Hello all! Thank you for the Favs, Follows, and Reviews. I love seeing the notifications come through they never fail to make me happy! Thank you as well for continuing to join me on my writing journey. I can't fully express how much I've enjoyed this. I was honestly so nervous to start posting.

In this chapter I've continued taking some liberties with LOTR histories and tweaked them for my purposes. Apologies to all you hardcore Tolkien readers if you're offended by this lol.

I'm very much looking forward to giving you the Haldir and Natasha reunion you all deserve! Stay tuned!

Special shout out to Fairlover2004 :) Thank you for your continued support.

She sipped the hot tea with care as she gazed over the books laid out over her bed, desk and part of the floor. Somewhere, here, amongst these vast old texts spread across the room, she might find some small bit of information that would help her create something out of nothing.

Her life had been a series of impossibilities from one step to the next. Born a poverty-ridden Russian girl with little to nothing to her name, to parents that should never have reproduced; she had been sold, trained, and beaten into perfection. She had been formed and molded with brutality into a gleaming diamond of espionage. Until she'd manipulated her way to the top of society. Until she'd been in the beds of the richest and most powerful men and women in the world. Nat had paved her way with their blood; stood on the shoulders of giants, titans of industry, kings and princes and she'd cut them all down with a single command.

The Red Room had made her something. It had turned a girl, born into nothing, with no skills, no money and no resources into the best assassin in the world.

Something out of nothing.

She'd lived her life by it.

A loud crash and a curse, that made Nat wince in sympathy, came from downstairs. The third such incident of the evening. Eric was working the kitchen with Berta and she had her hands full. Considering how busy it was downstairs, it wouldn't be the last. Bless her for wanting to take him on. He was good company but still off his rocker. It would take a considerable amount of time and patience before Eric was back to normal...if he even could achieve normal again.

A knock sounded on her door. Legolas had arrived.

She mumbled a quiet 'come in' knowing he would hear her despite her low volume. A moment's hesitation skipped by before he twisted the latch and entered carefully. A small tray, piled high with covered plates, was balanced on one arm as he passed through her doorway.

"Berta ambushed you." Nat chuckled as she unburdened him of the tray laden with dinner for the two of them.

"Is that the name of the whirlwind downstairs? I had no chance to ask her." He gave her a small grin as he closed the door behind him. "She was rather insistent I bring this up."

He was dressed more casually than she was used to seeing him. His hair was drawn back from his regal face in his usual fashion, but his well-tailored clothing had been replaced with a linen shirt and a pair of dark trousers. His high boots were travel-worn and the leather was scarred in more places than it was not. She highly doubted Berta knew she'd made an elven prince carry up food for a guest.

"I was just going to take a small break." She looked around and finding no open space she shoved the trunk at the foot of her bed into the center of the room and placed the tray atop it.

"We can eat while you talk." Nat sat down on the floor. The thin rug did little to smooth the uneven wooden floors. She gazed up at him for a long moment. His sharp features reminded her so much of Haldir. The slash of his cheekbones, the stubborn jaw and those dramatic blue eyes were nearly too perfect to be real. His species had no right looking so good.

Comfortably, he folded his long legs and took the spot opposite her. "What would you like to know?"

She wondered how often the prince had eaten on the floor with a trunk for a table. His naturally refined nature had been deceiving. He was perfectly at ease dining with a stranger on the floor.

Nat uncovered the small roasted game hen and sliced the bird eagerly in two. "Everything. I want to know absolutely everything."

She enjoyed his company. She wasn't sure which one of them was more surprised by it. He spoke of elven history easily and with astonishing detail. His recollection of events and places hundreds of years ago was precise and flowed so smoothly from his lips she could practically see it in real-time. No detail was too small to recount.

At first, he had simply wanted to relay the details of Dol Guldur; its surrounding landscape and construction. The conversation then flowed deeply into history; from the first days of Amon Lanc, an elven stronghold that Legolas' own grandfather had ruled to Sauron capturing the land from Thranduil and its final transition into Dol Guldur. His peoples' history was thorough and well written, but even extensive text wouldn't have given her the insight that his first-hand experience could. Little had been lost when his people had fled over the Forest River to escape the spreading darkness. It was during this transition that Legolas first met Mithrandir when he and the White Council attacked Dol Guldur and sent Sauron back into the shadows of Mordor. But the shadow of Sauron remained, a stain on the land, and dark creatures of all walks of life took over the fortress and inhabited the surrounding forest.

Thranduil withdrew into an underground fortress carved from an elaborate cave system, a safe haven for his people in times of war had become their permanent home. His voice changed when he spoke of his father and the deep-rooted tension was clear. Legolas hadn't agreed with the seclusion, but his father wouldn't risk open war after his elder son and wife had been killed. Spiders, Orc, and other dark forces lurked within Dol Guldur but Thranduil was confident his fortress and people were safe. He would not bring further bloodshed to his people. Not when they had risked themselves for decades waring against the spiders that continued to invade their territory and were reproducing faster than his people could kill them. Slowly, the elves had been pushed back and very little of the surrounding forest deemed safe.

