12 / 11 / 17 ~ In which Eleanor tells the truth…

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: What's this? An update? After seven months? You mean Rella's not dead and buried with her copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare after all? (And yes, I do own a hardback copy of Bill Shakespeare's entire works because I'm cool like that.)

No, ladies and gents, no she's certainly not dead. Though she doesn't blame you at all for thinking so. May to November is a bloody long time to hang off the edge of a cliff, and for that, you have my sincere apology. However, the wait comes with good reason, besides my real life work getting in the way. I'm not kidding when I say was the hardest chapter I've written to date. It literally took me six months to get right in between bouts of crippling writers block and work dramas, and even now I'm still not quite happy with it. Probably never will be totally happy with it, now that I think about it. Out of all the chapters of RB I've written so far, this is probably the top contender for a re-write someday.

So, if any of you sharper critics are wondering why this chapter seems a bit of a hot mess, that's why!

But needs must, and much like the rest of you, I'm sick of being stuck in this spot and really want to get on with the rest of the story so E and L can finally get that damned first kiss without being interrupted again! But despite all that, I do hope you enjoy the fruits of my labours. So lets get on with it!

A planet sized thank you to: flames and roses, mk0008, iloveturnip, The Dramatic Muffin, Whimsical Acumen, silverwolfwarrior13, RozenMaiden14, moonylxpins, ksecc1, Arwan, REMdream, IntrovertedBookworm98, Hana-Lizzie-Chan, LilactheDryad, Jamonkey32, N7SpaceHamster, Imamc, AndruilofTolkien, Says-the-Slytherin, The Lupine Sojourner, tyrantOFathens, K.Y.1234, Jofrench22, Eredil, jissymilissy, Katia0203, only-one-mirkwood-princess, FantasyAddictions, Rebel-Keiki, Quicksilver Spy, Lil Miss Sunshine14, BoltonBornRocker, SesshomaruLovexThranduil, Call Me Bessie, lacomtessa, NeoMulder, SmokeGetsInYourEyes, Fictional Quintessence, YumikoWantsCake, Sutoka-chan, SilentSilverSpirit, Ely-chan, Corii00, AcquisitiveMargo, Concha G, Bella47, PadfootFanatic, Jenny, Lotr4life20, Estel Ashlee Snape, Kirgy5040yahoo, La petit Maraudeuse, LadyVivianeNight, chrwe, thethreebirds, firerosedreamer67, person2309, Cedarlight, Evilhyperpixie13, xElisabeth, My Lady Lavender, ZentangledFox15, pineapple-pancake, Letheliah, Snickerdoodle97, IY Geek Gal, Ella, Meistar, and guests for sticking with me in the reviews section during this long wait. You continue to amaze me with your love of Eleanor, Tink and their ongoing story. I hope I, and this update, deserve your dedication. :)

Enjoy x

Part I : Chapter 11

- The Road Behind... -

"Any fool can know. The point is to understand." ― Albert Einstein

The walk back to the barracks was done in perfect, terrible silence.

Even the soldier — who was being frogmarched by Gimli as far from me as possible — didn't dare even complain at his wounds. He did send me the occasional look that mixed stung pride, anger and fear over his shoulder in between Gimli ordering him to keep moving, though.

I didn't return the looks.

If there was a manual on the proper etiquette of treating someone you'd just come close to murdering after they'd tried to force themselves you, I hadn't read it, and had no desire to. Unless it involved burying them in a shallow grave.

Legolas all but carried me on his side all the way to the barracks, into a mercifully empty side chamber, and helped me collapse onto one of the benches. He'd tried planting himself between me and Boromir when he and Aragorn followed us in, but Aragorn told him to wait with Boromir outside and make sure he didn't try to run.

Legolas didn't protest, though I could tell from one look at his face that he didn't want to leave. Even so, it was clear that he wanted Boromir near me even less, so he gave my hand a gentle squeeze and obeyed.

I remained the next best thing to catatonic after that, arms coiled around myself as the others began calling for a healer to see to me, and calling Háma's guards to see to my first attacker, whom Gimli shoved so hard into a chair on the opposite side of the room that it almost went over backwards. I just sat there in silence while an elderly female healer appeared and began fussing over my injuries, unable to look at anyone as I listened to Gimli "gently coax" an honest account of what had happened in the alley out of the soldier.

The now very sober young man tried to flat out lie at first. I didn't see the looks on Aragorn's or Gimli's faces with their backs to me, or heard what they whispered to him, but he's taken one a look up at them both and turned an unhealthy shade of green-grey.

Reluctantly, he'd admitted to following me with the intent of cornering me and, in his own words, "just having some fun."

Bile rose in my throat, and I hunched over a little more, curling into myself, as I fiught down the nauseous rage that was still trying to claw its way back up to the surface. The healer murmured something soothing at me, rubbing a hand against my back, but I didn't really hear her. It was a good thing Aragorn had insisted Legolas wait outside and guard Boromir. I honestly thought Gimli was going to put the boy's head through a wall for a moment, but then he got to the part where he'd told me that, had I been human, I'd have been fair game. The part where my eyes had shifted colour. The part where I changed…

The entire room had gone deathly quiet after that, and only moments later Háma and a few stone-faced guards arrived.

None of them were stupid.

They'd taken one look at me and my bruises, my assailant and his wounds, and the looks on Aragorn and Gimli's faces, and they'd put it all together.

Not one of them breathed a word as Gimli yanked the young man to his feet and shoved him toward them with a quiet: "You'll live to see your captains' punishment. Keep your trap shut about this if you wish to keep it that way, boy."

The clawing anger in my chest dissipated once they'd gone, but the queasiness and trembling didn't go anywhere. I was too busy trying to keep myself from either collapsing or being sick to notice when Gimli came and rested a warm, calloused hand on my shoulder.

