Author's Note: So I wanted to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

Trigger warnings: Physical and psychological abuse, cannibalism

Disclaimer: I don't own


Peas and Carrots: A Drabble

(Not TYW-canon!)

His presence was dark and ghastly. The very foundation of the tower, or perhaps the earth itself, groaned under the oppressive weight, of such malignant darkness. It crackled like lightning, and clawed the walls, coiling, moiling, roiling: barely contained.

And amid the dark, sobbing and bleating in unintelligible terror a little man from Rhûn slavered and soiled himself, and all lordly deserted him.

Wreathed in flame, a yellow eye glowered down, it's narrow pupil an abyss, a void, so empty, save for malice and wrath it burned and froze, and pressed upon him, pinning him to the stone. It was around him, inside him, and through him-burning, seeing, seizing, and like a solid hand it grasped him, squeezing and under such relentless cruelty he howled and shrieked, wishing it to end. He wished to die.

The steely fiery claws retracted, and he jerked as they were yanked from his body, and he gagged on the bile that rose with their removal, and there he laid, pained, sweating, shaking, gasping, and keening into uncaring dark stone as his body jerked in shock and twitched in agony.

Tilting his hooded head to the side, the Lord of Mordor looked down, impassive, unimpressed. Kemic had ever been a coward, and there was little sport to be had here, but even still something deep inside was vindicated. What the man had done to his son, was going to be repaid. Of course Featho would never know what transpired in the dungeons. The boy was smart enough to guess torture and death, and he'd be right, but he'd never know what that entailed. He'd never know the delighted and heavy hand his father had played in such a thing.

His fingers curled into a fist, as he stood stone still, and immovable as a mountain. He was furious, and he wanted to man to lose as he nearly had, to feel the pain that could have been his. The Lord of Mordor, had only the one child. His one precious and impossible child, that couldn't have been yet was in the defiance of Eru, and the world. And for a moment, a horrible moment, he had come so close, so bitterly close to losing his little wolf, and the fear of it couldn't be put in words, nor could the fury. And he wanted this man to feel it, to feel every aching moment of it, to know what it was like to come so close to losing something so special.

Kemic had children, and he cared for them, but the Dark Lord made a point of knowing what the true values of his servants were, and they would never have been enough. But there was something the puny man feared to lose, and long before the trial had taken place, and Kemic had been thrown into this dungeon, the Dark Lord had sent for it. And it had come at last.

What Kemic held dearest was his little sister.

But the Lord of Mordor was nothing if not patient, and he quietly watched the man squirm and squeal, and with nary a word he turned on his heel and departed. Much of what he needed to say had already been said.

Kemic, stripped of all rank and titles, was left largely to the orcs, as the Lord of Mordor ascended the heights of the utmost tower to rule his kingdom, and prepare for war. But in the following weeks, the Dark Lord was kept aware of the man's state. If he was fitted with a collar and forced to labour as a slave he cared little. If he suffered minor abuses and degradations at the leisure of orc jailors, he cared not, as long as the man was fit enough for his purposes. The man was his prisoner, and his ultimate fate was his alone to determine.

And the sister he marked similarly.

The weeks crawled into a month before the Dark Lord was afforded the leisure of his sport, and while he seldom bothered with prisoners, Kemic was special. The man who'd dared assault his son! The thought alone sparked ire into conflagration, and like a gale he stalked to the sanctuary of his prey.

Arishal was the woman's name. Muscles cramped with cold and fear she huddled in a corner. Little had been done to her. She had not been stripped of her clothes, nor of her jewels. The only thing that been done, had been to her hair, once woven into intricate braids and flowers, it not hung down her back in a single thick plait.

She jerked her head up as the bolt in the door ground against stone, and it swung open.

"No! Please! No!" She screamed, as the Dark Lord of Mordor, with his nightmarish eyes appeared before her. His gaze alone was too much, to evil, too terrible, and even as she moved to get away, her head grew light, and cracked against the stone as she fell into oblivion.

