Author's Note: Welcome to the sequel! This will necessarily be a bit less structured than the original, but I have lots of wonderful and awkward adventures in the works. :) Many thanks to Amelia, who is the best alpha reader in the whole wide world and has helped me more than I can say. Special thanks to inchrist-billios, who temp-beta'ed and saved the day. And now on to the action!

CHAPTER ONE

Meghan's side was on fire.

More than on fire, actually – it was being torn apart, rubbed with salt, kicked, cut, shredded. She felt lesser pains in one knee, across her face, on her arms, but nothing, nothing as bad as the profound agony in her side. She looked at her hands, and they were dripping crimson.

Am I lying down? It was hard to tell. Something heavy pressed against her back. No, wait, that's the ground. I am lying down. Thinking felt sticky. She could taste bile in her mouth. Her head throbbed. Her side flamed and roared and it hurts so much please make it stop.

She could hear noises, swords against swords and hoarse Orcish voices and feet beating against the ground. It seemed to be dwindling into the distance, or was that her hearing fading away? She opened her mouth to cry out and found that she was too tired. Darkness blurred the edges of her vision, crackled with pulsations of color that matched the throbbing in her side.

Why does it hurt so much? she wondered. She remembered in flickers, a playback broken by fractals and strobe lights and static. They had reached the edges of Mirkwood just as night fell, so they set up camp and she had drifted off to sleep. A guttural scream, a swarm of mountain goblins, the confusion, a battle. The sudden punch of agony in her side – an arrow lodged just below her ribs.

She tasted iron and acid on the back of her tongue as she tentatively reached out with her fingertips to feel the arrow shaft disappear into her stomach. It's barbed, she thought calmly. I am so sleepy.

"Meghan…"

The voice came from a great distance, and sounded like a whisper even though she knew it must be a shout. Someone was kneeling beside her, shouting while she was trying to go to sleep. She angrily pushed away.

"My Meghan, be still… ai Elbereth!" The voice grabbed her hands and that's when she started screaming, because she was being tied up and she had an arrow in her stomach and she had to get to Legolas—

"Legolas?" she choked, her throat raw with bile.

His hand was in her hair now. "You must stay awake, my Meghan," he said. She could see tears on his lashes.

"It hurts a lot," she said stupidly.

"I know," he replied. "Gwaethir is coming in a moment, just stay awake."

Drowsiness curled around her like a riptide. "I'll only sleep for a minute," she reasoned as her eyelids drifted closed.

"Meghan!" He grabbed her chin, jogging her awake. "No, my Meghan, stay awake."

She stared at him, confused. The pain in her side would go away if she could just sleep it off, but Legolas wanted her to stay awake? It didn't make sense. And now he was shouting for his brother in a voice that sounded like heartbreak and she wondered why he was so afraid.

He knew that Meghan's heartbeat was slowing down because he could see the blood pumping out of her in time with her pulse. He knew that abdominal wounds were particularly dangerous because if the internal organs were harmed, the body could poison itself from the inside out. He knew that Meghan was going to die if she didn't stop bleeding. And he knew that he didn't know enough to help her without possibly making it much, much worse.

"Gwaethir!" he shouted again, throat raw and hands shaking.

His brother finally appeared, throwing down a satchel and kneeling on the other side of Meghan in one swift movement. "How long?" he asked tersely as he tore a long rent in her shirt to see the wound more easily.

"Only a few moments," Legolas replied.

"Keep her awake."

"Meghan, come back," Legolas implored. Her eyes roved blindly and her fingers feebly clutched at his jerkin. He grabbed her chin again, forcing her to look at him. "I am here. Stay with me."

"I feel sick," she said in a faint voice.

"I know, but you have to stay awake." His hands were covered in her blood and he finally understood why she was afraid of it. Blood had never bothered him before, but seeing so much of hers made him remember anew that it was lifeblood. It was precious, and it was seeping out of her.

"The arrow goes deep," Gwaethir said, "and it is barbed. I will have to break off the fletching and then push it wholly through."

"Through?" Legolas balked.

"To pull it out will surely kill her," Gwaethir nodded. "Look. It sits low, under the ribs, and it is nearly out her back anyway. Trust me, little brother."

