Entwining by yletylyf

One

Read One

It began with a flash of black across his vision. Gone as quickly as it came, Celebrimbor was left blinking in confusion. When he opened his eyes everything was clear again: the warm lights of his city, the stars in the sky, the meal in front of him and his friends sitting around the table with him.

"I believe I've had a little too much wine," Ingrod said, somehow voicing exactly what was in Celebrimbor's own thoughts. He laughed a little and put his wine glass down. "I think I'll say good-night and turn in."

Celebrimbor scratched at his temple and peered at Ingrod. "Your vision just went dark, too?" he asked.

Ingrod blinked at him. "Too?" he echoed.

Without warning, the black returned - this time with a dramatic blaze of flame set amongst the darkness, a ring of fire in the center of his vision.

Celebrimbor blinked again, harder, and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them again, all was normal.

Lûrien also put down her glass forcefully. "What's in this wine, Tyelpe?"

"I don't think it's the wine," Celebrimbor said, staring at her with wide eyes.

It wasn't. It felt like one of the Powers of Valinor, or a vision from there—but who in Valinor would send him a vision?

He was still staring at his friends trying to puzzle it out when the answer revealed itself.

It was a slow chant, ethereal and haunting. The musical notes seared the inside of his mind, rising and falling in strangely compelling words he didn't know yet somehow understood perfectly.

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

And the ring of fire from the earlier vision was a perfect, golden band sitting on an anvil. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever beheld. And it spelled his doom.

 

Celebrimbor might have blacked out; he might have panicked or hyperventilated; whatever the case, he lost time and came back into awareness lying on the floor, staring at the stars, his wine goblet on its side and a stain of red spilled on the wood beside him.

Celebrimbor pulled Vilya off his finger, and tossed it into a dark corner by the door with a swift and thorough revulsion. Then he promptly rolled over and retched. He heaved, and up came the contents of the wine and dinner and bile. It was horrid, and made him feel worse; but he could not stop. He heaved, until there was nothing left in him, and then he drew a shaking arm over his mouth, wiping it off with his sleeve, and eased up into a sitting position.

Ingrod and Lûrien were also on the ground, crouched on their feet and staring at him. They had not, apparently, felt the need to be violently sick all over the wooden balcony.

Celebrimbor squeezed his eyes shut, but the vision was gone. He opened them again and stared at his friends.

"Take them off, you idiots," he snarled at Ingrod and Lûrien.

Their feelings were hurt by his language; they gave him shocked and reproachful looks. But they did not need to ask what he meant. They each slid Narya and Nenya off their fingers, and put the rings gently on the ground beside them.

"Why?" Ingrod asked. "What the hell just happened?"

"You can put two and two together as well as I can," Celebrimbor said heavily. "Didn't you hear it?"

Lûrien nodded. "Yes, but... I'm still trying to... puzzle it out. It... wasn't a language I recognized, yet the meaning was somehow extremely clear."

"We have been played as enormous fools," Celebrimbor said, and drew his knees to his chest, buried his head in them, and wept.

Ingrod and Lûrien both crawled over to him and started patting him on the back, murmuring meaningless words of comfort.

"I still don't understand," Lûrien said, when Celebrimbor finally raised his head and wiped his eyes with his clean sleeve. "You apparently do, so please explain. In simple words, if you don't mind!"

"The... the method of forging our rings had some secret weakness in it," Celebrimbor said dully, staring at her. "I have no idea what. I will figure it out."

"A secret weakness making them susceptible to... someone else's will," Ingrod said slowly, staring back at Narya, looking innocent and beautiful on the floor.

"A susceptibility that has now been exploited to completeness," Celebrimbor agreed. "Oh, I'm going to be sick again."

Ingrod and Lûrien both leaned hurriedly away from him, but it was still just dry heaving. There was nothing more in his stomach.

"Who would do such a thing?" Lûrien whispered.

"I can only think of one Power left in Middle-earth who would do such a thing," Celebrimbor said bitterly. "And you... did you not recognize the voice?"

The three elven smiths looked at each other silently.

"Ah, fuck," Lûrien said, finally breaking the silence.

"Unbelievable," Ingrod said. "It can't be.... We can't have... been that foolish...."

"Annatar was Sauron," Celebrimbor said, licking his lips and choking a little with the effort it took to force himself to say it. "Anyone who wields one of our rings will become his slave."

There was another brief period of silence.

"Fuck," Ingrod repeated.

"Right, okay then," Lûrien said, and she crawled around on the floor on hands and knees, scrabbling in the dark until she'd found all Three rings. "Right," she repeated, and stood up. Swift as thought, she disdained doors and rooms and hallways, springing over the balcony rail and landing lightly on her feet two stories below.

Celebrimbor almost laughed at the sight, would have laughed had his stomach not been so ill. Lûrien behaving like a young child just growing into her body would never fail to amuse. Celebrimbor and Ingrod followed her, landing a little more heavily, and she raced up the streets from Celebrimbor's dwelling to the House of the Mírdain. She placed her palm flat on the doors and they opened for her of their own accord.

Still running, she made her way to the center of the tower and threw the Three rings onto the largest and heaviest anvil. She took up a great hammer—the greatest one in the workshop—and brought it down with all her might on the rings.

Nothing happened to them. She lifted her arm and hit them, again and again and again, and succeeded only in eventually flinging Narya to the side and onto the floor with a glancing blow.

"Lûrien," Celebrimbor said cautiously. "You know, better than anyone, how durable these are. They cannot be destroyed like that."

Sweat pouring down her face and tears shining in her eyes, she looked up at Celebrimbor.

"Yes," she said. "I know."

It had been her song that was one of the final, key ingredients to make them so durable in their purity—no, Celebrimbor reminded himself abruptly. They were not that. They were horribly impure.

She took up the rings again and flung them inside the hottest, most powerful furnace of the shop. She piled on charcoal, and worked the bellows, and chanted over it as she worked.

Although Celebrimbor knew it would not work, he came to her side and joined her chant. Sounding even more weary and hopeless, Ingrod moved to join them after a few minutes.

Their voices united; the fire of the forge was perhaps one of the hottest they'd ever conjured in their lives, the desperation and pleading in their chant lending a wild element to their sorcery that Celebrimbor was slightly afraid of, should it leave their control.

But when they finished, spent of their energy and their song, and Lûrien put out the fire and they looked inside the forge, the Three were untouched. Perfect, beautiful, and unblemished.

"I suspect nothing short of dragonfire will work," Celebrimbor said hoarsely.

Ingrod snorted. "It's too bad the Host of the Valar destroyed all the dragons at Angband, then."

"Bah," Lûrien said scornfully, wiping her brow with her sleeve. "The Host of the Valar were sloppy! Who knows how many dark things they missed besides Sauron. I bet you if we went far enough north, we'd find some dragons hiding along with the other foul creatures we know escaped that place."

Celebrimbor groaned. It was true enough; they had all witnessed Sauron surrender to the Herald of the Valar outside Angband after the last of Morgoth's forces had been vanquished. But a few centuries ago, Gil-galad had discovered a Power growing in the south and building a stronghold. Investigations had revealed it to be none other than Morgoth's greatest servant, who was definitely not in Valinor seeking Manwë's pardon for anything, but shaping the dark land of Mordor for his evil purposes.

Though no one had ever reported dragon sightings down south.

Celebrimbor rubbed a hand over his forehead. He was getting a headache. "Wherever dragons live in the north—if they live in the north—won't be accessible to the likes of us."

Lûrien did not say anything to this.

"All right," Ingrod said. He sunk to the floor and hugged his knees. He sounded exhausted. "Instead of destroying them, we'll hide them. Get them out of this city. Give them to the others to protect."

"Oh," Celebrimbor groaned. "Oh, no. No! Can you imagine it? Facing the likes of Gil-galad and Galadriel and confessing... all this? 'Hey, remember that emissary of the Valar who gave you bad vibes? The bad vibes we refused to listen to? Oh yeah, this weird thing happened, turns out he was Sauron with a brand-new plan to enslave the Eldar!'"

Lûrien snorted a little at his high-pitched, mocking tone.

"They would be a little scornful," Ingrod acknowledged. "And we'd never have any power among our people again. But they would help us."

"I can't," Celebrimbor said in a hoarse whisper. "Oh, Valar help me, I can't face them and say it. They would pity me, they would see my father and my grandfather and think to themselves, yes, blood will tell, that's the evil of those kinslayers coming out again, and oh Valar I can't do it."

Lûrien and Ingrod said nothing. They were both busy staring at the floor. They had served the houses of Celegorm and Maglor, respectively, and had slain Teleri along with the rest of them, though like Celebrimbor they'd also left such service prior to the subsequent kinslayings.

It was not something the three of them ever spoke of in this new age.

"And even now," Celebrimbor added, intensely frustrated, "I can't for the life of me understand what 'bad vibes' they got from him. I still think it was just bitterness towards the Powers as a whole!"

Lûrien and Ingrod continued to stare at the floor.

"What do we do instead?" Ingrod eventually asked in a small voice.

"I don't know," Celebrimbor said. "Don't wear them. Don't let anyone touch them. Hide the others somewhere safe. I am going to study Vilya and find out what Annatar did to it. Maybe that will help me undo it."

"Annatar never touched the Three," Ingrod pointed out. "We stared on them after he left. How would he even have known they existed?

Celebrimbor shrugged. "He worked with us to develop the methods we used for the crafting, and something about it was compromised. I am going to find out what."

"How much time do we have?" Lûrien asked hoarsely. "Didn't he say he was coming back?"

"He did say he was coming back," Celebrimbor said softly. It was his turn to stare at the floor and blink tears out of his eyes. He swallowed the lump in his throat that had arisen at the memory of that parting, when Annatar left Ost-in-Edhil. Annatar had promised, very prettily and tenderly, that he would not abandon Celebrimbor and his favorite city for long. The fucking liar. "He didn't say when. I don't know how long we have."

 

Celebrimbor was certain he had everything he needed to solve this problem. He threw himself into it with a single-minded determination, abandoning the other work of the city and delegating its administration to others. He knew the methods of ring-crafting that had been used; he had his notes and all his calculations; and he was intimately familiar with Annatar's 'gifts'. He could solve this.

But, for a long time, he could not solve it. He already knew the craft that went into them; there were no hidden methods he'd missed. He dragged Lûrien and Ingrod over and over the schematics again and again, and they studied the Three as long as they dared. The answer was simply that they were what they seemed: great, beautiful objects of surpassing power.

"But where does the power come from, then?" Lûrien mused when Celebrimbor was voicing these frustrations out loud.

"From the metal, and the gems, and our sorcery in making them, and the design, and the intent—all these things together," Celebrimbor recited, as though giving a lecture to a young apprentice who had never crafted a magic item before.

"Yeah, the design," Lûrien said. "It isn't just that it's a circle of concentrated power. We did a lot of complicated math to arrive at the precise size and shape of the bands, and the placement of the jewels, remember?"

"I remember," Celebrimbor said, his heart wanting to tear itself out of his chest. Long nights with Annatar, bent over numbers and theorems, yes, he remembered it well. "I did that math. There wasn't anything wrong with it."

"Let's just... look at it again," Lûrien said. "Come on. It's something else to try."

Yes, something else to stave off the time when he had to finally decide what the hell he was going to do with nineteen Rings of Power, which his own team of brilliant smiths had designed to be indestructible, in order to stop Sauron from using them to enslave Middle-earth.

"Sure," he said, exhausted by the proportions of the task already.

 

At breakfast the next day, a messenger came with a letter for him. Celebrimbor received plenty of letters as a matter of course, and he usually tossed them in a careless pile to review later, or possibly never. This letter was eventful only because the handwriting of the name on the outside caught his eye.

"Damn it," he yelped in a high-pitched voice most unbefitting of Fëanor's grandson. "Damn it, someone find that messenger and bring him back here, I need to talk to him!"

Celebrimbor habitually breakfasted with the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, scholars and craftsmen who were not used to jumping when someone said jump. The guards and servants who would have jumped with alacrity did not accompany Celebrimbor to private meals with his guild. A few of the craftsmen looked at each other, trying to decide whom Celebrimbor was addressing, and some of them went outside to look for a messenger whose face Celebrimbor was sure no one remembered.

Celebrimbor sighed, and opened the letter.

Tyelpe, it said in achingly familiar handwriting, and Celebrimbor's eyes started watering. He hastily grabbed the letter and ran from the breakfast table to hide in a dark study. He hardly knew whose study it was. It didn't matter.

I have been gone longer from your side than I intended; the years have slipped away from me. I think of you every day, and in all my travels and works, I wonder what you would think of a person or particularly clever invention I stumble across. I know it is my own fault, that I have never given you a place to find me for a return letter, but I long to hear your reaction to some of the stories I tell and things I say.

I didn't tarry long in Rhûn, where you'll recall my last letter to you was composed. It is a very dull place; they have thought and done the same sorts of things for two thousand years and I don't know why I bothered to come see if they were still at it. There is nothing here to spark a creative interest.

I am further south now—do your people have any idea of the extent of Númenórean colonies down here?—and found interest in my work again. I had some friends here before I left for Eregion, and we were glad to be reunited. You would call them Avari. They are very dear to me, though of course nothing to rival you, Tyelpe. I told them all about you, but I'm afraid they're not impressed by any of the Noldor and think me a bit mad to be so swayed. I'm certain they'd change their tune if they could meet you.

We're laying some groundwork to irrigate a desert, a fascinating challenge to grow things in a hostile land that I haven’t faced the like of since the Sleep of Yavanna. I wish you could see it, you would surely have a hundred ideas for improving it. Imagining what you'd say is no replacement for having you here.

I completed a smithying project I'm very proud of and I hope one day to show you. I daren't imagine your reaction, but I think it the most beautiful thing I've ever created.

Every day I miss you. I hope we can be reunited soon. Please say hello to Lûrien and Ingrod for me and tell them I said they must be nice to Hirleth.

Love,

Annatar

Celebrimbor did not shed any tears beyond those that first shone in his eyes in the breakfast hall. As he read, he was torn between amusement, pity, sheer disbelief at Sauron's gall, and a deep, genuine, desperate, and terribly dangerous need to have his friend back. It tore through his stomach and clawed at his heart and would make him do the most utterly stupid deeds if he allowed it.

"Checking on his fucking cult in Rhûn, more like," Celebrimbor muttered, his hands tightening around the paper. They'd been Morgoth-worshippers and were no doubt happy to turn to worshiping the lieutenant. "And Númenórean colonies! What does he think he is warning us of? They are his enemies. Damn him. Damn him," Celebrimbor spat, rereading the part where Annatar—no, fuck, Sauron—implied Celebrimbor was more dear to him than the 'friends' he'd picked up serving Morgoth. And his wish that Celebrimbor could help him irrigate Mordor!

"Damn him," Celebrimbor repeated for a third time, scanning the lines about the smithying project that could be no other than that horrible master-ring.

Mortified and deeply ashamed of the contents of the letter, he nonetheless smoothed out the paper and went to show his friends in case they saw something useful in it that he did not.

"It's not even lies," Lûrien said dispassionately after she read it. "D'you know, I think he never outright lied to us? He did love working with us and—I think he did learn from us. And I bet he does wish he had your help in irrigating Mordor. And I even think he liked your fucking cat."

"Don't talk about Hirleth that way," Celebrimbor said reprimandingly. His cat had hated Celebrimbor's fellow smiths, and the feeling had been entirely mutual. "But he really has lost track of the years. He's been gone for a decade. Does he realize cats don't live that long?"

"Who cares," was Ingrod's flat reaction. "I hate him."

"Yeah. Me too," Celebrimbor said, and it wasn't entirely a lie; he felt a million things for the person he thought Annatar was and the person he knew Sauron to be, and a white-hot hatred was undoubtedly one of them. "At least we know he doesn't know. That we know."

It was a convoluted sentence, but his friends nodded as though they had understood it perfectly. "Doesn't sound like he's on his way here with an orc army," Ingrod agreed.

 

After thoroughly rehashing every word of the letter every which way they could, such as speculating on how even one of the dark elves could be on friendly terms with a servant of the Enemy—they went back to their original project.

Celebrimbor unearthed the book of calculations. The book, that everyone on the team had contributed to, the secrets of the rings of power. It was difficult, looking at it, to understand how they'd been so deceived. Annatar had treated them like colleagues, friends, equals—his pleasure in learning from them, reaching these conclusions together, had seemed so genuine.

Ingrod snatched the book out of Celebrimbor's hands, perhaps understanding where he was getting lost in his thoughts.

"No," he said. "We'll redo the calculations. From scratch. We're not going to simply copy them. And...."

He trailed off, then left the room. With a quick glance at one another, Lûrien and Celebrimbor followed. Ingrod made his way through the maze of rooms into a lecture hall. It held no seats; lectures in this tower were always standing-room-only. What it did have was walls and walls and walls of chalkboards.

Ingrod stared at the walls.

"Oh, shit," Celebrimbor breathed. "If this works... if we write out the formulas and see a pattern in them together, where we couldn’t have on any individual page...."

Lûrien and Ingrod were silent at his side, both of them breathing hard.

Celebrimbor's mouth was dry. It was a fucking masterful deception, if so. The sheer gall—and brilliance—of it threatened to take his breath away.

It took them a long time to redo the calculations. Not as long as crafting them in the first place, but redoing them by hand on chalkboards was a tedious, painstaking process. Every now and then, a few of the other mathematicians in the guild wandered in and out to help—and to remind the trio to sleep and eat—and comment on the results.

In the end, they had it: the walls covered in the formula for the rings of power. They had recreated the formula for Vilya, and there would be subtle differences in each of the eighteen other rings. But the underlying theorem was the same.

"It's a mountain," one of the other mathematicians said in a dispassionate tone. Celebrimbor had not explained to anyone else, yet, the reason behind their frantic work.

"Mmm," Lûrien agreed. "Yes. The fire of the ring has its roots beneath the earth."

"Mountain of red fire," Celebrimbor recited in the common tongue. And then—

"Orodruin," agreed another one of the observers.

"Fuck," Ingrod said, drawing the word out in a drawl. "We called on a specific volcano, a discernible geographic location in Middle-earth. Unbelievable."

There it was, scrawled on the walls, unmistakable at this scale: the formula weaved in and out, beautiful and intricate and complex, and ultimately formed a pattern. Once completed, it was a description and a map. It was undeniably pointing to a specific geographical phenomenon.

"We invoked the power of the mountain's spirit," Lûrien said in an awed tone. "And laid ourselves open to a sorcerer using the mountain to make something even greater."

"But we helped write the formula," Celebrimbor said, his tone almost whining. "This isn't possible. I was there, I ran the numbers myself, I worked out some of the problems on my own without ever consulting with him, many of these ideas were mine. Or yours or Ingrod's. Not his!"

"He's brilliant," Lûrien said bitterly. "Fucking evil, and horrible, and I wish he were in the Void with his thrice-damned master... but brilliant. He wove this mountain's song in all our work."

"Wait, what are we talking about?" a guildmember asked, looking bewilderedly at the three of them.

"We made some rings that Sauron will try to use to enslave Middle-earth," Celebrimbor said, blinking at the guildmember like an owl. "Oops."

 

"Well, look," Lûrien said a few weeks later. They had erased the formula from the chalkboards, explained the truth about Annatar to the people of their city, and had spent rest of the days in a sort of stunned daze. "We have our answer. This is how they were made. And it is also how to destroy them."

The location of the mountain was certainly quite clear to anyone who looked at the formula. It was somewhere south of them.

The south. Of course. Where Gil-galad had found Sauron building a stronghold. Where Annatar was currently irrigating a desert.

"Probably," Celebrimbor agreed. "Your own spells of durability are woven into and so founded on the power of this stupid mountain."

"Okay, so... mmm... we have to go to Sauron's stronghold to destroy his rings in his own land? Sounds like we need an army," Ingrod said, his tone steady but his expression troubled.

