Remember How I Love You (Sequel to 'Through Fire and Water')

Dreams and Mistakes

I emerge from the bedroom, closing the door most of the way but leaving it a

little ajar. Nemir has raided my kitchen cupboards and produced something

passable as breakfast, bread and fruit. Ana and I never really keep the

cupboards well stocked. It's a habit left over from our years of wandering. If

we need food we can get meals from the Royal kitchen.

I sit down at the table and pick at the

food.

"If she's not back in the next 2 hours I'll

have father send out scouts to look for her" I say and Nemir nods.

"What will you tell the children?" she asks

and I struggle to find an answer.

"I... I guess I'll tell them the truth; that

I don't know where their mother is but that we're looking"

"Legolas you can't tell them that! They're

just kids! Thalion's only 2"

"Would you rather I lied to them? I can't

do that. The only thing I could say was that their mother has had to go away

for a while without even saying goodbye. After the fight we had they'd think

she didn't love them. At least if I tell them the truth I don't have to come up

with excuses as to why mummy's not home"

"They won't understand"

"Neither do I"

Aragorn's P.O.V.

I jerk awake, alarmed by the sensation of

falling. The next thing I know is the painful sensation of my body colliding

with the stone floor. I sit on the floor, blinking and looking around me as I

try to wake up fully. Light is beginning to pour through the windows and the

royal apartment is perfectly still in the early morning quiet as the castle

wakes up. Eventually I put 2 and 2 together and work out that I fell asleep in

my chair, only to be rudely awoken now by falling out of it.

I reason that I still have a couple of

hours before I have to get up and so I rise to my feet, rubbing my bruised and

stiff body, and head off to bed. When I enter the bedroom it's not quite dark,

a little light spills around the curtains and lights up the sleeping figure of

my wife in the bed. She looks beautiful beyond imagining, just as she always

has. The day I met her I believed it impossible

for me to love anyone more than I did her then. A lot has happened since, I

have discovered how love can come in different forms and is always different,

but my heart still belongs to Arwen, perhaps more than ever before.

I slip into the bed beside her and close my

eyes. I'm starting to drift off when I feel gentle fingers twisting round mine.