When In Middle Earth: The edited, revised and face-lifted edition:

When in Middle Earth, do as the Middle-Earthlings do. Sakura finds herself in the midst of Middle Earth, immersed in a war she has no part in, saving a world and people she doesn't know, and why? Because Naruto would be disappointed in her if she ever got back and told him she hadn't...

Chapter Eleven:

In which questions are answered, answers are questioned, and Sakura is more of a pain than Naruto on a bad day.

Good effort Sakura.

Disclaimer:

The Lord of The Rings, it's associated characters and components are copyright and property of its author J. R. R. Tolkien, the actors that played them, and the director of the trilogy of films of the same name, Peter Jackson. The character Sakura and any components associated with the manga and anime 'Naruto' are property and copyright of Masashi Kishimoto

Apologies first I think:

I know it's been almost two months since my last update. Sorry about that. Blame summer jobs and violent stomach infections.

Tally ho.

The story continues:

The dawn was coming. Sakura knew this. The sky was getting lighter, she was sitting out in the open, and Glorfindel would be checking in on her soon. Sakura knew this too.

She also wasn't moving.

The mud was sucking at her knees, and the hem of her robe was dirty. Her fingernails were crusted with soil and her hands were red raw. Blood was dribbling down her arm from a hand that was looking significantly non-alive other than for the fact, and her knee was grazed. She was badly in need of a bath and a good excuse. But Sakura wasn't thinking about any of these things.

Haruno Sakura, for the first time in her life, was having a very hard time not putting on a piece of jewellery. The wraith-ring sat innocently in her hand; the well-earned prize of a battle hard-won. The thing was of course, that Sakura had never in her life kept a trophy from a battle. She was well aware of this, and for the first time since sneaking out in the middle of the night, she was thinking about the exact thought process that had led her to this point. As she looked at the plain piece of gold in her muddy palm, Sakura questioned her true motivation. She was also questioning her sanity, her strength of will, and what the hell was going on.

'It's not even pretty' she said to herself.

It's special, she whispered back to herself.

Her mind felt strangely…detached. Somewhere deep down she could feel that something was off. Wrong. But equally strong was the feeling that the feeling would go away if she only put on the ring. She felt like there was something she needed to remember; something that was stopping her, as if there was somebody else with her shouting 'NO!' at the top of their voice.

'It's dangerous' she thought.

You used to be dangerous, said the thought, slyly. You used to be strong. What are you now?

'I am-'

"Sakura!"

Her fist snapped closed. The wire around her hand dug into her knuckles, turning them white, but the cool feel of the metal against her palm was the only sensation she seemed to be aware of. Even her left arm felt less cold. More there. A shadow fell over her and goose-bumps erupted along her arms as the heap of the sun was blocked from her. She looked up, dazed. Sun? When had the sun come up?

Aragorn was standing over her, his face suspicious. Even as he examined her, he saw that her eyes seemed to clear, like a fog or a dream had lifted, and they became sharp again. The tight fist of her right hand relaxed to a normal colour, and dropped to her side, but did not open. Wire was wound about it, charred to a grey-black around her slim fingers. The wire from the forest, he picked correctly. His assessment took in her state. She was dirty, cold, and a little bruised. His own clothes were wet to the thigh, having waded across the river to her for the second time in as many nights. His noisy crossing could not have gone unheard, yet not once had he seen her look up 'til he called out to her. Suspiciously he looked again at her hand. He could see only the wire – though what could cause her to have looked at it so intensely he could not begin to guess.

He dropped to a crouch in front of her. Her eyes followed him, the same clinical green they'd ever been. She cocked her head at him.

Words ran through his head. A hundred things to say, and not to say; a hundred questions and worries, but she gave him no clues, no cues, nothing. She simply sat, looking back at him with an expression as still and emotionless as cold white stone.

"You are supposed to be in bed," he settled on at last.

"I felt like some fresh air."

"Could you not have opened a window?" he asked mildly, linking his fingers and resting his elbows on his knees.

"I'm not used to spending my days lying about," she waved the hand with the wire. "I had things to collect."

"Alone?" He clarified with blatant suspicion. "In the middle of the night?"

"Apparently."

Sakura's gaze was apathetic, and it concerned him greatly. She was acting…unusually. Colder. More distant. Uncaring, almost, yet her eyes flickered across his as if looking for something in his gaze. Was she still angry with him?

"And did you find what you were looking for?" He forced his tone to return to blandness. She held up the wire again, before reaching into her tunic (not without a grimace) and produced four paper tags with strange symbols inked across them. They did not look like anything of particular significance, but, he thought, there had been the smell of charred paper about the forest where the trees had been felled. Wire and Paper…could such things truly have the power to cause such damage? If so, he supposed she had cause to want them back, though why she'd felt the need to sneak away in the dead of night to do so was beyond him. Fighting his frustration, Aragorn rubbed his beard with a rough hand; did Sakura not know that he'd gladly have retrieved them for her had she but asked?

