Archive of Our Own

Celebrimbor shoved at the wooden door with his shoulder until it scraped open just enough to let him slip inside. He turned the latch out of habit. Not that it mattered. No one wanted what was his.

No one wanted his curse.

He let his tools drop beside the threshold with a clatter, the sound too sharp in the darkness. For a moment he almost felt bad. That hammer had belonged to his father, had been forged by Fëanor himself. He should treat it with more respect.

He kicked his tool bag out of his way. 

He already hated the shack tonight. The hearth was stone cold, the thatch overhead leaking from the rain the night before.

Then he saw the shape by the hearth.

His hand slipped into his pocket, wrapping around the small knife he kept there. 

At first he thought it was a trick of shadow, a trick of his mind, maybe, dredged up from old memory. But the shape didn’t vanish when he narrowed his eyes, just stayed curled where the floor met the wall, half-covered in a thin cloak that had never fit the boy it belonged to.

“Which one are you?” he asked. 

The boy’s head lifted, his eyes were so pale in the lamplight, they looked silvered over.  “Elrond.” 

He stayed in the doorway a moment longer, trying to find the right word that would not come out cruel “Elrond,” he said quietly. “Please leave.” 

“No.” 

Celebrimbor blinked. “Elrond,” he tried again. “That is not your corner.” 

Elrond blinked once, slowly, as if considering whether to answer him at all. Finally, after far too long, he said, “It is tonight.” 

“Get out of my house, or I will drag you,” said Celebrimbor, voice firm.

Elrond stared up at him. “Alright.” 

Celebrimbor waited, but Elrond did not move. “Are you not leaving?” 

“If you drag me.” 

Celebrimbor stared at him for a long moment, taking deep breaths as if the calming exercise would somehow make the nuisance vanish completely.

The boy just watched him in that silent, infuriating way that said: You will not do it. You never were going to.

Celebrimbor’s jaw ticked once. “Fine,” he muttered, the word sour on his tongue. He stepped away first, hated that he did, yanking out the chair at the battered table and dropping into it.

He didn’t look at Elrond again, just focused on his meal. He set the bread on the table and broke off a piece for himself, small and careful, as if rationing were still new to him.

It wasn’t.

He’d lived his decades of his life on rations of one kind or another.

The boy didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t even shift. He just stayed in that corner by the cold hearth, cloak huddled around his knees like a half-built wall.

Celebrimbor chewed, each bite rough and tasteless. He refused to glance back, but he could feel the child’s eyes on him. 

He scraped the heel of bread clean, pushed the crumbs into a tight little pile with his thumb, and wondered if he should say something more. Go. Get out. This is not your place. But it seemed it wouldn’t have any effect.

When he stood, the chair legs rasped loud on the planks. He left the crumbs where they were.

He did not say goodnight. He did not say ‘stay.’ He didn’t even grant the child the dignity of a final glance.

He lay down on the cot with his back to the room, boots still on, the taste of dry bread stuck between his teeth. The wind rattled the thin boards behind his head.

Somewhere behind him, he heard Elrond shift, the quiet scratch of cloak on splintered wood.

Celebrimbor closed his eyes and told himself that in the morning, the corner would be empty again. He told himself he would make it so.

He was gone in the morning.

It didn’t last.

When Celebrimbor returned the next night he reached the door and found the hasp exactly where he’d left it.

He unlatched it and stepped inside, already thinking of the hearth and the empty pantry and the bedroll that would not warm properly before dawn—

And found the boy there again.

Same corner. Same cloak. Same hollow eyes reflecting the last light of the sun. He hadn’t even moved when the door opened, just sat there, knees pulled tight to his chest. 

Celebrimbor dropped his tool bag beside the threshold a little too hard.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw and voice came out rough, “Why are you here?”

Elrond blinked at him, slow and deliberate, as if the question were foolish by its very shape. “We are cousins, aren’t we?”

Celebrimbor huffed. He gestured out the crooked door with two fingers. “So’s the king.”

