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b2memB2MeM Challenge: I18: First Lines: When shall we meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain? – MacBeth; Magic and Real: The Poisoners; Aspects of Aragorn: Healer
O72: Roles and Names of Aragorn: Healer (Bwa! Gotcha! Twice in one story!); Aspects of Aragorn: Captain; Deep Thoughts: we; Economy: Real Estate; Genre 1: Coming of Age; March, 3019: March 8: The Dead Receive their Summons
Format: ficlet/short story
Genre: Deathfic
Rating: Teen
Warnings: See above.
Characters: Aragorn, Halbarad, the Dead
Pairings: n/a unless you feel like squinting really hard.
Summary: On having to let go.
To my friend, who did not save my life
When Halbarad had been a boy, he had seen a cousin step upon a nail, and over the next few days, burn away from fever and fail. He had always known that metal – iron, steel – could kill; he had not known it could kill like that.
Time passes. The boy becomes a man who learns well – so very well – the way of steel. “If I took poison a little each day, it might not kill me quicker than the sword,” he jests sometimes.
“Be certain of it,” Aragorn will answer. “Take poison, I’ll stay my hand that you may regret your folly, for I’ll still have watches to fill!”
“Some healer you are!” Halbarad always retorts.
And so it goes – their long years on the watch slide by as on the edge of a blade, which cuts into flesh, theirs and others’, ‘til at last there comes a door, and a vision: of the oath-bound dead, and he standing among them on the other side.
My death lies beyond this!
He knows then: he has come to be their fellow or their captain, for he can break his oath or be broken by it. Aragorn hears him, bows to necessity – they pass on together.
Afterward, all the long, dark way to Pelargir, they will not speak of that moment before the door – for they will end their days as captains. Halbarad will take his place at the head of every column, and Aragorn will lay aside the captain and become, perhaps, a king, but he was destined never to be the healer in this matter.
“Go,” Halbarad gasps later, struggling against the fatal flow, “for we should not meet again too soon!”
Aragorn bows his head, and, for just a moment beyond captain or king or healer, asks: “Then when?”
“Ask the rain,” Halbarad pants, as vision clouds. “Ask the thunder and the lightning. When the storm passes – but now…”
Now we are only what the hour makes us. In the hour of decision that not even death may stay, they are captains, with companies to call, and orders to give, and they will have to bleed into this ground an army’s worth of men just to hold it an hour more.
Go. Halbarad can speak no more, and he feels the Dead nigh and waiting. Go, go…
A sudden, sharp sting shocks him, and he gasps, opens his eyes to see Aragorn wipe his dagger clean, and raise it in salute, ere he lifts Andúril high. Behind him, someone lifts the flag, and with a roar from a hundred throats, the battle flows onward.
It’s been a long slide down the blade, but it’s cold at the quick end of steel. Time to step beyond that door in truth. Halbarad shuts his eyes, and…
A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie: Back in the day, when I actually had ambitions to try to read edgy French novels, I tried reading this one, whose title translates to “To the friend who didn’t save my life.” It was about AIDS in the early years, and prostitutes, and included a lot of medical jargon put together in slick prose. Needless to say, I didn’t make it past chapter three. But the title stuck with me.
O72: Roles and Names of Aragorn: Healer (Bwa! Gotcha! Twice in one story!); Aspects of Aragorn: Captain; Deep Thoughts: we; Economy: Real Estate; Genre 1: Coming of Age; March, 3019: March 8: The Dead Receive their Summons
Format: ficlet/short story
Genre: Deathfic
Rating: Teen
Warnings: See above.
Characters: Aragorn, Halbarad, the Dead
Pairings: n/a unless you feel like squinting really hard.
Summary: On having to let go.
To my friend, who did not save my life
When Halbarad had been a boy, he had seen a cousin step upon a nail, and over the next few days, burn away from fever and fail. He had always known that metal – iron, steel – could kill; he had not known it could kill like that.
Time passes. The boy becomes a man who learns well – so very well – the way of steel. “If I took poison a little each day, it might not kill me quicker than the sword,” he jests sometimes.
“Be certain of it,” Aragorn will answer. “Take poison, I’ll stay my hand that you may regret your folly, for I’ll still have watches to fill!”
“Some healer you are!” Halbarad always retorts.
And so it goes – their long years on the watch slide by as on the edge of a blade, which cuts into flesh, theirs and others’, ‘til at last there comes a door, and a vision: of the oath-bound dead, and he standing among them on the other side.
My death lies beyond this!
He knows then: he has come to be their fellow or their captain, for he can break his oath or be broken by it. Aragorn hears him, bows to necessity – they pass on together.
Afterward, all the long, dark way to Pelargir, they will not speak of that moment before the door – for they will end their days as captains. Halbarad will take his place at the head of every column, and Aragorn will lay aside the captain and become, perhaps, a king, but he was destined never to be the healer in this matter.
“Go,” Halbarad gasps later, struggling against the fatal flow, “for we should not meet again too soon!”
Aragorn bows his head, and, for just a moment beyond captain or king or healer, asks: “Then when?”
“Ask the rain,” Halbarad pants, as vision clouds. “Ask the thunder and the lightning. When the storm passes – but now…”
Now we are only what the hour makes us. In the hour of decision that not even death may stay, they are captains, with companies to call, and orders to give, and they will have to bleed into this ground an army’s worth of men just to hold it an hour more.
