Under the Morning Moon
Chapter Eight: Failures
~*~
A/N: I've not been able to find ANYWHERE the years where specific Elves leave Middle Earth for the Gray Havens, aside From Legolas (after Aragorn dies). So, for the sake of this story, most of the Mirkwood Elves, evidently including our favourite Thranduil (yay!) and his kids are still lingering about. Sorry if this is Middle-Earth historically incorrect. Pretend this is AU if it is, and don't kill me! *hides* =^^=
Also, Frodo seems to fall ill a lot after the end of the W.O.T.R; he has a very poor immune system. He should drink more water. Poor sod.
This chapter takes place about nine days after when Legolas was captured. Aragorn.met up with Arwen's.easy.twin.hence his lateness?
***
The moon whispers to you; came a voice, from the back of the elf's mind. He stirred at the thought, turning his blank eyes upwards, casting his gaze brokenly over the stone bricks of his chambers. The moon calls, repeated the voice that Legolas faintly recognized as his own, yet somehow did not register he was speaking to himself. Again, he had broken into a cold sweat, shuddering against himself.
Quietly, he drew his knees against his chest, and quivered gently, his fingers shaking as badly as they had so many years ago in Moria, during the Quest of the Ring. Desperate for some release, he clutched at the tattered fabric covering his calves, fisting it childishly. The elf hunched forward, burying his head into the crook between his knees, and rocking back and forth. So cold, he thought. Stop sweating.
Every day they came, the robust men with crooked grins and heavy brows, bearing whips and chains and knives. They would catch the elf, who lost the will to fight more and more every day, by the wrists and drag him away from the corner of his cell where he lay in a blanket of sweat, murmuring to himself in a variety of languages-including Dwarfish, surprisingly- and pull him into the open.
Their town was symmetric, and monochromatic, living on routine. Every morn, the town would rise with the sun, and go about their appointed tasks. The women, almost equal in stature and weight to their men, would work in the padlocked gardens or with the clunky animals. At precisely midday, they would gather in where Legolas assumed was the center of their unchanging town, and would watch as the elf was dragged out from their prison and pushed to where a sturdy paddock had been built for the sole purpose of their sadistic entertainment.
The first time they had pulled him out of his dungeon, Legolas had seen with horror the cage in the plain open, the raised platform and squared wooden pillar to which he was chained. Looking dully around at the crowds that eagerly drew in to the spectacle, the elf noted with horror that among the watchers were children, some the age of his dear Eldarion that gripped at the wooden pickets of the paddock and cheered along with the rest as one of the men would walk forward, grinning, and lay his hands all over the delicate elf.
The moon calls, Legolas reminded himself in the dark of his prison. There were no windows, not even a crack of light below the door of his cell, and so Legolas was in a square of utter darkness no matter what time of day it might be, trapped below the earth as he had been in Moria. Yet this was infinitely worse. He was going mad, he knew-he was shivering and speaking to himself in a hoarse voice.
It does not call, he snapped, running the heel of his hand down the concave of his cheek, it is morn; there is no moon to call for me. Legolas pulled his head out of its rest in his knees, and tilted it back against the wall. He stared blankly ahead, stretching his feet in front of him. As of yet, the men who came to beat him daily had not done any serious damage. When any one of them got too carried away, a bearded man (that Legolas reckoned was the Mayor, of sorts) would immediately call it to a stop. They wanted the pleasure of being able to beat Thranduil's youngest son, while their family watched, to be a drawn out occasion.
And none yet had touched him, not like Legolas remembered a captor had done to him-how long ago was it? Seven years, at least. No, he was still innocent to them, and for that he was thankful. It gave him something to hang on to, until he devised a plan for escape. Escape.How blissful it would be to be rid of the dark and the stone, to feel the moon on his skin and to hear the trees once again.
Maybe the moon did call.
He was no longer sweating.