He thought that would be the end of it. He thought the boy would drop his eyes, offer some muttered excuse about the court, the cold— anything.

But Elrond’s mouth twitched. He tipped his head like a hawk and asked, “Then why aren’t you in his court?”

The question landed like a hammer strike. It wasn’t meant to be rude, just an innocent question of a child with no idea of how the world worked.

Celebrimbor didn’t answer it.

He shoved the door shut behind him, harder than he meant to. The latch caught, useless and pointless. The boy stayed.

Celebrimbor did not tell him to go again that night. He knew better now.

“Do you play chess?”

Celebrimbor didn’t look up at first. He sat hunched at the table, scraping rust off an old chisel with the tip of a knife, pretending the question hadn’t been asked. It didn’t help. Elrond just stood there like he knew the silence would crack first.

He’d lost count of how many times Elrond had wormed his way into his rooms by now.

No, that was a lie, he hadn’t lost count at all. It was five. Five times the latch hadn’t held. Five times he’d come back to find that pale shape curled near the dying coals.

Elrond wasn’t there every night, but it was starting to become a regular occurrence.

He made a small, disgruntled sound low in his throat. “I don’t have a chess board.”

He’d meant it as an end to the conversation.  But Elrond didn’t so much as blink, just slipped a hand into his cloak and pulled out a small cloth bag. Out came a square of worn cloth, inked with a crude grid. Tiny carved pieces, no two quite alike, clicked together in his palm. Bone, maybe. Or scraps of driftwood.

Celebrimbor stared at them, then at Elrond’s face, which gave nothing away except that sharp glint under the hollow eyes: Try to say no now.

He set the chisel down and wiped the rust flakes from his thumb onto his sleeve. He didn’t sigh, but he wanted to.

“Who taught you?” he asked, voice thin, as if he regretted the words the moment they left him.

Elrond shrugged, a quick twitch of shoulder and chin. “Maglor. Maedhros didn’t like it when he lost.”

“Because Maglor cheats.” He hadn’t meant to say it, but it slipped from his mouth without permission.

Elrond, for the first time since he’d started haunting Celebrimbor’s room, almost smiled.

Outside, the wind rattled the thin thatch, but inside, the child had his game, his corner, and his terms.

And Celebrimbor, Fëanor’s grandson, Curufin’s son, let him.

“If you’re going to haunt my rooms, you need to eat something.”

The words left his mouth before he could drag them back down where they belonged. He heard them hang there, stupid and final. 

He shouldn’t do it, he knew he shouldn’t. His rations were thin enough as it was, he’d spent half the week trying not to think about how he’d skipped the last few bites to keep an extra heel of bread tucked on the shelf. It was barely enough for one.

But when he looked across the table, the battered cloth board between them, the mismatched driftwood pawns, he saw Elrond’s hands; his fingers too long, too thin, looking as though they’d break if you grabbed him.

Horrifically small. That was the word for it. Not childlike. Small. And Elrond wasn’t even a child. 

Celebrimbor’s mouth twisted. He looked away first, hating that he always did. He scraped the last crust from the corner of the table and broke it into two pieces. He pushed one across the board, nudging a bishop out of the way.

Elrond slowly reached out, accepting it with a small nod.

Celebrimbor busied himself pretending to study the board. He nudged a pawn with his thumb. He said nothing more.

He told himself he wouldn’t do it again.

He knew he was lying.

The door wasn’t fully closed behind Celebrimbor before Elrond spoke.“Can you help me with arithmetic?”

Celebrimbor froze mid-step. He hadn’t even put his bag down yet, the weight of it dragging at his shoulder. He turned just enough to see the boy, sitting at his hearth, a school book clutched in his hands.

“Doesn’t the king have tutors for you?” Celebrimbor asked.

“They’re rude,” Elrond said simply. 

Celebrimbor let his bag thunk to the floor beside the door, wincing at the echo it made. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. 

“So being rude is how I can get rid of you?”

