Author's Note: OH MY GOD I'M SO SORRY I FORGOT TO POST A CHAPTER LAST WEEK (In my defense it was Animazement weekend but still) Here's chapter 26! Please forgive me!

"It just doesn't seem fair," Legolas says softly, her face cradled in his hands and his thumbs brushing lightly over her closed eyes as they sit in the shade of a tree and relax. "There were surely other ways to punish you. They did not have to take your sight."

Tauriel shrugs, leaning into his touch. It is a bitter thought that she's had multiple times since drinking the poisoned liquid that turned her world dark, but she's also had time to reflect. In a way, she feels that it is the least she deserved after what she'd done. And in some ways, she is even grateful for it.

After all, it is always easier to suffer punishment than guilt.

But she doesn't want to dive into that cesspool of regret and self loathing just now, so she deflects.

"Legolas, you know the custom as well as I. I disobeyed my King and I deserted my post," she explains. "You realize that the humans kill one another for such treason? And the dwarves, as well. What I did was no petty crime."

"No, it was not. Still... You didn't hurt anyone," he argues. "What you did affected only you."

She shakes her head, reaching up to press her palm to the back of his hand and trap its warmth against her cheek. Legolas has always been her protector, ever since she was small, and that has not stopped with age. He will blame himself, she knows, for not being here to stand in her defense. And she is not about to let him share her guilt when he did nothing to earn it.

"But I did harm others, mellon. Even if not directly. I was the Captain of the Guard. I had great responsibilities to the safety of this realm that I ignored, and in light of an orc attack, at that. My subordinates had no one to lead them. Your father was left to march into battle by himself." Tauriel hesitates a second, worrying her lip between her teeth as she debates how much to reveal. "You realize that I am responsible for every death among the guard at that fight, don't you?" she asks softly, shame and a hollow sadness prickling at her as she remembers bloody faces and dead eyes on the battlefield.

"Tauriel, that is not true!" Legolas protests, and she feels herself tear up.

"Isn't it? Had I been there I could have commanded them. Perhaps even prevented the fighting between Lord Dain and your father, or advised him to listen to Mithrandir when he warned of orcs. At the least I could have prevented the deaths of many that perished that day."

"That is speculation," the prince says gently before her thoughts can drift to Kili, pulling her to rest against his shoulder as he leans back on the trunk of the tree. "Who's to say what would have happened had we been there?"

Tauriel shrugs. After a moment of silence she lets out a slow breath.

"I think it is fair. In the end I was allowed to return home, and I was forgiven for everything after paying for what I had done. I cannot make up for the lives I could have saved, but at least this is something."

"I still think it rather harsh."

"You never did like to see me get punished," she smiles.

Legolas chuckles, the feel of it rumbling up through his chest into her ear.

"Can you blame me? You were such a troublemaker it seemed every time I saw you, you were being reprimanded for something new."

"I was always finding some new trouble to get myself into."

"You say that as if you no longer do so."

"Not as much," she mutters, but she can feel the corner of her mouth tugging up in a smile.

They are silent for a while after that, Tauriel listening to the pulse of Legolas' heart beneath her ear as his slow breath raises and lowers his chest under her. It is reassuring - knowing that he is alive and well and safe at home. She had asked the king before for word of her best friend, but he could only share what he knew, and Legolas had always been bad about writing letters, so most of his adventures afar had been guesswork.

Thranduil had asked her multiple times if she wished to write to Legolas as well, to have him script a letter from her to send along with his own, but she had declined. Legolas would no doubt wonder at why her letter was in his father's handwriting, and then she would have had to tell him.

He knew now, of course. It was inevitable that he would have known the moment he returned, but Tauriel had dreaded his reaction when he saw what her actions had brought upon her head this time. For all that she was sure he would react with kindness, she had not wanted to disappoint him with how far she had fallen. Not after everything he had done to see her succeed.

Her thoughts scatter and refocus as Legolas shifts beneath her, and she feels him take a breath to speak.

"Hopefully you have not gotten yourself into too much trouble in my absence," Legolas prompts, and Tauriel smiles.

"As if your presence has ever stopped me from getting myself into trouble."

