A fish that lives all its life in water doesn't know it's wet.

You have your first real argument.

"Where were you?" it begins.

The room is flooded with light and Estel's shadow falls upon you from the open door. You startle, nearly falling from the bench and flinging your new pennies about the room. When you gain your feet you find Estel looking nearly as dumbstruck as you feel.

Welp, there goes your hiding place.

"Out?" you say and turn back to the wall. What the hell?

The door shuts with a rattle behind Estel and the room is plunged into dimness again.

One, two, three, four, five the pennies drop into the bag. You jam the purse back into the hole between the ends of the branches that make up the wattle and the window frame where a chunk of daub and limewash had come loose.

"You weren't at the Pony." Estel stands in the middle of your floor, his hands on his hips and his face looking like he's been sucking on something sour.

Well, fuck, looks like he went searching for you.

You replace the chunk of daub, punching it back into place over the hole. "And?"

"I could not find you."

What is he now, your babysitter?

"And?" You shrug and drop down to the floor.

"Had you forgotten your promise?" he asks, glaring all so invitingly at you. Cuz that's definitely going to make you feel like sharing with the class.

"Of course not. I'm here," you say, striking the tips of your fingers on your chest and then spreading your hands open to indicate him. "You're here. Let's do this. Let's talk. What you got for me?"

"Very good. Let us start then." He nods and folds his arms across his chest, his face all screwed up and jaw clenched. "'Twas the first chance you were afforded to be alone since my return, aye? Why then were you seen in the company of Master Ferny? Was that your purpose in going to The Pony, to meet him there?

Oh, so that's what this is all about, then, Estel and his mysterious business, and his mysterious day trips, and his mysterious mysteriousness, and his god damn, fucking paranoia.

You snort and, turning your back on Estel, flip through the stack of folded cloth in the big basket at the foot of your cot.

Of course Ferny asked about Strider.

"Pining for yer company there, Fish?" Ferny had asked with a leer as he leaned in and rested his elbow on the sill of the barn window.

Fucker.

Fucker watched you the whole time you worked as if he had nothing better to do.

Fucker. Fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker, fucker.

He said you could fill your bag until it was full and that is exactly what you did, cramming potatoes in it until you were afraid it was going to bust a hole and scatter them all over the Road on the walk home. All the while you tried to not think too deeply about the fact that Ferny had just seriously overpaid you for an afternoon of mucking out his barn.

You suddenly feel a little ill.

"I ask you again." Estel doesn't exactly raise his voice, but it's a near thing, enunciating each syllable precisely and letting it ring in the small space. "What did you tell him of me?"

"For fuck's sake, Estel! Not everything is about you!" You yank a scrap of wool cloth out of the basket and go back to the window. "I might have had a few other things on my mind. Imagine that."

You unlatch the shutter and yank it from the window frame. "What the fuck would I have told him, anyway?" you grumble. "I hardly know anything about you."

He scoffs at that. "You know enough," he says but you ignore him, emotionally constipated, tight-lipped motherfucker that he is, and set the shutter beneath the bench.

"And should you spend your time in the company of the likes of Ferny of your own will," he goes on, "then I shall tell you naught more and can but regret that I have been as free as I have."

Oh my god. Really? What the fuck. Why does it matter so much to him?

"Do you think I like spending time with Ferny?" you exclaim. "That I enjoy it? Bill Fucking Ferny? Really? That I would be around him if I had any other option? Is that what you think of me?"

"What choice have I but to think this?" he asks, gesturing at you with his open hand before tucking it back across his chest.

"How about, I dunno," you say, "maybe you could, I dunno, maybe try trusting me instead of jumping to conclusions." With that, you lean over and pry the top of the soft basket open over the potatoes you had taken from Ferny's winter supply.

"Was it Ferny that you wished to protect from me?"

"No!" you yell and shoot back up to standing, cuz, god, fuck no.

Shit. Okay.

"Yes," you go on, "kind of, but not really. Damn it!"

Well that gets Estel's attention. And he is pissed. His eyebrows have nearly climbed off his forehead and he's going to crack a tooth if he keeps grinding his jaw like that.

"Look, Estel, there's a lot that's happened while you've been gone and I don't need shit stirred up right now. He had a job needing doing," you say. "I did it. He paid me. End of story." Right?

Yeah, you're not even convincing yourself.

