Middle-earth, Rivendell: T.A. 3019

Arwen was deep in a grief-soaked dream when the screaming began. She jerked from her bed and lurched into the hallway along with several other members of her father's household.

'What is it,' cried one of her father's cooks, covering her ears in pain. 'Has the dark lord descended from his tower to consume us all? Have they found the hidden valley?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' said a deeper, far more controlled voice. Erestor, strode into the light of the moon filleting through the windows of the hallway.

'It is the Dunlander girl, her child must be coming. Go, heat a basin of hot water and find us some towels, there will be a child born this night.'

And so, they did, the servants dispersed until only Arwen and Erestor stood in the hallway leading to her chamber.

'Where is she?' spoke the Evenstar. 'For she does not seem so near as to be in her room, and I should have heard if she had been moved.'

Her father's favourite councillor bowed and motioned for her to follow him.

'She collapsed in the dining hall, not so soon after you retired for the night, my lady. She had to be moved to a chamber closer to the ground, since she was much too heavy for us to lift all the way up to the room beside yours.'

Arwen nodded, but made no more move to say anything. Time was of the essence, and they could not waste the air with useless words now.

The girl was already half gone by the time they actually did enter the room, the baby almost crowning and the screams, oh the screams were unbearable. They would have made a mortal's ear bleed, but for the elves, who had grown so finally attuned to the gentle noises of their world, it very nearly broke them. It forced them to their knees and cowed them with the loud, sharp noise of something that was never meant to be.

And that was when the daughter of Elrond Half-elven realised that it was not the mother's screams at all that cowed her and Erestor so, it was the child's. Very nearly still in its mother's womb, it wailed and shook the walls with the terrible sound.

She wanted to run, but she couldn't move, no all Arwen could do was stay there as slowly the child squirmed its way out of its mother's birth-canal and took its first horrible breath. Most children couldn't do that, they needed the mother to push, the mid-wife to help…someone outside themselves to lend them aid in taking their first breath…this child did not.

It wriggled free onto its mother's bedding, and just lay there as all infants would, squealing in agony. It twitched, and it writhed as no mortal should, for you see there was no way for this child to truly be a mortal at all, for it only half lived. One half of its body was new-born and as all babies should be…but the other half, that half was dead to the world, it rotted, and it stunk, and wriggled with the flesh of newly-born maggots.

Meanwhile

Calgacus opened his eyes and sat bolt upright, he'd had that dream again. The same dream he'd had almost every night after they'd escaped the forest. That terrible dream, the one where his mother's trees fell, and the dead were set loose on Middle-earth.

His wife had told him it was just a dream, and to please stop waking her up at night to discuss it, but he didn't know. It had seemed so vivid this night, how could it not be real?

At least he didn't wake up screaming this time, it was difficult enough to explain that when it was only the hobbits that had heard him. Around him he could hear the soft low voices of the fellowship, they'd left the tree-city of Lothlorien not two days past, and the weight of the journey was already beginning to weigh on their shoulders.

The voices were growing louder, almost as if…as if they were rising in argument.

'Will you keep your voice down, the others do not need to be awoken by your ranting and raving.'

'My ranting...my raving? It was not I that was doing that last night, or in Lothlorien when you 'accidently' stumbled into my bed chamber.'

'Be silent, I was grieving, I was lost, and you had no right to force the situation.'

'Force the situation? I was asleep you pointy eared elf princeling, and you kissed me.'

'Please, please let us put it behind us, I am sorry that…that I disgust you so, but this journey is perilous enough without our hatred for one another growing out of control.'

'So, you do still hate me. Are you so bitter towards my kin for stealing a bride from you that you would continue to loath me merely for my race?'

'And do you not do the same to me? I am an elf, and there for as good as an orc in your eyes, or say it is not so?'

'No…No…it is not so…not so now, aye at the beginning I would have gladly run you through with my axe. But the lady has changed my eyes for the better, has she not done yours? Or was my hair so a flame with the light of the Elven born moon that you could not but resist me. Hair of fire so like hers, so like the first elf to love my kind.'

'You know nothing of what you speak master Gimli, and you never shall, now please leave me alone. I have need to be by myself tonight.'

'Did you love her, so? Or is it something else, something that you still cannot face.'

'I said… be quiet!'

There was the harsh sound of something hitting flesh, and suddenly it was as if all the air had been sucked out of the world and not even the hobbits tucked up safely beside the Dunlander, could sleep anymore.

'Blarney, they're at it again, Mister Frodo.'

Hissed a hoarse voice a few sleeping forms down.

Another voice giggled at that.

'I know, why don't they just f…'

'Pippin!'

'Oh, come on Merry, you know what I mean, they've done this every night since we left Lothlorien.'

'And more than a few in it,' came the first voice again.

