Chapter Text
(Alternate battle scene and conclusion)
Gil-Galad’s orders were implicitly clear.
Elrond was not to be informed of Celebrimbor’s unexpected arrival. He was to remain in healing halls until he permitted himself to be attended by his choice of healers (this did not include himself or Loreláthon’s incompetent minder), but no measures were to be taken without his unwavering permission. There would be no witnesses and no wagging tongues. The matter would be swept into the wind as was appropriate for the circumstance, and time alone would reveal the damage wrought.
He had ordered that Elrond was not to be disturbed until he was prepared to face the onslaught of skepticism and political unrest that was doomed to befall him from the moment he questioned his king. (He was no longer a prisoner, yet neither was he safe, and Gil-Galad was forced to confide in Yenneth to ensure he was securely confined without the threat of another guard detail.)
The question was who had spectacularly failed their one, simple role in corralling a wounded herald, and if this merited them the position of minding Loreláthon for the next century. For Camnir skidded past the guards in the commotion of flustering hands and heaving lungs, all but bludgeoning Gil-Galad’s walls with the desperation to share his thoughts as he gasped out,
“Galadriel — she named him Deceiver. Elrond ran to her aid — I could not stop him!”
Terrible certainty speared through Gil-Galad’s chest and he ran, snatching Aeglos from the doorway and ordering the guards to gather their comrades and follow.
He did not realize until he reached meadow slopes that the pouch holding three rings chorused from his knit fingers.
Nor did he desire to have any part of them, for there beneath the golden tree three warriors locked blades, proud and fierce and fair, and there to the right thundered the falls which had nearly carried Elrond to his doom.
How like the Valar to bring him back to this moment with no choice but to use the rings or forsake them entirely.
He could not dredge his mind from the shadows of repulsion and guilt to make that decision.
But Elrond did.
The healing halls were quiet, not soundless. Elrond was grimly aware of the audience waiting outside. Galadriel would be pacing and Camnir fretting, soon to be joined by others who pitied his wretched state. He didn’t need their placations or hollow reassurances. If they would only leave him alone until the marks of humiliation faded and he could once more be himself – if such a state was to be found. Gil-Galad might seek reconciliation, but Elrond knew the tenuous line he walked even before his loyalty came into question. Restitution would not come so easily, even if he sought refuge in Eregion.
Mellírin was gracious, overlooking his faltering composure and working swiftly to apply ointment and bandages to hide the marks they would never speak of again. Galadriel would fuss, but she could not thwart silence, and Camnir must never know. It was enough the High King had seen his disgrace.
Blows earned dueling a skilled comrade or defending against the shadows were symbols of endurance. These were declarations of supremacy. Ownership. Forced subservience to the mighty and proud. Even the Feanorians, captors as they had been at the start, never laid hands to himself or Elros to prove their authority.
Every choice was stripped away. Whether to eat or dress, to sleep or stare at the scroll he couldn’t even concentrate on as he waited for his minders to return without warning. Even Mellírin's hands now made him shiver, gentle and swift as she was in soothing the hurts he could not reach himself. He felt more limber, at least, able to raise his arms on his own when she helped him back into his tunic. Stiffness would be his curse for many days to come, and then this evil would be forgotten.
Just like Gil-Galad’s oath. Nevermore to be left in the company of his tormentors, indeed. Perhaps Vändel had not used the cane to inflict his will, but the degradation of being forcibly dressed and cleansed was far worse. For hands left unseen scars which burrowed deeper than any Orc blade, tainting the fea long after bruises faded.
It was a mistake, Gil-Galad promised.
He didn’t know.
He had promised.
Elrond didn’t know when he stopped breathing right again, only that he came to himself clutching Mellírin's hand as she hummed a nonsensical tune rather like a robin greeting the dawn. He wiped his damp eyes on his sleeve, mustering silence for armor, and patted her hand as he released it.
