Disclaimer: Nope, not mine today either. Haldir, Legolas and co still
welcome to come round any time...In fact we're having a small cocktail
party tonight (just 60 Elves or so. Thanks to my best mate Toni for the
idea, and gold-leafing the invitations. Heheh).
Thanks to my loyal reviewers...
Captain-Emily, prepare for even sorrierness, which I know isn't a word, but Boromir gets to mangle 'corporealism', so I get to mangle 'sorrierness'!! ^_^
Speaking of our favourite dead person, Alynna Lis Eachann, chapter four will be a wee bit more Boromir-orientated...I think (hope) you might like it. Try and live through chapter 3 first, because I had this almost written when I got your review and it sort of wouldn't change. Chapter four is in the works...hope to have it up pretty soon...well, soon-ish...well, this year...
Sakura Kuonji, thanks so much for your short but effective comment *grins* I most certainly do intend to continue, assuming schoolwork levels permit!!
Emerald Griffin, I'm glad you like it ^_^ Yes, I've said it before and I'll say it again - I intend to continue, whether school will let me is another matter!! I shall have to organise my time so I make SURE I get to continue it.
And at this point, Zophi (a.k.a. moi) realises she has (I have) a LOT of History homework to do for...well, ASAP, actually, seeing as how it's already late and all...and panics and logs off to do History till it's coming out of her (my) cute little pointed Elf-ears... -.-*
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3: Day One, Thursday; Sightseeing Part I
"Boromir," Aragorn hissed. "Boromir! Where are you?"
There was a small popping noise and the ghostly form appeared, hovering as usual in mid-air. "You called, Estel?"
"Don't call me that," Aragorn said firmly. "Yes, I did. I need information."
It was nine am on the Thursday morning: the first real, full day of their holiday, and Aragorn was taking control because Legolas - still recovering from last night's 'discoveries' - had disappeared into the bathroom for a comforting warm bath, with plenty of bubbles, and a nice hair-wash (not using Herbal Essences, as it happened. Tea-tree shampoo and matching conditioner was the current trend), and Gandalf was busy doing 'important Maiar things' in Room 23.
"Information, huh?" Boromir drawled. "I don't know...it'll cost you..."
"It damn well won't," Aragorn said. He was getting pissed off already, and it was only 9am... Taking a few deep breaths to calm down, he continued with some measure of sanity: "All I need to know is who took the London bus timetable Legolas had the presence of mind to pick up from King's Cross station, and where it is now. Please."
"Bus timetable huh?" Boromir said. "Hmmm...and why might I know?"
"Because you're a bloody well ghost," Aragorn said. "You don't sleep, you don't go out and pick up strange men to traumatise you, I have a sneaking suspicion you spend your death spying on us while we're asleep, and you're a darn sight more difficult to kill than any of these other twits I have to live with!"
"I rather liked the last point," Boromir said, plopping translucently down on Aragorn's unmade bed, and sinking straight through it. "All right, all right...Pippin filched the timetable out of Legolas' pocket when he was complaining about the E-numbers in a McDonald's hamburger. Okay?"
"Right. Thank you."
"Why were you so certain that someone'd taken it?"
Aragorn didn't deign to respond to that, thinking that with the Hobbits around it was obvious why he'd been certain someone'd taken it. Instead, he shot Boromir a grateful glance and headed out of the door, striding purposefully towards room 24...
**
Four arguments, a lot of spilled shampoo ("ARGH! You FOOL of a DEAD PERSON!! GET OUT OF HERE!! NOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!"), three (and a half) fights, one restrained hobbit, and a ripped bus timetable later, Aragorn - in a far worse temper than before - stormed back to Room 26, and walked slap-bang into the door before realising he'd forgotten to grab the key. "Owww!...Legs...Lemme in..."
"Just a minute!"
Aragorn leant against the wall and waited. Precisely one minute later, the door opened. "Forget your key?" Legolas asked, hair dripping wet and a towel over his shoulders (and, thankfully, wearing a hotel bathrobe).
"Ye-es," Aragorn said testily.
"Oh. Come on in then. Did you get the bus timetable back?"
"How d'you know about the bus timetable?"
Legolas pointed a long forefinger at one eartip. "Elf, Aragorn. Can hear (and see, but that's beside the point) in great detail for miles. I couldn't exactly help hearing you yelling on about it earlier. Besides, I knew Pippin had pinched it. I just thought he wanted to LOOK at it or something."
"Naïve elf," Aragorn commented dryly. "Pippin, take an innocent look at anything?"
Legolas blinked. "Yes, all right, all right... Where'd you put my hairdryer?"
Aragorn sighed. "It's on the shelves by the door."
"Thanks." Legolas marched over and retrieved the hairdryer, with added volumizing attachment. And the straighteners...and the serum...
"For God's sake, Lego," Aragorn said through gritted teeth, "you never used to faff on with all this airy-fairy elfy-hairy crap."
"I never used to be millions of years old with the imminent danger of the Dreaded Split Ends," Legolas shot back instantly.
Aragorn sighed again. "Well, if you must, hurry up, okay? What's the plan for today?"
Legolas visibly brightened. Plans he was good at, and organising Fellowships to follow said plans was a particular forte. "I thought we could take a bus over to Greenwich, and go to see the Observatory and the timeline?"
"O...kay...So how do we get over the river?" Having taken fourteen advanced- level courses in Geography, not to mention ranger-training classes, Aragorn knew quite a bit about the layout of...well, almost everywhere, really.
"Ferry," Legolas said instantaneously. "As foot passengers. Then we'll get another bus on the other side to get to the Observatory."
"Right," Aragorn said. "Sounds like a plan. You done with those bloody straighteners yet?"
"I hate doing this, you know," Legolas clarified as he ran the plates down his already-straight blonde hair one more time, for good measure.
"Suuuure you do," Aragorn muttered. "Hey," he added, louder, "isn't the Maritime Museum somewhere near there too?"
"Yeeeesss..." Legolas said slowly.
"We could go see that too, couldn't we?"
"Errrr......"
"Oh, go on. Just cos you've got a pathological fear of the sea, doesn't mean you have to spoil it for the rest of us. I'm sure the hobbits would love the Maritime. Maybe we could suspend them off the top of a ten-foot- high anchor, or something, in any case."
"Err. Okay. I'll try it. I suppose. For you."
Aragorn blanched. "That sounded very..."
Legolas snapped the straighteners shut and unplugged the electrical cable. "Grow up, Estel! I've roomed with you for millennia; if I was going to be 'very' anything I'd've been it by now. Honestly, you Men have no idea of heterosexual male warrior bonding..."
Aragorn was starting to look more than a little afraid. "Hetero? Promise?"
Legolas shot him one of his patented I'm-getting-sick-of-this-you-measly- human looks. "Good grief. I'm starting to wonder about YOU now."
"Me?!"
"Yes, you. Stop asking self-incriminating questions and go get the hobbits up. Oh, but before you head out the door at one hell of a rate of knots, can I ask a question?"
"Only if it doesn't involve the words 'do', 'you', 'love', 'me', and 'back', in that order."
"It damn well doesn't, and nothing I ever ask you will, all right?"
"Right," Aragorn said quickly. "Ask away, then."
"Okay. Should I wear my indigo jeans or dark-brown leggings with this shirt? Or, maybe a different shirt--?" Legolas undid the neatly-fastened collar button and reached for a different top.
Aragorn's eyes widened and he fled.
"What'd I say?" a very confused Legolas asked the empty room at large.
**
"Ah dinnae wannae ge' up ye' tho'!"
"Shake a LEG, Pippin!" Merry whacked his cousin hard on the shoulder and dodged Pip's flailing fists and obediently, if violently, shaking (read: kicking) leg. Aragorn, whom Merry had let in a moment ago, stood aside, watching with some amusement.
"Ah wannae go tae sleep..."
"You've been asleep all night, or at least I bloody well hope so," Merry replied. "Come on!!"
