Ink

Worst Day AU.  A rambling introspective piece on keeping one's sanity when they live in Hell and work for the closest thing to Satan they've ever seen.  And still try to be a good person in the process.  I just used Sindarin names because I'm a lazy bitch at 1:00 in the morning.  Also, this really is rambling and gets slightly off-topic in places, but it's just an idea that crossed my mind, so it's not too important.  Obviously related to "Villain" and "Worst Day" along with "Morals", "Hero", "Gloves", "Grace", "Nightmare", "Dream" and a few other stories as well, I'm sure.  Takes place in Barad-dur during the late Third Age.

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

Pairings: Sauron x Celebrimbor

Characters: Ilession (OMC), Sauron (mentions Celebrimbor, Maedhros, Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin, Amrod and other random elves)

Warning: non-canon compliant, spontaneous children, slash, potential non-con, torture and dismemberment, vague blood and gore, bad humor, personal fears, possible mental instability, talk of insanity, sexual undertones, etc...

Song: Once Upon a December (because it's nostalgic, I think)

Words: 1,454
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ink (noun): a colored usually liquid material for writing and printing
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ink

A great deal of history could be told with only the black curved lines of ink upon paleness.

Elves, Ilession though, often didn't seem to appreciate this fact.  They lived for so long--remembered for so long--that they seemed to forget the value in writing their stories down.  So many mortals he had crossed who wrote down their every little daily activity, their every hope and dream, their every work and accomplishment in the hopes that someone would remember them.  And yet, if one wanted to know what one of the elves of the first age truly thought, they could only guess.

Sometimes, he wished they realized that they were no more immortal than the mortals they scoffed at and sneered upon.  That, any moment, they could be killed as easily as any smelly, rough-around-the-edges farmer or mountaineer.

Sometimes, he wished that his father had actually written whatever silliness had been going through his brain.  Or that his uncles had ever thought to write down their thoughts if only for documentary's sake.  The only records he ever found from Mithrim or Gondolin were records of treaties, laws and trading logs, hardly a journal or diary to be scavenged from the ruins before the entirety of Beleriand disappeared beneath the ocean's waves and sank down to the bottom of the world where it would never again see the light of day.  And then he would stare into the waves and wonder if they had always expected to be there forever, if they had ever thought they might not be remembered.

If it had ever occurred to any of the kings of old how people scoffed at them now for their decisions without knowing the full story.  Or to his family that, without ever having recorded their doings, all elves believed them to be psychotic murderers when Ilession very well knew that--misguided and slightly insane or not--they had once been good people.

No one knew that they could cry.  That they loved their wives.  That Maedhros was a politician who loved children.  That Caranthir couldn't talk to a woman to save his life.  That the brothers used to play pranks on one another once upon a happier time.  That Celegorm and Curufin were best friends and had been since childhood.

By the Valar, most people did not even know that Maglor had biological children!  And yet here he sat.

Ilession did not want to be one of those people mentioned in the footnotes of one of Sauron's logbooks and thus be named traitor, elf-murderer and cold-blooded warmonger for the rest of eternity.  He did not want them to think he had turned his back upon his brother and his friends and his king for the sake of a little power and thousands of years of bowing and servitude and torment.  He did not want to be remembered as someone like that, cursed by his line to become an insane monster thirsting after the blood of all those good and pious.

He just wanted them to understand that the eye inked into his hand and the inscriptions drawn until his back like a brand were not the definition of his being.  That they were not the only history ever recorded, all truth written upon the flesh of a torture-master and apprentice of the Dark Lord.

It was, perhaps, that fear that led to them.  His most valuable possessions, the only he allowed himself to keep for they were too precious even to burn or throw aside in fear of their discovery.

The only proof--living or otherwise--that he was a spy.  For even his old friend Elrond and his brother Erestor would not be able to prove his innocence now, not when no elven army stood before the Black Gates, but instead a ragtag gathering of men cloaked in desperation and adrenaline-fueled foolish bravery.

Even if he died here, he wanted them to know.  Wanted them to see, in ink that could not be washed away or altered to change their story, why.

Wanted them to know how he despised harming others but could do nothing except save his own skin to spy another day.  How he took no relish in the screams of the agonized and dying as they hung before his eyes, pleading for his mercy, mercy that would never come.  How he feared that, should he be discovered and killed, his cousin would be alone in the tower under the thumb of the Dark Lord.

How he wanted nothing more than to take Celebrimbor and run, but knew he would be caught in the attempt to escape.  How he despised being forced to wait, knowing that each day longer he kept himself away, his cousin was deeper under that spell and helpless to fight.  How he longed so terribly to thrust a sword through the chest of his master and captor, to watch in satisfaction as that weak and ugly form bled out at his feet like a stuck pig.

It was that need that kept his hand moving even when he loved terribly to sleep.  That forced him to remember all those things he would rather forget...

Describing how he'd removed fingers one by one and taunted his victim in the process.  Promised to remove something much more prized and sensitive if this torment proved ineffective...

How he had carried out his threat...

And how his master had laughed when he'd told the tale in seeming amusement and sick satisfaction.  Those volcano-eyes had narrowed, that face curling into a smile that might have been handsome in its disgusting delight had skin not been corpse-gray and hair old-age-white.

How, in return, he had been told of his cousin.  About Celebrimbor's helplessness, how beautiful he was and slender he was and enticing he was when he cried and pleaded for more despite receiving only blood and pain...

And Ilession had laughed himself sick and grinned with all his teeth showing.  Told his master, point-blank, that he couldn't care less about blood.  What should it matter to him?

And maybe, next time, could he watch.

And how he had been sick afterwards.  That part, Ilession remembered all too vividly.  Though it was not an event oft looked fondly upon, it was relieving, to know that he was still so far from corruption as to find such heinous and toxic ideas repulsive enough to curdle his stomach.

That, if he died here alone, someone--someday--would know the truth.  Would look at these thousands and thousands of pages of his cramped and sprawling handwriting and know.

A comfort, that was what they called it.  A comfort for a man trapped in the closest place to hell earth had come in six thousand years.  Some days, Ilession thought it might be the last thread of sanity keeping him from dropping into the abyss like many a family member before him.  Kept him from spiraling into darkness like Maedhros or hatred like Amrod or madness like Celegorm or complete psychopathy like Curufin.

Or despair and resignation, like his father.

Carefully, each night, he wrote and then--when all words had been spoken and all deeds committed eternally to memory--he locked the book away again.  In the chest kept tucked in the darkest corner of his lavish bedchambers, the only place he kept personal possessions, with the key to its lock on a chain around his neck beneath his layers of shirts and mail and armor where no one would ever see it, could ever steal it.  If his master realized it was there, he never said anything--never even smirked in knowing amusement or scorn that one of his apprentices should think to hide from his gaze a secret.

Even if Sauron knew of the journals, he could not know what was within their pages.  The Dark Lord was probably too aware of Ilession's loyalty that had lasted over four thousand years, too assured of that continued faith and of his servant's lust for gore and blood to worry about such things.  Too distracted with plans and too high on his own power and egocentricity to be suspicious.

Even if Ilession thought his master knew, he would still not have ceased.

Even were he to die for those pages and pages riddled with ink and history and truth, Ilession would die happy to have existed.  And, in the afterlife, he would laugh and spit upon his murderer in scorn.

Perhaps it was that assurance that gave him the strength to continue.  Even when all he wished to do was lie down and cry.

Even if all he wanted was for everything to end.