This is a rough one! I also am very sick and sad so I feel it’s terrible but
Discussion of Lalaith’s death and taunting about it, mentions of torture and sexual assault, injuries and blood loss, some dehumanization
“Tell me of your daughter.”
Húrin raised eyes narrowed from wariness and from the blossoming of bruises that had half shut one eye and blurred the other.
“That is not your usual question,” the indifference is so forced his mouth is bitter. The Vala smiles widely and steps closer to him
Húrin grits his teeth and says nothing. He is exhausted, aching from the litany of tortures Morgoth had contrived today alone. The various whips of course, ones that bit into his skin and pulled like brambles. Then, a strange, sinister device that filled his mouth and stretched his jaw until he was choking on an unnatural cold that coated and stuck to the soft tissue and swallowed his screams. His voice had not recovered for some time after. It seemed to Húrin he was forever half healed, the hurts from past abuses opened and reopened again and again.
Following this, his hair had been roughly seized and bunches of it hanging around his ears to his shoulders had been sheared off, leaving jagged cuts on his scalp and the back of his neck. The bucket of frigid water that had been unceremoniously dumped over his head had not been sufficient in removing the blood and loose strands which still stuck to him.
During the previous session, the hilt of an elven blade had been shoved inside him when he had refused to identify it as of Gondolin or elsewhere. The bleeding had not slowed until he was dizzy and limp though not nearly so unaware that he could not also suffer the indignity of the injury being treated with the intimate application of a burning salve. It still hurt to walk and his balance was precarious even now as he stood before Morgoth, wrists wrapped in a cold, rusted chain that connected to the iron collar about his neck.
The Vala tugs on the chain almost thoughtfully as he continues.
“Your little girl. I heard she was lost to fever not four years past.”
“A fever you sent!” Húrin spits at him. The Dark Lord ignores this outburst, or rather, he allows it. Relishes it. The tension in the man’s body, the clenching of his fists…Morgoth’s eyes dart hungrily over him, taking in each sign.
“You must have been in such distress,” the silken gentleness that enters His voice makes bile rise in Húrin’s still raw throat, “To see her pain and be so helpless to stop it.”
He remembers Lalaith’s cold, clammy little hands clutching at him before the healers deemed it too dangerous for them to remain with her, remembers when her laughter stopped and then her speech and humming. He makes a sound in his throat, a half formed sob that takes his breath away.
Morgoth, still watching him, nods as though satisfied.
“Did you tell her you wished Ada could take all the pain for her?”
The flood of grief and rage that took him needed an outlet, no matter how reckless.
“Shut up!”
“It is far too late, is it not, Thalion, to take her pain? But I can show you quite easily what that pain was.” Morgoth holds his eyes as he draws a vial from his dark robes which seem to fold back of their own accord.
Húrin will have little clear memory of the next period. The fever rages through his battered body and it is not long before it feels as though any liquid held within him is gone. He gasps and pants, having frantically clawed at his own filthy, tattered robes, tearing them off and leaving ragged scratches down his arms.
Morgoth watches him with some satisfaction though the man is much too far gone to taunt. Occasionally his eyes dart up or to the side as though he has heard someone else in the small chambers.
It matters not that Morgoth must order a treatment given before one full day and night has passed, it will feel far longer to the tortured man. The Vala leaves his healers to their restoration, giving Húrin one more glance, drinking in the wild fear and misery in his eyes as his newly cut hair is pulled back so a small bottle can he tilted into his mouth
The water they pour down his throat renews his grief and his tears long before his sanity.
(I have the scene with the sword hilt written for the record)
When orc scouts reported to Melkor that mortals had created a game for the very first day of April where you fool one another, he chuckled gleefully, quickly creating a plan to fool his lieutenant.
While Mairon did not seem to enjoy it, he certainly did…
