Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He understood, in the end.

It was not a long defeat, or a slow one. It came all at once, triumph in one moment, the crash in the next, but he understood.

The crumbling of his tower, the unmaking of his ring. He could feel its absence cold upon his withered fingers.

Celebrimbor had looked distant, shocked. How Annatar had managed to shock him then, at the very end, was a puzzle. Surely he must have learned to expect, after Annatar had begun working on the flesh. Torture did not yield good results for interrogation, as a rule, but that was not what Annatar had wanted. Elves were -- not quite so attached to the flesh as mortals, who more or less were nothing but the meat. Yet the hroa followed the fëa, and thus was in dialogue with it. He only had to make it listen, so that the flesh would make Celebrimbor listen. The theory was sound. He would remake the body, in his own image, and surely in the annihilation and the remaking Tyelpe would become tractable. He did not need to make Tyelpe tell him where he had hidden the Three, only to make him agree that Annatar was right. The rest would follow.

But, of course, Elves were not only meat. Sauron had forgotten that. Or, perhaps, Sauron had forgotten to give Celebrimbor something to hold on to, in the meanwhile. Some reason to stay. Maedhros had been unreceptive to the torment that Sauron had once inflicted upon him, but he had remained unreceptive for so long only because he had bound his spirit to an oath he could not fulfill. Celebrimbor had no such oath. Tyelpe would only triumph, when his soul slipped away out of Annatar’s reach.

Sauron could feel it now, the unmaking. Orodruin was boiling over, great ashy eruptions were covering the skies of his domain. His ringwraiths withered, his hordes quailed, and his prisoners took heart for the first time in their miserable captivities.

It was so-- it was such a small thing, to be pried away from all his works unwillingly. How easy it must have been, for Tyelpe, to abandon it all, in favour of triumph. How quick the spirit must have fled. Sauron scrabbled, unwilling, but he had accomplished too many of his great works by the craft of his Ring. It was all that was left of him, in some ways.

He stretched out a hand, slim, fair, pale, perfectly formed, not yet hideous, reaching out for his sword, his palantír, his hoard of weapons and artifacts of power. His stack of blueprints, which never quite managed to be satisfactory in these after days. His fingers crumbled to ash, and with it the sword, and the plans, and the tower around him. As a wind came and blew him away, Sauron was rued to find that the palantír remained, dropping with a stolid thunk down to the rocky ground as Barad-dûr landslided down and into nothingness.

That was right. This had been his form, once. Before he had need of fana. Before he was constrained to be nothing but. He had no fair forms then, and none that were foul. Just Mairon, singing and working and making. He shook the thought away with a derisive laugh, and turned towards the looming stars and the threatening sky. Beyond them, somewhere, was the Void, where surely Morgoth had a place for him.

“Sauron,” whispered the wind, upon which those blasted eagles had crested into Sauron’s kingdom. “Thy realm is no more. Surrender thyself.”

The stars were not visible to the mortals on the ground, but above the clouds of smog and ash they were untouchable. “Abhorred One, submit thyself for judgement.”

Sauron felt the urge to grin, bloodily, as he was accustomed to doing these days. “I have no longer a celestial self to submit thusly to divine judgments,” he said, the horrible reality of it shivering through him.

It had been a long defeat, slow in the years. Firstly he unmade his goodness. Then he unmade his fairness. Then he unmade his making. Then he unmade himself. Then he was unmade. He was just a shadow, just a spirit. The power was out of him, and in the Ring, and now returned to the lava and the earth and to the fire. Into Ëa, where all the rest of his powers had gone, when he had first entered it. What was he left with? The meat. The meat that had crumbled away, and a cringing creature of fear, looking only inwards, and finding that even there he had nothing to left to look to.

He could not remember the celestial harmonies anymore. Neither could he hear them. He did not know what phrase or note or ringing couplet he might have once contributed. He did not remember the fire, or the earth, or his craft. Only the outpouring into gold, and only the mastery.

“No,” agreed Varda. “Thou art celestial no more. Yet though thy spirit is no longer of a magnitude of the Ainur, thou art still a spirit of Ëa, and while thou art thus unbodied there is yet one whose sole duty it is to pass judgement upon unhoused spirits such as thee.”

Sauron startled, as much as he was able to, discorporated into so much mist. She could not -- Surely she had to be joking.

Varda, of course, did not do such frivolous things as joke with defeated enemies. The great invisible army of the Ainur that had gathered to witness his downfall each had their thought and their power pointed towards Sauron, yet none touched him. Not so much as a lesser wind spirit tried to nip at his metaphorical toes.

Far away, a horn sounded, and Sauron began, inexorably, to turn from the onslaught of his enemies, and towards the West. It was impossible for him to ignore that call now. He had not only been excising and paring down, it seemed. In the forging and reforging, he had changed himself into something different. Something even more finite than he had begun to realise.

