Vision of Betrayal part 3
Pairing: Gandalf/Elrond
Warnings: kinda squicky, depends on your uhmm.....perception
archived elsewhere: you bet buddy!

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"I say, old friend, you must be hungry, talking about food in your sleep." Gandalf opened his eyes carefully. "Elrond?" Saruman laughed loudly and shook his head. "I'm afraid not."
He looked up and noticed the blue skies were gone. All he saw was storm clouds.
"I thought you'd prefer these surroundings to the stuffy confines of my chambers. Personally standing here makes me feel so...free..."
A dream. It was only a dream...Crushing despair threatened to overwhelm him, a familiar depression sneaking up on him once again. But no, he would not give into it, he never did. He was back in the planes of reality now and time to deal with it. They were on a very high tower, a pinnacle. Gandalf could tell this because the very top of Sarumans tower was level with his eyes.
"Also this height ensures that you will not escape, provided you find a way to fly. The only was up to this point is by a thousand steps exactly and I have many spells that will prevent you from touching even the top stoop."
Laying on the ground next to him was a red cloth. Saruman lifted the cloth, revealing several unpleasant looking instruments, undoubtedly made for torture.
"Now -- my apologies for the interruptions, but let us get back to the business originally at hand."
"Why are you doing this??" He demanded, anger pushing back despair. "I will not yield Saruman, so either let me go free or kill me but stop wasting your time!"

And Saruman did neither of these things for next three days. Gandalf was not allowed to sleep, eat anything but simple bread and dirty water, and was subjected to ceaseless Logic, amazingly lucid in its madness. All he had to say was, "Yes.", and the pain would stop, he would be free, and would be ensured a fine and rich future. It seemed so simple.
The thumb screw was tightened.
"Say yes."
The whip was wielded.
"Say yes."
The weight on his chest was increased.
"Say yes."
The reeds were pushed deeper under his fingernails.
"Say yes."
And so it went on, for three days. He never said "yes", although he did say many other words and phrases, many directed at his captor and none of them very polite.
For the brief periods when Saruman would leave, he would lay where he had been dropped and tried to gather his thoughts. At one point he thought about his dream of Elrond. He thought about his decision to leave all loyalty to his friends and life behind, and take the easy way out. It shocked him, now that he thought about it, that he would consider that option.
But it was Elrond. Did he not once say to himself, while watching the elf sleep, that he would do anything for him?
One morning, Saruman never came. Gandalf awoke on his own and not by his usual kick in the ribs. He waited patiently for someone to come up and bring some stale bread and dirty water, but it never came and he became hungry. He awoke again that evening, just when the sun was setting, after what he hoped was a healing sleep. It wasn't. It was then that someone finally came up. He expected Saruman of course, or at least the little servant thing Saruman called Wormtongue, but this was a new face.
But not new -- he would recognize this beloved face anywhere.
"Elrond?"
Unlike in his dream, this Elrond was his normal age, his dark hair cut to his shoulders, the gray eyes surrounded by a few more lines, but, as always, he had the same otherworldly, mysterious beauty that Gandalf found captivating."Elrond?" He asked again, stretching out his hand. The elf took it gently between both of his and knelt close to him.
"Easy dearest.Do not talk." He said softly, gently. "I heard word of your journey through Radagast, and was worried when you didn't come back for more than a week.
"How did you get past Saurian?" Gandalf asked, tired and confused. He was answered by a mischievous glint in Elrond's eyes.
"I talked him into it." He said, patting the sword at his side.
"What?! I've never known you to kill, let alone brag about the matter afterwards!"
"Yes, I know it may be a bit different from my usual philosophy, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I lost control when he told me his purpose for keeping you here. He should not be up here, trying in vain to hurt you into Sense and Logic, when I could be doing it much more efficiently for him."
Gandalf gasped and pulled his hand from Elronds, scooting away from him. "What?"
"Well, dearest," he started out like it should be the most obvious thing in the world, "he's been torturing you!And I just can't stand to you like this.
Sarumon just doesn't know that love is the greatest persuasive technique, not pain and hate."
Elrond crawled on all fours like a dog to him, the mischievous light in his eyes again. Gandalf pushed himself back further, his fingers dangling over the edge on the pinnacle.
"Elrond...beloved.." he said quietly, fighting back tears, "is this true? Do you mean to pick up where Saruman left off?"
"Oh no!" he exclaimed, "I'd never hurt you like that, like he did, you know that! You and I would be a much better team than Saruman and you. This doesn't have to involve pain, we would be equals. I love you, I just want you to have a good future. I want you to be on the Winning Side with me." There was a silence.
"You have just ensured that I will not have a future at all." Gandalf scooted more of his body over the edge, his legs dangling. He looked back once."And you have hurt me more than Saruman ever could."
He flung himself over the edge.
The sky rushed away form him, running form him, as the ground rushed to meet him. Glancing over at the top of the pinnacle, he saw Sarumans, not Elronds, stricken face staring at his descent, right before he hit a bed of soft brown feathers.

Voices seen to like to gloat when your not quite awake. They life to float and dart teasingly around you, each sounding different but all of them running into one another and becoming muffled. At times, it seemed to Gandalf that the voices were no more than ideas flitting chaotically through his brain to fast for him to catch.
"...for two...went...Gwaihir came...."
"Not much.....afraid."
"...help him....need....love him...." One voice was different. He reached for it but it flew away again, the others coming back.
"....I know how you must fe....."
"...sure....?"
"Please don't die..." THERE! There it was again! This voice was not muffled and confusing, but deep and melodic and familiar. This voice repeated three words steadily, like a heartbeat.
"Please don't die. Please don't die. Please don't die.."
He caught onto that heartbeat and held to it. He wasn't sure what he was hanging onto or what it was he was trying to get back to or out of but all he did know that this was something to hold. Simple as that.

