On Cold Thangorodrim by downtide

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

Though it was still day, the curtains were drawn and the room lit only by the flickering bluish light of the television. I turned over in the bed to glance at it, some documentary about eagles. I smiled to myself, and reached over my lover to turn it off. Findekáno stirred at the sudden silence and opened his eyes to smile at me.

"Only the truly decadent make love in the afternoon," he murmured quietly.

"Then we are truly decadent." I replied, tracing lazy circles with my fingers on the glistening skin of his chest. "And you fell asleep," I added, giving him a playful poke.

"I didn't," he protested. "But you did." He frowned. "You were dreaming again."

A chill shiver ran down my spine and I sat up, drawing my arms around myself, cradling my right arm with my left, like I used to do when my hand was newly severed. "Thangorodrim," I said simply, hanging my head and looking down at my arm.

"Oh." Findekáno fell silent, and touched my shoulder. "I thought you didn't remember that any more."

I closed my eyes, then opened them again and turned around to look at him. "I... lied. I'm sorry."

There was a long, silent pause, in which I looked only at the floor, whilst feeling Findekáno's eyes on me. "Maitimo?" He touched my face, I still did not look at him. All I could see was a broken, chaotic collage of images in my mind. Morgoth. Blood. Fire and steel. "Timo? What do you remember?"

I took a deep breath then, and I told him everything.

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I have heard it speculated by many people, how long I hung on that mountain. Sometimes they say fifty years. Or fifteen. Or five. Or one. They make me laugh sometimes, even I with my strength could not have endured just one year hanging like that on an exposed cliff-face. To begin with, Morgoth kept me indoors, in the caves below his fortress at Angband.

The cell was small but high-walled, roughly hewn from a natural space in the rock. The only light came from a window, nothing more than a crack, covered with heavy iron bars, maybe fifteen feet above my head. Each day in late afternoon, the sun passed by that window and filled the room with light for a brief while. Sometimes I was chained to the wall, with chains so short that I could not even sit down, but sometimes I was left unchained. It did not matter much either way; there was no escape either from the window or from the heavy iron door, but at least whilst unchained I was able to lie on the straw-covered floor and sleep. From time to time I would yell and bang on the door, and cursed Morgoth's betrayal with every breath, but I soon realised that no-one would listen or respond, so I gave up. Or rather, my voice did.

For several days I saw not a soul, except for an orc which from time to time would briefly open the door to shove a bucket inside, and slam it closed again. The bucket contained some kind of watery gruel, foul stuff but I was hungry and ate it anyway. After the first such meal I was vomiting for hours, but after the second my body realised that I would be getting no other sustenance and I was able to keep it down. A while after each meal, the orc would return, beat me with a large club until I stopped trying to defend myself, and then it would chain me up again.

And then, just as I was beginning to lose count of the days I'd been held prisoner, my captor came to see me. The cell filled with blazing light as he opened the door, and with my first glimpse of him I could see that he wore on his head a crown of iron, set with the three Silmarils. I lunged for the crown as he came close to me but the chains held my wrists and ankles.

Morgoth chuckled. "Such spirit you have," he said. His voice was like ice water. "Just like your father, before my balrog sliced him in two halves."

This time I gave a roar and lunged for his throat but again the chains held me. He was tantalisingly close but not quite close enough. "What happened to negotiations? Parley, you promised."

His dark eyes flashed, and he gave a mock sigh. "Oh, you disappointed me so, son of Curufinwë. I had hoped you were smarter than that." He took a step closer to me, touched my hair. All I could do was snap at his fingers with my teeth.

"Don't touch me!"

Morgoth answered by striking me hard in the face, and I tasted blood in my mouth. "You are my property now, son of Curufinwë, and you are in no position to make demands of me. It is I who shall make demands of you." He drew a knife into his hand and used it to slice my shirt from sleeve to sleeve, ripped it off, and cast it aside onto the straw. Then he placed the cold tip of the blade against my chest. I flinched and he smiled. "Such a pretty thing you are, with your hair the colour of embers, and your skin pale as ash. A shame that my orcs have bruised you so."

