The ring inside of Lily, deep in the depths of her mind that seemed to extend like the depths of Moria, stared out into the darkness to where somewhere in the real world Indil who was neither Lily nor the ring stood with a sword in hand burning so brightly against the night.

"I don't believe it," he whispered, not to Lenin, not even to himself, but perhaps to everything he had ever believed in.

Indil had chosen death.

Willingly, he had stared into the abyss, not even Mandos' Hall where the other mortal dead roamed, but true darkness and with a smile and bold confident steps he had said goodbye to the world he barely knew and embraced his own unmaking without anyone in the world who could understand what that meant.

Indil was going to vanish, just like that, with no one to mourn him and no grave marker to even mark his passing, and he decided it with a smile.

Indil had done what the ring, what Sauron, had avoided for millennia.

And he had done it with such horrific ease.

"I don't believe it," he said again, louder, and yet the words were still true.

Indil was half of him, and yet, he could not fathom that decision.

"I can."

He turned, slowly, and watched as Wizard Lenin joined him at the edge of the abyss. Their surroundings looked like the end of the world, that pit in the mines of Moria where Lily had fallen and he had jumped after her in fair form. It was snowing again, their surroundings perfectly dark, and the air cold and filled with the mist of their breath.

"Honestly, it's just like her," Wizard Lenin said with that peculiar fondness he could not quite contain for his host.

"For however much she bemoans her fate, her role in the universe, she will always stand tall and walk proudly into damnation without any laurels," Wizard Lenin explained, and in his eyes was the spark of fire that was either life itself or his feelings for her, "Of course, even something that's only half of her, could do no less."

"Yes," the ring breathed, and he realized that this, perhaps, was what he had envied in Lily more than any other being.

That indomitable strength of will, an inner nobility that did not doubt in the face of all opposition, and the kind of heroics that defied ballads altogether.

If Lily had been there, in the beginning, when there was only Valinor and a half-baked Middle Earth, she might very well have followed Morgoth into the jaws of hell but she never would have stayed there.

Disparaged by the Valar, mocked by Mairon, whatever the world threw at her, never the less in the darkened caverns on the racks Morgoth devised she would have been grinning in defiance even when the rest of them were screaming. When even proud Mairon had been unmade and reforged into a shadow of himself.

Even if she hadn't the power, even if she was a tenth of what she was, no prison or torment devised could have held her. She would have emerged, proud, triumphant, and free in a way that Sauron could not have conceived by the end of the first age.

And she would have come back for him. She would come back for him as she would come back Wizard Lenin in any and every circumstance. It did not matter if it was a war that was not of her making, on a side she should revile, or if he had spat at her and thrown her to the curb, she would be there all the same.

She would have dragged Sauron, who had forgotten what it ever meant to be Mairon, kicking and screaming into the light of day as if he had as much a right to sunlight as any other being.

If, of course, she had been there.

"Do you realize," the ring said, swallowing and forcing the words past his lips, "How lucky you are, my friend?"

In any other circumstance he imagined the man would scoff, perhaps hiss and spit and bemoan his unfortunate circumstances, as it was he instead smiled, "I have an idea."

Three thousand years gone by, stored in borrowed memories of the soul, and closing his eyes Indil thought it still smelled of honeysuckle far more than it did roses or lilies. There was the slightest of night breezes, warm from the summer heat, and the quiet gurgling of a fountain.

And more than anywhere else in all Middle Earth, perhaps Earth as well, it felt like home.

Finally, he opened his eyes, and found himself looking at a dumbstruck Celebrimbor who had undoubtedly just watched Indil appear from nothingness itself. He looked so young, so young and filled with life and curiosity. He had forgotten how he had looked, with that eager smile, those dark eyes shining, and silver hair only just pulled away from his face. Perpetually boyish, filled with unending joy of discovery and crafting…

Sauron had only been able to remember him defiant, broken, and bleeding as he was made into a banner to strike terror into his people. A bitter ghost as the three forever and always eluded Sauron after that.

