#also he doesn’t like or trust the valar so it isn’t that difficult of a choice

[feanorianethicsdepartment]

the last of my thoughts on the homecoming au, the au where maedhros and maglor are taken back to tirion at the end of the war of wrath and proceed to be relentlessly abused by elves more interested in them being ‘normal’ than happy. it’s pretty much exactly as dark as you’d expect from that description, lots of medical/caretaker abuse towards the mentally ill, just a horrible situation in general. one last time, @sunflowersupremes wrote the original au this is an extrapolation from, and @outofangband listened to me blather on about this for ages and contributed lots of ideas of their own. part 1 is here, part 2 is here. this the last part, it isn’t quite as intense as part 2, but it’s a lot more hopeless. also there’s some off-screen torture

on the first post i made about this au, i got some comments to the effect of ‘oh this will only last until person x bails them out’

there were several suggestions - fingon, nerdanel, any of the ainur. it seems like there are a lot of people who’d want to get maedhros and maglor out of this nightmare

seems. these aren’t necessarily my usual interpretations of their characters, but for the purposes of this au i can easily imagine a finrod who already bore a grudge over the whole letting-their-younger-brothers-steal-his-kingdom incident and subsequently heard the version of the nirnaeth where the fëanorians left everyone else to die. he is the only other person in the palace who knew beleriand, and he loathes them so viciously he can barely stand to look at them. they’re lucky he doesn’t do worse

i can easily imagine a nerdanel who was already having trouble processing what her husband and sons did at alqualondë when eärendil and elwing told her every awful thing they’d done since in the span of half an hour. she smashed all their statues, burned all their gifts, and curled up sobbing in a ruined house, wondering why she was such a terrible mother her children grew into demons

and this isn’t long after that, that wound is still fresh. whatever vain hopes she held that the boys she loved were somewhere in there are shattered when she sees them, and they’re talking and laughing just like they did when they were young

like nothing had happened. like nothing had changed. like the monsters had always been waiting patiently for their chance to strike

(they just didn’t want her to see the things they’d become)

i can easily imagine a fingon who is blazingly furious with maedhros over the later kinslayings. he spends most of their only meeting railing at maedhros, and the apologia his caretakers offer up only makes him angrier

so does the fact that maedhros won’t defend himself, won’t even raise his voice. does none of this matter to him? did it ever?

(it does. but maedhros knows what will happen if he yells at his cousin, and he is just so exhausted)

fingon is eventually asked to leave. maedhros’ minders tell him that if he can’t keep his temper around their patient, they’re going to have to cut off contact until maedhros is in a better mental state. fingon snaps that that’s just fine by him, and storms off into the city, trying to hold back his tears

the ainur, now, the ainur would definitely drag them out of the palace and haul them up to the máhanaxar. finarfin’s managed to get as much out of eönwë

what would happen to them after that, eönwë refuses to say. finarfin suspects he doesn’t know, and none of the valar will until they’ve had a chance to actually, like, hold a trial

even so, it becomes pretty obvious to finarfin fairly early on that the noldor simply can’t give the brothers the help they need. it’s plain to see that they’re very unhappy and they’re recovering slowly if at all. whatever the valar decide to do with them, odds are good they’d end up in some permutation of elf afterlife therapy, with well-practiced carers and the family they’ve lost. for their sake, and the sake of the people around them, handing them over to the valar would clearly be the best option

except finarfin doesn’t. he keeps his nephews in his palace, where they break things and make messes and generally give their caretakers constant headaches. when asked why, he always talks about the soul-deep terror on maglor’s face when he asked him not to give them to the valar

he’s not lying about that. but he does have other motives

there’s lots of suppositions in finarfin’s reasoning. there’s every chance the valar would throw them into the deepest depths of mandos until the second music. there’s every chance maedhros would choose to disappear into the woods and never trouble court again

but if the valar do decide to send them to lórien with no limits on their movement, and if maedhros does still harbour nelyafinwë’s political ambitions...

the closest finarfin has gotten to admitting it, even to himself, is saying that the noldor have enough problems right now, they don’t need a succession crisis on top of everything else. sometimes he’ll joke about not wanting maedhros to set up another functionally autonomous military government out in the wilderness

but it’s hard to deny that a maedhros, free to act, with his head screwed on straight, could potentially be the single biggest threat to finarfin’s crown

not that he doesn’t want his nephews to get better! it’s heartrending to see the pain they’re in, he sincerely wants to see them happy

he’d just prefer them to be happy in a way that's... convenient

maedhros and maglor’s contact with the outside world is kept to a strict minimum and heavily monitored when it does happen. they’re only allowed to visit the public parts of the palace when their caretakers know exactly who’s going to be there and if they can be trusted to not make a fuss about the brothers’ presence

it’s all in the interest of keeping the peace, you understand. maedhros’ followers are difficult to handle at the best of times, if they somehow got it into their heads that the last of their lords were being held captive in the palace...

well, finarfin says over tea. maitimo can see the wisdom in not provoking a civil war, can he not?