For split second, Legolas hung in the balance. "I trust you," he said.

"Turn her on her side." Gwaethir dug through his satchel for a moment before handing Legolas a thick strip of leather. "And put this between her teeth."

Meghan had drifted back into a half-world of glazed eyes and unsteady breathing. Legolas had to jostle her roughly to recall her attention. "You're still here," she said, surprised. He tried to be gentle as he rolled her onto the opposite side of her wound, but she still hissed in pain.

"Bite down on this," he said.

"Why?" She shrank away, some part of her at least dimly suspecting his answer.

"So that you do not bite off your tongue," he replied. "This will hurt very, very much."

She meekly accepted the leather between her teeth and clenched her hands around Legolas' own. He could see the tears already forming in her eyes, but he also could see her steeling herself. Her ability to master her panic and fear still surprised him. He glanced up at Gwaethir, and his brother nodded that it was time.

Meghan was screaming.

She wanted to fight back against the pain that flamed in her side as Gwaethir grasped the end of the arrow that protruded from her belly. Seconds lasted hours. Every nerve ending in her body radiated torment. She couldn't see through the haze of tears, and she didn't want to look anyway. Finally, after what must have been a hundred years, the arrow snapped just below the fletching and Gwaethir tossed the broken half away.

"Hold her steady," she heard him say. "This will be worse."

No! Meghan wanted to shriek but the leather got in her way. Before she could resist, Legolas pinned her arms down and wedged his foot over both her ankles, completely restraining her with his body. Then Gwaethir began to push the arrow through.

This pain was the worst of all. She tried to writhe away from the exquisite agony even as Legolas put more of his weight over her to keep her still. He was whispering something to her, probably words of comfort, but she couldn't understand him over her own screams. She could feel every muscle, every nerve, every fibre tearing as the arrowhead pushed through her side, and then the skin on her lower back splitting open.

Stay awake, she wailed to herself, because that was the only coherent thought she had left to hang onto.

Once the arrow was completely out, Meghan stopped screaming and subsided into sobs. Legolas cautiously eased his weight off her, fearing she would start thrashing again, but she lay still other than the shudders that racked her body. Meanwhile, Gwaethir had pressed thick swathes of cloth over both wounds.

"She is strong," he said. "That is a difficult pain to bear."

"Will she—" The words stuck to the roof of his mouth, and Legolas had to clear his throat.

"The next few hours will tell," Gwaethir said. "It is difficult to say if her internal organs were much harmed, and the arrow may have been poisoned. But see, the bleeding already lessens."

As if on cue to the word bleeding, Meghan threw up.

"Sit her upright," Gwaethir said, not daunted in the least.

Legolas shifted back onto his knees, drawing Meghan with him. She sagged against his chest as her fingers fluttered uselessly across his back. Her breathing came harsh and uneven.

Gwaethir pressed a poultice over the wounds and then wrapped a heavy bandage around her torso. "I must go see to Urúvien," he said. "He took a gash down the thigh, thought not so severe as this. For now, keep her still until the rest are ready to depart. We will move camp soon." He gathered the last of his supplies and, with a nod, hurried away.

"We're leaving?" Meghan mumbled thickly. Her gaze was flickering randomly around, and he noticed a red stain around the iris in her left eye – a burst blood vessel, probably from screaming.

"We must. There may be more goblins near, and we have not the numbers to oppose a larger pack of them. We will be safer in the forest." Around them, the other Elves were working quickly so that they could leave, but Legolas was barely even aware of them.

Her voice dropped to a whisper as she struggled to maintain consciousness. "Then I like the forest."

"I hope that you will come to love these trees as I do," Legolas murmured against her hair. "My brother says the woods are whole again, and the corruption of Dol Guldor is no more. Would that you had come to my home in any way but this!"

"When are we going?" she mumbled. "I really want to sleep, Legolas."

"Soon, my Meghan. Already they have begun to strike camp and saddle the horses."

She sucked in a sharp gasp as he shifted her weight a little so that he could see her face. "I don't feel good," she croaked thickly. Her lips and the skin under her eyes had turned ashen, like the beginning of a bruise. "I want my mom."

