Laws and Customs (Cover and Art Edition) by AdmirableMonster  

He shouldn’t have returned to Tavrobel.  Not during these troubled times.  But it was in the little house at Tavrobel that Pengolodh believed he had unwittingly abandoned a series of his notes about Maeglin, including a short interview he had conducted with King Turgon.  Gil-galad had sent an escort with him, but neither of them had wanted to take too many warriors away from the front for something like this, especially when a small group could easily slip beneath the notice of the armies of all sides.

Stupid, Pengolodh told himself as he crouched beneath the small table inside the now half-ruined cottage.  Neither of them had considered the possibility of other small groups, which would be far more likely to take an interest.  He had not even realized they were being attacked until his horse reared and ran and he had turned to see the rest of the company engaged in a pitched battle.

Running was the only thing he knew how to do, but he was used to it, and he knew that Dínferedis and her two soldiers did not need to have their attention split trying to protect the useless scholar, so he had fled and looked for a hiding place in the cottage.  With a scrap of ragged blanket across the table, he thought he had concealed himself as well as he could, but he did not know what was happening.  This might be where his luck ran out.  Trembling, he splayed one hand across the floor. 

He did not have to wait long to confirm that his luck had, indeed, run out.  At first, everything was still.  But very soon, the floor vibrated once, then again in the rhythmic pattern of a set of heavy boots.  Pengolodh’s breathing stuck in his throat.

Elentári, he prayed silently.

Then the table was thrown over sideways with a heavy thud, and he looked up to see a mud-spattered Orc with a bloody blade in one hand.

Pengolodh tried to run, but a hand caught his wrist, and he was jerked instantly to a stop.  He turned and went for the Orc’s eyes, but a heavy blow across his face snapped his head back, and he blacked out for a moment or two.

By the time the dizziness had passed, the Orc had dragged him out of the cottage and flung him down in the center of a ring of armed warriors.  Pengolodh frantically cleared his eyes, trying to see what had happened, trying to find a way out.

There were bodies on the ground—Dínferedis and her warriors, as well as two Orcs and another Elf, an unfamiliar one.  Pengolodh’s stomach roiled.  Forgive me, forgive me.

The last Elf, though—that was not one of their own.  And when Pengolodh looked up at the ring, he saw something that made his heart drop through his feet: Elves and Orcs conversing rapidly in what seemed to be a complex pidgin dialect.  Pengolodh’s Orcish was minimal, but the other language they were speaking was Quenya, complete with hand gestures, so he could follow some of the rudiments.  Something about scavenging, supplies—

Their attention turned to him.  His heart was thundering in his rib-cage, and the fear sent him back to his feet, flying in a futile attempt to break through the ring.  Hands grabbed him instantly, no matter how he kicked and bit and fought, always more and more, until his breath was seizing in his lungs and his muscles would not obey him.

This, then, was where it ended.  In front of an abandoned cottage, surrounded, again, by the bodies of friends.  Pengolodh’s hands balled into fists, and he could not keep back the frustrated tears, or the little sob that wrenched itself out of his throat.

Be dignified, he told himself.  Go to Mandos without being afraid.  Elentári help me—

It didn’t do much good.  All he could feel was the frenetic beat of his heart in his ribs as he was dragged on his knees in front of a big white-haired Orc, whose face remained expressionless as he flipped a dagger from his belt and pointed it at Pengolodh, saying something as he did so.

It was in Quenya, Pengolodh was sure, but heavily accented, and the fangs distorted the words so that he could not follow them without the aid of gestures.  The Orc repeated the instruction.  Pengolodh could not shrug, could not raise his hands to gesture.  He could only watch, helpless, hands stilled, leaving him mute.

Then one of the Elves caught the Orc’s arm, tugging him down to say something rapidly.  The Orc frowned, and Pengolodh saw him look around the group as if assessing something.  Then, with a slight shake of the head, he gestured to the Elf to move forward.

The Elf was grinning, and she addressed Pengolodh clearly.  “You’re the deaf scholar from Sirion.  The one they call the Pengolodh.” Turning, she spat to the side.

The red of her robes had faded to a faint brownish tint, but the accent was unmistakable.  Fëanorian.

There was little point in denying it.  Pengolodh nodded.

She smirked at him.  “I’ve been wanting to meet you, slanderer.” Strutting forward, she pulled out a little wrapped bundle, and cold encompassed Pengolodh’s entire body.  His notes.  She had his notes.

He must have made a noise, because she laughed delightedly and tossed the bundle into the air, catching it just before he was certain it would have fallen to strike the muddy ground.

“And what are you going to do with these, I wonder?” she asked.  She stooped, holding the notes right under his nose.  “More slander?  I’ve read some of your work, you know.  You don’t have any respect for your betters, Sinda.”

Pengolodh could not keep his eyes from the notes.  It was ludicrous.  He was about to have his throat cut, and all he could think about was that they would fall into the mud, be trampled, be obliterated, and he had worked so hard on them.

The Elf turned her head, and Pengolodh realized the Orc leader had said something to her.  She waved a hand lightly, and Pengolodh caught in her response only your people and mine and something that looked like a question.  Then she turned back to him.

“This isn’t Gondolin, Sinda,” she told him.  The repetition of something that wasn’t a name, Pengolodh thought.  There was a reason for it.  He’d talked to enough folk who had survived hardships to know that when the enemy began to speak of you as a category rather than an individual, things were about to get much worse. “You can’t play Noldo here and expect it to keep you safe.  You and your bastard king.”

With a swift movement, she stepped forward and ripped his kerchief back.  He flinched in horror and tried to cover himself, but he was securely held, and his fluffy hair sprang free easily, already badly-contained from several weeks of humidity and washing in the river.

Again, she turned; again, the Orc must have said something.  This time Pengolodh caught none of it; he was trying too hard to breathe against the crushing, all-encompassing sense of shame and nakedness.

The conversation went on longer, he thought; he could not be sure.  He had finally closed his eyes, trying to shut the world out.  He was recalled to it with a harsh blow, which rattled through his painful nose and made his eyes spring open.

“Oh no,” the Fëanorian told him, a dangerous glint in her expression.  “You don’t get out of this that easily.  My friend and I have a bet, and you need to settle it.”  She nodded to the others and said something that was too hard for him to follow.  They released his arms enough so that he could move his hands, though he was still held on his knees before her.  “You’ll speak or the notes go into the fire.”

He blanched.  He couldn’t help it.  His hands trembled but he forced himself to respond, “I’ll speak.”

She hit him again, an open-handed, contemptuous slap.  “‘I’ll speak, my lady.’”

Pengolodh’s gorge rose, but he could still see the bundle of his notes, the only copy of Turgon’s words left in Middle Earth.  Could still see Idril’s serious, confident expression when she named him Pengolodh.  “I’ll speak, my lady.”

“Good, that’s good, I might win my bet.”  She ran a hand through his hair, and he shuddered, trying to move away from the mockery of a caress, but the touch became a twisting, painful grip and held him still.  Only when he stopped trying to struggle did she step back.  “Will you do anything for your notes, Sinda?”

She wouldn’t give them back.  She’d humiliate him and then destroy them in front of him and laugh about it.  But the alternative was not even trying.  Idril’s reproachful face rose before Pengolodh’s mind, the image of Gondolin’s towers collapsing in on themselves in a shower of bright-glowing embers.  I am not faithless, my king.  I am not Maeglin.

“Anything.”

She raised a warning finger.

“Anything, my lady.” He knew his eyes were burning with anger as well as with tears.  His teeth shifted awkwardly and unpleasantly against one another; he was clenching them.

“All right then, Sinda.  Have you ever pleased a woman with your mouth?”

What. Pengolodh stared at her.  She grinned back, more of a snarl than a smile.  He could only shake his head.  Of course not.  “I’m not married,” he protested raggedly, hands moving before he had time to think.

She laughed again. “Still pretending you’re a Noldo?  I know what the Sindar are like, slut.”

“I am Gondolindrim, and the Sindar aren’t—”

She held up the notes warningly, as if about to drop them, and Pengolodh dropped his hands to his sides, shaking all over.

“Anything,” she bit out, hands and mouth moving.  “You said anything.  So what is it—anything, or do I burn the notes, slut?”

Would it kill him?  At this point, he almost preferred to die, but then the notes would—the notes would—no, surely not.  He might not be personally acquainted with carnal acts, but presumably using his mouth wouldn’t—it was shameful, but it wasn’t—

It was only shame.  Dínferedis and her warriors had given their lives for those notes.  Pengolodh dipped his head and nodded.  “Anything, my lady,” he signed numbly.

“Good boy.  Open your mouth and make sure you move your tongue, I like that.”  Quite unselfconscious, she approached him, unbuttoned her loose leggings, and flipped them open.

He could not quite believe this was happening.  Everything was starting to seem very distant.  Follow the instructions, he told himself sternly.  He opened his mouth.  She sank her hand back into his hair, pulling him forward and positioning him so that his mouth was between her legs.  She stank of sweat and of many hard days in the wilderness.  His mouth met unaccustomed heat, unaccustomed moisture. She tugged his hair, hard, repositioned him slightly.  It jolted his nose, and he felt himself mewl in pain, but she ignored that.

