A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed and favourited. It's good to know there are people out there enjoying the story.

yesboss21: You made a good observation and the story will come to a point where what you said will become important. Until then I ask for a bit of patience on your side because I do not want to comment lenghtily on something which will be fleshed out later in any case. Let's just say you spotted the crux of the story.

Anyway, here we go.

II. A Walk in the Dark

oooooo

Night had fallen over the Old Forest and Sauron the Abhorred was sitting alone in a bedchamber in Tom's Bombadil's house, clad in a makeshift tunic Goldberry had stitched for him with her deft hands. He had his legs crossed under him on the mattress and stared out of the window and into the darkness beyond.

There had been a great many questions on both sides after he had been resurrected. The little man and his wife had wanted to welcome him, but Sauron had declined curtly and asked them their names and where they were. They had introduced themselves as Tom Bombadil and Goldberry and had told him that he was now in Withywindle Valley. "Where is this valley?" Sauron had asked. —"Near the Shire," Tom Bombadil had answered. Sauron vaguely remembered having heard the name before, but that did not help him. "And where is the Shire?" he asked and Tom Bombadil had said nothing to that except, "Next to the Old Forest and not far from Bree-land, dol. But more I do not know, for Tom does not go very far beyond the boundaries of his land." And that was that. "Good," Sauron had said, because that was the end of the conversation for him. "Ho, do you not want to tell us who you are and where you come from?" Tom Bombadil had asked to which Sauron had answered "No" and turned away.

Then, when he had been already half-way out of the door, something very strange had happened, because all of a sudden he was frozen to where he was standing and unable to move another step forward. It took him only moments to understand that the strange little man in the blue coat and yellow boots was holding him back, working whatever twisted magic had brought him back to life. Sauron's wrath had flared brightly inside of him and a very familiar desire to overthrow and dominate and subjugate had grown within him. He would have killed both man and woman then and there and he strained against the grip of Tom Bombadil, not moving a muscle in his arm or his face, but to his growing anger and horror found that there was nothing to strain against. Tom Bombadil's will was not tangible or forceful, but incorporeal and all-encompassing, (not forcing him to kneel, but the universe folding around him in such a way that there was no other choice but for him to bend) and it slowly and carefully brought Sauron's own will to its knees and made it bow to Tom's terrible and gentle power.

Of his own free will (and then again, not) he turned around and sat down at the table, almost choking on his own wrath and hatred. But buried deep than that, there was also the mindless fear he had felt when he had been a mote, raw, naked and unshielded before Tom Bombadil when he had come home from his evening stroll, carrying about him an aura brighter than the sun and older than the stars, gentle and joyful and terrifying.

Tom and Goldberry had dinner afterwards, laughing merrily and singing songs, once in a while asking Sauron a question he did not give an answer to. He had watched them instead, with half a mind to behead the insufferable couple with the knife buried in a wheel of yellow cheese, but a look of Tom Bombadil had stopped him in his thoughts even before he could move his hand. He had left the room as soon as Tom bade him good-night and not a second too early before he lost his temper.

Now he was here, alone in a room with a long bed to accommodate him. To distract himself from his anger, he tried to get used to his new body. He remembered now the forms he had once worn, but this one was different. He heard the blood rushing through his veins and there was a heart beating in a cage of bones in his chest. The new body was slow and sluggish and even without trying he knew that he would not be able to shape-shift. There had been power inside him once, there had been a flame he had been able to drawn on to do great and terrible things. But wherever the flame had been was now only void. He felt cold and hollow, with the fire that had always accompanied him missing.

What have they done to me?

He looked at the necklace of flowers around his throat which was brimming with old, treacherous magic.

Flowers, mud and twigs. He snarled and considered ripping it off, but then reason caught up with his temper.

No, not yet. I may yet need this body, weak as it is.

He loosened the grip of his fist around the lilies when his gaze fell on his right hand. Up until now, he had merely remembered himself and who he was, but now that he saw his maimed hand with the missing fourth finger, he remembered the past. He clutched his head in his hands when a wave of memories came crashing down, when centuries and millennia raced past him and the force of the ages he had seen and lived through ripped every other thought away.

He remembered fire and flame, then darkness and cold, endless black halls hewn into giant mountains, a dark figure on a dark throne with three stars upon its brow, he remembered a tower on an island and an Elven fortress on a mountainside, faces of countless Elves and Men, he remembered forges and tombs, the heat of magma and the cold touch of the dead. Years and decades rushed past him in the blink of an eye. He saw nine kings kneeling before him and then old men clad in blue and brown and grey and the colours of the rainbow casting him down. He saw a mountain of fire and the building of a black tower, its foundations stronger than the world itself, he saw a chamber of fire—Sammath Naur, the name blazed brightly in his mind and was swept away again—he saw a ring and a son crouching at his father's side, swinging a sword that was broken. The rush of memories slowed down and at last he saw the mountain of fire crumbling to dust and the tower breaking away beneath him.

