Hi, guys!I've managed to sneak onto a computer again, but I had warning enough to save a chapter and take it along. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!I have a lot to do online and limited time, so answers will have to be short.

Iluvenis: I had to pick my jaw up when I read your review--A leap of intuition?

Swasti: Anything in specific I could try to clear up? If this chapter doesn't help, let me know.

Animir: School's out... I just have very random access to the internet from now to mid-August. Congrats on being able to smile. That's the last of the pesky buggers, right?

LJP: Legolas ran because he discovered something he didn't want to--about her, and about his own actions. It's discribed a bit below. As for her turning from Elrond and family and to Glorfindel, she is friends with Glorfindel. The house of Elrond is nothing to her--Glorfindel is. Nothing exactly happened between Legolas and Ashes here, save that Legolas got a kick in the pants unintentionally.

The Luckiest: Well, I'm glad you chose to keep reading! It's something in my writing I can't get away from, for reasons as yet unknown to me--the first chapter seems slow, mostly background. Not so much background in this case, just general introductions. Dull, I know.

Chapter 12 Things were fine

Rithil stepped forward, and gazed at the garden below them with unconcealed contempt. "You didn't see enough of gardens while you were in Imladris?" she asked, irritation clear in her voice.

"You didn't have to follow me, if you preferred remaining inside," he countered quietly, gazing at the muted colors.

"I came with you. Therefore, I'm expected to leave with you. Is that so much to ask?"

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, removing his circlet before loosening the first fastening of his shirt. "Maybe it is."

"My lord?"

He shook his head slightly. "You know it would never have worked, Rithil. We've both known since the beginning."

She was silent for a long moment. "That's it, then? You leave for eight months with another elf and come back and expect me to be happy about it?"

"This isn't about her," he sighed.

"Isn't it?" she hissed. "Things were fine until that… that… that wanderer showed up."

"Things were fine," he agreed quietly. "They could still be fine, Rithil. But I don't want things to be fine for the rest of my life." Her anger had slowly ignited his own, and it began flaring out of control, making his words into spiteful daggers to cut her as deeply as he had been cut… even as part of him knew it wasn't her fault he had been pained. She didn't even know about it. "This is no great loss to you—it was nothing more than a dream. Snare the prince and be set for life, right? Well, not this prince. Not Elleri, either—he's always been a bit smarter about your gender than I have. Things may have been just fine for us for centuries if we let them pass by in such a farce, Rithil, but I don't love you, and you don't love me." He found a rather great relief in that knowledge, but tried to be gentile enough that she didn't see it in his eyes.

"And you do love… her?" she snapped.

Rithil had always refused to use Ashes's wandering name. "No. I don't. And as things stand she and I would be utterly miserable with each other, should we try something like this."

"Then why?" she asked, beginning to sound less like the 'lady' she was and more like a petulant child who doesn't yet understand that whining only angers adults rather than encourages them to give in to the childish demands being made.

With a sigh he shook his head, releasing his anger, knowing she didn't deserve it, and certainly couldn't handle it. "Rithil… when you've found the right one, you shall understand."

"And you have?"

"I must have," he agreed softly. "Otherwise I wouldn't be haunted by the one time when it wasn't fine… but was so wonderful I am unable to consider less for long."

She gaped at him for a long moment, her expression changing so swiftly it almost seemed frozen, before she turned and swept back into the room where the feast and dances were still going on, as they would be until well into tomorrow.

He watched her storm through the feast, barrel past the dancers, and slam the door on the other end of the hall so loudly it made him wince.

He sighed and closed his eyes, waiting for her to come. The gentle sound of swishing skirts soon caught his ears, as he had known it would. "Took you longer than I expected, Verine," he murmured.

She sighed and moved to his side, looking out at the garden with him.

"It was foolish," he murmured after a long moment.

She remained silent.

"Surely she knew that?" he mused, running a hand through his hair as he began to have doubts.

"Did you know that?" she asked quietly.

He paused, and after a long moment inclined his head. "Yes. I suppose I did."

"And why did you know that?"

"Because I knew she couldn't be the one…"

"Good. Now stop being such an ass and get it together."

He lifted a brow.

She scowled at him. "Don't look at me like that. You've been denying the truth for centuries, and I'm quite tired of it."

He smiled faintly. "What truth would that be? That no hall lady can hold my attention for long? Or at least, can't make me happy? Content, perhaps, but never happy."

She sighed and wrapped her arm in his. "Yes," she stated simply, surprising him. "And you're intelligent enough not to settle for merely being content."

