Chiaroscuro
Fictober 2025 — #7: "You'll have to try harder than that." + 13: "It's a balance." + 21: "Just be honest." + 28: "I'm not lost!"
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Galadriel x Sauron)
Word count: 2202
AO3
He’s drawn to the darkness in her beauty. She’s drawn to the beauty in his darkness.
The moment she opens her eyes, she knows it's no regular dream.
The surroundings are too picturesque, too intense—too poetic, even.
One could wonder how a soul so dark could create something so beautiful—yet she doesn't. She can see through this illusion for what it is: an intricate deception, serving a sole purpose.
And she won't let him get under her skin anymore.
She doesn’t linger; the landscape feels painted into stillness, a world-sized canvas holding its breath. Only the whispering that claws at her mind reminds her she isn’t alone. She knows she's being watched, and she refuses to acknowledge that it does feel, to some extent, like admiration.
That's not the way into her mind, either.
"I know your trickery when I see it now," she calls out to the emptiness around. "Are you going to hide in the shadows forever?"
She’d rather avoid seeing him at all, if that were possible. Her heart starts racing as his presence becomes palpable.
"Now, now, Galadriel," she hears his voice behind her back, as if he had been standing there the whole time. "Why won't you admit that this time, it's you who are lost? I could guide you out of here, just you ask."
"I'm not lost," she replies, dreading to face him. Dreading to guess what game he's playing with her this time. Yet there's no other option. Slowly, she turns around.
He looks exactly as he did at their last meeting in Eregion.
Her fingers start trembling as molten metal floods over her heart. It burns deeply, almost making her want to throw up. Gnawing, festering, cutting into her soul, bleeding her from within.
I was so foolish.
It always feels like this when she looks into the eyes that used to belong to Halbrand. Her fingers never trembled like this back then, when she did not yet know the truth.
Now, his gaze feels like he's peeling her skin off, turning it inside out with calculated, cold tenderness. She wants his eyes to soften—and never meet hers again. She wants him to admit how much damage he's done to her, bring her tortured heart back in its place, and never, ever touch her once more.
"You look quite lost to me," he clicks his tongue, feigning sadness. "Galadriel… What would it take for you to trust me? Like it was before?"
Like it was before—as if that's even worth a mention. She bites back a bitter chuckle.
She misses her friend, Halbrand. Yet he simply doesn't exist; for Sauron is not him, never was, never could be. At this point, he has broken her heart twice—first, by killing Finrod; second, by giving her the illusion she so desperately wanted to believe. She couldn't afford a third one; what would be left of her then? What is already left of her, after all?
"Nothing." She hates that it took her a pause before replying. She still looks too closely into his features, trying to find familiar ones. Trying to find any evidence that what they shared was real—or never was. "I'm not going to fall for any of your lies anymore."
He has the audacity to smile broadly, baring his teeth. She feels hollow where it burned just a few moments before. He still looks too much like Halbrand for it to hurt deep; still, he looks all too different now for her to remember that Halbrand is gone.
Halbrand's alive only in her mind, in those messy dreams, where she feels a bit of safety only when she knows she's out of Sauron's reach. She wishes she had never known Halbrand at all. Even as he looks like he did before, the air around the man in front of her no longer feels like that of a mortal. The air around him still carries the wreckage of the first silence.
How could I not notice it previously?
"I was not lying." His voice is soft as silk. "Well, not more than you tend to lie to yourself." He kneels before her in a slow, deliberate, powerful motion. "Promise."
Something in the way he looks at her makes her breath catch. Something in the way he looks up at her makes her feel like a... queen.
The Dark Lord himself kneels before me.
She shivers at the thought, squeezing her eyes shut, and turns away.
"This is just a trick. Another manipulation." Yet another sting of fear to end up deceived again.
I am Galadriel, commander of the Northern Armies. I've made myself a fool just enough by now.
"I pity you," her own voice feels so tense as though it could get stuck between her gritted teeth. "That's the best I could feel for you. Pity. You could only become the monster you are if you were all too wrecked and lonely and knew nothing but dark."
Saying that is a mistake; she realizes it as soon as the words are out. The clothes briefly shuffle behind her, and she doesn't need to take a look to know he's standing right behind her back. What an irony, he could stab her so easily now, but he simply wouldn't.
What an irony. Could she stab him so easily if they swapped places?
I would, she reassures herself before she has a moment to ponder.
She feels a cold touch of fingers to the back of her neck, and a shiver runs down her spine.
"You know," his voice is nothing but a low purr caressing her skin with a touch of breath, "I didn't want you because I was lonely."
The pause carries a weight of significance. His touch glides through her hair, almost too soft, almost deceptive enough. She doesn't move, although his fingers leave a warmth in their tracks that makes her want to draw in.
"I was fine in the darkness. I bear the darkness." His palm wraps around the back of her neck, like a charm freezing her entranced. "Yet you made me want to be different. You made me feel different. As if I could matter to you the same way you matter to me."
Impossible.
She turns around, grabbing his hand by the wrist. Away. She needs to feel him away from her. He's just too good at getting under her skin; he knows her mind too damn well.