"Can you tell me you felt naught of discomfort?" Estel demands, far too perceptive for what you're comfortable with about now. "He did naught that tested your willingness to do as he wished?"

God damn it! It pisses you off enough that you have to let Ferny's eyes crawl all over you in order to keep the peace, but now you're going to have to lay it all out for Estel to pass judgment on it.

"Look," you pry open your jaw to say, "I'm doing the best that I can."

Well that really did the trick. He's fucking nodding again, but this time with his lips all screwed up like you just confirmed that you're an idiot and he's got to explain just how much of one you are to you in very small words.

"Hala, you do not know how perilous it is," he says, "nor how close you are to-"

"Fuck you!" you say, "I know exactly how close I am. If you would just listen, you might -"

"Hala, the life of a cotter is a hard one - " he begins but you pound a finger of the hand holding the wool rag on your chest.

"I'm the one who has to weave some kind of fucking path through the land mines of bad choices -"

"- even should you exchange support with others in that life."

"No shit, Sherlock!"

He ignores you and goes on, his voice all the more forceful and earnest. "The temptation when so desperate as you are like to become is strong."

"Are you going to actually tell me something I don't know?" you demand and throw your arms wide to take in the whole shit hill of your situation.

"Hala." He takes a step and comes very close to looming over you, his voice sharpening. "It would take but one more mischance or one illness or an ill deed done upon you," he says and jabs a finger at the door, "and he will be waiting for it."

"What the fuck, Estel," you say, your head whirling. God damn it! If he'd just shut up for a second. "Quit spouting off the obvious just so you're the one who can feel better!"

He unwinds his arms to shake his hands between you. "Use good sense! You have allowed Ferny a chance to find your limit -"

"Quit treating me like a fucking idiot!" you shout but he just shouts back.

"- and you will come to regret it in ways you have yet to understand!"

"What the fuck am I to do?" you shout at him and then halt in place, brakes slammed and tires screaming on the road.

Great. Now you're full out crying. God, you hate this. You have no idea what look is on his face because he is nothing but a blur of hot tears. Jesus. You're shaking.

Fuck!

"Hala, do not allow him the chance to find what more he can ask of you!" He raises a hand between you as if in an attempt to calm you down. It does not do that.

"Fuck you! You know fuck all of what's been happening since you've been gone so you do not get to waltz in here and pull your high and mighty Strider Knows Best act!"

He grits his teeth, his hands clenched at his side, and spits out something that sounds like it would be a curse if you only had any idea what language it was. Well, it's apparent that that is not at all how he is used to being talked to but you don't give a shit. He glowers at you like as soon as he gets that huffy chest of his under control he's going to start holding his breath and swell up like a pufferfish.

"I swear to fucking god, Estel," you say and poke him in one very huffy, swollen pec, "if you don't sit down and shut up and listen to me for once, I'm going to toss your pack and shiny weapons out the door and you can go sleep in the ditch and lecture the trees for all I care."

He turns away abruptly, grabbing onto his head and then sliding his fingers through his hair until he clutches it between his intertwined fingers at the nape of his neck. He must be working hard to reign himself in, drawing deep breaths very audibly through his nose before his shoulders soften and he lets his hands fall, easing himself to the bench where the light of the sun strikes the back of his head. You can't see much of his face in the shadow, but he's still looking at you with that harsh, bitter look on his face.

Jesus fucking Christ on a pogo stick.

"You think I don't know about Bill Ferny?" you demand. "Fucking dude bro extraordinaire and his fucking negging and midnight fishing expeditions laying out traps everywhere I fucking turn. Him and Blackthorn and Harry Goatleaf and, fuck, Harvey rat-bastard Tunnelson!"

Fuck!

Okay. Okay. C'mon.

You wipe at your face. God you hate this.

I mean, to be honest, at the time the only thing you had truly regretted about the whole afternoon was that you couldn't take that pony home with you and get it away from Ferny's clutches. Poor thing followed you around, bumping his nose into you for pets like it was touch-starved. Fucker hadn't even given it a name. Which was part of the whole plan, too, of course; play on your pity for the creature. No more than a yearling and consigned to a life of neglect and dependence on a man who would just as soon as beat it as touch it with an ounce of kindness.

You take a moment, just breathing in and out and letting the setting sun hit your face through the window where it warms your skin.

