Bits of Elven Glass by Himring

Chapter 9

The Bequest:

After Aragorn's death, Arwen takes leave of one of her daughters.

Rating: Teens (references to canonical bereavement and aftermath of torture)

'Estel, Estel!'

But he was gone from her, beyond the circles of the world.

Arwen bent over and loosened the clasp of the eagle brooch she had had made for him--decades ago, although it seemed only yesterday. He would not need it now, lying silent among the other kings of Gondor in Rath Dinen. No one would need it now: the brooch, the stone, all those dreams that had hung on far too frail a thread, as it had proved...

How could she keep any vow she had made, now it had snapped?

The light had gone out. Who had extinguished all the lamps and why? She blundered up and away. The room seemed full of people but she could not see properly. She bumped into shoulders and grasping hands--there was the babble of voices in her ears, but she could not distinguish a word.

The wings of the eagle cut into her hand. She must leave. She must flee. She had failed...

She fetched up in a small pool of silence and halted, trying to catch her breath. Her vision cleared a little and she recognized, in front of her, her daughter Celebriel, tallest of her children, almost as tall as her grandmother, with her mother's silver hair. She had doubted, once, whether the name might not prove too much of a burden for a daughter so unambiguously mortal, but Celebriel she had become and Celebriel she had remained.

Now, as she gazed into her daughter's eyes, she saw herself and recognized, suddenly--beyond the blindness of crippling pain--that this was not, after all, the first time anything like this had ever happened. Just so, like her daughter now, she had stood silent at the Grey Havens as Celebrian boarded the ship, her hands twisted into the folds of her cloak, trying not to clutch, trying to understand why her mother had to leave. But even seeing this, understanding what pain she would be inflicting, she knew she would not be able to stay--just as her mother had known and had had to leave anyway.

It was her mother who had bequeathed the stone to her. It was her grandmother who had given it to her and explained what the stone would do and what it would not. She had forgotten that last part, perhaps, during the days of glory when it seemed love, like Gondor's peace, would go on for ever and ever...

She opened her hand. The eagle rested in her palm, its wings bloodied where it had cut her.

It was needed still, the leaf-green stone that had passed down from Galadriel to Celebrian to herself, an inheritance that Lothlorien and Imladris, even as they failed and faded, had bequeathed to Gondor. Had she not known what she stood for, Evenstar that she was? She had chosen her own fate. And even if she herself had no strength to bear it now, not without Aragorn, she must not withdraw her gift entirely--nor did she wish to.

'This is for you now', she said. Her voice sounded strange in her ears, thin as a reed.

And she put the elf-stone into her daughter's hand.

Chapter End Notes

First promised to Elleth for a prompt for B2MeM 2015 and finally written for her for Fandom Stocking 2015. The promise gave me the courage to tackle the scene...