Title: The End Has Come.
Author: B-witched83uk )
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Gondor's royal family have their final adventure together.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Lord of the Rings. The whole of Middle-earth belongs to Tolkien.
Warning: Quite a sad chapter, but it also has some humour.
Dedication: The other half of my soul.
Beta: The Last Evenstar. A great friend and a great editor.
Archive: , Any others please ask.
Feedback: I would absolutely love some because yes I am a praise junky.
A/N: Since announcing the end of the Aragorn/Arwen series, I have received so mush support from my readers. I want to thank you all for making me and my stories feel very loved. I didn't know so many people read them until now. It is nice to know that all the hard work and sleepless nights I put in to writing them is appreciated. x
A/N2: I haven't been receiving my reviews this week, so I had to get them off the review page, I hope I didn't miss anyone out at the bottom, if I did then blame
Chapter Eight
Parting words
"Do you remember when we met again after long years apart?" Galadwen looked deep in to Legolas' eyes as they sat beside the water fountain in the main court yard.
"Of course, how could I forget? It was by the falls of Nimrodel." He lifted a hand to stroke her cold cheek. Night had long since fallen, and the courtyard was completely empty.
"You told me I was beautiful then." She smiled fondly at the memories of being reunited with the Elf she loved.
Legolas smiled coyly at her, holding her hand against his chest. "I did," he agreed. "You still are."
"I kissed you that very night, our first kiss." She leant forward slightly, gently brushing her lips over his. He responded by pulling her closer, trying to find some warmth in her lips. When the gentle kiss ended, there was an air of sadness in both their eyes. Legolas wondered how many more kisses they would get to share before Galadwen fell.
"You were always the braver of us." He left his hand in her hair, letting the silky strands sooth him.
"I am still brave, brave enough for us both. We cannot stop this, Legolas, we can only make the most of the time we have left together." Her words were soft, yet to Legolas they felt like knives being placed in his heart, very slowly.
"It doesn't have to be like that. We can go to Valinor, you can be safe there." He was angry at her for not thinking of him, for not living for him.
"You cannot ask me to leave my son." She shifted in her seat, so that they were no longer touching.
"You will leave him anyway."
"Yes," she whispered, looking down at the ground. "But not by choice."
His eyes shut briefly as he tried to resist the urge to shake her until she agreed to go. "I am begging you, let me take you to Valinor, let me save you. I cannot save you if you will not let me." He knew how desperate and helpless his voice must sound. If loving his wife made him weak then that's what he was, for he knew nothing other then the love and passion that he felt for her.
"I am dying, my love. You cannot save me, not this time." She didn't know how to make him understand that things happen for a reason, and there was no way of changing one's fate.
She glanced at him, and noticed the tears that had begun to fall, silent and empty, helpless and afraid. "Do not leave me, do not kill me."
"I cannot change my fate, you cannot not change my fate." She took his hand in her own, only to have it pushed away.
Legolas stood up before her, his pale face ashen and grim. "Why not?" His tone was harsh, harsher then she had ever heard it. "Fate is a cruel thing, an evil foe. I swear to you, Galadwen, I will find a way to change it. I will not lose you, I will not give you up without a fight."
"Mother!" Estelai warned gently, as she sat still in her parents' chambers. She had been sat there for over an hour, waiting patiently for her mother to broach the topic she knew she was sure to bring up.
Ithiliwen finally stopped talking about the weather and how nice the flowers had bloomed last summer and got to the sharp point. "Estelai, I worry about you. You are my first born…I almost died having you."
Estelai rolled her eyes. She knew full well that Ithiliwen had done nothing of the sort, it was just something she said when ever she wished to guilt her daughter in to doing something she didn't want to do. "Mother, I am a grown woman, and perfectly capable of finding a match for myself, if I so choose."
"If you so choose? You mean you are yet undecided as to whether or not you would like to spend your life alone?" Ithiliwen sounded as though her daughter had just cursed against the Valar.
"Mother, honestly! I am in no hurry to settle for the first man that comes along. I will not let you guilt me in to meeting with this captain." She could not deny the attraction she had felt for the captain, but something was holding her back from him. She knew not what, she just knew that she could never love him, no matter how handsome and brave he might be.
"You seemed interested enough in him at the feast."
Estelai looked at her mother, confused. "How would you know? You were not there."
"Elwing told me." She had sworn to her youngest daughter that she would not betray her trust and tell Estelai of the spying her mother had asked her to do.
"Did she, now? Well, there is one little sneak whom I shall banish once I am Queen."
Ithiliwen's face suddenly lost all mirth. She sighed and looked deep in to her daughter's moon-wide eyes. "Estelai, I just want to see you happy."
"What makes you think I am not happy?"
"What makes you think you are?"
"Why do you always answer a question with a question?"
"Why is it that you are the only person I cannot beat at this?"
"Why is it we always end up a stalemate?" Both women laughed and held hands.
Ithiliwen smiled lovingly at Estelai, squeezing her hands gently. "Because you are so like me that it terrifies your father. It frightens me, too, sometimes."
"Mother, when I fall in love, I will marry, but until then I am perfectly happy on my own. I have you and father and Elwing…and Gwydion. I am anything but lonely." She looked out of the window, wondering where Gwydion was and if she should go to him, talk to him until she felt lightened.
"What if I am not here when that time comes? Wouldn't you like for your poor mother to see you married and happy before she dies?"
Estelai rolled her eyes once more. "Mother, you can not guilt me into marriage, you taught me too well. I am immune to your wiles and ways."
