. . .
"Be careful."
Legolas jumped to the next flight and slid down the rails to the next rusty platform. Rain splattered off his skin, buffeting his hair. It was wet and smelled of the city as mist soaked the tarvy, into the brick, even the metal as it ping pinged on the rails.
"Be careful yourself." They were almost to the bottom. Kristy scrambled down the steps now, round and round, lower and lower. She threw her head back to shoot a glare at him. "And you're the one dying! Remember that."
"If I were run through, losing life blood and delirious in fever," he said back, "I would still be more dexterous than you in the rain. Watch your step, I say."
Kristy muttered curses. Colorful ones.
She thought he was patronizing her. Legolas shook his head. Worse, she thought he was wrong! Kristine just didn't see her own weakness, no matter how glaringly obvious it was. He watched her feet slip and her hands grab blindly in the dark.
He chose to ignore it.
They had to find a phone, contact Estel and Tauriel: rendezvous. No matter what, they had to be back at the cabin in time for the next portal's opening. Kris walked alongside him down the wet, windy street. Rain gusted through her hair and whipped over her face. She refused to flinch.
Half the buildings here were collapsed, crumbling or windows shattered across the pavement.
"Any idea as to where we find a telephone?"
It was dark and she didn't bother glancing at him. "The telephone lines are down. We need wireless. And your soldier friend took the one you gave me."
Dammit.
It was so cold. And this storm was the worst of all. She'd never seen buildings so broken and black. Even in the rain, she could see spits of fire smoking from the peaks. She splashed down the sidewalk as fast as possible. Her legs were shorter than Legolas'.
And she stopped.
They stood sheltered behind a truck, half-crunched and on its side. Rain bounced off the hub caps and shattered off the broken windshield. Legolas glanced at her, confused.
Nothing.
"Wireless," she muttered.
And realization dawned. Inside the cab, clutched in the death grip of an unfortunate trucker bleeped a light.
Legolas' face darkened. "We are not robbing the dead."
Kristy tilted her head at him. "Yeah? Well we'll be just as dead if we don't get out of here soon."
"Find us another phone."
"You find another!" she said so fierce Legolas blinked.
Why was she so angry? Yes, he was leaving her behind. He told her he had no feelings for her. Yes they fought. But he wasn't angry, furious like this, like her. Why?
Before he could think or respond, Kristy pushed past him and clambered onto the hood. The driver's side window, face to the windy sky, was shattered. And braced precariously on the curb, tipped on its side, the truck rocked and shuddered under her weight.
Kristy clutched the hood and broken fender like a lifeline.
"Be careful."
"You're not helping," she growled.
…Once the movement subsided, she started crawling upward, toward the broken window. Legolas walked beside, keeping pace with her. His fingers twitched, expecting the girl to fall any instant. He saw it. He wanted her to. He would catch her and they could leave this poor dead man in peace.
But she didn't.
The driver was belted into his seat, so he hung partially suspended over the street, hidden behind razor glass. The arm was twisted behind his back.
Kristy lay overtop the door, and reached down so her fingers groped through the broken window. But Legolas could see her arm was too short.
"God, I can't reach the fucker!"
"Watch your tongue."
Kristy ignored him. She craned her neck up to the sky instead and fumbled desperately, just inches from the man's hand. Most of the window was gone, and she was practically falling in.
"I can't get it! I have to climb down."
Legolas flinched. "Why do you make everything so difficult, Kristine?"
"You've got any better ideas, bright boy?"
"Such as asking any sane citizen to borrow their phone a moment?" he bit back. "Yes."
"Sane citizen." Kristy laughed harshly, and she pointed at a woman scrambling down the stairs to an office building nearby. Her screams bounced off the buildings and hurt his ears. "Good luck with that."
And before he knew it, she was climbing down, head-first. Legolas narrowed his eyes. Again, his hands twitched. Her fingers were bleeding from the glass and suddenly, she slipped and fell the rest of the way, tumbling into the passenger seat.
"Kristine!" He pressed his hands to the windshield and struggled to peer inside. It was so dark. Even his sharp eyes could barely see through the rain streaked, tinted visor.
"I'm fine." Came a muffled grunt.
"Can you reach it?"
No answer.
"…Kristine?"
A few moments passed. All he could hear was the rolling thunder, distant sirens and the occasional echo of shouts in the night. And suddenly he was worried again. It was panic: fear that quickly turned to fierce anger.
"Kristine, for Eru's sake answer me!"
And then, he heard her voice again. There was something wrong with it. It was strained and in pain, but it was there. "I've got it."
With that, the phone in her fingers lit the cab and he could see her.
"Are you alright?"
She nodded mutely, a burned, sour expression still covering her face. "Fine."
"Can you climb back up?"
She craned her neck back. It was still bitterly cold inside the car. The dead trucker's face was just inches away and it made her sick. She swallowed the bile in her throat.
"I," she gnawed the inside of her bleeding lip. She'd have to climb back using the driver as leverage: a dead man. A poor dead man that she'd just stolen from. "I…-"
"Move back." Legolas snapped. "And cover your face."
"What are you going to do? You can't break that! Are you crazy?"
