I Sit and Think of Times There Were Before by Erdariel  

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Of the aftermath

Phew. Finally this fic is done! I'm glad I wrote it, but also honestly relieved that it's done. This was quite a journey!

 

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The first thing I remember for certain is slow awareness that I was warm and I lay on something soft. There was a weight across my body, also soft and warm and not painfully heavy, but heavy enough that I was aware of it as a weight. As I sorted through the sensations that had not yet found their usual places in my mind, I found that I could feel pain more or less where I expected to, but it was dulled and distant, less intense than it ought to have been. I saw light through my eyelids.

I blinked my eyes open. I lay on a bed in a room filled with the clear golden sunlight of a late winter-morning. There were wooden beams darkened with age in the ceiling, and a colourful tapestry on a wall at the edge of my vision.

I felt more than saw a presence at my left side. I turned my head that way. Estelmo sat on a chair by my bed. He had a book on his lap and was reading from it, but when I moved he closed the book and set it down on a table next to him. He tried to smile. He looked healthy, but more careworn than when I had last seen him, and there was a curved scar above his right eyebrow, as though a heavy blow had driven the helmet on his head down so hard that its edge broke through the skin.

“Awake again? How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Warm. Alive. I suppose I cannot complain.” I glanced at the ceiling again. The architecture seemed familiar. “Are we in Imladris?”

He nodded.

“What day is it?”

“Day of week or day of month?”

“Month.”

“Twelfth of Narwain. You came here on the ninth, in case you were wondering. Some of Lord Elrond’s people found you wandering south of here.”

“My apologies for not bringing you a yestarë gift”, I said. Estelmo did not laugh. I decided not to take it personally. “I have been here for days?”

Estelmo frowned. “Do you not remember? You have been awake enough to be talking a time or two already.”

“I do not think I remember, no. I was walking in the snow. Everything after that is a blur at best.”

There was a question I needed to ask, though I dreaded the answer. I drew a breath and steeled myself. I had to ask. I had to be certain.

“Isildur?”

I saw in Estelmo’s face that it was not the first time I had asked that, though I could not remember it. I also saw that he had no good news to give. He fidgeted with the tail of his belt for a while before speaking.

“No one knows. He was not on the field when the battle ended, he had gone— Elendur begged him to”, Estelmo explained when I frowned. “King Thranduil’s scouts found his armour and sword and some other items on the riverbank further south. But there was no body, and there were things missing. He is a strong man. And you survived too, even though we thought—” He shook his head. “Isildur might have made it somewhere safe. Maybe come spring we shall get word from him.”

“No”, I said quietly, closing my eyes against the grief. “There were orcs on guard across the river. If they saw him, if they hit him… even he could not swim if he were pierced by their arrows. Gileinas and I were lucky to get past them; I doubt such luck is given twice in one night. No, my heart tells me he is dead.” I recalled the last dream I had had of him, and shivered.

Estelmo did not argue with me.

“What about Elendur?” I asked.

I saw tears in Estelmo’s eyes. “He died defending me.”

“Ciryon? Aratan?”

“They are dead. Everyone is. Only us three left”, he told me. His voice shook.

I could not stave off my tears any longer. I wept. I had no strength to fight the weight of the blanket on me and curl up as I wanted to, so I lay still, blinded by my tears, crying until it seemed I could not breathe anymore. The chair scraped against the floor. I felt the blanket be partly lifted away from me, and the dip of the mattress as Estelmo sat down on the edge of the bed. He gathered me into his arms and held me against his chest.

I only stopped crying when I ran out of tears. My face felt hot. I was out of breath, and out of strength, too. I was barely able to turn my head so that I could see Estelmo better. His face was also flushed and wet from crying.

“What you said last. Us three”, I began when I had regained enough breath to speak. “Gileinas? He is also alive?”

Estelmo nodded. He shifted so that I could see the rest of the room better. There was another bed set somewhat apart from mine. Gileinas lay curled upon it.

“He is asleep now, but he was awake and asking after you not two hours ago. I think he shall be alright”, Estelmo said.