"Very well, then I will leave you to seek out Gwydion." Estelai hoped that was a lucky guess. "I will, however, leave you with this." Ithiliwen stood up and leaned down to kiss the top of her daughter's head. "When love does find you, no matter the cost or consequence, take it with both hands and refuse to let go. For love, true love, only comes once a lifetime, and if you do not fight for it and refuse to let go then you will regret it forever. What would you rather? To regret something you have done, or to regret something you never had the courage to do?" Ithiliwen smiled warmly and walked to the door, opening it for Estelai. Estelai kissed her mother's cheek and smiled softly, knowing that moments like these were precious and rare now, for soon they would have no more like it.
Eldarion knew he was being watched, and he knew who was watching him. The skills he had learned from his father alerted him to the feeling of a hot gaze, burrowing in to him. Slowly, he opened his eyes and smiled up at Ithiliwen as she lay beside him in their bed. The sun had only just risen and he wondered if she had gotten any sleep.
"Good morning, my love." He sighed contently, brushing a strand of her hair out of her eyes.
Slowly a smile formed on her face, a soft smile that reminded him of when she was a girl. "I have been lying here, watching you as the sun awoke and lightened your face."
His smile suddenly held no cheer as he looked into the green caverns of her eyes. No light shone from behind them, only a dark sadness played there. "You should sleep, spend the day in bed. Catch up on your rest."
"I do not wish to waist any of my time left sleeping."
"Ithiliwen, please do not speak like this, can you not wait until I have had my breakfast before you start to cloud the day?"
"I cannot control the clouds, I can only see them coming and ready myself for the downpour." Her voice was a whisper, but it held no fear or bitterness, only softness and trust.
Eldarion sat up and began to get out of their bed when Ithiliwen held on to his arm, stopping him from moving. Her grip was still strong. Too strong, Eldarion decided.
"Do you not wish to know what it is I was thinking about while I watched you in the dark of night?"
Eldarion rested back down, holding her hand tightly in his. "Truthfully, no. I do not think I do wish to know what thoughts plagued your mind in the dead of night, whilst the rest of the world laid in slumber."
Ithiliwen seemed as though she hadn't heard him, or else she decided not to dwell on his words. "I laid here and thought of you, of our life together. I thought of our childhoods, how we would bicker and torment one another."
"Nothing has changed there, then." The smile was back on Eldarion's face as he stroked his thumb over her aged hand.
Ithiliwen did not smile with him, nor show any response. She merely continued to look at him with love and trust. "I remember how afraid you were, how the very thought of taking the throne terrified you. I remember after we had pledged ourselves to each other that I swore I would be beside you as your Queen. I swore that you would never be alone in your rule."
Eldarion swallowed hard, he wanted to get of the bed and pretend that they would never be separated, but he knew that whatever Ithiliwen was going to say, was important to her.
"I will not be here to guide you nor hold your hand. I will not give you council nor comfort. You will rule Gondor and you will rule it by yourself, but you will never be alone. I will be here-" She rested her hand over his heart gently. "I will be in here always. Though not in body but in spirit. I will watch you and I will know such pride, pride in you, my love."
Eldarion felt the hot sting of tears build up in the corner of his eyes. He had very rarely cried in his life, not alone nor in front of Ithiliwen, yet this morning, with his wife beside him telling him what he knew to be her farewell, he let them fall freely and without shame. He wanted her to see his tears, to know that they were for her alone.
"You are as much loved by your people as your father is. They will look to you and follow you and never question you. You are strong yet you are filled with love and honour, and I know that you will be great, I know that you will be kind. I will not see you take the throne, I will not be standing beside you when you address your people for the first time as their newly crowned King, but I know that everything you do, every path you take will be the right one. To be a good King is to be a merciful and true King, and that you already are my love. I know that once I leave this world-" She paused to wipe the tears from his eyes that were wracking his body silently, causing him to shake gently in her arms. "I know that once I leave this world, you will wish for nothing but to follow me, to find peace in the cold earth, but you must be strong like I know you can be, you must live and fight and be braver then any other has ever been."
"Often we have laid in bed at night talking of the world and how we wished it could be. You father has done a lot to ensure that we live in peaceful times, but when your time to rule is upon you, you must do all that we talked about, you must fight for every cause, every being who is unfairly treated or alone in this world. You will make Middle-earth a better place, and that is why you must stay behind, that is why you must be strong and brave, and fight for the world as we saw it, for the world we dreamed of in our bed at night. Live, my darling love, live for me and your people, and be the best that you can be."
TBC
EbonyBeach: I'm sorry for the lack of Aragorn and Arwen so far, but I promise you they will be in it more later on. I feel sorry for Elladan and Gwydion too, but that's men for you, they have to complicate everything.
Elraralia Meneloth: Thank you so much, that was a really sweet thing you said. I haven't given up writing completely, just my A/A series. I am currently writing slash, as I felt I needed a new challenge. I am very flattered that you would want to use my characters, I have spent the last 9 months developing them and I have become very fond of them. I'm sorry but I really would prefer you to use your own characters as I feel no one else could know them as well as I do. I know I'm probably being a little weird about my characters but I am very protective of them. If you would like help in writing new characters for your own fic, email me and let me know. I have a Sindarin dictionary which I always use when choosing names, it might come in handy, let me know.
ArwenEvenstarU: Thank you so much, I'm glad you like my stories. It is nice to know that all the hard work I put in to writing them paid off.
Queen Arwen: Step away from the Troy fics. I'm glad you are liking this fic hon.
The Converted: Unrequited/painful love is all I can write. I was the new warning on the site, very cool. I didn't change the spelling on Wendele, unless I did by accident. Oops. I think you need to move on with your life, get over Karl, that androgynous little imp aint coming back to you. Get a new muse, look in the paper, they may have one second hand.
Cerridwen-Evereven: I'm sorry that this chapter was sad too, although not too sad I hope. Glad you like this story.
