Some Fall By Virtue

Chapter Two: never satisfied, I'm never gonna be refused

"Terrible business," Gilithien mumbled, prompting her to tune back in to the conversation about her and her circumstances taking place. "Yeh gettin' waylaid by those no good sorts. Rarely see folk like that 'round here, what with the presence of mah husband's folk protectin' these lands." She shook her head. "Terrible luck, lassie."

Sakura inclined her head. "I suppose," she said, swallowing another mouthful. "Nothing too important was lost, and I got away safely..."

"You will have shelter here for tonight," Fainbarad spoke then, and Sakura nodded once more.

"Thank you," she said, reminding herself she needed to have acceptable manners with these people. She was trying to be good. Not to mention they hadn't hunted her. They hadn't turned their backs on her. In fact, they were doing the complete opposite. They were opening their door to her – a complete stranger in need of assistance. She could have been anyone. She could have been a murderer for all they—

Oh wait, she technically was one. Sakura resisted the urge to choke on her bitter laughter once more. It just meant it was all the more imperative to conceal her true identity and nature. People would only turn against her once more should they discover that much. She would deserve it, but it wasn't something she wanted.

Sighing softly, she continued to eat, some small part of her curling up in revulsion at the kindness she could sense in those gazes directed her way. Don't look at me, she wanted to scream. She didn't deserve those kinds of looks. Shoulders stiffening, she stared determinedly at her dinner determinedly.

"We shall see about getting you home on the morrow," Fainbarad said, slicing through her thoughts of shame and annoyance. "For tonight, rest well as our guest."

She nodded again, the words escaping her almost unbidden. "I no longer have any place to call home," she mumbled listlessly, remembering the cloudiness in the sky, blocking the light from Melkor's dwelling. The smog and the ash which choked at her lungs. Even if it still existed there and hadn't been destroyed beyond repair by the Host of Valinor, she would not want to venture near the place.

"Yeh poor child," Gilithien murmured, and Sakura hated the thrum of anger which overcame her at those words. She didn't want pity. She didn't want anything of the sort. But then again she didn't want the world to burn any more. Not now she was safely away from the Elemental Nations. In the same world as her soulmate, even though he'd hate her so bitterly for her past crimes of anger, rage, and sorrow.

"I'm nineteen, ma'am," she said then, wincing at the memory of her dying at nineteen in that second time around as Haruno Sakura, ignoring the fact she was truthfully nineteen plus a few centuries give or take. Deception was a shinobi's bread and butter. "Not a child."

"That is still young," Fainbarad spoke, and Sakura almost frowned. Edain were short lived, and as Sakura she could remember tales of sixteen-year-olds getting married within certain clans in the warring clans era. She would have thought the culture there would be similar to that period, seeing as how the technology level was roughly the same. But she wouldn't question what appeared to be common knowledge. "With a name like Lothien, and your knowledge of Sindarin, you're undoubtedly of numenorian descent."

Or she was, y'know, the creature of nightmare and legend who was supposed to hate everything.

Not anymore though. She refused to be. "Oh... I, uh, see," she said, twiddling her thumbs as she stared determinedly at her empty dinner plates. "I'll help clean up," she added swiftly, picking up her bowl, plate, and the rest of the cutlery she had used.

"We take it out back tah wash, lassie," Gilithien explained, and Sakura followed her obediently, wondering about the name with which she had introduced herself. Lothien, translated roughly to blossom-daughter, which was as close to her original name as she could really think of. Well, the closest translation she could come up with on the spot. Sindarin was the tongue she was most familiar with, followed by Quenya. Probably something to do with the fact she had an elf for a soulmate, the reason why those two languages had come to her tongue so naturally.