Labor of Love
for D. by request. Merry Christmas!
You only endured it by thinking of him during the darkness of a hundred thousand nights. You bore the long centuries of pretense, of abasement. You humbled yourself before the miserable, sloppy elves, pretended penitence, withdrawn into your perfect role as an obedient servant, an altruistic giver of gifts. It was nothing, after all, compared to the torments you'd suffered willingly at his hands. What did the elves truly know of punishment, of humiliation? It was only a shadow of what you would return to them one day.
Because you, after all, had been taught by the master of Pain. The one true Darkness.
The elves didn't trust you at first, but they kept you around because you were useful, because no one else had your skill at the forge, no one else had the fine touch to cajole metal to blossom beneath the torch as it did in your hands. And so, over the decades, they grew accustomed to seeing you pace their wide halls beneath the carven pillars; the guards at the gates let you in without question at all hours of the day and night.
You made sure of it.
You buried every true feeling, every worshipful thought, deep, deep within. But you never forgot.
They laughed, called you humorless, a drone unable to play, and you bowed your head in seeming submission, hiding your eyes so they would not see the darkness that swelled within at the thought of "play" with him.
In the darkness you remembered, remembered how he'd once toyed with you, kept you constantly on edge, so you never knew if he only kept you by his side for your utility, for your loyalty, the efficient lieutenant who could keep everything running.
Or maybe, just maybe, the hints of affection were real.
It didn't matter, you'd told yourself then. Regardless of what he felt for you, or if someone so great and powerful was even capable of emotion, all that mattered was that his attention might occasionally pass across your skin like a dark laser. You were never more alive than when he flayed your skin, slashed you with dark magic, stabbed you and beat you and bound you… because then you knew his regard was focused utterly upon you, and you could see by the faint smile tugging at his lips that he took dark pleasure in this kind of play. And it was enough. You didn't need him to love you. You only needed to worship him.
You did it all for him. It was worth it, you'd told yourself, worth kneeling at his feet, worth debasing yourself, worth breaking what you once had been to pieces, for a moment's glimpse of his dark glory. That was why you'd betrayed Aulë, turned your back on everything you'd once stood for, duped the other Maia. Why you'd followed him into darkness and beyond. How you'd set yourself to learn his every mood, his slightest preference. How you'd tried to model yourself after him, failing miserably because you were nothing compared to him.
And you'd failed him in the end.
Now, you sweated at the hearth of the master forge deep within the Mountain of Fire, its flue drawing magma from the center of the earth, the heat blistering your skin. This forge was the only one in Middle-Earth that suited your purposes. It was the only fire that burned hot enough for your needs. Hot enough to match the scorching desire and everlasting shame that scalded you from inside.
You'd failed him.
But there might be another way.
You'd searched the oldest records in the libraries for the information, scrolls that crumbled at a touch, written in languages few remembered. But you'd found it, found the spells you needed at last. Then you'd augmented them with those particular creative skills that he alone had encouraged and inspired.
Now you would complete your great plan. As you knelt in the windowless chamber hollowed out from masses of rock beneath the mountain, your dark prayers reverberated inside your head. You sprawled upon the stone floor, abasing yourself in his memory. You would breathe every breath in worship of him.
Every time you swung the hammer, every note the metal sang upon the anvil, it was all for him.
You'd woven obscure, dark spells into every craft teaching you'd given the elves; as they greedily drew upon your knowledge, you smiled in secret at the binding spells you'd placed on every one of the rings of power you taught them to create.
It was all for him. Every one of them, in the end, would be bound to him and his dark will. You swore it every night in your secret heart.
And if enough of the souls in Middle Earth were turned to worship of him, maybe, maybe all that energy, all that power, directed by a single source, would be enough. Enough to breach the Void.
And now, at last, you drew it from the fire. Engraved upon it with a fine tool the flowing, intricate letters, the last incantation to bind all the world to his worship. And as a final, supremely fitting touch, you chose the language he had created to work the final spell.
You held your great creation aloft, drew upon all of the energy of your own soul, wove it into the magic, poured yourself and all your worship and all your love into it, and spoke the words aloud in his language:
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
And as you placed it on your finger and felt the shackles of power extending across Middle Earth, all the other rings twisting to your dominion, you saw Celebrimbor's furious face, the shocked expressions on the lesser elves, and you laughed as you revealed yourself.
At last, they would all know.
At last, you would atone for your failure. Your failure at that burning moment when he'd finally demonstrated without a doubt what he truly felt for you. You'd wanted to die beside him, but he'd sacrificed himself for you. He'd declared it for all the world to know.
And in this moment, as you drew on the power of the Ring, as you bound yourself into it as you'd bound yourself to him, all the world would be bound in turn. At last, the dark reward would blossom, the searing and impassioned creation of a hundred thousand nights of regret, of pain, of revenge—of love.