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Chapter Text

Galadriel knows exactly where she wants to make camp on the first night. There’s a well-sheltered part of the woodland up here, with a good vantage point and a source of fresh water, where the curve of the landscape can hide a small fire from view. She focuses on the plan she mapped out before they departed the encampment: they’ll ride without rest so long as there’s daylight, avoiding open roads and any terrain that leaves them them too vulnerable to enemy attack. She’s planned the fastest reasonable route to Eregion, and she means to stick to it as closely as she can.

But to her dismay, it’s nearly sunset now and they’re still nowhere near her first waypoint. They’ve already been forced to swerve from their intended heading; there was a column of black smoke rising from the trees up ahead, too near their path for comfort, and the detour around it left them no choice but to ride harder to make up time. As the sun slides down in the sky, Galadriel’s spirits are sinking too. She’s losing the daylight. And – she pushes this thought sharply to the back of her mind – with every moment of delay, she’s also losing him.

All day she’s been fighting her compassionate instinct to slow down for just a little while, to give him a few moments of reprieve from the rough ride, but they can’t waste precious time. She’s stopped only to give him water and to dose him with the painkilling, fever-fighting tincture that Bronwyn instructed her to give him. But it isn’t enough, not when they’re riding this hard without any breaks. He’s obviously in excruciating pain, and the guilt tears Galadriel apart.

She glances back at him over her shoulder. He’s still clinging to his horse, mostly sitting upright, but he’s swaying unsteadily in the saddle. He looks pale and feverish, a shade of his former self, like he’s holding himself together through sheer force of will. When he sees her turn to look, he immediately sits up a little straighter and acknowledges her with a stoic nod, but the smile he gives her is more of a wince. Halbrand put on a good show for his people when he walked through the encampment that morning – he even climbed onto his horse without assistance – and when they set out, Galadriel believed with her whole being that he could make it to Eregion. But his strength is fading at an alarming rate, and they’re only a single day into the journey.

She wonders, not for the first time, if this gambit is actually hastening his demise. Will her attempt to save him only cause him more pain than he’s already endured? Has she been a fool to even try bringing a badly-injured mortal man across the countryside like this, with an orc-lance wound that none of the human healers thought was survivable?

She remembers the bitter truth that was written on the healers’ faces when they learned exactly how far Galadriel planned to take him, the doubt that flashed in their eyes as Bronwyn handed over the little bag of painkiller. Between the Númenoreans’ remaining supplies and the scant few bits they salvaged from the wreckage of the village, there wasn’t nearly enough medicine to go around. They all knew how unwise it was to waste resources on a man who was probably as good as dead, to give up supplies when there were so many other wounded to attend to.

But Halbrand is their king, and after what he’s done for them, Bronwyn would never have refused Galadriel’s request. They had to give him a chance. The Southlanders finally have the king they deserve, and they must not lose him. They need him back, alive and well. He must live to fight alongside Galadriel once again. If only she can get him to Eregion quickly enough, if only—

By the time night falls, Halbrand is barely sitting up, his body sagging to one side, his eyes half-closed. The horses are still picking their way through the trees to Galadriel’s intended campsite, repeatedly losing their footing in near-total darkness, and Halbrand slides ever further back on his saddle. Thankfully, they reach their destination shortly afterwards. The location is as good as Galadriel hoped it would be, and they quickly make camp. Well, she makes camp – Halbrand is in no state to help her with anything. She lays out the blankets and helps him down from the horse, and he leans heavily on her shoulder as they stagger the few steps to the campsite. He can hardly stand up, and her dark-piercing vision can’t miss the fresh patch of blood that’s soaking through his bandages.

Galadriel builds a fire and settles him next to it. She carefully changes his dressings, then gets the last of their water and mixes him another dose of painkiller. He’s smiling and joking a bit too much as she works, clearly trying to cover up how bad he’s feeling. But she doesn’t even register whatever he’s saying – because she’s just looked into the bag of medicine properly for the first time since they left the Númenoreans’ encampment. And what she sees inside freezes her heart with dread.

No. This can’t be right. There isn’t enough here. Not by a long shot.

She tallies it again, but the result is the same. They’ve only got two more days’ worth of painkiller left at the dose Bronwyn prescribed. That’s all that was in the bag... and it’s unlikely that Bronwyn miscounted by mistake. The unspoken message is there, plain to see: There’s no realistic way he’ll last any longer than that, so take this, and no more. Bronwyn only gave in to Galadriel’s plan out of mercy, extending a kindness to the Southlanders’ already-beloved king. The healers didn’t want him to die in agony, but they all think his death is inevitable. Six days is simply too long, and help will come too late.

Galadriel can’t bear to look at Halbrand, can’t risk letting him see the despair in her eyes as she puts the bag of medicine away. She says nothing to him. She leaves him there at the fireside, picks up the empty water-skins, and leads the tired horses down to the nearby stream.

The horses wander downstream to drink, and Galadriel kneels by the bank to refill the water-skins. When she’s finished, she leans down and splashes cold, fresh water over her wind-stung face. As she does it, she finally breaks down and cries, muffling her choking sobs with her wet hands. She needs to get it out, needs to drain herself of this doubt while she’s still out of his sight, so she can find her conviction again.

Perhaps it was more cruel than kind to put Halbrand on that horse. Perhaps she’s known all along, deep down, that it was selfish to do this. It’s her fault that he’s suffering. She did this to him, all of it. She’s the one who led him here, in more ways than one.

The human healers couldn’t save him, but at least they could have made him more comfortable. She could have left him behind and ridden to Eregion alone, and let him have a sliver of peace at the end. She could have granted him the solace he’s been longing for since before their paths crossed. She could have sat by his bedside, held his hand, thanked him for everything... and said goodbye, just like she’s said goodbye to so many friends in the wake of centuries of battlefields. He’s mortal, after all. She was always going to lose him. She could have just let him go.

But she simply cannot. Letting go is not what Galadriel does, not when she’s set her mind to something.

She needs Halbrand to make it. She needs him to survive. And she needs him, more than she can possibly allow herself to think about.

She sits there on the bank for a while, breathing deeply in the crisp night air, trying to calm her racing thoughts. Stars are gradually filling the ink-black sky, and she stares up at them over the trees. She thinks of the way Halbrand laced his fingers into hers as they stared at the starry sky from their raft, that first night after the storm cleared, the night before their miraculous rescue. Things could easily have seemed hopeless then, but all wasn’t lost after all. The storm ended, the stars came out. The next morning, the sun was shining and Elendil’s ship was there. Despite the odds, the tides still turned in their favor. And there’s no reason that can’t happen again.

What’s done is done. There’s no going back now. She’ll just have to cut back the dose, and make what medicine they have last longer. Tomorrow, she’ll start giving him half as much painkiller. But he will survive. Halbrand will make it to Eregion. He’s stronger than this. He has to be.

Galadriel picks up the full water-skins and goes to collect the horses. She finds a small, sheltered green patch where they can graze and ties their leads to a tree, then walks back toward the campsite.

Much to her relief, when Galadriel gets back to their camp she finds Halbrand sitting up, slowly chewing the piece of dry bread that she gave him from their rations. She’s got him positioned as comfortably as possible, propped up against a log with a blanket draped over him and his cloak rolled up behind his back, his feet pointing toward the crackling fire. He’s eating something, at least. That has to be a good sign, she tells herself. His vital organs escaped damage when the lance struck him – the very luckiest of circumstances, considering the severity of his wound. He’s in a bad way, but he’s not dead yet, and that’s all that matters.

She piles the water-skins alongside their other provisions, then she unclips her armor and removes it, stacking the pieces up neatly. She re-braids her damp hair, twisting it up with her fingers. She makes one more unnecessary walk around the perimeter she’s already checked, before she finally feels prepared to face him with some semblance of composure.

Halbrand is staring into the flames, his gaze distant, like his mind is somewhere else. She touches his shoulder, and when he turns to look up at her, she doesn’t lift her hand away immediately. She just lets it rest there, her palm against the soft linen of his shirt. She’s no longer concerned by how familiar she’s being with him, how easy it feels to touch him. It feels like second nature to put her hand on him now, after Númenor, after the journey, the battle, and all of it. His skin feels hot through the fabric; despite the night chill, she can feel waves of fevered heat coming off him.

“Halbrand? Some company, perhaps?” She forces a breezy cheerfulness into her voice, like she’s pulling up a chair beside him at the pub back in Armenelos, not sitting here at what might well be his deathbed.

He nods in agreement, but he doesn’t say anything, just looks back to the fire. She sits down carefully, tucks herself under the other side of the blanket, and settles next to him on his uninjured side. Their shoulders are touching.

“I should like to know your thoughts,” she says after a while. “What is it you’re contemplating so intently?”

Halbrand turns toward her again, and his eyes lock onto hers in that piercing way that always throws her off-kilter. It’s like he’s staring right into her, reading her like an open book. “I was thinking about yesterday, actually,” he says at last, his words slow and measured. “Was that really just yesterday? When we sat together... after the battle.” He doesn’t have to say any more for her to know exactly what moment he’s thinking of. Her mind has been circling back to it too, replaying their words to each other more times than she can count.

“What about it?” she whispers.

“I laid my soul bare to you then, Galadriel,” he says. “I meant it. Whatever happens, you must know that I meant everything I said. And... that I’m sorry it didn’t turn out differently.” The sincerity in his shaking voice rips her apart all over again, but she doesn’t break his gaze. “There was so much I still wanted to say to you... and with the way you were looking at me, right at that moment... I felt like... maybe you wanted to tell me something, too.” He leans closer to her. “Galadriel?”

Her foolish heart flips every single time he says her name. “Yes?”

“What would you have said to me then, in the forest? If we’d only had a little more time?”

I wanted to ask you to kiss me, she thinks, suddenly grateful for the dim light, and for the fact that his human eyes can’t possibly perceive the flush rising in her cheeks. “I’m not sure I remember,” she lies. “I do remember the moment, of course, quite vividly, but... I think my emotions had overwhelmed me. I cannot recall my exact intentions.”

The ghost of a smile flickers over Halbrand’s face. “Well, that’s a shame,” he says. “Because I’ve never stopped thinking of it. Lying out there on the road, with that cursed lance in my side... that was all I could think about. What you might’ve wanted to say to me. And I wondered what could have happened... if I’d just...” He trails off, slowly reaching out to take her hand in his own. Her heart beats like a startled animal scrambling to escape her chest.

