Chapter Text
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For a labored beat, Arwen could not move or speak, so shocked was she by his proclamation and the direction of his gaze.
“He can see me,” Aragorn said, aghast.
“And smell you, as well,” Halbrand returned, nose wrinkling in obvious displeasure.
It could only be foolish hope and madness that made her heart flutter, that finally made her lurch towards her grandfather. “How can you see him?” she gasped, faintly. She continued, voice brittle, “I thought he was a specter of my grief. A shadow made by memory and longing.”
Halbrand shook his head, gaze softening only when it met hers. “There are many things in the Unseen world that go beyond explanation,” he returned. “Even as a Maiar, it took a while to sense his presence, and that too only after I sang in accordance with the world. It shifted my perspective, made me see your departed husband when he came near you.”
She took a deep breath, fingers numb with shock at her sides. “I was certain he was only mine. A phantom of my own making.”
“A tethered shard of Fëa,” Halbrand corrected, a hum of consideration, “bound to you.” He stepped closer, with the caution of one who understood the weight of what he was saying. “And I believe you did that. Unknowingly or not.”
Arwen looked stunned. “How?”
“You are my granddaughter, and you are Luthien’s direct descendant as well. With your blood, you have many abilities beyond that of the Eldar. Through that blood, and through your grief, I think you called to him. You reached into the Unseen and anchored a part of him. Perhaps not his whole soul— but something.”
Her breath hitched. A shadow flickered in the corner of her vision, and she knew that shape of her late husband so well, so intimately—broad-shouldered, cloaked in twilight, eyes of a stern and steady kind of sorrow. Her grandfather saw it too. His gaze lifted past her shoulder.
“He is real,” Halbrand finished, low and steady. “Not your imagination.”
She swayed slightly as though the ground beneath her had changed texture, became fluid and treacherous; overwhelmed, she almost stumbled — but Aragorn was at her side in an instant, catching her. Every other time he’d touched her, she’d always held back an invisible flinch, an ache that her mind was so tortured in grief that it had conjured him up. But no— he was real.
“I told you, did I not?” Aragorn whispered, softly. “But you would not listen, and after a while I realized my protestations to the contrary only seemed to make the burden of my presence heavier. It was easier for you to presume me a figment.”
“You were never a burden,” Arwen gasped, tears gathering.
“He is bound to you,” Halbrand said, from a distance, watching. “He cannot leave. And that is not his choice—but I suspect it is his desire.”
“My heart knows my place,” Aragorn murmured back, not sparring a glance at the being once considered his greatest enemy, but his voice did not lack conviction.
“They call me a necromancer,” Halbrand explained, slowly, “and there are many ways to hold power over the dead. If you had asked me before if the dead can be held by love, I would’ve told you no. But I see now that I was wrong. The line between love and power is thin in you, granddaughter of mine.”
Arwen looked to him, unable to speak.
Halbrand exhaled. “And you are more like me than you dare admit,” he continued, stepping beside her now. “I bound myself to a vision of order. You— you —bound yourself to this mortal man. Irrevocably, it appears.”
Arwen’s eyes filled with an aching knowing joy, but she said nothing. It was a joy, but perhaps a curse too. She had Aragorn, and for that she would be forever grateful for even the smallest parts of him, but even still, she knew there was peril in this — in disrupting the natural order of things.
His Fëa should have been released, not bound.
Arwen drew in a shuddering breath. “Have I cursed him? Have I cursed myself twice over?”
“I do not yet know,” Halbrand replied, softly. “I do not think so, but you have changed the rules. And that is something even the wisest amongst us could not have predicted.”
He turned, casting one last glance at her. The silence after Halbrand departed was profound. No footfall marked his exit. He simply slipped away—into the shadows of the trees, as silent as breath leaving a body. His presence, always palpable even when subdued, left behind a gift that Arwen could not completely comprehend. If it hadn’t been for Halbrand, she would have gone the rest of her time under these stars weighted by the false presumption that Aragorn was a specter manifested by her grief. Halbrand’s revelations lifted the ache of some long-felt burden that Arwen could hardly describe, an ancient wound that could be healed again, perhaps.
Arwen stood still, head raised towards her husband, who only had his own bowed as though in prayer. His shoulders, so long held high with kingly discipline, began to shake. A breeze stirred his hair, and he would not look at her.
“Forgive me, meleth nín,” she confessed. Tears slipped down her cheeks, and she closed her eyes, feeling the faint pressure of him there, real enough to cradle — not a memory — real enough to touch. “I have held you against your will—”
His head snapped up, eyes focused upon hers immediately. “There is nothing to forgive, Arwen. My love, my wife, I choose to be at your side.” His voice was not just the wind, not just her memory. It was Aragorn’s quiet and steadfast voice, gruff and soothing at once. “That grief built a bridge. And I walked through it, even when I knew I shouldn’t have.”