"My lady, could you give us the room please? And send the two men waiting outside in, if you would," Aragorn said quietly to the woman at my side. The old healer made a clucking sound of disapproval but did as requested, and a moment after she left I looked up to see Legolas enter again, followed shortly by a grim-looking Boromir.

The blind anger had mostly gone out of his face, but there was still something hard and untrusting in his expression as his eyes fell on me. It set my stomach to churning all over again, but I forced myself not to look away.

Then my numbed brain finally caught onto the fact that there was a face missing among our troupe.

"Where's Gandalf?" I croaked, looking around for the absent wizard.

"He's gone, lass," Gimli answered gently.

"…Gone?"

"He set off to search for Eomer and his riders. We waited for you but he could not delay any longer. If the king wishes to defend Helms Deep he needs his riders back," Legolas explained, coming to stand nearby again, his carefully controlled expression still torn between worry and wrath. He was very deliberately not looking at Boromir, and I had the feeling that was the only thing keeping him from beating the man to a mushy red pulp right then and there, Aragorn's instructions be damned.

Pathetic as it was, and hating myself a bit for it, the part of me that was still trembling in shock wanted badly to just grab his hand and hold on for dear life. But something in the air was still setting my nerves on edge. It wasn't until I looked up at Aragorn that I realised what. He stood in the centre of us all, his arms folded over his chest, giving me a gentle but firm stare. Then he aimed the exact same look at Boromir, and the other man looked as if he was working hard not to look away.

And then Aragorn said what I'd been dreading since we walked out of that ally.

"Explain yourselves, both of you. Now."

No fuss, no beating about the bush, just a simple demand for the truth. And I couldn't have possibly thought of a worse time for him to ask me that than now.

I found myself looking at Boromir, who in turn was staring back at me until I thought his arms and shoulders would snap from the tension in them. Legolas didn't move from my side, but he shifted his weight in a way that made it obvious that if Boromir so much as sneezed in my direction, he would be able to take the man down before he got within two feet of me.

"Why did you attack her?" he asked with icy calm. When Boromir didn't answer and just continued to stare hard straight at me, Gimli cut in.

"Boromir!"

The Gondorian man snapped a look between each of our companions, expression flickering between uncertainty and frustration, his hands clenching and unclenching, until they returned to me with renewed anger.

"Because I saw what she really is."

If his words had been any colder, I'd have been a girl-shaped ice sculpture sitting on that bench. Gimli scoffed at him.

"What are you on about, lad? What is she?" he demanded, slapping me on the shoulder in his usual, bruising way that would have normally made me smile-wince. Now, it just made me wince. "She's exactly what she looks like; a brazen, small, but otherwise normal elf lass. One who was just forced to fight off two men on her own, I'll add."

His words, spoken with such trust and certainty, felt like lead weights being dropped onto me, but I couldn't say anything. I could only watch as Boromir's face twisted in warped hate he could no longer hide, and it was all aimed right at me.

"No…" he murmured, and his voice was enough to chill my bones. "She is not. Not even close."

"Speak plainly then," Legolas bit impatiently, still looking like he was contemplating twisting the other man's head off if he didn't start making sense. Boromir didn't look away from me once, but his jaw tightened with emotion, and when he spoke it was as if he had been holding back a flood for the past three days.

"When I was dying, after I took those arrows, I knew I was gone. I could feel myself slipping away, and I was content with that. I was ready for death, my just deserves for what I'd done… But then I saw you. You'd rolled me over, and I could hear you shouting, trying to save me, trying to heal me despite it being impossible. I already knew it to be too late, that there was nothing you could do. Nothing any healer could have done." He drew a shaky breath, and I couldn't tell if it was in anger, or dread at the memory of the pain. "But you refused to let me go. I could see the lights dim, but when you put your hand over my heart, it was as if something had begun pulling me back, anchoring me to life as death was still trying to drag me away. It was agony. It felt like my soul was being torn in half, and then…"

He hesitated, glare sharpening on me, and fresh dread flowed through me in a flood. As if I already knew instinctively deep down what was coming.

Perhaps I did.

"Then… images started flashing past my eyes. I saw things that do not make sense, and could not possibly exist. Towers of metal and glass, lands covered with rust and smoke with barely anything green for miles into the distance… Strange, metal contraptions, moving on their own. Men and women packed so close together between towering buildings, with barely room to breathe. I saw an entire city of stone and steel and glass, and not a single man within seemed to see what was around them. To even care."

I didn't make a sound as my body went cold from my legs up to my chest. My fear and dread had turned my body to stone. I didn't dare look to see the reactions of my other companions, but from their ghostly silence I could guess what they were thinking.

Boromir had gone mad.

Only, the truly frightening thing was that he hadn't. None of them had any idea how far from mad he was for what he was describing, what he'd seen in my memories.

Not even him.

"It was too much," he went on. "I tried to speak, tried to tell you to stop, to let me go, that even if I somehow lived, the pain, and visions would surely leave me broken and insane, but when I looked at you I saw — there you were — but there was also a second form, wreathed in flames, standing exactly where you did, two bodies overlapping each other; one looking at me as you did, and the other looking into me with eyes that burned gold. Just as they did when you tried to murder that soldier. And I saw those flames moving down your arms, into me, as you... you healed me, leeching into me, tethering me when I should have already been gone. It was the last thing I saw before I fell unconscious."

Such stillness had fallen over the room I could hear myself breathing. I could hear my own pulse beginning to race as I felt the weight of what he'd just said crushing down on me.

He'd seen her.

Just like Frodo had. Just like I'd feared. He'd seen Tink. He knew, and now he was going to—

"It is what he is planning. Isn't it?"

That stopped my panicked thoughts dead in their tracks. I looked up to find myself staring directly into Boromir's completely serious face.

"W-what?" I wheezed.

"What I saw. That abomination of a civilisation. It's what he is planning to create of this world, isn't it? When he finally takes the Ring back. A world of metal and smoke."

