Agarwaen

Part Nineteen
~Steal Your Pain~

The gaol was ugly even in the daylight. In the dark hours, it looked positively dreadful. As though he were entering the Barad-dûr itself, Haldir paused briefly once over the threshold, spinning about with hand on sword hilt when the thick wooden doors thudded unexpectedly shut behind him, barring his only exit. Knowing there was no going back now, he slowly relaxed his death grip on his weapon and examined the building with a little more than a twinge of apprehension.

The bastion was one of the only stone buildings in Merdon and for a good reason as it held its most dangerous occupants within its grey walls, slightly removed from the town and more respectable society. It looked more like a fort than a prison with tall, grey walls, and crenellations with arrow slits along the outsides. In case of attack, the building could also be used as a place of safety. Somehow the grim structure did not make Haldir feel any safer.

Ahead of him stretched a bare, weedy courtyard of ancient flagstones and arched doorways that opened both east and west and were carved with more skill than the small population of Merdon could claim. Two wardens exited from the western doorway as he crossed the open space, feeling oddly exposed.

One of them, an older man with a pockmarked face and sheer cheekbones like the crags of a cliff, said nothing and sidestepped cautiously away from him when the elf pushed back his hood. Haldir was probably the only elf he’d ever seen aside from the one now in his custody. The younger one on the old man’s other side goggled with unabashed curiosity and politely stretched out a hand to shake the elf’s. It was he who took Haldir to the cells when the elven captain told him what he wanted.

“I hope he talks a bit to you,” the younger man said as they left the courtyard behind and unlocked the eastern door that extended into a long corridor of mostly unoccupied cells. “He wouldn’t to me. He hasn’t said a word since he got here except at the trial. Wish I could have seen that. Grinj—who you met out there—got to be in the room. He said it was so thick in there you could have stirred the air with a spoon. The elf was right calm when he talked about murdering all them people. Grinj said he nearly lost his breakfast—and that man could swallow nails.”

He craned his neck over his shoulder curiously at the silently following elf. “You say about as much as him. Are all Elves like that?”

“Only those who prefer silence to useless chatter.” Haldir glanced around. The stone was newer in this corridor and the cells were three-walled with a barred grille taking up the fourth.

The irrepressible guard didn’t take the hint but noticed him looking. He smiled. “Interested? Rumor says Gondorians built this place close to the river Isen so they’d have a keep on either side of the Anduin. It burned down though when the filthy, murdering Wildmen attacked it,” he said but the acerbity bled out of his voice fairly quickly as he looked around and patted the rough stones fondly. “We managed to scrape it up a bit over the old foundations, kept the courtyard though and a couple other places underground.”

He continued on briskly, unlocking another door at the far end of the hall. “Careful, slick here.” A hand stretched out to balance himself as they descended down spiraling, close set stairs that twisted so narrowly Haldir, accustomed as he was to the Galadhrim flets and their endless ladders, actually felt a little dizzy.

“Usually, it’s just drunks and stuff from the bar that get holed up for a night,” the guard kept up a steady stream of commentary, his voice echoing slightly off the walls. “Maybe a chicken thief or two in the spring—they’ve got some great stories—but this one’s really turned people’s heads. I ‘spect a bunch’ll turn up for the execution…”

A rangy, saturnine man dressed in a high-collared wool coat with brass buttons stood with arms folded at the beginning of a corridor as they finally reached the landing. An only torch flickered above his head. He was round-shouldered and sallow-faced as though he spent much too much time out of the sun. In his belt, he carried a long, black baton and for reasons best known to himself a wide knife. He pushed off the wall as young guard greeted him enthusiastically.

“Visitor to see the condemned, Aylward…sir,” the younger guard said, belatedly tugging his forelock in a salute. Haldir guessed he must be the chief warden, the best man to guard the most dangerous prisoner.

The older man gave the tall visitor a wary once-over and plucked the torch from its bracket. “Follow me.”

The younger guard fell in at Haldir’s back as they followed the warden’s light down the tunnel which was black as pitch but for the gleaming dampness reflected off the walls. The whole place had an air of neglect about it as though no one had been down here in years. Behind him, the younger guard fiddled with his keys which clinked loudly in the stillness.

“There’s supposed to be all kinds of hidden passages down here,” he whispered after a moment to break the unnerving quiet. “Places that haven’t ever seen daylight, full of wide lakes and goodness knows what else.”

