Archive of Our Own

***

The light-masted Elven ship pulled out of Lindon’s harbor and into a golden sunset. The water rippled like golden glass before them and the ancient buildings, long empty and falling slowly into ruin, were bathed in beams from the setting sun.

As the sea-air filled Frodo’s lungs, for the first time in many years he felt something like hope. There was a lightening to his spirit and a stirring of curiosity at the path ahead of him, that Frodo had not felt since he first left the Shire all those years ago.

Before the Dark Lord and his Ring.

Before his spirit became tied to the rage and final desperation of one of the Ainur.

Here on the sea, on the way to Valinor, Sauron was just a distant memory, an echo in Frodo’s mind that did not hold power over him any longer.

Frodo smiled, and it was genuine and glad.

He turned back to catch one final glimpse of Merry and Pippin, and of his beloved, faithful Sam. He hoped they could see the peace on his face despite their grief at this unexpected parting; he could no longer stay in Middle Earth, but it was not their time to leave it.

Their faces were streaked with tears and Sam clutched the Red Book like a lifeline. They did not understand, not yet, but perhaps one day they would.

And one day he would see them again.

This he believed.

Then he turned to follow Bilbo and Gandalf and went below.

***

The Elves on Círdan’s ship were a merry bunch, and when they reached the open sea and the stars came out in a midnight sky, they broke into song.

They sang in the Sindarin of the sea-folk, though their dialect was strange and some of their nautical terms were incomprehensible. Bilbo grinned at Frodo and took great delight in writing down as many of the songs as he could follow, while pestering the Elves for translations when he could not.

Although Círdan himself, that most ancient of mariners, was not with them on their journey, his crew had travelled the Straight Path many times before, and their songs included the marvelous things they had encountered on the wide waters at the end of the world – tales of mysterious, mist-shrouded islands and dangerous whirlpools, of sirens and serpents and kraken, of fallen stars and minor spirits of the Earth, and creatures even stranger than these.

Círdan’s folk were Grey Elves who had, in the days before the Sun and Moon, lingered long on the shores of Middle Earth to sing the song of the Sea. Frodo suspected they would not forsake Middle Earth entirely until Círdan himself left it.

The songs of Círdan’s folk were often light-hearted, silly ones – of long hours and sudden squalls and merfolk – but when Elrond’s kin from Rivendell joined them, ofttimes the songs turned melancholy; of great tales of old, heroes and dark days and desperate deeds – for many of Elrond’s people belonged to the House of Fëanor, that most cursed of all the Noldor people.

And although the language of Círdan’s Elves became familiar to Frodo as the days passed, he was less certain of the archaic Noldorin which Bilbo told him was favored by the Fëanoreans.

When they joined the songs, their scarred faces and haunted, tree-lit eyes bathed in moonlight, Frodo would sit next to Bilbo on unused barrels and listen to his uncle translate their tales of Maedhros Tall and Maglor the Mighty Singer and all the Sons of Fëanor, of Amon Ereb and the Hills of Himring, and even of the romance between Lord Caranthir and Haleth, Chief of the Haladin – tales Frodo had never heard before.

Sometimes Lord Elrond himself joined them, a copper band upon his dark hair and his clear voice deeper than all the Elves around him. The harp he brought out on these occasions was old – made of driftwood that had been hollowed by the ages – but it rang clearer than any instrument Frodo had heard, even among Elves.

When Frodo asked, Gandalf said the harp once belonged to Elrond’s father, but Frodo could remember no tales that spoke of Eärendil’s love of music. Instead, he was much reminded of Queen Arwen, singing softly in the gardens of Minas Tirith as she wove alongside her ladies - her accent strange, her dark hair gleaming in the sunlight and her grey eyes lit by unseen starlight; a daughter of Elves who became a queen of men.

He touched the clear stone she had given him, a token to denote his presence aboard this ship instead of her and wished her well.

Lord Elrond’s voice was attuned to his Father’s harp in a way that spoke of long mastery, yet both his voice and the harp itself seemed to resonate with the unheard rhythm of the world, causing the air to vibrate as though responding to Elrond’s descent from one of the Ainur.

The longer they sailed, the more remote Lord Elrond seemed to Frodo’s eyes, like a memory of a past Age, and the sadder his songs grew – of parents and brothers and children lost to fate, and the never-ending toll of uncounted years.

Gandalf did not often join in with the singing, but he smoked his ever-present pipe – filled with good Southfarthing pipeweed, of course – out on the open deck and sat on Bilbo’s other side, the old hobbit and the wizard discussing whatever took their fancy.

Only the Lady Galadriel stood apart, her fair face solemn and her eyes dull without the gleaming light Frodo associated with her.

The ring on her finger – Nenya, the White Ring of Adamant – was dark; its song silenced when the One Ring was destroyed. Even Frodo could no longer hear it.

He saw her reach for Nenya more and more as the days passed, while staring fixedly out over the water as though waiting – or hoping – for a storm.

Yet she didn’t look back towards Middle Earth and her husband, the Lord Celeborn, or forward to Valinor and her long-sundered kin.

Instead, she looked ever southwards, over leagues of unchanging emptiness; where the deep-blue sea was broken only by the clear dome of heaven above, or the white-capped foam that danced upon the waves. She seemed to be holding her breath.

Perhaps, Frodo thought, she looked towards sunken Númenor or hoped to catch a glimpse of Tol Himring and all that remained of lost Beleriand.

Her grief was palpable and only Elrond dared to disturb her solitude. She would not eat, and Frodo was not sure she slept.

“What does she look for?” Frodo asked Gandalf, a fortnight out from Lindon. The Lady Galadriel was a vision in white, her golden hair gleaming in the bright sunshine.

Far to the south, a storm brewed ominously, dark clouds towering to legions high, and the growing wind whipped Lady Galadriel’s silver-gold hair across her face.

Her keen eyes were intent upon the storm, and her hands were white where they gripped the gunwale.

Gandalf puffed meditatively on his pipe, one hand holding onto his hat in the sea-breeze, as he stared across the deck at the lady.

He was silent for so long Frodo began to believe he would not answer at all.

“She looks for an old friend,” Gandalf said at last. “One who was destroyed and is now less than a shadow of a thought. He will never return to her.” There was a deep well of regret in his voice and his eyes were sad.

After a moment he added: “She knows he can never return.” But to Frodo it sounded like he meant more to convince himself than anyone else.

For reasons beyond understanding, Frodo thought then of Saruman after the burning of the Shire. When Wormtongue stabbed him, his spirit had risen above his physical form and reached hesitantly towards the West, but it was blown away on a cold wind.

Frodo did not know what happened to Maiar who were not welcomed back to Valinor. Nor did he know what would become of Rhadagast the Brown, who’d elected to remain in the Middle Earth, or even Sauron, whom Gandalf said could never touch the physical world again.

After an interminable time sitting in silence, Gandalf unexpectedly added: “She was bound to the Enemy in ways that I do not think even I ever understood until now.”  As though all things should be within the realm of his understanding.

Frodo hid a smile.

Lady Galadriel turned towards them then; her keen Elven ears having heard their talk. She raised a single, golden eyebrow at the wizard, looking unimpressed.