"We don't have an army," Celebrimbor reminded him tiredly. "Gil-galad reported that Sauron's strength was beyond the scattered remnants of our people five hundred years ago. Gil-galad is the only elven lord who's tried to build an army in that time."

"Númenor has an army," Ingrod pointed out. "And Gil-galad says they are his allies...."

"And while we spin our wheels building an alliance, the rings sit here, waiting for him to walk through the door at any moment," Lûrien put in.

As if on cue, all three of them glanced up to the door of the library where they were sitting. But no silver-haired Maia walked through the doorway, although Annatar had indeed loved this library. Or, acted like he loved this library.

"Maybe we should just keep them here," Ingrod suggested. "One Maia, not even him, isn't strong enough to resist the combined forces of this city by himself."

Celebrimbor thought about it, then sighed. "If he knows we know... he wouldn't come here by himself."

They sat silent in the company of their own thoughts for a while, but Celebrimbor imagined he wasn’t the only one thinking about the likes of Morgoth's host breaking down Ost-in-Edhil, whose walls were more decorative than martial.

"But... could we wait for Annatar to come back with an army, and sneak around behind him while he's gone from Mordor?" Lûrien suggested.

Celebrimbor shuddered. "No... no. We need to get the rings out of this city, and we needed to do it a year ago. I cannot bear the thought of using this beautiful place as bait for dark forces."

"Oh," Lûrien said, sitting up suddenly straight. "But Tyelpe, that's the answer. We'll sit here as bait, pretending we have the rings and know nothing. We'll send them—away. Send them out of our knowledge. Sauron will move against us, and we'll... we'll fall," she said, swallowing hard, "but we won't be able to tell him where the rings went, and he'll never be able to find them."

"Never?" Celebrimbor asked, looking at her sharply. "That's a long time to assume the Eldar can stand against him, hiding his own creation from him."

"Long enough for them to find some way to defeat him, maybe," she said. She was very solemn and looked at him unblinkingly. And she meant it: she would offer herself as bait, she would stay here and face Sauron's wrath head-on and no doubt bear much of the brunt of it as a former wielder of Nenya.

Celebrimbor lowered his eyes and stared at the table. His stomach squirmed at the idea. Sending the rings away, and nobly and uselessly watching his city and—himself—be destroyed in the course of Sauron's futile quest to find what had been hidden.

Certainly it was true that all options were going to be unpleasant. But he had taken this city's lordship rather than been given it—and oh, damn, how much of Annatar's influence had been driving that mess? Regardless, he thought he therefore owed it to the city to save it if he could.

"No. I think...."

He trailed off, and took a deep breath. "I think I want to sneak into Mordor, find this mountain, dump the rings in its fires, and sneak out."

Ingrod laughed; Lûrien did not.

"Oh wait," he said, looking between the other two. "You are serious."

"I think so," he said slowly. "It's not like trying to sneak into Angband, I shouldn't think. Just a big, lone mountain somewhere. I'm—I trust I can sneak past some orcs and cave trolls."

"I mean, maybe, maybe all that is true," Ingrod said, but he still looked incredulous. "But you can't just... dump these things in fire, not even fire in that mountain. The rings—at least the Three—would undoubtedly survive. Lûrien's protection spells work beautifully against fire. You'd have to... somehow... channel the same power of the mountain into a tool of destruction."

"The Seven and the Nine might perish in fire," Celebrimbor suggested. Lûrien had developed the sophistication of her protective spells as the work progressed, culminating in the perfection of the Three.

"Dragonfire, sure," Lûrien agreed. "But... I think perhaps only that awful master ring we saw in the vision would be vulnerable to the simple act of throwing it in the lava of the mountain. That ring lacks my song of protection, and seems to have been forged with said lava, so...."

"Yes, right, I follow you," Celebrimbor agreed. "I probably will have to channel the power of the mountain and craft a tool of destruction."

"That's a tall order," Ingrod said, in tones of deep gloom. "Sneak into Sauron's realm, find this mountain that is obviously beloved to him, fashion a tool, and destroy nineteen rings... all without him noticing."

Celebrimbor put his elbows on the table and buried his head in his hands.

"We should just ask for Gil-galad's help," Ingrod urged again.

"No!" Celebrimbor said fiercely, raising his head. "Ask him to protect these rings, when we won't risk our own city? Never. No. I'm going to go destroy the damned things, and clean up my own messes."

"You're probably just going to die," Ingrod said, his voice very unhappy. "Unless you suppose that in this land you will find not Sauron, but Annatar, who loves you and would never hurt you."

Celebrimbor lifted his eyes to Ingrod in disbelief. He felt pierced and wounded through to his very soul; he felt betrayed and hurt and wronged just as though he was hearing that One Ring chant in his mind again for the first time. He wanted to lash out and strike Ingrod; he wanted to scream and tear down the roof. He tasted blood on his tongue.

Ingrod saw it all in his eyes and did not back down.

Celebrimbor gasped a few times, then buried his head in his hands and started weeping.

"That was unfair of you," Lûrien said quietly.

"I need to know we're all on the same page here," Ingrod said unapologetically.

"Of course he doesn't think that," Lûrien insisted. "He's just... willing to die to set it right. And you know what, Tyelpe? So am I."

"Me too," Ingrod said, "Of course. But... if we die and conveniently hand him these nineteen rings on his own doorstep, that's not much of an accomplishment."

"I don't like the other choices any better," Celebrimbor said, raising his head and wiping at his eyes. "I'm not keeping them here. I'm not inflicting them on my kindred to figure out what to do with them. I think I have a reasonable chance at destroying them. It's just a mountain somewhere in a desert. He's busy with his stupid irrigation projects."

Lûrien took a deep breath. "Have you... thought about the nature of that vision we had?"

"What do you mean?"

"A telepathic connection, live at the moment he forged this master ring and while we wore the Three. If he is wearing the master... he will feel the destruction of the others, I think, the moment it happens."

Celebrimbor stared at her for a while. He tried to imagine what he would do or say to Sauron if Sauron walked in on Celebrimbor destroying these rings in his own mountain. His imagination failed him in all respects, except....

"You're right," he said. "I'm sure you're right. Very well then. It will be a one-way trip to a mountain in a desert."

"Not by yourself, of course," Lûrien said. "Obviously, the two of us are going with you."

Celebrimbor looked at them helplessly. "But...."

"We were as deceived by him as you were," Ingrod said softly. "He was our friend, too. The nineteen were equally our work. We're coming with you."

 

Ost-in-Edhil's population contained a few soldiers who formerly served Gil-galad. One of them, Arodor, had served in the unit that had been sent to investigate Sauron's rise in Mordor. Since then, he'd come to Ost-in-Edhil as a weary ex-captain who was tired of the politics in Lindon, seeking progress and beauty. Arodor was scarred and embittered but had opened up gradually and become a valued member of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain.

"Here, is where we entered," Arodor said, pointing a stubby finger at a map of the lands down south. Mordor was a kind of carved-out space, separated from the rest of the continent by three fierce mountain ranges at right-angles to one another. It looked as though they had been deliberately arranged that way by some Power of old. Arodor was pointing at a low spot between hills in the precise northwest corner of Mordor.

"We spied on him building a tower in the foothills of this range," Arodor continued. His finger was on the northern-most mountain range, just east of the corner of the box that was Mordor. "I recommend you pick a different way. He saw us, you see, and might have moved to do something about this spot between the hills that is more passable than the rest."

Celebrimbor nodded solemnly. "So over here?" he suggested, pointing a finger to the mountain range on the western end of the box, slightly to the south of the corner.

"Right," Arodor agreed. "There's a nice path that way if you follow the Anduin—" his finger traced the great river—"to the south."

"Understood," Celebrimbor murmured. "And what is... what is the land like?"

Arodor shrugged. "Ruined. Desolate. That lone mountain in the middle—" his finger tapped on the marking for what was undoubtedly Orodruin on the map—"is a volcano, and it spews ash into the sky and kills anything that is growing."

"Like Thangorodrim," Celebrimbor said, his eyes narrowing.

"Yeah, though not as tall, and... just overall not that terrifying," Arodor said. "Sauron is not fun, but he can't compare to Morgoth."

"Yeah," Celebrimbor echoed distantly. "Not so bad."

"It's still pretty bad," Arodor said with a grimace. "You ought to take an army."

Celebrimbor laughed. "Yes," he said. "This army of jewel-smiths and master craftsmen. Good idea."

"You've got more than just the Gwaith-i-Mírdain here," Arodor said, a sudden fire lighting his eyes. "You'd find people willing to go."

"Ah," Celebrimbor said. "No, friend, you I need for another task."

And so it was that Celebrimbor, Lûrien, Ingrod, and Arodor set out from Ost-in-Edhil late one summer night. They followed the Glanduin east, and had given out among the city that they went to seek Gil-galad's counsel and aid against the Enemy.

"We cannot trust anyone in the city," Celebrimbor had said heatedly to his friends when they questioned this tactic. "How would we know if someone looked into Sauron's eyes here and became a thrall, and is sending him word of all our doings?"

"I have only ever heard that Morgoth could accomplish such things," Ingrod had said carefully. "Unless that is your explanation for what happened to us, to make us trust him so?"

Heart aching and stomach in his throat, Celebrimbor had not been able to answer. But he'd had his way, and their journey was kept secret.

At the crossing of the Gwathló, Celebrimbor planned to go south, while he sent Arodor north with a letter. He did ultimately decide to lay bare to Gil-galad the extent of the foolishness of the smiths of Eregion, so Gil-galad could be prepared if their mission failed. But it was just a letter, it did not bear with it any Rings of Power. Those were sewn into Celebrimbor's clothing.

"Good luck, my lord," Arodor said, his eyes hooded. Celebrimbor knew he wished he was coming with them. But someone did need to bear a message to Gil-galad, and the fewer people in on the plan, the better.

"And you," Celebrimbor said, parting from Arodor with a kiss on his brow. Arodor proceeded into Tharbad to cross the river, while Celebrimbor and the others avoided the city and turned south.

 

Their journey south took a few weeks, or perhaps a month—it was hard to keep track of time on the road. They rode through Calenardhon, relatively safe country. It was a land that Celebrimbor knew Silvan Elves sometimes traversed and men generally did not. Númenóreans had not made it this far inland, while the men who lived here in the First Age had been Morgoth cultists and were, Celebrimbor understood, long gone. If Sauron had more orcs multiplying in the area, there were no signs of it.

The path was not well traversed, although there was a faint road. Celebrimbor wondered who had first traced it, and whose feet continued to tread it. It followed along the foothills of the Ered Nimrais, down to the sweeping expanse of the great river Anduin. The three of them lost a great deal of time searching for a suitable place to cross Anduin, and went further south than they originally intended, but the detour turned into a blessing: a wider, visibly shallower flood of the river was—conveniently—located at the base of a cleft in the mountains of Mordor in front of them.

"Too convenient," Lûrien remarked, as they rested their horses after the river crossing and looked upon the cleft before them. "If I were Sauron, I'd make it a nice little trap for travelers."

"Maybe," Celebrimbor said. "But the scouting reports from Gil-galad's excursion were quite clear that he hadn't built anything down here."

"That was five hundred years ago," Lûrien protested.

"He wasn't in Mordor for four hundred of those years," Ingrod said in a very quiet voice. His eyes were downcast, like he expected his companions to rebuke him for saying it. "He was with us."

"I mean... okay... yes," Lûrien said. "But what if he left orcs here and told them to build fortresses?"

Celebrimbor laughed, so loudly that he startled his friends. "We are all exceedingly familiar with orcs from Beleriand. In no conceivable way are they capable of building great fortresses without the will of their commander upon them."

Lûrien was clearly casting her mind back to all she had known of orcs during the First Age. Eventually, she conceded the point with a sigh.

They left their horses in the lush green lands around the river, where they should stay well fed and happy for a while. Or... forever, if their elves never returned.

The passage up and through the cleft was in every way uneventful; there was no road, but the climb was not overly difficult and there were no fortresses and no orcs to bar their way.

Eventually, they stood at the apex of the climb and gained their first sight of Mordor.

Orodruin was unmistakable—a tall, lone volcano belching a trickle of smoke into the air and creating a thin cloud high in the sky. The lands were not quite as barren as Arodor described. There were no trees, but bright green grass covered every inch of the plain before them, and it was a startlingly beautiful effect.

It looked completely deserted. Nothing could be seen moving, not even an animal.

"Wish I knew where he was irrigating," Celebrimbor sighed. "Where are the water sources?"

"Mostly likely around the tower Gil-galad saw him building up north," Lûrien offered.

"All right," Celebrimbor said with a deep breath. "Last chance to back out."

Both of them looked at him scornfully.

"Fine. No more talking," he said carefully. "Ósanwë only. We walk lightly and leave no trace and make no sound."

They nodded grimly. And Celebrimbor stepped forward, down the path into Mordor.

 

It was anticlimactic, really. As Celebrimbor had said lightly in Ost-in-Edhil, it was just a mountain in a desert. The way was easy to find. And while there were no places to hide, there was no one around to hide from.

The mountain was about two days' travel from the cleft in the mountains. As they approached, Celebrimbor realized he was, somehow, intimately familiar with this place. Whether it was because Annatar shared more of its spirit than he intended to, or because Celebrimbor was carrying the rings made with its power, Celebrimbor didn't know. But the mountain knew him, welcomed him even, and its secrets were laid bare to him as soon as he stepped foot on its slopes.

There was a series of chambers inside the mountain, and a few different entrances to choose from. They were not far from one, and once Celebrimbor climbed the steep slopes to find it, it was standing open for him.

He felt Ingrod's grim wariness behind him—what if this, now, was actually the trap—but Celebrimbor straightened up, held his head high, and walked into the Chambers of Fire.

The interior was not all that different from any workshop in Ost-in-Edhil. Annatar—no, he had to stop calling him that, Sauron's—forges were not the work of any great sorcery or mystery. They were sensibly and efficiently organized and outfitted. The three smiths from Eregion felt at home in them right away. They bent to their work without needing to speak.

Lûrien explored until she found the heart of the mountain, a lake of fire, and tested the theory that the lava would not melt the rings—it did not. Lûrien expressed both frustration and pleasure at this, that her work was precisely as she had designed it and wished it to be.

So they got to work making a tool of destruction. It was not all that complicated. The power of the mountain was already harnessed in the forge. They just needed to make a hammer, and that hammer would carry the mountain's sorcery in it. Rather like Sauron's dreadful master ring.

Celebrimbor lost himself in the work. He almost forgot Annatar's betrayal; forgot that he was deep in the heart of enemy territory and was probably not making it out alive. The pure pleasure in forging with the power of living lava was exhilarating. He understood, all at once, how Annatar could have forged something awful in here and still called it the most beautiful thing he'd ever made.

The hammer was fashioned, and affixed to a handle, and all was ready. Celebrimbor placed Vilya on the anvil in front of him, ready to be smashed into pieces.

All his pleasure abruptly vanished. Celebrimbor froze.

I did wonder, Lûrien thought wistfully at him. Whether you could look at our beautiful works and bring yourself to destroy them.

He lied to us, Celebrimbor formulated carefully in return. He used us, he betrayed us, and these rings are a lie. We made the tools of our own slavery.

Yes, Lûrien agreed. And yet. The finest things we have ever made, or will ever make.

He said he loved me, Celebrimbor thought with a final viciousness, and swung hard.

The hammer bounced off the ring. The ring sat there, innocent and untouched, just like after all their attempts in the House of the Mírdain.

Celebrimbor gritted his teeth. So. It was not enough to put the power of the mountain in the hammer. Celebrimbor needed to invoke it himself.

He closed his eyes, spread himself out, and opened himself to the spirit of the mountain. It was fire; he was fire. He was the conduit, he was the lightning rod, and he was the angel of destruction.

He brought his hammer down on Vilya again, and it shattered, shards of mithril flying everywhere and the gemstone reduced to dust.

Somewhere, away over the plains of Mordor, someone uttered a piercing scream of shock and agony.

Celebrimbor struggled to focus as he wiped away the remnants of Vilya. He could barely see; he did not know if it was sweat in his eyes or a veil over his mind. Ingrod had to help him fumble with the rings and unwrap them and place the next on the anvil.

Celebrimbor swung again, and the mountain swung through him; Nenya was dust.

There it was, the same scream again. Distantly, Celebrimbor realized his mind was open to another spirit besides the mountain—or was it the other way around, the spirit's mind was open to Celebrimbor?—and the thing that was screaming like it was dying was Sauron. Sauron was screeching something unintelligible in between screams, and he was not in the shape of a biped but he was a great, dark cat, running over plains at almost unimaginable speed.

Celebrimbor couldn't focus on anything with his physical eyes anymore. Ingrod was nudging him mentally, assuring Celebrimbor that the final one of the Three—Narya—was there in front of him.

Celebrimbor swung the hammer. Narya shattered into pieces.

He could not separate his mind from Sauron's—whose agony was this? Was the hammer and the mountain eating Celebrimbor, or was the destruction of the rings eating Sauron?

What Celebrimbor did understand, with perfect clarity, was that he was now in a race with Sauron. He still could not see very well, but he found a rhythm with Ingrod. The destruction of the Seven went more easily than the Three. They were nameless, only an echo of, a prelude to the great symphony that made the Three.

But with every swing of the hammer, he felt weakened. Eventually, he realized he wasn't standing upright on his own power; he was being supported by Lûrien, while Ingrod swept away ring shards and replaced the next ring in line on the anvil.

"He's... here," Celebrimbor struggled to form the words, no longer able to speak to his friends through the interchange of thought. His mind was in the grip of Sauron, or the mountain, or both. "At the entrance, he's coming in about five seconds. Cat shaped."

Ingrod didn't hesitate; he placed the next ring on the anvil. Celebrimbor smashed the hammer down. In the next second, Lûrien released Celebrimbor and he staggered, falling against the anvil.

Ingrod and Lûrien swiftly drew their swords and pointed them into the face of the huge black cat that appeared in the doorway.

Celebrimbor blinked, somehow managing to bring himself back to focus. Being in the same room, in the physical presence of Sauron, made it easier to remember who he was and mentally gather the shards of his mind into place. Celebrimbor was standing with hammer in hand, collapsed on the anvil; he was not at the doorway looking at himself. He put one shaking hand on the anvil and managed to stagger upright.

And so he was watching when the black cat shifted into Annatar. The shining silver hair, the surpassingly fair features, the wondrously perfect, slender grace of his being, it was so achingly familiar—and Celebrimbor did not fail to notice that he had not a scrap of clothing. The sight sent heat coursing from the tip of his toes to the top of his scalp, and he shivered with fear and something else.

Lûrien and Ingrod didn't miss a beat; their swords pressed against Annatar's bare chest just as they had against the cat's face.

Celebrimbor was left to wrangle the next ring on his own. He had completely lost track of how many he'd destroyed and how many were left. He clumsily swept aside the shards of the previous ring, laboriously fumbled for the next ring to place it on the anvil, and lifted the hammer.

Annatar screamed again. It was the scream of someone watching their children die before their eyes, Celebrimbor thought with a strange sort of distance. And then Annatar did the last thing Celebrimbor ever expected.

He threw himself on the ground at the feet of Lûrien and Ingrod and howled. He wept, and uttered wordless screams of anguish, and cried on their boots.

The swords followed Annatar's movements unerringly, but Celebrimbor thought Lûrien and Ingrod were at least as taken aback as Celebrimbor was.

Celebrimbor let the hammer fall. This time, he was in his own head, and knew it for his own agony: it scraped against his teeth, it ran through his nerves like fire, it burnt off the skin of his hand and seared his toes. Another of the Seven became dust.

"Please," Annatar begged, his howls turning into vaguely comprehensible Sindarin words. "Stop, I will do anything, whatever you want, please stop this madness, I will do anything."

Celebrimbor thought it might kill him to raise the hammer again. How many rings were left? He had to keep going. He reached out with an arm that was shaking violently, and swept remnants of metal and gemstones off the anvil. He swallowed, and it hurt. His mouth was so dry; he was so thirsty. His head was pounding with the worst headache he'd had in his life.

