uh-oh i’m having Silmaril-Era Angbang Angst Feels and now you’re all gonna suffer because of it
melkor coming back from valinor with his prize and sauron forges him a new crown to set the silmarils in, one more splendid and fearsome than the last, and melkor adores it. sauron has never been happier- his lord is returned, the fortress is thriving, their armies are without equal… and then things start to change.
the change is gradual, so slight that it almost goes unnoticed, but melkor becomes more and more paranoid, more temperamental, more and more unstable.
he starts losing his temper at the slightest inconvenience, lashing out at everyone around him, even at sauron, suspicious of everyone and everything, believing that he can trust no one
sauron becomes convinced that if he can just ease his master’s pain, that if he can find a way to heal the burns on his hands, then everything will go back to normal, that melkor will trust him again, that he’ll stop screaming at sauron for even the smallest infraction, if he can just manage this, everything will be good again.
when he realizes he can’t heal his master’s hands, that he can’t cure these wounds, he throws himself instead into his work- if he can perfect these experiments, if he can just do better, be better, then everything will be fine
but then he realizes that melkor hasn’t noticed any of the new improvements sauron has made, any of the new things he’s created, and more to the point, even when sauron brings these things to his attention, melkor doesn’t care, not about any of it
sauron slowly realizing that his master no longer cares for anything but the silmarils, not even him
like a tree branch breaking, the realization that melkor no longer loves him is slow in building until the weight is too much and all at once it snaps, and the break is enough to bring sauron to his hands ans kness shaking with the force of his sorrow, because he could bear any other blow, he could survive any other defeat, endure any other loss, but not this, anything but this
it becomes apparent that melkor is forgetting things, having to be reminded of things he should already know, that he does already know, he begins getting lost in the fortress, unable to find his way. the number of times sauron has to remind him where he is, when it is, has to guide him back to his chambers starts adding up and adding up and adding up, until it all but breaks them both
perhaps the worst part of it is that melkor is aware that he’s different now, aware that he’s changing, deteriorating, that he’s but a shadow of his former self now.
he knows that his relationship with his lieutenant was different before, and in moments of clarity he remembers all too well that sauron is quite literally his soulmate, that they were handcrafted by eru specifically for each other, but all too soon the haze of madness and confusion brought on by the silmarils consumes him again and he forgets
when beren and luthien steal the silmaril, melkor is enraged beyond reasoning with, he destroys entire sections of the fortress in his fury, smites whole battalions of orcs, and does a great deal of damage to sauron
after the rage subsides, melkor comes back to himself, more lucid than he has been in years, and find himself looming over a cowering sauron, his chest heaving with exertion, looking down at a sauron badly wounded, a sauron whose blood is on melkor’s hands and it breaks melkor in ways he never knew he could be broken
the haze is parted for several years to come, but there’s no respite in it, no reconciliation, no healing to be had. instead, melkor starts spending all his time locked in a dark room staring at the remaining silmarils as sauron stands outside the door begging his master to come out, please, just come out you’ve been in there for months please just come out, and melkor just shouts at him to go away
the lucidity allows him to remember everything, the good and the bad- the love he had shared with his lieutenant since the world was born, in heart-wrenching clarity, and also every moment since his obtaining the silmarils, every time he’s shouted at his love, berated him, every time he’s hit sauron, and it breaks him anew with every surfacing memory to know that the incident after the theft, that was not the first time he had spilled his lieutenant’s blood, not the first time he’d left bruises and broken bones, mangled flesh and crushed cartilage, in the wake of his anger
so he sequesters himself in his chambers, allowing no one entrance, sitting in the dark, clutching his crown, staring at the two remaining silmarils and wanting so badly to destroy them, to throw them away, but being unable to bring himself to do it, their hold on him is yet too strong.
and slowly the haze retakes him, and he forgets again. he forgets his love for sauron, he forgets his plans for arda, he forgets what he has done to the love of his life. he forgets everything but the silmarils and his need for them
eventually, he forgets sauron completely. every time he’s required to approve a battle plan, he has to be reminded who sauron is, what they’re doing and why.
by the end of the war, sauron is a hair’s breadth from forsaking his master’s cause and fleeing angband, but the valar’s host arrives before he can
in the last days of the siege, melkor once again remembers, and he remembers everything. once again, his love for sauron resurfaces, and he begs his lieutenant to go, flee from here, to save himself, and sauron pleads with his lord to let him stay, let him stay, please, do not send me from your side, but melkor will hear nothing of it, go, he tells him, go, and take my love with you. one of us must survive this, and i would not see you in chains, i would not see you perish.
and sauron weeps, weeps, because this has been all he has wanted, for so long- to have his master back, his love back, truly back, and now it is too late, far too late, and everything is ashes all around them, all they have worked for is for naught and as sauron flees at his master’s behest, he knows: they will never see each other again
he watches, from a distance, as his master goes out to fight the valar’s host, and from his hiding place it’s all he can do not to scream as he watches his master get cut down.
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