Marchwarden: Hidden Hero 12

Marchwarden: Hidden Hero

Part 12

Posted: October 13, 2006
Title: Marchwarden: Hidden Hero
Author: Kenaz

*****

Third Age 3019, Yestarë

The battle was over, and the Elves had won.

Despite the astounding violence of Mordor's armies, the Hobbit had succeeded, the Ring of Power had been unmade, and Sauron had been vanquished. The long shadow hanging over the land lifted at last.

The enemy withdrew from the Gladden Fields, but for the Galadhrim, the aftermath remained: tending to their wounded, assessing their losses, burying their dead. And still Dol Guldur stood, a canker on the green across the Anduin. Celeborn would see it brought down, but for the moment, a reprieve: two days to lay the fallen in the earth (no more pyres; fire had brought enough pain) and to recover their strength. Two days to prepare for one final stand.

Haldir ached for their losses, for the terrible deaths of the brave and the worthy. He had held vigil over Taurnil, who lingered between life and death with Ungol poison choking his veins. He buried friends with his own hands, and it was back-breaking, heart-breaking work. Through it all he had worn an indomitable face until he heard Rúmil's voice rise up with Feredir's to sing a lament for the warriors fallen, and then he had scarce been able to stem the tide of his grief.

And yet, one thought remained: that soon he would go to the hidden place where long ago two young ones had claimed the land as their own. And there, amidst the stands of birch and alder, amid the briar tangle which had once sheltered two small bodies, he would wait for Galion and receive the answer to his suit.

The sun was setting and still the laments for the lost lingered in his ears. He had painstakingly scrubbed the blood and filth from his body, though the hot water made his legs squall with outrage. Agonizing over how he might best present himself, he had settled at last on the grey velvet vest he considered the most handsome piece in his wardrobe and a fine linen shirt opened at the neck as far as decorum would allow. His breeches were snug suede of a darker hue, his boots carefully cleaned. He wore his hair unbound and oiled and had even daubed a bit of scent behind his ears, though now, standing alone by the side of the water, he felt foolish for his vanity. He knew from the hue of the sky that he had been there for some time, and still Galion had not shown. His hands worried the leather of his belt, looking for occupation as the knot in his stomach grew.

He acknowledged now with growing despair that he might finally have overreached himself; that the pain he had brought through his stunning lack of insight could perhaps not be allayed. His heart raced, the hollow sound echoing around his companionless self and the solitary trees, and he felt light-headed with the magnitude of his failure: He was forsaken, then. He had lost Galion; he was to be alone.

Legs going liquid beneath him, he leaned against the poplar whose branches had often cradled him, needful of its support. He wanted to run from this place, never again to see the remains of the brush fort that had once been an enclave for him, but at present he felt too ill to move.

In a moment, he told himself. I need only catch my breath and I shall be gone from here.

"Haldir."

His name was spoken so quietly, he was afraid perhaps it was just a mocking breeze. Yet when he turned, the healer was there, regarding him with an uneasy expression.

Haldir was silent for some time before speaking. "I was afraid you would not come."

"I did not know if I would," Galion told him simply.

"Yet here you are."

Galion had also taken care to dress himself well, and his dark locks, freed from their customary braid, swept the small of his back. He looked down at his feet. "Haldir, this is no small thing you ask."

Revived, Haldir was in motion, closing the distance between them. "Nay, it is a grand thing! It is the moon and the sun and the stars!" He dared to reach forward and take hold of the healer's arm. He was not rebuffed. "I know this, Galion. I know it is no small thing, but my love is no small thing, either."

Still, Galion looked ill at ease. "You have ever sworn you would not marry and now you would rush headlong into betrothal. What of me, then, when you regain your senses and rue your hasty action? I could not endure an eternity of regret."

"I will not regret it! I regret only that I caused you pain, and that I held you at arm's length when I should have kept you near. I regret that I broke with you when I should have been binding myself to you."

Galion was silent, considering. His head was cocked, and there, the old crease of worry cleaved his brow and his lips were drawn tight as he regarded Haldir indirectly from the corner of his eye. Haldir stepped close again, venturing light touches to his shoulders, his arms, his face.

"I cannot offer you much, for I have little. I am a faulty creature, as well you know. I dare not swear our road will be an easy one, nor can I promise a life of leisure or of riches."

"You sell it well," Galion remarked dryly.

"What I do have is the words in my heart, the vow I would speak, and a blade to see the deed done."

It took a moment for those final words to register, but when they did, Galion's eyes bulged, and he sputtered wildly before finding his voice. "Now? Have you lost your mind?"

"Nay, I have found my heart, and it will not wait. I will not wait."

