Chapter Text
“You will die because of me!”
“Heal yourself!”
“Go back to the Void from which you came!”
“I passed the test. I will diminish and go into the west...”
When at last the Lady Galadriel returned to the land of winterless spring, to rejoin her kin and live out the rest of her days in glory, she was not to be given the peace she’d sought. For she was already in the winter of her life, had lived longer in Middle-earth than any Ñoldor before her. More than anyone ever would again.
At what cost? the dark place in her heart whispered.
The Elves and Ainur that danced in the Pastures of Yavanna and feasted in the great Mansions of Aulë and Manwë had known plenty of hardship. They had fought their battles and lost, or sacrificed themselves freely for the lives of their friends. But Galadriel was there with them in the beginning and had stayed so long past their end. She’d carried those battles with her in her bones for so long, they’d fossilized. Entwined with the living tissue. A heavy marrow that ached despite the healing light of the One.
The darkness, as she had always feared, followed her to the Undying Lands. Unchanged. Unbreaking. She hid from it in the far corners where shadows ran the deepest in the Woods of Oromë, the great Vala huntsman. In the Gardens of Lórien, the master of dreams and desires, it shaped itself to form her enemy whenever she closed her eyes.
Sauron’s ring was gone. He should’ve gone with it. What was left of him to remain? But she knew, more than any of her kind, that all Morgoth needed was a spark. A live ember to ignite a speck of long dead decay. To rise again, he could corrupt ten thousand men into his service.
Or just one Maia to do it for him.
In the Halls of Nienna, the queen of mercy and grief, Galadriel sat upon the grey stone cliffs and cried out to the sea to take the shadow from her. She didn’t want it. It wasn’t hers to bear any longer. On a calm day, when the sun shone warm on her face and dried her tears, Galadriel swore she could see her own reflection in the obsidian stone dragons adorning the Door of Night. The barrier to the Timeless Void that housed the dreaded Morgoth. It was close enough she could feel him pulse, with anger and yearning from within its walls.
She had felt the same pull twice before. Once on the Sundering Seas, when she cast herself from the ship that would take her to the Grey Havens. The second was in Middle-earth, during the time when Sauron was under the thrall of his great Ring. When all trace of the man—being—she’d known was pulled deep into the Unseen world. So far out of her reach.
The other elves had called it sea-longing. They said her Teleri blood rebelled against her, beseeching her to return to the comfort of the waves once more.
“Tis not the sea that calls you, my dearest,” Nienna spoke softly beside her, joining Galadriel in her grief.
“You’re right, I can hear him. Rattling the bars of his cage. It hasn’t stopped since I arrived here.” However many years it had been, Galadriel had lost count.
“Only the Ainur can hear Melkor’s lament. If you can, it means another is there with him.” Her face never rose from its downturned state beneath her grey hood. Her tone never wavered from its doleful inflection.
“Sauron, you mean?” Galadriel asked, though she already knew the answer. “You can feel him too?”
“I share in the suffering of all things. I pity yours above all. Precious Artanis. I wish I could say it wasn’t meant to be this way.”
“And his?”
“My power does not grant the luxury of judgement. That lays with Mandos alone. Yes, I wept for Mairon, the sweetest boy. I weep with him still.”
With him. As she wept beside Galadriel?
“I can’t stay here, Nienna.”
“I know, child. You are bound with him in sorrow, and that is within my power.”
“You’ll help me?”
“I can’t make the decision for you, but I can light the way,” Nienna offered, casting her cloaked hand towards the ocean beyond them.
It was not to be master of the hunt that helped her, then. Or desire. Not Vairë who could weave time, or Varda who could inspire the purest joy with but a glance. It would be enduring grief that finally broke the spell within Galadriel.
“Why are you willing to do this? Do not lie and say that it will heal me. That is not your power.”
“I am the keeper of the Door. Closest to its call. Melkor’s songs are changing. A shift since you arrived on our shores. They all agree with me,” Nienna added, as if reading Galadriel’s mind on the contributions of the other Valar. “You could be our salvation, or our doom.” Coupled with the eternal sadness within Nienna, it was hard for Galadriel to feel confidence in the path before her.
