Happy Friday everyone! Thanks for tuning in for the next chapter! Writing is going pretty well. I'm trying to update every two weeks; one week to write new and one week to edit the chapter that is posting next. Once I finish I will start posting every week. I'm trying out some new programs for editing. Hope everybody is doing well and staying safe and healthy. Thank you to all those who fav, follow, and leave reviews! You guys make me smile! Best wishes and much love to you all. xoxoxo.
Silence.
She was greeted with overwhelming and incredibly awkward silence.
No one said a word as Nat and Haldir broke through the firelight and into the council that had formed. Conversation had ceased and for a long strung-out moment, she feared Haldir had been wrong.
"Agent Romanoff, it's wonderful to see you." Eric broke from the stillness beside Gandalf and with a familiarity that surprised her, embraced her without hesitation. "I knew you'd come for me." He squeezed her just a bit tighter before releasing her at arm's length.
The gratitude shining in his eyes floored her.
He had recovered beautifully from his time in the tower. The bags beneath his eyes were nearly gone and his skin tone had improved tremendously. It was a good sign seeing him so well after all he had been through.
"I would have come sooner if…" He cut her off quickly with a wave of his hand and a firm grip on her shoulder.
"There was no way to know. I could have been anywhere in the cosmos. Traveling through space and time is unpredictable at best. I have a Ph.D. in astrophysics, and I don't always get it right. Given all the odds it's a miracle that we ended up on the same planet let alone at a similar time…" He rambled on some more in his typical fashion getting carried away with his thoughts as he always did. His stream of consciousness flowed freely from his mouth.
She felt Haldir shift beside her, everyone still focused on them.
"I wonder how much time passed between us when we traveled here? Months? Years?" He shot her a curious glance as if she would have any input into his one-sided conversation.
"We were only four maybe five feet apart when the explosion happened and arrived here approximately seventeen weeks apart. I wonder…." He looked around in agitation. His hand slipped weakly from her shoulder. She quickly reached out to grasp his trembling digits in her own.
"I need my things, my computers and processors…. Jane...I need Jane and and Darcy…. yes, I need Jane and Darcy too."
She gave him a squeeze she hoped was comforting. "Eric…" she said trying to garner his attention, but he was still worked up and stuck in his own mind.
"Eric." She called again and gave him a tug.
He turned to her looking momentarily surprised and then his eyes came alight with gratitude again.
He looked beyond happy to see her. His aged smile lifted the wrinkles around his mouth and eyes in delight.
"Agent Romanoff, it's wonderful to see you." He said softly looking down at their joined hands.
He gave her a soft grin and embraced her again. "I knew you'd come for me."
She held him tight. He looked healthy on the outside but inside he was clearly broken. Mind control, spells, space and time travel, it had all been too much for him.
Something inside her cracked a little more. Tears gathered in her eyes as she met Gandalf's gaze over Eric's shoulder. Nat squeezed the older man all the tighter. Any hope that he was whole, evaporated into the night.
They were both lost now, absolutely and completely.
"Of course, I came for you." She closed her eyes and gathered him close as she composed herself. Nat offered him a soft smile that she didn't remotely feel. She looked for a distraction and in doing so gestured casually to Wulfric. In the meeting of their gazes, her pain echoed back in his stare. He knew that Eric had been her last remnant of hope.
"Have you met Wulfric." She turned on the charm as effortlessly as drawing breath and motioned casually to Wulfric. She cleared her throat. "He's Thor's nephew."
A look of wonder crossed Eric's face as he addressed Wulfric. "I knew you looked familiar!" He exclaimed.
"We were good friends, your uncle and I." He muttered for a moment, completely unintelligibly and then barked out a laugh.
"We drank together at a bar in New Mexico. He's a good man, your uncle, a very good man!" He was happy and bright as he approached Wulfric and continued to regale him with the tale of their drunken adventure.
Nat felt her knees buckle and a sinking feeling filled her gut. She turned her back on them for a moment and tilted her face to the sky. She loosed a long deep breath. By sheer will alone she remained standing. She wanted nothing more than to drop to her knees and scream until her voice gave out but what choice did she have in the matter. It would change nothing.
