Chapter Text
“What have you done?” she asks slowly, pointedly. She does not try to stare him down like she did in Eregion when they fought. By now, after she returned to the city of the Elven smiths a few weeks ago and gazed at its ruins, the fight has left her and only sadness remains – sadness about Celebrimbor and his people’s fate, about Adar’s fall and death, and about the end of any hope for a peaceful future.
“What have you done?” she repeats, in those half-dreams where he comes to her, or she goes to him, she hardly knows. The state of meditation that the Elves engage in instead of real sleep should be restful, but it is not so for her. Probably, Galadriel thinks, it is not restful for any of the Elves who are now building Imladris, a new realm, under Elrond’s guidance. But they do not talk about it. They do talk about Eregion, but not about how its fall haunts them, day and night. And they do not talk about dark visions of the future they must all have.
They talk about Sauron but nobody utters his name. The name of the one who visits her in her dreams, the name of the one she visits in his dreams. Their shared dream. She finds it very difficult to admit this even to herself.
When she asks him the rhetorical question – because they both know very well what he has done – he does not answer. Usually he sits at some distance, in a casual position, or leans against a rock, like now. Because they meet outside. In a forest, on the top of a mountain. The scenery shifts slightly from one time to another, but the aesthetic remains the same. It is not any specific place, or not one she recognizes. It is not threatening in any way, not gloomy or dark. They are not meeting in Mordor. They are not meeting in Valinor or any Elven realm, either. They are both dreaming, or daydreaming, of a neutral place.
In reality, she thinks as she watches him with sadness, they cannot meet again like this in any place whatsoever. Not on his territory, not on hers, and not on a neutral one. Not alone. Ever again. When they meet next time, it will be with their armies and on a battlefield. There is no future, not after what he did, in which the two of them could talk privately, about anything at all, whether in a friendly or hostile manner. Not even a future in which they could fight a duel, like they did in Eregion. This will not be allowed by the Elves, and she knows now it’s pointless because she would not stand a chance in a fight against him.
Through his acts, through his savagery, he made any future meeting between them impossible. The door is shut. Even the door to a real-life conversation, let alone anything else that once he (and she?) may have envisaged… whatever it was that may have crossed her mind, for a second, in the forest in the Southlands when he told her how he felt fighting by her side, or by the grassy banks of the Glanduin river in Eregion when he asked her to be his queen.
She refused back then, even if for a moment, perhaps, she did entertain the thought… now, after what he did, that door is shut. It cannot be otherwise.
“You have ruined everything,” she hisses. He could counter by saying there was nothing to ruin because nothing existed between them. The moment he showed her his true colours and made his pitch, she turned him down. But he does not raise this; he remains silent.
“I hate you,” Galadriel says. To that, he finally reacts. He does not exactly flinch but shifts his stance a touch.
“That might be true, but it’s not the whole truth,” he remarks.
“Then it should please you. Half-truths are your weapon of choice, Deceiver.”
“And who are you deceiving, Galadriel?” Sauron asks.
If she is deceiving herself, if she is deceiving her High King, Elrond, and all the Elves who would never guess how complicated her feelings towards their enemy still are, then so be it. Better deceive everyone than admit it. Because she cannot help it – seeing him as Halbrand stilled her hand when they duelled, and even today the memory of the time they were friends and allies pains her enormously. Even today she still cannot fully accept it was all deception.
Because maybe it was not. Maybe he was sincere then, but what of it? That is even worse, given what he did afterwards. And she won’t let him blame her for it. She won’t let him claim none of it would have happened if only she had accepted his offer. Her task was not to fix him. It was nobody’s task but his. If he couldn’t stay on the right path without her light, then he was lost anyway. She did not owe him anything, and not even with a ring of power can one Elf keep a Maia, a being infinitely more powerful than herself, from falling back into darkness.
“You are arguing with yourself in your mind,” Sauron comments. “I never said I blamed you. You are blaming yourself. What is the matter, Galadriel? Are you less certain of being right than you used to be?”
“Get out of my mind, Sauron!”
He looks the way he looked in Eregion, that is to say not like Halbrand but like Annatar. Not rough and ready for a fight, but impeccable to the last detail. A midnight-blue robe, long golden hair, his face smooth and expressionless like a stone. It is a strange choice – if he wanted to be persuasive, he should appear as Halbrand to her. But maybe this means it is she who creates this strange vision, her own mind is doing it, while Sauron is not really here.
