Happy Holidays, Vulgarweed!
Title: We Must Bear Witness
Author: hsavinien
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~3k, counting footnotes
Warnings: Non-graphic discussion of death, injury, and war.
Disclaimer: Characters and settings are the creation of Messrs. Pratchett, Gaiman, and Tolkien. The mixing thereof is entirely my fault.
Author's Note: Title from Elie Wiesel. The full quote is, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” Aziraphale and Crowley only play a small part in the events they witness in the War. Happy Christmas, Vulgarweed. I apologize, but there was more world-building and less romance than requested. This is a full fusion of Aziraphale and Crowley into Middle-Earth, I hope you like it. For other readers, I'm afraid this might be confusing if you haven't at least seen the films of The Lord of the Rings, but I hope you'll give it a chance.
Summary:There are two familiar faces on opposite sides of the War of the Ring and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields is approaching. They are dealing with this through the time-honored traditions of passive-aggression, worry, and damage control.
************
-September, 3018, on the Plains of Harad in a lovely tent-
“Really? Your highness?” Crowley added belatedly. The princess of Lost Kârna glowered at her. “You’re throwing your lot in with the fellow with the giant eyeball?” she continued a little despairingly. “That’s the plan?”
“The Gondorians have encroached too far on our land, Hizathar(1),” Sabriyâ growled. “I do not like the beasts or their fiery-eyed master, but they will crush the Gondorians’ ability to war upon us. We will have rivers of our own, and fertile land again for those who wish to farm. We shall avenge Kârna and take back what’s ours.”
“But...” Crowley made abortive strangling motions around her staff - carefully out of view of Sabriyâ’s second-in-command. Talk her out of it, put her off, at least delay things a few decades. "He'll use y- us as he uses his beasts, as pawns he loses without a thought."
Sabriyâ grinned wolfishly. "He may try. Our mûmakil shall trample our enemies like chaff, our riders shall strike swift and fade like a cloud on the wind, our archers prick their hides. We are not so slavish and unquestioning as his minions, nor so stupid as he thinks. It is our great chance to strike our enemies. I care not whose plans we serve besides in the doing of it."
“Yes, your highness,” she grumbled. Orcs. They were everything that she disliked, in their filthy, aggressive, discordant, destructive, unstylish way. Crowley grimaced. She had a nasty suspicion that Sauron knew exactly how far to trust the Haradrim and could manipulate them to his own ends much more effectively than Sabriyâ imagined.
***
-September, 3018, on the Plains of Harad in a smaller, but still opulent tent-
"Bugger-all I can do to change her mind," she said later to Aziraphale, tapping irritably on the table that held her scrying bowl. "She's got it into her head that she's the avenging force meant to punish the Gondorians for all the wrongs done in the last thousand or five years. I'm sure His Eyebally Self's got something to do with how thoroughly it's planted, but it's not like it's unjustified."
Aziraphale frowned up at her. "Well, the Haradrim do enough of their own raiding to have quite roused the resentment of Gondor's army and have for years, my dear."
"Numenor treated them as vassal states and not terribly well even for that," Crowley pointed out drily. "Her tribe have been nomads since Kârna was destroyed five hundred years ago and then twenty years back, Harondor diverted the river that fed one of the most reliable oases they visited. She's got a point, she's just allied with, well, you know."
Aziraphale's lips pursed. "True," she admitted reluctantly. "Do hurry up and get out of there, will you? It's hardly going to be safe for very long."
Crowley laughed in her face. "Safe? You're standing in the library of what's soon to be the main target of at least three different forces! Hardly safe as houses yourself."
"Well, they're not about to invade the Archives," Aziraphale said, but she didn't sound certain and there was a new line creased between her eyebrows.
"Sure of that, are you?" Crowley smirked down at the bowl. "Even if I could figure out a good way to leave, I don't know whether I would. I may have only come south for the sun, but it'd be a cheap move to abandon them from here."
"That's what you've been doing isn't it; spread discord, then leave to watch the fun?" Aziraphale said.
"And you're making sure nobody gets ideas about trying something new instead of stagnating in the ruins of their old kingdom, hm? Oh, but they lost the king, didn't they," Crowley snapped. She turned away, jogging the table with her hip, and Aziraphale's image vanished in ripples. She wasn't about to admit to Aziraphale that she'd got rather fond of Sabriyâ and her people. The old battle-axe grew on a person even if she was far too energetic for Crowley's liking.
Pasting on a wooden smile, Crowley went to see how much she could delay the Kârna war party by messing about with their supplies. For a start, the spare bowstrings could go mysteriously mouldy.
