I was content. I really was. When I ended Fortress, it seemed the perfect ending. After what happened, I couldn't see them coming together as in pink fairy tales. On the other hand, I couldn't see them apart, either. So I left it on a note of hope and luck. And lots of determinism (on Legolas' behalf).

However...the more I go back to it, the more I feel it's unfinished. The characters stir and whisper...banging against their coffins. They refuse to be buried! They want to return to the land of the living and finish this – for good or bad. Because even though we might curse and groan and kick and spit, Fate will have her way with us – the only choice left to us is whether it'll be nice or rough.

Or...

Do we really choose our lives, our paths and walk in blind crisscrosses on this globe, led by emotions, ethics, or the lack of those?

This story is an exploration of that. It is not so much about a haunting past, but more about a haunting future – the fight we give to escape the inescapable, to evade the inevitable. It's about how we try to cut what is indelible, how we try to bury what is imperishable. In short...it is about a man and a woman...and love.

This story is a Pentimento – the reemergence in a painting of an image that's been painted over.

Once again – grand master Tolkien owns it all and I am just using his genius of a work for my own little, selfish ends. If you are strict about his work, do not read this. If you are unwilling to waste time with a fantasy that goes nowhere and aims only to entertain, don't read this. If you are tired of Legomances, Mary-Sues or elves – don't read this. If, however, you are bored as I am and willing to take a ride for the pure joy of it – come and sit by the fire.

For Kris and Missy, who insisted this be written and then insisted more for it to be published. If anyone is entertained by it in the slightest, it is their deed.

Inspired by "Strawberry Wine" by Pat Benatar and especially by "If You Could Read My Mind" by Gordon Lightfoot.

"...Who can heal another? Who can cover past injuries, touch a magic wand and unmake the ugly scars? Who can forgive and forget so utterly that even the recollection of the forgiveness itself fades into oblivion?

"Is there a way to defy the heart? The brain? Is there a path that leads out of this mass of meat that governs our lives, or does everything that enters it remain for all times to come - the good as well as the bad? Must all the seeds we sew into the tender earth of our spirits sprout? The weeds as well as the orchids? The poisonous vines as well as the lilacs?...

"I am not the one to ask, far less the one to answer. I only walk through this maze of a jungle in my yard, trying to understand how simple, tiny things have become such gigantic roots, such labyrinths of branch and leaf."

Legolas looked up from the newspaper in his hand, out into the clouds that were lazily dissolving around the plane he was sitting in. That familiar, lazy ache settled in his heart and he breathed unconsciously in preparation for it. A long moment passed and the pain did not lessen. He cast his gaze down once more as his slender fingers slid over the black, miniscule print of the article. He tried to imagine Irulan sitting in front of her laptop, writing this. Maybe it had been nighttime - the later hours of the night, even. She must have been in her pajamas. Her hair must have been in a hasty bun. The blue flicker of the computer screen washing over her face, over her olive skin and her dark eyes.

He sighed and looked out again. He could have been there with her. He could have walked into the room, a slight smile on his lips when he perceived her state. He would have embraced her from behind then and she would have jumped with surprise at his silent approach. Maybe she would have been mad and tried to hit him, but Legolas would have chuckled only and embraced her stronger. He would have softened her temper with kisses on her cheek and her neck, inhaling her warm scent. "Enough," he would have murmured into her ear as she relaxed in his arms, "Come to bed." She would have protested, no doubt. She would have whined that Legolas himself barely slept and spent the majority of the night taking care of the problems of the world. But he would have ignored her objections and lifted her from the chair with the ease of lifting a little child. Irulan would giggle despite herself and swing her arms around his neck in an attempt to cling to him. "If I can push aside the world for a few hours, Irulan," he would have whispered to her as he strode towards the bedroom in the darkness with her comfortable weight in his arms, "surely you can delay your article as well."

None of this would ever happen.

Legolas sighed with frustration and closed his eyes. He leaned his head back on the cushions as the plane shook ever so slightly during the flight. Instead of her anchor and support, he was a weed in her garden. He was the poisonous vine that she wrote about. He had sprouted in her serenity and devoured everything else that had been growing there so tenderly. Every day she was chopping him off, cutting through branch and vein, through fiber and tissue. And unable to do anything else, every night after her departure he was growing once more. Come morning she would see that he had stubbornly held on to life, that he had painfully elongated his limbs once more. Ready to bear the cut of the axe again.

'What is it about Fate?' he thought grimly. 'I am master of myself no longer. I am drifting...like some piece of wood in a cold stream. Torn off from the living tissue. Removed from where I belong, and thrown into this thunder of emotions.' The thoughts encircled him, further and further, until their echoes sung strange songs in his head.

The plane shook ever so slightly and Legolas found himself jerking up from a state of light slumber. He blinked in confusion, surprised that he had drifted into sleep so easily and so unexpectedly. A swift glance out the window revealed the outskirts of the beehive of a city. Another moment passed as he remained unmoving, trying to clear his mind and the disturbance at the fact that his control had slipped like that. Then he placed the newspaper in his bag, put on his belt and awaited the upcoming landing.