“You are rude,” Elrond agreed, not missing a beat. “But you’re not mean.”

It shouldn’t have made Celebrimbor huff out a laugh, but it did. He dragged out the battered chair at the table and plopped down, then glanced over his shoulder at the boy, eyes narrowed. “Show me what you have.”

Elrond didn’t smile as he stepped forward, keeping his school book tightly to his chest. “I’m not stupid.” 

“You are stupid—“ 

“I can learn,” Elrond said through gritted teeth. “Just because I’m a Peredhel doesn’t—“ He sucked in a sharp breath, slammed the book on the table. 

Celebrimbor slowly pulled the book toward himself, trying not to think on what Elrond’s words meant. “You are an idiot,” he said, “it’s just a coincidence that you’re also a Peredhel.”

“And you’re rude,” said Elrond. “And it’s just a coincidence that you’re a Feanorian.”

Celebrimbor looked down at the page Elrond was showing him. It was simple work, far below where someone of Elrond’s age ought to be. At his age, the cusp of adulthood, he should be working complex problems, or debating science and arts. He didn’t comment. 

He fished out his knife to sharpen the blunt charcoal nub Elrond had brought. 

His hands ached. His eyes burned. He wanted sleep. But he found himself saying, “Again. From the start. And don’t smudge the corners.”

He told himself this would be the last time.

He was such a fucking liar.

Celebrimbor was the first to speak this time. He didn’t even take off his gloves before he fixed his eyes on the hearth, where Elrond sat folded up tight, knees drawn close, that battered schoolbook pressed to his chest again.

“Why do you still suck your thumb?” he asked.

Elrond glared up at him. He drew his hand away from his mouth in one sharp motion, thumb’s knuckle slipping free. There were tooth marks on the base of it, where it met his hand, as if he’d been chewing at it. 

“I don’t,” Elrond snapped. He tucked his thumb into his sleeve like it might vanish there.

Celebrimbor didn’t let him have the lie. He pulled off one glove, fingers raw and blackened with soot, and tossed it onto the table. “Alright.” he said simply. “You don’t suck your thumb. You chew it.”

Elrond hunched tighter around his book. “It wakes me up.” He didn’t look at Celebrimbor when he said it. He said it like a fact he’d rehearsed, like he’d said it before to those good-for-nothing tutors Gil-Galad had assigned him.

Celebrimbor dragged out the rickety chair at the table and sat down with a low grunt, the wood complaining under him. He pulled the second glove off his hand and dropped it beside the first.

“Try cold water instead,” he said. The words were sharper than he meant them. He tapped two fingers on the tabletop, beckoning. “Or ink on your fingers. You’ll stop quick enough when you taste it.”

Elrond didn’t argue, but he also didn’t agree. He just crawled forward on his knees until he was close enough to shove the schoolbook across the table. Then he said, “Elros dumped water on my head once, when it wouldn’t— when I didn’t wake.” 

The words came out flat, almost careless, but the break in the middle caught on the splinter in Celebrimbor’s mind and stuck there. When it wouldn’t. Not when I wouldn’t.

But he didn’t press. “Your brother’s a brat,” said Celebrimbor. He flipped the book open one-handed. “You’re not good with your eights times tables,” he said. Not for the first time, he wondered what the hell Maglor had been doing, not teaching a nearly grown fosterling basic maths.

“Sometimes he’s right,” Elrond said quietly. He was watching Celebrimbor. “Sometimes I don’t wake.”

Celebrimbor hummed, filing this additional information away to dissect later. He reached for the charcoal nub he’d sharpened to a knife-point edge.

“Then tonight,” he said, voice flat, final, “you’ll stay awake long enough to learn your eights. And if you start chewing that thumb again, I’ll paint it black myself.”

Elrond sniffed, like he might laugh, but didn’t. “I don’t like eights.”

“It’s not eight,” said Celebrimbor. 

“Yes it is.” 

