A/N: Hey! I originally wrote this story in German and I think it sounds better in that language but I wanted to post it nevertheless. Let me know what you think!
No wisp of wind blew above the land of Gondor as the soldier opened his eyes and thus alighted from bottomless darkness. The ground was a light brown, agitated and smelled of dirt and decay. The battle that had been raging moments ago left behind nothing less than a number of lifeless corpses that not even the darkest of wizards was capable of counting.
Humans, nevermind wether good or spiteful demeanour, Orcs, Oliphants and other creatures that came creeping out of the deepest places in Middle Earth gathered together. Gathered, to kill each other. To slay their heads, separate limbs from their beloved bodies, ram their swords into their stomachs, spear their enemy from behind, bring them down with an arrow from afar like hunting a bird. Yes, these creatures were hunting down each other. They were starving for that last breath, the despair in the eyes of the enemy when they'd realize that their life was forfeited and the fainthearted scattering should the last attack be prosperous.
For some not even the first one was successful.
Success. What is success worth if everything accomplished was to frighten the enemy brutally enough so they took their two or four legs and ran back into the maggot hole they descended so certain of victory. Victory. Yes, what a victory.
The scattering of death fell onto the wide lowlands softly. Still the dirt in the air cauterized in the lungs of the soldier who lay with his head tuned to his right in the middle of the battlefield. The sun burned, but nothing he felt despite the cold in his body. Why did he go to war. What made his family use of liberation from foes when there wasn't a family left.
He observed the Orcs that were slipping into death beside him. He had been seeing death. One of the things that fascinated him as a child. Death. Yes, he always wanted to see a dead body. It dawned on him that every being would see death one time in their life. Death that was only meant for them.
They were all avaricious: humans, Orcs, wizards, even the words were avaricious. Of power, of deaths, of spells, of meaning. And now when everyone got exactly what they wanted, what could satisfy their greed, no one took it and fled. Fled across corpses, decay, blood, arrows, spears, animals, humans, beasts.
The sun burned. And she shall burn onwards, without all those who had been too greedy. So heavily the sun burned, so heavily his ribcage caught fire. He coughed and turned his leaden body among unbearable pain unwillingly to his side. Thereby a dark, stained, twisted something fell into the centre of his range of vision. It wavered and scratched and raised itself constantly without rhythm up and down und quickly the soldier recognized there was another body. A body, flesh and blood and past, like he himself. However, he was veiled by black and dark red robes. His skin was darker than his. Or was is because he rolled in that mud? It didn't matter. He was human. But he was a foe, a Haradrim who fought on the other side, on Saurons side. Although he didn't even know who he had been exactly. Had he been a good man? Was he human at all? What was good?
The heat of a desert seemed to ascend in his head. All of his memories were blurred, were flowing beyond time and he still knew was that, in front of him, someone who was much like himself lay there. A soldier. Soldier?
The black eyes of the stranger ghosted from one point to another. He seemed to search for something in that sweaty air that spread above their heads. Und eventually – had it been a blink of an eye, an hour, a week, a ear, or an era – his eyes found his own. He believed remembering they had been green. The green of his mother's garden. Mother?
The hooded figure stared at him, pierced him and for one heartbeat he thought the enemy's dagger that owed him his wounds crept himself through his chest once more. The next moment a dearly warmth from his heart made its way through his body. It reached until his legs and toes and until each small fingertip that were buried under his heavy leathern gloves.
A strength arose inside of him. One of the kind that made men do insane thing, not thinking about his actions and in the moment of acting enjoyed the freedom of rashness. That strength pushed him, gave him power. Power that he hadn't had possessed on his past life. Not in illness, nor in health, not in battle, nor here on the adamant ground, not in the dirt, nor in blood. He dragged his unharmed arm in the direction of the Haradrim who had been – so he thought – his enemy. Enemy?
He stretched out his fingertips and reached for his hand that rested next to his veiled nose. His uncontrolled, quivering body was sinking still. But this time like the melody of a song that he thought long forgotten. He placed the tip of his index finger upon the pinky of the other soldier. It seemed like torture, as if he was climbing on the top of the highest mountain on Earth and then to the deepest part of Hell.
Still their eyes didn't leave each other.
And they didn't want to. Not now and not in eterni-.