Warnings: Graphic description of a past injury.
His hair tastes of straw, and it tickles his throat as he forces it down. It's too light, like feathers and sinew, and it tangles in his canine teeth; he can't reach up and pull it away without appearing weak, so he goes on swallowing and letting it tangle, until his mouth feels like a net and he's coughing up more than he can force down.
The bloody bits are easier to eat, because they're heavier and stay together when he swallows, even though they taste of iron on a battlefield. He doesn't know how much he is forced to eat before he's told he can stop, but it's enough to make him vomit into his own mouth. He swallows, vomits, and swallows again. Not a single drop passes his lips; more of it is hair than liquid. Legolas is looking at him in shaky dismay. Bolg is laughing.
Thranduil's life has become half a wreck in the space of an hour, and it makes him shudder.
"Cold, Elf-King?"
"No."
"No, that's right." Bolg shifts position, bringing himself down to Thranduil's level, dragging Legolas with him and nearly taking off his nose with the knife in the process; Thranduil supresses a wince, and a ripple of movement goes through the guards. "Elves don't feel the cold so much, do they? What about heat, though?"
Thranduil feels his spine clench as his head snaps up. Stupid, but involuntary. Bolg inclines his head. For a moment, he looks almost elfish, or human, in the way he moves. And then he opens his mouth, and the effect is ruined by his teeth. There are scars on his tongue that stretch when he speaks.
"Ah. And you thought you hid it so well. From your enemies, from your friends, you hid it." The knife twitches against Legolas's collarbones. "Ask him what I'm talking about."
"What is he talking about?" Legolas's voice is totally flat. Close up, Thranduil can see his nose has been bleeding. There are crystals of blood rusting on the skin of his upper lip and philtrum.
Thranduil remains silent. Bolg growls. "Tell your son. Tell him." He smiles. "Or even better, show him. I know you can."
"You are misinformed."
"I am not!" Bolg jerks the knife suddenly, pressing the point up into Legolas's chin. Legolas lets out an involuntary whimper, and Thranduil is suddenly drenched in icy terror. The room vanishes; his vision narrows onto the blade, and the fact that if it's given another second it will burst through muscle and go straight into Legolas's mouth. It won't kill him, but it could cut out his tongue.
"Alright!" Thranduil's knees are trembling against the floor. "Alright."
The knife retracts; as it pulls out of the skin, it breaks it further. Legolas is looking at the ceiling, out of pain or out of respect, it isn't clear. It doesn't matter. He will be hard-pressed not to notice what Thranduil is about to do. The guards will see. Bolg, of all the vile creatures, will see. If they get out of this alive, the shame might kill him.
Removing the illusion always hurts. The heat of that day had been enough to tear the flesh from Thranduil's jaw and cheekbones; the pain had been too intense for him remember much, but he remembers enough, and shaking the mirage loose feels like ripping his face all over again. When it's done, he feels no different – he always senses the air on his teeth through the gaps in cheek, always stares unseeingly out of his one, milky eye – but to know others he has not chosen are looking upon it makes him want to sink to the floor and cease to breathe.
Legolas is not looking, but the guards are; they can hardly stop watching, because if they do, they might miss an opportunity to end this. Thranduil pointedly turns to Bolg and raises his head. Kneeling, his eyes come up to Bolg's hips, but he can make his gaze reach further, much further. He imagines it stretching to the Orc's head, finding his brain, and pinching the nerves shut, one by one shutting them off and killing Bolg with a single look. But he cannot do it. There are too many things he cannot do right now.
Bolg is grinning. Perhaps such an injury is beauty to him.
"Very good, Elf-King. 'Misinformed'? I should say I was. There were rumours, yes, but not ones of such…ruin."
Thranduil can hear the past ringing in his ears, but he realises Bolg had not expected this. He had expected a small scar, had expected something minor with which to exploit Thranduil's vanity. Can Thranduil use the fact? Most likely not. If he'd realised, he would have revealed only a quarter of the injury. But he had not been able to risk it, with his son in so much danger.
Bolg, although he does not release Legolas, brings his right arm forward. The left still has Legolas's head in a vice grip, the knife pressed into the jaw. In the corner of his eye, Thranduil sees one of the guards shift, and he shakes his head, minutely. Any involuntary movement on Bolg's part will split open Legolas's neck jaw-to-jugular. The guard sees it, and stills.
Bolg's hand reaches for the scar and presses one, filthy finger into it, through Thranduil's skin, through the holes in his cheek and into his mouth. It feels abhorrent enough for Thranduil to want to bite; he has to reign back every inch of his pride, and he has miles of it, as well as force himself not to groan in pain and disgust as the finger brushes his tongue. Legolas is still not looking; he has closed his eyes, though Thranduil does not know how much he might have seen before he did.
