So you guys think that Post-Canon Celebrimbor ever made stuff and then had to double-take when someone recognized the design from Angband?
Like,
Maedhros, squinting at a doorknob: Hey, why do we have a door from Angband in the house?
Others: what? 😀😨
Celebrimbor, who learned a better doorknob design from Annatar and never thought about the origins of the technique: …ah.
This is either crack or angst potential. Either way, I can totally see Celebrimbor making stuff, except some of it is just designs used in Angband, so every now and again Celebrimbor gets a hysterical elf trying to figure out why a stool is deeply unsettling.
Alternatively; Mordor has a coffee machine. The maker’s mark is scratched and ineligible. However, everyone knows that it’s not Sauron’s creation.
“It’s been a long, long time since I memorised your face”
Is so Maglor coded..
Walking the beaches alone and singing the noldolante, the familiar lyrics falling from his lips as they not only tell the fall of the noldor but the fall of his brothers.
The brothers he watched grow up, watched them giggle and crawl before they started laughing and running.
As the tale plays in his head he can never quite remember their likeness.
Celegorms nose a bit too pointed, Ambarussas hair lighter than it actually was.
Every lyric is another reminder that he’s closer to forgetting their faces completely rather than remembering them.
this is my half of a collab for this year's @tolkienrsb featuring Celebrimbor’s corpse, one final waltz, and a certain Dark Lord’s long journey ahead in learning to let go of things long gone. It’s been an absolute dream to work with the wonderful @elennalore over the summer; her AMAZING fic will be going live on AO3 in a few days, so definitely look forward to that!!! Until then, here are some little screenshots of what’s to come... hehhe 🥳🥳
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
| SAURON
Annatar, or Mairon as he was once called and Sauron as he is called now, hadn’t been loved in a very long time.
Not since he scorned the love once given to him and turned his back on his master. He had found a new master, Melkor, who had loved him in his own cruel way.
Or maybe that was what he liked to tell himself.
He had been beloved once, a master smith, beautiful with love and life.
He was still beautiful now. But he had abandoned the teachings of his former master, no, mentor. He was loved by no one.
That was a lie. He was beloved by one. Tyelpë. Celebrimbor.
Of course, Tyelpë didn’t know his true identity. He didn’t know who Annatar really was.
He was oblivious to all of the atrocities and crimes he committed. All of the wounds he personally inflicted into Tyelpë’s own uncle.
No, Tyelpë’s love was to an illusion, a carefully crafted lie that he had maintained. His love wasn’t to him, it was to someone who didn’t exist.
But why did it feel so good? Why did it feel so good to be curled up in Tyelpë’s arms, to work with him in the forge. Why did he crave it more than he craved anything else before?
Everyday he could feel himself falling deeper and deeper into Tyelpë’s love. He could feel himself falling further and further in love.
But he couldn’t. He had a plan.
So why did it feel so bad to hurt Tyelpë? To inflict pain on that beloved body that he had once worshiped. Why did every blow, every insult, every lie that he inflict hurt him just as much as it hurt Tyelpë. And why, oh Eru why, did it hurt him so much when Tyelpë refused to even look at him with anything but vitriol, disdain, and hatred? Why did every insult that Tyelpë hurl at him hurt more than a million stab wounds?
He had once been among the strongest of the maiar. He had once been the most beloved student of Aulë. He had once been a prodigy, admired and loved. And yet, he was the one to throw it all away to serve Melkor, so why was he the one craving what he once had? Why was he craving all of Tyelpë’s love and affection, his admiration, his teachings, his strength?
He didn’t know.
| TYELPË
Tyelpë’s family had committed a great many atrocities, that he knew. Tyelpë’s upbringing was not the ideal, that he also knew. But he had never wanted as a child. Anything that he could ever want or need was provided to him by his doting father and uncles and grandparents.
But when Annatar came, full of life and creation, he wanted. He wanted more than he wanted anything ever before.
He came to crave the maiar’s touch, his love, his affection, his everything. And Annatar gave it to him.
Up until the end that is.
