Agarwaen

Part Sixteen
~What Lies Beneath~

He would be complaining about the cold if he were here. Haldir exhaled softly, his breath releasing a long stream of smoke into the air. The rain last night had made the afternoon damp and glistening. His shoulders and back ached; and his ribs hadn’t forgiven him for the hours he’d been riding either, feeling as though a flaming brand had been pressed into them. But he refused to halt even for an hour’s rest though it was dangerous to ride after dark like this. Lintedal kept tripping over rocks and branches hidden underfoot. Finally, when the path started to shrink and wind sharply uphill, she stopped and did not go any further.

Reticent to stop looking, the marchwarden tried to coax her forward but she refused to budge.

“Come, hiril bain. Not much farther tonight I promise.”

Lintedal laid her ears back stubbornly. Flattery would get her nowhere. That path ahead was unsure even in daylight and she could hear the rough weariness in her master’s voice. Surely he needed rest just like any other creature though he would not admit it even to her. But they wouldn’t find what they were looking for in the dark anyway.

He wasn’t going to win this battle against an animal nearly ten times his weight. However, upon dismounting, he almost wished he’d stayed in the saddle because his legs nearly gave way under him. He had to grab Lintedal’s neck to keep from crumpling gracelessly in the grass. It had been a long fruitless day and he was more drained from the hopelessness of it than the length. He had already searched up the bridge and thoroughly scoured the defile searching for hints of Aragorn’s presence. The most he had found was a dead log on the upper edge. A body had lain beside it for a short time but no longer.

He had to keep looking. They couldn’t take him too far. Fedorian would keep him where he felt safe and secure. He would find them.

In the morning.

Cinders soared into the night air from crackling pinecones. Little enough dry wood remained in the small grove he had chosen for his camp. Lintedal rested quiet nearby, untethered or hobbled. He knew she would stay where she could keep an eye on him. Huddled in his cloak but unaware of the cold, Haldir scanned the night, his saber ever close to hand.

The long calm of winter had settled over the forest. Away in the dark, he listened to a deer stripping away bark from some ancient poplar. It reminded him of his own hunger and after digging around in his satchel, he found what he had brought from Fabor’s stores though the innkeeper had been ill-pleased to part with his fresh bread and white cheese. A wineskin also lay at the bottom of his satchel though he hadn’t had cause to use it yet. It contained a much more precious liquid than wine however that Haldir had brought with him as a gift for Lord Elrond from the Lord and Lady. It might come in useful. He set most of his meal aside. Estel would undoubtedly be hungry if and when he found him.

“When.” Not “if.” Never ”if.”

Haldir tilted his head back, easing his shoulders into the pine’s rough embrace and ignoring the twinge in his back. Stars speckled the sky so brightly they eclipsed the tiny sliver of moon. But they brought him little comfort as a sudden, terrible vision filled his vision, imagination and memory working against him.

Aragorn’s bloodied, half-naked body dropped onto dead leaves, the shine of starlight glittering in his glassy eyes.

The marchwarden ran both hands over his face and through his hair, catching his fingers in the braids. He would find him alive if he had to kill himself to do it. Shadows filled all the hollows and dells, and blotted the starlight as though to mock his determination.

Across the camp a shadow deeper than the others shifted just out of the firelight’s reach. Pulled abruptly from his thoughts, Haldir looked up. His saber hissed out of its sheath.

“Show yourself. I know you’re there.”

Arenath approached like a wary dog seeking warmth. He looked pale and his eyes darted towards the saber in his friend’s hands. “Glad I am to see you whole, my friend. I feared for you when those men—” he dropped his words when Haldir’s face hardened.

He looked away from Arenath, biting the inside of his cheek. “You saw?”

“I tried to help you. I swear I would never have—” The slighter elf, watching the saber lower, grew a little more confident and stepped fully into the flamelight, his hair glinting as he cast back his grey cloak. “I would never have left you, Haldir.”

