#lunularia

For helping Sauron. This is both the tough one and the easy one. Sauron does not deserve aid. His current state (stuck in a spiral of loss and hate and desire and despair) is kinder than he deserves. He’s a slaver. He’s a murderer. He’s someone who deliberately causes pain. And he’s done that to… argh population numbers. Low hundreds of thousands at the low end, millions at the high end. But mercy exists in Arda and so does the possibility of redemption and becoming better and it has nothing to do with what is deserved or undeserved. An individual may be incapable of seeking it because of what they have made themselves become, but that possibility is never closed off. It’s not absolution, but it is a chance for survival and to do better in the future. Gandalf offers that mercy to Saruman, more than once. They offer the chance to Sauron in RotK (Let the Lord of the Black Land come forth! Justice shall be done upon him. For wrongfully he has made war upon Gondor and wrested its lands. Therefore the King of Gondor demands that he should atone for his evils, and depart then for ever. Come forth!) Sauron should have taken those terms, btw: he would have survived. Gandalf is someone who understands the world in that way - I talk about it a little below, but I think he’s the anti-Mandos. And on a character level, there’s also something to work with in Sauron, more to work with than Morgoth. He did love the world once and he did want to make it better. And in this story, he did love an individual person and was loved in turn. That can do a lot! All that said, it’s not exculpation. A Sauron who’s repented is no less responsible for his actions and a Sauron who hasn’t repented and who is doing evil should be fought.

For Celebrimbor, he gets the push he wanted because he does actually want to seek out Sauron again for a number of reasons. Not least of which because he is bored - Celebrimbor’s failure of ambition is something that troubles him a lot and part of the way it manifests is that because he hasn’t found any project as consuming as the Rings, no goal as worthwhile as healing the broken lands of Middle-earth, he’s not been fully engaged with a project and Sauron is certainly engaging. Pity for Sauron is another one. My version of Celebrimbor is not nice and certainly not sweet, nor is he particularly easy. He also has an innate tendency to be cruel when attacked or when he feels cornered, which he keeps mostly in check because he’s also a good person who doesn’t want to hurt others (there’s a reason he and Annatar got along and why they liked each other - they’re both quite sharp). (Neither is he naive or stupid, tyvm!) But he’s easily moved to pity, and Sauron is very pitiful: Sauron is someone who has lost his self and who is now nothing but hate and malice and loss and pain, and none of those are pleasant things to be. And Celebrimbor wanted to heal the hurts of the world, and the hurts of those who live in the world. Lastly, Celebrimbor’s still in love with Sauron, whatever else is there, and he still wants him. This conversation is what lets him let himself return, as it gives him a chance to work things out in his head and he has the tacit ok of Gandalf.

The scene starts out with Celebrimbor crying and talking to himself, speaking rhetorically to Sauron.

“Why did you return?” he said to the table when his throat cleared enough that he could speak.

“Return? Why wouldn’t I return? I had a hobbit to bring back!” said a voice.

Gandalf has excellent timing. I was pleased with this.

“I sought you out myself,” said Mithrandir. “I spent many great years, as your people reckon them, working against the dark in ways great and small and I heard many tales and much lore of the Master of the Rings, some false and some true.”

I don’t know exactly how much Gandalf knew before this conversation. Celebrimbor certainly thinks he knows more than he does. But he knew something was up. He's seen Celebrimbor around (they’re certainly not close, but do run into each other) and Celebrimbor has spent a fair bit of time being drunk and grumpy the past few years. I also think he may have sensed something through Narya.

Celebrimbor stared at him. Mithrandir was not the person to admit this to, and something inside him winced at what he was about to say to him, something wailed at him to stop, but he did say it; he could not not say it; he had to hear it made real again.

Celebrimbor is a deeply private person but he’s in a state of emotional distress and can’t control himself as he normally would. He also, as he says, needs to hear himself say what he feels about Sauron, the good and the bad both. He’s never said out loud everything he says to Gandalf and psychologically he needs the validation of hearing how he feels.

However, he never feels this way around Sauron. There's plenty Celebrimbor isn't telling Sauron, but he'd never feel embarrassed about sharing and he's not private with him.

