Disclaimer: None of the characters or places are mine. They all belong to Tolkien.

Melkor

I gave a muted grunt of pain as I landed hard on my tightly-bound wrists, and my hands struck unforgiving stone; I cursed the triumphant laughter of the one who had thrown me down. Ignoring the hot, metallic-tasting blood that oozed from my split lower lip, I glared furiously up into my younger brother’s face. Manwë stared back down at me with sorrow glinting fleetingly in his pale blue eyes. But his countenance swiftly iced over as he spoke to me.

“Melkor,” he began coolly, “you know why you have been brought here. Openly defying the works and will of Eru on more than one occasion… destroying the Lights of Arda… persisting in your evil ways even when you had been stopped…”

“Truly, what did you expect?” I growled under my breath, my eyes narrowing as images, memories of my triumphs, flashed one by one through my head. Manwë ignored me, or at least seemed to, and spoke to the thirteen others who stood in a silent, solemn ring around me. “Who now shall speak in Melkor’s defense?”

No-one moved or replied for several moments, but presently a single figure stepped forth: Fui Nienna, the Lady of Mourning. She gazed long into my pain-contorted face, serenely meeting my smouldering red eyes and holding them steadily with her own tear-filled ones as she raised her voice to the assembly. I ignored the voice I heard with my ears, focusing instead on the words that tolled bell-like in my mind, as she revealed her inmost thoughts to me: *You are not who they believe you are; no, you are not all you have become.*

With each soft, kind word, my blazing anger melted slowly to reeling confusion. My own unnerved, private thoughts hummed in my head, pounding against my ears like my heart against my ribs. Does she truly pity me? She, and no-one else, sees something different in me… some ember of my former self, perhaps, overlaid and all but extinguished by ashes?

But Manwë’s voice jerked me back to concentrate on reality. “If no-one else will testify, then let Melkor’s sentence be known.”

This time the silence was nonexistent; everyone muttered agitatedly to everyone else, and pointed down at me in indiscreet bewilderment, but no-one spoke out loud. I stared up at them, scanning their faces for emotion; I noticed confusion in some eyes, and utter shock in most, particularly Manwë’s. Fui was hushed, having spoken her piece, but she held her eyes on me. They were widened in shock, and I wondered vaguely what she was seeing. I soon heard her voice in answer.

*Your eyes, Melkor… they are no longer scarlet, but deep brown! Did you know of this?*

*Of course not!* I replied. *Why else would I wonder?* But her words pierced my awareness like briars’ thorns. For almost as long as I had had a corporeal body, my eyes had been a deep shade of bloody crimson. What could have caused this sudden change?

“Never mind how it happened!” Námo’s deep voice snapped from above me. “Is he to be sentenced, or not?”

Manwë hesitated; I held my breath. My gaze was fixed staunchly on his face as I wrestled with my own emotions. Could I possibly return to the ways of the Light? Did I even want to? Fui believed I could, she wanted me to…

But what is she to you? something else growled in my heart. Are her words suddenly the basis of your every decision?

No, my first thoughts answered, but perhaps if… if I could change, my kin might see me as a friend, a brother…

Is that what you truly want? To be accepted? Think of your priorities! Power is what you seek! You wish for dominion!

I felt a strange irritation in my eyes as my mind and heart strove against each other. I was weeping, I soon realized – real tears were dampening my skin. As my breaths emerged in weird, gasping sobs, I turned my gaze to Námo, willing him to see and know my spirit’s turmoil. A single word escaped my faltering lips.

“Please…”

In answer, Námo folded his arms across his narrow chest like a great black bat drawing in his wings. Glowering down his hooked nose at me, he spoke my sentence as though he wished every word to be a dagger between my ribs. It was a cold knell that pealed through my writhing heart.

“Melkor, you shall be chained and held as a captive within my Halls for three Ages, and not a moment less. Absolutely no one is to aid you; none shall speak to you, save Manwë or myself.” He nodded curtly to Oromë and Tulkas, who had first brought me here. “Take him away.”

“No!”

The distressed cry came from Fui, who rushed forward to place herself willingly between Tulkas and Oromë and myself. She confronted Námo with tears tumbling down her face.

“Námo, please reconsider!” she begged. “Give him another chance to prove himself!”

“One chance is far more than sufficient,” Námo told her coldly. “A sentence is a sentence – my words shall not be refuted.” He glanced also at my brother with those words. To my would-be captors, he rumbled again, “Take him away.”

I struggled uselessly against the viselike hands of my former kinsmen, as Námo held Fui back from me. She sobbed as she vainly tried to reach for me, and I for her. I called out to her with my thoughts. *Fear not for me! What harm can they do?*

*More than you know, Melkor,* Fui wept in reply, even as she shrank and diminished from my sight. Blinded by my own bitter tears, I gave up fighting and let myself be dragged to Námo’s keep.