The Chain That Snaps by Independence1776

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The Chain That Snaps

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He had learned to not scream.

They’d ignored it at first, but after the first few tests, they’d intubated him. He still wasn’t sure whether his silence was the goal or just a welcome side effect of controlling what and when he breathed. By the time he’d realized they just didn’t care if they hurt him or not, they’d ended the automatic intubation at the start of every experiment. But he still kept quiet.

His shouts had changed nothing and neither would his silence.

Not even when they put needles into his spine to sample his cerebrospinal fluid or large needles in his hip bone for bone marrow or during nerve conductivity tests or the blood draws and IV insertions and then finally the central line catheter in his neck.

The pain was sometimes more welcome than knowing they were doing things to him that he couldn’t feel because they’d injected anesthetic into his spine. The first time they’d done that he could only watch in horror as they inserted a needle into his upper left abdomen to insert CO2 and then made three incisions for the laparoscopic instruments. He’d kept his eyes closed after that, though he could do nothing about hearing them speaking of biopsies and samples and other things.

They didn’t anesthetize him when they amputated the little finger of his right hand to see if his speed in healing would extend to regenerating a limb. The scar on that palm should have told them there were things he couldn’t heal from-- and he would have told them about Maedhros if they would have just asked.

But they didn’t. They never asked him anything.

He shifted in the bed a little, trying to get as comfortable as he could given the ever-present restraints, thankful the night’s test was simply a drug injected into the central line. He didn’t know what it was supposed to do, but the only effect had been so far was hallucinations, of both random blobs of color and more detailed, sometimes frightening, objects and people. It had been millennia since he’d last seen an orc.

He closed his eyes when the door opened and heard footsteps coming toward him. He knew they knew he wasn’t asleep; the electrodes monitoring his brain waves assured that. But he would pretend as long as he could; it was possible they were just preparing for the next test.

Fingers brushing his cheek startled him to the point where he opened his eyes. They never touched him without gloves on. Elrond looked down at him, a sad and thunderous expression on his face. Maglor closed his eyes again, not wanting to see the hallucination. A hallucination couldn’t help him.

When the fingers vanished, Maglor let out a silent sigh of relief. But when the fingers came back, gloved this time, he had to fight not to try to bite said fingers. The one time he’d managed had not been pleasant afterward.

“I’m removing the central line,” Elrond said.

Maglor opened his eyes. His hallucinations hadn’t spoken before-- but that didn’t mean much. But Elrond stood there, gloves on his hands. “Do you know how?” he couldn’t help but ask. And then he closed his eyes, disgusted that he’d even let that much out. There was no point in conversing with a drug-induced figment of his imagination.

“I do,” Elrond said softly. “It will take a few minutes to do so and may not be entirely painless.”

Maglor didn’t say anything nor did he open his eyes. After everything he’d been through, he expected pain. But he did cooperate when asked to hold his breath, despite the odd sensation he’d been tilted backward. And when it seemed the line had been removed, Elrond-- more likely one of them who had decided the line had been in long enough, but it was pleasant imagining otherwise-- kept pressure on the site for a little while. And then a bandage was put on and the swooping sensation of being put back horizontal.

Maybe the line had been removed. The tugging sensation he’d grown accustomed to during the months after its insertion was gone. But the gloved hands were back, this time removing the electrodes on his head and chest. What--?

He opened his eyes again. Elrond was still there and he could hear a second person moving about the room. He crushed the little bit of hope that tried to exist. Elrond could not be here: he was in Aman and had been since Sauron’s final defeat.

The door opened again and a male voice said, “We need to leave.”

Elrond said, “I’m almost done.”

The last of the monitors were removed and then multiple sets of ungloved hands began working on the restraints binding him to the bed. “Do you think he can stand?” a female voice said.

“He needs to stay horizontal for at least an hour. There’s a gurney in the corridor,” Elrond said.

At that point, Maglor gave up fighting the hallucination. Maybe the people were real and part of the FBI or some other agency-- which would be trouble for an entirely different reason-- or maybe he was simply hallucinating or dreaming this entire thing.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d dreamed of escape.

