Author's Note: I've been so eager, but careless. Also on the search for a beta; any recommendations?
Many thanks to Certh, who has provided thorough feedback.

Disclaimer: This is for entertainment, not profit. I'm just playing in Tolkien's sandbox.

Warnings: AU. Boromir/OC.

The Captain's Wife

I stand on a ledge of black stone, sharp beneath bare feet. Tears roll down my face; I try to wipe them away, but my arms are too heavy to lift.

A flame springs up, circling the ledge so that in any direction I turn, I encounter blistering heat. Sinister words emanate from beyond the ring.

"I can give you what you seek…."

I see a caricature of myself, standing happily beside my lord husband. We are wearing winged crowns, his of pure silver steel – like unto a sword – and mine a glowing white – mithril. We are radiant, in love. My counterpart leans over and I see this Boromir's face turn down, into her breast.

I struggle within the invisible bond. My arms loosen, and I attempt to break through the flame.

My counterpart looks up, and I see her teeth are dripping with a foul, viscous thread. The crowned Boromir is now suckling greedily, the same substance dripping onto his armor. The image is seductive and grotesque, all at once.

I try again to break free. Flames shoot ten-fold into an undulating, crimson sky. I only have a foot's-width of space in each direction.

I have no way out. I am forced around, and around, until I am dizzy with the effort. I breathe deeply and attempt to blow out the tendrils creeping up my legs. They only grow stronger.

The flames close upon my throat and I choke.

"Wake, wake!" A gull's grey head enters my vision.

"Careful! She's learned more from her lord than love-making!" Another gull, to the left of her.

My hands are being held tightly, and I blink to clear the hellish dream; a new variation on the ones I told the others last night. A firm grasp bids me still until I can fully take in my environs – and my safety. My disorientation wears off gradually, and through the window I can see another cloudy day dawning.

Dol Amroth. The Sunset Shell chambers. Wendlywn whose body is taut with concern and cheekiness. She holds a tray of what must be my breakfast.

It is Elenaor whose warm fingers I have to pry from mine. "I am awakened," I say blearily, wiping my eyes free of sleep dust. Evidence of Namo's visit, my mother used to tell me.

She steps back, wary. "Some dream, miss. You nearly hit me and Wendy." There is affection for her sister-maid in tone and glance.

I apologize. "I was…dreaming badly."

'Wendy' snorts. "If that's dreamin' badly, I'd hate to see what a nightmare is!" She settles the tray on my lap, gently, like she might an invalid. I hoist myself up, catching the tray as it wobbles.

"No family breakfast?" I ask, looking the food over. Fruit, and tea, and toast. There is also a small piece of cold meat, and four cracker-like pieces. Elenaor straightens the rumpled bedcovers, and I have to muffle an inadvertent giggle as she accidentally passes over my feet.

"It's half-past when the meal begun," she answers. "You slept long and hard until that awful dream. The Lord Imrahil thought you might prefer some time to," she pats the bed, "yourself."

Considerate, but also lonely. The Princess might be a friend to me, and perhaps Lord Elphir. Erchirion is too…impudent, for my taste.

A few minutes later, I change my mind; lonely, certainly, but I am spared any embarrassment from ruining either my own dress or someone else's. The meat turned my stomach terribly and I dart for the water-closet where the chamber pot is waiting. Bile and freshly-chewed meat claw their way out. I heave and heave, until I all am doing is trying to breathe clean air.

I sit back, drying my cheeks of sweat and the noxious bile. I would heave again but for nothing being left to bring up. If my lord were here, he would be holding my hair, possibly with some jest at not being able to have any meal with me without my dashing away from him. "I must be an orc, for you to run away so often!"

He would do the kindly thing and help me clean up the mess, hand me off to my maid with no small instruction, and we would part on amicable terms. He would tend to his soldiers, and I to their requests. It was an unusual arrangement, one the Lord Steward was not quite acceptable of, but did not refuse his Heir when he cited his brother's absence and his inability to cover what had been lord Faramir's perview within City walls.

I shudder at the thought of seeing the Steward's brown eyes glittering in disdain. How he handled his late wife laden with child, I cannot fathom.

My heart quails within me, both with longing and with fear. Have I been a fool to leave Minas Tirith?

Wendy – the pet-name stuck, and absolutely suits her charming impertinence – wipes my face with care, with a white handkerchief as spotless as her overlay. When I am able to stand, albeit with one last shudder, she leads me back to the bed to regain my bearings. In her other hand is the same chamber-pot, which she sets on the floor by my feet.

"Just in case," she winks, and turns to the chest to pull my outfit for the day.

"Lady Amariel!"

A light, feminine voice calls my name. I am standing in the corridor outside the rooms given me, more than a little lost. The sconces are no longer burning, but I am no less confused in the daytime. Each of the stone walls seem the same, each arch of a doorway – some with doors, some simply an arch – identical to the one before it. I have been pacing for many minutes, attempting to discern differences in the walls, to no avail.

"Amariel!" I turn over my shoulder and discover the Princess running to me. "There you are, you sleepy clam! Father said not to wake you, but it seems you've done that yourself." She is not out of breath, I note, and her face is just as prone to smiling as it was last night. Her day dress is identical to mine, save its green to my dark blue, and I recall the maids telling me it was of her wardrobe they dressed me.

