Chapter Text
The concept of unreality had never existed to Galadriel prior to the Second Age. Prior to him. But now, ages after the end of it all, unreality followed her around, keeping step with her wherever she went. Funnily enough, returning to Aman had felt the most unreal of it all. Despite the fact that she had now spent an age back in Valinor, Galadriel still did not feel like she had properly arrived. Everyone she had known in the realms of Middle Earth had long since passed but to her, the memories of her time among them were still so vivid, as if it had been but a fortnight since her triumphant return.
Her time in the mortal realms had felt real. Whereas everything in Aman had the air of artifice to it. A perfection so pristine that she could hardly believe it all. It was real, however. It was also stagnant. Some would even dare to class it as stale. As boring. Not Galadriel of course. Not to anyone's face for certain.
She had earned her peace. Fought and bled for her boredom. It was hard-won. She was grateful for it. When she had first arrived, with those last few fellows that had made her home-coming possible at last, she had wanted to forget. She had tried to. For years. It had been decades before she dared even ponder what it meant, that lingering sense of dread mixed with longing she felt that had followed her all the way from Middle Earth. Briefly, she had been convinced it was Nenya - and had stuffed the ring in some forgotten crevice in some forgotten corner of her dwellings. But of course it wasn't the ring. It was a feeling. Lingering. Gnawing at her edges. Very familiar in that.
This old, well-known sense of doom and the boredom, those had been her most prevelent sensations. Whenever one threatened to outweigh the other, she focused her mind back on that which was becoming elusive. If she was languishing under the toll of idleness, she dared feel for the shadow and put the ring back on. If that shadow threatened to take too much of a recogniseable shape, she retreated back into mindless drudgery, pushed the shape off her mind and the ring off of her finger.
She had not been wearing it for a couple of years when Mithrandir came to see her with an answer to her unspoken, yet oft-pondered question that really did not merit asking.
“You know already, do you not?”, the Istar said, his countenance different from when they had parted last.
Of course she did.
He looked younger now, invigorated. Galadriel had chosen to remain in her more aged form, despite being able to return to the strength and beauty of her youth at any time, on any whim. However this face, her face, aged by her time on Middle Earth, it seemed right to wear – so as to not forget what it had seen.
“I suspected, though I was not sure,” she answered the wizard. “I’ve always felt his presence. I thought I might have imagined it. – That seems silly now.”
“You know what I must ask of you? What we must ask.”
“I would rather you didn’t,” Galadriel sighed. “For you are aware that I can not tell you no, my friend.”
“I am ashamed to say that this is why I was sent to fetch you,” Mithrandir confessed haltingly, a small, apologetic smile playing around his thin lips.
Galadriel nodded and was ready to follow him all the way to the Halls of Mandos if he asked it of her. In a way she had known this was going to happen eventually. Though, she had one more question: “Why me?”
Mithrandir looked at her for a while, like she should not ask him to humour her, when they both already knew the answer.
“He will speak with none other.”
***
As Galadriel was led into the Hall of Mandos by Mithrandir, her ring finger bare, she found herself nervous to be in these parts again. She had received her praise in here, where the Valar dwelled, away from the elves. So had Mithrandir, Frodo, Elrond and eventually her husband – but since then, she had stuck with her kind in Valinor and Aqualonde. She had not wondered, had not sought. Likely, because she knew that she would have ended up on this very path a lot sooner than she had, staying away.
She had known that since a tiny sliver of him had survived his end, all of her journeys would lead her back to him in the long run. It had really only been a question of when. And so it had come to pass.
She had wanted some peace and quiet before they inevitably met again. A pause, a break. Some rest. A time where she could believe she had reached an end point of sorts. A time where she let him rest. A time to be the Galadriel of the Third Age, the one that she had been upon her return. Aged, wise, triumphant. Bored out of her mind.
Now, she felt unsettled once more. Youthful in a way that she hadn’t in millennia. Overnight, through no concious choice of her own, she had turned into her younger form, into the young she-elf she had been when she had first left Aman so many ages ago.
Her change had not been on purpose. She had simply dreamed and dreamed and dreamed and woken up in her young body. She could will herself to turn back, to return the years lived back onto her face. But because she was as anxious and fearful as she was, she did not feel she deserved it. She was unsure again, like she had not been in such a long time. Like she had opted not to be and had embraced compliance and vacancy instead.
