Disclaimer: Wakabe Writing Firm doesn't own Lord of the Rings.
A/N: This is a companion piece to Waiting In the End. This is also for the guest reviewer who asked to see more of their new life together. Can't say that we'll do a series on it, but we can give you Aragorn's point of view. Hope you enjoy, and please be kind and review. Many thanks-Sephora (Trainee Secretary, Wakabe Writing Firm)
Arathorn, son of Arador. The fifteenth chieftain of the Dunedain. These titles I know, have studied in the history of the Rangers, and is one that I have hunted knowledge for most of all my ancestors. But they are more than mere titles. They are a connection to a past that I do not remember, and a father that I cannot recall for the life of me.
I can't say that I remember you. I was young when I lost you, barely two, still held close to my mother's chest, in the safety of her arms. And for all that I know that I cried for your lose, I know that I moved on, much quicker than if I had been older, if I had understood what death was- not just an injury, not just a leaving, but an eternal leaving. I would have taken your leave just as strongly as ada's-that is, Lord Elrond- had I had enough memories to keep you with me. For I took, and indeed still take his leaving very hard. Even with a kingdom to rule and a family that loves me and needs me, it still hurts to know that he is gone, that he has left me to find a peace that I could never provide. Even if that peace is because his wife is waiting for him, in a land blessed with peace and a paradise for those that had lost so much in the misery that is Arda.
Do not think, though, that I have any doubt as to who you are. I was often told stories about you growing up. Elladan and Elrohir loved you, cherished you, and fought fiercely to protect you whenever you rode out to defend our home, to protect the people that you would have been king over, had our ancestors not fallen from grace. When you died, by the black arrow of a yrch, in front of them, when they were within feet of you, they took it very hard. I think that a part of that is why they clung to me so desperately at times. They did not want to lose you. They did not want to see me perish, stricken by the foul beasts of Mordor. They did not want to see me fall like you, lost so early in a life that should have been long and full of a happiness that would have come from watching your children (I have always thought that I would have had siblings if you had lived long enough) grow up, become the men and women that you would have been proud of. They did not want me to die. And sometimes, especially when I began the final transition from boy to man, from sheltered fosterling to full on ranger, they would look at me with this softness, this sorrow that I could never quite place. It must have been that I reminded them of you. And for all that I never knew you, that I could not recall your face, it made me a bit proud to be seen as like you, even when I could not remember you or your habits.
Now though, as I come before you, waiting for me after my long life's journey, now I find that I cannot express what I think of you. I never really got the chance to know you as I did Ada, but perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps this, our new life together, would not be as precious as it will be now. And mayhaps, if not for the sacrifice of your life, Mother would not have lived long enough to get me to safety. There is, in the darkest corner of my heart, the quiet cries of a babe that had lost his father, but I have seldom have cause to bring him forth. Not because I did not love you, but because the family you left me in, the family that you entrusted my care to, ensured that though that hole within me would never be filled, that I would not know the pain of it, merely knowing that it was a part of myself that had existed longer than I could force myself to remember.
Remember that though I never knew you, I was with those that did. And they made sure that I knew of you. When Lord Erestor tutored me in history, he made sure that I knew you, knew that you had been the latest of Isildur's Heir that had been Chieftain of the Dunedain, one that had died trying to save his people, his wife, his child. When I was being taught now to hunt in the wild by Elladan and Elrohir, they showed me several tricks that you had made up for trapping small animals as well as the tricks that they had taught you. They told me stories when I was younger about you, though they did not always give you the same name, seeing as you had many. A trait that I seemed to have inherited from you. Ada, when he finally revealed to me my true heritage, told me I was Aragorn, son of Arathorn. That was my first introduction- not as King To Be, not as the new chieftain of the Men of the North- as your son. Halbarad too, me to the tree under which you were buried. He went to visit you often, although I am a bit ashamed to say that I did not.
But I could not go to you, when I was still alive and you were buried beneath me, giving life to a tree even when your own had fled long ago. It felt wrong. I could not remember you, and somehow, going to you when I had never had the chance to truly love you (like Mother did, like Halbarad did, like Elladan and Elrohir did, like Ada did, like all of them did, everyone but me) before I had lost you (to an arrowhead, to a blackened arrow, to a yrch, to the wild, to the fate of men, to death, to a place that I could not go to for such a long time no matter how tired I was, no matter how I sometimes, in the darkest hours, longed to). How could I come to your grave, sit under your tree, talk to you as though I had known you, when I couldn't even recall your face, your voice, the way you must have held me? How could I go to you after years of not knowing you? It just didn't seem right, didn't seem like the right thing. At least, when I visited my mother's grave, I knew her.
I do not think, though, that it is a complete loss, this lack of a familiar tie that I have with others. Had I known you all my life, had I been blessed such a bond, perhaps I would not have been able to withstand the blood lust and need of vengeance that I have heard once gripped my elven brothers. And if I had been born earlier, I could have died during the raid that had happened on the Angle not even five years before I was born. And if I had been conceived just before your death, there is no guarantee that Mother would have survived the grief, or that her body would not have let me go in order to become lost in the despair and sorrow that I know can destroy lives. And I do not think that Arda could have survived the Line of Kings being so completely destroyed like that, not with the darkness encroaching further.
Still, maybe now that we are here, now that we are no longer held back by the barrier of life and death, maybe we can finally mend the bond that I have not known, and that we are both deprived of. In this way, in this place that doesn't really exist, maybe we can find a way to rekindle and rebuild what once was. It would not be like the bond that I know others have. It will not be an easy bond, because we have very little to build on.
Love is not something I came by easily in life. I can only hope that in death, it will be more easy. I don't think it will be, though. But then again, what little love we have for each other, maybe it is enough of a foundation for us to build on. I hope that it is, that we do not have to worry or dance around each other overly much. I have missed you, even if I can't remember you. And I want so desperately to know the man that my brothers spoke of with such love in their voice. I want to know the man that Mother lived for, even after your death. I want to know the Chieftain that led his people against the darkness that tried to take away all that he loved. I want to know my father. And now, now I have that chance.
You and I have all the time in the world, after all. All the time to find out what we are to each other, and reclaim what was once lost to us. I am looking forward to it.