I like her, I decide, attempting my own smile.

"I had a dream, Princess," I say. "I can relate it later, for it seems you have news?"

"I do," she says, bouncing slightly on her toes. Whatsoever it might be, she finds it exciting, not at all dreadful as I have deemed my particular situation.

Something of my fears must show, for she takes my arm and squeezes it. "I know you are afraid, but truly, we think we have found a way through, in part. Come! Father is waiting."

As she guides me through to presumably what will be her Father's study – all men of office, I have found, seem to have a particular room with which to do work, as women tend to have solars or sewing rooms – she points out helpful markings. The shells that are everywhere are not just for decoration: there is a certain kind of code to the way they are arranged.

Doors that have one or two shells are for public use, she explains. They are accompanied by a demarcation for the room's use: the blacksmith a hammer, the armor-mastor a mailplate, and so on. Public water-closets, she adds with a smirk, have two lines representing the ocean next to the shell.

Rooms with three shells are for guests and those who come with them. So as I am Lord Boromir's wife, I was given a suite. Had I a lady-in-waiting with me, she would be in an adjoining chamber.

A twinge of guilt runs up my back. My ladies-in-waiting….all four of them will be expected to know where I have gone. The Steward will question them until he gets an answer. Gentle ladies, they are, prone to sensitivity, in particular Lady Mardil, who blushes at anyone's glance.

As my lord husband was responsible for his soldiers, I had claimed responsibility for these women personally. They were women of the Court, selected to help assist me to help navigate the gossip, the politicking, and to help fend off would-be seducers of my Captain.

Lady Mardil is the youngest, at sixteen. Her father knows mine well, as they were childhood friends. Lady Airemana, engaged to one of the archer-guards of the Lower Circles – she is the one most sympathetic to my missing Boromir during his absences; her marriage was arranged so that her younger sister could marry whom she pleased. She knew the meaning of sacrifice.

Lona is a widow, grieving a husband lost at Osgiliath. She lost her title with her husband – but her practicality is such I kept her with me. She it was suggested that I go to the Houses for employment of my time.

And finally, Lady Herenya. Her family, aside from the Steward's, is the wealthiest in the City. Also, the largest – her four brothers all have children, and her two younger sisters debuted at Court just last year. Her father and his three brothers were responsible for the finding of a mine some years ago. She carries herself with airs that by most standards are deserved.

For my part, she is the best resource for talk within the Court.

Of the four, she will be the strongest, well-used to sparring in word and body language. I hope the other three will follow her example.

Princess Lothiriel knocks, jarring me from my guilt. Her hand is upon a wooden door, the color of the sand in the harbor.

"Enter," says the Prince from within. She pushes in, and we are welcomed into a spacious study (I was correct). It, like every room here, has a spectacular view of the harbor. Large ships set upon the water and I can see the unfurling of sails.

The princess, too, notes their appearance. "To war with the Corsairs?" she asks.

Her father nods. "We are sparing every-one we can. The Lord Steward, " he says, with an additional nod at me, "will get our foot-soldiers, but our sailors must guard the coastline. We can ill afford to lose much more land to the Shadow."

"The Shadow is here, too?" I am surprised. The people, myself included, have long regarded Dol Amroth as a final safe-haven should the War end badly. "But there are so many here! I was with at least a hundred who sought your realm."

"It is in the waters," Princess Lothiriel explains. "Our sea-creatures are dying, of an illness we cannot stop. The Corsairs bring it with them, and plunder freely when the coastal villages starve."

"We are only just containing it from our main seat," she continues, glancing at her Father. "Father has had to order even my brothers to sail."

"I thought the Princes were obliged to serve?" It is thus within the Steward's line; every son has been a soldier.

"They are, yes," she agrees, "but when our own borders are overrun with burning and disease, we have to tend to them first."

I sink into a chair that, by its flatness, is well used to being sunk into.

The War is on a larger scale than I could imagine. Despite many hours with my lord Boromir, I was not familiar with the coast and what they might be- are battling. The Steward was the tip of the spear, I saw suddenly – the rest of his props the length of it.

"And yet you seek to aid me?" My voice is as small as I feel.

I am not a simpleton. Lord Boromir would not have agreed to marry me if my only quality lay within my breasts or between my legs – those, I knew, he could find either at Court or in the brothels. But even he argued that I stay within the domestic sphere, my only exploration outside it assisting him in his study. And that was because he knew my father trained me to read, write, and do business.

There was a reason my father paired me with him, I realize dimly. I could do the paperwork, while he spent his time with his first love: fighting the War. I am a tool, much like a sword or a knife, or a well-aimed bow.

Generosity of its own accord is new to me, then. That the Lords and Lady would genuinely try to find a way through the murk, well, I did not imagine it actually happening. An edict at their Court, perhaps. Or maybe I could have disguised myself as someone else, like my failed attempt getting beyond the check at the harbor's edge, a snide voice whispers.

I try to ignore it.

"Of course we would," says Lothiriel. "Think you not we would try to help our married cousin? After all, Faramir said that you might need it."

-to be continued-