"I didn't realize you had siblings." Nat interjected as she forked in a mouth full of game bird slathered in drippings.

"Mmmhmm." Legolas responded as he finished a small bite himself. "I'm the youngest of three. The eldest will one day succeed my father. It is how I am free and able to journey as I have. I do not have the obligations to the crown that my brother does."

He saw the question in her eyes and set aside his fork and knife. "After my mother's death, I wanted, very much, to do something that mattered. To protect my home and contribute to creating a place where my people would be free to roam the woodlands as they once did. To live amongst the trees and under the stars as we were intended."

"Your father doesn't agree?"

"Sadly, he does not. His grief weighs too heavily on his judgment, but his intentions are well-meant. He would save our people from experiencing the pain he bears daily."

"It's a difficult balance between one's mind and heart. They often pull you in opposite directions."

Legolas studied her carefully for a long moment. "You remind me very much of a dear friend."

He was genuinely surprised at the ease at which they'd spent nearly the last hour. She was an intent listener. He could see the information filing itself away inside her mind. Her interest was absolute. She hung on every word, every detail. He had never been one for making long conversation, but she had a way of drawing it out of him. It had been a long time since he'd had the pleasure of someone's company in such a naturally intimate setting.

"Not only in mind and demeanor but also in physical appearance." He grazed over her features as he reminisced. "You both have the same vibrant green eyes, bright as the first blades of spring grass and deep as the roots of an ancient evergreen. Your hair is naturally darker, more blood red to her light mahogany, but lovely, nonetheless. She is both fair and fierce. A warrior by nature much like you." He trailed off for a moment as he collected himself. There was sorrow between the two of them, strong and potent.

"Does she know you're in love with her?" His hands froze. "She doesn't, does she?"

He paused for a moment, contemplatively.

He had never spoken of it out loud. "She loved another."

"You say loved, does she still?"

"It has been some years since I've seen her. I know not if her heart would accept another. They were unbound and only beginning to understand the love between them. Their relationship was…unconventional." Rather embarrassingly he added. "He was a dwarf."

"You're kidding me?" She pictured Gimli with the female equivalent of Legolas. Impossible. The height difference alone.

When he remained silent, she pressed on. "Dear lord, you're serious?" She gave a small bark of a laugh. What crazed woman would find a dwarf more attractive than an elf? An elven prince for that matter?

"What happened to him?"

"He died saving her life and the life of his king a hundred years ago."

"A hundred years...a hundred years and you haven't told her that you love her?"

He smiled sadly. "It seems long to you. A hundred years...but I've loved her for centuries before even then. Elven hearts often love slowly...but when they do, they love forever. Mine has not and will never waver. I would wait for her through this life and our next. Once bound, elves mate for life, an eternity for one of my kind is very literal."

"Unrequited love...that's a painful path you've chosen to walk Legolas."

"I'm afraid there was no choice in the matter. I've tried to convince myself otherwise I assure you."

"She'd be positively flattered to know that you love her despite your best efforts." He laughed at the remark, warm and full. "I'm surprised, being royalty, that an arranged marriage isn't looming in your future."

He took the time to stack their plates. "Arranged marriages aren't uncommon among elves but it must be of mutual agreement between both partners as adults. My parents had such an arrangement and came in time to love and respect one another but they were never bound in the way my people commit to marriages of love. It is how and why my father still lives to rule Eryn Lasgalen ."

"If your father had been bound to your mother, he would have lost his Kingship when she died?"

He shook his head. "He would have lost his life. When elves bind themselves to their mates, we twine our souls, our fea. It is a commitment beyond the bounds of the human convention of marriage. If one dies, a part of the soul of the other goes with them in death. The pain of such a loss is said to be unbearable. The grief alone brings a slow and painful death to the one who remains. Most choose the honor of a ceremonial fade...and fell themselves upon a blade. It is the honorable method of separating a widowed fea from the hroa, our bodies. It is our chance to be reincarnated with our mate and end the suffering of our separated souls."

She was silent for a long moment. She thought of all the lives lost at Helm's Deep. All the bodies of elves and men alike that she'd stacked and pulled one by one from where they'd fallen. How many of them had been mated? How many more lives had been lost? More than any of them had realized. She thought of Haldir, his profound grief. She still felt the echoes of it days later. He would be the one to deliver the swords of the fallen. He would stand for his dead. It would be his duty and his honor to present them with all that was left of their loved ones whose bodies had been burned bright and hot on pyres around the Keep.

There had been so many, so many that would never see home again.

"That's both incredibly beautiful and tremendously sad."

