"Arwen?!"
Glorfindel's bellow filtered through the mesh of Aragorn's pain to whisper faintly to his core.
"She what?!"
The chains holding Aragorn's wrists went slack and he pitched forward, breathing raggedly and without consciousness. He had put up walls against conscious thought long ago and guarded them with a ferocity akin to madness. Still, he could not block his ears against Glorfindel's yowling any more than he could block them against his insidious whispers, the barbed compliments that poured out and gored him during the elf's ululating peaks of pleasure.
"What do you mean she—why didn't I know this? When did she leave?"
"When you were gone, lord. She—"
"When I was gone?" A crack echoed across the hollow stone space and Aragorn forced his raw muscles to propel his face upward; forced deadened eyes to focus on the figure in black on the floor and the stripped elf that stood above him. "Why wasn't I informed of this the moment I got back? Well? One of you, answer me!"
"We—" one attendant ventured to answer. Glorfindel whirled on him.
"You what?"
"You seemed—we thought you were—occupied…"
Silence crashed onto the scene and for a moment Glorfindel's eyes blazed even to distant Aragorn. Then the elf burst out laughing. "The Queen's run off and you thought I was too busy with my new toy to—oh, this is rich!" Silver flashed; the elf who had spoken sank to the ground, all Sindarin grace gone. Glorfindel's laugh sank with the elf down to the barest of growls. "Don't. Ever. Hide anything from me." On those words he stalked to the marble-topped table with his neatly-folded garments, donned them, and headed for the door. Halfway there he paused and casting a sly smile over his shoulder called, "King, oh King! It appears that your wife has run off to find you. Or me." He laughed. "But don't worry, dear. I'll tell you all about it this evening." He gave a little squeal of anticipation. "We can pick up where we left off."
By the time Aragorn had worked enough saliva into his mouth to spit, Glorfindel was gone.
* * * *
A scream was rising again.
He tried to fight them. Tried to mash them back down into his gut with willpower; to clench his teeth against their hot flow when force of will failed, but it was no use. They always came, sometimes in ones and twos, others for hours until his voice cracked beyond repair of a few minutes' rest. This night they took him suddenly, as he licked the last scraps of potato from the plate one of Glorfindel's henchmen held before him. The elf jumped, glared at him, then stalked away to the doorway where his fellow guard stood waiting. The two of them watched impassively as Aragorn bucked and tried to double over in his chains, the screams wracking his body as sobs could not.
The screams slammed to a halt at the shout of Glorfindel's voice. "Up! Move! Get him out, now!" In moments the black-garbed elf was striding into the room, pale hands flung this way and that demanding speed. "Well, what are you waiting for? I said move him!"
Aragorn lifted his weary head. He could do no more—the attacks always left him hollow. So he watched as his captors materialized out of the shadows, watched their long fingers attend to now tarnished shackles, watched the skin peel away from his wrists with the metal. The surrounding elves had to catch him once they freed his arms, for he could no longer stand without the support of the chains.
Glorfindel elbowed his way into the group and grabbed Aragorn by his hair. "What, King, descendant of Numenor—too weak to stand on your own two feet?" The elf batted his eyes and licked his lips. "Weak with desire, perhaps? Another time. For now, a change of scenery." He dropped the Man's drooping head and ambled out of the circle of elves, tranquility seemingly restored. "A little jaunt in the country is good for you once and a while, yes? I thought so." Glorfindel laughed, then hurled a pile of chains from the floor into the wall. "Move, all of you! I want to be gone by sunset!" His cape flapped around the doorway as he left.
"You heard him," a nearby elf growled, removing the tarnished silver collar and snapping the old iron one around Aragorn's neck before he could blink. "Come on."
Unlike when they marched him in, the elves now left the chains to drag on the floor as they hemmed him in a loose circle, with only the elf who'd just spoken holding a leash. The Man saw this but couldn't bring himself to act on the opportunity. He ached. Everything ached. He tried to think of Legolas' brilliant blue eyes and could not, and his vision blurred a little at the failure.
