#i'm SO SORRY for the wait mairon and mae//dhros temporarily worded me out T_T

[hirazuki]

*pops in* Hi, again! For the Kiss Asks...

I'm going to be greedy and predictable so risking everything: would you do something with 8 or 12, feat. either Sauron-Maeglin or Sauron-Eönwë, please?

I definitely don't have an agenda to get more written interactions between these characters

…in secrecy. | Sauron & Eönwë

•────────────────────⋅☾ ☽⋅────────────────────•

"That, I cannot grant."

The pronouncement falls with the finality of a blade so cutting that Mairon is almost surprised when there is silence in its wake, instead of the familiar dullness of body hitting ground.

"It is not within my power to pardon those of my own order," Eönwë says a moment later and his voice is colored glass, stained with reproach and that infuriating tint of self-righteousness. "You know this."

Oh, he does; the one-time Maia of Aulë -- forge-bound and rusting, who used to tarry on the high balconies of Ilmarin, a living flame against white stone (painfully simple for eagle-eyes to pick out once the day's duties were done) ever seeking a glimpse of beyond, of more -- knows this intimately. But, amidst the flood and the fire, the carnage and the breaking of the land, the wreckage of an Age -- what else was he to do? Ever has he licked his wounds in private until they are well-hidden under remorse, smoothed like wolf-skin in the glistening light of repentance. It has worked to his advantage, at times; at others --

"Return to Aman and receive my lord's judgement."

Come with me, he hears, the soundless words beating loudly in the still air of the tent, near-frantic, as heavy as he knows the wings of Manwë's herald to be.

The hollow hammering in his chest -- roaring at the certain promise of confinement, of humiliation; of limitation; of malaise -- is louder.

Mairon remains where he is, low-eyed and shallow-lunged and bone-chilled, kneeling on the coarse carpet. (It is deep blue, and shot through with gold and silver thread, rolled out in futile emulation of now-empty quarters across the sea.)

With the last shreds of strength left to him after the fall of Angband, he had dressed himself in a different face and different colors -- unremarkable features easily lost in a crowd, another Maia among the hundreds -- and slipped into the encampment to gain access to Eönwë's ear and favor, shedding his guise only once they were alone. The commander of the host of the West had not raised the alarm at his baring himself before him; just as Mairon had anticipated.

What he had not anticipated had been the resistance.

Eönwë has always been obstinate, but this unpleasant inflexibility is new. It is rigid and brittle like cast iron, clearly a result of being steeped for centuries too long in the dogma of the unchanging, and highly unwelcome: it renders him unresponsive to Mairon's devices.

A worthless endeavor, then, all this abasement; stifling the injury and the ire in his heart in order to demean himself, forcing his tongue to placate and stroke and gloss when all he wants is to bury his teeth into supple throats, to feel the give of flesh under pressure and soak himself in the subsequent warmth, as rightful consequence for laying hands on what is his.

He hears rustling.

Mairon does not raise his gaze from where it is studying the woven patterns under his knee, but he does not need to; Eönwë is finished with him, and most likely turning to go. And still there are no calls or bells or horns; a curious thing, given this failed reunion, but he has no intention of waiting around until the nets are upon him. Gingerly, and with the sickly taste that worry breeds, he casts his senses out: the Elves are numerous, but of little note; how many Maiar are between him and the edge of the camp? If he runs, in his current state, can he --

The prick of curved claw-tips suddenly dances along his jawline, the only notice he receives before a kiss is pressed to his forehead, hard and unyielding.

It burns; a scorching brand wrought of figment and fancy, a life that never was, neither in the lamplit air of Almaren nor in the treelight beneath Aman's sky, seared into his skin by lips incapable of ever understanding their own capacity for atrocity. It burns, so bright and unforgiving and sudden that he has to blink back tears, before they can fall and become misconceptions in someone else's story.

He recognizes it for what it is, of course: an attempt to soothe, and to sway. Poorly done, even if one were to discount the stench of blood, freshly dried, under the herald's dark talons; how he reeks with the recent ruin of everything Mairon held dear.

Mairon knows what he will find but tilts his face upwards all the same, letting hot breath and downy feathers trail their way along his skin until they fall off the edge, their softness as misleading as that of any beast of prey worth its salt.

He meets eyes of Valinor's blank splendor, violent as the devastation of the noonday sky, and drowns in their incomprehension.