On the same ruinous path by ohboromir

On the same ruinous path

The pain was gone. That was a strange sensation. He had been full of pain and anger for so long that it was almost alien to be free of it.

He was free of everything. Free of the decaying, rotting fana he had shaped for himself; it was a pleasant feeling, to be houseless fëa again, to be weightless and formless.

He had always thought he would dread the Void. In his fears it had been a dark, cold place. Not dark like his own Shadow, but empty and lifeless, no hint of the creation he adored - and adored it he had, even as his will had bent to destruction. Sauron had not forgotten Mairon the Maia, whose voice had rung in the first choir of the world, who had loved creation so dearly it had driven him to try and better it.

Mairon, who he was no more. Mairon who had loved his lord and master so dearly that he had not been able to shake the shackle of his ambition. If he had loved his lord less, perhaps he would have come crawling back to Aulë’s halls, humiliated and ashamed but repentant. Almost always, he had chosen self-preservation, he had borne shame and insult and worse in the pursuit of his goals. But forsaking his master’s love and slinking back to his murderers? That even Sauron could not do. The Valar had cast his beloved lord into the vast empty Void, and with him all hope of Sauron’s return.

But as his spirit was swallowed by the darkness, and Sauron attempted to get his bearings, he found the Void was not as he feared. The darkness embraced him, warm, almost fatherly. It stirred a long distant memory in his spirit, the memory of something he would not name.

It directed him. It did not drop him into the Void; it placed his spirit tenderly, like setting a babe in a cradle. Sauron was not afraid, as he looked upon the endless expanse of Nothing.

But it was not Nothing. Ahead of him, there was light. A blue flame burning. It called to him. He did not resist. His spirit sped towards it, hardly daring to hope that it would be what he hoped - who he hoped. As he drew near it, the flame grew, bigger and brighter. It was not a flame at all, but a spirit. The very spirit that was part of his, that had been sundered from him for two Ages of the world. As Sauron’s spirit trembled before it, in awe and trepidation, it spoke into his mind.

Oh, that voice. How long he had waited to hear it.

That voice, thick and rich and warm. The softness in it that had always been saved only for him. The quiet hint of grief, for his fallen maia, but joy too, that they were at last reunited. Sauron knew that voice.

“Welcome home, my little maia.”

Their spirits melded together, and Mairon wept.