Author: Karigan Rohanna (ladyofgondor@diaryland.com)
Feedback: Desired greatly.
Written: July 2nd, 2003
Summary: Tears are a bitter solace when saying good-bye to those you love.
Warnings: General audience, angst.
A/N: Part One of the Fic Circlet "Ties that Bind". Read also "A Different Kind of Dream" and "The Circle is Breaking". For Saramir, thanks to her Faramir muse, whom I did borrow.
Bitter were our tears, as sweet as the memory of
the words my brother spoke upon our last parting. As all things of its
nature, it was a wound that never healed quite properly, an injury that
would ache when all other things ached, but a thing tended, so that it
never would heal.
I did not want to forget the last time I saw my
brother.
I rode with him out of the city. As was our custom,
since we had both been boys, and I still very young, I wished to see him
off well. Even then I had feared to let go of my protector, for fear he
would not come back, as my mother had not come back from her illness.
We road a ways in silence. It was hard to think
of things to say. I should have been going, not he. It was I who first
had seen the dream, I who had plagued him about it until he brought it
up to Father, saying it had been his dream-- perhaps it had been, but I
never could assure myself that he simply did not say it was his for Father
to take notice.
Off chasing a dream. It was the kind of thing I
was supposed to do-- not he. He was the son Father loved-- he was the hero
of our people, our Captain-General, the Defender of the White Tower. I
was only Faramir, the poet, the thinker, the quiet one. I was the one who
dreamed. I was the one who should have gone.
I have always hated good-byes. They are never what
they should be. After a person is gone, you think of all manner of things
you want to tell them, but when you see them again, you have forgotten
almost, if not all of it. And when your big brother is about to go off
chasing down elves in a place that may not even exist, through a land very
few people travel through, over a dream that may or may not be true, you
do not necessarily know that he will be coming back for you to say any
of the things you think of. There are so many things you want to say, but
when it comes right down to it, the words simply don't come.
So we rode in silence and let the early morning
mist part as we ventured alone down the road that would take him first
to Edoras, then to the wild. If he was lucky, he would reach Imladris,
and after finding the answer to the Riddle, come home. I knew I could not
fathom all the dangers he would face, but the ones I could indeed fathom
were so many and so mighty that I feared never to see him again at all.
The weight of his death away from home, even while he was still with me,
alive and well, was something I felt and feared. I could very well be sending
him to his doom. What did that make me?
We had ridden no more than a mile before Boromir
pulled his horse to a stand-still. I reined in my mare and looked into
his face, trying to memorize what he looked like before he told me he had
to go the rest of the way alone. He looked back at me, and was very quiet,
and very sober, as if trying to think.
"I want you to know, brother," He said, very slowly,
very thoughtfully, as was his nature when he was trying to say something
emotional, "that just because I am leaving the City does not mean I am
leaving you." I waited for him to continue as he bit his lip, trying to
think of the words to express what was going on in his head and heart.
"I am not abandoning you defenseless, and I swear to you I will not be
long before returning." He paused once more. "And I will not return without
the answer you so desire."
I smiled, trying to put on a brave face, knowing
he was trying to say he still loved me even though we would be parted,
trying to encourage me not to be afraid. "I know you'd never leave me."
I told him. "I know you think you should be the one to go on this... quest..."
I did not plead with him to let me go in his stead. I did not plead with
him to please, please let me go, and take the huge weight off my chest
at the thought of leaving our city without him on my account. "I don't
know what I'd do without you looking out for me."
I saw a flash of guilt on his features then, and
had to fight to repress the swell of sudden guilt of my own for making
him feel bad about leaving. "You'll do fine on your own." He told me reassuringly.
"You always had it in you to make it on your own. You just have to work
towards it." I tried to believe him, but deep down inside, a spiteful voice
said I could not do anything without Boromir protecting me from Denethor's
wrath. I shoved it into silence. "I know I leave you in the best hands
that could have you-- your own."
He believed in me. It wasn't just talk-- I could
see it in his eyes. He honestly believed in me. He believed in me more
than I believed in myself. I tried to think of something to say. "You...
you'll stay safe, won't you? Not take foolish risks and..."
Boromir smiled at me. "I'll come back, don't worry,
little brother." He leaned over and ruffled my hair with his heavily gloved
hand, as he had used to do when we were children and the act had irritated
me. "I'll come back, just you wait. And you'll tell me about all the adventures
you had in the City, and it will be like when we were children again."
Boromir clasped my hand, and held it tightly, and
for a long moment, I thought we might part without tears. But it was he
whose eyes glimmered with unshed tears as he squeezed my hand. "I shall
miss you, little brother." He said quietly. "I know you pray... will you
pray for me as well when you lift up your requests?"
I did not tell him I had been praying for him a
long while, I just squeezed his hand back. "Of course." To repeat the stay
safe admonition would have been not only silly, but utterly pointless.
I tried to think of something else to say. I felt tears rising within me,
a response to those which glimmered in his own eyes. "I will miss you too."
I said, very quietly.
Boromir released my hand and turned his attention
back to his mount. He nudged it quickly into a walk, and I knew he was
hoping I would not have to see his tears fall. "Watch for me!" He called
back, not turning. "Watch for me, for surely I shall return!"
But I knew in my heart he would never ride this
road again, not up to the city. I had not told him that dream-- the one
in which I saw the cloven horn of Vorondil, and knew he was to die away
from home. I let myself cry as he became smaller and more obscured until
the mist swallowed him whole, so that I could only hear the empty ringing
of his horse's hooves on the pavement.
My tears tasted bitter and warm, but not half so
bitter as the pain inside, and not even hot tears could fill the cold empty
place in my stomach as my brother disappeared out of sight and sound.
When he was gone, I knew I would never be whole
again.