18 / 5 /16 ~ In which Eleanor and company voluntarily get lost in a creepy, ancient, sentient forest.

Disclaimer: "The Lord of the Rings" is the property of J. R. R. Tolkien. I only claim ownership over Eleanor Dace, Rávamë (aka "Tink"), and the subsequent plot of their story.

A/N: Ok guys, short starting authors note this time around because I kid you not when I say I am SHATTERED and am literally about to fall asleep with my face on my keyboard. I know it's been a terribly long wait for this update, but I had good reason which I will go into at the end of the chapter. In the mean time, as always, a high thank you to:

Jimmy10.0, Imamc, thesonicsmiley, N7SpaceHamster, Lacrea Moonlight, tyrantOFathens, EdenMae, katnor, MintBonBon, LittleApollyon, AranelReallan, Whimsical Acumen, amroush, K.Y.1234, Shingingheart of ThunderClan, ConstantlyMuchinOnApples, Sharn-sharn, Marie, NeoMulder, Lucinda Silver, beelovi, wickedgrl123, ella, writingaworldofmyown, bimbumel, wtm, Shieldprotector, Nevermore186, AshleyMarieD, TulcaRau, jada951, Luna Murphy, crlor, Draggu, oddiewalk, CassBerry, Samij505, and guests for all the wonderful and endless support despite the long wait. You all seriously rock.

Now, without further waffling from me, here's hoping you enjoy the update, and aren't too annoyed that it took me so long to get it to you. xxx

Part I : Chapter 4

- The Trees Have Eyes -

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me."

— Psalms 23 (my Grandad's favourite passage)

"Alright, I'm not trying to be funny," I said quietly, my voice echoing eerily back at me through the claustrophobic gloom. "But I swear, we've passed that same tree at least three times already."

Gimli — who had been all but riding the backs of my feet since we entered this forest — followed my gaze to the looming, gnarled mountain ash, its branches resembling some monster's grasping claws reaching down at us.

"Because we have! We're going in circles," Gimli grumbled, head twitching and grip on his axe tightening as his own voice echoed back at him through the trees. The sound resonated weirdly, like we were walking through the bowels of a cave rather than a rapidly darkening forest. At some point during our trek, he'd taken the weapon off his back and now held it at the ready across his chest, presumably just in case something ugly decided to spring a surprise attack on us without warning.

A wise if slightly paranoid plan, I'd thought. So I'd done likewise, taking out my hunting knife and holding it in a relaxed but carful reverse-guard at my side.

"That, or the trees are moving whenever we have our backs turned," I suggested, trying to sound light-heartedly casual.

I failed spectacularly. Aragorn and Legolas, who had been stoically leading the way once again, actually paused in their steps to look around with nerve-sharpened eyes, and Gimli all but turned to a statue beside me with tension, his axe at the ready. I had to close my eyes to keep from instinctively rolling them.

"A joke, guys. That was a joke."

'I hope…' I thought, peering cautiously up at the branches, swaying and creaking in the wind above our heads.

The canopy was too thick for the breeze to reach us down on the forest floor, and as a result, the further we ventured into Fangorn in search of Merry and Pippin, the more the entire creepy wood seemed to close in around us. How in hell we were supposed to find two Hobbits in here I had no idea, but I'd spent the past four hours of our walk suppressing the urge to climb a tree right to the top, just to get one gulp of fresh air.

Anything to escape the growing feel of claustrophobia none of us — not even Legolas and his obvious love of enclosed forests — seemed able to escape in this place.

"The air is so close in here," Boromir murmured quietly, mostly to himself from where he once again brought up the back of our single file convoy — though keeping noticeably less distance from me than he had out on the grass planes. "It seems to all but shrink in around us."

"This forest is old, very old. It is but only a remnant of a much larger forest that must have once stretched as far as the western coasts. Yet, even now, it is still teeming with lingering memories, and anger," Leglolas murmured just ahead of me, his hand lingering almost reverently on the bark of a particularly gnarled cedar as we passed it. A sad expression crossed his face, leaking into his voice. "It is strange, something of it reminds me greatly of Northern Mirkwood, as is used to be."

I had to admit, the all too familiar ache of homesickness was probably among the last things I expected to hear in his voice right then — creepy sentient forest and all — but I'd know that sound anywhere. I'd been living it every day for the past three years.

"Mirkwood used to be like this?" I asked curiously, tearing my gaze from the shaded forest to look at him. He was silent and still for a moment, then exhaled in a long sigh and nodded.

"Once, a long time ago."

