Adult-FanFiction.org : Lord of the Rings

Sleeping Beauty	By : SilentNiobe Category: -Multi-Age > Het - Male/Female Views: 6613 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings (and associated) book series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
Author’s Note: Wow. W O W. Honestly, you guys have left me speechless. I cannot thank you enough for your reviews. I know I had promised I would update sooner, but I had some troubles with the essays for my MA and I barely had them ready in time. Plus, I decided to reply to all of your reviews first and then post the next chapter; it’s only fair with all these wonderful reviews you leave for my story! I hope you enjoy the new chapter! :-)
Disclaimer: See Prologue.
italics: thoughts
-----italics-----: flashback

Chapter 14 – Where do we go from here?
“Do you see it…?”
Johan’s heart beat so loud, that he was certain he could hear it. He waited anxiously for an answer to his breathless exclamation, but it never came.
“Alice, do you see it?” he repeated his question again louder, thinking that his cousin hadn’t heard him. But the sight he met when he tore his eyes from the moonlit clearing explained the silence of his cousin. His heart’s beating faltered for a fragment of a second.
Alice stood still, all blood drawn from her face, her eyes roaming over the clearing… Searching…. He could see the tears running on her cheeks, but so stunned did she look, that she probably did not even have the strength to sob properly.
“N-…No.”
The red-haired woman finally found her voice back. Somewhere between the contrast of numbness and searing pain, she had managed to make her brain work for a reply; because, for the past few moments, it had gone completely blank.
She wanted to fall onto the ground. She wanted to cry her heart out. She wanted to scream like a madwoman. She wanted to close her eyes and stop existing. She wanted to stop the pain the air brought as it traveled through her lungs.
She wanted to die.
But no matter how much she wished for the mercy and oblivion of death, she could only stand still, her running tears the only evidence of any emotion. The bitterness she had felt the moment she brought her eyes to the clearing and found an empty space had engulfed her whole being; she could swear she literally tasted it in her mouth.
Darkness. Emptiness. Inexplicable pain.
And then the rush flooded her tormented mind.
What have I done?
How could she be so naïve to believe in such a story? When had she become so mentally ill that she had started making things out of her mind? How was she so sure that the incident with the necklace was true, that her mind was not distorting what other people told her, that she had not simply gone crazy?
“Alice! Alice!!”
Her cousin’s voice pierced through her foggy mind. He sounded so close, pulling her back from the blackness. She could feel the cold now. She could smell the ground and the trees. She could almost taste the nausea in her stomach. She could finally see and realized that Johan was right in front of her, shaking her with all his might.
“Speak to me, dammit!!”
“Stop… Johan, stop…”
Her voice was hardly audible, but to Johan who was looking for a sign that she was still with him, it sounded as clear as a bell. Relieved beyond words, he pulled her to his arms, soothing her with gentle words and caressing her hair like he would to a scared child.
“It’s ok, Freckles; there must be an explanation... Ssshhh... Calm down baby…”
Explanation?
In spite of her state, she almost laughed out loud.
There was just none.
Alice finally broke down, the first sob escaping her muffled against Johan’s shoulder. As her shock slowly subsided and the situation started sinking in, her legs refused to hold her anymore and both cousins sank to the ground with Johan still rocking her in his arms, trying to comfort her in vain.
There was no castle. There was no Legolas.
****************************************************************************************
She had been sitting on the sofa staring at the fire burning for a long time. Caressing the mug of tea she held in one hand absentmindedly, she refused to think about anything. She willed her mind shut, she willed her body numb of all feeling and her heart to stop aching; the first two she had achieved, but the third one she simply had no control over. So she just kept staring at the flames, picturing her pain in them, as she imagined her heart being the wood burnt to ashes.
Johan had not torn his eyes away from his cousin for the past few hours. He had managed to drag her back home, carrying her in his arms as she was too broken to do anything. She had stopped crying after some time, her eyes blank and staring to nothingness, refusing to say a word but moving mechanically to his soft instructions. He could not let her get lost into the dark void of her mind, but how?
He truly did not know what to say to comfort her. He did not know what to think either. They had done everything according to the myth; tonight the moon was full and they were at the right place when the moonlight hit the clearing… What had gone wrong? He refused to believe that his cousin was going crazy. He had seen the castle years ago; he knew it existed. And he knew that his cousin had something to do with the person lying in there; they had to literally grab her from going inside the castle when they were kids.
His cell phone ringing brought him out of his thoughts. Who could be in the middle of the night? He leaned over the couch to grab it, noticing that Alice was still lost in her thoughts. Mumbling a quick hello, he prepared to tell whoever had called that it was pretty late in Germany and that he was sleeping, but the voice at the other end stopped him.
“Logan?”
Logan?
Logan!
The name shone like a bright beacon in the blackness which had enveloped her and she wiped her head to the direction of Johan. He was looking at her as well, surprise clear in his features.
