guest: thanks.

PS: I was actually thinking of using lyrics from that song (and I might still later) but then I found Hardest of Hearts. I guess it's answered what happens with her now in this chapter, so I'll just let you read.

XIII. I feel like I am dead but breathing/I know because my heart is beating.

All the rangers were dead, the orcs had killed them all; they were safe once more with only five of their own dead. But Azog knew looking at Calla's face, not all was right. She stared at her small shaking hands as though they were covered with the blood of her inhumane act, tears streaming down her face as she sobbed. She screamed, broken and desperate, and he felt it like a dagger in his heart. No living thing had she ever killed, but at her feet lay a man; one she had killed to save him. Seeing her as she cried he was forced to remember she was not only human but a woman, and they were gentle and weak and needed a man to protect them.

He heard the sound of the wargs as they ran, their orcs heading them toward their leader. He looked to Calla, seeing her small body and her tears and he knew exactly as they would see her – weak. "No," he told her roughly, knowing she needed time to grieve but not having any time to give her. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her: "no," he growled, the only word he knew to tell her to stop crying. She stopped and looked up at him wide eyed and confused, and he said "no" softer a last time before turning to his warg. It was in that movement that he grunted as pain tore through him, he ached in his legs and he ached in his shoulder, and he limped toward his warg who looked as ragged as he felt.

He mounted the warg and turned to Calla, seeing she had ceased crying and wiped her tears, and was looking at him waiting for him to tell her what to do. "Come," he said holding his hand out to her, groaning as the arrow in his shoulder stretched with his movements as he pulled her in front of him; and he felt every drop of blood that was squeezed out of his wounds as the warg ran, and by the time they made it to the camp he was panting and covered in sweat.

"Is the tent made?" demanded of Yazneg, shoving aside the hands that tried to heal him.

"Yes," Yazneg said concernedly looking at the blood on Calla's dress and the blood on Azog.

"Take her there," Azog told him. "And give her her warg." He watched as Calla followed slowly behind Yazneg, looking back once with eyes that were slowly darkening to life, before she turned and he lost sight of her. He roared when an orc pulled the arrow out of his shoulder, and he turned to strike him but the pain in both his legs nearly brought him to his knees. Stifling a growl he turned to the tent and walked as firm as he could, refusing to show them any weakness. He smiled slightly at the excited whispers that sounded with his back turned; "she killed one of the rangers," one said, followed by a shocked exclamation. "Both Azog's legs were wounded, an arrow in his shoulder, and she stabbed a sword through the man's heart."

She was no longer weak in their eyes, she could defend herself and their leader, she was a killer. But any mirth Azog felt disappeared as he reached the tent, knowing the reason the orcs now thought of her with awe, was the very reason she hated herself. He entered the tent, seeing Daisy laying with her neck craned to look at the intrusion but her back to him, and Calla laying against her. But she did not move, she stayed with her face pressed into her warg's fur, tears leaking from her eyes, and Azog did not try to touch her. Wounded and exhausted he lay down groaning and fell quickly to sleep.

Calla didn't. She didn't sleep at all that night – unable to stop hearing the man's voice as he swore to take her from this life of horror, of his compassionate eyes and determination to save her though he knew he would die. Sleep did not will her rest, her heart did not will her peace, so she lay suffocating beneath the weight of hatred and her hands painted with blood she could not see.

It was not until the second morning, when his wounds did not keep him slow and weak, that he realized she did not sleep; she barely even moved. She lay still against Daisy who stayed only to keep her mother safe, feeling she was despairing. Azog did not know what to do for her, to do with her; he all but had to chew her food and shove it down her throat, but he could not force her to sleep. And when sleep overtook her unwillingly she woke gasping with a scream trapped in the back of her throat in the middle of the night – it had scared him the first night to hear her as she woke, a choked sound and Daisy whining, and then Calla had wept; long hard sobs that left her unable to breathe, and still he did not touch her. He was afraid to, in all honesty, he knew she would recoil from him for it was he she had killed a man for. It was as when she had first saved him, offering selfless kindness in healing him, and he had been unable to hurt her for the memory of her actions; this was the same, he could not demand she cease crying or to act strong for she had saved him. And so he laid or sat next to her wishing to know what to do to make her stop grieving.

Two months later

"Has she moved?" Yazneg asked, finding that against his own wishes he was concerned for the girl.

Azog snarled his displeasure, and his own worry. "Nothing more than raising food to her mouth when I force her and rolling over," he answered roughly. "How much more time am I to give her? She should not care any longer."

