The Ugly Darkness Gapes

Disclaimer: Not mine

A/N: Being of bored state of mind, this fic came to me. That my thoughts can drift to this in moments of silence disturbs me also.

Warnings: Dark!fic, kidnap, torture, non-con, slash

I will never forget that night – it will never cease to be my biggest regret, however selfish that may be. It was raining, great sheets of water falling from the sky, in land unknown to me. I was just passing through, intent on delivering a message to a lesser King of the South. The message was never to get there. Desperate for shelter, my relief was palpable that I had discovered a cave. My poor shivering nag and I entered, unaware and uninformed of the tales of these parts, merely grateful to be out of the lashing rain, I was able to relieve her of my bags and change into dry clothes.

I struggled to light a fire, but it was done, and in the delicious heat emanating from the flames, my eyes grew heavy. Thinking myself safe, in all the foolish overconfidence of youth, I relaxed my guard and allowed sleep to take me, intending to wake at grey dawn, the world crisp and bright, smelling new after the downpour. I thought I would ride out to birdsong and sunshine, and it would be a beautiful day to be alive and a Ranger, free as the winged creatures which would serenade me.

With those hopes in my mind, I fell into dreamless sleep. So tired was I after long days' travel, I did not hear the tramp of orc's footsteps from the depths of the cave. To this day, I do not even recall the swipe made to the back of head, which put an end to any struggles I might have attempted.

000

How much time passed before I woke, I do not know. That my head was hit to keep me subdued, I only surmised from the throbbing at the back of my head, and that I was not in the place I was. Cold metal encircled my wrists, and though I tugged and twisted at the cuffs, I could not pull loose from them.

"Save your energy," a rough voice in the darkness commanded me, and for the first time I noticed exactly how dark it was. No beam of friendly sunlight entered from any wall crack. Completely enclosed in blackness, a sudden panic clutched at me. Who else was there in the darkness?

"They all struggle," a different voice, whispered, but female.

"At least he has not screamed," a third voice, "Unlike some I could name."

"And why do you suppose it is a he?" A second female demanded.

Impatient of being discussed but not included in the discussion, I brusquely snapped, "What is this place?"

A quiet cackle and the latest spoken voice exclaimed, "See; he is man."

The coarse voice which had spoken first came again, and I noted how close it was compared to the others. "What is your name, friend?"

"I asked before you." I wrenched at the shackles again, hoping to find some sort of weakness I was obviously some sort of prisoner, though what these voices wanted of me, I did not know.

"You would do best to cease that tugging, for it will not avail you," the voice to my left informed me. "You have strayed where you ought not to have trod, and the creatures of the deep pits of the Earth have claimed you."

For the first time, I noticed the smell; dung, blood and filth in the stifling air. My voice came out as a snarl. "Orcs."

"Aye, we are captured here as you."

"What for?" I did not know why I believed him so rapidly, but the hopelessness in his voice… It was terrifying but was soon to become all too familiar.

Before anyone responded to the question, I had fear of an answer to, someone I had not heard speak named me. "Estel?"

There was bitter laughter. "So elfie speaks does he?"

I ignored the chuckles and instead tried to place the fluting voice. Then it came to me. "Erelin? Erelin of Imladris, do you speak?"

"So it is you. Aye, Estel it is me. My heart weeps to find you here."

The voice of my long time friend soothed me, though his words were dire. "Erelin, last year, without a word you vanished. Without a word."

Sorrowfully, Erelin informed me. "Not by choice young one, I promise you."

From the far right, a voice informed us, "They are coming."

Erelin's voice became urgent, "Estel, are you and the Prince Legolas still courting?"

"He has long since wooed me. I am his to be married to when I return from this mission." The thought of my beloved warmed me, and staved away the chill of the cold earth beneath me. Yet the fear in Erelin's voice caused me to in turn to fear.

"Think on him. Do not forget him, or your elvish blood will betray you, as it has done me." He spoke so rapidly I could not question him. "Live up to your name. Do not permit them to break you, young one."