So, she did what she always did and bore down as deep as she could manage and then further still. Nat added another tally mark on the side of all she had already lost.
Haldir's presence at her side drew her attention. He stood at her elbow, closer now than before, but still facing the group. He made no effort to touch her or any obvious moves to comfort her, but a quick turn of his gaze told her that he understood. His regard, a cool soothing pool of understanding, was a temperate cloth to her fevered skin.
She held his eyes, I just need a moment, Nat thought.
Haldir broke their connection quickly but it was enough. Enough pull herself up by her bootstraps and gather what was left of her senses.
She turned back to the group of men, all business. That was all this was to her now, all it could ever be to her, or she would lose it.
Nat looked between Gandalf and where Wulfric stood distracting Eric.
"Destroying the stone is no longer an option." Gandalf said quietly to the group. "This is beyond our mastery of fire and water. This is a power we can no longer hope to contain or destroy."
A heavy silence fell over the group.
"Dr. Selvig." Gandalf called garnering his attention from Wulfric. "Can you explain, as you did to me earlier, what you have discovered about the scepter and the stone?"
Eric jumped to attention. "Yes, yes." He cleared his throat.
"Where to begin…" He looked to Natasha for a direction on where and how to start but she had far too little information to go on. She had been at the testing facility and knew the basic tests Eric had conducted but the actual science was well beyond her.
"Your research before this." She started for him.
She rubbed a hand over the back of her neck as she recalled the details and met Eric's attentive gaze. "In New Mexico your staff was trying to harness the radiation and power to produce miniature self-sustaining reactors but for some reason the radiation levels were too unstable. They fluctuated too sporadically. S.H.I.E.L.D wanted to weaponize it."
Eric turned his hands over the tops of themselves and as his memory kicked in.
"We were thinking of it all wrong though!" he exclaimed excitedly. "There were thousands of books in Saruman's libraries. I had access to everything you could imagine. The Tesseract is a combination of magic and science, the gamma radiation isn't just a conductor, it's also a container." He trailed off again onto one of his educational tirades. She wasn't an astrophysicist or a radiobiologist and as his tangent went above her pay grade, she tried to tune him out.
Nat's face fell into an apprehensive expression. The technical jargon didn't matter; it was not the stone or the tesseract they needed to be worried about...it was whatever was inside them.
"Show her the pages Eric." Gandalf encouraged him to focus, gentle and kind, his voice held quiet authority.
Eric hurried on in a rush, "Yes, the book, the book. I came across one on ancient lore. It took me weeks to translate the pages that interested me. You see before there was time and space." He spun and motioned around them with wide arms.
"Before species of any kind existed," he touched her arm and spoke with great animation using his hands. "before we existed, before the universe was created there were six singularities. Sometime after the universe exploded into creation the six singularities were formed into the infinity stones. Each representing a different aspect of the universe as we know it."
Excitedly Eric dug into his pockets in search of something, after a moment he drew out folded pieces of ancient paper from his breast pocket. He motioned for her to follow as he laid it out on the wagon that doubled as their table. Carefully, he smoothed the pages.
The text flickered in the torchlight, beside it was a page of notes written in his own hand. The pages must have once been beautiful, but time had rendered the once vibrant colors to faded remnants of an age long forgotten. The images looked more like alchemy symbols to her than anything she recognized as words or language.
Gandalf took over for Eric and addressed the group gathered as a whole.
"These pages illustrate a primordial universe inhabited by celestial beings, beings that are responsible for the creation of the infinity stones of mind, power, reality, space, time and soul. As the universe expanded continuously the stones were separated to the far ends of unknown worlds. Their power as individual entities is limitless in manipulating the fabric of their makeup." He ran his hands over the sheets. His voice went rough and deep. Fear, Nat realized, he was genuinely fearful of what they had discovered. "The possession of these individually could give the bearer powers over life, death, creation and destruction...if the individual was strong enough to contain it."
Comprehension dawned on her, "The Tesseract contains one of the stones?"