"Tyelpe, for the love of the Valar, stop this, I will give you anything you want!"

"How... weird," Celebrimbor said, struggling to speak, to move his numb lips, to make his brain form the words. "Never heard you beg before."

"I am begging you," Annatar said, with no hesitation whatsoever, still groveling on the ground at the elves' boots. "Stop this, stop this madness, I beg you! Name your price! I will give you everything I am and everything I have."

"If only," Celebrimbor said, every word a marathon. He picked up another ring and placed it on the anvil, squinting to see it. His arm was heavy, why was it so heavy? Was this what dying felt like? "If only I could trust you to mean one single word you say."

Celebrimbor lifted the hammer, an almost supernatural feat. The mountain was devouring him. He swung, and Annatar's screams erupted again.

His vision blacked out. He could not see what happened next. Something hit him; he fell to the ground. There was a big black shape on top of him. It was howling, because the other two elves were stabbing their swords into it over and over. But despite the repeated injuries, the black shape wasn't moving away from Celebrimbor, and Celebrimbor wasn't letting go of the hammer.

"Tyelpe, it's killing you," he heard Annatar breathe out. "You're giving it your own life force with every stroke."

Oh, was that what he was doing, all the while thinking instead that he'd been channeling the mountain's force? Interesting. He hadn't made a mistake like that in a long time. His father was going to kill him for losing sight of such a fundamental principle.

"Let go of it," Annatar pleaded. He was doggedly hanging on to Celebrimbor in spite of the two elves still hacking away at whatever shapeless, black form he wore now. Celebrimbor could feel the stabs like they were his own flesh; his breath left him in a gasp with every new blow. "Tyelpe, my heart, my love, my light, you have to let go of it."

Celebrimbor could not have let go of the hammer even if he'd wanted to. He was dying, and that all right. He could face his father and his grandfather in the Halls of Mandos without shame. His rings would be not used to enslave his own people.

But Annatar was stronger than him; Annatar's spirit was enveloping him, and channeling itself into his hand, and the power of the hammer and the mountain was abruptly severed from his own. The shock of it was terrible. It left him reeling, sharp and sheer, like being thrown into very deep, very cold water. Celebrimbor gasped for breath, and his lungs found nothing, and he passed into darkness.

 

Celebrimbor woke to full alertness in an instant. He took a deep breath, which hurt less than he was expecting. His chest felt fine. His hand hurt the most of anything; it throbbed and stung.

He opened his eyes and blinked up at a ceiling of black stone. He was lying on a soft feather bed that was exceedingly comfortable. Light streamed through nearby windows. There was a warm weight draped across his legs.

He looked down. A big, black... something was lying across him. It was not a dog, or a wolf, or a cat, or any animal Celebrimbor had ever seen. It was just a long body and tangle of limbs with a vague, shapeless head. It was very still—either dead or sleeping.

Celebrimbor gingerly reached out—with his left hand; his right hand was the one throbbing and it was wrapped in bandages—and felt the black creature. It didn't appear to bear stab wounds and it wasn't bloody. It had neither skin nor fur. It felt sort of dry and brittle to the touch. It was not altogether pleasant. Celebrimbor shuddered, and resisted the impulse to shove it off him.

He took stock of his situation instead. He was still dressed in his own clothing, and he had not been stripped of his jewelry. He could feel the familiar, pleasantly heavy silver earring looping many times around the top of his left ear. He reached up, and felt the silver hair ribbons entwined through his braids. He concluded he was only missing his sword and its belt, his leather armor, his boots, and the knife that had been in his boots.

"How do you feel?" came a new voice to the side.

Celebrimbor turned and found himself looking at an elf standing beside the bed. The elf's hair was colorless and his skin looked washed out. The elf was dressed in sensible clothing, a plain gray tunic and utilitarian braids in his hair, with no adornment or jewelry. He wore a long knife in a sheath fixed to his belt.

"You must be one of his, ah, 'friends'—the Avari," Celebrimbor murmured, although the elf had spoken Sindarin with no discernible accent. "Am I in his tower?"

"Yes, and yes," the elf said. "My name is Lanawen, and I am a healer, or rather, I know more of the healing arts than anyone else here. You must be the Noldo he spoke of."

"I suppose," Celebrimbor said unenthusiastically. "I am Celebrimbor, most recently of Eregion. How bad is my hand? Where are my friends?"

"We're here," said a familiar voice behind him, and Celebrimbor managed to twist his torso around until he was facing the other direction. Lûrien and Ingrod were sitting on another bed, along the wall, and they were in chains. But they too were still dressed in their own clothes and wearing the same accessories they'd come in with, save for their swords. He looked at them carefully and thought they were uninjured.

"Shortly after you and A—Sauron passed out, orcs descended on the place, and we killed about fifty of them each," Lûrien continued cheerfully. "They didn't like that very much, and the ones who eventually knocked us down managed to chain us up and haul us here."

She's exaggerating, we probably only killed ten total. Anyway, we're fine, Ingrod said into his thoughts. But worried about you. Sauron seemed to believe you were dying. Are you?

"I don't think I'm dying," he said out loud. "Am I?" he asked Lanawen, the supposed healer.

"Your life force is weakened," Lanawen said in a measured tone. "But I judge it to be mending, rather than worsening. You will be all right. You hand is badly burned. It will recover, though I don't know if you will use it for fine, delicate work again. It is about time to change the bandages, if that's all right with you?"

He nodded. Lanawen went to a table on the far side of the room, collected some supplies, and approached Celebrimbor's bed again. Lanawen began unwrapping the bandages around his hand. It hurt. To take his mind off of it, he stared at the black thing draped across his legs.

"Is that... him?" Celebrimbor asked. "Sauron?"

"We do not name him that," Lanawen said, with amusement, "but yes. He... reverts to this form, I believe, when injured. It prevents him from having to create a new body from scratch, but requires relatively little energy and effort to maintain."

"Why is he on my legs," Celebrimbor said with a twinge of a whine in his voice.

"He refused to be separated from you," Lanawen said gravely, though a tiny corner of his mouth was twitching. "He was not conscious, I do not think. But it caused him distress when I tried to remove him."

Lûrien laughed so hard she snorted. "It was a sight, Tyelpe. His people trying to pry him away and then trying not to freak out when they couldn't."

Lanawen was definitely amused as well; his mouth curled upward a little more. But he remained intently focused on smearing something onto the shiny burns across Celebrimbor's palm—where he had gripped that hammer—and rebandaging the hand.

Celebrimbor wrinkled his nose. It was... distasteful, to think that Sauron, in an unconscious state, was desperate for Celebrimbor's presence. Or perhaps it was far too much in accordance with his tastes, and that was dangerous territory.

What was the final tally? Celebrimbor sent to Ingrod and Lûrien rather than examine that idea. How many did we destroy before he found us?

The Three, and five of the Seven, Ingrod responded. The orcs took the other two of the Seven, and the Nine, when they hauled us away.

Celebrimbor sighed. Only eight rings destroyed. He would have killed himself before he'd done all nineteen.

Lanawen finished rewrapping the bandages, and Celebrimbor relaxed back into the bed. It was a nice bed. Where did Sauron get a nice bed for his awful tower in the middle of the desert?

It's not a terrible outcome, Celebrimbor thought back to Ingrod. Sauron can probably do a great deal of damage with eleven rings of power, but I don't count it a bad trade, for the destruction of the Three.

Ingrod did not send any more words in his thought, but his mind remained open as he started imagining what it would look like for someone to wield a ring of power and be utterly enslaved to Sauron's will.

Ingrod was imagining something of his own power he'd had while wielding Narya—which had been considerable—in the shape of creatures that looked like a smaller Morgoth, with black armor and iron crowns (without any Silmarils, of course, in his vision), multiplied by eleven. Swinging around great maces, or great swords, lightning flashing from their hands, leveling cities (which looked like a combination of Nargothrond and Ost-in-Edhil), entire civilizations falling at their feat.

Celebrimbor winced. Not that powerful, he sent forcefully. The Nine are infinitely less impressive than the Three. They won't topple civilizations.

Ingrod mentally shrugged, neither agreement nor disagreement, then closed his mind to Celebrimbor.

"He would have gotten the Nine anyway," Celebrimbor said out loud, doggedly refusing to leave the conversation there. "If it was a question whether we could successfully hide the Three, there is no question we could have hidden all nineteen."

"Are you two fighting in thought again?" Lûrien asked. "How rude of you to leave me out. I am sure I disagree with both of you."

That wrung a smile from both Celebrimbor and Ingrod. Ingrod seemed to relax and settle a little more easily against the wall.

"It's done, regardless," Celebrimbor said. "I suppose now we're all just going to sit here and wait for him to wake up and decide our fate."

"Yes," Lanawen said, who had tidied up his supplies and arranged them back in little boxes and bowls on the table. He was standing at the foot of Celebrimbor's bed again. "Certainly no one else here has any idea what to do with you all."

At these words, a dull, sick feeling crept into Celebrimbor's stomach and settled there. Unbidden, his mind supplied images and stories of the torment of Angband and Tol-in-Gaurhoth, weaving an imaginary landscape of terror and despair that left him feeling ill.

He had willingly come to Mordor on a suicide mission. He was less sanguine about the prospect of being alive at the mercy of his former lover, who also happened to be the Lord of Werewolves and Morgoth's most feared servant.

The room lapsed into silence. No one seemed to have anything to say. Celebrimbor did not care to try to make conversation; he was doing his best to keep his mind blank. After a few hours, he grew restless and shifted his legs a little. He was losing feeling in them.

The black shape draped on top of him stirred, but did not wake. It moved along with his legs, extending a limb in a stretch, and Celebrimbor's breath caught in his throat.

There was a single, perfect, golden band resting on a stubby, weird little claw at the end of the limb.

He forced himself to look away from it and breathe normally. He relaxed and looked back at his friends, and tried to lie still.

He's wearing it, Celebrimbor sent to Ingrod and Lûrien. His heart was pounding despite his earlier efforts to relax. The One Ring to rule them all. It's on his claw. Right next to me. He's unconscious. And he only has one servant in this room.

Lûrien shifted, and yawned a bit, and settled back against the wall herself. Do you think you can take it off him? Do you need us to create a distraction?

Mmm, he sent back, his mind racing. Not just yet. Give me a bit.

Celebrimbor shifted his legs again, and reached down and wrapped an arm around the creature. He could feel Lanawen watching him extremely closely. Celebrimbor gathered the black shape in his arm—it was surprisingly lightweight—and drew it up closer to his chest.

He swallowed, hard, against the images that flooded his mind, memories of lying just like this, side-by-side with Annatar in Ost-in-Edhil. He knew he was shaking as he opened his left hand and started caressing the skin of the weird black thing.

It was less unpleasant, this time. He thought he could feel the spirit he knew intimately underneath his hand. He let himself relax with the motion and drift off, cradling the creature tucked into his side.

He drifted in and out of a haze for a few more hours. Lanawen stood there the entire time, as rigidly on duty as if he were a guard as well as a healer. Celebrimbor supposed that was indeed what he was doing. When it did not appear that Lanawen was going to move at all, Celebrimbor sent Lûrien and Ingrod a message.

Now.

Lûrien promptly opened her mouth, and screamed and began writhing as though in pain. Lanawen started towards her in alarm. Moving as fast as he could, Celebrimbor reached out for the creature's claw and pulled the ring off of it. He hadn't known what to expect, but it came off easily and did not burn or shock him or do anything at all. It was just an attractive gold band.

Celebrimbor slipped it on his own finger.

And he entered the world of wraiths, the Unseen world. Seeing with spirit rather than with eyes, he no longer heard Lûrien's screams or paid any attention at all to the insignificant flickering lives at the side of the room. A burning, fiery spirit was in his arms, and it was magnificent. Celebrimbor didn't feel his throat anymore, but somehow he knew it had gone dry in awe at the presence and majesty of this being.

It burned and flickered and the shape and color of the flames changed, but the spirit didn't move or focus its will on him. It was sleeping.

Celebrimbor took a few breaths, although he didn’t have lungs, and tried to drag his mind and his focus onto the ring on his finger. As he concentrated on it, he felt the swell of its power—and oh, did it hold power. It felt like all the power in the world, rumbling in the great distance and yet gathering close at his command.

He had no clear idea of what he wanted to do with this power. He pulled on it, and drew it in him, and half of him tried to command it to destroy itself and the other half tried to use it to become a god.

The ring was unceremoniously and abruptly yanked off his finger.

The Seen world rushed back to his senses. Celebrimbor was being held down by at least six orcs, who were not being gentle. He had been so distracted with Sauron that he not even noticed their spirits approaching him. The orcs were screaming at each other and a few other elves that had entered the room, in a language Celebrimbor couldn't understand.

A new elf had a hold of Celebrimbor's hand, and presumably had the golden ring in a tightly clenched fist with his other hand. He was breathing very hard and very fast, and his eyes were wild. The elf snapped orders at the orcs in a harsh, foreign language. The orcs stopped shouting, and one let go of Celebrimbor and hurried off.

"But—" said a second new elf in the room.

"Yes, I know this is the Noldo he has been waxing poetic about all year," the elf with the ring snarled, also switching to Sindarin. "But he took the ring off his finger!"

The orc returned, carrying heavy chains, and Celebrimbor was limp and unresisting as she clamped irons on his wrists and dragged his arms above his head and fastened them around something above him. It didn't pain him at all; Celebrimbor was feeling very strong and healthy all of a sudden. His palm wasn't even burning anymore.

"I will take full responsibility if he dislikes seeing his friend in chains," the elf with the ring continued, his eyes burning with a bright anger. "It—you still can't get his lordship away from this bed?"

This question was directed at Lanawen, who was standing a little away.

Lanawen shook his head. "I hadn't tried recently. This is my fault, Pagûl. It happened on my watch. You needn't take the fall for it."

"No one is taking the fall for anything," Pagûl said exasperatedly. "It isn't like he will kill us for it. Probably." He bent down over the black shape, and Celebrimbor watched, silent and still, as the elf slipped the ring back onto the creature's claw.

The creature didn't stir. He may as well have been dead. But thanks to Celebrimbor's very short journey into the Unseen world, he knew that Sauron was very, very much present and alive. Merely... resting. Recovering from injuries.

Pagûl spoke to the orcs in that harsh language, and the orcs filed out of the room quietly and with more order than Celebrimbor had thought them capable of. Three of the Avari remained in the room, looking grave and watchful.

Are you all right? Celebrimbor sent to Lûrien and Ingrod without turning to look at them.

We're fine, Ingrod sent back quickly. Lanawen instantly realized what you were doing, which was impressive. He turned away from us and called for help, which arrived rather quickly. No one has remembered the two of us exist yet.

I had no idea how to destroy it, Celebrimbor admitted to them. It was... overwhelmingly powerful. I think that I, well, tried to use it.

Of course you can't destroy it, Lûrien said, with amusement and a layer of light contempt. I thought we were all very clear it must be flung into the fires of that mountain. Did you not realize you turned invisible when you put it on? You should have made a run for the exit. Or used it to fly out the window or something. Or make him into your slave.

Celebrimbor had not thought about the consequences of his entering the Unseen world, no. But it made sense that he had gone invisible to Lûrien and Ingrod's eyes.

He sent them the vision of Sauron's fiery, breathtaking, fearsome spirit as best he could. I don't know what kind of will and power it would take to enslave that, he added, but it is certainly beyond me, even with his own ruling ring on my finger. I imagine it would take the strength of one of the Ainur.

While Celebrimbor had been having this silent conversation, Lanawen approached and was unbandaging his hand. When the wrappings were off, Lanawen gave a sharp gasp.

"It's healed, isn't it?" Celebrimbor asked, trying not to laugh. He could not see his hand anymore, but he could feel it, and it felt fine.

"Yes," Lanawen said slowly. "It's healed instantly and completely."

Pagûl lifted a hand and rubbed it against his forehead. "Great," the elf said, addressing Celebrimbor. "You stole his life force to augment yours."

Given how he was feeling—full of fire and energy—and magic—Celebrimbor had reached the same conclusion.

He looked at the ceiling, and laughed. And kept laughing. "I think that's right," he finally managed, laughing so hard that tears leaked out of his eyes. "Am I part Maia now?"

The elf didn't answer him. Eventually, his laughter subsided, and Celebrimbor found it annoying that he could not wipe his eyes. The tears trickled down his cheeks and were mildly ticklish.

"Great," Pagûl repeated, backing up a few steps to sit on an empty bed, on the other side of Celebrimbor away from Lûrien and Ingrod. "That's just great. Perhaps he will kill us when he wakes up."

Celebrimbor took a few deep breaths, then tried to steady himself and reach for a sterner tone. "I would like someone to wipe my face. Please," he added as an afterthought. They were not his servants and it felt unwise to further antagonize them.

Lanawen stepped forward instantly, and the cloth he used to wipe the tracks of tears from Celebrimbor's face was soft and warm.

"Thank you," Celebrimbor said politely. He wriggled around, trying to find a more comfortable angle for his arms, then sighed and gave up. The black shape at his side stirred, but only to settle closer to him.

Celebrimbor stared at it for a while. Everyone else stared at the both of them. No one said anything for an excruciatingly long time.

"I'm hungry, and also bored," Celebrimbor announced, hoping that the elves still wanted, in some measure, to cater to the Noldo about whom Sauron had been 'waxing poetic.'

He suppressed another shudder, and refused to allow himself to examine that thought too carefully.

Pagûl nodded at the third elf whose name Celebrimbor had not heard. The elf nodded and departed. She returned with a tray of bowls of soup and warm bread.

"What is in it?" Celebrimbor said suspiciously, wondering what sort of meat was available in this evil realm.

"It's vegetarian," she said, smiling like she knew his thoughts. Patiently, she sat on the side of the bed—away from the black shape—and spoon fed him. It was a little embarrassing, but Celebrimbor valued his pride fairly low in the grand scheme of things right now, and eating somewhat higher. She then moved on to provide food to Lûrien and Ingrod, whose arms where chained in front of them rather than behind them, and did not need to be spoon fed.

"I suppose we are available for your entertainment," Pagûl said with a soft sigh, where he was still sitting on the third bed. "Why not. What would you like? Stories? Song?"

Celebrimbor looked at him wonderingly. "Stories," he said slowly. "Where do you come from? What brought you to Sauron's side?"

"Hmm," Pagûl said slowly. "You are Finwë's grandson, are you not?"

"Great-grandson," Celebrimbor corrected.

"My father walked with your great-grandfather in Cuiviénen," Pagûl said with a soft smile. "He told me stories about them—Finwë, Ingwë, Olwë, Elwë—but they only became famous later. My father knew them long before Oromë arrived to invite them on the Great Journey."

Celebrimbor stared at Pagûl, with a terrible feeling building in his stomach. "Your father was taken from Cuiviénen by Morgoth," he said with a flash of insight.

"In a manner of speaking," Pagûl said, unperturbed. "It was before my time. I was born right here, in these lands, some four thousand years ago if counting by the sun."

"You are much older than I am, in that case," Celebrimbor said with a small smile.

"And Mínwiel is much older than either of us," Pagûl said, grinning, with a nod at the elf who was handing Ingrod some bread. "She is one of the first to Awaken."

"Oh," Celebrimbor said, looking at her with new respect. Then he coughed. "Oh, no. You were kidnapped by Morgoth?"

"Not kidnapped," she said, as scornfully as he'd ever known anyone to say anything. "He was the most glorious thing we'd ever seen, and we followed him gladly."

"Well," Pagûl amended, "there were some who were not so willing, and those are where your stories of torment and horror and orcs come from."

Celebrimbor shuddered.

"But the rest of us, we loved him," Mínwiel said fiercely. "And now we love his lieutenant in turn."

Celebrimbor found the idea of loving Sauron a little less reprehensible than he would have last year. He tried very hard to separate that thought and cut it out of him.

Then he laughed. "So you are counted among the Avari even though you never heard the summons of Oromë? That doesn't seem quite right."

