AUTHOR: Kassandra
DISCLAIMER: All belongs to J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm just borrowing them to do things with them he surely wouldn't have approved of. Sorry.
RATING: PG-13
SUMMARY: Legolas reflects on his life.
CONTENT: Aragorn / Arwen / Legolas
NOTES: Inspired by the scene in TTT were Arwen stands beside Aragorn's sarcophagus with the decaying city in the background.
FEEDBACK: Will make my day.
DEDICATION: To Jenn, devoted Tolkien fan, beta-reader and friend. Without her suggestions this story would only be half as good. Thank you :)

"Whether by the sword or the slow decay of time,
Aragorn will die. And there will be no comfort for you.
No comfort to ease the pain of his passing. He will come
to death, an image of the splendour of the kings of men in
glory undimmed before the breaking of the world."

- Elrond in "The Two Towers"

Dying With Him

The world is dying with him.

I stand here, looking over the white buildings of Minas Tirith that gleam beautifully in the slow dawning of the sun, and while my hands grip the cold marble of the balustrade I wonder why my life has taken this path.

More than three thousand years of existence, but tonight I cannot seem to shake off the feeling that I only started living for real the day I met him. I am cursed with the most vivid memory, and although more than a century ago that moment stands out in my mind the way others rarely do. Back then it were days of companionship and loyalty, loss and the endless shedding of blood, but what I remember are the moments of peace, of looks passing over the campfire in the cold of night and shared body heat that was sometimes more. But it all happened in utter darkness and silence, and I am not sure that anything of it meant more than loneliness and the feeling of no tomorrow while we touched each other like ghosts, heated only by what could never be.

I cannot find it in myself to regret those nights, for they sometimes represented the only moments I could allow myself to reflect, to remember that I am more than arms that wield knife and bow and more than eyes that look beyond the sea.

That I am also a lover.

I might not feel regret but what I do feel is bitterness. Bitterness for my heart fell foolishly in love with something that was not mine to have, and of all the things I have desired in my long life this one already belonged to someone else. I could never find the strength or cruelty to try and change that. And this way the heaviest burden lies on Arwen's shoulders, because after all he was only ever hers.

The day they married was a beautiful one, and even now it makes me wonder that I somehow thought it might be raining while my lover was being given someone else's hand. When he looked at me there was such sadness in his eyes, and my heart was filled with pain for I did not want him to be unhappy but also did not know what to do. I thought that he had everything he wanted.

We did not speak to each other after that for a long time. I journeyed restlessly through all the lands of Middle Earth, trying to escape from something I carried within me. Finally, weary of all the lonely travels I found myself back in Minas Tirith, the White City of old. I was greeted like a lost brother, and lost I did feel. There was a little grey in his hair, but other than that the years had not taken their toll. He held an infant girl on his arms, and the moment his eyes met mine I knew that my running away had been in vain.

That very night I had returned he took me to his bed, whispering how much he had missed me and that I must not go away again. When he had fallen asleep I wondered about Arwen silently, and I wondered about loneliness and no tomorrow. But I never asked him, frightened of what he might say. His hands were clean, and he did not smell of sweat and leather anymore.

Long years have passed since then, and with few exceptions I have spent them here, wandering this beautiful city, studying ancient texts to keep connected to my own past. Mankind has an almost obsessive need to write things down, but then this is not a surprise with people who live barely a century and can only remember things from a few decades. There were moments when I have missed my people so much that I thought I would break, but the nights when Arwen came to me and sang with me and pulled me into her soft arms took almost all the pain away.

I have grown used to the company of mortals, marvelling again and again at their heartfelt pain over someone passing away. I have seen so many of them die, strangers and friends, and I have come to loathe the concept of mortality. They have barely had a taste of life when they are called away again, going to their legendary halls of ancestors that might not even exist. But then, I sometimes think that I envy them. Although they have to leave the world after such a short span of time, for a few precious years they burn brighter than my people ever do. Their passion and love of life that springs from the knowledge of their finite existence used to captivate me from the first time I have set my eyes upon one of them.

All the people I have seen dying have not prepared me for his death. It will change everything. For me, for Gondor, for the world. The age of myth and legend is drawing to a close, and as I feel the winter approaching with its already chilling breezes and falling leaves, it seems hardly possible that long years back my heart was filled with something else than sadness or acceptance of the inevitable.

