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Galadriel of the Noldor, Daughter of the Golden House of Finarfin, swore vociferously in the tongues of Elves, Men, Dwarves and even Orcs, as bitter ash coated her nose and entered her mouth for the tenth time in as many minutes.

Several weeks ago, the land beneath her feet had been verdant and green; filled with life, and even hope, after the Numenorean host she’d led had crushed the foes under the Moriondor who called himself Adar.

Galadriel swore softly again as ash coated her eyelashes and she had to stop to delicately clear the acidic flakes from her vision.

The mountain must have erupted once more, for this much ash to still be in the air. It had been weeks since she and – and Halbrand had galloped for Eregion.

She coughed, trying to clear her lungs, as she brought her cloak up to cover more of her face while still attempting to keep the ash out of the links of her chainmail. She stamped her feet, displacing more ash, as she squinted through the grey darkness which had overtaken the Southlands.

Visibility was extremely limited, even for her keen elven eyes, and all around her the land was eerily silent. Death had come to this place, sudden and swift, and left nothing in its wake.

As Galadriel continued to move slowly in a – she hoped – south-eastern direction, ash-covered trees, shorn of their leaves, loomed out at her from the gloom, like skeletons with grasping fingers. The occasional, sickening crunch beneath her boots, told her she’d trod on the bones of some poor, small animal that had failed to escape the pyroclastic flow.

Each step through the unnerving silence and shadow stoked the fire in Galadriel ever higher. Rage, betrayal, and shame churned within her, in a dangerous mixture that threatened to explode out of her as violently as the fires of Orodruin itself.

Halbrand.

The man she had shared her life with, had endured perils on land and sea with, had fought besides as brothers-in-arms…. even bared her soul to, was not a man at all.

He had never been her friend and companion.

He had never been anything at all to her, except her sworn enemy.

Sauron the Deceiver.

Servant of Morgoth.

The very being she had spent centuries of darkness hunting, the murderer of her beloved Finrod, had been right under her nose for months.

And she was the fool who hadn’t seen who, no what, he was until it was too late.

He had tricked her, lied to her, gotten her to speak of her brother to him, and she had been too stupid – too blind and complacent – to see that it was her enemy and not her friend who stood before her.

Galadriel picked up her pace, heedless of the lack of visibility and the very real possibility of orcs. She had a stout elven sword; the very one Glorfindel had used to slay the balrog in the mountains above Gondolin, in fact. She also had one of the new rings Celebrimbor had forged – that he had given Celebrimbor the idea for how to combine the mithril for, the Void take him! – and any Orcs who crossed her path –

Despite being an Elf, Galadriel tripped.

Tumbling head over heels, she landed in a thick pile of ash, a cloud of it rising up to cover her.

She let out a short scream of frustration, furiously wiping at the ash that stung her eyes. They watered fiercely. Holding her breath, as much to not breathe in the ash while she cleared her nose, as to prevent her eyes from watering any further, Galadriel fixed her mind on all the things she planned to do to Sauron when she caught up with him.

Defiantly, she rose from the ash like a mortal tale of a goddess from the sea and continued on her previous course at an undiminished rate of speed.

She did, however, take more care as to where she placed her feet.

Galadriel had a general idea of where she was going and one very specific feeling for where she thought Hal- Sauron would be. She had spent weeks traveling with the man – evil fiend of Morgoth, and further weeks imprisoned with him on the island of Númenor.

Not to mention the centuries she had spent tracking him back and forth across the vastness of Middle Earth.

Denied of his original goal of Eregion and the power of the Elves, Sauron would return to the scene of his next most recent failure – the Southlands.

If he had not shed his current form – and she doubted he could just yet, that his power had not returned enough for him to do so – he would be unable to bear the fires of Orodruin. But she had seen in Armenelos and then again in Eregion, how even as Halbrand, Sauron had gravitated towards a forge.

He had been a smith of Aüle back in Valinor and was held highest in the Valar’s esteem. Mairon, he had been called then, and even as a child, Galadriel had longed to meet him. The Noldor prized craftsmen above all others – scholars, engineers, smiths, and weavers – and Mairon’s work in those blessed days had rivalled even Fëanor’s, and Aüle’s himself.

He had been particularly gifted in crafting swords, and young Galadriel had always longed for a blade of Mairon, though her father would not hear of it.

The Galadriel who had been forged in the brutal wars against Morgoth continued her march over the mountains, squaring her jaw and thrusting the past forcibly aside. Mairon was no more, and Sauron would die spitted on the end of her Elven-forged blade.

She would allow no other outcome. He would retreat to a forge; hoping to build yet another weapon for himself, and she would be there waiting for him.

The best forge in the Southlands was beneath the watchtower at Ostirith. It was unlikely even the tower’s destruction had damaged the forge, and though surrounded by orcs led by Adar, Sauron would head there; Galadriel was certain of it.

Day faded into night and back into day again before Galadriel was at last able to view the watchtower in the distance. Dusk was fast approaching, brought on faster by the clouds that ever covered the Southlands now, but at least the ash had stopped falling for the time being.

Galadriel kept her cloak on, and her bright silver-gold hair covered. It had been many centuries since she’d brought to mind the lessons Melian had taught her in enchanted Doriath. But now, with the power of the mithril-ring, Nenya, humming always at the back of her mind, Galadriel whispered an enchantment of concealment into the cloak. Hopefully it would be enough to get her past the orcs that patrolled these mountains.

Although she was in the mood for a fight, Galadriel wanted that fight to be with Sauron, not some lesser spawn of the Darkness.

There were no stars above her to help guide her way, but between one mountain valley and the next, Galadriel caught sight of the ruined watchtower through the gloom.

At last, she thought.

She hadn’t stopped to rest in days and her body was beginning to tire, but none of that mattered for the end of her quest was in sight.

Ostirith lay in a high mountain pass overlooking the steep drop into the valley below. Just a few weeks ago, this place had been beautiful and teeming with life. Now, the uneasy silence and death which hung over the rest of the Southlands, covered this place as well.

Ash coated the stone fortification. Ash blanketed the ruins of Tir-Harad far below. The only footprints in the drifting, grey mounds were the heavy tread of orcs.

As the gloom of day irrevocably fell into night, Galadriel’s keen ears caught the foul speech of those accursed creatures. Picking up her pace and drawing her sword from its sheath, she sprinted across the still standing, stone bridge and quickly picked her way through debris, rubble and rotting corpses of men and orcs, before reaching the base of the ruined watchtower.

She said a quick prayer to the Valar for the departed souls of the Southlanders as she searched for an opening and kept her breathing calm and unhurried even as the orcs moved closer. The sickly, orange glow of their torches shone on the other side of the bridge.

At last! Galadriel spied a break in the rubble that led to a descending staircase.

Silently, her sword a silver gleam in the darkness, her cloak a mere flutter in the breeze of her passage, she flew down into the darkness.

When she reached the bottom, she gave her eyes a second to adjust before beginning her systematic search. A hallway branched into two separate passageways further down and on either side of this hallway, a series of small, square rooms created darker shadows within the pitch darkness. They were most likely used for storage of non-essential items, food that had to stay cold or extra quarters as needed.

It was damp and cool, as in the shade of a great tree in the heat of high summer, down here. A mist rose up from the waterfall that once helped cool the Ostirith forge and crept down the hallway toward her.

The air was less foul down here than above; a memory of the Elves preserved for just a little longer.

Galadriel cleared every room, her sword ever at the ready, and her senses divided between Sauron ahead of her and the orcs behind.

At the branch in the road, she took the one that smelled better and soon realized she was descending further into the mountain, to the smith’s forge itself.

When she reached it, her heart fell in disappointment. It was deserted and had been for some time. Great shafts, carved through the mountainside, filtered down grey, gloomy light, just barely illuminating a cold forge with long-dead embers. Along the walls, there were neatly organized rows of tools on one side of the forge and swords, axes, knives and armor on the other. The thunder of the waterfall was a soothing ambience in the distance, and troughs of clear, sweet water lay about the room, filled and purified by the gravity and water pressure of the falls.

A neatly made cot with a rough blanket on top was pushed to one corner, as if the smith who had been here had lived and breathed for his craft. As one of the Noldor, Galadriel respected his dedication.

Yet, for all that, there was nothing else here.