He set me down on the bed again. I saw his gaze flicking between Gileinas and myself. He offered me a slight smile.

“I was wrong”, he said. “He did not break. Not even where the strength of many others would have failed.”

“I told you so”, I replied.

He laughed a little. “I know. You did.”

I lay quietly for some time. I stared at the ceiling and let my mind wander. Estelmo went back to his book, though he kept glancing at me.

“It is not against the law to sleep if you are tired, you know”, he said at length.

“I know. I will, in a while. But tell me… Queen Varyandë? Is she somewhere here?”

“She is. So is Valandil.”

“I should like to speak with her. Not today, I think, but sometime soon.”

 

Some days later I thought I was as ready as I would be to face Varyandë. I somewhat dreaded it, but I knew it would not become easier if I were to put it off for longer.

I had had a bath the evening before — my first actual bath since I had left Osgiliath four and a half months earlier, which seemed to me as distant as if it had happened in another life. It had been a pleasant experience, aside from the sight of my reflection in a mirror in the bathroom. I had felt like I was looking at a stranger. I do not know why I was not prepared for it; of course I could not look the same as I had before. But something about my image staring at me with lost, mournful eyes, its face half-covered with a patchy beard, the hair grown wild and overly long, the body thin and nearly frail-looking, unsettled me. It seemed less like a king’s young esquire and more like a stray dog given the form of a man.

Nonetheless, the next day I felt the most clean and presentable and in the best strength I had been since my arrival in Imladris. I sat on my bed. I had decided against any particular effort toward either formality or pretensions of being in better health than I was. Varyandë had known me all my life. When I had been a child, she had watched me play with Ciryon as a younger brother plays with an older. Behind closed doors there was no need for formality between her and I, and she would neither believe nor appreciate me acting as though I had come out of my ordeal unscathed.

Varyandë came in and sat in the chair by my bed. She wore a simple gown of wool and no jewellery — evidently she had made the same decision to forgo formality as I had. Her hair was loose and streaked with silver. When I had last seen her, it had still been all dark. She looked inquisitively at Gileinas, who was sitting on his bed leafing through a book.

“Varyandë, this is Gileinas. He is my friend —” Friend hardly seemed to cover what he was to me, even then, but I could never find a better word for it. “— I met him during the war. Gileinas, this is Queen Varyandë.”

Gileinas bowed his head politely. Varyandë returned the greeting. I watched them and hoped they would get along, even if only because of the affection each held for me. I did not think I could bear to stand between two people whom I loved and who both loved me but loathed each other. In time my hope was fulfilled; they came to like each other well enough, and Varyandë accepted Gileinas’ place in my life. But at that moment I could only wait to see how things would go.

“I am glad you had a friend with you”, Varyandë said, turning back to me.

I nodded. “So am I.”

A servant came and brought us cups and a pitcher of mulled wine. She left, and we were alone again. Gileinas turned to his book, politely pretending like he wasn’t paying attention to the two of us.

I was silent for a while. I found I did not know what to say or where to begin.

“Would you tell me what happened?” Varyandë asked quietly, taking the burden of choosing from me.

I did. I told her the broad course of the ambush, my orders, and my journey, Gileinas supplying some notes of his own here and there. I spared her most of the details I have written down in this account, partly because at the time I did not wish to look back on them myself, and partly because I felt it would be unkind to force her to hear the full depths of the suffering and desperation I had endured. I am sure she saw enough of it written on my face as it was.

I finished my tale and stared into the half-empty cup in my hand. Tears burned my eyes. I refused to let them fall. Her husband and three of her sons had all been taken from her in one night, and yet I had survived to sit there in front of her. It did not seem fair.

“I am sorry. I wish I had—” I began in a whisper.

Varyandë took my chin in her hand and turned my head toward herself. She was smiling in that way people do when they are trying not to cry. I realised that I had not been faithful to my intentions. I had not meant to pretend with her, but there we both were, holding back tears, putting on a brave face as if it could make things any better.

