Review replies:

yesboss21: I didn't know about the game, but it is an interesting take on Tom Bombadil. Also, it is a bit strange that even with Valarin strength, he is nevertheless unable to go toe to toe with Sauron. Valar are, for the most part, stronger than Maiar, haha. For me he is no violent character and I tried to write him as such. Tom is the master of the valley, but not in a way that uses obvious dominance and forceful subjugation, and I think Tolkien never intended him as an emperor-type even if all life in the valley might listen to him. It's more like Tom's intention for life in the valley is the natural way of things how they would go without effort and no interference from outside. I see him more as a caretaker and guardian than a ruler. That being said, he does have to take off the kid's gloves when handling Sauron. Otherwise there is just no getting past his obstinacy.

MDawn: Thank you for the praise! If my story is lovely, your review surely can hold a candle to it. Being compared to Tolkien himself is everything a humble fanfiction writer could ask for. Thank you. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story as well, we still have a bit further until we (and Sauron) are at the end of your journey.

VI. Under the Stars

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

From the mountains of faith to a river so deep

I must be looking for something, something sacred I lost

But the river is wide and it's too hard to cross.

Billy Joel, The River of Dreams

When Sauron had caught up to Tom Bombadil, they wandered the nightly countryside together, Tom singing, while the wolf followed silently. But the further they came, the further the wolf let himself fall behind until he finally sat down on a track between two harvested fields and would go no further.

Tom Bombadil turned around. "What is it? Are you tired?"

Sauron met his eyes with a glower, then he beat one paw impatiently on the ground.

"Ah, I see. Yes, I can understand that we have to talk about this. You must have many questions." Tom clapped his hand and a gust of wind swept over the fields, blowing up dried ears from the fields and wilted flowerheads from the meadows. The wolf closed his eyes and averted his face from the wind and when he opened them again, he found himself standing on two legs, back in his old form.

"What was the meaning of this ridiculous exercise?" Sauron asked, his voice low and dangerous. "Do not fear, I understood the overly subtle comparison with a dog that hunts a senseless goal very well. The creation of the One was madness, but you need not remind me of that."

"Ah, dol, I think I do." Tom left the track and walked over a patch of soft, wet grass to where the Brandywine flowed silently in his deep riverbed. "Closing your eyes to your errors will not make them go away and you seem to have forgotten that." Tom stood at the shore and looked out over the dark water.

Sauron did not reply but frowned at his reflection in the water, dark and sharp and unnaturally bright against the reflection of the dark sky overhead. Then he lifted his gaze and out of the corner of his eye he watched the small man who was swaying forward and backward with his upper body, humming a quiet tune. He regarded his round, wrinkly face and his red cheeks, the everlasting smile and the deep blue eyes and he thought of the nameless terror he had felt when he had seen Tom Bombadil for the first time. And like fear was so fittingly and unchangeably entwined with anger among wolves, and like dogs always lashed out when they were backed into a corner, Sauron, too, replied in the only way he knew when he was afraid:

"What is it to you?" he snapped. "Why do you concern yourself with me? Who sent you here? For what? There must be a great intent behind all of this! Who sent me?" Sauron stepped closer to him, resisting the urge to grab him and force it out of his throat by force.

Tom Bombadil turned towards him and although he was smiling, there was an abyss as deep as Time in his eyes that were blue even now, at the darkest hour of the night. "Nobody sent you here but the winds and maybe a bit of chance. And there is no plan and no higher will governing your stay. The Ancient Ones watch over many things, but I don't think they can see you any longer."

For some reason, this answer bothered him more than it would have if Tom had told him that his coming to the valley had been foreseen by greater powers. Until now, he had forged his way forward though space and time, in his mind the firm belief that he could build his own fate and tie it to the world's. The thought that there might be nothing there, no fate, no greater intention, no plan, no goal, but that they were all adrift in the void of chance made the warmth drain from him. He had fought to distance himself from what he believed was the main creation. He had endured ages of torment and throwbacks, of solitude and in the service of madmen, just so that he could be his own lord in a distant future. And now Tom told him that he had, despite losing the War of the Ring, obviously reached his goal. The world did no longer care what he did, he was free to go and do whatever he wanted. Then why did victory taste so stale in his mouth?

He knew the answer, but he was reluctant to truly look at it. What good was free will if there was nothing you had to defend it against? To whom would you shout your convictions and your protests if there was no-one who cared? What good was it to be king on a throne if you were alone in a world of your own? Sauron, the Lord of the Rings, would fade. As soon as he left the valley, he would go back to being a mote in a world of eternal twilight, Ruler of None and King of Nothing.

"Then why you?" he asked. "Why do you concern yourself with me if you have no orders to do so?"

