In which Thranduil and Lorna properly meet, and neither enjoys it much. Note: Thranduil witnesses Lorna's mind-rape in this chapter. While it's not terribly explicit, it could be triggering, and it's followed by some fairly graphic violence when she gets her revenge.
I lost the better part of this fucking chapter the first go-round. I really ought to just stick to writing it all out longhand first, because God did that piss me off. I spent far too long yelling at my laptop and scaring my cat.
Well. Thranduil certainly hadn't expected that.
If he had been Edain, the woman might well have broken his nose, she hit him that hard, sending white-hot pain jagging through what felt like every nerve in his face. Then, of course, she fell right off the edge of the bed, half-stunned and probably concussed.
Tauriel helped her up, trying to calm her, but the little woman was having none of it – she was babbling in her own language, giving Thranduil a look that was equal parts hostile and terrified, coughing all the while. He glared right back, gingerly touching his nose; at least she hadn't hit hard enough to make him bleed.
His irritation morphed into deep discomfort when Tauriel's words shifted into that alien tongue – not with ease, no, but that she could speak it at all, after so little time, was beyond disturbing.
That of all things seemed to soothe the woman, whose wide eyes flicked form him to Tauriel, even as she coughed all the harder, her gaunt frame wracked with them. This was the creature who was such a danger to so many of his people? Looking at her, he felt rather cheated. Surely someone capable of being such a peril to the Eldar should be remarkable in some way. Oh, her eyes were unsettling, but beyond that, he would not have spared her a second glance.
"Stay out of my mind," she said, looking back at him. Her voice was so hoarse, her accent so heavy that the words were almost incomprehensible, but they were most definitely Sindarin.
"I will not harm you," he said, though honestly, the ugly, petty side of him rather wanted to. That he still possessed that side irked him, but even at his age, he had yet to let it go. "You are making my people ill."
She shut her eyes. "I know," she said. "But there are too many'v you in my head already." Scrubbing a hand across her face, she looked back up at him. "Does it hurt?"
"It will not," he said, trying to summon gentleness and largely failing. "No more so than it does already."
Her hands – such tiny hands – shoved her tangled hair out of her face. "No," she said, "does it hurt? That?" To his utter horror, she pointed at the left side of his face.
Thranduil froze. The glamour was firmly in place, so firmly that none save perhaps Lady Galadriel should be able to see through it. There were few left in Middle-Earth who knew about the wound, and not even the healers who had come to Dale were among them. "Tauriel, Menelwen – go," he ordered.
"My lord, I don't know how wise that would be," Tauriel said warily. It was rare that she directly challenged him anymore, but in this case, he really couldn't blame her. While this bedraggled creature would have a difficult time harming him, she had no compelling reason not to attack him again.
"Go," he repeated. "I will not hurt her, and she cannot hurt me."
Go they did, with rather blatant trepidation. Surprisingly, the tiny woman didn't throw a fit over it – she was too busy looking at his face, her fever-glazed eyes bright with curiosity. While it was something of a blessing that she wasn't completely revolted by what she saw, the fact that she could see it at all both maddened and unnerved him.
"Does it hurt?" she repeated, and coughed again before turning aside to spit in a china mug. What she brought up was, he noted with distaste, tinted red.
"No," he said, and didn't try to touch her when she hauled herself back up onto her bed. "No, that ceased long ago. What are you, Ettelëa?"
"Ettelëa. Stranger. Fits, I guess," she said, with a grim smile. Unsettlingly, her teeth were smeared red. "I don't know anymore. I just want them all out'v my head."
Thranduil arched an eyebrow at her. "I cannot accomplish that if you attack me again," he chided. How her mind had not collapsed under the strain of invading Eldar thoughts, he didn't know, but he wanted to find out. Edain were simply not meant to have any ability of the mind, and yet she very obviously did. He couldn't dismiss it as anything else.