“I do not blame you.”

“No. I knew you wouldn’t. Are your wounds—?”

“Where is Estel?”

Arenath looked as though Haldir had slapped him. His lips moved but no sound came out. A log erupted in showering sparks and he flinched back, gathering the edges of his cloak in his fists. “That…that is his name? The dark-haired—? The one I met on the bridge.”

“Yes.” Haldir did not take his eyes off the smaller elf.

Arenath let out a shuddering sigh and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his gaze was almost reproachful. “You couldn’t leave it alone, could you, Haldir? You just couldn’t. You had to get involved.”

“I was involved the second I let you two leave Lothlórien,” Haldir’s jaw had gone rigid. “I am responsible. Now, where have you taken him?”

But Arenath was staring at Haldir, his eyes narrowed not in malice but in curiosity. “How is it that he has earned your loyalty? When last I knew you, you carried the game as far as Fedorian. There wasn’t any blood you wouldn’t spill. Even a man’s. That’s what you—we—did.” Recollection flittered over his face. “That boy… the one who was there when we rescued you from the Gondorians before, the one you said was an elf-friend…”

“Don’t, Arenath. He has nothing to do with this.”

“What was his name?”

Haldir sighed. He didn’t need to think to remember. “Tergon.”

“Even he,” Arenath stepped around the fire so he was directly facing his former comrade in arms. “Even he was not spared. He had earned your loyalty, your friendship and what did you do to him?”

Haldir closed his eyes. His onetime friend was rubbing his face in things he had worked long and hard to forget. And failed.

Arenath answered for him. “You killed him. Same as the others.”

“It has been a long time since you knew me. I have changed.”

“Have you? I wonder. Fedorian told me he found a man, one of those that attacked you yesterday. He had been stabbed before. With a knife. In the shoulder.” Arenath was not being cruel on purpose but he had spent too many years in Fedorian’s blunt company. “You still carry that scar on your shoulder don’t you? From Tergon’s knife.”

“And how many scars do you carry, Arenath? How many bodies have you left behind you since leaving Lothlórien?” Driven to retaliation, Haldir thrust the darkness of their shared pasts right back in his compatriot’s face, knowing it would sting. “How many have you heard expel their last bloody breaths off the battlefield?”

Arenath blanched but his face had lost none of its rigidity. “I have done my duty by my commanding officer.”

“Who has lost all that remained of his senses!”

The other elf’s head cocked calculatingly. “Tergon looks like your Estel. Is that what you’re trying to do? Make amends?” When Haldir said nothing, he took a pace forward, new understanding filling his deceptively youthful face. “You didn’t tell him, did you? He doesn’t know anything about any of this.”

“There was nothing to tell.”

“No? He will find out. Fedorian will tell him. Once he knows, Haldir, what do you think he will do? He will not even want to be anywhere near you. He will never call you ‘friend’ again.” Honest puzzlement was written in the smaller elf’s wide, uncomprehending eyes. “What makes you think otherwise?”

It was the question Haldir had agonized over ever since befriending the human ranger. He couldn’t forgive himself for what had happened to Tergon. How could he expect Aragorn to understand let alone forgive him when he couldn’t even forgive himself? But he couldn’t answer these questions. What mattered first and foremost was getting Aragorn back alive. He could figure out those answers after that.

“I care enough for his well-being to try to save him even if it means he will never look on me again. What have you done with him?”

“Are you asking me to betray him?” Haldir knew who he meant and it wasn’t Estel. It was almost a warning. Arenath had moved back again.

“I am asking you to save the life of one you know is guiltless of any crime save his blood.”

Arenath continued backing away, shaking his head, his legs tensing as though to flee. His face had lost its color again. Haldir had asked of him the one thing he had sworn he would never do. He knew what terrible things he had done since leaving his homeland; he knew what Fedorian intended to do with the boy now in his grasp. But even now certain bonds were hard chains to break and Fedorian’s hold over him had always been particularly strong.

