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It wasn't a conscious thing for him, not really, but he had this inexplicable fondness for new growths, fauna and flora alike. It wasn't until Eönwë flew down one time in the middle of Valar's festivities where almost all the Ainur were in attendance, where he had with him five small beings that he claimed were brought about by Eru as new maiar. They came late, much later than their brethren, that they became novelties, small in stature and might but unmistakably one of them.
They presently stood as tall as Mairon's knees, and he was told by Eönwë that they were different in a manner in which they would grow into their fana, something which Eru designed for the future incarnates that He called Children.
They were happy to be led by the other maiar, and, vaguely, Mairon noted that one was certain to serve Aulë. And yet it wasn't that one who came close to him where none would, bright eyes with the light of the trees peering up at him in wonder and amazement.
The little one called himself Olorin for it was the name Eru had given him, singing it to Mairon for the gift that it was.
"You're made in flames," he said, voice strong and soft with youthfulness. "Eönwë said he has a brother like fire."
"That I am. I serve Lord Aulë the Smith, and I work his forge fire and smelt his stones and metals."
There was no confusion on the little maia's face, only that of delight, guileless and wondrous that had Mairon felt some kind of rare consciousness. Mairon suspected that the new maiar had not come to awareness yet of who they were to serve and wondered how that would work. At the moment, Olorin was fascinated by Mairon's hair the most, where he had worn a net of luminescent stones shaped in the form of moths that oft lit the parts of Aman that were barely touched by the light of the trees.
Mairon weaved his fingers through his hair and took some of the scarlet stones in his palms. He crouched down on Olorin's level with enclosed fists, and with a gesture of blowing into them, he opened his hands to let the fireflies flutter around the young maia and into the wind.
Olorin's delightful giggles at the display were something Mairon would still remember for a long, long time.
In Angband, there was no child prisoner.
It seemed true that none of the Eldar, enlightened or otherwise, would deign bring a new life in times of strife. Which was why when the controlled experiment he had conducted on copulation between an orc and a female Avari resulted in an offspring, Gorthaur was quick to take it under his care, to raise and observe closely.
It was a deformed thing, at infancy as little as the runt of his smallest wolf's recent litter, with four limbs of different proportions. Its height was stunted, eyes bulbous and with an oddly bulging stomach. Its heartbeat was an erratic, uneven sound, and its breathing came in harsh pants when awake and noticeably slow and low when not.
It did not grow any better, barely as tall as his calves. It lumbered and crawled, mind and coordination undeveloped.
And yet it had not known Gorthaur's signature cruelty, had not known his harsh grip and tearing touch. To it Gorthaur sang, with a voice and song that rang within the black halls of Angband. In the quiet stillness of obsidian walls, the lullaby reminded Melkor dimly of the Beginning, of his once mighty Song that would have easily mingled with that of a bright flame's to create something beautiful entirely.
The creature had defied the nature of the Eldar and the Natural Order, and if that was not a miracle in of itself, Gorthaur knew not what would be.
His fondness for it ebbed toward a perilous territory that Gorthaur had yet to tread, but enough that when the creature died abruptly, his fury echoed within the dark halls.
And some, in hushed voices and whispers unheard, would also say grief.
When Annatar arrived in Eregion, its lord had taken an Edain for a ward.
A child who, for all that it was yet to take its first word and step, could all but command Celebrimbor's attention away from his making with a mere wail.
Its namedays were celebrated, its cries soothed and its laugh encouraged. Celebrimbor adored the child as dearly as one would the Children their offsprings. Annatar puzzled over this, at first, at how an Eldar could treat a child not even of his own blood nor race as if it was his own. Sentimentality of the Incarnates, he realized, and pity, too, toward someone who came to Arda weak and powerless and orphaned.
Celebrimbor named it Theo; a minute resemblance to the sire's name, he had said. And when Annatar could see how tenderly and lovingly he held it, he knew then what he could hold over Celebrimbor as a primary weakness.
Still, it was a glaring distraction from Celebrimbor's works, a wailing thing that earned more of Celebrimbor's time better spent in working with Annatar toward their goals. The logical thing to do was to eradicate its existence, purposeless that it was in the grand scheme of things. Annatar set a semblance of a plan that very same eve, with soundless footsteps on his way to the nursery.
