A/N: Thanks for reading! Happy New Year All!
Aragorn watched as Intara's body fell to the ground beside his. The orc Intara had stabbed fell back, her blade still stuck in its neck. The other orc, the one with the bow, had been cut down by Eomer who rushed towards where the woman lay with the arrow sticking out from her chest.
Aragorn crawled forward and grasped her hand bringing her gaze to his. She gasped, coughed and looked up, a crooked grin on her face. Intara's fingers were covered with blood that seeped from the deep wound in her side, and her fingers slipped in his hand. Aragorn cradled her gently in his lap, brushing some of her dark hair away from her face as she took a rasping breath. Aragorn didn't know if he would be able to speak, but he knew he had to try.
"Why? Intara, what have you done?"
"The survival of all…sometimes depends…on the suicidal act…of one." She answered grinning slightly. Aragorn shook his head, shocked that she would have sacrificed herself for him. He was about to say something more when a sudden rumbling filled the air around them. Eomer skidded to a halt beside them and looked towards Mordor where a bright flash of light illuminated the sky. Intara and Aragorn followed his gaze and looked through the open gate to where Mount Doom exploded in a rain of fire and molten earth. The tower, atop which Suron's great eye perched, suddenly cracked and toppled over. Aragorn was awe struck as were most of the combatants around them.
"He did it." Intara whispered. "Frodo did it." More lava burst from Mount Doom and Intara heard Gandalf shout for one of the eagles to descend so that he could go look for the hobbit. "It is done…" Intara gritted her teeth and closed her eyes against the pain she was in as the earth rumbled beneath her. She smiled at Argorn in spite of it.
"It is done. We're going to get you help." Argorn whispered as Eomer knelt beside them. Aragorn tightened his grasp on Intara and held her close until aid could be sent for and she could be carried off the battlefield.
Aragorn paced outside a tent waiting for the surgeon to emerge. He was distracted when Gandalf landed with one of the Eagles, two others landing carefully behind him. Legolas and Aragorn rushed forward to see what the two eagles carried and were elated to see that it was Frodo and Sam.
"They are alive, but they are not out of the woods." Gandalf said to them. He and Legolas carried the two hobbits to the healer's tents.
"My king?" Aragorn looked up to where the healer that had been tending Intara had just emerged, wiping his hands on a blood soaked rag.
"How is she?" Aragorn asked, worry in his eyes.
"She is not well." The healer said. "I do not think she will survive the week." Aragorn brushed past the man and went into the tent where Intara was sleeping. He hovered at her bedside for a moment before pulling up a stool and grasping her hand in his. She was slow to rouse, but when she opened her eyes they were clear.
"Aragorn." Aragorn leaned forward, happy that she was awake and talking. "What news of Frodo and Sam?"
"They are alive." Aragorn said. "As are you." But Intara was shaking her head.
"I heard the surgeon." She took a deep breath and concentrated on Aragorn. "I am glad they are alive…I am glad that my last act…was to save you."
"I wish there had been some other way…."
They sat in silence for some time before Intara laughed softly. "I wish I was able to see home…one last time." She said softly. "I have not been to the sea…in many years."
"I will take you there. I will take you to the sea if that is your last wish."
"I fear I would not see it. Besides…" Intara coughed and released his hand. "Besides, you must prepare to be crowned King of Gondor…uphold the family pride." The surgeon returned to the tent and touched Aragorn's shoulder.
"She needs rest sire." Aragorn rose and left the tent but not without one last look at Intara.
Aragorn pulled Gandalf aside and spoke quietly to him. The wounded were to be taken back to Minas Tirith for care. Aragorn did not want Intara brought back to the White City. He was not going to bring her back to a city she had no love for just so she could die. The surgeon had given her exactly a week and that's how long Aragorn thought it would take to get her to where her village had been on the western shores. He and Gandalf would accompany her on the trip. Legolas and Gimli would go with Frodo and Sam back to Minas Tirith and await Aragorn and Gandalf there.
"It is fitting she should be buried with her family." Gandalf whispered as she was lifted into a wagon. "It would not do to have her buried in Minas Tirith…she never spent any great deal of time there."
