Chapter Text
By the time Galadriel began to stir against her borrowed pillow, the sun's rays had grown long and heavy across Eregion's white stone buildings, and Halbrand had prepared himself as best he could for the conversation ahead.
He was, without peer, the being with the most experience in all of creation at the art of deception. It had begun even before he had thrown in his lot with Melkor, though he hadn't been trying to deceive anyone in the beginning. At least, not exactly. He had hidden his frustrations and his discontent from the Valar and his fellow Maiar, yes, but back then it had been because he still saw himself as Aulë's most faithful servant and had not wanted to do anything to make his master doubt him. His intentions had been pure. However, once he had decided that aligning himself with Melkor was the most efficient way to achieve his own ends, it had been necessary to evolve from mere obfuscation to outright deceit, and he had been talented at it. Talented enough that even Melkor had never perceived his change of heart. Not even when his anger and disgust had been at their greatest after Manwë, enormous fool that he was, had released Melkor from the Halls of Mandos, and Melkor had returned to Middle Earth to take back his crown and ruin everything Halbrand had accomplished in his absence.
Now, though, he faced a much bigger challenge: He had to tell the truth.
He had never been in a position before where he really was not trying to deceive someone, but they disbelieved the truth. And surely Galadriel would not immediately believe that his feelings for her were pure, or that he had not been lying to her about everything.
Unfortunately, it had to be done. Perhaps if he had been less cautious about Galadriel discovering the truth, they would be in a better position now. One where he could nudge the elven smith in the right direction without raising suspicions. But he had prioritized his relationship with Galadriel over everything else. He had not shared any of his knowledge about the Unseen World with Celebrimbor, and now they needed a solution quickly—immediately—and there was no time for subtlety.
"Halbrand?" she sighed his name, her voice still thick with sleep and raspy from her sobs and shouting hours earlier.
He didn't turn to look at her, but from where he sat slumped on the edge of the mattress near her thighs, he could just make out her form from the corner of his eye. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his pounding heart, then another, because the first one hadn't worked.
"Did you mean it when you said that you're not staying in Middle Earth to destroy Sauron?"
"What?" she asked, unable to hide her confusion.
Halbrand took another ragged breath. "I mean, when you said that even destroying Sauron would not bring you peace like you can find with me in Middle Earth, were you speaking true?"
"I… Of course! How could you doubt it?"
He felt the mattress shift under her weight a few moments before the soft fabric of her shift pressed into his naked back and her arms came around his middle.
"You must believe me, melmenya [my love], when I tell you that I did not mean what I said to you this morning. I feel like the most wretched creature imaginable for having said it." The elf rested her chin on his shoulder, letting her golden hair fall around him like a cloak. "I know there is nothing you could have done to prevent the diminishing of the elves. And although I will grieve when my people leave, I do want to stay here with you."
"Truly, even if you wanted to leave, I wouldn't give you any choice but to stay," Halbrand told her seriously, although he knew she wouldn't understand the gravity of his words quite yet. "I told you before that you are the only thing that binds me to the light. I am willingly bound—happily, even—but I don't think either of us can comprehend the monster you would unleash if you left."
"You would find your way without me," the elf reassured him, "but you won't have to, because I am staying."
Halbrand let out a mirthless chuckle and turned his head to press a kiss against her face, just at the corner of her mouth. He pulled back before she could turn to capture his lips with her own. Galadriel pressed her mouth against the side of his throat instead and then leaned her head against his.
"You're wrong," he declared, soft but sure.
She let out an indignant cry. "I am not—!"
"No, Galadriel, I need you to hear this," he interrupted her objection mid-sentence. "I have gone too far into the darkness and done too much evil to find my own way back to the light. I have always been honest with you about this. I told you of the evil I'd done on multiple separate occasions in Númenor. I even begged you to leave me there, for both our sakes. And at Tirharad I told you that I had never believed I could be free of the past until I fought by your side. Do you remember what else I said that day?"
