Note: Here's to all my loving fans… maybe my mother… but hey….yeah.
Aragorn slowly opened his eyes as the cell door screeched and scraped as it opened. He still lay curled up on the ground, even as he heard Legolas grunt when his wrists were roughly snapped into shackles. He head he whip crack as the man snapped it in the air. He only did this to get his quarry tense. But Legolas, however, was unaffected by this.
There was the sound of a whip shredding flesh and the slight whimper of Legolas who was trying to hold back a yell of pain. Aragorn cringed.
After about six more sickening lashes, Legolas was un-shackled and thrown upon the ground again, barely conscious from the pain. The man snickered and kicked Legolas squarely in the stomach. He made the oddest noise and coiled. The man left, shutting the door with a clang.
Aragorn scrambled over to his shirtless and bleeding friend. Without a word he gently turned Legolas over so he would lie on his stomach and not get hay and God-knows-what else in his cuts. He shifted slightly as Aragorn brushed his long silky hair out of his oozing whip gashes.
"Ow," Legolas moaned.
"Shhhh," Aragorn said, "I'm just moving your mess of hair out of your wounds."
Legolas replied. "I know… but it still hurts!"
"Wimp," Aragorn accused playfully.
"Ouch!" Legolas cried as his friend's hand ran over a particularly tender spot. "Well, you wouldn't be exactly chipper if you had been just whipped either oh Ranger-friend-of-mine!" He tensed painfully n his small nest of hay, Aragorn watching over. As the unseen stars shined above figments of broken memory swirled in the Elf's troubled mind.
"Legolas?" Aragorn asked, for his friend had fallen suddenly quiet. But he received no answer for Legolas had fallen asleep, snoring very, very softly. Aragorn curled up beside his friend and slept also, falling onto the dark paths of his dreams tonight. But he slept for the first time in days… and this was good.