Standard disclaimer: I do not own anyone here, except my original
characters, who if I do say so myself, kick total ass. Seriously. I may
just have to ditch Leggy and Aragorn and go take my original characters on
the road. Hmm…..
Notes:
The art of writing fanfic, especially in episodes like this, and publishing each one before the entire body of work is published is an imperfect science, really. After reading reviews, I went and reread the body of work that was already up there and realized that yes, I really did ignore Aragorn and not really do much in the way of characterization. So I could either go backwards and revise what I've already written, (which when people do that to me on multi part stories just annoys me to no end because then I have to reread and look for the differences) or I could write a new chapter to address just those concerns. So here it is. I tried to flesh out Aragorn and show him as the conflicted controlled creature that he is in my mind. I think I did a better job with the horse, sadly.
So this part of the story is probably slow, but it is needed to further address the characters and to explain some of what will be happening in the next chapter. I figured out the ending to this one, I just have to get it there. ::rubs hands together evilly:: You guys are gonna plotz, I swear.
The tribute in this chapter is to the ever lovely and talented Treehugger. Go read her stories of Egla Ash/ Elu Heneb. And yes, the comment in last chapter was aimed at "Dark Leaf" by Jastaelf. If you haven't figured it out yet, we're all in cahoots with each other in one way or another.
::returns serve to Jastaelf:: Go for it, babe. Blow me away, as you always do.
The stables were warm and comfortable and Aragorn intended to stay there as long as he could. It was a pleasant day out, and his ride had been enjoyable, but all good things ended too soon, he supposed. He could almost feel himself while alone among the horses.
The smell of the horses was earthy and pungent, but still comforting. He had dismissed the stable boy, choosing to groom his stallion with his own hands. The work was hard to muscles that were no longer accustomed to such things, but he welcomed the exertion for the clarity of mind that it brought.
After he had finished with his own mount, he walked over to the stall where Davyn's mount resided. The gelding was a good horse, and it would be a shame if he were lamed from today's incident. He did not like putting down good horses. He smiled slightly to himself, thinking of the overheard whispers in the halls of his palace. It was probably true that he did treat the horses better than his own people, he thought upon reflection. Horses seemed much more deserving of good treatment to his mind.
It was in the next stall that Aragorn saw Arod. The horse noticed the king at the same time the king noticed the horse, and they regarded each other solemnly across the stall. The horse moved forward, seemingly recognizing the man, and hung his head over the door and whickered quietly. Equine nostrils flared as the horse caught the scent that clung to the man's skin. Ears went back and eyes focused expectantly on the man, as if waiting for him to produce the person to whom that scent belonged.
Despite himself, Aragorn was drawn to the horse. He searched in his pocket and found a forgotten piece of sugar that he had neglected to give to his own mount. He offered it on the flat of his palm. Arod seemed to be disconcerted, the ears going even flatter. Obviously, this was not what he had expected Aragorn to produce. It was with some amount of obvious disdain that the horse finally lipped up the sugar, perhaps thinking that if he would accept this, the next item to be produced would be his elf. But that was not to be.
Aragorn patted the horse on the neck, and then realized that Arod was looking at him in an almost humanly expectant way. "You have lived among the elves for far too long, my friend", he muttered under his breath. "You seem almost as odd."
The horse snorted in response and then turned to look at the person that approached.
Aragorn turned to watch his mage approach and squelched his sigh of misery. It appeared that his pleasant time alone was about to come to an end. Leaning against the stall door and crossing his arms, he raised an eyebrow and spoke. "What brings you here, Davyn? I thought that the stable was not your favored place to be?"
The mage bowed deeply and then rose. "My liege. I have come to spend some time with you. After all, I missed you for the rest of the ride today." The mage turned and looked at Arod. "This is a fine looking horse. Perhaps I should take this one while my own heals from his misfortune today."
Arod looked less than pleased with that suggestion, Aragorn noted. The equine eyes narrowed in a look that could almost be cataloged as pure dislike. The king shook his head at that thought. Horses did not have those kinds of emotions.
