Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. I do not own any of the character, places, names, or anything associated with the works of J.R.R Tolkien or the Lord of the Rings (books or movie, whatever). My characters are Anita, Leila, and Arlandria and that is all.

Author's Note: Okay so I will admit to being naughty and that I had this chapter done (granted it is short) at the same time as the last one I uploaded and simply held off from posting it so you all could simmer in that last cliffhanger. Much love to all my readers 3

Just A Little Girl- Trading Yesterday

Chapter 67: Just a little girl

It felt like being underwater. Her body was weightless. An all encompassing blackness that she was floating in without direction. There was no sense of orientation, nothing to point her up or down. Her body felt disconnected. Was she breathing? She couldn't tell. She felt pressure all around her body...and yet there was no pain, somehow she knew there was supposed to be pain.

Occasionally there would be an echo of sound, muted and far away. A faint light would dance beyond the shadows, vivid and yet beyond her reach. She wanted to reach for it, to pull herself toward the lights and sounds. She yearned for it, to break the surface of the blackness and touch whatever was on the other side. She would will herself forward only to be pushed back down into the swirling dark. Again and again she would try when the lights would come, when the soft sounds would penetrate through the stillness...but something was keeping her under. How long had she been floating? Minutes? Years? Did time even exist anymore?

She felt liquid fill her mouth and slide down the back of her throat, she coughed violently trying to breathe past the invasion of her lungs. She thrashed, slow motion, disjointed. It may well have been cement when it filled her belly, weighing her down and dragging her away from lights...away from the sounds...further into the black...

When Ani opened her eyes she was face down on the floor. Her cheek was firmly pressed against the gray stone tiles that now filled her view...and yet they felt like nothing. Reaching a hand up into her field of vision, Anita ran her hands over the stone but they were strangely smooth, and even stranger was the sensation that knew what they should have feel like. Then she realized she was moving her right arm freely, as if it hadn't been ripped from it's socket by a wraith during battle. In fact she didn't feel any of the injuries that surely should have been causing great amounts of pain. She sat up sharply. There was no dizziness, no lightheaded sensation, indeed when she examined her body she found no indication that she had just survived a fight with a Nazgul. The stab wounds in her shoulder, side, and leg were non existent, as were the multitude of other little nicks and bruises she had incurred during the battle.

The elleth turned her attention to her surroundings. She knew this place, she recognized it instantly, she had been here before. Anita's breathing became labored and raspy, confusion and anxiety constricting her chest when she remembered the room she had hoped to never see again, and yet somehow was in. Helm's Deep. This was where they had barricaded themselves, this was where Legolas had tackled her to prevent her running after Glorfindel. She was on her feet in a second, pivoting one way and then the other, trying desperately to understand what was happening.

The room was empty, save for herself, and the furniture which had been upturned when they used it to fortify the door. But none of the other people who had been present at the time were currently in the room with her, and indeed there was a noticeable absence of all battle sounds from the other side of the door. It was eerily silent except for her own shaky breaths. Everything looked exactly as it did on that fateful day, and it all felt so wrong. She needed to sort this out fast. Placing her trembling hands on her hips, the elf closed her eyes and leaned her head back. She drew in a long slow breath and held it for a moment before exhaling, trying to calm down. When she opened her eyes, she was greeted by the sight of absolute darkness hanging where the ceiling should have been. Now there was just nothingness in its stead. Ani's brow wrinkled. Why wasn't there a ceiling?

Because she hadn't seen it last time she was in this room, she realized. She had never seen the ceiling and so she couldn't recall what it looked like now. And if the environment she currently saw was based off what she could and could not remember, she concluded it could only mean one thing; she was dreaming. Anita would readily admit it was an incredibly lucid dream, but a dream none the less. Despite having an answer for her current predicament, the girl left no sense of relief; in fact, she felt more anxious given the way her dreams had been going since the great battle she had survived at this very location.

On the plus side it meant she was very much not dead.

Anita turned and looked at the large doors which had been bolted shut and were barricaded with a few tables, just as it had been in reality. She wondered just how true to life this dream would be... if she opened those doors would she see an immense battle being waged on the other side? Would Glorfindel be there, fighting back the horde in a desperate attempt to giver her a chance to escape? Could she save him?

All at once the young elf was filled with the unquenchable urge to know. Without the wounds she had sustained in the waking world immobilizing her, Anita moved with renewed purpose towards the doors which has been braced shut. Gripping one of the table firmly she hauled it away from where it had been blocking the door, the large wooden piece of furniture weighing next to nothing in her dreamed up world.

