2. Chapter Two
Legolas was awake, but he chose to lay still with his eyes closed. Being wakeful after Sauron had left the day before, Legolas had watched the large orcs who guarded him as closely as they watched him. Only when it became clear that they weren’t going to come near him did he begin to investigate.
At first when he had tried to stand up he had fallen back onto the bed helplessly, his legs so unused to carrying his weight that it was as if he had forgotten how to stand. But he persevered, and it was with a kind of glad relief that he gained his feet after a couple of similar attempts. Still, he was unsteady, and he used the wall to walk around the room, one eye watching the orcs to make sure they didn’t move.
There was a name for them – what was it? He had known it, he was certain, but the long period of enforced unawareness had made his mind sluggish and lazy. Uruk-hai. Legolas nodded to himself. That is what they were. He whimpered suddenly, afraid, remembering what was inside him, but then he deliberately turned his mind away from the shocking truth of his predicament. Still hugging the wall, he made his way around the room.
There wasn’t much to see.
The small windowless room was at least a little brighter than before; the candles Sauron had kept lit now extinguished in favour of torches. There were four – one for each wall, and in a box Legolas found replacements, along with a few new candles.
There was a simple wooden chair, which Sauron had used, and the bed he had been kept prisoner on. Under the bed was what could loosely be described as a chamberpot. That was all. Legolas took a torch and some tinder from the box and painstakingly carried it back to the bed with him. Despite his nakedness it wasn’t cold, the stone floor was warm under the soles of his feet and the walls were warm to the touch. It was so unusual, Legolas at least had never known such a thing, and he wondered what it could portend.
He collapsed tiredly on the bed, and lay still for a while, holding the torch ready to be lit in his arms in case those on the wall should go out. The uruk-hai terrified him as Sauron didn’t, and he didn’t want to be alone with them in the dark.
Now, an indeterminable amount of time later – Legolas only knew that he had slept for a period – Sauron was back. He assumed the amount of time that passed to have been a day, since the dark lord had said he would be back tomorrow. Legolas ignored him.
“I know you are awake,” said Sauron in a rich, deep voice. Legolas chose to ignore it. He felt the torch being taken from his arms, and he offered no resistance, in the hope that it would encourage Sauron to believe he really did sleep. Opening his eyes a fraction, he watched the dark lord take the torch and tinder back to the box at the opposite side of the room. Then he suddenly turned and made eye contact. Legolas sighed in a kind of defeat and sat up a little on the bed as Sauron laughed quietly.
“How are you feeling?” he enquired directly as he took his seat – the chair Legolas had noted earlier – and he heard himself answering before he could stop to think about it.
“I am weak and feeble. It is difficult to stand up.” Legolas covered his mouth with his hand in astonishment as Sauron stood and walked over to the bed again.
“How long have I been here?” he blurted out in a fearful voice as Sauron came closer to him.
“Lie still while I examine you, Legolas,” Sauron commanded, and to his shame he felt himself reclining on the bed, offering himself up to whatever Sauron wished to do to him.
At first, the dark lord rested one hand against his belly, nodding in satisfaction at whatever he sensed while Legolas moaned at the reminder of what his body was being used for. Then, he was pushed onto his side, and he heard the dark lord take something from his robes before a finger, lubricated with some greasy substance, entered him from behind. Legolas gasped out, the sore feeling only subsiding after a couple of moments, and by then, Sauron was already withdrawing from him.
“Very good!” he said then, and Legolas shuddered. “The danger has passed. For now.” Legolas turned onto his back again and looked up at the dark lord. He felt relieved to be alive, and to hear that he wasn’t going to die even if something unspeakable was being done to him.
“How long?” he asked again, pleading, as Sauron sat on the edge of the bed. He seemed to think for a moment.
“All told. Give or take a day or two,” he began carelessly, “around two months.” Legolas felt his face grow pale. Two months?! He remembered the drug that made him sleep, and he couldn’t quite countenance it. It was so long! He thought of his family and friends, and heard himself negating Sauron’s words in soft whispers.
“They have almost given up searching for you,” Sauron told him simply, as though he knew what Legolas’ thoughts were. Then he gasped when he felt Sauron’s hand caressing his member, and everything else flew from his mind.