He was forced to understand what it was like, to turn his face from the triumph of his foes, and to be drawn, thin and defeated, into the halls of Remaking. Would that he could join the Enemy of the World now, out there in the starless void. Surely the agony would be preferable to the work that he would be lead into undertaking. Surely there was some way out of this, and into the Everlasting Darkness.

Then the gates of Mandos clanged shut, and none had ever escaped there without the Doomsman’s consent.

Sauron cursed bitterly in the grey dimness, and wished both for more and for nothingness. In the end, he understood all too well.

Chapter Text

Most inhabited parts of Aman did not experience winters as such, but spring and autumn were clearly delineated seasons. The bountiful autumns were a glorious time, though of course all seasons were glorious in Aman. The Noldor were not stereotypically associated with agricultural pursuits, but surely that was also an extension of their study of Aulë’s domain. All of which was to say, that when there was no dissent or unrest making the rounds, the days of autumn were golden and the harvest feasts bountiful. The wine would flow as freely in the solemn tower of the Mindon as it did in any woodland realm.

Out in Tol Eressëa, in the riverside complex where where Elrond and his household made their dwelling, there also dwelt a dwarf and three hobbits. When the novel barrels of hearty Hobbitish ale and dubious Dwarvish moonshine were brought out, the cheering and whooping could be heard all the way out in Tirion. A disreputable company, the lot of them were. Oh, sure, they had once been grave and ancient and dignified and wise, in Middle-Earth where mortals believed that sort of thing, and everyone who knew better were dead or in Aman or faded into a voice on the wind, but here, no one was fooled. They quickly became renowned for debauchery, drunken hooliganism, and intoxicated singalongs, even more than for being Returned or for having mortals among them.

As Gimli the dwarf was raised up onto a stack of boxes, so that he might better expound upon the virtues of a bright yellow liqueur made from melons, allegedly an ancient delicacy of his people, a messenger came swooping down upon them and deposited an envelope right into Finrod’s face. Finrod yelped, and almost fell over at the surprise, but managed to catch the thing by smacking a hand to his cheek.

“How ominous,” croaked Finrod from behind the envelope. The crowd had gone silent. There were not many messages that got delivered by bird these days. Runners could be hired. There was a perfectly functional mail system. And that was to say nothing of the devices for far-speech and far-seeing that had been improvements upon the Palantíri. Usually, they were a very particular kind of message.

Finrod cracked open the seal, and drew in a sharp breath of surprise. The crowd leaned towards him in anticipation.

“It’s…” Finrod said, floundering. “It’s a personal missive. No one is returning today.”

There was a great groan of disappointment. Finrod was pushed aside as a horde of drunken Elves rushed forward and picked Gimli up, cheering and throwing him up and passing him along this way and that over their heads as they clamoured for more wine, more ale, and even more of the mysterious neon yellow moonshine.

Finrod folded the letter up and put it in a pocket, then patted down the front of his tunic, making sure no one had spilt anything on him. He had the dregs of a smile lingering on the corner of his mouth, but a crease between his brows betrayed his uneasiness. He set his elaborate golden chalice aside on a table laden low with snacks and crept away towards the quay that faced the Pass.

There was a veritable fleet of little sailboats and dinghies parked out that way, but it was the work of a moment to find his canoe, upon which Finrod had rowed all the way over alone, foolishly believing that he would be getting some measure of relaxation and solitude away from Tirion and the bulk of his responsibilities.

The letter had been a summons from Námo and Vairë, who wanted him to give testimony on an important but secretive matter related to his and cousin Celebrimbor’s deaths. Finrod desperately tried not to think about why he was being called.

Unlike the others of the house of Fëanor, Celebrimbor had never slain any of his kin. Celebrimbor had rejected his house’s bloody Oath and had begun works not so tainted with blood, though they mostly came to the same evil ends. Of the princes of the Noldor still in Mandos, he surely had to be the one upon whom the judgement of the Valar ought to rest the lightest. If Galadriel could be pardoned and allowed to return--

That did not account for why it was Finrod being summoned, except of course that only he and Glorfindel had been thus pardoned before, and Glorfindel did not know Celebrimbor well enough to give any personal opinion. Finrod tried to be firm in tamping down his wild suspicions, but if Celebrimbor could be pardoned, surely the houses of Fingolfin and Finarfin could not be far behind.

Finrod rowed faster.

The Halls of Mandos were dim. Of course they were. Dim, and silent, and grey. Flames seemed to flicker in wall sconces, but they scarcely gave off enough light to see by. Sauron had some opinions on the decor, but he did not have anyone to make them to.

The call that had drawn his spirit into these grim halls came from deep within the stronghold. The flickering shades of elves and men that passed through Mandos’ halls seemed to stop somewhere in the upper levels, presumably to do their business and then be shunted off, either out to Aman, or out the other door, to the encircling sea and out of the edge of the world.

