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Until The Stars Are All Alight	By : kenaz Category: -Multi-Age > Slash - Male/Male Views: 911 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings (and associated) book series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Until The Stars Are All Alight
- 1
A/N: A new approach-- and new characters-- for me, and a piece I'm actually rather happy with. My great thanks, as always, to my lovely beta,

Home is behind the world ahead,

And there are many paths to tread

Through shadows to the edge of night,

Until the stars are all alight.

- A Walking Song, J.R.R Tolkien

Beneath night's mantle, he broods. It is cold, the fire long extinguished, and rimy breath escapes our lips like spirits in flight from the broken bodies that house them. The night is more than halfway passed, yet he does not sleep, will not even lie on the bedroll I have spread for him close beside my own.

He scans the sky, looking to the East for the star I imagine he sees rising over Rivendell: an eidolon of the one from whom he is parted, the one who is denied him by fault of his birth as a mortal man, and as the distant son of a broken king. He seeks her star every night, I know, but tonight he feels the barrenness of this land and this life he has chosen most keenly of all.

He slips his dagger from its sheath and regards the blade as if it has secrets to impart, as if the rusty residue clinging to the bolster might have belated absolution to grant, but steel keeps its own counsel.

I cannot sleep until he has found rest. I have left him to his solitude thus far, let him come to terms with his actions alone, but no longer. And so I approach, moving with the slow, deliberate steps of a man nearing a skittish mount, hands empty, palms open: I mean you no harm.

"It is late, Aragorn."

He looks over his shoulder and I see his tears glinting like stars on his cheek before he turns away again. He is drawn; his eyes are shadowed.

"He was a boy," he says, raw despondence straining his voice. "He was no older than I, and I took his life."

The first blood a man spills lays forever heavy on his soul. In this, perhaps, I am blessed in that my burden is lighter than most: the first man I killed was the man who slew my father, and if I sorrowed to spill another�s blood, I hungered for his death in equal measure. But Aragorn has no shield of vengeance to blunt the mortal blow. So what must I tell him? That he will live forever with the taste of another's blood on his lips? That the bright copper tang will rise like bile in the back of his throat and wake him in the night even years hence?

"It is late," I say again. And: "Come to your bed, friend."

I am surprised when he follows me.

****************************************************************************************

When, at the first turn of springtide, I beheld the sons of Elrond riding o'er the crest of the hill with a stranger in their midst, I looked on in wonder: in the main, the brothers Peredhel pursued their errantry alone. More unaccountable still, their companion was not of Elf-kind but of my own breed, and a stripling at that; what would bring a youth into these lonely lands? I learned quickly: he had come to join us.

�He is the son of Arathorn, the last of the line of Isildur,� Elladan informed me when I quailed. �It is his birthright to ride with you. Would you deny him, Halbarad?"

My whispered return was harsh with the gnarl of bared teeth. "He is too young for the wilds! Our tasks do not allow for the cosseting of children, especially not a child of such precious lineage!"

"He has marked his twentieth year," Elladan countered. "By your measure he is a man."

The Elvish legacy of Elros Tar-Minyatur showed itself in Aragorn�s attenuated youth: even now Arathorn�s son had little bulk on his withy frame, though he was agile on legs long enough to tangle themselves. His unlined face housed eyes grey as slate and the wispy hairs sprouting unevenly on cheek and chin rendered him more fledgling than man. The blood of N�menor ran strong in him, stronger than in my own line, though it, too, could be traced to the lords of that fatal isle. I recalled my own coming of age, flown now a decade hence; remembered taking up with my father's band, and how chagrined I had been to find the stable boys of Bree looking more man than I while lacking my years.

"'Twas Glorfindel who first put a sword in his hand, and my brother and I who honed his skills," the elder twin assured me. "Our father has taught him much of healing and lore. He will be boon to you, not burden."

"Bloodless bouts in the salle or a buck taken on the banks of the Bruinen are a far cry from rousting yrch nests and delivering a Chieftain�s justice!"

Elladan�s voice remained smooth against my chafing though its tone held a warning edge. �You have had no Chieftain since Arathorn, and his heir comes to you now.� The grey-cloaked rider gripped my shoulder and smiled with white, even teeth, his ageless eyes granting me no quarter.

"He has turned from his path. Our people have fostered him, but it falls to the D�nedain to help him find his way now. Will you guide him, Halbarad? Will you make of the boy a man so the man might be king?"