"It won't change a damn thing." The voice came from behind her, breaking up the stillness that filled most of the hall. Anita paused as she reached for another table and turned to seek out the source of the sound. Standing not but for a few feet away, Anita found that she was face to face with none other than herself. It wasn't a mirror image, no, this Anita was a younger version for certain. Her black hair was shorter, barely shoulder length, the purple streaks were more prominent. There was an eyebrow ring adorning her brow above eyes that were lined with a regrettable amount of black eye liner. Her red tank top and black skinny jeans were a far cry from the tunic and leggings she currently wore. Ani didn't pay the younger version of herself more attention than perhaps a few seconds before returning to the task at hand.

"You can't fix it," The voice said, louder this time, obviously not happy with being ignored.

Ani didn't bother to turn around when she answered, " You don't know that."

"I do know that, and if I know it...then you know it too."

Ani started to move a little faster in removing the obstacles from in front of the doors, " I am not you."

There was an obnoxious snort of laughter from her younger self, "Oh I think you will find that you and I are very much the same person."

Ani gripped the edge of the table before her and threw it with all the force she could imagine and sent it flying against a wall and splintering it into large shards before she whirled to face the much younger Anita standing a few feet back. " I am nothing like you!" She bellowed, "You are spoiled and selfish! Anyone that knows you has their life destroyed by you, and you can't even be bothered to care about all the damage you do!" The elf continued to rail against the younger human, " You ruined any chance that my parents had of being happy, you've spent every minute of the time I've been in Rivendell making Leila's life hell, you turned Legolas against his own family and kingdom for your own selfish needs, and your stupid decision making got Glo killed! And for what? You had a less than picturesque childhood so the world fucking owed you something? You felt victimized so you took it out on the people around you? You're a god damn monster!" A sob bubbled up from her chest when Ani stopped her rant to take a deep breath. Raking her hands through her hair she whispered, "Oh my god.. I am a monster."

Guilt ripped through her, sending a shudder down the length of her body. Every fight she had with her father or sister, every act that had been spurred by selfish need, every perceived mistake she had ever made in her life was laid out in front of her right now...a testament to the time she had spent focusing on only herself. It would take lifetimes to undo all the wrongs she had committed, and even then some mistake couldn't be fixed...

With a jolt of renewed energy, Ani turned away from the apparition that looked so very similar to how she had looked when she lived in Tucson and began stripping away the obstacles that still remained in front of the gates. She was determined, even if it was only a dream, even if it wouldn't change what had really happened , she was going to fight to save Glorfindel here and now. Piece by piece she pulled the barricades away until the only thing keeping the door closed was the large wooden bolting mechanism. Reaching for the bolt, she was stopped by a hand coming to rest on her shoulder.

"Anita, you cannot save me."

Hearing his voice again, even if it were only her fantasizing it, was enough to cause her heart to break all over again at his loss. Closing her eyes to prevent the tears that were building in her eyes from falling, Anita rested her head against the smooth grain of the door. " I haven't even tried yet," She whispered.

"Had you gone out that door and attempted to rescue me then you surely would have perished along side me that night, and then my sacrifice would have been for naught."

"But at least then we would be even." Her voice was thick and she shook with the effort of trying not to cry. A second hand came to rest on her other shoulder and pulled her away from the door before slowly turning her around to face him. Glorfindel stood before her, whole bodied and looking very much alive.

"Is that what you believe I had wanted, for us to be 'even'?" His blue eyes bore into her brown ones with the serious look he often wore, and it was almost more than what Anita could stand. "Ani I have lived a long life, and for however full of victories it was, it was also rife with losses...including losing the woman I loved, your mother. Seeing the woman and warrior you became under my tutelage was a stark reminder of how I lost the opportunity to be with her and father children of my own...If it meant that you had the opportunity for the life I threw away, if it meant saving you the pain of the mistakes I had made, then I would trade my life for yours every chance I could. I never wanted us to be 'even', I wanted you to live and be happy."

Anita couldn't keep her voice even when she spoke. "You deserved better than this."

Glo's expression softened, the tiniest of smiles appearing on his lips. "Come now, is this how to plan to remember me?"