Sauron was pulled along to a lower level that seemed to be deep below the earth, though, of course, you could never really tell if you were above or below ground in Mandos, and it was all more of a metaphor than an actual stronghold. But Sauron had cut out of himself that part which could converse in such metaphors, and so he was pulled along down a descending slope, the paving stones firm beneath his incorporeal feet, until he arrived at a set of solid stone doors. It appeared to be a smooth, seamless wall, some gigantic stone slab cut whole from a quarry and installed in one piece, but as he approached, the doors split down the middle and opened inwards on silent, invisible hinges.

“Sauron.”

It was not Mandos that greeted him, as Sauron had half feared. It was not even Vairë. No, it was a silver haired elf woman, carrying a basket on her hip and a lemonish expression on her face. She stood in the doorway, looking as if Sauron was simply blocking her path.

Sauron studied her. Her colouring indicated otherwise, but there was something incredibly Noldorish in her bearing and her clothes. And, ah. Yes. The keen shape of her eyes were familiar, and so were her imperious eyebrows. He’d spent long enough studying Celebrimbor’s every expression to see the resemblance immediately.

“I am Míriel Ϸerindë,” the elf woman said baldly, disregarding Sauron’s slimy once over. “These are the halls of the Weaver. You must pass through here, if you are to go to an audience with Námo. Touch nothing, unless you aim to add to whatever sentence Námo pronounces.” She did not wait for a response, but turned and went back inside and disappeared down a side corridor.

The doors opened onto a long hall. A tapestry running along one side of it seemed to stretch out into eternity. That was yet another metaphor, of course, for the temporal-spatial plane belonging to Vairë which intersected Mandos’ realms here, and for the Vala who technically was that plane. The Weaver only recorded the histories of Arda, which had a finite beginning and probably a finite end, but the deeds were recorded with infinite fineness of detail. On the opposite side of the wall, running parallel to Vairë’s great tapestry were smaller studies that echoed the Great Work. Side halls and passages also opened from that wall. Some seemed to open to work rooms and galleries full of more tapestries, while others lead to locked doors or into impenetrable shadow.

Maiar and lesser spirits worked at the tapestries, interspersed with the occasional elf. Some of them looked up at his approach and cringed or scowled, but most continued their work obliviously, probably caught in some vision or other.

Sauron looked with great interest at the parts of the tapestry closest to the door. Those would be the most recent events. There was Mordor, of course, and Barad-dûr, and Orodruin. And the nasty little hobbitses whom that nasty little creature Gollum had been supposed to bring to him. Sauron bit his ghostly lip as he studied the tapestry with the intentness of a tactician. He was urged along by the call that he was so helpless to resist, but he dragged his heels and craned his neck. He had many spies in those final years, but even to the Great Eye there were events that remained unclear, in the lead up to -- well. His destruction.

“How serendipitous,” he called over his shoulder as he drifted slowly past the areas of most interest and counted just how many coincidences and strokes of luck on the part of his enemies had lead him to where he was. A pair of eyes seemed to gaze back at him from out of the tapestry as Vairë turned her attention to him.

“The mind of the One is not known to any of us, Sauron.” There was a warning in her rustling voice, yet there also seemed to be patience, and sorrow. Sorrow for him, if such a thing could be believed. Sauron shifted uneasily, and stopped straining quite so hard against the call to go deeper inside. The Weaver materialised a Elf shaped body, and picked out a single golden thread from out from the tangled mass of her many-coloured hair. “I have seen you, as I have seen all. Fair you once were, and more than that, whole. A greater part of your power may have been poured out into Ëa by the breaking of your Ring, but your thread is not broken. The world is not yet closed to you, though I must wonder what the Maker means by this.” She tucked the thread behind her ear, and it was lost again.

“Keep wondering,” Sauron muttered, and was dismayed by how petulant he sounded. He gathered himself up and strode briskly forwards towards the end of the endless corridor, pretending very had that he did not feel the weight of her knowing gaze upon him.

As if in response to his intent, the endless length of hallway foreshortened and collapsed, and it was the work of a few more paces before another seamless stone slab opened up and admitted him into an ante chamber. Very carefully not thinking about how easy it would have been for Vairë to have done the opposite and trapped him in an endless corridor until the end of Arda, Sauron stepped through.

It was full of dead elves, which came as no surprise, but there was also one live elf.

“You!” shouted Finrod Felagund in dismay as he sprang up from an uncomfortable stone bench against the far wall and shoved himself between Sauron and the other spirits, who burst into similar exclamations of surprise and enmity.

“You,” hissed Sauron, more surprised than anything else. One had to wonder what Finrod had done that had earned his resurrection, since the last Sauron knew, he had been torn into hunks of so much meat.

“YOU!” A figure broke free of the scrum of Elf spirits and pushed past Finrod. It was--. Ah. It was Celebrimbor.

“Me,” agreed Sauron, and summoned up his best and holiest looking smile. Celebrimbor uttered a howl of rage and launched himself bodily at Sauron.