Wooh, sorry 'bout that delay, I have been writing, but I kept going back and editing this one. Today I decided enough was enough, it's going out to the world.
Thank you to all the reviewers! I super appreciate you all!
jewels369 I'm glad the shorter paragraphs works for you! Also, do you actually want an answer to your question about the proximity of the one ring, or is that sort of just speculation to yourself?
ColdOnePaul I know, right? I had way more fun writing that nightmare than I should have, considering that the main character is myself. It's just so fun torturing her, though.
SakiHanajima1 I (quite thankfully) have never been raped. This is just my portrayal of how I think I might respond to the situation. I apologize about it being difficult to keep track of time! I might try to start adding in the notes, or potentially the chapter title, what the date is. In story, she is having a heck of a time keeping track of time, just that days and weeks are passing. I am leaning more towards the books, because there's just so many fun characters that weren't in the movies, but in some ways I will be trying to incorporate movie things as well. Sorry 'bout the height discrepancy. I'll go fix that at some point, though I am a bit mind boggled that I got my height wrong. Too funny. Sorry you didn't like that bit of the chapter. If it's any consolation, I have extensive plans for this story. You gotta go down before you go up, though. We're almost through the worst of it, though, if that helps. She'll be herself again soon.
the guest who reviewed on the 24th, It is a bit that they're fascinated with her strength of will and ability to survive, and in the beginning at least Elrond, Erestor, and Arwen were very fascinated with her foreignness and knowledge, and most of the elves who saw her in the beginning were very worried at the state of her. Eventually it sort of turned into caring for her, at the very least as a friend. If you worry about anyone for long enough, I think that sort of just happens.
morne thank you! Glad you got that about the dreams, I was worried that wouldn't come through enough. And yay! I'm glad I'm portraying the elves well. That's kind of what I thought too. Immortality would be awful if you just closed up inside and weren't cheerful about stuff.
Again, and to pretty much anyone who asks questions about the story, do you actually WANT an answer? I'm perfectly happy to give you guys snippets of thought processes or behind the scenes details from an author perspective. I don't want to spoil anyone else's curiosity though, so if you DO want me to give you answers to your questions, you should review, or message me privately, so that I can give you specifically the answers you want.
It is currently the beginning of August. Legolas arrived in early July. She's been in Middle Earth somewhere around 5ish months, three of which have been in Rivendell.
I appreciate constructive criticism, and reviews are wonderfully motivating!
Enjoy!
I thrashed as I came back to awareness, violently pushing myself out of the bed I had been placed in, flailing to free myself from the blankets that constricted around me.
My limbs felt weak, and when I tried to step away from the bed, I stumbled.
An echoing call of my name in Legolas's voice, "Alyssa!", rang in my ears from the dream, and I felt a tidal wave of nausea flooding over me as I recalled again the knife going into my heart, along with his hateful expression.
My chest throbbed painfully in answer to my recollection, as if it had actually happened, and I could hold back the nausea no longer.
A few rushed steps, and I was at the window, scrambling out of it and collapsing in the garden outside.
Tears blurred what little vision I had in the dark, and panic and nausea clouded my mind and choked my throat as bile forced itself from me.
I coughed and choked as the meager contents of my stomach expelled itself, struggling to breathe as the fear crushed my lungs.
Hazily, I felt someone pull my hair away from my face and hold it back gently, so as to keep it from touching the mess of fluids and partially digested food that was coming out of me.
They placed their other hand against my forehead, cool against my fevered skin, not pressing, just holding me, helping me not to fall over as I trembled, struggling for breath and gagging as the images of my dream attacked my mind.
I could vaguely hear speech, though all I could make out through the panicked disorientation was that the voice was soft, low, and soothing to my turbulent thoughts and emotions.
It was a few minutes before my stomach calmed enough that I was no longer gagging and vomiting, and another few after that before my eyes finally stopped tearing up as badly, and my breathing was no longer so ragged and difficult to draw in.
The hands pulled me up gently, supporting practically all of my weight, lacking though it still was, and softly guiding me a few feet away from where I had thrown up, before pressing me back down into a sitting position and leaning me against what I assumed to be a tree.