She shook her head immediately. "I'll always remember that first day of training with a sword and the look on your face when you nicked my chin with your blade...I've never seen you looked so damned worried. I'll remember the way you tried so hard not to laugh at my inappropriate jokes, even though I would catch you trying to hide a smile out of the corner of my eye. You always listened to me vent about all my stupid problems and you never judged me. You made me feel like I had a purpose and I belonged right where I was, and I needed that so badly in my life... for seven long years you were always right there when I needed someone..."

"Then remember me in that way, and let me rest in peace." Glorfindel pulled her into a protective hug as the tears started to slide down her cheeks unchecked. Dream or not, the embrace felt real to Anita as she returned the hug; a bittersweet sensation knowing she would never again have the opportunity to embrace him again in real life. Ani wanted to stay like this as long as she could before returning to the reality that did not have him in it, fearing that as soon as this dream was over he would begin the slow but inevitable process of disappearing from her memories all together.

"I'll miss you."

Without warning, pain began to radiate intensely from her right side. Anita let our a strained groan and crumpled to the floor, using her left hand to clutch the area since her right arm was once again immobilized. Blood was pouring from a wound on her leg and pooling around her knees, seeping into the cracks between the tiles. Glo was gone again, the space he had been standing in was heart breakingly empty, Anita's younger self was also absent from the room. The dreamed up world collapsed on itself, and the elleth felt herself being forced back into the waking world, toward the muted sounds and colors she had seen in the darkness but now may as well have been technicolor.

Anita woke to sound of screaming, and it took a long moment before she registered the voice as her own. White hot pain was pulsating throughout her entire body causing her to convulse. Her left arm flailed, desperately seeking something to grasp to anchor herself down as she rode the constant waves of pain. She felt another hand grip hers tightly, and someone speaking to her...the words were jibberish past the torment she was trying to survive, she had no energy to decipher words. The other hand held hers as she continued to wail in agony and Ani was grasping it with all the might she could conjure. She felt a cup being brought to her parched lips and a thick bitter liquid, heavy with pulp, being poured down her throat. Anita tried to turn her head and spit it out, but a hand gripped her jaw tightly, forcing her to either swallow or suffocate; she chose to swallow the bitter fluid, and as soon as she did her jaw was released.

Relief from the pain began to flood her. The white hot pain that was pulsating through her dulled into a warm heavy numbness that filled her limbs. Her suffering slowly became manageable, her breathing was heavy but no longer labored, and the din which had filled her ears before was morphing into recognizable sounds. Sweat had broken out on her forehead during the struggle and Ani left a cool damp cloth being placed on her brow. The hand that gripped hers had never let go, and she was determined to see who it was that was attending to her. Carefully she cracked her eyes open, only to immediately snap them back shut against the light from the single candle which felt far too bright. Ani groaned in frustration at feeling so helpless.

A voice consoled her softly as a hand gently stroked her hair, " Shhhh, Anita, lay still and rest."

She recognized the voice. "Dad?" Her own voice was raw and weak from the screaming.

"I am here." Ani forced her eyes to open a slit, pain be damned, and sitting next to where she lay was Elladan, looking as haggard as an elf could. Anita couldn't recall a time she had ever seen him look so distraught. She could see their hands latched together, her small hand looking so very pale and pathetic in his grip. "How do you feel?"

Ani forced her tired gaze to meet her father's concerned one. "This is not my best day ever."

Elladan looked relieved and let out a small sigh, "Well you have your wits about you obviously, that is a good sign."

"I am very thirsty though." She confessed in a whisper and her father nodded in acknowledgment before releasing her hand and reaching over to a small bedside table to pour some water out of a pitcher. Ani followed his movements and could see the pitcher and cup on the table next to a single candle, there was also a bowl which had brown leaf pulp clinging to the rim where it had been poured out. After pouring a meager amount of water into the cup, Elladan moved his arm under her shoulder and lifted her off the bed just enough to sip from the cup...which she didn't even have the strength to hold herself.

When she had drank what she could, her father laid her back down as gingerly as could be managed.

"What was that stuff you gave me?" Ani motioned to the bowl on the bedstand with her eyes.

" A tincture of yarrow flowers and valerian root. Usually it is brewed in a tea to help those suffering pain to find relief and to sleep. But you were in such dire straits when you awoke that I improvised."

'Dire straits', Anita snorted to herself and then flinched in pain, that must have been the understatement of the year. "Why does it hurt to breathe?"

"You have at least two broken ribs, perhaps more, therefore we had to bind them tightly to ensure you did no further damage."

