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The Raft
The Elf clambers up on their raft and gasps for breath. He does not know her, but he recognizes the overproud bearing of the Noldor in the way she tilts her head up at the man who offers her water.
He does not like to look at her. There is a glimmer of Valinor in her hair and skin, the steel of her gaze, and he is not yet ready to consider the judgement of the Valar that awaits him, even in such an indirect way as this.
Lucky, then, that she pays him little mind, dealing with the humans and their fear, and then the wyrm.
But then there is only her, and if he saves her, she can help him hold the raft together.
Her arm is cool and strong where he grasps it to pull her back onboard, corded muscle flexing under his hand.
She gives her name reluctantly, and yes, a Noldo, a bothersome one, and a rebel twice over judging by her state. His assumed moniker drops from his lips, and something within him, restless as the waves, settles.
Yes. He is Halbrand.
Númenor I
The Elf will not leave him be.
He had assumed that he would fade from her mind once in Númenor; there are enough political tangles here to keep even one as adept as him busy, and she has proven herself unable (or, as he suspects unwilling), to play the games needed to reach her goals. But the mask he had worn has worked better than he wanted, and she has set her considerable stubbornness at bending him to her will.
Elendil has shown some willingness to be responsible for her, and Queen Regent Miriel alternately spurns her and keeps her close, and the townspeople mutter and watch her as if she is a devil from the deep, but she will not allow him to fade into the background.
(And how he would like that. For a little while).
It is laughable, and he does laugh, in private: Galadriel of the Noldor, Golden Princess of the House of Finarfin, a dogged shadow that had pursued him across Middle Earth for centuries now desires to have him at her side, guarding her back as she hares after yet another foe.
She is unstoppable; a force not fully in control of herself. He allows her to seek him out, because if she keeps getting arrested then it’s only a matter of time before suspicion starts to fall on him as well. It’s not a terrible trial; dogged and stubborn as she is, she is good company, if she can be moved off the topic of her longtime nemesis.
And she is very beautiful. Both in the usual way of the Elves, and something more: the light of the Creator shines in her face, and she moves with a natural grace that elevates her, even in this island-nation of the Valar’s favoured people.
The Queen Regent seems to be watching and waiting, in no hurry to make a decision either way, with that Ar-Pharazôn nipping at her heels. Instead she tells Galadriel that she cannot move without Halbrand’s backing, and leaves him to stand against Galadriel and her determination alone.
Such as now, in this loud tavern that he likes to frequent - he had mentioned where he planned to spend his evening and she had announced that she would accompany him. She has followed him here enough that the patrons have lost their wariness - he saw one of the serving-maids squeeze Galadriel’s arm in welcome when they walked in, and enjoyed her wide-eyed startlement.
She takes another sip of her ale - alcohol doesn’t seem to affect her much, but she likes the taste - and nudges his foot with the toe of her slipper.
“You haven’t answered me.”
“I’m not going to answer you.”
“You will if you have more ale,” she says, and smiles.
Oh, she is very beautiful indeed.
*
“Fine,” he says eventually. They are walking back to the palace, along the canal that runs through the centre of the City. “Yes, I took dancing lessons. In my youth. It was expected. “
“I thought so,” she says. She is balancing on the narrow ledge that lines the canal, barely a handbreadth wide, but she doesn’t look down. He walks beside her, shorter for once and enjoying this new angle. She glances down.
“A royal sort of answer,” she says, but she isn’t really pushing at him anymore. The canal ends, and he hesitates before reaching out a hand to escort her back down to the ground. She hesitates before taking it.
Her hand is small, and cool. He can feel faint calluses under the smooth skin, and a distant tremble, as if forewarning of an earthquake. She snatches her hand away.
“It is so very important to you that I am worthy,” he says, and she looks away. He has caught her wrongfooted, but he doesn’t enjoy it as he usually does.
He wants very badly to hold her small hand again, but she is stiff and silent beside him.
“I do not value you more for your heritage,” she says. “I simply recognise it.”
“Then what do you value me for?” he asks. She looks away, and does not answer, and they return to their rooms in silence.
*
The knock doesn’t startle him - he had heard her footsteps approach, then hesitate outside his door, but he makes sure to have an appropriately startled look on his face when he opens the door.
