Title: All Things Must End
Author: RavenWolf
Pairing: Frodo/Boromir
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: All belongs to the great Tolkein. Who I'm sure is condemning me as I type.
Summary: Ficlet. Frodo's POV on Boromir's descent into darkness.
A/N: Sorry, Bunny. I know I'm slacking off on writing 'Temptation', but I couldn't help it!
I remember vividly our first night together. You touched me so gently and kissed me so delicately. It was as if you were afraid I might break. You made me feel special. Touched, and this time not by evil. I'd never bedded a big person before, but you made the experience wonderful, one of moonlight and sweat and come. A beautiful, wild thing.
You did you best to ease my pain on the quest. The others did not see it, but I did. The ice in your eyes melted the tiniest bit, and you shed tears for me when no one could see. But I knew. I always knew, and I did my best to heal you. But I couldn't do it.
I saw your pain, as well. Your exquisite agony and clawing desperation. I could not help you with that, thought I prayed for Aragorn or Legolas to notice and help. For awhile, my cousins entertained you. Lifted your spirits. Brought you back to the light, if only for a moment. I admit that I was jealous then, but my heart was glad, because it seemed that you might fight your way back. Back to us, back to me.
You saved me from myself more times than I can count. Late nights by the fire, when all was silent and my damnable thoughts led to darkness and despair. You came to sit beside me, to stroke me gently and tell me with empty words that it would be alright. I am ashamed to say that it helped only because I knew that you were farther gone than I. And I could not help it, which made me that much farther in the wrong.
The Ring, I would say. The Ring troubles me, and I cannot sleep. And you would tell me some tale of your childhood, or of the great heroes of Men. Empty, light things, floating like cloth and shielding me in all their flimsiness against the cold. I clutched them to me like childhood treasures to ward of the trolls and other less tangible fears. They told stories of the old you. The you I imagine to be strong and great and brave and filled with incandescent light. I promise to hold that picture with me always, no matter what happens to us.
You devour the light now, neither benefiting from it or allowing others to do so. Your darkness is scary, I admit, but warm and musky, also, filled with all things representative of earthly desire and lust. You tell me without speaking what I must avoid.
I knew in Lorien. I knew I'd lost you. I came to see you, and you were pale and shaking, and a not-light shone behind your eyes. It reminded me of the time Sam had the fever so badly back in the Shire. Unnatural and unearthly. Something to be scared of, because it foretold death and pain.
And then it was too late to save you. You scared me for the first time, then. So out of control. Strength personified and unleashed with no master and no direction. Your pale face, lit with desire looked up at me, and I knew I had to get away from you.
But you grabbed me by the wrist, and begged me to stay. And what was I to do? I didn't have it in me to say no to you, not when I wanted so badly to help. So I sat beside you and let you clutch at me with your clammy hands. I let you kiss me again, and I kissed you back, if for nothing but to prove to myself that you were gone. And I touched you, because I knew it would be the last time I did so. And because even if you were a mere shadow of your former self now, you used to be Boromir.
And I used to love you.