The mage moved closer to the horse and reached out a hand to touch Arod's neck. The horse responded with a vicious snap of his teeth that would have taken a finger off, if the mage had not moved back so quickly. Deep inside, Aragorn felt a slight twinge of disappointment. "I fear that he does not much like you, Davyn. I was just remarking to myself that he has been too long among the elves. This is Legolas' mount."
The mage raised an eyebrow at that revelation, and then smiled evilly. "Then I will take this one as my own. Your elf will not be in any condition for riding for quite a while, I think." He then turned and examined the horse more closely. "And as you have so sufficiently proved, even those things elven can be broken to accept what they would think otherwise unacceptable."
Aragorn's face reflected his inner struggle at those words. Part of him wanted to smile victoriously at the memory of the lithe body he had forced to accept his will, and even respond to him against it's own will. Part of him felt deep shame at the same memory. The two impulses warred behind his eyes, and made them appear tormented.
Davyn looked from the horse and up to the man who stood next to him, and frowned. He had not sensed this kind of open struggle from Aragorn in months, not since he had driven Arwen away. "I feel the need to remind you that it was your choice to have the elf, My Lord." The voice was almost oily in its smoothness. "I remain your loyal servant, and do nothing but your bidding."
Aragorn snapped his head up and glared at the mage. "I know well enough that it was my choice, Davyn." He then looked down at his hands and sighed. "When I made the choice, it seemed like the right thing."
Davyn raised an eyebrow, and then twitched his lips into a grim smile. "Choices are not easy, My Liege. The hardest choices are often the right ones. The ones that cause the most pain are usually the ones that do the most good."
"Yes, yes. I know. And sometimes a few have to suffer for the good of all." Aragorn spat the words bitterly.
Davyn spoke again, his voice like steel wrapped in slippery silk. "You made the choices, My Lord. From the very beginning, I offered you a choice each time. You chose to accept my advice. You chose to accept my fealty. You chose to accept my torc. You chose to support me over your wife. Each decision was yours to make freely, even this one."
Aragorn drew himself up and glared at the mage with a combination of anger and arrogance. "Yes, they were all my decisions. Each one, and each one made for the greater good of my people, for the good of Gondor."
Davyn smiled. It was so easy to corrupt the self righteous, and still have them think that they were noble in their corruption. "Yes, for the good of Gondor." He turned back to the horse and studied it. Arod laid his ears even further back and bared his teeth in a promise of severed digits.
Aragorn continued, speaking as though to convince himself. "An elven queen gives Gondor great distinction and strengthens my bloodline. The children will be long lived and will provide great stability to the region with the length of their reigns."
Davyn nodded. "Yes. The good you did for your people far outweighs the evil you did to your friend." He hid his smile at Aragorn's wince of pain. He reached over and touched the royal elbow and exerted his will. "I do not like it when you doubt yourself, My Lord. You are a king, and your word is law. You can do no wrong." He nodded with approval when he saw the grey eyes harden as the personality of the King submerged again.
Satisfied that he had regained control, Davyn continued. "I almost forgot the main reason I came to you, My Lord. I bring you good tidings." He bowed and continued at Aragorn's nod. "I had an … encounter with your queen, and in the process determined that she is with child."
The expressions that crossed the King's face were exquisite in their intensity and pain, thought Davyn. Elation was swallowed by simple horror and guilt. The feeling of the soul suffering beneath the shell was satisfying to the highest degree. He decided to twist the knife. "You have assured your child will be of the purest bloodline. Arwen's lineage was not nearly as pure as the Prince's. She bore human blood in her heritage, whereas Legolas bears no taint at all. You made an excellent choice, if I say so myself." He turned back to the horse with a speculative glance. In doing so, he missed the fleeting look filled with loathing that Aragorn gave him before it was submerged into the persona that was the King of Gondor.
"I will go now and see how she is feeling." Aragorn moved to walk away, before Davyn caught the royal arm, exerting his control on even deeper levels.
"She is sleeping right now, and I fear will not be responsive for a few hours. I had to… pacify her."
Aragorn's fingers twitched, perhaps responding to the deeply buried wish to bury them around the mage's neck. The turmoil that he felt was overwhelming, and Davyn sensed this.