Aragorn grinned. It was so unusual to see the indomitable Merry-and-Pippin team divided over something, he just had to stand back and see how this panned out.
"Lemme go back tae bladdey SLEEP, ye grea' clodhoppin' Brandybuck..."
"No!" Merry thumped Pippin hard in the small of the back. Aragorn could see that this - amusing though it was - might well go on for hours, and he had to get the team moving now (or sooner).
"Pi-ippin," he said sweetly, "I'll convince Legolas to let us stop for hotdogs as second breakfast, if you get up now."
"Wha's fer fust breakfas'?" Pippin asked warily, wanting to know exactly what kind of a deal he was getting.
"Er...we'll see what the hotel has to offer," Aragorn replied, praying that they still did breakfast at 9.20am.
Pippin peered out from under the duvet, and gave Aragorn the hobbity evil eye. He considered, for a moment, asking why he was being allowed in the restaurant now when last night Legolas had been adamant they wouldn't go near it, but - as Merry had so often pointed out - food was food. And besides - IF the hotel did full fried English breakfasts - fried brekkies came with MUSHROOMS, didn't they...!!
"A'righ', a'righ'," he said with an over-the-top sigh. "Geroot, ye dirty grea' Ranger, so's Ah ken gat dressed. Ah'll be righ' there."
**
"How COULD you?" Legolas hissed to Aragorn as they sat side by side opposite Merry and Pippin, at a table for four in the hotel breakfast diner. "How COULD you bribe Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took with HOTEL BREAKFASTS?? They're going to clean the poor place completely out of mushrooms!" He paused, looked at the hobbits opposite, who were in their fried-breakfasty element. "And bacon. And toast. And sausages. And--"
"Okay, so I made a mistake," Aragorn hissed back. "Doesn't everyone now and then, Mr bloody Elf Perfect 2002? What time is it anyway?"
Legolas checked his wristwatch. "Ten o'clock. What can we do if we set off at TEN o'clock!?"
"Plenty," Aragorn said soothingly. "Trust me!"
A general rule of thumb that the Fellowship had quickly learnt as their life together went on was never to trust Aragorn when he said 'trust me', but right then, Legolas was too exhausted and given-up to think about that.
He would probably regret that lack of thought later.
**
Half an hour later, the entire Fellowship was piled onto a bright red double-decker London bus - the old-fashioned, rather rickety kind - and were headed for the river. "I hate buses," Boromir was saying despondently. "They're so...you know...ugh. Public transport-y."
"You never had anything against public transport in the Third Age," Frodo pointed out. After a few days of Boromir's constant presence, his fear of 'The Ghost' tended to subside. It was only when Boromir went away for a couple of weeks, months, years...centuries...that Frodo got nervous at his return.
"That," Boromir said, "is because in those days, public transport basically equalled walking somewhere with someone else!!"
Frodo thought about this for a moment. "There is that," he conceded.
Their conversation was cut short by Gandalf's firm interruption, intended for all of the Fellowship's hearing: "It's our stop next, so pay attention and be ready!"
"Or, in simpler English: anyone poncy enough to have a handbag, grab it an' get ready tae go," Pippin said with a smirk. Merry sniggered.
"Heyy!" said Legolas, who was carrying a canvas shoulder-bag full of all the essentials anyone would need for a three-year trek into the desert, and Sam, who was stuck lugging the picnic cooler. Both hobbit and elf realised the futility of arguing, though, and consigned themselves to sighing exaggeratedly at one another.
The bus lurched to a stop, prompting Aragorn to leap up and pound down the skinny spiral stairs, almost crashing into a blue-rinsed old dear on her way up. The slightly shell-shocked old dear muttered misguided things about the youth of today (Aragorn was, after all, neither a 'youth' nor 'of today'); and tried to whack him with her handbag, but missed due to the simple fact that Aragorn was moving at much greater velocity than the handbag. Legolas, following as quickly as anyone carrying a canvas shoulder- bag chock-full of...stuff...could, apologised to her en route to catching up with Aragorn, who was, by now, halfway down the street.
An elf, even an elf with a very large shoulder-bag, can always move faster than a human, and so it only took seconds for Legolas to get beside Aragorn and grab his shoulder. "Where are you off to?" he hissed in Elvish, hoping any nosy passers-by would think it was Greek or something. "And where are we anyway?"
"Mellonamin," Aragorn responded kindly, "welcome to Greenwich. In particular," he added, also speaking in Elvish, and motioning to the large glass-fronted building they were headed towards, "welcome to the Maritime Museum."
Legolas blinked. "Umm. That's the Maritime Museum?"
"Yes." By this time the Hobbits and Gandalf were also standing around near them, looking bored. Gimli had vanished into a small nautical shop and was deep in conversation with the owner. Boromir was floating six feet in the air, sitting cross-legged on the head of a German tourist who was peering confusedly at a map and asking, "Und ver am ich now?" of an equally perplexed Cockney gentleman who didn't understand a word of German (or a bemusing mix of German and English), and was loudly enquiring, "Wot's that, sorry, guv'na?"
"Tell you what," Legolas said gamely, "you go ahead and I'll go and get Gimli."
"Ohh no," Aragorn said firmly. "You're coming with us. Gandalf, you go get Gimli. We're heading for the Maritime; catch us up."
Gandalf nodded and dived into the nautical memorabilia store while Aragorn grabbed Legolas's arm and yanked him along the pavement. "I don't LIKE the sea any more!"
"Why not?" Aragorn asked out of genuine interest. "You were mad keen to sail west when I knew you in the Third Age. What changed?"
"Lots of things," Legolas sniffed petulantly. "For a start, the West turned out to be America."
"I can see how that might be depressing, not to mention more than a bit off- putting," Aragorn allowed.
"And then I was in the navy in the Elizabethan era, and the Queen - the Queen! The supposed figurehead of decency! - wanted us to go out and plunder Spanish ships for no apparent reason. Now if the Spaniards had been Orcs I would have been fine with that - but people - ?!"
A Japanese teenager who happened to be passing gave Legolas a very strange look and ran to her friends, jabbering excitedly about the kawaii blonde crazy guy.
Aragorn ignored the tourists and nodded understandingly as he pulled Legolas to the right and up the long gravel path leading up to the Maritime Museum. The Elf, talking about the eighteenth-century Merchant Navy, barely noticed the change in direction.
"And submarines! In the First World War I somehow ended up on a submarine and it was absolutely terrifying."
"YOU were terrified?" Aragorn asked, genuinely shocked.
"YES," meeped Legolas irritably. "I never intended to see UNDER the sea!"
"Hmm," Aragorn said thoughtfully, walking firmly forward. "Come on... I'm still not letting you cry out of this. You're not sticking me with the hobbits for an hour while we go round here and you sit out."
"Oh joy..."
**
"HOI, ARAGORN, WE'RE GOIN' UPSTAIRS, ALREET?"
Aragorn sighed and shot Merry and Pippin a weary thumbs-up. "Gimli, go with them...please?"
"Why me?!"
"Because Legolas, our usual hobbit-watcher, is too busy looking at the gold leafing on that longboat-type thing over there, and Gandalf's vanished into the gift shop to make sure Frodo and Sam don't blow our budget in one fell swoop. That leaves you."
"No it doesn't. What about you?"
"I'm watching the hobbit-watcher for signs of psychotic incident."
"And Boromir?"
"Hasn't been seen in half an hour."
Gimli frowned. "Och...all right. If I must, I suppose..." And he stomped off upstairs, muttering about how nobody (and no ex-bodies) could be relied upon these days, and in HIS day, why, things had been so different, and... "WHAT in the WORLD are you two DOING?!"
"Hangin'," Merry said in a bored sort of voice. This was, broadly, quite true: the two miscreant hobbits were in fact perched on the thin metal barrier around the upper balcony and dangling their feet in thin air.
"Get off there, ye great idiots!"
"Why?"
"In case you fall." Not that that'd be such a loss.
"We will'nae fall," Pippin said irritably. "We're hobbits!"
"Which has nothing to do with anything," Gimli said irritably. "Off there. NOW."
