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Banners slapped in the wind over the front gates of Minas Tirith. Its white walls had been fixed in the years following the war, they soared towards the heavens, a shining beacon of the prosperity of men in this new age. Bright cloudless powder blue skies above, with endless fields below.
But like all clear days, deep in the roots of the wind slept plants was the life of thousands that sometimes pushed through the loamy soil and up to touch the air when it rained. Days when the breeze was sharp and smelled almost metallic, were those in the city forced to remember.
Ever present, nagging thoughts that slunk into the shadows when it was sunny, and crept back out when lights were dim. No one was immune to this hurt that ran like blood in the veins. That held your hand when you walked alone, and whispered ever so quietly beside your head at night.
.
Aragorn woke with a start, breathing sharp and ragged, as if he had been running for miles. Running on no sleep with his legs, strong as they were, aching for rest. As if no time had passed.
He stumbled to the washbasin, almost dropping the ewer onto the floor. Slowly waking he splashed the cool water on his face, but instead of washing away the anxiety, his hands felt sticky and hot. Horrified, he looked down to find them coated with something and in the dim light, there was no mistaking the blood pouring from his hands. He scrubbed at them, desperately looking for a wound, but there was none.
When he woke again, Aragorn was in the forest. Feeling the hard ground below him, a starless sky above he exhaled slowly. It was silent other than the gentle sound of a nearby river. He went to look to see if the blood still covered his hands, but they were not his own. In his right hand he was gripping a sword, in his left, a horn cloven in two. He looked around, and he was not sitting in between trees. What surrounded him was water, a roiling, churning river, great and powerful. Dropping the horn and the sword he grabbed the sides of the boat he was in, cool and smooth to the touch. Grey sides that bowed and swooped gently as if they have been crafted with all the time in the world. The roaring in his ears grew loud and Aragorn tipped over the falls, water filling his lungs and forcing him below the surface.
The third time Aragon woke he was in the forest again, ruins in his field of vision, old worn white stones piled high. Someone was speaking to him, or was it his own voice echoing from far away. It sounded so familiar, the words being spoken, but they were thin on the wind. Something sweet pricked at his nostrils and rapidly became overwhelming. The smell of death, around him, a sea of lifeless bodies strewn about, and as he looked down he saw that he was not in armor nor the clothes he wore as a ranger, but no, these were from the day of his coronation. Beautiful and ornate, but stately. He fell slowly to his knees, the bodies seeming to multiply as his vision swam, lifting his hands to block out the vision before him, he watched them fill with blood, deeper in color than the night sky.
.
It had been years, summers that fell into long falls and quiet, lonely winters. But winter begets spring after spring after spring, and so the months passed. Things had not been perfect, but compared to months in the wild, orc raids, fighting tooth and nail in torrential rains as an unforgiving moon peered down, things were good.
Grey now dominated Aragorn’s chestnut hair, and time slowed. Though every year, around the same time. He would wake, after stumbling through lucid dream after dream, and wash his hands for days. The voices that followed him had begun to become clearer, but he still could not place them. The bodies had changed, but they still remained faceless. His clothing often altered, but it still did not fit. The rest of the months, his dreams were quiet if he had them at all.
.
One night, in the far future from the war, he walked through the echoing halls to keep his mind from drifting toward sleep. His footfalls were quiet, and the shadows deep.
Slipping outside, a cool breeze meandered its way through the tall buildings and sloping ramps. Aragorn for a moment paused, leaning against the parapet, and looking into the far distance. The moon was high in the sky, and reflected mightily off the white stone. And, like a distant star, he could make out the barest hint of Osgiliath. It had been rebuilt, as the Minas Tirith had been. A small pearl at the edge of the great expanse of the Anduin.
Aragorn remembered when he had taken Faramir to the freshly built city, he wanted it to be a gift of new beginnings, but the younger man had wept bitterly, for here was where so much had come undone. Eventually he had come round, but sometimes, about once a year; Eowyn had confided in the king, sometimes Faramir would leave for the tallest tower and only return after days. She had never asked him, and he had never offered, and that’s the way they kept it.
