~Inkwell Series~

A/N: Special thanks to Scribbles-on-Parchment for beta-ing this for me! Much love, mellon nin!

I highly suggest reading my other story 'At Least Its Not Eternity' before this one. It is not entirely mandatory to do so, but some parts will definitely make more sense after reading it. :)

Pattern

The Curse of Mandos, Maedhros scoffs inwardly. How much more of a curse can I attain than what my life has already been?

The Curse of Mandos, the voice bites in again, comfortingly, as the echo of mighty doors of Taniquentil crashing to a close resounds behind him. It takes everything he has not to whirl around or jump at the sound of it.

Instead he retreats back into his mind, hushed murmurs of his brothers brushing the edges of his consciousness.

He marvels at what the future has in store for him and rebukes himself for the shudder in his heart.

What have I not yet seen? What pain have I not yet felt? his inner voice bites harshly into his mind.

Harsh it may be, but comforting in a way.

He did not need to be coddled. Maedhros had seen everything. Empires rising and falling to the ground. He had seen death, despair, fire. Tasted the unforgiving bite of steel. The unforgiving desolation of a battlefield. Light leaking out of the eyes of everyone he had ever known. Bodies, strewn and charred so that you murmured a prayer to each one as they were lowered in the ground, for any of them could be the one you loved.

He has seen it all.

Yet he cannot control the rapid pounding of his heart or the churning of his chest as everything in him revolts against the restraint of the Maiar marching him forward. Any ounce of sanity that remains in him clashes repeatedly into the cage of his body, demanding to be let out. To run.

And he hates it. The way chest heaves and vision blurs. He is not supposed to be susceptible to fear anymore. He shouldn't care anymore.

And yet fear clouds his vision. The air around Maedhros chills him to the core. The murmur of voices drones in a swimming murk. He keeps walking, tile after tile filtering under his feet far too fast.

The Curse of Mandos, he scoffs again, breathless, shaky, a wobbling smile inside frantically clawing at the crumbling walls of his composure.

'And now this is the fruit of your labor, little kinslayer,' the voice slithers in with the fleeting image of a face. Eyes like burning embers.

Notagainnotagainnotagain! every fiber of his being screams. Pleads. Begs.

Hands on his shoulders, fingers digging into his forearms, breath on his neck, and the resounding of footsteps padding over the floor.

Smears of color flash in front of him and he jerks to a stop, the fingers tightening, tension coiling in the air.

He sees it. The fire. The glint of eyes as black as the very Void. Raucous laughter booming inside his head. The clatter of chains that leaves him breathless.

He is shoved forward and suddenly he can't move another step.

Notagainnotagainnotagain, no no no.

The world lurches drunkenly. His eyes roll like a terrified horse. His mind staggers under the crushing weight of a million memories.

He had kept them restrained for so long, fastened behind a mighty dam that he had sealed up as soon as a leak was sprung.

Bloody tears smudge across a sooty face; haggard and sunken. Aching bones groaning with the harnessed bulk of unnumbered millenniums of wear. Shuddering in the dark. The echo of a scream buried in an arm, ringing through halls of towering cobblestone.

Fire and blood. Pain and weakness.

Helplessness.

No. Not again. Never again.

The hands push him forward and he braces his knees with the strength of cornered prey.

Even now—bodiless—blood pounds in his ears. His form swirls and flickers, unstable. Like the elements of his fragile mind. The thread that held him intact has been snapped and washed away by the hurricane of memories and suddenly nothing matters except stopping.

Regret beats into him. Fist after fist, blow after blow. Guilt. Yes, I do know what I have done. I know it is unspeakable; that there is no way for me to amend my deeds. But spare me this... oh, spare me this for I fear there will be nothing left of me when I return.

Immortality feels all too much of a curse in this moment.

Maedhros clings onto the words of his mother with just a bit more tenacity than that of the guilt and regret beating into him with every aching thought. 'Are their hearts truly so evil?' she had said.

Judgement had been passed by the mighty Valar themselves. No, no we are not. Had it not been said by her— believed in so fervently by his mother— he would have questioned it himself with the growls of that guilt and regret and twisting memories at the hands of another and the fire wielded in their eyes as his transgressions were listed slowly, deliberately.

Had Nerdanel not put her heart into him so than he would have pondered that perhaps the Unmaking of his fëa would be preferable to this.

Maedhros has not realized that he has been pushed forward again. One foot in front of the other. Tile after tile passing beneath his feet like the slow decay of time, flashing with faces. Faces of ones he knew. Faces of ones who would see him dead forever. Faces of those who's Light fled their eyes as he withdrew his blood-stained sword.

Had Nerdanel been right to save him from thus? Wasn't this truly what he deserved?

Had he been a Vala, he might have proclaimed the fëa of Maedhros Nelyafinwë Fëanorian to be Unmade in the Void without a second thought. Surely this was mercy. Surely he could stretch himself just a little bit longer. For Nerdanel. For his mother.

He was unaware of his surroundings until the hushed murmurs of his brothers turns to hollow yells and the clanging of doors locking shut. He watches, one by one as they are separated accordingly, fighting with every inch of their life.

Everything freezes. They are being separated. He will be alone.

Alone.

Alone in the dark cold. Huddled in a corner, eyes wide, shoulders curled and bare. Listening for the barest footstep. The slightest clink of a chain. He is coming, it says. Every absent brush of breath. Any distant sound. It is all a herald of doom. And Maedhros would be alone.