“Were you sleeping?” She asks. He shakes his head and moves aside so she can slip past him.
His room is well-lit despite its size, the ingenious Númenórean lanterns keeping it bright, illuminating the lushness of the draperies and furnishings, the gleam of the gold and silver adornments. She doesn’t try to hide her curiosity as she looks around, and he wonders what her room is like.
“It’s late,” he prompts, when the silence begins to stretch. When she looks at him again, it is with an expression that he does not recognize in her.
“Yet you are not readying for bed.” He is still in the tunic he has worn all day, and she is in the dress she wore to the tavern. She seems to have been supplied with an endless number of elaborate blue and green gowns that she wears as unselfconsciously as she wore the shift he first met her in. She is a warrior, he knows, and he imagines her in armour, shining bright as she bears down on her enemies.
He has been staring. She has too. There is a beat, ponderous and heavy, like the slow tilt of the raft when the storm threatened to capsize them.
“I have seen you looking at me,” she says.
“Surely you must be used to it,” he says.
“I am,” she replies, and kisses him.
She kisses him with little hesitation, although she pauses when he pulls her closer, allowing his greedy hands to clutch her to him. He makes an effort to gentle his grip, skimming a hand down her back, breaking away from her mouth to plant kisses down her neck.
He created this body to be his servant, to disguise and illuminate him as he wished. It is nothing more than a tool. But in this moment it has betrayed him, a hammer that has struck against its master's hand. He is filled with the taste of her, the yielding firmness of her weight against his, the gravity of her presence that will not allow him to turn away.
“Galadriel, Galadriel.” Her name is a song in his throat as she removes his tunic, then his undershirt. She trails curious hands over his chest, rubbing a thumb over the hair there, resting a hand against his human heart.
She holds him at the waist and gazes up, the fingers of one hand sneaking between his breeches and his skin.
“I would lie with you,” she says. She is flushed pink. He winds a hand into her lovely hair, a finer gold than any metal he has forged, and with the other, makes quick work of the laces at the back of her dress. It falls away easily, the silk whispering as it releases her.
Underneath, a shift, so familiar that he smiles, and gathers it slowly, watching as she is revealed to him, first slim ankles, then white thighs - and here he stops and breathes, his traitorous body threatening to revolt, and she unwinds her arms from him to take the hem herself and pull the shift up and off herself, faster than he would have liked.
But now she is bare, and breathing hard with both desire and nerves, and she is so exquisite that he has to bite back against revealing all, from saying, I will raise Beleriand from the sea, if only you will take a step closer.
He gathers her to him, and she comes willingly and breathes against his chest, the warm air of her mouth making him shiver.
“Avatyara me,” she murmurs into his skin. He walks backwards, trusting his feet to lead them to his bed. Then her hands are on him, and her mouth, branding him, and he is pressing her down into the soft mattress as his hands glide over smooth skin.
Her legs part easily for him, and she is warm and wet, her thighs like iron around his waist. She lifts herself up and says into his ear, Halbrand, please , and he is lost.
*
After, she says, “I cannot say what you are worthy of. I can only see what you are capable of,” and her hands are gentle upon his skin. And he places his fingers underneath her chin so that he may look at her, and behold her light.
Númenor II
He doesn’t need to fall asleep - this body needs very little rest, which is fortunate. But he must have, because he last remembers her tucked alongside his body in a tangle, huffing into his ear as her body relaxed from the aftershocks of her pleasure.
Queen Regent Miriel had ordered that a festival be organised to celebrate the voyage to Middle Earth, and the whole of Armenelos is still awake from the sounds of it, celebrating the soldiers who will be departing at first light tomorrow.
They had feasted, and danced - Halbrand with every lady who had plucked up the courage to ask, and Galadriel with Elendil for a few short minutes. She had laughed and laughed, a carefree maiden for a short while, and onlookers had stopped to watch.
They had slipped away from the feast quietly, and separately, although the Queen Regent caught his eye and raised a brow at him as he had taken his leave. No matter. He is a King now, and Galadriel is not likely to care.
