This is a fairly short chapter, but I figured it stood best on its own, since it's the start of a turning-point.

Thranduil swallows, and Tauriel forces herself to sit still, for all she wants to run. She wraps the green blanket around her shoulders, inhaling lavender, but she can't quite bring herself to look at him. She doesn't know what she'll do or say if she does, and it's probably best not to find out.

"I do love you, Tauriel," he says at last. "Whether or not you believe it."

"So Yavanna told me," she says, wincing as she shifts her leg. Somehow, she doesn't add all the recrimination that stews in her mind, even though she has to wipe her traitorous eyes on the edge of the blanket. In nothing but her hospital shift, she feels vulnerable – if they must have this conversation, she wishes she could at least wear her own clothes.

"Do – do you believe her?" he asks, and there is actually a trace of hesitance in his voice.

"She has no reason to lie to me," Tauriel says tonelessly, "but Thranduil, that changes nothing. I do not have it in my to forgive you." Even if I wanted to. She has no personal reason to want to, and she is not altruistic enough to be able to give it solely for his sake. She's given him too much of herself already.

He doesn't answer right away, and she hazards a look at him out of the corner of her eye. He sits with his head in his hands, looking so defeated it's just wrong. Part of her pities him, but another part, the lingering scar of the emotional wound he dealt her, is furious. What right has he to feel such pain?

But she grits her teeth, keeping it to herself, and turns away. Perhaps, if she doesn't look at him, her ire will fade. Eru knows she's too tired to sustain it for long anyway.

"I know you will never forgive me," he says at last, his voice so deep and so broken. "I know that you will not, and I know I deserve every ounce of your contempt. There is no hope for me, which is why I Fade. Yet Yavanna does not wish to give me even that."

He pauses. "How did you not Fade, Tauriel, after all I put you through?"

She shuts her eyes, wiping them again on the damp edge of her blanket. He's not going to like this, but she won't lie. "My hatred sustained me," she says quietly, her voice surprisingly hoarse. "I thought you would be happy if I was gone, and I was determined to give you whatever misery I could. I would not let you dismiss me, and what you had done to me, so easily. Though at the time, I was certain you didn't care."

The small, wounded sound he makes doesn't surprise her, but it twists at her heart, for she knows all too well what he's feeling. But she had to face it alone, with none to confide in. It is unfair that he need not suffer in silence, too.

Perhaps she can't vent her ire at him, but there is something she can say – something she must say, for all it will run counter to Yavanna's objective. She's sat on it for far too long already. "I did love you," she says, curling into a ball. "I would not have given myself to you otherwise, and I need to know, Thranduil: did you know that, and use it against me?"

He sucks in a sharp, startled breath. "I – I knew you had some manner of fondness for me," he says, his voice unsteady. "I did not know that you loved me." It sounds very much like her revelation has broken him yet further, and she winces; Yavanna will not be pleased with her. "I know you do not believe me, Tauriel, but it was never my intent to use you. Had I merely wanted to use someone, I would not have chosen you."

Strangely, she does believe that now, and it somehow manages to give her relief and pain in equal measure.

"I spent so long thinking I meant nothing to you," she says softly, hating how her voice breaks. "Almost I wish that I did. How – how could –" She can't finish the sentence; her tears have taken over again, hot and bitter, salty where they touch her lips.

It seems he knows what she means to ask, for he says, "Because I am a monster. There is no excuse I can give you, Tauriel. I am a broken, selfish monster who loves without knowing how. Who has feared to love to so long that it is poison to all it touches."

A better person than Tauriel would try to comfort him, but she can't lie. Her chest aches with the effort of suppressing further tears that do not wish to be suppressed, her hair damp with them where it touches her face.

"I do not know what Yavanna expects me to do about…this," she says, when she finally trusts herself to speak. "I cannot give you what you want, Thranduil. I never will. You hurt me too much, for too long. If you need a reason not to Fade, let it be Legolas. It can never be me. I will not give you false hope."

