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When the labor is finally over and the child cleaned of gummy vernix, latched sleepily to her breast, Galadriel closes her eyes and waits for the crippling nausea that has plagued her for months now to take pity and abate. She waits.
She waits.
And waits.
The Deceiver scrapes constantly at her mind from the moment they are parted—but she has done well to keep him out of her personal, private thoughts, and manages to maintain the secret of the child itself until the shape of her middle could no longer be concealed by the trickery of a draped gown or an accomplice made of well-placed furniture. It is lucky—perhaps too lucky—that Celeborn was returned to her, disoriented but whole within a week of the seedling-sized heart beginning to beat in her belly. A means of reasonable doubt. She knows mortal men often give their wives gifts upon the discovery of a pregnancy. Maybe Celeborn is hers, from the lord of gifts himself.
By spring, gossip of her condition reaches the Southlands and it’s false king. He has guessed the nature of her secret, of course, but she feels the very moment it is confirmed for him, echoing in her own head: the elf-witch is said to be with child. The swell of his triumph, the pleasure of knowing that his essence has taken root in her. Murmurs among his people: how fortuitous for her kind, who long many hopeless years for their young. How lucky, for it to happen so quickly upon the reappearance of her husband.
Galadriel does not feel so lucky through the stretch of hot, airless summer, gowns sticking to her belly, bile in her raw throat. She takes to bed for weeks, suffering the ache in her skull that grows louder alongside the child. A tiny finger, a new toe, an eyelash—the effort required to create life seems to pierce her straight through. Sometimes there is no headache at all, but rather a foggy ailment that keeps her ragged, bound to her bed. The healers do what they can, but what they can do is not enough. Such is the nature of childbearing, they say, sympathetic. Some are unlucky, simply not suited to the pursuit. She is one of them.
When she is at her most ill and most gravid, the press of his mind alone is enough to provide relief. Like a cool hand to brow, his presence soothes the worst symptoms for a few hours at a time when she is, at last, too poorly to keep him out. To demonstrate further insult, the child always settles for him, a satisfied curl of limbs in her belly. He offers visions of warm, clean baths and plenty of respite—sleep that would feel like sleep instead of sleeplessness. Come home, he says, and I could make it better. You cannot keep this up forever, elf. You know this.
She slams the door between them shut.
When the well-wishers have gone, Elrond remains. He takes the squalling child from her arms as she vomits into the chamber pot.
“Galadriel,” he begins, weary. “I think the ruse has come to an end.”
She spits the saliva gathered in her mouth. She is still sickly in ways food and drink and rest has not been able to fix. She has sent the healers away again and again, refusing their interference, insisting upon a miraculous recovery. The wetnurses barred too, unable to comfort the colicky infant who wails without rest, determined to find her father.
“I need more time.”
“You do not have it,” he says plain but not unkind, giving a pinky for the baby to suckle in her stead. Celebrian’s little mouth is weaker by the day—the unnatural separation of father and daughter at odds with her will to thrive. She has hardly grown since birth, limbs still reed-thin and skin mottled despite several months of breath in this world. Soon, Galadriel knows, she will not feed at all.
“Gil-Galad has received word of your continued deterioration. He intends to visit Eregion to find out the truth. There are rumors, now, Galadriel. He will force your hand. Publicly.”
She nods, embarrassed. It needles sorely in her memory: a black snap of rage, unable to bear yet another courtier generously claiming how Celeborn had made such a handsome child—Galadriel had lost her composure at the wrongness, snatching the infant back into her arms, ordering them all to leave, teeth bared, pointed ears flat against her head. It had been wild instinct that compelled her to act. Instinct that had overruled her sense.
“It has not gone unnoticed that you will not let Celeborn even hold the child,” Elrond says more gently, handing her back the swaddled baby.
Even now the mention of his name sours her throat, the angry gland there swelling hot. “Haven’t I?”
But she hasn’t: not with the white-knuckled agony of each second dragging by, watching her husband’s numerous attempts to rock the child asleep. Chanting to herself that he posed no threat, that he bore no ill-will—but she could not get her body to accept the sour scent of him while it yearned stubbornly for another. At the precipice of her misery, Galadriel had vomited over the side of the bed until Celeborn handed her the then-screaming nursling.
