I'm still in a run and can't respond to all the reviews but here's a quick chapter I managed to write between meetings and presentations so enjoy it till I come back!

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The hallway was silent. It was deserted saved for a lone elf, who walked slowly yet steadily towards the lady's solarium. Without knocking, he pushed open the door and stepped inside, his blue eyes seeking for someone.

He immediately found her sitting in the window seat, staring into space with sorrowful jade green eyes that had dried out of tears. A shawl was wrapped around her shoulders, her hands clutching tight at the fabric as if it were a lifeline. She didn't acknowledge his entrance, keeping herself completely mute. She didn't even stir.

Thranduil's heart broke to see his daughter-in-law so miserable like this. With a soft sigh, the elven king stepped forward and took a seat beside her. He took one of her cool hands and squeezed. "Nara?"

She didn't reply, keeping her eyes trained outside. But her lips trembled, and a sob broke out. Still, she didn't say a word.

He tried again. "Nara, dear…please…Why are you secluding yourself like this? Come, let me take you to your room. The servants had prepared dinner for you there."

She weakly shook her head, clutching her shawl tighter around her. "I'm not hungry, my lord."

"That is a lie and well you know it," Thranduil gently chided, stroking her head. "You haven't eaten anything since this morning."

"But what of my husband? Has he eaten? Or is he starving, lying broken and hurt somewhere, having not the means to fend for himself? Without him, every food I take taste like dust…" She buried her face in her hands and dissolved into tears.

Thranduil pulled her until her head rested against his shoulder. "Shh, Nara…He will return, my dear. Legolas will return."

Narasene brushed her tears away, still sobbing. "But it has been weeks! My heart tells me that he is still alive, but where in Middle-earth is he? Oh, my lord, I can't bear this anymore…"

Offering soothing words to her as he hugged her tight, Thranduil himself couldn't stop his own tears from falling. Ai. Where could my son be?

Over three weeks had passed since the day Legolas went missing. The king of Eryn Lasgalen had been in his son's keep for many days now, lending his support to Narasene, sharing each other's worries and anxiety.

The warriors of Ithilien, knights of Emyn Arnen and guards of Gondor had launched a full-fledged search all over the land. They thoroughly combed the woods, checked every town and village, and inspected all the caves that existed, leaving not a single rock unturned. But they found nary a trace of him, having been washed away by the heavy rain before. It was as if Legolas had suddenly vanished from the face of the earth. His faithful mount might know where its master was or what had happened to him, but the stallion could not speak. Only Legolas could fully decipher the horse's unintelligible snorts.

The moment he arrived in Minas Tirith, Thranduil had ranted on and on about Aragorn's failure to stop Legolas from riding out alone. The poor man's ears were still blistering from the long lecture. Faramir, meanwhile, had wisely made himself invisible, after giving excuses to lead the searching expedition.

"Why didn't you just knock that silly boy upside the head?!" Thranduil had shouted at Aragorn in the end, his face turning red.

Then, seeing the huge guilt on the man's face, the elven king had quietly apologized for his rudeness and started to head back for Ithilien, where he had launched his own search and rescue operation. A familiar task for him, given that his son had repeatedly gone missing since the prince was a mere elfling. It had been an exasperating yet simple routine to him, only that it was not so simple this time. Legolas was never found.

Rubbing Narasene's back, Thranduil quickly pulled himself together, wiping his tears away. "Come, Nara. You must eat," he said, his voice firm.

"But I told you, I'm not…"

"…hungry, I know, but I still don't believe you," he replied with a stern gaze. At that, Narasene lowered her head, ashamed.

His voice softening, Thranduil added, "You should be more careful in your current condition, Nara. You are expecting. You might not be hungry, but you have to eat…for your child's sake."

She finally raised her tearful eyes, gazing beseechingly at her father-in-law. "All right, my lord. I shall eat. But…will you join me?"

Truthfully, Thranduil did not feel like eating himself, but he nodded with a smile. "I shall join you, my dear. Let's go, before the food gets cold."

As they walked—arm in arm—to her room, Narasene suddenly voiced out, "My lord, do you think he is still alive?"

