Author's Note: I'm alive! I'm sorry everyone for the ridiculous hiatus. I wasn't planning on leaving at all. And I didn't think it'd take so long to get back. I've finally started going over the next chapter of TYW, and uh, yeah, it's a mess! So there will be a bajillion scraps for the pile.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 5 Tar-Mairon Scrap Pieces
(Oh yeah. A lot of this dialogue did not make the cut. A lot of it.)
Fuinur was a candle in the breeze, a cold breath of a dying thing so easily snuffed, as he brazed the darkness of his master's presence. His lord heeded him not, consumed with matters of state. His pen was an elegant dancer across parchment, and it did not willingly stop its soliloquy of scratching for him, but his lord was aware of him.
He saw the great leviathan: all seething darkness and crackling with fire like lightning, and felt its heavy gaze, as it saw him: an ethereal glowing gnat to swat. Well Fuinur knew his place, and knew the delay was his lord's brand of spite, getting back at him for the intrusion.
'Pardon my lord.'
His lord had not pardoned him, and so he stood, as his master's own personal Numenorean Statue.
The pen rose, nipped the ink, and he felt his master's eyes sweep over him, with all their condescension, as if surprised to find him still standing there. Then once more the hooded head was bowed, and the pen was spitefully scribbling at him and there was nothing he could but wait upon his lord's pleasure.
It was not a wholly uncomfortable silence, and he much preferred it to what was liable to come. He tried not to think too much in advance, as once again the quills metal tip clinked against the glass of the inkwell.
The desk's top was void of darkness before him, as the roiling dark shifted, and his lord's attention fell on him, and did not turn away. It was a heavy horrid thing, and it forced his shoulders to hunch and his spine to bend, and it was the Eye, no, oh how worse in that moment it would have been. No. It was his lord's potent gaze, like fire under his hood, and the furious will behind them.
Fuinur's eyes closed a moment, his cousin's voice echoing in his ears-his one gossamer thread of hope.
'I bet on thee.'
With both his hands Fuinur clung tight to one saving grace. That one measly promise of salvation. Hs cousin never lost his bets.
"I did not send for you."
His master's voice was cold and stagnant, bereft of anything save vague impatience.
Folding his hands before him, and forcing himself to stand straight and imperious before the will set against him, he nodded.
"No my lord, you did not."
The Dark Lord's eyes narrowed, and his will became a sharper more intent thing as he surveyed the miserable wraith before him. With muted terror Fuinur dimmed, a silvery sheen of deathly cold un-light that could not deny of truth of itself even as Fuinur sought to reassert his pride, and hide his terror. It could not be done, but he'd never bothered making mention of it. Doubtless the wraith was well aware of the futility of his actions, and sometimes it amused him to pretend his little messenger was successfully keeping secrets.
"I spoke with your son-"
"And he sends you now to do his dirty work," the Dark Lord's voice was dangerously flat, and perilously devoid of any tremor.
"No Lord, he did not send me."
Fuinur bowed low as the darkness of his Lord's visage shifted. The Lord of Mordor settled back in his chair, head tilted, with one dreadful finger twirling a slow threatening circle his chair's armrest.
"Yet here you stand."
"Yes Lord." Fuinur's voice dropped with soft reverence. "I come before you because I spoke with-"
"A self-professed traitor." His master cut him off, and Fuinur's head shot up as the unspoken accusation caught him off guard.
"A self-professed?" Lips curled in a frown Fuinur took a brazen step forward, sensing the accusation and unjust wrath broiling deep under his lord's cool façade.
"I am yours, and yours alone. Bound to you-your ring-you truly question my loyalty?"
Wounded pride held him fast, and distress choked him, as he gazed in a muted quiet frustration and anxiety, because it wasn't true, and that his lord would consider such a thing was unbelievable. His hands curled into fists at his sides, as he stared at his master, feeling hopelessly betrayed by such an accusation.
But there was no mercy, no pity, and no remorse to be found in his lord's eyes. Nothing, but the brittle silence and the idle rest of a once twirling finger.
"All loyalty given to me is mine to question. And yours in particular, Fuinur- I have always found to be…" The Lord of Mordor paused, and his finger fell still in terrible dance.
"Questionable."
Like a stone the word dropped with a physical puissant weight behind it that made the wraith cover his ears as it seemed to echo in his head, too loud, and terribly repetitive.
