AUTHOR: shoneaugen
EMAIL: cparkerho@hotmail.com
DISTRIBUTION: Ask and recieve.
FEEDBACK: Begging for it.
DISCLAIMER: Aragorn, Boromir, Galadriel - they're all Tolkien's. I just bring them out to play.
SUMMARY: "He is man and he is elf, and all it has made him is half of nothing." [Aragorn POV, movieverse, slight A/B]
NOTES: Forgive mistakes. ;) Countless thanks go to Viv for her editing advice.
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It is dim and damp in Lothlorien, and Aragorn does not know if there has ever been a dawn in this place of cool wood and aged hearts. The hush is unnatural, its emptiness ringing in his ears; he tosses, turns, and when he finally succumbs to the blackness of sleep, his dreams are as alien as the silence in the trees. He never has pleasant dreams, even in ensured safety.
imladris is bright and bountiful again, unwithered, green and golden...
it is quiet, though, and still. quiescent. the birches stir in some unfelt wind, and he sees her standing there.
"Could you watch it done at another's hand as easily as you do at your own? You know what I speak of."
Galadriel is pale against Imladris's flora, golden hair faded like sunlight filtered through autumn leaves. Her eyes are chill, impersonal, colorless to his mind, and he wonders if this is still a dream.
"Death." The word lies heavy but familiar on his tongue, weighs down the air around them even as it leaves his lips.
"It is your art. But could you watch it brought on by forces not your own? To those you love? Hope for?"
He does not speak, and he knows that she can feel the sorrow coursing through his mind, his blood. Yes. But she knew the answer already, and her smile deepens in sadness.
"So much grief you hold for the inevitable." She reaches out, brushes cool fingers against his jaw. "But he will not escape this fate for all your grief, and neither will you."
Aragorn wants to protest then, to cry out, to wake from this dream's descent to nightmare. But he knows that he will not, and that knowledge haunts him. Acceptance of the inevitable, grief for the same - Boromir would have neither. A man would have neither; only elves feel quite so deeply, so profoundly to grieve for what cannot be changed. He is man and he is elf, and all it has made him is half of nothing.
"You told him that there was still hope," he lashes out, helpless. Despairing. She does not smile now, and looks to the east, where Elrond's house would be but is, in the dream, the crowning spires of the Tower of Ecthelion.
"There is hope. But it is not for him."
She speaks with a chilling authority, and now she is not the mother of the mother of the elf-woman he loves; she is the ruler of Lorien. She will not soothe his heart. He bows his head - men's faces show their hearts more readily than elves' do, and he would not have the Lady see his sorrow that much more openly.
"All men are doomed to die."
"And I?" he whispers, the wind carrying his voice to her. When he looks up, she is fading out of his sight, spectral.
"Your fate is to leave those who would have you stay. You know this." Her voice now echoes, deeper and softer with an understanding poignancy. It leaves him feeling hollow, and he suddenly sees himself as human men might have, as Boromir might have: cold, detached, lifeless. Elven. He thinks that death cannot be a curse if it forestalls the doom of beauty and emptiness that immortality brings.
"Death is your art, Elessar. Use it well."
When he opens his eyes, it is dark again, and colder. The faint breeze brings fleeting whispers of elven song, some mourning croon in lilting, soft voices. He looks up to the reflected silver of the surrounding mellyrn, and sees only the stars above, and Ithil's fractured light. Morning has not come yet, and he sleeps again with the breathing of nearby hobbits in his ears; his dreams are riddled with sun, but seductive darkness looms nearer, and he does not wake again until dawn creeps forth to overtake the greyish heavens.