Two snippets – one sad, one happy – describing memories Faramir might have. They are quite far apart in time but interlinked, as memories sometimes are. The first harks back to Finduilas's death and burial in the Stewards' mausoleum in Rath Dinen. In the second, Faramir would be about fifteen and both brothers are on holiday in Lossarnach, a rural province of Gondor.
I.
He could never remember the Black Place. His mind wouldn't let him remember; it swerved away from the memory, like a horse terrified beyond obedience. Perhaps that was why he remembered so vividly what came after.
Iarwen had told them that Mother wasn't really there, in the black place, only the appearance of her. Mother had gone to the Halls of Mandos and would wait for them there. He hoped it was true, but the Halls of Mandos seemed thin and unreal compared with the black place. How could they put Mother there, with her love of the light and her eyes that were silvery-grey like the sea that stretches to the end of the world, or for the elven kind, even beyond it? But how could she be there and somewhere else as well?
He remembered climbing and climbing up stairs that were too steep, so that his knees ached and his chest burned and there was a taste of blood in his mouth, always following his brother's impetuous figure – Boromir, when deeply moved for good or ill, always made for the high places. He remembered coming out on the walls and being met with a cold, buffeting wind from an eddying grey sky, and a startled guard flattening himself against the inner bastion as Boromir snarled, 'Let us pass.'
He fell in a heap on the narrow walkway, fighting for breath, while Boromir looked out between two battlements and drove his clenched fist passionately against the stone, once and then again.
'I am never - going – back there,' he said in a high keening voice utterly unlike his usual gruffly confident tones.'Never – never – never,' emphasising each word with another blow. Then he spun round, caught his brother's shoulders and dragged him to his feet.
'Never again – not you, not me. I'll do my dying outside under the sky, and lie there too, under the sky. I swear it. Not shut in, in the dark, like that.' Abruptly he relaxed his hold and turned away, quivering.
Faramir, too young to fully understand his words but feeling his brother's misery echoing in the depths of his own being, and sensing that his presence was the only real comfort he could offer, stood silent. Presently he said, uncertainly, 'Your hand's bleeding.'
Boromir looked down, surprised; he had felt nothing. 'It doesn't matter.' He pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped it round the bleeding knuckles; awareness of the sting of them pierced through the fog of horror that encompassed him. When he next spoke it was in something like his normal voice.
'Remember what I said. I meant it. You're too little to understand, but you're good at remembering. Just remember.'
'I will,' he said. And he had remembered, and much later, understood.
II.
When Aragorn finished speaking, Faramir sat silent for a long while, looking down at his folded hands. At last he spoke.
'So that is how it was. I'm glad you were with him, since I … couldn't be.'
'He died well. You knew that without my telling you.'
' I knew it, but I needed to be told.'
He looked up and smiled; it was one more seal on the bond between them.
'Perhaps,' said Aragorn slowly, 'you can explain something to me. His last words.'
'Surely there's no need…'
'I mean his very last words. I put them out of my mind at the time because they made no sense, but you may know better.' Aragorn smiled ruefully. 'He said, "look after the little frog…." Perhaps his mind was wandering, or perhaps I misheard…'
The quality of Faramir's stillness halted him.
'His mind was not wandering, or only into the past. "Frog" was his nickname for me when I was very small, because I was such an ugly child – born too soon, they said, and sickly with it. As I grew older he used it less, and never when anyone else could hear, but he never quite dropped it.' He paused, then repeated with a sigh that was close to a sob, 'Never quite.'
III.
'Another one, frog.'
'Catch!'
Boromir bit into the apple, and immediately spat out the mouthful with an indignant splutter. Squinting into the foliage, he took careful aim and threw the offending fruit; a yelp told him it had found a mark.
'Young rogue! There was a maggot in that one as big as a sparrow. I'll have no frog food down here. Eat it yourself, and throw down another for your elder and better.'
He examined the new apple suspiciously, polished it on his sleeve and bit off half of it.
'I heard an interesting thing today,' he remarked rather thickly.
'And what was this interesting thing?' came his brother's voice from the tree.
'I was riding home and happened to pass two girls on their way back from market.'
'Pretty girls?' asked the voice, softly mocking.
'Pretty enough, I suppose, but that isn't the interesting thing. "Have you seen how handsome the young lord has become?" says one. "Aye," says the other, "I never saw a bonnier lad."'
An apple core hit him neatly on the nose. 'Listeners hear no good of themselves, they say, but that isn't true of you, brother. Beware of such flattery, you think too well of yourself already.'
Boromir chuckled. 'Oh, they didn't know I was listening, and it wasn't flattery. It was you they were talking of, not me.'
A branch cracked alarmingly as Faramir stretched himself along it to peer downward, incredulous.
'They can't have meant me.'
'But they did! Before I was interrupted by certain bolts from the blue' - he threw the core back - 'I was going to tell you the rest of what the second girl said, and she the prettier, if you want to know. She said, "… a bonnier lad than our lord Fa-ra-mir".'
'You must have misheard her.'
'I did not so. Of course,' he added wickedly, 'it may be that the maidens consider frogs handsome, here in Lossarnach…'
Faramir dropped out of the tree, flattened his brother with a well-judged shove and sat on his chest, pretending to seize his throat in a stranglehold. 'Take that back!'
Boromir heaved him off and rolled him over. 'Perhaps I will. After all, there may have been another reason.'
'What other reason?'
'It may be that by good fortune, in a very favourable light, you look a little like me.'
'Or the other way round!'
Boromir aimed a mock punch at his head. 'More respect, young frog. Go and look in the glass and then tell me if I misheard or not.' He listened. 'Hark! The supper bell!'
Both brothers sprang to their feet. Boromir looked Faramir up and down and said, 'Do you realise we're much of a height now?'
Faramir returned the look and realised, with a shock though surely he had long known it, that his brother's eyes were on a level with his own. He said a little huskily, 'Whatever our heights, I should always look up to you, brother, you know that.'
'Ah well,' grunted Boromir, and then, with relief, 'There's the bell again.'
Faramir looked rather dubiously at the pile of apple cores. Boromir grinned. 'Strong men like us need feeding. Come on, my bonny lad, I'll race you back to the house.'