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Once More Unto the Breach

Summary:

He seizes her hand. Pushes the ring on with miserable finality. And she flinches away as it tightens. It would not fall from her. She would never be able to remove it. Still, she tugs at it.

“What did you do to me?” She spits. “Take it off.”

Work Text:

He is a spirit of flame; he loves like flame, too—something he despairs of. Everything he touches falls to shadow and ash; none of this was his intention, not at the start at least.

Númenor quakes. The ground shifts beneath his feet. Númenor will sink he knows with dread certainty, and the fault is his. He had not thought his enemies so vicious. He would not have willingly destroyed such creation. He had underestimated their capacity for destruction. A blind spot. A failure. Another mistake in a long line of them. He should have known.

He dives for the floor when he realizes, rips up the dark tile of his temple and wrenches out the pouch—a failsafe. His laughter, his glee at Pharazôn and his army’s destruction has dried up.

He stalks to her bedchamber.

Servants duck out of his way, brandishing baskets of laundry and pails of water. Stockings tumble from the piles. Splashes of water stain the pale floors. He must look fearsome. Their eyes widen. They fall backwards and away when he orders them to move. Weeks ago, he’d been gentle and beautiful and goodly; they had leaned towards him as though he was the kindly sun come to nourish them.

He had never violated her space in such way before. But courtesy, even cursory, is long past. He slams the door open and strides inside. His footsteps echo. His fingers rip into the pouch to brush cool metal.

She flinches first, sitting as she is at her desk. Her papers she sets aside. Her pen is dropped without hesitation. She stands, and glares at him, keeping the table between them. “Come to gloat?”

He does not speak. Does not dare to. Instead, he moves nearer, kneels before her, and his hand does not tremble when he holds out the ring, though something inside does. “Take it,” he begs. It is an ugly thing, too masculine for her, heavy and ornate, designed to appeal to another’s sensibilities.

She steps backwards. Her voice is sharp. “I do not want your poisonous gifts, you creature of malice. Begone.”

He smiles bitterly at her knowing. She steps away at the sight. Distrust colors her face. Her intuition, her instinct, both were better honed then her foolish cousin’s.

He meant it for Pharazôn. Her will he did not wish to command. But death, final and mortal, or life, bound and unending—those were the only choices left now. He would decide for her if he must.

He seizes her hand. Pushes the ring on with miserable finality. And she flinches away as it tightens. It would not fall from her. She would never be able to remove it. Still, she tugs at it.

“What did you do to me?” She spits. “Take it off.”

He did not speak. Could not.

Her eyes sparked with anger. She lashes out towards him, pale hands striking his chest. He lets her.

Lightning flashes outside of her balcony.

“You will not die. I will not allow it.” The room rumbled once more. “Our enemies seek the doom of this place; we must away.”

Then, she blinks, that spark he had nourished, that spark he had encouraged—it extinguishes with his word, and she follows. She had been such a pale, quiet thing before him. Her cousin had made sure of it.

We are the same now, he thinks bitterly. Servants for greater powers. Though he had lost his master, and untethered as he was, his mistakes were his own.

He leads her to the Meneltarma. His will bleeding over hers with every one of her mortal breaths.

“Your sacred mountain. It might survive. Climb.” He commands her.  The ground quakes beneath their feet, and Míriel stumbles. His hand snakes out and seizes her arm; he steadies her.

Her eyes were glassy. Not really hers, not really anyone’s.

“And you?” She looks at him without hatred. It is wrong. There is none of that vital life in her eyes. There is a sinking, heavy sensation passing over him. He ignores it.

“It will not bear me.” He swallows. These things were malleable. Adjustments could be made. Another ring, a different, better one, he could craft one.

He is decided. He turns away.

“Make haste and do not fear the pain should it come, Míriel. It will not last. Death will not take you.”

Millenia passes. Ages pool by.

On a field, carnage streaks by her.  Words move from her mouth. They are not hers, but they please her still.

A sharp blade pierces her flesh. It burns like ice. And she stumbles forward, clumsy and more than she had been the moment before. Pain, realer than any other, an agony sharper then the death which had merely been a dream.  

(Icy waters filling her lungs. It burned. She coughed and choked and spewed out water. More bludgeoned into her. Panic. Sudden and total. The noise. Crashing of waves. Crumbling stone falling out beneath her. She had flailed. Struggled to surface. More waves had collapsed on top of her.)

A long dream. All time had merely been a dream, glazed and cloudy and hollow. The first day, the day she had lived she remembers. She had not always been like this.

There is yelling and the noise is high and screeching. “Éowyn! Éowyn!” A name. She, too, had a name once, hadn’t she?

The women struggles upwards. Éowyn, she thinks. This is Éowyn, and Éowyn has a terrible sword fiercely held in her grip; Éowyn lunges forward, drives it between her crown and mantle. And the sword itself shatters, sparking into shards.

Her name she remembers now. Her name: Míriel.

And then a face. Smooth, pale, beautiful face. Perfect, treacherous, loathsome, monstrous face. Why does she remember that face?

Something tightens around her finger, heats up blisteringly hot. Splinters and fragments.

He had promised her something, hadn’t he?