departures

chapter three: the memory hurts

departures

haladriel modern au | E | 2/?

“Why did you go?”

Nausea gnaws at Hal’s stomach. He stands up straight, stuffs his hands into pockets just to busy them. “Celebrian, I don’t think we should talk about this.”

A sharp exhale, disappointed and defiant. “I have my theories.”

“They’re probably right,” he sighs, defeated. “Don’t make me re-live all that shit now, it was bad enough when it happened.”

“She cried when she got your card,” Celebrian says quietly, picking at her cuticles. “She never cries.”

It’s not true, though he doubts Celebrian knows this. Galadriel cries on late nights when the bottle goes hollow and sunlight streaks the sky with shadows of the deepest plum. She cries when they slow dance to old songs on crackling records, face buried in his chest like she wants to be smothered. She cries on West End backstreets, arms crossed, glaring at a skip, smoke curling through her tangled hair like roaming fingertips. 

There’s so much of her mother he shouldn’t know, and even more he can’t forget.

- - -

Consider this a controlled burn. A pressure valve to guard against catastrophe.

More bookbinding fun! Getting a headstart on typesetting bimmyou’s matchless character study of Sauron, “the nameless” while I continue onwards with the physical binding of TechnicalSpirit’s “She of Little Faith.” This haladriel classic is almost 40k of a truly amazing journey following an unreliable narrator so convinced he must be exactly what Middle-earth needs. The way the lore has been interwoven is spectacular, and I legit almost cried the first time (of the many times) I’ve read it.

This fic pulls from Paradise Lost, so how else could I pay tribute to that than by using 19th c. Illustrations and inspiration from Milton publications for cover art. The Internet Archive is a bookbinder’s dreamland, fyi…

Starting the year off with this absolute banger of a fic by TechnicalSpirit who was kind enough to let me bind “She of Little Faith.” I’ve probably read this fic 4 or maybe even 5 times since it was recommended to me last year. When I say I love it? I really love it 😍

You want Sauron coming to Galadriel in dreams? Bam. You want a different take on what could have happened in Eregion between the last two episodes of s1? Bam. You want searing smut? Triple Bam. You want something that will rip your heart out and stomp it into a million pieces? You get the picture.

Going with a quarto bind for a miniature book with this one and in the process of printing, folding, scoring, and gathering the pages. This is the best of hobbies.

A Man is a God in Ruins

by eye_of_the_cat / @conundrumoftime

find the original artwork by @/blossombythesea in the second picture here

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"You would bribe me.” “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Her hair curls in golden spirals around his fingers. “I like to give you things.” “You deceived me.” He considers this as if the very idea is new to him.   Halbrand leaves Eregion before Galadriel becomes suspicious, and goes back to be King of the Southlands.

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Read on AO3

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It’s time for a very smut-tastic chapter two of Haladriel modern dystopia a/b/o fic! Thanks for the reception on this one, friends :)

Haladriel Modern AU

E, 2/?, 12.5k

Many thanks to @makeshiftdraco for the tag that I’m supplying a day late! I’m trying to frantically finish my haladriel Victorian AU at the same time as getting my Gothic AU ready for @hellghoulweek so I’m burning the candle at both ends (appropriately for those two time periods lol)

I’ll Make You Sing For Me, I’ll Make You Scream is going to be a real labor of love throwing in all the gothic vibes from everything I can vibe together, primarily Carmilla and Wuthering Heights up through Tanith Lee’s gothic horror books from the 1980s. Ten year old Halbrand and Galadriel meeting ahead:

Just when he had determined to thoroughly dislike the intruder, he noticed Malva had returned from the hallway to bring news to Yavanna. They stepped to the back of the room to confer. “Poor wee mite,” the housekeeper tsked “She hasn’t heard yet about her parents. Handsome couple, him with his neck broke and her pierced almost through the heart by a piece of the carriage works. Shame. Such a shame. Thank the good lord above that Largo was out there when he was to find her wandering the moor.”

Her parents were dead. Would she cry and faint like they did in the novels he snuck a peek at in the library? There were always tragic young women in those stories where bad men did bad things and brought them to the kind of ends he had a feeling he wasn’t supposed to know about yet. Ghosts, too, and robbers and monks who had broken their vows.

Waiting for the hysteria that would surely arrive, Halbrand prepared himself to duck out of the room. He had no interest in weeping and wailing, even with the promise of seeing Largo bring back the forementioned kitten. Still, he loitered behind the great room door when the room began to clear out as the maids returned to their tasks. Galadriel appeared to lie down to sleep under a soft blanket, prompting his mother and Malva to leave the room to head to the kitchens. Their voices carried down the hallway, talking together of altering dinner menus for those helping with clearing the carriage as well as arranging lodging for the constable and doctor who would also need shelter from the storm.

As soon as they were out of sight, Halbrand inched forward around the door and took step by careful step to the edge of the couch to stare at the girl. She was still frightfully pale. He didn’t watch where he was going and stepped right on the floorboard that always creaked.

Her palest blue eyes snapped open, and he jumped backwards, startled. Sitting up, she pushed the blanket off and swung her legs around to sit on the edge of the couch. Those eyes never left his face in a fixed sort of way that was almost eerie.

“What are you called?” she asked.

“I’m Halbrand,” he found himself saying without even meaning to. It must have been the manners his parents had drilled into him.

“I’m Galadriel.”

He huffed, trying to regain what might be the upper hand. It was his house, after all. “I know.”

She smiled, then, and it was as if the sun broke through the clouds onto the tall birch trees when they glowed in the fresh autumn light. He gulped. She smiled even wider, sharp teeth paler than her face. “Do you want to be my friend? I have a cat.”

Eyebrows drawing downwards, he replied loftily, “I know that, too. They’re fetching him for you.”

Her head tilted as she observed him like one of the shrikes he’d seen sitting on a fence pole out in the fields. One of those fierce creatures would make an acceptable pet for a young lord, he had decided. Something more wild and untamed than the pigeons and doves in the dovecote would be just right.

Salt of the sea and iron smoke

Chapter 7: Like real people do

As the city awakens, louder noises drown the rhythmic drum of his pulse, and she stares into the water until the glittering glare of the rising sun makes her eyes sting. She is torn between mortification for how she’d behaved the night before and the gnawing hunger still deep within her. It dawns on her that he did tease her—and is actively doing so. Delaying the consummation of whatever has been simmering between them and making her confront what lies hidden under her lust for a mortal. How articulate of him to deny her even a touch when he’s had her, an elf, panting and coating his face in her pleasure. To say she is restless would be an understatement. If he intended to give her time to think and reconsider, then she is squandering it in a state of fevered limbo. It is not many elves that have been in her situation, to be bound in marriage and then have their desires awakened by another–at least not amongst the Noldor. She thinks back to the beginning of her marriage with Celeborn. They had been so young, so innocent, but he had been a patient lover, and she had been ravenous to discover what their bodies could do together, and she did so with delight.

This guilt may end her.