Returning Home: A Hobbit Fanfiction

Chapter 60 - Questions Without Answers

It might have been minutes, hours, or even days later for all he knew when Aredhel finally drew back from him, breathing uneven and thoroughly kissed. At some point they'd moved to one of the benches in the garden, and she was seated on his lap, wrapped securely in his arms. 

"How long has it been?" she whispered, stroking his face tenderly. "It has been so long for me, but I fear it has been even longer for you. Your face is unchanged, but your eyes... they hold much pain, my love."

The pain spilled over onto his face, and he grimaced, closing his eyes before smoothing out his expression once more. "Too long. It has been almost two centuries by the count of man since I last saw your face, and though it is but the blink of an eye to an elf, each day to me has passed with painful slowness, dragging itself that I might feel the full weight of your loss."

His gaze shifted slightly to the left of her face and he smiled, tucking an errant lock of hair behind her once-again pointed ear the way he always used to do. "But what of you? How long were you in this... other world?"

Aredhel's blue eyes flashed open wide with sudden realization. "Wait. You knew I had been taken through a gate. How? I was alone when I was taken through."

He chuckled, placing a small kiss on her jaw, only drawing back a short distance. "I may have met a young dwarf female who claimed to know you, and had evidence to back up her claims. She knew of the gate as well, and had apparently herself been taken through one to this world."

Aredhel gasped and sat up straight, though he didn't let her go too far. "You met Elena. That's right! I remember!" She eyed him askance. "You locked her up in the dungeons, too."

Thranduil raised a perfectly-formed eyebrow at her. "And how would you know that? I would hope that you did not hide your return from me, and were only found out by accident." 

The words were easily spoken, but he never could successfully hide his emotions from his wife, even now, and she hastened to reassure him.

"No, no, my love. When Tahlia found me in the Greenwood, as soon as I understood where I was, I insisted on being taken to you. I have been waiting to reunite with you for seventy years in the other world. I desired to wait no longer than I needed to."

Thranduil smiled crookedly down at her, hiding his relief under a smug aura. "I should hope not. It was Tahlia who found you and brought you here, you say? Remind me to increase her wages. And her training," he added as an afterthought, then frowned as he realized what she'd said. "Seventy years? It was seventy years for you?"

She nodded, eyes glazing over as she almost became lost in her memories. "It was awful, Thranduil. It was a world of only men, and when I woke, I found I had become one of them, albeit I aged very slowly if at all. But I could handle that. I knew that I had been taken through a gate, and if I just waited long enough, I would eventually return. But it was the waiting that killed me." Tears began to fill her eyes again, and he reacted instantly, tucking her against his chest under his chin and stroking her hair soothingly. 

"There was so much senseless violence," she choked out. "So much senseless hatred. When I woke, I found myself in the start of what they called the Second World War, mere decades after the first. I was in a country whose leader judged everyone by their appearance and ethnicity, and deemed all those who fell short to be sub-human, and worthy of death."

She drew a shaky breath. "I survived because my blonde hair and blue eyes met his standards of perfection. But I watched a mother and her two children be gunned down simply because they were Jews - an ethnicity he deemed to be sub-human. The war lasted for six years, and caused untold devastation and loss of life. I did what I could to help, but... so many died, and there was nothing I could do! I was nearly killed myself several times over trying to help the resistance!"