Chapter Text
Maeglin is thrown from the walls backward.
He watches the people above him shrink into incomprehensible objects, tiny specks so endlessly above, lost to his sight forever, stolen by golden light, by vengeful light of an awful sun, stinging his eyes, burning them blind, claiming his vision for this final moment, in victory, or in retribution.
***
It had been dark, not long ago.
The great Midday Darkness, smoke and smog thick enough to choke all light, to drown it all in billowing clouds of a nighttide swarm.
He said he would banish the sun. He promised an endless twilight.
And Maeglin had wanted that so badly. He had wanted the sun to bleed for its pitiless gaze upon all his suffering.
He had wanted it to hurt. He had wanted it to burn.
***
They watch him fall.
He feels their eyes like hot pokers burning his skin, probing and prodding for every flaw, every fault left open, left bare in the sunlight.
They, all peering deeper and deeper into his very self, righteous razors stripping layers and layers of flesh from his bones, violet ribbons suspended in mid-air, infernal, rage-filled strings of bitterness.
He, unraveling before their eyes and ever falling and falling and falling.
***
He falls and he thinks about dying in the shadow of a once Great City, where the bones of his father lay lonely, tasting dust in sun-forgotten grave.
He thinks about pain, inevitable and terrible, and the impending darkness that is to follow.
A darkness he cannot return from. A darkness deeper than he’s ever experienced.
***
He wonders if he will see his mother again.
It is a thought he does not deserve, and he hates himself for it.
***
Maeglin does not expect to remain alive.
***
He is not prepared for the flaring, burning pain that courses through his body, tortured breath, and ruptured lung.
He opens his eyes and sees a watery, wavering red, his own blood, the fires of the serpents, and beyond that, the smoke of a burning city far above.
He sees a shadow growing deep, growing wide, draping itself over his body, and creeping over his face and over his eyes.
And then darkness, once more.
***
He awakens to a sharp white first, slowly fading to yellow, and then a pulsing red, as the pain explodes behind his eyes, invigorated by consciousness.
He blinks back agony, and a face takes form in the flames above, a face with curling lips that speak with the silky, honey tones of amusement.
“You fell a long way down, you know. How lucky I am to have found you.”
***
Maeglin does not expect to remain alive.
***
He had always known that he was doomed.
He had understood fate, for that is what they call it when they have no other answer.
He is cursed for being born.
He is cursed because it must be.
***
Joy was not his, son of the murderer, son of the murdered.
Success was not for him to achieve.
Darkened child, a mirror of horror, the living remnant of nightmare.
***
Maeglin, Lomion, a child of the endless night, saying, ‘I will tell you where it is’ with his eyes screwed shut and his teeth clenched.
***
Maeglin, Lomion, cursed and damned.
***
The orcs drag him under the mountains, through deep, dark tunnels to lands ever darker.
He knows these tunnels, reaches out, scraps his broken hand against roughness and ancient rock, he knows where they lead, darkness and the dripping of water deep down, the dripping of blood, his hand, his fingertips, scratches and gashes and broken bone.
He knows where they are taking him, chambers full of silence and full of screaming and full of laughing .
***
He does not resist.
He has no strength left within, with a body so broken, with a mind inking out from a hundred fractures, black gore dripping bloody trails back to sunlight and misery.
***
Perhaps, he should be thankful.
***
He feels right in the darkness.
He knows it is where he belongs.
He is his father’s son, and his father’s blood is as dark as midnight and the depths of Nan Elmoth.
***
Mother’s blood was far too bright for the forest, a dazzling brilliance meant for the marbled stone of the City, meant for green pastures and clear sky and happiness and nothing, nothing like his own.
***
Maeglin’s blood, dark on the golden fingers of Mairon.
The Maia holds his head with two shining hands, his clever fingers weaving the pieces back together with dark mist and blood-red thread.
“You certainly made a mess of yourself,” he says, his voice swirling within rosy pools of pain, his thumb brushing strands all bloodied and torn from pale bruised skin.
***
“I should have died,” Maeglin says, arms crossed over his knees and his head pressed against them, his head still whirling, still spinning with the buzzing voices of half-dead memories .
They sit in darkness because it is only ever dark in Angband, and Mairon has said to rest, to heal, to wait, until he is needed again, and there is no light because there is no need yet.
“I have plans for you,” Mairon says, in a cheery voice that is always laughing, “You will not die yet. I have such interesting plans for you!”
He sits by Maeglin’s bedside and writes words in a spindly crawling black script on red parchment, grinning all the while.
“I wanted to die,” Maeglin says, staring at the wall, tracing the cracks with his eyes. The words feel like dust in his mouth, dry and suffocating.
***
"Oh," Mairon says, smile sloping downward into a frown, a perfect reversed reflection. He reaches out, trails his fingers through Maeglin's hair, tilts Maeglin's face upward with two fingers set gently beneath his chin.
His eyes are two flames wavering in the darkness, two drops of liquid curiosity, bird-like and stoic, yet ever wondering.
“When have you ever wished to die?” he asks.
It is somewhere between a question and a challenge or a test.
Maeglin does not answer.
***
They tell him that his mother purchased his life with her own.
They tell him to be grateful for it. (that he should have died instead)
That he should value his life because it is hers and theirs and not his own.
***
They say that he purchased his life with his treachery.
They say that this is selfish. (that he should have died)
That he is so, so selfish.
***
"I want to die," he tells Mairon, while the latter is lacing black stitching over Maeglin's right arm.
It refuses to heal even now, the flesh a dark bleeding purple. Yet Mairon finds it an entertaining puzzle and dedicates a portion of his time and effort to the mending.
He still has plans for Maeglin. Oh, such wonderful plans!
“So you have said,” Mairon says with a sigh, with the practiced patience one uses, most often, with children. His teeth flash like silver sparks over his words. “I do not believe you. I think, my dear, that you do not know what you want anymore.”
***
Maeglin wants to die.
He has never been good at suppressing his desires. ( he is so, so selfish in that way )
He wants everything and nothing all at once. ( Mairon laughs, thinking him so childish, so pitiful)
Maeglin wants to die.
***
He wanted Tuor’s blood splattered across fierce white-marble floors. He wanted Tuor’s child consumed in fire. He wanted Idril for himself. (it was disgusting, dark, and tainted like himself, he is told)
They are the only kind of things he should want, Mairon tells him. ( so selfish, so selfish)
***
“I want to die,” Maeglin says ( whispers behind clenched teeth because Mairon’s servants are not as patient as their master)
He wipes blood from his lips and snarls.
They hate the sound of his voice, they say. They tell him to shut up and threaten him with things far worse than death.
But Maeglin has nothing (wants everything or nothing or both) and says, ‘I have lost everything and I do not care anymore.’
***
Eventually, he finds strength again in his voice, fills the silences that stretch between him and Mairon’s smiling facade with his screams ( demands )
I want to die! I should have died! Kill me!
Mairon tries to placate him with softly spoken words, his golden warmth and comforting hands stroking Maeglin’s hollow skull, humming songs of false hope and twisted gleefulness.
“You cannot die, you see, Maeglin? I will only bring you back,” he says, cooing into the over-sweetened air as Maeglin gags on the stony floor.
***
Sometimes, Maeglin watches himself walk through unfamiliar halls full of unfamiliar faces. He speaks words that spiral like flaxen strands around the shoulders and necks of strangers caught in his presence.
They nod and laugh and speak behind a sheet of fog in his mind.
He feels Mairon’s eyes sparkling behind his own, Mairon’s mind at the back of his head.
‘I will not let you die while I yet have use for you,” he says, grinning.