Legolas had told me of his original home in the Northern Greenwood — more commonly known as Mirkwood — when we'd been training in Lothlórien together, but only a little. Anything beyond plain old facts and repeated histories, anything that seemed to touch on the home he'd left behind, had seemed a somewhat over-sensitive subject, at least for now. So when he'd evaded my occasional questions about it, I hadn't pushed. It had seemed only right when he'd extended the same courtesy to me — always curious to know more, but never pushing me if I wasn't ready to answer.

Still, I couldn't help but wonder. If Mirkwood had once been like this, what made it that way? And what was it like now?

Pushing the thought aside for a time with less haunted forests, I kept close beside him as we continued behind Aragorn who, as far as I'd gathered, was still following the invisible trail Merry and Pippin had left that only he could see.

It wasn't that I didn't trust Aragorn's mad skills as a tracker — and trust me, they were mad — but it was getting darker with ever passing minute. Pretty soon, the sun would be setting, and with the treetops as thick as they were, we'd have no light from the stars or moon to guide the way, and no mounts to escape on if our 'Hobbit hunting' plan went sideways. The horses had been about as amiable to the idea of coming into Fangorn as I did to getting a voluntary root-canal, and I couldn't blame them. They'd bucked and whinnied so much that we'd been forced to leave them behind at the forest's edge, halfheartedly hoping that they would be smart enough to wait for us to come back.

If we even made it back out, that is.

Aragorn's pace suddenly sped up, and the four of us quickened to keep up with him as he lead us into a comparatively clear area, then slowed to a stop.

"What is it?" Boromir spoke up again in anticipation, sounding suddenly very close behind me. "Are they here?"

Aragorn paused, then moved a hand down over the side of a tree trunk, which upon closer inspection had several deep gouges in it. They looked like they'd been made by the edge of a blade, or possibly claws.

"I very much hope not," he answered grimly, eyes drifting down to the thickets and leaves skirting the base of the trees. Some of them were freshly broken, and coated with a worryingly familiar substance, so dark it was closer to black than red. "These were not made by any animal."

Gimli stepped past me for a closer look. Then, honest to goodness, he reached out a gloved hand, dipped a finger into the thick dark liquid coating the broken branches, and tasted it.

"Orc blood," he announced, pulling a revolted face and then unceremoniously spitting the blood out onto the ground.

"Please tell me you didn't really just put that in your mouth," I said, staring at him and feeling my own face contort in disgust.

"And spat it out, you'll notice, lass," Gimli answered with a defensive look. I kept my totally justifiable look of revulsion and just shook my head at him.

"Seriously, any of do that again, and I'm force-feeding you an emetic, just in case."

"I doubt the trees would appreciate having their roots graced with man or dwarf vomit," Legolas commented dryly.

"Or elf vomit. That goes for you too, your highness."

"Noted," he responded with the barest hint of a smile, but it faded as he turned to stoop close to Aragorn — who was still scrutinising the marks and tracks. None of us were in any mood to try and hold an optimistic facade right now. "Any sign of them?"

Aragorn pursed his lips in a dubious look, but nodded.

"Yes, but the trail has long since deteriorated," he said quietly, obviously unhappy with the answer. He touched a hand to the ground before a track I hadn't even noticed before. "This does not make sense. There is no way they could have come this far quickly enough for their trail to have become this cold. Something must have found them."

"Orcs?" Gimli voiced all our fears, but Aragorn shook his head.

"If the orcs had found them, we would know by now. All we can do is follow, and hope that whatever has found them is at least uninterested in them as food, and that we can move fast enough to catch up. Come."

He stood up and marched headlong back into the trees, his head down, searching for more tracks. We all followed without a second thought, falling back into the same single-file formation we'd held before, though sticking even closer than before.

The more we walked, the more the trees seemed to close in around us, and the denser the air seemed to get, until it felt like a weight on all of us. Time didn't seem to follow the same rules as the rest of the world in this forest — so I wasn't sure if it was about five minutes or five hours later that I heard it…

Music.

A wordless song, lilting and quiet as a lullaby, drifting towards us on the thick air from not far off.

At first I thought it was just the breeze whistling through the leaves and branches overhead, playing tricks with my mind. But when I looked up, nothing moved.

The song grew a little louder, and my pace behind Legolas slowed as I rubbernecked around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. It was getting clearer by the second, and I recognised the sound of someone singing. A woman, I thought. A quiet voice, softly humming a hauntingly beautiful tune, somewhere nearby through the trees.

A tune that, though I knew I'd never heard before, sounded unsettlingly familiar.

