A/N: Chapter revised March 4, 2016
Chapter II: Dungeon Crawl
The first time it became apparent that Lucy was odd was when Annette lost her hair.
Lucy had always been an obsessive girl. Quiet, and pretty by most people's standards. She had a fine boned face and solemn blue eyes that made people treat her differently – treat her better – and a soft, hesitant smile that grandmothers loved to coo over. Lovely girl, they would say when she was younger, pinching her pale cheeks as they patted her head. Quiet, though. Is there something wrong with her?
Always, her mother would give the other women a brittle smile and shake her head. Lucy was still no good at making friends.
"Lucy," her mother would say, again and again. "Lucy, you need to give them space. If you hold on too tightly, they'll feel trapped." But Lucy wanted friends, almost desperately: she wanted people to need her as much as she needed them. She was awkward in a way that was always internal, in a way that rarely made itself known unless she decided to speak. Even still, Lucy had been affectionate as a child, prone to tears and sensitivity. She had few companions, and those she did possess she adored to pieces, clinging to with a fervor that was unnerving.
Things took a turn for the worse when she finally hit puberty. It had started early for her, and the first time she'd bled had been during a choir recital. Lucy had a lovely voice – one of the few positive traits she'd possessed beside her face – and as such she'd been standing at the front of the stage, square and center. She hadn't realized anything was wrong until another girl had screamed and pointed to the dark red stain that was soaking through the front of her sundress.
Afterwards, Lucy had simply stood there, palming the redness with eerie detachment until her sixth grade teacher dragged her away. From then on, her verbal ticks and wildly inappropriate comments got worse. She'd been friends with Tommy at the time, and the two girls had grown close. So close that Lucy hadn't wanted anyone else around them.
Tommy had suffered through an early puberty as well, only it wasn't in the way that the other girl had wanted. They both stayed short, but Lucy grew breasts while Tommy grew a thick middle and thighs. For a time – that time in-between, before the teasing got worse – Lucy's best friend had tried to change it with diet and exercise. It didn't work.
"Why do you like me?" Tommy had asked her one day, on the verge of tears after another failed round at the treadmill. "I mean, why do you hang around me? They're right, you know. I look nothing like you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I'm not… I'm not pretty."
Lucy hadn't cared. Tommy wasn't meant for exercise, for blood or sweat or tears. She was meant for books, for daydreaming and being brilliant. She was a prophet. Lucy's prophet. If she'd possessed an effigy of her best friend, Lucy would have gotten down and prayed before it. She loved the other girl that much. At the time, she'd simply blinked at her owlishly, struggling to find the words. Lucy was no good with words. She never had been, but she wanted to be. She'd wanted to tell Tommy that they were the same – that they were both awkward, just in different ways – only she hadn't been able to parse it.
Instead, Lucy had placed her hands against the center of Tommy's chest; pale and slim with fingers like matchsticks, feeling the beating of Tommy's heart. It was a strong heart. A good heart.
"I like the insides." she'd said, struggling to express herself. "I like the things inside you." Always, it was the warm, wet things past the flesh that Lucy adored. Pretty people were like nail polish, a plastic veneer of processed beauty to hide their internal flaws. Lucy knew this because she was one. They were rotten inside, the beautiful people, rotten like roaches and maggots and worms living in the bowels of someone's intestines. Tommy's insides smelt like sunflowers, but Lucy didn't have the words to express this thought. When she tried to explain it, her best friend had wrinkled her nose in confusion.
"You're really weird, Lucy." she'd said.
"But I like you." It was the only thing that mattered in Lucy's mind.
A few months later the teasing escalated. One girl – Annette – was worse than all the others. Annette was one of the beautiful people, with deep blond hair and pale blue eyes. She'd ruled over their classmates with an iron fist, and she'd hated Tommy for no other reason than that Tommy was different. Lucy had hated Annette because she could see the girl's true face. The festering pestilence that had twisted deep inside her.
