Chapter Text
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Galadriel never enjoys the spectacle of these gladiator fights. The celebration of brutality and violence is disgraceful, little more than bloodcurdling violence shamelessly used to feed the frenzied appetite of the mobs like chum in the water. Still, her father’s presence is a necessity, for the games are popular among the common people, so the senator and his family are always in attendance.
Two days of matches; another third to be expected.
The marketplace is crowded at the end of the second day. Galadriel moves through the crowds accompanied only by one of her father’s guards. He trails after her at a polite distance, but Galadriel hardly gives the beta any attention. Her head has been pounding all day, terribly sensitive to the loud noises and abhorrent smells of the city. She’d spritzed perfume on her wrists before leaving, wrapping herself up in a lengthy blue shawl that covered the sheer gold crinkled silk of her dress underneath, speckled with dainty flowers in the same shade of cerulean blue. It brought out her eyes, she’d been told by her mother, pleased.
Galadriel is not pleased. She is irritable, suffering in the humid heat, and has been uncomfortably scratching at her wrist glands all day. It is inflamed for some reason, though she cannot fathom why.
Across the square, there’s some loud shouting of men being lined up, an announcement of some auction. Galadriel’s attention is drawn simply because of all the commotion. A large unveiling of a lush red curtain as a backdrop to the stage starting the event. Her curiosity is peaked by the gathering crowd, all eager to bid on something of interest. She has enough coin to buy whatever she likes. It’s always been that way, customarily. Whenever she and her father visit the city, she comes back with two full trunks of additional clothing, books, and other little necessities.
“Come, Lady Ñoldor,” her guard says quickly, uncomfortable. “This isn’t the place for you.”
On the contrary, she sees plenty of ladies of similar station setting themselves up in the audience, front row. Galadriel doesn’t even bother to dismiss the guard’s complaints; she merely walks to the front, letting the crowd skirt around her, as she takes a place near the edge with a clear line of sight to the merchandise.
Except before there is any announcement, a line of men is marched out, briefly halting Galadriel in her thoughts. This isn’t the standard auction.
The merchandise, it turns out, are the Gladiators themselves.
With a slow dawning start, she realizes what this is. All males, all presented in little more than the linen garments they wear underneath their armor. An auction for alpha companionship, and she sits among a row of wealthy omegas, all daughters and sisters of some of the richest families in the country.
Now that she’s here, she wonders how to get out. Galadriel has only known rumors of how women seek out this type of brutality in companionship. The inhibitions of a heat aside, she cannot and has never entertained the appeal of submission to a brute alpha. The half-veiled maidens who sit next to her, some sat stoically and others too eager, are all locked in fascinated titters over the line of gladiators arranged in front of them. She’s heard the rumors as much as anyone else. How the rich matrons would come searching for gladiators down by the main gates after the games, the victors pushing the omegas to the dirt floor with their pretty skirts flipped up. Even Galadriel has heard of the filth that comes about after the matches.
But this is — Galadriel swallows, overflushed — this is something else.
Something explicit, and organized.
She’s sat among the crowds, been part of the frenzy that watched the violence unfold of the Gladiator fights. As the auction starts up, she realizes each one of these men had been a victor in one match or another. She’d seen the degradation of watching a man fight for his life, the insatiate greed of those in the audience cheering it on. Women of high culture and class, women like the row that Galadriel finds herself in, are supposed to be above such carnage, weaned away from violence at a tender age in deference to their omega sensibilities.
Not —not that Galadriel has ever shown the typical omega sensibilities.
Always playing in the mud, always picking up her brothers’ swords, always playacting at duels whenever her parents weren’t looking. Even at the age she is, far beyond adolescence, she’s been known to shuck her gowns and don her brother’s clothing to escape into the courtyard and fight. She’s never felt more alive than when she’s had a sword in her hand.
Watching the gladiator games, watching the men fight with the same types of swords for their very lives, watching them be pitted against man and animal alike — she’s come to know what true violence is.
Her gland had started itching uncomfortably after the first match, in fact.
Half an hour later, she’s hardly said a word while half a dozen men have been marched out to be auctioned off for one night. The women next to her have each bid at least once, only a handful of seats emptying in the long line. She’s not raised her hand once, refused to acknowledge the situation she is in. Instead, she’s sat and watched it all unfold until the first recess is called and the audience breaks for refreshments provided for them at the side table.
When she goes to get a drink — thinking to use the opportunity to finally disappear from the crowd entirely, find her guard again and escape — a man startles her from the side.
“You haven’t bid once,” an amused voice says, a deep rasp. “Too proud, too cheap, or has nothing yet caught your eye?”
Galadriel looks up.
From behind the fenced wall on the other side of the table and refreshments, there’s a cage of gladiators. A man stands alone, closest to her, studying her under a hood of soiled bangs, an unkempt mess of auburn hair rendered nearly black under all the grime. He’s covered in absolute filth, an iron collar around his neck linking him to a chained post nearby. He’s — tall, perhaps taller than any of the other fighters there. Built deceptively strong and unassumingly dressed in a dark blue linen shirt that looks like it’s seen better days. Torn and threadbare at the edges, he looks almost squalid, like he hasn’t seen a bath in weeks.
But his eyes hold hers without flinching when he stares at her.
“Careful to whom you speak,” she impresses upon him. “I am Galadriel Ñoldor, daughter of Senator Finarfin. You do not have clemency to address me.”
He huffs a soft laugh. “Is that right? M’sorry, didn’t know I needed your permission to say hello.”
