Take Your Pain Away

Chapter 8 Disclaimer; I own nothing.
A/N: Here's some explanations


Haldir woke slowly, stretching languorously in recollection of the heated night of passion he and his wife had enjoyed. He turned to face her, but found she was not in bed. He felt the spot were she had lain, and it was cold, indicating that she had been up for some time. He rose, looking out the window. It wasn’t that late, so why was she up early? He felt her presence, not that far away, at the practice grounds, and stopped short in the act of drawing on his tunic. Why would she be there at this hour? Especially when he was home, he thought with a lazy smile to himself. Normally, they would have stayed in bed for a whole night and day, talking, making love and holding each other after his absences. It was becoming a tradition that he greatly missed now that it had not happen this morn.

He climbed down from their talan, and made his way to her, feeling confusion cloud his normally clear judgment. He thought back to a few nights ago, on the fences, a night, which puzzled him even now, but he had not had a chance to ask about its occurrences. When he had felt his contact with her abruptly severe, much like it did during conversations, when the other’s mind was on something else. When he had felt her contact return, she was changed. She wasn’t the sleep lost, contented, somewhat aroused Ardenia that she had been only minutes before. She was upset, angry even. It felt like something of her had been taken away during those few minutes of absence. He stopped on the path, only meters from the practice grounds. He finally realized that there wasn’t something wrong with Ardenia. It was someone. And he intended to find out who it was. For if they were costing her any of her new found happiness, he would see they paid for it in blood.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Celeborn lay inside his own mind, raging against the dark barriers of evil that forced him to be a prisoner within his own body. He threw himself against the harsh control of an evil being, Malanion he called himself, that made him do things and say things that made him weep at the pain and devastation they would cause, for not only Ardenia and Haldir, but for all of Lórien and Ardenia’s family.

The malevolent spirit that inhabited him had been within him for near a hundred years, since he had first seen Ardenia as a child. She was little more than an infant, beautiful in her innocence. He had taken that innocence, and turned it in to cold harshness for the world around her. He taught her to hate, to feel anger, to lose her faith in others. Ever since his wife had left him for the undying lands, a part of her mind damaged by the great evil of Sauron, near two centuries before, he had been half the ellon he once was, something of his own spirit gone with his Lady. It was then, in his vulnerable state of longing for her, an evil malaise had taken hold of his mind, weak in the wake of being set free of it’s protective strength that Galadriel’s presence always provided. He knew not who sent this demon, but he had been fighting against it ever since. The beast seemed intent on killing Ardenia’s remaining family, although why anyone would want to kill Thranduil and Legolas he could not fathom.

Celeborn/Malanion’s face stretched in to an evil grin. He could feel the Silver Lord fighting against his barriers again, but he did not worry. He knew that Celeborn had not the strength to defy his control long enough to remove the amulet around his neck. The amulet that, even now, housed his influence over the Silver Lord. Indeed, he wondered if Celeborn even knew of it as the source of the evil that gripped him.

He leant back in his large chair by the window, staring off into the distance. He was much more interested in the happenings of Ardenia and Haldir’s talan, for he could hear every word through her as clearly as though he was in the room. He knew that she would defy him, sooner or later, but she had handed him a gift in loving Haldir. It was something that he could use against her. And he would. Oh yes, he would! For she must compete the task that he could not.
She was like him. His old body anyway. He had had the same auburn hair as her, until his spirit had left it’s body for good to reside in the Silver Lord, a much more suitable vessel for the demanding task before him.
It made sense though; that they had the same hair, considering their father had been the same man, and their mothers had been sisters with the same hair. His mother, (a passing amusement for Thranduil in his long loneliness without his soul mate), upon her death had told him of the great wrong done to him. He had been denied his place in the light, forever pushed behind his father’s other legitimate children. Her mother had been the younger sister of his mother, she who that Thranduil had now taken to wife. He enjoyed that little quirk of fate. Had he not intervened, Ardenia would have grown up happy, her presence acknowledged, whilst his was not.

So in revenge, he took her from her crib as a child. He stole past Mirkwood’s guards as the Captain of the Guards, clothed in a concealing Glamour. He had bought the baby elleth to Celeborn years before, and taken over his body for his own. He would take both his place in the light, while his sister would take the lives of those who defied him, and he would rule all of Middle Earth for the wrong done to him with his sister by his side.

Malanion/Celeborn grinned maliciously. It was time to put phase two in to action. Her training was almost complete. The men he had hired to brutalize Ardenia, in such a way as to create darkness in her soul she could not get rid of, hadn’t done their job well. She was not supposed to ‘escape’ for another 70 years. Damn her and her tempestuous spirit. She was meant to emerge from their hands a cold, lifeless creature, anxious for blood. Instead, Haldir had to come along and ruined that part of her training. Well, he reconciled himself, at least now he had some useful leverage to get the job done. She would kill the Lord Thranduil, his son Legolas, her very teacher in the art of the longbow. He liked that little twist of fate also. The story was unfolding with all the more malicious pleasure for her little detour from the path he had set her.

A maid knocked and entered, bringing him a glass of wine. He watched her, his eyes stalking her slender form across the room. He always had had a raging appetite for the pleasures of the flesh, and it would seem this carnal desire had followed him in to this body. He rose from his place, so quickly that the maid turned around to find him pressing her against the wall, drawing her skirts quickly up over her thighs. She looked around her in fright, as he unbelted his leggings with rapid precision. She bit back a scream as Celeborn/Malanion thrust himself into her unwilling body, holding her arms above her head, as he ruthlessly took her, his eyes betraying a coldness that chilled her to the bone, and left her speechless at the evil hidden in their depths. He pounded relentlessly in to her, bruising her white skin, making her tremble in pain and fear, as he spilled his seed deeply within her, and left her huddled against the wall. He pulled out of her, shuddering in his release, and walked over to the other side of the room, taking his wine with him. He sipped it, as he leisurely drew a knife from his belt, before making his way over to the weeping elleth in the corner, holding the knife to her throat.

“If you should let this slip to anyone,” he whispered, his voice a seductive whisper that made her tremble at the hidden threat that laced his words, and made his words appear to hang in the air, blacker than any mine of Moria. “I will kill not only you, but defile your family before you. Do we understand each other?” She nodded in desperation, anxious to leave the room, and be as far from such darkness as she could possible get. She had once thought the lord of Lórien a kind and gentle elf, if somewhat aloof, but now she could only help but think how wrong she must have been. Even in the darkness of the room, she could feel her soul slowly start to darken, forever tainted by the heinous act committed against her innocence. She fled, to the kitchens, and went about her work as normal, albeit slightly pale and shaky, limping from the pain, for she could not bear to see any harm come to her family.

Celeborn/Malanion’s laugh filed the room, as he felt Celeborn collapse in a heap in his mind, a weeping figure of subservience at the pain ‘he’ had caused.
He thought to Ardenia. <‘Remember…one little accident…’> he felt her shudder. He laughed again. She would do as he said, and then, he would have his revenge.

A/N; thankyou all for my lovely reviews! Very much appreciated! Let me know what you think. Special thknkas go to the great Minerva Ann McGonagall, who should rule the world.