(he will not bring death to the blessed realm again. not even if his last baby brother is rotting away to a shell, not even if he’s being smothered to death from the inside out. he will not, he must not)

(if he did, there would truly be nothing left but the monster)

and then, one day, maglor gets the chance to escape

his minders aren’t paying much attention to him, he’s been a lot quieter since they put the gag on him. he’s small and fast and good at sneaking around, by the time they notice he’s missing he’s already found a way out of the palace

he jumps out of a third-floor window, bites down the pain, and runs. he clears the grounds and disappears into the city

he makes for - he doesn’t know where. subconsciously, he navigates towards the craft guild districts, where his family’s staunchest supporters always were

except the city’s changed a lot since he was last loose in it, and before he knows it, he’s completely lost. he wanders the streets half in a daze, his raw nerves unused to the bustle and noise of it all. wherever he goes, people stop and start and turn away

finally someone calls him over. ‘hey, you want that collar off your neck?’

it’s a smith of some sort, he can tell that much. they’re smiling, welcomingly and without pity. he’s rushing over to them, nodding his head, before he can even think about

the trouble is, maglor doesn’t remember the faces of most of the people he saw in beleriand, but they all remember him

the trouble is, this smith was at sirion

back in the palace, who gets access to the brothers is very strictly controlled. which isn’t to say that nobody tries to hurt them; finrod tends to put the worst spin on things when he’s asked for advice, there’s all kinds of minor acts of sabotage, and they come across innocuous-seeming harmful objects more often than mere chance would seem to allow

but even their caretakers can tell that letting desperate revenge-seekers get near the brothers wouldn’t be particularly conducive to whatever recovery they’re hoping for. anyone who might randomly come across maedhros or maglor in a hallway is intensely vetted for ulterior motives, and while this process isn’t airtight it does filter out the most obviously malicious

and outside of that bubble, none of that applies. the smith does take maglor’s gag off, purely to hear him scream

soon enough, the palace guard tracks him down. they take him back to the palace, where he’s bandaged up and comforted and then, as a special treat, allowed to see his brother

(they’re kept apart more often than not these days. being around maglor makes maedhros agitated, being around maedhros makes maglor sullen. they’re just more cooperative when they’re alone)

maglor does the same thing he’s done every time he’s seen his brother for the past year, which is immediately bury his face in maedhros’ chest and shudder. it takes him a moment to remember he can speak now

‘we’re trapped’ he whispers. ‘we’re trapped’

because he was screaming for what felt like hours, and nobody came to help. as he was being carried back to the palace, he saw the scorn and the disgust in the passers-by’s eyes

there’s nobody who will shelter them outside the palace. there’s nowhere on this continent they can go

and that - that’s the end, in a way. maedhros remains stubborn and ill-tempered, never quite letting them forget he doesn’t want to be here and doesn’t like what they’re doing, but the fight goes out of him. he does what they tell him just as biddably as he did before they took his brother’s voice

maglor, surprisingly, takes a turn for the better. he starts acting cheerful again, doing everything that’s asked of him with a smile and a wink. he’s making excellent progress, his minders tell finarfin

(they don’t tell him what maglor looks like when the mask starts to crack)

finarfin is very pleased to hear that one of his nephews is finally starting to recover! it’s been a long, painful journey, but it looks like it’s all at long last working out

to celebrate, he decides to give maglor a gift he’s been holding onto for a while

he calls maglor into his office. the tension in his posture is a bit worrying, but his expression is all makalaurë, a casual, mildly disrespectful grin. he swans into the room, flounces into a chair, and asks what his uncle wants

finarfin praises him for all the progress he’s been making, and hands him a letter

it’s from elros

the first line is ‘how are you doing, you old bastard?’ it calls him a kinslayer six different ways in the first three paragraphs. it asks him how many people he’s stabbed since he got back. it closes off by wishing him some fun loud arguments with maedhros

finarfin was a little concerned maglor still not might be in the right emotional state for it, but the tightness bleeds out of his nephew’s frame as he reads. a couple of times he even bursts into snickering that sounds more genuine than any sound he makes in court

he finishes reading with a truly relaxed smile on his face. then he freezes, and looks up at finarfin

in a tiny, quiet voice, so unlike the way he talks nowadays, he asks, ‘may i write a reply?’

