to all things housed in silence by queerofthedagger  

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Celegorm

What is more dangerous—a moving body 
or the land it catapults into? When I left home, I let

the space behind me close rapidly,  
not a wound,

but a winking eye shut—a round lump, 
a clean seam. 
—Aishvarya Arora

*

 

Valinor

One of Celegorm’s first memories is getting lost in the woods.

In hindsight, it is far less perilous than it sounds. There was nothing in Aman, in those blissful days, intent on harming an Elf. Not in those almost-domesticated woods close to Tirion.

Celegorm does not remember how he ended up alone there in the first place. He remembers the trees, how they seemed gigantic, larger than life. He remembers being unafraid.

Remembers, above all else, the silence. Even with only two elder brothers then, their house was rarely quiet, rarely knew a moment of peace. He remembers listening to the wind in the trees, the creaking of wood. The rustle and calls of the beasts.

He remembers realising, with wonder in his bones, that it was not silent at all. It was just finally a music that he could feel the notes of, much like Makalaurë always claimed to be capable of.

Celegorm does not remember how he made it home that first day, but from that day onward, he returns as often as he can.

It is no hardship, no difficult feat. His brothers and parents are caught up in their own projects often enough, and Celegorm learns to slip away unnoticed. To wander the forest, deeper and deeper into its dark green, without anyone the wiser. To return with the mingling, and laugh along when Maitimo pulls twigs from his hair, asking if he got lost in the gardens again.

Something like that, he would say, flashing his teeth, and Makalaurë would roll his eyes, and his mother would smile, and Maitimo would make sure that corners of the garden are left to grow wild even as it makes their neighbours sigh.

Celegorm appreciates it, loves it all. And still, ever the forest calls to him.

He is not sure when he meets Oromë for the first time. There are, in hindsight, animals crossing his path a little too often, beasts trailing in his wake with a little too much interest, to keep believing it a coincidence.

The first time he knows, though—

The first time Celegorm meets his God, he gets lost in the forest for the first time in his life.

There is a pup, fur white and gleaming, its hind leg stained red. Celegorm is no longer a child, no longer sneaks away while pretending to wander the gardens. Can come and go as he pleases now, for the most part, even as his father still watches him more closely than all the others. More, at times, than even Carnistir, ridiculously small and always screaming until his entire face turns red.

Celegorm has learnt, by then, that Fëanáro’s overbearing attention is not because he is the youngest, the hypothesis solidly disproven. It is not even because his father loves him best of all, and with Celegorm’s lack of interest in forge work or the theoretical framework behind linguistic practice, perhaps that should have come as little surprise.

The likeness of Míriel, they whisper; not a daughter, but still, closer than the others.

As if he could only ever be someone to look through, or to be coloured with ancient grief not of his making.

Carnistir’s raven-black hair felt like a personal offence that day, and so Celegorm wandered, had found the forest, had let it pull him in, deeper and deeper, his mind not keeping track of where his feet were treading.

And then there is the pup. It is entirely silent, just watching Celegorm from where it stands between the trees, keeping its weight off the injured leg.

Celegorm wants to help. Thinks that maybe—maybe if he can fix this, fix something, can save a life instead of abandoning it to its own fate—

The moment he gets closer, the pup retreats. It does not flee, though—keeps a steady distance between them, clever black eyes fixed on Celegorm even as it limps deeper into the forest.

“I just want to help,” Celegorm murmurs, following. It does not matter that he has no idea how to do such a thing, that there is nothing but the forest, endless wilderness of plants he does not know the use of because everyone in his family cares more for Aulë’s creations than for Yavanna’s.

Until today, Celegorm has only ever found it baffling. Now, helplessly wandering in the hurt beast’s wake, he feels for the first time something almost like resentment.

It startles him enough that he would have lost sight of his target, if not for the bright-white fur gleaming through the underbrush.

It is the moment Celegorm realises that he is lost. He hesitates, the span of a breath, before he keeps following. The look on the pup’s face almost seems to judge him for it, even as it keeps limping ahead.

What a strange procession they must make.

