Work Text:
The fall of his hammer against steel, the thin piece of metal laid upon his anvil so delicate, so perfect, rang with a hollow sound that brought no comfort to his soul. It echoed dully around him into the empty forge, and he raised the tool again to bring it swiftly down once more to fill the silence with its once-comforting noise. Now...now he felt nothing.
But nothing in sound was still better than nothing in heavy, stifling silence.
The elves he shared this space with, under Aulë’s new joyful tutelage, had left long ago. Hours, days, he did not know and he did not care. He did not need rest or sleep, and they came and went around him without his notice. They had attempted to initiate conversation, at first, when he arrived here so ancient and careworn under their curious gazes. Drawn, he was sure, by his strange appearance - beautiful, by their standards, and how elves adored beautiful things - but he ignored every advance, every word, every excited glance.
They did not know who he was, who he used to be ages before. Such a brief space of time, unfolding behind him like a breath of cold air curling to melt in the sun. Told by others of his name - Mairon, once again, in a tongue only some knew - all other acts supposedly wiped clean as his eyes lost their fire, extinguished from his soul until he could no longer feel it burning inside him.
He simply did not care.
When he remembered to care about anything at all, he felt only pain, deep in the chasm left inside his chest. And so he stayed here, in the forge that was so different than the one he had been created for, so many lifetimes in the past, and yet so familiar. Aulë was everywhere in this space, his magic and energy in every stone and hearth, and he ached with it, was torn apart by it, when the magic he had known by another was destroyed by those he could not bring himself to despise.
And yet still - this was better, was it not, than anywhere else the Valar, vicious with their victory, thought to send him in their precious world. Aulë, he saw only mercy in this request, to bring him under his care once more, even as his soul was splintered, smaller and more hewn with anguish into every passing moment.
He did not belong here. No, never did he belong here again.
Aulë saw this, hurt for him, left him be as he faded away before their eyes. Nothing was to be done. His soul, his spirit - beyond repair, it all was. The holding force was gone, tendrils slipping away between the very pores of his physical body. Only the magic of the Valar, insistent in their desire not to release him, held him here now.
It no longer mattered, did it, whether they acted out of malice or greed, or some benign idea they could fix him, fix what they believed Melkor had broken. Bring him back, recreate him as their own, a Maia of their service the way he had once been.
But he was gone, insignificant and empty, with Melkor no longer in this world to give meaning to his existence as he once had. Every drop of will or vaguest remembrance of who he was...quite vanished into the wind, taken into the fires of the forge he no longer felt, no longer had comfort from as he once did.
He was the only one, perhaps, who did not care. He preferred this - this inability to remember, this inability to return to himself, the inability to feel.
For when silence came, it brought savagely fierce pain. Searing, pressing heavily in around him, as he recalled only vivid blue eyes, deep laughter that seemed to echo in his ears so close even when it was not truly there, words whispered through such intense darkness and falling with stars of blinding white. Lips along skin dusted with freckles, touches of calloused fingers so delicate and beautiful. A voice, heard all at once, everywhere and everything, telling him so selflessly -
Until, quite suddenly, he knew where he was, what he was, and realized it was not real, it was never real, and he did not understand any longer where his mind was. Or, in fact, if his mind was attached to any semblance of reality at all.
But then...did it matter?
No, he decided, over and over again, as he forgot and remembered so many times.
He raised the hammer and swung it down onto the perfectly shaped metal - always perfect, always, unmatched by any other even in his maddening, fleeting, illusions, tearing him apart so slowly - and felt his loss, the missing space left by his Vala’s absence like a gaping hole, a bleeding wound pouring glorious lifeblood through his chest where his body’s heart was beating without consent. Thudding like his hammer against the metals he no longer loved, could no longer feel any attachment to.
It did not matter, not at all. Never again.
Let it all wither into dust, let him burn away with the fire.
He was already gone.