***
-September, 3018, in a small room in Minas Tirith-
Aziraphale watched the braided swirl of Crowley's black hair disappear into rippled darkness and sighed. She sloshed the inky water from the scrying bowl carefully down the privy and straightened her blue robes. The Archives were chilly - difficult to heat effectively with the danger of fire - and she was bundled in six layers of knitted wool over her linen underthings. There was, at least, hot tea readily available as a warming agent. The chief Archivist, Mistress Boriel, who viewed her grey-haired assistant with irritated bemusement when she remembered that Aziraphale existed(2), brewed it strong enough to eat away at the cup, but it was still a good blend.
"Mistress Auriphel(3)?" As if thinking of her had summoned her... Mistress Boriel's quiet voice outside her room and the tap on the door frame summoned Aziraphale. She sighed, grabbed her walking stick, gave the blue enamel inlay a quick polish on the edge of her sleeve, and went to greet her (putative) superior.
They lived in wary harmony, abetted by Aziraphale's shameless tendency to edge out of Boriel's awareness at every opportunity. She got on quite well in the city largely by being unnoticeable. The only one on whom her tricks didn't reliably work was Mistress Ioreth at the Houses of Healing, who greeted her cheerfully and chatted her ear off every time Aziraphale was in the vicinity. She seemed to be under the impression that Aziraphale was part Dwarf, which presumably explained to her satisfaction Aziraphale's tendency not to age regularly. Aziraphale was a bit sniffy over that, but only because she'd never liked having a beard in any body and felt compelled to add sideburns and at least a hint of goatee as camouflage every time Ioreth cornered her.
They were afraid, all of them, even Aziraphale, though she wouldn't admit it.(4) Mistress Ioreth stockpiled medical supplies and all the young people who could be spared from other tasks scoured the hillsides for healthful herbs and the houses for linen and spare needles. Mistress Boriel proved pragmatic enough that Aziraphale and her fellow assistant, Gordur, steadily shifted the most valuable pieces of the Archives to one of the lesser-regarded vaults beneath the city, with a protective barrier of dusty, disused furniture to conceal it. Aziraphale trotted up and down seven flights of stairs carrying boxes and scroll-cases for a week and was glad of the occupation. If she had nothing to do, she'd only dwell more on Crowley and her stubborn, unnecessary presence in the coming battles.
More and more refugees streamed into Minas Tirith every day and the clouds to the East grew darker. Aziraphale shuddered every time she looked at them and half-thought she smelled the beginnings of sulfur in the air whenever one of the Nazgûl's flying beasts cried over the ruin of Osgiliath.
***
-Late January, 3019, the Archives of Minas Tirith-
They spoke off and on over the next few months. Kârna's folk were only so patient and, after a month of supply delays, strayed horses, and unfortunate incidents of diarrhoea in many of the war-party (Crowley found some appropriately unpleasant plants and added them to the communal pot of soup), Sabriyâ lost patience and ordered them on the march regardless.
Crowley reported gloomily to Aziraphale when they met up with one of the other groups of Sauron's recruits, a paler, broad-faced band of Easterlings who bore a flag with a white sun dawning on black, which while aesthetically complementary to their black serpent on red, boded ill for their getting out of this in one piece. The Easterlings were no more friends to Sabriyâ's folk than Gondor, though with less history of conquest.
By the time they passed the middle of January, Aziraphale's fretting drove Master Gordur to leave the room every time she entered, which was doing his copying duties no favors. Aziraphale tried to take up the slack, but while her penmanship was good, her tendency to forget her task and read ahead meant that Mistress Boriel's schedule of duplication fell desperately behind. Neither she nor Aziraphale really noticed. Mistress Boriel was busy managing the rotations for cooking for the refugees crowding the alleys and sheds. Aziraphale hadn't refused Mistress Ioreth's request for an extra person with knowledge of herblore (or at least knowledge of where in the Archives such information might be found) in the Houses of Healing's stillroom.
***
-February, 3019, in the hills of Emyn Arnen in a plainer, damp tent-
Crowley stretched wearily and dropped into her cot like her strings were cut, pulling in distaste at the blue trousers sticking to her skin. Months traveling in a considerably damper, cooler environment were bothering her more than she'd expected. She'd gone East to escape the damp in the first place, to explore the deserts and encourage some of the interesting plants that grew there, and had forgotten just how much she disliked everything north and west of the River Harnen. Saruman liked his lonely tower, Gandalf preferred to roam, and Radagast followed his animals, Aziraphale could readily be found anywhere with a library or other store of knowledge she'd not yet explored, and Crowley liked sun and plant-life. She'd enjoyed a stimulating couple of centuries in the jungles of Far Harad, then migrated back to the sandier hills of Near Harad, which were also lovely in their own way, and now she was stuck in a tent in the rain, near a swamp waiting for the biting insects to invade and shivering.
