He was going to die.
Of course, he had always known that all the roads he walked would end in death. But he hadn't expected it to come so soon; and at the same time he wasn't surprised. Just tired. He would have been grateful even to his brother's shade; to be this alone was too much, too much like his dreams of endless dark and eternal solitude.
And everything was still undone.
He felt surrounded by a terrible kind of blurriness, a vague fuzzing of the lines that reduced everything around him to smears of color and light and shadow. In his mind, however, it was all intolerably clear and sharp enough to cut.
He had failed Curufin. He had failed his brothers. And in a last attempt to clear that shame, he had failed Ireth. She had refused him, denied him, and he wasn't angry, not precisely – there didn't seem to be any room for it, only for a dull, senseless sort of ache that thudded in his chest like a second heartbeat.
He had lost.
"No – no!" He wasn't strong enough, but he fought anyway, strained against them, snarled, tried to lash out. They overpowered him as easily as his father might have, when he was a child, held him down kneeling.
"Now he understands," he heard one say, with a hint of nastiness – nothing like Curufin, though, nothing to how his younger brother could be when he had a mind – and he wanted to yell that no, he had understood there, but there he had been content to be helpless.
They left him in the dark, and just as Celegorm's eyes had finally adjusted to the green light of this strange place, he was plunged again into blindness. He sank down and considered the ways in which he could die.
How long would Elu Thingol want to delay? Not forever, perhaps only a few days. Perhaps as long as months, or years, to give him time to go mad in darkness and solitude without end. And no one would know. His brothers, if his capture were not made known, would think him dead. No one knew where he was but for Irissë, Eöl and her son; and no one but them would ever know.
He knew despair well, but this was something different. Deeper. Darker. And after he died, of course, who knew what would happen then? The Halls of Waiting, and perhaps it would be done with and perhaps it would be only the new beginning of a different kind of torment. He didn't want to know. Didn't want to die.
His life might be worth nothing beside his brothers, but surely it had to be worth more than this. Perhaps it would have been better, if his life was spent here so soon, to have gone north and died in futile battle with the Enemy's creatures, at least, instead of futile battle with those he could nearly call kin.
Celegorm could recall no other time when he had been so completely alone, other than those dreams of darkness.
You failed me.
Or maybe not alone. Celegorm cringed. He could almost see his brother's accusing eyes, unforgiving and merciless, looking down on him, grey eyes the only thing visible in a face composed of shadow. He tried to squirm away from them. "I tried. I tried, I will continue to try, but there is nothing left-"
You have your life. That should be enough.
Celegorm closed his eyes, and found the words to admit what he never wanted to say. "I'm sorry. It isn't."
Then let me help you. He didn't kneel, because Curufin never knelt, and at any rate he was only barely there. Let go and I will lend you strength. The door will open sooner or later.
"Let go of what," he asked, eyes still closed and the stars blinking in white sparks behind his eyes. Celegorm feared, perhaps, to face his brother's eyes.
Everything.
It sounded so easy. All he had to do was see this through to the end, and then there could be peace – within, at least, if certainly not without. Celegorm could feel himself sinking in the deep, black water, and there was no light to say which way was up and which was down.
Just give yourself to me.