#probably not the angst you're looking for anon but this is what my mood dictated i'm so sorry :'D

[gelenka-daria]

melkor and manwe and heavy angst plz? <33333

i remembered that there was a passage about melkor ripping manwë's eagles' wings off so i made it worse

Manwë won’t forgive this.

Melkor hesitates, his grip tight around the eagle’s throat as it struggles to free itself from his hold. He remembers his brother’s fondness for his winged creatures, the caresses, the loving looks, the pride. Had Melkor himself not harbored affection towards them given that they’re an extension of his little brother? What he’s about to do would cause Manwë such pain. 

Good, he squashes the uncertainty like a worthless insect as his face hardens, disdain deposes the sinking feeling in his gut, coiling with thorny sharpness around his heart and striking a horrible, burning heat into the dark folds of his mind. Has he not been cast aside? Been made a fool and his right forsworn? Has he not been hurt? I don’t need his forgiveness. Let him hurt.

His fingers squeeze and he pulls, tearing feather, skin, flesh and bone asunder, blood and viscera splashing haphazardly, slashing across his face as he shreds the eagle in half and the damned thing ceases its shrieking at last. 

He drops the carcass at his feet without a spare glance before turning to his quivering vassals, bidding them to hand him the next one, flexing his fingers to hide their shaking.

“Don’t waste your breath,” he tells the writhing, screeching creature, and it takes all his might to keep the breathlessness out of his voice, because he feels like he’s being choked, invisible hands closing violently around his throat, “your coward of a master won’t come to save you.” 

Melkor pointedly ignores the vicious chorus inside his own mind telling him that he’s the coward, how he can never bring himself to harm Manwë so this is what he stoops to. 

It doesn’t matter.

They’ve captured five in total, and he’s going to rip them all apart, sans one, so it could carry the pieces back to his little brother. 

_

There is rising hysteria punching its way up from the depth of Manwë's body. 

He’d retired to his chambers briefly after countless meetings had left him weary and in need of some much-needed peace and quiet. He’d only been able to enjoy a few moments of repose before an eagle had shot through his balcony and crashed into the floor, looking haggard, a large red mass of— something dangling from its claws.

Manwë didn’t know what he was looking at, at first, until he realized that the putrid pile of flesh was none other than the remains of some of his own eagles, torn to smithereens and stuck together in a tableau of death. 

The understanding zapped through him like a bolt of lightning, splintering him down the middle like a crack in a solid tree, and he found that he, the breath of Arda, could hardly manage to draw breath.

“Highest!” Eönwë bursts through the doors, the look of alarm on his face only intensifying once he spots the body parts. “It’s—highest!” He bolts to where his king has kneeled to cradle the worn-out bird as it struggles to breathe, his wide eyes stuck to the lump of flesh and bone his eagles had been rendered to. “Are you alright, highest?” 

Manwë can do nothing but nod, before he stands to inch closer to the heap of dead eagle parts, heedless of Eönwë's attempts to keep him away. 

“It’s him.” His herald hisses. Manwë doesn’t grace him with a reply, it doesn’t take a genius to know who he is. “Do not get closer, Highest, I beg, lest it be a trick.” 

“Send for the others,” Manwë tells him absentmindedly, continuing his advance until the hems of his pale, pristine robes brush over the pooling blood. 

“Highest–”

“Now, Eönwë.” Please, he pleads internally, leave me be.

Eönwë concedes, retreating in hurried steps from the chambers as Manwë sinks to his knees and finally lets the pain of it, the shock of it, settle in, grief weaving across his face. He can’t even tell them apart, doesn’t know which is which and something dies a little inside him, a small piece of his heart flaking away from the rest of it.

Eru. Why? He’d cared for them, too, once. Held them, fed them, flown with them. The Melkor he knew wouldn’t do this, the Melkor he knew recognized how much the eagles meant to Manwë, but the Melkor he knew is nothing but a mirage of fireshine and shadow now, born of memory and instinct. And in his place is this…this…this—

Manwë stifles a sob and covers his face with bloody hands. The tears are pouring and he’s helpless against them, he wants to scream, to spark the ozone infested air and put shape to his dismay, make his sorrows into something tangible. He’s so tired, but he is so solidly in his body right now, so prey to its whims and emotions, so desperate to let it out. 

“Pull yourself together,” his voice catches pathetically and he shakes his head as though he’ll be able to rattle the hurt out.

"Pull yourself together." He repeats more firmly as he rises to his feet and wipes the blood from his face and breathes in, breathes out. his brethren are fast approaching.

He gives a bodily shudder and feels the tremor carry to his ribs, to his heart. Manwë feels rattled, like he would be blown apart, scattered across the seven corners of the universe if someone doesn’t hold on to him and keep him grounded. 

What does it says about him, he wonders, that the only one who can do that, the one he wants, is the one who'd done this to him to begin with?