Immortalitui // Faramir 🥀

Chapter Thirty-Nine - Dreams

Word Count: 2,166 words. 

Warnings: None. 

Travel was not something that Arathiel had ever found difficulty with. Aragorn had expressed his discomfort for it several times, the strain on his back from sleeping on the ground, the tension that rises being surrounded by the same company. He particularly complained about his inability to tell how many days it had been.

Arathiel had never cared to know the time, nor how long it had been from one day to another. Now, time was all that she could think about. She thought about how many hours there was between the sun rising and falling, and how many times it had done that since she left Rohan. Arathiel thought about how long it would take to get to the borders of Mordor, and if she could find Frodo and Sam when she got there. More than that, the she-elf couldn't stop wondering how long she would last alongside darkness, and how much light she had left in her mind before Sauron took over.

"I do not have to take you," Halbrand told her, appearing by her side.

Sat with a fire in front of her, Arathiel bent her knees to her chest, resting her arms over them. He had followed her from Rohan, as though he was a stowaway on a captain's ship.

"Then leave me alone."

He watched the side of her face, but the she-elf refused to meet his gaze. "You will return to me willingly, Arathiel."

"I will not."

Halbrand rose his hand, brushing a strand from her sweating skin. "I love you."

"I despise you." It was the first time she had truly meant it.

When she slept, her mind returned to Rivendell, gaze on the sparkling water. Arathiel did not dream, and so to be where she was, the she-elf knew that she had been summoned.

"Is something wrong?" she posed, seated in the chair of her home – the home that Elrond had made for her.

"We are leaving," he told her, approaching from behind to place a comforting hand on his sister's shoulder.

"Leaving?" Arathiel countered, standing abruptly. "To go where?"

"We are to return to the Undying Lands."

In shock, Arathiel shook her head. "You cannot leave, Elrond," she argued. "Evil is still in Middle-Earth and it will need the aid of elves."

"It is too dangerous to stay," he tried, but every argument he made was done with only half his heart. "You are coming with us."

She deflated. "I cannot."

"I will not leave you behind."

"And I will not abandon the people of Middle-Earth..." she trailed, noting his brother's downcast expression. "...I would not be let return, not with the darkness inside of me."

"Returning would eradicate the darkness."

"Is that what you think?" Arathiel attempted, taking a step closer. "The darkness is a part of me that you cannot get rid of by ignoring it."

"I will not leave you to die!"

Elrond was never angry; at least Arathiel had never seen him do anything in anger in a long time. At that moment, he was absolutely fuming; at her, at himself, at the world.

"I am sorry," Arathiel tried, "but there is nothing you can say that will convince me to go with you."

"And what of after the darkness?" Elrond posed. "What of when the battle is over, and evil is gone? What then? Will you return home with me?"