#strides back out without another word and the fëanorians turn and set watches with their backs to sirion’s walls

[tanoraqui]

📓 please.

AU in which Celebrimbor saves Sirion.

That is, AU in which Celebrimbor happens to be in Sirion when the sons of Fëanor sends their final, maybe only letter of, “We’ll be there in 3 days, would you PLEASE just give us the Valar-damned gem (or else)”, and first he goes to Elwing and pleads with her to just do it. Not because his uncles deserve their cursed rock. Not because he has any idea what the refugees will do without its hope-bringing and general purification effect on water and land. But because he was there like the Iathrim weren’t, like the Gondolindrim weren’t, on the front (ok slightly farther back) lines of the Siege, and he knows for absolutely certain that this little refuge CANNOT survive even the remnants of the great army of East Beleriand. And he wants to see them survive.

But Elwing refuses (though she is, after initial suspicion and fury, kind about it). So Celebrimbor angsts, worries, stress-hammers the dents out of a lot of armor and maybe forges a new bar for the gates…

And on the third night, the night before the dawn on which Fëanor’s sons will come for the Silmaril, he doses the stew for the guards/what passes for Sirion’s palace with something to induce sleep; and he brings an enchanted lullaby music box (the last thing he owns crafted by Fëanor himself) to subdue—gently, gently!—Elwing herself (he’s not depending on just some fantasy Benadryl to knock out Lúthien’s granddaughter). He’s apologizing as he takes the Nauglamir from her neck (he has no interest in robbing her of the whole heirloom, but he doesn’t have the time to remove the gem). Someone raises an alarm, but Celebrimbor is already out a side gate, shining gem tucked away under a wrap of thick cloth—

The Fëanorians, already waiting in the woods, hear the alarm and see the running on the walls and decide to launch their attack early—

But there are orcs in other parts of the wood, waiting for their prey to be flushed out. Waiting for the Oath-driven stalking goats to do Morgoth’s dirty work so they can clean up the remnants. These, Celebrimbor runs into—and, beset and outnumbered, he does the only thing he can think and unveils the jewel. Its light helps fend off the orcs, though it attracts spiders instead—

Maedhros, Maglor, and Amras all turn sharply at the burst of light from the north, and run. Long-legged Maedhros is fastest; fell-handed Maedhros easily dispatches the last spiders—

Light-blinded Maedhros doesn’t see who exactly is pulling away from him, pulling the Silmaril away from him, before his blade slides through their chest. Only a moment later does he realize his nephew was saying, “Careful, it might burn y—”

For more fun, I’d write a first chapter that’s standard narration 3rd person close to Celebrimbor, and the whole time he’s thinking about how everyone is going to assume he’s nothing but treacherous after this, traitor first to his father and then to the people who took him in; history will remember him with the kinslayers after all… And then the 2nd chapter is written in the distant, historical anecdote style of the Silmarillion except it keeps trailing off in bullet points, or maybe just with further lines starting with ellipses, to show the multiple options for how the historical record will remember this night…and what happened next, whether Celebrimbor survived and what the Fëanorians and the people of Sirion did next. The branching possibilities. Like,

Then Elwing and the people of Sirion would not yield the jewel which Beren had won and Luthien had worn, and for which Dior the fair was slain; and least of all while Earendil their lord was on the sea, for it seemed to them that in the Silmaril lay the healing and the blessing that had come upon their houses and their ships.

Yet among them was one whose heart turned toward the cause of the sons of Fëanor. Celebrimbor, son of Curufin, who had turned against his father in Nargothrond now found himself moved by their plight…

…Celebrimbor, son of Curufin, revealed now the treachery he had planned long ago with his kin in Nargothrond. When night fell…

…Fear grew in the heart of Celebrimbor, son of Curufin, and when night fell he brewed a potion to send the guards of the city to sleep. Elwing, too, he went to sleep, and stole from her neck the gem and the Nauglamir which the dwarves wrought…

#ficlet #my fic #ask meme #the silmarillion #feanor and feanor's kin #celebrimbor #sparrowsarus #personally my favorite for what happens next is maedhros kicks in sirion’s gate with his half-dead nephew in his arms #and the silmaril in maglor’s #delivers celebrimbor to the infirmary and says ‘if he dies the promise I just made him to guard you is void’ #‘no you don’t get the silmaril back’ #peak ‘the enemy fled before his fire’ mood #strides back out without another word and the fëanorians turn and set watches with their backs to sirion’s walls