Hello everyone!

We're now officially in the final stretch towards the ending of this story. About one year of writing, and only a little more than that of posting it... Happy Birthday :)

As always, let me know what you think.

Chapter 61

August 29th, TA 3020

"Elladan, wait!"

Judging by the rapid swishing of skirts in his back, Elladan guessed Arwen to be the very image of womanly determination. How purposefully she drove her heels into the ground! Much like the strong-willed child she used to be. Such a forceful gait, emulating his and Elrohir's careless stride and better fitting a boy than their mother's only daughter, had more often than not made their mother purse her lips in consternation.

That was before she had managed to rid Arwen of such an unladylike habit.

Elladan clenched his jaw. He refused to think of their mother in such a moment; not when his heart already ached with a worry that, if he had his way, would not remain helpless for long. Ignoring Arwen's well-meant plea, he stomped across the alleys that divided the lawn into complex geometric shapes, making a beeline for the distant door of the Kings' House, and spraying the grass with gravel. Some industrious gardener, not unlike Samwise Gamgee, would curse him out for it come morning but, by then, Elladan would be too far away to overhear.

The swishing stopped, much to his guilty relief. Elladan had had no intention of making Arwen chase after him in the first place. If her ladies-in-waiting believed him to be an ill-mannered oaf for showing up at such an improper hour, then so be it. Elladan could not care less. But he would not stand to have his sister slandered by association.

The only other way out would have been to hearken to her request…

…But Elladan could not bring himself to do it. Not with Mehreen so far out of his reach, alone with her captors.

"You and Elrohir used to wear that same look upon your faces when you left for your…hunts." Arwen's voice came out soft, breathless, though not from running. "It frightened me."

Her words prickled, like a bur hidden under his clothing. Elladan turned around mid-stride, indulging the reproach with a wry smile. "And yet, we have always come home, have we not?"

"You misunderstand me, brother. It frightened me, because I did not recognize you in the men you then became. My brothers, who used to braid my hair and slip toads into my bathwater, did not have such hard eyes."

Arwen stood in the middle of a furrowed alley, her hands entwined in front of her stomach. Once again, Elladan was reminded of the girl she had once been, her lip quivering as she forlornly clutched the spindles of twisted iron separating her from the courtyard while their mother tried – and failed – to cajole her away with promises of an afternoon spent in the sunny quietude of her solar.

Arwen had kept the habit of bidding them both goodbye, even when no-one remained to dissuade her from doing so. Even when the rains pelted the valley with droplets as fat as pebbles, heralding a fall of heavy, sticky snow, she came to see them off, her shoulders hunched and her face as pale as apple flesh.

A light hand touched his shoulder. "Does Mehreen know?"

Elladan shivered. "Know what? That deep inside, I am no better than the men she has been raised to fear?" He threw a scathing glance to the gaggle of well-born ladies clustering together by the fountain, whispering worriedly amongst themselves.

"That you love her."

He froze, and turned to look at her. To really look at her, afraid of the pity he would find upon his sister's comely face. His throat tightened at the thought of Arwen telling him what he already suspected: that declaring himself was not, and would never be, doing Mehreen a service. And that no matter how he opened himself up, pouring a merciless light into his darkest recesses in the hopes she may thrive there, what tender feelings she now harbored towards him would wither, like that desert rose of hers, or worse: turn into a bitterness equaling his own.

He ended up shaking his head. What was there to say?

"Does Mehreen know about this?"

This time, Elladan did not evade her touch, allowing Arwen to link her fingers with his. Once, he had been stricken by how cold her hands were; now they were warm…or, at least, as warm as his own. "She does. Not that it has anything to do with her," he bit out as he remembered, not without shame, the circumstances of that particular revelation.

"Does Elrohir know?" In the stubborn silence that descended upon them, Arwen sighed. "I understand, now, why you have been avoiding me."

"Why spoil your happiness?" Elladan chuckled mirthlessly, thinking as much of his sister's unmarred felicity than of his twin's upcoming nuptials while she rubbed the dry skin of his knuckles, crackled in the wake of the disinfecting treatment he'd been subjecting himself to.

Death had as much its place at a handfasting as vinegar at the wedding table.

"Our happiness involves you, brother, whether you are ready to admit it or not."

