AN: This is entirely the fault of a reviewer on AO3 who asked about what would have happened in the movie version of the journey to Helm's Deep during the scene in which Aragorn goes over the cliff.

She'd been antsy all day, antsy enough to draw the attention of the remainder of the Fellowship, but Holly wasn't certain what exactly it was that she was antsy about.

Galadriel may have sharpened her ability to sense impending doom, but unfortunately the limited foresight had failed to come with an interpretation manual. At this point, her bad feelings could mean anything from impending attack to an indication of how absolutely terrible the coming confrontation at Helm's Deep was going to be.

As the death-scream of a warg filled the air, Holly wanted to slam her head repeatedly into the nearest solid surface. She had not meant that literally.

Around them, women and children were fretting as Riders marshalled themselves, moving off in the direction of the column. Taking the reins of Hasufel, Holly looked for Aragorn, scanning the teeming crowds.

"He went ahead," Eowyn said, catching her arm. "After the elf."

"Very well then," she muttered, swinging herself up onto Hasufel and urging the horse forward. If Aragorn was intent on scouting ahead on foot with wargs about, the only thing she could do was bring him his horse.

Theoden was riding towards her, but he gave her half a glance as he passed, and she guessed he was giving orders to Eowyn. As they broke clear of the civilians, Holly urged Hasufel into a fast canter, seeking out Aragorn amid the Riders separating from the main column.

At last she found him on a rise, heading back towards her, and she let out the breath she'd been holding. He was being sensible then if he was coming back for Hasufel. Skidding to a stop, she flung herself off the horse, pulling Aragorn close enough to shove the reins into his hand before she boosted him up into the saddle. "Go!" she shouted at him as he seemed to hesitate, glancing down at her. Had Halbarad never had to show him how to swap mounts in a hurry? Holly had seen her chieftain use a longbow, so it was nearly a certainty that he would have had to swap mounts to either take an archer's spot or to ride out with the horsemen, but perhaps it was different for him given who he was.

Hesitating a moment more, Aragorn finally got the idea when she unshouldered her bow and let an arrow fly, straight into the mouth of a warg that was about to jump down from the rocky hillside to an unwitting Rider below. Wheeling around, he raced off to join Theoden, and Holly drew back again, grinning as the shaft pierced an orc, wrenching him around with enough force to redirect the warg it was riding over the cliff's edge.

"Thuri!"

A shout made her whip around, and she saw Eothain charging towards her, arm reaching down for her in the same moving mount she'd been showing off earlier as the column rode out and she swapped horses without waiting for breaks. Glancing about to ensure there were no straggling scouts, she grasped his arm as he rode by, allowing him to pull her up behind him as they rode towards the sounds of battle.

When they arrived, it was pure chaos, Riders tangling with warg riders across a rocky cliff top. Several horses were down, and any number of Riders were fighting on foot. She drew back and buried an arrow deep in one orc's chest before it could gut a Rider, doing her best to tune out the screams of wounded and dying horses.

Mechanically, she drew back and released, picking her targets carefully as Eothain rode towards where Theoden and Eomer were fighting, but a flash of movement caught her eye, and she glanced at the clifftop to her right.

For a moment, she saw a warg there, senseless as it dashed on, heedless of the death that awaited it after the long drop, yet there was something…

A body. Someone was being dragged by the warg. As a hand came up, struggling against whatever kept the man bound to the warg, she caught an impossible gleam, a ring on the man's finger that she was very familiar with, having seen it any number of times on the journey thus far.

She blinked, and the man and warg were gone. Heart in her throat, she kicked Eothain's feet from the stirrups, sliding her own feet into them so that she could stand in the saddle and scan the clifftop for Aragorn.

There. He was falling from Hasufel's saddle only a few lengths away as a warg knocked him off, but it didn't linger to threaten him. Aragorn started to turn, seeing the approaching warg rider, and Holly couldn't be bothered to stop and think. Launching herself from the saddle, she hit the ground and rolled as she'd been taught, coming up on her feet. There was no time to put an arrow in the air.

Automatically, Holly let the knife drop from her sleeve into her palm, a thin, keen blade that she carried for a single purpose. One breath, a swift cut, and the harness that held her staff and bow was falling to the ground, taking her quiver with it, and then a final stride and she was there, leaping off a rocky outcropping to knock both Aragorn and the orc that had been riding the warg off the beast. Her momentum would have had her following them to the earth below, but something loose in the warg's tack snared her, and as she fell, Holly felt something suddenly constrict around her ankle.