The warden stopped outside a heavy door and the guard abruptly stopped talking. “He’s through here but I’m not taking a whole party back there. Petrin, get back to your post. Go on.”

The young guard, Petrin, looked slightly disappointed as though he’d been hoping to stay and listen but he tugged his forelock to his superior again, gave the elf a swift, admiring grin and sprinted back up the stairs.

The warden shook his head after him disapprovingly. “He’s been sneaking down here when he thinks I don’t know, and he’s going to get himself in more trouble than he can handle if he keeps it up. Prisoners are here for punishment not as a curiosity for boys. Still, I guess, with nothing else to entertain him…” He sighed waspishly and unlocked another, even thicker door to an even more lightless passage and stopped a little ways down. “We only keep those needing the most security down here.”

He pulled a dusty lantern off a rickety, worm-eaten shelf and lit it so the walls flashed and glittered with oily damp. In the stronger light glowing under his jaw, the warden examined his visitor, his eyes lingering on the elf’s long, golden hair and gently tipped ears. “Thought you looked a bit too familiar. Friend of his are you?” He jerked his head towards the cell.

Purposefully ignoring the man’s stare, Haldir peered through the small, square grille at the top of the door but saw only darkness beyond. “No.”

The warden shrugged and handed him the lantern. “All right. You can use this if you like. But leave it close to the door. If I see the light go out, I’ll come running,” the lock clicked back as the catch slid out. “Anything else you need?”

“Just privacy.”

“I’ll stand down the corridor. You won’t have long though. Strictly speaking visitors aren’t allowed down here since this place isn’t exactly safe. Some of the lower passages are flooded or caved in but since it’s a condemned’s visit...” He hesitated a moment then his blue eyes narrowed a bit. “You do know what he’s done, right?”

“Yes. I am well aware,” Haldir said, already stepping forward.

The warden blocked his path with his smoothly-drawn truncheon. “Sorry,” he added grudgingly when the elf looked annoyed. He tapped the elf’s saber hilt with the wood. “No weapons or anything he can get his hands on. He nearly beheaded one of my guards when he woke up while we were putting the chains on him. Had a knife concealed in his sleeve.”

Haldir pulled his saber off his belt and, ignoring the outstretched hand, set it on the floor beside the cell.

The warden nodded tightly and then guessed that it was trepidation that kept the elf hesitating. “Don’t worry. We took all his weapons. He’s perfectly safe, all chained up. He can’t reach you if you stay close to the wall.”

“And yet, you are staying on the other side of the door,” Haldir couldn’t help noticing.

“Yep.”

The door’s hinges whispered open; someone had bothered to oil them. The walls were thick stone, unadorned and spotted with damp and mold in the corners. He placed the lantern just shy of the threshold as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the general lightlessness. He couldn’t imagine being kept in this nightmarish place. There wasn’t a single window or light of any kind other than the feeble one he had brought with him. To be cut off from the stars and sound of birds and trees surpassed any amount of physical torture for an elf. They could not live without the sweet sounds of the earth though being imprisoned from them and yet still able to hear their free song might have been cruel comfort.

The cell itself was more of an oubliette, circular and long lengthwise though only eight paces at most in diameter. Not even a plank could be attached to the circular wall for a bed. The worst criminals, it seemed, did not deserve even that small, worthless comfort. The lantern let out a sputtering hiss as oil dripped down the wick and nearly quenched the little bright patch of stone it illuminated. A wooden tray and what looked like the crusty, congealed remnants of a bowl of gruel lay abandoned near the door. A disconcerting reddish-copper stain crawled thinly up another. Haldir waited for the occupant to break the silence first, knowing his presence had been marked.

Fedorian had chosen his spot well. Liquid shadow enfolded him completely on his side of the chamber. But Haldir could hear movement where the light couldn’t reach, a shifting and clink of chains.

“I had begun to think you would not come.” The voice was almost unrecognizable, a hard, filing rasp as though the elf hadn’t used it in days.

“I was not sure I would,” Haldir said.

“I see you’ve met our shining example of discipline, Warden Aylward,” Fedorian said. A chain scraped the floor as though he had jerked his head in the direction of the door. “He doesn’t believe in trials for…what was it he called me? ‘A blood hungry lowlife not fit to tarnish the light of day’ I believe were his exact words. Are you going to ask me for forgiveness before they have me on the gibbet?” he inquired suddenly, a rueful chuckle edging his tone.

