Ryslig PSL

[hobbitstho]

Boromir knows what it's like to sleep without dreaming-- it is the way of an exhausted soldier to fall into sleep like falling into a pit and to awaken as though coming up from deep water, knowing time has passed but not how much. This is not like that.

It's more like awakening from a bad dream into a worse one. This, too, he knows well. The dream from which he emerges is a dim sense of noise and chaos, heat and pain, an urgent despair; the dream into which he wakens is a damp, silent world. The smell of earth is the same, though.

He rises. His eyes find the tombstone first. He reads his own name. For many long seconds, he grasps after breath as though he had taken a blow to the chest. (Something intrudes on the thought-- some half-remembered pain in his ribs, something just outside the dream--) He has not won it back when he sees the stone beside it, standing over a grave filled in.

After a long, terrible moment, he shakes his tongue loose. "These are not the tombs of the lords of Gondor," he says, his voice low and frightened. "Who has buried my lord Denethor thus -- who has kept him from sleeping beside his ancestors..?"

An unbearable truth is bearing down on him. He looks to what graves he can see in the darkness-- Finduilas, though this is not her grave, not where she is laid, he knows this-- and beside it, another empty one, bearing his brother's name.

The unbearable truth draws nearer. But first, the sound of heavy footfalls reaches him, and the sound of keys. A lantern light dances in the distance. He reaches for a sword that he only now notices is not there.

"Who goes there?" he calls hoarsely into the darkness.

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[nearamir]

The lantern gleams through the fog and rain, the darkness clinging like a cloak. It halts in its movement at Boromir's call; seems to hesitate, its carrier turning towards the sound. The gravedigger is still a moment, the heavy footfall and the clatter of keys both, and then begins to move towards Boromir, this time with more clear purpose.

But it is not the gravedigger's voice that answers, soft enough to be half-lost beneath the pattering rain. "One who means you well, and one who means you harm. In your place, I might be inclined to wait for neither."

Faramir does not often linger in this place. There is a horror to it, the graves that will not give up their secrets, the strange air of waiting that lingers in among the rows. It is chance, and perhaps some instinct, that brings the troll here - and he is glad of it, for now he knows where the newcomers are. Still, with that knowledge comes a dull dread, that he must be seen as the monster he is by those who do not know what it means; and he holds back in the shadows, his hood raised over his horned head, a hulking shadow in the poor light. He can see the shape of the man who called out, the warmth of his blood pulsing through his form; he can see, with truer vision, the gleam of the dim light on muddied mail and the silhouette of a figure. There is something in the man's voice that rings with an odd familiarity. He cannot place it.

He does not step forward, not wanting to trigger the suspicion and fear that his form must surely bring. If it were a choice between himself and the gravedigger, and he did not know his own motives, he would choose the gravedigger - but he knows the man in question, and he does not seem well-disposed to monsters, or those who may become them. Better not to make it a choice. Better to stay hidden, and offer help from a distance, however much it may rankle to do so.

"North-west lies the gate, and beyond it the city. It is not far."

[hobbitstho]

The voice is terribly familiar. That is, it is familiar, and the sound of it, coming from the shadows beyond the graves of Boromir's kin, strikes at his heart with something terrible.

He climbs out of the grave, feeling the stiffness in his limbs as though he had truly been dead. His clothes are dull with grave-dirt and damp and clinging with the sullen rain. He looks to the dancing lantern, winding closer between the tombstones, and finds its approach frightens him. He has faced down far worse than a single man in the darkness, yet he longs to flee.

He steels himself. There will be time yet to flee, or fight. "Speak, stranger," he says, taking a half-step toward the shadows whence came the new voice. The shape of this man is wrong, too, as everything here is wrong; but the voice is fair, even lordly, to Boromir's ears. "What city lies beyond the gate? And how came the Steward of Gondor to be buried here?"

His voice cracks at that last. How did I come here? is a secondary question beside the weight of the unbearable truth coming to rest on his shoulders. For this moment, he is both his lord's captain, and his father's son.

