Laddie

He wasn't expecting her to call him “laddie.” He knew that, save for Merry and Pippin, he was the youngest in their group; and he was used to it. After all, for years, he had always been the youngest.

Youngest to kill – sickeningly unperturbed save for the cold knot creeping from the pit of his stomach up his spine, a pudgy eleven-year-old glistening red with an Eastron bandit's blood.

Youngest to give mercy to a comrade – twice in one week, twelve years old and kneeling in the golden sunlight that failed to make anything whole. Once for a squire younger than himself; once for a knight of forty-five, whom all the boys had thought invincible.

Youngest to be knighted – thirteen (barely,) surrounded by soldiers shivering in the vicious chill and he, under his father's grey stone stare hating himself for his shaky hands, because had it been the cold that made them tremble, he would have shook all over. But he had forced himself still, save for his traitor hands, so he could not tell himself it was the cold. When he knelt for the sharp frigid tap upon each shoulder, the frozen grasses left red runes on his bruised knees.

Youngest officer to be given command of Gondor's army, and youngest heir to bear the horn. Sixteen years old, he sweltered in ceremonial armour under a midsummer sun, wanting only to escape. He'd been de facto general for almost a year; the ceremony seemed so much pomp – his father droned, his armour itched, he longed to strip it off, have a bath and spend the afternoon with his little brother.

Then his father's rough hands offered a crescent of brightness, blinding, but he knew it even before he accepted the offering. Heavy and cold it rested in his hands – the symbol of stewardship, a heavy honour to weigh its bearer down, a great responsibility to hold them up. Grounded. Balanced.

It held him in the mighty curve of it. His father droned on about kings, but years had gone down into winter since last he cared about kings. He listened to the horn. It spoke in his grandfather's voice, and in his father's, half-remembered from an evening in the study long ago, when Denethor had been taller than the sky.

Stewardship: to be given in trust, to hold in safekeeping. The horn pressing down into his hands, he looked past his father at the crowds gathered to watch the ceremony and, at sixteen, for the last time felt the cold hand clench around his spine. It had not loosened since.

Still, he had not expected her to call him “laddie.” At four, he'd hardly been called at all; at fourteen, he'd been called by name, or Sir, and thus the stocky little red-bearded figure by the fire caught him off guard.

“I'm all right,” he called, answering her question, but whatever his face betrayed must have worried her, somehow, for as he navigated between the patch of black ice he'd slipped on and the near edge of a long, steep slope of rocky scree, she scooted over to give him room and, peering up at him from under bushy eyebrows, placed a callused hand on his arm.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded, turning away to let the flickering shadows hide his face, and basked in the fire's warmth. He did not think that she believed him, but she had the grace not to pursue the matter and, for now, that sufficed. He had always been all right.