Title: Inside a dream
Author: Lilya
E-mail: lilya_thedreamer@hotmail.com
Genre: Angst/Drama
Summary: Boromir and Faramir sometimes shared dreams and maybe something more. A dream was what started it all. Now a dream is all that's left.
Main characters: Faramir & Boromir
Pairing: none. I know that this may sound as a "slash-incest fiction" but I didn't meant it to be one. Truth to be told, I don't think myself able to write a slash fiction. In the end, think what you want: if you tell me that it sounds like a slash-incest fiction, I won't take it as an insult.
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Boromir e Faramir belong to Tolkien. Faramir's dream isn't mine as well, it belongs to Andres Tijerina
Author's note: English is not my native tongue. If you find any mistake – which I'm sure you will – please correct me.
Inside a dreamTo Albert and Andres Tijerina, who inspired this story
It's almost ironic. It all started with a dream. A dream I had, a dream that kept on tormenting me for many, many nights…a dream he had as well. Identical to mine, in every little detail. And that, you see, was weird, very weird.
The same blood flown in our veins, but he had never had those premonitory dreams and he had never dreamt of the great wave that sank Nùmenor, the golden island, and all its inhabitants. His dreams were different from my own, and yet…
My brother and I have always been very close, since we were but children. After our mother's death, it was him the one who protected me, the one who listened to me. It was him the one I turned to when my dreams became too horrible or when the dark shadow of that great wave fell upon my bed.
Our father didn't approve such a strong closeness, but all his tries to tear us apart failed miserably. He thought that things would change when my sixteen-years-old brother Boromir joined the army.
He was wrong. He didn't have the slightest idea of how deep the bond that bound us was. Truth to be told, neither we did.
I remember the first night when Boromir was far away. I couldn't sleep, I had been thinking about him constantly and I couldn't stop worrying. I didn't doubt that my brother was the best swordsman ever, but I feared for him nonetheless. I don't know how, but finally my tiredness won me and I fell asleep. And I started dreaming. I dreamt of my brother, no, I saw him asleep in his tent, as if I had been really there, a few steps away from him. And I now that he saw me, because he opened his eyes and whispered my name in a drowsy voice, reaching out to me. A few moments later, tens of miles away from each other, we were both awake, looking for one who wasn't there.
It scarcely happened again, but every night, as I laid between sleep and waking, I felt his presence in my head and in my heart, at the edge of my consciousness. I know that like I felt him, he could feel me as well. We never talked about it openly. We didn't want to spoil with imperfect words that incredible magic. Yet, every time we were reunited after a long separation, the same knowing, secret, loving smile tugged at our lips. It was our own secret, it belonged to the two of us only.
We both could feel the other, so we were never really alone.
It was always like this. The distance between us didn't matter.
Even when Boromir left in search of Imladris it didn't change. But, at sunset, a strange restlessness took over me and I couldn't be really at peace until I had laid down and felt that my brother was fine.
All went well, until he left the Elven city. Surely Imladris must have been protected by some incantations and I had thought that I wouldn't have felt my brother as long as he stayed within those walls, but, amazingly, it didn't happen. No, it wasn't until later that trouble arose. Our contacts became less immediate, the signals always more and more distant…as if he had been slipping away from my hands. Something had come between us, something that at that time I didn't know and yet I feared. I was afraid, but I kept on looking for my brother in the darkness of the night nonetheless, even when I couldn't feel him anymore. I knew that he was looking for me as well and I hoped that, maybe, we would have succeeded in finding each other.
I didn't feel him anymore, not even when he and the Fellowship passed through the woods of Lothlorien.
I didn't feel him anymore, 'til the day he died beneath Amon Hen.
Even if I lived two hundred years, I could never forget that day, by now carved in my memory.
It could have been a day like so many others, scanned by the same old routine…but it hadn't.
I remember everything, even the smallest details. I was in command of a patrol, we were exploring the territory when suddenly the wall that had kept me and my brother apart crumbled and the channel opened, pouring all those sensations over me like an ice-cold wave. Was really the wave that submerged Nùmenor the one who tormented the dreams of my childhood? Or was it this one, that like the first brought death, not of a nation, but of one of the people that I've loved the most in my whole life and that had been the center of my universe for years?
I've never known, I don't care to know. All I know is that right in that moment, down in the very depths of my soul, I was Boromir. Even if I couldn't see what he was seeing, nor hear the sounds he was hearing, every sensation he felt, I felt it as well.
My surroundings disappeared, swallowed by that wave. I was deaf and blind, the only link that I had with the world was my brother, who was fighting for the lives of two young Hobbits miles and miles away.
I don't know if he felt me. Surely not at first, but I think that he noticed me in his last moments. I stayed with him to the end, until his soul left this world. Then, the cold washed over me and I felt a terrible pain, more painful than every wound I've ever received, because it was both physical and mental. I couldn't feel anything but that cold and that pain, even breathing was a torture. Part of my soul had been torn away and now I bled.
The voice of my second-in-command brought me back to reality. I know that we continued with our mission, but, truth to be told, I don't remember it. My mind was elsewhere, miles and miles away. The rest of the day is nothing but a muddled and faded blur. I couldn't wait till night came. Because I couldn't, I didn't want to believe that my brother was dead, that Boromir had left me alone.
I didn't sleep that night, but I looked for my brother in that no man's land where we used to meet. I had been calling, shouting, invoking his name in the dark for hours.
But he didn't come.
The tie was broken, the communication cut off forever.
I knew I hadn't been wrong when I saw his funeral boat sailing by between the fog, carried by the stream of the Anduin. I had no choice, then, but accept what had happen.
Never again I've dreamt of the great wave of Nùmenor – and I still don't know if it was really that wave the one I used to dream of – nor of the riddle that set my brother on the road for the city of the Elves. But now I've a new recurring dream. And it's ironic that right in this dream I meet my brother, even if it isn't really Boromir, but a ghost created by my own mind. Even if the dreams are always more or less identical, I can never recognize them for what they really are. Maybe it's because I don't dream about the past, but about the present time.
Boromir and I are sitting in gardens of the palace where we grew up, stargazing and talking. Voices come from the building, happy voices. They are the voices of my wife, my children, our King and Queen, of all our friends. In a moment we'll come up with them, but now we sat there and we talk and joke and laugh like two fools. Just like we used to do once. We make plans together, there's always a thing or another that we must do together, what the hell, after all we're still brothers, aren't we?
And then Boromir stands up, there's a thing he must check or another he must fetch. He stands and leaves, while I sat there, watching him as he walks away and turns a corner, without a single worry because I know that he'll come back to me in a minute and we'll start talking again.
But he doesn't come back and I sat there alone, until I remember that Boromir can't come back because he's dead, he died at Amon Hen many years ago an that's the same old, stupid dream. My eyes fill with tears and I sat there, laughing like a fool because that cursed dream has tricked me again.
When I wake up, I get angry with myself because I've allowed the dream to deceit me again and I swear that this will be the last time. But in spite of this, I always fall for it. Maybe I don't really want to stop being deceived, because so, at least in a dream, I can see Boromir again and believe that he's still here with me. It's just that it hurts when I awake, when the illusion shatters and I realize that I am alone.