Caught (a legolas fanfiction)

Burning hands

Chapter 28

Thranduil's breath left him as surely as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

'If you are my Adar, where is my Naneth?'

He tried to breathe air into his lungs, which were begging for it, but he couldn't make himself.

'If you are my Adar, where is my Naneth?'

His wife's face, her beautiful eyes shining with mirth and her light brown curls framing her pale face, which was so much like her son's.

"Your naneth is not here," he managed to say, trying to stop the tears that were running down his cheeks.

Legolas was deeply disturbed by the tears that continued to flow own the face of his Adar. He reached up with two hands, which were long-fingered and unknown to him, and he held the face in front of him. He gently brushed the tears away with his thumbs.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, placing a kiss upon his father's brow. "I should not have asked."

He stood up slowly but gracefully. All the wounds, it seemed, were on the top half of his body. He frowned. How peculiar.

At the very moment that he stood up, a searing pain blew through his chest. He cried out and fell to his knees at the sudden onslaught of his senses. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears, and with each beat a sudden, terrible pain coursed through his entire body.

This wasn't caused by his injuries. No wound could cause pain this bad. He didn't know how he knew it, but he did.

He was pushed down so he was lying on the ground by hands that he didn't know. Wherever they touched him, they burned. He looked up. It was...what had they said their names were again? Elladan, Elrohir, Elrond and...Glorfindel? The others were nowhere to be seen.

Why were they hurting him? They had been so nice! Elladan and Elrohir had told him the funny bin bag story, and Elrond and Glorfindel were so kind.

"Stop it!" he screamed at them, and their faces became confused. "Please...please stop," he said, whimpering slightly. He was crying, and he was trying to breathe, but every inch of him hurt. "It hurt—Unnnngh!"

The pain once more became overwhelming, and he tried to curl into a ball but their hands were on his arms and his legs and his chest. Holding him against the cold, hard ground.

"Why...?" he gasped. "Please, please, please, it hurts when you touch me! Please!"

But they didn't let go. They held on, and he started to struggle within their burning grasps. He felt the tears running down his cheeks, and his vision began to grow hazy as he repeated it over and over and over.

"Please, please, please, please let go...Please, please, please, please let go...please..."

Something was pushed to his lips, but he held his jaw tightly shut. Shaking his head vigorously, he squeezed his eyes closed.

And then he realized how cruel they really were when his nose was held shut by two fingers, one on either side. He tried to hold his breath, he tried so hard, but eventually even he needed air. His mouth opened to gasp in oxygen, and at that moment the vial was forced into this mouth and a foul tasting concoction came out of it and onto his tongue. He tried to spit it out, but there was a hand clamped over it, and he was forced to swallow.

As the world swirled into darkness, his tears came anew as he realized that they were not his friends, and that the wounds were probably inflicted by them. They wanted to hurt him.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! Was his last thought before he fell into unconsciousness. You cannot trust people so easily!

The last thing he felt was a strange sense of déjà vu.

The world faded to black.

The group breathed a sigh of relief as Legolas's body finally fell limp and he stopped struggling against them. His body fell heavily onto Glorfindel, who had been holding down his arms, and the golden-haired elf gazed sadly upon Legolas's now peaceful face.

Elrond pocketed the vial that contained the sleeping draught he had made Legolas drink. Elladan and Elrohir relaxed their grips on Legolas's legs, allowing Glorfindel to pick him up.

"We should best be going," he said. "There is still another hour of daylight. If we continue at this pace, we should arrive in Lothlorien within a week."

"That may not be soon enough," Thranduil said, taking his son from Glorfindel and positioning them both on the horse. "We need to move faster. If we double our speed, we can make it within three or four days."

"That's ridiculous, Thranduil," Aragorn said, looking incredulously at the Elvenking. "We'll wear down the horses in no time at all."

"It's not the horses I'm worried about!" Thranduil said sharply to the ex-ranger. "It is Legolas! Did you not see him just now? If something of that scale happens again, we don't have another sleeping draught...He might..." Thranduil didn't continue, he just rested his head on top of Legolas's and breathed in deeply. His son would not die. He couldn't.

"Alright," Elrond said. "We can try it. However, if the horses look like they're about to pass out from exhaustion we will need to stopand rest, no matter what time of day it is."

Thranduil gave no reply, he merely spurred his horse and leaned over his neck as he galloped. The wind blowing in their direction sent

Legolas's hair flying into his father's face, and Thranduil was getting very irritated about having to constantly brush them away after a few leagues of riding.

The sun finally dipped below the horizon an hour later, as Glorfindel had predicted. Thranduil slowed his horse and came to a halt as he entered a small clearing. Yes, this would do nicely.

The others pulled up behind him and dismounted, letting the horses go and wander free, knowing they would return if they called for them. The group each got going on self-assigned tasks to get the clearing and make it into a reasonable campsite.

Thranduil had given himself the job of making sure Legolas was comfortable and checking up on him. He hadn't stirred at all since he had been drugged to sleep, and it was worrying Thranduil a little. Legolas should've woken or at least moved by now.

Thranduil got gracefully off of his horse and pulled Legolas into his arms, finding a suitable spot to lay him down across the clearing. He lay his son down, unrolled the bedroll that he had packed for him, and then slid it under Legolas. Legolas didn't even move a muscle throughout the entire thing.

A noise from in front of him startled Thranduil. He looked into the darkness, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. What he saw made him grab Legolas and leap onto his horse with a cry of warning to the others.

"Yrch!"

A/N: Mwhahahahaha another cliffie!