“And yet you still offer aid?”
“It is so seldom we agree on anything. And they all wondered if you’d even listen.”
As if to prove the Valar correct, Galadriel chose that moment to counter the statement so many had made in error from the very beginning.
“You’re wrong, Nienna. It wasn’t sorrow that bound us, time and time again. It was hope.”
Sauron wanted to fix the world, and she wanted him out of it. It had seemed that neither of them would ever win. Perhaps her only chance for success lay in the Void.
And it was not lost on Galadriel, as she followed the bridge that appeared across the Ekkaia to the Door of Night, that Nienna, the Ainu of suffering, smiled beneath her veil.
“What is hope if not the will to endure through the greatest hardship, for the sake of what lies beyond?” Galadriel heard her say as she faded from sight.
It only took a few steps before she was enclosed in darkness. Gone was the sea beneath her and the sky above her.
“Wait, Nienna! I can get back, can’t I?” Galadriel hadn’t thought to ask first, had simply leapt headlong into the unknown. Towards him.
As she always did.
Her words only echoed around her. The bridge was gone. The door behind her shut. The scent of salt and sunlight replace with the damp, musty stench of deep earth.
“I was wondering if you’d come,” a voice spoke from the darkness, just before a torch illuminated her surroundings.
The reveal of its bearer was no surprise to Galadriel, only his appearance. He wore an apron of supple brown leather, a shade deeper than his tousled chin length hair. A dusky shadow of the same hue along his jaw. From memory, she knew it would glow like flame in the sunlight, and crimson by firelight.
“As if I could refuse the chance to end you. Once and for all.”
He would choose this body to torment her. A glimpse of Mairon in Halbrand’s form. She was fool not to see the similarities before.
“I thought you had put down your sword. Been an age since you faced me. In the flesh,” he taunted.
“More like two, I think. What is this place?”
She looked around at what appeared to be an abandoned barrow mound. At the bodies strewn along the floor and hung upon the walls. Skeletons of men and elves, armored and broken. Collecting dust and rusting into the dirt. She crouched to remove a sword from one of the fallen. Gondolin steel, it was still as sharp as the day it was forged.
“Think of it as a holding cell, welcoming us into the Void,” he answered.
Galadriel tested the weight of her new blade with a flourish and rested the edge to Sauron’s neck. To his credit, he did not flinch. Only stood proudly against the threat. It did not hum in the presence of great evil as it was fashioned to do.
It was either the Void that corrupted it, or its victim.
“You could try,” he continued, guessing her intent. “Although, I don’t want to know what happens when one dies here. Perhaps Morgoth will go free in my place.”
“What do you mean?” The declaration sapped any potential victory from her thoughts.
“Did you think it would be so easy? You underestimate him. The one who killed children in front of their fathers. Mothers in front of their sons. You think he would invite you here without something in return.”
“What could he want with me? I am but an elf. My kind has never succeeded against him. Only the Valar, working together with all of their power can contain him.”
“You always believed we were brought together for a purpose. Well, you’re right. He’s found a way to escape, and for whatever reason, he sees us as his greatest obstacle. He’s using us, and I imagine if we give him what he wants, he will exploit it.”
“What does he think we can accomplish together that all the gods cannot? Don’t tell me it’s love. Such an assumption is beneath you.”
“No, Morgoth doesn’t know love what love is. He knows obsession. To him, love and hate are one and the same.”
“Good, because I do not love you,” Galadriel repeated again, in the event it wasn’t abundantly clear the first time.
“Of course,” he agreed slowly, with a glint to his knowing eyes. “But you are obsessed with me. And he will use that against you. He’s counting on it.”
The idea of Morgoth knowing her mind frightened her, more than anything ever had.
“What aren’t you telling me? And what does he have on you?”
“Only every thought I’ve ever had in my head since the beginning of time. The price his service demanded.”