“What? Are you… doing?” he managed, shocked beyond belief as the hand began to stroke and pull at him. Too late, Legolas thought to push Sauron’s hand away from him, but he wasn’t strong enough. “Stop!”
“Does it distress you?” Sauron asked, a slight smile on his lips as he continued to touch. Legolas blushed in humiliation as his body began to respond to Sauron, and he moaned wretchedly.
“Yes,” he hissed, and suddenly the hand was gone. Legolas moaned again in a mixture of relief and longing.
“You will find that I reward honesty, Legolas,” he said then, looking down as he stood up from the bed. Legolas looked up at him helplessly. “I have some rules. But don’t worry – they are quite simple.”
“One. You will not leave this room unless I take you from it myself. Two. You will not do anything to endanger the life you carry, or yourself. Three. You will obey me without question. Is all of that clear?”
Legolas trembled at the way Sauron spoke to him, and he nodded once. “What will happen to me?” he asked as Sauron turned and strode away, but there was no answer to his question, and soon he was alone again.
He wept for a while as the magnitude of his situation finally began to sink in, and he thought of his father and brothers. They have almost given up searching for you. “I’m here, Daeron,” he whispered, knowing that if anyone could track him down, then it would be his eldest brother. “Don’t stop looking.” He cried until his tears were gone, and then he simply lay on the bed, not bothering to move, even his fear of the uruk-hai who guarded him fleeing in the face of his hopeless plight.
Legolas awoke alone. For long minutes he lay on the bed, weeping. But eventually he quieted, and that was when he realised what being alone meant. No one was watching him. There were no orcs, no uruk-hai – he had been left to his own devices.
The chance for escape was too tempting to resist, and Legolas stood carefully, thankful that today, it was not so difficult as before. He tottered at first, without the safety of the wall to cling to, but soon enough his muscles remembered how to hold him and he walked freely across the room, regaining a little of the grace his kind was known for.
The door stood slightly open, and Legolas made his way over to it cautiously. There was the chance that guards were waiting on the other side of the door. In that case, everything would be lost; but he would rather they didn’t even see his hope.
No guards. Legolas breathed a sigh of relief. So relieved he was, that as he crept out of the room naked, and made his way down the corridor, it never even occurred to him to wonder why he was alone…
Panic was beginning to set in. So many corridors he had walked down; he was starting to despair. He didn’t know if he would ever find a way out, and he knew that the longer it took, the more chance he would be found wandering, or discovered missing from his cell.
The caution that he had when he first left his prison now utterly deserted him, and he began to run through the disturbingly empty halls. The sound of his footfalls on the stone echoed back at him, making him uneasy. Even pregnant, he was quick and nimble on his feet, the fear spurring him on, and eventually he came to a door. Light shone through the cracks – real light – and the heaviness lifted from his soul. Perhaps he would get out of here, after all!
He felt a small tremor of fear as he opened the door; sure that finally the orcs would be waiting for him, but there were none. No, it was not orcs that made him catch his breath in despair; it was the sight before him.
A black, barren, empty landscape stretched out before his eyes, ending further away than he could see. This was not Dol Guldur. He had been imprisoned and tortured, that was true. But through it all, he had always believed he was closer to the Greenwood than this. An awful feeling of homesickness filled him as he began to pick his way across the dry, rocky ground. He stumbled once or twice; there was a heat hanging over the land that made his eyes water and the burning air settled on his lungs like thick smoke, making him gasp. In hopelessness he flung himself on the ground. What chance was there of ever leaving here? This was why the guards were nowhere to be seen. He would die if he tried to escape this way. He didn’t exactly know where ‘here’ was, but it stretched on forever.
Just when he had given up all hope and was resigned to waiting for the orcs that would soon come and take him back, he heard something familiar. Something that sounded like home…
He followed the whispering sound until he came to a vision in the bleak wastes. Trees. His soul sang to see them. Woods, and wild flowers! He ran to the first of them with new confidence, certain that they would hide him from the enemy. As he drew nearer though, the song of the trees suddenly seemed full of shadow. He stopped, uncertain, but there was really nowhere else to go. He stepped underneath the leafy canopy, into the cool darkness, and the welcoming feeling of green.
