Disclaimer: sad but true: I don't know anything. If you went to review, review to every story separately, it helps to increase my number of reviews.
It has been a little over two months since I posted anything and I hope this wasn't too disappointing. this is based on a short writing I found when cleaning my room, I just made it a bit longer.
Aragorn cannot escapes the events at Helm's deep and seeks to elevate his burden by sharing it through a letter.
Dear Arwen
I know not how to tell you. Never before have I seen such horror, not even in my younger years when I first ran with the Dunedain and discovered the gruesomeness of battle. When I travelled through the dead marshes and saw the face of death, it could not have prepared me to see the face of the dying. Every night I fall asleep with the image of the dead haunting me and every morning I wake with the screaming of these for whom yesterday had been their last among the living and with a dreadful feeling that today will be mine. I have seen death before, but never like this, never before did we lose so many trying to achieve victory, it became a lamentable defeat.
I realise that for you so far away from this –and thank the Valar that you are- this sounds like something a poet would say. There is a significant difference though: poets live in a universe of their own making where they cannot be harmed and they may live without care for the world. For us, here on the battlefield, their poetry has become our grim reality.
For a poet it is simple, his hero comes out alive and lives happily ever after with a family that has miraculously been saved or the hero will die but will be remembered for his honour and altruism in serving his country. Never does the poet speak of those who fell fighting alongside his hero, of their families. And in the end, the hero never speaks of them, but in fond remembrance of their sacrifice for the greater good. But I have found that there is no noble way to die, it is not honourable or dignified. Death here is foul. Here the fallen lie in the mud, trampled by their friends before their last breath or drowning in their own blood. To survive, you must shield yourself with the corps of your comrade. No hero will arise from amidst the fallen and dauntingly present his blade to the sun in challenge without regard for his deceased companions.
There is screaming, the cries of those already in the clutches of death. Slowly the screaming diminishes, or maybe it does not but is simply overtaken by the mournful howls of those remaining behind. We fight for the greater good, we die for it, but doing so does not stop Sauron. He sits laughing on his throne, with the wave of his hand he sends out more of his expendable forces, and we keep fighting until all potential heroes are gone and still we would praise them. Is a so-called honourable death so much more preferable to a death while finding comfort in the arms of a beloved one last time before the end? Do we not make ourselves an easy victim by facing Him head on? would it not be better to hide away for now? and come out when we are ready, when we are prepared. But no, we could not do that: we would not be heroes. I'm sure He sits laughing on his throne.
I know I should not tell you this and that you will think it strange that I have. And I know that you expected something closer to a love letter, full of promises, but I seem unable t write such a lie. I love you never doubt that, but now I realise more than ever before that, despite what I 'd thought earlier, I cannot live of love alone. No one can. Love does not dismiss our hunger, love does not quench our thirst, love does not heal our wounds or cure our diseases. Love does not bring back the dead. It is to protect those we love that we fight, that we die. But when I see a woman crying her loss to the sky, after having lost husband, father and brothers or when I see an orphaned child wandering about lost, I cannot help but ask whether we have done the right thing. What have we offered them other but a life in further misery. Life, yes. A life in which they may toil for the rest of their days trying to regain some semblance of what they had before. They will curse Sauron for doing this to them. They will curse us for not handling things as we should have, for pretending to be heroes. It is so much easier to blame Him then.
I cannot promise a safe homecoming or indeed, a homecoming at all. And I cannot tell you to hope when I myself have lost all hope. I can only ask, should I not return, that you remember me as I was in the days when I still believed I could live of love alone. In love and hope. This war will leave its mark on me for if I come back I will not only carry visible scars, but invisible ones as well, these will run far deeper and will be much slower in healing. I do not remember when my hope began to weaver, but this is not the first time I have wondered.
I love you never doubt that.
Namarië
Yours
Aragorn.
The fire crackled merrily but unnoticed as it consumed the worries of a troubled soul. Better to let the lady remain ignorant among her books and poems and legends, than to burden her with the gruesome truth. Better to not taint her soul with the dark spot that is claiming yours.
I had to stop here, though my mind could have easily gone on for a long while yet, I felt I could not possibly write such a long, dark letter without getting a bit down. Bye, see you again, whenever I do.