But while the wraith cowered, shook, and trying and failing to blot the word from his mind, the Lord of Mordor shifted, finding his mug of tea to be of greater interest than whatever story his son had sent Fuinur to tell him.
The Dark Lord glanced the rim of his mug to see wraith standing morbidly dim and pale. The silver band across his gleaming brow was a cold flimsy thing, so easily broken, and the Dark Lord's eyes narrowed. His fingers tip-tapped in the fold of his arm, cruel and calculating.
"If I recall…." He trailed off as if he was indeed dragging an old memory to light. His voice sharpened, dripping condescension and cold ruthless malice. "You wept when you learned of Numenor's fall." His fingers fluttered in a minute twitch. "You had already bent the knee and sworn me fealty, yet you wept…and then had the audacity to send scouts to survey the wreckage for yourself, as if you thought there might be something left to salvage. I took away you home, all that you held dear, and now you, a proud little Ringleader of the Faithful, serve me as wraith bound to Arda for as long I desire you to do so, unable to live, yet forever denied death, doomed to walk cold and houseless, feared and despised by all."
Fuinur's shoulders stiffened, such impotent useless rage burning so pathetically, as he stood incapable of doing anything at all, and yet even that-that was no more than mere illusion, a gift to be stripped away at a moment's notice, and already he felt it, the sleuth of righteous fury slipping away from him like a clot of dirt in a fast stream, because his master would never truly allow him to hate him. And that perhaps, he hated most of all. And even that hatred was fizzling out, unnaturally supressed by a mind other than his own.
"But I suppose you made you peace with all that?" The Dark Lord mused, finger pressed thoughtfully against his lips. "Had you not accepted the ring I had offered, you would have ended up a wraith regardless, cast asunder and lost until the end of days under a hill in Valinor."
Fuinur's hands curled into fists at his sides, as he braced for an impact. He knew where the conversation was leading, what terrible precipice it was hurtling toward. When his lord was anger, and feeling vindictive, his Lord loved dragging up such glorious little facets of his past to cut him with. An even though he had known what was to come the moment he decided to speak to the Dark Lord, did not make the pain any less unbearable.
"So how about your precious cousin then? Right before your eyes I stole him, and bent him to my designs, turning him into the monster you always feared he might become, before setting him against Numenor, and against you." A smile; cruel and sublime curled the Dark Lord's lip. "Do you not hate me Fuinur?"
His lord's voice was greased with venom and the visage of ruddy light and terrible shade before him, stung his eyes to look upon. And Fuinr turned his face away unable to look and yet stubbornly unwilling to concede.
"Would that I could." The words scraped wild and desperate from his lips, and then the last scrap of hatred and anger he felt for his lord was snatched from him, and in its place, there was nothing but a empty chasm where anger and hate ought to have been, but the emotions slipped from his fingers like fish, as his lord denied him. And stripped of feeling he stood mutely for a moment quietly floundering about for words that without passion took such a great effort to say.
"If you gave me leave to hate you, to flee from you….If you placed the blade in my hand and commanded me to stab you, Herumor is still enthralled. As long he remained a slave, such freedom would be untenable, as you would always loom as a threat above him. If he wishes to bugger you with his profound drivel that is his own affair, but I won't put him at risk. Were freedom truly offered, I would remain."
He bowed, mighty Numenorean Lord once more, but his brow was cragged by worry, and a frown bent the corner of his lip.
Once…how many happy tales began 'once upon a time?' Once upon a time he'd known who he was. He'd been a whole person, a free person, if not a better one.
Once upon a time, in another life, faded to gossamer memories and warmth he'd never again know, he'd loved Herumor, but now he went through the motions with apathy and anger both, not knowing what else to do, because he assumed he might love his cousin still, were he in possession of his faculties, but the truth- the terrible truth was that he didn't know for sure. He might not. He owed his cousin nothing, and had no reason to love him, after the hand he had playing in Fuinur's own enslavement.
He didn't know what he truly felt, nor what the truth of himself might be, and he knew that he never would. It was yet another thing denied to him. It was one thing to hate his master for, that he did not have the capacity to hate his lord for.
The Dark lord knew all this, and Fuinur loved him in spite of every lie and all the pain, because his lord willed that he do so. At least he hoped that was case. The notion that such a thing could be genuine when he possessed so many reasons to hate his lord, and knew so many times his lord had denied him such an emotion lent credence to the assumption that it was fake. It was as unnatural as the apathy sitting hollow in his breast, but the horrible truth was that he did not know what he truly felt, and he would never know.