"Awwwww..." Merry and Pippin reluctantly complied.
"Good hobbits. Good."
The 'good hobbits' quietly exchanged 'We'll get him later' looks.
**
"Aragorn, LOOK!"
"Now what?" the Ranger asked unhappily. For a supposed hydrophobe, this Elf sure was having a hell of a good time. "I thought you didn't want to come here, anyhow."
"Oh, Aragorn, really," Legolas sighed, before proceeding to completely screw up Aragorn's version of events: "Now stop being so childish, you know it was me who had to drag you in here. Come here, I want to show you something."
Aragorn blinked a lot of times, very fast. "Umm...You had to drag...HUH!!?"
"Yes, you dirty great wimp. Look at this, it's the front of a real Elizabethan boat hung up on the wall!"
"You hated Elizabethan sailing," Aragorn protested weakly.
"Which is not to say their boats weren't beautiful," Legolas said happily. Having thoroughly screwed Aragorn's thought patterns, he turned on his heel and stalked off to try out the whirlpool simulator.
Risking a quick glance behind him, he noted the utterly bewildered expression on his friend's face. It was true, then: Revenge WAS sweet. Mixing Aragorn up was fun at the best of times, but this had been Payback, and it had been WORTH it. Blinking, Legolas kept a firm mental hold on the sick sort of feeling inside of him, and redoubled the excited-innocent-Elf façade.
**
"Gimliiiiiiii!"
"WHAT?!" Gimli said tetchily. This was only the tenth time Merry and/or Pippin had whined his name in half as many minutes.
"We're hungry."
"Well, yeh'll just have to wait."
"We don't want to wait. We're goin' tae the coffee shop."
"No you are NOT," Gimli said, more out of a sense of self-preservation than anything else. "You're coming with me. We'll find the others and get out of here."
"YAY!"
"WOOHOO!"
Gimli frowned. Or maybe it was a grimace; it was hard to tell in Dwarves.
**
It took a full half an hour to round everyone - all the bodies, at least - up, and even then Boromir was missing. "Has anyone seen him?" Gandalf asked, scratching his head. Thankfully he'd left his pointy hat at the hotel, but he was still pretty ostentatious in a ankle-length grey robe ("White gets dirty too easily!") and sandals...worn with socks!!... so it hadn't been too hard to find HIM. And he'd sent up a flare (somehow...using some magic words and theatrical hand movements only. When Aragorn thought about it, he decided either the words or the hand movements were for show, but couldn't figure out which way round it went) to help locate the others, who had found themselves magically drawn to the reception desk. (At said reception desk they had found a strangely innocent-looking Gandalf, a fuming Gimli, and two bickering Hobbits, none of which seemed to bode well for what was to come).
"Missing, presumed dead," Frodo said helpfully, his good humour by now fully restored.
"Ha bloody ha," Aragorn said crossly. "BOROMIR!"
"Yes?" said a sugary-sweet voice by Aragorn's left ear.
The ranger's eyes swivelled left but his head remained perfectly still. "Boromir. We're leaving now..."
"Okay."
"That was easy," Aragorn sighed. "Hang on...Boromir...why can't I see you?"
"Don't feel like being corporeal right now."
"I'm not asking for corporealism," Aragorn said, mangling the word right up, "I'm asking for visibility!"
"Do I have to?"
"YES." This said in a very firm, very flat monotone.
"Aw..." There was a small popping noise, and the vaguely transparent Boromir appeared, sitting cross-legged in mid air, dressed in Elizabethan Spanish navy regalia.
"Where'd you get that uniform?" Gandalf asked suspiciously.
"Don't blow a gasket," Boromir huffed. "I only saw one somewhere and copied it; it's not real, see? Aragorn, stick your arm out."
"Why!?"
"Because I am NOT demonstrating by floating through anything else anyone might feel like sticking out!"
"Oh for goodness' sakes," Legolas said irritably, "we believe you, okay? Now come on, everybody out."
"What's got into him?" Aragorn wondered aloud. "He was mad keen on this place not so long ago."
"Aragorn," Gandalf said wisely, "an Elf can only keep up an act for so long."
"Yeah, why d'you think Arwen left you?" Boromir asked, earning himself a dirty look.
**
Having appeased the hobbits' ever-voracious appetites, the Fellowship moved on to the Greenwich Timeline and Observatory. The hobbits dashed around the museum and went straight up to the Observatory, where they ducked under the barrier and started looking through the telescope. After being kicked out by a not inconsiderable number of burly security guards and wandering around the park for some time, they decided enough was enough and snuck back into the museum. They were heading for the Observatory again when Legolas and Aragorn collared them. Legolas picked Merry and Frodo up by the collars, and Aragorn hoisted Sam and Pippin, and between them they got the four struggling hobbits back to where the rest of the Fellowship was, which was in the Planetarium, awaiting a showing.
"I don't WANT to see the stars! We can see the stars any time! I don't want to - "
"Shut UP, Merry!"
"Why?!"
"Because I say so, all right?"
"But whyyyy?"
"Because if you don't," and here Aragorn put his face worryingly close to Merry's; "I shall do something extremely painful to nerves you didn't even know you had, and make sure that you have a lifelong phobia of the word 'why' and indeed, of speaking itself. ALL RIGHT?!"
"Yessah!"
"Good. Now shut up and get in there, the show's starting."
"Yessah!"
"I said, SHUT UP!"
**
Forty-five minutes later, the Fellowship emerged, blinking, back into the sunlight. Aragorn, having all but clobbered Merry and Pippin during the show, was suffering from a case of post-trying-to-silently-clobber-two- hobbits-three-seats-away-without-anyone-else-noticing-itis, which left Legolas, Gimli and Gandalf to deal with the hobbit contingency. Boromir was no help at all, having gone all poetic about the stars and sky and heaven and the like; and Legolas wasn't much better, so Gimli and Gandalf were essentially left to it themselves.
The wizard was just starting to wish, for the millionth time, that Legolas hadn't insisted he leave his staff in the hotel that morning ("Not even really weird old men have seven-foot walking sticks! And you're not doing any magic, so LEAVE IT!") and considering trying to make it come to him, but after making some vaguely Saruman-ish hand movements and getting odd looks from a family of random tourist passers-by, gave up. "Losing your touch?" Gimli enquired mildly, and got thwacked on the head with a rolled- up Tourists' Guide to London for his trouble.
"Shut it, all right?"
"Sorry. A little tetchy, are we?"
"YE-ES. With Aragorn, Legolas and Boromir out of action, the task of controlling this lot falls to you and I. Does that make YOU feel good?"
"Agh." Gimli considered this at length, pausing in his musings to collar Pippin and Frodo (who was suffering from a moment of post-Ringbearer traumatic stress and had gone hyper along with his cousins and Sam, who usually followed Frodo's lead after some token protestation) and stop them doing the Highland Fling in a flowerbed. "Since you mention it, no."
"We're agreed, then. LEGOLAS! Come on, will you?" Gandalf half-turned on the path and shouted back to the daydreaming Elf. That vague shadow near to his left shoulder was probably Boromir, but it was hard to tell at this distance.
In fact, it was Boromir, and the two of them were discussing stars. Not flaming balls of hydrogen, but the pretty twinkling lights in the sky at night. Although they weren't known for being the best of friends, in life or posthumously, this was a subject they were currently agreeing on quite happily, and as such both completely ignored Gandalf's summons. Aragorn, beginning to recover from the stress of single-handedly Hobbit-watching for three-quarters of an hour, marched back to them and dragged Legolas away by the shirt cuff. Boromir floated after aimlessly, continuing his present rant, which was on the theme of I Could Have Been Up There Among The Stars But For Various Little Happenings Along The Way None Of Which Were My Fault...
"Shut up and come on," Aragorn told him genially, leading the way down the steep path away from the Observatory.