"Look, Estel, it's been great having you here," you say once you can get something coherent out of your mouth. You stop twisting the wool rag between your hands and gesture about you with it. "And I can't thank you enough for all you've done. But if I don't give Ferny enough to pacify him and string him along until the spring, he's going to come straight after me and anyone who helps me again."

Fuck.

C'mon. You can do this.

You have to do this.

"When the fucking king returns," you say and snort wetly, wiping your chin on the shoulder of your tunic. "Yeah, well, until then it's going to be Harry and his whip and a very fun and very naked jog from here to the stocks in the market square before they hold me down and fucking brand me."

Yeah, you know Estel isn't going to be able to make much sense out of what you just said, but, fuck it, it's the first time you've said it all out loud and the horror of it sits like a stone in your belly. He's doing as you asked, sitting on the bench, silent, turned to you with his hand clenching the wood as if he just might snap it in half with his bare hands. You can't be arsed to make yourself anywhere more coherent than you are right now, but he's filling in the dots. At least that bitter look is gone. Not that dismay and pity are much better.

"So what do you want me to do?"

You despise that quaver in your voice. God damn it!

You swore you were not going to do this. This thing with Estel was sure to have a beginning, middle, and an end, and that would be that. And now it's going to end like this.

"Because when it comes down to it," you say, "when it's the coldest and darkest part of winter and Barliman keeps delaying taking me back because Ferny keeps stirring up outrage about how incorrigible I am and how only a hard hand like his would keep me in line, I've worn out my welcome on the landowners who might have leavings I could pick through, no one has daywork they would trust with me, and my food is running out, what do you expect me to do then, huh?"

Fucking mushrooms and burdock and chervil! Just how far out from Bree would you end up having to go to find anything as winter deepens? Shit. If Estel couldn't keep himself safe on the Road just outside of Bree in mid-spring when travelers are flush with money, what chance do you have when the pickings are thin and the thieves and the bandits are just as desperate as you are?

"Because you won't be here, will you."

Silence greets this. Of course he has nothing to say. Because what is there to say? Fucking Barliman, Nob and Bob, and Poppy and Cook; Ferny trapped them all. Made them choose between you and their own well-being. If Estel stays it would be so easy for Ferny to stir up ill-feeling against him when he's tired of waiting for you to give in. God, either way Estel would choose it would just about kill you.

What a fucking awful choice to force him into.

"And, listen," you go on, "I don't blame you for leaving, because… fuck! What the hell is there here for you, either, right?"

Yeah, you are thoroughly miserable. He is thoroughly miserable. Everyone is thoroughly miserable. Just great. 'Thumbs up' for everyone.

You sigh. God. This so sucks. You shrug your face against your shoulder and stare at the rag you've been twisting and rolling on itself until it has started to shred. Estel does nothing but stare at his hands where he has taken to wringing the hell out of his fingers, white knuckles and all.

If you are honest with yourself, and yes, you need to be honest with yourself, with the way things are going there is nothing for him here but more being torn between guilt and despair of the kind that had already nearly sucked him under. You can't keep doing this. Not to him. Not to yourself. You just can't. You need to put an end to this.

When you've dropped the scrap of wool back in with the rest of the linens, there's really nothing left to do but this last thing. And so you do it.

"You need to go," you force yourself to say and Estel shakes his head, his mouth a hard line.

"Ai, Hala," he says and then halts, choked.

Oh god. This is killing you, but you go on and say what you have to say.

"You can't stay. Not here. Not anymore."

Your chest hurts like a horse kicked it. And, fuck, Estel isn't doing much better, either. His eyes have filled and his whole face crumples as though it's a dam holding back a flood of everything he is feeling and it's losing that fight.

"Please, Hala, I beg you -" he says before drawing in a shaky breath. He can't seem to sit still, rubbing his open palms up and down his thighs as he rocks on the bench.

And then, in a swift blur of motion he launches himself off the bench at you. Hands come up about your face and his mouth is on yours, firm at first, but then with a low pained sound it softens to something tender, his lips parting.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh god!

He's making these high, hurt noises as if each touch of your lips is an electric shock. You kind of stumble into him, grabbing onto his sleeves to keep yourself upright so you can kiss him back. He's kissing you with such deliberate gentleness it's as if he'd considered every single variation of words he could possibly say to tell you this but found any and all of them completely inadequate.

Okay, okay. Yeah. Okay. God, Estel. It's okay. It's okay. Fuck, it's okay Estel, you get it now.

God, and he just kept coming back and coming back. Fuck.