finarfin hates to take the wind out of his sails, but maglor deserves to know. ‘that letter is centuries old. i’ve been holding onto it until you were ready to read it.’ he shuts his eyes. ‘i’m afraid elros passed some time ago’

maglor’s head drops. the letter in his hands begins to shake. little whimpers escape his trembling body. finarfin walks over, places a hand on his shoulder. ‘i’m sorry, we -’

that’s not whimpering, finarfin realises. those are growls. his nephew’s head snaps up, face twisted with rage

maglor tries to tear finarfin’s face off -

and that’s all i have. these headcanons have been exhausting to write, i’ll clean them up and put them on ao3 in a bit, but not now, if for no other reason than it’s 3am. again. i hope these weren’t too incoherent. going to try to unbanjax my sleep schedule now

[quendis]

(writing this as its own post and tagging @ibrithir-was-here instead of sending an ask because this got way too long)

I’m supposed to be studying for finals right now, which naturally means that the Numenor version of the Ring Babies AU is all I can think about. More specifically, I keep thinking about how the fall of Numenor would’ve happened in this universe. So I accidentally outlined a fic?

Annatar still has no particular love for the Valar in this ‘verse, but neither does he particularly want to get back on their bad side. Still, when weighing the pros and cons of manipulating Ar Pharazon into attacking Valinor… he probably still does it. It’s not like he’d be successful, after all. Pharazon attacks Valinor, the Valar squash him and his fleet like a bug, and suddenly the Numenorian problem is solved. Easy peasy.

...At least until, in the later stages of Annatar’s pitch and Ar Pharazon’s preparations for war, the king of Numenor states his intention to bring Narya with him on the flagship. As an honored guest, of course. (He’s not completely stupid, after all.)

Mairon panics. In all his machinations, somehow he hadn’t planned for this. He dissembles, at first — argues that Narya is neither warrior nor sailor, that he would be of far more use to the king if left on the island to aid in the forging of weapons and the administration of the war effort. Ar Pharazon is unswayed.

So what’s a Maia to do?

He breaks character, for the first time since his capture. This is an alternate version of the scenario in this post, where Mairon goes apeshit is pushed over the line and reveals himself as Sauron, revealing in the process that the idea of storming Valinor was entirely a plot to get Ar Pharazon killed. Even though he expected some amount of treachery, Ar Pharazon is livid. He gives Mairon an ultimatum: either surrender the true secret to eternal life, or watch as Ar Pharazon sends a war party to Valinor anyway — with Narya on board — to die.

Mairon doesn’t have the secret to eternal life. During his time as Morgoth’s lieutenant he learned how to extend life, and how to distort it, but to truly take away the Gift of Men is beyond his power. Still, there’s an idea that sparked in the back of his mind, back when they first began creating the Rings, back before he had wholly thrown his lot in with Tyelpe…

He tells Ar Pharazon of nine rings (non-sentient, unlike the later Three) designed for Men, and distributed as gifts among them. He tells him of how they might be altered, to extend the lives of their bearers near the point of eternity. He vows to collect them, and to make them into fountains of youth for Ar Pharazon and his most loyal followers.

(There are a few things he doesn’t mention. He doesn’t mention that, in order to create this facsimile of eternal life, he would bind the bearers of the rings to his will. He doesn’t mention that, although some of the rings are on the mainland as he mentioned, three are already on this island. And he doesn’t mention that one, a plain, unassuming steel band, rests even now on the finger of Tar Miriel, the rightful successor of that ring’s initial recipient.)

And so Annatar is sent beyond the blockade to find and steal the rings for Pharazon’s use, accompanied by a guard of several of the king’s strongest warriors, and with Narya left behind on Numenor, still, as an “honored guest.” He supposes it would’ve been too much to hope for that Narya would be sent with him, and that they could find some way to escape together. All he can do now is stall for time while he tries to think of a better way to escape — with Narya — upon his return to the island. And how to explain his past to his son, who he was never given a chance to speak with after that final confrontation.

Meanwhile on the Isle of Numenor, Narya is conflicted, to say the least. But he also doesn’t have much time to think about his father’s identity, since between “audiences” with the king and his generals, he and Miriel have found themselves roped into the Faithful’s rebellion. With dwindling power in court and no military force to match Pharazon’s, I think it’s at this point in the AU that they start preparing to “abandon ship”, as it were: gathering provisions and any refugees they can reach, building or stealing boats to ferry them to the mainland, and saving any relics of the kingdom they can get their hands on — including stealing Nimloth’s fruit, which is how Narya first meets Isildur and starts spying for the Faithful.