Thranduil took a long time to answer, his throat constricting, his paternal heart bleeding. Somehow, he could still hear his son's laughter and see his naughty grin, his silver eyes always glinting with mischief.

The king shook himself off his melancholia to respond to her question. "Legolas is still alive, I can feel it. He has promised to follow me to Valinor, to reunite with Keldarion there, remember? But if he is already dead, I believe my elder son would be so angry that Legolas didn't keep his promise. Why, I think Keldarion would try to bring his little brother back to life so that he can kill him again for being so stupid!"

In spite of herself, Narasene softly chuckled. "But let me at him first. Wifely rights, you know."

Thranduil grinned, glad to see some colors returning to her cheeks. Legolas might still be missing, but at least a small part of him was still growing in Narasene's belly. And Thranduil would do anything to keep both mother and child safe until Legolas returned to resume his place at her side.

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It was still early morning, and the mist was thick around him, but the slave was already hard at work by the stream, doing the laundry.

There were several overflowing buckets of dirty clothes for Legolas to wash. They came from every house and building in the village, placed there beside the stream by the villagers last night. The elf was expected to hang them to dry in the opened field after he finished the washing.

The water was so icy cold—nearly freezing—that his fingers had gone numb, but Legolas didn't seem to realize it. In fact, he no longer cared. He was moving on autopilot now, his hands busily working but his mind completely empty. He was still breathing, yet not truly alive. Like his body, his soul was trapped, slowly dissolving into a vulnerable shell he had put up around himself.

A month had already gone by. A painful humiliating month. Ever since they had imprisoned him in the hole that he himself had dug, something inside him had shut down—something so deep and complicated that he did not dare to contemplate. Something that was vaguely similar to what he had felt after a group of men had brutally violated him all those years ago. With each day he slaved for the Easterlings, his soul slowly died—bit by bit.

He was not giving up. But he was not fighting back, either. Instead, he silently waited, expecting his rescuers to come and take him back to his real, ordinary life sooner or later. He fully believed that Estel and his father would never stop looking for him, even if it would take them hundreds of years to find him. He had faith in them, in their love for him. He held on to that, to never giving up existing, even though he had felt like killing himself on the first night they left him in that pitch black hole.

As he scrubbed stubborn stains out of a white shirt, Legolas bitterly recalled what had happened last week. A troop of soldiers from Gondor had come into the village. Obviously, they were there to search for him. But a scout for the village had seen them coming from a league away and immediately warned Gervas. Keeping his cool, Gervas and his men had dragged Legolas from the cornfield back to his prison. Pushing him into the hole, they had relocked the steel door and put bales of hay on top of it. They even gagged the elf to keep him from crying out for help.

To the soldiers of Gondor, the Easterlings pretended to be warm and peaceful people who were sincerely trying to rebuild their life after suffering a big loss during the War. They also pretended to knew nothing of the missing elf.

"Lord Legolas, you say?" Gervas faked a thoughtful expression at their enquiries. "No. I believe I haven't heard of him. Have you heard of an elf around here, Traius?"

His eldest son had shaken his head, also playing along. "No, father. I never even met an elf before," the boy had answered, lying through his teeth.

"We still need to go through every house in this village," the captain of the Gondorim soldiers had said. "You know, it's strictly procedures."

"I understand," Gervas had replied, looking eager to please. "Go right ahead. My people will help you. We have nothing to hide."

The soldiers of Gondor took hours to search the entire village, but they came out empty handed. Never would they think that they had actually come very close to finding the missing prince. Legolas was literally right under their feet, struggling and fighting at his bonds and gag to catch their attention. But the bales of hay on top of Legolas' prison had been a very effective disguise. In the end, the soldiers had moved on to other villages, unsuspectingly leaving the elf behind, still a prisoner to the Easterlings.

A sudden appearance of a tabby cat pulled Legolas out of his reverie. He watched with a small smile as she moved to the edge of the stream to drink. Her tongue lapped greedily at the water, completely ignoring her audience. The cat obviously was very thirsty.

