Redone as of 7/1/04
Chapter 10
Eowyn, Faramir
Eowyn
Morning.
Wan sunlight filtered through the translucent drapery drawn over the solitary window in my room, the window that did not face east but rather south. The window that forced a complaint to pass through my lips, the grievances of a fatuous maiden. For the Lord Faramir to perceive me like that, a youth whose rash deeds and unorthodox conduct have ensued in a grave injury, a maid who lacks the mental will power to suffer the consequences, to succumb to the counsel of the sage healers, to endure tedium, bestowed upon me additional despair. I know little of the struggles and strains of the heart, had experienced nothing involving love and passion save the unconditional love I held for my kin and my infatuation, for that is what I deem it, with the Lord Aragorn. Yet I am cognizant of the tumult in my soul when I visualize the Lord Faramir lying awake, pondering the fatuous words of a senseless wretch.
"Faramir," I murmur, the syllables catching in my throat, my tongue viscous in the confines of my mouth. "Faramir," I mutter again and again, an echo. I am no longer aware of the sound of my own feeble voice. "Faramir." I run the word over my tongue, until the syllables as a entirety fail to make any sense to my ears, sounding uncouth and vile yet beautiful. I marvel at the sound the word create when I say it, his name. "Faramir..."
Abruptly I am awoke from my trance, gaping at my surroundings in horror. What folly was this, me lying in sloth, uttering a name over and over again until it deteriorate and faded, spawning no sense or significance to the human ear? What madness was this?
Mustering the scant strength and vigor I possessed in my broken body, propelled by a sudden desire for a breath of air not gone stale between these oppressing walls I staggered over to the portal to the balcony, still clutching the pure while sheet around my angular, bony shoulders. I passed over the threshold, the breeze tugging at my hair and the hemmed edges of the sheet. I glanced over the garden's, my eyes lured, drawn to to weeping willow under whose boughs I first encountered the Lord Faramir. There, half shrouded by the branches of the willow, which reached out to brush against the ground, I spied a tell, lean figure, his back to me, fronting east. His green cloak billowed and danced a perilous waltz with the wind ere settling back to his sides. The breeze rustled through his hair, the color of shined ebony, pulling the strands across his face.
I pressed my teeth against my wind burned, parched and spilt lips until they were saturates and besmirched with crimson blood, not allowing even a syllable of that dreaded name to pass through them. As I leaned over the alabaster marble of the railing a lone drop of blood spilled from my lips, staining a scarlet drop there forever more, until the collapsing of these walls, the decay of Gondor and the ending of the world. It is close, oh, so close. I have only to wait a few mere days ere death will take us all.
Soon, very soon....
Faramir
"For I love her."
Merry looked up at me, his eyes full of wonder, awe, and great woe. I was astonished to hear my own voice after hours of harkening to only Merry's gentle, melodic voice and the rusting of the breeze through the leaves of the willow. I was even more startled to hear what the voice said.
Love....
There are few beings in my life who I have ever allowed myself to love, and even fewer souls to whom I have confessed to loving. The wind blows, carrying with it memories, painful and poignant, bearing me away to a time long gone but never forgotten.
Flashback
I thought I was alone, believed I was the sole one awake in these dead watches of the night, plagued by a dream, my sleeping mind ever besieged. Never could I escape this dream, blissful sleep forever eluded me so I took to pacing on the walls, the words of the dream running through my mind over and over again, never ceasing.
"Seek the sword that was broken:
In Imladris it dwells;
There shall be counsel taken
Stronger than Morgul-spells.
There shall be shown a token
That Doom is near at hand,
For Isildur's Bane shall waken,
And the Halfling forth shall stand."
It was then I felt a hand grasping my shoulder, then I became aware of another presence on the wall. I then heard a familiar voice, rough, course and deep in my ear.
"Why do you wander, brother?"
"You know why I stray from the comfort of my bed; you know why I descend into the City, to the walls. You know what inflicts, what besets my mind, both in waking and in a troubled slumber," I replied, my voice devoid of the respectful warmth I usually regarded my older brother with, turning to face him.
