AN: It's been a while, hasn't it? With everything happening, it feels like it's been closer to 84 years than a couple months. But here's a little something for you. I hope it lives up to standards.
Chapter 21: Potential
Just saying, the Rohirrim know how to party. There were songs of ancient heroism and choreographed dances and all that, but I also collected a tidy sum from arm wrestling and watched Eomer do a comical jig on the dais. By the end of the night they even got a kick out of the Time Warp instead of being horrified at all the pelvic thrusting.
Thankfully King Theoden had retired before we got to the macarena.
Even better, the easily offended left before everyone (very traditionally) harassed the newlyweds the whole way to their bedroom. The sheer variety of penis jokes was astounding. Even Eowyn got into teasing her cousin about expectations and babies.
Then the rest of us went back to the hall and continued to party until a time I liked to call fuck-o'clock in the morning when not even the most hardcore of us could keep our eyes open.
Morning came horrifically early, but without much pounding in the head. Unlike poor Boromir, who hadn't thought to drink much water.
Most everyone was nursing at least a slight hangover over breakfast and the hall was quieter than I'd ever heard it. By the time I got there I realized that I didn't have a hangover because I was still drunk, and took advantage to sober up the easy way. I loaded up my plate with potatoes, custard crepes, and hard boiled eggs that made Boromir turn a little green.
Unfortunately for them the tournament was set to start directly after breakfast and frankly, some of us were a sorry sight. Madhav had never been a very heavy drinker and his pounding head meant that Aunt Libby eviscerated him. Most movements were clearly automatic while the competitors recovered from the previous night.
It was an easy win for me. I was a little more flexible than usual and my head was still a bit fuzzy, but that was nothing compared to the blinding headache my opponent dealt with. That I kept him facing the sun didn't help him at all.
The following round everyone was a bit more revived and things got interesting again. Watching Boromir wear Aunt Libby out made me feel for her, but I also appreciated her concerted efforts to take his shield away. No one was surprised when Boromir won. Least of all Aunt Libby, who gratefully retired to a bath afterward with a complaint of, "Not as young as I used to be."
Lunch I spent with Godiva that day. She knitted and I played patty-cake or other little games with the kids while we gossiped, a calm oasis in the middle of the biggest party in decades. She had watched with entertained, sober eyes since Rohirric women rarely drink during pregnancy, and had quite a few stories that I hadn't noticed unfolding.
There were no big upsets during the final two matches of the day, with everyone I knew continuing. It only made the stakes higher for those remaining; who would we have to face next?
In the evening there was more partying, people being handed drinks as soon as they walked into the Golden Hall after sunset, but there was a business undertone for several of us. It was the most convenient time to get together so Stevie, Anahera, Mackey, and I got together with the blacksmith, leather worker, and carpenter in a back corner. The tradespeople looked a bit overwhelmed but curious as we explained what exactly we wanted and needed: a fake hand that Stevie could adjust the fingers on.
Basic designs were drawn up and we agreed after the third drink to put it away for another day, but they thought the project was viable and that was the important part. Also it allowed us to not get involved with the chicken dance, no matter how hilarious I found Stithulf and Frelaf.
Again several people couldn't quite get home and slept in the main hall, while this time I got to half-carry Boromir into our room. He kept on apologizing quietly and looking ashamed of himself when I glanced over to make sure he was still awake. It was almost cute.
"You're fine," I told him nostalgically, "You didn't get in a quarter of the trouble my group used to." Sometimes we'd toss somebody else out on their head for being a creep, sometimes we'd wake up in the drunk tank being told we wrecked an entire bar. But this was tame.
I almost missed the brig.
"You're still such a mystery," Boromir mumbled while I opened the door, "Who are you, really, and what were you before? What did you do and what did you think?"
His drunken rambling made me smile. "Here's looking at you, kid," I muttered.
"What?" he questioned, squinting down at me.
"Just a tired old line from one of the greatest stories I've ever heard," I answered without answering and left him leaning on a bed post.
Thankfully Boromir was able to deal with his own clothing and on the other side of the bed, so did I.
