I'm sorry, guy. Things have been crazy. The only time I was able to get on a computer they were ones without outside internet access. This keyboard is also wierd--it tries to delete every fourth letter. Thankfully I already had the chapter up, or I wouldn't bother now. So I'll just apologize for any unexpected errors before the chapter break.

Madrone: If this chapter doesn't help clear up some confusion, let me know!

LJP: The title Uncle is past life... This chapter should finish any uncertainties.

Iluvenis: Okay, I'm still not giving away the plot, but you read my stories too well. ;-)

iria-86: there are quite a few chapters left for this story, at least. If the chapter doesn't unconfuse you, let me know.

Aglarendis: Mind if I ask which site? If you remember, anyway--it seems like it's been ages since I was last online. ;-)

Animir: Legolas is going to stay that way for quite a while... he's just so cute when he's all puzzled. LOL

Chapter 16 Once considered beautiful

With pursed lips he fit the key in the lock, turning it before pressing the door slowly open. He was struck with how eerie it was, to step into the past so easily. The illusion was soon spent, however, when he found the room was occupied. She looked at him for a long moment, and allowed him to look at her.

What he could remember of Silrinil told him she had visibly aged since then, as elves of their respective ages didn't often do. The soft curves of an innocent youth had been spent, a harder, stronger countenance in its place. "You've had a hard life."

"You knew that."

"Yes. But not that it was you."

She shrugged. "It was easier than it would have been here."

"Why?" he asked, looking around the room as he struggled to understand. "You…"

"Were given anything I could have wanted, for years," she murmured softly. "I was content."

"Then why leave?" He cast himself into a chair.

"Because contentment wasn't enough, Legolas. I wanted to be happy."

The words struck at him. "And you weren't ever happy here?" he asked, struggling to focus.

"I was. But it didn't last."

"So you just left? You'd been here since…"

"All of memory," she murmured softly. "I wasn't more than a few years when they came here."

"No," he agreed. "But you haven't answered why you left."

"I wanted to wander."

"No one just suddenly wants to wander."

"You're wrong. I decided in a matter of hours."

He stared at her for a long moment, then snorted when he couldn't see any sign of deception in her eyes. "You were somewhat…"

"Flighty?" she suggested, sitting down the edge of her bed, one arm wrapping loosely around the nearby post. "I was young, foolish."

"Foolish for leaving?"

She shook her head at once. "No. That was the first wise decision I'd made… perhaps in my entire life."

He considered her, all the things he had done, had said. "What of your mate?"

She froze, glancing up at him almost fearfully. "What?"

He sighed, and ran a hand through his hair, bringing a leg up to his chest. "You lost your mate. I… I suppose I shouldn't have asked, but I was curious." When she lifted a brow, he winced. "Am curious," he amended. "You have carried such strong pain for so long… I don't understand why you didn't come back. You would have been protected here."

"Which is why I couldn't be here. I couldn't be protected from heartbreak, Legolas. Most don't survive it. If I had not had a distraction, had only to confront it day after day, I would not have lasted long. Even now, with all the strength time has lent me, I find it hard to be here."

"He was here?" He looked up at her in shock. "But…"

"Perhaps I could keep a secret?" she suggested.

He frowned. "I don't know…"

She nodded with a sigh, her fingers tracing absent patterns through the intricate carvings on the post of her bed. "I know. I was something of a cross between your sisters and a hall 'lady', wasn't I? Not as annoying, yet not as… real." She frowned at the word she'd settled on, but didn't speak up to change it.

He understood, and nodded slightly, before shrugging. "That was my opinion, though even then I knew it to be somewhat uninformed."

"I can only look back on that time through my own eyes," she murmured, shrugging.

They fell into silence, which was not as uncomfortable as some of their silences had been, but it wasn't comfortable, either. He finally scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "I don't understand why you hate me."

"I…" She stilled, stopped her words and finally sighed, her fingers stilling. "I won't lie. Whatever games I've played with words, I've not yet lied. I do sometimes hate you. But it is not for anything you can control, can change."