Boromir appeared taken aback at my utterances and tone, harsh for my chiefly genial demeanor.
"The dream?" he queried though he very well knew the answer to his superfluous, redundant inquiry.
I merely nodded, I had long deemed words futile, discussions were always in vain.
"Brother, I know naught of this dream, but I do know of what it has done to you. You are altered, can you not see it? I look upon you and though I am greeted with your familiar features, you are disparate from the Faramir I once knew," he pleaded, clasping my shoulders, now thin and gaunt.
"I am a cursed man, Boromir," I muttered, but lacked the strength to pull away from his all consuming grasp.
"From afar I have watched you, brother, seen you vanish into Ithilien only to return even more haggard and distant than before. Our time together is minute and at times many months pass ere I lay eyes upon you again, before I am in your company again, and to see you suffering and being plagued wrenches at my heart, brother." he said, uncharacteristically candid.
I turned away, not able to endure to meeting his eyes.
"Listen to me, Faramir!" he demanded. "I have taken no wife, have loved no woman, partly for fear that she, whoever she would be, would delve a fissure in our relationship," he declared, shaking my shoulders in his frustration though his grey irises were full of compassion and genuine concern, unfeigned concern. "Tell me, little brother for I can deliver you aid," he fervently implored of me.
"You can't fix everything, Boromir. We're not young anymore. I know now you can not mend every problem we face..."
"Whatever could you mean?" Boromir asked.
My eyelids began to weary from an existence devoid of any restful slumber or any intermission in my contemplation of the dream or a dormancy in my troubled thoughts of the approaching assault on Gondor I felt was lurking in the umbra of the future. I pressed them shut, relishing in the utter abyss that greeted me, an onyx void of nothingness. Nothing.....
I perceived Boromir abruptly seizing my shoulder in alarm, stabilizing me. I vaguely recall pitching forward, lurching toward him as my brother strained to support my limp frame
"So thin and gaunt you have become," he grunted, struggling to bear my weight as I suddenly collapsed against him. With utmost heedfulness he sank to his knees, resting my languid figure on the stone floor, cradling my head. "Faramir," he pleaded, attempting to shroud the growing panic in his voice. "Faramir, brother," he called, feigning composure and serenity, running his hands over my forehead and through my raven hued hair. He hastily scrutinized my vital signs, examining my wrists for a faint, slow pulse, and wiping my brow. "Brother, do not leave me now!" he cried, terror rising in his voice. I heard him beckoning me, pleading with me, his voice remote and distant. I moaned, my eyelids fluttering open, staring up at the gleaming stars that loomed over our figures, mine sprawled out on the stonework, my brother's hunched over mine. He breathed a sigh of relief and gave me a wan smile that almost ridiculed and mocked his panic. "Brother," he said, playfully rustling my hair.
"I am sorry, Boromir," I murmured, possessing no breath for naught but the simplest articulations.
"No apology is required, Little Brother" he declared, his tone steeped in relief and I even detected traces of trepidation in the voice of one whom I deemed to fear nothing the world contained. He possessed the unparalleled capability to slay the most repugnant of beasts without the slightest semblance of tremor or cowardice and even when embroiled in the fiercest of onslaughts he maintained an expression of utter tranquility, concentrating on naught but what he must accomplish. Calamity could not inflict panic upon him, bred to be a warrior, nor could the possibility of fatality. To him bloodshed was ecstasy and he oft proclaimed that never did such a thrill and such a sense of purpose deluge him as when he was delving his blood stained sword into the side of a horrific orc or equally repugnant Southron, beings that to him posses no face, no name, and no past.
My disposition, unlike Boromir's, who seems to be wrought flawlessly for killing, is not suited for butchery and carnage. It was my own hesitation to swiftly draw my blade across the neck, to slit the throat of a young Easterling, that ensues in my own treacherous wound during the battle we waged in defense of Osgiliath. I halted my actions for mere seconds to gaze upon the boy, for he was no more than a boy, where his body lay, mutilated and maimed, amidst the filth of the hostility, unwilling to deal the terminal blow. In those mere instants he arose upon quaking limbs to push the jagged and notched blade of a dagger into my side ere collapsing again.