We tumbled into bed about the same time and I absently scratched Gander with a hand hanging over the edge before I got comfortable.
I couldn't really see Boromir, but I could feel him looking at me. His hand fumbled on my arm before he found my hand and held it. "I don't know how to understand you," he admitted, "You're stubborn and insulting and irreverent, but when I feel I see the real you, you're skittish and unsure and tender."
Bless the darkness hiding my expression. "I don't understand me either. Where does the mask end and the person begin?" I turned over his hand and with my free hand began tracing his knuckles.
"I don't quite get you either," I admitted, "How do you keep going, under all that pressure, and having to seem perfect while you do it?" It was another reason I went into the Marines: we're the best of the regular forces, but when not on display we've got a well deserved reputation for being shady animals.
A movement that felt like a shrug. "It's what I've always done," Boromir murmured, "Always what the people want, always at war, always under the Shadow." Again with that spoken capital letter.
"What's this shadow and fear that everyone is always under? What's so terrible about Mordor that they're even afraid here?" I whispered.
There was a heavy, ponderous pause. "To not know the threat of Mordor, you must be from farther away than I knew existed," Boromir said wistfully, "To grow up away from that…"
No, we had to worry about destroying the planet ourselves.
"Mordor is a poisonous place, populated only by orcs and beings of unspeakable evil, that bring terror with their mere presence," Boromir started, voice that of a storyteller and an observer at once, "And the Eye of Sauron is always watching, never sleeping, atop its tower…"
The more he spoke, the more it sounded like the ultimate dead zone. The idea of that much power existing in a literal sense was hard for me to wrap my head around, and the absence of such seemed to confuse Boromir just as much. My questions about Sauron then triggered a very short and abridged story about the Last Alliance and the Ring of Power, like he was afraid that speaking of such things would summon them. Only then did I have a real idea of what was going on in this world.
Ridiculously, I snorted out a laugh.
"I assure you, this is very serious," Boromir said, affronted.
I patted his shoulder several times. "No, it's not that," I assured him, "I've seen orcs and hobbits and such, why not a giant flaming eyeball? I was thinking that other countries near mine probably view America like you look at Mordor: poisonous, aggressive, downright evil." Again I stifled a laugh.
"Then why did you fight for such a country?" Ouch, talk about asking the hard questions.
Uncomfortably I shrugged. "Tradition, expectation, and it was the only good option that didn't mean taking on unspeakable amounts of debt," I listed off, "The pay wasn't good, but I could live on it, which in itself was getting rare." Then I added, "It's part of why I became a medic: I fixed people up instead of killing them. Generally."
"Ah. That fits," Boromir murmured.
"What would you do if you weren't constantly at war?" I blurted out for no particular reason.
A thoughtful hum. "I don't know. I've never really considered anything else," he confessed, "I suppose I would still be in the army, but… not losing so much. Not so tired."
My heart ached that he knew such a thing too. "My sisters and I were fighting the same war as Aunt Libby in the Middle East. Nineteen years isn't long in comparison to your thousands of years, but it felt ridiculous to us. I've sort of dreamed of what a peace-time military would look like," I said sympathetically.
"And yet I doubt we will ever see such a thing," Boromir whispered like some horrible secret.
I scooted closer to throw an arm over him. "Maybe. But we'll just have to keep going until someday, we win, and even if we don't get to see that peace, maybe the next generation will," I replied. His hair tickled my nose and I willed myself to not sneeze.
A nervous intake of breath. "About that… What will we do if there is a child?" he questioned.
The mere idea made me freeze. Then I remembered that it was impossible and relaxed. "There won't be," I assured him, "I had a thing done back at home to temporarily stop that, it'll last about three more years." I made a mental note to bring that up to my sisters.
For some reason the important part seemed to be, "To take such precautions, is there someone you left behind?"
The question blindsided me. "Not in that way, no. But who knew what could happen? Especially if I was captured?" The mere idea was sickening and I diverted before the thought could stick.
"Plus I liked the option of being prepared in case I did meet someone who was worth it," I added much more happily, "I'm glad. This doesn't need to be more complicated than it already is."
We shared a chuckle.
