Beneath my Feet
Author: Earanthiel
Cast: Arwen/Aragorn, brief Arwen/OFC, Rumil, Galadriel, Elrond
Genre: Drama/Romance
Warning: Mild innuendo, violence, angst...
Disclaimer: All characters originally created by Tolkien remain his: I have no claim over them and am making no profit from this story. All other aspects, however, including plot and original characters, are a product of my own imagination and are therefore my property.
Chapter Two: The Cold Hours
I hid behind myself, I suppose. I had no idea that he even existed, and this was partly the reason. I have known no one else who was more adept at disregarding their own outward appearance. But before he found me lying battered and bloody on the ground that day, I made my body into a screen behind which I could view the world. I was safe if I was beautiful, accomplished, and perfectÑand if anything happened to threaten my screen, I backed away from it, leaving a cold, empty shell to withstand the onslaught of emotion. Rumil was the first to approach it, but he did so with open arms. I was soothed by his demeanor, and my hand strayed push the veil aside.
Of course, once I learned of Tarenuel, I retreated far enough away that he could not see me, into the depths he was unwilling to penetrate. Erestel was willing enough, but I had the questionable good grace to slip even farther away.
Then came Aragorn.
When Arwen woke the next morning, it was with stiff cramps the length of her body, her hair tangled in the bedroll, and one side soaked where she'd rolled into a damp patch to her immediate right. Sitting up with no effort to stifle a drawn-out groan of pain, she reached for her pack only to find that she'd left it open in the night, and the loaf of bread she'd been eating the night before was soggy and ruined with damp.
She rose in high bad humor and saddled Faon, tightening the straps of the heavy leather affair with irritable jerks. The road wound on to the west, twisting from side to side with quiet grace. The smell of morning was thick in her nostrils: crystals of dew, damp leaves, and the fleeting scent of earth.
"We'll keep on," she said to Faon, wincing as she stood. Her limbs were taut as a brittle branch. The mare nickered softly, nudging her with her bristly nose. "West," she murmured. "Always west."
The morning, she had to admit, left nothing to be desired. Arwen managed to smooth down her cloak, coax her hair into a presentable state, and banish the last shreds of sleep from her face before leading Faon out of the forest to the road. She told herself that if she happened to meet one of the border guards, she wanted to be able to escape suspicion, but she knew that anyone she met this far out would have strict orders to escort her back to Rivendell without delay.
There was a nagging sense of unease fluttering about inside her skull, insisting on attention. She managed to pin it down to the fact that what she'd done was childish, immature, and utterly useless. Besides not having brought the right gear for an excursion like this, there was nothing to do except watch Faon's hooves raise breaths of dust in the heavy air and wonder what Rumil was doing at the moment, whether Erestel had successfully lured Tarenuel away from him yet, and if Elrond was worried about her at all.
Of course, if he were as intelligent as everyone gave him credit for, he would ask a large number of questions before sending anyone out after her. She hoped guiltily that Erestel wouldn't tell the truth about what had happened, but it was too much of a slim chance. It would be excruciating for him, but it would, in his mind, possibly save her life.
Elrond, she reasoned, would either wait for her return or send warriors out instantly. They would probably be able to track her to some extent. No, she thought despairingly. They would most definitely find her, and bring her back to face the stares of the other elves, Rumil's confusion, and Erestel's...
He loved her.
It was horrible to find out, after so many years, that he'd seen her as so much more than a friend. Her dream and the events that preceded it came back to her in an explosive rushÑhis lips on hers, hands sliding tenderly down the curve of her arms to her hips, drawing her closer
Her fists clenched on Faon's reins at the thought, but the idea of taking him as her lover was even worse. She could never engage in such acts as he had initiatedÑshe'd known him since they were both elflets! He knew her too intimately, as could be expected from centuries of friendshipÑhe could provide details about her life that she'd never want a lover to have. It would make for equally matched battles, if they arose, she thought wrylyÑshe knew just as much about him.
Applying a mild pressure on Faon's reins, she guided her away from a small pit in the road ahead. The mare twitched her head from side to side, hooves skittering in the dust. Arwen clenched her legs around the horse's sides and exerted all of her strength, dragging Faon's head around. The mare snorted through her nose and dug her back legs in, inching towards the center of the road. Arwen took both reins in one hand and spread her fingers over Faon's trembling neck, willing her to calm. She knew she couldn't hold her for much longer if she continued to resistÑher skill with horses was rudimentary, and the mare was out of all conceivable control.
"Faon, Faon," she whispered, glancing to either side. The stately forest gazed placidly back in the second before her concentration was wrenched away. Nothing there, and yet
"Faon!" she shouted, biting down hard on her lip to keep from panic. The mare could feel her fear and worked on it, fighting as if possessed. Her head jerked up and down, the bit sawing into her mouth. Arwen slid in the saddle, teeth grinding into each other. "Faon, Faon, hold," she moaned, sliding a hand up the horse's neck again, trying to infuse it with calm. "Slow, slow. Turn now, and calm..."
Shaking like like drapes in a gale, Faon's movements slowed. Pale and horribly weakened, Arwen curled her fingers around the horse's mane. Her hands, slick with sweat, tangled themselves inextricably into the rough strands. Whispering whatever words came to mind, she let Faon retreat down the road until her nervous energy ebbed away and she was able to gently steer her west again.
The feeling of unease was creeping at the back of her mind, waiting for an opening. Arwen decided it was only because of Faon's strange behavior. Perhaps she felt that they were nearing the borders of Rivendell's influenceÑyes, that was it. Of course she would sense it. The land had power here. It lurked beneath the roots and whispered in the leaves.
Forcing a smile, she leaned down to whisper in Faon's ear, letting the words escape from her lips like caged birds. It was only after she straightened up that she realized that she'd forgotten anything and everything she'd said.
Faon snorted, scuffling one hoof restlessly against the road. "We're going on," she said angrily, and dug her knees into the mare's resistant flanks.
Though he didn't want to admit it, he had to finally accept that his sense of danger wasn't nearly as well-attuned as her horse's. He turned over the body with one foot, his face twisted at the stench. It permeated the air in thickening clouds. This was a long-dead corpse, one that had been left at least a day to the mercies of sun and small insect life.
The mare must have smelt it. Hopefully, Arwen would understand.
He dragged the filthy corpse off the road, stripped it of its weapons, and disposed of them as efficiently as he could. There would be more of the creatures, and all of them hungry for the additional arms. He checked its mismatched pieces of armor and clothing for any sign of what in the Valar's name it was doing, but there was nothing.
Orcs. He spat on the carcass. If it had been alone he would have reckoned it a scout, but the ground around the body was torn with churning footprints and stained rusty with blood. Some kind of battle had been fought here, days ago, and the only testament lay rotten at his feet.
This statement brought with it a host of unanswered complications, as myriad as the flies that even now were regrouping around the fallen orc. Why hadn't anyone reported the fight? The only people in the area were Rivendell's elven rangers, and any one of them would have secured the area as best they could, alerted one of their companions, and brought the news straight back. Perhaps the ranger had been injured. He might have died of wounds, blood loss...