~*~
Aragorn hesitated at the fork in the path, looking down each path as far as he could. Both paths, roughly hewn trails from where many traveling feet had trod, meandered difficultly through the forest. And the footfalls down each path were equal in number, fresh as each other, nearly impossible to distinguish from one another. For a week and a day, Aragorn had been tracking like he had loved so to do a decade before. The footprints were odd. Legolas' were easy to distinguish, for they were so light that untrained eyes wouldn't be able to perceive them amidst the tangle of grass. But the footprints of the two men that had taken him were unlike any footprints that Aragorn had ever seen on men.
The men were heavy, and tall, he could tell from the length and the depth of the footprints. But their feet were also wide-toed, like a dwarf, and narrow at the bridge, like an Orc. Aragorn had only ever heard legend of Humans that were so close in characteristics with both the dwarfs and Orcs, dwellers of mountains. Mountain people. Supposedly, large hordes had dwelled at the base of the Misty Mountains before Thranduil learned of their existence, and demanded genocide over them (much, Aragorn thought, like Saruman had commanded over the people of Rohan). The Mountain folk had retreated to Gondor-but there was no proof of this story, and Aragorn had never seen any.
He hoped with all his might that he never would, and was mistaken in his suspicions of Legolas' captors. If they knew that Legolas was the son of the one who had commanded death on their people.Aragorn shook his head violently, and fell to his knees before the jumbled tracks. With his forefinger, he gently traced the contour of a footprint. With new determination, he stood, and took the path arching towards the east.
~*~
Trisha sat deep in concentration. Gilraen had fallen asleep about an hour before, and Trisha was free to spend the rest of her evening milling about. As luck would have it, on the way to the Library, she ran in to Arwen. The Evenstar looked frazzled; continuously dragging her fingertips down her cheek, crossing her arms defensively over her chest. She even started when Trisha greeted her-actually was surprised by the appearance of the young girl, who was by no means sneaky.
"What is wrong, my lady?" Trisha asked, polite and curious. Arwen looked at her with withering eyes. Trisha wasn't spectacular looking, but pretty enough for a human. Her hair was unkempt, a mass of fair tawny that hung in a straggly plait down her back. She had a softly tanned face, dusted with brown freckles. She was tall, but held herself in a way that not only suggested she was a Servant-not noble, not rich-but also demeaned her, made her look smaller.
"Est-King Elessar has gone," Arwen said shakily, trusting the girl with the information. "He is tracking Legolas."
Trisha was taken aback. She had no idea about her King's intricate past as a Ranger, and his skills in such areas as tracking; she knew him only as the prim, noble man that sat completely upright during the days upon days of inquisitions in his velvet-cushioned throne, and as the man who would give up his work for a day to sit by either of his child's beds should they have a fever.
"Why does Legolas need tracking?" came Trisha's nervous voice.
Arwen only shrugged hopelessly; Aragorn hadn't told Faramir, and Faramir hadn't told her.
~*~
There came a hiss of displacement of air. Legolas barely had time to brace himself, hold himself upright with aid of the pole to which he was shackled before the scaled leather of the man's whip came in contact with his side. He didn't allow himself the luxury of crying out, instead closed his eyes tightly. If he concentrated, he could almost hear the trees beyond the countless meters of stone wall, could almost feel the familiar prick of the sky on his skin, and of nature in his veins.
There came another stirring, this time of human flesh, and the force of a robust man's fist coming in contact with his jaw jolted Legolas' light form. Legolas felt blood in his mouth, and swallowed it distastefully, his tongue tersely lapping up the remaining crimson on his lips. His body was jerked upwards by hands underneath his armpits, and Legolas opened his eyes to a bearded face with thick brows and wide nostrils leering at him, a hairsbreadth away.
"Tha's for me wife," said the voice, low and heavily accented, smelling of earth and sulfur.
A knee caught Legolas in the stomach, and though his concentration on not feeling the pain didn't allow him to register the shock of his rib being broken he heard the distinct crack of a snapped bone, barely out shouting the rabid cheers of the massed townsfolk.