“I am really here,” he counters. “Even though here is not real. We are meeting in our minds, yes. But I am not a figment of your imagination.”
“That’s exactly what a figment of my imagination would say.”
“Perhaps. As usual then, you must believe whatever you want.”
“Why are you here?” Galadriel inquires. “Why are we meeting like this? What is there left to say? All the bridges are burnt. All the hope of peace is gone. We are at war. Why do you still want to talk to me?”
“For the same reason you want to talk to me. Whatever this reason is, it must be the same for both of us.”
“What happens next?” she asks. As they are both here, she may as well ask. He will tell her what he wants and no more than that, but at least they are talking.
Why, indeed, does she want to talk to him? What is this reason they share, the reason for which they both desire this meeting?
“Maybe you regret you refused the crown,” Sauron offers lightly, almost playfully, almost as if it was a joke. No, it is not the crown she wanted. If she was tempted for a moment, it was not because of the crown or the power he proposed to share with her. Well, perhaps it was a little because of the power. That power could have saved the Elves from fading, and at that time the rings were not created yet, so the fading remained a real threat. In any case, Galadriel did not desire that power to rule. She would like to have her own realm one day, but she never wanted to rule the whole of Middle Earth. His wild ambition, his overblown ego, his hunger for absolute power: she never shared that and never understood it.
What really tempted her was the complicity she shared with him. The same thing he talked about in that forest in the Southlands. Fighting at your side, I felt... if I could just hold on to that feeling. Keep it with me always. Bind it to my very being…
Together they were more than the sum of their parts. Yes, she felt that too, and she told him that. It is true that they could do so much good, using his power and her moral compass. And more than that: she could learn from him. With him by her side, she would have access to the deepest knowledge and the ancient magic from the very beginnings of time. So much could be built on that. And she would love to see what a being like him – a superior, divine being – could create if only he put his mind to creating rather than destroying. The beauty he could call into being…!
“But this is precisely what I wanted to do,” Sauron frowns. “Heal Middle Earth. Rebuild after Morgoth.”
Galadriel sighs. They have already had this conversation.
“No. You wanted to rule it, to introduce your order, and your tyranny.”
“You don’t know what I would have done. What we would have done. We will never know now.”
“No, we won’t,” Galadriel agrees, mortified. She turned him down because she was afraid he would stray away from the light – and afraid she would not be able to prevent it. Afraid she could not stop the evil in him from reawakening, and then she would be stained by him and slide into darkness and infamy with him, like he did with Morgoth. Afraid she would not be strong enough to keep him in the light, but he would be strong enough to drag her into darkness.
“As if it was your light against my darkness only,” Sauron says, and she has the impression there is a touch of bitterness in his voice. Or maybe she is imagining it. Maybe she reads emotion in him where there is only cold deception. She cannot tell.
“Was it not? You said yourself you wanted my light.”
“That did not mean I had none of my own. If I did not have any, why would the light in you appeal to me?”
“And what happened to your light?” Galadriel explodes. She takes a few steps forward and suddenly they are very close, less than a metre stretching between them. “What have you done to it? What have you done to Eregion? There is destruction in your wake – again. Everyone abhors you – again! You have an army of Orcs again, and you are the king of a realm of horrors in a burnt and desolate land. Does this not strike you as remarkably similar to your previous incarnation?”
He looks straight into her eyes. His face is near hers and she watches all his minute facial expressions: a strained grimace around his mouth, a muscle trembling, his eyes like two ice shards. Perhaps the skin around his eyes will darken in anger, like it did on the raft in the vision by the Glanduin river, just before he threw her into the water and left her to drown.
“Such a waste,” Galadriel whispers. She won’t say any more, she won’t give him the satisfaction. But… such power, such wisdom. Such a beauty of mind. An ocean of possibilities. All wasted. This is what she regrets, and not anything she lost by refusing him. She regrets what he could have been, and how he has chosen, time and again, to be something else.
“Do you want to see me dead?” Sauron asks. She flinches; she certainly did not expect him to ask this.
