Thanks so much to Calenlass Greenleaf1, Caomhe of Tyrone, GrayTanuki, Em2323, Gionareth, and TwilightsAngelStar for your wonderful reviews!
Quick Note to Calenlass Greenfleaf1: I am working on your suggestion but was unable to do so this week. I'll try to get that up with next week's chapter. Thanks again!
Chapter 9: The Choice
The picture snapped and Arwen bolted forward, nearly pitching out the window.
"Arwen!" Legolas' arms tightened about her waist and barely managed to keep them from tumbling to certain death.
"Legolas!" Arwen held to his neck like one caught in a typhoon. "Don't let go! Please! Don't let me go!"
Only twice in her long life had she wept, not a few splattering tears but truly a heartbroken cry of sorrow, one that drowned all thought out, one that would not be quenched or appeased. Twice in over a thousand years. And this day made the third. Sobbing, she clung to what she viewed as her lifeline. And in a way, he was her tether to reality, something solid and steady in a blaze of horrible images.
Visions were rare and far between but this was the most vivid, the most heartbreaking she'd ever experienced.
It revealed the fate of her family. It revealed the fate of Middle-Earth.
"Arwen, sidh, all is well. I will not leave you. /peace/" Legolas' voice murmured in her ear, soft and soothing.
The images from her vision filled her eyes again and she knew that he would leave her. He would leave her for Mandos' halls. He would not want to and it would break his heart but he would have no choice. If they married as she had seen, if they lived in the bliss she'd witnessed, if they were parents to the precious child she'd viewed, Middle-Earth would fall and her beloved would perish at the hands of orcs, bloodied and bruised.
That day the sun faded behind the hills but the couple still sat in the window sill, Arwen alternately weeping then staying deathly silent and all the while Legolas held her close, whispering words of comfort. But nothing he said seemed to ease the burden she carried in her heart.
--
You're in my arms
And all the world is calm
The music playing on for only two
So close together
And when I'm with you
So close to feeling alive
A life goes by
Romantic dreams will stop
So I bid mine goodbye and never knew
So close was waiting, waiting here with you
And now forever I know
All that I wanted to hold you
So close
So close to reaching that famous happy end
Almost believing this was not pretend
And now you're beside me and look how far we've come
So far we are so close
So Close- By Jon McLaughlin
Silky moonlight spilled into the room, gently stroking the figure of the two elves still cradled together, Arwen pressed close against her fiance's chest, the steady drum of his heartbeat stilling her tears, and Legolas staring out at the stars.
"Legolas?"
Legolas nearly started. That was the first word she'd spoken for hours. "Yes, 'star?"
Her voice trembled and had a rough edge from all the weeping she'd endured but it still carried all the gentle love and tenderness that had ever lined the soft tones. "I have seen us together."
"And?"
"We have a beautiful child, Legolas. Beautiful. He has your face and eyes but my hair. His laughter is sweeter than honey." She shivered and he unknowingly tightened his grasp about her waist.
"He grows strong and tall and is a master archer like his father. You and I live as we have always planned. We are so happy, meleth nin, so perfectly, incandescently happy." Tears filled her eyes. "But that all changes when you meet and befriend a human of royal blood named Aragorn. He is impetuous and confused but you refuse to lose hope that he will defeat Sauron."
"And does he succeed?"
"No…" Arwen's voice was more subtle than a violet's velvety petal. "He is felled and Middle Earth soon collapses without alliances to piece her together."
"This Aragorn…he is the last ray of hope for these lands?"
"He is the mediator between the lands of men and elves. Without him, no one will stand together save with their own races and so with their race…they will succumb to darkness." She turned her face into his tunic, the clean scent of the forest filling her senses, wishing that she could wrap herself in a cocoon of warmth and love and let the world care for itself.
"But how does our relationship affect Middle-Earth so irrevocably?"
"Aragorn was the hope for his people…but he had no hope for himself…" the tears fell once more, "he had no 'star to guide him."
Legolas went silent and his muscles suddenly tensed, as if struck.
Time seemed frozen. Hours and minutes were irrelevant and blended together in one mass of tangled thoughts.
When he did finally speak, he, too, spoke in low tones. And his voice, the ever merry wood elf voice, was for the first time truly sorrowful and never once had she seen his shoulders slump as they did now. His eyes radiated heartbreak, the deep blue pools of his soul shattered into a thousand, sparkling shards. "Then we have no choice, 'star."
"Goheno nin, /forgive me/" she could hardly speak for the lump in her throat.
"Arwen," he sighed her name, gently dabbing away her tears with his thumbs. "You need never ask for it."
She tried valiantly to be strong as he was, to hold her herself with the dignity and poise the daughter of an Elven lord should posses. It was for naught. Dropping her gaze from his, she wept anew.
He never told her to stop her tears, he never said a word. He merely began to hum. The song was one she had heard a thousand times. A lullaby, one she knew they would have sung together over their son.
Yet the effect it had on her was the opposite she would have thought. It eased the pain in her head, the ache in her eyes, the chill to her arms, and most importantly the sting in her heart.
More time passed as they savored what could only be their last moments together in such a way. It was she that moved first. Turning to him, she trapped his head between her hands.
"Know this Legolas Thranduilion, no matter what happens from this day on…le melon. /I love you/"
"And I you."
She moved forward and brushed his lips with her own. A brief moment passed and she drew herself away. "No in elenath hîlar nan hâd gîn. /May all stars shine on your path/" she whispered, knowing everything would change the moment she stepped from the room.
His response was exactly what she knew it would be, ever giving, ever loving, ever selfless. "No galu govad gen. /May blessings go with you/"
She had no idea that in that gentle, pale blue light sliding over her porcelain skin her angelic features lit up with a glow that made her virulent sapphire eyes fairly shine. Nor the way her silky dark hair caught the beams and glimmered with each movement she made.
But he saw. And he would never forget.
Swallowing the tears that would surely overtake her if she did not take her leave, she moved away from him. Each step towards the door seemed to send sharp pains lancing through her heart, almost as if someone was literally tearing it out and the agony was almost unbearable.
Her fingers brushed the knob and the cool metal felt like molten iron. The resolve within her mind crumbled and for an instant she was going to turn back and throw Middle-Earth's fate to the wind. Then her mind flashed back to her vision.
Arwen forced the door open. She could not be that self-centered, she could not ask that of him, she could not wish that death upon him by demanding a few years of happiness.
One last glance was thrown over her shoulder as she stepped beyond the doorway and it completed ripping her heart in two.
He sat as she had found him earlier that afternoon. One knee placed firmly against his chest, the other dangling over the garden. The strong fingers threaded together and placed on his knee. His face was upturned to catch the beams of the moon, eyes closed, and his flaxen hair gleamed in her silvery touch.
It was not the position that caused her heart to break but the sight of a single, lonely tear slipping down his cheek.
Chocking back a sob, she fled down the hall. She knew deep in her soul that Middle-Earth had just been spared a terrible fate…but then why did her very spirit seem to scream in anguish?
Legolas was a path she simply could not take. It was doomed to waste away as a passage closed away to her, a picture whose beauty had been hidden. A different destiny lay before her. What had been was now gone.
The past was the past.
And nothing would change that.
TBC...
We have one more chapter to go. Please don't give up on me just yet!