"Only sometimes? I got the impression it was nearly every time we spoke," he muttered bitterly.

She shook her head. "No. But you were right—I did fear you."

He frowned. "Why? Did you expect I would figure out who you were… well, really, who you are?"

She took the time to study the richly decorated room before answering. "Yes, I suppose I did. Thranduil knew, of course. I went to him when I arrived, saw him first. I was always somewhat in awe of you—you were older, and so clearly beyond us… But it was so long ago, and we were so young… I didn't expect Elleri would have thought about me much, and I was not really that close to your sisters."

"He has thought about you. Often." He shifted a bit. "For years he secluded himself in that melancholy garden you seemed to find so wonderful."

She smiled, an sardonic little smile. "The follies of youth may lead to a wiser heart. That garden is again my favorite, though my sense of irony is not lacking. It fits me better now, than it did. I find it's dark blooms of interest, of beauty, because I find myself wishing to compare myself to them… It was something of a shock to find Elleri leaving those wretched white flowers on the bench."

"In your memory. You did like those, didn't you?"

"They were considered beautiful," she shrugged.

He nodded. "They still are."

She tilted her head, and looked at the vase sitting on a small, otherwise barren table—long since dry and devoid of blooms, as it would remain. "Not by me."

"Nor me."

She smiled faintly and closed her eyes, leaning against the bedpost, her temple resting against the gnarled carving.

He glanced around the room, and saw that little had changed since Elleri had burst in the morning she disappeared. "How was the room kept up? He locked it."

"You have a key?"

He shook his head. "I know where he keeps his."

"Mmm. I had always asked Nari to lock the door when she was done, and only to come once a week. I suppose she continued it, as it was thus when I arrived."

"So she's known since the beginning?"

"No." She shook her head slightly, letting her eyes wander the paths mapped in a tapestry hanging over his left shoulder. "I was already in the room I am now before she would have come to clean, if she kept the old schedule. And if not, she was always known for being discrete. She likely spoke to your Ada to find out why things had moved slightly, if she noticed at all."

He let his head fall to the seat's back and continued to study her. Valar, how she had changed! Still, it was nice to know a bit of the solution to Ashes's mystery. "Why Ashes?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why the name Ashes in particular? Why not admit who you were when you returned? Why fear us, Silrinil? We who had been practically family since your father died?"

Closing her eyes on a sigh, she turned in her seat, draping her legs over the chair's arm. "The reason for the name itself was a rather childish one, and need not repeating. As for admitting who I was… I did not wish to. Whenever I wandered, I was Ashes, and have been Ashes for so long I can almost look upon Silrinil as a separate person, as if I knew her once, long ago… rather than was her."

"Are her."

She shrugged. "In a way, I suppose. But I have changed so much from she who was left behind the moment I left this room, that it hardly seems right to call myself by that name."

"Then why not a different elven name?"

"Why? When wandering a name means nothing. Here, I had one I didn't want. Why not use the one I felt I had earned?"

"You earned the name Ashes? What on middle-earth—"

"Legolas!" she interjected sharply, cutting his tirade short. "Enough."

Running a hand through his hair with a sigh, he considered her for a long moment, and then nodded. "Very well. For now, at least."

She laughed bitterly. "For now," she repeated, eyes dark, voice ominous with foreboding.

"But…"

"What?" she sighed.

"You didn't answer why you didn't want us to know you."

"I didn't want to be known as 'The Lady Silrinil' because I am no longer who I was. I would never wish to return to that, either."

"Then why not return as Rin?"

Her breath sucked in on a pained hiss, and she glanced sharply away. "I did not expect to be welcome, Legolas. I was relieved when the magic of the doors still recognized me as belonging within, but stone remembers more than people, and without the bias of unspoken years."

"But surely Ada's time with you would have calmed those fears?"

"I did not wish to take the place of a lady, Legolas," she growled, voice rising as her eyes flashed. "I never wanted to be a lady, even then. Now I know I was more like them than I could have ever wished, but now…" she laughed bitterly. "I think it safe to say I am no longer like them. The lessons I learned here held me in good stead. I've learned more, seen much…"

"And continue to evade the question. Why?"