Annatar, at this point, is playing out the world’s shittiest heist movie — sent from kingdom to kingdom among the mainland’s realms of men, disguised and collecting in secret the rings that he and his husband had given as gifts not so long ago, and all the while watched by Ar Pharazon’s men with the threat of harm to Narya looming over his shoulder should they catch him trying any more tricks. Narya, who he feels he failed. Who he almost got killed, who could be killed in truth if Pharazon discovers this plot-

He tries not to think about it. But he also keeps an eye out for any friendly faces on the road. He’s in survival mode right now, and survival mode for Mairon usually coincides with the hard-learned lesson of relying on himself, and himself alone. But he isn’t just Mairon anymore; he’s Annatar, and Annatar has friends, a family, and a loving husband who he would trust with more than his life. Maybe if he can get a message out to Tyelpe in secret, he might be able to do something.

Tyelpe is not able to do something. Or rather, he doesn’t know what to do. Since Annatar and Narya were captured — nearly half a century ago at this point — he, Vilya, and Nenya have been trying in vain to find a way through the Numenorian blockade to rescue their family. And between comforting his remaining children don’t phrase it like that, he still has three children, Narya has to be alive and he will not consider any alternatives, his own stress at losing his husband and son, and trying to both run and defend the city on his own, Tyelpe is… not doing especially well.

After he hears word of the sinking of Numenor, he’s doing even worse.

See, Ar Pharazon is willing to wait and see how Annatar’s new proposal pans out, but he also doesn’t intend to leave all of his eggs in one basket. He starts trying other methods. Maybe he sends scouts towards Valinor anyway. Maybe he begins making human sacrifices, as in canon. Either way, he manages to piss Eru off magnificently. And as in canon, Eru changes the shape of the world, and Numenor is drowned, Pharazon along with it.

What Tyelpe doesn’t know is that Annatar is already on the mainland. What neither of them know is that Narya, along with his new friends Miriel and Isildur, had boarded one of the last ships to escape the island, and is currently safe on the coast of what will one day be known as Gondor.

Annatar kills his Numenorian watchers. With Narya dead, there’s no point in playing Pharazon’s games any longer. He can’t bear the thought of returning to Ost-in-Edhil and facing his husband and children, after he killed his son failed. He starts to wander, and for the first time in his very long life, wishes he were an elf. At least an elf can fade.

Tyelpe had always heard that elves would feel something, when their marriage bond broke, when their partner died. That the sundering of a love strong enough to bond souls would take part of the survivor with it. He doesn’t know what it means, that he feels nothing. Maybe it’s some quirk of the unique bond between elf and maia. Maybe it’s his punishment, for not loving Annatar enough to drop everything and ride out of Ost-in-Edhil in a glorious charge (and a less glorious boat ride, he supposes) to save him. It’s what Fingon did. It’s what Luthien did. Why couldn’t he?

Tyelpe can’t save his husband, and he can’t save his son. But there are already reports of bodies washing ashore, and if he can’t save them, he can at least grant them rest. He gathers his other children, leaves the city in the care of one of his most trusted advisors (what he should have done, he thinks, half a century ago), and rides out to bury his husband and son.

Since this AU wasn’t dramatic enough already, naturally all three parties (Narya and the Faithful; Celebrimbor, Vilya, and Nenya; and Annatar on his own) meet at the same time. I’m sure there’s a lot of questions, a lot of shouting, a lot of crying. There are probably some difficult conversations, as Annatar and Narya address their fraught parting, and as Annatar comes clean to his children about his past. But that can all wait for another time, and another tale. Right now the Ringmakers and the Rings are together again and holding each other for the first time in fifty-seven years, and for a moment, at least, that’s all that matters.

[psychedaleka]

all my stumbling phrases

an angbang @officialtolkiensecretsanta 2020 gift fic for @celebbun :) hope you enjoy!

Rating: T | No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Melkor/Mairon Characters: Melkor, Mairon Word count: 2.7k

Summary: A winter day in Utumno, an outdoor excursion, and a conversation.

---

“You want to do what?” Mairon levels a flat stare at Melkor, who’s looking at him with an expression that would be unreadable to anyone else.

To Mairon, it’s the I-have-an-idea-and-it-just-might-end-in-a-disaster look.

“Strap knives to our feet and glide on ice,” Melkor says, matter of fact, as though it’s something that anyone would think to do.

read the rest on ao3! or below the cut

Mairon sets down his quill and closes the inventory records. The cover slams shut with a bang. He can feel a headache building. No—not a headache. Not exactly. But it’s an ache of some sort, something he can’t put into words. The feeling he keeps getting whenever he’s in the same room as Melkor but like he doesn’t know what he should do, what he should say.

Like he’s flustered.