Haldir grabbed his arm to forestall any flight and wrenched him back around. “Then why come to me if you will not help me?”

The elf fought him briefly before realizing he could not break the desperate, steel clasp. He stopped struggling but kept his face directed at the earthen floor, unwilling to raise his eyes. “Because I am…I am tired. I am so tired, Haldir.”

“Then help me. For once, do something you can be proud of.”

“I can’t—”

Haldir overrode him, his voice carrying more than a little authority in it. Arenath was a soldier. He would listen to orders if to nothing else. “Tell me where you have taken him, Arenath.”

Arenath told him. Haldir loosened his grip and the smaller elf darted free like a sparrow escaping the falcon’s claws.

“Will he live?” Haldir called after him.

Arenath paused at the very brink of the light, his back still facing his former friend.

“Is he strong?”

---------

In fact, Aragorn had come painfully to his senses less than a quarter of an hour ago. His back pulsed angrily, still feeling the searing strokes of the chain. Every time he shifted, trying futilely to get comfortable, the bark scraped up against the pinched and torn skin. At least no bones were broken. That he could feel anyway. If the chains had snapped his ribs, which they easily could have done, he’d likely be choking in his own blood right now. At it stood, his feet almost dangled above the ground forcing him to exert even more pressure on his protesting shoulders.

His dark hair fell across his eyes as he let his head loll against his chest. The naked skin, that bare of dark bruises anyway, was a strange mottled blue color. He didn’t think that was a good thing but he was too tired and cold to remember why.

If he kept focusing all his energy on the grass blades between his boots, it made the pain easier. Trying to take his mind off his miserable discomfort, he consoled himself with the thought that at least Brenn was free; Carlóme had gotten him away. They’d all gotten away.

Did they even know he was gone? Would they search for him as they had Brenn? For a fleeting moment, despair tugged at him, whispering deathly in his ear that he would never be found—not in a way that mattered anyway. Like a glass of cold water, it filled his chest and he let the agony on his back scream for a bit. Pain was better than despair. It meant he was still alive and the others, if they were coming for him, had more time. He wouldn’t be the first to give in. Lifting his eyes, he saw Arenath enter camp.

He didn’t know where the elf had gone though he felt a little safer knowing the other was near. He didn’t care to know where Fedorian was though he sensed the murderous one was still nearby. The manacles’ bloody ends bumped against his chest when he moved again. They had been draped around his neck.

The look Arenath cast his way might have been guilty but Aragorn wasn’t sure for the elf quickly set about ignoring him and clearing a place in the grass for a fire. The flames sputtered in the damp then a pinecone caught and quickened. With a few more additions, it began to burn steadily. The tendrils of warmth did not stretch around the bole of the tree; and Aragorn urgently tried to suppress his violent shuddering. He didn’t want to draw any undue attention if he could help it. But the clinking of his chains was easily audible to elven ears. Arenath glanced up from the flames then started to rise with a sigh.

“Do not touch him.”

The younger elf jerked back reflexively as Fedorian prowled over the small fire from wherever he had been sitting in the darkness.

After Arenath had sat back down Fedorian stood statue-still for a long time. He stared into the fire and Aragorn stared at his back, almost holding his breath. The tall elf was so still for so long that when he actually did move Aragorn started. But the elf didn’t come towards him just yet. Instead, he dropped into a low crouch and flipped over his cloak which lay close to the tree, revealing Aragorn’s broadsword and pack, the only items he’d had on him at his capture.

He examined the weapon critically in the faint light. “A soldier is defined by the state of his weapon. What does this say of you I wonder?” He tapped the shorn tip against the ranger’s chest. When Aragorn answered nothing, he tossed the blade aside and picked up a simple, well-rubbed pouch which the man had worn on a leather string around his neck, close to his skin.