“Don’t, Halbrand,” she whispers, squeezing his hand. His palm burns hot against hers. “Don’t do this to yourself again. You mustn’t think so much on your regrets, on the past, on what might have been. I told you to be free of it. It’s what we do in the present that matters.”

“You’re right, of course,” he sighs. “You’ve always been right.” He hasn’t let go of her hand. “But then... how about if you tell me what you’d like to say to me now? Here. In the present.”

She realizes suddenly that they’re sitting next to each other in almost exactly the same way as yesterday, except now they’re wrapped in blankets instead of armor. His eyes sparkle fever-bright as he moves infinitesimally closer to her. And she feels that same pang of longing, that same impulse to close the tiny distance between them and kiss him on the mouth. She could just let herself lean forward and–

“Say it. Please, Galadriel. Tell me something true.”

“All right,” she whispers. She takes a breath. “Something true. Halbrand... for so very long.... so much longer than your lifetime... my soul has desired only one thing. Only one thing drove me to passion, some might even say to folly. And that singular goal was always the same, the image of it always filling my mind, always pulling me onwards. Even when it felt nearly impossible to continue.” She grits her teeth, allowing herself a rueful half-smile as she envisions it. “I’d imagine my army gathered around me, our weapons shining... victorious at last over the forces of darkness. I’d imagine myself, triumphant and exultant in their midst. Proven right. Blazing with power. And I’d imagine standing over Sauron, holding my brother’s dagger against his treacherous throat. That vision... it’s never changed before.”

“I see,” Halbrand says softly. “But now...?”

“Now, I find that it has become... different.” She licks her lips, pauses. He’s so very close to her, and yet he feels so far out of her reach. His burning gaze is fixed intently on her. “I’m still victorious, still triumphant, but... when I press the dagger into Sauron’s neck... there’s no army around me anymore. There’s just you.” She exhales the confession and lets the words spill out unfiltered. Her eyes are stinging now, not only from the woodsmoke. “You’re the only one watching me. Sometimes your hand is on the dagger, too. And I don’t know if you’re holding me back, or if you’re steadying my hand... but I know I want you to do it, whatever it is.” She blinks, and the tears start to roll freely down her cheeks. “You must understand, I’ve never thought that might be a good thing before, Halbrand. To have someone to hold me back. To have someone tell me when to stop. When it’s enough. I’ve never let anyone tell me when to stop, not even my closest friend... not even...”

“I know.” Halbrand reaches out with his other hand and gently brushes teardrops from her chin. “Galadriel, believe me...I know. I feel it too. It’s the same way you temper me. You balance me. When we’re together, it’s like... you make everything feel clearer somehow. That’s what I was trying to say to you, after the battle. You’ve made me feel so many things I didn’t ever think possible.”

“Yes,” she whispers. “As you’ve done to me.”

She wants so much to pull him against her, to wrap her arms around him the way she’s longed to do since Númenor. She wants to kiss him a thousand times, throw away all sense and reason, bind him to her in any way possible – as if by doing so she might somehow tether him to this world. But he is still a mortal man, and a dying man, and she doesn’t know if she can bear to make this goodbye any harder. It’s still five more days to Eregion. It’s such a long way, and such a small chance, and yet...

No one believed her when she told them that Sauron still stalked the shadows, that she had to find him, that this could only end with the point of her blade – and yet there’s no denying that she’s been right all along. And if no one believes her now, if no one thinks she can really make it to Eregion with Halbrand still breathing, then she’ll just have to prove them wrong, again and again and again. As many times as it takes. She does not care to consider anyone else’s opinion anymore, save maybe Halbrand’s – and this is one conviction she hopes the two of them share: He can survive this.

She can’t think about how she needs to halve his dose of painkiller tomorrow. She can’t think about what five more days of arduous riding will do to him. She can’t think about the relentless hourglass that’s counting down to the moment when he’ll be beyond saving, even for the elves.

“You should probably try to sleep now, Halbrand,” she says, hurrying the words out in place of whatever foolish phrase might fight its way to her lips if she doesn’t stop this conversation soon. “Lie back and get some rest, all right? I’ll keep watch for a few hours.”

“All right,” he says. Disappointment flashes across his face for a second before he manages a half-hearted wink. “And stop worrying about me. I promise I’ll live at least till morning.”

He releases her hand, slowly unwinding his fingers from hers like he really doesn’t want to let her go. Her heart cracks. But she knows she desperately needs to put some distance between them before she does anything too irrational. She extracts herself from the blanket and pulls it up higher over him, pretending she doesn’t see how he winces when she tucks it around his injured side.

She means to leave right after that. She fully intends to get directly to her feet, to stand up and walk away from him. But she doesn’t. She can’t. Instead, she leans forward and kisses his burning forehead, letting her lips brush his face for just a fleeting moment.

“Good night, Halbrand.” Please don’t let this be a kiss goodbye. Please. Not yet.

“Good night, Galadriel.” He gives her the faintest flicker of his old smile.

And then he leans back against the log and closes his eyes.

Chapter Text

On the second day, Halbrand puts on a brave act, but it’s beyond obvious to Galadriel that he’s barely hanging on. Without the full dose of painkiller, he’s struggling badly. Whenever she glances over her shoulder to check on him, he looks near tears from the pain, even as he signals her to ride onward with a nonchalant wave of his hand: I’m fine, I’m fine.

As they arrive at their campsite that night, she goes to help him down from the horse and he practically falls into her arms as he slides to the ground, leaning his entire weight on her for a good few seconds before he can find his footing. He’s still burning up with fever, his condition getting steadily worse.

But he lives through the night, and he manages to get back on the horse again the following day. At first light, they ride onward.

By the end of the third day, Galadriel is distressed to discover that he’s blacking out. More than once he completely fails to respond when she shouts to him. And then, just before they reach their campsite, he crashes down from the horse. He slips out of the saddle without warning when they’re halfway up a rocky incline in the dark, and takes a hard fall that strikes a sickening horror into Galadriel’s heart.

Thank the light, he doesn’t break any bones or crack his head open on the rocks. She flings herself down from her horse, runs to him and kneels helplessly beside him in the dirt, her heart hammering quadruple time until he finally opens his eyes again. She’s almost unable to believe that they can possibly go on... but Halbrand’s will is iron. He manages to sit up and get to his feet, then she helps him climb back on the horse, and they continue to the night’s campsite.

Onward, onward, onward, she repeats to herself with every hoofbeat. He’s not dead yet. He’s still breathing, and they’re still moving steadily toward Eregion. They’ve already been travelling as long as the healers thought he was likely to hold on – three days – and Galadriel cannot forget it. She gives him a full dose of painkiller that night, further shortening their supply, but she refuses to think about that.

On the fourth day, Galadriel ties a rope to secure him to his saddle, and with him more firmly anchored, she pushes the horses a little faster. That night, they make camp ever so slightly before it gets dark. When the sun’s last rays slip away, their small fire is already crackling. Halbrand looks absolutely destroyed by the day’s ride, and he doesn’t say much at all to her, save for making one or two dark jokes about his impending death as she helps him lie down on the blankets.

In the dark, worry gnaws at her. If they keep to their planned route, it will still take them nearly two full days to reach Eregion from here, and there’s almost no medicine left to give him. They need to try to get there faster. As Galadriel walks down to the water with the horses and sits staring at the stars again, she starts formulating a new plan. She pictures the map, envisions the landscape ahead of them and comes up with a new route.

If she cuts in just a bit nearer to the human villages between here and Eregion, and takes more well-trodden paths where the terrain is less hazardous for the horses... then maybe they could attempt to ride overnight. Tomorrow night, she decides, they’ll ride straight on. If they keep up a decent pace, they might even reach Eregion by mid-morning on day six. They’ve moved far enough from the shadows of the ruined Southlands now, she tells herself; the chance of being assailed by orcs here feels exponentially smaller than the benefit of cutting a few hours off the journey.

She shares her new plan with Halbrand when she gets back to the fireside, as she cradles his head in her lap and wipes his fevered face with a wet cloth. She’s not quite sure if he’s actually listening to her – his eyes are only half open, and his gaze is unfocused. But he smiles slightly at her touch when she smooths his hair back from his face, and her heart does that foolish flip.

Despite everything, despite how hopeless this should seem, she feels almost invincible when he’s this close to her. It’s the same feeling she had that very first night on the raft: a deep, unshakable certainty that as long as they don’t let go of each other, hope isn’t lost. She tries not to let her heart break over the thought that she may never get to hold him in her arms in better circumstances.

She’s worked so hard to keep him at a distance, all this time. To deny whatever this connection is between them, to bury how much he means to her, to avoid getting distracted from the task at hand. She really didn’t mean to care this much, to become so inconveniently entangled with anyone, much less a mortal man. But something’s been pulling them toward each other like gravity, almost since the moment they met. And now, when it might be too late, all she feels is emptiness and the hollow ache of regret. If Halbrand is to be just another good thing that Sauron has ripped away from her... well, this time, it’s at least partially her fault.

She could have said all the words she held back on that day in the forest in the Southlands. She could’ve reached for his arm, stopped him from walking away, asked him to wait a moment longer when the Queen Regent summoned him. She could have said something on the ship to Middle Earth, that night they stood staring out at the sea together, neither of them able to sleep. She could have said something when they were still in Armenelos... at the forge, or after the party in the square, or so many other times. She’s had dozens of chances to be honest with him, and she let them all pass by.

Galadriel closes her eyes and lets her mind drift to the day he fitted her new armor, not long before they sailed from Númenor. They were alone in the workshop after hours again, and she remembers how he stood so close behind her, his hands lingering on her just a little longer than strictly necessary as he helped her try it on. It hardly needed any adjusting – he made it perfect the first time, as though he’d somehow memorized every curve and contour of her, and it left her speechless. Light, how she’d longed for him to keep his hands on her just then, not to stop touching her, not to pull back. She wanted him to lean down and press his lips against her neck. She wanted to let him remove all of her armor in more ways than one.

She could have just let herself feel something for once, besides the bitterness and anger that’s driven her all these centuries... but instead, she walked away. She winces as she blinks away tears, all too aware of her own hypocrisy – wasn’t she the one admonishing him for dwelling too much on his regrets, just a few days ago? Be free of it.

