Notes: It's very loosely inspired by Bastille's "Pompeii". For some reason listening to that song led to me writing this.
He walked without purpose for a long time. The few Elven folk who all but clung to his side at every moment shouted words of protest and confusion at his retreating form as he walked away without a word. Some got up to follow him but he pushed them away when they got too close. He wasn't sure why, exactly, he just knew he needed to go alone. It wasn't so much as a conscious desire, as he would have never left them on their own if he had a choice, rather it was a gut feeling. Something deep inside him wanted him and only him to venture out of the relative safety of their hiding place.
It took him the better half of a fortnight to realize where his feet were taking him. Loosing the war and having Sauron back in control of the Master Ring had cast fatigue on him. He had never felt so tired in the thousands of years he'd been alive; not when he lost his brother, nor his wife and children. It was the sense of hopelessness that weighed him down and made him feel the weight of every single day of his life pushing down on him.
Finally he stood at the edge of a crack in the earth. He knew that if he would look down there would be nothing to see but that it was a trick. There was something there. Well, there used to be, anyway. It had been destroyed quite some time ago. Remembering that particular night, the screams and the fighting, was almost enough to bring him to his knees and make him weep. He wanted to turn back. He wanted to get as far away from this place as he could. For once the bad memories overpowered the good and he wanted to have no part of it anymore.
Yet he couldn't turn away. His feet had started back on their journey and were leading him down the path into what used to be a grand city. The pathway was treacherous now, the war and time had caused it to loose all of it's smoothness and it was now pockmarked with giant holes and pitfalls. He wasn't exactly sure how he had made it all the way down without so much as even slipping but he had. Most of this journey he seemed to be in a sort of fog, like something else was controlling him. It certainly would explain why he kept on venturing forward rather than back, he thought.
He stopped at the end of the path and looked out over the ruins of a once thriving and lustrous city. It was now so decimated it hurt his very soul to look upon it. So much work had been put into this once grand city, so many souls cared for and loved it, so many wished to gaze upon it, and what was it now? Nothing more than piles of rubble, ash, and dust. Many buildings were missing and the ones that remained were nothing more than husks or pillars of stone. The waterfall that fed water into the city had been blown open so wide that the water flooded the lower half of the city completely. He was vaguely aware of the water lapping up at his own feet and soaking the bottom of his clothes.
Like a ghost he kept moving, his feet taking them where they wanted. Next thing he knew he was standing in his old bedchamber. Of all places in this city he could have ended up it was here. He wondered why, there was nothing left for him to see here. The room was dusty and none of the extravagant decor or furniture remained. He wandered out of the bleak place and into the room that used to belong to his daughter. Unlike his, her room was not barren. Furniture and fixings remained, but they were charred and covered in ashes. There was a giant hole in the ceiling and the bright light of the afternoon sun shone in illuminating the dust that was thick in the air. He whipped a hand softly across the wooden surface of a jewelry chest he had given her when she was very young. It seemed suddenly important that it be clean of any dust or debris. His eyes blurred with tears he refused to shed. He hadn't noticed the shard of glass still clinging to the front where there used to be a stained-glass pane and reflexively drew his hand in toward his body when the pain of the glass slicing open the palm of his hand hit him. The action caused the chest to crash to the ground, the sound echoed and sounded a million times louder than it would have if there was still life left in the city.
He stood pin straight and ignored the sharp pain stinging his hand. He listened and waited for any sign of something coming out of hiding. It was always safer to assume seemingly empty cities were populated by monsters that hid in dark places. For several moments he stood and listened, his good hand resting against the hilt of a sword that hung off his belt. When he was sure nothing was coming for him he turned back to his wound. Blood was flowing freely down his arm and dripping onto the stone floor turning the ashes scattered upon it a deep red. Using his sword he tore off a strip of his shirt and tied it around his hand to stop the bleeding. He winced and hissed in pain at the pressure before using his teeth to tie a knot.
Now that his hand was tended to he turned back to the jewelry chest. When he bent over to pick it up, however, something caught his eye; he knelt down to get a better look. At the base of the dresser, against the wall and behind the door something was hidden in shadow. He closed the door to let the light into the corner and that's when he was able to see what it was; a flower. It was beautiful. The stem and leaves were of the brightest green and the petals were blue and white. It was the only flower he'd seen in a very long time and it was the most beautiful thing he had seen in this world since Sauron took over. Gingerly he ran a finger over the petal and felt the silkiness of it.
For hours he sat there by that small flower, absentmindedly stroking it's petals, and it wasn't until the sun ceased shining through the hole in the ceiling that he discovered the small object contained more beauty than he thought it could. The white parts of the petals began to glow. He gazed at them in amazement. Never before had he seen such a flower.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the glowing from across the room. He stood and walked over and found yet another flower there, under a table. He walked to the door and opened it, wondering if they were anywhere else in the building and found several more out in the crumbling hallway. When he looked out through a gaping hole in the side of the house and out unto the whole city he saw them, thousands of them. They had been hidden from him by dust and rubble during the day but now at night their glow was so bright that no amount of dust or ash could hide them. They covered the city and the ruins seemed to sparkle with that spectacular white light.
He fell to his knees and wept with joy. When he stopped and rose to his feet he felt lighter. A huge weight had been lifted off him and he felt he was able to finally properly help those he'd sworn to protect back at the refuge. He once again felt the strength to try and defeat Sauron once and for all. He finally felt that feeling that had abandoned him when he had needed it most. He had found hope again.