She had been waiting for him just inside his chambers, and she had caught him up in a kiss almost before he closed the door. He pressed her against the wall, sank to his knees, and gathered the pale blue material of her dress in his fist and gave her to hold. Her legs spread easily when he urged them open so he could use his mouth on her, using his lips and tongue until she had screamed hoarsely, her legs trembling around his ears.
Then he had turned her around, and bent her over the table that the servants used to keep pitchers of drinking water. The unlucky jug had tumbled to the ground as he heaved her up. The feel of her overwarm skin drove him almost to distraction as he fumbled at his breeches, and she moaned in impatience.
“Hurry,” she commanded, as though she was at the head of a great army, and he had laughed, and got himself free at last, and lifted her dress higher so he could watch the muscles at the base of her spine contract as he drove in, and again, and harder, and he wasn’t going to last long at all, not with her surrounding him, squeezing him unmercifully, and he snuck a hand around and drew gentle circles around her centre, and she threw her head back, face contorted, and came, and so did he, spilling into her heat and bucking helplessly. Then to the bed, where once again she tested his now-mortal flesh against her elven agelessness.
But now he can no longer feel her resting beside him, and it spurs him to open his eyes. It doesn’t take long to find her, seated by the window, gazing at the stars. It is still early enough that Tilion has not yet made his way across the sky, and she sits at the narrow seat by the window, the moonlight on her face.
She wears nothing but a thin robe, her hair still in disarray, and something within him seizes. He thinks of the forge and the hammer and the anvil, of binding, the sweet smoke of a newly quenched weapon.
He misses her warmth, her many small movements against him - eyelashes fluttering against his skin, her breathing, out of rhythm with his, the scrape of her fingernails along his hip where she likes to hold him, but he doesn’t call out to her.
“Tomorrow, we shall leave,” she says, without turning. “We will take back the Southlands, and march upon the enemy, and you will be King in truth.” She says it as fact, as if she is relaying news from a battle already won.
She does not attempt to shape the world with song, but will alone. It’s fascinating to watch. As is the curve of her lovely neck when she twists to look over the sparkling water, just visible from her window.
She senses his regard, and the corner of her mouth ticks up.
“I first crossed these seas on foot,” she says. “It took years.”
“On foot?” he does not enjoy pretending ignorance with her, but it steals her attention away from the moonlight and the water and back to him, so it is a worthy exchange.
“Yes,” she says. “ With many of my countrymen, far to the North of here. There were mountains of grinding ice that connected the continents. It was…” she turns inward, deep, and returns subdued. “It was a trial.”
Ignorance, again. He stands and walks to her, sitting at the other end of the long seat, lifting her feet onto his lap. He presses his thumbs into the high arches of each foot and watches her come back to him.
“You are good to me,” she says quietly, and stops. A light flush spreads up her chest to her neck.
“Should I not be?” She shoots him a quick glance, and looks at his hands instead, which have crept up to her calves, stroking the soft skin there as she squirms slightly.
Silence, for a while. He concentrates on the glide of his hands over her skin, feeling her unspool by degrees as he works, until she is undone by his care, blinking languidly and shivering as his fingers brush the tender underside of her knee.
“I have been a soldier for many lifetimes,” she says. “There has been little space for tenderness these past few centuries.”
“A lonely life,” he says, and she darts a glance at him again.
“It’s what I chose,” she says.
“But not what you wanted,” he says, half a question. She stiffens in his loose hold, and he lets her go. She curls up on the other side of the seat.
“Is this the life you wanted?” The question is barbed, but he takes a moment to consider.
“I didn’t know what I wanted, at first. I felt that my destiny had been laid out for me in a way that I could not escape, and I… lost myself… in trying to break free. I still don’t know,” he admits. Except for the glimmer of a hope that he thought had been crushed when his master was overthrown: of an throne of adamant for his own, his crest stamped upon his devotees, the clang of hammers in his forges that would rise and fall to the beat of his name, the sound inescapable to all who lived in in Middle Earth.
How she would rage to hear it! The body that he was learning so well and the mind whose attention he craved would turn against him in a fury that would rival the storm they had survived. It would be a singular experience, as is everything to do with her.