“I have nothing to ask forgiveness for,” Haldir said a trifle coldly and fished the stained parchment out of his tunic pocket. “You asked for me.”

“Do you think I should ask for forgiveness?”

“What do you want?”

The barest glint of flame yellowed half of his jaw and illuminated his glittering eyes as Fedorian leaned forward into the light. “The little ranger survived didn’t he? I doubt very much that you would have come if he were dead.”

“He is healing,” Haldir admitted grudgingly. He didn’t want to talk about Aragorn in Fedorian’s presence if he could help it.

“Your softness for this ranger is almost sickening,” he remarked offhandedly. Then his eyes narrowed shrewdly as Haldir shifted his weight again. “You are favoring your left side. Why?”

Haldir sighed, his gaze darting around the walls again as he replied casually, “Broken rib.”

“Ah,” The eyes fixed unblinkingly on him widened in understanding. “I see. My snare?”

A terse nod.

His mentor tsked remonstratively and reclined back into darkness. “You should know better by now how to avoid a snare, Haldir.”

“That is not what I came here for, Fedorian. What do you want?” the marchwarden repeated, more sharply. He suspected Fedorian simply wanted someone to talk to, when it seemed his life would extinguish in the next few hours, even he, murderer, torturer, deceiver though he was, did not relish being alone. But Fedorian was also proud. He worked best alone. He always had. Why now would he desire company?

“You have not set forth a single step since you crossed the threshold. I am chained not you,” Fedorian observed from his place. “Do you fear me, Haldir?”

“No.” Fear was definitely not an emotion he could say he felt right now. Nudging the lantern several inches from the door, he stepped deeper into the room, feeling a chilling draft open up behind his back as he moved away from the strong, protective comfort of the wall.

Light pooled and spread now over the circular room. Even its dimmest fingers searched out the draggled form of Fedorian sitting against the opposite wall.

He was a wreck.

One leg crooked lazily up, the other stretched straight out in front of him. His hands lay in his lap, both connected to the walls by short chains. Someone had slapped a rude bandage, probably applied while he was still unconscious, over the arrow hole in his shoulder. His hair twisted over his chest, unkempt and tangled from the warrior ties. The long week of imprisonment had hollowed Fedorian’s cheeks and eye sockets even more until they were dark planes in his once-handsome features. He had been refusing his meals, out of spite, knowing he wouldn’t die before the appointed public date.

But a dark fire still flared behind those eyes as he raised his head a few inches to look up at his former pupil.

“Must I crane my neck along with all other discomforts?”

Haldir unfastened his cloak and tossed it over the filthy floor so he could sit.

Fedorian caught his eyes in the dim light. The ruined eye coated in scar tissue looked so much more disturbing up close, its blank, cloudy blueness opening into a soul just as ravaged and empty. But there was a grey fleck, a single flicker of life still in them that kept spirit and body together, just long enough to finish the set task.

“You have no more love of men than you ever did,” he said into the stillness of Haldir’s stony silence. “I know you better than that. You do not love them anymore than I do.”

“No. I don’t.” No glib remark or sarcastic put-off. Not with him. Not now.

“Then why this one?”

“He is the foster-son of Lord Elrond, husband of Lady Celebrían, daughter of the Lord and Lady I swore to serve. That places him under my protection by right of blood.” It was the simplest explanation Fedorian would understand, no longer having any concept of friendship.

“You always did do your duty,” Fedorian said without a sneer for once. “Even if you found it distasteful. You spoke with him then didn’t you? Straightened out my lies?”

Haldir remained silent.

Fedorian seemed to read his mind. “You didn’t. Interesting.”

Still, Haldir retained his silence.

“What makes you think he would believe me in the first place?”

This time Haldir’s eyes flickered with cold respect. “You have no need of lies because you have that singular talent of telling the truth in the darkest, starkest way you know how. You always did it to Rúmil and Orophin and I.”

“Yes,” Fedorian said vaguely. He actually laughed. But it was a hollow sound and he seemed still very much present as though he couldn’t quite picture anymore whatever memory Haldir had evoked. “We were friends once, Haldir, you used to confide in me.”