"It is a good thing that this has happened now, My Lord. I have missed our time together, our talks. I feel as though you have started to slip away from me. Now that your duty is done you will no longer have to bother with your queen." His voice was confident as he thought for a moment, and then rejected, that he was in danger of losing his control of the king. "All we have to do now is wait."
Aragorn's lip curled into a sneer and he fixed Davyn with an icy gaze. "But there you are wrong, Davyn. It is my CHOICE to spend time with Legolas. I CHOOSE to continue seeing her. And I CHOOSE this of my own free will. And for once, it is a choice that I feel I have rightly made." He smiled cruelly. "How else would I be able to break down the walls that she has built and make her accept what she has become? By the time that I have finished, there will be nothing in that body but a woman. Already she begins to act and think more and more like one with the passing days."
Davyn's response was cut off by the arrival of a page. The young boy panted as he bowed to the king. "Majesty, your presence is requested in the Chancellor's rooms." The boy looked up and smiled. "It's a miracle! They say he will recover from his illness!"
The king shot his mage a look, and then turned on his heel and left the stables. Davyn looked back at the horse. "I will be back for you", he promised Arod with an upraised finger. The horse snorted and lunged forward, teeth meeting air where there had been a hand but seconds before. His whinny of challenge mocked the mage as he followed his king.
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The light from the window hurt the back of Legolas' eyelids. It was the first time that specific part of his body had ever hurt, at least as far as he could remember. Opening his eyes only made the sensation change from pain to severe nausea. He closed his eyes again, choosing to hurt instead of vomit.
Rolling on his side, away from the light, seemed to help a little, but the movement made his stomach rebel even more. He froze, hoping that with the cessation of movement his stomach would return to his control, but it was not be. He tried to pull himself to the end of the bed so that he could be sick into the chamber pot, but knew that it was a hopeless quest.
It was with great relief that he felt someone hold a basin under his head and pull back his hair while he was explosively ill. A cool rag soon followed on his face and neck, and Valda murmured quietly into his ear, "I know not what you did, but I see what it has cost you. You have my eternal gratitude."
Eyes still closed, Legolas asked quietly, "Arnlaug?"
Valda's voice was painful in its joy. "He is recovering. The physicians say that he will be as he was before, if not better. Thank you."
It took all his strength to whisper "Good" before the room went dark and he fell back down into sleep.
It was morning when he woke again, and found himself wrapped in the creature's arms. He unconsciously stiffened and tried to move away but was held against the warm chest behind him. After a few moments he turned to look at the man that held him so tightly and was surprised to see the gray eyes regarding him with a light that he had not seen since he had arrived in Minas Tirith.
"You should be more careful, little one. You now have more than yourself to think of, and I don't know how well I can protect you from him… or myself." There was a small pause. "I am sorry." The voice was quiet, barely more than an exhalation of air past his lips. One of the large hands drifted to lie over the elf's flat stomach and rub gently.
Legolas felt his eyes grow wide and he stuttered in shock. "H- how?"
Aragorn smiled slightly. "Sometimes when he sleeps too deeply I feel his grip loosen. It is never for long, but sometimes it is enough for a moment or two."
"How do I break this spell on you? How do I win your freedom?" The words came out in a rush. The eyes were already clouding, but regained their focus for a moment.
"Everything is a choice, Legolas. Everything. If I choose to be free of him, I can be. But I must be given proper thing to choose over him."
"But what is that?" He knew, however, that the question fell on deaf ears, for the eyes had gone cold and hard, and the gentle look on the face had turned to a cruel and icy smile, and the grip on his body turned lustful and possessive.
After the creature had left him that morning, Legolas rose and walked to the mirror and looked within.
The woman with was tired, with dark circles under her haunted blue eyes. Her shoulders were slumped in seeming defeat.
The touched fingers in the glass and he spoke to her. "Do not give up hope yet. We know more than we did before, and we have regained a powerful ally."
She seemed to straighten in front of him, and smiled in response to his own tightly stretched smile. Then her face paled, and together they ran to the chamber pot to be noisily sick.
It was to this scene that Valda walked in, carrying a tray with a teapot and a small plate of toasted crackers.
She set the tray onto the table and then knelt by the retching elf, gently holding the long hair out of the way. When the spasms had finally settled, the Countess covered over the pot, and then helped Legolas to a seat, and poured a cup of the fragrant tea.