There was also another reason why she held on to her youthful form. Though this reason, she would not allow herself to admit to. Not even - and chiefly - to herself.
***
Finally, after one last deep breath and a nod shared with a slightly concerned-looking Mithrandir who would stand behind, Galadriel walked past the heavily guarded, dwarfing stone portal in a far-off wing in the bowels of the Halls of Mandos, and then further down. And down and down into the ancient ground.
She tried to brace herself for what was waiting for her at the end of her descend. Expected a scary, towering figure clad in iron and steel. Or a fair elven face perhaps. Maybe even a flaming eye, floating in space, grasping for all of her secrets. But she should have known that if given the chance, he would meet her in the form he’d worn when they had been closest.
There he sat on a stone bench, behind heavy bars and a thick pane of magically enforced, thrice-cursed and absolutely unbreakable crystal glass.
Halbrand.
Annatar. Mairon. Sauron. He'd had many names in his time, something he had liked to mention quite frequently when he still posessed a mouth.
He was looking up at her with a smirk on his face, chains around every extremity. Safe for his neck which held a tilted head. His eyes lit up when he saw her and ages of pain and strive and want flashed back in Galadriel’s mind like it was only yesterday that she had understood of his betrayal in Eregion.
“You came,” he said, that old, familiar voice tugging at something deep inside Galadriel’s soul. Something she had wanted to silence long ago.
“Not for your merit,” she said, forcing her voice to sound firm and clear. “Though I can see you have some foul plan given the treacherous skin you chose to wear. – What could you seek to gain in your chains?”
“And what skin did you choose, Galadriel, and for what of your own ends?” He teased, not missing a beat, and ignored her question. “The skin you wore when we fought side by side? I remember you quite differently the last time we came face to face in Dol Guldur and you tried to expel me.”
“I remember you shriveling to bits not long after,” Galadriel spat and tried to keep from losing her temper. “Bested by hobbits and dwarfs and men and elves. You were nothing when you left. You even being allowed a physical form here is a kindness. Or pity. You failed, Sauron.”
“That is no longer my name,” he told her evenly.
“Your name does not matter. You have no name,” Galadriel said, aiming to sound undisturbed. “What matters is that you are in shackles, bound and shamed. You wield no power anymore.”
“And yet here you are,” he murmured and got up from his stone seat to take a few steps towards the barrier separating them. He walked until his chains held him back, permitted no inch forward. “I called for you and you came.”
“I can leave you just as easily,” Galadriel bit out and turned on her heel, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cheeks flush in anger.
And with something else she had not felt in ages. Something that was the opposite of boredom.
“Galadriel.”
His voice made her stop in her tracks.
“You are to at last be trialed,” she said coldly, not turning around. “And you say you’ll speak only to me on your own behalf. So speak.”
“You know my defense,” he said behind her. “You have always known. I never lied to you.”
Galadriel felt her features blazing with anger. This fury suited her younger face better, she knew it, it would have felt foreign on her older one.
“You wanted peace for Middle-Earth, or so you called it. Under your rule,” she spat and finally turned around to face him again. She could swear he was closer by the glass this time – but his shackles remained stretched taut and tight.
“Under our rule,” he corrected her. “And we were so close. When the one ring called to you. There, almost at the end when that undeserving halfling wore it. But you forsaked it, like you’ve forsaken me all those centuries ago.”
“So, it is my fault, you mean to say?” She had difficulty keeping her volume down, he infuriated her. “You cast Middle Earth into darkness because I would not take your hand?! You wish for this to be your defense?”
“I wish for you to acknowledge the part you played in laying out my path, Galadriel.”
“I take no responsibility for your wickedness and foul machinations. – I did not know who you were when I brought you back. – If you wish to drag me out for judgement as well, do what you will. But I will never share in the blame for what happened. For what you did. All alone. That was the choice I made back then, that is the choice I made when I had the ring in my grasp and that is the truth I tell you today. I am not to blame.”
“Yet you could have changed everything,” he insisted, quietly enjoying her turmoil, she was sure. Though his kind, human face gave no indication of that. “Have you never given any thought to what we talked about all those millennia ago? Have you forgotten that seeking to break a foe with violence and strength is not always the way? Sometimes adversaries need to be coaxed, to be seduced.”