Gandalf winced and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. Then he stood from the bench, bowing to her across the deck. “My lady,” he said, before hastily departing below deck.

Frodo felt like smiling again at the old wizard fearing to offend the regal elf-queen.

Instead, he stepped across the deck and stood quietly next to Galadriel. The only sound between them was the wind in the sails and the soft singing of Elvish voices dropping down like gentle rain from the rigging above.

Lady Galadriel’s face was pale, and it looked to Frodo as though she was in physical pain. Her back was ramrod straight, pride apparent in every inch of her tall form. To speak of her pain would be a disservice to her, Frodo felt, even though he did not understand it’s cause.

She did not speak and nor did he.

After that, not knowing how else to help her, he continued to come on deck and silently stand beside the Elf-lady. She had been with him in spirit every step of the way through all the darkness of Mordor, and so he would not abandon her now on whatever dark paths she tread.

She turned to smile down at him when he joined her in the mornings, but her eyes were far away, and the light in them was faded.

He sent silent prayers to Elbereth to speed their journey and Uinen, Lady of the Seas, to protect them, but part of him knew that even on the healing shores of Valinor, the Lady Galadriel would not find the peace she sought.

Whatever it was, what she needed was here in Middle Earth – somewhere out on the wide, blue waters.

There could be no peace for her there across the Sea.

***

Galadriel of the Noldor dreamed of Halbrand.

They were dreams of waking and dreams of sleeping, and she could not escape them.

She dreamed of him smiling crookedly down at her before Miriel’s Court. The way he slipped her brother’s dagger back into her hands. How he’d gotten her to look at him, really look at him, for the first time since they’d met.

The way he’d given back to her exactly what she needed.

Mortal men did not flirt with her – she had always been too intimidating, too Other.

Yet, he had done so boldly, shamelessly; searching her eyes for something as he stared down at her.

It was only long centuries later, looking deep into the mind of Sauron, that she heard the echo in his memory of the Númenoreans, mocking him for thinking he had a shot with her.

And how close are you and the she-elf?

Perhaps she would prefer someone of better breading, they’d taunted. And in his mind, she saw it as the moment he decided to revenge himself upon them.

He hadn’t lied when he’d told her he’d landed in jail due to a dispute about a woman. She’d just never thought that woman had been her.

She dreamed of the sharp, surprised bark of laughter he gave at learning she was jailed alongside him for sedition against the Queen herself; his unabashed delight at the similarities between them.

The similarities she had refused to acknowledge for centuries.

She dreamed of the way he’d watched her pace her cell like a caged animal – that restlessness still in her which had driven her from Valinor, alongside all her kin, before even the Sun and the Moon rose – and which seemed to compel him to share his own insights of how to get the Queen to help her as a result.

Like a colt in full gallop, he’d said of her. He’d been right, much as it galled her now to admit. Umaiar though he was, he’d understood her more than anyone else ever had.

Later, looking at the memory through his eyes, she could feel his uncomfortable realization of the desperate rage that burned within her, and his automatic attempt to help her – one he’d denied even to himself.

She dreamed of the tears in his eyes as he stood limned in fiery light from the forge and told her he was sorry for Finrod’s death.

There had been no expectation in him that she would truly understand his apology, but he’d told her all the same.

Long, long ago, her brother Finrod had been trained in smithcraft by one of Aulë’s apprentices, named Mairon. The dagger he’d forged then had been aided by Mairon’s hands and craft.

Sauron must had recognized it the moment he saw it on her.

Now she wondered how many people he’d apologized to in his long and lonely life, and she suspected it was a very short list.

She dreamed of him standing next to her on the prow of a ship, the armor he’d forged for her gleaming brighter than starlight and fitting her form perfectly.

He had even crafted the sigil of the House of Finarfin, youngest son of Finwë, upon her breastplate. At the time, she’d never even wondered how he’d known it.

Instead, she had felt in that moment as though she was off to march on Thangorodrim itself again, with the mighty hosts of the Valar and all that remained of her kin at her back. Maedhros on her left and Maglor with his war-harp beside him, the hardened remnants of Gil-Galad’s folk and the Fëanorians behind them, and Celeborn, her silver clam, on her right.

That feeling – the world suddenly bursting into color again – had been there as she’d stood beside Halbrand, with the might of Númenor and all Elendil’s men at their back.

She dreamed of him as he’d been when they first met.

Ulmo’s wrath had passed, and Halbrand was unconscious and exhausted beside her on the raft, their bodies almost touching. She had thought she would die there, with only a battered mortal man beside her in the whole, wide world. The warmth of him had been so real to her – the scent of him, of musk and sweat and sea-salt, and something even deeper that smelled a bit like crackling flames – and for a while it had just been the two of them in what felt like the entire world.

She dreamed of him in Eregion, dressed all in royal blue with silver threading. A torq of twisted copper had been placed around his neck by her own hands, and he’d looked ever inch a regal lord among men.

He was a king, after all. Her king. The one she’d been searching for what felt like her entire life.

She’d met him in the sunlight, down by the sparkling waters of Eregion, and twined her arms about his neck.

She’d pressed her lips to his before she could second-guess herself. Before she could feel guilt for being un elf-like yet again – for failing to wait for Celeborn to be reborn to her once more, and for loving a mortal man more than she’d ever loved her elven husband.

After a moment, his body frozen and as tense as a frightened cat, poised to lash out, against hers, he’d kissed her back.

She remembered that clearly, through all the centuries that came after.

She’d thought at the time that he’d been surprised and unsure, and that his own kisses were inexpert, hesitant, even fumbling and too rough, although his hands clutched her to him hard enough to bruise an ordinary woman.

When he pulled back from her, his green eyes were filled with wonder, and his cheeks were flushed. His breath was uneven, and he couldn’t seem to look at anything but her lips.

He’d licked his own and she could feel him trembling – torn between warring desires.

If I could just hold onto that feeling…

When he kissed her again, it was the hungry kind, devouring her entirely – he was a starving man who’d been offered nourishment at last.

His fingers had mapped her form as though trying desperately to memorize her, to memorize this, forever.

To be in his arms had felt like her soul taking flight, and perhaps it had – for who could say with Maiar, even the fallen ones.

Melian had told her once that even those of them who took on physical form for millennia could not always control the power of their spirits.

And on that day, his soul became entwined irrevocably with hers.

It was as though they’d snapped together, all their jagged pieces fitting unexpectedly into a seamless whole.

Another link in the chain of many bonds between them – the first of which occurred on the Sundering Sea, when they first met.

Come on! Bind yourself to me!

And the second while they sat on a log in the green Southlands and he’d confessed to finding the light when in her presence.

That third time, as their souls twined, she pushed him down onto the spring-green grass and climbed on top of him, straddling his hips to feel all of him against her. He was hot and hard and throbbing, and he moaned wildly against her lips as she rode him.

It hadn’t taken long.

He’d thrown his head back in ecstasy and she’d bent forward to suck on his fluttering pulse, and when he came apart inside her, he’d cried out in a wordless howl as though in torment, his breathing utterly ragged.

She’d squeezed her muscles around him, delighting in his shudder, and he’d laughed at her then, delighting in her demanding ruthlessness.

