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Greatly had Elendil’s accusation vexed Galadriel. Running fast and blind, he claimed — as if expediency had not saved her company time and again and willingness to believe the impossible had not won over the allegiance of Elros’s estranged descendants. Those who faltered for the sake of old grievances were the ones who were themselves blinded to new horizons, and so her conscience was a mere breath of warning as she chased down Adar to sway his mind.
She had fallen back on old grievances with Halbrand and turned his path towards Mordor. She would not make the same mistake.
Too quickly, however, Galadriel realized the folly of her indiscretion as Adar turned her words upon her, revealing not one legion but many, and spearing her chest with the promise that would shape her nightmares for an Age to come.
“Now that you have confirmed beyond doubt who he is, and the one who carries your ring, Eregion will fall.”
Elrond! Anger passed into fear from one breath to the next as the Orcs seized Galadriel’s arms and yanked her behind the lines.
Though her heart was proud and there was always a purpose to defend her cause, she did not deceive herself to deny all guilt. The Orcs chained her in a cage, blotting out the sun, and her heart screamed of betrayal alike to kinslaying as horses screamed and trebuchets were released long after the stench of rotting blood swelled in the autumn heat.
Then came the laughter. The shuffle of unsteady, hobbled strides and the thud of rough hands striking armored shoulders. Sunlight blinded Galadriel in a swoop of stained canvas and blue eyes met grey with identical reflections of despair.
They must have dragged him from his horse. His left flank was smeared with blackened mud but the hues were darker on his empty scabbard and chin. He had fought them – torn flesh with teeth and dagger even while they swarmed him from all sides. Her Elrond, as savage with his blade as with his stylus, ever the concealed dirk in the king’s company whose soft eyes and flowing voice belayed a savagery to rival a starving wolf. He made them pay in blood for his capture, but in the end there were too many. They would have buried him under pummeling blows, designed to impede and not mortally wound, and when he stole their foul blades to turn against them they roped him as Men would snare a wild horse, tethering each limb before dragging him down with a rope around his neck. Still he would have struggled, bruising flesh and testing the strength of his handlers until they cut off his air, and only when he was hobbled and bound with his arms pinned to his waist and a rag muzzling his teeth did they allow him to rise.
Anger leeched from Elrond’s glower as he raised his shoulders, and Galadriel subconsciously mimicked his stance. They were the legacy of warriors and kings and they would not cower before Morgoth’s crawling spawn. Their confidence gave the Orcs cause to falter and they looked uncertainly to their proclaimed father, uncertain now if their prize was worth the cost.
Adar nodded and the black wave fell upon Elrond with all the bitterness of their race, snuffing the ire in grey eyes with fists and cudgels that split his ear and crippled his shoulder. He would not scream, and so neither did Galadriel, but her chest swelled with anger until she thought she might implode from within. Too long afterwards the Orcs dragged Elrond to his knees, bracing him as he blinked dazedly and swallowed blood. Gnarled fingers knotted in his matted curls, baring his throat as the gag was ripped away, and Adar leisurely brushed the bruises on his chin and neck before he yanked off armor plating and tore mail chain like parchment, curling his foul hand around the ring.
Calloused eyes deliberately tracked Galadriel’s seethe, grey fingers coiling around Nenya’s light, and she could not say whether she cried out for that foul touch grasping her ring or the cruelty with which Adar twisted the chain around Elrond’s neck before snapping it in twain.
A curse Elrond evoked upon him then, the pride of his Fëanorian fathers glowing unquenched even as blood dribbled down his chin. Adar’s retaliation was swift – a backhand to the temple that split skin and blinded one eye with the tacky scarlet flood. Galadriel spewed insults in turn, smiting in words when she had no blade to defend her cousin, and Adar’s sneer was unmoved as he prowled to the cage, dangling his prize.
“Thank you, Lady Galadriel,” he said with cool inflection, holding her gaze unflinching as he slid Nenya onto his finger.
Disgust warped Galadriel’s fëa and she railed upon him words of hate stored since she had first learned the meaning of death. Twisted flesh smoothed to something almost akin to the beauty of Elves, but the corruption of the fëa glittered untempered as Adar brushed off Galadriel’s derision like one would sweep leaves from the threshold. He turned and nodded for Elrond to be dragged forth.
“Put him in the cage. Galadriel will carry my warning to her people.”
As Galadriel was seized he caught her chin with bruising force, tearing her eyes away from her friend. “You will tell your army to withdraw from Eregion, or I will bring you his head on a pike.”
There were no chains to pick and Elrond could not run on the ankle bent under the stamping of iron boots, yet Galadriel would not leave him defenseless.
“If that is to be the way of things, then at least let me say goodbye,” she implored him.
Perhaps the ring brought pity to Adar’s cold heart, or perhaps it amused him to permit this last tender moment. He grunted assent and the Orcs released Galadriel's shackles, bracing wicked blades to Elrond’s throat and spine. There was no way to reach his hands without a full embrace, and she read his uncertainty as she ran her hands down his shoulders as one would greet a lover while she snagged the pin from his torn cloak. To the children of Men it would be a sign of possession, to kiss him as she would a wooer, and she felt him stiffen with unease. The customs of his brother’s kin were more strongly engrained in his mind than the featherlight kisses exchanged between dearest friends, but he did not let his dismay show as she wrapped her hands around his waist and slid the little star-shaped pick into his hand.
‘That is all that I can give you,’ she spoke through ósanwë, and the brush of shared understanding stilled her fears that he would misjudge the gesture and be forever estranged.
“Touching,” Adar huffed. “Know that if you fail, it will be your last.”
‘May it be so,’ was Elrond’s chagrined admission, and Galadriel almost cuffed his unbruised ear for such cheek.
She saw his hands grip in white fists, hiding the pick as he was cut free and tethered with chains, and he nodded in solemn promise. The wall must be guarded. He would not weigh her conscience with his blood.
They would not meet again on the battlefield. Later Galadriel would find the chains dangling empty amidst a slaughter that rivaled the troll’s carnage. No longer needed to command, Elrond stole into the city in Orc armor and waylaid the forge himself, sharing the brunt of Sauron’s wrath before the Deceiver hunted more worthy prey – nine to be exact – and Elrond and Celebrimbor were found curled around one another in the rubble of the tower, so coated in ashes and blood that the healers feared they had already passed from this world.
Yet ever did Elrond battle the odds, surrendering to the light of the ring which Arondir had tugged from Adar’s hand as he fell wounded, and when he opened his eyes many days later Galadriel made sure that the cot bearing his cousin was the first thing he saw. He covered his eyes to weep, then, splinted as were the fingers that first Orcs and then Sauron saw fit to cripple, and she embraced him as she would her future son-in-law as the memories of smoke and blood finally began to heal.
For her folly, Elrond had suffered the same vision she sought to prevent.
By Eru’s mercy she had not lost him in the end.