Movieverse. A little AU, in that Aragorn and company stay the day and next night at the fortress after the battle of Helms Deep (and I assume they probably won't do so in the next movie).

First in a trilogy about the aftermath of the battle. The first story is Aragorn's, the next "And Moon Rides High" is Legolas' and the last, titled, "The Answer is in Dawn," is Éowyn's.

*~*~*~*

-Theoden

~*~

As the sun triumphed over the blackest night of man, the armies of Rohan and Lorien, what remained of them, chased the last orcs from Helms Deep and hunted them down in the ravine, ending them one by one.

The battle was over, and against all odds man had lived to see the coming of the morning. It was victory. Yet after the initial realization that the balance had shifted, a pervasive emptiness filled the air and the hearts of those that still breathed it.

For the day must be spent collecting their dead. The elven dead. The dead men.

The dead children. Aragorn would hear the screams of their mothers for the rest of his days. How had he survived while they perished? What evil had bent arrows towards the innocent?

He rode with Gandalf, Theoden, Legolas, and Gimli to the mouth of the ravine and together they watched the black and red sky over Mordor flame and flash with wrath yet unknown to the world of men. He did not want to face it yet, though he knew very soon they would meet it with blades and blood. When they turned back toward the refuge, the price of the night met him. Despair seemed to close in from all directions.

 He did not welcome the sunlight, though many times in the night he had wished for dawn, for whatever finish to the unending dark. Without the condemning light, he couldn't see the shattered rocks and hills around him, littered with the bodies of the dead. Twisted, bloodied, torn apart, countless, they lay broken throughout refuge of Helms Deep. It was nightmare and stark reality, and he feared the future held nothing but more of the same.

And he also feared he couldn’t bear it.

He grieved beside the men of Rohan, the men that were left, all of them haunted by the memory of the night as they began burying the dead. He watched as great warriors fell to their knees and wept openly, tearing at golden hair with bloodied hands. Always, in his ears echoed the sobs of the grieving and the wailing of those who waited in the impossible masses for someone to find them, to tend to their injuries.

He walked among the wounded, doing what he could, but there were too many that were beyond all the medicine of this earth. He was afraid they would see that knowledge in his eyes as he tended them, but to a man and boy, the recognition of coming death was already upon them. Many seemed to welcome it.

Legolas and Gimli were always nearby, and he often caught them staring unblinkingly over the killing field, at what hatred had wrought. Even Gandalf, he noted, he who had knowledge of all things, had no understanding of such destruction and disregard of life.

Éowyn tended the dying with the grace and coolness that had protected her thus far in her young life. But for a moment her guard had been let down, and Aragorn had seen it, though he wished he had not. As he made his way to the makeshift infirmary, she came forth, to him, amazement and fear to believe he lived easily read upon her face. She laid a small hand against his filthy cheek, and despite the horror surrounding them, tears touched her eyes, washing away her reserve. Tears of gratitude for his life, and he was humbled and shamed.

"Bless you, Lord Aragorn." She embraced him. And he let himself be taken into her keeping, and tried to allow himself some small manner of comfort in her strong, slim arms.

But he was beyond comfort, and not sure that he deserved it anyway.

He went to the dark chambers that housed the wounded. As the sun peaked and began to fall again, the room and the earth around them grew as quiet and still as the graveyard it had become. The voices of the wounded had been silenced by time and neglect. The dead outnumbered the living. There was nothing else to be done.

Was it only a sunrise, Aragorn wondered, since the world had split apart at the seams?

*

Aragorn closed the eyes of the man who had finally succumbed to the gash of a blade in his chest, and wondered at the suffering he'd endured. Perhaps it would have been more merciful to simply end the farmer's life than to string out the hope into hours that held years of suffering within them.

He lifted his head and saw that Éowyn was standing across the room, looking at him. There was blood up to her elbows, across the front of her pale blue dress, and long golden curls had fallen from the tail she'd gathered her hair in and the ends of it were tipped in red. He turned away from her abruptly.

As he walked to the next causality, an unexplainable fury rose up and swelled, until it seemed there was room for little else, even the beating of his own heart.

A voice from behind him, a voice full of wonder, filled the room, and seemed alien there. "A child Aragorn! This boy has survived!"