He nodded his confirmation. But what about the scepter, she thought, how did it tie together.
Eric rolled the scepter over on the table. The blue orb glowed in the darkness.
"The Tesseract is the containment vessel for the space stone just as this." He ran a finger over what was left of the golden handle. " is a container for the mind stone. Someone created these containers and these two are connected to each other. They reverberate and communicate, somehow…I think they are made of or from the same magic." He explained, his voice far away with his thoughts.
She leaned over the table and looked to Gandalf.
"The mind stone, you're saying the mind stone is inside that."
How else would it have the power to control anyone it touched? She reached out wanting to grip what was left of the staff, but a chill shot down her spine and she withdrew her fingers before they could close around it. Remembering its burning power, she shivered, the memory of the pain, as it blasted through her, kept her hands at bay.
Gandalf was right to be fearful.
"Can it channel the Tesseract?"
"More or less. The mind stone's outer shell is powered by it…I think. It's why they fluctuate and reverberate simultaneously."
"And if we tried to unmake it?" She asked Eric directly.
He gave a small dismissive shrug as he stared at the staff. "It's impossible to say exactly what would happen without further testing. There could be a massive explosion, widespread radiation sickness."
His expression turned contemplative. "There's a possibility that anything within a twenty-mile radius could be liquified almost instantly." Eric offered a casual shrug. "At the very worst a wormhole. That is if the connection between this stone draws on the tesseract in which case this planet might collapse in on itself in the matter of minutes…. or…. absolutely nothing could happen. It could simply crack open like a walnut." He hummed over the table.
"But not to worry." He looked over joyfully at the shellshocked group, "We don't have anything powerful enough to do that."
Stone cold faces all around.
Gimli swallowed audibly.
"Then we must hide it." King Theoden suggested. "Keep it secret and safe somewhere far from enemy hands as we agreed upon before."
"The Lady has agreed to provide temporary refuge." Haldir spoke up from beside her and drove his point home firmly. "The Lady is all-seeing and all-knowing but her powers, and the powers of the elves, are fading. She cannot protect this for overlong. She knew of our intent before we convened to make the decision. I received the missive this morning."
Nat looked between the men gathered, so they had met in secret without, not shocking given her condition at the time.
She looked at Wulfric. "If we can't hide it or destroy it then we have to get it off-planet and into the hands of someone who can."
Wulfric knew where she was going with this but what she asked had been out of his reach for centuries.
Wulfric shook his head. "He won't answer me."
If he was brought here, there had to be away back. They had power, magic, intellect, and a conduit off-planet. They only needed to figure out how to utilize it.
"When was the last time you tried?"
"Who?" Eomer asked as he and the remaining group were no longer following the path of their conversation.
"Heimdall." Nat and Wulfric responded in tandem, but Wulfric continued on, "He's the sole protector of the Bifrost. He is all-hearing to the people of Asgard and opens the gates to and from the golden city. This place is either now beyond his reach or he has turned a deaf ear to my call."
Wulfric had been banished by royal proclamation and he knew Heimdall well enough to know that treason was not something he would take lightly.
"Allowing me into the city would be treason." Even at that it had taken more than just Heimdall to send him here.
"What if…" Nat went on quickly, clasping her hands together and rubbing her palms against one another. "What if Earth was successful in containing your father and the Chitauri? What if your uncle took the Tesseract back to Asgard? It would be the most logical place to send it for the same reasons we want to send the stone. Your uncle and grandfather would be the only ones strong enough to protect it."
She looked to Eric whose eyes remained on the stars. "You said the two were connected, is there a way to communicate through it?"
When he didn't respond she called to him and grabbed his shoulders.
"Eric." His eyes fell to hers, but they were far away and glassy.
"Where are we?" He asked quietly and looked back to the stars.
She tried to swallow down the hard lump in her throat, but it stayed lodged in place.
What an impossible question to answer. They were so far away from anything they had ever known. Drifting on a planet among stars they had never seen before.
She shook him. "Eric, look at me." She jolted him with a small shove.
