3: The Only Thing I Know (Is My Name)
Perplexed, Tauriel followed Kíli's gaze, examining each of the prisoners in light of this most recent revelation. The cut on Ingolf's head, his missing tooth. The bruises on Kíli's face. Of Suri she couldn't see very much, but the awkward way in which she held herself suggested a certain amount of pain. A cracked rib, possibly. Ruari sported an impressive black eye and either his nose had always been that crooked or it had been broken recently. They had all confirmed it already, but somehow Tauriel had failed to grasp its significance until now, naively assuming that when they spoke of their conflicts with each other, they were talking about more harmless squabbles amongst fellow prisoners.
"You did all of this to each other? Deliberately? " she thus asked, a vague sense of dread pooling in her stomach.
"Not all of it," Kíli amended, "but some. We had to."
"But you seem so peaceful around each other, almost like—"
"Friends?" Kíli cut in. "In here, we are friends, yes. Out there, we are what we need to be in order to survive."
Tauriel followed his gaze down the dark corridor. "And what is out there, precisely?"
This time, it was Ingolf who answered. "Lots of things. Foul things, for the most part. What's most relevant for us is what we call the arena."
"Arena?" Tauriel's eyebrows rose of their own volition. "For fighting?"
"It's quite simple, really. Either we fight or we're punished and eventually killed for our refusal to do so." Ruari looked around their small group. "None of us are the type to just give up and let ourselves be slaughtered. So we make do."
"By going up against each other?" Tauriel asked dubiously. Some of the injuries her companions sported looked not exactly trivial.
"Only as far as we need to." Kíli still wasn't quite looking at her, his tone somewhat resigned as he explained their situation. "The best way for us to end up back here with everyone in one piece is if we deliver a good show—a proper fight, where each party sustains a certain amount of blows. A fight ends when one combatant dies or is knocked unconscious. We always aim for the latter, obviously."
"Though not always with great success," Ruari sneered, looking pointedly at the empty cell to Tauriel's left.
There was a flurry of motion as Ingolf reached through the bars, grabbed Ruari by the shoulder of his soiled, tattered shirt and yanked him hard against the wall separating them.
"Hold your spiteful tongue if you know what's good for you. You know perfectly well how our agreement works."
Ingolf gave one more firm jerk of his arm and then let go of Ruari, who looked reasonably chastised. Whether that was because of Ingolf's harsh words or the physical threat was not for Tauriel to judge. What she did notice, however, was that during the little exchange, Kíli's knuckles had whitened around the bars of his cell, his face ashen.
Once everyone appeared to have settled down again, Tauriel looked at each of the faces staring back at her from amid the gloomy light, searching for signs that they might be leading her on with their tales of arenas and staged fights. However, they all wore similar, grave expressions. Not a joke then, but bitter, violent reality.
Pressing closer to the bars, she tried to see more beyond their set of cells. Her eyes met only darkness. "Who are our captors that they would choose such mindless violence? And what on earth for?"
"I don't believe any of us can answer the first of those questions with certainty. As for the latter, though, the answer is quite simple—entertainment. The more blood flows, the more excited the crowd gets." Kíli's mouth twisted as he spoke those words, as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. Tauriel could not fault him for that.
Across the corridor, Suri tugged on Ingolf's sleeve, pointing to a series of symbols she had drawn into a small pile of sawdust on the floor of her cell. From her side of the corridor, Tauriel could not make them out, but Ingolf obviously could, which cleared up how Suri had been able to communicate with her fellow prisoners if she couldn't—or wouldn't—talk.
"I know, dear, I know," Ingolf muttered. Turning to Tauriel, he said, "Suri's convinced that our purpose here is more than just entertaining our gracious hosts. She believes that they are sorting the wheat from the chaff by having us compete against each other, and are hoping to turn those who prevail into soldiers for their own cause."
Kíli snorted. "Good riddance, I say. I'd rather cut off my leg than fight for those bastards."
"Aye to that," Ruari grumbled. "They are fools if they think any Dwarf could be swayed to fight for them after locking him up in this shithole for weeks."
Weeks, something inside Tauriel squeaked, her chest tightening at the thought of spending any prolonged time within the confines of this dark, stuffy prison. She pushed the feeling away with a sharp inhale. "Perhaps you won't, still others may," she said as an involuntary shiver ran down her spine. "A long time enduring such conditions and pointless violence might weaken the resolve of even the best among us, I imagine."
"Speak for yourself, Elf," Ruari muttered.