Still, he deserves better than the half-truths she’s been telling him, and she wants to tell him so much more.

Halbrand has long ago slipped out of consciousness, but Galadriel starts talking anyway. She gently strokes his hair as he sleeps, telling him about her travels, about the places she’s been in her relentless search for Sauron. She tells him again about how she jumped from the elven ship, right before they met on the sea. She tells him how betrayed she feels by Elrond and Gil-galad, how hurt she still is about their decision to exile her and pretend it was for her own good. She tells him about the things Finrod said, the last time she ever spoke to her brother alone. She tells him how she’s never felt like she belongs, how no one has truly understood her since Finrod died... except, perhaps, until now.

And then she whispers how very much she wanted to kiss him in the forest in the Southlands, and on the ship, and in Armenelos. She whispers how much she needs him to survive, how fiercely she hopes that he’s going to open his eyes again tomorrow.

She’s not sure anymore whether she’s confessing these things to Halbrand, or to the stars, or to herself, but she sits awake talking to him until the last flames of their fire dwindle, and only the glowing embers remain. Then she finally closes her eyes. She folds her arms softly around him, reassuring herself that his heart is still beating, and falls asleep holding him.

Chapter Text

The fifth day of the journey dawns grey and chilly, but Galadriel’s spirits are soaring high. Not only is Halbrand still alive in the morning, he even seems to be doing a bit better. He manages to get to his feet without much help, and she settles him easily onto the horse as they set off at first light.

She tries not to think about how the dying will sometimes rally this way right before the end, giving the illusion of recovery right before they crash hard. Of course, she knows his injury and his fever are very much still killing him, and there’s no realistic way that he’s actually getting better. The hourglass is still running down for him. But her heart glows with hope nonetheless. He’s alive, they’re on the move, and they’re almost in Eregion.

Halbrand stays in an upbeat mood all day, and he’s awake every time she pauses to check on him. In some moments, he almost seems like his old self again. He’s mostly sitting up straight in the saddle, and he doesn’t look anywhere near as anguished as he did yesterday. When they stop for water and she hands him the water-skin, he’s locking eyes with her in that aggravatingly charming way, and giving her that smile that makes her need to look away from him before she loses all reason. Surely there’s no way an imminently dying man could look that good, she tells herself wryly. Surely he’s going to survive.

Halbrand is no average mortal, that much is clear. He’s a man of extraordinary gifts. He’s a king and a warrior with an unshakable strength of will. He’s not going to die now, not when they’ve come this far. After all, he’s set this unquenchable fire in Galadriel’s frozen heart without even trying; he’s enthralled her completely despite her best efforts to resist it. And if a man can do that, then he can certainly do something as simple as survive for one more day.

Eregion is so near now – safety is within reach – and that shining thought presses her onward.

She makes their course change exactly as she planned it, bringing the horses down out of the forested hills in the late afternoon and skirting nearer to the human villages in the valleys below. They’ll keep enough of a distance from the settlements not to attract any undue attention, but here they can benefit from well-trampled dirt roads and open stretches of land, where the horses can run much faster than they do through the woods. And on smoother terrain, they can continue to travel through the night.

Soon they’ll be in the city, and the elves will restore him, and she’ll finally be able to talk to him properly – not just spill all her secrets to him while he’s lying in her arms unconscious. When he’s recovering, when he’s rested, when they start talking battle strategy on how to to take back his lands from the darkness... she’ll have so many chances to be alone with him. And then she’ll find the right time and the right words to say everything she wants to say to the King of the Southlands. Everything that should have come after “I felt it, too.”

She whispers to the horses: faster, faster...

By early evening, they’ve gained significant ground over the original route, even more than Galadriel had hoped possible. They’re only about eight hours’ ride from Eregion now; they could very well be inside the city gates before daybreak tomorrow. She hasn’t felt this much hope since they set out from the Southlands.

But then, just as dusk falls and they’re passing the last of the human villages in the area, the weather suddenly turns. There’s a groundshaking crash of thunder. Lightning slices through the slate-dark sky, and a torrent of cold rain starts sheeting down. And soon afterward, Galadriel’s earlier fears are realized.

She looks back and sees that Halbrand is slumped over in the saddle, his eyes closed, his body sagging against the ropes that secure him to the horse. He’s crashing badly, just as she knew would happen.

The hourglass has run out.

The wind whips Galadriel’s rain-soaked braid into her face, and she can hardly remember why she felt so optimistic just a few hours previously. Halbrand is shivering with chills, and when she moves him to rearrange him in the saddle, he’s clearly in agony again. She’s left far too long of a gap between doses of painkiller, trying to preserve the last of the medicine they have left, and now he’s paying for it. She covers him with one of the thick blankets in addition to his cloak, pulling it over his head to shield him from the rain, and they try to keep moving.

She steers the horses onto a flat country road as they continue to move away from the last village, but even the hard-packed dirt is quickly turning to slick, treacherous mud. The horses can barely see the path ahead of them in the pelting rain. Both animals exude a skittish, nervous energy despite her attempts to soothe them, and their hooves are sliding dangerously in the muck whenever they hit the gentlest incline.

Galadriel brings her horse up next to Halbrand’s, and pulls them both to a stop. Crashing thunder reverberates through her armor as the horses stamp around in an inch of muddy water. Halbrand is motionless in his saddle, still slumped over to one side. His wrists and forearms are raw and bloodied from how tightly she’s had to tie the ropes to keep him from falling, and her attempts to keep him dry have been utterly futile – everything he’s wearing has long ago soaked through. The sodden blanket has slipped down to his waist, no longer covering his head and shoulders.

“Halbrand!” she screams over the thunder, reaching to grab his shoulder. His hair is plastered across his face, so she can’t tell if he’s conscious or not. “Halbrand! Can you hear me? Halbrand!” Every time he’s unresponsive, she wonders with barely-suppressed panic if this will be the time she finds him dead.

But no, thank the light. He’s alive. He lifts his head up and looks at her, rainwater pouring down his face. A big flash of lightning cuts through the skyline just then, illuminating his irises with a spark of bright light. And for some unfathomable reason, he grins at her. Maybe he’s delirious.

“Are you all right?” she yells. “What could you possibly be smiling about?”

He leans his head all the way back, letting the torrential rain fall directly on his fevered face. “This!” He smiles again, even laughs. “The weather! Look! It’s just like when we first met, isn’t it? Maybe it means the tide’s about to turn. Might be a good omen!”

Galadriel grits her teeth, unable to find any levity in the situation. “I find nothing amusing about this!” she shouts. “You’re dying, and we need shelter! We need to get you warm and dry! There’s no way we can make camp in this!”

He doesn’t say anything back. He just smiles at her one more time and then flops forward in the saddle, like he’s expended whatever tiny fraction of energy he had in reserve to make his last quip. She screams his name again, grabs his arm and shakes him, but he doesn’t respond except for an unintelligible mumble.

Her heart sinks. She can’t shake the dread that if they attempt to ride onward tonight, it will end in catastrophe. Suffering as he is, he needs to get out of the rain now. He needs a hot drink, and a fire, and a dry blanket, and fresh bandages.

Galadriel hates the thought of backtracking, but there’s no other option. So be it.

She spins the horses around, and starts back toward the small inn that they passed at the outskirts of that last village.

Well, my friend... it seems fate has in store for us one more raft.

Chapter Text

The tiny inn is more of a roadside tavern, with only a single small room upstairs that can be let out to travellers. Galadriel has seen many places like this over the ages, and there’s nothing remarkable about it. But tonight, after staggering in from the storm, after practically dragging Halbrand to the door... it’s been a long while since she’s been this happy to see four walls and a roaring fireplace.

She wasn’t certain if Númenorean coins would be recognized here – they’re all she has on her – but the innkeeper was more than happy to take the small handful that Galadriel held out. Yes, the old woman said, this would be acceptable to cover some food and a place to sleep for the night. Galadriel would have traded nearly anything for shelter and warmth this night, and she silently thanks Elendil for his foresight in insisting that she keep some coin with her, just in case.

Now, she’s sitting across from Halbrand at a rough-hewn wooden table in the tavern, and she couldn’t be more thankful. He’s warming up, he’s drying off in the closest seat to the fire, and he’s currently eating a bowl of hot soup. He does it slowly, moving the spoon from the bowl to his mouth with effort, as though he’s lifting a stone brick. But he’s eating soup, and for that she’s overjoyed.

Truly, she’s once again stunned that he’s conscious and sitting up in a chair, after all of it. When she got him down from the horse and stumbled with him to the door, he even stood on his feet long enough for her to help him walk inside. He really does have the fiercest determination of any mortal man she’s ever met, and she adores him for it.

“Well? You going to eat your food, elf, or just stare at me?” he laughs, reaching across to nudge her own untouched spoon closer to her. “Go on. It’ll do you good.”

Galadriel can’t actually remember when she last ate anything at all. But as soon as she picks up the spoon and takes a bite, she realizes she’s so much hungrier than she thought. Her constant worry over Halbrand – and everything else – has kept her from acknowledging her own exhaustion, and she’s starving. After a couple of bites, she sets the spoon aside, picks up the bowl and drinks all of her soup directly out of the side, gulping it down gratefully.

“Aha, see? Better?” Halbrand smiles. He gestures toward the fireplace. “Told you the tide was about to turn, didn’t I? Could be smooth sailing from here.”

His hair and his shirt look mostly dry now. She’s hung his blue cloak over the back of another chair close to the fire, where it’s finally stopped dripping into the puddle of water on the floor. But when he shifts around in his chair to angle himself more toward the fireplace, she sees him grit his teeth in pain. He may not be cold and wet anymore, but he’s still only had the tiny amount of painkiller that she gave him when they first got here, a fraction of a proper dose. She looks at the window, where torrential rain is still sheeting down hard against the glass. There’s absolutely no guarantee this weather will clear by morning.

“Halbrand... there’s something I have to tell you.”

“Hmm?” His head snaps up, his attention instantly fixed on her. His eyes are bright and he looks almost excited, as if he thinks she’s about to say something good. “What’s that?”

