Trigger Warnings: This chapter contains mentions of suicidal thoughts and outright descriptions of a non-con scene. Please heed all warnings if you are effected by such things. This chapter is the first that matches the rating.
The next day, Thranduil administers the drug again to Thorin.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
Every day, in the moments of lucidity between the nightmares, Thorin scratches a tally mark into the wall with the edge of his manacle. He counts how many days a dwarf may go without food or water, how many had already passed when he was taken from the company.
Every day he asks Thranduil, "Will you help them?"
The first day it is a challenge, and he throws it in the Elvenking's face. Thranduil's eyes flash with anger, pitiless as stars, when he says coldly, "No."
The second day it is a demand. The Elvenking's answer does not change.
On the third day it is an entreaty, and it does not matter. He inhales the powder as it is forced down his lungs, and it is in his teeth, in his throat and mouth. He is spiraling again. Lost.
Three days pass this way. He holds onto his silence, teeth grinding, jaw tightened to the point of cracking, and waits it out. Tries not to think, ignores the questions as they are thrown at him.
Feels himself slipping.
Four days. They had starved for three when he was stolen. A week without food, without water too. Can a dwarf survive so long?
Can a hobbit?
The manacles are like brands around his wrists and he can barely swallow the food that is given to him. It is as dust in his mouth and he only consumes it to maintain strength, so that he might take his chance, wrestle his way past the impossibly strong elven guards. It is hopeless, and he knows it. Every bite brings up bile, guilt and shame. These moments of solitude are the better part of his day, and he waits in dread for the sound of soft footfalls coming up the winding corridor. The sound is like a saw across his nerves, but he hides it. He is a dwarf, his kind were made from stone, and he must become stone again if he is to survive this.
He is no longer sure he wishes to.
He flinches, once, on the fourth day at the sound of their approach. Stands as much as the manacles will allow. He wants to be on his feet when he faces the Elvenking. Thorin clasps his hands before him and squares his shoulders, challenging Thranduil with his gaze as he comes into view.
The iron gate creaks open, the dark haired guards enter before their king, flanking him. Thranduil takes his customary place across from Thorin, looks down at him.
"Will you help them?" Thorin says.
"No," Thranduil replies, and the corner of his mouth twitches, amused, as if this is no more than the latest step in their dance. Thorin hates him for it, hates that he has become so much better at reading Thranduil's moods.
He braces himself. Closes his eyes and taking a deep breath, hoping to hold off the onslaught for a few precious seconds, to stay the fires of the drug as they work through his system and tear down his defenses, leaving him with silence as his only shield.
"There is no need for that today," Thranduil says. "I thought instead that we might talk."
Thorin cracks open an eye, sees that Thranduil is sitting now, the guards having brought chairs with them this time. He frowns, puzzled, before locking up his expression again. One of the guards takes a second chair and sets it beside Thorin, across from Thranduil and within easy reach of his chains. Does not unlock them, but beckons for Thorin to sit as well.
"I will stand," he growls, addressing Thranduil.
Thranduil inclines his head in acknowledgement and Thorin's hackles are up. Why this sudden change? He would rather take the drug again, this uncertainty is worse than the fire. He will need to do more than react, he will have to think, and attempt to outmaneuver a canny opponent. It would be a challenge even if Thorin was in a place of strength, his thoughts not consumed with the seconds and minutes of the day. A week. They had been starving a week.
They might already be dead.
Despair rises in him, and he forces it aside, meets Thranduil's gaze. Seated, Thranduil and he are on the same level, another reason not to accept the offered chair. Thorin crosses his arms across his chest, and settles back to wait.
"It has occurred to me how unseemly it is for two kings to converse with one another as we do," Thranduil says. His words are slow, languorous as one who has all the time in the world and knows it. Thorin can already feel himself growing impatient. "After all, such methods of force as I have employed are of better use on foul things. Orcs and other servants of evil, who cannot be trusted to give testimony without weaving it through with lies. We two should be above such things. Employ the art of diplomacy, and leave such brutish measures behind."
"It is not I who have employed these measures," Thorin says, eyes narrowing.
"But it is within your power to end them at any point, if you will but tell me the truth," Thranduil says. Thorin's lips firm to a line. If this is to be the nature of the conversation, he sees no reason to treat it any differently than the drugging sessions. Thranduil sees this and settles back, places his hands on the arms of the chair and reclines as if it were indeed a throne. Suddenly, Thorin no longer feels so steady. The power of the room has shifted and he is standing as a supplicant before Thranduil, but it is too late to take the seat.