Pure excruciation made my vision unclear but I was still able to afflict the wretched being one terminal, fatal blow before I succumbed to the encroaching abyss.
I was found upon the ground, beneath the dismembered corpse of an orc, suffering from severe blood loss, yet still living. Medical aid, even of the most primitive mode, is lacking in Ithilien, on the hostile edge of the realm of Gondor, thus the dagger was withdrawn from my side, the grotesque wound was bound, and my bleeding stopped. Beyond that naught could be done until I returned to Minas Tirith and I rejected any offer of returning until I was bidden by my father to attend a council, a council where my suggestions were denied ere I had fully articulated myself and I sat in tedium. In the month I had remained in Ithilien my wound had festered, failed to properly heal and do to the lack of cleanliness that existed among the company I dwelt with and fought beside, became infected. This, paired with the reoccurring dream that relentlessly plagued me every night, made me wretchedly ill, though I denied in and sought to conceal it from anyone. Revealing this would only grant my father more occasions to perceive me as weak and inadequate, so, believing that time could remedy even the most grisly of wounds, I refused aid. Yet I could not sustain this masquerade, feigning health for ever and anon.
"This can not be the work of a mere dream, even one as afflicting as the one which besieges you," Boromir mused, almost to himself.
"Nay," I relented, "it is not."
"Will you not confide in me, Little Brother? Let there be no secrets between us."
Boromir clutched my wrist and I glanced up at his lined face, his eyes brimming full of unshed tears, tears I knew he would later deny and scoff at. "If you are injured or ill you ought to tell me. The Healers, they can help. Have they not cured many an illness that was deemed to be lethal and have they not extracted many a poison steeped arrow from the flesh of unfortunate soldiers? Have you forgotten the incident involving a bar room brawl in which I came to have my own dagger lodged in my shoulder which they promptly mended without inquiring of the reason?" he jested in attempt to lighten the somber, dour mode yet only succeeded in mocking it with the obviously feigned smile that played upon his lips. "I do not doubt they have the poultice to salve whatever abrasion or fracture that has befallen you."
I granted him a meek nod yet lacked the capability to stifle a wan smile at mention of his calamity involving his own weapon in spite of the gravity of the situation.
"Brother?" he urged.
Wordlessly I drew up the hem of my tunic of simple sable embellished with the White Tree of Gondor at the throat, revealing the blood saturated bandages that I myself had bound that shrouded the ghastly, gaping wound.
I dimly harkened to him gasp yet the noise seemed quite distant and remote.
"Brother, how long have you been injured? You must tell me!" he demanded, his voice growing even more rough and thick with emotion as he grasped me by my collar, relentlessly shaking me, an act that may have been perceived as cruelty to an onlooker yet I knew to be an act of frustration and desperation.
"Since the battle at Osgiliath. Early on in the battle." I conceded, my own voice faltering and failing as I toiled to maintain clear, focused vision, something that eluded me in times of excruciation, both mental and physical, for I was assailed in both manners.
"Yet that has been nearly two weeks! And... and..." he muttered, struggling to recall the events of that fateful day, events that have diminished into mere shadowy memories of maimed bodies, crimson blood and the typical carnage of battle. "You continued to fight."
"We could not yield the bridge. I would not allow it yet of course we did fail. I would defend my home land with my terminal breath. This you know." I rasped. Where I lack such supreme power and skill as a soldier that Boromir possesses I have unwavering, unfaltering loyalty to Gondor and it is this fealty, this unbreakable allegiance that is the solitary thing that would ever induce me to kill.
Wretchedly I unbound the bandages, crude strips of linen I had torn from my own sheets in my chamber in Minas Tirith, pulling the blood steeped cloth back to reveal a grotesque wound, puckering around the edges in a repulsive manner, infected with some vile consanguine. And there was blood... Never before had blood galled or flustered me even when I bound my own battle wounds, or pried poison laced orc arrows from the open wounds of my comrades.
"Yesterday...." Boromir urged, "At the council meeting when you slipped out?" he implored urgently.
