He knows that face, because it is his own, and has been ever since he stepped off the shores of Middle-earth onto the ship that would bear him away from them forever. All that remained of all he had known and loved were the freshly sanded planks of wood he stood on, his companions, and his own body, grown so weary and faded.

He knew he had not been adequately prepared for the loss, but on the ship, it was nigh unbearable and in Galadriel’s eyes he had seen the same haunted desire, the same hunger for the place that even now, they had wrested themselves away from, lest they become one with it permanently, become nothing more than a voice in the wind that swept, and a shadow in the forest, and a smudge on the frosted windowpane. To stay any longer, when the rings had at long last fallen silent, taking with them their strength, would have spelled their end. They would have been consumed - they very nearly were. 

The pain of sundering from Middle-earth was terrible then, and even now, weeks after their ship docked to joyful family and long awaited reunions, even now, after joy, it still throbs within him, an immortal wound perhaps, like the dead nerves around the silent ring on his finger. 

He knows well that joy cometh not without its share of pain. 

Soft arms around a body he loved that was old and altogether new at the same time. Tears. Her lips on his trembling ones. Gracious as she was, she told him they would mourn first if he needed to. 

“In time,” gasped out with effort then again, with conviction. 

“Let us rejoice first.”

He comes back to himself. Celebrían lies beside him, a warm miracle, her soft thighs still draped over his own knee. He is loath to move them, but he must, so he takes her ankle in hand, gently thumbing her warm skin - with fingers that have craved the texture of her flesh for centuries - before resettling her on the soft linens. His feet take him softly to the door, but Galadriel is not there. The world outside is serene and silent, no visitor other than the wind sighing through the tall wisteria, casting silver shadows across the window pane. 

He had not been certain he would find anyone anyone at the door. But he had seen, even here, he had seen, and had needed to look out to know if it were still so. 

Perhaps, the gift and curse of sight is not the same on these shores. And that thought too, is loss. 

He goes back to bed and slides beside the body that is home. Only she has grown strong and strange and wonderful and he has gone up to the edge of fading, silver and slight, almost a wisp, almost a wraith. 

He lies beside her, eyes fixed on her face. He still cannot believe the fact of her. His whole being tilts towards her, drawn irrepressibly forwards, and there is a ravenous hunger within him, an urge to wrap himself around her bones, to seal his mouth to hers, to touch, to be reclaimed, re-named, by the burn of her love over and over - but he does not touch lips to flesh so that she will not be waked. Once, a time ago, he had waited hundreds of years to confess a truth that had possessed him body and soul. That had seemed an eternity then - and how foolish are the young! For the next wait had been much longer, and colored by so much pain. What are hours now? When he lies beside her, an arms length away, listening to the sounds of her gentle breathing, letting it wash over him.

Night gives ways to gentle morning and she stirs, eyes fluttering open. She catches sight of him and grins at the miracle of him, wraith or no, in her bed. She breaks his long fast, takes his face into her hands and kisses him. She kisses him so long that by the time they roll out of their beds giggling like two children and run down the stairs to make tea, it is the afternoon and he has almost forgotten his sight. 

Celebrían gathers fresh persimmons from the garden outside as he pours boiling water over the tea leaves. The wooden door of their hut slams behind her as she enters, and it is the sight of the fruits gathered in her pretty arms - that did not grow in Ennor - that remind him. 

“I think Mother will come by today,” he tells her gently, as he joins her at the counter to sort her gathered bounty. 

Celebrían has a fruit between her fingers, half peeled, juices sliding over her skin. Her aliveness thrums like a heartbeat, he sees her and this - this is joy. The red flush of her damp cheeks, exerted from running to the door, silver hair sticking to her sweaty brow. Elrond pushes the wispy curls away with his fingers, leaving a smudge of sticky juice on her glistening temple. 

“You have your sight still?” 

“Maybe,” he says calmly, “I’m not certain. It may have been only a dream.” 

“Did it feel like one?” 

“No. It felt like sight.” 

Celebrían leans back against the counter, her lips pursed in thought. 

“Some time has passed since the joy and celebration of your coming. Enough time,” red lips nibble on the leathery skin of the fruit, the skin splits and tears away, revealing soft flesh, “Enough time to despise those who do not understand.”

She looks at Elrond. In the afternoon light he almost shimmers - gone so close to becoming nothing, to becoming naught. 