A swift search of the area revealed nothing. He wished, irrationally, that he had his horse. But if he did, all chances of protecting Arwen would be gone. She was behind him now, hopefully steering Faon towards Rivendell. He couldn't know what she had chosen: it had taken him far too long to reach this place on foot, with her horse's strange behavior at the back of his mind all the while.
Suddenly he was assailed with the memory of her, the ageless curve of her lips as she smiled, the sound of her warm feet on bare stone. It came like a beast, eating away at his concentration, building up in his clenched fists and bowed head. Lips pressed painfully together, he opened his eyes to see the orc's body, sprawled in a disgusting parody of a drunken reveler in the dirt and crumbling leaves at his feet.
Wrapping his fingers around the hilts of his twin knives, he drew them and began to hack at the corpse, plunging the deadly blades into fleshy hide over and over until both his hands and the knives themselves were slick with black blood. The blades scored huge, stinking wounds, spraying drops of gore into the air. He cursed through clenched lips as he struck, great sobs wrenching out of his throat with harsh intensity, pulsing at the back of his head and pressing to be released.
When it was over, he stabbed the knives into the ground up to the hilt and collapsed to both knees. There was a great emptiness inside him that he could not remedy, that even his senseless attack did nothing to allay. There was a voice, behind the endless roaring of his heart, that said weep, weep.
He knelt there until the sun was high, the blood had encrusted itself to his knives and skin, and he heard the unmistakable sounds of hooves against packed earth drawing nearer down the road.
Arwen's nerves were strung painfully tight as she rode, and the utter silence didn't help. The morning had seemed pleasantly warm when she began, but the heat was becoming oppressive. She seemed to be a stranger in a world of insects and gently waving grasses, with Faon and her occasional dead halts and constant twitching and shying at shadows her only company.
A few yards down the road, the forest crept inwards to form a arc of trees, bending as if to conceal a secret. There was a strange smell on the air, at once sickly sweet and repulsive. It slid down her throat with every breath, asking her closer and warning her away.
Faon seemed to have a penchant for pessimism: she refused to take another step. Arwen was another matter.
There was a dark patch on the road ahead, as if someone had drenched it in water. Coming closer, she saw that it seemed, with the stench, to originate at a mutilated body that had been thrown into the forest to her left. Perversely fascinated, she pushed aside a bush, stared for a frozen moment, and doubled over vomiting.
Once it seemed that her entire stomach had been expelled through her trembling lips, she stood and retreated to her waiting horse. The taste of bile was thick in her throat, and the bones of her legs were doing a pitifully inadequate job of holding her up. Faon seemed to have an extremely self-satisfied look in her large eyes, and Arwen gave her a weak look of disgust and attempted to mount. It took her two tries.
She forced herself to survey the area. It was difficult to tell, what with the copious amounts of blood, exactly where whatever it was had originally died. It seemed that there had been some type of battle in and around the road, judging by the crushed and trampled grass. Though mangled beyond recognition, it looked as if the creature had been laid neatly out after death.
Arwen closed her eyes. Maybe her sudden onslaught of illness had weakened her mindÑnone of this was making sense. The sight of the carcass had affected her more than she liked to let on, and her skills at interpreting the carnage were woefully lacking.
Fingers clenched around the reins, she snapped them gently against Faon's neck. "Don't fear," she said, "it's dead now, Faon. We'll go on by."
There was a voice, behind, above, inside her, that was warning her to turn back. It was quiet and strangely commanding, binding her upright in the saddle and entwining itself into her ears.
"No."
She snapped the reins again, this time with a hint of anger, but Faon refused to move. "Think on what you have seen. You'll be killed before you ever see your home again."
"The patrols can take care of the orcs."
"What if the patrols are already dead?"
"Do you really think a lumbering orc could dispatch one elvish ranger?"
"There are more ways of death than by the sword."
Arwen shook her head in disgust. Talking to the empty air. She would soon be professing her love to the pines! She dug her knee into Faon's sides feeling the warm hardness of her flesh beneath the sleek flanks. "Stealth? Cunning? Orcs have none of these qualities."
"Look around, Arwen. Use your eyes. Orcs are not the only danger."
The voice had a hint of disappointment in it, and she felt unreasonably lacking somehow, as if she'd been assessed and found unsatisfactory. Dismounting, she knelt beside the patch of blood on the road, digging a toe into the dirt. It had been there a good amount of timeÑbut how long? There were footprints by the side of the road, where the dirt was soft, but all she could tell was that whoever had made them seemed to have a pronounced determination to obscure all references as to their identity. Heaving a sigh, she glanced at the bushes. The foul carcass was there, she knew, and the thought made her shiver in revulsion.
Taking a small breath and chastising herself for being a fool, she forced back the shrubs and crouched next to the fallen orc. It was almost impossible to tell what it had once been. The cuts were cleanly made, with a sharpened blade, and thickly congealed with wet blood. The stench lay unmoving in the air in an almost palpable fogÑif she opened her mouth she could taste it thickly on her tongue. Choking, she retreated, trying to replace the image that had been seared into her mindÑthe congealed blood on bared teeth, hands frozen into crooked claws
She stopped. Wet blood...
Forcing her head around, she saw what she had feared. Losing a pitched battle with panic, she whirled and forced past the bushes, biting her lip as the clinging branches bit into her hands and arms. Faon whinnied at the stench that still clung to her, shying away from her bloody hands.
That orc had been killed and left to rot, and someoneÑsomethingÑhad come upon it and uselessly, horribly...
Disgusted with herself, she leaned over and retched again, heaving until her throat was dry and burning with the acid taste of vomit. Her hair hung damp around her face, clinging to her bare skin. With a sob of loathing, she dug her knees viciously into Faon's sides, hauling her head to face west again.
She opened her eyes without being aware she'd closed them. Her face was wet with tears and horse sweat, and her lashes had gummed shut. Sighing, she wrestled her fingers out of the tangle of Faon's mane. Even if her motives had been less than glorious, the thought that the only good thing that had resulted from her escape was this galled. Elrond would probably have extracted the story from Erestel by now, and the tale would have spread and grown. She wouldn't be surprised if the gossips had invented salacious stories of Erestel seducing and bedding her, probably on a bed of dewy roses after a long night of dance and wine. She could just see Mellan smiling sweetly as she sewed, gown pooling between her slender legs. "You know Arwen," she would say. "She would never have let him do such things if she hadn't found out the truth. It's said she tried to lure the brother of Lorien's March Warden into her bed while she was staying there, but of course Tarenuel had already warmed it well enough. So when Erestel had had a glass too many, she was only too willing..."
Arwen groaned and clenched her fingers around Faon's reins, only to find that they were patterned with shallow cuts and speckled with blood. She lifted her hands to inspect them, running one finger along the web of lines, gasping at the dulled pain. What could have happened to...?
