The Day Transcending Night by StarSpray  

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Fourteen

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As Celebrimbor got stronger and started to feel a little more at ease around them, especially after he spilled the truth of the rings and seemed to feel as though he’d shed some great burden, Elurín started dragging him outside to walk through the hills or the woods whenever the weather was good enough for it. Celebrimbor couldn’t go fast or far, but Elurín thought every little bit would help. “You need to build up your strength,” he said, “and walking is the easiest way to do it. If we leave it up to Lossenol, he’ll just shove a stick in your hands and try to hit you for an hour every day.”

“I should probably build up that strength again too,” Celebrimbor pointed out as they stepped outside, finding Celegorm doing just that to Daeron, who slipped in the frosty grass and went down with a yelp. Celegorm laughed at him, but his grin faltered when he glanced up and caught Elurín’s eye. They’d come to a sort of uneasy truce. Elurín could speak to him about normal everyday things without being cold or standoffish, mostly, but he didn’t know how to close the distance. He couldn’t make the name atya come out of his mouth.

Lossenol and Celegorm still seemed like two very different people to him, and he still didn’t know how he was supposed to just—forgive Doriath. Eluréd could talk about many things being true all he liked, but that did not make them any easier for Elurín to hold in his mind or his heart at the same time. It still felt like the worst of betrayals, now that he knew the truth. And yet…

As they passed into the woods, their footsteps silent over the pine needles and leaves, Celebrimbor said, “Can I ask…” 

“Your uncle killed my father,” Elurín said after Celebrimbor trailed off and did not seem to know how to finish the question. “And then he forgot who he was and—and raised Eluréd and me, and we were happy, for such a long time. It’s—I still don’t know how to balance those things.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just know how complicated it can be. My family, I mean—loving them.”

“It never was simple. I just thought that I understood the ways in which it was complicated, and then…it got worse. Eluréd can do it, but I can’t. And if I try to speak to him about it I’ll just lose my temper, and that won’t solve anything.”

“It might make you feel better.”

“No,” Elurín said. He kicked a clump of leaves and watched them settle back down onto the forest floor. “It never does, really. It’s just—the person I’ve called my father since I was ten years old—he can’t be the same person who led the attack on my home. Who killed my first father.”

“I thought the same thing, when I last saw him in Nargothrond,” said Celebrimbor after a moment. “Or—well, not the same thing, but something very like it. I still do not understand how someone can change so much—he or my father. Or my uncles. It was the Oath, I think, but I’ve never sworn an oath like that and I know I can never understand the weight of it, but it also never seemed to change Maglor the way it changed them, so…I don’t know. And if I did bind myself like that, I would not do it the same kind of furious grief that they did. Twice. But Celegorm was different, even from my father. He just seemed to stop caring, in Nargothrond, after Beren came. It was as though it didn’t matter what he did, as long as it got him a little closer to fulfilling the Oath, though I’m not sure he really believed then that they ever would. Maglor’s right, you know. His forgetting—and all of you—saved him in more ways than one.”

“It wasn’t meant to save him, I don’t think,” said Elurín.

“Maybe saving him was not meant as a kindness,” said Celebrimbor, “but—well, curses and oaths and things, they so rarely turn out exactly how those who speak them think they will, do they?”

“I suppose not. And—I’m sorry. I do not mean to mar your own happiness.”

“Every scrap of happiness I have found since the Darkening has been marred,” said Celebrimbor with a shrug. “But finding that someone you love and thought dead is not only alive but—better? Than when you last saw him? There’s little that can mar that, except the circumstances that brought about the meeting, I suppose. It still doesn’t feel quite real, but I know that is because Annatar—Sauron—he tried very hard to pry into my mind, and in doing so he tried to plant things there that weren’t real. When that didn’t work—that was when he took up—other tools. Or at least I don’t think it worked. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

“It seems we came for you just in time,” Elurín said quietly. “I’m sorry that we did not come sooner.”

“I never expected anyone to come at all,” Celebrimbor said with a shrug. And then he winced, having pulled on one of his wounds. “I expected to die there from the moment I realized what it meant, that he’d forged a ring of his own. I just needed to hold out long enough for Celeborn and Elrond to get away.”

“I think you did. We neither saw nor heard any sign of them, and I do not think Daeron or Maglor did either.”

“And Eluréd saw them both in the mirror, I know. And the Three are safe, even if the Seven and Nine are not.” Celebrimbor ducked his head, strands of hair falling out of his braids, hiding his eyes. It was a bright day, cloudless and not quite as cold as it had been, but Celebrimbor still moved slowly and stiffly, and there were still shadows of other deeper pains behind his eyes that Elurín did not know how to banish.

Elurín was abruptly sick of shadows and darkness and the marring of the world. “Let’s forget about all of that for a while,” he said. “Let’s pretend nothing terrible is happening just out of sight—tell me more of what else you made there in Ost-in-Edhil, pretend it’s still there and you can show it all to me when we go north again. Eluréd and I visited once, but did not see as much as we would have liked, and I think you were away from the city then.”

Celebrimbor hesitated, but after a few more encouragements he started to talk of the founding of the city, and of his friendships among the Dwarves. The way his eyes lit up as he described the things they had created together made Elurín regret spending so much time away in the east. He found himself wishing that he could have been there in Ost-in-Edhil instead, to see Celebrimbor at work and to have known him in happier times. 

