Dark Judgement 16

Dark Judgement

Part 16 - Knowing How to Feel

Posted: July 18, 2008

*****

I lay awake all night, holding onto Maglor; not daring to let go, unless his presence and safety was revealed to be a cruel deception and that I did indeed remain, once again, within the void. He is my refuge and I feel immense guilt that I have never been the same for him. The capacity for guilt, along with other alien emotions, was instilled within me when the Valar remade my body after it was broken by Melkor’s tentacled hordes. For the first time in my existence, I feel the need to make reparation for the awfulness that I bestowed upon Maglor, when I held him captive before being defeated in the War of the Ring. How can I ever be worthy of the love he has for me?

It pains me that Maglor loves me so much. If he did not, I would not hate myself to the extent that I do now. Kindness is an unknown concept for me and I have never shown any, to anyone. I do not know how to accept his compassion. It brings forth unknown feelings that are uncomfortable to acknowledge, and yet, I would not willingly do without any of them. Every little kindness, every small act of love, every spoken endearment, reinforces the knowledge that I am the most unworthy of anyone who has ever existed. My shame is complete and although it feels uncomfortable, I would not willingly do without it. The new feelings of self-negativity are making me face my past and the iniquities I showered upon the one whom I adore. They stay my hand and make me want to be something else. I want to be worthy of his love, even though I fear this is a hopeless desire. I want to atone for all the hurt I gave him. This is how it must be for those who love and I never knew this before. It was my loss and of my own doing.

I realise now that I did not love Melkor; I was held in his thrall and desired to be part of his power. Love is not harsh or cruel, but kind, joyous and compassionate. Until recently, I had never experienced true joy. I thought I had, but now realise that crowing over the defeat of the enemy or basking in the sated aftermath of killing someone, is nothing in comparison. My previous life brought a false sense of happiness and was hollow at best. I always sought for something more, a sense of satisfaction. No matter how many elves I killed or the terror that I instilled, it was never enough, although it would be a lie if I were to say that I did not enjoy doing it. My name became feared throughout Middle-earth so that saying it was banned. I became the one whose name was unspeakable and yet I felt nothing but a transient delight in my notoriety. Such an enjoyment has no value at all and it quickly passed. Emotionally I was stunted and I still am, but now I have the capacity to let go and grow. For Maglor’s and my own sake, I must embrace this new opportunity wholeheartedly; I fear the consequences otherwise.

Maglor strokes my head as I grip tightly onto him, “Sauron, you have hardly slept.” It is still dark outside and there is a chill in the air.

“I know,” I say as I feel the gentle hand smoothing my hair. “I fear that if I go to sleep that you will not be here in the morning and that I will be back in the void.”

“I will not let you go back again,” Maglor says softly. He has no idea of what he speaks or that he cannot prevent it.

“Nienna will do as she pleases,” I say to him.

“Sauron, you are fighting with the past.” He says and kisses my forehead. “Would it be so hard to let go and accept your new life?”

“I have so many new feelings and I do not know what to do or how to feel them. Does one ever get rid of the feeling of guilt?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “One can never get rid of the feeling but you can learn to accept it and move on. Guilt is what stops us from hurting others more than we already have.”

“I wish I had felt guilt when we were on Middle-earth, then I would not have done the things...” I cannot say the words, my chest hurts, and in my heart, I know that I am lying; only Maglor would have been safe, everything else would have happened as it did. There is a large lump of pain inside, making it hard to breathe. I hold on even harder to the one I love, as the first tear falls down my cheek and splashes silently on his chest. My humiliation is complete.

“I know, I know,” he soothes, and again, I know that I will never be worthy of his forgiveness.

“Nothing I say, or do, will ever atone for my treatment of you,” I sob and more tears fall away from my eyes. “I am so sorry.” I never cried on Middle-earth. Not once. This seems to be one of the new abilities I am gifted with and the one that most reveals my pain. I would willingly give it back if I could, as it makes me feel weak and I do not seem to be able to control its occurrence.

“Sauron,” Maglor says, still stroking my head but also moving down to my shoulders. “Your need for atonement is misplaced. I suffered at your hands and believed it was a punishment decided by the Valar, for my evil deeds and accepted it, so that I could feel less guilty about my past. They let me come to live here and Nienna told me that I had paid many times over for being a kinslayer and nothing they did could equal your treatment of me on Middle-earth.” I kept saying that I was sorry but he told me to be quiet and listen, so I did. “Because I looked upon your treatment of me as the punishment for my past iniquities and truly believed that I deserved all you inflicted upon me, then the Valar made it so. I know that you would disagree but they have shown me nothing but compassion and everything they do is guided by that principle, even if we cannot understand their ways.”

