Work Text:
Elrond and Elros—the great-grandsons of Thingol, the rightful heirs to all Beleriand, the last, greatest hope of the Sindar—had lately come to join their alliance against Morgoth. How exactly they’d finally managed to escape their parents’ killers was a matter of great debate. Celebrimbor overheard any number of tales about their childhood plights and gruesome stories about their flight to freedom, but, of course, nobody said anything to him directly. Nobody even told him they were here.
Celebrimbor had no reasonable complaints about the most recent High King. Gil-galad was an aptly capable leader of the dregs of the free peoples still left in Beleriand and completely deserved all the respect bestowed upon him, and more besides. He was kind and just and never asked something from his people that he would not do himself. Gil-galad had not cast him out, despite the urging of many, and that too was no small thing. Celebrimbor had no desire to become a thrall of Morgoth or a thrall to his grandfather’s oath. His small place in Balar partly shielded him from those fates. He didn’t particularly want to die either, but that was the most palatable of the three dooms on offer from exile.
However, in the less reasonable complaints column, Gil-galad was one of the least direct Elves Celebrimbor had ever encountered. If there was a problem that didn’t affect the survival of the Elves or their cause, then Gil-galad would pretend with all his might that it did not exist. It was a particularly Finarfinion affliction. Finrod had been much the same. The fact that Celebrimbor was not only a Fëanorian, but a Fëanorion—his father and his grandfather unarguably the worst of them all, though who exactly was the best at being the worst depended on if a Sindar, a Noldo, or one of the Vanyar were consulted—was an issue that Gil-galad did his very best to overlook. And while that did mean that Celebrimbor got to stay in relative safety, it also meant that he was kept almost completely in the dark about his uncles’ activities.
Not that he truly wanted to know. Círdan, Círdan, had made the argument to Gil-galad, when the Havens had first called for aid, that Celebrimbor should come along too. That maybe he could say something to turn the Fëanorians aside, muster up some convincing loophole in the oath, or, at the very least, delay them enough that the forces from Balar could get into an advantageous position and stop them that way. Why they’d thought words would be an effective weapon against Maglor, Celebrimbor couldn’t really remember, but he did remember a sense of almost nauseating frenzy at the thought that he might be useful. He hadn’t been. They’d seen the Havens alight while still on the water. For a moment, Celebrimbor had been back on a different shore watching his grandfather set a torch against the fine, white planks of the Teleri swanboats. Celebrimbor had searched through Sirion, sick, sick, sick, but unable to purge himself of the feeling. At the steps to the highest tower, he’d found the crumpled body of Amras. Celebrimbor had turned him over to be sure, but he hadn’t needed to. He’d repaired that exact set of armor numerous times, his father’s mark was set in the helm. At the time, he’d thought it meant that Maedhros and Maglor had made it off with the Silmaril, shedding all sentiment as useless to their useless cause. Carefully, he’d closed his uncle’s eyes, and then heaved himself out of the building before anyone could accuse him of turning traitor.
It was months before Celebrimbor had learned that he’d erred. Months where he turned the words of Mandos—to evil end shall all things turn that they begin well—over and over again in his mind, honing them to a fine point, and thought very hard about the delay caused by his inclusion in the rescue party. He'd let what-ifs pierce him to the quick. It had been even longer before he was told about the hostage situation. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t his duty to know exactly how far his House had sunk.
Gil-galad disagreed. When Celebrimbor had come with the survivors from Gondolin, from the ruins of yet another city, he’d offered four potential types of service to Gil-galad: his sword, his advice, his knowledge, and his craft. Gil-galad had discarded the first as dangerous, the second as useless, asked only occasionally after the third, and placed all control of his forges in Celebrimbor’s hands. And so Celebrimbor labored, at use, at the very least at great use, and churned out swords, daggers, helms, breastplates, gauntlets, spy glasses, horseshoes, nails, glowing gems to light their way—never anything too bright—and anything and everything he could think of. He imbued them all with all of the considerable art he was capable of, crafting strength and stealth and safety into their very being.
There was a particular way to keep the edge of a blade keen for longer. It had been one of the very first things his father had taught him, all the way back in Aman. Celebrimbor had discovered no better method, though he had set himself against the problem now and again during the long siege. And every time he did it, he pictured his father, face backlit by the forge, sighing and saying, no, Telpinquar, like his. He’d done this exact thing thousands and thousands of times in his life and always his father’s voice came, no, Telpinquar, like this.