“Cruel as that trade would have been, if Isildur had thought that by keeping you at his side he could have made a difference to whether our sons lived or died, he would have done so. If he had thought that he could order them to flee the battle and be obeyed, he would have given the order. He did not. He did what he could to save you, because you were the one he could save”, she said softly. “Zôrzagar, that you have returned from the jaws of death is a joy to me in the midst of my grief, and more than I thought I could hope for when news of the battle came. Do not mar that joy with needless guilt.”

I bowed my head, half in acknowledgement and half under the weight of pain I still could not be rid of. Varyandë took my hand and held it in silence.

“I dreamt of Isildur”, I confessed. “It was on the night between mettarë and yestarë, if I have my count of days aright. He came out of a river and he was pierced with arrows, but he spoke to me. He told me to live.”

There was a catch in her breath, like a gasp reined in at the last moment. It was the first time I had spoken of my dream to anyone. Since then I have only told of it to Estelmo and to Lord Elrond. I included it in this account because it seemed necessary for the complete picture, but for some reason it has always seemed to me a thing not meant for many witnesses, and thus I have been reluctant to speak of it with others.

She squeezed my hand. “You have done all he asked for, and you have done it well. I think he would be happy to know you are alive and safe.”

I glanced at Narsil, which had been laid on a shelf by one wall of the room. I had been told that when I had first been brought to Imladris, I had become so distressed at anyone else touching the broken sword that Lord Elrond had decided it was better to leave it within my line of sight, so I could at least be more easily reassured that it had not been stolen. Now that I was in my senses again, I only wished to give it to someone else and feel that I was done with my mission.

“I suppose Valandil ought to have that”, I said.

“It is rightfully his”, Varyandë agreed. “You should give it to him.”

“It is not how I had hoped to introduce myself to him.” But very little had gone as I had hoped it would. I could bear this one thing more.

Varyandë was silent for a while. “I had hoped he could grow to manhood without the shadow of the throne upon him.” She smiled sadly. I could hear the strain in her voice. “I wish he and Elendur could have had the easy childhood that Aratan and Ciryon were given. It is an ill thing for a child to grow up in years of such fear and doubt, and then to be told that the weight of his people’s fates shall one day be his to carry and he should ready himself for it.”

I nodded. “Valandil is still a child, too young to be king. What will you do in the meantime?”

“I have dealt with the business of the realm since Queen Emeldir died five years ago. Longer than that, really; I aided her when her health began to fail. I can go on taking care of things a few years more. I am no longer young, but I should have more than enough time left to see Valandil that far.”

The wives of the Faithful had hearts of steel. They were given no other choice. Varyandë was strong even among them, and I believe she had courage enough to rival Isildur, though perhaps courage of a different kind. She endured the lot that fate gave her, and even as I spoke with her that day I never doubted that she would endure it.

We spoke for a while more. Eventually she took her leave, but we agreed that she would visit again with Valandil the next day, and I could give him the shards of Narsil then.

 

When the door closed behind her, all the tears that I had held back while we spoke flooded out unbidden. I curled up and wept helplessly. I do not know for whom; for myself, or for her, or Isildur and his sons and all my fallen comrades.

A pair of arms closed around me. Gileinas had climbed into my bed. I sank into his embrace. Exhausted by my tears, I must have fallen asleep, because the next time I opened my eyes, we were both lying down on the bed. I was still curled against his chest. He was asleep, one arm wrapped around me. The peace of sleep had smoothed away the tension and pain from his face. I did not want to disturb him, so I settled back against him and listened to his quiet breathing.

Later that evening I talked Estelmo into shaving my beard off and cutting my hair to the proper length just above my shoulders. I had in fact always tended to wear my hair quite a lot longer than was fashionable before then, but at the time I wanted to do whatever it took to look even a little more like a civilised man.

 

The next day I sat in a chair by the window, wearing a borrowed tunic made for someone more broad-shouldered than I would have been even when I was not half-starved. It was still a more presentable outfit than a plain shirt, or the mud- and sweat-stained clothes I had crossed the mountains in. Narsil lay across my lap. Gileinas sat nearby and Estelmo stood with him, neither of them willing to desert me. The light in the room was warm and came mainly from the lanterns and the fire in the fireplace; outside the clouds were thick and grey, and it was snowing again.

