Grima's days (were they even days?) passed in an incoherent haze of pestilence.
All that he had managed to determine was that he was somewhere new. He no longer was underneath the golden light of Rohan, but rather the silver glimmer of somewhere utterly alien to him. And the hands that touched him weren't rough and calloused and unkind. Instead they were gentle and cold and compassionate. He was somewhere new and under the care of an utter stranger, and where he was or who had come to care for him, he did not know. And not knowing terrified him. He couldn't even decipher the passage of time. It was maddening.
Though with every passing "day" it became less so as his mind began to clear, and he had begun to dream.
Though he never really dreamt.
He always found himself trapped within the confines of nightmares. And his nightmares resembled the frothing, befouled fires of Isengard, trapped within the obsidian-black, windowless prison of the dark tower. He burned beneath the heated flame of hatred; the scaling brand of ire and betrayal marking itself upon his flesh; the stench of his transgression clung to his soul with a horrid intimacy. He was trapped and suffocating and dying within the hate that'd tarnished his name and made him a loathed, banished creature, all while under the tormenting scalding-white shadow of Saruman. Words of repugnance filled his ears, threading through his mind until he felt poisoned and afraid, and shame clawed his soul apart. He was imprisoned within that dark tower, beneath the vexation of an even darker wizard. And he saw no escape.
But then, mercifully, he was awake.
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The blackness of Isengard faded away in a black haze, to be replaced with a silver setting with a ceiling that arched ornately above him. Silver was bathing everything, spilling forth from the lanterns hanging from the walls, and a pleasant smell filled the room, presumably from the bouquets of lavender that hung from the space directly over the bed.
The setting was strange, so unlike the halls of Medusled, and it made him afraid.
Grima tried to sit up in the bed (he was pleasantly confused finding himself laying in something considerably softer than the matted fur cots of Edoras's infirmary), but a sharp, blazing pain in his chest forced him back down into the embrace of feather-stuffed pillows with a harsh yelp. When a hand flew up to clutch at the pain, his palm was met with bandages, and exposed flesh. A heat entered his cheeks when he realized he was without a shirt, his form encased in a silken sheet. Someone had undressed him to dress his wound, and he was ill at ease.
Confused panic was seizing him.
Where was he? Who'd touched him? Why was he here?
His vision still swam, everything existing underneath a thin haze, as he sat up again, this time slowly and with caution. A sharp ache groaned through his body and settled in the back of his skull, drawing a seething hiss from between clenched teeth.
The lavender-scented air held a cozy chill, unlike the stuffy heat of Medusled's halls he'd come to haunt, or even the smog-filled atmosphere of Isengard. His lungs, he knew, were grateful, for this new crisp air, for the aroma of lavender, for literally any smell that wasn't suffocated by the stank of burning and industry.
A free hand drifted to the wall beside him, the chill seeping into his fingertips as he cherished the feeling with a deep inhale. Designs were carved along the walls, thin, looping, elegant ones that were obviously of elvish design.
He retracted his hand as though he touched the flesh of a hot iron. He was amongst elves?
That thought made him panic further.
Then the door to whatever rooms he occupied opened, and he retreated further onto his bed until he was pressed against the corner, hand clutching his bandaged shoulder with another wince. He expected death, and fear took hold of him because he discerned no features of who this intruder may have been, only that they emerged as a silhouette that was loose and flowing, and their form was draped in white.
His breath emerged as a shuddering gasp. Saruman?! He pressed himself further against the wall with a small whimper. No, that was impossible! The wizard was slain, by Grima's hand! He couldn't still be alive! It was impossible!
The figure stalled, wavering within Grima's vision, and then it spoke.
"Ah, you're awake." The voice was unmistakenly female, low in timbre and gentle like a whisper of wind threading through the tops of trees. Not the harsh, deep growl of Saruman. But that didn't stop Grima from retreating away from them as the figure approached him with a grace that was inhuman.
His vision cleared, enough for him to see that the intruder was a she-elf dressed in robes of lilac-purple and dawn-grey, cinched slightly at the waist with a silken belt that was silver in color. She held a similar beauty to all elves, being long, slender, and fair in face and form, her flesh unmarked and virginal in its paleness. Rather than hair, a veil flowed down the expanse of her back, and shrouded her figure with fabric in a color that shifted between light grey and light purple as she moved beneath the room's light. Securing her veil in place was a halo of silver, illuminated harshly by the lanterns. She was modest in her style, though the very edges of her skirts and veil were adorned with diamonds and glittering threats arranged in patterns that resembled constellations in the night sky.
In her arms were folds of silken cloth, and bouquets of fresh flowers, these ones oozing with the sickly sweet scent of lilac and hyacinth. To Grima, she resembled the blossom of jimsonweed, and it only made him more wary of her character.
