Chapter Text
The last thing anyone had expected as the ash began to settle, was movement. For a long moment as everyone stared there was only silence. Then something shifted. At first it was nothing more than a tremor beneath the rubble. Settling debris perhaps. Gimli tightened his grip on his axe anyway. Legolas’s gaze sharpened. Aragorn felt the instinctive pull of his sword-hand. “Did you..” Pippin began and then stopped. Because they all saw it.
A hand beneath soot and blood, fingers trembling as they clawed weakly at the fallen stones. It looked human. Then the rubble shifted and a figure dragged itself free. He collapsed almost immediately striking the ground with a force that should have stilled him entirely. For a moment he did not stir half-curled amid the ruins as though the act of emerging had cost him everything.
His armour was broken, warped by heat and ruin, clinging in jagged remnants to a body that seemed too slight to have ever worn it. What remained of it smoked. Slowly, painfully he moved. His fingers dug into the ash as though he might anchor himself to the world by sheer will alone. When he tried to push himself up his arms gave way and he fell again, a low, involuntary sound escaping him, half breath, half something perilously close to a broken cry. “No,” Faramir put a hand out as if to keep everyone back, “no this is some trick.”
“Is it?” Legolas frowned. Because there was no Great Eye in flame. No crushing presence bending thought and wills alike. Only a man or something that wore the shape of one. At last with visible effort the figure rolled onto his back as Gimli swore under his breath. The man was handsome, terribly, unmistakably handsome even now streaked with soot and blood, though his face was drawn with pain and exhaustion so profound it hollowed his cheeks. Dark hair clung damply to his brow. His lips were parted as he fought for breath, each inhale shallow, unsteady as though his body had forgotten the rhythm of living. His eyes when they opened were confused, disoriented. But aware. They flickered across the gathered company unfocused at first, then sharpening by degrees as recognition began to take hold.
For a moment he simply lay there with his chest rising and falling too quickly, too shallowly. Then with a ragged breath he forced the word out, “..Galadriel.”
A few paces back boots scraped against ash with Elrond’s arrival. Now he moved through the small gap the Company made without being asked. He stopped beside Aragorn, his attention already fixed on the man on the ground. Elrond did not hurry and yet there was urgency in him. He crossed the distance and stopped just short of the man’s reach. The others watched him, Aragorn with quiet tension, Gimli with open suspicion, Legolas with something closer to dread as Elrond simply looked. Recognition came slowly in confirmation. Elrond exhaled and the sound carried the weight of centuries, “I had hoped never to see that face again.”
The man on the ground stirred at the voice. His gaze shifted, struggled to focus and then found the elf before him. Elrond’s expression did not soften, “if any doubt remained,” he continued more firmly now for the others as much as for himself, “it should not.”
Aragorn stepped closer, “you know him?”
“I do,” Elrond’s gaze did not leave the fallen figure, “this is no mere guise taken in desperation. No passing trick. This shape was hard-won. After His first great fall He was diminished. Bound to the likeness of Men. Unable for a long time to take any form that did not wear their weakness, their mortality in semblance if not in truth.”
Gimli let out a disbelieving grunt, “He? You’re telling me that,” he gestured at the broken figure, “is the Dark Lord?”
Elrond did not look away, “yes, Halbrand. That was the name he wore.”
At the sound of it the man flinched. His hand twitched, his fingers curling as though grasping for something lost. His lips parted, “don’t..” The effort cost him, his body tensed, then shuddered as though even speech demanded more strength than remained to him.
Aragorn’s frown deepened, “he answers to it.” Silence settled again in the understanding of something far more dangerous than a tower or a lidless eye being present. Because Shadows did not bleed. But this could suffer. And Halbrand, Sauron whatever name one dared give him drew another shallow faltering breath it became inescapably clear he already was.
Gimli shifted unsettled, “so it’s true then. That’s Him.” Halbrand let out something that might have been a breath or an attempt at a laugh. It failed either way dissolving into a pained exhale. His eyes slipped half-shut, his lashes lowering as though even holding them open had become too much. He didn’t lose consciousness but he came close. Aragorn stepped forward almost before the thought of doing so had fully formed. His hand went to Andúril and in a single, smooth motion the blade rose.
Halbrand tried to shift, tried to speak but his strength was gone. Andúril descended in a merciless arc.
Tbc