He plants himself instead, shifting on his feet and striving for height he does not have, tilting up his chin. Thranduil arches an eyebrow, and appears to reconsider his argument. It is not a victory. Thorin knows his silence has given more information than he intended. One more reason to hate Elves: the thousands of years they have at their disposal to learn the nuances of mortal expressions, to toy with them upon a field so unbalanced as to be laughable. The gift of the Valar, who had set them at unquestionable heights above all other races, even above those who had been firstborn in truth.
"You might have ruled a great kingdom by now, had fate been kinder," Thranduil says. "You may still make Ered Luin more than it is, a filthy little miner's town. Should that day ever come, I would wish to grant you a gift."
"I have no interest in your gifts," Thorin growls.
"A trade, then," Thranduil says. "I have been callous, offering you nothing in return for your information. I thought that I only bargained with thieves, and assassins. If I do in truth negotiate with a king, or a future one, it is only just that an exchange is made. I propose that I will teach you the art of kingship and, if you find the lessons useful, you shall give me what I ask for in return."
"And if I do not?" Thorin says. Teach him the art of kingship? His teeth grind and rage kindles in his belly. Teach him? As if he were a strippling youth, as if he knew nothing of what it meant to lead his people in times of hardship? If he thought he could get away with it, Thorin would reach out then and there and strangle the life from Thranduil.
Then his eyes drift, downward, to Thranduil's clasped hands. To the concealed fingertips that may even now hide the yellow powder. Fear quenches his anger, turns it to ash inside him. He feels as if he is turning to ash, to gray blankness that is the only way to hold on to his silence. The fire inside gutters.
"A king who will not accept a hand offered in friendship is worse than an orc, worse than a beast," Thranduil says. "And you will be kept here as one."
Thranduil stands, the hem of his robes pooling on the floor like quicksilver. "We will begin tomorrow, and you will be offered each in turn. To be treated as a king, or to be treated as a beast. We may continue as long as it takes for you to choose correctly. I have no doubt it will demand more than a single day, such is always the way with dwarves."
Thranduil turns to leave, the two elves at his side snatching up the chairs and he stops, as ever he does when he prepares his parting shot. Thorin closes his eyes, wishes he could close his ears too, and waits.
"Some of your companions may yet live," Thranduil says. "But I wonder… for how much longer?"
Thorin's knuckles crack as he draws them into fists, feels his muscles tense to throw himself against the chains, to reach for Thranduil and tear him apart with his bare hands.
The fire dies. It would be a futile action, serving nothing.
He bows his head as their footsteps recede.
It begins again the next day, as promised. The guards open the door, Thranduil a silver flame to their dark-green shadows. He stands before Thorin, fingers pinched together and upraised, prepared to blow the fine powder into his face.
"Tell me which it will be, son of Thráin. Are you a king, or a beast?" Thranduil says.
"Better a beast than a king by your measure," Thorin retorts. He is prepared this time, inhaling deep so that he need not breathe for minutes after it is dispersed into the air.
The guards are prepared for this too. With a nod from Thranduil they surround Thorin, prying open his mouth, pinching his nose until he does so. He holds out, but there is only so much even a dwarf can manage and once again he is coughing and sputtering as the powder chokes him. Fine as flour, it coats his tongue and throat and he hacks to clear it, knowing it is already too late. Again the warmth steals over him and a haze descends over his mind, but he is ready. Thranduil's form wavers in the air before him, crouching mockingly low to address him.
All throughout the night has had considered different strategies for evading the questions, and so now Thorin closes his ears, humming low at the back of his throat to block out Thranduil's words. He builds walls in his mind, great masonry blocks falling into place, a city to dwell within locked within a mountain, dug far into the bedrock. He fills his ears with the clanging of picks and hammers. He lulls himself with visions of the Erebor, enclosing and defending himself within his home.
It does not take Thranduil long to catch on to his plan, but the moments stretch to what feel like hours in the thrumming echoes of the drug through his veins and heartbeat, and his technique fails as long fingers close around his chin and jerk his head upward.
"You wish to tell me why you were traveling through my forest," Thranduil says.
Thorin is drawn up short, as the desire to please meets the walls of resistance. In his state they are literal walls, the walls of Erebor built into the mountain, climbing to the sky in a solid mass that is one with the earth. The wall in his mind is Erebor, it is family, his nephews, and his sister Dís watching them depart from the gates of Ered Luin. It is Frerin lying in a pool of blood at Azanulbizar, and all his companions, and their fathers before them stretching back to Durin. It is Bilbo, who sacrificed everything for no other reason than to see Thorin and his people return home. He will not betray that trust any more than Erebor could fall.
