fictober prompt #8: “I know you do.”
There had not been elves openly in Minas Tirith in much longer than the city’s living memory, and their presence seemed to strike many of the people of Gondor as just as much a sign of the vanquishing of the Dark that had for so long seemed it must consume them all, as was the shattering of orcish armies, or the restoration of the monarchy.
Elrond’s people and especially Elrond himself had been very patient with them, of course—“let them have the joy of if while they may,” Erestor had told Aragorn when he sought to apologize for how ceaselessly the elves found themselves importuned on streetcorners by Men as guileless as Samwise Gamgee, and some a little less so. But today Elrond had been very little in evidence—he was not lord here, to have any role in making decisions and setting people to order, and Aragorn feared he might have little heart for the general festivity.
The wedding was today, and too soon after it Arwen’s father must depart to the West and never see her more, for the strength he had expended these last three thousand years had left him weary almost beyond recovering, with the waning-away of the Ring he had used to reach beyond what should have been his limits for so long.
Elladan and Elrohir meant to linger, but the first knowing sundering of the bride from all her kin forever still loomed, and leant a bittersweetness to the joy of the occasion.
It was only the same one that touched every joy of the new Age, every hope and new-built thing flavored at least a little with the passing-away of the world as it had been, but deeper and more personal because what was lost to the king and queen of Gondor was not simply the beauty and glory of a former time but the love and company of those dear to them. And there was no doubt in Aragorn’s mind that whatever pain it caused him could only be a flicker of what it was to Arwen, who had lived so long believing that she need never be wholly parted from those she loved, as long as the world should last.
The king of Gondor found Elrond in the library, standing near Faramir’s preferred chair and paging through a dusty history not a fraction his own age, that dealt with the affairs of his youth. It was less inaccurate than it might have been. The Dunedain did try their best to hold onto the past.
“Thank you for the copies of your library,” Aragorn said, lingering in the doorway—it was a princely gift, for Elrond was the greatest loremaster of Middle-Earth, and had been for some time. The new books had not yet been shelved, for a major expansion of the library was required to make space for them. Fortunately, this was precisely the sort of task he could entrust to his steward.
Elrond dismissed this reiteration. “I would have given you more of the originals,” he said. “But new copies should last longer.” The elvish skill at making things to last preserved their books for a very long time, but eventually ink would fade and parchment crack. That Elrond was concerned that his gifts would still be usable in two thousand years was a gesture of faith in the kingdom now being rebuilt.
Aragorn planned to have a great many more copies made, and circulated, of everything of value—the preservation of memory, though none remained who could tell the tales as they had lived them, was to be one of the foremost duties of the leaders of Men, he felt, in the Age to come when there would be no one else to rely upon, to remember for them.
Elrond set the book aside on the nearby lectern, still open, and Aragorn could see it dealt almost entirely with the founding of Numenor—a matter of great personal interest both to Gondor and to Elrond Peredhel, though for somewhat different reasons.
Tar-Minyatur, read the top of the page in heavily embellished script, and it was suddenly in his thought that Elrond had not been reading the book at all.
It was in silence the recently-crowned king came in, and closed the door behind, and crossed the stone floor to bring him closer to his foster-father. They knew one another well enough to have spent much time in silence together, for there was not always need for words.
Sometimes, however, there was.
“You still miss him, don’t you,” Aragorn asked, voice soft and all but penitent. They had never spoken of this so directly. “Even now. My ancestor—your brother, Elros.”
Elrond flicked his fingers as though he could chase the subject away. Drily, “It does neither of us good, I think, to remind me of the detail that my daughter is marrying my nephew.”
Somewhat surprisingly, Aragorn’s face gained a smile. “You can’t throw me off like that, Elrond! Your great-grandfather Turgon was Galadriel’s first cousin, and your great-great-grandfather Thingol Celeborn’s second, twice removed.”
Elrond laughed. “I should have expected you would know that!”
“You did set my childhood curriculum.”
“One rather has to know how everyone was related, to make any real sense of the histories of the First Age,” replied Elrond. “And yes, you’re quite right, by any reasonable measure Celebrían and I are much closer kin than you are to Arwen. Though I believe,” he added, dry again, “you sought out that information about Celeborn specifically. That he is a kinsman of Elu Thingol is relevant to his role in the world since the Second Age, but the precise degree…”
“I did consult a genealogy,” Aragorn admitted freely.
“The hobbits would approve.”