He disentangled himself from her gently and turned on his heels, more determined than ever not to upheave her life for a moment longer. Everything around them murmured of peace and belonging, from the immaculate façade of the Hall of Kings adorned with elaborate friezes, its many columns of white marble soaring towards the night sky at the image of the Tower of Ecthelion crowning its vaults, to the White Tree sapling, whose silver leaves glimmered softly under the moonlight, a nightingale trilling from its boughs. The hunger raging inside Elladan's heart only spoiled the picture, as surely as a blot of ink upon a colorful kerchief.

"Elladan, wait!" Arwen called after him, "Do not confuse rashness for swiftness. You cannot rush blindly into the night, without even knowing where she is."

He grit his teeth against the ages-old accusation. "Oh, come, sister. We both know how untrue that is."

How comfortable it must be, to judge him for having steeled his heart against indecision! As comfortable as keeping to the warmth of their home, while outside the winter storms raged, drawing ragged screams from the summits of the Hithaeglir.

"Give us a little time. I only beg your patience to…."

"I believe you are speaking to the wrong twin." He whirled around. "Will you have Runcynn saddled, or should I do it myself?"

A gasp of feminine outrage rippled across the courtyard at his less-than-courteous words.

Arwen merely tilted her head, her face a mask of mild solicitude. "Allow the poor beast a rest. It deserves a more understanding rider than you are at the moment." She raised her eyes to the stars, pretending to think. "Perhaps you should gift it to Lady Úrien's son. He has been wanting a pony for his begetting day and, dare I say, has behaved much better than you currently do."

"Easy for you to say!" Elladan snarled. "You…."

"Easy?" Arwen repeated icily, and only the paleness of her knuckles as she clasped her hands together ever tighter betrayed her fury. "I have waited out an entire war, fretting over embroidery, and dining at an empty table. Surely you can wait for an hour…?"

Elladan scowled. "That is not the same thing."

"Why? Because I am a woman? Because the virtue patience is supposed to be somehow turns into a weakness as soon as a man is concerned?" Arwen lifted her chin, eyeing him with the same defiance as the skinned-kneed child she once was – the very one she had been taught to smother. "If you love Mehreen, do not risk losing her by wasting precious hours searching in the wrong direction. Think of what Anwar and his men could do with that much time."

"I have given it ample thought already, believe me."

In fact, it was all Elladan could think of. His pulse throbbed in his fingertips, begging him to do something – anything! – instead of this unbearable idleness. If he closed his eyes, even for a heartbeat, he would see Mehreen trembling with cold and fear, nostrils flaring as she silently dared the men to renounce their honor. He imagined a coarse hand upon the back of her slender neck, pressing downwards….

"Then allow us to help you. One hour is all I ask for. One hour, for Aragorn to search the palantír so that, at least, you know in which direction to ride. And then, brother, if your heart urges you to follow Mehreen without delay, I shall saddle your horse myself."

oOoOoOo

True to her word, Arwen had given Elladan her own mount: a tall, long-limbed gelding as black of coat as a raven's wing, with an elegant neck and a white blaze stretching from its poplar-leaf ears to the delicate skin of its nose. A lather now coated its flanks as its hooves pounded the dirt, swallowing the miles as the night swallowed the hours until dawn. The moon hung overhead, bloated with silver light, casting its pale eye onto the heat-burdened fields and rolling waves of oatgrass that shivered in the wake of their passage.

Faster. He must go faster.

With each stride, and each powerful expansion of the gelding's lungs, they flew by sleeping hamlets and farms. Elladan's vision had narrowed to the serpentine road ahead. The baying of startled dogs pursued them, the shadows of poplars streaking their path.

Faster.

The gelding faltered, stumbling over an invisible pothole. Elladan urged it forward, spurred in turn by remorse as he ignored the signs of fatigue, and the blowing of its nostrils with every new leap.

Faster.

Arwen's gaze had been full of sorrow, when she had handed him the reins. Elladan briefly wondered what was it that she had foreseen: the merciless treatment he was inflicting upon the poor beast, or something worse? Something even Aragorn had not had the heart to tell him when he had descended from the Tower of Ecthelion to utter those two words.

Cair Andros.

By the spikes of Vorotemnar. Whatever would Anwar's men be doing there, so high up North and far from the Harad road? And what had happened to Mehreen's escort? Elladan could not find out soon enough. He had not waited for the party of rangers summoned by Aragorn to be ready before departing on his own, all but scattering the guardsmen as he had thundered out the Great Gate, bent over the gelding's neck for greater speed. A gnawing dread had settled inside his chest, unfurling its icy tendrils into his veins. Despite the heat rising up from the earth, Elladan shivered.

Faster!

