"Do wake up," came a solicitous croon. "You need your sustenance."
Aragorn moaned as varying curtains of black shifted behind his eyes. The curtains were all he knew.
"Come on, now. King." The voice twisted the word into something vile. "Get up and eat."
With a jolt memory came back to the Man and he hurled himself in the direction of the voice, only to be yanked back at hand and foot. "Curse you, what have you done to him!" he spat into the pale, placid face before him. Glorfindel only smiled.
"Who, your little elven concubine? He's hardly any of your concern now." Glorfindel nudged a pile of chains with a black-booted toe. "You have bigger problems."
Again Aragorn threw himself at the elf, blind to reason and the pain that still pulsed at the back of his head. Again iron bands held him back. "Where is he?" he roared, breathing heavily. "I'll kill you, I swear I will! Where is Legolas?"
"I can hardly tell you if you kill me." Glorfindel laughed at the fresh fury on Aragorn's face. "Eat up and I might get around to talking about your dear, slutty little elf." Once more he nudged with his black velvet boot, this time a tin full of steaming meat and potatoes. "I hope you enjoy that. We don't usually supply meat, but you were an exception."
Aragorn spat on the food. "Curse you and your exceptions! What have you done—"
"I gave you an ultimatum and you are free to take it or leave it. Though, in your situation," the elf added, grinning wickedly from behind a half-raised hand, "I wouldn't think there would be much of a choice." His teeth gleamed as Aragorn, shaking with rage, drew the tin to him and ate with manacled hands. He watched until the last scraps were wiped clean of the bowl with the Man's fingers.
"Well?" Aragorn demanded.
"What's that? Do I hear someone calling me?" Glorfindel cocked a hand to his ear expectantly. "Oh dear me, it appears I'm needed on deck. I hate to—my, aren't we feisty?" In one fluid movement the elf dodged the viciously thrown tin plate. His laughter seeped over Aragorn's hoarse cries of outrage. "Don't you worry, I'll be back. Wouldn't want you to get lonely down here." With a last flash of teeth he disappeared through a wooden doorway and up some stairs, his tread too soft to be heard.
"Curse you!" Aragorn shouted again, his voice cracking on the last word before he broke into sobs. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" He slammed his fist into the planks beneath him, but it could not beat out the image of Legolas' crystalline blue eyes laughing, sparkling in the sun and wind. "I'm sorry," Aragorn choked. "I let this happen to you." His hands were bleeding when he finally ceased his hammering and lay down amidst his chains. But he did not sleep. There could be no sleep with those beautiful blue eyes hovering right behind his own.
* * * *
After an indeterminate time during which Aragorn had recognized the rocking under him as that of the sea, and after what light filtered down the stairs and through the door had long since faded, a faint glow appeared in that direction and grew stronger. Aragorn was ready. As the light grew warmer he balled his fists around his chains, sat back on haunches coiled like springs. The ache at the base of his skull he ignored like he ignored the gnawing in the pit of his stomach. Only the eyes would not leave him, and he did not want them to. He wanted them there to see this.
The light lingered for a moment outside the doorway before spilling in, outlining a dark figure. Aragorn waited, waited for the tread of soft feet to come closer, closer… "Gwanno!" He lunged up, not forwards, and wielding his chain like a balrog's whip ensnared the figure in bands of iron. The lantern hit the floor with a crash and a small flame spread, but Aragorn ignored it. In an instant the very chains that held him went around the elven neck—he could see it now, ghostly pale in the light of the fire—tighter and tighter. He pulled the chains until his hands bled, the splinters grinding back and forth, further into his flesh, and he pulled harder. In time the kicking of the soft boots upon the floor ceased; the arms in their black velvet stopped their spasms. Aragorn sat back, panting, and was wondering what to do next when a torrent of cold water washed over him.
"Bravo!" Aragorn whirled in the direction of the doorway, but his sight was blurred by seawater. "I'm afraid Thalion there wouldn't agree with me, but then we don't have to worry about his opinion now, do we?" A tinkling laugh filled the room as a black-caped figure came into the almost-dead glow of the flame, dripping bucket held distastefully away from the fine embroidery. "I really must thank you. The pull of the sea was getting a bit too strong for our dear Thalion. He was all for changing course and heading West to Valinor, Man and all. But you were kind enough to save me the trouble of setting him straight." The laugh came again but Aragorn barely heard it over the rasp of his own breathing.
