Legolas was hyper aware of Kristine the next day, the emotions on the other side of this link, everything she did, everything she said. He looked for anything to hint that she wasn't serious. She couldn't possibly be thinking of coming with him back to Arda.
She probably said it just to rile him.
They packed up camp and made it to the cabin by noon. There weren't any patrols this deep in the woods, at least not yet. Kristy dropped her bag on the hard wood floor and looked around. It was dustier now, in daylight. Cloudy sunlight streamed through the dirty windows, muted, cold.
"Sweep the woods," Estel said. "I will take the west side."
She knew he was talking to Legolas, but Kris spoke up, digging her pistol from the backpack. "Can I help?"
"Go with Legolas."
The elf threw him a look.
"You were knocking on the door of death not a day ago, my friend," Estel said in hushed Sindarin.
Legolas didn't bother protesting. Maybe Kristine would let out some of her intentions. All he felt on the other end of their link was quiet, almost hard determination.
Not good.
Kristy followed Legolas out into the woods, pistol toward the ground and eyes flickering through the black, stripped branches. Legolas glanced at her every time he sensed she wasn't looking. She didn't wear heeled boots. Her coat was heavy and adequately warm. She didn't shake or pester him with a hundred questions. Her eyes were alive and glanced at every subtle noise, every creak of a branch.
It unnerved him.
"You wouldn't survive, you know." He glanced at her. "In the world I live in."
"Why don't you just worry about surviving mine?" She nodded to the trees they had yet to comb.
"I am just telling you Kristine, in case your rambling last night was more than that."
"Rambling?" She made a disgusted noise. "Honestly, the only reason I'm second thinking this is the prospect of being on the same planet as you again."
Legolas shook his head, "You are a filthy liar. You wish to come so you may be near me."
"I hate you! You are the most disgusting, arrogant—"
Legolas snorted, "You love me."
"Why do you keep saying that?" Kris shook her head, "In the hospital, you-you-…" She took a deep breath and looked away, as if resetting herself. "You are deluded."
"I know, Kristine. I am an elf. More than that, Galadriel has bonded me to you. I sense your emotions even now. You love me." Legolas paused, fists around the hilt of his blade, "It is a foolhardy reason to travel to another world."
"I'm doing it because I want to make sure whatever is attacking your people doesn't get back to mine. Legolas, I swear to god, you could drop dead right this second, and I would dance on your dead body."
He kept walking. If she was going to lie through her teeth, there was no point talking.
"And what do you mean bonded us?" Kris kept going. "You feel what I'm feeling?" She hissed at him quietly, in case they weren't alone in these woods.
Legolas didn't reply.
"What am I feeling right now?" Kris asked.
Legolas flinched. Pain. He spun around to find her pinching her own hand until the flesh turned white.
Kris blinked, seeing the expression on his face. "Are you..are you serious?"
Legolas sighed, "I do not know why. For some reason, she thought I would have a…difficult time leaving this world. She thought it would comfort me to maintain a tie with it."
A tie with Kristine, more like. But he didn't voice that part. It would just encourage her.
"Can you hear what I'm thinking?" She asked, still hushed.
Legolas ignored her. There was a new feeling swelling and morphing out of her shock. It was strong, so strong it was overwhelming all the other emotions flickering through her head. Hate. Anger. Seething anger.
Legolas glanced back. Not even a hint of it passed over her face.
Was it even real? Or was she deliberately masking her true thoughts from him?
"Keep your eyes on the trees, elf."
Legolas sighed, before yanking a silver knife from the sheathe on his back. "Kristine," he said.
She looked over.
"Come here."
She eyed the knife in his hands and went still in the snow. "No thanks."
Did she think he was going to gut her? Slit her from navel to nose? By the gods…
Legolas groaned, "Kristine… I wish to give you something."
She inched forward.
Legolas became impatient and met the woman half way. "Your 'pistol' is effective, but it is only useful so long as you have metal pellets. This will always serve you well. I wish you to have it."
Kris reached forward and brushed her fingers over the shiny metal. Elven symbols engraved the hilt and swirled along the blade. It was deadly sharp.
"I… I don't know how to use it," she said.
"Were I able to stay longer, I would teach you," Legolas said. "But when you need it, it will do. Keep it with you." He pushed it into her hands, hesitated just a second, before finishing in a hushed voice, "And remember me."