His hands cradle your face as if he were afraid he might hurt you and still he keeps on kissing you.

Fuck he feels good, his lips warm and so fucking soft and the brush of his beard on your face and his thumbs trailing on your cheek and jaw as if you were precious to him. It makes your head ache, but god, you don't want him to stop.

Don't stop. Just, please, fuck Estel, don't stop.

And of course that's exactly what he does. He touches his brow to yours, bending to you.

He begs in a voice that's cut up and raw, "Please, will you not confide in me?" but then he falters and his thumbs skim across your cheeks. "Ai, Halanya, can you not bring yourself to trust me?"

"Oh, Estel," you begin, your heart somewhere down below your knees, cuz, fuck, trusting him has nothing to do with -

"Listen to me!" he says and gives you a shake. "I care not what evil work they may have driven you to that keeps you silent. I will forgive it all!"

Fuck, you'd answer, if nothing else to get rid of that bereft look on his face, but you have no freaking clue what he's talking about.

"Just tell me, I beg you, and I swear I will do all in my power to free you from the hold they have upon you."

"Estel?" you ask, trying to get your bearings. "What hold?"

"Do not lie to me, I beg you."

"I don't -"

"Hala!" he says, "I have seen it with my own eyes, its light upon your face and you whispering into it."

Oh shit.

Wait.

You manage to get out a soft sound approximating, "What?"

He releases you only to then take your wrist and press your palm to the front of your tunic, right in the hollow beneath your collarbone, right over the pocket you sewed into the inside of your tunic.

The hard outline of your phone pinches against your fingers and ribs where he has it pressed. There's no way he can't feel its unnatural shape, too.

"Hala, I beg you," he says, still earnest, still speaking low, and still looking at you like his heart is breaking. "Who is it that requires you to look into this device you have hidden on yourself and report what you know to them?"

Oh.

Oh shit!

If this is what he was thinking, fuck, you should have told him a long time ago. It's just…

Wow. That is not at all what you were expecting. I mean, who thought someone from around here would know what a phone could do?

"I, uh, I…" you begin, pulling away and stuttering to a halt. God, he looks so heartsick when you hesitate, his face crumpling like any second he's going to clutch at his head and weep out of despair and frustration.

Fuck. You've only got about 4% power left. It always seems to drain faster when you hit the dregs of the battery. This is not how you wanted to spend your last chance to look in it. You seriously had been planning to drain off some of Barliman's whiskey for the event.

You step past Estel, fastening the latch to the door before you pick up the shutter and shove it into the window frame and fasten it in place, too.

You turn back to him and he's staring at you like he's really not sure he likes this turn of events, either.

"I turned the screen down really low, so we, uh, well, it needs to be dark to see it best," you say and motion him to the bench. He sits, stiffly at attention, watching your every move very closely, a look pretty close to alarm on his face.

You settle next to him and his hands tighten on the bench when you reach inside the neck of your tunic and slip the phone out.

"Hala, should you reveal my face -"

"It won't. It's not what you think," you say. "It doesn't show what is around us or convey sounds. It doesn't work like that. Or, well, it doesn't work like that anymore."

Okay, that's helping a little bit. He doesn't look quite like he's about to leap up from the bench.

You take a breath. The edge of the phone digs into the pad of your thumb.

"I do trust you, Estel. It's just…"

Fuck. This is going to hurt.

"I didn't get this from anyone, well, anyone here or anywhere around here. My, uh, it was my mother who gave this to me. She couldn't afford to get me any graduation gifts, so when I got my first real job a while back, she saved up and bought it for me to celebrate. You're right, it is a device that you can use to communicate with other people. They're very common in my world. Like, everyone I know has something like it. But it can't work that way, here in your world."

He frowns at this. Yeah, you knew he'd pick up on that. Well, now that you've started there really isn't anything else to do but keep on going.

"There's, well, there aren't any towers or satellites in orbit to carry its signal or any other ones like it here on your world that it can contact. There's nobody on the other end, not anymore."

His eyes flick from you to the phone and back. "What do mean, 'your world' and 'my world' Hala?"

Oh god. Here we go.