In that moment, I knew there was potential for us.
It was late and we were tired, and we'd both had more to drink than we should've (again) but I made an executive decision: I was going to be the adult that I claim so often to be. I was going to apologize to that fucking dick up in Minas Tirith and hopefully next year move to Gondor.
We were going to make this work.
Morning was again quiet, and those of us left in the competition had the luck for it all to be held after lunch. For me, that meant going back to bed for a couple hours after breakfast.
Only reluctantly did I let Boromir wake me up again; it felt so nice where I was that I gave him the evil eye until he was satisfied that I wasn't going back to sleep. I yawned while I braided my hair and at lunch slowly returned to life.
"How are you feeling? Ready?" Cressie asked expectantly as she handed over the butter.
I winked at her. "I'm always ready," I declared.
"We'll be rooting for you," Cressie told me with remarkable sincerity, despite that I knew she had just changed her mind this morning about watching us 'poison ourselves with testosterone'.
"We?" I questioned.
She blinked at me and waved a hand vaguely up the table. "We, us, the collective family," she listed off. "Are you feeling okay?"
Nope, not going there. "I guess still sleepy from my nap," I excused myself, "Time to go have a warm up." I scraped the last of lunch off my plate and with a little bow at the head of the table excused myself.
Surely everybody expected me to practice with my halberd or Electra's sword, but I had a different plan. An old tradition to keep up now that I had some privacy. The latest song to get stuck in my head came belting out of my mouth and I danced around the room like a lunatic.
"Suck my dii-ick, twenty- twenty!" As per Little Big, I repeated the chorus several times and took extreme joy in it
I mumbled my way through the other lyrics which I couldn't quite remember, before I resumed singing about the Year of our Lord 2020 sucking it.
"Suck my di-i-i-ick, twenty-"
"What in arda are you doing?" Boromir's voice stopped me in the middle of waving my arms around over my head and swinging my hips around wildly, dancing like no one could see.
I smiled cheesily at him. "Dancing? Singing?" I offered.
"Very rarely have I heard a song like that," Boromir chuckled, "And never out of a lady." At least he closed the door behind him.
"Good thing I'm not a lady, right?" I teased and let my arms drop. Instead I started on more standard stretches.
"But you are," Boromir corrected, once again making me stop in my tracks to stare at him. "Have you forgotten that as nobility, any wife of mine would be a lady?" He paced slowly, casually to my side of the room.
I made a face. "I never thought about it," I admitted. Now that he was closer, I used him for balance when I pulled each of my legs up behind me in turn.
"You never expected such a thing," Boromir said knowingly, "I take it you were a commoner in your country?" He squeezed my hand before I moved it.
"We didn't have a king or nobility in America, just a system of rich people lying to poor people to get elected to office and help their friends get richer," I scoffed, "It was getting better when we left, but it was still a pain in our collective asses."
Several paces away now, Boromir started on his own drills. But he was using his sword, so graceful that it looked like a natural extension of his arm.
"No king? Or steward? No central leader?" Boromir questioned, frowning.
I then tried to explain the presidency and congress and courts, checks and balances. "There have been so many truly terrible kings that everyone seems to have decided that we're not putting up with one person with unlimited power anymore," I added at the end, speaking to my knees in a forward bend. Just another inch and my whole hands would be on the ground, I thought and pulled myself in tighter.
"A king so bad that an entire system of government stops being used?" Boromir questioned incredulously., "In Gondor we've had kings who were overfond of luxury, who were greedy, but never so bad as to question the kingship itself." Wistfully he added, "Faramir still believes that there will be a king on the throne again in Gondor. I sometimes envy his faith."
Once I could properly breathe again, circling my shoulders, I asked, "What's with that? Why don't you have a king when y'all want one so badly? I'm sure your dad would love to take up that helm." When Boromir couldn't see, I sneered at that thought. The second Denethor became king, I'd clear off back to Tharbad.
Briefly Boromir explained about the royal line and Isildur's Heir. "Any claimant not from that line would be seen as a usurper and rejected. But we do not know if anyone even survives from that line, in the north or elsewhere," he said as he sheathed his sword, "It would be difficult for a claim to be pressed after so many centuries. Faramir told me an odd little riddle saying that the hands of the king are the hands of a healer and so the true king shall be known."