She took a step closer. Her voice cracked. “Did I keep you from peace?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know. I do not think so. Regardless, I stay by your side happily.”
Her heart seized. “You should hate me,” she said.
He shook his head and smiled, faintly. “You always judged yourself too harshly.”
A silence stretched between them as they drew closer, drifting into each other's arms until he leaned forward, their foreheads nearly touching. She wrapped herself up tightly in his embrace, feeling the shelter of his arms coming around her, and melted into him slowly. His form was defined: tall and broad-shouldered, his strong bearing softened only by his tender touch. His eyes—storm-grey, piercing, kind—rested on her with an ache she knew well. He was the one who died, but they had both grieved for each other in this purgatory.
He reached out—brushed a lock of her hair away from her face, the gesture was full of longing. His hand trembled, even as he took her face between his rough calloused palms and kissed her.
Something in her broke, then—softly, not with grief, but with a release. The dullness that had pervaded her existence until that point, that had governed so much of her life recently, suddenly sharpened. The anger in her veins quieted. Her hands reached for him, and there was real warmth where her palms met his chest. His heartbeat — absent now, but somehow it did not matter, for his warmth still melted into her skin, his flesh heated beneath her touch.
He was real.
Around them, the night deepened. For a time, they were not a queen and her ranger, a widow and her ghost, nor elf and man, nor vessel and spirit. Just two souls. Still reaching towards one another, tethered in some indefinable way, inextricably entwined. Still forever in love.
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Arwen slipped through the trees, the hem of her cloak wet with dew — and Aragorn followed after her. The quiet peace still clung to her like mist, the memory of Aragorn’s touch alighting the hollow emptiness that had ruled her for so long, filling it with this strangest glimpse of hope. For a fleeting moment, she believed in peace again.
Halbrand was crouched by the fire when she returned, sharpening a blade with slow, rhythmic strokes. But the moment she stepped into the clearing, he froze. His head cocked to the side, sharp as a hound catching scent. His entire posture tensed—muscle coiled beneath worn tunic, breath held, gaze gone distant and faraway.
“Halbrand?” she asked, wary.
He didn’t look at her. His eyes narrowed, staring through the trees as if he could see leagues away. “They’re coming.”
A chill slid down her spine. “Who?”
“Men— raiders.” He stood swiftly, already pulling their few belongings into his pack. “We need to move. Now.”
She didn’t ask how he knew—she’d learned that some of the strange gifts lingering in him were beyond understanding, even for her. There was something else in his tone now, not just urgency or alarm. Something grim with anticipation. They packed swiftly, and Arwen followed him into the trees. His feet tugged them northward in their journey, away from the roads, from the men, toward the veiled solitude of her hidden haven near the Celduin River.
She kept her voice low as they rode their horses. “We’ll keep to the hills. We can avoid them.”
But Halbrand stopped mid-stride. “No.” He glanced toward the east. “We need to go into the next town. Edorim.”
She turned sharply to him. “Are you mad? We’ve avoided men for weeks. You said yourself it was safer.”
“I did,” he answered, jaw tight. “But something’s wrong. I felt it—back there, before you returned. A shift. I don’t know what it means, but I need to see.”
“You felt something,” she repeated, wary.
He didn’t answer, but his knuckles were white where he gripped his sword hilt.
Whatever it was, it rattled him.
They traveled swiftly through the morning. By late afternoon, the gates of Edorim came into view—more a barricaded waystation than a town. Timber palisades, soot-darkened rooftops, and a heavy, suspicious quiet hanging over the stones. The guards at the gate barely looked up as Halbrand passed, something in his bearing drawing their weary glances, even in their silence. Arwen followed close behind, cloak hooded, face downturned, her ears hidden behind the braids of her hair. The town stank of smoke and tension, ash drifting out from blackened chimneys. Folk whispered behind closed shutters, and above it all, something heavy hung in the air, a reverberation Arwen could feel in her teeth.
They made it to an inn, and Halbrand questioned the barkeep under his breath—quiet and pointed. A silver coin passed hands, and the tension in the air was revealed and given explanation. “They’ve captured an elf,” the barkeep said, eyes darting toward the back of the room. “Dragged her in two days ago. She’s in the old smithy now. Locked up tight. Didn’t believe it myself until I saw her with my own two eyes. An elf, after all these ages.”
It had been so long since Arwen had seen another of her kind, there were so few of them left in Middle Earth.
“What does she look like?” Arwen asked, cold curling in her gut.
He paused, gaze drifting away, a look of awe. “Her hair,” the man muttered, “shone like the moonlight, it did. I’d never seen anything like it.”
