Chapter Text
"I am sorry, my lady, but --"
"Do you not know who I am?"
He could not see her yet, but he could picture her. Blue eyes burning, blonde head cocked in mock curiosity at the idiot guard who denied Galadriel what she wanted. A smile played on his lips even in this dark place.
"Of course, but the prisoner is dangero --"
"I think I know that better than anyone who remained in Valinor the last three Ages," she snapped. "Now let me in."
Her righteous anger was enough. He saw her gaze flick to the unseen guard in disgust as she strolled in, as if she were entitled to the deepest darkest depths of this Valinorian prison.
She looked utterly changed. The centuries had deepened her voice, aged even her face. Still beautiful, but quieter. Her edges smoothed out by easy centuries nestled in her woodland home.
They stood in silence for a long moment on opposite sides of the magical barrier containing him, returned to the form she knew best. She held his gaze, steady and sure and brilliant. A slight smirk teased at her lips, but she remained silent.
Finally, she sat on a small chair on her side of the barrier, slouched like she once had on a log in the Southlands. Sauron looked away.
"Do you expect me to apologise?" he asked, breaking the silence at last. She gave him a look.
"I would not expect you to mean it," she replied. That was fair enough. He considered for a moment, before asking the real question that burned inside him.
"Do you want to know why I did it?"
The question hung suspended in the air. He could practically see the words drifting over to her. There was a measure of relief in knowing he could still read her. Galadriel's expressions, her temperament, had long been a mystery to her people, but never to him. She did not need the answer. She already knew. She always had.
She blinked slowly.
"I have known you too long and too well to ask anything of you," she said quietly. There was no condemnation in her voice, just a quiet acceptance of their fate. Even now they were inextricably bound together. If the events of the last three millenia could not alter that, well…
"Then why are you here?" His voice was hoarse in despair and hope. He had been stripped down to nothing, just himself in this cell, to wait out eternity. He was not to be trusted in the void, apparently, and the halfling's testimony against him was far too compelling to allow any possibility for an eventual reprieve of his sentence.
Galadriel shrugged, somehow seeming once again as he knew her, the dim light of the prison cell reshaping her face into what he once knew.
She stood wordlessly, and walked to stand in front of him. The invisible barrier was all that prevented him from reaching out, touching her. One of her long fingers played at the edges of the spell. Nenya, useless now, still sat on her finger. A fine decoration, but nothing compared to what it once was.
She stepped back, and cocked her head at him.
"Will you return?" he asked. She did not reply. She did not make a sound. Her expression barely changed, but the slight crease at the corner of her eye was answer enough for him.