Chapter Text
Elladan knelt next to his sister, holding her hand as Arwen closed her eyes for the last time. Opposite him was Elrohir, holding her other hand. Their sister looked as young as she had when she had married Aragorn, beautiful and graceful as a star, the Evenstar of their people, as she was named. Elladan pressed the back of her cooling hand to his forehead, his grief too bright and awful and thick in his throat to say a word. Elrohir smoothed back the hair from Arwen's face, tears wet on his cheeks, as twilight shaded into night and all was still about them.
Long had they lingered on Arda's far shores, not yet ready to leave. They thought, perhaps, when Aragorn had died, that they would go, but found that they could not leave their sister in her grief. And now here, with Arwen gone and the world's magic fading day by day, they still did not know what to do.
A rustle of noise made Elladan look up. From one of the trees that circled the mound where Arwen had laid down to die dropped a slight figure in dark robes. Elladan closed his eyes to see that Erestor had come to witness Arwen's leaving.
Erestor came to their sides and paused there, staring down at Arwen for a long, long moment. “I tried to arrange a boat,” he said into the silence. “She would not go.”
“We know,” Elladan placed Arwen's hand onto her chest, letting go for the last time. “We tried as well.”
Erestor knelt next to him and placed a single flower on Arwen's hand. Elladan had never seen its like. “A moonflower for the Evenstar,” Erestor murmured as he pressed his hand to hers and bowed his head for a moment. Elladan remembered when this strange eastern elf had come to Imladris, wild and strange and so different than the elves Elladan and Elrohir had known. Erestor's people moved with the sands, had different tales and myths, and had known nothing of the evils of Morgoth and his people. They were the wild tribes of the east, having never heard the Valar's call to go to Aman.
Elladan also remembered how Círdan had wept when he said that Erestor and his people were not welcome on the boats that left from the Grey Havens. Círdan had no answer as to why Erestor and his people were not allowed to cross the sea with the other elves of Arda, only that a message had come from Valinor saying that only those elves of western Arda were allowed such passage and that was all. Erestor had been silent after that message, pale and withdrawn for days.
Elladan also remembered how devastated Lord Glorfindel had been as well. Not that they were to know such things. Lord Glorfindel had been Bound in Gondolin in the First Age and his husband Lord Ecthelion awaited him in Aman to be reunited again.
“There is one more boat waiting for you,” Erestor told them as true night fell. The magic of Lothlórien was fading fast. Soon there would be human homesteads on the borders of that fair land and year by year the great trees would be cut down and used for timber or firewood or weapons of war. The time of the elves was over and all Elladan could see was a great Darkness hovering at the edge of the world, growing deeper and deeper with every year turned.
“I do not know if we should go,” Elladan finally spoke the words out loud. “What place would there be for us there?”
Erestor sat back, his hands linked in his lap just as Elladan remembered from years as his student. “Your parents are waiting, your grandmother, their families, all of them wait for you to return.”
“You are our family as well,” Elrohir said. Elladan looked over at his twin, his other half, seeing him red-eyed and pale. “Why should we be forced to leave you too?”
Erestor smiled at that, a small twist of a thing, and shook his head. “I am one of the Firstborn of this world,” he said. “One way or another my people and yours will meet again in Aman. It may just take me a little longer, is all.”
“You should have been allowed to go,” Elrohir said. “You love –”
“Elrohir,” Elladan stopped him.
Erestor let out a breath, turning his face away. “You are not wrong,” he said to the dark that surrounded them. “But such things were not to be. Perhaps in another life...” But he shook his head and looked back to them, dry eyed and somber. “Things are moving far faster than I think even your father could foresee. Whatever grace Aragorn and Arwen created for the world will fade, far sooner than any of us would wish.”
Elladan glanced over at his twin in surprise and then back at Erestor. “What do you mean?”
Erestor's fingers tapped against his robe, one after the other. “Aragorn's rule was long and peaceful. A glorious, lush summer that has lingered longer than most men can remember. No one of the race of Men now lives that remembers the dark times when the Shadow was so prominent in the world.”
“The Shadow is gone,” Elrohir shook his head. “It was destroyed.”
“Was it?” Erestor sighed, gaze gone to that far off place when he was seeing beyond what most even in Imladris could see. Only their father had been able to match Erestor's gaze. “When Frodo destroyed the One Ring he destroyed the last physical manifestation of Sauron in this world. But evil was written into this world by Morgoth himself, before it was even made, if your people's myths are to be believed. That is a Shadow that cannot be wiped out, not even with the brightest light.” He focused back on them. “It is that Shadow that I now see starting to creep its way back into Gondor and into all the realms of Men. The dwarves of Erebor and the Glittering Caves are fading almost as fast as we are. Little news comes from the Shire at all these days. Men are spreading over the land faster and further than anyone can contain.”
“You think...”
“I think,” Erestor said, “that Eldarion's reign will not be as sweet as Aragorn's. That he will face a rise of war and strife that will test him in ways that not even I can name.”
“Then was it all for nothing?” Elladan curled his hands into fists. “Everything that we fought for, everything that we have lost...was it for nothing?”
“No,” Erestor's smile was sad once more. “It was not.”
“Is there anything that can be done?”
“Not anymore,” Erestor's hands came together in his lap. “Not now.”
Elladan felt his shoulders fall. He looked over at Arwen's still form, seeing the way the very edges of her body had started to shine. “What...”