“I tried to kill you, didn’t I? When we duelled. Very ineffectively, but I did try.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“So you think I would have regretted killing you if I had succeeded? You’re saying I would have mourned you?”
“Yes,” he says simply. He does not smirk or gloat, nor does he seem angry. He states a fact.
And he is right. She would have mourned him. She wants his death, but should he die, she would grieve. Why? Because, as she said, it would be a waste? Because he could have been so much more, so much better? Or is this not the whole truth again?
There will be war and they will fight on opposite sides. She will spend millennia fighting him. She will, she must win in the end, or rather her side must win. This is the way of the world, is it not?
But in the meantime…
Will she be strong enough to close her mind to him? Or will they be meeting like this, in this no-Elf, no-Maia, no-man, no-Orc land, and talk about nothing? Giving each other no new information that could advance the cause of one or the other, bringing nothing new to the table of their mutual deception and frustration, trading the same insults, repeating the same reproaches, feeling the same anger and the same sadness.
“It could be our place out of time and out of space. A place where things are different,” Sauron says.
“That would be a betrayal of everything I believe in,” she retorts immediately. She is able to reply so fast because, needless to say, she has thought of the same thing. She desires the same, but it is a desire that must be repressed. She could not live with herself otherwise. He, on the other hand, could – of course he could! Falsehood, secrets, deception, betrayal, ambiguity: he thrives on these. But she must be better than that.
“And yet you will not be strong enough to close your mind to me completely,” he says. “You will not give me anything. You will not tell me anything. But you will not stay away.”
“We shall see,” Galadriel shoots back.
“And the day I fall…” he prompts. She can see in his face he does not believe in it. He is sure he will prevail in the end. Just as she is sure of the contrary.
“The day you fall I will rejoice,” she replies firmly.
For an instant she hesitates. She should not give him anything. She should keep the door firmly shut, not let him put his foot in it.
“And I will mourn you. I will look at what’s left of you – a mere shadow that can no longer do any harm – and I will remember you at the time of your glory, when you rode to battle with me, and yes, I will mourn you, but I will hide my tears and nobody will know.”
He remains silent for so long that Galadriel begins to fear this is how the dream will end – with him not saying anything.
“We are both damned then,” Sauron utters in the end. Is this sadness? He sounds hollow. Perhaps this is the most sadness he can feel or show. Or it might be deception and manipulation again. But she is not strong enough, or cold-hearted enough, to remain unaffected by it. She is shaking slightly now, and she steps away from him.
“You fear me,” he remarks. They both know she does not fear he could hurt her physically, although he could. But yes, she fears him. She fears the influence he still exerts on her – a power not of the flesh, but over flesh. She fears how he makes her feel, how he makes her body feel. She fears, and she is ashamed of it. She will never succumb to it, because she will always be too ashamed.
And maybe he fears her too, in the same way, for the same reason. Maybe this is why he retains Annatar’s look, which endears him less to her. It makes it easier to keep their distance from each other.
“We are both damned,” she echoes his words. Are there tears in his eyes? Probably not. There are in hers, and this taints her vision.
“Release me now,” she asks him.
“It is not me who keeps you here. You must release yourself.”
Out of time and out of space: a place where they can meet. Every time they do, she will hope it’s the last one. She will hope she will turn out to be strong enough not to come here again. But when she does return… he will be here.
“Probably,” Sauron agrees.
Galadriel closes her eyes and only opens them after turning away from him. The scenery is gone; she is back in her bedchamber in Imladris. Through her window, she can hear the river murmur down in the valley.
Her face is wet with tears, and she knows it will always be this way when she returns from that place. She also knows she will go there again. And when she does, what if she finds him waiting for her in his Halbrand guise? What if he looks at her again the way he did in that forest in the Southlands, what if he says, let us walk, let us pretend. Let us forget the reality beyond. Give me nothing, betray nobody. Just be with me here, now.
What then…?
Is Sauron thinking similar thoughts now, staring at the ceiling in some dark bedchamber in a gloomy castle the Orcs must have built for him in Mordor? There is no light there, there is no light left in him. He is lost. She closes her eyes again and extends her arms towards this darkness, to briefly feel close to him again.
In a moment, she will get up. She will throw the doors open, let the daylight in, and go about her day – building Elrond’s realm of light, faithful to her purpose and to her people.