Miserably I nodded, confirming his suspicions. "I was loath to depart but I felt it necessary..."
"I wondered..." he muttered, almost to himself. "You seemed so gaunt and ashen when you returned...." He looked upon me in terror, contemplating anew the fortnight we had spent together between these alabaster walls. He paused, fitting pieces of the puzzle together to create an image more frightening to him than all the armies within the mountains of Ered Lithui and Ephel Duath, the Mountains of Ash and the Mountains of Shadow that enveloped the foes of Mordor. An image which is worse than anything Saruon could conjure up. The image of a mortally, fatally wounded brother. "Do you believe it lethal? Do you believe it will claim your life?"
"If it does it shall be just payment for my folly in my failure to disclose it to a living soul. I shall have to reconcile myself to that in the afterlife, if there truly is one," I replied, unable to stay the bit of bitter sarcasm that my tone had gained.
"Faramir, brother," Boromir choked. "Whatever happens, I love you. I'm not sure I've told you for a long time, if ever. But I love you."
"And I you."
At this he assisted me up, struggling to help me regain my footing. But I could not stand unaided and once again lurched forward as Boromir caught me. With his arm hooked under mine we stumbled along painfully slowly. At times we faltered and I would slip from Boromir's tight grasp as we wove our way through the labyrinth of tightly wound streets and alleys to the House of Healing.
"Brother," I gasped, abruptly aware of the hold this infection had over me, how ill it was making me. "Conceal this from Father," I pleaded. "I would not have him posses him any more reason to scorn me. Any more justification for his loathing of me."
"He does not loathe you, Faramir. In his eyes you mirror our mother too much and he detests being reminded of her in your bearing, you utter goodness. Also he sees much of himself in you, too much for his comfort," Boromir replied, pausing to regain his breath ere we ascended further into the city.
"I love him," I confessed ere succumbing to a bout of coughing and sickly shuddering. "I don't believe I've ever told him. If this is to be my end I would have you tell him. Please, Boromir, promise me." I choked, clutching on to his now rumpled tunic.
"I will, I promise you...."
They laid me in a bed in the House of Healing, covered my fevered brow with a warm cloth and told my brother there was nothing more they could do for me. I suffered from extreme exhaustion and my body lacked the strength to fight off infection. All were doubtful I would live through the night, live to see the sun rising over the Mountains of Shadow ever again.
That night my brother staid by my bedside, eventually succumbing to sleep and he dreamed. Dreamed the dream that had plagued my mind for so long....
And in the morning I awoke.
"Sir? Lord Faramir?" the Halfling asked, curiously gazing up at my face over which a shadow had passed, my eyes vacant as if looking back into time.
"Yes?" I asked, my hand lingering near my lips where blood had not gathered in many months.
"The White Lady also has ensnared my heart," he confessed and misinterpreting my silence he hastily added, "for she is more valiant and courageous than any woman I have ever encountered and for that I respect and admire her."
"I fear," I said, "that the despair that besieges her will never abate and she will never open up her heart to me. She is skilled, Master Meriadoc, at shrouding her heart and I fear that will be her undoing. I love her," I reiterated and no longer did the words feel uncouth and unnatural in my mouth. "I love her," I echoed.
I had ridden to my demise just a few sunrises ago and now I could not summon up the courage to even tell the Lady Eowyn that I loved her. A bittersweet smile played on my lips. Was this folly the love poems and lore are written about? Was this frightened yet blissful feeling that overwhelmed me what minstrels sang about? Was this love? Something in my heart told me love is more perilous than all the foes in Mordor.
And it is true.
Love, I have learned from both my books of lore and life experience, is both terrible and wonderful, perilous and enchanting. It was my brother's love for me that forced him to follow me in my wandering in the dead watches of the night. It was his love that steadied my faltering feet and held me as I battled both my mind and my illness, wrought from a repugnant wound. It was by his love that he bore me to the House of Healing. By his love that I was saved. And by his love he took the road to Imladris, eventually forfeiting his life for a dream had by his younger brother. A brother he loved more than life itself, a brother he would readily have gave his life for.
