Chapter Four: Always, She Has Known

Aragorn couldn't quite train his thoughts into sense, couldn't bend them toward memory or plan. Like metal against metal, there was a ringing in his ears that seemed to rattle his very teeth to their roots. He clenched them hard in attempt to prevent their escape. He had awakened in confusion, remained there. Relentlessly, the blasted ringing in his head persisted, and with it knifing pains stabbed against his temple, as if from the inside of his skull. The earth beneath him was churned and broken, and he knew he still lay where he'd fallen. His fingers stretched, searched, then relaxed as they brushed the hilt of his sword.

He might have been alarmed to wake without knowledge of where he was or how he'd come to be there, but for the nearby presence that seemed to guard him, to hold him in serenity and safety.

He quickly remembered her. He couldn't find the will to open his eyes yet, for fear that she wouldn't be there, for fear he'd wake from the dream of her. He could feel her now, still, and wouldn't chance losing her yet.

"I am dead." He murmured with great certainty. "You have come to take me to my forefathers' house in the dead lands."

Her laugh soothed and pleased him and her cool fingers trailed across his brow bone, where the center of his pain pulsed. Instantly the blinding throbbing receded to blurry ache, and he found himself thinking more clearly, found that he didn't hurt as he had.

Her voice reached him from nearby. "Are you so sure you've earned your place there? In your father's hall?"

He opened his eyes and looked for her now, convinced she was there, but he found that moving was too painful yet. Instead, he studied the woven tree branches directly above him and spoke again to her.

"Perhaps not. I have come to save you and yet here I lie in your care. My pride is wounded beyond your healing. It is a mortal wound."

Another laugh, like silver raindrops, fell into his ears. "You fought bravely, though foolishly. One against twelve! You have shown your honor and put yourself in great peril for me. There is no shame in that, and it is no great trouble to heal you for it."

"You are to blame for my wounds, Lady," he charged with a hint of a smile emerging through the hard lines of discomfort bracketing his mouth.

"You should not have allowed yourself to be distracted in your battle," she accused, but he heard a smile in her words as well.

There was no irritation in his voice when he returned, "you should not have stepped into the light and taken the breath from my body, as no orc blade might have."

The hand on his brow moved to his cheek, stroked softly, lulling his eyes closed for a moment. When he opened them again, she was leaning over him, and she filled his vision, hiding all else in the world above from him.

Though the moon had fallen from her and the trees closed back in, she still seemed to shine with some inner light, some bright, hopeful sheen that never faded, but pulsed persistently, age upon age.

"Nay, not Luthien," he murmured to himself, "The Evenstar."

Arwen smiled and nodded gently.

"I am dreaming then, if not dead. I have walked in a dream since I saw you, a lady made of sunset and moonlight, calling upon the sky. How do I know you as Arwen Undomiel, though I have never had sight of you? Nor you of me."

"But I have seen you, Estel. In a dream I saw you, at the very hour of your birth. All of us in my father's house saw that day, though you were far away. I saw as your mother took you to her breast, and your father wept for joy, and the world of elves once again saw promise in man."

His lips tightened and he grimaced, though she was healing his wounds with her hands and voice even as she spoke lightly to him about a much older scar. He turned his face away from her, and there was bitterness in his tone.

Old bitterness, for one so young, she thought.

"There is no promise in man. Man is weak. I am weak. Ask your father if you doubt it." In a moment her fingers touched his cheek, turned his face firmly back toward her. Her eyes met his, and his blood ran both cold and hot.

This pain was far deeper and not within her skill to repair. But despite the graveness of this hurt, it was in her to try. "You stood alone against a company of Mordor, put yourself before me. There is no weakness in you, Estel. My father would not have sent for you if he thought there was anything but courage and faith here," she murmured as her hand trailed down to rest on his chest. And beneath her touch, his heart beat especially hard, as if straining toward her.