A pang of guilt hollowed out his gut, although it wasn't his fault that she would never see her family again. She cut off his reply, however, by choking out a gurgling cough.

"Ouch," she panted, her eyes rolling back a bit. "Hurts. Ouch."

Dread coiled sickly around the base of his spine. Despite himself, his hand shook as he reached out to touch her darkened lips, and wiped away the blood that had coated them. "Meghan," he said, trying to keep his voice even. "I think perhaps I had better call my brother back for a moment."

"Why?" she slurred just before her breath hitched in her throat, as if she was realizing something. "My mouth tastes weird." She tried to lift a hand to her lips, but he caught it and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

"You must be still," he said.

"It really really hurts." Her eyes were luminous in the dim moonlight – and was he just imagining the grey pallor of her skin? "I think I'm going to die."

"You are not going to die," he said, smoothing away a fresh tear from her cheek. "Your body is already healing. You simply need time."

She replied by vomiting down his chest.

"Oh nooooo," she moaned. "I barfed on you. I'm sor—" But she couldn't finish her words, because she choked on another mouthful of blood and sick.

"Gwaethir!" Legolas shouted as he angled her face so that she wouldn't suffocate on her own vomit. His brother reappeared with seconds, and knelt to assess Meghan where she lay half in Legolas' arms. Gwaethir's face remained carefully impassive, an expression that Legolas knew he reserved for the most grave situations so that he wouldn't frighten the patient.

"What ails her?" Legolas asked in a low voice.

"She was shot in the stomach," he replied mildly, although his mouth tightened as he peeled back the bandage from her abdomen to reveal a dark, sickly stain on the skin around her wound. He placed his hand flat against Meghan's stomach, just above the discoloration. "How are you feeling, Meghan?"

She winced at the contact, then hazily refocused on him. "Twirly," she whispered. "What's wrong with me?"

"You are fine," Gwaethir said, but Legolas knew differently.

Meghan wasn't fooled, either. "No, ouch, hurts," she wheezed, starting to hyperventilate. "This is—this is not okay—" She struggled to sit up, but both brothers gently lay a hand on her to keep her still.

"You must stay calm," Gwaethir said. "I believe your stomach was torn or perhaps even ruptured by the arrowhead, and the wound does seem to have been poisoned."

"What do we need to do?" Legolas asked quietly.

His brother looked grave. "I do not have the supplies to treat her properly. Were it a surface wound I could draw the infection out, but this goes too deep. I think it would be best to take her to Father. The hands of the king, after all."

"Are the hands of a healer," Legolas finished, and didn't wait for any more information. He scooped Meghan into his arms and strode over to the horses. Arod whickered restlessly, dancing a little despite the long night without much rest.

"Wait, little brother," Gwaethir said, following. "It would be unwise for you to ride ahead with her alone. It is still a full day's journey at least, perhaps two."

"If we remain with the company, it will be longer," Legolas said helplessly.

"I did not mean that Meghan should wait. You have not studied medicine as I have. Let me take your lady by the swiftest road, since I know how best to treat her along the way."

There wasn't even time for Legolas to think through this option, because Meghan sucked in a deep, choking breath and turned her head away just before throwing up again. She followed this with a wet sob.

"Take Arod," Legolas said, grinding his teeth. "He is used to bearing two."

Gwaethir nodded, already swinging up into the saddle. "She is going to be fine," he said as Legolas passed Meghan up to him. "The first bout of illness is often the worst."

"Guard her well," Legolas said. He turned to Meghan, but she had already slipped into fever dreams. He pressed a kiss against the inside of her wrist, drawing comfort from the warmth of her skin and the thrum of her pulse.

"I will see you a few days, brother," Gwaethir said, and with that he was gone.

Meghan drifted into a cacophony of sounds.

They were all innately familiar to her, but at the same time very, very wrong. The caterwaul of sirens. Slow, steady beeping. A low rumble that she couldn't quite place until, with a pop, she realized it was an engine. She opened her eyes.

She was in the back of an ambulance.

Author's Note: OHHHHHHHH MY STARS I cannot even tell you guys how long I have waited to post this chapter!