“But I do know you, Ringmaker,” said Mithrandir. “Narya was my companion and aid for many years. No evil ever touched it, not in its bearing and not in its making. Through it I saw the heart of its creator and saw that he desired to make things of understanding and healing, for his creation to be a blessing to the world. And it was a blessing.”

Understanding and healing is from what Elrond says about the Three: healing, understanding, preserving all things unstained. I think the preservation aspect can be overplayed and the healing and understanding part forgotten about. The Rings are presented as good in LotR itself. Gandalf, the emissary of God, bears one and uses it to heal and inspire. And the fact that they will no longer work in Middle-earth is sad, and not a good thing; it’s a symbol of the Elves fading.

I didn’t really do anything with this though, Gandalf knowing about Celebrimbor through Narya, nor much on Celebrimbor’s reaction. I wish I’d done something more, but not sure what it would be and this is already long enough. I wouldn't take it out, though, because it's necessary in establishing what connects them.

“A wise fool,” said Mithrandir.

“Clever and stupid both,” Celebrimbor agreed. “Yet he… he saw me for me, not as the pale shadow of a dead man, and he understood me. I didn’t have to think on how to explain things, for his mind made similar leaps. We shared a sense of humor — and that is disconcerting in retrospect! — and it was easy and challenging both to be in his company; he was sharp, in an enjoyable way. Never nice, but I liked that too, and I didn’t mind that there was no kindness or pity in him. Perhaps I should have.

'Wise fool' is straight from The Two Towers; Gandalf calls Sauron that. It could also be used to describe Gandalf.

With Celebrimbor's speech, and his previous monologue, I wanted to go more into how Sauron is Annatar - Celebrimbor knew he wasn't a good person, not really, quite amoral, and he certainly wasn't nice. "Perhaps I should have [minded it]" - but he doesn't mind, not really. Celebrimbor knows he loved a monster, and he's surprisingly ok with that part.

Utterly miserable, he began to weep again, wracking sobs, and he pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and burying his face against them to hide.

Celebrimbor made me very sad writing this. He deserves a far better boyfriend. One thing I hope to show (in the "show don't tell" sense) by the end is that while Sauron genuinely makes his life more difficult and hard, that objectively Celebrimbor would be far better off without him, that bad things happen to Celebrimbor because of Sauron (in the future as well as the past - it won't be easy sailing after they leave Avathar), he also makes Celebrimbor happy, in a way that he's only happy with Sauron. Celebrimbor cries because of him a lot, but he also is fulfilled. (A Long-Expected Climax is post-Bones in my mind, though I reserve the right to change that mind, but what I picture their general dynamic like later.)

It had not been the first time Celebrimbor had been disloyal. He had betrayed the bond between him and his father and lord, thrown away honor and forsaken filial duty, for the path Curufin chose had been evil. He had betrayed the bonds of friendship, that which bound him to the one who had been closest to his heart, for Sauron’s path had been evil too.

This is an aside, but I don't think it's always appreciated what a big deal it was for Celebrimbor to break with Curufin, who was the lord to whom he owed loyalty as well as his father. Celebrimbor is someone who absolutely will put what he thinks is right over what is easy, or what society thinks is right (breaking loyalty... Celebrimbor would have been looked upon with a lot of suspicion by many in Nargothrond I think).

“Should you not? I pity all who fall to such depths.”

Celebrimbor felt tears come to his eyes again. “But pity the world too, for what Sauron did to it. How he hurt it! How marred it is! So much is… no, not broken exactly, but so many cracks in it.”

“Cracks?” said the wizard. “But how else would the light get in?”

“Spiders come in through cracks too.”

“Spiders and light both. And at times grace, when you least expect it. When Mandos spoke his Doom upon the Noldor he said that all deeds that begin well will turn ill, but he was less than half right: things can turn well that begin ill, and there is always room for hope. It wriggles in through those cracks too.”

This is, I guess, the emotional core of the conversation. And this I think is Gandalf. He's the anti-Mandos (pity, hope, "not even the wise can see all ends.") Gandalf is someone who looks for the eucatastrophe, someone who is open to the eucatastrophe. He’s the wisest of the Ainur indeed.

Btw, I thought I was so clever with my "the light gets in through the cracks" thing and then realized only after I posted that I stole it from Leonard Cohen, a line that had been floating around in my mind unconsciously unattributed.

