Chapter Text
For several days, Frodo Baggins lay between shadow and waking.
The valley changed around him.
It did not change loudly. Imladris was not a place that gave itself to panic. Water still ran silver over stone. Lamps were still lit when evening drew close. Elven voices still moved through corridors in quiet speech and softer song. Yet Rene felt the difference in every threshold, every garden path, every glance that passed between Elrond’s people when they thought the guests from beyond the valley were not looking.
The house had become watchful.
Rene learned the shape of waiting in those days. It was different from the long, slow waiting that had followed Gandalf’s disappearance. This waiting had a heartbeat. It lived in the healing wing, behind a closed door guarded not by soldiers but by silence. It breathed whenever Elrond entered that room and stopped whenever he emerged.
Bilbo came and went like a small ghost. He pretended to be busy. He fetched handkerchiefs no one needed, asked after kettles, misplaced his pipe, found it again, and recited pieces of verse under his breath until the words wore thin. Sam hardly left the passage outside Frodo’s room. Merry and Pippin moved between him and the rest of the house with trays of food, blankets, questions, and a brave cheerfulness that frayed whenever no one was looking.
She could not help but notice Aragorn was quieter than all of them.
He had been given rest, food, clean clothing, and every encouragement to remember that he was not personally responsible for holding up the roof of the world. He accepted the first three with courtesy and ignored the last completely.
Rene found him twice in the healing wing corridor after midnight, where she happened to be strolling for completely unrelated reasons and absolutely not due to compulsive anxiety driven checkups on a certain hobbit she had never actually met before despite a compelling draw to him.
The first time, he stood by an open window with his arms folded and his gaze fixed on the dark garden beyond. He did not turn when she approached, though she knew he heard her. She had learned already that Aragorn noticed nearly everything and pretended to notice less than he did.
“You should be asleep,” he said.
“So should you.”
“I am older and therefore entitled to worse habits.”
His eye crinkles spoke of too much time in the sun in a handsome rugged way, but she’d eat her nonexistent hat if he had more than half a decade on her. “You can’t possibly be that much older or entitled to much of poor habits.”
She leaned against the opposite wall, mirroring him. “How is he?”
Aragorn’s face did not change much, but his eyes did. “Still fighting.”
That was all.
The second time, she brought him a cup of athelas tea because Elrond had brewed more than she needed, and because it gave her an excuse to do something with her hands. Aragorn accepted it after a brief hesitation.
“I believe this was intended for you, my Lady,” with a rueful incline of his head.
“There’s enough.”
“Elrond said so?”
“No.”
A faint curve touched his mouth. “Then I am complicit in theft. Or misappropriation of medical reserves.”
“It’s medicinal theft. I’m sure there’s a loophole.”
He looked down into the cup, and for a moment the steam softened the lines of weariness around his eyes. “Athelas does not work on all ailments or weariness.”
“No,” Rene said. “But sometimes warm things help anyway.”
He looked at her then, fully.
There was nothing demanding in his gaze. He did not look at her measuring usefulness. Aragorn looked at her as if she were simply there, and that itself mattered.
“I have found that true too,” he said quietly.
Rene looked away first.
The corridor remained silent for a while as he drank the tea.
The morning Frodo awoke, the tense valley eased with laughter from the healing wing.
It was weak laughter, and brief, but unmistakably hobbit laughter, which Rene had come to understand carried unusually far for something produced by such small people.
She was in Bilbo’s terrace garden when it came. Bilbo had been pretending to correct a poem and doing a poor job of hiding the fact that his hand trembled too much to hold the page steady. Rene had been pretending not to notice.
The laugh drifted out across the courtyard.
Bilbo froze.
Rene lifted her head.
Bilbo dropped the page, clasped her hand, and tugged her along with an urgency that belied his years.
They reached the healing wing quickly and Bilbo slipped through the doors with surprising speed. Rene followed more slowly and stopped just outside the door, unwilling to crowd the room.
Through the open doorway she saw Frodo sitting propped against pillows, pale as linen and thin with suffering, but awake. His eyes were tired, shadowed by what he had endured, but when Bilbo reached him, Frodo’s face eased and he looked younger. Smaller. He reached for Bilbo with both hands.