He was kneeling on the floor when he opened his eyes again.

For a few moments he crouched there on the flagstones strewn with rushes and the last feeling he remembered before his memories ended with the fall of Barad-Dûr gripped him again. Fear and despair spun a dark web around his mind—for a moment he remembered another which had also spun webs of darkness—and he came very close to succumbing to it, but then he shook his head and made a gesture with his right arm as if to chase away a ghost, and a sinister smile appeared on his face.

Nonsense. This is a mere inconvenience. I have a body, and while it is weak it is better than having nothing. And I still have my mind which as far as I can see is undamaged. I have come back from worse than this.

With renewed purpose, he strode up and down his room, testing the limits of his new form and finding them too quickly, quite to his chagrin. So instead of getting angry over the limitations of his incarnation, he sat on the bed and thought on what to do next.

And so he sat on his bed, cross-legged and lost in deep thought, clad in Goldberry's tunic and trying not to listen to the blood rushing through his veins and the heart beating in his chest.

I have to leave, he thought, there is no question about that. If I ever want to regain what I have lost, I need time and a place where I am left in peace to find out what has happened and how do undo it. Maybe I can find the ruins of Dol-Guldur if the Elves have not yet claimed it. Or Angmar, in the north. No one will have dared to settle in its ruins. Yes, Angmar is where I shall go.

Sauron unfolded his legs and stood. He opened the door, walked out into the hall, turned a corner and headed down the short passage to the front door. Unexpectedly, he found the door unlocked and unbolted.

Clever fool, he thought. As if a lock could keep me here.

Cold autumn air hit his face and involuntarily, he raised a hand to shield himself against the cold. He tried to ward off the air, but the elements did no longer bow to him and the fire that had once been at his beck and call had been extinguished. With gritted teeth he took the first step onto the grass. Hoarfrost crunched and cracked beneath his bare feet and the cold was like a knife he could not deflect. He stumbled forward and raised his head to the sky which he loathed and the stars which he feared. He made a gesture of Doom in the direction of the Sickle which hung high in the northern sky, its shimmer distant and cold.

"Your threats won't keep me from going north, Star-Kindler," he spat at the stars and then looked around at the dark valley that stretched in all directions. Where to go? He was unfamiliar with this land and when he had been reduced to a spirit, he had been in no state of mind to determine where the winds had taken him.

To his left the path went down, wound itself along the river that cut through the valley and vanished into the shadow of a dark forest. There was no wind, but still he could hear the rustling of branches and leaves and one time he thought he heard a gnarly voice creaking tree-ish words.

To his right the path wound itself up the hills where it met a second path that led into the range of bare hills to the east.

Sauron frowned and regarded the downs with a thoughtful expression.

"Cardolan's capital, I see," he said, then turned back to look at the Old Forest. "So this must be a remnant of the forests of old, when trees still walked and talked. Barrow-wights or Huorns. An easy choice then." And with that he turned east and climbed the path that led into the downs. Tom Bombadil's house fell away beneath him, but the going was slow and more than once he had to stop and search for the path because his eyes were not as all-seeing as they used to be. The higher he climbed, the steeper the path seemed to become. Gravel slipped under his feet, stones were cutting into his soles and he could not draw in enough air into his pumping lungs. Nevertheless he climbed on and some time later he noticed that he was crawling on all fours and bleeding from his hands and knees. He spat blood and curses and felt a nail splintering on a stone. In the end he was not even strong enough to crawl and he had to drag himself over the ground like a snake. He made a last feeble attempt to reach out and pull himself forward another arm's length when the tips of his fingers splintered and crumbled to dust like old wood.

Sauron looked at his fingers and then at the yellow boots that had appeared on the way before him.

"Ho dol! What are you doing, creeping away like a thief in the night?" Tom Bombadil asked.

"I am leaving," Sauron ground out between his teeth. "Have you come here to keep me?"

Tom laughed, but quickly became serious again. "No, no! Tom won't keep anyone here against their will. You are free to go—if you can. But you look like old Lumpkin trampled over you when I called him to come and eat his oats. You can go on, but crawling over the downs will take you too long and you know what waits in the shadow of the standing stones at sundown. You would need a form, but you are too small and too weak in this world to hold a body for yourself, and Tom's magic doesn't go further than the boundaries of his realm."