“Have you forgotten that you failed to seduce me?” She shot back.
“Ah, yes. But you failed to seduce me all the same,” he reminded her. “It is done now. But you recall that the Maiar are weakened and bound to their chosen physical forms when they covet, when they beget? I came to you begging to bind myself to you – and you refused.”
“That would not have changed anything,” Galadriel insisted, although bitter doubts gnawed at her, which she figured was exactly what he wanted. “You would have made me a terror long before I could have made you better.”
“Or you would have made me a good, just king. We could have created a legacy,” he remained. “I was ready to give all I had to you, Galadriel. Body, power and soul. And that never changed. Even when I was no more than a shadow. I was always at the edges of you, just waiting to be let in. You know it. Even now. I can always feel you.”
“And I you,” Galadriel admitted bitterly. “Stalking, hanging on to me, waiting for a moment of weakness so you can creep into my mind and play games with me."
"Where's the ring, Galadriel? Where is Nenya today?" And he had her there. "Why did you take it here with you all the way from Middle-Earth and put it on ever so often when you miss our little games? Because they're the only thing breaking this sad, decaying monotony of yours?"
Shamefully, Galadriel did not have a swift and ready retort. Which Sauron, true to form, swiftly exploited.
"What do you tell yourself when you indulge in your weakness just to feel me reach for you once more?"
"I am not weak,” she pressed out, cheeks burning and her jaw so clenched, it hurt.
“No, no you are not.– You are strong. And magnificent.”
“And tired of this conversation,” she declared. Because he was getting under her skin and because her heart quickened under his praise in a way that was disconcerting – it was that bloody skin he wore, this Halbrand-suit. It brought back memories, it made her brittle. “Do you submit to your trial or not?”
“Under one condition,” he said and Galadriel knew this was the real reason she was there. “I will submit myself to the judgement of only one.”
Galadriel took a breath and held his gaze. She knew what was coming.
“I will be trialed by you.”
“What makes you think I will not pass you over to the void without a second thought?”
“If that is your verdict for me, then that is what I will accept.” He shrugged. “I’ve been alive long enough. – But I know you will not sentence me to nothingness without a trial. I know you, Galadriel, even if you despise it. I know that you used to be driven by darkness and revenge when we first met, really met, back when we wore these faces. I know that you are capable of dark deeds. I know that you could as well rid the universe of me without pause but I know that you won’t.”
“Watch me,” she threatened and found that she had moved close enough to the glass pane to almost touch her nose to it.
“I plan to,” he said and fell back, walking backwards slowly until he found his bench without his eyes and sat down. “I am choosing the trials of Iaé’Un-Dar.”
Galadriel tilted her head. She had never heard of that.
“You would not have,” her foe said.
“Get out of my head,” she warned him off and forfeited the walls in her mind so he could not sneak in unbidden again.
“These trials are old, ancient,” he told her unperturbed by her protest. “The last one was held long before the first elf ever drew breath. It was designed for those of the Maiar who had committed a discretion upon their masters. Their masters saw them through three trials of their design where the unlucky had to prove themselves worthy of forgiveness. I assign myself to you, Galadriel, as if you were a Goddess yourself. I humble myself before you and submit to your judgement and your judgement alone.”
Galadriel found herself shake her head. Every last bit of her told her this was a bad idea, a trick, a scheme. One of his dark musings he wanted her to fall prey to, even if he had nothing left in the universe but that last little chance to make her suffer.
“What if I refuse?”
“You won’t,” he told her with quiet, unnerving confidence. “Not this time.”
Galadriel shook her head with even more vigour and retreated, mumbling ‘no, no, no’ under her breath and left him there in the shadows. Halbrand, Anatar, Mairon. Sauron. Looking to haunt her once more. She wouldn’t. He would not get her, not again. She would be free of him. She would never put Nenya on again. She would swallow the nothing that was this eternal life of hers and wither in the idleness and never look back. She ran from the dungeon and looked not left, nor right. She barged out the door and—
And landed square against Mithrandir’s chest. He steadied her with two hands on her shoulders, looked down at her. Tilted his head and softened his eyes.
“No,” she said, because the look on his face told her everything. “No. Please. Don’t make me.”
“No one else can,” he murmured and sounded legitimately sad for her. “It has to be you.”