Warning: very AU in most parts  

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It was the yuletide of winter when she was born.

Elrond and Celebrian, the Lord and Lady of the hidden valley of Imladris, had been awaiting the moment ever since they had realised that they had conceived a daughter. They loved their twin sons, but those two were troublemakers. Besides, their boys had now grown up and led their own lives, although they never strayed far from their parents anyway. The parents, bereft of the joy of rearing a child, hoped for the presence of a daughter in their lives, to spoil and nurture and shape into a beautiful, dainty lady who found it a joy to be at her parents’ sides at all times. It was a selfish thought, they realised, but one that they could not – and would not – avoid.

They just had not expected that their little girl would like to be born early, instead of in the spring as were most Elven children. Just after the large breakfast held in the banquet hall of the Last Homely House, Celebrian informed her worried spouse that their daughter was about to be born. That, of course, made the realm erupt in happy chaos, save for its lord and two sons, who were anguished instead. Elladan and Elrohir, for the first time since their births, were awfully quiet and still, sitting huddled to each other by the closed – and locked – door of the room in which their mother was struggling with the delivery of their soon-to-be sister. Their father were prowling before them, as if a mother bear guarding her den (a notion they would have spoken aloud were it not for the stressful circumstance). Glorfindel, the guardian of the hidden valley and its royalty, was seated beside the twins on the wooden bench, his eyes closed and a concentrating look on his face. Neither people there save for himself knew what he was doing, with the golden glow – brighter than normal – surrounding his form and making his molten-gold locks stand out even more.

A female pained cry. The Peredhil winced. Another pained cry. The twins whimpered. Another. They hugged each other tightly as if to a lifeline. And another, weaker one. Elrond dropped sitting on their other side in a very un-Elven-like fashion.

And at last, the healthy squalling of a newborn baby was heard.

Shaking slightly, Elrond rose to his feet. The twins released their death-grip on each other, but did not follow the lead of their father. Glorfindel was undisturbed, although a small smile now played on his lips.

The door crieked open after some moments, revealing Erestor, with his blood-stained healer apron still donned on, who was holding a white-lenan bundle in his arms. He smiled at Elrond and proffered the bundle to him. “What would you name her? Celebrian wanted to name her Arwen,” he said softly to the Lord of Imladris, who was presently marvelling at the sated, sleeping face of his newborn daughter.

“Then Arwen she shall be called,” the son of the Mariner replied firmly. Erestor’s smile grew. It faded slightly, though, when Elrond transvered his gaze to the opal bracelet the other ellon always wore on his right hand, which emitted a strong silver glow. Not many knew why Erestor always wore the slightly-feminine-looking piece of jewelry, especially while the ellon did not otherwise indulge himself in wearing bejewelled clothes or accessories. But Elrond – and a select few others – knew better about the history and true powers of the innocent-looking bracelet, which had ever adorned the hand of Melian the Maia herself. And if Erestor had resorted to calling upon the powers within the large, smooth ring of gemstone—

“How is my wife?” he asked, his voice strained. His twin sons looked up from cooing at their new sibling with identical looks of surprise and horror. They had apparently also forgotten about their mother in the joy of welcoming their sister into their midst.

The part-healer, part-caretaker, part-seneschal, part-warrior and former adventurer just shook his head and sighed. On Elrond’s deathly glare, though, he elaborated, “I have put her into a healing sleep, my friend. She lost much blood. The maids assisting me are currently cleaning her up and tending to her needs. I have instructed them to coax her to drink some blood-replenishing potion. They are healers and midwives themselves, so Celebrian should be fine with them.” He skirted the true purpose of Elrond’s question, they all knew, yet, oddly, no one was willing to press the matter further. The lady of the realm was presently fine, well cared for, and in a (bracelet-induced, no doubt) healing sleep; that was what they needed to know, and they made themselves content with it.

After all, there was a newborn elleth to tend to and fawn over now.

Glorfindel opened his eyes when the Peredhil had left the room, the newest addition to their family with them (Erestor having forbidden them to see Celebrian right away, despite much coaxing and cajoling and puppy-dog looks). The glow surrounding his form diminished, yet it lingered in his cornflower-blue eyes, lighting up the already-bright orbs even more. They pointed unerringly at Erestor’s deep blue-grey ones and gazed into the latter, but elicited no reaction from the multitasking Sinda; not even a flinch. A knowing, guilty smile mirrored each other on their faces. The family needed not know what had transpired behind the closed door. Celebrian would be present that night, holding her newborn daughter and showing the tiny Elfling to the partygoers: the gift to lighten the dark days of late winter to come. No one should know about what had led to that happy occasion.