The thieving Vala pressed the knife-blade harder, until it drew blood, and he traced a scarlet line across my chest, first one way, then the other. I hissed with the pain but forced myself not to cry out. "What do you want, Morgoth?"

"Melkor," he said, pressing the knife deeper and smiling as my blood welled from the wound. "My name is Melkor, not Morgoth."

"You can torture me... " I gasped for breath. "...all you like, but I'll tell you nothing. Morgoth."

The laugh he gave was full of ice, and no humour. "You really are stupid, aren't you?" With one swift twist of his arm he brought the knife up and slashed across my left cheek before I even had time to turn away. "I don't need to torture you for information. I have all the information that I want."

"So what do you want from me?" Blood dripped from my face and I tried to bring my hand up to touch it, but the chain that held my arm was too short.

"Entertainment."

"What?"

"You amuse me, Nelyafinwë." Morgoth diverted his attention to my hair, and cut off a large chunk of it. "Such pretty hair you have." I gave another roar, tried to bite him again, but he was quick and kept just out of reach. "And such spirit too. I want to play a game with you. I want to see how long you will last before you break. Before you beg me to kill you."

"Never! I will never beg anything from you, deathbringer."

Tucking the swag of my hair into his pocket, and sheathing his knife again in his boot, he smiled and turned to walk away. At the door he turned back. "Oh, but I think you will, Nelyafinwë. I think you will." When he left, and closed the door behind him, the cell was plunged again into darkness.

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After that he came to me every day. Each time he wore the iron crown, taunting me with the light of the Silmarils, so bright I could hardly bear to look upon them. Each time he used his knife on my body, never the same place twice. And each time I held my tongue, no matter how much it hurt I refused to cry out. I would not give him the satisfaction of hearing my pain.

The orcs continued to bring the bucket of gruel, and beat me with their clubs before chaining me up again. Sometimes the beatings would reopen almost-healed cuts, and once I think they broke some ribs, because for a week or so after, I was coughing up blood.

Morgoth grew bored with the knife game, and devised another. He brought a bench into the cell first of all. It was as long as a bed but higher and a little narrower, and had a chain attached to each corner, with a shackle on each one. I shivered at the sight of it, but already I could smell something that turned my stomach. It was the very familiar scent of a forge; burning coals and hot metal, so familiar from my childhood.

Three orcs came into the room, two of them held me down while the other unchained me from the wall. At that moment, fear overtook me and with a roar I tore myself from the orcs' grip and leaped for the open doorway, tripping over bench and bucket in my haste to escape. The three orcs lumbered after me but I was too quick for them.

And too quick to notice the brazier with which I collided just outside the doorway, which then shed half it's load of hot coals and ash over my legs. That was when I screamed, for the first time. By the time Morgoth reached me I had already collapsed to the floor, unable to walk, so he simply picked me up and carried me back inside, whilst one of the orcs shovelled the spilled coal back into the brazier and carried it into the cell.

"Tut, tut, so impatient," Morgoth scolded, with the same tone of voice my father had used on me when I was a child. "You shouldn't be so reckless, you'll only get hurt."

I moaned with pain as he dropped me onto the bench, and I was by now unable to struggle as he laid me face down and shackled my hands and feet to the chains at each corner. The pain from my burned legs rubbing against the rough wooden surface of the bench was almost unbearable.

"Oh, I see you got hurt already. Never mind." Morgoth turned his attention to the brazier, donned a thick leather gauntlet, and pulled from the coals an iron spike three feet long and glowing bright orange. A quiet whimper escaped my throat and Morgoth smiled. "Ah, is that fear at last, my pretty one?"

I closed my eyes but I screamed a second time as he drew the hot iron across my back.

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The days and weeks, or maybe it was months that followed, blurred into a haze of pain, hot metal and burning flesh. Some of the wounds became infected and for a long time I lay on the straw, drifting in and out of fever and delusional dreams in which I thought Findekáno had come back to me. But even though my body had been weakened by abuse and near-starvation, my strength, and the natural resiliance of the Noldor, kept me going when any lesser mortal would have succumbed.

