Author's Note: Scraps from the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written. An accident sends Linear back in time to meet Sauron in First Age.


Mairon snarled, and a shimmering mirage of heat enveloped his hands. It made her twitch and look up at him, and he saw the words dying on her tongue.

"Do carry on."

Reflexively, she jerked back, hands fling up in a pacifying gesture as her heart pounded in her ears, and her throat went obscenely dry. Telling him, was a bad idea-at least talking to this younger past version of him was a terrible idea. Although…she'd only brought it up to this younger version of him because she'd been worried about this very thing, but she and Mairon of the Fifth Age had a relationship of sorts.

Her ears were ringing, and her blood was roaring, drowning out all other noise as he glared, seething, and effervescing impatient lethalness, and she sat there, hopeless gasping unable to form words.

Did he really want her to keep talking? Was it a trick? She hated when he pulled this sort of thing. She liked sarcasm, and irony, but once again she found herself floundering and afraid, because sometimes with him no one really knew. And sometimes. Most times, he was cruel.

Her head felt like it was caught in a vice. The pounding turning into a sharp pain pulsing in her temples, and drumming behind her eyes. The sensation was horrible familiar all the suddenly she was furious, and then that fury dissipated, replaced by fear of her own wrath.

She focused on her lungs, trying to concentrate on breathing, rather than the cruel vice, turning her mind to jelly. Why were they friends again?

No anger. He's a mess, but he's your mess- O Elbereth, you really are an idiot. You're his mess too. He's scared. It's about him. Keeping him safe-getting back to him-so his younger psychopathic self-Owww….

"How?" His voice hissed. Sharp like glass, it cut across her mind, pained her ears, and her body shivered with sudden cold.

Youtoldme! Youtoldme! Youtoldme!

She squeezed her eyes shut against the fiery reds and yellows cropping up in her vision, and suddenly felt weightless, even with the Eye bearing down on her. What had she done?

The words wouldn't come. Nothing could make it past her gritted teeth. Belatedly, she fumbled for the paper- that tiny scrap of paper, her dark lord had given her. But her hands felt slow, heavy, like they were disconnected from her body and her will. In clumsy fingers that did not want to move she extricated it from her pocket. Biting her lip, she tried to raise it toward him blindly reaching out until her hand his something solid. Him? A wall?

She pressed the paper against that solid warm surface, willing him to take it. To see it. To read it. It was in his hand. He had to know that! He had to recognize his own penmanship?

Take it. Just take it.

Her fingers gave out, and her arm fell limply at her side, while she hung in a limbo between scalding fire and cold darkness.

Nothing was making sense anymore.

Then the pressure lifted, and she pitched forward, thumping against a solid person sucking in quaffs of air and choking as the sudden absence of pressure was shocking in its own right. Shuddering, she curled against him, keeping her eyes closed while her head still pounded.

Through the roar of blood in her ears, she could make out the vague din of voices, felt herself being shifted, but didn't care. It was easier, easier to believe she was in the future, that the voice of Mairon, was that of the Mairon she knew. Because Mairon had become synonymous with safe. She had his note… proving it. But this wasn't her dark lord, and the voices proved it.

"Mairon, you've…." The feminine voice sounded muffled and distant, albeit worried.

"The Valar failed. Morgoth failed. Keep walking down the same road. Go in the same direction. It worked out well 'n the end, why try?"

"What is she saying?" Thuringwethil looked between the exhausted child slumped in the Lieutenant's arms, and the Lieutenant himself, who's lips curled into a scowl. "What has she been telling you?"

"She proved she knows me."

The Vampire's dark eyes shifted between them, before stooping to pick up the note the child had carelessly dropped.

"Don't-"

She gave the Lieutenant and unimpressed glare, before reading it.

"If this is real… your loyalty doesn't come cheap or without consequence-"

"…Murdered a forest…stabbed Morgoth. Tried to hit him with his own hammer. It was amazing. Should have seen him." The girl squirmed in his arms, refusing to open her eyes. "Best hero ever. Insufferable captor."

Pressing her lips together Thuringwethil, forced back a laugh. But her good humour was short-lived as the girl's words sank in.

"She's saying you wind up fighting Morgoth at some point?"

"Before Arda gets wrecked. You were there too, don't you remember?"

Mairon hoisted her up, closer to his chest. He may have indeed gone too far, but he wasn't ready for a stranger he'd only just met to start talking about all his fears, his insecurities, and his imperfections. It had far too much too soon, but stunningly convincing.

Their eyes met, troubled molten gold, meeting dark eyes churning with a maelstrom of worried star dust.

