Work Text:
Dilthen tinu
She is trapped in time, but he is ever changing.
A boy when he first comes to Rivendell, fisting his mother’s skirts on the steps of Imladris. Her father has fostered many heirs to Gondor and Arnor. She has seen lost kings roaming the halls of lore, watched them from the shadows as they reached for the Blade that was Broken only to pull back at the last moment. None would dare to claim Narsil, the sword of Elendil, and neither does Gilraen’s son. He is no different than those who came before. That is what she tells herself in the beginning.
The next time she sees him, he is a young man of 20, his steps light but strong through the woods of the Hidden Valley. He sings the Lay of Lúthien, and it is so beautiful that she forgets the promise she made never to reveal herself to the one they call Aragorn. Their eyes catch amongst the white birches, the sunlight haloing his dark hair in gold.
Tinúviel, he calls her, and in that moment, she has found her Beren.
***
Thirty years pass before she sees him again, a blink in a long life, but it changes him greatly. He comes to Lothlórien as a grown man with broad shoulders and stubbled cheeks and eyes that no longer sparkle but burn. She feels that clear blue gaze on her when no one is looking, and dares her own stolen glances. Her grandmother has dressed him in silver and white, the fine clothes of her people, and gifted him a circlet with a bright gem. He looks all the world to her as an elven lord, but there is an earthiness to his strong jaw that makes her hands tremble.
“Mirror of Lúthien,” he says when she approaches him at the banquet, hugging the edge of the dance floor. “You are as fair as the evening stars.”
Arwen bows, her knees faintly shaking. “Son of Arathorn. It pleases me to see you well.”
The canopy shines with moonlight that catches on strings of crystals dipped in Lady Galadriel’s magic. The silk moths and the twilight starlings flutter in the trees. The tables overflow with platters of food, a summer bounty to honor the solstice, cups of wine and Miruvor cordial that tastes of honey and flowers. A small band of players start up a Sindar jig. “Do you dance, my Lord?”
His steps are fluid and controlled as he leads her across the floor. She can feel his fingertips through her dress, the heat of his palm on her waist. He does not hold her tightly, but his touch grows strangely heavy. Sinking into her bones, softening parts of her she has never noticed before. Her stomach, her chest, the tops of her thighs. Her cheeks pinken; she blames the Miruvor when he notices. They talk through the steps, polite questions, the kind of idle chatter that has no business making her feel so giddy. He is staying for a fortnight. She can hardly contain herself.
“Drink,” he hands her a silver goblet of water – it tastes like Elanor petals. “I am not so old as you, but I feel my years more. If I dance any longer, I’ll wear my feet to stumps.”
She laughs. Again. She can’t seem to stop. “I thought I saw some gray woven through your curls.”
She pulls one on impulse, tucked behind his ear. A dark, soft spring. Something passes over his face and settles behind his eyes. It makes her perk up, a nameless, perennial ache building low in her stomach. She steps closer on instinct.
“Arwen…”
Yes. Say my name. It sounds best on a Man’s tongue.
Aragorn jerks back abruptly, and it is only then she realizes she is leaning in.
“My Lady,” he says in a low, hard whisper. A short bow, and then he is gone.
***
She does not see him for the rest of his stay, but not for lack of effort. At first she keeps her search private, taking walks because she is “bored” and stopping by the council meetings “to see if she is needed.” She does not ask after him until the day before he is set to leave, and only at nightfall.
“Atar,” she finds her father on the banks of the River Celebrant. “Has the son of Gondor returned home?”
Her father sees right through her, as he always has.
“Aragorn is King in title and spirit. He is as good a man as one can find, and I love him as I love all of my children. But he is not for you, Arwen. You are the Evenstar, the jewel of my crown and daughter of Rivendell. You belong with your people, and Estel…” he says Aragorn’s second name with fondness and sorrow. In his eyes, she can see the boy her father raised fading before him. “A great doom awaits him. His trial has yet to come. Until he has proven his worth and earned his right, he shall take no wife, and you shall settle for no love so brief as a mortal one.”
You terrible fool, she wants to scream. Can you not see that I love him already?