"Fair enough," Legolas chuckles, stroking a hand through her hair once more. They lapse into silence again, but Tauriel can feel unease from her friend. Legolas is tense beneath her, but faking calm, and it worries her.

"Legolas?" she

"I deserted my post as well," Legolas says at length. "They did not hold me responsible for my actions."

Tauriel lets out a sigh, twisting around to better address him.

"That's because it was not your fault."

"How so? I chose to leave, did I not?"

"Yes, but we all know that you would not have done so had I not run off first," Tauriel says with a smile, smacking his chest lightly. "Bloody knight that you are."

"Well I wasn't about to let you go get yourself killed."

"Exactly. I took advantage of that knowledge to lure you along, and therefore I am responsible for your desertion of your post as well, although your father would argue to the contrary."

And he had.

At her trial, Lord Thranduil had made it clear that she was not to hold any responsibility for the actions his son had taken, only her own. And even then, he had insisted that her affection for Kili be taken into mind, because love - especially young love, experienced for the first time - can blind one to the consequences of their choices. How ironic his words had turned out to be.

She hadn't truly been listening to anything that was said that day, her heart still aching with loss and her head still spinning with self-loathing at the listed names of her subordinates who had been slaughtered in the battle for the mountain, but afterwards she had remembered.

Even after threatening him with the most heinous of crimes, Thranduil had stood up for her.

Tauriel swallows hard, emotions burning behind her sightless eyes.

The feeling is there again, tugging at her subconscious, and Tauriel ducks her head, her fingers playing with the end of a long strand of silken hair. She cannot tell if it is Legolas' or her own.

Her voice, when she finally forces it out of the stranglehold that her emotions have on her throat, is barely a whisper. "Your father is kinder to me than I deserve."

"Tauriel," Legolas scolds immediately, hugging her tighter.

She feels pathetic.

Poor Legolas has barely been back for a day and already she's spilling her soul to him.

It makes sense, she supposes. He is her best friend, her older brother, and the one person that she can trust with absolutely everything, even things that she wouldn't dream of letting others know. And having him gone for so long has left her with all of her problems bottled up, meaning to deal with them at a later time. But it troubles him to see her upset - she can hear it in the tone of his voice, and can feel it in the way his fingers smooth gentle circles on her shoulder - and she hates to do this to him.

"Sorry," she laughs - a small, choking sound that sounds painfully forced. "I do not mean to sound so down. Guilt is a hard thing to recover from."

"You have suffered more than enough to make up for anything you did."

She shakes her head, but that only makes the Prince settle her weight more closely against him, pressing soft kisses to her forehead and cheeks as his thumb strokes along her jaw comfortingly.

"Don't cry," he murmurs, and only then does Tauriel register the warmth trickling down her face. "Don't cry, Tauriel. You are not at fault."

Yes, she is at fault, but it's still nice of him to say and it's what she needs to hear right now so she doesn't correct him. Tauriel winds trembling arms around his neck, pulling herself up to tuck her head beneath his chin as her breath catches sharply in her throat, wracking her body. She can feel his hands rubbing up and down her back, over and over, soothing her as she clings to him and sobs.

Tauriel can usually push old memories to the back of her mind, keep them from bothering her, but now she's opened the floodgates. It's rapid-fire images of Kili dying in her arms, Legolas leaving her to go to Rivendell, Thranduil's disappointment and anger, the dead eyes of her comrades and her soldiers as they lie on the battle ground, fire and screaming children as Laketown burns, trees sick and dying to the evil that she can never seem to stop, and blood - so much blood - her parent's blood covering her, soaking into her clothes, still warm from where orcs had slit their throats and she had just stood there and watched it happen, trembling like a newborn foal-

She flinches hard against Legolas' side, and he smoothes a hand through her hair, hushing her.

"I was such a fool," she admits, her words muffled by his soft tunic as she buries her face in his collar.

"When?" Legolas asks, disbelieving.

"At the battle."

She draws back from him, but the prince just pulls her close once more, so that her chin is resting on his shoulder and their heads are leaned together. Tauriel lets out a shuddering breath.

"I don't know what I was even thinking. I threw away everything that you and your father had given me." But saying the words feels like betraying Kili, and that pain stabs up through her, bringing new tears to her eyes.