“Enough time to need those who do.”

He comes to her. Takes her warm hands in his, presses them to his lips. 

“Celebrían the wisest,” he whispers, and she laughs, but there is yearning in her eyes at the use of the old pet title. Celeborn had given it to her, to vex his wife who had once given it to him - Celeborn who is not here. Celeborn who had stayed. 

“Let’s make the honey cakes together, they have always been her favorite.”

They sort the fruit, finish the tea and then the counter turns into a mess of flour and wooden bowls as they measure the flour and golden honey together. 

For a time the only sound is the sighing of breath, leaving and entering their bodies, heart beats, syncing to their old rhythm, the warmth of the other nearby when they had been sundered so long. The flour puffs into the air where Elrond scatters it on the wooden table and time 

slows

crystalizes 

and Celebrían is suddenly back. She hears the sound of their children in the garden playing, she can hear the rhythm of their beloved Imladris surging through her being, she looks over at Elrond, leaning against the table, sleeves rolled, but already dusted in flour.

She is home. 

Her husband is in her kitchen, and there is none to bother them, his dark hair loose around his face. 

He looks up, startled, at the sound of the bolt sliding as she slips it into place. Then she has her arms around his shoulders, and one of the baskets of fruits falls to the floor as she mounts him. 

His warm mouth against her pointed ear. A half-hearted complaint offered with no teeth—

“Cel, we will have nothing made by the time she gets here.”

“You must feed the hungry, Lord Elrond! Be a gracious lord and treat your subjects with kindness!” 

Her silvery laugh tickles his spine, washes over him. He has cast enough spells of his own to know he is caught fast in one now. 

“Tell my lady to have mercy on me, for I am the one starving”, he breathes against her warm neck, beads of perspiration clinging like early morning dew. “She is a tyrant, and holds me prisoner to her wiles.”

His hands find their way to her thighs - she watches as he marvels at the plumpness he finds - she had been so thin when she sailed. Now she is full-ripened, golden soft fruit begging to be plucked from tree and devoured Now, she wants to taste what she has been without for so long. 

“Service your lady”, she whispers against his ear, “and perhaps she will grant you mercy.” 

He places her on the table, drops to his knees right on the flour-covered kitchen floor and oh Eru, his eyes are beautiful where they hover right at her knees. Celebrían holds on long enough to claim his beloved dark locks between her fingers, leans forward to press a kiss on the face caught between her hands and then his long, tanned, fingers part her, and she throws her head back in joy. 

Somehow, after much time passes, and a mess is both made and cleaned up, and made and cleaned again, a platter of warm honey cakes stands on the counter and they wait, Celebrían sprawled against Elrond’s chest on their floor cushions as they nibble on the warm cakes and drink cups of warm, spiced cider. 

“Mother always comes on her own time,” Celebrían reassures him, mindful that his gaze has drifted to the door. 

“I am worried for her,” he admits. “It has been painful to—” his voice catches, dry and scratchy. 

“Let us rejoice first” he had said and hadn’t they? Didn’t they? Even while he shimmered before her, a spectre haunted by the absences of their three children. A ghost torn from the very place that had birthed him. A weary thing washed up on unfamiliar and too bright shores.

She grips his arms so he cannot slip away into the wind, so he cannot fade away in front of her. His flesh, gone ice cold, thaws under her hold, and he is corporeal once again. Trembling lips press a shaky kiss to her silver crown, “Without you, I would - be lost to it - she has not the joy I have of being with the love of her heart.”

“Cling to me, husband,” she whispers. “Remember that we at least, have a duty to one another, whatever the choice of our children. I cannot lose you, not now. I will hold you until it is no longer painful to remain on your own. Stay.”

Stay 

Stay 

Stay

It is not a choice one makes once and that is the end of it. He has made it so many times over now. When Arwen spake her choice to him, when his sons came to tell him they would remain with her - indefinitely - when he stepped on the ship, when he stepped off it into brilliant, unfamiliar, strange shores. In the moments after when he woke crying in her arms, in the moments when he had no tears to cry and stared stupidly at the shoreline. 

Now, he stays. Again. 

Tiredly, until the next time he must decide to. 

Celebrían is warm, and her grip is like iron. He feels himself forming into something solid under her hands. And he finds he can lean forward and kiss her nose. 