"You're...okay now?" Gimli asked. This was the fastest Aragorn had ever recovered from an...episode. 'Episodes' were what the saner members of the Fellowship (i.e. everyone according to themselves, but not according to each other) called the periods when the others went temporarily insane, or at least slightly psychotic. The only one who had almost never had an Episode was Gandalf, or maybe his just looked different, but Aragorn came in a close second. When the Ranger did go off it, though, he went Off It. Usually involving a lot of beer, tissues, and Oven Fries, and nobody getting any sleep for a fortnight. An hour was a worryingly short episode, in Aragorn.
"I'm fine," the Ranger carolled gaily, in the straightest sense of the word, and skipped a couple of paces. Even Legolas, through the thick fog of Elven star-lust, blinked in surprise.
"Uh...are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. Come on, will you?"
"We're coming," Boromir said uncertainly, floating some metres after the others with no small amount of trepidation.
"Slowly," Legolas added. For a change, he and the resident ghost were getting along with a minimum of jibes - neither had deliberately insulted the other for over an hour, which was a house (or, in this case, out-of- house) record - and the others were hoping and praying it would last. Unlikely, they knew, but everyone lives in hope. (Dying in despair, Boromir noted whenever anyone pointed this out, was the downside to that particular state of existence, which only Gandalf would ever admit was true, since he was the only one who had any hope of knowing anything about death and the like).
"Very slowly," Boromir nodded, frowning. "Lego...are you worried about him?"
"Do you care?" came the answer, which sort of broke the record for non- aggressive comebacks (Gandalf had been timing it. The record for Longest Civilised Conversation had indeed been broken, and the new one was one hour, seven minutes, and twenty-nine seconds).
"As it happens, yes, sharp-ears, and I'd appreciate an answer!"
"Since you ask...yes," Legolas conceded after a pause.
Ahead, Aragorn was still skipping merrily ahead - well, perhaps 'skipping' isn't quite the word, it was more a sort of dignified bounce - completely unaware of the conversation about his sanity and wellbeing going on a hundred metres back. "Come on, people! If we hurry we can maybe make the four o'clock sailing along the Thames!"
"Did we actually...book...a sail along the Thames?" Gimli asked sceptically.
"Ah, well, no," Aragorn admitted at the same time as Legolas tuned in, worked out what the conversation was currently about, and wailed, "You're trying to kill me!"
"I am?" Aragorn asked in genuine bewilderment, breaking off the dignified bouncing and trotting back to where Legolas was standing, looking vaguely petrified and definitely slightly panicked.
"Ye-e-es! I hate sailing!"
"Oh." Too late, Aragorn remembered that they had a certified hydrophobe in their midst. "Umm...I guess you could stay on land, if you prefer?"
"I do!"
"Right..." *Thanks a bunch, Lego,* Aragorn thought irritably; *if you stay off, we're down one on the hobbit-watcher count, and you're the best hobbiter there is in the group. Marvellous, just bloody marvellous.* "We can always count on you," he said aloud, trying to sound like he meant it.
"Oh...ye-es...sorry..." Legolas frowned, and took a very deep, rather shuddery breath. "All right. I'll come."
"You don't have to, you know," Gandalf said, laying a paternal hand on the Elf's shoulder (as only a wizard with a couple of hundred thousand years on him could). "I'll help Aragorn out with the hobbits, if you want to stay on the bank."
"No, I'm sure, I'll come..."
"Are you certain?" Gandalf asked kindly.
"Oh yes," Legolas said. Nobody in the group had ever heard anyone sound more uncertain, but they (those who were, um, 'eavesdropping' might be the word) didn't particularly fancy saying so. "Posolutely absotive. I mean, absotively poso--I mean--"
"All right," Aragorn interrupted brightly; "so long as you're sure - let's go!"
And he led the way along the pavement towards the river.
**
"Wouldn't you bloody know it," was Legolas's comment when he saw the boat they were taking.
"Wouldn't we bloody know what?" Frodo asked. Having calmed down somewhat since the sword-dancing in the flowerbeds incident, he was now tagging along rather worriedly at the back of the group, along with the group's resident reluctant Elf. Boromir was floating in the ether near to Frodo's left shoulder, which was doing nothing for anyone's nerves. "Boromir...go away now, please," the little hobbit added as a very nervous afterthought.
"Nyet," Boromir said, in Russian for no apparent reason, smiling innocently. "What's that you were saying, sharp-ears?"
"I said, wouldn't you bloody know it," Legolas repeated, stepping onto the docking flotilla.
"We got that part," Frodo said. "Wouldn't you bloody know WHAT, though?"
"We missed the train, we missed the bus, we got up late, we nearly missed the star show, everything's been late so far but the one thing that's on time is the bloody boaaaat!!"
"Um," Frodo said intelligently. "Usually what's been late is us, can I just point out...?"
"You can," Boromir said, "but I don't think he's listening." Indeed, Legolas had gone off on one of his soliloquies, and from the opening lines it sounded like a depressed one. "Damn it all, somebody interrupt him before he gets to build up steam!"
Aragorn, his ranger-senses kicking in at the precise right moment, obligingly overheard the part he needed to and whacked Legolas on the arm, hard. "Shut up, Lego, okay?"
"--whilst train and bus so hurriedly roll away without us onboard, and silently I look to the sky and dream of gentle fjord--ow! What was that in aid of?"
"Shutting you up. When were you last within three thousand yards of a fjord?"
"Ah, Nimrodel..."
"Oh, bloody hell," Aragorn muttered. "And they tell me I live in the past. At least I don't go around sighing 'ah, Nimrodel' to myself!"
"Naw, just 'ah, Arwen'," Pippin said cheekily.
"Close your insolent mouth, Took, before I give you some concrete boots and take you for a walk along that there river," Aragorn said. "Hang on, why does he like fjords but not rivers?"
"Oops," muttered Legolas, and glanced around for escape routes.
The only available one was onto the Thames cruise boat, and he didn't fancy that much, but Aragorn - realising they were boarding - grabbed his shirt sleeve and dragged him on board. "Aiiiiiiii...!"
**
Later that evening, on the bus back to the hotel, the hobbits seemed to be having an argument. It was a very odd argument, though, because they weren't actually trying to kill one another, and were even smiling (well, Pippin was smirking and Sam was giggling, but they were all producing some variation on a basic smile).
"The bath!"
"Swimmin' pool!"
"Pond!"
"Maritime museum!"
Legolas raised an eyebrow and blinked at the hobbits. "What in the wide world are you four doing?"
"It's a game, of sorts, and it's us five, not those four," Aragorn told him. "Those little hair-washing things in the barber's."
"Ooh, good one!" Frodo said. "Umm...lemme think...how about the shower?"
"Tha' counts as part o' bat'," Pippin said. "No go."
"Aw, fooz," Frodo said.
"What're you actually doing?" Legolas asked again.
"Umm...nothing," Sam said guiltily, jumping three feet in the air (a hard feat when on a crowded London evening bus with a cool-box on one's knee, getting squished by a pack of Hobbits, and trying hard to look innocent).
"Tell me," the Elf said, smiling dangerously.
Nobody liked it when Legolas's smiles went into the 'dangerous' category (except Boromir, and that was because he couldn't be killed twice) so Gimli decided to fill him in. "They're...thinkin' of watery places you DO like."
"Gimli...?"
"Umm...yes?"
"Thank you for telling me. I'll be sure I DON'T kill you when we get back to the hotel."
"Why doesn't that bode well for the rest of us?" Frodo wondered aloud, and tried hard to telepathically transmit to the other Hobbits and Aragorn - *don't tell him I started it! Please!!*
~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~
Addendum: Shh! Don't split on Frodo, please!! ^_~ Namáarië, mellonaminea, until next time...ch4 is coming, slowly ^_^ ~~Zophi~~
PS Chapter four is getting less Boromir-y as it wears on, but I have taken comments into account and am trying to give him a greater part in all the chapters...maybe some other chapter I'll make 100% Boromir.