Aragorn Elessar grinned, because they would. There was something so comfortingly predictable about hobbits, once you had gotten to know them—for all they had been the unexpected arrow on whose shot had turned the whole War of the Ring, that was as much due to their general obscurity as their hidden virtues, and it was pleasant to be able to rely on things like the fact that nearly any hobbit would take a great, friendly, critical, and vaguely proprietary interest in anyone’s family tree.
He had spent several hours once with Bilbo Baggins, years ago, reviewing some of the complexities of his own, and come away feeling he possessed an honestly better understanding of his lineage than he had had before. Hobbits had a certain eye for detail that could breathe life into someone who was otherwise merely a name and collection of lines on a page.
His smile faded. “You do still grieve,” he said, though Elrond had deflected the question once already. He would hardly have another chance to ask, and for a moment his chest seemed it would burst with a lifetime of things left unsaid for another day. A day he had naively supposed would always come, as long as he lived.
Elrond let go a breath. He looked no older than he ever had, most of his venerable years conveyed only in a certain solemn majesty, and yet time seemed in some inexplicable way to have caught up with him, as it had with Bilbo when he let go the One. A weariness clung to him even as he laughed or sang, and not one untutored soul in Gondor had mistaken him for one of Arwen’s brothers, as used to happen from time to time with mortal guests at Imladris. “Always.”
Aragorn had always known this, it seemed, and yet it pressed upon him to hear it aloud as a fact. “That seems hard.” A hard fate to bear, a hard choice to have been faced with so long ago. Elves might expect to be reunited in the West, Men might hope to see their lost ones in whatever came to them beyond death, but for the peredhel there was the certain promise of parting, and nothing more. Not while Arda lasted.
“It was the price of my own choice as much as of his.” Elrond turned to face Aragorn fully at last, and said with an unearned kindness, “I have never blamed him for it.”
Aragorn’s chest weighed heavy with words he had not spoken. “I am sorry,” he said.
Elrond’s face was troubled, yet very still. “Are you?” he asked softly.
“Not…that I love, or am loved. I could never regret that,” Aragorn said, and some of the trouble faded from Elrond’s brow. “But that our happiness together should come at such pain to you, who have granted me such kindness always, and of whom I can say no ill and whom I would never wish sorrow…this grieves me. I wish there were any other path, where none I loved might bear a burden.”
“That is not a road a king may walk,” Elrond told his foster-son, and sighed. “Indeed I do not think it is a road one in ten thousand among the living may even hope to find. It is well, Estel. If it is forgiveness you seek, you have it. Arwen’s path was always her own to choose, and I can bear this. I am practiced at partings. Always there has been at least one whom I waited to see again, beyond the breaking of the world.”
Aragorn’s tears had begun to flow just after Elrond called him by his childhood name, and now at these final words he nearly leapt forward across the small space left between them, and drew Elrond close against his breast.
They were of a height, for Aragorn Elessar was in form very like his ancestor Elros Tar-Minyatur, but he had ducked his head as he embraced the only father he had ever known, and so Elrond’s tears fell into his dark hair as he returned the gesture in a whisper of silken sleeves.
“I am sorry,” repeated the young king, who was not so young—years older than Elros had been when he chose the same destiny, and old enough by the count of ordinary Men that his grandchildren might have children of their own.
But by the measure of elves he would be still a child, and he had spent enough of his life amongst elvenkind that he would probably count himself young until his hair grew white with time. “I do regret…”
“I know you do,” said Elrond. “You would not be the man my daughter loves if you did not. But do not let my grief be a shadow on your heart. I am glad for your happiness together, and that is a greater thing than my loss.
“Live wisely and in joy, and wring the fullest measure of sweetness from your count of days. That is all I would ask.” He hesitated over his next words, but then said softly, “I am not Gilraen. I have given those I loved to the Dúnedain before, and it did not break me. I will be well, and you must not fear for me.”
Aragorn’s grasp strengthened, so that it was briefly obvious that under the fine embroidered robes of his new office he had not yet lost the hard, lean shape of a Ranger, and then he withdrew to arm’s length, with only the least undignified catch to his breath. “If ever I am told there has ever been one greater among the Eldar,” he said, a hand still on Elrond’s shoulder, “I shall not believe it.”
Elrond laughed a little, though the tears were still upon his face, and patted the arm reaching out to him. “Some partiality is allowed to family.”
“I would argue it to the foot of Manwe’s throne if need be,” Aragorn said firmly, but his mouth was curling easily, and it was as much joke as oath in earnest.
“I certainly hope there never shall be!” replied Elrond, letting his hand fall, and Aragorn’s after it. “But come, you can waste no more time here in the dust, amongst the relics. Today you wed!”
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
snowghoul
janainaart
germansingergirl
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
prguitarman
