The familiar rapping echoed through the drear little room, bringing a lopsided smile to Aragorn's soused face. What was this, the fifth time tonight? He startled to giggle when he thought of prim and proper Beregrond unlocking the door only to find it barred from the inside. He stopped giggling when a frigid female voice and not Beregrond's nasal whine penetrated the timbers.
"You humiliated us today, Aragorn. I don't know how we'll ever repair relations with the Elves of Lothlorien, let alone our own people. Now—"
"What does it matter?"
Aragorn could almost see Arwen's chiseled beauty constricting as she worked to process the information.
"What?" she shrieked, right on cue.
Aragorn giggled and took another swig from his private stash.
"What does it matter? What does it matter? Have you lost you mind, Aragorn? Don't you care anything for your people?"
"Not particularly," Aragorn replied, bursting into full-fledged guffaws at the irate pounding on the door.
"Aragorn son of Arathorn, open this door this instant!"
"Ho Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadillo!" Aragorn sang, far louder and lustier than he felt.
"I give up!" Arwen shrieked from the other side. Before Aragorn could reply with a smart remark he heard her add in an aside to someone else, "Post a guard. Bring him to me as soon as he steps foot out of that room." When her footsteps receded down the hallway Aragorn let the empty wine bottle roll across the stony floor.
What did it matter, indeed.
* * * *
"Temper temper, Sam, I only ever gave Frodo my sword. Nothin' to get all upset about."
Aragorn swayed a little on his feet, pointing a finger at the wardrobe.
"And you, Gimli! D'you have any blurry idea how…how…" The king frowned, searching for his train of thought. Perhaps another bottle would ease things along. "How difficult," he cried triumphantly, remembering, "you made my life, you rotten son of a…Dwarf!"
"How so?"
"How so, you ask? You're asking me how so? I'll tell you how so! Always prancing around Legolas like some fat little hound, never letting me get a word in edgewise—how so? Ha! You had him to yourself all through the Glittering Caves, you selfish fiend…"
"And this distresses you?"
"Elbereth knows it distresses me!" Aragorn hurled his latest bottle into Wardrobe Gimli, savoring the smash of glass, only to discover with dismay his empty hands. "Curse you Gimli, now look what you made me do!" He stumbled toward the bed in the faint hope that it would yield more ale, but one of the still-whole discarded bottles slipped under his foot—Gimli's doing, he was sure—and he went flying.
Strong arms caught him.
"Gimli, gerroffame, I mean it! Fuzzbearded little Elf snatcher…"
"Your drunken charm remains unrivalled, I see."
"Don't get cheeky with me, son of Gloin, or mark my words I'll…"
Aragorn focused blurrily and, in the dim starlight reflected in off the Tower of Ecthelion, thought he caught the glint of sea-flecked eyes.
"Or you'll what?"
Aragorn's tongue was thick even without the liquor. "L—Legolas?"
"Assuredly not," Legolas—no, Aragorn corrected himself confusedly, not Legolas—replied, hoisting Aragorn easily from the glass-and-garment-littered floor to the only slightly cleaner bed. "don't you recognize a Dwarf when you see one? You've been drinking far too much, Aragorn."
"You're one to talk, Gimli," Aragorn muttered, batting weakly at the hands that settled him on his pillow. "Imagine that, receiving drinking warnings from a Dwarf. Almost as funny as getting advice for your love life, no?"
"Are you going to start in on that again?"
Aragorn's laugh was bitter. "Oh no, why would I mention that? After all, dear Gimli, what does love matter in this world? What does any of it matter?"
Without warning, Gimli's eyes—the ones that looked remarkably like Legolas'—were close.
"A very great deal," the Elf That Was Not whispered, lingering in Aragorn's face a moment before pulling away.
"What's that s'posed to mean? And what right d'you have to parade around looking like Legolas? And while we're at it—"
The imposter laid a hand on Aragorn's biceps and squeezed reassuringly. "Hush and sleep," the Elf whispered. "At this rate your morning will be very dark indeed," he added, gesturing to the empty bottles about the room.
"All mornings are dark," Aragorn growled.
"That's not true."
"It is, and you—you, you double-crossing Elf-snatching Dwarf, have the nerve to sneak up here and make it worse!" Aragorn tried to rise from his pillows to strike, but the imposter pushed him back down.
"You are not yourself."
"I am! All mornings are dark, I tell you!" Aragorn felt the threads of his thought fraying, threatening to unravel with the drink. "Why do you think I turn to the bottle? Why do you think I moved up here? Why do you think…" He choked, reaching for a consoling bottle that wasn't there. "Why do you think I'm so alone," he finished finally in a whimper.
"But you're not," the imposter spoke suddenly, and leaning close he looked and smelled and sounded so like Legolas that Aragorn didn't know whether to lunge at him with his fists or his lips.
"Sleep, now," the imposter crooned, sliding Aragorn's eyelids shut with his fingertips.
"You are cruel," was all Aragorn could think to say before his mind caved in on itself in a puddle of alcohol.
* * * *
Oh, the many colors of pain. There were the rampant reds and yellows, of course, and insidious greens and browns, but every so often there came a bolt of black so sharp and sudden it was like a dark jewel piercing the brain. It was in the throes of one of these searing jolts that Aragorn opened his eyes.
It was a mistake. Not the blinding flash of sunlight, oh no—that failed to cut half so deeply as the glimpse of empty bed and blowing curtains, tiled floors glittering with the glass of comfortless bottles.
He was alone.
Why oh why had he ever let himself believe his drunken fantasies even for a moment? He didn't remember everything—at least, he didn't think he did—but who could forget those soft lips and high cheekbones hovering close enough to lick, those pale blue eyes close enough to glint with sapphire flecks?
And it was all a dream. Groundless, truthless and without meaning, just like this world he was waking to.
With a howl of rage Aragorn lurched from the bed (where dream-hands had propped him and tucked him, so kind), ignoring lances of pain in feet and mind alike as he stumbled across class shards to the window with its mournfully blowing curtains. He paused for a moment, squinting out across the columns and courtyards that in another time, another world he could have come to love. He had the vague idea that there was a protocol to this sort of thing; that there were words to be said and reasons to be given. But there was no one to tell them to and, that fact alone being reason enough for anyone in Aragorn's personal opinion, he shut his eyes tight against the rising sun and jumped.