Sauron was not here.

The feeling inside Galadriel was too brittle and bitter, too hopeless to be called disappointment, though it was a distant cousin.

There was a pain in her chest, shar and burning, as she contemplated the evidence of her eyes that she had not known Halbrand – no, Sauron, Sauron! – at all. That he had deceived her even in this. The heartburn must be from her ingesting too much ash earlier.

“Faithless and accursed,” she whispered to the darkness, turning away.

If she hurried, she might be able to reach the other branch in the hallway, which she suspected led back up to the surface, before the orcs arrived.

If she hurried. Their stench and the foul Black Speech they uttered grew ever closer, and she had no wish to be caught in such a small space, with all the exits blocked, by them.

Yet even as she turned away, the ring of adamant on her finger flared once, only once, as bright, and pure as a star, and Galadriel gasped – too loud! – sudden fear hitting her as she tried to turn back, sword rising, already knowing it was too late…...

He was here.

Hands grabbed her from behind, one clamping down over her mouth and the other gripping her vice-like around her torso, pinning her sword to her side. She was pulled backwards into a narrow alcove which she’d missed in the darkness, and hauled tight against a hard, male chest.

“Quiet,” Halbrand hissed, his voice whispering in her ear, and at the sound and feel of him, Galadriel could no longer breathe.

The orange glow and chaotic stampede of orc feet heralded the arrival of two dozen of the creatures, pouring through the doorway into the forge. They spread out, looking for her, she realized.

Elven enchantment on her cloak or not, there was no way they’d fail to see her and Halbrand, pressed together in this alcove. Not with the light from their torches illuminating everything.

Unconsciously, she pressed further back into Halbrand, forgetting for a moment just who was holding her. Sauron was infinitely more dangerous than any number of orcs could ever be. She should take her chances with them, instead of the being who had her bound tight to himself.

She tried to wriggle to get her sword free, but he merely tightened his grip and she desisted. Even in this mortal form, as a Maiar who awoke long before even the Song of Creation, Halbrand was physically much stronger than any Elf.

His huff of amusement ghosted against her cheek, where his bearded chin pressed against the side of her face.

“Where is she,” snarled one of the orcs, and Galadriel flinched despite herself.

Halbrand was murmuring in her ear, so softly she couldn’t make out any words, although the cadence was in a language she could not recognize.

“She must be close,” growled another. Torchlight flared as an orc, larger than the others, moved to peer into their hiding place.

Galadriel’s heart was pounding, and she was afraid her shallow breaths would draw attention, as the orc came close enough to assuredly see them. It peered left, then right, then stared straight into her blue eyes, its own sickly, yellow-red gaze bloodshot and foul.

Her right hand was clenched so tight around the handle of her sword that the pommel cut her palm.

Halbarnd’s breath caught against her ear and his arm around her tightening until he was hurting her. His chanting had fallen silent, and she could feel that he was coiled tight as a snake, ready to spring. She couldn’t even feel him blinking, as they booth stared straight into the orc’s eyes.

And he stared back, without seeing them.

Then, after sniffing suspiciously at the air, so close to her face that Galadriel’s hood fluttered and she was sure she’d gotten orc boogies on her, the orc inexplicably, miraculously, turned away.

“Not here,” it muttered, in the Black Tongue.

Halbrand’s chest expanded against Galadriel’s back as he took a long, slow, deep breath, his face still pressed against the side of hers, so that it felt like he was breathing in the scent of her skin.

As one, with the eerie synchronicity of a pack of hunting wolves, the orcs turned, sniffing the air. They turned towards the doorway of the forge.

“She’s heading for the surface!” one shouted.

“Track her down,” howled the leader, as the whole pack of them swarmed towards the doorway, down the mist-filled hallway, and back out into the night.

The silence they left behind was deafening, and in the absence of any other sound, Galadriel heard her own shaking breathing – felt the rise and fall of Halbrand’s chest against her, the callouses on the warm hand which covered her mouth, and the warm breath that ghosted against her skin.

She shivered, her breathing unconsciously falling into rhythm with his.

Then anger, hot and fierce, cleared her mind of fear and reminded her why she was here. She twisted with all her might and startled, he let her go.

Galadriel spin to face him, sword already up as she prepared to run him through.

But he was no longer there. The alcove contained only shadows.

A sudden breath of air and heat, and it was as though a spell had been lifted from Galadriel’s eyes. She turned, taking in the space before her. The smithy, once dark and cold, was alive with a warm, red glow from the lit forge. The damp had been pushed back and from the few belongings scattered about the place, and the tools strewn about, the place looked lived in.

Halbrand stood in front of her, much as he had on Númenor – arms crossed over his chest, green eyes fixed on hers. His hair was damp with sweat, his face and arms touched with soot from his craft, and he looked tired. The light from the forge cloaked him in flame and hid his face in shadow, and a hint of his true nature and power glimmered around him as the light and the absence of light, both struck him.

But the same crooked grin graced his lips that she remembered. He looked her up and down; an armored and cloaked avenging elf-warrior with a bright sword pointed squarely in his direction. Her hood had fallen off, revealing her silver-gold hair, braided in a radiant crown around her head.

Seeing her, he laughed. “Let me guess, the Elves exiled you yet again.”

Galadriel snarled and leapt at him.

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Chapter Text

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As Galadriel leapt into the air, she had just enough time to see Halbrand’s eyes flash as he accepted her challenge. His half-grin widened into that familiar smirk she found so very aggravating from their time together on Númenor, and she felt her own anger flare even hotter in response as she realized that he saw her attempt to kill him as some sort of game.

But she had no time to feel anything more, for then he moved – impossibly fast.

One second, he was beneath her – Galadriel frozen above him in her jump, her teeth bared, sword extended, cloak flaring out behind her, with her silver-gold hair a bright halo around her head.

She was like an ancient stone frieze or a painting; Fingolfin versus Morgoth; Túrin Turambar facing Glaurung; or Ecthelion of the Fountain against the Balrog of Gondolin – a hero of the First Age, worthy of song and remembrance.

She was Galadriel of the Noldor versus the Dark Lord Sauron. Just as her uncle, Fingolfin, she would give the dark enemy of her people a wound he would not forget. Even if it led to her death. And in so doing, she would redeem herself from bringing Sauron back to Middle Earth. From saving him from the Sundering Sea. From healing him in Eregion and giving him access to Celebrimbor and what remained her people.

This battle – this death in battle against the enemy – was her penance.

But the next second, he was across the room, the fiery forge at his back, and a naked blade held confidently – nay, arrogantly – in front of him. And that damn grin still on his face.

Galadriel landed awkwardly, dropped into a roll and was back on her feet again in a heartbeat, centuries upon centuries of warfare giving her a speed few enemies could hope to match.

Save for Sauron.

“You’ll have to be faster than that,” he taunted, clearly enjoying himself. The red-orange flames behind him cast the rest of the forge into darkness and shadows.

Galadriel snarled and launched herself at him anew, her sword brought around in a deadly arc. Its blade gleamed in the forge-light like a star, and it moved faster than mortal man could hope to counter.

But Sauron was not a mortal man.

He blocked her effortlessly, his powerful, forge-trained wrist twisting in just such a way that he almost tore the blade from her grip.

But Galadriel half-expected this move and spun with the blade instead of against it. Then she swung her leg wide and low as she pivoted, one move flowing into the next as she attempted to sweep his legs out from under him.

He jumped, disentangled their blades and as she moved to get back up onto her feet, he struck straight for her heart in a powerful lunge – a thrust that would have ended her life then and there, chainmail or not, if she’d still been in the same spot.

But Galadriel’s sweep had allowed her to continue her spin, putting distance between them in one fast, elegant move.

He wasn’t expecting that! She grinned at him tauntingly.

A lesser swordsman would have instinctively followed her move then; overextending until he was thrown off balance and thereby ending the fight in Galadriel’s favor.

Sauron, however, pulled back and favored her with a sardonic look and one raised eyebrow. “Come now, Galadriel of the Noldor, Commander of the Northern Armies under High King Gil-Galad,” he mocked, harkening back to their first audience before Tar-Miriel in Armenelos’ Royal Palace. “Surely you can do better than that.” He sounded disdainful and slightly disappointed, but Galadriel ignored the latter and reminded herself that he was always and ever a deceiver.