The healers had left, and he was alone with the unconscious man. The healers said he was hurt badly, had lost too much blood, and had only a small chance of waking. Never more than now did he curse the incompetence and inadequacy of the healers in his own household.
Elrond brushed his lips across the back of the other mans knuckles. "Please don't die, dearest."
How many times had he pleaded that to Gandalfs hand, as if it would take on a life of its own and snap its fingers.
It was the hands that had always fascinated him; long, graceful, they almost radiated a tangible aura of experience.
And then, when they moved...oh, in sweeping arcs like angel wings or the quick, nimble movements of a elven child at play, Elrond would want nothing more than to have such things as those brush against his hands. Or any other part of his skin, or that matter..
"Please don't..."
They wouldn't move now.

Gandalf was reminded of the dream he had in Orthanc, the dream of Elrond. Funny how much you can remember something that never really came to pass... Right before waking up he had considered and consented with the notion of never returning to the real world (as some would say it was.) He was tempted to stay once again. No paradise was here, but a comforting blanket of Nothingness. The Nothing quenched the grief of the one he loved most betraying him, the pain of his abused flesh.... He wanted to stay...

Elrond's voice was becoming hoarse from repeating that same prayer over and over, so he fell upon touch as a prayer in itself. He ran his fingertips along Gandalfs arm, lightly, brushed back his hair, traced his face. 'So much is counting on you dearest..' he thought. 'I fear we will be lost if you leave us.'
He touched the eyelids gently, willing them to open.
'I fear I will be lost if you leave me.'

The voice had stopped. No!! His hands grasped vainly at the Nothing as his lifeline to whatever it was he was trying to hold onto disappeared and he fell.
Despite being in Nothing, he had the curious sensation of falling, when your stomach leaps and your chest shrinks to you can't breathe well. But then he felt something else, something catch him in mid-Nothing and cradle him. Slight, gentle, invisible beings danced down his arms, through the strands of his hair, around the curves of his face and neck. They were apparently keeping him up with wings or else he'd still be falling...Were they fairies?
The beings danced all around him, pulling and tugging at his brain to get him to open his eyes.
Open his eyes?
Is that why everything looked like Nothing? Because his eyes were closed? It had to be more than that, but he would give it a try anyway. He opened his eyes.

When he first saw the dark gray eyes looking back at him, he thought it was a dream, and expected largely to wake up soon. But he didn't and Gandalf opened his mouth also, croaking out, "El-El-rond?"
"Yes! Yes, dearest I am here, have worry no more, you are safe now." Gandalfs eyes flew open wide and he shot straight up in the bed in a panic. Elrond stretched out his hand and touched his shoulder but he flinched away, his eyes turning angry and wild. "No not touch me traitor!!"

Elrond...his beloved.... The first thing his eyes saw...
Before relief had time to sink in, the event of the last week came back to him in terrifying clarity; the tower, Saruman, Elrond...Of all the hurts and injuries he had lived through in his long life, nothing had wounded him as deep as Elrond's betrayal. He snarled something about "traitor", though he wasn't sure what he said.
The Traitor was speaking to him softly, hurt and confusion in his deep voice. Wasn't that the same voice that pleaded for him not to die while he was in the Nothing? If it was, he reasoned, it probably just wanted him alive so he could use him.
The touch came back again and he dodged it. The touch belonged to The Traitor. The Traitor wanted to use him. The Traitor wanted to hurt him. The Traitor...the traitor....was...
He remembered looking up as he feel from the tower and seeing...
Not Elrond.... Saruman.

A sudden change came into Gandalfs eyes, as if he just realized something, and he sat silent and thoughtful, looking at the bed. Then he looked up, peering suspiciously into Elronds eyes.
"Elrond?" he asked. Elrond just nodded, fearful any further response from him would trigger another violent reaction.
Gandalf slowly came close to him, till their noses were almost touching. He brought his thumbs up and ran them under Elronds eyes and down his cheeks, over his shoulders and his arms. Finally one hand rested over his heart and stayed there for a minute. As if he had found something, Gandalf visibly relaxed and brought his hands back to wipe at the moisture in his eyes. "I-I'm so sorry...I thought....that...."
Elrond shushed his and wrapped his arms around his neck. He felt the beginnings of tears on his neck and Gandalf tried to push away.
"Quiet dearest, there is nothing to be ashamed of." He brought his head down for Gandalf to see his own tears. "See? You are not alone, even in this."
"I know..." Gandalf said, burying his face against his beloved's neck again. "I was never alone.."
They sat together in each others arms, weeping for the most part. Eventually they dried each others tears with hands and lips and Gandalf told Elrond the whole account of what went on in Orthanc. Many times he had to stop and close his eyes against the images, and when he recounted his last hour when Saruman came to him as Elrond, and what he tried to do as a result, he shuddered and they held onto each other tighter.
Supper time came and they came down to the dinner hall, everyone greeting Gandalf with smiles and cheers. He held onto Elrond's hand, the pulse in their wrists pressed together and beating in time.
This was not an allusion or a vision or Nothing, Gandalf thought, smiling. This was real.


**The end*** ...for real...