Melyanna they would call the little elleth in Quenya – the High Tongue, or so people named it –, after the fashion of Elrond’s Gondolin heritage. A dear gift indeed for all concerned, a dear gift to reward Celebrian’s pains and toils and struggles.

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It was the yuletide of winter when she met him.

More than half a millennium had lapsed since that fateful day, the day Celebrian was torn away from her kin and the land of Middle-Earth, the land of her birth and upbringing. Until now, her family and friends still bemoaned it, and regretted why they had not been enough guards to escort her through the Hithaeglir, not enough precautional plans— Still, she was lost now to those who stubbornly remained in Middle-Earth, and people reacted differently to a life without her warming presence, radiant hair, and even more radiant eyes and smile. Elladan and Elrohir threw themselves into hunting down and killing orcs, the monstrous race which their mother’s torturers had belonged to. Arwen fled to Lothlórien, unable to endure the memory-evoking sites, items and moments in Imladris which linked her to her mother. Glorfindel and Erestor closed up to the world, thinking that they were to blame for the horrors she had been forced to go through. But neither were as bereft and desolate as Elrond, as he was forced to watch his children and friends fall into darkness and left him, as he was forced to stay in his realm and give support to his people whilst he had none for himself.

Years – decades, centuries – had passed by, crawling and flying at once, then something unexpected happened: Isildur’s bloodline was nearly estinguished on the premature death of Arathorn son of Arador, if not for the survival of his young wife and two-year-old son. The two were then taken under Elrond’s wing, violating the norm of fosterling maintained by the Dúnedain and the Lord of Imladris ever since the fall of the Northern Kingdom, and cheer slowly crept back into the souls of everyone in the hidden valley. The twins stopped hunting orcs long enough every time to fawn over their foster brother, Glorfindel and Erestor delighted on the chance to mother-hen another child, and Elrond awoke from his dark stupor to rain both mother and child with fatherly attention. But Arwen was tucked away in the realm of her grandparents east of the Hithaeglir, aware of the newest addition in the family and happy for everyone, but unwilling to forsake her ethereal, beautiful, quiet forest sanctuary for the hubbub of her waterlocked home.

But they met at last, inevitably. Arwen was twirling and singing softly among the patches of niphrodel and elanor on Ceren Amroth, celebrating the yuletide by herself before her time was consumed by the celebrations (her birthday, and the midwinter festivity itself), when he came by and halted, mesmerised by the beauty of her form and her voice. He called out a name in a tentative, wavering soft tone, and she aborted her beatific solitary dance. “Tinuviel?”

She gazed into his eyes and smiled, showing her amusement. “I am not she,” she said with a tinge of laughter in her otherwise-impassive pronouncement. But inside, her heart was fluttering with a sudden, strange emotion. The intruder was not an Elf, her instinct told her, yet he looked like one – like an Elf-lord, like Glorfindel or Erestor or her grandfather and father. He appeared and behaved kingly in his own way… and more, he was besotted with her. What kind of elleth did not preen on the attention of such a handsome being? She certainly did not fall into that category, as she was fighting off a creeping blush with all her might, while maintaining a cool, composed outlook befitting her rank in front of a stranger. Was this what her mother had described to her a long time ago when she had met her father? Then she had been right: The feeling could not be described by words!

Her nervousness melted away a little when the stranger – a Half-Elf like herself, perhaps, though with too much Mannish blood in him – looked down at his boots and blushed openly, fidgeting. It was a relief that the intruder also perceived this chanced meeting as an awkward situation. He had mistaken her for someone else! That made her selfish part swell with pride, still, because she had not really believed her family and friends of her parents when they told her about her vivid likeness to Lady Luthien Tinuviel, the daughter of King Elu Thingol and Queen Melian – her second namesake. Now she had a prove, and what a delightful confirmation it was!

But if he was a Man, should she really be falling in love with him? That would have broken her father’s heart, if she were to choose the life of a mortal like his twin brother had. But then she would have really been the imitation of her likeness: forsaking her immortality for the sake of a deep love towards a Secondborn spouse. She would have a chance to go down in history as a great lady who carved her own grandure outside the shadow of her long-time role model…

“Who are you, stranger?” she asked him, and a note of dread suddenly presented itself in her soul, a foreboding of some kind.

“I was called Estel, but my true name is Aragorn son of Arathorn, the heir of Isildur and the thrones of Gondor and Arnor,” he said proudly, his eyes shining, but finished his declaration with a hint of embarrassment, as he went back to looking at his boots.

