Chapter 14
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?"
"No."
"Are we there yet?!"
"If you ask me that one more time I will tie your mouth shut!"
Pause.
"Are we there now?"
Aragorn lunged at Arya with the intention of carrying out his threat to the letter.
She laughed as she jumped away from the rocks she was walking on, landing on others with a nimble grace and springing from perch to perch like a snow leopard, Aragorn woefully clumsy in comparison, especially in the rapidly darkening twilight.
The Fellowship just rolled their eyes and continued trudging forward, used to Arya's antics with a week of travelling with her behind them.
Yesterday was Legolas.
The day before was Gimli.
The day before that was Aragorn.
It appeared it was his turn again today.
After Aragorn had sat down on one of the rocks, out of breath and sweaty, trying to suck oxygen back into his lungs, Arya dropped down beside him and patted his back empathetically.
"Don't worry, heir of Gondor. I'm sure your fitness will improve soon enough, and then you might have a chance at possibly catching me!"
Laughing, she rose and walked away with a skip in her step, until a pair of arms wrapped themselves around her middle and Aragorn hoisted her onto his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, walking back to the rest of the Fellowship, who had settled down in preparation for nightfall a couple of minutes ago.
Arya squeaked in indignation. "Put me down!" She rapped her knuckles sharply against his shoulder blade. "This is such an undignified position!"
"I will put you down when you stop being a spoilt brat," he remarked calmly, though still slightly out of breath.
"Excuse me?!" she spluttered. "Spoilt? I have never been spoiled in my life! I may have been who I was, but I was never spoiled!"
"Anyone else notice she didn't argue with the brat part?" Gimli muttered to Legolas.
The elf snorted. "She chose her battle wisely, is all I can say."
"Of course race wins when competing with reason."
"Come now, Gimli," Gandalf reprimanded gently. "I am sure Legolas meant that Cat has simply no way to argue against the observation that she is being a brat, as Aragorn puts it so nicely."
Boromir, who was tending the fire a few feet away, scoffed. "That girl is going to be the death of us all."
"I have no doubt of that," Legolas muttered, and for once he and Gimli were in complete agreement.
Gandalf smiled knowingly. "I wouldn't be so sure."
~o0o~
"Given up yet?" Aragorn teased Arya.
"Look, because I feel bad for the cramping in your shoulder, I'm going to say yes. That, and because I don't want you to start whining that I weigh too much."
"You do weigh a lot." Aragorn groaned in relief as he set Arya down onto the rock-strewn ground, rolling his shoulders back until they clicked. "About as much as a sack of feathers."
"Then why did it hurt to hold me up for two hours?" Arya asked, genuinely interested.
He smiled sheepishly, rubbing his shoulder. "Even a sack of feathers gets heavy after a while. At least this teaches me not to make threats I can't carry out."
"Fair enough," Arya said as they settled next to the campfire, having been unanimously voted for first watch after their little argument threatened to carry on deep into the night.
If they were going to be pests, they might as well be useful pests, as long as they kept quiet about it.
Arya leaned into Nymeria's warm flank and gazed into the warm golden fire, hands idly playing with the threads of her cloak. The direwolf twitched slightly but didn't wake, the leafy crown the Hobbits had made for her staying in place.
She looked at Aragorn, something she had heard in Imladris niggling inside her mind. Her mouth ran away from her as usual. "Is there anything between you and Arwen?"
He looked at her in surprise. "What are you talking about?"
Shrugging, she squinted at his face in the flickering light. "I didn't really get what the people meant, and it's not really my business, but there was this one elf saying that you two were supposed to love each other wholeheartedly, not treat each other as siblings. Why would he say that?"
Aragorn sighed heavily and turned his gaze back to the flames. "When I was a child, about two years old, Lord Elrond gave me a home at Imladris and treated me like his own son because my father, Arathorn, had been killed by orcs. As I grew older, Arwen came to me saying that she loved me, and that we were meant to be together."
"What happened?" Arya pressed when it looked like he wouldn't continue, though she could guess that it didn't end well.
"I told her that I didn't love her and that I was raised as her brother, and so she should treat me as such."
"You lied," she guessed correctly, watching as shame crossed in face. "You did love her. Why didn't you tell her?"
"Because she shouldn't tie herself to me now, and then spend the rest of eternity heartbroken and alone. I couldn't do that to her; she deserves happiness for the rest of her immortality, and I cannot give that to her." He shook his head. "She was so upset, I was actually going to confess, but then Lord Elrond entered the room we were in and she ran out in tears."
"I'm surprised you lived to tell the tale," she said bluntly.
He laughed sadly. "He gave me this look, and I could tell straightaway that he knew, somehow, and that he was grateful I had done what I did. The next time Arwen saw me, she called me brother, and acted like our previous incident hadn't happened, but I could tell that she had taken my words to heart. It took her twenty years to get over, but now she is the best sister I could ever have, and I doubt we could see each other as anything else."
"If it makes it any better, I think she's happy with how it turned out. She still loves you, just in the way siblings love each other," Arya said reassuringly. "I should know; I have five." She paused, a shadow of sadness crossing her face. "I had five."
