Author's Note: Okay, It has been a very long time since I updated. No one hate me, please? Soooooo busy with band and piano and exams... :P How I hate exams...but I'm back. Also, I think my chapters, in order to be more frequently updated, will be about half as long. Well, at least they were monstrous from the start, right? I took days on the end of the chapter, and read a lot of reference material. I think I put across sufficient emotion, so tell me if anyone cries. I'll apologize and yet also be glad that I can write somewhat well. Anywhos, enjoy! :)

(Long-Overdue) Shoutouts:

LalaithElerrina: Thanks for all of the constructive input, analysis, and insight! Helped me loads.

Marine76: I'm glad you think so!

lotrjesusfreak: Good idea! I will definitely think about using it...suspense. ;)

Kumiko Seph: Glad to see that you like it so far!

Lola: So sorry to disappoint, but I just couldn't disrupt canon...teeheehee I'm too much of a Tolkien fan for that.

Reviews are the letters put into words put into sentences put into my heart.


Chapter 8: Goodbyes

We were floating on Anduin the Great for a long while, and all the water rushing by soon became a bit of the norm. It wasn't a bad normal, everyday sight, though. The water glittered in the beaming sun, slipping and sloshing under the hulls of our elven canoes. Its powerful flow pushed us along more than the rowers of the boats. Legolas still refused me the oar.

However, something I had extreme trouble getting used to on the river were the bathroom breaks. They were few and far between, and usually it was just me who had to go. Everyone else would wait until late at night, when the sun had already dipped below the horizon, and we stopped on the west bank of the river to rest for the night. I mean, that couldn't have been good for their bladders. Or kidneys, for that matter.

The first night it had been my turn to find the food for the night's meal. I had been sent with Legolas, and from the meaningful looks Aragorn and Legolas were exchanging, it seemed to me that Aragorn had wanted us to make amends.

Often on the journey, we would either glare at each other or just bicker. Several times I had heard Gimli mutter about how I had become much like a dwarf. The irony of this was that the dwarf and elf had been getting along splendidly.

From the nonexistent conversation Legolas and I were having on the hunt, Aragorn's tactics seemed to need to be tinkered with just a little bit.

"Legolas, do you hear anything?" I asked, my elven hearing not picking up anything.

"No, Merilieth." Legolas' tone was annoyed, seeing as this was about the seventh time I had asked in about five minutes.

"If he heard something, you would too. You are no human with pathetic hearing anymore, mortal," said a voice in my head, and I huffed, annoyed. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Legolas glancing at me, his eyebrows knitted together and the corners of his mouth turned down. Oh. He thought I huffed at him.

"Sorry, Legolas. I did not huff at your harmless comment." I saw him raise an eyebrow and ended up shaking his head, probably not sure what to make of me.

Most people weren't.

The rest of the hunt, the most of what I did consisted of rolling my eyes at Merilieth who chided me for expressing my annoyance with her visibly. The eye-rolling prompted many, many, many scoldings, as was expected. Legolas did all of the hunting, carrying, and preparing for cooking, which Sam did. Well, I made puppy-dog faces at the deer before there was an arrow in its eye...that had to count for something, right? Merilieth assured me that it didn't matter, and that I was a fool for even entertaining the notion. Ahem. Sarcasm, anyone?

More lectures. Merilieth had a budding career as a college professor building up for her.


The majority of the time floating on the mighty Anduin was spent in silence. However, several times, Gimli and I had quite engaging conversations: I asked if there was anything exciting happening recently in his life, and he continually responded with a patient, "Well, there have been fish swimming upstream against these mighty waters."

I responded with an awkward humming sound of understanding, and winced at my awkwardness when the dwarf turned and could not see my facial expression. There were many of these moments.

Many.

But more often than not, the only sound were the sloshing of the oars and Legolas humming to himself.

Once, I decided to hum as well. Yes, I did hum "Into the West", sung so magnificently by Annie Lennox and composed and written by Howard Shore, Fran Walsh, and Annie Lennox herself. Yeah, I was a geek. So what?

On the high notes, my humming voice made a loud squeaky sound, and I stopped immediately, blushing, as Gimli and Legolas tried to hide their amusement. There was a strong urge coming from my tongue to stick out at them. I controlled the short muscle, but just barely.

I was lectured until nightfall by the voice in my head. It was a very enjoyable day. Not.


The next morning was passing by ever so slowly when my mind was literally blown. I heard Aragorn say, "The Argonath," and I looked up from an interesting knot in the canoe's wood.

Surely enough, the statues of Aragorn's ancestors stood high and mighty, their grim and foreboding faces forever set in stone. My jaw had dropped many times during the last several months, and dropped very low.

But never had I looked up so high, my eyes immovably attached to the sky-scraping likenesses of Anarion and Isildur, Elendil's sons and heirs. Their threatening and warning postures set a chill to my spine, and I wondered at the might of Gondor. Their outstretched hands towered far over us, and when our boat passed under one hand, the purpose of the statues was fulfilled: I was intimidated.

We passed by all too quickly, and I wished I had the ability to take out my Blackberry and snap some pictures, if it would not freak out my companions.

But then I decided; whatever. I was in the back anyway. I took my phone out subtly, and was able to get some magnificent angles of their faces and sheer size.

And then the moment I had been waiting years, it seemed, for: after many days on Anduin the Great, we finally stopped on the banks of the lake Nen Hithoel, for more than just sleep, and came to set up camp some ways into the forest that rested on the very shore and stretched far away from the path of the winding water.