"And if I refuse, what then?"

Haldir had rediscovered his confidence. His prize was in sight, and it would not escape him again. "You will not refuse. When I said I would make you mine, it was neither a jest nor a threat. It was merely a statement of fact."

Galion bristled, his nostrils flaring. Any Elf possessing a modicum of good sense would not tolerate such a galling declaration.

But any Elf possessing a modicum of good sense would not have tolerated Haldir, his arrogance, and his ambivalence, for all these many years.

"You rebuked me, saying I had no faith in you." Haldir spoke softly this time and kept his distance. "Show me now what it is to have faith."

Galion jerked his hand through his hair and turned aside, his body a taut line curling in on itself at the shoulder. Before him lay the singing stream, behind him the place where their little brush fort once stood, reclaimed now by gorse and fern. He thought of all the years that he had wanted nothing more than this, and the torment that was Haldir dancing forever just beyond his reach, taunting him now with a whirlwind promise of forever. He vehemently shook his head. This was madness, utter and complete.

He took a breath before speaking.

Haldir saw the slow shaking of Galion's head and the movement of his lips around a quiet word he could not hear. The rejection hit him with all the force of a punch to the gut. His mind swam with the cruelty of it, and he feared for a humiliating moment that he would be ill. He took an unsteady step back, wiping his sweaty palms on his thighs, disturbing the nap of the suede. So stricken was he by this gesture of refusal, this silent denial, that the hum of devastation in his ears nearly deafened him to Galion's voice.

"Strip."

“What did you say?” asked Haldir, unable to credit his ears.

"Strip, I said," the healer demanded again, turning sharply to face him. "That is how it is done, is it not? Lovers bare themselves to one another as a token of good faith, that nothing is concealed and nothing stands between them?"

Already Galion's hands were twisting at the fibula of his cloak, letting it fall in a careless heap on the ground. His eyes were hard as adamant, yet shining wildly, and he tugged impatiently at his belt.

"Well?" he prodded, toeing off his boots and shoving his breeches roughly down his legs.

Haldir only stared, momentarily struck dumb by the turn of events. He worried his lower lip between his teeth as he watched Galion disrobing, each jerk of his limbs tinged with exasperation. He looked with startled and astonished eyes, as if he had never truly seen Galion before, never fully appreciated the lean sculpt of his chest, the graceful line of his neck and shoulders, the high arch of his cheekbones.

"You are beautiful."

Galion's expression softened, the challenge fading from his eyes. "And you are still clothed, seron vell."

Beloved.

Haldir was radiant in his joy. He pulled his dagger from its sheath and placed it on the ground at his feet, and then hastily undressed under Galion's warming gaze. Naked at last, they faced each other. Though as the crucial moment dawned, a shadow of unease flickered across Haldir's face.

"I would do this now, but Galion, if you are at all unsure I will wait; your word is bond enough. Patience is not a quality inherent to my nature, but for you I would perforce learn it."

Galion shook his head, pressing his hand to Haldir's cheek. "I have never been more sure of anything." He did not blink when he locked his gaze on Haldir, fixed and final.

They knelt then, there on the velvet of the moss, blind to all but each other. With clasped hands, they whispered the words that wrought the solemn vow of binding, the arcane invocations known only to Firstborn and spoken between true lovers since the awakening on Cuiviénen's shores.

Haldir picked up the knife and drew it swiftly across his palm, reveling in the sharp sting, in the sight of his blood blossoming in the wake of steel's passage. He held out the dagger to Galion, who did not so much as wince as he opened the flesh of his own palm and held it up, a garnet trickle flowing down toward his wrists.

In silence, they brought their hands together, fingers twining, and each felt the earth beneath them shifting, so swiftly did the surge of the bind come upon them. Above, though they did not see, the stars briefly flared, a sign that their call to Ilúvatar had been heard and their compact accepted. Between their hands, a current deluged them: blood sang to blood, heart answered heart, and two became inexorably one.

Galion's eyes rolled up behind his lids and a low moan escaped him. The feeling of being drawn into Haldir and of Haldir being drawn into him was at once alien and sensual. It reminded him of healing, of sending himself deep within another, seeking the utmost limit of that fine thread which bound his soul to his body. But there was no limit here, no point of parting, no fear of becoming unmoored from himself and lost in empty darkness. For now, as he felt himself being pulled outward to his mate, Haldir was bourn to him, the misty tendrils of the warrior's spirit filling him, completing him. He could feel the weight and unearthly heat of Haldir's body; they had slumped against each other in the dizzying onslaught, each bearing the other up as their faer mingled within and between them.