“I believe it was you who said it had been long since we were friends,” Haldir reminded him, a little icily. But it was true enough. They had been friends, close ones in the manner of soldiers with the elder looking after and guiding the younger. Years had passed but that didn’t mean Haldir still didn’t feel the ache as though it were yesterday: the gaping loss of his mentor and confidant. It hurt still more to see him like this, a warrior of the Galadhrim, snapped in chains like a common criminal, sentenced to an ignoble death where brigands would fight over his corpse afterward. The thought made his insides burn.

“I was angry.” Fedorian said slowly. “I do not take betrayal well.”

“I did not betray you.”

“You betrayed me the moment you decided you valued a human’s life more than loyalty to one you owe everything to!” his voice rose shrilly. “I stood by you in everything and that wasn’t worth a damn to—!”

“Is that what you want from me? An apology?” Haldir’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. A sharp rap on the other side of the door froze both of their voices as they glanced towards it simultaneously.

“Everything all right?” Aylward’s voice called.

“Yes.” Haldir shot a look at Fedorian who merely sneered soundlessly at the door.

“Even Arenath did not fall so far,” the dark Galadhel said in a much lower voice. No footsteps had sounded to indicate Aylward had moved away from the grille.

The subject of Arenath was still tender and Haldir’s eyes darkened. “He did his duty by you and he died for it.”

“He died with more honor than he could have hoped,” Fedorian snapped back. “If I could do what I did over again…”

“You would do the same thing.”

Fedorian said nothing but his eyes roamed over his subordinate’s face again as though searching for cracks in the armor.

Haldir stared at the floor. He tried to think of all the things Fedorian had done to be in here, to deserve this: kidnapping Brenn, torturing Aragorn, killing Yyrin, Ral and countless others. Throwing himself into an unending tide of vengeful bloodlust. But hadn’t he, the marchwarden of Lórien, once done the same? If things had turned out differently, it might have been he in those chains, in this cell. Or dead.

“I cannot help you anymore,” he said as he rose and peered out of the grille. Turning back to his friend, he knelt, taking his time gathering up his cloak, folding it over his arm and meticulously brushing the dust off it.

Fedorian gave him a long, slow look as Aylward unlocked the door.

----------

“What kinda time you call this?”

The inn had been dark and completely silent when Haldir slipped in through the side door from the stables. The hall smelled faintly of snuffed candles. Even the servants after forcefully ejecting the last of the all-nighters had finally thrown ashes over the coals and sought their beds. Haldir did not allow his surprise to show as he faced the door on his left from which the accusatory voice had issued.

Carlóme’s bleary, red-eyed face peered out at him from her bedroom door. It seemed she had been one of those last all-nighters for she still wore her boots and trousers under a long, threadbare nightgown.

“I could ask you the same. Your celebration of bloodshed finally tire you or did you simply run out of coin?”

“Now, don’t be like that.” she squinted up at him. “You’ve been gone awhile. Strider went to bed hours ago.”

“Good. He could use it.” Somehow he doubted Aragorn had been content with his “going for a walk” excuse and was probably waiting up right now to grill him on his absence.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t have a little celebration of your own all those years ago when you killed my people.” Carlóme said unexpectedly, finally processing his earlier comment and stung by it.

Haldir stared at her for a long, measuring moment. “They were not your people.”

“Being humans makes ‘em my people. And that’s not an answer.”

“What answer could I possibly make that would matter to you?” he asked dismissively as he passed her, heading for the stairs. Over and over and over she had pressed and jeered and scorned and prodded for details of his exploits he had absolutely no desire to recount to her for her vicarious gratification. The people of her country had long been enemies of the Gondorians. If there were a few less of them to plague the people of the Sunlands why should she care?

She followed him, grasping the banister. “The second I laid eyes on you I felt something.”

“See Zaren for those needs, not me,” he retorted, rising another step.

“Shut up and listen a minute,” she said, grasping the hem of his cloak slung over one arm and giving it a sharp tug. “Since Saeryn’s got a big mouth, I don’t need to explain again—you know I’ve seen the bad side of men, what ‘my people’ do to each other—and yours. You know too. I saw you sitting in that room,” she jerked her head towards the common room. “Saw that look on your face in front of the fire the first night you and Strider were here. You knew how to get through the dark hours, knew what a treasure a good bottle of brandy is for sleep, I saw it. Like there’s something in you that hurt too. I could see it then—still see it now.”