Aragorn mounted his horse and followed the cart, while Gandalf drove it. There were a few others with them, including Merry and Pippin and a few rangers who had known Intara during her service to them.
"I thought she'd live forever." One of them whispered to a comrade. "It was said her mother was an elf…"
"I had heard she'd sold her heart to the dwarves for a marble one so that she'd feel no love in this world." His friend returned. "Did you see her fight? I've never seen anything like it."
"There were many rumors about Intara." Aragorn said, the two rangers turned to look at him. "I think some of them may have had some truth to them."
"I suppose we'll never rightly know which were true and which were not." Gandalf said. "That is the legacy Intara will leave behind."
Intara occasionally woke and talked to those around her. She laughed at stories some of the rangers told and one day even recounted her life story to Eomer, who had also followed. But each passing day her skin grew paler and she became weaker.
"We are one day away." Gandalf said as they went over a bluff and down into a low valley. They were to go to an area just below the River Isen. It was there that Intara's village had once stood as an insignificant trading post between the sea and the countries of Rohan and Gondor.
"How did her people come to settle here?" One of the rangers asked. "She rode with the Dunedain…her cousins were Dunedain…how would the two be connected when so much land separated them?"
"Her grandfather was Dunedain, but he did not like the mountains. He heard the stories the Numenorean Kings told of the sea and the great Western lands. He left his clan in the care of his brother and started the village on the sea." Aragorn explained. "She was a chieftain's daughter, her great uncle was Isildur."
"She is related to the line of Kings?"
"Not directly enough to make it count. She said she met him once as a child, but he'd already been corrupted by the ring and died within a year."
"She has indeed deserved her rest then." One of the rangers whispered as he gazed reverently at the sleeping woman in the wagon.
Intara breathed deeply and slowly opened her eyes. A soft breeze blew across her and carried with it the salty tang of the sea mixed with something more fragrant. She looked to where Aragorn rode behind her, his silver eyes locked on her.
"You shouldn't have…you have much to prepare..."
"It was the least I could do for you." He answered.
Yellow flowers bobbed in a field of tall sea grasses. The sand on the beach was a soft white that contrasted with the deep black of the rocks of the cliffs that backed the place where the village had stood. Gandalf stopped the wagon on the rise above the beach and looked down to the place where the village had once been.
"We'll have to carry her down." Gandalf said. "The wagon won't make it." The rangers lifted the stretcher she was on out of the wagon and carried her down the road to the cliffs where they all made camp. They set her down so that she could look out over the sea to where the sun sank into the cobalt waters. Aragorn knelt beside her.
"How could I have forgotten it was so beautiful?" She asked without taking her eyes from the horizon. Aragorn looked over his shoulder to where the blue of the sea met the pink of the sky, the sun, a bright red disk that dipped beneath the horizon and sank slowly. "How could I have stayed away so long?"
"Because you are stubborn." Aragorn said brushing the hair form her face. "And foolhardy." She laughed softly.
"Now I know why the elves travel west. To see where it is the Sun sleeps every day would be a grand thing, don't you think?" She asked thickly.
"It would indeed." Intara looked at her cousin as tears brimmed in his eyes. She reached one hand out weakly and took his strong one.
"You must promise me something." Aragorn leaned close to her to hear her better. "You must not weep for me." He pulled away quickly and looked down at her. "You mustn't." Her hand slipped from his as she fell back to sleep.
Intara's breathing became shallow in the night and she spent a long time looking out the tent flap at the pin pricks of light that were the stars. She had spent many a night in the deep woods gazing at the stars and never once thought about how she'd lain on the beach with her father learning all their names. There were good memories that were had here, but she'd done her best to forget them along with the bad.
The next morning Aragorn changed her dressing, binding the herbs that were supposed to fight infection within the wrappings. The cut on her side was deep and had turned the skin immediately around it a bright, angry red. The surgeon had said the orc blade had severed bone and broken it spreading more illness throughout her body. The arrow, which had pierced the breast plate of her armor, had lodged itself between two of her ribs and had needed to be cut out. The surgeon had done a good job and hadn't needed to break any more of her ribs to remove it.