For three hundred years, he had looked like he did now, and yet Sauron had only ever truly remembered those last few days at the end.

And looking at the idiotic expression on his face, the way his eyes comically bulged, Indil couldn't help but laugh, "I didn't really feel like walking."

Celebrimbor, perhaps predictably, had nothing to say to that and seemed to be having a very hard time closing his mouth.

"I thought I should pay a visit, apologize, since we seem to be at the end of things," Indil said in the quiet, taking a seat next to the dumbfounded man he had once made a friend and a fool, "It seemed like the right thing to do, paradoxes be damned."

He cocked his head, listening beyond the mortal world and to the great song that underpinned all of this reality, "And besides, the song does not seem so corrupted. Perhaps, Eru Illùvatar approves of improvisation after all."

"I'm sorry," Celebrimbor said with the most awkward of smiles any elf could manage, "Do I know you?"

"Half of me," Indil said with his own carefree grin stolen so easily from Lily, "The lesser half in my humble opinion."

A sly, amused, grin, as if Celebrimbor was beginning to realize he was playing the fool in Indil's unspoken joke, "Is that supposed to be a riddle?"

"My life is such that all honest, blunt, answers take the appearance of riddles," he responded drily in turn, it was the truth, after all. No matter how he phrased it his existence seemed to be the most absurd and ridiculous of riddles to which even he did not know the answer.

The likes of Bilbo's victorious, "What have I got in my pocket?"

"Well," Celebrimbor, "I'd be happy to make your acquaintance, although first I must ask why you are brandishing a sword and why you appear to be covered in blood."

He looked down at his hands, at the blade he still held there, and duly remembered that he was indeed practically soaked in the blood of men and orcs.

"Occupational hazard," he said blandly, vanishing both the sword and blood away with a wave of his hand.

"Must be quite the occupation," Celebrimbor said dully as, blinking, he took in Indil's new blood-free appearance.

"I was trying to be on vacation, actually," Indil explained with a shrug, not sure whether Celebrimbor would or should take him at his word either, "But somehow I got sucked into everything anyway."

"But then," he mused, "Destiny seems to be like that."

"Like what?" Celebrimbor asked.

"It's like waking up with a chain around your ankle," Indil said slowly, picturing the scene in his mind, "It is lax at first, as you grow aware of your surroundings, but then it tightens and slowly but surely drags you into the darkness. And you only realize it too late, when it is taut, and no matter how you scrabble and grab for purchase at the rocks at the floor of the cavern it pulls you inch by bleeding inch backward…"

And at the end of that chain, waited Sauron with his missing finger and damned weakened form, all too eager to unthinkingly devour whatever was left of his own fëa.

And the ring was and always would be a thing of destructions, and with all eventualities eventual, there were only two true paths for him. One, for the good for the world, he would destroy himself and all power of Sauron with him or else merge back with his former half.

And both were oblivion, the end of all the ring ever was, and yet…

Indil looked over at Celebrimbor's fair yet wary features and couldn't help but smile fondly at the man that should have been his friend, "It is good to see you again."

Celebrimbor, to his credit, tried to smile. It was not the kind of smiles he'd given Annatar at the beginning, middle, or the very end. In the beginning they'd been polite if distant, then the fond smile of a friend, and at the very end triumphant if bitter things as he kept from Sauron his trump cards that would ensure the freedom of Middle Earth.

This was instead an awkward thing, one that was trying to be a smile, but failing at it miserably as if he had forgotten how to smile at all in the face of whatever this was. Likely he was thinking of summoning the guard, perhaps summoning Annatar who as a vassal of the Valar undoubtedly had some experience in combat.

Still, perhaps it was the allure of the ring or perhaps it was the fact that Indil truly did mean no harm, because all Celebrimbor did was try and fail to smile. He did not shout for the guards or even raise his hand, just stared like a man who had found himself in the middle of a grand cavern without the slightest idea of how he got there.

The way most beings felt in Lily's presence, Indil couldn't help but think fondly.

He thought Celebrimbor probably would have liked the girl, had there ever been a world in which they could have met.