Despite his injunctions, the gelding soon slowed to a canter, its head hung low as though in apology. It stumbled, panting, down the road that led to the bridge, lurching into a pained walk as soon as the old stones came into sight, argentine with mist and moonlight.

"Forgive me, my friend," Elladan whispered as he dismounted, and tied the reins into a loose knot over the gelding's neck as it chewed on the bit, trembling with nervousness and exhaustion. "I have treated you unkindly, and now I must abandon you as well."

Sending a hasty prayer to Nienna in the hopes of her finding a merciful soul to care for it in his stead – and perhaps even return it to Minas Tirith – Elladan sent the horse trudging towards a clump of fescue growing under a gnarled olive tree with a pat upon the rump. Then he adjusted his satchel across his back, and set out for the crossing to Cair Andros. The forbidding silhouette of Nemgairost was cut out against the blueberry sky, sharpest where the first rays of dawn brightened the horizon, filtering through swirls of muddy clouds.

The stench assailed him before he even reached the gates. It slithered over the crenellations as if trying to get out, pouring through the machicolations and the portcullis, oozing out of every pore of the fortress' thick, stony skin. The reek of desperation and decay, and the surrender of flesh in the face of suffering.

The scent of death.

Beyond the lowered lattice, its beams shod with rusting iron, the courtyard stood empty, save for a raven watching him with its beady eyes from atop a bucket abandoned by the well. Undeterred, Elladan clenched his jaw and started to climb, ignoring the churning of his stomach while finding a grip amongst the ashlar loosened by many a siege. As soon as his feet touched the parapet, he unsheathed the sword he had been lent by one of the Citadel guards. The weapon was unfamiliar in his hand, and Elladan regretted not having taken Sídhan with him; his long-time companion, its long, double fuller blade like a scalpel with which he had aimed to cleanse the world of evil.

The parapet was deserted. The men had not bothered with a sentry, deeming the portcullis to be a sufficient obstacle to approaching troops…unless something had prevented them from doing to. The pestilence was stronger here, wafting out the stable doors, speaking of horse manure, of urine as thick as pus, and rotting meat. Before Elladan had made it down the flight of stairs leading to the bailey, he had understood, and his heart went out to the loyal beasts left with neither food nor water after having served so faithfully. Either the men had been too busy – and Elladan refused to envision how exactly they had spent their time – or they had not planned on leaving the island.

Neither of these options was reassuring in the least.

Above the stable doors stood one of the twin keeps crowning the prow, but its door and windows had been shuttered and locked years ago and, judging from the cobwebs that glimmered in the rising sun, untouched since. Thus rid of an unnecessary dilemma regarding Mehreen's whereabouts, Elladan stalked across the bailey towards the distant entrance, the packed earth cushioning his footsteps. The raven cawed at it watched him hurry towards the open door.

Warning him.

Elladan, who had been expecting an ambush, stopped in his tracks, struck by the scent that reached his nostrils; a haunting fetor, as thick and noxious as tar, bespeaking of vitiated humors and soiled clothes, and of a taint no sword could eradicate. He was now starting to piece the story together: feeling the sickness sip at their forces, the men had sought the first shelter they could find, not knowing that for many of them, the fortress would become their tomb. His heart leapt to his mouth as he distinguished, amidst the sulfurous exhalations of the plague, the familiar scent of jasmine. Faint, weakening, as though struggling to survive inside a nest of putrefaction.

Elladan bolted, uncaring for what lay behind the door, and more than ready to meet it. Yet the blade he raised was in vain: the corridor was empty, a bowel crawling with a triumphant darkness, the walls weeping with humidity. And rows of doors on each side, some closed and some thrown open, or even hanging from their hinges.

"Mehreen!" he called out. His voice reverberated down the hallway before finding some corner to die in. "Mehreen!"

Madly, Elladan hoped for the noise of a struggle, or the sound of her weeping. That, at least, would mean she was still alive, his little spitfire, and fighting for her life with that same fierceness he had come to admire. That he could still save her. That this time, he had not come too late. His thoughts dwindled down to an obsessive mantra:

Where is she?

When a raspy rale scrambled to meet him, too mangled a sound to originate from a living throat, what caution Elladan had maintained as he had passed the first few doors flew to the wind. He raced blindly towards the heart of the keep and, once more, the stench of death preceded him.