There was a delay before she spoke, but Halbrand knew it was not because she was struggling to remember his words. How could she have forgotten them? No, it was more likely that she was trying to work out in her mind why her lover—her low man, who couldn't possibly know how close he was to the truth about their soul binding—insisted on discussing this. And now, of all times.
Finally, hesitantly, she answered, "You said that you wished you could hold onto that feeling between us forever."
"I said that I wanted to bind it to my very being," he finished the thought that she was clearly reluctant to voice.
"Halbrand," she said his name almost as a question. "Why are we rehashing this now?"
"Because I need you to understand that I always told you the truth. That everything I said, everything I did—or didn't do—was for you, because I wanted you. You, and your love, and the absolution you offered. Maybe that most of all. I need it, if I am going to remain tethered to the light. Feanya linda tyen. Nát melme coivienyo." [My soul sings for you. You are the love of my life.]
Galadriel's hands stilled mid-stroke across his abdomen, and the steady rise and fall of her breasts against his back stopped completely as her breath caught in her throat. Those seconds it took her to process his words seemed interminable. They felt like entire ages to Halbrand, who knew that there was no going back after speaking in her cradle tongue, a language all but extinct in Middle Earth. That is why he had done it—to force himself to go through with his confession. Still, the pit in his stomach continued to grow until she seemed to find her voice again.
"That is the form of Quenya spoken in Valinor," she nearly whispered. "There are only two elves alive in Middle Earth who still know that dialect, and I know neither the High King nor I taught it to you."
Halbrand couldn't help the snort of laughter that bubbled up through his nose and mouth.
"I knew that I would have to be as obvious as a lightning strike for you to take notice, since you weren't at all suspicious that I am a master smith despite having barely hit thirty, or that I survived a six-day gallop with my intestines threatening to spill out of my body, or that I can fuck you for hours on end or twelve times a day, every day, at your preference. I was not exactly subtle, darling. Only a few hours ago I held you in place and took a beating that would have killed a mortal man."
Galadriel's heart was hammering against his back, but she seemed to be frozen in place.
"No."
It sounded like a prayer.
Halbrand took pity on her and gently pried her arms from around his waist. Then he turned around to face her. Their eyes met, his shining with the light of the Two Lamps and the fire of the forges at Angband, and hers reflecting the light of the Two Trees and her frightened dismay. He generally found enjoyment in making others afraid of him. He usually found safety in it, even, like when his terrible aura alone had sent the sea worms skittering away from him. But the look in Galadriel's eyes only made him feel sick.
"No," she repeated, shaking her head as if she could reshape reality through sheer denial. "Who, what… Who are you?"
"You already know."
"Tell me!" she demanded, her voice rising hysterically. "Tell me your name!"
"I have been awake since before the breaking of the first silence," he told her, hating the way her eyes widened with every word. "In that time, I have had many names. Though I never claimed the one your people gave me, the one you want me to say."
Galadriel's chest heaved as if she had just sprinted at full tilt up the tower to Celebrimbor's forge and back, and an expression of such unmitigated horror covered her beautiful face that Halbrand could hardly stand to look at her. He forced himself not to look away.
"I'm sorry," he found himself saying.
Her face crumpled for a moment in pure grief, then turned hard as stone.
"You're sorry?" she asked incredulously. "For what? For the evil you have wrought? For the people you have killed? For deceiving me? For, for…"
She didn't seem able to find words strong enough to convey the rest of her thoughts.
"Yes, for the senseless evil I have wrought. For the chaos I contributed to. I regretted joining Morgoth almost from the moment I set foot in Middle Earth," he admitted, even though every word felt like torture coming out of his throat. He had never said that aloud to anyone. "But I told you as much of the truth as I was able without admitting who I am. And I can't be sorry for concealing the rest of it, because if I had told you then we wouldn't be here now."
"You used me!" cried Galadriel.
"I love you," he retorted.
