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Curufin paced up and down the length of his chambers, hands clenched tightly behind his back. He should be back by now…
Suddenly the sound of the doors being thrown open in the common area between their bedrooms caught his attention, and he rushed out, trying not to appear frantic. There his brother was, looking tired and streaked with filth, but unharmed, and late .
Curufin stormed up to him, puffing out his chest angrily with his fists clenched at his sides. "Do you have any idea of the hour? I have been waiting --"
He was cut off by an ungentle hand cupping his cheek, smudging him with grime and knocking his glasses askew. "Do not fret, mother hen. I am back, aren't I?"
Curufin prickled at the comment and sardonic tone, and grasped Celegorm's wrist, pulling it away from his face, and opening his mouth to give some retort. He stopped short when Celegorm gave a small hiss of pain, and recoiled from his touch.
"Sorry," Celegorm said again quietly, and started to step away when Curufin noticed the smear of blood on his palm. His eyes snapped down to Celegorm's wrist, who attempted in vain to conceal it.
"You're wounded." Curufin stepped toward him, and Celegorm took a step back.
"It's nothing," Celegorm gruffed, holding his hand behind his back.
"Nothing? You've bled right through the binding! Let me re-dress it, let me look ." He stepped towards Celegorm again, who took another step back, nearly growling like the cornered, injured animal he was. "Damn it, Tyelko, you make me wait, you make me worry , and you come back like this! Let me see the damn wound!"
Celegorm's gaze was contemplative as he looked back and forth between his bloodied bandage and his brother. Such an emotional display from Curufin was rare, and embarrassing, but in the end it won him his brother extending his arm, which Curufin took in a gentle grasp.
Guiding him closer to the fire for light, he unwrapped his brother's wrist. Curufin grimaced at the sight of the jagged cut. It was deep, and continued movement was keeping it from closing properly. "This may need sutured." He frowned, his lips a tight line as he looked at Celegorm's face, who would not meet his eyes.
"Then do so," he replied. Curufin nodded, and sat his brother down before the fire, fetching a small medical kit from his room before sitting beside him. He offered a thick piece of leather to bite, and Celegorm took begrudgingly.
Carefully, Curufin cleaned the needle and cord, before pouring an antiseptic alcohol over the open wound. Celegorm groaned and bit down onto the strip in his mouth, his teeth creaking against the leather, threatening to puncture. Curufin gave him only a moment to recover before patting him dry and starting with the needle.
Six stitches it took to close the wound properly. Each puncture from the needle hurting Curufin at least as much as it hurt his brother. As much as his brother irked him, or goaded him, or even deserved it, he did not enjoy bringing him pain.
"I am no Makalaurë, but that shall suffice. These bandages will need changing," He said, and before Celegorm could protest he was already unwinding them up his forearm. What he saw made his heart stop for a beat, and a look of guilt flashed over Celegorm's face before he was unraveling them faster, and pushing Celegorm's sleeve to his elbow.
"Tyelkormo… " The breath was sucked from Curufin's lungs as he held out his brother's wrist. His entire forearm --and Curufin suspected even higher-- was covered in scars. Some thick and white, some thin and pinkish, some gnarled and raised and others faded nearly invisible. His tattoos now marred into unrecognizable shapes from the slashes. All of them perfectly horizontal, all of them caused by his own hand.
Celegorm jerked away, cradling his arm to his chest and pulling his sleeve back down hastily. Curufin realized at once what they were. Offerings. Sacrifices. Hundreds of years of desperate, unheard prayers. Unheard, or unheeded ? He thought bitterly.
All these years he assumed the wrappings and the long sleeves were to cover the tattoos, the images that so clearly marked Celegorm as one of his. To hide a sore reminder of his former master, who was as complacent as any of the Valar in their mistreatment and misjudgment. But no…
Time after time after time after time his brother had bowed, and prayed, and offered his very blood. And for what? To have their home all but burned to the ground? To be made refugees, unwelcome in a city by any but its asinine ruler? To be left in the clutches of the Black Foe, the ground turning fetid beneath their feet as he spread his vile claws across the land?
What did any Vala possibly have left to offer? Why would his proud, unyielding brother supplicate himself before those who cast them out and left them to rot ?
"Why?" He asked, his voice wavering despite his otherwise chillingly calm demeanor. The look of pain and guilt on Celegorm's face hurt almost more to look upon. It pained Curufin that he'd hid all that time, afraid of his judgement, or disgust, perhaps.
Curufin wanted to be disgusted. He wanted to be angry, and swear, and scream. How dare you ask them for help? How dare you crawl back to him ? How could you offer what he does not deserve, what he would not even take?
But his anger fizzled out as soon as it arose, and he reached again for Celegorm's arm with a tender grasp, turning his wrist upwards, and tracing over the lines on his skin, willing away the threat of tears burning behind his eyes as he did so.