"This," you say, taking in a deep breath and motioning about you, "this isn't my world. Like, when I said I'm not from here, I'm really not from here, Estel, like at all. That's why I know fuck all about how to live here. And god, I really hope you don't decide to burn me at the stake or something, I mean, cuz, shit, there's enough xenophobia about outsiders around here to light up the Eastern seaboard and they're just talking about people from the Shire not from like way way outside of the known universe, and I have no freaking clue how I got here. I mean, the moon is the same, so it's got to still be the same planet but I dunno maybe it's like a multiverse thing or maybe a completely different time or timeline or something, fuck, I dunno maybe I fell asleep and I'm drowning in my bathtub and this is all in my head and it's like my brain is deprived of oxygen and flicking through random scenarios before I, like, go into the light or something-"

"Hala," he says, and, yeah, you suppose you are spiraling.

Yeah. Okay.

"Just, watch, okay?"

His eyes flit from you to the phone, concern drawing fine lines upon his face. You really don't have anything you could tell him that would ease his mind or explain things, well, without it becoming a two day long treatise in parallel worlds and multiverses, or something that you don't really understand, yourself. You were there, and then you were here, nothing in between to explain what had happened or how it might be reversed.

If only you had walked through a strange cupboard or run through a brick wall in a train station at speed, at least you could use the lamp post or train tracks as some sign that 'here the worlds' boundaries run thin.' But no such luck, unless the hay rick you woke up in had some unnatural quality you hadn't discovered in your time there. Brought into this world like Jesus in a fucking manger.

You've shut down any app or process that might leach a charge out of the battery. Not like location services were going to work here. There's really only one app that is worth running down the battery to open.

The skyline from Navy Pier during some stupid work function schmoozing with potential donors. Well, maybe not so stupid. You'd been working several years for a nonprofit that focused mostly on supporting youth coming out of foster care and crashing into adulthood, but, honestly, given the needs, did a little bit of everything for the neighborhood. God, their security had been a nightmare. Disabled backup system, default and super obvious passwords everywhere, expired certificates, and click-happy coworkers. Fucking stone knives and bearskins held together with chewing gum and duct tape.

Alex and Marta practicing their perfect pout for the camera during a client's graduation party. And then them laughing and dancing. New Year's Eve on the beach. It had been snowing for hours. Huge flakes whipped by the wind high up over the water. White everywhere and Lake Michigan rolling dark and endless. You'd put the bottles in a snow drift to chill the champagne. Kiara with her partner raising their cellphones against the dark horizon as fireworks stream across the sky. Someone joked about skinny dipping. Who was it? Marcus, maybe? Shit. You're forgetting.

Then there he is, your little brother, Fynn, leaning his head upon your shoulder before he beat you to blowing out your candles, your mother behind the phone taking pictures. Then a series of others in which he is giggling and clowning behind you, your mother pressed up close and dragging him into the frame until the three of you are piled together in a chaotic mess of the world's worst selfies. You tap one and their voices fill the small room. Light and sound and singing and laughter from a time that seems so long ago, now. It had been your birthday and your last visit.

2%. 2% left. You tap and drag and one, two, three, the screen goes dark until there is nothing to see but a faint, ghostly image of you and Estel caught in the glass. You've maybe got one more time you can do this. Maybe. It's frankly a miracle the battery has lasted this long as it is.

Yeah, if the way you feel right now is any indication, you're going to need to make a whole night of it. Steal that whiskey you've been eyeing in Barliman's cellar, flick through the pictures and videos until the light goes dark on its own, and then drink yourself into as close of a stupor as you can possibly get afterward.

Maybe if Estel doesn't say anything and everyone can just move on to another topic, you can go on pretending that it's just been a really long time in between visits and you can walk down the Road a little ways, get out your keys in a jangle of metal and unlock your old Corolla where you parked it on the street, and, after a while of driving downstate on straight as a ruler highways with cell towers, corn and soybean fields, "Jesus saves!" billboards, and a startling lack of state police keeping you company, finally, at last, pull up in your mother's driveway.

"Ai," Estel says, his voice hushed, and then he bursts into laughter. It's strained and wet and choked. He leans over his lap. His elbows on his knees, he kneads the skin of his brow with his fingertips.

He stays like that for some time, holding his head with just the tips of his fingers and staring at the floor at his feet. You'd ask what he was thinking, but you kinda don't want to know.

God, you'd delayed and delayed and delayed, hoping you could squeeze just a little more time out of this thing you have between you before it all goes to shit and he freaks out. 'Nice ta meet ya, but omg what the FUCK are you and why have I trusted you and this is just a little too weird for me, ya'll! Peace out!'

