The earlier version of this story was written in 2003. It was rewritten in 2006.

~*~

He arrives without fanfare. It is an admirable coincidence in a place where he has no subordinates to silently command, where no ship has landed for the last decade. She remembers the throngs of elves that had gathered at the shipyard, Noldor and Teleri, all to watch her Grey Ship arrive, a historic occasion that could not be bypassed by witnesses. He is not a spectacle of the fallen, therefore the Noldor would not be very interested. He is royalty, but the Teleri are informal about such things.

She had received Elu’s letter a week ago; she suspects that he neither wrote nor meant a word of it. All she had known was that he would not commission a letter to her about him if the information was not true. Of course it is true. She sees Celeborn, there, a speck of grey with a white head, knowing it could be any other Telerin Elf and that this was all wishful thinking, except that Elu told her, and Elu was almost always true about him. Sometimes she thinks that Elu knows him so well that he was either Celeborn’s father or his lover.

She was his wife; she assumes she knows him (only because she was his lover). With Celeborn, assumptions are dangerous things. They have always blown up in her face, and are not among her proudest moments.

Elu has told no one else of his arrival, not even Celebrían. She is almost thankful for this – it only means that she will not have to play up to preconceived notions and pretend to be ecstatic to see him. Elu’s discretion has left her choice free: ignore him, receive him, adore him, detest him. Galadriel plays the game well with choices; she only turns desperate when there are none.   

*

Within an hour, she writes back to Elu: Thank you. It is only civil, of course, even if she has not met the Sindar king more than once since she herself came. Celebrían asked why, once, and Galadriel refused to answer. She knows now that Elu understood. Or else he would not have shown this courtesy.

She wonders if Melian felt the same when Elu had been reborn and returned, young, ageless and alive, with the yawning distance of years spent alone for her and death for him. She wonders if she should speak to Melian, whether Celeborn will speak to Melian, whether betrayal will be forgiven. It sounds strange to think it again, betrayal, and what it means for all of them. The first thing she was told to learn on Aman was to forgive. It had not been easy at all – she does not think she has learnt well.

She shuts her eyes. With Celeborn come complications. Alliterative sentences are harbingers of doom sometimes.

*

She knows where he is staying (an unobtrusive house near the harbour), what he is eating (veal), on what pillows he is sleeping (goose feather). She doesn’t know whether she should go to meet him this moment, or wait a couple of years before acknowledging his presence. She knows how to implement the latter possibility extremely effectively - if she chooses this, she hopes he will hurt.

For Galadriel, hurt is also a sign that someone feels, regardless of what the feeling is. Too much had changed with Celeborn, and then without him. It is only logical to assume that it will change again.

A quiet cough behind her, and Elrond asks, “Do I intrude?”

She does not turn, and wonders how he knows. Her secret, Elu’s secret, is possibly no longer one. Perhaps this is Elu’s revenge – it is swift, painful, worse than what most of her imaginative cousins would have been able to come up. Damn these Sindar and their overclever minds.
 
“Does Celebrían know?” She is afraid of this, because it will make Celeborn her husband. She is not sure how to deal with that just yet.

“No.”

“Have you withheld the information, or simply allowed her to find out for herself in the due course of time?”

“I received news of the ship from my father.” Elrond possesses this peculiar ability of making himself and his lineage sound normal, heretically so, when he should announce names and not simply pronounce them. Instead, Elrond speaks with faint, dry, half-smiles. “Entirely in the course of conversation.”

“Eärendil is…most kind.”

Elrond steps closer, voice hovering between concern, apprehension and amusement. “Do not be rash.”

She laughs bitterly. “I suppose I must be thankful that he is here alive.” 

“He has arrived, Lady.”

“I know,” she says, breath catching in her throat, constricting, because even the sight of the Celeborn-shaped speck did not drive home the fact as Elrond had just done. “By the Valar, Elrond, I know.”

*

As she fears, soon everybody knows. Galadriel pretends she doesn’t. She pretends not to see occasional, prowling, gossip-seeking shadows in the shrubs that run throughout Finarfin’s estate, she pretends not to hear the speculative whispers, she pretends that Celeborn is a fictional character of great adventure and listens to his tales with polite, inattentive smiles. 

She pleads a headache when Elladan and Elrohir come to see her, an aching back from too much riding when Elrond does, and disappears for a bath when Celebrían demands an audience. Everybody agrees that the situation has alarming side effects, for Galadriel has never been so poor in making excuses.

One day Finrod, steering her towards a quieter corner of the hall, away from the social gathering that seems to never be more than two steps away from her father’s house and hospitality, says, wittily, “Such melodrama does not suit you, sister.”

“On the contrary, Finrod, it has not even begun.”

“Do no punish him for this, not when he has done what you have desired.” Finrod responds, softly.