Thank you. 

He knows, he would have already drifted away, if he had not fallen under her spell all over again, if she had not caught him, like a little bird, and built him a nest of hedge and thorn to rest in, to hide in, to grow well again. And again, in a flash, his fears for Galadriel come back.

“She is terribly lonely Cel, we must do what we can to hold her too.”

“You never change, my sweet foolish boy. You can do no holding. You are not allowed to.” She nuzzles his jaw, pressing close. “Your mistress commands that you do not.” And then, pulling back she fixes unflinching eyes on his amused own. “For I am strong enough to bear both of you, and I shall.” 

He laughs breathlessly at her stern tone and she joins him, silver laugh settling around his shoulders like a cloak. She lays back on his chest.

“But of course, you are right, she will need you. Sometimes, I think you know her better than even I.” 

“She needs us both Cel,” he says softly. 

It’s agreement, but it’s also gentle reminder that what she offers to her mother as daughter is every bit as important as what he offers her, as old friend in the long struggle against darkness. 

Celebrían lifts her head from his chest, winds her hand against his neck, pulls him to her.

She kisses him hard. 

But Galadriel does not come, though the night drags on and Celebrían sings softly to him, her knees against his and after a time, Elrond, who has gathered himself up into a semblance of wholeness, laughs at himself, perhaps he does not see here, as well as he did there. 

…

But she does come, a small rap on the door, as they are getting out of their garments and preparing for sleep. 

Elrond pauses and reaches for the shirt he has just discarded. Celebrían, still clothed, catches his gaze and slips from the room. 

The door is already open and the gentle chill of evening seeps through the house. The Lady of Lothlórien stands silently waiting on the threshold. 

“Mother,” Celebrían says, gathering her into a embrace. 

Galadriel wavers, a candle cringing before a draft, flickers as if she might blink out altogether. She has ever been intimidating, both warrior and sorcerer, wielder of magic and wisdom - tonight - she seems almost small in her daughter's embrace. 

Elrond, walking down the stairs, thinks it may be how much they had faded, taken to the very steps of departure. He is a matching shade to Galadriel’s flickering flame, feeble - but already, a hedge of protection has been growing around him. Celebrían, strong and mighty whom once - a long time ago - he had grown his own hedges of protection around. He looks at her bared arms, strong around her mother and thinks wryly that perhaps Galadriel and he only seem fragile and small because Celebrían has grown so very large. She took her wounds and filled them with lakes and valleys, verdant gardens. She is mighty like an oak now, her mother and her husband two gray birds seeking shelter in her boughs, where once they sheltered her. 

Galadriel pulls away from her daughter, softness just creeping into the edges of the haunted expression she wears. There is love there, but there is sickness and Galadriel cannot hide, she has never been able to hide what she wants. Tonight, she wants the companionship of her son. Celebrían, strong oak, knows no resentment. 

She pulls out a chair for her mother. 

“No,” Galadriel says tonelessly. 

Her hands wave fruitlessly. 

Celebrían knows her mother well. She knows she is too proud to ask for what she needs. 

She kisses her softly. 

“The sea is a singer on restless nights, and the birds come to serenade if you but ask them kindly. Elrond and I have built a path there that gives peace to our feet. The witches thimble blooms there, white like the blossoms of home. ” 

Elrond has reached them. He wears loose trousers for sleep and a billowing white shirt. His hair is unkempt and ruffled and she admires him as he comes towards them, his warm hand reaches for hers and squeezes so very tightly. 

Celebrían turns to her mother, who stands stiffly, body tilting towards Celebrían's husband. 

“Elrond will show you the way.” 

She relinquishes the warmth of his hand. He bends to press his closed lips against hers. The feeling of his flesh against hers - to be at once consumed with hunger and to be so cocooned by worship - and she stores it in her heart, because it will be what she has to hold of her husband tonight. 

Not resentment, but a small pang of regret. She does not need to look at her husband to hear his thoughts, and the pleasure of being in one another's mind so easily after this long separation is a sweet thing. 

Wait for me, love. We have waited long enough. I will make it up to thee. 

Then: 

“Come mother,” he says, and he takes Galadriel’s white hand in his brown one. 

“I will show you.” 

