Like a Shooting Star by StarSpray

Chapter 1

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Gil-galad stretched her arms up over her head, sighing as joints popped. Her shoulder ached dully, as it did sometimes in the damp or cold—as it had more and more often on this campaign. It didn't hurt enough to stop her using the arm, but it was enough to conjure memories best left buried. Her dreams had been filled lately with images of Nargothrond's fall—and even the fall of Minas Tirith so long before, when Sauron had come with wolves, and her mother had died to ensure her escape.

She hadn't been Gil-galad then, of course. She had been Finduilas. Gil-galad had been born in Brethil, when it seemed best to let Finduilas Faelivrin die with Nargothrond. Túrin would have come seeking her, eventually, but by then she had realized that there was some terrible Doom dogging his steps, and if she wanted to survive—if she wanted her people to survive—she would have to keep her distance, no matter how much she cared for him.

But she had not been Finduilas for a very long time. She was Gil-galad Ereinion, High King of the Noldor in Middle-earth, and only a handful of close friends and advisers knew the truth of her origins. One of these was Elrond, who sat across the tent, bent over lists and calculations. The siege of Mordor had been a long one, and resupplying had been a constant struggle nearly from the start.

Oh, what she wouldn't give for a proper bath. With as many scented oils as she could manage. She stretched again and rose from her cot, going to the map, on which pebbles and pins served as representatives for their armies. She gazed down at them, trying to think, trying to find some weakness in the enemy's defenses, anything they could take and exploit…

"Elendil wants to take another run at the gates tomorrow," Elrond said without looking up from his calculations.

Of course he did. "What do you think?" Gil-galad asked.

"I agree." Now Elrond did look up. A strand of inky black hair fell free of his tangled braids to swing in front of his eyes. "The wind changed this morning. Now it blows from the west."

She hadn't noticed. But that was why a king had advisers. "Then that is what we will do," she said. "Summon the generals. Go to Thranduil first," she added as Elrond stood. Tensions still ran high between the Elves of Greenwood and the Noldor, and she had been trying to ease it wherever she could. Elrond nodded, and slipped out of the tent.

The planning session lasted well into the evening. Well, probably evening; it was a darker gloom than usual, at any rate. The fumes and smoke that poured from Orodruin blocked the sky day and night, and only the Sun was bright enough to pierce them even a little. It was terrible, being unable to look up at night to see the clear bright stars. Even Gil-Estel was hidden.

As the darkness deepened, Gil-galad watched Círdan and Elendil depart, Isildur trailing a little behind with two of his sons, and Thranduil going off alone in another direction. Elrond remained behind, tidying up. In the deep gloom it was harder to believe they would emerge from his siege victorious. Sauron had been defeated before, but they were none of them Lúthien, and even if she were here, Gil-galad suspected it would take more than even her Song of Power to reduce Barad-dûr to dust and rubble.

(She had wept when that news reached Nargothrond—tears of joy for the freeing of the captives and the defeat of the Werewolf Lord, but also tears of grief for the fate of her dearest uncle, and the tower he had built there on the river.)

"What is it?" she asked finally, as Elrond continued to linger. "Do you have misgivings?"

"Yes," Elrond said. "And no." He hesitated. "I fear for you. I fear the cost of victory may be too great."

Somewhere in the distance, wargs howled, a grating cacophony that set Gil-galad's teeth on edge, unlike the sonorous music of wild, true wolves. They were soon joined by some orc screeching that might have been singing, might have been fighting—or both. She let the tent flap fall, shutting out the night in favor of their last guttering lamp.

"No cost is too great," she said finally. "If my death serves to rid the world of Sauron forevermore, then I will die gladly." Elrond grimaced. "And you will return home to Imladris," she added, smiling, "where Lady Celebrían awaits you." That made him blush, red to the tips of his ears, but he still looked unhappy. "I don't intend to die, Elrond. But if I do, don't drown yourself in grief for me. I am not Fëanor and bound to stay in Mandos forever." She had faced death too often to be afraid. And after all, was she not a scion of the House of Finwë? Death would not take her so easily.

In the end, Sauron himself emerged from his tower. Gil-galad was reminded of the tales of Fingolfin and Morgoth—but Sauron was not Morgoth come dragging his feet out of the pits of Angband, and she was not Fingolfin come alone and in despair. At her back was Elrond and Círdan, and at her side was Elendil, and Isildur with him. Narsil gleamed, and Aeglos' point glittered in the red light spewing forth from Orodruin behind them.

Grappling with Sauron was like grappling with metal fresh out of a forge. He bore Gil-galad down with a fiery hand around her throat, burning and choking the life from her, but hotter still was her rage—for fair Finrod and Minas Tirith on Sirion, for Númenor, for Eregion and the ruin of Eriador and Celebrimbor—and Aeglos was yet in her hand, and with a scream she thrust it up and forward even as Elendil leaped forward, Narsil raise high, crying Númenor for Gil-galad!

In the moments before her spirit departed, she saw Sauron fall, crashing to the ground, not to rise again. And when Námo's call reached her, she went with him gladly, her burning rage turning to fiery joy in victory, and she laughed as her spirit flew through the stars for which she had named herself, until she came at last to Mandos, where all fires faded to embers, and all the spirits of the dead found rest.