He made a show of rifling through the belongings of the dead, her blade no longer of interest to him. As if any earthly possessions would do either of them any good. If what he said was true, they were trapped until they found their way out.
“You thought that was a fair trade?” she asked skeptically.
“You bound yourself to me for vengeance and five ships,” he retorted without missing a beat.
“That wasn’t the reason—" She cut herself off before she confessed anything further. Like that they were bound many years before Númenor or Tiharad were even glimmers on the horizon. Before either of them left Aman for glory and ruin in equal measure.
“He’s made this prison his realm. In the way the others have all shaped their lands in Valinor, he’s spun this abyss into his own design.”
“Then how do we get out?”
“We play the game.”
“Right.” She nearly broke a tooth with how hard her jaw was set. “This is all a situation we would not be in had you not lured me here in the first place.” Her frustration made her shout as she began to pace the small chamber.
“Lured you?” he snorted incredulously, a mocking smile spread wide across his teeth. “The great Galadriel? You have never run so fast towards something in your entire life. And that is truly a feat that not even I could coerce from you.” He paused as if another thought had come to him. “Unless you missed me. Just a little.”
“I felt your rise, as I always do. It was my obligation to investigate.”
“Don’t blame your curiosity on me,” he chided, before he rolled over a stack of bones encased in gold thread. In the similar way a child would turn stones to look for grubs.
“Why are you even here? Were you sentenced by Mandos?”
Finally, she stopped pacing and stood helplessly behind him.
“No, the Valar did not think me worthy of punishment it would seem. Despite my fair and hale appearance, I am quite diminished, I promise you.”
She fought back a laugh at his promise. “You still did not answer why?”
“I heeded the call. Seeking my peace, the same as you. I, as low as I am, was not given a choice.”
“Tell me you have a plan, then?” she asked sharply. After years of hearing him boast over his power and might, she dared not believe him. Sauron was a deceiver, diminished or not. “Or have you just been sitting here waiting for me, sulking in the dark.”
“It all starts through there,” he answered, pointing towards a door at the top of the barrow.
Galadriel ascended the stone steps to inspect it, but it appeared to be locked from the outside. Burning it down would asphyxiate them before it penetrated the thick wood, but perhaps they could fashion a ram or a wedge to pry it open...
“It is not just a door, but an agreement. An oath, if you will. You elves love your pledges of honor and commitment, don’t you?” He sauntered to join her at the top of the steps and revealed his own procured Gondolin blade.
It was larger than the one she’d found, naturally.
“And Morgoth demands his in blood.” She was beginning to see what he was inferring.
“Precisely. Give me your hand.” He reached for her, but she shook off his advance and held her own blade defensively between them.
“I can do it myself, thank you.” Galadriel used the tip of the ancient Elven sword to nick the skin of her thumb.
A single bead of blood rose from beneath the split, and she caught him watching it intently. When he looked up to meet her gaze, he offered out his own hand.
“Will you do me, as well?” he smirked before adding, “Not too deep.”
Tentatively, she held his wrist with her fingers. The back of his hand cupped in her own palm. He should not have felt so warm. Should not have been so close. His breath soft upon her cheek. Maiar didn’t need to draw air. They had no lungs. Those that did had only adopted the motions to mimic the children of their master.
Just another trick. A falsehood. A mask.
She felt like her failed Gondolin sword, too corrupted to tell the difference between danger and friend. As if to prove her resistance, she drew the edge across his lifeline, cutting deeper than she did herself. At least he did not pretend that his blood was as red with life as hers.
It bubbled forth like liquid coal from his broken veins.
“There, that should do.” She released him quickly as if burned, only for him to take her hand in return, and place them both together against the door.
"You're about to have a lesson that you'll never forget,” he prophesized, as the earth beneath them rumbled and the door shook on its hinges.
"What's that?" Galadriel took a deep breath, knowing something important was about to happen. Like the moment before jumping from a ship, or a cliff.
"What it's like, to be tortured by a god." He may have intended it as a wicked threat, but she did not miss the dread that passed across his face.
And then everything went dark again.