Hey, everyone! I'm back again with another short piece. It's a bit...well, darkish. Or, at least I think so. This one is based more on the film-although it takes place seventeen years before the events of the War of the Ring, so maybe that's considered book-verse, I dunno. *shrugs* Anyways, I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think. (Just remember, flames are for fireplaces, not fanfiction.) ;)
Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the Rings, I'm just borrowing the characters for a little bit before I return them.
Just Like Me
by Knowing Grace
"The enemy? His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem. You wonder what his name is, where he came from. And if he was really evil at heart. What lies or threats led him on this long march from home. If he would not rather have stayed there...in peace. War will make corpses of us all."
~ Faramir, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended DVD)
Ithilien, T.A. 3001
Blood. It was everywhere: it was splattered all over my clothes, all over the damp, leaf-strewn ground...and, also, all over the dead man that lay at my feet. It dripped from the tip of my sword. Blood, so much blood! The metallic scent of it was so thick in the air that I fancied I could almost taste the bitter tang of it upon my tongue. The smell alone caused my stomach to twinge; bile burned my throat, but I swallowed it back. I was not about to disgrace myself or the line of the Stewards of Gondor by spewing what little I had eaten for supper the night before into the bushes in direct view of my men. I was a son of lord Denethor II, and it behooved me to act as such.
However, I could not stop thinking about the body before me.
Dead. He was...he was dead. And I had killed him. I did not know why it was affecting me so much; Boromir could slay Easterlings and Southrons all day long without batting an eye.
Yes, but you are not Boromir, a tiny voice in my heart murmured.
Stop acting like a child, the rational part of my brain scolded, you have killed several times before.
It was true, I had slain many Orcs and Wargs without giving it much thought. They were evil creatures, with hearts just as black as the blood that flowed through their veins. I may not have cared about spilling the life force of the spawn of Morgoth, but this was a man. Staring down at the corpse, I realized that he was young—no more than seventeen or eighteen years of age.
Little more than a boy, I thought. Just like me.
Guilt gnawed at my insides. Suddenly, the red blood staining the grass meant more. I had killed a man, a man who had a heart, lungs, an intelligent mind; a man who had a home, a family, and more than likely, a sweetheart waiting for him to return. A man who had loved, laughed, and cried. A man who had lived. And with one, quick slice of my blade, I had stolen whatever future he might have had away from him.
It did not matter that he was a Southron. It did not matter that he had tried to lop my head off with his scimitar moments ago. It did not matter that, if he had succeeded in killing me, he more than likely would not have felt any remorse for doing so. It did not even matter that he was one of the Enemy.
All that mattered was that I now had his blood on my hands, and I would have to live with that for the rest of my life.
~ Finis ~