Elrond stood near the foot of the bed, Gandalf beside him, his brows drawn but his eyes bright. Aragorn stood somewhat apart, grinning with relief and looking as if something inside him had finally unclenched.
One of the Elven healers murmured softly, “Seventeen days.”
Another answered, “It should not be.”
Gandalf turned, not sharply, but with the weight of authority. “It should not be,” he agreed. “And yet it is. Remember that when you look upon him. Frodo Baggins bore a shard of a Morgul blade for seventeen days and did not surrender wholly to the shadow. Do not mistake small hands for a small spirit.”
The healer bowed his head at once, chastened.
Rene’s throat tightened as she looked back at Frodo. He was smiling at Bilbo through tears, Sam hovering at his side as though he could keep his friend tethered to the world by force of devotion alone. Merry and Pippin were both speaking too quickly to their cousin, which seemed to comfort Frodo rather than overwhelm him.
Rene felt a prickle at her scar and braced herself, but no vision came. Only a deep, aching knowledge she did not know how to carry. Something had begun, something was set into motion, with a hobbit awake in a bed while those who loved him laughed and wept in relief.
Aragorn turned then and saw her in the doorway. For a moment his face held no guardedness, only relief.
Rene gave him a small smile.
He returned it, weary and warm.
————————————————————————
The Hall of Fire felt different that evening. She had been there many nights since midsummer, though at first only for short intervals. The hall had intimidated her then, with its song and firelight, pooled in the great hearth and caught in the carved pillars. Elves had gathered in clusters, some with harps, some with cups, some simply listening as though silence itself were music. Songs rose without announcement and many faded without a need for applause, ancient tales slipping through the air like leaves drifting down a river.
At first, Rene had sat near Bilbo and let the songs pass over her without trying to understand. Sometimes a word would catch in her mind and pull too hard. Sometimes a melody would make her eyes sting with homesickness for a place she could not remember. But Bilbo never minded when she left early, and Arwen always seemed to know when the hall was too much.
Now the hall was full. Not merely with Elrond’s household, or with the hobbits, or with those Rene had come to know. Others had arrived and it seemed more came each day.
Elves from far places stood beneath the arches. Men, rugged Rangers, with weathered faces and hard eyes spoke in low voices near the doors. Dwarves had come too, bringing with them the scent of metal, stone, leather, and long roads. Rene saw them first from the far side of the hall and felt, with a small inward twist, that she had been expecting them. One was broad and red-bearded, his eyes keen beneath heavy brows. Beside him stood another, shorter and younger by the bearing of Dwarves, though to Rene’s eyes age remained difficult to guess in anyone who was not human. He wore pride like armor and suspicion like a second cloak. His gaze moved over the Elven hall with grudging admiration that he seemed determined no one should detect.
Bilbo, of course, detected it and them instantly.
“Glóin!” he cried, and abandoned all dignity to hurry across the hall.
The Dwarf’s stern face broke into delight. “Bilbo Baggins, you old fox!”
The embrace that followed was so fierce Rene wondered if Bilbo’s ribs would survive it. Gimli watched this display with a mixture of astonishment and respect, as if discovering that the old hobbit beside the fire had once been part of a tale he knew by heart.
Soon after, Bilbo hauled the Dwarves over to introduce them.
“This is Rene,” he said. “My tea companion, occasional pipe sharer, and a mystery of high quality.”
Rene gave him a look. “That introduction had too much flair.”
“Impossible.”
Glóin bowed with surprising courtliness. “At your service, lady Rene.”
“And yours,” Rene said.
Gimli bowed also, more stiffly but not unkindly.
Later, Men of Gondor arrived. There were fewer of them than Rene expected, or perhaps one man merely carried enough presence for many. Boromir came in late the next afternoon beneath a sky brushed with silver cloud. He rode a great horse, travel-worn but still noble, and dismounted in the courtyard with the contained stiffness of a man who had spent too many days in the saddle and would rather perish than show it. His fur trimmed cloak was dark, his mail finely wrought, his horn bound with silver at his side. He moved like one accustomed to command, and when he spoke to Elrond, his voice carried without effort.