But Arwen says nothing. She knows in that moment that Aragorn is gone, likely returned to the wilds, his sword already wet with orc blood. She can hear it in her father’s voice. Hers are not the first ears he has spoken these words to.
***
Another year passes, and for once in her long life, Arwen feels it. She returns to Rivendell in the spring when Lothlórien goes green and the Mallorn trees finally shed their golden winter leaves. Her heart has aged beyond her body, and she arrives at the steps of the House of Elrond weary and withdrawn.
“Will you not eat, seldë?”
“I am not hungry.”
“Drink, then?”
She accepts the tea her father offers, but only so he will quit fussing and leave her to her book. Reading is all she has the strength for these days. Arwen comforts herself with the poetry of Rúmil and the tales of the Noldor and, of course, the tragedy of Beren and Lúthien. I am not alone in my heartbreak. I am not the first elf who has loved what she is fated to lose.
Sometimes she takes walks, hoping in vain to find him hidden amongst the birches. Months come and go. Her hair is past her knees. She wakes one morning after a night of terrible dreaming and suddenly she can’t bear to stay in the House of Elrond any longer. The stable boys call after her as she kicks Asfaloth past the gates and out into the moorlands.
She rides for days. Crosses the Ford of Bruinen then drives west to the Trollshaws. Strange calls follow her through the night; the sun rises to the beat of Asfaloth’s hooves and her hard breaths. She finally brings them to a stop at the banks of a jagged creek that feeds from the Hoarwell. The poor horse is weak with thirst and Arwen is hardly faring better. Her palms are rough from gripping the reins and she has scratches on her face and neck from the trees.
She bends at the edge of the creek. She is washing her cheeks when he speaks.
“Arwen?”
A shriek and a splash. Asfaloth brays. She spits and wipes the hair from her eyes, staring up from where she has fallen into the water. He arches a black brow.
“….H-hello, Aragorn.”
***
His cabin is nestled in Nan Tornaeth under the cover of dense green.
“How long have you been here? I thought rangers did not dwell in one place for long.”
“Only a few nights. A pack of orcs made camp a day’s ride from here, in the gorges,” he smirks at her face. “Be at ease. They headed south this morning.”
Aragorn hangs her wet riding cloak across the mantle and sets to lighting a fire. Arwen sits in a rickety chair at a small table by the door. She looks around. The cabin is old, belonging to the ruins of the Rhudaur. This land has survived the rise and fall of many kings. Who lived here before? What have these wooden walls seen? She pulls the musty blanket he gave her tight around her shoulders and tucks her feet.
“You are a long way from Imladris and Lórien, my Lady. What brings you so far west?”
You, she thinks, then blushes deeply. Aragorn looks up, his eyes catching on the color. He blinks and turns back to the fire.
“Are you well?” She blurts, the words jumping high, betraying her emotion. Aragorn turns back to her. The hunger in his eyes gives way to confusion.
“Well?”
“You left,” She shifts the blanket on her shoulders. “That is – in Lórien, last summer. I had been led to believe you were due another night, but when I asked for you…” Now she is the one to look away. “I had thought, since you did not bid me goodbye, that perhaps your haste was a sign of some ill. You left so suddenly, gave no word—”
A tear slips free of her lashes. Arwen swipes at her cheek, mildly mortified. “I’m sorry. Ha. I suppose I am still rather hurt by it.”
Aragorn says nothing, though his eyes search her face intently. Arwen balls the blanket beneath her chin but refuses to fold under his stare. Let him see what she feels. Let him answer her.
“Forgive me, Arwen. I was needed elsewhere. I meant you no offense.”
The words are spoken low and clear, but there is strain behind them she can’t parse out. Another tear falls. Where was he needed, and by whom? A faceless jealousy rears ugly inside of her, feelings that are not known to elf-kind and yet he makes them bloom in her. She covets. She wants. He is not only mortal, but a man in purest form. His elven robes and clean curls are gone. His jaw is dark with hair. He wears leather and stained linens, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and she can see how every tendon and muscle move beneath the skin of his forearms, the sweat and the dirt. His hair hangs in a tangle and the laces of his tunic have come undone, bearing the top of his chest. She cannot look away. She has not seen skin like this before.
