[OPEN] - Ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when.

[laurenande]

WHO: Galadriel and Various
WHAT: Galadriel before her arrest, for those who would like CR before this Civil War plot is underway, her being arrested, and Galadriel in the cells for anyone who wants to come visit her or attempt to break her out. This post is super, duper open to anyone who wants to tag in. Please, have at.
WHEN: Late Guardian to early Drakonis.
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: No warnings yet, but have a link to the IC thread that happens amid all this: Cassandra interrogates Galadriel.

Pre-Interrogation/Arrest Prompts.

The Emprise du Lion was a dreadful place, and spending more than a fortnight within its borders had taken a toll on Galadriel. She arrived back in Skyhold only a few days before her conversation with Seeker Pentaghast, and she spent them taking what rest she could find. Sleep did not come easily to her, even at the best of times, so it was hardly a surprise that she spent long hours in the peace of the garden, watching the horizon on the battlements, or embroidering in the Rotunda.

(OOC: The above is the State of Galadriel, it's mostly for those who want to do something I haven't included, but it applies to the below as well. If you'd like to use a prompt for a specific scene, there are several options below to choose from. If the prompts don't appeal, please feel free (and encouraged) to write up any scenario you'd like, anywhere around Skyhold.)



Garden -

The winter chill that crept through the fortress was not as biting nor as pervasive as the wind outside the walls. There was something dull about the cold in Skyhold, something muted and gentle, but it was a feeling too fleeting for her to place. The sun chased the cold away just after dawn. Though the air was not warmed by the sun, the plants in the garden stretched toward it, green and vibrant as spring itself.

She adored spring and lingered for long hours in the gardens, relishing the sunlight that crested over the mountains. She spent each morning in the garden, watching the distant rise of the sun before tending to the plants. There were others who trickled in, as dawn passed and the fortress awoke, and she would leave the plants to them as they began their tasks, but she enjoyed the peace and stillness while she could.

The Emprise had been a grating, awful place but new growth and tender green leaves made her glad. More than once she found herself singing as she worked, and the plants grew quickly under her care. In only a few days, the grass would be renewed and the first small buds would open. She was thousands of years old and yet, despite that, she could hardly wait.



Courtyard -

Galadriel had not taken stock of the yard after the rift had closed. At the time, there had been more pressing matters to attend to, and she hadn't the patience to wait and search for subtle things. Now, without anything to pull her attention elsewhere, she devoted time to examining where the rift had split the veil.

Skyhold was a place with many curious sights to behold. The Orlesian nobility who visited the fortress were bedecked in feathers and quills atop gilded silk and stiff, polished leather. There were dwarves who quietly skirted the sunlight whenever they darted out of the fortress to their carts; their relief as they dove back to the keep was palpable. There were even a few humans clad in mud and fur who insisted on carrying goats. Truly, she was not so strange a sight that she merited recognition, standing in the courtyard with her staff in hand, simply peering at a space in the air. That she stood in place for hours on end, without moving a hair, was barely worthy of note.

The crowd moved and bustled around her readily enough, as though she were simply a fixture of the fortress, and she was glad for their disregard. A few mages slowed as they passed her, but they did not stop to speak. They would regard her oddly (a few of them frowned) and then they hurried away to see to their tasks. They were gifted mages, Galadriel noted silently; the majority of people who walked past her could not sense the slow current of power that rose against the veil. Those who could feel the pull of magic seemed disoriented by it, particularly when she shifted it or allowed it to ebb, but her study did them no harm.

If it had, she would have refrained from such tests in Skyhold.


Rotunda -

Galadriel's notes were artful and fluid things; they were not terribly numerous, but her time in Thedas had generated a few dozen pages of them. She hid none of them when she left the fortress, though she tidied them and tucked them out of the way when they were not in use. When she was using her notes, as she was now, she spread them out over the table as one would spread a map.

The unfamiliar letters of the tengwar curled over the sheets of cast-off vellum and pages of pressed pulp; when they were set side by side they were more drawing than words. She added to them as she read, writing between the older lines of text with habitual ease. Occasionally, amid the layers of tengwar, a word in the trade tongue appeared, but they rarely gave much clarity to the text around them.

It was early afternoon when she took over the space in the rotunda again. She had gathered a few clean pages and carefully written out the whole of the tengwar. She had promised to teach Sina these letters, and she intended to extend that invitation to all the elves of Thedas, but teaching required patience and materials. It had been centuries since she had last instructed anyone in their letters, but the memories were so fond, so filled with delight, that she couldn't repress her smile as she sat and carefully created a chart.