He blinked at her. He had never seen her in such a mood. For someone he assumed was not often given to self-reflection, it was rather disconcerting to hear her talking this way. But she was still to surprise him.

“You saved Brenn, you saved Strider, you helped us capture that damned rogue. He’s going to die. And I’ll tell you right now, I’m not sorry for it. Not sorry for it,” she repeated. “But that you feel bad… that’s not right either.”

She took several paces closer until she stood on the step beneath his looking up into his face. He could smell the tang of booze on her breath, and not only the rheumy glaze in her eyes but also the sincerity. “We all do things we regret. Some regrets are bigger than others. You should talk to your ranger. Friends are all that hold us together after what we’ve been through. Sometimes they’re all you’ve got.”

“You’ve had far too much to drink if you’re trying to heal my ghosts,” he said with a certain amount of dark irony as he brusquely pulled his cloak out of her loosened grasp and continued on up the stairs, feeling her eyes follow him until he reached the dark landing.

The upstairs was just as shadowy and silent as the first floor though without the smell of candles. His side was starting to throb again but he managed to make it to his own door with most of his breath. He paused just shy of entering it as he saw a dim glow flickering from underneath Aragorn’s room.

Just as he’d thought, the ranger had apparently been waiting up for him but had lost the battle against sleep. Mouth slightly open, the young ranger sat slumped in an armchair by the fire, his head nestled in the crook of the chair back and wing, his legs outstretched towards the still-warm hearth. The comforter pulled from his bed had slipped down around his waist, exposing his loose, red sleeping shirt and the splinted fingers lying in his lap. He had left the lantern on beside him.

Haldir took pity on the man and silently pushed the door a little wider. It wouldn’t do for him to sleep in a chair until morning. Bending over the sinking light, he fiddled with a knob on the side, snapping the wick up increasingly brighter. Aragorn cringed away from it with a deep inhale and blinked himself awake. He squinted up at his friend, tugging the quilt back up around his shoulders as the cold in the room made itself known to his previously sleep-warm body.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” the ranger protested against an unspoken accusation, rubbing the grit out of his eyes.

“Resting your eyes, I’m sure,” the elf said as he walked through the shared door that divided his room from Estel’s.

“What’s the time?”

“Time for all good, little rangers to be in their own beds. Not their chairs.”

The realization of why he had been waiting up for his friend came to the ranger with a rush and he suddenly leapt up, flinging the quilt on his bed, and padding into the other room.

Haldir looked around at him guardedly as he set his swordbelt on the small chest of drawers. His boots already lay discarded next to the bed. When Aragorn didn’t say anything, he resumed his nightly ritual and disentangled his braids, scowling at his reflection in the mirror while he watched the man over his shoulder.

“I thought you were going to be back hours ago. Where did you go?” It wasn’t accusatory or even really inquiring. But it was worried and even as full as his mind was at the moment, Haldir recognized it.

“I…down the road,” he invented lamely, glad his back was to the ranger.

Aragorn perched on the side of the moth-eaten bed near the door, watching his friend watching him. He didn’t say anything. He just waited until the silence echoed in the room and contracted so tightly Haldir felt he would almost be squeezed in half if he didn’t break it. He gave up on his hair and flung the comb down on the dresser with a satisfying clatter.

“He wanted to see me.”

Aragorn didn’t have to ask who ‘he’ was. “Why?”

“I told you the messenger didn’t find me. I lied…He’d written to me and asked me to come. So I did.”

The ranger nodded slowly. He didn’t ask why Haldir had granted his torturer’s last request or anything of the sort. Instead, he merely said, “You could have told me.”

Haldir saw that he’d hurt Estel and ran his fingers over the knobby bedpost guiltily. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you. It was…”

Aragorn looked patiently up at him with wide eyes. Haldir dropped his own to the threadworm carpet.

“I wanted to go alone.”

“So Carlóme doesn’t know either.”

“I didn’t tell you but you think I might have told her?” Aragorn held his hands up in surrender as the elf’s former self-assured acidity reasserted itself. Haldir sighed. “She would have told me my judgement was clouded. Or more likely mutter something about how not sorry she is that he’s dying though she’s sorry I am affected by it.”

Aragorn raised an eyebrow at this but Haldir shook his head dismissively, wordlessly imploring the ranger not to ask. Silence fell again but the atmosphere in the room had changed subtly, grew heavier, denser. Aragorn watched his friend pace purposelessly across the room to lean against the window ledge.