“No,” he said. “It’s three and five.” He flipped the page, found a blank space, and said, “Let me show you.” 

They crossed paths in the king’s corridor.

Celebrimbor had no business there except to deliver what the king’s guard had ordered, a new bracer, still warm from the forge, wrapped in oiled cloth. 

Galadriel stood in the open archway, half-turned from some quiet word with Gil-Galad’s steward. She looked at home in these walls. She was at home here.

Celebrimbor wasn’t. He never would be.

“Cousin,” she said first. The word dripped warm, but the warmth was all frost under the tongue.

“Lady,” Celebrimbor answered, giving her just enough edge to make it polite, not enough to make it kind.

She glanced at the oilcloth in his hands, the smear of soot on his wrist, the raw edge of his sleeve where he’d burned it days ago and never bothered to mend it.

“Still hammering scraps for your supper?” she asked. 

He flicked his eyes past her shoulder, to the torchlit hall beyond. “Still spinning silk for yours?” he said evenly.

A ghost of a smile, sharp at the corner of her mouth, something that might have been amusement. 

“I see you’re busy,” she said, stepping aside just enough to let him pass, as if she owned every inch of the stone under their feet.

“Can you tell left from right?” 

Celebrimbor’s gut instinct was to snap that ‘of course I can, I’m not stupid’ but there was something… vulnerable in the half-elf’s tone. “Yes,” he said simply.

Elrond chewed his lip, his silver eyes downcast. Then he looked up. “Why can’t I?”

Celebrimbor shrugged.

“Can you teach me?” 

Left and right wasn’t really… something Celebrimbor felt prepared to teach. He doubted simply lifted Elrond’s hands and saying ‘this is left and this is right’ was the kind of lesson the half-elf needed. Still, he tried. 

“Picture a map,” said Celebrimbor after a moment. “With North at the top.” 

“… alright.” 

“Where is the Harad?” 

“At the bottom. In the south.” 

Celebrimbor took a breath. “In relation to the coast, Elrond.” 

“Huh?’

“The Harad is on the left side of the continent.” 

Elrond nodded slowly. 

“Harad is south. Harvo is—“

“Left,” finished Elrond.

Celebrimbor watched him, eyes narrowed, waiting for the catch. There was always a catch.

Elrond’s brow furrowed. “So,” he said slowly, testing the shape of it in his mouth, “if Harad is south, then Umbar is—?”

“Also south, you little idiot. I said left. Not all south is left.”

Elrond dug his knuckles into the battered table edge, still testing the trick, like he was half afraid it would slip away the moment he looked down.

“Alright,” said Celebrimbor. “That was a bad example—“ 

“No,” said Elrond. “I think I have it.” He smiled. 

Somedays Elrond wasn’t in Celebrimbor’s home. It didn’t worry him. The boy had other corners to haunt.

Sometimes, it was almost a relief to open the crooked door and find the corner by the hearth empty. On those nights, Celebrimbor could eat his full supper. He could sit at his table with no pale eyes watching him, no battered schoolbook waiting to be shoved across the table. He could pretend the world stayed locked outside.

Other days, he wasn’t so fortunate.

He stepped in, same drag of the latch, same thud of his boots on the warped floor, and there they were: two shapes this time. Elrond in his usual post by the hearth, and another boy sprawled out beside him, boots kicked off, grin wide and easy as sunlight on water.

“This is Elros,” said Elrond, like he was offering up a stray cat he’d found in the rain.

“I surmised,” said Celebrimbor. He didn’t bother to unshoulder his tool bag yet. His eyes flicked between them, the mirrored eyes, the twin tilt of the jaw, so alike and yet split clean by whatever lay between them these days.

He didn’t ask, Elrond didn’t offer, but the whole camp gossiped about the on-and-off-again brothers. 

Elros lifted a hand in a lazy half-wave, grin sharp around the edges. “We brought you supper.” He nudged a small parcel wrapped in oilcloth across the floor with his bare foot, like a peace offering.