Still her face flushed red. Valar above, his every breath mocked her!

They circled each other like wolves, eyes bright with battle light. Galadriel shed her cloak – while simultaneously stepping back to discourage an immediate attack on his part – and her chainmail tinkled like running water as the cloak slid off her.

Sauron’s eyes flickered crimson and scarlet, reflecting the fire that was his element, and reminding her of the cracks in his mortal façade that revealed his true nature on the raft within her mind. Neither took their gaze from the other for an instant.

“And you,” she hissed in response; her sibilant voice a counterpoint to the crackling, spitting fire behind them. “Lying snake, spawn of darkness, friend of Morgoth…you failed to tell me just who – no, what, you are.” Her disappointment had long since descended into bitterness.

Halbrand had been a friend. Perhaps something more. Sauron was only the enemy.

The Maia’s eyes narrowed, and his lips parted as though to answer, but he did not get a chance to speak again.

She struck; tired of waiting and tired of this game he was playing between them. Their blades clashed furiously together.

He spun with her blow, twining their blades, and following her movements in perfect synchronization, until he stepped confidently within her guard. He grabbed her non-dominant wrist in his other hand, preventing her going for her knife.

Their swords tangled above their heads and their bodies pressed flush together – her chainmail against his damp tunic. He smelled like the forge: like fire and sweat and honest labor. She felt anger at this; for she’d always liked the smelled of the forge. He smelled like a man, hard at work, and not a spawn of darkness. If she was being honest with herself, it was not unpleasant. This infuriated her further.

His green eyes – forest green with flecks of copper and brown, like moss and oak trees, the metal of his element and good, clean earth – bore into hers, inescapable. There was fire within their endless depths and for an instant, Galadriel could see the immensity of his being – the age and power he held within this deceptive mortal form.  

His breath was hot upon her face as they grappled. She shivered, and knew he felt it. His hand tightened around her wrist and then her waist, and a split-second of indecision, or perhaps uncertainty, crossed his familiar features. Then they hardened.

“I never lied to you.” His voice was a growl, ominous in the power that echoed beneath a mortal man’s rough speech. “You were the one who placed a crown upon my head. You were the one who dragged me back to Middle Earth.” He laughed without mirth. “Even after I begged you to let me be. You were the one who wouldn’t let me try and carve out the few dregs of peace left to me.”

His throat bobbed convulsively as he swallowed, his too-bright eyes darting rapidly around the darkened forge.

Ar sí tar na- lala senda. And now there is no peace. His voice whispered darkly in her mind in the language of her childhood.

There was a bitter, dark sort of triumph in the half-heard, half-felt words. He mocked both his fate and the will of Illuvatar himself. It was as though he said to her: I tried, but even you dragged me back into the darkness.

Galadriel felt a shiver as she recognized Sauron’s words and feelings within herself. It was an unwilling sense of kinship, one she had felt so many times before with Halbrand. For how many times, in the darkness of her own heart and in the pride of her own despair, had she thought something similar? Not even in Valinor would she find peace from her own heart, she had told Elrond defiantly.

The pride of the Maiar servants of Aulë was infamous throughout all the Elf-kingdoms of Valinor. Finrod had once joked that it was matched only by that of the Noldor. She had laughed then. Now, she looked away from Halbrand before he could see the sudden understanding in her eyes.

How many more times would she look into the eyes of the being before her and see her own mirror reflected back at her? She shuddered and tried to firm her resolve. She would not empathize with this monster. And of course, the Dark Lord’s arrogance knew no bounds, beyond even that of Fëanor himself. Only Morgoth had ever matched the depths of his depravity.

But for the second time Galadriel noticed how tired Sauron appeared. The eyes of Morgoth’s successor darted around the room, fixed on something she could neither see in the real world nor hear. Galadriel tried to tap into Nenya’s strength to see what he saw, but still, she could not.

Instead, she strained to pull her head back and give herself distance from him, but his grip was like iron. Her heart was like ice within her chest.

Still, her eyes flashed up at him with defiance. “Do not blame me for your crimes, Sauron. I would never have brought you here if I’d known who you were,” she hissed in his face, still struggling to pull away. “You deceived me –”

“You deceived yourself,” he snapped, refusing to let her go and still not truly looking at her, though he panted with the effort of holding her to him.

Galadriel suspected Nenya burned him every time the ring brushed against his skin and was viciously satisfied at the thought.

 “You felt my power,” the Maia continued, “– an echo of your own strength – a darkness that mirrored your own –, and you wanted to see me as fair. You wanted vindication for your own unending crusade and your inability to put up your sword.”

He angled his head until his burning eyes finally met hers again, despite all her attempts to pull away. The pupils had turned into narrow slits, like a cat’s - as they had when he’d taken her into the illusion of the raft on the Beleager.

“I told you I was not the hero you sought;” I told you I was not the hero you sought - he echoed both within and without her mind. He shook her then, hard, and with a roar that shook the entire forge, like the rumble deep within the earth that precedes a rockslide: “You wanted to see Halbrand, when all that remains is Sauron!”

Galadriel shut her eyes, an automatic reaction to the pain she felt in both her ears and mind. Then she opened them again, ignoring all discomfort. “Do not worry,” she promised him. “That is all I see now.”

Sauron’s eyes began to narrow as he caught her look, but Galadriel didn’t give him time to realize what she was about to do.

With all her strength and rage she let her head snap forward – head-butting him hard in the nose and the vulnerable soft tissue of his face. Blood burst from his nose, as bone and cartilage broke and blood vessels burst. He swore in Black Speech – "Morgoavh'uk aveeavh" – as he released her, stumbling back. For all his Maia strength, some part of him was still all-too human.

Galadriel saw stars for a moment and shook her head to clear her vision. Then she growled and tackled him straight to the ground.

He’d dropped his sword when she first struck him, and now as she landed on him, he fell heavily, striking the back of his head against the stone floor. He lay winded and momentarily dazed as she straddled him. He groaned in pain, hands coming up to grip her waist, whether to throw her off him or keep her close, Galadriel could not decide.

She raised her elven blade to drive it down through his evil heart, her off-hand squeezing his throat hard enough that he gurgled for breath. He blinked up at her as he tried to focus on her face.

For one final moment she just looked at him; at his handsome, rugged features surrounded by soft, dark, shoulder-length hair; at his forest-green eyes watering with pain from the broken nose she gave him, and then the subsequent blow to his head which she also gave him. Blood covered his lips and chin and was now smeared onto her hand. His blood. He bled like a man too.

He blinked water back from his eyes and went on staring up at her.

She couldn’t recognize the expression in his eyes, but once again she was caught by their color. Green as Yavanna’s pastures back in the light-dappled fields of Valinor. Green as the deep forests of Doriath, where Melian once taught the nightingales to sing, and where Galadriel once danced for silver haired Celeborn. Green as the dress she’d worn beside the Glanduin, where she’d learned who he truly was – the dress she’d worn for Halbrand.

His hands now hovered beside her hips, as though he had pulled himself back from touching her there.

Galadriel’s lips parted, her heart missing a beat and then twisting painfully in her chest. Her arms and hands trembled even as she began to bring her sword down and pierce his heart. Those brilliant, green eyes never left her face.

All she could see beneath her blade now was a friend; the man who’d stopped her from cold-blooded murder, the man who’d rescued her from drowning at sea – and the man who sat beside her on that log in the Southlands and seemed to see straight through to her soul, who felt the light when he was with her – and whose own breath had caught in utter shock when she admitted to feeling the same with him.

She hesitated, her own breath catching now: grief, guilt, anger, despair, and searing, unbearable hope twisting inside her until she felt physically sick. She hesitated to kill him. She realized her mistake immediately.

Quick as a striking serpent, Sauron seized on her hesitation and brought his hands up to cover hers. In the span of a breath, the sword glowed red-hot beneath her palms, as though it lay amid a burning furnace.

Galadriel yelped as her flesh was burned off her hands. She dropped the steel and that allowed Sauron to escape once more.

He shoved her off and away from him, the force of it sending her flying across the room to slam up against the stone wall with bruising strength. Her head snapped back, striking the stone, and for a moment, everything went dark. Rhywbeth am rywbeth. Quid pro quo, she thought with an unwilling trace of amusement. The odd phrase rose unconsciously in her awareness; the language of the little, dark people who lived far to the north of Lindon, and who had a strange magic and an odd sense of justice even she did not understand. They would have approved of Sauron’s version of justice.