The charge had been given. Elladan's voice held no query despite the pretty framing of his words: the son of Arathorn would ride with us. I turned from the Peredhel and made my way back to my men, and to my new companion.

That night, I watched him turn his face to the sky, and wondered what he sought there.

*****************************************************************************************

Elladan had spoken true: Aragorn, sure-handed with bow and sword, was boon to us. He was also taciturn, and in that he was alike to all his kin, myself not least of all: the Men of the North are not inclined toward idle speech. He rode with us in his own silence, save when Adrandir endeavored to coax a song or little jest from him, and before the first season passed I found I was unable to recall the time before his presence. His habits became as familiar to me as my own, and I watched every night as he cast his sights above, tracking his distant light.

"Who is she?" I once inquired.

�She is beyond my reach,� he told me, but after that, my curiosity was met only with silence. Silence, and his enigmatic smile. This much, at least, he had learned: a Ranger's secrets are his own.

Despite the authority lent by the star-brooch at his shoulder, our Strider had not a Ranger's dour mien and he looked a boy beside every man save myself. Time and trial would hone his form into something more befitting his station; time and trial would find him ere the wheel of the year had come full circle. Rumors soon reached us in the taverns of the Angle and in the dark, unsavory corners of Bree. Rumors of malfeasance beyond what even the denizens of that low village could countenance: violence and thievery, women defiled in Archet, beaten in Combe.

I bent my head to the innkeeper who filled my ears as he filled his tankards. I kept one eye on the hearth where his wife sat brittle and pallid as onionskin save for the livid bruises ringing her eye and traversing her cheek. Her hands flapped fitfully in her lap, the wings of a dying bird. My men, stone-eyed and watchful, took in the warped tables and circulated among the denizens of the rough benches. Aragorn hung back, observing his fellows as much as the tavern-crawlers, and the tavern-crawlers eyed him in turn, ill at ease in our presence. When I had heard my fill, I pressed coins in the innkeeper's hand and summoned the others.

"The woman was beaten for the silver in her purse and threatened with worse," I told the men as they bent over their bowls, famished after days of meager game. "They took horses from the livery and made for the Greenway. We stand to overtake them if we move tonight."

Aragorn�s head turned but slightly, yet I caught the sidelong glance he cast toward the stairs leading up to the inn�s rooms.

"Would you sleep well in that bed knowing while you dreamed these brigands slipped our grasp?"

The other men chuckled, but Aragorn's cheeks burned, and I wondered if I had been needlessly harsh. Living rough wearied both bone and spirit, and even after three seasons with us, through spring�s rain and summer�s heat and autumn�s vicissitudes which were now giving way to the first spiteful chills of winter, Aragorn's body was still soft with the memory his downy childhood bed. I could scarce recall when last I felt anything under my back that was not root or stone or hard-packed earth. Ah, well, I considered. There would be opportunity enough to soften my words if time�s passage still found them barbed.

********************************************************************************************

We left the inn and rode late into the night, well beyond the South Downs, and rose at dawn stiff with the frost that had followed us from Bree. We saw naught for the whole of two days, no sign of horse nor man, only fallow fields laid out crookedly beneath a fallow sky. But as bleak light gave way to grey light, a small figure tumbled toward us, flailing over the furrowed earth. Blood gushed from the child�s nose and lip, turning russet where it soaked into his threadbare shirt and crimson as it slicked over his teeth. He choked through tears that strange men had broken down his door and even now harried his mother. We covered the distance to the crude homestead in haste.

What we found there was what we had expected: violence, cruelty, a woman pinned to her own table by ragged men she could not overthrow, her moans low and hoarse: she had already screamed as long as her throat could stand. A door dangled half prized from its hinges, and a pot left untended smoked on the cooking fire. They had not foreseen our interruption; at the sight of us, a pair of cravens fled, but the rest remained, their brutal rutting only leaving them thirsty for worse.

The absconders were swiftly tracked by Adrandir and Elvellon and dragged back to the homestead bound hand and foot. The others we engaged with sword and knife and with our bare hands. The grunt and thump of bodies hitting solid earth and the shear of reposting blades told that we grappled for blood.

Aragorn assailed his man just beyond my line of vision, but I knew he would call for me at need. I had seen the one who had charged him, blade bared, and he was no older than Aragorn himself, if even that. But like his rogue companions, he was fierce and bloody-minded. Occupied with my own struggle, I saw nothing of their bout, but after I battered my opponent�s head against the hearthstone until he fell insensate, I turned and witnessed the resolution of it: the boy had gotten him to the floor and straddled him. He closed one hand around Aragorn�s throat and held his knife aloft as I dove, breathless, to intervene.