Mairon has never been flustered in his life.

“You need a break,” Melkor says. “You’ve been staring at that for how long now, a week?”

“Less than a day, for this particular record,” Mairon corrects. “I have been auditing your storerooms for a week.”

“Exactly!” Melkor says. “Does it matter if we have 3400 or 3401 shields?”

“Yes,” Mairon says, but doesn’t bother to offer more explanation.

He wants to double check and cross reference the math, because it’s simple, and straightforward, and if there’s something he doesn’t recognize, there’s inevitably a solution.

It distracts him, too, from staring at Melkor too much, from watching everything he does. It is probably, Mairon tells himself, that Melkor is a Valar, and he commands attention. There’s no other possible explanation as to why Mairon might lose track of everything else when he’s around.

“Listen,” Melkor says, shifting tactics, “the inventories will keep for another day. Just give an order that whichever storeroom you’re investigating shouldn’t be touched, and come back to it later. It isn’t as though the shields will run away.”

Mairon considers it.

“Fine,” he says.

“Excellent!” Melkor says. “Now, I have some ideas about how we could achieve this—”

Of course, those ideas happen to be Melkor describing what he wants to achieve, and Mairon scrambling to find a way to realize it. It’s very typical, and Mairon’s used to it now.

Melkor’s a big picture thinker, and that was what drew Mairon to him in the beginning. Mairon can’t really complain about that now. Even if Melkor occasionally shows up to dump a pile of half formed plans and ideas on him, leaving him to drop what he’s doing and piece together the scraps and trace Melkor’s—often disjointed—logic.

Even so, Mairon’s quite pleased with the end result—ice skates, they’ll probably be called. The blade is separate from the shoe, with a platform that attaches to the sheo by two leather straps. The blade is not as sharp as the knives Mairon prefers, no, but it will glide across ice and support the wearer’s weight.

It will help with icy expeditions and complaints that frozen lakes are impossible to cross.

“All that’s left to do is test them,” Mairon tells Melkor, who’s been sitting on a bench in his—no, the forge, Mairon can’t forget that it technically doesn’t belong to him. Melkor’s presence has surprised and scared quite a few of the other maiar and a not insignificant number of orcs. “I’m certain I’ll be able to find a few orcs willing to volunteer—”

“No, no,” Melkor says. “Let’s go test them.”

Mairon opens his mouth, then closes it again.

“I have work to do,” he says, a weak excuse.

“Get someone else to do it,” he says. “Surely, counting can’t be so difficult a task that you need to attend to it?”

“No one will organize the storerooms in the optimal configuration,” Mairon says.

“Optimal configuration, you say,” Melkor says, and Mairon knows he’s laughing at him, but he doesn’t say anything. “It can be just the two of us.”

Mairon tries to parse the implications of that sentence.

“Besides, I’m bored,” Melkor continues.

Mairon remembers the last time Melkor had been bored. It involved several explosions, a near incomprehensible scoreboard, and half a year to clean up. Mairon considers it, and looks up at Melkor—who seems to know exactly what he’s doing.

“Fine,” Mairon says. Productivity in the forges has been down, anyways, since Melkor first started watching him work on the ice skates. His normally competent assistants have ruined a batch of swords, broken three hammers, and nearly dropped a ton of molten iron on the ground. He needs to get Melkor out of here before his presence causes a larger disaster.

“I knew you would agree eventually.”

There are underground lakes and rivers beneath the foundation of Utumno, used for the drinking and other miscellaneous needs of the fortress’ inhabitants. It’s liquid year round, even in the middle of winter, insulated from the aboveground temperature by layers of rock. The paths to this reservoir are many, but it’s not there that they head for, and for that, Mairon is secretly glad. The last thing he needs is to field panicked reports of the plumbing not working because Melkor had frozen the whole thing. Even if he had designed and tested it himself.

Some distance from Utumno is a lake, nestled between mountain peaks. Fed by rainwater and melting snow from the mountains, it had formed when the Lamps were destroyed.

It was also where Mairon had landed, when he came to Utumno permanently.

It’s there that Melkor leads him, now, some distance away from straying gazes and open ears.

The surface of the lake is frozen over, in a layer of clear ice.

“Will the ice hold?” Mairon asks.

“One way to find out,” Melkor says, and Mairon fights the urge to tell him that there absolutely are more ways to find out. “You first.”

Mairon’s already come this far. He might as well—and if he falls over, well, there’s no one around to see except Melkor, and he doesn’t care if he embarasses himself in front of Melkor.

That’s a lie. He cares very much of what Melkor thinks about him.

Mairon straps the skates to his shoes with cold fingers. He should have brought gloves.