"Where's that coming from?" I heard myself ask, the sound startlingly sharp against the softer echo of the singing.

Aragorn slowed just long enough to peer over his shoulder at me.

"Where is what coming from?"

"That sound."

"Sound?" Gimli parroted, his thick eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"Someone singing," I said, still looking around for the source. When no one answered me, I stopped and looked around at my four companions, only to be met with four utterly blank stares. My insides squirmed a little. "You… don't hear that?"

"Eleanor," Legolas said seriously, "I hear nothing."

"You sure you're feeling alright, lass?" Gimli added, trying to sound jovial, but it just came out sounding ill. I looked between them both and Aragorn, who was eyeing me with masked concern.

"I could have sworn I…" I trailed off, looking away in the direction I'd heard the voice singing. It had faded to silence, but I could still recall the tune perfectly, replaying it in my mind, like one of those annoying 90s pop songs that get stuck in your head after hearing them just once. "I… must have imagined it."

However, something deep in my gut knew I hadn't.

'Tink? You could hear that, right?' I whispered silently, somehow feeling that even inside my own mind it would be a wise idea to keep quiet.

'I heard it,' she answered softly, her own confusion and unease mirroring my own as she appeared at the back of my mind. 'Is it just me, or did it sound… familiar?'

I didn't need to answer her. She knew it had, and to both of us no less — which actually unsettled me a lot more than hearing that strange disembodied voice singing at us through the trees. Now I was hearing spookily familiar voices outside my own head as well as inside.

Just what I needed.

"This accursed forest will be the death of us, if it doesn't drive us all to madness first," Boromir growled from somewhere behind me, and I once again had to fight the urge to tense at the hostile sound, even though I knew it wasn't directed at me.

Hearing voices in a creepy forest was bad enough, but whatever it was that was lingering between Boromir and I, it was starting to make my skin crawl every time he spoke.

It had to stop.

A low, creaking groan suddenly shuddered up two of the huge poplar trees either side of us, their trunks and branches shifting together of their own accord, bending down over us like grasping limbs. I almost jumped out of my skin when one small branch brushed against the back of my head, and Gimli jerked into an instant defensive stance, the haft of his axe coming up as he whirled on the spot.

"Gimli," Aragorn hissed at him with a sharp hand gesture, glancing up at the animate trees. "Lower your axe!"

Gimli gave Aragorn an incredulous look.

"They are only speaking to each other, my friend. You would not wish to offend them," Legolas told him seriously as he eyed the axe blade, but I could hear the faint teasing note in his voice. Gimli sent the elf a dark look, but did as advised and reluctantly lowered his weapon.

"Offended trees," he grumbled, stomping quickly ahead after Aragorn. "By Mahal's hammer, what would trees have to be offended about anyway? Besides having their branches soiled with squirrel droppings."

Using his stung dignity as a distraction, I let him pass ahead of me without trying to catch up. Legolas had started speaking in low tones about ancient trees and forests becoming more alive the more they aged. I even heard him mention some of them growing sentient enough to communicate and defend themselves from attack, thanks to the guidance of creatures called "Ents" — some kind of fabled 'forest shepherd' apparently — living among them. Curious as I was to hear more, I didn't hurry to catch up with them. Instead, I deliberately slowed, listening closely to Boromir's footsteps gradually slowing behind me, just as he had when we'd been running.

Only this time — when we were both far enough from Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas that I was sure they wouldn't be listening closely — I stopped, and spun to face him.

Boromir froze in his tracks, his tired blue eyes that only milliseconds before had been fixed on the back of my neck now locked on my face. Something like alarmed surprise crossed his expression for a fraction of a second, but it was quickly covered by the flat, stony look he'd worn before. The same one he'd been giving me ever since I'd woken up.

I hadn't gone into this with a plan of what to say, so I decided I might as well be blunt.

Very blunt.

"Alright, I give up," I said, purposefully keeping my voice quiet enough that the others wouldn't overhear. "Who are you, and what have you done with Boromir, son of Denethor?"

Boromir just stared at me, his hard expression held carefully in check.

"Pardon?"

I took an experimental step forward towards him, and I saw his shoulders tense slightly. Bloody hell, just how tightly was he wound?

"You have said a grand total of zero words to me since I woke up," I answered plainly, deciding it was better to stay where I was. "You've been practically burning holes in the back of my head for the past day, and the last time we exchanged any words you were halfway into a shallow grave, and I wasn't far behind. I can understand trauma. Hell, the fact that we're both still standing freaks me out too. But whatever else is wrong here, I think we need to at least have a serious talk about it, right now."