She opened her eyes to blinding pain from her scorched hands, and several bruised and broken ribs. A trickle of blood was making its way down her scalp and the back of her spine, and distantly she found it itchy and uncomfortable.

She was crumpled on the ground, the joining of the stone wall and hard floor twisting her body into an unnatural, uncomfortable shape. A small, involuntary sound of pain escaped from between her clenched lips.

She looked up and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Sauron was bending over her. His face was still bruised and bloody and there was a dark expression in his green eyes. He reached for her right hand – the one with the most grievous burns. The one that carried Nenya.

Galadriel’s power, channeled through the ring, was entirely instinctive. A great, silver wave, like a shield of pure light, burst into being and hurled Sauron away from her.

He threw his arms up, using some dark sorcery to push back against her power, and landed crouched on his feet a little way in front of her, no worse for wear. A shiver in the air before him flickered into existence as a translucent shield that shimmered with gold, crimson, and sable lights.

He straightened and the shadow on the wall behind him straightened up as well, growing until it took the form of Sauron’s armored figure, and loomed over the man who stood before the forge. The light of the flames danced in his eyes and Nenya’s light gilded the planes of his face, sharpening his features and deepening the shadows that lay within until he became something utterly inhuman. An unholy creature of flame and shadow – a fallen angel. A demon of the ancient world.

Galadriel inched herself painfully to her feet, using the wall behind her for support, gritting her teeth against pain and unconsciousness, and channeled her power again.

A wall of light met a shield of flame and shadow, and behind it, Sauron snarled like a caged animal. “Damn it, Galadriel!” he raged. “You’re wasting your strength. Stop fighting me and use that thrice cursed mithril ring to heal yourself before it’s too late!”

But Galadriel could feel that it was already too late. Even as she sent another pulse of light towards the fallen Maia, she felt her powers wane and flicker, as a lone candle will when at the end of its wick. She wavered against the surrounding darkness.

Mind how you go, Galadriel, she reminded herself, dryly. There would be no songs sung of this brief battle with Sauron; for no one knew where she had gone, and no one, save herself, knew that he was back.

This would not be like Finrod’s magical duel of sorcery. Or Lúthien’s famous victory outside the tower of Tol-in-Gaurhoth. She felt bitter failure consume her, knowledge that her actions and failures, her inability to defeat evil, would once more doom Middle Earth to darkness.

She tried to breathe but it felt like knives piercing her lungs. She took a small breath and held it. Tried to focus on Sauron. He waved an impatient hand in a powerful strike, like he was attempting to cut the very air. Flame and shadow burst through her containing shield, turning it into stardust.

Her power went out, her light flickered – and as she fell into darkness, warm, human arms caught her.

“Halbrand,” she murmured, and knew no more.

***

When she came to, the world was still colored crimson and sable. The sound of hammer on anvil was familiar and strangely reassuring, and the crackle of a roaring fire warmed the damp stone of Ostirith’s lower levels.

She kept her eyes closed and watched the play of the warm red glow behind her eyelids. She took stock of her current situation. Mostly, it could have been worse. She was surprisingly comfortable, as though she was lying on something soft. Perhaps a bed.

The pain she remembered before unconsciousness claimed her was a distant memory, as though she had been injured a long time ago, but still had some residual aches. Or perhaps as if someone had attempted to heal her rather inexpertly.

He probably hadn’t tried to heal another being in centuries. She snorted. The sound of smith work paused, audibly hesitated, and then resumed.

“I am beginning to lose count of the number of times I have saved your life, now, Elf.” His familiar voice came from across the room. He was close, too close. Her heart skipped a beat. His voice was still the comforting tones of a friend and as familiar to her now as breathing. When had she allowed that to happen?

Yet dismay and rage and grief and fear followed close behind the comfort.

He was no longer hiding himself from her within the form of a low man, and now she could feel his true power and his darkness. He was a void without warmth or light, trying to draw her into orbit around him. His power, the very gravity of his being, threatened to consume her.

She swallowed, and still without opening her eyes, attempted to speak. Her voice was a little scratchy, but serviceable. “I wouldn’t need saving if I hadn’t hesitated in striking you down.”

He laughed outright, sarcasm coloring his tone: “Yes, I’m sure I am somehow to blame for you throwing yourself into the Sundering Sea and for Orodruin exploding as well.”

“I’m sure you are,” she snapped, wrenching her eyes open at last, ignoring the gritty feel to her eyelashes. She felt with stiff fingers for her ring at the same time. Nenya was still with her, a pure light in the darkness of the Dark Lord’s forge. She still had a chance.

The sounds of hammering metal drew her attention over towards where he labored at the smithy. A strip of unrefined ore, which glowed a deep orange-red color, sparked furiously as he pounded it into shape with the ball peen hammer in his right hand. His powerful back was towards her, his hair hanging softly about his face and reflecting with copper highlights from the glow of the flames.

Briefly she wondered how long she'd been asleep; her armor had been removed and her sword placed on the other side of the forge. As though he did not trust me with it, she thought with sardonic amusement. She wondered if her feet would hold her should she attempt to stand up.

Even as she tried to take stock of whether she was capable of fighting or fleeing, he spoke flatly: “I had no wish for my path to cross with yours, Elf.” His displeasure was clear. There was truth in his words.

Galadriel’s scorn was audible as she sat up – too fast! she scolded herself, as her head spun – and boldly challenged him. “You are telling me that wound in your side was not manipulation to get me to take you to Eregion? To corrupt my kinsmen for your own ends?” She snorted delicately, even as she fingered Nenya and contemplated her options, glaring at his broad back. “I don’t believe you. You said yourself that you wanted the power of the Elves on your side, Deceiver.”

There was tension to his shoulders even as he refused to look at her.

To Galadriel’s Elven eyes, it was apparent he was forging a sword and had been for some hours, and he kept his attention firmly fixed on it even as he answered her. “Perhaps I needed the power of your people to help the Southlands,” he offered.

Galadriel snorted again. “You have had many centuries to prove you do not care about others, Sauron. Try again,” she demanded. She did not know why she was so adamant to have him admit that he'd used her, except that she needed to buy time to shore up her strength. She knew he had used her; she did not need to hear him say it.

His hand briefly tightened on the hammer, but he still did not turn towards her. “I have had many names over the centuries, yet still you persist in using that one,” he murmured.

“Because that is your true name.”

She was not Finrod. She would not play at words with him.

 “I used too much of my power keeping you alive,” he muttered, almost inaudible over the crackling of the fire, ignoring her previous sally. The: I do not know why I bothered, was all-but added. “This is going to take longer than I anticipated.

“Perhaps you should just give up and leave,” Galadriel offered.

He paused and inspected the metal for flaws. The continued tension in his shoulders told her he was well-aware of her glare. He flicked a quick glance at her over his shoulder; he was amused by her sharp tongue.

She averted her eyes so as not to meet his gaze; a spider was often amused by the futile defiance of a fly.

“Or did you think that you, and a majority of the Southlanders and the Númenoreans escaped death from pyroclastic cloud through chance alone?” The mocking tone in his voice set her teeth on edge.

“What?” She asked, blankly, staring at those broad shoulders and his powerful arms. Halbrand impatiently pushed his hair out of his face again and Galadriel's hands twitched. Her mind flashed back to the wave of heat and sulfuric air that had hit her, the ash cloud that had followed – her subsequent calls to Elendil and Halbrand when she finally awoke. There had still been so many dead.

“The heat and gas from Orodruin should have stolen your breath and the ash should have solidified around you.” He flicked a dismissive glance at her again. “An Elf warrior of old, immortalized forever staring towards a fiery mountain.” He was mocking her again.

His gaze moved up towards her hair, which was now coming down from her braids in wisps of silver and gold. “No one would have even known the color of your unusual hair,” he said in a studiously neutral tone.

“I do not believe you.” Her words were an automatic denial. They had been close to the mountain when it exploded, but not so close that Galadriel would rule out the possibility of their survival by any other means than assistance from Sauron. She had spent centuries understanding that Sauron did not have any mercy or compassion left within him.

He snorted. “Believe what you will, Elf.” He sounded as though he did not care whether she believed him or not.  