The memory of the orc came back to her in sickening rush, battering the easy prey of her weakened mind. Lip clenched between her teeth, she glanced around her at the warm afternoon. There was nothing. Of course. The patrols would have taken care of the orcs with no trouble at all. None at all. If she could just get out of this place, and soon, she would be all right. They couldn't touch her. She was the daughter of Lord Elrond of Rivendell, and no filthy creature could touch her.
She realized she was mumbling and closed her mouth hard. Her whole body was shaking, but it wasn't cold. No, it was the height of a glorious summer, so why did she feel naked? She pulled her cloak closer around her to combat the chill, but her fingers slipped on the fine weave and the garment fell away.
"I am royalty," she whispered through shaking lips. "I am safe."
He watched her mare stop, idling from one side of the road to the other in nervous unrest. She slumped in the saddle, fumbling for the reins. Even disabled by terror and exhaustion, she was a lovely creature, and he felt desire surge to challenge worry. There was no way she'd make it back to Rivendell on her own, and there was no chance of him showing himself to her. Not here, not now. He didn't know if he could control events once they were set in motion any more than he could hold off the entire might of Morgoth in his days of power with nothing but a bow and sword.
I am not afraid of you, my lady, he thought as he watched her. I only wish that I could be.
Of course, months ago he wouldn't have recognized the feeling. He'd had a lover, then. Perhaps he still did. Had he been sincere enough?
Against his will, he unlaced the neck of his tunic and lifted out the stone from where it rested in the hollow of his throat. It was warm from its contact with his skin. Pressing his fingers against it as if to hold in the heat, he turned the problem over and over in his mind. Besides showing himself and turning his back on her, there was only one thing he could do, and the very thought disgusted him. Lord Elrond would have trusted the boy called Estel, but there was no reasoning behind his love. He himself had been there, in the Hall of Fire, when the woman fell against the door, pounding her pale fist against the wood until Nenneth made her way through the press of warm bodies to open it.
She had collapsed across the elf, her face white with cold. One arm clutched a sodden bundle to her chest, and her drenched clothes clung to her skin. Even her eyes seemed washed-out and pale. He'd watched her saw Nenneth bend down, her ear to the woman's lips, for a long moment. Finally, the elf nodded and reached out to take the bundle.
The woman fell to her knees, tears tracking erratically down her cheeks. She had been beautiful, once, but something had wasted her down to this pale shadow. Her wrists were so thin he could have wrapped two fingers around it with ease, but her eyes retained a spark of what had to have been a lovely flame. "Thank you, my lady," she choked. "May the blessings... may the blessings of the Valar be upon you."
Nenneth's back stiffened for an instant: then she rallied herself and extended one hand to help the woman to her feet. "You honor me," she said clearly. "Come. You need rest, and warmth."
At the sound of Nenneth's words the woman gave a sigh of release, the wordless sound a mariner might make, stepping from the solid ground onto the salty deck of his craft again. Elrohir reached out and took the tangle of cloths, folding the layers aside with one hand. A cry of surprise broke from his lips.
There was a child cradled within the frigid wrappings. Its small mouth was devoid of color, and the curling lashes brushed harshly against its skin. The elf unwrapped the cloth around the boy, unfastened his own cloak in one smooth motion, and folded it gently around him. Elladan, across the hall, made a loud jest about skills one never knew one had and Elrohir gave him a licentious smile and a wink. Nenneth took hold of his arm and steered him out of the door to uproarious laughter.
He frowned. There was something about the woman that he couldn't place, that not even the renewed bardic attempts could banish. Alien, and yet strangely familiar. Her skin was not as luminescent as an elf's, and her features were harsh and spare, but they commanded a hawk-like beauty nonetheless. More than hawk-like. Commanding. Almost royal.
He made his way to Elladan's side. He'd had what could tentatively be called a brotherhood with Elrond's sons for years, fraught with the usual rivalries over women, ridiculous pranks, and shared excursions into drink and fancy. It was mainly from this last that Erestel had discovered that the more drink Elladan consumed, the more he tended towards unnatural sobriety. But this was only after his fifth flagon, and by the looks of it, he was only on his third.
"Hail, oh lord of silence!" Elladan cried as he approached. "Have the visitors stolen your words?"
Filling a glass with rich red wine and sipping slowly, he tried to force his thoughts into a recognizable mold. "How is it that she invoked the Valar?" he asked casually. "I thought that mortals did not worship Elven gods."
"Perhaps it was only an attempt to win favor," Elladan replied. "She looked near death."
"But who could have told her of them? It is a high honor to have the Valar called on your behalf."
"Half the time." Elladan shrugged. "Mostly it is used as a courtesy. Perhaps she has been here before, and knows what is expected. Don't bother yourself over her! Lord Elrond will heal her and send her back to the father of her child."
He smiled in agreement, drained his glass, and left the hall.
There was an old Elven proverb about age. Something concerning the desire to mature when one was young, and the reverse as age nipped and worried at one's heels...
Well, he could hardly be labeled as ancient, but the fact remained that he had grown. The tangle of vines pressed against his chest, digging viciously. Writhing in discomfort, he peered into the window. When he was considerably thinner and markedly less heavy, he had been able to scale the wall with ease, but now he could feel the vines shift ominously beneath his feet.
Just a few more moments, to make sure the room was truly empty, and he would be on solid ground. Safe in an immediate sense, but in more danger than he had ever been in his life.
All he could see was the spacious bed and the stand beside it, shaped to represent a tree with a candle set in each branch. A select few had been lit, picking out the extremities of light and shadow. Beyond, he knew, the room was sparsely furnished, each piece selected to suggest opulence and subtly remind the few who gained entrance just whose chamber they were standing in.
Or peering into.
He could see no one, and the vines were making their protests known in a disturbing fashion. Elrond had opened the window, presumably to take advantage of the warm breeze, and he made easy work of his entrance. Swinging his legs over the edge and landing catlike on the balls of his feet, he glanced around him, every nerve on edge. If he was caught hereÑif anyone heard
Finally, he made his way across the room and into the hallway, making sure to blow out a few of the candles on his way. The less light the better, he reasoned, and he knew the room well enough to make a hasty retreat if needed. Give Elrond's rage enough time to sheath its claws.
Then he heard it. An unmistakably male voice, speaking low, soft Elvish into the dark. He tensed, his head snapping towards the sound, but the velvet quiet remained undisturbed by everything but the gentle words. "Listen to me, listen. You will not heal if you fight me so. Let yourself go."
His stomach lurched sickeningly. He felt guilty, dirty, as if he had sullied something sacred, but the feeling was interspersed with intense curiosity. Letting his eyes become accustomed to the darkness, he saw that a half-open door farther down the hallway was leaking light and what he had reluctantly identified as Lord Elrond's voice. The woman was there. With him.
He crept along the carpet until he reached the door and paused, his hand resting on the frame. Of course, Elrond could only be healing her. His words had indicated that much, but the tone in which he spoke them had been unsettlingly erotic. As if, instead of the most chaste of acts...
Shaking his head, he rounded the door so as to be better able to see through the crack, and beheld what he had feared.