Kris looked up, blinking quickly. Cool wind snaked through the trees, picking up tufts of snow and sending them into strange little swirls. "Legolas, didn't you hear me last night? I want to come. I want to see the world that made you. I want to help."
"You know that is impossible. Please, Kristine, see reason. We go to our deaths."
Kris shook her head. "You don't… you don't know that."
Not if Tolkien's history books were true.
Legolas fisted her fingers around the dagger and looked into the wet, blue green of her eyes. "You are not coming. If you try, I will stop you. I will not see you die in a world scourged of life and freedom when the dark one marches across our lands. You will stay here. And you will be safe."
"How do you plan to stop me?" She snapped, "You think you can just order me here and there, but you can't. And you do not know the things I know."
"Then why don't you enlighten me, Kristy?"
Kristy.
"Tell me, how do you plan to survive when my people are gone, when I am gone, when humanity is enslaved, when evil like you have never known reigns supreme? How?"
"You're just one big dooms day parade, aren't you? You've already given up hope, haven't you?"
"I have hope, it just is not enough. I need…" Legolas stopped, breathing quickly, looking at the defiance in the set of her mouth, how her boots were planted in the snow, ready. He took in a calming breath and forced the muscles in his spine to relax.
"What do you need?" Kristy asked, fierce and gentle.
He needed her to stay, to be safe, to live the life they would have lived if he could have stayed. A normal life.
"Kristy," Legolas said, so faint she leaned closer. He remembered the weeping child in Galadriel's vision. So tiny. So precious. "I want you to have children. I want you…I want you to find love."
Kris could just stare, blinking. The distance was almost gone from his eyes. It was like the old Legolas stood before her… the Legolas who could love a thing like her.
She didn't know how long they stood like that, so close their breath swirled into icy clouds and drifted away on the wind. For a minute, it was almost like she could feel what he felt through an endless tunnel as translucent and fragile as a silk thread. It was pain, longing, buried so deep and so far it almost wasn't there. Almost.
"Legolas…" she whispered, "I—"
"—Find anything?"
Legolas snapped his head up to see Estel on the ridge that sheltered them from the brunt of the icy wind. His lips were nothing short of amused.
"I assume not?"
"No, nothing," Legolas shifted away from her so smoothly the girl almost didn't realize it until he was suddenly three feet from her.
"Not even wildlife. They must have been scared away," Kristy said.
Estel nodded. "No matter. There is food at the cabin, and it is deserted still."
Aragorn was right, if you could call cans of cold bean soup food, that is. Kris ate it quick and without complaint though.
"In case patrols move north, we will need a watch."
She snapped her head up, before jiggling the can of energy drink she'd found in the cupboard. "I'll do it. This will keep me up."
Aragorn slipped a finger over his lips, considering.
"I know what to do. If anyone shows up, kick Legs in the head. Let him do his thing. Trust me, I got this."
Tauriel snorted on her bite of beans and covered it with a cough.
"Very well," Aragorn said.
Legolas didn't bother protesting. He could use a good night's rest. His heightened senses and link to Kristine were taking its toll. It felt like his head was going to explode.
But it didn't happen that way. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't sleep. Elves didn't need sleep, not in the same way. But after months of resting like a human, he craved it.
Kristy was on the porch, bundled in a coat and fingering the dagger in her boot. She still wasn't sure why Legolas gave it to her, but it felt good… having something of his. She didn't hear him when he came out, massaging his head, sitting on the top step next to her with a thump.
"Still hurting?" She looked at him.
Legolas nodded.
He didn't notice as she drew her hand away from the dagger, and he didn't notice the tiny lump in her boot. So Kris went inside for a minute, and came back out with pink pills. Advil, she called them.
"Might help."
It took awhile, but it did. Some. It felt like the pressure in his head eased a little. Legolas glanced at Kris as she stared out into the woods, moonlight reflecting off the snow and glowing hazy silver in the night.
"Thank you," he murmured.
She glanced at him, chewing the inside of her lip. Then she nodded. There was nothing else to say.
"Kristine…" he said suddenly, then stopped.
She lifted her chin.
"Will you miss me?" Legolas asked in a voice so thin it wasn't even a whisper.
Kristy's fingers clenched. "No." Because I'm coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
Legolas visibly flinched. "Good. I was only curious. I… did not wish you to hurt. I am glad."