Tommy had sported waist-length hair when they were younger; beautiful brown hair that was several shades lighter than Lucy's, but just as silken. When Annette had cut it off during class one day, snipping Tommy's braid at the base of her neck, Lucy hadn't been there to stop her. It didn't prevent her from hearing about the incident, though, or seeing Tommy's tear-stained face afterwards.
"My hair!" Tommy had screamed as Lucy had held her and cried for them both. "Lucy, my hair!" Lucy was bad with words, but she excelled at exacting vengeance. No one was allowed to hurt those she loved, and she would go to the ends of the earth to make them suffer if they so much as dared to try it.
Lucy's vengeance was a tenacious thing, devoid of morals and utterly lacking in fear. She followed Annette into the locker room one day: a Wednesday, when all the grade eight classes had tennis practice. Annette took a shower the same time each session, fastidious as she was about her appearance and utterly assured in her belief that she was safe. Slowly, so the other girl couldn't hear her, Lucy had taken off her shoes and her socks, her sweater and book bag. Silent as a ghost, she'd walked into the next stall over. While Annette was distracted, she'd taken the girl's shampoo and mixed the contents with a mild form of acid, a concoction of cleaning fluids and over-the-counter hair remover.
The screaming hadn't started until she was in the next room over, and by that time it had been too late to save Annette's long blond mane. The day after the incident, Lucy had arrived at the school to see Tommy smiling. Immediately she'd been filled with contentment. Tommy was happy, so she was happy. Vengeance was served.
It was the insides the mattered. The guts and the bones, the blood and the brains. External beauty was just a by-product.
When Lucy woke up, she was in a cell.
Around her the stone walls were an awful mixture of gray swirled with green, and the room was small, barely six by four feet across. From her position atop a narrow cot, Lucy could hear the muted roar of rushing water from a nearby ravine; could smell the slightly damp scent that clung to the air around her like rainwater. Everything was so coated in moss that she was sure the cell hadn't been used in ages. Her head was pounding, her tongue feeling thick inside her mouth. The left side of her face was swollen.
There was a bright square of light floating directly above her, and it took Lucy a moment to realize that it came from an iron-barred hatch in the ceiling. At the end of her cell there was a heavy wooden door, and across the lichen-covered floor there were strewn greening rushes. Lucy shivered, too weak and disoriented to crawl beneath the cot's blanket to escape the chill.
She was in a bad way. A really, really bad way. Her head spun with vertigo, the dizziness so deep it was impossible to move without gagging. My head's broken, Lucy though, but her ribs and leg were broken, too. The pain in her leg was fierce, but it was numbed out by the burning in her lungs. Each time she exhaled, there was a wet gurgling sound that breezed past her lips, like a balloon that was slowly filling with water. Lucy lifted a sluggish hand to feel the stiff linen bandage wrapped around her head, before her fingers clumsily drifted downwards to discover that the rest of her injuries had been left untouched. The elves had bandaged her up enough to keep her functioning, but no more than that. Lucy remembered the look of fury on the dark elf's face as he'd cracked his white bow across her temple, and wondered why.
"They're perfect." Tommy had said. "They're supposed to be everything humans aren't." Only perfect people didn't beat others to a pulp when they happened to casually mention the name of Sauron.
Trying to breathe as shallowly as possible so as not to agitate her lungs – trying not to move at all, or think about dead, desperate Tommy – Lucy closed her eyes and willed herself to go back to sleep. Eventually though, someone came to see her.
It was a female elf – an elleth, Tommy had called them – who was thin and very tall, dressed in black and silver. Lucy didn't realize she was there until she felt a cool hand on her forehead, pushing aside her hair. The elleth had a pale, ageless face, the skin on her hands soft and unblemished. Her eyes were so dark they looked black. Lucy stayed still under the dark elf's ministrations; her mouth slightly slack and eyelids at half mast as she listened to the constant plunk, plunk, plunk of dripping water. As Lucy watched her, the elf used her slim hand to brush her hair further back, revealing her rounded ears. She ran a curious finger along the edge of them, tugging on an earlobe when Lucy didn't react.
