It felt a lot like drowning.

There was the plunge: he was thrown down from a high place. He had a rush of panic as he fell. He scrabbled for purchase in every direction he could, but it was already too late; his enemies had won.

Then, there was confusion: it was hard to get his bearings. There was no oxygen to think, no point at which to take a breath and collect himself. He was sliding further, and there was no way to stop the inevitable darkness that was coming, darkness that had already come and swallowed him, and he was reduced to the efficacy and power of a starved animal. This stage lasted the longest, and he lacked the points of reference to understand at the time what that truly meant.

Lastly, there was calm: there came a point where clawing and fear lost their worth. He drifted through cold at the dark bottom of an endless lake, and he let himself watch distorted shapes flutter by above him in the world, entirely unaware of him. Slowly, he regained some measure of himself—I don't feel like a king, though surely I was one. Thoughts visited and left like drifting fish; occasionally he caught one, but most others he let go, the energy requirement too much to reach out and grab more.

There was something he wanted. Something about the stars playing silent sentinel over him brought a name back, because the two had always been at war, and he remembered to hate them in his fog; they spelled out doom for someone he had treasured more than all the world.

Eventually, he ached. He began to hunger again. With bloody claws and a will stronger than mithril, this wraith crawled out of some crack in the ice at the roof of the world into howling wind and darkness. The night saw him emerge with the rage and pain of desperation, and he knew that he wanted this person back, this treasure he longed for, to get revenge at the stars that quietly watched his helplessness for so long.

Sauron woke up in a hospital room. Pale morning sunlight softened the cool sterility of the room and glittered on the sink opposite his bed, on the unfamiliar instruments someone had left by his bedside, and he stirred and rubbed his head. Hands, he wondered. He glanced down at himself: when had he regained physical form? For that matter, where was he?

There were strange sounds outside. Curious, Sauron swung his feet to the cold floor and meticulously removed the IV needle from the side of his wrist. He stretched and walked over to the window.

He was in some kind of castle, he thought. His window faced a large parking lot and a road beyond it, and Sauron looked down at people getting out of cars, getting in them, walking with children to sliding glass doors in the castle that opened just for them. No, not castle—there were no fortifications and too much glass. Anything like this built for defense would have been worse than useless. Those things down there were some kind of transportation. The roads beyond looked better than anything he had ever seen, and he furrowed his eyebrows, wondering how long he'd been out, who had done this to the world, how few trees there were.

Granted, the lack of trees meant that his servants were possibly winning. On the other hand, everything he saw looked so…clean.

Somewhere behind him, the door opened, and he turned around; a middle-aged woman in a white coat entered the room with a clipboard and asked him a question.

Sauron frowned. "I have no idea what you just sai—ai—a," he coughed, the words breaking up in his parched throat, coming out in little more than a hoarse whisper.

The woman quickly strode over and picked up a plastic cup from the small bedside table and filled it. "Drikke."

Sauron drank. The water soothed his throat and gave his shaking hands something to hold, and let him escape for a moment from the shock realization of how much everything changed while he was gone. The woman gestured to the bed and reached for his arm. He shrugged away from it and sat down by himself.

The woman asked him something else as she stood above him—something he would never tolerate in his own day, but his last defeat at the hands of Atani made him cautiously accept this role for now—but he shook his head, the confusion on his face giving it away; whatever language she was speaking, it wasn't Sindarin, or Westron, or anything at all that he recognized. Was it some Eastern language? Not quite—it had a familiar cadence to it, though the words were all wrong.

Finally, the woman set a hand on her breast and said, "Anna."

She looked expectantly at Sauron, her clipboard held sideways against her hip. He didn't know what to say.

His voice sounded strangely hoarse and quiet to his own ears when he answered, "Mairon."

"Mairon." She smiled and made a few scratches on her clipboard with a style of pen he'd never seen. Everything was so foreign—it was a wonder and a terror at the same time, his critical mind wishing to know how all of these things worked. Even the little details like writing utensils were strange enough to mock his current understanding of their mechanics. A wave of unease crept slowly over him as he struggled to pull back the last things he remembered, and the thought of what his enemies would say if they saw him in such a state.

