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Ring-Maker [Worm/Lord of the Rings Alt-Power] [Complete]

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Lithos Maitreya said:
You are not my possessions." I smiled at her, keenly aware of my heartbeat. "If anything, Sophia… I am yours."

And there, in full view of her, I slipped the One Ring onto the ring finger of my left hand.
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We're not even going to pretend that this wasn't a marriage proposal and acceptance.

I admit to not knowing who the shade trying to hide was. Was it Queen Administrator, lost and alone since it failed to bond with Taylor?
 
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Dawn 14.6
  • Threadmarks
    • Many thanks to @BeaconHill for betareading.

    -x-x-x-​

    "Welcome back." Emma didn't look up as Sophia and I returned to the small campsite-cavern, hand in hand. The pale blue cold-fire danced in her eyes as she turned her Ring around in her fingers.

    The two of us glanced at each other and, by unspoken agreement, separated and approached. We sat across the fire from her, equidistant, ringing the dancing not-flame.

    "Are you having second thoughts?" I asked. "Talk to me, Emma."

    She considered that for a moment, Lumeya dancing between her fingertips. "No," she said eventually. "No, I still think this was the right thing to do. It's just going to take some getting used to."

    "Feeling the One?" I asked. "I understand. It'll always be there for you, just as it will for me, from now on."

    "Yes, but not just that." She glanced between us suddenly, a quick and jerky motion of her head. "I guess I should be congratulating you both," she said.

    Sophia frowned. "Thanks, but I get the sense there's a 'but' there."

    "There shouldn't be," she said. "You're good for each other. A blind idiot could see that—I can see that. I'm just… not sure how I feel about it." We were silent. After a moment, she continued. "I feel like I'm part of all this," she says hesitantly. "Whether I like it or not, and I'm not sure whether I do. How would the world look right now if I had been stronger, after that night in the alley? How would it look if I hadn't fixated on the both of you?"

    "I don't think that's productive," I offered gently. "Might-have-beens are usually unhelpful at best. We can only move forward with what is."

    "Sure. But it's not comforting." Emma let out a breath. "I feel like… it's hard to imagine any of this happening if there wasn't some sort of fate or destiny at play. And if that's true, then everything I did, everything I became, was part of that. That… well, it makes me feel a little sick, to be honest." I opened my mouth to respond, but she kept going after only a momentary pause. "And—even if I accept that, even if I was some sort of vessel for destiny… it feels like I just outlived my own purpose. Neither of you needs me anymore. You've both outgrown me. What's the point in my being here anymore, if my part in the story's been told now?"

    "That's not how this works." It was Sophia's voice, not mine, that echoed in the luminous dark. "You're not defined as a side-character in someone else's story. Not mine, not Taylor's. Sure, maybe our little narrative triumvirate is falling apart, but that's a good thing. For all of us, you included. I've outgrown that night in the alley. And now you're outgrowing it too. This isn't the end of your part in defining our stories, it's the end of our part in defining yours. When we get back to the Bay, it won't be an ending for you—it'll be a chance for you to start fresh, to start telling the story you want to tell. Like we're all doing."

    Emma considered that, her eyes hooded as she studied Sophia. "I… believe you," she said. "It's just hard to internalize it."

    "Then let me answer some of your more… existential anxieties," I said quietly. They both looked my way. "Fate, destiny… these things exist. We are part of a story—of a symphony of interwoven music and melody. Each of us plays a part in that Song. But that does not mean that our choices don't matter, or that we aren't the ones making them. On the contrary—it means the exact opposite.

    "The importance of what happened between us, Emma, isn't just that my friend and sister turned on me. It's that you chose to do it. The importance of what happened after Heartbreaker came to the Bay isn't that I tried to build myself an empire and control the world around me—it's that I chose to do it, and the reasons why I chose to do it.

    "If we're part of a story, then it's not one of a sequence of events—it's the actions of characters, of people making choices, good and bad, and the ways they touch one another's lives. If we're part of an orchestra, then the music we're playing is nothing without the instruments playing it, and the wind in their pipes.