But then he admitted, “There is a part of me that does want him back. He is still so very dear to me, Sauron the Abhorred. I am quite certain I am the only person in all Ea who still… cares for him. Not that he deserves it. But I do. He was and remains the most important person in my life.”

It was a release to say it, like a prison door opening, or a chain snapping, a release nothing like death.

I love that poem. (Also somewhat applicable to Sauron, he of changing and of shifting shape.)

Celebrimbor needed this conversation, needed someone he could spill his guts to - and he never has before, not since SA 1697, and then it was his literal guts. This is a conversation in which he says things he's only thought before, and he hears it. (Sauron was the most important and most dear thing in his life. Celebrimbor later tells him that he cannot find it in himself to wish they never met. Hey, this is shipfic!)

“Hmm,” Mithrandir said. His eyes were keen and thoughtful. “But what you were to him? You say he loved you, and I am not saying that you are wrong. But he was named Deceiver, and justly so.”

[...]

“He asked me to marry him,” he said, and took some amusement in the wizard’s clear and quickly hidden surprise. “Mind, his other, simultaneous proposal was that we conquer and rule the world together. Yes, Mithrandir, he did love me once. He just wasn’t particularly good at it.”

Gandalf can be surprised! Not that he likes admitting it. And he absolutely was surprised. Not that he was expecting Celebrimbor to say he was in love with Sauron (he came in to the conversation expecting to hear that they were friends) but to know that Sauron felt the same. It’s important information to him, I think.

Sauron proposing was something that came to me in the middle of writing this chapter; the breakup was always planned to go in it, but what the breakup was exactly was unclear. I knew I needed something that left Celebrimbor zero doubt that Sauron did love him and I wanted that knowledge to come from the scene in which they break up, and I also didn’t want Celebrimbor to know Annatar was Sauron before he puts on the Ring. I’m very pleased with what I came up with (if less pleased with the scene itself; it was the most bothersome to write and I finished the proposal scene the night before I posted the fic).

Also - this isn't canon, but I totally think Gandalf's a closet romantic. It's part of the reason he tacitly encourages Celebrimbor to try to help Sauron.

“All things being equal, I would prefer not to be vivisected again. A curious custom of the Elves, that we prefer our bones within our bodies,” he said to Mithrandir with a wry smile. Sauron would have laughed, but Mithrandir merely studied him.

Celebrimbor thinks this is a bit funny; he says in the next paragraph that he would have laughed back at Sauron. Poor Sauron, he's going to have to put up with Celebrimbor making pointed jokes about that time that Sauron tortured and killed him for the rest of their existence.

“And he must have been so scared at the end, so very scared,” Celebrimbor said, and took a slow breath to ward away the sobs that threatened to tear at his throat. He was not successful. When he could talk again, he said, “And now hurt. His own doing, but there is a gaping hole where the Ring once was, and the loss and the longing that consumed him when I saw him, it was an aching pain. He hurt himself so much.”

Sauron, you do not deserve him.

“Did he now? Curious,” said Mithrandir, half to himself. “I knew who I was when I returned to Arda, but many of my memories were faint and hidden. I did not remember my name until a friend called me by it.”

This is a detail I always loved from the books. It works in the dialogue and story, but I also just think it's cool.

“But I have done something,” said the wizard. “I have now learned that Sauron is alive and in Aman, and I did not know that before.”

“You did not know,” said Celebrimbor blankly.

“I do now! I suspected, and you confirmed my suspicion.”

This is another area where I think I got Gandalf. He's a tricksy bastard!

My thoughts are that Gandalf suspected something was up, was snooping around for info, and found that there was a lot going on that he didn’t know about. Sauron’s return is one of those things (that he half-suspected, thanks to Narya), but to hear that Sauron was in love with a particular person enough to bind himself in marriage (and I do go for the soulbond version) and that said particular person is weeping helplessly because he misses him.

Mithrandir huffed. “Well there’s rarely any use gainsaying the foolhardy. But as I said, you have more than one path you can take, and I do not know if one is best. But you do need to walk forward. You might wish this hadn’t come to pass, but the small, diminished spirit of that which was Sauron has returned, and it was you that came across him.”