"Was there anything else you wished to find?" He thought about the sharpened throwing stars that he'd picked up from the bank. He berated himself for not simply leaving them by her bedside. If she'd seen them when she'd woken up…

"My shuriken," she shrugged, "My kunai."

He hesitated over the foreign words, repeating them clumsily.

"My throwing stars and my knife," she clarified with impatience. She couldn't explain why she was so testy. Angry at herself for getting caught out perhaps, or else just tired and cranky: after all, she was still in pain, and Aragorn was prying. And besides, she reasoned, she'd been cross with him already anyway, for all it seemed such a trivial thing now.

"I collected metal stars from the river bank at the Ford," Aragorn sighed. "I had meant to return them to you on your awakening."

"Oh."

Guilt hit her like a ton of bricks. Why was she being so harsh to Aragorn? She knew he'd been the one to come looking for her, that he'd been worried, that he had still come for her when he'd realised her missing. He'd taken the time to collect her weapons for her and here she was acting like he was the enemy. Her fist tightened unconsciously, only to quickly release again when Aragorn's eyes flicked down to her hand. She looked away.

"Thank you," she muttered.

For a time the silence stretched between them like a great, echoing chasm. Feeling frustrated, worried, and with an unexplainable discomfort in his gut, Aragorn stood and looked about the area. There were footprints etched and dried in the mud – a small set that could only be Sakura's and a second set, deeper and wider, as if someone large and heavy had stood here not so long ago. Those prints were slightly pointed at the toe, not unlike the boots worn by the Ringwraiths. His brow furrowed. Aragorn crouched, running a finger around the rim of the print. They were muddled, and crossed each other frequently. A flattened space in the mud – someone had fallen on their back – but haphazard footprints ran from it as if the other had staggered backwards. Sakura's shrewd gaze followed him, but she did not yet move from the ground.

He glanced back at her. Her right arm had been poisoned, without a doubt. His step fell unevenly, and he looked down to see the ground drop and peak with footprints stood close together. Here? There was a long skid, as if someone had been thrown off balance. He knew from his previous experience with Sakura's fighting style that she'd have struck at the end of that slide, but could see no evidence of another fall, nor, in fact, any further footprints. The mud was drying quickly in the sun, baked to near clay, but barely discernable on the ground was something metallic. Sakura's knife?

He drew his own knife from his belt and pushed it into the dirt, levering up the soil and loosening its hold on the object. A triangular point became visible, followed by a long shaft and a metal loop. He dug deeper, unearthing the blade inch by inch until at last the strange shaped weapon sat heavily in his palm. He weighed it thoughtfully, and turned to address the girl behind him.

Sakura froze; one hand tucked inside her tunic, industriously prying apart the seam with her fingers. But he halted in his turn as the sun glimmered in the corner of his eye. Aragorn's attention had been caught, and he did not see Sakura carefully tuck the ring away into the little hole. She shivered as the metal left her skin; her body becoming suddenly cold.

What had caught his attention was neither particularly shiny, nor particularly distinct. Had the sun not caught it at just the right angle, at just the right moment, he'd have missed it entirely. He returned the tip of the knife to the soil, prying up the object. Black metal, smeared with mud and sheered at the edge. Curved, and tapered into a point, the shape took him a long minute to recognise. A finger. From the armour of a Black Rider. His breath caught.

Sakura heard the hitch in his breath, saw the line of his shoulders become tense. She could not see his face, but she'd bet an entire missions wages that his eyes were darting about, reassessing the remnants of the battle. She watched him shift his weight, rock on his heels and rise in a fluid movement; exposing the kunai in his hand. His knuckles were white about it, but the very next moment his body relaxed and he loped over to her once more. Immoveable and expressionless, he looked down at her.

"I've found your knife," he told her quietly, pulling her to her feet.

She took it from him unsurely, a feeling of sudden apprehension washing over her as she watched his face for some kind of recognition…or accusation. But his face was still and without expression: she couldn't read him at all. Unnerved, she allowed him to take her by her least injured hand and lead her away. The light weight of the ring bumped gently against her ribcage as she walked – she found herself suddenly fidgety – but could not adjust her clothing. Doubts settled in her mind: dark thoughts that she shied from, and those more close to home; doubts of herself.

Feeling the silence become thick and oppressive, and fearing it, she offered a shaky, even a little meek, "Thank you" as he began to propel her along in the direction she'd come. His hand tightened around hers. It stayed tight.