"I am sorry for your loss," he said quietly, and she could tell that he understood.
"Don't be," she sighed. "It was long ago, in a different world. Maybe I'll forget the pain soon, but I can't speak about it now."
"That's alright," he told her. "These things take time."
She visibly shook off the memories and leant forward, hands on her knees, the brightness back in her gaze. "Now for the things that don't add up."
Aragorn rolled his eyes. "Ask away, your royal highness. I live to serve," he said sarcastically.
She took that as permission to go ahead. "How old are you?"
He didn't miss a beat. "Eighty-seven."
"Funny. You don't look a day older than thirty."
He winced. "Is that your way of telling me I look old?"
"That's my way of telling you that I don't believe you." She shrugged. "Though I can tell that you aren't lying."
The flames flickered and spat out burning embers, illuminating Aragorn's patient face. "I would not lie to you."
"I'm not saying I don't believe you, I saying that men don't usually live beyond thirty, forty if they're lucky, in my world. And if they do, they become old and wrinkled and ugly."
A small smile appeared on his face. "Are you telling I'm handsome?"
"Anyone with eyes can see that," she told him absent-mindedly, doing the maths in her head. "You're not a man then?"
"I am a Dunadan. I am descended from the men of Numenor, who can live up to roughly a hundred and eighty years of age, longer if they're of the royal line-"
"Which you are."
"Which I am, yes. Thank you for not interrupting," he said pointedly, turning to look at the trees behind him at a faint rustling noise, then turning back once he saw it was just the wind.
"How old can elves get?" Arya wanted to know, though her eyes were starting to droop down due to exhaustion.
"The eldest I can think of right now is Lady Galadriel, and she is around twelve thousand years of age." He turned his laugh into a cough as Arya's head slipped off her hand and she jerked into awareness suddenly.
She glared at him sullenly, and he tried to look like he hadn't seen that. "Go to sleep. I can take first watch by myself."
"Are you sure?" Arya questioned, even as she tried to stifle her yawn. "I can stay up."
"Don't think I don't know that you feel the need to stay awake whenever one of the others takes their watch."
"At least I can trust you not to strangle me in my sleep," she returned as she draped her cloak over herself and curled up next to Nymeria.
"They would not do that," he told her.
"Wouldn't they?"
"Of course not. They would wait until you were awake."
"That does not make me feel better. Wake me for second watch, will you?" she asked, even as she felt sleep tugging her into oblivion.
"Don't count on it," he muttered under his breath, but he didn't need to worry; Arya was already asleep.
He settled back against a tree, watching over the Fellowship as their snores drifted peacefully into the inky black sky.
~o0o~
The light of the flaming brands burns her eyes and she retreats further into the soothing darkness of the night, moving on silent paws to prevent discovery.
She scents the air, and a foul stench hits her nose, one of grime and congealing blood and rotting flesh, but mixed with that is the scent of not-family, her distant, smaller cousins, even if they feel slightly wrong.
Not of her pack, that is certain.
Pricking her ears forward, she makes out the rough growling cries of the strange monsters, their words jagged and undistingishable, hurting her ears and making her want to rip, tear, kill, and she knows she can't do that.
Not yet, anyway.
But she stays and prowls closer, remaining invisible in the shadows, but able to make out the large mis-shapen forms of twisted and ugly creatures, chasing the sleeker and smaller forms of her not-family before them.
Then, the sound of a whip.
She hisses angrily, ears flattening to her skull, even as her distant cousins pick up their pace, so much that she herself has to increase her speed in order to keep up.
The larger ones stop suddenly, but her not-family keeps running, and now she sees the foam at their muzzles, their ribs sticking out from their mangy fur, the madness in their eyes and she runs, runs faster than the wind back to her pack, branches snagging in her fur and pulling her back, but she breaks free every time and runs even faster.
Because she knows that they are hungry, and rabid, and they are heading right towards where those in her pack lie asleep and defenceless.
~o0o~
Arya woke with a cry and found herself looking right into golden eyes. Nymeria howled urgently, then leapt to the opposite side of the clearing to rip Legolas' covers away.
Aragorn was already standing, sword drawn. "Cat, what-"
"Up, everyone up!" she yelled, springing to her feet with daggers in hand, traces of sleep already dissipated. "Wolves!"
AN: I hope that clears up why Aragorn is not involved romantically with Arwen; he breaks off their love because he does not want Arwen to suffer eternally once he eventually dies, and now the only love between them is sibling love. I've always found it heartbreaking that Arwen has to be alone without him when he passes on, and so I've changed that in this story.
And yes, I do know that she dies of heartbreak a year later.
A reminder, the story isn't completely dictated by the books/movies, it will be different every now and then, and the characters are written as per my impressions of them.
Also, right now Arya and Aragorn are only friends, because she needed someone to confide in about her past, and (I feel) the Hobbits are not mature enough for that, just to clear up some questions reviewers had.
I don't have any set plans for pairings in this story, if you want to see a specific one really badly, tell me in a review and explain why. If you're convincing enough, I'll fit it in, though if you feel anyone should stay single then tell me as well.