The bright glow of a serviceberry flower drifted into his palm when he upended it. Aragorn closed his eyes. A spark appeared in his mind. She had worn such a playful smile that day when she’d plucked the first summer flower from Elrond’s gardens and placed it in his hair. He chased after her and shook the full cherry boughs until her silvery laughter rang. The petals whirling like snowflakes, caught in her dark twilight tresses.

Fedorian threw the flower in the fire. He met the human’s glare with calm. “You cannot actually kill me with your stare, adan. No matter how you might wish to.”

Aragorn held his breath when the elf extracted a small object wrapped delicately in a worn cloth. It was the only other dear thing in the pouch.

“What is this?” Fedorian unwound the oilcloth and tilted it slightly so the small thing rolled into his palm.

Twin pairs of verdant eyes winked in the faint light; one serpent entwined around a silver band devoured the other which upheld a crown of flowers. The Galadhel studied it for a very long time, turning the ring over and over between his fingers. The snakes’ eyes seemed to absorb rather than reflect light and shone summer-green even when he held it away from the flames.

Aragorn’s mind raced. He knew Haldir had fought in the Last Alliance. It stood to reason Fedorian had too. It stood to reason he would also recognize the Ring of Barahir that Elendil had worn to war and bequeathed to his eldest before his death, that heirloom of Kings given long ago in the First Age as a sign of friendship between men and elves. The irony was not lost on the human.

“How were you blinded?”

The pouch crumpled as Fedorian’s long fingers closed around it.

Having satisfactorily distracted the elf, Aragorn met the blazing eyes unflinching when the elf stalked up to within a foot of him. He would not forget the sight of the petals blackening. He had forgotten his hunger, his thirst and the pain in his back. With his eyes he pointedly traced the white scar that could barely be seen above the elf’s fair brow.

“Were you struck with a blade? Was that it?”

Arenath’s head snapped up, his mouth slightly agape at the gall of the human.

Fedorian stared at him as though scarce able to believe his captive’s insolence. Slowly his hands relaxed and he dropped Barahir. The calm smile returned to his face though it was a little more strained than before. His eyes were still hard and revealing as glass.

“How is it that Haldir could put up with such intrusive questioning?”

“He tells me I’m nosy,” Aragorn’s tone was light and bantering but his eyes remained hard, grey pools. Only the faint tremor in his arms betrayed the bone-deep cold and fear that was gnawing at him.

Aragorn automatically flinched when the elf raised his hand. Icy fingers ran lightly over the raised bump on the back of his head.

“A blade fractured my skull. Not unlike the blow I gave you though you fared better…”
Fedorian pressed inward until the wound throbbed again and soft purple spots slid over Aragorn’s vision. “You will find, boy, that I am not as patient as Haldir is.”

“He would never do what you have done!” Aragorn hissed, blinking his vision clear and trying to ignore his heaving stomach.

“No. He is worse. I do not hide what I am. I do not conceal the truth from those I consider allies,” the dead eyes flitted briefly over to Arenath. “I do not turn on my friends.”

“He didn’t turn on me.”

“Not yet. But you are not his first human friend, are you?”

“Sir—” Arenath stood up but faltered when Fedorian looked over at him.

“He has the right to know how grievously he has been deceived, Arenath. He should know why he is in this mess. Why he is suffering.”

Aragorn shut his eyes tight and repressed a shudder as the cold fingertips trailed over his battered, blood-encrusted ribs.

“For you are suffering, adan. And you will suffer more. Perhaps if Haldir had been a little more truthful, he might have warned you. He might have spared you this. But, no, as always, his pride and self-righteousness forces others to pay the price he exacts.”

Aragorn said nothing. He refused to rise to such baiting.

“Naturally, he hides his shame in a fair cloak of honor, of duty,” Fedorian sneered the words. “But he had neither when he slew the Gondorians in their sleep. When he willingly stabbed an innocent boy—”

With a clatter, Arenath knocked over the cooking pan he’d been placing the rabbit meat in. Fedorian spun sharply and hauled him out of the way by his collar, scattering the curls of smoke smoldering from the pine needles.

