Chapter Text
He has heard rumors, the whispers of stories. Mirkwood has fallen, and the Necromancer (they say) has found something he once lost, and orcs and darker things are crawling through every acre of land between the Misty Mountains and the Iron Hills. Rumor says that some great elf-enchantress has been drive from her grove, and now rests in Rivendell; rumor says that blond horsemen with fell faces have been sweeping up from the south, and dealing with the dark power at Dol Goldur under the leadership of their decrepit king.
For Thorin, King Under the Mountain, this matters only where it affects his own people. The dwarves are for the dwarves, and he is the lord of them, now that Dáin is dead. The gold of Erebor grows, and its people multiply by birth and by migration, until his grandfather’s dragon-luring hoard is dimmed in its glory and the kingdom thrives in splendor.
And yet, despite the memories of exile and fire, the people of Erebor do not fear for their wealth. They celebrate a month after Durin’s Day, the anniversary of Thorin’s re-emergence from the Mountain; young dwarves compete in boxing, and mothers tell their dwarflings of Thorin’s Blow and how the wicked Smaug fled to the Misty Mountains before the mighty fist of their king. No dark thing dares approach, they crow, while Thorin is their king.
But dark things do move in the world; and dark things whisper in Thorin's heart, rumor and suspicion. While Erebor thrives, plowing and terracing its slopes to supply its own bread, other nations are beset by war, by marauding orcs, and by the growing influence of the Necromancer himself.
Yet in this growing dark, with Erebor proudly isolated from the world, there are a few things Thorin will not stand, the chiefest of these being dwarves enslaved to orcs; so when the slave-drivers come, Thorin sends his unruly nephews out to hinder them, and to bring home the lost children of Mahal whenever they are found.
Most of these caravans are populated with men and elves, and they will die quickly, Thorin knows; no use to waste his strength upon them, who will not give him aid even if they live, and who will not suffer long. But dwarves were made to endure, and they are precious to this Necromancer with his machines and strip-mines, which must be run in the dark and deep places, reeking with foul vapors, filthy and loud; and dwarves can endure them.
And if this gives his nephews something to do, to placate their unrest and their growing ill-temper, it is only a secondary blessing. Most of all Thorin wants them to see—these loud brash dwarves that his lads have become, with their strange foreign friends and their gold-heavy eyes—what an alliance with the Necromancer would become.
For the Necromancer has sent envoys, oh yes he has, promising safety from the coming war, promising tools and engines that plow the earth more efficiently than the knowledge of dwarves, promising bushel-baskets of sapphires and cities made of gold, even greater wealth than Erebor has yet known. And Thorin has seen his nephews' faces, and recognized the ancestral gold-madness there; so it is for the best, that Fili and Kili learn who are the true foes of Erebor.
Now they stand before him, dark triumph glittering in their eyes, and besides their rescued kin they have taken one more, an elf in chains and hooded with a rough sack, as if they bring him to the headsman instead of to their uncle's throne. White-gold hair falls from beneath the filthy cloth, and Thorin's mouth goes dry.
"We've brought you a gift," says Fili, smirking. "Almost left him, but Kili recognized his face."
"What have you done," says Thorin, hoarse, fearing that what he sees in the next few moments will destroy him. Kili laughs and pulls off the hood, and Thorin’s fears take wing: it is Thranduil himself, the Elvenking whose lands were the first taken by the Necromancer, kneeling chained and filthy at the foot of his throne. His face is thin, but still beautiful; he is draped in rags, and still seemingly more haughty than any king.
Old familiar rage uncurls in Thorin's chest like a dragon awakened upon its hoard, and his worry for the souls of his sister-sons vanishes in a tide of greed and punishing rage and half-forgotten sorrow. He is off his throne in a heartbeat, and he nods voiceless to the lads as he seizes the chains that bind Thranduil’s arms, hauling the elvenking upright.
“A fitting gift,” says Thorin with a shaking voice, “and one I shall enjoy.” He descends from his dais, and takes Thranduil’s chin in his fingers, lifting his face to be examined. It is truly him, though smeared with filth and withdrawn behind his mask-like face. Kili whispers in his brother’s ear, and Fili mutters to his uncle: “Mind he doesn’t enchant you.”
Thorin fixes his nephew with a black look and stands straight to address the court. “I adjourn you,” he says, ignoring the whispers and murmurs about the room, and pulls Thranduil upright by the chains that bind him, leading him from before the throne while Balin clears his throat and invites unfinished business to be dealt with at the next court, or by council members, as appropriate.
