Bearer of Chiaroscuro by AdmirableMonster

nan dungortheb: weaving a tangled web

“This is the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted,” Mairon grumbled.  He and Gothmog were crouched in a small cave with a merry little fire flickering in a small firepit.  And he was trying to choke down a piece of roasted spider on a stick.  No one was happy about this, including Mairon’s stomach, the two little ones, or Mairon himself.

“You need to eat something,” Gothmog pointed out.  “If you had thought to bring more rations—”

“Oh, if I had thought to bring more?  Mine were lost in the swamp when I was nearly killed by a dragon!  What if you had thought to bring more?”

“I had to leave in a hurry,” Gothmog retorted.  “I was worried about you, if you’ll recall.  If you had told me any of this—”

Mairon sulked and forced himself to take another bite of the spider.  They had made it through the Pass of Anach, but instead of turning West to follow the Crissaegrim, they had been forced to make a rapid Eastwards detour to avoid the attentions of a particularly dogged group of Orcs and winged watchers.  Mairon chafed at the delay, but there were considerations that might become easier this way.  Benefits versus costs.  All of it twisting up into something that would likely end in his death, and the deaths of the two souls who had not asked for any of this, and the deaths of—

The deaths of his shadow and his smith.  He ground his teeth together.

“What happened, Mairon?” Gothmog asked quietly.  

“Bad luck?” Mairon tried, putting a hand across his swollen belly.

Gothmog’s eyebrows drew together.  “Try again,” he said, and Mairon put his chin onto his knees and stared at him miserably.  Gothmog, he was sure, knew what he had told Melkor long ago.  Knew in his bones the magnitude of the betrayal that lay within Mairon’s form right now.

“I cannot explain it,” he said softly.  “It has been so long since He saw me, I suppose.”  It was a bad explanation, and he knew it.  The thought of Melkor made him shiver.  “The things He would do, though,” he whispered, in the barest thread of a voice.  “And I would deserve them, Gothmog, but these two would not, so I have become a traitor, and I do not know how it happened.”

His friend had gone very still on the other side of the fire.  “What do you mean?” he asked, and Mairon could not read his voice.  “What would Melkor have done, Mairon?”

Mairon did not look at him.  “It is not of consequence,” he said, after a moment.  “It would be His right.  But I find I cannot accept it.  This is my choice, and no one else’s.”

He was not certain he could read the noise Gothmog made, but he chose to pretend that he had not heard it.  “I am tired,” he announced, choking down the last bite of spider.  “I need a great deal of sleep in my condition.”

Gothmog muttered something, but out loud he simply said, “All right, Mairon.  I’m tired, too.”

They slept with Gothmog’s heavy cloak thrown over them, and Mairon curled against his huge side.  Mairon made certain to wake before dawn and found that he had enough connection to the Song still to hum a heavy sleep across Gothmog.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” he said, as he made his heavy way out of the cave.  “But I will not see you die at the hands of the Gondolindrim.”