When the Phoenix Cries by kimikocha

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Chapter One: The Fire

This chapter in its entirety depicts nonconsensual sex (rape) and its immediate aftermath. No comfort is provided to the survivor in that aftermath, and the survivor remains and believes themself to be in a situation where additional like acts will be perpetrated against them. Please exercise discretion according to your best judgment.

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Angels are jealous of such loveliness;
The flesh which they inhabit and possess
Is not to them indifferent,
And they resent
Infinitely the profane caress.

—J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Epithalamion.”

 

The king’s chambers are as opulent as the rest of Númenor’s grand palace. Colorful mosaic tiles spiral out in repeating patterns on every flat surface of the walls, the results of what must have been hundreds of hours of painstakingly precise craftsmanship. Thick rugs cover most of the cold stone floor, woven with intricate star-like motifs which, to Mairon’s eye, bear close enough resemblance to be deemed a bastardized form of Fëanorian heraldry.

As for the bed in which he finds himself — its four posts and full canopy are encrusted in golden filigree. Sheer silk are the curtains — for summertime, presumably. The air is heavy with perfumes, spices, and the saltwater scent of the ocean. Far beneath him, beyond sound and sight, volcanic magma churns within the earth.

Above him…

Pull yourself together.

Against the bare soles of his feet, the sheets are cool to the touch. Raised lines of embroidery adorn the silken coverlet; minute lines of golden thread catch the sunlight from the window. Mairon studies it closely, though his tone is idle as he speaks. “Such fine artistry.”

The weight on the bed shifts. The voice of the one in his company issues from somewhere in front of him. “Tribute.” That voice has gone deep, rough-edged with desire. “From the coast.”

“Ah.” There’s something in the king’s inflection on those words. “And was their tribute well-received, your majesty?”

“It was a wedding gift.” At the edge of his vision, the corners of Ar-Pharazôn’s mouth draw back, his chin jutting forward in a semblance of pride as he surveys what lies before him. Those strikingly pale eyes — Mairon sees them, and something closes in his throat. To flinch in this moment, to look away, is the wrong thing to do — and yet he cannot bear the opposite.

He brushes his fingers over the lines that mark the outspreading limbs of the great tree, casting an exacting eye in search of a information writ into the fabric. Ar-Pharazôn did not attain his crown by right, that knowledge rises before him; and it is the way of Men like him to seek their immortality in the shadows they leave behind…

Mairon’s mouth is dry, dry as the barren desert from whence they took him. He wets his lips; as if from a great distance, he sees those bright piercing eyes drawn to the flicker of his tongue. “I recall that for your people, it is customary to entwine the names of those newly wedded upon such gifts.”

A sharp-edged sort of smirk. “It is.”

“One wonders, perhaps, if those who brought your majesty such tribute were… misinformed, at least initially, as to the name of your majesty’s wife.”

The slap takes him off guard. Mairon tastes blood — careless, the voice in the back of his mind says coldly — and manages to set his teeth in time to catch the backhand. Beneath the sternum, tucked into flesh wrought beneath his ribcage, his’ fána’s heart quickens.

(It matters, Annatar, of course it matters.)

He should not react. Eyes like sea-glass seem to pierce straight through him, riveted. Ar-Pharazôn is watching for his reaction, a reaction Mairon does not wish to give — yet he has already given it. He’d flinched when the king struck him. So small a thing, but it seems to jar something loose. It is only his fána which thinks it ought to be frightened, not he.

Some part of him notes that the king has yet to remove the inmost layer of his tunic. There is danger here, but little he ought to concern himself with. More important is the opportunity he sees, the opportunity he would reach out and seize if only his accursed mind could recall how to do it. His thoughts scatter like frightened mice.

A low, satisfied chuckle. “Not used to being on this end of the sword, are you?”

“Is that what you said to your ‘wife’?” An idiotic thing to say, he risks losing everything he’s played his hand for, but the volcanic rage that pounds through him in this moment feels so much better than the terror and grief welling up below.

Someone snarls, somewhere — it might be him. Or is he laughing?  If so, his stupidity is beyond compare, but he cannot help himself. Half-mad he is in this moment, a bestial, wild thing — “Are there any that would have you by choice?” he hears someone ask in his voice, as cutting and cruel as he knows how to be. “Or has it forever been your way to take that which is not freely given?”