The bathhouse was searingly hot and wreathed in steam, but he could just make out the woman standing naked in the water, her hair lying soaked and heavy down her back. She was sobbing without sound, her shoulders heaving, and Elrond was kneeling on the tiles before her, gripping her shoulders in both hands. His face was intent on hers as he spoke, sometimes raising a hand to trace her tears with one finger. She was thin, but not unhealthily so, each line and curve sculpted from luminous flesh. Elrond, strangely, was not looking at her nakedness, but at her lips as they formed the broken-off beginnings of words.
"Speak to me," he said firmly, his fingers loosening their hold on her skin. "Tell me his name."
A shriek tore itself out of her, and she threw her head back and let it spend itself through her open mouth. She arched against him, and he wrapped one arm around her back to hold her steady and brushed back the hair from her face. "Tell me of him, Gilraen," he said, and she shuddered at his command.
She took hold of his wrists and jerked them away from her, her fingers clenched in claws. "Arathorn," she groaned, "why do you torture me? Why do you make me suffer?"
"Your son," he said calmly. "Tell me his name."
"He is not mine to give away," she sobbed, "never mine. Why do you make me leave him? I named him after you, I carried him through to life, I bore him bloody out of my womb, and yet you make me leave him here! Do you remember how it comes that he is alive, or is it the act of animals to love?"
In answer, Elrond lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her wholly without inhibition or malice or even, strangely, any sign of passion. She responded slowly as he deepened the caress, twisting so that the steaming water lashed her legs. The watcher closed his eyes in silent admiration of Elrond's restraint as the latter disengaged himselfÑeven this far away, the sight of the wild beast inside her turned expectantly tame awakened the first stirrings of lust. Her damp mouth opened like a child seeking the mother's nipple, and he had to clench his hands into white-knuckled fists to keep from making a sound.
She's mortal, he told himself sternly, and with a child. You have no business salivating over what you can never have.
He looked back at Elrond. The lord of Imladris was stroking her face with two fingers, pausing at her cheek and forehead and eyelids and cracked lips. Watching his hands, any observer would have thought him searing with love for her, but his face was impassive. Slowly, she relaxed under his touch, her neck arching back and her eyes closing. "Arathorn," she whispered, "say my name. Please."
"Gilraen," Elrond said softly. "If I want you to tell me his name, it is only so that when I hear it, I can remember who first spoke it to me."
She tensed, and took his hand in both of hers, grinding down against it until his still face shuddered with the shade of a grimace. "Aragorn!" she screamed, spitting blood from her twisted lips. "Are you satisfied now? His name is Aragorn!"
Elrond picked up a cloth, whispering words of sleep and contentment into her ear as he cleaned the sweat and grime from her skin. She breathed slowly, regularly, as he combed her hair with his fingers and smoothed balm into her lips and hands. The wildcat was gone. The watcher recognized his movements; he was healing her even as he washed away the memory of the night. When she woke it would be as if from a feverish sleep, and she would know only that she had dreamed of her husband.
He gazed at them until Elrond had finished, taking her hand and leading her out of the water as he would a child. She stood still, moving only to lay her head on his chest as he fastened the buttons of her gown, docile as an infant. Elrond ran a fine-toothed comb through her magnificent dark hair a few times until she murmured for him to stop, and then he lifted her easily into his arms and settled her head on his shoulder, kissing her softly once more. Her head lolled against him as he raised his own and looked up and straight into the watcher's eyes.
Elrond had known all alongÑknown that he was there. He was swamped with a wash of guilt, intertwined with sick fear. How could he have been such a fool? His breathing, footsteps, half-concealed gaspsÑall would have been as bright as Gondor's signal beacons to anyone with sharp enough ears. Why had he not done anything until now? Had he known who was watching him, or had he only just seen his face and realized?
Elrond stared at him for a long moment before nodding his head in acknowledgment and turning away. The woman lay quiet, the harshness of her face dulled and softened by sleep. Adjusting her arms across her chest with all the care of a lover, he carried her across the room and through a small side door. The small snap of it closing was like a slap to the watching elf's senses, and he had to exert immense control not to run back to the bedroom and fling himself out of the window and onto the ground below. He would not run. Lord Elrond would be furious, but it would be the crowning act of disobedience to flee.
After what had to have been an Age later, the hallway was still dark and empty but for the sound of his breathing, and Elrond still had not come.
He would have to call on Aragorn. There was no other choice, but the thought of going to a mere Man and begging his assistance made his insides burn. He tried out the remaining options in his mind, but their former abundance boiled down to this one course, accompanied by the knowledge that he had only himself to blame for sinking this low. What had he done to deserve it? Had the Valar seen into his mind when he imagined taking Arwen with all the rage of years and years of thwarted desire?
Oh, Gods no.
He looked at the stone, the sun fracturing through its threaded depths. All he had to do was speak the words that would call the crow, and it would alight on his hand, rough claws digging into his flesh. The only thing that was stopping him was the nearness of humiliation. And, of course, Arwen. The memory of her lips on his shoulder as he moved inside her, murmuring his name wetly into the flesh, seared painfully to the fore. He could feel the pinpoints her nails made into his back, the waves after waves of shuddering climax that took hold of his body and tossed it cruelly from side to side. It took all his effort to remember that it had never happened. Only in his fevered dreams had she submitted to him.
He opened his eyes and saw her again, but this time the vision was one of stark truth. The horse's sides were streaked with pale sweat, and her own face was pale and faded, like a gown left too long to the sun and rain. She was so near, too near to collapse. For once, he would have to lay aside his pride.
He opened his mouth, the words welling out of some deep place he had neither the time nor the audacity to seek. The right phrases and intonations hung there, fruit on some enchanted tree, waiting to answer to his hand. And the bird had come. Its beady eyes fixed on his own, it listened as he instructed it. It was a heavy creature, warm and smelling of sun, and though he normally tread warily around crows, he felt that he could trust this one.
It took only a moment to lash the elfstone firmly to the crow's scaly leg, and it took wing, pumping higher and higher until it was a mere slash on the sky. He slumped to the ground, scraping at the blood on his hands. It would not do to be coated in orc gore, now or any time. It took him an enormous effort of will to even care.
After only a moment, he found himself standing and pacing towards where he knew the horse was standing. He wanted to see her, make sure she was still breathing, until the Man found her.
The Man...
He buried his face in his hands. Oh, Valar, what had he just done? What could have ever made him seek the aid of a filthy mortal, even if Elrond had taken him under his wing and loved him as he did his own sons? But of course, Elrond was adept at concealing his true emotions. He could have cared for the boy because of some mad promise to his mother. After all, who knew what had happened after he carried her out of the bathing room? She might not have been the only one under his bedsheets that night.
Gods. His very thoughts sickened him. He slapped himself across the face with a stinging crack and an involuntary whimper of pain. The feeling was almost welcome; it helped him to stop thinking and simply be. When he started imagining Arwen's warm skin and impassioned kiss, he slapped himself again, but this time he far harder.
...I hope you enjoyed this installment! Please review...
Chapter Three: Aragorn finds himself oath-bound to guard a royal, haughty Arwen, who will do nothing in response to his jesting admiration of her, and he begins to hate her as much as she scorns him...
