Title: All These Empty Human Souls
Summary: The dark is cold and the dark is hungry and the dark will claim you…
Fandom: The Silmarillion (and if I ever get around to re-writing the Avengers/Silmarillion crossover idea, this would be the prologue)
Characters: Maglor
Words: 1,239
Tags: maglor, memory loss, dark, very dark, but there's light at the end of the tunnel, tw: self-harm, implied self-harm, tw: suicide, implied suicide attempt, (s), insanity, mourning, loss of self, maglor falls apart, his mind becomes his jailor, did I mention that this is dark?, silmarillion, all these empty human souls, writing, fanfiction, passing of time unnoticed and ignored, slaughtering of –tense's
Warnings: This is actually quite a bit darker than most of the stuff I write. There is implied self-harm and at least one attempted suicide.
Does this darkness have a name? This cruelty, this hatred? How did it find us? Did it steal into our lives or did we seek it out and embrace it. What happened to us? That we now send our children into the world like we send young men to war; hoping for their safe return, but knowing that some will be lost along the way. When did we lose our way? Consumed by the shadows, swallowed whole by the darkness. Does this darkness have a name? Is it your name?
(or is it mine?)
It wasn't until the sixth time that he was able to conjure a picture of their faces. In the void that was now his mind and world, they faded quickly, no matter how desperately he clung to the memories. The seventh time he tried, they were gone again. It wasn't until the twenty-third time that he said he'd stop trying altogether.
He lasted maybe a week before trying again and this time, the void spat back a false group and he looked at them for hours before realizing that the names and faces didn't match.
After that, he began to suppress the memories altogether. It no longer mattered that he couldn't remember what his family members had looked like. What mattered now was the fact that they were gone and he dealt with that the only way he knew anymore.
By the fifth century (was it the fifth century? It seemed like it must've been longer, it had to have taken longer) since that twenty-fourth time, he couldn't remember his brothers' names or even that he had brothers at all.
By the seventh (seventeenth) he couldn't remember his own name. All he knew was that he was sad. Why was he sad? Perhaps that he'd never know. There was a gaping emptiness in his mind and he didn't know what belonged there or if anything belonged there at all. The only thing he could remember anymore was the Void so maybe the Void was what belonged.
He watched the world go by and the 1,000 year mark (100,000) he concluded that he was different. But he still had only the Void and by the next century (thousand centuries) he decided that he must be the only normal one.
The years passed in a blur of ache and the by the time the next decade (century) ended he was screaming. They tried to make him stop, but they couldn't destroy him. The Void takes so very much, but it doesn't like things being taken from It.
He keeps screaming. At some point between the centuries, he finds a harp and the screaming stops for a moment. He watches it cautiously, unsure of why he is so drawn to it. He never does figure that out.
In the waking world the screaming is replaced by singing, but it the dreams it never even dulls. There are faces in his head, but whose he doesn't know. They're screaming too, only they are so angry and there is red coming from their eyes. In the Void, he touches them, so curious, but then the tables turn and he is the one screaming again.
He leaves the harp behind and screaming in his head quietens slightly. The music is gone and the screaming returns. That's what the odd ones say. He doesn't know what they mean. He's still singing. Why don't they like it?
You are nothing say his dreams and the water beckons. For a moment, it envelops him in its welcoming embrace, but the Void won't give up its prize for anything. The screaming continues.
He's an it now, and it is nothing. It has no say, it has no choice. It screams, but it doesn't know why. It has to scream, that it does know. If it doesn't, the monsters will return. Its head is its enemy. The Void has claimed its prize.
He wakes on the cold shore, gasping for air. A small victory. A meaningless victory. Nothing in the grand scheme. The song continues. His voices cracks and breaks and dies and so he carves the song into his arms. The song must go on, the song must not end.
It's not enough; you're not enough, NOT ENOUGH. He wakes crying. The moisture is red. Why is it red? What does red mean? For some reason, he feels red is bad, but why is it bad? Red is not bad, the Void whispers, Red is good, find the Red. He doesn't know where the Red is. He claws at his arms, screaming. The Red comes. The Red comes in puddles and he lies in them, weeping. The Red is wrong and the Red is bad and the Red hurts. He wants the Red to go away. The Red keeps coming. All the screaming he can rip from his aching throat won't make it go away and he stumbles to the water. Make it go away, make it go away, make it go away. His arms burn beyond anything the Void has ever inflicted, but the Red slowly washes away. He should feel relieved, but he doesn't. The Red has stained, the Red hasn't washed out.
He has stumbled from the water mindlessly. If he doesn't do it himself, the Void will pull him out. The Void won't give him up. The Void wants him. Why does the Void want him? WHY! He screams and then he sings. What's the difference? He doesn't know. He doesn't see one. Aren't they the same? He still doesn't get his answer.
The Void is laughing and something about its laughter stings him, like it shouldn't be mocking him, but before he can think about it, he is flailing and the Void is hissing and the moment passes. The Void is angry now, but he doesn't know why. There is a voice in his ear whispering that he should be ashamed to call himself a member of a royal family. He's confused. He's not royal. He's nothing. He doesn't have a family. He doesn't deserve one He doesn't need one. What's a family?
Somewhere, something is laughing. And he feels odd somehow. The word 'disappointment' comes to mind. He doesn't dwell on it. What is disappointment? Why is he feeling it? He's not; the answer somehow comes, uninvited, and he begins to scream again. The emptiness is consuming him. He keeps screaming. He hasn't stopped screaming, but people stop noticing. It's not until someone walks straight through him that he realizes though, and the shock is enough that he stops screaming and stands there for a few minutes. Then he starts again, louder than ever before, trying desperately to be noticed. No one glances his way.
Inside him, the Void hums with pleasure. He falls to the ground, the fight gone out of him. He can feel the Void descending over him, but he doesn't try to fight it. Take me, he pleads. Take me. And it does.
Except it doesn't.
He wakes to someone bending over him, concerned and he can't decide what to be shocked about (they can see him, they care, how did they beat the Void, nothing beats the Void) so he just settles for staring at them blankly. He's so cold. He shivers once. Weakness. He flinches away.
Suddenly, the cold is ebbing away, replaced with something he can't name, but it feels good. The Void retreats and suddenly all he wants to do is sleep. He feels safe, but what is safe and he doesn't know, but he doesn't care. Warm, he is warm, that is the word, he is warm and he doesn't care that he doesn't know what safe is. Warm is safe, he decides, and the empty ache in his chest begins to finally fade away. Maglor, he remembers suddenly. He is Maglor. He is Maglor and he is warm again. He can't remember anything else, but that is enough for now and he sleeps.