Chapter Text
She drifts in a cloud of perfect light, weightless, formless.
These are stars, countless in number and ageless. The first eyes to open beheld these stars. They will endure even beyond the last breath. She is in them, of them, surrounded and cradled.
There is no conscious thought, only a complete and overwhelming bliss.
But...no. Not complete.
It cannot be named. Words are too abstract. It’s only a sense of creeping absence, a rippling discomfort through her white-gold corona. These are stars, every one precious and pure.
And yet, none of them are hers.
She is not meant to go turn from this path. Somewhere beyond are the halls of her forebears, an endless comfort where she will be welcomed with song and joy, but she has never been content to sit and listen to pretty song. She remembers no forebears. She would have no peace without her missing star.
There is still time to coalesce and so she turns her will toward it. It feels like drowning, an excruciating crawl back to air. Every breath is made of heavy sand, her lungs atrophied and unable to swell, but even now, she is incandescent, fierce and unstoppable as the break of dawn.
She leaves the light behind without even a shiver of regret.
Everything hurts, a cacophony of pain, a thousand discordant notes shrieking in unison. Everything is too bright. Everything is too loud.
For a long moment, she thinks only of her breath, and finally the world goes still.
“Tauriel,” someone says and yes, that’s her name. She remembers. She is something with a name. A being? A person.
If she is a person, perhaps she too can speak. “...Tauriel.” It’s little more than a whisper.
Someone peers down at her - a cascade of blond hair, blue eyes pinched with what she thinks is concern. A smile? Yes. “You yet live.”
“...I live.”
“Do you know me?”
So familiar, both the face and the voice. Familiar. Loved? Concepts form in her mind but diffuse, like sunlight burning through a winter fog. A friend. “Legolas?”
A wider smile, redolent of joy and relief beyond measure. “Mellon-nin. Tell me something only you would know.”
A question. Difficult, but not impossible. The fog is lifting. She can see the thoughts as they form, paths like rivulets of snowmelt. “...I...am a better shot...than you.”
He laughs. “This is an argument we have had many times. Do you remember?”
“Someday...you will lose.”
“Today is not that day.” He shifts, and positions take shape: she’s lying on her back. He’s sitting by her side. Bed? She is in bed. “How do you feel?”
An accounting. She isn’t sure how she’s supposed to feel. She thinks perhaps her limbs are not as well-attached as they ought to be. There’s a stillness in her back - or is it her legs? She can see legs which logically might be hers, but if she commands them to move, they do not. She tilts her head and- no, that was a mistake. A constellation of pain blooms behind her eyes. She observes it as it happens, aware of the visceral attack but somehow still distant. She blinks and somehow, that helps.
Legolas is looking at her expectantly. A question. He asked her a question and she must be taking too long to answer because he asks it again, this time in softer, more gentle tones: “Are you in pain?”
“...I think so.”
He immediately reaches beyond her view and brings back a bowl - she knows it’s a bowl - and a deep spoon. “Do not move,” he says, bringing the spoon to her lips.
She’s still trying to comprehend the relationship between the spoon and not moving, but her body knows what she does not and accepts a mouthful of water. No, not water. She tastes herbs, fresh and clean. She blinks again and the pain in her head recedes.
“Better?” Legolas asks.
She closes her eyes to formulate an answer, but when she opens them again, the room is dark, the only light from softly-shining lamps. Her body has changed. She feels as if she’s a great stone trapped beneath a glacier, her bones grinding beneath its inexorable pace. She isn’t sure if she can label the sensation pain . It feels more like...pressure, deep and primal, her marrow being forced into spaces where there isn’t room. “Legolas?”
“Here I am.”
“I am injured.”
“You are healing.”
“I do not understand.”
“You were dying when you were found.”
She remembers that, or part of it. There was cold and numbness, a band like iron around her lungs. Blood-slick and somehow, peace. She remembers the peace. “I am still here?”
“If you truly meant to leave, you would have gone.” Something darkens in his face - grief. She recognizes grief. She carries her own, although its source is somehow shadowed and hidden. “I am grateful you stayed.”
She sleeps, and then wakes deep in the night to an unfamiliar face once again spooning the broth of spring into her mouth. She swallows without recognition, and sleeps.
Once again she wakes. What could be called pain is now slowly melting into warmth. A voice, singing softly above her:
Mend what was sundered
Spin what needs wound
Heal what was plundered
Bind what needs bound.
She feels vines seeking paths through her body, tendrils curling to become strong, woody stems. Water wears away lifeless stone, breaking open cracks for eager roots. Structure returns to barren dust, clay swelling with fresh rain.
She sleeps.
It’s late afternoon when Tauriel comes back to herself fully.