Pagûl raised an eyebrow. "We've heard it," he said quietly. "Do you suppose we have never heard the cry of a gull? But it holds no attraction for us. We are Melkor's, not of Aman."

Celebrimbor digested this. He had heard some of the Sindar speak of seagulls this way, but he personally had never understood it. He was not—he was not going back to Aman. A bird could not convince him to do what Manwë's own herald had not.

"We have something in common, then," Celebrimbor said lightly. "I am not of Aman either."

Pagûl looked taken aback. "I thought you were born there," he said.

"I was born there," he agreed, moving his eyes away from Pagûl and to the ceiling. "But I don't—well. I am not going back."

The way the Valar had dealt with his family was bullshit, from Fëanor's exile to Formenos all the way to Maedhros and Maglor's end. Celebrimbor was not going back to the cages of the Valar unless someone killed him and sent him to Mandos against his will.

"Hmm," Pagûl said. His eyes were shrewd, but his words remained mild. "How about we cease to interrogate one another about this. Why don’t I find some books, and we can read to you."

"Books?" Celebrimbor echoed, no doubt sounding foolish. "Books in the dark tower of Mordor?"

Pagûl smiled easily. "Angband had books too, believe it or not. His lordship likes books very much."

Funny. Annatar had indeed loved books.

Pagûl rose, gracefully with an admirable economy of movement, and when he returned, he was carrying a pile of actual, real, books.

Pagûl sat back down and opened one of them. "You do not speak Rhûnian, do you?" he asked.

Celebrimbor laughed and shook his head.

"Very well," Pagûl said. "I will endeavor to translate."

"When did you learn Sindarin?" Celebrimbor asked curiously. "The Avari are supposed to have their own languages, all variously derived from ancient Quenya."

"Ha," Pagûl said, smiling a little. "As you just heard, we have been separated from the other tribes of the Avari for thousands of years. We have no more idea what they are speaking than you do. We picked up Sindarin when you did, during our war with them."

Celebrimbor found the idea of elves loyal to Angband learning fluent Sindarin—for surely they could not have picked it up except from prisoners—to be so disturbing, he could not find anything to say. He was glad when Pagûl interpreted his silence as a cue to start reading from the book.

Sauron's taste in fiction turned out to be achingly similar to Annatar's. He had novels and collections of fairy tales and myths and compilations of oral traditions among nomadic peoples. Annatar had always been fascinated by mortal men and their efforts to preserve knowledge which would otherwise be lost to them, in their short life spans. Annatar had carefully not betrayed any more of an interest in the eastern peoples over the Edain, but the tales of Rhûn and Harad and Hildórien he gathered here felt astonishingly familiar to Celebrimbor.

Celebrimbor's intense and personal interest in Sauron's book collection carried him through what could have been intolerably endless days, or weeks. It was otherwise not the most pleasant time; his arms ached and it was difficult to get comfortable and it was impossible to forget the black shape curled up obliviously at his side. He both intensely dreaded and also could not wait for Sauron to wake up.

He had nightmares every night; confused images, some that he had actually lived and some not: of being torn apart by werewolves and whipped by Balrogs until he was face-down in his own blood while Anfauglith burned; of dragonfire and giant spiders; of cruel orange eyes and sharp laughter; of being chased from his home by fire and demons and orcs and terror and herded to coastlines until there was nothing left of anything or anyone he ever loved.

He woke from these dreams gasping for breath and with a parched throat, desperate for water, heart racing, breathing too fast, panicking.

Perversely, he found he could calm himself down by turning and breathing into the pelt of the black creature who was still unmoving at his side. He did not know if it was because part of him still thought he loved and knew Annatar, or because of the much more literal and less romantic fact that he'd stolen Sauron's life force through the ring and now shared some measure of it.

He hadn't had nightmares like this in centuries, not since Eregion had prospered and they had peace and he had found contentment in rebuilding a small but precious part of Middle-earth.

He buried his face in Sauron's side seeking comfort, and cursed him heartily and thoroughly at the same time.

 

Celebrimbor woke up feeling content and relaxed. If he'd had any dreams, he didn't remember them. Something smelled nice; his face was buried in familiar silky hair and there were arms around him that belonged to a body he knew nearly as well as his own.

The first thing he knew was that he had an erection, and the body entwined with his was always happy to take care of it. He pressed himself closer to his lover—and the second thing he knew was sheer panic, along the lines of no no, you idiot, this is Sauron not Annatar noooo.

He must have shifted shape while Celebrimbor was sleeping.

Celebrimbor's arms were still chained and he couldn't move away, but a fierce anger rose in him after the initial moment of panic. He brought his legs up and kneed Annatar in the stomach, as hard as he could. Hard enough to shove him off of the bed, causing to fall in an ungraceful heap on the floor.

Annatar gave a sort of strangled groan. He sat up, blearily opened his eyes, and looked straight at Celebrimbor.

They stared at each other wordlessly.

Annatar's shape resembled, more or less, one of the Eldar. He was of average size and height, with typical elven facial features such as the ears, and a skin tone that matched the brown of the Calaquendi rather than the Angband elves. He had an ethereal quality that was hard to describe—Celebrimbor had once thought of it as his inner being, shining with the Light of the Trees—but aside from that, Annatar could have easily passed for an elf. Celebrimbor's heart was in his throat, looking at Annatar like this and yet knowing what he really was.

He was not wearing any clothes, and out of the corner of his eye, Celebrimbor saw Lanawen hurry forward and crouch on the ground beside Annatar. Lanawen held out a satiny black robe and draped it around Annatar—a jarring effect; Celebrimbor didn't think he could remember Annatar wearing black even once.

"Lord?" Lanawen asked in a careful tone.

Annatar ignored him. He pulled the robe around him more tightly, like he was cold, and kept staring at Celebrimbor.

Annatar's silver eyes matched his silver hair rather perfectly, and Celebrimbor had always particularly loved the effect. But he wanted to throw up at the sight now.

"What was that for?" Annatar eventually asked him, gesturing at the bed and the floor.

"Oh, I don't know," Celebrimbor said through gritted teeth, anger pulsing through him. "Maybe it was for coming to my city in disguise and tricking me into forging rings to enslave my own people to aid your pursuit for world domination, Sauron." He said this name with as much acidity as possible.

Annatar tightened his grip on the robe around his shoulders. His face betrayed nothing of his feelings.

"Or maybe it was for lying to me every single time we fucked," Celebrimbor gritted out. "Maybe it was for all my family and friends you've tormented and slain. Or the destruction of Himlad, or Nargothrond, or Gondolin, or—or the whips of the Valaraukar or the fires of Ancalagon—fuck. Fuck, Sauron, pick anything you like and it would work as a reason to kick you out of my bed."

Annatar's expression didn't change for any of this. He blinked a few times, then—"Why are you—" He cut himself off, and swung his head over to Lanawen crouching on the floor. "Why is he chained?"

Lanawen stooped his shoulders and bowed his head very deeply. "He took the ring off your finger and tried to wield it himself. He took some of your life force to replenish his. Right under my nose. I am sorry, lord, I failed you."

Annatar's smooth expression broke and he winced. He brought his right hand to his mouth and pressed his ring firmly against his lips, as if reassuring himself of its existence. He did not lower his hand, and when he spoke, he spoke around it. "Your care for my person is unparalleled and beyond recompense, Lanawen. Thank you. But please unchain him now."

Lanawen leapt up instantly at these words. He went to the door, took up a set of keys that hung beside it, and returned to Celebrimbor's bed swiftly. He unlocked and removed the chains and retreated back to the door to hang them up beside the keys.

Celebrimbor eased his arms down, slowly and carefully, breathing through the burning ache and cradling them at his side.

"How about us too, you jerk?" Lûrien asked from behind Annatar.

Annatar whirled around in surprise, as though he'd had no idea the other two elves were on the bed behind him.

"Lûrien," he said measuredly. "Ingrod. How nice to see you again. Are you well?"

"Fuck you," she spat. Ingrod said nothing, but stared at Annatar through narrowed eyes.

Annatar looked at Lanawen.

"I did not witness it," Lanawen answered carefully, "but my understanding is they stabbed you repeatedly and slayed a dozen orcs before we could subdue them."

Annatar winced again, and reached back and felt between his shoulder blades like he was remembering being stabbed there.

"Will you agree not to attack me if the chains are removed?" Annatar asked them.

Lûrien scowled. "You're the fucking Enemy, Sauron. No we're not going to agree not to attack you again."

"Am I?" he said, sounding surprised. "When did that term start meaning me instead of Melkor?"

"You're here and he's not," Lûrien pointed out.

He sighed. "Can we have... a temporary ceasefire? No one attacks anyone while we talk for a bit?"

"Fine," Lûrien said, still scornful. "What do you want to 'talk' about?" The inflection on the word 'talk' was deliberately sarcastic.

Annatar nodded at Lanawen, who took up the keys again and undid the chains on Lûrien's arms and legs. Annatar held up a hand before Lanawen got to Ingrod, and stared pointedly at Ingrod.

"Yes," Ingrod said. Celebrimbor was surprised to hear his voice was shaking. "I agree not to attack you while we talk."

Annatar lowered his hand and nodded at Lanawen, who removed the chains around Ingrod as well. Lûrien scooted closer to Ingrod and draped an arm around his shoulders, then sent Annatar a defiant glare.

He either didn't see it or didn't care. He turned back to Celebrimbor, and raised his chin to look up at Celebrimbor and recommence staring at him.

"What are you doing here?" Annatar asked, his tone injured.

"You invited me," Celebrimbor replied calmly.

"What—no I didn't. What are you talking about?"

"You said you wished I could see your irrigation work here," Celebrimbor reminded him, and found himself having to bite back a smile.

"I didn't—what. But I—no. How did you have any idea what I was talking about. How did you know—how did you know," Annatar finished urgently, starting to sound very upset. His eyes were a little wild as he swung his head back and forth from Celebrimbor to where Lûrien and Ingrod were sitting. Annatar was breathing much too quickly, and Celebrimbor wondered if they were about to witness a temper tantrum and whether it would be the last thing they ever saw.

No such thing erupted. Instead, Annatar leaned over, placed his arms on Celebrimbor's bed, buried his head in them, and started weeping.

"You destroyed them," he sobbed. "They were beautiful, the most beautiful things on earth, they were perfect and your finest works and you destroyed them."

Celebrimbor stared uncomprehendingly at the sight of Morgoth's greatest servant weeping uncontrollably at his side.

Celebrimbor eased himself up into a sitting position, then scooted further up the bed and leaned against the wall. He briefly contemplated the idea of patting the weeping Maia on the back. He discarded it almost instantly.

Do you think he's putting on an act? he sent wordlessly to Lûrien and Ingrod.

They didn't send anything back right away.

What would he get out of it? Lûrien finally asked. He's just going to kill us either way.

Ingrod flinched at this, and closed his mind without responding.

"How could you?" Annatar was sobbing. "How could you, Tyelpe, how could you do such a monstrous thing."

Celebrimbor felt a flash of fury. He reached out and took Annatar's hand by the finger wearing the ring, and shook it, hard.

"How could you do this?" he hissed. "Corrupt our greatest work and turn something of beauty and generosity into instruments of slavery?"

Annatar's hand was limp; there was no resistance in him. He lifted his head to look at Celebrimbor. His beautiful face was streaked with tears and snot, and his eyes were red and still watery.

"If I had kept wearing Vilya," Celebrimbor continued, his eyes blazing into Annatar's, "I would be your mindless slave. That's what you wanted from me? Planned it this way from the very beginning?"

Annatar whimpered. "No," he said, his voice very small. "No, of course not. We would be—you would be so beautiful, at my side, my gorgeous powerful Tyelpe, we could have accomplished anything and made everything perfect."

Celebrimbor's lip curled. "Everything would be beautiful until, what, you demand Gil-galad open Lindon to us and he refuses and you order me to attack him? With Vilya on my finger and this thing on yours, I could not have said no. Slaying my kin for your ambitions! How fitting that you chose one of the House of Fëanor for your little slavery project, in that case."

Annatar flinched like Celebrimbor had physically struck him. "I would never, no, never do that to you."

So he had been listening, those few, scattered nights when Celebrimbor had spoken of his fears that everything he did was forevermore tainted by the blood of Alqualondë. Sauron had doubtless felt zero real empathy, and it was mortifying to realize that Celebrimbor had been confiding in someone with a hundred thousand times more blood on his hands... but at least he'd been listening.

"But you did," Celebrimbor said, pressing forward pitilessly. He shook Annatar's finger again to emphasize his point. "If I hadn't taken Vilya off instantly, I would gradually have lost the ability to ever take it off again. I'd lose my will to yours and become nothing more than an echo of your desires."

"No," Annatar protested, starting to weep harder. "You don't understand. That isn't why I made this ring."

Celebrimbor was flat, exhausted, wrung out and backwards. He was grim and cold and miserable. He stared at Annatar.

"Of the two of us," he finally said, "I'm the one who was wearing one of the subject rings at the moment you forged the ruling ring. I know exactly what would have happened had I continued to wear it."

He shook Annatar's finger one final time and then let go. He felt so utterly spent, he almost did not care what his future held.

"That isn't why," Annatar insisted. He was crying again, and buried his head back in his arms. "We would have been perfect together."

"You're delusional," Celebrimbor said distantly. "I can't decide whether that's better or worse than it being your plan from the very beginning."

Annatar did not say anything else. His shoulders were shaking like he was still crying.

"Are you mentally unwell?" Celebrimbor asked suddenly. "Can a Maia suffer a mental injury with a physical one, like the incarnates sometimes do?"

"I'm fine," Annatar mumbled, his voice muffled in his arms. "Fuck off."

"You were unconscious for a... long time," Celebrimbor pointed out. "You were making your servants exceptionally nervous."

"I was stabbed repeatedly, was using all my powers to stop you from killing yourself instead of healing my own wounds, was telepathically living the death of each ring you destroyed, and then my recovery was apparently interrupted by someone taking my life force. Yes. I was out a while. Thank you for the reminder."

He sounded angry. At least it also sounded like he had stopped crying.

"I did not... take your life force intentionally," Celebrimbor said.

At this, Annatar rotated his head to look at Celebrimbor. He was glaring. "You did not steal my ring from my finger intentionally?"

"Of course, that part, yes," Celebrimbor said. "I mean, I didn't know what I was doing with the ring and I didn't realize I was stealing your life force. Do you... want it back?"

"Ugh," Annatar said, looking exasperated. "I thought you were intelligent. You certainly do not understand what you did, if you would offer that. It would..." he paused. "It would hurt you very badly if I tried to take it back. I wonder if you would survive it."

Celebrimbor looked at him gravely. "Are you trying to convince me you would never hurt me?"

"I—no," Annatar said, momentarily confused. "We both know better than that. As you are so determined to be enemies. But I am fine. I will regenerate my power eventually. I do not need to take it back from you."

"I am not the one determined to be enemies," Celebrimbor protested. "I would be exceedingly happy if you wanted to go back to solving math problems and cutting gemstones in Eregion."

"Would you." Annatar's expression and voice was flat.

"I... well... yes," Celebrimbor said. He hadn't expected to be challenged on that. "Sure. Give up your ambitions for conquering Middle-earth through slavery and I will welcome you back. I probably won't make any more objects of power using your formulas, though."

"I don't have ambitions of conquering Middle-earth through slavery," Annatar snarled, his expression going ugly.

"Um. That's a lie," Celebrimbor said firmly.

"It is not," Annatar hissed. "I want to heal Middle-earth and make it beautiful and bring order and perfection."

"Through slavery," Celebrimbor rejoined.

"I—if that's what it takes," Annatar said, his voice evening out. "But only for my enemies."

"And there it is," Celebrimbor sighed.

"I don't find it plausible that you would take me back after finding out who I am," Annatar said flatly. "So who is lying now?"

Celebrimbor blinked. "It is a very great betrayal, sure, but if I could trust you to know where you went wrong and not do it again, well... I...."

"If I had first walked into Ost-in-Edhil and told you that I was Sauron, you wouldn't have let me get another word in before barring the door and drawing your swords."

Celebrimbor smiled weakly. "Yes," he agreed. "You're right."

"It's not fair," he said fiercely. "I want to help."

"Your method of helping sucks," Celebrimbor said bluntly.

"It does not," Annatar said petulantly.

Celebrimbor blew out his breath forcefully. Annatar had—on occasion—exhibited a very strong childish streak when he did not get his way in some particular. Celebrimbor had never been frightened of it in Ost-in-Edhil, but now he thought it better not to provoke such things.

It was hardly going to be a productive argument, anyway, no matter what.

He reached out, and placed a tentatively gentle hand on Annatar's head. He ran his fingers through the fine silver strands of hair, frowning a little.

He shouldn't care—he didn't know why it even occurred to him—this was the least of his problems when it came to this stupid Maia—but: "You're not wearing them anymore."

Annatar sighed, and shifted his face away so that his hair was more accessible to Celebrimbor. He did not need to ask what Celebrimbor was talking about. "They don't stay in my hair when I change shapes," he explained. "Not even if I shift to another shape that has hair. They just... fall out."

"Did you even keep them?" Celebrimbor asked bitterly.

"How could you think—of course I did," Annatar said, sounding hurt. "Lanawen. Ask Pagûl to unlock the cupboard in my chambers and bring me the small, tan leather pouch inside."

Lanawen rose, bowed his head again, and left the room. He was only gone a minute, and came back empty-handed.

"How could you imagine I would have come back to you without them?" Annatar asked. He sounded upset.

"Well," Celebrimbor said, pretending to consider the question. "If you had come back at the head of an orc army to sack my city and demand the surrender of the rings, I don't suppose I would care much what hair ornaments you'd brought with you."

Annatar huffed. "Why would I have had to demand their surrender? They're mine."

Celebrimbor groaned, but continued running his fingers gently through Annatar's hair. "For the same reason I just destroyed some of them, you asshole. I do not consent to your using them to enslave the peoples of Middle-earth."

"You're very unkind to me," Annatar said in a small voice, and what on earth Celebrimbor was supposed to say to that, he had no idea.

Pagûl saved him from having to find something to say by entering the room. He offered the leather pouch to Annatar, who shook his head slightly. Celebrimbor held out his hand for it.

With a slightly raised eyebrow, Pagûl handed it to Celebrimbor.

Celebrimbor opened the pouch and dumped its contents into his hand. Elegant strands of surpassingly fine gold links poured out like liquid and shimmered on his palm. They were as pliable and flexible as ribbons, yet made of the finest, purest gold. Their creation had been a matter of extremely delicate work, shaping extraordinarily small links of gold and twisting them together one by one.

Celebrimbor put down the pouch and raised a hand to his own hair to double check; yes, he was still wearing the silver equivalent of these ribbons, braided into his own dark hair.

He and Annatar had made them for each other around the same time they had started using the word 'love' for their relationship.

Heart in his throat and tears stinging at his eyes, Celebrimbor sat up and leaned forward. He took Annatar's silky hair in his hands, separating it with his fingers and starting to carefully braid the gold into the strands. He had done this every week in Eregion, and Annatar had braided his hair in return, and it felt nearly as tender, intimate, and emotional as sex.

It was incredibly hard to swallow the instinctive and habitual I love you that sprang to his lips at this end of this task. Instead, he vaguely patted the top of Annatar's head and settled back against the wall.

"Does all jewelry fall out when you shapeshift?" Celebrimbor asked, striving for a friendly, conversational tone.

"Yes," Annatar said. He shifted his head around to face Celebrimbor. "Except the One Ring, which is more or less me, not a piece of jewelry."

"That's fascinating," Celebrimbor said. "Why is it the Ainur can create flesh but not jewelry to give yourselves shape?"

"Just... choices we made at the dawn of the world," Annatar said, an interested hum in his throat. "We fashioned the raiment of flesh in anticipation of Ilúvatar's thoughts for his Children to come. Now that we have bound ourselves to Arda, we cannot change such aspects of ourselves through a mere exercise of will. I am the most talented shapeshifter among them, to my knowledge, but to take a new form requires extensive study of existing anatomy, rather than simply—" he lifted a hand from the bed and snapped his fingers.

