Disclaimer: LOTR copyright Tolkien.
"Pieces" lyrics copyright Dan Powell.
A/N: This is a one-shot. No slash. Flaff. Please R/R.
Also: Read my Bio for info on the ViggOrli Fluff Episodes.
Smile
He lifted his head into the shaft of light that fell down into the cell from the barred drain carved high up into the stones. It was evening again, and the moon must have been full. The beam formed a circle beneath him, white without flaw except for his shadow. The light caressed his bruised face, bringing out how pale he was, with his golden hair reduced to a soiled, faded mess. He was broken. It was visible in the way he hung there, arms raised in their cuffs and chains, chest barely heaving, eyes weary and dull. Pieces of fabric clung to his tunic where it had been ripped; dirt and blood stained everything, even his skin. His finely chiseled cheekbones were smudged and streaked brown, mingled with the bruises and the dried blood that coated the right side of his face and his cracked lips, the lower having been spilt. His torso, mottled with bruises and blood, was concealed with what was left of clothing, though the welts and open wounds left by his whipping stood out where the cloth had torn at his back. His wrists had ceased to bleed from rubbing against the cuffs yet still stung and burned if moved. His boots dangled a foot off the straw covered ground, made of gray stone. His blood yet stained some places of it, and he did not forget the cold, hard surface that it had offered to his face and his body during the beatings of that day. He closed his eyes at the fleeting memory but opened them again to stare into nothing, the dripping of water resonating in his pointed ears.
"The final count – is 42."
"42...42. Well, that may be fine for a pointy-eared Elf princeling, such as yourself. But
I am sitting here on 43."
Those eyes, dull and empty, glazed as the soul beyond them faded, flickered for an instant. They had once been a brilliant blue, a shade that could not be produced by any being of the earth, such was the beauty that God had given them. Now, they resigned to an opaque gray, bleak and hopeless. Even in the light, they were lost. It had not taken long for the fire that had once resided within them to dwindle into ash, the lambent orbs they had once been reduced to dead windows. After hours of abuse, they had died, diminishing gradually as they looked up into the shadowed faces of assailants and into empty space. The hours had left him bleeding, remembering, and weeping when finally left in solitude. He did not weep because of the pain or because of the hopelessness; he had wept at the realization of defeat, of being broken despite all of his resistance. He had wept as his limbs ached, his head throbbed, his wounds burned, and his bones cried out with each breath and heave of his chest because his defeat was written in them. He had suffered worse before, yet had always clung to hope. It had abandoned him here, at last.
He had lost track of the days. Time had blurred and had become meaningless in a captivity he admitted to himself would not end. Before being hung up, he had drifted in and out of consciousness, lying on the stones waiting for another beating after having been left. He assumed now there would be no more abuse – only death. He wondered how it would be delivered to him, hoping it would be more merciful than the blows he had been so swiftly dealt. He had wanted only a chance to see the stars again, to lie in the grass with the sunlight on his face, to feel warm before he died. Even that hope was futile for him. Depression hung in his body, like a veil that had settled o'er his shoulders, barely swaying in the draft that accompanied the shaft of moonlight. He closed his eyes and smiled faintly in his heart, remembering the golden afternoons; he had not the strength to curl his lips. He could hear his own mild breathing somewhere in his subconscious, as he watched a vision from long ago.
He was laughing, smiling in the sunlight with friendship as his companion. True gray eyes glittered at the ones he looked at them through, and he felt them in his chest, wherever his heart used to beat. It had stopped beating with his surrender; it lived in the memory of immortal hope. Yet hope was mortal. It was a truth he had come to accept long ago, coming out of sweet denial to save himself unbearable despair. Now, the death of it would only kill his soul and spare his body. Or it would have – had he been given the chance to bid hope farewell. Would one of the assailants returned for him then, they would have not understood the faint smile he wore, with his head bowed to his chest and his eyes closed.
A tear escaped his knowledge and his eyes. Another followed, and he remembered. His body ached and his chest throbbed within as he allowed another breath to rattle through his lungs. If only it would leave him alone, just as his heart had abandoned him and every other light. His candle flame would never know how he shed those tears, and that thought only brought forth more from beneath his dark lashes. The rain clung to his lower lip that refused to quiver, even in the solitude. Oh, he remembered the rain. He remembered it with a sigh that was meant to be a whimper.
The rain had been warm and beautiful the day of his memory. The afternoon had been cast in twilight, not a patch of blue sky seeping through the clouds. He had been with brotherhood, and the laughter had returned in the shades of gray rain. The water had clung to their skin, sleeked their hair, beaded their lips and their lashes. It had soaked their clothing and when they had come together, their sodden bodies had stuck together. He shuddered in a breath, refusing to sob, as he remembered the way he had flung his arms around...
