Bearer of Chiaroscuro by AdmirableMonster

gondolin: something lost is found

“So this is where you have tried to hide yourself, Mairon.”

The city was burning, and the screams of her citizens echoed in his ears.  He could feel hot blood trickling down the inside of his thigh, and it was strange, the emptiness inside him now.  But it made him laugh, because it meant no one left to protect.

“Am I hiding myself, my lord?  I thought I was standing upon the wall and defying You.”  He thought the words should burn his lips, but they did not.  Flames were all around, and flames had always been Mairon’s sanctuary.

Cold laughter rippled up his spine, and he flinched, but stood his ground.  The lady Idril might hate him, but she was no fool.  A pair of half-Maiar children might be the saving of them.  If he could buy the time, he might even keep Tyelpe and Maeglin safe.  Tyelpe, at least, would keep himself alive to care for the babies.  Maeglin—well, perhaps not, but Mairon would take what he could get, after all.

Better than nothing, the thought of Tyelpe’s crooked smile living on.

“What have you done, Little Flame?” Was that gentleness in Melkor’s voice, or censure?  Mairon trembled.  He had never been a warrior.  But he called the flames to him and away from those whom they might harm, and they surged up at his back and along his arms, till his hands each sprouted five grant fiery claws.

“They should have been my heirs.”  Melkor’s black-armored figure grew vast, till it filled all of Mairon’s vision.  Now his voice held unmistakable cold anger, and the breath froze in Mairon’s lungs.  “After all I have done for thee?”

Cold discord fought with the fire in Mairon’s blood.  “After all thou hast done to me?” he retorted, and the fire roared up in an impossible sheet.  Melkor cried out in pain.  An icy hand seemed to squeeze Mairon’s lungs, and he screamed in turn.  Melkor forced him to his knees, writhing and struggling the whole time.

It took everything in him to look up at his old lover, at the gaunt face hardly different from the ghostly mother’s, with the way the bones lurked just beneath the flesh of it, the hollow fire of its eyes, the twist of the mouth so different from the great Vala he had followed long ago.

“They will be children first,” he choked out.  “If they are heirs at all.  And never will they be thine.”

He had forgotten to give Maeglin back his mother’s necklace, and now he would likely never be able to.  What a pity.