    "We are more than the sum of our actions, than the effects we have on others." I tore my eyes from the pale cold flame, meeting her gaze. "We are each of us the end unto ourselves. The Song is infinitely complex and fractal. Every single part within it is a universe in its own right, endless in depth and meaning. You aren't defined as a part of your story. You are defining the story."

    Emma's eyes glittered in the dark. "Sometimes," she says quietly, "I almost forget that you're basically a primary source for the Bible."

    After a pause, Sophia let out a dry chuckle. I joined in, and soon so did Emma.

    "Okay," Emma said after we had subsided. "All right." She stood, stretching. Sophia and I followed her to her feet. "Let's get going," she said. "The world outside won't wait forever."

    As she slipped Lumeya back onto her finger, I felt her return on the edge of my consciousness, like a computer linking back into a network.I gently reached out with my mind and touched hers, a brief offering of companionship. Hesitantly, I felt her reach back, mental fingers meeting mine as we doused the flames and left the cavern.



    -x-x-x-​



    It was night when we emerged from the crevasse. The stars twinkled overhead. I imagined that the faint scent of sulfur which had suffused the Yellowstone caldera for millennia was already starting to fade. It would take time, but this last wound I had left on the earth, the last scars of Mordor, could finally begin to heal.

    If even the darkness of Mordor had become something beautiful in the fullness of time, I couldn't wait to see what would emerge from its purification.

    "What's going on over there?" Sophia's voice pulled me from my reverie. She was pointing into a thicker copse nearby, one we had passed through on our way in. There were lights there, the beam of a flashlight darting hither and thither among the trees, and behind them the twin beams of a pair of headlights.

    I had an inkling as to what I had missed. I wasn't certain, and I hoped I was wrong. "Come on," I said. "Let's go see."

    As we approached, the man holding the flashlight seemed to sense us. The beam turned in our direction for a moment before shutting off. When we drew close enough to see through the trees we found a familiar green pickup truck idling in the clearing, tire tracks running along the grass behind it. Mark Anglin stood there, bracing himself with one arm against the lip of his truck's bed, his face hidden in the shadows. In the dark he seemed older and smaller than he had in the daylight. His arms were thin as rails, his twiggy legs barely seemed capable of holding up even his emaciated frame. But they didn't shake.

    His gaze found me, and in an instant we saw one another unmasked. I knew him--and he knew me. Terror seized in every muscle of his frame, and he threw himself from his vehicle, turning to flee.

    "Nadal," I snapped—and only once the word was out of my lips did I come to the sickening realization that my order to stop had been spoken in the Black Speech.

    His body rebelled against him, his hand gripping the bed of his truck with white knuckles as his legs refused to propel him. Slowly, he turned back to face me.

    "So," he said, and the midwestern lilt was gone from his voice—not peeled away like a false skin, but brushed away like dust as the original rich voice was revealed. "You've returned."

    "I have," I said quietly.

    "I felt the change," he said, his voice shaking. "I felt the old land sigh—relief, I thought. I assumed it was one of the Istari, or an Elf-king, come back to finish their old war. But… it was you?"

    "It was me," I confirmed. "Come to put an end to my own sins."

    Sophia stepped up beside me, glancing between the two of us. Her eyes sought mine. "What are we missing, Taylor?" she asked. "Who is this?"

    I felt my face twist into an involuntary grimace. "My oldest surviving victim."

    "I was once a King," he said quietly. "Even I don't remember the realm I ruled now, nor the name under which I ruled it."

    "And then I found him," I said. "And now… now you've found me. I had no idea you'd survived—I thought you had been destroyed at Pelennor."

    "They never found it," he answered roughly. "The damn thing just sat there. The others were all melted down when Orodruin erupted, but mine sat on those fields for three hundred years before I managed to pull myself together enough to move it. Another thousand before I had a finger to put it back on."

    "I'm sorry," I said. It was all I could say.

    "I thought it would all end when you died," he rasped. "They were supposed to lose their power. We were supposed to be free. But I lingered. I watched Gondor and Rohan fall. I watched the world be sundered like a mirror into uncountable reflections. I watched the survivors try to put the pieces back together into something that made sense."