"I'll kill you," he snarled. Tears of wrath joined the seawater in his eyes.
"Oh, do get angry," Glorfindel purred, coming into the light of the nearly quenched flames. They cast his eyes into shadows from which two tiny pricks of light burned. "You're so…amusing, when you're angry." Deftly he ducked the chains Aragorn hurled at him, catching them when they fell and yanking with a strength the Man hadn't counted on. Iron bit into wrists and ankles as Glorfindel pulled him to the utmost reach of his chains, smiling that small-toothed smiled of his. "Oh yes," the elf crooned softly, something changing in the pinpoints of eyes, "most amusing."
Aragorn spat into the pale face so close to his, and the gob of spittle slid slowly down the elf's cheek. "What have you done to him?" Aragorn grated, barely able to get the words out between lips twisted in revulsion.
Glorfindel ignored the question, instead pulling a long slim dagger from the depths of his cloak. "I can see," he murmured, wiping the spittle off his face with the blade, then tracing its tip along Aragorn's cheekbone, "that you and Undomiel will have much to say to each other." He laughed at the change in the face under the knife. "What, you thought I would just kill you? Oh, but that would be so swift! Though I don't doubt you'd want it, given your 'faithful' slut's abandonment of you for the glories of Elvenhome…"
"You lie!" Aragorn jerked at the end of his chains, to no avail but the pricking of Glorfindel's knife into his skin. "You killed him! Never. He would never—"
"Believe me if you want," the elf shrugged, hurling chains and Man to the floor in sudden disinterest. "I don't really care. But isn't it a little self-serving to presume that Legolas would choose death over eternal light in the halls of the Valar? Life without you?" Glorfindel sauntered across the floor, toeing out the last lick of flame on his way by. He paused in the doorway, a shadow within a shadow. "We gave him a choice, Aragorn son of Arathorn. He is an elf, after all." He laughed, and it was neither tinkling nor delighted. "Even if he does have poor taste in flesh." The soft discordance of splinters against velvet was the only sound made as he left.
Aragorn slumped to the floor, exhausted by the fight and the bite of the seawater in all his wounds. He did not believe Glorfindel. Legolas' eyes had never left him, never even faded before his sight once since he'd come to consciousness, and in them he saw all the reassurance he needed and more. Legolas would not abandon him. And yet there was the question of just what had happened to the elf, and did they hurt him, and why all this had to happen in the first place, why they couldn't have just lived happily—
The Man bowed his head. He knew why. He had failed in his vigilance, failed Legolas. He was getting old, softening as the elf had not and would not for all eternity. Had Legolas not pointed out the silver glinting in his hair, that first day on the beach after the Grey Havens? Beauty, he had called it then. "But is this beauty?" Aragorn asked the cold hold of the ship. "Is whatever they've done to you, wherever they've taken you—is that beauty?" The groaning of the ship in the hands of the sea was all the answer given to him, and in the turgid silence he lay his head in his bleeding hands and wept. There were no words, Elven or otherwise, to express his sorrow.
* * * *
Days passed. Aragorn was aware of them only in the reappearance of food—which never seemed to fill him—and of Glorfindel, who never seemed to get close enough for Aragorn to kill him. The Man doubted he had the strength to, anyway, though he wore his wrists and ankles raw in effort to free himself for just that purpose. Glorfindel just laughed.
At last, after they had been on the Anduin for several days with the wind against them, cries filtered down from above deck. "Minas Tirith! You can see the fair city from here!" Glorfindel's pale face craned around the doorway set with a lurid grin.
"Is your heart quickening, oh King? Are you quaking at the thought of return your beloved city—to your wife?" He laughed as usual, but there was a chill in it that Aragorn noticed but failed to care about. The elf had never let slip Legolas' true whereabouts; never dropped the ruse—Aragorn was sure it was a ruse—that he had taken the ship to Erresea. The Man had spent the days in the dark, alternately mourning over and pining after Legolas. Now, as the moment of confrontation with Arwen Evenstar drew near, he felt only empty and longing for his lost lover.
Glorfindel returned with a host of similarly-attired elves in full accouterment. "Take him, and watch his chains," Glorfindel ordered, swirling his black cape and adopting a look of concern. "You know what happened to poor Thalion."