"Eric! I need you to focus." His starry gaze met hers.
"Agent Romanoff?" He questioned. "It's so good to see you."
Her control slipped. Her anger bubbled over, and she had the strongest urge to slap the shit out of the old man. Instead, he drew her close and embraced her again. He wrapped her in his warm embrace.
Her throat was so tight she barely managed to squeeze the words out.
"Eric, I need you to look at me."
She drew back and when his gaze slipped from hers to the people around them, she clasped his face between her hands.
"Look at me." He nearly pulled away, but she drew him back and patted his cheek roughly. "Only me, Eric."
When he finally focused, she asked again. "Is there a way to use the mind stone to communicate with the Tesseract?" Each word was heavily enunciated as she tried to penetrate his mental turmoil.
His brows drew tight as he contemplated his answer. "There's no telling who could be listening on the other end." Eric said in quiet worry. The paranoia showed on the edge of his voice. "But I think, maybe, there might be a way."
"I need specifics, Eric. Tell me how!" She hadn't intended to shout at him, but she didn't dare lose this moment of lucid conversation.
He struggled in her hold. "Why? Why are you doing this?"
His eyes went wild. "Is he here? Has he come for me?" Eric cringed as if he expected her to strike him, but she wasn't Loki, one look into her eyes should have told him that.
"Tell me Eric! How do I do this?"
"Natasha, I think that's enough." Gandalf said calmly
She barked at him angrily. "Enough? Will it be enough when millions of aliens invade this planet? Will it be enough when they destroy every living thing you hold dear?"
Images of New York flashed before her. "Will it be enough when women and children are running and screaming for their lives; their homes crumbling around them? Will it be enough when your cities are burning to ash and there's absolutely nothing you can do because you are hopelessly," She couldn't help but laugh and motion to the men carrying swords, axes, and bows. "and hilariously outgunned."
They had seen the damage she alone was capable of. What horrors awaiting them could spark such fear in her? Theoden's eyes drifted to Wulfric, picturing the kind of enemies the Asgardians might face. What kind of power had it taken to banish a man such as him?
She held Eric steady and drew his gaze to her again.
"Is that what you want?" The question posed to him and the men of the ruling class that surrounded her. All of them high born and noble. All of them incapable of contending with the doom that awaited them.
If only they could find a way to communicate with Asgard. She would not let the hope that flared in her belly spread any further. This could very well be impossible, and as Eric finally replied she realized it was nothing more than a pipe dream.
A rush of words tumbled from Eric's mouth. "We'd need a long-distance radio transmitter, neodymium, iron, boron and equipment to manufacture an N52 magnet, twenty-six-gauge wire, one billion volts of electricity…" dozens and dozens of things after that. Equipment they didn't have and could not produce. Technology that didn't exist. For fucks sake they didn't even have electricity.
"You'll need to call Jane and Darcy. I'll need my assistants and they are the very best. We can use Jane's new lab in New Mexico. Everything there is state of the art, Mr. Stark made sure of it."
She cut off his words and pulled him to her, "Ok Eric, ok."
His rattling slowly died off and he embraced her back. He gradually relaxed into her and she rested her head against his shoulder as he breathed deeply. Eric peered down curiously at her.
"Agent Romanoff?" He questioned and then smiled. "I knew you'd come for me."
Trembling with frustration she patted his cheek. "Of course, I came Dr. Selvig." She cleared her throat and stepped back.
"Why don't you go eat something." She gestured to the roaring fire at the center of camp.
"I'm sure there's plenty to go around." She offered up a small encouraging smile as he hesitantly looked around the group. His eyes still distantly glassy as he fought to concentrate.
His gaze landed on Gandalf and held. He visibly relaxed and nodded his consent.
"I think I'll do just that." He wandered away slowly as if he was contemplating each step as he made his way to the people gathered at the center of camp. He paused for a moment when he was nearly out of sight. His hand drifting up to his wild hair. He looked around, back to her and then to the center of camp and back down to his feet. He smiled softly and his hand raised as if he had remembered something important and then he set out toward his original destination.