She didn't look at him as she approached the bedside table, dropped her things, and then stepped to come closer to the bed. Grima shifted away from her, but she didn't seem to notice, now busying herself with taking down the hanging bundles of lavender. The flowers looked slightly wilted, as though they'd been hanging there for a day or two.
"For a moment, I feared you would never awaken," she spoke again, and her pale brow rose gently as she began to hang lilac and hyacinth from the ceiling.
"Where am I?" Grima startled himself at the harsh, ragged, scratching growl his voice emerged as. Pain gnawed at his throat, and he was thirsty.
"Lothlorien," the elf said simply, her voice devoid of any emotion he could discern as she did her work. Before he could ask why, she continued, "For reasons unknown to me, your king demanded that you be sent here for elvish medicine, to recover from your time in Isengard."
Grima winced at the mention of Isengard, and he craned his head back until it rested against the headboard. A groaning sigh escaped his lips, and his grip on his shoulder loosened.
She returned to the nightstand where she dropped the rest of her things. The sound of grinding prompted Grima to open his eyes again and glance over at her as she worked with a pestle to further grind whatever green-ish paste filled the marble mortar. This must've been the elf that dressed his wound, he thought as the ache reverberated through his chest and back again, echoing from beneath his hand and the bandages. He only turned his gaze away from her when she looked up to regard him with silver eyes that were startling in their brightness.
"This must be Theoden's idea of banishment," Grima started bitterly, before scoffing a sound that was the cruel mockery of a chuckle. "Banishment under the guise of vacation and recovery. How lovely."
The she-elf turned to him, her hands now occupied with unrolling a length of unused bandages, her pale brow subtly creased. "Theoden is dead, my lord Wormtongue. He's been dead for a short while. It was his nephew that sent you to us, I believe."
That prompted another seething groan. "Eomer. Of course." Revenge for his own exile, it seems.
Grima's heart burned when he recalled the branding hatred that'd burned within Eomer's eyes when he'd been presented with the parchment that made his own banishment official, with the help of Theoden's weak, degraded signature scrawled along the page's tattered end. And that seemed like a lifetime ago. And perhaps it was.
Theoden.
"Theoden King is dead?" Grima asked, the magnitude of the she-elf's words finally stabbing him in the gut. He winced, and shame began to slither through his body. A man that'd extended to him the hand of mercy despite the evil Grima had done to him, and to his people, had tried to convince him that despite his cruelty he was still a man of Rohan and not some traitorous snake, was now gone. And Grima's mouth soured at the thought of Theoden meeting his end because of him. He couldn't bear the thought of blood staining his hands further.
The elf paused her work to look at him again, and he suddenly felt afraid-ashamed-being regarded by those pools of starlit silver. Her expression conveyed nothing, but muted sympathy oozed from her gaze as she eased herself to sitting on the very edge of the bed.
"He is," she spoke bluntly, "His death was noble, or so I am told. He met his end in battle, though I am afraid I cannot bother myself with recalling details. I am not a creature for war. My duty is to mend and heal, so the finer details of war mean little to me when a gutted and dying man is beneath my hands. War is a sport for the brutish, the foolish, and the bold, and I've not the passion to make myself interested in such sport." Her lip pursed, knowing that she never participated enough in social circles to gain details about warfare-though that was no one's doing but her own.
Grima narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips over his teeth. He found himself agreeing with the elf. War was for the foolish and the bold. Grima was neither of those things. He wasn't built for war, his frame smaller and more wiry than pureblooded Rohirrim. But he had wit and cunning, and he knew diplomacy. He knew and remembered details of war and politics, why else would he have been made a royal advisor?
The flash of a hand entering his field of vision snapped him back to the present, and he flinched away from the she-elf's touch before her fingertips could meet his flesh. He was like an animal, cornered and afraid and flighty, and he didn't know if he could fight back if he needed-or wanted-to.
The elf suddenly looked stern, her lips, pale pink in color, settling into a firm, unpleasant line. "You need not to fear me, my lord Wormtongue. If I'd wished harm upon you, it would've been done by now." She extended her hand again until the back of her knuckles ghosted across the flesh of his brow, feeling for evidence of a fever.
'Lord Wormtongue.' So, his infamy is known amongst elves, too, it seems. And that damned name was hideous coming from a mouth sculpted to be beautiful and say beautiful things. Though her tone caressed the alias with a gentleness he'd never known his name to be spoken in before, it still struck his heart with shame.
Grima winced beneath her touch, lips parted in another sigh that groaned with exasperation. "Oh, please, my lady, do not address me by that blasted name. Such a thing was birthed from hatred and fear. I detest it, just as the people that have addressed me like that have detested me." It reminds me of my sins… I don't want to be reminded of that… it burns, my lady… it burns.