    "And eventually you found something you had lost," I said gently. "Something I had stolen."

    "Eventually you run out of pain," he said raggedly. "Eventually there's no more suffering left in the world. All that's left is you—empty, porous, like an empty sieve."

    "And you waited for a world that had forgotten you," I said. "Waited for something, anything, to remember you. To acknowledge that you existed, still, even eons later."

    "They did," he said. "The wandering tribes, the people who wandered into the old country following the buffalo. They thought I was a spirit, and they were right. Sometimes they prayed to me, sometimes they tried to banish me. I stayed. Here—where at least I could still feel an echo of myself."

    "And time went on around you. Until now."

    "Until now," he agreed, raw and weary. His dark eyes met mine. "You're changed," he observed. "Not just in body. You feel different."

    "Yes," I agreed softly. "I am different. I've been reborn, not just reawakened. I came here to heal the scars I left behind on the earth, and I have now done so. Mordor has finally been set at peace."

    "I have imagined it so many ways… and yet, somehow, I never once imagined it could be you." He was silent for a moment, staring at me, desperation, fear, and hope warring in his eyes. His hands clasped together, and began to shake.

    "It's all right," I said, gently. "Say it. Ask."

    With slow, trembling hands he pulled the Ring from his finger and held it out towards me. "Let me go," he croaked. "Please."

    There were a thousand things I wanted to say. I wanted to apologize for all I had done to him; to mourn for all that the both of us had lost; even to explain to him why I had done what I had, been what I had, to beg if not forgiveness then at least absolution. But all of these things were selfish desires, things I wanted for my sake. He had existed because of my own selfishness for more than long enough. I reached out and took the Ring back from him. "Go," I said simply. "Be at peace."

    There was silence for a moment. Then, with a sound like a sigh, Mark Anglin faded away. He leaned back against his truck and sank down as though to his knees, but by the time he reached them they, and he, were gone. All that remained was a green Ford, its headlights glaring into the night.

    "I'm sorry." My voice was barely audible even in my own ears, a whisper lost in the night breeze.

    I stared down into my hand, turning the band of bronze and amber around in my fingers. It was cool to the touch, and felt brittle, as if it could be crushed into powder with a mere twitch of my fingers.

    "Emma?" I murmured, turning to face her.

    Silently she held out her left hand. I deposited the Ring in her palm. For a moment, Lumeya glimmered both on her index finger and in her hand. Then, like dust disturbed by a sudden breeze, the last of the Old Rings disappeared into nothing.

    "I told you that Ring was a promise," I said softly, staring at her hand where the oldest of my sins had just vanished. "That we would never again go back. That the old cycles were broken." I met her gaze. "Hold me to it," I asked—begged. "Please."

    Her hand closed into a fist for a moment, before falling to her side. "I will," she promised.

    Our stare held for a moment before I nodded slowly. "Thank you," I said. My hands shook as I fumbled for my radio. "Dragon?" I said once I'd produced it. "We're finished here. Can you send a craft to pick us up?"

    "I had a feeling you'd be calling soon," said Dragon affectionately. "I'll be at the rendezvous in just a few minutes."

    "No," I said, swallowing. "Here. Where we are now. Please."

    "Oh. Um, okay." Dragon sounded hesitant. "Are you all right, Taylor?"

    "I…" My voice caught. I met Sophia's green eyes, furrowed in sympathy and concern, then turned to face the lonely truck. I swallowed. "No," I murmured. "No, I'm not. But I will be."

    I sank to the ground and rested my face in my hands. Sophia's arms closed around me. We were still there when Dragon found us fifteen minutes later.

    -x-x-x-​

    Apologies for the wait. After last chapter I had a hard time regaining my drive to continue—so many of the things I'd been pushing to get to had finally happened. But I think I'm back.

    For anyone interested, I've been working on a Quest for the past few weeks called Sword of Paradise. It's set in the Destiny universe, and voting for the current chapter closes in just a few hours—so come check it out if you're interested! It's available here.

