crownofleavesandberriess:

“Why do you ask?” Thranduil asked as he laid dejectedly up in the tree. He had been there for five days and was dying. Tauriel wasn’t the first elf to come and persuade him down but she was the first one to use this tactic. For some reason it ignited an anger in his belly that he had not felt burn in a long time. “Of course you did!”

“I did.” Her own sorrow and self-hate took his words and his anger in a different context, an insecure context.

The wooden feeling set deep into her bones, as she looked towards her king who sat in the tree; wishing himself to die. She was tired of fighting, tired of hurting, tired of aching and wallowing in self doubt and regret.

The lone solider shrugged and threw her hands down, “You’re perfectly correct, I did matter once when a war was waged, when my life was expendable and when my life guarded others– I did matter once in my life.” She laughed now, scratching at her cheek, her gaze looking to the woods. “Well, I wish you a swift death then, if that is what matters to you now.” Her voice was friendly, she even seemed to appear friendly, she genuinely meant what she said in the best of manners.
“I am glad to have been of some service to you in my life,” she finalized before starting off into the woodlands.