“The source of a difficult pregnancy was easy enough to conceal, but I am beginning to run out of explanations about the trials of motherhood on your behalf. And, my dear friend—I am worried. About you. Her.” Elrond’s gaze flicks to the baby. “About the consequences of an investigation. Gil-galad is…it is a difficult situation, Galadriel. I am told he will not be quick to forgive.”
The lump in her throat is hot, and her face is wet. She is a traitor. They will demand she confess. They will cast her out—they will find her precious child an unworldly abomination, an aberration worthy of punishment. Her skin prickles with the beginnings of terror, looking at Celebrian’s delicate hand curled about her finger. There will be nowhere safe for them, when the truth comes to light.
My poor elf, he soothes, a patient, rich warmth in her mind. Come home, darlings.
The horror of it all doesn’t come till later—until her boots are streaked with mud and the horse refuses to take another exhausted step, until the frantic bleat of a mind urging her to run quiets enough for her to realize that she is far, far from Eregion, surrounded by foliage she doesn’t recognize. Elrond’s warning had burrowed in her head for hours until she was mindless with fear, left stumbling beneath the moon to steal a horse and race towards the only means of protection left for her on Middle Earth.
“Easy,” the Dark Lord says, to her or the horse, patting its flank appreciatively and reaching up to slip her from the saddle, setting her firmly on the ground. Tonight he wears the face of Halbrand, except with the shine of preternaturally bright eyes—too lazy, she supposes, to bother maintaining the facade of humanity with her. He steps close and at first she thinks he means to kiss her—Galadriel stiffens—but instead he uses a careful finger to tug at the velvet of her cloak, peering at what was hidden beneath.
“Oh,” Galadriel breathes, blinking down at the sleeping face of her daughter. Sweaty cheek pressed to her sternum, milk-breath mouth open in a snore. Ignorant of her place between the two most powerful beings on the continent, instead concerned only with the closest source of body heat.
“What do you call her?”
She hesitates. “Celebrian.”
“Silver Queen,” he says in elvish, head bent to observe the small rise and fall of her chest beneath white muslin. “Very suiting. May I?”
He is slow in his movements to tug said drowsy infant from her arms; irritatingly good at it from the get, cupping her small head and humming and shushing when the child stirs. He sways his weight from foot to foot until she is perfectly lax again, eyes shut and lips smacking in her sleep.
“Very well done, Galadriel,” he murmurs after a brief inspection of his progeny, the praise oozing hot and sweet behind her ears. Oh, because her shoulders relent in their nine and such months of tension, because she can finally take a deep, shuddering breath of relief, cool and quenching down to her toes. She sags against the horse, saited instinct finally receding its hold of her mind, her will. She’s done her duty. “A very perfect child you’ve made.”
The gratitude spills forth before she can wrench it back; she’s shivering so hard from the sudden release it hurts. “T-thank you.”
He turns with Celebrian still safe in his arms, nodding to the deeper part of the wood, another step farther from Eregion, another step closer to what awaits them. A smile in his mouth, so pleased with her. “Now come along, my little commander.”
Sleep comes easily for both mother and daughter for nearly three days; he brings them to the humble keep where he is playing king to the mortal men of the southlands. The people he’s fooled—farmers and fishermen and blacksmiths and bakers—turn to him like flowering buds to the sun, eager for his leadership, soaking up his praise. Galadriel’s disgust only goes so far until she remembers he now has the same effect on her, bound so by her own biology and the baby in her arms.
There is a nursery prepared when you’re ready, he offers, and she thinks of course, because all along, this was inevitable, the prize of his year-long study in patience. But she isn’t, and for three days he keeps them solely in his rooms, letting them both sleep off the last of the sickness plaguing their spirits. They make a warm, soft nest of his bed until they both smell like him again—beechwood sap and bergamot lingering in her daughter’s sparse blonde hair. Galadriel alternates dozing and eating, and Celebrian latches well and often. The colic has, predictably, vanished in such close proximity to her father.
He returns early in the evenings to bathe before crawling into bed alongside them; he never seems to need sleep himself, only studies them with a reserved fascination. Especially the infant who lay between them—reaching out to stroke her little hands, her soft cheek, to count her toes with an indecipherable expression easily mistaken for some sort of paternal angst. Likely a ruse for Galadriel’s own comfort.