This imagining heats his blood, and he reaches for her again, and this time he does not limit himself. She settles upon his lap, and he frees her from the silken robe. She shivers as he lowers his mouth to the neck he so admired, then the strong line of her shoulder, and the smooth swell of her breast. He doesn’t stop until she is panting, reaching down impatiently between them to touch him.
“Showing you care is not a hardship for me,” he says. She stills, and the want in her face turns to a tenderness that he cannot face directly. He picks her up, and carries her back to bed, away from the window, where the moon and stars cannot see.
The hills of Emyn Arnen
For all the stress and worry it took to start the expedition, the sailing itself is easy. They encounter no storms in crossing the sea, and they enter the Bay of Belfalas and sail up the Anduin with little trouble.
They are sailing up to the hills of Emyn Arnen on Galadriel’s urging; she had spent many hours studying his brand and comparing it to maps of the Southlands, before declaring that Sauron’s stronghold was most likely located close to the Orodruin. It’s a shockingly accurate guess, considering how little information she had to go on, and he is oddly proud.
However, the smoother the journey goes, the more restless she becomes. She stands sternly by the bow while the wind carries them, and politely harries the navigator when they slow, inquiring whether this or that causeway or current may be quicker. He convinces some of the newer soldiers to spar with her; she is gentle with the younger ones, and some lightness returns to her bearing when explaining a series of movements, or correcting an uncertain stance.
He does not fight her himself. He has learned this new body well, but she is too seasoned; she will notice a too-quick parry, or a show of force behind a block, and he does not trust himself to keep his head, not with the way her eyes glint when she has a sword in hand.
Instead he spars with Elendil while she dances up the other side of the deck with all the soldiers eager to prove themselves, and if she wonders at his refusal to cross swords with her, she never mentions it - perhaps thinking to protect his pride.
He distracts her in other, quieter ways, which come with considerably less bruising, and in this fashion they reach the hills a full day ahead of schedule.
Their ships reach the designated docking point at sunset when it is too late to push on. Orodruin is only two days’ ride away due east, if they push the horses, and he can see the longing in her eyes to continue, but headstrong as she is, she is not foolish, and she does not protest when Queen Regent Miriel orders a camp to be set up.
“At first dawn,” she says, and stalks off, probably to pore over the maps once more.
He is feeling restless, himself. Even at this distance he can feel the presence of many thousands of orcs; their feet pound the earth in a familiar vibration that he can feel ever so slightly, if he’s quiet. He knows who is leading them, and he entertains a very pleasant fantasy of that thrice-cursed Uruk tied to a whipping post, pleading for death.
It is Elendil’s boy who comes to find him, leading him excitedly to the fire, where the soldiers are trading war stories. Númenor has not been to war for so long that their stories are echoes upon echoes, but he is captivated all the same. Isildur turns to him, once, and opens his mouth, as if to ask for a true story, but the friend whom Galadriel had promoted clasps his arm before he can.
Good; the feel of orcs so close has set a black mood on him; the stories he wants to tell would stink of blood, not the polished valour they seek.
He excuses himself, and hangs his head so he seems burdened, rather than incensed, and goes in search of her.
She is not with the maps, or at the food stores, or sharpening her blade. She is not with Queen Regent Miriel, or in her tent. He looks around the dark and scowls, and wanders more, and hears a familiar voice, quiet and crooning.
She is standing in the temporary paddock, stroking the head of a white horse and speaking to it softly. Finally, she is at peace: the impatient stiffness of her spine is gone. When she turns to look at him, her eyes are alight with joy.
“I shall have this one,” she says, and the horse whickers in agreement. She turns to the horse again, murmuring words in Quenya that he can’t quite hear, stroking the horse’s neck.
“It’s a handsome animal,” he says. She doesn’t seem inclined to move, so he walks closer. The horse eyes him warily, but allows him to place a hand on its withers.
“I am thinking of naming her Tintallë.” The horse whinnies again, nuzzling into Galadriel’s shoulder. “Or, I should say, that is her name. She seems to have chosen for me.” She laughs. “Isildur said that one will be yours.” She gestures at a bay several feet away. “He has good feet, and a good temper.”
“Did they not give yours a name already?”