    I fully intend to work on the two projects in parallel. I have enough time and energy to do both most of the time—if one falls by the wayside it's because of writers' block, not because I was busy with the other.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • I would not have guessed in 1000 years that Mark Anglin is the Witch-King of Angmar, though I guess the Ang- Mar- could have given it away. Also, Mark means Warlike, which applies too.
     
    Okay wow, I was really not expecting that to be who Mark Anglin was. Surprisingly fitting, as much as I would've liked a cameo from Gandalf.
     
    Dawn 14.7
  • Threadmarks
    • Many thanks to @BeaconHill for betareading.

    -x-x-x-​

    My eyes opened to the soft sunlight filtering in through my window. The grey dawn cast long shadows across my old bedroom.

    I hadn't slept here very often over the past several months. Dad had been comatose—I had left him comatose—for a lot of that time, and even after that the place had been choked with unpleasant memories. I remembered feverish nights spent torturing myself over tearstained journals, documenting every cruelty, from cutting remarks to elbows in the ribs, from stolen assignments to ruined books. This was the room where I had desperately tried to think about any way out of the prison of my life—any way except for the obvious.

    Unbidden, as I lay there in the gloom, my thoughts drifted back towards Mark Anglin—the name the Witch-King had chosen. I couldn't know firsthand what it was like for a mortal to have his soul extended over millennia, but I had seen the results more than once. I had watched as my Nazgûl gradually faded away, any spark leaving them as their lifespans lengthened. Curiosity had been one of the first things to go, followed by any interest in the future. Hope quickly faded—not in the sense that they grew hopeless, but in the sense that the shape of the future lost any lustre for them. They did not hope because there was nothing to hope for.

    By the time of the second War of the Ring, the Ringwraiths had been scarcely more than automata. They could string together thoughts, but there was no creative spark left in them to form original ideas. They could put together plans, but they had no desires left to motivate them to seek objectives. All that was human in them had been sapped away by time.

    Or so I had thought.

    I had imagined that the human essence, the Gift of the Second-born that was endemic to them, was gradually passing out of the vessels even as I kept them animate. I had never tested it—just assumed that, since the Nazgûl had stopped acting like autonomous human beings, they no longer were, just shells I could control.

    I had been wrong. In my absence, the core of the man who became the Witch-King had endured. The profound horror of his circumstance, the inescapability of it, had never ceased to torture him. He lingered in a world that had forgotten him, unable to muster grief, unable to feel anything but an abject melancholy for the man he had once been.

    And I knew, with cold certainty, that back then I would not have changed a single thing. Every indignity I had heaped upon him, I still would have, even knowing exactly what it would do to him.

    The blankets moved beside me. I startled, turning my head in surprise, but before I could say or do any more I felt lips on my forehead. Sophia wrapped herself gently around me, the blankets rustling between us, and I leaned into her, allowing myself to melt into her arms.

    She held me there, stroking my hair and pressing slow, soft kisses against my face for a few minutes. I wasn't crying, but in her arms I could feel how I was shuddering. Slowly I grew still, clinging to her like a limpet to a rock.

    "I forgot you were here," I admitted at last, once I felt I could speak without my voice shaking.

    She ran the fingers of her left hand through my hair. I felt the ridge of Cenya against the back of my scalp momentarily. "Well, I am," she said. "And I'm not leaving anytime soon."

    "I'm glad," I said, burying my face in her shoulder. She was wearing simple cotton pajamas, wonderfully casual, and I breathed deep of the banal scent of her shampoo.

    "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked.

    I hesitated. I didn't want to think about it. Not now, not here in her arms, wrapped up in her like a bird in its nest. And I could ignore it, here and now. I could distract myself with the wonderful softness of her, and the beautifully light feeling of being in love, and being loved in return.

    But that couldn't last forever, much as I, eternal, might wish it could. And if there were anyone to whom I could bare myself, she was here beside me now. I didn't fear her judgement, and that alone made her unique and precious beyond any other treasure.

    So I told her. I told her about the Nazgûl. I told her in painful detail about what Mark had gone through, about what I had damned him to suffer in my absence.