They did not go far, and did not stay out long. But by the time they returned home he’d even gotten Celebrimbor to laugh, by way of some absurd story from when he and Eluréd had been very young and reckless in the woods of Eriador. Both Maglor and Celegorm turned in surprise at the sound, and Elurín thought for a moment that Maglor might burst into tears. That moment passed, though, and the mood in the house was far lighter that afternoon and evening than it had been in many months. Elurín knew that he marred it by still refusing to speak to Celegorm unless he had to, but every time he opened his mouth the words got stuck in his throat. 

“Well, find a way to unstick them,” said Eluréd when Elurín told him so that night. Daeron had not yet come upstairs, so they had a few minutes to themselves. “You can’t keep going like this. Neither can he, but you don’t seem to care—”

“Of course I care,” Elurín said. “I just—how do you let it go?”

“I haven’t let it go, but you know what Daeron says about hatred—”

“It’s easy for him—”

“I really don’t think it is,” Eluréd said as Daeron came into the room. “Daeron, do you find it easy to not let hate rule you?”

Daeron paused, blinking at them, hands frozen halfway to unwinding a string of glass beads from his braids. “It’s easier now than it used to be,” he said after a moment. “It takes practice, like anything else. And, I suppose, I’ve never been inclined to hatred by nature, so maybe it’s easier for me than for others. Do you want to tell me what this is about?”

“I don’t hate him,” Elurín said. “I don’t. But I just—”

Daeron came over to wrap his arms around him. “It would be easier if you did not keep it all locked up inside you, birdie.”

“I don’t think anyone wants me to let it out,” Elurín muttered, turning so he could hide his face in Daeron’s stomach. At least Daeron was who he had always been; at least Elurín could turn to him and find shelter and understanding—never condemnation, just love—and never fear that some other terrible secret would reveal him to be someone entirely different. He wished, not for the first or last time, that he could be more like Daeron than like himself.

“I told Lossë once that mourning those kinslayers who died at Sirion or Doriath was not a betrayal of us,” said Daeron after a moment. “But he still tried to do what you are doing, to bury it all down somewhere he did not have to think of it, because to him it felt like a betrayal—if not of me, then of you. And then it all came out on the beach—you heard it, same as I did. This isn’t so different—”

“This is a betrayal, though,” Elurín said into his shirt. “Of—of our father, of—”

“I refuse to believe our father would want us to cling to such anger,” Eluréd said.

“But he’s the one that—”

“I never knew Dior,” said Daeron, “but I do not think that his actions in the last moments of his life, when he was angry and frightened and in pain, should be the example that you follow. I think I can say with confidence that that is not what Lúthien would want.”

“I don’t think she would have wanted us to be raised by Celegorm.”

“Maybe not, but that is still what happened, Elurín. You know that he loves you more than anything, and that he regrets, deeply, all that he did. It haunts him—it will haunt him, I think, forever. If things were different I would say that you should take what time you need, but I do not think we have that luxury. I don’t know how long we can stay here in safety. Whatever happens in the north, it is only a matter of time before the Enemy realizes that we are not there. He’ll come for us—and we need to make our way north before that happens.”

“You really want to take Lossë and Maglor to Galadriel?”

“No,” said Daeron, stroking Elurín’s hair, “but what other choice do we have? The Enemy will expect us to make for Lindon by way of the coast, once he realizes that we haven’t already. We could try to reach Edhellond and go by ship, but that will take months that I fear we do not have. If we can even reach Edhellond. We must not forget that the Enemy came from the east. He may have left servants behind to wreak havoc in his absence. There are no good options, but at least crossing the Gap and making for the forests east of the mountains is the shortest route, and when we reach the woods we will be able to ask help of the Ents.” 

The Ents had helped them before—without them, neither Celegorm nor Eluréd and Elurín would have ever made it out of Doriath. They would certainly allow them passage through their woods now. Elurín tried to imagine what the meeting with Galadriel would look like, and could already feel himself bristle at what she would likely say to Celegorm and Maglor. He didn’t know what to do with that feeling, either.

“You need to be able to trust Lossenol,” Daeron said quietly. “And he needs to know that he can trust you, when someone needs to watch his back or fall in on his left. Neither Maglor nor Celebrimbor are used to that yet, the way we are.”

“I do trust him,” Elurín whispered. But he didn’t know if that was true, or if he just wanted it to be true. 

He had always known that his foster father had been a kinslayer. But it was so different now to know that he had planned and led the assault. To know that he had been so hateful and cruel. Maybe the Oath was no more, but what else might happen to cause such a change in him? Fëanor had not been Oath-bound when he had drawn his sword upon his own brother. Was not Celegorm Fëanor’s son? What wrong step would Elurín, the son of Dior Eluchíl who had kept the Silmaril out of Celegorm’s hands and then cursed him with his dying breath, need to take to have a sword pointed at his own throat?

Oh. Elurín leaned harder against Daeron, squeezing his eyes shut, unable to speak aloud this sudden realization. He wasn’t angry at all, was he? It was just that fear sometimes felt so similar. 

But what was he supposed to do when the person who had once calmed all his fears was now the source of them?