He stopped again for the briefest moment in trepidation, remembering his feeling that there was a shadow hanging over the forest, but nothing seemed out of place. He must have been mistaken. Breaking into a joyful run, he touched the bark of the trees as he passed them, sending them his hope and his relief. //Hide me… keep me safe…// A small spark of his former self came back to him after all the darkness – he was Legolas again here and now, and he would fight to keep his freedom. He was exhilarated, dodging through the trees, but gradually he became aware that the wood was for some reason stopping him from proceeding. His direction changed until he knew without a doubt that he was heading back the way he had come.
Why? In an annoyance that was half-despairing, and half-playful, he stopped and leaned against a nearby tree to catch his breath, his back to the trunk. Only when he stopped and listened to the silence did he notice for the first time what was so strange about this wood. There was something missing – the sound of life. There was no birdsong; no humming insects. In fact, there were no animals at all. Disquieted, he leaned against the tree, trying to hear the explanation in its song, for surely there was a reason.
And this too he had missed during his captivity; the smell of the wood. He closed his eyes while he listened and breathed in the scent of summer on the leaves, inhaled the rich smell of the earth. Familiar feelings of the Greenwood came to him; the wild dark, the quiet secrets of the undergrowth, the magnificence of a forest and the trees such patient, silent overseers. But then he felt something he didn’t like – the tree he was close to felt a great loneliness, spoke of centuries without seeing life. Indeed, it seemed that these woods had forgotten the world. They sang to him in the way that trees had; the rustling of leaves, and the creaking of branches. Despite the sadness of the wood, Legolas smiled. They wanted to know where he had come from.
He felt leaves brush against his face, sensed the fragrance of blossom on the air. Long, cool grass moved around his feet, caressing his ankles. It was like a siren song to the lost wood-elf, and he gladly let himself fall into it. //How did you come to be here?// He listened, and although he understood the need, considering the emptiness of the wood, what he heard made him apprehensive. He shook his head to clear it, perhaps it was the feel of the words in his head which were making him dizzy; he had been locked up inside for far too long. He listened again:
Stay with us… we have been alone, and lonely… Sing for us… silence is death…
He pondered the lifeless state of the forest, silently asking, and in a flash he envisioned centuries upon centuries of stillness and quiet. For the trees, such natural observers of life, long ages where nothing changed except for them, where nothing made a sound except the breeze through the leaves. Trees spent their lives watching and listening to others; this unnatural, dead, still silence was already unbearable to him. How long it must take for the days to pass here, let alone the years. Legolas shivered suddenly in comprehension – this was a kind of hell. He knew without being told that even the weather was controlled here, but the truth was given to him regardless. No storms to disturb the unwanted peace, a heavy mist instead of the drama of rain. These woods had no secrets to keep, no memories to treasure; even their limited consciousness must be made insane by it.
Someone had kept the forest alive in this state of non-existence. But who? And for what purpose? The answer came as a memory, a reply to a similar question asked in delirium, the remembered words delighted and dark; “Because it amuses me.” The full horror of where he was struck him and evil enfolded him in its black grip, crushing his spirit. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, and he saw the wood for what it was – an exercise in control for the dark lord’s entertainment. It might look like home, but it wasn’t. And the trees might be familiar, but he didn’t know them. Trees and the wild places they inhabit should never feel so strange to one of his kind, he thought with a touch of bitterness.
No wonder they wouldn’t let him leave. With his arrival he had surely woken them up, and his stomach lurched at the thought. He didn’t understand what was happening here, and he felt uncertain when he thought about what might happen to him. He should never have ventured in here, he should have known better, and heeded the warning; these woods did belong to the enemy after all.
He opened his eyes only to find small tendrils of ivy curling around his wrists. He moved his hands away quickly and tore his feet free of the grass that had wrapped itself around his ankles, holding on to him. Refusing to admit his fear to himself he backed away from the tree, looking around him at the wood.
Protectively, he rested his hands over his belly, remembering too late Sauron’s instructions to him. The wood almost seemed to draw back in shock at his action, and the silence deepened. The atmosphere became slightly threatening and the air felt colder than before. The silence was oppressive and heavy, longing to be broken. He could hear his own breathing, his own heartbeat too loud – because they could sense it.