'I don't remember that?' Frodo, darn it, Frodo was awake…that could not end well for anyone.

'Oh, Aye sir, that they did, since the first night the Lady spoke to us.'

'How did you see this?'

'Wasn't hard, they walked past our bedrolls every night having the same argument.'

'Where was I then?'

'In a dream sir, in a dream.'

Somewhere outside Rivendell

It was a dream, it was all a dream, that's why the girl told herself. None of it could be real, none of it…she…she was human, she had never been an elf, maybe that was the dream. No, no, she could remember her lives before, her names, she had been those elves, was still those elves fused as if as one in a single body. But she was still human, that at least had to be real.

So maybe it was everything else that was the dream…. maybe in her arms was nothing more than the whisper in the mind. A nightmare that at any second, she'd wake up from and be all the better, no, she was never so lucky. She lacked the imagination to dream up something…. something like this.

The elves had been afraid, no more than that, they'd been terrified of the thing that had come out of the girl. And right they should be, for even now the thing squirmed at her breast, and wriggled around in her arms like it was violently sick in its own skin.

She couldn't look down at it, not yet anyway…maybe in time, some time, she'd be able to look down at…at that thing and feel only love. Like her mother did for…for them…in the other life…the life when they were not a girl but elves…the life that…they had tried to make themselves forget. They had tried to play the role, be the wife, for Calgacus, for his child…but Calgacus was gone now, away on a journey without her and she was alone with the babe in her arms…hiding where the elves would never look.

Where her family would never look.

Amon Hen, not but a week later

The world moved too fast for Calgacus to catch his breath, they'd already lost Gandalf to the dark depths of Moria and now the Ringbearer had vanished into the forest surrounding their campsite. All the terrible things that could happen to someone as small as Frodo flashed through the boy's mind, and he tried to keep the nausea off his face.

So many terrible things, not just the dead here, but the living, the dark and terrible creatures that crawled out of the two towers. He'd never really seen an orc before, back in the heart of his mother's trees, he'd never imagine anything could be as horrible as the dead…and nothing could, but the orcs came the closest.

What if…what if one of them found Frodo before the Fellowship could? What terrible things could an orc do to a hobbit in the time it took the others to reach them? No…no…the more he thought like that the weaker he felt…imagining such terrible things would do nothing to help the hobbit now. No, what would help was if Calgacus found him, and he couldn't do that if he was retching on the ground.

Then from the North he heard the sound, it was a great bellow like a horn blown…the horn of Gondor.

'Boromir!'

Hefting his shield onto his back, Calgacus took off at a sprint, bounding over the harsh jutted stone of the wreckages of Gondor long past. He was moving so quick now he could hear the sharp slap of the wind against his face, it slammed against him, made his breath short and ragged and yet he couldn't stop…for the horn of Gondor still bellowed in the distance. Which could mean one thing and one thing only.

Boromir had found Frodo.

And that was a terrifying thought all by itself.

Rivendell, A week earlier

She did not have a horse, she did not have a cart, or some form of carrying her forward that wasn't just her own legs – legs that were very quickly losing momentum against the horse-back riders that pursued her.

No, that pursued them. The Elves had been afraid of the child that had come out of the girl…truly afraid…more afraid of her than they ever were of the orcs that they hunted daily. For the child was of two worlds…the living and the dead. The elves did not know how to handle it, did not know what to do when the child wailed that unnatural shriek of hers, in yearning not for her mother's milk…but for her blood.

They shunned the child, tried not to look at her, but maybe that would have been all they did if it had not been for the mother herself. For after the birth she seemed changed. Not broken, or tired, as one might expect in the aftermath of any birth…but as if she was no longer there, as one person anymore.

She talked and bickered with herself constantly, as if there was someone in there with her, but when her nursemaids opened the door, they found the girl sitting all by herself.

'The child has driven her mad,' concluded the wise Elves of Elrond's council. 'The only solution is to take it away from her.' Elrond said nothing to this, a slow clawing guilt gripping him when he thought of the girl, or the child at all.

Not because of the boy on the quest, no, it was something deeper…something darker than that. He was trapped within his own duty to the members of his household, who were not only terrified by the child…but very possibly in danger…for a dark gloom had hung over the house of Elrond since the child's birth that was of nothing natural to this world – and his own conscience swayed by history best left forgotten. For what would he have done if Maglor or Maedhros would have looked at him and his brother Elros, like they were creatures barely worth the air that they breathed?

There was something wrong with the child, something deeply wrong but…a child was still a child.

He forbids them to kill it, but that was all he did for he'd witness the deterioration of the mother and knew that the child could not be permitted to continue to suckle at her breast. It must be taken away, and it must be taken now.

