Author's Note: I'd first and foremost to apologize to those who say the update for TYW and found no third chapter waiting for them. I took it down, because it was terrible, and it's a long story. I am very sorry about that. But the new version of the third chapter is up.
Disclaimer: I don't own.
Of Glorfindel and Gothmog, as Told by Sauron
"Frûmsnaag," the Dark Lord crooned. The melodious tenderness in his voice warped with the subtle finery of a throaty 'r' into a muted growl. "Little Wolf, bedtime is upon thee. Come."
The small child looked up, and padded over. He was a mere doll in the Dark Lord's hands when he lifted the child up. His red hair fell in short downy waves, so unbelievably soft. The boy was soft in general; made of tubby rolls of baby fat he was only just starting to grow out of, and a tranquil personality.
"How was thy day, my pup?" He blew on the boy's head, watching the cascade of flyaway red strands. The boy giggled, and scratched at his forehead.
"Boring," the boy pouted curling forward in a silent desire of a proper hug. "It's only fun when you're here."
The Dark Lord smirked. He took a great deal of pride in his wit and found it wondrously delightful when his sense of sarcasm and humour was appreciated. Every Wednesday he visited his son at six, to read to him. before putting him to bed.
Of course, he made a point of making sure to visit more often than that, but at least one of the day of the week it was a mandated appointment on his calendar, rigid, and immovable. He had to be with his son. It was important that the child get used to the strict protocols of a militant society, and organization was a virtue of great worth, that he wanted to make sure was instilled in the boy as early as possible, for one day his whole world would be made of schedules, and calendars. That's just how the world worked. (A properly functioning one at any rate.)
Literacy was another lesson of great importance, and even at an early age his son had a shelf of books. Most of them gnawed upon and when he'd asked the boy what had happened to them he'd blamed his toy wolves, saying they didn't have anything to hunt, and the books had been lying there.
Writing books for his son in Black Speech had proven a delightful challenge. A militaristic language for a dark warmongering society, he'd learned swiftly how few words were suitable for his son's developing impressionable ears. Of course that was also the moment he remembered that all stories were, sooner or later, about war, and bloodshed.
In Numenor they'd read their children stories about warrior kings, and their epic battles, and it seemed small children were quite keen on the presence of blood, provided it was being by shed by the deserving…or rather they enjoyed the exploits of those who deserved to shed blood.
But it was only in the peaceful centuries after the Last Alliance that the blood had been taken out of such stories, to make them more suitable for children, or at least more suitable for those who had to read them to children, and didn't want to deal with the hassle of answering difficult questions.
All that being said, there were no epics of Azog the Impaler on his son's shelf, just to be safe. He didn't need his son getting funny ideas about the effectiveness oaken tree limbs in the heat of battle. How that dwarf had managed to live as long as he had, was beyond the Dark Lord's reckoning, but no son of his was going to stake his life on a piece of bark, that was for sure.
The choices available, were all well read, and he made a mental note to write him a new one. A developing mind needed fresh inspiration and information. It was vital to ensure the preservation of curiosity and intrigue.
Boy still tucked to his chest, he pulled one from the shelf. The book was called Where's My Cow, and it was the one his son loved most. Riddled with tooth marks and wrinkled by once wet saliva, the book was an old favourite, and the only one mass marketed for children worldwide.
Naturally it was about a father, who was a lazy oaf in charge of law enforcement rather than a country, and was consequently lucky in the fact he got to be home every evening at six with his little son, unlike the Lord of Mordor, who might find himself suddenly holed up in an emergency meeting, or treating with foreign dignitaries at unreasonable hours, and was, as result forced to schedule family time. But that was life for a leader.
He opened the book, full of whimsical pictures, with cows and friendly little green dragons, because dragons were more than the ill-tempered hoarders the world made them out to be, and it was important to him that his son have an appreciation for people's differences, and some people liked sleeping on mountains of gold more than others.
It was an old standby, and certainly he could read it tonight, but an idea for a new story, something bold and brazen, full valuable life lessons, and few a tasteful elf-jokes was tempting.
Far too tempting, and he slid the teal covered book back onto the shelf.
They'd search for a lost cow another night.
Slipping from the boy's room, child in his arms, he made his way to his wife's study. She sat at her desk writing, and without asking, with his free hand he began opening and closing drawers, searching for what he needed.