Aragorn turned, eyes wide, as Legolas hurried into the sickroom carrying a child in his arms. Gimli walked close behind, seemingly determined not the let the elf out of his sight. Aragorn hurried toward Legolas, and from across the room, Éowyn approached them too.

Aragorn studied Legolas for an instant before turning to the child. There were tear tracks on the elf's cheeks, and he was uncharacteristically covered in dust. Aragorn could not recall ever having seen Legolas shed tears, and he thought he understood what had caused it. Behind what looked to be new hope in Legolas' eyes was a deep grief, and Aragorn realized at once that Legolas must have found the Lady's broken soldiers in the ruin.

From the way that Gimli was fussing behind him, Aragorn supposed that the elf's reaction had startled the dwarf deeply. Aragorn was dimly aware, as he studied the elf that Gimli looked from he to Legolas and back again, and he seemed deeply troubled by whatever it was that he gathered from their eyes.

Looking away from Legolas, because his pain was hard for Aragorn to bear, and more so as he remembered Haldir's sightless eyes, remembered arriving too late to give him even a word of comfort to ease his passing, Aragorn instead focused on the child. And discovered that it was the boy he'd spoken to the night before, on the eve of the destruction. The boy who had been so frightened that his fingers had trembled on the hilt of a sword too big for him to wield.

And Aragorn, freshly confronted by Legolas' wisdom that their numbers were too small to face the army he'd seen bearing down upon Helms Deep, had felt as if it were him who threatened the life of the child, not Isengard's forces. And taking the blade from the boy, he had slashed the air with it until his fury had abated enough to give the child some sort of reassurance.

He had given the child what hope he could, along with the weapon he could not defend himself with, and Aragorn had had fiercely clung to his own feeble hope. Hope that to him sounded like Arwen's voice.

"I know this child! This is Haleth, son of Hama! Where did you find him?" Aragorn asked, as he gently ran his hands over the boy's arms, legs, middle. "He looks as if he has nothing worse than a few scratches."

"I found him under the bodies of the warriors who perished protecting him," Legolas answered in a voice that was barely audible over the hiccoughing sobs of Haleth, meeting Aragorn's eyes fully in amazement at such a sacrifice, at such a possibility that this mortal child had lived through such devastation.

"He has been spared!" Éowyn cried and reached for the boy, taking him into her arms and clinging to him as tightly as Legolas had, seemingly finding hope in the reassuring weight of him.

Aragorn turned to the Lady, and looking briefly at her beaming face, took Haleth's face between his torn hands, and brushed the child's tears from his face. "You are very brave, Haleth. And the battle has been won. You see, there is always hope, and against the odds, you have lived out the night. Let us care for you now and you may then rest. You have earned it."

Éowyn, at his nod, took the child toward one of the newly emptied beds and immediately set to caring for him. Aragorn watched her for long moments, and the dread in his chest returned and swelled again, and any joy he had felt at seeing the boy alive was pushed aside, for there were other, and more fierce, enemies of man to be found, and they would soon be coming from the East until the rising sun could not be seen above the darkness.

Feeling the elf's eyes upon him, Aragorn glanced at Legolas and saw the question in his ageless eyes.

"Such horrors for a boy to endure," Aragorn said bitterly, unable to restrain himself any longer. "He is too soon made a man."

"But he is alive," Gimli protested, but Aragorn turned away from them and looked toward those who remained on their beds, near death and suffering with it.

"He is among the few," Aragorn called back to them, and walked away, leaving Legolas and Gimli looking both confused and worried for him.

*

It was too much for one man to bear, Aragorn decided as the afternoon light threw long and sinister shadows through gaps in the curtains, and as men looked to the setting sun and awaited a death they had accepted.

He heard the whisper of fine fabric and saw only Éowyn's back as she retreated suddenly and quickly from the room. He looked to the bed of the young boy she'd been tending, saw that he had lost his fight like so many others.

He left his charge and he pursued her through corridors, and at last he came upon her, standing in the darkness of a side hall, with her head clasped in her hands, her blood stained fingers tangled in golden strands of hair.

He was so weary of the suffering, but to see hers had the potential to undo him.

"Are you unwell, my Lady?'

She had not been on her guard, and his voice seemed to startle her. With a strangled gasp she flung her head up, and though he had expected her tears, they still tore at him. She seemed ashamed to have him see her grief, and she made as if to wipe the tears away, but saw the red stains upon her fingers before she touched her face.