“They did,” she says. They named yours Falmar, which will not do. With a name like that he will drag you into the first body of water he sees.” Merriness is lovely on her, he muses, as rare as it is. “How do the Southlanders name their steeds?”
He has always cared more for the making, than the naming. He considers it, though, encouraged by her bright expression. A name that sounded like the shriek of metal against metal, perhaps, or something he could cry out at he mowed that traitor down.
This is a curious reversal, where she is calm, and he is raging, only millennia of long practice helping him keep control. As in the beginning, he does not want to look at her.
“I do not know,” he says finally. “I cannot think on it.”
“Halbrand.” Her brow furrows, and she leaves the horse be. “Do not be troubled. All will be well.”
And then she is gentling him, as though he is a faithful beast
(And he is, he is , for so long he had toiled under a yoke, only to be betrayed just as freedom was within his grasp. What can be denied to one who has suffered as he has? Not her light, surely. Not her hands or her care).
And his head is bowed, far enough that he can bury his nose in her neck. She smells lightly of horse, and of living things.
“Do not leave me, Galadriel,” he says. She pauses. Her hand stills on the back of his neck.
“I am not the one who leaves,” she says.
This Elf is his enemy. He would have cut her down if they had met on the fields of battle and laughed as she died. He would have mounted her head among her kinsmen and thought nothing of it. He holds it now, cradling her close, the anger smothered to a great despair.
“You will have your vengeance,” she says. “For all you lost. I will help you.”
He cannot promise that she will have her own vengeance, so instead he holds her to the distant sounds of coming war.
The banks of the Glanduin
“Tell me your name,” she whispers. Her lips tremble.
Which name to give her? Does he wish to stoke her anger, or to drown it?
(He wishes neither. He wishes a crown upon her head, fashioned by his hands. He wishes her teeth in his neck, her thick rope of hair twisted in his grasp. He wishes to recreate the mallorn tree in gold and silver, unbreakable, everlasting.)
But he will not batten himself down for anyone, not even for her, most lovely of all beings.
“I have been awake since the breaking of the first silence,” he says, and the wrist in his grasp quivers, and her eyes are the eyes of Manwë, ever ready to cast him down, “and in that time, I have had many names.”
After
The Southlands are a beautiful ruin.
Orodruin continues to belch smoke and ash into the air, turning all around into a featureless grey. Even the Orcs struggle with the foul air, choking on ash that still rains down at regular intervals. Most of the greenery is dead, and the few remaining plants stand forlornly, as if counting down to their doom.
There are few humans left alive, the few he sees pressed into service by the Orcs. They look thin and weary. He doubts they will last long.
This was not quite the plan - he had planned to activate the Mountain after he had already consolidated his power in this region, as a final devastating blow to his opposers. The Southlands were meant to be an irresistible honeypot, luring in the wealthy and influential, bringing their resources under his power before sending them back to their kingdoms to rule in his stead, but no matter. It’s a minor flaw in his design, and will be forgotten soon enough.
He slays the traitor, and plans.
And brings the Orcs under his heel, and builds.
And throws back the foolish Southlanders who oppose him, and dreams.
His tower begins to take shape. Large and imposing, a bruise upon the blighted landscape that will put off all but the most determined attackers.
Orodruin erupts again, and the sky turns black.
And still, she does not come.
Is she still in Ost-in-Edhil? She will have been shamed by the discovery of his identity, he knows, but surely not enough to leave. Not when she will be needed in the new war effort.
He coaxes a tributary from the Sea of Nurnen up to the North, to his monstrosity of a tower, and uses the water’s power to light a forge.
Finally, rain that does not burn falls from the sky. His Orcs, their loyalty newly refreshed, inform him that plants are starting to grow again, slowly and reluctantly.
It is everything he wanted.
He leaves when the sun is highest, and leaves no instruction. He hasn’t left his new Kingdom since he departed
(fled)
Departed from Eregion. It is disconcerting.
He cannot sense her, and so it is tedious. He wants to find her, free himself, and return to his ambition.
He becomes Halbrand again, folds himself down into man-shape and speaks as the people in the Southlands do, and people are glad to speak of the She-Elf who comes and goes with the wind, a cloud of golden hair that blots the sun with its beauty.