"It is sad for those left behind. The ones left to grieve their friends and family but for those of my kind that are mated it is a gift to be able to follow your love into the afterlife, to be together for eternity in the fade or to be brought back to the shores of Arda until the ending of the world. We are the firstborn of Illuvater and were granted gifts beyond that of other creatures."

It was a funny thing death. How for some, death could be a gift and to others, an unfathomable curse laid upon the young and weak. But to him, an immortal, the idea of dying to spend an eternity in the afterlife or to be reincarnated was a blessing. He had faith. Faith in his gods and the gifts they'd bestowed on his people. She'd never had much faith of any kind but after what had happened between her and Haldir and the discovery of the infinity stones she was beginning to believe...even if only a little.

"How can you have so much faith that some all-powerful being created you in his image?" The concept seemed asinine. How could one individual be responsible for so much creation and diversity?

"I think...I think it takes a tremendous amount more faith to believe that this is all simply left to chance. Magic, in and of itself, is divine purpose channeled through earthly bodies. Creation, life, death. What makes them start, stop, and exist? Surely all that lives and breaths to walk this world wasn't created by spontaneous chance...What is it you believe in Natasha?"

"I've never believed in much of anything. Magic isn't widely believed in where I'm from. Until recently I would have argued it didn't exist at all. Everything I know, everything I've experienced I can attribute to science. I was immersed as a child in the fundamentals of existing; life and death." Life and death had been a process of clinical procedure, a scientific process that had little to do with miracles or magic. The concepts of right and wrong she'd been indoctrinated with were not those taught to normal children. Once she'd been reintroduced into society it had taken her decades to right those concepts in her mind and separate them from what she knew, in her heart, was right. She'd spent most of her life at war with herself.

"This place is more elemental than my world. The light and the dark are much easier to identify...but essentially...if we break it down it's still a war between life and death. It's really all anything boils down to. They want us dead so that they can live in a world of their own making, one that accepts and embraces their instincts to kill and destroy. We want them dead to preserve a harmonious way of life and the peace that the people of Middle Earth are accustomed to. Is one right over the other? Is one life worth more than the next? Are we more important than them? The answer depends entirely on what side of the question you're asking it from. Life and death is the engine that drives the world and it is us, the likes of you and I, that decide that."

She shrugged as she considered. "Maybe we were created or perhaps it's all just a happy coincidence that the atoms that make us up figured out how to stick together and survive. Either way, it doesn't change how I live my life. I don't spend my time praying and asking for divine guidance any more than I study biology or evolution. God or the gods don't make the choices for me. If I take a life or save one, that's up to me."

Her eyes went sad. "I've inflicted my fair share of death and loss for one lifetime."

She took the plates from his hands, rose smoothly, and set them outside the door.

"I had thought someone of your profession would be well accustomed to the notion."

She absorbed the stinging pain of his remark knowing he hadn't meant it offensively. He was much too polite and genuine to have done so and further, wouldn't have offered to come here if he'd thought so poorly of her.

"When I was young, I thought it would get easier. I thought eventually I wouldn't see their faces when I closed my eyes. That I wouldn't hear their last rattling breaths or feel their blood on my hands. As I got older, I was more afraid I'd stop seeing them. That I'd be exactly what they say I am." She slid back to the floor and handed him a thick text and the sleeve to her suit. She'd have him start scanning documents as she went through what texts she could manage. So far he'd been a well of knowledge. She hoped that well of information would continue to flow plentifully.

"I force myself to look, to remember...if I didn't, I'd be the monster they intended to create."

His eyes were bright with sympathy for her. A woman torn between worlds.

She found her own volume to go through. She cracked it open off to the side and ran her finger over the detailed map at the book's front and took a good long moment to absorb the new world she'd found herself in.

One she was now trying to protect.

They worked into the night by candlelight. Legolas proved to be tireless in his pursuit of information and even when the conversation took a more technical turn he would listen to her one-sided thought processes. It was late when the tavern below finally grew quiet and Berta and Eric's tired feet trudged heavily up the stairs. And still, they worked and talked through the midnight hours until the dawn began to peek over the horizon and neither of them had any more time to prepare.

Legolas quietly gathered their work in the background. She had a rough plan, or at least an opportunity to execute one if she could get her hands on the right resources. There was a slim chance, a snowball in hell, but a chance non the less that she could destroy Dol Guldur and keep the people of Lothlorien and Mirkwood safe.

She stood in front of her window; the curtains were drawn back. Her hair was braided down tightly, and her black suit slicked like a second skin over her body. The small city was just waking. The roosters called for the light of day announcing the start of a new beginning. Heralds of the dawn.

It would be the last time she had this view.

She committed it studiously to memory. Every rock, every window, every thatched roof and added it to her mental palace. A private mental sanctuary where she could find some small bit of peace. A moment of happiness when she needed it most.

