Disclaimer:
Places, situations, and characters, especially Faramir, decidedly Tolkien's. Boromir may be PJ, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens'.Author's Note:
I didn't want to write this little idea that just popped into my head unlooked-for; I know that I'm falling into a rut and writing nothing but Frodo-angst. I tried to stop myself! I tried! But to no avail, alas. An opportunity I thought the filmmakers missed in The Two Towers to do another very dramatic, theatrical flashback (kind of like the flashback they did to Weathertop during the Nazgûl fly-over in the Marshes). You wouldn't know it, but this was written after having seen TTT, even though all the Fellowship references are movie-verse (another thing I feel really bad about writing) and all the Towers stuff is book-verse. That's just because I like the movie-verse Boromir and the book-verse Faramir better; they're nicer. Movie Faramir is all wrong! No! Bad! Complete mischaracterization! Argh! (OK, sorry – needed to get that out.)Anything but Betrayed
More than the incident itself, it seems, I clearly remember the moments after, when I crouched beside the great seat on Amon Hen in the swirling gray fog of the Ring-world, moments that passed as slowly as if all the universe cowered as numb and still as I. I remember my heart beating so fast, a dully thudding hammer in my brain, that the rest of the world seemed to have slowed down to make its panicked rhythm feel normal. My own hurried, ragged breathing thundering so loudly inside my ears that it drowned out every other sound and everything else was muffled in a suffocating blanket of silence. My fear a bitter bile in my throat as I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on regulating my heartbeat. My limbs weak and trembling, at once too light and too leaden to move, from the traces that remained of the adrenaline rush that allowed me to escape, to be kneeling there, clinging to the cold rock and grasping at the remnants of my composure. Severely shaken, rudely awakened to the reality of a danger I had been warned of but had only barely begun to foresee, but not betrayed. Never betrayed. I knew already that he would be the first to fall – he alone did not see. It was in blindness that he struck, I told myself, lonely, fearful, anything but betrayed.
I suppose my memories of the remembering afterward must be stronger than those of the actual event because when it occurred, everything was happening so fast, so frantically. Like one frozen in the eye of a snake, in my cornered fear, I could not think; like a small child who has no words yet in which to record memories, my mind had no words, no reason, only its primal instinct to get away. So now, I can see more vividly the images that flashed behind my eyelids, once my panic-stricken mind slowed down enough to think (indeed, slowed to a crawl), of Boromir's angry snarl and burning, hungry eyes than I can now remember them in the attack itself. I can relive in more detail those instants when I relived with every shaky breath his desperate lunge at me, knocking me to the ground, winding me; I can feel more solidly the shadow that I felt afterward of the cold damp earth at my back and all the weight of a Man's strength crushing my chest. I could still see his eyes blazing, Boromir gone as I searched in those eyes for him, and only his greed and desperation left. I could feel phantom hands scrabbling at my throat, trying to choke me, trying to take the Ring, which is far, far worse…I could feel, crouching there, a second rush of that fear, that all-consuming fear that he wanted the Ring, which overcame my panicked paralysis and galvanized me to put it on, kick myself free, and run.
But he is not here, I tell closed eyelids; he cannot take It; I am safe. When I open my eyes, I will be crouched by the great seat on Amon Hen, the carved stone so much bigger and older than me and my fears. The Ring will be a cool weight around my finger, shielding me from all unfriendly eyes, reassuringly where it belongs –
Where it belongs? It belongs as a few drops of melted metal in a volcano. But it won't hurt to leave it on a while longer, just to keep me safe, until I know he's gone, if I can just open my eyes…
…And it seems that I have only blinked, for Faramir is still looking at me expectantly, his gaze intent, eager, anxious, earnest. I close my eyes again, and force from my mind's vision Boromir's hungry eyes, from my ears my deafening heartbeat in the deafening silence. Instead, I replay my memories of Boromir patiently teaching my young cousins how to fence; his strong, steady arm around me, supporting me, as I watched Gandalf's fall in helpless horror and grief; the raw sorrow and sympathy in his plea to Aragorn, "Give them a moment, for Pity's sake!" Still the fresher memories return: my fear, my shock, my grief for the Boromir I had known. But not betrayal. Perhaps he had betrayed the Ring-bearer; but not me.
At last I meet Faramir's kind gray eyes – so like his brother's – and reply, "Yes, I was his friend, for my part."