"Forgive me, Lord Aragorn," she said, dropping her hands to her sides and meeting his eyes with difficulty.

"What injury have you done to me that you should have need to ask my pardon, Lady?" he asked gently, studying her closely.

"I cannot bear to see Rohan dying." She said it in a steady voice, but new tears spilled down her pale face. "The men have fought the battles and I have not the strength to see them suffer for it. I am weak."

Her youth suddenly struck him, her inexperience with the world and with the ways of men and of war overwhelmed him. She had learned many hard lessons in the night, and he feared she would come to full knowledge of war soon.

"Nay, Lady. It would be the very weak of heart indeed who could bear to look upon such a sight and not feel sorrow."

She looked surprised at his words, and did not offer comment, so he continued in a gentle voice. "No, Eowyn. You have a spine of iron. You are stronger than us all."

"No, My Lord, I am not. But I would put on a brave face for these men, as you have done. As you still do."

For a moment she dropped her gaze, and seemed to ponder her words carefully before raising her chin and meeting his eyes. In her gaze was sympathy and tenderness as she told him timidly, "I would wear that face for you as well."

"It is a dear face," Aragorn answered and he was moved to give her some touch of comfort. He raised his hand, meaning to stroke the ivory curve of her cheek, but his hand too, was covered in the blood of Rohan, of Isengard, and of his own wounds. He dropped it to his side instead, curling his fingers into his palms as if to hold the promise of the cool touch of her skin there.

She looked to be past the point of her strength and her courage, and instead of touch, he tried to give her easy words. "Do not cause yourself more pain, Lady. Go now, and rest. The wounded will be well cared for."

She met his eyes fully in a way that few other men or women ever did as she challenged, "would you take rest now? When the men in that room wait for you?"

"Nay," he said, though she knew the answer.

"And neither shall I," Éowyn said.

To his own surprise, and to hers, he smiled at her. A gentle smile, a smile full of respect and admiration for her courage and her selflessness. She looked almost as if she expected him to forbid her to return to the healing rooms, almost as if she expected him to deny that she could withstand what sights awaited her there.

He would not do so. For he believed that she was made of far stronger stuff than he.

"As you wish, Lady. Your men do love you. The sight of your face gives them hope. I shall leave you, then, to your thoughts, if you need nothing else of me."

Tears rose up in her eyes again as he turned to go, but they were of a different sort. Tears of gratitude, of some sort of hope that Aragorn couldn't understand but was glad to have provided her.

He turned and left her there to gather her courage again, and he felt her eyes upon his back as she watched him go.

She was a fine lady, of great heart, and being near her made him ache for his own Arwen, but he had sent her away from him. He did not regret the decision, but just now, to have word from her, or touch, or sight would have gone far in restoring his purpose. Now it seemed, his days were full of nothing but grief, death, and memories that made him ache.

His fingers went to the pendant she had given him, worn even now in remembrance, in some stubborn hope that time could be reversed and that all things could be possible and hopeful once again.

It seemed cold and dark beneath his touch.

*

As the night came upon them again, and as nervous eyes looked toward the West, and then the East, fearing another invasion, there was time for rest.

Though his body was battered and though he had been pushed to the limits of his ability, Aragorn knew no respite awaited him. He would find no peace. Not now. Perhaps not ever again.

Yet, his frame felt too heavy for his bones, and all parts of him were too sore and weak and worn for even one more step. Many times in his years had he been exhausted, but not unto the point of feeling near his end. Every part of him hurt, every sinew and muscle, and he had never in his entire life wondered whether drawing another breath was worth the effort it cost, had never been so very, very weary.

Or more disheartened.

There was precious little privacy in the ruined fortress, but he, Gimli, and Legolas were given a small room in the King’s chambers to share. Though he did not wish to leave the watches, and though he thought perhaps they should have ridden out that night, Gandalf was insistent that they take rest.

"Aragorn, you have pushed past the limits of your strength. All of us have. Acknowledge it, and do not be such a fool. Even if you did have the will to go on, these men must have a night to grieve, to say goodbye to their sons and their fathers and brothers, to take or give what comfort they can to their women."