Haldir was open to him, all his love made plain in the sweat scent of his skin, the touch of his hand, the thrum of his blood; he withheld nothing. Galion did not demure at showing what lay in his own heart, the love that had resided their for years uncounted, the surety of emotion that remained through all of Haldir's mercurial phases and through his own pain and doubt which only now began to recede once and for all.

Breath passed between them and they drank it in, each from the other. They were deafened by the roar of blood pounding in their veins, the thunder of hearts seeking, and finally, finally, finding synchrony. They discovered the tingle of skin now aware of every touch, the resident warmth of fingers. The pulse of their hands echoed the rhythm of twinned hearts and a deeper throb answered below, the sudden and compelling need for closeness beyond this mere touch; the desperation to share their bodies as they now shared all else. He did not need to see to know that they were both powerfully aroused by the urgent summoning of flesh to flesh.

Galion's breath became a gasp, a harsh pant. He could no more deny himself his desire than he could conceal the love he carried within. He would see himself sated, glutted on Haldir's flesh. His growl of need reverberated between them as he drew Haldir down beside him on the cool green, and with his free hand drew Haldir's head to his and fused their mouths together.

Haldir melted under his kiss. How could it have been but a short few months since he had last received this when it felt like a thousand parched and barren years? It was as a feast to one starving. He might have spent from the sheer bliss of lips and tongue and the weight of Galion's body on top of him save for the deeper yearning that held true pleasure at bay: his body would find no true satisfaction until they were joined. His legs rubbed against Galion's and his heels dug into the ground below and he was fleetingly aware that his burns no longer plagued him, that his flesh felt new and flawless as a babe's. He would not have been surprised to survey his body and find all of his scars vanished, but it was only Galion's body he cared to survey now. The thought of the tight heat that awaited him sent a bolt radiating outward from his bollocks, tense in anticipation of their fetching.

"Oil," he whispered. "There is some in my pouch. It is not your yarrow salve, but it will suffice."

Galion chuckled sardonically. "You were certain of yourself."

"Nay," a breathless grin swept his features. "Desperately hopeful."

Galion reached without relinquishing Haldir's hand, but it was his own pouch he grabbed, rummaging for a moment before pulling out a small pot of yarrow salve. He acknowledged Haldir's groan with a dark grin of his own.

"And I leave nothing to chance where you are concerned."

His slicked hand brought a needful pang to the erection spearing up between Haldir's legs. But his fingers did not linger there. They drifted over the straining orbs that lay below, and slipped into the dark crevasse behind. Haldir made a noise of surprise and Galion's grey eyes locked on his, glassy and luminous as stars.

"You are mine now, Haldir Guilinion. There is no part of you I will allow you to withhold. I would have your body as well as your soul."

The shiver that took him at those words, at that shadowy and strangely potent shade coloring Galion's familiar voice, started between his shoulder blades and tumbled down his spine. Haldir did not fear the act—he had lain under lovers in his youth and taken pleasure in being thus used. It had been soldierly pride that stayed him from that role in later years and made him exalt in his primacy. But he had never felt the need for such dominion with Galion. Nay, it had not been pride that had stayed him in the healer's bed, but rather the disconcerting knowledge that in surrendering to Galion, he would be forced to own the full measure of his love. Submission would have been acknowledgement that the healer was his weakness.

But he knew now—had learned nearly too late-- that Galion was not his weakness, but his strength; there was no more need to run from what his heart most desired.

"Yes," he whispered, tightening his grip on Galion's hand, and then said nothing more. For there were no words, no words for this perfection, no words for finding himself for the first time in all his long years well and truly cherished, well and truly whole. In that instant, Haldir wanted nothing more than to be owned, to be claimed, to be loved.

The healer's fingers moved inside him with tender persistence, coaxing him open, and he could not be sure if the spreading warmth he felt within was his body's own rapture, or the secret heat of the healer's innate gift to succor with his hands. He drew up his knees, offering every inch of himself. Galion was so exquisite to behold, the moon caught in his skin and glowing pale, the sinews of his chest and arms flexing, virile strength subdued behind his gentle touch. The inky fall of his unbound tresses cloaked him in shifting shadows. He was single-minded in his preparation, suppressing his yearning that Haldir's pleasure might be as fulsome as his own.

When at last Galion breached him, the burn was nothing compared to the wonder of it, the concomitant swirl of power and vulnerability, the strange and beautiful knowledge that his most faithful and beloved was inside him, was within his blood and soul as well as within the tight clench of his body, and the thought of it was enough to make him keen. He watched through heavy-lidded eyes as Galion rode him, life straining beneath his skin, too much for one body to hold.