"Do not thank me yet," he muttered.

And though the thought had not been meant aloud, and Sakura had not been meant to hear it, she did, and she fell into a troubled, fretful quiet.

The gardens were quiet at this time of the day, Sakura mused dully, hopping awkwardly across the stepping stones of an ornamental pond. She was alone.

Unceremoniously deposited on her bottom on her bed, Sakura had been promptly abandoned by the Ranger into the hands of Glorfindel, now-and-ever-after to be known as 'The Bastard'. She been lectured like a child, stripped and sponge bathed by some unnamed elf woman (much to Sakura's vocal protest. Extremely vocal) and then, to put the cherry on the humiliation cake, assigned a personal guard to make sure she 'stayed where she was supposed to'. Sakura ground her teeth. She was not a child to be bloody babysat. How they hadn't found the ring was a mystery to Sakura, but after they'd taken her robe away and finally left her alone (with the guard) there it had been, poking surreptitiously out of a crack between two floorboards. She could only assume it had slipped out of the seam when they'd dropped the robe onto the floor pre-bath, and found herself thanking every deity she could think of that the guard hadn't spotted it before she had. Using the bathroom as an excuse for privacy, she'd carefully dug her fingers into the crack and pulled the floorboard up as far as she dared, pushing the ring more firmly underneath it and out of sight. She needed time to think about that. It wasn't something she particularly wanted to have to explain just yet.

Hell, she still hadn't told anyone what had actually happened yet. Nobody but Sakura; and possibly Aragorn, she amended with a wince; knew or suspected what the battle had truly involved. Whenever Glorfindel tried a new tactic to pry information from her, she'd clam up like Hinata faced with Naruto, and refused to speak for some time afterward. The subject of her chakra loss was one she'd barely coped with herself; explaining it to somebody else was a thought that made her balk. She couldn't quite deny that frustrating the healer also sparked a little vindictive pleasure in her. It wasn't like knowing was going to bring him any closer to healing her anyway. She snorted at the 'great practice of elven healing'. Her left arm had been bandaged up like a mummy again, 'til not an inch of skin was visible, and to add insult to injury The Bastard had bound it up in a sling as well. She'd have had it off in seconds if not for the fact that he'd used some sort of elven knot that was impossible for her reach or undo. His (stupid, she thought) reasoning was that, if she couldn't keep aggravating it perhaps they might finally see some progress. Sakura doubted it.

Her poisoned elbow showed some improvement with the treatment of Kingsfoil, despite her night-time excursion, and so she narrowly escaped a second sling. The healer had almost done it anyway, out of spite, but had reined in the urge. One of them had to be an adult, after all, he'd told himself, though he insisted on a brace. It was made of leather and resembled her Konoha elbow guards in a way, but was fastened with buckles and held a more rigid shape. She poked it unhappily with the fingers that dangled from her sling. Glorfindel hadn't understood what she'd meant when she'd vehemently protested the second sling, stating that she'd look like a mental patient, but he'd compromised. Not entirely a victory but better than nothing. A wry smirk ran across her features at the thought. Perhaps she'd managed to pull one over on him after all; the guard had been hopelessly easy to give the slip. She almost couldn't believe that the same tactic had worked twice.

'Distraction-no-jutsu' she thought mockingly, with a mental sigh. She could just imagine Naruto, or Lee, striking a pose and declaring that at the top of his voice. The most ridiculous thing was that it would probably work as well.

She fiddled with her leather brace as she walked, unhappily trying not to think of how Danzo-ish she must look with her arm all bound up. Thankfully the elf-woman's pick of clothes were a little more substantial than the thin robe she'd had before. She wrinkled her nose at the dressing-gown like thing that Glorfindel had pushed at her. The short tunic and leg-hugging pants were much more her 'thing' though she was still without shoes. And the Bastard had taken her weapons away again. Grumbling under her breath, she awkwardly tried to shift her arm in the sling, without success.

It was as Sakura was musing on the possible consequences of introducing a strait-jacket to Middle Earth, that her concentration failed and she stopped watching her feet. Another ornamental stream opened out of nowhere under her outstretched foot; it's contoured banks slippery; and Sakura skidded. Her restrained elbows flapped like a chicken as she fell backward, unable to retain her balance. She was braced to land in a particularly ungraceful heap when the hand appeared. It caught her by the wrist and tugged at the same time a second appeared on her lower back to steady her.

Sakura blinked dizzily for a moment upon finding herself suddenly upright again.

"You alright there, lass?"

For a moment the fleeting thought had been that it was Aragorn. He'd certainly developed a habit lately of appearing from nowhere on her. But the Ranger had been neither seen nor heard from since he'd left her in her room, and was rumoured to have been in a council of the utmost secrecy with the wizard and the elf-lord for some time. She didn't want to think about what that might mean.