In instant the elves were upon Aragorn, grinding him down into the rough floor, holding him there as they undid the rusty iron around his joints. He bucked when he felt the shackles fall away; heaved and strained against the immaculate hands that held him, but somebody grabbed a fistful of his hair and snapped a heavy iron collar around his neck "A collar for the wild beast," a tinkling voice breathed into his ear, and he let loose a howl. "My point exactly," Glorfindel giggled, clapping delightedly as Aragorn lunged. An elf behind him jerked on a chain attached the collar and he flew back, his head jarring with the whiplash. "You'll present in fine form to the Queen, I'm sure."
Aragorn regarded him with silent loathing as he led the procession of black-clad elves out of the stinking hold, five chains in total coming from the collar with the fifth in Glorfindel's hand, and out into the sunlight. The Man squinted his eyes to slits in the face of the well-lit onslaught but did not close them; real light felt so wonderful. In the sun's warmth he felt capable of giving things thought again.
"Oh dear, we can't have you parading through the streets like that," Glorfindel sighed, shooting Aragorn's naked body a glance. They had left him as they'd taken him. "I guess we'll just have to arrange for other transportation. Down the ramp, and don't let him jump!"
Aragorn allowed himself a snort as they picked their way down the gangplank. Don't let him jump? As if he would commit suicide when there was still a chance that somewhere, somehow Legolas still lived…still…wanted him for all his faults…
"Something amuses you, King Aragorn?" Glorfindel purred from the back of a carriage waiting by the quay. "I hardly think this a laughing matter. Perhaps the sun is addling your mind after so much time away from it? I'll be happy to fix that for you." At an imperious gesture from Glorfindel, the elves around Aragorn picked him up and hurled him into the back of the carriage, whose bolt he heard slam into the grooves before he'd even risen.
"What," he yelled, loud enough for even his hoarse voice to penetrate the heavy wood. "Too frightened to ride back here with me?"
A chilling laughed echoed from above.
Aragorn settled himself in a corner of the windowless carriage to wait, feeling grateful that the floor had been worn smooth with care—or with use. The smell was less than kindly to the nose but no worse than that of the hold, and he pondered his situation with the strength even that brief glimpse of the sun had given him. He wondered what he should say to Arwen—what he would say to Arwen. Certainly he would not try to conceal the truth—Legolas was his as Arwen was not and hadn't been for a long time. He might even bring that up, those lonely nights after their wedding, when—
His musings scattered as the sounds of the city reached him. Music, hawkers, life! The white flags flapping, the seven walls gleaming with the dwarves' repairs…Minas Tirith! Eagerly he stood amidst his chains, searching the cell-like walls for a crack, a knothole, anything with which to behold his beloved city. Oh, if only the others hadn't been around after the Field of Cormallen, if only it had just been Aragorn and Legolas! Then the Man would have shown off his city in even its injured splendor; he would have borrowed poor Boromir's words to describe it, the ancient beauty…
With a noise of grinding gravel the carriage came to a halt. Aragorn waited impatiently, longing for the ride to be open and the doors to open, be it Elrond himself who awaited him. For the sound and feel if not sight of his birthright filled him with hope anew—he would escape or receive pardon, he knew he would, and after that he would find Legolas and be with him to the end of his days, if the elf would have him. And even this doubt, and the weight of all his failures, was lifted a little within the white walls.
Aragorn waited impatiently for the carriage to resume its motion, but it did not. What were they doing? Had a wheel mired itself in mud; an axel snapped? No, he would have felt it. His curiosity piqued as hurried voices babbled outside, too soft or far away to hear. They couldn't have reached the palace yet; it stood at the top of the towering city, in the very last set of walls. Why, they'd barely made it past the first gate judge by the time, they couldn't possibly be further than—
Golden sunlight blinded him as the doors to the cell-carriage were thrown open. The chains pooled around his feet disappeared suddenly, balled into a tangled of iron and hauled forward, forcing Aragorn to stumble along behind. The pace increased to an elven run and the Man panted to keep up, his long days of hunger and confinement weighing heavily on his movements.
"Move, keep moving!" came a hiss in his ear as he crashed over chiseled stone—what felt to be a doorframe. He opened his eyes and could make out stairs and fine furniture, frescoes and lush décor.
