Blood and Copper on the Cliffs by Tathrin  

Fanwork Notes

This is my first fic set in the First Age so I implore you to be gentle with it. And by "gentle" I mean "please tell me if I got anything wrong so I can do better with the next one, no need for gentleness at all, thank you." It is also my fist fanwork posted on the SWG, and I am both excited and nevous; please tell me if I've done any formatting/tagging/etc incorrectly that I ought to correct. Thank you.

Content Warnings (probably nothing surprising, but best to be sure):

• the customary "recovering from injuries/torture" experience of having been recently plucked off the cliffs of Thangorodrim.
• an oblique reference to periods of past starvation.
• narration from a very messy mental state: a significant portion of the fic is narrated from the premise that our protagonist is experiencing an hallucination (caused either by his own damaged mind or Morgoth's arts) and it is dotted throughout with various references to previous hallucinations/dreams/mental-torments and a great deal of self-loathing (some justified, most not).
• one (unintentionally) non-consensual kiss.
• no one is doing okay. but at least some of them are choosing hope by the end.

Fanwork Information

Summary: Trapped upon the bitter cliff, Maedhros dreams. Or hallucinates. Or endures the mental torments of the Dark Vala, Morgoth. Surely, one of those must be the case; for he cannot have been rescued from Thangorodrim's torturous peak. He cannot. But then, why is Findekáno here? Maedhros finds in many ways that those visions which do not end with his own blood and breaking are the worst of all: because they end instead in waking, and the inescapable knowledge that such things will never again be aught but dreams to him. That knowledge is a tighter shackle than the one that holds him to the cliff-face, and the pain of it around his heart is much sharper than that which throbs through his arm. An arm goes numb much faster than a heart, and there is a limit to how much pain a body can bear before the sensation of agony starts to crumble beneath the onslaught. If there is a limit to how much pain a heart can hold, Maedhros has not yet found it. Major Characters: Maedhros, Fingon Major Relationships: Fingon+Maedhros Genre: General, Hurt/Comfort Challenges: Rating: Teens Warnings: Check Notes for Warnings
Chapters: 1	Word Count: 14, 835
Posted on 9 May 2026	Updated on 9 May 2026
This fanwork is complete.