[nearamir]

At that question, Faramir's breath catches in his throat, an audible hitch of sound. There, then, is the familiarity. There is the knowledge of why this voice is tugging so at his memory. The Steward of Gondor. Of his time, or another? Does it matter? To hear the name Gondor at all, in this place, is both a wonder and a horror.

To hear its Steward mentioned, when the memory of his father's play-acted death is still fresh in his mind, is horror alone. He feels grief stab dull and heavy at his chest, and he sighs heavily; it is a moment more before he trusts himself to speak. A moment he should not linger, with those footsteps drawing ever closer.

"He is not buried here." Nor in any other place. He is ash and dust, he is lost, and beyond all return. He closes his eyes, all but the lidless and glassy one that burns at the centre of his brow, and shakes his head as though to clear it. "The grave is empty. Gondor is a world away, and all its people. And the city beyond the gate is not one you will know, nor - I think - find much familiar in, but it is safer than here."

[hobbitstho]

There is little light in the sky and the lantern is not yet close enough to throw long shadows, but Boromir sees the dim reflection of what light there is on that third eye. Not enough to tell what it is; it might be a dull jewel in a circlet, or just a place where the rain drips down the stranger's forehead from the peak of his hood.

The footsteps, the jangle of keys, are coming too close to ignore. It seems to Boromir that their pace is quicker now. In the shadows behind the lantern light he can see the shape of a shovel over the man's shoulder. He thinks: He would have buried me, if he had found me while I slept.

He stands caught in indecision, between this least-strange stranger and his growing desire to put the graveyard behind him. "Come with me, then," he says, a request spoken like a command. There are few in Gondor who do not answer to his authority. "For you say the Lord Denethor is not buried here, but you do not say he lives." (Something intrudes again, another piece of memory-- where was he, before this? A mountaintop, a cavern, a riverbank...? He must chase the thought to find it.) Something dark draws a shadow across his mind, and he passes a hand over his face. "...I have had no news from Gondor these months of hard travel, good or ill. I have feared the worst."

[nearamir]

The Lord Denethor. It is he, then, that the stranger means; it is of his time and his home that the stranger speaks. And then these months of hard travel, and the seed of doubt in his mind takes root, blossoms into realisation, and Faramir staggers at the weight of it, letting out a low cry as though of pain. Still, his mind rebels; swears that it cannot be so, that no matter what has been taken from him, he would know his own brother's voice, recognise Boromir if he saw him - and surely there have been others who have travelled out from Gondor, others who have left their home behind.

But not others who would speak with such surety of the Steward as though they knew him; not others whose voice would carry such command and such an expectation of fealty. He struggles against the wounded edge of his own uncertainty, but he has never been good at lying, and the truth stares him in the face, and its features - even as he makes them out - are strange. There is a lump in his throat, twisting into his chest. He swallows it down, and looks back at the approaching light.

"As you will." His voice is thick, of a sudden. He does not want - desperately does not want - to pass out of this graveyard and into the light, to be seen as he is now. He does not want to see clearly what he cannot recognise, either. And yet, time runs short, and either he obeys, or there will be fighting. He does not want that, either. He tenses his jaw, his tusks digging against the flesh over his lip, and clenches his fists until dark claws scrape against the leathery skin of his palms. "Follow me, then."

He is not graceful. His trollish form does not lend itself to grace. He moves in a way that belies any pretence of humanity, hunching forward and clearly built as much for four limbs as two. He starts toward the gate, and he does not look back to see whether Boromir (not he, of all men, surely there must be some mistake) will follow.

[hobbitstho]

Boromir takes a quick step back, and his hand moves again toward a sword he does not have as the-- man? The creature? lurches out of the shadows. It is a shape he would not have reckoned with such a fair voice, which cried out (he thinks) when he spoke Denethor's name. It is a shape he would not have reckoned with any human voice. The strange familiarity of it seems a horror now, for he would have said they spoke like kin, had he not glimpsed those clawed hands as it turned from him.

