Mae athollen (welcome back), readers! Eek, it's been a while, but I'm happy to be posting again. This is my first attempt at any LOTR fanficion and also my first attempt at a multi-chaptered story—and also something I whipped up when I should have been writing an art history essay instead—so please forgive and/or point out any errors. The story is set pre-FoTR and assumes Aragorn came to know Legolas sometime during his travels after leaving Rivendell. This story may drift slightly more to book-verse than movie-verse.

This is friendship only (hopefully with lots of angst). Reviews welcome!

chapter warnings: none (only mild violence)

Chapter 1: Taken

Noise.

Raucous, senseless noise grated his ears, making his head sear. Harsh sounds—voices? Laughter?—floated through the darkness, and he grimaced, trying to block them out. He just wanted to sleep.

But his focus only seemed to make the noises more distinct, pulling him relentlessly towards consciousness. After a moment his vision lightened, blurring. At first he could make nothing out, uncertain if he was even up or down; then his body slowly gained awareness of his painfully awkward sprawled position. Something hard, almost bony, ground along his ribs—tree roots, he realized—and he tried to shift his position, only to realize he could not move his arms; something was holding them back, digging his wrists into the bark.

Almost at the same time, the smell of earth—and fire and filth—filled his lungs and his head spun again, making him nauseous. Tipping back his chin to breathe more easily, he inhaled, glimpsing the rippling waves of leaves and—Aragorn.

The name came out barely in a whisper, but his voice still cracked. Thankfully, the orcs—for it had to be orcs, his mind now realized—remained unaware, their voices still emanating from somewhere close by.

The ranger was tied to the tree trunk beside him, silent and motionless, but after a moment Legolas found a pair of familiar blue eyes observing him keenly.

"Estel…" Legolas felt a hiss escape his lips as his eyes focused on the ranger's face—Aragorn was obviously much the worse for the wear. Bruises peppered his face, and a long cut decorated the side of his face. "They hurt you!"

"I'm fine," the man's hoarse whisper sounded indignant even when barely audible, but evident relief filled his voice. "It was you I worried for—I feared you might not wake from your head injury."

Legolas grimaced, memory washing back over him now—a splitting, white-hot pain in his skull, then nothing. An orc must have hit him from behind, as he had fought his way towards Aragorn, overwhelmed in a tide of black armor. Yelling. Screaming…he closed his eyes, feeling nauseous again. There were no other elves with them. The entire company might be dead.

"The orcs fear some of the guard may have escaped," Aragorn intoned quietly, as if reading Legolas' mind. Some. Guilt seared him. "They have made haste for two days now, heading south."

Legolas' eyes flickered open again. Two days. South. There could only be one destination that would drive the orcs like this—Dol Goldur. The name felt like ice in his stomach. Despite the purging of the fortress, it was still a pool of all that was dark and evil and wrong in this forest now. He should never have brought them this far out, they should never have left the Elven Paths to hunt spiders, but they could not have known—could not have foreseen...

"Aragorn—why...you?" He swallowed bile in the back of his throat, something sour, off. Why had the orcs taken both of them?

Aragorn understood the question instinctively, his shoulders shifting in almost a shrug. "They wondered what a man did among Elves," he observed briefly. His voice was grim but his expression too light for Legolas' liking, as if the issue mattered infuriatingly little. Did the man have no self-preservation at all, or was he only too hopeful for his own name? Legolas had made jest about both before, but at heart he knew the ranger must care more for his own safety. His own heritage. The elf gritted his teeth furiously, a retort on the tip of his tongue, when Aragorn tensed and an explosive pain suddenly lit up the elf's side. He groaned, wanting to curl up on himself, but his restraints kept him open and vulnerable—but not helpless. He kicked out with his foot and felt his boot make contact with a leg, while hoisting himself up as far as he could go and leveling an icy glare at his tormenter with all the force of a thousand years of Elven royalty behind it. He was still a prince of Mirkwood, son of Thranduil, and he would give these orcs no pleasure.

The orc cursed and slammed a clawed fist across his face, and the noble sentiment vanished in an explosion of agony as his head made contact with the tree again. Glaring out through some misty red haze, Legolas glimpsed the raw cruelty flaming in the creature's eyes, but it restrained itself, its gaze mocking, cunning even. Perhaps the leader, then. The intelligent ones were always the worst.

"The Elven princeling is awake, boys" it sneered, to raucous cheering that seemed to echo between Legolas' ears and pound the inside of his skull, "and without any filthy man-help either." He seemed to mock Aragorn, and suddenly Legolas knew where his friend's injuries must have been coming from these two days, and why. The thought made his blood boil.