"Mairon, if he learns about this, about us potentially- did she give any clear indication why we left him?"

"There's a servant's chamber adjoined to mine. I'm going to keep her there."

"I want to go home."

The two Maiar ignored her, before the vampire gabbed her, half dragging the girl from the Lieutenant's arms.

"I know my Lord Mairon has handled you far less gently than he should have done, but I need you to listen to me. These things you're saying about him, and about me. You are to say nothing to anyone else, you understand?"

Linaer nodded, reaching out to balance awkwardly between them, feeling precariously strung out between them as she was.

"I understand. Your secrets are safe with me. Just give me my pan and the note future-Mairon wrote back, and we're all good."

Thuringwethil, paused, grimly searching the girl's face for any hint of deception, but much to her surprise there was none. Exhaustion, stress, and some dizziness, but nothing that made the fell messenger doubt her words, and after another moment she carefully maneuverered her back into Mairon's arms.

"You're oddly helpful."

The girl shrugged, turning away, but not before mumbling. "I don't have many friends, and I don't want to lose any."

"We're friends in the future?"

Another shrug was her answer.

Thuringwethil, walked beside the unlikely pair, eyes darting from Mairon, to the girl in his arms, and back to his stern jaw locked face, with golden eyes, that looked nowhere but resolutely ahead.

"I thought it was clear that ours was to be a private conversation," he said at last, voice harsh around the edges. The girl bit her lip, and the vampire's wings rustled with nervous energy.

"The tension was palpable from my room, and I felt it best to check on you."

"I was fine."

The dark eyes of his messenger swirled with motes of phantasmal dust. "Perhaps, it was not your wellbeing I was concerned about."

Mairon's teeth grit, and his will shifted, ominous, foreboding, and tinged in flame.

"Thanks for the consideration."

"Can I say something mystical?" Linaer interjected. The Dark Lady chuckled, and Mairon's gold eyes slid back the hall before them, even as he reigned in the harshness of his mood.

"By all means, say something mystical." Thuringwethil smiled toothily, relishing the Lieutenant's discomfort, even as he tried to hide it.

"In the Third Age, your symbol was an eye. The Great Eye."

"Mystical? I think that's rather sinister. The Great Eye." The title rolled from Thuringwethil's lip dripping in mirth, and Mairon chose that moment to roll his eyes.

"Well it probably can't be too mystical. If I start sounding too prescient it'll attract attention… speaking of which what's my cover story?"

She craned her head to look up at the Lieutenant.

"I feel like 'child that fell from Vampire's bedroom ceiling is going to raise a few eyebrows.'"

Mairon's lips quirked. "If anyone asks you're the hapless waif of a servant I mercifully pulled from the rejected-minions bin."

"My Lord-!"
Linaer cackled. "Shit! That's Perfect! No one will have any questions!"

Beside them Thuringwethil shook her head, dark ebony curls bouncing, and a faint smirk graced his lip, keenly fascinated by the effect his joke had, but it didn't stop him from disliking certain words.

"Language," he admonished.

"You just squeezed my head like a grape, but one bad word is beyond the pale?"

The Eye shifted in silent warning. He'd squeeze her head again, and she didn't doubt the threat was real.

"Such language speaks to a lack of education, poor vocabulary, and immaturity, all of which is most unbecoming."

The girl fell still and momentarily silent. "Well, yeah." She said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and it was his turn to frown.

"You're very agreeable."

She shrugged, settling against him, with a uncomfortable amount of contentedness. No one should have been that comfortable around him. It was going unnoticed by the Dark Messenger either.

"You're a lot like what I imagined a younger you might be like, but you're also not." The girl didn't elaborate, and Mairon refused to ask. His eyes remained fixed on the halls, of the stolen elvish tower, while his will bore down on the child in his arms.


Linaer possessed a fierce and determined love for the wayward Dark Lord she'd travelled with, clinging to his metaphorical side in a the manner of the child she was. Somewhere down the line he'd regrettably gotten used to it. Sauron, as he had been, and maybe as he still was, hated relying on others. He hated, that her absence from the proceedings was niggling at the back of his mind. She should be there. She was supposed to be.

But she didn't show up, didn't appear, and every passing moment of absence began to enforce the notion that something had gone very wrong. But he didn't dare mention it. He didn't dare ask for a pause, nor enquire as to whether or not she'd been missed. It wouldn't do for someone to use her against him.

So he waited, speaking to the Valar, forcing his mind away from the niggling worry, and irate feelings of betrayal, until at last it was over and he could take his leave.

