Black Eyes

Chapter Fourteen: Devil May Cry

by Capella

A/N: Well, here it is, at long last.I'm terribly sorry it took so long. Life and a ferocious writer's block and the World Series took their toll. Plus, I took my time on it because I wanted it to be worth the (admittedly ridiculously long) wait. Hope it's up to par.

Review, review, review. I am like the Andromeda strain, only instead of alkaline killing me, I die when I have no reviews. Honestly. Uh, sorry if I ruined that movie for any of you who are presently watching it.
Oh, and thank you so much to those of you who were not complete asses during my little crisis. Barfing, that ass comment was directed towards you. Finally, the name reflects the person inside.
P.S. I have no concept of time. Do not bother pointing out time-related inaccuracies.

"And then you came back, you, the angel of destruction - just as I felt sure. In a moment, at your touch, there is nothing but ruin. O God, what have I done? The python. The octopus. Must I become after all what you would make me?"

- T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party, Act One

They were saddling up the horses with supplies for a long journey -- mostly lembas, which Draco had to settle for, and clothing -- when Rumil found them. He looked tired -- there were deep, dark circles beneath his blue eyes, and his shoulders slumped in a way that Draco had never seen an elf's do -- but his jaw was set with determination. He was leading a horse, a sweet little gray mare, already loaded with Rumil's own supplies. Draco eyed him critically as he walked up.

"I want to go with you." Rumil's eyes were hard and unyielding. He looked ready to do violence. Draco didn't really care.

"I don't really care," Draco informed him, grunting as he clinched the saddle underneath the horse's stomach like Thranduil had showed him. She whickered gently, as if sensing his agitation. "I don't need another elf on this trip." He didn't look at Rumil as he spoke.

"My brother is out there. My -- my brother's fiancee is out there. And you are going to the Gray Havens." Rumil stroked the neck of Draco's horse, and his own horse whinnyed jealously and nudged his arm. "I am coming with you."

Draco sighed and straightened. "No, you're not. I'll have an easier time of it if we have only two people along."

A hand grabbed his shoulder, hard, and he yelped, and Rumil spun him around so that he was staring into hard, angry blue eyes; Rumil's other hand came up to grip his bicep so hard that Draco could imagine the bruises forming.

He glared up at Rumil and twisted, but Rumil held on, staring steadily at Draco. "You are not the only one who is worried," he said calmly. "I am worried as well --"

"Who gives a fuck," Draco snarled and attempted to knee Rumil in the groin. Rumil twisted out of the way and let go of Draco's shoulder, only to drive his fist into Draco's shortribs a second later. Draco doubled over, gasping for breath.

"You cannot stop me from coming. If you do, I will beat you near to death and then tie you to your horse, and go anyway. However, I would prefer it if you did not put up this fuss. Are we clear?"

Still gasping, Draco looked over at Thranduil and raised an eyebrow. There was a little smile playing around the corners of Thranduil's mouth. He said nothing,

After a few moments, Draco regained his lost breath. "Fine," he growled and climbed onto his horse a little unsteadily, glaring at Rumil as the elf swung up effortlessly. "But we leave now. And we ride hard. I don't care if I have to break these horses' legs to get to the Gray Havens before Haldir does."

He could feel the elf grinning at him, and he stoically stared ahead, wondering why it hurt to look into those eyes, so much like Haldir's own.

Harry did not touch Legolas again for a long, long time.

Legolas stayed, sitting, on the starboard side of the boat during the day, resting his back on the planks of the boat's side and staring blatantly at Harry, who either did not notice or did not care. Harry remained always at the prow staring out over the water, sometimes looking up at the sky, never taking notice of the spray soaking his clothes and hair. His eyes were always green.

During the night, they occupied the one cabin in silence. Legolas voluntarily slept on the floor, while Harry laid awake in the one bed. Legolas was often awakened when Harry would go back out onto the deck in the middle of the night; Legolas assumed that he went back to the prow where he always stood. He never followed Harry, even after his bruises healed. The finger-shaped bruises on his hips were the last to fade.

It was on one such day, sitting and staring almost entranced by the way Harry's hair whipped back from his face, that Legolas found himself numbly wondering why exactly he had not killed Harry yet.

In all honesty, in his present healed state he was stronger than Harry was -- it would have been easy, so easy, to sneak up behind Harry and push him over the side. He realized that he could probably watch Harry drown with only a modicum of regret.