It shambles past, and onward. Boromir stands a moment among the graves, watching its hulking back weave between the tombstones. In its ugly mannishness, it resembles his enemies most -- creatures whose shapes twist and mock the shape of Men.

The shadows of the tombstones nearest him begin to waver in the light of the gravedigger's lantern. He can see the gravedigger himself clearly now as he approaches. That is a man's shape-- has he had it wrong since he awakened here? Was the fair voice lying about which of the two meant him harm?

He does not know. But he cannot remain until he knows what the stranger knows. When ten paces are between them he follows, and though he fears he made the wrong choice, it does not stop the relief when the sound of jangling keys becomes quieter behind them.

"You know something I do not," he says, allowing himself to speak a little louder as the gate comes nearer. He means about Denethor, and his fate. He sounds more the captain now, grim under threat. "What is it?"

[nearamir]

Faramir laughs then, and it is a sound both grim and sad, and entirely without joy.

"I know many things that you do not," he says, his voice low, though not for the sake of secrecy. There is a ring of despair in that tone, a softness that is not in the least bit gentle. He does not turn back. He dares not. Half he fears that when he looks, the other man will be gone; half he fears that he must turn in time and look upon his own griefs. Wholly, he fears to see the look on the newcomer's face, now that they near the lights of the city, still alien in their unnatural steadiness, which will cast in full the shape of his corruption.

He pauses as they come within sight of the gate, and heaves a deep breath. "But I do not know your face. I do not know your voice. And I am afraid, for night brings news to near kindred, and yet it brings you, and I know you not." He does turn, then, and the distant lights catch his face: the tusks jutting above his jaw, the gleam of that lidless third eye, the six horns that ring a still vaguely human face. Under the fall of his cloak, the gleam of white quartz embedded in the dark stone plating of an inhumanly broad chest. Under the shadows of his hood, the undeniable glint of tears. "Do you know me, Boromir?"

[hobbitstho]

He knows that laugh. He knows it. He refuses to believe he knows it. But in his heart he knows he has heard this voice laugh in joy, though less and less over the years; it has been a year and more since he heard it at all...

The monster's face, though, makes his breath catch, makes him take a step back in fear and disgust. He has never seen its like, though he has fought every monster Mordor has ever spat across the border, every foul thing that tunnels under the mountains.

He makes himself look into that face. “Your voice I know, or think I know.” He speaks softly now, with something under the words that hangs between despair and fury. “But I do not know you. How came you to speak like a captain of Gondor? By what trick did you learn my name?”

He stands at a crossroads, and down every road a new unbearable truth travels toward him. Soon they will all reach him, the one named Denethor and the one named death, and the one named Faramir. He stands stubbornly against them; but stubbornness is the last defense he has.

[nearamir]

He expects it, and yet it hurts: that disgust, that fear, that loathing. It is all that he would feel - all that he does feel - looking upon what he has become, this thing that is half-Troll and half-Orc and all bitter mockery. It is just, and that is why it cuts so deeply; and he wishes, almost, that Boromir had greeted him as he greeted Atem when he first arrived. It would hurt less, and feel a less final death, than the double blow of that reaction and of the certainty that there is nothing familiar in his brother's face. Oh, he can see the resemblances - to Denethor, to their mother, to Faramir when he was himself - but that is all they are; and in the face of confirmation, there is no defence against the grief that threatens to knock the legs out from under him.

But you must be strong. He breathes in, closes his eyes, breathes out. His own grief is one that can wait, for it is one that he understands, at least in part. In this, he must be steadfast, and not let himself falter; for he is at the advantage, no matter how it feels. O! but it hurts to hear that pain in Boromir's voice, and to know he is the cause of it; it hurts to know, in every fibre, how strange it is to awake in this world of monsters, and to imagine how much worse it would be to wake to this.