Finally, the elleth adjusted the bandages around her head, pulling the covers up to her chin. Then she left.
Lucy supposed the half-hearted care was better than none. Mostly, she supposed she was too far gone to care. She needed to make sure she'd arrived in the Third Age, but she was tired and thinking hurt too much. As soon as she felt better, Lucy decided, she would ask for Gandalf. He was one of the few people from Tommy's books that she remembered with any sort of clarity, and she was sure he would give her some sort of instruction on what to do next, now that her best friend was dead. She was no good at making plans on her own.
Don't think about it. She told herself, when a sharp stab of pain lanced its way through her chest. Don't think. Just sleep.
So Lucy drifted for a time, not really awake but still hearing and seeing. The blanket wasn't that warm, but she still managed to achieve a degree of peace with its presence. Eventually she came back to herself, cluing in to the sensation of smooth-skinned hands pressing against her forehead. Opening her eyes, Lucy discovered two elves standing over instead of one. It was the elleth from before and a dark haired ellon; another word that Tommy had made her remember.
The creatures were alike in many ways. They were both pale skinned with raw-boned features, their black hair worn long and intricately braided. The ellon had bright gray eyes similar to the archer on the mountain, but his face was narrower, his lips thinner. His forehead was furrowed into a frown.
Abruptly, the elleth leaned around him to push Lucy's unbound hair away from her face, pointing to it emphatically.
"Hên." she declared. She looked upset, if a marble statue could look upset. The ellon made a hmmm noise, feeling along Lucy's jaw and behind her ears with slender fingers.
"Ethir tol mîn pain cadw." he said, his tone neutral but firm. Lucy just stared at him, barely registering the way he skimmed his hands along the glands on her throat. He seemed to be searching for something, his manner very much like a doctor's. "Calagor baur degant firen." he continued in a reproachful tone. The ellon had a very deep voice, his words spoken with a bit of a drawl. In the background, the muted roar of the underground ravine was a constant.
"Hên." Black Eyes insisted. "Firen winë."
"Gwanw hên." the male shot back, raising one of his hands and snapping his fingers in front of Lucy's face. She barely followed the movement. The elf reached forward with his other hand to carefully cradle the side of her head, tilting it towards him.
"Mana neitha na hen?" he asked his companion, his frown deepening. Black Eyes bit her bottom lip, looking distressed. Over what, Lucy couldn't say.
"Im doú henio." she said in a tone of hesitant admittance. "Firen doú pladamaer. Ennas rhoeg ened."
"Calagor?" the ellon queried, raising an eyebrow. He looked surprised, and Lucy wished she could understand what he was saying.
The elleth shrugged, and the two elves exchanged a few more words, each statement punctured by pointed fingers and furrowed brows as they eyed her. The elleth seemed slightly more sympathetic, but only barely, and even then it was because something about Lucy seemed to disquiet her.
Maybe she sees the insides, too, Lucy decided. Maybe she sees something that's rotten.
Eventually the ellon's right hand came to rest on her chest. Very carefully, he felt along the breaks in her ribs. Lucy sucked in a hiss of breath as he did so. It hurt to the touch, so much so that she nearly saw stars. Her skin beneath the creature's slim hands was soft and spongy, the skin purple and bruising. When she breathed out, Lucy could hear the fluid in her lungs. He could too, it seemed.
"Sin baur na penio." the ellon said darkly. He placed one hand against Lucy's side and another on the top of her chest to feel the way her ribs moved as she breathed. Lucy wheezed beneath the added weight.
"Û si." he continued in that deep, clinical manner of his. "Anaduilin tírad hên."
