---

Elurín had always hated the forest, though it seemed to love him more than anything else in the world. It would reach for him, beckoning.

Come, my child, come let us adore you.

The tales, tales of protection, were false - and yet they echoed truth in all the parts that would be dreaded most. Only tight-woven magics could hold the forest at bay, and in those stories it did, didn't it?

Naneth had told him those stories. Naneth had told him to run.

And yet those had fallen, like that tree which had fallen in the night. The one which used to stand outside his window. An awful crash it had made, and when he woke the next morning there shone a strange light, and he had pulled his covers over his head in a futile attempt to block it out. When that didn't work, he had crawled into Eluréd's room dragging his blankets behind him. His twin didn't stir, and his room was all the soft darkness Elurín could want.

That darkness was all around them now. Its softness beckoned. Would it be comfort, a slow stifling? Would it be mercy?

Come let us adore you, come unto us, come-

The rain was pouring down now, leaves falling and crushed into the muddy earth, embraced to their origins, handed back over, kicking and screaming. Elurín's new robes were stained with brown and stuck with spikes and floating seeds like the haunted woods following him wherever he fled.

A pull on his outstretched arm sent him falling, and the world leaned out for just a second but then with rocks embedded into his cheek he was raised up again: his brother was too fast, and Elurín was just the afterimage.

"We must keep moving, Lurí, come on,"

Come on, come let us adore you.

"Lurí!" Eluréd was on his knees, concerned face blocking out shadows and revelations alike.

"Too bright, too bright-" He didn't like the darkness, where he had grown, he feared the light, what he would find- and yet his palms glowed like his visions, the markings there backlit. Eluréd shone too, mostly his eyes - or was that a reflection of Elurín's own?

"Cover them, I'll lead you," But he didn't have his blindfold, he didn't have his gloves. He didn't have his scarf, or his cloak with the calming space its hood provided, because it was a normal day and that meant being normal. Being normal meant letting the light flow out of him, and letting that light free meant his terrors made manifest. It always did.

The darkness swallowed the light. The darkness could not exist without the light. The darkness adored the light.

"Ré, I... I- they're not-" He reached to grasp his hair, to pull it over his face, to shroud his eyes, and yet its weight did not sit like it usually did on his shoulders, because the forest loved him too much. When he was cut free that day, before the comforting cloth was slipped over his eyes, he saw the last of the silver strands disappear into a hollow in the trunk.

That had been years ago, he realised, his blurred vision stretching behind his eyes like from the dark end of a tunnel. That had been years ago, and it never grew back.

The tree though? In the back of his mind, he always knew - for a part of him was in it, and thus a part of it around him - it flourished.

---

Maedhros never liked the woods of Doriath, for numerous reasons, but of course he had to be there, couldn't be anywhere else - because Elwë's heir had a silmaril.

He would often wake in the middle of the night, feeling crushed though his blankets had been thrown to the other side of the room. And so wherever he had wandered, he would look up to the stars. (They would always be different, and yet always the same, for Varda understood, he was sure). Glimmering pinpoints set in Ilmen, so far away.

And yet he had looked upon those same stars from upon Thangorodrim and wondered through some haze, were they what he sought?

Fire he had watched, fought, walked through, and its sting lashed ever at his back. And yet fire, was it not all alike? His brother, they said, was lost to it: but Maedhros prayed ever that it was a finding instead, whereby some mercy would trace those scars with a delicate finger and whisper forgiveness. His father, they said, was naked flame bound to fëa bound to hröa, and looking back he knew they were right - it was his truth, his reason, and his undoing.

He would know that flame as long as he lived, whether, after today, that be forevermore in the void.

It was light, and it birthed, forged, and destroyed. He saw it in the smithy, sparks flying as some new thing was created, he saw it in the doom of his kinsmen across the Helcaraxë when he stood aside but he didn't regret it, nor did he regret his lack of remorse.

