Chapter Text
“The War of Wrath, signed by the independent label The Flenser in 2023, is managed by what some would call the ‘infamous’ Melkor Bauglir. While he is known for lifting certain artists into great success—take Balrog, for example—he is also suspected for being a direct contributor to other artists’ downfalls. The War of Wrath’s decision to take Bauglir on as their manager was a bold choice, but understandable for a band striving for success.
So far, it seems, success is all it has brought them. It was after Bauglir started managing the band that they were signed to The Flenser, and from there on out they have been taking music festivals by storm.
A majority of the festivals they’ve performed at thus far have been more focused on metal or hardcore music, making Lothlórien a hopefully welcoming change of scenery for the band.
As for Galadriel, she looks and performs as if she were made for this forest festival.”
— A weekend with the performers of Lothlórien music festival
~
August 2025
Tragically, Galadriel spends the majority of her early evening thinking about Halbrand.
She’d successfully tamped down all the roiling angst and anxiety regarding their relationship enough to get through her daytime set, but the second it was over the emotions came whirling back up in an all-consuming wave.
She takes some respite alone in the big fancy tent provided by the festival, claiming to her band she needed solo downtime after the show. They didn’t question it, and to her relief did not linger, choosing instead to venture into the festival grounds without her.
The canopy of the trees prevents her from overheating, but she throws a wet bandana over the top half of her face all the same. She tries to do some mindful breathing, anything to pretend that she’s recovering rather than stewing.
Behind her eyes, though, all she can see is him.
After her first night in Umbar all those years ago, Galadriel woke in Halbrand’s bed with his head between her legs. She fought the urge to be too timid or self-conscious of the unwashed smell and taste of her, but as if he could sense the unsureness within her, he held her open, eyes trained on hers as he pressed wet kisses to her clit, not letting up until she was crying out and panting.
He made her coffee in one of his notorious cut-up muscle tees and boxer briefs while she sat at the tiny table in his kitchen before proceeding to frown thoughtfully as he took in his moderately empty fridge, then turning to her with a quirked brow and the question, “You like pancakes?”
Pancakes were a short walk away in a small restaurant the perfect amount of crummy. The servers knew him by name and comped their coffee and upon hearing Galadriel was to perform at their wine bar that evening gave her a free, generously sized mimosa.
“There are perks to being on your good side, it seems,” Galadriel had said.
“Sure,” he replied through a mouthful of pancake. “But I think they also just like you.”
They crawled back into bed after brunch and she fell asleep with her head on his chest while he held a book above her head and read in silence, the slow turning of pages lulling her under like white noise.
She forgot to set an alarm to provide ample time to get ready, but three hours before her show she comes to with the feeling of her back against his chest and his long fingers bringing her thigh up to the outside of his before trailing to her apex, rubbing circles while she writhed against him until he pressed his cock inside of her.
She had never felt that level of insatiableness. It was terrifying.
He accompanied her to her hotel to grab her gear and change into her white dress. He helped her set up at the wine bar before ordering a bottle of orange wine he described as “weird but addicting,” and he refilled her glass before she went onstage—onstage being the selection of floor space in the bar cleared for her to play in front of the tables—and he watched her with attentiveness the entirety of her show that rivaled how he watched her play at the river festival.
And once again, she didn’t know how to say goodbye.
When she told him she had work the next day and had to drive home that evening, he didn’t argue, only said, “Give me your phone,” and wordlessly added his contact information in, sending himself a text.
When he handed it back over, he looked her in the eye and said, “If I so happened to make a trip to Eregion two weekends from now, would you be around?”
She smiled. “I’m sure I could make something work.”
He smirked in return. “Good. I’ve been needing a change of scenery.”
And he’d kissed her fully and sweetly, twisting his fingers into her hair and tilting her head back with the brush of his thumb along her cheekbone. She held his wrist with an irrational fear that if he let go too soon that would be the end. But he didn’t. He held on, inhaling through his nose against her skin rather than parting away to take a breath.
The goodbye still hurt, but not as much as the first time around.
The memory of it all fills her now with such a visceral nostalgia she feels nearly nauseous in the dead heat of summer.
And then she’s remembering the months that followed, the back and forth they both made to each other’s respective cities. The active effort to play more shows near one another. The invitation she extended to him when she got her first invite to a legitimate festival. The molly they took at a DJ set that made her feel as if her lungs were vibrating behind her ribs, followed by the precarious sex they had behind one of the festival stages.
His moment of excitement when they signed Melkor Bauglir as their manager. The way she bit back her concerns and criticisms so as to not ruin his mood. The argument that followed months later after an article about yet another questionable deed done by Melkor and she couldn’t hide her resentment of the situation any longer.
