The Light Between Our Scars | Adar x Galadriel | Rings of Power

Chapter 3: Under the Moonlight

Galadriel tried to syncronize her breath with the rhythmic gallop of the horse. The animal was sweating abundantly, and white foamy saliva came out of his mouth. Her heart tightened, sensing the pain of that wonderful creature, but they still weren't out of danger; the woods were swarming with orcs, and it was imperative for them to escape as far as possible. Her arms hurt because of her efforts in preventing Adar from falling off the horse. His back was leaning on her chest, and she felt his blood soaking her clothes. Belanor held the reins, and Galadriel couldn't help but notice that he was not an expert of the riding ability. They even risked crashing against a tree a couple of times, but fortunately the horse seemed to know what he was doing. She wondered if Belanor was really a soldier, and if not, why he was disguised as one.

"I think we can stop now!" he exclaimed after what seemed an eternity. The horse slowed down, huffing and breathing heavily until it stopped near a big granitic boulder. Galadriel looked around; the shadows of the sunset had now turned into darkness, but the half moon shone enough to allow her to see that the trees were starting to thin out, and she could hear the slow and inviting gurgling of a nearby stream.

"Yes, here it's good" she nodded. They dismounted and took Adar near the boulder. She urged Belanor to give her his mantle and to take some water from the stream. He rushed to the horse to take something to carry the water with and went in the direction of the creek.

Galadriel tore the mantle into strips and started to cut Adar's armor with a knife. When she finally freed his chest from all the layers of armor and tissues, she couldn't hide an exclamation. At the light of the moon, the abdomen of the Uruk looked horrible. Aside from the fresh wounds, she noted with horror that the flesh was full of old scars, way worse than the ones visible on his face. One of them ran from the neck to the lower abdomen, like if he had been opened in two. Just standing or walking were probably incredibly painful for him, and he was dealing with this from millennia. Wounds that endure an age... He had returned Nenya - the only thing that could heal him from all that pain - without hesitation, just for the peace of Middle-Earth. She swallowed painfully.

Belanor came back from the stream, carrying a saddlebag full of water. "It was the only thing I could find to bring you the water" he gasped. "Thank you, Belanor. It's enough. Now please help me clean his wounds and bend them. We have to stop the hemorrhage" Galadriel started to dip a strip in the water. It was really difficult for them to clean his body with the bare moonlight, but they couldn't light a fire because they didn't know how far from the orcs they actually were. And they didn't even have something to light a fire with. Their condition was really pitiful, Galadriel had to admit. She looked at Nenya and thought how much it would be useful for them if she could control her light, but the ring was inanimate.

"How is he still alive?" Belanor asked while carefully cleaning the nearest laceration with a grimace of disgust on his face. "Uruks are stronger than us. He suffered a lot to become one" she pointed at the old scars. He frowned. After some minutes of silence, he asked "Why?". "What?" Galadriel raised her eyes, giving a quick look at him, then returned to her work. "Why did he want to become an Uruk?". "I'm not sure, Belanor. He had been tortured, physically and internally. He certainly is a very tormented creature" she responded distractingly.

She was actually thinking about Nenya and how it healed him once. She struggled in choosing what was the right thing to do now. Should she use it to heal the Uruk again? The wounds were profound, and she couldn't see how he would ever be able to survive; but still, she felt uncomfortable using an Elven ring to heal one of the worst enemies of the Elves in front of Belanor. She had a debt of gratitude towards Adar, but this didn't mean she could claim the right to use the ring for her own personal purposes. She had made enough mistakes in the past, following her own discernment alone. The memory of Halbrand painfully hit the course of her thoughts, but she quickly pushed it away. No, she wouldn't take a decision for now; she could stop the hemorrhage in some other way and try to give his body a bit of additional strength.

She remembered a bush of Aïthenintil she had glimpsed near the stream when they dismounted from the horse. "Hurry up, Belanor, I need you to keep those herbs near the water" Galadriel ordered. When she had the herbs, she dip them into the water to make a compress and delicately applied them on the wounds. "It would work better with warm water" she said "but it should avoid infections and stop the bleeding". Then they quickly bent all the Uruk's abdomen with the remaining strips, tying them very tightly; it looked like the hemorrhage had finally stopped.

Galadriel put an hand over Adar's heart and the other hand on his forehead. The Uruk had a little gasp, then his breath seemed to adjust to a more normal rhythm, and his muscles started to relax. Finally, she soaked the last strip in clean water and tried to hydrate his mouth as much as she could. "I can't do more for now" she said, standing up and moving her dirty hair out of her face.

She looked at Belanor interrogatively "Who are you really? I don't believe you're a soldier". Belanor blushed in the darkness. "No, Lady Galadriel. I'm not a soldier indeed" he said, standing up in front of her. "I was one of Celebrimbor's apprentices, I'm a blacksmith". Celebrimbor. Galadriel felt a sting of pain in her heart. "And how do you wear a soldier's armor?" she asked.

"When the Dwarfs' army arrived, they freed the Elven imprisoned in Eregion by the orcs, including myself. It was chaos, and I had no protection with me, so I took an armor from a dead soldier" He swallowed, painfully remembering those moments "Then Gil-Galaad and Elrond planned to set up an Elven camp far from Eregion. I found a lost horse, and I was following the other Elves when I saw a sudden white light in the forest and a female voice in my head saying Come, Come, Come."

"A female voice?" Galadriel was confused "Yes. It was not yours, though. It was peremptory and insistent. I couldn't resist her recall. That's how I found you" Belanor concluded.

Galadriel frowned, walking in little circles. "So, you know where Gil-Galaad and Elrond were headed?" "Yes, Lady Galadriel. I can bring you there tomorrow, when I'll understand better where we are". "Good. At least we have a starting point" she looked at Adar laying at her feet and continued "I guess the best thing we can do is rest now. I think we both have forgotten the last time we have slept, right?"

After cleaning their faces the best they could at the stream, they laid down near the boulder, with Adar between them. Belanor fell asleep immediately, while Galadriel had still too much adrenaline in her body. She stared at the moon and the stars above, then turned her head and looked at Adar. The Uruk was breathing regularly. She wondered why she hadn't noticed how much his face looked so Elven before. Who was he, before becoming Adar?

She thought again to the Elf he had become while wearing Nenya. His warm, green eyes and sinuous moves. No more flames, and no more darkness. Let this Ring heal the rift between Elf and Uruk... She didn't realize it at the time, but his soft words and gentle appearance hit her more than she could admit. Being so near to Adar in the quiet of the night gave her a weird sense of... Safety? Protection? She wasn't able to give a name to that sensation; she just knew it was very different from the unsafe feeling she felt with Halbrand. She nervously turned her head to the sky again, frowning. She didn't need protection; she was the Commander of the Northern Armies after all. A deformed and corrupted Elf wasn't going to change that, especially considering how bloodthirsty and ruthless he had been just until the day before.

She closed her eyes and, after a minute, slowly moved her hand and gently grabbed Adar's.

It was only then that she could finally fall asleep.

[To be continued]