Nowhere

Mellow Soulmate AU.  There can't always be a happy ending.  Sometimes the end is just as unpleasant as the rest of the story.  Quenya names used (Sauron = Mairon or Annatar, Celebrimbor = Telperinquar).  This is closely related to "Grace" and "Nightmare", but also to "Heat", "Lust", "Disaster", "Lies" and "Breakable" among others.  Enjoy the angst.  Takes place (partially) in the Void and in Minas Tirith in the early Fourth Age.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: Sauron x Celebrimbor

Characters: Sauron, Celebrimbor (mentions Melkor and other random elves/people)

Warning: non-canon compliant, slash, non-con implied, Stockholm syndrome, betrayal, death scene of a sort, people going crazy

Song: Black Black Heart

Words: 1,126
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nowhere (adverb): not in or at any place; to no place
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nowhere

What did one do if the end ended in nowhere?

---

It was the Void.  Or some realm like the Void.  Or perhaps it was simply a form of nonexistent existence.  Where there was nothing.  Nothing at all.

Mairon spent the first few days--

Were they days or second or millennia?  He couldn't even count minutes or hours here.  Everything blurred into one long streak of silent blackness.  There was no time.  No moving forward.  No going back.  He could walk forever and ever and never move an inch...

--screaming and screaming and screaming.  Banging at an invisible door on an invisible wall in an invisible dungeon cell.

He needed the physical world.  Needed to breathe.  Needed to feel.  Needed to fuck.  Needed to do something other than sit here unable to feel the ground upon which his incorporeal form rested, unable to feel the faint drafts of shifting air upon his face, unable to feel cold metal between his fingers or the heat of fire and blood upon his skin.

But that ceased soon enough.  He had no throat to grow raw, but eventually the sound stopped coming, and his voice would not obey.  Even when he opened his mouth--to speak so that he might hear words--no sound would come out.  Nothing, nothing, nothing but his thoughts...

The screams had always been silent.  An illusion of the mind.

Nothing here was real.

Not even him.

Not his body.  Not his voice.  Not his hopes and dreams and nightmares.  There was no sleeping.  There was no eating.  There was no moving.

And no matter how his fingers itched and itched, they were not even there.  His eyes--which did not exist--would look down and see nothing where he thought they wriggled and flailed.  And they itched.  Itched and itched to do something or to feel something.  Anything.  Burning.  Corrosive.  Rough.  Sharp.  Anything.

Eventually, he stopped pretending to open his nonexistent eyes.  There was nothing to see.  And he stopped moving hiss anxious hands and twitching fingers.  There was nothing to touch.

There was nothing but his thoughts.  They were real.  They had to be real.  Or he wouldn't be real.

And he clung.  Clung to the memory of heat and cold and pain and pleasure.

Clung to the surge of power singing in his veins when first he wore the ring upon his finger and held it up, glowing red-hot in the fires of Orodruin.

Clung to the image of that pale body writhing beneath his, skin so delicate and tender to his touch and hair like wreaths of silk about his fists.

Clung even to the humiliation and the hatred he felt for his old master and for all those who would oppose him.  For all those who would damn him to this hell, let them scream and burn in a sea of fire within the vast empty spaces of his mind.

It was all he had left in this land of nowhere.

And, eventually, it became all there ever was.  Because here, nothing was real.

And, eventually, even that faded away.  Into quiet.

---

He wondered, at first, if perhaps they had been jesting.

"Find a lovely young lady.  Get married.  Start your life."

Over six thousand years old, and they were telling him to start his life.  As if he hadn't been living all this time full of war and unrest and death.  As if everything that had happened were some nightmarish prelude to the true story of bliss and perfection.

So easily, they thought he could forget.  Just let go as if nothing had ever happened in the first place.

But they didn't realize that this was not the beginning.  Not for Telperinquar.

This was the end.

And here was nowhere.

There was no other destination.  No life to lead or path to take that would move him forward past this dead-end.  No young maiden he would burden with his lack of love and devotion or force to carry children to whom his heart would be cold.  No quiet place to live where he could feel secure in the knowledge that reality would not decide to unravel around him once again.

All he could think of--all his heart yearned for and desired--was Annatar.  Wholly and intensely, it consumed him.

He remembered so clearly and painfully being in love with that man.  With his sweet smiles and soft, burnished eyes.  With his strong and yet oh-so-gentle hands.  With his rolling voice, quiet yet somehow filling up a room completely.

With the nights of passion spent in a burning embrace.  With holding hands and sneaking kisses in darkened corners.  With watching the stars in the dewy grass.

With staying up late by the light of the forge, that body settled behind him and arms around him, teaching and molding and caressing until there was only the two of them in all the world...

He missed Annatar.

And Telperinquar did not think it would ever go away, that longing.

Was it any surprise that he did not wish to force himself upon a spouse he would never love?

Could never love.  Because, even if she had hair spun of golden light and eyes that put to shame the blood of the earth, she would never have that spark.  Never have the charisma that drew him with such gravitational force.  Never have the intelligent gleam in the depth of her eyes of one master artisan to another.  Never have that aura of power and presence surrounding and blanketing over him until he curled within its depths and felt so safe and warm...

Because he would never love another.  Not like he had loved Annatar.  Not like he had loved that nonexistent delusion of a creature.

In the end, there never had been a somewhere waiting for him at the end.  Only an illusion cleverly hiding the poisoned, jagged spine of a lie hunting down unwary, naive prey.

Now, he was utterly alone.  Sitting apathetically in the window of the healer's house, looking out over the pearl of Minas Tirith toward the crumbling wall of mountain and the dissipating shadow of Middle-earth's greatest bane and foe.

And he knew that there was nowhere to go.  Not now.

There was only the fleeting memory of Annatar's love--false though he knew it must be--to fuel his movements.  To make him wake up each morning and eat his soup each night.  To burn at the pitiful rubble of his spirit.

Until it was all gone.  Everything.  And only the memories remained.

That was all he lived for.

---

But wish to go back to the beginning.  And erase the bitter past.