Chapter Text
Legolas woke to pain. It seared across his skin like the feet of centipedes, digging deep into his bones and scraping air like sand through his lungs; and still, even only brushing consciousness, Legolas forced his body into silence and stillness – for he was not unaware. Had he been the sort to wake unaware he would not have been a warrior and a captain of the forests of Eryn Galen, which the outsiders, justly or not, called Mirkwood. So it was that through his agony, the blindness of tight shut eyes and the thick stench of blood in his nose, Legolas knew that he had not been returned to the halls of his father, for fresh, clean air swept even the darkest of corners there; nor did he lie in the buildings of men, for the stone under his fingers was too smooth and the ceiling far too high. It was certainly not the home of goblins – if only because he awoke alive, unbroken and in possession of all of his limbs, if not skin.
The options left, together with the terrible memory of fire and death from before darkness took him, left him with fear and wishing in a bout of cowardice quite unlike himself for unconsciousness once more. Yet there was nothing he could do now that he had started waking, feeling the full extent of his blistered and blanched flesh and unable not to ask himself why he was in the very heart of the dragon’s pit and yet still alive. Had any others of the patrol he had been on survived also, and if so were they safely home or here as well? They were good people all of them, sharing food, stories and laughter on the dark road, and it tore Legolas’ kind heart to think them dead or suffering. And he himself, alone in this dungeon – merely food kept fresh and close-by, or perhaps as Thranduil’s son a hostage? Maybe another purpose existed for him sensible only to the minds of dragons. Such thoughts plagued Legolas as he lay there and drew strength around himself to ward away the pain, feigning senselessness and praying that any earlier movements might not have been seen.
Smaug the dragon was great in size and there were many small tunnels throughout the mountain that Legolas would be safe in. Now if only he could reach them!
Legolas opened his eyes and looked around. He took great care in his actions, despite the fear that told him to make haste and the silence saying with near certainty that he was alone in the hall. Caution was rarely frivolous when you dealt with dragons, after all, and Legolas was canny enough to remember it.
He lay on a raised platform next to a towering wall, where sconces held burning torches. Great pillars rose around him, stone carved in straight lines and cold angles unpleasing to his elvish eye, that did not seem placed inside the hall so much as the hall hollowed out around them. And gold, silver and jewels – such quantities of it Legolas had never thought possible to gather in one place! It covered the floor, deep and rolling hills and hummocks fathoms deep. Coins it was for the most part but plates and goblets as well, armour and jewellery enough to clothe a city. Gems made dots of colour in the sea of metal.
A dragon’s hoard but no dragon, not unless he were buried beneath it all – and even then holding his breath and keeping the steady pound of his heart still. Legolas swallowed to clear his throat and allowed himself the smallest of hopes that he might just escape. There was no exit on his platform but one tunnel only a short sprint away – his body protested at the very thought, in sore need of healing, but it paid heed to his spirit’s command and not the other way around: escape would be painful, pushing his body to breaking point and perhaps beyond, but he could do it.
Later, Legolas would wonder how he could have possibly missed what he had done until that moment. For as he finally stirred he was struck with the abrupt, horrible realisation that injury was not all that restrained him. Not only did shackles bind his wrists together behind his back, his ankles likewise hobbled, but the chain between his wrists connected him to the wall via a deep set ring. Legolas didn’t cry out in his frustration, though it was a near thing, for despair from hope suddenly lost is always terrible. The chain between his cuffs allowed several good inches of slack, and he pulled and twisted in his fetters though they budged not one bit; his burnt skin cracked open and bleed, sloughing off to expose raw flesh, and the fear from before seemed to come back tenfold stronger.
When at last he found the self control to stop fighting the metal and fall still, an embarrassingly long time for one usually so mild, Legolas did his best to pull the rags that were the remnants of his burnt clothes around himself and rested against the wall to let its chill soothe the wounds he was frustratingly unable to tend. It was as he sat in silence that he came to two unpleasant conclusions: the first was that he had underestimated the severity of his injuries – both that the fire had done to his body and the fear to his mind – that the chains should have gone unnoticed; the second was that someone existed here who had the dexterity to fasten locks and chains, and who served the dragon’s will.