"This is Vandal Root tea. It will help calm your stomach." She pressed the warm cup between the bloodless fingers, and Legolas nodded gratefully as he sipped.
"How did you know?" He finally was able to ask after holding back another wave of nausea.
Valda smiled gently. "Every pregnant woman in Gondor drinks Vandal Root tea. It is not only good for the mother; it is good for the child as well. In small amounts it settles the stomach, and encourages the appetite. In larger doses it helps you rest, and in a newly delivered mother it helps bring the milk in faster."
"No, Valda. I am not…" His words stuck in his throat as he remembered his encounter with Davyn.
"No, Legolas, you yourself are not a woman. But you are in the body of one, and the body is pregnant." She reached over and gently poked Legolas in the breast, causing him to hiss and recoil in pain. "Yes. The body is definitely pregnant." She handed him a cracker. "Eat."
Legolas looked at the piece of food suspiciously, but then broke a small piece off of the corner and put it in his mouth, allowing it to melt slowly on his tongue before swallowing. As he repeated this process, Valda talked quietly. "Arnlaug will be on his feet before the end of the week, the physicians say. Whatever has affected him so has completely gone." She paused. "When he recovers, he has asked me to marry him. I have agreed to do so."
"I am happy for you both. You deserve to be joyful with each other." Legolas smiled sincerely. "I hope that I will not lose you here, though. I have great need of you both."
Valda nodded. "We will go nowhere. Our place is here."
It was with some surprise that Legolas realized he was sleepy. He was still slightly nauseated as well, but the tea and crackers had helped somewhat. "I need to talk to Arnlaug and Gilby. And to anyone else that you think we may be able to have some influence with on the counsel, if they will listen to me. We have much to do."
Valda snorted delicately. "Of course they will listen to you. You have just become the most important person in Gondor. You bear the heir." The woman's smile softened at the elf's headshake of denial. "But we will not arrange things today. Today you will rest, and when you are feeling better, we will go for a walk in the gardens."
With gentle hands she took the cup from now loose fingers, and escorted the tired elf back to the bed. There was still time, and with Arnlaug restored to her, there was hope as well.
Notes:
The art of writing fanfic, especially in episodes like this, and publishing each one before the entire body of work is published is an imperfect science, really. After reading reviews, I went and reread the body of work that was already up there and realized that yes, I really did ignore Aragorn and not really do much in the way of characterization. So I could either go backwards and revise what I've already written, (which when people do that to me on multi part stories just annoys me to no end because then I have to reread and look for the differences) or I could write a new chapter to address just those concerns. So here it is. I tried to flesh out Aragorn and show him as the conflicted controlled creature that he is in my mind. I think I did a better job with the horse, sadly.
So this part of the story is probably slow, but it is needed to further address the characters and to explain some of what will be happening in the next chapter. I figured out the ending to this one, I just have to get it there. ::rubs hands together evilly:: You guys are gonna plotz, I swear.
The tribute in this chapter is to the ever lovely and talented Treehugger. Go read her stories of Egla Ash/ Elu Heneb. And yes, the comment in last chapter was aimed at "Dark Leaf" by Jastaelf. If you haven't figured it out yet, we're all in cahoots with each other in one way or another.
::returns serve to Jastaelf:: Go for it, babe. Blow me away, as you always do.
The stables were warm and comfortable and Aragorn intended to stay there as long as he could. It was a pleasant day out, and his ride had been enjoyable, but all good things ended too soon, he supposed. He could almost feel himself while alone among the horses.
The smell of the horses was earthy and pungent, but still comforting. He had dismissed the stable boy, choosing to groom his stallion with his own hands. The work was hard to muscles that were no longer accustomed to such things, but he welcomed the exertion for the clarity of mind that it brought.
After he had finished with his own mount, he walked over to the stall where Davyn's mount resided. The gelding was a good horse, and it would be a shame if he were lamed from today's incident. He did not like putting down good horses. He smiled slightly to himself, thinking of the overheard whispers in the halls of his palace. It was probably true that he did treat the horses better than his own people, he thought upon reflection. Horses seemed much more deserving of good treatment to his mind.