He half-smiled, wondering when his little sister had gotten to be wiser than he was, and turned to sit on the balcony. "Is it intelligent not to settle for being content?"

"If you accept mere contentment, you will never be truly happy."

"But is that happiness worth all the time of loneliness? Of wondering if…"

"If?"

He gazed blindly into the hall.

"Legolas? If what?" she pressed, sensing as she always did that this particular point was very important.

"Once I was very happy, Ver. I just… I just don't know if it was real."

For the second time in just a handful of minutes, a she-elf was left gaping at him.

He reached up and gently pushed her lower jaw back into place.

She shook herself free of her shock and frowned at him. "You don't know? How can you not know?"

He sighed, and shrugged, deciding at last just to explain. Now that she had an inkling of a story she would never let it go again without a full explanation. He'd learned long ago it was best simply to indulge her curiosity. Far less irritating. "I woke up one morning, and felt so amazingly at peace, so ready for anything life would ever want to throw at me again. I… I thought there was an elf beside me, and I reached out for her, knowing she was the cause of it all, but there was no one there. I untangled the blankets and pushed them away, looking for some sign it had happened… and found none."

"Maybe she left?" Verine suggested, biting her lip.

He smiled faintly. "If she felt half of what I did, Verine, she would not have left. She could not have left."

She turned and considered the swirling mass of bodies in the hall beyond their secluded balcony. "Then it must have been too much to drink."

He closed his eyes with a pained sigh. "I know."

After watching him for a time she looked back into the hall, seeing Morsallien sitting beside their father, smiling slightly from time to time at whatever he was saying. Elleri was… there. In the center of the room. Dancing with… another male? She frowned and focused on the dark-haired elf, before smiling as she recognized who it was, despite the clothing. Or perhaps because of it. Ashes. The ever-graceful, ever mysterious wanderer. "What do you think of her?"

"Who?" he asked, opening his eyes.

"Ashes." She watched a shadow pass over his eyes. "Legolas? What is it?"

"Nothing."

"If it were nothing, you wouldn't say it was. Now, what is it?"

He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair once more. He shoved his circlet farther aside, shifting so he could sit cross-legged on the broad stone railing. "While in Imladris, I somehow hurt her. I don't know how, exactly, only that I did, and that it was a deep wound. She fled from me, into the wilds around the haven… and nearly died."

"What? Why did we hear nothing—"

"What was there to say, Verine? Was I supposed to come in, when all is well, and drag it out once more? Risk hurting her when Elrond wasn't there?"

She stilled, then slowly relaxed. "What else?"

He grimaced. "That is utterly annoying, you know."

"That's why you wait for me to join you out here when you know you need to think about something but don't really want to think about it. Now. What else happened?" She looked at him sternly, waiting.

Silence reigned for the longest time, before he drew a knee to his chest, wrapping his arms around it. "They couldn't reach her. They warmed her up—she'd been unconscious, exposed, in an ice storm, but they couldn't call her back, couldn't break her fever or bring her back. Elrond, Elladan, Elrohir… even Glorfindel tried, but all with no luck, though Glorfindel, at least, got her to almost open her eyes. They made me try."

"And?"

"And I reached her, obviously."

"Legolas," she sighed, bringing a hand to her eyes. "Even when you want to speak about difficult things, sometimes I think it would be easier and less painful for us both if I simply cut out your tongue so you wouldn't have to."

"Verine," he murmured softly. He rested his chin on his knee, and closed his eyes. With a weary sigh, he gave in. "She didn't want to come back, Ver. She was happy there. So happy. Peaceful. But I was selfish. I wanted her back so her death wouldn't weigh upon me forever, as I was the reason she fled. I pressed for her to come back, even through she was so much happier…"

"And?"

"And somehow I managed to find out why she didn't want to return to life. She lost her mate, Verine. The one to whom her soul was bound is lost to her. Yet she followed me back. With all the pain, all the anguish she has carried for so long, she still followed me, because I am her commander," he muttered bitterly. "I think I understand, now, why she fears me." He hugged his leg a bit closer.

Verine looked at him, and with a sigh, wrapped her arms around him, leg and all. "You look like a child when you huddle up like that. So hurt and defenseless," she sighed. "I can't help but try and make it better, though I know I can't."

He smiled weakly, and thought back to a warrior lord who had recently been held in such a fashion, and wondered if any of them ever really grew up. Then he had to wonder if he really wanted to know, if they did.