FIC: Small Mercies 2/?

[laguera25]

Title: Small Mercies 2/?

Author: laguera25

Fandom: LOTR(TTT movieverse)

Rating: FRM/R

Pairing Haldir/OFC, with long stretches of gen

Spoilers: The LOTR trilogy

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, places, and events are the property of J.R.R. Tolkien, the Tolkien estate, and New Line Cinema. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.

Prologue Part I


He's following him seven turns of the sun later as they climb a slowly-cresting hill on the outskirts of the Gardens of Lorien. Orophin, too, has come, and his shortbow clatters against his back as he climbs. The morning is cool, and the air stirs their hair with playful fingers. It is sweet in his nostrils, perfumed with jasmine and roses and lilacs and the promise of spring rain, and he savors it as he walks. Ahead, Rumil sings a song of gratitude for the morning, and beside him, Orophin hums in furtive accompaniment.

He had sung, too, at journey's beginning, when ten thousand steps had lain between him and the home to which he now draws near, but as the leagues have disappeared beneath his feet, so has his desire for song. His spirit is restless, and his mind races, fraught with possibilities both sweet and dreadful. His brothers' ebullience has turned his thoughts from melancholy paths, and they have bolstered his flagging courage with hopeful speculations, but now that the gardens and the Lady beckon, the fears they had so bravely banished have returned. His voice remains to him, but he can find no songs to sing.

Orophin gives his shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Fear not, brother. The Lady will have the answers you seek."

And what if it is the answers I fear? he thinks, but he musters a wan smile. "The Lady is ever wise," he says, and walks on, Orophin's steady, shrewd gaze a gentle weight at his back.

The gardens are thick and fair, and Rumil revels in them, darting from thicket to bramble and flowering bush with happy cries. Haldir knows he is committing them to cherished memory, studying them with worshipful eyes so that equally-reverent fingers might preserve them in ink and pigment. It slows their progress, but in truth, he is glad of it; he would remember his brother thus if the Lady's tidings prove too dire for his heart to bear. It would be a measure of solace as he wandered Mandos' grey and joyless halls.

Orophin is not so sanguine. "Always he dawdles," he grumbles, and hitches his bow.

"He has been ever thus," Haldir agrees. "Whatsoever he loves, he loves wholeheartedly."

"A trait that runs in the blood, it seems," Orophin observes blandly.

"And perhaps you will find you share it," Haldir retorts.

The faintest twitch of lip, and then Orophin stalks across the garden to pluck Rumil from the rosebushes and chivvy him back to the path.

The house sits in a small glade, flanked by slender silver birches and bordered by a stream to the east and lush grasses to the west. Bees bumble through the air, bent to their industry, and a finch hops across his path, a vivid burst of color that takes wing at the water's edge and disappears into the vast expanse of blue. The roof is thatched, and the eaves and walls are festooned with wood chimes and silver bells and lush tangles of ivy, garlands threaded through a maiden's hair. Broad wooden steps lead to a stout oaken door. It is so unlike the majesty of Caras Galadhon, with its great, winding stairs that led unto the heavens and its thrones of polished marble that he can only gape at it in mute astonishment.

"Perhaps the Lady has diminished, indeed," Orophin murmurs, and rocks back on his heels to better survey the profusion of thatch that overhangs the roof. "Are you sure you have not led us to the dwelling of Radagast the Brown?" he calls to Rumil.

At that moment, the door opens to reveal a man clad in a tunic of diaphanous, white linen and matching leggings. A wide, grey belt is cinched about his waist, and from it dangles a sword sheathed in a fine scabbard of oiled leather.

The new captain of her guard? he wonders, and is unsettled by the pang of bitter loss the thought inspires.

It cannot be, he knows. There is precious little need for swords here, and even less for guards, soldiers with their hands bent to destruction and death. A manservant, then, the sword a mere affectation, a habitual vestige from a past not yet fully relinquished.

The manservant descends the steps and stands before them. "Mae govannen," he says, and bows, hand pressed briefly to his heart. "I am Glandur, servant of the Lady Galadriel and Lord Celeborn. Welcome."

Haldir bows in turn and steps forward. "I am Haldir of Lorien, and I would see the lady. These are my brothers, Rumil and Orophin."

Glandur offers a haughty smirk and surveys them through half-lidded eyes. "By your leave," he murmurs, and with another small bow, he turns on his heel and retreats up the steps and into the hall.

"The courtesy of her hall might have diminished along with her circumstances," Orophin mutters from the side of his mouth when he is sure Glandur is out of earshot.

"I find myself wondering if I were so haughty," Haldir confesses.

"Insufferable," Rumil says drily, and Haldir is torn between the urge to laugh and the impulse to box his ears. Orophin says nothing, but his lips curl into a wicked grin.

They do not have long to wait, and when Glandur reappears, he is not alone. Lord Celeborn looms behind him, solemn and resplendent in robes of deep green embroidered with pearls and golden thread. A circlet of silver and emerald adorns his head, and his silver hair spills over his shoulders and down his back.