Short term memory loss. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Mentally, Eric Selvig, was a lost cause.
She was on her own with this one.
She scrubbed her hands over her face, "чертовски сукин сын"
Wulfric winced. His mind automatically translating her profane exclamation.
"Has he been like that the whole time?" She looked to Gandalf. He'd said he had done his best to protect Eric but seeing him in his current state made her wonder if Gandalf had done anything at all.
He nodded sadly. "I'm afraid so."
She met the eyes of the wizard and then the eyes of everyone in their company.
"I can't build that type of tech…. hell! He can't build it...at least not here."
She huffed out a full breath of frustration and maneuvered back to the tabletop to examine the pages absurdly thinking that they would suddenly reveal the answers she sought. She should have known better than to think even for a moment that Eric would have had a doable solution. Not here, in this beyond third-world planet where running water from a hand pump system was a small miracle.
"You can't hide it, at least not for long." Nat said looking at the pages searching for anything that might help her. Her blood, heated from anger and frustration, spiked for a completely different reason as Haldir stepped up beside her to examine the pages as well. She touched the page where the depiction of the mind stone was displayed. She laid a not so stable finger on it.
"Thor said once that this acts as a beacon of sorts. That if utilized in any way it sends a signal to other worlds that the planet is ready for a higher form of warfare. If that's true, Saruman's experiments, his magical tampering, could have unintentionally transmitted that signal far and wide." She found herself looking up at the stars again, searching the heavens for any movement. Thankfully, she found none.
"Someone may already be searching for it."
"Then we prepare for war." Aragorn stepped forward. "and hope that whoever comes after it is willing to peacefully negotiate for it."
Wulfric saved her from replying. "There won't be any negotiating. I promise you. The things lurking out there are powerful and advanced beyond your wildest dreams. They do not abide by the same code of honor that you cling to."
"I say we let them have it!" Gimli replied roughly. "We will guard it from our own enemies so that it may not be used against us and if…" He motioned up to the sky. "Something comes for it; we give them the blasted thing."
"Agreed, Gimli. We will prepare as best we can, but I believe in this matter we are now at a loss. Already we contend with war on multiple fronts. We do not collectively have the power to defeat these enemies. Now more than ever we must choose our battles carefully and this," Gandalf motioned to the staff. "Cannot be one of them. For now, we keep it safe and out of enemy hands."
He looked deeply at Nat, searching her eyes with his seemingly all-knowing gaze. "I would ask that you do this."
Her hands braced her on the tabletop as the weight of his request fell on her shoulders. Gandalf addressed their gathering to convince them of his suggestion.
"Natasha above all others knows the dangers associated with this task. She can defend it…. better than even myself."
He turned to her again and laid a cool hand on her shoulder. "You've had your taste of it, and I've seen the fear in your eyes when you gaze upon its power. It must be you."
She hesitated for a moment and hoped Gandalf could read the question in her gaze, why not Wulfric? They held his loyalty far better than hers. He had proven himself to them time and time again. So why her? Could Gandalf be questioning Wulfric for the same reasons she did, because of his father? The potential was inside him, where Frost Giant and Asgardian blood mingled in his veins. Could prolonged exposure to the stone's power drive him to the same madness as his father? Or had he chosen her because if all else failed Gandalf knew there was one being that walked this earth that had a chance at containing her?
"What times are these that women and hobbit folk are tasked with the fate of Middle Earth?" Aragorn said softly. "Once our choice was made to remain inconspicuous for who would venture to guess that a creature so small would carry the weight of the world. And now with this, you suggest perhaps the least obvious choice of us all. One who has no firm loyalty. An individual who the dark lord himself is chasing. Would not such a thing be better off in your hands, Gandalf?"
He addressed Natasha, firmly but politely diplomatic as was his usual bearing. "I mean no offense to you, my lady. You've saved my life and the lives of many others and for that I respect you greatly, but this is madness."
Gandalf held her gaze long and hard, the silence that filled those moments told her what she needed to know.
She had brought the damn thing here and she'd better well take care of it.
