Galadriel Misses HALBRAND (her Friend), She Found Him When Everyone Left Her Alone. She Doesn't Miss

i still wonder how the guard could miss like that

CHARLIE VICKERS as ANNATAR/SAURON

The Rings of Power, 'Doomed to Die' (2022 - )

The Fallen Kings

Elendil and Gil-galad

Elrond when his daughter starts to fall in love with the Quick witted long haired Scruffy long lost heir to a human kingdom x

i'm WHEEZING

dear makalaure

I am dangerously close to counting Maglor as the final harbor. The shore that has always been stable, and waited for the storm to calm down - and will return to it, finding all the other firmaments sunken, fragile under the palm of the element.

Just a short video tribute to Gil-galad's hair. (Sound on please!)

His hotness level just reached 10,000+ Brutal Badass Achievement Unlocked. I'm sorry. I don't make the rules. I just follow them.

No but Gil-galad choosing to fight orcs with a spear named “icicle” in retribution for what was done to his sister would in fact be ice cold of him (and stupid hot, sorry not sorry).

OPPENHEIMER (2023) | dir. Christopher Nolan "And now I am become death. The destroyer of worlds." ​​​

All I need is a clear line of sight

( credits to @sugurugetos for this incredible gifset ! )

❊ — THE PARTING GLASS ;

summ.  You fall at the Battle of Eregion. Lindon grieves their High Queen; Gil-Galad grieves his wife. or: You haunt the narrative. pairing.  gil-galad / queen!reader w.count. 1.3k a/n.  angst galore , Gil-galad is going through it , & so is Elrond too , Reader haunts the narrative so it’s more of an exploration of grief amongst trop!characters , & a dash of ‘duty versus morality’

YOU REFUSE TO DIE. Arrows have pierced you grave through heart and breast, and though you are mortally wounded, the armies can see yet: you’re unbowed. You’d taken every Orc down with you, left them strewn across the battlefield; destroyed the trebuchets and banners to burn in your wake.

The Queen of Lindon is a fell beast when it is demanded; But the hour for that call has come to pass now, and your grip on the hilt of your sword has finally yielded.

Elrond is first to catch you, and the last to hear your dying breath.

Elven and Dwarven soldiers alike bear witness to the fall of a great Queen, and the kneeling bow of a great King.

For this is Gil-Galad, High King of the Ñoldor; Of whom the Kingdoms have beheld him rend through wood and stone from sheer strength alone, who himself had pulled steeds and comrades out from mire and blood, who had borne the weight of carts laden with all his wounded;

The Eldar’s paragon of boundless, unyielding strength—

And yet, when came the hour after the Battle of Eregion to journey the dead home; High King Ereinion Gil-Galad could say naught but one thing as he drew you up into his arms:

“Help me carry her,” he cried. “Help me carry her.”

So goes the tale of your departure, and that of the High King’s might and heart. Alas, it had not always been that the forests of Lindon were dim with grief. 

In the beginning, when war and battle had been but a forgotten thought, and the sun of Gil-Galad’s life had not yet left him, you were but a General among the army, and earlier than that— the charge of Círdan the shipwright, and soon the heart of young Gil-Galad. 

You were fair and witty and mighty. A forge-fire of life that did not burn but instead tempered, whose hands were calloused from craft yet gentle in touch, whose heart had beat fiercely and still loved tenderly. You were a brilliance of light to Lindon, standing alongside the High King.

But if meeting you had brought out the best in Gil-Galad, then losing you brought out the worst.

He dismisses the late condolatory missives of the Silvan King, Oropher of the Great Greenwood, much to the wise Círdan’s dismay; and when Elrond brings tidings from the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm, that the doors of their mountain are welcome and its resources open for Elven-folk, Gil-Galad grows ever sharp-tongued and ill-tempered.

“Had they been swifter to arrive at the Battle of Eregion, the Queen of Lindon may yet still stand before you,” he says, and does not speak your name— because he cannot. Not anymore. (Many claim he never did again.)

Elrond, however, who is first and foremost a friend to all and especially to Durin, defends kindly, “We do not know this.”

Then, blindsided with anger, Gil-Galad spoke, but came to regret his words in an instant. That is:

“Perhaps, but know this. Your kindness is misplaced and unneeded, Elrond Peredhel.”

