In which Tauriel has some revelations (and is freaked right the fuck out), Thranduil is conflicted (and a touch creepy), and Maglor is…Maglor. There's rather more dark humor than I had anticipated.
Shocked silence follows Tauriel's blow to her father's face, and it only grows more shocked when she turns and slugs Thranduil, too. It's so unexpected that he actually staggers, touching his aching jaw.
"Well, that's one thing off my list," she says, turning back to Maglor. "That was a gift from Naneth," she adds. "Go away. You should have come back when I was a baby, or not at all."
She turns on her bare heel and stalks back the way she came, but pauses. "King Dáin, I have something for Kili's mother," she says, fishing something out of her pocket. "I was going to ask to meet with her, but just now I think that a poor idea. If you could give her this, I would thank you for it."
She holds out a small stone, and Dáin, who has half looked as though his Begetting Day came early, sobers as he takes it.
"She'd like to meet you, lass," he says, his eyes flickering to Thranduil, then to Maglor, "when you actually have time. For now, I'll give her this."
Before she can reply, Maglor – who now sports a split lip, dripping blood down his chin – starts toward her, and Thranduil draws his sword almost without knowing what he's doing."
"I think it rather clear that she wants nothing to do with you," he says dryly.
Maglor spits red. "She wants nothing to do with you, either," he retorts.
Thranduil barely resists the urge to roll his eyes. "Yes, but unlike you, I respect that." No matter how much it hurts. "Leave her, Maglor. She has her own life, and you have no right to intrude upon it."
"I am her father," Maglor snaps, reaching for his own blade, but there's a strange pain in his eyes, woven among the madness and wrath, pain and grief and guilt.
"That you sired her does not make you her father," Thranduil says, calm as can be. "Tauriel has endured enough. She does not need you on top of everything else, Kinslayer."
Thranduil can almost feel Tauriel's eyes boring into the back of his head, hot as the sun. Her curiosity and confusion are no less palpable, for all he cannot see her.
"It pains me to say Thranduil is right, but he is," she says. "I have no father, Maglor. You lost that opportunity centuries ago. I am going home, and you will not follow me."
At the risk of his own head, Thranduil turns to look at her. Her hair blazes in the sunlight, a river of living fire, but her eyes are somehow irritated and stricken all at once. Maglor's next words do nothing to help.
"I'll find you, Tauriel," he says fervently, an ominous note of rising madness in his tone. "Wherever you go, I'll find you." And the truly terrible thing isn't the madness, it's the wistfulness, the shadow in his eyes.
Her expression goes very, very strange – Tauriel has been difficult to read for decades, but just now, it is impossible. She tilts her head, watching her erstwhile father –
And, almost quicker than sight, draws her bow, aiming for his heart.
"You will not," she says, deathly quiet.
Most of the Elven delegation draws a hushed, horrified breath, but Thranduil freezes. He's near enough to see the murder in her molten green eyes.
"Tauriel, no," he says. "Do not be like him."
"Some things must run in the family," she says, her tone oddly flat. "Had he not abandoned my mother, she might yet live. The entire course of my life might have been different."
That does make Thranduil flinch a little, for there is an edge to it that he knows is directed at him. She's not wrong, either.
"That does not mean you should shoot him, Tauriel," he says, just barely keeping the urgency from his voice. Perhaps you are of his get, but you are not of his ilk. You are better than this."
Her eyes flicker to him, very briefly. "How would you know?" she asks witheringly. "You know nothing of me."
"I do know that much," he insists. "Do not kill Maglor, Tauriel. Let me deal with him."
"Oh, very well," she sighs – and shoots her father in the foot. "Good luck trying to follow me now."
In spite of everything, Thranduil finds himself hard-pressed not to laugh – not helped at all by Maglor's yelp of pain. There is the Tauriel that he knows, that he loves – it is precisely what she would have done, before he broke her.
Oh, how he wants to follow her when she turns and walks away, but as he told Maglor, he respects that she wants nothing to do with him, and he must continue to respect it.