"You scared me," she said, unrepentant. "You look too much like him. Your eyes do, I mean. What he did…too many'v you bastards've seen already." Her words were a churning mix of Sindarin and her own tongue, but he thought he understood anyway. She curled in on herself, hugging her knees, a thunderstorm brewing in her unnerving eyes. Pushing her, he was certain, would not be wise – not if he actually wanted to accomplish anything without knocking her unconscious.
"I need not pry," he assured her. "I must only construct you a shield."
Her eyes narrowed. "You'll pry anyway," she said, and coughed. "You want to know too much. You'll get in, and you'll dig."
If it wasn't impossible, he'd swear she was reading his mind. "And how would you know that?" he asked, rising and drawing over one of the armchairs.
"Because your eyes are just like his," she said, resting her chin on her knees. Her hair fell around her like a shroud of silver-threaded darkness, smelling faintly like lavender in spite of how dirty and tangled it was. "He wants to know, too. We're animals to him – and I'm an animal to you."
Loath though he was to admit it, she was perilously close to being right. The battle five years ago, and the subsequent rebuilding of Dale, had taught him to attach some value to the lives of mortals – but, really, only to those of Dale. These Edain were his neighbors, people with whom he allied and traded. This tiny woman was nobody, attached to no one he had cause to care about, who, even if she survived this illness, would be dead all too soon anyway.
"That you are mortal does not make you an animal," he said. "I have no want nor need to hurt you, Ettelëa. That you have imperiled my people is not your fault." Which was not precisely true; she had, after all, brought this pestilence with her, though even he had to concede she had not done it of malice aforethought.
"Lorna," she said, coughing. "My name is Lorna, and you'll dig anyway. You do what you need to do, your kingliness, but you're not going to like what you find."
Her complete lack of faith in his integrity was really quite insulting. "This will be easier on you if you lie still," he said, not bothering to challenge her assertion.
"That's what she said," Lorna muttered, an expression he did not understand. Lay she did, however, and flinched a little when he laid a hand on her face. Edain were warmer than Eldar, but her skin positively burned beneath his fingertips.
He had no intention of dipping into her mind, but he had little choice: no sooner had he touched it than it assaulted him with shocking force. There was no order to it, and he suspected it wasn't conscious; thanks to all the other invading thoughts, her mind was freewheeling. Memories and thoughts hit him at random – memories of things he had never before seen or imagined.
"Welcome to the circus," Lorna muttered, wrenching the door shut. Now that she wasn't running, she was chilled through, her temper growing fouler by the second. "Come on, come on."
The engine coughed again, and roared to life when she floored the accelerator. Even yet she hadn't quite got the hang of American cars - from her perspective, everything was on the wrong side - and she fumbled with the gearshift before she got it into reverse. The tires, nearly bald, squealed and slipped on the wet pavement, sending the entire bus lurching to the right.
"You actually drive this thing?" her companion asked, gripping the dashboard.
"More or less. Live in it, too." She winced as the undercarriage scraped the curb. "What are you doing?"
He was, in fact, rifling through the pockets of his huge overcoat. "Grabbed this off one of the goons," he replied, pulling out a handgun. "Not much, but it's loaded."
Lorna snorted in disbelief. "When did you manage that? And just what is it with you Americans and guns?"
He did something that made the gun go click. "I'll give you the lecture later. Will this thing actually make it up this hill?"
"Oi, no insulting my ride." She leaned forward to wipe the condensation off the windshield, but all she did was smear it around. The ancient windshield wipers didn't do her any favors, either.
A stray thought hit her brain - not words, but an image. Somebody was very nearby, and they were looking right at her bus.
- there you are –
"Oh, shite." A fresh burst of adrenaline filled her veins as she stomped the gas again. The engine protested when she slammed it straight into fourth gear, pealing up the hill with another screech of tires. "Is that thing loaded? 'Cause I think we might need it in a minute."
"Well, fuck." The window squeaked as he rolled it down, and rain immediately blasted in.
"Where?"
"Don't know. Close, somewhere ahead'v us on the left." Lorna's heart was in her throat again, anger joining the adrenaline in a red-hot wave.
"Head right at the stop sign. If we can reach the freeway, we're golden."