“Arenath, be careful.”

Aragorn couldn’t see Fedorian’s face. But the younger elf quickly scrambled down on hands and knees to correct his mistake.

“I’m sorry, it was an accident.” Even with his head bent over, Aragorn thought Arenath’s eyes darted for the sparest second in his direction. “It was an accident.”

----------

Night temperatures plunged dangerously and Aragorn’s clothes were nowhere near dry. A glazed coat of ice crusted the edges of his trousers and boots. It had started with a creeping burning and numbing, first his fingers, then his wrists, forearms, shoulders and sweeping down his back, wracking him with chills. He was shuddering so violently he had to close his eyes to keep from being nauseous.

He had tried to think of other things. He remembered the roaring hearth in the Hall of Rivendell on feastdays or really any days. It always burned tall and bright. But though he walked towards them, the flames receded, or he was stepping back from them. The points of flames grew smaller and he was outside, in the dark, the door shut on him.

Arenath set aside his plate, his eyes on the unmoving form. “He isn’t going to last the night if we keep him tied like that. It’s too cold.”

Fedorian looked at him and the younger elf seemed to wilt slightly but the older elf switched his gaze to the human whose skin had dipped into a fascinating shade of white. He considered.

“You lost that big hunter last winter remember,” Arenath pressed.

“Then take him down if you wish. I want him to last longer than the night.”

Arenath, already hurrying over to the man, flinched at those words. Luckily Fedorian didn’t see him with his back turned.

Aragorn’s bleary eyes watched the elf with confusion when Arenath took the chains from around his neck and dumped them on the ground.

“Perhaps it would be a kinder mercy to let you die tonight,” the elf murmured, touching the man’s bonds above his lifeless wrists. The human was already so cold. Usually when they were this cold, they were dying already. It wasn’t really the torture that was draining though in the end, usually, it did kill. But the cold in the winter or the heat in summer sapped humans’ strength so easily. Arenath always wondered how this race had survived; they seemed so fragile.

The human was pale but beyond the usual color. He had seen others pale with fear, with surprise, with blood loss. This was the paleness that approached after blood had fled from the face entirely and had no hope of returning. He looked that shade of death, lips, cheeks, fingers and eyes all blue and glowing. Taking his lip between his teeth, Arenath cast a glance over his shoulder, making sure Fedorian was out of earshot before speaking.

“I have seen this kind of death before. It is quiet. You will sleep. You will not suffer anymore.”

Aragorn heard the words but they didn’t really register. He could only feel cold and the swirling blue shadows under his feet. Blurrily, he forced his faltering consciousness to work out what the elf was asking him.

“I can help you.” Arenath bent and picked up the knife he had used earlier to tear the human’s tunic and pressed it gently against the man’s ribs. A good, sharp thrust in the right place and it would all be silence. Haldir would not have wanted the human to suffer like this.

The prick of steel didn’t register. His abdomen had gone numb. But something in Arenath’s eyes must have alerted him to the situation because he tried to shake his head. No, he’d promised himself he’d wait. He had to give Haldir more time… the others…they were coming for him…He knew it! He had to hold on that long. No matter how much he wanted to sleep.

“Arenath, what’s taking you so long?”

The elf jerked in surprise and the knife scored a short scratch across the man’s side.

The sudden shock of a different pain cleared the fog from Aragorn’s head and he blinked rapidly. “No…” he croaked. “Have to…hold on…promised…”

Arenath closed his eyes but let the knife drop and began working the knots that kept him threaded to the tree. He caught the ranger in his arms when he slumped limply, unable to hold his own weight up. However, he was careful to tie the man’s wrists again in front of him though he knew the human was too weak to run.

Aragorn’s stiff and cramped legs refused to work properly so Arenath had to half-support, half-drag him over to the fire, dropping his faltering, frozen body beside it. Automatically, the human curled as close to the life-giving warmth as he could, singeing his sleeves as blood began to throb painfully back into places it had long been restricted.

