Kissing My Cousin

On Cold Thangorodrim

A little bit of AU (Alternate Universe) here; Maitimo and Findekano are in the present day, reminiscing about their past life.

Though it was still day, the curtains were drawn and the room lit only by the flickering bluish light of the television. I turned over in the bed to glance at it, some documentary about eagles. I smiled to myself, and reached over my lover to turn it off. Findekáno stirred at the sudden silence and opened his eyes to smile at me.

"Only the truly decadent make love in the afternoon," he murmured quietly.

"Then we are truly decadent." I replied, tracing lazy circles with my fingers on the glistening skin of his chest. "And you fell asleep," I added, giving him a playful poke.

"I didn't," he protested. "But you did." He frowned. "You were dreaming again."

A chill shiver ran down my spine and I sat up, drawing my arms around myself, cradling my right arm with my left, like I used to do when my hand was newly severed. "Thangorodrim," I said simply, hanging my head and looking down at my arm.

"Oh." Findekáno fell silent, and touched my shoulder. "I thought you didn't remember that any more."

I closed my eyes, then opened them again and turned around to look at him. "I... lied. I'm sorry."

There was a long, silent pause, in which I looked only at the floor, whilst feeling Findekáno's eyes on me. "Maitimo?" He touched my face, I still did not look at him. All I could see was a broken, chaotic collage of images in my mind. Morgoth. Blood. Fire and steel. "Timo? What do you remember?"

I took a deep breath then, and I told him everything.

---------------------------------------------------

I have heard it speculated by many people, how long I hung on that mountain. Sometimes they say fifty years. Or fifteen. Or five. Or one. They make me laugh sometimes, even I with my strength could not have endured just one year hanging like that on an exposed cliff-face. To begin with, Morgoth kept me indoors, in the caves below his fortress at Angband.

The cell was small but high-walled, roughly hewn from a natural space in the rock. The only light came from a window, nothing more than a crack, covered with heavy iron bars, maybe fifteen feet above my head. Each day in late afternoon, the sun passed by that window and filled the room with light for a brief while. Sometimes I was chained to the wall, with chains so short that I could not even sit down, but sometimes I was left unchained. It did not matter much either way; there was no escape either from the window or from the heavy iron door, but at least whilst unchained I was able to lie on the straw-covered floor and sleep. From time to time I would yell and bang on the door, and cursed Morgoth's betrayal with every breath, but I soon realised that no-one would listen or respond, so I gave up. Or rather, my voice did.

For several days I saw not a soul, except for an orc which from time to time would briefly open the door to shove a bucket inside, and slam it closed again. The bucket contained some kind of watery gruel, foul stuff but I was hungry and ate it anyway. After the first such meal I was vomiting for hours, but after the second my body realised that I would be getting no other sustenance and I was able to keep it down. A while after each meal, the orc would return, beat me with a large club until I stopped trying to defend myself, and then it would chain me up again.

And then, just as I was beginning to lose count of the days I'd been held prisoner, my captor came to see me. The cell filled with blazing light as he opened the door, and with my first glimpse of him I could see that he wore on his head a crown of iron, set with the three Silmarils. I lunged for the crown as he came close to me but the chains held my wrists and ankles.