He moved in a circle with his arms outstretched, trying to watch all of the wood at the same time, ready to bolt at any sign of movement or danger. A branch creaked above him and he jumped, looking up only to see the tortured branches of a large oak, unmoving. The feeling of such fear in the middle of a wood was so alien to him that he almost laughed, but he didn’t dare. Instead, the fear continued to grow, expectant of something – but what? What could trees do? He had the unnerving impression that the forest was closing in upon him. Every time he looked around, the trees behind him appeared a little closer than before.
Deciding to move through the wood, whatever the truth of its nature might be, he turned and stopped immediately when he found himself facing an ancient oak. This wasn’t imagination – it hadn’t been in that position before. He began to back away, and bumped into another of the ‘unmoving’ trees. Before he could jump away in his panic, the ivy that had held him earlier was back. He pulled his hands away, but the living bonds were stronger now. He heard himself whimper in terror and he lost his reason as he fought mindlessly against the imprisonment. He would not be made helpless again!
After some moments of fruitless struggle, during which more and more ivy and vines had grown to hold him in his place, Legolas stopped to gather his strength. Trapped, he was unable to stop himself weeping bitter tears of frustration. Somehow, this was worse than Sauron’s prison. Here, in the embrace of the wood, he felt horribly betrayed. He heard the song of the wood again, and this time the hidden meaning was clear.
Stay with us (we won’t let you leave)… we have been alone for too long… Sing for us (we would hear you scream)… silence is death…
Legolas moved his hands again, and caught his breath when he felt a sudden, sharp pain. He looked and found that numerous brambles also held his wrists. Their thorns were catching at his flesh with every movement he made. He remembered all he had endured only to end up here, and it seemed eerily similar. Bound, helpless, forced to endure pain. He moaned plaintively, and he sensed the forest all around him, listening, drinking in the sound of his despair. The sensation of being watched and enjoyed as a form of entertainment made him move again. The thorns tore at his sensitive skin, and time slowed down. He watched, fascinated, as a drop of his blood fell, managing to shine wetly even in the half-light. It landed on a leaf, sounding like the first heavy drop of rain before a storm. The contrast between red and green was striking, and he felt the reaction of the wood to this new development. The brambles tightened around his arms painfully. He stayed as still as possible, understanding the danger. They would tear him limb from limb for the sound of his screams and the colour of his blood.
He closed his eyes to calm himself, and immediately the link between him and the forest was stronger. Despite what was happening, he again felt the instinctive bond of his kind towards nature and growing things. Even such a forest as this, twisted and insane, was at its heart the same as any other wood. The familiarity of his position as a prisoner made him remember his experiences, and too late he realised he had passed his memories on to the life around him. Their grip softened until it was once again bearable, but now the purpose changed.
He held his breath when he felt new touches over his body, refusing to open his eyes and acknowledge what was happening. Why would they do this, he thought suddenly, they couldn’t ‘feel’ him; they had no real sense of touch. One of the creeping vines brushed across a nipple, and he cried out, startled. The sound carried in the stillness, breaking the dreadful silence, and then he knew what this was about. He closed his lips tightly against his sighs, determined not to encourage this, but in his mind he remembered being forced to feel pleasure against his will and knew he would not be able to fight for long. His thoughts and his sense of failing resistance passed into the consciousness of the wood, and the touches became more insistent. He struggled again, despite the pain from the thorns; he had to get free somehow.
“No…” he pleaded finally, when he felt the lightest touch on his soft member, but the nightmare continued, only encouraged by the sound of his voice. Soft, stroking touches that almost seemed to belong to fingers… His body tried to move into the touch, causing more drops of blood to fall from his wrists and arms. The faint smell of copper made him aware of it, and he tried desperately to stay still as the intimate torment of his body went on.
After a while he couldn’t hold back, and he moaned into the stillness, regretting every sigh that passed his lips. This was wrong. He opened his eyes and cried out in shock at the sight. A criss-crossing pattern of vines and ivy covered his entire body. They had grown around him, making him part of the wood, seeming to absorb his separate identity. Nothing more than a plaything, he was held perfectly still as the vines stimulated his nipples and hardness. He was helpless once more, at the mercy of things which should be friends or protectors, and this time it would be endless. Legolas screamed as the vines covered his open eyes, and the sound reverberated through the entire forest, breaking the centuries’ old monotony at last.
This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author.