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Haldir had to admit to himself that he was, against all odds, surprised. Dumbfounded, even. He was near three-thousand years old and believed he had well and truly seen it all, but there she was.
There you were.
You did not fight like Men fought, with brutal strength and duty-bound fortitude. You did not fight like Elves fought, with endless grace and centuries-won exactitude. You did not fight like the Dwarves fought, with clever tenacity and closely-guarded pride. You did not even fight like the Hobbits, with vengeful loyalty and emotion-fueled strikes. From all Haldir knew of the Free Peoples of Middle Earth, your skill and style mowing down orcs was unfamiliar in all ways.
You were… curious . It was an unfamiliar feeling to him. Thinking himself learned-enough, he’d forgotten just what it was like to feel the gusting winds of confusion-delight-hunger-want, but here he was, curious. And there you were, a curiosity.
He was crouched atop his flet from high above, the natural oak canopy acting as cover for the marchwarden. It was one of the rare days he had to draw up his hood, biting winds nipping at his ear-tips every moment of this long watch.
If he was honest with himself (which he very often is) Haldir would attribute his sudden flush of warmth to your martial prowess.
You swung some sort of long club, the bulbous end sharpened in a half-dozen flat blades as an axe would be. On the other end of the weapon, a wicked serrated edge took one half of the blade while the other was hewn to a deadly-sharp edge. It hooked out at the end where the sword-tip would be, almost like a lethal shepherd’s crook. He had never seen its like; he had never seen your like.
In a rare instance of Haldir not being honest with himself, he dismissed the problem of his admiration as simple curiosity of the weapon you held.
He quietly signaled to his fellow wardens in the trees, and they converged on your position, stepping soundlessly across boughs that did not dare to bend beneath their weight. As he drew closer, more details about you stood out: the sharp grin you wore, the hair that flared as you spun your body, the club-staff-sword-hook- thing spinning three times as fast above you. When the fall landed, the hooked edge on the sword-end embedding itself in an orcish neck, the very wind seemed to fall still, like it had been sundered as well.
It was then that the elves dropped from their branches, floating down with the golden leaves to surround you. Your chest heaved with exertion, but your teeth remained bared in a feral smile. Unease rippled through the other wardens beside him, but Haldir stood his ground. You and he were the picture of contrast: your body coursing with adrenaline and fidgeting with your weapon, his body standing statuesque and controlled without reaching for his own weapon.
Your eyes met, and perhaps the wind stood still again. Perhaps the world ended. Perhaps the entire universe faded away. Haldir wouldn’t have been able to tell you, to enraptured by the force of your attention on him. It felt like a brand, the pain of a sun-burn and the relief of cool water at once. He was undone and remade a hundred times in just the span of silence that preceded the storm of hearing you speak.
“Well, thanks for the help, mellyn.”
Haldir grinned like a lunatic, none of his usual cool demeanor to be found. He could feel his brethren’s sharpening discomfort at the sight; he never smiles, is this good or bad? they seemed to ask.
“You handled yourself well enough,” Haldir said, voice sounding strange around the shape of his smile. “Mellon,” he added after a moment.
Your ears were not pointed, and you did not glow with the grace of the stars. You bore seemingly no signs of the long-lived races of the land, but any signs of Man seemed to evade you entirely. This was, of course, untrue: you bore the signs of the mortal Men, but you bore them so well and with such impressive authority he deemed you a new being entirely, Woman alone.
What is wrong with him?
“What business have you here? A few yards east and you would have made quite the foe within our borders.” He tilted his head, trying to read you the same as you were trying to read him. Most of his body was concealed by many layers of shifting green-gray watch-cloth, and beneath it revealed layers still of light armor and concealed weaponry. His bow, however, remained prominent across his shoulders. He bore no visible rank but the dignity in his shoulders, which had been enough for several thousand years.
You finished your assessment of him with a final, long drag of your eyes up the length of his body. Your gnashed teeth calmed into a twisted pout of lips, and your half-gasps for breath eased into a pleased hmm that Haldir couldn’t interpret.