I just stared at him with my jaw hanging open. I couldn't quite believe I'd heard him right. Under literally any other circumstances the suggestion that Sauron's ultimate dastardly plan was to turn Middle Earth into a perfect replication of Piccadilly Circus during rush hour would have sent me into hysterics.

I almost laughed.

Almost.

"How the hell would I know what Sauron's bloody plans involve?!" I demanded, my voice trying to rise to a shout, but breaking over the strain, my throat still too raw. I managed to stand up, though. Boromir convulsed back away from me like I'd spat fire at him, his hand automatically going for his now empty sword sheath.

Legolas moved so fast I couldn't physically see it, only feel it as the air rushed past me, and hear it as he slammed the flat of his hand against the man's chest. Boromir was sent staggering backwards with a grunt, almost going over the back of the chair my attacker had been interrogated in, catching himself before he could go crashing to the floor.

"You do not touch her a second time," Legolas snarled, tone low and dangerous. But Boromir wasn't deterred, baring his teeth at the elf in a damn near animal-like growl.

"You would defend such a serpent?! When you have seen with your own eyes what hides beneath that face?"

"I saw only you attempting to choke the life from her with hand that should have been protecting her," Legolas seethed, but I could see the expression on his face as his gaze flickered toward me for a second.

Oh, he'd seen alright — and despite his adamant defence of me, it had indeed unsettled him more than he was letting on.

Whatever was left of Boromir's sanity snapped, then. He lost it.

"That figure had his eyes! His!" he roared, throwing a finger right at me. "Inescapable, wreathed in flame, the pupil slitted like an animal's! They were the eyes of nothing mortal! Are you so blinded by affection that you would ignore that?"

"Enough!" Aragorn bellowed.

Boromir and Legolas both fell instantly silent, staring at him with wide eyes, and I realised with a twinge of macabre amusement that it was probably the first time I'd ever heard Aragorn raise his voice at either of them. He still didn't look angry, or even upset. Just calm and focused, but when he turned his attention to me again, I still felt myself shrink under that neutral stare. "Eleanor, can you or can you not explain what he saw? What we all just saw."

I opened my mouth to speak, not sure what I was going to say, but the sound that came out was another croak that turned into a choking cough. Legolas reached out to support me again but I shook my head. If I was going to do this then I needed to be able to stand and say it without anyone's help, much as I might want it.

When I finally got my breath back again, my throat had recovered just enough to get the words out.

"I… I can, yes," I said, barely able to speak above a whisper for both the pain and dread in my throat. "But… it's complicated. And I really doubt you're going to believe me if I do."

Boromir made a sound somewhere between a growl and a snort, and Gimli, thoroughly sick of the all posturing, seized the front of his tunic and shoved him none too gently down into the chair he'd almost tumbled backwards over.

"Let her speak, laddie. After what you did, you owe her that much at the very least," he rumbled, then turned and gave me what might have been an encouraging look.

I couldn't tell what hurt more, the trust in Gimli's eyes, the neutrality in Aragorn's, or the blatant suspicion in Boromir's. I didn't dare look at the elf at my side. I knew if I did, I wouldn't be able to get the words out.

If I did, I'd break under the fear of what I was about to do.

How was it that I was somehow brave enough to charge headfirst into a one-on-one fight with an Uruk-hai warrior, but the thought of telling the people I cared for the most about where I really came from absolutely crippled me?

"Eleanor…?" Legolas breathed low so only I could hear.

I wondered how my name would sound on his voice once he knew the whole truth about me…

I looked down at my battered fingers — nails torn and still bleeding a bit despite the bandages the old healer had wrapped my knuckles in — knowing it didn't matter now. I'd almost killed a man with those hands in a fit of rage thanks to the secrets I'd been keeping. If Boromir hadn't been there to stop me, I probably would have; and I wasn't even sure I would have been sorry for it.

I had to tell them.

'Finally time to tell our story, I guess,' I thought, knowing there was only one person in that room could hear me, and understand what those words cost.

And in reply, from deep within my mind, I felt incorporeal fingers wrap around mine, and gently squeeze.

'I'll be right here,' she whispered, and I drew one last deep breath before looking up at them all again.

"If I'm going to explain this, I'll need to start from the very beginning. The figure you saw, Boromir, I can't explain what—" I stopped and corrected myself, "who she is without telling you the whole truth, first. My whole truth. And I might as well warn you now that it's going to sound mad. More so than any of the stories I've been telling up till now."

"Your whole truth, lass?"

God, this was such a huge, frigging mess. I couldn't bring myself to look at the expression on Gimli's face, so I kept my eyes fixed on the floor at his feet and stumbled onwards.

"What you all found out in Lothlórien, about me not knowing who I was, about not remembering anything before two years ago. It… it was only half the truth about where I can from."

I saw Aragorn's head tilt from my peripherals. "Am I to assume this has something to do with your hysterical protestation at being called a she-elf when you first stumbled delirious into my camp near three years ago?"

Sometimes I hated how perceptive he was.

I had to fight not to wince at the vividness of the memory; the confusion and panic I'd felt at finding myself in a dangerous place I didn't believe could exist. At being trapped with no way home.

I nodded.

Aragorn seemed to contemplate that for a second, then made a grunt of acceptance. "Start from the beginning then. We will listen till the end. All of us."

It was an unspoken promise to hear me out, no matter how mad what I was about to say was, and I wasn't sure there was a way of phrasing this in any language that didn't sound off the rails. It was the best I was going to get under the circumstances, though. So I steeled myself, sucked in a deep breath, and started what was probably going to be my longest and least believable story yet.

"That city you saw in my mind Boromir, it isn't part of Sauron's plan. It can't possibly be because — because it already exists. And… it's where I'm really from. My home."