They reach a silvery clearing just as Laurelin’s light fades for good. Celegorm has not marked the passing of time; it slams back into him, unexpected, with the sight of the figure that stands on the other side of the clearing, edges melting into shadow, vines and roots tangling in its hair.

It is not the first time that Celegorm meets an Ainu. It is the first that he falls to his knees, as if some age-old instinct is pushing him down.

He bows his head. The weight of a gaze has never been this physical.

“Tyelkormo,” Oromë says, his voice a rumble through the trees. “You have been wandering my woods for a long time.”

“I was told they were Yavanna’s woods,” Celegorm says, before he can stay his tongue. Never has it been his talent to think before he speaks, much to his family’s eternal despair.

He might have finally understood their plight if the God across from him had not shaken the forest with his laughter.

It sounds like a revelation. Celegorm pushes back to his feet, feels something taking root deep in his chest.

Oromë, in his mirth, no longer appears as fey. The burnished gold of his hair is still a riot haloing him, the forest still bows its tree-crowned head to him, and his dark skin gleams in the light, but—

But. A spark of kinship, of recognition. Celegorm meets the golden eyes and, for the first time in his life, feels like someone is seeing him, and him alone.

It is years before Celegorm gets to ride in the hunt. Years of growing distance from his family, of nursing Huan back to health, of naming him, a gift and a claim. Of riding ever deeper into the woods alongside him, changing lands and savage beauty filling him, finally, to the brim.

It is years, and Celegorm always, unfailingly, gravitates back home—to his mother’s laughter and his father’s rare smiles. To Maitimo’s care, and Makalaurë’s songs, to Carnistir’s silence, and the brothers that come after. To Curufinwë, and how he takes a hold of Celegorm one day and simply refuses to let go—out of all the people in the house, and, for the first time, someone other than a God picks him without a second thought.

It leaves him split in two more often than not. The forest, the hunt, the heady rush of being something other. His family—parents, brothers, Finwë, his cousins. Írissë joins him, and it is like coming up for air, for the first time in years; finally, someone to understand.

And yet. And yet.

The first time Celegorm dares to touch Oromë in anything other than supplication, he is drunk on the rush of his first kill. There is blood on his hands, his face, on his skin; he still does not know if he wants to flinch from, or bathe in it.

It tastes heady on his tongue. The fires in the clearing burn bright. His skin feels too tight to contain all of him.

He drops to his knees before Oromë, and there is nothing innocent in the gesture. He meets the gold-burnt eyes, all his devotion smeared crimson across his face to see.

He has never been more unashamed.

“Please,” he says, and it sounds like a dare, like an oath. Like something he can never take back.

Oromë frames his face, touches his mouth. It burns like reinvention.

Exile

In many ways, Formenos does not feel real.

Celegorm goes because he must, because he loves his family. Because he does not think that his father is wrong, no matter the lectures that Írissë treats him to.

But even the north has its forests, and by then, it is easy, always, to find the hunt. Huan is a steady companion by his side. Oromë may frown in disapproval, and yet, he never forbids Celegorm his liberties.

It is not easy, but it is alright; a short snatch in an endless unspooling of time, and what does it matter, then, if increasingly often Celegorm finds himself watched by Oromë with dark eyes. If increasingly often, his father’s fury is directed his way, accusations of fraternising, of vitriol where once Fëanáro had ever dared to raise his voice least of all against Celegorm, against the likeness he embodies.

“A God,” Curufinwë scoffs, one night, when Celegorm returns from the Hunt. “If ever it comes down to it, who do you think he will choose? His brethren, or you? And can you blame him, then? When it comes down to it—oh, when it finally comes down to it—after all, you will make the same choice, will you not?”

Will he not? Celegorm wonders, as he cleans his knives.

The forest has been his home for as long as he can remember; Oromë’s pillow the bed he slept in most easily for years.

But then—but then.

His father’s unflinching love, even when the mere sight of Celegorm cut him to the bone; the endless trips across Aman, the determination to learn about plants and beasts to teach Celegorm, once it became obvious that it was the thing he cared for most.

