Work Text:
Maedhros hung from the mountainside. The eldest son of Feanor looked down, and all the world seemed to spread out below, and all of it was ash.
Maedhros knew that that was not the case, of course. That one hanging from Morgoth’s mountainside could see only the gates of Angband and the ruin all around it, that one held by Morgoth saw only what Morgoth wished.
But that knowledge did little to ease the heart beating stubbornly within the body stapled to the cliff. Knowledge is not comfort, it is not hope, it cannot sustain. Maedhros knew that somewhere the air was clean and the desolation ended, but could not know where, or what people still lived there and had not been killed. And as time passed the picture of it faded from Medhros’s mind, and the idea of happiness seemed strange. But Maedhros refused to give up, to allow Morgoth to win, not within the privacy of Maedhros’s own mind.
Maedhros hung from the mountainside, sustained only stubbornness and spite.