The Tempered Steel by Lyra

Part I, Chapter III*

In which Maedhros involuntarily discovers the concept of cliffhanger. *Warning for continued torture.

Maitimo had no strength or resolve left when they came back to him. Time had stretched shapelessly, filled with pain and darkness, the former increasing and the latter staying reliably the same, although there were spots of light dancing before his eyes whenever he tried to move. He had given up on that long ago, however, crouched in the darkness, waiting – for how long he could not tell. It felt like eternity. And it did not stop. It was absurd, but he could not deny that he was still drawing breath, even when all his reason told him that he should have died long ago. Even that road to freedom, it seemed, was blocked.
Then finally the Orcs returned and a wild flash of hope seared through his throbbing head. Maybe they would kill him at last. Maybe he would have a chance of fighting his way free after all. Maybe they would torment him again: Even that would be better than this black nothingness.

They unchained him and kicked him in the ribs and told him to get up. He couldn't. After having been confined to a single position for so long, his muscles refused to wake from their stasis, and when he tried to rise, the sudden agony was well-nigh unbearable; it felt as though strong, cruel hands had taken hold of his limbs, stretching and twisting them beyond the point of tearing. A pained gasp escaped him; it was all he could do to stifle a howl. The Orcs laughed and kicked him again, and he tried again to move even a little, but all he managed was to fall over. There he remained, teeth dug into his lower lip to keep from crying as his body protested fiercely against the unfamiliar use.

Since he could not move on his own, they took him by his wrists and ankles and dragged him through the endless corridors while he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to make no sound. Finally he was dropped to the floor. Brightness approached, and the Orcs scurried away: not far, but far enough to keep away from the centre of the light. Maitimo forced himself to raise his head - even that minute movement was draining – and saw Moringotto towering before him, all black polished iron, a grim sneer on his face. In his crown the Silmarils still sparkled, bright and cold. Their light fell on Maitimo as he lay there, and he felt some of his pride and will rekindled. Ignoring the agony of his abused body, he slowly got to his feet. His breathing quickened, and he trembled and swayed from the effort, his head spinning, but as long as he kept his eyes on the jewels he felt he could endure it.

"Not bad," said Moringotto, baring his teeth in a grin, "not bad at all. You're a strong one, sweet Maitimo."
Maitimo meant to laugh, but what came was a dry, raspy sound like the grating of metal on stone. He had seen enough of himself while rising: the sores and bruises where the chains had been; the old cuts and welts and burns from his earlier torments that had begun healing but badly with so little nourishment and so many injuries; the awkward angle in his left foot where the bones had healed crookedly; the thinness that made his skin look drawn onto too large a frame – and it was plain that his mother-name was ridiculous now. He did not try to asses the damage again lest his courage leave him; it was safer to look at the Silmarils in their unchanged beauty.

"Such a waste, really," Moringotto went on. "Your brothers do not want you back."
"Good," Maitimo spat with as much force as he could muster. He had intended to say more, but he found that his voice was strangely unreceptive to his wishes and threatened to betray him; 'good' would have to do.

"Is it really, little Maitimo?" Moringotto asked, cupping the elf's chin with his hand – the right one, burnt black at the theft of the Jewels – and Maitimo felt his skin go icy and his body numb with the harsh cold. "Is it? For now I shall never release you, and you will stay in my power while the world lasts."

But the good thing about the numbness was that it also took away the pain, and Maitimo could think clearly for a moment, and felt that, if only for this second, he was perfectly empty of either hope or fear; and he snarled through his teeth, almost triumphant, "While you last, at the most, and you will be brought down soon enough. But I shall die sooner, I daresay, and be free even before you fall, for surely my body will not last much longer."