“I... I have no more painkiller to give you tonight. We have almost nothing left. We need to save what little we have remaining for the ride to Eregion, but... that does mean tonight might be difficult for you. I’m sorry. ”

“Oh.” He looks downcast for a second before he waves a hand with exaggerated indifference. “Ah, well. It’s all right. I’ll get through it.” He tilts his head toward the tavern bar with a wince. “But I think maybe we’d best get some spirits, then. A bit of something strong to drink could help, no?”

Galadriel nods. Of course. Yes, anything will help.

She finds the innkeeper by the front door, busy mopping up all the water that they tracked in. She hands over another Númenorean coin, and asks if she could have a cup of the strongest spirits in the place. The speed with which the old woman snatches up the coin – and the fact that she goes to the counter and pours Galadriel two very large, very full cups – confirms that the payment must’ve been generous. The cups are filled so high that Galadriel can hardly carry them back to the table without spilling liquor everywhere.

Halbrand’s face is amused as he watches her approach. “You don’t have to get half the cask at once, you know. You can just go back and ask for some more.”

Galadriel rolls her eyes, barely managing to set the wooden cups down. “I suspect I may have overpaid for this,” she says. “I only asked for one cup, but I got two.” She pulls out her chair, sits back down. “Do you happen to know how much those Númenorean coins are worth? I never really had occasion to use them while we stayed.”

“You paid in isle coin, here?” His eyebrows go up. “What sort of coin was it?”

“I’m... not certain. Elendil gave some to me. I think this one had a dragon stamped on it?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” Halbrand shakes his head, laughter in his voice. “Oh, you silly little elf. For two cups of liquor? They probably still owe us the rest of the bar!” He lifts his cup, tips it back, and drinks half of it down at once. “Mmm hmm. Yes. We are absolutely getting these refilled.”

She smiles despite herself. “Be careful, please. Remember that you still need to get up the stairs.”

“Yes, well... in order to get up the stairs, I first need not to feel it,” he says wryly. “C’mon. Drink up. Cheers.” He lifts his cup. “To us. To another storm weathered.”

“To many victories yet to come,” she says, softly.

His eyes stay fixed on hers as she carefully lifts her over-full cup and taps it against his. Then she brings it to her mouth and drinks. The innkeeper has followed her request to the letter – it is indeed very strong stuff. It burns down Galadriel’s throat, sending an immediate flash of warmth into her blood, and it feels exceptionally good after being pelted by cold rain for miles.

She’s not at all worried about getting drunk off a few cups of spirits; an elf can easily hold her drink against a half-dozen human men. (Elendil clearly knew that, too, since he gently asked her to refrain from joining any drinking games with the young crew before they set off from Númenor.) But it does enough to make her feel ever so slightly relaxed, for the first time in weeks. She can feel the knots of tension easing from her shoulders, her tired muscles unwinding a bit.

When she brings the two empty cups back to the tavern bar, Halbrand’s prediction proves true – the old woman refills them with a smile and a wink, and asks for no further coin. It occurs to Galadriel as she’s walking back to the table that this is the first time she’s tasted any human-made spirits in the better part of two centuries. Contrary to Elendil’s worries, she’d been in no state of mind to partake in any of the festivities with the crew in Númenor. In the days before they left the island, she was in hyperfocused, single-minded battle mode. Every fraction of her attention that wasn’t locked onto strategizing with the council or training the company had been focused on him. On convincing him to support the cause and take back his lost kingdom. And on furiously holding back whatever other feelings she was having about him. Relaxed was the last thing she wanted to be, back in Númenor.

It’s Númenor that Halbrand talks about for most of the time they sit drinking together. She sits back and lets him talk; he’s trying his best to distract himself from the pain he must be in, and she’s all too glad to listen to his voice. He tells her about the swords he made. He tells her which market stall had the nicest bread and which pub had the best seafood. He recounts the tavern brawl he got into, and the day she duelled with Elendil’s squad in the square. He even almost manages to get her to laugh at the fact that they both landed in the dungeon – a memory she did not ever expect to find amusing, much less want to revisit. But then again, it was in that very dungeon that she first noticed how much his presence affects her. And she’s never stopped noticing it. Being near him just constantly makes her feel things, and she’s still not quite used to it.

When Galadriel goes back for their third round of liquor, the innkeeper once again hands it over without asking for any payment. But as she slides the full cups to Galadriel across the bar, the old woman pauses and puts one hand on Galadriel’s wrist, concern etched on her face. She tilts her chin toward Halbrand. “I can see your poor friend over there is in a bad way,” she says, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Looks like he’s hurting pretty badly. What happened to him?”

“A lance wound, in battle,” Galadriel says. “I’m taking him to be treated.”

The old woman narrows her eyes. “Ohhh,” she says, nodding somberly. “You mean you’re taking him to your people.” Her eyes skirt over Galadriel’s face, and her scrutinizing gaze lingers at the side of Galadriel’s head, on the exposed point of her ear.

After the cold reception she received when she arrived in Númenor, Galadriel’s back is already prickling, bracing for an accusation in the woman’s tone. “Yes, that’s right, to my people,” she says, keeping her own voice cool and even. “We ride in haste to Eregion. We were moving swiftly until we were caught by the bad weather.”

But despite Galadriel’s misgivings, there’s no malice in the innkeeper’s face. She’s nodding sympathetically, patting Galadriel’s hand. “Ahhh, yes, yes. I hear there are excellent healers in Eregion. They will help him. Put your doubts to rest.”

“I do not doubt the skill of the elven healers,” Galadriel says, “providing we reach them in time. But it’s been five days already; we’ve come all the way from the Southlands. And if the rain doesn’t clear tomorrow, I don’t know what we’re to do. He’s got a fever, and I haven’t even got enough painkiller left to give him.” She gestures at the full cups of spirits on the counter. “Thus, we’re making do with this.”

The woman’s eyes widen. “You’ve been riding five days? With him in that state?”

“I wish it weren’t so, but we had no choice,” Galadriel says. “He’s dying. He needs elvish medicine.”

The innkeeper looks over toward Halbrand, then turns slowly back to Galadriel and lowers her voice again. “It was an orc’s lance that struck him...wasn’t it?” she whispers. “I’ve heard rumours the shadow moves once more in the south... but I did not want to believe it. Is it true?”

“I’m afraid so.” Galadriel averts her eyes. “The Southlands have fallen to a familiar enemy. Our battle was hard-fought, and we thought we’d struck a victory but... it wasn’t enough to drive them back. Not yet.” She takes a steadying breath. “We will reclaim the Southlands in the name of their rightful king. We’ll fight on, and we will fight back.” She decides not to mention how close that king happens to be right now.

The woman blinks slowly, taking in the news, her cloudy eyes brimming with tears. Then she tuts, shakes her head, and pulls open a drawer beneath the counter with a loud creak. She rummages around until she finds what she’s looking for. “Here.” She holds out a small paper packet toward Galadriel. “I make myself a sleeping draught with these herbs on the coldest days, when my bones ache and I cannot rest comfortably. You can take it for your friend, if you’d like. To help him sleep tonight.”

“Oh!” Galadriel gasps. “Yes, please!”

“Three pinches in a cup of water, stir it up, and it should knock him right over. He won’t be feeling any pain until morning.” She looks Galadriel up and down. “And if you ask me... I think you should take some as well, my girl. You look soul-weary. Elf or not, how long has it been since you had a proper rest?”

“I’m perfectly fine—” Galadriel protests.

The old woman shakes her head. “Hush. Three pinches in water for you, too. For your kind, it likely won’t do much... but it should still help you rest easier. You ought to feel restored for tomorrow, if you plan to ride on to Eregion.” She glances down at the two cups of liquor still sitting on the counter. “And when you finish these drinks, you should really get yourselves to bed. I need to close up down here.”

“Thank you,” says Galadriel, squeezing the old woman’s hand. “Truly. Thank you so much.”

She tucks away the packet of herbs, then picks up the two wooden cups.

The innkeeper taps her fingernail against Galadriel’s metal-clad forearm. “No. Thank you. Your company must live to continue your fight... your friend included. And we must all do what we can do to help hold back the darkness.”

Their room is at the top of a rickety staircase that’s so narrow the two of them can scarcely go up it side by side. Galadriel half-considered asking the old woman if they might simply roll out their blankets on the tavern floor and remain there by the fire. But Halbrand insists he’s perfectly capable of climbing up the stairs – and, true to his word, he proceeds to do it. Galadriel winces in sympathy as he hauls himself up one stair at a time, leaning hard on her shoulder. His face is flushed, his eyes are bloodshot and his breathing is ragged, but he’s still stepping to the next stair, and the next one, and the next. He’s doing a great job of it, all things considered – especially with how much he’s now had to drink.

Sleeping in a proper bed will surely do him good. Galadriel will give him the old woman’s sleeping draught, and he’ll be able to rest soundly. Overnight the weather will hopefully clear. Then they’ll set out first thing in the morning, and by nightfall tomorrow he’ll be safe in Eregion under the care of the elven healers. All will be well, she tells herself. All will be well. Almost there.

“We’re nearly finished,” she says to Halbrand, patting his shoulder encouragingly. “Three more stairs.”

“Ugh. Fantastic.” He manages a sarcastic eye-roll as he holds on to her with one hand and the wooden bannister with the other. He takes the next step with stoic determination. “Not exactly the way I ever imagined taking you up to bed, now is it? Sorry ‘bout this.”

Galadriel’s heart leaps into her throat. She’s sure her mouth has dropped all the way open as she realizes what he just said. She quickly tries to rearrange her face into feigned exasperation, but she can’t keep the smile from her lips or the heat from her cheeks.

Not exactly the way I ever imagined taking you up to bed.

“Well, then... I suppose you will just have to live, if you want to make it up to me,” she shoots back, before she can think the better of it. “Live and you may yet see a better night in my company than this one.”

He drags himself along the bannister to the second-last step. “Oh, believe me, I fully intend to.” Then he pauses and turns his head toward her, blinking as if he’s just processing her words. He gives her that slow, cheeky smile, his eyes sparkling. “Hang on... is that a promise, elf?”

He’s undoubtedly already read the expression on her face all too well. But she’s saved from having to answer, because just then, Halbrand falls down. He stumbles over the last step on the staircase, and collapses to his knees as they reach the top. In her flustered distraction, Galadriel doesn’t brace in time, and she completely loses her footing too – only narrowly keeping them both from tumbling back down the stairs. She probably shouldn’t have let him drink quite that much.