His mother’s patience, her humour, her steady, calloused hand on the back of his neck, even when he brought home beasts and bugs and divine creatures in the form of dogs. Maitimo keeping the gardens wild, and his door ajar, always. Makalaurë singing his strays to sleep, so that he may set their bones and stitch up their wounds with little suffering. Carnistir, always ready to leap to his defence. Curufinwë—Curufinwë. As wild and careless as Celegorm, racing across open plains, always, always a dare on his tongue.

The twins, late-comers, eager pupils to all Celegorm, by then, had to teach.

His grandfather, always so full of stories of a wide, wild world beyond. Celegorm could never bear to lose them.

And yet.

He realises, when Aman goes dark, that he does not know fear, not truly.

He sees it in the white of his brothers’ eyes, in the tension running like a thread through all of his cousins. Notes it taking root in his chest when they cannot find their father, and watches as it tangles itself up in the one thought that keeps ricocheting through his mind—Finwë, dead. Dead, dead, dead and gone.

Celegorm does not yet know loss. He searches for Oromë’s eyes in the crowd, searches for a response, for action, and finds none.

He turns to Maitimo and finds grim determination on his face. Then, in the darkness of Tirion with Huan steady by his side, it is the only thing that matters.

Celegorm knows the weight of an oath, its meaning. Knows that it is no light thing to utter, especially not while dragging the name of a God across your tongue.

Knows, too, how easily such an oath can be broken. It has been countless years of his place in the Hunt, of Oromë’s heavy hands on him.

It has been the decision of a split second, his father and brothers shining brilliantly in the light of torches, to leap to their sides. To doom himself, then, because the only people in Finwë’s stories of old who have made two promises have always been the ones to come to ruin, some sooner, some later.

Celegorm may be many things; he is not delusional enough to think himself exempt from them.

And so, he follows.

The darkness is a bristling, breathing thing. His father and brothers, for once, seem as wild as Celegorm feels. There is a fight, and Celegorm meets it, crimson across white-washed wooden planks.

He knows the weight of a life, what it means to take it. This is no different (it isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t).

It is not until Mandos’ Doom echoes across the land that he realises that, still, he had been waiting—for Oromë to appear, to intervene. To stop him.

Oromë does not, and his glaring absence is all the louder for it.

Celegorm did not think himself so easily abandoned. He refuses to look at the irony of that.

It drives him forward, a building sense of prideful resentment. Aman had always been too narrow, his lover always temporary, his faith never been anything other than—

He takes a torch to the boats right alongside Fëanáro and Curufinwë. His oldest brother stands aside, his grave face twisted in grief that Celegorm loudly judges him for, and silently cannot endure.

His youngest brother’s screams cut through the night, and there, on the shores of the land they are now bound to call home, Celegorm learns of regret.

Or perhaps he would have, if he had not turned away, shutting his heart against it as he had been taught to do so long ago.

Early Beleriand

He plunges himself into battle, into rallying their people, into racing across Hithlum’s rocky hills.

He kills Orcs by the dozens, black blood smearing his sword, his clothes, Huan’s fur. Does not think of Írissë, at the edge of the heaving Ice. Does not think of Oromë, unmoving, inert, leaving him and all his kin to their fate.

He does not think, merely wins battle after battle, his blood singing with the thrill of it.

At the end of it, his father still dies in flames. At the end of it, his oldest brother is still captured.

At the end of it, Curufin still looks at him with barely contained accusation, and Maglor with barely concealed resentment as he repeats, demands, orders Celegorm to yield, his voice twisted into inescapable law.

The twins no longer look at him at all. It is this that makes him bow his head in deference, accept the weight of the guilt for his failures—to his father, his brothers. None other still matters.

He loves his brothers, he does. He wonders how much longer it will be enough, the dark reality of this new land, of their self-wrought doom, seeping into all the cracks already.

Maedhros ’ Abdication

It is only Caranthir, stern face and harsher words, that stops Celegorm from confronting Maglor about his cowardice, that stops him from yelling, I told you, I told you we could have done it. Instead, you have left him to rot, you who claim to love him best. Instead, we are now indebted to Findekáno, for daring what you did not.