He pulled her down against him and wrapped his arms around her, and almost promptly fell asleep as mortal men were wont to do.

She’d only realized later how impossible sleep was for him, and that this was but the second time in his entire existence that he'd found it.

The first had been on the raft after the storm.

She’d wanted a child from him then – there beside the clear, tumbling waters of Eregion.

For the first time in thousands of years she had felt hope and a brief, fragile happiness, and she knew it was fleeting. He was mortal, she was elf-kind. Their paths were destined to diverge, and when he fell to death – either through sickness or battle or inevitable old age – he would leave her behind, forever.

She was not Lúthien, who could compel Mandos himself to change the Fate of Eru’s children.

She was Galadriel of the Noldor, doomed to Exile along with all that remained of her kin.

Yet still, in that moment, she’d wanted to bind them together in every way that mattered, and she’d told him this when he woke beside the river.

He’d looked up at her, his fingers brushing the hanging curtain of her hair around his face, and acquiesced. His green eyes were more vulnerable than she’d ever seen them, and his breathing came too fast.

He smelled of spices and Elven wine and that elusive scent of a warm-burning fire on winter’s night.

When the light caught your hair…

She’d felt as though she’d wandered into a dream from the Elder Days.

Perhaps he had not understood her desire that first time, or perhaps he had not known how to give her a child; his mortal form an insufficient vehicle for the power of his spirit – his Maiar nature unused to the bonds of both spirit and flesh that were intrinsic to Elf-kind.

Melian told her it had taken many tries before she and Thingol conceived a child.

The child came later, in a dream within a dream in Lothloríen, after he’d fallen even further into darkness – and even now she is not sure if he truly knew what he was giving her when he submitted to her in the Unseen World.

When he’d bound his spirit to a single form – as Halbrand – forever more as part of his spirit was given to their child.

To Celebrían. Mairen Nerisse Celebrían.

The daughter Celeborn had raised and loved as his own. The one he’d called their silver-queen.

The daughter they’d all lost.

Half-maia, half-elf and as powerful as Lúthien. She, who had commanded fire itself and won the heart of Elrond Half-elven.

Like a mirage on the distant horizon, again she returned to the disbelieving look on his face when she told him in the Southlands that she felt their connection too.

Though the sea surrounded her, she was once more seated on a log in the fair, green Haradwaith, before Orodruin exploded and turned everything to ash.

She could still remember how sweet the air smelled, and how brightly the sun shone on his copper-burnished hair.

How the linked rings of his armor clinked softly as he shifted beside her.

How his thigh brushed her own beneath the deep ember-red of his tunic.

The smell of his sweat and the leaf-green fire of his eyes.

The sound of the quiet gasp he’d given at her answer.

The way he’d drawn her back from the darkness that day – instinctively kept her from crossing a line he’d crossed long ago.

On the other side of which was only the long descent into the dark.

Since that day, the balance had been in his favor.

And the tides of Fate still waited for her answer.

***

When she wasn’t dreaming, awake or asleep, she swore she could hear him just on the edge of her awareness.

He whispered to her, faint, malevolent, seductive – yet whenever she reached for Nenya, he was gone.

His form haunted the edge of her vision too. She felt he was just behind her, solid and real, waiting for her to turn towards him.

She could smell him over the salty tang of the sea, that scent of fire and sweat and something even deeper – like sunlight on clear water – that she remembered from the raft, from Númenor, from the Southlands, from Eregion.

Yet whenever she turned towards him, he faded away again – as insubstantial as mist or a shadow on the water.

Frodo stood beside her again today and he made to say something, but she turned away before he could, hiding the tears that threatened to fall, and he forbore.

I’ve written a poem, but I fear your beauty far overshadows anything I could possibly write.

A voice inside his mind.

An echo of his subconscious.

She watched him stare at an Elven couple walking in Eregion; the fall of the Elf-maiden’s golden hair glinting in the sunlight as she turned to smile brightly up at her beloved.

Annatar watched them distractedly for a moment, his face unreadable, before he moved seamlessly from vision to the dark reality of Eregion under siege.

A siege of his own making.

“What do you see?” Frodo asked her.

She grimaced, her eyes on the approaching storm. Another couple of days, she thought, before the storm is upon us. I wonder if Ulmo will let us pass this time.  “I see a man who did not even know his own mind,” she told him. There was an undercurrent of anger in her voice, which surprised even her.

Gandalf, standing on her other side, almost dove over the railing to grab his errant hat.

Frodo smothered a laugh.

“I can’t imagine a man who knew his own mind would make such a ring,” the wizard offered, after he’d retrieved his hat and relit his pipe.

Galadriel gave him a look to say where he could shove such opinions. “He helped make your ring as well, Olórin, servant of Nienna,” she reminded him, and he sighed.

“And if he would have known it would be gifted to me, he would have found some way to sabotage it, I’m sure, my lady.”

It wasn’t funny but there was an undercurrent of humor at the pettiness of such a powerful being as Sauron, that Galadriel – and even Frodo – smiled. “No doubt,” she agreed.

She could not remember if she ever saw the Elven couple afterwards in Imladris or Lórien, and she wondered if they were only constructs of his imagination.

Time grew ever more uncertain to her – the past blending into the present, vision into reality – as it had ever since he’d faded from her mind at last and Nenya fell silent.

The memories were now louder than the voices of those around her.

Sometimes she knew she was on the ship with Elrond and Olórin.

Sometimes she knew that Frodo kept silent vigil beside her; that all three ringbearers sought to keep her with them.

Most of the time though, she was holding Celebrían in her arms under the golden mallorn of Loríen.

The baby’s bright green eyes laughed up at her, and she had Halbrand’s crooked smile. Galadriel’s tears slipped onto the baby’s face and Celebrían too-bright spirit reached for hers to comfort her.

Celebrían slept peacefully at the edge of the forest, a giant wolf with fiery eyes curled around her.

The wolf, unable to take fair form again, had taught their daughter to control her shape-shifting powers, and the silver of her famous hair shimmered into being to mimic Celeborn’s own when she was five – along with his epesse for her.

She felt the rage of Sauron’s diminished spirit shaking the Misty Mountains when Celebrían was taken – and remembered Elladan’s tale of the bauble of fire that bobbed and lit the way for her grandsons to find their mother; bruised, battered, broken, but alive.

Galadriel was still lost in the woods above burning Eregion, Sauron’s blade whistling close above her head, his blood mixing with hers as he stabbed her with Morgoth’s crown and bound them together in the Shadow World.  

She was back on the Sea again – always on that raft with him – and Halbrand was there. His presence unsettled her from the first, drawing her to get close to him and getting under her skin like no one else ever had, all while in the distance a storm brewed – Ulmo’s wrath.

On Númenor, in the Haradwaith, in Eregion that first time, she was sure he should be beside her.

That she would be with him until whatever end awaited them – either his end or hers.

She had put those feelings aside after Eregion, buried them as far as they would go and concentrated all her considerable willpower on destroying him and freeing Middle Earth of his evil, forever.

And it was only now, when she had won and all hope of his return was lost – when Valinor was within her grasp – that she herself began to fade as well.