Arwen’s blood turned to ice.
Galadriel.
She turned to Halbrand; his expression was vicious banked fury — before a cold mask descended over the rage in his eyes and his face became unreadable—stone-carved, hard. He didn’t look at her.
Once the man left, Arwen did not waste time. “We need to get to her,” Arwen said, already turning for the door.
Halbrand’s hand shot out and caught her wrist. “Not yet.”
“Why?” she hissed. “It’s Galadriel. She could be hurt. What are you waiting for?”
But Halbrand’s gaze had locked onto something past her—out the grimy window, to the smoke-stained square beyond. Soldiers were gathering. Men with brands and ropes, eyes hard with fear masked as righteousness. A few villagers pointed toward the smithy.
“I was right,” he said, his voice low and dark. “They’re preparing something. A spectacle.”
“They’ll kill her,” Arwen said, heart pounding.
“As if I would allow that,” Halbrand replied, stepping back from the window. “Get ready. When night falls, we move.”
But something still lingered behind his eyes. A shadow deeper than fear or recognition. It was anger. At what these men meant for Galadriel.
A pause. “What will you do?” Arwen demanded. “You cannot just kill them all.”
“Why not?” Halbrand returned. “They mean to string up your grandmother simply because she is an elf.”
“Just because they act like barbarians does not mean we need to meet them in kind.”
Halbrand rolled his eyes. “Where do you get this sense of mercy from? It is not from me, and it is certainly not from Galadriel either. She never knew the meaning of mercy against her enemies.”
“Spoken like her greatest enemy,” Arwen returned, tartly. “We do this, then we do this my way. No life needlessly taken.”
He exhaled heavily, a tick in his cheek. “Fine. Bind me to your ridiculous whims. I do not need to kill these men to teach them a lesson.”
She glanced at him. “And what lesson is that?”
He did not look back at Arwen. Only spoke, under his breath, “Never touch what is mine.”
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The mood in the town had curdled into something foul by nightfall: a crowd gathering not for justice, but something far uglier and cruel. Fear, Arwen knew too well, could make monsters of men. Smoke and murmurs thickened in the town square as torches were lit one by one.
From the roof of the stables, Arwen and Halbrand surveyed it all—their eyes calculating, twin brows furrowed with intensity. Below, a raised pyre had been stacked in the center of the square, dry and reeking of oil. Around it, a ring of soldiers stood, grim-faced and heavy-handed, keeping the villagers at bay while others talked about dragging out the elf in chains.
She turned to see Halbrand’s jaw clenched so tightly, it looked mildly painful.
This wasn’t just fear of an elf. This was a spectacle. Some sort of gruesome ritual.
“Move quickly when the time is right,” he told her.
At his signal, Arwen loosed the latch on a penned oxen corral at the edge of town. The beasts, agitated from the scent of smoke and the rising tension, stampeded into the square with a chorus of bellows and trampling hooves. Chaos immediately broke out as Men shouted, torches scattered, villagers screaming and diving for cover. The distraction worked perfectly.
And Halbrand dropped onto the road like a predator hunting prey.
At first he moved leisurely through the chaos, a shadow cutting through the center, steady and merciless—until men realized his path and charged against the stranger in their midst. Violence broke out from all directions and Halbrand was the epicenter. He was sharp and brutal, cracking bone and disarming guards with a frightening precision.
In the confusion, Arwen sprinted from the rooftop and reached the smithy’s side entrance. The door had been hastily locked, but she broke it swiftly, giving way with a wooden groan. Inside, she expected to find Galadriel—wounded, shackled, in need of help.
But the smithy was empty.
The iron chains lay slack on the stone floor. She turned quickly, searching the shadows, calling out in Sindarin. Nothing. When she rushed outside again, the crowd had mostly fled in the wake of the chaos. Halbrand stood in the center of the square, bloodied and panting, watching the last few soldiers retreat into the dark.
And then he staggered.
A blur of pale hair and rage struck him from behind, a streak of ferocity. The dark figure emerged from the shadows of the treeline like a phantom—silently, like only few could. Now Halbrand was on his knees, a blade drawn tight against his throat.
And the long-familiar voice shot out like the crack of ice: “You,” came the cold accusation, at Halbrand.
Arwen could hardly contain her gasp of horror. Galadriel. Even covered in blood and grime, her presence burned through the dusk. Her hair, streaked gold and silver, was matted but unmistakable in the moonlight, and her posture—defiant even in tattered rags—radiated wrath like a coiled storm. She had been recently beaten. Blood caked the side of her face, and there was a darkening bruise above one eye that threatened to swallow it shut, but Galadriel only had her focus seared upon Halbrand.
Arwen ran toward them. “Stop!”