It was in the next stall that Aragorn saw Arod. The horse noticed the king at the same time the king noticed the horse, and they regarded each other solemnly across the stall. The horse moved forward, seemingly recognizing the man, and hung his head over the door and whickered quietly. Equine nostrils flared as the horse caught the scent that clung to the man's skin. Ears went back and eyes focused expectantly on the man, as if waiting for him to produce the person to whom that scent belonged.
Despite himself, Aragorn was drawn to the horse. He searched in his pocket and found a forgotten piece of sugar that he had neglected to give to his own mount. He offered it on the flat of his palm. Arod seemed to be disconcerted, the ears going even flatter. Obviously, this was not what he had expected Aragorn to produce. It was with some amount of obvious disdain that the horse finally lipped up the sugar, perhaps thinking that if he would accept this, the next item to be produced would be his elf. But that was not to be.
Aragorn patted the horse on the neck, and then realized that Arod was looking at him in an almost humanly expectant way. "You have lived among the elves for far too long, my friend", he muttered under his breath. "You seem almost as odd."
The horse snorted in response and then turned to look at the person that approached.
Aragorn turned to watch his mage approach and squelched his sigh of misery. It appeared that his pleasant time alone was about to come to an end. Leaning against the stall door and crossing his arms, he raised an eyebrow and spoke. "What brings you here, Davyn? I thought that the stable was not your favored place to be?"
The mage bowed deeply and then rose. "My liege. I have come to spend some time with you. After all, I missed you for the rest of the ride today." The mage turned and looked at Arod. "This is a fine looking horse. Perhaps I should take this one while my own heals from his misfortune today."
Arod looked less than pleased with that suggestion, Aragorn noted. The equine eyes narrowed in a look that could almost be cataloged as pure dislike. The king shook his head at that thought. Horses did not have those kinds of emotions.
The mage moved closer to the horse and reached out a hand to touch Arod's neck. The horse responded with a vicious snap of his teeth that would have taken a finger off, if the mage had not moved back so quickly. Deep inside, Aragorn felt a slight twinge of disappointment. "I fear that he does not much like you, Davyn. I was just remarking to myself that he has been too long among the elves. This is Legolas' mount."
The mage raised an eyebrow at that revelation, and then smiled evilly. "Then I will take this one as my own. Your elf will not be in any condition for riding for quite a while, I think." He then turned and examined the horse more closely. "And as you have so sufficiently proved, even those things elven can be broken to accept what they would think otherwise unacceptable."
Aragorn's face reflected his inner struggle at those words. Part of him wanted to smile victoriously at the memory of the lithe body he had forced to accept his will, and even respond to him against it's own will. Part of him felt deep shame at the same memory. The two impulses warred behind his eyes, and made them appear tormented.
Davyn looked from the horse and up to the man who stood next to him, and frowned. He had not sensed this kind of open struggle from Aragorn in months, not since he had driven Arwen away. "I feel the need to remind you that it was your choice to have the elf, My Lord." The voice was almost oily in its smoothness. "I remain your loyal servant, and do nothing but your bidding."
Aragorn snapped his head up and glared at the mage. "I know well enough that it was my choice, Davyn." He then looked down at his hands and sighed. "When I made the choice, it seemed like the right thing."
Davyn raised an eyebrow, and then twitched his lips into a grim smile. "Choices are not easy, My Liege. The hardest choices are often the right ones. The ones that cause the most pain are usually the ones that do the most good."
"Yes, yes. I know. And sometimes a few have to suffer for the good of all." Aragorn spat the words bitterly.
Davyn spoke again, his voice like steel wrapped in slippery silk. "You made the choices, My Lord. From the very beginning, I offered you a choice each time. You chose to accept my advice. You chose to accept my fealty. You chose to accept my torc. You chose to support me over your wife. Each decision was yours to make freely, even this one."
Aragorn drew himself up and glared at the mage with a combination of anger and arrogance. "Yes, they were all my decisions. Each one, and each one made for the greater good of my people, for the good of Gondor."
Davyn smiled. It was so easy to corrupt the self righteous, and still have them think that they were noble in their corruption. "Yes, for the good of Gondor." He turned back to the horse and studied it. Arod laid his ears even further back and bared his teeth in a promise of severed digits.