…

Celebrían is right, the night is lovely, and the sea sings and Galadriel thinks it is a terrible thing to spend the last years of her life longing for the sea, longing for Valinor, only to come here and mourn, mourn, mourn.

Another woman would be comforted, but not she. Not when her silver comfort stayed to watch over their grandchildren and Elrond's children. She knew Elrond had asked it of him, she did not begrudge it. 

And truthfully, it is not even dear Celeborn she misses this night, but Ennor, sweet Ennor, and all she had poured into it. All she has left behind. This is what it meant to fade surely, to pour so much of self into the woods and stone, into the humans who lived and died, into rock and flower and sunrise. To become one with the earth, to have given all, to lose self. There was only a slip, only a shade of herself that remained to herself by the time she sailed. And now she dreams of Middle-earth, knit into her very bones. 

Torn out of those bones and left behind. 

He, her matching shade, was the only one who understood. 

She should feel wretched for stealing him away from her beloved daughter so long separated, but she did not. She felt selfish, and desperate. And no one could understand, except him, his brown hand warm in her own. She looked at their shadows, tiny things on the shoreline, but somehow still bigger than their own bodies. They were curious, shrunken, things, gnarled and twisted like Melian’s enchanted roots on the border of Doriath, ill-fitting and out of place on the pristine sands they walked. 

If he did not understand so well, he would have spoken by now, like all of the others. 

“How are you?” 

“Is everything fine?” 

“I love you.”

“You are safe.” 

“It will take time.” 

She had longed to stab out the last kind offender's eyes with a knife, and she was grateful none were on hand. When the fury passed she had known she needed him. And he, unlike the rest, was now silent beside her, offering only the warmth of his hand. How little he seemed. Like a child almost, like the little prince she and Celeborn had once lost to the cursed oath and the wicked blades that worked its will. 

“How selfish I am.”

Elrond bless him, even now stays silent. No rushing to placate her, assure her of her worth. It makes her feel emboldened. 

“I have thought this pain truly terrible. But surely it must be worse for you, born from the very soil. From a mother who only knew that world. You were knit from her bowels and I - was a guest who insisted on prolonging her first welcome.”

The laugh from her lips is bitter. It is a sorry attempt at making either of them feel better. She knows it, and so does he.

“Should we measure wounds then, Galadriel?”

It is true, a pointless exercise, and she slips against his mind.

She suspects she will find him thinking of her longer years and her desire for a realm, and the wars she fought and the people she lost before he were even a babe and how that makes it worse for her - but no, when he feels her presence and gracefully allows her entry into his mind, she sees he is thinking of being a half of a whole. This is not the first time he has felt odd, out of place, a thing not quite full fitting, he thinks it an unfair advantage to himself over her.

“You are wonderfully odd, my darling.”

And she kisses both of his cheeks. 

“Humor me, for I am bitter and terrible and so are you, although perhaps not as terrible. Let us measure who of us has it easier than the other.” 

His weary eyes kindle with something - not laughter, but perhaps the movement towards it. 

“If you think it necessary, I can only name myself, I must have it easier for I spent many less years there than you. Any more years spent loving and I would have surely passed because the loss would be too much.” 

“You fool, I had it easier because I had much longer there to cherish, to enjoy, to marvel. And so my time was full realized”  

“Then it is still I, because this place, as strange as it is, is the only place in which I can now - know my mother.” 

Ah, there is some pain. 

She seizes on it. 

“You are not the only one whose mother sundered from them over these shores.” 

“She might say, you left her.” 

“Go on!” She demands fiercely, golden hair whipping in the wind. Terrible, she is, and he, meets her there, in the middle of their shared rage and loss. They both fall silent before it, chests heaving.

A breeze is blowing in from the sea, they falter before it. 

He says:

“I had my son, my hope - and and and - and he can’t say her name - to entrust with the care of Middle-earth.” 

“My grandson, you mean,” she goads. 

“I because Celebrían”, he pauses mid-sentence, choking over the words. That loss had nearly taken him. Hadn’t it nearly taken her? Without the promise of her face on these shores, he would gladly have went to the wind. 

His face is wet with tears and her fierceness feels good. She has forced softness from him, and he, fight from her, and they both stand a little more solidly on the shifting sands beneath their feet. 

“I, because Celebrían.” she repeats to him. 

The sound of their mingled laughter shocks her, so long saddened. She holds his hand tightly, braces herself - and he - against the strong wind. 