This was why he'd not been back to Rivendell in so many years. He'd been too busy forgetting both the shadow in his past and the hope that the elves placed in his future. They knew too much of him, and most of all the Master Elf, who had seen him turn his back on his name and the way that was his merely by blood. He'd spilled that tainted blood often in Middle Earth, in penance, but he would not claim the title that would let all know of the sins of his fathers.

And now the Lady, the Lady of Rivendell, had given him the words that made him want to walk forever alone, just as the words of her father had, long ago, when he'd told Aragorn who he truly was.

"Milady," he began softly, a pleading note in his voice that she cease such talk.

"Aragorn," she interrupted, and said it again, though he winced. Surprise to hear her call him by his given name, as none other than Elrond had, flashed in his hard eyes, surprise at the extent of her recognition and knowledge of him.

"You are Aragorn. Son of Arathorn. And Isildur's heir." His lineage fell from her lips; in the words was a confidence and nobility he neither expected nor wanted, and a familiarity which unnerved him straight to bone. "I am Arwen."

"I know both names." He said it helplessly, pinned by her persistent gaze. She would give him no quarter, as others might have. She was his match in all things, and he had recognized it at the moment he saw her, orc sword lifted high.

"And which name do you fear more, Milord? Mine, or your own?"

"Your name has been long in my mind, Lady Arwen. For too long I have felt the shape of it upon my lips without knowing why."

"Perhaps it is your own name you should remember, Aragorn," she softly suggested, and the last of his pain faded away as she took her fingertips from his face. It was as if she had drawn all the hurt from him, into herself, and then released it to scatter on the winds.

"Your name has been in my heart for many years as well, Aragorn. I have never forgotten it."

"It is not a name worthy of remembrance," Aragorn insisted.

"Nay, the name means little. Is it the man who bears the name who has been in my thoughts. But the name is Aragorn, and it is yours to bear, whether you will it or not."

"You do not know the man who carries that name, but you speak as you do!" Aragorn charged her, his words taking on a harder edge because she unsettled him, and he did not like to be unsettled. He did not want her faith in him.

"I do know, Estel. I know you as you know me. As we've always known one another in the deep, quiet places. Our paths will run together from this time and onward."

"You do not know of what you speak! Our paths go very different ways. You are elf. I am man!"

"I am elf. You are King of man. And not even that may keep us apart, Aragorn. I have spent many ages waiting for you Estel. Trust in me, trust in yourself."

Again her fingertips touched his jaw, trailed down his arm to tangle with his own fingers. Leaning forward, she laid her lips over his, lightly, and the brightness of the stars seemed to fill the clearing again.

Despite all of his determination no to do so, which was no small force, Aragorn took her hand into his keeping and took her lips as well. He had no power to turn away from her; indeed, his lack of will where she was concerned had just nearly cost him his life.

In a moment she raised her head, though he was not ready to lose the touch of her yet. She looked into his eyes, and spoke to him, without words. Her vow entered into his heart and turned it cold with dread, even as it soared.

"We shall be together, you and I. I bind myself to you, for the years of the world that are mine, I am yours."

Relief stabbed through him, and he fought it. He had no right to take pleasure from such a vow, no right to accept it. He must not do so, and he took his hand from hers, needing distance. His voice was rarely raised, but now it rang out in anger. Anger because what she promised could not be. "You do not know what you promise! You cannot understand the price of such a promise!"

She did not mirror his anger, but her voice was firm. "I am not a child. Indeed, you are the child here, in years. I know the price, as I know the reward. I know what my choices are and I do not speak lightly. Do not doubt me."

"I do not want your promise. I would not ask you to pay such a price. Indeed, I will not allow it!"

He was restless and annoyed with her now, but Arwen remained at peace. She had known this would be his response. Had always known it as she knew him. He would deny himself that which he desired most because he would never believe he'd earned it. He would never willingly allow himself peace or happiness when his bloodline had denied the world of both.

