Fëanaro didn't really think this through, but the lock on the door proved too easy to pick not to take advantage of it.

Slipping out of Mirfin's house is surprisingly simple. There's no guard inside, and the one outside isn't watching for people going out. The next part is going to be harder: Fëanaro is too tall, and his eyes stand out dramatically in a sea of dullards. He has to reach the closest slave settlement. The man who cleans his room, a small and fearful sinda ready to sell his mother for some of Fëanaro's food, described in great details the path to follow, and the noldo manages well enough without being seen. There he steals some nondescript clothes (too small for his frame) and smears grimes on his face. He braids his hair in a single plait that he hides under a dirty shawl. He can't do anything for his eyes but hopes to pass for a common noldorin slave.

He needs to go to the mines. The slave told him the mines are the worst jobs to get, but that the noldor are numerous there. Fëanaro hopes to find support among his people: his subjects are strong both in body and will, and he expects them to have already started hoarding weapons. With them he is optimistic that he can break out.

The streets look highly hierarchized. The slaves walk as close to the walls as they can, while the soldiers have the sides. The middle is left empty, most probably reserved to the occasional beta and alphas. Fëanaro walks with his head down, not looking at anyone, stopping only occasionally to ask for directions to fellow prisoners. His steps take him lower and lower in the belly of Angamando. He squints at the permanent lack of light; the uruks, who see well in darkness, need very few lamps, but the elves of Valinor are used to brighter landscapes. Most of the streets are actually illuminated with some kind of fluorescent green moss growing on the ceiling and glowing blue mushrooms on the floor.

It's not difficult to keep track of time since there are clocks on every great squares and gongs ringing each hour. Fëanaro has been walking for a few hours, enough to feel like he may actually do it, when a clawed hand grabs his arm. He has to remind himself to keep his eyes to the ground and his head bowed. The hand is dark and greasy, but the noldo doesn't know if the color is natural or if, like Mirfin, there's some kind of makeup involved. The animalistic nails, though, can't be anything but a physical deformation, much like those of the soldiers he fought with his people during the battle under the stars.

"Where are you going, slave? You're in a hurry for a lazy lightelf, going around carrying nothing!" The beast laughs. Warm drops of spit land on Fëanaro's face; he turns to stone to keep his hand from wiping his cheeks.

"To the mines," he answers in a small and submissive voice, but he must have got something wrong (a word mistaken for another, a polite greeting unknown to him), because the soldier punches him hard in the belly.

"How dare you talk in such a disrespectful manner to one of your betters? Who do you think you are?"

The king of the noldor and destroyer of your people, you fool.

"I'm sorry."

Another hit to his shoulder. What did he do wrong this time? Is he supposed to get on his knees and lick its toes? He can't fight back. A slave being beaten on the side of the road isn't remotely interesting to the other soldiers, but a slave riposting his bound to attract attention. Fëanaro pushes back the growing panic and the memories of Mairon. He can't lose it now. How would the damn Mulak want him to react?

Like a beaten dog, most probably. Mirfin always treats him as if he were a talking animal or a child.

He curls on the floor, eyes burning with shame, and at least the uruk calms down. Once he gets out of here, he'll kill as many of those twisted creatures as he can.

"Who do you belong to?"

The uruks and the younger alphas and betas all have names in the Black Tongue, mostly common nouns. Fëanaro answers with a random name that may or may not actually belong to a real person. He doesn't expect the soldier to know everyone.

"I've got no idea who he is," the uruk says with glee, "which means he's no one important and I don't have to care if he misses you. T'will serve him right for leaving his slave idling in town."

It grabs his braid (why do they always have to go for the hair?) and drags him out of the street. At least, if it's taking him to a more private spot, Fëanaro may be able to kill him and steal its weapons. But the uruk seems to like to share and they end up being followed by half a dozen of filthy creatures that the noldo will never be able to dispatch without raising the alert.

The uruk is bragging, but most of the vocabulary he uses is unknown to Fëanaro. The meaning, however, becomes a lot clearer when the creature starts to untie its breeches.

To Mandos with discretion! The quendë already had to endure Moringotto's depravity, he's not going to get raped or even touched by the lowliest, most disgusting of beasts! From his position on the ground, he launches both feet forward. One hits the uruk in the belly while the other crushes its dangling parts with full force. A blood-freezing screech explodes from the beast's chest. It folds to the ground, panting, while one of its companion takes out a knife and starts to advance.

Fëanaro crouches, ready for a fight.