***

When they were three weeks out from Lindon, while the storm raged to the South, Frodo finally cornered Lord Elrond and demanded answers.

He had carried the One Ring at the very height of Sauron’s powers and as a result, he had become sensitive to the other ringbearers – to the Nazgûl, yes, and the Lidless Eye of Sauron himself, but also to the wielders of the Three: to Gandalf, Lord Elrond and Galadriel.

He had seen them through Sauron’s eyes, and the echo of their bright-burning spirits in the shadow realm somehow remained – like a faint susurration in the air.

It was how he could see that the Lady Galadriel was fading. It was how he could feel Gandalf and Elrond redirecting some of their own power into her, and their silent ósanwë with one another.

Eventually Frodo had enough.

When the Elf-lord exited his cabin as night fell, he found a hobbit waiting for him.

Lord Elrond’s grey eyes gleaned in the twilight, and his long dark hair was braided in the complicated Noldorin style.

His deep, red robes were simple but elegant, and on his brow sat the plain copper circlet he favored; the one set with an eight-pointed star that reminded Frodo of the one emblazoned on the Doors of Durin, the entrance to the Mines of Moria.

He knew it was the sigil of the House of Fëanor – that Galadriel’s banner born a different star denoting the House of Finarfin, her father – but he did not know why Elrond of Rivendell would wear such a thing.

He put such musings away to discuss later with Bilbo, who delighted in curiosities. 

Lord Elrond stopped short upon seeing Frodo and raised a single, solitary eyebrow.

“My Lord Elrond,” he began, formally, and Elrond sighed, suddenly less a mighty elf-lord and more a tired father of errant children.

“Mr. Baggins,” he began. “I wondered how long it would take before you, like all hobbits I have known, made it your business to involve yourself in affairs beyond your understanding.” His tone was severe, but a faint smile lifted the corner of his mouth.

It was an expression that reminded Frodo suddenly, inexplicably, of Strider watching the antics of Merry and Pippin, and he was unexpectedly comforted.

His shoulders relaxed.

The Elf-lord’s gaze was still piercing. “Although I wonder if Galadriel herself knows you have become so protective of her,” Elrond mused, and the amusement deepened. “She has never taken kindly to such things.”

Frodo felt himself turn red and fought the urge to drop his eyes in embarrassment, but he was used to Elves by now and the merriment they found in obscure places.

“I know she is powerful and far wiser than I could ever be,” he admitted, “but even the wise and powerful need a friend, and someone to look out for them in their turn.”

Elrond’s gaze softened. “The wisdom of halflings,” he murmured. He sighed again, looking suddenly old as a mortal man might. “What is it you wish to know, Mr. Baggins?”

He held up a hand as Frodo opened his mouth to speak. “Keep in mind that even the knowledge of her plight does not mean you can alter the course of her fate.”

Frodo nodded. He knew this. But he also knew that he had to try, and if what he feared for her was true, then he might be in a better position to help than most.

The Dark Lord had lived in his mind for years. If anyone understood Sauron, he thought he might have greater insight than most.

He couldn’t look Master Elrond in the face as he asked: “Is the Lady Galadriel bound to –” He paused and searched for the right name. At last, he decided upon: “- to the one who was once, long ago, called both Mairon and Artano among the Elves,” he hedged.

“She is bound to Sauron,” Elrond said flatly. “To the Dark Lord in all his forms.”

His words seemed to echo in the small hold of the ship and Frodo automatically looked around to make sure they were alone.

Bound, as in married?

Did the other Elves know? Did her own people know such a lady as Galadriel was tied in spirit to one of such darkness?

Distantly Frodo wondered about the Lord Celeborn, and his decision to remain in Middle Earth while Galadriel sailed.

Elrond continued. “She is bound to him in blood and bone and spirit, and I fear she cannot be untangled from him. And so, as he has faded from the world, she is fading as well.” The elf-lord grimaced. “Such is often the fate of Elves whose soul-bound is broken by the irrevocable sundering of their spouse.”

Frodo thought then of the Lady’s spirit finding him in Shelob’s lair, pulling him to his feet as she gave him her strength and the light to go on.

She had found him so easily in the darkness – Sauron’s darkness.

Frodo was silent for a moment and listened to the creaking of the ship around them, the waves and the wind lashing the ship from above, and the soft murmuring of Elven voices from further in the hold. He thought about his own bond to Sauron, which was quiet but which he did not think was truly severed.

“What can we do?” he asked at last.

Elrond’s voice was heavy with foreboding. “She cannot stay in Middle Earth now that the power of the Rings is broken, and one such as Sauron can no longer touch the world or follow her across the sea. The Valar have forbidden it.” There was an undercurrent to Elrond’s voice that Frodo could not read. It almost sounded like disapproval. “Yet, without him I fear she will fade away entirely, even in the Blessed Realm.”

A spasm of pain crossed his face. “Much as Arwen will fade when Estel takes the path that all men must take. It is the fate of Elves who give their hearts to those not of our race.”

Frodo have never heard Lord Elrond refer to Aragorn by the name of his childhood, and he realized that Elrond was deathly afraid of losing Galadriel, like he had lost so many others in his long life.

Gandalf’s gruff voice came from the shadows of the hold, causing Frodo to jump slightly. “She’s has stopped fighting it,” the Wizard said, as he walked out into the lantern light. “She will fade into the shadow realm and become little more than a wraith.” A wisp of smoke issued from his pipe, and a sudden flare of embers caused his eyes to glow. “I have never known her, even in her youth, to give up.”

Lord Elrond’s face grew sad and faint lines Frodo had never seen before appeared, almost like a mortal man. “I didn’t know she could stop fighting,” he said, half to himself. “The fire that burns in her burns so very bright.”

Gandalf blew out more smoke. “Like all those of her House.” And he looked long at the other Ringerbearer in silent question, their minds battling, before raising a single, bushy eyebrow.

Frodo glanced between them both. At the edge of his awareness, where he’d been searching for some time, a faint presence still lurked. Feeling sick, he tried to open his mind and let the presence grow closer.

Gandalf blew out a smoke ring.

Elrond grimaced but inclined his head. Conceding.

Frodo ignored the silent byplay between them. “So,” he asked instead, “how do we get her to start fighting again?”

He feared he already knew the answer.

***

That night, Frodo dreamed of a sea-maiden, whose hair was the waves and whose voice calmed the heart of the storm. She cried tears of salt for one who was lost, a brother who would not heed her calls.

Her eyes met his within the dream and within the storm. Frodo Baggins, she said, and her voice was the call of the gulls and the current of deep waters and the play of merry waves upon the shore, the one who has seen the Eye!

He woke and tasted the echo of her tears upon his own cheeks. Unsettled at the intensity of the dream, he rose and pushed damp hair out of his face, before and going out on deck again. It was empty this morning, save for the captain and the first mate.

The sky was slate grey, with huge, billowing clouds that hung low and ominous above them, and the sea was a malevolent grey-green color with thick, rolling whitecaps.

The storm was almost upon them.