Celebrimbor grinned unreservedly at Annatar. The admission that Annatar was the most talented shapeshifter among the Ainur would never have occurred while Annatar was pretending not to be Sauron. It felt like a promise—ah, fuck, it felt like a gift—the potential of all they could be with no lies between them. And Celebrimbor adored these discussions, of hearing what life was like before the stars existed. He would probably have continued his questioning and fallen back into the patterns of their old banter—

Stop being nice to him, Ingrod's brittle, agonized voice seared across Celebrimbor's mind. This is Sauron, for fuck's sake. Demand that he give us the rings back and let us go.

Ingrod was a quiet soul, who felt things deeply and was slow to trust and change. Lûrien might, eventually, if he started doing much better, forgive Annatar. Celebrimbor could not imagine what it would take for Ingrod to forgive. As far as Celebrimbor knew, Ingrod still nurtured resentment against Maglor and had not forgiven him, more than sixteen hundred years later.

"Annatar," Celebrimbor said, tasting the once-familiar and now-strange name carefully. "Are you holding us prisoner here, or are we free to leave?"

Annatar's eyes blazed. He sat up, taking his arms off the bed and pointing a shaking, accusatory finger at Celebrimbor.

"You trespassed into my lands, without invitation. You appropriated my forge for your own uses without asking. You destroyed my most precious works. You hurt me, attacked me again and again, and even so my people brought you here and healed you. You stole my own life force to complete your healing. You are in a sick bay, with all your needs attended to, and not a fucking dungeon. And you have—the temerity—the gall—the nerve—to accuse me of being in the wrong, of holding you here against your will!"

"We have been quite literally chained here," Celebrimbor said calmly. "It is a fair question."

"Only because you apparently presented a danger to other convalescents," Annatar hissed, ugly spit flying from his beautiful mouth. "Damn it, Tyelperinquar. Damn you. Get out, if you want to go."

He lowered his finger and twisted his torso to look at Pagûl. "Outfit them with horses and supplies. Return their belongings. Have someone accompany them to the Morannon."

Celebrimbor carefully swung his legs around and got out of bed. He continued to feel strong, hale, and whole. Even his sore arms were already feeling better. He gave Annatar a careful berth and went to Lûrien and Ingrod to help them stand.

Lûrien paused, and looked at Annatar, still sitting on the floor.

"Since the rings belong to us," she said, her voice strong and fearless-seeming, "are you giving those back to us as well?"

He slowly lifted his head to look at her. "I do not agree with your premise, as I'm sure you did not imagine I would. But even if we could agree that the rings were a joint venture, and belonged wholly to none of us...."

She tilted her head, looking curious as to where he was going.

"If I give them back to you, would you immediately run off to destroy them?"

She drew away from him a little, and did not answer.

"So I thought," he said. "No, I will not be giving you the rings back."

Celebrimbor turned his back on Annatar and left the room without another word.

 

Pagûl followed Annatar's orders exactly. He gave them back their boots and armor and weapons and supplies they'd arrived with—minus the rings—and added more provisions to their bags.

Celebrimbor accepted his sword and strapped it around his waist with a flood of intense relief. He had never let onto Annatar how valuable this sword was—perhaps because he did not want to confess to anyone how much he valued it.

The sword and its hilt were plain, unadorned, and nothing impressive to behold. But. It had been Fëanor's sword, cast by his own hand in the secret forge in Valinor where the Silmarils themselves had been made. It cut through armor and flesh alike, as easily as a warm knife through butter. It was indestructible as far as Celebrimbor could tell, impossibly lightweight, and never needed cleaning, polishing, or sharpening. Sometimes, when he wielded it, Celebrimbor could swear he channeled his grandfather's fiery spirit.

Celebrimbor's love for this sword was beyond all reason, stained as it was with infamy and the blood of his kin. He probably should not have carried something so precious to him into Mordor, but as he'd been expecting to die, he hadn't taken thought for the future beyond that.

Celebrimbor followed Pagûl down a long spiraling staircase and outside, where Celebrimbor got his first waking sight of Sauron's Dark Tower in the land of Mordor.

It was smaller than he expected. It looked like... it looked like Arodor's description of the place from five hundred years ago. It was about twenty stories high, of slender proportions, with one balcony protruding about two-thirds of the way up, and a flat roof.

If Sauron intended to use the power of his ring to build a laws-of-physics-defying tower, he had not started on the project yet.

Pagûl led to them to a low building a hundred yards away, made of wood, which was nothing more than an ordinary stable with ordinary horses. There were a few men hanging around, ready to tack up the horses for travel, whom Pagûl addressed in that same strange language. This startled Celebrimbor; it was unlikely to be a form of Orkish, if elves and men were also speaking it.

Lanawen was already there, dressed in very smart livery of black and red, a full-sized sword hanging from his hip, and holding the lead of a horse. He gave Celebrimbor a smile when they saw each other.

"You wouldn't make it out of this land without being stopped, if unaccompanied," he explained. "I volunteered to take you."

They set off down a wide, well-worn, easily-traversed path to the northwest. Taking in his surroundings, Celebrimbor understood why they had not seen this tower when entering this land to the southwest: the sight of it had been blocked by the mass of Orodruin the entire time.

Lanawen was pleasant company on the road, answering Celebrimbor's questions about the geography and protections of the land without hesitation.

"I would not take that passage again, if I were you," Lanawen said with a startling swiftness when Celebrimbor explained where they had entered Mordor. "We name it Cirith Ungol. A child of Ungoliant lives above that pass!"

"Oh, no," Celebrimbor uttered, dismayed.

"Mmm, yes. I don't think he knows how to get rid of her," Lanawen added. Celebrimbor was thoroughly taken aback by the frankness with which Lanawen admitted this weakness of his master's. "I suppose you passed under the strong noon sun and she was not hungry enough to attack three bright, armed Noldor. But... mmm... I wouldn't go that way again, personally."

"No," Celebrimbor agreed, staring. "No. Thank you for the warning."

Lanawen only gave him an easy smile.

The journey took them about three days. Celebrimbor's nightmares returned, but with a different quality. He dreamed he was laughing (and he sounded like Fëanor) as he burnt down Ost-in-Edhil and erected a temple to Morgoth in its ruins. He was lying at the feet of a dark shape that was bearing the One Ring, and smiling happily as he ran his sword through Ingrod and Lûrien, to please his master Sauron. Gil-galad was falling slave to Narya and, unable to get it off his finger, casting himself into a fiery chasm. Galadriel was the wielder of the One and sweeping across Middle-earth, casting down Annatar as Celebrimbor screamed for his lover, and with a bright light in her eyes like Morgoth's, sailing a fleet of ships over the sea to conquer Valinor itself.

When Celebrimbor woke, the image that unsettled him the most was Gil-galad's fiery chasm. Celebrimbor had not had to witness Maedhros's death in reality, but unwillingly-conjured images of it used to haunt his dreams regularly. And how had Celebrimbor never noticed that he recreated the fates of the Silmarils in his Three rings of Fire, Air, and Water?

He felt sick all day after that. He noticed Lûrien and Ingrod casting him worried looks, but he had no desire to confide in them with Lanawen listening.

He kept riding.

They proceeded to the exit of Mordor—the low, level spot where the north-south mountain range and the east-west mountain range were joined. True to Arodor's prediction, it was presently a site of very great activity; orcs and men swarmed everywhere and were busily engaged in moving around stones and crawling around the hills.

They temporarily stopped their work and respectfully bowed to Lanawen as he passed, and gave open, curious glances at the other elves following in Lanawen's wake. But they did not say anything. Lanawen led them past the activity and work, the horses stepping carefully, and stopped when they had a view outside the mountains of Mordor, over the long plains and trees sweeping down to Anduin.

"You can take it from here, I think," Lanawen said. "Farewell, Noldorin friends!"

Lûrien and Ingrod dismounted. "We have our own horses, in the forest somewhere south," Lûrien explained to Lanawen. "We'll go find them again, we don't need to take yours."

Lanawen caught hold of the bridles of their two horses, and watched as they removed their packs from the saddle bags and shouldered them.

Celebrimbor stayed on his horse, at Lanawen's side.

"Go," he told his friends, a lump in his throat. "Tell Gil-galad and Galadriel... tell them everything. I suppose Celeborn can have the city back. And I will see you again, whether this side of Mandos or the other."

"No," Lûrien said, instantly understanding. She whirled back to look at him. "No."

Ingrod bit his lip until he drew blood. He was silent.

"I have to," Celebrimbor said, agonized. "I cannot leave him here, with that horrible ring on his finger and with no one to tell him when he is being an idiot. But you two mustn't stay—if things go very bad, you cannot be here for him to use against me."

"He isn't Annatar," Lûrien said, tears shining in her eyes. "He is the Enemy, who cannot be trusted."

"I don't trust him," Celebrimbor agreed. But he had come to disagree that there was nothing of Annatar in Sauron.

 

Lanawen didn't comment on Celebrimbor's choices. They retraced their steps for another three days, and Celebrimbor found Annatar precisely where he had left him.

He was lying in the same bed Celebrimbor had stayed in for however many weeks. The sheets had obviously not been changed. Annatar was strumming a lyre, singing something incoherent and unbeautiful. He had a distant look on his face, his eyes unfocused.

Celebrimbor took off his sword and leaned it against the wall at the doorway of the room. He came in and sat down on the bed beside Annatar. He took the lyre, set it down on the next bed over, and took Annatar's hands in his. Annatar did not resist, but looked at him with a sad expression, eyes shining with tears.

"Are you still crying for the rings, or because I left?" Celebrimbor asked, his tone as light as he could manage.

Annatar's expression crumpled, and he fell into Celebrimbor's chest. Celebrimbor wrapped his arms around Annatar and buried his face in the silver hair.

"Maybe I'm recovering from my injuries and still in pain, you ass," Annatar muttered. "Maybe it's all three things."

Celebrimbor straightened up, placing his hands on Annatar's face and hauling him up too. Celebrimbor stared into Annatar's eyes for a moment, permitting himself to admire their color and beauty.

"Why did you come back?" Annatar asked.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"It's not remotely obvious," Annatar said in a clipped tone. "I was under the impression you were fleeing this land like you thought your safety depended on it. Do enlighten me."

Celebrimbor tilted his head, leaned in, and kissed him.

Annatar was very stiff. He did not move his lips against Celebrimbor's, and Celebrimbor drew back, his heart breaking even though he had been pretty sure it was already broken and shattered.

"Celebrimbor," Annatar said. His tone was a little formal—and he almost never used the Sindarin version of his name. "You cannot, on the one hand, kick me out of your bed and tell me you are disgusted with me, and on the other hand, kiss me like you still love me."

"You are accusing me of sending mixed messages?" Celebrimbor asked. For one moment, he was stunned. Then he started giggling. He took his hands off Annatar's face, and wrapped his arms around himself, and laughed, with a tinge of hysteria.

Annatar stared at him with a distinct air of disapproval.

Celebrimbor got a hold of himself and managed to sober up.

"I'm not pleased with the deception in Eregion. I am not pleased with your ruling ring. I... probably shouldn't have confused the matter by bringing up Nargothrond and Gondolin and Ancalagon. I appreciate that your reaction to the destruction of the Three was to, ah, weep about it instead of hurting me. I... am curious to find out if you would agree, if I said we should not give up on each other."

Annatar took a few moments to digest all of this, while Celebrimbor tried not to hold his breath during the wait.

"I earned some of your trust back by weeping all over you? Fascinating."

"No, you dumbass," Celebrimbor said, but the insult was affectionate, and the sort of banter they used to exchange all the time. "During the entirety of our last conversation, I thought—you likely planned to—werewolves and dungeons or something—but I asked to leave and you let me go. And I feel... being honest with each other has been a big step."

"Mmm," Annatar said, his expression and tone flat. "I'm not really in the imprisonment business here. Would you believe me if I told you this tower does not in fact have a dungeon? Nor a single wolf?"

"Yeah, I get it," Celebrimbor said, a little shortly. "Dungeons and screaming torment was Morgoth's style, deception and magical enslavement is more your arena."

Annatar stared at him for another second, looking deeply unimpressed, then his lips twitched, and he actually laughed before he could stop himself.

"I wouldn't have put it that way myself," he said, which was as much of an agreement as Celebrimbor was going to get.

"Well? Would you agree?" Celebrimbor persisted.

"I never said I was giving up on you," Annatar said stiffly. "You're the one who said Sauron was not welcome in your bed."

"I thought you were angry with me for destroying the Three."

"I am... wounded, and grieving, and very hurt, but no, I don't think I'm angry with you."

Celebrimbor sighed. He lifted a hand and stroked Annatar's braids. He loved Annatar's hair, even knowing it was only... raiment, or however Annatar liked referring to it. "I'm a little angry with you. But I'd prefer to be angry at your side than away from it."

"How romantic," Annatar said dryly.

"You never objected to my romantic tendencies before."

"My deception and your destruction of the rings has not been very romantic."

"No, it's been awful," Celebrimbor agreed readily. He was still playing with Annatar's braids, and looking at them rather than Annatar's eyes.

"Do you—would you even believe me if I said I loved you?"

Celebrimbor looked up sharply at that, and met his eyes. "Yes," he said, his heart pounding. "I would believe you. For a certain definition of love, that falls somewhere above what you feel for most of Ilúvatar's Children but somewhere below your plans for Middle-earth."

Annatar was startled and taken aback by this. He did not draw away from Celebrimbor, but he went still.

"I have never... ranked things like this in my mind," he said slowly.

"Rather unpardonable, for someone with your mental resources," Celebrimbor said tartly.

"Are you going to accuse me of being mentally ill again?"

"Ah, no. You can say it's where I've decided I rank on your priorities, if that makes you feel better. But I'm here all the same." Celebrimbor hesitated. "You are attracted to me, that wasn't a lie?"

"Mmm," Annatar said noncommittally, but he dipped his head and nosed at Celebrimbor's cheek and made his adorable, funny little purring sound. Celebrimbor melted. He dropped his nose on the top of Annatar's head and breathed deeply into his hair, bringing his hands up to slip Annatar's robe off his shoulders. It fell without further encouragement, pooling on the bed around them, and leaving Annatar's arms and chest gloriously bare.

Mine, mine, chanted Celebrimbor's stupid brain. He made this body for me, to please me, and it's so beautiful, all for me. He ran his hands along Annatar's back, relishing the electricity that sparked through his fingers as a result.

Annatar moved down and nipped lightly at the skin on Celebrimbor's throat. Celebrimbor moaned. Annatar continued dropping kisses, pulling down the edge of Celebrimbor's tunic to continue his path downwards, and eventually pausing just long enough to unlace it and slide it off him. Annatar seamlessly bent back to his work with the same harmony, biting lightly at a nipple. Celebrimbor groaned again and dug his fingers hard into Annatar's back, feeling the edges of his spine and kneading as though he believed he could eventually break beneath the skin and touch that which made up Annatar's insides.

Annatar was pressing kisses into Celebrimbor's stomach just above the waist, when he paused, and sighed, a soft breath over the skin.

"If you... really want to... do this," Annatar said, seeming to struggle with the words, "there is oil over on the table."

Celebrimbor's hands lingered along Annatar's back for another moment, then he got up and walked over to the table. It was a very nicely laid out workbench for powders and salves and herbs, everything beautifully organized and labeled. He suspected Annatar tolerated nothing less, here, though he'd never succeeded in getting Celebrimbor to be this organized. Celebrimbor found a vial of oil and returned to the bed.

Annatar was giving him a very strange look, as though he barely recognized him.

"Is it so strange that I want you?" Celebrimbor asked. "We have done this a thousand times before."

"I don't believe I ever brought myself to hope I could still have this, if you knew the truth about me," Annatar said, his voice like a prayer.

Celebrimbor settled down beside Annatar and kissed his hair. "I'm here," he said quietly. "I'm here, I'm with you."

Annatar took the oil. He squeezed his eyes shut briefly, then swiftly undid Celebrimbor's trousers and slipped a hand inside them.

"Fuck," Celebrimbor breathed. He pressed his hips forward. "Oh, angel, how I missed you."

Annatar registered a laugh deep in his throat at the endearment, which to be fair might be a little out of place now. The noise vibrated so pleasantly against Celebrimbor's skin that he couldn't quite remember the nature of the objection.

Annatar's touch was gentle as he took Celebrimbor's cock and teased it into hardness. Celebrimbor's hands trailed down Annatar's back and ran lightly over the top of his butt. Then he moved to coat oil on his own hand and gently slid the pool of Annatar's robes away from his waist and legs.

Annatar's cock was fucking gorgeous, just like the rest of him, a perfect shape and a perfect fit in his hand. Celebrimbor buried his head in the crook of Annatar's neck as they touched each other and responded to each other in perfectly mirrored reactions. Celebrimbor cried and arched his back and bit hard on Annatar's skin as he came, the pleasure spreading through him rather less important than the pleasure he took in making Annatar feel and sound so desperately pleased to be with him.

Annatar shifted, and draped himself over Celebrimbor, causing them both to flop backwards down on the bed. Celebrimbor laughed, so satisfied and content and happy, and wrapped his arms around Annatar, now firmly lodged on top of his chest.

"I am very attracted to you," Annatar said eventually into Celebrimbor's skin. "Body and spirit. You make me feel complete in a way I haven't felt in a long time. And I missed you too. Didn't I say so in all my letters?"

"You did," Celebrimbor admitted, holding him a little more tightly. "You're starting to make me believe you again."

Annatar made a pleased, satisfied purring sound.

They lay there for a few minutes until Annatar pulled away, rolled off Celebrimbor, and sighed. "Will you go get a cloth?" Annatar asked. "I'm sorry, it's not a command, only I think I'm rather too worn out to walk there."

Celebrimbor had no objection to standing himself. He made his way back to the table, where there had been a cloth and a basin of clean water. He dabbed the cloth in the water and returned to the bed, where he gently cleaned Annatar's thighs and his own belly, dried them off with the other end of the cloth. Annatar watched him with half-closed eyes, through his beautifully long silver eyelashes. Celebrimbor felt himself flushing in pleasure or perhaps self-consciousness. He stood and returned the cloth to the table by the basin.

When he came back to the bed, Annatar's eyes were closed and his breathing had evened out. If he hadn't known better, Celebrimbor would have thought him sleeping. He eased into bed next to him, draped an arm over his chest, and drifted off to sleep.

He did not have any nightmares.

 

Celebrimbor woke to light streaming through the windows. Now that he didn't think he was going to wake to death or torture or torment, he could admire the room. The stones were smooth and polished, with intricate metal decorating the walls that might have been intended as artwork; the beds were light and soft; and the temperature was very comfortable.

He still couldn't really believe that Sauron's Dark Tower had a sick bay.

Annatar was lying exactly where he'd been when Celebrimbor had fallen asleep. He had only lifted his head to look up with bright eyes when Celebrimbor woke.

"Are you not bored while I sleep?" Celebrimbor asked abruptly. In Eregion, he had deluded himself into thinking that Annatar had enough affection for Celebrimbor to overcome how boring it must be to watch someone sleep for hours. He no longer found this to be a plausible explanation for Sauron.

"I was sleeping myself," Annatar said simply. "And even if I hadn't been, lying here with you is much better than what I was doing before you came back."

Celebrimbor wanted to laugh. "Did you really spend six days straight lying in this bed singing sad songs and weeping?"

Annatar scowled. "I've been ill," he said defensively.

Celebrimbor did not laugh. He kept a completely straight face. "Well, I'm hungry, and I'm very tired of this room. Can we have breakfast? Somewhere else?"

"Yes, of course," Annatar said. He sat up, and reached for his robe. "Though you'll have to bear with some slowness, I do not quite have my strength back. If you were not here I think I'd still be in that black shape."

"If anyone can take your life force by the simple expedient of putting on the ring, this seems a rather dramatic weakness," Celebrimbor said, frowning slightly. He, too, started gathering his clothes and getting dressed.