‘Uh… yeah, she has her cell phone turned off. She’s with me, we’re in Germany. Do you wanna talk to her?”
Oh sweet mother of God, Logan has realized it was all a mistake! She could finally go back to her old life and leave this nightmare in her past! Relief acted like morphine on her tortured soul and she was suddenly able to breathe somewhat better. As she moved to grab the phone from Johan, he held her back with his arm.
“Oh. Okay. Sure, go ahead.”
Her relief was short-lived and she almost choked as her air passage seemed to constrict once more. What the hell is going on…? Why didn’t Johan let her talk to Logan? Didn’t Logan want to talk to her? But he was looking for her, isn’t this what he had told her cousin?
“Uhhh… okay… Come on man, are you sure about it? I mean, perhaps you should have a talk and then…- Okay, okay. Yeah, you too. Bye.”
Johan had hardly hung up when Alice attacked him with questions.
“What was that all about? Why didn’t you let me talk to him? Is he looking for me? Is he coming back?”
“Freckles, perhaps this is not the right time…”
Johan’s face looked apologetic and Alice could not understand why.
“Johan… please… What’s going on…?”
Johan remained silent. Her trembling voice betrayed she was ready to start crying again, but her face had acquired some of its color back. A tiny flicker of hope lit her previously dead eyes… how could he put it off after the pain she was already suffering? Could her heart take another blow? But he knew that she would not let it pass so easily… and it would not do to let her rise back on her feet and then sweep them underneath her the moment she stood. He sighed defeated and pinched the bridge of his nose. Good Lord, how could he bring himself to do this to her?
“He sent you a message, but realized that your cell phone was turned off and your friends told him he could reach you at my number… he’s not really ready to talk to you yet…” Johan winced at the pained look in her face and took a deep breath to steady himself for what was coming. “He’s moving out and he wanted to let you know.”
Alice felt as if someone had punched her hard in the stomach. Her breath left her; her mind seemed to freeze. The steady flame of pain immediately rekindled, becoming an uncontrollable fire. How could an already ruined life fall apart even more? Where would she find support to push herself up on her feet when everything had turned into dust?
How did it come to this? After the initial shock in the woods, her mind seemed to have secretly latched onto the hope that Logan would understand… that he would come back… that she would come back to herself and her old life. Now that everything she had built had fallen apart…
Where do we go from here?
Johan looked at his younger cousin at a loss. He had expected her reaction but once more didn’t know what to say to comfort her. What was there to say anyway? Alice had lost her faith and he could not blame her. She had given up everything, her beliefs, her long-term relationship, even her logic to chase after something that could not fit into reason… and now she was left with absolutely nothing. So what would they do now?
Where do we go from here?
The light of the fire caught on the necklace around Alice’s neck and he turned his gaze to the emerald. It gleamed playfully, as if winking at him; as if begging him to believe it was real. What if we did something wrong? What if we didn’t have enough clues for the myth to make the castle appear?
What if there is still hope?
“Is there any way you can come in contact with Legolas again?”
“Don’t be ridiculous Johan, it’s not like imaginary people carry cell phones with them.”
Oh, the venom. Her voice was full with it. And he had expected it.
“Alice, he could give us some clue, something, anything…”
She looked at him as if he had gone mad. Seeing red was not a figure of speech for her anymore. No, she was done with this story. She was done with childish fantasies and Princes.
“Don’t you dare, Johan. Don’t you dare.”
She could not control her lips from trembling as she spoke, nor the tears that escaped her eyes.
“Freckles, perhaps we did something wrong,…-“
“NO!!” she screamed at him. “No, do you hear me?? I refuse to go back to this madness!!”
Getting up from the couch, Alice strode to the fireplace, her hand curling around the necklace. When he heard the snapping sound of the chain, he suddenly realized what she was doing. With a speed he never knew he possessed, he jumped from the couch to grab her before she threw the necklace to the fire. But the emerald was already flying towards the flames, where it landed with a sickening sound. Johan merely had time to catch his cousin, as it gave off a blinding light and Alice sank unconscious to the ground.
-----
She could not breath. The smoke was burning her throat and lungs as she inhaled it, blurring her vision with the tears it caused. She was getting dizzy, her steps out of balance, but she needed to get to her father. She could not leave him; he was the only family left to her. She had lost her mother to the orcs and she was determined not to let it happen to her father as well.
The whole town was in flames. The orcs had caught them unaware and the people barely had time to react before the monsters rushed into their houses. Fena’s brother had dragged Alysse out of the house as her father grabbed his sword and screamed to her to flee to the woods with the rest of women and children, where the elves would protect them; they would stay and try to hold the orcs back.
But as an orc attacked Aedan, he dropped the red-head to draw his sword, pushing her away. This was the opportunity she was looking for: without thinking, she took off to the opposite direction, tripping over slain bodies of orcs and men, straining to find her house through the smoke. All burning houses suddenly looked the same and she could not recognize the streets anymore. She tried to focus on her heartbeat, to keep her breath even, in order to drown out all the gut-wrenching screams and black smoke.