"All right, I understand why she hit him," Dáin says, "but why in Mahal's name did the lass hit you?"
"She has her reasons," Thranduil says, touching his tender jaw. He'll have a fantastic bruise there by tomorrow morning. "And they are not without merit. Could I perhaps purchase some manacles from your people? Crippled or not, I do not trust Maglor to wander off on his own anyway."
Dáin laughs, but it doesn't last – something whistles through the air, and Tauriel lets out a cry of pain, collapsing into a heap on the grass.
Thranduil runs to her without a second thought, caring not a whit what anyone might do to Malgor – though if none of them kill the miserable creature, he will, Kinslaying be damned.
It's a knife the wretch threw, a long knife that went straight through Tauriel's thigh. Dark blood is already wicking its way through the fabric of her tunic, and she's swearing like a longshoreman, groping for the hilt.
"Tauriel, stop," he says, kneeling beside her. "If you pull it out now, you may well bleed to death. Wait until we can get you to a healer."
"I don't need your help," she says, and the statement is so patently absurd that he nearly laughs.
"Well, you need someone's help, and I am what you have just now," she says, ready to catch her hand, should she reach for the hilt again.
"Then get me a healer, and go away." Incredibly, she's trying to stand, the foolish girl, and again it's all he can do not to roll his eyes.
"Will you hold still?" he demands, not quite daring to touch her, for all he wants to. "Like it or not, you need the healing wards, and then you can go back to your forest and ignore me for the rest of eternity."
"You are making that rather difficult," she grumbles, but at least she stops trying to move – though she also won't look at him. She does her best to curl into a ball, visibly seething – so angry that it seems the bulk of her pain has yet to hit her.
Oh, Thranduil wants to touch her, to hold her, but even now he knows how that will end. When a healer comes running, he knows it would be wisest to leave her, but he cannot. Each second in Tauriel's presence is to be hoarded, even if she's still cursing like an Edain.
He has to stand back to let the healers work, and his eyes travel to Maglor – Maglor, whose sanity appears to have deserted him again. He looks uncertain now, and lost, as though he doesn't know where he is, or how he got here.
Well, that won't save him. Thranduil can't kill him, much as he wants to, but the Elf just tried to murder one of his people – for so far as he is concerned, Tauriel remains his, whatever her feelings on the matter. So, as King of the Woodland Realm, he is well within his right to do what he does next.
Maglor holds neither sword nor knife, so Thranduil has no trouble at all bringing his sword around and slicing the wretched ellon's left hand clean off.
Predictably, Maglor howls, blood spraying from the stump of his wrist like a fountain, but with a proper tourniquet, he'll live. Thranduil plants a boot on his chest to hold him still, tearing a strip of cloth from his tunic.
"If you do not stop screaming, I will stuff this down your throat," he says, catching Maglor's arm and wrapping the fabric around his wrist, once, twice, three times, pulling it as tight as he can without ripping it. "You are only fortunate I am not like you."
To that, Maglor says nothing, though at least he stops screaming. He still looks genuinely bewildered – his confusion, it seems, is not feigned. It makes this punishment rather less satisfying.
Such a waste, he thinks. Maglor was one of Valinor's most accomplished musicians, and now look at him. What in Eru's name had Tauriel's mother been thinking? Perhaps she had not known who he was, but even so – Thranduil cannot imagine how such an unstable person could be appealing to an elleth. Her mother must have been very drunk indeed.
"What did you do, Thranduil?" Tauriel calls, her voice laced with pain and irritation.
"I removed your father's hand," he says, wiping and sheathing his sword.
"He's not my father," she grumbles.
"Your sire, then. He will be throwing no more knives, at you or anyone else. And I suppose we must take him with us." The thought is…unpleasant, and made all the more so the longer Thranduil watches Maglor's shivering. No Elf should look like this, not even a Kinslayer.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," she grunts, and hisses in pain.
He turns to see the healers wrapping bandages around her leg, knife and all. "I will not risk taking that thing out until you are safe in the healing wards," he says firmly. "You can hardly roam the forest with such an injury anyway."