You flip the phone over and over in your hands. It catches the dim light as it turns, light, dark, light, dark, light dark.

"Ai, Halanya, but you confound me atimes," Estel says, his voice hollow. "I have lived in such fear that you were lost."

Shit, he sounds so lost himself.

This has got to be a head shift to end all head shifts.

"Who did you think I was talking to?" you ask and he wipes at his face and sniffs, rubbing his hands on his breeches before he sits up and holds out his hand.

When he takes the phone, he runs his thumb along its edge as if he were testing its sharpness and then turns it about.

"That's a lense, there," you say, pointing to the back.

He holds it up close in the fading light slipping through the crack beneath the shutter to peer at it, frowning. He then nods.

"It's a camera," you say and his eyes flick over to you before returning to examining the phone. "It's built like an eye, more or less, and it can take in the light that we see. That's how it makes the pictures you saw."

He nods, somehow following along, and then shakes his head, considering the blank glassy surface with care.

He turns the phone about, studying the buttons along its side.

"We have devices of this nature here," he says, "of glass that lights at the touch and shows things that are far distant and allows those who look within them to speak with others, or so have I read of them."

He watches as the light slides across the surface before handing it back to you. "But they are rare and very old. Palantíri, they are called, made many years ago, it is said, mayhap even before the sun and the moon that light our world were set in the heavens. The craft of making them has long been lost.

"Hala," he says and sighs, rubbing his hands along his thighs, "ere he fell, the Lord of Mordor was once apprenticed to the Vala Aulë, and is gifted in the fashioning of devices of power. I thought surely he had discovered the way of it again and had ensnared you."

Well, shit.

Oh god. No wonder he'd been so tight-lipped.

"At first, I thought you willingly bound," he says, and then leans his elbows on his knees and returns to wringing his hands together. "But then I came to know you, and thought surely you were unwilling or ignorant of the evil works of those who held you in their power. But my fear of what you might betray within this device, even should you do so unwittingly, kept me silent."

And there he stops, unable to continue for a moment, his lips pressed tightly together as though he were in pain. "I thought us doomed, you and I. You, I mourned, for I knew, in time, should you not throw off your shackles, it would destroy you.

"For myself," he says and then laughs, a burst of sharp sound. "I thought them fools, men whose hearts were drawn to somewhat that was sure to be their undoing, a herald of doom that would make a wasteland of all they loved. Then I found myself in their company.

"And I cared not, Hala," he says, shaking his head. "Atimes, I think I would have turned my back upon all honor and duty, so stricken with terror was I at what they might one day demand of me should I not convince you to confide in me and change your course."

He pulls in a trembling breath and forces the rest out. "Ai, Halanya," he says. "I have never been so comforted nor so shamed by being so wholly mistaken."

"Dude!" you say. Good god. "How the hell could you have known?"

"Nay," he says and laughs bitterly. "I have been a fool and thought myself helpless. And so did naught when I should have been a better friend to you."

'Better friend to you.' Like he didn't spend every waking minute with you trying to offer you as many viable alternatives as possible given what he thought was your situation.

"Jesus! I'm the one who kept it secret. Do you always hold yourself to these kinds of impossible standards?" you ask as he sits upright, sighing.

"You are an idiot," you say when he doesn't answer but lifts his hand and lets it fall back to his leg as if to illustrate how little of a choice he has.

"I believe that was my point, Hala."

Yeah, yeah.

"Just so you know, you're being an idiot right now."

"How so?" he asks, groaning and easing about so that he leans against the wall, facing you with his leg curled up on the bench. He laughs, if ruefully. "I beg you, Hala, should you have more you need to disclose you do so now, ere I make more of a fool of myself."

"No, you idiot," you say, worming your fingers into his hand where it rests in his lap, "you're over here beating yourself up when we could be doing other things that are much more pleasant."

He's not quite smiling, but his face warms a little. "And what had you in mind?"

You snort. "Really, I mean, I know you are, well, let's say, unpracticed…"

He huffs and all but rolls his eyes. "I do not deny it, but that does not mean I am an innocent." He captures your fingers and gives them a squeeze.

"I kissed you back," you say, using his hand to tap him on the thigh. He may be getting the hint, because he's refusing to let your fingers go. "Tell me you haven't given that some thought."

"I have," he says but, instead of elaborating further, he lifts his free hand, his fingers trailing on your cheek as he rests his head against the wall, watching you in the dim light. "Ai, how I have ached for you, Hala. To be near and speak with you and touch you without fear and regret is enough.