He didn’t fight the transfer to the gurney, pushed by a silver-haired woman he thought looked somewhat like Galadriel, and then Glorfindel-- proof this was fake; he would never help Maglor after the Kinslayings-- took the lead out of the room. Elrond stayed next to him, looking down at him often.

The woman pushed the gurney passed Maglor’s room without slowing down. Galadriel-- a drawn sword in her hand, dripping blood-- met the group at an intersecting hallway. “Your sons have the information; they’ve gone to the van.”

The group left the building, going through corridors Maglor hadn’t been aware existed and finally out of a set of automatic doors leading into a dark, moonless night. A service van puttered directly in front of the entrance, the double back doors open. Maglor was lifted into the van by Galadriel and Elrond and placed on a narrow bed bolted to the left side and put back into restraints while Elrond whispered an apology. After shoving the gurney away, the silver-haired woman climbed in and buckled herself into a seat that brought her knees brushing the narrow bed Maglor lay on. Glorfindel climbed in beside her and closed the doors. The van lurched forward as it accelerated away. Maglor closed his eyes and let the motion of the road lull him to sleep.

* * * * *

The first thing he noticed upon waking was the smell of vanilla. The second thing was the soft mattress and the veritable pile of blankets covering him. He opened his eyes and learned the brightness was caused not by the ever-on fluorescent lights, but by sunshine pouring in through a window through which he could see trees covered in reddish-brown leaves.

It had been early spring when he’d been captured, his tulips just beginning to sprout.

He glanced around the room, wondering what was going on, what new test they were doing, and stopped when he saw Elrond sitting in a wooden chair at the side of the bed.

It hadn’t been a hallucination.

“Elrond?”

His son put down the book-- written in English, so maybe he was still hallucinating-- and smiled. “How do you feel?”

“I think I’m hallucinating.”

Elrond closed his eyes briefly. “I was afraid you’d think so. You’ve been asleep for more than twelve hours; it’s after noon. The drug they’d given you would have worn off by now.”

He’d heard them say he’d need another dose in eight hours. Even if he’d been rescued an hour or so before dawn (and he didn’t know the time; only that it had been at night), the drug had been given a couple hours before his rescue. Maglor struggled a little to sit up, but managed when Elrond pulled down a couple of the blankets. He shivered a little, but he was able to see out of the window better, well enough that he could tell it was after noon by the angle of the shadows. This was no hallucination.

“Where are we?”

Elrond pulled a fluffy bathrobe from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around Maglor’s shoulders. “In the outskirts of a city about two hours north of the laboratory you were imprisoned in.”

“How did you--? Why are you here? How can you be here?”

The door to the bedroom opened and Galadriel leaned against the door frame. “Elrond is stubborn. I am more so. When we learned of your plight, we informed the Valar we were retrieving you.”

“How did you know?”

“Manwë keeps watch over Middle-earth still.”

That was less than an answer than he’d hoped for. “How long? How long did the Valar leave me there to suffer?”

“We left three days after the Valar informed us-- and they knew the day after your capture. Communication is not instantaneous between Aman and Middle-earth.”

“So why did it take so long to rescue me?”

Elrond sighed. “We knew where you were captured from, not the laboratory’s location. It took time to find that and even more time to safely find a way to break you out. Elladan and Elrohir also had to engineer a computer virus so none of the files about you would survive our purge.”

“They can reconstruct what they remember--”

“No, they can’t,” Galadriel said.

Which brought up a memory of her dripping sword. “How many were there?”

“Everyone who had anything to do with you.”

Maglor closed his eyes. “I didn’t think you of all people would care.”

Galadriel snorted. “I may have hated your father, Káno, and what you did in Alqualondë, Doriath, and Sirion, but I still wouldn’t wish that on you.” She looked at Elrond. “Lunch should be done by now.”

She swept out of the room, not closing the door behind her. Elrond raised an eyebrow. “It’s a loose collection of people who came to help you, Maglor. Most of them have returned to our ship.”

“Why haven’t we?”

“I made the decision it would be too far for you to travel immediately, especially when we didn’t know what condition we’d find you in. The ship is another four hours north. We rented this cabin two days ago to give us a stopping place and to let you rest a while.”

Maglor looked out the window again. “How long will the rental last?”

“Another three days.”