Rene watched from an upper walkway beside Arwen.
“He has come far,” Arwen said.
Rene nodded. She had felt it before she saw him, an already familiar sense she was becoming too comfortable with. A pressure. A horn-call too distant to hear and too sorrowful to ignore. Something brave and flawed and breaking, ringing in her ears.
“Gondor,” Rene said.
Arwen turned slightly, reining hope on her behalf. “Has the crest jogged your memory?”
Rene realized she was looking at the white tree worked upon his surcoat.
“No,” she said slowly. “Maybe. The tree feels… important.”
“It is.”
Rene did not ask more. She could feel Arwen wanting to tell her and choosing not to press.
Below, Boromir lifted his head, taking in the courtyard. For a brief instant, his gaze found the walkway. He saw Arwen first, and his expression shifted with the reverence due to Elrond’s daughter, to the Evenstar. Then his eyes moved to Rene. He took in her human face, Elven clothing, the small sword at her side, Arwen standing close enough to suggest familiarity, and something assessing passed across his features. Rene resisted the urge to step behind a pillar.
Arwen noticed and, because she was Arwen, said only, “Come. The evening grows cool.”
“I’m not hiding,” Rene said, quietly, embarrassed her reluctance had been noted yet again despite working on her poker face. The months had only bettered her friend’s ability to read her moods and near thoughts, though she was far too polite to call them out directly most of the time.
“No,” Arwen agreed, threading their arms together. “We are choosing a warmer place.”
“That’s different.”
“Entirely.”
Rene looked at her friend and found a smile tugging at her mouth despite herself.
————————————————————————
The days before the council filled with arrivals, questions, and answers no one seemed ready to give aloud.
No one had summoned all these people, or so they said. Yet here they were, all drawn to Imladris by separate roads and separate troubles. The Last Homely House made room, as it had done for her.
In the Hall of Fire, the evenings grew yet more crowded.
Frodo came when he was strong enough, though Sam hovered so close behind him that Merry suggested tying a bell to Frodo so Sam might relax. Pippin asked whether the bell would ring if Frodo tried to skip supper. Sam was scandalized, Frodo laughed, and Bilbo declared it a practical suggestion if applied to rangers instead, which earned a fond eyeroll from said ranger.
Songs filled the hall as always, but now they seemed to carry a sharper edge, tales of old wars, lost cities, oaths kept and broken. A song of Beren and Lúthien left a resonating silence in which Rene could hear the fire settling into ash.
Aragorn was sat in the evening’s shadow of an open window during that song.
Rene noticed despite trying not to look for him. She had a quiet awareness, a quiet draw, to him. She noticed when he entered a room, though he often entered like a man accustomed to not being seen. She noticed the tired slope of his shoulders when he thought no one watched, and the way he straightened whenever one of the hobbits called to him. She noticed that he had different smiles: one for courtesy, one for old friends, and one rare, nearly startled one that appeared when something genuinely amused him.
Arwen noticed Rene noticing. This was also becoming a problem, part of the greater problem of being friends with impossibly perceptive elves.
One evening, when the hall was warm with fire and too crowded with travelers, Arwen appeared at Rene’s side with a cup of spiced wine.
“You are far from the song tonight,” she said.
Rene accepted the cup. “Just tired.”
“Your head?”
“No. Not tonight.”
Arwen followed her gaze without seeming to. Aragorn stood near one of the pillars, speaking quietly with Gandalf. His face was half-lit by firelight.
“I wondered,” Arwen said, casually, “whether you have seen the upper gardens.”
Rene gave her a side-eye she had become almost certain transcended language and culture, and wondered where this line of question was going when paired with the gleam that lit Arwen’s eye, her usual mischief tell.
“Arwen.”
“They are peaceful at night.”
“Arwen.”
“Are you in need of air? I find the hall somewhat stifling tonight.”
Rene grinned, relieved, “That does sound refreshing, I’d love to step out for a bit.”
“Excellent,” her airy voice chimed. “I would walk with you, but I’m afraid I must speak with Mithrandir. Let me find another guide for you.” Before Rene could retreat, Arwen had crossed the hall.