He hurried to her room, to demand an explanation, but knocking got no answer, scowling he forced the lock open and barged in anyways. Nothing was amiss, aside from the fact her room was dark, and she was not in it. The calendar had been marked, counting the days, with today being circled. So she hadn't forgotten. She was just gone.

The frying pan was gone. He recalled her saying something about cooking.

Gritting his teeth, he set about covertly searching the entirety of the halls. The first place on his list being the kitchens, but stretching out his will, he felt nothing of her, and when he walked in to see a bunch of elves, merrily singing, scrubbing dishes and playing with soap, her absence was confirmed. They paled at the sight of him, falling silent, and a couple were scowling in open hostility, but toying with a few elves was low on his priorities. He offer them a dirty look, and proceed in his search.

All the usual places: the library, the gardens, the weird little alcove balconies she liked to duck into were devoid Linaer's presence, and real anger was beginning to take hold, and with it came a growing sense of paranoia.

Linaer was gone.

Stalking the halls, teeth clenched, and stretching his senses -probing every shadowy space, and measly niche she could hole up in- he sought her out. Once more the golden uncharted breadth of his mind narrowed into a brilliant point of yellow-hot sunlight: a magnifying glass of his own making, as he pried into the physical layers of the world around him, until at last something caught his attention.

A gossamer waver, like light winking on a spider web, there one second, but gone as soon as the breeze shifted, and he bore down on it, double back as he hastened to its location.

Winking, gossamer, faint, vague, he studied it. Poking at it, he felt it resonate with faint vibration of song. A frail echo of power, already failing, and unravelling, not so far from where his search had begun. Something wasn't right, and that he'd found this -instead of finding his damaged little Second Born, made him all the more certain of conspiracy.


The Eye shifted, a tiny flex of pressure that made her see red, and feel the first lick of fire it was famed for.

"What even is the point? You clearly don't believe anything I'm saying. You might as well just say so, so we can both move on with our lives."

Her head was killing her, and she sat there, drifting in a dark sea of pulsing head pain, while her conversation partner remained silent.

"How do you propose we both go on with our lives?"

Something clicked. She sat up straighter, suddenly caught off guard by an epiphany.

"Wait…" He was glowering at her, still limning faint angry light, but giddy with revelation, she risked ignoring all common sense. "That's the problem, isn't it? You do believe me."

His gold eyes narrowed. "I believe," he started slowly, "that you believe what you're telling me to be true. I believe you know things about me no mere child should."

The Lord Tol-in-Gaurhoth leant forward, looming over her, darkening her little corner of the world, but where should have dread, there was a faint trickle of relief.

"So you think I'm crazy?"

"Veritably."

The girl managed a faint sardonic little smile. "You're not wrong."

Her smiled faded. "I'm not exactly sorry, but I don't like upsetting you. I know that was a sore subject, and I really was trying to be understanding, while honest about it. I'll figure it out, because it's horrible how haunted and tormented you are, back home. Actually, it's pretty horrible throughout the Second and Third Ages too-it's never not horrible-"

"Stop talking."

"I'm just trying to say-okay…." She trailed off awkwardly, wishing she were back where she belonged, where things made sense.

The Eye shifted, vanished, or whatever it did, when Mairon wasn't actively inspecting something, and Linaer was left reclining in a heavy posh chair, gritting her teeth as she suffered the headache of the Age.

"How do you know any of that? Who told you? Who sent you here?"

He sounded tired, and while she could feel gaze in her direction, she had the feeling if she opened her eyes to look at him, he'd look away. Apparently, knowing he feared failure, had unsettled him-as if the vice grip on her brain hadn't been proof enough.

"You told me… Well, screamed it at the sky really." She opened her eyes wincing at the memory. "I just happened to be there. You were very justifiably upset with… everything. The Valar were failures in your eyes. You were kind of disappointed with them, and I think you probably had been for a very long time. But Morgoth also failed-came back, and proceeded to make the same mistakes- the world was being destroyed all around you, and I think you finally said everything you had ever wanted-needed to say. I also spent a lot of spare time reading history books, and you're prominent figure throughout the first three ages, but some of the stuff you did. I always wondered why, and fell down a sort of weird rabbit-hole studying you." Her nose wrinkled in disgust." Goodness, that's really creepy. Sorry."

She splayed her fingers across her knees. "My running theory is Curumo, and some failed-or more accurately- successful experiment. Maybe?"

"You've met Curumo."

"You guys are so weird. I don't understand the competition between you. I get the mutual betrayal and lying and being an issue. That would ruin any relationship, but I never understood what started all that. Did you guys hate each other in the Timeless Halls too, or is it just Arda Marred bringing out the best in people? But, as far as I know it's his handiwork. I don't know who else would've done this… I met one of Feanor's sons."
"Curufin?"

