Dream

I am still writing another story today.  Worry not.

Mellow Soulmate AU.  Even before the rise of the Necromancer, Celebrimbor could always sense that the battle for Middle-earth had never ended.  That it had only just begun.  Quenya names used (Celebrimbor = Telperinquar, Sauron = Annatar, Curufin = Curufinwë).  Basically a prelude to "Grace", "Nowhere" and "Nightmare", but obviously related to all of the Lust arc as well.  Technically takes place somewhere in the Misty Mountains mid-Third Age.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings

Pairings: Sauron x Celebrimbor

Characters: Sauron, Celebrimbor (mentions Curufin once)

Warning: non-canon compliant, slash, dub-con, possibly mind-rape, severely dysfunctional relationship, objectification/dehumanization, world domination, war, murder, etc...

Song: The Horror of Our Love

Words: 1,193
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
dream (noun): a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep; a visionary creation of the imagination: daydream; a state of mind marked by abstraction or release from reality: reverie; a strongly desired goal or purpose
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dream

"Look at it.  Does it not take your breath away?"

Just the sight left his mind blown, his skin tingling and writhing in excitement, covered in gooseflesh.  The tiny hairs upon his arms and neck stood on end with the high of adrenaline and power that surged like wildfire through his molten veins.

Spread out below were the lights of tens of thousands of fires.  The camps of tens of thousands of soldiers ready and waiting to do his bidding and die for his cause.  Fearless and thirsting for the blood and gore of battle.  To rain their fury upon the terrified earth until all the free peoples bowed and pleaded for mercy, scrambling and scraping at the feet of their master and Dark Lord for every last drop of nonexistent sympathy he offered.

So close was it, the completion of his goal.  Of that dream that had been sitting in the back of his mind since before the beginning of time itself.

That little vision that he longed to reach out and grasp.  So close...

But it had changed since then.  Something was missing...

He turned, and then his gaze washed over the porcelain beauty he kept firmly pressed against him.  The last piece of the puzzle.  The missing detail that somehow completed to superb perfection this delicately balanced vision.

As if handling glass, his fingertips danced across the angles of that face, stroking over dark brows and across soft cheeks to the reddened petal-lips of which he was so fond.  The visage was beautiful, albeit sharp and stern, brows creased downwards over darkened gray eyes.  Eyes that were ringed in thick eyelashes, that glowed with inner fire in the dark of the night.  The eyes of a strong spirit held so firmly under his control with knots of affection and lust.

For this creature, his desire was inexplicable, could not be explained or wished away.  Entranced, he moved his lover to stand before him upon the balcony.  Watched powerful, limber hands curve over the railing, white on black.  Observed the tilt of that head and the flash of horrified amazement in that gaze.

That face turned to look back at him, confused and somewhat dazed.  "Annatar?"

In the background, Orodruin was rumbling and groaning, fire bubbling from atop the distant peak.  Heat washed over them, and the scalding wind swept out the curtain of dark hair into a wreath of inky flame painted over the sky.

Never had he seen anything more beautiful.  His kingdom nearly complete in its construction--the culmination of tens of thousands of years of clawing his way up the vertical, frictionless wall of servitude, ideology and indoctrination.  Until he reached the unattainable freedom at the apex of the sky and looked down upon everything he had ever wanted all cupped in the palm of his hand.

And Telperinquar was there, with the dark sky overhead and the scorched, blackened rock below.  His pet and lover and companion.

His, his, his.

Forever in his grasp.  He reached out and cradled a fistful of dark locks of hair, lifting them to his nose so that he might breathe in that rich, smoky scent and feel the satiny texture against his face.  Something so harsh and angular and yet undeniably as close to perfection as could reach a mortal being.  A creature of destruction, creation and iron.  The epitome of everything he wanted to create.  Everything he wanted to rule.

Perfection...

"One day, this will be mine."  You will be mine. "This will be our world.  And whatever we want, we shall have.  We will create our perfect reality, you and I..."

"Telperinquarinya..."

---

It echoed.

As though the man whose lips had spoken those damning words were standing here still, though before him there was naught but the plain boarded ceiling of his modest cabin.  The room was dark, the candle having gone out long past, and he was in his bed, safe and slightly chilly from the winter air drafting inside..

Blinking, Telperinquar sat up in bed, hair ruffled and face shimmering in a sheen of sweat, trying to still the frantic throb of his heart trying to crawl its way up through his lungs and out his throat.  His breath came out in small white puffs of panic to match, and his eyes were roaming the walls, wide and dilated searching for the source of that feeling.  But no matter where he looked, there was no fire.  No golden light.

No molten eyes.

"It was... a dream..."

His hands rose, covering his eyes as he hung his head, allowing waves of dark hair to spill and spill.  Hiding him away from the world, truthful and imaged.  From the atrocities and devastation left in the wake of his foolish and arrogant creation.  From those fiery eyes looking upon him so hungrily as he stood before the downfall of freedom.

Still, he could feel them.  Boring into him, acidic and corrosive sinking into his flesh and into his bones and straight through the other side.  Eating a hole straight through his soul, devouring until he felt hollow inside, as though part of him had been stolen away forever.

And had it not been?  Had Annatar not taken a chunk for his own?

The feeling never left the son of Curufinwë.  The dreams never departed.  Always, they were there.  In the background skulking.

The black plains and the towering mountains and the violent explosion of ash and rock shooting fireballs into the sky of a dying, dominated and decimated world.  All spread out at his feet like a grotesque declaration of devotion and domination both at once.

And behind him Annatar stood, the very image of his lover of long past.  The face of the man he loved corrupted with that grin of sadistic gratification as the world burned down around them, if only so he could shape it into something new.  Into something of his own imagining, under his thumb and under his law.  Utterly at his mercy.  Every inch.  Every crack.  Every grain of sand.

Not even Telperinquar would be spared.

And the niggling feeling of anxiety and suspicious never ceased.  Not a day went by when he did not feel it in his bones and his chest and his soul.

Ignorant fools could say as they wished, but he knew.

Knew that Annatar was not dead.  Sauron was not dead.  He was not a wild and fanciful imagining conjured by the broken and lonely heart of a half-faded elf going senile alone in the mountains.

His presence was real.  More real than the faint moonlight whispering across the floor.  More real than the cold air sucked into his desperate lungs.

More real than his hot breaths washing across his trembling, chilled hands and the livid burn of salted tears dripping upon his skin.

Annatar was tactile.  Not a dream.  Never a dream.

And, one day, he would be back.