A/N: What am I even doing? Maedhros feels. It's Mythopoeia's fault, bless her!
In the beginning, there was Father—a king over kings, not with them, with eyes like steel and starlight, the white fires on his brow and in his hands. He asked for fealty more than love, and it was given, in the waking of an age and the breaking of a family.
Long afterwards, when heat and cold and hatred have winnowed them all to ashes, when the boats have burned and his father has fallen, when he has long since forsaken the throne, when his brothers lie in blood, he will meet a pain so perfect it is a release.
He falls, oath long kept, heart long broken, with the gem in his hand.
Like his family, it is most beautiful when it burns.