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“a fish hook
an open eye”
- Margaret Atwood
She wakes on the raft, drifting under a harshly sunlit sky.
Have I not already passed this test? It has been a score of decades since the Valar last saw fit to torment her with this nightmare; it has been almost a century since he betrayed her and left her in the Glanduin to drown. She had thought herself beyond this torment, but he stands before her now clothed in sea-worn rags, the stolen sigil of a dead king hanging around his neck, and she wonders if she will ever be free of him.
He is as unchanged as a sculpture; fair, with a strong jaw and eyes as dark as the depths of the sea. Countless times has she reminisced on her folly, how completely she was bewitched with dry wit and a charming smile; how his humor pulled laughter from her all too easily. But then, he is The Deceiver, and she is not the first nor the most wise to fall prey to his lies.
She is as steady on the rocking sea as any Teleri, finding her sea-legs as she turns away from him. Nenya burns on her finger, its white radiance guttering to a mere shimmer as she slips it from her hand into a pocket at her waist. He cannot yet know of their success in Celebrimbor’s workshop; though she is sure it is only a matter of time until his spies discover their secret. But - for all she is sure that this is a simple dream, and not some trickery - it behooves her to maintain the deception even so. He has been in her mind before; she has felt the scalding heat of his soul as it swallowed hers, and could never forget the feel of it for the burns he left across her psyche.
“Will you not look at me? Galadriel.” He murmurs her name like a prayer, and she can sense him rising to stand by her side, the heat of him a festering burn at her shoulder. He does not touch her, but she can feel the ghost of his hand on her wrist, a shackle. He burns as hot as Aulë’s forge, the dark flame of his immortal soul searing-hot in contrast to the chill waves of the Belegaer that break over the raft. He is older than even she can begin to fathom, burned into the very foundations of all the world; an itching, raw weal that she returns all too often to pick at like a scab.
With hindsight, she does not know how she failed to notice it before; perhaps her eyes were shrouded by greed, by vengeance - it matters little now, but to shame her further with her failure. But she has met many Maia before, and counted several among her friends; Melian’s very presence once sang as his does, song writ into ancient and fair form, both unknowable and familiar. But Melian had been a sweet rush of wind over treetops, fallen leaves over beds of moss - Sauron (Mairon, she thinks, an old name of many that he has since cast away) is fire and iron and blood, the heat of a forge and the rank swelter of armor over flesh.
“I’ve nothing to say to you, Deceiver.” Perhaps she can leap into the roiling sea, and wake. She strides to the edge of the raft, ready to dive into the chill waves, but is stopped by fingers winding betwixt her own - and then the full length of his body is pressed into her side, his arm an iron band around her waist as he hauls her from the water’s edge and to the center of the heaving vessel.
Her silk shift is no barrier between them, the white fabric near-sheer with water, and he is a firebrand against her; she can feel every line of him pressed to her, as intimate as an embrace. “You’ll not flee from me this time.” He murmurs into the delicate point of her ear, wincing as she bucks in his hold, the fine tips of her nails catching on sun-worn skin. She becomes as a wild thing, a doe caught in a hunter’s snare; heaving and squirming even as he tangles his hand into her sea-wet tresses of gold hair and yanks. “Be still.”
The cruel strength of his grip reins her to a stop, scalp smarting. “Release me.” The words are a hiss, quiet even as the water stills around them in a terrible reminiscence of years past. The raft steadies as the waves die; the water is as a mirror about them, reflecting the darkening clouds that cascade over the horizon line. His hands do not move from her, keeping her in place as he steps to face her; she wriggles once more in his hold and receives another quelling tug to the tender roots of her hair.
“It need not be like this. We were as partners, once; it would not be so different to be so once more.” He drops his hand from her hair to cup her jaw, the wide span of his hand dragging her chin about to force her to meet his gaze. Now, his pupils are slit like a cat’s; eyes of pure fire that seem almost to flicker as she looks into them, as strange and otherworldly as a roiling inferno. There is little of Halbrand to be found in the heat of his stare, even as a familiar, wry smile twists across his lips. “Perhaps a little different, I suppose. But we are not so opposed, protest as you may; even now, your goals are not so far from mine.”