Gimli was already sleeping fitfully when Aragorn came into the room. The absence of the tell-tale roar of the dwarf’s snore told him that physical exhaustion would not chase away memory of the death so that easy sleep might come forth.

Legolas stood at the window, staring sightlessly into the darkness. He turned when Aragorn entered the room, but there were no words between the warriors, only the slightest acknowledgement of the end of the day. It was time to put down their weapons, though both were uneasy in doing so.

There was no bed, but Aragorn needed none. He threw down a blanket upon the stone floor and eased himself upon it slowly, feeling as old as Gandalf and in much poorer condition. He groaned softly as the tension went from his legs and lower back. He fell onto his side and was quite convinced that he might never be able to rise again.

His eyes burned and stung and he thought he could feel every small vein that was shot through them, but closing them at last was no relief. The faces of the dead were branded on the inside of his eyelids, like scars.

He would not sleep. Could not sleep. Did not want to sleep for fear of what he would dream.

And yet, Gandalf was very wise. He had come to the end of his strength and his will was overcome by his body as he gave himself over to oblivion.

*

"Where have you gone tonight, Estel?"

"I am in the darkness, Arwen. I have gone back to the night of the killing."

"You can not bring back the dead, nor send away the moon, nor change the stars. Will you not come to me tonight? I have been waiting for you."

"I cannot come to you. I am too weary and my heart is heavy."

"Then I shall bring you to me and take the burden of your heart from you for awhile."

The voice, light and soothing, drifted over his entire body like the most delicate caress. Easing him out of darkness, easing him out of pain, easing open his tired eyes. She was there, lying beside him, eyes just inches from his own.

He knew himself to be dreaming, to be asleep, for she often visited him in sleep and he treasured it. And yet, even as he looked upon her, felt her breath upon his face, he knew she was far, far away, forever beyond him, and loneliness knifed through him. He fell further in despair.

He thought that perhaps he’d never had greater need of her.

As she searched his gaze and pulled the wounds from him, he felt tears, hot and swift, come up in his eyes. One fell, the first he had allowed himself. It scalded a path across his nose and dripped to the pillow their heads rested upon. In response, tears rose in her own eyes, cradled on her dark lashes like silver half-moons.

He was in Rivendell with her, for that was where their minds and hearts always met in dreams. Their home. The rushing of the waterfalls replaced the echoes of the screams, the lowering sunbeams caught up in the leaves of gold, and the wind, warm and gentle, dried his tears before he shed another. He lay with her on a feather-soft bed that held him away from physical discomfort, and it was only the two of them in the entire world. For a moment, he felt content.

Until he remembered. Not even Rivendell and the Evenstar could eclipse the memory of Helms Deep.

"My Estel, I am here," she whispered, watching him steadily, sympathetically.

"You cannot be here," he murmured. "You are sailing away from here, from me. Forever. Yet you still find me in dreams. I do not know if it is comfort or torment."

Her eyes narrowed just slightly. This was the point of contention that tried her most, and he knew it to be so. "I will not sail, Aragorn. Long ago I made a choice that I would never be parted from you."

"I would have you leave Middle-Earth, more now than ever before. We will all be ended. There is naught but death and destruction. There is naught but hate left."

"There is love in you, Aragorn."

"No Arwen. There is no love left in me, I fear. Not after the night."

She smiled at him, soft and sure. "As you breathe, you love. You love the people you fight beside, you have always loved the people you protect, and the men you will rule. And you have always loved me, Estel. You love me still. I feel it in every heartbeat. You are made of love and bone. And the fact that you are so grieved by the loss today is evidence of it. It is not in you to stop loving. Though it costs you dearly."

He closed his eyes, did not want her to see any more of what he had seen. He would protect her from all the badness of the world, all the weakness of men and of evil.

"Do not hide your heart from me," she asked of him. "You have never done so before."

And he met her gaze again, and he let her see, let her see what he had tried to protect her from, let her see why he had tried to do so. "Arwen, I watched children stand, and fall under blades. I watched them try to wield swords longer than they were! Why did you call me back from the peace I might have found on the riverbank? I would have preferred it to seeing such things! How can such things happen in the world?"

"Such things cannot happen. That is why you fight. To stop it. That is why you are here, Aragorn. It is your destiny."

"I do not think I can bear it, Arwen," he whispered, so frightened to give this weakness voice. "I cannot watch children die."