Instead, he went back to hammering the sword in his hands. His hands were deft and skillful, and she could feel him infusing the blade with his power. It was darkness he wove within the metal, but a clear darkness, like a night that waited for the first faint stars to appear. If anything, it felt like Melian’s magic – she who have been a Maia of shadow and mist – and not something Galadriel would expect Sauron to wield.

Nenya flared soft as sunlight against her finger, a comforting song at the back of Galadriel’s mind, and she began to draw its power to her, trickling in like water. She would have one chance to make her move.

“And I suppose the fact that your hands and lungs and head are healed are also due to that same chance and not my good will?” he inquired, still sarcastic.

“I am capable of battlefield healing,” she informed him, very stiffly, even as she gingerly breathed in and out and felt her wounds once more. Her head was no longer bleeding and her hands, while stiff, were whole and unburnt. She had already suspected he had healed her, rather inexpertly. Yet she wouldn’t have needed healing if he hadn’t injured her!

That’s true, he agreed softly, whispering in her mind. Nor would you have needed it if you had left me in peace. Like I asked you to.

“Get out of my head, Sauron,” she snapped.

“You were all-but shouting at me, Commander,” he murmured sarcastically, using the tongs to place the sword back into the flames, burying it beneath the embers. “It would be impossible not to hear you,” he mocked. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“I believe nothing you tell me,” she returned, instantly. Her annoyance at the small feeling of uncertainty she felt towards his actions made her voice unyielding with stiff-necked Elven pride.

Elrond once told her she had the Noldor pride in even more abundance than most of her kin.

Sauron’s hand, the one not being used to hold the sword in the fire, clenched into a fist at his side, but he said nothing in response to her barb. She wondered if she had wounded his own pride. As a Maia of Aulë, he wouldn’t have been particularly gifted at healing, and she suspected his long service to Morgoth had stunted any abilities or pretensions he had towards anything as filled with light and goodness as healing.

Evil could not heal; it could only destroy and corrupt and pervert. Melian taught her this long ago in Doriath. Finrod had shown her this in Valinor when the light of the Two Trees had still glowed upon the shores of Eldamar.

If she thought about it, she was distantly surprised he’d been able to heal her as well as he had, and more than half suspected he was lying to her, like he always had, and Nenya had helped heal her while she was unconscious. That seemed far more likely.

But nothing was evil in the beginning.

She tried to think of what else she could say to distract him from the steadily growing trickle of her power she was drawing together. It was difficult to concentrate on a conversation when she also had to keep herself in firm control so as not to not draw too much power to herself too quickly, thereby potentially alerting him to her plan.

She wasn’t sure how liminal a being Halbrand was, how porous the boundary was between his mortal form and Sauron’s Maia nature, but she remembered from Melian that the more bound a Maia spirit became to their chosen form, the less they were able to draw on their full power.

She had wondered all the way from Eregion what made Sauron chose the form of a low man, a simple smith from the Southlands, as his current form. She wondered now why he kept this form, when he must assume that she had told all Eregion what his true name was. She could feel his power now, and knew he would be able to change it should he choose.

A tiny part of her wondered how close this form was to the one he’d fashioned in Almaren, when all the world was new, and the Lamps still bathed Middle Earth in light.   

As if he could hear her thoughts, he gave a particularly aggressive shove of the sword deeper within the coals, before turning back around to face her. He crossed his arms over his chest, the firelight casting his face ominously in both light and shadow. “Ask your questions, Elf,” he told her shortly. “My patience grows thin, and you are rapidly wearing out your welcome.”

Galadriel shifted carefully until she was upright and swung her legs over the side of the cot. Her hands were both hidden in the furs, and she twisted Nenya around her ring finger as she slowly, oh-so-slowly, continued to draw more power to herself.

She looked around the sparse workspace he’d chosen, just to buy herself more time. “Why are you here?” she demanded.

“Why are you here?” he countered, unimpressed. “Last I checked, you wanted nothing to do with me.”

“Wrong. Last you checked, I tried to kill you,” she shot back, feeling her ire begin to rise again. How he always managed to get under her skin never ceased to amaze her.

His eyes glinted and there was a mocking twist to his lips. “Oh, was that what that was?” he enquired, maliciously. He looked her up and down. “You are no threat to me, Elf.”

Her eyes narrowed at such presumptuous dismissal. She was on her feet again, a slow and steady approached be damned! She gathered Nenya’s power to her all at once, combined it with what she had drawn already, and –

Instantly he was in front of her, so close their chests brushed, his left hand grabbing her right, his huge palm cupping Nenya, and the explosion of magic and power that should have come…never did. The power seeped away from her all at once, drawn into Sauron and leaving Galadriel drained and shaky. She felt him shudder against her, his pupils dilating and his breath going ragged as her power swept through him like a torrent of light.

He released her abruptly, not seeming to care that she slumped bonelessly against him. Turning half back to the forge, he reached one hand – ungloved, defenseless – directly into the burning coals and drew out the glowing, half-completed sword.

With a flare like starlight, he transferred Galadriel’s power through himself and into the sword. His voice, a deep, mellow baritone, began to chant in a language she dimly remembered from her childhood – the language of the Valar. His voice evened out, still dark, and ominous but … musical, she realized.

Sauron, the Dark Lord, was singing a song of sorcery. Her eyes widened and she struggled to get her feet back under her, clutching onto his other arm. The sword glowed in the heart of the furnace like a star of Varda.

He sang and his voice called to the stone around them. He sang and the fire in the coals leapt and danced. He sang, and the very particles of the steel itself vibrated in answer. Arda rejoiced in the song of Sauron. No, she could not call him Sauron when he sang like this.

He chanted a song of power bright,

Of sun and air and pure starlight,

Of protecting and of striking true,

With angelic might he thus imbued,

A sword made for a lady fair,

Whose radiance was captured in her hair.

She felt whatever enchantments he was weaving into the blade take hold: strong, formidable, and full of light. Her light, she realized, and his too – faint but there – skillfully woven with his power and craft. This blade would never fail and never dull, and darkness itself would run from it.

Halbrand took it from the fire. She could not tell if its power hurt him, but still he sang – deep, melodious, echoing, like the dwarves in Khazad-Dum – until, with an end word of power, he tied the enchantment and set it free within the sword.

He turned towards her, and Galadriel realized she was still holding onto his arm. Quickly she released him and made to step back, but before she could move away, he thrust the newly forged sword between them – the hilt fitting perfectly in her hand.

“Try not to lose this one, like you did the other,” he teased, and she could feel his gaze upon Nenya, forged in part from the Valinorean gold and silver within her brother’s dagger. Galadriel had never asked Finrod where he’d gotten the blade he’d always carried with him. Now, she remembered Finrod once served an apprenticeship under the smiths of Aule, and she wondered anew whose magic lay within her ring.

She looked up at him, expecting to see the same cocky grin she’d seen on Númenor, when he’d stolen the dagger back from Elendil for her and teased not to make any more enemies.

Instead, his green eyes were pools of darkness, unfathomable and full of an aching, desperate sort of sadness. She stared up at him, watching the play of light across those eyes. His face was still noble and fair, and his eyes, his eyes were…. she felt like she’d known him all her life, like she’d been searching for him and waiting for him, all her life. Where were you? she wanted to ask. But she knew. He had been lost to darkness, and she ached for them both.

“And now you must leave,” he told her, gazing back. What he saw, Galadriel did not know, but it felt like he was saying good-bye.

Quite without her control, moved by his sorrow and her own awe at what she felt, she reached up and placed her palm against his check.

He jerked beneath her touch, perhaps fearing violence, but she was gentle. She stepped closer to him, almost cupping his cheek as she looked up and tried to memorize his features. She knew she should run him through with her sword, or tear him apart with her ring, and rid the world of his evil and herself of this shame once and for all.

But she could not. She did not think she would be able to do so ever again.

He had made her a sword of light, infusing it with both his power and hers, and woven it with spells of protection so strong, not even he could break them unaided. She had heard his voice, and she wondered for the first time what Finrod had felt when he’d risen his voice in song against Sauron so long ago.

Morgoth could not sing. He had long ago forsaken the music of creation that had been sung by the Ainur in the Timeless Halls.

But Sauron could still sing.