Two things from the unconscious woman he took. And with great care he wrapped them as a gift in dark velvet to present to Kemic. Orcs waiting beyond the door shrank back as he slipped passed, and as soon he exited they entered.

~O~O~O~

Kemic jerked pitifully in his chains as the Lord of Mordor appeared before him, but the man was freezing, and he whined at the breaking of his solitude, wishing the menace before to depart. But the darkness encroached, and to his horror knelt beside him.

"Ah sweet little lord, why do you recoil?" His voice was glazed in honey, and the air around him was as gold. "Once you served me faithfully-shh…"

The man flinched as a gloved hand dabbed tears from his cheek. "Aww, my little lord," he laughed softly in gay humour. "You weep, yet little has befallen you. Little that cannot be rectified."

Gloved fingers gently wiped away yet more tears.

"There's no need to cry. This is a wondrous day, when wrongs may yet be rectified, and old evils laid to rest. I have brought for you something special. A gift of trifling fancy, yet devised by my own hands, will you not look and see?"

Lightly the Lord of Mordor set the parcel in the man's hands, with all the ginger care of passing a baby. And through his tears Kemic blinked confusedly down at the dark velvet in his hands.

"Go on, Lord Kemic. Tis but a dainty, but if it tickles your fancy then there is yet more I would bestow upon you, so that last we may come to an understanding." His voice smiled, and his hands were gentle. The air about him was warm and generous.

"Here," The Dark Lord said, with the same calm glowing cadence, peeling back the threads that bound the package. "Now I leave you the rest, for surely you don't wish me to ruin the surprise."

Sniffling, Kemic's shaking fingers, pinched the velvet, and peeled the soft fabric back, revealing a braid of ebony hair. Hair that could have belonged to anyone, if not for the silver rose on a silver chain that gleamed coldly amid the strands.

He choked on fear and horror, as his fingers lighted across the necklace he'd given his sister. His whole body convulsed around the sobs that ruptured from his chest. Beside him the Dark Lord stood, rising to tower above him, and in that moment the door swung inward.

A pair of orcs paraded into the cell, and he choked on hope and terror as he saw his sister between them. His terror, was mirrored in her brown eyes.

"Please!" He reached for his master's boots, but his lord was suddenly out of reach.

"Please! Don't do this! Don't do it! Not to her! Please not to her! Please!" He tried to reach for her, but chains held him back, and one of the orcs, shoved him back.

Across from him with hardly an arm's length separating them she was chained to the wall, and he sobbed, fearing what would befall her, what he was about to witness his lord or the orcs do. His mind already imagining sordid terrible things, and still he begged futilely to an uncaring heedless lord that she might be spared. He couldn't watch-couldn't and he knew he'd forced to witness what cruelty his master allowed his orcs to inflict, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

"P-p-plea-please-!"

"Please?" The Dark Lord's voice was compassionless stone.

The orcs that had dragged Arishal into the cell slipped outside, only to reappear a moment later, with a third orc. Between them, they carried small table, while the newcomer brought a plate, a chalice, a fork, and a knife.

"Please?" Mordor's Lord scoffed, as table legs scraped and dinnerware clinked behind him.

He faced Kemic, eyes burning with contempt.

"Please unhand your sister? Let her go? That's what you would ask of me?" Rancour laced his voice, and the roots of the tower shook as his words shook with the crackle of barely constrained puissance. With a mere word, he could eviscerate the man, and leave him drowning in his own entrails. With a mere flick of power, oh what he could do…what he might do yet… He was disgusted.

"Did not my son ask the same of you? Did he not plead for a reprieve? To be spared cruelty? Did he not-?" The earth trembled and the hooded gaze looked away. "You ask of me what you denied to him?"

Kemic quailed, shivering at the cruel venom that scraped his ears. But even greater was his fear as his furious lord, turned his perilous gaze toward Arishal.

She shrank back, but there was no escape, and she whimpered as a gloved hand gripped her chin.

"You love your sister."