Varyandë entered with Valandil at her side. Lord Elrond followed after them. I was not very surprised at his presence; I knew he cared deeply for Elendil’s family and therefore for Valandil, while I was both his patient and a guest in his house. He had a reason to be interested in what happened between us.

I looked at Valandil with interest, and caught him looking back at me with equal curiosity. He was dressed plainly for the most part, though in fine clothes; the only jewellery he wore was a thin circlet of gold on his head, and the Ring of Barahir hung on a chain around his neck. His fingers were still too slim for it to stay on well in any of them. He held himself proudly as a king’s son ought, and walked with the same grace as his mother. Having been taught by the Eldar and raised in their dwelling, he had a light in his eyes that few Men do. He was still far from his adult height, hardly coming up to Varyandë’s shoulder. But although he was still a boy, his face was solemn and well-controlled.

I stood up for long enough to bow to him. He looked a little bewildered, evidently unused to such gestures.

“My lord”, I said, sitting back down, “my name is Ruinamacil, and I was your father’s esquire. When we were ambushed on our march north, he entrusted me with these, the shards of your grandfather Elendil’s sword Narsil, and commanded me to bring them to safety.” I drew a breath and tried to speak through the grief choking my throat. “I had hoped to return them to him, but as he is dead, they are yours by right. Will you receive them?”

I held the sheath out as far as I could, but I kept my right hand on the armrest of the chair to mask its weakness. Valandil glanced at Varyandë and Lord Elrond. He stepped forward, slowly reaching out his hand until it hovered over the hilt of Narsil.

“I will receive the shards of Narsil. Thank you for serving my father so faithfully.” He spoke slowly, carefully, a little as if he was seeking for the right words as he was saying them. I felt sorry for him. He was only a child, caught in the middle of others’ grief for a man he had never known and faced with the weight of future duty that should never have been his. He has since become a great and honourable king, but as Varyandë had said the day before, it was not fair that his childhood was disturbed by such things.

He took Narsil from me and stepped back. I watch him hold the sheath in his left hand and carefully drew the sword out with his right. He looked quietly at the gleaming blade, broken off a foot below the hilt.

“That was a good sword. Keep it well, Valandil, and do not forget the cost by which the peace in your realm was bought. But it will not be for you to repair it; indeed this blade shall not be reforged until Sauron rises once more and Middle-Earth stands again on the brink of darkness”, said Lord Elrond quietly, moving to stand behind the boy.

I glanced at Varyandë, alarmed. Valandil turned to Lord Elrond and frowned.

“But Sauron was defeated utterly, was he not? Surely such a day shall never come”, he said.

A shadow flickered on Lord Elrond’s face. “We may hope that it shall not, though few things are certain beyond doubt, and in some matters hope alone is a poor shield. But in any case such dark things shall not happen in your lifetime, and for the time being you may safely put it out of your mind.”

 

We all stayed in Imladris until the end of Gwirith. Partly it was because, although we believed that he was dead, it nonetheless seemed better to wait until it was certain beyond doubt that had he made it to safety, word of it would have had time to reach Imladris. But largely it was because Varyandë wished for me to come with her and Valandil to Annúminas, and wanted to make sure I had enough time to recover in peace and that the spring was far enough for good travelling weather before I had to be on the road again.

I allowed Lord Elrond to cut the arrowhead out of my shoulder, because he feared that it might otherwise move with time and cause worse injury than it already had. He is a skilled healer, but a wound is nonetheless a wound, and waiting for his work to heal added to the time I needed for recovering. He told me also that the arrow had cut partly through a nerve, and though the pain and weakness might somewhat lessen with time, I should not expect to ever regain the full use of my arm.

Estelmo and Gileinas and I spent much time together during those months in Imladris. Estelmo could well have returned to his home in Tharbad as soon as weather permitted travelling again at the beginning of Gwaeron, but he chose to rather see us to Annúminas first before turning homeward. There was a strange, grim connection between the three of us, the only survivors of the slaughter of that night near the Gladden Fields, that we could not deny.

