"There is something amiss with your wife."

I had to hand it to the elf; he was the king of grand entrances. And cryptic comments. And stating the obvious.

"No shit," I said, not looking up from the feathers and arrow I was trying to attach to each other.

"Pardon?"

I threw the arrow down on the table, aggravated at the stupid feathers – fletching the elf would correct me if he could read my thoughts which, despite all evidence to the contrary, he could not – for not cooperating.

"I know," I said through my teeth, then quickly added, "I don't want to talk about her."

Legolas walked over and picked up the arrow, twining the thread around the shaft and securing the feathers with ease. Damn him. I clenched my jaw harder. It's his and his stupid blue eyes' fault I'm here in the first place.

"Your problem," he began, handing the arrow back to me, "is you hold on too tight."

I stood up and slammed the arrow against the table, splitting the shaft and earning myself an exasperated sigh from the elf. "I hold on too tight?" I shouted. "My wife is out gallivanting around the countryside with whichever elf strikes her whim and suits her fancy and I hold on to her too tight?!"

Legolas's expression didn't change except for a quirk of his eyebrow. "I spoke of your craftsmanship."

I held his gaze with narrowed eyes. It was probably unfair to blame him for my predicament. Surprisingly, he was one of the only elves my wife didn't seem to gravitate to.

"Oh," I said, not knowing how else to respond. I sat back down and he joined me at the table. I frowned at him for a while and he let me, not seeming to mind, or possibly understanding the reason for my mood.

"So fine," I finally said. "What's wrong with my wife?"

Legolas remained silent for a few very long moments. I'd grown accustomed to his mannerisms over the past week, or however long we'd been here, but I was in a mood today and everything annoyed me. Right before I was about to tell him to say something already, he spoke.

"Were you with her in your room last night at any time after your argument?"

I wondered at the question, but answered anyway. "No, I stayed here."

Legolas nodded once. "You were not here when I returned late in the evening."

His tone wasn't accusing, but I still didn't see where this conversation was headed and that irritated me. "I went for a walk."

He pressed his lips together. "I feared for your safety, with the strange happenings as of late, so I went in search of you. I saw you enter your chambers…"

"I told you," I interrupted him. "I was not with my wife last night."

He blinked at me a few times. "Someone was." He paused and raised his eyebrow. "Shortly after I saw who I assumed to be you enter your room, I heard your wife scream."

"What?" I gasped.

"Fear not," he said, "She was well when I visited with her." He paused again. "But she lied about your having been there and she lied about being alone."

"What?" I repeated. Just when I thought this day and this situation couldn't get any worse, it did. I lowered my voice to try and keep from yelling at the elf. "What exactly did she say?"

"She said you were not there, that you had been but left. I am certain someone was hiding in the room."

"So what did you do?" I stood with such force it knocked my chair over.

"I departed." He rose as well and held out a hand to my half-formed protest. "She asked to be left alone."

"Of course she did," I shouted. "She's been sleeping with elves for the past few days; why would she want to sleep alone last night?"

I sank back down to my chair and dropped my head into my hands, hating how I felt. My stomach twisted in knots and I wanted to rip things apart and kick and punch things – or certain elves – but at the same time I didn't have the spirit or the energy to do anything more than sit in a chair and sulk. I felt a hand clasp my shoulder and looked up at Legolas.

"Remember last time you assumed you'd seen your wife with the son of Elrond…?" he said.

I scoffed. "Well, was it Nerdanel in my room?"

He hesitated. "No."

I grimaced. "So there you go." I ran a hand through my hair, resisting the urge to pull it out.

"Come." Legolas patted my shoulder. "I think it time for you to learn to wield a sword."

"Really?" I asked, skeptical that fencing would do anything to improve my mood.

"Yes, 'really'," Legolas said, pulling me up by the arm. "The men of Esgaroth claim sparring as the best way to relieve tension.

I shrugged and followed him out the door. "Well… if the men of Esgaroth say so, who am I to disagree?"

I followed Legolas out and down the path towards Elrond's rooms. He wanted to see if there were sparring swords I could borrow since I didn't have one of my own. My mind kept running over the scene Legolas had painted for me – my wife in our room, lying about my presence, covering for someone – and I wasn't really paying attention to where we were walking so I almost bumped into Legolas when he stopped short in the gardens.

He held up a hand and his meaning was as clear as if he had verbally shushed me.

I followed his gaze across the lawn and saw a bunch of people on the ground. At first I couldn't make out who it was or what they were doing, but suddenly one of them turned her head towards me – her head that had just been bent over one of the men lying on the ground, suspiciously close to his face – and I recognized her.

"What the…?" I muttered, sidestepping around Legolas's outstretched arm and stomping across the clearing. As I got closer I recognized Elrond kneeling next to my shirtless wife, both of them bent over his two sons.

"What the hell?" I shouted, furious until she looked at me and I noticed more details. My stomach turned over and I felt bile rise in my throat.

She was covered in blood.

The world around me came to a screeching halt.

Back when we were still in the real world, before this Lord of the Rings nonsense happened, I had gone with some buddies to see this crazy action movie. You know, the kind where there's really no plot, but there's a scantily clad girl and they keep blowing crap up. And there may have been aliens involved, I'm really not sure because, like I said: no discernable plot. Anyways, there was this crazy battle sequence at the climax of the movie and I remember it because we mocked it afterwards: everything turned to slow motion and you could hear a heartbeat pounding loud in the theater but all other sound was muffled. The half-naked girl – whose clothes were even skimpier because somehow the battle ripped them – and the unlikely hero meet eyes as bullets or laser beams or some sort of CGI effect whizzes past their heads. And it's all very dramatic.

That is exactly what happened to me now, I kid you not. Well… minus the CGI bullets.

I heard my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I didn't move; she didn't move. We just locked eyes and stayed there. I think Elrond may have been shouting to Legolas because out of the corner of my eye I saw him gesturing wildly, but I couldn't hear anything he said.

My wife finally tore her gaze from mine and bent back down to one of Elrond's sons – both of whom were lying on the ground – covering his mouth with her own. Somewhere in my brain it dimly registered that she wasn't kissing him, that she was performing CPR, and if that was the case, most likely the blood was someone else's.

A hand grasped my shoulder, shaking me.

The world started to return to normal.

The elf my wife was bent over gasped and sat up and she sat back on her heels, exhaled a visible sigh of relief, and burst into tears. I dropped to my knees besides her and, forgetting all anger at whatever happened last night, wrapped my arms around her. She sagged in my embrace and sobbed against my chest.

Legolas knelt down next to Elrond, heads bent together speaking quietly to each other and I finally noticed the other elf lying in front of him, breathing shallowly, blood-soaked cloths balled up on his stomach, and I realized whose blood covered most of my wife. I held her tighter and thanked whatever God they believed in here that it wasn't hers.

Hello beautiful, patient readers! Finally another chapter! The first one not to be posted at HASA - (cry!)

You know the drill. But it's been a while so I'll remind you:

Read. Enjoy. Review.

Hopefully the next one will not take almost a year!

Cheers,

Arandil