#once again i've caught myself in a trap wherein i NEED to write a foundational fic in a...not series so much as coherent timeline

[tanoraqui]

listen this is kinda crack and this is very crack and this is PURE crack, but nonetheless I’m sitting here slightly overwrought at the thought of… Even without Sauron to defeat, I think the Third Age still ends, the Age of Men still begins, with the Choice and wedding of Arwen Evenstar; the departure of Elrond and Galadriel and the final fading of the last great elven-realms of Middle Earth. Maybe they stay a few extra years to meet all the grand/great-grandchildren? But they don’t tarry long.

But Celebrimbor keeps tarrying! Why shouldn’t he? The ring he bears is Narya II, kindler of spirits, a little less great than its (long-since destroyed) original but also never dragged down in the final fall of a One. He married to a Great Maia determined to keep him alive and spiritually whole at any cost. (They’ve debated “at any cost” and compromised on Celebrimbor not getting himself killed and so never direly pressing the issue.)

Yes, the great elven-realms are gone—but I’m not sure they ever made a new one, after losing Ost-in-Edhil and destroying Númenor in retaliation, and being in mild shock for a few years after just barely surviving the destruction of Númenor. The Valar may or may not send Istari in this timeline, because there’s already Celebrimbor and Annatar wandering around Middle Earth and further continents, and for a while whatever of the Mirdain are left to go with them, randomly showing up in different realms to offer technological innovation, loudly and slightly threateningly debate the ethics of the local laws, and introduce/encourage/oversee use of the international currency Annatar introduced when the economy of pretty much every coastal country in the world was conveniently floundering in the face of an unexpected giant oceanic. (They weren’t in shock for that long.) (It’s called the mainad, lit. “precious thing”, pl. mainaid. Celebrimbor officially named it, but you bet your ass Annatar-who-is-emotionally-an-evil-cat was already thinking it.) (Why back a currency in gold or silver when you can back it in a minor deity saying, “Because I said so”?)

(Okay, they more like settle places for a couple centuries at a time, because you need time to get a forge set up just right and really get to work in it. Despite Celegorm’s best efforts, Celebrimbor has never been a camping person, or even an inns person.)

So they just...keep doing that in the Age of Men. It’s like having semi-benevolent trickster gods but inversed to creating order rather than chaos. Except now and then, when absolutely necessary, they do overturn governments. 

But…Celebrimbor is getting tired, metaphysically. Even Narya can only do so much, even for her bearer. Maybe especially for her bearer. Even Annatar can only do so much, when his power is set against the great Marring of the World—to which he once contributed proudly!—that erodes the fëa of Elves just as disease and age erode the hröa of Men. More slowly, obviously, but no less inevitably. 

[Tangential headcanon: in the late First Age, everybody but especially Elves were getting morally shaky and plain unpleasant to be around, in the way stress often brings out the worst in people but…moreso. Morgoth’s Ring, Arda is called, because his defeat came only when he’d poured so much power into the whole world that the rest of him could be chained and exiled. When the other Valar kicked him out of Arda, they managed to card out enough of that twisted, corruptive intent and throw it out with him that now it’s just...wearing. Tiring. To live in this world. Normal amounts of “stress makes people worse” - and the stress can ebb rather than grow and grow. Unless you live in Valinor where it’s aggressively sterilized of even this ultimate, exhausting Marring.]

At first Annatar takes advantage of it—less nagging to not infringe on people’s free will for their own good and the good of the world overall! Finally! Maybe he even argues that they’ve been doing things more or less Celebrimbor’s way for literally 6000+ years with only minimal, at most moderate net average improvement and glorification of Arda, so it’s PAST time to try Annatar’s way where they also use armies, blatant coercion, etc. Tired of the argument, a little less invested than he used to be, Celebrimbor agrees, and the Dark Lord starts to build an empire once more…

But only for a few centuries. He doesn’t get very far. Because once he’s conceded that point, Celebrimbor has less… Is less. It’s just hard to be hype for a dream that isn’t his anymore - he fought the long defeat and, well, he lost. As prophecied three Ages ago on the shore of what would be Lindon. It’s so thoroughly the Age of Men that he hasn’t seen another elf in decades, and it was Maglor who doesn’t count, and he’s tired.

And Annatar lost his own war over 6000 years ago when he admitted, “Well I’m not going to do it without you!”

So, like, Annatar settling some affairs, maybe even letting the “good” guys “win” for the sake of hope or whatever, and just walks away, carrying a half-drowsing Celebrimbor. (Celebrimbor nuzzling into his chest because husband soft, warm, literally and metaphysically.) He walks - or maybe flies on epic wings of fire; one last #drama moment - to the beach where Dave (the Balrog) is sitting with Maglor, who is... if Celebrimbor is half-faded, Maglor has reverted entirely to the frail-but-for-his-Song, half-faded, half-hallucinating beach hobo he was when Dave first found him. Having a companion who was also There, Back Then, and monstrous at the time (and still kinda now) was good for him for a millennia or two, but he’s been exhausted since he threw the Silmaril into the Sea. Since years before that, actually. But if he doesn’t tell the tale, and paean the star and requiem the dead and... who will? And what other purpose has he?

Dave has spent the last couple centuries trailing after Maglor along the shoreline, making sure he eats and sleeps in kind of the way you look after your beloved pet who’s on their last legs and it’d almost be a mercy to put them to sleep already but they’re hanging in there and they still seem happy when they lie in the sun and you love them too much to give up quite yet... (Cracky romance is great but I do think Dave does less well than Annatar at ever internalizing the idea that the Children of Eru could be their equals rather than, like, surprisingly competent sentient annoyances.) 

Annatar arrives to this, Celebrimbor in his arms, and he says, “Come on, Dave, let’s go - it’s time to take the kids home.” And maybe they argue (Dave argues; Dave is a little scared, though he won’t admit it; the Balrogs were servants of Melkor even before they all entered Arda. He’s never been anything but foe to the other Valar. But Annatar used to be Sauron, Deceiver and Gorthaur, Lieutenant of Angband, and before even that he was Mairon, servant of Aulë, so he prevails. And moreover, he builds a boat (which they probably have to con Maglor onto because he’s also still scared to Sail), 

The Men, having “defeated” the Dark Lord, promptly declare it to be the Fifth Age now. Presumptuous - they haven’t even invented the steam engine yet.

[Slightly overwrought, to be clear, because maybe it’s about...care-taking. Maybe it’s about love. Maybe it’s about redemption and no one being lost, no matter how long it takes them to come home. Maybe it’s all a story about learning to respect and care for your father’s differently-born younger children, who are, in fact, yours to care for as well, and not actually a blight upon the world.]

#ficlet #my fic #the hell do i tag this #the silmarillion #silvergifting #annatar #sauron #mairon #celebrimbor #maglor #dave the balrog #he's a character now shh #once again i've caught myself in a trap wherein i NEED to write a foundational fic in a...not series so much as coherent timeline #in order to provide proper context for the rest of it (which i keep bithely writing instead)