And then it was over. Legolas' bounds were untied, but the elf was winded and dispirited; this beating had been worse than the others, and Legolas knew that they would only get worse. The town, no longer a mass, went about their ways, some venturing towards their homes or shops, others bunching a few feet away and talking in hushed voices. The 'Mayor' came over, kneeling beside the elf, catching the elf's jaw bruisingly in his hand.
"Where is your father, elf?" came the low growl of his voice. Legolas, taken aback, shook his head.
"I don't know," he tried to say, but his voice fell from his lips uselessly along with a few droplets of blood painfully drawn from the back of his cracked throat. Legolas' vision swam, lurched, and blurred at the edges; suddenly, the face that had been so clear was obscured, and Legolas knew no more.
***
A/N: Again, sort of short.sorry.I know where I'm bringing this story, but I'm not sure if I should branch into a more R rated plot or leave it mild, or if I should leave it as such. Also, not sure exactly the point where I want to end it. Hopefully the story'll keep writing itself for me =^^=
In response to your reviews;
Tithen Min: It *does* hurt! Plus, you get very odd patterns on your head, particularly if you have a Braille keyboard, I'd bet. LOL Somebody needs to buy you a chair with rails! . Chair rails. What are those called? Watch me be up all night trying to figure it out. LOL Schizophrenic reviewer! SCORE! =^^=
Reginabean: Yay! Glad your computer finally un-wonktified. Your review looks fine.I hope the storm breaks, though, and if it doesn't that lightening doesn't strike a cow or something who goes crazy and mows down your house, for that'd be rather tragic. Sorry about your snowed in car! Have you tried a blow torch? (cackle) =^^= Enjoy new chapters to come!
Elentari Manwe: *blushes and giggles schoolgirlishly* aww.tank you.Hope the horridness of this chapter didn't permanently scramble your braincircuts or something.That'd be horrid, I'd feel really bad. No, you adding me didn't spook me too bad LOL The more insanity in my life the better, right? Meant that as a compliment =^^= In between EM and Manwe, who should I cheer for? LOL
Chapter Eight: Failures
~*~
A/N: I've not been able to find ANYWHERE the years where specific Elves leave Middle Earth for the Gray Havens, aside From Legolas (after Aragorn dies). So, for the sake of this story, most of the Mirkwood Elves, evidently including our favourite Thranduil (yay!) and his kids are still lingering about. Sorry if this is Middle-Earth historically incorrect. Pretend this is AU if it is, and don't kill me! *hides* =^^=
Also, Frodo seems to fall ill a lot after the end of the W.O.T.R; he has a very poor immune system. He should drink more water. Poor sod.
This chapter takes place about nine days after when Legolas was captured. Aragorn.met up with Arwen's.easy.twin.hence his lateness?
***
The moon whispers to you; came a voice, from the back of the elf's mind. He stirred at the thought, turning his blank eyes upwards, casting his gaze brokenly over the stone bricks of his chambers. The moon calls, repeated the voice that Legolas faintly recognized as his own, yet somehow did not register he was speaking to himself. Again, he had broken into a cold sweat, shuddering against himself.
Quietly, he drew his knees against his chest, and quivered gently, his fingers shaking as badly as they had so many years ago in Moria, during the Quest of the Ring. Desperate for some release, he clutched at the tattered fabric covering his calves, fisting it childishly. The elf hunched forward, burying his head into the crook between his knees, and rocking back and forth. So cold, he thought. Stop sweating.
Every day they came, the robust men with crooked grins and heavy brows, bearing whips and chains and knives. They would catch the elf, who lost the will to fight more and more every day, by the wrists and drag him away from the corner of his cell where he lay in a blanket of sweat, murmuring to himself in a variety of languages-including Dwarfish, surprisingly- and pull him into the open.
Their town was symmetric, and monochromatic, living on routine. Every morn, the town would rise with the sun, and go about their appointed tasks. The women, almost equal in stature and weight to their men, would work in the padlocked gardens or with the clunky animals. At precisely midday, they would gather in where Legolas assumed was the center of their unchanging town, and would watch as the elf was dragged out from their prison and pushed to where a sturdy paddock had been built for the sole purpose of their sadistic entertainment.