Legolas: But then I want my own chapter too! Aragorn: And me! Zophi: Okay, maybe that's not such a great idea... Haldir: And what about me, I'm not in it at all!! Zophi: Ah...now THERE's an idea... *writer's block magically unblocks and she goes off to Write* ^_^
Thanks to my loyal reviewers...
Captain-Emily, prepare for even sorrierness, which I know isn't a word, but Boromir gets to mangle 'corporealism', so I get to mangle 'sorrierness'!! ^_^
Speaking of our favourite dead person, Alynna Lis Eachann, chapter four will be a wee bit more Boromir-orientated...I think (hope) you might like it. Try and live through chapter 3 first, because I had this almost written when I got your review and it sort of wouldn't change. Chapter four is in the works...hope to have it up pretty soon...well, soon-ish...well, this year...
Sakura Kuonji, thanks so much for your short but effective comment *grins* I most certainly do intend to continue, assuming schoolwork levels permit!!
Emerald Griffin, I'm glad you like it ^_^ Yes, I've said it before and I'll say it again - I intend to continue, whether school will let me is another matter!! I shall have to organise my time so I make SURE I get to continue it.
And at this point, Zophi (a.k.a. moi) realises she has (I have) a LOT of History homework to do for...well, ASAP, actually, seeing as how it's already late and all...and panics and logs off to do History till it's coming out of her (my) cute little pointed Elf-ears... -.-*
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
3: Day One, Thursday; Sightseeing Part I
"Boromir," Aragorn hissed. "Boromir! Where are you?"
There was a small popping noise and the ghostly form appeared, hovering as usual in mid-air. "You called, Estel?"
"Don't call me that," Aragorn said firmly. "Yes, I did. I need information."
It was nine am on the Thursday morning: the first real, full day of their holiday, and Aragorn was taking control because Legolas - still recovering from last night's 'discoveries' - had disappeared into the bathroom for a comforting warm bath, with plenty of bubbles, and a nice hair-wash (not using Herbal Essences, as it happened. Tea-tree shampoo and matching conditioner was the current trend), and Gandalf was busy doing 'important Maiar things' in Room 23.
"Information, huh?" Boromir drawled. "I don't know...it'll cost you..."
"It damn well won't," Aragorn said. He was getting pissed off already, and it was only 9am... Taking a few deep breaths to calm down, he continued with some measure of sanity: "All I need to know is who took the London bus timetable Legolas had the presence of mind to pick up from King's Cross station, and where it is now. Please."
"Bus timetable huh?" Boromir said. "Hmmm...and why might I know?"
"Because you're a bloody well ghost," Aragorn said. "You don't sleep, you don't go out and pick up strange men to traumatise you, I have a sneaking suspicion you spend your death spying on us while we're asleep, and you're a darn sight more difficult to kill than any of these other twits I have to live with!"
"I rather liked the last point," Boromir said, plopping translucently down on Aragorn's unmade bed, and sinking straight through it. "All right, all right...Pippin filched the timetable out of Legolas' pocket when he was complaining about the E-numbers in a McDonald's hamburger. Okay?"
"Right. Thank you."
"Why were you so certain that someone'd taken it?"
Aragorn didn't deign to respond to that, thinking that with the Hobbits around it was obvious why he'd been certain someone'd taken it. Instead, he shot Boromir a grateful glance and headed out of the door, striding purposefully towards room 24...
**
Four arguments, a lot of spilled shampoo ("ARGH! You FOOL of a DEAD PERSON!! GET OUT OF HERE!! NOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!"), three (and a half) fights, one restrained hobbit, and a ripped bus timetable later, Aragorn - in a far worse temper than before - stormed back to Room 26, and walked slap-bang into the door before realising he'd forgotten to grab the key. "Owww!...Legs...Lemme in..."
"Just a minute!"
Aragorn leant against the wall and waited. Precisely one minute later, the door opened. "Forget your key?" Legolas asked, hair dripping wet and a towel over his shoulders (and, thankfully, wearing a hotel bathrobe).
"Ye-es," Aragorn said testily.
"Oh. Come on in then. Did you get the bus timetable back?"
"How d'you know about the bus timetable?"
Legolas pointed a long forefinger at one eartip. "Elf, Aragorn. Can hear (and see, but that's beside the point) in great detail for miles. I couldn't exactly help hearing you yelling on about it earlier. Besides, I knew Pippin had pinched it. I just thought he wanted to LOOK at it or something."
"Naïve elf," Aragorn commented dryly. "Pippin, take an innocent look at anything?"
Legolas blinked. "Yes, all right, all right... Where'd you put my hairdryer?"
Aragorn sighed. "It's on the shelves by the door."
"Thanks." Legolas marched over and retrieved the hairdryer, with added volumizing attachment. And the straighteners...and the serum...
"For God's sake, Lego," Aragorn said through gritted teeth, "you never used to faff on with all this airy-fairy elfy-hairy crap."
"I never used to be millions of years old with the imminent danger of the Dreaded Split Ends," Legolas shot back instantly.
Aragorn sighed again. "Well, if you must, hurry up, okay? What's the plan for today?"
Legolas visibly brightened. Plans he was good at, and organising Fellowships to follow said plans was a particular forte. "I thought we could take a bus over to Greenwich, and go to see the Observatory and the timeline?"
"O...kay...So how do we get over the river?" Having taken fourteen advanced- level courses in Geography, not to mention ranger-training classes, Aragorn knew quite a bit about the layout of...well, almost everywhere, really.
"Ferry," Legolas said instantaneously. "As foot passengers. Then we'll get another bus on the other side to get to the Observatory."
"Right," Aragorn said. "Sounds like a plan. You done with those bloody straighteners yet?"
"I hate doing this, you know," Legolas clarified as he ran the plates down his already-straight blonde hair one more time, for good measure.
"Suuuure you do," Aragorn muttered. "Hey," he added, louder, "isn't the Maritime Museum somewhere near there too?"
"Yeeeesss..." Legolas said slowly.
"We could go see that too, couldn't we?"
"Errrr......"
"Oh, go on. Just cos you've got a pathological fear of the sea, doesn't mean you have to spoil it for the rest of us. I'm sure the hobbits would love the Maritime. Maybe we could suspend them off the top of a ten-foot- high anchor, or something, in any case."
"Err. Okay. I'll try it. I suppose. For you."
Aragorn blanched. "That sounded very..."
Legolas snapped the straighteners shut and unplugged the electrical cable. "Grow up, Estel! I've roomed with you for millennia; if I was going to be 'very' anything I'd've been it by now. Honestly, you Men have no idea of heterosexual male warrior bonding..."
Aragorn was starting to look more than a little afraid. "Hetero? Promise?"
Legolas shot him one of his patented I'm-getting-sick-of-this-you-measly- human looks. "Good grief. I'm starting to wonder about YOU now."
"Me?!"
"Yes, you. Stop asking self-incriminating questions and go get the hobbits up. Oh, but before you head out the door at one hell of a rate of knots, can I ask a question?"
"Only if it doesn't involve the words 'do', 'you', 'love', 'me', and 'back', in that order."
"It damn well doesn't, and nothing I ever ask you will, all right?"
"Right," Aragorn said quickly. "Ask away, then."
"Okay. Should I wear my indigo jeans or dark-brown leggings with this shirt? Or, maybe a different shirt--?" Legolas undid the neatly-fastened collar button and reached for a different top.
Aragorn's eyes widened and he fled.
"What'd I say?" a very confused Legolas asked the empty room at large.
**
"Ah dinnae wannae ge' up ye' tho'!"
"Shake a LEG, Pippin!" Merry whacked his cousin hard on the shoulder and dodged Pip's flailing fists and obediently, if violently, shaking (read: kicking) leg. Aragorn, whom Merry had let in a moment ago, stood aside, watching with some amusement.
"Ah wannae go tae sleep..."
"You've been asleep all night, or at least I bloody well hope so," Merry replied. "Come on!!"
Aragorn grinned. It was so unusual to see the indomitable Merry-and-Pippin team divided over something, he just had to stand back and see how this panned out.
"Lemme go back tae bladdey SLEEP, ye grea' clodhoppin' Brandybuck..."
