Thoughts: how would it feel to be suddenly free after so long? Rather like "A Tale of Two Cities", this is. It's short.

He found the ledger in an old notebook buried deep within the steward’s desk. Covered with dust, it kept track of offences committed and culprits punished over twenty years ago. The new steward frowned and began to leaf through the trial notes.
A name caught his eye, and a trial. The crime: the murder of a young woman, a daughter of a well-known tailor. The killer had been convicted with what to Faramir seemed extremely flimsy evidence. He read further, felt his eyes widen in horror. What was this?

The King looked up as his steward entered the chamber. He sat in a pool of golden sunshine and read about the imprisoned young man, locked away from the world so very long ago. Then he silently read the list that Faramir held out to him. A list of names of the prison inmates left alive after all of these years. He sucked in his breath and let it out in a whistle.
“Well, then,” he said. “I think we must remedy this.”
*****

The man came out slowly. He was unaccustomed to daylight; the only light he got in his cell came in the afternoon, for a few hours. It reminded him of happier times, before he had come here; times of laughter and happiness. Without it, he would have gone mad long ago.
They watched him emerge, the Steward and the King, from the dank little prison. He was several years older than the Lord Faramir, perhaps forty, but years of grief and stress had rendered him aged. His hair was lank and silver-streaked, and he wore rags, and carried a tattered sack with few personal belongings. A comb. A few scraps of paper. A tiny pen-and-ink sketch of a beautiful young woman.
The Steward and the King bowed to the man, and led him back to the Citadel. There, he was washed and shaven and dressed in real clothes for the first time in years. Then he was invited to sup with the King, where he was told the truth of what had happened so very long ago.
It had been a rough night for the old Steward, and recurring grief and anger had put him in a hot mood. The lass in the fine pub he went out to with some other noble lords had been pretty and round in all the right places, and he had pursued her after he had left his friends. She fled to her home, seeking refuge in the safety of her family, but he had caught her in a small alleyway. Then, her brother appeared. A young man, he respected the steward but refused to let him harm his sister. Hot words were spoken, and a fight began. The steward pulled out a dagger and went after the lad, but the lass got in the way. In moments, it was over.
The Steward was not to be blamed. He could wantonly kill, but it would go unnoticed. But who to blame for the girl’s death? The only other witness: her brother.
That night, one grieved and broken man ate real food, spoke with kind hearted people for the first time in years. Yes, he had a family still, or he thought he did. There was a girl, whom he had married a scant year before his imprisonment. He had not seen her since the City was evacuated in March. Perhaps she was still alive?
The King sent runners out; within two hours, they had found her.
She came to the Citadel to collect her husband. They fell into each other’s arms and wept, able to touch without bars between them for the first time in twenty years. The woman thanked the Steward and the King through her tears, and then bore the man away, to the home he had bought for her, but never lived in himself.
That night, the man lay in his wife’s arms and watched the stars shine through the open window. The sound of merry music filled his ears, for the peoples on Minas Tirith were still celebrating the King’s return. Such sounds had not reached his ears in two decades. He lay there and wept for joy, for the simple miracle of freedom. His wife stroked his hair and murmured soothing phrases, and the man finally fell into a blissful sleep of utter peace. He was home.

The End