Thorin has never ended an audience so abruptly, but then he has never coveted anything so urgently nor so long, not gold nor throne nor Arkenstone. Thranduil follows him with chin raised, but more than once he stumbles, and Thorin begins to understand that his captivity has been long and his privation extreme, and his haughtiness is a show.
Thorin has imagined this before.
Once, young and blind with the confidence of royalty, he stood beside his grandfather’s throne and greeted the envoy of Mirkwood, proud of his powerful stature and his princely demeanor, and found his heart racing and felt his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth as the Elvenking pulled back his hood. Thranduil had been so strange, so lovely, in the light of the Arkenstone’s glow. His smooth face and tall thin frame were nothing that Thorin had expected, nor that any dwarf might naturally find beautiful, but despite his peaceful appearance there had been a battle-light about him. His skin and hair put Thorin’s mind on moonstones and silver, where once they had preferred to linger on bronze and jet; and as Thranduil debated with the great dwarves of the Mountain, Thorin thought of the tales he had heard, of how the Elvenking had fought in great battles and slain terrible foes and finally retreated within his borders to shut out the world and lead his own folk in peace.
Thorin laughs to think of it now, how he had admired his foe. It seemed to him a great and noble thing, at the time, to reign from within a cavern and treat only rarely with the surface world. He had longed in his youth for adventure and romance, for war and dominion, and at the end of it long years of lauded comfort on a throne that gave no thought to men or elves. The dangerous air of Thranduil’s calm had inflamed him; the strange beauty of his eyes had wormed its way into Thorin’s thoughts for many months, and after that his admiration had only crystallized into a deep and smoldering hope.
In the next meeting, years later, Thranduil’s eyes had met his own, and the smoking ember in his breast had become a flame that threatened to consume him. In his boldness, he sought audience with the Elvenking before his departure, and exchanged some meaningless diplomatic pleasantries with only the slightest catch in his throat, and received for his courtesy the incline of that graceful head and what was almost, in Thorin’s memory, a smile.
Thrain had cornered him after that and warned him of the Elvenking’s treachery, though little did he know how strangely his son’s attentions had become warped, nor how deep the vein of lust could run.
“Remember, my lad, that he is older than many nations, older than many of our own delvings,” Thrain had said, clasping him by the shoulder. “He is not an equal; he is a sorcerous creature, a force like a landslide, and we deal with him at our peril. He does not take comrades, Thorin, nor ally for love or loyalty; he sees what is useful, and he uses it. Never forget it, or he will use you too.”
Like a landslide, Thorin had repeated to himself. Like a force of nature, beyond alliance or compulsion. It had eaten into him for years, and the rest of the warning had slipped from his mind.
Only to be recalled, when Erebor burned and Thranduil turned his back. Only to be remembered in bitterness and hatred, as Mirkwood turned its back and the survivors of Erebor starved. Only to fester into spite beyond bearing, in the years since Thorin’s Company had fled ravening Mirkwood, slaughtered by orcs and spiders, only a few of them escaping without a single arrow’s help from Thranduil and his kin.
He supposes now that Thranduil must have been caught in his own battle. Surely it was only poor luck that led their company into Mirkwood at the moment the Necromancer gained sudden awful power; certainly Thranduil’s folk had been routed, destroyed, and driven from their home. Until now Thorin has thought their king perished, or under torture unending in Dol Goldur, and clung to the thought as a solace when the old hatred crept up in his throat.
If there is one awful gift in all the turmoil of the outside world, one dark delight that makes Thranduil’s capture a sublime opportunity, it is that the Necromancer has been quite open about the fates of his foes. Everyone from the beleaguered city of Minas Tirith to the filthiest ditches in the wilderness of Rhun knows how elves are best tortured, and what torments they most fear.
Old scrolls and tomes agree, as do the desecrated corpses of elves sent by the Necromancer (with jewels in their mouths and… other orifices, honey to sweeten the stick) as warnings against hospitality for his enemies. Sexual violation is a thing of dread and revulsion to all thinking creatures, but to elves there is extended some twisted mercy, some bizarre bodily process, by which that violation cascades into shock like that of blood loss—weakness, pallor, coldness in the limbs, shallow gasping breaths—and is just as fatal, without fail.
The ever-courteous notes that come with the bodies explain that, as with blood loss, the weak are more susceptible, and that even the strong may learn to withstand more awful violations with care and long exposure, though none have yet withstood unwanted orgasm nor any sort of major penetration. The texts are nearly scientific, though Thorin has no stomach to examine the bodies; for it is not Thranduil’s death he longs for, and if deep in his heart some more innocent self is protesting, he knows—he is sure he knows—exactly how far he can push and still keep his revenge.