"I loved him," she amends, for her own sake as much as for Legolas, and the prince whispers "I know" against her temple.

"I loved him and I screwed it all up...I did so many horrible things, and then I couldn't even save him..." she sobs, and now that she has started baring her soul, she can't seem to stop. "What use were so many years of training when they did me no good the one time it mattered?"

"You cannot win every battle," Legolas soothes.

"I seem to win all but the ones that count!"

"You were defeated by an orc twice your size. One that, I may add, wiped the floor with me the first time we encountered one another in Laketown. You are lucky to be alive."

A small, despairing sound catches in her throat, and she feels Legolas hug her closer.

"Tauriel?"

"Kili tried to save me," she confesses after a long moment, and it hurts more than she thought it would to say it aloud. Her dwarven prince had been holding his own just fine until he went up against Bolg.

Kili would have lived if he hadn't come to her aid.

"A young dwarf with a half-healed wound and barely a dozen years of combat training." The prince's words are said gently, not meant to insult. "Even together, the two of you were no match for that orc, and the only reason I was even able to slay it was because you had both exhausted it by the time I arrived, and I was able to get in a lucky strike."

"If he hadn't tried to help me-" she starts, but Legolas cuts her off.

"Then you would have been killed, and your dwarf would have likely been the orc's next target."

She understands that - it makes sense that the orc would not have been satisfied with her death alone - but if only one of them was to make it out of the battle alive, why had Eru chosen her and not Kili? What was so special about her? At the time Kili was second heir to a reclaimed kingdom, and was needed to lead his people in his brother's place. He was young and innocent and loving and had everything to live for.

She was just a banished traitor, with nothing to lose but him.

And even he had been taken from her.

"I am cursed," she says softly, and aloud the words hurt even more than they had in her thoughts.

"What do you mean?" Legolas asks, stroking a hand through her hair, still trying to comfort her as she blinks tears into his tunic.

"I could not save my parents, nor could I save the one I love. Every time I have had to fight for the life of someone dear to me, I have watched them die. I am a curse, Legolas! I am a curse, and it is only a matter of time until you or your father gets killed because of me!"

The memory of Thranduil desperately trying to keep the orcs away from her in the forest makes her shudder. She knows that Legolas would have done the same without a second's hesitation. She is a burden to them now, a liability. It would have been better if she had simply been killed at Kili's side, instead of left alive by his sacrifice.

Pain stabs up through her, and she buries her face against Legolas' neck as she admits for the first time what has truly haunted her the most since that day.

"Eru, I wish I had died," she sobs.

"No," Legolas snaps, giving her a little shake. "Do not ever wish that. Do you hear me?" He pulls her close, rocking her back and forth as she cries and stroking her hair to soothe her. "I don't know what I would do if you had died. Eru's sake, I don't even want to consider it."

"And what if one of you gets hurt," she sobs. She cannot do it again. She can't have any more blood on her hands, or she will surely fade to nothing from the grief of it. The thought of one more person dying to keep her safe is enough to make her sick.

"Now you listen to me," Legolas scolds, taking her by the shoulders. "Ada and I are more than capable of taking care of ourselves. We are also centuries older than you. If anything happens to us, that is our failing as warriors, not yours."

"I can't help you," she whispers, begging him to understand that she cannot possibly watch his back if she cannot see. "I can't-"

"Then don't," the prince says simply, cutting her off, and she can feel him shrug. "It is not your job to protect everyone. For once, allow me to help you. You have let this darkness fester within you for far too long."

Tauriel shakes her head. Legolas doesn't understand; how could he? He has never failed someone he holds dear the way that she has. He has never had to look himself in the eye and wonder if someone's sacrifice had been wasted on him. And he had certainly never frozen up in fear and horror at the exact second that taking an action would have saved the life of a loved one.

Like she had with Kili.

"It's all my fault," she cries, clinging to him desperately because he is the only thing keeping her from drowning.

"It's all right," he murmurs, his breath soft and warm against her ear. "Everything's going to be okay. I promise. It wasn't your fault. It's not your fault."

Yes it is, she thinks, one hand fluttering traitorously to the runestone in her pocket as a sob catches in her throat.

Yes, it is.