In my story, Lei is NOT YET DEHOODED! I didn't really like the way it really happened, so I'm rewriting it.

nothing is mine, so here we go, chap 2

A Little lesson about being Drunk

Suddenly, Varden was very, VERY sober.

"I think you may have had enough", she said.

Her voice was steady, but even though she was hiding under her cloak, he could see the tears in her took a glance around. Everyone in the bar had been staring in interest for a moment or two, but by this point they had all returned to their activities. The wet barmaid was serving drinks furiously on the other end of the bar, sending Lei'ella looks of death every few seconds.

Varden took a few staggering steps towards the door before Lei'ella stiffly took his arm and led him into the street. She was steering him back towards the inn that she had so recently kicked him out of, and she was furious at him or maybe just jealous which he had to admit warmed his drunk body just a bit.

Every block or so Varden snuck a glance at the stony silent woman, and every time her eyes were dry, her face expressionless.

When they got back to the inn they were staying at, Varden carefully lowered himself into a chair and put his head in his arms on the table. Still nothing was said between the two of them, and the silence was growing more and more painful. He wished she would take off her hood and admit to being the elf he knew she was. Then, he would be able to have a real relationship with her, not an awkward friendship full of lies.

At least, vocally, they were silent. Lei'ella was banging and slamming in the little kitchen, making what could easily be considered far more noise than was necessary.

Several times he tried starting a sentence—something along the lines of—"Sorry about….er…I didn't mean for…" But nothing ever seemed to sound right in his head, so he stayed silent.

Gradually the sky outside darkened and Lei'ella stopped banging so much in the kitchen. The place started to smell pretty darn good, and Varden had no choice but to take his aching head out of his hands and stick his head cautiously around the kitchen door.

"Er…"

Lei'ella, who had been standing at the stove whipped around with a frying pan in her hand looking more than a little dangerous.

"Yes?" She asked curtly, icy anger in every bit of the word.

"I was wondering what smelled so good." Said Varden, hoping not to be chased from the inn with a hot frying pan.

She didn't respond, but raised an eyebrow questioningly. Praying that this meant she wasn't going to kill him, Varden moved farther into the kitchen and peered into the big simmering pot on the stove.

"Oh, pasta." He said carefully. "Enough for two, by any chance?"

Lei'ella raised her other eyebrow and regarded him with a look that may have been able kill several small animals before turning to the cabinet and taking out a second bowl that she set on the counter next to the pot. Guessing the answer to his question had been 'yes', Varden muttered "Thanks", before trouping back into the living room and laying out cups and placemats on the rickety little table there.

About ten minutes later, Varden was facing Lei'ella over his steaming bowl of pasta, and once again, he had absolutely nothing to say to her. The days of their voyage had been long and boring, but the pair of them had experienced no problems talking to one another. Several times, he opened his mouth to say something, anything. He almost said something about the weather, which was currently working itself up into a huge rainstorm outside of the dirty window, but decided that it was better to be silent than to sound stupid.

"I wanted to ask you about something." Said Lei'ella so abruptly that Varden dropped his fork and sent a meatball flying. There was nothing in the tone of her voice that suggested even a hint of anger. Coming back from under the table where he had stooped to retrieve his fork, Varden looked at Lei with his eyebrows raised.

"What's that?"

"What are you going to do when I've gotten back to my house?"

Varden sat thinking for quite a bit before he answered her. They had already dropped Neirenn back with her father, and carried Acheron's body back to his mother. Lei'ella was next to be delivered back home, and Varden honestly had been too preoccupied lately to think of what he was going to do after that.

"Well, I 's'pose I'll be going back to thieving again…"

"Oh." Said Lei'ella. And from what he knew of women, she sounded rather put out.

"Unless…" Varden hesitated, looking up at Lei'ella who was staring back at him with those shockingly golden eyes. "Unless you needed me to do something else for you first?"

"I could use a little help on the house." She said, waving her hand as if it didn't really matter whether or not he decided to help out.

"Well I could probably do that."

"Really?"

"Oh, I don't see why not…what else have I got to do with myself?"

Lei'ella looked up at him sharply before muttering so he could barely hear—

"I thought you might want to come back here to stay with your barmaid."

"No! I mean she just…she was…I didn't…you know…fheessmgh. He ended incohesivly when he realized that she was grinning at him over the table. "What!?"

"You." She said with a smile still tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Varden didn't bother to ask what she found so funny about 'him', and as long as she was actually talking to him again, he didn't really care.

"So about the work on the house." Said Varden, feeling considerably lighter hearted.

"What needs to be done? And where will I stay, exactly?"

"Oh you know, this and that. You could…erm…stay there with me while you fixed it up…?"

Sensing that there was more to that statement, Varden asked, "and under what conditions would I be able to do that?"

Lei picked at a very interesting spot on the table for a moment before answering.

"I thought maybe you could stop thieving—just for the time you stay."

That was certainly do-able. If he was completely honest with himself, theiving had been losing its draw lately anyway. His friend in Muiford had been right, it really was a career full of young foolish guys, and he had run far too many risks at this point anyway. Besides, if he was going to spend any time with Lei'ella her distain for his work would certainly pick fights between the two of them. He didn't want to fight her, he wanted to crawl into her bed and stay there forever. He wanted her to take that freaking hood off.

Suddenly he knew what to do; Quitting theivery was compromise that he would be more than willing to make, and this moment could be the perfect leverage to get something he very much wanted in return. Feeling that he might be walking the plank in about ten seconds, Varden picked a thread in his pants as he said:

"I'd be willing to do that. Only if you stop concealing yourself from the people who care about you."

He didn't specify that he was a person who cared about her—that might be a bit much. The hope was that she would figure it out on her own, that she would do some hemming and hawing, that she would tell him he really didn't want to know, and that she would finally slide that hood off of her head and he'd get to see everything underneath it.

What he didn't expect was complete silence. He was still staring very hard at the thread in his pants, and he was afraid that she had converted back into Angry Silent Lei'ella, that he'd never get her to speak again. The suspense was killing him but he managed to look up at her and she was sitting exactly how she had been, no change of expression, hands coming back to rest on her lap—

—with her hood down.