Frodo found a barrel and stood upon it until he could lean over the railing to watch the ship part the waves below. He breathed deep and tried to quell the nausea remaining from his dream. The sea-maiden’s presence had been overwhelmingly powerful, and her grief for her brother was as deep as the ocean itself.

The sounds of the sea and the wind lulled him, for they were soothing in their untamed melody, and the music of the world was within them. He had read somewhere that in Manwë’s winds and Ulmo’s waters still echoed the first music the Ainur sang at the breaking of the first silence.

He felt small and utterly insignificant here, face to face with its vast, uncaring power.

The sails snapped above him, rippling in the strong breeze from the south.

When he opened his eyes, a face gazed up at him from the water.

He jumped and almost fell off the barrel in surprise. Only the realization that it was the sea-woman from his dream kept him from calling out.

She smiled fey-like up at him, her blue-green hair rippling like water itself, and the blue of her dress blending in with the waves.

Frodo Baggins, she whispered in his mind, and this time he knew it was no dream.

 Her voice was powerful enough that it felt like unbearable screaming in his mind and he closed his eyes from the pain, fighting through it to hear her words. You who have seen the Eye.

Perhaps this was her title for him.

He wondered if she was Uinen herself, or another spirit, perhaps akin to Goldberry rather than the Greater Maiar.

My brother is lost, the sea-maiden continued. He is trapped and lost and forgotten. In long Ages past, we sang the music of the world together and even now I cannot abandon him to the Shadows.

He always burned so very bright.

Her voice bore a sadness that was almost unbearable, and Frodo felt tears running down his cheeks again at her grief. The force of her spirit was as great as Sauron’s own, though he knew she tried to temper it for him.

The sea-maiden wasn’t finished.

Only you, who bore his spirit and freed him from the Ring, can find him again. Frodo Baggins, one who has seen the Eye; please do not let him remain lost forever!

She was silent for a moment and when he opened his eyes, it was to find her standing on the deck inches from him.

He flinched back, but her hand – cold and clammy as a fish – gripped him to keep him upright and pull him towards her. Her fey-like eyes were inches from his own and the wild power of her flooded through him.

The Elven captain across the deck swore loudly in Quenya and Sindarin, and Frodo saw the First Mate duck below deck.

Uinen – for it must be Uinen – released Frodo from her clammy grip, only to tap a single finger against his temple. Her motion rang in his head like a bell. It rang over and over and over again, like ripples in the sea – searching for something in ever-expanding circles and binding him to whatever end they found.

The sea-lady’s voice grew in power. If not for me, child of men, find him for the one you call Galadriel. She mourns him even now, and her spirit fades into shadow.

Soon she will follow him into the Shadowlands.

And both will be lost forever.

But the sea ever leads from one world to the next.

Galadriel knows this.

Find him for her.

The sea-maiden released him, and with the sound of a splash and a cry like a dying albatross, she was gone. By the time Frodo opened looked over the gunwale, the only evidence she’d ever been there was the splitting pain in his head.

“Frodo!”

Frodo turned to find Gandalf behind him. The old wizard’s hat flapped in the gale, and his pipe had gone out. He looked as though he’d been running, and the First Mate, looking pale, was close behind him.

“Who was that?” the wizard asked.

Frodo shook his head. His heart still beat fast, and it felt like he had wandered out of a dream.

“I don’t rightly know,” he admitted. “But I think it might have been Uinen?”

The ringing in his head had lessened but the ripples continued to spread outward – not in the physical world, but in a space Frodo could not rightly describe. They were calling to someone or something, and Frodo half-feared, half-hoped for an answer.

Gandalf eyed him sharply, but after a moment he “hmm’d” and with an impatient flick of his hand, his pipe flared even in the gale, and Frodo saw a flash of fire from his hand, where Narya still sat.

Frodo held his breath as the old wizard, muttering, turned away and stomped off across the deck – likely to find Elrond.

And as he looked up, he met the eyes of Galadriel as she came up on deck.

And she was wondering too.

***

The golden path to Valinor appeared at sunset two days later.

The storm was upon them, and night fell early.

There was silence upon the ship when it arrived, as though everyone had gathered to wait for something they knew not what.

Frodo had spent the day listening for the voice of Sauron upon the wind. He was sure he could almost hear it now, and that the ripples had found their answer.

When the clouds parted and a golden light shown upon them from high in the heavens, Frodo felt peace and well-being fill him. He heard the music of ethereal voices all singing in harmony and in the distance, a far green shore was under a swift sunrise.

“Valinor,” he heard Bilbo breathe in awe. The old hobbit had a hand upon Frodo’s shoulders to steady himself.

Frodo let the golden light was over him and breath caught as for the first time the wound in his shoulder failed to pain him.

Valinor, he thought.

He held out his hand…

Saw those around him hold theirs out as well…

At the very edge of his awareness, barely there, came a low, sibilant voice.

Galadriel, Galadriel, Galadriel.

There.

His eyes snap to the south and the storm. He could feel it – a point on the horizon that felt…different. Weaker. More uncertain. Less solid, perhaps.

There, he thought again. He is there.

“No!” Came a cry from behind him. Distantly, Frodo recognized Lord Elrond’s voice, and there was great distress in it.

A splash sounded behind him.

“Galadriel!” Then: “Not again,” in tones of vast annoyance.

Frodo tore his eyes away from Valinor and turned.

Lord Elrond was at the side of the ship, dark haired whipping in the breeze as he frantically looked out over the dark water. The seas were rough, waves wracked the hull, and Elrond swore like a sailor in the languages of elves, men and dwarves.

Frodo was impressed and Bilbo gave a low whistle.

“Good show, Master Elrond!” he called.

“Bilbo Baggins!” Gandalf snapped, “Now is not the time for your linguistic appreciation!” Then: “Elrond?”

His hat finally blew away entirely and he hardly seemed to notice.

Frodo followed Gandalf over to where Elrond was frantically signaling the captain. “What happened?!” he demanded. He could feel the golden light at his back, but he refused to turn. “Where is Galadriel?”

Elrond swore again. “She jumped overboard. Again!” He turned and his eyes were wild and fey. “Stay the ship!”

And such was the Power in his voice and the regal nature of his bearing, that one by one the Elves turned from Valinor and the ship lingered in the waters of Middle Earth.

The light of Valinor faded from the sky and the Elven ship waited for the storm.

***

Galadriel was no longer in Middle Earth, but rather somewhere else entirely.

“Halbrand!” Galadriel shouted over the storm and the waves and the wrath of the Ainur in the Unseen World.

She’d felt the light of Valinor again, yet all her focus had been on the storm. She knew it – she could feel that he was close.

And then she heard his voice calling her name.

All it had taken was Frodo’s exclamation in her mind for her to see the boundary between worlds weakening, to hear his voice calling to her once more, and she hadn’t even thought it through before she jumped overboard into the raging sea.

Behind her, Elrond and Frodo and the ship vanished.

Ahead were towering waves, the flash of lightning, and a lone, derelict raft battling to stay afloat.

A man stood at the beam that served as a make-shift mast and struggled to hold on. Wind and rain battered him, and waves threatened to engulf him.

Him. Sauron. Halbrand.

Galadriel felt her heart pounding in her chest from something other than fear and exertion. She couldn’t feel him yet, but she could see him.