She laughs, but her heart is not in it (there have been too many halves – half-laughs, half-smiles, half-tears). Worse before than now, of course, but Celeborn (or even mention of Celeborn), reminds her of what is was like to not feel half-undone.

“All right, Finrod. Let him come. Let us see what mayhem ensues. ”

*

To give him due credit, he descends unobtrusively, in the evening on one of the days that followed. She does not ask him how he knew she would be taking a walk along that route alone. (It would be conversation material if she did, and they could talk about the weather). He will oblige her, she knows, since she has summoned him, and he will follow whatever path she wants to take. And later, if she remembers correctly, he will arrest whatever headstart she has and turn it entirely to his advantage.

“Hello,” she says. Woeful, immaterial, childish, but a start. 

He stares a little, and then says, equally carefully, “Good evening.”

It seems a little silly, her versus him, a sufficiently respectable distance between them. The twilight fades, both are slightly shadowed and neither face is clearly visible. He chooses appropriate times – at least that has not changed. 

“Are you well?”

 She thinks he is smiling. If it were not such an edgy situation, he would having been laughing, and she would be laughing with him. What are we doing?, she thinks, a little resigned and a little wry.

“I am, thank you,” he says courteously, a slight incline of the head, hands folded behind his back.  

She falls silent, ignoring the protests in her mind (that it is too soon to be silent). It is immaterial that she is conceding her greatest argumentative weapon: if she is silent, he has won.

“Galadriel.” It is all he says, and all he means. She knows this, despite all the anger. She averts her head, but no hair can fall over her face to obscure it (to protect it) because she’s tied it all up. Such gladness that he has come, that he did not die a terrible, agonizing death, that he came - she has not allowed herself to feel this for three weeks and six days, since she saw him getting off the ship. It feels terribly (frighteningly) right to be Galadriel in Celeborn’s presence.

She sees him smile a little more, despite the palpable weariness in his face, the huskiness of his voice. “Forgive me…I did not come prepared to say more.”

She still does not look at him, but murmurs, “Indeed, you not renowned for roundabout rhetoric.”

“We have been a little formal.”

“Perhaps.”

He kisses her, of course, and it is far more than a respectable, sincere gesture, since that is the only thing that will not qualify as formal, and she wants to resist, if only to teach him a lesson that how dare you leave me, but she can’t, she never could, because its him and that is the easiest (but most illogical) reasoning in the world.

Since she can’t curse him, or not kiss him, she slaps him. Nenya leaves a satisfyingly red mark on his white (too pale) cheek.

He looks a little stunned, but not very surprised.

Taking a step back, he says, voice so low that it doesn’t rise above the moment, “Resorting to physical violence so soon, Galadriel? Perhaps it is a good sign.”

Then he smiles his glimmering smile, and says, just before he leaves, “It seems that round one is over.”

*

He reappears in the middle of the night, in the manner of overdone love songs and weepy epics of sundered lovers. She half-fears that he’s brought a harp and is going to sing beneath her window.

“Good night, Galadriel,” he says, throwing the words up into the wind. She is not in direct view, but stands next to the window sill and curses these newly acquired good manners of his, where good evening and good night were apparently essential components of conversation.  

*

She hears that he has become a minor celebrity in these parts. She begins to realize that people had not talked about him earlier because they were afraid of her. Apparently now that he had arrived whole and hearty (a fact that was, of course, debatable), coupled with the fact that Galadriel seemed to refuse to acknowledge his existence in public, was providing fodder for the many rumour mills that Tirion housed.

He sends a letter one day, unsigned: I’ll grovel, if you want. But come and eat strawberries with me first. You can’t say no to strawberries.

Proud, willful, tempestuous, strawberry-loving Galadriel goes, and does not say no. It is of little consequence that three lines from him can bring her to this state. 
 
He is lying on the deck, flat on his back and head hanging over the water, but not alone. Ulmo has risen half-out of the sea in a newly-acquired human form, naked to the waist, the ends of his hair (like shining foam) partly swaying in the wind and partly moving in the waves. He runs his hands through Celeborn’s hair; they laugh. Her stomach knots with jealousy of the greenest variety.

A single footstep on the wood, Celeborn sees her, Galadriel meets Ulmo’s gaze on top of Celeborn’s head, and many things are understood. With a faint, faint smile, the Vala disappears into the depths of the sea.

Celeborn looks up, eyes laughing. “Sorry. He wrote me a few love letters once.”

She looks a bit startled, and it amuses him even more.

“Only once. He asked me to shave my hair as an offering to him, in return for safe passage to Aman.”

“Did you?”

“I cut some off the ends and gave them to his wife.”

“Was he very angry?”

“Furious. He told me that I had learnt irreverence from you.”

A faraway splash, a glimpse of a fin disappearing underwater, and Galadriel knows that Ulmo has heard, approved, and played his matchmaking card. 