Kíli, meanwhile, was studying her with eyes like hard, dark pebbles. It shouldn't have, not when she barely knew him, but after the teasing warmth with which their interaction had been laced just minutes ago, the obvious distrust with which he regarded her ever since she had revealed that she was a Mirkwood elf stung more than she cared to admit.
"Abandoning those you've sworn loyalty to may be condoned among your people," he now said. "It is not among ours, I assure you."
Taken aback by his cold tone, she raised her hands in what she hoped was a calming gesture. "I did not mean to imply—"
Her protest was cut off by a rattling sound somewhere within the surrounding darkness. To say that light flooded into their prison would have been an exaggeration, but the air did brighten from the dim glow which entered the room.
Taking in as much of her surroundings as quickly as she could manage, Tauriel saw that beyond the six cells which the small lamp illuminated, there were in fact only two more cells, both of them currently empty. Beyond those two cells, a door had opened, revealing murky orange light and the shapes of several figures of medium height.
The door was just broad enough to allow one person to pass through at a time, and, after a muttered conversation, four individuals entered their prison in single file, three advancing purposefully into the room while the fourth fiddled with some sort of mechanism beside the door. There was a clang of metal followed by an unpleasant, grinding noise, and in the cell on Tauriel's right, Kíli groaned.
"Again? You've got to be joking. What about the five-course dinner I ordered?"
There was no answer from the hooded figures as one of them marched past Tauriel's cage and stood in front of Kíli's. The young Dwarf had stepped back from the bars and was glaring at their visitor with venom in his dark eyes.
"Take me instead," Ruari pleaded from the other side of the corridor. That, too, went ignored by the guard, who had yanked open a door to Kíli's cell which had so far been concealed among the remainder of the bars. Immediately, Tauriel resolved to re-examine her own prison for any signs of a lock—where there was a door, there had to be a lock, right?
"Aw, how sweet of you, offering to sacrifice yourself for me," Kíli commented with a humorless grin as he stepped into the corridor, where he was immediately seized by his upper arms by two of the guards and pressed against the bars of Tauriel's cell. He did not meet her confused gaze while they bound his hands behind his back with a piece of rope.
"Don't flatter yourself, princess," Ruari snorted from across the corridor. "I was merely looking to blow off some steam."
"I bet you were," Kíli muttered, wincing as the guards tightened the knot around his wrists.
Right before he was yanked backwards by his bound hands, he locked eyes with Tauriel, just for a second. In his eyes she still detected traces of the distrust from a few moments ago, but beyond that she saw something else, something born of necessity. A message he was trying to convey to her, simply because she was the only one there to receive it.
If I don't come back, see to it that the rest of you make it out alive.
Tauriel managed the hint of a nod just before their eye-contact broke. She'd only just met these people, but she wouldn't leave them behind when she got out. And get out she would—there was no way that a captain of considerable rank in Thranduil's guard would dwell in this hellish place a moment longer than necessary.
At a brisk pace, Kíli was led down the corridor, through the narrow door and out of sight. The slam of the door plunged their prison into darkness once again, leaving them all staring silently into the blackness surrounding them.
"It seems as if he's become something of a favorite with them," Ingolf eventually broke the silence.
Ruari snorted. "Either that, or they're hoping to be rid of him more quickly if he gets himself killed."
"And you would prefer that?" To her own surprise, Tauriel found her voice quaking ever so lightly with anger at Ruari's careless remark. Hadn't they all just accused her of not being capable of true loyalty?
Instead of being offended by her blunt question, however, the Dwarf gave a bark of laughter. "Indeed, I might. That would save the world a whole lot of trouble."
Tauriel blinked, surprised by the straightforward reply. "And why do you say that?"
"The lad can be. . . difficult. Reckless. Stubborn. A trait that runs strong in his entire, accursed family."
"You don't seem to like each other very much," she observed. "And yet you did offer to go to the arena in his stead."
Ruari glared at her. "I already made my intentions regarding that matter clear, didn't I?" Tauriel raised her eyebrows at his sudden aggressiveness and Ruari deflated, running his closed fists up and down the bars of his cell where he was holding onto them. "It's a matter tradition rather than actual dislike, to be frank."
"Tradition?" Dwarves really a were an odd sort of people if their traditions included throwing barbed comments at one another and wishing each other dead.
"He's a Longbeard, I'm a Firebeard," Ruari sighed, as if that explained everything. It didn't, not for Tauriel at least, who must have looked rather bemused while she wondered how Kíli's slight stubble might be counted as 'long'.
"His great-great-granduncle offended my great-grandfather when he borrowed his favorite pickaxe, pretended to have lost it, and then returned it with a dent in its blade fifty-three years later. Ever since, there has been no love lost between our clans."