Time has done nothing to diminish his splendor, and though Haldir is no longer a marchwarden of Lorien, his knees genuflect in an act of muscle memory, as do those of his brothers. "My lord," they say in unison.

Lord Celeborn sweeps around Glandur and down the steps. "The only lords here are the Valar," he declares as he approaches. "I am but Celeborn, historian and a man with far too little to do." He inclines his head and gives a small bow. "The Lady wanders in the gardens at present, but I would hear your tidings. "Come, that we may refresh ourselves with food and drink."

He ushers them up the steps and into the hall, Glandur bustling behind to close the doors. The interior is bright and airy and larger than it appeared from the outside. Stairs rise to a second floor and descend into a basement. The entrance hall opens into a sprawling room with a grand hearth and rich tapestries adorning the walls. No fire burns now, though wood is stacked neatly in a brass woodbox nearby. This room gives way to a small kitchen, where an elf maid scours an iron kettle with a boar-hair brush. She inclines her head as the lord of the manor passes and returns to her task.

Through the kitchen and onto a veranda. The view is breathtaking; green fields dotted with rosebushes roll unchecked to the horizon, and a small, clear pool sparkles beneath a stand of pear trees. A tidy garden sits to the east, set in neat rows of turned earth. Stakes jut from the rows at regular intervals, and the first green shoots poke from the earth, the promise of future bounty.

"The Lady prefers the pool," Celeborn says as he leads them to a table covered in fine linen and laid with platters of sliced fruit and cheese and bread. Pots of honey and pitchers of water and wine there are as well. "Though it appears that her wanderings have led her farther afield this day. Please, sit. Refresh yourselves." He settles himself into a chair and reaches for a goblet that Glandur hastens to fill. "There is sweet cream if you like."

"Already you are too gracious, my lord," Haldir replies. He slips off his bow and sets it beside his chair before he sits, and his brothers follow suit. He reaches for a cube of cheese and takes an exploratory nibble. It's smooth and nutty and he rolls it on his tongue with an appreciative sigh.

"From the cheesemongers on the plains just outside Orome's forest. It pleases you?"

"It is very fine," he admits.

"So the Lady would agree." Celeborn sips his wine. "Late is your coming. We expected you long ere now."

Haldir raises an eyebrow. "My coming was foretold?"

"You misunderstand. We thought to see you before now. Have you been so long in your exploration of these lands?"

"Alas, I have only just returned from my sojourn with Lord Mandos." He reaches for a pitcher and pours himself a cup of water.

Now it is Lord Celeborn who is surprised. "So long?" he says, and Haldir's stomach does a slow roll.

How long have I been away? he wonders, but before he can voice the thought, Celeborn has steered the conversation to other topics.

"You have found your kin, I see."

"Yes. Much to my mother's delight."

"My mother was much the same, singing and fretting at once."

Haldir says nothing, distracted by the vision of Celeborn being accosted by his mother. He has been Lord of Lothlorien and consort of the Lady for as long as he has drawn breath and endless ages before, and he can imagine him as nothing else, certainly not a son hectored and harried by an overjoyed mother.

"Do you seek employ?" Celeborn is saying now, and Haldir blinks to clear his head of the image of regal Lord Celeborn being dragged through the house by the sleeve of his robe and force-fed steaming bowls of homecoming soup.

Haldir shifts in his seat and takes a contemplative sip of water. "In truth, I have not yet turned my mind to such matters."

"Mm. It is of no pressing concern here. We care one for another. If you should need a means by which to pass the idle hours, the Lady seeks a new manservant."

"I am flattered by your generosity."

"Generosity it might be, but it is also of selfishness. You were the finest of our captains, and we thought well of you. It was a blow to lose you as we did."

An awkward silence descends on the company, broken only by the creak of chair and the shuffling of feet as Glandur sidles restlessly at his post.

"I would speak of it with the Lady when she returns," he says at length.

"Excellent."

And so, talk drifts to other matters, to Rumil's art and Orophin's research, to the upcoming spring festival, and to the circumstances of friends, acquaintances, and heroes of old. Legolas has joined the shipbuilders at Alqualonde, and he is chiefest among Cirdan's pupils. Elrond has established his hall in the Forest of Orome, and there he practices his healing arts, though there is but scant need for them now. Mostly, he devotes himself to the scholarly pursuit of chronicling the history of Aman, to the preservation of genealogies and the documentation of magics and medicines. Orophin has passed much time there in his study of the languages of old and their inexorable evolution.

They have just begun to treat upon the fate of Gil-Galad when movement stirs in the kitchen. A flash of white on the periphery of his vision. The whisper of feet and fine linen, and then the Lady appears, and Haldir sucks in a breath, overcome by awe.