The child was awake when Annatar saw him under Tilion's meager light, with eyes glittering in recognition toward Annatar's face. His lengthening shadow covered its form, a dark shade from the moonlight.
Until tiny fingers gripped Annatar's long nails, taking them as if a toy to nibble and gum on. When sharp claws were a hair's breath away from soft cheeks, they returned to their previous shape of blunted nails and calloused skin.
Theo studied Annatar's hand as curiously as he did the infant who remained unafraid but just as quickly turned dismayed when Annatar pulled away. The small face reddened and crumpled, and came next the strong wails from deceptively tiny pair of lungs.
He was on Annatar's arms when the spread of his palm went on his small back and making slow circles that he recalled Celebrimbor doing once. The cries easily reduced to sniffles and hiccups until the little body went slack, forehead knocking against Annatar's shoulder.
He could count wisps of blooming dark hair on the soft back of head. A bit of force and with a finger he could touch the stem connecting the brain and spine of soft bones. Instead, Annatar ran a knuckle from the nape to tailbone, careful of the delicate skin.
Celebrimbor stumbled upon them in that manner, a weary but fond smile playing on his lips. Annatar suspected he had been there long enough to watch him put Theo back to sleep, letting Celebrimbor's assumptions run as his ruse.
When Annatar gingerly put him back down to his bassinet and exited with Celebrimbor, the latter's smile hadn't left his face even until the next day and the next.
Three days later, it occurred to Annatar that Celebrimbor liked seeing him with Theo.
His main guise was to come to Eregion as an emissary of the West, but if Annatar had to adjust around the idea and take on the role of an accidental guardian and mentor to a rapidly growing Edain, well.
That could only endear the Lord of Eregion to him, couldn't it?
And it did, though what Annatar least expected was to find a surge of fascination on how Celebrimbor's mind work in return. He was a genius as his Grandfather had been, but a rare prodigy who refused to be hindered by his own pride. He welcomed all knowledge and wisdom, and to Annatar's teachings he had none but an open ear.
His ward adopted his voracity for learning, devouring languages that Annatar could teach him, of theories and paradoxes that challenged his young mind, and of the magic of Arda and beyond. Theo was yet to leave the grounds of Eregion on his own, but already he was worldly for a child of ten. And where there was a fascination for Celebrimbor's mind, there was pride for Theo, a pupil whose curiosity couldn't be held back by his short years and youth.
Celebrimbor liked that the three of them get to spend their time together at certain hours of the day, and Annatar... Annatar grew to like them too, he supposed, both the occasional tranquil silence and the passionate debate at times.
He contemplated on what it would mean, if this would be what Annatar would have from now on—for as long as time allowed Theo—and found that it wouldn't be so bad.
They made the rings, given freely but carefully to people they had chosen. Leaders and healers and farmers, they were, people known for their nobility and compassion. Annatar had thought that it would be the one to break his ruse, the darkness that marred their creation showing itself without any prompt.
But while Celebrimbor claimed to not be an impeccable judge of character over a short span of time, he had been fairly confident in their chosen ringbearers, and Annatar, in a spur of impulsivity, decided to put in his trust.
Trust that paid off once he saw the fruits of their labor: new vegetation and new growths, all borne from the pure will of the rings to make way for new life, for new beginnings.
He grew ever tired, a gradual but sure thing, but the weariness over his skillful deception had began to chafe in moments where he had learned to adore Celebrimbor's dreams, his conviction... his admiration that Annatar couldn't exactly say unreturned.
He thought back on the days when he had been offered the choice of repentance, how he had balked at kneeling at his once Masters' feet. He had spurned the path to forgiveness that Eönwë had generously given, but now he wondered if it had been a test instead, a test of his true resolve to tread the path of absolution.
Annatar dared not to think that it would be this easy for such great a crime he had committed, but knowing that there was a glimmer of chance still, with hands that retained their craft for beautiful creations, he wanted to hope.
It did nothing but solidify itself each passing days, in the turning of years that marked Theo's age. He grew bright and tall, not unlike his Celebrimbor with his smiles and laughs freely given. Dimly, Annatar noted, too, that it wouldn't be long until he grew past his foster father's appearance, and where the people he grew up knowing around him would remain timeless and ageless, he would eventually feel the thinning and stretching of worn skin over brittle bones.
"I can stop it," Annatar told him the night of his fifth year since coming of age. When the years started to feel unstoppable for Theo. "You need not age. You need not leave Eregion, your home."
