Title: Blue
Author: Maranwe
Summary: Aragorn remembers a friend. 1st person pov.
Disclaimer: Not mine; never were, never will be
A/N: This was inspired off a challenge given on The Fellowship Followers yahoo!group (though it doesn't conform to the requirements) and written in fifteen minutes. I hadn't planned on posting it, but I decided I might as well. Interpret it as you will.

o/o/o/o

Your eyes were blue. How often did I look to them for comfort or assurance! Shades darker than the summer sky but just as warm, just as bright. Friend, I named you, and friend you were . . . the best friend I've ever had.

I remember how we used to roam the northern Wilds, making silly contest of our tracking skills, daring each other to find danger first, racing each other across the lands on a quest better accomplished together, knowing we courted death at every parting but assured it would not come, confident every time our expectations were met and we returned to tell our tales. It seemed like we traveled forever. I know now it wasn't long enough. But you were always there.

You were there the first time I fired a bow. I was there the first time you drew your sword. It was your eyes I saw, the first time I faced death in battle, you who gave me strength to fight so well. You were the one who held me when the truth of what I'd done sank in. And I held you back.

You were there when I fell out of the birch-tree and the elflings laughed at me. You were there when I learned my name, my true name, and the weight of my heritage fell upon my shoulders. You were there, and somehow it did not feel quite so heavy as it does now.

You were there when I declared my resolution to never love again, to never again let anyone so close to me as I let you. I cried then, and it was the first time you weren't there. It was the last time I saw your eyes . . . and you weren't even behind them—empty glass with the right color but none of the feeling and strength I had come to expect. And now you're here again, only you're not.

My friend . . . I see your eyes.

"Aragorn?"

His voice is soft, hesitant--strange to ears caught in the past. It should be you calling my name, but that's not your voice. I used to fancy I heard you calling from the next room, whispering to me when it was quiet, laughing at something stupid I said, a joke; now I don't remember what you sounded like. I couldn't tell you the tone when you were happy, or sad, or angry. It's an echo inside me where substance should exist, but I can't find it. And the more you disappear, the more I lose of myself, the person I used to be.

I'm just a shell now.

"Mellon nin?"

I start. The body before me is covered with blood, twisted, broken. It's nothing like you. The feet are too small, the hands too slender, the frame too delicate--a woman's body instead of a man's. Blood crusts the corner of her mouth and her nose was shattered, but it's her eyes that catch me—hold me, don't let me go. Blue eyes.

A blue shades darker than the summer sky. Deep within them I can see your warmth, your humor, your zest for life. But now they're wide, frozen with shock, filled with a fear that can now never be erased. And I see your fear, your shock.

Your death.

You fall. Your eyes meet mine and I can't save you. I can't, and I fall too. Only I'm not where you are. Different arms hold me. A different face hovers before me. Different eyes stare into my own, searching, worried.

"Are you alright?"

Your face imposes itself over his, swimming from nowhere to settle over it then fracture off. There but not, just like you. The blue eyes are too light, but I still look for you in them. My heart breaks again every time I fail. But he wants an answer. And I owe him one. I call him friend. But he can never be you.

"I will be," I answer.

I know I never will be again.