*

It begins to rain. They have accomplished nothing so far, not even one strawberry, not one single conversation of any consequence. Just idle strolling, he barefoot, and she sorely tempted to be barefoot – he asks about her family, she answers. 

He acts without thinking, logically, appropriately – picking up the huge basket (undoubtedly filled with strawberries), puts one arm around her waist, and ushers her into the dry shelter of the house.

He’s dripping wet – she remembers that his hair darkens to pewter when wet. It tangles too, she remembers (without thinking), and he’ll complain about it later if he doesn’t put them into braids now.  

But he just stands there, suddenly motionless, and everything is silent except for the sound of water, either falling off him or falling off the roof.

“I...” he begins saying, and then looks away, at anywhere but her, “You came.”

She tries to smile, but it requires a supreme effort. “You offered me strawberries.”

His eyes lighten a little; she knows he appreciates her attempt at trying to lighten the moment. “So that’s what it took? Strawberries?”

“They were an…added attraction.”

He raises an eyebrow. “And the primary temptation?”

“You.”

She raises a hand towards him, almost involuntarily, terrified that he would walk away, that he was no more ready to face this situation than she was. It was like this before, ages and ages ago in Doriath, where they were both novices at playing each other, when neither had anything as much at stake.  

He doesn’t move, a careful blankness settling on his face, voice steady, “I do not know how to go about this, I’m afraid.”

Celeborn the wise, admitting that he did not know. She can only admire him for this candidness, admire him as before, when he had said I cannot match you. “It is not a problem,” she says, softly, with far more control than she felt capable of possessing. “I--”

There is no chance to say more, because his mouth is on hers, and he is gentle at first, then ravenous, his hands cupping the nape of her neck in those long, long fingers. She throws her head back in startled joy, wanting this and willing to admit it, and deepens the kiss, running her hands through his wet hair.

He stops, breathing deeply, “Alatáriel...”

She closes her eyes, or the tears would fall. Not of sorrow or joy or nostalgia, but simply for the way he said it. She wonders how she even allowed anyone else to call her Galadriel in his absence.

He rests his head against her forehead, eyes searching, searching, and she sees the weariness, the newer scars reflected in his gaze.

“Stay tonight, and I’ll give you strawberries. Please.”

*

He asks, very simply, “Are you angry?”

“I was angry for a long time, yes.”

“Now?”

“I realize that you are here. It is a little pointless to be angry with you. It was easier to do so with your behaviour, as I remembered it.”

As promised, there were strawberries and mulled wine, and an old robe of his that she pulled around herself to keep warmer. He sat barefoot, legs stretched out and crossed, head thrown back and eyes half-lidded. She knows he observes her every move.

It is time, she thinks, to turn the force of conversation. “Why did you come, Celeborn?”

“You must understand that when I did not come with you before…it was not because of you, Galadriel…only because I simply could not leave. There came a time when I could leave. I left. It was as simple as that.” He says this quietly, without further explanation.

“Is your heart broken?”

“A little. Yes.”

Sudden fury because she still comes second, despite all vanity, despite the fact that she knows he has come only for her, and everything else he says is mindless drivel till he admits it publicly. She ignores his mute plea for forgiveness, and gets up to move away, some element of selfishness regained in Aman, lost in Middle Earth when everything was fading.

He does not stop her, but says in a low, harsh voice, “We are too old for this, Galadriel.”

“Too old, too battered, Celeborn…” She shakes her head, bitterly. “Too long.”

He rises – she had forgotten how fluid he was in movement – and moves towards her, standing directly behind her. She faces the door, knowing that if she leaves now he can do nothing, for she would have made her choice. He doesn’t touch her because he doesn’t dare to. Angry tears blur her eyes momentarily – at him, at herself, at the impasse that had no end in sight. She supposed that she could have shouted, and it would have been easier than this.   

He places a hand on the small of her back. It is the softest, most uncertain touch, and it speaks volumes about how terrified he is.

“I love you, Galadriel,” he says, simply, uncompromisingly.

She has never accused him of roundabout rhetoric.

*

“The wise make the worst fools.” She presses her lips against the hollow of his neck. “That has got to be the worst cliché I have ever heard.”

He lets out a chuckle. “Yes.”

It hasn’t stopped raining, Tirion will be abuzz at her absence. She takes a certain pleasure in tormenting the gossip-mongers a while longer.

“Dance with me tomorrow?”

“Teach me the dance tomorrow.”

“Stay for me?”

“How very melodramatic, Galadriel.” He murmurs, teasingly.

“I rehearsed it countless times.”

A smile, that wonderful, melting smile, which lifts his eyes at the corners and his eyes, dipping, sweeping over her, sparkling with a blue she had not dared to allow herself to see mirrored in Elu’s, and he brings her hands to his lips and murmurs, Fool.

~*~