A vicious clout about his face — one, two, more, he doesn’t know. Blood wells in his mouth and spills down his chin where his teeth cut into his cheeks, his lip. Setting his jaw is beyond him now; he’s all but forgotten that he should. Pain lances through his head as a dissonantly loud crack sounds in his ear. Creaks sound from the bed’s timbers; the mattress shifts.

A shadow falls upon him. Heavy hands marked with the rough, thickened bumps of sword calluses seize hold of his knees, shoving his legs unceremoniously apart. Overbalancing, his back hits the covers — and it is then, of all unmerciful moments, that Mairon finds himself suddenly and hideously — present.

He is vulnerable in this fána, and he curses his own stupidity for leaving himself in it. The form of Annatar, the form he’d spent more time than he cares to admit making lovely for one now forever lost to him — it was rank idiocy not to think to shed it for something less beautiful earlier. You brought this on yourself, he snarls viciously in his mind. Fool! This is your own fault. You know the ways of mortal Men. How could you be so careless?

The raised lines of embroidery on the coverlet — they’re digging into the bare skin of his back. If Ar-Pharazôn fucks him into the mattress, he’ll have those patterns imprinted into his naked flesh when the king is done, and the thought makes bile rise in Mairon’s throat.

“At least pull back the bedspread first,” he snaps before his stupid, stupid mind has time to think better of it. That’s not— it isn’t—

He sees no need to ask your leave to have you; what stroke of idiocy led you to think he’d care for your comfort as he rapes you?!

Black rage descends across Pharazôn’s features — apologize, Mairon hisses to himself, yet cannot force his recalcitrant tongue to do it — and a heavy hand closes upon his throat. Too hard, the thought flits across his mind like a blade flaying him open, Tyelpë thought it wasn’t safe but Tyelpë isn’t here you idiot — then his words vanish in a shocked burst of pain as a closed fist strikes the unprotected flesh of his stomach.

Once. Twice. It stuns him, leaves him retching and sobbing for breath as the pressure on his throat eases up. Too late he realizes that he’s let his useless excuse for a fána go slack in his strangling — but though he’s present enough to notice, he hasn’t the strength or wit to resist as Ar-Pharazôn finishes rearranging him. The mattress shifts with the body pinning him, fingers close on his leg, and the king’s got Mairon’s thighs spread so wide his knees touch the bedclothes — lungs compressed, feet hanging awkwardly in the air. He has no one to blame but himself.

It’s not your fault, whispers a voice very like Tyelpë’s — but who else could be at fault for Mairon’s own carelessness, his incompetence, his failure? For getting himself into this position to begin with, and then leaving himself no feasible means of escape from it?

—Not that he wants to escape. He knew this might happen, it was part of the plan, it wasn’t stupidity, he doesn’t want to get out of this, he doesn’t — but he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want Pharazôn, and he doesn’t want anyone to have him like — this, uncaring of the choice he would make—

(Breeches down, Lieutenant.)

— it doesn’t matter, but—

(It matters, Annatar. Of course it matters.)

The hand is back on his throat before he has the chance to speak, squeezing. Those pale eyes fix down on him from above with an eerie sort of curiosity, bordering on rapture. Mairon knows he should not cry, everything in him revolts at the thought, but his fána might not give him the choice. An unmistakable slick weight bumps his thigh as Ar-Pharazôn shifts his weight, gaze trailing down. There’s a twitch at the corner of the king’s bearded mouth.

“They say the Ainur can change their forms at will.” A faint crinkle around his eyes, and an unmistakable hint of a smirk. “Considerate of my adversary to leave a port of entry.”

Sudden rage, bitter and blazing, forces words past the breath whistling through Mairon’s constricted airway. “They know nothing.”

Broad strong fingers rough with sword-calluses reach down between his legs and — take hold of him where he is tender, twisting mercilessly, crushing-tight. A shriek strangles in Mairon’s throat before the pain fully registers, then turns to choked coughs and retching as a dull, nauseating ache pounds through his lower abdomen. His feet slip and scrabble at the sheets, back arching as he tries to raise his hips to ease the pressure, until a further vicious twist leaves him pliant and shaking and he realizes—

—Ah. This was punishment. He was meant to submit, not to struggle. Mairon should have known that — should have known how to handle it. The grip on his throat eases up, and a thumb prods at the soft underside of his jaw.