"I should say goodbye to Eric." She said softly as Legolas came up behind her. Her pack in his elegant hands. He slipped the straps around her arms; the iron boxes were heavy and took up most of the room inside. He rested a hand on her shoulder. He'd seen the pain on her face every time Eric spoke. His delusional and unintelligible ramblings had pushed Natasha to the edge. He'd unintentionally crushed her by no fault of his own. What had been done to him had ruined their chances of going back to their homeworld. Clearly, the old man blamed himself. He grieved as much as she...in his own way.

Legolas was quiet for a moment as he listened intently. "He's awake and dressing for the day already. We can catch him in the hall momentarily."

She closed her eyes and gathered herself. Gathered the frayed ends and battered sentiment. Gathered her thoughts and all she'd taken from Legolas through the night.

Nat took one last look over the small humble city.

She had a mission, and she had every intention of seeing it through.

"Let's go."

He held the door for her and admired her for walking through it with confidence.

Eric came out simultaneously from down the hall.

"I was hoping to catch you."

"I wanted to say goodbye."

The pair spoke over each other and then with a small grin Eric came forward and took her hands in his own. A grandfatherly affection took hold over his features. He didn't know her well, there were few who did, but she'd risked her life to save his. She'd risked everything to get him out and had set him up in the home of a kind stranger so he didn't have to be alone. He didn't know much but he knew at the heart of her she was much more than the treacherous assassin he'd read about on paper.

"I would tell you to be careful Agent Romanoff, but my experience tells me you won't be."

"I'll be as careful as I can be."

"I got to thinking last night." He rustled around in the layers of his clothes until he produced a folded sheet of parchment and his glasses. "I think...well...there's a possibility we can break the casing and sever the connection with the tesseract."

He unfolded the sheet. It was covered in mathematical equations, symbols she didn't recognize, and some that resembled alchemy.

"It's alright Eric." She knew it was too good to be true and too dangerous to try without the proper equipment or testing.

"No, no this could work. Without it exploding." He looked down over his notes for a long moment. His fingers rubbed the papers between their tips. He gave a long sigh and scratched casually at the top of his head as he contemplated.

"Eric?" He jumped in surprise and looked up.

"Good morning." He said and looked back down in a disappointed fashion at the paper in his hands. He folded it back up and handed it to her. "This must be for you."

She turned the inked parchment over in her hands and saw her name scribbled at the top of the fold.

"I came to say goodbye, Eric." She slipped the note into her breast pocket.

"Ah, yes. Be careful Agent Romanoff and…and...thank you for coming for me."

"I'll see you soon. Stay with Berta until I get back?"

"I quite like it here. I'd very much like to stay."

That was good, Nat thought, at the very least he could be happy even if he had lost his mind. He deserved to settle and enjoy his sunset years. She hoped her efforts would have him seeing plenty of them. That was the most she could ask for.

She patted his cheek as she would a child's, as she had Clint's children.

"Goodbye, Dr. Selvig."

He covered her hand over his ruddy cheek.

"Goodbye, Agent Romanoff."

She pulled away turning on her heels with Legolas close behind. She'd made it halfway down when Eric came thundering after her.

"Light, Natasha." He put his hand to his head and ran his fingers angrily through his hair.

"Light." He mumbled again looking up at her. For a moment his eyes were lucid and deep. Full of memory, pain, regret, and bursting with knowledge. He opened his mouth but the words didn't come out. In an instant, it was gone. His eyes went a little glazed and unaware.

"Goodbye." He mumbled and headed back up the stairs with heavy feet.

She watched him go. Frozen on the stairs until the snap of his heavy door closing refocused her.

She carried on without a word and stepped lightly into the kitchen below. Knowing Berta would be elbows deep in flour and kneading bread for the day.

"I'll be a moment." She spoke quietly to Legolas and didn't bother to acknowledge him more. She couldn't take the look she knew was in his eyes.

She was surprised to find the kitchen empty. The ovens cold and not a trace of bread or flour to be found. All the better perhaps. She wasn't terribly sure she could handle another goodbye. She'd grown attached to one too many things here; to Berta, Eowyn, Gimli, the Rohir, and she would very likely see none of it or any of them again.

Nat tossed the small sack of coins she had left on the counter next to the flour where she knew Berta would find it. What Nat had to offer was nothing in comparison to all she'd been given.

She pulled down a jug of whiskey and two glasses. Carefully she poured two fingers into each. She swirled one glass in her hand, toasted them together, and downed one. She clung to her grief. Swallowed it's bitterness and remembered it's taste. It's fuel burned in her gut. The other glass she set carefully next to her coins and smiled as she thought of the woman who had nothing but love to give the world.

"Be happy Berta." She whispered as she patted the stopper home to close the jug.

Her time in Rohan was over.