Author's Notes and Disclaimer: It all belongs to Tolkien, except the bad parts. Most of those belong to PJ, but the really bad foul-ups and the insane mini-rant (which you may skip; you are by no means my captive audience, right? -Insert evil laughter- ) are my own. That's all I'm claiming; not Boromir, not Gimli, not the general concept of the Wargs, and you can keep your blonde elf-boy, you slavering fangirl, you.

The PPC (which belongs to the master authors Jay and Acacia, by the way, other good stuff which I have no right to claim and therefore do not do so but you ought to check out for a good laugh) is probably going to shoot me, stuff me, and hang me in their office for saying this, but I don't mind Mary Sues. If you like blue hair, silver-violet eyes, and a name that's five or more syllables in length without any sign of a breathing space, feel free to write about it. I may not read it, but it's good practice for a career in the anime genre. It's got to be better than any of the current TV shows if it features Frodo, no?

Which brings me to what really does get my goat about the archetypical Mary Sue story: way-out-of-character-ness, also known as +divide by lembas error+ or OOC. Show me a typical 10th member romance and I'll show you a dwarf who acts like a serious loser, an insane misogynist criminal just waiting for his chance to screw up the Fellowship, and an elf that exists merely for a woman's pleasure, yet somehow has not yet been claimed in three thousand years. What, there actually are four male hobbits, one of whom does little but angst, and a wizard in it, besides a ranger and the aforementioned OOC trio? This is an exceptionally good one.

At which point our antihero Warg enters the scene. Is it possible to write a romantic AU and still keep true to the spirit of Tolkien? Nyaah, she thinks, but she'll try one anyway. It might help her figure out just how one stays true to the master, if she gets enough purists flaming her. So please, precious, hit that silly little button in the bottom corner and practice your best orc swearses, gollum.

In short, (if I'm ever short,) I don't take my works or myself too seriously, but give me a shout out if I've crossed the lines of AU into Evil! OOC Land. I rather like fixing this stuff.

Edit: Thanks to the fine folks at Livejournal's OCAnalysis, I've decided to change the mother's name. Not a big thing, but it does make it a wee bit closer to canon. Please tell me if I missed a spot.

Pausing along her journey down the half-remembered road, Celenel looked down in bemused wonder at her son as he toddled alongside the path, stopping to examine the occasional leaf that caught his eye. His thumb remained firmly in his mouth as he brought such a weed up to his lightly tanned, youthful face. Watching this innocent discovery, she was surprised as ever at how such a young boy could mean so much to so many. Aragorn was her son, her heir, and now her only living family member. An alien, frightening thought to a woman who had been raised to value her clan above all else. Both of her parents had died in their homeland, not long after the birth of their grandson. Aragorn was already assuming the aloof attitude of his forefathers around strangers, but to his mother and those that the little boy recognized as friends he was ever loving and affable. He was so similar to his father, in both looks and manner, Celenel mused as she watched her little one attempting to hone his nascent woodsman's skills with indeterminate success.

Arathorn and Celenel had had a cold, mostly unloving marriage, as he had never forgiven her for standing in the way of matrimony to his beloved, if only passively. Neither had truly wanted the wedding, but clan politics had intervened in the paths where young hearts would tread. Her father had been kind and well meaning, if a little distant from her and her mother, but his steadfastness had proved his downfall more than once. First Thorongil had earned the mistrust of the Stewards of Gondor by hinting a little too bluntly at the existence of a family with a truer claim to the Southern throne than even Anarion's unbroken line might have had to offer. But the true fracture of his family had come when Thorongil proposed an unexpected solution to his rival Arador's problem. Arador had protested that his son Arathorn was wooing a girl, named Gilraen, who was much too young for the heir of Isildur's house. Celenel was in actuality not much older than Gilraen, but her stronger lineage had made her considered marriageable material, by Arador's standards at least.

Celenel had known from the beginning that her marriage was destined to be an unloving one. She still had had the wanderlust native to her race pulsing through her blood when her father had begun pressing her to wed. Up until the very day she had left Arnor, she knew Gilraen was the one who rightly deserved her place. Gilraen had known it, too. The younger woman had never explicitly objected after the engagement was announced, but Celenel felt Arathorn would still be alive if it had been his beloved he were returning to, instead of her. The pain and silent accusation in Gilraen's eyes told her that the younger woman privately summarized as much. But Arathorn's mother's pleas upon her son and his lover's behalf and Celenel's wariness toward the wedding had come to nothing against the pact of a stubborn pair of chieftains who believed they had at last found a way to unite the old royal bloodlines. Despite their frigid terms of acquaintance, Celenel could not help but regret her late husband's death. Arathorn had given her their son, and was willing to show the love that Aragorn merited, if not his mother. That love of her son counted far with Celenel, and no man, no matter how gruff and standoffish, deserved to be killed by Wargs.

And yet the awful, but not unthinkable, had occurred. A ranger's widow and her son would be cared for by their clan, but neither the O'Palansüls nor Arathorn's kin had the resources to spare for a healer who was more streetwise than woods-sensible and a youngster who would not be able to add to the hunt for several years yet. While Celenel had felt comfortable in her parents' homeland, they were too poor to keep that comfort. Royal blood did not guarantee riches, nor even a regular meal and a roof. Her clansmen were kind to her, as she was by technicality chieftain, but Celenel had seen hidden relived smiles on more than a few faces when the wandering wizard Gandalf had offered them shelter in Rivendell. It was the same in every culture. People wanted knowledge of a king; the thought that there would be an heir to the throne was comforting, but they did not want their ruler in their everyday lives.

Thankfully, Gandalf had taken mercy upon the newly widowed healer and her son. Celenel was unsure of how far to trust the elves, but any way to remove herself and Aragorn from that forest filled with its painful, bittersweet memories was more than welcome. She picked up the young child as Aragorn reached out to her, presenting the unfamiliar plant to the healer for judgment. Holding her son tightly to her breast, Celenel turned her steps once more to their future in Rivendell, the home of the elves.