He nodded. “Galadriel mentioned lunch?”

“Vanilla buttermilk pancakes, courtesy of my sons.” He frowned. “Are you able to walk there?”

Maglor took stock. He may not have been allowed to exercise overly much, but they’d needed him in minimally healthy shape for their tests. He could manage short distances. He nodded, shrugged the bathrobe from his shoulders, and stood up after untangling himself from the blankets. Elrond held out the bathrobe after Maglor stood and helped Maglor put it on. He followed closely behind him, but let Maglor walk down to the dining room-- or rather, the eat-in kitchen as he discovered-- without support.

He sat down on one of the cushioned chairs at the table, opposite Galadriel and Glorfindel, neither one of whom made an effort to hide their studying of him. He ignored it and slowly began eating the pancakes the twin with the shoulder-length hair placed in front of him.

They had fed him actual food when their tests didn’t demand otherwise, but their pancakes were nothing like this. The syrup tasted real, not artificial. After he’d eaten enough that he was no longer hungry, he walked back to his room and curled up underneath the blankets.

Why Galadriel? Why Glorfindel? Who was the silver-haired woman? Which twin was which? Who else had helped? What would the Valar do to him?

Did he even want to return?

Yes, a large part of him cried. But his pride, his shame-- those would prefer he remained in Middle-earth.

Remain to what end? he asked himself bitterly.

They had found him because of photographs taken over the decades. Who else could or would or already was tracking him that way? Who else would assume that not appearing to age (at least in mortal time scales) would mean complete bodily regeneration? Who else would treat him as a specimen, not human, something to be experimented on?

Yet there had been a multitude of mortals over the years who had helped him directly and indirectly. The mortals had built cities and monuments: he had lived through so much, saw so much wonder-- the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, Stonehenge, the Great Wall in China, the Egyptian pyramids, Machu Picchu, the Statute of Liberty, and so much more.

But even those things could hardly compare to the wars, the genocides, the displacements of ethnic groups, the slavery, the opinions of people and entire countries who believed themselves better than everyone else and acted on those beliefs.

Of course, the Eldar had hardly been better in some respects. He’d met those the Amanyar called Avari-- had lived with the various tribes-- in civilizations that rivaled Tirion. The Avari just had different priorities and worldview. But war? That had been Morgoth and Sauron imposing it on the Elves-- until the Kinslayings.

He buried his head in his pillow, flinching when he pressed the bandage on his neck harder than he’d meant to. He rolled onto his back and reached up to finger it. Elrond would remove it when the wound had healed enough. He stared up at the wooden ceiling.

Walking to the kitchen and back had tired him, but he wasn’t exhausted enough to sleep. At the very least, he wanted to adjust back to a diurnal schedule. The months he’d spent awake whenever they wanted him to be had been unpleasant for that alone.

A soft knock on the door frame made him look over. He smiled at Elrond, who sat back down in the chair. “I don’t recognize--”

“Elladan’s the one with short hair; Elrohir the longer.” He rubbed his face. “I don’t believe you properly met my wife Celebrían, either. She’s the one who pushed the gurney.” He grinned. “She’s Galadriel’s daughter.”

Maglor stared at him. “She’s who?” He laughed, remembering one of the tidbits of information that had come East. “I thought that was just a wild rumor. I didn’t see her at lunch.”

“She’s busy restoring the van. We took out two sets of seats to fit the bed in. She dropped the bed off at the dump this morning and is nearly finished bolting the seats back in. Glorfindel’s helping her.”

Maglor studied him. “Do we still have three days or did you underestimate how much media attention my rescue would bring?”

Elrond sighed. “We have the time. Celebrían wore a wig and cheek pads to the dump and we have different license plates now. But you do need to decide by that time if you want to sail.”

He’d already decided. Valar or not, there was nothing but pain and hiding left for him on Middle-earth. “I don’t need three days, Elrond. Imprisonment in Valinor is better than a life spent hiding here.”

Elrond reached out a hand and Maglor sat up enough so Elrond could embrace him. Elrond moved onto the bed and wrapped his arms around Maglor. Maglor allowed himself to sink into the warm embrace, resting his head against Elrond’s, finally believing he was safe.