“How do we bear it?” 

Her voice sounds almost like herself again. She thinks of countless tents of war, in which she had sat down bruised and battered, defeated, and drawn up battle plans again. She thinks of her scream at her daughters departure, and her journey to see her shattered son, and shattered grandchildren. Time and again, they fell and rose. Time and again and again and again. 

“How do we bear it?” 

She is sitting back down at her table, battle plan in hand. He is behind her shoulder, whispering of his hope. 

He raises gray eyes to the horizon and she knows he sees her, the Evenstar. She knows he tries not to direct his gaze to the twins, to influence their decision, if they knew the raw suffering of their father, they would come. It would be unfair. 

The sound of celebration far into the night reaches her ears. Elves, out in the night, frolicking in the light of the stars.

She hates them, and laughs at herself for her hate. She thinks, battle plan in hand, perhaps she too, might slip back under starlit skies and dance - one day. 

“They have never known Middle Earth. None loved it so much as we. None will ever.” Her words sound bitter to her own ears - they are not. 

“They do not know what it is to become knit to the fabric of the place, its peoples and its song. I will forever be sundered from myself. We will forever be changed for loving it.”

He tears his eyes from that far horizon. She does not think he will ever stop looking at it, not for a thousand years, not before the world is made new. 

“Let it be the price we paid for knowing and loving then. That we will never be the same. Like the old trees of Fangorn let us be, bent and twisted by our loving, still standing witness to it.” 

She is so tired, and so is he, in the flickering of his eyes, she sees it. 

A child he looks, and an old, old man. And she, an ancient woodland spirit, a sorceress that men fear and once, told tales about. He, the guardian of the last homely house to the wounded and the wandering, and she the last gate shielding them against the shadow of darkness howling and beating against it in rage. 

That was there. 

Now they are here. Old trees in gardens of never-ending youth. 

She sinks to the sand beneath her, and he follows her. His eyes are on the shoreline again, and hers stray there too. 

Old trees.

“Celeborn would be delighted over such a comparison,” she says wryly, thinking of silver hair and strong willowy arms. “He went to say goodbye to them and left me to travel here alone, the bastard.” 

“When he comes, I will make you tell him what you have told me, we will convince him that we are two old trees and he will have to tend to us! He will start a garden -”

“No,” Elrond whispers, his face grave, “They will fight over whose is the better, and Celebrían has been tending hers for hundreds of years now - we will not know peace. And besides - he is more obsessive, but she has always been better than him. Even you, know this.” 

She thinks about teasing him, for somehow a little joy has returned to her, and so she answers just as gravely as he, though her eyes twinkle.

“Perhaps Celebrían might take him under her tutelage, as a gesture of goodwill to another unskilled traveler, unfamiliar with these shores. No doubt he will be quite as wild (and wounded) - she thinks but does not say - as we.”

“Then he will be the one to suffer our tending, Elrond says, smiling wearily, but smiling. She touches his hand, and he hers.

They dig their toes into the sand, it runs scraping and shocking against the brittle flesh of their bodies - and the water washes over their feet and recedes, and comes back to them. Galadriel thinks the sea almost sounds like it is singing as Elrond coaxes a little snipe into his kind hand, its mouth open. It does not sing, but pecks at his hand, as if trying to determine what he is.

It likes what it finds, fluffs it feathers, tucks itself against the warmth of his skin. 

There is a light up in the cottage where Celebrían waits, and the witches thimble along the walk back bloom white like Niphredil.

The sea still calls her, a different tune now, on the opposite shore.

It will never stop calling her. 

But here, Galadriel thinks, is as good as any place, to place roots, and climb again.

...

A fic, in this economy?

I have loved this idea of Elrond and Galadriel being on the edge of fading, almost wraith-like by the time they wrest themselves away from the beloved shores of Middle-earth, and somehow, over the course of roughly six months, this odd little thing crawled out of that. Galadriel's love of Middle-earth needs no explanation, she yearned for realms of her own there, and defied the Valar over it, but also, I'm interested in what leaving those shores must have felt to elves like Elrond, who had only ever known it, as home. When the rings faded, so did their strength to remain, but I think they left pieces of their heart there forever, especially in the figures of Arwen and Aragorn. And so this fic. Also Celebrían barged in and said she had things to say (or do).