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Chapter 34: Another Cell in Another Rotten Place
The cell that I was currently sitting in was 21 feet by 30 feet. Dwarven feet that was. I knew this because Thorin Oakenshield, the second of his name, King Under the Mountain, and current prisoner of the elves of Mirkwood had walked its path enough times that I had started to count along with the tapping of his feet.
Really I was doing anything at the moment to distract myself from the mountain of emotional shit that I was currently fumbling beneath.
"Tori, please let me look at your face."
I flinched farther into my corner, the cold, damp press of the rocks a rather pleasant balm to the bruising along my sides.
Bruising from his bruiser. His little enforcer. His shadow that grumbled and grunted and had made my life a living hell along with him.
But I had moved past that. I had gotten over it. I was a grown up and I had accepted that that was in my past. That he had changed and Dwalin had changed and all of them had fucking changed.
"I'm backing away, Tori." Was that desperation in his worse? "I'm getting away from you. Just - just draw in one breath. Slow - slow - slower…"
Oh. Oh.
My lunges filled, slower now, just as he said. The aching in my ribs that had begun to grow and grow like a balloon filling and filling and filling too quickly, dulling. Musty air slid down my throat, pushing my chest out enough for me to feel every single bruise in my chest before I let it go.
"Good. Good, Tori. Just… Just one more breath." He was farther away, by the cell door now. I turned my head until I could nearly taste the stone beneath my cheek. "Breath in with me… Listen to my breath…"
There were 1,457 cracks in the walls of our cell. Which was rather impressive because the whole thing was made out of walls were more light brown like sand off the beaches of the far coast where the sun felt like a hot hand upon one's neck and the wind felt like the wet kiss of a grandmother. I had thought of that metaphor about an hour into staring at the floor - then frowning and turning to stare at the wall across from me because you wouldn't really judge a wall's color by a floor that had been stepped all over and dirtied by feet and vomit and all the bodily functions that a prisoner in the middle of extreme paranoia and fear would be in.
"Fili's asking for you." His voice was so close. So close and I couldn't find it in me to - to think of anything else but what the floor's color was now. What could it be compared to? Something unpleasant. "He's been asking for you for hours."
I flinched, growing cold at the thought.
I couldn't - if I let him see me - if I saw those blue, blue eyes - the softness there, the kindness -
I couldn't let myself have kindness right now.
Not when I hated myself so much.
"This stops now," Thorin's voice whips out like the strike of an angry snake, fangs revealed, striking eyes glowing in the dim light of the moon filtering in from the hallway. "As your King, I command you to let me see your wounds."
I haven't thought about it. All day I haven't thought about it. Not him. Not the company. Not my mother or father or the vile things that ran through his veins to me. Not the way she must have gazed at me as I came screaming into the world, so small and brutish compared to her. One last violation from the man who had already taken so much from her.
And there I had been, drenched in her blood with her hair and her ears and her eyes. I had torn away whatever had been left of her - I could feel it, imagine it.
What must she have thought when she saw me? Had she been hoping that my birth would give her something good? That the horrid things she had endured would be wiped away as they should have been because she was an elf and elves believed that children were a gift, a miracle.
How disgusted was she at the very sight of me?
"Tori, as your King-"
"Shove it up your ass." I blinked across the room. Just as baffled at the words that had burst from me as he was. Those striking eyes that all the women cooed over in the darkness of the halls widened. I was baffled… but not ashamed. I bowed my head in his direction. "Your Highness."
My eyes went back to the hard stone bed. There was no pallet on that bed. I wonder how many of the others were sleeping on it right now.
"You may be my nephew's heartmate but I would remind you-" From the frightening growl in his voice, I was sure that he was gearing up for a real good one. He would have probably spit me out whole just so he could eat me more slowly the second time.
"You're the one that did this to me. Not the elves." Silence, thick as a new downy blanket settled around us. I didn't take my eyes away from the pallet. "Well, not you actually. But basically you. Dwalin - in the woods - he dragged me from Fili's side in the dead of night. He dragged me away by your order and beat the ever-loving daylight's out of me." A raw laugh burst from me. "I pleaded with you both. I tried to beg you to let me stay and you - you told me that I was a dirty fucking elf and that I should go back to my true king." Was I crying? No. Just laughing so hard that it hurt. "It was the elves that saved me. Those elves that I hate. That you hate. Isn't that funny?"
It's a long while before I stop laughing, wiping away the spill of tears from my face hard enough to make my whole head throb.
I don't look to see Thorin's expression. "I'm sorry. I… I don't remember… The forest…"
My laugh isn't nearly as happy this time. "Yeah. The forest."
It's a convenient excuse. He knows it and I know it as well.
"Please just talk to her."