He barely moved, yet the chains made a slight noise. He almost felt wet, though it was not the sort that he had been that day. It would have been the miserable sort, if it had been true at all. He had been thoroughly soaked a long while before, when the assailants had come in with a bucket of ice after a beating. They had said he did not look so pretty with the blood and dirt to soil his appearance. When he had lain there shivering with blue tinged lips for a time, they had returned with a bucket of water almost too hot that had sent a jolt throughout his body. Once he had begun to dry, he had shivered again in the chill dampness.
He had wanted a flower to lie in his hand beneath his loosely curled fingers. It would have been a pale pink color, with too many petals to count without picking them off of their mustard-yellow center. But he did not like picking a flower apart – he would have let the number of petals remain a mystery. He wanted to lie in the grass, with the sun on his face, the flower in his hand, and smile. He would have known about the breeze without having to open his eyes. He would have felt hope coming for him again in the sunbeam that would reach for his face. He would have felt the memory of callused fingers running gently through tousled hair as he lay in the grass that those same fingers could have passed through. He would have smiled with the smile he loved lingering in his sight, eyes closed. He would have given it up willingly in the moment of perfection. He could not be granted that here, in his cell, hanging chained like a wild bird. Yet he would have given anything to be let down from his chains just to lie in the straw instead.
He lifted his head and opened his eyes when he heard a noise from somewhere at the end of the chamber, brash and anxious. Somehow he discerned metal being broken, wood giving way, and the door being forced open. He wondered if one of the assailants had come back for him in a drunken rage, yet a part of him clung to an ember of hope's extinguished flame. Boots pounded the stone, scraped, echoed in his ears as they drew closer toward his cell, coming down the narrow way. He did not drop his head again but instead waited for who ever it was to come. Those footsteps were not the heavy, bleak ones that belonged to his assailants...
"Legolas." The man threw himself against the bars of the cell, arms snaking through the spaces and grabbing at the bars themselves. His face was pressed eagerly against them, looking at the captive in both disbelief and relief.
"Aragorn," the Elf answered, and the tears flew up into his eyes, threatening to break through what meager self-control he had left. His body sagged in absolute reprieve, and he felt the impulse to cry out for joy at the return of hope. It had not died; it had not yet forsaken him. Hope lived.
The man fumbled for something is great haste, and the Elf nearly sobbed when the keys to the cage were produced. The door flung open, the man rushed forth and searched through the keys for the one to release the Elf of his chains. The Elf's eyes glimmered anew with restored hope. Once the right key was found, the man reached up with arms coming around the Elf's head to unlock the cuffs. Their bodies were close, their chests nearly touching with their breath. Legolas looked down into the upturned face of his savior, and he lost himself.
"You came back," he said.
"I came for you," he was answered. The chains let go. The Elf's limp body slid down into awaiting arms, with the strength he had lost, as if offering it back to him. He collapsed against the man, who lowered himself to the ground with the Elf in his grasp. "I am only sorry I could not come sooner," the man said with his emotions, his regret revealing itself nakedly in his eyes. He cradled the Elf in his lap, his arms holding him like an infant. The Elf looked up into his face and smiled sincerely with what strength he had left. He told the man not to regret anything, for it did not matter. All that mattered was that he had come at all.
"I waited for you," the Elf admitted, as he realized it himself. It was he who had clung to life in the aftermath of hope's loss. Life did not hold him captive; he had wanted to see friendship and brotherhood once last time.
"I'm here," the man reassured in the quiet stillness. His body shielded the Elf from the shaft of moonlight; it shone passively upon the mortal's back. He apologized again, bowing his head in sorrow at what the Elf had endured. The Elf stared at him with tears slipping away into darkness from the corners of his glassy eyes. He allowed the man a long moment of self-loathe and guilt, before gripping the mortal's chin firmly in his slim fingers and lifting his face up again. He smiled mildly at him, who wept still.
"I could not see your eyes hidden beyond your raven hair," he said. The man choked back a sob and crumpled, lifting the Elf's head forward a little to give a touch to his fair brow, a kiss like crushed petals. The Elf's arm bent up around the man, and he gripped his shoulder. His eyes were shut, tear giving, as his best friend held him. For a long while, they remained this way, in the path of the moonbeam. The Elf let go of control and broke down, as broken as his body and soul were, weeping in the arms where judgment would never come.
"I love you," Aragorn began.
"With all the pieces of my heart," Legolas finished.
He would not die in the grass, with the sun upon his face and a flower in his hand. He would not die in a dungeon where hope was dead and darkness enveloped him with cold and pain and only a single moonbeam. He would not die remembering, weeping in solitude. He would not die at all. He would live because hope lived.