You need not leave your father. You need not leave me.
"You do not have to answer now but know that it is a choice you can make," he added when Theo merely stared at him, as if Annatar wasn't offering him a gift preciously coveted by his brethren since their wake in Arda.
But Theo had the keen senses of his father to not notice the hint of desperation in Annatar's voice, that in the face of it he held forbearance that Annatar should have expected.
"No," was Theo's firm reply. "Do not get me wrong. If you had asked me when I was six, I would have agreed, naive as I was. But you wouldn't give me a gift, only," he paused and trailed off. "One day, I will grow old, taken slowly by time on my deathbed but surrounded by those I have loved throughout my life. I think some of them would still look like how I knew them as a child, while the rest will age like I did.
"It might be difficult to understand, but I know. I think I know the moment I became aware that I'm living on a borrowed time, but living and knowing love in spite of that are what make the years of the Edain worth it.
"And I'm not afraid to leave, not when I'm certain that I'll leave those who will come after me to people who will love them the same way I was loved."
Theo left no room for doubt, so certain that Annatar would still be here in the future and the next. And what could Annatar do against the face of hopeful optimism?
"You made him wise, of course," Celebrimbor would tell him later in the comfort of each other's company, a wry but rather amused smile playing on his lips. "He most certainly didn't get it from me."
"I have made peace with it, you know," he would tell Annatar next, once sobered. He didn't seem conscious of his hand laying atop Annatar's. "It's not easy, and I doubt it ever will be, but acceptance will come. Slow, but you know it will be there. And if nothing else, I know it will be nothing short of honoring his wish to let him go when the time comes."
Annatar wished, not for the first time, that he could bend as easily as those around him. To be as easily susceptible to change and acceptance of things that he could and could not change. But with the assurance of having Celebrimbor, if not for eternity then in the face of impending loss at the very least, Annatar thought the hurt wouldn't have to linger just as much.
It was the final nail to his ultimate decision, Annatar would reflect when it was time for him to leave Eregion. Not for forever as he had planned originally, no. Not anymore. Only to settle his affairs and start his own mending beginning from Mordor. Then he would be back and Celebrimbor would know it all.
"Write to us, and soon, if you can. Theo would hate to miss your messages while abroad." Annatar understood enough that the hint of grief on Celebrimbor was not solely for his departure; Theo was at the age where he had expressed a desire to wander and see more of Arda beyond the walls of Eregion. Celebrimbor had let him go on his first journey half a year ago, and knew that it would be the start of numerous journeys where Theo would come back a bit older every time, the mark of years ever more noticeable.
"I cannot give a definite time, but I will be here and it will be to stay." There was an overwhelming squeeze inside Annatar's chest at the bright hope that surged in Celebrimbor. "If you will have me."
"Of course I will." Celebrimbor gave him an incredulous wet laugh, as if that was as question anymore. "And when you come back, I will ask only this: let me know you. Let me know all that you are and I will love it all the same."
Pretty words that Celebrimbor seemed to believe himself. He wouldn't be, once he knew.
"You won't like it," he said still, as incriminating as he could get.
"Maybe," Celebrimbor allowed. "But I will be there to try."
Annatar departed Eregion at dusk, bearing with him the last light of the sun and wanting to keep it within himself for as long as he could until there would come a chance to give it to Celebrimbor and Theo.
He rode with the wind, a foreign anticipation consuming him until he could think of nothing else but coming back to Eregion, to his and Celebrimbor's forge, to the study where he had first taught Theo his numbers and letters, of histories, of—
Annatar came upon a distant burning, visible from the glade he paused on. Vaguely, he recalled hearing within the previous village of Men a smatter of concerned whispers about what was suspected to be bandit raids on nearby villages.
He would wonder later if what had spurred him was an ironic sympathy for the Men who had worried for their safety, or the idea that Celebrimbor would think it kindness from him. Or perhaps a mere idle curiosity and not the odd ringing urge from a terrible intuition.
Later, he would remember it for what it was, the same feeling from an age back when Eärendil had flown with a ship from the Valar, the light of a Silmaril gleaming bright from his head.
A young man, hanged alone for all to see among the ruin of the burned and dead, with limp and matted hair, dark skin awashed pale, the dull eyes that no longer held brilliance nor life.