Yeah, if, she thought. The intersection was momentarily empty, and she prayed she wouldn't hit anyone who might be approaching.
The bus shuddered again when she turned hard right, and for a second she was afraid it would tip over. What was that bloody game her nephew played - Grand Theft Auto? It was a lot less fun in reality.
There weren't any cars, but there was, at the next intersection, a police barricade. She had no space to pull a U-turn, even if she thought the bus could handle it. The thing looked unmanned, so she kept the accelerator floored.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
"Hang on."
"To what? My own ass?"
Lorna didn't answer, because there was no answer to be given. The wooden barrier splintered apart when she hit it - whatever else might be said of her bus, it was sturdy as a tank - and she gave a triumphant laugh. "Pog mo thoíne, jacknob. Shut the bloody window, will you? I think you can put the gun away."
"What does that mean?" he asked, struggling with the window. The icy blast of rain couldn't be helping his grip.
"'Kiss my ass'." It was amazing, really, what you could get away with saying in America; she'd yet to find a single person who spoke a word of Irish. More than once in her panhandling, she'd sung songs made up entirely of curses, and nobody knew the difference.
- ran the damn barrier. Are they even worth it –
"Oh, come on," she growled. "They just don't quit, do they?"
She didn't get to finish the sentence. The front tires blew with a sound like an explosion, a deep, echoing boom far louder than it ought to be. The bus pitched forward, back tires actually lifting off the pavement, and Lorna's stomach lurched with it.
The steering wheel refused to respond - the bus careened wildly, spinning what felt like a hundred and eighty degrees. Lorna barely had time to recognize the second crash, and less time to register pain, before she flew at the windshield and everything went black.
Thranduil twitched, even as he summoned the will to form her shield. Her powers of recall were not so keen as an Elda's, but they were still shockingly acute, so much so that the phantom pain of her crash tore through him.
The memories fragmented again, pelting him at random while he worked. A frigid wasteland; running; flying machines; choking gas, and then another, horrifying in its clarity –
Lorna's return to consciousness was wholly unwilling, her head pounding with every beat of her heart. Her lungs were on fire, her every muscle one giant ache.
She was lying on some kind of gurney, her wrists shackled to the metal railings, and the realization made her heart plummet. "Oh, focáil an uile rud," she swore, her voice little more than a rasp.
"Don't bother, Donovan." It was Von Ratched's voice, and the sound of it made her heart plummet yet further. It was deceptively calm, almost mild, and that was more terrifying than overt anger could ever be. "You're not going anywhere this time."
"Focáil tú sa chluas," she growled, blinking hard. Her eyes stung horribly, her vision blurred as they watered freely. She heard Von Ratched rise, his footfalls all but silent as he approached.
"I admit, I am at something of a loss as to what to do with you, Donovan. You cost me two pilots, hours of wasted time, and a decent portion of my Institute. Tell me why I should not just kill you."
Her eyes focused a little more, glaring at him even through her weariness. "Go ahead," she whispered. It sounded like she was speaking through a throat full of sand.
He leaned over her, one hand on either of the gurney's rails. "You really mean that, don't you?" he asked, visibly intrigued. "You truly would not mind if I killed you."
She shook her head, still glaring. "At this point? No."
He straightened, pacing the room. "I could always kill Ratiri," he said, "or Katje. I suspect, however, that would only cement your stubbornness. I believe you would see them as martyrs, and fight me all the harder. Torturing them would likewise only enrage you."
She tried to follow his progress, but barely managed to turn her head as he went to a drawer and took out the hairbrush. He moved like a fucking predator, this stupidly tall man with his unnaturally pale eyes, and she wanted nothing more than to rip his head off and shit down the hole. He drew his armchair around the head of the gurney and pulled the snarled mass of her hair over the edge, and went to work, careful not to pull or tug. "I think I have figured something out about you, Donovan," he said, almost conversationally. "You are proud of your ability to deal with injuries and violence, giving and receiving. You count it a sign of hard-won strength, and I must agree - it is. In any other situation I would admire it, and in a sense I must even now, however counter it runs to my purposes."