It isn’t difficult to balance on solid ground, but the moment Mairon steps onto the ice, he slips and falls. He can hear Melkor’s muffled laughter.

Well, he thinks, at least Melkor has the awareness to muffle his laughter—as though that’s any better.

His cheeks flush red, and it’s not just because of the cold.

He pushes himself up from the ice. His fingers are cold. This time, Mairon manages to stay upright for a few more seconds, but when he starts trying to move, he’s wobbly and falls soon after. He scrambles for a few seconds, trying to push himself up again, before Melkor interjects.

“Need some help?” Melkor asks, gliding on the second pair of skates as though this isn’t his first time skating. Melkor offers an arm, and Mairon clings to it, dragging himself up.

“Thanks,” Mairon says.

“Here, hold my hands,” Melkor says. “You won’t fall over as much.”

“Perhaps it’s a design flaw,” Mairon says, trying to concentrate on something other than how close Melkor is. “How much balance is needed to effectively operate them, I mean.”

“I don’t think so,” Melkor says. “All you need is some practice.”

Melkor starts skating backwards, slowly—the showoff—and he takes Mairon with him. Mairon glides, pulled along by Melkor, inexorably drawn by his trajectory, trusting him not to lead Mairon to a fall.

“See, it isn’t so hard,” Melkor says. “Why don’t you try?”

Mairon lets go of Melkor’s hands—reluctantly, and he doesn’t want to think of the implications of that. He wobbles along, for a short while—he’s getting better, he thinks—and falls. Again.

Melkor muffles his laughter, again, as Mairon drags himself up.

“Not all of us have your sense of balance,” Mairon says, annoyed.

“Oh, yes, I’m very well aware,” Melkor says, not bothering to hide his grin.

Mairon glares at him.

“Here, we can keep holding hands,” Melkor says. “Let’s go around the lake.”

Mairon casts a glance at the other shore of the lake, barely lit by starlight filtering through a thick layer of clouds.

“Are you sure the ice will hold?” Mairon asks.

“Oh, yes,” Melkor says. “There shouldn’t be any issues.”

A few hours later, Mairon is chilled to the bone and decently competent at skating.

“That was fun,” Melkor says.

“More importantly, the skates are tested,” Mairon says.

Melkor stares at him, for a long moment.

“What?” Mairon asks.

“Did you really think this was about testing skates?” Melkor asks.

“Yes?” Mairon says. “What else?”

“You and I, spending some time together,” Melkor says.

“We spend plenty of time together,” Mairon says. “When you come and watch me work, when I report to you about the status of Utumno—”

“No,” Melkor says. “Not about work. On a personal basis.”

Mairon blinks.

On a personal basis? What could Melkor want from him ‘on a personal basis?’

He asks as much, but Melkor doesn’t answer that question.

“You were unhappy in Almaren,” Melkor says, a statement more than a question. “That was easy to tell. But harder, I think, to tell if you’re happy here.”

A pause.

“Mairon, are you happy?”

“Yes?” Mairon answers. He doesn’t know why Melkor would ask him this.

“I mean it,” Melkor says. “If there’s anything you dislike—if there’s anything that you want to be different, don’t hesitate to change it.”

There is. There is that maddeningly incomprehensible feeling he gets when he’s around Melkor, but that’s not something he can articulate, let alone make concrete plans for.

“I hadn’t thought my personal wellbeing mattered to you,” Mairon says, instead.

“Why would it not?”

“Because—well, because you’re you, and I’m me,” Mairon answers.

“That’s not an answer.”

“As though you haven’t been giving me non answers the whole day.”

“Like for what question?”

“What do you want from me on a personal basis?”

Melkor—for probably the first time in his very long life—thinks about what he says before he says it.

“The work you have done for me is commendable,” Melkor says. “The structure, organizational, and technological improvements have been greatly beneficial to my forces, and I—would not have been able to achieve these changes without you. But what you could do for me was not the only reason I wanted you to be mine.”

What other reason could there be, Mairon thinks, but doesn’t ask.

“I—” Melkor glances around, as though someone could be eavesdropping on their conversation— “I love you.”

Mairon stands there, frozen, not just because of the cold.

He opens his mouth, and closes it.

“You—what?” Mairon asks, finally, when the implications of what Melkor just said hits him. “I—what?”

Melkor turns sharply, skates grinding across the ice. There’s tension in his shoulders.

“Forget it,” he says. “Forget I said anything.”

“No, I—” Mairon falls silent. He doesn’t know how to proceed.

“We ought to return,” Melkor says.

The thing is: Mairon doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to go back to his inventories and reports. He wants to stay out here, even though he’s freezing cold, because—because—because—

Because Melkor is here, with him. With only him.