Legolas is there, seated in a wooden chair nearby, reading by the light of a tall window and languid in a way that suggests he’s been there several hours. The room is of cream-colored stone, glowing from a red winter sun. It is a beautiful space, marred only by a broken pane in the window and an absence of anything that might be considered a domestic comfort. A fire crackles from a hearth at the edge of her vision.
She opens her mouth to say his name, but all that comes out is a hoarse croak. Her lungs go hollow as if they’ve never once held breath, and she remembers, dreamlike, the taste of blood in her mouth, icy pebbles pressed against her cheek.
As she coughs, a cup is held to her lips. She gulps with the animal instinct of a brook trout, warmth surging down her throat and into her belly, carrying with it the deep indolence of a perfect summer day.
She finds herself leaning forward in bed as Legolas supports her, one arm firm around her shoulders while the other offers the cup. Blinking through fading stars, she turns her head, summoning what breath she has left. “Legolas…”
“Drink again,” he says, and she does.
Slowly, her mind clears and her heart slows its pounding. He adjusts the pillows so she’s more upright and gently lays her back.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
She considers. In honesty, she feels off-balance, as if the horizon has tilted and she hasn’t yet found her footing. It’s strange and more than a little frightening. Now that she has a moment, she can see the room is obviously not one of Elven make. The window and its syrupy sunset precludes Dwarven. They live under stone, under the mountain-
“Dale?” she rasps. “Is this Dale?”
“Yes.”
She lets her eyes wander around the room. A bare table and cushionless bench is pushed into the far corner. Cobwebs cluster near the ceiling. “Spiders,” she observes.
“Dol Guldur is cleansed. Gandalf gave a full accounting.” He moves to wrap her hands around the cup. “Can you hold this? You should drink.”
Her fingers feel distant and cold, but after a moment, they obey her command. Shakily, she swallows again. She can’t immediately identify the herbs, all of them strong and bright.
Legolas is still watching her carefully. He’s waiting for something. Has he asked a question she hasn’t answered? She takes another sip.
“This is Dale,” she tries.
“Yes,” he repeats, but the look intensifies. It’s as if he’s bracing himself.
Something tickles the back of her mind, like a cough that hasn’t yet burst forth. “Dale.”
At that moment, her eyes are drawn to the window and its broken pane. Curling frost coats the glass, but through the tiny square of sky, a peak rises up tall and sharp. Near its tip, a pale star flickers in the coming dusk.
A sensation like a catching thorn rakes across her senses. “Kili.”
“He lives,” Legolas says quickly, and this is clearly what he’s been waiting for. He leans toward her, palms open as if he’s afraid she’s going to leap. “They all live.”
“Kili,” she says again, a hard surge of panic rushing up her throat. “Where is he? Where can I find him?”
“He remains in Erebor. You will see him.”
Memory comes back in a churning flood, moments like ice that careen by too quickly for focus. She claws at them with no success. “He went- and Bolg- I heard-”
“Bolg is dead,” Legolas says firmly. “As is his father Azog.”
“Bats -”
“The bats are dead.”
“Kili.” She casts about for something solid, something upon which to form a coherent question. She has no name for the wild need in her heart. “How?”
So Legolas explains the final battle, the bleak desperation until the great eagles and the skinchanger came in from the west. He tells of the rally, of Dwarves and Elves and Men taking every Orc to slaughter and losing many of their own in return. He describes the moment Azog and Thorin fell upon each other’s blades, and how the might of Dwarven spirit overcame the bitter force of evil. “I saw it, Tauriel. Thorin took Azog and cast him off the mountain. He fell almost to the valley floor. Nothing of his body remained unbroken.”
“And Kili?”
Legolas hesitates. “He took great injury meant for his uncle, but he lives and will recover.” There’s a pause, as if he’s considering his next words. “He told us where you lay. Without his help, you could not have been saved.”
“Saved,” she echoes, the word rough in her throat.
“To live or to die was your choice,” he says quietly. “Mellon-nin, I have sat vigil these ten days in great fear. I could not have borne your loss.”
Ten days. An impossible length of time for Elven healing and yet even with the powerful tincture, she feels weak.
The room is in Dale. She is in Dale. Not Mirkwood.
The rising grief must show in her face, because Legolas’s lips go thin. “My father sent a small company of healers to tend to the people of Dale.”
“The healer-”
“The king said you were banished. He did not say you should be left to die.” His eyebrows come together in sadness. “Tauriel, I will speak to him, I swear to you. He can be convinced-”
Her vision goes blurry and she thinks she’s passing out until the sob wrenches itself from her chest. Distantly, she feels the cup gently taken from her hands and set aside. Legolas is the closest thing she has to family, but they have never been physically affectionate. He’s the prince and she’s merely a soldier. Propriety must be maintained, but now he eases into bed beside her, settling his back against the headboard and gently taking her in his arms, resting his chin on her head. He smells like moss and smoke, a heady combination so beloved that any control she might have aspired to is swept away.