She was tilting her head, trying to look at him, and he sighed, leaning over her so he could meet her eyes. "There are worse things than pain, Donovan," he said quietly. "Things in which you would take no pride. I do not want you to drive me to them, because even I have standards. And they would destroy you," he added, brushing her tangled bangs back from her forehead. Now, finally, she flinched, a kind of terror she'd never before known surging through her.
"I'm not going to rape you, Donovan," he said. "I certainly don't want to, but I would not need to. The things I could do to your mind would be so much worse."
She felt the blood drain from her face, and he sat again, going back to work on her hair. "I would find even those distasteful, though. Even monsters such as myself have limits, and that is mine. I have been called a sadist, but I do not fit the true definition of the term - I take no physical satisfaction in the pain I cause."
Horror crawled along her skin, but with it came rage, searing and welcome, pounding the terror into something she could actually deal with. She'd brought down the roof in the rec room; surely she could do that again here. It might well kill them both, but it was a risk she was more than willing to take.
"I did warn you, Donovan," he said, setting aside the brush and twining his hands in her hair.
"Don't you bloody dare." She lashed out, wildly, but she was weary down to her very bones, and what she summoned wasn't anywhere near enough.
"I am sorry you drove me to this, Donovan," he said, and he actually meant it.
She was sure he'd meant to hurt her with this, in spite of his words, and she was horribly surprised when he did exactly the opposite. Insidious pleasure, wholly unwelcome, shivered along her nerves, sparking into something that had her gritting her teeth against a moan. She held very, very still, trying to shove it away, to bury it beneath the heat of her wrath, but she was failing, and failing horribly.
"Stop it," she said, but the words were more gasp than growl.
"Only if you stop fighting me," he said, grave.
"You can't - you - you can't make -" Oh, she wished saying that would make it true, but even with Liam she'd never felt like this.
"Yes I can," he said, his fingers shifting in her hair. "I hope this is a lesson I will only have to teach you once."
Lorna shuddered, but it was still partly revulsion, the dissonance between the sensations he forced upon her body and the loathing in her mind almost more than she could bear. She snarled at him in Irish, a string of incoherent curses that trailed off into something visceral and wordless. Now she simply couldn't hold still, but she couldn't escape, either.
He didn't make her suffer long, at least. She bit her lip and somehow avoided crying out as he guided her senses over the edge, into a delirious flood of bliss. It left her boneless, and livid with hatred for him and for herself.
Lorna shut her eyes, refusing to look at anything as he guided her back down to normal. "I told you the truth, Donovan," he said, smoothing back her hair, "I did not want to do that, and I do not want to have to do it again."
To that she said nothing, nor did she move. They stayed like that a long while, he with his hand on her forehead, her with her eyes resolutely shut. She fought to gather her thoughts, her self, to process anything but the aftermath of that horrible, exquisite feeling. She struggled for anything resembling strength – and unfortunately for Von Ratched, she found it.
Her eyes snapped open, a wrath not hot but frozen heaving through her like water from a breached dam. Lorna had always had a truly vicious temper, but never until now had she really, truly wished to murder someone before. The cold numbed her horror even as it fed her ire, strengthening her, destroying her weariness and all the weakness that went with it.
For the first time, Von Ratched actually looked disturbed, his face gone quite pale. She bared her teeth in a death's-head grin, an almost sub-audible growl at the back of her throat as she regarded him, willing him to drop dead. She felt him reach for her mind again, and very nearly laughed when he slammed into her wall of ice, crashing headlong into the barrier he would never breach again. Lorna would die before she'd let that wall fail a second time.
Her telekinesis, it seemed, wasn't entirely useless; it let her rip her arms free of the restraints, though she knew the force of it would bruise later. Without stopping to think – without any conscious thought at all – she launched herself at him.
She must have startled him, because he failed to dodge her, or fend her off. Lorna leapt on him like an infuriated cat, sinking her teeth into his neck and tearing like a mad badger, her fingers scrabbling for his eyes. The rage had her now, vicious and almost euphoric as her teeth broke his skin, flooding her mouth with the hot, sickening, coppery taste of blood. She'd kill him, but first she'd make him hurt.