The streets of the city are empty in these early morning hours, but in front of my mind's eye I conjure the picture of them as I have seen them day after day for over a century. Crowded with people, pursuing their business, shouting and laughing and... living. Into their voices those of people long gone weave, echoing in my ears. People I left behind on the blood-soaked battlefields. People that I abandoned by choosing to live a life among mankind, although I already knew back then that in the end there would be nothing left for me but grief.

With all my eternal youth and beauty I could not prolong his life, and for me this is the greatest failure of all. The blood of Númenor flows strongly through his veins, but even this strength had to come to an end one day. I find it ironic that people of my race are only allowed to give up their own immortality but not to make that very gift to someone else. But then, I do understand the reason for it. It cannot be for the Elves to be the only ones that do not suffer from heartbreak and loss. Although we are the most perfect creatures in everything else, this one thing makes us painfully equal to all others.

I remember a night some few years back when he and I stood here on the Tower of Ecthelion where I stand now, and he gently took my hand and put it over his heart under the velvet robe. He said that I shall never understand his love for me, for it is like the love for the mountains or the sea, for eternal things that have been there long before him and will be there long after he is gone. It pained me to hear him speak like that, for I did not want his worship. I wanted his passion, his warm flesh beneath my mouth and fingers and his soft moans of pleasure that made me smile with the knowledge that I had caused them.

And he was wrong. I understood very well. With his words he made me feel a stranger. In the world of Men, in this city, in his bed. I wondered whether he had told Arwen the same things. But then she had given up her immortality. Maybe that is what he always held against me. That I was not ready to do the same thing. To make this incredible sacrifice.

But in a way I did. Most of my people have sailed into the West. I am almost alone. Middle Earth is the land of mankind now, the Elven dwellings deserted and left for nature to reclaim them, to erase every last trace from the surface of the earth that we have ever existed here.

My whole being aches for the Sea, the memory of the crying of the gulls setting my heart on fire with a quite different longing. It has asked almost too much of me when I first heard their soulful mourning on my travels years ago. When my toes dug into the soft white sand and the warm breeze played with my hair and all I could think of was him, for he was the only reason that made me stay. Made me stay although I was alone here but for one sister that was not related to me in blood but even more so in heart and soul.

I wonder does he ever think of what he has asked of me? Does he know what staying behind with him meant to me? How my heart cried out to my people long gone to the Undying Lands? How the sweet smell of the ocean filled my senses and left me breathless with yearning? Does he know?

In these last hours I imagine he does. I desperately cling to the knowledge that he appreciates all that I have done and all that I have not done. That he treasures the sacrifices that I have made and all the things I gave him that she could not.

But above all else I hope he knows that I love him. And that he will take this knowledge to his grave.

Arwen comes to me to tell me that it is almost over, and although he has asked me to accompany him in the end, I could not grant him his last wish. I could not bear his ashen face in which the eyes still burnt with the same fire, his mind behind them still sharp and clear. I could not bear seeing him pass away by his own choice, knowing what - who - he left behind and still choosing to do it.

She takes my hand and kisses it gently, for she knows that we have both loved him to the very end, and she does not hold it against me. She looks weary, for her own choice must weigh upon her heavily, just as it does on me. The first gleam of sunlight catches in her dark hair, and a few streaks seem to already be kissed by the coming of winter.

We must look so strange to the people of this city, she and I. All through the turn of the seasons, the passing of the years, we have never changed. No loss, no grief seems to ever have an effect on us. They must think us cold, those mortals. Cold and untouchable with our white skin and unfathomable eyes and voices that speak of a sea none of them has ever seen.

But none of this matters anymore. She and I, we are among the few of our kind that still linger in Middle Earth. When all of us are gone it will only take a few centuries, and the Elves will have passed out of all knowledge. We will be forgotten, and with us our lore and our songs. Elessar is the last of the great Elf-friends, the last great king of the Númenórean line, and with him all memory of the old alliance between Mankind and Elves will be lost. The destiny of the kin of Elendil has fulfilled itself. Elessar has brought a time of prosperity and peace over his people, and there is scarcely anyone still alive who remembers that all of this has been bought with the blood of thousands.

Arwen remembers, and her eyes are so sad when she looks at me that it grieves me that none of my words can give her any solace. I know how she feels, for I feel it, too.

The world is dying with him.

And so are we.

THE END