*laughs too hard to form words*. This wasn't even tongue-in-cheek, this was downright evil:) And very meta, because you're right of course: What's most frustrating (at least to me) is that in *these* stories, actions don't necessarily have consequences. Even if you don't take into account that most of the wounds these two suffer from on a daily basis would be fatal (I don't really have much of a problem with that, to be truthful), it's the fact that the characters aren't changed by what they suffer through. There are of course a lot of great friendship authors out there who manage to write that into a story, but the "usual" friendship story tends to leave out this rather important ingredient.

And sadly, I realized we really didn't find Aragorn's mother *g*.