Destiny's Arrow
(Partings)
Legolas rolled over. His arm fell on the warm spot where Arwen should have lain, but she was not there. A wide shaft of pale light from the early morning sun streamed through the open window. Exertions of the previous evening had left the elf sleeping with his eyes closed. The amber dawn assaulted his eyes when he opened them, causing his pupils to constrict painfully. Once his eyes adjusted, he began to look around and was momentarily disoriented. Arwen was not in the bed, which suggested that he was at home, in Mirkwood. The sunlight and cool morning breeze that raised goosebumps on his bare skin told him that he was elsewhere. He wriggled from beneath the soft sheet and blankets. He shivered a little in the crisp spring air. When he stood, his view from the window was picturesque. The Falls of Bruinen roared into the roiling pool at their foot.
Rivendell was beginning to wake. Legolas could hear footsteps on the veranda several yards below the window. He thought it would be wise to leave Arwen's apartments. She was, after all, the only one who knew that he had not stayed in his own room. To anyone else, it would have appeared that Legolas had slept there. The few items he had brought were scattered about the room and the bedclothes were thoroughly rumpled and disarrayed.
As he pulled on his leggings groggily, he wondered where his bedfellow had disappeared to. He quickly and deftly braided his long hair. He did not wish to be caught wearing the same clothes he'd arrived in the day before; looking tired and disheveled but strangely happy, as though he'd recently dragged himself out of a heated bed.
The prince smiled to himself as he finished the plait, remembering how she had glowed in the sunset when he'd arrived to find her awaiting him on the stone footbridge. Then, the sun had set and the real greeting had begun. Arwen had been completely insatiable. For the five centuries that they had been lovers, she had always been so after they'd been apart for a time. Legolas slipped on his shoes and surveyed the room from the bed, looking for his shirt. The latch disengaged as he stood to implement a more active search for his absent articles of clothing. Slowly, the door swung open and Arwen tottered in looking pale and peaked.
"You look dreadful," he said, going to her.
"I'm sure I do," she answered, half laughing.
"Is everything alright?" he asked as he took her arm and escorted her to the bed. Arwen sat with a long sigh. She briefly considered telling him about every morning of the preceding week that she'd woken with the irresistible urge to vomit. She decided against it. She knew what it meant, and so would he.
"It will be," she answered. Her lips were soft on his cheek. Legolas wanted to make love again, his own appetite as keen as hers. He laid back and pulled her with him. Rolling on his side, he began to kiss and nip at her neck in the way he knew that she liked best. "Oh no, Legolas," she chided, smiling. "I have unpleasant news, beloved." She extricated herself from his arms and rolled onto her side also so that she could face him.
"What news?" he asked curiously, but with a hint of disappointment, as he let her go.
"I must go with my mother to Lothlorien," she answered. He sighed resignedly. He'd wanted this to be a long visit. In fact, he'd requested to attend the coming council simply to have a plausible excuse for making the increasingly perilous journey over the Misty Mountains.
"When are you leaving?" he asked rubbing his sleepy eyes in frustration.
"Today," she sighed.
"Today?!" he repeated a good deal louder than he had meant to.
"Sh…yes, today. I'm so sorry, Legolas," she tried to pacify him. She reached out to stroke his hair. He sighed.
"When will you return?" he asked.
"I cannot say. I do not know," she answered, allowing him to wrap his arm around her waist and pull her closer.
"Then I think we should waste no more of this gorgeous morning talking about it," he said as he began to kiss the side of her neck again, rolling on top of her. As she had greeted him, he wished to bid her farewell. Deciding to humor him, at least a little, she smiled and closed her eyes. After all, what will it hurt now? she thought. And he was wonderful. She began to brush her long fingers and palms over the naked skin of his shoulders and back. Legolas laid a path of kisses to the intricately embroidered neckline of her gown where it lay on her shoulder. He worked his way down, along the deep décolletage. Too occupied with her flawless skin, he did not hear the quick footfalls in the corridor. The pair was startled, their amorous spell broken by a brisk knock at the door.