Celebrimbor arched a brow at Elrond, who just stared back, half-daring him to refuse.

The parcel smelled of half-warm stew and too-stale bread. Probably stolen from the mortal cookfires near the shore. Celebrimbor let out a quiet huff and dropped his bag by the table with a dull thunk.

“Bringing me your own rations now, are you?” he muttered.

Elros’s grin only widened. “Consider it rent.”

Celebrimbor didn’t argue. He didn’t smile, either. He just bent to unlatch the parcel and thought, not for the first time, This was never my house at all.

He was starting to understand exactly where Elrond’s education had failed him.

It had been left to a minstrel.

Elrond, who could barely multiply two digit numbers, could debate philosophy and art with the best of the king’s loremasters. Or at least, Celebrimbor supposed he could if they would ever let him. But it seemed no one else listened, because it was Celebrimbor who, inevitably, was left listening to Elrond chattering on about the differences between Telerin and Noldorin translations when he was supposed to be doing arithmetic.

Celebrimbor drummed his fingers. “Can you count music?” he asked.

“Of course.” 

He rubbed his eyes and, not for the first time, cursed his uncle.

Somedays, when Celebrimbor returned home, he wanted to know what it was that Elrond did, cooped up in his crooked shack all day. What ghosts he dragged inside with him when he thought no one was looking.

Because some days, when he opened the door he’d find the boy curled on his side by the dead hearth, cloak half-kicked off, hair stuck to his temple. Pale but slick with sweat, like he’d run the length of the isle and back again in the dark.

On those days, Elrond didn’t speak. Not when Celebrimbor stepped over him to drop his bag. Not when he rattled the hearth back to sullen life. Not when he pressed a heel of bread against the boy’s limp hand and watched it drop untouched to the floor.

On those days, Celebrimbor didn’t ask.

He’d sit at the battered table, scraping rust from old tools, counting the seconds between the boy’s rough breaths. He told himself there was nothing to be done, nothing to know.

Some nights, he believed that lie. 

Most nights, he didn’t.

“Where have you been?” 

Elrond stopped, but he didn’t turn back to face the speaker and he didn’t answer. 

“Your tutors say you haven’t been in your lessons,” Gil-Galad continued. He was keeping his voice careful, the way he always did when talking to the twins, as if they might break if he scolded them. 

“I finish my work,” said Elrond. 

He stepped left - toward Harad - and into his room. “Goodnight cousin.” 

“Are we more elf or mortal?”

Celebrimbor didn’t look up from the battered table, knife scratching slow curls from the edge of the charcoal nub.

“Is this a math question or a philosophy question?” he asked. 

There was a pause, long enough to count. Then, softer, too soft: “Both.”

Celebrimbor made a small sound in his throat. He reached out, hooked the corner of Elrond’s schoolbook with a knuckle, dragged it over, and cracked it open to a blank page. He pressed the tip of the charcoal down so hard it squeaked.

“Your father,” he said, voice clipped, the words falling like hammered rivets, “half elf, half mortal. Simple.”

“Your mother — tangled. Dior’s line: Beren, mortal. Lúthien — half Maia, half Elf. Nimloth — pure Elf. So Elwing…”

Another scribble. Another line. Fractions turning to decimals he hated already. He might be better at math than Elrond, but he didn’t enjoy it. 

Maybe he shouldn’t complain so much about Maglor’s teaching methods. 

Elrond watched, silent, thumb tucked tight in his sleeve to keep from chewing at it.

Celebrimbor spoke as he worked, “Eärendil: fifty elf, fifty mortal. Elwing: twenty-five mortal, twelve-and-a-half Maia, sixty-two-point-five Elf…”

Another fraction. Another decimal.

Finally, he sat back. He gestured at the sum like it should settle something.

“Fifty-six percent Elf,” he rasped. “Thirty-seven mortal. Six Maia.”

He didn’t look at Elrond. He didn’t say ‘So there. Solved.’ He didn’t say ‘So you won’t die before I do.’

