A/N: Welcome to Part II! We leave Hallas for a while, to greet another Gondorian…

As a side note, I belatedly recalled that Minis Tirith was referred to as Minas Anor in the Fourth Age. Sorry if that bothered anyone in the first chapter! I'll leave it as it is, however. Enjoy!


Part II - Eldarion

Eldarion refills the wine on the table, then leans back in his chair with a sigh. "I suppose you'll be leaving soon."

The elf-prince sitting adjacent to him nods, sniffing the wine appreciatively before taking a sip. "The sea has been calling me since before your father claimed his crown," he says. "It is time to go now. I know it with certainty. I've already started building the ship for Gimli and myself."

And in that moment, it is real, and final. A stab of acute sadness pierces Eldarion's heart. He glances over to his mother, unresponsive by the window at the other end of the room. Her dark, bent outline is framed by the rain-blackened clouds outside. The downpour is yet to commence; it hovers over them, oppressive and depressing, a heavy discomfort that will not alleviate. A storm that refuses to pass.

He turns back, fighting the endless fatigue and sorrow of the last five days. Legolas and Gimli sailing across the sea was just one more trial to add to the list. One more departure. Two more of those closest to him gone, forever.

"I will miss you, both," he says solemnly and sincerely. He might have choked back a sob, had he not run dry of tears days ago.

Legolas smiles joylessly. "You will not have time to, my friend. This kingdom is yours to manage now."

"And I fear it's a duty that comes too soon."

"Your father prepared you well," he says, his voice firm with assurance. "Gave you all the effects of a king, taught you the ways of statecraft. He would not have given up his life if he did not think you were ready to assume his role. Take heart in that."

Well, for all his years of long life, he was not immortal, Eldarion thinks, bitterly. If I was that old, in a city that did not need me anymore, sitting content in the knowledge that I had made it all come together, I would be ready to let go too.

He has long since stopped curling in to his sorrow. He feels only despair and a dull, throbbing anger in him. A question - why? - that remains unanswered. He looks back at Arwen. She had barely spoken since the first day; it was the only day she had held Eldarion, had let him cry with her. When they had brought his father's body to be embalmed - when they had prepared to move the wrapped corpse to the tomb - she had gone silent, and since then, almost no sound had left her lips.

He of all people can at least understand most of her pain. The silence angers him. His father had always been patient, kind, and merry - somehow, in every situation - and now he was gone, and all those qualities were fled from their home. Only silence and grief remained.

He needs to say something. He an always count on his father's old friends for a listening ear and true sincerity.

"I can't get through to her," he mumbles, dropping his voice. He doesn't need to clarify who he is speaking of. "She will not see me. I try to comfort her, but she will not have any of it."

Legolas looks troubled, and when he speaks, there is an apprehensive, foreboding edge to his voice.

"Eldarion…elves only love once in their life," he says softly, looking towards Arwen's motionless shape by the window. "When that love departs this earth, it is the greatest loss for them - and it can be difficult for those who remain to get them back."

There is great sadness in his eyes, a haunted recognition that looks like memory, that says he understands Eldarion's helplessness.

"And you know the consequences of your mother's choice," Legolas continues, his words weighted. "There is no ship to bear her away from this grief. You must prepare yourself."

Eldarion knows, of course. He had grown up in two worlds.. His father, and his uncles, had taught him everything about the elves, and everything about what it meant to be a peredhel. He had never forgotten, and had never been allowed to.

He knows his time with his mother is limited now. But he cannot bear the thought of more tragedy. He cannot even consider it.

He raises his goblet to his lips - and, after taking a sip, decides to swallow a full gulp instead. Legolas eyes him carefully; Eldarion does not acknowledge the look.

"I had best retire for the night," Legolas says, rising. "If I am to journey home tomorrow, I'd like to be rested."

"Rest?" he raises an eyebrow. "You, who ran for three days and night after a pack of Uruk-Hai?"

"I, who did so with a single-minded Dúnadan and a Dwarf who complained incessantly," Legolas smiles.

For a moment, Eldarion permits himself to return it, briefly; but it quickly slips from his face. He rises, feeling as though his bones are rattling inside him, drawn up to stand and move against their will. He follows Legolas to the door, and hesitates before he speaks. He is a King - he cannot speak with such weakness, to anybody except his mother - and yet…

"Will you return to see us?" he asks quietly. "One more time, before you go?"

Legolas places a firm hand on Eldarion's shoulder. "There is no host nor force on this earth great enough to stop me," he says, looking steadily into the young King's eyes. "Take care of yourself. Let her do what she needs to find peace. I wish you nothing but good."

"Thank you, my friend."

Eldarion closes the door, turns to lean the back of his head, and then his whole weight, against it. The metal ringing his head is hard, and uncomfortable. He wears a circlet among those close to him; but it feels just as heavy and cumbersome as the great crown itself. He blinks dry, weary eyes.

The light is failing. The shadows crouch deep and dark in the corners of the room, waiting to swallow the tables and chairs and food and wine, and take Eldarion with them as well, take everything worldly until all that is left are the cold, white stone walls, waiting empty for anything at all to live in.

He looks to his mother. Surely this is an effigy, and not Arwen herself. She is so still, as if life has already slipped out of her.

"Nana," he calls quietly. She does not move to suggest she has heard anything.

He steps forward and repeats the word, with more conviction. Still no response.

"Nana, he has left us here," he says softly. "But he left us here together. Please say something."

He thinks he sees her chin shudder - her mouth open slightly - but then she slumps again.