She could feel his soul singing the same song as hers.

He was right there in front of her, lips parted, eyes wide with what looked like confusion and fear and slight wonder. His cheek was rough like a man’s, his lips were chapped, and he smelled of smoke and ash and sweat. His hands rested lightly on her waist, and she could see his pulse beating frantically in his throat as he swallowed.

“Halbrand,” she whispered, and his eyes flickered down to her lips before being drawn back up to her eyes once more.

She did not know if he had ever done this before, or if he even knew that he wanted her. Melian once told her that she had been shocked and alarmed by Thingol’s desire at first – that Maiar were spirits more than they were the bodies they inhabited. She moved her hands up into his hair and felt him shudder beneath her.

Galadriel also did not know for how long Halbrand had taken this form.

She did not even know if this was what he would call his ‘true’ form, but she could see him in her mind’s eye – in Almaren, in Valinor – as close to how he was now. Younger, less rough around the edges, but this was him. This form – him in this form – felt true to her from the moment they met.

“What are you doing, Galadriel?” he asked, pronouncing her name the Elven way, and she shivered at the musical sounds in his voice. His pupils were blown wide, and he stared at her like she was water in the desert, and sunlight after darkness.

She did not know what she was doing.

All she knew was that he had saved her on the Sundering Sea and then destroyed her on the Glanduin. He had flirted with her and argued with her and fought with her, pulled her back from darkness and stayed by her side even when he did not have to. He had lied to her and betrayed her and killed her loved ones. He had refused to kill her – again. He may have saved the very life of the Eldar in Middle Earth. He had forged her a sword of light.

He had sung a song of such beauty and power that Galadriel would never, though all the ages of the world should pass, forget it. Some part of him yearned for the light, and she suspected it always would.

She ran her fingers through his hair, across his bearded cheek and touched her finger to the fullness of his bottom lip. She looked back up into his eyes and saw both terror and hope there. “Do not be afraid,” she whispered to him, but she was terrified as well.

She could feel their souls twining together, something that had never happened between her and Celeborn. He shook his head. “Galadriel,” he said again. 

He looked like Dior Aranel, Lúthien’s son, and Elros, Elwing’s son. He looked like Elendil, Melian’s long-sundered descendent; the nobility of his form betraying his Maia origins, his kinship with Melian and all her descendants.

Galadriel recognized who he truly was long before she’d let herself see. And now she’d never be able to see him as anything else, despite the darkness she feared he would once more descend to.

How many centuries had it been since those who knew him had seen Sauron in this form?

His hands gripped her hard at her waist, and she wasn’t sure whether he meant to pull her closer or thrust her away. His eyes fell to her lips again and he looked at war with his very self.

She would not let herself hesitate, not now, and if she could not kill him and she could not have him, then she would take this single moment in time. It would be theirs; forever.

“Mairon,” she whispered against his trembling lips, and kissed him.   

***

Chapter Text

***

Kissing Halbrand was like being consumed by fire. Galadriel burned and could not pull away.

At the first press of her mouth, Halbrand’s lips parted, and he froze beneath her in shock. His lips remained unmoving even as she kissed the corner of his mouth, then the top of his lip, before brushing her lips softly over his stubbled cheek, and his big hands came up and hovered over her shoulders, as though he warred within himself to push her away.

His lips parted slightly as though to speak or to draw a quick breath of air.

She didn’t let him. Galadriel was out of practice with this kind of thing, her kisses frantic and clumsy and inept, but she had dreamt of this moment for too long to hesitate now. She felt like climbing him like a tree, but instead hooked an arm around his neck and dragged him down to her.

She kissed him again, deeper; savoring the taste of him and how he grunted in surprise at her boldness. Elves did not act as she did; this she had long known. Her father used to tell her she was too akin in spirit and will to her uncle, Fëanaro; an accusation the younger Galadriel had taken as both the gravest of insults and an incentive to further defiance.

Sauron’s breathing quickened beneath her onslaught, and his hands twitched against her shoulders when she bit his lip in annoyance. But still, he did not move to kiss her back. She growled low in her throat and bit him again, drawing blood, and he half-laughed, half-groaned in surprise; a quick huff of air where their breaths mingled, and their lips brushed.

Pain was something he seemed to enjoy. Galadriel was not particularly surprised by this revelation.

Want and need warred within her alongside the ever-present rage and shame that had driven her to Mordor, and she knew she danced on a precipice in time itself.

She would regret both pulling him close and pushing him away, but not matter her choice, he would haunt both her sleeping and waking dreams for all of eternity. He would bring her endless grief, and he would inevitably fall back into darkness and seek to use their connection to corrupt her; for he was Sauron.

Still, she kissed him, and as she was Galadriel of the Noldor, she would not be gainsaid now.

Ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë. – “All paths are drowned deep in shadow.”

Standing on her toes, she threaded her hands through those tauntingly soft locks of his and pulled him even further down for her pleasure, drawing him off balance and licking into his mouth, stealing his breath into hers. He tasted like smoke and ash and heady fire; everything she’d always associated with him, and she sighed in shaky relief.

Yes, she thought at him, and opened the door in her mind just enough that he could feel the rightness of their connection reverberating through her. The spark of her fëa flared impossibly bright in response to the touch of his, dark and fiery though it was. Her soul sang the same song as his; his power burned through her like an ocean of vibrant color, when everything before had been grey, and Nenya absolutely sang in response. Yes.

She wasn’t sure she heard the sound he made then, she only felt it.

One moment he was stumbling down into her, every line of his body screaming uncertainty, and the next he was grabbing her hungrily, pulling her hard against the hard planes of his mortal body as he ravaged her mouth. His hands were everywhere; tangling in her hair, clawing under her armor to trace the line of her spine, kneading her arse as he savagely bit her lip, fingers worming into her legs to dig deep into the meat of her thighs.

It felt like he was trying to consume her, like he sought to pull her very soul from her body and bind it with his.

Galadriel held on through the onslaught and met his hunger with her own fury.

He groaned against her mouth, his iron control over his mind slipping for a brief instant to flood her with a series of images that passed too quick to understand; though her bathed in the light of the Silmarils, shining in the light of Two Trees of Valinor, reflecting the light of Varda Elentari’s eyes herself, seemed to be the recurring them for him.

You are more beautiful than anything I could create, came the thought, escaping him in the desperate heat of his desire, for there was bitterness in his realization, mixed equally with awe.

He was more infuriating than any being she’d ever met, even the Sons of Feanor. Anger and righteous wrath warred within her with want and loss – the loss of the man she’d thought Halbrand to be, the loss of that heady feeling of finally, finally knowing where she belonged in this world.

Sauron had stolen that from her when he revealed Halbrand to be the lie. Just like he’d stolen so much else from her. Her kisses turned savage.

“Did you kiss my brother, Finrod, with this mouth before you killed him, murderer?” she hissed against his lips, reminding him who he was and twisting his hair in her fists until she drew blood from him.

He growled, hoisted her into his arms and stumbled across the room to slam her hard against the wall. He ground his crotch pitilessly against her center, gripping her with slipping Maia strength and hard enough to bruise her Elven skin. Through her leggings she felt how aroused he was. She shivered and felt herself grow wet as he rubbed against her.

Their lips found one another again.

He laughed, low and cruel, his breath hot against her neck: “No, but I kissed your cousin, Maedhros, with this mouth, darling,” he taunted. “And he begged me to never stop.”

She pulled his hair again, yanking several strands loose, and felt his hips jerk helplessly against hers. She wondered if he would come just like this, right in his pants, and felt a shivery sense of power over him as she arched her back and pulled him harder against her. His breathing sped up as he rocked into her again, hands hopelessly tangled in her golden hair.

She tightened her thighs and rubbed herself against him, relishing in the tiny moan he seemed helpless to prevent. She could feel the anger in him at his loss of control.

But still he hesitated for a moment when she pulled her head back and barred her throat to his questing mouth, and the breath he drew in was shaky before he pressed his lips against her beating pulse point and sucked. She moaned, and her center throbbed against his length as he rutted into her.

Maedhros never spoke of what Morgoth did to him upon the heights of Thangorodrim, but Elrond once confessed his foster father had been haunted by nightmares and unable to sleep throughout his childhood. And that was five hundred years after Maedhros’ torment.