"Right." Kristy couldn't help but smile.
"How about you? Miss anything about this dump of a planet?"
Legolas shifted where he sat on the step. "I will likely be too busy."
"Too busy dying. Because your world is doomed and all is for naught," Kristy said in a voice that made Legolas frown.
"Something like that."
Kristy leaned closer, on her knees, so her nose was just an inch from Legolas' cheek. Blood rushes to his face and he ignored it. He ignored her too.
"I hate you."
Legolas leaned back, enough to look at her sharply. "The cursed bond I told you of? The one I cannot rid myself of? It tells me when you are lying," he said more fiercely than he had to. "You say you hate me, and you are a liar. Just stop."
Kristy shifted closer yet, but there was no anger in her eyes. "Whatever feeling you think you're getting from me, don't believe it. Believe my words. I am over you."
Legolas lifted his fingers and snatched her chin between his fingers and thumb. His lips touched hers before she had time to blink, or pull away. Warm. Breathless. He kissed her softly and with a need that made his own heart thunder against his ribs.
To his mild shock, the feelings on the other end of the tunnel remained what they were. Almost as if she was expecting him to do what he did. Testing him.
Dammit.
Kristy's lashes fluttered and she looked at him. She was a little short of breath, but calm. Unbothered. "What's your 'link' telling you now?" She asked softly, keeping every scrap of her inner self collected. "Hm?"
The words clogged in his throat.
"Maybe these 'feelings' you're so big on are really just yours projected onto me."
Was she right? Legolas stared at her. Or was she just getting better at pushing her emotions into the corners of her head?
Legolas' fingers brushed her knees, and his voice dropped to a whisper. "Kristy, do you love me?"
Her lashes fluttered three times, like her mind stumbled.
"No," she said.
It was such an obvious lie, it made Legolas smile. Even though they weren't words he wanted to hear, or could hear, a part of him felt…relieved that he hadn't succeeded in pushing her away. Not completely.
The rumble started with a vibration in the earth, a quaking that knocked the snow from the branches and off the eaves of the cabin. Kristy flinched as it bounced off her head.
It was time.
Legolas bolted to his feet and dashed inside. She didn't follow him. She just grabbed her fists and braced her feet in the snow, steeling herself, mind racing. It wasn't too soon. She wasn't scared. She was ready. She was going to walk right into that storm and she was going to see the world that made Legolas, right with her own eyes.
She just had to get past him first.
"The sword!" Legolas pointed at Tauriel's sheathe on the table just as a blur of lightning and storm clouds began whirling into a point just up the hill. Snow flew on the gusting wind and blinded them.
Kris stood on the porch as Aragorn and Tauriel bolted past, toward the crest of hill behind the cabin where the burst of white lights were strobing brightest.
"Kristy."
Kris looked up and Legolas was there. His hands were around her waist, pushing her against the wood porch post. Then they were around her wrists and he…and he was kissing her. Vehemently.
Kris struggled for a second, but he was too strong, too insistent. What was he doing? There wasn't time!
Suddenly, something cinched around her wrists and she realized he was lashing her arms behind the pole.
Kris broke away from his mouth and screamed, "No!"
It was too late. It was too tight. He was already closing the knot.
"Legolas!"
The elf captured her face in his hands and kissed her again, quickly, chastely.
"I love you, Kristine."
Kris gasped, left gaping as he stepped away and ran down the porch steps. He disappeared in the blowing snow as the burst of light turned into a solid spasm of white stretching from earth to ripped, roiling sky.
She had minutes, maybe seconds. Kris whipped her head around. Her backpack was still inside, but no matter how hard she pulled she couldn't get free. She wrenched violently on the tattered ropes until blood seeped down her wrists until… she swore. The knife!
Kris pulled and slithered until the ropes around the post slid down to the floor as ducked down to her heels. Her fingers groped desperately into her boot for the knife, and she almost cut herself sawing through the twine.
Suddenly, her hands snapped free and she stumbled into the cabin. Twenty seconds later, she was scrambling through the snow, up the hill as the white out grew blinding.
Legolas. He was still at the edge of the blur of white light. Snow, branches, bits of dirt flew around the shaft glaring white like a tornado. He just stood there, bow in his hand, hesitating.
An angry shout, and Kristy barreled into his back, shoving them both into the eye of the storm.