“Does your heart belong to another?”
Aragorn goes still.
“I thought – when we danced. I liked it, and I thought—”
“I am forbade such things.”
She licks her lips. “And if you weren’t?”
He stands from his crouch before the fire, and suddenly she is small, craning her neck to hold his gaze as he steps closer.
“Arwen.” Her name holds weight on his tongue. “You are to me like a sister.”
He is not wrong, but the way he says it makes her stomach drop. Not the same. He does not feel the same. “Is that all I am to you?”
He frowns deep. “You speak as if it were a trifling thing.”
“Because a brother is not all you are to me,” she barrels on. “I have brothers, twofold, and I do not feel for them what I feel for you.”
Aragorn’s hands twitch at his sides. He takes the smallest step back.
“You do not want me,” she continues. “I see now that is true.” The tears run freely, but they do not make her feel weak. Her pain is defiant, and he will bear witness to the weight of the heartbreak she carries. “I do not begrudge you what you do not feel. I just – I need you to tell me why.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If your heart were not barred, what kind of woman would command it? How would she be? What sort of talents and temper would she possess, and how would they differ from mine?”
“Arwen.”
“I simply wish to know, so that I not be left to wonder! I understand heartbreak, but uncertainty is a plague on my mind.”
“This is madness,” he mutters under breath. He moves, and it is agitated. “I – am not going to sit here and tell you all the reasons I do not love you—”
“Then you admit you do not.”
“You are spinning me in circles, muinthel.”
Her spine snaps at the word sister. She feels a fierce anger untether itself in her, and suddenly she is standing, their chests nearly touching. He smells of salt and pine and manhood, and it makes her head pound.
“If you do not love me, then tell me why. If you do not want me, then say it.”
Aragorn looks vaguely devastated.
“I need to hear you speak the words. Tell me you do not want me. Tell me I am alone is this and put me out of my misery.”
“Arwen.”
“Say it, Aragorn. Say it, hanar.”
A strange light catches in his eyes at the word brother. His breathing is heavy.
“Tell me you do not want me, that you never have.”
“Don’t—”
“Tell me you do not want me!”
“I WANT YOU!”
He has never raised his voice at her. It should terrify her, but Arwen’s chest swells with triumph. Aragorn tears away, hands in his hair. He hisses when she reaches for him.
“You are cruel,” he whispers on a broken laugh, rubbing his eyes. “I never would have thought it of you.”
“Aragorn, look at me.” She reaches for him again. “You can have me. Do you understand? I am already yours.”
She palms his shoulder and his cheek bulges, but he does not pull away. Her fingers move to his neck. “I think of it often. What it would be like with you. I – I have never been with another, man or elf. It is not something often spoken of. Will you show me? Teach me what I must do?”
He catches her by the wrist when she tries to touch his face. His grip is hard, a bit too hard. She tests it on instinct, and shivers when it tightens.
“You are cruel,” he whispers again.
She pushes up on tiptoes to kiss him.
It happens quickly. His hand on her nape, the world spinning sharply. Her feet tangle as her back hits the wall. His palm is on her throat now, cupping, fingers pressing into the sides. She can breathe, but there is pressure. It sets her whole body alight.
“Enough,” he all but growls. Their faces are close, noses nearly touching. “Don’t you see? I am – we are not for each other.”
“Why not?” She palms his chest, delights in the heat and hardness of it. “My heart is yours. It always has been. Ever since our eyes met and I heard you singing Lúthien’s song. I can be your elf-maid.”
He grips her harder. His eyes take on a dangerous edge.
“You do not know of what you speak, my Lady. What you ask for…it is not kind. It is not gentle. Not for a man like me.”
“I do not need it to be.” I do not want it gentle.
He grimaces, then sneers. “You would not say such things if you knew my mind. If you saw how I see you.”
Her heart is a hummingbird. “How do you see me?”
“For the taking.”