For a few quiet moments, I sat, trying to focus on breathing and attempting to banish the nightmare from my thoughts.
The voice had faded, and I briefly wondered if perhaps whoever had helped me had decided that I no longer required aid.
Or perhaps they left to fetch a healer…
That did seem like something an elf might do..
Then something damp and cool touched my face, a cloth, wiping gently over my sweaty forehead, across my eyes, and over the rest of my face and neck.
Slowly, I opened my eyes, bringing one still trembling hand up to rub the remnants of tears away and clear my vision.
His form, obscured though it was by the darkness of night, was obviously slender and masculine, garbed in dark colors that I couldn't make out, crowned with silver hair that even I could see in the shadows.
He knelt next to me, and despite trying, I could discern very little about his expression in the black of night.
Observing him and struggling to make out his features in the dark offered something else to focus on other than my nightmare, though, and over the few short minutes that I watched him, my breathing became calmer.
It also let me hear past the pounding in my head, to hear what he was saying.
"There you go, slow breaths. In, good, and out. Well done. Feel the grass beneath you, hear the rustle of the wind in the leaves, smell the fragrance of the flowers and herbs that grow in this garden. Come back. Come out of your mind. Let your terrors fade into the darkness. They have no hold here."
Interspersed in his quiet words, were beautiful words in Sindarin that slipped by like the soft touch of the damp cloth on my skin.
There was concern and sadness in his voice, low and silky.
My eyes slipped closed again, focusing on his voice.
For what seemed like the first time in weeks, I could feel the tension soothed away.
He talked me through a few more long, slow breaths before the tightness in my chest subsided the rest of the way, and the last of the panic gradually faded.
I felt the barest of touches on my arm, and slowly forced my eyes to open.
They felt sluggish and heavy.
His voice sounded again, soft in the quiet of the garden. "Do you feel well enough to move? You should go to the healing house, you still look quite pale."
I shook my head once, regretting it immediately as the headache that always followed nightmares stabbed uncomfortably against my temples.
My voice was shaky and rough when I spoke, vastly different from his smooth, beautiful baritone.
"I don't need to go to the healing house. It's nothing serious. I'm sorry if I bothered you."
He sounded mildly startled when he spoke next, dark voice colored with concern.
"..Bother? Alyssa, you have not bothered me. I did not wish to leave you alone after your fearful reaction to Aragorn and Boromir, and I see that my concern was warranted. I tried to wake you from your dream, but you didn't hear me.
Are you certain you do not wish me to accompany you to the healing house? That didn't look like nothing serious.."
My voice came out far more defensive than I intended.
"I'm not sick. It was just.." I trailed off.
Saying it was just a bad dream sounded bad.
Nightmares didn't usually cause that severe of a reaction.
I couldn't help it, though.
After the months I'd spent in Rivendell not talking about things, and dealing with the dreams alone, I was just so tired.
Tired of feeling like I couldn't talk to anyone, and of feeling like the things that had happened to me were some sort of shameful secret.
Tired of trying to hide how bad the nightmares were effecting me, or how scared I was that I wasn't doing the right thing or making the right choices.
Just so very tired.
Everything spilled out of me.
How I wasn't from Middle Earth.
My awful trip from Fangorn to Rivendell, and all of the things that had happened during it.
The starving, the despair and hopelessness of having literally nothing, the rape, and the horror at how easy it was to kill the men who hurt and raped me.
The nightmares. The fears of how it could go horribly wrong if I changed things.
My worry about not being allowed onto the fellowship because of how weak I was.
The terror that I would get captured and that my knowledge would destroy the world.
The anguish that I would never see my family or friends again. That I was alone.
I glossed over nothing, save the actual things I knew, and the things I had changed.
Everything else came out.
At some point, towards the beginning of my tearful explanation, he pressed me to his chest again, curling his arms around me, and I told the remainder of it while listening to his heart.
Through it all, he sat with me, never releasing his protective hold on me, or pulling away.
