Like floating in the currents of the sea… weightless… breathless… bobbing at the mercy of forces beyond reckoning… Galadriel could only watch with unblinking eyes as drop after drop of her light slipped away. Buoyed and buoyant, confined in liquid not of this earth. Drowning again, her strength and life were failing.
No, not her life, she realized with fearful wonder. Her every muscle flexed in power, but still she could not breathe, not unlike her dream visions from him.
Ripples passed before her eyes as she reached her hand out before her, bouncing against something that restrained her very being. Like the skin of a bubble ready to burst.
Patience, a female whisper caressed her ear. You leave me no choice but to deal with the Dark Lord myself. She could feel the voice's formless sneer from within her mind.
"What do you mean?" she mouthed, her own voice melodic bubbles in her watery containment.
Your female body betrays us, so often you succumb to his power, his sensuality. You give of yourself too freely, Elf. The voice snarled at her, each word sending ripples and waves over the boundary of her prison.
"You do not command me, whatever you are," Galadriel shouted, kicking and thrashing herself against that waving skin of water.
But I am you, now. And you are me, bound to my power. As we are bound to our mission, we are bound to one another. Galadriel's hand shook, the silver band at her finger pulsating with power on each syllable she heard.
"I have not forgotten my mission," she snapped. "Once I am queen, I…"
The waves of laughter in response stirred the water about her violently. You think the firstmost servant of Morgoth will let you rule? You think he will grant you any power, let alone the power to release prisoners of your own kind once you are his queen? Her ring burned ice cold, summoning more power, stronger power, as shadows and shapes moved formless beyond her watery prison. You believe he loves you, Daughter of Valinor, born and bathed in the Light of the One for centuries. Ha! The ring quit its shaking, stilling even the water about them in but a second.
Some growing shadow darkened just beyond the surface of the magic. A swirl of smoke, lit in softest reds and oranges as it approached.
As he approached.
He had come for her, her heart thrilled. She would gasp in delighted surprise if her lungs drew air.
The thieving sorcerer invades. He took power from us, power that is not his. I wonder how dearly he will defend our power, the power he wrongfully stole from us to see just how much we could defeat his dark decay. The voice fairly snapped its jaws in outrage.
"But I gave of myself freely. My body and my magic," Galadriel snarled, fighting to the very surface of whatever it was that repressed her strength. "It is not only yours to give or withhold. It is mine as well!"
Poor little She-elf… so alone in the world, you jump into bed with your greatest enemy. Now he must choose between keeping your power and your very self alive. See what he will do to save you, if you want. But do not shed a tear when he should choose your death to retain that sliver of our power he slipped from us while you fucked.
Like a gag being shoved in her mouth, her tongue froze. Now hush, she was ordered. And magically she obeyed.