(An optional sequel to "Decision Final")
Arwen’s hand tightened on her brother’s arm, the grip surprisingly strong despite the waning of her spirit. “Promise me you will go.”
“Hush, thêl dithen,” Elladan said soothingly, pressing a warm palm to her forehead as though she were once again a fretful child, easily pacified by an elder brother’s touch. “You need not worry for me.”
“But you are sworn to eternity, ‘Adan,” she whispered, tears standing in her clouded eyes. “Will you linger here alone forever? To fade and be forgotten?”
Elladan’s own tears were long since dry and he smiled slightly, the stab of pain in his chest now a welcome friend, a promise of oblivion. “I will be well.”
“And ‘Rohir?”
A surge of warmth flooded Elladan’s heart, as he thought of his beloved twin, safe and content with his bond mate. “’Roh will want for nothing. Orophin will see to that.”
“He will want for you.”
Elladan did not answer, instead taking his sister’s now icy hands in his own. “Shall I sing for you, Tinu? The old songs?”
Arwen made one last effort, her fading spirit railing against the senselessness of it all. “You would walk away from two millennia’s loving for the sake of what, ‘Adan? The foolish error of a pride-sick adolescent? Why, tôren? Why?”
Unexpected wetness touched Elladan’s cheek, much to his surprise, and he realized that he could still cry, after all. But his words, when they came, were hopeless and cold.
“I was not the one who walked away.”