In silence his master watched him, privy to every fumbling step he took, trying to slog through the quagmire of uncertainty and doubt that gnawed him.
"Fuinur."
His head snapped up, to find his master turned toward him, appraising him. His tone was melancholy, and his eyes might have been kind. They might have in that moment been patient, understanding, and sympathetic, and with a twist of concern Fuinur looked to his lord, trying in turn to understand, to find the swiftest most efficient means by which to blot out all that troubled him. But command came and no answer was given.
"Fuinur." His lord spoke again. "If you truly loved your cousin, you would have killed him the moment opportunity presented itself. You knew-you always knew what it was you were become, whether it was to be by joining Ar-Pharazon's failed armada, or joining me. You knew what was to come. And knew you well that your cousin's fate lay entwined with your own. But rather than suffer your loneliness, you did nothing."
His master's voice was still soft, still gentle, still limned in melancholy, but his eyes had narrowed, and with what cold capricious spite his lord undid him, as he fervently shook his head railing against it.
"You were a selfish man. You've always been so selfish," his master tutted like a parent passively scolding a child, and the deeper his lord's word dug, as his voice slowly sharpened with a pulse of russet puissance. "You didn't claim me as your master because you wanted to protect him. You knelt before me because you couldn't stand to be alone-"
"That's not true!" Fuinur's fisted hands trembled. It wasn't true! It had never been true! But with a coy tilt of his hooded, and a quirk of his lips, his lord undid him.
"So you have always said. And I'm sure repeating that little lie, helps you face yourself in the mirror. But speaking verily, you are here because he betrayed you to me, and he is here, because the great Lord Fuinur, was naught but a coward who couldn't do what needed to be done."
His Lord's voice was a thin blade of steel sheathed in silk, and how it gutted him. If he'd possessed entrails to rip out, they would have been bleeding in his hands as he stood trembling and shaking. It wasn't true. It wasn't what had happened! It hadn't been like that! It was lies his master spoke! Yet his lord's words had struck deep with a potent venom he couldn't fend against.
"Truth is a cruel thing is it not?" The Dark Lord asked, eyes gleaming with wicked mirth.
"Then it is with the bitterest of truths I come before you now!" Fuinur snarled, seething with wounded horrible wrath and pain.
Above him his master scoffed.
"And what know you of truth, Lord Fuinur?"
The Dark Lord rose and flaunted toward him a sweep of velveteen robes, and Fuinur lurched back from their sudden proximity.
Tall, mighty, and dreadful, his lord loomed over him a tower of menace and despair, and Fuinur balked, steeping back and looking away, only to freeze, as his face was caught in his lord's gentle hands.
His shuddered in his lord's grasp, as a soft noise of terror bled from him before he could stifle it.
Too warm, his lord's thumb grazed his cheek, leaving a wheal of fire against his own icy twisted fëa. Jaw clenched, eyes closed, rigid and petrified he stood unmoving enduring in bitter silence such abhorrent ministration.
"Poor Fuinur," his master crooned. "Poor Lord Fuinur. Ever thou hast been ungrateful, thankless, and accursed, doomed time and time again. Yet I have stood stalwart by thy side and spared thee torments greater than my own contrivances."
Fuinur's hands balled into fists, as his master's fingers scorched, and he stole himself against instinctive jerks and flinches, enduring in prideful silence all his master did. But spasms juddered scornfully across phantasmal white light and despite his efforts he could not stop them entirely, as his lord smiled over him.
Amid the dark, roiling ether, fire crackled, and lightning flickered with fey power, and Fuinur recoiled in earnest as it white-washed the world leaving him blind. Gone were the shadows and shades that textured his dark world. There was only brilliant horrible hurting light. He fell to his knees cowering before it, no longer cold, no longer formidable, and no longer able to see.
"I spare thee still."
His lord's voice was thick with golden honey, melodious, and made of molten gold, so rich so beautiful to the ear, so horribly, and gut-wrenchingly familiar.
He saw- he saw- amid phosphorescent flashes of fire, and brilliant puissance, Fuinur saw him as he'd been so long ago. Against his better judgement he looked up flinching at the sight of pristine pale hands too near. Squinting he tried to see beyond the façade. It was a phantom, a trick of light on a wall, a delusion, but there were no cracks. It was a perfect and glorious lie, and where he'd fallen he knelt, overcome and completely undone by the incomprehensibly glorious lord his master had once been.