But if while in his attempt, Harry turned and looked at him -- it was always the eyes that stopped Legolas -- he knew he would fail; always, on their trip to the Gray Havens with his repeated attempts to escape, Harry's eyes would somehow stop him. It wasn't so much that he was frightened but that they reminded him of when life was not this way, when Harry was -- normal.

Harry turned and looked at him, smiling slightly as if he knew what Legolas was thinking, and Legolas felt a little chill run down his spine. Then Harry turned back, and the moment was lost.

Legolas used his days to think. He had never really had this sort of free time; he had always been hunting orcs, in his father's court, helping patrol Dol Guldur, traveling with the Fellowship -- his mind was kept so occupied by his activities that he never had time to just reflect.

Now, he had time.

He devoted most of his time to replaying back the moments of the past few weeks with Harry over and over, trying to figure out exactly where it had gone wrong and what had happened. He supposed his first warning sign should have been when Harry had gone blind. He'd seemed weaker as well during that period, which Legolas had simply chalked up to his new condition, but perhaps he had been wrong. And maybe -- he had been pale; he had looked like some of the humans Legolas had seen fighting off sickness or weariness.

Suddenly a memory popped into his mind. When they had first arrived back at Minas Tirith, Harry had acted -- strange, shaking and falling. He tried to remember what Harry had said.

"I could see..."

His eyes had been green.

And then Harry had gone insane with Aragorn and Gandalf, and had his eyes been green then? Legolas couldn't seem to remember.

What was it about Harry's eyes? Why were they green now instead of the pale milky-white color of blindness, and why could he see? Why were they green when he acted like -- like he was now?

"You're thinking too hard, Legolas."

Legolas glanced up to see Harry looking down at him, radiating a faintly amused air. There was something in his eyes -- his green eyes -- that Legolas did not like.

"How do you know I was at all?" It came out a bit more passive than Legolas would have liked. Harry smirked a little.

"I suppose I don't," he said, still sounding amused, and turned back to look at the sea.

Legolas leaned his head back against the wood of the ship and started thinking again.

Draco climbed off his mare, petting her sweaty, heaving sides absently. There was froth on her mouth, and her eyes were slightly wild. Neither Rumil's nor Thranduil's horses looked much better.

He glanced at Rumil, who was bent over the ground, carefully studying the ground. The wind blew Draco's hair into his face, and he spit it out with an annoyed sigh.

"You're sure he came this way?"

Rumil gave him a withering glare. "I was not a guard of Lothlorien for nothing. Yes, my brother passed by here on his way to the Gray Havens. I do not doubt that he might near there already. We are a half a day behind." Rumil spoke slowly now, studying the ground harder as if it might tell him precious secrets. "He is moving slowly because of his illness; he pushes his horse hard but stops often to rest. He must be quite injured if he stops so often. I have never seen him rest while injured."

"He is worried," Draco said softly, staring at the ground that Rumil was bent over. "He must be concerned for his fiancee."

"You are a fool if you believe that," Rumil snapped. "He cares for her and worries for her safety, yes. But if you believe he goes out of some romantic notion, than you are more a fool than I thought. He has other concerns than her. He and Legolas known each other many years." Rumil's mouth quirked up in a smile. "He always has had a strange heroic bent as well that I have not seemed to inherit." Rumil paused for a moment, and then looked up seriously at Draco. "And you are Harry's friend."

Draco could not think of anything to say in reply. Rumil did not seem to notice.

"Perhaps we can catch him. We are a day and a half from the Gray Havens," Rumil said quietly. "I wonder what we will find there."

Nothing Rumil told him could have prepared Draco for what they saw.

"There's...no one here."

Draco was too stunned to reply. He had expected activity -- elves coming to travel on the boats, sentries, children playing -- but standing at the gates of the Gray Havens was like standing at the entrance to a ghost town. No noise, no elves, no anything.

"There is something wrong," Thranduil said softly.

"Of course there is," Rumil snapped. "No one is here."

"Something other than that." Thranduil glanced around him with an air of faint unease. "Can you not feel it?"

A soft breeze blew Draco's hair into his face, and he felt a little chill go down his spine; he tried to tell himself it was just Thranduil and Rumil's paranoia affecting him, making the tiny hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He rubbed his arms briskly.

"Did they all leave?" he said mostly to himself, and wondered, silently, why none of them had stepped inside the town yet.