Halbrand glared at the heavens, and over the storm she could hear his deep voice cursing each of the Valar by name.

Her clothes and hair weighed her down as she struggled to cross the waves to him. Her arms and lungs burned, and all she tasted was salt.

Finrod’s dagger, long lost and melted down, was tied once more to her belt.

She wanted to weep; it had been so long since she’d had any memento from her beloved brother beside Nenya.

The raft rose on a swell as she fell below, and it almost crushed her as it came down. She dove beneath the waves and rose again, to find the raft right before her.

“Halbrand!” she screamed over the storm. She held out a hand as the current sought to sweep her under. “Take my hand!” She begged him, feeling water enter her nose and mouth. She coughed and tried to spit it out. “Halbrand!”

He turned and through the wild rain he looked down at her without emotion, as though she wasn’t even there. Lightning flashed above them and lit his eyes with a fey light. Strands of wet hair clung to his face and rags hung about his emaciated form.

She wondered if he would try to save her or leave her to drown in the sea. He shook his head and turned his head away from her, only to turn back again and stare at her.

Rain fell between them as his eyes moved hungrily over her face as she treaded water.

His clothes were the threadbare ones he’d worn when she first met him, centuries ago, in another life and another place. He shook his head again. “Leave me be, witch,” he demanded. He turned away from her again, as the raft rose and fell and she tried to catch hold of it.

He was stuck in a dream or vision of his own making, she realized.

A never-ending loop he could neither complete nor escape.

Perhaps, she thought, desperately, he believes me a figment of his imagination as well.

A sorcerer of illusion, she well knew, could quickly lose themselves to visions and dreams. He would have no reason to think she would or even could cross into the Unseen World.

She hadn’t believed she could either, until she heard his call and until Frodo found the door for her.

The storm rose between them again, pitiless and ferocious. “Halbrand!” she screamed, as another wave pulled her under. She gasped and water filled her lungs. Kicking mightily, praying that she faced upwards and would not sink like a stone, she fought against the storm.

For a moment, she thought she was done for, that all the days of her long life would end here, a wraith in the shadowlands of Sauron’s mind.

There was anger in her and bitter humor that he would defeat her without even knowing it.

Then with one last mighty kick, she broke the surface again, sea spray and howling wind buffeting her from all directions as she sucked in gulps of air.

A hand reached down and grabbed her arm, holding onto her with bruising strength, as Halbrand hauled her from the Sea and onto the raft. She coughed and gasped for breath, but he did not let her rest.

He pulled her up to stand before him, both of them drenched as wet cats and Galadriel half-drowned.

Their eyes met and held, hers filled with tree-light and his a wild, fey green like foam-capped sea-waves.

“Galadriel,” he said simply, his voice lilting over her name as though they were back in the Second Age. She heard him clearly over the storm.

“Halbrand,” she returned. Her voice was hoarse from seawater and trembled shamefully upon being before him once more.

His hands gripped her shoulders like bands of iron, as though he would not let her go again, and there was something sharp and dangerous in his glance. She raised her hands to place them over his arms, soothingly.

“Yes, I am here,” she confirmed. “As are you. It has been a long time since I’ve seen you in the flesh, Lord of Shadows.”

He looked around them at the sea and the storm, as though seeing them for the first time. Then he looked back at her, unable to look away for long. His gaze flickered up to her fingers and the faint star that was Nenya. She could feel the ring calling to him, and faintly she could feel him answering.

He raised a single, mocking eyebrow. “Strange tides indeed,” he commented, and he looked her up and down, in a way no other man was ever bold enough to do.

She raised her chin and cleared her throat. My face is up here, Lord of Shadows, she thought hard at him. She still could not feel him within her mind.

He flicked a sharp, green gaze at her, still mocking. And what is your face – and form – doing here on my raft, my Lady? His sarcastic osánwe was loud, overpowering all else, even the storm around them.

Her lips quirked at him, involuntarily. Since meeting him – since wearing his ring and lingering long in Lothloríen – time had felt strange and circular, as though she’d missed the straight path and was forever destined to travel in circles that always led back to him.

She remembered this circle from long ago.

“Well, my friend,” she told him from the depths of Second Age, still amused: “It seems that Fate has in store for us one more raft!”

His face shuttered at her words, his eyes growing cold and distant.

He sneered, and it was an ugly expression. “Are you my friend, indeed?” He released her and turned away, his back broad but his shoulders hunched. She stumbled in the gale, unbalanced from the loss of him. Cold rain hit her face and whipped her hair into her mouth, as she struggled to keep hold of her feet. She was a daughter of the Teleri, child of the water, and she feared neither sea nor storm.

“You turned from that path as my friend long ago,” Sauron told her, still turned away. His voice was filled with ancient bitterness.

She came up beside him as he looked out over the restless sea, and she watched the play of emotions pass over his face; he both wanted her here and wanted her gone, and her ring called to him like a chime of bells.

He was dressed much the same as she remembered him from their first meeting; tattered clothes, scabs on his arms and legs, sea-chapped lips and wet, stringy hair. His bare feet balanced on the boards with the innate skill of a sailor. He was utterly mortal and yet she could feel the coiled power within him, a shadow of his former self, but growing the longer she stood beside him.

Always he rose from the ashes of his own defeat, stronger than before although more broken as the ages passed.

“Did I turn from that path?” she challenged him, trying not to fall into the raging sea as the raft heaved around them on the turbulent waves.

She moved into his space, pulling on his shoulder until he turned to face her. Surprisingly, he let her.

“Here I am,” she said.

“Here you are, indeed.” His voice was cold and mocking, and his eyes even colder; an icy river frozen in mid-flow. “But why are you here, Galadriel? What could you possibly want?”

He glanced around him at the sea again.

“I may not know exactly where or when I am, but I do know you should not be here, elf.”

“We seek the straight path to Valinor,” she told him. There was no use hiding the truth from him. There was no reason else for her to be on the Sundering Sea.

She had known he would be here as well – that of all places, his spirit would retreat to a shadow of the place he once sought to cross for a new beginning.

“I am leaving Middle Earth, at last, and returning into the West.” She knew her voice held grief and her own bitterness – she had no desire to return to the cage of the Valar, though many were the faces she hoped to be reunited with.

He flinched, as though she’d struck him. Then his face hardened.

“Then leave already. Head back to your cage and see how long it takes before you wither like a flower in winter – always pushed back down when you try to break free from their endless rules. Run back to safety and complacency, elf, like all your kin before you.” His eyes were pitiless and eternal, suddenly so very different from Halbrand’s warmth, and yet they were his all the same.

This part of him that was so very like her own - that she could only admit to feeling in his presence.

“It is not my wish to leave you,” she admitted quietly.

He scoffed. “You have made it very clear over the past four millennia, Galadriel, that all you wish to do is to leave me – or for me to leave you, you’ve never been particular in that regard. You forget that I know your mind, and it is pointless to lie to me.”

And I know yours, she thought defiantly.

Then she laughed. She couldn’t help it. “You’re a fool,” she told him. “You’re a blind fool, even now.”

She wanted to shake him.

“I have no wish to leave you. I have never wanted to leave you. That has always been the problem between us. I leave you because I must.”