“You’re troubled.”

Haldir laughed bitterly. “My captain is dying tomorrow. I think that’s worth a little trouble, isn’t it?”

“It’s more than that.” Aragorn joined him at the window but didn’t look outside. Instead, he rested his elbows on the sill and stared at the shaded profile of his friend.

“It could have been me.”

A small, puzzled frown creased Aragorn’s brow at the barely audible whisper. “I don’t understand. What could have been you?”

Haldir’s knuckles whitened on the windowsill and he still didn’t meet the man’s compassionate gaze. “If things had turned out differently, I might have been the one in chains now. The one waiting for his death, spending his last night in a dark cell. It is hard for you to believe, Estel, but I…I hated men with as much passion as Fedorian.”

Aragorn didn’t really know what to say to that so he improvised, “I know, I will never know everything that happened to you and if you don’t want to you don’t need to talk about it. But I also think you would feel better if you did.”

“You and I have started this conversation before.”

“And this time we might actually finish it,” the young man said calmly in a tone older than his years. “You did not give in to your hatred like he did, Haldir.”

“I did for awhile.”

“But you knew it was wrong and that it would destroy you if you let it take over you,” Aragorn said remembering what Arenath had told him. “You got out of it.”

“Belated guilt does not excuse what I did.”

Aragorn couldn’t believe how relentless Haldir was being in blaming himself for something that he could not have controlled. “What would you have me do? Condemn you? Spurn you for something that happened so long ago my great-great-grandfather was not alive to bear witness to it?”

“Yes,” Haldir insisted. His silver eyes snapped up intensely into the ranger’s face. “I killed them, Estel. Men as young as—younger than—you. I did it without mercy. Without remorse.” He released the man from his eyes as though he expected, even wanted, Aragorn to leap away from him.

Aragorn didn’t budge. “All right.”

“That does not bother you?”

“It—” The man fiddled uncomfortably with a splinter hanging off the shutters. “No. The simplest, shortest answer is no, it does not.”

“And the longer, more complicated answer?”

“I know you,” the ranger put simply.

Haldir scoffed. “Two months, Estel. That is a short span even by your standards.”

“I meant,” the man continued patiently. “I have seen you fight and I know how careful you are to kill only when you have to and if you have to, to make it as quick as possible.” When Haldir showed no signs of responding to this, he broke off, raked a hand through his hair with a long sigh and tried again. “Maybe…I understand better than most why you did what you did. My own brothers, they did very much the same when—”

“—when Lady Celebrían was taken,” Haldir finished quietly for him; he remembered all too well the frightening grief and rage of Elladan and Elrohir that awful year when they steeped themselves dangerously in blood to avenge their mother’s pain.

“Even after all these years, they still ride after the orcs,” Aragorn said. This time it was his eyes that dropped to his hands now still on the windowsill. He was straying into perilously personal territory indeed.

“This is different.”

“How?”

“They slay the orcs in open battle not in their sleep, not on their knees…not their friends,” Haldir rushed out as though the very admittance might burn him up and consume him before he had the chance to finish. “He looked like you, you know. Tergon.
I have been asking myself more than once this trip whether I am somehow trying to make it right—‘make amends’ Arenath accused me—or if I am protecting you for your own sake.” He shrugged distractedly out of his tunic and rubbed the itching bandages underneath.

“I worry for you, you know.” In any other situation, with any other person, he would never have made such an admission but he couldn’t help saying anything less than the truth under Aragorn’s eyes. “Worry that it…it could happen again…”

Aragorn was shocked. He had had no idea Haldir felt this way. He had largely resented the elf’s overprotectiveness during this trip, how much he insisted the ranger needed looking after. It made better sense now. “Well, I’m still alive aren’t I? Nothing’s happened to me…well, not much…” he added when the elf leveled a disbelieving glare at him. The ranger sighed. “The circumstances were different then. You lost people you loved, Haldir, that would hurt and anger anyone. What happened to Tergon…was an accident.”

Haldir stared at him, the first, frightening flicker of desperation in his eyes. “How are you so sure?”