"I do not know." Rumil seemed to be gathering himself to enter. "We must split and search the village. Meet back here. If any of us finds something urgent, let out a cry." With that, he marched straight into the village without looking back. Draco cast an uneasy glance around them and followed him less surely.

He watched Rumil and Thranduil disappear up the street, obviously leaving the front section of the village to him. The wind blew a shutter from a nearby house closed and he jumped so badly that he nearly fell over, his heart thudding in his chest.

"Jesus," he said, feeling a bit embarrassed. He approached the first house with a fair bit of trepidation, finding himself shaking in reaction to something he had not yet seen as he reached his hand for the doorknob.

He opened the door, and a pair of crystal-blue eyes stared lifelessly up at him from the floor.

An elf lay on the floor, her neck twisted almost all the way around, the throat slit wide open. Her hair lay soaked in the puddle of blood created by her wound. Draco felt his stomach heave and tried scream for the others but found he had no voice, the sound created by his attempt a low, choked moan. Nothing he had seen his father do had prepared him for this.

A small child lay next to the woman-elf, staring up at the ceiling, but apparently with no wounds that Draco could see. Draco knew, right then, what had caused that little elf-child's death. He wondered from the peaceful look in the dead child's eyes if she had not seen the green light coming.

"Harry, you bastard," he said softly. There was no reply.

He wandered aimlessly from house to house, knowing somehow even in the silence that Thranduil and Rumil were finding the same scenes he was, time and again -- men, women, children dead; the older elves all murdered brutally, the children never with a mark on their bodies. Draco found one elf staring up with big brown eyes at the ceiling in shock, his hands still on his stomach, apparently to keep a loop of intestines in his body, and Draco bent over where he was and vomited noisily and messily onto the floor.

Draco was standing up, wiping his mouth, when he heard a long, anguished wail, more like an animal in pain than anything else. He backed out of the house, his eyes glued on the elves until Draco could no longer see him.

He followed the dying cries until he found the source -- Rumil, hunched over a body in what appeared to be some sort of gathering-square. The body wore a dress.

Thranduil was already there, standing off to one side, murmuring something in his own elvish language.

"She is gone," Rumil whispered, so softly that Draco could barely hear. He lifted the figure's head and pressed it to his chest tightly, stroking the woman's long black hair while her blood soaked his shirt and trousers. "Too late. We were too late."

"Rumil --" Draco started, and then stopped, unsure of how to comfort or help, not sure whether Rumil wanted either.

"I loved her," Rumil said, brushing the side of Thaliephel's face with the back of his hand, tracing the curve of her mouth with a finger. "I wanted to marry her. I never told her." He looked down at her blankly.

"Leave him," Thranduil said quietly, and Draco looked at him, questioning. Thranduil glanced down at Rumil and then back at Draco, his blue eyes clear and shining with something that Draco suspected might be tears. "There is nothing we can do for him, or for her. We must go on. There are ships in the harbour we can take, and I have a feeling that Manwe will favor us with strong winds and Ulmo with calm waters."

He turned without another word and left, leaving Draco alone with Rumil, who was still silently staring down, stroking Thaliephel's face and hair, smoothing her dress, blood staining his hands and coat.

Draco left Rumil after a few moments to follow Thranduil to the boat, thinking all the while of the bodies he had found and the one who was responsible.

As each day passed, Legolas could sense the excitement radiating from Harry growing; as each length of ocean passed behind them with no troubles, Harry grew more pensive, almost never leaving the bow of the ship, barely eating. He did not seem to need either food nor sleep. His eyes were so bright a green that they almost hurt to look into, like the glare of light reflecting off of metal.

And with each passing day, Legolas grew a bit more desperate to find a way to keep Harry from reaching his goal -- whatever that was.

Legolas lost count of the days. He occupied himself by thinking of his father, his brothers, Rumil, Haldir. Thinking of Harry helped not at all.

Then one day he knew that something was different. The waters were clearer, an amazing turquoise color that exposed all of the beautiful fish swimming, unworriedly, alongside the boat. The air was fragrant, the sky a magnificent blue.

Legolas felt his heart pounding in his chest when he saw Harry gripping the side of the ship, his knuckles white and bleeding from the fierceness of Harry's grip.

His mind raced as he tried to think of something that would distract Harry and maybe allow him to take control of the boat. He knew there was rope in the cabin. Perhaps if he just lunged -- knocked Harry's head against the side of the boat, ran downstairs, tied his hands, waited until they reached the Long Isle --

Allowing no time for thought, Legolas shifted silently until he was in a crouch. As he lunged, he noticed belatedly that Harry's grip on the ship had relaxed, and not until Harry spun around and grabbed him by the throat and gathered Legolas's wrists in his other hands did Legolas realize his mistake.