The female elf looked highly unimpressed, and her response – which Lucy didn't catch – was caustic. The ellon shrugged in return. "Im doú henio." he admitted blandly, taking his hands off Lucy's front to reach into a bag by his side. He pulled out a slender bottle. "Ethir ná ethir, pen uin anrand."
The ellon held out the bottle to the black-eyed elleth, waiting for her to take it. When she did, he proceeded to rattle off a series of instructions. Black Eyes listened well enough, although the frown that was marring her features got deeper. As he finished talking, the ellon turned to look at Lucy, eyeing her bare legs with a peculiar sort of concern.
"Abgovad, esgal hên am." he said, pointing to the mangled limbs with an errant finger. "Hên û no hell."
The elleth's eyes narrowed dangerously, but the ellon got up and left without another word. Quickly, the black-eyed elf uncorked the carafe and made Lucy drink the contents. It was difficult at first, and Lucy choked on most of it, but the mixture was sweet and had an immediate effect. Soon her chest didn't feel quite so bad, and her breathing was almost bearable. Within a few minutes she was nearly euphoric, hallucinating fields of flowers and cornucopias of stars.
Black Eyes made a concerned tching noise when she began mumbling, dabbing away a bit of the clear liquid that had stained her cheek. Stars, Lucy thought as she eyed the silver necklace dangling around the elleth's neck, and tried to reach for the jewellery. The elf sighed and gently put her hand back.
"Stars." Lucy repeated aloud. It hurt to talk, but she couldn't help it. "I want the stars."
The elleth shot her a brief, worried glance, but otherwise ignored her. A thick green paste that smelt like rosewater was applied to her wounds, and then the elf was helping her sit, her arm carefully going around her shoulders so as not to bump her ribs. Lucy moaned as the world spun, her head lolling against Black Eyes' chest.
"Am, hên," the elleth commanded. "Am."
Lucy hurt too much to answer, and the elf seemed too distracted to care. Without delay she half-dragged Lucy into the hallway, marching her down a corridor made of dark gray stone. The passage was lit by torches every ten feet or so, and beside those stood a guard, each of their faces hidden by intricately carved helms of silver. The air was just as heavy in the hallway as it was in the cell, and soon Lucy was wheezing hard. Before she'd died, Tommy had said nothing about the atmosphere being different in Middle-earth. Lucy almost resented the world for daring to be different from her best friend's expectations.
Finally they reached a large wooden door towards the end of the corridor. There was a silver-helmed guard standing watch on either side. Black Eyes shifted Lucy in her grasp, pulling her past them into the room. Inside the chamber was long and shaped like a bunker, it's ceiling curved in an arch. The room was large but was mostly empty, devoid of furniture save for a pair of wooden chairs and a table next to an iron brazier. Several elves were standing near it, and with them was the archer that had knocked Lucy out. The archer was talking to another elf; a smaller one, with his silver hair pulled into a knot that rested at the nape of his neck. The ellon was dressed in black, his countenance so somber he looked like he'd come straight from a funeral. In his hands he held one of Tommy's books. Lucy couldn't tell which one it was from a distance.
Somewhat gently, Black Eyes sat her on the nearest chair, but Lucy was so dizzy that she couldn't stay upright without assistance. By the brazier, the archer gestured animatedly in her direction. Through the ringing in her ears and the cotton-like sensation that clouded her senses, Lucy could make out words like Sauron and Morgoth, along with an odd name that almost sounded like Angband. If she imagined harder, she was sure the archer was also spitting out such flattering expletives as spy, traitor and whore for good measure. Silver Hair listened to the archer's complaints well enough, only interjecting twice. The second time he cut the other elf off, however, and the dark-haired ellon fell silent.