Diminished, they had called her, but as he gazes upon her, he thinks it a falsehood. Her hair is long and silken and yet radiates the light of the Two Trees, and her eyes, fathomless and inscrutable, are as the sunlight upon frozen skin. Lovely and fearsome and strong as tempered Elvish steel. A warrior once and a goddess always. For three thousand years, he had guarded her throne and defended her borders and paid her obeisance on bended knee, and time has dimmed neither her power nor his loyalty and admiration.

He rises from his chair and fights the urge to drop to one knee. "My lady," he manages.

She turns her gaze upon him, cool and unflinching, but her voice is warm when she speaks. "My marchwarden returns at last. Mae govannen, Haldir." She drifts to him on feet that seem not to touch the ground and cups his cheek. She turns that penetrating gaze upon his brothers, who drop their gazes in deference to her splendor.

"Lady." Hushed, children at the feet of the Valar.

"I am a Lady no longer. Here, I am only Galadriel."

"I have told them the same," Celeborn points out, "Yet still they persist."

"Habits are hard masters to overthrow." The Lady plucks a piece of cheese from the silver tray and seats herself beside her husband.

"Haldir has interest in returning to your employ." Celeborn's hand covers the Lady's, and Haldir swallows against a stab of sweet envy at their easy comfort with one another.

"Well pleased I am to hear such news. Your service would honor this house. Though I see you have brought naught with you save your bow. Will you return home for your things?"

"In truth, my bow and my brothers are all that I now possess."

"So you will stay then?"

Caught by surprise, he can only answer, "As my Lady commands." It is reflex, out of his mouth before he can seal his lips.

There is silence from his brothers. Orophin's face in stony, and a muscle twitches in his jaw. Rumil hangs his head, his eyes downcast, a captive before the lash, and in his face, Haldir sees betrayal.

A blow I did not intend, Rumil, but my masters are harder than most, and I am honor-bound to obey the Lady.

'Twas your cherished honor that led you to your current circumstance, the voice of nettled conscience hisses in his head. Alone, without that which bids your heart to beat, and yet uncertain as to precisely when you are. Phantom hands in his hair and the memory of Anduin water on his skin.

"And yet, it is not the hope of a job that brings you here," the Lady says shrewdly. When he blinks at her, she lowers her eyelids and whispers, My power is diminished, not gone, Haldir of Lorien, and even were it so, I would have no need of it to see that your mind and heart are turned elsewhere.

"I seek word of my wife, and Rumil tells me that you and Lord Celeborn might know what has become of her."

And just like that, the atmosphere sours. The faint smile that has been Lord Celeborn's constant companion fades, and the Lady's radiant face grows dim. Rumil straightens in his chair, his pique forgotten, and Orophin's gaze sharpens, piercing as a rapier as he gazes at his hosts.

I do not wish to hear this, he thinks, and his fingers curl tightly around the armrests of his chair.

But what the Lady says is, "What is the last that you remember before the darkness claimed you?"

His answer is immediate. "The bite of the Uruk's ax and the empty eyes of my brethren, filling with dirt and rain."

"Your last thoughts were of the battle?"

"Of Anariel. I begged her forgiveness."

"For what had you need of forgiveness?" Curious, now.

"I promised her I would return. It was an oath I could not fulfill."

"So it becomes clear," she murmurs to herself. "And thus, faith becomes a curse."

Haldir says nothing. His heart hammers painfully against his ribs, and though his tongue cries for water, he dares not reach for the goblet of water so near to hand.

"Your death undid her," Galadriel continues gently, her eyes distant with memory. "Long was the hour of her weeping, and in her grief, her tongue was become a lash. No reason would she see, no comfort would she accept. Time did not heal her wound, but instead it deepened and festered. Silent she became, and bitter. Her only sounds were of unspeakable grief, and she became as a wraith clothed in flesh."

"You exaggerate," Rumil interrupts, and Haldir is so astonished at this unexpected hubris that he can only stare. "'Tis true that she was undone by grief, and she did descend into melancholy and unshakeable silence, but no wraith did she become. When I staggered home across the golden fields, she was there. Though well I know it was not I she sought to embrace, embrace me she did, with as much tenderness as one can salvage from a shattered heart. She lent me her shoulder and bore me home and tended my wounds and filled my belly. She was not yet so lost in her grief that she had abandoned kindness; she was my sister when I had no brothers left."

Pride swells again for his Anariel, hot and bittersweet as honey and gall. I knew I had chosen well. Pride, too, for Rumil, who had thrown off his reserve and docile nature to rise to her defense.

"Your brother speaks truly," Galadriel concedes when Rumil has subsided, unfazed by his outburst. "She was ever faithful in her duties to the people of the Wood. None did she shirk, and when asked to lend aid, she gave it swiftly. In that, she was a credit to your union, but there was no gladness in it, no song within her heart."

Did you think to find it so soon after I had fled the shores of Middle-earth? he muses, and is abashed at the cynicism in his heart.