Idk, this seems like a Gandalfy thing. He says as much to Frodo, at any rate, for all that Celebrimbor is foolish in a way that Frodo and Sam are very much not. I do think this is a touch trite, or alternatively too referential; I might have rephrased or cut it were I writing today.

“It is never too late to offer mercy. A drowning man may toss aside driftwood that is thrown to him out of pride and a refusal to accept help; he might even throw it back at them who would aid him, out of spite. He might slip between the waters before he can grasp it. But to be the one who wants to help, even if that help is refused or hopeless? That is not a bad thing to be.”

Celebrimbor knew that; he agreed with Mithrandir, and yet there was some part of him that needed to be convinced.

“If you were that drowning man, why would someone throw you a lifeline?”

Under Mithrandir’s bristling brows was some glimmer in his eyes. “Perhaps because others take pity on you. Perhaps because you are very loved.”

Celebrimbor looked away, unwilling to meet Mithrandir’s eyes.

But the wizard continued, “And whatever else Sauron was, he was very loved. That is no small thing.”

Or this might be the heart of the conversation.

Gandalf certainly wasn’t planning on sending Celebrimbor off to heal Sauron (he wasn’t planning on Sauron redemption at all) but to his surprise he found someone who might just have the tools to do so. It’s not that love is redemptive in and of itself, but there’s something in Sauron that could be better, and there’s someone who loves him enough to help him.

And just as importantly for Gandalf, perhaps more importantly, this gives Celebrimbor a chance to get what he wants (“I should just like to say goodbye to him and for him to know who it is that says goodbye.”)

Do I think that Gandalf would offer even Sauron yet another chance? I do, yes. It’s not a pardon nor absolution. Sauron will have to face justice and his sins are immeasurable. But Gandalf never closes off the possibility of people becoming better than they are. He hopes for it even, knowing it to be foolish. And unlike Gollum, Sauron is very loved. (It's deeply unfair. Poor Smeagol.)

“He poured into [the Ring] so much of what he was, all of his power, his malice and his cruelty,” said Celebrimbor.

“Well those are no bad things to be destroyed!”

This is one of my rationalizations for Sauron being able to get better. It's not that he himself is any less mean or cruel with the Ring destroyed, but they're qualities that are no longer metaphysically intrinsic to him. Now that the Ring is gone, Sauron is metaphysically capable of becoming not as mean and less cruel. It doesn't mean he can do it, of course; he certainly couldn't without Celebrimbor, but the possibility of him improving is no longer blocked off.

Incidentally, that metaphysical freeness is also why he's able to take fair form again. Sauron thinks at one point that a ring is a signifier of a bond, which it is; with the Ring destroyed he is released from bondage. He's still Sauron, though. It didn't magically make him less evil.

“Or he may turn away aid,” continued Mithrandir. “And even if he does recover, at least in part, do you know who he will be? He was scarce less evil than his old master. Even if his shallow repentance after Morgoth fell was genuine, he long ago undid it. If you go to him and if he does come to a place where he knows who he is and who you are, he may be as the Lord of the Rings was when he was cast down, not as Annatar when you knew him. You said earlier that choices make a person who they are, and Sauron made himself foul and mean.”

Stinky asshole.

He closed his eyes. “Mithrandir, Holy One, if you bound yourself to an evil inanimate object which was then destroyed, what would be the best way to reconstitute you?”

The Maia did not answer his question but said, “Before the beginning we chose this world.”

Sauron's saving grace is that he did love the world once and he did chose it. There’s something meaningful in that (and meaningful in Gandalf’s choice to enter it and then to return to it)

“Oh yes. It will be an adventure, if you will,” said Celebrimbor cheerfully

Someone's been talking to Bilbo. (Bilbo will, I think, be the Hobbit who stays the longest in Valinor; Frodo and Sam are weary in a way he isn't. I think he may stay indefinitely, because there are lots of adventures to go on.)

He remembered [Narya's] forging, how he had called upon the lifeblood of rock and flesh and the slow-moving currents of liquid fire at the heart of the earth, churning with heat and bringing forth newness. It was a spark to the weary soul, a light in a dim place, a forge to remake that which had been broken, an ember to warm the heart and mind and swift-spinning globe.