D. K. Blackwater: Actually, by then, it shouldn't be pre-wedding…

Iluvien: Yes it is, and yes she will.

LadyJadePerendhil: Last chapter he had been there long enough for the elves to be fully settled… a year or two? This coming chapter is a few years beyond that… Mirimir is very good at staying away… I'll try not to get too mushy for you. If I have to go brush my teeth, I'll rewrite something. Fair?

Farflung: I don't know that she does know… at least before this chapter. I don't know. Sometimes my character's are secretive even around me. That sounds really weird. I could be my own Psychological study! What characters do in the free space of one's brain. Hmm… All in all, though, she is more likely to understand than he is. He's running on millennia of not having someone close, while she's just running on plain old instincts when it comes to her own feelings. If she were to stop and think, she would probably understand it all… Which sort of brings us to this chapter. Sorta.

Thanks to cemph4eva, Coolio02, Mystress Deidra, Tara6, and agaxris for reviewing!

Again with the loss of break. Sigh.



Chapter 33

"My Lady?"

Mirimir turned and looked up, and then shook her head slightly with a faint smile. "No, thank you."

The serving elf bowed his head and wandered away, offering drinks to other elves as he went.

With a sigh Mirimir left the hall with dances in progress, heading off to one of the small gardens most of the elves now watching her leave would be unable to find. Even if they did, they wouldn't think to look for her in the small sheltered nook she silently moved to, curling herself up as she leaned her head back against the cool stone.

There were always so many things to think about, so many things to mourn, to feel sorry for.

Her memories had more or less fitted themselves together correctly in the past few years, a painful collage of events an older, wiser elf should have been able to prevent, but which a mere babe could not begin to comprehend, much less change.

When night came, now she could cling to the few good memories she had of her family, of the times when it was only Nowina, their mother, who was being beaten. She clung to the knowledge that it wasn't her fault her father beat her mother, wasn't her fault she survived when her siblings died.

It was her mother's.

Sort of.

Her father had never been a good, kind, and loving elf as long as she could remember. Memories from the years before Yeradriel was born were rather fragmented, but she knew that for a time Father had only ever beaten their mother. The beatings turned to wounds and marks from the brand or whip after he noticed she had silver eyes—a trait neither he nor her mother possessed.

Whether or not he was truly her father, she couldn't say. Kalick had clung to the hope she was not, and had thought that—her lack of relation—would save her life. Maybe he thought her true father would come riding in one day to take her mother—and so her—away. Maybe he thought that then things would get better… for all of them.

Whatever he thought, he was but a child when he thought it. A small lad when their father's anger turned to her one day after their mother had passed out from the pain, choosing the numbness the darkness provided over looking after her children.

Kalick had shielded her, taken her blows and beatings, and later, Yeradriel's, though Yeradriel looked just like Father. By the time Rallene was born, Kalick was beginning to fade away, his eyes a faded blue she would recall until the end of all life.

After his death, they were all beaten severely, then she and her sisters were locked up as he assaulted their mother, and disposed of Kalick.

It was something she understood, now, her fascination with the soil and plants that grew from it. Kalick had been put into the soil, and plants sprouted up and bloomed happily from his grave. After him, Rallene began feeding the earth, then Yeradriel, and finally their mother. She was buried in the winter, a final child buried within her, dead without having been subjected to the terrors that had awaited it in life.

She had been happy, when her mother died. She had been happy when her sisters died. Kalick she had missed more than she had been happy, for her youth. Not happy because now she got their beatings, because now with only her to focus on, he became ever more cruel and demeaning, his sadistic laugh lighting the red-walled cell she had called home most of her life under his rule. Happy because they were no longer there, no longer enduring what she had been left to endure.

Happy they wouldn't survive to attempt to pick up the battered pieces of their lives, wouldn't have to learn to fit in even though they would never really feel they fit in.

She certainly didn't.

Every time a male asked her to dance, held out his hand and began leading her around the floor, she looked into his eyes and saw that he was unaware such horror could exist. She saw that he would probably think she was telling him a story if she told him the truth. Saw that he would turn away from her in disgust if she could prove it wasn't lies at all.

She had told Legolas once she wished she could climb out of her own skin. She always wished it, wished she could just be brought back in another body, one which didn't still display several puckered burn marks and even more jagged scars from heavy blows she had survived. Most of her scars were gone, true, her body healed in the few hundred years she had spent in the palace. It wasn't those that could be seen that she wished most to escape. Those were most visible to the eye, of course, but they no longer ached.