She grumbles, and something twists in his heart, but it isn't necessarily unpleasant. Tauriel is not broken anymore, isn't frozen in silent hatred and unhappiness. He doesn't dare let himself hope she might wish to return, and yet….
And yet.
She will see her old home with new eyes. The caverns were hers for nearly six hundred years; they have only been poisoned for her for twenty. Perhaps – perhaps, when she sees the progress that has been made –
It is a fool's hope, and he knows it. Tauriel might no longer hate him, but she will never forgive him. He should know better than to hope he could ever convince her to stay.
This is not at all how Tauriel had thought her trip would go, and certainly not what she had wanted. She's tempted to pull the blasted knife out herself, but though Tauriel is stubborn, she isn't stupid. She really might well bleed to death if she does.
Which means she's stuck returning to the halls with Thranduil, and Maglor. Who is her father. If she could travel to the Halls of Mandos and slap her mother, she would, because truly? Maglor?
She grumbles yet more as she's loaded into a cart, softened by blankets and pillows on loan from various Edain. Maglor, only semiconscious, is loaded into another, and she thinks she deserves a medal for not spitting on him.
Brilliant. Just brilliant. Thought of the halls makes her skin crawl; she isn't nearly ready for that. She's healed, yes, from her mental and emotional wounds, but it's too soon. She doesn't see how she can face it – but then, she need not be there long. Take the knife out, bandage her leg, and she can fashion herself a crutch until it heals. Eru knows there is athelas in plenty this year. She doesn't have to linger.
She can do this. She can do this, and then return to her home – and never leave it again, if this is what happens when she does. Really, she should have listened to her intuition, and stayed put.
The cart jounces over ruts and rocks as it moves, and she grits her teeth and stares at the sky, willing the blue to soothe her. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work.
I won't be trapped, she tells herself, breathing in the scent of lavender that clings to the blankets. I won't. I won't. And yet she has a terrible fear that she will be – that Thranduil will lock her up, and believe it for her own protection. For whatever sick reason, he believes that he loves her, and she fears that could be detrimental to her freedom.
Oh Eru, she hopes not. Let him have accepted that she is lost to him, and stay out of her way.
Somehow, she doubts she is that lucky.
Tauriel, stubborn girl that she is, refused poppy, but eventually her consciousness deserts her anyway.
Though the bleeding is under control, she's too pale beneath her tan, and all Thranduil wants to do is hold her.
Hold her, and never let go.
Some dark, truly mad part of his mind is telling him that he must keep her, that he must prove to her he is not the ellon who hurt her so much. It whispers that she will forgive him, love him, if only he can prove himself to her.
But that will take time, and time he does not have. She will be out the door and gone as soon as she can walk with the aid of a stick.
Perhaps…perhaps that means he must make sure it takes longer than she would wish. He loves her, and she must know it with certainty. Perhaps she will leave again anyway, but he needs her to know.
No matter what he has to do, to make her.
Eventually Tauriel wakes, and swears. Why did she not let the healer give her poppy? Her leg is throbbing, pain coursing through it in red-hot waves, and she's more than a little nauseated, her skin cold and clammy.
Thranduil walks beside her cart, and she briefly entertains the idea of sitting up and being sick all over him. After a slight struggle, she does just that, though she really only hits his boots.
His expression is so revolted that she would laugh, if she wasn't in so much pain. She spits bile, grimacing herself, and all but falls back into the cart.
The sun is setting now, washing the trees red-gold, bright rays of it piercing the boughs. It is gorgeous, and she wishes she were watching it from her tree, not this wretched cart.
She doesn't look at Thranduil, but she doesn't need to – he's completely disgusted, and she allows herself a tiny smile. If only she could do that to Maglor, too.
Speaking of whom… "What are you going to do with your prisoner?" she asks, and her voice is little more than a dry rasp.
"Imprison him, for now. I will send someone to Galadriel – she will better know what to do with him permanently. He is, after all, her cousin."