The others were silent, and Erelin quieted. I did not want to speak either. I could hear the approach another had now, and for the first time, light flickered in two parallel slits to my right; above and below the door. Raucous orcish laughter and language reached my ears, which I could understand enough of to cause me to fear.

The door opened and blinded by the sudden light as I was, I did not have my wits about me to look around and see the faces of my fellow captives. All I saw was six bulky shapes in the doorway, and then a torch was brandished in front of me, illuminating the pitted tormented face of an orc. "What've we got here?" he asked, in his guttural tone. "Skinny."

"These travellers always are," a second orc professed.

A grimy claw clenched my chin, forcibly turning my face to the light. "It'll do." The scaly skin revolted me and I tugged my chin away from it, thoughts chasing each other rapidly around my mind: they could not be intending to eat us, or Erelin would be gone now.

Summoning my inner courage, I demanded, "Release me, you beast."

The Orc drawled his doubt.

"Because you bring no peasant into your den, and I will be looked for."

"Says ever'one of 'em," the Orc nodded to the others. "But they're still here." There was more laughter, and the Orc turned to the five others. "Outside. I'll get you when it's your turn."

"We'll hear," another cackled.

The torch was removed and all was dark again. I was bemused to hear a clinking of armour from the Orc who remained. I could not see a thing, but presumed this creature of filth who had no love for the sun was not so encumbered.

Hands were on me again, and I tensed at what they might do, however the ripping noise which followed caused me no pain. It took me a moment to realise what was done; that the cold air of every inch of my skin came from me being bore to the world, the rags of my clothes ripped from under me. It was then I realised what they intended to do.

I was flipped onto my stomach, the chains embedded in the wall twisting, and dragged away from the wall. The scrape of rough stone grazed my bare stomach. I wrenched at my bonds, tried to crawl back to the wall, to escape the hands which tugged my legs apart. I kicked out, twisted and struggled with all the strength I had, but the orc merely called for two of him companions. One of these held one of my legs apart each, with vicelike grip. I was little match.

When I felt a blunt heat press against my entrance, I froze.

No.

Not this.

Not even my Legolas had entered me; fingers and tongues had probed, stimulating that little gland within me more than anything felt before, but we had been saving taking each other for our wedding night… It was in four months… I would be marrying my beloved in four months. I had to escape. I had to marry him.

"No, no, no," I forgot any semblance of pride and begged, "Please no. Please!" That was for Legolas! "Ah!" My protests were strangled by the cry which rent my throat as the rock hard rod pushed inexorably into me. With no penetration, I could feel such burning heat. Pain like fire ripping through me, tearing me apart. "No, no!"

I did all I could, I did; I kicked out, but he seemed to enjoy the movement of my body doing its best to escape. I knew that I had clenched around him, the tension doubling the pain, but I couldn't just… accept it.

Ai Valar did it hurt. The Orc began to thrust and in my attempts to restrain my agonised cries, I bit my lip so hard I could taste blood. My fingers tore into the earth as my passage was cleaved in two. The panting grunts of the orc above me filled the air, and when his breath hitched, I knew, just knew could I not bear this creature pouring himself into my core.

I kicked out and there was a crack and a cry. It took me a moment to realise it was mine. Pain hit me at the same moment as the realisation; One of those orcs holding my legs, who had, I barely comprehended begun to rut against it, expelling rough groans of impatient pleasure, had snapped me kicking leg in two.

My yowl tipped the orc atop me over the edge and he filled me.

000

I kept resolutely silent as the inevitable occurred, and the other goblins who had waited their turn took it, and left. My eyes were screwed tightly shut, reluctant to see my assailants abuse my fellow prisoners, and equally unwilling to meet the gaze of those who had heard my cries. Yet they did not suffer as I had just done; there was a small scuffle but it did not last long and there was the clank of metal against stone.

And they were gone.

I pulled myself up against the cold stone wall, as if it could offer me some sort of comfort and pulled the dregs of clothing over myself in a somewhat futile attempt to secure some warmth around myself, and protect my shattered modesty. I could feel myself leaking onto the floor; blood and gruesome liquid, and agonising spears of heat shot up my leg each time I shifted.

