Work Text:
LXXXIII
(Poem by Pablo Neruda)
***
It's good to feel you close in the night, Love,
invisible in your sleep, earnestly nocturnal,
while I untangle my confusions
like bewildered nets.
Absent, your heart sails through dreams,
but your body breathes, abandoned like this,
searching for me without seeing me, completing my sleep,
like a plant that propagates in the dark.
When you arise, alive, tomorrow, you'll be someone else:
but something is left from the lost frontiers of the night,
from that being and nothing we find ourselves,
something that brings us close in the light of life,
as if the seal of darkness
branded its secret creatures with a fire.
***
“Annatar!"
Celebrimbor’s voice was shaky with potent desperation, each syllable removing itself from his lips in an anxious pain. The Maia halted as that plead broke the stillness, sudden and brilliant in its dissonance, before the sounds hung limp in the honey-thick air between them. Hearing that familiar voice- usually glossy like calm water- become heated suddenly to foaming waves made his ribs feel like too small a cage to contain the ache that swelled beneath. He kept his back turned as he heard the elf draw even nearer to where he stood.
“Anna,” he repeated, softer, as of ripples undecided in their rhythm but unwilling to be ignored. “I don’t understand. I can’t remember, but they told me about what happened. . . about the accident, about what you did, then. . .” Celebrimbor shook, and it echoed into his voice like an earthquake far beneath the sea, heaving vast volumes of fearful water. Annatar wished that he wasn’t so sensitive to each seismic wave, but they ripped through him, heedless of his desire to be unshakeable.
“They told me you were making ready to leave before I awoke.”
The Maia shuddered almost imperceptibly. Why had he lingered? Why had he placed his trust in the discretion of those Healers? Why did he let the roughened tremors in Tyelpë’s voice coax resonant trembles through his very bones? He closed his eyes in a pitiful attempt to maintain indifference, but images unbidden fluttered to his mind- of the crumbling black lace of deep-tissue burns, of thin metallic shards sunk into pale flesh, and of blooming rubies on amethyst lips. His eyes flew open to escape the dreadful images, and he busied his hands instead, stuffing away the last of his belongings. He didn’t dare turn around.
“I must leave,” Annatar said quietly, loath to speak, lest the same weakness of fortitude infect his own voice. “I have tarried well past my intended stay.”
The cloak he wore was made of a thick velvet, and he kept an oversized hood over his head, such that the shadows seemed to swallow the radiance of his face like the sun as it disappeared behind the Door of the Night. The Maia was sure to keep the fabric towards the searing intensity of Celebrimbor’s unwavering stare, as a final bulwark between the elf and the mists of his mercurial emotions among the ruins of his features. The Maia wavered, his fate balanced upon the bitterest of summits. Despite his shattered thoughts, Annatar’s fingers were steady as he laced the pack he had just stuffed and he turned and made ready for the door.
Some profoundly obscured part of the Maia, integral to his Fëa- a thread of his Theme that had become too entangled with the elf-Lord before him, perhaps- thinned and strained and quivered taut, and a burgeoning nausea swelled in his viscera as it coiled about him. Annatar recognized it: it was instinct, and it was telling him to stay.
“Stop.”
It was a command, painted in the guise of a whisper and belying the force that had shaped each letter. Annatar obeyed, unable to withdraw from the boundaries drawn by the voice of Celebrimbor, and of the tendrils that connected them, or from the instinct that warned him. But that didn't mean he wouldn't resist, however futile.
“The Valar did not intend me to stay in Eregion forever. There are others on Middle-Earth that are in need of my guidance.”
Silence, then, bleeding from both their Fëar. The exsanguination left them cold, and their hearts quivered in the waning tension.
“I don’t believe you,” Tyelpë’s voice cracked, coarse with strain.
The air shimmered between them, glittering with the Power of both wills manifest. It wavered in a distorted dance like waves of heat on a hot summer’s day. Annatar was breathless, each inhale stolen by a plummeting captivation, each moment a labor to pass by. The sands of time were swallowing him whole- would Tyelpë sift through them and find within the rising dunes the grains that were his lies? Would he find the sun-bleached bones of his past in all the layers?
“What?” Annatar managed to gasp.