"But I wanted to ask you something," Indil said, interrupting his own thoughts.

"Oh?" Celebrimbor asked, "You came all this way to ask me something?"

"You have no idea how far I've come," Indil chastised, and Celebrimbor nodded dutifully, the hint of a true and amused smile on his lips, strands of silver falling over his dark eyes.

"Forgive me, how far have you come?"

"A little over three thousand years and a good number of miles," Indil answered blandly, which was and sounded dreadfully far, and seemed far to Celebrimbor whose eyes were practically falling out of their sockets again.

Indil looked out past him, to the gardens of Eregion, lost in time as they were, and let the words fall out of his mouth almost without thinking, "The one ring is made of gold, I believe, for a very specific reason. If Sauron, Mairon, was a metal he would be gold. A precious, shining, metal that was so very malleable and so very easily tarnished."

And how he'd glittered in Valinor, in the eyes of his first master and Morgoth in turn, how he must have shone with sheer potential for all he could become. It was small wonder, really, that gold had suited his fëa so well.

"Lily, my other half, the half you do not know, is not gold. She is a diamond," he said quietly to both Celebrimbor and his gardens, "She shines no less brightly, but there is no shaping her, no breaking her, and certainly there is no tarnishing her no matter the ages that pass. Even had Morgoth set his sights on her, even if she had wandered into his mechanizations as he once had, she would never have been his slave."

As Mairon, though he had never dared to say the words, had been Morgoth's slave.

"And I want that," he said, his voice shaking it, "I chase it so desperately within myself that I would risk destroying her altogether just to become her."

"You realize," Celebrimbor said slowly, warily, eyes dark with a hidden fear of wars half-forgotten from the first age, "That I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Of course not," Indil said, coming back to himself and this present moment that was his past before things had gone to hell again, "You're three thousand years out of date. I think I just needed to say that bit, that wasn't what I was going to ask."

He sighed, rubbed at the back of his head, and tried to pinpoint why he'd felt such a desperate need to speak to Celebrimbor of all people. Shared history, no doubt, but perhaps it was because Celebrimbor, of all beings, deserved to be the one to give this answer.

"I am going to die soon," Indil said quietly, a soft smile on his face for the ease at which he could say it out loud, "As soon as I can, really."

"Myself, well, I do not know what will happen to the maia Indil," he said, "However, the fate of the one ring is left undecided. He can be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom from whence he came, to face the same oblivion I all too likely face, or he can be joined back with the rest of his soul and whatever horrors await him with assimilation. Should he choose fire, Celebrimbor, or ice?"

Celebrimbor said nothing for a very long time, simply looked out past Indil and into the gardens. Finally, quietly he said, "You know, I had been hoping for a night to myself, simply to clear my head."

"My apologies," Indil said, "I had been hoping not to have to slaughter the armies of evil and yet here we are."

Celebrimbor nodded once, in silence, then after a pause remarked drily, "You realize I still haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about."

"I didn't come to you because you had the full context, Celebrimbor," Indil said, "But because you, of all people, are entitled to an opinion."

"So, you do know my name then," Celebrimbor remarked, leaving Indil to realize he hadn't really said it at this point, "Perhaps this is a dream."

"If that makes you feel better," Indil said with a painful shrug, not really sure how to take that, he supposed he couldn't really blame the man.

"It's a very confusing dream," Celebrimbor said with a furrowed brow and then, turning to look at Indil and take him in inch by inch, add, "And one with high stakes."

"My fate is sealed, Celebrimbor," Indil said, "All you have to tell me is the path I should take."

Because Indil did not know, truly, whether it was better to fling the ring into he mountain and destroy all Sauron ever could be or give into a greater inevitability and reforge himself upon Sauron's finger.

The first seemed like the honest, true, answer and yet it left such a sour taste in his mouth. As if to choose that path was to give up on all he ever once was and could have been. It was to condemn and destroy Mairon as well as Sauron.

"Well," Celebrimbor said after a pause, "If you're willing to accept that I truly have no idea what you're talking about—"

"I can accept that," Indil said with a grin that seemed to do nothing to ease Celebrimbor's nerves.