That was love.
Chapter 10
Eowyn, Faramir
Eowyn
Morning.
Wan sunlight filtered through the translucent drapery drawn over the solitary window in my room, the window that did not face east but rather south. The window that forced a complaint to pass through my lips, the grievances of a fatuous maiden. For the Lord Faramir to perceive me like that, a youth whose rash deeds and unorthodox conduct have ensued in a grave injury, a maid who lacks the mental will power to suffer the consequences, to succumb to the counsel of the sage healers, to endure tedium, bestowed upon me additional despair. I know little of the struggles and strains of the heart, had experienced nothing involving love and passion save the unconditional love I held for my kin and my infatuation, for that is what I deem it, with the Lord Aragorn. Yet I am cognizant of the tumult in my soul when I visualize the Lord Faramir lying awake, pondering the fatuous words of a senseless wretch.
"Faramir," I murmur, the syllables catching in my throat, my tongue viscous in the confines of my mouth. "Faramir," I mutter again and again, an echo. I am no longer aware of the sound of my own feeble voice. "Faramir." I run the word over my tongue, until the syllables as a entirety fail to make any sense to my ears, sounding uncouth and vile yet beautiful. I marvel at the sound the word create when I say it, his name. "Faramir..."
Abruptly I am awoke from my trance, gaping at my surroundings in horror. What folly was this, me lying in sloth, uttering a name over and over again until it deteriorate and faded, spawning no sense or significance to the human ear? What madness was this?
Mustering the scant strength and vigor I possessed in my broken body, propelled by a sudden desire for a breath of air not gone stale between these oppressing walls I staggered over to the portal to the balcony, still clutching the pure while sheet around my angular, bony shoulders. I passed over the threshold, the breeze tugging at my hair and the hemmed edges of the sheet. I glanced over the garden's, my eyes lured, drawn to to weeping willow under whose boughs I first encountered the Lord Faramir. There, half shrouded by the branches of the willow, which reached out to brush against the ground, I spied a tell, lean figure, his back to me, fronting east. His green cloak billowed and danced a perilous waltz with the wind ere settling back to his sides. The breeze rustled through his hair, the color of shined ebony, pulling the strands across his face.
I pressed my teeth against my wind burned, parched and spilt lips until they were saturates and besmirched with crimson blood, not allowing even a syllable of that dreaded name to pass through them. As I leaned over the alabaster marble of the railing a lone drop of blood spilled from my lips, staining a scarlet drop there forever more, until the collapsing of these walls, the decay of Gondor and the ending of the world. It is close, oh, so close. I have only to wait a few mere days ere death will take us all.
Soon, very soon....
Faramir
"For I love her."
Merry looked up at me, his eyes full of wonder, awe, and great woe. I was astonished to hear my own voice after hours of harkening to only Merry's gentle, melodic voice and the rusting of the breeze through the leaves of the willow. I was even more startled to hear what the voice said.
Love....
There are few beings in my life who I have ever allowed myself to love, and even fewer souls to whom I have confessed to loving. The wind blows, carrying with it memories, painful and poignant, bearing me away to a time long gone but never forgotten.
Flashback
I thought I was alone, believed I was the sole one awake in these dead watches of the night, plagued by a dream, my sleeping mind ever besieged. Never could I escape this dream, blissful sleep forever eluded me so I took to pacing on the walls, the words of the dream running through my mind over and over again, never ceasing.
"Seek the sword that was broken:
In Imladris it dwells;
There shall be counsel taken
Stronger than Morgul-spells.
There shall be shown a token
That Doom is near at hand,
For Isildur's Bane shall waken,
And the Halfling forth shall stand."
It was then I felt a hand grasping my shoulder, then I became aware of another presence on the wall. I then heard a familiar voice, rough, course and deep in my ear.
"Why do you wander, brother?"
"You know why I stray from the comfort of my bed; you know why I descend into the City, to the walls. You know what inflicts, what besets my mind, both in waking and in a troubled slumber," I replied, my voice devoid of the respectful warmth I usually regarded my older brother with, turning to face him.