He grabbed her, naturally, trying to break her grip, but she was having absolutely none of it. He'd pry her loose when she was dead and cold, and not a moment before, goddammit. Her teeth gouged deeper, right down into the muscle, chewing like every zombie in every horror movie she'd ever seen.
That was as far as she got, before darkness took her.
Thranduil recoiled, his shield only half-completed. It took a great deal to nauseate an Elf, but he had not felt so sickened since Dagorlad. His very skin felt foul, as though coated in some filthy toxin. To invade the mind of another without permission was sacrilege in and of itself, but what that man had done….
"Told you you wouldn't like it." Lorna's harsh, abused voice snapped him back to reality, filled with an echo of that frigid wrath. Her eyes were twin wells of green poison, cold and almost reptilian. "Had a good look, did you? You and every other fucking Elf in this backward fucking world."
For once in his very long life, Thranduil had no idea what to say. What could anyone say, in the wake of that? He had faced many a horror, but no one had ever force him to enjoy it. He felt as though he should say something comforting, but it was simply not in his nature – and even if it had been, no words would be sufficient.
"Are you gonna finish what you started, or what?" Lorna snarled, struggling to sit up. The words weren't entirely comprehensible, but her meaning easily was. "Pity me and I'll break your fucking neck." Such was the vehemence in her tone that he had little doubt she would try.
What left Thranduil's mouth surprised even him: "Did you kill him?"
The question seemed to stymie her rage a little, though instead it brought a harsh, bitter laugh, accompanied by a stream of coughs. "I doubt it," she said, wrapping her blanket tighter around herself. "Son'v a bitch is like a cockroach. He'll not be dead until someone's stomped on him."
Thranduil didn't know what a bitch was, nor a cockroach, but her meaning was taken easily enough.
"He can't get in my head anymore, so how the fuck did you people manage it?" she added, glowering at him.
"You are very ill," he said, "and our minds are stronger than those of the Edain. It is only a wonder yours has not broken under the strain." Indeed, he had little idea how it hadn't; he suspected it was down to pure stubbornness. Certainly, that had to be how she was still alive, given how ill she really was.
Her glare took on an extra edge, her hands gripping the edges of the blanket so hard her knuckles went a bloodless white. How could someone so tiny exude so much rage? Her wrath, within that memory, was every bit as intense as his could be, concentrated and narrowed into a needle-fine point. No, she was not nearly as strong as an Elda, but her capacity for sheer viciousness unnerved him.
"Kindly do not attempt to rip my throat out," he said. "That looked rather unpleasant."
"Don't talk down to me," she snapped.
"I was not," Thranduil said, and meant it. "If that man did not die of what you did, I would be very surprised. Elves are immortal, Ettelëa. That you could not defend against us implies no weakness on your part. Even the youngest here is at least ten times your age." He didn't know just how old she was, but there wasn't an Elf in Dale below five hundred.
That at least seemed to mollify her. A little. "So what now?" she asked, coughing.
"I must finish what I started," he said, again striving for something like gentleness, and again largely failing. "When you are well, I would have you return with us to the Woodland Realm. From what I have seen of your world, you would be ill-suited to life in Dale – and if any more from that place should arrive in my forest, it would be better if you were there."
Lorna regarded him with open suspicion, and rightfully so; while he meant what he said, he was also voraciously curious about her world. He wanted more, and he needed time to convince her to allow it.
"Fuck with me and I'll rip your kidneys out," she warned.
For the first time, Thranduil smiled. "Duly noted."
In Ettelëa, Lorna had been spared the Institute, and thus didn't have such an intense well of rage to deal with. She is, needless to say, rather damaged. What neither she nor any of the Elves yet realize is just how much her mind has damaged them, too.
What she says in the memory Thranduil sees is "Oh, fuck everything" and "fuck you in the ear" in Irish.
Title means "Memory" in Irish. As always, your reviews give me hope and direction.