Author: Earanthiel
Cast: Arwen/Aragorn, brief Arwen/OFC, Rumil, Galadriel, Elrond
Genre: Drama/Romance
Warning: Mild innuendo, violence, angst...
Disclaimer: All characters originally created by Tolkien remain his: I have no claim over them and am making no profit from this story. All other aspects, however, including plot and original characters, are a product of my own imagination and are therefore my property.
Chapter Two: The Cold Hours
I hid behind myself, I suppose. I had no idea that he even existed, and this was partly the reason. I have known no one else who was more adept at disregarding their own outward appearance. But before he found me lying battered and bloody on the ground that day, I made my body into a screen behind which I could view the world. I was safe if I was beautiful, accomplished, and perfectÑand if anything happened to threaten my screen, I backed away from it, leaving a cold, empty shell to withstand the onslaught of emotion. Rumil was the first to approach it, but he did so with open arms. I was soothed by his demeanor, and my hand strayed push the veil aside.
Of course, once I learned of Tarenuel, I retreated far enough away that he could not see me, into the depths he was unwilling to penetrate. Erestel was willing enough, but I had the questionable good grace to slip even farther away.
Then came Aragorn.
When Arwen woke the next morning, it was with stiff cramps the length of her body, her hair tangled in the bedroll, and one side soaked where she'd rolled into a damp patch to her immediate right. Sitting up with no effort to stifle a drawn-out groan of pain, she reached for her pack only to find that she'd left it open in the night, and the loaf of bread she'd been eating the night before was soggy and ruined with damp.
She rose in high bad humor and saddled Faon, tightening the straps of the heavy leather affair with irritable jerks. The road wound on to the west, twisting from side to side with quiet grace. The smell of morning was thick in her nostrils: crystals of dew, damp leaves, and the fleeting scent of earth.
"We'll keep on," she said to Faon, wincing as she stood. Her limbs were taut as a brittle branch. The mare nickered softly, nudging her with her bristly nose. "West," she murmured. "Always west."
The morning, she had to admit, left nothing to be desired. Arwen managed to smooth down her cloak, coax her hair into a presentable state, and banish the last shreds of sleep from her face before leading Faon out of the forest to the road. She told herself that if she happened to meet one of the border guards, she wanted to be able to escape suspicion, but she knew that anyone she met this far out would have strict orders to escort her back to Rivendell without delay.
There was a nagging sense of unease fluttering about inside her skull, insisting on attention. She managed to pin it down to the fact that what she'd done was childish, immature, and utterly useless. Besides not having brought the right gear for an excursion like this, there was nothing to do except watch Faon's hooves raise breaths of dust in the heavy air and wonder what Rumil was doing at the moment, whether Erestel had successfully lured Tarenuel away from him yet, and if Elrond was worried about her at all.
Of course, if he were as intelligent as everyone gave him credit for, he would ask a large number of questions before sending anyone out after her. She hoped guiltily that Erestel wouldn't tell the truth about what had happened, but it was too much of a slim chance. It would be excruciating for him, but it would, in his mind, possibly save her life.
Elrond, she reasoned, would either wait for her return or send warriors out instantly. They would probably be able to track her to some extent. No, she thought despairingly. They would most definitely find her, and bring her back to face the stares of the other elves, Rumil's confusion, and Erestel's...
He loved her.
It was horrible to find out, after so many years, that he'd seen her as so much more than a friend. Her dream and the events that preceded it came back to her in an explosive rushÑhis lips on hers, hands sliding tenderly down the curve of her arms to her hips, drawing her closer
Her fists clenched on Faon's reins at the thought, but the idea of taking him as her lover was even worse. She could never engage in such acts as he had initiatedÑshe'd known him since they were both elflets! He knew her too intimately, as could be expected from centuries of friendshipÑhe could provide details about her life that she'd never want a lover to have. It would make for equally matched battles, if they arose, she thought wrylyÑshe knew just as much about him.
Applying a mild pressure on Faon's reins, she guided her away from a small pit in the road ahead. The mare twitched her head from side to side, hooves skittering in the dust. Arwen clenched her legs around the horse's sides and exerted all of her strength, dragging Faon's head around. The mare snorted through her nose and dug her back legs in, inching towards the center of the road. Arwen took both reins in one hand and spread her fingers over Faon's trembling neck, willing her to calm. She knew she couldn't hold her for much longer if she continued to resistÑher skill with horses was rudimentary, and the mare was out of all conceivable control.
"Faon, Faon," she whispered, glancing to either side. The stately forest gazed placidly back in the second before her concentration was wrenched away. Nothing there, and yet
"Faon!" she shouted, biting down hard on her lip to keep from panic. The mare could feel her fear and worked on it, fighting as if possessed. Her head jerked up and down, the bit sawing into her mouth. Arwen slid in the saddle, teeth grinding into each other. "Faon, Faon, hold," she moaned, sliding a hand up the horse's neck again, trying to infuse it with calm. "Slow, slow. Turn now, and calm..."
Shaking like like drapes in a gale, Faon's movements slowed. Pale and horribly weakened, Arwen curled her fingers around the horse's mane. Her hands, slick with sweat, tangled themselves inextricably into the rough strands. Whispering whatever words came to mind, she let Faon retreat down the road until her nervous energy ebbed away and she was able to gently steer her west again.
The feeling of unease was creeping at the back of her mind, waiting for an opening. Arwen decided it was only because of Faon's strange behavior. Perhaps she felt that they were nearing the borders of Rivendell's influenceÑyes, that was it. Of course she would sense it. The land had power here. It lurked beneath the roots and whispered in the leaves.
Forcing a smile, she leaned down to whisper in Faon's ear, letting the words escape from her lips like caged birds. It was only after she straightened up that she realized that she'd forgotten anything and everything she'd said.
Faon snorted, scuffling one hoof restlessly against the road. "We're going on," she said angrily, and dug her knees into the mare's resistant flanks.
Though he didn't want to admit it, he had to finally accept that his sense of danger wasn't nearly as well-attuned as her horse's. He turned over the body with one foot, his face twisted at the stench. It permeated the air in thickening clouds. This was a long-dead corpse, one that had been left at least a day to the mercies of sun and small insect life.
The mare must have smelt it. Hopefully, Arwen would understand.
He dragged the filthy corpse off the road, stripped it of its weapons, and disposed of them as efficiently as he could. There would be more of the creatures, and all of them hungry for the additional arms. He checked its mismatched pieces of armor and clothing for any sign of what in the Valar's name it was doing, but there was nothing.
Orcs. He spat on the carcass. If it had been alone he would have reckoned it a scout, but the ground around the body was torn with churning footprints and stained rusty with blood. Some kind of battle had been fought here, days ago, and the only testament lay rotten at his feet.
This statement brought with it a host of unanswered complications, as myriad as the flies that even now were regrouping around the fallen orc. Why hadn't anyone reported the fight? The only people in the area were Rivendell's elven rangers, and any one of them would have secured the area as best they could, alerted one of their companions, and brought the news straight back. Perhaps the ranger had been injured. He might have died of wounds, blood loss...