Morgoth thankfully left me alone whilst the fevers had their grip on me, but when I recovered from their sickness he came back to taunt me again. "Findekáno," he said thoughtfully, whetting his knife as he sat cross-legged on the bench. He looked as though he were dressed for horse-riding, in grey and black. The blaze of light from the iron crown filled the room, burning away every shadow.

"What?" I looked up at him through a curtain of matted hair. The section Morgoth had cut out had long since grown back.

"Findekáno," Morgoth repeated. "Your cousin."

"I know who he is!" I growled, albeit weakly.

"I wonder why it is his name that you cry out in your dreams?" I felt myself flush bright crimson but I said nothing. "You have so many cousins, Nelyafinwë. It is odd that you cry out the name of only one of them." He leaned close to me and placed his cheek close to mine, to whisper quietly. "You must think very highly of him." He trailed his finger down my chest, his fingernail making a path down the red scars, pausing only when he reached the waist of my leggings. "I am disappointed that it's not my name you called out though." He gave a mock pout.

"I would never cry out your name, Morgoth," I muttered. "You are not worth one hair on his head."

The Vala laughed. "He must be very special indeed. Tell me, pretty one, does he cry out your name when you fuck him?"

I spluttered, unable to think of an answer that did not dig me into a very big hole. Morgoth however, did not seem concerned about a reply. He stood and came up to me again, pressing the newly-sharpened blade against the side of my neck. Just enough, as usual, to draw blood. With his other hand he touched my cheek, only this time it was not a blow but a caress. Still chained to the wall, I was unable to do anything to stop him.

"Or do you cry his when he fucks you?"

Despite the gentleness of the touch, or perhaps because of its gentleness, I found Morgoth's cares unbearable. I screwed my eyes closed, trying to keep contained the tears which threatened to spill out over my cheeks. I would not... could not allow myself to show such weakness.

"You're hungry for it, aren't you?" Morgoth continued, his face so close to mine, his hand now clasped around my throat so that I could not attempt to bite him. I kept my eyes closed, to keep in the tears, and keep out the sight of Morgoth's face and my father's gems that he wore on his brow. Slowly he let go of my throat and drew his hand gently over my body. I felt his fingers pass over every protruding rib, and over the stretched, scarred skin of my abdomen, instead of the firm muscles that Findekáno had touched, the last time I saw him. When he started to unlace my leggings I felt sick.

This was torture far worse than any blade or brand. I fought back the tears and the urge to vomit. The only way I could bear it was to close my eyes and imagine that it truly was Findekáno touching me. He whose touch I had not felt since I left the shores of Valinor, and who, when my father burned the ships at Losgar, I knew that I would never see again. Except in my dreams.

Morgoth pulled my leggings down and leaned forward to kiss my bony hips, and my abdomen, and then... No! I tried to fight it but thinking of Findekáno had aroused me and the evidence of my arousal pulsed warmly at the touch of Morgoth's lips. Please, no! "Please..."

The Vala stood again and looked me in the eye. He was one of the few I've ever met that is as tall as I am. "I've always wondered," he said softly, more to himself than to me. "I've heard that if an elf is raped, then they fade. I wonder if that's true or not."

My knees gave way at that point, and the chains holding my wrists were the only things holding me up off the floor. No! Eru, please, not like this! And for the first time I wished that I had died from his previous torture.

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That which he suggested, he did to me.

Not once but over and over again, and I did not fade. Not physically, at least, though I felt as though my spirit had truly left me, and I was but a shell. Empty, because the only way I found that I could endure it was to let my spirit free from its captivity and return to the golden shores of Valinor. There I could let myself relax in the memories of happier times, to sink into the warm embrace of my beloved, and lie together with him under the light of the Valar's Trees.