I hadn't really thought about reactions I was going to garner, but I still hadn't expected quite the shocked silence I got in response before the inevitable landslide of questions came.

"You…?"

"What do you—?"

"You mean you remembered where you're from at last?"

Aragorn silenced them all with another look. He was the only one who's expression hadn't so much as flickered. I swallowed and continued, trying to gauge their reactions and choose my words carefully.

"No, not exactly. I still have no idea who I was here. But before…" My voice failed again as the feat of what I was doing, what I was about to tell them threatened to choked me. "… Before I woke here, in that cave two years ago, I had another life… One that I left behind when I came here."

You'd think after explaining all this once to a quartet of hobbits I'd have improved my process for telling this story. Lady Luck and her evil twin brother Bad Timing must really have it in for me.

"I don't understand," Legolas murmured. "What do you mean: 'when you came here'?"

A spike of visceral pain came with the memory of that night and all the emotions that went with it. The still vivid memory of mine and Mark's fight, of my parents, of the last time I saw Katie disappearing into a crowd of dancing party-goers, thinking I'd be right behind her…

I closed my eyes tight and wrapped my arms around myself, trying not to let the stinging in my eyes turn to tears. If I let myself stop now, I might never get the words out.

"I wasn't always an elf, alright?" I blurted, my voice breaking around the words. "Before two years ago I was just a normal girl living in a city exactly like the one Boromir saw. I was born and grew up in a world where all this?" I gestured a bit viciously around at our surroundings, "It doesn't even exist. Arda, elves, wizards, orcs, Maiar, none of it was real. None of it. The closest I ever got to those kinds of things was in the books and stories I was studying at my college." I had to stop to suck in a few more shaky breaths, but this time, no one interrupted me. "On February the 10th, two years ago, I was walking home from a party in the snow and suddenly fell unconscious. I don't know how or why, but the next thing I knew, I was waking up in a cave in the middle of Trollshaws forest with tree roots growing around me. I had no idea where I was, or how I got there, or where to find help. I didn't even realise my ears were pointed until… If Aragorn hadn't found me…"

My throat burned again, and I wasn't sure if it was from my neck injuries or from the flood of emotions still fighting for dominance inside me. I hadn't even noticed I'd sat down on the bench again until I felt my fingers ache from clutching the edges. The silence was crushing, almost painful, and seemed to stretch on forever. No one seemed to know what on earth to say, and I couldn't blame them one bit.

I could all but hear the thoughts going through their heads.

Is she insane? Is she making it up? What if she's actually telling the truth?

Just like master Elrond had done.

Then finally, of all people, it was Gimli who broke the silence over us all. He was shaking his head at me, eyes a bit wide behind his helm.

"Mahal's beard, lass. I know you're good with tall tales, but this is unbelievable even for you."

"It's not a story this time, Gimli. If it was, I'd have bloody well figured out a better way of telling it by now."

"If… if this is really true, and not some conjured tale to avoid judgment, then how is it even possible?" Boromir asked, curiosity eclipsing his mistrust. "How in the abyss did you end up going from a human girl to… this?"

I couldn't hide the hurt on my face, and Gimli obviously noticed because his expression softened at me.

At least he was still trying to be kind, even if he now thought I was mad.

"I have no reason to lie to any of you, not now," I said quietly, unable to ignore the sting of his words. "The only reason I kept quiet about this until now is because I didn't know how to explain it without you all writing me off as insane. I couldn't… I couldn't deal with that. And I truly don't know how it happened. Not even Gandalf could tell me exactly how I got here when I asked. Only that finding out who I was in this world before, and how all this happened in the first place, is probably the only chance I've got of finding my way back."

Gimli sputtered. "Gandalf knew? You told him, and yet not us?"

"He already knew. He called me by my human name before we even reached the foothills of the Misty Mountains. He'd learned everything from Lord Elrond, not from me. He was trying to help me remember who I was before we lost him in Moria. After that I… I didn't know what else to do but keep quiet and keep going. I didn't have anyone left who knew my secret, and with everything else happening, if I brought it up, you would have left me behind without a second thought."

I saw Aragorn's arms tense, and a faint flash of guilt in his gaze, but he still gave me a look that was impossible to read. And still he didn't say a word as the others reached for more questions.

I could practically hear the gears of Legolas' mind whirring beside me, trying to wrap his mind around what I was telling them.

"If this is really so, then why in the Abyss did you still wish to come with us so desperately?" he asked finally, softly. I exhaled, looking down at my lap as if I'd find the answer there, unable to make myself look at him.

I was already terrified of what I'd see there.

"There have been only a few times I've been able to remember scraps of my past self's life, like I told you. But they've all been tiny, not enough to piece together who I was before I was alive in London."

"London?" Boromir asked, the harshness softening a bit around the edges.

"The name of the city you saw."

Gimli threw one meaty hand up as if to stop me.

"So, let me see if I've got this right, lass," he said frowning in concentration through his beard. "You lived here in Arda before you were born into this metal world you and Boromir speak of? London, you called it? And now, somehow, you've returned to your body in this world, but without memory of who you were?"

Stupid as it was, I almost felt like crying in relief.

I nodded, unreasonably thankful that one of them grasped what I was trying to say enough to summarise it. I'd thought my explanation to the hobbits had been mangled, but this was somehow coming out in an even bigger mess. It was as if, all this time, I'd put a dam up in front of everything that had happened to me, and now that a little had come crashing down, the rest was quickly following.

"You all had half the truth already. Just… not the parts that made it all make sense." I gestured weakly to myself with a sweep of my hands. "I had a life here before. This body I'm walking around Middle Earth in now didn't just spontaneously appear in that cave. As for my other body back in London, I got a glimpse in Galadriel's mirror when we were still in Lothlórien. I'm in a hospital stuck in a coma. My…" I almost choked on the words, my already tender throat tightening. "M-my family are still waiting for me to wake up, but nothing the healers are doing is working. Galadriel seemed to believe that while my soul is inhabiting one body in one world at a time, the other falls into a deep sleep without my spirit there to drive it. I don't know how it happened, or how to reverse it, but I've been trying to find a way to remember for the past two years."