"No!" Merry thumped Pippin hard in the small of the back. Aragorn could see that this - amusing though it was - might well go on for hours, and he had to get the team moving now (or sooner).
"Pi-ippin," he said sweetly, "I'll convince Legolas to let us stop for hotdogs as second breakfast, if you get up now."
"Wha's fer fust breakfas'?" Pippin asked warily, wanting to know exactly what kind of a deal he was getting.
"Er...we'll see what the hotel has to offer," Aragorn replied, praying that they still did breakfast at 9.20am.
Pippin peered out from under the duvet, and gave Aragorn the hobbity evil eye. He considered, for a moment, asking why he was being allowed in the restaurant now when last night Legolas had been adamant they wouldn't go near it, but - as Merry had so often pointed out - food was food. And besides - IF the hotel did full fried English breakfasts - fried brekkies came with MUSHROOMS, didn't they...!!
"A'righ', a'righ'," he said with an over-the-top sigh. "Geroot, ye dirty grea' Ranger, so's Ah ken gat dressed. Ah'll be righ' there."
**
"How COULD you?" Legolas hissed to Aragorn as they sat side by side opposite Merry and Pippin, at a table for four in the hotel breakfast diner. "How COULD you bribe Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took with HOTEL BREAKFASTS?? They're going to clean the poor place completely out of mushrooms!" He paused, looked at the hobbits opposite, who were in their fried-breakfasty element. "And bacon. And toast. And sausages. And--"
"Okay, so I made a mistake," Aragorn hissed back. "Doesn't everyone now and then, Mr bloody Elf Perfect 2002? What time is it anyway?"
Legolas checked his wristwatch. "Ten o'clock. What can we do if we set off at TEN o'clock!?"
"Plenty," Aragorn said soothingly. "Trust me!"
A general rule of thumb that the Fellowship had quickly learnt as their life together went on was never to trust Aragorn when he said 'trust me', but right then, Legolas was too exhausted and given-up to think about that.
He would probably regret that lack of thought later.
**
Half an hour later, the entire Fellowship was piled onto a bright red double-decker London bus - the old-fashioned, rather rickety kind - and were headed for the river. "I hate buses," Boromir was saying despondently. "They're so...you know...ugh. Public transport-y."
"You never had anything against public transport in the Third Age," Frodo pointed out. After a few days of Boromir's constant presence, his fear of 'The Ghost' tended to subside. It was only when Boromir went away for a couple of weeks, months, years...centuries...that Frodo got nervous at his return.
"That," Boromir said, "is because in those days, public transport basically equalled walking somewhere with someone else!!"
Frodo thought about this for a moment. "There is that," he conceded.
Their conversation was cut short by Gandalf's firm interruption, intended for all of the Fellowship's hearing: "It's our stop next, so pay attention and be ready!"
"Or, in simpler English: anyone poncy enough to have a handbag, grab it an' get ready tae go," Pippin said with a smirk. Merry sniggered.
"Heyy!" said Legolas, who was carrying a canvas shoulder-bag full of all the essentials anyone would need for a three-year trek into the desert, and Sam, who was stuck lugging the picnic cooler. Both hobbit and elf realised the futility of arguing, though, and consigned themselves to sighing exaggeratedly at one another.
The bus lurched to a stop, prompting Aragorn to leap up and pound down the skinny spiral stairs, almost crashing into a blue-rinsed old dear on her way up. The slightly shell-shocked old dear muttered misguided things about the youth of today (Aragorn was, after all, neither a 'youth' nor 'of today'); and tried to whack him with her handbag, but missed due to the simple fact that Aragorn was moving at much greater velocity than the handbag. Legolas, following as quickly as anyone carrying a canvas shoulder- bag chock-full of...stuff...could, apologised to her en route to catching up with Aragorn, who was, by now, halfway down the street.
An elf, even an elf with a very large shoulder-bag, can always move faster than a human, and so it only took seconds for Legolas to get beside Aragorn and grab his shoulder. "Where are you off to?" he hissed in Elvish, hoping any nosy passers-by would think it was Greek or something. "And where are we anyway?"
"Mellonamin," Aragorn responded kindly, "welcome to Greenwich. In particular," he added, also speaking in Elvish, and motioning to the large glass-fronted building they were headed towards, "welcome to the Maritime Museum."
Legolas blinked. "Umm. That's the Maritime Museum?"
"Yes." By this time the Hobbits and Gandalf were also standing around near them, looking bored. Gimli had vanished into a small nautical shop and was deep in conversation with the owner. Boromir was floating six feet in the air, sitting cross-legged on the head of a German tourist who was peering confusedly at a map and asking, "Und ver am ich now?" of an equally perplexed Cockney gentleman who didn't understand a word of German (or a bemusing mix of German and English), and was loudly enquiring, "Wot's that, sorry, guv'na?"
"Tell you what," Legolas said gamely, "you go ahead and I'll go and get Gimli."
"Ohh no," Aragorn said firmly. "You're coming with us. Gandalf, you go get Gimli. We're heading for the Maritime; catch us up."
Gandalf nodded and dived into the nautical memorabilia store while Aragorn grabbed Legolas's arm and yanked him along the pavement. "I don't LIKE the sea any more!"
"Why not?" Aragorn asked out of genuine interest. "You were mad keen to sail west when I knew you in the Third Age. What changed?"
"Lots of things," Legolas sniffed petulantly. "For a start, the West turned out to be America."
"I can see how that might be depressing, not to mention more than a bit off- putting," Aragorn allowed.
"And then I was in the navy in the Elizabethan era, and the Queen - the Queen! The supposed figurehead of decency! - wanted us to go out and plunder Spanish ships for no apparent reason. Now if the Spaniards had been Orcs I would have been fine with that - but people - ?!"
A Japanese teenager who happened to be passing gave Legolas a very strange look and ran to her friends, jabbering excitedly about the kawaii blonde crazy guy.
Aragorn ignored the tourists and nodded understandingly as he pulled Legolas to the right and up the long gravel path leading up to the Maritime Museum. The Elf, talking about the eighteenth-century Merchant Navy, barely noticed the change in direction.
"And submarines! In the First World War I somehow ended up on a submarine and it was absolutely terrifying."
"YOU were terrified?" Aragorn asked, genuinely shocked.
"YES," meeped Legolas irritably. "I never intended to see UNDER the sea!"
"Hmm," Aragorn said thoughtfully, walking firmly forward. "Come on... I'm still not letting you cry out of this. You're not sticking me with the hobbits for an hour while we go round here and you sit out."
"Oh joy..."
**
"HOI, ARAGORN, WE'RE GOIN' UPSTAIRS, ALREET?"
Aragorn sighed and shot Merry and Pippin a weary thumbs-up. "Gimli, go with them...please?"
"Why me?!"
"Because Legolas, our usual hobbit-watcher, is too busy looking at the gold leafing on that longboat-type thing over there, and Gandalf's vanished into the gift shop to make sure Frodo and Sam don't blow our budget in one fell swoop. That leaves you."
"No it doesn't. What about you?"
"I'm watching the hobbit-watcher for signs of psychotic incident."
"And Boromir?"
"Hasn't been seen in half an hour."
Gimli frowned. "Och...all right. If I must, I suppose..." And he stomped off upstairs, muttering about how nobody (and no ex-bodies) could be relied upon these days, and in HIS day, why, things had been so different, and... "WHAT in the WORLD are you two DOING?!"
"Hangin'," Merry said in a bored sort of voice. This was, broadly, quite true: the two miscreant hobbits were in fact perched on the thin metal barrier around the upper balcony and dangling their feet in thin air.
"Get off there, ye great idiots!"
"Why?"
"In case you fall." Not that that'd be such a loss.
"We will'nae fall," Pippin said irritably. "We're hobbits!"
"Which has nothing to do with anything," Gimli said irritably. "Off there. NOW."
"Awwwww..." Merry and Pippin reluctantly complied.
"Good hobbits. Good."