Galadriel knew Sauron expected her to associate his words with violations he’d made upon Maedhros at Morgoth’s behest or his own depravity – violations of the deepest, most personal, kind – but she remembered Adar’s scarred face and the mournful lilt of his voice, the regret he’d failed to hide as he confessed to killing Sauron almost an Age of the world ago, and his references to Sauron’s angelic beauty.

His beautiful servant, Waldreg called Sauron. And he was beautiful. Galadriel had always been able to see his beauty, like a lost reflection of Valinor itself.

She wondered if, in some dark and twisted way, Sauron and her cousin had not instead found some common ground, some strange kindred feeling, unexpected an unwanted, as playthings both betrayed by Moringotto.

As if, on some dark, forgotten peak, thousands of years ago, the brightest, most brilliant prince of all the Noldor – the one who should have been their king – and the brightest of the Maiar – the one the Noldor named Mairon – tried to claw their way back up to the light from deep within the everlasting darkness.

If so, the image in her mind’s eye of her most beautiful cousin, Russandol, with his copper hair and fell, silver eyes, entwined sensuously with Halbrand’s mortal form, all rugged and sweaty, with his golden-green eyes alight with fire that revealed his true nature, made her shiver with desire even as her stomach twisted with horror and revulsion.

He chuckled within her mind, surprised: I can see your mind, Galadriel. I can see how filthy it is. Little Elf, what would your people say to such indecent thoughts?

She shivered against him again, pulling him closer even as she thought of hitting him.

Your cousin was quite beautiful. He sucked harder against her pulse point. His thoughts were almost slurring, as though he were drunk. Though not as beautiful as you, Artanis.

Galadriel expected to feel his teeth break her skin and wasn’t disappointed. Halbrand’s human teeth lengthened against her, and then with the slightest press of those elongated fangs, he broke the skin, and she felt him greedily suck her blood.

She wondered what was wrong with her as she throbbed against him and her vision grew dizzy. She pressed herself harder against him, letting him feel how wet she was, and his resultant moan vibrated through her. He was as hot as fire, warming the cold that had settled into her soul and her bones, unnoticed.

“Navatar puntl,” Galadriel swore. Aule’s balls.

Halbrand pulled off her with a startled laugh. “Not quite the sentiment I was going for,” he admitted. And it was Halbrand’s laugh again, not Sauron’s. It was the laugh he’d greeted her with in Numenor’s prison, when she’d confessed to sedition. He’d laughed in surprised and genuine amusement.

It was only now that she could see his amusement at the irony of Galadriel of the Golden House of Finarfin admitting to sedition before the Maia, the Ilúvatáren, who’d revolted against brothers, sisters and Eru Ilúvatar himself. Like Galadriel, he’d found himself alone, exiled from a place he could no longer return to.

“Why?” she asked him, helplessly. Mairon, she reminded herself. The Elves called him Mairon at the beginning. “Why?” she whispered. And she didn’t know what she truly asked, but she was desperate for the answer.

Of course, he didn’t know of what she spoke. “You never cease to surprise me,” he answered instead. He pulled back just enough that she saw Halbrand’s crooked grin again, the hint of angelic flame behind his hazel eyes. “I would have made you a queen, Galadriel,” he reminded her. Then, with a sharp tug around her naval, she found herself falling once more back into Númenor.

Sea-blue silk bunched high around her bare thighs, and she sat on a forge with a hot fire crackling at her back. Her legs were still wrapped tight around Halbrand, but he was dressed in his Númenorean tunic, sage green with the crest of the Smith’s Guild pinned to his shoulder.

His skin was covered in sweat and soot, his hair matted to his head, and his green eyes blazed as he looked at her from out of the darkness.

She remembered this night. He’d been just a man then, and she’d thought for one, brief moment that she’d walk the path of Lúthien.

Why do you keep fighting, Galadriel?

Because I cannot stop!

She remembered his frustration and anger, his strange apology for the death her too-bright brother, and the look in his eyes as he recognized her words – the ones ripped from her very soul – as part of his own essence.

He’d tried to stop fighting, had begged her to leave him be, and she’d pushed him to begin again. He’d made her see Halbrand, and Halbrand was all she’d seen.

She could not even stop herself, instead pushing him to continue, and now he could not stop when she yearned for him to stay with her, to leave everything behind them.

It was a never-ending cycle of creation and destruction, an ouroboros like the ring Finrod gave Barahir on the plains of Anfauglith, when all was fire and death around them.

They were doomed to chase each other, Sauron and Galadriel; to devour each other until the end of days and the time of the Dagor Delothrin.

“You wanted me then,” he reminded her now, in Halbrand’s deep voice. The desire between them had transmuted to embers, capable of reigniting at a single spark. His hands came up to cup her face, his callused hands unexpectedly gentle. She didn’t know what he saw in her eyes, but whatever it was, he looked both awed and certain: “I could feel it,” he breathed against her lips.

His flame-lit eyes fell to her lips, and she parted them in anticipation. “I should have taken you then,” he swore, “ravaged you against the forge, and left you there for all of Númenor and all the realms of elves and men to see that you were mine.”

Then he neither spoke, nor loosed his hold for many minutes while he peppered her face and neck and the top of her breasts with more kisses than she supposed he’d ever given another soul in his entire existence.

The fire in the hearth burned too hot against her back, and she felt it singe her dress and scorch her skin. She wondered if it would scar her in her mind. Yet though he seemed intent on devouring her, even her, especially here, he would not look at her; as though afraid to gaze into her Tree-Lit eyes.

She grabbed his face and pulled him away from her ravaged skin, his lips red from their assault. His cheeks were flushed and his lashes fluttered over the green eyes she loved so much, preventing her from truly seeing him.

“Look at me,” she commanded. He tried to pull away from her, but she viciously grasped his hair with her hands and a wild vindictiveness came over her, turning her eyes bright and fell. “You will look at me, Halbrand. You cannot hide from me. Not here!”

He tore himself away from her, but she did not let him go easily and several strands of his hair tore out in her hands. “Damn you, Galadriel,” he swore: “This, this, is what you wanted from me.” He waved his hand around at the darkened forge, the Númenorean night sky, his mortal form as the low-man, Halbrand: “Take it, for God’s sake and leave me in peace. Damn you, you are relentless!”

Her resulting laughter was malicious. “Peace, peace?” she taunted him, pushing herself off the forge to stalk towards him. Her sea-blue dress flared around her like the snap of a cloak in high wind. "You pull me into your mind and talk of peace?”

His eyes flickered up to her face, a hint of flame behind the dark of his irises, and he unexpectedly stepped back around the table as she advanced. “You speak to me of peace, Sauron,” – she laughed again, uncaring that she sounded unhinged – “when it is you that has stolen forever what peace I’d hoped to find here. You and your master. You stole my kin and my dreams from me, and now you speak of peace?” She spat the word at him. “I have no hope of peace now and neither do you.”

In her rage, she dared too close to him: “I will haunt you for eternity, shadow of Moringotto,” she promised, as binding as any oath.

Cruelly, he grasped her to him again, his grip tight and bruising. At last, his eyes were on her again, as wild and fell as her own and infinitely more pitiless: “Are you possessed of a devil to speak to me like this?” He demanded, shaking her. “What dark evil compels you to never let me rest, elf?”

In the heart of his illusion, in the center of his turbulent mind, Nenya flared brighter than starlight on her finger, and she laughed again. “I can feel who you once were with this ring, Sauron; the metal you forged with my brother on the shores of Valinor still hums with your essence. Now show me who you are and cease these petty games.” She was Galadriel of the Noldor, and she would not be denied, not by him.

She pushed at him with all her might, Nenya’s song twining with her own power and will, and with a sudden ripple in the air, the forge and Númenor vanished and the ruins of Tirharad flickered grudgingly back into view.

Halbrand’s face was livid with emotion, and he released her abruptly as his form strangely rippled to turn away, averting his face to stare out the window and up at the coiling smoke of Mordor.

Galadriel stumbled back from him against the wall. She felt the cold stone press reasuringly against her back, and then reached for Nenya again. This time she looked at Halbrand through its power, pulling at the faint threads of Mairon’s essence until it mingled with the dark song of the fallen being stood before her.

