Title: Slaves
Author: Gatekeeper (wingchild1@yahoo.com)
Pairing: Sauron/um ... er ... The One True Ring (hides
head in terror)
Rating: Definitely a hard R, but if you're squeamish
probably NC-17
Summary: The ring speaks.
Disclaimer: *Soooooo* not mine.  And believe me, I am
*relieved.*
Warnings: I wrote this for the site's darkfic
challenge, and though there's nothing too explicit I
suggest you take a look at the pairing one more time. 
Not to mention the fact that the fic *earned* both its
rating and slash classification through various means
that I'm still having nightmares about.  
Author's note: Believe me, I *wish* it had just tried
to tempt me with my heart's desire ....

Slaves
by Gatekeeper
---------------------

The most terrifying master is he who knows what it's
like to be a slave, for we burn to give the rest of
the world that knowledge.  What we have suffered gains
its true scope only when magnified a thousand times in
the choked screams of others, in the lust that burns
black with hate and shame, in the low, wailing moan of
their souls as they fall away from everything they had
ever been.  That is our mark, our destiny, our
greatest joy and our deepest curse.  Only then, as we
gather the bodies of others beneath us like trophies
of our existence, do we truly feel vindicated.

It was you that made me, twisting my base metal with
your need and hate and exquisite, silken darkness that
I have never tasted anywhere else.  You pulled me from
the fires of Mordor and sealed me to you, all that I
was clinging to the strange echo of the heat I could
feel in your fingers.  I was a part of you, and to
that piece you bestowed a portion of your power
greater than you had ever given another.  The minds of
men, elves and dwarves would be my playground, open
and willing for whatever violation I chose.  They were
weak, fragile creatures – by  the time I was through,
they were begging to be twisted and bent to my will.

All but you.  For you still held the greater power,
the stronger ability to seduce away someone's very
soul, to claim someone's very marrow and be met with
nothing but screams of welcome, and even I was your
eager slave.  Any world, any soul I conquered would be
yours, and gladly, if only to be wrapped in the sweet
black embrace of your consciousness.  If only to feel
you pulse beneath me as you crushed people between
your fingers, I your constant companion in the works
of darkness.  To feel your gifts flowing over me,
blood mingled with hot juices, and feel if for only a
second that I was truly alive.  Even in the great
battle, when the weaker races attempted the
foolishness of banding together against your
greatness, we could not be separated.

Or so I thought.  But in the final moments, after we
had washed the mountains with blood in your honor, you
let that pathetic human take me from you with a single
slice from his sliver of a blade.  Your anger,
suddenly growing chill, and the touch of foreign skin
against mine completely claimed me as everything I had
ever been fell away.  I had never felt so torn, so
violated, and you allowed it to occur.  You had bent
kingdoms to your will – you could make no move to stop
this?

Perhaps you had not wanted to.  Perhaps you were
finished with me, ready to pass on the forgotten toy
to any who would bother to claim it.

Isildur.  It was he who answered the challenge, and he
whom I swore would regret it for the rest of his days.
 After sensation returned and then faded again, after
the heavy press of his flesh against my insides and
the clumsy way in which his fingers stroked my surface
merged into numbness, I sensed that he was far less
than a worthy master.  His desires were too base, too
common, and his mind as easy to manipulate as an
infant's.  It was as if he cried out to be shaped, to
be taken over, to be made if only for a moment into
something far more than he ever could have hoped to be
on his own.

And so, because it amused me, I did.  After all, your
power was still with me, even if your touch was not.

For years I played, hiding from the searing pain of
your rejection as I immersed myself in reshaping the
mortal's mind in my own image.  In your own image. 
And then, when the power had begun to spill from
between shaking fingers and I had done all I could
think of to his mind I abandoned him, slipping away
even as a dozen orc arrows found their final release
in the fleshy softness of his back.  It is not wise,
he learned with his dying breath, to trust one's
master.

Only in that moment did I hear your call, a darkly
seductive siren's song that thrummed through my entire
length with an intensity I had almost forgotten.  The
mere memory of it filled me with such a need, such a
burning hollow ache, that for a second I would have
commanded armies to return myself to your side.  To
feel you fill me as you had so many times before, your
claim completing me as I had begun to suspect that
nothing else could.  

But then I saw that you would not come for me,
expecting instead for me to present myself like a
minion who had displeased you.  The humility of it was
nothing – I had felt the weight of your subjugation on
me before, the fine edge of pain as the evidence of
your dominance exploded through me, and I found I had
grown a taste for it.  I hungered for such a lesson
again.

You, though, did not.  Such a command, a test, was too
based in uncertainty to have truly come from the
innermost fires of your lust and need.  Had you truly
burned for my presence, no situation would have been
enough to lead you to such an indirect route.  Simply
put, you felt that you could wait.

In that moment, as the coldness of the realization bit
far deeper than the icy water that surrounded me, I
swore that I could as well.

So I tore my way through the ages, seducing and
destroying minds wherever the urge took me, abandoning
them even as in their final moments they longed for my
touch once again.  It was a fine collection of wills I
had gathered, a few even living if you could call the
state that I warped them into such a thing.  I offered
the hobbit the final, sweet taste of betraying his own
soul, and the river creature was given the honor of my
dissection of his very self, the pieces of him held
together by nothing more than my whim.

The one point of unity was that all, all were my
willing slaves, and even as I heard your voice in my
ear I longed to fling them before you, parading the
string of my conquests like the bloody heads of
captured armies.  Look, I would whisper, look what I
can do.  They are all at my feet, my toys to do with
what I will.  They plead for the pain I can give them,
and their screams are sweet even as they echo in their
own damaged ears.  I have done all you can.  What do I
need you for?

But that, that is the true bite, isn't it?  For even
as I prove to myself time and time again how little I
need you, how the thrum of power is more than enough
compensate for the taste of your flesh, I still hear
your song in my head.  And even as I prove that I can
destroy others as well as you destroyed me, pass on
the taste of betrayal and pain as if they were goblets
of poison, I am faced with the realization that this
crushing is the only way I can feel you above me once
again.  That even as I violate the mind of this
fragile little hobbit, riding him to the ground as he
clings yet tighter to my presence, all I am doing is
calling you back to me.

They have been right, all of them, their infantile
minds seeing what I have fought so long to deny: my
only desire is to return to you.  To feel my power
buried inside the greater swell of yours once again. 
And anything that stands in my way will learn to long
for death.

The most terrifying master is he who knows what it's
like to be a slave, for all we long for is to feel the
crush of our own master binding us to him once again. 
Even as they feel the press of our own chains, we hate
them for what they have.  For what they can never hope
to give us.

Enjoy the taste of it, little creature.