"You shouldn't do it. I belong to the Mulak Mirfin. He'll kill you if you dare touch me."

"You're a filthy liar!" It answers, but it's careful. Obviously, it knows Noldor are stronger than Uruks, and fear that the Elda may overcome, even without a weapon. "The Mulak will whip you to death for your disobedience!"

"Shut up!" Another beasts interrupts him with a fearful face. "He's telling the truth. The Mulak is on his way."

So that was it. His first escape, ending in a filthy alley, trapped by monsters he could have slayed easily if he only had a sword, waiting for Mirfin to come and get him back. Knowing the Mulak he is most probably going to grab him by the ear like a child. He'll probably get that wretched manacle back too.

They wait for a long time before Mirfin's arrival.

The uruks make way for him and kneel, their head bowed to the ground in a most abject manner. Fëanaro stands proudly, his eyes firmly fixed to the other's face.

The Mulak asks what happened. Fëanaro opens his mouth to speak, to say that these... tried to attack (he doesn't have a word for "assault") him and he merely defended himself, but Mirfin glares with such coldness after the first words that he falters.

The uruks explain that they saw him idling in the street, that an idle slave is fair game, that he lied when asked for his owner. They didn't know he belonged to the Mulak and of course they would have let him be if they had. They weren't even going to hurt him, indeed, and he hit one of them before they even started. They just wanted some fun, they wouldn't have crippled him in any way.

Mirfin then turns to him, and Fëanaro merely tells him that they tried to attack him, so of course he defended himself, and since he's unarmed and unarmored, he's clearly not the threatening one here.

Everyone (including the beasts) glare at him in disbelief.

"This is my judgement," Mirfin says, and by then the altercation had attracted quite an audience. "For abusing Lady Fluithin's propriety," the beasts shake. Apparently, hurting a goddess's slave is worse than harming Mirfin's. "You will receive ten lashes, considering that the slave lied about his identity and wore no markings of ownership. All witnesses of the scene will receive five for passive participation."

"For lying about your status," Mirfin then tells Fëanaro, "ten lashes. For lying about your master's identity, ten lashes. For disrespecting an uruk while assuming the status of a slave, ten lashes. For hitting an uruk while still assuming the status of a slave, fifty lashes. For disrespecting your Mulak by talking out of turn, fifty lashes. My judgment is one hundred and thirty lashes. However, considering my own responsibility in failing to properly teach you the rules and ways of our society, I invoke the Suh-Luh. As such my final judgement is that you will receive sixty-five lashes, thirty of whom will be inflicted by the uruk you attacked and thirty-five by myself."

Fëanaro doesn't remember the flogging past the first five hits. He doesn't fight it because he knows any resistance will only add to his pain right now. It's a lesser agony compared to what Mairon can unleash, but it awakens the memory of it, and the phantom of this suffering freezes his mind.

He "wakes" only hours later. He's back in his room, tied by the ankle, laying on his belly. Someone bandaged his back and gave him some medicine that now burns his stomach. A quendë with chestnut hair is replacing the lock. Only when the beta leaves does he allow himself to cry. The sobs wake the ache of his back.

Finally, he falls asleep or passes out again.

When he wakes, Mirfin is sitting on the floor next to his bed, cross-legged, his bare chest covered with bandages.

"What happened to you?" he asks.

If anything, the question seems to annoy Mirfin.

"The Suh-Luh allows an uruk of higher rank to take upon himself part of the punishment of his subordinates, if he is at least partly responsible for their mistake. I took half your hits in order not to kill you."

"You look fine."

"I know how to take pain with dignity." His hairless brows frown. "Do you know how ashamed I am right now, Fëanaro?"

"Because I tried to escape? You didn't expect me to?"

"Of course I did, but I expected your attempt to prove your worth, not to be a flagrant display of both stupidity and weakness! What were you thinking when you tried to pass as a slave, and a bad one at that, dressed as if you wanted their attention? At least you could have shown that you have bravery, but did you? A true warrior would take at least thirty leashes without flinching!"

"Are you actually angry that I got caught?" Fëanaro lets out a mirthless laugh. "What next? Am I supposed to thank you for the torture as well?"

"It's called justice and being responsible for your own actions, a concept you seem to have difficulties with considering that you started a full-scale war for your own petty interests. If you do something against the laws, the people or fail because of incompetency, it's normal that you should be punished for it. And yes, I am angry. You endangered yourself, my own worth through our blood ties, my authority, and the very fabric of the law since I am not allowed to kill you. Do you understand that your actions have repercussions greater than your own self?"