But Melkor is skating towards the opposite end of the lake, and Mairon rushes to follow.

Only—he shifts his weight, and there’s a cracking noise, and before Mairon can realize what’s happened, the ice breaks beneath him, swallowing him beneath the icy water.

Mairon is a Maia, and he doesn’t need anything as paltry as oxygen, but he’s exhausted from his week of auditing, and trying to ensure the forges don’t fall to chaos as he and Melkor design the ice skates, and the cold air while he skated, and the love confession, and the icy shock.

Mairon is a Maia, but his nature is that of fire and stone, and he doesn’t do well with cold water.

He slips into unconsciousness.

The next thing Mairon is aware of is a heavy weight on his body, and the fact that he is lying on something soft. He blinks his way to wakefulness, slowly, slowly, and the world around him sharpens in degrees.

He’s lying on a bed—a feather bed, with stuffed pillows, underneath several layers of thick blankets. The bed frame is carved dark wood, and the richly embroidered curtains are half closed, giving him a faint view of the room outside. There’s a roaring fire opposite him, with the faint smell of wood smoke, and tapestries hanging on the stone walls.

This isn’t his room, with his sparse cot and makeshift blankets that he had chosen over a proper bed.

Mairon sits upright, too quickly.

The room is empty. He had hoped it wouldn’t be.

Mairon tries, desperately, to parse what happened.

Melkor had said he loved him. He loved him.

Mairon had thought—this was impossible, not because Aule had implied Melkor was incapable of love, but because Mairon was a Maia, and Melkor’s subordinate, and—

He had rejected that possibility, and his own feelings, because he never thought it would be possible.

But it isn’t impossible. It isn’t even improbable.

It happened. Melkor had said he loved him.

And Mairon had—he flops back down onto the bed. Mairon had frozen, entirely.

He lies there, for a few more minutes, before making up his mind. He needs to do something about this.

He pushes himself out of bed—maybe too fast, because the world swoops around him.

A hand catches his arm, pulls him upright.

“Careful there,” Melkor says, standing right next to Mairon. He’s watching Mairon, with an expression that is utterly unreadable to Mairon.

Mairon doesn’t like it.

“What happened?”

“You fell into the lake,” Melkor says, and Mairon thinks Melkor should be amused, he should find it funny that Mairon actually fell into the lake after worrying that he would, but Melkor isn’t laughing.

He looks dead serious.

“I thought you said the ice would hold,” Mairon says, because he doesn’t like this. He wants Melkor to be making fun of him.

“If you’re implying that I deliberately made you fall in—”

“Did you?”

“No!” Melkor snaps.

Is he angry? Mairon doesn’t know. He sits down—and something in him says, this is improper, you shouldn’t be sitting when he isn’t, but Mairon’s passed improper hours ago.

“It was very cold,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Melkor doesn’t respond. “Where am I?”

“My rooms,” Melkor says. “Yours were hardly sufficient. You don’t even have a bed.”

He sounds—annoyed? Angry on Mairon’s behalf? Mairon isn’t sure why, except—the words I love you rings in his mind, and Mairon wonders, then, if Melkor cares about him beyond the way a lord should for his servant.

But of course, Mairon chides himself.

“Perhaps I should start stealing your bed,” Mairon says, after far too long a silence.

Melkor doesn’t respond to that.

“I should go,” Mairon says, but he makes no move to leave.

But Melkor doesn’t make him leave.

“I love you too,” Mairon blurts out. He should be leaving. He should really, really be leaving. But when he makes for the door, Melkor stops him with a firm grip on his arm.

“Don’t say that just because you feel obligated to,” Melkor says.

“I’m not,” Mairon says, feeling the room grow several degrees warmer. Or maybe it’s just his face. “I don’t—feel obligated to—I just. Wanted to tell you how I felt. Feel. Still do.”

Melkor brushes a thumb across Mairon’s cheekbone.

Then Melkor kisses him.

After an eternity, and too short a time, they pull away from each other.

“You can steal my bed anytime you’d like,” Melkor says, with a wink.

Mairon, flustered, is speechless.

“My auditing,” Mairon says.

“Forget about it,” Melkor says. “You can easily go back to it tomorrow. Stay here. With me.”

With him.

“Sure,” Mairon says. “What do you want to do?”

Melkor’s watching Mairon with his I-have-an-idea look. But this time, it just might not end in a disaster.

[fuckingfinwions]

Dark!Fingon buys slave Maedhros from Morgoth.

Canonish timeline through the flight of the Noldor and Maedhros’s capture. But when the Nolofinwean host arrives, Fingon doesn’t charge off north unprepared (or maybe he tries, but doesn’t find Maedhros and so turns back). He works with his father to build a fortress and train an army. 

