Lord of the Rings/The Rings of Power. Halbrand | Sauron/Galadriel. Rated M.
A03 Tags: Torture, Violence
Originally posted to Ao3 02/2023
In a gully a day and a half’s ride from Lindon, there’s a camp. It has no name, no permanent structures, only the barest complement of soldiers. Its only remarkable feature is the scorched earth on the northern side, where they burn the bodies. It’s a place for forgetting.
Galadriel keeps it tucked behind her teeth when giving her reports to Gil-Galad. It’s part of the agreement between them, the one he’s party to but could never name: that he will rule with generosity and goodness, and she will do what is required to keep war from his doorstep.
Lindon is as golden and beautiful as ever. It’s the last place left in the world she might call home, and every time she’s there, she counts the hours until she can leave again.
When one of her scouts sends word, she slips from the dinner table with graceful apologies, setting her cutlery down mid-sentence. She gets a few scandalized glances for that, but Elrond promises to catch her up later on negotiations with Khazad-Dum. Gil-Galad notes her going, and turns his face away.
She pushes her horse until it’s frothing and arrives the next day at sunset. Only a few of her people keep watch here, those she can most closely trust. Lindir, her lieutenant, explains before she can ask for his report. He had been lately of Oropher’s house, and lacks the more delicate sensibilities of some of her own kin.
“It was a skirmish with a supply force from the Southlands. Supervised by a commander. We managed to capture him.”
“Well done.” She dismounts lightly and hands the reins off to another of her soldiers. “The rest dead?”
Lindir nods sharply. Not that she needed to ask, but she enjoys his look of satisfaction
“Has he said anything?”
A brisk shake of the head. “Volunteered nothing, and we thought it best to leave the questioning to you.”
She nods, pulling off her riding gloves and trading them for a lantern. She always does the questioning herself.
“I’m not to be disturbed.”
Another nod. She never is.
When she pushes back the flap of the central tent, she’s surprised to find a man chained to the iron post. He would be tall and broad shouldered, were he not slumped, eyes closed, into the dirt.
She kicks him hard in the ribs; something gives.
He groans and looks up at her. One eye is swollen shut. His hair is matted with dirt and blood into some indeterminate colour. His features are hard to fix on in the dim lantern-light. She often struggles to tell men apart, in any case.
“Do you know who I am?”
His lips curl up in a sneer. “The Lady of Light herself.”
She crouches down, setting the lantern beside her. “Very good. If you can answer my other questions as quickly, your death may not be so painful.”
“Don’t count on it, she-elf.”
She backhands him. Blood pours from his nose, hot over her hand.
“How this goes is up to you. Now, tell me, how many legions are coming from the Southlands?”
“No.”
She pinches the place where his nose is broken, and twists. He cries out and his eyes well up, but no words come. That’s fine, she didn’t expect them to. This is just the softening stage. She stands and pulls her cloak off, pushes her sleeves up and ties them back. This is going to take a while.
“Do you give all your prisoners such tender treatment?” he says when he can breathe again.
“No.” Most of them they simply kill. Extracting information is time consuming, and often of questionable quality. Still, it’s worth the effort.
HIs head lolls against the post. “There were whispers, that the Lady Galadriel had stooped to such base methods, but I didn’t believe it.” He seems almost admiring.
“No there weren’t. No one has ever left here alive.” Carefully, delicately, she steps on his hand. Bones shatter, and he howls. As soon as she does it, she regrets it. The hands are sensitive, and can be coaxed to roaring pain with little effort. She’s squandered that on a petty need to punctuate her point.
“Except your men,” he says when he can breathe again. “And how much do you trust them?”
“More than I trust you.” She draws her knife. It’s not time, not yet. “Now. How many legions?”
“If you don’t trust me, why are we even talking? I could tell you anything.”
Orcs are never this mouthy. They’re hard to break, but they break clean. This man is something else entirely. “How many legions, and from where?” She crouches down again and traces his swelling knuckles with the tip of her knife. “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll let you live.”
He laughs, a hysterical bark, which turns into a wheeze from his broken ribs. “No you won’t.”
She hums in agreement. “Perhaps not. But why suffer for your lord? What has he done to earn your loyalty? Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll grant you a clean death.”
“What have you done to convince me to break it?”
She jerks back in shock, but quickly schools her features. “Was the pain not to your liking?”
“Pain? Do you think I haven’t known pain sitting at the Dark Lord’s knee?” The grin he gives her is wild, missing two teeth and full of blood. His eyes glitter in the half-light.
She backhands him again, to break the intensity of his gaze. He spits blood on the dusty floor. A tooth goes with it, bright in the red. It repulses her, this show of human frailty, even more so that he doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it.
She gets to her feet, taking a sip of water from her canteen and wiping the spatter of his blood off her with a rag. “Truly, the hearts of the men of the Southlands are stout, to bear up under such suffering.” She returns to her crouch at his side, offering the canteen. “We could be allies, you know. If you might repent of your sins, the elves would welcome you back to an alliance. The way is not yet shut.”
His gaze darts from the canteen to her face with a hungry flicker. Good. But instead of folding, he smiles and says, “I know what you’re doing. I know what you’re doing because I’ve done it.”
Something in his voice changes, the vowels rounding, the edges softening. She pauses. Knowledge moves beneath the surface of her mind, all the more appalling for its familiar shape.
“Break your prisoner down with pain and isolation, and then finally, offer them one scrap of kindness: one sip of water, one morsel of untainted food. And that is the moment they turn against themselves. That is the moment they will devour themselves for you.
“Isn’t that right, Galadriel?”
In all the ages of the world, only one person has ever said her name like that. Knowing breaks in her mind like a blood-red dawn. “You.” She doesn’t flinch, or gasp, and she realizes with a cold detachment that part of her had been waiting for this, or something like it.
“Me.” His features, once indistinct in the dim light, have resolved themselves out of memory. There’s that smile she knows so well. The face she could never forget. “I came to see you. Wanted to see how things were getting on.” He shrugs, the movement hampered by his bonds, but still almost insouciant.
She slides the blade against his neck. She should do it now, kill this vessel of his before he can absorb more about their position and movements. She knows she should.
“Is it all for show? A game to you?” She slides her knife delicately along his jaw, teasing his carotid like a lover teases a sensitive spot.
“No”. He swallows. If he moves too fast, he’ll do her work for her. “I feel it all as surely as any other living creature. Does that satisfy you, Galadriel? To know you cause me pain?”
She grabs him by the collar of his shirt, yanking him to the very edge of his bonds. “You know well I’ll never be satisfied,” she whispers. “Not until you are exiled to the void, your towers cast down, and all your works destroyed.”
“And what will you give for that end? Your soldiers, your friends, your home?” He leans impossibly closer and whispers like he’s telling a secret. “Yourself?”
His lips part, like he’s about to laugh, or sigh. And for a second, just one second in her whole immortal life, she wants to lean into him, to part her lips against his, slip her tongue into his mouth and feel him sigh for her the way he’d screamed.
She drives the knife straight between his teeth. It’s the only intimacy she’ll allow herself.
The life goes out of him like a door slamming shut, his spirit out in the night again already, speeding to some distant end.
Leaving her alone, with blood on her hands.