In front of him then, at that first landing, had stood a land that was utterly bereft of fire, of light, of brilliance, save for that which was his birthright, or so he believed. Because he saw fire in how it made him, how he renamed himself (because he was Maedhros now, not-) and how he would wield it to burn through those who stood in the between him and the Silmarils.

---

And now there were three.

Tyelkormo lay off to the left, his silver hair (so like their grandmother, they'd been told) stained almost as red as Maedhros' own, blood pouring from where his skull had been caved in. Some desperate Sindar, he supposed, armed with the last vestiges of their will and debris from their crumbling home. Fragments of bone stuck, in the mire of their misery, like a shattered pane of glass held in stasis - and so did his face, twisted in a look of despair that Maedhros knew would be hidden immediately under a scowl, if he still lived.

What a forlorn legacy, Maedhros thought. He had covered his brother's face in cloth torn from the part of his robes with the least bloodstains, hoping that it would cover the image in his mind too. (It didn't.)

Carnistir sat in the middle, like always, slumped against a pillar covered in desperate grasping handprints now framed forever. Blood was smeared down his face, empty eye sockets gaping at Maedhros in memory of their own ghosts. He had tried his best to close them, but it didn't work - the remnants of his eyelids nothing but tattered strips where they had been scratched away. His hand had been severed, lying a few paces away and clenched around his sword.

And lastly Curufinwë - named for his father. Maedhros thought he could have died like him too: though his body lay still, he half expected it to burst into flames. But it didn't, and perhaps it was for the better (though of course Curvo would have been disappointed in himself, like he always was.) Or maybe, no fire would take him, for he had been torn at to beyond the point of recognition - Maedhros supposed that the Sindar needed a poster child for their hatred, and his brother happened to take that role. Maybe it shrunk from his mangled body like Makalaurë did, when, breaking apart at the seams, he fled these accursed halls.

It was a massacre, and yet fruitless. For in a hasty pile on the other side of the room, at the foot of the throne where they had fallen, there too lay the King of Doriath, and his wife, but not their Silmaril, and not their children.

Three children, Maedhros remembered, and from the reports they surely carried their great-grandmother's blood.

Of course, he'd heard the reports of things, moving in the darkness that only 'haunted' forests could provide. The darkness of fear, he'd swore, but he still could not deny the stories that something there was neither Eldarin nor of the kindred of Men, something there that stalked the shadows, its face bound and its hands enticing. Something that would vanish when you looked at it, leaving a prickling feeling down your spine and feathers in your robes.

He was not thinking of theses stories, however, when without a word, he ran into the woods.

---

Elurín had always hated the forest, and now he had been delivered into its arms. It reached for him, slowly, and he couldn't move because ropes bound him to his fate, he could only imagine his form being pulled apart and that thing inside of him bursting out of his skull and ribcage, turning flesh to smoldering ashes, stretching sinews into taut cobweb and lighting everything with a flash - the forest would have him then, and maybe all the trees around his grave would grow taller than ever before in fulfilment. He closed his eyes tight but everything remained crystal clear, he stretched and twisted trying to cover his face but he could always see, could always know, and darkness would never blind him but it would flee from him when he chased it, in desperate need of release.

His mouth was sewn, but not his eyes - blood dripped down from the holes in his face, from where his tongue had been crushed beneath his teeth and flesh ripped from the inside of his cheeks and he felt the twine like knives slice through his lips and pull free as he screamed and wailed uncontrollably, a guttural cry that wrenched itself out of him no matter how threads and his will tried to keep it in, tearing his mouth to shreds like hanging vines stained red with their regret, blood pouring down his face and stinging like burning iron.

He sounded like he belonged here, with the terrors of his rampant mind, beneath the dark canopy of skin and bone, with all the things that loved him too much.

Everything he never wanted to see shone before him in his own light, and yet he could not find Eluréd. They'd been left, and they'd been left separated, by strange Elves who seemed to echo all the worst parts of him and all of his fears. Their speech had been loud and abrasive and as quiet as the creak of a branch before its end poked through your chest, their hands quick with horrible efficiency because they'd done this many times before, hadn't they, holding his jaw shut while that needle went in and out and those ropes went round and round and then they were gone.