His cousin Galadriel had warned him, as had his cousin(?) Gil-Galad. They had all warned him of the truth. That Annatar was not what he seemed and he would be the downfall of both him and Eregion.
He hadn’t listened. And now he paid for it. Every kiss, every intimate moment, thrown back in his face.
With his dying breath, he stared back at that once beloved face in hatred and wished death upon him and spat curses at him. He refused to let himself fall to the same evil his grandfather and all his uncles afterwards did.
And then, he was dead.
Death, he had decided, wasn’t so bad. He was in the Halls of Mandos. And while it was fuzzy at first, he can recall his father, pulling his broken, shattered spirit close and holding him together until he healed enough to be given to his other cousins.
He wanted to call out to his father but his weary, tattered spirit wasn’t strong enough.
He wanted to apologize for his harsh words at their last parting, to tell him that he still loved him and had loved him always. He wanted to apologize for failing him. For using his teachings for evil, for their second greatest enemy after Morgoth himself.
By the time he recovered enough to speak, his father had all but disappeared from the halls.
He spent his time healing, recovering from the wounds Anna-no, Sauron inflicted upon him. In the tapestries of the Halls, he saw his own brutal death depicted but also all that came after.
And he began to wonder.
| ANNATAR
Sauron had lost everything. His plans had failed and he had fallen.
He was nothing more now than a houseless spirit. He was not doomed to the void like his master, but instead to an eternity wandering alone without a house nor home. He would wander in his regret forever.
But his thoughts were always drawn to the one he could not have, the one he could not taint. He was drawn to the land that had once been his but was now no longer.
Valinor. Tyelpë.
His spirit, without his knowing, wandered the shore where he found a mad and half-dead Maglor Feanorian.
He regarded the fellow wanderer and the state he was in. His hair tangled and matted, his clothes tatters upon his skin, his voice cracked and broken. His once bright silver eyes glowed with an eerie light. He was rakishly thin and his hands gnarled.
He followed Maglor Feanorian for a great many days until he was found by Elrond Peredhel.
Sauron had once hated the half-elf with a vicious passion. Now, Annatar regarded the half-elf with interest as he bundled up Maglor Feanorian in a heavy cloak, fed him, and promptly led him in the direction of the Grey Havens.
He hastened to follow. He followed them across the Sundering Sea to Valinor itself where Elrond and Galadriel were welcomed gladly and those accursed hobbits who foiled him were welcomed as heroes.
And for a great many centuries he watched. Watched as Maglor healed and became Makalaurë once more.
And he began to wonder if he couldn’t become Mairon once more.
| TYELPË
Tyelpë was reembodied without fanfare, just as he wanted. He supposed he could have gone home to his grandmother’s but he chose not to. He was not yet ready to face her.
Instead, he was met by an anxious half-elf.
Elrond embraced him gladly, fed him, clothed him, and brought him to his home by the sea where he resided with his wife among a great many others.
Elrond also gave him his last remaining uncle.
Maglor, no Makalaurë, healed from all the hurts of Middle Earth and all the tainting of Morgoth. He was alive and well and whole.
Somewhere, deep in his heart, hope began to bloom. Even as he squashed it down with the same viciousness that he had cheered with in the Halls at Sauron’s final defeat.
There was no use in loving a monster that could never love him back. Especially when he had fallen in love with a lie.
Life continued on and he continued on too. He reunited with his grandmother and found himself a home in the Mansions of Aulë once more.
Aulë had taken one long look at him upon his return and led him to workbench. Old but lovingly kept ready for use despite ages of disuse. Old projects have finished and ideas were scattered along the surface.
He recognized the handwriting immediately. How could he not? How could he not when it belonged to the men who taught him how to write, how to work a forge? Two sets of handwriting littered the great many pages. Fëanor and Curufin.
One half of the workspace was clearly Fëanor’s while the other was clearly his father’s but this space had belonged to his family and it could once more.
He refused Aulë’s offer of the area in favor for a new one. His family would return someday and they would want their space back.