Perhaps there were dwarves who had lived here, kept and forced into servitude, or men stolen from nearby towns. Not elves, as every death and disappearance of their own was identified, and none had happened where a dragon might roam. It was certainly not goblins or their like, for their foul touch would have lingered. And if it were dwarves or men then did he have an ally in this place, or not? Even if they served the Enemy willingly they could still be tricked or bought in ways a dragon would laugh at.
It was not until that day and a good part of the next had passed that Legolas’ unhappy musings were broken, the torches gone out and the only light that which was reflected down from tiny, out-of-sight windows which let in neither sound nor scent of outside. Wind whistled in far off tunnels, then went silent; it was replaced by the heavy, clicking footsteps of some massive and clawed beast. Breath from great bellows of lungs became audible, then finally the slow beat of a giant heart.
Smaug entered the hall and instantly his orange eyes turned to Legolas, who stood straight backed and did not cower, not even when the full length of the dragon seemed to fill the very entirety of the chamber as outstretched wings and claws and teeth in a gaping mouth. Smaug came up to the platform that Legolas stood on, the end of his long snout resting on the stone, and the heat from his breath hurt like knives on Legolas’ broken skin.
His body stood giant and sinuous, yellow and red scales gleaming as if polished armour, tinted metallic blue; his wings were vast and far from the flimsiness of bat wings – rather the membrane was thick and the bones like heavy steel scaffolds. Beneath him Legolas felt tiny and weak.
‘Good morning,’ Smaug said. He sounded amused, and the pupils of his vast eyes had dilated into fat diamonds. Legolas noted distantly that though Smaug’s mouth opened and closed as he spoke, his lips barely moved, and his tongue not forming the words as elven tongues did.
‘I can not tell, this far underground,’ Legolas said, when Smaug seemed to be waiting for a reply.
‘Let me know what makes a good morning to a fair one like yourself, and I will judge for you.’ Smaug rolled the words in his barrel chest and coated them with amusement.
‘I would prefer to judge for myself,’ Legolas said. In truth he did not quite know what he was saying, and did not care enough to keep the insolence from his answers.
The sound that bubbled up out between Smaug’s teeth was undoubtedly a laugh. ‘A pity! There are some things we cannot sacrifice for pleasantries. But come, if my morning was under sky breakfasting on five wood elves – for meat butchered and left in the sun the day before last they kept remarkably well! – yours was here with you far underground. Have you no opinion on your time in my halls?’
They was words intended to rile and although Legolas knew this, rile they did. Anger and agony of the spirit blinded him to wounds of the flesh and Legolas pulled violently at his chains. Five immortal lives and all that held, made cheap by petty jeers. His friends – mothers, fathers and children – who had not survived after all.
‘You ask my opinion, O dragon? Know then that I think Thror’s mountain rooms vulgar enough, and your presence here serves only to despoil them further,’ Legolas spat, falling still with the exception of his heaving chest. Already he was sick of this game, and part of him hoped that maybe he could enrage the dragon enough to kill him and be done with it. He would hardly be able, after all, to merely walk away.
It was not the case. Smaug only blew out a long breath, scalding hot. Legolas recoiled instinctively but he could not escape, chained as he was; he coughed, unable to breathe. His eyes watered, fresh pain awaking with the old. When the exhalation finished at last he rasped for air, and Smaug waited a long time for silence before speaking again:
‘Tell me, are you very unusual in your colouring? My wings have taken me great distances yet I’ve seen no elves that shine golden, until you.’
His voice held no anger, but even so dread greater than before seemed to settle upon Legolas, for an idea occurred to him that he would have laughed at only minutes earlier. For he knew of the lust dragons held for gold, and he knew well the colour of his own hair – but to bring those truths together! Surely the very thought was an absurdity.
‘Of the firstborn the Vanyar are golden, but save for a few of their children it would take more than a dragon’s wings to find them. They live with Manwë in Valinor,’ Legolas said carefully, and wished desperately that he were anywhere but there, deep underground, pinned by Smaug’s gaze and questioning.
‘Then you are a child of the Vanyar?’ Smaug asked, voice patient and all the worse for it.
‘I am of the Sindarin folk, whose hair is dark; only in exceptions and oddities such as myself is it any other.’ Legolas replied truthfully, for he did not know what else he could say.
‘I see,’ said Smaug, and that was that: retreating his head he curled up in a mountain of gold, looking very pleased indeed.