And she's heavily pregnant! Legolas noticed with pleasure.

His smile slowly vanished then, as his thought flew to his own pregnant wife. Narasene was due to give birth and day now. Trapped here in the Easterlings village, Legolas deeply regretted not to be able to be there for her when the baby came. He was also sad to realize that his child might be born without a father.

Valar, how he wanted to smell his child's first breath, and to sing him lullabies that his own father had once sung to him. How he wanted so much to become a father in a true sense of word, in every way he could.

But, look at him now—a mere slave to his enemy, a warrior and prince no more.

He looked down at his hands, the hands that used to wield heavy sword, twirl sharp blades, and shoot deadly arrows. The hands that had helped resurrected the king of Gondor to his rightful throne. The hands that had killed hundreds of orcs and cut the tail of a balrog. The hands that once could heal all kinds of illnesses and maladies. The hands of a manyan. But those hands were now deep in suds from dirty laundry.

Something flickered inside him then.

Ai Elbereth. What am I doing? Legolas raised his hands and stared at the calluses and blisters that were never there before. Why am I willing to be subjected to this? Why didn't I fight back? This is not who I am. I'm a prince, a warrior. I may never escape from this place, but that doesn't mean I should tolerate what these people are doing to me.

A smile slowly broke on his face, his spirit steadily rising once more. I'll show these people who I really am.

He quickly looked around, noticing that his two guards were standing not too far away. Unsurprisingly, the two men were completely armed with bow and arrows, but one of them looked as if he was asleep on his feet, nodding off with his chin resting against his chest. The other man, meanwhile, was bored out of his mind, yawning hugely now and then.

Legolas had considered escaping by jumping into the stream, but it was too shallow for swimming and the water was too cold to the bone. Besides, he was still bound in shackles. But the stream could provide other kind of distractions. 

Making sure that the two men were not watching, Legolas silently slipped the shirt he was holding into the stream. Then he tossed several more into the water, watching with glee as the current carried the clothes downstream. Then he looked behind him at the row of the full laundry buckets.

Oh, what the heck, thought the elf, and dumped the entire buckets into the water, grinning like a maniac.

"Hey, what are you doing?" his two guards shouted when they realized what Legolas was up to. "Stop!"

Legolas couldn't help laughing as one of the men ran and jumped into the stream to catch the drifting clothing, cursing like mad. His friend leveled his arrow straight at Legolas' throat. "Go help him catch those clothes, elf!" he ordered.

The elf just grinned. "No."

The man's face turned red with anger. "Do it or I'll shoot you!"

Shrugging, Legolas laid himself onto the ground, his arms folded behind his head. "Go ahead. Do whatever you like. I don't give a damn."

The man blinked at Legolas' easy response, totally unsure of what to do next. And then, alerted by the guards' cries just now, more men came running towards the stream.

"What's going on?"

"What is Holt doing in the water?"

"The blasted elf threw all the clothes into the stream!" the guard complained.

"All of them?"

"Yes! Now go help Holt picked them up before there's nothing left for us to wear!"

Lying lazily on the bank, Legolas chuckled as he watched the men stumbled all over themselves after their friend to catch their 'escaping' garments.

Gervas was so not amused with that incident. Afterwards, he ordered Legolas to be whipped.

Not a stranger to such punishment, the elf took the fifty lashes they gave him with a smile, highly pleased to note that he had managed to greatly fluster the Easterlings over a simple matter of laundry.

He didn't stop there.

The next day, while he was washing the dishes in the tavern, Legolas purposely broke all the plates and glasses. While working in the cornfield the day after that, he ran the plough all over the budding seeds he himself had planted. He then shoveled the horse manure out of the stable and dumped them right onto Gervas' doorstep, before throwing some more into the man's house for added measure. To top it all of, he had relieved himself right into Gervas' water trough, contaminating the man's water supply completely.

Of course, Legolas was roughly punished for every single thing that he did, but it was worth it. Now these humans knew that he was not an easy person to play with.

It didn't take long for Gervas and his men to finally come out with a plan to curb the elf's bold retaliation, once and for all.

TBC…