So it was in this way of thinking that Aragorn noticed a pinprick of light, in the distance, a single fire shining brightly at the tallest point of the old city. The dome of stars. Aragorn knew that there was rarely anyone up there, and concluded that it must be Faramir. Why though, did he lock himself away so tightly. As the night continued on, Aragorn made his way back to where he slept when he was too anxious or agitated to bother Arwen. Falling onto the small bed, he eventually fell into disrupted slumber.
Perhaps it was seeing that tiny pinprick of light across the fields where, no doubt, a sleepless man watched the hours pass, but Aragorn’s dreams were in much sharper focus and as he tipped, in that small boat down the falls, the next time he woke, he was on a river.
The swiftly moving current swept him along, past dense wild forests that bowed slightly as he passed, tall cliffs, and then, wide open fields. Open fields that spread wide sprawling arms up toward the sky. Vast and empty, tall grass waving gently like an endless sea. In the distance we’re great peaks that cut across the horizon, a jagged scar upon the waves.
When Aragorn awoke, he was still floating, and was not surrounded by the dead. There was no smell of decay. No blood. It was silent, but for the lapping of tiny waves. The mists were thick, but suddenly from out of the gloom, white walls rose up. Years and desertion had caused them to become a shadow of their former glory, worn down by season after endless season.
The boat carried him gently under the city, where it bumped along the gravel of the shore.
Aragorn stepped out of the boat and onto firm grounds, so different this was than his usual spiral into the stench of battle and feeling of death. Here it was quiet.
Here there was not even the smell of cold stone or wet marsh grass. A noise startled him, turning he ducked behind a crumbling pillar and slowly peered around.
The noise was the sound of gravel being kicked back, as boots had skidded back. The owner of the boots had fallen to the ground, seemingly after pulling a boat onto the shoreline.
Aragorn’s heart stopped beating and the air caught in his lungs, the person on the shoreline was a very much younger Faramir. His hair matted and slightly dirty, his armor only half on. Faramir who was staring, glassy and wild eyed at the boat he had drawn forward, one hand over his mouth in a muffled shout.
It was then, that those creeping memories that years and war and careful removal so one could get on with their life quietly took hold. So familiar had those shores been, the soft touch of smooth wood boats, the ruins. Like a quiet daydream, where the sun filtering though calls you to a home you hadn’t seen in years. Like waking from a deep slumber, Aragorn remembered days that he had locked away so very deeply.
The terror in blue eyes that he turned from, the shrill call of voices, the sound of many feet running through trees. Fire in his lungs and ice in his veins as he came cresting over a hill. Black blood pouring over his hands, sweat and grime in his eyes, blinding flashes of light, and pain, a terrible amount of pain.
And then silence.
Silence as his eyes fell on Boromir.
Silence as loud and wide as the river when he saw Legolas finally lower his bow.
Silence as deep as the mines of Moria where in the darkness lay the bones of Gimli’s people that he mourned.
Boromir was speaking, but his words were an echo. His skin sallow and greying. His breath but a shallow whisper on Aragorn’s face. His body shuddering with an effort to stay alive. Aragorn could not speak, his throat shut tightly against this moment he knew had already passed.
But he must, as if reading a book or play he recited his lines as if they had been memorized for just this day. He felt the warmth beneath him start to dwindle as the air between them cool. Aragorn pressed his lips to the other man’s forehead, and opened his eyes.
.
It was daybreak, the sun cresting in the distance of the edge of the world. A deep hue that pushed up into the stars, and waning moon. Deep in the rooms and buildings of Minas Tirith, the surviving and the living began their ordinary days. And as they walked down sloping steps and meandering roads, they passed a tiny building. Hidden in the shade, where their great and powerful king wept hot blinding tears for a time he had longed to forget.