Chapter Text
I
As Thranduil rode into the city of men, he noticed a small girl-child sat on the wall. She was small and slender with large green eyes that stared at him out of her too-thin face. Her bare heels drummed against the wall in a strangely compelling pattern and her short hair blew in the wind, still a vibrant red even through the layers of grime and muck.
He found her... interesting. All the other men-folk looked away, afraid to meet his eyes but this child met his gaze with an insolence and command that made him feel for a fleeting instant that she was the royal and he the tattered beggar, but that moment soon passed. She was eating an apple and he noticed how thin and pale her arms were. This wasn't a child that had been cared for. She was thin, too thin and her clothes were tattered and ragged.
She was wearing a too large shirt that swamped her small frame and she wore tattered old breeches that ended half-way down her shins with red hair that just brushed the tops of her ears, but there was no way this child would ever be mistaken for a boy. There was a delicateness about her face and her features were entirely too feminine. She bit the apple again, drawing his attention to her lips. It was cold enough that he felt a slight chill, but despite her lack of winter clothing the girl did not shiver, her hands and feet, while pale, were a normal colour and her lips were as red as the apple, not blue.
A guard called his attention away for a second – Thranduil answered him with a dismissive remark and a frown- and when he looked back she was gone as if she had never been there. The only thing left to show that he had not dreamed her up was an apple core placed carefully on the stones so that it stood proud and visible. Thranduil rode on, resolutely putting her to the back of his mind. She was a child of Men, and therefore of no importance to him. It would not be the last time he would meet her.
II.
A few days later, the human king decided to show him around the city. He seemed proud of it, and spoke of it as if it was a jewel or some such thing, but Thranduil only saw poverty and despair. The girl-child he had seen a few days before had been the first homeless child he had seen, but he soon realised that there were far, far more.
There was a scuffle at the end of the alley and a confusion of voices, drawing his attention away from the human king's tiresome words. One voice raised above the rest, which was no small feat. “Stop! Thief!” it cried. A small figure emerged from the crowd and headed towards them at a dead run. Thranduil was surprised to recognise the child he had seen before. (That is to say, he was surprised that in the whole city it was the same child twice in a row, not that he was surprised to recognise her, for elvish memory is not like human memory for elves almost never forget things, although he was surprised that one human child would stand out to him so much.) She held a steaming pastie in one hand, occasionally taking bites from it, apparently unconcerned by the hot gravy streaming down her hand and arm, covering her chin and spotting her shirt.
As she approached them, her eyes flickered from a waggon pushed off the side by the king's tour, to the shoulder of the waggoner to an overhanging rooftop and Thranduil understood what she was going to do a split second before she did it. She jumped onto the waggon, then one small foot landed on the shoulder of the astonished waggoner and then she jumped again and grabbed at the overhanging rooftop. She hung there for a second by one hand before swinging herself up and on to it. The pastie that started the whole business was still clutched tightly in her other hand and she took a big bite, grinning at the chaos she had created.
Then she was off, tripping along the rooftop like she'd been born to it, one arm outstretched for balance and eating her pastie with the other. She glanced back over her shoulder only once, but there was no fear or triumph in her eyes. Instead, she only seemed gently amused that they'd even bothered to try and catch her in the first place. Then her gaze met Thranduil's. It seemed like he gazed into her eyes for eternity, drowning in a sea of green before she smiled and disappeared into the distance. Thranduil was troubled. While he could hold anyone's gaze and intimidate most on Middle Earth, this child seemed to be the exception.
A guard ran over, puffing and out of breath. “Where did she go?” he asked the waggoner.
“Over the rooftops,” the waggoner replied. The guard swore briefly.
“Not again. That's the third time we've lost her this week.”
“You are not going to go after her?” Thranduil asked. The guard seemed to realise he was in the presence of royalty for the first time and he bowed in Thranduil's direction.
“Nay, majesty,” the guard said respectfully. “Once they've hit the rooftops we've lost them for good. No idea of where they've gone, you see?”
“They?” he queried.
“Street rats, majesty,” he clarified. “There's whole gangs of them. Kids who's parents have died or kicked them out on the streets and left them to fend for themselves. They probably reckon it's better to join a gang, safety in numbers and all that.”