“Goheno nin. I was not…”
“There is nothing to forgive,” she reassured him. If she had somehow sailed to Valinor and back to retrieve the tea that mysteriously appeared in her hand, he would not be surprised. It was sweet and spicy on his tongue – peppermint to soothe, lavender for calm, chamomile for clarity and cloves to deter illness – and he drank it without heed for the scald. Mellírin tutted and poured a second cup, tapping the rim with the order to drink it slower (“Or else you won’t be able to taste anything and then you’ll have spoiled my hard work.”)
He consented, foolishly grateful that she had touched the cup and not his hand to instruct him, and for a precious span of time he could focus on the sunlight on his cheek and the curl of warmth on his tongue and nothing else.
Nothing, that is, until Camnir’s voice resounded against the doorway with increasing urgency. Mellírin rolled her eyes, marching to the door to give a stout reminder of the basis of separate healing halls where one could rest in tranquil solitude, only to falter when Galadriel shouted on the other end.
“Deceiver!”
Sword on sword. No words were needed. Elrond bolted to the door, sweeping Mellírin around and behind him, and yanked Camnir inside just as a black blade notched the wood where his neck had been. He swiped his friend’s dagger, tearing his attention away from Galadriel and her fair foe long enough to grip Camnir’s hand and implore him, “Find the High King! Do not stop. Send anyone who will heed you!”
By the king’s orders there were no guards at the door or any surrounding halls. They had no other defense save the Mellírin’s herb knife, and she was not trained to fall in battle. Elrond shoved her back as she tried to flit out to help, regret seizing his conscience when she stumbled, and he slammed the dagger where two seams met, penning her inside. She would bruise her feet kicking the door like that, but she could not hope to survive if Sauron turned his sights on her.
Whirling under the swipe of a black blade, Elrond snatched up the long knife Galadriel tossed to him and locked blades with her, driving the enemy back a pace. Brandy eyes were feral with coveted victory.
“It appears that the nightingale has sharpened his beak. Let’s see how well you sing.”
Like a lashing serpent Sauron spun them back, his ebony blade a lashing spoke of fire and malevolence. For every blocked cut they were driven back three paces, a terrifying retreat that forced them onto grassy slopes. In disorganized pairs the king’s soldiers routed to aid them, only to fall back like discarded puppets from a flit of Sauron’s hand. He was toying with them, pushing them back to the golden tree that even now rained blackened leaves as evil finally choked it from within.
Desperation flooded Elrond’s heart and he expelled it in a hollered prayer, darting under the next blow to snatch up Vorohil’s sword. He felt the sweep of black flames skirt his ear, singed hair a foretaste of the agony if such evil met flesh. Long knife and sword he spurred at mocking blue eyes, snarling when the Deceiver twirled to launch him into Galadriel, one arm tucked behind his back as he merrily dodged their strained lunges.
By their strength alone they would fall. Without the combined force of an army they could not overwhelm this maddening dance creeping towards death. Fools they were not to see through his disguise in Eregion! (Fool Elrond was now, for surrendering to despondency while the enemy strolled into Lindon.) He blocked another downward stroke with both blades, his arms trembling as sweat streamed down his battered shoulders, and looked past the insipid sneer at the crownless king who staggered from his run just shy of the wilted tree. In his right hand was Aeglos and in his left the gleam of the silmarilli.
One more the waterfall was to his back and the enemy before him. The same sense of certainty locked Elrond’s knees and he nodded to his king, dropping Galadriel’s knife and holding out his hand.
Gold spun in an arc and he captured it, spiraling to duck the furious sidestroke as Sauron failed to seize the ring from his hand.
Power crackled in Elrond’s fist and he smiled as the darkness faltered, a song that was not his own surging through his limbs and lending him strength beyond the might of his kin.
He knew what he had to do.
