To all my readers: thank you for following the story so far!

To Lola: thank you very much for giving this one a try, and for taking the time to review! Can't say I don't understand your fondness for the Mirkwood prince... Have you tried "Hiraeth", my latest Legolas/OC romance? Or the earlier "From the Shadows"? If not, I'd recommend taking a look (though I'm hardly impartial... ;)).

Now, on to Elladan and Mehreen's story. I hope you all enjoy this chapter!


Chapter 9

June 17th, TA 3020

"You killed my brother!"

The words hung in the air even after Mehreen threw them to his face, their shrillness attracting the attention of the passers-by. Her hands were shaking, a righteous anger driving her, mixed with fear. Harun had by no means been weak. What would this Lord Elladan do to her, now that she'd exposed him? Tareq's words of warning, long since forgotten, came back to her.

Never give them a reason to hurt you.

Too late.

No matter how childish it seemed, Mehreen had almost expected Lord Elladan to laugh and confess to his guilt, as a true villain was wont to do; instead, his chiseled face closed in worry, lips pressed into a line so thin they turned bloodless.

"Go on," he turned towards Saineth, dismissing her with a terse nod – her, and the two other elves who'd approached them from the side. "I will handle this."

"Handle me? Just like you handled my brother?" Mehreen snarled at his back; she was starting to sound hysterical, aware of how perfectly it would suit him. Perhaps did he intend to pass her off as one of the ailing souls that haunted this wretched place. "Harun, his name was Harun. Do you even remember him?"

Lord Elladan turned to face her. In the emerald twilight, his skin was almost translucent, the high cheekbones and grey eyes reminding Mehreen of a shard of broken glass. "I remember no such name. Perhaps if we could speak of this in private…?" He slanted a pointed look towards the nearest alcove, and made a move to grab her elbow.

Mehreen drew backwards, under the shadow of the giant oak, a bitter laugh spilling from her lips. "I would've been surprised if you did. How many did you slay, that day? Hundreds? Thousands?"

He blinked, and let his hand fall. "What day? By Angainor, what are you talking about?"

"You really don't remember, do you? On Pelennor!" Mehreen stomped her foot, nails digging into her palms as she balled her fists in disbelief; they quivered by her side, pitiful in their helplessness. "You killed my brother. You killed Harun! My father saw you do it!"

"Did he, now?" It was Lord Elladan's turn to regain his wits. He squared his shoulders and, for an instant, Mehreen was reminded of the taut, pale muscles underneath his tunic. She swallowed, willing herself to forget that image. "And what were they doing there, your father and your brother both, if not bringing war to the doorstep of Gondor?"

Mehreen gasped. "They…they had no choice!"

The One take him, him and his shamelessness!

"No choice," Lord Elladan repeated with a haughty lift of his chin. He crossed his arms upon his chest, the leather of his jerkin creaking as he did so. "You truly believe this, do you?" His voice, which had possessed the abrasive coolness of stone but moments ago, was turning sour with sarcasm. "Who forced them to come, then, tell me? And how?" Lifting one hand to his chin, he raised his gaze to the shivering canopy above, as though thinking aloud. "Has someone, perchance, put a blade under that little throat of yours, and threatened them with your life?" His gaze abruptly returned to Mehreen's face, and she wavered under its intensity. "Did you even care about the war, before it affected your precious person?" Lord Elladan spat out. "I thought as much." His voice dropped further, dripping with contempt as he took a step towards her; Mehreen retreated in haste. "You dare stand here, amidst those who have been wounded and orphaned by the war, by the actions of the likes of your brother, and speak to me of cruelty?"

Mehreen opened her mouth, then closed it, like one of the fishes in the fountain of her father's gardens. "He…he was a noble man," she protested and took another step back, "he would never…" Yet the words choked her as she said them, sticking to her unwilling tongue. "You killed him," Mehreen repeated once more, stubbornly and plaintively, like a child. She sucked in a breath as her back pressed against a rough surface: the ancient oak.

She was trapped.

Lord Elladan narrowed his eyes, smelling her weakness. "If it is a confession you are hoping to wrench from me, you shall be disappointed, though I will say this: if, as you claim, I did kill your brother, it was only because I chose to let others live. Others who would otherwise have perished under his sword. Or will you claim he was blameless of that, too?"

Mehreen's blood pounded in her ears, the coolness of the bark that seeped into her hands a relief to the flame in her cheeks. Would it that she could….

Elladan eyed her in disdain as the silence in the courtyard stretched on, before rubbing a hand across his forehead. "You do not know what a battlefield is like, and how would you?" The fight seemed to have left him; the fire in those ashen eyes died and his gaze turned dull, uninterested. "I do not know what twisted fate brought you here, and I have half a mind to send you back where you came from…."

At that very instant, Mehreen ardently wished that he would. Over his shoulder, the door gaped, open onto the vastness of a world free of his undeniable presence and of questions she could not answer; a bright green blot amidst the grey dreariness of crumbling granite. It called out to her, but Lord Elladan stood in her way, daring her to even try. Mehreen pressed her hands against the oak, gathering the courage to leap.

Would he grab her, if she did?

Mehreen's heart leapt to her throat. And what would he do then…?

"…but I gave Legolas my word that I would take you off his hands. I shall not renounce it, not even should you find more of such accusations to taunt me with." As if he'd read her mind, Lord Elladan stepped aside, and swept an arm towards the exit. "Go, now, and think. Will you live off the hard work of those here who would earn their living rather than profit from that of others, clinging to excuses even you must sense are false? Or will you add your efforts to theirs?"

"The choice is yours," he called after her as Mehreen rushed towards the door. "I shall expect you here tomorrow morning…though I suppose it shall be in vain."

The words would stay with her long after she'd crossed that threshold. Easy for him to say! He was a man, the Lord of this broken place – but still a place of his own. No-one else had ever decided for him he'd be better serving the One's purpose somewhere else, doing someone else's bidding according to someone else's rules.

The choice is yours.

Only a man could be so naive.

oOoOoOo

"Father was right. These people are heathens, savages…" Mehreen paused to catch her breath, her lips curling into a grimace as she spat out the rest: "…and that so-called Lord Elladan's the worst of them all."

She reached the wall and spun on her heels to stalk off towards the opposite side of the room, shaking with fury. "I hate him, do you hear me? I hate him!"

"You have every right, my Lady."

From her position on her bed, Ahlam nodded demurely without interrupting her work, Mehreen's tunic in one hand and a needle in another. By the One, wherever did she find the strength to mend clothing after a day of working in the washery? It came as a source of bafflement to Mehreen, barely eclipsed by her current state of anger.

"You should've seen him. He's not even ashamed of what he's done!"

Mehreen threw her hands into the air with a strangled cry. The ambient silence and the narrowness of the room closed in on her, the cramped space between the beds, the chest in one corner and the cabinet that held the washing basin in the other like a cage in which she could barely turn around, lest even pace properly. The dull homeliness of her surroundings seemed to mock her indignation, dwarfing it to fit the confines of what little space she was now allowed to exist in.

Mehreen wanted to scream, but no sound left her throat; so instead she clenched her teeth until they hurt.

A Sheikh's daughter didn't scream. Lalla Nafiyah had seen to that early enough.

Lalla Nafiyah, who'd loved the palace gardens as much as Mehreen, and had been especially fond of all sorts of exotic birds that her son would order from merchants in Khand and Umbar. They would arrive in cages of golden wire, the locks set with emeralds and rubies in an attempt to sweeten their captivity. In vain. Each and every single new addition to the harem aviary would scream night and day during the first months, shrieking out without respite amidst the tamarisk boughs, waking the household with the rawness of its rage, until the cries grew scarce and then stopped completely.

Even a bird was granted more liberty than she, Mehreen thought bitterly as she bit her tongue, trying to remember the last time she had given in to her emotions. The elves had had no need to break her; she had come to Ithilien already tamed.

In the light of the small brazier that stood between the beds – a gesture of goodwill from Lord Legolas, who must've noticed Mehreen's incessant sniffling in the weeks following her arrival – she took another look at Ahlam, whose gentle face was drawn in concentration. How long had it taken to tame her?

"Do you miss him?"

"What?" Mehreen blinked at the question, one that had been asked so softly that she'd not even balked at its impudence. "Who? Harun? I…." She paused mid-step to stare at her maid. "He was my brother…I respected him."

Ahlam bowed her head over her needlework. "Of course, my Lady. Forgive me, I shouldn't have asked." She didn't meet Mehreen's gaze, returning to her task as though the question had been as trivial as her choice of thread color for the mending.

"I always have," Mehreen insisted, "you know it was my duty."

"I know, my Lady."

The silence settled in once more, as implacable as the night that was falling outside.

Will you claim he was blameless?

Lord Elladan's detestable tone rang in her ears once more, saturated with arrogance and certainty. Standing in the middle of their room, Mehreen felt shaken, as though the floor had been a rug, pulled from under her by some teasing hand. Yet the room remained unchanged and Ahlam, unruffled by Mehreen's refusal to elaborate.

She wrung her hands against her stomach. "He was my father's firstborn. His heir."

"Yes, my Lady."

Mehreen suddenly wished she could ask her maid the same question in return. If anyone had grounds to pray for Harun's death it was Ahlam, yet she'd been the first to console her mistress upon hearing the news, not knowing that the tears Mehreen had shed had been of guilt rather than grief. Mehreen's gaze came to rest on the tapestry that hung from a nail, opposite of her bed; Hanaa's goodbye present to her. A family tree embroidered in gold and silver thread upon a field of crimson velvet, the names of the men inscribed inside the dagger-shaped leaves, and those of the women inside every fruit.

Harun's name glimmered in the light of the brazier, reminding Mehreen of the way his eyes used to flash, his temper as shifting as quicksand.

"I wished for him to be gone," she whispered and, this time, Ahlam looked up. "I didn't know…I didn't think it'd happen…." Mehreen watched, envious, the stillness of her servant's hands, as she wrapped her own restless arms around her. "Does that make me complicit of his death?"

Ahlam seemed to ponder the question as she set the mending aside, folding the tunic with painstaking diligence. "I think," she said eventually, "that your wish is not what killed your brother, my Lady. An elven sword did, and even so, it may not have been your will that guided Lord Elladan's hand."

"Whose, then?" Mehreen asked in a murmur, addressing her question to anyone but Ahlam. Back in Jufayrah, it would've been a question a maid couldn't answer without facing the consequences, and Mehreen had no desire to force loyal, gentle Ahlam to speak her mind about her opinion of Harun.

Yet the maid shrugged, her hands idle in her lap. "I cannot say, my Lady. But rest assured that all those who have ever crossed your brother's path remember him."

Had someone looked in through the window, he would've seen two women conversing like equals; in the harem, such a scene was as unseen as it was unseemly and even Mehreen, rattled by the turn the discussion was taking though willing to overlook Ahlam's newfound familiarity, sharply inhaled at the implied threat.

Lalla Nafiyah's lessons had ingrained the respect due to her elders in general, and men in particular, into her very being. Strip the flesh and they'd be found engraved into her bones, Mehreen had once thought; now, she balked at the insinuation.

"This is my brother you are speaking of," she snapped, "my blood." Nevermind that she only shared half of it – and not the best half, as Lalla Laila wouldn't have failed to point out. "My father has ever been kind to you. Is this how you would repay him? By insulting his dead son?"

She'd expected Ahlam to flinch as the rebuke; to grovel, and beg for forgiveness. Such was the only behavior that could spare a servant the bite of the whip. Yet Ahlam merely hung her head, muttering an apology Mehreen didn't discern over the furious pounding of her own heart. And, before Mehreen could magnanimously forgive her, she reached out for the tunic to resume her sewing.

Mehreen gaped at her maid's impudence.

Of course, Ahlam knew she had no whip, and that even if she'd had one, Mehreen would rather have cast it into the brazier than used it. Much to Lalla Laila's despair, she'd never feared Mehreen, only dreading perhaps the punishment her mistress' own misdemeanor could bring. Even so, the maid never would've dared deviate from the well-learned pattern they had both maintained ever since she'd been assigned to Mehreen's service.

Ahlam had never been afraid of her. Now, the need to cower was gone as well.

In a moment of staggering clarity, Mehreen understood she'd been wrong about her maid. Though the turban she wore bore the yellows and greens of Lalla Nafiyah's beloved birds, Ahlam wasn't tamed. Unlike Mehreen herself, she was no prisoner of her own existence; she'd chosen to come along to Ithilien – only the One knew why! – and now, she was choosing to preserve what remained of their masquerade to protect Mehreen's feelings.

She was adapting; a difference as crucial as that between fasting and starvation.

Once again, Mehreen endured the realization that Ahlam was wiser in that prospect than she, and itched to ask the woman where and how she'd learnt this precious talent. She stood for a moment, uncertain about the attitude that should now be hers, afraid of what would happen should she try counter Ahlam's decision to alter their relationship.

Back in Jufayrah, she'd been the one in power, but this wasn't Harad. The small room, with its plain furniture and empty walls, was as real as the needle in Ahlam's hand, which could've been a sword for the power it contained.

Ahlam had no need of her presence. She'd chosen to stay.

And to work, enduring Mehreen's ineptitude and naivety. The least Mehreen could do was to try and do the same.

She wandered to the window to look outside, where the lights of the Great Hall twinkled amidst the distant shrubbery, mimicking the stars sowed in a cloudless sky. Something hooted in the trees that stood by the dormitory – an owl, perhaps, and Mehreen craned her neck to distinguish, within the blackness of the canopies, a pair of yellow eyes.

Judging her for her weakness, no doubt.

Mehreen sulkily stared back until the owl turned away, fingering the pebble she'd moved that very morning, when she was still hopeful about what the day would bring. The warmth of the brazier had seeped into the side farthest from the window while the other side remained cold under her touch. Easy for a stone to accomplish; not so much for a being of flesh and hot blood like herself.

It seemed to Mehreen that she, too, was teetering on the edge of something she didn't have the wisdom to discern. A moment where she would've welcomed Lalla Nafiyah's guidance, Lalla Zahra's lessons or even one of Lalla Laila's snide counsels, as long as they directed her towards the right path.

The pebble rolled between her fingers.

Had Mehreen been a man, it would've been her duty to kill Lord Elladan, to repay blood spilled with more blood and avenge Harun's death. Yet she was no man and, as such, all she could was to hold her head up high with all the disdain she could muster, so that he'd never forget that she wouldn't, either.

But Lord Elladan didn't expect her to return; he, too, thought her weak and impressionable, too frightened to face him again. Mehreen smiled crookedly to her reflection in the window. If Ahlam could adapt to a place as strange as this one, so could she.

Lord Elladan was in for a surprise.