"I am so sorry Estel." I heard Erelin's voice as if from a great distance, though a haze of hot pain and tears which stung my eyes in an attempt to spill.

"Why did you tell him to fight back? You know it hurts more if you fight back."

"He is nearer to my kind than any other but myself who has suffered these halls; I meant in spirit."

"A pity then you did not explain that. We all heard the crack."

"Was it his arm?"

"His leg. I saw't."

Though I heard the words, the conversation from all directions, I could not listen. All I could feel was humiliation. As Erelin had commanded me, I thought on Legolas, yet all I saw was his disgust. If he saw me like this, crumpled on the floor, used and abused, he would despise me. He would turn his back on me, demand to know why I had allowed this to happen, why I had not fought back hard enough, where the noble human he had expected to marry had gone. No! Not Legolas. Legolas would see a foolish mistake with disastrous consequences, and kiss me, and tell me how he would make it better. If anything could.

"Hush. You will scare him further," the voice next to me said. "All of you can hush. Estel? Was that your name?"

I nodded, appreciating the soft tone from the so coarse a voice: it had a quality of leadership and authority despite its patient wisdom.

There was a quiet laugh. "Lad, if that rustle was you nodding, I can not tell."

"Sorry." No one could see his flush of shame. "Yes. I am Estel."

"I am Dilyed. You know Erelin of course, and the man by the door there, he's Bruthil. Then there are the seven women. Introduce yourself girls, proper like."

There was a chorus of introductions and though at the time, I did not take in the names, I grew to know them well; Tingela, Oonnem, Collel, Carry, Pretha, all young girls, Kiaon who had been there longest and Slyera, the girl to my right, who had not spoken or attempted to communicate since she was first taken. She was continually silent.

There was scraping of wood on metal, and the room was quiet, once names were told, and Dilyed informed me, "At your feet is your dinner."

"I do not want anything." Food could not fill the space inside me.

"Yes you do. Your body is bruised and broken and exhausted, but it needs sustenance because all that is important is that you are alive. Keep it that way."

Erelin decided to impose his view. "If you want Legolas to have anything to marry, you are going to have to eat."

"Do not pressure him," that was Carry's voice.

Kiaon spoke. "You do not want to be ill Estel; bind your leg if you do not want it to set wrong. Then you eat, or they will punish you. You must eat."

Another voice, "Keep up your strength." Pretha's childish voice, only sixteen. Though I was only a decade older than her, she seemed so very young.

It was too much and I snapped out at them. "Just stop talking! Though they were only trying to help me, and I knew this, it was too much. I wanted their voices to stop. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up in a world where my biggest worry was who to invite to my wedding, and which of my brothers was to be my best man.

They quieted and at once I hated that they had done so, the silence was too huge.

000

"Have you ever seen a female orc, Estel?" asked Erelin; I had bound my leg but against the advice of others, ignored the bowl of slop which they informed was food.

"No… I thought they were born of the depts. Of the Earth," I cautiously said.

"They were. They are. But they are still lustful creatures. Few orcs will submit to the violent treatments they prefer, so we must be substitute for that."

"I will not be!" I professed boldly.

Kiaon's low voice informed me, "You just were, Estel."

"They will come for me." I had to fake confidence if I wanted this thought to remain my belief. I was to return to Legolas in three weeks. They knew me. They knew I would not just run from he I adored. He I adore. They would come.

"I hope you are right, mellon nin."

000

Conversation waxed and waned, but the majority of it focused upon me as the newest person in, to explain my life and bring news of the outside world. I was glad of the distraction. I did not think I could bare a silence. Silence brought memory. I wandered how Slyera could live within her silent world, unless it was just that: another world completely. Maybe she was the smartest of we eleven. Despite the pain whenever I shifted position on the cold pain, whilst we spoke, there was some relief. Collel spoke little and when she did, it was in the burbled laughter and mutterings of the insane. The others pitied her. I feared becoming her.