"Hizathar," Sabriyâ's second, Johul, called softly from outside, rousing her from her glowering contemplation of her sogginess, "Her Highness wishes your presence. We have visitors from the orcs."
Crowley groaned. "I'm coming. What do they want?" She levered herself back off the cot, slapped her helmet back on her head, and grabbed her staff.
Johul's shoulders set. "They come to discuss the coming battlefield and our place on it."
Crowley winced. "Ah."
***
-March, 3019, in Minas Tirith's Houses of Healing at night-
"Fireballs!" Aziraphale hissed irately into her dish of water. "Flaming debris!"
Crowley groaned. "It's the orcs, what do you expect? They've no interest in your blasted manuscripts anyway apart from how flammable they are and I can hardly go up to one of those big captains and ask him to please aim a bit to the left, they're likely to hit the library where my blue-garbed counterpart lives and she's stroppy when she's angry. He'd discorporate me and then where would we be for the next decade or two it'll be sorting out this mess? Estë's not likely to speed me through processing."
"Angry and singed," Aziraphale grumped. "Mistress Ioreth wants to keep me here for observation and I've had the deuce of a time trying to get her to forget I'm here so I can just heal. As it is, I've lost six inches of hair and nearly didn't get the fire out in time to save the genealogies." She ran a finger along the seam of the scroll-case that was tucked up in bed beside her.
"Oh no, not the genealogies," Crowley said flatly.
"They're important."
"Annnd the rest of the city, the people in it..."
Aziraphale cringed. "Yes, obviously, the people are important too. But without history, how can they rebuild? You're certain you can't do something about those fireballs?"
"What, do you want me to pull lightning from the sky and blow them up in midair?" Crowley asked, gesturing rather a lot and threatening to tip the scrying bowl. "Shall I call forth life from within them and send a ball of carnivorous plants to their doom? They'd still be wrapped around a boulder," she added, when Aziraphale perked up. "We're under far too much scrutiny right now. His Conjunctivitious Lordship's focused right here and I wouldn't be surprised if the Big Discordant Note(5) Himself had a ringside seat from off in the void."
Aziraphale shuddered. "I'm sorry, my dear. I'm just..." She trailed off.
Crowley ran both hands over her face and rubbed her eyes. "Me too."
"I don't want to see another city, another people, in ruins," Aziraphale said quietly.
Nor do I," Crowely agreed, eyes flitting away from the bowl toward the rest of her encampment.
They sat in silence for a minute, until Aziraphale sighed. "Stay safe, my dear," she murmured.
Crowley laughed a little breathlessly. "I'll try. Have you seen where His Treacherousness has arrayed our riders?"
Aziraphale nodded bleakly.
***
-March, 3019, outside the broken gates of Minas Tirith-
Aziraphale wandered among the fallen, trying not to step in anyone's insides. The soldier beside her, Baragil, offered his arm, but she ignored him. Bending down to check pulses, she picked out the men and women that might yet live, given care, and set a pair of sturdy folk with stretchers to bear them back to the field hospital that Ioreth had set up outside Minas Tirith's walls when the battle was done and the wounded and dying overflowed the Houses of Healing. One of the fallen, a child nearly, lay beneath a dead horse. Aziraphale stopped at the tiny whimper that escaped and set to pulling the dead animal to the side, then knelt and brushed aside the red scarf that cloaked hi- her face. Kohl-darkened eyes skittered away in fear and pain and Aziraphale shushed and hummed comforting noises as she took stock of the injuries. Broken legs, a dislocated shoulder...she patted gently and at the girl's agonized whine, concluded that at least one rib was broken as well.
"It's well, child," she murmured in Haradric. "You fought honorably. We have made treaty now and I'm here to send you for healing." The girl gulped and nodded. Aziraphale offered her a little water from her flask. "I'm going to have to reset your shoulder now. It will hurt, but it's better done now than later. Yes?"
"Yes," she croaked.
Aziraphale nodded to her, then instructed Baragil to hold the girl's other shoulder down. She laced her fingers with the child's, and pulled the loose arm slowly, directly away from the body, feeling the click as it fit back into place. The girl's eyes rolled up in her head and she gasped through her teeth, then subsided. "Well done," Aziraphale said softly.
She called a muscular farmer and her bean-pole of a daughter over and supervised as they gently lifted the rider onto the stretcher. By the time they'd settled her, she'd fainted, probably a mercy considering the broken bones. Aziraphale sent them off with Baragil and resumed her duties.