And then, he drowned himself in his work once more.
| MAIRON
Tyelpë was reembodied and he couldn’t stop himself from following him around. He knew that Aulë could likely sense his presence around Tyelpë but he had yet to say anything.
Instead, he continued to let Annatar follow him around like a lost puppy, eager for Tyelpë’s mere presence.
In the Mansions of Aulë once more, his hands ached for the feel of a smithing hammer in his hands once more, his body sought out the heat of the forge, for the sound of metal upon metal.
Then, one day, Aulë took Tyelpë deep in the mansion to show him something.
It made Annatar’s non-existent heart stop.
Aulë, the mentor he had once scorned, had kept Mairon’s workbench exactly as he had left it.
No, that wasn’t true. He kept it better than he had left it. The papers with scraps of ideas written on them were lovingly placed into piles the way Aulë had done for him when the world was young. The projects he had left half-finished were kept pristine as the day they were made, ready to be finished. The forge was stocked just the way he liked and his hammer and gloves and apron were hanging, ready for him to use once more.
It was like the world was still young and his younger self would walk in at any moment, ready to work and learn.
For the first time since he had left the safety of the Mansions of Aulë, he allowed himself the luxury of crying.
He wept and wept. He continued to weep even after Tyelpë and Aulë left, running ghostly fingers over his pristine workbench and crying once more.
Maybe, just maybe, there was still room for Mairon in this world of Eru’s.
And for the first time in a very long time, Mairon prayed to the One.
| TYELPË
Aulë was the one who broke the news to him.
Sauron was to be reformed after a long period away with Eru Iluvatar himself.
He would come back, not as Sauron, but as he once was, as Mairon.
A part of Tyelpë, that traitorous part of him that still loved the maiar, rejoiced at news of his return. The other part of him spat in disdain and wanted nothing to do with the other after his great many affronts to Tyelpë during the Second Age.
Aulë was kind enough to grant him leave which he used to seek out the one person he knew would not lie to him.
Unfortunately for him, Elrond was not alone, but instead with his law-mother.
Galadriel, thankfully, held no grudge over what had happened in Eregion and instead welcomed him with open arms.
The two of them assured him that Sauron would not have been allowed back if he had not truly changed for the better.
He continued to stay with Elrond anyways.
| MAIRON
If Mairon had expected to meet with Tyelpë immediately after returning to Valinor, he was greatly mistaken. For it seemed that the other was avoiding him with everything in his power.
He couldn’t even blame the other. Not after what he did to him.
No, this was what he deserved.
Their inevitable reunion came with much less fanfare than he had imagined.
He had moved back to the Mansions of Aulë and took up his spot at his workbench once more. It was there that he met the other for the second first time.
He had expected a slap, he had expected hot anger.
He had not expected cold disdain and apathy.
“Tyelpë-“ he had tried to greet the other only to be met with a snarl of “Do not call me that!”
He had lost any right to that name a long time ago.
That didn’t stop him from trying though. From trying to earn back Tyelpë’s love and affection, the very thing that saved him from perdition in the first place. The very thing that made him good again, that made him Mairon again.
Because for Tyelpë, he’d do anything.
| TYELPË
It wasn’t long before the gifts started to appear. They appeared everywhere. His workbench at the Mansions of Aulë, the forge Elrond had had built for him when he kept coming for long visits to avoid Sauron, his grandmother’s home, his own meager rooms.
Jewelry, bouquets of metal flowers scented to smell like the real thing, small mechanical animals. He knew who they were from but he didn’t say a word about them, simply collecting them with a small sigh.
Even Sauron should know that his love was not so easily bought.
Then came the notes.
They were filled with a variety of things. The first were filled with apologies and explanations. The next were filled with little messages for him asking if he’s well based off of something he noticed. Asking if he needs help on a project and some advice or a person he should ask for advice from. Just little observations that made his heart flutter.
Then came the confessions. The “I miss you”s and the “I still love you”s and the “I never stopped loving you”s. Even if he kept the first ones, he always ripped up and threw out the latter. They didn’t come often, interspaced with the ones with observations, but they came all the same.
He didn’t know what to do. He loved Annatar still and he knew it. But how does one love a monster? One that tortured and killed him no less?