"Your family," Legolas whispered so quietly, more to himself than anyone else, and I looked at him just in time to see his grey-blue eyes widen in realisation, gaze flicking down to the knife at my waist. "A Elbereth Gilthoniel*, the names on your knife…"

Another flash of memories. Another stab of pain.

Breathing slowly so I wouldn't break apart, I closed my eyes and nodded. Without needing to look, I took the hunting knife off my belt and held it, my fingers running over the engraving I'd carved all that time ago. When I opened my eyes again, my vision was blurry, but no tears fell.

"Andrew was… is my father's name. Sophia is my mother. Theo is my little brother. Katie's been my closest friend for so long she's more like a sister. And February the 10th two years ago was the date I fell into that coma. I carved them there so no matter how long I was trapped here, I wouldn't forget about them."

Silence descended over the room again, but this time I didn't care to break it. I was too focused on trying to quell the pain growing inside me at the thought of my family. I hadn't thought about this properly in a long time, and now that I was being forced to, it reminded me why.

It hurt.

God, it hurt so much I could barely breathe.

"If what you say is really true…" I heard Boromir say softly, cautiously, and it was the closest to his old self I'd heard since before Lothlórien. I looked up to find him still watching me, but his expression had turned conflicted. "The city I saw, the one you called London. It was filled with Men. No elves, or dwarves. There was nothing there to suggest any other race at all. You said there was — is no such thing in that… in your world. If that is all true, if what I saw is true, then that means you must have been…"

I looked right at him, meeting his eyes and seeing the realisation clearly in them. A wry smile somehow found it's way onto my face, but it felt wooden, hollow.

"Human," I confirmed quietly.

"Mortal…" I heard Legolas breathed beside me, and the shock in his voice forced my eyes up to meet his. I instantly wished I hadn't. He looked like someone had gutted him where he stood, and he was only remaining upright by sheer will. He swallowed thickly, his low voice forming a question I knew would change everything for us. "Then… Eleanor… how old does that truly make you?"

My insides twisted.

I knew what he was really asking, and I wanted to fold in on myself at the thought. Curl into a ball beneath the floor and never see daylight again. I couldn't lie to him now even if I wanted to, but I couldn't bare to meet his eyes as I answered his question, fixing mine instead on the silver leaf pin at his collar.

"I'm… twenty-four."

Blue-grey eyes widened, and every drop of coloured drained from his face in the space of a breath.

"Well…" Gimli exhaled in a rush, dropping down onto a nearby bench so hard, I thought it might break beneath him, "That all certainly explains your strange speech, and attitude towards other elves at least. But I still don't understand what this has to do with that fiery figure Boromir saw when you healed him."

It took a substantial effort to pull my gaze from a shell-shocked looking Legolas, but I forced myself to take a proper look at each of them first. I wanted to at least try and see past the shock to what they were thinking now.

All things considered, they were taking it rather well. Not good exactly, but not nearly as badly as I'd feared. None of them looked angry at least. Stunned, yes. Gimli's head was still shaking in bemusement at me, Boromir looked as if he was trying to solve a complex riddle in his head, and Legolas hd gone as pale and still as a marble statue.

But not one of them looked enraged or suspicious anymore.

Not even Aragorn, who through my entire tirade of muddled explanations, still hadn't moved or uttered a single word. He just watched me with steel-grey eyes, sharp as I'd ever seen them, as I sucked in one last steadying breath.

The very last deep breath before the plunge.

"When I first arrived in Rivendell, I had a… voice, I guess, stuck in my head. Every time I fell unconscious or slept I could hear her, talk to her. She helped me, kept me alive at times when I'm sure I should have died. At first I thought I was going mad, that she was just a construct my mind had created to deal with the trauma of what was happening. It was almost like having a corporeal survival instinct in my head. It made sense at the time. Whenever I dreamed she looked and sounded exactly like me, but with golden eyes instead of green, and was fixated on keeping me safe." I explained, trying hard to sound calm though the nerves were all but eating me alive from the inside.

"I didn't tell anyone, not even Lord Elrond. At the time it just seemed like one more mad thing to add to the pile. My first day in Rivendell, he tried to help me access some of my blocked memories. I didn't get much, but I did get one name; Rávamë. I didn't immediately put it all together; the name, the voice in my head, what you told me about her, Legolas. Not until after I healed Boromir. When I…"

"When you healed him and survived," Aragorn finished when I trailed off. "That antacuilë should have killed you, but it didn't, because you weren't working with just your own power. You had hers too."

I swallowed hard, and nodded.

"And… the soldier who attacked you?" Boromir asked. It was strange, the more I seemed to delve into my story, and the more my own nerves grew, the more his steadfast suspicion of me seemed to be eroding.

"Aye, you damn near tore his face off, lass. You have a temper I grant you, but I've seen nothing like that. That was her, too?" Gimli added. I shook my head, instinctively jumping to Tink's defence despite myself.

"No. Not exactly. She was actually trying to snap me out of it. I'm not totally sure, but I think something… went wrong at Amon Hen, when I used her power to kill that Uruk-hai, then heal Boromir. It's been like this every time I've felt angry or scared recently. It's become harder and harder to keep it under control. When that soldier… when he…" I couldn't make myself say it; even now the anger was too fresh. "I couldn't think past the rage. She seems to think that the more of her power I use, the more we're starting to bleed together. My anger. Her power."

"Not a healthy combination, if that lad's face is anything to go by."

"Or that patch of deadened forest we found you in at Amon Hen." Aragorn murmured, still eyeing me with an uncomfortably intense expression I couldn't quite read. "That was her too, was it?"

