The Exile's Daughter

The Fallout

The cave was eerily quiet when I regained my senses. For a moment the pain in my head was all that existed, and I moaned, but once the world had steadied a little, I could feel someone holding me against them. I jerked away, but he steadied me, shushing me calmly.

"Peace, Nesseldë. It's only me, it's Legolas. It's alright."

We were in the middle of the cave. A beam of the setting sun snuck in from the tiny entrance, and relief flooded through me. The blurry figures of the rangers surrounded us. Some were searching the bodies of the men, and some stood guarding the entrance.

I reached upwards blindly and clung to him, burying my head in his chest. "I thought you were sundered from me."  For a while he sat in silence, pulling me into him and burying his face in my hair. I breathed in his familiar smell, of pine and wood smoke. My muscles, painfully tense, relaxed ever so slightly.

"It would take more than these cowards to slay me." He muttered thickly. I sniffed, and his lips pressed into my hairline, lingering shakily on my skin.

"Is it over?"

"It's over." Legolas confirmed, and I found my eyesight was steading slightly. "He's dead. The man who took you." Painfully, I moved my head to the side, to where Freca lay, eyes open, an arrow in his throat. "Nice punch, by the way". Legolas smiled. I choked out a laugh.

That, however, was the moment I noticed the blood on his tunic. I gasped, thinking for a second that it was his own, but as the fear faded my memory sharpened. I brushed my bleeding lip with my index finger, gazing at the trickle of blood oozing down to my knuckle.

Legolas put a hand under my chin, tilting it as gently as he could to assess the wound. He delicately touched his thumb to it, wiping away another streak of blood and saying nothing. He looked right at me, and my breath seemed to catch. Behind his usually serene eyes was a darkness I had never seen.

"My proudest work!"

That voice.

How could he still be alive? I jumped to hear him speak, looking wildly around to find the source. Aragorn and Elladan had pinned Wulf to the jagged cave wall. It seemed he was the last man, and he sneered to see my eyes fill with tears. Elladan forced him to look away from me, digging into his chin with his nails and growling some threat I could not hear.

Legolas spoke. His voice was strained, shaking and tense. "Did he do this to you?"

I nodded, my hands shaking uncontrollably to think of what else he would have done, if they had not reached me in time. Legolas wound his arms around me tightly, leaning down to kiss my temple. "It's alright, Ness. He won't hurt you again."

My unharmed right hand clung tightly to his tunic. His voice still had that strained quality to it, and it was growing by the word. "Could he tell us anything that you could not?"

I didn't want Legolas finding out about the murderer's identity from the man himself, nor any other information – things I wanted to keep wholly secret from all but him.  I shook my head.

"Alright", Legolas said in a voice of forced calm. Carefully he propped me against the wall and stood again, snatching up his white knife from the ground. His hands shook, but certainly not from fear. His jaw was set, his eyes dark and his mouth turned down. He glared at Wulf, who stiffened, and pushed his knife to his throat. Elladan melted away, allowing Legolas his revenge.

However, at the last second, I found that I objected. This kill belonged to no one else.

"Dartho!" (S: Stop!)

Beads of blood had appeared at Wulf's neck. I saw a wet patch spread over his trousers, a mark of his terror. A sick satisfaction filled my heart. If revenge was ever due, surely it was now. Legolas, however, seemed to mistake my wide eyes and shaking hands for pity.