She could have stopped after writing them out, she supposed, but drawing the pictures that accompanied the letters was half of the entertainment of it. Sina was too old to need tales of lamps and ships and golden treasure to learn letters, and Galadriel did not need them to teach this lesson, but needing and wanting were very different things. In this instance, she wanted them and there was no reason to refrain.





Galadriel being escorted to the cells.


Courtyard - Under Arrest.

Galadriel rarely used her height to intimidate - it was cruel and largely ineffective - but she had drawn herself to her full height as she stared down Cassandra. The guards had not offended her so direly, but as they took her by her arms and lead her down the stairs and into the courtyard, she gave them no quarter. They were wary of her, as well they should have been, and she towered over them like a great looming shadow.

Her expression was rigid and thunderous, filled to the brim with deep, consuming fury masked only by the cold veneer of disdain. She walked with sweeping grace, despite the indignity of her situation, and the guards that led her avoided her gaze as they opened the door to the cells. They had made a spectacle of her and it was another slight she would not forget.





In the cells.


Day -

The cells were barred, with heavy iron gates and thick, artless locks. The stone of the chamber was crumbling, despite the efforts to reinforce the mortar and the floor. Half of the cells were unusable, collapsed or filled with rubble, and the other half were bare things, small and littered with chunks of rock and dried hay. The only objects that had been placed intentionally within the cells were a threadbare, unclean bedroll and a wooden bucket.

The chill that moved through the fortress was keenest here. Wind cut beneath the far door and the torchlight twisted wildly in the drafts. The single fire that burned in the middle of the room was barely sufficient to heat it; the brazier that held the fire was large, but it was unshielded and not well fitted to its current use. The two guards who had accompanied her devoted the majority of their attention to keeping the brazier lit. Between the bare nature of her cell and the build of the room, it became very clear how the people of Thedas dealt with captives.

Galadriel rarely lauded Mirkwood for its splendor, but her current trappings made even Thranduil's deepest, darkest cells seem kingly.


Night -

Twilight was an ordeal in these cells, one that dragged on for far longer than it had any right to. The cells that had collapsed and were open to the sky leaked grey light for hours; when they finally darkened, the far door lit the room in much the same way. Eventually, when the sun finally dropped away, a deep darkness settled over the room. The guards were attentive, but the night was cold and she unnerved them in the dark. They stood farther from her, behind the pillars that lined the walkway, and spoke only in hushed tones.

The fire required less attention at night, but without the wind threatening to extinguish it, the guards stoked it far less frequently. It burned low, dancing red and orange in the darkness, and Galadriel was left with the option to watch it or sleep. She chose to watch.

Comments

[colecomfort]

She had warned him, once, about the shadows he would encounter if he should look too close at the frayed threads and tangles within her. Now, he sensed the depth of the despair in front of him, a chasm opening through the foundations of her being, and knew... this was only the start of what she must have meant.

The sorrow was suffocating — lost chances, the decay of dreams, the sight of a storm looming on the horizon and nowhere to hide. It was a struggle to breathe, to reach out with his consciousness in a desperate scrabble, and pull the words from the ether.

"You couldn't have done more to save him." Blaming of the self was a beast that could bring down even the noblest spirits. The thought if only I could have done more, known more, been more. There could be comfort in knowing that sometimes, there wasn't an enough that one could be.

[laurenande]

Galadriel stared at Cole and her expression broke apart as he spoke. She should have known about the danger, she should have seen it; he had fallen at her very doorstep, taken by an evil as ancient as she, an evil that had eluded her sight for thousands of years. All of her efforts, all of her strength, they had all been rendered worthless by the Balrog of Moria.

A thousand small questions crept into her heart, every choice she had ever made was pulled into her mind. She had been so firm, so unyielding in her effort to drive out the shadow. She had been so focused on Sauron that all else evaded her--this road she had chosen charged a heavy price and, of all people, she had never thought that Gandalf would pay it--she couldn't have known--she should have done more. She should do more.

She couldn't do more.

She was trapped here, locked away on the whims of mortal men and she could do nothing.

It was a delicate line that separated grief from rage and Galadriel lacked the calm to recognize how she stood upon it. She had done everything in her power to safeguard Lorien, she had done everything in her power to drive back the shadow in Midddle-earth, she had done everything in her power to assist the Inquisition and to what end?

She was alone and she would remain so, ere the ending of this world

Galadriel drew her power to herself, then, or she tried. The veil siezed around her, resisted her as she tried to fall into herself, to conceal herself, to weep as bitterly she wished, and she was denied. Her frustration shifted into shock and her shock became anger. She struggled only a moment more before the whole of her sorrow became blind fury.