I scoffed as I finished my stretches to tuck some loose hair behind my ears. "Good luck with that one, mate." Hell, Strider could be king with that kind of criteria.
"We do what we can, with what we can," he replied simply.
There was an irritating cadence of double-handed knocking on the door. "Get your clothes back on, the tournament starts in a few minutes!" Electra called through the wood.
I smacked my forehead.
Boromir had the bright idea of opening the door.
My youngest sister looked at him, then me, impressed.
"Just 'cause you're a horndog doesn't mean we always are," I told her.
She stuck her tongue out, then smiled and left.
"You're such a strange family," Boromir stated, shaking his head at the empty space Electra previously occupied.
It sounded almost like a compliment. "If Anahera sticks her tongue out at you though, run," I advised, "It means she's pissed and down for a fight."
We grabbed our weapons and headed down the hall, toward the sound of an assembled crowd.
"Does it mean something different for her?" Boromir guessed.
"For her culture it's an insult. It means that they're going to kill you, eat you, and turn you into human feces," I told him blandly, patted his shoulder, and left to find Electra. I needed to borrow her sword again.
The first match was Boromir versus Eomer, a real spectacle. Both were tall, strong, and well-trained men, the cream of their crops, and they showed it. Eomer used his shield as a weapon as well as defense, which intrigued me, while Boromir's own shield was mostly too large to use offensively. It gave Eomer an advantage in my book, but his impatience and relative lack of experience got the better of him. Boromir came out on top, hauling his friend and competitor up with a grin once all was done.
Theodred of course advanced, and whispers got ever fiercer when Anahera survived her own match against Hama.
My own match was sadly very short. Apparently the man in question had fallen and hit his head last night, leaving him a bit addled in the morning. With as little additional trauma to his head as possible I disposed of his weapon.
Right afterward Mackey and I hurried him off for the few tests we could do without real medical equipment. Several times his eyes slid in and out of focus and when we told him to follow the hair pin with his eyes only, they wandered before he got them under control. We diagnosed him with a serious concussion and ordered that he get some rest; no more sword fighting for at least a week.
I hate to say it, but I may not have won the match if he wasn't already incapacitated. As irritated as I was at him for aggravating an injury (the medic in me), I was quietly grateful.
While Mackey and I were complaining about men being stupid, Andy noticed a lingering figure in the doorway. "Hi, is there anything you need?" she asked brightly.
"Theoden King requests Miss Cass's presence," Rohesia said, eyes going from the new princess to her twin and then me. At me she smiled shyly.
"I'll be right there. Thanks, Rohesia," I told her.
With a nod of acknowledgement she left to her duties.
Andy quirked a brow. "On first name basis with the staff, huh?" she asked, eyebrow raised in a question that I normally would have answered with a playful waggle of my own.
But this was Rohesia, who I knew best as Nan, and that was just wrong. "Think about who else has that name and is from here," I told her, "Gotta go see what your father in law needs."
In the main hall Boromir, Anahera, and Theodred were gathered by the throne with King Theoden and that slimy worm of a man, Grima. At my appearance, they got to business. "Lord Boromir has requested that the brackets be changed so that he need not battle his wife. Is that acceptable to you all?" King Theoden asked expectantly.
"It would likely be a better show," Theodred mused.
Considering how much more experience he and Boromir had than Anahera and I, he was right. I just couldn't help needling. "I don't mind either way. But does my husband not want to damage what's left of my pretty face? How sweet," I cooed with a toothy grin at Boromir.
He gave me a flat look. "It would be inappropriate for us to face each other in such a way," he replied diplomatically.
I shrugged. "It's all good," I answered, "I'll take on big bad Anahera for you."
She snickered.
"Then it is in agreement. The brackets will be changed," King Theoden decided.
The whispers were incredible when my black dog in the board was switched with Boromir's swan.
The proper explanation was given, and then it was my turn up. I swaggered into the ring, halberd in hand, and bowed gallantly.