Nat looked down at the infernal blue stone, wishing that she'd never come across the cursed thing. It was no longer shining brightly or glowing in its pronged broken setting. It sat quietly. Harmlessly laid upon the table. She had faced worse odds than the ones this situation presented.
Could she do it?
The answer was a resounding yes...Did she want to do it? Did she want to, yet again, risk her life to protect the world?
No, she would much rather be rid of the thing completely and carry on with her life, in whatever direction she chose.
"Fine...Carry it to Rohan for me and I'll take it from there." She didn't want to touch it again, best she find a smithy and make a steel and lead box made for it. It would be a bitch to carry but it would protect her from any radiation flares and hopefully put a damper on anyone detecting it accurately.
Gimli grumbled at her from across the table obviously unsettled with the whole arrangement. She mustered up as much comfort as she had to offer in her gaze. She didn't want to like Gimli, but she was helplessly lost to his gruff charm.
She turned to Gandalf, Aragon, Theoden and the rest, "If this war turns against us, you understand that I'll abandon you at my own discretion. I won't ask for permission."
Nat would make sure the stone stayed far from enemy hands even if it meant leaving them to their deaths. Her main priority was no longer their main objective. It would be foolish to think they were not thinking the same things. They were not exactly at odds but traveling parallel with different objectives and the same enemy.
Haldir shifted slightly beside her. Goose flesh rose on her arms as his eyes bore into the side of her head. A glutton for punishment, she met his penetrating stare. How could one man...no not a man she was reminded as she took in his luminous skin and sharp features...an elf, affect her so thoroughly?
Around her the men agreed to her terms in one form or another. Thoroughly skilled at the art of multitasking she responded to each in turn, but her attention kept turning back to Haldir. Their gazes met, held and she did not want to let it go. His quiet presence was incredibly intense. Heat laced through her flashed and burned with sudden ferocity. She suddenly wondered what he would look and sound like when he came undone. Would he maintain that impressively impassive facade or would he give himself over to pleasure? Would he bite his plump bottom lip to keep quiet or would he hiss and moan in satisfaction? She watched his Adam's apple bob. He swallowed hard as if he knew the direction of her thoughts. Nat watched in quiet delight at the sight of the skin at his collar flushing with color. Her blood heated right along with his...basic primal attraction.
Whatever he had done, he had done it to them both.
Slowly, her attention drifted back to the remaining members of the group as they dismissed themselves one by one. The minutes dragged on as they dispersed to rest for the evening. Gimli gave her a friendly hug before he departed with Gandalf, the broken staff and stone tucked carefully beneath his robes.
At last, only the two of them remained.
Nat cut to the chase when they were out of earshot of the others and asked in a low tone. "What have you done to me?"
Haldir's heart slammed against his rib cage, not enough, he thought, Not nearly.
He wanted her.
He felt it in his bones, but he could not, and wouldn't, do anything about it. All manner of thoughts regarding her had bombarded him at one point or another...none of them appropriate. Instead, he replied as calmly as he could manage and focused in on a spot between her eyes as he waited for his blood to cool.
"Nothing intentional, I assure you."
Must you always be so calm and collected? Nat thought as she observed him for a moment. He seemed his usual self, rigid and controlled. Even the hint of a blush on his neck was gone.
"I have a hard time believing you do anything by accident."
Haldir turned from her and focused on the fires burning brightly through the camp. She was just as hot at his back as the flames were bright on his front. He did not want this blossoming awareness to grow between them. Haldir had never been interested in more connection than what it took for him to find a momentary release at the mouth of a willing female. Relations between elves were a slow and tedious process that often took decades to develop between couples. While the marriage rights were sacred between elven couples, there were numerous other ways of indulging in the pleasures of the flesh without marital commitment. He was neither a virgin nor a priest, but this was more than wanting. She had taken root inside him. The awareness ran deep, too deep for his liking.
He battled with himself, trying to find the right words. Ones' to reassure both himself and her.
