Bringing Trouble to Barad-dur by Aiwen

Mishaps and Mayhem

The next morning, Gil-galad carefully eased the attic trapdoor open a crack and started pulling the documents through. One of the documents got stuck in the too-tight crack, so Gil-galad opened it a bit wider... and dropped the trapdoor. It swung open all the way with a squeak, swinging right through Gil-galad. He struggled to get it closed, but it was too heavy for him to manage by himself in this form. Oh no, Gil-galad thought, I need Celebrimbor now but he's downstairs with the prisoners - what now?

Footsteps came along the corridor. It sounded like Sauron had heard the noise. Gil-galad turned and ran with the altered orders and shoved them in with a pile of miscellaneous papers on Sauron's desk. He'd have to deal with those later. As for now, he dashed upwards into the attic and tried to hide as much of the important stuff as he could. The footsteps came towards the attic and stopped underneath, then went away with the trapdoor still open.

Gil-galad paused, then continued to try to make things in the attic look as normal as possible. Most of all, he wanted to hide the smaller and harder to replace things, like the packets of interrogation drugs that they still intended to use on Sauron at some point. Given that they were now fighting a major battle, that might well be soon. There was an odd noise from below, and Kelas' head appeared in the middle of the hole left by the trapdoor. She looked around with interest and some puzzlement.

Gil-galad looked around himself, wondering how much of what they'd done was obvious. She looked around again, then went back down, still leaving the trap door open. Gil-galad went to the entrance and looked down. Kelas had pushed a chair over to stand on, but it wasn't tall enough for her to actually get into the attic. Presumably she'd be coming back with a ladder, so he'd better use the time well.

Gil-galad went back to hiding his and Celebrimbor's materials behind the miscellaneous bits and pieces that were already in the attic when they arrived, but he expected that if Kelas actually came up there and started digging through the mess there wasn't going to be any way to hide it all.

Kelas did indeed come back five minutes later with a ladder, but she also brought Sauron with her. The Umaia was looking none too pleased by the interruption of his palantir viewing. Kelas went up the ladder while Sauron watched from one of the steps. Sauron did not seem inclined to go crawling around in a dusty attic while he had a servant available to do that for him. Bit by bit, Kelas found and removed the stack of not yet ready to go documents, the white paint, the maroon dye, the pink dye, the yellow dye, boxes of chalk, and assorted other odds and ends. But they never did find the packets of interrogation drugs.

Later, Gil-galad went and retrieved the altered orders from the mess on Sauron's desk, and stuck them in the out box. Then he went down beyond the bottom of Barad-dur to tell Celebrimbor what had happened.

Celebrimbor, meanwhile, was having trouble of his own. The ceiling was leaking dirty, rusty water from that flood they had used to distract the orcs. He came back to find one of the mortals sporting a black eye, the dwarves and the elves sulking in opposite corners, and the baby wailing.

Celebrimbor groaned. Couldn't he leave for fifteen minutes without everything falling apart? What is going on? he wrote.

"Where were you?" demanded Duilin.

Fixing the leaky ceiling so that dirty water doesn't get into your water supply, wrote Celebrimbor. I was gone all of fifteen minutes. Why do I come back to find such a mess? The blond man three steps behind you has a black eye! He didn't mention the baby. Screaming babies happen.

"Oh, you mean Finrod?" That man has a mouth on him that won't stop whining.

Finrod glared back at him in sullen anger but said nothing.

Finrod? Celebrimbor thought. Yes, it's an appropriate name for a Numenorean-descended mortal, but why this mortal of all people?

He shook his head and went back to writing. You are going to be stuck in this underground chamber for quite a while, so I suggest you learn to get along at least well enough not to hit each other. All of you! Now why are the elves and dwarves hiding in opposite corners?"

"They started it..."

"No, it's not our fault really, you..." Celebrimbor held up his hands for silence, forgetting nobody could see him and both groups continued to talk across each other. Basically, it was a case of 'he looked at me funny so I said something that he took offense at and he said something rude about my ancestry' and all the old grievances between else and dwarves got dragged out in misremembered form.

Stop and listen! wrote Celebrimbor. I was around when this particular piece of stupidity got started. What happened was the fault of both our peoples. I will tell you the entire tale if you want, but blaming this particular group of dwarves for the crimes of the dwarves of Nogrod makes about as much sense as blaming Oropher for the Kinslaying at Alqualonde. They aren't even the same race as those of Nogrod. The dwarves of Nogrod were Firebeards, and these dwarves are Longbeards. Not only that, but their great, great grandparents were not born at the time and they have no idea what I'm referring to.

Gil-galad chose this moment to enter the underground chamber. Celebrimbor grinned at him. "You get to explain the history of the dwarves and the elves to this group of idiots before they start a war," he said. "Bye!" He vanished out through the ceiling, leaving Gil-galad staring after him.

"We're going to need more chalk," Gil-galad called after him, not certain if Celebrimbor had heard. He looked in the chalk box. There were only four sticks left. He shook his head. Apparently he didn't even have to be alive to have a bad day.