"For the moment," he goes on with a smile when you groan and knock your temple against the wall.

Fucking Romantic(tm).

"Hala, I have been seen about Bree," he says, when you give him a pained look. One fucking kiss and he thinks that's going to hold you. He stops caressing your cheek but only to fold your hand in both of his. "They will have heard that I am expected to leave for the Road upon tomorrow's eve by now. I would not leave you were it not even more imperative now that I go. I will return, but I must leave tonight, ere the moon's rising, ere word of my movements can be sent abroad."

Well. Fuck.

Yeah.

"And there is this," he goes, shaking your hand to get your attention, "you have been forthcoming, and I thank you for it, but I have not yet. And I cannot. Should it not be you who reports on my whereabouts to those who wish the Northlands ill, then I know not who it is nor who they report to nor their methods. Until you are safe, I dare not tell you more than I have. And so I must go and do what I can to see to it."

He turns your hand over so that he can brush his thumbs over your knuckles. When he looks back up, he hesitates before speaking again.

"Hala," he says and then stops, taking a breath before proceeding, looking at you earnestly, "there are yet things I need tell you ere you make your choice should you wish to return my affections or no."

You shake your head, cuz there's locking the barn door after the horse has gotten out and then there's locking the barn door after the horse has shimmied its way down the Road and is dancing to WAP next door with the cows after a night of margaritas and jello shots.

"And yet," he says, giving you an apologetic look and not bothering to finish that sentence.

Yeah, so hand-holding and meaningful silences it is, damn it. And so that's what you do, lean into the wall with him and let him hold your hand, rubbing his thumbs up and down the bones from knuckles to wrist and back in the silence as you wait for the sun to set.

Well, at least he's your emotionally-constipated motherfucker, the big lug.

"Do you think it's Ferny?" you ask after some time and he glances back up at you from where he'd been studying your hand. He doesn't really need you to explain what you mean.

He shrugs. "Mayhap. I have not evidence enough to put my whole trust in it, but 'twould be no surprise should it be him, though I suspect his friend from the south more."

"Huh," you say. Well, that explains a lot. "Actually, I've not seen his friend around since before the harvest and he's usually pretty hard to miss."

Estel grunts, considering the news but clearly coming to little conclusion.

"Yeah, uh," you say and bite at your lip, "he's been, uh, laying low for a while, now."

"Aye?" he asks. You've caught him now, what with that spark of light in his eyes.

"Yeah," you say and then you have to stop to look away and scratch at your upper lip to hide the smile that threatened to bust out all over your face. You squint at him. "That's kinda what started this whole round of crappy events that lead to today. I, uh, I may have beaten the shit out of him for peeing on my door."

Estel blinks for a beat or two, and then a smile bursts across his face and he throws back his head and laughs, long and hard, his whole body shaking with it. "Ai! I should have known!" he cries. "How ever could I have doubted you?"

"I don't know, dude," you say, grinning. "I'm the picture of innocence over here, that one's on you.

He shifts your hand about so that he turns it palm up, smiling. "Aye, so it is," he says and, with that, he lowers his head to cup your hand in his and lift it to his lips. There he presses a slow, tender kiss to the meat of your thumb.

It's not lost on you that that's exactly where Harry Goatleaf would brand an "I" into your skin if he got the chance.

Well, maybe you are an incorrigible dumbass, but apparently you are his incorrigible dumbass, and he doesn't mind it so much.

Shit, your palm still tingles where his lips were a minute ago and you are grinning at him like a fool. He doesn't seem to mind that so much, either, if the smile on his face and the warmth with which he is caressing your hand is any indication.

"Such a strange and wonderful place you are from, Hala," he says after a while. "I know not what to make of it. It seems beyond my comprehension that there are worlds other than our own or places so far removed that there has ne'er been congress between them."

"Have you," you start and then have to clear your throat to make yourself better understood. "In all the stories you know, has there ever been anyone who, uh, might have come from, you know, a place like this?" You hold your phone up where he can see it and waggle it at him in case he wasn't sure what you meant.

He shakes his head and then presses another kiss to your hand as if he hopes that will soften what he has to say next. "I know of none, nor any study here of such things."

Yeah, you suppose that would be too much to hope for. Fuck.