“All right, stop talking and just focus on walking, Halbrand.” She’s still smiling to herself as she picks him up from the floor; she can’t help it. “You can clearly only do one at a time right now.”

A minute later, she shoulders open the door to their room and sighs in relief: they’ve made it. Sure, she’s practically carrying him, but they’re here, and he’s still alive, and he just said that thing he said, and... well, this may not be the best of nights, but for this one shining moment, Galadriel feels pure elated triumph.

The small room only has one bed in it. There’s a table and two chairs crammed into the corner under the window, and another little table next to the bed that has a wooden cup and a clay pitcher of fresh water sitting on it. The ceiling is so low that Halbrand probably couldn’t stand up straight even if he were actually capable of it right now.

She lays Halbrand down on the bed, then gently removes his boots, and peels off his still very slightly rain-damp outer layers of clothing. She fixes his bandages, then hangs his clothes on the chairs to finish drying them. He’s still awake, his gaze following her intently as she moves around. But the effort of getting up the stairs has exhausted him, and she’s relieved he’s not giving her any more dangerously flirtatious quips while she’s undressing him. He’s just quietly watching her through half-closed eyes.

She remembers then that she still needs to give him the sleeping draught. She pulls out the little paper packet and drops three pinches of the herbs into the bottom of the wooden cup, and adds some water from the pitcher. She stirs it with her finger, then sits on the edge of the bed and cradles his head up so he can drink. “Here. Drink this down, please.”

“Ugh... tastes awful,” he mumbles as she pours it into his mouth. “What is this?”

“It’s to help you sleep.”

“Better not be poison.” Another flash of that snarky smile as he chokes down the rest of the mixture. “If you’re putting me out of my misery... please, at least use the pretty dagger.”

Despite herself, Galadriel smiles. “You have my word, Halbrand. Should I ever decide to kill you, no common poison will suffice. I shall do so in only the most grandiose and dramatic fashion.” She leans forward, whispers: “As befits a king.”

He leans back against the pillow, staring dreamily into space, and then he pats the blanket next to him. “Mmm. You going to come lie down here with me and tell me a bedtime story again, elf?” He blinks at her sleepily. “That was... quite... nice. I...liked that.”

Her heart stutters, and she nearly drops the empty cup.

“Halbrand.... did you hear me, when I was talking to you last night?”

No answer.

“Halbrand?”

His head is tipped back, his eyes closed, his chapped lips half parted. His breathing is soft and even. He’s out of it.

She reaches out and smooths his tangled hair back from his forehead, her heart pounding. Light, if he was listening to her talking last night... how much might he have heard? She thinks back, frantically trying to reassemble everything she said out loud. But then again, didn’t she want him to know all of it? Wasn’t that why she started talking in the first place, because a part of her wants desperately for him to know her, just like she wants to know more about him? He’s a dearer friend than she’s had in centuries. They’ve already confessed so much to each other. What does it matter?

But if he really heard everything she said yesterday... well, it’s no wonder he spoke so boldly on the stairs, and that he kept smiling at her the way he did this morning. Her cheeks flush hot again when she remembers her own unfiltered words just now.

Live and you may yet see a better night in my company than this one.

Is that a promise, elf?

She gets up from the edge of the bed, pulling the blanket gently over Halbrand. She checks that the door is firmly closed, then looks out the window to the courtyard below. She can see their horses down there, tethered under a small stable roof. The storm has abated a bit; the rain is falling much more slowly now, though the odd flash of lightning is still illuminating the landscape.

She watches it for a while, wiping tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. She doesn’t know exactly what she’s crying about, but she needs to let some emotions out. She clutches Finrod’s dagger against her chest the way she sometimes does for comfort, imagining Finrod is standing beside her, his reassuring hand on her shoulder, his soothing voice in her ear. You’ve done well today, sister. But come now, it’s time to rest. Leave tomorrow’s problems for tomorrow.

Slowly, she unclips all the pieces of her armor. She removes her boots, and divests herself of her remaining layers of clothing until she’s down to her underclothes. She piles all her things on the chair where Halbrand’s cloak is still drying. She sets Finrod’s dagger down on the table – hesitates – then swiftly picks it up and cinches it back on, pulling her belt back around her waist. She’ll sleep better with it by her side.

Finally, she picks up the little packet of herbs the innkeeper gave her, shakes out three more pinches and stirs her own sleeping draught in a fresh cup of water. Halbrand was right, the mixture tastes pretty awful; it’s eye-wateringly bitter. But it’s time to rest well. No more thinking tonight, just blissful sleep. She swallows it all at once, and washes it down with another cup of water.

Then she extinguishes the lantern on the wall and crawls into the narrow bed next to Halbrand. There’s not a lot of space, but she pulls the soft knit blanket over both of them and curls up against his uninjured side, laying her head on his hot shoulder. She always remembers the raft when they lay like this, side by side. Her mind lingers on the comforting feeling of their fingers entwined when they were floating on the sea, the stars above and the water rocking them gently after the tempest receded. That moment when she clasped hands with a stranger, and didn’t let go even long after the immediate danger had passed.

“Good night, Halbrand,” she whispers against his ear. “Sweet dreams.”

Halbrand stirs a bit then, and he slowly turns his head toward her. “Mmm... Galadriel?” He buries his face in her hair, murmuring something incoherent as he presses a kiss to the top of her head. It’s mostly unintelligible, but she makes out a couple of words here and there: “I’ve wanted... so much... I wish...”

Wanted what? Her heart skips a beat even though she knows he’s just mumbling nonsense in his sleep. Oh, but she longs to hear him say it.

“Wanted what, Halbrand?” she whispers.

“If we could only...” He rests his burning forehead against the side of her face without opening his eyes. His lips are almost brushing hers. “Come here, Galadriel... please... if I could just...”

Then he reaches out suddenly and grabs Galadriel’s wrist, his fingers squeezing hard as he pulls her arm forward.

And at the very same moment, something incredibly strange happens: Galadriel falls. Not out of the bed, but straight down, like she’s plummeting through the floor, and reality is tilting over sideways. She gasps out loud.

Light, maybe it was more foolish than she thought to drink liquor for the first time in two hundred years and then chase it with a mix of unknown herbs – because when her eyes snap open, she’s not in the room at the inn anymore. She’s somewhere else entirely, in the midst of one of the most vivid dreams she’s ever had.

She’s wearing armor, and so is Halbrand.

They’re sitting side by side, back in that forest in the Southlands.

Chapter Text

The forest grove in the Southlands looks more or less as Galadriel remembers it, lush and leafy-green and glowing with warm sunlight. But she doesn’t spend any more time looking around at the scenery than she did the first time. There’s only one place her gaze is drawn.

Halbrand.

He’s sitting close beside her, and it hurts so deliciously to look at him, to see him strong and healthy again in his armor. He looks so alive, here on that fateful day that should have been their triumph. The day when the battle seemed won, when he was just moments away from being hailed as the true king of the Southlands.

She’s replayed this conversation over and over in her mind for days, and now it seems that even in dreams she can’t stop reliving it. For all her talk of letting things go, she hasn’t been able to leave this moment behind.

"Fighting at your side,” Halbrand is saying, “I felt... if I could just hold on to that feeling...”

The words are familiar, but Galadriel realizes that the scene is slightly different. When he said these words to her the first time, the two of them weren’t facing each other. She remembers how much she wanted to turn her head as Halbrand spoke, but she’d still been so shaken by what happened in the barn, and so unready to face the inevitable consequence of letting her guard down around him. They’d both been well aware of how dangerously close they were to the edge of a precipice, to shattering each other by acknowledging this thing between them and making it real.

“...keep it with me always...”

It’s different this time because Halbrand is turned toward her, and she’s looking straight at him. There’s a pleading question in his eyes, and there’s so much wanting written on his face that she feels like her heart might break apart.

“...bind it to my very being... then... I... "

He stares searchingly at her, but once again, he doesn’t finish his sentence.

“I felt it too,” she whispers. She still wants to say that part, still needs him to know. That part, she always got right.

Halbrand reaches over slowly, tentatively, and puts his hand on her wrist. Her heart is racing as she opens her clenched fist and turns her hand over, allowing him to lace his fingers into her own the same way he did by the campfire. He strokes her palm with his thumb, and she realizes another thing that’s different: she’s not holding the dagger. It’s sheathed away on her belt, as though she’s already cleaned the moriondor’s ink-black blood from it and returned it to her hip.

“Galadriel?” Halbrand prompts her softly. He’s waiting for her to keep talking.

She glances over his shoulder, in the direction the Númenorean soldier came from with Míriel’s summons. But there’s no one there. The forest around them is completely empty.

“No interruptions this time,” Halbrand whispers. “The Queen Regent will wait. We have all the time in the world.”

I felt it too.

Galadriel feels it again now. That strange, magnetic energy shimmering between them, drawing them together. During the battle, they’d been so aware of each other, it was as if she could feel every surge of elation and satisfaction from him when his sword danced deadly through their enemies. And when he locked eyes with her across the battlefield as her own sword struck true, she was ablaze with such glorious certainty, every swing of her blade singing out to him. He had forged her sword, after all – the most wondrous weapon she’d ever seen made outside of Valinor – and he’d crafted the shining armor she wore. It was as though his hands were on her the whole time, and she burned with power. Just like him, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt more free of everything that had come before. Everything felt completely new.

If I could just hold on to that feeling...bind it to my very being...

In the forest now, he’s still looking at her, patiently waiting while she’s lost in her thoughts. He holds her hand with a steady, warm gentleness she’s not sure she deserves. She’s imagined so many different alternate versions of this moment in the days since they left the Southlands, during the relentless hours of travel and through the long nights of worry. She’s thought about all the things she could have done, all the things she could have said, all the ways she could have told him exactly what he means to her. And almost every version ended with his arms around her, his lips against hers as they gave in to that undeniable pull between them.

But here and now, though she’s back in that same fragile moment, she doesn’t do anything at all. And neither does he. They just stare at each other, unable to look away.

In the back of her mind, Galadriel prickles with resentment. Even in her dreams, she apparently can’t help but torment herself. Why? This isn’t even real, and yet she still manages to deny herself even one small indulgence. She could do absolutely anything she wants right now, but instead... it feels like she should be focused on something... else.