"I'm sorry," he thought. The elves laughed and Aragorn, realizing that he had spoken aloud, thought no more.
But then came the sun. He had lost track of time long ago but coming out into the morning it came rushing back to Aragorn, the mist swirling about the feet of the mountains, the dew glistening underfoot, and the sun. Autumn's chill was nothing compared to the gloom of Glorfindel's dungeon and Aragorn basked in the light of a sun that seemed warm as summer. Even as his chains clanked and the carriage drew near he felt the sun's energy sluice through his bones to his core, pooling there and growing. He hid the resurrection of mind and body from the elves around him and kept his head down to keep them from seeing the glow in his eyes. He was back.
"In, in, what are you waiting for? Get him in there!" Glorfindel screeched, appearing from around the carriage in a torrent of black cloth. Aragorn let himself be slung into the tomblike carriage and added to his deadened act by moaning at the loss of the sun. But he noted the lack of shackles on his wrists and ankles, and the knowledge made his collar all the lighter.
The doors to the carriage slammed shut and he heard Glorfindel squealing orders to his cohorts, then lowering his voice to a mere hiss. Aragorn figured the elf must have realized the early hour and what questions his commotion might cause. The man sneered into the shadows of the cell-carriage, relishing even that little disquiet of the elf. He would have more to come, Aragorn would be sure of it.
The carriage lurched into motion at the crack of a whip. Over its jolt and jangle Aragorn heard Glorfindel's vexed hissings. "How could she—why—why wasn't I told?" Then, quieter, "Why didn't I see…" The whip cracked again.
"I don't care what he did or didn't see," Aragorn thought. "He won't see me leaving." He waited until the cobbles of Minas Tirith had passed far behind, when the dried mud ruts of country roads sent the carriage crunching every few feet. On a particularly hard jolt the Man hurled himself against the door and felt it give into the heavy oak bar behind it. "So they still thought to put that up." He grew still until the next rut, when again he threw himself against the back doors of the carriage, just to be sure. The splinters ate into his naked skin he ignored as he ignored the revived bleeding of the shackle-marks.
On the third rut he jammed a link of chain into the crack between the doors when he hit them, barely stifling a cry of delight at the sliver of sunlight that seeped in. Aragorn plastered his face to the crack, breathing in the fresh air and drinking in the light with his eyes alone. It was enough, he decided, to have even just this much of the world for a moment. Through the hairsbreadth of space he made out the green of fields and the towering bulk of mountains. "Legolas," he murmured, thinking of the golden-haired beauty atop the rock in the Misty Mountains, sighting Saruman's crows from afar.
"Watch it!" With a crack the carriage hit a rut too large for it and the splintering of wood filled Aragorn's ears. Eyes still pressed up against the crack he watched it widen and surrender the view to him, fertile fields and lounging windbreaks and jagged teeth of peaks, failing to register the falling feeling in the pit of his stomach until his breath left him in a rush.
"What…" His voice was a croak amidst the frantic neighing of horses, but even as the word died on his parched lips he realized his chance.
"Curse this horse, these roads, these—well, don't just stand there! Make sure he's alive! Yes, the man—"
Aragorn was up and running before his vision stopped spinning. His chains he gathered into his arms in a bundle, all but one. This he swung with a raspy roar as he took to his heels, catching the nearest black elf just opening his mouth in warning in the chest. "Gwanno," he hissed, and ran.
"Get—get him! No! Run, you fools! Get him!"
But Aragorn son of Aragorn was off and running, nearly crying in the full blast of the morning sun. He felt the sun's warmth everywhere, on every bruised and broken part of his body, and it gave him a strength he hadn't felt since—
And then he nearly fell, for he could see again. The blue of the sky seemed to have dripped down in two sparkling drops that hovered behind his own eyes, and he knew that the watchful vigil of his lover had returned. "Legolas!" he shouted, howled. Golden waves of wheat parted beneath him, before him. "Legolas! Legolas! Legolas!"