A rattle of a howl begged to escape Annatar lest it ate him from within his core. A name spilled out from his lips instead, and it would be the last that Annatar would speak of it.
Theo.
He could see it now, could see himself with the same eyes of his prisoners, and acknowledged that this was how it was, how it had been to fall prey under his and his Dark Master's evil.
The one who presently occupied the tower of Mordor called himself Adar, and he had amassed a number of Melkor's previously scattered orcs to make up his own force. Annatar remembered Adar's face with vivid clarity; first from the sea of unsuccessful experiments in his laboratory in Angband; next among the unwilling assistants that he had, those he had deemed precious to die on a table; and finally, finally, the last face that the form of Gorthaur had seen before it died under a stolen knife from Eönwë forces.
There had been an oath stumbling from Adar's lips then; a curse that promised him to be the blight of Gorthaur's immortal existence, an Avari who would not see rest until he himself destroyed Gorthaur's heart. A far crueler oath than Fëanor's, one that should have seen an impossible fulfillment.
And yet, and yet.
Adar laughed as his being disintegrated in Annatar's hands, uncaring for his death and only for his victory.
There was no rest for him when he set Mordor and his forces to right like he meant to. The fires of his forge raged at his return, when it thought it was about to be diminished as Annatar had intended.
And he could, and Annatar could leave it to the orcs, for ruin or for good as what he had envisioned not so long before, when there was still the certainty of home to come back to.
There would be none of that, now. Not when Theo's death was as much as on his hands, not when he had created Adar. Oh, how Celebrimbor would grieve, for their boy's death and Annatar's supposed betrayal.
Annatar threw it all away as carelessly as he threw the gold ore in the pit of liquid fire, and watched it crumple and thin down, forming what it was supposed to be before Annatar became fond of playing house and allowed himself to fill his mind with crafty illusions that fooled even him.
And as it formed to its desired shape, molded with his own will and a piece of his being, Annatar knew that he had given away something that he could never get back.
They were not both whole, the next time he saw Celebrimbor, walking in his half-dream muddled with loss and pain. Annatar could still recognize them despite his willingness to part with that aspect of him that used to comprehend those complexities.
Celebrimbor recognized him, too, in spite of it all, and for a short moment looked at Annatar as if he was his salvation. And then nothing, nothing but the hollowness of realization of who he truly was.
Annatar could forget about the taste of betrayal from the three rings created without his knowledge. He offered him a place, a power to wield by his side. Celebrimbor grew distant the longer Annatar spoke. The sweeter his words become, the farther Celebrimbor heard them.
After all the coaxing, Celebrimbor would ask, "Did you kill him?"
Annatar recalled a thousand thoughts before the ring, about a boy he held dear for a short while, one he held as a babe and molded into an ideal Edain, one who would have grown to love him unconditionally and would have taught the same brand of naive loyalty to his predecessors.
"I did," Annatar whispered, none of the honey and bare of anything at all. "You wanted to know all that I am. Then here am I."
"I see you," he said simply. Celebrimbor's gray eyes shuttered without tears, only resignation and a kind of understanding that, in this, Annatar was not lying. "I wish I had much earlier and saved ourselves the pain."
Celebrimbor wouldn't be the same, not when he was burning with the Fëanorean fury as he defended Eregion to his last breath despite not being the warriors that his uncles were. And even in captivity, the same fire remained, burning ever bright and hot.
He did not give up his rings, his body breaking first before his will. Sloppy, for Gorthaur's standards; unproductive, for Annatar's.
Sauron raised Celebrimbor as a banner, a warning against the Dark Lord's enemies. In the midst of the dark forces' deafening roar, a lone wail echoed from the Ring, ringing farther and farther as the impending war drew near.
The third and fourth sacrifices that he was presented by Pharazôn were a pair of a father and son, among the rare Faithfuls that remained on this side of the island, and in the face of their death they murmur the Adûnaic names of any Vala that wasn't Melkor.
When they both dared look up at his face that betrayed none of his giddy delight at the new blood he would feed at Melkor's feet, two pairs of gray eyes met Zigûr's.
Their features were striking and almost identical, and distantly Zigûr recalled a resemblance to the soft face of an Edain boy and the gentle gaze of an Eldar smith.
When Zigûr gifted them a clean death together without an ounce of hesitation, he met Pharazôn grave and deep-set satisfaction at the certainty of his next victory with a smile.