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The Fellowship slept around him, their breath echoing like drums off the empty stones of Khazad-dûm. They slept, but Celebrimbor could not. He rose and crossed the dim room on noiseless feet, his heavy cloak clutched tight around his shoulders. He passed between his companions unnoticed by any save for Frodo, whose turn it was on guard. Frodo caught his eye quizzically as Celebrimbor paused on the threshold of the wider hall, but did not speak.
Celebrimbor was not sure how to explain, especially succinctly enough to avoid waking the others; and they needed their rest, after the swift pursuit of the wolves and the terrible thing in the water and the long, long march in the dark.
He hesitated, searching for the words by which he might answer Frodo's unspoken question; but before he could craft them, Frodo nodded in silent understanding and offered him a nod and a thin, sad smile.
Celebrimbor blinked, and managed somehow to force himself to smile back, although he knew it did not reach his eyes; then he turned his back on the Ring-bearer and stepped out into the darkness of the empty, echoing Mines that had once been his heart's second home.
It was so strange, to walk through Khazad-dûm in the dark. All the many times that Celebrimbor had come here before, the great underground caverns had been lit by clever mirrors that channeled sun- and moonlight down into the depths of the mountains; by great lamps of glass and crystal that hung from the tall stone ceilings and cast light of soft and marvelous color across the pale grey stones until one felt as though one walked within a geode or a rainbow.
Celebrimbor was not used to seeing these great halls dark, but he did not lose his footing; did not lose his way. Even lightless, he knew these rooms of stone too well to trip or stray within them.
He knew them well, and so he mourned them.
He mourned each crack that marred the walls, each chasm that broke the floors, each empty room where once light and life and noise had been. He mourned each fallen column, each crumbled carving, each intricate relief whose sharp edges had been lost to time and wear. He mourned each dwarf that had ever walked here and every craft they had ever forged or might have forged in lost days of peace that never came.
He mourned his friends.
He mourned his lover.
(He even, though he would admit it not even to himself, mourned for his betrayer.)
He walked into the dark, alone, and his broken heart screamed into the hollow silence.
On the far side of the lightless hall a doorway stood open, its wood long gone to rot or scavengers. Celebrimbor stepped across the threshold and stopped, staring, at the bleak sight before him. A single shard of mirror remained somewhere in the walls above, tilting a sliver of cold moonlight out upon the floor, and by its feeble glow Celebrimbor could see the empty workshop that had once rung with laughter and with hammers and with song.
He moved forward as though in a dream, his feet carving a shallow path through the thick dust that carpeted the smooth stone floor but making no sound: he moved like a shadow, like the ghost of one already dead, and he left nothing but sorrow in his wake.
Celebrimbor had been dead for so long, now; dead, while all he loved was dying for his sins and for his folly and his love.
He had loved Ost-in-Edhil, and he had invited its murderer to come within its walls; had welcomed the Enemy to make himself a home there, in their city and in the hearts of his beloved Gwaith-i-Mídain. He had loved Khazad-dûm, and he had not been here to help guard the Doors he had helped craft; the Doors that had not been enough to keep its halls and people safe. He had loved his smith-craft, and had allowed his pride and grief and folly to turn that skill to darkness and to evil; had forged things of beautiful destruction with his own two hands, so like his grandfather before him.
He had loved Narvi, and been able to do nothing but watch and weep as mortality stole that one true and good bright love from him; he had loved Narvi, and yet his love had turned to grief so bitter that it could in the end only be classed as a betrayal.
He had loved Annatar, and in so doing he had doomed them all.
Celebrimbor sank to his knees before the worn stone workbench where he had once annealed starlight into silver; where Narvi had once forged moon-silver into magic. He pressed his hands against the stone, feeling the chips and pockmarks left behind by all their tools; but he could not feel the warmth they had once conjured together there. The forges here had long gone cold; and Narvi was much longer dead.
Narvi was so long dead.
And Celebrimbor was, once again, alone.
He folded down low upon the floor and pressed his face into his hands and he wept and wept until his voice gave out, and still he was alone. The pale sliver of reflected moonlight swam before his eyes like a band of bright ithildin, but there was no one here to forge the metal; and no words that could ever do justice to the weight of grief upon his heart. It mattered not what he might say: Narvi was dead, and could not hear him. He could scream until his throat gave out, and Narvi could not hear him.
Narvi was dead, lost to whatever dreams Mahal kept for his dwarves; lost to Celebrimbor now and on until the breaking of the world. Narvi was gone, and a sliver of Sauron's soul called to Celebrimbor softly from that terrible band of gold that Frodo bore. Narvi was gone, and Sauron was here, and Celebrimbor was alone with no comfort but the cold and careless eye of a distant moon. Tilion did not look down on him in mercy; Tilion did not look down on him at all. He was alone.
There was only the darkness of once-bright Khazad-dûm, and the aching sorrow of Celebrimbor's shattered heart as he wept into his empty, shaking hands.
"Celebrimbor?"
The voice was soft, little more than a whisper; for a moment, it sounded like Annatar, and Celebrimbor froze, his tears choking-off wetly in his throat. His tattered soul twisted, cold and sharp against his bones. His spirit reached out, yearning still for the remembered comfort so often offered by that lovely voice; it recoiled, fearful and burning with hate, from the memory of its own destruction at the cunning speaker's hands.
"Celebrimbor, are you there? Are you all right?"
Celebrimbor drew a shuddering breath and lowered his hands. It was not Annatar—Sauron—who spoke now, he realized; was not the once-beloved corrupter of all his dreams, but rather Frodo: the small Hobbit who had all the bravery that Celebrimbor lacked and who had volunteered to carry the Ring that Celebrimbor could not dare to touch. The Ring that had destroyed him, once; that Ring that now he must destroy.
"I am here, Frodo," he made himself say. His voice cracked on the words, brittle as overheated steel or ill-carved stone. Celebrimbor swallowed another sob and wiped at his streaming eyes.
Frodo padded forward across the dark room on his quiet, curly feet. Celebrimbor watched the small figure of the Hobbit step across the sliver of moonlight and settle to the floor in the shadows before him. He looked up at Celebrimbor, his little face drawn tight with worry and compassion.
"Are you all right?" Frodo asked again.
Celebrimbor opened his mouth to reassure the Ring-bearer, but what came out instead was: "No."
Frodo smiled at him. There was no joy in that smile, but a great deal of kindness. "I didn't think so," he said simply. "Would you like to tell me about it?"
"No," Celebrimbor said again, faster this time.
Frodo's smile did not waver. "I didn't think so," he said again. "That's all right. Can I sit with you anyway, for a while?"
No, Celebrimbor meant to say for a third time, but instead: "Yes," he whispered. "Yes, Frodo, thank you. I would like that."
Frodo nodded, and reached out wordlessly to take his tear-damp hand, and Celebrimbor let him.
They sat there together, the Ring-bearer and the Ring-maker, in the black darkness of Khazad-dûm, and watched in silence as the faint sliver of moonlight moved across the dusty floor.
Somewhere in the back of both their minds, the Ring was laughing.