A/N: This was originally going to be part of my story 'First Meetings, Final Partings', but as you can tell it kind of outgrew the original 150 words. Not beta-ed, so please point out any spelling/grammar mistakes etc. Also, I don't know who it was who originally called Halbarad's wife Miriel, but I hope no offense is taken if I use that name.
January Skies
No parent should have to bury their child.
In the end, he helps to dig the grave. Anything to blunt the grief a little, but with every thud of the spade into frozen ground, the pain grows rather than abates. His bruised fingers are stiff and cold, curled around the lifeless wooden handle the way they curled around his sword-hilt, the way his son's fingers had curled as he sought his father's hand in the moment before the orc-blade had stained the snow crimson with his blood and ended his life. Halbarad remembers that moment well. He has remembered and re-remembered it every night for the three nights that have passed. He remembers it again as the snow settles on his hair and on his hands, and in the grave that he is digging. He does not think he will ever forget.
There had been tears, and screaming, and Aragorn's arms wrapped tightly around him as if they could hold one other together. The wind had been roaring in the trees, and he had felt his blood pounding through his brain, rushing in his ears, so, all in all, Halbarad knows he couldn't possible have heard. But in his dreams all fades to an unearthly silence, and he can hear each terrible gasping breath as bloodied hands scrabble for purchase in snow and gore, hear the terror in a soul too young to know death, hear the whispered plea: "Father..."
Crunching footsteps tear his thoughts away and Halbarad realises he has stopped digging, that the spade is hanging limply at his side. Work-abused muscles are screaming at the sudden stiffness, but he only stares blindly out across the snow; the dusk is the light fading from his son's eyes. It is the most sickening sight he has ever beheld, and as a ranger, he is no stranger to death.
The footsteps stop at the graveside, and a gentle hand comes to rest on his shoulder, warm even through the sodden wool of Halbarad's cloak. It is Aragorn, his eyes as bleak as January skies when the blizzards howl down from Forochel and every being that wishes to live takes to shelter. The snow curls around him, and he draws in a deep, unsteady breath as if he were to make a speech, to dredge up some well-meaning words of comfort from the bottom of his heart. But in a moment he lets it out again with a sorrowful sigh, and pries the spade from Halbarad's nerveless fingers.
"It is time."
The hand squeezes his shoulder in silent support, then drops to the spade. Aragorn finishes digging in silence.
"It is time," Dírlas tells her, and, numb to the core, Miriel follows her mother-in-law out into the snow, little Hirgon wrapped up warm at her hip. The child is only beginning to understand what his parents and siblings have, that his big brother has gone away forever, and he buries his face in the fur of her cloak, seeking comfort in his mother's closeness as they trudge the cleared path down to the edge of the village. Ahead of them, Halbaron and Hareth are carrying the torches, and the feeble light flickers off raw eyes and damp cheeks. Like icicles their tears drip slowly, rolling and drying as their cries are torn away by the wind. From somewhere behind, there is the sound of sobbing.
Miriel has done her crying, did it two nights ago in Halbarad's arms as they watched Aragorn's futile attempts to stem the blood flow from a wound too deep to survive, and the fire of her grief has exhausted itself into smouldering anguish in a face that has aged centuries overnight. Maybe she will weep again, when Halbarad wakes up screaming and begging, and "Let it be me instead, ah Valar let it be me instead!" for then she will not scold him for taking the name in vain. Then she will hold him and they will mourn together and seek to blot out the horrors with love, but now, as the wind whips her hair from her braid and threatens to extinguish the sputtering torches, Miriel's heart feels as barren as the snow-swept field they have adopted as a graveyard.
The torches make little impact in the growing darkness at the graveside, but Miriel is glad that she cannot see her husband's face. Halbarad's eyes are lowered, staring blankly into the snow at his feet, and his slumped shoulders give the impression that Aragorn's presence beside him is the only thing keeping him standing. But Aragorn must move away, and Miriel slips an arm around Halbarad's waist in his place. Her husband shifts to lean against her and raises his eyes, but neither of them have words to express what the both of them understand. Flanked by their surviving children, they await the bier in silence.
The approaching footfalls are muted by the snowstorm, but the small crowd parts before their inexorable progress, and everywhere they pass, solemn heads are bowed. The whispers of the children quieten, and slowly, as if a great curtain is being drawn fitfully aside, Halbarad sees the pallbearers appear through the gloom. They are barely older than lads, these friend's of his son, and written on sombre faces is the knowledge that it could have been them, could still be them. Yet when burial is over and grief has been poured out, they will sleep and wake anew in the morning, ready to fight on. But Handír son of Halbarad goes to his eternal rest tonight, and when the sun rises in the morn there will be nought left of him but memory and star, nothing but an unmarked rock to show the place of his sleep.
This he has seen before; there are not enough fingers or toes to number the friends he has helped bury in the clay soil of the Angle (and is it worse to see an old trouper cut down after years of hard toil, or a young lad barely out of training?) Now he knows, because nothing is worse than burying a child, and Handír was only twenty-three...
Miriel's hand tightens around his waist and Halbarad's eyes refocus. Aragorn is speaking, but the words run through them like water, and as Halbarad watches, the wind works lose the cloth covering Handír's face.
And the snow covers his son's hair like a shroud.
A/N: Please review. If you enjoyed this, I currently have two other LoTR stories published here.
Own Character List (in order of appearance):
Dírlas – OC, Halbarad's mother
Miriel – OC, Halbarad's wife
Hirgon – OC, Halbarad's youngest son, aged 4 or 5
Halbaron – OC , Halbarad's eldest son, aged 27
Hareth – OC, Halbarad's eldest daughter, aged 27
And of course:
Handír – OC, Halbarad's middle son, aged 23