It is only Caranthir who stops him, but Maglor knows. A small mercy, and one that means little throughout their eldest brother’s arduous recovery. Means little as he speaks more intimately with Amrod about their shared disfigurement, Maedhros the only one who had no part in it. As he speaks once again most with Findekáno, his low voice rough and threadbare in a way he no longer allows the rest of them to hear.

Give it time, Caranthir tells them. As if giving it time had not meant their brother’s torture for endless turns of the moon, had not meant sitting idle and useless.

Still, Celegorm does. Grits his teeth, avoids meeting Maglor’s eyes, avoids letting his gaze linger on the mangled, broken form of Maedhros. Tries to take heart, instead, from the sharpened edge that Maedhros’ words now carry, the cold-white hardness of his eyes. They may yet arise anew, they may yet rally themselves, claim their rightful places, may yet—

Oh, how Celegorm resents the hope. They have doomed themselves the moment they raised their swords in Alqualondë. It was no Oath that drove them, no divine fate. There is only one way this will end, and it is only a question of how they will reach it.

He believes that, he does. He still feels it like a blow when Maedhros announces his abdication to Fingolfin.

“My brothers and I will remove east in the wake of it,” Maedhros adds, and he stands tall and terrible, an immovable mountain. He meets Celegorm’s eyes, and Celegorm knows there is no longer any use in trying to appeal to him for anything.

He refuses to show deference. He follows regardless, Aredhel’s dark eyes burning like a living thing into the soft skin of his neck.

She has not spoken to him once since she arrived on these shores. Has only made it clear, through impenetrable distance, that if it had been Celegorm up on that mountain, she, unlike her mad brother, would not have come after him.

Celegorm tells himself that it matters not. When they leave, he refuses to look back.

The Long Peace

In truth, Himlad is a relief, is, during those first few decades, almost enough to banish the lingering doubts into the shadows.

They build their strongholds. They rally their people. They besiege Morgoth, they hunt through endless woods, they come and go as they please and only rarely are they reminded of all that came before.

Only rarely does Celegorm think of Oromë riding through these same woods in ages past, of what it would have taken, perhaps, to bring him back alongside Celegorm. If he tells himself that it is rarely, he may believe it eventually.

He does not pray, and no one answers. Not any longer.

Celegorm grows ever-closer to Curufin, the spaces left open between them in Aman now closing. He spends as many a night worrying about the empty, faraway look his brother gets too often, whenever he thinks of their father, the burn marks on his arms a perpetual reminder, as he delights in having someone as unapologetically determined and vicious as himself beside him.

They gather at Himring, even the twins making their way up north, every once in a while.

It is not that any of them greatly enjoy those days, those long dinners, those strange attempts to reenact what once was dear and now is ever fraught with tension. It is just that at the end of the day, they have always stuck together, no matter their differences.

There is no land, no foe, no crime against each other that could ever change that.

Of course, it cannot last. Deep down, Celegorm had always known that, and for all their disagreements in recent times, in this, he and Maedhros are perhaps the most alike.

He returns from weeks of hunting with Amrod and Amras, the relationship between them strained and strange since the boats, no matter how hard he tries (and he tries, and tries, and tries; and yet Amrod will never look at him the same again. Celegorm knows this; he does).

He returns and hears of Aredhel’s visit, the time she had spent in their Keep, waiting, riding out, growing impatient.

It is so like her that it burns. In the notes of her absence, he can hear the shadows of their Doom creeping in again, like rotten roots and poisoned flesh, the stench of death ever trailing in his wake.

He hears of her death long after the fact, from Maedhros, who had been told by Fingon.

Celegorm thought that he knew rage, knew what it meant to grit his teeth, raise his chin in the face of contempt. What it meant to lose something dear, and how to survive it.

He stands on Himring’s battlements, the wind howling around him, and fixes his eyes on Doriath’s forest in the distance. He thinks, with the savage certainty that comes right before a kill, that he could burn it and all that ever came from it, without losing a single night of sleep over it.

The Dagor Bragollach

The land burns.

Celegorm would laugh at the inevitability of it, but he is too caught up in fighting, in making Morgoth bleed for every inch that he gains.

And bleed he does. In the end, it makes no difference.

The pass falls. Himlad is overrun. In the distance, they can see the Gap go up in flames.