"Can I help you?" The boy's mother asked at length, giving him an incredulous look.
"Possibly-no." He lifted a red leather bound book up. "I found it."
"Wait! Wait a minute! There's a toll for ransacking someone's drawers."
He turned, smiling in her face. "I have a son in need of a story. I'll pay later."
With that he turned on his heel and sauntered off, smirked as he caught her, grumpily mumbled 'with interest you will,' as he reached the door.
"That a threat?" He asked, eyes flashing. From where she stood in front of her desk she glared. "Only if you want it to be, Tar-Mairon, dearest. I'll have you know in today's economy rates of interest are absurdly high and fluctuate…hmm…If I'm being generous…I would say every ten minutes. You'd better hurry, foreign reading policies aren't cheap these days."
Laughing he waved her words away, and left her to her number crunching, journaling, or whatever she'd been doing.
"What's a desk troll?" Fëatho asked, as they made their way back to his room.
"Why it's a troll that lives in a desk, of course."
Fëatho frowned. "I've never seen one."
"That's because they only come out night and hide during the day."
The child's head perked up. "Can we look for one?"
The Dark Lord's lips curled into a smile. "It's bedtime now, but perhaps tomorrow you can look for one. To lure one out of hiding you have to clap your hands, as loudly as possible. Then you'll need to say you have chocolate. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to shout it. And the perfect time to catch one, will be when your mother's sitting there, as it will already looking for a place to run away to."
The boy nodded along, and the Dark Lord's smile warped into a vicious smirk. Let his wife make of that what she would. He was the master of intended interest, and it served her right, for spouting heinously poor economic jokes at him.
His pressed his lips into the boy's hair as they settled in his bed.
When the Dark was sitting, with his legs awkwardly draped over the end of the child's bed, and his little wolf was curled in his lap, he opened the book's cover.
"No pictures." Fëatho pointed to a page full of Tengwar.
"This is an adult book. Grownups don't read books with pictures in them. We have to use our imaginations, and make-believe the things we read. It's really quite fun," he assured the child.
"Just get comfortable, and then when you're ready, close your eyes, and listen to what I say."
"I'm ready," the boy said. And the Dark Lord pursed his lips.
"You always say that, and then ten minutes you're squirming about a grub, and crawling over me."
"I'm ready," Fëatho urged, and his father narrowed his eyes, at the open honest face peering up at him from his chest.
"You're sure?"
"Shoor! Pomise!"
The Lord of Mordor rolled his eyes, giving the boy a generous five minutes before he broke his promise and started wiggling, but without another word on the matter, the Dark Lord obliged.
He read to his son in Black Speech, especially when reading tales of elves. If one was going to make a language in mockery of theirs' he thought it an equally good idea to mock the childishly, over-dramatic manner in which they began their insipid little fables.
"Once, not so long ago in the grand theme of things, as Ainur reckon the passage of time, there once lived a happy little Balrog named Gothmog. And he was a very good little Balrog. He was big, and strong, wielded a whip of fire and sword of flame."
His son uttered a soft gasp, and the Dark Lord placed a hand over the boy's eyes as they fluttered open.
"He liked taking long strolls in the snow, drinking oolong tea, and singing bad karaoke."
The Dark Lord's head tilted, and maybe his eyes lost some of their molten lustre. Maybe not all had been so bad. It was a time in his life he rarely thought back to, and it was surprisingly harder than he'd initially thought-paying respects to fallen friends, who'd deserved better than they'd received. The Void was no place for any of them…well most of them….
His hands slipped to upward, and his fingers curled into his son's hair: so soft, so warm, and so far removed from cold harsh snow and stone.
"He was a captain," the Dark Lord said softly. He wasn't even looking at the page in his hand-wasn't even reading. On a whim, he was making his story up, and his son was strangely stiff and quiet, as if he felt the shift in his father's demeanour. One of his little hands rose, and curled around the Dark Lord's fingers.
"He was a great captain, commanding many: orcs, men, other Balrogs, and more besides. He was well respected, loved, and feared. He had a deep booming voice, and an even bigger laugh that shook the earth, and he spent his evenings with his soldiers, pint in hand, exchanging crude dwarf jokes."