Aragorn's dagger caught the firelight, flashed, and vanished, buried to the hilt between the lad�s ribs. The animal rage left the young man�s face. His mouth opened as if he would scream, but he merely whimpered, his eyes gone wide with suprise. Aragorn's own eyes mirrored their shock in the moment before he shouted, cursing as blood dappled his cheeks and mouth from above where an inexorable trail issued from the dying raider's lips. Aragorn thrashed beneath him, as if some threat yet remained, and he threw the body off, stumbling awkwardly to his feet. He stared at the corpse, at the shining hilt of his knife protruding from the lifeless chest, and then rushed headlong through the doorway.

In the corner, the woman wept and clutched her torn bodice to her breast, eyes frantically lighting on the floor of the hut now strewn with the remains of a meal, shattered crockery and blood. We left her to clothe and compose herself, dragging the corpse from the hut and taking the captives away. Likely the men of the village would string them up near the road, a bold message best delivered by the townsfolk, not passing strangers.

Aragorn's body pitched forward to retch, one arm clutching the wall. Heaves broke like waves over his slim form, his back undulating in their throes. I kept my distance until the spell subsided, knowing he would not want me near, and then asked him quietly, still at arm's length: "How fare you, cousin?"

He turned half way, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and anguish hewed lines in his face.
"It is not like killing an orc�it is nothing like." His voice trailed off, and his eyes focused on his breeches where a wet spot spanned his thigh. The mysterious stain held his attention, allowing him to avoid distilling word from thought, and his fingers traced the dampness, then slowly rose toward his face. He grimaced when he realized what it was. He looked to me in disgust, seeking confirmation.

"Aye,� I told him. �It is what you think."

Stricken, Aragorn thrust away his hand as if he wished to disown his own limb, and then he ground his fingers into the dirt, burying the biting scent under fusty earth.

"Come away," I bade him. "We can spare a moment."

He shook his head, his jaw pulsing in that way I had quickly come to associate with intractability. Pushed, it would turn to temper. His chin was yet streaked with his bile and another's blood.

"Let me be."

I did.

*****************************************************************************************

I remember the first time I saw death: purpled faces and swollen tongues, gracefully elongated necks and awkwardly angled heads. I remember the groaning of the rope on the bough as the bodies swayed. Fools who had come to our village to spill blood for gain had been repaid in kind. My father bade me stay within our house, but curiosity ruled me with a firmer hand and I stole away to look. The gentle swinging of the bodies entranced me, the distorted faces fascinated. It was not until I saw the dark, spreading stain at their crotches that I fully understood that these had been men, not just grotesque novelties; that they had once lived, but now they lived no longer and could not stem the flood of piss down their tightly bound legs. I saw them in my dreams and took to sleeping at my father's side until the visions subsided, preferring his stern looks and splenetic sighs� his wordless reproof of my disobedience�to waking alone in a puddle of my own piss, loosed from my body in terror rather than in death. I would offer to keep Aragorn close this night, as my father once kept me, yet I know he would not accept. Even for a Ranger, he is a solitary creature.

"He was no older than I, and I took his life."

"The penalty for his crimes was death," I remind him, a voice of reason at his shoulder. "You merely brought his justice more swiftly."

"He was a boy!" He looks at me as if I might gainsay him. I do.

"A boy? He ravaged that woman, just as his fellows, and she was for certes not the first! That child saw his mother defiled by those curs. Think you that he rues that death, or that she does? Your lad died as he lived: in ignominy."

He focuses his eyes on some far-off point, taking his thoughts where I cannot follow. When he speaks again, it is a refrain:

�It is not like killing an orc. Killing a man�it is nothing like.�

And to this, I say nothing, for killing a man� it is nothing like.

"I fear his face will ever haunt me." A beseeching look. He hopes I can allay this fear, but I cannot.

"You will kill only when you have due cause or when holding your stroke will forfeit your own life, and you will know your action righteous."

Lank, dark hair curtains his eyes as he looks to his hands, examining the abraded knuckles and the dirt beneath the nails. He sees that they know more today than they did yesterday, that they know now what it is to kill, to hold a blade and drive it deep in another man. He twists the Ring of Barahir on his finger, his eyes fixing hard on the twined serpents, one upholding, the other devouring.