"When the appointed hour came, she and a handful of like-minded others refused, deciding instead to abide in the wood until their fallen returned to them."

"Surely not," Haldir protests. "Once a soul flees to Mandos' hall, never again can it walk the paths of Arda. Anariel was no sheltered child. She knew this."

"So knew they all," the Lady agrees. "And yet, they persisted in their hard course. They would not yield, no matter our entreaties. Anariel's heart was the hardest among them, and she refused my counsel with sharp words.

"The Lady has the truth of it," Rumil says, subdued. "I, too, pleaded with her to turn from her course, but grief had deafened her ears to reason and blinded her eyes to future hope. She saw only your absence, felt only the moment when your soul was torn from hers. Her hands might have been at the kneading of lembas dough, but her heart had turned inward, retreated to a time when you yet lived and breathed and loved her. Ever in her company was your red cloak, which she carried whithersoever she went."

"My red cloak," he repeats dumbly.

"I thought it would bring her a measure of solace, but I fear it only sharpened her anguish, drove it deeper into her undefended places."

He remembers that cloak, his favorite of all the clothes that her hands have so skillfully fashioned for him. She had sewn it during a Lorien summer, the heavy fabric draped over her legs while she worked by the light of the stars. Silver needle in her hand and tuneless song on her lips. Loose-limbed and lovely as she sat at the entrance to their talan. It had given her pleasure to make it for him, and he'd modeled it for her near the end, long-suffering and secretly delighted as she'd lengthened the hem or tightened the furl or added a stronger clasp. Great skill had she in the craft of garment, his Vaire with a sweeter heart and fairer hair. A scene of tranquility it had seemed to him then, when he'd stood in the door of their talan with a steaming cup of herbal tea cradled in his hands and watched her golden head bent to the task, but now, it strikes him as a dreadful portent.

"I am surprised she did not bury me with it," he murmurs absently, and recalls the brush of velvet against his cheek as she'd drawn its hood over his head.

Another pained silence descends. He can only wait, his stomach a hard knot beneath his tunic.

"There was no burial," Rumil admits at last. "Not in the Wood."

"Ah." It is a short, barked syllable, as though an unseen fist has buried itself in his abdomen.

Now he begins to understand. There had been no time for formality after the tumult of Helm's Deep, no time for the women of Lorien to retrieve the slain from the fields and prepare them according to custom. No shrouds, no veils, no bodies prepared with sweet incense, no tender laments or farewell kisses pressed to lips gone cold.

"A common tomb?" he says dully.

A miserable nod from Rumil. "They raised cups in honor of the fallen once the battle was done, but there was time for little else. Elessar made for Mordor and the Pelennor fields, and those who did not go with him sought for Osgiliath and the defense of their kin and lands."

He snorts. His sacrifice, honored only by a cup of feeble, sour wine. He would laugh if he did not feel so numb. I left her with only a brash promise and a bloody, rent cloak.

"I take it the day was won, then?" he asks, though he is indifferent to the answer.

It is Galadriel who answers. "It was. The valor of Men and the sacrifice of the Galadhrim allowed the Rohirrim to hold until Mithrandir arrived at dawn of the fifth day with reinforcements."

"The Valar be thanked," he replies, but his heart is not in it, and the Lady's gaze is hard upon his.

He is too preoccupied with worry for Anariel to care. "And yet," he muses slowly, more to himself than the assembled company, "I do not understand. "Anariel has ever been prideful, and oftentimes she is quick-tempered and ill-disposed to suffer foolishness, but she has never been disloyal; she is as much a servant of the Lord and Lady as I."

Even as the words escape his mouth, he knows them for a lie. Anariel is pure and stout of heart, and like all Galadhrim, she reveres the Lord and Lady, but she has never served them, never counted herself as a vassal moved by their whims. Her chiefest loyalty has always been to him. Her allegiance to them has matched, but never exceeded his own.

If she could slay her kin, then it should be of little matter to turn her blade against a few orcs, she had said that night in the Anduin, her body wet and glistening and chilled as her passions had been hot, and he longs for her with a white-knuckled, hot-eyed want that dizzies him.

"Even so, one must make the journey into the West of their own will. It is a haven, not a prison, save for those doomed to toil in the eternal night of Melkor's halls."

"But why would she not wait for me there? Here?" he amends. To this, he knows the answer, though he will not admit it to himself, not when he senses more grief to come.

"I did not know her heart. It was closed to me. Lost."

But not to me. Never to me. It was her sweetest gift, constant and reliable as the flight of Gelmir through the heavens.

It is Celeborn who resumes the tale. "They remained, the wives and daughters of the vanguard. Every night, they gathered on the Wood's northern borders to await a homecoming that was never to be, and every night, the laments filled the stillness of the forest. For many years, they were vigilant in their duties and resolute in their purpose, and grief was their constant companion."