The 'good hobbits' quietly exchanged 'We'll get him later' looks.
**
"Aragorn, LOOK!"
"Now what?" the Ranger asked unhappily. For a supposed hydrophobe, this Elf sure was having a hell of a good time. "I thought you didn't want to come here, anyhow."
"Oh, Aragorn, really," Legolas sighed, before proceeding to completely screw up Aragorn's version of events: "Now stop being so childish, you know it was me who had to drag you in here. Come here, I want to show you something."
Aragorn blinked a lot of times, very fast. "Umm...You had to drag...HUH!!?"
"Yes, you dirty great wimp. Look at this, it's the front of a real Elizabethan boat hung up on the wall!"
"You hated Elizabethan sailing," Aragorn protested weakly.
"Which is not to say their boats weren't beautiful," Legolas said happily. Having thoroughly screwed Aragorn's thought patterns, he turned on his heel and stalked off to try out the whirlpool simulator.
Risking a quick glance behind him, he noted the utterly bewildered expression on his friend's face. It was true, then: Revenge WAS sweet. Mixing Aragorn up was fun at the best of times, but this had been Payback, and it had been WORTH it. Blinking, Legolas kept a firm mental hold on the sick sort of feeling inside of him, and redoubled the excited-innocent-Elf façade.
**
"Gimliiiiiiii!"
"WHAT?!" Gimli said tetchily. This was only the tenth time Merry and/or Pippin had whined his name in half as many minutes.
"We're hungry."
"Well, yeh'll just have to wait."
"We don't want to wait. We're goin' tae the coffee shop."
"No you are NOT," Gimli said, more out of a sense of self-preservation than anything else. "You're coming with me. We'll find the others and get out of here."
"YAY!"
"WOOHOO!"
Gimli frowned. Or maybe it was a grimace; it was hard to tell in Dwarves.
**
It took a full half an hour to round everyone - all the bodies, at least - up, and even then Boromir was missing. "Has anyone seen him?" Gandalf asked, scratching his head. Thankfully he'd left his pointy hat at the hotel, but he was still pretty ostentatious in a ankle-length grey robe ("White gets dirty too easily!") and sandals...worn with socks!!... so it hadn't been too hard to find HIM. And he'd sent up a flare (somehow...using some magic words and theatrical hand movements only. When Aragorn thought about it, he decided either the words or the hand movements were for show, but couldn't figure out which way round it went) to help locate the others, who had found themselves magically drawn to the reception desk. (At said reception desk they had found a strangely innocent-looking Gandalf, a fuming Gimli, and two bickering Hobbits, none of which seemed to bode well for what was to come).
"Missing, presumed dead," Frodo said helpfully, his good humour by now fully restored.
"Ha bloody ha," Aragorn said crossly. "BOROMIR!"
"Yes?" said a sugary-sweet voice by Aragorn's left ear.
The ranger's eyes swivelled left but his head remained perfectly still. "Boromir. We're leaving now..."
"Okay."
"That was easy," Aragorn sighed. "Hang on...Boromir...why can't I see you?"
"Don't feel like being corporeal right now."
"I'm not asking for corporealism," Aragorn said, mangling the word right up, "I'm asking for visibility!"
"Do I have to?"
"YES." This said in a very firm, very flat monotone.
"Aw..." There was a small popping noise, and the vaguely transparent Boromir appeared, sitting cross-legged in mid air, dressed in Elizabethan Spanish navy regalia.
"Where'd you get that uniform?" Gandalf asked suspiciously.
"Don't blow a gasket," Boromir huffed. "I only saw one somewhere and copied it; it's not real, see? Aragorn, stick your arm out."
"Why!?"
"Because I am NOT demonstrating by floating through anything else anyone might feel like sticking out!"
"Oh for goodness' sakes," Legolas said irritably, "we believe you, okay? Now come on, everybody out."
"What's got into him?" Aragorn wondered aloud. "He was mad keen on this place not so long ago."
"Aragorn," Gandalf said wisely, "an Elf can only keep up an act for so long."
"Yeah, why d'you think Arwen left you?" Boromir asked, earning himself a dirty look.
**
Having appeased the hobbits' ever-voracious appetites, the Fellowship moved on to the Greenwich Timeline and Observatory. The hobbits dashed around the museum and went straight up to the Observatory, where they ducked under the barrier and started looking through the telescope. After being kicked out by a not inconsiderable number of burly security guards and wandering around the park for some time, they decided enough was enough and snuck back into the museum. They were heading for the Observatory again when Legolas and Aragorn collared them. Legolas picked Merry and Frodo up by the collars, and Aragorn hoisted Sam and Pippin, and between them they got the four struggling hobbits back to where the rest of the Fellowship was, which was in the Planetarium, awaiting a showing.
"I don't WANT to see the stars! We can see the stars any time! I don't want to - "
"Shut UP, Merry!"
"Why?!"
"Because I say so, all right?"
"But whyyyy?"
"Because if you don't," and here Aragorn put his face worryingly close to Merry's; "I shall do something extremely painful to nerves you didn't even know you had, and make sure that you have a lifelong phobia of the word 'why' and indeed, of speaking itself. ALL RIGHT?!"
"Yessah!"
"Good. Now shut up and get in there, the show's starting."
"Yessah!"
"I said, SHUT UP!"
**
Forty-five minutes later, the Fellowship emerged, blinking, back into the sunlight. Aragorn, having all but clobbered Merry and Pippin during the show, was suffering from a case of post-trying-to-silently-clobber-two- hobbits-three-seats-away-without-anyone-else-noticing-itis, which left Legolas, Gimli and Gandalf to deal with the hobbit contingency. Boromir was no help at all, having gone all poetic about the stars and sky and heaven and the like; and Legolas wasn't much better, so Gimli and Gandalf were essentially left to it themselves.
The wizard was just starting to wish, for the millionth time, that Legolas hadn't insisted he leave his staff in the hotel that morning ("Not even really weird old men have seven-foot walking sticks! And you're not doing any magic, so LEAVE IT!") and considering trying to make it come to him, but after making some vaguely Saruman-ish hand movements and getting odd looks from a family of random tourist passers-by, gave up. "Losing your touch?" Gimli enquired mildly, and got thwacked on the head with a rolled- up Tourists' Guide to London for his trouble.
"Shut it, all right?"
"Sorry. A little tetchy, are we?"
"YE-ES. With Aragorn, Legolas and Boromir out of action, the task of controlling this lot falls to you and I. Does that make YOU feel good?"
"Agh." Gimli considered this at length, pausing in his musings to collar Pippin and Frodo (who was suffering from a moment of post-Ringbearer traumatic stress and had gone hyper along with his cousins and Sam, who usually followed Frodo's lead after some token protestation) and stop them doing the Highland Fling in a flowerbed. "Since you mention it, no."
"We're agreed, then. LEGOLAS! Come on, will you?" Gandalf half-turned on the path and shouted back to the daydreaming Elf. That vague shadow near to his left shoulder was probably Boromir, but it was hard to tell at this distance.
In fact, it was Boromir, and the two of them were discussing stars. Not flaming balls of hydrogen, but the pretty twinkling lights in the sky at night. Although they weren't known for being the best of friends, in life or posthumously, this was a subject they were currently agreeing on quite happily, and as such both completely ignored Gandalf's summons. Aragorn, beginning to recover from the stress of single-handedly Hobbit-watching for three-quarters of an hour, marched back to them and dragged Legolas away by the shirt cuff. Boromir floated after aimlessly, continuing his present rant, which was on the theme of I Could Have Been Up There Among The Stars But For Various Little Happenings Along The Way None Of Which Were My Fault...
"Shut up and come on," Aragorn told him genially, leading the way down the steep path away from the Observatory.