A fire in his eyes, brighter than the Evenstar. He still has her by the neck, and he has moved closer, until they are touching from toe to chest. She has nowhere to go.
“Do you know what a ranger does? He hunts. Through long days and longer nights. He does not sleep. He does not eat. He has no purpose but tracking the steps of his prey.”
His thigh presses against her, slowly parting her legs.
“Every footprint. Every thread caught on twisted bark, the taste of a handprint left behind. There is nothing I cannot find once I’ve caught the scent of it.”
There is a taunting edge to his voice. He is trying to scare her. Arwen smothers her breaths, her pulse racing. She knows he can feel it beating in her neck.
“Something cold takes over the closer I get. Everything else becomes secondary. I have one task. Nothing will sway me from it…” His other hand is on her hip. His fingers twist in her skirts and pull. “Not even my own reason.”
Arwen presses forward, until the pressure on her throat grows distressing. She whimpers and Aragorn’s eyes flash. His thigh drives up, catching her at the apex of her legs, and the face she makes pulls a curse from his lips.
“Stop this,” he grits through his teeth, even as his nose skims the underside of her jaw. “Say the words and stop this now, before neither of us can.”
“Ui,” No. “Please, I want—”
His mouth crashes down on hers.
Arwen gasps, but the sound is quickly swallowed up. And then she is swallowed, devoured openly. Tongue, teeth, his canines pressing into the flesh of her lower lip until it stings. She grabs him blindly, hands and fingers frantic for purchase in his tunic, his shoulders, the curls at his nape. He still has her by the throat and uses the hold to arrange her to his liking. Chin up, jaw wide, open for his pleasure.
Blood rushes loud behind her ears, but she begins to make out fevered words whispered against her tongue. Things like sweet and better and soft. Words spoken in Sindarin, words she has heard a thousand times but never like this.
Yes.
More.
Give me…
Mine.
“Take it,” she breathes as his mouth latches onto the spot behind her ear. “Whatever you want.”
Something inside of his snaps. Aragorn gathers her skirts and rucks them past her hips, his hand driving clean between her legs to cup her. Arwen chokes. It feels…she has no words. The heat and pressure of his touch make her knees buckle.
Her back leaves the wall and suddenly she is falling, bottom to the edge of the cot in the corner. It creaks, wooden frame wobbling, the hay of the mattress poking free of its burlap cover.
Arwen shudders as she is spread long, her knees hooked over his forearms, held wide open. Her small clothes are tugged sharply to the side; she feels cold air and hot breath on her soaked skin. A belated pang of fear steals through her, and Aragorn sees it. His eyes go dark and hard.
“Foolish thing,” he says so low she realizes he is speaking to himself. “I told you, but you wouldn’t listen…”
Another twinge of fear. He is staring at her there. Heavy-lidded, a tension high up on his jaw, but his lips are loosely parted. At once dazed and focused. Intent, but indulgent.
Arwen tries to close her legs. His hold is steel.
“Stop,” he demands, and softer—“Stay.”
She doesn’t understand, still trying to make sense of what he means to do when he bends forward and puts his mouth on her. The feeling is so foreign, the shock of what he is doing, that for a moment she goes completely still. Breath caught, eyes wide. Her mind contracts sharply.
And then she is only feeling. Her chest collapses on a desperate mewl. Her knees jerk high. His tongue traces the very heart of her in a long, thorough swipe, and it is—
It is…
“Perfect,” he croons into the next taste. “You are perfect, dilthen tinu.”
Little star. She whines low, caught up in the way he tastes her, the scrape of his stubble on her skin, his callouses leaving marks on her thighs. Firm, parting licks, satisfied hums, more words. Wet. Little. Made for it. Arwen hiccups. Aragorn sounds different. Not himself, or wholly himself – perhaps for the first time in his life.
Tension gathers at the base of her spine. Imperceptible at first, until it isn’t. She leans into the feeling, as strange as all the others he teases forth, and now that it has her attention, she can think of nothing else. More. Too much. It scares her with its insistence, and when Aragorn’s eyes flash up, there is a knowing light behind all the black.
She mouths the softest, “stop.”
He doesn’t.
