simaethae:

In Angband, Maedhros had learned a great deal about testing
the limits of one’s bonds. Physical, or otherwise – manacles that could be
slipped, if one did not mind dislocating a joint or two; commands that could be
either defied, or followed with dumb literalism, wilfully taken to the wrong
ends.

He had been punished, but also, sometimes, rewarded. If he
amused. If he could sneak disobedience through, in the crack between word and
meaning, between his chains and the mountain wall.

“Please,” he said, begging, as he had not, upon
Thangorodrim, not until Fingon came. “Please, I don’t want to do this – “

The Havens of Sirion had no cliffs, were wet mud and tangled
reeds. Blood puddled, thin tendrils infiltrating through the silt, wavering on
the surface of the river.

A woman of his own people spat at him, as she died, before
the light still gleaming in her eyes went out. It wrenched at him, reminding
him.

This swear we all –

It was an oath to wriggle through, to break and crack and
evade. Fëanáro’s kin, he thought, and
was she not their kin, through her husband, of Turgon’s line – death will we deal him, but she was no him, she was neither Maia nor Elda nor
Aftercomer –

“Elwing!” he called, fighting through the rough dwellings
rising from the marshes, at the edge of the sea. There were guards, soldiers,
but the fearful remnants of the hidden kingdoms, of Doriath and Gondolin, were
little match for the Fëanorian veterans. Some had been only children when they
fled.

“Elwing, listen to me! We don’t want to do this!”

There were still children, even now, their screams high and
thin amid the clash of battle and the smoke coming up from the reeds.

“Please,” he
called, following the light, cutting through a guard’s chest with a single
sword-blow, the blade grating on a rib as he tugged it back, to catch and parry
with the backswing, another trying to come up at his side. He surged forward,
momentum carrying him to crush the man’s face with the edge of his shield, in a
crunch of blood and splintering bone.

The Oath caught at his limbs, when he would have stood, and
let the blows land, and led him on: thinking, all this could stop, if she just gave us the Silmaril, I wouldn’t have
to –

One thing Maedhros had never learned was surrender. He went
on, and watched the light fading into the sea; then turned back, to his brothers,
and the dead.