He tracks her to Caras Galadhon, a small city in an unremarkable wood. He knows she is somewhere here, but still, he cannot feel her.
He wastes half the night searching before he hears a familiar voice.
She is in full armour, and he cannot hear what she is saying from this distance but it is intense, and what he can see of her face is grim. He watches from the woods as she claps her hand against the shoulder of what must be a lieutenant, and returns to a small, well-kept home on the outskirts.
He waits until all is quiet and dark, and flows forward, silent as a cat.
Her window is partially open. Careless. It is the work of a moment to enter, and find where she is sleeping.
He can feel a familiar magic in the air, like his but not, the reason why he was not able to sense her until he was close. They must have forged the rings, then.
In sleep, she is painfully familiar. She still rests with an arm flung up, her face tucked into the pillow. All the rest of her is shadows. He feels a painful pang, and takes another step closer.
A whirl of movement, and there is a blade slashing at his throat. He raises his own dagger to meet it, and blocks the blow a hairsbreadth from his skin.
“Always the same attack,” he says.
She is wide awake, her exhaustion, or the pretence of it, gone from her eyes and voice. He wonders how long she had known he was there, how deliberately she had arranged herself in such beautiful repose.
“Get out,” she says. She is barely moving, barely breathing.
“If that is what you wish,” he says.
He can feel her pressing harder with the sword, the strain of her muscles working against him. It takes some effort to keep her from slicing him through. He waits until he feels her begin to tire.
“I only ask that you hear me,” he continues.
“Say it then,” she says, “and leave me in peace.” She sounds weary.
He sees the sparkling cities of his dreams in his mind’s eye, the spires reaching up to Manwë’s domain. Ever has his ambition reached up and outwards, striving for the perfection that Eru in his magnitude and selfishness kept for himself.
“Halbrand-” she says, and he shakes his head. She seems to realise that she still has the sword to his throat, and lowers it. A small victory.
“Not Halbrand,” he says. He had chosen Halbrand as an echo of his original name’s greatness, and now the name chafes at some unseen part of him that now feels unformed, vulnerable. He hopes she does not hold the sword to him again.
“Gorthaur, then, if you prefer,” she says acidly. Her sword arm twitches.
“I am… bereft,” he admits. She waits.
“I waited for you to come and try to kill me,” he says. “I built a tower so you wouldn’t waste time wandering.”
“You want me to end you,” she says flatly.
“I wanted you to break me,” he says, finally.
“And yet, you are immortal. You set me an impossible task.” She gives no more quarter. How he wishes he had fought her, before their meeting on the raft.
“No,” he says. “No. I want-” what does he want? Why is he here? He thinks of the shine of the mithril, the glorious moment where he thought the binding had succeeded, the exhilaration of a wholly new creation.
“I have lived since before the light of Laurelin touched that hair of yours,” he says. “Eternal patterns cannot be undone on a whim. I wanted you to set me free.”
“A whim that has brought you through my window,” she says. “Mighty Maia that you are, your worries are beyond my powers to solve.”
“Galadriel-” he is at a rare loss for words. He has been undone, lifted high, dragged down by an anchor. He wants to touch her. He wishes she would swing that sword at him.
He doesn’t know what she sees, but her face softens, just a fraction.
“My husband styled me Galadriel,” she says, “and now all know me by that name, though I was Artanis for millennia.” He suppresses a jealous snarl. She notices and scoffs, unsympathetic.
“So what shall you call me,” he returns. “Faithful hound? Will you fashion a leash?”
“I fashion nothing,” she says. “I will not name you. Choose for yourself, or remain.”
“My ambitions,” he says, “or your hand. A heavy bride-price.”
“No,” she says. “I cannot bind you. I will not promise you.”
A shining city, a heaven in the east. Order and awe and beauty shaped by his hand and discerning eye. He breathes in deeply.
She carries the scent of the mallorn tree.
“What shall I call you,” she says. A softly-voiced offer. Not a binding, but a door.
And so he tells her, and her eyes flutter closed, whether in gladness, or sorrow he cannot yet say. And then her eyes open, and he knows. And once again, some part of his ancient, restless being settles into place.