Landing hard on her shoulder, she tried to let out a sound of pain, but the breath was driven from her lungs by the impact. It took a long moment for her to regain it, the warg dragging her along as it hurtled headlong towards the cliffs. By the time she got her shoulder to move, pulling herself upright to cut whatever it was that had bound her to the beast, it was too late, and she was falling over the cliff.

With a grunt of exertion, the sound lost to the wind rushing through her ears, Holly slashed her blade through the strap, separating herself from the warg. Knowing she had only moments to prepare, she willed herself slower, and the ground beneath her soft enough to break her fall gently.

As the battle subsided, Aragorn picked himself up and took stock of the field. What scouts remained were fast fleeing the regrouping Rohirrim, but it didn't look as if Theoden intended to give chase. The Riders who had lost their mounts during the melee moved across the field, stopping by downed companions and animals, blades occasionally flashing in a mercy stroke to put a dying animal out of its misery.

Few of the Rohirrim seemed to have fallen, though they had lost many horses, Aragorn noted as he cut an orc's throat for good measure, not wanting to take chances of leaving enemies on the field at his back. Some animals were being fetched from where they'd fled after their riders had been dismounted, but more lay dead and dying on the field, their screams filling the air.

Rejoining Theoden's group, Aragorn took count of familiar faces. The king himself seemed unharmed, as did Eomer. Legolas was there, and he could hear Gimli cursing somewhere on the field. Given that Aragorn had last seen him with two warg corpses atop him, he doubted the dwarf had taken any other harm.

Boromir appeared from behind a pair of Riders, flushed with exertion, but otherwise unharmed. Frowning, Aragorn looked for Thuri, who had been with him until he entered the field proper. Glancing up at the ridge where he'd left her, he tried to see if she'd taken a marksman's perch somewhere out of the field.

"Where is the Ranger?" someone called, and he turned, wondering what he was needed for.

A Rider he recognized as Eomer's second was cantering up, glancing about in what seemed to be barely concealed panic. "Where is he?"

"Aragorn is here," Eomer said, gesturing to where Aragorn stood. "What need have you of him Eothain?"

"Not him," the man said, shaking his head as he peered at the group. "The other one, the message rider."

"Thuri?" Boromir said, urging his mount up to stand next to Aragorn. "I have not seen...him since before we were attacked."

Eothain didn't seem to notice the pause as Boromir corrected for the fact that the Rohirrim believed Thuri to be a man. Indeed, Aragorn often found himself forgetting that Thuri was actually a woman, given that she dressed herself as the Rangers did, hood up to conceal her hair and cowl up to conceal her face. How she managed to disguise her figure he did not understand, but unless one happened upon her while she washed, it was near-impossible to tell that she was not the man everyone assumed her to be. "He rode with me from the ridge, but he must have seen something and dismounted in a rush. I lost sight of him, but his actions were not…"

Aragorn tuned the rest of the man's words out, striding towards a spot he vaguely remembered. Gimli was wiggling out from under the pile of corpses with the assistance of two Riders and their pikes, but Aragorn spared only a cursory nod for the dwarf, trying to remember where he had been when he had been knocked from Hasufel by a warg. Coming across a trampled patch of ground he knelt, reading the tracks. Yes, this was it. Here he had fallen and scrambled to his feet, and there was the oncoming warg.

Vaguely aware that others were following him, he tracked the path of the warg he'd ridden briefly towards the clifftop. There was the orc who had been its master, lying where Aragorn had slain him after they'd both been thrown from the beast's back. Aragorn had thought little of it at the time, expecting that they'd collided with another warg like the one that had knocked him out of the saddle. Unease stirred in his gut, telling him that something was not right.

Thuri was reckless, he knew that, and would have put herself in danger if it meant protecting him. The warg he'd been riding had headed towards the cliff, but Aragorn had planned to stop it before they went over. Had Thuri seen them?

Had it been she who had knocked him off the beast?

"Aragorn!" Legolas called, and he rose, turning to see the elf a few lengths away from where he'd been knocked from his horse. A familiar bow was in his hand, the same bow Thuri had crafted while they were in Lothlorien.

She would not have left the bow. Halbarad trained each and every Ranger to hold on to their weapons unless they could not without risking their lives. How Thuri had lost her bow in Moria was hard for him to understand, but when he'd asked about it in Lothlorien, she'd muttered something about her staff and stomped off, giving the offending staff a glare.

"Here's something," Eothain's voice said, and Aragorn dragged his eyes away from the bow in Legolas's hands towards the man, towards the cliff. There was a tangle of leather straps in his hands, one Aragorn would have recognized, even without the staff hanging from it.

Behind him, Gimli let out a wounded sound, and Aragorn thought he heard Boromir take a sharp breath. Dread weighing his feet down, he walked the short distance to the cliff top, knowing what he was likely to see.

Below his feet white water rushed and rolled. There was no sign of the warg or of Thuri.

Ripping his gaze away, he turned back to Eothain, to Thuri's harness. It made no sense; he'd watched her don it multiple times during their journey and knew it took at least a minute to get everything settled and the straps buckled properly. Not something she could do while being dragged over a cliff, and not something that would have happened by chance.

"It's been cut," Gimli was saying as he approached, careful fingers tracing part of the leather. "See this part here? That's not wear, that's a blade."

Legolas peered over the dwarf's shoulder, reaching out to run his finger over the cut ends. "This blade was razor sharp," he murmured. "Not like most of the weapons orcs bear."

The thought made Aragorn pause, considering. Orcs tended towards causing most of their harm from blunt force trauma, blood loss, or overwhelming damage. They didn't care for weapons, didn't clean and sharpen them between skirmishes. Legolas's observation did not fit with what he knew about orcs and their weapons.

"Hold it up properly?" Boromir asked, and Eothain obliged, looking confused. Aragorn watched as Boromir adjusted the way several of the straps hung before stepping back, making a few vague gestures with his hands. Finally, his mouth flattened grimly. "Thuri cut the strap."

All heads turned to the man. "What do you mean?" Aragorn asked.

"Look at the angle," Boromir said, gesturing at the harness in Eothain's hands. "No orc weapon could have done it, and it's not your usual strike. Across the chest, instead of directly at? There's no indication that anything else was cut, no blood on the leather, so it wasn't a very deep strike. And look at how the leather has bunched, as if the blade moved up. Thuri keeps blades on his person, one up his sleeve I suspect."

"And what would you know?" Gimli huffed, glancing at Boromir, who scowled back at him.

"Have you not seen Thuri fight?" the man retorted. "Or disarm, when we have had the luxury of doing so? Whatever he has seen, he is one of the best armed fighters I have ever known."

Aragorn had to allow this, having seen Thuri remove weapons for sharpening, maintenance, and bathing previously. He hadn't been aware that Boromir had also noticed. "But why leave this behind?" A thought occurred to him, and he turned on Eothain. "You said Thuri must have seen something?"

As the man agreed, Legolas's face grew even grimmer. "The Lady's Blessing," he said softly, and Gimli hung his head. Aragorn swallowed hard. If Thuri had not intervened, it likely would have been him going over the cliff. That was the only explanation that made sense: she had seen his fall and intervened to make sure he survived.

"We must go," Eomer called, riding towards them, Hasufel and Arod trailing him. "By order of Theoden King, we leave the dead and make haste to Helm's Deep."

It took an effort, but Aragorn tore himself away from the cliff edge, knowing that there was nothing he could do to help Thuri now. He mounted Hasufel, watching as Boromir carefully took Thuri's staff harness and strapped it to his mount's saddle. Legolas still carried Thuri's bow with his own.

With a heavy heart, he rode away from the cliff top, hoping that Thuri found peace in whatever lay beyond.

She woke, and couldn't breath.

Summoning all her strength, Holly rolled herself onto her side, feeling the ache of a bad fall in every muscle of her body. Coughing weakly, she started the process of emptying what felt like an entire lake's worth of water from her lungs, but in the end she could breathe again.

Below her was a rocky riverbed, stones digging uncomfortably into her side, and she forced herself up into a sitting position. The sun was in the west, so it was afternoon, but she did not know how many days she'd been in the river.

Nothing hurt enough to suggest that she'd broken anything, which was about the only positive thing she could find in the situation. Everything but her harness was in place, which meant she had supplies and most of her weapons, except for her bow and staff. Her quiver was empty, the arrows in it lost to the river, but she had more and materials to make more, which was the least of her concerns at the moment.

Digging in her belt pouch, she hesitated before opening one of her precious vials of pain reliever and drinking it in a single gulp. She needed to be up and moving immediately; there was no time to wait for her pain to recede naturally.

Everything died down to a dull ache, and she felt brave enough to try standing. With the help of a nearby rock, Holly pulled herself to her feet, wondering how she could figure out where she was in relation to Helm's Deep.

Finding a stick on the riverbank once she'd gotten up the will to move the two meters from the water's edge to the grassy bank, she placed it on a flat rock and spun it as she whispered: "Point me Helm's Dike."

The stick spun for a moment before being drawn to the southwest, and she sighed in relief. Her trip down the river had carried her west, towards Helm's Deep. She could follow it until she found the road, if her recollection of the way was clear. Holly had asked Eothain and Eowyn before the skirmish, to see what they knew of their route in an attempt to understand if her foresight was warning her of an attack on the road or of the battle to come.

With a sigh, she pushed herself to her feet again and started walking, only to stumble as her foot hit a tussock of grass. Regaining her balance, she continued her steady trudge along the river's edge, hoping to reach the Dike before Saruman's forces even though she doubted it. The army had been on the move even as Theoden had emptied Edoras, and she had not the strength to sustain her as she had when Aragorn had led them from Rauros. If she drew upon her magic, she would only exhaust herself by the time she reached the Dike, rendering her useless to help any she found there.

Fixing her mind on the task, she took one step, and then another. A third, and then a fourth, and she found herself counting each step without really thinking about it, humming a song she barely recognized until she realized that it was from a children's Christmas special that Teddy had adored and forced them to watch each year.

A broken laugh escaped her, and her heart ached as she thought of Teddy, and of Rose and Hugo, who would forever be teenagers and young adults in her mind. She wondered for the first time in a long while what they remembered of her, if they remembered her, and what they had become.

That train of thought took her through more steps, and she realized that her clothing was drying quickly in the early spring sun, no longer sopping wet. Another blessing, she thought vaguely, and went back to counting steps, shutting out nearly everything else in her fixation to move forward.

It was the thudding of hooves that drew her out of her count, and she snapped her head up, ignoring the throb of aching muscles at the movement. A horse thundered towards her, and she took a step forward, raising her arms and preparing to lurch out of the way. "Whoa there!" she called, trying to keep from startling the animal any further. "Whoa there!"

It skidded to a stop, blowing hard, its sides heaving. It wore a halter, a broken rope dangling from it, and given the way the whites of its eyes showed as it sidestepped, she suspected it was fleeing something. "Easy now," she soothed, taking tiny steps forward. If she could catch the horse, she could ride it, and make better time to Helm's Dike. "Easy now. I've got you, you're safe now."

Slowly, the horse let her approach, settling as she talked until she could reach out and touch its neck, her other hand grabbing the dangling rope. It took another minute or two before she could convince the mare to calm enough to let her mount, but once she was settled, she wound her fingers into the coarse mane and urged her forward.

The mare was beautifully responsive, needing only a shift of Holly's weight or a nudge of her leg to cue her. As they moved smoothly into a canter, crossing the ground in long strides, Holly spared a moment to marvel at the horses kept by the Rohirrim. She suspected the mare was a farm horse, meant for riding and cart pulling and plowing. If this was the quality of the average horse, what greater standards were the warhorses held to?

As the sun was slipping towards the horizon in front of her, they came across a road. To the north, a plume of smoke was beginning to rise, and Holly felt a heavy weight in her gut. It could only be the approaching army, likely burning Rohan's crops and fields as they came. From the amount of smoke, and the fact that the mare she was riding had been fleeing something, she suspected they'd found a village.

Hoping against hope that the inhabitants had retreated to Helm's Deep, Holly turned the mare southwards on the road and set off as quickly as she dared. If the army was close enough to fire the village, she had little time to spare.

As dusk set in, she reached the gates of the dike, firmly barred against her. Backing the mare, she tipped her head up and peered at the wall above the gate. "Hail the gate!"

"What business have you at the Dike stranger!" came back from the wall, and she rolled her eyes beneath her hood. At least it wasn't in Rohirric so she could understand.

"I am Thuri, a Ranger of the North!" she called back. "I rode with Theoden King and Aragorn, son of Arathorn as they led refugees from Edoras to the safety of the Hornburg!"

"Why come you not with them?" the gate guard answered, his gruff voice causing the mare to shift uneasily under her.

"We were attacked by warg scouts on the road. I was separated from the rest, and had to make my way alone across the country. This mare found me; I suspect she fled from the village up the road and to the west. As I passed, it seemed as if the Enemy had put it to the torch."

There was a long pause, and then the voice called down again. "We cannot spare the time to take word to the keep, but we will let you in. The fall of a Ranger is known to us. But should you prove false, we will slay you where you stand."

"Agreed," she said, and dismounted as a small door in the might gates opened. Leading the mare through, she found herself surrounded by armed men.

"You will be escorted to the Hornburg, where Theoden King will hear your claims," one man said. Nodding, Holly followed him to a small stables set to the side of the dike where a group of three men waited, already mounted and well armed. She remounted her mare, and the trio fell in around her: one riding before her, one riding next to her, and the crossbowman behind her, insurance should she prove false.

It showed how desperate for men they were that they allowed her in the gate, and spared only three to escort her. Halbarad would not have let someone within Esteldin without at least five guards, possibly more if they were on the eve of battle.