“Alysse!!”
Her ears picked up a voice calling her over the screams and commotion, and she suddenly found herself on the ground coughing, as a hand had grabbed her dress and pulled her backwards.
“Alysse we have to go to the woods!!”
Fena was trying to drag her back towards the woods, but Alysse would have none of it; she kept fighting the other girl off like a madwoman.
“No!! No!! Let me go!! My father is in there!!”
“No Alysse, you cannot go back!! It’s too late to help your father now, we have to go!!” her best friend tried to talk some sense into her once more, but she pushed her away.
“NO!!”
Screaming and kicking her friend’s hands away, she managed to escape Fena pushing her to the ground with all her might and ran towards the burning houses. She could still hear her best friend screaming her name behind her, but she could not leave her father. She was panting now, her coughing getting worse, but she felt relieved as she saw the sign of their herb store in the distance. She started running faster… just a few meters away from the entrance, something slammed into her side and she fell to the ground on her stomach.
She had no more breath left. Whatever had fallen on top of her was too heavy and she could not move. Raising her eyes towards the store, she could make out a figure walking out of the flames. The corners of her lips shifted upwards in an effort to smile… her father was alive! The smile quickly faded, however, and her eyes widened in shock when she realized that the figure was an orc and that it was dragging her heavily wounded father behind it.
Alysse did not know where she found the strength to pull herself from under the wooden pier that had fallen on top of her. In a haze of red and black, she heard her own scream as she grabbed a forgotten sword she found lying at her feet and ran to the orc.
The orc turned to her surprised and dropped her father. She would have smiled in triumph that her father was free from the monster, but the orc caught the sword in her hands and ripped it violently off her hands, throwing her on the floor. The impact made everything go black for a second; it didn’t take long for the pain to spread from the back of her head and she felt the blood trickling down her neck, lost in the red of her hair. The next time she opened her eyes, she found herself lifted from the ground, two iron strong hands wrapped around her throat and blocking her air passage.
Through the dancing black spots in her vision she saw the wood on the roof above her crack. Seconds later, she heard the sickening sound of burning wood falling apart and she found herself trapped under its weight. Watching the flames approaching her unable to move, her lack of oxygen made everything go black.
It was a word that died with her on her lips. A name that came out with her last breath. And his smiling face was the last image that danced before her eyes accompanying her last heartbeat.
-----
“Legolas…”
Alice sat up panting, each breath she took slowly clearing her vision. She gradually became aware of her cousin holding her face, calling her name and forcing her to look at him.
“Alice?? For God’s sake Alice, talk to me!! Tell me you’re okay!”
She managed to grab Johan’s hand and nod her head, too weak to speak yet.
“Jesus, Freckles, you scared me to death!!” her cousin exclaimed as he pulled her into his arms, their strength suffocating her almost as much as the smoke in her vision. Alice gently pushed him away and kept taking deep breaths to slow the wild beating of her heart while Johan pushed strands of hair that were matted with sweat on her face.
“What happened Alice? You blacked out when you dropped this thing into the fireplace,” Johan was hyperventilating, his gaze traveling back and forth from the pendant to her face. “It gave out a blinding light and then extinguished the fire just like that!”
Alice looked at the necklace that lay intact in a pile of dying embers.
Her thoughts were in turmoil. She tried clearing her mind to think straight but the images kept swirling around in her head; the girl, the fire, Legolas, the necklace, the woods, Johan… She tried to speak, but the shock was still fresh. Instead, she broke down in sobs falling once more in the comforting arms of her cousin. Crying was safe; it didn’t hurt and it gave her an outlet for all the emotions throbbing inside her. A long time passed before she was able to speak again.
“She died in a fire, Johan... Those monsters attacked her village and she was trying to save her father when the house toppled on them… I… this girl is me, Johan. I could feel everything, I could see through her eyes, I know it was me…”
The words left her in a single breath, quickly, just like the thoughts replacing one another with lightning speed in her head.
“Ssshhh, it’s okay Freckles,” Johan whispered in her hair, still caressing her back soothingly. “I believe you. I’ve always had. It was you who had given up on yourself.”
Alice pushed herself off the blond man’s arms and looked into his eyes.
“I think I triggered some memory when I threw the pendant into the fire.”
Johan turned to the fireplace and brought his hand over the burnt wood to test their heat. Seeing it was just smoking, he hesitantly touched the emerald. His eyes opened wide in surprise when he found out that the jewel was actually cool, even though it had fallen into the fire. Alice watched with equal surprise as he pulled it off the fireplace and held it before her.
“What magic is this…?” she whispered dumbfounded, as she took the pendant from his hands.
“We will find out soon. We’re leaving for Rome tomorrow.”
What..? You thought I'd let her find her Prince so easily...? :-P
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Sleeping Beauty