This was not the first time that he had dreamt of death. Every man had his own image of death, but for Faramir it was always a wave… a gigantic wave rising out of the sea, rearing a terrifying head of water high into the air. A vicious creature, its mouth flecked with white foam, it would come forth, devouring everything in its path…
Faramir awoke, drenched with sweat, shaking. The dream was gone, but the terror remained.
He got out of bed and stumbled through the dark to his brother's room. Boromir's door was always unlocked. For him. Faramir opened it a little noisily, half-trying to wake his brother. But Boromir was never an easy person to wake. He worked hard and slept hard. His rhythmic breathing stayed rhythmic.
Faramir sat down in front of his brother's dying fire, too tired to try to revive it. He couldn't very well wake Boromir and say to him, "I'm miserable, I can't sleep, I need someone to comfort me…" For Boromir was at peace, comfortably asleep, and didn't need someone to make him miserable.
His father sometimes said that Boromir was like his mother. Finduilas of Amroth, said Denethor, had always slept more peacefully than anyone he had ever known. But Faramir had never known his mother. He hadn't realised, when he was just a few years old, that this was all the time he would get with her. And so he hadn't taken the time to store up in his memory the look on her face, the touch of her hand or the sound of her voice…
"Faramir?"
Faramir uttered an inarticulate grunt in response. Now that he was twenty years old, why would he still need a mother to comfort him?
"Did you have that dream again, Faramir?"
"No," he answered. It was childish to have nightmares. But it was still more childish to lie to Boromir…
His brother was with difficulty hauling his large muscular frame out of bed. He padded across the room, dragging a few odd bedclothes in his wake, and flopped down on the floor next to Faramir. 'Even when we're sitting down,' thought Faramir, 'he's taller than I am.'
"Boromir…"
"Hmm?"
"Do you remember mother? Sometimes I try to remember how she looked but I can't seem to…" His voice trailed off. He shouldn't have said that. It wasn't right to jerk his brother forcibly out of peaceful slumber and plunge him headlong into a torrent of icy-cold misery.
"Do I remember mother?" Boromir repeated his brother's question, and what a ridiculous question it seemed to be. "How could I possibly forget Mummy," he asked. "And how could you not remember her, Faramir…" Boromir immediately regretted having said that.
Faramir had been so young… not much more than a baby. He couldn't be expected to remember Mummy… he probably did not remember grandfather, either. And he didn't know what father had been like then. Father used to be warm and smiling when Mummy was alive. And before Faramir was old enough to be aware of things, the old life had been destroyed. He would never know it.
Faramir stood up and quietly left the room. He was not one to indulge in emotional storms, or displays of temper.
Boromir watched as his brother left the room. Every night Faramir came to him, looking for something. And what could he do for him? He couldn't be Mummy, or Grandfather to him or even father as he used to be…
Boromir sat in front of his dead fire, bent with weeping. He had said the wrong thing again. But at some unknown hour of the night, when he was half asleep, how could Faramir expect him to say all the right things?
After a while, he heard the door again. Faramir had come back. I wish he'd leave me alone, thought Boromir. I'm sure I'll say the wrong thing again.
"Boromir, I'm sorry…" said Faramir. "Every night I wake you up and talk about things you don't need to hear."
"You didn't wake me up," answered Boromir. "And all I do is listen. I don't seem to be able to make things better for you…"
Well, at least there's someone still around who wants to make things better, thought Faramir. Boromir was his family… his one-man family. Boromir, with all his faults, was father, mother, grandfather and brother to him, all in one. Although his brother was incapable of any coherent verbal expression of his affection, Faramir knew that it was there; it was real. As he reassuringly clasped his brother's clenched fist in his own hand, Faramir mentally thanked whoever it was up there that had sent him a brother who cared so much for him. "A Elbereth Gilthoniel…" he breathed.
Faramir did not know that it was a not-so-divine power that had given him the gift that he was so grateful for… he did not know that it was a power far less than divine who had worked patiently, many years ago, to turn a sullen little boy who hated his brother into the Boromir he now knew.