For the next few minutes, Sauron endured a very tiring exercise: allowing an Atani woman to look him over as a sick patient, as if she could fix what was wrong with him. He let his mind wander as she prodded him gently for responses, to which he replied as best he could guess how; it was an awkward game of grunts and hand signals. Sauron listened for words that appeared more than once; 'drikke' had been obvious, but now he wanted more useful language, commands to get him what he needed. He would not be helpless long in this new place, and the reassuring thought of his own intelligence was enough to give him patience.

The woman gestured for him to stay as she hooked his wrist back up to the IV—she would be back, she tried to tell him, and he nodded.

The second she was gone, he stood up again.

This time he went to the mirror; he had not seen himself in physical form for ages, and he was curious what his half-conscious essence had dressed itself in. He did not expect what he saw:

His hair was red—dark red, red like forge fire, like coals burning at the end of the night. It was long and brushed strong shoulders on a swimmer's frame, his body leanly muscled and flexible as a cat. His features were as he remembered them, delicate and precise, much like his natural temperament when he used to serve—he immediately shied away from that thought. His immediate goals were to get self-sufficient, and he would do so quickly, if only to put his current humiliating circumstances behind him.

It was not like being taken prisoner by Numenor. He'd reveled in their sickening delight, knowing that every act of pride would cost them later. He'd endured being mocked and degraded by choice. Whoever had him now was looking out for him. He had no control. This kindness and pity made his vulnerability truly upsetting.

He sat back down on the bed and looked around at all the strange letters in the room. He wouldn't get very far until he learned to communicate.

Wow…he really did lose the war, didn't he.

Sauron spent the next few days in hospital care, learning words and phrases from the nurses as they realized he wasn't insane, just foreign. When Anna asked him where he was from, he couldn't answer. When he managed to ask where he was, she said, "Norway."

That didn't sound like Beleriand or Middle Earth. He accepted these facts with the stoic silence of a man in exile.

"Does anyone know what language he's speaking?" the staff asked one another.

There was little to do in that time but learn to communicate. Mairon picked things up quickly, but he was oddly unfamiliar with technology. The staff wondered if their John Doe had some kind of memory loss—someone suggested trauma, and one strange anesthetist half-jokingly mentioned aliens. They did manage to convince Dr. Anna Hall to bring in a psychiatrist for an evaluation, to no avail. Sauron, upon learning what this man's profession was about, threw him bodily from his room and slammed the door, cursing in a language no one knew.

Eventually the hospital just gave up.

Sauron had been awake for less than a week; the afternoon drifted lazily by, his thoughts circling around words for confinement. How long would he be here? Not long, he decided. The hospital was outlasting its use. He could concede to stay and try to learn more, or he could take a chance beyond that parking lot, and he knew which he'd rather do.

Dr. Hall knocked.

"Maar arin." Sauron pulled his gown tighter around himself.

"Good morning," replied Dr. Hall. "How are you feeling?"

"I am good."

"Excellent." Sauron assumed that was another word for good. He let her look him over, somewhat bored with the routine without being able to ask what all she was doing. For all of a week, he'd learned only a handful of words, mostly to do with physical objects around the room and his state of being, assisted by childish expressions and hand signals.

"Okay, Mairon, I have some news for you. We can't exactly keep you here since you're recovered—I've done all I can to give you a few extra days, but without any kind of psychiatric issues all I can do is let you leave. Do you understand?"

"I go?" he asked.

She nodded.

Sauron looked relieved. "Good."

"Now wait a second." She held up her hand to stop him. "I have to fill out some paperwork I might need you to sign. I also have a few resources that can help you get back on your feet. Do you have any ID?"

Sauron blinked at her. Of course, she admitted to herself, how can I expect him to understand all that when he can barely string a sentence together?

"Okay," she said exasperatedly, "wait here." She left.

Sauron rolled his eyes and walked out.

He was done with this shit. If he wasn't a prisoner, he would figure it out himself. Basic things like food and water were secondary concerns to him—he needed to know more, gather some allies, see if there was anything in this age to salvage. He had goals to regain some of the dignity that he'd lost. He would not be hindered by a place full of healers and sick people. He was pissed, not sick.

So help his servants if he found any left alive.