Gil-galad had asked him once, before they knew each other very well, if he found feeding the machinery of war boring after spending his life crafting great works of art. Celebrimbor had said no, because he couldn’t say that he’d spent his whole life making an unending stream of swords. He’d been born not long after Morgoth had first begun to drip poison into the ears of the Noldor, and his father had tutored him accordingly. It wasn’t very different in Beleriand, though the cause, at least, was more noble. It had really only been in Nargothrond that he’d had the time to make something for the sake of making it. Finrod had had the opinion that if one thing was beautiful and another thing was also beautiful, then, well, there could be nothing more magnificent than both of those things together in the same work. Once, Celebrimbor had made him a pair of earrings as a joke that incorporated every aspect of all of his favorite earrings. They were monstrous, enormous, with mismatched gems in every color and fine gold filigree and bold silver geometric patterns that alternated between covering up and being covered up by the jewels. Finrod had loved them unreasonably. Finduilas had given them to him after Finrod died. He didn’t know where they were now. It was only much later, after years of living in Balar, that Gil-galad revealed that Finduilas had written about those earrings in her letters, about all of the lovely, useless things he’d made in that lost decade. Gil-galad never said if his sister had said anything about Curufin. Celebrimbor never asked.
So Celebrimbor worked, thinking of the beautiful things he’d make when this was over, hearing snatches of gossip about his worst uncles and how the war was going—badly, but not as badly as before—and imagining no, Telpinquar, like this. It was dull, but unceasing, and he often labored long after everyone else had left for supper or for bed, left with only his dull, but unceasing thoughts for company.
On one such night, when Celebrimbor, trying to think mainly about sapphires and failing, was almost sick enough of himself to consider sleeping, a soldier sidled into his field forge. He was in search of a head start on a repair. That wasn’t as uncommon as Celebrimbor would have liked. Sometimes it precluded a great rush on the forges the following morning, as the less keen soldiers applied for replacements through a quartermaster. Sometimes it just meant that the soldier in question had been hapless and wanted to cover up any evidence of a mistake. And sometimes it meant that everyone else in the company was dead and beyond caring about dents in their helms and nicks in their sword. From his looks, the stranger was Sindar and, so, it wasn’t surprising that Celebrimbor could not place his face. The Isle of Balar had been small, but still large enough for a shunning that Gil-galad pretended not to notice, and Celebrimbor mostly hadn’t cared about. Only the bitter exigency of the Last Battle had pushed some of the Sindar into admitting he could be of use. Especially among the younger Sindar, and this stranger was very young. He had not introduced himself when entering, only greeted him after making eye contact and asked him if he should wait until the next day, and Celebrimbor was loathe to admit that he couldn’t remember one of the few Sindar willing to treat him like a person and not a symbol of his House.
“No, now’s fine,” Celebrimbor said. “But if your problem is more involved, I might not have time until tomorrow.”
The stranger nodded. “It’s my sword,” he said, handing it over.
The issue was immediately apparent, there was a sizable notch in the blade. Celebrimbor should tell him that this wasn’t something for a smith to fix, there were polishers in abundance around the camp. But it was also immediately apparent that this sword was of Noldor-make. That alone wouldn’t be rare—his apprentices or he had made almost every sword wielded in Gil-galad’s army—but it was clearly not one of his. He took it. It was nicely balanced, crude, but many deadly things in Beleriand were crude, and lacked a maker’s mark. Once it was in his hand, he could tell that another Fëanorian had crafted it, as well as the most likely candidate.
“Can you fix it?” the Sindar asked.
“Yes,” Celebrimbor said. The damage wasn’t so severe that he would recommend a replacement. He looked at the stranger and thought about telling him to seek out someone whose job it was to polish swords. He thought about asking him where he’d gotten it. Mostly, he thought about asking if he'd been mistaken and if he did, in fact, see him merely as a symbol of his House. Instead, Celebrimbor went over to his whetstone and set the blade against it. It had been a long time since Nargothrond, the last place people spoke to him mostly directly, and he'd fallen out of the habit of blunt speech too along the way.
It took very little time in the grand scheme of things. The stranger didn’t try to engage him in conversation while he worked. He looked pleased, his grey eyes wide, when Celebrimbor finished, carefully testing the edge against his thumb.
“Thank you,” he said, in perfectly formed Quenya, vowels rounded exactly like he’d just walked out of the palace in Tirion upon Túna, and walked out of forge.
It wasn’t until weeks later that he’d learned Elrond had been the twin to grace him with his presence. Though it took until much, much later, until he knew the twins considerably better, for him to realize the full significance. And even later still for the sapphire ring Celebrimbor had been thinking of at their first meeting to make it to Elrond's hand.