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He enters her mind as if he has always been there, like crisp air swaying the dandelions. It is no longer her mindspace alone; he has woven his memories into it, fashioned it into a home meant just for them.
He dares to stride over to where she stands, atop a hill that overlooks her fading realm.
A helmet with melted spikes obscures his face, but she knows he chose the skin she once loved, the one she touched as darkness descended–
“You have awakened in me the parts that long for power.” Galadriel says to the shadow that bears his form. “You have corrupted me.”
His laugh is spiked and bitter. “And you think you left me unchanged?" Colors light up his face, the familiar tanned skin coming alive under her mind's brush. "I wished to hide among mortal men. But you thrust glory upon me, made me king and savior. Worse, you made me crave it again, power. Because it's the one thing that binds me to you,” he says, with effort, the words lodging themselves in his throat. “ You have corrupted me .”
It was too much. The admission sliced into her, revealing parts of herself she dared not confront: the unquenchable thirst, the ever-burning fire she fights to keep dormant, the very things that severed her from her kin and bound her to him eons ago.
She tries to shut her mind’s door to him, but he remains, his form solidifying until his fingers on her chin feel real. She draws power from Nenya, but the ring resists her commands, cutting off the blood flow in her finger. Their link endures, a rusty chain she rarely pulls, but when she does, vines thread around it.
“You enchanted my ring!”
“I did not need to, Galadriel.” Yet Nenya hums with the weary cadence of his voice. “For power to be forged, it requires sacrifice. You imbued the ring with your darkest memories, everything you yearned to forget—including me. It holds power now, but it knows my name.”
She carries a part of him, drops of his darkness, which she wields to safeguard her kin.
“What of your ring?” It gleams with the glow of the unseen world, her people’s tongue etched on the band. The gold whispers. She has felt its pull for an age, coming close–
“You held it, in Lothlorien,” he scans through her memories, pages of scrolls lying on their mindspace. “Yet you refused. As you refused me in the raft.”
And yet, she still bears a ring binding her to him. Cruel, inescapable destiny.
“I passed the trial.” She was judged, and the tides of fate deemed her heart pure. She was free to make the journey to the undying lands. But the freedom to diminish is hollow, she would rather die here, entomb herself in the land she fought for, as mortals do.
“I didn’t. To do so would mean relinquishing everything that ties me to Middle-Earth, and I couldn't—not while you still walk upon its plains.”
“So you replaced me with a metal orb?”
His thumb caresses her jaw. “I consoled myself with power when I couldn’t have you.” The armor melts away from his skin, revealing Halbrand as she knew him, the uncrowned king. “That’s the cold, selfish glittery object of my desire that I get instead of you.”
“Destroy it, then.”
His fingers weave through her hair, pushing it back to reveal her eyes.
“Only you have the power to do that. Come to Mordor and end this. Let me hold you once, and death will seem like a mercy for not having you.”
The rings hum in perfect harmony.
She hugs his torso, resting her head on his chest, feeling notes of forgotten songs coursing through him. Her own melody intertwines with his, she senses the anguish in the fervent embrace he returns, desperately.
She sees it now, destruction is already consuming him from within.
It can only be her to end it.