I also spoke often with Valandil. I was hesitant at first, for I did not wish to burden him with my grief, but he came to me again time after time, and asked me to tell him about his father and his brothers. How could I have denied him?

 

Our journey to Annúminas went quietly. Estelmo’s father came to meet him there and accompany him on the journey to their home in Tharbad. I stayed with Varyandë and Valandil, and Gileinas remained with me.

Varyandë knighted the three of us the following year. When it came to Gileinas and myself, it was a formality, to honour deeds we had already done, and not truly tied to expectation of any future service. We all knew by then that I would never hold a sword again. Gileinas could still have been a warrior otherwise, but he would never leave my side for long.

When Valandil was twenty-one, he took the throne for himself. Five years after that, satisfied that he had things well in hand, Varyandë returned to Imladris. She had grown close with the Lady Celebrían during the years of the war, and wished to see her again and spend the remainder of her life in peace in that fair house, away from the busy and complex life of the court in Annúminas. Gileinas and I accompanied her at her request. She died thirty-three years later, with enough forewarning that Valandil could come stay with her for her last months. I think she was as happy as anyone in her place could have been.

After Varyandë’s death, we returned to Annúminas again for a time. I am sure Lord Elrond would have allowed Gileinas and I to stay in Imladris indefinitely, but I wished to be in the company of my own people again.

Before the year was over, we left Annúminas, however. I had been away from the court for a long time, and I found it hard to settle in and felt myself a stranger there. I know Valandil was sad to see me go, but he granted me a house and the lordship of some lands near Emyn Beraid, in the quiet western borderlands where even lordly houses only maintain a small troop of men at arms for the sake of formality. It is a fair land, and I have been happy in my life here; the happiest while Gileinas lived, though the time he was given seems to me too short. Estelmo visited us when he found the time for it in between his own duties, as a knight, and then as the Lord of Tharbad, and as a husband and father. While Gileinas’ health allowed it, and again after his passing, I made a point of visiting Annúminas for at least one of the great feast-days of the year. Valandil, and now his children also, are the only kin I have left in the Realms of the Faithful, and it would not be polite to turn my back to my family.

As I write these words and look back to the events I have relayed in them, it seems plain to me that it was the hand of some power greater than myself that brought me and Gileinas alive over the mountains. Too many things on that journey depended on luck that settled on our side despite everything. I doubt it was for our own sakes. After all, what did our two lives weigh in the scales of the world to make such an intervention worthwhile? Besides, though I have not been unhappy with my life, I feel as though ever since I woke up in Imladris a part of me has been adrift and seeking a purpose that no longer exists to guide me. If I had been saved for my own sake, should I not have clearly seen the path to follow and felt right in keeping to it?

No, I think whatever aid beyond human might I may have been given, it was because I was meant to save Narsil. My own fate must have become irrelevant as soon as I reached Imladris with it.

I do not understand why Narsil should be so important, but Lord Elrond seemed to think that it is, and I am not one to question his judgement. He sees far, further perhaps than any other living person, and prepares for chances of a a future far beyond the lifespan of any man. I will not ask him what he thinks; I have no wish to burden myself with such knowledge.

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Chapter End Notes

I hope you enjoyed this fic!!

I'm sincerely really grateful for all of you who commented on the chapters while I was writing the fic, it really encouraged me to keep telling the story despite the way it kept getting away from me <3

This is actually the longest fic I've ever finished, even though I've spent 11-ish years in fandoms and writing fic; I'm not much of a chapterfic writer. It might even be longest I've ever written at all (I'd have to check that against one fic languishing in one of my google docs folders that I never got to the point of posting to make sure which is longer, but I don't feel like doing that just now...)

Next I'll be off diving into my Thingol cosplay project for Finncon, my art ideas for Scribbles & Drabbles, and preparing for running Finnish Fanworks Week, so we'll see when I find the time to write fic again, but I think I might want to return to Ohtar (and perhaps Gileinas as well, and Estelmo, and certainly Varyandë) again in some future story