Galadriel tried her best to suppress the shudder running down her spine as they loped through the black gate. The metallic grinding couldn't hide the rattle of his laugh that touched her ear. A laugh as he noticed her trembling, pressed against his chest as she was.

They crossed a vast, black plain, the ashes of the fiery mountain still blanketed the ground. To her surprise as they slowed their gait, clusters of thatched roof homes crept into view, rebuilt from the bones of the Southland cottages, she suspected. Humans skittered among them, eyes down cast as they rode past. Men and women now loyal to Sauron, not unlike the ways of his former master, she noted with a bite of her tongue. Over the next rise, Galadriel glanced around as quickly as she could. It didn't matter whether she hid her actions from him or not. She knew, had been warned, that he would observe all anyway, every twitch or scan of her gaze, or grimacing judgment. She noticed fields of crops growing in the thin light of these outermost hills of Mordor. And while it was a far cry from children sunbathing on the hills of Valinor, these people did not exude suffering as she had expected. Had she expected villages of men at all in these lands.

She was too close to him to see his face as they rode past these small clustered cottages. All she could hear was the hiss of his breath and feel the sharp graze off his armor against her back. She dared not lean back against him more. She did not trust that sharpened armor. Nor did she trust that mouth. Not its words or any actions it might take.

For his part, he remained silent. The rhythm of their ride rocked her back and forth until she felt a warm creeping sleep overcome her.

In an instant she dreamed. A dream, a nightmare, that had been haunting her for what seemed ages now…

She woke with the stir of morning breeze through the gauze of her curtains, the faintest scent of dewy blossom on the wind as it reached her on the bed. She stretched against downy feathered pillows, curled under the softest of elven woven bedding. Her rooms in Eregion. From after the rise of Mordor and the eruption of the mountain. But the anguish of that time in reality was gone. She felt only the lasting peace after toil, and hope that he would recover.

A single knock at the door, and her heart quickened. News of Hallbrand's healing, she wondered with a pulse of anxiety. She bolted from the bed, her shift trailing after her as bare feet padded across the chamber. But before she could open the door, he was there before her. Letting himself inside. Slipping in noiselessly, effortlessly.

His reddish hair glinting in the earliest rays of dawn, his mossy green eyes reflected back her own inner hesitation. A battlefield within. Gone was the fevered shine she observed without end in Celebrimbor's workshop, that reflected furnace inside him. For now, he was as she found him at sea, struggling just as she was.

"Hall…" the only syllable that he let escape her lips before he clutched her, stopping her breath with his own. Her own core went molten, quickening with heat. Fire flowed down her veins, swirling through every limb. But still she did not breathe. His hands coursed into her hair, his lips plied her own. But no air passed into her lungs. Darkness clutched around her sight. She was drowning again. In a flash, her body chilled as she opened her eyes, surrounded by the waters of the Sundering Sea, bound up by the wreckage of their raft, and this time, he did not come to save her.

She gasped awake, shivering and alone. That vision again, she had thought herself free of it. Had it been months or weeks since she last felt that flaming fire gutted by seawater? That dream blushed her cheeks with shame, so much so, she had never shared it with anyone. Not Elrond, though he knew her guilty association with him long before it had escaped into common knowledge. Not even Mithrandir, who seemed to already know the inner workings of her mind.

Her surroundings, first hazy, cleared steadily into view. Pressed into the lushest of chairs, she felt nearly swallowed in downy pillows. Just like her dream. A fire crackled before her, framed in golden mantle, the strands of purest metal weaved back and forth upon themselves, spotted with leaves, leaves identical to those of the trees around Eregion, to their sacred trees, to the tree of light in Valinor. In the distance, the rushing of harshest wind echoed outside some window. The scent of blossoms filled her nose as she blinked her eyes once more.

Raising her head as she came to, he sat across from her. His face washed and relaxed, his armor removed, replaced by a tunic of emerald velvet. He raised a brow as their eyes met, the smallest of smirks twisting his lips, as if he knew her stomach dropped at the merest memory of her dream. Clearing his throat, he raised his hand, sweeping slowly around them. "Galadriel," he said, "welcome to Mordor."


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