There was time yet. Time to convince him that she was right and to show him that he deserved peace, happiness, and the love that she held for him. Though she'd walked the earth for ages, she still did not fully understand how her love for this man had come so strong, and swift, and sure. But she knew enough of the world to realize that there was little reason for fighting it. She loved him. It simply was. And, always would be.

But she also understood that had she all the years of the immortal life she would so willingly forsake for him, it would never be easy for him to let her love him, no matter how much he loved her. He was the most unselfish of men, and for him to take from her, of all things, immortal life, would be perhaps his greatest trial. He would see the taking as a weakness, not as the strength of faith in love that she knew it to be.

And she saw the blood-stilling fear in his eyes and didn't doubt that he did love her, as suddenly and surely as she had loved him on the day of his birth. He feared his ability to deny her wishes, his ability to deny both of them what would be both saving grace, and ultimately, her demise.

Aragorn sat up suddenly and with gentle hands pushed her aside, standing unsteadily and walking away, not feeling weak so much from the fight with the orcs of Mordor as from her easy words.

"You must not speak of such things again, Arwen!" he said breathlessly, bracing himself against a tree. His whole body was rigid, long lines drawn tense and ready for another battle. "It is impossible."

"When two feel as you and I do, Aragorn, all things are possible," she returned smoothly. She rose as well from where she'd been kneeling, turned to face him with hands folded in front of her, and watched him turn shades paler. "Do not worry so. The time has not come for final choices. Mortal lives are short enough. Even had we both the years of elf-kind, it would not be long enough for us to love. Let us bide what time there is together."

He said nothing. So for a moment they stood, faced off and staring at each other, he warily, she with great patience and greater amusement.

She took a step closer to him and he backed away in equal measure. She laughed again, that same bright, warm sound so alien in the midst of the bloody clearing. "I have frightened you, the great Ranger called Strider! You tremble before a mere elf maiden!"

She saw that her words struck at his pride and that he didn't like it. He moved restlessly back and forth and his mouth twisted, opened to deny her words, and then closed again several times, before at last he spat out, "of course you frighten me! Nearly out of my life. My brief, mortal life," he added with a wry and bitter quirk of his eyebrow.

She gave him a slow smile, and then waited as he walked back toward her with stilted strides, almost as if against his own will. His legs were still the slightest bit unsteady, but she did him the courtesy of pretending not to notice. She did understand something of a warrior's pride, after all.

He didn't stop until their breath mingled, didn't stop until his fingers, roughened and scarred from his battles, tentatively touched the warm marble of her cheekbone, slid familiarly down to tangle into the cool silk of the heavy hair at the nape of her neck. He no longer seemed unsteady, but she suddenly felt her own knees run toward water as his gaze, luminous and intense, bore into her own, full of amazement, of uncertainty, of trepidation.

His eyes were like sword steel, hard and strong, capable of both great coolness and glowing heat, capable of cutting through all else with a swift and potent edge. Capable as a blade of defending or destroying. The quicksilver gleam of those eyes, as if all might shift toward light or dark in the space of a blink, was both intriguing and intimidating, Arwen thought, at least for those who were easily intimidated. She wondered at what things he had seen so young that might cause the shadows swirling in him, the things that might cause him to doubt her offering. How was he so convinced he was unworthy of love, when all that knew him loved him so?

She said nothing as he searched for, and found, the answers to his questions in her eyes. In return she found her own answers. He was both beginning and ending to her. And everything in between.

When finally he spoke, his voice was so low, so soft, that even her sharp ears could barely discern the words over the whisper of the wind in the treetops.

"Yes, you frighten me, Arwen. Because nothing is so terrifying as the hope I feel when I stand here with you. The hope of what may be and the fear that I will lose it. That I must someday lose it."

"You will not lose me. Always I will be here with you," she promised him again, and when his fingers tightened at the nape of her neck, she willingly allowed her head to fall back into his hand and lifted her chin to meet his mouth with hers, sealing the vow.

They stood there for long moments, or for hours, or days. He lost all perspective on time in her embrace, until he thought he felt the years of her life flowing through both of them, forever and ever.

