Aragorn is fifty-three years old when the wolf takes him.
To his eyes, as to the eyes of all others who were there, it was an ordinary wolf. No warg, this, no hate-driven creature, not even desperate or ill. A wholly ordinary wolf out of Rhudaur, one of a wholly ordinary pack seeking nothing more than winter sustenance in the easier lands between the Ettenmoors and Weather Hills.
It's a bitterer fight than it should be, four Rangers against three wolves, but cold slows Man more than beast and they've had a long patrol on short rations. They succeed, in the end, but not before the last one takes Aragorn to the ground and gets its jaws around his sword arm. Halbarad slays it before it can do irreparable damage, then binds the gouges tightly and declares that he will live.
All told, it's an ordinary battle, and an ordinary injury.
They return to their southward path with every intention of resuming their patrol: skirting the eastern edges of the Weather Hills to cross the East-West Road to the South Downs, and maybe a stop in Bree to resupply.
By the second day, their plans have changed.
Of the third day, and of much of the stretch of weeks after, Aragorn has very little memory.
Later, with effort, he can recall glimpses, but no more than impressions. The Weather Hills at gray dawn, marsh mud frozen almost passable, oily lamp light in a darkly wooden room, and then nothing. Nothing until rousing near to waking in Rivendell to find himself sicker than he's ever been before.
It's not the wound, Elrond says softly, sitting at his bedside in his blurry memory. Your arm is healing well. I know not what is causing this, but I will find it. Rest, Estel. Rest. I will find it.
A fortnight he toils in the borderlands of delirium, too sick to speak, too weak to raise his head. The fever consumes him, tears at him, grinds him down into shards. All he knows in those weeks are painful malaise and the sound of his father's voice.
Rest. It will be well. I am here. Rest.
As always, Elrond proves true to his word, though some of his promises ask more patience than others.
When at last the fever has faded and Aragorn has scraped together enough strength to sit up, he is told of the past days. The wolf was likely diseased, and passed its contagion on through the bite. Your men brought you to Bree when you sickened, and thence Halbarad bore you here. Messengers have been sent abroad to the Dúnedain to warn them of this danger. No others have fallen ill.
How long? he asks, his voice more breath than sound.
Long enough, Elrond says. His eyes are sorrowful and not, Aragorn thinks wearily, as confident as they might be.
His strength comes back to him slowly, and all the while his father keeps him in his watchful sight. Five days after regaining his feet he has been allowed no further than the end of the hall which adjoins his room, and not even that without supervision. He chafes under it, but not as much as he might: he needs no clearer memories to know how ill he has been.
Elrond's wariness is vindicated on the evening of the sixth day, when the first seizure strikes.
The second, a month later, is worse.
By that point, he has accepted the bitter truth that he will be long away from his people. He is yet far from well. The fever never returns, but at whiles its pains do – shearing cramps in the long muscles of his arms and legs, grinding aches in all his joints, sickening pressure in the hollows of his face, behind his eyes and along his jaws – and send him to his bed for days at a time, where he endures as best he can with the aid of comforting care. Elrond's nearly always, but Elladan's and Elrohir's too once they are called back to the valley. They fear for him. He begins to fear for himself. Whatever hardiness he may claim through his bloodline has clearly deserted him, and Elrond still has found no cause that satisfies him.
Gandalf arrives in the wreckage of the second seizure. Aragorn has spent much of the past few days sleeping, desperately weary no matter how long or deeply he rests, and wakes to find the wizard sitting at his side regarding him with pained dismay. My dear boy, he says, the words so gently heartfelt that Aragorn breaks as he has not yet broken before his father. He cannot say why. My dear boy, Gandalf says, as though Aragorn's sorrow is his own, and Aragorn weeps. We will solve this, the wizard promises, brushing a stream of tears aside with tenderness unlooked-for. Fear not, son of Arathorn. This will not be your end.
Gandalf remains in Rivendell, seeking for Aragorn knows not what in the libraries and in long conferences with Elrond, Glorfindel, and Erestor. As he regains some meagre strength, Aragorn thinks to enter into those conferences and demand to be included in their counsels, but in the end he decides against it. He is tired, and he is unwell, and he would rather spend what time he has enjoying the peace that only the home of his heart can give him. Even in winter the gardens are fair to look upon, and in the Hall of Fire he can find warmth and restful solitude.
It occurs to him that he may be dying, but he is too exhausted already to note the added weight of that worry.
He grows sicker once more as the anticipated date of the next seizure draws near, wracked with hurts and weaker than he's been since the fever. When Elrond lifts his head to give him water, it's all he can do to swallow without choking. His vision dims, nuance lost in shadows and faltering shapes, until it seems he cannot see colour at all. Then all at once he is panting as though at a great height, unable to pull enough air into his lungs to sustain him, and shuddering uncontrollably. Elrond's hand alights on his brow as it so often has, but even that healing touch cannot pierce the malady that grips him now. His fëa flees, and Aragorn is lost.
He comes back to himself in pieces.
Frost-rimmed earth against his skin. Pale winter sunlight lancing his eyes. Soft footsteps approaching, two dark-haired figures reaching down to him, words he cannot parse that still impart a wholesome sense of calm. Gentle hands guiding him up, a warm cloak drawn about him, steady arms beneath him, bearing him away.
He wakes once more in his chamber, attended, it seems, by the entire household plus a wizard.
And, finally, by the answers Elrond had promised.
Years later, when those first agonised months are no more than a rueful memory, the tale of that night will be told in jest: how Estel had bounded away in his new form as though a burning brand were affixed to his tail, how his brothers had been hard pressed to keep sight of him in the moonlit forest, how he'd held them off with restless pacing and mournful howls until he'd shivered his way back to human form and collapsed onto the leaf litter, then to be carried home crusted in dirt and imprinted with the marks of twigs and stones. And Aragorn will shake his head at his brothers' laughing account, and scoff at their inability to keep up with a creature less sure of its legs than a newborn foal, and remind them of the many times after that they were the ones to end up in the dirt.
And his brothers allow it, as does he, because to laugh at the memory of fear is to deny its power.
It takes many years to come to that point, however, and not many fewer battles, both of will and arms.
Aragorn is fifty-three years old when the wolf takes him, but the wolf does not defeat him, and nor does it replace him.
By the time he is sixty, he and the wolf are one.
. . .
happy new year, and thank you for reading!
quick note: if you comment on this, or on anything else, to ask me for commissions i will a) block you b) assume you're a bot who didn't actually read this, and c) report you for being a spam bot. also, if you're a real human person thinking about commenting on a fic to ask a stranger to give you money for, essentially, their own work, maybe don't include a ton of personal information in that comment? just a thought? because yeah i'm annoyed but someone else might actually really for real harass you. like if you're gonna slap someone in the face don't stick around after to tell them your home address. it's wild that i have to say any of this but i guess that's just how things are now: weird and annoying and deeply out of touch with reality.
to everyone else, sorry for breaking character as the affable writer who only exists to post stories. if you have actual real thoughts or feedback that isn't that^ then I'd genuinely love to hear from you! i am simply so incredibly over this nonsense.