After a while, I spent more time lost in my memories than I did in my body, lying in that cell on the straw. I was no longer chained to the wall since I no longer had the strength to fight or even try to escape. I swear that if he had left the door open I would not even have noticed.

Eventually, after I know not how long, Morgoth's visits grew less frequent, and finally they stopped. I was aware only that the Silmarils on his brow no longer filled my cell with light, and the darkness now seemed absolute. Even the sun no longer warmed me through the window.

It was then, almost with relief that I greeted the dark Vala when he came to me that last time. His mood was different, no longer paying compliments to me, no longer calling me "pretty one". I suppose that weakness and starvation had left my body somewhat less attractive to him.

"I tire of this game now," he said absently, as he lifted me up onto his shoulder as though I weighed nothing at all. "I have one last amusement planned for you, to keep me entertained as the winter draws in."

And for the first time since my captivity began, aside from that one brief failed attempt to escape, I was outside the cell. I tried to concentrate on where he was taking me, but I felt dizzy from being carried like that, draped over his shoulder, and I was only half conscious. There were stairs, and forge-smells again, and the ever-present light from Morgoth's crown.

Then the cold winter air, and the gentle touch of falling snow on my naked skin, brought me back to full consciousness with a snap. "Let me go!" I tried to wriggle out of Morgoth's grasp but his strong arms held on to me tightly.

"...very disappointed," he was saying. "I thought you would have broken long before now." He tapped me lightly, as a parent might scold a disobedient child. "...nothing to be proud of though..." he continued. "I see that it's nothing more than stubbornness and ignorance. I am quite disappointed that you do not have the same fire in your spirit that your father had."

We seemed to be climbing, though from my vantage point all I could see was the floor, and the stony, snow-dusted track on which we were travelling. Finally we crossed a precarious rope-bridge over a narrow chasm, that led to a ledge on an otherwise sheer cliff-face. There, Morgoth dropped me in a heap on the ground. I tried to get up, to run from him, but I could not even sit, and I just lay there shivering in the cold.

"Fools," Morgoth was muttering. "One shackle?" I heard him growl. "I suppose it will do." He knelt and cupped my chin in his hand, forcing me to look at him. I closed my eyes against the glare of the Silmarils. "Even with one hand free I doubt you've the strength now to try to escape." He lifted me off the floor with one hand and clamped the shackle around my right wrist. When he let go, I fell just as far as the chain would allow, the jolt feeling as though my shoulder had been wrenched from it's socket. My feet dangled off the floor, a few inches above the ledge, so that Morgoth had to look up at me just a little.

"There. I'm sorry it didn't work out, my pretty," he said, with a sad look in his dark eyes. He shrugged and smiled. "You are just not entertaining enough, but one last game will keep me amused now, for a little while. How long can you live, out here, before cold and hunger takes you and the ravens pick your bones? Not longer than a week, I expect. I'll come back after the thaw, to collect your skull. It will make a nice trophy for my dining room." With that he turned away and started to cross the rope bridge again.

Fear filled me, for I knew he was right. In the cell I probably would have endured indefinitely, despite the abuse. Out here, with my naked body exposed to the elements, without food or water, I knew that I would die, and soon. And what then? The Valar's curse still echoed in distant cloudy memory. As a Kinslayer, Valinor was barred to me and even in death I would not see my beloved again.

"Please," I said to Morgoth as he stepped onto the bridge. "Don't leave me here. Cold."

Morgoth turned and smiled at me. "Ahah! Was that pleading I hear? At long last, does the stubborn thing finally break?" He drew his knife again into his hand and ran its tip down my right arm, which was already throbbing from the weight it was bearing. "I can end your suffering in a moment, son of Curufinwë, if only you'll do the thing I asked of you right at the start."

My head was spinning. "What?"

He slid the knife around until the edge of the blade rested across my throat. "Beg for death, and I'll end it for you right now."

I spat in his face.

He turned away, laughing, then he crossed the bridge. When he reached the other side he cut the ropes with his knife and I knew then, that my fate was sealed and he would not return. When he was out of sight, I wept.

