"I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it."

[littlerubyred]

Ruby had gone to her room smelling of cheeseburgers often enough that one might assume she grew tired of them, though the one piled high in front of her could easily make a lie out of that. She had the day off from the Smoking Room but was still tucked away in one of its booths, a plate bearing a half-eaten cheeseburger and a scattering of fries next to a mostly smeared ketchup puddle in front of her. In one hand was a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, and while she kept glancing up and around to see who had joined her for lunch in the bar, she was enjoying the book very much. Reading was not a past time she made enough time for, she’d decided, and her New Year’s resolution had been to tackle the knee-high pile of “To Read” books that had gathered on her side of the bed she shared with Graham before she or he tripped over them for the millionth time.

She glanced up and around at the bar once more as she selected another fry and swirled the tip in ketchup, bringing it to her mouth for a bite before casting her attention back down to the book. She had heard somewhere that Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda was allegedly responsible for a good deal of his work, this book included, and she thought she could believe it. This book had the sort of prose that was not frilly but touchable, the sort of “fiction” one might write after taking a good, long look at both themselves and their marriage. A definite feminine touch, but who really knew in the end? All she was really sure of was that the story had proven to be brilliant and insightful and sad, and while Ruby usually preferred adventure stories and this one was definitely not that, it was holding her attention marvelously.

Idly, she moved to wipe the salt from her fingers on a napkin before turning a page, glancing up once again between the break of one chapter and the start of another. She’d opted for a pint of beer with her burger, and nearly jolted at the realization that she’d been neglecting it all too much between her people watching, her burger, and her book. She sat the book face down on the table, still open and far away from her food to keep from either wetting the pages or getting them dirty, and picked her beer up for a nice, long drink.

Comments

[afeastofstarlight]

“I could braid your hair,” Tauriel said, readily. “It would not be difficult. You look very much like an elf, also, I think.” While being an elf did not have quite as much to do with appearance or pointed ears, she did think Ruby could easily be mistaken for one, if eyesight were not quite so sharp.

She knew she had opened herself up to it, so she didn't mind the question. Truly the idea of people in love made her heart glad, if only because it had seemed something so difficult to attain and then easily lost that it must be held onto. Personally, though, Tauriel had trouble admitting to it – to anything. It did not escape her that she had never made any clear declaration, not the way Kíli had, and also that it hadn't seemed to matter; everyone knew. While she had been unable to say it outright, she had been unable to hide it. At all.

“I do not know,” she said, but even as she spoke she knew it for the lie it was, and that was not in her nature. “Perhaps,” she added, immediately. If some colour reached her cheeks, she did her best to pretend it was not there. While she had felt fear more keenly than she ever had in her entire life over the past several days, she would not let it triumph. She met Ruby's gaze very directly. “I watched him die before me, and I held vigil over his body after. Now he is here. I confess it is quite complicated.”

[littlerubyred]

“Do you think?” Ruby said at the comment that she could resemble an elf, looking at Tauriel a tad closer as she attempted to imagine what the race of elves must look like. It was true that they were both tall and slender with delicate noses, but Tauriel was so ethereal and pretty and while Ruby had never considered herself unattractive it was strange to be lumped in a group with someone who was so naturally beautiful. She smiled in earnest at the comment, taking it for the compliment she understood it to be, and gave a nod. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re very kind.”

She listened as Tauriel spoke almost hesitantly of the boyfriend she was unsure if she had or not, her head tipping as Tauriel spoke of the complications of it all. It was something Ruby could surely relate to, though her story had a bit of a different twist. “I’ve gone through something similar with my boyfriend,” she said. “When I arrived here he had been dead for weeks, but he came from a time before his death. This place is wonderful for second chances in that way.” She smiled and reached across the table to give Tauriel a squeeze. “Is he one of the dwarves you spoke of, then? He must be quite a man.”

[afeastofstarlight]

While much of the conversation had involved learning new things, this was a bit of information that truly took Tauriel by surprise. "Does this happen often?" she asked. Of course, she had been unable to explain Kíli's survival after the battle, especially not after she had kept watch next to his body once she had finally regained the strength to crawl back to it. But while she could not explain it, there was no arguing it, and she did not have any issue in accepting and believing something just because she could not explain away its existence.

Kíli's presence in the hotel brought about its own complications, beyond his flouting death. It was not that Tauriel's love was untrue; it was very real. But adversity and danger had also played their hands against her and her feelings, and now she wasn't sure how to go about her business with at least one of those things out of the way. She especially wasn't used to something being so supportive of it, let alone refraining from balking at it.

"He is a prince of his people," she asserted, "and fierce in battle." She paused for a moment, wondering how she could explain it. In many ways, doing so would admit to what Tauriel refused to accept - that she and Kíli didn't belong, and never would. But refraining from mentioning such things at all would give a tilted view of the situation. "My kind and his do not easily find common ground," she added, quietly.

[littlerubyred]

Ruby chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip as she gave Tauriel’s question some real thought. As far as someone finding someone they loved very much and had considered long since dead, she had only three examples. Herself and Graham, Loki and his mother, and now Tauriel and her fellow. That did not mean that they were the only examples in all of the Nexus, but only the ones Ruby had heard of herself. And still, in terms of life-altering second chances, she figured that percentage had to be pretty fucking high.

“Well, besides you and myself, I have a very dear friend who was reunited in the hotel with his mother. I don’t think she had died yet in the timeline he came from, but his brother is also here and apparently his mother was to die in the very near future. Not exactly the same, of course, but I similar enough to be noteworthy I think.”

She listened as Tauriel described the man she’d come to love, and felt her heart clench in sympathy when Tauriel mentioned that her kind and his did not get along. She extended her hand to Tauriel’s to give it a squeeze of comfort once again. Her situation was not at all the same, but she had enough imagination to understand how difficult it would be for Tauriel and the man she spoke of. “The Nexus has its faults,” Ruby said, “but it’s also offered me a second chance at a life I’d never thought to have in my own home. I don’t know if it will work that way for you here, but there is that chance, and if you and this fellow are very much in love I’m enough of a romantic to be pulling for the both of you.”

[afeastofstarlight]

Well, at the very least this was not something that was entirely unheard of, though Tauriel had to wonder who else might return from the dead. If Bolg reappeared, then they were all in serious trouble.

She smiled when Ruby squeezed her hand again. It was an unfamiliar motion, but basic enough that she had no trouble reading what it was supposed to convey. "Thank you," she said, lightly. "We shall have to see." Kili aside, there was much that Tauriel had to think about, thoughts that had been filling her head ever since she had started her physical recovery.