Celebrimbor growled, as primitively guttural as he had ever heard, and the unnatural twist of his voice tore to shreds the space between them, spearing Annatar with its rawness. Tyelpë had never, not even once in the hundreds of years that Annatar had known him, had he lost his temper. In his secret shame and fierce stubbornness, the elf had tempered his pride into a grounded calm and a gentle patience: an assay to ease the terrible burden of his forefathers and the reproof of many who knew his family name. Annatar had been mistaken to forget the inebriating potency of anger that flowed red beneath silver.
“I don’t believe a Valar-damned word out of your mouth.”
The air shattered, sharp and thin and as perfectly sleek as a needle on each of his nerves. It pinned him down with hesitance and guilt, but the Maia, too, was no stranger to wrath.
“All these years and you disrespect me as I take my leave?” Annatar’s voice was cold and acidic, and was a burn of a different sort. He turned to leave with a furl of the cloak about him- like a standard whipping in the violent winds- but Celebrimbor was faster than him, and he was fey, and a blue fire like lightening cleaving the clouds was in his eyes, brilliant and dreadful to behold. Annatar pulled from him like he was stricken, and he kept his face hidden from that piercing temper, those eyes searching him through cloth and flesh.
“All these years and you think you can uproot yourself without disturbing the foundation of soil and all those who are near to you? You think that you may flee from all those who have come to love you because you are afraid and then you claim disrespect?” He was slow and quiet, each word carefully chiseled despite the crackling energy about him- it sounded like wood splintering under a mounting pressure, and the Maia flinched at the sharp fractures. Celebrimbor took a few shaky, but measured breaths. “You are indeed foolish to think that I will not fight as best as I am able to keep you at my side.”
Neither of them spoke for a long time, and Annatar shivered, unclad to the elf's perception and the fervid passion, unlooked-for possessiveness, and devouring peril that intermingled in the glimmering streams of the the blue of his eyes- was this what mortals felt when met with his own gaze of ringed fire? Was this the peril they had faced, to feel his eyes crawl upon them, though they might not even be looking upon his face?
“Why don’t you trust me?” Tyelpë finally asked, unable to keep the hurt from his voice.
Annatar’s response was weak, and he was mortified at the way it quivered: “I do trust you.”
The elf slammed his fist into a nearby table-top, knuckles white with strain, the quills on the table flitting like leaves loose for autumn as their delicate holders shook. The intensity of Celebrimbor was elemental, nearly Ainur-like, and at last it broke Annatar senseless.
“Why won’t you tell me the truth then?” Tyelpë demanded, “Why?" he asked, stepping closer to the Maia when he saw that his shoulders shook. As suddenly as his anger had brewed, now it had dissipated to a soft, yet firm exhaustion- the deep well of his patience had dried, and Annatar would get not one more drop. He was quiet for a moment and did not attempt to see the Maia’s hidden face. “Why do you hide from me?” he asked, impossibly careful and cruelly tender.
Slowly, Celebrimbor cupped the Maia’s hands, which had balled into fists in the velvet of his cloak. Tyelpë's fingers were long and slender, and they were so sweetly warm like the sun had shone upon them. No one had undone him so with such a simple gesture- not probing or demanding, with no desire to take, but to give support and comfort. Those digits interwove with his own, imparting their strength upon him, faithfully steady and impossibly gentle. Those hands could shape stone and beat metal, but they could chase subtle curves and cunning shapes, and his hands were accustomed to the most delicate of pressures. Annatar knew that he could surrender to him with that embrace, if he had the courage. He could resign himself to that warmth.
Annatar collapsed against him, crumpling like parchment against his broad chest of iron sinew and silky skin- sinew and skin he had spent the last week repairing at a great cost to his own. Face still hidden, he clutched Tyelpë’s loose dressing gown- the elf hadn’t even slipped shoes on in his frenzied rush to intervene in the Maia’s departure, he realized. It made his heart throb with an unstoppable torrent of guilt, and he muffled his growing sobs into the fabric as it submerged his senses.
Celebrimbor embraced him, and the guilt that submerged him faltered at the security of those arms. “What did I tell you,” Tyelpë began, “About Eregion when you first arrived, all those years ago?”
Annatar did not need to answer- he could recall those words fondly, for their truth had been a secret hope of his.
“Eregion is a place of second chances,” Tyelpë answered. “For the broken earth, for the refugees and the veterans of the War, for all peoples, for my family name, for. . . for you, too, whoever you may have been in the past.”