Something crawls unsettlingly at the edges of her memory. She can’t shake the feeling that she’s meant to be doing something important, and it pulls at the fringes of her mind, filling her thoughts with an anxious urgency. She wants to push that feeling away, to sink into this beautiful dream, to stay here with Halbrand and just let it be good. She wants to remember all those words that should have come after “I felt it too.” She wants to reach out for him and pull him close to her... but she can’t do it. That something else just keeps coiling into her head like wisps of black smoke – that memory, that creeping dread that there’s something very important that she needs to—

Sauron.

The name takes shape in her mind like a poisoned barb, and her fingers clench, her nails biting into Halbrand’s hand. Her eyes drop to the ground in front of her, where that burlap-wrapped parcel rests by her foot. The decoy. Her stomach turns, suddenly remembering all of it. What’s wrapped in this parcel is just a useless wood-axe, but the real thing is out there somewhere; and at this very minute – while she sits here thinking about why she isn’t kissing Halbrand – Sauron’s cursed key is about to be put to its nefarious purpose.

“Galadriel?” Halbrand says. He’s looking at her fingers digging into his hand, and there’s concern in his voice. “What is it?”

She narrows her eyes as she looks in the direction of the mountain, her thoughts spinning. What would happen if Halbrand didn’t go talk to the Queen Regent at all, if the two of them never went to rejoin the Southlanders at the victory party? What would happen if instead they rode back to the ruin of the watchtower in pursuit of the true dark artifact? Could they stop the brute who turned that key before the deed was done? Could they still get there in time?

Her body tenses with battle-readiness. She knows this is only a dream, and there’s nothing she can possibly do that will actually fix anything. She should just stay here with Halbrand, and hold him like she so desperately wants to. But—

“Look at me, Galadriel.” Halbrand brings his free hand to her chin, and and gently turns her head so she faces him again. “Look at me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She simply can’t stop herself. She’s never been able to stop.

“Sauron,” she growls, spitting the Dark Lord’s name like a curse. She snatches her hand back from Halbrand’s hand. And as she reaches for her dagger, Halbrand physically recoils from her. He jerks back as if she’s struck him, staring at her with something like horror, as if he thinks she might be about to stab him.

She gets to her feet. There’s no time to apologize or explain. They need to move. “Quickly!” she shouts. “Forget the Queen Regent, we must make for the watchtower, now! Come, we need to get the horses!”

“Galadriel, stop!” Halbrand yells after her. He’s on his feet now too, a step behind her, but somehow he moves directly into her path so fast that she runs right into him. He locks his arms around her, holding her firmly by the shoulders. “Stop running, Galadriel. Stop it. This isn’t—”

“Release me!” She tries to push him aside, to wrench her arms free, but he doesn’t let her go. “Halbrand! We need to go, right now! The watchtower! We must—”

“No!” he shouts. “We can’t change what happened! I wish we could, I wish it just as much as you do! But we can’t! It’s done!” He hasn’t raised his voice to her like this since they argued at the forge in Armenelos, the night he demanded to know why she wouldn’t stop fighting. “It’s too late, it already happened, Galadriel! Let it go!”

“I will not!” That all-consuming, deep-down fury lashes through her veins, the same terrible impulse that had her draw blood from the moriondor’s neck even as she pulled her blade away to spare him. She just wants to run her sword through something, to tear something to pieces with knife-sharp claws, to destroy—

She looks up at Halbrand and she screams in his face, a visceral roar of pure frustration and grief, and she lets her anger overtake her completely. She shoves him away with so much force that he loses his balance, stumbles back and very nearly falls to the ground.

As Halbrand falls away from her, the forest around them shimmers and cracks. At once the sky goes impossibly dark, and the forest is a barren wasteland again. Ash is falling from the sky, everything in the dream is disintegrating. The trees are distorting and contracting, tangling into each other, the ends of branches evaporating into spectral smoke. Everything is awash in eerie reddish light as Galadriel’s scream pierces the forest. The scenery suddenly looks wrong, so wrong, like a disturbed reflection in water. It’s all coming apart at the seams — the dead forest is closing in on her — the sky itself is collapsing — the whole world is crumpling like it’s made of wet paper. Somewhere, distantly, she thinks she hears Halbrand shouting ‘No, no!’ but the sound is swallowed by the echoes of her scream.

Then Galadriel blinks, and she’s standing in the quiet green forest again. Sunlight reappears behind the trees, and a warm beam of natural light bathes the grove. She looks up. The sky above is clear, blue and cloudless. The mountain in the distance is still just a mountain. All she can hear is the gentle splash of the nearby stream, and her own panicked, gasping breaths. She realizes that she’s standing with Finrod’s dagger clutched in both hands, holding it out in front of her. Her hands are trembling as she struggles to calm herself, slowly lowering the dagger and returning it to her belt.

Breathe. Breathe.

She braces herself to meet Halbrand’s eyes, expecting to see something like disappointment or fear on his face. But... no. His expression is one of unabashed awe. He’s breathing hard, with his arms stretched out to his sides, like he was somehow trying to hold that crumbling world back for her. He’s looking at her like she’s the moon and the stars – there’s unmistakable desire still flashing in his eyes. His mouth is half open, and he looks like he wants to devour her. And as her gaze meets his, that perpetual low hum of longing she feels for him sparks into white-hot flame.

“Halbrand—” she gasps.

She needs him so much. He’s already moving toward her, and he collects her into his arms, gathering her tightly against him as they collide. He cradles her head against his chest and keeps her there, locking his arms around her. There’s no softness to their contact – if anything it’s a little awkward as they’re both still encased in stiff armor – but he holds her nonetheless. She can feel burning heat radiating from him, just like she felt his feverish heat in the bed back at the inn.

He’s still out of breath and he’s shaking as he clutches her, saying her name over and over again. “Galadriel, Galadriel, Galadriel.”

“Halbrand, I.... I wanted you to kiss me,” she says, her voice breaking as she finally lets the truth spill out. “Please...”

“Shhh. I know,” he says. “Believe me, I know. After the battle, when we sat right over there... I came so close to losing my head and just pulling you toward me. I wanted it so badly. And I still do.”

“Then why?” Confusion fills her thoughts. “What are we doing? Why did we hold back from each other?”

“I think you know why,” he whispers hoarsely. He leans his head down to her, and his lips brush against her ear as he speaks. “I’ve asked myself the same thing, over and over again: why did I hold back? But I know the answer now. I don’t only want a single moment with you, Galadriel, as unbearably tempting as that moment may be. I want so much more. And if it had happened here, when we were both still enthralled in the battle-fever... I feared that one moment could be all I’d ever get.”

“Halbrand, that’s not—”

“Come. Sit down over here with me.” He releases his hold on her slowly, then takes her hand and leads her back to where they sat together before. She sits down by his side, even closer than before. Her heart is pounding.

“Let me make my feelings completely clear, Galadriel,” he says at last. “I would have kissed you in the middle of the battlefield, with your beautiful bloodied sword still in your hand. I would have kissed you in the barn, right in front of that wretched orc. I would have kissed you while you held your blade to his neck.” He licks his lips, swallows hard. “Galadriel, I would kiss you while you held it to mine, do you understand? I want all of you, the darkness and the light, even those things in you that you despise.”

With his free hand, he brushes back the strands of her hair that have fallen loose from her braid, letting his fingers linger against her temple before he continues.

“If you had reached for me here, after the battle... I don’t think I would’ve had the will to resist you,” he says. “I would have taken anything and everything you would give me, so gladly. But... if you had let yourself do that with me, right after what happened back there with the orc... then this would just have been one more thing you wished you’d been pulled back from. You’d want to banish me with your regrets, right along with your memory of what you did in there.” He gestures in the direction of the barn where the moriondor had sat chained. His eyes search hers. “You did not want to face what having that kind of power made you want to do afterwards, Galadriel. And that’s why you were relieved when we were interrupted by that messenger.”

A shocked gasp catches in her throat. For a moment she wants to shove him away in anger again, to reject his too-astute analysis and that way he insists on reading her like an open book. But just like back in the Númenorean dungeon, he has a damned good point. And she can’t push him away when she still wants him near her so much – here, and on the battlefield, and everywhere else.

“There will be more battles for us to fight together,” he says with a flicker of a smile. “And there is nothing I want more than to let you burn off that battle-fever with me after every single one of them. But not here, not this day. We both need to let this day go.”

He stands back up, pulling her to her feet along with him. As he stands, he turns and kicks the burlap-wrapped parcel with the side of his boot, and the decoy tumbles away into the woods.

She lets out her breath. The sky is still blue. In the distance, the mountain is still a mountain.

“Forget about this, Galadriel,” he whispers. “Close your eyes. Come here, and just... let me...”

He gently spins her around so she’s standing with her back to him, and slowly, so slowly, he slides his fingers into her hair and starts to undo her braid. She closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and lets him do it. She tilts her head all the way back as his sublime touches work the last of those dark tendrils out of her mind, until she can’t think of anything at all except for him. His closeness steadies her as much as it unbalances her in other ways.

Breathe. Breathe.

When he’s finished unwinding her braid, he gathers her loose hair up in one hand and holds it up and away from her neck. Then he deftly undoes the metal clasps at her shoulders with his other hand, and he starts to take apart her armor. “I did love seeing you fighting in this... in the armor that I made you,” he murmurs. “Truly one of the most magnificent things I’ve ever witnessed.” He leans down and brushes his lips against her bared neck, and she gasps softly in surprise. No more thinking. Just... let me...

He’s still holding up her hair as he trails his mouth around to her jawline and up toward her ear, and all the while he continues unclipping pieces of her armor one-handed, like it’s no effort at all – of course it isn’t, because this is a dream, she remembers hazily. And this time, she’s not going to ruin it. He’s kissing his way along the side of her throat, and when his tongue flicks against her skin, she makes what is possibly the most indecent sound that has ever been wrought from her. This is exactly what she imagined him doing back in Númenor, that day when—

Her eyes flutter open, and the green forest of the Southlands is gone. She’s standing in the warm glow of firelight, and most of the pieces of her clean, polished, newly-made armor are stacked on a table next to her. Halbrand’s hands are still on her, and he’s still standing behind her with his mouth hot against her neck.