And so, what if his voice raised a tad too loud for the secret meeting, his advisers – save Erestor, who remained too close a confident of the Evenstar to be trusted – had forced him into it. It was hardly his fault if the only empty meeting room, his staff hadn't filled with broken furniture was just down the hall from the child's nursery.

How was he to know the mother would be there? How was he to know she'd take offense at his advisers plans to steal her child? How was he to know what she'd do to try and stop it.

Honestly sometimes his advisers could be the most paranoid of people.

***
Amon Hen

They were too late; they were always too late. The hobbits were gone, either carried off by…by those foul creatures or wandered off of their own volition. And Boromir, Boromir was dead…Boromir was gone, just like so many before him.

Aragorn had ordered them to lay his body out in one of the long boats they had used to get up here, his small round shield laid out over him as if it could protect him from all the terrible things that would come for him in the afterlife. He didn't know the rituals of death of the Men of Gondor – the Gondor soldiers who had been trapped in his mother's forest rarely spoke of their home-land, except maybe to teach a few of the locals the Common tongue – so Calgacus didn't know if this was really what Boromir would have wanted, but he doubted it. Truth be told Boromir would have preferred to be alive, to have his own skin remain his till the end of time. He would never have the former ever again, but perhaps if Calgacus acted quickly he could stop the later, he could do this one last thing for a man he had never been brave enough to call friend.

The others had started to sing, a low and mournful song of Boromir's life – but Calgacus did not know the words, and he hardly cared to learn them now. No, now there was greater work to be done for the dead. He crouched down and scrabbled in one of the packs that the hobbits had left behind.

A tinder box, Master Samwise had carried many of them, perfect, just what he needed.

'Calgacus, what are you doing?'

Legolas lent over him, a faint frown crossing his ethereal face.

'He has tae burn; the body has tae burn.'

'No,' said Aragorn his hand shooting out and latching onto the Dunlander's wrist, before he could spark the ever so needed fire over Boromir's body.

'It is not the way it is done in Gondor, Aon-adharcach; we must respect Boromir's wishes.'

'If Boromir's wishes had been respected, he wouldna be dead.'

Aragorn stepped back from the angry youth; his own face gone decidedly blank.

'He wished tae go home, his wished tae go doon the gap o' the Strawheads. But ye thought better of that oh King o' Men, and now lays your due…Boromir is dead, aye, we must except that. For there is nae man or elf, or dwarf yet living who could cure him o that, nor should…but I'll nae let this great man's body be a vessel for thems that dinna ken to stay dead. Better it burns than tae let it rot. '

No one stopped him this time, aye, no one stopped him at all.

It was a terrifying sight to behold, what the elves who pursued the mother and babe that dark and cold night saw. They'd known it would be of course, the child was a horrifying sight all by herself, yet somehow not in their wildest dreams could any of them have imagined this.

When they'd first come across her, that strange girl from savage Dunland, crouched heaving over her still unnaturally screaming child, they had believed that they had caught her that night – ah what fools we all are in hindsight.

'My Lady, please we have out run you this night…we will out run you tomorrow night…and every night that you try to elude us…please my lady, we will not hurt the child.'

'Then what will you do, Glorfindel of Rivendell?'

The voice sounded wrong, as if it did not fit the slight body of the girl it was coming from. It sounded harsh and deeper than it should have. As if…as if some other soul was trying to break through…trying to show themselves for what they really were. But of course, that was absurd.

'We will take her somewhere safe, a village perhaps, but you must know this cannot continue. Look at you my lady, you were already weak from the birth…but now you can barely stand. She cannot be allowed to consume your blood anymore…you will die…and then who will protect her after that?'

'Oh, my dear Glorfindel…you truly sound sincere in your concern for our daughter's safety…we never knew they gave such wonderful acting classes in the halls of Mandos. But then we never really got a round much when we were there.'

The girl's head flicked back over her shoulder and she laughed…laughed in a way that no mortal ever should. That no immortal ever should…she laughed like she was being split in two. Glorfindel fought against the deep undeniable terror that had forced him and his soldiers to their knees.

Something was happening…something terrible and he didn't think it was the child this time. Something was breaking before him, the mother's back bent over and…and ripped in twian. Blood, bone all pulled apart like they were never meant to be in the first place.

And when that cold chill finally settled on the forces of Elrond's household at last, it was not a girl that stood before them…in fact it was not a single person at all, but two.

Two elves looked down on the soldiers kneeled before them and smiled, smiled as if this had been their game all along.

'Good Evening, Gentlemen,' said the twin spectres of elves long past. 'You can call us the Ambarussa, now…' they said as they bent and scooped up the still screaming infant.

'We believe you were in the middle of trying to murder our daughter. Or were we mistaken?'

All were silent, for none could speak under their gaze.

'Ah, I see…well we certainly can't allow that, now can we?'