At the end of it, I broke, crying again at how miserable it felt to re-tell it all.
Now that the panic and nausea was gone I was left with a pounding headache on top of feeling drained and exhausted.
He simply held me, whispering quietly to me as I cried.
"You are not alone. You are not weak. You have done nothing wrong."
When I tried to respond, he only held me tighter, soft voice cutting me off.
"Hush now. Listen to me. Let yourself cry. I have you. I won't leave you. You shan't ever be alone."
Something cracked inside of me, and instead of simply being held by him, now I clutched him like a lifeline, tears and quiet, heart wrenching sobs coming back in full force.
I don't know how long I cried, but when the tears were gone, and my mind was drifting slowly away from wakefulness, I felt him curl his arms around me again, lifting me up and carrying me somewhere.
He laid me down on something soft, and I couldn't help but let out a soft whine at the absence of his warmth, then I felt his hand take mine again, and finally, the dark claimed me.
When I awoke a few hours later, it was to find the sun starting to rise through my window. I lay there for a moment, mind floating in a haze of exhaustion from the previous weeks.
It was astounding how much better I felt, even after just one night of sleep.
My muscles were still sore and aching, and my head still throbbed, but I could think.
For the first time in a few weeks, my mind was mostly clear, and the voice was blissfully silent.
I was warm, too. Especially my hand, oddly. With some difficulty, I managed to drag my eyes open and take in the room.
Legolas was still seated in a chair next to my bed.
His grasp of my hand had not loosened, which explained the warmth, and he was lounging with his legs over the armrests of the chair, his back pressed against the other side.
A book was tucked in his lap, pages being flipped by his other hand, and it took me a moment to realize that it was one of the books of Herbs that I'd left out on my bedside table.
"I would like to speak about some of the things you told me last night, if you're feeling well enough."
I jumped at his voice. He hadn't looked up at me, still perusing the book, so I hadn't realized he knew I was awake.
"Ah..I didn't think you would….well..still be here...Wh-...what do you want to know?"
My voice was scratchy and the slightest bit hoarse from both vomiting the night before, and extensive sobbing.
He looked up at me then, slowly closing the book and setting it aside so that he could sit properly in the chair.
"I tried to leave you to your sleep a number of times, yet you stirred whenever I released your hand."
He leaned forward to look at me, a surprising amount of hesitance, and a bit of fear clouding his expression and his voice.
"Your..The way that you…..reacted yesterday...we were all very concerned. I was with Aragorn, a young man who grew up here in Rivendell, and Boromir, the son of the steward of Gondor..they were the ones you were...afraid of. Why do you not react that way to anyone else here?"
I pushed myself up slowly, releasing his hand so that I could sit up and gather the blankets around me, as if they would protect me.
Once I was situated, he sought out my hand again, twining his fingers with mine, thumb stroking along the back of my hand comfortingly.
Though the apprehension on his face made me think that oddly, holding my hand was for his comfort, more than mine.
I swallowed, and despite that my voice was soft, it was surprisingly strong.
"Elves are too different. Too inhuman for me to make that mistake. Plus, it helps that I know that elves can't...force themselves on others, or have others forced upon them. It's just not in the nature of elves to be intimidating in that way."
He let out a soft breath, and gave my hand a light squeeze, eyes closing, an expression of pained resignation forming on his face.
"I am so…." he struggled for words for a moment, his breathing faltering slightly, tears of his own gathering in his eyes when they opened to look at me, "I cannot believe that you could be so strong to live through that. I am so sorry."
His tears began to fall then, and he moved to sit on the bed next to me, arms reaching to hold me again before he paused, a small, anguished look overtaking his features.
"Do you dislike being held? Am I making you uncomfortable?"
I shook my head, releasing my blanket and scooting over to press into the arms that were already reaching for me.
He curled around me, pulling the blanket to surround me again and stroking his fingers down my blanket covered head while he whispered, over and over, how sorry he was.
We stayed like that for a long while, him silently crying for me, me silently holding him.
I couldn't help but feel a bit surprised at the intensity of his reaction.