"But Erebor did fall," a sibilant whisper slithers around his ears, enters him and dances along his brain. Had he spoken aloud? "It was no match for the dragon." And he can see the drug burning red in his veins, seeking his heart all the secrets kept their, and it is the burning red of Smaug tearing down the gates with his claws, the heat is dragon fire and the truth is waiting on his lips, just as Thorin had stood at the battlements, helplessly watching his city fall.
Thorin chokes on a gasp, clenching his eyes shut against the vision, as his home and refuge is torn apart before his eyes by the inexorable voice that demands more of him. He is alone, naked in the dark, and somewhere in the dark beyond wander his kin, and Bilbo. Dying, or perhaps already dead.
"Erebor is gone, forevermore beyond your reach. Unless that is what you seek now? Is that why you pass through my forest, lost son of a lost kingdom?"
Panic rises swift and sharp in Thorin's heart to have already given away so much and he tries frantically divert. If Thranduil knows, he will stop them at any cost. If he believes Smaug is dead, as Thorin does, he will be the first to Erebor like a vulture alighting on a corpse. Want, desire, those were the impulses fanned by the drug, the impulses Thranduil relied upon for his answers. As ever, when there was fear in his heart, Thorin turned to rage to bolster him.
What does he want? He wants Thranduil to be the one on his knees before him. He snarls against the drug, against the reality of Thranduil standing before him imperious and demanding, tugging at the heart of Thorin's being for his answer. It will not end here. He will not spend the rest of his days as the plaything of an oathbreaker while his home is drug is tearing at his brain, and it feels as if all wards against the savagery of his own heart have been worn away layer by layer with each dose. He is on the knife's edge now, where every second is like a muffled scream, and each blink of his eyes threatens to drag him down. But he cannot trust himself, or the drug that flows through his blood and lungs. If he gives in will he go mad, or will he only be hypnotized, muttering plans to…he cannot even think the words, he must not.
But when he is successful it will be Thranduil kneeling before him. A king, he says? Well, let Thranduil be the first to admit that a king may fall, and oh how much farther they fall when they have so much more to lose. Let him be stripped of his crown and robes, let him be bound with thongs and chained in a cell. His lessons on kingship will have more meaning when they are spoken by one who no longer has it, let him keep his smug certainty of his right to rule when he is naked and bound.
Heat races along Thorin's skin, the fires of hatred which feel not so unlike the fires of lust. He can see the Elvenking bowed before him, his pale lips parted and begging for, what? Freedom, for Thorin to help him regain his kingdom. Perhaps his son is lost somewhere in the woods, starving, and he begs Thorin's aid. Yet all feel wrong in Thorin's mind, they do not give the bone-deep satisfaction he requires, and he bites his lip to keep himself from speaking even as he seizes his vision of Thranduil by the back of the head and closes his mouth around those lips, biting and violating him. He wants to feel anger, he wants this elf to feel as helpless as he does, but even that isn't right. The drug pulses in his veins and he wants and he sees Thranduil gasp against him, his pale body bending like a bow against Thorin's clothed one.
Somewhere, distantly, a voice not nearly as breathy and desperate as the Thranduil in his vision is complaining about something. But Thorin pays him no mind, he knows that he remains silent, for there is only the sound of his own breath through his nose, his lips are still sealed shut. But behind his eyes a white figure is clad only in bonds and lays stretched out on a stone floor beneath the mountain. Thranduil gives an unwilling twitch, his skin is like satin beneath Thorin's hand.
"Son of Thráin…" a voice is saying in the waking world but Thorin is far away. He sees the body of Thranduil stretched before him, his hands bound behind him. He imagines his own hand tracing that pale flesh, free of manacles and bedecked with rings. He sees Thranduil as his prisoner before him, these desperate days in Mirkwood a distant memory. Erebor reclaimed, and vengeance had. His fingers skirt Thranduil's inner thigh, drawing out his arousal and the Elvenking, a king no longer, keens a high-pitch and desperate sound.
Thorin's heart goes cold within him, even as his blood is hot. He feels no pity for this wanton creature before him, who bends to his touch. He wants only to take from Thranduil what the elf had tried to take from him: his dignity and pride. He wants to wring hidden words and needy sounds from him. Thorin licked his lips against a mouth gone suddenly dry at the thought.