"I don't expect to be unconscious and unresponsive very often," Annatar said, unperturbed, standing up. He stretched his arms to the ceiling, rolling his shoulders, showcasing the rippling, perfect muscles of his chest and arms. It was only after that little display that he wrapped his robe around him. "If you tried wielding the ring while I was awake, you'd find yourself trapped, very firmly under my power—I expect much more so than whatever you felt wearing Vilya."

"I wish I could trust you enough to try it and see what that's like," Celebrimbor said wistfully. "The mysteries of the Unseen world are fascinating."

"I absolutely do not trust you enough to hand you the ring, so the point is not worth debating any further."

Annatar's tones were clipped, but not offended. He fastened the robe's ties, and crossed the room at what was indeed a slow and measured pace, like he was judging whether each new step was likely to hurt. Celebrimbor finished dressing and followed.

As Celebrimbor passed his sword lying against the wall, he hesitated. His eyes flickered from the sword to Annatar.

"Are you waiting for my permission?" Annatar said scathingly, flinging a hand negligently through the air. "Carry your beloved sword here if you like, please just refrain from stabbing me with it."

"Well, this is your tower," Celebrimbor said. "It is not unreasonable to expect guests to defer to the host's preference about weapons in their home."

Celebrimbor picked up the sword and buckled it at his waist. He knew if Sauron ordered all his servants here to attack Celebrimbor, one sword wouldn't do much good. Nonetheless, he felt much better for having it.

"A terrible analogy, given that you apparently believed I am not a gracious host, but a tyrant just waiting to throw you in the dungeons and torture you."

Celebrimbor lifted his chin and gave Annatar a level look. "Do not pretend as though I was unreasonable for harboring suspicions of the type."

Celebrimbor's heart was pounding in his ears at his own boldness, but Annatar apparently decided to concede the point without another word. He turned, his robe flaring out dramatically behind him, and made his way down the central spiral staircase. He led Celebrimbor into what seemed to be a kitchen. Mínwiel was there, waving a wooden spoon and ranting at an orc who was standing beside a hearth dancing with flames.

At Annatar's entrance, Mínwiel abruptly cut off whatever she'd been saying—it was likely the same unlovely-sounding language Pagûl had used with orcs earlier, Celebrimbor thought—and clasped her hands to her chest and bowed her head to Annatar very deeply.

"I am so glad to see you up and looking well, lord," she said warmly.

One of the orcs snapped something disdainfully at Celebrimbor and Annatar. Whatever it meant, it was clearly unflattering.

"Stars and skies and Melkor's eyes," Mínwiel hissed at the orc, "what is wrong with you that is his lordship." She said this last part extremely quickly, the words blending into one another.

The orc looked at her doubtfully, and Celebrimbor wondered if the orc had even understood this very rapid Sindarin.

"Don't worry about it," Annatar said easily, slipping onto a stool at a raised counter in the center of the kitchen. He seated himself gingerly, as though testing whether the movement would cause pain. "My friend is hungry and would like some breakfast. What do we have on hand?"

He tilted his head and looked at the orc, then spoke in that harsh language. His tone was mocking, though not outright cruel, if Celebrimbor could accurately judge such things in another language.

The orc stared at Annatar in stunned disbelief.

Mínwiel hissed again, just like a cat, and hit the orc on the ear with the spoon. The orc winced, and gave her a wounded, betrayed look. The orc said a few words in the harsh language, and lowered his eyes to Annatar's feet. His tone remained very grudging.

Annatar laughed, propped his elbows on the counter, and rested his chin in them. His eyes were dancing with amusement. "Don't bother, Mínwiel, the orcs will never find this form any more pleasant than Celebrimbor would find my other shape. Breakfast?"

"Sauron is too pretty for orcs?" Celebrimbor marveled, taking the stool next to him. "What a world."

"I am too pretty for anyone," Annatar said, with a smile that was sharp and revealed all his teeth.

"Do you want to flirt with him, or do you want some eggs and sausage?" Mínwiel asked Celebrimbor, with a small toss of her head.

"Eggs and sausage would be lovl... what kind of sausage?"

"Pork," Mínwiel said, giving him a pointed look. "You actually do think we eat orc flesh here?"

Celebrimbor made a face. "I fought in the wars. Plenty of Beleriand resorted to orc flesh before the end, let's not pretend it didn't happen on either side."

Mínwiel gave a little sniff. "Not in my kitchen."

"I'm sorry for giving offense," Celebrimbor offered.

"Don't apologize to her," Annatar said sharply to Celebrimbor. "You didn't offend anyone. I would like a plate too, Mín," he said in a pleasant tone that nonetheless had a sort of hard edge to it, like he was displeased.

"You honor me, lord," she said fervently, without addressing whether she had actually been offended by Celebrimbor's comment about orcs. She barked a series of orders in the harsh language, and she and the orc busied themselves around the hearth and the cupboards on the far wall.

"You have very quickly slipped into telling me what to do," Celebrimbor objected, propping his cheek on a fist, elbow on the table, and staring sideways at Annatar. "What, I'm not allowed to apologize to your servants?"

Annatar was very quiet. His face did not twitch, his breathing stayed even, but his slender fingers dug into a crack in the table like he wanted to tear the whole thing apart. When he spoke, his voice was low but steady. "This is going to be miserable. Please. If you are here because you want to securitize everything I say or do to find evil in it, then please, just leave."

Celebrimbor considered this carefully, and tried to be dispassionate about the matter. "You would not have spoken to me or anyone else in Ost-in-Edhil like that."

Annatar shifted his weight on the stool, looking aggrieved and uncomfortable. "I thought we were to have no more lies between us. It would be a lie to pretend to be the same person I was there."

Mínwiel set two plates down in front of them with a detached air, like she had not heard a thing they said. She placed tableware and two cups on the table, then withdrew in the same careful silence.

Celebrimbor picked up the cup and sniffed at it. It smelled like a black tea with a little honey. He took a careful sip, and decided that was correct. It was pleasant and familiar.

He did not think he would last long here if Sauron's disposition was to be casually cruel—either on a constant basis, or in between sharing a bed. On the other hand, Celebrimbor might be instinctively giving the most uncharitable gloss possible to Sauron's behavior. He would not have leapt to the conclusion that Annatar was being controlling and unpleasant if he had spoken that way in Ost-in-Edhil.

"I understand the nature of your objection," Celebrimbor eventually told Annatar with a sigh. He picked up his fork. "Let us cease to quarrel about it."

Annatar visibly relaxed, the lines of tension leaving his mouth and his shoulders. He dug into his breakfast with every appearance of enjoyment, eating fastidiously but rapidly.

"Why are you eating and sleeping all of a sudden?" Celebrimbor asked, watching him attack the eggs with grace and poise.

Annatar finished swallowing a mouthful of eggs and gave Celebrimbor a smile. "I cannot usually be bothered with the tasks and their attendant inconveniences, but it does give me nourishment and replenishment when I am corporal. And it's especially a good idea while I'm recovering."

"Fascinating," Celebrimbor said. "It's good to know you will not feel inconvenienced when I wish to stop and eat."

"You do not inconvenience me," Annatar said swiftly. "I am very pleased you're here. Did I forget to tell you that?"

Celebrimbor wanted to form a retort involving his earlier comment about how miserable Celebrimbor was being, but he refrained; that felt like it might be quarrelsome behavior.

"What were you thinking we would do today?" Celebrimbor said instead, as he tasted the sausages, which turned out to be quite tasty.

"I could spend all day in bed again," Annatar said with deep, exhausted little sigh. "But there are some pressing tasks. Are the orcs still guarding the Sammath Naur, Mínwiel?"

"Yes, lord, there are eighteen there at the moment."

"We need... we need to clean it up and secure it," Annatar said to Celebrimbor, but his manner was extremely reluctant.

"I will go take care of it if you tell me how you want it secured," Celebrimbor offered. "You shouldn't put yourself though having to see the shards."

Celebrimbor did not particularly want to see Annatar weeping all over him again about the destruction of the Three.

"It is definitely going to be painful," Annatar said gloomily. "But it would be... quite a task to teach you to secure my workshop." He paused. "How did you break in?"

Celebrimbor lifted a shoulder. "I didn't really... do anything. It felt like the mountain knew me and welcomed me. Perhaps because I was carrying all the rings, and the rings were made with its spirit?"

"Ah, you did figure it all out," Annatar said, a momentary gleam entering his eyes in what Celebrimbor thought was appreciation for his cleverness. "Though you still haven't told me what tipped you off to look for answers."

"I did, actually," Celebrimbor said, raising an eyebrow. "I told you I was wearing Vilya the moment you forged the One."

Annatar scrutinized him. "And... so?" he asked, almost haltingly.

"The connection between the rings forced open my mind and I—knew what you were doing. And why. I heard your chant in—ah, it wasn't orc speech, but I'm not sure what it was...."

Annatar was frowning. "Fascinating," he said finally. "I ought to have—I did not realize there would be a connection even before I put the One on my finger. I should have thought of it."

"Should have thought of it and then done what?" Celebrimbor said tiredly. "Kept up your lies and returned to my city like nothing had changed between us? Sharing my bed and enslaving my will by increments?"

Annatar's mouth twisted. He didn't answer, and devoted himself to finishing his breakfast.

"At any rate, I do think we should go to Orodruin today," Annatar announced when he finished, like they had never been speaking of anything else. "I don't want to wait any longer, against the possibility of more trespassers coming and tearing it up."

Celebrimbor finished his tea as an alternative to finding anything to say to this.

"Are Lûrien and Ingrod coming back with an army?" Annatar asked carefully, his posture tense again.

"I have no idea," Celebrimbor said, startled by the suggestion. "Um, I mean, Ost-in-Edhil does not really have an army. I did tell Gil-galad what was going on, and he has an army, I guess. He doesn't seem to be the type to attack you just for existing, though—he's left this place alone for five hundred years, hasn't he?"

"Yes, though he might consider... your tale of 'what was going on'... to be stronger provocation than my mere existence."

"He might," Celebrimbor said mildly. "I really couldn't say."

"Isn't Gil-galad your cousin?"

"My second cousin," Celebrimbor corrected pedantically. "Half-second cousin, actually, if you want to get into it with the children of Míriel versus the children of Indis...."

"I have never wanted to get into anything less," Annatar said, looking disgusted. "By Varda's stars, I'm glad I'm not pretending to care about the nuances of elven bloodlines anymore. No. I just wondered how close you two are."

"We had little to do with each other in the First Age, until we both found ourselves on the Isle of Balar towards the very end. Then we built Lindon together for a few centuries, but we do not have much in common, except for a disdain of the idea of going west. He thinks himself much better than me, and his heritage purer than mine, for all that I am fully Noldorin and he is not. All of Finarfin's descendants have this superiority complex, as I'm sure you noticed of Galadriel."

"And Finrod," Annatar laughed.

Celebrimbor clenched his jaw and ignored this comment, which could not have been anything other than deliberate provocation. He continued determinedly with his original line of thought. "I wish it had been the house of Fingolfin that had survived and stayed. They always understood the house of Fëanor, even while they hated us."

Annatar raised an eyebrow. "I could have sworn Elrond was descended from Fingolfin."

"Oh—Elrond," Celebrimbor said. "I suppose, technically, he is."

Elrond was important, and very dear, and certainly did not share the superiority complex of Finarfin's descendants, but he was no substitute for his grandmother. It was Idril who Celebrimbor desperately missed. He did not say it aloud; Annatar did not need to know this. But he missed her fiercely and, more than sixteen hundred years later, he was still so angry with Tuor for dragging her out to his precious, perilous sea.

Idril had been his closest friend in childhood and then his anchor in the madness of the First Age. If Idril had stayed, Celebrimbor would have remained grounded. He would never have fallen for Annatar's dreams and schemes.

Annatar appeared perfectly oblivious to this line of thought. "What will Gil-galad make of the news from Lûrien and Ingrod that you remained here?"

"Likely that I am in your thrall," Celebrimbor said, but he did not care. He had better things to fret over than the opinion of Finarfin's grandson. Finarfin himself had never dared to come to Middle-earth, except on the one occasion the Valar permitted him to. The coward. It was his father, too, who'd died. "Does it matter?"

Annatar sighed. "Well, I suppose we'll deal with it when we have to. Are you done eating? Shall we take our trip to the volcano?"

"Yes," Celebrimbor said. "I am ready if you are."

 

Annatar, it turned out, probably had not been ready. Mínwiel and Lanawen readied horses and supplies and prepared to accompany them on the journey, both dressed in that red and black livery. Annatar managed to change into traveling gear on his own, but then followed a bit listlessly in their wake. Once in the stables, he stared at his horse like mounting it was unthinkable.

"We could do this later," Celebrimbor suggested, coming to stand next to him.

"No," Annatar said, stubborn as ever. "I want this over with."

Celebrimbor made up his mind swiftly. He placed his hands around Annatar's waist and, without further ado, lifted him onto the horse. It was surprisingly easy; Annatar weighed much less than Celebrimbor and did not muster an ounce of resistance. Celebrimbor mounted the horse behind Annatar—she was a large, study warhorse, Celebrimbor was confident she could bear the weight—and wrapped his arms around him.

Annatar was limp and warm. He let himself lean back against Celebrimbor, almost gratefully, and relaxed.

Mínwiel and Lanawen had straight faces and no comment as he guided the horse outside the stables and down the dusty dirt path to Orodruin.

They rode in silence for most of the morning. Summer in Mordor was dry and hot; the early morning sun was not hidden by the thin cloud of ash that was gathered straight overhead, and the lands warmed quickly. The path was not well traveled; easy enough to mark, but overgrown with grass only slightly less thick than that at the sides.

"Where does all this grass come from?" Celebrimbor wondered, finally asking a question that had been on his mind since he first looked at Mordor from the pass of Cirith Ungol.

"It rained for several days, a few weeks ago," Mínwiel explained. "The grass is dormant when it does not rain, brown and brittle, but it swiftly turns green and spreads at the slightest encouragement. The horses and cattle like it; it's not good for much else."

"It's beautiful," Celebrimbor disagreed softly. "It makes the land look less...."

"Evil?" Annatar suggested, the faintest hint of laughter in the word.

"Desolate," Celebrimbor corrected. "If you wish to equate the two, that's not my affair."

Annatar did laugh at that, but then relaxed again and said nothing else. He had remained passive and soft in Celebrimbor's arms, using none of his own strength to stay on the horse. In comparison, Celebrimbor's arms felt strong and powerful around him. Something in Celebrimbor relished the sense that Annatar was at his mercy, to protect or to crush as he pleased (whether that was an accurate reflection of reality or not).

The Celebrimbor who had fought countless battles of the First Age, and had the scars to show it... the Celebrimbor who'd been wielding Vilya and saw his own permanent enslavement flash across his eyes in the vision of the forging of the One... that person ought to want to crush Sauron.

Instead, he bent his head and softly kissed the top of Annatar's hair. He had a long way to go before he could reconcile Morgoth's greatest servant with this being who was precious to him. For now, he stopped making himself try, and simply enjoyed having his love in his arms.

"Are you hungry?" Mínwiel asked him, when the sun was more or less directly overhead and had finally passed behind the ash cloud, providing them some shade that was actually quite welcome. "Do you wish to stop and eat, or eat as we ride?"

"Hmm, are you asking me?" Celebrimbor asked. "Or him—"

He looked down at Annatar, but he was quiet and still. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow and steady. Had he fallen asleep again?

Celebrimbor suddenly felt guilty about his escapade with the ring and stealing Annatar's life force.

"We can pause and give the horses a break and graze if they are so inclined," he decided, "but I think I'll stay mounted so I don't disturb Annatar."

Mínwiel nodded. They all nudged their horses to the side of the road, dropped the reins, and let the horses wander as they pleased. Lanawen dismounted and poured some water from skins into a bucket for the horses to drink from. Celebrimbor supposed there was not a water source anywhere near them.

Mínwiel took a cloth out of her bag and handed it to Celebrimbor. Inside it were some soft crackers and cheese and an apple, and a flask of some cold and delicious drink.

"Thank you," he said, shifting Annatar into one arm so he could eat.

She smiled and nodded in acknowledgement. They were silent while the horses fed, until Lanawen suggested they move on.

"How did you come to choose this place, after Beleriand sunk?" Celebrimbor asked the Avari, after a few more miles of riding. "It's, uh, very far away."

"That I do not know," Mínwiel said. "I came here with his lordship early in the days of the stars, after Utumno fell. We traveled to the shores of a lake somewhat south of where we are now. That lakeshore was where we met Lanawen and his kin." She inclined her head towards Lanawen, who for his part remained entirely silent. "When Lord Melkor was unchained and entered Beleriand, we traveled north again to serve him. And then came all the way back down here when he fell. But as to why this land was his lordship's choice, you would have to ask him."

"Did you actually fight in battles?" he asked. Both Mínwiel and Lanawen wore swords at their hips, in well-worn leather scabbards, with a comfortable sort of ease that spoke to long use. But—"I don't remember ever seeing elves on the other side of the battlefield, and I didn't hear any stories of it either."

"No," Mínwiel said. "We were far too valuable—and too few—to be risked on battlefields. We ran the fortress and trained the orcs and oversaw administrative matters like supply chains and slaves."

Before he could comment on the choice to label slavery as an administrative matter, she turned her head to face him and gave him a swift, cruel smile, her eyes filling with a fierce and unpleasant light. It made his stomach curl and go cold.

"Are you asking if we're capable of using these swords?" she demanded, in an amused and vicious tone that wouldn't have been out of place coming from Sauron's lips. "I wouldn't mind finding out if you are with yours, myself. Would you like to know who first taught me to sword fight?"

"Um," he said, staring at this elf who could apparently switch from submissive servant to calculating predator in under a second. "Morgoth?" he said, at a wild guess. For it was Morgoth who introduced weapons to Celebrimbor's people in Aman.

She laughed, a sharp laughter that hurt his ears. "Your uncle."

"You'll have to clarify; I had six of them," Celebrimbor said, willing himself to be calm. He refused to be thrown off balance by her.

"Nelyafinwë," she clarified, with a smile showing all her teeth. "Was he not accounted one of the best swordsmen among your people?"

"Mmm," Celebrimbor said, staring at her. "Perhaps some would have said so, before he... mmm... used his sword on our own people. Why are you asking me this?"

"I wanted to see what your reaction would be if I claimed him as a friend," she said simply, the cruel edge to her tone and face melting away as suddenly as it had arrived. "He was not really my friend, of course, but...."

"But?" Celebrimbor prompted, a little bewildered.

"He made a strong impression," she said, with a softer smile. "I kind of missed him, afterwards."

"He was a strong person," Celebrimbor agreed. "Although I have to tell you, he didn't come back from Angband talking about all the dear friends he'd made there."

She laughed merrily. Whether it was his dry irony that amused her, or the memories of Maedhros' torture, Celebrimbor could not even begin to guess.

"No," she agreed. "I shouldn't think so."

"I learned to fight with a sword at the same time as him, rather than from him. He quickly eclipsed me; if you're expecting skill like that from me you shall be disappointed."

"All the same," she said, giving him a smile that was all teeth. "I should like to try you."

"Um, all right," Celebrimbor said, but he was suddenly a little nervous about it. It wasn't that Celebrimbor was bad with a sword—he was strong, he was in good shape, he had centuries of battle-tested experience, and he was wielding what he considered the finest sword ever made. But it also wasn't where his talent was greatest. And something about this elf—the way she moved, as if her sword were the most natural thing to be at her side—made him think she would be frighteningly competent.

"Don't worry," she said, her smile shifting into something that could have been sweet, but probably was not. "His lordship would kill me, very slowly, if I hurt you." She drew out the word 'very', to demonstrate her point. "Just a little sword practice among friends."

"Sure," Celebrimbor said, taking no care to hide the skepticism in his tone. "Friends."

Her smile did not dim.

"Do you always call him 'his lordship'?" Celebrimbor demanded. "Does he not have a name you are comfortable using?"

