A/N: My grateful thanks to Prof. Tolkien, to whom Aragorn belongs. May be slightly AU in that I assume as Thorongil, Aragorn would have the Ring of Barahir and the hilt of Narsil with him, but hidden.

This original version of this story won 1st place for the Teitho "The Sea, The Sea" challenge, and can still be found at that website in its original form. This is a slightly revised version–the only real change beyond a word here and there is that I’ve broken it up into chapters.

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"Renewed shall be the blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king." (The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien, page 167, Houghton-Mifflin edition.)

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Pain was a beast gnawing relentlessly at his skull. He grimaced and pulled himself to his feet, trying again to summon the energy... to do what? Beat uselessly against the door? Scream for help?

No one would come. No one would hear.

He knew he was alone, that he had been left alone for... days? Or merely hours? He swallowed. His dry throat and parched mouth told him that he had been imprisoned longer than mere hours. But he really had no way to tell. His thoughts kept skipping and straying beyond his reach, disappearing into foggy shadows and reappearing at random until he moved his head the wrong way and pain drove all reckoning away like quail scattered by the approach of a clumsy hunter.

It was useless, but he walked–stumbled, really–to the door and rested his forehead against the rough wood. Oak. Maybe hickory. Hard and solid and ancient. A door that had withstood harsher assaults than his weak pounding.

But he had to go through the motions. His pride forced him to keep on, to never give up until strength was utterly spent. He pried at the edges of the door, digging in with his fingernails. Nothing happened other than a sharp pain that told him he had ripped back a nail. He cursed, pounded on the door again and again until strength fled and he sagged to the floor with a soft despairing cry. He rolled over on his back and laid a forearm across his eyes. Weary eyes. Aching head.

A soft inflow of air, tangy with the scent of sea and rich with the promise of rain, puffed intermittently under the door, ruffling his hair. Teasing him with the hints of freedom that lay just beyond his reach. He rolled onto his side, fighting dizziness and a grinding ache behind his left ear that hammered relentlessly against his skull with every move. He pressed his eye to the crack near the floor.

The view was the same as the last time he had looked. A glimpse of stone and gravel, shadow and light... light that hinted that outdoors, far away from this dim cell, the sun shone and people went about selling and buying in marketplaces and elves sang songs and hobbits ate feasts... all oblivious to the man trapped in this cold, stone prison.

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An hour passed. Two. Or maybe it had only been a few minutes. Time had ceased to have meaning in this dank, windowless place.

He lay listlessly staring into the gloom. He didn’t think this was a real prison, a real dungeon manned by guards and lorded over by some evil master. No, more likely it was some long-unused storage building. The wooden rafters far overhead and the cursedly strong but plain locked wooden door–even the small ventilation slits all along the bottom of the stone walls–spoke less of prison and more of some other more plebeian purpose. And few dungeons were square at the bottom only to soar overhead into what looked like a round tower. It reminded him faintly of lighthouses he had seen along the coast of Anfalas and Belfalas. But this building was not tall enough to be such a structure–the roof was only twenty feet above his head, and there were no stairs leading upward, no trap door that would lead to a beacon fire.

It made no sense. Nothing made sense.

He reached back and laid his hand tenderly against the lump behind his left ear. His hair was stiff with dried blood. He let his hand fall. He knew his skull was grievously bruised, maybe even cracked. He had prodded it in an incautious moment and fell into blackness for hours. He had no wish to repeat that mistake. If it was cracked, it would either heal, or he would die. Poking it into fiery life in the meantime seemed pointless.

He turned his mind away from dreary thoughts of broken skulls and tried to chase down whatever elusive knowledge might provide a clue to where he was.

He knew this much: he was somewhere in south Gondor. Anfalas had been his goal, to see the great Bay of Belfalas from the wilds of that long shoreline before heading north for home. He had served Steward Ecthelion II under a name not his own. As Thorongil, he had learned much and fought well but the time had come to put aside that name and don another. Estel, if he were to head to Rivendell, or maybe Strider, if he were to resume his life as a Ranger prowling the wilds of the North. He hadn’t been positive which path to take, nor even if it were to be his choice. He had found, in so many of his journeys, that fate often ignored his plans and pushed him in directions of its own. For all he knew, he might end up in Mordor. But the Bay of Belfalas beckoned strongly, and it was on the road that led to that great water that he had set out, to seek solitude in the wild unpopulated northern shores of Anfalas.

But perhaps not this much solitude.

He groaned, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. How on Arda hadhe gotten here?

He searched his aching brain. Remembered a crushing blow to the side of his head and plunging into darkness that lasted he knew not how long. He remembered a tiny hamlet. A quiet lane. And a face. Wild eyes. A madman claiming to be, of all things, the Heir of Isildur.

Aragorn suddenly laughed, a harsh, guttural bark that frightened him, for it sounded too much like the mirthless laughter of that madman.

But the irony of it! Oh, the awful irony of it. Being locked away to slowly die because the madman wanted the crown that he, Aragorn, son of Arathorn, the genuine Heir of Isildur, did not. To die because someone wanted to take the title he had so often prayed, in the secret watches of the night, would not be his to bear after all. And now that it looked as though the throne, the crown ... life itself ... would indeed be snatched from him, he wanted it more than anything on Arda.

It seemed that prayers too often go answered after all.