Something in my guts writhed, but now that I had everything out in the open at last I felt oddly liberated of the fear I'd felt before. I sat up a little straighter and met his gaze head on.

"I am not lying, Aragorn."

He just watched me for a long moment, before finally speaking again.

"Then prove it. Show me."

I blinked at him. "What?"

"Boromir was able to see this figure — this spirit you say is trapped in your mind — and your memories when you healed him. You should be able to do the same for me at little risk, since I'm not dying."

I looked at him with my mouth slightly open, trying to understand what he was suggesting. When I finally did, my already fragile voice began to fracture over my words again.

A limifëa.

He was asking me to show him the inside of my mind through a limifëa, almost just like I'd done with Frodo back in Rivendell.

I stammered as the memory of the hobbit struggling agains the morgue splinter's cold stole my breath. "But I… I don't even know if I can—"

"You must," Aragorn insisted, taking a step towards me. "Truth or not, if we are to fully believe or help you, there must be at least some kind of proof what you claim is real."

"And my eyes changing colour on their own just now wasn't?" I snapped on impulse, but he just continued to look at me in calm challenge. I threw my hands out to the side. "Why would you believe anything you see in there? If you think I'm lying now, I could just be deceiving you again."

Something strange happened to his face. It softened very slightly, and while he didn't look any less serious, the corner of his lip twitched in what once might have been a wry smile.

"You have never been a talented liar, Eleanor. Not when you first stumbled into my camp, and not now." Then he knelt down in front of me, so we were near eye to eye. Grass green to steel grey. "Show me the truth now, or this is as far as we can go."

I looked at him for a moment, then turned my attention away as I searched for an alternative. There was none.

I knew what he was saying clearer than if he'd explained it word for word. He was willing to believe me, help me, trust me. But only if I was willing to trust him — and by indirect extension, all of them, since I couldn't preform a five-way soul-link on my best day — with seeing the truth of what was in me.

Of seeing her face-to-face.

'Tink… can we?'

She hesitated, and with the stilling of my own emotions, I could now feel hers like an echo of my own deep down. She was uncertain, too.

'Technically yes, but…' she hesitated, seeing out through my eyes at them all watching me. At Aragorn waiting patiently for my answer. 'He's different to Boromir and Frodo somehow, boss. I can feel it. We can do it, but there's no way to know what he'll see… or what we will on the other side.'

So that's what it all came down to. To trust, or go it alone from here on.

Liar, madwoman, or unlikely truth teller…

"We don't have a choice, not anymore," I breathed aloud this time, almost too quiet to hear. Then I looked up at him. "Give me your hands."

He did.

And I took them in mine, and let the floodgates of my mind open wide.

The last time I'd preformed a limifëa I'd had my eyes shut when it all happened. I'd been so focused on keeping the link as gentle and soothing as I could that I hadn't thought too much about what I was going to see. Not until it was already there forming behind my eyelids.

This time, I didn't shut them, and I'm still undecided whether it made the experience better, or much, much worse.

The world around us disappeared in a sudden burst of blurred colours, sounds, and rushing vertigo, stronger than anything I'd felt before with Frodo or Boromir. I couldn't see Aragorn in front of me anymore, even though my eyes were still open, but I knew he was there because I heard his sharp inhale along with my own. And even as my own perception of what was happening outside our linked minds vanished — as the blurred shapes and echoing sounds began to condense into recognisable figures — I could still feel his calloused hands clutched in mine.

A swirl of colour took sudden form like smoke solidifying, showing me a beautiful young mortal woman with long red-gold hair and a simple gown pulling me to her in a fierce hug.

"Be brave, my love, my precious son," she whispered, her lovely voice thick with tears as she pressed one last kiss to my temple. "You will see me again, I promise."

Then she was gone again, vanishing into a stream of more swirling shapes like ink in water.

Moments later, I was suddenly watching Katie pulling me by the hand down the side of the Thames, cars and taxis rushing past as the London Eye towered behind her. She was laughing, her brown eyes bright in the sunshine, holding a digital camera over her head, our beaming faces reflected in the flip-screen.

Another surge and I was standing in a clearing, a bow and knocked arrow in my hand, shouting in a furious teenage boy's voice at a familiar blond elf with grey-blue eyes. Legolas looked exactly the same, yet his eyes seemed somehow younger, more boyish, despite the serious look on his face as he raised both his hands and spoke carefully in answer. I couldn't see the expression on my face, but I felt the anger dissipate, replaced by exhausted fear, and sadness as the arrow tip dropped to point safely at the ground.

Another surge, and I was sitting in a busy street cafe with Mark opposite me. I was listening to him trying to convince me not to go, to not leave him behind while I went off to study in London. I stared down at the reflection of my human face in my mug of cooling tea, and felt the familiar rush of writhing emotions in my gut as I tried to ignore the long look a passing waitress gave my boyfriend — and the look he gave her in return.

Another surge, and I was staring down at a familiar stone podium I'd last seen in Rivendell, calloused ranger's hand running over the shards of a broken sword resting on it, Lord Elrond's stern voice echoing in my ears…

No. Enough.

'Stop!' I thought hard, and with a mighty effort, I managed to pull myself from the tirade with a silent cry of effort.

We needed to push through this. I knew we could both spend forever trapped in here if we carried on, lost in each others memories if I didn't do something to get to what we came here to see. What we attempted all this for.

So with one mental hand, I reached out and pulled Aragorn from the storm of our combined memories with me, and with the other I reached out through the darkness surrounding my thoughts with incorporeal fingers, reaching for her…

And instantly felt the whisper of warm, invisible fingers gripping mine back.

A tug, a gasp, and we were both suddenly falling. Down through the darkness, I could suddenly see Aragorn beside me, corporeal, real, steel-grey eyes wide, and still gripping my hand tight as a lifeline as we both plummeted towards the ground.