---------------------------------------------------

For a little while I drifted in and out of consciousness. I found that by bracing my legs against the rock I could lift myself up a few inches, just enough to reach the chain with my left hand and hold it for a little while, thereby taking the weight off my right wrist. Inevitably though, I would lose my grip and fall again. The shackle around my wrist would catch my weight and after a half dozen attempts my wrist was raw and bleeding, so I gave up.

Later the same day, or maybe the next, I saw the bird. At first it was just a speck in the sky and I watched it making lazy spiralling circles, getting gradually bigger as it came closer. I remembered what Morgoth had said about the ravens picking my bones, and thought how unpleasant it would be if they did not at least have the manners to wait until I was dead first.

"Go away," I yelled at it. "Come back next week."

The bird continued to spiral closer until eventually it was close enough for me to see that it was an eagle. A very, very large one. It landed on the ledge beside me, quite precariously for the ledge was barely large enough for it. It towered several feet taller than me, and it looked at me curiously with it's large golden eyes.

"I am sorry," I said to the eagle. "There isn't much meat on me now. Hardly worth the effort. You may as well just leave."

A low chuckle rumbled in the bird's throat. "I am here to help you, not eat you," it said. "My name is Thorondor. I am a servant of Manwe, not Morgoth." It tilted its head in the way that birds do.

"Morgoth got his wish after all, it seems," I muttered quietly.

"Hmm? What wish?" Thorondor asked.

"He broke me. Made me crazy."

"Rubbish." The bird fluffed his feathers and shuffled closer to me, so that his warm body shielded me from the biting wind. "You're stronger than he expected, you're not crazy."

I gave a hollow laugh. "Begging your pardon, but I am hallucinating that I am having a conversation with a giant talking eagle. But it does not matter. I think my death will be less painful if I am insane."

My hallucination stayed with me all night, his feathery body pressed close up against me, keeping me warm and supporting me so that I could sleep. When the sun rose I was relatively comfortable, aside from the pain in my right arm.

"Whilst you are here," I suggested, "might you use that strong-looking beak of yours to break the chain that holds me, and get me off this mountain?" He tried, but truthfully I had not expected him to actually succeed. He was after all, just a trick of my own deluded imagination.

"I am sorry," Thorondor apologised. "Do not worry. I will bring help." And he spread his great wings and dived from the ledge, swooping low before three long heavy wingbeats carried him high above me and out of sight.

I drifted in and out of dreams and old memories, searching for Findekáno, longing for the golden shores of Valinor and his warm embrace. Instead I found only nightmares of ice, and his face so cold that his tears had frozen on his cheeks. I need you, my beloved, I tried to call to him. Please, help me!

Even my feathery hallucination did not come back, and the remaining nights I had to endure the full force of Angband's winter. I had no food, and the only water I had was what rain and snow I managed to suck from my hair. But I knew that the cold would take me before the starvation. My right arm was thankfully already completely numb but in that state of drifting barely conscious, it probably would not have mattered much anyway.

I am dying. Perhaps I am dead already.

I tried to think of Findekáno but instead it was my father's image that came to me. There was no strength in me for anger or hate and instad I wept. I am sorry, Atar. I have failed you. He merely smiled and said nothing. I do not deserve to die like this. Do the valar forget that I alone regretted the kinslaying? That I lamented the burning of the ships at Losgar?

"That was not regret of the Kinslaying," my father accused, "but regret that you could no longer rut with your lover. Kinslayer you are still, and Oathbreaker."

No! But my father had already passed me by and his image was gone. Somewhere in the distance I thought I heard Findekáno singing.

Findekáno, help me!

"Where are you, my beloved?" his voice cried, weeping, though I could not see him. I could not tell if the fog that clouded my vision was in the air, or in my mind.

"Here! I am here!" I tried to call out but my voice was cracked and parched from lack of water, but it was enough to snap me into full consciousness again, and incredibly, I could still hear Findekáno singing. From somewhere I found one last shred of strength, I filled my lungs with chill Angband air and I returned his song, as loudly as I could manage.

