A/N: Three wonderful ladies gave generously of their time and experience to help me get this thing presentable. I'd be delighted if they ended up getting a review or two from this shout-out. Cairistiona, Linda Hoyland, and Levade. They write really, really excellent stuff.

Thank you to everyone who's been reading! Here's a nice, sappy chapter for those of you with a soft spot for h/c ;D

All recognizable elements belong to J.R.R. Tolkien.

XI
Taking Your Tending Like a Man

I stayed with my father while he took a length of rope and picketed Morien by a forefoot. He handed me the lighter satchel from his saddle and lifted the larger one and nudged me ahead with a hand between my shoulder blades.

A narrow door in a brushy hillside appeared. It was so dark that I had not seen that the ground rose no more than fifty feet from where we had left the horses. The doorway was low and my father had to stoop to enter, and then we traveled through a short tunnel and ducked through a second door. When I raised my head, I saw we were in a room hollowed out into the hillside. Bracing the ceiling was a single heavy beam held up by a supporting pillar of oak, and beyond it stood a crude table and a pair of tree stumps for chairs. At the very back, Aragorn crouched beside a tiny stone fireplace with flint and firesteel in hand. Already he had lit one candle and stood it beside him on the dirt floor, and by the time Ada had entered behind me and shrugged out of his cloak, a second and third cast guttering shadows on the root-studded walls. Sive and Halvard came behind my father, and Elrohir behind them. The first two looked too weary to startle at the sight of the little burrow under the hill.

"A far cry from your ada's guest wing," my father told Elrohir, dealing him an affable, backhanded swat to the stomach.

"I am just as pleased to see it tonight," Elrohir answered, grinning and rubbing his belly. "Even if it is more fitting for hobbits than peredhil."

"A more considerate peredhel would not have spoiled my pretty patchwork," said Aragorn. He set a pair of waterskins beside the table, and his leather bag near them. From the latter he pulled a ream of canvas and rolled it open upon the tabletop. The glint of instruments in the candlelight made my stomach start to curl.

"You should be more concerned with sleeping than needlework," said Elrohir. "Particularly tears that are already knitting. It will keep until the morning."

"I fear there is one which will not," said the Chieftain, and his sympathetic eyes fell on me.

I had to battle the urge to slip behind my father and hide my face in the back of his jerkin.

Aragorn took a seat on the stump and reached into his leather bag and pulled out a square of cloth. From his canvas he slid a slim knife and laid the cloth on the table and carved a crescent in the center of it. He hooked a finger at me. I would not have gone to him but for my father's insistent hand in my back.

"I will show you," he said when I stood at his shoulder. "The pike-head caught you like so…" Here he crooked one finger, as if his second knuckle were a knee, and used another to slice behind it. "The wound is not too deep, but there is a piece of skin much like this…" He picked up the scrap of cloth and lifted the dangling flap with a fingertip. "If I do not stitch it back over the wound it will be very difficult to keep clean. The loose skin will die away and leave a gaping scar." He laid down the cloth again. "I will not force you if you will not let me," he said quietly. "It will sting, and I have little to dull it."

I looked up at my father. The corners of his eyes were tight, and for a moment I thought he would not decide for me. But then his hand rose to my shoulder and tightened just enough to be uncomfortable, and I knew he was remembering the sight of Halvard and I beside the dead goblin, or the sight of my wound when he had torn away my hose.

"She will let you," he said.

Aragorn nodded and began to clean his hands.

Elrohir filled one hand with bread from a satchel and headed for the door. For a moment Halvard watched him, and then took his own ration and followed. Sive had already settled on the dirt floor and pulled her arms inside her sleeves. My father went to a hollow in the wall I had not noticed before. Wedged into it was a pair of shelves that held a box of candles, a smattering of mismatched dishes and cookware, and a stack of rough woolen blankets. With the whole stack balanced on his arm he went over to Sive and shook one out and flung it across her shoulders. He crouched and tucked it around her feet, speaking something too low for me to hear. He smoothed the hair off her forehead. She stretched on her side and was asleep before he could cross the room to rejoin us.

I sank to the floor and tugged off my boots, hissing as the motion pulled my wound beneath its wrapping. Aragorn had spoken the truth; the back of the left one was torn and flopping, the hose that lay under it puckered and snagged. I twisted my foot to see it better and decided it was beyond even Lútha's skill to mend. I reached behind my knee and found the hole beneath the bandage and ripped it until the lower half of the woolen came off in my hand.

"You could have unpointed it and taken it off ," said Aragorn wryly. He had watched my performance with mirth in his eyes. "You'll have no stocking inside your boot tomorrow."

I held up the torn piece of hose. "I did not think of that," I admitted.

"No matter," he said. "You young savages run barefooted ten months out of the year as it is." He patted the table in front of him. I backed up to it and laid my palms on the surface and hiked my backside onto the edge. I sat like that for a moment, my feet swinging, and he waited patiently while I sorted my thoughts.

"I wish it was winter," I said at last. "Then I could numb it with snow."