Aragorn stared into the elf’s eyes, saw the years-deep pain behind them and felt his heart squeeze tightly in his chest. “Because I know you,” he repeated sternly, willing the elf to believe him. “And the Haldir I know would never hurt a friend on purpose; he would never let himself slip like that because he has seen what it would do. I’ll give you a perfect example. You had the chance to kill Branock that day by the stream (and I think he would have deserved it if you had). But you didn’t. You didn’t. Yet you continue to punish yourself needlessly for things that happened so long ago and that you have atoned for a hundred times over. You put yourself in danger for the sake of others and you never think of the cost to yourself before doing so.”

Haldir listened in silence which Aragorn took as a sign to continue.

“You are just…” his voice dropped abruptly and he bit his lip, for the first time looking a bit unsure of himself.

“‘Just’ what?”

“I think…” Aragorn said softly, not sure if it was his place to say this but deciding to finish anyway. “I think you are unhappy. You have not been happy with yourself…” he trailed off helplessly.

Truth be told—though Aragorn would never dare say this aloud—as long he’d known him, he didn’t think Haldir had ever been really happy. There were moments: bright, beautiful moments when a flicker of joy would surface, a flash of ready humor but it was always overcast by a darker, more somber mood that the ranger felt in his heart the elf did not deserve—whether it was from the condemnation of others’ or the elf’s own thoughts.

Haldir remained perfectly still after this pronouncement. In fact, for a moment, Aragorn feared the elf hadn’t heard him and he would have to repeat that horrible sentence. But then the marchwarden sighed, very heavily and glanced over at the man.

“I’ve been called worse.”

Aragorn blinked, dumbfounded, thinking this an odd moment for the elf’s particular brand of dry humor to surface but he recovered quickly. “Even so, I am very lucky to count you as a friend and I would rather no one else fight by my side.” Without hesitation or even a tremor in his fingers, he squeezed the elf’s shoulder firmly with his unbroken hand, a soft smile lighting his face.

“Who else would save an idiot ranger—who shall remain unnamed—after he stumbled through the wild in the middle of a fog?”

“You fell off a cliff,” the elf reminded him.

“For the record, I was pushed,” the man defended himself mock-indignantly, glad to see a smile creep however slowly back over the elf’s face. But he became serious again as he told his elven friend. “You could have left me there. But you didn’t. That is not the mark of a remorseless killer.”

“No, that is the mark of an idiot who was then saddled with said idiot ranger.”

“I’d say we match up well then,” Aragorn said proudly.

Finally, a chuckle. Haldir planted his hands akimbo and shook his head wonderingly at the young man. “You are without doubt the strangest person I’ve ever met.”

Aragorn flopped backwards onto the bed. “And now I think the tiredest.” But he smiled at the ceiling. It felt unspeakably good to hear his friend laugh again. He would have to keep doing that and Aragorn would be there, to keep him happy, keep him laughing if nothing else. A sharp tug on the covers made him look up and reluctantly roll his lethargic body off the bed.

Whisking the blankets off, Haldir folded himself in them and sank into a chair near the window.

Aragorn cocked his head in confusion. “Are you going to sleep?”

“If you stop chattering at me,” the elf said, peering down at the deserted cobbles below as he propped his long legs up on a cushioned footstool. “Throw me a pillow will you?”

“Isn’t it a little more comfortable to use the bed—that is why we have two rooms, otherwise you could have slept in the armchair in mine.”

“You snore.”

“I do not,” Aragorn protested, throwing the pillow a little harder than intended.

Haldir caught it with a faint grimace and admitted. “I can’t sleep comfortably lying down at the moment.” His movement had dislodged the blankets, revealing the neatly wrapped bandages around his ribs.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Haldir, I completely forgot.” Aragorn mentally kicked himself. Of course, broken ribs were bad especially because there was no comfortable way you could sit, stand or lie without pressure on something that hurt. “Do you need anything for it?”

“Just quiet.” A beat passed.

“What are you doing now?” the elf asked in a mockingly irritated voice as the man padded back into his room and returned a few seconds later carrying his quilt and an armful of pillows which he dumped on the elf’s vacated bed.

“Well,” the man said, shrugging. “If you aren’t going to sleep in your bed, I will.”

“Keeping me company?” the elf shot him an exasperated look he usually reserved for over-persistent brothers.

“Softer mattress.”