Then, one day, another confession came.
“I will always love you, even if you hate me forever”
He kept the note with all the rest.
Shortly after he began to notice Suaron’s presence around him more and more often.
Then he approached him with an offer of collaboration on a project. When Tyelpë didn’t turn him away, he lit up brighter than the sun.
Working with the reborn Sauron was the same and different in so many ways that he didn’t even notice when the other fell back into the habit of calling him Tyelpë. He didn’t even notice when they fell back into the habit of casual touches and lingering glances.
He didn’t even notice when he began calling the maiar Annatar once more, then Mairon.
Then he began fallowing Tyelpë around like a lost puppy, anxious for the scraps of Tyelpë’s affection.
And if Tyelpë sometimes gave it to him, no one had to know.
Then came the note.
“I love you. I always have and always will. Even if you hate me forever. Even if I have to spend an eternity making up for all my wrongs just to be with you for a single day.”
Tyelpë broke.
Was it his wisest decision to pull the once most hated maiar in all Middle Earth into a kiss? Probably not. Was it his wisest decision to ask him for a relationship, a proper one this time? Who knows.
this is my other entry for @tolkienrsb , which I had the absolute joy of working on with the lovely @zealouswerewolfcollector !! we explored a 'what-if?' scenario in which it's Maedhros who survives in Maglor's place, and his wanderings in Middle Earth in the later Ages 😙 the fic will be going live in a few days as well so until then, here are some sneak-peaks of what's to come!
bonus: an alternate version of screenshot 2 with a different bg under the cut
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
“What makes a father? Elrond wondered to himself.
From the moment Celebrian came to him with the wonderful news that she was pregnant, the question had lingered in the back of his mind, nagging and spreading doubt and anxiety through him.
He had never known his father. Not really. Not in the ways that mattered.
All he knew of Eärendil was the distant, faded memory of the smell of the sea and a smile. Other than that, all he knew of his father was the star in the sky.
Maglor had tried his best, he truly did. However, by the time he got them, he was no longer completely mentally sound. He fought to keep his brother in the present, he fought against the Oath, he fought against himself (his demons, his guilt, his hatred). He taught them how to sing, how to appreciate music and life. Maybe he instilled in them his own (twisted) morals. Maglor was the one who taught them to read and write and grammar and maths. He taught them some other more dubious lessons as well. How to gossip and where to learn all the best information, then how to use all of that to your advantage.
Maedhros, on the other hand, taught them only when he was lucid enough. He taught them how to fight, how to kill nearly every species ever present in Middle Earth. He taught them diplomacy and taught Elrond how to heal. He was the one to inspire Elrond to become a healer, to follow the path he did (even if he sometimes hated himself for it).
Neither spent much time on subjects they deemed unnecessary or irrelevant. Things like manners were neglected as well as parts of history.
No, that all fell to Gil-Galad, who was more friend than father. He was the one who saw to it that the gaps in Elrond’s education were filled, even if Elrond was an adult by the time they met (by edain standards at least) and even more so by the time lessons started (by elven standards of course).
But none of them had played with him in his childhood or adolescence. And wasn’t that what a father was meant to do? To play with his children, to teach them, to guide them, to be there for them.
None of his father figures were here now. Not even Gil-Galad who had been more friend than father.
No. He was alone.
Elrond didn’t know what makes a father. All of his had left him long ago.
The only thing he did know was that he would be there, always, for as long as he was able to (the way none of his father figures were for him, the way none of his parents were for him) and that he’d love them for all eternity (even if they broke his heart, even if they left because didn’t they always leave?).
Elrond wasn’t sure that he was ready to be a father, not when he never really had one to look up to. He hated and loved all his parental figures in equal measure.
He just hoped that his children would love him more than they hated him.
maedhros and maglor discover the body of amras during the sack of sirion
i prefer having amrod die in the burning of the ships like in the shibboleth, bc it really hits home how much greater the loss of the two oldest feanorians is when their last baby bro... dies... ig??? 😢 mr tolkien i dont feel so good...