Aragorn continued, speaking as though to convince himself. "An elven queen gives Gondor great distinction and strengthens my bloodline. The children will be long lived and will provide great stability to the region with the length of their reigns."
Davyn nodded. "Yes. The good you did for your people far outweighs the evil you did to your friend." He hid his smile at Aragorn's wince of pain. He reached over and touched the royal elbow and exerted his will. "I do not like it when you doubt yourself, My Lord. You are a king, and your word is law. You can do no wrong." He nodded with approval when he saw the grey eyes harden as the personality of the King submerged again.
Satisfied that he had regained control, Davyn continued. "I almost forgot the main reason I came to you, My Lord. I bring you good tidings." He bowed and continued at Aragorn's nod. "I had an … encounter with your queen, and in the process determined that she is with child."
The expressions that crossed the King's face were exquisite in their intensity and pain, thought Davyn. Elation was swallowed by simple horror and guilt. The feeling of the soul suffering beneath the shell was satisfying to the highest degree. He decided to twist the knife. "You have assured your child will be of the purest bloodline. Arwen's lineage was not nearly as pure as the Prince's. She bore human blood in her heritage, whereas Legolas bears no taint at all. You made an excellent choice, if I say so myself." He turned back to the horse with a speculative glance. In doing so, he missed the fleeting look filled with loathing that Aragorn gave him before it was submerged into the persona that was the King of Gondor.
"I will go now and see how she is feeling." Aragorn moved to walk away, before Davyn caught the royal arm, exerting his control on even deeper levels.
"She is sleeping right now, and I fear will not be responsive for a few hours. I had to… pacify her."
Aragorn's fingers twitched, perhaps responding to the deeply buried wish to bury them around the mage's neck. The turmoil that he felt was overwhelming, and Davyn sensed this.
"It is a good thing that this has happened now, My Lord. I have missed our time together, our talks. I feel as though you have started to slip away from me. Now that your duty is done you will no longer have to bother with your queen." His voice was confident as he thought for a moment, and then rejected, that he was in danger of losing his control of the king. "All we have to do now is wait."
Aragorn's lip curled into a sneer and he fixed Davyn with an icy gaze. "But there you are wrong, Davyn. It is my CHOICE to spend time with Legolas. I CHOOSE to continue seeing her. And I CHOOSE this of my own free will. And for once, it is a choice that I feel I have rightly made." He smiled cruelly. "How else would I be able to break down the walls that she has built and make her accept what she has become? By the time that I have finished, there will be nothing in that body but a woman. Already she begins to act and think more and more like one with the passing days."
Davyn's response was cut off by the arrival of a page. The young boy panted as he bowed to the king. "Majesty, your presence is requested in the Chancellor's rooms." The boy looked up and smiled. "It's a miracle! They say he will recover from his illness!"
The king shot his mage a look, and then turned on his heel and left the stables. Davyn looked back at the horse. "I will be back for you", he promised Arod with an upraised finger. The horse snorted and lunged forward, teeth meeting air where there had been a hand but seconds before. His whinny of challenge mocked the mage as he followed his king.
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The light from the window hurt the back of Legolas' eyelids. It was the first time that specific part of his body had ever hurt, at least as far as he could remember. Opening his eyes only made the sensation change from pain to severe nausea. He closed his eyes again, choosing to hurt instead of vomit.
Rolling on his side, away from the light, seemed to help a little, but the movement made his stomach rebel even more. He froze, hoping that with the cessation of movement his stomach would return to his control, but it was not be. He tried to pull himself to the end of the bed so that he could be sick into the chamber pot, but knew that it was a hopeless quest.
It was with great relief that he felt someone hold a basin under his head and pull back his hair while he was explosively ill. A cool rag soon followed on his face and neck, and Valda murmured quietly into his ear, "I know not what you did, but I see what it has cost you. You have my eternal gratitude."
Eyes still closed, Legolas asked quietly, "Arnlaug?"
Valda's voice was painful in its joy. "He is recovering. The physicians say that he will be as he was before, if not better. Thank you."
It took all his strength to whisper "Good" before the room went dark and he fell back down into sleep.