When we hit the grass, it was like falling from a tree. Not enough to break bones, but enough to knock the sense from you for a few seconds. It took me a moment longer than Aragorn to pull myself onto my elbows with a groan. He was already on his feet and looking around as I sat up to do the same. Trying to figure out what part of my mind and memories we'd ended up in…

And my heart just about stopped.

I knew exactly where we were the moment I saw it.

I'd have known it if I'd been trapped in Arda a thousand years, instead of near three.

We were in a garden, dark with the early evening and lit by a balmy summer moon. Or at least I knew it as a garden. To anyone else it would have looked like nothing more than a stretch of well-kept but untamed grass and wildflowers sprawled out behind a house maybe sixty meters away. The distant building was an old, English farmhouse, with a tall, thatched roof, oxblood pink walls, and boxes full of geraniums under the windows. Vegetables grew in a small plot by the open kitchen door, and there was a wind-chime made of sea glass I'd crafted when I was ten, tinkling just outside.

We had landed out back almost to where grass and wildflowers of the lawn gave way to fruit and woodland trees, a couple of beehives buzzing quietly nearby, but we were still close enough to see that there were lights on in the house. Smoke was rising from the chimney, and every now and then, I heard a familiar laugh. Could see the silhouetted shadow of someone moving inside…

"Eleanor…" Aragorn murmured slowly, quiet as if someone might hear him. "What is this place?"

My chest burned with an ache I couldn't stop. My eyes blurred as I stood up beside him, unable to look anywhere but at the house through the tears filling my eyes.

It was just a construct. Just an illusion built by my mind in place of the real thing, and yet…

And yet.

"It's m-my…my…" I could barely breathe, my eyes squeezing shut as tears streaked down my cheeks, shuddering as the breath left me in a whisper. "… My home."

Aragorn was utterly silent for a long time, standing beside me in the grass, no sound but the gentle breeze in the trees and the distant sound of chatter and clinking of glasses coming from the house.

"It… looks like the Shire," he stated, as if the idea both confused him and made sense all at the same time. "Nothing like the metal buildings I saw just now."

"This is my parents' house, far outside the city. My father was in the army, but he and my mother moved back here when he retired." I heard myself say, my voice coming out in a shaking whisper. My hand reached out of its own accord and brushed over the tops of the swaying wildflowers, their buds tickling at my palms. "I… I thought I might never see it again."

He shifted toward me, a rustle of grass and cloth before his hand settled hesitantly on my shoulder. "It's… beautiful. Peaceful."

"Not all of her world is metal and glass, ranger," a voice I knew as well as my own — probably because it was my own — came from the trees right behind us.

Aragorn spun like a dervish, his hand automatically going for his sword, but my own hand moved shockingly fast, seizing his wrist before he could draw the weapon.

"Don't! It's ok."

I looked up away from the house, and sure enough, there was Tink.

She was standing a respectful distance back behind us, her form shaded from the moonlight by the rustling trees, but I could see her amber eyes gleaming like a pair of fireflies through the gloom.

Aragorn didn't relax, but I was reasonably sure he wasn't going to try and draw his blade again. So I hesitantly let go and stepped to stand between them. For the tiniest moment, with the tensed look of suspicion on the man's face, and the alertness of the being behind me, I felt oddly like I was back in the Cat & Canary, about to break up a bar fight before it could escalate.

"I told you I had some kind of spirit trapped in my head, Aragorn. Well…" I said carefully, gesturing with an upturned hand to the identical, golden-eyed version of myself behind me. "This is Tink. Also known as the lost Maia, Rávamë."

Tink chose that moment to step entirely out of the shade of the trees and into the moonlight. Aragorn had one of the best poker-faces I'd ever seen, but even he couldn't hide the shock in his expression at the sight of my face being worn by something so obviously different. Oh, Tink and I might be identical in shape and form, but I knew for certain now from the look on his face that — even without the colour of our eyes — to another's perception we were about as different as night and day.

As opposite as creation and destruction.

They regarded each other for a painfully long moment, unspeaking and unmoving.

"Tell me who you are," Aragorn growled at last, in the voice he normally used for battle orders, not taking his eyes off her. Tink inclined her head at him, one of my — her — eyebrows elegantly arched, and when she spoke, even though it was my voice, it was almost painfully obvious it wasn't me speaking through it.

"She just told you who I am, Son of the West. Are you deaf? Or do you trust her word so little after all she's done?"

Aragorn's face darkened into an even deeper frown, anger and sharp mistrust deepening the lines at his eyes, obviously resisting the urge to draw his sword, for all the good it would do him here.

"I would hear it from your own mouth, Maia."

Tink eyed him, amber eyes glinting like a cat's in the moonlight. Then she looked pointedly at me, and her expression softened into that knowing little smile of secrets shared between close friends.

I understood that look. I knew who she was now. She wasn't bound into silence by my ignorance anymore. She could introduce herself now, without me needing to do it for her first.

"Very well. I am Rávamë of the Wilds, vassal to Yavanna Kementári, and learned of Oromë Aldaron the Great Rider of Aman," she said, with a rather unnecessarily flowery bow and a sardonic smile. "Pleased to meet you at last, Aragorn, son of Arathorn. Best ask your questions quick though. If you truly wish to keep my host well and whole as I do, you will not push her to keep this link open any longer than necessary. It is already tiring her."

Aragorn's attention flicked to me for a second, and I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile, but it probably looked a bit wooden, all things considered.

"I'm alright for now. Ask away."

He paused for a moment, then nodded, turning back to Tink. "You are truly one of the Ainur? As Gandalf is?"

She folded her arms over her chest. "I am indeed. Though, I'd say I've aged better than Olorin** has."

Aragorn ignored her barbed sass with all the grace of a saint. "You were responsible for powering the antacuilë that saved Boromir?"

"I was. Though he has Eleanor's skill to thank for his life," she sniffed.