In the low light, Lucy noticed the glint of something reflective near the archer's throat that she had not seen before; a clasp holding his cloak in place, made of steel and shaped like an arrowhead. It looked like some sort of sigil. When the archer finished speaking, the silver-haired elf stepped towards Lucy and sat. Up close, it became apparent the ellon's features were different from the other elves: still delicate, but his nose was shallower, the bridge of it lower and less straight. His eyes were silver too, his features more fox-like. Casually, Silver Hair held up the book.
It was Tommy's copy of The Silmarillion, splattered with blood and dented from the fall. The cover was plain, decorated only by a scrawling band of elvish script that Lucy couldn't read. The script was wrapped around the cover.
The ellon tapped a single, slender finger against the tome as he looked her straight in the eye.
"Quenta Silmarillion." he said, reading the elvish script aloud. His voice was as somber as his countenance, mellow but lacking in warmth. Turning his head towards the book, Silver Hair tapped his finger twice more atop the embossed design, his long digits thumping dully against the paper. A moment later, he turned the book back around so it was facing him. Almost languidly, the elf began flipping through the contents, breaking the spine and forcing the book open so the pages turned rapidly from left to right. His eyes skimmed mindlessly over the English letters.
Lucy's head lolled. It was getting harder and harder to stay awake, and the medication Black Eyes had given her was already wearing off. Silver Hair looked up at the movement. The ellon's gaze was critical, but oddly blank. He pointed to one of the pages written in English, tapping it again benignly.
"Man thel pent?" he asked. Luck didn't have an answer for him. Silver Hair kept on staring, scrutinizing her with detached interest that verged on chronic boredom. Behind him the archer was pacing. The pale ellon lowered the book to his lap and gently closed the cover.
"Car le buio i Fëanorians?" Silver Hair queried. When Lucy still didn't answer, he tilted his head to examine her more closely, rigid and dainty as a bird. The ellon was not the most physically imposing elf in the room, but there was a disquieting lack of empathy about his gaze that made him twice as terrifying. Morbidly, Lucy wondered if he would kill her.
"Man lín eneth?" the elf continued, his words coming out on a drawl. As he asked the question, the archer stopped pacing, his fair cheeks still flushed. His nose was a different shape from Silver Hair's – straighter, and the bridge more narrow – and his eyelids were heavier. Normally Lucy would have chalked this up to family genetics, but Black Eyes and the doctor-elf had them as well. All three of them were bigger than the silver-haired elf sitting in front of her. It was almost as if they came from a different species entirely.
"Car le buio i Sauron?" asked Silver Hair. Lucy jolted awake at the name. She didn't know what the ellon was saying, but Sauron was a familiar word.
Lucy, someone whispered along the edge of her ear, and even through the haze of pain, she had to fight the urge to scratch at the sensation. She was only half-sure she was imagining it. The silver-haired ellon was still staring at her.
"Car le buio i Sauron?" he repeated. Lucy swallowed heavily, feeling even dizzier than before. She wanted to answer, needed to answer, but the air was too dense. She could barely concentrate on making sure one breath came after another, much less form sounds into words.
Silver Hair continued watching in silence, waiting for her to answer. When Lucy didn't, he stood. On silent feet the pale elf glided forward, stopping close enough that the hem of his short black cloak was brushing against the bare skin of her legs. A second later, he reached out and grabbed her. The hand that he threaded through her hair was fine boned and elegant, the fingers unnaturally long. Lucy could feel his short nails scraping softly against her scalp as he lifted her head, pulling it into an upright position so she was looking at him. Then Silver Hair turned towards the black-eyed elleth standing behind her. The two elves were the same height.
"Ûn thloew." he said. It was a statement.
"Firen winë." Black Eyes insisted. Her clipped tone strongly suggested that she was thoroughly unimpressed with his tactics. Silver Hair bit the inside of his cheek, hmming briefly at the back of his throat as he turned his gaze to Lucy. Slowly he cocked his head, and as he did so Lucy decided that the ellon reminded her of a sparrow.
"Sauron iuitho hîn nó." he said simply, turning Lucy's head back and forth. Behind them, the archer had taken a step forward, his hands clenching repeatedly against his thighs.