"No, the other one, but I can't see any of them doing something like this. Except, maybe Celegorm, but he's not a smith, biut he is a meathead related to great smiths-so maybe? I don't know. He's angry enough. And he hates you, and me by association, but he's also a mutton chop. So…that kind of brings me back to Curumo."

She tapped her chin. "I don't really like blaming him though. It seems too obvious, and… I feel like he knows you would skin him alive if he pulled a stunt like this. So, I don't know, but I can't think of anybody else."


It was when she'd finally calmed, her crying reduced to tremors, and the occasional hiccoughing breath, that she shifted and spoke.

"We survived, we survived together. That's why-" She swallowed and shivered sounding breathless and tired. Fresh tears welled up, and she bowed her head to aggressively swipe at her eyes.

He supposed it was the answer to his question. But instead of satisfying his curiosity, it only left him with more questions.

"Can you find a way to send me back now? I want to go home."

She rubbed at her face again, unwilling to look up at him, fingers digging into his clothes, fisting the ornate red fabric in her stubby little hands.

A long shuddering breath exited her mouth, as she pulled away. "I don't know why you did a lot of the things you did, but I know you had a falling out with your current Master." She looked up at him, very serious, with a young adolescent glower. "I don't know the details, but I know there was no loss of love between you, and when I said I saved your life twice…an altercation…he was one of those times."

"You hit Morgoth with a frying pan?" He wanted to laugh, but the girl shook her head.

"I just got in between the two of you. I didn't hit him with it." She chewed her lip. "I mean I wanted to." She glanced up at him sheepishly, as if worried she'd said something wrong.

Then he truly did laugh. A condescending, disbelieving, cruel and mocking laugh, that made her balk, and cringe away, even as he kept a tight grip on her wrist.

Never in his life had he heard anything so absurd! It was ridiculous! What leeway she might have had as an oddity, had flown out the window.

"Is that so?" His grin was bared teeth.

Scowling, and lifting her chin to meet his scorn, she held a folded piece out for him. It was the note from earlier.

"I don't know how time travel works, but I do know that you are going to be very mad at yourself if you hurt me." She opened the note, once again revealing his flowing script-the undeniable proof she knew him in the future, and his eyes narrowed, disliking her cool willingness to challenge him.

"That is a bold assumption to make." He sat down again reaching for his untouched tea, only to sit there and glower into the cup, hating how uncertain those words sounded in his own ears.

"I trust you." He glanced over at her, but she was staring into the fire, eyes bright, and something bordering on a smile tugging her lip. "You're smart, tenacious, and really good at fixing things. You'll figure this one out. I think the first assumption will be kidnapping, and you'll rattle a few potential cages, but once it's clear the likely suspects have nothing to do with it, you'll prod at a few unlikely ones before giving that up, and returning to the place I disappeared. Where hopefully there will be some sort of evidence suggesting I got paradigm shifted."

He rubbed at his neck, feeling uncomfortable, in the face of her confidence. Her staunch faith in him had to be misplaced. It had to be. But there wasn't so much as a flicker of doubt in her eyes.

"For argument's sake, let's say I go through the trouble of discovering what happened to you. How can you be so certain I would bother to rescue you?"

She shrugged. "Why are you always so doubtful? Not all things happen because logic says so. There are forces in this world that scoff at the very notion of being so readily quantified and qualified. But we're getting off track," she waved a hand. "I know you'll 'bother with it' because that's what you do. The sun rises in the east, the tallest of mountains will one day turn to dust, and you will bother, because that's what you do. You don't like leaving mysteries unsolved. You don't like your things, or in this case your people getting taken from you, and more importantly you're not going to turn your back on something broken especially when the broken thing in question might be reality itself."

She sat back, incredibly small in a chair better suited for someone of his stature. "I give you about a month easily. Two at most, to cross off your list of suspects, because there would be a lot of them. And then it would take another two months for you wrap your head around the concept of a person being sent through time, but once you did, you'd be here in, like an hour or something. So all totalled, I figure we're looking at rough four or five months before you show up here… would it be okay if I stay here?"

Mairon uttered a short laugh. "As if I would permit you to leave." He eyed her over the rim of his cup, watching the confusion, the misplaced hopefulness, and uncertainty that passed across the girl's face as her troubled mind suddenly chased itself in circles.

"And you're being serious? I really can stay here?" There was a hesitant edge of distrust in her voice.