"Maybe we made it to the palace after all," he thought, "and I dozed off along the way. Maybe my brain really is addled. Where else would you find this wealth…
"Down the stairs! Now!" Aragorn barely kept his balance down the steep winding stairwell. He hadn't occupied the palace long, but he didn't remember any spiral staircases descending from the ground floor. This had to be a wine cellar or cooler. It didn't make any sense. "Is it all right? Did anyone see us?"
"No, my lord. We're too early for it to be very busy."
"Good, good, put that—no, not there! There!" Aragorn's eyes had to adjust anew to fresh darkness and were still trying to make the transition when manacles of shining silver and not iron clacked suddenly shut over his wrists, yanking his arms out above him. Glorfindel's face loomed out of the pervading darkness like the light of a fade. "I hope you enjoy our hospitality," Glorfindel squeaked softly. A wild light was in his eyes.
" 'Our'," Aragorn thought. "So he's being open about it." Then he said outright, because he could think of nothing else, "Are you sure Undomiel would hearken so readily to your reference to the two of you?"
Glorfindel laughed, and it no longer tinkled but hiccoughed up and down the lilting scale of elven chords. "Undomiel?" he sputtered between guffaws, "Who said anything about Undomiel? When I said our I meant our," he said with a smile, extending his hands outward to the ten or so black-clad elves that ranged about the room. He turned the all-encompassing gesture into an imperious one and the chains that whipped around Aragorn's legs flew out to either side, snaring him that way. A cold wisp of presentiment licked at the base of his spine.
"Where is—" he began, but broke off as Glorfindel skipped suddenly close, his pinpoints of eyes dancing with mild mirth.
"You didn't really think I'd give you to her, did you?" the elf whispered. "Such faith you have." He laughed graciously through small, glinting teeth. "But honestly, that would be such a waste. Arwen fails to see…your charms." Glorfindel smiled as Aragorn ducked his head frantically out of the elf's kiss. "The collar," he commanded to a cohort behind the Man, and Aragorn felt his neck anchor into the position he'd twisted it; arched back out of the reach of Glorfindel's mouth. The elf compensated for the gap with a small step forward. "Try and escape it now," he chuckled, and seized Aragorn's mouth in a savage kiss. Aragorn bit down, as hard as he knew how, and was rewarded with a squeal.
"Curse you and—" Glorfindel stopped, smiling a bloody smile. "Ah, but I should be praising such energy. I am an elf, after all, am I not?" His smile deepened. "Like him?"
"No!" Aragorn howled as Glorfindel slipped out of view. Behind him. "No no no, sweet Elbereth—help me!" he cried to the shadowy figures looking on. "One of you, somebody help me! You've got to—you'll never be Legolas!" he shrieked, changing targets to the closer and much more dangerous one at his back. "Never! You stinking, filthy—help me! Help me!"
"You're so enchanting when you're like this," Glorfindel giggled at Aragorn's ear. A horrific shudder shook the Man.
"Get away from me! Elbereth, Gilthoniel, help me! Oh, for the love of—Legolas!" he screamed, and there was neither lust nor longing but blind panic in the sound that bounced off stone, deep underground.
"That's right," Glorfindel chanted softly amidst the sound of rustling fabric, "say his name. Remind yourself of him. Oh," he assured, running a hand over the hysterically jerking head of hair, "I know I can't be Legolas Greenleaf to you. I know that quite well. No, what I aim to do—" He took Aragorn's head in both hands and grinned down into the gray eyes with glee, "is to best him."
Aragorn heaved at his bonds, slicing the polished metal deep into his flesh, pulling harder, feeling the old iron collar saw at his neck. Metal clanked on metal as he struggled fruitlessly, encouraging the collar at his neck in its sawing, praying for it to behead him.
Glorfindel saw this and grabbed the Man's head roughly by the ears, tut-tutting as he did so. "My my, we'll have to get you a better collar. I meant to have one made, you know. But without you to measure I knew I'd get it the wrong size. I knew I'd underestimate you…girth." He brought his face within a hairsbreadth of Aragorn's; breathed in deeply. "Do you have any idea how long I've waited for this?"
Aragorn's howls blurred together until they lost all meaning save that of torment. His wrists and ankles bled freely but he did not feel them any more than he heard his own screams or smelled the perfume Glorfindel had applied. Terror swept through the man, terror and a pain so great it blotted out Legolas' dear blue eyes from their familiar post at the front of the Man's consciousness. And when they were gone, those last bastions of warmth and kindness and sweet, sweet safety…that was the most terrifying thing of all.