Halbrand did not struggle. He knelt in the dirt, jaw set, eyes narrowed—not in fear, but in recognition. “Of course,” he muttered back. “You could never just say thank you for the rescue.”
“I did not need your help, Nameless One,” she spat back.
Halbrand frowned, annoyed. “That, again.”
Galadriel didn’t blink. “You should not be here,” she whispered. “You should still be shadow and rot, any Hröa beyond your grasp to command.”
“I didn’t ask for this body,” he said, ruefully. “But admit it, you always liked this look the best.”
“You were defeated,” she snarled, pressing the blade in tighter, enough to draw a bead of blood. “By the lives of thousands sacrificed. I saw your form broken and cast down. And now you wear this face again?”
Arwen stepped closer, hand outstretched. “Ememel —wait. He’s not the same. He—we came here to save you.”
Galadriel’s eyes flared as they snapped to Arwen in quick recognition. The silence between the three of them stretched like an arrow, thin and taut against a bowstring, shimmering with tension. Galadriel stood above Halbrand, her dagger still pressing into his open throat, her knuckles white from how tightly she gripped the hilt. Her breath came sharp through her nose, her golden-silver hair tangled with blood and dirt, her eyes lit like twin stars on the edge of a blaze.
“This is a mockery,” she whispered to Arwen, voice trembling not from fear but from something else restrained and repressed. “This—this thing should not wear a body. Not walk the earth. Not speak words with my granddaughter.”
“Worried your secrets would spill loose?” Halbrand rasped, glibly, barely daring to move. The line of blood at his throat ran down to his collarbone. “Still so afraid of everyone knowing what you did with me in the dark?”
“Silence!” Galadriel’s voice lashed out.
“Ememel, do not let him provoke you,” Arwen said, firm despite the ache in her chest, stepping forward cautiously. “He’s not what he was. He came back different.”
“He is what he was,” Galadriel hissed, eyes burning, blade unsteady at his throat. “Even if he no longer admits to the shape of it. Even if he repents. Darkness does not disappear because it dims.”
“I never said it disappeared,” Arwen said, softly. “But he’s part of this world now. Same as you and I. You’ll have to choose to be something different now, other than what you were. I will not allow you to cut him down again.”
“Why not?” Galadriel demanded. “You know what he is, his gift for resurrection — he wormed his way back into existence, a blight forever upon these lands.”
Halbrand smiled thinly. “For once, I was not the architect of this power, Lady of Light,” he said, voice low, raw. “It was her. Your kin. She called me back. Not as the Dark Lord. But as—this. Halbrand.”
Galadriel slowly turned her gaze to Arwen. “Is this true?”
Arwen stepped forward, not flinching from her grandmother’s fire. “Yes. It is.”
“Why would you bring him back?”
Arwen lifted her head. “Because I know who he is. I know he sired my mother.”
A flicker of emotion broke Galadriel’s brutal glare, a glimpse of— shame, of her secret so roughly exposed. She studied her granddaughter with unreadable eyes—so like Arwen’s own, and yet not. Then she looked down at Halbrand, who met her gaze without flinching. The knife wavered in her hand.
Arwen stepped closer, close enough now for her palm to gently wrap around Galadriel’s wrist. “Please,” Arwen whispered. “You once told me love was the most dangerous thing a being like us could feel. That it makes fools of kings and queens and ruins empires. But you also told me it was the one thing that made the world worth saving.”
Galadriel looked at her.
Then at Halbrand.
He did not beg.
He did not plead.
And in the silence between them, something shifted.
Shortly—with a breath that sounded like the weight of centuries sliding off her chest—she pulled back the blade. Not sheathing it, not yet, but she lowered it minutely. Halbrand remained kneeling, head raised, breath even. The red at his throat gleamed briefly before vanishing beneath his collar.
Galadriel stepped away from him, toward Arwen. “You are more your mother than you know,” she said quietly. And for the first time since Arwen could remember, her grandmother looked—not radiant, not mighty—but tired, ancient, and fractured. “Do not—” Galadriel said quietly, “—for a moment forget what he has done.”
“I will not,” Arwen replied, a vow. “But I am asking you to see him for what he means to be now.”
Galadriel said nothing more. She turned from them, walking past the bloodied stones and ruined square, her ruined cloak trailing behind her.
Halbrand exhaled and stood up, brushing dirt off his clothes, flicking an imaginary speck away from his tunic. “That could’ve gone worse.”
Arwen turned to glare at him. “You could’ve tried not provoking one of the most dangerous elves in existence.”
“She always liked it when I looked contrite,” he said with a faint, crooked grin. “On my knees. Maybe I was hoping to disarm her with nostalgia?”
Arwen let out a noise of disgust, and turned away from him.
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