"Why, because I am here and because I want to, of course," Tom replied. "And because you are lost. Tom on the other hand knows his ways and he might yet be able to help you."

There was silence after Tom had spoken and for a while they were just looking at each other, two opposites sizing each other up as if they were taking note of each other for the first time; tall and short, and young and old, burning like embers and cool like an old river, exalted and rooted; like the sun and the ocean regarding and mirroring each other, watching each other intently and recognising themselves as equals.

"Who are you?" asked Sauron.

"I am Tom Bombadil," Tom replied.

"You told me that," Sauron said.

Tom swayed forward and backward, onto the balls of his feet and then on his heels. "And the answer remains the same, for Tom, too, remains the same. But you are asking the wrong question."

Sauron stepped a big closer to him. "What is the right question then?"

Tom gave him a glance out of the corner of his eye. "I think you know."

Sauron raised an eyebrow, the remark that Tom seemed to be too forgetful to remember not lecturing him at the tip of his tongue. He briefly considered giving the question deeper thought, but came to the conclusion that of course Tom Bombadil would want to hear the obvious answer and he decided to humour him. "'Who am I?'" he asked, feigning seriousness to mask the scathing irony of his tone.

Tom, however, did not seem to either notice or bother. He turned around to look at Sauron and spread his arms. "Why, that is a good question. For all the interest you have in my name, you surely have told little about yourself. I don't even know your name. Who are you?" He leaned forward a bit and looked at him with twinkling blue eyes.

Sauron scoffed. "This is ridiculous. As if I did not know who I was."

Tom did not move, but there was something in how the shadows fell over his face and his wrinkles and his smile that made him seem very old all of a sudden. "So who are you?" he asked with a shrewd smile.

Sauron, for his part, had had enough of his cheek and his questions. He turned around to walk away along the moonlit path and find his own way back to the valley, but after three steps his temper got the better of him and he spun around."Fool!" he snarled and with every word he came a step closer to Tom Bombadil, this small, smiling, singing, insufferable creature and advanced until his large shadow fell over the little being.

"You want to know how I am? Well, I shall tell you who I am," he said and his words hissed like water meeting fire and turning to steam. He felt a pulsing in his veins and the very air crackled around him. "I am Mairon the Admirable who was there when the world was built and the pillars of creation were beaten from the molten core of the first suns at the very Beginning, I am Aulendil the Disciple of the Great Smith who forged Elbereth's eldest crown and set ten stars upon her brow! I am Annatar the Giver of Gifts under whose beck of the hand empires rose and fell! I am the High Priest of Númenor who was there when the sea came to claim it and escaped unscathed! I am Gorthaur the Cruel, I am the Lord of Werewolves, the Necromancer of Dol Guldur!"

He stopped and snapped his teeth shut as if biting off his own sentence and stared down at Tom Bombadil, his chest pumping, his fists clenched and his eyes sparking flame, daring the intolerable creature to speak.

Tom had his arms crossed and looked up at him now. He wasn't smile, much more was he frowning. But his frown was less one of worry but one of mild curiosity as if Sauron had explained the difference between various pipe-weeds to him.

"Is this who you are or what you like to call yourself?" he asked. "Because right now I see no-one admirable. And Aulendil is the name of a friend of the Valar. But you cast that friendship aside long ago, so Aulendil you are no longer. Neither are you anyone's disciple because you have no one to guide you and you told me you did not like to be lectured, as it is."

Tom Bombadil looked up and down, assessing him from tip to toe. "I see no Giver of Gifts, only someone who has nothing left to lose. Gorthaur the Cruel is as much the a title and as little a name as the Admirable, and I see neither werewolves nor the dead bowing to you. Who are you?"

"I am the Lord of the Rings!" Sauron shouted and a murder of ravens burst from the trees above and for a brief time the shine of the stars seemed to dim before they returned to their former brightness.

Tom was still very much unimpressed. "And the rings have been destroyed. Clearly, you are no longer lord of anything, be it dark fortresses, wolves or rings. What else?"

Sauron opened his mouth to reply, but no words would come to his mind. He shut his mouth again. Silence came creeping back over the silent meadows and acres.

Tom Bombadil was still looking at him. "Is there any other name?"

Sauron wanted to answer, but there was nothing he could say. There was one other name, yes, which he abhorred as much as those who had given it to him. Sauron, yes, that was what they called him. Not his name, but what he was named, a description, a title in the worst sense and a word so foul that it defiled the very syllables used to form it.

And it is not who I am, either.

He was looking out over the nightly acres. The first grey streak of dawn tinted the sky in the east. Mists began to rise over the meadows which lay blue and turquoise in the gloaming and over the riverbed of the Brandywine. The grass under his bare feet was cool and wet with dew. His legs and arms felt numb and his mind was fogging over when here, at the edge of the river and under the stars, realisation crawled up his throat like a lump he had to retch out.