Boromir appeared taken aback at my utterances and tone, harsh for my chiefly genial demeanor.
"The dream?" he queried though he very well knew the answer to his superfluous, redundant inquiry.
I merely nodded, I had long deemed words futile, discussions were always in vain.
"Brother, I know naught of this dream, but I do know of what it has done to you. You are altered, can you not see it? I look upon you and though I am greeted with your familiar features, you are disparate from the Faramir I once knew," he pleaded, clasping my shoulders, now thin and gaunt.
"I am a cursed man, Boromir," I muttered, but lacked the strength to pull away from his all consuming grasp.
"From afar I have watched you, brother, seen you vanish into Ithilien only to return even more haggard and distant than before. Our time together is minute and at times many months pass ere I lay eyes upon you again, before I am in your company again, and to see you suffering and being plagued wrenches at my heart, brother." he said, uncharacteristically candid.
I turned away, not able to endure to meeting his eyes.
"Listen to me, Faramir!" he demanded. "I have taken no wife, have loved no woman, partly for fear that she, whoever she would be, would delve a fissure in our relationship," he declared, shaking my shoulders in his frustration though his grey irises were full of compassion and genuine concern, unfeigned concern. "Tell me, little brother for I can deliver you aid," he fervently implored of me.
"You can't fix everything, Boromir. We're not young anymore. I know now you can not mend every problem we face..."
"Whatever could you mean?" Boromir asked.
My eyelids began to weary from an existence devoid of any restful slumber or any intermission in my contemplation of the dream or a dormancy in my troubled thoughts of the approaching assault on Gondor I felt was lurking in the umbra of the future. I pressed them shut, relishing in the utter abyss that greeted me, an onyx void of nothingness. Nothing.....
I perceived Boromir abruptly seizing my shoulder in alarm, stabilizing me. I vaguely recall pitching forward, lurching toward him as my brother strained to support my limp frame
"So thin and gaunt you have become," he grunted, struggling to bear my weight as I suddenly collapsed against him. With utmost heedfulness he sank to his knees, resting my languid figure on the stone floor, cradling my head. "Faramir," he pleaded, attempting to shroud the growing panic in his voice. "Faramir, brother," he called, feigning composure and serenity, running his hands over my forehead and through my raven hued hair. He hastily scrutinized my vital signs, examining my wrists for a faint, slow pulse, and wiping my brow. "Brother, do not leave me now!" he cried, terror rising in his voice. I heard him beckoning me, pleading with me, his voice remote and distant. I moaned, my eyelids fluttering open, staring up at the gleaming stars that loomed over our figures, mine sprawled out on the stonework, my brother's hunched over mine. He breathed a sigh of relief and gave me a wan smile that almost ridiculed and mocked his panic. "Brother," he said, playfully rustling my hair.
"I am sorry, Boromir," I murmured, possessing no breath for naught but the simplest articulations.
"No apology is required, Little Brother" he declared, his tone steeped in relief and I even detected traces of trepidation in the voice of one whom I deemed to fear nothing the world contained. He possessed the unparalleled capability to slay the most repugnant of beasts without the slightest semblance of tremor or cowardice and even when embroiled in the fiercest of onslaughts he maintained an expression of utter tranquility, concentrating on naught but what he must accomplish. Calamity could not inflict panic upon him, bred to be a warrior, nor could the possibility of fatality. To him bloodshed was ecstasy and he oft proclaimed that never did such a thrill and such a sense of purpose deluge him as when he was delving his blood stained sword into the side of a horrific orc or equally repugnant Southron, beings that to him posses no face, no name, and no past.
My disposition, unlike Boromir's, who seems to be wrought flawlessly for killing, is not suited for butchery and carnage. It was my own hesitation to swiftly draw my blade across the neck, to slit the throat of a young Easterling, that ensues in my own treacherous wound during the battle we waged in defense of Osgiliath. I halted my actions for mere seconds to gaze upon the boy, for he was no more than a boy, where his body lay, mutilated and maimed, amidst the filth of the hostility, unwilling to deal the terminal blow. In those mere instants he arose upon quaking limbs to push the jagged and notched blade of a dagger into my side ere collapsing again.