He emerged at the top of a ramp that curled up on itself like a sleeping cat, inside what appeared to have been the fortress kitchens. The air inside was pregnant with sickness, thick with stale sweat and the emanations of slowly decomposing flesh. Elladan could almost see it curled in volutes between the ceiling beams, seeping into the stones that had already seen more than their share of woe. Men lie strewn about like Sofie's ragdoll, unmoving. A woman had been stretched out upon the only remaining table, her brow crusted with dried perspiration, her once fleshy face now sagged in and sallow. Yet, Elladan was both shocked and relieved to distinguish the faintest wheeze coming from her blueish lips.

Where is she?!

A pile of corpses in a corner. Two, to be precise, one young and dark-haired, and one old enough to be his grandfather. Elladan tasted bile upon remembering how the plague seemed to torment the frailest of people the most. The youngest, the oldest. The women.

Where is…?

"Mehreen!" Elladan gasped upon seeing a small, unnaturally wan hand slipping from beneath the folds of a grubby cloak, tossed over her to keep her warm – or so he hoped – rather than hide her absent stare. He vaulted over the edge of the ramp, landing amidst the sick, but with eyes only for Mehreen.

She lie motionless, snuggled up against the wall as if merely napping, her knees drawn to her chest; but the pulse he found on the second try beneath the bleak, brittle locks of her hair – refusing to believe his senses when his fingers found but a dismaying stillness – was waning. Her chest rose in shallow shudders and sagged just as abruptly, a hideous crackling reverberating under her ribs.

Elladan knelt beside her, and gathered her into his arms with the same care than he would have had for a woman made of fresh snow, so pale was her once-golden skin. "Mehreen," he murmured as he pushed a stray curl away from her face, his thumb stroking her cheekbone in breathless worry. "Wake up for me, Mehreen."

He kept repeating her name like a prayer, choking on the sweetness of it, until at last her eyes fluttered weakly, unable to fully open and only offering him a glimpse of a fern-green spark beneath.

"El…ladan," was all she managed, her chapped lips splitting as she spoke, weeping precious crimson. "A…good dream." Her eyelids fell shut once more.

"Stay with me." Elladan shook her as forcefully as he dared, one arm cradling her head, the other lingering upon a neck webbed with black veins. Her heartbeat faltered under his fingertips, as though fading in the distance her plagued sleep had put between them – a distance that would last forever, if he did nothing to prevent it.

Yet, his healer's satchel held nothing that could stay an infection this advanced. Mehreen was beyond the powers of medicine; what she now needed was a miracle.

Elladan splayed his hand upon her chest, beneath the gentle swelling of her breasts, oblivious of anything but the faint shimmy of her pulse, and of her lungs failing as she drowned in her own fluids. He closed his eyes and dove into his own body, seeking there the energy to save her…

…And finding nothing but a parched hollow.

"Stay with me," Elladan croaked out, pleading with a dying woman. "Just a little longer. I can…I can do this, I promise."

He tried again, rummaging through his depleted forces with increasing desperation, as though dying of thirst and finding, instead of a juicy apple, a brown, shriveled-up core. His own chest throbbed with a dull, swelling pain that closed its fist around his windpipe, tearing out tears of helplessness.

He must succeed.

He must.

He….

As Mehreen let out a small, appeased sigh and softened in his embrace, Elladan let out a hoarse wail that shook the dust off the timbers above. He bent over her, willing her to drink the air from his lips, and live. To sense him there, heartbroken and utterly lost in a world robbed of its meaning, and live. But could she even hear him?

Could anyone?

Would it be that one of Mehreen's genies overheard him, and granted him this one, single wish! But Elladan had long since learned there was nothing but one's own efforts to carry one through the night. Efforts he could no longer sustain, having squandered his energy with unforgivable abandon, and overplayed his hand. As despair closed in on him, hounding him from the edges of his vision, Elladan found himself reaching out to the one being who had never let him down.

"Elrohir?"

He wished fervently, with all the light of his once immortal soul, for his twin to respond. More than he had ever dared wish for anything, and certainly more than he had a right to expect.

Nothing happened.

The bond remained as desiccated as old bones, as silent as the Void itself. Elladan tasted ashes in his mouth upon understanding how utterly he had failed those he loved – a failure pieced together by his own careless hands. He had taken his gift for healing for a mission and Elrohir's loyalty, for a birthright. And, though he had known, in a corner of his mind, that he would someday be presented with the bill, never had he expected the price to be so high.

A.N.: 'Sídhan' is a made-up Sindarin name for Elladan's sword. It means 'peacebringer' (from 'sîdh' = peace and 'tan' = maker, smith (as in Círdan)).