What Will You Do Then?

What Will You Do Then?

Posted: June 2, 2006
Title: What Will You Do Then?
Author: Athos
Type: FCGen
Characters: Aragorn/Arwen, Legolas
Rating: R for disturbing themes and angst, suicide
Disclaimer: The characters and setting belong to Tolkien; the plot is mine.
Warnings: character death. Not a happy fic.
Beta: Lynsey. (I didn't want to subject Min to this)
Author's Note: Not in any way connected to my "Four Little Words" series. I haven't the faintest idea where this came from. All I can hope is that you'll forgive me.

Summary: "Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, an arm's length behind us. It has always been there, watching..." Mortality comes to Minas Tirith.

*****

Arwen stared, eyes wide open in shock, lips slightly parted but breath barely escaping them. The very blood seemed frozen in her veins—truly, should anyone else have been there to witness the sight, to touch the once-elf, she would have appeared as still and felt as cold as the form lying prone on their bed.

He was dead. Aragorn was dead. The strong chest against which he had cradled her did not rise and fall with his steady breathing. Blue eyes were covered by thin, grayish eyelids, not wide and kind in their regard of her. His formerly powerful hands, unyielding on the battlefield but so gentle when they caressed her, were frozen in space, one laid upon his inert chest, while the other reached over the coverlet on the bed towards her, in supplication? Need? Anguish? Regret?

For how long she stood there, faced by the irrefutable proof but still unbelieving, stuck in the place between realization and acceptance, no one could tell. Finally she took in a great, shuddering gasp of air and closed her eyes, throwing her head back and inhaling again as if to scream, but all that came out was a weak whimper. She collapsed where she had stood, crumpled on the cold stone floor next to their bed, Aragorn's chill hand barely brushing her cheek.

Unbidden, she recalled her father's warnings:

***

"Arwen!" he spoke sharply. Arwen turned reluctantly to meet her father's stern gaze.

"Why do you do this? Why do you do this to me, your brothers, to yourself?! Even if Aragorn survives this war, survives the enemy against whom there is no hope of victory, you will still lose him."

"I love him!" Arwen passionately protested.

"You love him.... I don't doubt that, daughter. But will your love sustain you when he is dead? He may be Dunedain, but he is mortal! A few centuries with him, and then what? What will you do? What will you do when Aragorn, King of Men, is dead and gone from this world? What will you do then?"

***

Weeping silently, Arwen pressed her hand to her breast as though the pale, slender extremity could contain the pain she felt seeping from her heart outward. Where for so long she had been frozen in disbelief, she now felt everything. Pain, pain, pain...such pain as she had never felt before, not when her mother had sailed, not when she'd nearly lost hope for her love and for the fate of Middle Earth, not ever. Love had sustained her when Aragorn and she had spoken, briefly and awkwardly, about this inevitable moment. Love had sustained her when she had watched helplessly as Aragorn aged as she never would, grew physically slower and weaker, though their love for each other never, ever wavered.

But now, Arwen realized something...not quite consciously, not yet, but almost... She had nothing left. There was nothing. Love had kept her alive when Aragorn was there to love, to meet her halfway, to love her in return. But he was gone, dead, forever lost to her, just as her father had warned her. She knew it would happen, but she'd never actually thought past that moment.

And now there was nothing. Her heart was a vacancy within her chest, radiating loss and sorrow. It consumed her, it was everywhere, she couldn't breathe! Nothing but waves and waves of agonizing despair and grief, tearing through her. She collapsed fully on the floor, her body contorted in agony as the horrible truth hit her again and again....He's dead. He's dead. He's dead he's dead he's dead he's dead—

She inhaled suddenly again, and this time she did scream. Screamed as though the cathartic vocalization would free some of the anguish that overwhelmed her, but it didn't. The painful pressure remained, getting worse as she screamed and screamed, and she couldn't stop.

She screamed, unaware of the worried voices in the hall, of heavy pounding on the locked doors to their rooms, of Faramir ordering someone to find Lord Legolas, the only being not within that room who had the strength to break down the doors.

When her voice was gone and her eyes were wild and red with tears and torment, she stopped screaming. There was nothing. Nothing for her now, not ever again. She closed her eyes and took Aragorn's cold hand in her own, pressing it against her wet cheek. She opened her eyes, and a flash of light on silver caught her eye.

The short knife that Aragorn always carried tucked in his left boot. He'd been sharpening it the night before. The blade lay naked an arm's length from her.

She reached for it, grasping its cold silver hilt. Everything was so cold. She heaved herself with effort up onto the bed beside her love, raising the knife to her neck, its shimmering tip just below her pointed ear. She pressed her tear-wet lips to Aragorn's cold ones and whispered, "I love you, and from you I will not live apart." She pressed the knife blade in and down sharply.

For a very brief instant everything was warm, and then cold fell over her and Aragorn, and she knew no more.

That was how Legolas found them once he'd broken through the strong oaken doors, together gathered in death's chill embrace, empty shells from which their radiant light no longer shone, and would never shine again.

*****

THE END

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