Follow the instructions.  He knew the basics, at least.  He might not be personally experienced, but he read fairly indiscriminately, and he’d devoured his fair share of erotic fiction. He moved his tongue.  The taste wasn’t terrible, at least, even if the sensation was beyond strange, slimy and hot.  Worse was the feeling of being trapped, the fact that he had to steal air, shaking, through his nostrils, which were already clogging with blood and snot.  

And worse than that—

He could feel her moaning, a ragged tremor going from her body into his mouth.  As she got him settled into a position she liked, there was less pain—she was only a little rough, and he could use his hands to steady himself as she rocked against his mouth.  And—his hröa responded to her heat, to her taste, to her movements.  His cock hardened; his cunt grew wet.  A horrible, distant nausea began to twist in his belly as she used him.

Elentári, please, he begged, but there was nothing but the usual silence, the heavy hand on his head, the awful feeling between his legs.  He tried squeezing them together, but that only sent a bolt of bright, ugly pleasure up his belly and into his chest.  His nipples hardened as well, pressing against the thin linen of his breast-bindings.  Please, Pengolodh prayed hopelessly, and a sharp-edged something tore out of his chest, shaking his body with the force of it.  The hand in his hair tightened, and she forced herself against him harder, her thighs shaking around his face.  For a moment, everything started to go dim, and he realized vaguely that he could not breathe.  Please—please—

Then—a gulp of air into his lungs, almost a disappointment, and there was nothing holding his head.  He sank downward against the hands that were still holding the rest of him up, and blinked through blurred eyes to see her staring down at him, flushed, her chest heaving.  Her Treelit eyes traveled up and down his form, lighting on first his face, then his chest, then his groin.  “Oh, you liked that, didn’t you?” she signed.  “I knew you were a slut.”

Pengolodh shook his head, sending splintering pain through his face and skull, but the evidence was there, incontrovertible, un-hideable.  His breath came in panting gusts through his mouth; his nose was blocked now, but he could not raise his hands to do anything about it.

“Well, I’ll go again, since you’re so eager,” she said, and then something muddier he couldn’t make out, not focused on him.  Suddenly, the others, who had been holding him passively, were moving.  Pengolodh struggled weakly, but he was too exhausted to do much other than catch his breath.  They pulled off his tabard and his belt, untucked his shirt and yanked it up; then they forced him down onto his back, hands pinning his wrists into the mud, his back pressed roughly into a pointed rock.

Her weight came down directly on his sternum, forcing his breath out in a rush.  Straddling him, she slid back along his stomach, leaving a trail of fluid where his shirt was rucking up around him.  Her hand grasped his cock, freeing it from his trousers with a rough, painful twist, and positioned it beneath her.  Then she sank down on him—heat and slick surrounding him, horribly pleasureful.  Pengolodh gasped for air, turning his head to the side.  Surely—surely now he would die.  Surely.

The rock dug into him, just on the edge of uncomfortable.  His cock sank into the Fëanorian, over and over again, as she fucked him into the ground with repeated, business-like motions.  He took one breath, and then another, each one torn out of him.  Pain prickled through him, through the wrists that were bruising from his attempts to pull them out of his captors’ grasps, through the sharp point of the rock in his back, through the cramping muscles of his abdomen.  But the pleasure was worse, a relentless warmth coiling in his belly as she rode him, as she forced him into her, again and again and again.  And he breathed, and he kept breathing, smelling blood and wet earth.

Her hands ran over his chest, and one of them brushed across his nipple.  He twitched, an intense spark of sensation traveling through him, and she halted in her motions for a minute.  When he looked at her, still trying not to try to breathe, still with his breaths coming too fast, too hard, too strong, too alive, she was flushed and amused.  She said something he couldn’t make out, too far gone to read her lips, and then she pinched his nipple, hard, through the breast-bindings.  Pengolodh’s whole body jerked.  Pain shot through his mouth, following by the smothering copper tang of blood, and he realized he’d bitten through his lip.

She did it again, and again, each time making his body thrust up into her, each time shaking loose a wash of sick pleasure; then she bore down against him heavily, pinching again as she did so, and he spasmed into a climax, all-consuming and terrible, his heels knocking against the earth.

When she peeled herself back up off him, he was still alive.  Everything had remained silent.  There had been no call to Mandos.  Pengolodh lay in his own filth and sobbed quietly.

For the space of four breaths, he thought at least it was over now.  He had failed his parents and his people and his gods, but at least it might be finished.  Then there were more hands on him, dragging his leggings down, and hands pulling his thighs apart.  She’d noticed more than he’d realized when she was playing with his nipples, then.  Maybe, Pengolodh thought, with one last guttering ember of hope, maybe that will be enough.  Maybe this final violation would detach the fëa.

Fingers sank into his wet cunt, up to the knuckle.  Someone slapped his thigh lightly.  Pengolodh looked up for long enough to see there was a different Elf between his legs now, and then turned his face away.  At least this intrusion hurt, though not really all that much.  The rock in his back was worse.  It would probably bruise.  He noticed, distantly, that he was no longer really expecting to die.  Instead, he was vaguely cataloguing the new set of sensations through a grey numb veil.  There was a stretch—that was most of the pain—and an intrusion, and the repeated drag of the thing inside him against the walls of his cunt, repetitive, not as pleasureful as his cock inside the other, but pleasureful enough.  Hands were playing with his breasts again, and he shuddered and closed his eyes.  A particularly violent thrust drove him into the rock, and he gasped.  That might have broken the skin, finally.

He searched for a distraction. Looking around the area, he saw that what had originally been a muddled ring of onlookers had broken apart.  Several of the Orcs were standing watch at the edge of the clearing.  One or two of the Elves were going in and out of the cottage, perhaps checking for supplies.  Pengolodh did not think there would be much left.  The big white-haired Orc stood watching with a neutral expression, while several of the other Elves were—

Pengolodh’s face burned.  What they were doing should not have made it worse—nothing should have made it worse—but it did. 

The Elf fucking him clutched at his hips and went still, cock twitching obscenely inside him.  When he pulled out, Pengolodh felt hot seed trickling out of him.  His stomach heaved, but he forced the nausea down, afraid of what they might do if he threw up. Another Elf took the first one’s place. They stopped holding onto his wrists. It made little difference.  Pengolodh lay limp and felt his body move, hands lying like discarded gloves against the earth. The soreness between his legs slowly increased, but he couldn’t even be glad of the discomfort anymore.  Worse, this one lay on him, weight pressing him into the earth, and Pengolodh could feel the moans and grunts against his crawling skin as the second fucked the seed of the other back into him, then let it mingle with his own.

The next one was an Orc, and the feeling of the larger cock pressing at his entrance was, abruptly, too much.  Pengolodh felt himself make a noise that shook his whole body.  His gaze fell on the white-haired Orc, who made a motion, and he signed, desperately, even though he knew he wouldn’t be understood, “Please, kill me.  Please,” trying at the same time to make the words come out of a throat that did not know how to shape them.

The Orc’s mouth opened, and even with the accent and the fangs, Pengolodh could read a sharp word, Stop.

The Orc between his legs halted, looking back.  Then, with bad grace, he stepped back, letting Pengolodh’s legs fall, splayed and trembling, to the earth.

The Fëanorian met the white-haired Orc partway to Pengolodh’s side, saying something, furious and rapid.  The Orc looked at her impassively, then took her by the shoulder and steered her over to Pengolodh.  He gestured from her to Pengolodh; she glared, but shrugged, and said to Pengolodh, “He wants to know if you want them to stop.”

Agony twisted up Pengolodh’s spine.  His eyes flickered to the notes at her side.  The white-haired Orc jabbed a finger into her shoulder.  She rolled her eyes.  “He says I have won the bet, as you have fulfilled your word.”  She turned sideways and said something else, but now the Orcs around the clearing were stirring, several of them reaching for their weapons.

“Stop,” Pengolodh signed.  He could not take more, in any case. (Maeglin bloomed somewhere deep and hidden in his chest.  Maeglin.  No.)  “Please.  Kill me.”

She said something else to the Orc, who nodded and took the notes away from her.  Then she turned back and shook her head, face cold.  “A true Noldo wouldn’t have survived that, slut.”

Pengolodh squeezed his eyes shut, tears slipping down his cheeks.  A large pair of hands took him carefully beneath his shoulders and drew him into a sitting position.  Then rough cloth was thrown across his legs, and something soft and leather was tucked into his hands.  He opened his eyes again to find that the Orc had pressed his notes on him.  He pulled something off his belt and handed Pengolodh a waterskin and a few strips of dried meat, miming eating.  Pengolodh stared at him.

The Orc gave him a nod, raised his hands, and stepped back.  He turned his head, calling out, and the whole band of them began to collect together.  The Elves were a little slower to gather, several of them tucking themselves back together or staring at Pengolodh, who instinctively tried to make himself smaller, but after a few minutes, they were all gathered, and then all of them began melting away into the forest.

Pengolodh curled up around his notes.  The damn rock was no longer in his back.  It was the last thing he thought before he slipped into a deep stupor.

