Chapter Text
They say the hour of defeat begins the moment one looks death in the eyes and shies away.
Sauron opened his eyes to her face leaning over his sickbed and he lunged to grab a candlestick.
They said the fever made him delirious; that the wound to the halfbreed’s impenetrable skull was an accident.
(If only it was a mortal blow.)
“Herald Elrond is one of Lindon’s trusted healers,” they tried to cajole Sauron when he shouted at the spawn of Lúthien to stay back and cease his song.
He called upon the mudcrawler every vile malignancy he wished upon her, until at last they removed the stench of starlight from healing halls.
Pure, immeasurable, willful spite lingered in the scourge’s wake. Sauron remembered shivering until nameless healers soothed his spirit and lulled him into a healing trance. When he woke, the mutt of unspeakable lineages was gone.
Sauron wandered with great care, rubbing his shoulder where the memory of Mannish fingers lingered on his skin. So now they brought Peredhil into sacred song. The ways of old were truly muddied with the disgrace of forsaken bloodlines.
He was rather surprised to find the Celebrimbor mingling with such refuse. Grandson of Fëanor, master of his art, Lord of Eregion; surely he merely catered to the supposed “High King’s Herald” and had since banished him until such a time as he was forced to endure his presence again.
How woefully wrong was that conjecture. For the mutt appeared that same afternoon, interloping on Sauron’s proposition for stronger, if minutely diluted ore to force mithril to concede. The cur looked upon Sauron with pity, as if he expected him to seek penitence for the scabbing mark on his brow.
Sauron neither required nor desired such forgiveness.
He tried to speak with Celebrimbor away from the halfbreed, wandering freely with him through hallway and garden, seeking to lose the hound on their trail. Ever did the scabbing wart trail behind them, vexingly belligerent and loyal without fault. Everywhere Sauron turned, there was Lúthien standing in the corner of his vision.
Perhaps he would have stood a chance, left to himself in Eregion. Perhaps he could have been the noble king Galadriel desired.
Yet every noble aspiration, however minute, was shaken the moment he turned around and felt Lúthien’s song wrap around his throat. The riverbed scum had but to speak Celebombor’s name and Sauron’s palms clammed up with anticipation of a battle which should have been won.
(How dare she haunt him even now!)
He redoubled his efforts, steering Celebrimbor away from this crawling myriapod who dared to creep in as pseudo kin. He shut the windows against wary voice and nearly slammed the door on lithe fingers (only once, and only because Celebrimbor fretted so much that he pulled the mongrel inside the forge to check on him did Sauron never try it again). He even tried putting on a show of sympathy, cajoling the aberration like one would pat the head of a three-legged dog, urging him to set off for home where his ilk was permitted to roam wild and free.
(Perhaps he said something rather like that to the herald’s face. The look he received was hardly magnanimous. Rather kindly did Celebrimbor distract them before Sauron was compelled to strike with reasonable force.)
Rather than slink away with crestfallen gaze and slumped shoulders, the offshoot of madness chose to trail after Celebrimbor with all the more fervor. It seemed as if Sauron could not turn around without tripping over that teal cloak. And so he conspired a new thing.
One circlet was too costly for their precious store of mithril. They must have two. (One for Golden King, and one to replace Morgoth’s crown.)
Celebrimbor looked straight at the lowborn hybrid and readily agreed.
His self-appointed shadow, at least, had the grace to look askance. Immediately he began to argue with Celebrimbor about the burden of such a crown and who could possibly be trusted with such power.
Distracted by the subtle shifting of sand beneath his foundation, Sauron left them to their argument and trailed after Galadriel.
Perhaps he would have made peace with her. Perhaps he would have bent to one knee and begged her forgiveness. Perhaps he could have been the gentle king she yearned for; a new story redeemed from the ashes of Morgoth’s defeat.
With the blight of Lúthien’s line still echoing in his thoughts, Sauron set his teeth and steeled his mind and refused to repent. He would not appeal for his right to not only thrive, but dominate a futile Age, when Men interbred with the Firstborn and Orcs thrived and the Valar refused to intercede. He would not grovel when the undeserving was offered his crown. And he would not concede to Galadriel, not even now when she trembled before him, for she dared claim the abomination as kin.
Sauron left her to drown and hastened to the inner city to annihilate one last pest.
Yet the forge was empty of all save Celebrimbor and his apprentices. At the worst possible moment the needling halfbreed had flitted away, leaving the Lord of the City unguarded.
Seeking the cousin who refused to be Queen.
In that moment Sauron sensed he had lingered too long. Galadriel would live, and upon her confession Lúthien would be unleashed. The hound would howl and a new song would surge and all he had conspired would be unwoven in one rancorous chord.
So he fled, he who has chased down kings and commanders and made them bow down in the mud slurried with the blood of their soldiers. He fled to the farthest reaches of Middle Earth, where ashes choked a once green wood and the usurper dared claim his throne and title. There he lingered, plotting only one course: to overthrow all who aligned themselves with Lúthien and Fëanor — even to bring about the fall of every Elven kingdom which endured in Middle Earth.
(One day an army of beastly legions would besiege Eregion, and the Orc whose name need not be remembered would speak of the commander who defended the wall. Then Sauron would demand the leaders be left alive long enough to root out this vein of starlight, that he might bestow upon him gifts of his own: a muzzle so he could not bite, and an iron band around his throat to suffocate a nightingale’s song.)
Finally, Lúthien would pay for every triumphant day which had passed since the dawn of his humiliation.
Morgoth’s heir would achieve what he himself could not:
The end of starlight and song.