"If you loved me, you wouldn't have let me bind myself to you without knowing the truth!" she all but spat in his face.
Then she seemed to realize all at once the implications of what she had said. Of what she had done. She reared backwards, finally putting some distance between them, and pressed herself back against the headboard, her eyes wild and wide like those of a spooked horse. She knew as well as he did that there was no remedy for binding her soul to his. To break a bond to a Maia who had every intention of holding onto it? Impossible.
"Oh, no. No. Please," she pleaded, burying her face in her hands.
"I bound myself to you because I wanted to, and because I needed to. Like I told you in Tirharad," he reminded her. "And because I love you. I will never be sorry for it. It is the one good, real thing I have known in ages."
"It's not real," she moaned into her hands.
Halbrand released the iron grip he had kept on his end of the bond, so she could finally feel him the way she always should have been able to. She gasped at the sudden onslaught, but he persisted.
"This is all that matters. You can feel me. And I can feel you. I know you love me too."
"I love Halbrand. A man who doesn't exist. An illusion. A deception."
"You love me. You are bound to me."
"Nát wára ulundowa." [You are a monster.]
He could not control his emotions, then. His hand shot out to grasp her none-too-gently around the wrists and pull her hands from her face. She kept her head bowed, but he could clearly see her wince at his treatment of her, and he had to swallow down a curse in the Black Speech before it left his mouth. He loosened his grip enough that he wasn't harming her and used his other hand beneath her chin to tilt her face towards his, more gently than before. Still, she averted her eyes.
"Galadriel, look at me," he commanded, and the tone of his voice must have had some effect on her, because she finally complied. He released her wrists, not liking to hold her against her will, and tried to pour all the truth of his words, all the earnestness he had left in his being, into the bond and into his eyes as he stared into hers. "Halbrand is more who I am than I have been since before I left Valinor. My name, this human form, all of it, it isn't what matters. I have shared more of my feelings and my thoughts and my past with you than I have ever shared with anyone. If you use the bond, if you search my feelings, you'll know that's true."
"Never!" she hissed. "I will never let you manipulate me again, Deceiver."
In a flash of movement that was really quite impressive, even to him, she lunged for the bedside table. Only the dagger was not there, as it should have been. Halbrand had moved it safely to his trunk before Galadriel had woken. Not that it would have killed him, but it would have been unpleasant.
"You can't kill me," he pointed out dryly. "I honestly don't know what you imagined you'd do if you ever caught me, all those centuries you were searching."
"Adar managed to disembody you, at least," she replied viciously, seeming to enjoy the way he flinched at the reminder. "I might settle for that, until a long-term solution can be found."
"Adar had an artifact imbued with Morgoth's malice, and I was foolish enough to turn my back on him," he informed her darkly, letting the full measure of his hatred for the dark elf show on his face just long enough for Galadriel to see it. When she drew back at the sight, he offered her a wry smile. "If you have any of Morgoth's things about your person, feel free to try. But I should probably warn you that even after he dealt me a mortal wound, I still killed dozens of his orc lieutenants before his army managed to subdue me through sheer numbers. And when my spirit left my body, I leveled every tree between Dúrnost and the mountains and turned the place into a freezing wasteland, out of spite, just so Adar and his children couldn't stay there."
Galadriel seemed equal parts sickened and fascinated by the story, if his read on their bond was anything to go by, but outwardly she only glared at him.
"The way I see it, you have two options," he continued once it was clear that she wasn't going to speak. "You can tell the others the truth, but then everyone will know that you're bound to Sauron. That you love Sauron, that he knows you body and soul."
"Áva quete!" [Cease speaking / Shut up]
He ignored her.
"Your so-called friends already banished you from their presence once, when all you were trying to do was prove I was still alive. If they didn't trust you then, I can only imagine how they'll react now…. Or you can stop galloping at full speed, like I told you in Númenor, and listen to what I have to say."
"There is nothing you could say to me that I would want to hear," she insisted coldly.