The Maia’s knees had given out, and he had been directed carefully to the side of the bed where now they sat. Tyelpë’s voice had returned to the lyrically smooth and tranquil lilt of its normal tone, and the deep, full hum of it as its soothing vibration had resounded from his cheek that he pressed atop the Maia’s head. It was peaceful in such a way that he had fallen asleep to Tyelpë reading on many a troubled night. He let himself be collected into his arms, firmly but not confined.
The doom of Annatar approached. It dropped hot and heavy in the pit of his gut, and nestled itself within him.
Celebrimbor asked his first question:
“None of the Noldor, myself included, remembers you from amongst Aulë’s highest, though you are worthy of the admiration of His people.”
It took him a long time to answer, and he was thankful that Tyelpë was merciful enough to avoid brazenly asking him directly what he wished to know.
“I have never been to Valinor,” he confessed, “Not since Almaren have I worked under Aulë.”
Silence. Celebrimbor took his time to consider that answer and all it implied. Annatar gripped onto him as he was awash with waves of nausea- he was reckless- nay! He was pathetically unassertive over the power of this unintended attachment to be telling him this. How long had he spent among them, struggling against himself in his doubt on what to do next, biding his time as he built up his Power in Mordor? He had never intended to become so attached! And now he was ruining the long years of his work with a fool’s hope that some deep cavity within him- a pit of despair and horrible pain- could be made shallow, could be made bearable. He wanted to vomit, for there was little alternative now but open war, as the rings had yet to be finished.
But Tyelpë held his hand again, and all such thoughts were banished.
“If not for the Valar,” the elf began, “Why did you arrive here? For what purpose?”
For what purpose? For what purpose had he come? What purpose did he have after all he had known was obliterated from the earth? After the only thing he had loved was banished to the Void? For what purpose did he wander the wilds, feral and numb to the years? For what purpose had he travelled into the East, drifting from village to village of men as a god in passing, teaching them the arts and the knowledge that was left to him? For what purpose did he nestle himself into the embrace of the mountains of Mordor that Melkor Himself had reared in the days of His splendor? For what purpose did he leave the comfort of that land to aid the elves? No- there had been none, he realized. He had been hollow: purposeless.
“I do not know,” he replied. His voice seemed so resigned. He spoke truthfully, but doubted that he would even be believed.
Silence. This stillness was gentle, a careful contemplation of tone and quality. It was one where Celebrimbor’s thoughts glowed softly, and were rounded at the edges.
“You take a different shape when you are around only me,” he whispered. “Is this because you fear recognition?”
Annatar huddled closer. Tyelpë was too clever, and his yes was muffled in his robe. The hand that clasped his own squeezed gently.
“Anna.”
He could not breathe, could not think, could only squeeze back, tight and clammy and lurching—
“Were you a thrall of Morgoth?”
Nausea came upon Annatar like a deluge, swelling hot-cold, hot-cold in a sickening swirl of saturated colour. The room shook with the instability of his Fëa. He felt intoxicated beyond all faithful perception, beyond all but surrendering to the doom that was biting him around the neck, its teeth deep and unyielding even as he struggled. Annatar let out such a harrowing cry, permeated with a sound of utter fear that it seemed to him that he had heard it as if it had come from outside a window and he was locked in a room of the caged bars of his own Self.
Tyelpë, hearing the Maia’s inconsolable anguish, misunderstood it as a confirmation of his words, but Annatar tore himself away, witless and overwhelmed with the approach of his doom. He had to remove himself, for it was easier to pull away of his own volition than to feel Tyelpë pull away from him, overcome with fear and hatred. Disconnected from his own hysterical Self which he could not seem to control any longer, he heard at last the words which fell unbidden from his own lips, drawing him far from any possibility of recovery:
“I was not His thrall! I was His Lieutenant!”
The world about him fragmented, shattered but not falling- it stayed like a broken mirror, where each facet he could see a new aspect of the horror unwritten in his Fëa. What had he done? What had compelled him so? Each little broken piece of the world around him shimmered sickly iridescent, and the jagged peaks dug into him. Annatar realized those spikes of terror were not all his- everything that shot through the elf’s Fëa, he could feel also, multiplied for his own torment.
Nothing for long moments. Then a sickening realization dawned upon Celebrimbor, foul and oily to taste. Denial blossomed quickly, wilted and shriveled as all the lies Annatar had told began to now make sense. Acceptance, and then a searing, all consuming anger which sparked into a wild tempest, then died quickly as it came, leaving him cold and damp with betrayal, and hurt, numbing into shock and a frothing into doubt, doubt on how to proceed- all these emotions blurred together in a terrible haze of which the Maia could not bear to meet.