Something tickles at the back of Thranduil's throat and makes him gag as Bolg finds what can only be a strand of hair and pulls it out, brushing against still-tender nerves and exposed flesh. "What have we here?" Bolg says as he holds the hair up. Orcs are not build for delicacy, and he holds it clumsily. Thranduil hopes he will drop it, and have to scrabble to pick it up, but he does not. "Answer me, Elf-King. What do I have here?"
"A hair."
"Wrong."
Bolg grunts and the second of the smaller Orcs comes forward. Something passes between them that Thranduil does not understand, and then the hair is pushed back into his mouth, through his cheek, and round the long band of muscle that stretches like a bridge between the gaps adjacent to his nose. It's like having a snake fed onto his tongue. When it is done, the hair is wrapped around his cheek, and Bolg hands the two ends to the smaller Orc.
"It's a leash, Elf-King." Bolg grins. "I think it suits you." He jerks his head to the smaller Orc. "He looks restless. Take him for a walk."
The humiliation of before is nothing compared to this. The hair is strong, and it chafes as Thranduil's head is wrenched. He must crawl on his hands and knees, or have his veins break. Burned as his nerves are, he still feels the pain, fresh and blistering. His face has gone white with rage, his lips purple from being pressed so closely together. His robes tangle around his hands and feet and his head bleeds onto his knuckles and neck. His pride is threatening to burst through his spine; he has only to reach up, snap the hair, snap the neck of the Orc holding him, to end this.
He cannot, he tells himself. He cannot. There is greater pride in having his son live. There is-
"Enough."
The Orc lets go of the hair. Thranduil, before he can stop himself, reaches out and snatches it away. His breathing is picking up, but he supresses his rage and inhales only through his nose; he cannot do so quickly without pain, and if he has to starve himself of oxygen to prevent himself doing something rash then by his life, he will do it.
He's growing dizzy by the time Legolas breaks free.
Bolg has shifted position too much, too intent on Thranduil, and it's clear Legolas has not been idle. Forced as he has been from standing to sitting to crouching, he has wormed himself, not completely out of the path of the knife, but far enough toward the handle to escape without severe injury. Even Thranduil doesn't realise what he intends to do before it is done.
With a snarl, Legolas tears himself to the left, bringing up his shoulder and deflecting the knife off it as he ducks and skids forward, out of danger. The guards are instantly alert; the clicking of shoes on the floor comes only a second after Thranduil has raised himself to his feet and reached for Legolas, dragging his son behind him before Bolg can snatch out a hand and catch the back of his robes. Bolg roars.
The guards are coming forward now, hunting for the knives and weapons they had been relieved of and hastily snatching up arrows that had been snapped in two when the Orcs took them. The Orc behind them, who, Thranduil realises, must have been approaching unseen, falls with a growl. A second arrow bounces off Bolg's armour – the shaft, Thranduil can see, is only a third of the length it should have been – and then Bolg is upon them. The knife snickers through the air. Thranduil ducks and comes round, Legolas behind him, the two of them back-to-back and weaponless, hands raised.
The second smaller Orc is dodges the poor excuse for arrows the elves are using, but cannot completely outmanoeuvre a thrown knife. It burrows into his chest and he goes down. Blood has made the floor slippery. Bolg makes another charge and, unable to dive out of the way in time, Thranduil settles for pushing Legolas backward, out of danger. The knife is to his throat in an instant, an arm around his chest – he still has not regained his breath, and he feels choked. His vision spins.
"Kneel!" Bolg is roaring. He is trapped; he will not escape this. He will not be allowed to pull off his tricks a second time, not now the guards have a formed a line around them. He will die. This is over. The humiliation is over. "You. Will. Kneel. Every one of you. Or I will kill him."
They hesitate. But Thranduil, of all of them, will not kneel, not anymore, because Bolg has hurt his son, the boy he remembers shooting arrows made of twigs because he'd been too young for the real ones, with his hair caught in the branches of a tree, laughing, crying, both at once. And Thranduil will not forgive. Of the many things he cannot do, that is the foremost.
His position is better than Legolas's had been. He throws his head backward, out of the path of the knife and into Bolg's face, wishing he was wearing his crown because it might have taken the beast's other eye out, but satisfied it will put his throat out of range of the knife.
Only, Bolg is ready for it. As an arrow finds its mark in the Orc's head, he brings the knife, not up in a stab, as Thranduil had anticipated and prepared for, but sideways. The skin of Thranduil's neck breaks so quickly, he would have thought it were made of gossamer.
Thanks for reading, reviews welcome!
To be continued.