That makes Tauriel a second cousin. She's related to the Lady of Lórien. "So much for being 'of lowly Silvan stock'," she says, and can't help but take a small bit of satisfaction when she sees him flinch out of the corner of her eye. It makes her frown; she ought to be beyond that by now. She had thought she was. Damn. They haven't even reached the halls, and already she is regressing.
She can't allow that to happen. She will not lose all the peace she has gained, will not be sucked back into the misery of her former existence. I am Tauriel, she thinks, staring at the darkening sky, and I am free. Free in mind and fëa, even if she's physically stuck at the moment. There will be no rising to his bait – whether he intends to bait her or not. Even she realizes he likely won't do it on purpose.
Yavanna, stay with me, she pleads. Yavanna may well be the only one who can help her, now.
Thranduil knows he should not walk near Tauriel – it will only cause him pain, as it's doing right now. She'll keep needling him, he's sure of it – there is so much she might throw in his face, and make it sound like mischief rather than malice.
Eventually, though, she sleeps again, while the stars wink to life in the dark velvet sky. In sleep, she is relaxed, no strain or irritation or pain marring the serenity of her expression.
He'd watched her sleep that night, before drifting off himself. There had been a smile on her face then, an innocence in it she would never know again.
He wants to give it back to her – wants to give her anything, everything, but she will accept nothing. Not from him. Having her here, being able to look at her, is both a blessing and a torment.
She is shivering in her sleep, and Thranduil sheds his outer robe, laying it over her for a cover. He will retrieve it when they are home.
Unfortunately for him, what he does not do is empty the pockets first.
When Tauriel wakes again, the golden light of sunrise is filtering through the canopy, and even with all her pain, she breathes a sigh of relief. She's home, even if, at the moment, things are…somewhat less than ideal.
For one thing, she recognizes her blanket for what it is. Much as she'd love to throw it away, she's too cold, so she settles for surreptitiously digging through the pockets, and stuffing the things she finds – a small wooden box, a glass jar, and several handkerchiefs – into her own. Perhaps, if she is obnoxious enough, Thranduil will be glad to see the last of her.
Meanwhile, she hurts. Oh, she hurts. She'd thought spider stings were bad, but this is ridiculous. It doesn't help that the knife is still in there, too, her leg immobilized by a splint.
She might not be able to kill Maglor, but she'll have his other hand, before he's given over to Lady Galadriel. What she'll do with it, she's not sure, but it will be hers, and not his. That is all that matters.
Yavanna shakes her head. While that could have gone worse, it could not have gone much worse.
What a mess. What an utter mess. Maglor, mad and now one-handed; Tauriel, temporarily crippled and very annoyed, and Thranduil…Yavanna doesn't at all like where Thranduil's thoughts are going. She needs a word – or seven – with him.
Meanwhile, she's made certain he has conveniently forgotten that there was anything in the pockets of the robe he gave Tauriel. Those are things Tauriel must see for herself. What she will make of them, Yavanna isn't certain, but she must see them anyway.
As for Maglor…he too lies unconscious in a cart, and she could strangle him. Of all the ways to greet his daughter…the ellon is not beyond redemption, even now, but he drove a nail right through the heart of any relationship he might have had with Tauriel. Yavanna can't blame Thranduil for chopping his hand off, though it made her wince anyway, for even after millennia, she remembers the beauty of Maglor's music. Such talent, such promise, wasted by that thrice-damned oath.
Well, this will have to play out as it has begun. At this point, there is little she can do.
When consciousness again finds Tauriel, she discovers she's been dosed with poppy in her sleep.
She can't really say she minds, considering how much pain she'd been in; what she does mind, however, is the scent that assails her even before she opens her eyes. She knows well the aroma of herbs used in the healing wards: yarrow, feverfew, athelas, pennyroyal, the bitter and the sweet.
