Title: Both the Heat and the Cold
Prompt: 017. and most of all, I don't need your opinion; 'cause you don't know what it's like to be like me
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Túrin left Doriath after killing Saeros, who had insulted him and his people, and considered himself an outlaw for doing so. Mablung was the last Elf to speak to him before he left, since Túrin refused to return to Menegroth to seek Thingol's pardon because he feared that he would be imprisoned. The title comes from a quote by Melian, Túrin's foster-mother, in Unfinished Tales: 'If in days to come you remember the words of Melian, it will be for your good: fear both the heat and the cold of your heart.' All the characters belong to Tolkien.
He had been warmed by righteous anger, and the pride from his last words to Mablung was still running in his veins, but a sudden icy blast was enough to bring Túrin to his senses. The Girdle of Melian protected Doriath from the worst of the cold, but there was no such shelter here, and in the lands around him walked things that would make a freezing to death a kind fate – and for the first time, Túrin understood what he had done. I've left Doriath. I've left my home. But he had left Dor-lomin long ago, and Doriath, although it had fed and clothed and taught him, was no more his home than a wet-nurse was his mother. He had cooled his anger in the snow, but now a kind of joy burned inside him, and as he set off through the woodland the cold wind sang of freedom.
EDIT: Now an AU after I reread Narn I Hin Húrin in Unfinished Tales, where it says at least twice that Túrin left Doriath in the summer. Erm… maybe Morgoth sent a freak thunderstorm to attack him? Either that, or another effect of global warming, I suppose…