One of the Rohirrim limped toward her, a drooping Haradrim warrior in a mud-caked helmet and blue tunic braced over his shoulder.
"Healer," he called. "Another. I don't know the language. Can you tell what's wrong?"
Aziraphale bustled over, only slipping once in the bloody mud. The warrior lifted her head.
"Oh." Aziraphale rushed the last few steps and caught Crowley out of the man's grasp. "I could," she said absently, "but I believe she understands you perfectly well."
Crowley grinned wearily, amber eyes dull. "I thank you for your assistance," she told the Rider. "I will do well enough from here." His eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he shrugged and stepped away.
"Your folk fought well," he said to Crowley, then nodded to Aziraphale and went back to his own survey of the dead and wounded.
Aziraphale clutched Crowley to her. "My dear," she said softly. "Are you well?"
"In body," Crowley allowed. She leaned into Aziraphale's grip. "More than that, I really can't say. Exhausted, though."
"I'll take you to the city," Aziraphale said, turning them in the right direction. "You may rest there. Are you... Are you looking for anyone in particular that I should tell the others to watch for?"
Crowley half-shrugged. "My princess was too good a ruler to lead from the rear," she said tiredly. "Sauron set us between the Rohirrim and Prince Imrahil's knights."
"I'm sorry." She bowed her head for a moment. "We will remember her."
Crowley nodded.
Aziraphale slid her shoulder under Crowley's arm and they limped back to the city. No one disturbed them as they went and the busy streets parted around them easily enough. Crowley's head was drooping low by the time they reached the fourth level. Aziraphale installed Crowley in her own bed, dislodging manuscripts and dust, then went back out onto the Pelennor Fields.
There was more work to be done and healing would come slow. Sauron's taint would linger long after he had departed. Peace would be hard, a just peace harder still. Crowley's friends among the Haradrim, the other defeated peoples, would need help as much as the farmholders of Gondor and Rohan.
That was what happened after wars. Mourning, rebuilding, the tedious business of learning not to hate. It was never quick and never smooth, no matter how it looked on paper.
~end
***
1. Hizathar - roughly 'the humbled one (f.)' - Adûnaic from hi 'she' and zabathân 'humbled' -> Crawly -> Crowley. (Yes, I spent far too long determining an appropriate translation for which there was Adûnaic vocabulary and constructing a name out of it. Adûnaic would be one of the main languages from which the Haradric language descended and thus this would probably be an appropriate name for Crowley to use while in Harad.) Crowley had been pleased to come up with something sneakily serpentine to match the Kârna's emblem.
2. Aziraphale had installed herself in the Archives of the White City approximately three decades ago, much to Mistress Boriel's surprise when she had taken up her post ten years later. Boriel had ended up appointing a second Assistant (which hadn't happened in nearly a hundred years) so that her own secretary, Gordur, could still have an official position.
3. Auriphel - roughly 'sunlight-border' or 'dusk' - Sindarin from aur 'sunlight, day' and pel 'fence, border'. Auriphel wasn't actually a real name, but it was close enough to pass as simply unusual rather than ridiculous, and Aziraphale had rather run out of ideas by the time she'd been asked. When pressed, she murmured something about it being a family name and exited the conversation as quickly as possible.
4. She was desperately afraid that Gondor's fall would be one of those unfathomable parts of the Eternal Plan that she'd have to bear witness to, that Sauron and his twisted creations (oh, Eru, if she slept, she'd fear nightmares of the torture and misshaping of the Elves he'd taken) would overrun and destroy the city and Archives.
5. Morgoth (aka Melkor), Sauron's boss, was still out of the picture in his exile for refusing to sing in tune and Not Playing Well With Others on a genocidal scale and would be until the Final Battle, for which everyone was grateful.
***
Afterword and Informative notes:
"In this story, Aziraphale and Crowley are both Istari - the two blue Wizards who were companions to Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast and went into the East, never to be heard from again. This ranks them as angels in the pantheon of Middle-Earth and, while I have changed their connections to the Valar they serve, little else is altered from canon. In this tale, Aziraphale is a servant of Vairë the Weaver, who weaves the story of the world in her tapestries and is the wizard Morinehtar ("Darkness-slayer" seemed appropriate for a fellow with a flaming sword). Crowley is a servant of Yavanna, Queen of the Earth, who cares for plants and animals (Crowley went more the plant route, of course) and is the wizard Rómestámo ("East-helper", which role he certainly tries to take on here). Middle-Earth's morality really isn't black and white, oddly enough, and Crowley is therefore not even nominally on Sauron's side. But, as you can see, that doesn't stop him coming in conflict with Aziraphale."