Celegorm has never before felt this helpless, this cornered—has never felt so much like prey. All they have built and fought for, crumbling to ashes in moments, and no amount of rage, of determination, of endurance, can change the way everything goes up in flames around them.

Never again, he vows, and knows it to be an empty promise. It only fuels the rage burning like poison within him.

“Shall we try for Himring?” Celebrimbor asks, his face cast sharp in the dancing shadows.

Celegorm does not know when his nephew has grown up so much. He thinks of Maglor, then, inexplicably, of the sharp-thorned distance that has grown between them ever since they left Aman.

He shakes his head. “No use. We will lose more trying to make it through than it is worth.”

The north burns. Doriath will never let them pass. He has no hope for any of Angrod and Aegnor’s people and ignores the sting that comes with it.

It has been a long time since they were family in anything but name. Except—

“We ride South. We ride for Nargothrond.”

The fact that his brother does not protest, merely passes the word along, speaks to the dread of their situation.

Celegorm wonders if they will ever get to stop running again.

He knows the answer, of course. He ignores that, too.

Nargothrond welcomes them with open arms, and Celegorm wants to scoff at the naiveté. He knows better than to underestimate their cousin though, and so he does not.

And for a while, all is stable. He watches as Curufin’s eyes follow dear, golden Ingoldo through the dim halls. Watches as Finrod looks back, his eyes sharp and contemplative. Watches as their people settle into Nargothrond, as they grow content once more. As Celebrimbor spends time in the forges, and Curufin his nights in Finrod’s bed.

Celegorm swallows his cruelty about it, a part of him still too relieved at the absence of hollowness in his brother’s face.

Occasionally, his tongue will slip, though, will make him bare his teeth at Curufin, will mock and jeer, and ignore the bold-faced lies of it all following some kind of genius plan.

“You like that golden cock in your mouth, admit it; if only father could see you so,” he says one night, drunk on heavy wine and the festering, bitter cavity within his chest.

Even as he says it, he knows it to be cruel. It is the only reason he does not block Curufin’s punch; merely wipes the blood off his mouth and keeps grinning. “You can deny it all you want, Curufinwë, but you are just as wretched as I am. As we all are, in this godforsaken land.”

He does not wait for the pity to wash across Curufin’s face, mocking and unbearable. Tomorrow, all will be forgotten; between them, it always is.

Still, always, the rage simmers just beneath the surface. Celegorm has long since given up on any desire to tame it into something less ruinous.

When Finrod announces his Quest with the Man at his side, Celegorm does laugh.

Eru must possess some humour, clearly, for this to come upon them.

“It is the Oath,” Curufin insists, his jaw clenched tight. “We have no choice.”

Celegorm has not yet grown cruel enough to tell him otherwise. He knows, though. He does, and so does Finrod; in the end, it is only ever their choices that have brought them here.

In the end, there is little left for them but to keep moving. His brother does not need to hear this, though. Not yet.

And so Celegorm speaks in front of the court, pulls forth fear and uncertainty, plants the same seeds of rebellion that his father had sown, so long ago.

He may have never had the same inclination to linguistic theory and lettering that his father did, but oh, Celegorm knows how to speak the language of any beast. Their fallen kin is no different; the effect marvellous.

Finrod leaves Nargothrond with a mere ten companions. As Curufin watches with dark eyes, as Celebrimbor lingers in the background, unwilling to be close to them, Celegorm feels nothing at all.

The rage, at least, returns not long after. Flares bright and devastating once they find Lúthien, her fair skin and black hair moving through the forest, calling to his mind someone else entirely.

“It is revenge,” he tells Curufin, when his brother watches him with a crease between his brows. “It is power. What do you think we will be able to accomplish with Doriath’s allegiance?”

It is the Oath, he does not say. Knows that Curufin hears it regardless, lets it drive him, as if they hold no power in all this.

They do. This, this is all them, and it is merely a matter of following it through to its inevitable conclusion.

Celegorm has nothing to prove but his point. If Huan’s judging eyes follow him into sleep, he has grown well-skilled in ignoring that, too.

And then, and then.