A heavy silence fell between us, and I felt my resolve wavering under the intensity of Boromir's stare, his normally kind blue eyes hardened over with unfamiliar ice. He shook his head, his jaw tightening very obviously.

"I do not know what you are talking about," he said, his voice halfway between a whisper and a growl. "There is nothing for us to speak of. Not between us."

Despite everything, his words stung more than I'd been expecting. I didn't try and stop him as he strode past me to catch up to the others, but I did turn and fall into step beside him, refusing to let him try and outpace me. He obviously wanted badly to be away from me, but I still needed to understand why.

"What happened to you?" I asked, my voice coming out softer than I'd intended. The memory of clutching Boromir's hand as he bled out on the forest floor at Amon Hen came back all too vividly — seeing unfamiliar images pass before my eyes that I knew where not mine to see. I swallowed nervously at the thought, and continued. "When I was healing you, I saw… something. Things that didn't make any sense to me, that I don't think I was supposed to see. And from the way you're acting right now, I'm guessing I'm not the only one who saw something strange."

"I saw nothing," he lied without hesitating, still not looking at me.

I stopped abruptly in my tracks, my hand coming out to lightly touch his upper arm. I didn't grab him — one simply does not go grabbing seasoned warriors by the arm if one wants to keep ones limbs where they are, but it was enough to make him flinch to a stop. He turned to face me, and if I hadn't been more bewildered than intimidated by his behaviour, his expression right then might have frightened me.

Instead, I took a deep breath, and tried to smile at him, like I'd effortlessly used to just a few weeks ago.

"Boromir, please," I said with all the sincerity I had. "It's me. You can trust me."

I really expected him to shrug me off, or maybe even push me away, but he just stood there looking at me. For a tiny moment as he held my gaze, barely half a second if even that, his hardened mask wavered slightly, and he suddenly looked truly exhausted, a whole lot confused, and even more afraid. Then he shook his head, clenched his teeth, and the hard-eyed Boromir I didn't recognise was back again. He looked away from me towards the others who had slowed ahead of us as Aragorn crouched to study some more tracks in the dirt.

His expression shifted again, then he asked in a dangerously soft voice, "Why did you do it?"

I blinked.

"Do what?"

"Save me," he said, the words coming out harsh and bitter. "You almost killed yourself to keep me… tethered here. Why?"

I looked up at him incredulously, unsure of whether I was more baffled by his question, his choice of words, or the fact that he looked so utterly tormented by them both.

"Is that what this is about?"

A sudden, totally unfamiliar look of frustrated anger warped his handsome features into something frightening, but before I could take an unconscious step back, it was gone.

"Just—," he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, as if warding off a migraine. "Just answer the question, please."

I let my hand drop to my side again and thought about it very carefully.

It wasn't one that I had a simple, rational answer to — because it hadn't been a rational decision. In that moment, I'd been frantically searching the Amon Hen camp for any sign of the Hobbits, and as I'd heard the Horn of Gondor, I just knew that if I did anything other than try to save him, I'd never be able to forgive myself. Looking back on it now, I wasn't sure I'd even believed that I really could save him. I'd probably believed somewhere deep down that I was running towards my own death, as well as his, but even then it hadn't mattered.

It had never mattered.

The only thing that had was his life, and doing everything I could to save it.

However, there was no way I could condense all that into simple words I knew he wanted, needed to hear. So instead, I gave him the most honest reply I could find.

"Because… I knew there was a chance I could keep you alive. A tiny one, maybe, but still a chance," I told him in a very small voice that sounded quiet even to me. My eyes flickered over the faint pink scar that was just visible over his torn tunic — the arrow wound I'd healed at the cost of my own body's strength and a chunk of Tink's too. I felt my jaw set in resolve as I met his gaze again. "And because it was the right thing to do… because you didn't deserve to die."

Boromir just stared at me for what felt like hours, but couldn't have been more than seconds.

His face was utterly blank, but behind the mask, I could see the storm raging. His blue eyes burned with such a torrential mix of emotions I could hardly even begin to list them.

Frustration, anger, sadness, confusion, outrage, grief, distrust, pain, and most of all, lingering, gut-wrenching guilt. That last one made my heart clench, wishing badly that whatever was wrong between us would just go away so I could clasp his hand, tell him that Frodo and Sam would be ok, and that we'd get Merry and Pippin back, no matter what.

That none of this was his fault, or mine.

If only.

He turned away from me and looked out into the trees, the tired shadows on his face making him look ten years older.

"You shouldn't have," he told me tonelessly. "You should not have done what you did."

I just looked at up him in incomprehension.