“If they are compassionate, why did they make me your lover?” I ask, and it is a valid question. I was the bane of his life and the one who instilled terror in him during his miserable existence as my captive. It seems a particularly cruel thing for the Valar to do to him.

“Because you loved me, even then,” he says and I listen in disbelief.

“How?” I ask. “I was incapable of feeling love for anyone. I hurt you.”

“You always healed my injuries and my skin,” he says, almost as if it is a fond remembrance.”Many times you said how attracted you were to my beauty.”

“That was desire,” I remonstrated.

“According to Nienna, it was love. You did not recognise it as such because it was a feeling that you suppressed in favour of being evil. The two cannot co-exist and she said that you have been given a second chance, because if you had not been evil, you would have been just as mighty and loved by all.” Maglor pulled my body up, so that our faces were together, and kissed me on the lips.

“I wonder what it would have been like to be loved by all,” I mused.

“There is very little difference between the intensity of both emotions and so I would guess there would have been very little change at all. Your surroundings might have been nicer though.” He smiles at me and strokes my face. “You ask why I love you and it is simple, the Valar made it so. I did not love you then, in fact, I hated you and prayed for your destruction; however, I do love you now. I cannot explain the way things are, and it seems that I am just as much a pawn of their machinations as you are. I really do not want to keep talking at length about our past because it still pains me that the one who I love so much now, hurt me beyond the limits of my endurance.”

I promise that I will try my hardest to be worthy of you,” I say to Maglor and bury my head on his shoulder, breathing in his sweet warmth. “I am so sorry that the Valar compounded my cruelty with even more of their own.”

“They are not cruel,” he said. “I am a kinslayer; I deserve nothing better than you.”

That stung me to my heart. “Then how can you love me?”

“I deserve nothing better and neither do you,” Maglor said. “We are as bad as each other in our own ways.”

“You were never as bad as me,” I say, shocked that he could think such a thing.

“Is it a competition?” he asked.

“No, of course not,” I replied. “You seemed so innocent and incorrupt. You saved Elrond and Elros and bought them up as your own elflings.”

“There were advantages to keeping them alive and it was a pleasant interlude watching them grow,” Maglor sighed. “We burnt villages to the ground, killed those who opposed us, killed those who did not oppose us, killed those who were in the way, killed whole villages of elves so that they could not point to our whereabouts and killed for sport and because we could. We lost sight of the meaning of our war and were overtaken by bloodlust.”

“At least you did not kill any elflings,” I say, knowing that when I killed an elfling in front of him, that he became mute and started to fade. It had been the final straw for him and his body gave up to the grief; it took all my skill to keep him from passing and yet I wonder why it was so important for me to keep him alive.

“I did kill elflings, even babies,” Maglor said. “When you killed the elfling he pleaded with you to let him live, just before you slit his throat. “When I killed my last elfling, he said the same words, just before I slit his throat. I knew then that I could never be forgiven and my heart broke because I had truly repented of everything I did and it would never be enough.”

“But it was enough,” I said softly.

“My final punishment was to love you, it seems,” Maglor says with a small laugh.

“Mine was to love the one I feel most guilty about hurting,” I replied. “I do not think that feeling will ever leave me.”

“Neither of us have our old bodies, meleth,” Maglor says in his soft voice. “We are made anew and have a new life. Let us look forward so that we do not have to look back, because I for one cannot bear to look back ever again. There are some things that are still too raw and if we are to start afresh then we need to leave them behind.”

“But how can you be so dismissive of my past?” I ask, wondering at his capacity to do so, in spite of everything.

“Because when I dismiss your past, I can also dismiss mine. I saw what happened to you through the Door of Night. Nienna showed me your image on the wall and I saw everything.” He grips me a little tighter. “Then she told me of your repeated sufferings when you were in the void before you came to me. Look upon it as your punishment, just like I did and then move on.” He kissed my cheek. “You must realise, meleth, both of us have paid many times over for our past deeds. We need to let go and adapt to our new lives and become the ones we were meant to be. I cannot do this any other way.”

“You are right,” I say, horrified at the thought that my lover had to watch my sufferings at the hands of Melkor. How painful it must have been for him and I feel naked and exposed, inside and out, because he has seen me as such.

There can be no going back. To do so would be a betrayal to ourselves, and all we have to look forward to. It concerns me less that I still enjoy the feeling of fear that I instil in every elf who sees me even now, and I tell him so. He says that this will change as I allow more of the good feelings into my life.

In all honesty, I can say that I do not care if every elf remains scared of me. Maglor is my focus and I will move forward because of him. No one else matters and so I will play by the rules. I have a new future to safeguard and it is not mine alone.

For Maglor, I will do all that I can. For the one I love, I will make sure that I do not fall.

*****

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