Haldir chuckled again and relaxed against the cushioned chair back as he listened to the man adjusting pillows and bedsheets. The room darkened as he reached over and turned down the lantern. The ache in his side had become much more bearable and though he had not put all of his unhappiness behind him, it was better just being with light-hearted Estel who was right now nothing more than a shapeless dark lump sprawled on the bed. If this was “softness” as Fedorian had so insultingly put it, then he would take it and gladly. Haldir let his mind begin to drift as he looked back out the window at the stars glittering above. Fedorian wouldn’t be able to see them…

“It will be good to be home,” Aragorn murmured, his voice muffled slightly by the mound of down-filled pillows around his head.

“Yes.”

“I can take you hunting up on the pine ridge. There are great, big deer herds up there in the summer.”

Haldir made a vague noise to show he was still listening—albeit inattentively.

“Oh, and there’s that little—”

The elf captain sighed loudly to cut him off. “Estel, go to sleep, mellon nin. Humans are grouchy in the morning if they don’t enough sleep. And so am I,” he added darkly.

“All right! I know. I was just—”

Wondering if the man had actually pulled off falling asleep in the middle of a sentence, Haldir rolled over onto his uninjured side and propped himself up on one elbow to peer over at the bed.

Aragorn was sitting up in his mess of blankets and pillows. His face, upturned towards the elf’s, was bathed in moonlight slanting in from the window a curious look of wonderment and growing delight on his bruised, tired face.

Haldir lifted a trim eyebrow. “What?”

“That was the first time you have ever called me “mellon nin.””

“Is that all?” the marchwarden snorted and lay back down. “What? Do you want a prize for it? I don’t have any more knives to give away. For the last time, go to sleep!”

Aragorn laughed softly and Haldir listened to him rustle around for a bit before finding a comfortable position. He was glad the man couldn’t see him smile—he would never have any peace.

A scarce thirty seconds of silence passed. “You know I never really thought—”

“You see? This is exactly why I wouldn’t sleep in your room.”

----------

Warden Aylward whistled softly to himself as he paced the damp corridor attempting to keep awake as the cold hours before dawn crawled by. At least by this time tomorrow, he wouldn’t have anything to guard. Then he could get a decent night’s sleep. Rubbing his eyes against the painful glare, he set the lamp down by his feet and rattled his polished truncheon against the metal grating at the top of the door.

“Bet you’re not getting any sleep in there are you?” he called through the wood. “A beast like you doesn’t deserve sleep. Tomorrow though, tomorrow you’ll get a good one.” The guard chuckled knowingly. “A good night’s rest.”

His laughter died away quickly and silence swooped in to take its place. The man shivered and pulled his cloak closer about his thin body. He almost wished he’d taken Petrin’s offer of switching duties tonight. Why did it always have to be so damn cold down here? He kept talking more to amuse himself then for the benefit of an actual conversation. The prisoner hadn’t said a word since they’d subdued him a couple of hours ago. He’d been a little too agitated for his own good after his one visitor left and taunted the guards. In fact, maybe they’d been a bit overzealous. He might still be unconscious.

“Didn’t hit you that hard, did I? Tough old torturer like you. You couldn’t fight much against real men who aren’t tied up.”

He jolted away from the door, the hair rising straight up on the back of his neck when a smooth, completely awake-sounding voice answered him in coherent Westron.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. You hit like a worm. And with about as much force.”

Goaded by irritation and tiredness, the man was in no mood for more taunts and unlocked the double catch of the door quite against his usual, precautionary judgement, brandishing his baton. “You won’t be able to walk to the gallows when I’m done with you.”

Faster than lightning, something thin and glittering shot out of the darkness and pierced his left eye. He reared back more in surprise than from the force of the blow. Crimson droplets smeared his fingers and pattered onto his uniform with increasing urgency.

He screamed, the sound ringing terribly up the empty stairwell like an alarm as his hand flew up to his face. He didn’t get the chance to yell again. A lithe shadow sprang out of the cell and smoothly relieved the knife from his belt. It slashed out once. Just once. The guard’s body knocked over the lamp as it crumpled. The glass shattered, oil pooling and mixing with the rapidly growing crimson puddle rilling over the flagstones.

The knife gleamed red in the sputtering flames as the elf bent and wiped it on the dead man’s tunic. He spread the pale already cooling fingers and delicately retrieved the brooch pin he had used to pick the locks on his chains.

“Good night, warden. Have a good night’s rest.”

Fedorian retrieved his weapons from the storage room and without pausing for another instant, he leapt up the stairs, leaving a trail of wet footprints in his wake.