Pure excruciation made my vision unclear but I was still able to afflict the wretched being one terminal, fatal blow before I succumbed to the encroaching abyss.
I was found upon the ground, beneath the dismembered corpse of an orc, suffering from severe blood loss, yet still living. Medical aid, even of the most primitive mode, is lacking in Ithilien, on the hostile edge of the realm of Gondor, thus the dagger was withdrawn from my side, the grotesque wound was bound, and my bleeding stopped. Beyond that naught could be done until I returned to Minas Tirith and I rejected any offer of returning until I was bidden by my father to attend a council, a council where my suggestions were denied ere I had fully articulated myself and I sat in tedium. In the month I had remained in Ithilien my wound had festered, failed to properly heal and do to the lack of cleanliness that existed among the company I dwelt with and fought beside, became infected. This, paired with the reoccurring dream that relentlessly plagued me every night, made me wretchedly ill, though I denied in and sought to conceal it from anyone. Revealing this would only grant my father more occasions to perceive me as weak and inadequate, so, believing that time could remedy even the most grisly of wounds, I refused aid. Yet I could not sustain this masquerade, feigning health for ever and anon.
"This can not be the work of a mere dream, even one as afflicting as the one which besieges you," Boromir mused, almost to himself.
"Nay," I relented, "it is not."
"Will you not confide in me, Little Brother? Let there be no secrets between us."
Boromir clutched my wrist and I glanced up at his lined face, his eyes brimming full of unshed tears, tears I knew he would later deny and scoff at. "If you are injured or ill you ought to tell me. The Healers, they can help. Have they not cured many an illness that was deemed to be lethal and have they not extracted many a poison steeped arrow from the flesh of unfortunate soldiers? Have you forgotten the incident involving a bar room brawl in which I came to have my own dagger lodged in my shoulder which they promptly mended without inquiring of the reason?" he jested in attempt to lighten the somber, dour mode yet only succeeded in mocking it with the obviously feigned smile that played upon his lips. "I do not doubt they have the poultice to salve whatever abrasion or fracture that has befallen you."
I granted him a meek nod yet lacked the capability to stifle a wan smile at mention of his calamity involving his own weapon in spite of the gravity of the situation.
"Brother?" he urged.
Wordlessly I drew up the hem of my tunic of simple sable embellished with the White Tree of Gondor at the throat, revealing the blood saturated bandages that I myself had bound that shrouded the ghastly, gaping wound.
I dimly harkened to him gasp yet the noise seemed quite distant and remote.
"Brother, how long have you been injured? You must tell me!" he demanded, his voice growing even more rough and thick with emotion as he grasped me by my collar, relentlessly shaking me, an act that may have been perceived as cruelty to an onlooker yet I knew to be an act of frustration and desperation.
"Since the battle at Osgiliath. Early on in the battle." I conceded, my own voice faltering and failing as I toiled to maintain clear, focused vision, something that eluded me in times of excruciation, both mental and physical, for I was assailed in both manners.
"Yet that has been nearly two weeks! And... and..." he muttered, struggling to recall the events of that fateful day, events that have diminished into mere shadowy memories of maimed bodies, crimson blood and the typical carnage of battle. "You continued to fight."
"We could not yield the bridge. I would not allow it yet of course we did fail. I would defend my home land with my terminal breath. This you know." I rasped. Where I lack such supreme power and skill as a soldier that Boromir possesses I have unwavering, unfaltering loyalty to Gondor and it is this fealty, this unbreakable allegiance that is the solitary thing that would ever induce me to kill.
Wretchedly I unbound the bandages, crude strips of linen I had torn from my own sheets in my chamber in Minas Tirith, pulling the blood steeped cloth back to reveal a grotesque wound, puckering around the edges in a repulsive manner, infected with some vile consanguine. And there was blood... Never before had blood galled or flustered me even when I bound my own battle wounds, or pried poison laced orc arrows from the open wounds of my comrades.
"Yesterday...." Boromir urged, "At the council meeting when you slipped out?" he implored urgently.