    And I told her, too, about how it had felt to watch him try to flee the moment he had realized who he was facing. I told her about the sick feeling in my belly when the Black Speech had passed my lips unbidden. I told her about the way my mind had flickered back to Valefor, to Nikos Vasil, to the little Master-children I had run down not two months ago. I told her about the way my traitorous heart had flared in satisfaction at being, once more, feared.

    She listened to me. She held me as I poured out my pain, my fear, my self-hate. Her breathing was even and gentle, and I felt the rhythm of it in my whole body, calming and centering me. She didn't interrupt, and when I finally subsided, she spoke.

    "You can't just stop being affected by the things you used to do," she said kindly. "You can't just flick a switch and turn off the parts of you that reacted in a certain way to things. When I made Emma trigger on the roof of Winslow, part of me was happy about it—happy to be inflicting pain instead of receiving it. That was who I was for years. Even though I knew better by then, it was still a part of me. It still is now. It always will be. But I think that's okay, because there's another part of me that wants to make people stop hurting, that wants to help people feel better, and be better, whether they're my enemies or not. It's not consistent, and it doesn't have to be. People are contradictory, and so am I. And so are you."

    I buried my face in her hair. "If I get it wrong even once," I said softly, "I could hurt a lot of people."

    "Yeah," she agreed. "But every time you get it right, you help someone. Look—maybe you sometimes like seeing people scared of you. But you also like to see them trust you, and you like repaying that trust in kind. You like to see them happy, and to know that you're the one who made them happy. It's all part of you, Taylor, and nothing you feel is wrong. What can be wrong is what you do, and you're doing your best. That's all anyone can ask."

    "Is it enough?" I found myself asking.

    "It has to be," she says instantly. "Otherwise, 'enough' is meaningless."

    I snuggled closer. "I love you when you get all wise."

    She laughed and kissed me, and we didn't talk again for some time.

    -x-x-x-​

    The farewell party was a joyous affair. Though we were all aware that it would be the last time we all saw one another in the same place for some time—possibly forever—none of us let that hamper our celebration. I caught even Emma smiling as she listened to Jess and Alec swap stories of some of their sillier escapades as villains.

    We had commandeered one of the large conference rooms in the upper floors of PRT HQ for the purpose. Several small tables were scattered around the space, littered with food and drink, and all around were couches, seats, and two or three televisions. One wall was paneled in glass, allowing a view of the Bay lit dimly by the sunset. A glass door opened into a balcony with metal tables and dark green umbrellas. Someone had set up a dartboard in one corner, and a few of the PRT members were doing their best to compete with Miss Militia and the luminous green dart in her hand. Across the room, Brian and Marissa were playing against Alec and Jess at the pool table someone dragged in from the break room.

    The party was loud, rambunctious, and lively. Wards, Protectorate members, PRT officers, and former villains all mingled, and somehow no one was uncomfortable with it.

    I did, in the end, order pizza. It seemed fitting.

    "Hey," said Carlos, lowering himself into an armchair beside my seat on the sofa. He held a slice of Hawaiian pizza in one hand and a paper plate in the other.

    "Hey," I replied softly, my eyes on Dennis and Sam playing table tennis, their eyes alight with laughter.

    "You doing all right?" Carlos reached out and gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder. "You've been awfully quiet since you got back."

    I turned to him, showing him the genuine smile on my face. "I know," I said. "I had a rough night, but I'm doing better now." My thoughts drifted back to the morning, to waking up with Sophia beside me. "I'm good, Carlos. There's nowhere I'd rather be, and nothing I'd rather be doing."

    He smiled slowly. "Good to hear," he said. Then his face fell somewhat. "Listen, Taylor, I know most of us weren't really… what you needed, after your second trigger."

    "It wasn't your fault," I said immediately, my smile fading. "Something like that was going to happen, Carlos. It's who I am—who I was. I'm just sorry you were all caught up in it."

    "That's what I'm talking about." Carlos looked unhappy. "It feels like you don't trust us anymore—and I get it. We let you down. We should have been there for you—like Sophia was. We should have seen what was happening and done something about it. I just…" He sighed in frustration, and in a flash of insight I understood.