He can do nothing but stare as they disappear behind thick doors of iron.

Tyelko's bouncing gold. Curvo's slick sheet of onyx. The Ambarussar's ruffled russet as they are pulled apart with dimmed cries of anguish behind separate doors.

All he can do is stare. Tears roll down his cheeks. Fists pound. Muffled yells break the silence.

Maedhros is next and his father is in a frenzy, fighting and pleading like he never had before. It would have brought a tinge of warmth to his heart had he been truly aware.

Something is behind him and suddenly there are arms around his shoulders and a tumbling wave of pleas rushing on warm breath to his ear. A cry tears through his lips and he falls to his knees, twisting and scrabbling out of the hold of the Maiar guard like a wild thing gone mad.

His mind shudders under relentless waves of more shudders, doubling in on itself. His heart starts up again in its mad chase.

The thing on his back detaches and he raises moist eyes to a thrashing Fëanor. Anguish is etched into the very fiber of his fëa and Maedhros' heart lurches as he disappears behind another door. His cries are loudest.

His wide, swimming grey eyes turn to the Maiar towering above him as he slinks closer to the ground on his knees, almost submissively.

You shouldn't care anymore, he tells himself and yes, he does not care that tears cascade freely down his face. He does not care that he is guilty. He does not care that this is what he deserves.

A solemn flash of sympathy flickers over the Maia previously restraining him. His jumbled mind has no spare moment to ponder this as he is limply nudged inside a small dark room and any semblance of life is choked in the shroud of darkness.

Insanity swallows his mind.

And that's when they come; the same old memories slithering out of every crack and crevice. Eyes like glittering embers, promising harm.

He edges away, the two walls of a corner pressing familiarly into his back, but they near, reaching, reaching, reaching. Course claws rake through his hair, tighten around his neck, and there flashes the fire. Over and over and over.

His mind his broken and bleeding. No more, it pants, no more. The eyes of glowing coals cock to the side, crinkling in a bone-chilling smile before delving right back with a hot knife, dissecting every good thing he ever remembered and crushing it in the black fire.

He screams again and again.

Pain blooms everyday, and each and every aching hour feels like a million life ages of the earth.

One day melds into the next, weeks, months, years, and he is swirling in a small black pit. Aimlessly, uncertainly, fearfully—coexisting in his little niche of darkness, broken, bleeding, tumbling around and around on the edge of a blessed death that is a mere inaccessible fleeting fantasy.

Until it is broken. A crack of light knifes through the darkness with a precision that promises pain in Maitimo's eyes. He wisely cowers away from it. The only light he knows of is the fire that devours his flesh.

The flickering semblance of a Maia's face peers through the opening and Maedhros absently ponders this new form and what new pain it can bring. A shiver rattles down his spine despite himself and his weary, bleeding mind and the fear that grips him.

The figure enters with the lightest step. It is a woman. A glorious glowing image with a neat braid draped over her shoulder and gossamer satin swirling about her slender form.

Maedhros squints against the vigorous light but has not the energy to bring up an arm to shield his eyes.

The Maia crouches, gazing upon him with a gentle kindness that promises no harm like the other flickering images that haunt him always. A tentative hand reaches out, fingers slender and clean. They brush ever-so-slightly down the side of his face before fading away at the line of his jaw.

His eyes stare forward hollowly and he would have flinched had he cared anymore. But he didn't. Additional years in this suffocating dark taught him that caring isn't worth his energy. Exist is all he can do.

The bright eyes flicker with sympathy and Maedhros finds a figment in his mind click into place. He has seen this before.

The Maia leans to her knees and pulls him forward out of his solitary corner. He does naught more than stiffen.

Her lips purse in concern and she glances at a similar figure hovering at the doorway.

She rises, Maedhros draped over her arms, brow creasing at the rapid booming in his chest and small, desperate breaths rushing in and out of him in time with the violent tremors racking his whole body. They file out of the small cell, coming to bathe in the light outside the small room.

Barred doors pass on either side of them as the Maia makes her way to the appointed destination. The other Maia nearly materializes beside it, tentatively swinging it open.

The fëa inside glimmers with unprecedented light and presses forward on the invisible barrier separating him and his son.

The Maia enters and Fëanor quickly snatches his son away with an air of such strong possession that makes the being back away and disappear once again behind the iron, the cloak of darkness descending but not suffocating as it had been in Maitimo's little niche in the Halls.

Here, the fiery essence of Fëanor pierces the dark and drives it off to skulk ashamed in its allotted crevices.

Nelyo is in shambles. It is difficult to place a description other than that Fëanor could feel it to the very depths of his son's fëa. His heart weeps and his flame is stoked.

"What has become of you, my son? My great, beautiful Maitimo? What have they done to you?" Fëanor's anguished whisper seeps into the air of the room, stirring Maedhros from his terrified stupor.

Surely this is a dream, he thinks. Sooner than later, Fëanor will turn his hand against me like in every twisted illusion and it shall be the same all over again. He screws his eyes shut with an involuntary shudder that deepens Fëanor's frown.

Running his fingers through locks of the most vibrant russet, Fëanor rocks his son back in forth in his arms, a torrent of pleas and comforts and prayers spilling from his lips.

"Hold on for me, Nelyo. Your mother waits. Hold on, my son..."

oOoOoOo

A/N: What Have I Done.

Feedback would be much appreciated. :)