xx. No light, no light in your bright blue eyes/I never knew daylight could be so violent/A revelation in the light of day/tell me what you want me to say/And I'd do anything to make you stay/no light no light/tell me what you want me to say.

A month later

She frequently visited Bolg, clenching her hands together to keep from reaching for him as he so often did to her. She could tell the two orcs responsible for him did not like when she came, for it did nothing but distract him and made him more human than orc – something Azog had as gently as he could, told her would get him killed. It did not ease the ache in her heart, nor lessen the yearning her arms had to hold him close to her chest; and yet she did not reach for him, she did not tell the orcs that struck him mercilessly when he did something wrong to stop. And many a time Azog had caught sight of her as she walked back to the tent and he followed her to hold her as she cried; he could not understand this, a mother's love, and it put a strain between them.

"Why do you keep seeing him?" he asked her one day, wiping a tear from her cheek. "It does nothing but hurt you?"

She sniffed softly as she pushed her tears aside, finding it easier and easier to keep herself from feeling when bouts of emotion overcame her. "He is my son, how can I not?"

Azog sighed as he stared at her, resting his forehead against hers as he breathed in tune with the rise and fall of her chest. And that settled it; Calla was his mother, so no matter how it pained her to see her son mistreated she continued to visit, seeing the slight brightening of Bolg's eyes when he saw her. As soon as he could walk they began training him, placing a small weapon in his hand and sparring roughly; striking him with the hilts of their weapons til he screamed, and Bolg quickly learned how to not only hold his weapon but also how to use it. Calla would wince when they hit him, hearing his small whimpers which silenced with time, her heart breaking when he screamed as he bled.

But she did nothing. Only one time she had stepped forward in defense of her son and the first orc turned on her with his weapon raised threateningly, and she knew all too clear they would hurt her before they stopped. Upon seeing the orc aiming his crude jagged sword at his mother, Bolg had ceased crying and picked up his small weapon and hit the orc on the leg. In a blinding rage the orc turned on Bolg and raised his sword and brought it down, a large white hand grabbed his arms and shoved him backward.

"You will never raise a weapon to her," Azog roared, kicking the orc hard in stomach and flinging him in the air. He stared heaving at the orc's terrified eyes before turning to the other, "continue training him," he ordered before grabbing Calla's arm and pulling her after him.

She landed hard on her side with a gasp as he threw her into the tent and she looked at his infuriated gaze.

He had felt a flash of fear at seeing a sword aimed at her chest, and that fear had ignited a terrible anger in him; and in the face of fury all sense left him. "No place do you have trying to tell them what to do," he yelled. "You are a human, you could never understand our ways."

She stared at him with wide hurt eyes, he hadn't yelled at her like this in over two years when she had first refused him to lie with her. The problem was not that she did't understand why he was angry, it was that they believed different things when it came to their son. "They were hurting him," she told him much softer, "aimlessly." She looked at him waiting for him to sigh and tell her he knew, that he would speak with the two orcs – like he always did – but he did not this time. Instead he looked at her waiting for her to say something else, as though that weren't enough. "Do you not care?" she asked him baffled.

His own eyes widened as he stared at her incredulously. "No," he cried simply as though it were obvious. "We are orcs, we do not care." He did not understand the mistake of those words in that moment, nor would he hours later or even days later; not even faced with her hurt eyes looking at him as though he'd struck her.

"You care for me," she said knowing he did, and knowing he knew it too.

And he did know it, but in the face of his rage it did not matter; and he said the words he would never cease regretting. "Maybe that was a mistake." He knew the moment the words left his mouth they were wrong, that he hadn't meant them for he did care for her. But he was an orc, and not only that, he was a man and he was stubborn and prideful; and so when tears filled her eyes he did not apologize, he did not reach for her, he gave her a hard look before turning on his heel and leaving her.

She covered her mouth with her hand when she started crying, and when she heard Daisy yelp knowing Azog had picked her up refusing to let her have comfort, it only made her cry more. Everything, she had given up everything for him; her maidenhood, her morals, her heart, even her son; and he called it a mistake. She had killed a man for him, had stabbed a sword through the heart of her freedom because she loved him – it couldn't be a mistake. But he did not come to her that night, and he did not come the next morning either; and with a heavy heart filled with longing and torn apart by pain she put on her cleanest dress and stepped out of the tent to see Daisy tied to a post so she couldn't go to her.