"I wish that, too," he said. "If ever you take a pike-wound again, you'll know to time it better."

From his post at the foot of the table, my father growled, "If ever you take a pike-wound again, I may finish the job."

Aragorn ignored him, an act for which I was immediately grateful. I was nervous enough without Ada huffing and rumbling and leveling threats. Shakily I met the Chieftain's eye. "I'm afraid I won't be able to stay still."

"We'll go as slowly as you need to. I have known grown men who need respite between stitches. Elladan sulks like a little boy whenever he has to sit still for a healer."

I felt my eyebrows spring up. "He never."

"Indeed he does," said Aragorn solemnly. "If he were here you could show him a thing or two about taking your tending like a man."

I was not so foolish to think that I would ever be able to show Lord Elladan anything. Even so, the thought of him sulking was absurd enough to distract me from my nervousness. I swung my feet up, and when Aragorn had unwrapped the bandage, I stretched out and rolled over and propped my chin on my folded arms.

I watched the candle in front of my nose drip wax on the tabletop and struggled to think distant, diverting thoughts. Silently I counted to a hundred in Sindarin, and then again by threes, but faltered somewhere around forty-two and had to beg for my first reprieve. I felt vaguely sick and thought that the feel of any more tugging might turn my stomach inside out. I buried my face in the crook of my elbow.

A warm hand settled below my knee. "You are a brave girl," said Aragorn. I sniffed wetly and did not believe him, and in the end my father had to steady me with confining hands on either side of where the Chieftain worked. The moment the last stitch was tied and clipped he swept me off the table and onto his lap as if I were no bigger than Lossiel. He held me tight against his chest while Aragorn coated my stitches with thick salve and bound my knee again.

When he finished I mopped my face on the sleeve of my tunic and said, "I do not think I will take another pike-wound."

"See that you don't," said my father, but his rough kiss above my ear ruined his sternness.

Aragorn sat crouched on his heels. He cleaned the salve from his hands on a scrap of cloth and then let it hang between his knees as he regarded me. His bright eyes shadowed briefly, as if his thoughts had scattered somewhere far away from the little dug-out waystation. Then they cleared again and he shook his dark hair and rose and flipped the rag to the tabletop.

"I will relieve Elrohir," he said. "He likely has not slept for some days."

My father shifted me in his arms and stood. "I believe the watch is mine," he said. He carried me across the room and laid me down beside Sive.

"He has not," I mumbled. The pain behind my knee had dulled and fatigue was beginning to lap insistently behind my eyes.

"Who has not what, love?" He shook a blanket over Sive and I.

"He has not slept. Elrohir. You should make him…" A yawn interrupted me. Ada pushed back my hair.

"We will make him," he said. He patted my hip through the blanket and Sive turned in her sleep and buried her face against my neck, and then I sighed and succumbed as well.

-o0o-

Pain woke me. It washed down the back of my leg in waves and I whimpered and shifted onto my belly. The low voices from across the room ceased. Footsteps crossed the earthen floor but I did not move again. I kept my eyes shut tightly.

A hand drew up the blanket and smoothed it down my back. It settled again on the nape of my neck, brushing my hair aside to lie warm and callused on the skin there, and when it lifted the waves had become ripples. The voices resumed, and I had awakened enough by then to discern them in that small space.

"I find I have little stomach for repairing orcish handiwork on small children," the Chieftain said quietly in Sindarin. "Sweet Lady, a fingerbreadth higher and she would have been hamstrung."

"Even Adar has no stomach for it," said another voice. Elrohir's. "And he has seen times when the need was not so blessedly rare."

I turned my head slightly and cracked an eye, the light from the single candle feathery through my lashes. The Chieftain was settling back against the far wall, and I realized it had been he who had come to soothe me when I stirred. He sat and drew up one knee and slung his forearm over it. In his hand he held an untouched apple, but he seemed to stare straight through it. Shadow poured in pools beneath his cheekbones and in the corners of his somber eyes, and though the light from the candle was warm, it did not drive the pallor from his face. He looked frighteningly weary.

Near him Elrohir stretched on his good side, propped up on one elbow. Idly he spun his knife between his fingers, the small one he carried secreted in his boot. After a moment he flicked it to stick neatly in the dirt and rolled onto his back and hooked an arm beneath his head for a pillow. "Eat the apple, Estel," he said. His eyes were half-closed. "Your stomach will fare better with something besides regret to gnaw upon."

Aragorn twisted the apple in his hand. "Regret sometimes turns to wisdom, if gnawed long enough."

"Or to bitterness," was the murmured reply. "Have it out if you intend to, otherwise brood quietly and leave us others to our sleep."

For a few long moments I thought the Chieftain would do just that. Elrohir's chest heaved once and it seemed he had drifted away, but then Aragorn turned his face from the candlelight and said softly into the dark, "I should have known it for the diversion it was,"

Elrohir's eyes snapped open. He levered himself upright and faced Aragorn. "And you should be all-seeing, perhaps, and able to be in seven places at once," he said, and his tone was not gentle. "And while you are at it, sprout wings and breathe fire. And cleanse the world of plague and pestilence with a flick of your hand."