“In truth, I was chasing the orcs. There were twenty by the nearest trailhead, but these five had fled east until I tracked them down.”
Haldir felt his heart swoon a little, like an elf-maiden in a love song. He felt it in the same way as his curiosity, near-identical to one another. He supposed, poetically, that to fall in love is as much a learning as it is a finding out, the very domain of the curious. His mind, addled as it was, put a few things together. The western watches had seen quiet shifts the last three months. It would have been ominous if it hadn’t been so thorough. “How long have you been fighting orcs, lady?”
You brought your hands on your hips, drawing his attention down to the luscious curves beneath your garments. Even covered in black orc-blood and viscera, he could not bring himself to deny his attraction. He wanted to know the feel of you in his hands, to know you by touch as well as he was growing to know you by sight, by sound, in this moment.
“I am no lady, marchwarden. I am a wanderer with no land or king or man to bind me to it.” His hair stood on end at the conviction in your tone. “I have dwelled west of here some three months,” you gestured with your head, eyes still locked on his.
Haldir felt his wardens start to shift and fidget, discomfort over his speaking with a stranger in a language neither spoke. Not many of his kind spoke the languages of Men, but Haldir had lived quite a long time and would not be seen as ignorant. He gave you a short nod of thanks and respect. “It seems you are responsible for my watchmen’s peace, if this is how you spend your time, la—” he cut himself off with a grin when he saw your glower deepen.
“I assume you will tell me to move on, away from this place?” You ask, haughtiness belying the flash of weariness in your eyes. Had you worked at this task ceaselessly? When was the last time you’d had a moment’s respite?
The jarring, but not unfamiliar feeling of Lady Galadriel seeing through his eyes threatened to startle away his cool behavior. Her watching was not of supervision or authority, but instead more curious in nature. She wanted to see what Haldir would do with you.
His eyes focused in on the slashes in your sleeves where you’d been wounded by orc blades. “These creatures are known to poison their weapons. You may accompany me to the watch-station.”
“I don’t wish to be in your debt, cánima.”
“I don’t wish to charge you a debt with my thanks, lindrandír.”
You exchanged names— handsome-commander, beautiful-wanderer— in the same manner of sparring strikes. Never to harm, but only to test defenses. Whatever you found in his answer, you were pleased by it. The wardens behind him almost snicker, but remember their bearing at the last moment.
“Then let us go. These things reek.”
Stay far from the settlements, and never seek the cities. That was all you’d been told as a child before being handed the traditional weapon of your people and ushered onto the road, alone. You’d wandered the land for ages, keeping to your advice and staying sharp as the edge of the spear-point.
The elf had sent his fellow wardens back to their posts while he escorted you to the watch-station. He had not shared his name, nor did he correct the three names you’d given him. Friend. Marchwarden. Beautiful. He seemed, by all accounts, content with those.
He most likely doesn’t want you asking too many questions. The elves of Lórien keep to their secrets as you keep to your solitude.
Naught but the sound of your boots upon the golden leaves accompanied you on the journey, until he halted you and directed you through an unseen opening within a thicket. “There is a river past the post, should you like to wash when we finish.”
You found yourself quite annoyed at how much you liked his voice, how thrilled it made you to know he was looking at you. As a wanderer, your dress and manner often turned eyes away from you. This elf looked at you like he’d die content doing so. It was new.
You nodded your affirmation and ducked into a well-disguised building. What looked like a shabby lean-to on the outside turned out to be well-furnished and clean on the inside. You blinked a few times at the sudden neatness. “Sit here,” the marchwarden instructed, indicating a beautifully-carved chair before disappearing into a side room. You were almost afraid to sit on it, worried your filthy state would damage it somehow. But you sat anyway.
He returned with a small basket of supplies. It was no healing house, but you supposed wardens stationed on watch had to take care of their own wounds whenever more often than not. His fingers, long and graceful, plucked several items from the basket before he gently moved it away with a brush of his thick forearm.
Then there was that. How dare he be so attractive?