It is possible it hadn't crossed Calla's mind before then, but seeing that Azog had deliberately kept anything that might bring her ease far away had one thought going through her mind – I can do this no longer. And with that thought in her mind she went to where the orcs had her son and upon their severe glares she bent down and kissed his cheek, telling him she loved him. And then she left.

Azog knew the moment he saw her walking past Yazneg as she made for the trees she was planning to leave, and a brief moment of panic overcame him for he realized he had made a grave error the night previous. In that moment, that small insignificant moment, he realized as not only a human but a mother she was far more attune to her emotions than she ever had been and she could not be held responsible for her need to protect her young – it did not make her human, it made her a mother. Wargs displayed this trait as well, but Azog had deemed it due to her being human and therefore she had no right to her son. And he realized then he had driven her away. His revelation lasted but a moment and it faded with watching her leave him, and then hurt and betrayal set in and gave way to anger.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked, surprising her as she turned around to look at him.

She hadn't thought he'd follow her, she had almost thought he would let her leave just to prove he did not care for her. And so beyond all sense she allowed herself to hope, only for it to be crushed when she looked at his hard mistrusting eyes. "I will go southwest and take the main road to a village," she told him, surprising him with her knowing how to leave.

His eyes narrowed and he stepped closer and lowered his face to hers. "You are a fool to think you can just leave," he told her dangerously, hiding every ounce of caring and wanting her to stay behind his cold eyes.

She no longer knew what to believe, whether he had actually felt anything for her if he had only wanted to; and it hurt her more than she dared show for it would have made him smile cruelly. "What was this?" she asked of him, her own eyes turning hard as her heart believed his lie of not caring for her. "Did you wake up one day and decide you wanted a pet, is that all I was?" she demanded, her own anger and hurt and betrayal turning to hysterics. "Why did you keep me, why didn't you just rape me and do away with me like all the others?" Her voice became almost shrill and it left him staring down at her realizing he had taken his own frustrations too far – he only wanted her to stop mourning her son, who was well and good and on his way to becoming a warrior, but he had led her to not knowing his own feelings; and in all truth, he was worried. "What made me different? Was I just a really good fuck?"

"Enough," he cried silencing her, and he reached for her to grab her arm only for her shove him away.

"You can have your son," she said, her voice deeper with the threat of tears. "You can make him into the monster you want him to be, make him exactly like you. And you can have Daisy, now that she's had her pups you can ride her. But if all I was was a woman for you to lay with," her eyes glistened with the tears she would not cry, "then you cannot have me." Her chest was numb, as though it had been torn open and everything inside she had just laid in his hands, and she swallowed the lump in her throat as she stared him down.

His blackened heart kept him from doing what he knew he should, kept him from falling to his knees and swearing he had only ever loved her; and it kept him from becoming anything but infuriated. "Then go," he said cruelly, no challenge in his voice and no dare in his eye, only finality.

And so she did. And he stood watching her as she walked away, knowing she would come back. Even after he returned to the camp and minutes turned to hours he knew she would return. When day turned to night he sat waiting for her to walk into the tent and lay beside him, to tell him she knew he cared. When dawn rose and he lived through another day he knew she couldn't possibly not return, knew that no matter what he said she wouldn't leave him because she loved him. But she did not return. When the sun set and he laid awake another sleepless night and the sun broke over the horizon for another day; she did not return.

song is No light No light by Florence and the Machine

I'm going to start off by saying I had not planned for this chapter to go the way it did. I got to the part where the orc turned on her and held his sword to her and then I had the thought that was like, hey why doesn't she leave; and it kind of seemed natural. Cause Calla as a mother isn't okay with watching her son be hurt, and Azog is frustrated cause he wants her to stop being hurt by it; it's just how orcs are, it's how he was raised. So what's unnatural for her is completely normal - and expect - for him. And they butt heads over it, and Azog being an orc doesn't really know how to not fight her and so he drives her away. And Calla is now devestated cause Azog's done a pretty damn good job of making it seem like he feels nothing for her, and so she doesn't know what to think anymore. But next chapter will show just how much she's lost while being with Azog, and I'm kind of excited for it and I hope you guys aren't too mad the direction's changed drastically.