survival, it was destined for your name (tolkien's legendarium | arwen/tauriel, elrond, legolas)

[fiachairecht]

survival, it was destined for your name. tolkien's legendarium (hobbit movies + lotr books), arwen/tauriel + elrond, legolas. war has lessened arwen's taste for a love that demands her death. 1.2k words, rated t. for the prompt 'homecoming'.

When asked what she remembers most about the war, Arwen says: freedom.

The first time, she says it without thinking, and spends the rest of the night wondering at how the truth of it surprised her. She is to be queen, after all, and must take care with her words. She ought not be surprised by them.

But Arwen shuts her eyes and she sees—

—Orcs, set loose on roads they never should have seen.

—Rivers rising on her command, alive because of her, a command like and unlike those her grandmother channeled through her ring.

—Hobbits, outside the Shire with a curiosity and bravery unlike any of their kind before.

—Ahead of her, only one choice.

Freedom was always ever a gift, and a painful one.

*

Night falls late, after the war, sky and sun painting the world in the soft blues and pinks and purples of unending twilight instead of the sharpened reds and oranges of battle. It's apology and recovery and a future all in one, and Arwen stands in the garden and tips her head back to listen to the moon's promises of love.

They're so different from the ones she had once given Aragorn.

The world is dying around her, slow and drawn out as these twilights, and she can feel the change in the earth even without her grandmother's magic. Life lies across the sea for her kind.

For her, if she would have it.

Love had seemed the more important during the war, kisses as if they could hold back armies. She loves Aragorn still, would choose him over an eternity alone, but—

I cannot die for him anymore, Arwen realises, as she watches her father sign the last list of the dead.

She had expected more guilt, more pain than that which comes.

*

She helps in the rebuilding of Gondor anyway, watches the flowers bloom in the ruins and the children lose the fear in their eyes. Every day is another day of life, days she had somehow forgotten to expect and days that she welcomes with a curiosity she hasn't known in decades.

Arwen marks her years in Gondor by the climbing spires of her adopted city and the passing journeys of her first family.

Her father comes to her the day the first child born after the Ring starts her sixth year.

Child, he says, you are not coming with me. It's not a question, and her heart aches for him.

She hugs him close, breathes the cinnamon-silk sweet of Imladris from his skin and wonders if one day that scent too will leave her. No, she murmurs into his shoulder. Not now. I am not choosing a mortal life either.

His eyes are sad when he pulls away. Refusal is not a part of the Choice.

I know, she says, and it doesn't feel like a lie but she thinks it might be anyway.

Elrond stays the night, and she curls into her father's side by the fire and wishes for something to ease his worry, though she doesn't truly expect to find it. Gondor is new, a symbol of an age to come, an age he will not see.

The voice that says dance with me is sweet and unfamiliar, and Arwen looks up to find the redheaded leader of the visiting Mirkwood delegation, eyes and hair sparkling with a light that could never come from a mere fire.

She accepts the outstretched hand after a brief glance to her father, lets Tauriel spin her through the light until she thinks her feet aren't touching the ground.

When she catches her father's eyes through the flames, he is smiling at her, and this, she thinks, this is how she will always remember him.

 

*

 

You have shown me your home, Tauriel says to her a month later, a month whose nights she has spent in Arwen's bed more often than not. And I would show you mine now, if only...

Arwen props herself up on one elbow, smiling down into fey eyes that have never unsettled her as much as they ought. If only?

It is not an easy place to leave.

Gondor has been reclaimed, is regrowing. Gondor is very far from home in any but her most childish of dreams.

You are not easy to leave either, my lady.

*

They return to trees strung with lights in celebration rather than in a last line of defence against a necromancer's creeping dark and the life that the earth speaks of here is too old for Gondor, too wicked for Imladris.

Everything in the wood is edged with the wild, and Arwen feels the changes swirl around her, tiny and soft and necessary all, and she doesn't ... she doesn't mind. She has remade a city, after all, why not herself?

Tauriel pulls her into dances here as well, and these ones Arwen is never sure have an end. Alone, she shuts her eyes and spins and spins and spins until she thinks she should be sick of it, throws herself down on soft grass and watches the leaves — and the stars? — and the moon? — and — spin above her until Tauriel returns, lies down next to her and kisses away her questions.

Legolas joins them, sometimes, but his eyes and mind and heart are all far. He is little like the boy she once knew, and she knows that for all war took from her it gave him more.

You make her so happy, he says one night as they watch Tauriel jesting with some of her guards further down the feast table. If you only knew...

But I do know, she says, somewhat startled, and when he looks at her it is almost as if he thinks she is the young one. She tells me every night, and for her I have—

For her I have—

Instead she wraps her arms tight around him and tries very hard not to think about how he feels insubstantial under her skin, so much like the sea.

Legolas leaves the next night, and she never wonders what he might have meant.

*

Still, the night she asks Tauriel neither of us are crossing the sea, are we? it almost feels like a surprise to her.

Of course not, Tauriel laughs, though not unkindly, nuzzling into the side of Arwen's neck. These woods are mine, and I am theirs.

Arwen frowns, slightly, pushes Tauriel aside so she can sit up, sheets pooling at her waist. And me? Am I...

Am I yours? If I was not born here than who am I to your trees? These are the questions she doesn't ask, should never have known to ask, but Tauriel hears them anyway.

You refused the Choice, Tauriel shrugs. There is nothing calling you anymore.

There isn't, there hasn't been for years, the future that stretches before her vast but blank, studded with bits of colours and lights but nothing whole, nothing to hold. Still it chills her that Tauriel has recognised this in her.

I think, Arwen says slowly, that I made a different choice when I followed you here.

Tauriel sits up too, then, smiling as if she's just said something particularly clever.

Oh, very good, my lady, she says. But you're wrong. It was your choice, and mine, and this realm's. That is why you may stay.

And when I stay? she asks, breathless as Tauriel straddles her lap, runs long fingers through her hair over and over and over.

It's life as eternal as you would find in the Halls, Tauriel whispers into her skin.

And it is home.