Yazneg shook his head, thinking very hard about what he knew of humans, of what he knew of Calla. "She does not know how to see herself as anything other than the girl who willing put a sword in another human's heart," he told Azog, having lost much of his timidness to speak of Calla a month ago when Azog first asked him what to do about her; knowing Azog would demand an answer should he remain silent. Azog's eyes, pale and hard, still made him shrink inside.

"She does not wish to live," Azog said realizing it was true, feeling a weight on his shoulders at the thought of losing her now; now that he knew she cared for him, and now that he was realizing just how much he cared for her.

Yazneg looked at his leader, the orc he followed into battled and the orc who struck fear in his heart; Azog did not look so fearful now, he looked like a lovelorn man – though it was in his frustrations and his worries and sadness that he was most vicious, and it was in this state that the orcs feared him the greatest. "Perhaps she has forgotten why she wants to live," Yazneg said, though it sounded more a question.

Azog looked at the ground as he thought, his pale eyes hard and glaring as though he were angry; but he was wondering perhaps if he showed Calla he cared for her, then maybe she would smile again. Abruptly he turned from Yazneg, forgetting his existence, and made for the tent knowing she would destroy herself if he did nothing – a thought that pierced his heart with the sharpest of fears, for he could not bear the thought of it. She did not look at him when he entered, he did not expect her to, she did nothing but lie on her back with Daisy at her side staring up into nothingness as she barely breathed.

"Calla," he said though she still did not look at him, as though she could not even hear under the noise of bitter self-loathing. He grabbed her and Daisy rose snarling, but she recoiled when he hit her firm on the nose; if Calla was her mother then he was her father, and though Daisy bore no love for him she did not dare defy him.

He sat her up and she looked at him with a blank face and eyes vacant, as though her hold on life had already gone. So he hit her, a hard slap across the cheek that whipped her head to the side from the force; but she looked at him with dazed startled eyes as she brought a hand to her face. She stared at him disbelieving, one of the first emotions he'd seen in weeks from her and it made his heart swell with delight. She was not nearly as pleased as he, for her cheek stung and her head rung, and he was holding her arm tightly in his hand. She looked at him waiting for what he wanted, wondering if he would kill her now – almost hoping he would so she could stop feeling so cold.

He was left unsure of what to do, for he had no way of speaking the words he wished to tell her and in all honestly he did not know what he wished to say. So she continued staring at him waiting and he continued looking at her almost timidly. He placed his hand over his heart, staring hard into her still shocked eyes, and then he put his hand over her own heart. It took several moments of his hand between her breasts, the meaning of his actions churning in her mind in face of the month he had refused to be near her. And there it was, the reason she should want to live; she had forgotten it in the face of horror and blood on her hands and pain.

He was surprised when she moved, a second and she had gotten on her knees and kissed him, pressing her body into his as she forced her tongue in his mouth. He growled when he felt her hands pulling away his loincloth, months of desire unabated from his own worries to hers, and she lowered herself onto his lap and he slipped inside her. Their moans were loud and desperate as they moved together, Azog showing her in his gentleness how he cared for her, and Calla remembering the feel of caring for him. He moved specifically for her, slowing himself stopping himself so that she would come first; she shook against him, her nails biting into his skin, her moan tearing from her throat, and her walls clenching around him driving him to his own release.

He laid back keeping her laying over him, staying inside her warm and soft, and he allowed for the moment to run his fingers through her hair. His hand moved to her back when she sat up and looked at him, her eyes not so empty or sad though the spark of life had not yet returned to them. She placed her hand over his heart and said; "love."

His brow furrowed, it was such a strange word with even stranger sounds. His mouth was unused to forming the sound so that when he said, "love," in return, it was too rough and ugly.

But the corners of her mouth twitched in the first formings of smile and settled back on top of him, pressing a kiss directly over his heart.

Sometimes it seems that the going is just too rough/And things go wrong no matter what I do/Now and then it seems that life is just too much/But you've got the love I need to see me through

lyrics from You've Got the Love by Florence and the Machine and Dead but Breathing by Lesley Roy.

Her "waking up" at the end to me seemed a little fast, however I think it's because it's just unnatural for someone to be so low and then to come back so quickly. And psychological issues aren't natural, and she's been through a lot so her mind is already a little damaged and changed from everything that's happened. But she was basically to the point where she couldn't feel like that anymore, she was either going to just stop feeling like that or she was gonna kill herself. I just wanted to offer an explanation as to why I did it like that, in case anyone was put off by it. Also, they did both basically say they loved each other; (which I'm so freaking happy for) but they're still going to be feeling each other out, and she's gonna integrate more with the orcs. So it's not just going to jump straight into them being all lovely.