"Why?"

"I did not—. I don't deserve it," he said firmly, his voice still unnervingly deadened and face still unsettlingly blank. "You were wrong. I do not deserve to be alive now as I am."

He started to walk away again.

Anger — unfamiliar, strong, and sudden — spiked through me as my frustration broke past my better sense. Before I could realise what my body was doing, my hand shot out again, bruised fingers latching onto his forearm just below the elbow, an alien snarl on my mouth.

"Why the hell not?!" I demanded, never raising my voice, but the words coming out one step below a growl. "Give me one bloody good reason I should have sat there and let you die when I swore to keep all of you in this damned Fellowship breathing as long as I could. Why the hell is your life suddenly less valuable, less worth saving, all because you—"

Boromir spun, almost too fast for me to react to, his big hand coming up and grabbed my arm by the wrist in a grip so tight I felt the delicate bones of my wrist creak. I froze and looked up to find his face had suddenly gone from hauntingly blank, almost dead, to abruptly, blood-chilling savage — his lip pulled back in a snarl.

He didn't look angry or tormented. He looked one step shy of mad.

"Because it was wrong, Eleanor!" He bit out, shaking my arm hard. "What you did, whatever you are, is wrong!"

Fear, sudden and fierce, and frighteningly familiar to when the Uruk-hai's skin had suddenly caught fire at my — or rather, Tink's — command surged up inside me. I could already feel the bruises forming where his fingers still gripped my arm, but that paled in comparison to the look on his face. I had to work hard not to try and jerk away, or worse, go for one of the knives I'd hidden under my tunic.

"Boromir," I said gently, using the same tone most people would when dealing with a feral dog, though there was an unfamiliarly cold edge in it I hadn't expected. "Let go, please. You're hurting me."

For a horribly long second, he didn't move. His throat working and his eyes still wide as he looked down at me — though mercifully less deranged than before.

Even so, he didn't release my arm.

An uncomfortably intense rush of heat surged up through my body and head with the sudden release of adrenaline, and without warning, my eyes suddenly pulsed with a sharp, burning sensation.

Then they sharpened into a razor-like focus, the forest blurring into a mass of colours, and the tiniest details of Boromir's face suddenly becoming impossibly clear.

Were I not rooted to the spot with shock and fear, I would have jumped. Whatever had just happened, it had done something frightening dramatic to my eyesight — something not even my elf eyes in all their focused clarity compared to. I could suddenly see the beads of sweat forming on his brow, the constricting and dilating of his pupils, and quickening throb of his pulse point at the side of his throat — which my still stinging eyes seemed almost magnetically drawn to.

Boromir went abruptly pale, his hand still on my arm, and I watched as what little colour there was instantly drained out of his face.

He let go of me and took an unconscious step back, the fingers of his right hand flexing in an unconscious grasping motion towards his left hip. It was a small motion, almost unnoticeable unless you were looking for it, but it was one I only recognised from when we'd trained together — right before he went for his sword.

I froze on the spot like a rabbit trapped in headlights, blinking rapidly as my super-sharp vision abruptly died away. The look on my face must have changed too, because he froze as well. Unfortunately, it wasn't a good change. Instead of anger, or near-crazed confusion, he now had a look on his face that I imagine men in the Middle Ages once wore when they were convinced they were looking upon a witch.

He quickly backed away from me, and I wasn't entirely sure he knew he was doing it.

"What I did — the Ring, Frodo — and then what you did to keep me… It was wrong, unnatural. I should not have survived. Neither of us should have," he said softly, tiredly, and bizarrely more like himself than anything he'd said these last few days. He looked at me, looked over my shoulder at where I supposed the others were still lingering, and shook his head. "By all that is right and just in this world, we should have both died on that hill."

A pain that had nothing to do with fear or anger appeared in my chest — dull, and aching, and refusing to lessen.

I didn't say anything back. I didn't know what there was to say to that.

For a good few seconds I didn't move. Not even as he passed me, being carful not to touch me as he did. Only when I heard Aragorn calling to us both, and I turned to find him, Legolas and Gimli all watching us with mixed expressions of concern and caution, did I finally move. Legolas in particular was looking at us with an unsettling intense look in his eyes, and clearly working hard to hold a neutral expression in place.

I fell back into hesitant step behind Boromir as we caught up, and the gap between us two only seemed to grow wider, even though we walked almost side by side again.

I didn't speak again as the forest went dark around us all, and neither did he.