"Tauriel," Thranduil says, and he sounds so small, so lost, so very unlike him, "is there no way we could start over?"

She shuts her eyes, too weary to summon rage. "No," she says. "No, there is not. You can't undo the past, Thranduil, nor can you erase the last two decades of my life. That I feel the pain no longer does not take away the fact that it ate at my fëa for twenty years. Even if I ever managed to forgive you, I will never trust you again. I can't." And it's very, very true. Perhaps Yavanna could influence her to forgiveness, but nothing would ever induce her to trust Thranduil again.

It's brutal, but it's the truth. Yavanna might not like it, but Tauriel can't change it. Offering him false hope would only be cruel in the end. "Find someone else, Thranduil," she says, not unkindly. "Find someone, and do not repeat your mistakes. If you can love me, you can love another."

He draws a shuddering breath. "No," he says softly, "I cannot. After Anameleth, there was no one – no one until you. And there will never be another."

Tauriel forces herself to roll over and look at him, her eyes still blurred with tears He still sits with his head bowed, the curtain of his silvery hair obscuring his face. "Thranduil – I can't help you, Thranduil. Someone needs to, but it can't be me. Perhaps I am not so broken as you, but I am far from whole." She shuts her eyes a moment. Everything in her rebels about laying any part of her heart bare to him, but he needs to know, and she might never truly move on until she's told him.

"You have no idea how much you hurt me," she sighs, hugging the blanket tighter around herself. "No idea. I actually felt my heart break that morning, and oh, how I cried that night. You made me feel so used, so worthless, and I cried myself to sleep for a full week. Never in all my life have I felt so degraded, before or since. How can you say you love me, yet leave me like that for so long?"

He's quiet for so long that she opens her eyes. "There is no single answer I can give you, Tauriel," he says at last. "I was guilty and ashamed and afraid. I do not – I do not deal with emotion, as I'm sure you know by now. As soon as I start to feel something, I freeze. As I said, I am a selfish monster. I want to say that I feared speaking to you would only make it worse, but in truth, I feared to truly confront you at all. For what I did, there is not defense, and I will not insult you by attempting to make any. I was a coward, until it was too late."

She wipes her eyes again. "It was too late after the first two days," she says. "You hurt me and I hated you. I know that nothing you could have said or done would have changed that, and yet I wish you had tried. I wish you have given me something, after all I gave you." She swallows hard. "Did – did it even mean anything to you?"

Only now does he look up at her, his pale eyes bright with heartbreak. "I hate that you have to ask that," he says softly. "It meant everything to me, Tauriel. It meant so much that I was terrified, for nothing had stirred me so since Anameleth died. I knew I did not deserve it, but in denying myself, I nearly destroyed you. And I have regretted it every day since then, though I never had the courage to say so.

"You are young and strong, Tauriel, and I am old and so very weak, in ways none can see. Everything I touch, I poison."

She ought to say something to that, but she has no idea what. Words are simply not to be found. Though he's said it before, for the first time, she truly believes it – believes that he is not merely deluding himself.

"I can't grant you absolution, Thranduil," she says at last. "It's not in my power. But no longer do I hate you, nor do I wish you ill." That is partially a lie, but she's trying to make it the truth. She's sure that she will, in time.

"Let me try, Tauriel," he says, his hands twitching, as though he wants to touch her. "To find a way for us to start over – let me try."

There is no way, but if he needs that particular delusion – if it will keep him from Fading – she can let him have it. "If you make me angry and I hit you, you will have none but yourself to blame," she warns.

For the first time, the fleeting ghost of a bitter smile crosses his face. "I have none but myself to blame for anything you my do to me," he says. "I am willing to take the risk."

She has little doubt that she will hit him, at some point. At least he knows to expect it, and he has something to keep him from Fading. Yes, it's a delusion, but she recognizes that he needs it.

He can have it, for now.

Thranduil, you've got along-ass way to go, buddy, but you can do it. Eventually. Like, way eventually.