"With neither the Lady nor the power of Nenya to sustain it, the Wood withered and fell into darkness. When Elessar died and passed from the world, it was to Lorien that Queen Arwen came to spend her endless grief and shed the unwelcome bonds of her life. Anariel it was who wove her shroud, her eyes dim and her face pale and wet with tears, and she it was who led the procession to her tomb, her head held high and her voice lifted in lament, though methinks it was not for Gondor's fallen queen that she sang. Not that night, and not for all the nights thereafter, when she stood over the royal tomb and cast her sorrow upon the mercy of the Valar."

"It grieved me to see the Wood deposed from its former majesty, and thus, I departed from its forlorn heart and betook myself east, and there I established a new realm, fair and tranquil, though it was no equal to its namesake so regretfully left behind. I bid those who would to follow me, but none could I entice to abandon their ghosts. They clung to them as tenaciously as Anariel clung to your cloak. Robbed of all they had adored, I would not rob them of choice, and so I left them, but always I kept an eye turned thence, hoping reason would prevail."

"It did not." It was not a question. His head swims, and air sits not easily in his lungs.

Celeborn shakes his head and takes a sip of wine. "No. There the remained, the watchers in the wood. Men shunned it as a place haunted, and so it was. I tarried in East Lorien for a time, bidding farewell to the land and places I had loved so well and hoping that the grief that gripped my kin would fade, but it was not so. Letters I wrote to Anariel, and these she answered faithfully, but she would not be moved from her purpose, nor any of those who had cast their lot with her, and so I left them and sailed into the West."

"They passed from all knowledge until Legolas, son of Thranduil came bearing his dwarf and a few of the vanguard. After them came the rest, but Anariel was not among them."

"Did they say what became of her?"

"She alone would not yield her vigil," Celeborn says simply. "Though she gave the others leave to repent their choice and aided them in their preparations, she would not depart the Wood, but lingered there, wandering its deserted paths and haunting its rotting talans and clutching the fabric of a cloak she no longer held. Time had not lessened her sorrow, but had increased it. The last watcher to leave saw her on the edge of the Wood, a grey-clad phantom among the dying trees, eyes turned northward in eternal search and face as white as the granite of Minas Tirith."

A strangled wheeze escapes him, and his eyes blur and burn. Elbereth, no, he thinks. It thuds in time with his anguished heart. His fingernails dig into the smooth, varnished wood of his chair. He knows why she stayed, why she refused to surrender her grief and take what solace she could find from the soft sands of the shores and the hiss of the sea. An impossible promise offered in well-intended haste, ardent lips pressed to hers.

You cannot promise-

And yet I do.

"Stubborn as a Dwarf she was," he hisses. It was why I loved her. "What became of her?" he asks again when he trusts himself to speak. The air is too thin, and his blood is too hot.

"None now know," Galadriel answers gently, and her compassion is as a scour unto a raw nerve.

"I would know!" he cries, anguished and imploring. "I would know. Of all the splendors of the world, though she was not its chiefest, she was mine alone. My sweet, secret note of the Great song. She was mine, and she was faithful, and though my service to you cost her dear, she never wavered in her duty, never flinched from its harshness. She was mine, and I-," But he cannot speak of the promise so rashly uttered, cannot admit that she was bound to her course by the wagging of a loose tongue. He slumps in his chair, head in his hands. "I can still feel her," he says instead. "A faint whisper in my soul."

"I am sorry, Haldir," the Lady says.

"Is there no hope?" He raises wet eyes to hers. "If I can feel her, then her fea yet lives. It is diminished, but still my Anariel. Surely she yet dwells in Middle-earth, in Lothlorien, tending the past, or in Mirkwood with Thranduil's folk. Perhaps my time in Mandos obscured my fea from her. Now that I am released, perhaps she will seek for the Havens and the skill of the shipwrights."

"The last of the elves left the shores of Arda long ago. The folk of Ithilien were the last. If there be shipwrights there, they are not of the Eldar, and none there are to guide her home."

"Cirdan-"

"Returned long ago, as I have told you, brother." Rumil, soft and low, a man soothing a spooked steed.

"Then I would return for her."

"It is forbidden. Those who set foot in Valinor can never return whence they came."

"I can feel her." It is a quiet moan. "Is she to be trapped forever beyond my reach? I would hold her, feel her hair beneath my fingers, hear her song in my ear. Never have I asked anything of this world, never have I begged the Valar for favor, but I would ask this."

Silence hangs over the room. Though the sun is bright and warm without the veranda, it cannot penetrate the dismal pall, cannot warm his deadened skin. "What assurance have you that she was not captured by orcs and driven in chains to Barad-dur, there enslaved and forever bent to their cruel toil."

"Sauron was utterly defeated, his armies routed," Celeborn answers. "Those not annihilated on the slopes of Barad-Dur were hunted by determined foes and put to fire and sword. No slaves or captives were discovered when Sauron's fell halls were emptied. That fate you need not fear."

