These Lovely Scars (Lord of the Rings Fanfic)

Into the Mines

Aragon is sitting on top of me and bending over my face, looking concerned. My lips feel weird and throb, not in a painful way, but in an unfamiliar, alien way. I can't remember anything that just happened. "Get off, you're crushing me," I groan, trying to push him off.

He gets off, as if forgetting that he was sitting on me the whole time. "What's my name?" He asks desperately.

I give him a weird look. "Aragon."

"What's his name?" He points to Legolas.

"Legolas. Okay, what's - "

"What about him?" He points to Frodo.

"His name is Frodo! What's going on? Why are you asking me these questions?" I say, utterly confused and starting to get a bit frustrated.

"She's back," Gandalf says vaguely.

"What is that supposed to - " I am cut off by Aragon hugging me. I stand there awkwardly. In other circumstances, I would have hugged him, but right now I don't even know why he's hugging me, besides the fact that I know people's names.

"Don't touch that water again," Aragon says, continuing to hold me tightly.

"What happened?" I finally get to ask.

He breaks away and looks at Gandalf. They share some kind of conspicuous look before he turns to me again. "You passed out when you touched the water. Do you...remember anything?"

I rack my brain hard. Nothing comes up. Just the colour blue, a blur of blue all around me. But that's no use. "Nothing." I say. "I don't even remember touching the water or passing out, never mind what happened after that." And it's true.

Aragon holds my gaze for a second, and then breaks away as if uncomfortable. I can't help but feel a little hurt inside. There's something he's not telling me, something he doesn't want me to know about. With one last look he goes over to talk to Gandalf.

I feel drained. Physically, and, well...emotionally, I guess. Although I don't know why. I reach up to brush away the hair in my face, and my hand comes away wet. Have I been crying?

I'm so tired, I don't even have the energy to get up. I stay there, laying on the ground and staring up at the dark stone ceiling. The black rocks underneath me dig into my back, as does my bow and quiver full of arrows. Through a crack in the rock above me, a slight imperfection in the cave, I can see a sliver of the full moon outside. It reminds me of Elrond. He loves moonlight.

I am lost in my thoughts. It bothers me more and more as the seconds go by, the fact that I have no idea at all what just happened. The thought is a little itch that I can't scratch, burning more fiery and irritating the longer I can't do anything about it. I don't even hear Legolas's footsteps as he approaches me. "Adrianne?"

His voice makes me jump a little. My heart does a backflip when I look at his face - what! No, that's only because his presence startled me.

So why does my heart continue to race?

"Hi, Legolas," I say, sitting up. Black pebbles probably cling to my back. He sits down next to me. Not too close, but not distanced either. I could reach out and touch his crystal eyes, if I leaned far enough. We sit next to each other in silence. Not an awkward silence, but a thoughtful silence. A word comes to my head. Spontaneously, I blurt out, "What is a bathing suit?"

Legolas looks at me, confusion made clear in his eyes. "I don't know." He says. "Where did you hear it? It sounds so...foreign."

I open my mouth, but then close it. Pausing, I realize that I have to think about the question. Where did I hear it?

Ah, yes. It was from my dream-memory-thing. "It's a word that came to me while I had that little flashback memory thing," I say.

"Can you remember any of it?" He asks, seeming genuinely interested. I smile a bit.

"No," I begin to say, but before I can continue my thought, something else catches my attention. I lean forwards. There it is again! "Did you see that?" I ask in a slightly flustered manner. I thought I had seen it earlier, but I doubted myself. Now I am sure. The vivid flash of a tentacle lurking beneath the surface was not something my imagination could have created. It was too real, too...alive.

We both stand up, staring intently at the water and probably look ridiculously silly. A voice interrupts us. "THE DOORS! They've opened!" Pippin's voice cheers from across the cave, the sound echoing off the stone walls for all the fellowship to hear. We all turn to the entrance, where Gandalf and Frodo stand. I wonder how they figured the password out. Legolas and I exchange a hopeful look and make our way over to the rest of the group, forgetting all about whatever may be stirring under the blanket of water.

It is even darker inside the mines than outside. Gandalf illuminates the path in front of us with a dim glow from the tip of his staff.

There is a scream, but it is not me. It is not one of the hobbits. It is Gimli.

His kin is dead.

• ⧫ • ⧫ •

I plead with my will not to look down, but curiosity has a stronger hand. My breath hitches. I have almost stepped in the rotting corpse of a dwarf with an axe in his chest. There are dead bodies strewn all around the room, all gaping eye holes and grinning skulls. Dried blood splotches the floor and walls. "Nooooo!" Gimli cries.

"This is no mine, it's a tomb." Boromir says accusingly. Yes, you're very perceptive, Boromir. "We make for my city." Everyone ignores him. We give him a moment to lament.

Frodo's cries break through any sadness we might have had. "Ahhhhhh! Help!" We all avert our attention to him.

Something slimy loops around my waist, like the unwanted attention of an undesirable lover. I don't need to look down to know that it is a thick tentacle. I scream as I too am dragged from the room and out to the water.