She weeps until all that’s left are quiet little tears. She realizes that not once has he made a quip or joke, and the strength of his embrace is as much for his own reassurance as it is for hers. A small shiver runs through him: he’s weeping too, softly, soundlessly.
Tauriel can endure pain. She can endure the tangled paths of her confusion. With great effort, she can endure her wild need to rush to Kili’s side. She cannot endure this.
Legolas is her friend. He came to her when she was a child feral with grief and sat with her in all the decades after. He put a bow in her hands and guided her aim, and did the same with her blades when she was old enough to wield them. He suffers his father’s capricious moods with a smile and good-natured humility. He followed her to Lake-town despite Thranduil’s explicit order. He never questioned her sudden and overwhelming passion for a Dwarf, nor did he question the moment she’d aimed an arrow at her king. If he’s grieved her choices, he’s done so in private.
And yet, she will go to Kili. This is not in question. Both she and Legolas know it. As soon as she can, she’ll make her way into the mountain or across Arda or to the white plain of the moon if that’s what it will take to find her love. She will have two short centuries - perhaps half again more, if they’re very, very lucky - and every part of her aches with urgency.
She will go to Kili and cling to the smallest moment, but he will die and she will be returned to Elvenkind to subsist on grief. Two hundred years is nothing for an Elf, especially held against Legolas’s two thousand. It means everything to her so he cannot deny her. It also means he will have to watch her come back, and perhaps that’s his greatest sorrow.
Tauriel can’t think of anything to say, so she just leans against her friend and closes her eyes.
In the morning, she ventures out of bed - slowly, painfully, most of her weight on Legolas’s arm - to a prepared bath. Elves rarely see each other nude, but there isn’t any shame in it, so he drags up a chair and watches like a hawk to catch any impending faint.
It’s wonderful to have a bath. Tauriel’s entire body feels like a clenched fist and in the heat of the water, some of the tension melts, allowing for a brief inventory of the violence done her. Fading scars twist across her ribs. Bruises still linger under her skin, the halo of their color barely discernible. There’s a sensation adjacent to pain in her spine, something like weak fabric that might start to rip if she twists without thought.
Elves recover quickly and it’s been a tenday since the battle. By all accounts, she should not be alive. It will take more than a few hours to catalog her hurts.
“Surely you cannot here to be my nursemaid,” Tauriel teases, but the look in Legolas’s eyes dispenses any humor. Something cold slithers in her belly. “The healers could not stay.”
“The people of Dale have enough of their own wounded,” he says quietly. “You need only rest now. I would not leave you in their charge when the rest of our kin have returned to Mirkwood. I have helped with the rebuilding as I can, but you have been my charge.”
She wraps her arms around her knees, slowly leaning forward to gauge her range of movement as she considers her next words. She finds both lacking. “What are the consequences?”
“My consequences are my own.”
“Mellon-nin, I will not have you outlaw yourself on my account.”
Legolas’s expression is inscrutable.
“Please.”
There’s another moment of silence, and then he leans forward to press his lips to her forehead. It drops her back to her earliest memories of him, sparking up emotion she hasn’t let herself feel in centuries. “I would not have you sorry for me, Tauriel.”
Tears well up, sharp and deep.
“Besides,” he adds lightly, “without your competition, I remain the best archer in Mirkwood.”
Her body has forgotten how to move. Every step is a thick and clumsy thing, her feet unsure of their place. Tauriel reaches for a cup and her fingers knock it back. She fumbles with buttons, agonizes at the laces of her boots. Her strength will return. She’s Elven, after all. She just has to be gentle with herself as she heals.
Legolas says nothing of her decision to travel. They both know it’s unwise, but she has breath and is upright and can wait no longer. Every moment away from Kili swells in her chest, a hot, choking mass of emotion too thick to swallow back.
“I will go with you as far as the gates of Erebor,” Legolas says. “Whether or not they will welcome us in, I cannot say.”
She knows. It sits in her stomach like an uneaten meal.
“Gold would be nice,” he adds, slotting the blades she can’t hold into their sheathes at her back. “Silver does not suit you.”
“Payment-”
“I do not speak of payment.” His eyes twinkle. “Will he not give you pretty beads for your hair?”
For a long moment, she cannot breathe, and then they’re both laughing, soft and pure as they ever have. It hurts, both in her chest and in her heart.
A hundred years might be nothing to the life of an Elf, but the time to Erebor on horseback feels like that and more. Tauriel is exhausted even before Legolas boosts her into the saddle and by the time they’re trotting up to the mountain gates, she is sunk so deep inside herself that he has to reach over and tug her reins so she actually stops.