"And yet, Sauron was not the only evil in the world," he croaks. His bloodless fingers throttle the armrests of his chair, strengthless and fumbling for softer purchase. "Only the gods know where she walks now."

"Do you know how long it is that you have dwelt with Mandos?" Galadriel asks, and the gentleness of her voice hints to him of some terrible new doom.

He shakes his head.

"It is the fortieth year of the Seventh Age," comes her reply, and with it, his wounded heart crumbles inside his chest.

"The Seventh-" he repeats weakly, and then he rises from his chair on jerky, wooden legs and scissors toward the the gardens. He lurches and staggers as though he has partaken of too much strong Elvish wine. He reels past the Lady's outstretched arm and stumbles down the steps into the sun-bathed verdure. He collapses to his knees on the grass, and bile rises in his throat.

Gone, he thinks wildly. Though her spirit yet survives, she is lost to me until the End of Days. Her vessel has faded. No more will I hold her or kiss her lips or stroke her hair. No more will I hear her voice in my ear, lulling me to sleep with soft whispers, and no more will I see her shining face. She is but a wraith, insubstantial as dust and bound to Arda until the breaking of the world. Lost, his mind wails, and he opens his mouth, sure that the wracking sobs massed in his chest like a suffocating clot must come, but all that emerges is a dry, choked hiss.

The grasses of the Lady's garden vanish, replaced by the gritty, bloody stone of the Deeping Wall, and green becomes black, charred and desolate and reeking of smoke and death. No birdsong now, only the screams and moans of the dying and the ringing clash of steel. Pain sinks deep into his belly, poisoned Uruk steel, but it is worse, so much worse, as though the gods have unwound the strands of time and redoubled his agony. He bites back a scream and tastes copper in his mouth.

By Elbereth's mercy, I should never have left Mandos' halls. I should never have come thither at all. Would that I had lingered forever upon the ruin of the Wall or followed my body into its rest in that communal tomb. Mayhap then I would have found my Anariel again, blundered across her as she ventured from the dead boughs of Lorien to breathe cleaner, sweeter air and find companionship for a happy hour with other wanderers.

But that possibility is ever lost to him now, lost as his Anariel in the changed wilds of the world. Without her, there can be no peace, no comfort or repose for his soul. Without her, Valinor is merely Helms Deep stretched to joyless eternity, and he would not have it. He turns from it, lips steadfastly shut against the gall that the gods would pour down his throat. He retreats into himself, eyes screwed shut against a world he no longer wishes to see, and wills his soul to snap its newly-fashioned fetters and leave this useless vessel behind.

A shadow falls over him as he kneels. His brothers, he thinks, come to console him, but the hand that falls upon his shoulder is delicate and pale as alabaster. The Lady.

"Haldir." Gentle and implacable, silk and frozen stone.

He lifts his head with an effort and sways drunkenly beneath her hand. He tries to speak, but his strength is spent. He would lie down and sleep until the earth crack and sundered beneath him.

"Haldir of Lorien!" Sharper now, and the hand on his shoulder tightens.

"I am of Lorien no longer," he answers faintly.

"Of Lorien or not, I would hold you to your word."

His brow furrows in confusion. He has offered her no word, uttered not another foolish promise. And then he remembers. "You would have me as your manservant?"

"I would." Majestic and cold as she looms over him, and her tone brooks no argument.

And yet, the temptation stirs within him to defy her. Has he not sacrificed enough for her glory? Has he not denied himself the pleasures of a life fully lived to ensure the security of her borders, inflicted undeserved hurts on she whom he loved most at her whim? Whatever bonds once bound them, surely death has severed them? His debt was paid in blood. She has no right to ask more of him.

And yet, habit is a hard master, indeed. Honor is all that remains to him now, and he gathers it close. "As you wish, my Lady." Words of duty and no more. He cannot love someone who would bind him to such torment for want of a servant.

She smiles at him and gives his shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Rise now, and become a part of my House once more. You shall abide with Glandur until your rooms can be arranged. Hold fast, Haldir, she urges him within his mind. Hold fast.

To what shall I hold? he returns. Nothing remains to me. He is dimly aware of wetness on his face. The tears have come at last. He does not bother to wipe them away.

He inclines his head in a graceless approximation of a bow and makes to join Glandur, who has come forward at the mention of his name. Before he can, Rumil shoots to his feet, face blanched and twisted with a sorrow that mirrors his. "My Lady," he blurts. "I would stay with my brother."

"As would I," Orophin agrees, and rises as well.

"No," he croaks. "You have lives and desires of your own, and I would not have them disrupted for a lost cause."

"And I would not abandon you in your hour of need!"

"My hour will stretch unto eternity. I cannot ask you to spend your days as a nursemaid."

"And you did not!" comes the tart retort.

He turns his attention to Orophin. "You must go. You have your own prospects to tend, I am told, and I would not rob you of such sweet opportunity."