Legolas jolted and Kristy jumped, pulling her knees up and covering her head with her arms. "That's shatter-proof glass and double-"
A sharp crack snapped her mouth shut. A second hit and she felt cool pieces bounce and land in her hair, drop down her legs, land on the inside of the door. Rain streamed through the gap and she peered up, shaking. Her hands trembled in their fists. It didn't show because she hid them.
He'd broken the window.
"H-how did you do that?" she blurted.
Legolas tilted his head, before reaching to pull her out of the cab. "I am an elf."
It was already cracked. It was weak and-and… And the thoughts didn't console her any. Legolas was different. She knew it. There was no denying it. He was sharper, more focused, stronger. He was more.
"Call Estel," he said.
And she obeyed.
. . . . . . .
Kristy was shocked when Tauriel hugged her. They were parked in a wet dark alley. Sunrise wasn't for another hour yet. But then, maybe the human girl looked as wet, injured, and miserable as she felt. Still she was angry: furious even. And it didn't deter her.
"Thank Manwe you are safe," Estel murmured.
"Time is short." Legolas said even quieter in Sindarin. "We must depart."
"Can she drive?" Aragorn asked, nodding to where Kristy leaned on the car. She held herself in her arms, shaking and glaring at the pavement.
"She must. I know not the streets." Legolas nodded to the distant north, a black blur of skyscrapers and clouds. "When we're out of the city, I will find the way. Ask her."
Aragorn pulled the door open. "Kristine?"
She looked sideways at him, and then at the captain. Drizzle poured from the gutters and landed in the street. They were sheltered under a steel overhang. Her eyes didn't even linger on Legolas though, as if he wasn't there.
Without a word, she shoved off the car and climbed into the driver's seat.
"Kristine," Aragorn muttered once the doors slammed shut. He sat in the back with the elf prince, "..what did you do to her?"
"I?" he protested. They used Sindarin, but he still dropped his voice. "I did nothing. She wounded herself. She climbed…no, fell through a broken window to get hold of a telephone. I warned her." He huffed a short breath of cold air. "But of course she didn't listen. Stubborn, irrational, nonsensical-"
Estel blinked.
Legolas shifted uncomfortably. Damn Dunedain.His gray eyes were like cool daggers. "What."
"You fought," Aragorn said bluntly.
"So?"
The streets rushed past in the dark and he felt his blood stir with the speed. "What happened?"
Legolas didn't answer.
"Did you tell her that she cannot come with you?"
Legolas clamped his mouth shut tighter.
"You did."
"No!" he protested. Why could this damnable Dunedain still make him shift in his seat like this?
"What do you mean?"
"I…I told her there was no reason."
"What?"
"I told her how I felt." He explained, "That I have no feelings for her, beyond that of friendship. A friendship we must end."
Aragorn snorted in an un-ranger like way. "And she believed you?"
"No."
"You expected her to?"
Legolas narrowed his eyes fiercely. "I told you I don't wish to speak of it. We've been over this."
Aragorn was tempted to push his friend. But he chose not to.
. . .
Kris felt like she was in a muffled, hazy world of instinct as she drove. She heard their voices in the back seat once in awhile, a small comment here and there, but she couldn't understand the words. She was cold and wet; the heater didn't help. It just fogged the windows.
Half way through the night though, the rain stopped. The sun rose on the horizon like a spinning gold coin, shrouded in plumes of white-pink haze. Miles passed until they blurred into one indistinguishable mass of fields, twisting country roads, flinching in the light as it passed along the windows. It felt good though, after the long black night… as if it slowly burned away suffocating cobwebs in her head.
So when noon passed into early eve and Kristy felt a little more focused, she crunched through dry brown grass and a dusting of snow, to collapse next to Estel. They were parked along a deserted roadside, overlooking a distant pasture, cattle milling about behind the fence.
"How do you like it?" she grunted, nodding to the sandwich he fingered in his hands.
No answer. His eyes just drifted in her direction, only to focus completely on her face. She was so young, the girl. Painfully. She was little more than a child. Yet right here, right now, her eyes looked old and weary.
"It is tolerable," he said with a wry smile so tiny, it almost wasn't there.
She just looked at him, blank, before shaking her head and dropping her chin.
"Are you alright?"
Nothing. Not that he expected an answer.
And so he said softly, "There is strength in you, young one. You just need find it."
"I don't feel strong."
Aragorn's mouth twitched. Such a typical answer.
And so he hesitated a moment, before placing a hand on her lowered head. Kristy didn't say anything, but the simple gesture was strangely calming. Cold wind gusted strands of hair gently across her face and she let it, staring at the ground. Faint light sparkled off the snowflakes on her boots. She sighed softly, letting herself relax and…
And suddenly, hers weren't the only ones.
Kristy jumped and snapped her head up. The comforted feeling vanished instantly. Legolas stood there. His eyes weren't angry, but they were sharp like steel.
"The sun wanes." He said pointedly, "Let us not linger."
And without a glance in her direction, he walked to the car pulled off the road and climbed inside.
Aragorn looked her way, knees parted and his hands limp between his legs.
Kristy yanked her gaze from Legolas long enough to stare at him. "That has nothing to do with me," she said, suddenly feeling tired.
"Of course." But the expression on his face said otherwise.
. . . .
Thank you for reading!