She

He walked in on her bathing in the river, which, given their respective personalities, wouldn't have been either as romantic or as creepy (depending upon one's perspective) as it sounded, even if Merry and Pippin hadn't done so first and stood there with their mouths hanging open, waiting for something to fly in. Boromir flipped their cloaks over their heads and picked them up by the scruff, one in each hand, without breaking stride – and not a second too soon, to judge by the gruff bellow of “Oy! Hobbits!” from the water fast disappearing behind a screen of trees.

About then, the young hobbits' brains completed the admittedly challenging leap from unexpected dwarf breasts to current events. They turned, instantly and to his great amusement, into an indignant maelstrom of fuzzy feet and flailing arms.

He set them down on the other side of a thicket, flipped their cloaks back right way 'round, and crouched before them to put his eyes on level with theirs and, conveniently, block the route to escape. The look they gave him failed to evince any real difference from the look they'd given Gimli. In return, he gave them one known to make every recruit in a five-mile radius spontaneously exclaim “I didn't do it!”

“What the hell did you two think you were doing?”

And, of course, Pippin blurted.

“Why are you the only big person who will cuss around us?”

Boromir decided it had to be an honest blurt, rather than a failed distraction. He was used to failed distractions. He had a little brother.

“I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm fully aware that you're adults.” Young ones, though; at his words, their chests puffed up in pride, which he promptly deflated. “Unfortunately, this means I expect you to act the part.”

“But he's a - ”

“Shut up, Pip!”

“No.” He held up a hand to forestall Merry's attempt to knock some sense into his friend. “Go ahead, Pippin.”

“He's not a he! He's a woman! I saw, he has, he has breasts and, and...” Colour slowly crept up from under the young hobbit's shirt, “and down there and the whole nine yards, except I guess it's no yards, and, well, er...” Taking a deep breath, Pippin finished, determinedly, “and he's a she.”

“And?”

Pippin stopped staring at his toes in order to stare at Boromir. Pippin opened his mouth. Pippin closed his mouth, for once without having said anything.

“Does it make a difference? Does Strider suddenly lack his head, because a woman couldn't begin to cleave a warg's head in half?” If they managed to digest the basics, maybe later he'd get into things like “not everyone with those parts is a woman.” For now, he'd be glad if they just shut up and seriously thought about this.

“Well, no...” admitted Pippin at last, sheepishly.

“Do you think Gimli would take well to a sudden bout of miladying and...and what the hell ever you do with ladies in the shire?”

They both blushed, Merry muttering a fervent “Oh gods no!”

He didn't manage to catch more than the tail end of a bark of laughter before it slipped out; Merry and Pippin looked, respectively, worried and relieved. Smiling sunnily, he stood and bowed out of their way.

“Now that's settled, let's get back to camp before we freeze. I've a few snares to check – I'll catch you up.”

Maybe. If I learn to fly. The two young hobbits fled so hurriedly he found himself addressing their backs. An honest man, he made a cursory check of the (redundant, given the presence of an elf and his attendant skill with such things) nearby snare he'd set all of half an hour ago, then leaned back against a tree and waited for the heavy trudge of dwarven footsteps.

As he expected, they approached sooner rather than later – whatever their reason not to travel as openly female, and he could think of many, he respected it, and entertained no doubt the hobbits had worried them. To judge by the expression of dark blue eyes and bushy red brows sandwiched between beard and helm, he worried them, too.

Gondor has hardy been known for open-mindedness, since Grandfather's death. A thirty-four-year-old ache, like the wrist he'd broken jumping out of a tree in a high wind to see if he could fly. He could not grudge the dwarf's wariness.

He fell into step beside them, walking slowly in the chilly stillness under the trees.

“Merry and Pippin will say nothing, unless you give the word,” he announced quietly after a moment. Gimli shot him a startled look which rapidly turned considering. Dwarves didn't hold with his people's stoicism, or at least not the rest of the world's simplistic notion of it as merely hiding every scrap of emotion, but he suspected they, or at least this one, might ascribe to its deeper roots – to make the best of what one has, because nearly anything can be livable if you make it so.

“...thank you,” came the gruff reply. A tense smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

“You're more than welcome. In the...” Damn, what was the Dwarven word? He couldn't remember. “In the...company of your own? with your friends and kin, what do you prefer to be called?” He felt his face heat in embarrassment at the awkward wording and his companion barked a laugh.