Eventually, the Noldor under Fingolfin can negotiate with Morgoth from a position of strength. Fingolfin is willingly cedes the Silmarils as part of a mutual non -aggression pact. He doesn’t like agreeing not to attack his father’s murderer, but he doesn’t expect Morgoth to actually be left in peace - the Feanorians won’t let him while he holds the Silmarils. There’s symbolic wereguild exchanged for the dead elves and orcs that ‘happens’ to work out exactly even. So Morgoth rules the north and the Noldor and Sindar rule the rest of Beleriand, with elves and orcs mostly giving each other a wide berth. There’s a pair of embassies or similar at the border, so that diplomatic requests can be heard without either king going into the other’s territory.

Fingon walks in the Angband embassy and says he wants one of the prisoners. (There are also a lot of Sindarin prisoners, as Morgoth says they’ll be released if Thingol negotiates for them, and Thingol will not some so close to Angband, but there wasn’t much chance for Noldor to be taken prisoner.) He offers a cloak from Valinor blessed by Manwe in exchange. Morgoth likes powerful magic, especially if it’s stolen from the other Valar, even when it burns him, so he accepts.

Maedhros was in Angband for decades longer in this timeline than the canon timeline though. Morgoth has always been his overall master, but he has been transferred from one general to another as  reward before, and on the trip to the embassy doesn’t initially notice it as different.

Fingon is determined to keep it that way. That is, Maedhros is no longer in Angband, but he belongs to Fingon as surely as he did to anyone.

Maedhros is brought in naked to the embassy, and immediately kneels on the ground without looking around.

“Maedhros, I’m so happy to see you! It’s been so long, but everything will be alright now that I have you.”

“Fingon? What are you doing here, Angband is horrible! You should get out while you can.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not in Angband anymore, and you won’t ever have to go back again.” Fingon reaches out a hand to tilt Maedhros’s head up and force him to meet his eyes. (eye contact promotes trust and shows sincerity! physically manipulating Maedhros’s body reinforces that he doesn’t get to make choices! win/win for Fingon!) “I bought you from Morgoth. You’re mine now, not his, and I have no intention of sharing you.”

“Oh. What do you desire of me, Master?” Maedhros is confused, but that’s not new, and this phrase rarely makes things worse.

Fingon kisses him. “I desire you, in every manner possible, for the rest of your life. I already a few things ready for you in my rooms in Hithlum. Not clothes yet; I wasn’t sure your size, but jewelry and more pillows for the bed and such.”

Maedhros nods. “Thank you.” Maedhros has learned not to hope, but he’s either going to be allowed multiple hours a week lying in a bed or Fingon has a pillow fetish.

“There’s no need to thank me when you haven’t actually seen it yet! Come on, let’s go.”

They go out to Fingon’s horse and ride back south. Fingon brought a spare cloak, so Maedhros is more dressed than he has been in years.

It’s a long journey, several days. At night, Fingon fingers Maedhros open, then fucks him hard and fast. He asks Maedhros to blow him in the mornings to save time, and sometimes when they stop for lunch.

Over the next several months Maedhros realizes how kind of a master Fingon is. Fingon usually wants sex to feel good for Maedhros as well as him. He doesn’t whip Maedhros just for the hell of it. He gives clear orders like “get on your knees so I can fuck your throat” rather than making Maedhros guess. He generally likes when Maedhros is loud, and if he doesn’t will gag Maedhros rather than punishing noises. Most amazing of all, Maedhros sleeps in the bed beside Fingon every night. Maedhros is incredibly comfortable, and has no need to worry about not waking up in time to serve his master - Fingon’s right there, and Fingon doesn’t even have to wait for him to wake up to start fucking him.

The most painful part is removing Morgoth’s brands. Even with a sharp knife, slicing off skin hurts.  But Fingon is kind for this as well. He ties Maedhros up before the surgery, in case Maedhros has trouble holding still. The biggest marks, like the one on his inner thigh as big as his hand, Fingon even has Maedhros drugged for the removal. Fingon explains that the pain killer is difficult to make and also he’d rather Maedhros not become addicted, but just this once it’s worth it. The cuts are always bandaged after, and Fingon lets Maedhros ride him while they’re still raw, rather than Fingon holding him down and causing pain from a carelessly placed hand.

The only mark Fingon makes on Maedhros is small, just a couple inches long, and done with a needle rather than a branding iron or a sharp knife with salt rubbed into the wound so it will scar. “Property of Fingon” tattooed behind Maedhros’s balls isn’t surprising, and is reassuring that Fingon really will keep him.