Arwen relaxes. She didn’t mean it, not really, though she couldn’t be sure until she tried. She wants him to give him. Wants him in control. There is a game to be played here, but she doesn’t know the rules. He has to teach her, even if it’s hard. He cannot stop now – no matter what he wants. No matter what she wants. They have set loose something between them that will not be denied.
“That’s it,” he rasps, fingers moving where his tongue was. “Look at you.”
“Please,” she chokes, tucking her hips in a useless bid to hold back this thing that is happening—“Aragorn, I…”
Hot. She is so hot. His touch is inside of her now, an easy slip through tight folds – one finger, then two – pumping at the very well of her need. Arwen jerks, kicking the air, and now she really is frightened. “No, not – please, I can’t!”
“You can.” His tone brooks no objection. “Let it happen, darling.”
It’s too much, she wants to say. She is not even sure what it is. Only that it consumes and terrifies, relentless as it builds inside of her, reducing every fiber of her being to blinding sensation. She can’t breathe. Her mind is a white haze. He’d said she was made for this, but how could that be? If anything, she feels unmade, taken apart at the tightest seams.
His pace increases, falters, picks up again without rhythm. The inconsistency of it may be deliberate, but only he can know its pattern, and the not knowing leaves her wrecked. He puts his tongue back into it, a dual assault she has no hope of resisting. She barrels towards an unknown edge and cries out.
“Aragorn—”
The deepest press. His tongue swirls. “Come, muinthel.”
It happens in an instant, and yet it feels like she has always been suspended here, grasping at more, an incomplete shape of herself until this moment. Come. The word is fitting. She was nearly finished, almost whole, but this part was absent. Something to tie her together, a long missing piece – only now slotted into place.
He is talking again, but she can’t hear. The light of the Valar is deafening in her veins. Her ears are still ringing when Aragorn rears back and tears his tunic over his head.
He is beautiful, but in no way she knows. Not smooth, not soft, not fair – the opposite of each. Hard muscles and rough skin, burnished from the elements, dotted with scars. She runs shaking fingers down his torso as he unlaces the ties of his leather trousers.
“What happens now?” There is more, she is sure of it.
He reaches forward, takes the bust of her gown, and tears it clean down the middle.
Arwen sucks in a sharp breath, eyes gone wide as her breasts spill free. Aragorn palms one mound solidly, squeezing almost to pain, then hooks a finger beneath the hem of her twisted smallclothes and pulls them down her legs.
“Now?” He leans back on his knees, pushing at his trousers. “Now, I show you how a man takes a woman.”
She stares openly as he grips himself, long and hard, thick and big. Panic cuts through her fading high. Green though she is, Arwen understands the basics of coupling. She cannot imagine that part of himself fitting inside any part of her.
His hand comes down above her as he lines up, the blunt head notched against her opening. She makes a small sound, still sensitive, still slick. The first press forward meets no resistance. Her heart feels ready to beat straight out of her chest. It lurches as he slides deeper.
“Wait, wait—”
Aragorn ignores her, and in a single sharp thrust, he is seated to the hilt. Arwen’s chest cracks on a high, broken wail. Too big. Too big. She reels from the onslaught and thrashes to get away.
“Hush,” he bends his face to her neck and sucks lightly at her pulse. His hands find her wrists and pin them beside her ears. “Breathe. Breathe through the pain, love.”
She gulps air, hips cramping, eyes blurry with tears. He nuzzles the hinge of her jaw and whispers sweet comforts in Sindarin. The panic in her chest loosens some, and she sags incrementally beneath him. Their chins brush, pulling a sigh from her stinging throat. It is all the permission he needs.
The first slide is heavy, the second still burns. She breathes through the third and feels some more of the tension give. He kisses her temple, her eyelids, the tip of her nose. He licks at the tears that spill down her cheeks. A bite to her chin; he starts to move faster.
“Talk to me, muinthel. Tell me how it feels.”
Her bottom lip trembles, confused by the sticky sweet feeling in the pit of her stomach every time he calls her sister. A rightness, a terrible wrong. Her legs wrap tentatively around his waist as another tear falls.