The infant returns his curiosity—at first eyeing him quizzically while nuzzled to Galadriel’s breast—but she warms to him quick enough, her feet kicking enthusiastically when he joins them the third day, gnawing on his fingers, cooing while he softly recounts his day, a child eager for conversation. I inventoried the grain stores and re-thatched the roof of the kitchens, see the blister here on my hand from the cudgel? or a foal born last spring, sired by Papa’s horse, perhaps Mama will take you to see her in the stables, Celebrian, and you can decide if it is to your liking to keep. I know you are very discerning.
Celebrian sleeps now, the sound of her noisy, open-mouthed exhales in Galadriel’s ears. Her own hand, the one sparkling with Nenya, is settled on the baby’s middle, feeling the regular rise and fall of her milk-fat belly.
His hand falls over hers, encircling her wrist. “There,” he murmurs, low enough to not wake the child. “Not so bad, is it?”
He coaxes her to part with Celebrian for a few hours, insisting she’ll appreciate the freedom to bathe alone without grubby hands pawing at her breast—she agrees knowing, somehow, he will not harm the child if only because she is part of him, another extension of his power—and because if he did, he would lose the bargaining chip he now seemed so fond of controlling her with. Galadriel would be content to waste herself rather than fall under his crown, but she was unable to condemn an innocent to the same fate. That much was obvious: why else had she escaped mindless in the middle of the night, trying to find him? If she was a victim, it was only to motherly instinct.
After the wetnurse collects the baby and they are alone, he washes her hair in the tub, thick bubbles of soap sliding down her temple. The steam penetrates the lingering soreness in her muscles, but it is difficult to fully relax. She closes her eyes and waits and waits for him to get in, to grope at her slick, naked body. He doesn’t.
“Are you sorry?” He asks, thumb stroking her ear. He has spent the better part of an hour in silence, meticulously braiding her damp hair down the length of her back and over the edge of the tub. She can hear it dripping quietly onto the floor.
“No.”
He sighs, like someone who has extended too much slack on the leash of a dog and found themselves in a quandary about retraining them. “Well—I am. If you insist on making everything difficult, elf, then have at it—stand up.”
She does, she tells herself, not because she is compelled, but only because it is a simple thing he asks. She is capable of standing on her feet, and perhaps she even wants to, to face him like the adversary he is. The water slaps the edge of his copper tub as she rises, displaced by the sudden absence of her weight. Unfortunately she does not particularly feel like a fearsome adversary when he tucks her into a towel, wiping at her wet face and dressing her in a linen shift like a child, holding her chin up to face his.
“Should we experiment a bit?” He says, gently rhetorical. The smile that lifts his mouth is mocking as he turns her face, inspecting her much like he had inspected his daughter in the woods. “Should we see what else you’re capable of, now that you’re going to be good for me?”
“No,” she warns between clenched teeth. “No. This isn't why I came.”
“It is. Give me a kiss.”
She is lifting off her toes before the synapse even fires; hands in his tunic, a helpless noise of want in her throat. He catches her with an arm behind her back, steadies her against him. He laughs, delighted, just ghosting his mouth over her own, testing the shape of it to see if it is as he remembers. “Well now—that’s very promising. Open for me.”
The humiliation is sobering. This time she shakes her head, furious.
He waits, stroking her cheek. He doesn’t need to be cruel about it. He doesn’t need to curse to get his point across, like the time before; open your fucking mouth, darling, back when she hadn’t known the truth and she had only known Halbrand. Back when she had been thrilled by the coarseness of his words and swept up in the excitement of an explicit tryst, submitting freely of her own will. Now they both know her body will do the work for him. He doesn’t have to wait long either; saliva pools in her mouth the longer she resists, glaring at his smirk, tongue pressed firmly to the roof of her mouth to stave off the gagging.
The gagging comes shortly anyway, followed by bile from an empty stomach. She doubles over and retches pathetically in the space between their feet, momentarily blind with disobedience.
He holds her hair back as she gasps for air, wipes her face clean again with the corner of his tunic. “Alright,” he soothes, petting back the loose strands of hair caught in her sudden cold sweat. “Alright. You’re alright. Easy. Tell me when you’re ready to try again.”
