They were mine. That was how this started. Well, maybe it started before, when my father remarried. Maybe it started when he focused on my half-brothers and that interloping wife of his more than me, or maybe it started with his death. I guess it doesn't matter now, will never matter, because the past is far beyond my reach.

When my father was slain, I was mad with grief. When I heard that the damned abomination that had stolen my father from me had taken my jewels, my crowning achievement, I was simply mad.

How dare he? How dare he take the only thing my father had praised me for? The only thing that had drawn his attention from my half brothers and again to me? The things that had given me my father back, back to like how it had been before, how it had been when we were a family and were happy. How dare he?!

I don't remember the Oath I swore. I don't remember my sons following my example. I remember Nerdanel's face when we left-all the pain, and grief and a bit of rage, and a bit of helplessness-but it was for her, and for our sons I was doing this. I had to get them back. I do remember the killing. I do remember my confusion, my rage, alight within my breast, and in my eyes. I remember being denied ships, denied the chance to get back what was mine, what I needed to pull my family back together. I remember thinking "They're only flesh. They're only bone. They can't stop me-I am fire and fury. I need to get them back." And I remember red swords, the horror and resignation on my son's faces, soon masked by determination hard as diamond, and just as brittle.

I remember telling my host to let the ships burn. I remember thinking, "What's a few more fires? I will burn the world for my family. I will burn myself."

I remember fighting again, this time the fighting was black rather than crimson, and I would not stop. I would not stop until I was stopped. Stopped, by a fire greater than mine, forced to leave my quest to my sons, forced to go to the Halls of Mandos, where yet I burned, always burned, and watched, and was tormented.

My eldest was taken and tortured. My youngest had been burned-at my command. My sons were torn apart by death, by the weight of my cursed oath, by me. I had ruined them. They entered the halls, one by one, and with each one, I felt my fire dim. I had ruined my family. I just wanted to be together. I just wanted them to know that I loved them all, and was proud of them all, and that there was never a replacement for them. I had captured the light of the trees to get my father back, and to light the paths of my sons with the light that could not be extinguished. Seeing those, my gift to my family, in the hands, on the brow of that Darkness caused my blood to boil.

Upon seeing my eldest enter the halls though, I had realized, that I was the wolf who had torn my family apart. I had ruined them. I had ruined them. I had destroyed their happiness in trying to get it for them. I had broken them, far more thoroughly than the darkness had. I was the reason for their suffering, and sorrow, and loss, and pain. I had not given them love. I had given them doom. I was their doom.

And so I waited, and waited, and waited for my second son to come, so that my sons could be complete before me when I begged their forgiveness. I yet wait. But they are mine, my sons, and I will have them back.

They are mine. I will wait.