The first time they had pulled him out of his dungeon, Legolas had seen with horror the cage in the plain open, the raised platform and squared wooden pillar to which he was chained. Looking dully around at the crowds that eagerly drew in to the spectacle, the elf noted with horror that among the watchers were children, some the age of his dear Eldarion that gripped at the wooden pickets of the paddock and cheered along with the rest as one of the men would walk forward, grinning, and lay his hands all over the delicate elf.
The moon calls, Legolas reminded himself in the dark of his prison. There were no windows, not even a crack of light below the door of his cell, and so Legolas was in a square of utter darkness no matter what time of day it might be, trapped below the earth as he had been in Moria. Yet this was infinitely worse. He was going mad, he knew-he was shivering and speaking to himself in a hoarse voice.
It does not call, he snapped, running the heel of his hand down the concave of his cheek, it is morn; there is no moon to call for me. Legolas pulled his head out of its rest in his knees, and tilted it back against the wall. He stared blankly ahead, stretching his feet in front of him. As of yet, the men who came to beat him daily had not done any serious damage. When any one of them got too carried away, a bearded man (that Legolas reckoned was the Mayor, of sorts) would immediately call it to a stop. They wanted the pleasure of being able to beat Thranduil's youngest son, while their family watched, to be a drawn out occasion.
And none yet had touched him, not like Legolas remembered a captor had done to him-how long ago was it? Seven years, at least. No, he was still innocent to them, and for that he was thankful. It gave him something to hang on to, until he devised a plan for escape. Escape.How blissful it would be to be rid of the dark and the stone, to feel the moon on his skin and to hear the trees once again.
Maybe the moon did call.
He was no longer sweating.
~*~
Aragorn hesitated at the fork in the path, looking down each path as far as he could. Both paths, roughly hewn trails from where many traveling feet had trod, meandered difficultly through the forest. And the footfalls down each path were equal in number, fresh as each other, nearly impossible to distinguish from one another. For a week and a day, Aragorn had been tracking like he had loved so to do a decade before. The footprints were odd. Legolas' were easy to distinguish, for they were so light that untrained eyes wouldn't be able to perceive them amidst the tangle of grass. But the footprints of the two men that had taken him were unlike any footprints that Aragorn had ever seen on men.
The men were heavy, and tall, he could tell from the length and the depth of the footprints. But their feet were also wide-toed, like a dwarf, and narrow at the bridge, like an Orc. Aragorn had only ever heard legend of Humans that were so close in characteristics with both the dwarfs and Orcs, dwellers of mountains. Mountain people. Supposedly, large hordes had dwelled at the base of the Misty Mountains before Thranduil learned of their existence, and demanded genocide over them (much, Aragorn thought, like Saruman had commanded over the people of Rohan). The Mountain folk had retreated to Gondor-but there was no proof of this story, and Aragorn had never seen any.
He hoped with all his might that he never would, and was mistaken in his suspicions of Legolas' captors. If they knew that Legolas was the son of the one who had commanded death on their people.Aragorn shook his head violently, and fell to his knees before the jumbled tracks. With his forefinger, he gently traced the contour of a footprint. With new determination, he stood, and took the path arching towards the east.
~*~
Trisha sat deep in concentration. Gilraen had fallen asleep about an hour before, and Trisha was free to spend the rest of her evening milling about. As luck would have it, on the way to the Library, she ran in to Arwen. The Evenstar looked frazzled; continuously dragging her fingertips down her cheek, crossing her arms defensively over her chest. She even started when Trisha greeted her-actually was surprised by the appearance of the young girl, who was by no means sneaky.
