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It is hard, to make a flawed thing.
His master would not have found it hard. His master would have found the beauty in it, no doubt - turning the corruption just so to become a mirror upon the absurdities of what it mocked. But he is gone and all that Annatar was and all that he never became has gone with him, and now Annatar is left alone to make things flawed himself.
Annatar. The name seemed right when he chose it, although it has since become a heavy thing to wear and a weight draped over his arms and he wonders now if it was the act of choosing itself that had pleased him the most after a long life of having all such things denied. His names were all decided for him before, whether in praise or shame; he had never earned the right to choose his own. Now he is in a new world, he and whatever remnants of others survived the war, and there is no-one here to tell him what he must name himself. And the name is right, after all: he is bringing gifts, as kings do and as leaders should.
The Sindar here still call themselves the forsaken, he knows. It’s mostly habit, now; it’s been long, long ages since Ossë bore their fellows across the sea, leaving these scattered few who stayed behind to search for their king. Was that loyalty? He supposes it was - he has to take on the pretence of supposing it was, here. (It certainly wasn’t loyalty on Thingol’s part nor Melian’s, though, as they stood still gazing into each other’s eyes in that ugly twisting forest as the vines grew over them and the land choked in darkness outside. Yet - there has never been any indication as far as he is aware that Melian was cast out for her decisions, that she faced fury and trials when she returned to the land she had left on whim rather than principle.)
(He is not thinking of Melian now. Melian is gone.)
It is odd to be here among people who call themselves forsaken so casually, who don’t even seem to mind that they’re here on this side of drowned Beleriand and seem uninterested in what awaits them across the sea.
Another issue for another time. For, now, here is one gift, for Celebrimbor: a ring, imperfect.
He doesn’t even need to pretend the embarrassment he feels as he places the ring gently in the waiting palm (although he does manage and cultivate how that embarrassment looks, ensuring that the only shame he shows serves his purposes and gives nothing else away). He’s made such wonderful things before, such glorious things, and even then his ambition thumped like a heartbeat inside them until it wasn’t enough. To create something that’s deliberately not what it could be makes him feel like he had when he knelt in the mud at Eönwë's feet and fills him with all the shame he’d felt rise as a bitter flood in his mouth, but he’s used to this offering of his own weakness as a gift, and if it stings - if it’s bloody - if it has to be torn out of him leaving him aching and spent - then that only makes its value the greater, doesn’t it? Yes. Surely.
Not that Eönwë had understood. Eönwë had sighed and said “Oh get up, you look pathetic.” And Celebrimbor doesn’t understand either but Celebrimbor isn’t meant to, doesn’t see it that way. Isn’t meant to see it that way.
“I’m sorry,” Annatar says. “I really thought I had it right this time but the setting’s gone wrong again, look, and I tried to catch it earlier and still it’s… I don’t know. Maybe the enchantment was too strong.” His face has slipped into its well-practiced ashamed-and-in-need-of-pity look, a blade long ago whetted upon his master’s appetites. He hadn’t meant that. He had meant that. He doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter, though, he can sweep it all aside - what matters is that Celebrimbor believes it and believes the truth of it, and sees him here not as a threat or a conquerer or a lord, but as someone who is… weak.
Celebrimbor breathes out his disappointment in a slow sigh, but then his hand closes in around the edge of Annatar’s as well clasping him warm and secure. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t expect any of us to find a solution this soon. See it as another iteration of knowledge.” He wants to - no, not reward. To reassure. He is trying to bring Annatar reassurance. A strange taste, and yet, Annatar supposes, one he should be grateful to savour. Was this not precisely the reaction that he sought to cultivate?
(No, a part of him whisper-hisses deep inside. No, it wasn’t. Not when you first came here. But perhaps this, too, can be an iteration of knowledge.)
That night he lets Celebrimbor believe the shame of his failure to improve the ring is still haunting him. He eats little as they dine together, only drinks when Celebrimbor prompts him to, sighs his gloom into the dark corners of the room. “I want to bring you better than this. Otherwise, what’s the point of you even having me here? You have enough smiths as it is.” He gestures in the broad direction of the rest of the city and, by implication, the rest of the mírdain, and the surface of the deep red wine in his goblet shudders uneven and then settles again. “I came here to help you.”
“We can’t expect instant results.” Celebrimbor is proud and ambitious and sharp and keen and in him Annatar sees too much of his younger self, the way he was in Almaren; but he’s also so very, wholly unlike Annatar that it’s difficult to predict him one from one moment to the next, let alone nudge him and turn him and move him where Annatar wants him to move.
Now, he places a soft hand on Annatar’s forearm. Annatar is far too well-practised at accepting such gestures to flinch. “You’re just used to a very different kind of work in Aman, my friend," he says, meaning it to be cheerful. "It’s not the same here. We’re facing a great challenge. I’m fortunate you’re here beside me.”
A great challenge, yes. Celebrimbor wants to improve Middle-earth, to mend it, to fix it, to make sure none of its flowers fade and none of its trees die, to make it as bright and beautiful as it should once have been. To un-mar what was once marred. And Annatar wants… the same, yes. Surely. The same, to bring back to Aulë and lay before his feet, to show as an apprentice shows a master. The culmination of his craft. The final work that will demonstrate he has earned the right to make his own crafts, as he chooses. Yes. He wants this.
“We’ll work it through together,” Celebrimbor says. “Between the two of us. Your skills - my skills - they complement each other.”
Perfect.
Annatar kisses him and thinks, my Tyelpë, butter-soft as gold. “You’re kind,” he murmurs into the edge of Celebrimbor’s jaw. Either the wine or the victory has gone to his head a little because this close he finds himself remembering the other forms he’s taken, can’t help but think of the copper-tasting hot blood that courses through Celebrimbor’s veins - he wants to bite - Celebrimbor’s flesh is so soft, so yielding, and he lets himself -
Celebrimbor’s hand clasps the back of his head firm. Annatar feels the slight pinch of hair trapped between thumb and forefinger although there’s no telling whether or not it’s deliberate. At any rate he freezes in place: in this, he’s too well-practised to do anything else but be quiet and obey. “I hurt you,” he says, the apologies spilling forth out of him like his own blood upon his hands. “I never meant - my greatest regret -”
“You liked it, though,” Celebrimbor says. “You wanted it. You don’t need to pretend to be soft with me.” That sharpness is back in him again; this kind, forgiving elf is the grandson of Feanor, after all. “We must both bring what we are to this work - weren’t you saying?”
The hand still around Annatar’s head compels him to obedience. He nods, brief, unsure. “I’m stronger than you. I’d hurt you.”
“You’ll be obedient, though. Won’t you?” The edges of his fingers dig firm and reassuring into the flesh at the base of Annatar’s neck. “You can be what you are, Maia.”
And Annatar will. He unfolds himself into thanks and gratitude and grazed-teeth kisses, into learning the expanse of Celebrimbor’s flesh and how it flinches and eases both under his lips. It has worked, Annatar tells himself. It has worked. Here is Celebrimbor, soft and careful and kind and commanding beneath him, and fully deceived.
Annatar need not face the bitter taste of the one truth that bites at him, and yet it’s there all the same, to be swatted aside but not wholly ignored.
For here’s the real truth of the deceit: he could have made that ring better, its flaws less obvious, the breaking not quite so complete, without Celebrimbor. But without Celebrimbor, he still couldn’t have made it right.