He’s the only thing holding her upright, and her fingers dig into his forearms for support. It is a bleak thought: this will end the same way it started—facedown, his come in her belly, his teeth at her neck, his laugh in her ear. It’s only a matter of how badly she wants it to hurt.
“You elves have such a fascinating means of establishing the paternity of your young,” he says casually as she collects herself. “Needing the father nearby. The compulsion to submit yourself to his will. It’s all very…neatly done, threaded into your very creation. Something about ensuring the strength of the familial bond, if I recall? You should be commended, for holding out this long, determined to deceive them—but you’ve always been a stubborn thing, even to your own detriment. I was worried I’d soon need to raize Eregion myself to collect the both of you.”
She wants to close her eyes, afraid the images of Eregion burned to ash wait for her there.
“But I suppose it’s better this way,” he continues, thumb pressing on her bottom lip to slide against her teeth. She can taste the salt of his false skin. “You coming to me. It’s unlikely you would’ve enjoyed the manner in which I like to collect my thi-ngs, goddamn it all, Galadriel—“
The tang of blood pools in her mouth, coppery-tart as he yanks his injured hand back, shaking it. More blood spatters on the floor—though not nearly enough—and Galadriel has only a moment to feel the vicious thrill of success before he’s seized by her hair with the hand that remains intact.
Her brief mount of bravery recedes quickly as the reality of her situation returns. “I j-just—”
“No fucking biting,” he swears, looming above her as his bloodied hand knits itself back together by a needle of shadow—the worst of the wound clearly his ego, then. The verbal order shocks her mouth shut, glues her teeth together in one movement. “If you need rules, we can have rules, until you learn to behave.”
“I’m sorry,” she bleats as he starts to cross the room, dragging her with him. She stumbles over to keep up with his long strides, scrambling likewise to think of the quickest way to placate him. “I am, I didn’t think it would work, with the bond the way it is—I—wait, please!”
“Please what?”
“Please, I’m…” she inhales, grasping. She does not want to spend half the night over his knee, even if the thought makes her squirm in a not entirely unpleasant way. He had struck her in Numenor, her nightgown bunched around her waist, and all it had done was soak her smallclothes. “Ready to try again. Like you said. Be obedient. Be good. You know I don’t have a choice.”
The words bring him pause as he tries to vet the sincerity of her expression, brow furrowed; Galadriel maintains open eyes and a nervous mouth—an even more open mind. She pushes a reminder to the forefront: I came to you, for you. Surely her cooperation was his sweeter vice, however reluctant it was.
“Alright then,” he relaxes his grip, and Galadriel blinks the prickle of tears away, head tender and throbbing dully. “Show me.”
The request worms into her blood, a pleasant rippling when she obeys: tip-toe, earnest, trembling hands pressed to the center of his chest. He palms them, needing to stoop slightly to meet her mouth, like they are only lovers again. She kisses him as sweetly as she can muster, demure forgiveness on her tongue, kisses until her own mouth feels fragile and swollen, chin pink with the rub of his beard.
His free hand—the one she’d bitten, the one he’d already healed—winds back into her hair, a kind touch this time. He deepens the kiss, tilting her head back and gently encouraging her to open wider for the slip of his tongue, allow him deeper access to her mouth. Her head begins to fill with languid warmth, breathing in the scent of him so close, being so good, doing exactly as he says—
His hand tightens experimentally, and he pulls back, an inch between them, then more. He holds her still, searching over her face, eyes heavy-lidded, dark, clearly seduced by the power he now holds over her. The fluttering reflection of the fire in the hearth licks at his endless pupils. “Come kiss me again.”
She makes an unhappy noise. He’s holding her hair too tight, too tense. Maybe he doesn’t realize? Galadriel tries to lean forward anyway, thinking he’ll release her to accomplish the task, but her scalp remains taut. She cannot close the gap. Not on her own.
But she also can’t stop trying.
He allows her to struggle for a few long seconds before she understands it is on purpose, wobbling at the end of a makeshift leash of her hair. She looks up at him, straining and wide-eyed.
“That’s,” he laughs, soft, almost surprised. “Well. Very adorable.”
She flushes. “It is not.”
“Beg me to kiss you.”