But what can he say? What is there to say, in this dreaded moment, but the truth?

"Your name, I did not forget. That is all that was left to me: your name, and memories that have no form, like stories told at a fireside." And the memory of the boat, how silent it moved, and how still; and how I thought to myself that you looked almost at peace. He cannot seem to meet the man - his brother's - eyes. He tries, even so; but there is shame as well as grief weighing his gaze, and it will not hold. "But you spoke of Gondor, and of being far from it, and should I not know which lord of Gondor trod so far afield - I, in whose place he went? Seek for the Sword that was Broken - that Voice, crying from the Western sky - should I not know?" He is weeping now, and cannot help it, but his voice is as steady as he can make it. "Should I not know my brother, when he stands before me? Alas! It is a cruel fate, to meet thus: blinded and malformed, and all that should be despised! Yet whatever I may be now, still I speak as I was, and there is no trickery in me. There never was."

[hobbitstho]

The months with the Fellowship and his proximity to the One Ring, and before that the long months crawling alone through the wilderness toward Rivendell, have ground Boromir down to a cruel, suspicious man. Even among his companions, for weeks he has seen betrayal lurking around every corner; the world had begun to seem to him full of secrets, kept from him by evil beings intent on the ruin of Gondor.

But the hard lines around his mouth soften, and an unwilling wonder comes into his face, when the beast before him speaks words from the dream he shared with only one other. It is a trick, he wants to insist. But it is Faramir's voice.

The question has never been put to the test, but if asked Boromir would have dismissed the idea that any evil thing could bear itself like Faramir. He is too much himself; his goodness runs too deep. In his forty years Boromir has seen many fair things corrupted, but Faramir, he would have said, is incorruptible.

Slowly, he closes half the distance between them, and he begins to see it: Under the hideous teeth and unblinking third eye, there are pieces of a face he knows.

He stops, and comes no closer. He cannot bear to. Many nights he has lain awake, wondering if his brother still lives, if the border still holds. He has hoped for their reunion many times, and feared that one or the other of them would not live to see it. (A piercing phantom pain blossoms again in his ribs, in his chest. He puts a hand over his heart as though he could grasp it, but it does not ease.)

"I have seen evil things since we parted," he says, and he keeps from weeping, barely, but his voice is bitter and hoarse with grief. "I have walked lightless ways and fled from evil as ancient as any servant of the Enemy. I have been among sorcerers, and borne thoughts too dark to speak-- of Minas Tirith ruined and burning, of the line of Stewards ended." And worse, though he does not speak the thought aloud. "But this-- never in my blackest thoughts could I have foreseen this. Who has changed you?" he cries suddenly, furious. "What enemy fell on you when I was gone, and senseless to your danger?"

How have I failed you? is the true question. How could he have prevented this, if he had only been there?

[nearamir]

Evil things, indeed. Faramir had hoped for recognition, and yet when it comes, it hurts almost more than its absence: that slow dawning of realisation across his brother's face, the way Boromir's grey eyes map his features and all their changes, the knowledge that an easier end for both of them was in that Elven boat floating peaceful upon the river. It should have ended in their own time and their own land, the slow draw of fate towards its proper end, and both of them dying of their wounds, their work done, their sins forgiven.

Not here. Not thus. He turns his face away again, unable to bear the knowledge of it, and swallows hard. "It is this place." His tone is grim, his voice quietly sorrowing. "There is an evil that dwells here as great as any that lurks beyond the mountains; and none of us who are brought here are spared."

There is so much to say, and he desires to share none of it. He remembers what he was told of Boromir's last days, what he knows of his brother's journeys. This is not the ending such travails deserve. This is not the rest that a weary warrior should earn. He knows, with sick certainty, that it must all come to light: what came before, the passing of their father and the siege of the City; what has befallen him here in this place, and what he has done here that is beyond any recovery; how all the work of a hundred lifetimes lies before them still. And, again, that bitter vision of the white boat upon the still Anduin, the distant horn blowing.