At that time, when they didn’t talk for a week following, it was the longest she’d gone without speaking to him since it all started.
Depending on the day, she chooses to blame the awful feeling she had inside of her by the end of that week for being the reason she chose to end it a month later. Sometimes she blames him and his choice to compromise ethics for the sake of success. Most of the time, regardless of how much she believes it, she tells herself they were going in separate directions anyways and it was never meant to last.
But regardless of the stories she tells herself, she's never thought in the years since then that it was the wrong choice.
~
For social respite during the festival, the Hobbit Hole is where most musicians choose to escape to.
Its limited VIP access keeps the amount of people in the space at a reasonable capacity, although certain hours of the night after all the sets are over brings about a larger crowd. One of the final sets that evening was The War of Wrath, so Galadriel chooses to depart from the stages during that time and settle herself into a comfortable corner of the Hobbit Hole. Eventually her band mates join her, and she drinks the on-tap wine from her allocated metal cup and lets the people come to her.
When members of The War of Wrath begin trickling in, she pointedly makes herself not glance over to the entrance of the space. Still, it’s as if she feels his presence like a magnetic pull, barely visible out of the corner of her eye yet intense enough her skin prickles.
Her bandmate Arondir, ever the observant man, quickly notices her uneasiness. “You alright?” he asks her quietly. She nods with a smile she hopes is at least semi-believable.
She jolts when her drummer Durin stands with a shout. “‘Ey!”
It’s directed at The War of Wrath men, the four of them in their sweaty, all-black glory. Adar looks over first with a questionable raise of his brows.
“That was a bloody good set, boys!” Durin says, nearly sloshing his beer in excitement.
Isildur smiles, but when he sees Galadriel, it tenses.
She tries to give him a reassuring smile back with a subtle wave of her hand. It likely looks as painful as it feels.
“Not usually the type of music I enjoy, but I reckon you’ve awoken something in me,” Durin continues, completely unaware of the tension.
This whole time, Halbrand is pointedly not looking in her direction.
Durin gestures in Galadriel's direction. "Do ye know Galadriel? You'll have to come to our set on Sunday. Ye don't wanna miss this one with her harp."
Durin, being their newest band member who also lives a peaceful life off of social media with his family, is the only one out of every single person in the group unaware of Galadriel and Halbrand's precarious history.
Galadriel realizes now it was probably a mistake for her to not have warned him as soon as the line up was announced.
“Durin,” her violinist Bronwyn says warningly, but it’s too late. A blanket of awkwardness falls on the group. Adar appears to be biting down a laugh. Arondir clasps Galadriel’s shoulder gently.
She finds her eyes darting to Halbrand, her attention on him going completely unnoticed as his focus is instead trained on Arondir’s hand on her shoulder.
Galadriel clears her throat. “Halbrand and I actually met at a small festival in 2019.”
That breaks him out of his stupor. His gaze raises to hers. She wonders if she imagines his eyes dilating at the sound of her saying his name.
“What do ya know!” Durin says with all the ease of ignorance. “Small world!”
Adar smirks. “Small world, indeed.”
This time, Galadriel refuses to be the first to look away. After her cowardly fleeing the day before she promised herself she’d be more courteous if she got a second chance.
Still, she doesn’t blame him when he is the one to turn away, nodding in the opposite direction for Adar to follow. Adar says a quiet, “We’ll be back,” in a way that makes it abundantly clear they will not, in fact, be back.
Galadriel lets out a long, strained breath.
“Huh,” Durin says. “Bit of a stand-offish lad, eh?”
Galadriel can hear the small smile in Arondir’s voice. “You have no idea.”
~
Years of build up come to a head in a moment inherently anticlimactic.
Galadriel should’ve known it would be more mundane than mighty. But after so many years of having nothing to go off of but the imaginary reunion, she couldn’t help but envision it as dramatic and declarative.
Instead, she’s in the back of the crowd watching a show, feeling more at home here rather than in the exclusive areas for other music artists and VIPs. The sun has long since gone down, allowing her more easily to blend into the throngs of people, bouncing between finding the perfect awkward position to see over tall shoulders and standing further back behind the cluster so she can watch everyone sway and dance.
This is the kind of place where she fell in love with music.
“Sunglasses at night, huh?” A voice says from behind.
She glances over to see Halbrand sidling up to her. “You’re not high are you?” he teases.
She’s thankful he can’t see the roll of her eyes. “I ate one mushroom. I’m barely buzzed.”
