whetstonefires:

fictober prompt #8: “I know you do.”

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There had not been elves openly in Minas Tirith in much
longer than the city’s living memory, and their presence seemed to strike many
of the people of Gondor as just as much a sign of the vanquishing of the Dark
that had for so long seemed it must consume them all, as was the shattering of
orcish armies, or the restoration of the monarchy.

Elrond’s people and especially Elrond himself had been very
patient with them, of course—“let them have the joy of if while they may,”
Erestor had told Aragorn when he sought to apologize for how ceaselessly the
elves found themselves importuned on streetcorners by Men as guileless as
Samwise Gamgee, and some a little less so. But today Elrond had been very
little in evidence—he was not lord here, to have any role in making decisions
and setting people to order, and Aragorn feared he might have little heart for
the general festivity.

The wedding was today, and too soon after it Arwen’s father
must depart to the West and never see her more, for the strength he had
expended these last three thousand years had left him weary almost beyond
recovering, with the waning-away of the Ring he had used to reach beyond what
should have been his limits for so long.

Elladan and Elrohir meant to linger, but the first knowing
sundering of the bride from all her kin forever still loomed, and leant a
bittersweetness to the joy of the occasion.

It was only the same one that touched every joy of the new
Age, every hope and new-built thing flavored at least a little with the
passing-away of the world as it had been, but deeper and more personal because
what was lost to the king and queen of Gondor was not simply the beauty and
glory of a former time but the love and company of those dear to them. And
there was no doubt in Aragorn’s mind that whatever pain it caused him could only be a flicker of what it
was to Arwen, who had lived so long believing that she need never be wholly
parted from those she loved, as long as the world should last.

The king of Gondor found Elrond in the library, standing
near Faramir’s preferred chair and paging through a dusty history not a
fraction his own age, that dealt with the affairs of his youth. It was less
inaccurate than it might have been. The Dunedain did try their best to hold
onto the past.

“Thank you for the copies of your library,” Aragorn said,
lingering in the doorway—it was a princely gift, for Elrond was the greatest
loremaster of Middle-Earth, and had been for some time. The new books had not
yet been shelved, for a major expansion of the library was required to make
space for them. Fortunately, this was precisely the sort of task he could
entrust to his steward.

Elrond dismissed this reiteration. “I would have given you
more of the originals,” he said. “But new copies should last longer.” The
elvish skill at making things to last preserved their books for a very long
time, but eventually ink would fade and parchment crack. That Elrond was
concerned that his gifts would still be usable in two thousand years was a
gesture of faith in the kingdom now being rebuilt.

Aragorn planned to have a great many more copies made, and
circulated, of everything of value—the preservation of memory, though none remained
who could tell the tales as they had lived them, was to be one of the foremost
duties of the leaders of Men, he felt, in the Age to come when there would be
no one else to rely upon, to remember for them.

Elrond set the book aside on the nearby lectern, still open,
and Aragorn could see it dealt almost entirely with the founding of Numenor—a matter
of great personal interest both to Gondor and to Elrond Peredhel, though for somewhat
different reasons.

Tar-Minyatur, read
the top of the page in heavily embellished script, and it was suddenly in his
thought that Elrond had not been reading
the book at all.

It was in silence the recently-crowned king came in, and
closed the door behind, and crossed the stone floor to bring him closer to his
foster-father. They knew one another well enough to have spent much time in
silence together, for there was not always need for words.

Sometimes, however, there was.

“You still miss him, don’t you,” Aragorn asked, voice soft
and all but penitent. They had never spoken of this so directly. “Even now. My
ancestor—your brother, Elros.”

Elrond flicked his fingers as though he could chase the
subject away. Drily, “It does neither of us good, I think, to remind me of the
detail that my daughter is marrying my nephew.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Aragorn’s face gained a smile. “You
can’t throw me off like that, Elrond! Your great-grandfather Turgon was Galadriel’s
first cousin, and your great-great-grandfather Thingol Celeborn’s second, twice
removed.”

Elrond laughed. “I should have expected you would know that!”

“You did set my childhood curriculum.”

“One rather has to
know how everyone was related, to make any real sense of the histories of the
First Age,” replied Elrond. “And yes, you’re quite right, by any reasonable
measure Celebrían and I are much closer kin than you are to Arwen. Though
I believe,” he added, dry again, “you sought out that information about
Celeborn specifically. That he is a kinsman of Elu Thingol is relevant to his
role in the world since the Second Age, but the precise degree…”

“I did consult a genealogy,” Aragorn admitted freely.

“The hobbits would approve.”