Aragorn's head fell back against the wall. "I should have left Rangers behind," he said. "There were none to guard them but half-grown boys and old men."

"Old men who were spilling goblin offal when you were still tottering after us with your backside in swaddling."

"Do not be flippant, Elrohir."

"Then you do not be pigheaded. We are at war, Aragorn. This is not some private duel for which you alone have thrown down the gauntlet. I am growing weary of reminding you that you cannot hold up the sky on your own shoulders."

"I have no desire to hold up the sky. I wish only to keep my folk alive, and the children of my people safely away from the weapons of our enemies."

"If you have an foolish child, you can restrain him, or keep him locked away so the consequences of his stupidity do not kill him," Elrohir said sharply. "But when he is a man he will still be foolish, and will get himself killed anyway. Were you the greatest healer in Arda, you still could not cure childish idiocy. You are not so old to have forgotten that only grave mistakes and hard lessoning are remedy for that."

"And if the mistake is so grave there can be no lessoning after?"

"Such was not so, this time."

"Not for the child, perhaps."

"You are only sniffing in circles, and I am beginning to find this conversation vexing. Why do you berate yourself over her fate? She will heal, and Halbarad will shackle her to her loom until she is old enough to marry off. Both she and the boy came away with only a few scrapes and a tale to tell their fellows. How is that a thing to mourn?"

Aragorn flicked his finger through the candle flame, causing it to sputter and dance. "Seven short," he said softly, and at his words I saw Elrohir sag a little, as if his vexation had fled and taken his bristling with it.

"Not the child, then," he murmured, and then he sighed and shifted forward on the dirt floor and grasped the front of the Chieftain's jerkin and gave it a shake. "You do not know," he said with an edge of fierceness. "They might have been separated, or fled another way. They might be wandering still in the wood. Would Dírhael not have left word at the cairn if they had taken casualty?"

"Perhaps he lacked the time."

Elrohir released the front of Aragorn's jerkin with a little shove. "And if there are? If seven of your people lie dead in shallow graves somewhere along the way? Will flogging yourself with fault bring honor to them, or peace to their families? Will it keep the next raid from tolling so grievously?"

"If I am wise enough to foresee it before it comes to pass, then yes."

"Your grandmother is foresighted. Your grandfather has fought invasions since before your mother was born. Would you call them fools, then, for being caught unawares this time?"

"Of course not."

"Well, then."

"But the charge is not theirs. I wonder often if these folk would be safer with Isildur's Heir away again in the far countries, where the rumor of him is only that, and the Enemy's thought might be drawn from the Dúnedain of the North."

"By careful vigilance, even in the North it is but a rumor still," said Elrohir. "If the truth had been found out, that Valandil's line endures and bides in Eriador unbroken, it would not be a swarm of goblins come in the night to burn and spoil, but all the hordes of Mordor, with the Nine at the vanguard. You know this, Aragorn. Orcs will raid purely for their lust for ruin. Sometimes there is no impetus behind their hatred but hatred itself. "

Aragorn did not answer this, but from where I lay I could see his face as he stared into the shadows. After a moment of heavy silence Elrohir slackened onto his back again and cast an arm across his eyes. "Eat the cursed apple, stubborn boy," he said in a tired voice. "And if not for your own sake, absolve yourself for mine. I have not the strength this night to batter sense into you."

"You have not had the strength for forty years," said Aragorn, smiling slightly. He buffed the apple on the breast of his jerkin and took a bite out of the shiniest spot.

"Remind me of those words in a day or two, Dúnadan," said Elrohir, his eyes closing completely. "And I shall feed them back to you."

The Chieftain finished his apple, core and all. He sat for a moment, twisting the stem, and then he leaned forward and fitted his hand against Elrohir's broken ribs.

Elrohir's hand flew up and caught Aragorn's wrist. "No," he said, in a tone one might direct at a toddler reaching for a hot stove. "You have spent yourself enough already, lessening the child's pain. Exhausting yourself trying to lessen mine will not assuage your guilt." He flung the Chieftain's hand away. "Elladan will reach us by morning," he added, as if the thought had just occurred to him. "And if you are still awake nursing it I will let him string you up by your heels."

"You are full to the brim with threats tonight," said Aragorn. He slid down the wall and lay flat on his back, his fingers laced over his belly. Elrohir answered with a hum, but he was more relaxed than I had ever seen him and did not speak again.

The floor of the waystation was uneven and smelled of must. Sive slept with her hands pulled under her chin and her bony elbow needled my ribs. The hollow behind my knee still felt heavy and uncomfortable, and just as tender was my pride at Elrohir's words about imprudence and childish idiocy. But at last I decided that none of this mattered. The Chieftain had given of his own strength to ease my ache. If he with all his cares could find rest beneath my father's watch, then I would not rouse him from it further. I snuggled closer to Sive's warm body and let the tide of sleep wash over me again.

Thank you so much for reading!