"Don't you dare," she spits. He looks into her eyes, pupils dilated, absorbing each word of her outburst like he's feeding on it. "Don't you dare speak of my feelings as if you could ever feel the same. You're only capable of destroying what I hold dear."
He smiles calmly, unshaken, his gaze piercing through the inches left between them. He looks into one eye, then the other, drinking in her expression to the last drop.
"I wanted you because your light made me want to step out from the shadows," he finishes as if there were no interruption, his voice a velvet. "Still do."
There's a moment of silence. Her heartbeat is the loudest sound all around.
"You're Sauron," she breathes out, throwing his hand away; it's despair mixed with everything else. It would be so much easier if he were just anyone but him. She wants him to be anyone but Sauron. She misses Halbrand so much. "You only care to get the power to rule us all, submerged in darkness."
"And you're Galadriel, sworn to never know rest until you hunt me down," he matches her tone, his eyes dark, with an amused glint. "Now look at us both. I like your fierce light."
"And I hate your essence with all of my being," she hisses back at him.
"That's what I'm talking about," he chuckles, for an instant reminding her of the Halbrand who used to tease her. The instant is fleeting, but the image lingers before her eyes, all too real and almost palpable.
She closes her eyes to expel it from her mind.
"So you want to corrupt me. To turn me into your mindless puppet."
She can see his shadow shifting through her closed eyelids. Still, she doesn't expect his featherlight fingers to touch her chin, making her look up. His fingers bear the delicacy that would've been appropriate for crafting the most exquisite jewelry. Or a crown.
"No," he breathes out. As their eyes lock, she can see the mirror of the past—him standing on the raft amidst the sea again, telling her about his grandiose design. "I don't want a puppet. I want you exactly as you are."
She winces. His words pull a string she doesn't want to admit she has. A string that rings in longing that connects them both. If she could just let go of that feeling, unbind it from her very being…
He smiles.
"I don't need to corrupt you, either, Galadriel. There's darkness in you, and there always has been." His whisper wraps around her like morning fog—or a dark mist of his curse; hard to tell the difference.
"Only because of you."
"You give me too much credit." He cups her face in his hands in near-reverence. The hands capable of such violence should never feel this gentle. "Just be honest. After all, sometimes, in order to find the light—"
She steps back, breaking free of his trap. Her fury's her best armor—the only thing still giving her some strength to stand against him.
"Don't say these words. You have no right to twist them to your liking."
The corners of his lips curl further. Almost a sympathetic smile—if he knew any sympathy at all. It would be both much easier and much more complicated if he did. It would definitely be much easier if he didn't.
"I'll say it with different words, then." He leans in to whisper into her ear. She knows she should step back again, but she stays still. His lips graze her hair in a ghostly kiss. "A certain darkness is needed to see the stars. Quite a lot of darkness, in fact."
The distance is almost intimate. She can feel his subtle warmth in the inches between them, where their eyes have no space to meet. Her fingers clutch at his clothes, the smallest tether of contact, caught between pushing him away and pulling him closer.
Time seems still, measured by quiet breaths in this embrace without touching.
Slowly, he raises his hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. She mirrors his move, hesitantly, noticing in her periphery how he pulls back a little. His eyes follow her hand with an incredulous sideways look. She touches his cheek with her very fingertips with caution she'd touch an unpredictable beast of the dark—not knowing if it would attack or submit.
His eyes flutter shut as he leans into her palm, letting out a soft breath. His quiet hum reverberates through their skin contact. As if there were something inside him, longing to be seen, starved for a touch like that.
The beast is tamed, even if for a moment. This could be the moment she'd strike the blow.
This is the moment she knows she couldn't.
Her hand travels further, following the carved features of his cheekbone down to his lips, forming a small smile in response. She catches the amused look of his half-lidded eyes—something that looks like affection, in someone who hates the world as it is—and her mouth gets dry.
"I feared there was nothing genuine in you." Her voice is but a whisper that she can hardly discern herself. "Foolish me. I wish there actually wasn't."
The second she tries to pull her hand back, he catches her by the wrist, keeping her palm in place against his cheek. His grip is strong, firm, a little hurtful, and his eyes are equally piercing now.
"Don't let go." That's a pleading laced in hoarse metal. "Bind yourself to me."
She lets him prolong the touch for a few seconds longer. She grounds herself in the warmth of his skin; in his fleshness; in everything he embodies. It would be so easy to agree. It would be so impossible to forget.
It would take all of her to deny they're already bound for eternity.
Her lips curl in a bitter smile as she pulls her hand free.
"You'll have to try harder than that," she says, looking into his immediately darkened eyes.
The unmasked vulnerability fades from his face, as if seeping right into the Unseen world. The balance shifts as if the scales were tipped, stirring through her hurt once again. Sauron in front of her looks too much like Halbrand, even with his eyes this sharp; Halbrand, in her memory, looks too much like Sauron—like a reversed side of the same coin.
He is Halbrand, among everything else. That's what makes it most difficult.
"That's not a no," he responds with a cold smirk.
"That's not a yes either," she says, her head defiantly high.
It's a balance of things that were, things that are, and some things that have not yet come to pass.
Therefore, it will likely never come to an end.
