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The banners were being sewn, ribbons and garlands gathered and decorating every hallway, every doorway. Everywhere the sound of rejoicing could be heard echoing from the once cold stone walls.
Never mind that half the city was dead, never mind that the walls still crumbled, that everyone he saw had lost someone. That it had been four days and not a word had passed those lips, that the barest flicker of his eyes had told tale of his awakening.
Aragorn sat in silence, as he had done every moment afforded to him.
He held a fascination for the bowl of water, the way it parted and held his hands in a cool embrace. The ripples that curved and arced around its surface as it dripped from his finger tips. He'd lost count the number of times he had wrung the cloth out, folding it neatly before pressing it to chilled skin.
He'd run out of words to say long ago, there was nothing he could say that he was brave enough to utter. Instead he sung softly, low and airy in languages that none around him knew, the lyrics lost on all passing ears but perhaps they guessed at the meaning.
Four days. Uncounted hours that stretched and pulled at him, the time passing with every sluggish beat of his heart with a weary misery that pressed down upon him, the sense of being trapped between two places heavy on his chest.
Outside they sang songs of victory.
Outside they buried the dead.
He held the pale hand between his own, tracing every line and imagining every arrow ever drawn. His skin was cool, neither living nor dead. It was these quiet moments where he would bring that hand to his cheek, to press into the unfeeling touch and for the briefest of moments he felt the agony of the battlefield in his heart again.
That one blinding second that had shaken the very earth beneath him as he realised that all he had fought for had come to nought. That there had been a truth before him he had never hoped or dared to look for. For what was victory at the expense of the heart.
His eyes clouded with tears, brimming and spilling to run between porcelain fingers, to curl around the slender wrist and trace the faint path of life beneath silken skin. "I'm lost." He whispered, a feeling of betrayal welling up behind his tears, as though to voice his fears was to become them, he had fought all these years, repressed so much, how could he possibly put into words now that which had become ingrained within every fibre of his being. His fear, his terror and failing, of not being all that they had built him up to be. "I've never wanted this.
'But then, you knew that better than anyone." He dropped their clasped hands to his lap, holding tight as though the gentlest of breezes would be enough to rend them apart.
"You remember when we met..." He laughed drily, "Of course you remember, you remember everything.'
'I can't have been more that 10 years old, even I can barely remember those days. But I remember being told you were coming, that you were the greatest archer to walk middle earth, and you were a Prince. I'd been brought up amongst lords and ladies and people of high titles but never had I met a Prince, real royalty, and Mirkwood seemed so far away as to be a wholly different world. I waited at the gates to see your party arrive. I don't really know what I expected; whenever my brothers or Lord Elrond travelled they always seemed to go amongst banners and trumpets. But then, they never really went very many places."
He glanced up as one of the healers passed, her head covered in the dark robes of her station, her eyes fixed on the floor and paying no indication that she had overheard any of the words Aragorn had said. He pressed his tongue against his teeth, trying to recall what he had said and what language had rolled from his tongue, his racing heart glad to know he had guarded his words just as much as he'd guarded his thoughts. "There was no fanfare," he went on, over the momentary distraction. "No call from the gate guards. In fact, there was nothing to give your party away from one of our own other than the way you looked. I remember that you waved to me as I sat on the gate wall, I wasn't meant to be there, and anyone else would have called for me to come down. But you didn't, you just smiled and waved. '
'I have always been treated as a child, even in the years since I've grown, a childhood spent with those a thousand years my senior and with not another friend with which to run and play. It's not how I would want any child of mine to be raised. I was always loved, of that there was no doubt, but I have always had the sense that I am looked down upon, that no matter how many years pass by I shall forever be seen as the man hindered by short years and lacking in the wisdom only earned by countless years of study.
'You never treated me as such." He turned the hand over within his, finger tips drawing lines across the bow worn palm, hesitating to hide the tightness of his throat. "Who knows why." He smiled at the thought of sun dappled days of his childhood. "I followed you all over, hung on your every word. I was devastated the day you had to leave."
He paused, watching the motionless face before him for any sign of change, to see whether the telling of his tale had brought about any effect. He watched the shallow rise of his chest, the slow pass of air between parted lips. He had once thought he could have sat and watched him for the rest of the days afforded to him. The reality was far different to what he had expected.
"It was you I ran to when I found out who I was." He told the sleeping figure softly, the timbre of his confession revealing more than his words. "Everyone I spoke to talked to me of duty and of honour, of becoming who I was born to be, they spoke of dusty halls and stone thrones, of weighted crowns and obedience to the laws of a land I knew no love for." He placed the hand he held on sleeping chest, pale fingers just grazing the bloom of red that still coloured the petal white linen, holding it there with his own as though to feel the heart beat through them both.
"You spoke of honour, and renown, of walking a path not just with duty but with hope, and valour. Of righting wrongs long since passed and restoring faith to those who had never had the chance to feel." The fingers beneath his slipped and parted beneath his own, allowing the tips of his fingers to rest against the feel of a barely beating heart, tracing the almost indiscernible warmth through the stained wrappings. "You told me not to worry, that it would only come at a time when I was ready and that no one could ask any more of me than I was willing to give." He closed his hand around the elf's, "You calmed my fears when all I could see was a future taken away from me. You gave me hope."
There was a shudder that caught his voice as he tried to breathe, to keep the hot press of tears at bay at the futility that curled dark and insidious within the deepest caverns of his heart, chilling him with ice and stripping him of what little warmth he possessed. "I knew it then, that what I felt for you was love, but I did not understand." His hand tightened in its hold, as thought to press his insistence into unfeeling flesh. "I felt love for my brothers, for my foster father, for those of my brethren with which I hunted and rode and learnt how to fight. I thought I loved you as such."
He could feel the wall within him break, the waters of his repressed longing long held in check by the propriety held down upon him, of the need to put duty and prudence above that which he held dear, bursting at the seams and threatening to overcome him, to drag him down into furious torrents that he had no doubt would swallow him whole in the misery he had denied for the sake of others.
He could deny it no longer, not when such guilt and remorse clawed at his chest, to know that he had led others onto the field of death with misguided truth and sins of omission, when he had blinded those who deserved the light and pushed away from him that which sought to give him joy and peace.
Who was he to turn his cheek, to refute that which should have been so plain and for so long. He had known his secrets, had turned them into lingering doubts and curious daydreams, nothing more than that, for to be a king he would be a man of unwavering strength, to rely upon himself and his beliefs. He would be such a man that others would aspire to be him, to look upon him and his beauteous wife and yearn for the perfection of his rule.
But he had lied, had not truly known the depths of his own betrayal until faced with a fear he had never conceived, to see the threat of death hang over something so pure, so strong and full of life that it seemed to him as though nature had broken her own rules. With the fading beat of that strong heart he had felt his own hope wane, the fading light within those eyes becoming him, seducing him with thoughts of unending nothingness. To be faced with his own mortality, with his heart to break when he had held it so carefully, was his undoing.
His hair obscured his eyes as with bended head he pressed his cheek to cool skin, choked breath stirring flaxen hair as he waited with strained ear to hear the faint and eternal beat of the heart he had never thought to end. He sighed, an empty sound bereft of hope as he whispered one futile prayer to whatever gods held mercy for him. "Please."
The hand upon his shoulder should have startled him, should have given him cause to jump and reel but he had not the strength nor the presence of mind. He did not posses any will of his own save the grace to follow the hand that guided him to turn his face into white robes, to clutch at the wizards clothes as though a child as he poured out his grief, whatever words of comfort offered to him lost as he fought to keep his tears in check.
He could never come back from this.