Glorfindel was even more surprised by the sight that greeted him when he opened Arwen's chamber door without having waited for an answer. Legolas sprang to his feet, a carefully neutral and impassive look on his face. Arwen simply sat up and smiled warmly at the intruder as though he had seen nothing. The older elf shook his golden head. Children, he thought with amusement, They think their love is unknown to all but themselves.
"Are you ready, child?" asked the flaxen haired elf. She looked sadly at Legolas before making her reply.
"Nearly," she said standing and placing the few items she would need into her traveling pack. "I will be out shortly." Glorfindel took his cue and left the doorway, pulling the door to behind him. Legolas, who had not moved, exhaled heavily. Arwen set down her bag and went to him. She laid her hand over his heart. "I love you, always," she whispered. The kiss that followed was long and longing. When they parted, he spoke.
"And I, you," he said. Holding her hand to his chest, he kissed her forehead one last time. His eyes searched hers. His gaze asked what the matter was, begged to know why she was leaving so abruptly, but he remained silent, knowing that neither would she answer him nor would it do any good to pry.
"Farewell, beloved," she said while the voice in her mind screamed—Come with me. See your child come into the world. I will be your princess, your queen for all time. I love you. But the words were imprisoned in her mind even as they fought to reach her lips. With every passing moment that she stayed, burning to tell him those things, the green gem her mother had given her, which still hung from the same silver chain, seemed to become heavier. She wanted desperately to make him know that he was the sire of the child she carried, and carried gladly. She knew that he would want to know, knew he would be overjoyed, but the weight of that stone about her neck weighed on her heart, silencing her. Arwen touched her lips softly to his high cheekbone, more a platonic gesture than a passionate one, before turning, picking up her pack and departing the room. Legolas wondered how long it would be before he would see her again. It would be nigh a year.
As Arwen closed the door behind her, she felt as though she was shutting Legolas out of her life. For some reason, she felt that she had betrayed him. But she also felt that a weight had been lifted from her soul now that a solid wall stood between them, and, though she yearned to return to her lover, she seemed less and less burdened with every step she took toward the terrace where her mother and Glorfindel awaited her.
When she arrived, Arwen found not only her two traveling companions, but also her father and twin brothers waiting to see them off. Elladan and Elrohir had wanted to accompany them. It had been a great many years since they had seen their grandparents, but Celebrian had declined their company, telling them that it was a journey that only mother and daughter needed to make. She had, at last, consented to be escorted by Glorfindel at Elrond's request. Two women traveling alone was not wise, after all.
Celebrian bid her lord farewell with a deep kiss that made all three of their children smile happily. It pleased them to know that their parents still loved each other in more than an intellectual way. Elrond sensed in his wife's embrace, in the way her lips touched his, that she was keeping something from him. After nearly two and a half thousand years of togetherness, how could he not have known? The lord of Imladris did not ask her secret, though. He knew, as Legolas had, that prying was no use. Stubbornness was certainly one trait that mother and daughter shared.
Elrond fingered the black lock of his hair that his wife had woven into a love knot with her own golden tresses. He smiled at her as she stood on her toes a little to kiss the foreheads of her two tall sons who had outgrown her in their youths.
Arwen kissed the cheeks of all three of the men in her beloved family. Her father sensed the same secrecy in his daughter that he had in his wife, but the secret troubled Arwen in a way that disturbed him. He disliked knowing that she was worried and being unable to assuage her concerns. She also looked different to him somehow; different in a way that Celebrian had seemed before, but he could not place how or when.
"Go carefully, my loves," Elrond said as the two women and Glorfindel mounted their silver-white horses and turned to leave. "Watch over them, Glorfindel," the husband and father called after them. Elladan and Elrohir remained silent, still a little irritated at having been left behind.
"I will," Glorfindel answered over his shoulder. He was honored that Elrond had entrusted him with such a precious charge.
Legolas watched unseen from Arwen's high window as the company disappeared into the trees.
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