notes: Gosh, you guys, I'm sorry. I just haven't had the spoons to update lately. I finally have some time off, though, so I got rest and recovered some energy - enough, at least, that I was able to update. Again, I'm so sorry.

Mild TW for referenced past sexual assault. Nothing explicit, and tbh you can read it as meaning something else. I just figured I'd give a warning for that. (The full story, if you're curious about it, is called Poisoned Star and I'm writing it now. Idk if I'll ever post it though... So if you would read something like what's implied in this chapter, and even would like to, I'd appreciate you letting me know, that way I can kind of gauge whether or not I should post it...)

Without further ado, though, here's Chapter 29!


Chapter 29

Elrond sank against the nails in his wrists, whining deep in his throat as his shattered leg strained against the nail in his feet. His chest throbbed with sharp, stabbing agony, and his face hurt enough to force him to swallow back tears. He could barely breathe, could barely think—was barely alive.

How he was alive, he did not know. Dark magic and black machinations, Elrond suspected. Or was he alive because it was only his spirit suffering this torment—his fëa rather than his body, his hroä? He closed his good eye, wincing at the pain of his damaged eye pulling, and took as deep a breath as his shattered ribs would allow him.

He hurt. He hurt so much. He longed to black out—to succumb to the darkness crawling at the edges of his vision, of his thoughts, of his mind. Yet something—the same thing keeping him alive, he suspected—was keeping him conscious to this living hell.

At least, he thought, the Witch-king was not there at the moment. He had tormented him for what had felt like days, showing him memory after memory after painful memory, dragging him again and again back into the darkest parts of Elrond's life: the Sack of Sirion, Maedhros and Maglor's flight from Beleriand and Maedhros's ultimate death, his brother's death, Gil-galad's death again and again and again, every other Elf he had known and been close with who had died, and countless other moments of pain and torment he had suffered over the years. More than once, the Witch-king dragged Elrond back to the nightmarish few months he had spent with the Orc captain and fallen Maia Vorgod. Again and again Elrond found himself bound back to the hated four-poster bed, Vorgod's body warm against his; again and again he found himself the plaything of the Orcs under Vorgod's command, his body tearing beneath and around the whips and knives and pointed rods they had used upon him.

The Witch-king, it seemed, exulted in Elrond's suffering. He would laugh as Elrond screamed, dragging him out of his memories just long enough to feel the pain in his spiritual body, for just long enough for the Witch-king's laughter to ring in his ears, for just long enough for his tormentor to whisper cruel nothings in his mind. Then he would be sent, again and again and again, into the darkness of his mind.

At last, though, the Witch-king had stopped in his torment, saying, "I have other matters to attend to besides your breaking. Farewell for now, Star-child. I will return, and we will continue our fun." Then he had left, vanishing into the air as if he had never been, only the chill of his presence remaining to indicate that he had been no fiction of Elrond's strained and fractured mind.

Now Elrond sagged against the nails binding him to the tree, barely able to breathe but in short, panting gasps filled with agony and the taste of blood, barely able to think about anything beyond the pain in his body and mind and heart, barely able to see past the darkness clouding his eyes and feel past the darkness weighing on his heart.

How much longer could he resist? How much longer could he fight? How much longer could he remain himself, strong in the face of such pain and torment, unwilling to bow or break before the steel blade of the Witch-king's torture?

The air shimmered, and the Witch-king stepped forth from nothing. It seemed to Elrond that he was smiling, though there was nothing in the blackness of his face but empty void. When he spoke, however, there was delight in his voice.

"Hello again, Star-child," the Witch-king said.

Elrond lifted his head—a herculean effort—and spat bloody spittle at the Witch-king's feet. "Eitho," Elrond cursed through his labored pants.

The Witch-king laughed. "That is not my place," he said with infuriating humor.

Stepping forward, the Witch-king lifted a chilling hand and ran the nothingness bound by a black, leather glove down Elrond's cheek. Elrond shuddered away from the touch, and the Witch-king laughed again. "You still have so much spirit," he said. "We must fix that." He reached for Elrond's forehead, and Elrond screamed in defiance and pain and fear through the blazing agony in his chest.

He fell.

Elrond opened his eyes to the sprawling chaos of an Orc camp. Shackles bound his wrists to a pole behind him, and his ankles were bound together with thick rope. He was kneeling, his long hair braided into a chain that was attached to both pole and rope, forcing his head up.

A large Orc knelt beside him, one hand fisted loosely in his hair, the other gripping his chin with painful tightness. The Orc's long, stained nails dug into the sensitive skin of Elrond's face and throat, drawing tiny beads of blood as he tried to wrench away.

"Now, now, my pet," the Orc crooned, "no need for that."

Elrond, hearing the Orc's voice for the first time, froze. He knew that voice—knew its soft, sibilating tenor, knew its rolled vowels and sharp consonants, knew its oozing purr.

"No," he whispered. "No, you're dead. I killed you."

"You can never truly kill a Maia," Vorgod murmured into Elrond's ear, leaning close enough that his breath ghosted over Elrond's ear. "You can only...inconvenience us for a while. Now look," he said, and shoved Elrond's head down, down, down.

Elrond looked against his will.

There, stretched out on the ground before him, still and unmoving and lifeless, were his wife and children. Their bodies were marked with red welts and redder cuts, handprints, bruises, weeping and bleeding wounds gouged and pierced into their flesh.

They were dead, and their deaths had been unkind—had been utterly, horrifically, entirely breaking. In his ears and in his mind, Elrond could hear the echoes of their screams, his screams, all of them begging for mercy.

Elrond closed his eyes.

"Why?" he asked, hoarse and numb and vacant.

"Because you are mine," Vorgod said. "You are mine now, in a way you never were before—were denied to me before. And I do not share my pets with anyone, let alone their wives and children. Besides, my Orcs wanted sport. And your family gave it to them."

"I will kill you," Elrond said, dying but already dead. "I will kill you for this."

"You may try," Vorgod said—and then the world lurched sideways, and Elrond was falling up, up, up, away from the sight of his dead family, away from Vorgod's touch and voice, away from the horror of it all.

"Now," the Witch-king said, "shall we watch it all happen?" He touched Elrond's forehead—and once again, Elrond fell.


end notes: So, what did you think? Let me know! 8 reviews and I'll update immediately, otherwise I'll update on Sunday or Monday. Sound good? Hope to hear from you!