“Please,” she babbles without an ounce of haste or shame. “Please, oh please, pleasepleaseplease—“
“I wonder if this is why you never let the Sindar Prince fill you with a child. I’m sure you can hardly stand it, being ordered about like this.”
Her flush turns to anger, sobering once more. Head abruptly emptied of the sweetness he’d poured into it at the mention of her husband, Galadriel glares: “Celeborn wouldn’t disrespect me like this.”
“No,” he agrees far too readily for comfort. “He wouldn’t. Kiss me again.”
She does, helplessly. Again, and again—up on the tips of her toes, whining each time he pulls away to chuckle—feeling like she’s drunk too much wine on an empty stomach, lighter than air, struggling to keep herself still.
It’s the effect he has on her—his scent, the handling, the stern instruction. She knows this. It doesn’t change how she reacts. Or rather, when she tries to fight the compulsion, he manages to draw her right back with a touch or a murmur, the gravity between them a deep, black well, more cloying than ever before. The buzzing in her middle grows thick and pulsing, insistent, bold in its abject betrayal of her mind.
“Stop thinking so hard, little elf,” he hums, holding her swaying body still. “Get on your knees.”
She does not go gracefully, knowing what he means for her to do; she braces herself against the task, which in turn only makes it worse, and she nearly topples over by the time her bottom hits her ankles. She grasps at his clothed thigh for balance.
He clicks his tongue, freeing the length of himself from his trousers, giving it a rough, practiced stroke, thumb at the tip. “Hands in your lap. Open your mouth for me.”
Irritatingly, she can’t seem to bite him; as if her jaw has been affixed just wide enough to accommodate the girth of his cock by his earlier command—no fucking biting, Galadriel. Not only that, but she can’t even feel the urge—the idea evaporates, dewy each time she attempts to grasp it, make it solid, put it to action. He presses in—slicks himself with her spit, half-soft, and pulls out again, hardening against her cheek, tilting his hips to smear saliva on the side of her face, her eyelashes, her hairline, until her face is tacky with it. Testing the limits of his ownership.
He smiles at his work, stroking her wet cheek. “Very pretty.”
She burns, glaring, but the praise is welcomed by her body regardless, a euphoric bubbling in her middle. She doesn’t protest when he palms the back of her head, pushing into her throat, making her choke. Galadriel gags, teary, swallowing desperately in an effort to breathe around him.
“Perfect fucking mouth,” He swears quietly, flexing the hand on her head in a clear effort to control himself, the other coming to stroke the outside of her cheek, languidly feeling himself in her mouth. When his hips begin to move she finds herself in a grateful rhythm, gulping what breath she can until the firm tip breaches her lips again, over and over. Her lashes flutter when she chances a glance up: He looks—well, satisfied, to put it—and a part of her flushes appreciatively at the thought of pleasing him with her mouth. She quickly squashes it.
Once the gagging and tears are constant, her hands curled into shaking fists, still fused to her lap—only then does he quit the abuse of her throat. Galadriel is left to blink and cough and fall forward against his thigh, sucking in air, wiping at her embarrassingly slick chin. His fingers stroke her scalp as she recovers: deceptively gentle. Trying to evidence the kindness in him that she is welcome to earn, no doubt.
“Very well done,” he says, and she shivers, curling her toes. She touches her own throat, feeling the bruise left within as she swallows. “On your back now, darling. On the floor. I want to see your face when you come.”
She looks up, sharp. “I don’t—I don’t want—”
“Don’t be silly,” he interrupts, kneeling with her, cradling the back of her head as she folds. “You’ve had a long day. Let’s not make it longer, pet.”
She is making some mumbling protest, but it sounds incoherent—more noise than word, and weak noise at that. Even more still when he nudges her thighs apart, making space for himself to hover above her. Her hands go in a panicked flutter to his chest, flattening as if to defend the last few inches of space between them.
“Don’t,” he says, looking, awfully, like he almost feels sorry for her. “I don’t wish to punish you more than you’ve already punished yourself.”
She chews the inside of her cheek. It sounds like a choice—but it isn’t, not really—like how it wasn’t a choice to leave her home and her people to join him either. To bring him his child, to wrap herself in his affection like a domesticated, collared pet.
“You aren’t weak,” he argues her thoughts aloud, seemingly sincere. He strokes her ear again, the sensation leaking down her spine. “You never have been, my little commander. But this is how things are going to be now, do you understand? The way things are meant to be.”