"Because…" Celegorm started, and stopped himself, shaking his head. He sighed, and shrugged. "I wanted-- want to see him. I have to ask him-- some things. I need his… guidance."
"What guidance could one of them offer you? They wish for no more than to damn us…" Curufin's bitter words died in his throat as he spoke them. At the look on Celegorm's face, he could not continue. As rare as it was for Curufin to so openly worry, it was the same for Celegorm to show any kind of guilt or remorse. Everything he did was for a purpose, and nothing was vain. Except, perhaps, this.
Celegorm kneeled to none, bowed to none, and took advice from no one.
"I feel him, sometimes, or I am mad." Celegorm began to wrap his arm back up. "Guiding my arrows, steadying my aim, lending power behind the blows of my sword. Always intangible and out of reach. Nothing more than a whisper, than a feeling . Perhaps it is simply that I wish it so."
"He lends you nothing. Your skills are your own." Curufin was at least able to hold back the vitriol in his voice this time.
"Every skill I have was taught to me by him." Celegorm looked darkly at his brother, his voice low. "I owe him my life on more than one count... He is not like the rest of them, he would not abandon me, hasn't abandoned me." He drew a hand across his arm, fingering over the wraps and tracing the lines of his tattoos that he knew by heart.
Curufin narrowed his eyes. There was more he would say, more he would scold his brother for, if only he had the heart. He did not ever expect Celegorm to jump to the defense of any Vala, or to feel indebted to anyone in the first place. There was something more that Curufin could not pin down, some other motivation yet unknown to him.
A slow realization settled into his mind, and Celegorm must have read it in his face, for he sighed again. "You were in love once, were you not?" Curufin did not answer. "Would you not do anything to get back to her? To mend things between you?"
"No," Curufin said tightly. There may have been a time when he would have answered differently. There were plenty of moonless nights that he had held his son and cried, and wished for her by his side. Uncounted hours of sitting alone and regretting that they had ever crossed the sea. The journey cost him his father, his mother, his wife. But she had made her choice, just like his mother had made hers. What he left behind him… he now counted no loss.
"Liar," Celegorm grumbled, but did not say more.
They sat in silence for a long while, the fire beside them crackling and whispering in the gloom.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Curufin eventually said, hardly above a whisper. Maybe it wasn’t his business, and maybe he didn’t deserve to know, but he was hurt by such a deep secret being kept from him for so long. There were so many things he wanted to ask; when, how, why? But those were not questions for now, or maybe ever.
Celegorm scoffed a laugh. “Like you would have understood. Like you wouldn’t have run off and tattled to father about me.” He crossed his arms, “You were always more loyal to him than me.”
Curufin did not answer, because he did not know how. He wanted to reject the statement, to say that no matter how much he loved and looked up to their father, they were always there for each other first, all seven of them. He knew that wasn’t quite true, though, not for him. He’d held a fair few secrets over his brother’s heads as ransom to get his way. Most of them relatively harmless, but he could not say with a clear conscience that he would have kept such a secret, especially not during the height of their father’s madness and distrust of the Valar.
Their brothers were always there for each other, but Curufin was always his father’s son first.
“I wanted to tell you.” Celegorm continued in Curufin’s silence, “I almost did, many times.” He shifted slightly, his body language more open as he faced Curufin. “When we were young, before we left, even after the kinslaying. Again, I almost told you, after Atar died. What consequences were left? Why should I have suffered the burden of such a secret? But by then you had so much hatred of your own for the Valar, I could not.”
Curufin still was silent. Again, he could not say his brother spoke anything but the truth. It would have felt like a slap to the face, an utter betrayal for Celegorm to confess his affair while their father’s ashes still hung in the air. Celegorm knew him well, and though it pained Curufin, he was right not to tell him.
“I’m sorry,” Curufin said, when he found his voice at last. He wanted to say more, but his voice threatened to break, and again tears threatened to spill, so he clamped his mouth shut. He tried not to think about the pain his brother shouldered alone, what he had put his body through in a vain hope that his lost lover would answer some call.
He also felt a prick of jealousy in his heart that Celegorm could make such a call. He knew his apologies would never be accepted, but his wife would never even know that he was sorry, deep in his heart. Curufin almost laughed at himself, though, knowing he’d never stoop down to apologize even if he could.
He started when he felt Celegorm suddenly sitting beside him, wiping away the tears he hadn’t realized finally escaped.
“You are too soft, brother,” Celegorm laughed quietly, “You have never been able to fool me.”
Later, he would be annoyed. At himself for being so transparent, at Celegorm for knowing him too well. But for now, he sighed and deflated against his brother. For all they knew each other, he was beginning to wonder what else Celegorm had hidden from him when he was such an apparently open book.
Later. Later he would worry. For now his brother’s trust, and his safety, was enough.