"No, not to kill—Noo!" A sharp clang sounded under Aragorn's ear and he laughed, loud and harsh. The very collar Glorfindel had put around his neck had saved him from one of the elf's own arrows.
"Missed me!" the Man crowed, ducking through a bordering hedge as another arrow whooshed into the space his head had been. He thought of Legolas arcing from his white horse in Imladris and his feet pounded faster. He could think again, he could see again! A startled squawk on his left tore him from his mental caress of that dear face and he turned in time to see a farmer and his wife staring at his nakedness from where they scythed their crop. He grinned at them. "Legolas!" he shouted, but when the two peasants focused on something behind him he threw himself into a roll on the ground.
"Never!" came a hiss. Aragorn rolled up onto the balls of his feet facing a whirl of black cloak and flashing teeth. "You're mine!" Glorfindel howled. "Never his. You never were. Always mine."
Aragorn's voice fell from its lofty ululating to a sneer. "Your precious, even?"
"No." A knife slipped from the folds of Glorfindel's cloak and his long, pale face twisted into a demented giggle. "Just mine," he purred, and whipped the knife arm back to throw.
But Aragorn was faster. Even as the bolt of silver shot through the air his chain hummed, knocking the knife harmlessly into the grass and ensnaring Glorfindel around the arm. Aragorn yanked viciously.
Glorfindel screamed as he fell to the golden land, gripping a shoulder twisted horribly out of shape.
"I was never yours," Aragorn rasped, fighting the urge to kick and rake the pale form beneath him to pieces. He jerked his chain free of Glorfindel and ran, the two farmers gaping after him.
Two wheat fields gave away to a pasture fence, which Aragorn jackknifed over, chains and all. He didn't know how close Glorfindel or any of the others were and when the nearest gelding looked up from its grazing Aragorn leapt onto its back, crying Legolas' name over and over. The sun on his skin and the sky above with Legolas' eyes floating in it swirled his blood, set a wild laughter in his throat. He was free! He was free and Legolas was too, somewhere. He knew it. With those eyes locked firmly in his mind he clung to the horse's mane and kicked it onward, toward the mountains towering in their snowy cloaks. He was free.
* * * *
Aragorn shivered on the bank of the mountain stream, dripping water from ankles to eyelashes but refusing to rub a hand across them lest he rob himself of the sight of the sunset. Its flares, distant and landlocked though they were, reminded him of that first night after he'd reached Legolas at the Gray Havens in the nick of time. He sighed and closed his eyes and the vision of Legolas returned, so newly restored by sun and fresh air. "I'll find you," he murmured, a smiled playing on his lips as the stars came out one by one.
A laugh colder than the stream bounced off the rocks behind him.
"Oh, I don't think so," the familiar voice crooned, all traces of the fury in which Aragorn had last heard it evaporated. "I don't think you'll find him anywhere. Not where you're allowed, anyway." The laugh returned, softer this time. "I lied, you know, about the Blessed Land."
"I know," Aragorn grated. He had not moved and still stood facing the last eddies of color on the horizon.
"Do you now?" A twig snapped. Aragorn tensed. "Do you know then that your dear ex-lover is dead, oh wise King? That I had him killed by the very brothers you played with in your youth?"
"No!" snarled Aragorn, whirling with chain in hand. "You lied, and still do. He is not dead. You could not kill him!"
"Oops, I forgot." Glorfindel, left arm held rather stiffly but otherwise in his usual meticulous state, shook his head smiling sadly. "Men are rather touchy about their mortality, aren't they?"
Aragorn whipped his chain out without a word; sparks jumped from the rock on which Glorfindel had been standing. In the rapidly darkening twilight the shadows worked to the elf's advantage, leeching the black from his cloak into the terrain around him. "I told you I'd kill you," he spat to the shifting blacks and grays, barely able to get the words out over raw rage. "I meant it."
"And I told you I'd love you," came a voice hot and breathy in his ear. His body convulsed in revulsion and remembered horror as long, pale fingers sank themselves deep into the crawling flesh of his neck. "And I meant it, ever so much."