A solemn silence passes. Elrond looks as if he'd been dealt a deadly blow.

“I hope you can endure your anger long enough to discover its true name, High King.”

To this, Gil-Galad says, “Or you can save us the trouble, Herald, and tell me.”

Elrond lingers pensively for a moment. Then, gently:

“Grief.”

It shall be said; the High King is not so lost yet to sorrow that he would not see his folly in discrediting Elrond. For that in itself would have been a dishonor to your name— you had taken to Elrond as less a charge and more akin to that of a son you never bore, the day Galadriel had brought him from the seaside.

So when his head had calmed and Eärendil’s light cast the night from his heart, he sent his men for Khazad-dûm, and Elrond came from respite to the creaking sound of wheeling carts and the stomp of Dwarven marching, come noon pass over the new sanctuary protected by the Elven Rings.

“I was wrong,” Gil-Galad apologises, when they convened at the tents where the injured are tended. “This war has already darkened the lands and taken too heavy a toll of us. And if it is to jade even your heart from its ever-kindness, then we would have lost something truly irreplaceable.” 

But if he had not lost his kindness, he surely had gained grief, instead, to have watched the next closest thing to a mother die before him.

“I know in her final moments she spoke to you, Elrond. In my despair I could not ask then, but now I release your burden: What did she say in her last breath?”

Elrond smiles, and though it’s sincere, it’s the type given to dignitaries; Quiet, thin, exhausted. 

“...That she had but only one command left for me. That is to herald to you: Namarië, Ereinion Gil-Galad. I will await you at the shores.”

But Galadriel, from a distance, had seen through him. 

“You lied,” she says, when finally there was no one around to be privy to their conversation. “To protect him.”

And at once Elrond allowed himself to cave from the weight of his untold knowledge. 

“Yes,” he confesses, and Galadriel had to steady him, for a great deal of grief overcame him. “She had called out for the High King, only once, then nothing more. I could see in her eyes she was frightened. I did not have the will in me to tell him such a truth. Have I forsaken the Queen? Was I mistaken to spare his heart?”

Galadriel could not answer.

When Eärendil’s light had shone again come nightfall, in the distance, a wave of cheer and whimsy erupted from the Dwarves across a shared tablespread among startled Elves.

Gil-Galad listens.

It’s a slow-rising crescendo; A lament to the fallen, yet sung in lively tune and bright cadence, and alongside it: the ring of pipes, the beat of cups, and the stamping of feet. 

“I understand you honor your people’s death differently,” comes the sudden voice of Durin IV, “But for us, we sing as an expression of defiance against Death. And we honor the lives of our fallen and their memories through joy and celebration over sorrow and grief. I can order them to sto—”

“No,” he overrides, cut to the quick. The Dwarves may have been slow to arrive at the Battle of Eregion— but they had arrived nonetheless, and have lost their own folk to turn the tides when at its most crucial. 

He would not silence them. It would have been cruel.

“Let them sing,” he says, and marvels at how the Elves had gone to pick up their harps and trill their flutes to join in song. “I’ve not seen my people with light in their eyes since the battle; For Elven memory do not dim.”

“I imagine,” begins Durin, “Oftentimes, it must be a terrible gift.”

And Gil-Galad could not answer at once, because for a moment he saw— as if it had happened only yestereve— the light of your smile in his mind’s eye, and in the next, the shadow of the day you fell on the battlefield.

“Yes,” he says solemnly, blindsided. “It is.”

Then, to the Dwarf’s utmost surprise:

“How will you do it?” Gil-Galad asks. “How can you begin anew tomorrow with all of the grief of your yesterdays?”

How can I? he doesn’t say. How will I?

But he had no need to, because Durin IV could discern him; he had lost his wife and his Queen, as Durin had lost his father and his King.

So counsels wisely the newly-crowned King of Khazad-dûm:

“My friend, we carve through stone not because it yields, but because we must.”

Footnotes:

The Dwarves are singing “ The Parting Glass ”, a folk song about saying farewell to loved ones, often sung in funerals. It is the inspiration for this entire fic and its title; I greatly recommend a listen, especially for its lyrics!