The hand in fact, as it turned out, belonged to a short and stocky fellow with a long red beard. It was neatly braided with leather thongs and large wooden beads, as was his hair, and his jerkin and gloves were of a fine embossed leather. Sturdy boots and an axe completed the ensemble, all of which gave the man an almost Viking-like appearance. His accent was not one she recognised, though he spoke the Common tongue. He certainly wasn't an elf.

"Um, hello," she said, immediately grimacing at her lack of eloquence. He chortled.

"Hello," he said with a friendly smile under his bristly moustache. He tilted his head at her. "Can't say I was expecting to see a wee human lass here, let alone one all bandaged up so. These elves been treating you well, lass?"

The way he said 'elves' made it sound like he was really saying 'scum', Sakura thought with amusement.

"I, ah, was in a bit of a fight. I was brought here for healing," she answered honestly enough, though vaguely. Embarrassment at having been seen to stumble with such a lack of grace, and indignation at the term 'wee lass', were fading surprisingly fast for her volatile temper. The Viking-like man was quickly capturing her attention with his obvious distaste for the elves, and she couldn't say she was feeling too charitable toward them herself at the present time. "I'm alright," she added, aware that he'd posed the question twice now. The man nodded, stroking down his beard and tugging absently at the beads.

With an abrupt change in demeanour, he suddenly swept into a low bow, twirling his wrists in a ridiculous fashion.

"I am most glad to hear it, my lady. Gimli son of Gloin, most honourable of dwarves, is at your most humble service," he pressed a bristly kiss to the back of her hand. His eyes gleamed with amusement under his thick brows, and Sakura against all expectation found her lips quirking up; not least because this sort of behaviour was exactly the sort of courtly nonsense that annoyed her about the elves, and it seemed Gimli knew it. She let her grin come to fruition; the sort of silly smile she hadn't once worn since her arrival in Middle Earth. Dropping into an exaggerated curtsy, Sakura swept out the hem of her tunic as far as it would go and tucked one ankle behind the other.

"Gimli son of Gloin, most honourable of dwarves, I am Sakura of the Haruno clan. It is the greatest pleasure to make your acquaintance," she affected in a snooty voice. He wiggled his eyebrows at her, and she giggled.

Gimli moved around to her right side, and offered her his arm, which she did not hesitate to take.

"Come, come, my lady Sakura," he said warmly, "I am but one of few dwarves at residence in a place full of elves, and I should much enjoy some pleasanter company. Walk with me a while, and share with me the meaning of your name."

"How do you know my name means something?" Sakura asked curiously.

"A name so beautiful, and attached to such a beauty, cannot but mean something beautiful also." Sakura blushed a little at his warm and friendly praise, and the dwarf chortled again. "Come now lass, and talk with me, else I shall call you naught else but 'lassie' for the duration of our acquaintance."

He laughed outright as the girl wrinkled her nose. That was the sort of thing they called dogs. But she soon gave in to the smile threatening her lips and let a little laugh escape her. It was a strange sort of company she'd found, Sakura thought as their walk took them deep under the trees. But Gimli amused her, and treated her as an equal from the get-go, and she found him a welcome sort of distraction from her gloomy and shadowed thoughts.

'Yes,' she thought. 'His is a company I can take.'

Aloud she turned a smile on him and squeezed his arm.

"Very well, Master Dwarf, you have won me over."

.

.

.

The elf guard, a young fellow by elf standards who went by the name Farahad, stood meekly in the centre of an empty room. Empty, that is, except for himself and two of the most respected figures in Rivendell, both of whom were currently staring him down in the most scathing, disbelieving and furiously aghast manner possible. The young guard quaked. Glorfindel's face had never been so flushed as it was in anger – one could almost have thought to fry an egg on his forehead – while the Dúnedan Aragorn was staring daggers at the poor young elf, with his fists clenched and his eyes alight.

"What do you mean 'you lost her'?"

.

.

.

To be continued…

All new, never before seen content.

In which Sakura is pretty much a headache and a pain in the bum for anyone and everyone who has to deal with her – especially poor Aragorn who really is trying to keep her relatively safe and in one piece. And just who did she convince to play 'distraction' this time?

Also in which Sakura meets Gimli (who is awesome) and discovers another Middle-Earthian Species; elves are gently mocked, as is Danzo, and Sakura is thinking about Konoha quite a lot.

And finally, in which cursed jewellery finds a new home under the floor. I don't believe Sakura owns a jewellery box. She probably just used to borrow Ino's stuff.

~Devi1OnUrShou1der~