I added some stuff to the prologue, which basically gets her to the Battle of Pelennor fields. It's not totally necessary to read, but definitely fleshes out the story a bit.
In her short fourteen years, Hathel had never felt such pain.
She lurched to one side, staggering drunkenly over the corpses littering the ground, heaving her weight onto her good leg while the other skittered uselessly behind her in the blood-stained earth. The gash in her side throbbed. She felt another wave of blood leak from the wound, trickling hot and sticky down her side and staining her filthy tunic.
She hauled herself over the still-twitching body of a horse. Her thin fingers scrabbled in the dirt, seeking purchase enough to pull herself another few feet forward. But her good foot tangled in the cloak of a fallen soldier, and she crashed onto her stomach.
Blinding pain. One of her broken ribs shifted. Unconsciousness was immediate, if only temporary, and for a moment she joined the motionless carcasses in their silent rest upon the battlefield.
A few moments later, she opened her eyes again with tremendous effort and forced the blackness away. Her vision was hazy, rimmed by a dark fog that threatened to creep inwards and blot out sight and feeling. She pressed one hand to the gaping wound in her side, feeling as though she were holding herself together, and felt the blood ooze through her fingers. Then she forced herself to her knees.
She must go onwards. She must. Until she found him. Because she would find him. He could not be dead.
Up again, weight resting on one leg and one arm, and she continued: stumbling, crawling through the wreckage of battle, all conscious thought banished from her head. She must keep going, though all she could see were swimming, sickening colors and all she could feel was her shattered left leg and the terrible rip in the side of her body. Keep going. Look for the kind face, the patient face. Listen for that voice.
Upright figures moved in her darkening vision, calling to one another and occasionally dipping lower as if examining the corpses. Hathel opened her parched and bleeding lips and forced a sound from her throat.
"Euhhk," she rasped. Her tongue was too swollen to move. "Heulk…" She gagged on the dryness.
Help me. Don't let me die.
She paused in her efforts, leaning against the body of a fallen troll and tilting her head back in exhaustion, sucking in the smoky air. Every part of her ached. Blood was caking itself onto the fingers pressed over her wound. Her shattered leg felt oddly numb. She would die here, a tiny, broken figure huddled against the corpse of a monster. They would throw her body onto a pyre to be burnt, seeing only the small, childlike face and short matted curls. A little Rohirric boy, tragically killed in the war to end all wars. Somebody might shed a tear for the young roundness of her cheeks and the frailty of her tiny fingers. But the tear would still be for someone she was not. No one would ever know now the full story of her life, and how she came to lie on this battleground wearing the guise of a ten-year-old boy.
I don't want to die. Please don't let me die.
Her eyes fluttered open a crack. The sky spun above her, just a blur of smoke and dirty sunlight. Her breath rattled in her chest.
I just want to see him. Please let me see him. Please let him live. Let him live.
She pulled her torso upright, her head sagging sideways. Her free hand seized the troll's armor, and with her last ounce of strength she pulled her broken body to its feet.
There, just there, a familiar figure through a veil of smoke. A gleam of white-gold hair, the long thin shadow of an Elven bow. He did not see her.
Hathel's cry of emotion ripped itself from her aching throat, coming out as a strangled gasp. She staggered forward on her good leg, arm flung forward and fingers splayed in a silent plea for aid. He was alive. He was alive. She felt hot moisture trickle through the grime on her cheeks and knew she was crying. A terrible, joyful sob forced itself from her mouth.
He heard. The head turned, he saw her. Though she couldn't make out his face, she knew he saw her. Her hand tightened around the gash in her side and she half-ran, half-fell forward, crying from relief. She heard his voice. Calling her name, though of course it was not really her name. He leapt agilely over the bodies in his way and reached her far quicker than she ever could have reached him.
She collapsed at his feet, her free hand clutching his boots, the side of her face resting against his knees. His voice was still calling to her, calling her false name and murmuring soothingly. Gentle hands pulled her fingers from her wound and stroked her short, matted curls away from her forehead.
Then she was lifted like a young child from the ground, her whole body throbbing painfully at the movement. She did not cry out, though. She was at peace. She was safe. More importantly, he was safe. In her last conscious moments, she blinked her leaden eyes open and tried to tell him her name. Her real name. So he would know the truth when she was dead.
"Hathel," she rasped. "Hathel."
But then the world went black.
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