The shadow of Fedorian blocked the warmth as he stood over the human, his face hardened with dissatisfaction. “You tasted only a fragment of the pain I intend for you, human. This is but a short reprieve. Mortal bodies are so ill-equipped for dealing with prolonged punishment. But you will last long enough for what I need.”

His gaze lifted to the other elf who kept his head lowered, pretending to rummage among their things. “Watch him carefully, Arenath.”

“Where are you going?” the younger elf dared raise his head, for the first time noticing Fedorian had several odd-shaped materials and coils of rope draped over one shoulder, his russet cloak in his other hand.

The dark Galadhel smiled enigmatically. “I will tell you later. For now, keep camp. Make sure our hard-won prize does not die of cold before I can deal with him properly.” He patted Aragorn’s hurting shoulders purposely as he passed.

Arenath waited until he had gone then slowly crouched beside the human who lay tucked up within himself, shuddering anew now that blood circulation had come back a little. The pain in his back wasn’t so bad now that he had his throbbing fingers, face and toes to concentrate on. He didn’t look up when Arenath leaned over him.

“You are blue.”

“Helchon.”

Arenath brushed a bit of ice from the hem of the ranger’s tunic. “Well, if you stay in those wet things, you’re going to get colder.” He waited and when the ranger did nothing but stare at him, he reached out and slipped the ripped, creek-and blood-dampened fabric from around the man’s shoulders, ignoring his protests. “It is no good to you now.”

The man’s skin was as cold as an iced brook and nearly as pale. He seemed incapable of doing more than lying there so Arenath, his lower lip between his front teeth again, crossed the man’s arms over his chest to keep in what warmth he had and tucked several thick wraps under and over him to keep him off the partially frozen ground.

As sweet, melting warmth seeped back into his deadened limbs, Aragorn began to stir like a beast coming out of hibernation. He blinked and met his caregiver’s gaze which hurriedly glanced away.

“Hannon le.”

Arenath shrugged, still keeping his eyes on the fire.

The elf clearly didn’t want to talk to him; and Aragorn felt too tired to try. As his mind thawed, memories of the last few hours bubbled to the surface. Fedorian’s words kept playing over and over in his head: He slew the Gondorians in their sleep…willingly stabbed an innocent boy…

No matter what the dark Galadhel said he couldn’t believe his friend capable of such things. He was a soldier, yes. Sometimes duty was a difficult line to walk. Sometimes it involved a certain ruthlessness of character. Meeting him for the first time, Aragorn had been off-put by Haldir’s rough-and-ready manner, his caustic humor, his secrets. But after traveling with him for more than two months, after what they endured together in the early weeks of their friendship, Aragorn couldn’t find it in him to think of Haldir other than as a noble elf, an honorable soldier…

A good friend.

Though Haldir only reciprocated the sentiment in small ways, never giving too much, or sharing too much of his own private concerns. Aragorn hadn’t minded; he was willing to work towards friendship and not push too hard. Haldir had said some things in his life were not worth knowing. “Not everything I have done in my life is worthy of praise.”

But his friend had been hiding behind his walls for far too long. His silence had been eating him up inside before they had even come to Merdon and Aragorn could see it. Despite his position, he was interested in breaking open this controversy of secrecy. Maybe at last, he would be able to help his friend.

He sighed and closed his eyes against the suddenly bright fire-glare. He wouldn’t be able to help Haldir if he were dead. A short, shaky breath escaped his lips.

Arenath looked over at him. The elf had walked away from the fire, standing guard with his face outwards towards the trees. But he turned back now.

“I cannot help you.” Flatly.

“Iston. (I know.)” Aragorn stammered, his teeth chattering again.

“Stop that! You are no elf!” Arenath suddenly burst out, his fists clenching. An agony of conflict shone in his youthful face.

Aragorn sat up slowly, pulling the blankets close around his shoulders. “Why do you stay with him if you…are so unhappy?”