Rene watched in confusion as Arwen spoke to Aragorn. He glanced toward Rene. Gandalf glanced toward Rene. Then, to make matters worse, Gandalf smiled into his pipe as if he were enjoying himself immensely.
Aragorn approached a moment later.
“My lady,” he said, with solemn courtesy that did not quite hide the amusement in his eyes. “Arwen tells me you require a guide to the upper gardens.”
Rene closed her eyes briefly. “I thought she was offering to come with me. I apologize for the interruption, I don’t mean to take you away from the halls.”
“I suspected as much.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know.” His voice softened. “Yet I would welcome the air too, if you would not mind company.”
The upper gardens lay above the Hall of Fire, reached by a narrow stair that curved along the rock face. Night had settled fully over the valley. Lanterns glowed beneath the trees like captured stars. The air smelled of wet leaves, stone, and the last autumn flowers. Far below, the hall’s music drifted upward, softened by distance until the words were lost and only the longing remained.
Rene walked beside Aragorn in silence for a while. She had forgotten, if she had ever known, that silence with another person could feel gentle.
At a terrace overlooking the Bruinen, Aragorn paused.
“This was one of my hiding places as a child,” he said.
Rene looked around. “You had a lot of hiding places.”
“I required them.”
“Grammar again?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes history. Often my brothers.”
She smiled. “Your brothers are trouble.”
“And sister, though her mischief is far harder to predict,” he added, before a grimace tugged at his mouth at his choice of word. He winced apologetically at her for a moment, before she waved it off. He looked down at the valley and a quiet warmth moved over his face. “They have ever been kind to me. To have three siblings, even lacking blood, is a gift.”
“That must have helped while growing up here.”
“It did. And at times it made leaving harder.”
“You left often?”
“Yes.”
He did not explain further. Rene did not ask. There were shadows in that simple answer.
Below, a new song began. The melody rose like smoke, twining through the trees. Rene shut her eyes. For once, no vision came, only the ache of beauty.
She opened her eyes and found him watching the valley. “I have wondered how it must seem to you. This house. These songs. All of us speaking of things ancient and perilous while you search for the name of your own home.”
Rene’s fingers tightened around the cup Arwen had pushed into her hand. “It feels like standing in the middle of a story when I’ve lost the first half.”
Aragorn nodded slowly. “And yet you have remained kind.”
She glanced at him, startled.
He looked back then, and the full steadiness of his attention settled on her. “To Bilbo. To the hobbits. To Arwen, Elrohir, Elladan. They speak highly of you.”
“I think they’ve been far kinder to me.” Rene looked away before her face could give too much away. “I’m mostly just scared and trying not to make it everyone else’s problem.”
“Fear does not lessen kindness.”
Her throat tightened. She took a breath that did not quite steady her. “You sound like Elrond.”
He clasped a hand to his heart, feigning a stagger. “I shall try to recover from the offense.”
A laugh escaped her, soft and unguarded.
There it was—the third smile. The rare one. It appeared before he could stop it, warming his tired face until the ranger looked, for a heartbeat, like the boy who had once hidden from lessons and dripped fishpond water into the pantry. Rene felt herself caught by it. His gaze lowered briefly, then lifted at once as he took a half-step back.
Rene looked down at the valley.
He looked out beside her.
Neither spoke for a while.
When they returned to the hall, Arwen looked up from her seat by the fire. Rene avoided her for the rest of the evening.
————————————————————————
Frodo grew stronger.
That was the brightest thread in the days before the council. He walked slowly at first, with Sam at his elbow and Merry and Pippin pretending not to hover by hovering very badly from several paces away. He came to tea with Bilbo, sat wrapped in a blanket, and listened while Rene and Bilbo debated whether seed-cakes were better with honey or jam.
“Both,” Pippin said from the doorway.
“No one asked you,” Merry replied.
“I felt the discussion lacked ambition.”
Frodo laughed, then winced faintly and pressed a hand to his shoulder. The room quieted.
“I am all right,” Frodo said.
Sam looked unconvinced. Rene suspected everyone did. Frodo noticed. His expression changed—gentle still, but with an edge of frustration Rene understood too well.