“Who comes to Erebor?” a voice rings out in a heavy Dwarven brogue.
“Legolas of Mirkwood,” Legolas calls back. “And Tauriel.” Not of Mirkwood. Daughter of no one, including the beloved forest that sheltered her for so long. “We seek audience with the King Under The Mountain.”
Every fiber of her body aches. Thorin will recognize her as his jailer. There is very little hope that she will be permitted to see Kili and even less hope for the things she dares not name.
She fell in love with Thranduil’s enemy and was banished for it. She cannot imagine Thorin’s reaction will be much different.
Tauriel tells herself she just wants to ensure Kili is alive. She vaguely remembers the gold of his armor glinting amid blowing snow and the sudden warmth of his body even through his mail. If she closes her eyes, she can summon the memory of the smell of his sweat, battle-bright and heady.
If she closes her eyes, there is a strong chance she’s going to fall off her horse.
Legolas leans over to give the animal a reassuring pat on its neck. He’s always been much more fond of horses than she has, and whatever anxiety Tauriel is passing to the animal is immediately eased. “Have strength,” he murmurs. The words are, perhaps, also for her.
Time stretches away. She concentrates on the brisk air on her skin, the sharp winter breeze in her hair. There is no more of the strong herbal tincture and frustration fills its place. All the strength it imparted has made its mark; it’s up to her own flesh now, but of whatever virtues Tauriel may claim, patience will never be included.
Finally, an older Dwarf walks out of the looming gate, his long white beard naked of any adornment. His robes are rich without being ostentatious, lending him an air of strong, practical wisdom. He seems to know Legolas, who easily slides off his horse to greet him. “Legolas Greenleaf. I have been told you seek an audience with Thorin.”
“Indeed,” Legolas says, and glances at Tauriel. “Although I am merely an escort in this matter. Tauriel, this is Balin.”
She recognizes him as the closest of Thorin’s advisors, the one who despite much effort couldn’t convince his king to accept Thranduil’s offer. He recognizes her immediately, and his demeanor changes. “You are Tauriel.”
Legolas makes a small gesture unseen except to her, and she carefully tilts down into his arms. It’s a skillful movement, presenting a far greater facade of strength than actually exists. She is painfully grateful.
Tauriel is tired and frustrated and weak. She’s clinging to the only fragment of self-control she still possesses, but a great reservoir of tears hangs behind her eyes, ready to burst forth at the slightest provocation. This isn’t who she is. She’s Thranduil’s captain, a being of confidence and power. Through years of great effort, she’s crafted herself into someone dependable and competent, someone trusted to guard the forests around her home, someone who can put an arrow in a spider’s eye before it can twitch.
No, not a captain. Not anymore. She’s given everything for Kili and she wildly craves a moment, just a single moment, to take his face in her hands and kiss him.
As she steels herself for an onslaught of righteous anger from the Dwarf, she’s startled when he takes three steps forward and catches her hands in his own. “You above all others are most welcome here.”
The confusion must show in her face, because Balin smiles and gives her hands a gentle shake. “We have heard much of your aid.”
“I imprisoned you.”
“And saved our young prince,” he says. “Thrice, by his reckoning.”
“He lives?”
“The line of Durin remains unbroken,” Balin assures her, and the relief is so great she sways a little. Legolas immediately puts a hand at her elbow. Balin misses nothing. “And yourself,” he says soberly, “we had not heard whether you lived.”
Her throat is too tight to speak, so Legolas smoothly breaks in. “I must return to my father. I will speak to him about aid.”
Balin’s eyes flick from Tauriel to Legolas. “I would not expect such,” he says, “although we would accept it with gratitude.” He looks again at Tauriel. “I imagine the lad will insist you reside with us for a time.”
“I would not impose,” she says, even though she has no other choice. “But I would be grateful.”
“No imposition at all,” Balin assures her.
Legolas ties the horses together with quick, practiced economy. Aside to her, he says quietly, “I cannot bring you back with me.”
“I know.” She will not cry. She won’t.
“I will return when I can. This is not the last time we see each other.”
“There is nowhere else I can be.” Tauriel is homeless, and more than that, Kili is here. Wherever he is is the only place she can draw breath. “Thank you, mellon-nin.”
He smiles, mounting his horse with ease, and there’s such sweet sadness there that she almost succumbs to the ready well of tears. “Be well, Tauriel.”
Tauriel, not of Mirkwood, where every branching path leads away from its crux. Time will not let her retrace her steps, and though she’s certain this is not the end of their long friendship, something about the farewell seems final, an explicit demarcation between who she was and who she is now to be.
When Legolas is far down the path, she turns back to Balin. The old Dwarf inclines his head toward the hall. “Welcome to Erebor.”