A swift search of the area revealed nothing. He wished, irrationally, that he had his horse. But if he did, all chances of protecting Arwen would be gone. She was behind him now, hopefully steering Faon towards Rivendell. He couldn't know what she had chosen: it had taken him far too long to reach this place on foot, with her horse's strange behavior at the back of his mind all the while.
Suddenly he was assailed with the memory of her, the ageless curve of her lips as she smiled, the sound of her warm feet on bare stone. It came like a beast, eating away at his concentration, building up in his clenched fists and bowed head. Lips pressed painfully together, he opened his eyes to see the orc's body, sprawled in a disgusting parody of a drunken reveler in the dirt and crumbling leaves at his feet.
Wrapping his fingers around the hilts of his twin knives, he drew them and began to hack at the corpse, plunging the deadly blades into fleshy hide over and over until both his hands and the knives themselves were slick with black blood. The blades scored huge, stinking wounds, spraying drops of gore into the air. He cursed through clenched lips as he struck, great sobs wrenching out of his throat with harsh intensity, pulsing at the back of his head and pressing to be released.
When it was over, he stabbed the knives into the ground up to the hilt and collapsed to both knees. There was a great emptiness inside him that he could not remedy, that even his senseless attack did nothing to allay. There was a voice, behind the endless roaring of his heart, that said weep, weep.
He knelt there until the sun was high, the blood had encrusted itself to his knives and skin, and he heard the unmistakable sounds of hooves against packed earth drawing nearer down the road.
Arwen's nerves were strung painfully tight as she rode, and the utter silence didn't help. The morning had seemed pleasantly warm when she began, but the heat was becoming oppressive. She seemed to be a stranger in a world of insects and gently waving grasses, with Faon and her occasional dead halts and constant twitching and shying at shadows her only company.
A few yards down the road, the forest crept inwards to form a arc of trees, bending as if to conceal a secret. There was a strange smell on the air, at once sickly sweet and repulsive. It slid down her throat with every breath, asking her closer and warning her away.
Faon seemed to have a penchant for pessimism: she refused to take another step. Arwen was another matter.
There was a dark patch on the road ahead, as if someone had drenched it in water. Coming closer, she saw that it seemed, with the stench, to originate at a mutilated body that had been thrown into the forest to her left. Perversely fascinated, she pushed aside a bush, stared for a frozen moment, and doubled over vomiting.
Once it seemed that her entire stomach had been expelled through her trembling lips, she stood and retreated to her waiting horse. The taste of bile was thick in her throat, and the bones of her legs were doing a pitifully inadequate job of holding her up. Faon seemed to have an extremely self-satisfied look in her large eyes, and Arwen gave her a weak look of disgust and attempted to mount. It took her two tries.
She forced herself to survey the area. It was difficult to tell, what with the copious amounts of blood, exactly where whatever it was had originally died. It seemed that there had been some type of battle in and around the road, judging by the crushed and trampled grass. Though mangled beyond recognition, it looked as if the creature had been laid neatly out after death.
Arwen closed her eyes. Maybe her sudden onslaught of illness had weakened her mindÑnone of this was making sense. The sight of the carcass had affected her more than she liked to let on, and her skills at interpreting the carnage were woefully lacking.
Fingers clenched around the reins, she snapped them gently against Faon's neck. "Don't fear," she said, "it's dead now, Faon. We'll go on by."
There was a voice, behind, above, inside her, that was warning her to turn back. It was quiet and strangely commanding, binding her upright in the saddle and entwining itself into her ears.
"No."
She snapped the reins again, this time with a hint of anger, but Faon refused to move. "Think on what you have seen. You'll be killed before you ever see your home again."
"The patrols can take care of the orcs."
"What if the patrols are already dead?"
"Do you really think a lumbering orc could dispatch one elvish ranger?"
"There are more ways of death than by the sword."
Arwen shook her head in disgust. Talking to the empty air. She would soon be professing her love to the pines! She dug her knee into Faon's sides feeling the warm hardness of her flesh beneath the sleek flanks. "Stealth? Cunning? Orcs have none of these qualities."
"Look around, Arwen. Use your eyes. Orcs are not the only danger."
The voice had a hint of disappointment in it, and she felt unreasonably lacking somehow, as if she'd been assessed and found unsatisfactory. Dismounting, she knelt beside the patch of blood on the road, digging a toe into the dirt. It had been there a good amount of timeÑbut how long? There were footprints by the side of the road, where the dirt was soft, but all she could tell was that whoever had made them seemed to have a pronounced determination to obscure all references as to their identity. Heaving a sigh, she glanced at the bushes. The foul carcass was there, she knew, and the thought made her shiver in revulsion.
Taking a small breath and chastising herself for being a fool, she forced back the shrubs and crouched next to the fallen orc. It was almost impossible to tell what it had once been. The cuts were cleanly made, with a sharpened blade, and thickly congealed with wet blood. The stench lay unmoving in the air in an almost palpable fogÑif she opened her mouth she could taste it thickly on her tongue. Choking, she retreated, trying to replace the image that had been seared into her mindÑthe congealed blood on bared teeth, hands frozen into crooked claws
She stopped. Wet blood...
Forcing her head around, she saw what she had feared. Losing a pitched battle with panic, she whirled and forced past the bushes, biting her lip as the clinging branches bit into her hands and arms. Faon whinnied at the stench that still clung to her, shying away from her bloody hands.
That orc had been killed and left to rot, and someoneÑsomethingÑhad come upon it and uselessly, horribly...
Disgusted with herself, she leaned over and retched again, heaving until her throat was dry and burning with the acid taste of vomit. Her hair hung damp around her face, clinging to her bare skin. With a sob of loathing, she dug her knees viciously into Faon's sides, hauling her head to face west again.
She opened her eyes without being aware she'd closed them. Her face was wet with tears and horse sweat, and her lashes had gummed shut. Sighing, she wrestled her fingers out of the tangle of Faon's mane. Even if her motives had been less than glorious, the thought that the only good thing that had resulted from her escape was this galled. Elrond would probably have extracted the story from Erestel by now, and the tale would have spread and grown. She wouldn't be surprised if the gossips had invented salacious stories of Erestel seducing and bedding her, probably on a bed of dewy roses after a long night of dance and wine. She could just see Mellan smiling sweetly as she sewed, gown pooling between her slender legs. "You know Arwen," she would say. "She would never have let him do such things if she hadn't found out the truth. It's said she tried to lure the brother of Lorien's March Warden into her bed while she was staying there, but of course Tarenuel had already warmed it well enough. So when Erestel had had a glass too many, she was only too willing..."
Arwen groaned and clenched her fingers around Faon's reins, only to find that they were patterned with shallow cuts and speckled with blood. She lifted her hands to inspect them, running one finger along the web of lines, gasping at the dulled pain. What could have happened to...?
The memory of the orc came back to her in sickening rush, battering the easy prey of her weakened mind. Lip clenched between her teeth, she glanced around her at the warm afternoon. There was nothing. Of course. The patrols would have taken care of the orcs with no trouble at all. None at all. If she could just get out of this place, and soon, she would be all right. They couldn't touch her. She was the daughter of Lord Elrond of Rivendell, and no filthy creature could touch her.
