TITLE: Yet Faithful...

AUTHOR: Prophecy

EMAIL: darlinggrrrl@hotmail.com

RATING: PG

PAIRING: Arwen/Legolas, Arwen/Aragorn

DISCLAIMER: The characters and events refered to in this story belong to the estate of J. R. R. Tolkien, and probably some dudes at New Line Cinema.

FEEDBACK: Please: feed my muse!

SUMMERY: Even in the Undying Lands, Legolas cannot forget the great love of his life...

NOTES: This one is dedicated to the insidious Orlando Bloom, who seems to have gotten to me more than I had intended to let him and it's going out with a huge thank you to my beta-reader, Em, whom I have neglected to thank in too many of my LOTR fics...

It's a second-person POV, which is a little odd, I know, but the story is not being specifically told by anyone... just, bear with me?

Yet Faithful...
by Prophecy
~ * ~

He never knew. Never even suspected. And, for that, you suppose that you ought to feel guilty; instead it is a relief. Knowledge would have served no purpose, save possibly to make him doubt your friendship or question her love. Neither of which ever wavered in his long lifetime.

The time you and she shared was lifetimes before his father's father was born; in the time that was very nearly still childhood for you both. The youngest of the Royal Houses of Mirkwood and Imladris brought together in Lothlórien, parental intent to discover if an alliance could be sealed through a marriage...

A beautiful spring; you still remember the young Evenstar, her then-girlish face flush with the beginnings of that beauty which would become legendary. You remember the laughter and joy - the two of you playing happily among the trees of the Golden Wood. It was a simpler time, when politics, divided loyalties, and the fate of the earth did not concern you: it is a memory you treasure, and still often escape to when the years press heavily upon your shoulders.

It was a time of innocence - shared and willingly surrendered. She had never lain with any, and neither had you... the discovery of her soft, young body had been a magical experience. An experience shared, and delighted in - as if the two of you were the first to uncover such wonders.

They spoke of betrothal, of marriage many years hence and, young as it was, your heart had leapt at the opportunity. She, however, spoke of caution. Of the years that would pass; and the freedom to love and learn with others - should you or she so desire it. If you were to wed, and she promised with all her heart that she did wish it, it ought to be a choice made again, not a fulfilment of an obligation. For the poets spoke of love souring when it became a duty and not a pleasure.

When the leaves that had fallen like flame coloured tears littered the paths of the Golden Wood, you bade farewell to the Love of your Childhood - carrying the memory of her face, of her kiss... keeping them ever close to you as your path took you from childhood to adulthood...

Oh, to be fair to her, you did not spend the years entirely alone. Nor did you want for companionship. But through it all, you remembered her. Perhaps it kept you aloof, kept you from giving your heart to any whom you lay with - but that was your own fault, your own choice to experience the world as she wished you to, but yet remain faithful to her...

You journeyed around, took to hunting Orcs with her brothers to sharpen your -even then- formidable skill as an archer. Elladan and Elrohir knew not of your passion for their sister, knew not the joy you took in the small scraps of news of her that they discussed in front of you, always apologising for boring you. That 'boredom' was one you could easily have borne tenfold...

And then one autumn when you were to meet with the twins, you found they travelled not alone. A young man plainly of the people of the West, descended from the line of Númenor, by the name of Estel who had been raised in their father's house, accompanied them. Friendship and respect between you and the Man was won on the battlefield, and forged in the blood of Orcs...

It took him a while to confide his secrets in you, to share with you his heritage and the truth of his heart that the twins would not appreciate. A truth that, in retrospect, you wish he had not entrusted you with: he had encountered the Lady to whom your heart still belonged, and he had fallen in love with her. His battles here and wherever he would roam would all be for her, to prove his worth until the day he could claim the throne of Gondor for his own.

You took comfort, perhaps selfishly, when he admitted that the Evenstar did not hold him in equal esteem... And you planned to journey to Imladris to reunite with her when the current hunting season drew to a close. But, alas, news from Mirkwood and a summons from your father drew you to the opposite side of the Anduin...

You still wonder if things would have been different had you not received that summons...

Her lack of regard was apparently short-lived... as was the optimistic naivety of the young Estel, whom you came to know in the interim by the ancestral name he had confided in you, Aragorn. But his optimism and naivety were replaced with a real hope, for Arwen had given him her heart... and the promise she had denied you.

When you saw her again - in her father's house, not long before you set out with the Fellowship - you kissed her cheek: offering her a pledge of friendship, and promising to ensure that Aragorn returned to her... She wept for you, and you brushed the tears from her fair cheeks, and then you turned away from her to hide the tears in your own eyes.

You were there when Aragorn claimed his throne, you were there when she became his bride... When you pleaded with her to love him as her husband, but not give up her immortality, it was upon his request. Throughout the too brief hundred and twenty years that King Elessar and his Elvish Queen reigned over Gondor, you remained in Middle-Earth, never far from the White City, lest they should need you...

His death was as big a shock to you as it was to her: an intellectual understanding of mortality did not prepare you for him to suddenly cease to be... And it cut like a knife to know, to finally comprehend that this was the doom she had chosen for herself. To, after a time, simply not exist.

She had fled to Lothlórien after burying her husband, and it was nearly winter when you arrived there. The light of the Evenstar was fading, and her once-midnight hair was shot through with silver. You held her close, and wept with her in vain, grieving the onslaught of time. Time, that which would take her from you even more completely than Aragorn had - for even though she was out of your reach when she was his Queen, she was still there: still beautiful and still as vibrant as the girl you first fell in love with so very long ago...

When the leaves that had fallen like flame coloured tears littered the paths of the Golden Wood, you bade farewell to the Love of your Childhood as she died in your arms... And when you buried her upon the hill of Cerin Amroth, where she had pledged her troth to Aragorn, you wept as though your heart would break...

And you fled across the Sea, carrying the memory of her face, of her kiss... keeping them ever close to you. You thought the pain might lessen, that her memory might prove less haunting in the Undying Lands, but ah, Legolas, you are more faithful than you wished to be...

~ finis... ~