“It hurts.”
“Does it.”
She catches the ghost of his smile before he kisses her deeply.
It does hurt, but there is more. One hand slips beneath her, presses to the small of her back. Her hips tilt just slightly, but it lets him go deeper, and the new angle is—
“Oh.”
Aragorn laughs against her tongue, licking the roof of her mouth when her jaw falls wide. The moment his other hand releases her, Arwen grabs at him blindly, fingers digging into his biceps, nails leaving little crescents in his skin. He pumps into her again, and the world is nothing but starlight.
She did not expect it to be so messy. Their skin is slippery with sweat wherever they touch, hair sticking to temples, spit dripping on her tongue. The scent of him heavy in the air. She likes it, how rich and heady it is, another reminder he is a man. She runs her fingers through his hair and tightens around him, pulling a curse through his teeth. His next thrust hits her high up, a burst of pain she latches onto. Another kind of good.
“Precious girl. I feel you. You take me well, don’t you?”
“I’m frightened,” she says. It’s not quite the truth, but it will have to do. Will she ever have words for this? Is there a way to describe how helpless she feels, how gloriously defenseless? She has no walls to hold back all this emotion, this beautifully aching inside. He tried to warn her, but this cannot be described. Her pleasure overwhelms her with its violence. It is so good even as it tears her apart.
“You should be,” he rasps, hand closing around her throat. “You should be terrified of what I feel for you.”
A warning sounds in her head. Now she sees him – the hunter of whom he spoke. That cold focus, his sights set on some glory she doesn’t understand, dauntless in his pursuit. He slides a hand between their bodies, touching her where they meet. He finds a spot that makes her back bow.
“Should have run when I gave you the chance. Should have never come here at all. Now it’s too late. I’ve tasted you. I know your scent. I would find you anywhere.”
He’s moving faster now, harder. He was right – this is not kind. The hand on her throat slides into her hair, pulling sharp, until her head snaps back and her neck strains. Bared to him. She feels tongue and teeth.
“Do this every day. Keep you like this, always.”
“Yes—”
“In this bed, just waiting for it. Full of me.”
Full of him. Full of him. Full of him. The words are a tattoo in her ears. The tension coils again.
“You are always lovely,” his voice is so low it rumbles. “My little star, my beloved sister. Always so fair, perfection of a woman. But I think I like you best this way…”
He dips his head and takes the tip of her ear between his canines. Arwen’s world sucks in around her.
“Ruined,” Aragorn snarls as the first tremors begin. “Ruined by me.”
***
She falls asleep after and does not wake until well past nightfall.
He sits in the chair, pulled up to the lone window at the foot of the bed. He has put his shirt back on, but it gapes to his navel, and his trousers are still undone. A long pipe dangles from his bottom lip, puffs of smoke curling to the rafters. It smells of strong weed and embers.
He does not turn when she sits up and gathers the blankets around her. Only once she is standing before him, pink-cheeked and expectant, does he meet her stare.
“May I try some?”
The question makes him smirk, but he shakes his head. “You won’t like it.”
His knees are spread. He stiffens when she settles onto one.
“How long?” She asks, and hopes he understands her meaning.
“I saw you through the trees, and I knew.”
“Why did you never tell me? Why put us through this torment?”
“I spoke with your father. With my father. That is what Elrond has always been to me.” He takes a long drag, brows knit. She watches the smoke rings float out the window and dissipate in the dark. “He told me—”
“I know what he told you.”
She turns in his lap. “He may lead my house, but he does not rule my heart. It is mine to give, to whomever I choose.”
“You choose death, then.”
“I choose this,” she palms her chest, then touches his. “I choose a love worthy of legend. I choose the son of kings. I choose a mortal life – and everything that comes with it.”
The emotion that plays across his face is too layered for her to make sense of. Smoke between them, and his eyes staring through it. His hand closes around her hip, soft at first, then firmer. Presses over her womb like it’s looking for something. Slides forward, palming the top of her thigh, kneading skin, going deeper. Her breath catches as his fingers start to wander.
“Everything, hm?”