She had not expected him to be there, at that hour past midnight she considered solely her own.

Neither had she expected to find him in exactly the same place where she had first seen him, in the daylight hours, in what seemed ages, ago.

Nor had she expected him to, in one smooth and silent movement, turn and bow to her as if always knowing she would come—and as if she were indeed a princess worthy of the honor.

"M-my Lord—!" The words sputtered from her mouth as she managed a flustered obeisance. "Master Elf--I had thought you would be resting—…"

It was so banal, so obviously untrue, that she feared his reply..

Instead, she heard him say, "I had thought the same of you, my Lady."

Swallowing mounting curiosity, she prepared to offer some customary remark. But he spoke again: "Truth be told, I should have known better to think otherwise."

Now, he completely turned his back from the wide, moon-washed plains and faced her. Like a god, she would remember. Or perhaps truly one, for the starlight and moonlight seemed to combine with the torches from hall and village to reveal a smile playing on the corners of his mouth.

"Young warriors, "he said, "are always restless on the eve of battle."

"On the eve of—" Something in her stirred, or snapped, reacting to that slightest, slightest trace of patronization in his voice. Young warriors--! He had spoken as if she were an eager, eager child. But she was not naïve, not unaware of what it meant—on the eve of battle—

And then she stopped. The indignation that rushed through her vanished as quickly as it had come. He had spoken—he had spoken to her as if—he had spoken to her as--

He was now smiling, she saw. Smiling, inscrutably and almost admiringly, or maybe that, just like what she had heard, was only a trick of her imagination.

"Yea," he said, his voice a dark music, rich and secretive as the night. "In this hour perhaps you want to be alone." He bowed again, deeply, with a hand placed on his heart. "I take my leave." And he began moving towards the great doors of Meduseld, past her, past the sentries, who for their silence she could not fathom whether watching respectfully or asleep.

"Wait!"

Impulsively, she reached for him, and grasped half a leather vambrace and half a cold, pale hand. She stepped back immediately, jolted. "I—my Lord—forgive me—" It was not turning out to be an evening for her eloquence. "But how--What do you mean?"

Her eyes met his, or else his eyes met hers. And again Eowyn felt it, as she had felt it just that same past afternoon. A subtle flame, a spirit's fire, at once foreign, and familiar…

But Legolas only looked at her, gazed steadily and deeply into her questioning, searching eyes, filling them with the memory of his own. "My Lady," he said again, this time barely above a whisper, and slipped away into the darkness of the Golden Hall.

There were a lot of things Eowyn had not expected that night, but could have always feared, always dreamed. But most of all, she had never expected this: that, in the strange and solemn Elf, a being far removed from anything she had ever known in her life, she would find someone who could so easily see, and had seen, into her soul.

And who, unlike the Lords Aragorn and Faramir, would know it as his own.