He woke to torchlight and a hand touching his shoulder, and he jerked away in terror.  As he went, the rough Orc’s cloak fell from his bare legs.

The torch lifted high, and Pengolodh halted in his instinctive flight as he recognized the face.  “Elrond?”

No—it wasn’t Elrond, he realized after a moment.  The faint shadow of a beard across the chin and cheeks told him that.  A blessing in disguise, maybe; he didn’t know the twin well enough to dislike. Horror blossomed on Elros’s face before he schooled it to neutrality.  “Pengolodh?”

Pengolodh’s knees buckled.  He shouldn’t have tried to stand.  

“By the Valar, sit down.”  Thank the gods he was speaking clearly, even if that tiny Fëanorian lisp made Pengolodh flinch.  He took a breath, and another, then sat, pressing his face briefly into his hands.  Elros knelt beside him, signing awkwardly, “Drink some water.”

It was easier just to obey.  The cool water soothed a throat he hadn’t realized was parched, and he drank long and deeply, then rinsed his mouth and spat the water to the earth, trying to rid himself of the last dregs of the Fëanorian’s taste.

“Are these yours?” Elros was holding his trousers, his tabard.  Pengolodh felt his cheeks burn.  He nodded.  “All right.”  Elros spat something Pengolodh couldn’t quite follow in his numb, exhausted state, but which looked like a Mannish obscenity.  Then, “Um, do you need me to help you get them back on?”

He looked like Elrond, and he spoke like his foster fathers, but there was a frank openness in his face Pengolodh had to trust.  Besides, he could trust Elrond, even if he didn’t like him.  Ergo, he could trust Elros.  Surely.  “Yes.”

“All right.  Okay.  Uh.  Let me help you over to this log.”

His hands were callused but not ungentle.  He did not have Elrond’s healer’s precision, but he was better at remembering to look at Pengolodh when he spoke to him.  In a little time, he had Pengolodh’s leggings back on, his shirt fixed, and his tabard smoothed down.  Pengolodh was drooping anyway, with a lethargic weariness mixed with despair.

“Here.” He pushed his notes at Elros.  “Please.  Keep these safe.”

Elros looked down at them, looked up at Pengolodh, and seemed to see something in his face.  He nodded, taking the notes and settling them carefully into his pack, before swinging it onto his back again.  “What are they?”

“My king’s—Turgon’s—the one interview I had with him in Gondolin.”

“Oh.”  Elros nodded seriously.  “I’ll be very careful.  Now come on, my folk and I are holed up in an old Marchwarden fortification. It will be safe there.  You can get some food and bathe.”

Wearily, Pengolodh shook his head.  He wasn’t hungry; there was only a dull, persistent ache in his abdomen.  “I don’t need food.”

“You do.  You’ll feel better once you’ve had it, no matter how—how terrible the things that have befallen you are.”

“No.”  Pengolodh shook his head.  “I shouldn’t eat.”  He could not have stopped himself from drinking, but could he stop himself from eating, at least?

Elros rose from the log beside him, pacing back and forth in the torchlight.  Then he turned.  “I’m not going to leave you here,” he said, slow and clear.  “I would never do such a thing.  And I’m not going to drag you, either.  So either you come back with me, or we wait here together until someone else finds us, and I defend you to the death.  Do you understand?”

Pengolodh stared at him, aghast, riddled with guilt.  “I don’t think you understand.  I was—they—in exchange for the notes, I let them—and I did not die, so, so, you see, I’m—look at me.”  He gestured to himself, to the stains on his clothes, his uncovered hair hanging in limp, greasy tangles around his face.  “It wasn’t, it wasn’t—” Maeglin. “It cannot have been unwilling.”

Elros closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath.  For a few moments, his lips half-moved as if he were speaking to someone in a low voice.  Then he came and knelt in front of Pengolodh again and looked up at him, driving the base of the torch down into the muddy earth so that his hands were free.  “No,” he said, with his hands.  “No.  Pengolodh, look at me.”

Unwillingly, Pengolodh moved his eyes up to Elros’s face.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Elros told him clearly, with both his lips and his hands.  “Whatever—specific things they did to you, whatever promises or agreements they extracted from you, it was rape.  It was the deepest kind of violation.  I can’t see your fëa, like Elrond could, but I know you’ve taken harm to it.  I know that.”

“Then why,” Pengolodh burst out with shaking hands, his voice reverberating with echoing pain in his chest, “why didn’t Varda let me die?”

“Because you’re strong, or because you’re unlucky, or because you’re needed to protect the notes.  I don’t know.  I can’t know the gods’ minds.  But I can tell you what I do know, and that’s that none of this was your fault.”

“They died for me,” Pengolodh stumbled out with shaking hands, gesturing at the bodies of Dínferedis and her folk.  “They died for me, and I—”

“You are still alive, they kept you alive, and that mattered to them, Pengolodh, it mattered to them, and it matters to me, and I know it will matter to Gil-galad.”

And perhaps it would have mattered to Idril.

And there is still no one else.

“All right,” Pengolodh said, giving up in the face of Elros’s immovable obstinacy.  “But I don’t think I can walk far.”

Elros blew out his breath, sagging a little.  He nodded.  “It’s not too far, and I can help you, or I can carry you a little way, if I have to.  If you’ll allow me.”

It was a true question.  Pengolodh could read it in his eyes.  He would let Pengolodh stagger the whole way until he actually fainted, if Pengolodh needed him to.  Pengolodh’s legs felt like jelly, and he trusted Elros.  “Yes, I don’t think I can do it alone.”

“All right.  Good.  I’ve got you.  I’m going to put an arm underneath your back, and we’re going to get you to safety.”

As Elros had promised, the trip was not long; half a mile down the river, perhaps, where Elros set him down, handed him the torch, and put both fingers to his mouth to blow a piercing whistle.  To Pengolodh’s shock, he felt it faintly in his fëa.

The trees on the other side of the river stirred and then sent their branches creeping across, twining into the shape of an elegant woven bridge.  Elros saw Pengolodh’s startled look and explained, “Some of Melian’s magic yet remains here.  This is where the Girdle stood.  And, uh, it listens to me.”

One of the branches patted his head, and he blushed and swatted at it.  Pengolodh stared at it, then at Elros.  Somehow, perhaps because he very much did not get along with Elrond, he had not realized how strongly the Maiar blood ran in the twins.

Elros ushered him across, into the dark and silent forest.  They passed through a grim, darkened archway between the trees, and suddenly, there was light and warmth.  A small ring of stone cottages with thatched roofs stood around a round, central stone slab.  Between them, clothes hung drying, hanging from thin ropes.  There were candles in the windows, and little furtive fireflies glimmering on and off in the treetops.

“Food first, then bath,” Elros told him firmly.  “And I’ll get you some privacy.”  He ushered Pengolodh to one of the huts, knocked, stuck his head in.  After a few minutes, an Elf and a human woman came out, gave him a quick smile, and fled.  “Here.”

Inside the cottage, there were two beds covered in soft green quilts, one along each wall.  Pengolodh sank gratefully down on the left one, hissing when he pulled at the injury in his back.

“You’re hurt,” Elros said.  “I mean—I knew you were hurt, I just—”

“It’s nothing.”  Pengolodh shook his head.  “It’s really nothing serious, I mean—just a bruise, maybe a cut.  They—they had me on a rock, and I—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Elros cut him off.  “If you want, I can take a look.  If you don’t, I won’t.”

 All of a sudden, the injuries he had sustained over the course of the day made themselves unavoidably known—the swelling nose, the bruise in his back, the ugly soreness in his stomach and between his legs that he had not wanted to think about. It didn’t matter, he told himself, willing them away again.  Elros was probably right that he should eat, and the messy tumult of his brain could not think beyond that. “Food first,” he said, moving his hands with careful deliberation.  “Then, if you wouldn’t mind, if you’d check the injuries while I’m bathing, I’d be grateful.”

“All right.”

Elros’s head turned as if there had been a noise—a knock on the door or voices outside, Pengolodh inferred.  “One moment, that’s probably your dinner.  Convenient.”

He came back with a bowl cupped between his hands and gave it over to Pengolodh with a smile.  It smelled faintly of fresh, growing things, but it was cool to the touch, refreshing in the rather warm summer evening.  Slowly, he realized it was iced tea poured over soft grain, topped with sliced vegetables and a little cooked fish.  Elros put a spoon in his hand and waited.

Diffidently, clumsily, Pengolodh spooned himself a bite.  The taste was mild and refreshing.  He took another, and another.  His stomach rumbled, and the ache in his abdomen revealed itself to be simple hunger.  He refused to eat too quickly, but he shut his eyes to savor the cold, salty vegetables, the soft hearty fish, and the spoonfuls of tea-enriched rice.  When he set the spoon down with a sigh, he opened his eyes to see Elros giving him an encouraging smile.

“Bath?” he asked.  “And, if you need me to shut my eyes or look away at any point, just let me know.”

It was difficult, but he managed to smile back and nodded.  “Thank you.”

The bath was outside, in a quiet, slow-moving loop of the river that had been partially blocked off by another span of woven trees.  Privacy was ensured by long sprays of vines covered in glossy dark green leaves, which formed a curtain between the rest of the encampment and the bathing area.  Jeweled lanterns cast a soft pink glow across the moss-covered bank, and their reflections glittered in the water, made ten times manifold by the gentle motions of the sluggish current.