"Hesto –" he began.
"Calagor, dartha estë." Silver Hair ordered blandly, not looking up as he cut the other elf off. The flush returned to the archer's face full force, his jaw locking so tightly Lucy was sure she could hear his teeth grinding. Stiffly, the dark-haired archer turned and stormed out of the room in a swirl of blue fabric.
Once he was gone, Silver Hair stepped back and let go of Lucy's head. He wiped his hand on the front of his loose fitting tunic, as if the bodily contact had been slightly repulsive. For a moment, all Lucy could hear was the crackle of the brazier's fire. Then the ellon began dolling out orders. His eyes were hooded as he tucked Tommy's book into a pocket on the right side of his tunic, his gaze returning to Lucy as he focused on her legs. The elf gestured to her bare skin with an errant hand.
"Esgal hên am. Hên û no hell." he said, his words directed towards the elf standing behind them. Even though she couldn't see her, Lucy could hear the terseness in Black Eye's tone as she responded.
"Im garo al hamma esgal in hên." she bit out. Silver Hair gave the other elf a bland look, and when the elleth held her ground he sighed, reaching up and unfastening his thick black cloak from around his neck. He tossed the garment onto Lucy's legs, covering them from sight.
"Hebin ha." he commanded, turning back to the brazier. Black Eyes bowed low, and beside her Lucy slumped forward, her mouth slack and eyelids drooping. She couldn't stay awake any longer.
Quickly the elleth crouched, using the cuff of her own sleeve to wipe away a trail of spittle that had dampened her lips. With the cloak thrown over her shoulders, Lucy was dragged once more into the depths of the dungeons. Black Eyes barely managed to steer her back to her cell before she fell unconscious.
Author's Note
A huge thank you to those of you who reviewed. I'm glad you're enjoying it. To the guest reviewer who asked when I'm going to update: as stated above, it will probably be sporadic. For a full explanation as to why, see my profile. To the other guest reviewer: I'm glad you find it interesting! I shall try my best not to disappoint.
A big thanks to msg839 and EpitomyofShyness for beta'ing!
Glossary
Longer than the last one, with names/general words first and sentences second. As always, if you see errors (and there are tons of them), don't hesitate to correct me. Please note these are all very rough translations, and pretty much devoid of grammar. Most are just the general meanings, and sometimes I had to resort to a word or two in Quenya as there was no Sindarin equivalent. As such, feel free to ignore this.
Anaduilin – Name
Calagor – Name
Ethir tol mîn pain cadw – Spies come in all forms
Calagor baur degant firen – Calagor needed to kill it
Hên. Firen a winë – A child. It/the human is a young child
Gwanw hên – A dying child
Mana neitha na hen – What is wrong with her
Im doú henio. Firen doú pladamaer. Ennas rhoeg ened. – I don't know. It/the human doesn't feel right. There is something wrong inside
Sin baur na penio. Û si – This needs to be fixed. Not now
Anaduilin tírad hên – Anaduilin wants to see the child
Ethir ná ethir, pen uin anrand – A spy is a spy, regardless of age
Abgovad, esgal hên am. Hên û no hell – After the meeting, cover the child up. A child shouldn't be exposed/naked
Am, hên. Am – Up, child. Up
Man thel pent – What does it say
Car le buio i Fëanorians – Do you serve the Fëanorians
Mana lín eneth – What is your name
Car le buio i Sauron – Do you serve Sauron
Ûn thloew – It's sick
Firen winë – It/the human is a young child
Sauron iuitho hîn nó – Sauron's used children before
Hesto – Sir/Captain (Quenya)
Calagor, dartha estë – Calagor, wait outside
Esgal hên am. Hên û no hell – Cover the child. Children shouldn't be exposed
Im garo al hamma esgal in hên – I have no clothes to cover the child
Hebin ha – Keep it