He knew only to flee.
Senseless and devastated, Annatar turned and bolted in his blind panic, but trembling uncontrollably was captured readily by Celebrimbor. He thrashed in his hold, but the elf’s grip was as unyielding as before and just as successful, for he was only mindlessly twisting, sobbing pitifully, and he had fallen to the floor and was restrained. But in his last, futile attempt to escape, the velvet hood that he had so carefully kept as a guard fell, and he was at last uncovered completely.
All the beauty that Annatar had so carefully, obsessively crafted- the perfect symmetry of each muscle, each eyelash, each freckle- was gone. The face that was revealed to Tyelpë was nearly obliterated from all recognition and form: chunks of flesh were missing from his left cheek, and his cheekbone was shattered. It was as if he had been in a horrid accident, Tyelpë realized, and had been cleaned of all blood, but had not been healed of the damage done. The striations of muscle that still managed to hold his jaw to his cheek quivered, exposed to the air of the room. The flesh around his left eye was burned shut, melted like unbaked clay at the corners against a socket too deflated to contain a working eye. The skin about the hole in his cheek was black and tattered like burnt parchment, and punctures gaped from his temple and nose where shards of shrapnel had once been embedded. Celebrimbor had never- not in all the years of War in Beleriand- seen such a horrific wound on a creature that still drew breath.
In his shock, Celebrimbor had released his hold on the Maia, and Annatar took the moment of weakness to kick away, desperately crawling and pressing himself to a corner where he heaved and choked over his sobs. With his uncontrollable shaking he could not pull the hood up again, and he kept his hand as best he could, covering his ruined face. Understanding came suddenly upon Celebrimbor, and tears wet his cheeks as he spoke.
“Anna?” he whispered, and though it was soft, the Maia’s sobs could not overcome it. For though it was gentle, it could not be quelled and had a hidden Power of its own.
“Anna?” he whispered again, and he crawled closer, cautious but overcome with grief. “You did this, for me?”
It was long moments before the Maia could answer, and his reply was painfully strangled, like the jaws of anguish held him still by the neck, commanding him to forfeit. But he managed to answer, and he no longer pulled away, limp and tense with uncertainty, for this turn of fate he had not foreseen. “You would have died,” he whimpered, “You would have left me too.”
All thoughts vanished from Celebrimbor, save that of comfort. He recalled, quite suddenly, the vast heights and unfathomable depths of love he had for this strange creature who had given him friendship when all had avoided him for his lineage. Annatar had held no judgements, had assured him not to be ashamed of recalling his Uncles fondly, who had not been disturbed by his frustrations at always being compared to his Father, to his Grandfather- who had taught him, day and night, patiently and undeterred, and had encouraged him to a potential he would never have achieved alone and insecure. All doubts subsided, and Tyelpë realized that he loved him, unconditionally and unfalteringly. He realized that that still had not changed.
Perhaps he was a fool, but Annatar had only ever helped the peoples of Eregion. He had many opportunities to take the city at unawares, to make himself more prominent in the councils of the mighty, to pit the elves against one another and against the other races. But there was no contention, no grief among them all, and the Fëa-bond that was between him and Annatar could not be faked. Nevertheless, the goodness that Tyelpë had known and loved within Annatar was clear on his face, and Tyelpë could not abandon one who had sacrificed much to heal such a horrid, tragically devastating wound. He felt waves of dread just thinking of waking up in Mandos, unable to return back home to the city he had nurtured and built, to the many peoples that he loved- to be separated from Annatar.
Without further thought he crawled towards the Maia’s frozen form, and embraced him, and kissed the dulled wave of his copper hair, and held his hands again, away from his face so that he could look upon it fully, and the single eye that was left to peer out tearfully from his face. He pressed another kiss to the cheekbone that remained intact, and then to his brow. Tyelpë pulled him close, and held him even as the Maia lay limply, dumbfounded. And then, when he realized that Celebrimbor was not calling for guards, or fearful, or disgusted, or hateful, he clutched with all the strength he had left onto him.
“I’m not going to leave you,” the voice said, glossy like calm waters. He felt Tyelpë’s strong and gentle hands on his, and surrendered fully at last.