~*~
When he awoke, it was the next morning. All that he remembered of the following days was a constant pain of his entire body and a jolting feeling as the Orcs ran across plains and marshes into Mordor. For that was from whence the Orcs, and Cadewyn, came.
When they arrived, Legolas was thrown into a dirt-floored cell, with harsh iron bars as a door and dirt sides. There was naught in the room but a tiny shred of fabric, as if to mock him, to say, "This is all that you will get from me for a blanket."
Who his captor was, Legolas could not guess; for at this time, the idea of Sauron returning was a mere idea in the very back of the minds of the wisest, and did not even enter their thoughts more than in nightmares or depressing days when their minds had nothing else to work on. He would learn who it was soon enough.
For within a few minutes of Legolas's arrival, a man came and led him to a room. He sat Legolas roughly in a wooden chair, shut the door through which they had come, and left. The room was pitch black, but for a red glow coming from one corner. The glow intensified slowly, and soon Legolas raised his head from wonder at what it might be. And he saw an eye.
"An eye?" he thought to himself. "Here I sit, captured, and in a darkened room, expecting something to fear, and there is merely an eye."
But it spoke. Out of its flaming depths came a voice harsh as metal grating upon a stone. "Ah, Legolas. Do you know why you are here, Prince of Mirkwood?"
Legolas did not answer the eye. He almost found it amusing.
"So we are silent when we are captured. That is good, for it shall be less painful on the ears of my minions if you do not scream when you are tortured. This is why you are here: I was feeling malicious, so I wanted an Elf to torture. How convenient that you were traveling alone at the time. Cadewyn did a fair job, getting you here, did she not?"
Silence would not do anymore. "What have you done with her?"
The eye laughed, and the wreath of flame around it seemed to flicker and grow. "You misconstrue my words. She was not a victim. She was a helper. And she is quite the actress, is she not? My fair daughter led you straight into my grasp."
His eyes stung with tears that wanted to flow, but he held them back. "She would not work for you. She would never work for you, nor ever hurt me, we-"
"Yes, I know. You will say, 'we are in love!'. Well, you are sadly mistaken, and apparently not very perceptive for an Elf. It may be that you are in love, but if so, you love a statue of Galadriel! For she is just as inaccessible to you, Prince, as is that Lady of Light. She loves you not. Here, I shall call her, and she may tell you herself." The eye seemed to glow even more maliciously than it had been, and Legolas felt a pang of fear in his Elvish heart. For suddenly through the door walked Cadewyn, in a long, black cloak, with a long black skirt and a black corset over a blood-red tunic on her pale body, making her look even whiter than she had the day before.
"Legolas," she began, "you are a fool. Your family will be ashamed! No perception that I was not the nice maiden in need of help. Your chivalry was overtrusting. Not all women are looking for someone to protect them all the time. You did not even notice that I was not a maid! Any Man would have known that," she scoffed, insulting him more than he had ever been before by comparing him to Men.
"Cadewyn...I...is that even your name, woman?" An anger grew, his eyes flashed. This woman who was nothing was insulting him, hurting him! "Yes, that is true, my name is Cadewyn. But I am no woman of Rohan, with a simple cottage and a horse. I am the daughter of this," she gestured to the eye, "the next leader of Middle-Earth."
Legolas scoffed. "An eye. You jest, Cadewyn, but you are not amusing. You are simply a woman in search of power, bothersome in your air of superiority."
The eye spoke again now, angry. "You are nothing, Legolas. And you will learn this. No person, Man or Elf, insults my daughter. I am Sauron, Elf. The Sauron. I will return, and you are my first victim, you pitiful little Elf. You will feel pain, and you will feel sorrow because you lost your love. Torture of all sorts will come to you until you are a pitiful wreck of your former self, and you will return to your father in the wood, never telling him what happened, hiding it for shame. Yes, Legolas, I know this."
Legolas's spirit broke all at once, he let his body go limp, and he cradled his head in his hands and cried. And through his sobs, he heard the deep, rough laugh of Sauron and the high cackle of Cadewyn, so different from her light laughter the day before.