"I'm glad you're at least taking me seriously," Anahera stated, eyeing my halberd.
"Stevie told me about the Panama Incident," I replied meaningfully.
Her smile went a little cold. A little blood-thirsty. Maybe it wasn't such a good thing to remind her of that right before we were supposed to fight.
King Theoden began the countdown.
We got into stable positions.
"Begin."
Anahera fought much like Eomer with a sword and small dual purpose shield, except that she had much more patience. Cunning. But lord was she fierce too.
Alarmingly, for the first time I had to use meatier bits of me to shield the squishy parts from her shield while my halberd dealt with her sword. It left me sore and in pain, which definitely helped her. Ten minutes in, I was having a hard time moving my left arm without shooting pains.
Even worse, with a horrible crack, her shield splintered the staff of my halberd. Shit. Looking up into her dark eyes, we both knew she would win. The only variable was how many cuts and bruises she got.
Without thinking I kept hold of the bottom half of my staff and used it to spin the sword out of her hand.
At almost the same time I heard a horrible crack somewhere close to my ear and wondered if someone had set off a firecracker. But those don't exist here yet, do they? Only after a split second of amused thought did the pain arrive.
I fell into Anahera, the world spinning and ready to get sick from how much my head hurt. "That was such a bitch move," I slurred.
"Don't be a baby, I didn't hit you that hard," she said bracingly. With a little leverage she dropped her shield and instead hauled my arm over her shoulder.
My steps stumbled and I wasn't quite sure which way was up. Everything was too bright and loud.
"Cass, are you alright?" Boromir asked, his face swimming in front of me. His hand on my cheek was a shock; how did it get there?
"Concussion I think," I mumbled, "She won. Let me sleep."
I yelped and had to swallow back breakfast when I was scooped up into Boromir's arms. It's been years since I got motion sick but I very much felt it while he carried me off.
My thoughts drifted and sometimes I wasn't sure whether I was conscious or not. It was like we got from the outdoors to the main hall to our room within seconds of each other. Somewhere we gained Andy, Mackey, Aditi, and Rohesia.
One of those times I was aware of consciousness was when Aditi held up a candle in front of my eyes to test how they did or didn't dilate, the closest thing available to a flashlight. It was too damn bright and I turned my head away, eyes clenched shut.
"Cass, are you awake now?" Mackey asked calmly.
"Fuck off," I mumbled.
"How are you feeling?" she continued.
I scowled and carefully pried my eyes partially open again. "Like being sick all over you," I grumbled. Even I knew my words were still slurred, somewhat difficult to understand.
Without losing her composure (she'd had quite some stories as a pararescue) Mackey continued down the list of symptoms, which I groaned and bitched at. "That was a pretty savage knock on the head. Definitely a concussion but I don't think there's any real damage. We'll need time to see that," Mackey decided after a little pow-wow in the corner.
"Rest. You did well," Adidi added. She covered me up with a nice heavy blanket and patted my shin before she left.
"Sleep, we'll wake you up for lunch," Mackey promised.
Similarly, Andy added, "You were seriously impressive. You deserve a good nap."
Then it was only Rohesia left. I smiled loopily when she began to mother-hen me, making sure I drank and my pillows were properly fluffed. "You're gonna be such a good mum one day," I told her.
"One day, I hope so," she replied, "I will be back in an hour to see if you're still comfortable."
I expected that I would be alone after that, but footsteps made me freeze. I recognized those footsteps- who was here? My vision was still a little fuzzy, but Boromir stood out everywhere.
"Oh. Hi," I mumbled. How awkward, to see him directly after I got my ass kicked.
He knelt beside the bed and touched my cheek. "Do you think you'll be alright while I see to my match with Theodred?" he asked. For a few seconds of focus, I saw him eyling the side of my head where I got hit.
"It'll take a lot more than this to take me out," I declared, "Go get him, tiger."
Boromir smiled and I think this was the first time he's ever kissed me in the daylight. It was short and sweet, comfort and reassurance.
"I'll be back afterward," he promised.
When he left, I turned carefully over and fell dead asleep.