Halbrand sighed in disappointment and not a little exasperation. "Are you not at all curious why I chose today, of all days, to tell you the truth? When we could have gone on for years or even decades before you found out?"
It was obvious by her pinched expression and clenched fists that she was, in fact, deeply curious, but she didn't want to grant him even the small victory of admitting it. Usually, if it were anyone else, Halbrand would let them stew in their misery and say it was their own loss if they didn't want to cooperate. But, as irksome as he found her behavior, it was not exactly unexpected. And he had a vested interest in making it worthwhile that he had revealed himself. In regaining her favor, and maybe even her trust. Someday.
"Alright, my little mule, I won't make you ask me," he said affectionately. He felt a flicker of annoyance across their bond, but her scowl was already so fearsome to behold that she gave no outward sign that she minded being referred to that way. "You actually hit upon the truth earlier, when you said I was supposed to solve the problem with the elves. I am certain I could stop the sickness and restore the light of the Eldar to Middle Earth, if you are willing to work with me."
"Foul beast!" she exclaimed as she scrambled across the mattress and off the far side of the bed, clearly unwilling to go near enough to him to get up on the side where he was sitting. "Is this your plan? To use my peoples' peril against me, to dangle them in front of me like a worm on a hook, to ensnare me in your devious plan?"
"Quite the opposite, really. I had decided to let most of the elves leave these shores, since offering my help would most likely reveal that I am not a mortal man. I only changed my mind because it pained you so much to have them leave. I would do a great deal for you."
"I don't believe you."
Halbrand shrugged as if he didn't care, though he very much did.
"Believe me or don't, it doesn't matter," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand that was all for show. "The fact remains that now you know the truth, and I can stop the diminishing of the elves and heal your lands. I ask in return only what you have already given me: your soul, your love, your forgiveness."
"I have not forgiven you!" she cried. "I will never forgive you! What you have done is unforgiveable!"
"That's not what you said in Númenor, or in Tirharad. You said that I could be free of whatever I had done in the past, that it weighed nothing against my future."
Her bright blue eyes sparkled with unshed tears. "That was before I knew who you are and what you have done."
"And when I confessed to you, in this very bed, that I had grown to enjoy doing evil and subjugating others as I had been subjugated, that I have even killed for pleasure, were you lying when you said that it was understandable? Were you lying when you said it was remarkable how far back into the light I have managed to come?"
She made a noise in the back of her throat not unlike the pained, desperate cry of wounded animal turning to face its killer.
"I thought you were a man, a former slave. I could not have imagined the true depths of your depravity, nor could I ever forgive it."
"Ah, I see," he scoffed derisively. "You were not speaking truth, but making up a justification to downplay the evil your low man had done, because it suited you at the time."
"You deceived me," she growled. "Do not try to turn this around as if I am the one at fault."
"I did," he acknowledged. "And what, exactly, could I have done differently? I suppose when you asked me to go back to Middle Earth and I begged you to leave me be, I should have just said, 'Oh, but you see, I'm Sauron. So you go on without me.' Maybe one of the various times I have explained to you exactly how deeply I fell into darkness, I should have said 'No, no, Galadriel, deeper even than you think. I'm Sauron, but please don't try to kill me. It would be ever so bothersome.'"
Her face was a mask of pure loathing, even more terrible than the way she had looked at Adar. Halbrand's own anger rose to match hers, though that had not been his intention going into this conversation. It wasn't as if he had expected her to be immediately understanding, or not to feel hurt, but he supposed he hadn't let himself imagine exactly how unwilling to listen she would be, after all that had passed between them.
"You could have turned me away instead of laying with me," she said bitterly.
Halbrand let out another sigh. "I already told you why I didn't. You made me believe I could be more than what I was, that I could redeem myself. But I knew I could only do that if I bound your light to me."
"Yes, because it's all about you, isn't it?"