Fili is apparently in the cell beside ours. I can hear the gentle roll of his voice, the gravel he gets when he's pleading for his uncle to look at my injuries. If I close my eyes, I can imagine him here, touching me, so close that I can feel the warmth of his breath against my temple.
"She won't even let me touch-"
"Don't fucking tell me what you can't do," Fili snarls, his voice vicious in the echoing cells. "You did this to her. You and Dwalin and I don't give one flying fuck how you make it better but you will. If you've ever loved and respected me as I have you, you will do this for me."
There's a long pause filled with so much anxiety that I can taste the bitter tang of it on my tongue. No one speaks to Thorin Oakenshield like that. No one-
"You will make a good king one day, kidhuzurâl."
Ah, that name. A small smile creeps across my face, feeling foreign, odd, out of place. I had forgotten that they used to call him that. Kidhuzurâl. Golden one. Their prince, his hair like that precious metal we mined for. Our golden prince.
For some reason that makes tears come to my eyes, a swell of shame sweeping through my chest. I swipe quickly at them. What a foolish thing to cry over.
"Hot water." Gortphen is back. Again. I can feel him like a hound scenting the whip that has disciplined it, as a horse senses the bridle. He looms in the doorway of our cell, his eyes always on me. I can't blame him. I feel disgusted at myself as well.
"You said you didn't care if she died from fever last time you came here," Thorin replies sardonically. Right. I curled tighter to the corner, remembering the raw emotions in those words.
Gortphen enjoyed looming. He enjoyed coming to my cell doors and staring inside like if he just looked long enough I would cease to exist. If only life were that simple.
A low growl rips from the elf's throat, his teeth flashing down at a thoroughly unimpressed Thorin. "I don't!"
"If you're going to snarl and spout lies, come and play with me, pechanadan." I couldn't help the giggle that burst from me. Of course, Fili would use the only words that he had learned in our Sindarin classes for this. My smile quickly faded. "Amrul? Amrul, are you awake?" The desperation in his voice made me flinch, my whole face going hot. "Please - please just talk to me. Let me know… Your brothers have been asking about you too - I just - I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have kept you safe. I…"
I wanted to. I gulped against the sudden bitterness that filled my mouth, my eyes trapped on the little bit of light I could see outside of our cell. I didn't - I would never blame him for what had happened. Fresh tears burned at my eyes. I needed to say something. I needed to tell him that I was okay, that I loved him, that he had kept me safe -
But when I opened my mouth all of those words turned to ash. They drifted away from me with a rapidness that left me numb.
And Thorin and Gortphen were there to see it all. I quivered, my mouth opening and closing, my throat working to say something - anything. I didn't… I blinked, forcing away tears. My knees knocked against the wall, my cheek pressing to the stone that was now scolding hot from my skin. Absolutely useless. I was so useless.
"She fell asleep again, Fili." I hated it. Hated that Thorin was lying to me. Hated that I could still feel those eyes burning into me. Both Gortphen and Thorin - both filled with so many thoughts, all of which I was too tired to try and decipher. "She… I'll tell you when she wakes again."
"Oh… Okay… Just… when she wakes." More hot tears spilled down my cheek. He sounded so small. I had made him sound that way.
I didn't know how much time had passed. All I knew was that when I finally forced my eyes open, Gortphen was gone and Thorin had come to sit across from me, his own broad back squished into the opposite corner. A bowl of gently steaming water lay at the toe of his mud-splattered boots. The elf who hated me had brought a lot more than water. Folded neatly beside the bowl was a few rags and clean bandages. Beside that was an assortment of very small bottles with different liquids inside. I would have suspected poison but Gortphen seemed more the type to strangle you with his bare hands.
"I was in a cell like this once," Thorin suddenly hummed, his head tipped back, eyes narrowed on the ceiling above us. He seemed to be contemplating something, his dark hair threaded with gray in a tangle around his face. He had lost his overcoat somewhere along the line so only his dove gray undershirt remained, rumpled and dirty. "A rotten little place in Belegost. My friend and I had thought it would be fun to celebrate our manhood by going from Belegost to Nogrod and then back along the Blue Mountains." A sad smile tipped his lips, wistful and dreamy. "Because we were men and we needed to go out and see the world and not be such nidayith. So we went. We went and we got so drunk that we ended up trying to smuggle jewels in our pants and ended up tripping and spilling rubies and emeralds and the contents of our stomachs all across the great hall."
I couldn't imagine Thorin embarrassing himself like that. Being young at all. When his head rolled, he obviously saw the same disbelief written in my face because he chuckled. Thorin didn't laugh. He didn't rub his hand along his neck, chuckling softly as if he were embarrassed. Thorin was stoic. Thorin was rigid to a fault, grumpy and waspish.
He slowly folded his legs, leaning onto his knees. The smile that curved his lips was almost self-deprecating, a little soft.