Haldir pulled his hand from Galion's grasp, for their blood had long since mingled, and they were now joined in an embrace far more intimate than the clasp of hands. He cinched his darkling mate in his arms and drew him down, drew him close, begged kisses from him with his mouth open and tongue questing. The sensation of radiant weightlessness flowed between them, love and pleasure now one and the same and more intense than anything either of them could have imagined. Galion pushed deep, sank to the root in Haldir's heat, but he moved slowly, in spite of his ravening need to possess. His thrusts held a rhythm of languor, as if they had all the time in the world to dwell in this ensorcelled realm. Haldir's legs locked around his hips as if he feared the loss of him. Something profound ached inside that demanded Galion's presence within him, some feral part of him was desperately satisfied by the feeling of being spread wide and speared, the feeling of unimaginable fullness and surrender. He was a willing thrall to Galion's exquisite hunger.

His shaft was trapped between their bellies, tormented by the slow drag of sweat-slicked skin. And suddenly, it was all too much: the friction, the delving heat that slowly pierced him, the kisses now as necessary as breathing…his skin tingled, every inch of it, his vision had gone white at the edges, as if the brilliance of this act would blind him. His breath burned in his lungs and Galion's weight pressed him into the ground. The cords in Galion's neck stood out against the strain of his measured thrusts, the effort of holding himself in check even as his release threatened to shatter them both.

"Oh…please," Haldir begged, and the word came out of him again and again, a visceral supplication. He could not articulate his need, only knowing as he knew his claiming, his joy, his body being pushed to the peak of desire, that Galion alone could give him what he required. Galion was moving faster now, hunger at last conquering patience. As the healer's hips pumped in the ecstasy of the rut, each could feel the other's waxing bliss as hotly as their own and the revelation of pleasure given as well as received magnified every sensation. And then someone was crying out, it did not matter who, and Galion was spilling himself deep inside Haldir, filling him with the warm flood of his seed, his face twisted in utmost bliss. Haldir's body was rhythmically shuddering and his own release was spurting hot between them, stippling their chests.

When at last the tremors subsided, Galion collapsed atop Haldir, who held him close, refusing to relinquish him. The din of roaring blood had subsided, and only the laughing brook and the songs of the night birds broke the placid silence. No words passed between them, but their hands were eloquent enough, smoothing paths down the curve of a back, tracing the plains of faces familiar and beloved, drawing each other into close and closer embraces as they roused each other and coupled again with no less hunger than before.

They loved each other into exhaustion. The first golden striations of dawn had appeared when they had finally spent the last of their ardor and drew their cloaks over them to stave off the early chill. Haldir curled himself against the healer's side, pillowing his head on Galion's chest, listening to the comforting cadence of his lover's heartbeat echoing his own. Galion's face was half buried in his hair, and he seemed at peace breathing in the familiar scent of it. But at long last, a pang of misery assailed Haldir, regret for the needless pain he had caused, for time wasted, for his thoughtless and destructive denial.

"Oh, Galion…curse me for a fool," he whispered, his voice thick.

Galion twined his fingers tighter in Haldir's hair, smiled mildly into the unruly blonde crown. "I often have."

"I should have claimed you for my own when I first knew your heart."

But Galion would hear no recriminations in the wake of their lovemaking. Nothing save death could part them now, and seasons of his waiting fell away before the promise of unnumbered years stretching before them. "Sleep now," Galion murmured, his own body suddenly suffused with torpor. "You have an eternity to recompense me."

Scant hours later, Galion woke alone in the snug nest of cloaks they had fashioned in the night. Curiosity and worry piqued him, but when he quieted his mind, he became aware Haldir was near. A sense of wellbeing that was, and yet was not, his own hovered in the background of his consciousness. It was strange, this presence of another, this new clairvoyance. Strange and wonderful.

Tentatively, Galion cast out the thread of his thoughts, knowing not how, or if, Haldir would hear them.

Where have you gone, bright one?

Behind him, a splash of the water was the river's merry response. Haldir broke the surface of the stream, swiping the water from his eyes with one hand and grinning from ear to ear.

"I am here," he answered. He had heard.

He scrambled up the bank, water sheeting off his hair and beading on the planes of his body. Galion watched him swagger toward him with mingled adoration and reawakened desire. Haldir knelt beside him and took up one of his hands. Into his palm, he pressed a smooth, grey river stone.

"A new declaration," he offered.

"You are far from a child," Galion gently teased. "Have you still no words to speak it?"

Haldir cupped his chin and looked long into his eyes, as if the very sight of Galion's face nourished and renewed him.

"Only these," he said. "I love you."

*****

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