Beta by Wendwriter.

Elladan and Haldir watched worriedly to see how Faelwen would react to her twin's emotional greeting. For a second, she simply sat there, unmoving, as he sobbed against her shoulder. A moment later however, hesitantly and tentatively, she hugged him back.

"You are alive! You are here…and you are alive! I missed you so much!" Feredir sobbed. "They always said that there was no way you could have lived! But I knew you didn't die!"

For a moment, the other three elves in the room looked at him in confusion, before remembering the memories they had seen in the mirror all those centuries ago. Faelwen's brothers had told her father and twin that she had been bitten by a spider and swept away by the current in the river.

"Where are we?" Feredir continued to hold his sister as though he would never let her go again. His grip was slightly painful, but Faelwen really didn't mind. At that moment, all she could comprehend was that her brother did not hate her. What ever else happened, her twin did not hate her!

"You are in Imladris, Feredir," she told him shakily. "The home of Lord Elrond…my foster father." Now was the time to gauge his reaction.

"Foster father? Imladris? How did you get here? 'Las, what happened to you?" Feredir seemed stunned as he asked his rapid and tearful questions, wincing violently as the sobs caused the pain in his torso to double. Again, he touched her face with shaking hands, as though to see whether or not she was a dream. "How can you be here, safe and in one piece?"

"That is…a long story," said Faelwen diplomatically, staying surprisingly calm. She eased the blond elf back down onto the pillows. "You will have plenty of time to hear that later. You need rest, you still have plenty of healing to do. And in the meantime, you need to tell us what happened to you. You came within an inch of being summoned by Mandos. If Elladan had not found you, you certainly would have been. How did this happen?"

"I…my memory is a bit vague to be honest," said Feredir in a strained voice, as a spasm of pain shot through him. He could hardly believe that he was sitting here having a conversation with his 'dead' twin sister. "We had been travelling for a few weeks. We were heading for a human village…Bree I think it was called. At any rate, the journey was mostly uneventful until yesterday morning. We were just walking together…just like we always do, when those…creatures came at us unawares. I have never seen their like before. Hulking and viscous – the very look of them was evil! Their attack was swift. We were outnumbered but Alyan ordered me to run to safety. I refused. I could not just leave them; they are my brothers! But one of the creatures brought me down. I remember Aradan throwing himself at the beast to get it off me. I must have fainted after that."

Slowly, Faelwen nodded. It had been rambling and badly worded (not surprising in the circumstances) but she thought she understood – that is, she understood what he was saying, but she did not really understand what she heard. Speaking so much seemed to cause Feredir even more pain, though, and she knew that she had to do something about it. There would be time to think later.

"Feredir, I need you to trust me," she said gently. "I closed your wounds as well as I could, but you are still very weak. You will be in a great deal of pain if you are agitated in anyway. I am going to send you into a healing sleep. Hopefully it will diminish as much of the pain as possible."

"No!" said Feredir adamantly, sitting up sharply, an arm crossed protectively over his tender abdomen. "I have only just found you! I will not lose sight of you again! I want to know what happened, how it is that you are here, why the dark-haired one calls you his sister, how…"

"Brother, please," pleaded Faelwen softly. "Be calm. There will be time for all that later. I am not going anywhere, I promise. I will still be here when you wake up. But I cannot tell you my story if you do not heal to hear it. Just trust me. I would never harm you."

"Do you promise me that you will still be here?" Feredir's tear-stained eyes bore into hers in quiet desperation.

"I promise. I have not left Imladris for more than a thousand years," said Faelwen gently, with as much of a reassuring smile as she could manage. "I will not do so now."

Reluctantly, with a final squeeze of her hand, Feredir obeyed. He lay back quietly and allowed Faelwen to place her hands over his eyes and gently coax him into a deep, sound sleep. The room was soon filled with his even, steady breathing.

"Are you alright, Faelwen?" Elladan watched the sleeping elf with a slightly bemused expression, before turning to his sister.

"I…I am not sure," Faelwen replied slowly, as she rubbed her forehead wearily. "I feel strange; a bit mixed up. I am relieved that he does not hate me; I am a little surprised that he even still remembers me – it's been more than ten centuries after all; I am confused that he said the others were protecting him at the risk of their own lives; I am scared because I do not know how I am going to tell him what really happened. As soon as I do that, the others will know who I am. And I am still terrified that one of them might recognise me any minute. I just feel…drained."