"Elurín!"

Eluréd's voice cried out worried and relieving and so damning, because his own mouth couldn't form the words, his torn tongue no longer willing to grant some solace, some comfort, for both of them. The shout came again, and again, and Elurín manage to force some strangled name out but it wasn't his brother's name, and soon all spoken words dissolved into heaving sobs, because they were together and yet it was all the worse because it was not distance that separated them but it was pain.

Slowly, even their sobs ceased, Elurín's throat burning, and they were left with a silence that stifled. He couldn't breathe, and maybe it was easier that way. Maybe the rain that was falling would drown them, and may it spare at least Eluréd whatever he suffered.

Everything he never wanted to see shone before him, so since he craved mercy, he did not see it until it took the place of that branch through his heart.

---

Maedhros was tired. He staggered through the woods, useless useless couldn't even defend them, they were his responsibility and all he was was useless clutching at his chest, blood trailing behind him. Maybe that would be his end. Maybe the One would be merciful. And yet he continued - but it wasn't him, was it, it was the oath he can't blame the oath it was his fault his fault his FAULT and his footsteps weren't his and his hand wasn't recognisable and his sword was stained with someone else's blood.

Distantly, or right next to him, or inside his head, whispers sang their mournful tune, a lament of the ages. It sounded so familiar, and why wouldn't it, it was his voice - and it was his actions, his hand hands and his own burden to bear. He deserved it, he knew. So why wouldn't the voices atar sauron findekáno dior makalaurë tyelkormo carnistir curufiNWË NÀMO MANDOS be quiet? They'd done their job... but he hadn't done his.

So here he was, and here he would march like a soldier to his death, like his kin across the Helcaraxë, like the forces of Morgoth out of angband, until the Silmaril was found.

Something flickered in the corner of his eye, and against his better judgement, he turned towards it you never turn towards what you see because it isn't there and you're alone with you and your thoughts and that thing which doesn't exist and he was falling, tripping over the bodies, over his sins- there were no bodies. It was nothing but a branch, young untarnished leaves sprouting out of the end, unknowing of their home's sudden lack of a tether.

And before him, in the mud, was a footprint.

Young, untarnished. The print was small, and though rain had begun to soften its edges he could make out the faint shape of four toes - not talons like he'd heard not claws and before he knew it he was back up on his feet and marching again, head up! back straight! despite the pain and following, following towards the last shred of what he had sought.

It is here, it is here, was all he thought. He was like a beast of the forest, hunting for, he supposed, what he deserved. Every creature felt self-righteous in their search, for they never turn back, do they? They never stop, and consider whether it is their right to their prey, they never say, I am unworthy.

The darkness of the forest begin to fall away, and he did not notice the path that had been beaten out in the undergrowth, did not notice the blood that pooled where rain should have been in the tracks that he followed until he collapsed again - this time he saw no branch, this time he saw no leaves.

It was beyond imagination. It was exactly what he'd imagined.

Two children lay, their white faces untouched by dirt, their eyes closed. And they shone - of course, they shone, like they deserved what he sought more than he did, like a mockery, like a joke. The forest grew up around them, twining around their hands and feet, like they'd been forsaken centuries ago, like they belonged, but they couldn't because the blood was fresh. One cried red, the streaks pouring down his face and staining his cheeks, rich and still warm. One spoke red, bubbling down from the shreds of his lips and down his chest. And both their hearts beat red, if they did at all, beneath a carved Fëanorian star.

---

Something dug into Maedhros' own chest, and he arched his back, reaching. His hand closed around something cool and hard, and for a moment, it was worth it, because it had to be, could never be worth it, because how could it?

He drew it up, out of the mud, out of the mire of blood and memory. And raising his face, there it lay - there it lay, in his open palm, a shining beacon in the fog, a bright island in the waves-

An eye.

Maedhros dropped his head into the grass at the elflings' feet, and wept.

---