Scorn and affection toyed with Galadriel’s mind, seizing her with luminous brown eyes and then dismissing her with calloused blue. Ever did the Deceiver flit between guises, now a blacksmith, now an Elvish prince, now the face of a trusted friend. He kept his sights on her and his blade against Elrond, dividing them through violence as surely as a sea wall. Galadriel believed she could withstand him, if only by spite and hatred alone, but Elrond was flagging before he sprang to defend her (fool of a Peredhel!), and the battering of steel rattled his teeth, shaking him apart until he could barely lift his arms. Sauron toyed with him as a cat would brace its paw over the timid mouse, cornering him and drawing back each death blow at the last moment. It was not enough to spill Luthien’s blood on the roots of the blackened tree. He wanted Elrond to kneel; to admit despair; to covet death from a benevolent lord.
Galadriel locked her fingers around one slim wrist, cringing as linen bandages reminded her of the misdeeds of her kind, and closed off her mind to the association as she spun Elrond away from the melee. He floundered – tripped – nearly fell – and she snap-kicked Saurons’s smirk, pulling away his attention long enough for Elrond to find his balance. This weaving spiral of blades and mockery could not last forever. Ever was Elrond pushed back towards the falls that seemed to whisper with Elwing’s song. Ever did Galadriel realize the futility of two Elves standing alone against the darkness. They needed help, and non was to be found. They needed power beyond song, weapons beyond blades. They needed….
Gold sparkled in a glittering arch as Elrond reached forth his hand, and Saurons’ attention slipped as he snatched for the tumbling ring. In that instant his concentration was compromised. Galadriel dove to put her blade between his ribs while Aeglos flashed from the right. A prancing twirl and Sauron was simply not there, black eyes gloating as he reciprocated Galadriel’s kick and slashed at Gil-Galad’s wrist. The pouch spilled open, mithril clinging against stone, and Galadriel stooped without conviction. Nenya sprang to her finger like she wanted to be found. In that moment something Galadriel did not know she had lost was healed, banishing the shadows of her brothers’ needless deaths. Her sword shone as she drove it at the face of evil, and she saw fear flicker from blue to lit coals as Sauron barely ducked.
Narya claimed Gil-Galad’s hand and the fury of a guardian consumed him from within. He pushed back Sauron with whirling glave, forcing him to turn away from Elrond, who stooped as though wounded, light bleeding from his clenched fist. It leeched from his eyes, punching the air from his shuddering lungs, and when he released it in a scream the tree burst from its corroded shell, scattering blackened fragments like butterfly scales as golden light stripped off each poisoned leaf. Now Sauron faltered, fear swirling into his eyes like rain dousing a fire pit. Anger hardened them in the next instant and he snatched out, tearing Aeglos from Gil-Galad’s grip and hurling it over the falls
Galadriel shrieked Elrond’s name, knowing without any gift of foresight what he would do.
Yet there were no secrets among those who knew him well. Even as Elrond ran to put his blade or himself before his king, Gil-Galad enfolded him and whirled away, his boot scraping the edge of the rocks. In the light of rings Galadriel saw the path before them and her heart screamed to deny it. For in the shadows or this strange foresight it was Elrond who stood above his fallen cousin, his sword stained black and his eyes rent with grief, Vilya gleaming on his hand as he refused this last desecration.
And then a long knife swished into her vision and Sauron screamed, holding the stump of his arm as black blood poured over his fingers. Like his spirited mare Lore nipped with white teeth, challenging the wolf who dared flank the herd. Then confusion shattered his ire and he looked from blond locks to blackened eyes with increasing bewilderment.
“You’re not Vändel.”
“You.” The livid snarl twisted with the same futile infuriation one would reserve for a pebble that kept turning up in their boot.
“Ah,” Lorel said, faltering back a step as his eyebrows flicked up. “So about that….”
His confession would be lost to the centuries, for Galadriel lost no more time in swinging her blade, separating neck sinews in a cascade of black blood.