"Justice? Where was justice when your god made me suffer for fun? How are my interests petty when I waged war for a man who was not only my father but my king? And what blood ties do you dare to invoke?"

"I told you before, and you wouldn't believe it. I am a son of Finwë and Miriel."

"What do you hope to achieve with this lie?"

"Lie? What proofs do you have that I lie? Finwë's silence? Is something false just because your father failed to tell you it existed? What proofs do you have that I tell the truth? I sang of Miriel and her face is one most beloved by Fluithin, who clads herself only with the appearance of her children's mothers. I have been named after them. So tell me, aren't there more proofs of you being of my blood than of the contrary?"

"Your very behavior proves you wrong! What brother would treat his own like you treat me?"

"That's rich coming from the man who abandoned his little brother to cross the Icy Lands! I punish you because you are worth less to me than the conservation of my people and the laws that are necessary to the existence of society. My "cruelty" toward you is not gratuitous. I'm doing my duty as a Mulak. You were king, surely you can understand that whatever affection I may feel toward you cannot come first."

"Do I deserve everything that happens to me then? Tell me, Mulak, do I deserve what Mairon did to me? The weeks he spent torturing me for nothing, asking me nothing, because he was jealous of me and my achievements and felt threatened? He didn't do it to punish me for the war or the battle, he did it because I exist and he could."

"Mairon is stern but fair. He would never do such a thing."

A laugh (mad, hurt, more like a sob gone wrong) rips his throat. It's deserved then. Perhaps the Valar were right when they said he was marred from birth, an error of nature bound to commit great evils. Perhaps there's actually some unknown, noble design etched into Mairon's gratuitous torture, born from the Song, with the purpose of punishing him for his marred existence.

Or perhaps this place is really a madhouse, and he's only one of the poor souls getting crushed by it.

"You know what? You're right. Whatever you say. I agree with you, so I'll just remove the stain of my presence. You said I belong to Fluithin, right? Then go fetch her and tell her: as Miriel did, I want to die. I want to die permanently. I don't care what happens to my soul once it's done as long as this suffering stops."

Fëanaro thought to take his pretended-brother aback, but Mirfin only watches him with a gravity not unlike Finwë's. The noldo laughs again. If this is a truth and this ner really is Finwë and Miriel's son, how ironic that he reminds him more of Nolofinwë than of himself!

"Is that what you want? To die and be erased?"

"Yes. What other choices do I have anyway? Your precious Mairon was very clear that if I die I'll just stay here. I'm tired of this place."

"You are aware that your soul will most likely be reincarnated. Your new body…"

"I don't care. If I get a final whish just tell them I want to be a cat. They look like they are the only ones who have a good time here." He chuckled. "That would please your master, wouldn't it? To have me, useless and stupid, purring on his laps while he scratches my ears?"

"If it's what you want, then I shall relay your wishes, though I find it sad that you would give up so quickly. I know my expectations are high, and our culture not well adapted to the weak but…"

He wants to scream that he isn't weak; he's just sick of the contradictory demands. Be more disciplined, stronger, meeker, better at escaping, a better crafter, no crafter at all, submissive and more strong-willed. Be a better king, be no king, be a genius, stop being special, I love how passionate you are, can't you see you're tiring me, you're too much, stop being mad! All of those at the same time? He's tired of being required to be everything and less than himself.

He's not weak. He's not mad. It's too easy for everyone to just point and pretend he's not like everyone else, that they can have higher expectations because he's the greatest (and who pretended that Fëanaro was in the first place?) of them.

"I'm just a normal person, Mirfin. Are you even aware that what he did –what you just did to me, no normal person raised in a normal family, among normal people would bear it?"

"I would like you not to define the norm by the standards of Valinor. They are rules imposed to you by the Valar, who are false gods and kept you from your true nature as an elf. I am merely trying to rectify what they did to you, the weakening of your natural will. I know it will not be easy but…"

"Stop. Just. Stop." What he wants is the acknowledgement, at least, that he's… what, a victim? He doesn't want to think himself as such, but can his experience there be defined as anything else that victimhood? Yet Mirfin only sees all of this as some kind of twisted education. He's not even a sadist. There's some kind of weird nobility in his readiness to be hurt for his sake, but this very acceptance of suffering isn't allowing the Mulak to understand that it's not the normal course of things, that living creatures are meant to avoid pain instead of accepting its existence.

He won't help him, because he doesn't even see the wrongs.

"You said you would relay my wishes to die. Please, do so. I do not think there's anything left we could say to each other."