Erelin was particularly appreciative and adored hearing his home tongue again. He admitted to me that he had stormed away from home in anger and had intended to travel a while to recover from the anger. However, whilst he had travelled for well over a month, his journey had reached a most unfortunate end.

"I just want to apologise to her before I die," he brokenly confessed.

"Death will not take you," I was fast to assure, but he admitted that he would not survive more of the rough treatment he experienced. His fae begged to flea. Only the thought of his beloved partner had him secured to life.

"But now you are here, you can tell her I do not hate her. I love her, Estel."

"You will return to her, not I." Seeing him – hearing him rather – so distressed forced me to affirm my hopes. "Eleya has not given up on you. She waits still, has no eyes for another, though she thinks you have left. You will return to her when Elladan and Elrohir find me. And they are the best trackers in this Earth. They will find me, if they have to use each and everyone of the Dúnedain."

"I wish I could have your faith, little one," Erelin's voice was weary.

I could not permit him to become so tired of this life that he would leave. Leave me. To these unfamiliar voices and those brutal hands. "I am named Estel for a reason. You and Eleya will be returned to each other, and you will be invited to my wedding and all shall be perfect."

Even I could tell that I sounded like an innocent child, but it was going to happen. It had to. Erelin had difficulty believing me. "I am broken, Estel. She will not want me now. She deserves more."

"Ancient…" Before I could ask what he meant, Oonem spoke.

"They come again."

I fell quiet with the rest of them.

There were only four of them this time, but they did not come to me. Rather they fell upon three women. Light illuminated the cave and for the first time, I paid attention. Young girls and pretty ones they had chosen, even Kiaon who as far as I could tell had survived this place for a decade. A grunting monstrosity ravaged her, and brutally too, but she was silent, staring at the ceiling with glassy eyes. I wondered if she thought of a love who would steal her away to the sun one day.

The petite girl at her side had to Pretha, for there was no one else so young and she sobbed as she was attacked, crying out gutturally as the goblin plunged into her again and again. Each time was echoed by her sob.

Next to me, the only noise was the orc's growls of pleasure; he had chosen Slyera whose filthy head of hair showed traces of once being gold. The thrusting demon threw her feeble body about as if she was a doll, and she protested as little as one. I would not have thought her alive had the firelight and glinted off a single tear. When I saw her ears, I had to restrain a gasp; she was elf-kind. No one had mentioned.

I attempted to shoot an accusing glare at Erelin, but when I looked in the direction his voice had come from, I wanted to cry aloud. The strong elf warrior I remembered was little more than grey skin stretched over a rack of bones. His face could barely hold the small smile he shot me, and it even reached his eyes, which once had been so sharp and keen but now were bulbous and pale. Once shining locks, fell ragged dawn his back. One of his legs was skewed awkwardly, broken as mine, and a scarlet scar ran down one side of his face. His body was pitted with a hundred other such injuries but I did not have time to examine them.

An orc reared its head in front of me. "What's this then? A new recruit."

"One of Slâg's," an orc called.

"And not eating his dinner…" The first orc observed and crouched in front of me, his putrid breath washing over me. "Why not eating, dog? Not good enough for you?"

"No, no it's not."

To this day, I do not know why I said it.

I do not know why I said a lot of things I did to my captors. Anger, I suppose. Childish frustration at being in a situation which was beyond my ability to control. No one else would stand up to them.

And I soon found out why now.

000

It was impossible to keep track of time in that light forsaken place in the middle of the Earth. They fed us when there was food and when they remembered. When Pretha died, they tried to feed us. They remembered then. I had three of my ribs broken for refusing to eat that night.

My legs suffered the most; as the only things free, they were the only things I could attack with and therefore snapped more times than I cared to count. Words had a lot of effect too: having once informed an orc what he surely must have known, that he was the most dirt-ugly thing I had ever seen, he informed me very coolly that he was to be the last thing I ever saw. A knife across the eyes rapidly followed.