“Nae!” Gil-Galad shouted, tightening his grip on Elrond and holding out his hand just as the body burst in a blazing flash of light and ashes.
Galadriel saw them soar over the edge before her head struck the tree and she knew no more.
Cold fingers against her brow launched Galadriel upright with a gasp, her sword shearing cloth as her assailant yelped and scrabbled back.
“Spare me from trying to save your life again!”
Groaning for the pulsing in her head and a surge of self-pity as Lorel hovered like a nagging beetle, Galadriel rolled upright and planted a hand down to steady herself, blinking into the grey light. Frosted snowflakes sifted above her, dusting Lorel’s traveling uniform ashen and coarse, almost like the mountain….
Understanding filtered in stages. Galadriel brushed clumps of silt from her face, coughing as she surveyed the wasted landscape. The golden tree creaked ominously behind her, its hollowed trunk blacked as if by fire. She and Lorel stood alone on the frost-crunched hillside.
“The king?” Galadriel croaked, shambling to her feet and shaking off Lorel’s hand. “Elrond?”
“I just woke up,” Lorel scowled, pacing to the edge. “Peel your eyelids and put on your climbing boots if you’re going to follow me — it’s a long ways down.”
He stalked back, kicking up clumps of ashen fronds, and stooped to snatch up the glimmer that could not be suffocated. Vilya. Tossing it lightly, he squeezed it onto his third finger and twirled it around, holding it against the choked sunlight. With a shrug he wrenched it off, tossing it to Galadriel. “Don’t know what’s so special about it, but the Peredhel didn’t want to let go. C’mon. I’ll carry you if you like.”
Galadriel would not like and made a point of stalking ahead, grimacing as blood trickled down her temple. A fine pair they made — two grey Orcs slugging down the wilted slopes in search of lost kings. (Except that Elrond was no king, and yet she had seen the circlet on his brow in a woodland realm where the rivers danced to his command.)
For once in his life Lorel was silent. He glided beside Galadriel like a wraith, the ash trail swallowing their footsteps. Here and there he paused, craning to see beyond the river which stretched below.
“We need Yenneth,” Galadriel ordered him only once. She scowled at his noncommittal hum and forged ahead.
“The Purger has her own problems upstream,” Lorel commented, bounding across the tallest rocks as he scanned the shore on either side. “I don’t know if anyone was breathing.”
Now Galadriel recognized the pragmatism for what it was, and she could offer no comfort. Where one fool blundered the other was often not far behind, yet Nuréin had not sidled up to join their quest. Whether he lived or not would not be settled by fetching a healer. Lorel had deliberately focused on the greater concern and refused all other distractions.
She did not imagine he would stay long in Lindon if he found himself guarding the halls alone.
The scuff of a staggered footstep was her only warning before Lorel honed in like a fox eyeing a rabbit. “Starshine,” he breathed out before he took off, loping from one smooth stone to the next and leaving Galadriel far behind even as she hollered for him to wait.
Then there was no time to waste and she quickened her own stride despite the treacherously shifting stones.
Lorel shoved Elrond back with one finger to the sternum, tearing off golden ties and layered silks before shoving at the settling water Elrond had no strength to expunge. Narya glittered on Gil-Galad’s hand as if tethering the fëa when blue lips forbade residence. Not to be left useless, Elrond crawled to press his hands against still temples once more, lisping a song that only jostled into a feeble whine as his battered frame shook apart.
“Elrond! Peace,” Galadriel soothed, yanking off Lorel’s cloak to wrap around his sodden shoulders. When Elrond nearly fell over his king she yanked him away, holding him down when he cried out and fought her with bleeding, icy hands.
“Don’t let him get close again,” Lorel snarled, turning Gil-Galad to the side and whacking him between the shoulders thrice. “He’ll kill himself trying to fix this.”
“I — I c-can save him,” Elrond chattered, keening when Galadriel refused to let go. “Please!”