Happy Holidays, vulgarweed, from your Secret Writer!
Author: hsavinien
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~3k, counting footnotes
Warnings: Non-graphic discussion of death, injury, and war.
Disclaimer: Characters and settings are the creation of Messrs. Pratchett, Gaiman, and Tolkien. The mixing thereof is entirely my fault.
Author's Note: Title from Elie Wiesel. The full quote is, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” Aziraphale and Crowley only play a small part in the events they witness in the War. Happy Christmas, Vulgarweed. I apologize, but there was more world-building and less romance than requested. This is a full fusion of Aziraphale and Crowley into Middle-Earth, I hope you like it. For other readers, I'm afraid this might be confusing if you haven't at least seen the films of The Lord of the Rings, but I hope you'll give it a chance.
Summary:There are two familiar faces on opposite sides of the War of the Ring and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields is approaching. They are dealing with this through the time-honored traditions of passive-aggression, worry, and damage control.
************
-September, 3018, on the Plains of Harad in a lovely tent-
“Really? Your highness?” Crowley added belatedly. The princess of Lost Kârna glowered at her. “You’re throwing your lot in with the fellow with the giant eyeball?” she continued a little despairingly. “That’s the plan?”
“The Gondorians have encroached too far on our land, Hizathar(1),” Sabriyâ growled. “I do not like the beasts or their fiery-eyed master, but they will crush the Gondorians’ ability to war upon us. We will have rivers of our own, and fertile land again for those who wish to farm. We shall avenge Kârna and take back what’s ours.”
“But...” Crowley made abortive strangling motions around her staff - carefully out of view of Sabriyâ’s second-in-command. Talk her out of it, put her off, at least delay things a few decades. "He'll use y- us as he uses his beasts, as pawns he loses without a thought."
Sabriyâ grinned wolfishly. "He may try. Our mûmakil shall trample our enemies like chaff, our riders shall strike swift and fade like a cloud on the wind, our archers prick their hides. We are not so slavish and unquestioning as his minions, nor so stupid as he thinks. It is our great chance to strike our enemies. I care not whose plans we serve besides in the doing of it."
“Yes, your highness,” she grumbled. Orcs. They were everything that she disliked, in their filthy, aggressive, discordant, destructive, unstylish way. Crowley grimaced. She had a nasty suspicion that Sauron knew exactly how far to trust the Haradrim and could manipulate them to his own ends much more effectively than Sabriyâ imagined.
***
-September, 3018, on the Plains of Harad in a smaller, but still opulent tent-
"Bugger-all I can do to change her mind," she said later to Aziraphale, tapping irritably on the table that held her scrying bowl. "She's got it into her head that she's the avenging force meant to punish the Gondorians for all the wrongs done in the last thousand or five years. I'm sure His Eyebally Self's got something to do with how thoroughly it's planted, but it's not like it's unjustified."
Aziraphale frowned up at her. "Well, the Haradrim do enough of their own raiding to have quite roused the resentment of Gondor's army and have for years, my dear."
"Numenor treated them as vassal states and not terribly well even for that," Crowley pointed out drily. "Her tribe have been nomads since Kârna was destroyed five hundred years ago and then twenty years back, Harondor diverted the river that fed one of the most reliable oases they visited. She's got a point, she's just allied with, well, you know."
Aziraphale's lips pursed. "True," she admitted reluctantly. "Do hurry up and get out of there, will you? It's hardly going to be safe for very long."
Crowley laughed in her face. "Safe? You're standing in the library of what's soon to be the main target of at least three different forces! Hardly safe as houses yourself."
"Well, they're not about to invade the Archives," Aziraphale said, but she didn't sound certain and there was a new line creased between her eyebrows.
"Sure of that, are you?" Crowley smirked down at the bowl. "Even if I could figure out a good way to leave, I don't know whether I would. I may have only come south for the sun, but it'd be a cheap move to abandon them from here."
"That's what you've been doing isn't it; spread discord, then leave to watch the fun?" Aziraphale said.
"And you're making sure nobody gets ideas about trying something new instead of stagnating in the ruins of their old kingdom, hm? Oh, but they lost the king, didn't they," Crowley snapped. She turned away, jogging the table with her hip, and Aziraphale's image vanished in ripples. She wasn't about to admit to Aziraphale that she'd got rather fond of Sabriyâ and her people. The old battle-axe grew on a person even if she was far too energetic for Crowley's liking.
Pasting on a wooden smile, Crowley went to see how much she could delay the Kârna war party by messing about with their supplies. For a start, the spare bowstrings could go mysteriously mouldy.