"How's my arm?"

"I have returned it to it's rightful place and put it in a sling to prevent you from ripping the stitches in your shoulder. You are very fortunate that the stab wound was shallow, you should regain full control in a short amount of time."

"And my leg?"

Elladan hesitated and chose his words carefully before he answered. "That will take some time to heal fully. The wound was not deep, but it cut across nearly the whole length of your thigh. It took me hours to sew it back together properly, and your body will need time to do the rest."

Anita's screwed up her face in response to her father's statement, "What do you mean it took hours to sew back together? I haven't been out of it that long."

Elladan pursed his lips momentarily, and Ani could see him weighing the options of how much to tell her even though his expression didn't fluctuate much. Finally with a small shake of his head her father admitted the truth. "Anita you have been asleep the better portion of four days."

"Four days?!" She rasped. It hadn't felt like that long. What had become of Minas Tirith in the four days she had been incapacitated?

" We found you unconscious in the middle of the road," Elladan explained, his brows pulled together in a look of worry as he recalled the events, "There was so much blood, we thought you were already lost to us. It was nothing short of a miracle when we saw you could still draw breath, we brought you to the House of Healing straightaway." It required far more energy to lift her head to look around than what Anita currently was capable of mustering, but the gentle sounds of shuffling and other being breathing throughout the room confirmed that they were still in fact in the House of Healing. "As we worked to save you, you kept trying to regain consciousness and you would move around even as we tried to stop the bleeding. Eventually I had to give you a dwale to force you into a deep sleep lest you awake mid-surgery. But then days went by and you did not wake up..."

"Well that explains the weird dreaming..." The elleth mumbled before focusing on a different detail of the narrative, "How did you find me?"

The older elf sat back and looked off to a different part of the room, his gaze far away. " Leila discovered the note you left in Rivendell very soon after Aurelius admitted to having seen you sneak out of the city in the middle of the night. I sent out trained soldiers to track you, but you were already far beyond their reach and they lost your trail near Caradhras. When your horse, Adobe, was found wandering alone we all feared the worst. Your sister was devastated thinking that you had fallen. When your letter arrived from Lothlorien I sent Glorfindel out the very same day to retrieve you and bring you home. Your second letter was far more worrisome...it sounded very much like you were saying a more permanent goodbye. I decided it was probably best that I come and find you myself and your uncle Elrohir accompanied me which is when we sought out the Grey Company to aid in our search of you and set out for Lorien; that is where we learned you had set off with Glorfindel to help defend Helm's Deep against Sarumon's army. And yet when I arrived in Rohan I discovered that you had departed for Gondor with Gandalf. We knew the city was under seige by Mordor and therefore were not able to search for you straightaway, instead we lent our swords to Aragorn in the hope of liberating Minas Tirith before Sauron destroyed it completely. And I do believe that we would not have been successful in that mission had Aragorn not rallied the Army of the Dead to fight with us, they were quite decisive in winning this battle for us. When the remnants of Sauron's army were driven back to Mordor, that was when I began searching the city for you. I will admit I started looking in the bodies of fallen soldiers first, and only when I did not find you did I dare to hope that maybe you had survived the great siege of this city, at which point I discovered the terrible state you were in; bloodied, broken and quite unconscious. I am afraid to ask about the wraith we found dead nearby."

"We will have to put a pin in that story for me to tell you about later," She mumbled weakly, her sentence interrupted by a yawn, " and put a pin in that 'Army of the Dead' thing too, I wanna hear about that." Anita's eye's had begun to droop, and Elladan could clearly see the effort and strain it was putting on his child to remain awake.

"Of course, we can speak at length later." He tucked the blanket around her more securely after she had shifted slightly to make herself more comfortable. Elladan was caught by surprise when Ani snaked her hand out from under the blanket and wrapped in around his hand the way a toddler seeking comfort would.

"Thank you for coming to find me." The full effect of the valerian root she had ingested earlier had settled on her heavily; her eyes were closed and her words were breathy and starting to slur with the need to fall back asleep. "I know it would have been easier on you if you hadn't."

Anita was already too far gone to see the look of raw hurt that crossed her father's face. Elladan gave her hand a gentle squeeze as the young elleth fully succumbed to the tincture. "You have been worth your fair share of headaches," Elladan whispered to the now dozing elf, " but you are my daughter, and all the forces of darkness did not keeping from coming to find you."