He turned those blue-silver eyes on your wounds, assessing them with a commander’s judgment until he deemed the slash on your shoulder the worse of the two. Without looking away, he reached down and hooked his hand beneath the edge of your seat and pulled you toward him. He hadn’t seemed to exert any great effort, either. Like bearing your weight was easy to him as the basket he’d brought in.
The problem with this move was that now, you were much closer to him. You could see the quicksilver flecks within his eyes, the places age had settled between his mouth and his cheeks, each individual eyelash, all the separate parts of his face that made up a stunningly beautiful whole. Your heart started to gallop in the same unbridled way the rush of battle took you. His hands were warm as they gently washed your wound, rotating your arm to see it better. His dark brows furrowed some.
“What is it?” You asked, after he hadn’t spoken for a moment.
“The poison orcs use comes from luinaië. Its berries, if eaten, can drop a man dead before they hit his stomach. In the concentrated coating they temper their steel with, orcs can stop a human’s heart just by brandishing the blade too close to his nose.” He didn’t continue, only quietly cleaning out the inside of the wound where your skin and flesh had split. It wasn’t very deep, and you were well-used to injuries, but his careful touch meant you felt nothing but the warmth of his hands.
“So I’m to die?” You asked, not feeling the normally-accompanying dread and panic that usually followed a lethal strike.
“The poison drew itself from your blood.”
“What?!” You twisted your head to look down at your shoulder, but that put your face less an inch before his. It took several seconds for you to gather yourself and look away from him, down at the wound.
It was red, inflamed as any laceration, but the black poison from the blade had indeed pulled itself out of your body, dripping into and staining your undershirt instead. “How—?”
“Indeed,” the elf murmured, drawing his own chair closer to pull your other arm in by the elbow, looking down at your forearm. The gash there looked much the same, even if it still contained bits of rubble and dirt inside it. “This one bears the same fate. You’ve been fighting off orcs for three months; you never were injured before them?”
“Of course I was,” you said, cocking your head. “I didn’t know about the poisoned blades until now.”
“How interesting.” His eyes went glassy for a moment before he refocused, starting the process anew to clean out the wound on your forearm. With his head bowed before you, he spoke again. “My Lady Galadriel requests to meet you.”
Your blood went cold for a moment before the name registered. Of course you’d heard of Galadriel. Once that thought settled, you stiffened again. Meet you?
“Why…?” You asked, watching him carefully.
“That is her own counsel she keeps.” He knew as little as you did. “But, were I to guess, I would say she’s curious about you. As am I.” He did not take his hands from your wrist and forearm, but he looked up at you. Your faces were so close your noses brushed. Against his unnatural stillness, your fidgeting seemed amplified. Close enough to kiss, you thought with a surge of delirium.
“What exactly are you curious about?” Your voice comes out in a whisper, and for the smallest moment your lower lip brushes his. Why aren’t either of you pulling back? Why do you want to press closer?
“Many things,” he said in the same hushed tone. “But I confess I cannot think of any other but one, lindrandír.”
“What’s that?” You asked, feeling your eyes flutter just a moment.
“I’m curious to know what it is like to kiss you.”
“How curious?”
His eyes sparkled with mirth, seemingly brighter for the dark eyelashes around them. His smirk drew his laugh-lines in, and your heart leapt in your chest. Devastatingly curious, his countenance said.
The kiss you crashed together in was inelegant as it was perfect, bold as it was careful, too short as it lasted forever. His hand found the side of your neck, the warmth of his palms searing you from the inside out. His thumb grazed the side of your jaw, drawing your face up so he could kiss you deeper. You bent to him as a flower to the sun, content to bask in him.
“Wait,” you whispered, gasping for air. He pulled back, panic in his eyes for the first time since you’d met him. “I don’t know your name.”
He laughed then, a joyous thing that shut his eyes and made him glow with the light of stars. He takes a breath of relief and looks to you. “Nor I you.”
“I asked you first.” His thumb traced the high point of your cheekbone, a tender gesture you wanted to melt under.
“Haldir.”
You told him yours. “Mae govannen.” Well met, indeed.
“Mae govannen. Now kiss me again. I’m still curious about the rest of you.”