"I know, Estel. I know. But you will bear it because it is not in you to walk away from this now. You will see it through. And that is why I love you." He flinched at her words and she smiled softly. "Why do you recoil at such words after all this time? Do you no longer love me?"

"My Lady. It is painful to love you as I do. Everything, it seems, is painful." His fingers stretched across the pillow towards hers, but stopped abruptly. He looked at his hand, scarred and bruised and bloodied.

"What is it?" Arwen asked him quietly when he paused, and seeing his hesitation, met his hand with her own.

Aragorn jerked it back quickly.

"Why do you fear to touch me, Estel?"

"There is blood on my hands, Arwen. The blood of many."

She deliberately reached for his hand, and though he resisted weakly, she turned it and placed a kiss on the blistered skin of his palm, and brought his torn knuckles softly against her own cheek, cradling his hand to her.

"Ah, that is it, is it not, Estel? You think all of this blood is on your hands. You would take the weight of the world on your shoulders you arrogant, foolish man. When you have led an army of 1,000 to victory against 10,000, you would still question your right to stand before them all, Elessar. It is your title. You have earned it in the darkness."

"Men died by my command. And elves. Many of them have fallen to shadow. Haldir. He is gone."

"Men and elves alike live and die by their own fates, not yours, Aragorn. And you know that it is so."

"What shall I do, Arwen? What can be done now?"

"You will stop the evil, or slow it, while Frodo completes his task on the mountain. You will save this world from the darkness so that you and I may live in it together and love. So that our children may live and love. It is you, Aragorn. It has always been you. The world has awaited you for 3,000 years, and so have I. Now is the time. It is come, Estel. It is upon you. Upon us all."

"And if I fail?" he asked in a hushed voice, the only one he would pose this question to, in the dark of the night.

"It is not in you to fail," Arwen responded, and when his uncertain gaze searched hers, she put a hand against his cheek and kissed him. It was a kiss that meant not to stir, but to ease, though both feelings surged into him. "I see such doubt in you, Estel. It has always made you fight harder and longer and with more heart than all others. You will not fail in this."

She brushed his hair from his troubled brow. "You must sleep now, for your rest is hard won and there will not be opportunity for much of it in the time to come. Your road is long and the sun prepares to take you from me."

"Stay with me here, until the dawn," Aragorn told her, forgetting his bloody hands and reaching out for her, pulling her closely to him. "Do not leave me yet."

She obliged him, wrapping her arms tightly around him and pulling his head down to rest upon her breast. Her fingers stroked his hair, and she murmured soft reassurances as if he were just a child in need of comfort upon waking from a nightmare.

And he was in need of comfort. He was wounded down in the deep places in his soul, the places that could break a man. He’d seen so much death and would see more, and he feared, so would she. So many men would die before it was over.

She was life though. She was life and love and hope and light. Beneath his cheek, her heartbeat was strong and sure, and he closed his eyes and let that steady thrumming fill his mind and his blood, let it push back the shadows in the corners of him, and as the dark hours waned, he set his life’s rhythm to it.

It seemed like moments later that he opened his eyes again. The waterfalls had faded away, and the cold stone of Helms Deep awaited him, as did his destiny.

Legolas was still by the window, and the first rays of newborn light touched him, spilled over him in golden waves, and Aragorn saw the elf take a deep breath and set his shoulders with the same resolve that had entered Aragorn through Arwen.

Rising slowly and stiffly, Aragorn limped toward the window to stand at Legolas’ elbow, watching as the sun stretched across the torn land, warming, healing.

"The day is new," Legolas murmured softly.

They watched the coming of the dawn together, and as he did so, Aragorn felt the steady, faithful pulse of another alongside his own heart and knew that he would not doubt again that every night, however long, would end in dawn. The days would come down, again, and again, but always they would rise anew.

Against his chest, the Evenstar seemed to pulse with the very warmth of the sun.

And the hope and promise of morning filled his eyes and his heart, and he made ready to go forth.

*

Finis

*This story was inspired by the movie...particularly the look upon Aragorn's face after the fighting is done and everyone else is celebrating. He just seemed so very overwhelmed and weary and sorrowful in that brief flash to me. 

*The sequel, which is Legolas' thoughts of this long day and night, is called, "And Moon Rides High."