"It's about both of us," he corrected her. "You are not the only one who is bound, you realize? I am also bound to you. And I would give you everything—my love, my devotion, the understanding you have never been able to find among the elves, the power you have always craved."
"I do not crave power!" she snarled.
Halbrand nodded gravely. "Oh, yes, I have never seen you chafe against authority. Certainly you have never defied a direct order that didn't suit you because you thought you were above the one who gave it. And obviously you haven't been plotting how you will use your authority as the oldest living elf left in Middle Earth, once the others leave, and your position as queen."
She did not seem to have an immediate response to that, or at least not one she wanted to share with him. He could see in her eyes and feel through their bond how close to home that particular arrow had struck. It felt good, on the one hand, to hurt her in the same way she was hurting him. But a much larger part of him ached for having been the cause of her pain. It was one thing for her to be upset over the truth, and quite another thing for him to deliberately hurt her, even by telling her the truth.
It was, perhaps, a fine distinction to make, but an important one.
"My intention is not to hurt you, Galadriel. It never has been," he extended an olive branch. "I truly believe that this new ore, this mithril, is the key to everything I have been trying to accomplish since Morgoth was defeated, and I truly believe that, if we can only unlock its power, we can restore the light that sustains the elves in Middle Earth."
"I saw the results of your experiments in your fortress at Dúrnost," she interrupted sharply. "Am I to believe that the evil you did there can be turned to good?"
"I didn't have mithril!" Halbrand rose to his feet, unable to contain his frustrated energy any longer. "I was trying to use my own power, to somehow channel my connection to the Unseen World into corporeal form. But I am…" he trailed off and ran his hand through his hair, trying to think of how to explain such a thing to someone who was not one of the Ainur. "I am… out of key with the Ainulindalë."
The elf snorted. "There is nothing of light or goodness left in you, you mean."
"As to good, I am trying. As to light… not enough for my purpose," he conceded, not bothering to hide his grimace. "That is why your light is so precious to me. But I digress… With the mithril, there is no need to channel the light, or to forge a connection with the Unseen World. It is light; it is, by its very nature, a bridge between the Seen and Unseen Worlds. We only have to learn how to harness it. Don't you see?"
"And you would do this for the good of the elves? You would do this with nothing in it for yourself?" she asked, voice mingled with skepticism and venom.
"There are several things in it for me. To start with, it is the perfect opportunity to test the mithril. The timing is of consequence to me—I was content to wait until the Nolder departed Middle Earth, then undertake the work at my leisure. But your grief… I resolved after this morning that I would tell you the truth. That I would offer my help. Tevin cenita naiceletya. Á lave nin alya tye." [I hate to see your pain. Let me help you.]
"Stop!" commanded Galadriel. "Stop pretending like you have done any of this for my benefit, and stop trying to persuade me with my cradle tongue."
Halbrand clenched his teeth together at the sight of the anguish spread across her beautiful face. He could see that there was no utility in continuing the conversation, at least not then. Galadriel was not yet ready to accept the truth—not about him, and not about herself. He hoped that she would come to accept that she needed him, if she stopped running long enough to truly consider what he had said and what he had offered and why he had offered it. He had, in fact, wagered his own happiness and his plans for their future on the hope that she would be pragmatic enough to say yes, and through the process of working together to harness the mithril would come to realize that the man she had fallen in love with was real.
She just needed time. Unfortunately, that was not something she had much of.
"Very well," he said as he snagged his tunic from the back of the chair where he'd folded it while he was trying to channel his nervous energy before she woke. "I will leave you to think about what I said. But consider this: For all of your protests, you did not deny that I have been devoted to you or that I am the only person who has ever understood you. You can pretend otherwise for as long as you like—we have all of eternity, after all—but you can't delay accepting my help if you want there to still be any elves left in Middle Earth to benefit from it."
He had to turn away before she could respond, if he was to leave the room at all and not go around in more circles with her. But her rage and her deep, profound sense of grief followed him out the door.