I refused to plead. I had seen the others submit and beg for the end and was determined not to allow them to see me do the same. When Dilyed died, it was my duty to instil some sort of hope in the others, as they would become shells, husks of beings. Slyera's presence next to me made me determined not to permit that to happen to the others.

Perhaps if the torment had continued, I would have conceded to beg, to ask for release. But after that first time I remained silent during penetration, and attacked them with all I had before and after.

Freedom came one day after I spat at one of the Generals, on his way to Erelin I had grown very accurate in the dark. Practice made perfect. That had made him furious. Yet I was silent as his studded leather belt shredded my back into a thousand scarlet pieces. My hands bled with the force I dug my nails into them – I had long since learnt that distracted pain was better at keeping me silent than most else.

Legolas had chided me more than once for my stubbornness.

At the point where I was seriously beginning to wonder if I would be able to lie on my back in the next month, there was a clattering in the doorway. The general paused.

"What?"

"Attackers."

One word. That was all it took for painfully pure hope to leap in my throat. Please. Please Valar. Be Legolas. Be my love.

Laughter, as hysterical as Collel's tended to be, bubbled from my throat. I needed this to be true. But this den was a rabbit's women, so many twists and turns and so many inhabitants.

"We are not saved yet," Bruthil warned.

"Not yet. But we will be," I replied, somewhat harshly. His depressing thoughts undid much of my hard work to remain positive, but I knew how much he had been through: His wife and daughter had been captured with him and were not more.

"We will see the sun again," enthused Tingela, then immediately corrected herself. "Sorry Estel."

"I am content to feel that warmth, I promise."

There were shouts from down the corridor, the clang of iron against iron, coming closer until…

"Aragorn! Aragorn!"

"Aragorn!"

My name came reverberating off the walls of the caves and when I tried to call out to my elf; I found that my voice failed. It was too used to whispers, for we were not truly permitted to speak.

There was a murmur of confusion, questioning who 'Aragorn' was, until I finally found my voice, and bellowed my husband's name.

A moment later, cautious hands stroked along my skin; my wrists, my cheek, my hair, everywhere Legolas could touch without causing me pain. "Oh love. What have they done to you?" he breathed.

That was him; that was my Legolas' voice. I reached up, searching in the dark for his face. I could feel my hand trembling. I wanted to see him. I wanted to see his beautiful blue eyes. I wanted to see him. My hand encountered smooth cool skin, soft through my hands were no doubt filthy. Hot liquid reached my fingertip and it took a moment for me to understand that it was a tear. "Do not cry, meleth," I pleaded. "You are here. You found me."

A beat, the sound of Legolas swallowing dryly, and the voice so sweet I had almost forgotten it told me. "I will get you and the others out of here. Stay there."

I did not see it necessary to remind him that I had little choice.

His voice had trembled.

000

He carried me out of that hellhole, that sweet elf who loved me, ever so careful and apologetic of each brush and scrape which was inevitable in those tiny tunnels. I had tried to walk myself, but my much abused legs would not support even my reduced weight for more than a few steps. I had known this to be true already: when I knelt for whipping it had to be on my hands and knees, or clinging to the wall by my fingertips to drag myself upright.

From that stinking darkness, which reeked all the more from the scattered bodies which made Legolas' progress slow. Then we come towards a tunnel which led outside: I could feel the rush of cool, clean air and the heat of the sun brushing my cheeks. And it was so good.

Hands careful of my torn back, Legolas lowered me to the floor. There, with grass under me, and Legolas' woollen cloak would around me, enveloping me in heat and his scent, he murmured to me. "Aragorn; you are outside now. You can open your eyes now."

When I told him that I could not, I think it hurt him more than it hurt me.

A/N: I shouldn't have written this. It was wrong. But I do so two weeks before my first exam because it was more interesting than learning Othello quotes, or how aerobic respiration works or… God forbid… Anything to do with chemistry. Also the Faustus quote "Ugly hell gape not" is my favourite after, "If I had as many souls as stars, I'd give them all for Mephistopheles."

Sorry that the fic is fragmentary. My first person stuff always is. So what do you think? More broken!Aragorn angst? Though it might switch POVs…