"That is understandable." said Haldir sympathetically. "You have had a trying day."

"You should go to bed now." Elladan instructed with gentle firmness. "I will tell Ada about Feredir's progress and fill him in on the details. You need to get some rest. Come, we will walk you to your room."

"They were protecting him?" Faelwen mused aloud, as they walked slowly down the corridors. "Were they really willing to risk their lives for him? Have they changed that much? And do I want to find out?"

"No more worrying for today, Faelwen!" Haldir told her, taking her hand. "Have a good night's sleep and we can all talk everything over in the morning. Your father will know what to do, and we will all be behind you."

"Haldir is right…for once." added Elladan with a grin, ignoring Haldir's dry look. "Even when they do know who you are, they will not have a change of getting near you. Not while any of us are around. I swear, Ada was close to having to tie Estel up for the day, simply to stop him from trying to run them through one by one. You have too many people who care about you to let one of them hurt you. Get some sleep now. Things may not look quite so terrible in the morning."

Faelwen nodded tiredly and, bidding them goodnight, retired to her room for some much needed sleep.

But she made sure to place her small hunting dagger under her pillow.

The noise of her door being locked from the inside made her snap back to awareness. Her heart pounding madly, Faelwen scrambled up in bed only to find Alyan's malevolent eyes glaring into her own. She was so petrified that she found she could not make a sound.

"You thought your little masquerade had been successful, did you not?" he sneered in a violent hiss, his fingers closing cruelly around her wrist and gripping hard. "But you did not fool us! We saw through you immediately; my fine lady with your airs and graces. You're nothing but the same worthless brat that we tried to kill years ago."

The silence that followed his final sentence was so tense that it could have been pierced with an arrow.

"I have come to correct our mistake," said Alyan with a cold smile. "And this time, I shall not fail!"

Suddenly, his hands were around her throat; squeezing and pressing as she choked for breath and tried in vain to cry out.

"That is right!" laughed Alyan, eyes blazing. "Try to scream! No one can help you now!"

The world began to swim before Faelwen's eyes as she tried to escape his painful grip. She tried, again and again, to scream for help. Alyan had won, she realised sadly, as everything started to dim. And she would never see Haldir again…

"Faelwen! FAELWEN!"

In a flash, Faelwen had shot bolt upright in bed, drawing her small dagger out with hands that moved too quickly to be seen. She pointed it at the shadowy figure by her bedside, every muscle in her body stiff with fear and adrenaline. Her bedsheet was tangled around her neck; feeling just like Alyan's hands had done.

She almost screamed when a set of fingers closed around the wrist of the hand that held the dagger. But this time, they were gentle.

"You need to put that down, gwaleth," said Elladan's voice gently. "Nice and easy. Just put it down. There is nothing to be afraid of."

Blankly, Faelwen dropped the dagger onto her bedclothes. Elladan hastily put it out of reach before gathering his sister in a bone crushing hug.

"I heard you screaming," he told her quietly. "For a moment, I feared the worst."

"But I could not scream!" Faelwen told him hoarsely. "He had his hands around my throat. I could not breathe." She wasn't crying; there were no tears in her eyes. She just shook.

"It is all right, it was just a nightmare," Elladan soothed her, a gentle hand smoothing her rumpled hair. It had been centuries since Faelwen had suffered from nightmares. Not since that last encounter with that awful human. This marked how serious this situation was.

"This cannot go on, Faelwen," he said determinedly. "I will not watch you living in fear for one day longer. You have to tell them! You have shut a door on this once and for all. I cannot bear to watch this tear you apart!"

Faelwen gazed back at him numbly, her eyes dark and haunted, just as they had been when he had first met him. It broke his heart to see her look like that again.

"Lie down again," he told her. "I will stay. They cannot get into this room when I am here to guard you. Go back to sleep." Faelwen silently obeyed and Elladan grasped her hand tightly.

"We will clear this whole history up, I promise," he whispered. "No matter what it takes. And we will start tomorrow."

Again, Faelwen simply nodded, and drifted back into an uneasy sleep once more. Elladan drew the covers snugly over her, before gazing down at her white face and cursing the cold-hearted brothers who had put her in this state.

She was sleeping with her eyes closed.