Miserably I nodded, confirming his suspicions. "I was loath to depart but I felt it necessary..."
"I wondered..." he muttered, almost to himself. "You seemed so gaunt and ashen when you returned...." He looked upon me in terror, contemplating anew the fortnight we had spent together between these alabaster walls. He paused, fitting pieces of the puzzle together to create an image more frightening to him than all the armies within the mountains of Ered Lithui and Ephel Duath, the Mountains of Ash and the Mountains of Shadow that enveloped the foes of Mordor. An image which is worse than anything Saruon could conjure up. The image of a mortally, fatally wounded brother. "Do you believe it lethal? Do you believe it will claim your life?"
"If it does it shall be just payment for my folly in my failure to disclose it to a living soul. I shall have to reconcile myself to that in the afterlife, if there truly is one," I replied, unable to stay the bit of bitter sarcasm that my tone had gained.
"Faramir, brother," Boromir choked. "Whatever happens, I love you. I'm not sure I've told you for a long time, if ever. But I love you."
"And I you."
At this he assisted me up, struggling to help me regain my footing. But I could not stand unaided and once again lurched forward as Boromir caught me. With his arm hooked under mine we stumbled along painfully slowly. At times we faltered and I would slip from Boromir's tight grasp as we wove our way through the labyrinth of tightly wound streets and alleys to the House of Healing.
"Brother," I gasped, abruptly aware of the hold this infection had over me, how ill it was making me. "Conceal this from Father," I pleaded. "I would not have him posses him any more reason to scorn me. Any more justification for his loathing of me."
"He does not loathe you, Faramir. In his eyes you mirror our mother too much and he detests being reminded of her in your bearing, you utter goodness. Also he sees much of himself in you, too much for his comfort," Boromir replied, pausing to regain his breath ere we ascended further into the city.
"I love him," I confessed ere succumbing to a bout of coughing and sickly shuddering. "I don't believe I've ever told him. If this is to be my end I would have you tell him. Please, Boromir, promise me." I choked, clutching on to his now rumpled tunic.
"I will, I promise you...."
They laid me in a bed in the House of Healing, covered my fevered brow with a warm cloth and told my brother there was nothing more they could do for me. I suffered from extreme exhaustion and my body lacked the strength to fight off infection. All were doubtful I would live through the night, live to see the sun rising over the Mountains of Shadow ever again.
That night my brother staid by my bedside, eventually succumbing to sleep and he dreamed. Dreamed the dream that had plagued my mind for so long....
And in the morning I awoke.
"Sir? Lord Faramir?" the Halfling asked, curiously gazing up at my face over which a shadow had passed, my eyes vacant as if looking back into time.
"Yes?" I asked, my hand lingering near my lips where blood had not gathered in many months.
"The White Lady also has ensnared my heart," he confessed and misinterpreting my silence he hastily added, "for she is more valiant and courageous than any woman I have ever encountered and for that I respect and admire her."
"I fear," I said, "that the despair that besieges her will never abate and she will never open up her heart to me. She is skilled, Master Meriadoc, at shrouding her heart and I fear that will be her undoing. I love her," I reiterated and no longer did the words feel uncouth and unnatural in my mouth. "I love her," I echoed.
I had ridden to my demise just a few sunrises ago and now I could not summon up the courage to even tell the Lady Eowyn that I loved her. A bittersweet smile played on my lips. Was this folly the love poems and lore are written about? Was this frightened yet blissful feeling that overwhelmed me what minstrels sang about? Was this love? Something in my heart told me love is more perilous than all the foes in Mordor.
And it is true.
Love, I have learned from both my books of lore and life experience, is both terrible and wonderful, perilous and enchanting. It was my brother's love for me that forced him to follow me in my wandering in the dead watches of the night. It was his love that steadied my faltering feet and held me as I battled both my mind and my illness, wrought from a repugnant wound. It was by his love that he bore me to the House of Healing. By his love that I was saved. And by his love he took the road to Imladris, eventually forfeiting his life for a dream had by his younger brother. A brother he loved more than life itself, a brother he would readily have gave his life for.
That was love.