The elf brought her hand away, and her head canted to one side ever so slightly, brow arched and eyes heavily lidded to offer her an expression of cruel indifference. "Then what is it do you wish to be called, my lord?"
He was relieved that she didn't ask for more reasoning behind his hatred of being addressed as "Wormtongue", but he could see the curiosity burning within her gaze.
"Grima," he said, and he hated how foreign his name sounded on his own tongue. "Son of Galmod."
Her head jerked in a brief nod. "Well, Grima, you've still a fever, but you're finally responsive and conscious, thankfully, though I will need to change your bandages," her hands were held out loosely before her as she made a gesture to Grima's bandaged chest that asked 'may I?', to which Grima allowed with a small nod and a wince. With slender hands that moved with swift expertise, she began to undo his bandages.
"For a moment I feared I would've lost you," she said. "You were asleep for nearly three days, and I started off needing to change these blasted things nearly three times a day with how often the wound soiled the bandages." When she pulled her used gauze away, the cloth was stained in a collage of light pink from blood, green from her healing salves, and orange from marigold petals. Her fingers then lightly poked at the very edges of the wound, now scabbed over and healing from the stitches she'd sewn in just yesterday morning. His flesh was still hot to the touch, and Grima savored the chill of her fingertips. He wanted her to press the entirety of her palm against his chest, so that the chill could reach his heart and cool his soul.
Grima flinched slightly, though, blinking. She feared she'd lose him?
She felt his gaze and the quickening of his pulse beneath her touch. "Don't flatter yourself, my lord," there was an inflection in her tone, and it was impossible to discern if it was something playful or vexed.
Grima's heart faltered, then fell.
"I am aware of the infamy surrounding you, I am aware of your villainy-" Grima winced at the word and curled his lip into a pained sneer, "-and I am aware of how you're regarded by your own people. But my occupation doesn't allow me to take sides, so I don't take any. My duty is to heal and revive, and healing takes no sides and holds no judgement. So," her brows arched momentarily as she took some of the salve from her mortar onto her fingers, and started to massage it around the wound with a tenderness completely foreign to Grima. Not even the healers of Edoras were this gentle with him, their hands all rough and inconsiderate as they'd worked with him. "I will not treat you any differently than others I've healed. I see no reason to. A man is just a man when he is on the cusp of death. Titles and histories and actions mean nothing to me when a person is dying and requires aid."
She didn't rinse her hands before she took fresh marigold petals, pressed them against the paste, and began to encase his upper torso in fresh bandages.
It'd taken Grima a moment to process the she-elf's words. And his heart argued with itself on whether to feel grateful for her lack of prejudice or to feel suspicious. No one was ever willingly kind to him. Not unless they expected payment, not unless they held some other action or demand behind the veneer of compassion. To have someone look upon him, his wretched form, his history of wrongdoing, without an expression of scorn or hate or mistrust left a warm spark resonating within the depth of his chest.
Though, his heart scolded him, yelling at him that he couldn't trust this elf, that he couldn't trust her and her kindness. But that wouldn't stop him from expressing gratitude for her indifference.
But what could she even gain from being kind or tricking you?
Grima watched her closely as she concluded in wrapping her bandages, ran her fingers across her work, nodded, seemingly satisfied with her work, and then she stood. Grima barely noticed her weight leaving the bed, and she left no impression in the mattress and folds of silken sheets.
"I advise that you take another day or two to rest. You may be awake, but your fever is still fierce and stitches may reopen," She rinsed her hands in the bowl of water on the nightstand, then brushed them against her robes before settling them on the small pile of neatly folded cloth she'd brought in with her. "Your old clothes and cloak have been washed, and I brought you new clothes to try whenever you wish. Do tell me if the fitting and style is to your comfort, whenever you've the chance."
Grima felt at the bandages, at their snugness, and the ghost of the she-elf's touch lingered across his flesh as he looked back up at her while she reorganized the table, folding excess gauze and clearing away scrap herbs into her open palm.
"With that, I shall leave you to recover. You're welcome to the amenities within the room. I may return with some tea-ginger, I think-and water to aid in lowering your fever." With her palm cupping discharged herbs and marigold petals and holding her stained mortar in the crook of her elbow, the elf didn't regard Grima again as she turned on her heel to depart from the room.
In a way, Grima didn't want her to go. He felt less alone with her by his side, even if she were only there out of a healer's duty,
"Thank you," he blurted suddenly just as she reached the threshold. She paused to glance over her shoulder with those piercing silver eyes. "Thank you, my lady…" he trailed off in a manner, prompting for her name.
The elf's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, lips parting in a breath as though she were about to speak. She was silent for a moment, but then lightly inclined her head in a bow. "Lady Tathareth."
And then she was gone, and Grima was alone again.