He just flicked the nub at the edge of the table, sent it rolling across the wood like a pawn toppling over.

Behind him, the wind rattled the warped door. Elrond, quietly, nodded. 

Celebrimbor rubbed his face. 

“I’m sorry,” said Elrond quietly.

“It’s not your fault,” Celebrimbor informed his palms. The numbers were starting to swim, his brain protesting the long days at the forge followed immediately by lessons in mathematics. “Why did no one teach you this?” 

“They did,” said Elrond, fiddling with his sleeves. “But I don’t understand it.” 

Celebrimbor sighed. “Then they didn’t teach you right.” 

“It’s not Kana’s fault the numbers move.” 

“What do you mean the numbers move?” 

“When I’m not looking,” said Elrond, as if it made perfect sense. “The numbers move.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Do letters move?”

“No.” 

Celebrimbor cracked an eye open. “So just the numbers?” He’d heard of people who said letters moved around, he’d not heard of only numbers doing it. He supposed that might explain the struggle with left and right.

Elrond nodded. 

“Well,” said Celebrimbor. “That’s new.” 

The latch didn’t catch.

Celebrimbor noticed it too late, hand still on the crooked handle as the warped door swung inward with no resistance. That was wrong. He always latched it.

Always. 

The hearth was out, the room cold. It was horrifically silent.  

“Elrond?” he said, more habit than hope.

No answer.

Then he saw him.

Folded near the far wall, not his usual corner, not his usual shape. His legs were sprawled, one bent beneath him, the other kicked out stiff. His cloak had twisted around his arms, half-pinned under his shoulder. His head lolled back, chin jerking with every sudden breath, too quick, too sharp, like he was choking on air that wouldn’t go down.

“Elrond,” Celebrimbor said again, sharper now, stepping forward.

Still no answer.

The boy’s whole body shuddered, fingers twitching like they were trying to grip the air. His jaw clenched. His eyes were open, glassy, wild, unfocused. Foam at the edge of his lips. His heel scraped against the floor like a nail dragged across stone.

Celebrimbor dropped his bag.

It hit the floor hard. He didn’t hear it.

“Elrond—!” He was already on his knees. Reaching. Pulling the boy away from the wall, from the splintered edge of the firewood pile, from whatever this was.

He didn’t know what he was doing. But his hands moved anyway.

He turned the boy on his side, bracing his head with both hands, cursing every healer he’d ever ignored. He’d seen seizures before, from heat stroke in the forge, but this— this wasn’t that. 

Elrond convulsed once, hard enough his teeth clicked. Then again, and again, like his body was trying to break itself open.

“Stop,” Celebrimbor said, voice cracking. “Stop. Stop. Stop.”

He didn’t know who he was talking to. The boy. The air. The Valar.

And then— it stopped.

Elrond sagged, all at once, like a marionette with cut strings. His breath came ragged, wet around the edges, but steady. The twitch in his fingers slowed. Stilled. His lashes fluttered. His mouth moved once, twice, then stilled too.

Celebrimbor stayed there.

Kneeling in the dust, one hand braced on Elrond’s back, the other cradling the boy’s skull like it might crack if he let go.

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that.

Eventually, Elrond stirred.

A groan, soft, barely more than a breath. His eyes flickered, dazed. Uncertain. Then wide. Then afraid.

“I—” he started.

“Shut up,” Celebrimbor said.

Elrond flinched.

Celebrimbor dragged in a breath. Let it out slow. He didn’t let go.

“You should’ve told me,” he said. “You stupid little idiot. You should’ve told me.”

Elrond didn’t look at him.

Celebrimbor touched his chin, made him meet his gaze. One of Elrond’s eyes was darkening into a bruise. 

Next time, he wanted to say. Next time you tell me.

Instead, he said, “You bit your tongue.”

Elrond nodded, small, ashamed.

Celebrimbor muttered, “Fine.” Then, quieter: “I’ll get water.”