Disrobing was less difficult than he’d feared.  The touch of the befouled clothes on his skin was unpleasant, and stripping them off was a relief.  Normally, he’d have folded them neatly, but he couldn’t find the heart to do so, and he just dropped them on the moss.

 Elros sat on the bank, reassuringly non-threatening. “All right, let me see.”  He beckoned Pengolodh over to him.  “What do you want me to look at first?”

It was really his face that was hurting the most—nose and lip aching and swollen.  And that was easy.  Pengolodh gestured ruefully to his countenance, and Elros gave a sympathetic wince.  He patted the spot beside him, and Pengolodh gingerly took a seat.  Elros gently looked him over, taking his chin and very very carefully turning it first one way, then the other.  Then he shook his head.  “The nose is broken,” he said bluntly.  “Not much I can do about that.  It will probably heal crooked, I’m afraid.  I don’t think we can get you to a real healer in time to fix that, unless you want to have it re-broken.”

The re-breaking, at least, presumably wouldn’t be time-sensitive.  Pengolodh shrugged.  At least his eyes and fingers were unharmed, and they were far more important.  

“The lip isn’t bleeding anymore, but I should probably clean out that cut and get you something for the pain.  Would that be all right?”

Pengolodh nodded.  “Maybe after I’ve washed in the river,” he suggested.  Perversely, he wasn’t quite ready to let go of the pain just yet, a reminder that he’d struggled, that he’d been hurt.

“Good idea, you’re full Elf, so I don’t think that’s a risk for you.”  Right.  Men and their vulnerability to sickness.  “Can I see your hands?”

Startled, Pengolodh lifted them, and then noticed what Elros already had.  His wrists were ringed with swollen bruises in the shapes of eager fingers.  He stared at them, shuddered, looked away.

“I’ll get you a bruise balm,” Elros told him, when he was ready to look again.  “They’ll heal.  Quickly, even.  With long sleeves, you won’t have to look at them while they do.”  His eyes flickered downward.  “Oh—yes, a bruise balm,” he said, momentarily distracted by something.  “Let me see your back?”

Pengolodh turned. A gentle hand was laid between his shoulder-blades, careful and reassuring. He shut his eyes and covered a sob with a hand before taking a deep breath and managing to settle it. Elros studied him for a little while, then tapped his spine, and he turned back around.

“It’s mostly bruised too, but there is a cut—if you want me to help you, it might be just as easy to wash it out in the river and dress it when you get out.  Or you can do it.”

“I appreciate the thought, but I can’t reach it well.”  There wasn’t much point in trying when it was in such an awkward location, a little too low and a little too central.  “Just don’t drag it out.”

Besides, he was realizing how desperately he wanted to be clean.  He stank, a ripe, unpleasant smell like rot, and he could feel the crusting of fluids on his inner thighs and the hair between his legs. 

“I need to get clean,” he said.  “I need—”  Then he realized he didn’t need anyone’s permission, and he waded out into the river.

Although it must be late by now—he could see the stars shining dimly through the branches far above—the water was warm, maybe a consequence of Melian’s residual enchantment.  Pengolodh breathed out a sigh of relief at its gentle touch, then submerged himself, letting the river’s embrace take hold.  The world slipped away for a few blissful moments.

When he resurfaced, Elros was waiting for him with a washcloth and a bar of soap that smelled sharp and clean, a mountain breeze laden with the scent of pines.  Patiently, he lathered it up and then beckoned to Pengolodh to turn around again.  He had rolled his trousers up as high as possible, but they were still clearly getting soaked.  Pengolodh felt a sob catch in his throat at the fact that Elros hadn’t even asked whether he could disrobe, he had simply waded in fully-clothed to help.

Elros’s hands moved gently across his back, and Pengolodh pressed the heel of his hand to his mouth to muffle another sob.  The throbbing in his wrists was especially bad, recalling him forcefully to the feeling of many hands holding him down.  His chest hurt as well; when he looked down, he finally realized what Elros had noticed earlier when he was talking about bruise balm.  There was another long mark trailing over the top of his left breast and diffusing into an ugly yellow-black bloom.  He shuddered, pulling away from Elros, and crossed his arms over himself, trying to will away the feeling that those hands were still there, careless, pinching, and painful.  His skin crawled. He was as safe as he could be outside of Gil-galad’s stronghold.  He knew it, logically, but the understanding did nothing to abate the sudden rush of nausea.  He doubled over at the side of the river, retching and dry-heaving, a long-delayed response finally forcing itself out. 

He did not actually throw up, only coughed and spasmed for a long minute, his body going through the motions of something he’d suppressed almost violently earlier in the day.  When it was over, his trembling muscles relaxed, and he slid down the bank, half-collapsing into the water.  When he was finally able to look up, Elros was waiting.

“I can leave it,” he said.  “It will probably be fine.”

“No,” Pengolodh signed in return.  “I’m not there.  I’m not there.  Just do it.”

“All right.”  He went back to work, a little more quickly this time, a little less gentle.  Pengolodh clenched his hands tight until it was over.

Then Elros offered him the washcloth, and he took it and the soap, cleaning himself all over with his own hands—neck, face, shoulder-blades—his arms, one after the other, digging his fingers perversely into the bruises on his wrists, to prove he could, to prove he had fought, even if he’d been overmatched—

He washed his breasts quickly, then his stomach, and then he came to the thighs and all the rest, and began to scrub.  This, he quickly discovered, was awful.  His cunt was sore and swollen, his cock only sore, but a gentle touch made him want to start retching again.  He couldn’t have Elros do it—that would be worse—so he had to force himself, over and over again, until he was weeping silently and breathing so hard he was starting to see black dots flickering in front of his vision.  He must be clean by now.  He must.

He flung the washcloth down on the shore, pressing his hands to his head and squeezing his eyes shut.  The river lapped at his thighs and waist.  Once again, he felt torn in two: here and there, now and then.  The phantom sensations echoed through him again and again, and he could not stop trembling.

This had been going on for seemingly a very long time when a soft melody intruded on his heart, thin and a little hesitant, but so very unusual that it pulled him right back to the present.  The sensation of the water grew sharper and more real, the clean smell of earth and growing things presented itself insistently to his nose.  The beat of his heart slowed, and he was able, at last, to open his eyes.

Elros sat on the bank, leaning forward, his lips pinched into a tiny o.  He was whistling again.  

“Any better?” he asked as Pengolodh’s wavering vision settled.  He seemed realer, somehow, than anything around him.  The light clung to his curls, the deep restful shadows collecting under his sleeves and chin.  Starlight was reflected in his eyes, a softer, more distant gleam than Treelight.  The same distant white glitters lay on the water where Elentári had flung them, a gesture, perhaps, of safety.

It was better.  Everything outside this place seemed distant, dream-like even.  Pengolodh nodded shakily.  Out here, like this, Elros seemed almost like a tree himself, or perhaps an Ent.  Wholly in harmony with this place and holding everything in his presence in harmony as well.  “Thank you.”

A nod.  “Of course.  Do you want me to dress your injuries and then we’ll get you to bed?  You look exhausted.”

He was exhausted.  He had been exhausted for hours, but now part of an injury he hadn’t realized he was carrying had turned from pain into sheer, healthy weariness, like fluid released from a festering boil.  “Yes,” he said.  Even his hands felt heavy.  “Could you do that again afterwards?”

“I’ll sing you a lullaby if you want.”

“Stars, please.”

Slowly, he pulled himself out of the river.  Elros hopped out ahead of him and wrapped a towel around his shoulders, letting Pengolodh rub himself down.  He did so, then followed Elros exhaustedly back to the little cottage, where he sat and shivered on the bed while Elros cleaned his nose and lip and bandaged his back and rubbed balm into his bruises.  Someone had found a clean linen nightshirt that smelled of old wood.  Pengolodh put it on and crawled into one of the beds, soft as a cloud beneath him.  Elros’s sweet high whistle serenaded him into sleep, and he dreamed of walking among the stars with a cloak of light about his shoulders.

Several months later. Just like Elves, Harashkir thought, to pass judgement outdoors, even when the winds from the east brought ash and smoke from the forest fires.  He winced and shifted in his chains.  Stupid.  If he and his folk had parted from the Elves right away after what had happened near the meeting of the waters, they might have escaped.  But he’d worried that Nordowen would take offense, and he hadn’t wanted to subject his people to a possible pitched battle with such an equally-matched force.  Fuck.  Bad call.  They were all going to die anyway.

Harashkir was fair enough to say that they probably deserved it.  Whatever Nordowen had said, whatever excuses he had mouthed to make himself feel better, Harashkir was almost certain it had been rape, and a particularly ugly rape—multiple participants and a single unarmed free Elf.  It was always worse for the free Elves: a lot of them thought they would die of it, and if they didn’t, sometimes they killed themselves anyway.  Harashkir hoped the scholar hadn’t killed herself.  He didn’t want that on his conscience when he went to face his ancestors.  He already wasn’t sure they wouldn’t turn him away to roam as a restless ghost.

