Singing of the Daffodils

The White Tree of Gondor stood strongly in the darkness. Solitary but not abandoned. Not engulfed in flames the way Pippin had seen it through the Palantir. It was radiant now, showered by silver streaks of the crescent moon.

Aragorn stepped outside the citadel and beheld his Lady Arwen standing with her back to him. She could have been mistaken for a statue were it not for her soft features and the flowing fabrics of her night garments. She stood tall, unmoving, without the slightest tremor or shivering against the chill evening but Aragorn closed the distance at once and draped his robe around her shoulders. His lady did not move or react to her beloved as his presence was always with her, in some form or other. Yet her eyes were pondering and her gaze far from the citadel courtyard.

Grief suddenly clenched Aragorn's heart. Several such moons had passed since the war's ending and the return of the hobbits to the Shire. Those evil times were slipping away quietly now, day by day; but Arwen had never looked so distraught.

Aragorn frowned. With her by his side, he had rebuilt Gondor and brought his people back from the brink of devastation. Houses were restored, trees replanted. The Pelennor Fields—once bare and sandy—had regained a green hue, their grass so thick that even the hobbits would have envied him his opulent meadow.

His frown deepened as he sensed her growing sorrow, for he always felt her heart. Tonight something had happened to make his most beloved one mourn. His hand ran tentatively along the elfin lady's shoulder. Arwen remained motionless.

"He suffers still," her soft, light voice floated amidst the wind. Another would not have heard it, would have missed its desperation, but the king missed nothing. Aragorn stiffened, his mind clenching with Arwen's emotion as it wandered to the one they both cared for so deeply.

"Frodo." Aragorn's voice was as light as his queen's. But it was not questioning. Today was… for Eru's sake, he thought, would the hobbit never be given rest?

"The spider's poison is still in his blood," her voice was even quieter. "It was never washed away. In the tower...Frodo awakened in the orcs' clutches, and still he carried it along to…Mordor."

Aragorn now could feel her tremble.

"He might not have showed the signs when he was treated in Ithilien but it still can kill him."

Arwen's eyes fluttered briefly. "Now Shelob comes to him in his nightmares."

She had felt the hobbit's terror, the spell that had just attacked him. No longer could she hide her own agony from her husband as she fought an urge to clamp her hands on her ears, to shut out the torment in Frodo's cries that only she could feel in her heart.

"Arwen…" Aragorn's arm tightened around her.

"No, my dearest," she whispered, her voice now trembling with her body. "I must listen. Listen to it, suffer it for him. For that is the least I can do for the Ring-bearer."

"You gave him the white gem to reduce his pains."

Aragorn's voice was drowned by pained howls echoing through her accepting mind and sometimes, even worse for her, the whimpers that flooded Arwen's ears.

"She's come to relive the sting," Arwen went on dazedly as if Aragorn had not spoken.

And the poison spurted into his blood vessels; it felt oddly like thousands of icy prickles had stabbed his body from the inside. Hurting his tissues, bones, skin, passing inside his throat, freezing his lungs and heart, freezing him.

But Frodo knew this was just a nightmare. He was not frozen. The spider was not wrapping him into some kind of a packet. He still could scream for the umpteenth time that his throat felt scratchy. And when he thought he could not cry again, a name was gruffly beckoned.

Sam.

Tears ran unbidden down Arwen's cheeks. The agony was dire, even for her, even from a thousand stones away. How would it feel for such a damaged little body like Frodo's? Hold on to the gem, Frodo, prayed Arwen. Hold on to it, sweet-one, the sun will soon rise and you will be freed of the pain.

"He may die," Arwen sobbed openly now, hanging on tightly to Aragorn. "His body might fail him no matter how strong his will."

Aragorn loved Frodo but his concern was for his wife. There was nothing he could do to stop the torment upon the Halfling. "Arwen."

But he could save his beloved for she was here with him. "Arwen," his voice was strained. "You must detach yourself."

"No!" She would not let Frodo fight alone. "He can't even breathe, Aragorn. But he… he lives to feel that he can't breathe. It's so cruel! The Dark Lord's minions, they torture him so. Even now."

Aragorn said nothing, simply gripping Arwen's arms tightly, propping her up, the both of them awaiting the sun.

Quietly, together, full of sorrow.

Until at some point Arwen's body turned limp, sending Aragorn into a fear he had never known, not from any orc or enemy's weapon. He stared up into the dark sky, the sun yet to come into sight. Dawn had barely broken but its light calmed his ragged nerves as he beheld a weak smile on Arwen's beautiful, tilted-up face.

"Sam has come," she said, relief gushing through every single pore of her body.

~ * ~

AN: Beta by Celandine Goodbody