A/N: I don't own anything you recognize.
Grief
They told me he died in combat.
They brought his body back on a black bier. His shield was set upon his corpse beneath his folded arms. He held his sword, unsheathed and kept clean to avoid iron-eating rust, clasped in both hands. Blood soaked the black leather of his jacket, and the black breeches he wore. The lacings of his boots were saturated with dried blood that flaked off in tiny pieces when the wind ruffled the boot ties.
I wished I could touch that lion's mane of lovely black hair just once more. How many times had I brushed his hair, running the brush through the thick, soft hair over and over again as he talked to me about so many things, everything he worried about, everything he feared and hated and wondered about; he spoke to me about all that. He unburdened his heart to me, and then I was forced to send him to his death.
"For the sake of our kingdom," I told him. "For the sake of our children. You must go on this mission, you have to."
He'd traveled through the Bean Stalk Forest, alone and secret, hidden from his enemies. At my request, he'd rescued ourr children from the hands of the enemy forces. He'd freed an imprisoned monarch. He'd taken the enemy prince, or tried. He'd almost made it; the enemy prince had just barely managed to slip through her husband's grasp. But in the end, it had all been too much for him.
I watched now as they laid his body to rest in the place our family claimed, and wondered. I wondered what they had done with my husband's head after Prince Wendell had driven through the entire 4th Kingdom with it hanging out of his carriage window.
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Disclaimers: I do not own the Lord of the Rings; I do not own blah-blah-blah. I just wanted to see how this would work itself out in my brain.