“I am,” he repeated.
Rene looked down into her tea. “I believe you.” Frodo looked at her. She added, “You can be alright, but it can still hurt.”
His face softened.
“Yes,” he said. “It can.”
After that, he sought her out once or twice, often in the gardens where the late roses still clung stubbornly to bloom. They did not speak much of wounds. They spoke of safer things. Bilbo. Food. How Elves could make everything beautiful and still somehow serve dinner in portions that offended hobbits. Frodo had a dry humor gentler than Merry’s and less explosive than Pippin’s, and Rene liked him more each time he showed it.
She also feared for him more.
The fear did not come from a vision. It came from watching him touch the chain at his neck when he thought no one saw. The Ring was kept hidden, yet not hidden enough from those who knew it was there. Rene felt it sometimes. Not as temptation, exactly, but a pulling pressure at the edge of a bruise. When Frodo stood too near, her scar would ache faintly, and somewhere far back in her mind came the image of a gold circle in fire.
She told Elrond.
His face went very still.
“Do not seek that image,” he said, urgency lacing his voice.
“I don’t seek anything.”
“Then do not follow it when it comes.”
That was, as always, the hard part.
On the morning before the council, Imladris seemed full to bursting.
Rene walked through the lower corridor beside Elladan, who had taken it upon himself to escort her after she admitted she needed air and then accidentally turned toward the east archive instead of the garden.
“I knew where I was going,” she said.
“Of course.”
“I did.”
“The archives often resemble gardens to the unwary.”
She sighed. “I was distracted.”
Elladan’s teasing softened. “Many are.”
She thought of her notebook, hidden beneath folded shawls in her room. The list of names had grown. So had the fragments. She had written them in careful lines, hoping order might make them less frightening.
Frodo—Ring-bearer.
Aragorn—Strider—Estel—Elessar?
Boromir—Gondor—horn—falling?
Gimli—stone, oath, grief.
Legolas—green leaves, snow, sea?
Moria—dark. Drums.
Council.
The road.
That afternoon, Rene found herself drawn to the chamber where the shards of Narsil were kept. The room was quiet, lit by late sun slanting through high windows. The broken sword lay upon its cloth as it had for years beyond Rene’s reckoning: hilt, blade-shards, legend given shape and ruin. She had seen it only once before, at Arwen’s side, and the sight had made her dizzy enough that Arwen had led her away without questions.
Today the ache was gentler. Sad, but not sharp. She stood several paces from it and clasped her hands before her to keep from touching her scar.
A voice spoke behind her.
“Greetings. You are no elf either, and yet you have leave to be here?”
Rene turned.
Boromir stood in the doorway.
He had removed his traveling cloak, but still wore the bearing of a man in armor even without full mail. His hair fell to his shoulders, sun-brown and roughened by the road. His eyes were sharp, grey and assessing. The horn at his side made her chest ache with a grief she did not understand.
“I think so,” Rene said. “No one said I didn’t.”
His mouth curved, though not with warmth. “A permissive standard.”
She flushed. “I can leave.”
“That was not my meaning.” But he did not soften it much.
He entered, boots sounding louder than Elven feet ever did. His gaze had already moved past her to the shards.
Narsil altered him. Not visibly at first. He still stood tall, still held himself with a captain’s authority. Yet something in his expression stripped bare before he could hide it: longing, reverence, anger, hope sharpened too long into pain.
“The sword that cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand,” he said.
Rene had not heard footsteps, but Aragorn’s voice answered from the doorway. “So it is said.”
Boromir turned.
Aragorn stood there in plain dark clothing, unadorned and calm. Nothing in him announced what Rene had seen in the visions, only a weathered ranger with tired eyes. Boromir looked him over and seemed to find the simplicity wanting.
“This is more than a tale for songs,” Boromir said. “In Gondor we remember.”
Aragorn entered slowly. “Memory can be a heavy inheritance.”
Boromir’s eyes narrowed. “Spoken like one who has had the luxury of setting it down.”
Rene felt the air tighten.
Aragorn did not rise to it. “Few inheritances are set down so easily.”
Boromir’s gaze flicked to Rene again. “And you? Do you also come to ponder the relics of kings?”