She nods jerkily, silent except for the harsh sound of her rapid gulps. The air feels thick, mucky with the scent of him as she realizes what he means to do—what will happen, regardless of what she wants—that he’s going to fuck her, thoroughly. Hold her down while he does it. Press her apart and finish inside her. She’s dizzy, painfully aware of his fingers a hair away from the pulsing gland in her neck. She wants to move away, but what use would it be? He would command her to stay still, possibly command her to enjoy it—
“There’s a fine idea,” he mutters, considering it as he peels the linen nightgown from her body as quickly as he’d dressed her in it. “Might make things easier for you, I’d imagine. Arms up—would you like that?”
“Wait,” she colors pink. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Oh?”
Her rebuttal is tangled in fabric as he brings it over her head, and she huffs in frustration. It occurs to her that he is presenting her with the option much like how a parent talks to a child—the illusion of choice—revulsion stirring in her gut. The yellow or the blue slippers? The blackberry or the fig? Do you want to be my queen now, or later? Would you like to enjoy it when I make you come, or do you want to fight it?
“Galadriel, enough of that. Look at me.”
She makes a pathetic, nervous noise when his fingers dip inside her—already slick. She has been for days now, and he’s been letting her hide it. Wet since the moment she saw him in the wood, probably even before then. She wants to look away, count the cracks in the ceiling, imagine herself elsewhere—a brilliant meadow or a sandy break in the shoreline: cool, clear water lapping at her toes. Instead she finds herself looking up, meeting his gaze. His eyes are the same as she remembers; older than hers, golden-flecked in the center.
She can feel him sifting through her mind as easily as he does her body, the boundary between them thinner and more translucent than gauze. It was easier to keep him out while she remained at a physical distance: with his fingers inside her, it becomes impossible. She arches her back, attempting to wriggle away from the stretch as he hushes her again, but he—
—pinches the back of her neck where the gland is fevered to the touch, squeezes hard, and the whole world goes bright and taut, a shining thing, all the muscle in her body contracting, rigid, long, long seconds of ecstasy—
—and then just as quickly going slack. She hiccups, unable to straighten her spine, her arms limp and numb, a ringing in her ears.
“Wait,” she hears herself whisper, trying to remember what creature she was before the gland has subdued her so. “I don’t…want this. This—”
“You squirm quite enough for someone who doesn’t want, little liar.” His fingertips linger within, and she presses helplessly back at the touch. He clicks his tongue, stilling the behavior. “Whore. You’ve already borne me a child, Galadriel, you want to be filled with another? So soon?”
The shame feels like it might choke her. Even in the depths of suffering there was that secret, prideful joy to draw strength from, feeling the wriggle of life in her belly. But not any child, of course—his, only his. Even if he had ensnared her, she had been the one he’d chosen out of all others, the one he desired; she had ensnared him in turn. How strong a father she’d picked, how powerful, how clever—how fearsome her little child would be, imbued with maiar blood, fit for crowns, fit to rule—
“I wish you had let me see you,” he says wistfully, a thumb slipping between the fold of her, gathering slick, pushing it back in like he might some other substance. His other hand slides to her front, palming her still-softened abdomen, the heel of his hand pressing on a tenderly empty spot. “You know I imagined it every night we were apart, the swell of your belly in your pretty gowns, knowing what I’d done to you? How you looked with my baby. You denied me that, Galadriel. That was incredibly foolish. A man likes to see what he’s done to a woman he’s fucked.”
There are only minutes left for her to be capable of rational speech, and he is using it to fantasize about her pregnancy. She turns her face away so he won’t see her roll her eyes. “I was…unpleasant to be around,” she warns in a sour mumble.
“Very cross, very disagreeable, I heard,” he tsks. “You won’t be this time. I’ll make sure my poor wife is tended to in such a vulnerable state.”
This time seems to rattle something free in her brain. “I—I don’t think—so soon—”
“I’m afraid you are not in a position to be thinking at all, my little commander. Lie still.”
Her wrists are held firmly at her middle, and Galadriel’s squirming halts, braced for the worst—it’s been nearly a year since she’s been touched even by her own hand, and the stretch of his fingers has already brought her easily, wickedly to the brink. The pull of muscle in her back keeping the angle of her spine arched makes the sensation excessive, almost gaudy with pleasure.