“Perhaps it was foolish of me to believe I could take you like any other foe once vanquished,” Ar-Pharazôn murmurs to him, appreciative gaze wandering over everything he never had a right to see — lingering on his damp flushed face, at the tears mingling with sweat on his cheek. “My wife would call it the height of hubris to imagine that I, a mortal Man, could do aught with one of your kind against your will. You like this, don’t you? You want it.”

“No,” Mairon whispers, the hoarse word falling from his tongue without conscious thought. “I don’t want this. ‘Tis not my choice. If wouldst not — profane me so — wouldst not have me at all.”

He hates the way his voice cracks and trembles, the way his language slips into a form archaic to those who never saw Beleriand fall. Above all he hates the painful hope that swells in him, great and terrible as morning — it will not work, he knows it won’t work, Tyelpë could say what he pleased of choice but Tyelpë knew nothing—

Pharazôn scoffs, and his heart falls to the bottom of his stomach. “Sauron, the Deceiver, would have me believe he speaks truly.”

A sob breaks through his control — through him. “I speak the truth. What reason have I now to lie?”

The king quirks one corner of his mouth, eyes cold and humorless. The hand between Mairon’s legs gives his flesh a derisive little shake. “Your purposes are your own, but your lies are plain to see.”

(Report, Lieutenant. And do not spill unless I give you leave.)

“No!” There’s no pressure at all on his throat now, yet his breath comes as a harsh, labored wheeze. The world seems to be tilting out from under him, and he can’t seem to get a grip.

“Flesh— flesh will do as it will,” Mairon chokes out in half a whisper, hating himself and the sound of his own voice. “Yet in this its will is not mine. I desire this n-not.”

“You don’t?” Ar-Pharazôn’s voice is soft, low, a husky growl — his pupils slightly dilated, breath coming heavier through parted lips. “Truly?”

A light, almost gentle stroke of fingers between Mairon’s thighs leaves him rigid with terror — no, no, let him not be forced thus, not — beneath that mocking gaze — he cannot, he would rather die — until the grip turns cruel and rips a wail from his chest and leaves him sobbing in its wake.

“No,” he hears himself snarl through his tears, as bitter as he is desperate. “I don’t. Already thou didst bring me here unwilling, in shame. Thus thou hast me now, thus thou wilt have me if thou stayest thy course. No lover of mine art thou — I did not make this flesh for thee.”

At his last statement — a stupid thing to say, stupid — stone seems to descend on the king’s features. The hand between Mairon’s legs vanishes abruptly and — slaps him, hard, where he is tender. He jumps and shrieks and covers his mouth, shuddering sobs wracking his fána. A pathetic sight he must make, cringing and crying, his hair a tangle, snot mixing with the tears running down his flushed face — but he cannot help it. Above him the king’s breath is heavy, too close, cold eyes drinking him in.

“Suit yourself,” Pharazôn says, shifting his hips and reaching for himself. He looks down at Mairon and flicks one of his nipples, drawing a miserable squeak. Mairon stifles a pained whimper in a closed fist, biting down on his knuckles as a hot slick weight forces its way inside him.

It hurts. It’s too much. The pain is all wrong, jagged lightning bolts shooting up his spine and a sickening pressure inside him that cramps his stomach and leaves him sweating and cold and panting as he tries to accommodate it.

“Wait,” he chokes. “No, wait—” This is so much worse than he remembers.

Ar-Pharazôn grunts, shoving further inside, and pauses to brush away a stray lock of hair stuck to Mairon’s cheek. “Don’t worry. You’re supposed to bleed the first time.”

Why did he even bother asking? All Mairon can do is lie there and squirm, sobbing open-mouthed into his own white knuckles until Pharazôn takes his hand by the wrist and pins it down at the side of his head. He doesn’t want this, he doesn’t, and how much easier would this be if he did — Ai, Tyelpë, see what thine instruction hath wrought!