He set the cup aside, wondering what insecurities of hers he was treading around. In the back of his head he wondered if he should not be concerned by her willingness to stick around, but there was nothing overtly malicious or dangerous about her. She wasn't particularly threatening to behold, and he was not all convinced she could swing a frying pan at a dark lord.

All he saw was a confused, delusional, and worried child, determined to desperately cling to the narrative she'd been sent with.

"You claim knowledge of the future, and history. You claim knowledge of me. I don't know how you've come to possess that knowledge, but I see no reason to let you wander freely."

"Oh, okay. Good." She sighed. "Thank you. I'll try not to be too much of a bother-oh- Draugluin?!"

Massive, powerful, and rippling with blue-grey fur Draugluin had chosen that exact moment to prowl into the library, but the effusive excitement that met him gave the mighty wolf pause. His golden eyes gleamed as he regarded a child sitting at the hearth with his master.

"You're handsome as ever! How are you?" Linaer shifted in her seat for a better view, and with his brow furrowed Mairon watched Draugluin hesitate in the face this child's insanity and flattery. The wolf glanced at him in silent canine confusion, before continuing forward, and Mairon supposed it would make sense that if the girl knew him, she would likely know his wolves.

"I see introductions are not needed here."

"What? Of course not. You don't know me because we haven't met yet, but I remember you. It's a shame…" her voice lowered "…we met under rotten circumstances. He started systematically killing wolves- all wolves- out of spite, because he hated you." She looked toward the fire. "I really don't know why. You never said what happened. But I think it was the killing of the wolves that finally proved one grade too many, and you turned against him."

Linaer hugger herself. "You were terrifying. Incredible. In that moment you were incandescent, and dark, and radiant-like fresh obsidian from a volcano. You are so vindictive, and you have a knack for making it look like a virtue. I'll never forget it-what you did. There was so much fire. You turned that horrible never ending night into day."

In her mind's eye she could see him- terrible in his wrath, dark against the blaze, but the air around him glowing. One dark lord brutally and powerfully telling another to go back to the void. It had been scary, but she hadn't been afraid of him exactly.

It was immutable truth that Zigur was a force to be reckoned with.

"Fine. If that's how you want to play." She folded her arms, shoving the note in her sleeve. "Lock me in a dungeon or whatever it is you intend to do! I'll be more than happy to wait. Because nothing will be funnier than watching you kick your own ass!"

"You dare-" he yanked her toward him a hiss, suddenly furious. She yelped, and fear widened her eyes.

Her eyes narrowed, and her lip was curled in soft smug little smirk. "Yes, I do. Because I know you. I know what you become. Besides you're pragmatic, and too smart to risk ruining something potentially useful."

"You're both delusional, and prideful." He snarled, eyes gleaming.
"That arrogance and your overall lack of respect will be your undoing."

"Oh." She frowned. "…Maybe. Yeah." She sighed bowing her head." You're probably right, but you're also the one who said, I should continue being assertive."

"And I allow you to be rude?"

Linaer shrugged. "I don't think you like it, but you've made it perfectly clear that you hate false fronts and being lied to, so we have a sort of understanding where, I moderate myself in public, because people are dangerous and liable to hurt you, but behind closed doors, you're a bit more tolerant."


"In the First and Second ages you enjoyed teas made with lavender, mint, and other herbs that were pungent or sweet."

Mairon's mind drifted to the pot of mint tea waiting for him, cold and forgotten in the library, as he saw Thuringwethil turn to regard him with a raised brow.

"Then during the Third Age, you enjoyed a type of tea from Harad that was spicy and sweet. A type of red tea, that only comes from those deserts. And when we met, while you had those preferences still, you seemed relieved there was even tea to drink. Though most of it was bitter and dark. And you hate coffee. It's smell. It's flavour. You turn up your nose every time I drink it, like my enjoyment of it, is some sort of crime." She smiled. "You call it boiled bean curd, and in turn I call your drink of choice 'scalded swamp water.' But that's only in private."

Having no idea what coffee was, Mairon decided to momentarily ignore that detail, to ponder the fact, his supposed future-self permitted this blunt, crude little commoner, to insult his taste in tea. He didn't know what to make of that, or her, but his curiosity was piqued, and even if this whole situation was some fever dream or phantasmal delusion conjured by his Master, he was willing to play along.

"So, you're my servant."

"I-no-maybe-I don't know. I'm not sure there are words in any language for whatever we are."

He tilted his head to the side. Fiery hair, both reminiscent of molten gold, and orange flame, caught the light of the hearth and seemed to flicker with uncanny light of its own.