“You are right,” his sister's voice said. Elladan sat up straight, glancing around but Arwen's lips did not move. “There is nothing that can be done now, little father,” she said. Elladan saw Erestor's head bow. “But to change it all there will be a price.”
Erestor's head came up. “I will pay it.”
“Wait – no –”
“It is not for you to pay, little father.” A soft wind moved through the glade. Elladan shivered at the brush of fingers against his cheek. “Brother,” Arwen said, soft as a feather. He wanted to reach for her. Wanted to take her hand. But his whole body was frozen in place. “You and Elrohir have always been the bravest of us all. Will you both be brave for me once more?”
“Yes,” Elladan whispered.
“Yes,” Elrohir echoed.
“Then go with our little father,” Arwen's voice said. “He will take you to where you need to go. And there you must make the choice.”
“What choice?”
“Between here and there,” her voice was fading, as was the touch on his cheek. “Between one side of time and the other. You have until the night of the dark moon. That is all the grace I can give you.”
And then she was gone.
Elladan looked at his twin, but Elrohir had his eyes shut tight and his fingers pressed to his cheek. Then he looked to Erestor, who had tears in his eyes, but they did not fall. “What does she mean?”
“An Evenstar she is,” Erestor said without answering. “We must go and hurry. We cannot wait.”
“Wait – go where? What does she mean?”
No matter how they asked, Erestor would not explain, not as he led them out of the fading forests of Lothlórien, down the river Anduin, then across the wild lands of Rhûn, where long rolling fields of hay was all that they could see. Further and further east they went until the rolling green and gold grasses were gone and all that remained were dunes of sand that shifted under their feet. It was there Erestor taught them the way to dress, how to wrap their heads and faces to keep out the sting of the worst of the sands. How to balance on the edge of a ridge of sand, how the stars wheeled wild and brighter than anything Elladan could remember above them.
They walked and walked until on the night of the dark moon came and a great chasm appeared before them.
Erestor, now in the robes and trappings of his people, his hair bound up in braids and twisted with ribbons and charms for protection, the same ones that adorned Elladan and Elrohir's hair, marking them as family, as kin at last, stepped forward, his worn boots stopping just shy of that dark edge.
“Once,” he said into the silence of the desert. “There was a lake that went on for as far as our eyes could see. Once, our peoples wandered away from that lush land, following a path in the stars only our elders saw. But when we came back to that great water all the rest of our people were gone and we were alone.”
Elladan felt Elrohir take his hand. They linked their fingers together.
“Once,” Erestor continued, “we stayed at the edges of that great water until the world shifted and turned strange. We scattered then, going North and East and South and West. By the time my people came back to the same path that had led them away the great water was gone and all that remained was this,” he looked down into the chasm. “The Great Dark.”
Elladan felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
“Once,” Erestor whispered into the silence that had started to spread out around them. “It was said that this is where life Began. This dark chasm has always been in my visions, in my dreams. I had thought it was my lot to leap in, to take this plunge. I was wrong.”
He turned then and looked at them. The light of the stars above them were blazing with a Light Elladan could not name. “It is your choice now,” Erestor told them. “Stay and watch the world as it turns under the hands of men who can not See. Or leap, and change it all.”
Elladan could not speak. All he could do was hang onto Elrohir's hand and look into the dark abyss beyond Erestor, their little father, the elf who had helped raise them after their mother had left their fair shores. The same elf who had brushed Arwen's hair and told them all bedtime stories when their father could not rise from bed from the grief that weighed him down.
“We do not want to lose you,” Elladan croaked out. “If we do this, you will be lost to us, won't you?”
“I do not know,” Erestor told them. Then he smiled. “You will always be my little dune mice, never fear. In this world or wherever you find yourself, that will never change. I swear it.”
Elladan threw himself at Erestor then, as did Elrohir. They hugged him close, not able to say the words they wanted but knew that Erestor heard them all the same. Then Elladan let him go and stepped up to the edge of the chasm, feeling Elrohir do the same.
“I love you, little father,” Elladan managed to say to the vast darkness before him. “We always will.”
Then they leaped and darkness was all they knew.
Elladan had expected to wake up in many places and in many times. Perhaps at Cuiviénen, when their people had first woke under the stars their Lady had set into the sky. Perhaps in Beleriand during the War of Wrath, when Morgoth battled against the Valar and their peoples, trying to drag the world down into destruction with him.
Elladan had not expected to wake up in a warm bed in a well appointed room with a banked fire in the hearth. He had not expected the fine clothes that lay in his closets or the fine gems that seemed to be strewn everywhere.
Elladan had absolutely not expected to see bright red hair hanging loose down his back when he looked into a mirror. His own pale face looked back at him, but his eyes were a shade of blue of their little father's, and he was far more fair than he could remember ever being.
So when someone bellowed, “Caranthir I am going to thump you ,” he really should not have been as surprised as he was. That was when Elrohir – Amras , a little voice in the back of his head told him – burst into the room and Elladan – Amrod that same little voice told him – knew just how far they had leaped.
I love you , the voice of their little father whispered into their ears as Elrohir – Amras – clung onto Elladan's – Amrod's – shoulders as tight as he could. I always will.
“What is going on? How...how did we...”
“A chance to change the world,” Amrod said, clutching his twin back just as hard. “We have one chance. We cannot waste it.”
It was the only Oath he meant to make.