At the edges of his mind like cruel ghosts sent to taunt him lurk memories that strike like ice through his heart. Fingers in his mouth and soft hands in his hair, a sweet crooked smile and ridiculous questions — do you like this? Concerned dark eyes, and a fatal question fallen from his tongue like glass upon the floor — does it matter?

It does not matter, Mairon snarls to himself as sorrow and despair well up within him. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t, and yet the grief in his chest could be an ocean to drown all the land in tears. He is older than creation itself; he has walked through fires of madness that melted other Maiar down and emerged the other side his own. Still in the face of this he is too small a thing, too frail — there is a ringing in his ears and his fána’s limbs have turned insensate.

It’s too much. He cannot contain this storm, this ocean is too deep; it swells and swells and crushes him from within until he screams from the pain of being forced to contain it.

It matters, Annatar. Of course it matters.

*

When Pharazôn finishes with him, he stays on top of Mairon, gasping, for what feels like an eternity. At last he withdraws, and Mairon whines through his teeth at the sting. Even that movement hurts. A glance down tells him that he has been bleeding, more than he should.

It’s not urgent. He’s bled worse.

Slowly, Mairon draws his knees together. His thighs ache; his legs are shaking. Cramps still twist his stomach, though the intrusion is gone. Every bit of tender flesh he gave this fána when he crafted it all those years ago feels bruised and… raw, as if in his efforts to get those pain-sounds out of Mairon the king had resorted to sandpaper.

An awful thought. Mairon will have to accustom himself to showing his pain before it really hurts.

(As thou should.)

He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t — but it doesn’t matter, does it? Tyelpë is gone, and Pharazôn is here.

At his side, the king’s breathing is slow and even — relaxed. Cold rage rises in Mairon at the sound of it, as if— as if— think you that I could let a beggar enter where a king stood before?

He cannot abide it.

“Well met,” he whispers, taunting. Mairon’s voice sounds foreign to his ears, hoarse and cracked and gone to madness; but shattered as he is, naked and befouled with sweat and seed and the blood that still seeps from the open wound that is his flesh, he has nothing else left.

Ar-Pharazôn looks at him, eyes narrowing. It matters not. What hurts can the king inflict that have not been done to him before, by hands both greater and far more loved than than such a Man could ever be?

“Well met, indeed,” he rasps again. That fey laughter bubbles up in his throat again, but he hurts too much to let it surface. The bed’s canopy swims above in his vision, out of focus. “A true worthy heir of Melkor art thou! A king who suffers to be subject of none; who waits not for the divine, but makes his own right. Perhaps the master of the fates of Arda lives again in thee. Perhaps thou shalt succeed where once he failed; perhaps thou shalt be the one to break the gates of the world at last and make thine own eternity. Well met, beloved, well met.”

At last, Ar-Pharazôn is silent. It is no solace that Mairon should have the last word. A barren wasteland stretches out before him, dead earth bearing naught but the scorched and twisted remnants of every hope he’s ever built. He is lost in it. He is lost.

Leagues distant, beyond sight and sound and life, he feels the fire. Liquid fire that churns deep within the island’s belly — restless. It calls to him, its voice an echo of the same low-rumbling murmur in which he himself sang it to life in the earliest moments of creation. It calls to him, and he answers.

It is a wild thing, the fire. No weapon is this, for there is no controlling it. It heeds no master, cares not for friend or foe, and will not abate in ferocity until it deems itself spent. “To call it forth would be madness,” Mairon once told Melkor. Wisdom and love prevailed then, though he suffered for it.

To call it forth would be madness.

Mairon calls to it.

The fire answers.

*

A far shorter distance away, in the eastern wing of the palace, Ar-Pharazôn’s royal physician lifts his head in puzzlement. Was that—? But no, no — it must have been nothing. Only his weariness. He looks back down to his notes.

Just outside his field of vision, in an untouched alchemical flask held securely with a clamp, a ripple crosses the surface of the liquid contained within before swiftly fading away.

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Chapter End Notes

Mairon's italicized flashbacks to events from his relationship with Melkor are quotations from / references to Mertiya's "lost and beyond recall." The refrain "It matters, Annatar, of course it matters" comes from AdmirableMonster's utterly delightful modern silvergifting AU, "Five Gold Rings."