The dismissal was slight but unmistakable. Not cruel, but impatient. A warrior’s glance over someone he did not understand and had no time to value.
Rene felt herself shrink inward and disliked him for causing it.
“I was just looking,” she fought to keep the defensiveness from her voice.
“And what do you see?”
She glanced at the broken blade, and the words left her before she marked the strangeness. “Something that feels unfinished.”
The words were quiet, but they struck. “Unfinished,” Boromir repeated.
Rene held his gaze for only a moment, then looked away. She was too tired to defend strangeness to one more stranger.
Boromir stepped closer to the pedestal. “In Minas Tirith, this blade is not merely unfinished. It is a promise long delayed.”
Aragorn’s voice remained even. “Promises cannot be forced to ripen.”
“No,” Boromir said. “But men may die while waiting upon them.”
There it was. Beneath the pride. Beneath the aloofness. A wound. Rene saw it then: a white city under siege not yet come, stone walls, a father’s shadow, a younger brother’s face, people looking to him because someone must stand in front when darkness presses against the gate.
Boromir reached toward it and lifted one of the shards.
The edge kissed his finger.
A bead of blood welled bright against his skin.
Boromir stared at it, surprised despite himself.
“Still sharp,” he said softly.
The words fell with an echo Rene felt in her bones. Blood on stone. A horn cloven in two. Arrows. Leaves under a dying man’s hand. No—no, not dying. Not if—
Her vision blurred.
Aragorn moved first, but stopped short of touching her.
“Rene?”
She gripped the back of a nearby chair. The room swam, then steadied. The vision did not fully take her. It only left behind the taste of grief and iron.
Boromir saw. His expression closed at once, as if vulnerability in himself had been answered by weakness in another and he had no patience for either.
“Is she ill?” he asked.
“I am fine,” Rene said before Aragorn could answer. Her voice was not sharp, but it was steadier than she felt.
Boromir’s gaze returned to her. Something like embarrassment crossed his face and was immediately buried.
“My pardon,” he said stiffly.
Aragorn stepped to the table and picked up a clean cloth from beside the display. He offered it to Boromir.
Rene looked from Boromir to Aragorn and felt the future gather like storm-cloud.
Boromir set the shard down.
It slipped slightly on the cloth and fell with a clear, ringing note.
No one moved.
At last Boromir wrapped the cloth around his finger. “Tomorrow, then, perhaps we shall learn why so many roads have led us here.”
Aragorn inclined his head. “Perhaps.”
Boromir looked once more at Narsil, and the hard pride in his face flickered. For a heartbeat, Rene saw not a dismissive captain but a tired man who had crossed the wild with hope he barely allowed himself to name before his armor returned.
He bowed to neither of them, though he gave a courteous nod, and left the chamber.
Rene let out a breath she had not realized she held.
Aragorn watched the doorway. “Boromir of Gondor has ridden far under a heavy summons.”
“He doesn’t seem to like you.”
A faint, dry smile. “He has had little cause yet.”
“He doesn’t know you.”
“No.”
“That seems unfair.”
“Many things are.”
He was still gazing at the broken blade, but not with longing as Boromir had. His expression was harder to read. Older, somehow. Full of restraint.
“Does it bother you too?” Rene asked quietly.
“That he doubts me?”
“The sword here. Broken. Waiting.”
For a while, Aragorn said nothing.
When he answered, his voice was low. “Some things must wait until the hand that takes them up is ready. And some men spend many years unsure whether readiness is wisdom or only fear wearing a noble cloak.”
Rene’s heart ached. She had no answer worthy of that honesty.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, “you don’t seem like a coward to me.”
He turned his head.
The afternoon light caught in his eyes, making the grey warmer, and a glint flickered in them as he took her in.
“And you,” he said after a moment, “do not seem like one who is merely looking.”
The words should have startled her, they did somewhat, but they were not unkind. They simply rang with the knowledge that he understood, perhaps far better than she’d yet told anyone, the depth of the things she had seen.
Rene looked once more at the shards of Narsil.
Broken. Sharp. Unfinished.
Then she followed Aragorn out into the fading light.