The crowd stirred.  Harashkir shifted uncomfortably in his chains and looked up.  He, his folk, and Nordowen and his were all bound in chains in the center of a circle of wooden benches rising up and then apparently merging into the trees.  Around them on three sides sat stern Elven warriors; in front of them was a large wooden chair with a richly-woven purple tapestry flung across it—the throne of the Elven High King.  It was currently empty.  The king and his councillors had been in conference, perhaps deciding the fate of the pillaging bandits they’d captured earlier in the month.  Now, they arrived to pass judgment.

The king came first, his councillors behind him, dropping easily into the chair.  He was tall, broad-shouldered for an Elf, and strangely handsome—nose slightly snubbed, eyes widely-set and with sharp eyebrows that Harashkir suspected required careful grooming to keep contained in those neat, thin points.  Was he even really a pure-blood Elf, Harashkir wondered suddenly, his breath catching in his throat.  The High King’s sharp eyes rested on him for an instant, a beat, and Harashkir looked away at the judgement in them, instinctively submissive.  Not a pure-blood, a child of two worlds.  Precious.  Beloved.  Fuck.  His judgement would be just and also proper, and Harashkir, guiltily, wished he had at least had that pretense to hide behind, that an Elf did not truly have the right to judge him.

Looking away from the face that sealed his fate, he found, quite suddenly, the scholar.  He almost didn’t recognize her.  Rather than the simple traveling clothes she had been wearing when he’d first encountered her, she was attired in a set of deep blue robes decorated with intricate silver embroidery.  Her silver-streaked hair was uncovered and largely unadorned, though some delicate white flowers had been woven into an elegant fishtail braid at the back of her head. A delicately-decorated monocle—silver with tiny flowers—was set in one eye.  She looked irritated, maybe agitated, but not fearful.  And her nose—fuck.  It was crooked, sitting oddly on the fine-boned, symmetric face of an Elf.  They had broken it, then, and Nordowen had likely made it worse.  It had already been swelling from a blow in those first moments, when Harashkir had just been planning to kill her or take her prisoner, but by the time he’d put a stop to things, it had looked worse, blood smeared across her face and bruising already evident in the hollows around the eyes.

At least she was alive.  She hadn’t killed herself, and she hadn’t died of exposure, which was the other weight Harashkir had been carrying on his heart for the last month.  He’d left her food and water, he’d known there were allies in the area, but it had still been a risk, and one he wouldn’t have taken if he’d thought he could control Nordowen.  He should never have believed that bullshit excuse for a second, and he’d known it even then, but he’d been afraid for his people.  Fuck.  He might have condemned them all to be wandering ghosts, and only Istark really deserved it.

The High King raised his head.  The crowd’s murmurs grew silent.  “I am here,” the king said, “to pass judgement on these bandits, who have been accused of theft, pillage, murder, and rape against those under my protection. Have any of you anything to say in your defense?”

If it hadn’t been for the scholar, Harashkir might have tried to contend that the thievery and pillaging had been necessary for survival on a continent that was being torn apart by powers so far above them they might as well be ants, and that the so-called murder had been a fight between equals.  But there was no defense against the last charge.  It was clear they were condemned from the scholar’s own mouth.  A living witness.  If the Elves were anything like the Orcs, it was her words that would have the most sway.  Still, Harashkir couldn’t regret her survival.

Of course, Nordowen opened his mouth.  “Rape?” he said, in his clear, haughty voice, speaking the lyrical language that was still sometimes difficult for Harashkir to follow.  “If you’re referring to our interlude with your pengolodh, it’s self-evident that it wasn’t rape.”

The scholar was watching Nordowen’s face closely.  She flinched, shutting her eyes for a moment, then schooled herself, and raised her head again to meet Nordowen’s scornful gaze.  Harashkir felt like seven kinds of a worm. The king’s face grew still, the line of his jaw more pronounced.  His nostrils flared, a hunting stance.  “And what do you mean by that?” he asked.

“He’s standing beside you, isn’t he?  Everyone knows that the Firstborn die if they’re violated.  We made a bargain, and now he wants us killed because he didn’t enjoy himself?”

Fuck it.  Harashkir had been going to let him keep digging them deeper, but a muscle twitched in the scholar’s jaw and her hands clenched, making tight bunches in her pretty blue robes.  She didn’t deserve any more of this.  Twisting in his chains, he slammed his shoulder violently into Nordowen’s face, and the Elf stumbled sideways with a cry of pain.  Harashkir pushed forward between the rest of his chained companions and went heavily down on his knees before the High King.

“It was rape, King,” he said, enunciating as clearly as he could.  “If there’s to be torture before death, I am the leader of this band, and I would ask you allow me to suffer it on behalf of my folk.”

The scholar was looking at him.  Harashkir could only hope someone was interpreting for her, because he did not think she would be able to understand him otherwise.  Still, he didn’t think that his instinct to drop his head as he spoke to her would be the right thing to do for this woman, so he looked up and met her eyes as he spoke.  “It was not a fair bargain.  You were not treated the way a prisoner should have been.  It is my fault, and that of my folk.  I accept it.”

To his faint relief, the scholar turned to a dark-haired Elf by the king and exchanged a series of rapid gestures.  They were mostly signs that Harashkir did not understand, but he caught a question, the scholar nodding in the affirmative, and something that looked like death, passed back and forth like a coin between them.  Then the scholar looked back at him and held his gaze for a long moment, before putting her hand to her mouth and drawing it outward to display an open hand, palm-up.  It was a simple gesture, and one that Harashkir knew.  Thank you.

A sick numbness spread up from Harashkir’s belly to become an almost painful burning heat in the back of his neck and his ears.  He looked away—and right into a knee, which Nordowen brought up with a crack! into his face.

“Traitor!” he howled.  “Fucking Orc traitor!”

He would have thrown himself at Harashkir, but the Elvish guards grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground, leaving Harashkir swearing and tasting his own blood, stinging waves of pain resounding through his face and skull.  Nordowen was still yelling, and Harashkir found himself suddenly grateful that the scholar couldn’t hear, because he caught, “could have had your own taste, if you wanted it!”  Well, that probably meant he would be tortured as well, but he richly deserved it.  Harashkir should have put him down like a rabid animal—he should have known Nordowen was one of the lost ones, the mad ones, the ones who had forgotten what it meant to be a person.

Wincing, Harashkir spat to clear his mouth, shook his head—a mistake, his own freshly-broken nose informed him—and, wincing, looked back to the king.  He was in conference with the scholar now, signing back and forth with her with a fluidity Harashkir hadn’t realized was possible.  Ancestors, the scholar was not only an advisor, but a friend of the king.  Nordowen, you fool.  He would certainly be tortured as well, and neither of them could hope for a quick death.

“You,” the king said to him, and he tried to compose himself.  “Leader.  What is thy name?”

“I’m called Harashkir, king.”

“Harashkir.  Which of thy folk was it who was going to continue the rape when thou didst halt it?”

Harashkir heard Istark hiss through his teeth.  For one unworthy moment, he considered indicating him, but it would not be right.  “I was responsible, king.  I will not name them.”

“That is honorable of thee,” the king said.  “It does render the judgment more difficult, as—”

“It was me, king!” Istark had pushed his way forward.  Harashkir closed his eyes, relieved despite himself.  At least Istark had not lost himself as thoroughly as Nordowen.  He joined Harashkir on his knees.  “It was me, and it was rape, and I have shamed my ancestors.”

Nordowen made a kind of piercing whistling noise from where he writhed on the ground.

“Good, I am glad to see you both acknowledge the truth that my scholar has told and written.”  It had the cadence of a formal statement, but one that Harashkir did not know.  The king sat up straight, drawing the majesty of his heritage about him like a cloak, and continued.  “This is my judgement.  The witness has confirmed that his companions died in battle, and that there were equal losses among these bandits. Thus I will not consider it murder. Those who participated in the rape are to be put to death.  That is at least three of the Noldor, one of whom has already confessed.  The rest of that folk will be remanded to Eönwë, to be taken for judgement back to Valinor.  The Orcs will be kept under guard among my people for fifteen years, understanding that this is a long period of time for those of that kindred.  If, during that time, they prove to be penitent and trustworthy, they will be released.”

Harashkir stared at him.  “Great king, you can’t—I am responsible for the actions of all those under my command.”

“Thou art.  As my scholar has told it, the Elves were not under your command, but hers.”  He nodded at Nordowen.  “Thou didst stop thy folk from committing the unpardonable.  And we need honorable folk among us, for this long war has not yet neared its conclusion.”  He leaned forward, locking eyes with Harashkir.  “Those who prove themselves after a first mercy are the most worthy.  Those who fail are the most unworthy.  So my father taught me.  Which wilt thou be?”

The words of Nega in one of the oldest Orc epics, when she pardoned her brother’s murderers.  Harashkir prostrated himself.  “King, you are powerful indeed, as is your brave scholar.  I will strive to be the first kind.”