You know, I never got over how many trees there were in Middle-Earth. It was like all of the trees we cut down in Earth got planted here, and voila! you have woods. I liked the change, though. I wondered if there was a rainforest in Middle-Earth that Tolkien never mentioned. From my hypothesis, it would be rather large. Amazonian, even. I would have to ask Aragorn someday.

Speaking of our leader, he started to voice our route. "We cross the lake at nightfall, hide the boats and continue on foot. We approach Mordor from the north." I fought the urge to sigh at how much Aragorn's plans would go amiss in only less than a day.

"Oh yes, just a simple matter of finding our way through Emyn Muil, an impassable labyrinth of razor-sharp rocks. And after that it gets even better," Gimli began, and his sarcastic voice brough no humor to his grim words, "a festering, stinking marshland, far as the eye can see."

Aragorn looked at Gimli and replied with his usual unshaken tone, "That is our road. I suggest you take some rest and recover your strength, Master Dwarf."

This set the Dwarf off to muttering, and set me off to held back giggling. Legolas, who stood nearby, gave me an amused glance I caught out of the corner of my eye, and went to speak to Aragorn.

As I sat, the majesty of where I was caught up with me. I was lost in thought and thinking of how I sat in Parth Galen when the name brought me back to the present.

"Where's Frodo?" Merry asked, and ice gripped at my stomach. My lungs constricted, and I cursed at myself for allowing my mind to be distracted. Frodo had left the clearing.

Boromir was not there either. No, he had been gone for a while, like Frodo. Only neither's absence was noticed until it was too late.

Everyone bolted off, in search of the two, a nasty foreboding on their minds. I, however, split from the rest of the Company: I had no urge to fight a band of Uruk-Hai, no urge to go in a futile search for Frodo. I had made up my mind to try and save Boromir, so he could live, and stay with us. I thought of the image in Galadriel's mirror, paused, and carried on. I would take the consequences.

Only, I could not find the place of his final stand. I ran around the woods, breathless, lost, pushing low branches, bushes and obstacles out of my way. My frantic mind tried to slowly analyze anything for familiarity: was this the tree he died against? was this the clearing he made an effort to save Merry and Pippin in.

I ran into Sam.

"Oh, sorry Miss-"

I cut him off and said hurriedly, "Boats. Frodo's there. Go." The hobbit barely gave himself time to look up and smile and nod at me before he ran off.

The Horn of Gondor blew, and I turned my head sharply, pulling a muscle in my neck, and raced towards the faint and distant sound, dismayed that I was so far off. It was too late. I would not be able to save him, but only stand by and watch as Aragorn held his dying form in his arms.

I bolted into an orc-strewn clearing and halted suddenly, seeing the object of my search as I had imagined him. Two men, one holding the other, both on the ground.

Boromir whispered to Aragorn, a hopeless look in his eyes, knowing that this was the end, and his sad eyes brought me back to Gandalf's fall. I could hear screams from then shattering the thick grief of the forest air, Frodo's anguished voice crying out for his long time friend. My head rang with loud and pronounced despair.

He went on, whispering about Frodo, and how he tried to take the Ring, but in both Aragorn's and my eyes, he had redeemed himself with trying to protect Merry and Pippin, like he always did...had always done.

Arrows pierced his chest, becoming visible as I walked up to the two Men of Gondor and knelt besides them, falling to my knees, a dull pain going through my body. Boromir looked over to me, and he whispered softly, fading away, "Will the hobbits be all right?"

I looked pointedly at Aragorn, who closed his eyes briefly, and I nodded to the man, a pent-up flood inside of my tear ducts starting to leak. Oh, why did this always happen? Aragorn then continued trying to persuade Boromir that Gondor would not fall...all noise in the background to me as Boromir's shaking and gasping form lay dying.

I had become so close to this man of Gondor, this man of valor and honor. This man who had been bent by the Ring, but not broken. This man who never lost his standing in my eyes, from when he welcomed me into the Fellowship with more or less open arms, to when he started to feel the terrible presence of the Ring.

And then, his last, loyal words.

"I would have followed you, my brother...my captain...my king." His last breaths, wavering, shuddering, futile. His hand grasping to hold his sword once more. His eyes, glazed over, as his head fell back and his weak body fell limp on the forest floor, lined with dead leaves rustling in the wind, as if Boromir's ghost had come, haunting all of our memories of him.

And his true bravery would only be viewed by two little hobbits he had died shielding, being carried away to death and torture. I sat there in front of Boromir as Aragorn stood shakily, his still-warm, still-bleeding body a mockery of how we failed to find him on time. I could not wrench my flooding eyes from his finally smooth and unworried face.


Author's Note: Disclaimer: This is a FanFiction from the Lord of the Rings world, created and trademarked by J.R.R. Tolkien. The characters, settings, and anything created by J.R.R. Tolkien are not my own and I do not claim ownership to any of them. This is a FanFiction I made with nothing to do with J.R.R. Tolkien, and is for entertainment purposes only: I am not profiting financially from this work, which may or may not be canonical. Thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien for making the world of The Lord of the Rings, for without it, many people would be un-enlightened to the genius of Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien and the following FanFiction would never have been made, and I would have no life. Credits from most dialogue and setting to Peter Jackson, one of the best directors ever.