Chapter Text
The arrow came first—a whimper through the trees, fast and low. It missed Y/N’s shoulder by a breath and buried itself in a nearby ash trunk with a whispering thunk. She didn’t flinch.
Instead, she crouched, fingers already brushing the knife at her belt and the tiny leather pouch of fine dust hanging beside it. Her eyes scanned the thicket. Movement. Not animal. Not orc. Too slow.
She moved without sound, feet knowing the land as if it were an extension of her own body. A hundred yards from where she’d been foraging wild garlic, she found the source of the shot.
A man.
Slumped against a tree. Blood slicked his side in thick, rhythmic pulses, staining his tunic and the moss beneath him. His breathing was shallow but even, jaw clenched tight, body held like a coil of wire trying not to snap.
A ranger, by the look of him. Cloak torn. Sword still in hand.
And by the faint trace of Númenórean blood in his features—the silence in his posture, the steel in his presence—she knew him for one of her kind.
“Great,” she muttered. “Another damn Dúnadan, bleeding out in my woods.”
His head lifted slightly. She saw the shadow of a beard on his jaw, dark with sweat. He didn’t speak. Just looked at her.
“Let me guess,” she said, stepping closer. “Didn’t see the snare, did you? Thought yourself too clever for the old forest paths?”
Still, no reply. But his hand twitched against his thigh. Not for a weapon. It was a gesture of pain.
Y/N cursed under her breath and knelt.
“I should leave you,” she said flatly, pulling out her pouch of ground marigold and crushed comfrey. “I don’t take in strangers. Especially not the brooding, sword-wielding kind who bleed on my moss.”
“No… trap,” the man rasped, voice low and rough like wind scraping over rock. “Orcs. Just ahead.”
“Lovely,” she said. “Thanks for bringing them to my doorstep.”
She cut the fabric around his wound with a flint knife, ignoring his shallow flinch. The gash was deep—angry. Not clean. Arrowhead still lodged beneath the flesh, buried in the meat of his side.
“You’re lucky,” she said, reaching for a bottle of willow bark tincture. “Another inch and you’d be joining the trees.”
He didn’t reply. Just held her gaze. There was something unnerving in how quiet he was. As though he carried entire storms in his chest and refused to let them loose.
She sighed, muttering, “Stubborn, half-dead, and mysterious. Of course you are.”
He raised an eyebrow. Just a flicker.
She smiled grimly. “Ah. He lives.”
With practiced fingers, she worked fast—pressing a poultice against the wound, binding it tightly with a strip of boiled linen, then lifting him to his feet with a grunt.
He didn’t cry out. Not once.
It was the silence, more than anything, that unsettled her.
Her cabin wasn’t far—tucked between a stream and a crooked birch tree, hidden beneath boughs. She half-dragged, half-guided him through the underbrush, muttering curses the entire way. His weight leaned heavily against her shoulder, but he didn’t let go of his sword. Even half-conscious, he clutched it like a lifeline.
Once inside, she eased him onto a cot near the hearth and poured what was left of her fire cider down his throat.
“Burns,” he rasped, voice gravel-thick.
“Good,” she replied. “Means you’re not dead.”
She stoked the fire, set water to boil, and refused to ask his name.
He didn’t offer it anyway.
Hours passed in the soft hush of flickering firelight and bubbling herbs. Outside, the forest was beginning to turn toward night, the leaves whispering above like old ghosts. Y/N moved through the space like a hawk watching a wounded creature—not cruel, but cautious. She’d seen too much to trust quickly.
He stirred near midnight, waking with a grunt and a hand at his side.
“Still hurts?” she asked from her stool by the fire.
His voice came slower this time. “Yes.”
“Then you’re not dying.” She leaned forward, arms on her knees. “Now you can tell me your name.”
He studied her. She felt the weight of his gaze as surely as if he’d pressed fingers to her jaw.
Finally: “Aragorn.”
She raised her brows. That name carried weight. She’d heard it in whispers from wandering elves, in muttered tales near the edges of firelight. Isildur’s heir. The northern king who carried no crown.
“Of course you are,” she muttered. “And I suppose next you’ll tell me you’re just passing through?”
His lips quirked, just a touch. The barest shadow of humor.
“I was,” he said. “Until I wasn’t.”
Y/N sighed, slumping back. “Figures.”
She didn’t trust him. Not yet.
But she’d stopped reaching for her knife.
And that, for a woman like her, was saying quite a lot.