Moringotto let go of him, and he collapsed. To his surprise, the lord of Angamando appeared to be amused rather than angered; he was laughing again, teeth glinting in the light of the Silmarils in his crown.
"How little you know for a Noldo," he said. "Indeed your body wouldn't have lasted until now, if I had not made it last." He bent down and pulled Maitimo up by his throat. First the elf struggled; then he stopped in the hope of Moringotto strangling him. He had no such luck. "You will not die of hunger nor thirst nor your wounds, though you can feel all three," the Enemy explained, eyes gleaming maliciously. "That would be too easy a way out." He let go again, and Maitimo stumbled as he tried to remain upright. Moringotto took a few paces away, and the elf thought that the conversation was over; but then the fallen Vala turned back to him, and the light in his eyes was terrible.
"I offer you this: Swear me allegiance and your pain will be at an end. I could use another steward, one who knows the counsels of the Eldar, and you have proven to be quite strong… You would be healed, and honoured well. Think about it. Surely you no longer owe anything to your brothers, who left you to this! What is your answer? Will you serve me?"
"Never," hissed Maitimo, clenching his fists.
"Are you so certain? Do you not hurt? Do you not know that I can always hurt you more? I could hang you high upon a mountain, a trophy and a warning to all who think of defying me... Come now, be honest to yourself! Are you not angry with your brothers? They know full well that they leave you to suffer. "
"I am proud of them," Maitimo managed, though he couldn't help but feel thoroughly miserable.
Moringotto shook his head in a mockery of sadness. "I thought you would say no," he said. "Such a waste."

- - -

After an age of being bundled up, it was not too unpleasant at first to hang like this, capable of stretching cramped limbs and of breathing free air instead of the stuffy, used air - always carrying the smell of iron or blood - that he had perforce grown used to. He could make out the stars overhead, and, once his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he could also see the wide lands about him, mountains and rocks at first, hills and meadows beyond them, and far away a glint of water, all robbed of their colour and tinted in greys and blues, giving him an illusion of peace. It was almost like freedom.

If only there hadn't been the growing strain on his right shoulder. It increased by the minute, sending jolts of pain through his already hurting body with every beat of his heart; breathing grew harder and harder. He struggled to reach the gyve around his wrist with the fingers of his now-free left hand, tried to pull out of the band of hard steel that had once been part of his armour, but even now that he had grown so painfully thin the band bit into his arm relentlessly, and all he achieved was to tear his skin open. Blood ran down his arm and then his side, sticky and warm, to drip into the darkness below. He kept his left hand on the shackle, pulling himself up to take the weight off his aching shoulder, and that eased the pain for a brief while; but soon his arms grew tired, and his fingers slipped on the blood-smeared steel, and he fell for his arm's length before the cruel band of steel caught his weight. He could feel the joint in his right shoulder give way. He screamed then, helpless in his agony. The mountain walls took up his scream and multiplied it as he hung, drained and sobbing, on the face of the sheer wall.

Even breathing became an ordeal, yet when he tried to stop, he found that he couldn't. All attempts to hold his breath and die only resulted in more pain to his stretched-out rib cage when his body forced him to draw breath after all. Sometimes there was rain, and strangely it made breathing easier, just as it helped to slake the thirst that was tormenting him. But even that was a mixed blessing, for more often than not the rain was accompanied by storms, and he was shaken like a leaf by the winds, thrown against the rock, scraping his barely-healed skin open against the rough stone. There was hail, and he prayed that it would strike him dead, and there was lightning, and he prayed that it would hit and burn him, but they seemed to be in league with Moringotto, for though they added to Maitimo's pain, they never killed him. There were winds icy and searing hot, and long droughts that left him delirious with thirst.
And then there was light.

Silvery and calm it shone over the peeks of the mountains and lay upon the far hills and lake. It shone through Maitimo's closed eyelids and tore him from furtive sleep (for after a while, he grew so exhausted that even through his pain sleep claimed him). Opening his eyes with some difficulty, he stared up at the new lamp in the sky. He knew that light, he thought; how often had he come home after a day's adventures in the silvery sheen of Telperion, ages ago, in his other life! He wondered faintly whether he was imagining this, but discarded the thought, reasoning that if he were imagining things he would certainly imagine himself in a kinder place. He looked around. In the brighter light, the shadows deepened, and the mountains around him looked crueller and more forbidding than ever. For the first time since he had been brought here he could see the ground of the sheer wall he was dangling from clearly, a ravine of rocks and ashes. It was terribly far below him, and he looked up again quickly, his senses reeling. Yet he could not help feeling that this light was a promise, though of what he had no idea. It had to be good. It had to mean something.
To his surprise, he realised that he was smiling.

If he took the appearance of the moon as a sign of hope, the fiery light that joined it some time later filled him with dread. Oh, at first he cherished the new light, fierce and hot, bathing the land in golden light. He was astonished by the multitude of colours that now appeared, delighted by the far-off birdsong and soothed by the warmth on his torn body; but when the light grew higher, it blinded him, and the black rock from which he hung grew scalding hot. His thirst grew ever more unbearable. He felt as though he were hung in a furnace. His head lolled back against the stone, and his eyes fell shut; memories appeared unbidden of his father working in the forge, explaining to him how to melt ores. Dazed by the intense heat, he drifted into illusions.