I still didn't fully understand why he was acting like this — whatever precisely this was — or what exactly it was that he'd seen to spark it off, but I had seen more than enough in his face when he'd grabbed me. Something about what I had done — the fact that we'd both survived when it was so clear the odds had been stacked high against us — was consuming him, twisting him up under the mask.

Something more than just the guilt at trying to take the Ring from Frodo.

And I had the horrible, twisting feeling deep in my gut that if he didn't say exactly what it was that was eating him alive inside, I was going find out in a far less pleasant way than in words.

It was almost completely dark when I finally looked over at him again, the last of the sunlight dying over the treetops, and I noticed something. In his current state, despite it being far better than I'd expected, I knew he was a still too weak to carry heavy weapons and armour — the both of us were really.

Even so, I couldn't help but ask, I needed to ask…

"Boromir, where is your shield?"

He didn't look at me, but I saw his expression tighten.

"We had to leave a great deal behind to pursue the Uruk-hai on foot," he answered curtly, not even slowing his pace. I hesitated with my words again, watching his face carefully in the dark.

"And… and the horn of Gondor?"

His steps faltered, only for a moment, but he didn't look back at me through the lingering silence that followed.

He hesitated for what felt like a long minute, but then he spoke, very softly.

"I no longer have the right to bear that mantle."

Abruptly, he lengthened his stride again, leaving me behind on the path to catch up on my own. It wasn't exactly an answer I needed to start making sense of this, not even close, but I knew it was the nearest to one I was going to get from him.

At least for now.

~ / ~ / ~ / ~

We rested in the open that night, and I couldn't decide which was more uncomfortable — the roots poking into my sides, the cold damp air, or the lingering silence that had fallen over us.

I wasn't sure how much of Boromir's and my conversation the others had overheard, but it was obvious they'd heard enough to give us both some much needed space. Aragorn was too busy leading the tracking to be concerned with me, and neither Legolas or Gimli asked me about it, though they both gave me looks of open concern that said they'd listen if I wanted to talk.

I didn't. Not yet.

We risked a small fire in the centre of the clearing Aragorn chose for the camp that night — still sheltered by the branches, but far enough away from the trees for Gimli to stop clinging to his axe like a safety blanket. It was barely big enough for us all to warm ourselves around it, and yet Boromir still managed to maintain at least a blade length's distance from me.

I pretended not to care. Instead, I made myself focus on anything other than the memory of our talk earlier, trying to block out the hurt, confusion, and fear that still lingered like a weight in my chest.

Turns out, Aragorn had broken two toes with that penalty kick he'd performed on the Uruk-hai's head. I spent a good fifteen minutes setting and bandaging them enough so they wouldn't heal crooked, and by the time I was done, Gimli and Boromir were both starting to slip into reluctant, exhausted sleep. Even Legolas was looking a bit worn down, his grey-blue eyes a little unfocused. When I'd offered to take the first watch, however, he and Aragorn both flat out refused.

"You are still not at your full strength yet. You need as much rest as you can get if you are to keep pace with us tomorrow," Aragorn had said plainly, but not accusingly.

I hadn't even tried to argue.

Not even when a weary looking Legolas took the first hour's watch, his back to us, and his bow held across his lap as he stared out into the trees. I just settled down on my side on the moss covered ground as Aragorn settled down, purposefully putting himself between me and where Boromir was already unconscious.

He didn't say a word to me, but gave me a loaded, meaningful look. A look that said he knew exactly how much my short conversation with Boromir had unsettled me, made me unwilling to turn my back to him. He knew, and he wanted me to know I was safe, so I gave him a weak smile and nod, an affirmation that I was ok, at least enough for him to relax.

He eyed me for a moment, a mix of scepticism and wariness in his face — then he returned the nod, lying down and shutting his eyes for some much needed rest.

I felt bad for the little sigh of relief that escaped me at having him between Boromir and me, but not enough to do anything about it.

I followed his example, curling up on my side a few feet away, though sleeping was the last thing I really felt like doing right now. A dull, throbbing stress ache had appeared in my head shortly after our conversation, and refused to go away. Even when I turned away from the warm fire to face the cool, darkened forest, my closed eyes still pulsed with unrelenting pain that made my head feel hot.

'Try lying on your side, and putting your temple against the grass,' Tink's voice echoed inside my head, gentler and softer than I was used to hearing.

With nothing else to try, and I did as she suggested, and the cool damp of the earth was like a balm to my feverish head, the heat and pain draining away like water into the ground. I almost groaned aloud from the sudden relief.

'Thank you,' I said sincerely through our mental bond, allowing a tiny smile onto my face.

I felt her smile too, as if it were a part of my own, but also felt the tinge of unsettled concern in it too.

