ummmmmm okay so your art of nerdanel and celebrimbor was so cute and your comment about how hes the only one that gets back to her had me tearing up so now i gotta hear how you think their reunion goes
Hello! ♥
Ok, I have been procrastinating answering this for a very long time because I have lots of hcs (and feelings) about this, but absolutely no way to write them. Like, this got me thinking so hard that I wrote around 5 pages about their relationship before and after, but I just lack the ability to give form to all that mess. So, I'll just try to dump some of those hcs here. Very long post ahead:
I don't have a very clear vision of how would it be from Celebrimbor's point of view, to be honest. Mostly because I don't have any hcs about his mother (beside she being a teleri), and her absence or not when he gets back would kind of influence his reaction. Like, is Nerdanel the only motherly figure waiting for him? Why? I don't really know. But I'll say that she is.
I like the headcanon that injuries that are very related to trauma don't heal completely after being reincarnated. Is like the physical scars are the exteriorization of the emotional ones. So, going by that, Celebrimbor is full of them. And, by meeting Nerdanel, he feels ashamed of them for the first time. Not for an aesthetic reason, obviously, but because he knows that seeing them hurts her. She will look at him and know all the pain he went through and feel bad about him, and he doesn't want that. I mean, he craves to be comforted, but he doesn't want her to feel bad about him because a) he doesn't want to cause her any more pain b) He might feel he deserved what he got? But that would be me getting out of topic
As for Nerdanel, it's such an intense experience. I do have the hc that she is up to date with what each of her sons and even her (very ex) husband did and went through. Something about being allowed to see Miriel's tapestries about their lives. I imagine her being summoned whenever a son of her would arrive to Mandos. So, when she gets summoned for the last time, she is expecting Maglor. Seeing her grandson intead is a very different kind of pain. Seeing his life is specially painful to her because she can see the similarities between her grandson and her husband, but she can also see how different they were. While Feanor distrusted and disliked the valar, Celebrimbor blindly accepted the help and friendship of a maia. While Feanor traveled and sustained a kind of isolated life, Celebrimbor became the lord of a city which doors seemed to be open for everyone. While Feanor created things of beauty for his own, Celebrimbor created things that would help people. She can't stop thinking that half of the things Tyelpe did were a way to show how he wasn't Feanor. And some of those were the ones that ended up killing him.
She sees the tapestry, she knows what he went through before meeting him, and she had years to process it before he is re incarnated.
She wants to be strong for him, and she wants to be as comforting as she can. He was barely a teen when he left Valinor, so he probably doesn't remember much about her, but he is all that she's got from her family.
Meeting him for the first time is still a very shocking experience for her. At first glance, he looks like the husband he hates and the son that she misses. Looking closer he looks much softer and kinder that any of them, but he also looks more weary and older than any of them got to be while in Valinor. He was basically a kid when he left, and now he is this man aged by all the experiences he had to through in Middle Earth. She wanted to be strong, but just looking at him breaks her.
So I guess the actual reunion was a mess of crying, hugs and words of reassurance. But the most important part is Nerdanel inviting him to her family house, to her and her father's workshop. She wants him to keep creating. Creating helped her after the parting of her son's and husband. Creating helped her through each of their deaths, kept the sadness at bay, helped her grieve. And she is afraid that, after what happen with the rings, he might feel that he doesn't deserve to be able to create. So she offers, she insist, on him going to her workshop. Trying to get back to sculpture or pottery, like when he was a kid.
He is not ready to get back to jewelsmith, and he won't be for a time. Spending time with her long lost grandmother and connecting with craftmanship from another side sounds like a good way to start his new life (pottery in particular sounds nice for him, because there won't be the loud sounds of surfaces being hit, and it also allows him to make things that can be used and might be of need for others). So he accepts.