"Do you fear you will become inured? That you would find yourself handily dispatching souls without remorse? I tell you fear not that, for it is not in you. But righteousness is; I see it."

And in this moment I do see it. I see his face in a time to come when the winged crown of his forefathers sits proud on his brow and his eyes shine with wisdom rather than with tears. I see in him all that he will become, and it is all I can do in this moment not to drop to my knees before him and offer him fealty. I look at the boy and I see the King, and he does not refute my words, nor duck his head as if to shirk them; perhaps he knows himself now.

In the silence that follows, I behold his face and see it is altered, a certain gravity settling in his features which was not apparent yesterday. He is one of us now, a Man of Westernesse in truth, grim of countenance and of spirit older than his years.

Ai, Elladan! I silently rail to the sky, you bade me make a man of him and so I have�but will you forgive me for bringing down the boy to raise the king?

"It is late," I say. And: "Come to your bed, friend."

******************************************************************************************

In our bedrolls, I seek sleep, but he is restless still. The night waxes chill and his breath fumes like pipe smoke. Beneath his cloak, he shivers as he tosses, his grey eyes staring into the impenetrable black above. I know he is thinking of his woman, the one he will not name. He looks to see if I am still awake.

"It is lonely under these stars."

His candor takes me unawares. Loneliness is a thing unspoken among the D�nedain: for us, a lost tribe doomed to wander, the ache of it is always too near, too true. Aragorn's path will be loneliest of all.

"The night will grow more bitter yet,� I tell him. �Share my warmth."

Aragorn huffs and rolls near, tolerates my attentions as I cover him with my well-worn cloak before pulling his own garment over us both. Still he shivers, not as cold now, but no closer to calm or to sleep. I feel his wakefulness; it is like the air before a storm, charged and seething.

"Here, cousin." I sigh, at once tender and aggrieved, prompting him to move to my arms, where he succumbs at last to the comfort offered. I imagine he despises this childish need the day's events have wrought in him, yet desires reassurance in like portion. He shifts his head to my breast and breaths deep against the burden of my arm around his shoulder. Slowly he settles, and at last I allow the weight of my exhaustion to tug down my lids, nearly losing myself to slumber while Aragorn presses himself closer still, his lean body molding itself to my side as he nestles in.

Sleep eludes me again, however, when I feel at length a particular warmth and rigidity at my thigh. The proximity of our bodies and the fraught emotion of the day have converged in Aragorn's blood. I will myself to stillness, knowing he will not thank me for bearing witness to his body's unruliness, but he feels me stir.

He pales and brusquely turns away, curling in on himself and drawing up his knees, and I bite at my laughter, remembering painfully my own body's occasional refusal to heed my mind's more temperate demands, yet Aragorn hears only scorn in my mirth and feels it as the point of a knife. Rangers, by nature, are men of action; we tend to our needs when duty keeps us long away from creature comforts. One quickly learns to turn a blind eye to hands covertly moving and a deaf ear to certain cadences of breath, but this has not occurred to Aragorn.

"'Tis little wonder you are riled," I hush. "This day has asked much of you. And when one is lonely, the simple nearness of another is enough to spark tinder."

Aragorn curls in tighter, irritation writ plain in the tautness of his posture, in the indignant hunch of his shoulders.

"I know this!" he spits peevishly. "A pox on you, cousin! I am no child!"

What else can I do but smile at such a pettish fit? "Nay, no child, then." Yet no man in this way, my mind amends. "How is it you wield one sword with mastery, yet quail before another?�

Aragorn says nothing for some time. When at last he speaks, his voice cracks, though only a little. "Because there is but one sword I have ever known, and it is forged of steel, not flesh.�

A choked sound of disbelief wrenches free from my mouth. I heartily wish I could call it back. "You cannot mean to tell me that you have never�"

"Nay!' A hiss of umbrage laced with humiliation. Beyond him, Elvellon stirs and Aragorn remembers himself. "I have been assured am unfit to claim my the one I love, save that I survive my trials. With all that is asked of me, to offer up to her the whole of myself alongside a crown and a kingdom seems but the smallest task I might be appointed!�

Ah. His heart is given to an Elf-maid, then, for what man would hold back his daughter and claim Isildur�s heir an unfit suitor?

He turns his head just enough that his profile appears limned in moonlight. �Though she knows nothing of my devotion, I vowed to myself that I would give her all, and to my mind, that means my body as well as my heart. Are you so loose with your affections that you scoff at one who would reserve himself for love's true thrall?"

