Celebration

Mellow Soulmate AU.  What would you do if you had to learn to live again... twice?  Quenya names used (Celebrimbor = Telperinquar, Maglor = Makalaurë, Curufin = Curufinwë).  Ilession is my OMC and he's just there, as usual, from "Cry", "Aloof", "Worst Day", "Hero", "Morals" and "Gloves".  This is also related to the Lust arc and the Grace arc.  Takes place in Gondor at the end of the Third Age.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion or The Lord of the Rings

Pairings: past Sauron x Celebrimbor

Characters: Celebrimbor, Ilession (OMC), random people (mentions Nerdanel, Fëanor, Curufin, Maglor, Sauron and other random elves)

Warning: non-canon compliant, slash, dub-con at best, mind-games, psychological torture, Stockholm Syndrome, depression, suicidal thoughts, fading, family feels, espionage, war, some mild sexual stuff

Song: Silence

Words: 1,468
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celebration (noun): to perform (a sacrament or solemn ceremony) publicly and with appropriate rites; to honor (as a holiday) especially by solemn ceremonies or by refraining from ordinary business; to mark (as an anniversary) by festivities or other deviation from routine
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/celebration

If he had not felt so apathetic, Telperinquar might have bothered to be insulted.

Truly, though, he knew they did not understand.  When they looked upon the ruins in the distance--upon the smoke rising and spewing forth into the lightening sky--they did not grieve.  They did not shudder and wince.  They did not feel the urge to curl up and hide their eyes, pretending everything was all a nightmare.

They felt none of that.

All around him, these humans and elves were drinking in revelry.  Comrades in arms threw hands about each other shoulders and hung off one another's necks, laughing loudly at poor jokes and lewd comments.  And the women sauntered between the half-drunken men, in too good a mood to do more than lightly scold at an insensitive, crude comment or swat gently at a wandering, encroaching hand.

Everyone was smiling, all of them mingling together into a mass of humanity, joyous and rising from the ashes of their despair and terror.  Because they were alive.

Alive...

"Why do you hide here in the corner, cousin?"

The familiar voice, low and raspy, ripped apart from years of shouted across the din of battle and screaming at the feel of his master, was to his immediate right.  Telperinquar's eyes drifted slowly from the swarm of people, reluctantly settling upon a face he was used to seeing only through the visor of a black helmet and meeting eyes he could remember only darkened with battle-rage and distant detachment.

And yet this creature was the reason he still lived.  Lived.  And the son of Curufinwë did not think he could bring himself to be grateful.

"You know why."

Ilession scoffed, but Telperinquar could read this man well enough to see the worry lingering just underneath that facade.  No matter the horrible things the once-servant of Sauron and the former-spy of Gil-Galad had done in the service of his pair of masters, there was always that compassionate blood surging through veins as red and hot as any of their brethren.  Above all the others of their family, this man had taken after Lady Nerdanel's softness and Makalaurë's infamous softhearted kindness.

And yet still he managed to be so very cruel.  So very heartless.

With a long-drawn sigh, the dark-haired firstborn of Makalaurë sat beside him in the silent, shadowed little corner of the lively tavern.  Telperinquar ignored his cousin's presence, instead going back to staring at the celebration before his eyes.  The celebration that marked his second death.

"You cannot linger upon him forever."

As if he had a choice!

"What do you know about it?" he hissed beneath his breath. "There is a wide divide between master and lover.  How could you understand!"

Those eyes were so blue.  Such a rare color for a son of the Spirit of Fire, dampening the otherwise harsh brilliance beneath. "I did not claim to understand your pain." Though I would claim to have more than my fair share of my own to compare. "But you and I both know you cannot carry on like this forever."

We both know you will fade.

And Telperinquar was not dead-set against that fate.  Slow and withering, but fast in comparison to millennia of remembering, slowly dissolving bit by bit a little more each day.  Until there was nothing left at all except the pain and all the world disappeared.

At least if he faded he would be in the Halls.  Locked away in madness, but allowed to forget should he choose.  Allowed to hide away.

