Work Text:
You arrive in Californian spring, and Feanor is there before you.
He loves to be first. You’d rather be last.
You’d rather remain, when everything else is gone, and if you can unfurl grey folds of brain-tissue, or slip muscle from tendons like a hand from a glove, so much the better.
I’ll kill them for you, Mairon swears, and you think you can see his eyes in the embers of the grate, while you are not looking at him. You could carve them out and put them there, but they would sizzle and pop like any other eyes.
You answer, Take your time.
Gothmog returns to you, when Feanor and his brats set you back another month’s work. You would go and find Feanor yourself, you would pin him down and take his bones quite slowly, but you think it best that he does not yet know you are here.
What have you to offer me? you ask, since my labor is burning?
Heads will roll, is the promise they both make, albeit in the terms that suit them best. Gothmog speaks of order, Mairon of terror, when what they both mean is blood.
You accept this. You dine on it. You have always dined on loyalty.
I’ll gut the Spaniard like swine.
No, you won’t. Mairon is so—wild, around the foaming corners of his mouth. He has much to learn. You are still mulling over how best to teach him.
He needs a project, and you need an empire, and the two are not yet aligned safely together. You are not a blacksmith, but you could be. You know how metal must be beaten and burned before it can be strong and whole. So it is with men.
For now, he grinds his teeth and bows his head and obeys. (A beginning.)
So. Thingol, you leave aside. Feanor, you watch. His sons are very young—but of course, you had not forgotten that.
I’ll root them out, Gothmog rumbles. I’ll have them trussed up and handed over within the month.
Weapons and all? You’d very much like those weapons, since you understand better than Gothmog how much they mean.
Weapons and all.
He is something of a fool. You look out of fresh-glazed windows, on a mountain valley that belongs, now, to you, and you say,
Bring me his heart, beating.
(For that is what suits you best.)