She had no patience for the delicate machinations she normally employed with the veil, nor did she concern herself with the cost of rash action. No, this time, in this place, she steeled her will and forced the veil to thin. It did not slough away, not as it usually did, it strained and twisted snared on her mark and her ring like silk caught in a bramble. The shadows pooled in rough, scattered, patches. Sound and light twisted through the facets of her anger and the strange quality of the air. All at once, she was wreathed in her own light, burning nearly as brightly as she did in Arda, tempered only by the brackish green glow that swept in and filled the patches between the shadows around them.

Nenya was sharp and gleaming on her hand, the mark guttered wildly, and, for a moment, Galadriel turned her attention to the cell, to the stone that hung above her.

[colecomfort]

He felt the shudder that rippled through the Veil, saw the shards of light glinting through the places where it stretched, thinned, threatened to rip. The breath was squeezed out of him as he gripped the bars tighter, wishing he could become smoke, or small enough to slip through —

But he was solid. So were the bars, and the lock, and the stones — and they could break. They could all break.

"No — stop," was all he could say at first, and while it was addressed to her, his face was tipped downward to shield himself from the light... which only protected his eyes. In his mind, it was blinding, white-hot and dark all at once, crackling with contained power. "Please stop."

His hands fell away from the bars, one to press against the floor, the other rising to his forehead. He couldn't hold it out. Her power, sorrow, and fury washed over him in a wave, and he relented to it. He had no other choice. The words spilled from his lips like a fervent prayer, just audible over the crackling of the anchor:

"Sindanóriello caita mornië
i falmalinnar imbë met, ar hísië
untúpa Calaciryo míri oialë..."

[laurenande]

The sound of quenya was enough to stun her, even through her anger and her grief. Galadriel's gaze snapped to Cole; his head was bent and braced, his posture spoke of pain, and half a second passed before the meaning of his words registered. The verse was familiar...she had written it. It was her farewell, her lament for the East--

Ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë.

She swallowed as she stared at him, as green light threw strange shards of shade across the ground, and a quiet, fearful voice, the voice that surely was her own, crept back into her mind. He had begged of her to stop, could she stop? Could she truly?

"Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.," she said, distantly.

The power she exerted dropped away and, like the sea, the veil poured back into the space she had cleared. Her brightness was smothered in a viscous instant and the shock of it, of the weakness that crashed upon her, overwhelmed her and sent her to her knees. She dropped down, just opposite Cole, and braced both her hands against the stone floor. When she spoke again, tears had already begun to track down her face.

"What if I cannot return?" she asked, sounding far too small to be Galadriel any longer. For a moment she was reduced, whether she was Artanis or Nerwen, it mattered little; the world was darker.

"I will never see them again...I am...alone."

[colecomfort]

Cole felt the shock of everything crashing back into place. Relief followed shortly after, the discovery that he could breathe again.

Silence, for a moment, after she spoke. Cole raised his head to watch her through the bars of the cell. He knew, even clearer than he'd known before, that she was only still in there because she allowed it. That, if she chose, she could have easily escaped already, caused further chaos within the Inquisition. But she hadn't done so.

He reached into his pocket. The lockpick made a soft rattle within the mechanism on the door, which clicked into place with a sound swallowed by the roar of rushing wind and water beyond the castle.

He closed the door carefully behind him, just in case a guard should wander through. He sat in front of her, legs crossed, hands on his knees. No more barriers.

Then, one of his hands slipped off his knee, coming to rest on her hand, the one that held the anchor.

He couldn't replace what she had lost. But she didn't have to face that loss alone.

[laurenande]

She drew a shaky breath and, after a long moment, turned her hand toward his. There was something simple in this, just holding a hand in hers, something comforting in touch, and she had...she would miss it.

"He was my friend," she said. Whether to herself or him, even she could not say. "They were--"

No, she lacked the strength, the ability to consider it all at once. Not again. To even find their names was a staggering endeavor and her show of power, futile as it had been, had left her deeply, deeply tired.

"He was my friend."

[colecomfort]

He held her hand in both of his, looking forward and listening, not only to the words she spoke but the pain that carried them. When they had first met, he had been awed, had kept his distance, would have quailed at even the thought of touching her — now, his hands tightened around hers in comfort.

He stayed silent, again, until the weight of her words had fallen, until he was sure she had nothing else to say. Then he lowered his chin, bowing his head in mourning.

"Márienna, Mithrandir."