'Do you… do want to talk about it?' she asked tentatively.

I knew immediately what — or rather, who — she was really referring to.

As if alerted by my thoughts, Boromir made a quiet noise of discomfort in his sleep, and I instinctively curled a little tighter, pressing more of my aching head against the grass. I knew there was a lot more that he wasn't, or perhaps couldn't, put into words about what was wrong between us. I hadn't exactly expected our talk to go swimmingly after everything that had been going on between us, but I hadn't expected for it to be quite that bad. For him to be so… vicious.

The memory of the tone he'd used when he'd said "what you are" sent an icy shiver running up and down my back, and I curled in on myself even tighter.

"What I was?" I mouthed silently.

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

The echoing memory of everything he had said continued to me send unfamiliar lances of cold fear and sadness through me, and my head began to throb again.

'Boss?' Tink's voice chimed in my head again, more worry leaking into her tone. I exhaled in a long, tired sigh.

'I do want to talk, Tink. Just—. Just not right now. Ok?' I answered her softly.

I felt more than heard her hesitation, almost as if she was shifting from foot to foot, wringing her hands as she searched for the words to say something else.

'I think we…' she began, then trailed off. I don't know why, but I got the distinct feeling she was deliberately reigning herself, forcing herself to hold back from putting too much pressure on me, to the detriment of her own curiosity. 'Ok. Whenever you're ready, boss.'

I felt her begin to slip back into the vaults of my mind, but I called her back before she vanished.

'Tink? Is something wrong?'

A pause, just a second too long.

'No. It's ok, it's nothing,' she answered, paused again, and added, 'Aragorn was right, you need rest. It can wait, Eleanor, really.'

With that, she was gone again, and I was alone with my thoughts, the cool grass against my cheek, and the steady, dull throb of my lingering headache.

~ / ~ / ~ / ~

I couldn't actually remember falling asleep. I must have done at some point, though, because the next thing I knew, the smell of worn leather, metal polish, and pipe smoke was filling my nose, and I was being shaken roughly awake by a large, dwarven hand.

"Lass! Lass, wake up!" Gimli's low voice hissed through my sleeping head as he shook me by the shoulder. In an instant, I was wide awake, panic jolting me sharply back into reality and my sleepy eyes coming back into focus.

I couldn't have been out for more than an hour or two; the fire to my left was still glowing with dying embers, and the forest was still pitch dark. Boromir was awake and getting to his feet, still a little bleary-eyed, but otherwise ok. Aragorn and Legolas, on the other hand, both looked as if they hadn't had so much as a wink of sleep all night, the both of them looking out into the dark, eyes hard and wary, and their shoulders tight with tension.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

"What is it?" I whispered at Legolas, too quiet for Gimli or the two Men to hear. He barely moved, only a tiny twitch of his head in my direction to indicate he'd heard me.

"I do not know," he answered just as quietly, and it was only then I noticed he had an arrow nocked. "There is something out there—"

Beside him, Aragorn hadn't gone as far as to ready his weapon for a fight, but his hand was placed very deliberately on the hilt of his sword.

"Something is coming this way. Be ready," he ordered, not wasting any effort on sugar coating it. Not that any of us cared. The last word was barely out of his mouth before Gimli already had one of his smaller battle axes at the ready, Boromir his sword halfway out of its sheath, and I one of my throwing knives palmed and ready to fling at a second's notice.

None of us dared to move a muscle for fear of making more noise as Aragorn leaned close enough to whisper to Legolas, slipping seamlessly into Sindarin I easily translated.

"What can you hear?"

Legolas didn't respond for what felt like forever, barely seeming to breathe, and I knew he was focusing all his attention on listening for footfalls through the dark.

When he finally did move again, his entire form went rigid from head to foot.

"The White Wizard approaching," he answered in the common tongue, just loud enough for us all to hear.

If the name all on its own — and the knowledge of whom it belonged to — wasn't enough to make my skin crawl with dread, the hardened tone with which Legolas said it would have been more than enough. I had no idea how he was able to tell who it was coming for us by the sound alone, but I trusted him enough to believe him when he said it.

The White Wizard. It was Saruman.

'We are in very deep trouble.'

"Do not let him speak, he will try to overpower your mind," Aragorn commanded us all, his voice now barely louder than a breath.

'He can sodding well try,' Tink snarled inside my head, her anger mixing with my fear, setting my nerves aflame with the urge to either flee, or fight, or both.