Elrond hadn't reacted this way when he found out…
Though I suppose Elrond hadn't just seen me have a panic attack the night before, and I hadn't actually said directly to Elrond that I'd been raped.
He'd seemed like he could tell, but I hadn't directly said it.
Legolas was a quite a bit younger than Elrond, as well.
Maybe Elrond had just seen more, and was thus less emotionally affected by things?
Eventually, Legolas's tears calmed, though he did not cease his hold on me as he spoke.
"You told me last night that you know things. Is it that you have foresight, like Elrond? Are you a seer?"
For a moment I deliberated, wondering what I could tell him, without saying too much.
"I….saw once. Long ago, and far away. It was a story, and every choice that was made caused something to happen. I remember many of the choices, but certainly not all. Things are different now. I have not seen since. Now I just remember. I don't think I can tell you more without speaking to Elrond first..."
"Will you talk with him?"
I nodded.
"Then I shan't ask again. What about your home? You say it is not in Arda? You are not from the Land of the Sun..?"
"..Is that an actual place here?"
I felt him nod against my blanket covered head.
"Yes. 'Tis only spoken of in stories and legends, but we are fairly certain it exists."
"..Well..No, I'm not from there. The place I grew up was occasionally called 'the sun state', but 'the land of the sun' sounded more appropriate for this world...I didn't mean to lie.."
He squeezed me lightly.
"Worry not. It is of little consequence. When you said that you worried you wouldn't be allowed to be part of the fellowship, what did you mean?"
I hesitated for a moment, listening to his heart.
It was a very reassuring sound.
I wanted to trust someone.
I wanted to trust him.
"The Fellowship will be created in the council you were invited to. I'm worried that...well, that Elrond is going to decide I shouldn't go because I'm not strong enough."
He pulled away from me then, looking at me with quiet curiosity.
"You are aware of the council, then?"
"Yes." the hesitation returned, and I curled slightly in the blankets again, "This is really something I need to talk about with Elrond before I can talk to you."
"Ah...Of course. My apologies. Is that fear the reason you haven't informed Elrond of your night terrors?"
I stilled. He was going to force me to tell Elrond.
I'd be off the Fellowship in a heartbeat.
I had to be honest.
I'd been as honest as possible up to this point, if I lied now he might not realize the severity of the situation.
My answer was a bit choked, tendrils of anxiety curling around my throat and making it difficult to speak.
"Y-yes. I don't think he would let me go if he knew. I need to be there, Legolas. I have to. There are certain things that have to happen, I have to make sure they happen! Lives literally depend on it."
I was starting to panic now, breathing picking up, voice becoming rushed and trembling.
He held me tighter, pressing my head to his chest again, his voice low and soothing.
"Shhh, shhh, breathe, Alyssa. Breathe.", I struggled to take a deep breath, feeling my chest loosen a little bit as he continued speaking, "Thank you. Have you not considered that perhaps he would be able to help you with your night terrors?"
"I have. Of course I have. But what if he can't, and then he thinks I'm weak for not getting over them?"
He held me tighter, his fingers stroking along my forehead softly in a seemingly random pattern, soothing the last of the panic.
"You've been through a number of very terrible ordeals. He would not view it as a weakness that you have night terrors. Your very presence here is proof of your strength. You do not need to prove to anyone that you are strong."
"I don't feel strong."
"Perhaps you simply need someone to help you see. You've been struggling for so long that you see it as a normality, not the extraordinary feat of strength and determination that it is."
"I don't know how to do that…"
His voice was a bit softer in his next response.
"You will learn."
We talked for another hour or so, Legolas asking small questions to prompt me into talking.
I told him little bits about my home and family, things I hadn't said before because they would reveal I wasn't from Middle Earth.
At one point, I apologized for crying on him so much, and he brushed his fingers across my forehead, voice soft when he responded.
"Crying like that isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of having endured too much for too long."
He was just asking about some of the things I enjoyed doing in my world, when there was a knock on the door. I squirmed, trying to get out of his arms and release my blanket so I could go answer the door.
