A/N: Magic Eight Palantir, do I own LotR? Drat. This story might be slightly AU, originally written as it was to fit with a very old Suefic 'verse and then trimmed of any direct references, but if you give Denethor's sons access to Psychic Birdbaths, interesting things are bound to happen...
What is one expected to do, when one only has less than a month to live?
It was not knowledge that anyone expected me to stumble across; no one was there, so there was no reason for it to be a lie.
As was not uncommon for me, I had slept poorly beneath Lothlorien's boughs, and was more than content to let any noise in the night draw me from the bed in the chamber I shared with Aragorn. He did not wake as I stepped out beneath the trees, and a part of me was tempted to seek a more pleasant nocturnal companion. But the sound came again, and the soldier in me could not ignore it.
Hidden in the shadows of mallorn trees, my attention was drawn to two smaller members of my fellowship, returning from their own midnight errand. I noted Sam and Frodo's passage with a little fear, a little distrust, - the Ringbearer had been withdrawing more and more as we moved southward, and if he were to take anyone with him when he at last stole away from the rest of us, it would be Samwise, as loyal and slow-witted a companion as a Halfling with uncertain motives might desire. And yet, the two hobbits were heading back to their own room, looking shaken, certainly making much more noise than they usually would, let alone if they were planning to sneak away from these haunted woods without us, and I suspected that any threat in the night would not come from them. I watched them gain their shelter without interfering, then traced their path backwards, further into the woods.
This was away from the guestroom talans, away from anywhere I had been invited to visit during the daytime. This path led away from anywhere a man had ever dared tread in the Golden Wood, deep into the fey wilderness where the elves stalked silently on tasks of their own. There was no sign of anything but the hobbits, and precious little of that, but my imagination conjured up elves just ahead of me, above me, doubling back to surround me as I trespassed into the darker shadows of their mallorn trees. The path was clear and easy walking; perhaps in the dawn light one might consider it a pleasant ramble through the forest. But here, now, its grass was slick, subtly wrong in its softness, and the gentle windings promised unseen guards angry at my presumption for intruding around every bend. The air was still beneath the trees, carrying a silence that I did not trust.
Before I could scare myself silly and turn back to my bed, I came upon a small, raised pool, no larger than a birdbath. But this was no mere garden ornament as might be added as a touch of whimsy in Minas Tirith. Smoke still rose lazily from the bright water, its surface rippling outwards and back to the muddled center, entirely too much response for a pebble, too even for a bird. Uncertain, I stalked around it, reluctant to look into the waters themselves until the last wisps rising above them faded into the darkness. That liquid reflected more light than far-off talans and the leaf-cloaked moon and stars could account for.
I wasn't sure exactly what I expected to see when the water stilled. My own face: haggard, restless, beard in need of a trim if I did not wish to resemble a very tall dwarf in this forest of elves. And yet, there was that light.
I caught sight of myself mirrored in the pool for no more than a heartbeat, even if it became one of the longest heartbeats left to me. Then the water swirled, and I saw Gondor: Minas Tirith's bright walls with the prow of the Citadel rising within them, Osgiliath, now in ruins but with the shards of her starry dome lying ripe for the moment we are able to turn away from war to rebuilding, the fortress of Cair Andros and the hidden sanctuaries of Ithilien and the seaside palace of Dol Amroth and the woods beyond the Pellenor and mountainous stretches of Lebennin I'd patrolled with my elder cousins and trackless other towns and villages, farmland and wilderness. Over everything, the same dark clouds from the dream that had sent me here began to roll in, blotting out the sun. I'd found Isildur's Bane, councils had been taken, the Halfling had stood forth, the Sword that Was Broken had been forged anew, but it was all for naught. Nothing had changed, save that I was not there to defend my home. Certainly, my brother still led his command in Ithilien ably, and my father was as strong as ever, but the king I had found would not be there to relieve their burden in time. Mordor's might would come rolling in first as dark clouds, and then as unstoppable armies, and I would be too far north to even attempt a resistance. I would die here. I saw it.
Not in this forest, perhaps. But a northern forest it would be. Soon. I saw my blood pouring to the old leaves, my sword shattered and its pieces scattered among fallen firewood, thick arrow shafts still quivering in my chest as I sunk against a tree. The pool offered nothing but a vision, but I felt weak and unmanned by the sight as I had not in many years. I could all but smell the iron tang, struggling to catch my breath as if I had been physically hit already. I seized the lip of pool to fight the tremble in my joints, the sudden weakness of my knees. This was too real for a dream, and as nightmarish as the vision seemed, I was awake. This felt more sure than even the dream - the foolish, senseless dream - that had driven me northward. I had foreseen my future, and it was death.
I had expected death in battle. I had not even truly expected to see Mordor finished. Though these last few months I had begun to think a bit more seriously about leaving more than Faramir behind to continue the fight, I had never done much to further that goal, expecting that I'd be able to win some small moment of peace first. But now that peace would never come. I supposed I should be glad to see Minas Tirith only as I remembered her, not battered and burned by Sauron's minions, but I felt a failure already. I would die and my city would fall. My family would die because I would not return.
No. Finally I ripped my gaze away from the water as the vision rippled beneath my quaking hands. That future could not happen. I would do whatever it took to insure it would not happen. I would live and I would convince Frodo to go to Gondor. I would bring the Halfling and his weapon to my people, or someone else would see that vision.