"I do not scoff, Aragorn, nor do I decry your choice," I softly reprove. "But is chastity so hewn in stone that your lady would think herself slighted should you grant yourself some solitary relief?"

He pauses, his eyes blinking at the darkness. I watch his lips part as if to speak, but only a grunt of frustration follows. After a moment more, his voice returns so timidly I must lean in close to hear it.

�Nay, but�Ah, Halbarad! I am a wretched! What manner of king am I to be, then? Behold, Isildur's heir! He who weeps at the murder of brigands and knows not even how to grant respite to himself!"

His voice wavers near tears and I perceive at last the full toll of the day�s trials on his soul. He feels well and truly alone and my heart breaks for him. And so I offer the only solace I can.

"Let me ease you, Aragorn, else your restless blood will ruin us both.�

He does not hearken to me, but turns his head aside, and even in the darkness I perceive the flush of color across his cheeks.

"Do you trust me, cousin?"

Aragorn's eyes flash toward me, accepting the challenge lurking in my words. Though he slowly turns over over, frustration and shame stay him from meeting my gaze. Yet in the end, he returns to my arms, tucks his head under my chin, comforted, I think, by the slow and steady heartbeat that reaches his ears even through the thick wool of my tunic.

It is with a sure hand that I free him. He gasps when I press my cold hand to his stomach, but better to warm it here than elsewhere. It twitches when my knuckles brush against the thatch of wiry hairs further below, it leaps at the first touch on that part of him that is long and long denied. Nay, my mind repeats. No child, then.

He cannot restrain a whimper when encircled in a warrior's grip, though I know my callused flesh is nothing alike to the velvet touch of the one he longs for. I enfold him in my grasp, and find him heavy and thick in my hand, warm with blood thrumming beneath the skin and pulsing against my palm. I wonder at the feel of him, for I never think much about my own flesh, save that I know what touches bring it most efficiently to tumescence and release, and it has been far too long since I handled another in this way, man or maid.

I whisper words to steady him, bid him close his eyes and think of her, the veiled beloved far away, the frayed edges of my breath turning milky in the night air. I draw him ever closer, clench our bodies rough together, pressing my face into his hair where his scent is strong and wild, feeling his head burrowing into my chest as though seeking deeper solace, fisting his hand in my tunic with bloodless knuckles, the rush of his breathing a white sound in the night. And oh, how I ache with the nearness of him! So long alone and resigned to my solitude, mirrored as it is by the barren wastes of Eriador, my cold bed with stars above and earth below gives no quarter for intimacies such as this and now my body hungers for them, for the presence of another, for Aragorn and his shivering, for his stifled moans warming my breast.

Low tones gentle him and he gives himself over to me, his body rocking into my touch, echoing the motion of my hand, then he is writhing against me, hips canting forward and urging my pace. With only a small, strangled sound for warning, his rangy frame goes rigid. He mewls into the hollow of my throat as relief rushes through him, and then out of him, and out of him.

My own body rages in his aftermath, but though I burn, I do not ask him to requite me. That was not tonight's task, nor the task of any other night. At the least, I have taught him what he will henceforth handle for himself and at the most, I am but a surrogate for another. I reach across him to tuck the cloaks snugly around us both, trapping the heat of one fire vanquished and another banked beneath the heavy wool.

He does not speak at first, nor do I expect him to, predicting him to be as close in these matters as he is in all things that weigh heavily on him, but I perceive none of his earlier brooding. His hand slips into mine and I hold it, firmly enough to let him know my heart but leaving enough play that he knows himself not hostage to the clutch. The thick calluses of swordplay stand in relief from a palm that is not yet roughened like mine by the road. At length, he goes lax in my arms.

Just before dreams claim him, I hear him speak.

"Halbarad?"

"Aye?"

A pause, then a head slowly shaken. Whatever words he thought to voice remain unspoken.

His jaw slackens in sleep, his lips parting to expel warm breath against my shoulder. I raise a hand to stroke the sparse beard that will not for some time sit comfortably on the youthful visage. I send my own thoughts into the tangle of dark hair, not giving them utterance lest the delicate warp and weft of sleep so recently spun is sundered. You have my sword, dear friend, and I will follow you even unto my death. My lips press his unruly crown and I let my grip tighten around him one last moment knowing my arm will soon fall away in slumber.

When I sleep, I dream of stars and kings.

~*~
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Until The Stars Are All Alight