"His name was Tunri - my friend." Was. My stomach twisted uncomfortably. "Very few are gifted with a heartmate as you and Fili are. There are so few dwarf women and… well." His smile was so gentle that I could only stare dumbly at him, completely baffled by the way he was speaking to me. As if… As if I was a living breathing person with emotions. "I loved him. Not in the way you are thinking but in a way that I've never loved anything or anyone before or since. He was everything to me - friend, advisor, brother… And when he died, I thought that I would die with him. That I should die with him."
The utter devastation in his voice tore at my heart. I felt it in his every action. The tightening of his hand along his nape, his head bent enough that I could barely see the way his brows dipped over his eyes. His throat bobbed, his hand slowly slipping away to fall limply into his lap.
"How did-" I gulped against the rustiness of my own voice, my vocal cords protesting at the action. "How?"
Shadows clouded Thorin's eyes, his gaze turning to the moonlight filtering in from the hallway.
"One of our first battles." He swallowed, his lips tightening. "He was better with a sword. Better with the axe." A small smile. "Better with everything really. He had killed more than half the army opposing us - at least, that's what it felt like. I remember being behind him - always being behind him. Watching as he pushed forward and forward. He was… He was beautiful." That last word ached. The smile slowly wilted, sinking into a blankness that frightened me. "I had gotten a side injury. Someone had slit me clean open. Tunri dragged me back to our line, checking on me, scolding me like an old hen for being so useless. He had dragged me back because I was a prince and I mattered, I suppose. That's how it's supposed to be, isn't it? Everything else can go to shit but Durin's line must hold.
"I was delirious, mumbling that he needed to stay. That the battle was almost over. Trying to get up and go with him when he said he had to go back and finish what had been started. And then I remember a scream - someone calling for help and that big oaf - he just turned right around and yelled that he would be back. And then nothing." His eyes moved to his hands, fingers picking at each other. "I passed out and when I woke up, he wasn't there. They said… they told me that he had…" He cleared his throat. Once. Twice. "Two people from our forces died that day. Two. He had slain more people than I had even got within striking distance of. How - How… I had barely fought more than a handful of people and yet he had been the one to die. It didn't make any sense. None of it made any sense."
I watched him try to work through it even now, his brows lowering and easing in a series of signals that seemed to be calling for help. Flagging down someone to save him from drowning.
"I still don't…" He swallowed, the space between us filling with all the words neither of us could fully say to the other. Finally, his eyes slid to mine. "Please, Tori. Please just… Just let me clean your wounds."
What else was I supposed to do?
I uncurled from my corner and we met in the middle, his expression embarrassingly eager as he rolled up his sleeves and started the long process of cleaning the dirt from my body. The water had cooled in the time that it had taken for Thorin to relive the horrid reality of his loss.
And something about that - something in the way that he had been so vulnerable wore down on me. It crashed against me with alarming vengeance as he methodically worked around the swelling of my temple and jaw - the startling spiderweb of bruises coloring my face. His brows were knit, face back to that hard consideration as if every wound he saw was a personal offense.
"I'm sorry," he whispered to me as he spread some kind of salve that smell sharp and wild along my chin. "I don't know how to say it - how to tell you how sorry I am-"
"It was the forest," I whispered, looking away. A little more of the wall around my heart crumbled, letting in some of the emotions that I had been pressing down from the moment I got that confounded journal. My eyes slid to it inadvertently, still flung so perfectly into the middle of the room. "We both know it wasn't your fault."
I shut my eyes against the words. Somehow they felt too close - too personal. And I - I just -
"She was raped," I breathed, my lunges aching. Weight - so much weight suddenly crushed me. Something about saying it felt so real - it made it all so real. "My-my mother - I think - Gortphen said she - I think he did something horrible to her."
Thorin had gone still, his hand freezing in its slow test of my skin. And gods - but I couldn't look at him. I couldn't even say - My father - my father had done something horrible to my mother and I had been the result. The result of such a violent brutality. The child of such cruelty.
And I couldn't separate myself from the act. I couldn't think of myself outside of those things.
"That's her journal," I whispered, terrified to look away from it and yet terrified to open it as well.
When Thorin spoke it was with suck softness that I curled in on myself, my arms hugging the bruised skin of my ribs. "Tori, have you -"
"I can't," I said immediately, shaking my head. "I can't read it."
"You won't know until you read it-" he replied, so gently.
I shook my head even harder. She hadn't wanted me. I understood why she hadn't wanted me. I wouldn't take another thing. Not from her.
"Can you take it?" I breathed, finally dragging my eyes away. "Take it please."
"Tori-"
"Please."
He stayed beside me for a moment longer, before slowly standing and gently picking up the journal and sliding it into his shirt - the only place where there wasn't a chance of me seeing it.
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Sinadarin / Khuzdul:
Pechanadan: idiot
Nidayith: Little boys
