Disclaimer: Do I really need this? Thanks very much to Professor Tolkien for making up the people I'm using and to New Line Cinema for producing such a fantastic movie of The Lord of the Rings. It gives me so much opportunity to mess with everyone… Really, none of it's mine and I'm making no money (aw, shucks…)

Author's Note: I'm gonna get flamed – forget flamed, I'm gonna get lynched – but I have to say it: I saw the movie before I finished reading The Fellowship of the Ring. I may not have had the motivation to finish the thing if I hadn't (knowing it was going to get more interesting…someday…). So though the real versions of The Two Towers and The Return of the King will be the first ones for me, and I'll be among the nerds watching the movies like a hawk for discrepancies, the movie version of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring will probably always be first and foremost in my mind. Glorfindel didn't do much else in the book, and Liv Tyler is prettier anyway. Here we have a combined movie-and-books-based fanfic, a bit of a speculation on what was meant by a particular line spoken by Arwen when she wasn't even there in the book. Liv Tyler is pretty, and she looks a lot better when she cries as an Elf than as Fay in That Thing You Do!, but that's sort of irrelevant…

The Choice of Lúthien and Arwen

My son asked me today if I regretted my decision to remain in Middle-earth, choosing a mortal life with Aragorn rather than the immortality granted to my people. I told him 'of course not; had I not chosen mortality, I never would have had you.'

But I wonder: Do I ever wish now that I had not given up my immortal life, my claim to a place in Elvenhome? Do I ever long for my father, my mother, and my grandmother more than I love Aragorn?

And when must I have chosen differently if I truly wanted to remain immortal? Some might say that I forfeited once and for all the Elven ways when Aragorn and I pledged our troth to each other under Cerin Amroth. Once I gave my word to "bind myself to him, forsaking the immortal life of my people," I could not break that bond. Being an Elf, I should have thought through my promise very carefully and known beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was what I wanted, and that I would not rue rash words. Yet Aragorn, I know, would have understood, even if there was some blame for me, if I had regretted a vow made in the haste of passion. I sometimes think that he did not know if I would keep my promise or forget about it, wishing never to die or to be kept out of the West when the time came for my people to leave.

It might be thought, then, that I sealed my decision in the garden of my father's house, Rivendell, when we met and pledged our love again before the Council of Elrond and the formation of the Fellowship of the Ring. It was I who reminded Aragorn of the promise that I had made: "Renech i beth i pennen?" I asked – "Do you remember what I told you?"

And Aragorn remembered: "You said you would bind yourself to me, forsaking the immortal life of your people."

"And to that I hold." Then I gave him the gem of light that symbolized my existence as an Elf, my eternal life – with that gift I sacrificed my place with my father and my people in Eressëa, the Undying Lands. Before that secret meeting, I might have had the chance to go back on my word with the pretense of forgetfulness.

Not so.

I had given my word years before, on Cerin Amroth, and the word of an Elf may not be broken, for she will know of her dishonor until the end of time and it will never set her free. This I knew when I finally confirmed my choice, the choice of Lúthien before me, not in the garden in Rivendell…but at the Ford of Bruinen.

I was entrusted with the fate of Middle-earth as surely as any of the Nine Walkers for those hours when I guided Asfaloth, carrying the Ring-bearer to safety through woods and plains and across the Loudwater with the Nazgûl in hot pursuit. With the power of the Elves I thwarted the Ringwraiths at the Ford, but with the power of a prayer I held off Frodo's impending death on the other side. In him lay the future of the world I loved, and for that future – and a strange, parental love for the little hobbit with the pathos-filled eyes on whom it depended – my tears fell on the shore, and I whispered the prayer: "What grace is given me – let it pass to him. Let him be spared."

So did I bestow my right of the Elven kind to a final home in the Far West, a right I had earlier chosen to give up but had not yet truly sacrificed. The gem of my kind I gave to Aragorn, my true and only love, as a sign that I relinquished my immortal life for the love I bore for him. But in Minas Tirith, I gave Frodo another white gem of the Elves, the token that showed that although for Aragorn I gave up immortality and Eressëa, to Frodo did I give it up, for I knew that he would need the rest and healing the West offered far more than I before his part as Ring-bearer was done.

Sometimes, when I think of my father, Elrond, and my mother, Celebrían, who left for the West long ago and whom I missed centuries before I met Estel, I wonder if I made the right decision – to stay in Middle-earth and live a human life. Yet I love Aragorn, and this land that he loves, so dearly that I seldom regret my choice and the moments I might have changed it, governed by emotion as they were. And though the choices of Elves should be made with reason and forethought, not passion – a very impulsive, human way of making decisions – it is prized among Men to follow one's heart. Lúthien did, and never regretted the choice her heart made.

For Frodo's sake as well as Aragorn's and mine, and above all Middle-earth's…nor do I.