“That will do, guardsman,” the king snapped. “Return to your post.”
“Yes sire,” the guard muttered. He retreated and the party moved on in silence, leaving Thranduil to wonder about the young red-headed thief.
III.
It was maybe a decade before Thranduil had cause once again to venture into the land of Men and he remembered the small red-headed child that he had seen. Her face had not faded in his memory, rather she stood clearer in his mind each passing day. The new Captain of the guard, Tauriel, reminded him a lot of her in looks and her fiery personality, although he had never actually spoken to the child, but Thranduil put her out of his mind with a frown. Why should he waste his time thinking about a human thief? He had more important things to worry about.
They were not far from the city he had visited last time when Thranduil heard the sound of running feet. Before he knew it, he had once again come face-to-face with a certain red-headed thief. She was a child no longer, although her face still held some of it's childish mischief and Thranduil was once again reminded just how quickly men aged. She was still small and slim in stature and again she wore no shoes and her clothes were thin and ill-fitting. Her eyes were as green as before, but Thranduil didn't make the same mistake of meeting her gaze. Her hair was barely longer although it looked better cared for. She could not have been more than seventeen, hardly an adult even by human standards, but she still held that air of command.
As soon as they saw her, his guards jumped into action, pointing their weapons at her and she skidded to a halt, her eyes wide. For an eternity, no one moved. For an elf who was accustomed to having centuries fly by in the blink of an eye to have seconds drag by as if they were millennia was strange and unsettling. Finally, the red-haired thief spoke and once more, she seemed amused by the whole thing. “My brother keeps saying I should I should worry about where I'm running to not where I'm running from. I'm starting to think he might be right.” That wry statement would have made Thranduil smile, had he not been in front of an audience, but at least it got his guards moving again.
“Should we take her into custody, my lord?” Tauriel asked. The red-haired thief frowned.
“Why? I didn't think it was against the law to be running across the country-side.” Tauriel had no answer for that.
“Let her pass,” Thranduil said, waving a hand airily. “She is not doing anything wrong and I cannot be late.” The guards lowered their weapons. The red-haired thief met his gaze, but this time, instead of drowning in it, he seemed to be pinned by it, and he couldn't break eye-contact.
“My thanks, majesty,” she said with a small smile, and then she was off again. For a moment, Thranduil felt gratified by her thanks, that someone had seen him as an equal, not simply as a King. There didn't appear to be anyone chasing his red-haired thief, she just liked to run.
“My King,” Tauriel said. “If I may ask, why did you let her go? She is a wanted thief in the human lands.” When he raised an eyebrow at that she mutely pointed to a wanted poster pinned to a nearby tree.
“It often amazes me,” he said softly, gazing into the distance.
“What does, my lord?”
“The courage and resilience of human children.” Then he urged his elk forwards and would talk of it no more.
IV.
Many, many years later, after the dwarves had reclaimed their homeland and the dragon had been killed, Thranduil surprised the man called Bard the Bowman, later King Bard of Dale, by bringing food and aid when he least expected it. “I have come to reclaim something of mine,” he said. Many assumed he was talking about the jewels in the mountain, or his wayward Captain, but deep in his heart, he remembered the insignificant red-haired thief he had met three times. He had never even known her name, but slowly, he had forgotten her and in doing so, he had forgotten how it had felt to feel something other than cold. He had come to reclaim that, to reclaim that person he had been so long ago, the one who had felt gratified to have the thanks of a red-haired human thief. He had no idea how to go about it, but he felt that helping Bard the Bowman and his family and people might be a start as to how to go about it.
He saw her once more, or at least, he thought he did. When him and Legolas and the rest of their kin finally decided to sail for the Undying Lands, he saw a flash of red hair on the docks as they set out. At first, he thought it was Tauriel, but no, she was the other end of the ship. He seemed to see a pair of green eyes staring at him out of their too thin face and a swish of red hair. A laugh floated across the harbour to his ears and the patter of running feet. For a second, he saw her, and he bowed his head in benediction. When he raised his head again, she was gone.