Arenath’s face twisted in a grimace. Tearing his eyes from the human’s face, he wrapped the remains of the evening meal in a cloth and stored it in his pack.

Aragorn hadn’t expected an answer and instead plucked at a small hole in one of the blankets. He looked up sharply when he heard the soft, barely audible whisper.

“I swore.”

“No oath is worth this.” Aragorn gestured vaguely with a wool-covered hand at the small camp, the dead branches and bloody chains.

“He is my friend and my commander. I cannot abandon him,” it sounded like an oft-repeated litany, so worn and threadbare by steady repetition that all meaning had gone from it.

Aragorn didn’t believe him. But he was at least a little relieved now that he had someone to talk to. Someone who didn’t necessarily hate him.

“Can I ask you something?”

“No.” Arenath would much rather have pretended the human didn’t exist. But he looked back at him anyway. “What is it?”

“What—he—said…about Haldir…is it true?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Arenath shrugged. “Believe what you like. But if you did not know better, would you think me a killer?”

“I don’t think you are a killer. Not by choice.”

“People always hide who they really are. Even Haldir. Even you, Heir of Elendil.”

Aragorn had no response to that. His insides squirmed uncomfortably as he realized these elves knew more of him than he wanted them to know. Though it probably didn’t matter to Fedorian if he were the lowest peasant or the next King of Gondor, he was human and that meant he had to die.

“What did he tell you?” Arenath looked as though he’d asked this against his better judgement.

Aragorn told him what little he knew about Fedorian’s torment and the conflagration that had struck Lothlórien in the wake of the Gondorian’s attack.

Arenath passed a hand through his pale hair, gazing into the middle distance. The campfire glittered in his eyes. “Mandos claimed forty-odd soldiers that night alone, and more after from wounds and burns. Two of them…” He paused and stayed quiet a moment, a slight frown creasing his forehead as though he were recalling things he had not thought about in years and found bitter to bring up again.

“Two of them were our healers: Geilrín and Silivren. They saved the lives of many that night and before that night.”

Aragorn looked down at his hands folded inside the blankets. The deaths of healers were always horribly sad and often violent because of the lives they freely gave in service to others; he knew that well enough from his father’s experiences. But he didn’t understand the heart-deep pain that flickered in the elf’s cerulean eyes.

“Why—?” Aragorn found himself asking something and then not knowing how to ask it.

But Arenath, locked in the rush of his swirling memories, did not hear the half-spoken question. “They were killed in the fire. Or at least one of them was. Geilrín suffocated from breathing in the smoke. Silivren…Silivren’s body was never recovered.”

For the first time in minutes, the elf lifted his eyes and Aragorn felt himself pierced by the startling grief in their depths. “You wonder perhaps, why this would matter at all to us? Out here, in the wilderness, cut off from home… from family?”

Sudden realization made Aragorn’s chest wring with something he thought he would never have felt for his tormentors: pity. “They were your family.”

“No… Not mine.”

The elf abruptly rose and walked away from the flames. Aragorn thought he was leaving until he returned with his cloak and extracted something from a pocket sewn on the inside. He passed a flat, square paper over to Aragorn. The man took it in his bound hands and unfolded it gingerly. It was a sketch drawn on ancient parchment, spattered, creased, smoke-singed and stained after who knew how many years.

Two nearly identical women sat in the foreground, one sitting against the other’s knees. The younger woman had her arm wrapped playfully around the elder’s neck. They were both laughing. The artist had captured them beautifully: the upraised chins, the small wisps of hair that had escaped their ties and fallen into their sparking eyes. Arenath pointed to the elder woman first, his voice sounding muffled.

“Geilrín was Fedorian’s wife, Silivren his daughter.”

“They’re beautiful.” Aragorn could think of nothing else to say but even those words were hollow and Arenath ignored them.