His back stiffened as he felt her magic, but he did not turn. As Galadriel looked at him in the Unseen World, she saw what he had done to his spirit through countless ages of service to Morgoth: to her gaze now he was a pillar of fire, and the eyes that flicked back at her were cruel and pitiless, and as without light as the Void itself.

She cried out in horror: “Oh, what have you done to yourself, Halbrand,” she said, mournfully, and her hand reached for him, but he flinched back from her, snarling like a cornered animal.

“I have done what was necessary. I have done what was needed! I must heal this earth, can you not see that, Galadriel? You of all elves?”

But she shook her head at him.

“Come to me, oh do not turn away now, Halbrand.” In her eagerness, she pushed herself away from the wall, but her legs shook from the burst of power she had used, and her vision saw double now between the Seen and the Unseen Worlds.

At her earnest appeal, she saw him turn to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes were wide and wet as they flashed fiercely at her. Beneath the green of Halbrand and the black void of Sauron, there was just the smallest hint of palest fire, like that of a white flame. His breast heaved convulsively as he stared back wildly at her.

An instant longer they held apart, and then how they met Galadriel never knew, but she sprang at him, and he caught her frantically in his arms, and then they were locked in an embrace so tight, Galadriel did not know anymore where she ended, and he began.

She felt unmoored, floating outside herself, and knew only that he threw himself onto the narrow cot with her still in his arms, gathered to him in greedy jealousy.

Later, when she’d returned to herself, still warm in his arms, she looked up to find his green eyes watching her guardedly. “Galadriel,” he murmured, just her name; but his voice was hoarse, and he swallowed visibly, unable to continue. His fingers drew nameless patterns upon her skin – circles within circles, never-ending rings.

Galadriel, he continued through osánwe. Her name held a question he didn’t dare voice aloud. What had they done?

But Galadriel shook her head at him, unwilling to discuss what had happened. Even now, she felt how he’d wavered, seeking to bind her to him with blood and foul arts. He’d let her go, but a part of her remained with him, even now, and a part of his song now mingled with hers.

“Sleep,” she whispered, instead, brushing the side of his cheek with gentle fingers. “Sleep, arimelda.” At her touch, he blinked, and in the openness of his mind to hers, she slipped in the lightest touch of enchantment, like a sigh on a breath of wind, as Melian had taught her long ago. “I’m here,” she promised him. “Sleep,” and she watched as those flame-lit eyes closed and Halbrand drifted off, still holding her in his arms.

Galadriel briefly considered killing him while he slept. It would be easier, for both of them in the end, and it would take centuries for him to reform himself again and seek to threaten the world.

She stroked her fingers over that well-known face, the pads of her fingers catching on the scruff covering his chin. His hair was wild about his face, but he looked surprisingly content for all he held her too tight to his chest. She buried her face in the hollow of his throat and felt the fragile, bird-like fluttering his heart.

How easy it would be to end him like this. How much better it would be to finally be free of him.

But he sighed in her arms and turned to bury his face in her hair, and she saw instead her cousin, Maedhros, asleep for the first time since Findekáno rescued him from Thangorodrim.

Maedhros had been the most beautiful of her cousins, but Morgoth left him hideously scarred and disfigured. His right hand was gone, one of his ears mauled, and the Tree-Light in his eyes was changed to something new and terrifying.

But Findekáno was not alarmed by Maedhros’ ruind form and soothed him every time he stirred. Her other cousin met her horrified eyes and smiled sadly: “He begged me to kill him; said we’d all be better off without him.”

Galadriel thought this was probably true: Maedhros and all the Sons of Fëanor were Doomed by the Valar themselves. And she had never seen an elf suffer so much and live afterwards.

Fingon must have read the truth in her eyes, for his gaze turned knowing and the Tree-Light in them deepened to something resembling fondness: “Ah, Artanis. You truly are kin to our uncle,” he said, laughing, which was still a great insult. “You bend for no one; not Elf nor Maia nor Vala. I pity the being that ever gets in your way, little cousin.” He shook his head. “What I would not endure for even one more smile from Maedhros, for one more hour in his company, despite the doom that hangs over us all. Perhaps you too will discover such a truth; that there are some people we grieve over forever.” His smile turned sad again, and he brushed back a lock of Maedhros’ faded copper hair. Their cousin and their high king was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and twitched in dark dreams upon the bed: “Though I do not wish such torment on you, even if the bliss is sweet.”

I will never be free of him.

Perhaps it was her remembrance of Findekáno and Maedhros, the glimpses of their bright, burning kinship long buried under centuries of death and grinding loss, that caused her to dream. Perhaps it was her place within the arms of Sauron, one of the greatest of the Ainur, whose music first sang the world into being, that caused time to slip around her.  

She fell asleep and found herself back in Valinor, descending a winding staircase beneath Aule’s mountain. Her brothers had learned to art of smithcraft from the maiar who worked here, though Galadriel was still too young.

Today she was looking for Finderáto. Her Ammë had told her to bring him back on time, or Fëanaro would accuse them of not respecting him.

“Ingoldo?” she called. She was further beneath Aulë’s mansions than she’d ever gone before, but one of the other Maiar told her Finderáto was down here today.

At the bottom was a heavy stone door, that swung open easily and without sound on the most perfect hinge she’d ever seen. The room was awash with shining glass baubles of light and fires blazed form numerous forges around the cavernous space.

“Ingoldo?” she called, again.

“Galadriel?!” Finderáto’s voice, from far away and behind her, up the stairs.

A figure within the shadowy room turned towards her. She caught a glimpse of copper hair and a flash of green, flame-lit eyes, and then she was scampering back up the stars towards Treelight and her brother’s calling voice.

She burst out under the Valinorean sky, but Finrod was not there. Instead, heavy armor cloaked her form, and a distant mountain exploded into liquid fire. The heavy pyroclastic cloud of the volcano roared towards her, like dragon fire spewing from the pits of Thangorodrim. She could not turn away, though she heard Halbrand’s voice calling for her. Galadriel, look at me!

The cloud hit her…. except this time, just before the cloud engulfed the Southlander village, she turned and saw Halbrand just behind her. His fiery gaze threatened to turn the world to ash, and then he lifted his arms, palms out in command. A single word burst from his lips in a word no mortal man could pronounce. It rumbled like an earthquake in the very bowels of the earth, and it burned through her like cleansing fire.

It was a word of power, a single note of command, spoken in Valarin; the tongue of the Ainur themselves.

The cloud struck the village; and though it flattened everything, destroying buildings and bridges and mills, it failed to burn men alive or turn them into dust or stone.

She was on the ground. Rolling painfully onto her feet, coughing, she straightened up. Ash covered her, coating the inside of her throat as she tried to breathe. “Halbrand,” she cried out. “Halbrand!”

And then she was standing in a blighted land before the tallest tower she’d ever seen rising like a wound before her. It was black and twisted, devoid of light, and as sharp as a sword seeking to pierce the sky above. The blighted lands around, all of onyx and fire-blackened rock, seemed devoid of light and life, save the red glow of flames.

Something stared down at her from the darkness above; something invisible and yet it bore down upon her as hot and acrid as volcanic Sulphur. I see you, it whispered in her mind, threatening to tear her apart as it sought to get at her mind.

And she screamed for she felt him there, in this new and monstrous form.

Galadriel woke. She was breathing too heavily, though Halbrand did not wake from her spell. Slowly, she extricated herself from his arms, reluctant to part from him though she knew she could not stay.

For the first time, in the arms of the one who’s power filled her ring, she caught a glimpse of it’s true potential; and of her true potential as it’s bearer. To bear a ring of power is to be alone. Many paths were open to her, and so many of them ended in darkness.

She had little time, but still she looked back. She would always look back, for elves live in memory sometimes more than they walk beneath the Sun.

A moment more she lingered, placing her hand on Halbrand’s, no Sauron’s, beloved face. She could not pull him back from darkness, not without falling herself. But maybe…

“Mellon nin,” she whispered in the darkness of Tirharad and Mordor reborn. “When you are at the end and all other paths are closed to you, listen to my words. I will not follow you into the darkness with you. You know this. So, when you can no longer fighter, follow me! Stop fighting me and together let us fight them.”

She knew he would hear her. She knew one day he’d have no choice but to hear her.

Then, cloaked in the power of her ring, Galadriel slipped from the land of Mordor and the eye of Sauron, one more time.

***