Written By: Beauty ID
For: Nathonea
A/N: Written for the fic exchange. Nathonea requested one shot angst or reflections, or Aragorn/Arwen fluff. I figured I'd do Aragorn/Arwen angst with some fluff. It ended up really just Arwen angst with no fluff. It's also very short. Hopefully it's not too bad, though.
Cerin Amroth
It was on this precise spot, amidst the elanor and niphredil, that they had plighted their troth. On Midsummer's Eve they had stood upon the fair hill, and rejected the shadow; and Arwen, with a heavy heart, had renounced the twilight.
Her choice – had there ever been a choice? Even after their first meeting at Imladris, she had felt her doom. For many years she had sat while Estel roamed the wilds, and slowly she felt darkness creep into her heart. A weight was upon her that even Lothlórien could do little to lift. For in that time she began to understand her fate, and the reality of it pained her, but she had accepted it.
It was with great sorrow that she had left her people, but the most grievous of all partings had been with her father. She knew that her decision was even more painful for him to bear than for herself.
She had watched her family fade into the west, and she had remained in Middle-earth. Her father and her brothers would meet her mother and all the others who had gone West to Valinor again, and she would linger and finally die a mortal death, going to the uncertain resting-place of Men where no Elf dwelt. It was then that mortality had seemed to her most bitter.
And yet in the years after she was married to Estel she knew joy that she had never known before. The lands had flourished under their rule. Sorrow gave way to laughter, and fear to hope. She loved Estel, and she loved her children, and her days were happy.
It had seemed that the world breathed anew, and was filled with a light that had been obscured by the shadow for ages. Green things grew in the city, and around Minas Tirith the land became alive and bright again. Every day seemed to bring forth some new wonder. And Arwen forgot, for a while, the full meaning of her choice.
She was unaccustomed to the abruptness that came with mortality. Suddenly it had seemed that a darkness descended on everything again, the brief happiness torn cruelly from her feeble grasp. Estel was dead. She was left with a numb heart, and trembling hands. She sat at his side for a long while, but he had made his choice, as she had made hers. It was time for her to go.
She had fled to the place that had always brought her peace in times of turmoil and grief. Lórien had never failed to soothe her and mend her wounds, but as she moved through the barren woods she knew that she would not find rest in this hollow mockery of what once was. But there was one place left, perhaps, that could pacify her sorrow.
The woods of Lothlórien were cold and grey and silent, as if all the life had been drained from the earth. And as Arwen crested Cerin Amroth, she could feel her own life waning.
She rested her head on the soft grass of the hill. Elanor and niphredil still bloomed here. She turned her eyes to the night sky lit with the pale stars of winter, and felt empty and alone as the land around her.
'This is my doom,' she thought to herself. 'Yet at least I know that I go to him now. The years have made me weary, and I long for rest.' She had said farewell so many times; this was her last.
When Spring had not yet come, and Lothlórien was fading, Arwen Undómiel died. Beneath the light of the stars the shadow had departed, but so had the twilight. So it was that the doom of Aragorn and Arwen was finally complete, upon Cerin Amroth where first it was avowed.