He knew what to say now, but his pride was keeping him from uttering it aloud and embracing the truth. But then he thought of the other Dark One before him whom he had served for two ages and he remembered how pride, blindness and unwillingness to see his own flaws and madness had finally led to his downfall. Morgoth had wanted to rise higher than anyone else, but he had gone from a god with the world in his hands to a mad moon orbiting and reflecting his own thoughts back at himself, until all noble intent that might have been there in the beginning was lost and had become so distorted that it was rendered unrecognisable. In the end he was a fly caught in the spider web of madness he had spun with his own hands. It was so tragical and so comical at the same time, for no one would have been able to bring Morgoth down, no one except himself…

I committed almost exactly the same folly when I created the Ring. I very nearly destroyed myself, although I swore to myself I would not step into the same traps like my old master. Do I want to fall and be remembered in the same way as him? Surely not. I have begged and crawled more than once and I was not too proud to do it, because reason was stronger than my sense of pride. But how strong am I when I cannot even bear my own truth?

And so Sauron swallowed his anger and his pride and he said, "There is one more name … but it it is not my true name either. There is nothing left. No name. Nothing left of me." He had not wanted to speak the last sentence aloud, but there it was and when he listened to its echo in his mind, he knew it was true. Something within him, a fire—his anger, maybe?—went out at this. He tore his gaze away from Tom and stared at his reflection in the dark water, feeling hollow, but also strangely calm and a bit puzzled.

Tom followed his gaze and stepped a bit closer to where the ground beneath their feet suddenly fell away and after a drop of about three feet, met with the water of the Brandywine. "That's what Tom was thinking. There is nothing left. You have had a great many names, and I see them lined up behind you like pearls on a string, but none of them is any longer who you are. You cannot go back to being Mairon or Annatar or who you once were and there is no longer a place in the world for Sauron the Abhorred. You have lost much more than a piece of jewellery and a dark tower." Tom was not singing now, nor was his voice skipping up and down and to and fro like a bird as it usually did.

I have lost myself. He followed him to the edge of the shore. "So what am I?" he asked, and this time the question was genuine.

Tom inclined his head to the left and to the right, tapped his finger against his chin and then hunched down at the shore, pointing at something out of his sight. He followed Tom and hunched down next to him. His eyes followed Tom's fingers when the little man pointed out something white spotted with brown and soft dangling in an unfelt breeze just below the edge where the firm ground dropped away. It was a feather; a down, judging by its small size. It was ruffled and encrusted with earth and dust, its flawless white spotted with brown. It dangled helplessly in the wind a hand-width above the water and in the dim moonlight he could see that the feather was kept from falling only by a silvery string of cobweb attached to a blade of grass which grew at the edge of the shore.

"As old Tom sees it, you are not unlike this feather here. You are dangling on a thin string, while your past mistakes still cling to you and make you too heavy to ever fly away from them. Sauron has fallen over the edge and weighed down by the things he has done, he has no hope of ever climbing back up again. Many deeds are swept away with time and waiting, but some are too great for that and they remain." Tom Bombadil regarded the feather as it was pushed up by a soft breeze and fell again when it subsided. "Before long, Sauron will be pulled under by the weight of everything he has done."

The feather turned and whirled, spinning from white to brown and back again until its colours and edges blurred.

He crossed his arms and suppressed a sound that teetered somewhere between being weary and angry. "So? Hearing you talk it sounds like you have all the wisdom of the world in your head, however unable you might be to express yourself clearly. What counsel can you give me, Tom Bombadil of Withywindle Valley?"

Tom rose from the ground and brushed off his knees with his brown, nimble hands. "I cannot see the future, but only who you have been in the past, little spirit. You have been a slave for many ages. To Morgoth, to mad kings and queens and to the Ring who was to no small part yourself. You asked me who you are, but you must see that it is entirely up to you to answer this. It's your decision who you will be and what you will do, whether you will continue in this manner (but I can assure you that you will not last much longer if you do) or try to become free of what you did."

He snorted and this time, it was clearly full of scorn. "And how would I do this?" he asked scathingly. "I cannot change the past, not even if I wished to."

Tom turned around, his hands braces against his sides and his blue eyes bright. "No one can. This is beyond all the powers you might know, even those who are greater and older than both of us. But Tom was talking about Sauron. Sauron is caught, Sauron is lost. In this case, the answer is obvious: You have to become someone else. Cast Sauron off like a snake sheds its old skin. And then you have to find out who is standing where you are standing now and who is looking back out at you from the water."