"You're...okay now?" Gimli asked. This was the fastest Aragorn had ever recovered from an...episode. 'Episodes' were what the saner members of the Fellowship (i.e. everyone according to themselves, but not according to each other) called the periods when the others went temporarily insane, or at least slightly psychotic. The only one who had almost never had an Episode was Gandalf, or maybe his just looked different, but Aragorn came in a close second. When the Ranger did go off it, though, he went Off It. Usually involving a lot of beer, tissues, and Oven Fries, and nobody getting any sleep for a fortnight. An hour was a worryingly short episode, in Aragorn.
"I'm fine," the Ranger carolled gaily, in the straightest sense of the word, and skipped a couple of paces. Even Legolas, through the thick fog of Elven star-lust, blinked in surprise.
"Uh...are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. Come on, will you?"
"We're coming," Boromir said uncertainly, floating some metres after the others with no small amount of trepidation.
"Slowly," Legolas added. For a change, he and the resident ghost were getting along with a minimum of jibes - neither had deliberately insulted the other for over an hour, which was a house (or, in this case, out-of- house) record - and the others were hoping and praying it would last. Unlikely, they knew, but everyone lives in hope. (Dying in despair, Boromir noted whenever anyone pointed this out, was the downside to that particular state of existence, which only Gandalf would ever admit was true, since he was the only one who had any hope of knowing anything about death and the like).
"Very slowly," Boromir nodded, frowning. "Lego...are you worried about him?"
"Do you care?" came the answer, which sort of broke the record for non- aggressive comebacks (Gandalf had been timing it. The record for Longest Civilised Conversation had indeed been broken, and the new one was one hour, seven minutes, and twenty-nine seconds).
"As it happens, yes, sharp-ears, and I'd appreciate an answer!"
"Since you ask...yes," Legolas conceded after a pause.
Ahead, Aragorn was still skipping merrily ahead - well, perhaps 'skipping' isn't quite the word, it was more a sort of dignified bounce - completely unaware of the conversation about his sanity and wellbeing going on a hundred metres back. "Come on, people! If we hurry we can maybe make the four o'clock sailing along the Thames!"
"Did we actually...book...a sail along the Thames?" Gimli asked sceptically.
"Ah, well, no," Aragorn admitted at the same time as Legolas tuned in, worked out what the conversation was currently about, and wailed, "You're trying to kill me!"
"I am?" Aragorn asked in genuine bewilderment, breaking off the dignified bouncing and trotting back to where Legolas was standing, looking vaguely petrified and definitely slightly panicked.
"Ye-e-es! I hate sailing!"
"Oh." Too late, Aragorn remembered that they had a certified hydrophobe in their midst. "Umm...I guess you could stay on land, if you prefer?"
"I do!"
"Right..." *Thanks a bunch, Lego,* Aragorn thought irritably; *if you stay off, we're down one on the hobbit-watcher count, and you're the best hobbiter there is in the group. Marvellous, just bloody marvellous.* "We can always count on you," he said aloud, trying to sound like he meant it.
"Oh...ye-es...sorry..." Legolas frowned, and took a very deep, rather shuddery breath. "All right. I'll come."
"You don't have to, you know," Gandalf said, laying a paternal hand on the Elf's shoulder (as only a wizard with a couple of hundred thousand years on him could). "I'll help Aragorn out with the hobbits, if you want to stay on the bank."
"No, I'm sure, I'll come..."
"Are you certain?" Gandalf asked kindly.
"Oh yes," Legolas said. Nobody in the group had ever heard anyone sound more uncertain, but they (those who were, um, 'eavesdropping' might be the word) didn't particularly fancy saying so. "Posolutely absotive. I mean, absotively poso--I mean--"
"All right," Aragorn interrupted brightly; "so long as you're sure - let's go!"
And he led the way along the pavement towards the river.
**
"Wouldn't you bloody know it," was Legolas's comment when he saw the boat they were taking.
"Wouldn't we bloody know what?" Frodo asked. Having calmed down somewhat since the sword-dancing in the flowerbeds incident, he was now tagging along rather worriedly at the back of the group, along with the group's resident reluctant Elf. Boromir was floating in the ether near to Frodo's left shoulder, which was doing nothing for anyone's nerves. "Boromir...go away now, please," the little hobbit added as a very nervous afterthought.
"Nyet," Boromir said, in Russian for no apparent reason, smiling innocently. "What's that you were saying, sharp-ears?"
"I said, wouldn't you bloody know it," Legolas repeated, stepping onto the docking flotilla.
"We got that part," Frodo said. "Wouldn't you bloody know WHAT, though?"
"We missed the train, we missed the bus, we got up late, we nearly missed the star show, everything's been late so far but the one thing that's on time is the bloody boaaaat!!"
"Um," Frodo said intelligently. "Usually what's been late is us, can I just point out...?"
"You can," Boromir said, "but I don't think he's listening." Indeed, Legolas had gone off on one of his soliloquies, and from the opening lines it sounded like a depressed one. "Damn it all, somebody interrupt him before he gets to build up steam!"
Aragorn, his ranger-senses kicking in at the precise right moment, obligingly overheard the part he needed to and whacked Legolas on the arm, hard. "Shut up, Lego, okay?"
"--whilst train and bus so hurriedly roll away without us onboard, and silently I look to the sky and dream of gentle fjord--ow! What was that in aid of?"
"Shutting you up. When were you last within three thousand yards of a fjord?"
"Ah, Nimrodel..."
"Oh, bloody hell," Aragorn muttered. "And they tell me I live in the past. At least I don't go around sighing 'ah, Nimrodel' to myself!"
"Naw, just 'ah, Arwen'," Pippin said cheekily.
"Close your insolent mouth, Took, before I give you some concrete boots and take you for a walk along that there river," Aragorn said. "Hang on, why does he like fjords but not rivers?"
"Oops," muttered Legolas, and glanced around for escape routes.
The only available one was onto the Thames cruise boat, and he didn't fancy that much, but Aragorn - realising they were boarding - grabbed his shirt sleeve and dragged him on board. "Aiiiiiiii...!"
**
Later that evening, on the bus back to the hotel, the hobbits seemed to be having an argument. It was a very odd argument, though, because they weren't actually trying to kill one another, and were even smiling (well, Pippin was smirking and Sam was giggling, but they were all producing some variation on a basic smile).
"The bath!"
"Swimmin' pool!"
"Pond!"
"Maritime museum!"
Legolas raised an eyebrow and blinked at the hobbits. "What in the wide world are you four doing?"
"It's a game, of sorts, and it's us five, not those four," Aragorn told him. "Those little hair-washing things in the barber's."
"Ooh, good one!" Frodo said. "Umm...lemme think...how about the shower?"
"Tha' counts as part o' bat'," Pippin said. "No go."
"Aw, fooz," Frodo said.
"What're you actually doing?" Legolas asked again.
"Umm...nothing," Sam said guiltily, jumping three feet in the air (a hard feat when on a crowded London evening bus with a cool-box on one's knee, getting squished by a pack of Hobbits, and trying hard to look innocent).
"Tell me," the Elf said, smiling dangerously.
Nobody liked it when Legolas's smiles went into the 'dangerous' category (except Boromir, and that was because he couldn't be killed twice) so Gimli decided to fill him in. "They're...thinkin' of watery places you DO like."
"Gimli...?"
"Umm...yes?"
"Thank you for telling me. I'll be sure I DON'T kill you when we get back to the hotel."
"Why doesn't that bode well for the rest of us?" Frodo wondered aloud, and tried hard to telepathically transmit to the other Hobbits and Aragorn - *don't tell him I started it! Please!!*
~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~
Addendum: Shh! Don't split on Frodo, please!! ^_~ Namáarië, mellonaminea, until next time...ch4 is coming, slowly ^_^ ~~Zophi~~
PS Chapter four is getting less Boromir-y as it wears on, but I have taken comments into account and am trying to give him a greater part in all the chapters...maybe some other chapter I'll make 100% Boromir.
Legolas: But then I want my own chapter too! Aragorn: And me! Zophi: Okay, maybe that's not such a great idea... Haldir: And what about me, I'm not in it at all!! Zophi: Ah...now THERE's an idea... *writer's block magically unblocks and she goes off to Write* ^_^