"He'll need more than filthy Elvish herbs when he's rotting in dungeons," the orc spat, kicking at Legolas, to renewed roars of sudden violence.

"Kill the man!" "Man-flesh! Man-flesh!" "Skin them both!"

"Shut up, you stinking rats!" the leader roared, and the shouting quieted, but he still raised a cruelly notched dagger to Aragorn's face as if probing, considering. The man did nothing, but Legolas could not.

"Do not touch him, if you value your life!" The words spat out of him before he could stop them, heedlessly, but Legolas couldn't care, even as he strained against his bonds in vain. He would not stand by and watch his friend become Orc meat when Aragorn was so much more important than a healer, much less Legolas' caretaker. It was why, when all others were running, the elf had plunged towards Aragorn instead, his knives stained with black blood, because above all else Isildur's heir, the one true hope for this Middle-Earth, could not fall—

The answering blow nearly left him dazed. The orc's fingers squeezed around his throat, pain burning dully in his neck, but he didn't care, words still falling past his numb lips. "This man...is valuable. Even more than—an Elven prince..."

The orcs fingers tightened for a moment and black spots started to dance across his vision, foul breath filling his lungs, but then the fingers loosened and he fell back against the tree again, pain flaring.

"What man has more value than Elf scum?" the orc laughed, mocking. Out of the corner of his eye Legolas thought he felt blue eyes prod him warningly, but he ignored them, keeping his voice proud and steady even if the rest of his body was starting to tremble from exertion. What use were Aragorn's secrets if he was dead?

"A king."

The bellowing harsh laughter of the orcs felt like it split his head wide open again.

"A king! A king!"

The orc leader grinned mockingly as he slapped his fist across Aragorn's face, and the reflexive way the man went with it suggested it had happened many times. Legolas felt a pang and a surge of white-hot surge of anger.

"We care not for man titles," the orc hissed gleefully, leaning closer to the elf and exposing every one of its pointed teeth as it to remind him that these orcs could tear them to pieces and eat them—and enjoy it. "But you may both rot in the tower if you so desire."

It used the dagger to slice at the ropes holding his wrists, nicking his skin, but Legolas held his tongue. At least it wasn't Aragorn.

"Clear out, scum! Move!" the orc leader bellowed, and the orcs suddenly surged together, extinguishing their fires, and Legolas felt rough hands cutting his other wrist free while more forced a rope over his head. He jerked away, but it was futile. The noose cut into his flesh.

Despite the rope, warrior instincts suddenly rushed back in a micro-second at the freedom of his hands, screaming at him to jump away, to fight, but a swing from a sword pommel found his head and the rush of nauseous pain made his knees give way. Rough hands dragged his arms back and retied his wrists painfully tight. For a moment the earth swayed dizzily. An orc shoved him from behind. "Get up, scum. Move!"

"Form ranks! Clear out!"

He saw Aragorn stumble beside him as the orcs shoved him forward, equally bound.

"You said you were fine," Legolas hissed furiously under his breath as they surged forward.

"I am, as well as you," the man returned stubbornly, his voice placid though his face was pale and jaw tense. He shifted so as not to put more weight on his limping ankle. It was obviously sprained or broken. "But you should not have spoken—"

"Quiet, scum!" A lash cracked through the air and the man winced. Furious, but holding his tongue lest he inflict even more damage on his friend, Legolas simply shifted closer to the ranger to somehow give him some support in case he needed it. But he felt no betrayal over the words he had said. If they would keep Aragorn alive, he would never regret them. Until...

The orcs were moving fast, and Legolas felt a sudden wave of despair crash over him as the shadows of the forest deepened around them. Surely some elves must have escaped—but how long would it take for them to return and spread the word? Dol Guldur was at least a week's journey even for these orcs, but they were ahead and in a hurry to escape Elven reach. And what awaited them there...no. They must never reach it. The Elves of Mirkwood could track these forests better than any orcs, and they could be speedy in wrath. Help would come in time—or would it?

Perhaps if he had been alone, the despair in his heart would have turned to different, darker thoughts, but for now, Legolas pushed them all aside to focus on only one thing, the only tangible goal: by life or death, he would keep the man he had come to know as friend—and to believe in as future king—safe to the end of this living nightmare.

...well, that's the end of the first chapter. Let's see how well he succeeds in his goal. : ) Please R&R!

Estel - Aragorn's elvish name; "Hope" in Sindarin