"There is one I might ask," he goes on, watching you closely, as if he were reluctant to give you too much hope, "should you wish, who might know of such things."

Holy fuck! Your heart gives a huge painful thump in your chest. Damn it. That's a long fucking road to walk down, with a very high likelihood of many, many dead ends and disappointments that are going to hurt like hell. And yet, what choice is there? Not attempt it?

When you nod, he smiles, if cautiously. "Then I will get word to him when next I have the chance. It will be some time ere he and I can speak. He has no fixed abode and his journeys are long and his concerns are many, and I have had no word of his whereabouts since coming west to Bree."

"That's okay," you say, cuz, honestly, maybe you are woefully underestimating Estel's world, what with the lack of indoor plumbing and electricity, and how his stories of cities and centers of learning seemed as distant and foreign as his tales of dragons and trolls and elves from your day to day life in Bree, you weren't expecting even that much.

"Do you know how-" he starts to ask but you shake your head in turn and he falls silent.

Well, some other day, then, and you stuff that thought way way underground someplace and close doors and pile furniture in a barricade before them so you have at least a chance of drawing in a breath every once in a while without wondering if you actually deserve the air you take up.

"Do you want something to eat before you go?" you ask but he shakes his head.

"Nay, do not trouble yourself. I have enough rations for some time. I can eat on the Road as I walk."

"Hey, listen," you say, jerking your chin at the bag leaning against the bench, "I've apparently come into a ton of potatoes. No butter, but, well, I do have onions and at least they'd be hot."

He huffs a soft, skeptical laugh, no doubt recalling just where you had obtained said potatoes from and the heat of the argument that had prompted. "Nay," he says, "not unless you hunger."

You glance through the gap between the shutter and the window frame and shake your head. The sun has slipped below the hedges surrounding the fields of Bree to the west, lighting the clouds a bright pink and gold. You've probably got about an hour before the moon rises. You can wait.

"Do you want to just do this, then?"

He nods, and, running his hand up your forearm and back, settles into holding your hand in his.

And so that is what you do. You twist about and toss your phone onto your cot and then let him take both of your hands.

If he thought this would be less intimate than kissing, this sitting in the growing dark while your fingers touch and skim over his before they entwine, then he is badly mistaken. Long and thick and strong, you uncurl his hand in your palm and run the tip of your fingers up his palm, spreading his thumb and fingers apart as you go, up and over callouses from his work and down again to the soft skin between his knuckles and over his wrist, your touch light and his breath quickening at it.

When you look up again, you find Estel staring at you with a look of wonder.

His breath hitches when you take his hand and cradle his palm against your cheek, laying in a kiss at that spot where palm and wrist meet.

God, you wish you could take a picture of him like this, so open and so soft.

"Ai, Halanya," he breathes out and, fuck, so not fair. He's looking at you like no one has ever made him feel like this until now, treasured and wanted, and he's really not sure what to do about it.

And so you stay like that until, at last, he pulls away and stands up.

"Do not listen for my footsteps or watch for the direction I take," he says once he's eased his arms through his pack and hefted it to his shoulders and buckled his thick belt with his sword about him. "What you do not know, you cannot betray even should you not wish to.

"I understand now why you did not know the signs for what they are, but hearken to me," he says at the door, his voice low and grim. "Those who flee from the south are but the first who shall do so. We are on the brink of a war unlike any that has been seen in this age, Hala. Even now, the long arm of the Enemy reaches into the Northlands."

With a sudden movement his hands come up to clasp your face and he peers at you in the dark. "Should you need to flee, do so," he whispers, his voice grown harsh and strained and his eyes searching yours.

"Stay away from the Road, aye?" he asks and you nod, though fuck if you know where you'd go or how you'd stay alive on the way there. "Keep the hills to your right and strike across the low lands south and east until you come upon a river and there take shelter. I will find you."

You have no clue what's on your face, but you know what's on his. Pity. Yeah, fuck, whether or not he makes it back or you stay in Bree or escape into the Wild, you have a feeling your days of living in this small little circle of light about your hearth are over.

"I will always find you, Hala," he says, "no matter where you go."

Well, maybe you won't have to do it all by yourself, then. And so you nod and that seems to be enough.

When he presses his brow to yours you breathe in, doing what you can to burn the scent of him and the feel of his chest beneath your palms into your memory. It seems he is doing much the same, because he lingers there for a long moment and closes his eyes.

And then he's gone, and you are alone in the dark.