His hands are tucked into the pockets of his worn worker pants that look like they’ve seen better days, hints of his ribs peeking out of his sleeveless black band shirt. He really hasn’t changed since she last saw him. She doesn’t know whether she should admire it or judge it.
“What are you doing out here slumming it up out here with us common folk, anyway?” he asks, eyes focused on the audience.
“Us?” She raises her eyebrows. “What makes you so sure of your inferiority?”
He raises his eyebrows right back. “Not inferior, perhaps just more comfortable amongst the people.”
“And what makes you think I’m any different?” She challenges.
“Figured you’d prefer somewhere where you can actually see the show,” he says with a smirk.
She scowls. “Well, I actually prefer seeing the bands this way. We’re much more like them,” she nudges her chin at the crowd in front of them, “than any of the other performers here who may think themselves better.”
“You’re well on your way up there, though,” he says. “I can see it so clearly. Sports stadiums, avid fans with silver tinsel in their hair. You’ll forget about everyone else so easily.”
“Try not to sound so personally disgusted by this daydream of yours.”
“Quite the contrary. All I’ve ever wanted for you is success.”
She wishes she could call bullshit, claim he didn’t give a rat's ass whether or not she was able to become a full time musician, her entire life solely dedicated to creating music. But the reality is that, when it came to him, he was nothing but supportive in her endeavors.
When she secured a European tour, all she saw in his eyes was pride; when she got signed to a label; when she was invited to open for another musician on a tour in the United States. Nothing but proudness that made her ache.
And she repaid him by dumping him a week before she left.
The words they exchanged still ring through her head, clear as day, like it was yesterday rather than four years ago. Her faux sensibility—I’m doing us both a favor. This kind of long distance is only going to get worse.
Rather than tell him the truth, she let herself use the long distance argument as a scapegoat. Because it hurt less to tell him it was for something she thought to be amicable.
And his simmering rage, his disbelief. You sound like an instructor’s manual. Talk to me like an actual fucking person.
She thought he would at least be understanding of her reasoning. Why would he want to stay in a relationship where they may not see each other for months on end the rest of their lives?
Instead, all she saw on his face was betrayal with a barely concealed level of devastation that nearly broke her.
And then it was like she was dead to him. All social media wiped clean, her blocked from all access into his life. If it wasn’t for the fact that she was the one to initiate the breakup, she would’ve felt it was cruel. But it was technically her fault they were in this predicament. If he wanted to eradicate her existence from his life, that was his prerogative.
Which leads her to the light level of confusion she feels now, him talking to her like no time has passed, and after all he’d done so far at the festival was stare at her as if she were a ghost come back to haunt him. She doesn’t want to question it aloud out of fear that he’ll remember he’s strictly not been talking to her for four years and shut down.
Running away from him like a teenager only led her to reflect on what happened and tell herself that if she were to see him again, she’d be mature and brave and actually speak to him.
She’ll take what she can get, even if it’s a passive aggressive conversation saying so much and yet nothing at the same time.
Maybe he feels similarly, because instead of going further into the crowd, he doesn’t leave her side. They watch the rest of the set together, and he even lingers for a while longer after people begin to disperse for other stages.
“Will I see you braving the Barn for us tomorrow?” he asks after a moment of strained silence.
The Barn is a smaller indoor stage where the festival loves to stick the more gritty bands given its prime set up for a rowdy crowd. The War of Wrath’s final set is Sunday late at night, two hours after hers, and she anticipates it’ll be exceedingly chaotic.
She pretends to contemplate it for a moment. “Maybe. Not in the pit, though.”
“No,” he agrees. “Not the best idea. Even if it would be fun to see you back in there.”
“As if you’d be able to see me,” she says flatly.
He tilts his head back and laughs. It stirs the sleeping dragon deep in her belly.
“I look forward to not seeing you in the back of the crowd, then,” he says.
He’s watching her, and she’s terrified of seeing the look on his face, of getting sucked into those wretched eyes.
So she nods, her own eyes trained on his shoulder, and then holds out her hand like a fucking idiot.
Even though she can’t see his face, she can tell he’s biting back more laughter as he grasps her hand with his, large and calloused and burning hot, and shakes it politely.
"Enjoy your evening," she says as if she's a customer service worker bidding him goodnight. He gets the message, tucking his hands in his pockets and backing away from her with a small smirk on his face.
"You as well, Galadriel," he says, and her entire body erupts in chills at the sound of her name rolling off his tongue for the first time in years.
She finds herself frozen in place, her nervous system registering danger in the way that tells her to fawn like a scared little doe.
It's only after he turns that the tension in her shoulders releases. She flexes her fingers as he walks away.