He scoffed again and made to turn away again, until she grabbed him and forced him to look at her. He resisted for a moment, before his hands gently closed around her back, afraid to break her, and his breath caught as he stroked along her back.

A spark of warmth entered those green eyes, and the storm lessened.

She gentled her hand from where it gripped his shirt, and she cupped his cheek instead.

“I bound myself to you upon the open sea, when our paths first crossed,” she reminded him “I bound myself to you beside the waters of Eregion, when I admitted our souls sang the same song. I bound myself to you beneath the mallorn of Lóthlorien, in a dream within a dream, when we made a child together.”

She thrust her hand up between them, Nenya glinting like starlight upon her finger. “And I bound myself to you when I put this ring upon my hand, knowing you designed it for me, Sauron.”

She’d always known the ring was yet another bond between them.

Yet she’d also always known that he’d designed this ring with the last of Mairon’s light.

There was no evil in Nenya, only a last gift from a spirit falling down into the darkness once more.

“Without you,” she told him, the sea still restless and unsettled around them, the rain falling steady upon their faces: “I am already fading. Can you not see it? Can you not feel it?” She shook her head, her wet hair heavy as it fell beneath her waist. He brushed a wet strand from her face as she traced the familiar lines of his face and the curve of his lips. “Even in Valinor, I will fade and eventually enter Mandos.”

She could not help the spark of bitter humor she felt. Her lips quirked at him. “Like Míriel, Fëanaro’s mother, too much of my spirit is bound up with yours, Úmaia” Even in this, she could not escape the shadow of her uncle.

For the first time since he’d pulled her onto the raft, he seemed to really look at her. His hands tightened convulsively around her, and a feral gleam entered his eyes as he looked long at her and examined her spirit.

“Impossible.” His voice was like Elrond’s became, whenever he came across an academic improbability that messed with the laws of logic and reason. “You are –”

He shook himself. His hands were tight enough around her shoulders to hurt, though she had no wish to pull away.

“Nonsense, Galadriel! You are as you ever were. You will move passed this weariness and heal in Aman.”

She closed her eyes. She would never tire of how he said her name, the musical way his voice lilted over the epesse Findaráto bestowed upon her as a child.

“You stood against me for millennia. ‘Stronger than the foundations of the earth,’ I said to you.” He laughed, but there was no warmth in it, rather an undercurrent of sudden and unexpected desperation. He was starting to believe her.

“You cannot be fading. I am gone from the world at last.” He seemed to notice how hard he was gripping her for the first time and made a conscious effort to lessen his strength. His voice was sarcastic, but he made no attempt to soften that.

“You are finally free of me,” he said. “You can return to Valinor and be at peace.”

Galadriel smiled without opening her eyes.

“I will find no peace in Valinor,” she told him, bluntly. “For I bound myself to you long Ages past, and you are not there.”

“So let me go!” His voice rose in passion, and the seas rose with it, the storm renewing its fury. “Break the bounds you have allowed to grow between us and be free. I have no strength to stop you anymore.” His eyes were turning into slits in his fury. “Take it and be done with this, Elf!”

She laughed above the storm, suddenly feeling as hardy as a girl again. “It doesn’t work like that, Halbrand,” she told him. “The balance between us has not been made right. You know this.”

She shook her head at him.

“You said long ago that I was your salvation, but you were wrong. I wasn’t your salvation, you were mine,” she admitted.

He was quiet now, the only sound between them the restless waves against the raft.

“For years – for centuries – I believed I looked at you and saw my own darkness mirrored back at me. I feared you for it. And I resented you.” A whisper, unwillingly breathed into the air. Even now, her heart pounded to admit weakness before Sauron. His eyes were unblinking upon hers, and pitiless as a cat’s, a hunter’s gaze.

She shook her head again. “But when I held Celebrían in my arms, I realized the truth. It wasn’t your strength I was drawn to, nor your power of will.” Her hands were hard around his arms, as if by her own strength she could make him see what she did.

“It was your light,” she conceded.

He shook his head, that familiar, self-deprecating smile twitching at the corners of his lips as he made to brush aside her words and tell her she was mad, but she quickly held a finger up to his lips and, for a wonder, he desisted.

“It was,” she insisted. “I watched you try and pull yourself up, alone and unaided, from the darkness, to try and find redemption,” she said. “That was not a lie, though you may have convinced even yourself it was.”

Her hand cupped his cheek, and she felt Halbrand’s stubble against her palm. His eyes were still unblinking upon her; his lips parted in unwilling breath at her touch.

“You pulled me back into the light,” she told him. “You were what kept me in the light. What I measured myself against.” She took a deep breath, knowing she was giving him power over her – knowing she had to do it anyway. “And when you reached out to me for help, I pushed you back into the darkness.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “You –”

She cut him off again. “Not entirely,” she agreed. “You may have taken the same path without me. You likely would have, in fact; I was never enough to save you then. But I was one more linchpin in your fall back into the darkness, when I should have been a memory of light instead.”

“You were. You are.”

Her smile was sad. “I know, but I should have helped you then, and I did not. And I have had to live with that failure for centuries.”

The waves against the raft soothed her as she searched for the right words to say to him. She had dreamed of this moment so many times, and like all the most pivotal events in her long life, she still felt unprepared to face it.

If only she’d had more time, she thought, and she laughed a little at herself. Millennia old and I still don’t have enough time.

“I’m old now, and – hopefully – a little wiser. I will not force you to come with me, but I am asking you to follow me once more across the sea.”

She saw the instant flash of defiance in his eyes and rose to meet. “I know,” she agreed, stroking his cheek gently. “Your pride would have you remain here in bitterness and defiance unto the breaking of the world. I know,” she said. “I feel just the same. I would stay with you, but I cannot. I am fading even now, and I long to see our daughter once more.”

His big hands, still loosely clasping her side and hip, twitched at the mention of Celebrían.

“I would rather remain caged in Valinor with you by my side,” she acknowledged, “than face all the ages of the world alone or fade down into the shadows without you.”

She could already see that he would deny her – that he would attempt to exploit her weakness, as he had every time before; a defense mechanism, perhaps, from his time with Morgoth, and one as old as the Ainur themselves were.

She decided it was time to push. She’d always been too rash for her own good, and time had not cured her of that impulse.

In the face of his sharp eyes and the even sharper words that waited on his tongue, she gazed fiercely up at him. She felt, for the first time in many centuries, as mischievous as a girl again – like she had in Númenor, dancing with Elendil’s soldiers and with Halbrand’s appreciative eyes upon her from the smithy.

She smiled and the joy in her smile caused his mocking gaze falter into something more uncertain. She knew her smile also wasn’t a particularly nice one – it was too sharp, too triumphant; much as she herself was.

And it was all at his expense.

“When Celebrimbor was reborn,” she began, and watched his cheek twitch slightly at the mention of her cousin’s name; they had been something like friends once. “He sent me a note. A single line on a parchment transported across the Sea and across legions of Middle Earth. It contained only one line: Show him whose will is mightier.”

His cheek twitched again. So, she’d guessed right, and Celebrimbor’s words were an echo from Sauron himself.