Quietly, she rode with her escort, eying the citadel rising against the mountains before her, wondering what she would find within the walls of the Hornburg.

"Sire," came the call from the outside of the keep. "Theoden King, there is word from the Dike!"

Aragorn sat up, tucking his pipe away. Nearby, Eomer, Gimli, Legolas and Boromir also straightened. There had been little word since they'd arrived at the Hornburg, the refugees not far behind them. The Dike was supposed to be the first line of defense, and he had expected to hear only when they had fallen, and the survivors retreated back to the safety of the Hornburg where they could muster a final stand.

He had not thought the armies of Saruman were so close.

"It has fallen then?" Theoden asked as the messenger from the gates was admitted.

"No my King," the man said, bowing hastily. "Three riders have come, escorting one who claims to be a Ranger, fallen in the skirmish with the warg scouts."

"Thuri," Aragorn said, leaving his pipe on the table as he rose. "Thuri survived."

"Impossible," Eomer said, shaking his head. "No man could survive a fall from that height."

I do not die like mortal men she had told him as they stood outside Moria and she attempted to destroy her staff. At the time he had thought that Thuri meant she had been blessed with the grace of the eldar, who would not perish from age or sickness, but might fall in battle. But now, now he suspected that she meant something far different.

"Thuri may well have," Aragorn replied, heading for the door. "They are holding at the gate?" he asked the gate guard.

"Awaiting Theoden King's ruling," the man responded, looking to Theoden, who sat at the head of his table, looking grave.

After a long moment, the king looked at Aragorn. "If it is truly this Ranger who comes to our gate, he may enter with my blessing. But Aragorn son of Arathorn is chief of the Rangers, let it be his decision as to whether or not this man is false."

Bowing his head in acknowledgement of the responsibility Theoden had just laid upon him, Aragorn followed the gate guard out of the keep and down the stairs to the gate. A quartet of riders stood outside, the one in the center familiar to him.

"Mae govannen Thuri," he said watching as her head snapped in his direction.

"Somewhere in the north is hid/A hope for all to see" she responded immediately, not even waiting for him to ask her to confirm her identity. He would have been willing to accept her on that alone, but he knew that they'd both been away from the north for long enough that the pass phrase could have been compromised. Especially given Saruman's treachery.

"At Amon Hen, you told Boromir that thanks were not owed to you. Who were they owed to?"

She studied him under her hood. "The Master of Visions and Dreams whose timely words saved Boromir's life."

He was very nearly entirely certain that it was Thuri who waited before them, but he wanted a third confirmation. As Aragorn searched his brain for something that only the two of them would have experienced, a voice spoke from behind him. "What was the seventh tether?"

The words froze Thuri, tension in every inch of her body visible. Reacting, the mare she rode shifted uneasily, blowing out a long breath. After a long moment, she said: "I was."

Aragorn turned to see Boromir looking at Thuri, sympathy in his eyes. Looking away, he nodded at Aragorn. "That was what Thuri told me as we spoke alone on the eaves of Fangorn as she kept watch."

Wondering what they had spoken of that unsettled Thuri so deeply, Aragorn nodded to the gate guards. "You are indeed Thuri of Esteldin. Be welcome in this place."

She rode through the gate as her escort turned and kneed their horses into a gallop, returning to the Dike. Dismounting, she allowed a youth to take the mare to where the other horses were stabled as she turned and faced Aragorn.

"I apologize for my delay my lord," she said softly, bowing slightly. "But I bring word from beyond the Coombe. Saruman's forces are nearly upon us; they may have already reached the Dike."

"We must see you armed then," Aragorn said, having expected that news. Their scouts had anticipated the army's arrival as night fell. "Your weapons were retrieved from the cliff."

"That is beyond hope," she said, turning as Legolas approached, offering her the bow he had carried since he'd first picked it up. "I knew that I would likely fall, and did not wish to replace this so soon after its crafting."

So that answered that. She had indeed seen him fall, and acted to prevent it.

"Your staff waits inside the keep," he said, knowing that Boromir had placed it with their packs. "Come with us, and we will tell you of what has happened since we last spoke."

He had any number of questions for her, but there were Rohirrim eavesdropping everywhere. Aragorn didn't know if he necessarily wanted the breadth of Thuri's talents to become known, as they likely would have if she deigned to answer even half the questions he had. She nodded, and fell into step just off and behind his left shoulder, as he realized she tended to place herself whenever they walked. Wondering if that was something she'd answer, he led the way towards the keep, where hopefully there was food that could be spared for her, since he suspected she had not eaten since their midday stop.