"Don't…don't bother with it." Intara said. "It will not help." She coughed and blood seeped from the corner of her mouth. Aragorn wiped it away quickly.
"It will ease the pain." He was sure now that the blade had been poisoned and knew she must have been fighting off a great deal of pain to have lasted as long as she had on the overland trip.
"I shall not live out the night." Aragorn grasped her hand and squeezed gently. "I don't want to…." She tried vainly to remain awake but drifted off to sleep again.
In the afternoon she took a terrible turn for the worse. She coughed on blood that had seeped into her lungs and she could hold neither food nor water in. She refused to eat anything after the first time she'd retched. It hurt her too much to try to go through it again. Her hands shook violently and had taken on a cold clammy feeling to match the pail pallor of her once sun bronzed skin.
"You used to be the strongest woman I knew." Gandalf whispered as he sat beside her. She smiled slightly, all the emotion she could muster in her weakened state. "Now you are a shell of your former self. 'Tis a pity one so young should die."
"I was meant to save a King." Intara whispered. "And I did that." Gandalf nodded. She looked out to where the sun was making its evening descent again and then let her gaze drift to those that milled about. Gandalf could read in her eyes what she was thinking. She did not wish to die around so many people. She'd been a solitary figure in life, and she wished not to have the weeping mourners around her when she died. Merry and Pippin stood in the shadow of the cliffs as Gandalf and Aragorn carried Intara's cot to the edge of the surf.
"What are they doing?" Pippin asked as he watched Aragorn kneel beside the woman they'd first met as Shadow.
"I think they're saying good bye Pip." Merry replied, a catch in his voice, as he saw Aragorn grasp Intara's hand and lower his head.
Intara listened as the sound of the surf surrounded her and the salt stung her lungs. Gandalf whispered words of peace and of a safe journey into the wind. She took a deep breath and smiled.
"Tell Elrond, I'm sorry I must break my contract." Aragorn bowed his head and smiled in spite of the gravity of the moment. The surf licked at his tunic and dampened the hem.
"Always thinking about duty…I'm sure he'll understand." He raised his eyes and watched as she moved her arm slowly off the side of the cot and let her hand drop into the surf. He was glad her eyes were slightly closed and that she would not see the tears brimming at his eyes.
"Tell him I returned to the sea from whence I came…."
"I will…" She turned to face him as her breaths became shorter and quicker. Her mouth moved several times, as if she wanted to say more, but hadn't the strength. As the sun began to sink into the sea, Intara, Ranger of the North, and contracted Rivendell defender, closed her eyes and died.
Intara was buried on the hillside, over looking the sea that she had loved, but had never allowed herself to return to. A tall white marker was erected over the grave, carved with runes baring her name. It was simple, as she had lived her day to day life. Merry and Pippin had spent time clearing away the grasses from the other graves at the top of the bluff and stood at the foot of Intara's grave while Gandalf said the proper words to help her pass on.
"Come now." Gandalf said when they had thrown the last of the dirt upon her. "We have happier times to look forward to. Let us take a page out of Intara's book and not dwell on what has past, but on what lies ahead."
"Yes….on what lies ahead and not those left behind." Eomer said as the others filtered away. He turned to Aragorn. "We have much to prepare for, you and I."
Aragorn nodded solemnly and Eomer left him to say his final good bye.
"Be at peace, Aragorn, for I certainly am". A voice seemed to whisper around him on the salt scented breeze and he smiled, knowing that at last, Intara had found the rest she had fought so hard to find.
The others mounted their horses and waited until Aragorn joined them. They left the beach slowly and followed the path they had taken on their arrival. Aragorn briefly thought about his cousin and the life she'd lived.
Intara had given much of herself in the service of others. She had refused to share her life with others, and had found only brief moments of happiness in a long line of pain, heartache, and sadness. Even with all the hardships she'd enforced on herself, she'd been loved by many and had done things that were beyond recognition. He wondered if anyone had ever thanked her for the sacrifices she'd made and the deeds she'd accomplished. Her story was one he hoped his sons could take to heart and learn from.
The small group was silent as they rode back towards Gondor and the White City, where Aragorn would be crowned King of Men.
King of a land where there were no Shadows.