But they’re in the forge in Armenelos, in the workshop – exactly as it was on the day he fitted her armor.

Chapter Text

“Better here?” Halbrand asks, a smile in his voice. With a last brush of his lips against her ear, he releases her, and he lets her hair tumble back down onto her shoulders.

Galadriel turns around. He’s dressed in his smith’s uniform, with his heavy leather apron on and his Númenorean guild crest pinned at his shoulder. He places the final piece of Galadriel’s armor onto the table, his fingertips lingering over the smooth, polished plate.

“Your armor did turn out perfect, just as I envisioned it,” he says. His lips quirk up deviously. “But as much as I enjoyed putting this on you... there is something so very satisfying about taking it off, don’t you think?”

She reaches out to touch the armor, too, letting her fingers rest against his hand.

“I wanted you to kiss me here, on this day,” she whispers. “When you were helping me try this on... I thought I would lose my mind.”

In a dream, she finds it so easy to be honest. The words feel smooth as honey in her mouth. She could say absolutely anything to him.

“I know. I was listening, at the campfire.” He places his palms on either side of her face, cupping her chin in his hands, stroking his thumbs over her cheeks. He’s admiring her with wonder, as if he can’t quite believe she’s here. “All you would’ve had to do was ask me, Galadriel.”

And then he dips his head down to her, and his lips are finally over hers.

He kisses her oh so gently at the start, with a softness that’s almost infuriating. But she readily opens her mouth to him at the first exploratory lick of his tongue, returning his affections without restraint, already imploring him for more. She rakes her fingers up into his hair and pulls him in closer, eliciting a low growl of pleasure from him as he responds to her invitation and deepens the kiss.

He claims her mouth hungrily, his tongue sliding over hers, his body pressed tightly against her. He kisses her like he’ll die if he stops, like he needs her to breathe, and an incandescent heat is pouring through her veins. She’s never felt so... connected to another person, and it’s at once terrifying and exhilirating.

When they finally break apart, both of them are breathless. Galadriel’s knees are shaking.

“How’s that?” Halbrand whispers. He’s looking straight into her eyes, the glimmering firelight reflecting in his irises. “More?”

She nods, not quite trusting herself to form words. Oh, yes, yes – more, please...

“Close your eyes,” he says, brushing one more teasing kiss against her lips. “I’ll be right back.” He slips out of her embrace and steps away from her as her eyes flutter closed. She stands there dizzy and stunned, her heart in full gallop, aching for him to return to her arms and put his mouth back over hers.

And then, she suddenly realizes that she can feel wind lifting her hair up off her neck. A cool breeze is whipping against her face, and the room smells like the sea.

“Halbrand?” Galadriel’s eyes snap open, and she looks around.

The workshop is gone, and she’s standing under a starry sky on the deck of Elendil’s ship. She’s alone, watching starlight shimmering over the dark sea and listening to the soft swish of the waves. She knows immediately that this is the night when she couldn’t sleep, during the journey from Númenor to Middle Earth – the night she ran into Halbrand walking on the deck. Another place she talked about at the campfire, when she confessed all the times she most wanted to kiss him.

She was standing barefoot at the rail, looking over the side of the boat at the light reflecting on the water, trying unsuccessfully to soothe her troubled mind. Then Halbrand came over and stood beside her. He leaned on the rail and placed his hand directly next to hers, as close as it could possibly get without touching her, like he was daring her to slip her hand over his.

"Can’t sleep either, hmm? Just please promise me you aren't about to get separated from your ship again,” he said, flashing her a disarming grin. “I'd really rather not have to jump in there after you."

She allowed herself a small smile in return. “I promise. I’m staying right here."

"Good."

He looked at her for a long time, as if he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her. And she stared back at him, his windswept hair dancing around his face, his lips quirking into that enigmatic smirk. For a moment, she wondered if he might be about to lean down and kiss her. But he looked away first, averting his eyes back to the water.

"I would do it, you know," he said softly. "Jump after you. I'd do it again. All of it."

"I know, Halbrand," she whispered. "I know."

For all the time they stood there talking – and they must have stood there for at least an hour after that – she had kept a deliberate distance between them, careful not to lean too close. She’d been ever so cautious not to let too much emotion show on her face, in case her longing for him spilled out. They both needed to keep focus on the battle ahead, on the goal, on the enemy–

But this time, when she finds herself reliving the same moment, there is no such discretion. She looks behind her and sees Halbrand approaching, walking across the deck to join her just as he did before... but he doesn’t say a word when he reaches her. Instead, he sweeps her straight into his arms with confident intention, presses her back against the wooden rail, and kisses her fiercely.

He tastes like salt, like sea spray, like the ocean wind, like victory. He picks her up easily and lifts her so she’s sitting on the rail, and she has no fear at all that he’ll let her fall. His arm holds her there like an anchor and Galadriel kisses him again and again, her mouth as hungry as the sea. Everything feels so vividly real that she has to keep reminding herself that she’s dreaming this.

“There’s something special about being out on this water, isn’t there,” he whispers to her. “Mmm. It did bring us together, after all. And the Númenoreans say that the sea is always right. ”

“Yes,” she whispers back. “You know... I shall probably never again look at the sea without remembering you.” She’s skimming light kisses over the scruff on his jaw, imagining how it might feel against other parts of her.

“Well, I hope you will never have occasion to forget me in the first place,” he says. “Or... do you need more to remind you, Galadriel?”

More. Please, more.

“Oh? Really, more?” He smiles mischievously. It’s as if he can hear her very thoughts. “Come here, then.”

He swings her down from the rail again, setting her bare feet back down on the deck. Then he grabs one of her hands, spins her right around as if he’s about to dance with her, and twirls her down the deck.

When Galadriel stops her spin and gets her bearings, the ship deck has disappeared. Halbrand is no longer holding her hand. And instead of the soft sounds of ocean waves, there’s a roar of raucous, festive noise around her.

She’s surrounded by singing Númenorean merry-makers, at the party in the square in Armenelos – the night before their ships sailed for Middle Earth. The very same party where Elendil cautioned her against getting involved in the crew’s drinking games. And where she’d spent far too much time thinking about kissing Halbrand, when she wasn’t worrying about everything else.

Halbrand hadn’t come to this party at all – he had been busy in the workshop again, finishing off a last few swords before their departure. Meanwhile, Galadriel had been quite unwillingly dragged into the festivities, with Elendil insisting it’d be good for morale if she were seen to attend.

Elendil hadn’t really wanted the company out drinking and partying at all on the night before they departed, but he knew he could hardly deny it to them when their future was so uncertain. And so, the whole company had partaken in the final send-off celebration, dancing and shouting out victory songs about past battles with their friends and companions, lighting beacons for a hopeful future long into the night.

Galadriel wore a borrowed wine-red dress that belonged to Elendil’s daughter. It wasn’t her usual color palette, but she found it fitting for a party like this – after all, she was so far from everything she knew, she may as well dress like someone different for the night. She stood at the edges of the crowd watching the Númenoreans shouting and dancing and singing, but she kept letting her mind drift away. She kept staring out toward the dark sea, looking in the direction of Middle Earth. Her spirit was unsettled with nervous anticipation, her mind occupied by what lay ahead, and the coming battle, and Sauron—

But then she glanced up toward the forge, at the warm glow emanating from that familiar doorway, and she longed to walk over there and see what Halbrand was doing. She wanted to speak to him alone in the workshop one last time, to say something more to him, anything, so the next time she saw him wouldn’t be when they boarded their ship tomorrow morning. This was the final night they would be in Númenor together, and she wanted nothing more than to spend it in his company, even if it was sitting quietly in the forge and watching him tempering swords. She imagined his capable hands, and the way he’d crafted such beautiful, perfect armor for her... and other things he could do with his hands...

As if he felt her gaze even from a distance, Halbrand came to the workshop door just then and stood there looking out, silhouetted in the golden light. He looked directly at her, somehow having picked her out immediately from the throng of moving people. He waved to her across the crowded square and she lifted her hand in return. The foolish, impulsive part of her wanted so much to go to him, to push through the crowd and run over there, just run straight into his arms and kiss him on the mouth—

Of course, she did none of that. And after a moment, Halbrand turned around and walked back into the forge. Galadriel looked away from the empty doorway, and she stared back out toward the implacable sea.

She turns her head now and looks up toward the forge. Halbrand is standing in the doorway, exactly as he was that night, leaning there casually and looking directly at her. He raises his hand and waves, smiling. Galadriel waves back.

And then he steps out through the workshop door, comes down the stairs into the square, and starts walking toward her.

He’s still in his smith’s apparel, but he’s taking it off as he walks, peeling the leather bands from his forearms and wrists, undoing his heavy apron. She loses sight of him for a minute behind the moving crowd, and when he emerges again right in front of her, his hair is a bit different and he’s dressed in party clothes. He’s wearing a regal-looking shirt that matches the color of her dress, and he looks incredible.

“Oh! Halbrand! You’re here!” She holds out her hands to take his. “I did so wish you would come to this party, but... I thought you were still making swords!”

“Well, I finished them off more quickly than I thought possible,” he grins, pulling her toward him. “Had I known how much you wanted me here, I would have come, Galadriel. I would have been here. All you had to do was ask me.”

“You continue saying that, as if you’ve ever done anything just because I asked you to,” she says, a smile tugging at her mouth. “Perhaps if I’d asked you half a dozen times to reconsider, you might finally have relented–”

He leans down so she can hear his low voice over the music. “Or perhaps... when you first attempted to sway me to your schemes, you were simply not using the right methods to convince me, Galadriel,” he murmurs. He presses a single, tempting kiss to her lips. And then he grabs her hand, and swiftly pulls her into a moving circle of people dancing.

She realizes she can’t actually see anyone else clearly, or focus on any of the individual people in the crowd; she’s more just vaguely aware that there are a lot of other people around her as the crowd parts to allow her and Halbrand through. It’s all effortlessly graceful and seamless. Galadriel doesn’t really know any of the steps for this Númenorean dance, and it’s highly unlikely that Halbrand does either, but in the dream they improvise it flawlessly. They move together like one being, anticipating each other’s every move with a fluid symmetry, much as they did when they fought side by side in battle. She can’t help but imagine even more interesting ways they could apply their synchronicity, and her whole body blazes with want. She just fits so impossibly perfectly beside him.