***
-September, 3018, in a small room in Minas Tirith-
Aziraphale watched the braided swirl of Crowley's black hair disappear into rippled darkness and sighed. She sloshed the inky water from the scrying bowl carefully down the privy and straightened her blue robes. The Archives were chilly - difficult to heat effectively with the danger of fire - and she was bundled in six layers of knitted wool over her linen underthings. There was, at least, hot tea readily available as a warming agent. The chief Archivist, Mistress Boriel, who viewed her grey-haired assistant with irritated bemusement when she remembered that Aziraphale existed(2), brewed it strong enough to eat away at the cup, but it was still a good blend.
"Mistress Auriphel(3)?" As if thinking of her had summoned her... Mistress Boriel's quiet voice outside her room and the tap on the door frame summoned Aziraphale. She sighed, grabbed her walking stick, gave the blue enamel inlay a quick polish on the edge of her sleeve, and went to greet her (putative) superior.
They lived in wary harmony, abetted by Aziraphale's shameless tendency to edge out of Boriel's awareness at every opportunity. She got on quite well in the city largely by being unnoticeable. The only one on whom her tricks didn't reliably work was Mistress Ioreth at the Houses of Healing, who greeted her cheerfully and chatted her ear off every time Aziraphale was in the vicinity. She seemed to be under the impression that Aziraphale was part Dwarf, which presumably explained to her satisfaction Aziraphale's tendency not to age regularly. Aziraphale was a bit sniffy over that, but only because she'd never liked having a beard in any body and felt compelled to add sideburns and at least a hint of goatee as camouflage every time Ioreth cornered her.
They were afraid, all of them, even Aziraphale, though she wouldn't admit it.(4) Mistress Ioreth stockpiled medical supplies and all the young people who could be spared from other tasks scoured the hillsides for healthful herbs and the houses for linen and spare needles. Mistress Boriel proved pragmatic enough that Aziraphale and her fellow assistant, Gordur, steadily shifted the most valuable pieces of the Archives to one of the lesser-regarded vaults beneath the city, with a protective barrier of dusty, disused furniture to conceal it. Aziraphale trotted up and down seven flights of stairs carrying boxes and scroll-cases for a week and was glad of the occupation. If she had nothing to do, she'd only dwell more on Crowley and her stubborn, unnecessary presence in the coming battles.
More and more refugees streamed into Minas Tirith every day and the clouds to the East grew darker. Aziraphale shuddered every time she looked at them and half-thought she smelled the beginnings of sulfur in the air whenever one of the Nazgûl's flying beasts cried over the ruin of Osgiliath.
***
-Late January, 3019, the Archives of Minas Tirith-
They spoke off and on over the next few months. Kârna's folk were only so patient and, after a month of supply delays, strayed horses, and unfortunate incidents of diarrhoea in many of the war-party (Crowley found some appropriately unpleasant plants and added them to the communal pot of soup), Sabriyâ lost patience and ordered them on the march regardless.
Crowley reported gloomily to Aziraphale when they met up with one of the other groups of Sauron's recruits, a paler, broad-faced band of Easterlings who bore a flag with a white sun dawning on black, which while aesthetically complementary to their black serpent on red, boded ill for their getting out of this in one piece. The Easterlings were no more friends to Sabriyâ's folk than Gondor, though with less history of conquest.
By the time they passed the middle of January, Aziraphale's fretting drove Master Gordur to leave the room every time she entered, which was doing his copying duties no favors. Aziraphale tried to take up the slack, but while her penmanship was good, her tendency to forget her task and read ahead meant that Mistress Boriel's schedule of duplication fell desperately behind. Neither she nor Aziraphale really noticed. Mistress Boriel was busy managing the rotations for cooking for the refugees crowding the alleys and sheds. Aziraphale hadn't refused Mistress Ioreth's request for an extra person with knowledge of herblore (or at least knowledge of where in the Archives such information might be found) in the Houses of Healing's stillroom.
***
-February, 3019, in the hills of Emyn Arnen in a plainer, damp tent-
Crowley stretched wearily and dropped into her cot like her strings were cut, pulling in distaste at the blue trousers sticking to her skin. Months traveling in a considerably damper, cooler environment were bothering her more than she'd expected. She'd gone East to escape the damp in the first place, to explore the deserts and encourage some of the interesting plants that grew there, and had forgotten just how much she disliked everything north and west of the River Harnen. Saruman liked his lonely tower, Gandalf preferred to roam, and Radagast followed his animals, Aziraphale could readily be found anywhere with a library or other store of knowledge she'd not yet explored, and Crowley liked sun and plant-life. She'd enjoyed a stimulating couple of centuries in the jungles of Far Harad, then migrated back to the sandier hills of Near Harad, which were also lovely in their own way, and now she was stuck in a tent in the rain, near a swamp waiting for the biting insects to invade and shivering.