He pressed the blanket back around me, one hand stroking across my forehead again.
"I would like to continue talking, if it's not something urgent. You needn't get up."
With that, he rose, crossing the room in a few long strides and opening the door.
Gandalf stood with his hand raised to knock again, and his brows jumped up upon seeing who opened the door.
Legolas beamed at him.
"Mithrandir! I meant to search you out last night, but you were nowhere to be found, and then I ran into Aragorn! Do you need Alyssa for something? We're a bit occupied, but I can spare her if your need is urgent."
Gandalf glanced around Legolas, eyebrows raising a bit more at seeing me completely ensconced in blankets.
"Am I interrupting something?"
I stared back, eyes widening at the realization of what this might look like, and shook my head, opening my mouth to say 'no, definitely not, nothing is going on, there are no interruptions'.
Of course, then Legolas nodded once, offering Gandalf a slight smile, silken voice amiable and far too cheerful for the early morning hour.
"Well, yes, you are interrupting a bit, Mithrandir. Though 'tis no huge imposition. We can always continue our conversation later."
I stared at the side of his head, startled into silence.
Of all the times to be blunt and say 'yes, you are interrupting', he had to pick this one?
Thank the Valar people weren't the same as my universe, or else everyone would immediately assume we were sleeping together.
Gandalf glanced back at Legolas, voice a bit quizzical when he spoke.
"Well..I suppose you can, can't you.." he looked at me again, clearly not talking to Legolas anymore, "Elrond and Erestor are in Elrond's study. Please join us..." he glanced briefly at Legolas again, then back at me, "...at your earliest convenience."
Well damn it all, that looked very much like Gandalf was assuming exactly what I hoped he wouldn't assume.
Gandalf took one step backing, looking as if he didn't know quite what to make of what he was seeing. "I'll leave you to your...conversation. Good morning."
With that, he turned, shaking his head slightly as he walked away, and Legolas closed the door.
Legolas was met with a bewildered expression when he turned back to me, and he sounded a bit taken aback when he spoke.
"Is there something wrong?"
I stared back at him silently.
Was sex really such a small part of elven culture that he didn't realize how that had looked?
Was I making up those reactions from Gandalf, or being more concerned about them than I should?
"...Alyssa?"
Apparently he really was completely oblivious.
I shook my head.
"Nothing, no, everything is fine."
It certainly didn't seem like the type of prank an elf would play…
Either way, I needed to make sure this potential misunderstanding didn't continue to happen, and for that, he had to not be in my room anymore, and ideally, not in it at any later dates, either.
I uncurled from my blankets, carefully straightening them while I tried to collect a bit of calm and stop the burning in my face at the looks Gandalf had been giving us.
"I think I should go. Talk to them, I mean."
I tugged on the cloaklette that was folded on top of the chest at the foot of the bed, "Earliest convenience and all. Now seems good."
Legolas turned, his eyes following my path across the room, looking almost as baffled as Gandalf had at the sight of Legolas answering my door.
"...Mithrandir said at your convenience, though. That means we could keep conversing, for a short while at the very least."
I wobbled awkwardly on one foot, trying to pull on my boots without stopping motion, but also without falling, a feat which did not work very well, and looked extremely ungainly.
"I know, but they're like, three of the oldest, most wise people in the entirety of Middle Earth, I feel like it would be hugely impolite of me to keep them waiting. Besides, I'm sure an important guy like you has things to do. Maybe we can talk later when we're both free?"
I held the door open, standing to the side and looking at him with a politely expectant smile.
Legolas gave me an odd look, but he did walk over, taking considerably longer to cross the room than he had when he answered the knock.
He paused outside the doorway, waiting for me to close the door and then offering me his arm with a slight smile, almost wordlessly saying 'you can't escape this conversation quite that easily'.
I pursed my lips, and took his arm with a resigned sigh, gaining a chuckle from him.
"The least I can do is walk you to Elrond's study."
I gave him a dry look.
"Come on now, be honest. The least you could do would be leaving me at my doorway with a farewell. This is certainly not the least amount of effort you could put in."