Pengolodh paced back and forth in the corridor, trying to burn away the restless energy.  The Fëanorian was dead.  He had seen her severed head himself.  Gil-galad had offered, and Pengolodh had accepted.  Vengeful, perhaps, but it wasn’t only that.  He needed to know that she was far away.  She couldn’t touch him from the halls of Mandos.  Maybe now the repetitive, vivid nightmares that had stalked his dreams on and off since his return would stop, or at least diminish in frequency.  But there was something else he was going to try as well.

He wiped his sweaty palms on his handkerchief to save his formal robes.  He’d approached Elrond earlier to ask if his twin would be returning to the stronghold soon, and Elrond had given him his most polite look, then gone vague for a minute, then said, yes, he thought Elros might in fact be back this evening.  A little earlier than Pengolodh had looked for, but he wasn’t going to wait.

When Elros did arrive, he looked refreshed and at ease, as if he’d already dined and maybe had a glass or two of wine.  Pengolodh suspected Elrond had told him who might be waiting for him, because he didn’t look at all surprised to see him.  He just leaned sideways against the wall, gave him a smile, and said, “To what do I owe the pleasure, Pengolodh?”

Pengolodh had put together a very nice little speech.  All of it fled out of his head, and he said, instead, “I’d like you to go to bed with me.  If you’d like to.”

He got a startled blink for that, but then Elros gave him a considering look, then a thoughtful nod.  “Walk me through what you’re looking for, but I’m interested.”

A very reasonable request.  Pengolodh tried to gather his scattered thoughts.  “It’s the nightmares and the memories and all of it,” he said, knowing he wasn’t perfectly coherent but determined to express as much as he could.  “They’re dead or gone, and I know that.  But the Fëanorian—” He paused.  As much as it made his hackles rise, he wouldn’t do the same thing to her that she had done to him.  “Nordowen,” he corrected himself, spelling the name letter by letter, “She was right about one thing.  I’m not a Noldo.  Maybe that’s—why I didn’t die.  Maybe I should take the heritage of my mother as a sign of strength.”

Elros nodded, waited.  He was very good at attentive waiting.  Unlike his brother, who seemed to disappear when he was listening, Elros maintained his own presence.  Only in that attentive, waiting silence did Pengolodh discover what else he was trying to say.

“I don’t want rape to be my only knowledge of physical intimacy,” Pengolodh said.  He shook out his hands, which had started to cramp.  Too tense. “And I trust you.”

The last four words sat there in the stillness, true and sincere.  A bashful little smile crept up Elros’s face; he tucked an errant curl behind one ear, turning his face down and to the side for a moment.  Then he looked back, speaking to Pengolodh clearly with both lips and hands.  “I’d be honored,” he said simply.

* * *

In the end, they decided to take the evening into Pengolodh’s own room.  It was where he would be the most vulnerable but also safest.

“Would you believe I haven’t slept with an Elf before?” Elros said, a little abashed, as Pengolodh invited him over to his own cozy little bed, tucked beneath a wide glass window that looked out into the courtyard.  “Men and women, yes, but—”

Pengolodh cut him off by lifting the crystal decanter of wine he had thoughtfully procured earlier in the day and gesturing with it towards two glasses set out on his small reading table in the center of the room.  Elros nodded in thanks, and he poured wine into both and offered one to Elros.  Then he took a long swallow from his own and set it down to reply.

“Most of the Elves you’ve known were Noldor.  Exiles even?”

A nod.  “Yes.  Elrond and I were raised that way.  Elrond is…much more Noldorin than I am.”

Given Pengolodh’s unfortunate awareness of the relationship between his king and his king’s favorite herald, he wondered exactly how forthcoming Elrond had been with his twin brother.  But then, there were barriers to a king’s marriage that there might not be for anyone else, so perhaps it was not inconsistent. 

He engaged with the more salient point. “I was raised that way, too.  Gondolin wanted very badly to be Tirion.  And it’s hard to criticize a home that was lost—that way.”

A shaky breath from Elros.  He took a long drink of his wine.  “Yes.”  He set the wine cup down, jaw working slightly.  “What do you remember of Sirion?” he asked abruptly.  It seemed to cost him something to look into Pengolodh’s eyes, but he did it.  “I’ve read what you wrote, but there’s not much.  About the place, I mean, what it was like to live there…”

It was a question that cut Pengolodh to the quick more than anything else Elros could have asked about, including the rape.  He hadn’t really thought of Elros and Elrond as children—as people—in conjunction with Sirion much.  He had been too busy making sure to write a history that would absolve them of complicity with their foster-fathers’ sins.  But the history of Sirion had been deliberately dry and distant.  What do you remember of Sirion…

He took another drink of the wine to fortify himself.  “The cranes,” he said.  “We followed the cranes to Sirion.  They used to dance there—to marry there.  Dírhavel showed me.”  He shut his eyes, thinking of grey feathers in a twilight-orange sky.  “There were very beautiful.  The dances were very intricate.”  His hands shook slightly.  “Your mother had the Silmaril brought to the top of the tower whenever she wanted to welcome the mariners home.  She did it for us, too.  When the light went out—”

Gentle hands stopped his words, and he opened his eyes to find that Elros had claimed his wrists.  “I’m sorry,” he said, the Fëanorian lisp very pronounced.  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you that.  Not now.”

Pengolodh took a shaky breath and waited a moment before freeing his hands.  “I’ll give you my notes,” he said in a rush.  “You can copy them and give them back to me.  There’s much that I couldn’t—use.”

“Thanks.  I would very much appreciate that.  Um.  We were talking about Gondolin, though.”

“Yes.”  Pengolodh finished his wine and laughed.  All the homes he’d lost, one after another.  “Yes, we were.  Gondolin wanted to be Tirion, but—it wasn’t Tirion.  My mother was Sindarin.  She had lovers before she married my father, and it never bothered either of them.  She spoke of many of them fondly.”

He took Elros’s hands back, holding them between his own now, leaned forward over the wine, and kissed him soundly.  “There,” he said, sitting back flushed and triumphant.  “I’ve never done that before.”

Elros chuckled, his nose scrunching up and his tongue flicking out.  “Do you want to go to bed then?” he asked.  “Only—sex can get complicated without words—um, sorry.  Spoken words, I mean.”  He gestured awkwardly at his ear.  “I want to know if you want to stop or keep going even if your hands are doing other things.  I mean, stop the sex, or stop what we’re doing—either one.”

It was a reasonable concern, if clumsily expressed.  “Don’t hold my left hand,” Pengolodh said.  “I don’t think I’d want you to anyway. Then if I pinch three times—” he demonstrated on the back of Elros’s hand, “—we stop.  And I tell you whether I mean stop entirely or something else.  If your left hand’s free, you can do the same, though I’ll have an easier time reading your lips.”

“Oh, I’m easy,” Elros said, then flushed.  “I mean—you’re right, though.  It shouldn’t just be for you.  Thanks.  Should we undress?”

He was more hesitant than he had been when he was taking care of Pengolodh’s injuries after—after the rape.  Which made sense, Pengolodh supposed.  He didn’t need the other person to be strong now, and Elros knew that, so he was letting Pengolodh see more of himself.  Pengolodh thought he liked what he was seeing.

“Let’s undress,” he said.  “Come with me to the bed?”

They were soon naked upon the bed together.  Elros lay back against the pillows and showed off, splaying his legs open.  He was well-muscled and the addition of a short, carefully-shaped beard, recently grown, kept his face from looking too much like his twin’s, despite the similarity of his full, mobile lips.  His hair was not so well-groomed, though it was kept shorter, in the Mannish style, and loose dark curls spilled around his sly grey eyes.  Pengolodh let his gaze drop lower—Elros was obviously enjoying the attention, posed and flushing happily.  His compact frame was well-muscled and scarred in several places—one particularly impressive one ran raggedly across the side of his stomach, and he had twin clean straight scars across his chest.  His dark curls appeared again just beneath his navel, forming a thickening trail down to his soft, flushed cock.  Pengolodh reached out curiously, rubbing his hand across it—it was smaller than his and swelled but didn’t fully harden at his touch.

Elros tapped his head once to get his attention.  “It’s not like yours,” he said, unperturbed.  He made no effort to move Pengolodh’s hand but arched lazily against it as he spoke.  “I thought we were the same the first time I saw you, but it looks like yours is a little more—independent.”  He nodded to where Pengolodh was hardening between his legs.  “Which is delightful, because that means you can put it in me if you want.  I like that.”

It had not occurred to Pengolodh that Elros might have a cunt as well, which—changed things.  Of course, he didn’t have to take him up on the offer.  There were other things that could be done, with hands and mouths, but—those ugly memories, nestled away like immovable words on a page.  Like any words, they could be overwritten with others.  I can write my own story.

“Don’t touch my breasts,” Pengolodh warned, feeling a little spurt of nausea as his nipples peaked while he was speaking.

Elros nodded seriously.  “Anything else?”

“I’m going to use my mouth on you first.  You can touch my hair, but don’t—don’t pull it.”

A little hitch of Elros’s hips; his slick organ rubbed against Pengolodh’s hand.  “Ummm.  Right.”

“Good.  Thank you.”  He lay down on the bed, pressing his hands to Elros’s inner thighs before he lost his courage.  