Tauriel blinked. "Really? That is all?"
"I'd say that is more than enough," Ruari bristled. "It was a family heirloom!"
Concluding that Dwarves really were an odd sort of people, Tauriel gave up on the topic for the time being.
"So, if they took only Kíli to that arena and no one else," she asked instead, "whom is he going to fight? Are there others like you on this. . . vessel?"
"Others like us, you mean," Ingolf reminded her. "And yes, there are. Either he will face one of them or he will be pitted against one of the foul creatures of which our captors appear to have an endless supply of. For Kíli's sake, I hope it's the latter."
"You do?"
"Aye. Much less complicated that way. With a goblin or an orc you don't have to think twice before you kill it." Ingolf spit on the ground to emphasize his disgust with said races. "If it's someone like us, though. . ."
He trailed off, the shadows of things he'd seen and done passing over his features, too fleeting for Tauriel to grasp.
"Those others you speak of, have they formed similar bonds as you have? Bonds which prevent them from hurting each other unnecessarily?"
"I wouldn't know. We've tried reaching out to them, but seeing that we only ever encounter them in a fight, that is no easy task."
Tauriel nodded in understanding, her heart aching with pity for those harassed souls, torn out of their various lives against their will. She couldn't allow for this to continue, couldn't let their fate become hers as well. And yet, what was she to do? Her current situation allowed not much room to take action, as far as she could tell. Not without risking that those individuals, different from each other as they might be and yet bonded together by the sheer will to survive, came to even more harm than they already had.
No, she would have to become one of them, would have to play the cruel game instigated by those who viewed life as something to toy with, its loss perversely amusing to their debased minds. She barely knew her fellow prisoners, and Kíli, at least, did not seem to trust her, but she was sure of one thing—they did not deserve to be here any more than she did.
While her thoughts drifted along those lines, Ingolf had disappeared into the shadows which lay over the rear of his cell. He returned with a few strips of faded, black fabric clutched in his fist. Shoving his arm through the bars adjacent to the corridor, he held them out to Tauriel.
"Here, you should bind your ankle. It won't be long before it's your turn to go out there, and you don't want to be slowed down by something like that when you do."
Tauriel stared at his offering, strangely moved. "I should not... You ought to save them for yourself. I shall be just fine."
"Don't be silly. You can barely stand on that foot of yours. Go on." He wriggled the strips of cloth in her direction until she smiled and finally reached out with her hand to catch the ends of the fabric between her fingertips. Ingolf grinned, visibly satisfied. "Besides, I wouldn't want to have to go easy on you in case it's me that you get to fight first. You're correct in assuming that I haven't encountered many of your kind before, but what I do know is that you're bloody good fighters."
Ducking her head to hide the blush she felt creeping onto her cheeks, Tauriel did not bother to refute Ingolf's observation. False modesty was not her way, at least not when it came to her skills in combat. "Thank you, then, for your help. If we do meet in a fight, I shall try to make it worth your while."
"Ah, I'm certain you will. You strike me as someone who cannot quite resist a challenge."
Well, that was certainly true, Tauriel thought, although this trait of hers hadn't exactly worked out in her favor as of late.
Silence fell over their small group after that, Ingolf retreating back into the shadows to rest, presumably, while Tauriel found a reasonably clean spot on the floor to sit down and bind her ankle. Judging by the soft snores which emanated from the cell on Ingolf's left, Ruari had gone to sleep and Suri had followed Ingolf to the back wall and was now nowhere to be seen.
While Tauriel tied the strips of fabric around her ankle as tightly as she dared without risking an obstruction of the blood flow, her thoughts went to Legolas and her king and the question how her absence affected their actions. She had no real concept of time in this dark prison of hers, but she was certain that the amount of time Legolas might have set aside as a period of grace during which she might still return to the palace without him making a big deal out of it, had long since passed. The best thing she could hope for, really, was that her prince was so angered by her actions that he would stop himself from going after her in a display of the stubbornness he had inherited from his father. For if he did come after her and managed to get himself into the same, miserable predicament she currently found herself in, she would never be able to forgive herself.
Either way, she was convinced that now she had finally managed to ruin her friendship with the noble, blond elf for good. For centuries, she had heard the whispers at the palace, wondering how it came to be that the king's son had picked her as his favorite. Reckless, temperamental, without any sort of favorable family connections. Well, now she'd gone and proved them all right.
