Title: The Fate of Her Family
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Rating: T
Length: 238 words
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: N/A
Summary: Arwen had known that mortals died of illness. She had just always avoided thinking about the possibility that she would one day be sitting and waiting to see if her family member would live or die.



Arwen had watched her father treat mortals for years in his halls, but she always avoided thinking of how this could one day be the fate of her family.

She had avoided it even when illness had struck the city during their rule, and Faramir had kept his family away from it, writing to Aragorn and Arwen and urging them – “on the record as advice from your Steward, if that’s what it takes” – to not let their children out to mingle in case they caught it. She had wanted to laugh at the idea of it taking her son or daughters, but one look at Aragorn’s face had kept her from doing so.

Instead she had busied herself in the Halls of Healing, trying to nurse some of the ill. When spring had finally come, and Faramir and Éowyn had come to the city with their children again, she had pushed it from her mind.

But now her granddaughter was on the bed in front of her.

She watched Aragorn trying everything he could to save her, Eldarion pacing next to him. She saw Elboron’s pinched face as he brought news to them of the city and how it fared – too close to how his own mother had died, she thought, it’s too hard for him to watch his friend’s daughter suffer the same, he’s so much like Faramir was – and she couldn’t avoid thinking about it.