A feels annoyance flicker inside him. "I cannot do this by myself," he urges. "No man is an island, remember ada would say that? That includes you and me. He had you at least."

Nothing.

"He's given me the effects and title of a king, nothing more," Eldarion presses, trying to make her think about him if she refuses to think about herself, frustration welling up inside him, exacerbating the grief that has long since settled in his bones and turning it to anger.

Arwen simply stares out the window, eyes glossy and lips still.

The words spill out before he can stop them, before he can choke them back. "The people are crying in the streets!" he shouts. "They weep his name and tell tales about Elessar, saviour of the Free Peoples! What use do they have of me? A generation from now those deeds will be nothing more than pages of text in the old tomes of the archive, and our family will be no more noble or Númenorean than those of the Third Age stewards! What will the House of Telcontar be other than a vague spot of nostalgia in the minds of those who remain to remember? What am I supposed to do with this crown, with his blood, in a world that no longer needs it?"

Whatever word or phrase it could have been, it finally works. Arwen turns, her hair whispering softly over her shoulders like a flurry of damp autumn leaves. Her eyes are red and small, her cheeks hollow and her skin pale; the tear tracks on her face have long since run dry.

"We fought those wars to live," she rasps. "Not to be remembered."

He breathes deeply. Her eyes bore into him, imploring him to accept even when he cannot understand.

"And now you curse the dead instead of mourn," she condemns.

"The dead?" he hisses. Those long-spent tears seem to be refreshing, stinging at his eyes. "'The dead' is my father, nana. The dead is our king. Now both have left us and you bid me not to curse?"

He doesn't ask the one thought that lingers in his mind, presiding over his every move like a vulture on his shoulder. Who am I without him?

"If you have lost yourself so much," his mother whispers, almost knowingly, "until you think the world no longer needs your blood, then perhaps you are not long for it."

The words strike cold and deadly inside him, and Legolas' warning comes rushing back to him. You must prepare yourself.

"Do you think the world no longer needs you, then?" he asks softly. He cannot breathe, lest the knot in his throat come undone and a sob escape.

But for today, her words are spent. She presses her lips into a thin, bloodless line, and turns back to the window, veiling herself with her night-dark hair.


Eldarion walks swiftly through the hallways of the House of Kings. The decision had been split-second, the moment he'd shut the door without bidding his mother farewell. He felt guilty for it - but his anger had been thoroughly quenched by her dark words, and he knew not what to say to her, nor what to think of himself.

It was not wise, perhaps, to go directly to Legolas; he had already retired, sleeping or not - and more importantly, he was almost certain to try and dissuade Eldarion. So the new King - heavens, the title is so foreign - accosts the nearest servant, and bids him take a message to the Elven prince.

"Please inform him that I will be accompanying him to Ithilien in the morrow," he murmurs. The man bows his head gently and moves off in the direction of the guest chambers, where Legolas is residing.

The matter sorted, Eldarion feels the energy drain out of him. His clothes feel too big on him, and heavy. His long cape whispers darkly where it trails over the floor, as he turns to repair to his bedroom.


Night falls at last upon Gondor, as does the rain. The moon is new and the clouds are heavy, and the darkness is so thick and pervasive that it seems to breathe, lurking and living where the shadows are deepest. Eldarion thinks he can almost smell it, hidden within the cool scent of rain and petrichor, as he steps into his room.

Despite the blazing fire that has been prepared in his chambers, he feels cold. He shrugs off his outer clothing, too tired to place it over a chair or to change into nightclothes. He crawls into the bed, too large, unnecessarily so. The covers are thick around him, but the warmth they give does not feel real. He burrows into them, wrapping himself up in the thick, fluffy fabrics and furs. If he could stay here, without ever having to go out and face grief and legacy and this widening expanse of loneliness around him, he might remember what it was to be happy - before the crown had fallen down onto his head, before his father had left him and his mother too soon, forever too soon…

There is a scraping at his window. Eldarion's eyes shoot open, and he looks toward the glass panes. They are shuttered against wind and cold, the rain lashing ceaselessly against them.

He half-rises from the bed, looking out. The darkness gapes its cavernous maw on the other side of the window frame. The only light to be seen is the fire reflecting off the water droplets striking against the glass. He strains his ears, peering in the half-light, looking to see if whatever made the noise will make it again.

It had sounded like something shuffling about on the windowsill; a bird, sheltering from the worst of the wind and rain? Somehow, however, the shadows lurking just outside his room feel too alive to let anything living take refuge where it chooses to reside.

Eldarion lays himself back down on the bed, his mind troubled once more. When the storm is over, it will be light again. The earth will be new, quenched, even in the waning of the year. As it always was. There would be no storm for him to struggle through; only a quiet peace to preside over. His father's peace.

And he knows that all his anger, all his feeling of inadequacy, every part that is making this about himself and his turn to rule, is just his way of laying blame on something other than mortality and time, of lashing out at the dead because there is nothing else to do. It is too much to say - ada, I miss you, and I wish you were still here.

He feels himself begin to weep again, and lets it happen. He cries quietly into his pillow, as the rain rages outside and the shadows lie dormant.


A/N: Do forgive me if any of this seems out of character, or going against the grain of continuity. I like to think that it's useful to inject some imperfection and cynicism into the ending of 'Return of the King', and into Aragorn's history thereafter (as recounted in the Appendices). Neatly tied up endings to characters' stories are lovely, yet so much more delicious for fics when they are more bitter than sweet.

The next chapter should be up before Monday (24th Oct).

Thank you for reading!