“How is it,” he grunts in disbelief, “you still manage to be so tight.”
She doesn’t have an answer for that save but a shameless, high-pitched squeak. He bends over her now, his fingers buried in her pussy, stroking evenly, his thumb finding her clit. His hair tickles her ear when he kisses the tip of her nose; he sounds a little hoarse when he speaks. “You made the sweetest sounds the first time I fucked you, did you know that? The tears, like you didn’t know what to do with yourself when you were all filled up. So upset by how big it was. Confused and lost. So willing to take me anyway.”
She shudders, the memory of their time in Numenor violently flooding through. It had felt so good, so good, when he’d broken her in. “I didn’t know—”
“Part of you did—cried when you came, and made me hold you after, remember, Galadriel? You took a terrible amount of convincing that everything was alright. Then fell asleep all curled up with my come still inside. Whined for more in the morning, you greedy, spoiled brat.”
His fingers press deeper at the accusation, all the way to the bottom knuckle. There’s an odd cramp, a pressure at the very deepest part of her. She bites at the air.
“And what did I do in the morning, Galadriel?”
She squeezes her eyes shut, shaking her head as he bluntly pets her cervix, making her spasm, a sliver of pain. “You—ah—you fucked me.”
“No, little one—say it.”
She wishes the floor would swallow her up. The fever blisters, her cunt clenching up around his fingers and trying to keep them in. Instead he pulls them out when she doesn’t answer. The loss is horrific, so sharp and keen that Galadriel sobs, desperate for anything to make it stop, even the truth. “I…I asked for—a baby, I—I wanted—a baby.”
That night she had wanted, despite everything, dreamt of it, and he had laughed at first, a silly, delighted sound that quickly became serious. A flicker in his expression that should’ve given him away. She should have known then. But he had turned sweetly distracting in the next moment, and kissed her all over her face until she laughed too—my precious elf, he’d said, I’d give you anything you want.
“You wanted to have me put my child in you, remember?” He sighs, the pace of his fingers upon their return moving faster, watching her wriggle fruitlessly, her braid coming undone. “I think you’re going to come.”
It is embarrassing that she does—squeezing her eyes shut and whimpering through it, remembering what she’d told him that night as the feeling between her legs builds to a finality. Her hands in his hair, asking politely for him to come inside me, please please please I want to feel it I want it please I want a baby—the unbearable heat in her neck and chest, unable to think of anything else—thanking him breathlessly when he had, his large body heaving to a stop as he’d emptied himself thick and impossibly warm into her cunt. The stunned expression on his face when he’d pulled out, eyes glossy, and used his fingers to push it back in, Galadriel, where it belongs, hips up, good girl—
She had sat red-faced and leaking in that bed among slivers of early morning sunlight, unsure of what was so deeply wrong with her to beg for such a thing when it was hardly possible—descended from royalty, her Halbrand, but still human. Surely nothing would take. She remembers dozing off a few hours more, his palm on her belly as she slept, a soft warmth there among muscle.
She wonders if he’d known then. If he had willed it into being, coaxing that little spark to light. Or if he’d been as surprised as she was.
But now—too quickly after an orgasm to be comfortable—he presses his cock into her slick pussy and Galadriel’s toes curl as the sensitive emptiness abates, warm-wet and overly full and soft everywhere, at all the edges, even in her mind. Still—even with stretching—
“It hurts,” she whimpers. He gives no indication he’s heard her, arm hooking beneath her hips, pulling her up slightly, seating himself deeper. She feels small when he does that, lifting off the floor, too little compared to him, no room for the rest of his length still to come. She tries to push back, bracing her feet against the rug, whimpering louder, fighting it, making him hear her protest. “I know it hurts,” he soothes, pushing another solid inch into her body, his hair beginning to curl at the back of his neck from the effort of fucking into her. “Brave little elf.”
