A/N Camping trip over, it's about time for real shit to start. We're so close to the Fellowship leaving I can taste it. It tastes like Christmas candles and sexual tension.

Disclaimer: Please don't lick Christmas candles to see if I'm right. Just trust me.

Time passed strangely in Rivendell, she'd come to notice that, but what had seemed slow before felt like nothing now. Two weeks from now on Christmas day at that, the Fellowship would leave. Preparations were truly beginning as they were all outfitted in warm, fur lined clothes and full packs of supplies. Boromir had grown more stern as the days went on, like he was feeling the time crunch as much as she was.

Aragorn wasn't wrong when he said soon there wouldn't be time for rest because soon had become now. Her day flew from Boromir to Gloin to Aragorn to Legolas and straight to bed some days.

Luckily, with a speed that she could only attribute to Elven horses being especially gentle with her, Aragorn already had her galloping through Rivendell in the afternoon light, using his own steed to guide her from the front until she knew their route by heart.

Their rides were still the best part of her day and now that she could pick up speed it had gone from careful instruction to racing him back to the stables.

Hoofbeats warned those ahead they were coming, everyone now familiar with their afternoon runs. Only today Aragorn took a different path, slowing a little so she wasn't taken by surprise as he veered down a path to the left. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she followed and came to a halt in a low courtyard, surrounded by the rocks of the mountainside.

He dismounted as she came up beside him and offered his hand to help her down. "I wish to show you something."

They left the horses to graze and he led her through a tunnel in the mountain that opened into a large cavern overlooking the river. There was a forge cut into the rock letting off waves of heat that only abated in the cool breeze off of the water.

Two Elves, the smiths most likely, bowed their heads to them and ducked out, back up the way she and Aragorn had entered. Aragorn went to a table on the opposite end of the room and motioned for her to come over.

Narsil laid on a blue cloth, whole and reforged.

"Anduril." She said, touching the leather wrapped hilt gingerly. "Flame of the West."

Aragorn nodded. "As you instructed. I will bear it on the journey, as I will my true name."

When she looked back up something had changed in him. There was an assuredness that she hadn't realized wasn't there before, a nobility. Just like the palpable fear in the dark breath of the Nazgul, perhaps this too was more tangible than metaphorical. Josephine would swear she could see the blood of Numenor in him, though she had no notion of what that was prior to how he appeared now. It took her by surprise and he picked up the blade and held it in front of him, inspecting the craftsmanship they both knew he had no need to check. At the end of this, if she managed to keep it all together, he would be the king of Gondor.

The endgame was what she hoped for, but the longer she spent with him the more she feared it. Their friendship wouldn't be the same after, he would take the mantle up and marry, have heirs that would carry on the line of Elendil through the Fourth Age. In all likelihood, she herself might have a hand in finding the woman he would marry in order to maintain the story. And that was only if she was still alive and still in Middle-Earth when things were done. If she was brought to Middle-Earth, then who was to say she wouldn't be sent back when her task was complete?

The draw towards him she'd been beginning to recognize would have to fade through necessity either way. But until that moment came, she couldn't bear to let it go.

"Josephine?" He asked, laying the sword back down. "Is that not what should be done?"

The sword out of his hands he seemed to slip back into the air that was more familiar to her. "Sorry, I was just thinking." Leaning over the sword she took in the details, checking it through her memory of what Anduril looked like. Though, the specifics of its inscriptions and new gold inlay would hardly have an effect on how he carried it later. "It's exactly what I remember. I'm glad I remember to have it reforged before we left."

"Without you here, I may not have requested it done." He confessed. "What happened, in your knowledge?"

He was getting bold with his questions now and she gave him a stern look. "Asking advice of a Seer?"

"Not advice. But perhaps…hindsight." He knew he was toeing the line but was confident enough that she would simply rebuke him if she didn't want to answer.

"In one version, you had already decided to take it up. You'd had to search for the pieces and gather them here. Then had the sword reforged before the Fellowship left. You didn't have any of them on the trip from Bree so I knew that wasn't what was happening." She supposed it wouldn't do any harm to tell him now.

"And the other?"

She'd tried not to bring up Arwen since Weathertop and the Trollshaws, it was a hole she was worried about filling. Not to mention it was awkward to speak to him about a woman he was supposed to be in love with who had already left Middle-Earth. "Arwen would convince Lord Elrond to reforge it and it would come to you when you needed it most, but after you'd already left."

"You knew that would not be the case either so you had to intervene." Her continued confusion over Lady Arwen's departure worried him. She had said things were split between two versions of events, but it seemed that was an event that was absent from both. She hadn't spoken much of her knowledge, but it seemed a strange change in things she wasn't sure how to handle.

"I honestly don't understand why things are so mixed up." She tossed her hands out at her side and she started pacing. "The best I can come up with is somehow, something or someone tried to mess with Eru's Great Song. But that doesn't explain why it represents two versions of a story I know, down to the smallest details of how things appear. I could see how the song could be tampered with, it's not like it hasn't been corrupted before or at least it's been attempted. I honestly don't remember which it was and that whole part of the book was a little hard to follow anyway."

She took a deep breath, still pacing. "And if it was messed with in order to ensure Sauron's victory then I feel like there was an easier way to accomplish that than fiddling with a song written by a being that's essentially God. Hell, I can think of a few times when all there needed to be was a tiny change, a little push, and that Ring would be in Mordor on Sauron's hand by now. So why this? Why two stories that don't fully fit together that somehow are a book and a movie that I just happened to become obsessed with at sixteen! And then to top it all off, Arwen is in the West which didn't happen in either iteration! What am I supposed to do with that?" She groaned as a way to put an end to her diatribe and looked back over at him.

Given an opening to intervene, Aragorn came up to her and folded her hands between his. "You do what you have done up to now, for you have yet to lead us astray." He perhaps had more faith in her than she did herself, but he could not help but believe it. She cared too much for their world and despite her frustrations, she was dedicated to saving it. If she wasn't, she would not be joining the Fellowship.

"People are going to die, Aragorn." Her throat tightened and tears pricked at her eyes as she looked up at him. "Good people."

"We have all vowed to take that risk." He assured her.

"But I know how. When. I might even be able to stop it but I don't know if it'll change something important. In fact if I don't let it happen it might ruin everything."

"We fight not just for our own lives, but for those that we love and have sworn to protect. If we fall in service of that task and the sacrifice brings about victory, then we have done what we set out to do." He cupped her face, one hand still holding onto hers which were shaking. "You need not bear that guilt, Josephine." Perhaps he spoke more for himself than the others, but bearing the responsibility for their lives in a time of war was a fate he would do all he could to steer her from. And especially in the chance that she spoke of him, of his death that might very well come on the journey to Mordor, he would do all he could to convince her she should not bear the weight of it.

"I don't know how." She confessed, visions of Boromir in the glade too vivid in her memory. "I know every moment, I see it all when I close my eyes?" She folded as he pulled her into his arms, cradling her head against his chest. Winding her arms around his waist she held on tight, as if that would cement her to that spot forever and she'd never have to make the decision. "I don't want to do this."

A moment passed, letting her words sit for a beat before he answered. "You must."