It was morning when he woke again, and found himself wrapped in the creature's arms. He unconsciously stiffened and tried to move away but was held against the warm chest behind him. After a few moments he turned to look at the man that held him so tightly and was surprised to see the gray eyes regarding him with a light that he had not seen since he had arrived in Minas Tirith.
"You should be more careful, little one. You now have more than yourself to think of, and I don't know how well I can protect you from him… or myself." There was a small pause. "I am sorry." The voice was quiet, barely more than an exhalation of air past his lips. One of the large hands drifted to lie over the elf's flat stomach and rub gently.
Legolas felt his eyes grow wide and he stuttered in shock. "H- how?"
Aragorn smiled slightly. "Sometimes when he sleeps too deeply I feel his grip loosen. It is never for long, but sometimes it is enough for a moment or two."
"How do I break this spell on you? How do I win your freedom?" The words came out in a rush. The eyes were already clouding, but regained their focus for a moment.
"Everything is a choice, Legolas. Everything. If I choose to be free of him, I can be. But I must be given proper thing to choose over him."
"But what is that?" He knew, however, that the question fell on deaf ears, for the eyes had gone cold and hard, and the gentle look on the face had turned to a cruel and icy smile, and the grip on his body turned lustful and possessive.
After the creature had left him that morning, Legolas rose and walked to the mirror and looked within.
The woman with was tired, with dark circles under her haunted blue eyes. Her shoulders were slumped in seeming defeat.
The touched fingers in the glass and he spoke to her. "Do not give up hope yet. We know more than we did before, and we have regained a powerful ally."
She seemed to straighten in front of him, and smiled in response to his own tightly stretched smile. Then her face paled, and together they ran to the chamber pot to be noisily sick.
It was to this scene that Valda walked in, carrying a tray with a teapot and a small plate of toasted crackers.
She set the tray onto the table and then knelt by the retching elf, gently holding the long hair out of the way. When the spasms had finally settled, the Countess covered over the pot, and then helped Legolas to a seat, and poured a cup of the fragrant tea.
"This is Vandal Root tea. It will help calm your stomach." She pressed the warm cup between the bloodless fingers, and Legolas nodded gratefully as he sipped.
"How did you know?" He finally was able to ask after holding back another wave of nausea.
Valda smiled gently. "Every pregnant woman in Gondor drinks Vandal Root tea. It is not only good for the mother; it is good for the child as well. In small amounts it settles the stomach, and encourages the appetite. In larger doses it helps you rest, and in a newly delivered mother it helps bring the milk in faster."
"No, Valda. I am not…" His words stuck in his throat as he remembered his encounter with Davyn.
"No, Legolas, you yourself are not a woman. But you are in the body of one, and the body is pregnant." She reached over and gently poked Legolas in the breast, causing him to hiss and recoil in pain. "Yes. The body is definitely pregnant." She handed him a cracker. "Eat."
Legolas looked at the piece of food suspiciously, but then broke a small piece off of the corner and put it in his mouth, allowing it to melt slowly on his tongue before swallowing. As he repeated this process, Valda talked quietly. "Arnlaug will be on his feet before the end of the week, the physicians say. Whatever has affected him so has completely gone." She paused. "When he recovers, he has asked me to marry him. I have agreed to do so."
"I am happy for you both. You deserve to be joyful with each other." Legolas smiled sincerely. "I hope that I will not lose you here, though. I have great need of you both."
Valda nodded. "We will go nowhere. Our place is here."
It was with some surprise that Legolas realized he was sleepy. He was still slightly nauseated as well, but the tea and crackers had helped somewhat. "I need to talk to Arnlaug and Gilby. And to anyone else that you think we may be able to have some influence with on the counsel, if they will listen to me. We have much to do."
Valda snorted delicately. "Of course they will listen to you. You have just become the most important person in Gondor. You bear the heir." The woman's smile softened at the elf's headshake of denial. "But we will not arrange things today. Today you will rest, and when you are feeling better, we will go for a walk in the gardens."
With gentle hands she took the cup from now loose fingers, and escorted the tired elf back to the bed. There was still time, and with Arnlaug restored to her, there was hope as well.