But who knew, maybe it was for the better. As of late, she had begun to feel a strain on her friendship with Legolas, expectations raised by him which she could not—and, sometimes, did not want to—meet. Expectations which would be more appropriately directed towards a spouse, and not a friend.
As always when her thoughts ambled down this particular road, Tauriel's heart began to beat somewhat erratically. She swiped a damp palm across her brow and shook her head at herself. Surely this wasn't how one was supposed to feel if a formidable person such as Legolas took an interest in them. Or maybe it was? Was this what romantic love felt like? Tauriel had no idea. Elves loved but once, so surely when they did, they were able to tell with some amount of certainty—right?
Letting her head drop back against the rails behind her, Tauriel took a steadying breath. Enough with this nonsense—she had bigger problems on her plate than the plummeting sensation in her stomach whenever she thought of Legolas as more than a friend. And, even if Thranduil would have allowed such a thing to develop before her departure (which she seriously doubted), he certainly would not do so now.
In fact, the mere thought almost drew a hysterical giggle from her and she had to breathe out slowly through her nose to avoid giving her prison mates the impression that she was already losing her wits. No, Thranduil would certainly not condone any sort of entanglement between her and his son. After this, she wasn't even sure if he would still allow them to remain friends in the unlikely event that Legolas still wanted her friendship.
Whatever her king may have seen in her in her younger years, that hesitant tenderness she had sometimes glimpsed in his demeanor towards her, had been eclipsed in more recent times by. . . well, to be frank, she wasn't entirely sure what had brought about the change in their relationship.
She would have been tempted to say it was her temperament which caused her king to look less favorably upon her now than he once had, but she had always struggled more than her peers when it came to obeying commands and adhering to rules even if they did not make sense. If she detected injustice in the world around her, her chest grew tight and her stomach tied itself into knots until she did something about it. In consequence she was, admittedly, less docile, less complacent than many of her peers. However, those things had not just sprung up overnight. They were a part of her, and Thranduil knew this.
No—she suspected that what had caused her king, once the very center of her insignificant existence, to turn away from her, had less to do with her character itself, and more with his realization of how badly suited her temperament was to his ever-narrowing worldview. Like a thorn in his side, insistently reminding him that locking themselves up in an underground palace for all eternity wasn't the answer.
As with all things that threatened to intrude upon his peace, he had begun to cut her out, to send her on mission after mission to cleanse their borders of the foul creatures trying to invade their lands and turn their once so beautiful kingdom into a place of shadow and desolation. And all this without once listening to her pleas to let her go after the root of all this evil, to allow her to fight the disease itself rather than just its symptoms.
Well, now you've taken it upon yourself to do so, and see where it got you, a voice that sounded conspicuously like Thranduil piped up in Tauriel's head.
She silenced it with an impatient huff and shifted on the hard floor in an attempt to get more comfortable while still keeping the door in view. How much time had passed since they had come for Kíli? It was hard to tell in this perpetual darkness, the groaning and creaking of their outlandish mode of transport in combination with the vibrations echoing through in her bones threatening to lull her into an absent state of mind.
She was resolved to wait for the guards' return, not, as she had by now almost convinced herself, because she was worried for the Dwarf, but because she did not want to miss a single opportunity to find out more about the locking mechanism of their cells. For the time being, she had ruled out any dramatic escape attempts in favor of keeping the other prisoners safe, but that did not mean that she wasn't interested in finding out how she might break out.
Time passed, her attention flickering like the light of the small lantern dangling above their heads. Eventually, the candle burned down, and the whole prison was cast into darkness. Tauriel was quite certain that she had only closed her aching eyes for a mere second when the door was flung open to admit two bulky figures dragging what appeared to be a heavy sack of grain between them.
The light flooding through the open door was dim at best, but after hours of sitting in darkness, it might as well have been blindingly bright. Blinking rapidly, Tauriel tried to observe every detail as another, slighter figure slipped through the door and completed whatever series of actions was necessary to operate the mechanism locking the cells.
One of the bulkier figures barked what was clearly an order at the shorter one, prompting them to dash forward and reach up toward the extinguished lantern. Tauriel nearly wept with joy when the candle stump inside was replaced with a new one, the little lantern coming back to life with the stroke of a match. If she had to be locked up in a cage, then she preferred to be able to see at least.
Distracted by her enthusiasm over the renewed source of light, Tauriel momentarily did not pay much heed to the guards' actions and was bewildered to find them opening the door to Kíli's cell and lugging their freight inside. Only then did she realize that what they had been carrying between them wasn't a sack of grain at all, but a body.
Kíli's body.
A/N: Chapter title credits to Eliza by A Choir of Ghosts