“They were beloved of the northern marches. Their deaths were a—a crippling blow. I was his second then. I bore much of the brunt, the fault, the… command when it fell apart. We didn’t fight the men anymore… openly anyway. We hunted them down instead. We searched them out every night. Just the three of us.”

“Three,” Aragorn echoed the word and the answer flickered like a will o’ wisp. “Haldir.”

“We raided their camps nightly, taking from them the lives they’d ripped from us. It wasn’t honorable,” Arenath stared into the picture. “War never is. Doubtless, because of your heritage, you know of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men?”

“I do,” Aragorn said hesitantly, wondering where this was going and pulling the blankets tighter around his chest.

“It claimed many more lives than the fire. Many, many more. One of these was Haldir’s father,” Arenath leveled an even gaze at the man. “Did you know that too?”

“No. I didn’t.” Aragorn had known Haldir had brothers, of course—had met them while he was staying in Lothlórien. But parents, aside from a brief discussion about Aragorn’s own unique situation, had never come up. He had never even thought to ask since Haldir and his brothers were now fully grown and warriors in their own right.

“Soldiers of the Daglorlad,” Arenath continued. “regardless of where they went after the Dark Lord’s defeat, stayed on that battlefield for the rest of their lives, haunted by it in dreams and waking life. For many, it was the first time they’d ever seen true, bloody warfare. Often, it was the last. After what was left of King Amdir’s company returned without their dead, Haldir…he couldn’t take care of his family… not well. His brothers were still too young to understand.

“Geilrín and Silivren gave them what aid they could. They became his family too. He had already lost a father—was losing a mother. With his brothers still so young…Without Geilrín and Silivren I don’t think they could have held together. And after they died, everything collapsed. We needed to avenge them, to bring home our dead.

“But it was too easy,” the elf touched the knife at his waist and hastily wiped his fingers on his trouser leg as though he had gotten something on them. “And we got carried away. Have you ever had a man on his knees before you? Pleading for his life? Have you ever looked at him, and not cared? Some nights it was easy just to…to…But others I could barely lift my sword for seeing those eyes. It made you empty inside,” A brief shudder passed through him and he briefly closed his haunted eyes. “Haldir knew it. He got out of it while he could.”

“Why didn’t you?” Aragorn asked the question numbly, his mind still reeling from trying to absorb all this information. At last, he understood why Haldir had nightmares of burning, how he shied not only from human touch because of what had happened to him—but because of what he had done to them.

“I was already drenched in blood and bound by it. His—Fedorian’s—daughter was almost…my wife. Silivren.”

Sadly Aragorn handed the picture back. “I am sorry for your loss,” he offered.

Arenath said nothing but took the drawing from him and tucked it back in its hiding place. He didn’t know what had made him talk about all this. He hadn’t even mentioned their names to Fedorian in years. Some nights, he wasn’t sure his friend remembered them at all and simply continued the bloodlust for the sake of old habit. To find himself confiding this very near grief to a human who he would kill in the next few days was nothing short of ridiculous—if remarkable.

Aragorn too was astonished by the other’s candor though his tale was heartbreaking. At least he had a better understanding of his enemy now though it had muddied the waters quite a bit more than he’d ever wanted it to. It couldn’t be “us against them” anymore. Nothing was simply one side or the other. You couldn’t just be evil. Something made you that way.

“I do not think she would want to see you like this, so unhappy,” he said so quietly he barely heard his own words.

“No, she would not,” Arenath had heard him clearly. With his back to the ranger, he ran a hand over his face, glancing curiously at his wet fingertips when he pulled them away. “But he is the only family I have left. She would want me to take care of him.”

His cheeks glistened in the firelight. “Do you see now? He has no choice and neither do I. And, as usual, I have said too much.” He leapt up abruptly and said over his shoulder, “It would be best for you to sleep while you can.”

Aragorn lay down obediently but his mind buzzed for a long time afterward, sleep eluding him with everything he had been told. Arenath took up his post at the other end of camp and did not speak to him again.