It was not until a high, thin wailing sounded over the wind, across the marshes and the mountains, that they parted. It was the scream of the dying, of the tortured, of the damned, and simultaneously of the murderer, the torturer, and the ones that condemned. Both evil and pitiful, it rose, ever higher, then grew closer, increasingly louder. On a brisk wind, the sound entered the clearing, and it was nearly deafening as it sought to wrap around every tree in the forest, to shriek through branches and hollows until it filled all the spaces, until it filled man and elf, standing frozen in each other's arms.

Arwen's agony was apparent in her eyes when she jerked in fear and surprise. Never had her ears been subjected to such a foul sound before, and he understood that it injured her more than sword blades damaged him. Quickly, he reached for her, pulling her cheek and ear to his chest and covering the other ear firmly with his hand. She trembled beneath him, and both of her hands wound tightly around his wrist. She held hard to him, almost as if she was afraid she'd be carried away by the terrible sound.

In return, he pulled her even closer, trying to ignore the splitting of his own ears as the sound ripped at them. Chills rose on his arms, his veins gave over to ice water.

When at last the shrieking died and an uneasy silence took its place, he released her and sprinted toward the three tethered horses left by the fleeing orcs. The sound had roused them and they reared and struggled to answer the call of their master.

"What was that evil sound?" she called breathlessly, eyes wide and fearful as she stood paralyzed in her place.

"The trumpets of Mordor. The gates are opening. Sauron has learned you've escaped and has sent a force out. He's calling all those loyal to him to join the search. They are coming for us and they will arrive quickly and in great numbers." Aragorn told her, and as it might have with another woman, it never occurred to him to lie to her, to try to make the danger seem less that it was.

She blinked once and then steeled herself, and quickly ran after him, toward the wild, evil horses who gnashed their teeth and struck out with metal shod hooves.

"We must ride fast, and hard, and I fear we cannot wait for your father, or Legolas, or the warriors that follow them. We must ride for the wild lands, and hope to lose them there. These horses must bear us, maddened though they be."

She still looked so frightened, and that expression seemed so foreign on her brave, dear features, that he paused in gathering his things and laid a hand against her shoulder. "Arwen, we will evade them. We will outride them. Do not be afraid. I will not let them take you."

"I am not frightened for myself." She smiled courageously, and if it was a bit strained, he still appreciated the effort. She placed her hand over his. "I am quick with a sword. It is you I worry for, Ranger. You are easily distracted and prone to fainting. I have not just found you to lose you so quickly. It is not in my plans."

"So I gathered, Milady," Aragorn agreed, and then vowed, "I shall try very hard not to pitch at your feet again, even should an orc blade take my head cleanly off my shoulders."

"See that you do," was her solemn reply.

Though he could feel the slightest shifting of earth beneath his feet as the dark ones started thundering through the massive Black Gate, he found he still had the heart to give her a roguish smile and that the doing of it lifted his spirits just a bit. And when she gave him a laugh in return, he began to think that it really would be all right.

~*~

*To be continued…

Note regarding the trumpets of Mordor: I had originally thought this was my own creation, but actually Tolkien already had it covered. In The Return of the King, in the chapter entitled "The Black Gate Opens," Tolkien writes:

"There came a long rolling of great drums like thunder in the mountains, and then a braying of horns that shook the very stones and stunned men's ears. And thereupon the door of the Black Gate was thrown open…"

The discomfort Arwen feels at these horns was drawn shamelessly from the Fellowship movie (extended version), in which during the Council of Elrond scene, Gandalf uses the black speech of Mordor and Legolas winces as if he is actually in physical pain due to the sound.

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*I am going to respond to reviews, because I always like to do that now, but thought I'd wait till I caught up on revisions and then do them together! But in the meantime, thanks so much for helping me see the point in picking up this story again!

Oh, and yes, Legolas is coming back VERY soon, Jasta-elf, I promise, though I should ransom him for a new chapter of The Scruff Factor!