"I spare thee even now, yet I know not for the life of me why." Tar-Mairon smiled eerily, his eyes of metallic gold flickering uncannily, with fell hidden thought. "As thou hast done naught to prove thyself worthy of such regard." In his resplendent regalia of mauve, cream, and gold he stood as no king ever had, sacrosanct, haloed in a golden light, as if the sun itself had crowned him.
"Thou think me cruel, but never have I been devoid of mercy." The beautiful brow furrowed, and it seemed they might have been back a thousand years, the stone white beneath his knees, and the hearth fire flickering much larger, darker, and malicious in a massive stone pit, and the air might have smelt of perfumed oils and incense.
For a moment, a horrible, gutting, awful glorious moment, he might have felt the flutter of his own heart in his breast, the swell of his lungs, the rush of blood pounding terror in his ears, and he might felt the inexplicable prickle of salt in his eyes, as he turned away from the visage of the priest, and his fire, and the air of glory that cloaked him in a fell light.
For a moment, he might have been nothing more than a man.
An elegant lithe hand touched him, and gently tilted his head upward, and his lord was troubled. A perfect perplexed, innocent frown tugging on his lip, and how wrong the sight of it was. He hated the sight of it, and hated any hand he may have had in the distress caused to his vulnerable master.
"If I were to guess it's my innate kindness that has spared thee." Deeper his lord's brow furrowed, and he knew his lord feared such a thing being taken advantage of. Someone somewhere had taken cruel advantage already, and Fuinur hated them for it. He hated them as he loved his lord. And he cautiously rose slightly, tempted to reach out, and offer what miserably feeble comfort he could, to try thought he knew he'd fail to assuage such abyssal woe. Purpose kindled and sparked hot-like never before he was driven by the need to protect and to serve. Had not been why he'd come in the first place? He knew that he had, that this was naught but a misunderstanding to be righted. He needed only to make his lord understand that, but even as he looked up, something minute and subtle shifted in his lord's eyes. Something that drove a thin sliver dread into his earnest plan.
"Harken Fuinur, and mark my words well, for there will come a day when my patience favours thee not, and thou shalt learn where the bounds of my mercy lie."
His lips quirked in a thin, humourless smile, as Fuinur was forced to gaze into a face made of lies and was yet more real than anything he'd known in years.
Memories unbidden, came flooding back, and he shifted uncomfortably under their assault. He remembered every why he'd sworn fealty, why he'd twice refused the ring that had been so graciously offered only to succumb to cowardice and crawl back, begging for forgiveness, for help, and for the gift he'd so callously spurned.
His life in Numenor passed across his mind, with more clarity and realism than it had over millennia. He reviled it, and hated it, disgusted by his mistakes, ashamed of them, and bitterly he watched his life unfold, seeing contempt mirrored in the depths of those molten eyes.
They saw him for what he was and had been, and he hated them. He hated his lord's gaze upon him. He hated it, and was powerless to stop it.
"Truth is a funny thing is it not? How easily it strips us of our veneers, and reveals all the little secrets we hide from the world-all the little lies we tell to the world, until we come to believe them ourselves."
Tar-Mairon's voice was beautiful and melodious, but grey with apathy.
"It was with truth your cousin spoke when he said I would have greater need of you than him. And here you are." Tar-Mairon wave a hand at him. "My esteemed, noble, messenger, whilst he is least among your brethren."
His lips quirked wistfully, but his eyes glinted with something dark and perilous.
"The prodigal son, if ever there was one. Yet his proclivities have often proven themselves a trifling amusement. Still…." He trailed off, turning away, only to pause and look down at the wraith from the corner of his eye. "Entertainment can only curry favour so long, and the same joke repeated after thousands of years sooner or later begins to lose its charm."
His smile was serene, and warm against the coldness of his eyes, and warning in his voice, and before Fuinur could say or do, he was seized and golden lips kissed his brow.
Then his lord deserted him, leaving him cast in the cold darkness beyond the realms of men, as all the world was made an ink slaked canvas of moiling shades, flickering shadows, and bleary silhouettes once more, but against the terrible cold, his master's threat chimed like silver bells, where he knelt.
The Dark Lord, was standing over him, furious, arms folded, and seemingly contemplative.
"Truth is such an amusing thing, is it not?"