Lúthien escapes. Finrod dies. Huan leaves.

So does Celebrimbor, and Celegorm could hardly blame him, if he ever stopped to think.

He does not, cannot, no longer.

He wants to tear the world in two. Wants to bite and snarl, show whoever is still watching over him that they were right to give him up.

Oh, he will show them how right they were (him, he will show him; at the end of the day, that is still the only one who matters, ever has. Celegorm will not be so easily discarded and forgotten, he will not).

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

The fury, Celegorm learns, is a faithful companion, more faithful than any God.

It is the only thing to make Himring bearable.

His brothers no longer look at them the same. For the most part, they do not look at them at all, whenever they can help it.

Darling Findekáno visits Himring once, in the wake of Finrod’s death. It is the only time Celegorm ever wonders if Fingon might attack him.

He does not; he fights with Maedhros long into the night instead, and leaves the next day.

“You could have condemned us and been done with it,” Celegorm says, when they break their fast in the wake of it.

Maedhros meets his eyes, cold and terrible. “You are still my brothers. You know well enough what I think of you; I will not make a spectacle out of it to anyone else.”

It is, in truth, more than Celegorm would have expected. It is almost touching, if not for the contempt in the twist of Maedhros’ mouth.

It is what they do, though.

And so, when Maedhros calls, they follow, his grand Union almost, almost, almost enough to bring something akin to hope back into the cold and dreary fortress.

Celegorm does not so much as expect them to win as that he refuses to contemplate losing. Regardless of the outcome, he has been itching for a battle since they fled Himlad, since Finrod, since, since, since—

It still amazes him, how spectacularly they lose, the utter devastation that is wrought against them all. The betrayal, the dragon that he had vowed such vengeance against, scant years ago, and Celegorm fights, and fights, and fights, blood drumming in his ears and coating his armour, his hands, his hair, until Curufin physically drags him off the battlefield, his hand a vice on the reins of Celegorm’s horse, his eyes an order that leaves no room for argument.

Celegorm wants to fight against it, wants to rip to shreds whatever stands in his way. In the end, he does not. He paces in the aftermath, caged once more, and cannot bear to think of how little there is left of them, now.

Of none of them less than of Maedhros, truth be told. After Thangorodrim, Celegorm had not thought it possible to see his eldest brother brought any lower, and yet—

And yet, it had nothing on the figure before him now, sitting on a bedroll that Maglor had rolled out. Celegorm had not realised, until then, that he had never before seen someone devoid of any hope.

It is almost enough to move him to pity.

Celegorm gives it some time. Watches—Maedhros, Maglor, their people. The power vacuum that is settling into their midst.

They have removed to Amon Ereb, the only one of their Keeps still in their power. The Ambarussa’s forces are the largest remaining one they have, too; Celegorm and Curufin’s people had, infamously, mostly stayed in Nargothrond. Caranthir’s were hit the worst by the Men’s betrayal.

It is mainly Maedhros’ and Maglor’s men, still holding the balance. Maedhros is in no state to lead, and Maglor, this time, refuses to fill the void, refuses to leave Maedhros’ rooms for longer than necessary, to so much as speak to any of them, really.

Someone needs to take charge. No one ever said it had to happen for selfless reasons.

Prelude to Doriath

Still, for many years, little happens.

They hunt—Orcs, for food, their ghosts. They wander.

They cannot stand to spend much time in each other’s presence any longer. Or, perhaps, the others cannot stand to spend much time in his and Curufin’s presence any longer, but then, it boils down to the same thing. It matters no longer.

They avoid each other where they can. Return to each other when they must.

And then, and then; Doriath falls. Lúthien dies. The boy-king wears their father’s jewel like a taunt.

Maedhros still refuses to lead, and Celegorm calls his brothers together.

The truth is—the truth has always been, from the very start—

Celegorm knows monsters, knows the shape and make of them. He knows what they have all become, what they are hurling towards—no Oath, no Doom, nothing other than themselves walking every single step of the way.

Celegorm knows monsters, and he knows what awaits them, at the end of it all. There is nothing but to play this through to its bitter, inevitable conclusion.

He calls for his brothers and is obeyed.

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