"So the further I go the faster I will come undone? A fine gift you have given me."

"It is not a gift." Tom Bombadil's eyes twinkled and for a moment Sauron was reminded of a time long ago when he had still answered to another name and when the first stars were born and set into the sky by their queen.

"What then? A punishment? Who are you to punish me?" Sauron stared up at the small man and not so long ago his eyes would have sparked fire and flame in anger. "Who are you? Answer me!"

"I am Tom Bombadil," Tom Bombadil answered. "And that is all there is to know."

"You are lying," Sauron said and his voice was like the growl of a big, old wolf.

"And you, on the other hand, are talking when you should be thinking and charging forward when you should be going back. Tom's realm ends where he stands and so does his magic. You are very close to the border, just look at your fingers. They look like broken twigs. So unless you want to pull yourself forward by your teeth, you should use your head while you still have one and decide if you do indeed want to go up that path and onward until there is nothing left of you." Tom regarded him with eyes that were deep blue even at this hour when everything else was grey and black.

Sauron did not answer for a long time; instead he remained on the ground as motionless as a snake that was about to strike. But the longer he remained that way, the stronger the pain in his limbs and head became and he knew that he was not far away from going back to from where Tom had called him forth—a world of eternal twilight where he was a bodiless, mindless thing with only the basest of instincts, driven by nothing but pain whose cause it could not remember and fear as its only companion.

"Why should I go back?" he asked at last. "What is there the be found in a house at the edge of the Old Forest? I am not seeking redemption."

"Good, because I haven't seen it loping about here," Tom said with a laugh. "No, little spirit, there is no redemption to be found here. But there are songs to be sung, lilies to be brought to Goldberry River-daughter, and there is a lot of time to heal and become whole again and maybe there are one or two lessons to be learned."

"I do not wish to be lectured," Sauron said.

"A foolish thing to say for someone who is supposed to be so bright." Tom's eyes twinkled like the first drop of dew under a young sun in a newborn world. "There are lots of new things to be learned every day, even for Tom, even for Old Lumpkin! If he feeds on the same patch of grass every day, the grass becomes brown and dies and my Fatty Lumpkin is hungry and unhappy. But if you move out with open eyes, you might find a meadow even greener than your old one. Don't be shy of new things just because you think you are old! Do not refuse to learn because you believe yourself wise! The first one is lazy, the second one foolish!" Tom jumped to his feet. "Because compared to many things in this world you are quite young and I am beginning to think you're not nearly as clever as you would like others to believe. My Lumpkin is not as lazy as you and smarter at that. But I believe you can learn if you can bring yourself to want it. The forest hides a lot of things and I am sure there is something for you to be found here as well."

"Like water-lilies? I already have those," Sauron replied drily and looked at his necklace whose petals were now dry and wilted.

"Ha!" Tom clapped his hands. "A sense of humour—the first but far from the worst thing to discover about yourself. We'll find other things that will do you some good. Now turn around and get back on your feet again. Crawling up the Barrow-downs is not something that befits you and you are ruining the tunic Goldberry sewed for you. Up now! Derry dol! Back to home and house, to a merry fire and warm beds!"

With great effort, Sauron turned around and crawled after Tom who was skipping down the hill and singing loudly. Had he not needed his hands to pull himself forward, he would have very much liked to cover his ears. For a moment he was severely tempted to turn around and forge on northwards despite Tom's warning. But, lo!, even after the first few steps he had crawled back, the pain in his limbs eased and the bleeding out of his nose and ears stopped. His fingertips grew back and soon he was able to stand on two feet again. With every step he took back into Tom's realm, the load of a mountain seemed to fall off his shoulders and by the time he reached the Tom's house there was a spring in his step and his strength had returned to him. The water-lilies had straightened their petals; once again they were fresh and young and shining like little white stars around his neck. Only when Sauron was standing on the porch of Tom Bombadil's house and candlelight was greeting him it came to him what he had done and that the little fool with the feather-hat had indeed kept him from walking away. But after having spent quite some time lying in dirt and on gravel, the absence of pain seemed like a blessing itself and he did not quite find the will to kindle his anger when he walked down the small passage and back into the room he had all to himself. There he lied down on the bed and this was the end of his first attempt to return to Angmar.

A/N: One of the fundamental ingredients for a story: Conflict.

The problem: Characters who hate each other will try everything to avoid each other.

Solution: Throw your characters into a melting pot they cannot escape from.

I guess this is not going to be as easy as Sauron was initially thinking.