She realized she was mumbling and closed her mouth hard. Her whole body was shaking, but it wasn't cold. No, it was the height of a glorious summer, so why did she feel naked? She pulled her cloak closer around her to combat the chill, but her fingers slipped on the fine weave and the garment fell away.
"I am royalty," she whispered through shaking lips. "I am safe."
He watched her mare stop, idling from one side of the road to the other in nervous unrest. She slumped in the saddle, fumbling for the reins. Even disabled by terror and exhaustion, she was a lovely creature, and he felt desire surge to challenge worry. There was no way she'd make it back to Rivendell on her own, and there was no chance of him showing himself to her. Not here, not now. He didn't know if he could control events once they were set in motion any more than he could hold off the entire might of Morgoth in his days of power with nothing but a bow and sword.
I am not afraid of you, my lady, he thought as he watched her. I only wish that I could be.
Of course, months ago he wouldn't have recognized the feeling. He'd had a lover, then. Perhaps he still did. Had he been sincere enough?
Against his will, he unlaced the neck of his tunic and lifted out the stone from where it rested in the hollow of his throat. It was warm from its contact with his skin. Pressing his fingers against it as if to hold in the heat, he turned the problem over and over in his mind. Besides showing himself and turning his back on her, there was only one thing he could do, and the very thought disgusted him. Lord Elrond would have trusted the boy called Estel, but there was no reasoning behind his love. He himself had been there, in the Hall of Fire, when the woman fell against the door, pounding her pale fist against the wood until Nenneth made her way through the press of warm bodies to open it.
She had collapsed across the elf, her face white with cold. One arm clutched a sodden bundle to her chest, and her drenched clothes clung to her skin. Even her eyes seemed washed-out and pale. He'd watched her saw Nenneth bend down, her ear to the woman's lips, for a long moment. Finally, the elf nodded and reached out to take the bundle.
The woman fell to her knees, tears tracking erratically down her cheeks. She had been beautiful, once, but something had wasted her down to this pale shadow. Her wrists were so thin he could have wrapped two fingers around it with ease, but her eyes retained a spark of what had to have been a lovely flame. "Thank you, my lady," she choked. "May the blessings... may the blessings of the Valar be upon you."
Nenneth's back stiffened for an instant: then she rallied herself and extended one hand to help the woman to her feet. "You honor me," she said clearly. "Come. You need rest, and warmth."
At the sound of Nenneth's words the woman gave a sigh of release, the wordless sound a mariner might make, stepping from the solid ground onto the salty deck of his craft again. Elrohir reached out and took the tangle of cloths, folding the layers aside with one hand. A cry of surprise broke from his lips.
There was a child cradled within the frigid wrappings. Its small mouth was devoid of color, and the curling lashes brushed harshly against its skin. The elf unwrapped the cloth around the boy, unfastened his own cloak in one smooth motion, and folded it gently around him. Elladan, across the hall, made a loud jest about skills one never knew one had and Elrohir gave him a licentious smile and a wink. Nenneth took hold of his arm and steered him out of the door to uproarious laughter.
He frowned. There was something about the woman that he couldn't place, that not even the renewed bardic attempts could banish. Alien, and yet strangely familiar. Her skin was not as luminescent as an elf's, and her features were harsh and spare, but they commanded a hawk-like beauty nonetheless. More than hawk-like. Commanding. Almost royal.
He made his way to Elladan's side. He'd had what could tentatively be called a brotherhood with Elrond's sons for years, fraught with the usual rivalries over women, ridiculous pranks, and shared excursions into drink and fancy. It was mainly from this last that Erestel had discovered that the more drink Elladan consumed, the more he tended towards unnatural sobriety. But this was only after his fifth flagon, and by the looks of it, he was only on his third.
"Hail, oh lord of silence!" Elladan cried as he approached. "Have the visitors stolen your words?"
Filling a glass with rich red wine and sipping slowly, he tried to force his thoughts into a recognizable mold. "How is it that she invoked the Valar?" he asked casually. "I thought that mortals did not worship Elven gods."
"Perhaps it was only an attempt to win favor," Elladan replied. "She looked near death."
"But who could have told her of them? It is a high honor to have the Valar called on your behalf."
"Half the time." Elladan shrugged. "Mostly it is used as a courtesy. Perhaps she has been here before, and knows what is expected. Don't bother yourself over her! Lord Elrond will heal her and send her back to the father of her child."
He smiled in agreement, drained his glass, and left the hall.
There was an old Elven proverb about age. Something concerning the desire to mature when one was young, and the reverse as age nipped and worried at one's heels...
Well, he could hardly be labeled as ancient, but the fact remained that he had grown. The tangle of vines pressed against his chest, digging viciously. Writhing in discomfort, he peered into the window. When he was considerably thinner and markedly less heavy, he had been able to scale the wall with ease, but now he could feel the vines shift ominously beneath his feet.
Just a few more moments, to make sure the room was truly empty, and he would be on solid ground. Safe in an immediate sense, but in more danger than he had ever been in his life.
All he could see was the spacious bed and the stand beside it, shaped to represent a tree with a candle set in each branch. A select few had been lit, picking out the extremities of light and shadow. Beyond, he knew, the room was sparsely furnished, each piece selected to suggest opulence and subtly remind the few who gained entrance just whose chamber they were standing in.
Or peering into.
He could see no one, and the vines were making their protests known in a disturbing fashion. Elrond had opened the window, presumably to take advantage of the warm breeze, and he made easy work of his entrance. Swinging his legs over the edge and landing catlike on the balls of his feet, he glanced around him, every nerve on edge. If he was caught hereÑif anyone heard
Finally, he made his way across the room and into the hallway, making sure to blow out a few of the candles on his way. The less light the better, he reasoned, and he knew the room well enough to make a hasty retreat if needed. Give Elrond's rage enough time to sheath its claws.
Then he heard it. An unmistakably male voice, speaking low, soft Elvish into the dark. He tensed, his head snapping towards the sound, but the velvet quiet remained undisturbed by everything but the gentle words. "Listen to me, listen. You will not heal if you fight me so. Let yourself go."
His stomach lurched sickeningly. He felt guilty, dirty, as if he had sullied something sacred, but the feeling was interspersed with intense curiosity. Letting his eyes become accustomed to the darkness, he saw that a half-open door farther down the hallway was leaking light and what he had reluctantly identified as Lord Elrond's voice. The woman was there. With him.
He crept along the carpet until he reached the door and paused, his hand resting on the frame. Of course, Elrond could only be healing her. His words had indicated that much, but the tone in which he spoke them had been unsettlingly erotic. As if, instead of the most chaste of acts...
Shaking his head, he rounded the door so as to be better able to see through the crack, and beheld what he had feared.