Aragorn Elessar grinned, because they would. There was something so comfortingly predictable about
hobbits, once you had gotten to know them—for all they had been the unexpected arrow
on whose shot had turned the whole War of the Ring, that was as much due to
their general obscurity as their hidden virtues, and it was pleasant to be able
to rely on things like the fact that nearly any hobbit would take a great,
friendly, critical, and vaguely proprietary interest in anyone’s family tree.

He had spent several hours once with Bilbo Baggins, years
ago, reviewing some of the complexities of his own, and come away feeling he
possessed an honestly better understanding of his lineage than he had had
before. Hobbits had a certain eye for detail that could breathe life into
someone who was otherwise merely a name and collection of lines on a page.

His smile faded. “You do still grieve,” he said, though
Elrond had deflected the question once already. He would hardly have another
chance to ask, and for a moment his chest seemed it would burst with a lifetime
of things left unsaid for another day. A day he had naively supposed would
always come, as long as he lived.

Elrond let go a breath. He looked no older than he ever had,
most of his venerable years conveyed only in a certain solemn majesty, and yet time
seemed in some inexplicable way to have caught up with him, as it had with
Bilbo when he let go the One. A weariness clung to him even as he laughed or
sang, and not one untutored soul in Gondor had mistaken him for one of Arwen’s
brothers, as used to happen from time to time with mortal guests at Imladris. “Always.”

Aragorn had always known this, it seemed, and yet it pressed
upon him to hear it aloud as a fact. “That seems hard.” A hard fate to bear, a
hard choice to have been faced with so long ago. Elves might expect to be reunited
in the West, Men might hope to see their lost ones in whatever came to them
beyond death, but for the peredhel there was the certain promise of parting,
and nothing more. Not while Arda lasted.

“It was the price of my own choice as much as of his.”
Elrond turned to face Aragorn fully at last, and said with an unearned
kindness, “I have never blamed him for it.”

Aragorn’s chest weighed heavy with words he had not spoken. “I
am sorry,” he said.

Elrond’s face was troubled, yet very still. “Are you?” he
asked softly.

“Not…that I love, or am loved. I could never regret that,”
Aragorn said, and some of the trouble faded from Elrond’s brow. “But that our
happiness together should come at such pain to you, who have granted me such
kindness always, and of whom I can say no ill and whom I would never wish
sorrow…this grieves me. I wish there were any other path, where none I loved
might bear a burden.”

“That is not a road a king may walk,” Elrond told his
foster-son, and sighed. “Indeed I do not think it is a road one in ten thousand
among the living may even hope to find. It is well, Estel. If it is forgiveness
you seek, you have it. Arwen’s path was always her own to choose, and I can
bear this. I am practiced at partings. Always there has been at least one whom
I waited to see again, beyond the breaking of the world.”

Aragorn’s tears had begun to flow just after Elrond called
him by his childhood name, and now at these final words he nearly leapt forward
across the small space left between them, and drew Elrond close against his
breast.

They were of a height, for Aragorn Elessar was in form very
like his ancestor Elros Tar-Minyatur, but he had ducked his head as he embraced
the only father he had ever known, and so Elrond’s tears fell into his dark
hair as he returned the gesture in a whisper of silken sleeves.

“I am sorry,” repeated
the young king, who was not so young—years older than Elros had been when he
chose the same destiny, and old enough by the count of ordinary Men that his
grandchildren might have children of their own.

But by the measure of elves he would be still a child, and he
had spent enough of his life amongst elvenkind that he would probably count
himself young until his hair grew white with time. “I do regret…”

“I know you do,” said Elrond. “You would not be the man my
daughter loves if you did not. But do not let my grief be a shadow on your
heart. I am glad for your happiness together, and that is a greater thing than
my loss.

“Live wisely and in joy, and wring the fullest measure of
sweetness from your count of days. That is all I would ask.” He hesitated over
his next words, but then said softly, “I am not Gilraen. I have given those I
loved to the Dúnedain before, and it did not break me. I will be well, and you must not fear for me.”

Aragorn’s grasp strengthened, so that it was briefly obvious
that under the fine embroidered robes of his new office he had not yet lost the
hard, lean shape of a Ranger, and then he withdrew to arm’s length, with only
the least undignified catch to his breath. “If ever I am told there has ever
been one greater among the Eldar,” he said, a hand still on Elrond’s shoulder, “I
shall not believe it.”

Elrond laughed a little, though the tears were still upon his
face, and patted the arm reaching out to him. “Some partiality is allowed to
family.”

“I would argue it to the foot of Manwe’s throne if need be,”
Aragorn said firmly, but his mouth was curling easily, and it was as much joke
as oath in earnest.

“I certainly hope there never shall be!” replied Elrond,
letting his hand fall, and Aragorn’s after it. “But come, you can waste no more
time here in the dust, amongst the relics. Today you wed!”