"I knew my departure, my sudden flight hurt Elleri and Thranduil. I expected the rest of you would at the least be affronted on their behalf, as they had given me so much love through the years, accepting me as one of you when my father followed my mother to Mandos. Coming back to Mirkwood was difficult enough, Legolas. I did not need to deal with the old relationships as well."

"As well as dealing with returning to the place you lost the one your soul bound with?"

"I think that was already covered," she murmured a bit tensely.

He noted it with a frown. "You will not speak of him, will you?"

"There is no reason to do so."

"But there is, if it continues to pain you so much after more than thirteen centuries."

She shook her head. "No, Legolas. There is nothing to talk about."

"Then he doesn't exist? He didn't die? Nothing ever happened?"

"Our souls met, and our paths parted. I could not follow him that time. I did not want to."

"So instead you ran away from Elleri, who had helped you through your father's death?"

With a great sigh, she nodded. "Yes. I did."

He shook his head, not quite believing all he was hearing could be the truth, but not finding any hint of deceit or deception within her. "But why? He was your best friend…"

"My only friend," she countered quietly, now staring blindly into the fire.

He studied her for a time, trying to piece the fragments of memory of Silrinil with the elf he had gotten to know much better in such a short time… That he hadn't known his brother's best friend after over a thousand years of opportunity as well as he knew one solider he hadn't known for a complete two years bothered him greatly.

He could well remember how the two had become friends. Elleri had been upset by the way he was treated by others—the activities of a prince are more stringent and monitored than those of the other youths, and teasing often ensued, though it was subtle enough that even if his pride had allowed him to complain, nothing could have been done. So he often wandered through the dressing and bathing room that connected their chambers, sleeping at the foot of Legolas's bed, sometimes begging a story of adventure or mayhem.

It was on one such night that a piercing scream rent the air, followed by a pleading tone spouting words he couldn't understand. He had sighed and rolled over, bringing a pillow over his head, but found himself looking directly into his little brother's sky blue eyes.

"Aren't you going to do anything?"

"Why?"

"She… she's had a nightmare, hasn't she?"

"I rather suspect she's remembering seeing him die, Elleri," he muttered, a bit cold and callous, he realized only when looking back.

Elleri had flinched. "Shouldn't you do something?"

Legolas simply sighed and covered his head. He didn't bother to explain that every time he had tried, she would look up at him with those dark, haunted eyes, eyes that had seen far too much for one so young, and prattle off some desperate question in that language she shared with her father, the tongue he didn't understand, growing more and more agitated as he didn't answer her. He had realized fairly early on that his silence made things worse, but as he didn't know what to say, he was at a loss.

He had thankfully learned better by the time his sisters graced them with their presences. Elleri had learned early—he had, for some reason, either youth or natural gift, a better understanding of what females needed.

Though Elleri hadn't known, he had crept down the hall when the panicked foreign tongue had stopped, and had seen them curled together on the covers, looking as if they belonged there together.

"He is dead, isn't he?"

"Elleri? What happened?"

He shook his head, holding up his hands to calm her irrational moment of panic. "No, no. Elleri is fine. I was just curious to know if your mate was dead."

She lifted a brow as she relaxed back. "It isn't clear?"

"Under normal circumstances, I would say it is, but it seems nothing with you is 'under normal circumstances'." When she didn't seem inclined to reply, he sighed. "Keep your secrets, then, if you will but answer me one thing."

A long pause. "What?"

"Is it Elleri?" He could imagine it was. They had always been close—at least, since her father died—and it would explain why she had felt she needed to leave… though he couldn't imagine anyone, much less Elleri, giving up the one to whom their soul was bound.

She stared at him for a long moment, and then a tremulous smile touched her lips. "No, Prince. Your brother is safe from me." Swiftly she was on her feet, and motioned at the door, pulling the coverlet from the bed before moving to the niche carved into the wall. She wrapped herself tightly in the cover, her head tucked down, hair denying him a look at her face.

With uneasy uncertainty, he left the room, locking it behind him.