Arwen’s heart plummeted. Her earlier excitement waned as quickly as it had waxed. Estel. Her brothers’ letters lately had been filled with stories of a fosterling named Estel, who their father had sheltered alongside his mother since he had only been two years old. Could this be he? But if so, she could not possibly let herself love him other than as a sister to a brother! The twins, alongside everyone in Imladris, had practically adopted him. It would have seemed like a terrible inbreeding relationship if she pursued her selfish desire.

Yet all the same, her soul’s urging won over her mind’s reasoning, and they ended up talking gaily on the flet adorning the flower-strewn green hill. The invisible gap between them lessened and lessened, as did the physical distance keeping them apart. Late in the afternoon, while the darkness was once again settling in around them, they were practically glued to each other. In such a short time, their souls had found peace and completion in each other, alongside anchoring and support. Talks of a future together were avoided on unspoken agreement, but they knew what they would do: Somehow, they would find a way that they be joined in marriage.

Years passed – decades, counted four times – over and Arwen yet stayed in the realm of the Dreamflower, her grandparents’. But now she left a measure of her youthfulness behind, replacing it with the thoughtfulness of full adulthood, despite her being only two-and-a-half millennia. People around her noticed it, but no one was willing to breech her silence on the matter which occupied her mind and changed her attitude. Estel – no, Aragorn, she reminded herself – passed the Golden Woods the second time then, weary and grumpy from his long, fruitless hunting of a creature named Gollum. He looked just like any other road-weary vagabonds; dirty, gloomy, smelly, cranky—

But his eyes were the same liquid grey which seemed to pierce one’s hidden thoughts and penetrate the soul. They were still the eyes of an Elf-lord – or a Man-king – and they still lit up upon beholding her fair form, although they then dimmed in self-consciousness and lowered to the ground. He recognised her, did not want to hurt her in any way, and he yet looked for her approval; he loved her, still, after all those years.

They met up again late that day at Ceren Amroth, catching up on decades of separation and soothing each other’s troubles; or, more precisely, Arwen was doing the soothing and Aragorn was clearing up his conscience over his every problem – which one of them happened to be his romantic relation with her.

It was just a day after midwinter festivals, and the time for sunlight was getting longer and longer. The couple watched the sun set on the western horizon, yet soon their attention was drawn to the east. “He frightens me, the one we do not name,” Arwen confessed in a whisper as she unconsciously buried deeper into the Dúnadan’s embrace – her Dúnadan. Aragorn’s arms around her tightened, but he said nothing for a moment.

“I shun the allure of the East, my love,” he murmured into her delicately-pointed ear. “But I am afraid that you must also turn away from the West if you would be with me.”

Arwen’s heart clenched. It was the notion she had been pondering for many a year… but now she had a way to fulfil all her desires. She kept her silence and answered his inquiry with a kiss to his lips. Yes, she loved him with all her being, and yes, she would love to be married with him and bear his children… and yes, she loved her father also, and her mother, and the call of the Undying Lands was too great…

She was a dear gift to all, including herself, and she would gladly strive to maintain it, for the sake of all.

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It was the yuletide of winter when she was reborn.

Elrond waited on the quayside of Avalonnë, his eyes dull. Celebrian snuggled in his arms, trying to sooth him in vain. Her eyes, too, were dull, and for the same cause. Arwen, their only daughter, their youngest and most beloved child (and even said child’s twin brothers knew that, with a measure of playful envy, as they, too, loved her very much), had married Aragorn son of Arathorn almost a century ago, the year Elrond and the other Ring-Bearers departed Middle-Earth forever in search of the peace and healing of the Blessed Realm. She married a mortal, albeit from the line of Elros, Elrond’s twin brother who had chosen mortality in the end of the First Age. She married a mortal… She would like to be a mortal also, then, to be joined again with her spouse in death, just like Luthien had done a long time ago. Oh why, why, why… Why had they indulged her with so many tales and praises about her likeness to Luthien? Then she would not have that much desire to follow on the footsteps of her role model, perhaps?

But, as the long-awaited ship neared the harbour, the ship which most likely bore the Peredhil twins and Celeborn – and perhaps Legolas and his Dwarven friend, too –, astonishment swept the morose parents’ faces. A lone woman stood with perfect ease near the front tip of the ship, smiling beatifically, enjoying the sway of the vessel caused by the gentle waves.

Then their eyes locked, and the shocked parents forwent any dignity, yelping, “Arwen!”

Their daughter was there, coming home to them. Their daughter was not lost. Their dear, dear gift from Eru.