"Hizathar," Sabriyâ's second, Johul, called softly from outside, rousing her from her glowering contemplation of her sogginess, "Her Highness wishes your presence. We have visitors from the orcs."
Crowley groaned. "I'm coming. What do they want?" She levered herself back off the cot, slapped her helmet back on her head, and grabbed her staff.
Johul's shoulders set. "They come to discuss the coming battlefield and our place on it."
Crowley winced. "Ah."
***
-March, 3019, in Minas Tirith's Houses of Healing at night-
"Fireballs!" Aziraphale hissed irately into her dish of water. "Flaming debris!"
Crowley groaned. "It's the orcs, what do you expect? They've no interest in your blasted manuscripts anyway apart from how flammable they are and I can hardly go up to one of those big captains and ask him to please aim a bit to the left, they're likely to hit the library where my blue-garbed counterpart lives and she's stroppy when she's angry. He'd discorporate me and then where would we be for the next decade or two it'll be sorting out this mess? Estë's not likely to speed me through processing."
"Angry and singed," Aziraphale grumped. "Mistress Ioreth wants to keep me here for observation and I've had the deuce of a time trying to get her to forget I'm here so I can just heal. As it is, I've lost six inches of hair and nearly didn't get the fire out in time to save the genealogies." She ran a finger along the seam of the scroll-case that was tucked up in bed beside her.
"Oh no, not the genealogies," Crowley said flatly.
"They're important."
"Annnd the rest of the city, the people in it..."
Aziraphale cringed. "Yes, obviously, the people are important too. But without history, how can they rebuild? You're certain you can't do something about those fireballs?"
"What, do you want me to pull lightning from the sky and blow them up in midair?" Crowley asked, gesturing rather a lot and threatening to tip the scrying bowl. "Shall I call forth life from within them and send a ball of carnivorous plants to their doom? They'd still be wrapped around a boulder," she added, when Aziraphale perked up. "We're under far too much scrutiny right now. His Conjunctivitious Lordship's focused right here and I wouldn't be surprised if the Big Discordant Note(5) Himself had a ringside seat from off in the void."
Aziraphale shuddered. "I'm sorry, my dear. I'm just..." She trailed off.
Crowley ran both hands over her face and rubbed her eyes. "Me too."
"I don't want to see another city, another people, in ruins," Aziraphale said quietly.
Nor do I," Crowely agreed, eyes flitting away from the bowl toward the rest of her encampment.
They sat in silence for a minute, until Aziraphale sighed. "Stay safe, my dear," she murmured.
Crowley laughed a little breathlessly. "I'll try. Have you seen where His Treacherousness has arrayed our riders?"
Aziraphale nodded bleakly.
***
-March, 3019, outside the broken gates of Minas Tirith-
Aziraphale wandered among the fallen, trying not to step in anyone's insides. The soldier beside her, Baragil, offered his arm, but she ignored him. Bending down to check pulses, she picked out the men and women that might yet live, given care, and set a pair of sturdy folk with stretchers to bear them back to the field hospital that Ioreth had set up outside Minas Tirith's walls when the battle was done and the wounded and dying overflowed the Houses of Healing. One of the fallen, a child nearly, lay beneath a dead horse. Aziraphale stopped at the tiny whimper that escaped and set to pulling the dead animal to the side, then knelt and brushed aside the red scarf that cloaked hi- her face. Kohl-darkened eyes skittered away in fear and pain and Aziraphale shushed and hummed comforting noises as she took stock of the injuries. Broken legs, a dislocated shoulder...she patted gently and at the girl's agonized whine, concluded that at least one rib was broken as well.
"It's well, child," she murmured in Haradric. "You fought honorably. We have made treaty now and I'm here to send you for healing." The girl gulped and nodded. Aziraphale offered her a little water from her flask. "I'm going to have to reset your shoulder now. It will hurt, but it's better done now than later. Yes?"
"Yes," she croaked.
Aziraphale nodded to her, then instructed Baragil to hold the girl's other shoulder down. She laced her fingers with the child's, and pulled the loose arm slowly, directly away from the body, feeling the click as it fit back into place. The girl's eyes rolled up in her head and she gasped through her teeth, then subsided. "Well done," Aziraphale said softly.
She called a muscular farmer and her bean-pole of a daughter over and supervised as they gently lifted the rider onto the stretcher. By the time they'd settled her, she'd fainted, probably a mercy considering the broken bones. Aziraphale sent them off with Baragil and resumed her duties.