“Hush, mellon nín,” Galadriel soothed, forced to restrain him with the same brute force of his tormentors. Her heart seized when he cried out, curling away from the arms wrapped around his bruised shoulders. “You have done your part. Let us help him now.”
He had not, and they could not, yet neither could Galadriel let him expend his spirit trying to hold back the last shadow. She saw apprehension slur into pessimism in avid blue eyes even as Lorel continued trying to return breath to stilled lungs. She clutched Elrond to herself, willing her whispered comforts to seize and heal the self-reproach that would inevitably follow.
Healing of the fëa was beyond Galadriel’s power, yet the cracks in Elrond’s hands suddenly sealed without a scar as the bruises peeking out from his bandaged wrists melted away. Lorel looked up and spewed a curse.
“Mahal. Give me the Peredhel. I know how glitter rocks work and you’re the only excuse we have for a healer.”
Though Galadriel had no idea what she was doing she traded off one cousin for the other, hissing for Elrond to behave himself when he twisted in Lorel’s grip and bit his arm. Tenderly she touched her fingertips to Gil-Galad’s grey face, willing warm blood and breath into his still form.
Nenya sang on her finger and she felt her command surge into idle veins, smoothed congealed streams and banishing the chill. The heartbeat flickered and then pulsed, yet the mind refused to be swayed.
“Okay just — ow! Fine but if you so much as bat one eyelid I will sit on you!”
Long fingers rummaged in Galadriel’s pocket as Elrond wrangled himself back to Gil-Galad’s head and caught the ring Lorel tossed to him. Without hesitation he donned it, no longer shivering as he braced his forehead against his king’s. Lorel prowled to the other side, watching them both, his eyes flickering dangerously to Gil-Galad’s right hand.
“Hm. Why not.”
He plonked himself down between Galadriel and the arm he seized, ignoring the elbow to his ribs as he slid Narya from the king’s finger to his own. Elrond growled, too caught up in following Gil-Galad’s path to warn him off. Scarlet flickered in the depths of blue as Lorel flexed his hand, examining the red stone with a wistful sigh.
“The things I could do with you, my love.”
He shrugged and planted his hand on Gil-Galad’s chest. “Hey, Goldie!”
Elrond yelped as Gil-Galad launched upright, clocking his chin and spilling him onto the rocks. A warrior’s hand brutally twisted Lorel’s wrist before the ring was plucked from his hand.
“Never. Do that again,” Gil-Galad snarled, dark eyes wroth with unnerved displeasure. Blood trickled down his forehead where he and Elrond had knocked skulls, but he did not release his grip until Lorel raised an unrepentant eyebrow and raised his free hand in surrender. Fitting the ring back onto his own hand with a troubled glower, Gil-Galad coughed low and straightened his disheveled robes.
“What of the Deceiver?” he rasped.
“You’re looking at him,” Lorel said, plucking ash clumps off his shoulder. “Well. What’s left of him.”
“He is gone,” Galadriel promised. How strange that the sun shone brightly now, raising the mist and the ash clouds that had blotted the trees.
Softness eclipsed Gil-Galad’s expression as he reached behind him, reaching out and then shuttering when Elrond stiffened. With a keen Elrond suffered him to press a hand to his cheek, brushing the cut that even now sealed as Vilya erased Vändel’s terrible deeds.
“I heard you calling for me,” Gil-Galad murmured.
Elrond clasped the hand to his face, falling into Gil-Galad’s embrace when he leaned up to cradle him. Lorel grumbled under his breath about too-easy reconciliations and nipped to his feet, making for the cliff face where others awaited lay wounded. Pressing her hand to Elrond’s, where Narya clasped and three rings banished the lingering clouds, Galadriel murmured her relief and kissed her little cousin’s brow before leaving him to make amends with his king. She followed quickly after Lorel, determined to bring the same hope to those who had stood against the deceiver.
Far above them the golden tree burst forth new blooms in a cascade of healing light.