When the song ends and the music pauses before the next dance, they’re standing in the middle of the square, breathing in unison and staring at each other with their foreheads pressed together. Halbrand embraces her, sliding his hands down her body from her shoulders to her waist. Then he kisses her again, long and slow, his teeth grazing her lower lip. He pulls her hips toward him and caresses her in a way that makes no secret of his desires. It’s a wholly inappropriate display for a public forum, one that should surely embarrass her, but this amorphous crowd is completely indifferent to their presence. It’s as if they’re both invisible, the king and the commander shrouded in their own secret little imaginary world, and she thrills under Halbrand’s flirtatious attention.

“You do so delight in commanding me, elf... always endeavouring to find ways to bend me to your will,” he says against her ear. “And now, here you have me. I am completely at your mercy. If you asked me right now to kneel down in front of you, to pledge my loyalty to you here, before all of Númenor... I would do it.”

“No one kneels in Númenor,” she whispers

“Then what would you bid me do for you?” He leans even closer, his voice enveloping her like intoxicating smoke. He kisses the hollow of her throat as his fingertips trace the low collar of her dress. “Where would you have me, Galadriel? Say it. Where do you want me most?”

His words stoke the aching heat that glows between her thighs, and her breath hitches.

“The forge,” she breathes. “I would have you there.” She doesn’t know exactly why she says that – there are certainly better locations to choose – but he always seems the most himself there. She wants to reach into the heart and soul of who he is; she wants all of him. Halbrand. Not only the king she asked him to be, not only the ferocious and resilient warrior he turned out to be... but the smith he truly wanted to be. That was the man she fell for first, after all.

Halbrand’s eyes light up as she makes her decision, his pupils blown wide as he looks down at her. He pulls her close and captures her mouth with his own. Galadriel closes her eyes... and when they pull apart again, they’re back in the forge, the fire blazing behind them.

Outside in the square, the carousing sounds of the street party carry on, music and laughter streaming in through the open doorway. Then Halbrand flicks his hand, and suddenly the singing and shouting become muffled, quieter. The wide wooden front door to the workshop is now closed down and bolted.

Right. Dreaming, she reminds herself.

In a dream, Galadriel can be recklessly bold. In a dream she can allow herself every indulgence, every delicious distraction. And she really can say anything she wants to him, anything at all. She wants his hands and mouth all over her; she wants his body entwined with hers, wringing pleasure from her until she can’t form a thought. She needs him to slake this unbearable longing that he ignites in her. It’s still incomprehensible how she could possibly be this far gone over a mortal man... but she’s stopped trying to explain any of this to herself. She’s never been more sure that theirs was no chance meeting; this was always going to happen.

In the workshop, Halbrand has turned around to quickly tidy his freshly crafted swords off the table, and she trails her hand over the empty surface he just cleared. “So... will you work on me, then, Halbrand?” she asks with a teasing smile. Her heartbeat is careening out of control. “Would you forge me into a fine weapon... or armor, perhaps? With such talented hands...”

“Hmmm.” He puts on an exaggerated expression of contemplation, smiling back at her. “Well... let’s see.” He picks her up with one arm and swings her up to seat her on the table, and she realizes that she’s now wearing her blue dress – the one she was given right after they were first rescued from the raft. He’s got his smith’s uniform back on, too, his leather apron back in place.

Halbrand moves his hands studiously all over her, following her contours appraisingly as though he’s taking the measure of her. As his palms adoringly caress her sides and skim down to her hips, she remembers how perfectly he crafted her armor, how precisely it fit her. He must have done this so many times over in his mind. It’s as though he’s already traced the curves of her body a thousand times. Her face flushes.

“You, Galadriel... I think you would be both,” he murmurs. “You are unbreakable armor, and a fearsome blade. You have been my armor, you’ve been a shield and a protector... and you are a fiercer and more magnificent weapon than I could ever hope to craft.” He slides both hands down to her inner thighs, gently nudging her legs apart through the fabric of her dress.

“Do I need some tempering, then?” she whispers. “Or perhaps you need to—”

Her words falter as his mouth covers hers. He slowly tilts her back, rucks up her blue dress and slides one hand up her thigh underneath the skirt, and somehow she’s already halfway to losing control. He’s barely even touched her; they still have all of their clothes on, but her entire being lights up with such otherworldly pleasure that she cries out with it – a feral and hungry sound that he answers with equally ravenous kisses.

She wants their clothes off and his insatiable mouth exploring all over her. She needs to know how it would feel to have him inside of her, to join their bodies in the same glorious, perfect synchronicity she felt beside him on the battlefield.

“Undress me,” she commands, but it comes out as a soft, broken plea. Please, now, oh please—

He buries his face in her neck and gasps something in answer; she’s not quite sure if he said it out loud or if she heard it in her head: Yes, my queen.

His hands are already at work on her dress, undoing the clasps faster than realistically possible. Maybe he’s just ripping it right apart. Then again, it doesn’t matter if he destroys her dress, it’s not like she needs to walk out of here wearing it. In a dream, she can do exactly what she wants. If she wants them to tear each other’s clothes off right here in the forge in Armenelos, there’s nothing in the world that can stop her. She deserves this, and she’s going to delight in every second of it.

But just as she reaches out to start undressing Halbrand in return, the strangest thing happens. It’s as if Galadriel suddenly untethers from her body. Her perspective switches suddenly... from her own to his.

One moment she sees Halbrand in front of her, that salacious smile on his face when he shifts his position to give her better access to undo the side of his leather apron... and the next moment she’s facing the other way, looking at herself – or something like her. When Halbrand’s hands peel open her blue dress, what’s inside is a being of silver-white ethereal light that’s so mind-shatteringly bright she can hardly look straight at it. It’s amazing and terrifying in equal measure, and she feels like she’s falling into something cosmic and infinite.

Light explodes into all of her senses and overwhelms her until she’s not sure she even still has corporeal form, washing the whole room with searing, sublime brightness–

And an instant later, Galadriel snaps back into her own body.

Halbrand’s hands are still on her, and her dress is mostly undone. His smith’s apron is on the floor, she’s partway through pulling his shirt up... and he’s just staring at her in vacant, open-mouthed reverie.

“What was that?” she gasps. “Is... is that how I look to you right now?”

“Beautiful,” he whispers in a daze. His eyes are brimming with tears, glowing with reflected light. His palms are feverishly hot against her back. “Beautiful and terrible as the dawn... Valinor doesn’t even begin to deserve you, Galadriel.” He leans in and kisses her desperately, moaning her name against her mouth. “Oh, Galadriel, Galadriel... Galadriel, oh, please–”

There’s a loud crash behind her then, and when she turns her head she sees that the shelves bolted to the workshop wall are shaking violently. Stone bricks are crumbling and falling out of the wall; all the tools are plummeting off their hooks and clanging down. Flames are escaping from the hearth, distorting into unnatural shapes as the fire moves right out onto the stone floor.

She looks at Halbrand. His head is tilted back, his mouth open in awe, his eyes still glowing with that ethereal light. His hands are outstretched, grasping for Galadriel’s dress. But the floor is melting away from under him, the whole workshop is disintegrating into dust... and now they’re both falling.

She’s thrown abruptly from the world like she’s falling from her horse, tumbling along with him into dizzying, endless nothingness.

Galadriel jerks awake with a start, and she’s back in bed at the roadside inn. At once, she realizes several things: she can hardly catch her breath, she’s hopelessly tangled up in her half of the knit blanket... and she’s sprawled halfway on top of badly injured Halbrand, one arm flung around his neck.

He curses hoarsely as he startles awake, too. Galadriel quickly scrambles back, clutching the blanket against herself.

“Oh! Halbrand! I – I am so sorry! I don’t know what I was – I didn’t mean to!” she stammers. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Halbrand looks at her with unfocused eyes, staring blearily at her, like he’s not entirely sure where he is. He’s even more out of breath than she is, raggedly pulling in lungfuls of air like he’s just been submerged underwater. His whole body is shaking uncontrollably.

“Halbrand, speak to me. Are you all right?”

“It’s fine... I’m fine... I’m... I’m good,” he rasps out at last. He reaches up and pushes his hair back from his sweaty face, and for a moment he struggles to try to sit up. Then he gives up on that, and just lets his head drop heavily back against the pillow. “I’m sure I’ll be... fine... in a minute.”

“I was having a dream,” Galadriel says sheepishly. “I’m so sorry for waking you.”

“S’all right.” His mouth twitches into a small smile. “Nice dream, I hope?”

“It was.” Her cheeks burn, and she’s all too aware of the embers of heat that still remain between her thighs. “You were there. I was dreaming that we... that we were back in Númenor together.”

“Mmm,” he says. “That does sound nice.”

“Light, I think there must’ve been something strange in that sleeping draught, whatever was in those herbs I got for you,” she says, shaking her head. “I took some of it, too, and I don’t know if I’ve ever had dreams that felt quite so... intense.” She studies him, with his flushed face and his hair somehow even more dishevelled than it was when she put him to bed. “Did you have any oddly vivid dreams?”

“Mmm hmm,” he mumbles. He’s still smiling, his eyes blinking slowly. “Yeah. To come to think of it... I did.”

Galadriel notices just then that the room is completely silent. There’s no more crashing thunder outside, no more wind and rain battering against the windowpane. She sits up straighter and looks over at the little window. It’s still dark out, but the glass looks almost dry. Her spirits sail with relief – the storm is over. Maybe everything really is going to be all right.

She forces herself to pull her focus back to reality. “Look! The rain has stopped!” she says. “We can leave at daybreak, and we’ll surely make it to Eregion today.”

Halbrand doesn’t respond.

She turns back to him. He looks terrible, exhausted and drained... but at the same time, he hasn’t stopped smiling. He’s just grinning vacantly into empty space.

“What did you dream about, Halbrand?” she asks, waving a hand in front of his face. “Halbrand? Hello?”

He’s quiet for a long time before he answers. “A project I was... working on,” he mumbles at last. “I was dreaming about... the most beautiful project that I left unfinished... back at the forge...”

He reaches out and brushes a trembling hand over Galadriel’s face, his fingertips briefly framing her chin before his hand drops to his side again. Then his eyes roll back, and that is the last coherent thing he says to her before they reach Eregion.