He looked down at the river and his own nameless reflection looked back at him, one eyebrow arched in a questioning manner, almost demanding as if it wanted to say, Well?

"Become someone else," he repeated. "Change." He stopped himself, tasting the word on his tongue and then gave a derisive snort. "Ha. Change. I have changed more often than I care to remember. Changed my name, my face, my alliances…"

Tom hummed, but it was less amused and more serious than he had heard him speak before. "Ho dol, no. This is not the change Tom is talking about. Tom is talking about the true change. One that happens on the inside, not on the outside. You are empty right now; does it surprise you that you are fading? You need to find something to fill yourself with, before the winds will strip away the thin shell of Being that's hiding the hollowness at your centre; only then will you be able to talk about I and Me with meaning ever again."

He smiled, albeit without humour. "And you think this will be enough to appease the gods and stop the world from making me come undone?"

"The world is not doing anything to make you come undone," Tom Bombadil said. "You yourself cut the ties binding to it and only you can renew them."

He was pacing silently up and down he riverside when he thought about how the greatest part of him had been destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom together with the Ring, and wondered whether there was enough left of him to pull himself back out off the abyss. But then his face darkened almost immediately. "So let us suppose that I did indeed succeed in regaining a Self," he said and stop in his tracks. "What would the Valar stop from smiting me where I stand as soon as I took form again?"

"I don't know about the manners of gods," Tom Bombadil said, "but when you spill ale over someone else's coat, the hobbits of the Shire at least ask for forgiveness."

He barked out a laugh that was about as mirthful as it was genuine. "Hobbits! How does everything these days come back to them? Truly, I am surprised they haven't claimed dominion over all other peoples with all the wisdom they supposedly have."

"Because they know well enough what they want and who they are. It is not in a Hobbit's nature to dominate and subjugate and hurt, but you they are an extraordinary sturdy folk, and stubborn when they need to be. And they are remarkably able in finding the simple solutions for difficult problems."

"If everything were this simple—," he began, but Tom held up his hand.

"I said simple, not easy. There is an important difference between the two. It is simple to understand that you need to apologise for an error, but how easy is it to get to your knees and ask for forgiveness with true repentance?"

For a while they looked at each other and neither said a word.

"So," he said thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed, "my choices are to either to come back as a repentant and mend my ways, or be unmade either now by myself or the Greater Gods as soon as I return?"

Tom shrugged. "Who can say for sure what is going to happen? But you have to make your decision and make it quick, little spirit. There are cracks between the world that go deeper than stone or fire and already they are opening up around you, following everywhere you go and becoming bigger with each passing hour. You were nearly gone when I found you in the forest. The threads keeping you here are wearing thin; you are standing on a crumbling edge."

He looked down at the necklace of lilies. The petals were drying and wilting and the pristine white was giving way to a dull grey.

He smirked. "So in the end it all comes down to what I want. A fine choice, though, almost as fine as the ones I left others with in the past."

Tom Bombadil did not reply, but was looking out over the river which was gurgling softly in a night that had already lasted too long to be considered ordinary.

His reflection looked back at him. For a while he stared at the suddenly foreign appearance, then he raised his head to look up at the stars. "Submission or annihilation… is that what they offer me? Is this all that is left in this world for me?"

Tom still did not answer.

He thought of something someone else had told him a long time ago: Some bridges, once burnt, cannot be rebuilt. Some doors, once shut, will never open again. Some opportunities we have only once, and yours is gone.

The stars shone distant and cold, but to him it seemed like a twinkling mockery, an unspoken demand.

You have your choices presented before you. Choose.

Submission or annihilation?

They stood in silence, Tom with his arms crossed, while he had his fists clenched at his sides and the cold from the wet grass crept up his legs. The feather dangled in the wind in silent turmoil. At last, when a chance meeting of a hidden whirl of water and change in the current met at a stone underneath the surface, the calm water of the Brandywine surged up in a crest; they both watched as the lap took the feather and the string of cobweb snapped. The river carried it away swiftly, and the mud-encrusted feather quickly sunk into the murky depths of the water and soon it was gone and there was no trace that it had ever been there.

A/N:

Phew. This was by far the hardest chapter to write what with so much that had to go into the dialogue. Everything up until now was the setup for this chapter which is the turning point in the story. It was a balancing act between railroading the conversation along a planned track, checking off bullet points like milestones while trying to avoid making it seem artificial or contrived.

I lost count of the hours I spent arranging and rearranging certain questions, sentences and paragraphs until I was finally content with what I had on my pages.

Now I just hope that you readers are content with it as well.

As always I'd love to hear your thoughts, opinions, praise or criticism. Let me know how you liked it.

A rough estimate for the next update are the days around the 6th of May.