“Gimli.” Boromir wondered if anyone had ever blushed themselves to death before, or if he was about to set a humiliating record. The dwarf, however, must have noticed his discomfort, and took pity on him; the dark eyes glanced somberly up at him and the gravelly voice added, with a certain rough gentleness, “I'm a woman.”

Tension loosened its grip a little.

“Thank you for trusting me.”

“I haven't much choice, have I?” Was it amusement or resentment that coloured her voice?

“No.” He offered a wry smile. “But I appreciate both your good grace in the matter, and the continued existence of my kneecaps.”

“Quoth the greatest mortal warrior in Arda,” muttered Gimli, definitely laughing now. She sobered, though, drawing ahead of him by a few steps and then slowing, peering up at him, inscrutable beneath wild eyebrows.

“How did you know to ask, son of Denethor? And how did you come to take it with such aplomb?”

If she'd intended malice in evoking his father, she would have been disappointed by his lack of outward reaction.

“Our city – my people's city – it used to be called Minas Anor. A king's city.” He scowled, glaring abstractedly at a tree's knotted, mossy roots. “For a thousand years now, it has been Minas Tirith, the Tower of Guard.” He half-shrugged, tugging the ever-present knot between his shoulderblades, trying not to let the ache leak into his voice. “For a thousand years, we've been at war, and in Gondor, women may not inherit.”

Beside him, she made a noise like an incipient landslide. Had he the heart for it,he would have smiled.

“Thus, sometimes, in noble families with no male children, a daughter will become a son, taking on a man's role to fulfill military obligation, wed a woman, adopt children, continue the family's line – they aren't men, exactly, but neither are they women any longer. Our word or them translates to dusk-walkers.” They had come to a halt; or he had, staring blankly at that clump of moss. Curiosity and concern vied for space on the prime facial real-estate between Gimli's beard and helm.

“One such was my most trusted officer.” It was a quiet explanation, barely a statement. Gimli flinched a little.

“I'm sorry.”

“I don't know that they're dead.” The words, like rain, had grown too heavy not to fall. “They were stationed upriver when I lost eastern Osgiliath. Few survived that campaign, and I left soon after, before the casualty reports were complete. As complete as such things get.” He shook his head sharply, clearing nonexistant cobwebs. The world had not faded out in some poetic inward turning. He was too well-trained.

“We get that, in the mines,” she said gruffly, kindly, unobtrusively resuming their slow course back to camp. “Sometimes, they turn up. Sometimes they don't.”

He nodded, lips tight, glad she didn't offer platitudes, and let silence settle in between them until a question presented itself.

“Did you introduce yourself as 'son of Gloin' to avoid condescension, then?” Judging by her reaction to Gondoian inheritance laws, Dwarven culture held its women to far different standards than did his people. Nevertheless, her booming laugh surprised him.

“No, no! 'Son' is just the closest translation. 'Heir' would have worked, in my case, as I am Gloin's only child, but not all woman-offspring whose role resembles mine are heirs. So might 'warrior-child,' but not all of us are warriors; some are smiths, stonemasons, merchants, jewelers, engineers...”

He mulled it over, turning it in his mind like a rough rock until the idea fit smoothly in the back of his mouth, so he could speak it properly. “Offspring whose role other societies forbid their daughters?”

“Precisely!” She grinned under her beard but, as they stepped into the circle of warmth about the fire, the skin around her eyes tightens. Merry and Pippin, seated a bit apart as always, watched him closely too.

Waiting for me to be cruel. All three of them, waiting for me to be cruel.

Anxious though she was, he hardly needed beckon Gimli to follow. As he had every night since the second, he took a seat with the hobbits, cross-legged on the ground with the ease of one used to life on the road. As he had every night since the second, he drew forth from the pouch at his belt a bee-shaped sweet stolen (under the watchful eye of a highly amused cook) from Rivendell, and divided it into thirds – the backside for Merry, the centre for Pippin, the head for Gimli. Originally, he'd intended the head for himself, but then the dwarf, nearly as extraneous a person as himself and the two young hobbits, evinced a sweet tooth – so the head was hers. Despite his love of sweets, he preferred it that way.

In six days, already it had become tradition. Tonight, it was an offering of peace.