It is only now that he allows himself to look: to see there a belt clasped with golden leaves, and neither horn nor sword. He exhales slowly, and blinks back his tears, trying to school himself to firmer purpose. To be strong for his brother, as his brother has so often stood strong for them all.

"There is too much to tell." His hands open and close, flexing as though to grasp at some solid thought. After a moment, it comes to him that there is something he can offer, at least; and he reaches under his cloak, unbuckling the sword that hangs ungainly at his hip. It is a strange thing, not at all of Gondorian make, but the edge is keen, and it has solid weight to it; and he holds it out hilt-first, as though doing so can replace an offer of answers. "And this is not the place for its telling."

[hobbitstho]

If they had been reunited as they should have been, they would have embraced before any words were spoken between them. But Boromir cannot bring himself to draw any nearer to that stony flesh. He hesitates a moment, and then takes the sword; for a second it is a bridge between them, and then they are separated again as he averts his gaze and buckles it on.

Another shadow. Another evil. Another horror he was not there to prevent. He feels a deep weariness, deeper than woe or anger.

"Take me, then, to the city," he says. "...Unless it is forbidden to you, as... as you are."

[nearamir]

That weariness is audible in Boromir's voice, clear in every line of his bearing, and it digs itself deep into the hollow of Faramir's chest. He would give all that he has to be able to be himself for only a moment, to close the space between them and embrace his lost brother tightly, to offer him support and comfort.

He cannot, or dares not. Not seeing how Boromir hesitates, how that horror still lurks in his shadowed eyes. The chasm yaws between them, and cannot be so readily crossed; and all that he can do is push down his feelings and turn towards the gate.

"It is not forbidden. Little enough in this place is truly forbidden; for it has no lord and and little to hold it in order." There is, for a moment, an edge of bitter wryness in his tone. "I would that I had any better tidings, and not darkness and shadow alone. But there are places in the city where you may rest safely, at least."

[hobbitstho]

"Rest!" he says, and matches Faramir's bitter wryness. "I could sleep in a nest of goblins, I think, if I were only given a pillow. How many months has it been since I set foot in a city of Men?"

He pauses. The lines around his mouth deepen in a frown, as though he were truly considering the question he just asked. "...Months," he says. And then: "I think the quest has gone awry." His grey eyes are inward-turned, searching after the memory that keeps pressing at the edges of his mind and flitting away. "My companions-- we were separated when I..." When he left? When he fell asleep? He tries to remember how he came here, some sense of movement, but the memory is murky and formless. He looks up with sudden alarm. "They will not know where I have gone. They will search for me-- there were Orcs on the riverbank. We had known for days we were pursued, but had outpaced them. We camped below Amon Hen..."

It is lost again. He reaches for it a moment longer, then shakes his head. "When I have rested," he says, looking back at Faramir. "Then we can begin to plan our return."

There are a thousand questions yet to be answered. But this has solidified, among all the shifting uncertainties: Whatever evil has fallen on them, it must be his duty to lead them out of it.

[nearamir]

There is a selfish frustration that flares at Boromir's clear confusion and pain: it sounds a great deal like not yet. Not yet, not until I have caught my breath, do not make me tell him, not yet.

But he will not give that selfishness ground. It is Boromir's pain that must come first, not his own. He exhales slowly and turns to Boromir anew, his expression sincere and gentle.

"You were separated," he agrees, quietly, "but they live. Frodo son of Drogo, and Samwise too, and Peregrin, and the others." Or so he hopes, at least. The King's future seemed brief and in doubt, and he scarcely left Frodo and Samwise in safety, but it is true enough, and the best comfort that he can think to offer. He quickly adds, in a tone of firmness that he has turned but rarely towards his brother, "Do not ask how I can know it, not yet; for it is too long a tale, and one tale must lead to another, and you are weary. But if you trust me in anything at all, trust me in this. You did not leave them to their deaths; and they have not turned from their purpose."