He curled into himself, hiding his suddenly weeping eyes from whom, he did not know, for he was alone. It was foolish to conceal his tears when no one was there to see them, but still he buried his face and his shame in his arms and cowered in the dark and wished desperately for life, for his life.

His life.

He growled, then, and pushed himself up with both arms until he was sitting, his back against hard stone walls that felt no different than the floor. He would not cower. He swiped his hand across his cheeks, wiping away the betraying tears.

If this be his doom, so be it. He would face it as a man, a Dúnadan. A Númenórean.

A king.

He would not lie sniveling in the dark, tormented by despair. He took a deep breath and then another, searching for the last dregs of strength and wishing he had found a bit more.

The rain scent seemed more pronounced. The zephyr under the door strengthened to a steady whistle of wind that blew cold and damp across the hand that rested beside his leg. He opened his fist and let the air brush his palm, as if he could somehow capture the moisture it carried.

He listened to the wind outside the door, a soft roaring sound, muted but growing louder. Thunder rumbled somewhere above the rafters. He leaned down and looked beneath the door again. A flashing flicker of light, then the thunder pealed once more, louder this time, and closer.

A storm, approaching fast. He straightened back up, thinking about the implications. He did not know if that was a good portent, or ill. He knew that storms on the sea could be fearsome things when they hit the coast, driving surf far inland to flood everything in its path. Tearing roofs from buildings with their strong winds...

Tearing roofs from buildings.

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the flare of pain in his head that stirred violent protest in his stomach and whirling dervishes in his vision. He steadied himself with a hand on the wall and stared upward into the shadows at the rafters supporting the roof. The stone walls would withstand all but the most violent of floods, but the roof was mere wood, no doubt topped with perhaps slate or tile. He stretched an arm upward, trying to reach the top of the wall, trying to touch the lowest beam.

He wasn’t nearly tall enough. He almost smiled. Seldom was it that he had to admit to being too short.

He walked around the perimeter of the small room, feeling the walls, searching for handholds. Four paces took him the length of each wall. Sixteen paces and he was back at the door. The stone walls were too smooth. The ventilation slits along the bottom were too low and too narrow, barely the width of his smallest finger, and certainly nothing to help him climb the twenty feet he needed to reach the rafters.

If the roof did blow off, he was still trapped.

Thunder shook the building, rattling even the stones beneath his feet and assaulting his aching head with its cracking rumbles. He stared at the ceiling, wondering how high aground his stone prison stood. How far from the shore.

How far from what shore? Had he made it to Anfalas, or was this some remote region of Belfalas or who knows what other shore? He clenched his fist and pounded the door, frustration getting the better of him again. How had he gotten here? And where was here?

He had no answers. Only fuzzy snatches of memories that a concussed brain refused to sort out.

Memories of that wild-haired man, his eyes fixed on Aragorn’s ring....

The ring.

He looked frantically at his hand. Curse his muddled brain, why had he not checked before.... "No," he cried. The ring of Barahir was gone. After so many long months playing the stranger, he had foolishly put it on again, in his longing to once more be himself. He had become so very tired of the person called Thorongil, a wayfarer from the north who no one knew nor could ever know. He had been tired of surface friendships, of deceptions, of half truths.

He had just wanted to be himself again, right down to his uneasy acceptance of his heritage. Somehow being in Gondor had changed something within him, had planted the seeds of a love for this realm, a love greater than he ever would have believed possible. But greater still was his desire to go home. His emotions had been so muddled that putting on the ring somehow soothed him. He saw himself in that green stone, and saw his conflicting desires in the serpents battling on either side. It made no sense, but somehow that ring gave him comfort.

And now it was gone.

With a small groan, he slid back down to the floor. How could he have been so stupid? Giving into homesickness like some whimpering child not yet out of infancy. Well, now he was paying the full price of his folly.

The entire debacle roared back with a skull-pounding vengeance. The beggar, who at first had seemed harmless, almost charming with his childlike stream of chatter, had recognized the ring, somehow, and started making wild-eyed claims that it was stolen, that he was Isildur’s heir. Try as he might, Aragorn could not dissuade him of his sudden delusion, and the man’s childish cries and protests had only grown in volume and fury the more Aragorn tried to calm him.

The only good thing about the entire fiasco as that they had been alone on a deserted lane and no one heard the man’s screeching accusations. No one came running with questions of their own, questions Aragorn would not be able to answer. But that they were alone also gave all the advantage to the beggar when he unexpectedly produced a cudgel that he slammed against Aragorn’s head.

In that brief instant before unconsciousness swept in, it felt like the blow had sundered his head from his neck. He fingered again the aching bump just behind his left ear, winced as he tried with limited success to turn his head to the right. The blow had been a fierce one, for the beggar had been young and strong. Aragorn had slid into darkness, the triumphant laughter of the beggar echoing in his ears. He had no idea how long he had been lost to the world before waking up... here.

"Where is here?" he suddenly shouted. Wind and a peal of thunder were the only reply.

He forced his thoughts back to the storm. From the rising noise of the wind, it appeared this might indeed be one of those massive storms that the sea hurls against the land. He pictured the wind tearing the roof from his prison.

He shivered. A wind strong enough to tear apart this stone building would tear him apart. He shut his eyes and tried to come up with a plan.With all its frustrations and fears and the destiny he did not want but could not willingly refuse. Life that he felt ebbing away minute by minute.