“You do,” she returns, frost in her throat.
The man only hums a response back, a non-signifier. He settles back against the wall, leaning against the brick with his legs stretched out before him, arms folded over his chest — seemingly unaffected by the shackles that bound him at the neck and legs. Instead he studies her under a type of scrutiny that leaves her flustered and glowering back.
“What are you looking at?” she demands, reproachful.
He lifts a single eyebrow. “Do I need permission to look now, too?”
“With me, assume all is off limits,” she replies, flatly.
She moves to the next table, a reserve of fruits and cheeses arranged artfully around garnishments, a platter of simple foods. As she picks at the food, she is highly aware of her audience. Even though he is the one in a cage, the one behind bars and made into daily bloody spectacles, she cannot fight the notion that she is the one being studied, the one looked at as if prey.
“You don’t have the look of the typical girls I see here,” he says, conversationally.
Apparently he does not know the severity of her rebuffment, so she ignores him.
“Daughter of a Senator?” he says, curiously. “Did I hear that right? Senator Fëanor?
“Finarfin,” she corrects with a hiss, unable to help herself.
She rather hates it whenever anyone brings up her uncle.
“Ah,” the man says, an acknowledgement. “His niece, then. Yes, I think I heard about you once. They said your hair was rather lovely. Lovelier than sunshine — or some nonsense like that. Me? I’m not a man to care about woman’s hair so much.”
She nearly rolls her eyes. “I’m sure you have other interests.”
“Don’t get all huffy. I didn’t say you didn’t have beautiful hair. Indeed, it is rather fetching. I’m sure you have plenty of other admirable qualities once you get passed the scowling, too.”
She glares up at him, and that just makes him grin.
“Yeah,” he says to her. “The scowl is rather fetching by itself, isn’t it?”
She flushes, annoyed by the observation and unable to respond to it. She plucks another piece of cheese onto her plate and moves along — when he speaks up again.
“May I bother the lady for some scraps of food?”
It’s become a familiar voice to her, a southlander drawl, but this time with a slight rasp that belies a parched throat. She looks up, and the man is studying her again with a look of hunger aimed at her throat rather than at the plate of food she’s assembled.
She’s about to tell him off when he continues, too peckish, “I haven’t eaten anything all day, and they’ve set up a small feast just out of reach. Have pity.”
Galadriel frowns. She would hardly call this a feast, and she is not eager to interact anymore with this man, but the idea of them being starved sends her stomach churning unpleasantly.
She knows that these gladiators are little more than slaves. The story around Sauron, if she remembers correctly, was that he was a captured soldier serving the enemy. A General or Commander of some type, forced to serve as entertainment instead of imprisonment or death. His popularity and brutality has left him in the gladiator matches for three seasons now, which is longer than most foreigners survived in the arena.
She looks around, seeing that none of the guards are minding her, and steps forward with her plate. It isn’t much, but she offers him the fruit and cheese from her own plate, waiting for him to sneak it past the bars.
Before she can anticipate it, his hand shoots out from the cage and locks onto her wrist in a vice-like grip, spilling the plate to the floor. She’s about to gasp out a scream, something loud and outraged, but his fingers press harshly into her wrist, into the stinging ache of her mating gland which has been uncomfortably itchy for days now.
He reels her in, closer to the bars — so close she finds herself pressed against them, lined up bodily with him in diminished proximity. The pressure of it, his calloused fingers pressing in at her gland, the stench of him too near and overwhelming to deny — it does something to her. A heightened reaction, a gasp of her breath leaving her lips, her eyes dilating. She looks from her caged wrist up to his face, watching something dark and ominous fall over his features as he takes in her scent, nostrils flaring wide.
“Bid on me,” he says, sharply.
She sputters. “W-what?”
“Bid on me,” he tells her. “Your heat is near, I can smell it.”
“Don’t be preposterous—”
“It’ll break by sunset, I assure you. You’ll want me there to usher you through it.”
“I am on suppressants,” she tells him, frostily.
“Well, they’re not working,” he tells her, condescending.
She stares up at him, his grimy face, the hair flopping across his eyes in several dirty strands caked in mud. He is the most uncouth, unclean specimen she has ever come across, but she cannot make herself pull away from him.
“Bid on me,” he grits out, a command.
She yanks her hand free, finally coming back to some senses.
When she steps clear of the bars and walks away, her pulse is a rapid gallop in her throat. She can hardly feel steady on her legs as she makes it the short distance back to her seat in the front row.
When she looks back, he’s picked up the plate of food that had fallen to the dirt floor, uncaring of the mess as he finishes off the fruit and cheese she had taken out for herself. She is enraptured by the sight of him biting into a piece of fruit, juices spurting out at his lips — so caught up in the sight that she doesn’t realize he knows she’s watching him until a smirk smears itself across his face. He winks at her.
She looks away, blinking rapidly, unable to process what is happening.
By the time they restart the bidding, when they draw Sauron out, led by the chain affixed to his collar, marched out like the slave he is, Galadriel is hardly in full possession of herself. When she raises her voice and her hand, offering the first bid, she is hardly fully aware. Neither can she understand the urge that propels her to continue to bid when another voice raises in response. Higher and higher she goes, blowing past her allowance, doubling it, tripling it — all in a daze. She does not understand why she is doing this. She does not understand what she is doing.
“Sold,” the auctioneer announces, finally, banging his gavel. “To the Lady of House Ñoldor.”
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