"What is wrong, my lady?" Trisha asked, polite and curious. Arwen looked at her with withering eyes. Trisha wasn't spectacular looking, but pretty enough for a human. Her hair was unkempt, a mass of fair tawny that hung in a straggly plait down her back. She had a softly tanned face, dusted with brown freckles. She was tall, but held herself in a way that not only suggested she was a Servant-not noble, not rich-but also demeaned her, made her look smaller.
"Est-King Elessar has gone," Arwen said shakily, trusting the girl with the information. "He is tracking Legolas."
Trisha was taken aback. She had no idea about her King's intricate past as a Ranger, and his skills in such areas as tracking; she knew him only as the prim, noble man that sat completely upright during the days upon days of inquisitions in his velvet-cushioned throne, and as the man who would give up his work for a day to sit by either of his child's beds should they have a fever.
"Why does Legolas need tracking?" came Trisha's nervous voice.
Arwen only shrugged hopelessly; Aragorn hadn't told Faramir, and Faramir hadn't told her.
~*~
There came a hiss of displacement of air. Legolas barely had time to brace himself, hold himself upright with aid of the pole to which he was shackled before the scaled leather of the man's whip came in contact with his side. He didn't allow himself the luxury of crying out, instead closed his eyes tightly. If he concentrated, he could almost hear the trees beyond the countless meters of stone wall, could almost feel the familiar prick of the sky on his skin, and of nature in his veins.
There came another stirring, this time of human flesh, and the force of a robust man's fist coming in contact with his jaw jolted Legolas' light form. Legolas felt blood in his mouth, and swallowed it distastefully, his tongue tersely lapping up the remaining crimson on his lips. His body was jerked upwards by hands underneath his armpits, and Legolas opened his eyes to a bearded face with thick brows and wide nostrils leering at him, a hairsbreadth away.
"Tha's for me wife," said the voice, low and heavily accented, smelling of earth and sulfur.
A knee caught Legolas in the stomach, and though his concentration on not feeling the pain didn't allow him to register the shock of his rib being broken he heard the distinct crack of a snapped bone, barely out shouting the rabid cheers of the massed townsfolk.
And then it was over. Legolas' bounds were untied, but the elf was winded and dispirited; this beating had been worse than the others, and Legolas knew that they would only get worse. The town, no longer a mass, went about their ways, some venturing towards their homes or shops, others bunching a few feet away and talking in hushed voices. The 'Mayor' came over, kneeling beside the elf, catching the elf's jaw bruisingly in his hand.
"Where is your father, elf?" came the low growl of his voice. Legolas, taken aback, shook his head.
"I don't know," he tried to say, but his voice fell from his lips uselessly along with a few droplets of blood painfully drawn from the back of his cracked throat. Legolas' vision swam, lurched, and blurred at the edges; suddenly, the face that had been so clear was obscured, and Legolas knew no more.
***
A/N: Again, sort of short.sorry.I know where I'm bringing this story, but I'm not sure if I should branch into a more R rated plot or leave it mild, or if I should leave it as such. Also, not sure exactly the point where I want to end it. Hopefully the story'll keep writing itself for me =^^=
In response to your reviews;
Tithen Min: It *does* hurt! Plus, you get very odd patterns on your head, particularly if you have a Braille keyboard, I'd bet. LOL Somebody needs to buy you a chair with rails! . Chair rails. What are those called? Watch me be up all night trying to figure it out. LOL Schizophrenic reviewer! SCORE! =^^=
Reginabean: Yay! Glad your computer finally un-wonktified. Your review looks fine.I hope the storm breaks, though, and if it doesn't that lightening doesn't strike a cow or something who goes crazy and mows down your house, for that'd be rather tragic. Sorry about your snowed in car! Have you tried a blow torch? (cackle) =^^= Enjoy new chapters to come!
Elentari Manwe: *blushes and giggles schoolgirlishly* aww.tank you.Hope the horridness of this chapter didn't permanently scramble your braincircuts or something.That'd be horrid, I'd feel really bad. No, you adding me didn't spook me too bad LOL The more insanity in my life the better, right? Meant that as a compliment =^^= In between EM and Manwe, who should I cheer for? LOL