The Dark Lord's thumb grazed the woman's lips.

"More than you ought. More than is appropriate for a brother." He smirked as the faint inhale from behind him, and victory screeched triumphantly in his chest, as he savoured the anticipation of the death knell.

His fingers fell away from the woman's face, and he turned to Kemic.

Eyes blown wide, tongue thick, heart hammering, the man scrambled away from the menace in his lord's gaze. Horror clotted the air around him, and like a gluttonous wolf his lord stalked forward.

"You love your sister, as you love food, fine wine, and amusing jokes."

Mordor's Lord clasped his hands together. "And so I shall tell you one. The greatest joke you will ever hear. It's certainly the greatest I've heard tell of…."

Kemic quivered as his lord's gaze swept over him.

"Long ago, I helped sing the earth into formation. Dike and dell, moor and mountain…I hand in the making of such things. I was painter, and the whole of the young world my canvas. Such wonders I made…but there was one and only one into which I poured myself; a treasure the likes of which the world will never see again. Its cost was great, and left me bereft of the ability to make."

He shifted to look at his captive audience. "I was rendered sterile, incapable of creating new works, begetting life…. I could no long paint and it made no difference what brush I tried, nor which stroke I used. I was bereaved of creative potential that I knew I would never get back. But then one day…." his lips quirked. "By dint, design, miracle, or my own father's will I cannot say, I sired a child. A sweet, precious, little child... He walks my earth; the only proof that I am not wholly a monster, precious to me, as no one has ever been, and yet deep down, I know in my heart that the world will one day come to claim him. And my power, for all its worth may prove too little to save him in the end."

Kemic squeaked as his lord grabbed him. "Surely you see the joke? My impossible, beautiful child, gifted to me, so that I might suffer his loss. Is it not hilarious?"

The man shut his eyes, and keened miserably, under the weight of his master's oppressive glare, and with bruising force the Dark Lord's fingers dug into his cheeks.

He fell as his lord released him, and he sputtered against cruel stone, as once more his lord rose to tower above him.

"You can't presume to tell me you've heard a joke far grander, but it matters not, for I don't find it particularly amusing. And you-"

"I never meant-! I never intended-!"

"What you intended and what you did are not the same," the Dark Lord snapped. "Whether you would have done worse or not, is irrelevant! You thought you could assail my child and the Eye of Dark Tower would look away. You thought you could fly away to Rhûn, and I'd be unable to reach you. Yet here you are. And graciously, I delivered you your sister." He gestured the woman sobbing in her chains.

"You shall dine, and glut yourself upon what parts of her you like."

Arishal howled in fear, as Kemic shook his head. He wouldn't-he wouldn't, and how the perilous flickering eyes burned. They raked him with their scorn, and fire bled into the corners of his mind.

"You wish for my clemency, then first you shall do my bidding. You will have your sister." His voice was black and slaked in venom. There was nothing but acrid scorn, and heinous power was put into it, so that each word cut. And Kemic's skin crawled and itched, as if riddling by stinging insects.

"When you're thirsty it be her blood, and her tears that you drink. When you hunger it will be her flesh that will satiate you. And when there's nothing that remains of her but barren bones, you will imbibe the stock leeched from them. When they've been bleached by boiling water and brine, they will be ground into the finest powder, sieved through the finest sieve, baked into the finest bread, and that too you will eat. You will have your sister, in all the ways a man can have one. And by your own hands you will lose the one loved, as I have lost mine. Then perhaps, when you've learned my fear and experienced but a pale shadow of my torment, I will grant you the mercy you've begged for."

He folded his hands together. "Now tell me, my lord, do you wish to wine or to dine?"


Author's Note: I'm cutting this off here, cause if I don't this will spiral into serious M territory, as if it's not twisted enough as it is. While this is a bit vulgar, he did let a party of elves be eaten by wolves, and Saruman (implicitly) forced Grima to eat a Hobbit, so Sauron doing something like this wouldn't be that far out there, even if I don't think this type of torture is really his style.