    "Oh, Carlos," I said gently. "I promise, I didn't want this. Splitting up the team wasn't my idea, and I wasn't in favor of it at first. Alexandria had to talk me around to it. I don't want you all to leave, and I don't want to leave all of you. You're my friends. And you were there for me—I don't blame you for not knowing intuitively exactly what I needed. No one would have."

    "Sophia did," Carlos said dryly.

    "Sophia did," I agreed with a wide smile that probably came out rather goofy. "But she's different."

    Carlos chuckled. "Fair enough," he said. "Have to admit, I was surprised you wanted Oracle along for your little field trip."

    "Emma," I corrected him. "And—it seemed right. The fear that I would do exactly this, but for the wrong reasons, is what drove her to the Empire in the first place. She deserves to be there, to see for herself that it goes right."

    "Mm-hm. And it also gives you a convenient chaperone."

    It was an effort to let myself flush red, to resist the urge to clamp down on such a blatant display of emotion. "She wasn't our chaperone," I said. My lips twitched. "Or if she was, she wasn't a very good one."

    Carlos raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like there's a story there."

    "Not all that much of one." Sophia's voice came from behind me as she passed by the couch. I leaned up, and she leaned down, and there in full view of Carlos and the rest of the team, our lips met. Sophia smiled down at me for a moment, then winked at Carlos. "Emma gave us our space, that's all." Then, with a happy bounce in her step, she continued on.

    I looked back at Carlos and saw that not only had his jaw dropped, so had several of the others who were nearby. Missy's eyes looked like they were about to fall out, and Alec looked like he might fall over laughing at any moment. Dragon's eyes were on me with an odd, almost wistful smile on her face. When I caught her eye, she gave me a tiny nod and then turned back to her conversation with Colin.

    "Well," said Carlos, sounding strangled. "Um. Congratulations?"

    "Thank you," I said gracefully. "If I'm honest with myself, it's been a long time coming."

    "Sure, yeah," he agreed absently, his eyes darting over to Sophia across the room, then back to me. "Not really what I expected when you said Emma would be coming with you."

    "I didn't expect it either," I admitted, "but that needed to happen. Sophia, Emma and I go back to the very beginning. Each of us caused the others a lot of pain, most of it intentional. We needed to close the circle, all three of us, if we wanted to move forward. Emma needed closure so that she can live her life without orbiting me and Sophia anymore, so she can find her own path."

    "No mention of you and Sophia finding your own paths, though."

    I raised my eyebrows at him, ignoring the warmth in my cheeks. "What an oddly specific thing to point out," I said blandly.

    Carlos laughed. "You'll be all right," he said. "Take care of yourself, okay, Taylor? And take care of Sophia while you're at it."

    "I will. You too, Carlos." I watched as he stood and rejoined the rest of the party. I let my eyes drift over the others.

    We might not be together in the flesh for much longer, but we were bound together by more than Rings, now. These were my friends, and so they would remain no matter what changed around us.

    My smile widened as the first of many fireworks exploded over the bay outside the window. I let Sophia pull me to my feet and followed her out onto the balcony. The bursts of color in the dusky twilight illuminated the city that had become my home, the people who had become my friends and family.

    I had built these fireworks with Dragon's help, and asked some of Dad's friends to set them off once night fell. I remembered designing some of them long ago, in simpler, younger times, with someone who might have become a friend had things been different. But as I watched Sophia's eyes widen in delight as a sparkling dragon soared over the Bay, I couldn't be too upset about lost opportunities or doors left unopened.

    There was, right now, nowhere I would rather be.

    End Arc 14: Dawn​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Lithos Maitreya said:
    That was who I was for years. Even though I knew better by then, it was still a part of me. It still is now. It always will be. But I think that's okay, because there's another part of me that wants to make people stop hurting, that wants to help people feel better, and be better, whether they're my enemies or not. It's not consistent, and it doesn't have to be. People are contradictory, and so am I. And so are you."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    Do I contradict myself?
    Very well then I contradict myself,
    I am large, I contain multitudes.

    —Walt Whitman
     
    A very nice, gentle close to the arc. After this arc, such a chapter feels like the end of the fic to be honest. I'm not really sure where you're going to go from here.
     
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