I saw Aragorn's eyes flick to Boromir for a split second and he gave a short, sharp nod to the half-sheathed sword at his side. Boromir responded by very slowly, and carefully taking hold of the pommel and pulling the blade free, holding it in close to his side at the ready in a low guard. I saw Legolas's fingers curl slowly around the end of his nocked arrow, and beside me, heard the wood of Gimli's axe haft creaking beneath his white-knuckled grip.

The little throwing knife in my palm suddenly felt very small and insignificant, but it was better than nothing. I gripped it hard enough to hurt as the tingling feeling of someone coming closer shivered up my spine, ready to reach for any of the half dozen others I had hidden in my tunic the second it was out of my hand.

I couldn't tell which direction the wizard was coming from, but I could feel he was almost upon us…

"We must be quick," Aragorn breathed, and I saw his grey eyes flicker once very deliberately to the left, and we all saw it, and knew what it meant.

A mere moment later, there was a crunch of leaves under an unhidden footfall from our left, and every one of us spun in a single unison blur of motion.

It all happened in less than three seconds.

With all my strength, I flung my knife in a backhanded throw at the exact same moment Legolas released his shot, using the momentum of the spin to aim and fire at the pale figure that hadn't even left the tree line.

A white staff came up, and a blast of blinding white light flared, effortlessly deflecting Legolas' arrow and my little knife, and searing both our retinas at the same time. I screamed, both my hands coming up to cover my face, and somewhere to my right I heard Legolas cry out in pain too. Gimli flung his axe with a furious shout of effort, and I heard the blade shatter against whatever blazing white shield the wizard had conjured. I couldn't see what happened to Boromir and Aragorn, still half blind from the light — but from the hissing sound, their sudden cries of pain, and the sudden scent of scolded skin, I guessed the wizard must have heated their blades until they were forced to drop them.

The sound of metal clattering to the ground was the last sound I heard before a terrible silence fell over us all. I tried to open my eyes, but the light was so bright I could barely make out Legolas and Aragorn two feet away, trying to shield their own eyes against the eye-scorching light.

"You are tracking the footsteps of two young Hobbits," a voice, deep and resonating with what sounded like a dozen unfamiliar echoes spoke in a firm, unquestioning tone — and though I knew it was the wizard speaking, the sound seemed to come from every direction at once.

Using my hand to half-shield my watering eyes I saw Boromir go tense with pain and fury, unable to look directly at the light either, no matter how much he and Aragorn both tried.

"Where are they?" Aragorn demanded in an equally enraged snarl.

"They passed this way the day before yesterday," the voice, still a barrage of echo from every direction, took on an amused note, as if smiling behind the inferno shielding him from view. "They met someone they did not expect to see. Does that comfort you?"

Aragorn snapped.

Heedless of his eyes and their pain, I watched as he ground his teeth in rage, and forced himself — completely weaponless — to look directly into that blazing light that was all but blinding the rest of us into helplessness.

"Who are you?" he shouted, his own voice thundering around the clearing in almost the same way the white wizard's had. "Show your face!"

And just like that, the blinding light began to fade away. It didn't disappear, not entirely, but rather it shifted its focus, like a spotlight being aimed so it was no longer shining directly into your face. The pain of it dimmed, and slowly, my eyes regained their ability to see again as the forest and my shell-shocked companions came back into focus—

Along with the face of the White Wizard before us…

And it wasn't Saruman.

My mouth fell open the moment I saw him. I tried to speak, but no sound came. Not even Tink, though I felt her right below the surface of my consciousness, could form a single, wiseass word.

The second knife I'd pulled from my sleeve slipped from my fingers, and fell point down into the ground by my feet as Boromir, wide-eyed and pale as a sheet, croaked out three words.

"It cannot be…"

A/N: Whew, I'm glad that creepiness is over and done with. I'll give you three guesses who it is that's just appeared to them in a flash of light like David Bowie — though if you've read the books or seen the films, you guys should really already know :)

Either way, I do hope you enjoyed it, and thank you for being so patient during the long wait. I don't normally share things like this online, but since you have all been so supportive these past two months, and this is rather important to me, I wanted to share with you the reason for the delay:

I want to dedicate this chapter to my wonderful Grandad, who I'm deeply sad to say passed away last month after a long struggle with diabetes, and numerous chest infections. He was grouchy, loveable, hard of hearing, opinionated, loved telling stories (the wilder the better), thought Wales was the best place on God's earth, and I love and miss him very much. But, much like our favourite White Wizard, I know I'll see him again someday — so in the mean time, I have every intention of continuing the family tradition of telling wildly exaggerated stories. The wilder the better.

Until next time, much love and thanks to all you guys,

~Rella x