Her smile grew, and eyes that held the light of the Two Trees glinted at the Dark Lord, fey-like and untamable. “My will is mightier, Sauron, Shadow of Morgoth, Lord of Wraiths – for here we stand in the Unseen World and Middle Earth is free of you.”

He tore himself away from her again, snarling, and retreated to the far side of the raft. His hands clenched at his sides as he looked out at the restless sea, and she knew without a doubt that he would lash out at her. A blow for a blow.

A heartbeat passed. And then another.

The only sound was the lap of waves upon the wood beams and the pounding of Galadriel’s pulse. She forcibly unclenched her hands. She would not rise to his bait. She would outmaneuver him, as she had done for centuries.

He turned back to her, a mirthless grin upon his face. There it is.

“Galadriel of the Noldor will fade into the shadows for – for what? For love?”

He sneered.

 “Some shadow of love that you sought with me?” He laughed and it was an ugly sound.

She raised her hand again and he made to step back from her, as though believing she would hit him, but all she did was lay her hand back upon his cheek.

He didn’t like touch. She knew that. But he’d never seemed averse to hers.

“Perhaps, I did,” she said, simply. “Perhaps I seek it still. But you will never know if you stay here, alone.”

He scoffed at her. “Do you really expect me to leap back with you into the furnace?” he taunted. “Look where that led us both last time.”

His words confirmed what she knew from looking into his mind; they had taken a wrong turn last time. They had gone done one path when they should have travelled down another.

She believed it was time to make that right.

The wind and the rain had stopped. The storm had passed and all was calm.

Her smile widened. “Yes, I believe you will follow me, Halbrand, and together we will find peace.” She stroked his cheek again, unable to stop touching him now that he was here before her at last. “Together we will find peace.”

Seemingly without conscious thought, he reached out and ran his fingers lightly through several strands of her hair. She watched him as he gazed at the silver-gold locks running like water over his fingers.

She reached up and laced his hand with hers. His green eyes flicked back to hers.

“Halbrand of the Southlands,” she began formally. “Sauron of the Úmaiar.” He grimaced and looked away from her out over the water. “Mairon of the Maiar,” she finished on a whisper, and his hand twitched in hers.

She shook it gently, hoping he would look back at her. “Will you follow me once more?”

He turned to look at her, one eyebrow already raised and a self-deprecating smile dancing on his lips.

“To better ends this time, then the last,” she added, hopefully.

He hesitated.

“There can be no peace for you here,” she echoed, from centuries ago and a firelit conversation where he’d been stricken at her words. Once more, she saw the mirror of that expression on his face. He swallowed. “Nor for me,” she admitted.

She took a deep breath. “The only peace for us is that which lies across the sea.”

He was silent for so long her hope began to flicker once more.

Please, she begged the uncaring Valar, even Illúvatar himself. It’s been so long to meet him at this point once more – and I’m so tired…

His hand was sweaty in hers. “And if there is no peace – even there?” There was no expectation of agreement in his voice, but he couldn’t seem to let go of her hand.

She clung to him fiercely. “Then we will make some,” she promised. “Together.” Another bound, freely taken.

He looked at her and she could see the faint flame growing behind his eyes.

She smiled grimly. “And woe betide any Vala who gets in our way.”

A caught breath. His hand tightening even further around hers.

And the unmistakable feeling of his path aligning with hers once more – as it always should have been.

The tears on her cheeks were sweet in their unexpected joy.

“Not even I can diminish your light,” he said, fondly, and he wiped her tears away.

He bent forwards and before she could react, he pressed his mouth against hers. She breathed him in like a reflex, and he smiled against her lips. Then he kissed her in the Unseen World and she felt everything burst into vibrant color once more.

***

It was Lord Elrond who found them once the storm had passed.

On a derelict raft upon the sea, two figures curled towards one another in exhausted sleep.

One was a man in threadbare clothes, whose face and form reminded Frodo of a relative of Aragorn’s.

The other was Galadriel, clad in a simple white shift and looking younger than Frodo remembered. Her hair gleamed in the starlight.

Galadriel’s hand was held tightly by the man, who must have been Sauron in physical form, and though battered by the storm, she looked at peace.

Even to Frodo’s eyes, it was clear her fading had halted.

As Elrond swung down from a ladder to scoop her up, the man’s eyes opened – a flash of green in the darkness – and Frodo shivered. The man was indeed Sauron, for his eyes were slitted like a cat’s.

“Elrond of Rivendell,” the man said, and his voice held untold menace. “Do not seek to take what is mine.” And he refused to let go of Galadriel’s hand.

Elrond was unmoved. “Father of my wife,” he returned, pointedly. “I am merely bringing Galadriel aboard ship.” He paused, then added begrudgingly. “You are welcome to come up as well.”

A raised eyebrow. “Am I indeed?”

Frodo felt a bit like hiding behind Gandalf, who was smoking his pipe faster than usual as he watched the scene below, but he found himself unwillingly fascinated.

Elrond grimaced. “Celebrían would have words with me if I left you behind.”

The elf-lord glanced down at the woman in his arms. “And Galadriel would never let me hear the end of it,” he sighed. “So yes, you are welcome,” he ended on gritted teeth.

Sauron’s eyes glinted and the smile he gave wasn’t friendly in the least. “How gracious,” he said, sarcastically.

“Don’t push it,” said Elrond, and the Dark Lord followed him up onto the ship.

When he stood upon the deck, the eye of every Elf upon him, he reached over and plucked Galadriel from Elrond’s arms.

His eyes met Frodo’s, and he winked.

Oh dear, Frodo thought.

Then the small part of Sauron that still resided within him, vanished, and Frodo was finally free.

Elrond grimaced and then, without ceremony, pulled Vilya off his finger and dropped it into the sea. “Well, that’s useless now.” He gave his father-in-law a stern look. "Did you have to deplete the rings entirely?”

Sauron shrugged. “We could not get back without them.” He hefted Galadriel more firmly in his arms. “I’ll make you another one,” he offered.

“No!” cried a dozen voices at once.

The Dark Lord grinned.

His voice held an accent similar to Pippin’s, which struck Frodo as wrong, somehow.

Beside him, Bilbo stirred. “Are you the one who made my marvelous ring?” he called, over the horrified Elves.

Sauron tilted his head. Then he said, “I did indeed, Master Hobbit.”

“I say, that was marvelous work,” Bilbo continued, apparently oblivious to the tension on the ship. “Any chance of you making another one?”

As one, the Elves flinched.

Sauron started laughing.

Galadriel stirred in his arms. “Don’t even think about it!” she scolded.

Sauron laughed harder, before coming over to shake Bilbo’s hand. It was a surprisingly pleasant laugh, and when he met Frodo’s eyes, there was no malice in his gaze.

Thank you for carrying a piece of my spirit for so long, Frodo Baggins.

Frodo shrugged. “It was nothing,” he said politely, for he was a gentleman after all.

Gandalf rolled his eyes. “Hobbits,” he said, in exasperated tones.

Frodo smiled.

Apparently, whatever the future held in store for them was going to be interesting indeed.

And if the Valar let them pass, Frodo knew Valinor would never be the same again.

***