The bathhouse was searingly hot and wreathed in steam, but he could just make out the woman standing naked in the water, her hair lying soaked and heavy down her back. She was sobbing without sound, her shoulders heaving, and Elrond was kneeling on the tiles before her, gripping her shoulders in both hands. His face was intent on hers as he spoke, sometimes raising a hand to trace her tears with one finger. She was thin, but not unhealthily so, each line and curve sculpted from luminous flesh. Elrond, strangely, was not looking at her nakedness, but at her lips as they formed the broken-off beginnings of words.
"Speak to me," he said firmly, his fingers loosening their hold on her skin. "Tell me his name."
A shriek tore itself out of her, and she threw her head back and let it spend itself through her open mouth. She arched against him, and he wrapped one arm around her back to hold her steady and brushed back the hair from her face. "Tell me of him, Gilraen," he said, and she shuddered at his command.
She took hold of his wrists and jerked them away from her, her fingers clenched in claws. "Arathorn," she groaned, "why do you torture me? Why do you make me suffer?"
"Your son," he said calmly. "Tell me his name."
"He is not mine to give away," she sobbed, "never mine. Why do you make me leave him? I named him after you, I carried him through to life, I bore him bloody out of my womb, and yet you make me leave him here! Do you remember how it comes that he is alive, or is it the act of animals to love?"
In answer, Elrond lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her wholly without inhibition or malice or even, strangely, any sign of passion. She responded slowly as he deepened the caress, twisting so that the steaming water lashed her legs. The watcher closed his eyes in silent admiration of Elrond's restraint as the latter disengaged himselfÑeven this far away, the sight of the wild beast inside her turned expectantly tame awakened the first stirrings of lust. Her damp mouth opened like a child seeking the mother's nipple, and he had to clench his hands into white-knuckled fists to keep from making a sound.
She's mortal, he told himself sternly, and with a child. You have no business salivating over what you can never have.
He looked back at Elrond. The lord of Imladris was stroking her face with two fingers, pausing at her cheek and forehead and eyelids and cracked lips. Watching his hands, any observer would have thought him searing with love for her, but his face was impassive. Slowly, she relaxed under his touch, her neck arching back and her eyes closing. "Arathorn," she whispered, "say my name. Please."
"Gilraen," Elrond said softly. "If I want you to tell me his name, it is only so that when I hear it, I can remember who first spoke it to me."
She tensed, and took his hand in both of hers, grinding down against it until his still face shuddered with the shade of a grimace. "Aragorn!" she screamed, spitting blood from her twisted lips. "Are you satisfied now? His name is Aragorn!"
Elrond picked up a cloth, whispering words of sleep and contentment into her ear as he cleaned the sweat and grime from her skin. She breathed slowly, regularly, as he combed her hair with his fingers and smoothed balm into her lips and hands. The wildcat was gone. The watcher recognized his movements; he was healing her even as he washed away the memory of the night. When she woke it would be as if from a feverish sleep, and she would know only that she had dreamed of her husband.
He gazed at them until Elrond had finished, taking her hand and leading her out of the water as he would a child. She stood still, moving only to lay her head on his chest as he fastened the buttons of her gown, docile as an infant. Elrond ran a fine-toothed comb through her magnificent dark hair a few times until she murmured for him to stop, and then he lifted her easily into his arms and settled her head on his shoulder, kissing her softly once more. Her head lolled against him as he raised his own and looked up and straight into the watcher's eyes.
Elrond had known all alongÑknown that he was there. He was swamped with a wash of guilt, intertwined with sick fear. How could he have been such a fool? His breathing, footsteps, half-concealed gaspsÑall would have been as bright as Gondor's signal beacons to anyone with sharp enough ears. Why had he not done anything until now? Had he known who was watching him, or had he only just seen his face and realized?
Elrond stared at him for a long moment before nodding his head in acknowledgment and turning away. The woman lay quiet, the harshness of her face dulled and softened by sleep. Adjusting her arms across her chest with all the care of a lover, he carried her across the room and through a small side door. The small snap of it closing was like a slap to the watching elf's senses, and he had to exert immense control not to run back to the bedroom and fling himself out of the window and onto the ground below. He would not run. Lord Elrond would be furious, but it would be the crowning act of disobedience to flee.
After what had to have been an Age later, the hallway was still dark and empty but for the sound of his breathing, and Elrond still had not come.
He would have to call on Aragorn. There was no other choice, but the thought of going to a mere Man and begging his assistance made his insides burn. He tried out the remaining options in his mind, but their former abundance boiled down to this one course, accompanied by the knowledge that he had only himself to blame for sinking this low. What had he done to deserve it? Had the Valar seen into his mind when he imagined taking Arwen with all the rage of years and years of thwarted desire?
Oh, Gods no.
He looked at the stone, the sun fracturing through its threaded depths. All he had to do was speak the words that would call the crow, and it would alight on his hand, rough claws digging into his flesh. The only thing that was stopping him was the nearness of humiliation. And, of course, Arwen. The memory of her lips on his shoulder as he moved inside her, murmuring his name wetly into the flesh, seared painfully to the fore. He could feel the pinpoints her nails made into his back, the waves after waves of shuddering climax that took hold of his body and tossed it cruelly from side to side. It took all his effort to remember that it had never happened. Only in his fevered dreams had she submitted to him.
He opened his eyes and saw her again, but this time the vision was one of stark truth. The horse's sides were streaked with pale sweat, and her own face was pale and faded, like a gown left too long to the sun and rain. She was so near, too near to collapse. For once, he would have to lay aside his pride.
He opened his mouth, the words welling out of some deep place he had neither the time nor the audacity to seek. The right phrases and intonations hung there, fruit on some enchanted tree, waiting to answer to his hand. And the bird had come. Its beady eyes fixed on his own, it listened as he instructed it. It was a heavy creature, warm and smelling of sun, and though he normally tread warily around crows, he felt that he could trust this one.
It took only a moment to lash the elfstone firmly to the crow's scaly leg, and it took wing, pumping higher and higher until it was a mere slash on the sky. He slumped to the ground, scraping at the blood on his hands. It would not do to be coated in orc gore, now or any time. It took him an enormous effort of will to even care.
After only a moment, he found himself standing and pacing towards where he knew the horse was standing. He wanted to see her, make sure she was still breathing, until the Man found her.
The Man...
He buried his face in his hands. Oh, Valar, what had he just done? What could have ever made him seek the aid of a filthy mortal, even if Elrond had taken him under his wing and loved him as he did his own sons? But of course, Elrond was adept at concealing his true emotions. He could have cared for the boy because of some mad promise to his mother. After all, who knew what had happened after he carried her out of the bathing room? She might not have been the only one under his bedsheets that night.
Gods. His very thoughts sickened him. He slapped himself across the face with a stinging crack and an involuntary whimper of pain. The feeling was almost welcome; it helped him to stop thinking and simply be. When he started imagining Arwen's warm skin and impassioned kiss, he slapped himself again, but this time he far harder.
...I hope you enjoyed this installment! Please review...
Chapter Three: Aragorn finds himself oath-bound to guard a royal, haughty Arwen, who will do nothing in response to his jesting admiration of her, and he begins to hate her as much as she scorns him...