The drug captures his imaginings, plasters them in vivid colors behind his eyelids. He can feel his fingers enclosing Thranduil's length, bringing him to hardness with rough strokes while elf writhes and keens beneath his touch. He can hear the elf wanting it, yet hating himself for giving in to so low a creature, a mere dwarf. Thranduil scrabbles for his dignity and cannot find it. He is a wrecked and wanting thing, desiring only Thorin's touch. Yet he is aware, ever and throughout, of how far he has fallen. It is there in those icy blue eyes: self-loathing that burns with the same heat as his desire. He wants only to be plundered now, the only purpose of his life. Thorin indulges him, giving him the touch that has been withehld. Thranduil's body would be ready for it, this would not have been the first time that the elf panted beneath his touch. His hand slips lower, slicked with oil and enters Thranduil. The elf bucks, grinding into the ground, drawing Thorin's fingers into him, begging for more in slurred tones that have lost their arrogant precision long ago.
Thorin fingers him mercilessly, and it does not take long because at this point Thranduil is always ready for him, preparing himself in anticipation, wanting him, falling before him. He is begging now for Thorin's cock, and Thorin's lust rides the waves of the drug, burning hot enough to consume him. He is lost in visions of stretching Thranduil, of flipping him onto his stomach, stronger now than the waifish elf. His own broad hands would be dark against the pale white flesh of the elf's hip. There would be little warning as he drove himself in, but Thranduil would moan with relief, and with shame, rocking himself back onto Thorin's cock like the wanton and fallen creature he is. Thranduil wants this, it has all he has ever wanted as Thorin stabs his pleasure spot again and again, hardly taking a note even of his own pleasure, if it can be called that. Rather it is a dark satisfaction that curls in his gut, far more effective than anything so gentle as lust. It is victory. It is conquest, and it sets his body afire with a heat that consumes him, as the elf lays plundered beneath him, and he is close, he is-
There is a ringing slap and pain blossoms across Thorin's face. He jerks free of the whirlwind and Thranduil is facing him, eyes puzzled. He is clothed and looming, and wears his disdain like a cloak. The wanton vision melts and with it nausea rises in Thorin's mouth, banishing all heat. Any effects it had on his body die in a blink and he recoils from Thranduil with revulsion.
"And where does your mind wander, dwarf? What paths does it walk while you ignore my questions?" Thranduil says. "Sleep and dreams will do nothing to aid your companions, nor will it stay my purpose."
Sleep? How could that have been sleep? He is back in his cell, hands chained before him as he kneels, and perhaps that is the only reason they had not seen the effects of the drug upon him. He burns with a different fire now, with shame, and disgust that twists within him like a living thing.
Beneath it there is a new question, of whence the vision had come from, what flaw in his own metal had given rise to that desire? To destroy Thranduil, aye, that he would glory in if given the chance, were it not a short-sighted and suicidal prospect. But destroying him in other ways? That had never occurred. Not until now, when he knelt before the Elvenking and saw what tortures the elf would gleefully subject him to. Had this always been within him, or was this too the fault of Thranduil?
He has no answer, but glares up at the elf, silent as ever, fearing that speaking even a single word would release the torrent.
"Do you think on your companions?" Thranduil continues, accustomed now to Thorin's silence and seeming not to care at all whether Thorin participates in the game. There is always something to draw him out again, that Thorin cannot resist even if he attempts to stop his ears. He dare not let his thoughts wander again, but feels his heart grow cold at the thought of the tortures he would visit upon Thranduil in return. He is cold to the depths of his soul, as if the fire within is replaced by ice and he is transforming into something other. Something he does not recognize, but that is crafted of hatred and helplessness. "Do you wonder after them? When last you saw them they lay within the webs of the spiders. Perhaps they are there still. What would you do now, if confronted by them? What would you tell them, son of Thráin?"
He can see them. As real as if they stood before him, Thorin can see the company. Bodies dripping webs, faces pale in death, they watch him with accusation in their eyes. How else could they view him except with hatred, who is fed, if imprisoned. Who dreams of lying with the enemy responsible for their suffering. How could they not hate him, he who with every second under Thranduil's power threatens to confess the purpose of their mission and give away the keys to Erebor if only it means escaping this place? But he cannot give in, he must not. For them.
Thranduil withdraws, looks down upon him. "We will cease with the drug for a day. Worthy or not, a lesson in the manners of a king will perhaps do you good, instead of wandering the paths of delirium as you seem to so enjoy. Rest and recover your sobriety. Tomorrow I expect to meet with Thorin, lord of Ered Luin, and not a mute beast," Thranduil says. He leaves, and perhaps his mind is preoccupied with other matters for he takes no parting shot.
Thorin would not have heard it in any case. Slowly, the world returns to him, but he needs no drug to see his kin, and his failure, laid out before him true as life itself.
Author Note: Thank you for reading! I know it's a rather dark tale, but do consider leaving a comment if you're enjoying it!