Rise from the Ashes by AdmirableMonster  

Rise from the Ashes

Everything is over.  The skies are slowly clearing, and streaks of blue bleed through the dark brown smoke.

It’s not unlike the skies of Númenor after the Fall.

The Mouth finds himself seated on a fire-blasted rock, alive.  Surprising.  Odd.  Confusing.  He has lost his helm.  He has lost his master.  He has lost everything, again.

The world does move in cycles, he thinks.  Algae blooms and dies in ponds.  The Sun and Moon rise and set.  The land is poisoned; the land is healed.

This land is poisoned.  Thus, logically, the next step is for it to be healed.  It all spun away in the end, didn’t it?  Tar-Mairon—what was left of him—was mad.  The Mouth supposes he was, too.  He feels empty, lost, and floating, sore and sorrowful.

(The Witch-King is dead.  His Queen is dead.  Not for the first time.)

You have been alone before, he tells himself, staring at the dead and poisoned land.

Perhaps now someone will do something about the quicksilver he knows has been bleeding into the water.  Perhaps he could do something about it.  He has had some experience, after all.