"And how is it that you came to share the same body as Eleanor?"

"I can't say because I don't know," she told him transparently, gold eyes drifting back to me for the briefest of moments. "When Eleanor destroyed her memories ands put herself to sleep in that cave, she took mine as well. I can tell you no more than she can."

"Destroyed her own…" Aragorn turned suddenly on me, a look close to horror in his eyes. "You destroyed your own memories?"

I nodded, the same feeling of hopelessness I'd felt then slipping back into my gut like a dagger between the ribs. "Galadriel told me back in Lothlórien. Apparently she helped me do it some time ago, but couldn't tell me why. Blood oaths, wailing and gnashing of teeth, and all that."

"Neither of us know how or why it happened, ranger, only that it affected us both when it did," Tink cut in, drawing Aragorn's attention sharply back to her.

He narrowed his grey eyes at hers again. "And you cannot simply leave her body?"

"No, I simply cannot," she answered, seemingly unaffected by his razor sharp gaze. "Not as we are now, at least. I can sense that much. It would damage us both, and I won't do that to her."

Aragorn mulled all that over for a second, his eyes drifting over her, not in the way a man would look at a woman, but just as one might study an especially complex chessboard.

"You also speak and appear as she does. Why?"

Tink rolled her head to the side, giving Aragorn a look as though she thought him rather thick. "You and that pointy eared princeling have known each other for, what? Seventy years? And lo, you both speak similarly too! Companions and friends often do when they spend near every waking hour in each other's company."

Aragorn gave the maia a thoroughly irritated glare, and it would have been enough to make me laugh if I hadn't been so on edge about two halves of my world colliding in a dream-scape version of my parent's back garden. I watched with bated breath as he held her stare for an agonisingly long.

"You are… not what I expected," he said slowly. Tink dipped into an elegant mock curtsy, miming lifted skirts.

"I live to surprise. Now, any other questions I can enlighten you by half-answering, dearest ranger?"

"One," he said, low and quiet as if choosing the words. "What is it you intend in all this? Helping Eleanor, and by extension us. Why do you show yourself here of all places? In a place that obviously means so much to her? Tell me, what is it you truly want, Rávamë of the Wilds?"

Tink sobered, and didn't answer immediately. Instead, she dropped the sardonic expression entirely, and drew herself up.

The sight was downright eery. She didn't get any bigger, but it was as if the shadow she cast in the moonlight grew to three time its size, writhing behind her like it was cast by a much larger, stronger form. Her amber eyes burned like coals in the mirror of my face as she stared into Aragorn's, and when she spoke, it was in a strange double tone — like two different voices laid perfectly over each other.

One calm, the other quietly furious.

"The same thing I see you intend, Son of the West. I intend to protect the one whom's body contains me, and I intend to help her regain the past that was torn from both our minds, so she may one day return to this place that is most precious to her, and I may return to mine." Then her face softened, and she looked away from Aragorn and straight at me, her voice returning to normal again, yet somehow more gentle than I was used to.

"I am an ally and friend to the woman you stand beside. I care greatly for her wellbeing, body and spirit, and by my power, I won't allow any harm to come to her." Her expression didn't change again, but her eyes sharpened to jagged edges as they returned once more to Aragorn's. "Not even from you."

Aragorn for his part, didn't balk at the flaring of Tink's temper. He didn't look away from her either, but I did notice that his hand had drifted from his sword hilt to hang at his side. Almost as if the her words — dramatic with a capital "D" as they were — had reassured him more than anything else could have.

"I see that now," he murmured, and gave her a single, solemn nod, which she returned after second's pause. Then his eyes hardened again, and he raised a hand to point squarely at her face. "And I in return I tell you now that she is also my charge to defend, and I have no intention of allowing harm to come to her from within either."

To my baffled surprise, a big cheshire cat grin spread over Tink's face like melted butter, wide and genuine as anything I'd ever seen from her.

"Then I suppose we have that much in common, at least," she said, and almost, for just a second, she sounded like she might have been pleased. Then she blinked and it was gone, turning back to me in all seriousness again. "You both should go. Any longer will start costing each of you strength you don't have to spare."

I went to argue on instinct but felt Aragorn's hand on my wrist.

"She's right, Eleanor," he agreed, lifting my arm up so I could see my hand. My fingers were starting to tremble violently. They had a point, but I wasn't at all convinced my suddenly exhausted body was solely because of the link I was holding open.

Warm relief flooded me from head to toe as I stared at my other self for what felt like hours, my passenger, my friend who had come to my defence, standing in the constructed illusion of my family's garden with tear tracks down my cheek, and had no idea what to say.

"Tink…" I breathed, but she cut me off.

"It's ok, boss," She just smiled softly, winked at me, and though her face still held the lingering flickers of a worry and wariness, the raw care and affection I saw there was far brighter. "I meant what I said. I've got your back. Always."

And with that, she was gone again, and Aragorn and I were falling down through a flurry of colour, falling leaves, and the lingering scent of wildflowers.

Translations:

* "Oh Elbereth who lit the stars…" — Probably the closest thing to "Jesus Christ" you'll ever hear an elf swear. (Sindarin)

** Olorin — Gandalf's original name as a Maia of Valinor. He and the other Istari took different names when they took mortal forms and left Valinor to come to Middle Earth.

A/N: Yes, it's yet another split chapter. On the advice of my eternally patient Beta (who's birthday it was a couple of days ago btw!), I've split this chapter into two again so 1) you guys have been waiting so bloody long and you more than deserve it by now, and 2) this one turned out to be about three times longer than intended, so it made more sense to have it as two less lengthy ones, despite it all technically being part of just one continuous scene. Think of this as the first of twin chapters, the next of which I'm almost finished with now.

Once it's been proofread and spell-checked it'll be up asap. Until then, thank you guys so much.

Much love,

Rella x