"We do always call him that," she said without missing a beat. "Back when we had two lords, and had to differentiate between them, we would call him Lord Mairon. Have you not heard of that name for him?"

"I—oh, yes," Celebrimbor said, suddenly remembering where the name 'Sauron' had come from in the first place. It was his cousin Fingon, at the very beginning of the war, who'd thought it a clever play on words to turn 'the Admirable' into 'the Abhorred.' He decided to keep that story to himself. "I haven't heard it in two thousand years, though, and forgot."

"And what exactly is 'Annatar'?" she asked, not at all abashed by her own curiosity on the topic.

"It's Quenya," he said. "'Anna' is—"

"Gift," she said swiftly. Celebrimbor was somehow not surprised she knew Noldorin Quenya. "And 'tar' is high or noble. Or lord. But why do you call him that?"

"He called himself that," Celebrimbor said, with a chuckle. The soft fondness of his tone surprised even himself. "He came to us pretending to be an emissary of the Valar, wanting to bestow his gifts among us and heal Middle-earth after Morgoth's war. Most of my family did not believe him. I did not really believe the Valar sent anyone to us, either, but Annatar was...."

He trailed off, lost in memory.

Annatar had learned his lesson quite thoroughly from his failures with Gil-galad and Galadriel. By the time he came to Ost-in-Edhil, he was so quiet and reserved, Celebrimbor thought him shy. It took a meal and a glass of wine to unbend before he would say much at all. And then... he and Celebrimbor had a lengthy, wide-ranging, heart-to-heart discussion about science, natural history, progress, the arts, and philosophy. They were fast friends before anyone had even thought about introducing the subject of the Valar or Morgoth.

Celebrimbor had thought he recognized a profoundly lonely soul who was an exile from Valinor, just like him—whether self-imposed or not, he hadn't asked. He continued to believe his cousins mistrusted Annatar because they mistrusted the Ainur; whereas Celebrimbor found Annatar compelling because he thought he was not quite like the other Ainur. And, he thought with some perverse satisfaction, he'd been right about that.

"I fell in love with him very swiftly," Celebrimbor admitted.

"I understand perfectly," Mínwiel said. "We love him too. He has been extraordinarily good to us, and has gone to great lengths for us. He is intensely loyal, if he thinks you are worthy of it. He can be... breathtakingly beautiful and very great, and yet remain charming and relatable. When he wants to. He can also be unbearably cruel."

"Would you say this if he were awake?" Celebrimbor asked suspiciously.

Mínwiel's eyes fell on the body peacefully slumped against Celebrimbor's chest.

"He does not like... chatter," she said carefully. "So in that sense, no. I would be riding in silence if he were awake. But they are not sentiments I would find necessary to hide from him."

Celebrimbor laughed, the sound rumbling through his chest and erupting before he could stop it. "No! Oh, dear, no, he does not like chatter at all."

Large meetings, community-style meals—anything like that had never been Annatar's preference, with loud noises and a hundred conversations going on at once. He had appeared at some of them reluctantly, when Celebrimbor asked him to, but he had never liked it.

And Valar preserve the poor apprentice who happened to be inclined to chat while working. Oh, the looks Annatar would turn on someone in the workshop who said something unrelated or not strictly necessary to the task! Even Celebrimbor on occasion had been subject to such looks, which were generally sufficient to silence the offender immediately without another word.

Celebrimbor stopped laughing when no one else joined in, but he knew a silly smile was lingering on his face as he remembered.

Damn, but he missed Annatar.

"Do you not like chatter either, Lanawen?" Celebrimbor asked lightly, turning his head to look at the elf behind them. "You have been so silent all day."

Lanawen gave him a swift look, appearing startled to be addressed. "What would you have me say?" he asked, his tone friendly enough.

Both Lanawen and Mínwiel were looking over at Celebrimbor with expectant, almost... biddable expressions. Celebrimbor decided he did not like it.

"Does Mínwiel speak for you on everything when she's around?" Celebrimbor asked, feeling like goading them for some unfathomable reason.

"She does not," Lanawen said with a small smile. He did not appear offended in the slightest. "But I am quiet by nature, and she is not. I do not have any wish to test your swordsmanship, if that is what you wished to know. I am capable enough with a sword, but not devoted to it as she is."

"I actually do not want to duel either of you," Celebrimbor said firmly, regretting his earlier acquiescence.

"Yes, of course, lord," Mínwiel said, instantly as if automatically. "Forgive me for suggesting it."

"Oh holy shining Varda on Taniquetil, save me," Celebrimbor uttered in horror. "Are you calling me that in jest? Please don't. I have not come here to join Sauron and rule."

She looked at him with very serious dark eyes. "You have arrived in our lands and taken up a place at our lord's side. I don't know what you thought you were doing, if not proclaiming such a position."

"I'm—not—I'm just—" he gritted his teeth and struggled to speak coherently. "I just stayed in order to see if I could stop him from doing something exceptionally stupid to himself and the rest of the world."

"If you expect to be able to wield such power, you mustn't also be in denial about it."

Her eyes were like tunnels. For no reason at all, he thought of the pits of Angband as they had loomed large in his imagination for centuries. He shivered.

"Leave me alone," he said, childishly, but it was also an order, and she instantly pulled her horse a few paces behind his, and fell completely silent.

What a mess.

 

The elves did not say anything else, and Annatar did not wake up, until they started up the slopes of the volcano. Annatar finally stirred in Celebrimbor's arms, perhaps sensing the mountain, and he managed to sit up straight and give himself a little shake.

He stayed silent as they climbed the mountain and passed the row of orc guards. They dismounted, Celebrimbor sliding off first and hoisting Annatar down by his waist again. Annatar made a soft, appreciate noise at this, a noise that made Celebrimbor want to rip the clothes off of him and jump him right then and there.

With a deep breath and a focused effort to think about fires and mud and fleeing through the night from horror, Celebrimbor got a hold of himself and did not pounce on Annatar.

They passed silently through halls of stone into Annatar's forge in the heart of the mountain.

Celebrimbor watched Annatar as Annatar surveyed the damage.

His lip curled slightly in distaste, and he tossed his head, swinging his braids over his shoulders.

"I forgot," Annatar said finally, after a long silence. "This is my least favorite trait of yours."

"Destroying things you believe are your property?" Celebrimbor asked, mildly puzzled.

"Not that," Annatar responded, glaring at him. "The mess you make of everything!"

It was certainly true of this workshop right now. Celebrimbor, Lûrien, and Ingrod had opened every drawer and cabinet they found, pulled out almost all their contents, strewn them across the shop floor and every work table, left metal shavings and ashes in every space they'd worked in, failed to properly extinguish the fire and rake out the coals, hadn't put a single tool back where they found it, and of course—the shards of the rings were still scattered all over the floor. Celebrimbor suspected no one would be able to take a single step inside without treading on something.

"I am not usually this bad," he protested. "And in my defense, someone interrupted my work before I was able to put anything away."

"You were going to kill yourself," Annatar said, eyes going distant.

"I suppose," Celebrimbor said unenthusiastically. "I didn't realize until you said something."

Annatar took in a sharp breath through his nose. "I would never forgive you if you died," he said fiercely.

"You wouldn't sail to Aman to rescue me from Mandos?" Celebrimbor asked, his tone light and teasing.

Annatar slowly moved his head with careful precision, until he was staring Celebrimbor in the face. His presence suddenly felt heavy, like the air itself had turned oppressive. He did not blink once.

"Right," Celebrimbor said, struggling to breathe. "Not funny."

"Not funny," Annatar agreed, enunciating a bit too sharply. He finally moved his gaze away to look back at the wreck of his forge, and Celebrimbor took a huge, gasping breath of air that was just air.

"Let me clean up," Celebrimbor offered. "I know how you like things, I will do it your way. Should you not sit down?"

Annatar was silent.

"Yes," he said eventually. "That is all I want to do."

He retreated a few steps, and sunk onto the floor, and leaned back against the wall with a sigh.

"It feels nice here," he said, sounding contemplative. "This place is... good for me."

Celebrimbor smiled, then went to open a closet that he remembered holding brooms.

"Mín and Lan will help you," Annatar said, sounding distant and sleepy, and when Celebrimbor glanced back at him, he had stretched himself out on the ground and fallen asleep once more.

"Is he going to be okay? He just slept all day, and all night," Celebrimbor asked in a low voice when Lanawen carefully picked his way over to stand by Celebrimbor in front of the closet.

"Yes," Lanawen said softly. "Give him time."

Celebrimbor set Mínwiel and Lanawen to sweeping out coals and gathering up supplies. Celebrimbor was confident he knew where everything belonged, and the other elves were not, so he ended up ordering them around extensively.

Meanwhile, he knelt on the ground by the anvil and, by hand, gathered up the fragments of the Three. Although he, too, had once upon a time felt they were beautiful and precious and the culmination of his life's work, the thought of them no longer inspired anything but nausea. He could barely wrap his head around how Annatar could weep for them so.

He collected the largest shards of mithril, gold, and silver in a small box. There might have been enough to salvage to make something. He retrieved a piece of chalk from a supply cupboard and carefully labeled the box with a list of its contents and the year. Celebrimbor usually didn't bother with such things, because he would remember whatever was in the box, but he had promised to do things Annatar's way.

The smaller shavings from the Three, and the fragments of gemstones, were useless. He swept the rest of it into the bin.

"What are we doing with this?" Mínwiel asked. She pointed distastefully at the hammer he'd forged to destroy the Three. It had fallen to the ground, and there was a large bloodstain near it.

Celebrimbor reluctantly went to examine it. It was a crude, ugly sort of thing—hurriedly made, with no care for design or style. He could not remember the last time he had fashioned something so ugly, yet he remembered that he'd felt it was beautiful as he crafted it.

Something was wrong with the spirit of this mountain. He was determined to ask Annatar about it. Eventually.

Celebrimbor poked the hammer with a finger. Nothing happened. It was just a hammer.

He sighed, picked it up, and then left the forge. He wound his way down to the chamber inside the mountain where the lake of molten lava was exposed.

Without further ado, Celebrimbor tossed the hammer into the fire.

The lava hissed and bubbled and spat, spewing and spraying in fountains and sparks, as though it were a monster eating the hammer alive.

Extremely disturbed, Celebrimbor returned to the workshop.

With the help of the two elves, the work was swiftly finished—everything put away and cleaned and tidied. Even the bloodstains were gone, although Celebrimbor was not sure how Lanawen had managed that without a bucket or a mop.

"I think he'll be happy," Celebrimbor said, suddenly feeling very tired. He wondered how late it was—probably very late, or even early the next morning. He leaned against the wall and surveyed the scene. "He talked about securing it, but we'll have to wait for him to wake up for that."

"Yes, lord," Mínwiel said.

"No," Celebrimbor said. "Stop that."

She looked like she wished to laugh at him, but subsided.

Celebrimbor looked down at Annatar, who was still slumbering on the ground. "Is there anything here but stone to sleep on?"

"There is not," Mínwiel said. "Usually he is the only who works here, and he does not usually sleep."

"Right," Celebrimbor said with a sigh. He was very tired. He unbuckled his sword, removed his boots, and ran a tired hand over his braids. He decided to leave them in.

He settled onto the ground beside Annatar, who Celebrimbor noted with amusement had not removed his own boots before passing out. The stone floor was hard and cold and unpleasant, so Celebrimbor chose to rest his head on Annatar's chest like a pillow. He heard, as if distantly, Mínwiel and Lanawen extinguishing the torches and arguing over who would take the first watch. He fell asleep to the steady rise and fall of the breathing beneath his head.

 

When Celebrimbor woke, it was very dark. He blinked, and realized that was because he was still inside Orodruin, and darkness communicated nothing in particular about the time.

He was sore, and the hip that was digging into the stone hurt. He groaned and tried to stretch, only to realize he was holding Annatar's hand.

He was holding Annatar's right hand. Annatar had previously touched Celebrimbor with his left hand, as though he understood that Celebrimbor wanted to avoid the other hand. The metal of the One Ring was warm between Celebrimbor's fingers.

Annatar was still sleeping soundly.

Celebrimbor suddenly realized he was right here, the only place in Middle-earth the One could be destroyed, and Sauron was not awake to stop him.

He debated only for half a second. Destroying the Three had unquestionably been the right choice, compared to all his other options. This would work out too... he hoped. Or if Sauron killed Celebrimbor for it this time instead of weeping, at least he would not also go on to enslave all of Middle-earth with the thing.

Celebrimbor slid his hand out of Annatar's, taking the ring with him. He slipped the ring on his own finger, and shivered as the world became shapeless and shadowy again. He ignored Annatar's fiery but quiescent presence, and made for the door that led down to the lake of lava.

A loud shriek penetrated his awareness, even if he felt as though he did not have ears. A spirit fell upon him, and he recognized Lanawen. Lanawen's presence was nothing compared to Annatar's spirit, but he had strength enough to grapple with Celebrimbor and slow him as he neared the door. Celebrimbor tried to throw him off, but he was distracted by the strange mechanisms of movement in the Unseen world, and his knees buckled and he fell underneath Lanawen.

Then a second spirit came barreling towards him, wrestling with him for control of his hand, to pry the ring off, and he realized it was Mínwiel.

Celebrimbor drew on the power of the ring, and this time, he understood what he was doing. Lûrien had been right earlier. It was what this ring was for—what it did best.

He reached out with the ring and took Lanawen and Mínwiel in its grasp and ordered them to stand down.

They struggled against the order, retaining a shred of their own wills for a moment. Celebrimbor pushed harder, and he felt them crumple. Their bodies in the physical world released him, and Celebrimbor could stand again.

He was almost through the door when Mínwiel recovered and let out another piercing shriek—not verbally this time, but telepathically, through the ring's power that he had exercised over her, and it washed over him and pierced him and it hurt.

He managed to scrape enough wits together to command her to stop, but in the next instant, he realized she hadn't actually been screaming at Celebrimbor.

She'd been screaming at Sauron, via the Unseen world, to wake up.

And he woke.

In a fraction of an instant, Celebrimbor was paralyzed. The powerful, fearsome spirit on the other side of the room had him in its clutches—he was nothing, he was crushed, he was absolutely incapable of moving, all of him was laid bare to this enormous force of will. He ceased to exist as anything other than an extension of it.

Sauron had been right. This was vastly worse than wearing Vilya at the moment of the One's forging. It was the most complete, utter domination Celebrimbor could have ever imagined. He could not even begin to struggle to break free. He was—nearly—incapable of even wishing to.

Sauron approached him, and Celebrimbor fell to his knees before he was aware he'd been given a command.

Celebrimbor waited for orders. He was trapped. He could do nothing else. Sauron could order Celebrimbor to throw himself in the lava and he knew he would do it without hesitation.

They remained facing each other for a while. The fire of the spirit flickered through several different colors and forms, as though thinking very hard. Finally, Sauron's spirit reached out to Celebrimbor and enveloped him.

It was... oddly warm, and comforting, like being sung a lullaby. Whether Sauron was truly singing or not, Celebrimbor did not have the necessary senses to tell. But Celebrimbor felt himself being dragged upward, as though through murky waters, and he surfaced, gasping for breath, water flowing from his nose and eyes.

No, no. He was in Sauron's forge in Orodruin, where everything was rock and there was not a drop of water to be seen. His eyes once again gazed on the Seen world; he perceived flesh instead of spirit. He was indeed gasping for breath, but he had not been drowning in water.

The force of Sauron's will had broken over him and withdrawn from him—perhaps that was the emergence from water he thought he'd felt. Celebrimbor was his own person again. He was staring into Annatar's eyes. For some reason, Celebrimbor was not the only one kneeling: Annatar was level with him. Annatar held Celebrimbor's right hand in both of his, but his grip was gentle.

Celebrimbor looked down. He was still wearing the One, but he no longer walked in the Unseen world.

"Lady of the stars," Celebrimbor breathed; it could have been a blasphemous curse or a fervent prayer, and if it was a prayer, he hoped Sauron would not notice. "I am in so far over my head."

"Undoubtedly," Annatar said, a bit sharply.

Celebrimbor heard himself give a small, incoherent whimper he hadn't meant to be audible.

"I am," Annatar said in a voice that was under iron control but clearly wanted to scream, "going against all my instincts to prove a point to you, Tyelperinquar." With a sideways glance at Mínwiel and Lanawen, he barked: "Leave us."

The two elves had been prostrate on the ground next to Annatar, but at this, they swiftly rose and withdrew without a word. They passed through the door that led down to the lava lake, and closed it carefully behind them.

Celebrimbor supposed they were going to stand guard to ensure he did not make it to the lava lake. Not that it was necessary, with Annatar awake.

"You seem to believe that this ring controls me, rather than the other way around," Annatar said evenly. "I am showing you that is not so. I can choose not to enslave someone's will. Do you follow me?"

"Yes," Celebrimbor said instantly, only because it was clearly the expected response. He had no idea if he was following or not. His head was spinning.

"I am going to explain to you, very calmly and rationally, why you should not destroy my ring. All right?"

"All right, yes," Celebrimbor managed to gasp.

"This ring is me," Annatar said, his hands tightening their grip almost imperceptibly. "I put myself into it. It focuses my power, enhances it, guides it—but it's my power. My spirit. If you were successful in destroying it...."

Annatar was silent for a protracted amount of time, but Celebrimbor could not find anything to say. He was still reeling from being—not under his own power. His heart was pounding in his ears and he wasn't sure he was breathing.

"You would destroy me," Annatar continued, his voice hollow. "I would be nothing. A shriek on the wind. An echo of malice. Nothing. I doubt I would so much as retain a sense of self. Is that what you want?"

Celebrimbor took a deep breath, striving to focus. It was very important not to displease Annatar. "No," he said, his throat dry and painful.

"How would you feel if you woke up every morning realizing I had tried to kill you in your sleep?"

"Miserable," Celebrimbor admitted readily.

"Right," Annatar said evenly. His silver eyes were distinctly cool. "So, will you please give me the ring back. Of your own free will. Please."

Celebrimbor wondered how free his will was, really, when Sauron could presumably drag Celebrimbor back into the Unseen world, where he would be slave to the master of this ring, any moment he pleased.

"May I..." Celebrimbor licked his lips. "May I share something with you?"

Annatar's eyes narrowed. Celebrimbor knew he was irritated Celebrimbor had avoided answering the request.

"Yes," he said eventually.

Celebrimbor closed his eyes, and reached out for Annatar with óswanë.

Annatar had not been open to this, before. He'd kept his mind firmly closed at all times. Celebrimbor used to theorize that, perhaps, óswanë was not suitable for communication between the Maiar and the Eldar. After having learned the truth, Celebrimbor suspected Annatar had been afraid of revealing too much, were his mind open in Ost-in-Edhil.

Here, now, Annatar's mind was open and receptive. Celebrimbor's previous theory had been quite wrong; it was no different than óswanë with another elf. Annatar was mentally quiet and waiting on him.

Celebrimbor brought up his memory of the moment of the forging of the One Ring, and pushed it at Annatar.

He made Annatar feel the oily slickness of the chant, the silken threads wrapping around Celebrimbor's mind though Vilya as the One was fired into life, the sinking realization that your will would never be your own again, and the promise... the promise that all life would fall to this power, sooner or later.

Celebrimbor opened his eyes. Annatar was quiet and his eyes were pensive. He looked at Celebrimbor for a long time without saying anything.

"Very well," Annatar said eventually. "I scared you. It... was not my intent," he said carefully. "I didn't even know Vilya existed at the time I made it. But I acknowledge that you felt... feel? this way."

"There can't have been any other reason for you to make it," Celebrimbor said, as gently as he could. He took his other hand and placed it on top of Annatar's, so that all four of their hands were now entwined. "You can talk about other motives you had all you please. But that is what your ring is for."

"You cannot destroy it," Annatar said, his voice bleak. "Tyelpe, please, promise me you will stop trying. It is me."