His eyes flicked to his wine. "All the best jokes I find are founded on it." He smirked under his hood, and might have uttered a shallow laugh. "Such a lark. You are too young to fully appreciate all its sublime comedy, but since you are so eager to claim knowledge of truth, I'll do you the kindness of illuminating, the depth, breadth, and height of your folly. And perhaps you will find a sliver of appreciation for the leniency I grant you. However, given that has taken this long, it's possible that I've just set myself to an impossible task, but for your sake I'll endeavour to try."
He settled in his chair and rested his hands atop one another.
"If nothing else, you may yet learn how terrible and cruel truth can be. One day you may be grateful for my lies, and all the horrors they keep you ignorant of. There are worse than me. There has always been worse than me."
His voice was limned in jaunting laughter completely at odds with such a grim declaration, but his eyes were unendurable, and Fuinur did not raise his head to meet them.
"Fëatho, is impossible."
There was a pause, and Fuinur dared to glance upward, to find his lord's hooded bowed. His eyes darted to the floor, when the Lord of Mordor reached for his tea.
"The child should not be-no-he cannot be. He's impossible…yet here he is." The Dark Lord waved a hand, gesturing to the world. Head bowed, Fuinur didn't see, and Mordor's lord didn't care. He nurse his cool herbal tea, while his fingers tip-tapped in a nervous flutter.
The cup was set aside with a clink, and Fuinur heard the shift of papers.
"My Ring when I made it, was perfect," The Dark Lord whispered reverently. "Something so pure, so perfect, precious, and pristine, could not have been made without terrible cost."
Adoration glimmered golden in Fuinur's eyes when he at last dared to look up. The whole of his master's countenance had softened, and the Dark Lord uttered a soft laugh. "My greatest creation, costed me nothing more than the ability to create. And I confess at the time I was…displeased with the loss, but perfection is such a rare thing, that had I not been made sterile, I would have wasted my days thereafter, trying to maintain such an accomplishment, and I might have been grown bitter for it, when nothing ever again was ever so beautiful. So you see, Fuinur, between my Ring and Eru's will I was rendered sterile, in all senses, stripped wholly of my creative potential, and I made my peace with that."
The Dark Lord, grit his teeth. It was such a funny joke.
"So naturally the only time I laid with a woman, she got pregnant."
Fuinur's brow furrowed.
"That's not coincidence." The Dark Lord hissed. "After stripping me of creative potential my own beloved father," he sneered, "saw fit to give me a son."
His lips quirked in a humourless smile. "Is that not a quaint little lark? Is that not a delightful truth to hear?"
"My Lord-"
"He gave me a son!"
The desk trembled as Dark Lord slammed his hands down standing up. Back and forth he paced, fingers fluttering.
"He gave me a son. I have a son I should not have, because He willed it. Because nothing I have suffered thus far is enough. Nothing will ever be enough-and he knew-! He's biding his time, waiting for the day I let my guard down. He's counting on it," his lord snarled. Rancour cloaked him, and in its embrace the lord of Mordor might have trembled.
He might have trembled, until he willed his clenched fist to calm at his sides. And nonchalantly he folded his arms. Sourly he glowered out the window.
"I never gave thought to having children. I can't say that I ever wanted to have any. But I know if I had dreamt of child, none of my imaginings could have been so fair," the Dark Lord intoned dryly, as if he hadn't been on the verge of spitting fire moments before.
The Dark Lord looked at his gleaming little wraith. "He's perfect Fuinur. He's precious," the Lord of Mordor whispered with the same honeyed reverence he lavished on his ring. "He's beautiful, and Eru gave him to me to see me undone, because he knew I'd-"
The Dark Lord's voice cut off, and he returned to his chair.
"The boy's doomed. From the moment he opened his eyes, and I saw the undeniable light of kindred spirit he was lost. They'll take him away, and there will be nothing I'll be able to do to stop them. I should have ended- whilst he slept in the crib. Infants pass unexpectedly sometimes. It happens."
His lips quirked. "I'm a fool," he mused. "I thought-I convinced myself that if I had a hand in making something so good, I couldn't possibly be a monster. And he is, Fuinur, he is good: without hate or jealousy. He's nothing like me."
Sooo… I altered a lot of this. The Tar-Mairon thing never happens. And a lot of the dialogue has been rewritten or cut out. But basically Sauron is an emotionally abusive git who will siphon off his own angst by bringing up the worst memories of his servants and then threatening to kill their cousins.
Year's only just begun and he's already the winner of the #1 Dad Award!