"Then one day, his good-for-nothing, nihilistic, completely mad, disorganized, helter-skelter, scatter brained, bad singing, discordant, ill-humoured, cruel, vindictive, spiteful, rotten, frightfully ridiculous, cunning, conniving, dishonest, deceitful, low down, miserable, git of a master-! told the innocent Balrog the elves' hidden city of Gondolin had been found, and they needed to take it while the elves were unaware."
For the sake of continuing the ruse, he turned a page in the book.
"Good, sweet, and innocent Gothmog bowed before his master's mighty throne saying; 'Yes, Lord. As you will it, so it shall be.'"
The boy chose that moment to start squirming, and the Dark Lord counted the scant handful of short minutes of stillness the babe had promised him. All told they were worth a narrowed gaze, and an impassive apathetic gaze as the boy shifted about as he was wont to do and the Dark Lord wondered why he'd even bothered to assume the outcome would be any different.
Pointy elbows and bony knees hidden under fatty folds of deceptively soft skin, bruised and jabbed as he wriggled about, and the Lord of Mordor pursed his lips quickly growing irritated, but too vindictive to aid the child in his search for comfort.
"Father," Fëatho whined when he tried repositioning himself unaided. Little fingers buried themselves in folds of heavy dark cloak.
"Ada," he tried again, still petulant and quickly growing frustrated. When Quenya failed him, he tried again in Westron, beseeching his father's help.
Exhaling, the Dark Lord looked down at his son. "Well, what it is you want me to do?"
"You're all lumpy," the child groused. "And I'm cold…." He gave his father's cloak a pointed yank, scowling at the immovable fabric. Much of the cloth was confined beneath him.
"And you're all knobby. How came a grub like you, to have such pointy joints?"
"I'm not a grub! I'm a pup!"
"Oh no," the Dark Lord mused tapping a finger to his lip. "You're definitely a grub."
The child pouted at him. "Please…."
"You failed to keep your word, and I should reward you for that?"
A plaintive whine was all the response he got, as the boy slumped and rested his head against him. Exhaling the Lord of Mordor rolled his eyes. He really had gone soft in his old age.
He lifted the boy up, so that he dangled rather precariously. He smiled, clinging to his father's hand.
"Where is it you want to sit?"
At last the boy was settled, swaddled in the folds of his father's dark robes, until only his eyes and nose peeped out. Warm and lost in the dark, the child contentedly closed his eyes, only when he was most comfortable, and subsequently causing his father the most discomfort.
Heavily the babe was pressing every inch of fat-roll into his diaphragm, and the Dark Lord wondered if his son wasn't doing it on purpose.
At last he continued, telling his son of Gondolin, and the elves that lived there, filling in the important details. Describing the elf lord's in such exquisite and mocking details, as elves so often did- paying homage to the superficial details: the colour of his eyes, the length of hair, the gleam of his sword in the wan sunlight, the tenor of his melodious voice, the floral scent of his body odour, the yapping of his annoying dog, all his family relations including that one questionable sea slug who modern paleontologists were still debating the place of in the universal family tree, and most importantly his favourite flavour of sherbet, because those were the things that mattered.
For every elf lord, he did this, because it was good that Fëatho know who his father's enemies were, if not why they were counted as such in the first place. Explaining, he served someone who wanted to destroy the world, and all life therein, and might yet attempt to do so once more, wouldn't be easy to explain to one so young. Nihilism such as that, could not be so easily defined. So he left out the 'why,' distracting his son with the 'who.'
"…Then the Elf Lord- with his streaming golden hair- flung Gothmog from the cliff, adding murder to the obstruction, and terrorism charges already mentioned. And the Balrog's children didn't have a daddy anymore. Gothmog; honourable and noble as he was, was hated and reviled throughout all the ages that followed. While Glorfindel got away with it, without so much as guilty twinge: he was embodied by Mandos, returned to Middle-earth, and lived happily ever after as a celebrated hero, proving that you can be excused for just about anything if you've got fantastic hair, because they'll be so overwhelmed by your luscious locks, they'll forget to ask inconvenient questions."
He paused a second. "The end. You can open your eyes, if you wish."
The Dark Lord knew the boy wouldn't. He could hear his son's gentle breathing, all his little muscles slackened in slumber, and a smile touched his lips. Ever so gently he folded the boy into his arms, and carefully placed him in his bed. With that same care he slipped from the tiny bed.
His fingers trailed through his son's feather-soft hair.
"Sleep well, Little Wolf."