Current mood:	creative
Current music:	Plush - STP

first cut at Aragorn and the gauntlets of lurve
I'm NOT quite sure it works yet (yeesh, I can't believe I forgot the NOT). It definitely needs polishing and possibly filling out with some dialogue from the movie, but it's what I wanted from the scene. I think.

And it would have been much easier if Elrond *had* given him Anduril in that graveside scene. Dammit.

I don't know. Aragorn has *never* been easy for me to read. The movie made him somewhat more human, but even so, he's still far more ... epic in scope than Boromir, with his big honking flaw, or Faramir (either version) or the Rohirrim or the Hobbits. He's definitely more Elvish than they are. Or more like Gandalf, another head I was never able to get into....

Ah, enough of my rambling.



Inheritances

Aragorn accumulates talismans heirlooms the way he accumulates names.

He hasn't much he thinks of as his own, though the others would laugh if he said that. His is the sword of Elendil, the seven-starred crown of Gondor, the sceptre of Arnor; if any man could claim the One Ring, it would be he.

He does not want them, has never wanted them, or the power they represent. But he seeks them anyway. For only when he is king of Gondor and Arnor both will he have the one thing -- person -- he *does* want.

No, as far as he's concerned, he carries his life on his back, long years that suddenly seem too short to accomplish all he must get done. He wears the Evenstar around his neck, tangible proof of Arwen's love, though he needs it not. He knows she would give up the grace of her people for him; he is torn between wanting to keep her with him and wanting to keep her alive and safe. And he fears he will never be worthy, never wear the crown and hold the sceptre. That is all they mean to him.

Meant to him.

Generations of Men, a thousand years of expectations, weigh on him, and he would shrug them off if he could, if he didn’t know that this quest is what his mother and father lived and died for, and their mothers and fathers before them.

And all of it has just been brought home to him in stark clarity, such as he has only known once or twice before in his life.

He stares down at the bloody, lifeless body of Boromir, whom he is preparing for the last journey he will ever take, and he understands.

This is what he fights for, gallant men who have also given their lives, protecting what is rightfully his, what in any other land would have been theirs within a generation.

He has been reminded forcefully of his responsibilities and that they do not always fall on willing shoulders, but on shoulders built to bear them, nonetheless.

Frodo has shouldered the heaviest burden, and he would have followed the Halfling to the very fires of Mordor, but that is not his path.

He leans over Boromir and silently repeats his promise. He will not let the White City fall, nor her people fail.

He feels Legolas behind him, impatient to be gone, to chase after the hobbits, or, more likely though never-to-be-spoken, uncomfortable with the finality of the Doom of Men and wishing to be away from it.

Gimli bows his head, mourning a brave warrior and fallen comrade.

Aragorn has one more talisman now, one more heirloom to add to his growing collection, and this is the first he’s taken on willingly.

He straps Boromir’s well-oiled leather gauntlets vambraces onto his wrists, and stares at the White Tree embroidered on them, reminding him of his promise, his birthright.

His people.

end



Comments/suggestions/brilliant perceptions welcome, nay, asked for. This is, after all, draft 1.

And I was right -- 490 words.