Go. Halbarad can speak no more, and he feels the Dead nigh and waiting. Go, go…
A sudden, sharp sting shocks him, and he gasps, opens his eyes to see Aragorn wipe his dagger clean, and raise it in salute, ere he lifts Andúril high. Behind him, someone lifts the flag, and with a roar from a hundred throats, the battle flows onward.
It’s been a long slide down the blade, but it’s cold at the quick end of steel. Time to step beyond that door in truth. Halbarad shuts his eyes, and…
A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie: Back in the day, when I actually had ambitions to try to read edgy French novels, I tried reading this one, whose title translates to “To the friend who didn’t save my life.” It was about AIDS in the early years, and prostitutes, and included a lot of medical jargon put together in slick prose. Needless to say, I didn’t make it past chapter three. But the title stuck with me.
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 04:55 am (UTC)I'm not sure what this says about me...
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Date: 2012-03-03 05:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 05:26 am (UTC)It is lovely as they always are. You do know how to wring my heart when you write these two together.
Thank you! I have no idea how I got this attached to the Aragorn-Halbarad relationship, but it doesn't seem to be something I get tired of writing. Even when I'm killing Halbarad yet again...
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Date: 2012-03-03 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 04:36 am (UTC)*bawls*
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Date: 2012-03-03 04:57 am (UTC)Glad it was effective!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 04:52 am (UTC)What a wonderful, economical use of the all the prompts! I love the evocation of metal and blades--they bookend the story really well. The evocation of Halbarad's childhood, and his friendship with Aragorn, is so relatively brief, and yet very effective: And so it goes – their long years on the watch slide by as on the edge of a blade, which cuts into flesh, theirs and others’, ‘til at last there comes a door, and a vision: of the oath-bound dead, and he standing among them on the other side.
I also love the way you play around with the idea of roles; of how Halbarad and Aragorn choose to embrace their respective roles, and, are in some ways constrained by them, but that, at the end, they both manage to go beyond those roles, anyway.
It’s been a long slide down the blade, but it’s cold at the quick end of steel. Time to step beyond that door in truth.
What an ending. Sort of blew me away. I absolutely love how you can do death, even the death of loved ones, without the slightest trace of sentimentality or maudlin-ness. Makes it all the more powerful. Thanks very much for this, Dwim!
P.S. I AM SQUINTING VERY HARD AND IT'S YOUR FAULT.
P.P.S. Now I am going to go listen to Adele and cry.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 05:21 am (UTC)I love the evocation of metal and blades--they bookend the story really well.
Thanks! I'm glad that tactic worked - I needed it for Magic & Real, and to get one of the healer references in there, and then the metal-sword-blade imagery has to actually function beyond that introduction or lose its effect.
I also love the way you play around with the idea of roles; of how Halbarad and Aragorn choose to embrace their respective roles, and, are in some ways constrained by them
That's the single biggest thing that I want for them, in a lot of ways - they have these roles, and they can't just throw them over, or frankly, their friendship would be lessened by that freedom, because they would be lesser for it. I think that lets their hard-fought transcendence of those roles, however brief, weigh a lot more than if it were taken for granted that they relate to each other always outside of the roles they've committed to (and it doesn't require me to write nearly so much either...).
I absolutely love how you can do death, even the death of loved ones, without the slightest trace of sentimentality or maudlin-ness.
Thanks - I do try!
P.S. I AM SQUINTING VERY HARD AND IT'S YOUR FAULT.
Enjoy the view. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 10:20 am (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 01:18 pm (UTC)Glad you enjoyed the story!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 01:59 pm (UTC)- Erulisse (one L)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 03:30 pm (UTC)They really
doshould.no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 03:05 am (UTC)It’s been a long slide down the blade, but it’s cold at the quick end of steel.
Great line, especially in light of the other line about the years on the edge of a blade.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 03:33 pm (UTC)wouldn't have made it past the doorwouldn't have made it out of Ranger training class).Great line, especially in light of the other line about the years on the edge of a blade.
Thanks! Gotta balance that opening line.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-03 06:59 pm (UTC)"...for we should not meet again too soon".
Maybe I should go and find the other six....
Edited in case this was so short as to be cryptic:
I wouldn't normally go and collect death fics as such, but if this is an example of your Halbarad death fics, then I want to read the rest, too.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-04 03:45 pm (UTC)"Til Death Do Us Part" is the earliest; "Religion" deals with a much earlier bout of foresight on Halbarad's part and is from around the same time (first year or so in fandom).
Then there's "The Dark Before the Door" and "New Day Dawning," which are slashverse and I find them less convincing because in a sense the relationship is more private and less contextualized - I think I'd have needed to work harder on these, personally, to sell them in full. But I do try not to totally write out Arwen, so I think the latter especially has that going for it. These are about five or six years old, I'd guess.
Then there's the "Kinsmen/Father Feeling" diptych, so actually, I guess that makes... eight-ish. Same time frame.
"Armageddon will not be televised" is probably the latest instantiation of Halbarad and the door before this ficlet, and was
the fault of B2MEM 2010written for B2MEM 2010in a burst of obsessionin a very compressed timeframe.And if you want something less dark on the door premonition,there's "Resurrection" and "Lie Down in the Darkness, Rise Up from the Ash" (though I cannot recommend that story to folks who are pressed for time).
So - yeah, it's a theme I've dealt with before, but I expect the stories would say a lot about what I was learning in the decade 2001-2011 as a writer!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-05 08:34 am (UTC)