"I can't believe you would try this again, Legolas," Harry said in an unpleasant, threatening tone, squeezing Legolas's throat until Legolas felt his eyes water. The punch that Legolas threw at Harry's midsection was halfhearted through his lack of air and Harry avoided it easily. "You could have easily beaten me four weeks ago, but now?" Harry smirked. "You haven't eaten in days. I suppose you haven't noticed. You're weak, Legolas."

Without warning, he slammed Legolas's head on the side of the ship. Legolas moaned and slumped to the floor, his vision going gray. He heard footsteps walking away but could not make himself care through the throbbing in his skull, and only when he felt the hands gathering his own and tying them together in front of his body did he realize what had happened.

The feeling of a knot being pulled tight and coarse rope on his wrists brought him back to consciousness.

He opened his eyes to Harry smirking down at him. He was yanked unceremoniously up by the hair.

Legolas started to speak, but something gleaming in the distance caught his eye.

His eyes widened involuntarily. Harry twisted his head enough to see.

He could see the shores of the Long Isle. Harry was still gripping his throat but had let go of his wrists in shock, and he too was looking at the almost glowing-white land in front of them, a fevered look in his eyes. For some reason, it put a desperate panic into his heart, and almost without thinking he reached for Harry's waist and grabbed the knife that hung there with both hands, pulling it from the sheath before Harry could react and slashing it across Harry's face.

Harry let go of his throat and staggered back, a hand going to his face. He hissed in pain, and blood streamed down his neck from a cut deeper than Legolas had thought at first, slanting delicately from the bottom left of Harry's cheek and nearly up to his eye. Harry lifted his hand away from the slash, staring at the blood that trickled down his palm.

"I should kill you for that," Harry hissed, ignoring the steady stream of blood, and grabbing Legolas by the hair. He yanked Legolas up, not tall enough to bring them both to eye level, but he seemed content enough to stare down at Legolas in a dangerous rage. There was blood on his lips, and he licked it away with an expression of distaste. Legolas saw the death go out of his eyes.

"You have gained my passage to Valinor," Harry said after a moment as if thinking out loud to himself, "but I have not yet traveled across the land. I could still be prevented from reaching my goal."

"What goal is that?" Legolas asked softly. Harry looked almost startled, but because of the question or the answer, Legolas did not know.

"You will find out later. If I let you live." The tone was cold, but he seemed slightly off-balance. He seemed to have forgotten about his cheek for a moment.

"That is going to scar."

"Are you trying to provoke me into killing you?" Harry stared down at him, but strangely enough, there was the hint of a smile around the corners of his lips. Legolas had not seen him truly smile in what seemed like an age.

His eyes flickered, and Harry staggered for a moment, his hands going to his face. When he took his hands away, his face was contorted in desperation and his hands were stained from the blood on his cheek.

"Harry," Legolas said quietly, realizing how off-balance Harry was, that whatever was making him act so strangely had loosened its hold for a second. "Please, untie me. Please."

Harry stared straight through him with milky-white eyes, and then he rubbed at his eyes with his fingers desperately, almost too hard, as if he wished to crush them into his skull. Despite himself, Legolas was beginning to worry about the cut on Harry's cheek -- he had not meant it to be so deep; and Harry's face was beginning to go deathly pale, but whether from blood loss or something else, Legolas was not sure.

"Please," Legolas said again, and held out his wrists; Harry stared straight through him with those odd milky-white eyes, so different from the green they had been only a few moments before, and Legolas let his hands down slowly, realizing that Harry could not see them.

Then Harry seemed to whisper something to himself and shake his head; he blinked, and his eyes were again their usual startling green.

He smiled at Legolas slowly.

"Nice try," he said softly. He approached Legolas, who stared at him in distrust, almost flinching when Harry's hand came up to stroke his cheek. "You'll have to do better than that, love."

He put both hands on each of Legolas's shoulders and pushed, and Legolas fell to the floor where he sat without a word, staring up at Harry in shock.

It had not worked. And now, they had reached Valinor.

A/N: Abso-frickin-lutely took me FOREVER. So so so so sorry.
Please review and let me know that you don't all hate me.

But...Presidential Election time!