"Yes," Celebrimbor agreed, if somewhat reluctantly. "I ought—I shouldn't—if you asked me to weigh one life against enslaving all of Middle-earth, this is the wrong answer...."

As he spoke, he freed his hands from Annatar's, pulled the One Ring off his own finger, and slid it onto the first finger of Annatar's right hand.

Annatar let out a gasp, a sharp breath of relief, as tension flooded out of his body and he squeezed his eyes shut.

"And yet, I promise," Celebrimbor said, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to Annatar's forehead. "I promise I do not seek your destruction. I will not try to take the ring from you again."

"Tyelpe," Annatar said, and it was almost a whimper. He raised his head and his hands shifted to Celebrimbor's shoulders, fingers digging in painfully as he smashed his lips against Celebrimbor's. The kiss was possessive and fierce and aggressive. "I love you," Annatar gasped into Celebrimbor's mouth. "I cannot bear the idea of your rejection, it's too hard, you will destroy me piece by piece."

Something about this tone made him wonder if Annatar had done worse during those six days of Celebrimbor's absence than just sing sad songs and weep, but the thought left his mind when Annatar moved to press kisses down his jawline and onto his throat. The kisses changed to biting, and Celebrimbor moaned shamelessly, his trousers suddenly much too tight.

Annatar's hands moved lower, to Celebrimbor's shirt, and then hesitated.

"Do you love me?" he asked, his voice abruptly imperious and his silver eyes sharp as a blade. "You have yet to say it, not since...."

"Yes," Celebrimbor said, but slowly, cautiously. His arms were dangling at his side, and he had to resist the impulse to curl his hands into fists. Stars, but Annatar was mercurial today. His mood swings were starting to give Celebrimbor a headache. "I love you," he clarified carefully.

He wasn't sure whether he was reacting to the echoes of being in Sauron's mental grip and simply spitting out the desired responses, but he knew... he would not survive messing this up.

Annatar abruptly dropped his hands and sat down on his legs, as though he had grown very tired all at once.

Celebrimbor sat down on the floor as well, easing his legs to the side and massaging his knees, which he—somewhat absently—registered were hurting from the stone.

"Possibly more than any other person you've met, but somewhat less than you love your vision of Middle-earth without Sauron in it." Annatar's tones were clipped again, and his eyes were guarded, but Celebrimbor thought that he must have been hurting, to throw Celebrimbor's words back in his face like that.

"I don't seek your destruction or your absence from this world. I just don't want you to enslave me and my kin," Celebrimbor said tiredly. "I didn't realize that was so much to ask."

"I didn't think it was so much to ask for you not to destroy our greatest works," Annatar snapped.

"I just promised you I wouldn't destroy your ring," Celebrimbor ground out, gritting his teeth against the growing headache.

"It is already too late for the Three," Annatar said, his words catching and breath hitching slightly.

"Oh, this again," Celebrimbor moaned, lifting his hands and pressing fingers to his temples. "You never even saw the Three, you have no idea what they—"

Annatar's hands sprung up to clutch at Celebrimbor's shoulders again with such surprising force that Celebrimbor cut off whatever he'd been about to say. It was not a lover's touch this time, to remove his shirt and find the skin beneath to worship. Annatar's anger, simmering just under the surface ever since Celebrimbor had stolen the ring for the second time, was visibly rising. His eyes were flashing and his grip was iron.

"Please stop talking," Annatar said hoarsely. "You are vexing me."

Celebrimbor nodded, rather than open his mouth again. He could not ever remember Annatar becoming visibly angry in Ost-in-Edhil. He must have felt anger at times—things certainly did provoke him there—but he'd had his temper under the firmest of regulation for centuries.

Whereas here...

Annatar was breathing very heavily, while Celebrimbor felt nearly too afraid to breathe.

"Let's go," Annatar said, his voice smoothing out and his fists releasing Celebrimbor's shoulders. "You are henceforth banned from Orodruin. Thank you for cleaning up your mess, though."

Annatar rose fluidly to his feet, and held out a hand. Celebrimbor accepted it and was pulled up until he was standing.

Annatar flicked his eyes to the door. It opened, and Mínwiel and Lanawen came through.

Before Annatar could say anything, they prostrated themselves on the ground again.

"We have failed you, lord," Mínwiel said, sounding thoroughly miserable. "We will cast ourselves into the fire if you bid it."

"Oh for fuck's sake," Annatar bit out. "Sixteen hundred years and you still treat me as though I'm Melkor. Get up. Mínwiel, accompany Tyelperinquar back to Barad-dûr. I will join you there eventually. Lanawen, stay with me."

Barad-dûr—a strange name. Not a language Celebrimbor recognized.

Mínwiel did not say anything as she obediently stood and turned to Celebrimbor. Neither she nor Annatar said anything when Celebrimbor paused to put on his boots and buckle his sword at his waist. Mínwiel then escorted Celebrimbor to the surface of the mountain in silence. The sun was bright in the western sky, and it hurt Celebrimbor's eyes for a few seconds until they adjusted. It must have been late afternoon; they had been in Orodruin longer than Celebrimbor realized.

The orc guard and the horses were patiently waiting on the slopes. Mínwiel ordered Celebrimbor to take the horse Lanawen rode in on. Mínwiel remounted her own horse, leaving one horse for Annatar and Lanawen on their journey back.

They rode in silence through the afternoon, as the sun set, and they continued to ride through the dark. Mínwiel seemed to know exactly where they were going; Celebrimbor's horse had only to follow her. Celebrimbor was not inclined to ask her to stop and camp for his sake.

Celebrimbor was hard-pressed to stop himself from nodding off and falling off his horse by the time they finally arrived back to the tower. One of the men in the stables came outside at their arrival to take their horses, looking as though he'd been roused from sleep, and Mínwiel escorted Celebrimbor through the tower and into a long hallway with a row of similar-looking doors.

"You can sleep in here," Mínwiel said, speaking to him for the first time since he stripped her will from her. He had a vague sense he ought to feel bad about that, but too much had happened for him to think straight. "I will check in with you tomorrow. Do you need food tonight?"

He shook his head, then stepped through the door into a small room, with a mattress and a crude set of shelves and a chamber pot. There was a window, though nothing but darkness could be seen beyond the glass pane. Mínwiel withdrew and took her lantern with her, closing the door, and then it was dark.

Celebrimbor was too weary to be hungry. He threw himself onto the mattress and slept.

 

He dreamed he was back in the grip of Sauron's will. He could not move. He could not breathe. He was waiting, helpless, for a command.

The night was endless. He was frozen in its grip.

Waking was, at first, hardly better. His brain was racing, trying to orient himself, but his limbs were still frozen and he feared he could not breathe.

He managed to pry one eyelid open, and then the second. He took a deep, shuddering breath, and rolled over onto his side and squeezed his eyes shut again.

It was a dream. It was only a dream. He was not wearing Sauron's ring; Sauron could not do that to his will in the ordinary course of things. He forced himself to breathe steadily in and out and extend his senses to the texture of the mattress beneath him and the warmth of the rays of the sun entering the room. Really, the situation had not gone that badly—he had been caught red-handed trying to destroy Sauron's ring, and nothing really bad had happened. It was both shocking and comforting.

Sauron had made his point—he was very powerful. He had also made the point that he could control his power and his temper. Celebrimbor breathed in and out slowly and methodically, then opened his eyes and reminded himself how to move.

He shoved his boots on, then stood and made for the door. It wasn't locked—it didn't even have a lock on the knob—and Celebrimbor vaguely started to believe Sauron that he wasn't in the business of holding prisoners here.

The tower was not difficult to navigate; Celebrimbor returned to the central staircase and descended to find the kitchens. Fortunately, he found Mínwiel there, busy supervising her orc cooks. She shoved a plate of food at Celebrimbor without comment.

"Thanks," he said. "Do you know why Sauron stayed at Orodruin or when he's coming here?" he asked, as this was on the forefront of his mind today.

"I know no more than you, and perhaps less," Mínwiel answered, giving him a suspicious look. "Why? What are you plotting now?"

"Nothing," he said. "I was just wondering what I should do in the meantime. Would you try to stop me if I wanted to leave?" he asked around bites of the food, which seemed to be potatoes, and more sausage.

"No," she said. "But I would escort you to the gates to ensure you did not... cause any more trouble here."

"Right," he agreed.

He considered the prospect, and decided he did not want to leave. Perhaps his staying here would make things worse. Only a delusional fool would believe that Sauron could be reasoned out of his plans and schemes.

But Celebrimbor was quite sure that if he left, Annatar would be utterly lost to him. He thought he was ready to sacrifice quite a bit if he could avoid that fate.

He wondered where and when he would have to draw the line and choose a side.

He shoved these thoughts away, finished his breakfast, and then asked Mínwiel again if there was something to do.

"There are plenty of chores," she said, with a light in her eyes like a challenge, as though daring him to refuse to do any real work.

He did not refuse.

Mínwiel introduced him to another one of the Avari elves, Makwë. Makwë apparently ran the stables, outhouses, and gardens; the animals did not necessarily like to get close to orcs and so this elf, along with the small population of men, were in charge of the husbandry of the grounds.

Makwë was mucking out stables today, and Celebrimbor joined him with no hesitation. He liked work. He wouldn't have wanted to do it for a living, but as an occasional thing, he liked the physical effort of it and the satisfaction of a job well done.

The men Celebrimbor had seen earlier in the week were hauling water in from—somewhere—to clean the flagstones of the stable floors. They gave Celebrimbor slightly nervous-seeming nods when he crossed paths with them.

"Where are these men from, originally?" Celebrimbor asked as he worked in a stall alongside Makwë. Makwë had not been talkative beyond describing his duties, but Celebrimbor nursed hope that he could be drawn out. "And what language are they speaking?"

"Nurn," Makwë answered, a taciturn and unhelpful sort of reply. He was silent for a few shovels of horse dung, then continued. Whether his answer was grudging or not, Celebrimbor could not tell. "It's a city on the shores of an inland sea a week or two south of here. It's on a trade route from Rhûn to Harad, and prosperous. But these men—or their ancestors—were not among those who prospered, and so they came up here when his lordship offered them wealth."

"Has he held up his end of this deal?" Celebrimbor asked suspiciously. The men seemed coarsely dressed, calloused, and weary—not exactly shining and blessed.

Makwë paused in his movements with the pitchfork and gave Celebrimbor a blank stare.

Celebrimbor stared back.

Makwë did not twitch a single facial muscle. It was not clear what he was thinking—whether he was angry, or thought Celebrimbor was an idiot, or whether he even understood what Celebrimbor was implying. Eventually, he looked back down at his pitchfork and resumed his rhythm. Without answering the question at all.

"And the language they're all speaking?" Celebrimbor pressed. He was not slacking on his share of the chores, but he wanted to get something out of this in addition to clean hay for the horses.

"It is a language his lordship invented to unite his servants—elf, men, and orc alike," Makwë answered, much more readily. "Its name in Sindarin would be something like—the Black Speech. It's based on Lord Melkor's efforts to teach orcs to communicate, but it's more—ah—systematic and refined. Unfortunately the wild orcs will not speak it—but those directly serving his lordship have used it since we settled here."

Celebrimbor blinked at this flow of information, and paused in his work for a moment to marvel. Annatar had constructed a language. That was sexy. Calling it the Black Speech and giving it all those harsh sounds—a little less sexy. But Celebrimbor was nevertheless delighted by the idea. It was such a classically Annatar thing to do. Celebrimbor wondered if he had constructed it by himself, and how long he'd been working on it. Celebrimbor also suddenly wanted very much to learn it.

"How many orcs are in the tower here serving him?" Celebrimbor asked.

Makwë shrugged.

"What about the wild orcs? Where do they live?"

"I don't really have anything to do with them," Makwë said evasively.

"Does Sauron even have an army? What would he do if Númenor attacked tomorrow? Are there really no wolves around?"

Makwë gave Celebrimbor a withering look, and declined to answer.

Celebrimbor shut up. Clearly, he would not get answers from this elf about Sauron's operations.

Celebrimbor lasted the day without asking Makwë any more questions. He was helping feed the horses in the evening when there was a bit of a commotion: horse riders approaching from the south. Celebrimbor guessed by Makwë's sudden sharpness, and the stiffening of the men, that Sauron was returning.

Celebrimbor continued spreading out clean hay for the horses and only glanced up briefly when the new arrivals rode in. Annatar was awake, at least, sitting up on the horse under his own power, with Lanawen perched behind him. Annatar looked tired, but no longer too weary to move.

He dismounted from the horses, handed the reins to one of the men, and turned to the exit without a word.

Celebrimbor abandoned the hay and moved to intercept Annatar before he made it to the doorway.

Annatar half-turned, and took a few seconds to process Celebrimbor's presence. As he did, his tired and grim expression melted away. His entire face lit up. His eyes were shining and a small, but very pleased, smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

He was visibly delighted to see Celebrimbor. It made Celebrimbor's entire body tingle, and warmth settled in his stomach. It displaced all of the residual fear from Orodruin; Celebrimbor thought he would do anything to stay the focus of such a look.

"You stayed," Annatar murmured. He took a few steps forward, closing the gap between them. His eyes did not leave Celebrimbor's face, as though he could not get enough of the sight.

"Of course I did," Celebrimbor said simply. He leaned forward and kissed Annatar, tilting his head and pressing their bodies together.

Annatar pulled away and laughed. "You stink," he said, wrinkling his nose. "What have you been doing?"

Celebrimbor grinned. "Chores. I was bored."

Annatar raised an eyebrow. "There are many things to do around here other than mucking out stables."

"It felt good to do something productive," Celebrimbor said with a shrug. "But I'm sure I do stink."

"You really do. I could use a bath myself. Come with me?"

"I would be delighted," Celebrimbor said. He had not, so far, seen evidence that there was running water in the dark tower, but he was eager to be proven wrong.

Annatar smiled, as though he knew what Celebrimbor was thinking, and led the way out of the stables to the tower. He gave orders to the orcs at the entrance and then proceeded to take the central staircase down, for several spiraling flights, until emerging into a dark room with bare rock walls.

Soft, flickering orange lamps illuminated at his presence, and Celebrimbor marveled at the room.

It was a beautiful pool, long and narrow, with walls of gleaming, chiseled black stone. Steam was rising gently from the surface closest to the entrance, while the far end of the pool had a slightly lower ledge, and a constant cascade of water was flowing over it in an even, unbroken flow into a seemingly infinite darkness.

"It's gorgeous," Celebrimbor said. "I didn't realize you had so much water here."

"There is an aquafer with ample water underneath us," Annatar explained. "It's pumped up using steam power, from the same hot spot that warms water for this pool."

"Very sophisticated," Celebrimbor said admiringly. He bent down briefly to pull off his boots. "How long did it take you to build?"

Annatar's hands came to rest on the lacing in the front of Celebrimbor's shirt, and he gave Celebrimbor a small smile. "A while," he answered vaguely. "I've been here much longer than your High King supposes."

"Mmm," Celebrimbor answered, losing that train of thought as Annatar undid the laces on his shirt. Annatar's beautiful fingers were brushing against Celebrimbor's chest, giving him goosebumps. Softly, slowly, tenderly, Annatar opened the shirt and guided it over Celebrimbor's arms and shoulders, his fingers trailing against bare skin, until the shirt fell to the ground.

Celebrimbor shivered.

"I feared that I scared you away again," Annatar said, so softly Celebrimbor almost did not hear him. He undid Celebrimbor's belt, placing the sword gently on the ground, and worked a few fingers in the waistband of his trousers to pull them off.

"Shh," Celebrimbor urged, his own fingers flying—less gently and more eagerly—to unlace and slide Annatar's clothes off him in turn. "I don't want to talk about this now."

Annatar helped shrugged off his clothing, then his hands immediately returned to Celebrimbor's body. He traced the lines of the massive, jagged scar running from stomach to thigh, and the other scars that spiraled lower on his leg. Annatar sighed.

"Shut up," Celebrimbor insisted, although Annatar had not said anything. These scars were made by Balrog whips in the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, and he really did not want to talk about it.

And without further ado, Celebrimbor grabbed Annatar by the arms and not-so-gently hauled him over the lip of the pool and dunked him in the water.

Annatar surfaced, laughing, and splashed water at Celebrimbor until he climbed in as well. The water was a very pleasant temperature—warm but not hot. The surface below the water was soft sand, or mud, and he curled his toes in it and laughed back at Annatar.

"This is nicer than the baths in Ost-in-Edhil," Celebrimbor admitted, with a grin. The baths in his city were gravity powered and diverted from a stream, and heated by burning coal. They were... nice, but they were not this intimate or impressive.

Annatar kissed him for that, long and tenderly. Celebrimbor lost track of time before they broke apart, and Annatar laughed again.

"You still smell of horse manure," he said. "Here, look."

Annatar dove under the water and emerged with handfuls of the mud from the bottom of the pool. It was thick, rich, and dark. Annatar pulled Celebrimbor's arms out and started slathering the mud all over him – arms, chest, neck, and then inching downward, until he was caressing more intimate parts, and then down his legs.

The mud matched his skin color, in a charming way. It was heavy, and a strange sensation, but it did smell nice. When Annatar finished, he flashed Celebrimbor a grin. "It's good for your pores. Or something."

Celebrimbor shook his head, and then surged forward and tackled Annatar, wrapping his arms around him and smearing the mud all over both of them. Annatar squirmed in his hold, wriggling his arms free and then wrestling with Celebrimbor—it wasn't much of a contest, the Maia was much stronger—until Celebrimbor was pinned to the side of the pool in Annatar's embrace.

They looked at each other silently for a few seconds, both breathing hard.

"You seem like you're feeling better," Celebrimbor ventured.

"I am," Annatar agreed. "Being in Orodruin helped. The mountain is... an old friend, so to speak." Then he grinned. "Shall I demonstrate how much better I'm feeling?"

Without waiting for a response, Annatar slid down into the water, hands trailing Celebrimbor's sides until he reached for his cock. He brushed against it lightly, and Celebrimbor shivered despite the warm temperature. Still submerged, Annatar tugged at his cock, cleaning it carefully it until it was free of residual mud. The movements and the gentle handling started to feel erotic, until Celebrimbor was hardening despite his efforts to stay calm. Without warning, Annatar took it into his mouth. Celebrimbor gasped, and instinctively moved his hands to tangle in Annatar's hair. Apparently with no need to breath whatsoever, Annatar sucked and licked the shaft until Celebrimbor was fully hard and thrusting into Annatar's mouth.

It was the strangest sex they'd had, by a long shot, floating in the warm water, in the infinite darkness surrounding the pool, with the pale orange lights shimmering on the surface like a constantly-shifting mirror. Everything was comfortable and soothing and Annatar's mouth was so delightful, it was so good and so unreal. When Celebrimbor finally seized up and held Annatar's head against him and thrust a few final times in that tight heat, his head was spinning and he had nearly forgotten where he was or what he was doing.

Annatar pulled away, and Celebrimbor let go of his hair at once. Annatar surfaced, water breaking over his head in a smooth motion. Annatar looked very pleased with himself.

Celebrimbor pulled him close and kissed him hard, feeling like he never wanted to let go.

Despite the distractions, they did eventually finish rinsing the mud off Celebrimbor, and left the water to find someone had left a fresh set of towels and robes. They dressed and made their way up the staircase—nearly all the way to the top of the tower, Celebrimbor suspected—and Annatar lead Celebrimbor into what appeared to be his own private chambers.

They were large, although not lavish. The main decoration was bookshelves crammed with books; there was a sofa and a table and a bed. A dinner was waiting on the table, and although the summer evening was warm, there was a fire lit in the fireplace.

It was rather romantic. Sauron's dark tower in his dark land was not so bad, after all.

"I love you," Celebrimbor said, as they sat down to eat. And he meant it this time—his head was clear and he knew it for the truth.

"Thank you," Annatar said softly.

It was an unusual response to a declaration of love, but Celebrimbor knew what he meant. Thank you for staying, for giving Sauron a chance, for being here right now—and Celebrimbor leaned forward and kissed him again.