It is not the same as offering not to hurt her, but the praise settles the rapid, frightened beat in her chest, makes her more docile for a time. But Galadriel is fickle—she has never done well at being prey; she twists as soon as the sting starts to fade to something barely tolerable, aiming to do something, anything contrary—
“Enough,” he snarls, pushing her head back down by the neck—right by the achy nerve that was suited to his designs—and shoving himself into her. She moans, the submission immediately forced, dragging her back down somewhere warm and slick and safe. She wants to stay there—like a little bird nesting in a beam of sun or a leaf rocked gently in a pool of water. And she does, for a little while, rocking under his thrusts, feeling the sharp pop of pleasure when he pushes in over and over, until he is tugging at her hair, kissing the slope of her neck, licking the sweat, asking her something that sounds important.
“Do you want to come again,” he scrapes his teeth over a taut tendon, into the well of her clavicle, bites at her jaw, desperate to consume. “Galadriel, it’s alright to cry—shh. Do you want to come again, darling?”
She nods automatically, hiding it into the spread of his chest, hair sticking to her forehead. Even as she does, the whine wobbles out, unsure, needy: “I—I d-don’t, hn, know.”
He is so deep in her she’ll never get him out—and if she does, there is always more of him to take. That he is older, larger, stronger, endless in every way—the father of her child—and could keep her pinned and full beneath him as long as he wills it so. It would be easier—all of it will be easier if he chooses this small thing, and she can nurse her strength to fight something bigger.
There is something kind about the way he holds her face then, kissing her forehead even as he hilts himself as punishingly as possible to draw out a cry. She digs her fingers into the fat of his forearm, grasping hard enough to keep herself attached to her body, until her knuckles blot white and her fingers cramp.
“Poor child,” he says between absent kisses and wrought hiccups and the slick pulse of her cunt. “Would you like me to decide, from now on? When you come, when you open your mouth? When you spread your legs? When you give me heirs? Is that easier, little one?”
The shame edges her closer to climax, but she nods furiously, whimpering and kissing him back, all desperate, wounded and thrilled to be understood, after so long. She babbles at him—how difficult it was to know what to do, pregnant and alone, wanting him to come rescue her and he didn’t—instead letting her chafe against the cruelty of her own choices, wouldn’t teach her her place, show her where she belonged, so mean, mean, mean, he is so mean to her for the sake of a lesson, she promises she learned it, just don’t make her do it again—
His eyes glint—shards of perfectly formed glass in the dark, the human of him slipping at the edges again, the knitting coming unraveled. “You’ll show me next time,” he says, hand over her belly, pressing down to feel the slide of his cock inside her cunt, groaning when the head bumps her womb, and she panics—because that’s where he’s going to come, inside, again, the place he’s already made his—
“I should,” he threatens, teeth too sharp, too animal for his human skull. “I should, Galadriel, get you fucking pregnant again—right now, I should, don’t tempt me—”
She trembles, reluctantly moving her hips to meet the angle of his thrusts, show him how good she can be, wincing, teeth clacking together when it becomes too much. Soft sounds spill from her mouth, ah ah ahs to smother into his shoulder. He’d asked her before if she was sorry, and she realizes she’s saying it now, coming beneath him, exactly when he demands it of her.
He pulls out and her body goes limp with achy, short-lived relief. Because his hands are already on her again, rolling her over, belly-down, sensitive and jerking, a hand pinned between her shoulder blades to keep her in position. “You’re not done,” he says roughly, punishing when he pushes in again, somehow thicker like this. “I didn’t say you were done, did I?”
“No,” she hiccups, obedient, hands flat to the floor. “No, not done.”
This is the part of him that is angry, she remembers—who despises himself for wanting her so dearly, who has resigned himself to the fact that even if he possessed her in a thousand ways, he wouldn’t rest until he found another. That he would salt the earth in pursuit of perfection and still find himself flawed in the shape of her at its cornerstone.
He comes in her anyway, just as helpless as she is.
Celebrian stirs in her cradle only when the moon has swept through the sky—a few angry burbles just barely tugging Galadriel from a dream when she feels the bed move, the crack of a knee unfolding, the heavy pad of feet on the floor.
The infant quiets as he lifts her to his chest, bringing her to the window, a soft murmur as he points out the city below, the fields stretching beyond, the glow of sunrise an hour yet away. Galadriel hears her child yawn—a tiny exhale of contentment. She will hunger soon and demand to be fed, but for now she’s consoled by the deep hum of her father’s voice, the warmth and security of his arms, and Galadriel may sleep a little longer.
Besides, they have much, much to do in the morning.