He was torn from his reveries by a sound like horns and trumpets far below, and by the sound of distant voices raised in challenge. Shaking his head weakly to clear his senses, he realised what this must mean: an army, a battle; a chance maybe to be saved from this living death. "I am here!" he shouted, or tried to; but it resulted in a cough; clenching his eyes shut, he willed his dry throat and swollen tongue to produce sound: "Here!" he repeated. His voice sounded rusty and raw. The mountains echoed with his scream so that he could hardly hear the horns below, but nothing else happened; and then the voices and trumpets and marching feet grew softer and disappeared before the echoes had subsided. He could see the army now, heading away to the South. A mighty host. Blue banners.
He wondered whether it was another illusion. Perhaps he was losing his mind.

The bright light passed over the land and back again, burning down relentlessly. There was something shrill to the birdsong by now. Maitimo's skin felt burned, raw; he kept his eyes shut for fear that they would shrivel and dry in his head. The insides of his eyelids were red and orange like fire. He remembered a game that had amused him as a child, facing the Trees with his eyes closed, then turning around and opening the eyes to a landscape all tinted in green, even the sky and the mountains and people's skin. Surely enough, when he opened his eyes now, he saw everything around him in dazzling greens. Green, he remembered, hearing his mother's voice, was the opposite of red, so it was what his eyes showed him when they were tired of too much red.
With a kind of detached exhilaration he decided that he couldn't be insane yet if he could remember his lessons in lore.

Time seemed to stand still in the pitiless heat. He was aware at some point of the earth and the rock trembling beneath him, of distant shouts and the ringing of metal. There was a battle in the sky, although through his half-lidded eyes he could not tell what exactly was happening. There were flashes of brilliant light and stretches of deep darkness, but in the end the light persevered, even brighter and fiercer than before.
His skin felt as though he had been bedded on glowing embers (he remembered perfectly well what that felt like from his earlier torments.) He was trembling despite the heat. When a cloud of bitter dust and smoke arose, wrapping around the mountaintops and blocking out the intense glare, he was downright grateful.

Finally the dust-hazed light gave way to gentle darkness. The air cooled, and his dazed mind could clear a little. He stared up at the sliver of moonlight that occasionally broke through the clouds and tried to distract himself from the burning of his blistered hide and the all-overwhelming agony in his right arm and shoulder. He found it almost impossible to focus; forcing himself to recite poems and pieces of lore to himself – the ordering of nature, the names and provinces of the Valar, the history of the Eldar, the three ways of working steel – he was frequently torn out of his concentration as he couldn't push away the pain any longer, his muscles and nerves screaming in anguish.
The lights settled into a pattern of brighter and dimmer hours, and he tried to count the passing time by their change, but he soon lost count. He frequently lost consciousness now and did not know how much time passed in the stretch spent in oblivion or in restless dreams of his family, his life, only to wake again to the still-growing agony. All hopes of rescue had left him; after being tormented but never killed by seasons of extreme drought or bitter frost or cruel storms, he gave up hope of death as well. Yet his life was over; there was nothing he could do but stare at the bleak mountain walls, or watch his many wounds scab over slowly and badly only to be replaced by new sores and welts, watch his hair grow longer than it had ever been only to be knotted and tangled by the winds. Trapped in body and in spirit by physical pain and recurring memories, he considered himself dead to all intents and purposes, hoping that the certainty would make him indifferent to his pains. Yet it did not make the enduring any easier as the endless years of torment crawled by.

Chapter End Notes

The length of Maedhros' imprisonment is a perpetual source of discussion, I know, and with "canon" being as vague as it is, I've pretty much heard every option between "20+ years" (supported by the timelines) and "around two weeks", supported by the fact that Maedhros wouldn't still have been alive after a longer time. Personally I don't think the latter point relevant. If Morgoth could make Húrin sit in a chair and watch everything that happened to his family for most of his life without dying or losing the ability to walk, talk or think afterwards, I think we can safely assume that Morgoth could perform a similar trick on Maedhros. It's doubtlessly a cruel trick, but since when is Morgoth averse to cruelty?
So I think we're looking at several years here - my personal count is five years for the events of Chapter One, and seven for the events of this chapter. Of course you are free to disregard that if you prefer a different timeframe.