He laughed outright at that.
"Fair. So tell me, Alyssa, the songs you played the first time I heard you perform, are those from your world?"
"Yes. The first one was the prelude to a cello suite composed by Johanne Sebastion Bach. The second one was called the Swan, I don't actually remember who composed that one though.."
"The Swan…" the way he said it sounded as if he was tasting the word, testing to see if it was worthy of the song itself. It sounded beautiful in his dark voice.
"I think that was my favorite. Will you play it for me again some time?"
I nodded.
"Probably. It's one of my favorites as well."
He continued asking small, rather meaningless in the long run types of questions, all the way to Elrond's study.
He shortened his stride considerably, ambling along with me at a leisurely pace and seeming in no rush to get me to my destination.
It was actually rather pleasant.
He didn't bring up anything touchy, or anything I had to be overly vague about, and if he noticed he was broaching into that type of subject, he switched us to a safer topic, oftentimes something about his own life or home.
His sharing made me want to share, and we ended up trading a number of childhood stories.
Obviously I thought his were far more interesting than mine, but it seemed almost as if he felt quite the same about my own life.
Around a half hour later, after I noticed us passing the hallway that Elrond's study was in, I realized he'd been wandering me around in the main house, not even trying to get me to the study.
I'd been so engrossed in our casual conversation that I hadn't even noticed.
I called him out on it, and he laughed, turning us around and heading back in the direction of the study.
We could see the door at the end of the hall when he stopped.
I assumed he meant to leave me here, so I pulled away, intending to go to the study.
Or rather, I tried to pull away.
He kept my arm firmly in his grasp, though his grip was gentle and I could tell that if I really tried, he would let me go.
I glanced up at him with a raised eyebrow.
"What are you doing? You've already had your continued conversation, and because of that I've already kept them waiting much longer than I intended to."
He looked me in the eyes for a long moment before softy speaking.
"Would you promise me something? Before you go to speak with them?"
I retreated the slightest bit, not fully pulling away from him, but taking a small step back so that I didn't have to crane my neck back quite so far back to see his face.
I couldn't quite make out the expression he held.
It was a touch serious, with a dash of determination and a bit of thoughtfulness, but there was something else that I couldn't quite decipher.
It was entirely disconcerting.
I hesitated to respond for a moment. I'd been taught very firmly growing up that you didn't make promises you couldn't keep, and you didn't make promises without knowing what they were.
"...What exactly is this promise?"
"I would like you to promise that you will return to training with myself, the twins, and the hobbits. I want you to promise that you will return to spending evenings with Arwen, or Bilbo, or anyone really, just that you won't pull away. Promise that you will start performing again in the Hall of Fire, and that you will begin your lessons with Erestor again. If you do these things, I shall do as you wish and refrain from informing Elrond about your night terrors."
I stared at him in a mixture of mild shock, and a little bit of amusement.
"...Are you….blackmailing me? Can elves do that….?"
He tilted his head slightly, smiling. "We can do a lot of things. Will you make me these promises, Alyssa? Or shall I join your meeting and inform them of the severity of your night terrors?"
I refrained from glaring. Barely. Would he really tell them? Over little things like that? I pulled my arm away fully, taking another step back and studying his face for a moment. There was nothing but solid determination there. Damn.
"Fine, yes, I'll do those things. Now off with you, nuisance. I've got a meeting that I'm late for."
Sarcastically I tacked on, "Thank you for that."
He grinned. "You are most welcome. I would also like you to join me for dinner this evening."
I eyed him suspiciously for a moment.
"..Is that part of the promise..?"
That gained a chuckle from him, and a head shake.
"No, 'tis simply a request."
"...I'll think about it. Good day."
I turned, heading down the hallway.
Just as I was about to knock, he called out.
"Are you going to inform Elrond that you confided in me?"
I sighed. I was not looking forward to that conversation.
Nonetheless, I turned slightly to offer him a brief nod.
I didn't hear him leave, but when I glanced back, he was no longer there.
I turned back to the door, taking a deep breath, and then raising my hand to knock.