He knew he was clumsy to start with, licking between the folds too awkwardly, too delicately, but Elros only petted his head encouragingly, and he moved upward, getting his mouth onto Elros’s small cock, which twitched underneath him.  Elros made some kind of a noise that arrived at Pengolodh’s lips as a small vibration, but he only moved slightly against his mouth, then widened his stance to give Pengolodh better access.

He tasted salty-sweet with a hint of smoke—much more pleasing than Pengolodh had expected.  After a little while he started squirming a bit.  Pengolodh explored the base of him, and Elros petted his head more, not even threading his hand through the hair with a care that made Pengolodh moan, which wrung a twitch and a sideways jerk out of Elros.  Moving up, Pengolodh got his lips around the head and experimentally sucked, and Elros half-twisted off the bed, hand vanishing from Pengolodh’s head.  When Pengolodh sat back, wiping some of the slick from his mouth, he found that Elros’s hands were both fisted in the sheets, and he was red and panting, chest heaving and cheeks flushed across.

He looked at Pengolodh and for the first time forgot to sign along with his words.  “Please tell me you’re going to fuck me now.”

This was very different from before.  This was Elros, desperate, asking—pleading.  This was a man trusting Pengolodh with his body, scars and all, and willing to be denied.  This was the smell of clean sweat and musk in Pengolodh’s own bed in his own room, where he had opened the door to let it in.  Pengolodh sat back on his heels.  “I’m going to fuck you now,” he said.

Elros’s head tipped back in relief; his mouth parted, and his chest heaved.  He pressed himself back into the bed, opening his legs wider, inviting.  Pengolodh tested him briefly, with a finger—with two fingers—and Elros clenched around them and rocked before opening again, legs and eyes, to give Pengolodh another desperate look.

Hurriedly, Pengolodh lined himself up, panting when his cock brushed against Elros’s leaking slit.  Then, arms trembling a little, he entered him, slow and careful.  Elros looked up at him with lidded eyes, blown wide and dark.  “Can I put my legs around your back?” he asked.  Pengolodh nodded, pressing deeper into the welcoming heat of him, and Elros closed his legs and guided him the last little way.

Pengolodh kissed him, and Elros moaned into his mouth, kissing back messy and eager.  Then he reached out with his left hand to capture Pengolodh’s right and pull it down to the bed, interlacing their fingers and squeezing.  His knees squeezed too, very gently, and Pengolodh gulped and began to move inside him, very slowly.  Each movement outward was easy, each stroke inward deep, less a thrust than a sinking and a joining.

The feeling of desire mounted, and at first, he did not like it.  The way it clutched at his belly and tried to make him thrust faster, and the way it threatened to strip his fëa away and leave him mindless, vulnerable, at the mercy of a host of ugly memories.  But then Elros began to match his rhythm, rocking slow and tender with him, welcoming him inside, and the memories subsided a little.  The too-intense pleasure transmuted into a new feeling, a slowly-building warmth, the desperation blunted by Elros’s easy motions, by the way his mouth moved against Pengolodh’s and his right hand caressed Pengolodh’s shoulder like a benediction.

The breath trembled in and out of Pengolodh’s lungs.  He kept the pace up steadily, and Elros followed his lead.  After a little while, he tucked his face into the junction of Elros’s shoulder and his throat, and Elros pulled him into an embrace.  Chest to chest, the slippery sensation of sweat and heat against his nipples was a gentle additional source of stimulation, and Pengolodh moaned, his pace increasing a little, thrusting deeper into Elros as Elros held him and met him and opened for him.

Elros freed his hand, and Pengolodh hesitated, in case he was about to signal something, but he just slid it down between them to start rubbing his own cock.  His knuckles dug into Pengolodh’s stomach, but the discomfort didn’t seem to matter.  If anything, the firm touch made an interesting contrast with the rest and kept the growing fizzing sensitivity of his skin from being overwhelmingly too much.

He had not expected to start losing time; it was not something that had happened to him before outside of studying and writing.  But the world fell away, and there was only Elros—Elros’s cries reverberating through his flesh, Elros’s hand on his back, rubbing circles in his sweat, Elros’s thighs a secure weight on his waist, Elros’s cunt, hot and slick and drawing him in over and over and over and—

Elros’s nails scrabbled at his back, slipping in the sweat, and his cunt contracted around Pengolodh’s cock, sudden and forceful.  Pengolodh’s hips hitched and shifted, urgency mounting, as soft wet heat spiked in his groin, his belly, his chest—for a moment, he had his face buried in Elros’s shoulder, fucking him desperately, chasing the feeling, which rose higher and higher and then—

He tipped over, shaking, warmth flooding through him, stilling welcomed and held deep within Elros.

It took him a moment to collect himself.  Once he had done so, he realized that Elros was petting him gently, repeated, light, almost imperceptible strokes of a hand across his hair.  Pengolodh looked up and caught his gaze.  “Thank you,” he said.

Elros yawned and smiled.  “My pleasure,” he said enthusiastically.  “Most definitely let me know if you want to do this again sometime.”

There did not seem to be any urgency about disentangling themselves.  Pengolodh found that he didn’t object.  “I will,” he answered, smiling back.  There could be no reason not to be Sindarin in this; they clearly understood certain things better than the Noldor, in any case.

The fires were burning low.  Harashkir had a fully belly, and his ears were also full, with the sound of his people’s songs.  It had been a long time since they had had the energy for singing.  When he had been young, they had sung in Angband: life was hard, but there was food enough and rest enough.  When they had escaped in the confusion of the first few years of the great war, they had sung then, too.  But food had become scarcer, death more common.  The singing had petered out and finally stopped altogether.  He was glad for them, that their music was returned to them.  And glad for himself as well, though it didn’t feel fair.  It felt like a reward for an atrocity.

Their situation—technically prisoners of the king—felt more free than living in Angband.  Although the guards posted among them only let them gather in small groups, they were jovial and kind, and already, Harashkir knew, some of his folk were befriending them.  Many of the king’s folk—at least the ones who had been chosen to act as guards—seemed to have the easy acceptance of people with other shapes that came from necessity, the kind of thing that had forged deep bonds in Angband between Elvish and Orcish thralls alike.

A light step, out-of-place among the more heavily-armed and armored guards, approached from the direction of the main fortress.  Harashkir turned automatically and found himself looking at the scholar.

She was walking very determinedly straight towards him and within moments was closer than she had been since—the rape.  At her side was another Elf, much taller, robed in green.  Harashkir stared up at her from his seat on the log by the side of the fire, utterly unsure what could have brought her here.  He could smell sweat on her, could hear the pounding beat of her heart and see a minute constriction of her odd, Elvish pupils, but he did not know if this portended nervousness or anger.

She gestured to her companion, who took up a position at her side, signing a question to her that Harashkir did not understand.  She signed a response.  The other nodded and turned to Harashkir.  “My lord Pengolodh wishes to interview you.”  The way he said pengolodh made it clear, finally, that it was a name, which made Harashkir feel even smaller and more ill-at-ease.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

The companion signed to the scholar—to Pengolodh, who signed back, and Harashkir realized she had brought him as an interpreter.

“Lord Pengolodh is a scholar and historian, and they would like to ask you about your people’s ways,” the interpreter clarified, using one of those incomprehensible Elvish pronouns that always gave Harashkir a headache when he was trying to follow the language.  He transferred his attention back to Pengolodh, who was obviously the person who actually wanted to converse with him.  Better practice when dealing with an interpreter, and Harashkir could not bear to be rude to her, even if he still did not at all understand how his people’s ways could have brought her back into the midst of his folk, even under careful guard. 

“I will try to answer,” he said, with a nod.

“You recognized the king’s words that he learned from his father,” she said.  It was not a question.

A chill settled into Harashkir’s stomach.  Was she looking for evidence that her king was of two kindreds?  The guards here might be well-enough disposed to Orcs, but Harashkir knew there were many Elves who weren’t.  He owed his life to Pengolodh and to her king—how could he choose one of them to betray?

“It made me think that perhaps his father learned those words from your people,” she clarified, her eyes following his face closely.  He couldn’t tell if she was trying to intimate that she already knew, but at least it seemed that his first fear wasn’t founded.

“Yes,” he said, as she seemed to be waiting for a response.  “Maybe that’s where he heard them.  They’re the words from an Orcish epic.”

“I’d like to know more about the words.  Can I sit?”

She hardly needed Harashkir’s permission, but he slid sideways on the log and gestured welcome.  She hesitated for a bare moment and then settled herself beside him.  From inside a pocket of her robes she drew forth a small, leatherbound book, like the one he had returned to her at Tavrobel, and one of those clever Elven writing implements.  Signing with it in her hand made her movements clumsier, but her interpreter evidently understood her well.

“Now tell me.”

Harashkir didn’t know how to begin.  “I, uh,” he said.  She waited.  This was nothing anyone had ever asked him.  He didn’t have children.  He never would.  He didn’t remember how he’d first heard the story, and he wasn’t a bard, who would know how to recite it properly.

“Maybe let’s start with the epic,” she said, after he tried and failed six dozen different times in his head.  “Are there many epics among your people?”