Only Legolas had seen the other wounds, the ones that still were open and raw. He had seen them, and he had still reached out to her, trying to help her, to convince her she could heal, in time.

Well, in time she was healing. Slowly. Very slowly.

It was just hard, being so alone. In a palace, in the middle of a very festive time, she was utterly alone, even as she was spun around the dance floor by another elf who tried to convince her the festivities should be continued even once the music had ended.

She missed him.

His smiles, the way his eyes darkened, the way his arms found their way around her when she needed the contact the most.

The way he convinced her, just by being there, that she was worth saving.

Mirimir?

A slight smile curved her lips. Yeah? She couldn't help but be glad he had broken in on her melancholy thoughts, though her smile and joy soon faded.

What's wrong?

You dropped in to ask what was wrong?

No, I just wanted to talk for a while to someone who doesn't forever call me 'My Lord' or 'Your Highness' or something else equally annoying, but there is something wrong. I can hear it.

You heard it in my yeah?

Yeah.

She smiled faintly and leaned back once more. How well he knew her. Your father has thrown a rather ostentatious party.

Tonight?

Tonight, last night, the night before, tomorrow, the night after that… It's going to last for nearly two weeks.

What ever for?

She bit back a grin. He sounded halfway between being shocked and sure his father had lost his mind. The reason for the party killed her mirth. It is a… farewell party.

Farewell?

She could feel his heart pause and his breath hitch. Yes, she agreed softly. He makes plans even now to leave within a moon of the final night. Most will leave that morning.

Were we to be informed?

A messenger should have arrived today… perhaps he stopped for rest a bit longer than expected.

Perhaps, Legolas agreed, his tone grim and angry.

Legolas, he does not answer to you any more than you answer to him.

I know, he sighed, letting go of his rising fury, but something like this I thought he would discuss with me.

But you have known for years this time would come, and that it would be soon. What does it matter if it is now or in a year, when you plan to join us soon enough?

Us? He was silent for a long moment after that one word. You are leaving as well?

She bit her lip. I have not much of a choice, Legolas. I cannot remain here alone. If I go, I shall be with Leherim and Elrohir.

Or you could come out here and be with me… unless you still need space, which I doubt, since you have not had any bad nightmares in a while, though even now you are troubled by what you have remembered.

As I may always be, she agreed softly. You said Aragorn was growing old, would soon decide his time had come. In a matter of years at the longest you will be with her again.

But in the meantime you will leave me utterly alone.

There are others with you, are there not? Gimli is there, and you have Aragorn as well, for the moment, any way.

I am not as close to them as I am to you.

She lowered her eyes and let out a sigh. The pleading in his tone was more than she had anticipated. Legolas, it will not be for very long. I do not wish to remain here any longer, and—

Nor do I! But I—

But you promised you would remain, and so you shall. I have no joy here, save for the plants…

Without me. Without Leherim.

Yes, she agreed on a sigh. But Legolas, I—

Madan will be there.

He said it as if it was the end all to the conversation. She simply blinked. Who?

…Madan. You were found in his house… It is likely he is your father, the one who tortured your family.

She took a deep breath, and slowly released it, controlling the shock of fear that had coursed through her. If that is the case, I will deal with it as it comes.

You won't wait a year or so even if it means I can be with you?

You cannot shield me from my own emotions, Legolas. If he is there, I will face him. Standing on my own feet, unsupported and free. He did not break me then, he shall not succeed now, not when I know the truth of life and elves.

The truth? His tone was bitter, knowing he had lost the argument, that she would be going to the undying lands with his father, would leave him to spend his remaining days alone, without any elves left who truly knew anything about him.

Yes. He is the anomaly, the freak, not me. He is the one who is outside the realm of normal, not the average. It was that fear that kept me silent for so long.

You thought I would be like him?

For a long time I thought you were just waiting for me to do something wrong. There are many things about you that are like him.

Mirimir—

She hurriedly broke in. But there are many more and deeper ways in which you are not, she soothed. I know you would never delight in causing such misery. Even when the punishment is deserved you do not thrill in administering it.

Are you calling me oversensitive? His tone had lightened, faint laughter threatening to rule his voice.

No, no. Not at all.

He laughed. Good. His thoughts turned back to the matter at hand, and with a sigh, he agreed. Very well. I shall join you as soon as I can. And in the meantime, I want you to chat up a storm to hold me through the silence once you do leave.

And me, she whispered.

Yes, he murmured with a slight hint of a sad smile in his voice, and you.