Legendarium [ Tolkien One-Shots ]

A Flame Extinguished

His auburn hair blew in the fierce gale that whipped around his body. He no longer felt the pain of the silmaril burning its way into his flesh; he no longer felt anything. He stood there, alone, numb. He couldn’t even feel his hand, instead it was like dead weight. He couldn’t feel anything. Nothing but shame.

Maedhros, of course, felt relatively familiar with that sensation. Shame had ever accompanied his life since leaving the Blessed Realm. At first he had masked the shame with fury, with rage. He desired only vengeance in those first steps upon Beleriand. He didn’t just desire it, he needed it. He needed to know that his deeds had meant something. And yet time after time the binding oath he swore to those which should not be called upon in vain led him to increase the Enemy’s power.

Everything he’d orchestrated, every move he’d made to protect the Free Peoples had gone amiss. When Fingon had lived, he had managed to salvage the hope of peace. But after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad…

Maedhros shook his head as he stood there above the fiery pit below. He did not want to think about the death that had rocked him so hard. When Fingon had lived, Maedhros’ spirit was tempered. When they rose up together in battle, all fled from them. So how had he gotten here.

Fingon never would have approved of the kinslayings. Maedhros didn’t even fully approve of them. At the time, he had felt them to be a necessary evil. And yet here, at the end of it, he knew they had only contributed to the downfall of the Firstborn. The elves would have perished if not for the Ainur and their host of Vanyar.

The scars still littered his body from his captivity in Thangorodrim. The unnaturally pale scars served as a constant reminder not only of how weak he truly was, but also a reminder that he had almost died. He had wanted to die.

And so as he watched the fiery lava beneath him spew forth smoke and heat, he felt tears flowing down his face. He stood at that place again, the place right before death. And this time, like the last, he yearned for the release it would bring. He thought not of his father, for his father had doomed his sons to a life of tragedy and for that, despite all the love once in his heart for Feanor, he could not forgive his father.

Instead he had thought for his brothers. Celegorm, the hunter who had driven them to attack Dior’s kingdom. Curufin the crafty, always looking for praise like their father once had. Caranthir the dark, so named because his face would often match the red of the flames below Maedhros. Amras, the elder twin, and Amrod, the younger, both precious to Maedhros for they had relied on him most. Maglor, who still lived perhaps, and who needed to live on for both of them.

And of Fingon he thought then, the brother he had not by blood, but forged in friendship and in flames. Now the flames would take Maedhros to Mandos at last. As he stepped off the edge, that thought comforted him. The eldest son of the Spirit of Fire died there, consumed by the flames at last.