Allowed to pretend he had never ventured from the tapestry-papered hallways to begin with.  That everything--from the moment he stepped beyond Mandos' gates to the moment he laid down and his mortal body ceased to draw breath a second time--was just a dream.  A horrible nightmare.  But one he had awakened from.

Here, he could not pretend to awaken.  Could not pretend it was a dream.

"I will do as I please."

"And what about the rest of us?" A hand gripped tightly his forearm, the hold near-strangling about his wrist. "What about me?  What about your mother and father?  What about your nephew?  Do none of us matter to you?"

Do you care for us less than him?  Than a man who never even existed?

"Feel free to join the celebration!" Telperinquar snarled, though his voice lacked bite and harshness, instead coming out all too tired and disillusioned. "Feel free to make revelry of the destruction of my world!  But ask me not to join!"

It was then that he would have walked away, gone back to his room in the healing houses and languished in silent agony.  But the hand refused to release where it was shackled in place.

Refused to just let him die.

"You are not dead, cousin."

I might as well be.

Their eyes met again, and Telperinquar had not even the energy to bar his pain from the other's gaze. If anyone could be trusted with his vulnerability--with the knowledge that he had been caught between loving that monster and crawling away in fear, locked into a stalemate battle within his own mind--it would be this man.  This man who knew all too well the war between right and wrong tearing apart one's thoughts.

"Please, just allow me to leave.  Watching only makes me feel ill."

"No." Instead of loosening, the warrior's grip squeezed.  Once upon a time, Telperinquar would have scoffed that he could withstand far more than such an infantile grip--he was a smith, after all, and his arms were powerful for all the work they did in the making of priceless treasures--but those days were long past.  Now he was humiliated to whisper in admittance--if only within the boundaries of his private thoughts--that he could not have escaped even had he desired to fight.

Weak.  Broken.  Frail.

Shattered.

"This is a celebration of being alive."  Ilession's voice strained, low and bubbling over in concern.  Trembling with emotion. "These people, they lived.  They can go to work again without fear of losing brothers and husbands and sons.  They can go about their daily lives without imminent attack looming over their heads.  And they can raise their children in a time of peace that they never knew.

"Think you not that they deserve their celebration?"

"They and I are not alike."

I have no mate with whom to create a family.  No children to watch over.  No wives or daughters or sons to care for.

Annatar had been his future.  And Annatar was gone.

"You are," his cousin insisted. "Let his memory not haunt you, hanging over your lead like a gilded prison of dripping curls and molten eyes.  Let his visage fade into the back of your memories where it belongs, perhaps a pleasant recollection, but naught more than that."

So easily it was said.  But so hard it was to do.  Telperinquar knew.  He had been trying for as long as he had known of the betrayal.  Trying and failing.

"I cannot."

"You can," the other insisted. "You have the Spirit of Fire in your veins.  You can overcome an illusion, see straight through its foggy recesses.  That much I believe.  You are alive, Telperinquar."

Alive... Was he alive?

"Think on it." Finally, he was released, and yet Telperinquar's feet were hesitant to carry him away from this confrontation.  Away from Ilession's pain-filled, miserable gaze, so filled with resigned sorrow and worry.  Away from that face marked with scars and tinted with shadow.

Away from those words and their poison.

"This celebration is for us all.  For myself--" Finally I am free of my master. "--and for you, though it does not seem it."

For you are free of this soul-sucking mockery of love.

No more could he take.  The once-smith--the once-lover of the Dark Lord Sauron--fled back out into the night and dared not glance back.  Dared not cease his brisk lope until he was safely tucked away within the four white-washed walls of his empty, prison-like cell of a bedchamber in the barren healing houses.

Dared not think too hard upon those words.

"This celebration is for us all... even you."

Upon the terrifying, tantalizing thought of keeping open his eyes and keeping strong his breath.  Of burning forever and ever alone and pining for that which was beyond his reach.

Upon the thought that never would there be a new beginning.  That those sweet and wondrous words were all naught but a lie.