"Then I suppose I would say… the second," Celebrimbor finished after a pause, and then the spark was back in his dark eyes, that spark that had belonged solely to him in the three centuries Sauron had known him, "I prefer to believe in redemption, second chances as it were. Destruction is such a final end, where nothing awaits you at the end, and the other… At least it is not an end, but simply a different beginning."

It could go wrong, Indil wanted to say, Sauron upon gaining back his soul would have more than what he needed to take Middle Earth. And what would become of Lily then, on the doorstep of Mordor and handing the ring over to the man? It could be the decision that very well damned them all.

But…

But it was the one decision that did not damn Sauron.

Mairon, Lily had called him, with a confidence and faith that was not to be defied or broken.

She had called him Mairon, and Indil knew, that if she were able she would have given the same answer as Celebrimbor.

So, all Indil could do was stand and smile, "Thank you, my old friend."

Then, from the air he sang into existence a small, innocuous necklace singing a small hidden note of song and placed it into Celebrimbor's pale calloused hands, "For when all faith is sundered and hope is lost, keep it secret, keep it safe, and when the time is right just say 'portus'."

Celebrimbor inspected it, the small silver glittering thing, little more than a trinket, and asked, "And will I have this in the morning?"

"Well, that's for me to know and you to find out," Indil said with a smile, "But whatever you do, Celebrimbor, do remember to call."

And with that he was gone, as quickly as he came, on a night none but Celebrimbor would ever know of or remember.

As Indil, they teleported straight into the heart of Mordor at the end of this third age. One last time, they wore his pale limbs and took him step by step up the dark high tower in Barad Dûr. In his mind there was the strange, intangible, echo of Lily's thoughts.

"You could run, you know."

There was always England, where she and her friend the wizard Lenin would no doubt find themselves again one day. He could become minister there, a king in all but name, and rearrange the British Isles to his own designs just as he had Mordor for thousands of years.

He could always run.

However, Mairon had been running long enough.

For three thousand years as a ring, for twice that as a maia, he had been running ever since he set foot on the corrupted shores of Middle Earth.

He could run, but as Lily so often thought to herself, the trouble with running was that too often you discovered you were on a treadmill all along.

He paused at the last step of the tower, just under Sauron's metaphorical nose. The heat of him was like the heat of the sun, sweat pouring down Indil's fair skin at the mere proximity. He took one final breath, as Indil who was the best and worst of the pair of them, and then slid the ring that could not be seen or felt off his finger.

And just like that they were two again, Lily, and Mairon.

How could such a being as her, he thought as he looked down at her, have the nerve to look so impossibly young? And how could he see so much of Indil, the best of what they had been, inside her eyes?

"Are you sure?" Lily asked him, one last time as it were.

"I'm sure," he said, glancing down at his pale hands, now burning bright with the black script given Sauron's proximity, "I am tired of running and being little more than clever clockwork."

"You know, there's no shame in running away," Lily chastised him, which in turn only caused him to smile.

"Lily, I have been running for six thousand years," ever since the end of the battle that decided the first age, when he had run from his trial in Valinor, he had been running.

And there was all the shame in the world in it.

"Well then," Lily said, sitting down on the last step and placing her hands behind her head as she leaned against the wall, "Come hell or high water, I'll wait for you here."

"It won't be me who comes down these steps," he reminded her but she said nothing, just gave him a rather knowing look.

"I choose to believe, Mairon, that I will see you again," then that infectious, impossible, and unstoppable grin that had so unnerved everyone in Middle Earth, "I'll see you on the other side."

Without a word, with only a nod, he turned and took the final steps up the tower, straight into the burning heart of the eye of Sauron, to wage war against the worst of himself. And for that single moment, glowing and stepping forth into the darkness, he knew that it would be Mairon and not Sauron who would emerge victorious.

Author's Note: IT'S OVER! HOORAY! In other news there is a side fic "The Hubris of Dragon" in which Indil accidentally meets Smaug and much death ensues.

Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter