A/N I dunno guys, there's music in this one too. I always feel weird adding songs into stories for more than a line or two, but I think it works? I mean at this point it's happening so we'll cross our fingers. I think I was scarred by some of the song fic days of the early 2000s so anytime music gets involved I'm like WAIT. IS IT TOOOOO SONGFIC-Y?

We were such moody little fucks back then...

OKAY FINE. We still are, we just write less song fics to express it. I think.

Btw, we get out of Mirkwood in the next chapter unless some weird ass plot bunny shows up all like YOU'RE NOT DONE. HOLD UP. ONE LAST THING.

They've done it before, wily little suckers.

ANYWAY

In totes unrelated news, is anyone else half hypnotized lately because of Hozier's new album? Seriously, when I found out I'd missed the boat and all his shows near me were sold out on his tour a part of me died a little. Le sigh.

OH

This is also a short chapter, but it's late and my brain said I can't write anymore scenes and we really should be getting on with escaping anyway.

ENJOY Y'ALL

IT'S SAD.


Their days in the dungeons were long, but as far as Josephine was concerned, not as long as her days upstairs. Here at least she had people to talk to, friends to joke with, and a twenty-first century songbook they could play around with. But after a while even they agreed that they shouldn't annoy their elven captures too much more than was strictly necessary and after a few days they got quieter again.

"May I ask you something, Lady Josephine?" Fili asked from the cell beside hers. The bars of their cells were just close enough that they could stick their arms out and reach each other if they stretched a bit.

"Sure, ask away." She replied, leaning back against the wall separating their cells so she could hear him better.

"Your land, is it a happy place? Not Gondor," He corrected. "The land where you lived before coming to ours."

Josephine weighed her answer based on the standard in Middle-Earth. "More convenient in some places, maybe. But I don't know, I don't think it's much different from Middle-Earth in that way. I don't know, Middle-Earth may even be the happier of the two."

"It seems strange." Fili pondered. "From all that you've told us it seems a very happy place. Why would we be so much better here?"

She had to think about it for a second, not even totally sure how to put in the words the feeling she had about it. "I don't know, I guess. I only ever had a narrow experience of the people in my land. I've traveled more miles in the few years I've been here than I did in my whole life back there." Josephine could ramble herself in circles trying to explain something that she wasn't even sure there were words for. "Why do you ask?"

"Just wonderin' is all. All the songs you teach us are happy, or at least exciting. Makes it seem like the people of your land never knew sorrow as we do."

"Oh they've known their fair share, and there's plenty of songs to match. Guess we've always been trying to have a good time and I never never wanted to bring the mood down."

Fili paused and she heard the beads on his beard clank against the bars as he looked around the dungeon. "I'd say we've earned a few sad songs given our current situation."

"Are you asking me to sing you a sad song from my land?" He was acting like she was hard to convince to sing at any given moment. Living in Middle-Earth made it second nature to spout off songs at any time.

"Oh fine, if you sing one for me, I'll sing one for you. Though I can't really translate it out of Khuzdul so…you won't really know what I'm saying."

Josephine chuckled and leaned her head against the bars. "Okay, so what kind of sad do you want? Death, loneliness, loss, yearning…my people wrote for it all." The trick was would she remember enough of the words of any of it…

"Sing one for you." Fili said softly.

Josephine sputtered and chuckled awkwardly. She wasn't sure she wanted to venture into that kind of sad song territory while she was locked in a dungeon with nothing but time to think about how much she missed Aragorn and home. "How about I find you a sad Queen song to go with Bohemian Rhapsody?"

Fili didn't say anything, but he pointedly cleared his throat and waited until she had time to think of something and give in.

"Okay fine! But I probably forgot half the words."

"Well come on," He pushed teasingly. "Get to it then."

She said a silent prayer to Hozier, wherever he was. In hindsight, her fondness for the yearning, tall, bearded man with long hair felt a bit more like foreshadowing than before.

Clearing her throat, she started somewhere in the middle, having forgotten exactly how it started. "That's when my baby found me…I was three days on a drunken sin. And I was burnin' up a fever, I didn't care much how long I lived. But I swear I thought I dreamed him, he never asked me once about the wrong I did."

Josephine had a feeling Hozier wouldn't mind her messing up his lyrics, both by accident and on purpose. It was awkward and she knew she had to be mixing up different verses, but after so many years, it was the best she could manage.

She stumbled on through several more, realizing halfway through she'd tucked the first bit into the middle and skipped the chorus in a spot. "I uh…sorry."

Suddenly the private cell was a refuge and she turned her face away from the door to swipe her palm under her eyes. "It's not quite right."

"Lady Josephine?" Fili's voice came from as close as he was able to get to her, face pressed against the bars. His arm reached out with an open palm.

She looked over her shoulder and thought about staying put, but she finally reached back and took his hand. "This is why I…" Her voice shook and she had to pause. "Why we stick to the happy songs, you know." That was what she'd avoided this whole time. Her reactions to her injury had been enough, she needed to show them she had her strength back and was well and capable of continuing on. There was a reason she hadn't let them see this half of her journey with them.

"You should keep going." He urged gently.

"No, I think…I think you've got the idea."

He gave her hand a light squeeze. "Please?"

She was already crying, she supposed. It wasn't like a little more would hurt her street cred with them at that point. So, shakily, she started the next line. "When my time comes around,"

Then Fili's voice came in behind her quietly, filling in effortlessly from the first time she'd sung the chorus. "When your time comes around, lay you gently in the cold dark earth.

"No grave can hold my body down."

"You'll crawl home to him."


3020

Aragorn smiled to himself as he pushed open the door of Josephine's study, her voice carrying softly as she stood in the afternoon sun, a stick of charcoal in her hands. She was bent over her new table, she'd commissioned it for her work on the city. A drafting table she'd called it, necessary for her work if they were going to rebuild Osgiliath and venture one day into Ithilien. It had been such a simple request, but was the one she'd been the most excited to have.

As she'd fallen into her work and slipped back into something familiar, Aragorn felt like he was meeting a new part of her he'd not seen except in flashing during the War. All that time she'd fought to find her place in their world and learn how to survive in it, and now it was her turn to bring what she knew to help them.

He waited in the doorway, unnoticed as she drew the charcoal over the parchment she'd weighed down against the table. Her lips moved absentmindedly, singing to herself as she worked. It went on for another minute or so before she noticed him.

She glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled, stealing the very air from his lungs. There was peace in her eyes, the likes of which he'd only seen sparingly since that day in Rivendell so long ago. He knew she'd found happiness, but the peace he saw was all the more precious to him in its rarity. Finally, perhaps, the dark weight of the War was lifting from her shoulders. As bright white stone replaced charred rubble and mithril was forged to replace iron, maybe she too was rebuilding just like the city that she'd fought for.

"You okay?" She asked, wiping her hands on a cloth and setting it back on a hook off the side of the desk. "You look like you're stuck in your head again."

He smiled with a guilty dip of his chin. "I suppose I was. And yet," he walked over and took her hand. "One look from you and my thoughts escape me."

"They're still in your eyes. You sure you're okay?"

"Worry not, Josephine. I merely came to see you, and found I could not bear to interrupt when you seemed so content."

"You," she began, pecking him on the lips. "Can interrupt me anytime. Even if I seem content."