His expression betrays nothing, but a rosy blush creeps into the tips of his brother's ears. "If it cannot survive brief absence, then it was not meant to be," he says gruffly, but his eyes are soft and dark with worry. He pivots toward the Lady. "I would stay with him. If you have no need for more manservants, then I ask your leave to remain as a guest."

"Guests are always welcome in the house of Galadriel, though I am certain there are tasks that need tending in the gardens. Glandur will find rooms for you until others can be arranged."

"We thank you for your generosity, my Lady." Orophin executes a proper bow, hand pressed to his heart.

"Yes," Rumil agrees, and follows suit, and then they scoop their bows from beside their chairs. Rumil gathers Haldir's with solemn care and slips it over his shoulder.

They hurry to his side, his younger brothers become his solicitous guardians, and Orophin grips his elbow and steers him toward the door to the kitchen. "Come, my brother, let us away," he whispers in his ear. "You need rest."

Haldir meets his sympathetic gaze with raw, dull eyes. "What I need is Anariel," he says, but he offers no resistance when Orophin guides him through the door in the wake of Glandur's crisp, white robes, which flap at his ankles like a flag of surrender. Bereft of purpose for the time since his appointment to the Royal Guard of Lorien and his first glimpse of Anariel at a spring near the Lady's talan, he shuffles through the corridor and away from the light.


It is said by those with an excess of opinions and a dearth of discernment that the Lady was mistaken when she gifted him the title of Celeborn the Wise. They mistake his serenity for indifference and his silence for lack of wit. Even Elrond, young and not so tested as he was in the end of those hard, black days in Arda, had taken him for a lackwit when first he had come to Lorien to court Celebrian. He had never said as such; orphan of Doriath though he might have been, he was well-schooled in matters of diplomacy, political and otherwise, but Celeborn had seen the question in his eyes, the creeping supposition that the lordship of Lorien was a title conferred out of tradition and pity rather than just merit.

They are fools. As Elrond had discovered in the fullness of time and many hours spent conversing in the sun-dappled forests and gardens of Lothlorien, there is naught of the simpleton in him. He speaks not the better to hear, and if he often appears as remote as the distant sea, it is only because he would see the whole of the picture before him before he would remark upon it. Silence can be a savior, and prudence a bulwark when wielded by deft hands and keen minds, and there a few hands defter of keener than his.

So he sees the shift, sees the precise instant when his wife chooses her course. The brightening of her eyes and the subtle stiffening of her shoulders. The soft flare of her nostrils and the cant of her head, avian and predatory as she listens to Haldir rail. He knows not what she plans--his was not the gift of foresight--but that she plans is plain to see. He sees the spark of it in her eyes, feels it dance along his skin, breath and the tingling crackle of imminent lightning. He bids himself be still, and he waits. She will reveal her heart in time.

He hears, too, the whisper behind the agonized cry. "She was mine!" Haldir's mouth exclaims, and in a still, small voice, his heart whispers, And I left her for you. Will may school his marchwarden's mouth, but it cannot shutter his eyes, wet and stunned and clouded with an anguish that cuts to the bone. It is an anguish he has seen too often in his life, the sudden bitterness of death come to one who was never meant to taste of it.

Such anguish had visited his beloved Anariel that night in Lorien, when a marchwarden's wife had returned to girlhood and wept in the mud, her arms wrapped around his knees as she sought for comfort. Her eyes, too had been wet and anguished, unseeing as she had howled into his neck like a foundling child. So small she had seemed as she had clung to him, so lost. There existed no words that could convey the solace such a profound hurt required, and so he had not wasted the futile effort. He had held her until another voice had cried out in the darkness, bidding him come tend another hopeless wound. He had had no choice but to leave her to her mourning, tottering feebly without his support to bear her up and wailing convulsively to the impassive heavens.

The husband in him pities Haldir, cries at at the ugly injustice of a choice made for him, but the lord in him understands that there was no choice. They could die as warriors on the Deeping Wall, fighting for the greater survival of Middle-earth, or they could be slaughtered beneath the trees of the Wood, their blood soaking the soil and spattering the drooping leaves. Their end would come to the same. A few months would have made no difference.

The virtue of truth seldom makes it easier to bear, points out a prosaic voice inside his head. The greater good means very little to those who do not live to share in it.

That, too, is true, and he offers no rebuke to Haldir's unthinking impertinence. Neither, he notes with interest, does Galadriel. Nay, she sits unmoving in her chair, fingers curled loosely around the armrests and gazed fixed, not on Haldir, who is lurching unsteadily toward the gardens, but on his brothers. Grief, that pernicious beast, is contagious, and it has wrought its work upon their features as well. Orophin's expression is stony, his posture ramrod-straight. His eyes are dry, but his complexion is wan, and a vein throbs at his throat. Beside him, Rumil's cheeks are wet, and his eyes follow Haldir's path as he stumbles gracelessly down the steps and into the sunny, inviting gardens at his back.