Manwe's wind carried my song to him and then he was there, on the other side of the chasm, just across from where the rope-bridge used to be. My beloved Findekáno, so close to me and yet, still impossibly far away. His face was etched with horror at the sight of me.

"What are you doing here, Kano?" I asked.

"I had a dream... I came to rescue you." He looked around. "I cannot get across."

I gazed across the chasm at him, my vision blurred with tears. Given time he could probably have built another bridge, like the ones we used to build in Valinor when we were children, but I knew he could not build it in time. All I wanted was to feel his touch one last time, and even that was impossible.

"Findekáno, please, if you love me, let me go."

He shook his head, confused. "How? I cannot reach you."

I looked at the bow on his back. "One swift arrow in my heart will be enough. End my suffering, please!"

"No!" Findekáno refused but I begged him again and at that point I realised that Morgoth had won, and I'd finally done what he wanted me to do all along, to beg for death. I hung my head and wept.

I watched him slowly draw his bow and nock an arrow to the string. His hands were trembling, tears ran down his face. He set down the bow again. "Maitimo... I can't."

"Do you love me?"

He nodded.

"Then do as I ask. I am dying already, just make it swift."

I closed my eyes then, but I heard him cry out to Manwe, and with one last sob from his throat I heard the thrum of the bowstring. Nothing happened.

When I opened my eyes again my vision was filled with feathers. Thorondor had returned, a broken arrow clutched in his talons, and Findekáno himself clinging to his back as the eagle bore him across the chasm and gently set him down upon the ledge. He was sobbing and laughing all at once.

"You missed," I said to him, and he sobbed and laughed all the more.

"I swear I'll get you out of this without killing you," he replied. He took off his cloak and wrapped it around me, and offered me water from the flask he carried on his hip. Then he drew a knife and used its blade to try to wrench the chain from the cliffside. But the chain was stronger than the blade, and it was the knife that broke first. Cursing, he hurled it aside and it tumbled down the cliffside far below, and he drew his sword to continue his efforts.

"Findekáno..." I lifted my left hand and restedit on his shoulder. "This is angband steel. You'll only break the sword too. Put your blade to better use."

He glared at me. "No. I won't give up this time, 'Timo. There has to be a way." He turned his attention instead to the shackle itself, trying to prise it open with the sword-blade, but it held. The blade slipped and deeply gashed my hand, almost severing a finger, and he pulled away quickly, his face pale with horror. "Eru, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you."

I shrugged as best I could with one arm above my head. "You didn't. I can't feel a thing." Blood trickled down my arm. "Please, Káno. Let me die quickly, and with some shred of dignity." My voice shook. "And let me have one last kiss before I go."

He gave a choking sob and held me gently, and then I was sobbing too. Our mouths met and our tears mingled, and if I was to die then I wanted it to be now, with this moment of closeness to be my last memory.

At last Findekáno drew back and he held his sword in his trembling hand. "Please forgive what I do, my Maitimo," he said quietly. "I love you." He drew his sword back and I closed my eyes as he swung it towards me with every ounce of force that he could muster. I felt myself fall from the cliffside and I crumpled into a heap on the ledge and then, mercifully, I fainted.

---------------------------------------------------

And the rest is history, or so the saying goes. Long ago history. I turned to face Findekáno again and wrapped my arms around him. He gently brushed his fingers across the stump of my right arm, where he had struck off my hand to save me, rather than kill me. He was trembling, quietly sobbing.

"Hush, meldonya," I whispered to him. "There's no need to be upset."

"I had no idea... all those other things you endured..." He turned to face me and touched one of the many scars that still marred my body. "Or how you really got those scars."

"I am sorry for keeping it from you for so long," I whispered, stroking his hair. "You worry so, and I did not want for you to worry un-necessarily."

"Of course I worry. I love you." He closed his eyes and I kissed the tears from his cheeks.

I looked at my handless arm, an ever-present reminder of just how deep was his love for me, and I smiled.

"I know."