This was like asking if water was wet.  Harashkir stared at her.  He’d never had a conversation like this with an Elf.  Either they were all thralls together, and they already knew, or they were Nordowen’s folk, who would work with his folk but clustered together in the evenings and whispered about them, laughing and mocking, if not openly.

“It is common, then.” She was amused.

“Yes,” Harashkir said finally.  “I don’t know if I used the right word.  All our stories are songs.  We pass them on to our children.  I don’t have children.”

“Neither do I.”  She presented the words matter-of-factly.  Then she continued, “I still tell stories.  It’s why—they call me Pengolodh.”

Maybe he’d been wrong that it was a name.  “Is that not your name?”

“It’s my name, but it wasn’t either of the names I was given at birth.”  She frowned, tapping her pen against her notebook.  “So, if your stories are sung, do you not sing them to outsiders?”

“No, it’s not like that, we’re not the Dwarves.” Something he knew, finally.  “I’m just not very musical.”

“Well,” she pointed out dryly, “I can’t hear, so it doesn’t matter.  Just tell me what happens in your story—your epic.  How do the words fit into the story?”

That reassured him a little, and he realized she had been doing it intentionally—building up a friendly rapport to help settle his nerves.  It made him feel sick, and he had to put his head down for a minute, failing to meet her eyes.  How could she do that, when he’d just watched and done nothing while they raped her?  Fuck.

He breathed slow, to calm himself.  He owed her far more than he could repay, but he could do this much for her, at least.  “Right.  Nega is a woman who lived a long time ago, before we were slaves, when we were just a people who lived in the north.  She had two brothers and they were the only family she had left in the world.  Their parents had died when their home was destroyed.”

“Destroyed? How?”

He hadn’t expected her to interrupt him, and he looked up to see that both she and the interpreter were sharing a long look.

“Uh, I don’t know.  The story doesn’t say.”

She nodded.  “I’m sorry—please go on.”

“Don’t,” he said without meaning to, too sharp, moving too quick, and for the first time she startled, flinching backwards.  “I mean—don’t apologize.  Shit. I’m sorry.”  He rubbed his sweating palms on his trousers and tried to make his body language submissive.

After a stretched, awful moment, she settled back into her seat.  “Go on,” she told him.

“They were waylaid on the road, and the attackers killed her brothers, but Nega escaped.  Later, she went to the lord of her land and asked for his help.  He captured the bandits and said he’d abide by Nega’s verdict.  She let them go—that’s what she said to them, or maybe what the lord of the land said.”  He paused.  “Um, later they come back and kill her, and her daughter hunts them down and takes them back to the lord of the land, and he tortures them to death.  There’s a lot more, but that’s everything about Nega.”

The scratching noise of the pen stopped abruptly.  Pengolodh met his eyes.  “She dies.  Because she shows mercy.”  She shook herself.  “Well, I suppose that’s not exactly uncommon in an epic.  Are all the stories of your people tragic?”

She was afraid now; he was certain of it.  Her hands were shaking, and the smell of her sweat had grown stronger.  

He didn’t know what to say.  “Most of them.”

She folded a little over her knees.  He needed to think of something.

“I don’t want to be tortured to death,” he said finally.  “And I believe your lord can protect you.  He’s a child of two worlds, and they say those children can see the farthest.”

A blink, as if she were coming out of a reverie.  “But if he could not,” she said, her clear green eyes rooting him to the spot, “what would you do then?”

“I’d—protect you,” he said, fumbling with the honesty.  “I don’t want to be tortured to death, but I thought we would be, and I thought that’s what your lord should do.  That’s the judgement I would have made.  For what we did.”

The rhythm of her heart settled a little.  “For what you did?” she asked, with the faintest half smile hovering over her mouth.  “You stopped her.”  Before he could decide whether there was some other response she was looking for, she rose to her feet.  “Thank you,” she said, the gesture that had cut him to the quick the first time and now did it again.  “I’ll come back.  I want to hear more of your stories.”

“If you want.”

“Don’t apologize again.  It doesn’t help.”

He ducked his head numbly.  “As you command, great lady.”

It made her laugh, for some reason, but it was better than the fear.

* * *

It was late and Pengolodh was very tired, but he wasn’t ready to sleep.  Instead, he sat in front of a candle burning low, and wrote.  He was starting to get a headache, but he didn’t stop until the small strip of colored cloth in front of his desk dipped and raised, the marker he used in place of a knock on his door.  Then, rubbing his eyes and wondering who was calling on him at this time of night, he went to the door.

It was Elros, looking about as tired as he felt.  “I just got back,” he said tersely.  “Balrogs to the east.  Everything was on fire.”  His eyes, Pengolodh noted, were reddened with smoke.  “How did it go?”

Pengolodh gestured him inside.  “I went down there,” he said.  “Right into the middle of them.  I spoke to Harashkir.  I didn’t run away.”  He’d wanted to.  Almost every minute he was there.  He hadn’t done it.  “He was trying not to scare me, I think.”

“Something else happened, though, didn’t it?”

“Gil-galad will be pleased.  I’ve learned more about his heritage,” Pengolodh said, in lieu of answering.  “I think Harashkir will tell me more too, if I go back.”

Gracelessly, Elros sat on the floor.  “Can I touch you?” he asked, from his very unprepossessing position.

“Yes.”  To Pengolodh’s surprise, he scooted closer and then laid his head along Pengolodh’s thigh.  It was intimate but not intimidating.

“So what happened?” he prodded.  “Are you writing down the Orc story now?”

Daringly, Pengolodh swatted him with a piece of paper, and Elros wrinkled his nose and pretended to sneeze.  “No,” he said.  “I’ve got all my notes, and I’ll need to speak to him more if I want a more complete story anyway.  He’s not a storyteller.  I’m trying,” he didn’t want to admit it, but he suspected Elros wouldn’t stop until he told him what had happened—not without him asking Elros to stop, anyway, but somehow he didn’t want to do that either, “I’m trying to use the notes from—from Tavrobel.  To write about Gondolin again.  About Maeglin.  I don’t know why I’m bothering.  I’ll never know the truth.”

“You avoided the question again,” pointed out Elros.

“You asked me two questions at the same time.”

Shrug.  A little infuriating.  Tentatively, Pengolodh put his hand on Elros’s head and petted him, combing his fingers through the messy curls, matted with sweat.  “He told me about the quote, yes.  It’s spoken by a woman whose brothers are murdered.  She frees the murderers, and then they come back and kill her.”

Elros made a face.  “Oof.”

“They’re tortured to death later.”

“Doesn’t really help.”

“No.”

With a slow, gentle motion, Elros took his hand and simply held it, a little like he had when they’d slept together, with the fingers interlaced.  He didn’t hold it for long, but he squeezed it once before releasing it.  “You’re safe now,” he said.  “I wish I could hand you a better promise than that, but I suppose we both know that I can’t.”

Tears pricked at Pengolodh’s eyes, and, after a moment, he let them fall.  “I wonder if they tortured Maeglin,” he said.  “I’ve been wondering the whole time.  Or if they did worse.  I’d have done anything for my notes, and then I’d have done anything to make it stop.  Or did he really betray us as Idril said?”

“You knew Maeglin,” Elros said slowly.  “I didn’t realize.”

“We were friends.” Pengolodh rubbed his hands across his face.  “We used to take tea together.  He knew my childhood nurse very well.  Lord Talagando of the Harp.”  And there was someone Pengolodh couldn’t think about—not now, maybe not ever.  He gestured helplessly at Elros.  “The first time I wrote it, it was the only story I could tell.  Now I don’t know.  And I don’t have any evidence to tell me differently.  All I have is this.”  He tapped the notebook.  “We barely talked about him.  All Turgon said was that he was a true Nolofinwëan.”  He shrugged.  “And I have what Idril said, I suppose.”

“What about what you remember?” Elros asked.

“That? None of it holds together.  I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should try to write a different kind of history about him.”

“I’m a loremaster of Gondolin,” Pengolodh said.  “I’m—the loremaster of Gondolin.  That’s the only kind of history I know how to write.”

“And of course you couldn’t learn anything else.”  Elros squeezed his hand again.  “Think about it.  Maybe you could write an epic instead of a history this time.”

“But then it won’t be true,” Pengolodh complained.  He was already considering it.  “I can’t.  Maybe.”

Elros yawned, and his eyes flickered over to the bed and back.  “Can I stay here tonight?” he asked, before Pengolodh could ask him if he wanted to.  “I’m going to have nightmares about forest fires.”

“I’m going to have nightmares too,” Pengolodh replied.  “Please stay.  Will you whistle me a lullaby?”

A very strange look appeared on Elros’s face.  “I don’t know if you’ll be able to hear it this far from the remains of the Girdle.”

Pengolodh shrugged.  “I could put my fingers to your lips.”

The look changed into something considering.  “Maybe do that anyway,” Elros said, and smirked.  “Yes, all right, I’d be honored.”

They went over to the bed together after Pengolodh had straightened his papers and blown out his candle.  Elros pulled off his tabard and leggings, leaving him in his undershirt, and Pengolodh, without even thinking about it, changed into his nightshirt in front of him.  Then he pulled back the covers and invited Elros into his bed.  At least if he had nightmares, he’d wake up to a familiar face.