"On the battlefield, healers gifted enough to use the power of the Valar, hold the souls of the injured and dying to the light. They are offered up to our gods and if they are deemed worthy, they are gifted with whatever relief can be granted." She stepped up beside him and he forced himself to relax as his memories churned. "My mother was such a healer. I had seen it done and hoped there was enough of her gift in me that I might give you some level of comfort…. I didn't expect." He cleared his throat gently, "...We were tethered in the divide longer than I intended."
There it was, finally, an explanation...now...only if she understood what he meant. She said as much to him and for a moment his only reply was the gentle shake of his head.
"I offered your soul a small bit of mine, to tether us through the divide and act as a guide through the space between us and our gods."
His loose hair caught the light. It shimmered in the moon and firelight. In that moment he looked ancient. Tiredness creased his brow and filled his eyes. His grief lingered in the lines of his handsome face.
"In my ignorance, I left the bridge between us open for too long." Because it had felt like nothing he had ever before experienced and for the first time, possibly ever, he had indulged himself for the pure enjoyment of it. With the ache from the loss of his brother still burning in his chest, the comfort he had felt had made him want to stay. But now the reality of what he had done was sinking in. How could he ever explain the complexity of elves to her, a foreign human with little experience with his kind. Guilt built inside him, deep in gnawing. He had started them both down a path he could not see a way off; a path he did not want to be on. The Lady Galadriel would know, she would see the way with clarity, all he had to do now was wait the few days it would take him to travel home.
Nat nodded in understanding but barely believed that such a thing could be true. She had never exactly believed in God, not in the way most defined him, but she had always believed in something. The creation of the stones was proof enough of divinity. She had never been so close to it. Nat had never thought herself worthy of it or the salivation it offered so many. She had always thought of herself as one of the damned. Tainted from the day she was born with the blood of her drunken whore mother and her junky abusive father.
"I can...feel you." She said, quietly contemplating her next sentence.
"There's this...awareness that takes over me. It's stronger when you're close or when you have a particularly intense response." She cast her gaze to him until he returned it. The haze of grief he felt lingered in his eyes but more than that she could feel it, echoing inside her. She put a hand over her aching chest.
There was no pity in her eyes, only an understanding that burned from her gaze straight into his bones.
"Your grief feels as if it's my own."
He forced the next words from his mouth, conjuring the most dismissive tone he could manage and shoved aside whatever physical thoughts had recently drifted through him.
"With time, it is my belief, the connection will fade, as all things do where mortals are concerned. This is nothing more than a passing triviality." He watched the words bite deep and take root. Anger suited her features. By the stars she was lovely. Her bright eyes beguiled him even in her fury. This pull between them could go no further. Nothing good would come of this, she was mortal, and he was elf kind. "You need not concern yourself with the frivolous consequences of my actions."
There could never be anything between them. It was a damning venture to pursue it. Haldir was pained enough as things stood between them. He had never meant for this to happen, to accidentally bind part of himself to her, a mortal was a slight beyond forgiveness. He hoped his words were true, that given time the blooming desire between them would fade. He would do what he must and lead his people back to their homeland on the morrow. The distance and familiarity of the forest would bring his tumultuous heart and mind some small comfort. It was his duty to return the shields of the dead, a task of honor and sorrow. A duty he had rarely performed over his centuries as March Warden, one that he would now present to his own brother, Rumil, for their brother. The rhythm and familiar pattern of his life would maintain him from there.
She nodded adamantly irritated by his adverse convictions but also understanding that his duty to his people came first; that writing her off was the simplest way out for both of them. Despite her irritation, the grief he carried was more prominent. The unusual urge to comfort him was strong, to hold his muscled body in her arms and wind her fingers into the glorious lengths of his pale golden hair. Nat rarely wanted to be so physically affectionate, but the yearning was there. Instead, she held her tongue and didn't correct him. Even she didn't fully understand how long her life would be, his words rang loud and clear. There would not be any further exploration of what was between them. The casual flirting from the baths, their unexpected connection; the desire heightening inside her just from standing close to him…. none of it mattered to Haldir. He was drawing a firm line between them and she would respectfully abide by it.
She should have felt relieved. It terrified her that she didn't feel that way at all.