He neither turns his head nor stands when Galadriel rises from her seat and follows her stricken marchwarden. She has no need of him, and his ears will tell him all he wishes to know. He turns his head and drops his chin, and his wife's words drift to him on the warm air.

"I would hold you to your word." Soft and not unkind, but unyielding.

Her words surprise him, but he gives no sign. He merely plucks a thread from the sleeve of his robes. From the corner of his eye, he sees that her hard words have struck home with Haldir's brothers, whose ear tips redden with stifled indignation. Their loyalty to she whom they call the Lady is great, however, and they keep their counsel.

Wisdom abounds, he muses, as Rumil shifts uncomfortably in his chair and Orophin's teeth grind behind tightly-sealed lips.

And so does immeasurable grief, he realizes as Haldir reappears, shoulders slumped and head bowed and face stained with tears. He is a far cry from the proud, haughty, fierce Galadhrim he has known since early manhood when, bright-eyed and eager, he had accepted appointment to the Royal Guard as a scouting bowman. He is but a child to his eyes, inconsolable and vulnerable, lain bare by the enormity of the terrible truth with which he must now forever live, but when their eyes meet in passing as Haldir shambles to meet the waiting Glandur, it is an old man he sees, bent and broken and longing for the mercy of death.

Sauron's war has claimed one last casualty, he thinks sadly as Rumil takes his brother by the elbow and ushers him out of the room. When the door has closed behind them and the rustling scrape and shuffle of feet has receded, only then does he raise his head and speak his mind plainly. "You were hard with him."

"Sometimes blood must needs be shed to save a life," Galadriel answers.

"I fear he has precious little to spare."

"And yet it must be done." Galadriel stands beside her chair, lissome and lovely. Her face is still, but her eyes are hot with purpose. He would know her mind, but instead, he says, "Methinks his brothers believe you insult his misery with your fiat."

She blinks.

Ah, this you had not considered. Impetuousness still finds you on a while.

"Then let them think it," she says at last. "They are not my concern. Once the thing is afoot, then I shall bring them into my counsel so that they might know the truth."

"I would know it," he says mildly, and reaches for his goblet of wine.

Another blink, and then she gathers the fabric of her gown in hand and resumes her seat. "I would help Haldir if it is within my power."

"That is plain to see," he answers mildly. "I would know how you propose to achieve your aim."

"If Haldir still senses her, then she yet lives. Perhaps she can be retrieved."

"Unlikely. The call to the sea was ages past. Those who resisted chose their fate and began to fade. Surely she must be little more than mist and lingering will by now."

"The others returned."

"Not long after Legolas," he points out. "Their fading had scarcely begun."

"Even so, I would attempt it. There are miracles left to us. If she is faded, then mayhap she would at least send words of farewell to soothe his heart."

"I fear you court disappointment."

"We are well met. If nothing comes of it, then so be it. At least the deed will have been tried."

"And that matters?"

She takes his hand. "Sometimes the smallest kindnesses are all we have left."

"What you propose is no small kindness," he replies. "No Eldar who has set foot in Valinor can return to Arda. Even if, by some impossible chance, she is found, there are none to build ships or guide her home."

"You speak the truth," she agrees. Her thumb traces light circles over the back of his palm. "No Eldar may return. But it has been done by others."

He opens his mouth to ask whom she might entreat for this task, but then he knows. "Mithrandir."

"He was ever fond of Arda. Indeed, I think he loved it best."

"Would Lord Manwe grant him leave for such a journey?"

"I cannot say with certainty," she admits. "The Valar have little interest in the affairs of men these days, and even less in the affairs of elves. The fate of a single elf is of little consequence to them. But they are not without compassion, and a refusal was seldom an impediment to Mithrandir once his mind was set."

"In that, you are most alike." He brushes hair from her temple and presses a fleeting kiss to the flutter of her pulse. "What has turned your mind to this?"

"Haldir was the first to volunteer, and it has cost him dear."

"It has cost so many dear."

"And yet those costs have been recompensed. Save for Haldir, who finds it greater than he can bear."

"Even so..."

"'He was the captain of your guard for three thousand years, and yet you do not shed a single tear for him,'" she murmurs. "Spoken in a moment of anger, but it was not without truth. I have been the author of much sorrow, and I would now mend it."

"And if you cannot?"

"Then I cannot," she says simply. "If it cannot be done, then I will release Haldir from his oath and let him go where he might. But I will not know the end of the affair until I have begun."

"Then what would you have me do?" If she is resigned to this, then he would help her to the last of his strength.

The answer is immediate. "I must speak with Mithrandir at once. Plans must be laid forthwith. Despite the binds of honor I have placed upon him, I fear Haldir will fade."

In that, they are in accord, and so he presses an encouraging kiss to the side of her warm, pliant mouth, and then he reaches for his goblet. He finishes the last of his wine with a long draught, rises to his feet with a flourish of his robes, and sets out in search of quill and parchment.