One of the Rohirrim limped toward her, a drooping Haradrim warrior in a mud-caked helmet and blue tunic braced over his shoulder.
"Healer," he called. "Another. I don't know the language. Can you tell what's wrong?"
Aziraphale bustled over, only slipping once in the bloody mud. The warrior lifted her head.
"Oh." Aziraphale rushed the last few steps and caught Crowley out of the man's grasp. "I could," she said absently, "but I believe she understands you perfectly well."
Crowley grinned wearily, amber eyes dull. "I thank you for your assistance," she told the Rider. "I will do well enough from here." His eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he shrugged and stepped away.
"Your folk fought well," he said to Crowley, then nodded to Aziraphale and went back to his own survey of the dead and wounded.
Aziraphale clutched Crowley to her. "My dear," she said softly. "Are you well?"
"In body," Crowley allowed. She leaned into Aziraphale's grip. "More than that, I really can't say. Exhausted, though."
"I'll take you to the city," Aziraphale said, turning them in the right direction. "You may rest there. Are you... Are you looking for anyone in particular that I should tell the others to watch for?"
Crowley half-shrugged. "My princess was too good a ruler to lead from the rear," she said tiredly. "Sauron set us between the Rohirrim and Prince Imrahil's knights."
"I'm sorry." She bowed her head for a moment. "We will remember her."
Crowley nodded.
Aziraphale slid her shoulder under Crowley's arm and they limped back to the city. No one disturbed them as they went and the busy streets parted around them easily enough. Crowley's head was drooping low by the time they reached the fourth level. Aziraphale installed Crowley in her own bed, dislodging manuscripts and dust, then went back out onto the Pelennor Fields.
There was more work to be done and healing would come slow. Sauron's taint would linger long after he had departed. Peace would be hard, a just peace harder still. Crowley's friends among the Haradrim, the other defeated peoples, would need help as much as the farmholders of Gondor and Rohan.
That was what happened after wars. Mourning, rebuilding, the tedious business of learning not to hate. It was never quick and never smooth, no matter how it looked on paper.
~end
***
1. Hizathar - roughly 'the humbled one (f.)' - Adûnaic from hi 'she' and zabathân 'humbled' -> Crawly -> Crowley. (Yes, I spent far too long determining an appropriate translation for which there was Adûnaic vocabulary and constructing a name out of it. Adûnaic would be one of the main languages from which the Haradric language descended and thus this would probably be an appropriate name for Crowley to use while in Harad.) Crowley had been pleased to come up with something sneakily serpentine to match the Kârna's emblem.
2. Aziraphale had installed herself in the Archives of the White City approximately three decades ago, much to Mistress Boriel's surprise when she had taken up her post ten years later. Boriel had ended up appointing a second Assistant (which hadn't happened in nearly a hundred years) so that her own secretary, Gordur, could still have an official position.
3. Auriphel - roughly 'sunlight-border' or 'dusk' - Sindarin from aur 'sunlight, day' and pel 'fence, border'. Auriphel wasn't actually a real name, but it was close enough to pass as simply unusual rather than ridiculous, and Aziraphale had rather run out of ideas by the time she'd been asked. When pressed, she murmured something about it being a family name and exited the conversation as quickly as possible.
4. She was desperately afraid that Gondor's fall would be one of those unfathomable parts of the Eternal Plan that she'd have to bear witness to, that Sauron and his twisted creations (oh, Eru, if she slept, she'd fear nightmares of the torture and misshaping of the Elves he'd taken) would overrun and destroy the city and Archives.
5. Morgoth (aka Melkor), Sauron's boss, was still out of the picture in his exile for refusing to sing in tune and Not Playing Well With Others on a genocidal scale and would be until the Final Battle, for which everyone was grateful.
***
Afterword and Informative notes:
"In this story, Aziraphale and Crowley are both Istari - the two blue Wizards who were companions to Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast and went into the East, never to be heard from again. This ranks them as angels in the pantheon of Middle-Earth and, while I have changed their connections to the Valar they serve, little else is altered from canon. In this tale, Aziraphale is a servant of Vairë the Weaver, who weaves the story of the world in her tapestries and is the wizard Morinehtar ("Darkness-slayer" seemed appropriate for a fellow with a flaming sword). Crowley is a servant of Yavanna, Queen of the Earth, who cares for plants and animals (Crowley went more the plant route, of course) and is the wizard Rómestámo ("East-helper", which role he certainly tries to take on here). Middle-Earth's morality really isn't black and white, oddly enough, and Crowley is therefore not even nominally on Sauron's side. But, as you can see, that doesn't stop him coming in conflict with Aziraphale."
Happy Holidays, vulgarweed, from your Secret Writer!