She's warm, at least, even if the bed is now too soft for her taste. When she opens her eyes, the room she finds herself in is larger than she expected: it's one of those used for long-term patients. The walls are lined with hooks for spare clothes, and smooth oak cupboards, with a bookshelf beside the bed, though that currently stands empty.
Her fingers trace over the soft green wool of the counterpane, even as she spies the small pile of her things on the end-table. Her clothes have been cleaned and mended, and when she scrabbles through them, she finds all her various belongings have been returned to her pockets – hers, and those she stole from Thranduil.
The tiny glass bottle puzzles her at first, until she holds it up to the light and realizes it contains a strand or two of her hair. Why in Eru's name is Thranduil carrying her hair, and how did he get it to begin with?
Tauriel is downright disturbed, and is now uncertain she wants to know what the box contains. It's a shallow rectangle, beautifully smooth and polished mahogany, with an oak tree intricately carved on the lid.
It's also locked, but her knives have been returned to her along with all else, and prising the lock open is but the work of a moment.
It is filled – stuffed – with folded parchment, so much that it spills out onto the bed as soon as the lid is open. She unfolds a piece, wondering what on earth he would feel the need to lock away and keep on his person. In his strong, elegant script, it says:
Tauriel,
The sun is bright and fierce today, and I wonder how well you can see it, wherever you are. I know you have been hard at work thinning the canopy, but it is easy to forget what it is to be under open sky.
I must see Bard and deal with Dáin tomorrow. Still I wish that you were here, for you, I think, Dáin would actually listen to.
These lands are much changed even after a single winter, and I hope that someday, when memory of them no longer pains you, you will come to see them. It is as though the snows of winter have washed the taint of the dragon away when none were looking.
Bard's children, I know, will ask after you. At least I can tell them that you are well, and hard at work within your home. I know that you cannot be truly happy while you mourn, but it seems already that you deal with your grief far better than I ever have with mine. In some ways – crucial ways – you are stronger than I. Had I your strength, the kingdom might not have fallen into such darkness.
But the darkness is receding. When I return to the Woodland Realm, we will begin dismantling Dol Guldur. I hope that you will see it, in time, and know that your words have been heeded, even if it is far too late.
Gi melin, Tauriel, though you will never know.
She stares. He couldn't possibly have intended to send this to her, not knowing where she lives within the forest. She picks up another, setting the first aside.
Tauriel,
It has been so long since I have traveled in a procession, and I had forgotten how aggravating it is. An army can simply march, but a procession must be on its excessive dignity at all times, and it is beyond wearisome.
When you and Legolas were children, you always wished to accompany me, and always resented it when I said no, but in truth, I refused because I knew you would both be dreadfully bored. You would not have been able to play as you liked; you would have been trapped acting as small emissaries, and you would have hated every moment of it.
And you, I am certain, would have rebelled, and dragged Legolas in your wake. I have no doubt you would have done something amusingly, spectacularly destructive, and while I would have enjoyed it, Thrór the Humorless would not. Though seeing his expression might well have been worth it. I only wish I had you with me now.
Gi melin, Tauriel, though you will never know.
There are more, eight more, and by the time Tauriel is finished, she's stunned. This…she doesn't know what to do with this. The letters, the hair – this isn't love, though she's certain now that's what he thinks it is. This is obsession, and it leaves her deeply, deeply disturbed.
Thranduil is obsessed with her, and she is currently crippled. There is no way at all this can end well.
She can't let him know she's seen any of this, but she also can't exactly rise to hide it, either. All she can do is stuff it under the mattress, for now.
She'd thought she would be angry, being trapped in the halls, that she'd sink back into the swamp of pain and hatred she'd been mired in for so long. And while she is a little irritated, for the most part, Tauriel is very, very afraid.
Don't worry Tauriel – Thranduil's not actually as much of a creeper as he currently appears. (Though he is kind of a creeper).
As for poor Maglor, I think he's probably actually the least murderous of Fëanor's sons (he's certainly the only one who actually expressed real regret), but he's been more than a little crazypants for thousands of years now. Maybe, just maybe, he'll re-discover a few of his marbles.