Outrage floods through her at that, and she rips her face from his proprietary hold with a snort of disdain. “I will not bandy lies with you again, Abhorred. We share nothing but an unfortunate meeting.” When his hand does not loosen its hold on her waist, she surges into him, the sharp point of her elbow striking his sternum as she twists away. She does not make it far - he moves as quickly as a striking viper, the shackle of his grip catching around her wrist once again.
The movement of his body is eerily disjointed, monstrous strength rippling through muscle like a poorly-fitted glove. Now that she knows to look, knows the sort of twisted creature he truly is, the facade is as obvious as anything. The realization only shames her more, rankles against the truth of her failure, and her hand whips to the pocket where Nenya is shuddering and quavering like something alive, the presence of such malice and torment an anathema to its adamant nature. But she dares not draw it forth.
“Again and again, you have fled from me, Alatáriel. Have I ever given you reason to believe that I would truly harm you? Even as you held a blade to my throat, I did not fight you; and you know as well as I that such a struggle between us would only end one way.” Halbrand - Sauron, she asserts - reels her back to his embrace like a fish caught on a line, and this time she does not bother to resist, dropping her hand from Nenya as if burned.
She does not doubt that he does not fail to catch that movement of her hand, and curses herself for it - but he does not address it, though she can almost feel his gaze as it passes over the pocket where Nenya quivers like a rabbit before a fox.
“You already have.” She spits, the weight of a thousand thousand tortured, fettered souls behind the poison of her tone; the grief of a brother, a husband, a culture and people screaming through her as he lays his hands on her yet again. But, for all that sorrow - there burns a thrill of terrible, awful truth; Halbrand had been truly a friend to her, and for all the truth of his identity now disgusts and horrifies her to the core of her very soul, there is a dark whisper of temptation that had stirred in the depths of her horror; a sin of pride, to be sure - one that haunts her still, and chokes her with him before her now.
She closes her eyes, hands curling into tight fists even as he winds forge-rough fingers around her wrists, drawing them up to her chest. Her nails bite into the soft flesh of her palm, and she turns her face into her shoulder, away from the awful heat of his stare. She can feel it pass over her like the heat of the sun, trailing from her hands - she can feel blood welling under her nails, collecting in her palms as she tenses - to the planes of her face. “Enough of this.” She will not beg - there is no point; there is no mercy in his soul, not for her nor any other being - but in this dream, where he holds her as tenderly as a lover, her tone softens. A weakness; one that she would not tolerate, if only he were not wound around her like a snake poised to devour. He latches onto the weakness like a leech.
“I once offered you dominion over all, and you spurned me - though you know as well as I what you truly want. Whatever paltry power and position your High King has granted you will fade, surely as summer bleeds to autumn. What I offer - still, even as you deny me - is evergreen; you would never need bow and scrape to another at my side.” The hot sear of his breath against her cheek, altogether too close, makes her flinch. But she does not retreat - will not retreat - and his thumbs, calloused from the forge and sword, drag softly along the delicate skin at the inside of her wrists. She shudders at the tender caress, something dark twisting in her gut - nausea wars with desire; horror with a longing she had thought long since buried - and she catches the edge of his smile from the corner of her eye.
He leans into her, breathing his treacherous words into the delicate skin of her neck, lips moving softly against the delicate skin. “You know where to find me, Galadriel. When you tire of lessening yourself, you need only cast away the chains you have let bind you, and come to me.” She feels the slightest touch of a hot, wet tongue to her jugular as he speaks; the scent of him, iron and smoke and sweat, thick in her nose, is almost overwhelming. “Though I will only be so patient; tell me, where are the Rings?”
Then, after a pause where she remains silent, trembling in his hold - Nenya goes ice-cold at her waist, and his presence is abruptly an open flame, hands burning at her wrists as a jagged, horrible maw opens at her neck, fangs poised to sink into her throat and tear -
She jolts awake in her bed in Ost-in-Edhil, sweat cooling on her heated skin; the sheets are tangled about her like a noose, and she feels the weal of a burn across her right wrist, even as Nenya trembles on her finger. Sea-salt coats her tongue as she swallows, fingers wrapping gingerly over the ruined flesh of her wrist, and her silk shift drips icy seawater onto the mattress.
No mere dream, it would seem.