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Minas Tirith stood silent in the deepening dusk, its white stone stained with the shadows of smoke and war. Though the fires had long since been extinguished, the scent of battle clung to the air like something unwilling to leave. From the upper tier, where the cold wind touched the edges of the citadel, the city stretched below; bruised, battered, but still standing.
Aragorn stood at the edge of the stone parapet, gazing out toward the dark plains beyond. His black hair stirred in the breeze, unbound and wild, still marked by the life he had lived in the wilds. In his hand, he held a strip of leather, one of many used to secure his armour. He turned it over in his fingers absently, eyes unreadable.
He did not know what he looked for in the grey horizon. Perhaps the shape of a future he might not live to see. Perhaps the courage to carry the weight that had settled on his shoulders the moment the city gates closed behind them.
Footsteps approached, light as breath on snow.
“You look as though you seek answers from the wind,” Legolas said softly.
Aragorn did not turn immediately. “Perhaps I do.”
Silence passed between them; the kind that’s worn familiar by years. Then Aragorn glanced sideways. “You move more quietly than the wind.”
Legolas’s lips curved into something almost-smile. “And you stand heavier than the stone beneath us.”
This time Aragorn did smile, faint and brief. “The stone has not carried as many burdens.”
Legolas stepped to his side, gaze following Aragorn’s toward the horizon. The sky was tinged with grey-blue, the first stars veiled by the thin smoke still rising from distant ruins. Below, soldiers moved like ants, preparing for what was to come. The last march. The end.
They both knew what they were walking toward.
And still, Aragorn could not quite breathe when Legolas stood this close.
There were things he had learned to carry in silence; duty, sorrow, the ache of choices already made, but this… this wordless tether between them had grown into something he could no longer name, let alone bury.
Legolas tilted his head. “Your hair will fall into your eyes when you ride.”
Aragorn raised an eyebrow, caught off guard by the remark. “That has never stopped me before.”
“No,” Legolas murmured, “but you are no longer only a ranger.”
A pause.
Aragorn looked at him fully now, a slow breath caught somewhere in his chest. “I do not know if I can be more.”
“You already are.”
There was no hesitation in Legolas’s voice. His eyes, bright as forest light, held him fast.
“You carry your bloodline and your blade as one. You have walked the shadows and returned to light. You are Isildur’s heir. But you are also Aragorn, son of Arathorn, the man who kept watch over the sleeping wilds, who sang to himself in the dark to remember the stars.”
Aragorn said nothing, the weight of those words settling over him like the wind settling into stone. Then—
“May I?” Legolas asked, raising a hand slightly.
Aragorn blinked. “May you…?”
Legolas stepped closer, lifting one hand toward his shoulder. “Your hair. Let me braid it.”
Aragorn hesitated.
Not because he did not wish it, but because he did.
There were gestures that meant nothing when given freely, and others that meant everything when given in silence.
Legolas’s hand hovered. “Not like a king. Just, like the Aragorn I know….”
That caught Aragorn’s breath. Slowly, he nodded.
They moved to a bench under the citadel’s archway. Aragorn sat, his shoulders drawing tight at first, but then relaxing under the lightness of Legolas’s hands.
He was not used to being touched this gently. Or maybe he was simply not used to wanting it.
The elf worked in silence, fingers deft and practiced. He gathered the side strands of Aragorn’s hair, brushing them back gently with his fingers before beginning the braid them behind. Each time Legolas’s fingers grazed his cheek, the touch lingered. Not long enough to be intentional, not short enough to be dismissed. It was reverent, careful, like a ritual neither of them had spoken of but both somehow remembered.
It was not the braid of a court or a crown. It was warrior’s braiding, quiet, precise, meant to keep the face clear, the sight true. And it was done with care; each knot laid like a word unsaid.
Aragorn closed his eyes. The sounds of the city below faded, and all he could feel was the whisper of Legolas’s breath near his ear, the slight brush of his fingers against the back of his neck.
He did not trust himself to speak.
“You do this for your kin?” Aragorn asked quietly.
Legolas’s voice was a murmur. “Before battle. Before journeys. Before farewells.”
Something tightened in Aragorn’s throat. He opened his eyes but kept them on the floor.
“I would not wish to leave anything unsaid,” he whispered. “And yet I say nothing.”
Legolas paused behind him. The braid half-finished.
“But you let me do this,” the elf said.
“I do,” Aragorn replied.
And that, for now, was the only truth he could bear.
When Legolas finished, he stepped around, standing in front of him now, the light from a nearby brazier tracing his features in soft gold. Aragorn looked up, and their eyes met, really met, for the first time that night.
Something in Legolas’s face faltered, just slightly. A breath held too long. A shield he no longer bothered to keep in place.
Aragorn stood. Not quickly. Not with force. Just the slow, steady pull of something inevitable.
He stepped in, far too close, until only the space between their breaths remained. His gaze dropped to Legolas’s lips for a breath, then rose again.
His hand lifted, slow, searching, aching, and brushed along the side of Legolas’s face, the pads of his fingers ghosting across the sharp line of his jaw, then curling behind his ear with a tenderness that felt like a question.
Legolas’s eyes fluttered closed.
The wind rose, gentle but cold, catching at his golden hair and lifting it forward. Strands danced into Aragorn’s face, brushing his mouth and cheek. And in that moment, he closed his eyes, breathing in the soft woodland scent still clinging to Legolas despite the smoke and blood of war. It struck him as something unspoiled, something pure, something worth returning to.
“Aragorn…” Legolas whispered, eyes still closed, head turned ever so slightly away. “Do not go further.”
There was no warning in it. No fear.
Only quiet ache.
And restraint.
Aragorn did not answer. His other hand had found its way to Legolas’s arm and now trailed gently down the length of it, knuckles gliding over the fine fabric, then over the hardened curve of bracers, his touch a line of warmth that left no mark but set something trembling. His fingers traced lightly along Legolas’s ribs, just where his armour ended and the tunic clung soft to his side, then back up again. He did not grip. He didn’t press. But he lingered. Legolas did not move. His chest rose with every breath, each one drawn slower than the last, as though part of him feared even breathing would end this.
And still Aragorn stood there, unmoving but so close, looking at him like he might memorize this moment before all light left the world.
They might have stayed like that, locked in the quiet, but the sound from below finally broke through; the low clang of a signal bell, a voice echoing across the courtyard signalling the preparations are complete.
The world pulled them back.
Aragorn blinked first. Stepped back first. His hands dropped, gently. Legolas’s gaze did not follow him right away.
The braid held, shifting only slightly in the wind.
They moved in tandem to the horses waiting in the lower courtyard. Neither spoke. They didn’t need to. Something had been exchanged; unfinished, but real.
As Aragorn mounted his steed, he looked to Legolas across the space between. The elf’s expression was unreadable, but his eyes said enough.
A promise. A knowing. A goodbye that had not yet been spoken.
Aragorn nodded once. Not just in farewell. In thanks. In quiet hope.
They rode out into the Black Gates.
And the braid stayed.