Disclaimers: If I owned LotR, Boromir would never have died in the first place. It's also fairly safe to say that Merry and Pippin wouldn't have lived past the first chapter, and that Faramir would have replaced Legolas in the Fellowship. So it should be pretty apparent that I don't own LotR.
A/N: Sorry for the delay… I was actually out of town this time, not just procrastinating. Though there was a bit of that, too.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed—glad to see you're enjoying your reading almost as much as I'm enjoying the writing. Sorry, no Faramir in this chapter; he'll be back, I promise.
Two Men and an Elf stood at the fringe of Fangorn Forest, gaping open-mouthed the vast tangle of interlacing branches and looping vines and snaking green tendrils before them. Or, such was the case with at least two members of the trio; the third was somewhat preoccupied with the three would-be mortal wounds adorning his torso, from which blood was oozing softly like sap might from a pine.
"Fangorn Forest," breathed Aragorn.
"Fangorn Forest," breathed Legolas.
A long moment of lingering and somewhat brittle silence.
Boromir finally glanced up from the pressing task of nervously prodding his bandages, at which point he received some rather frosty glares from his companions. He blinked. "What?"
"It's your turn," hissed Legolas irritably.
"My turn for what?"
Legolas stamped his foot petulantly. "Honestly, if you were any more oblivious, you'd be dead."
"That joke was in rather poor taste, I think," grunted Boromir with some resentment.
"Sorry, Bori."
"And don't call me Bori."
There was a noise not unlike that of ten thousand… wait, make that five readers muttering simultaneously, "Well it's a little late for that, isn't it?" Aragorn shivered; he was beginning to find the number of unwarranted disembodied exclamations that had dogged him of late to be somewhat unnerving.
"Er, right… what was it you wanted, anyway?" said Boromir to Legolas, after the appropriate interval of eerie silence had passed away.
"Just say 'Fangorn Forest' in appropriately reverent and fearful tones," instructed the Elf.
Boromir lifted an eyebrow. "'Fangorn Forest'?"
"Good enough," murmured Legolas, and they proceeded to enter the Forest.
Boromir stooped to examine the foliage of a nearby shrub. "Orc blood," he announced, gesturing toward a fetid stain on one of the leaves and wincing as he straightened.
"How can you tell?" asked Aragorn.
"Er… because it's black?"
"Don't you have to taste it or something?"
Boromir's left eyebrow was seeing some exercise today. "Are you mad?"
The Dúnadan rolled his eyes. "Of course, you wouldn't understand; common soldiers aren't as willing to get nitty and gritty in the line of duty as we Rangers," he chided loftily.
Boromir glanced pointedly from Aragorn, to his own blood-stained tunic, and then back again. "Was that," he began, slowly and deliberately, "a joke?"
The heir of Elendil noticed that Boromir was looking a mite feral. "Yes, of course it was," came the hurried reply.
"Then that's the second time that someone's made a joke about my condition in the last ten minutes! When will you lot get around to acquiring some sensitivity!" He rounded on Aragorn heatedly. "And my brother's a Ranger, I'll have you know!"
"Yes," affirmed Aragorn in what he hoped to be a placating tone, while inwardly he thought, Of Ithilien, that is. Pretentious little bastards; I hear they even take baths over there. His thoughts were interrupted by a strange rumbling and groaning that vibrated from the serpentine roots to the quivering boughs of the trees above. Both Men paused, looking around warily.
Only Legolas seemed unphased. "This Forest is Old," he declared. "Very Old. Full of Memory. And Anger."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" demanded Boromir.
Legolas's face suddenly screwed up like an anguished prune. "I don't know!" the Elf wailed. "I make ambiguous statements under pressure! I thought that this was already established!"
"Well, don't! It's confusing for the rest of us!"
"You all just don't appreciate me the way you should!"
"If you mean that I don't appreciate vague visionary pessimistic assignations, then you're absolutely right!"
"You're just an insensitive prat, is what!"
"Why are we shouting?" put in Aragorn.
"Because we're upset!"
"Why are we upset?"
"I don't remember!"
"Are you upset because you can't remember?"
"No! I'm upset about what I'm not remembering!"
"What aren't you remembering?"
"That's just it!"
"Wait…! Does it have anything to do with the fact that Boromir's bleeding to death?" offered Legolas, nodding at the injured Man.
"Yes… perhaps that's it…" said Aragorn slowly, though something seemed anomalous about this statement—the words "upset" and "Boromir's bleeding to death" seemed to jar strangely in his mind.
"But I've been bleeding to death for nearly three days now!" countered Boromir. "There must be something else…" The three warriors paused for a moment, deep in thought.
"Ah-ha!" interjected Boromir abruptly. "I know why we're arguing! You insulted my brother!"
"I did not!"
"Yes, you did; you called him a pretentious bastard!"
"No, I didn't!"
"Yes, you did!"
"No, I didn't!"
"Yes, you did!"
"At least I never said it out loud!"
"Yes, you… wait a minute, you didn't?"
"No!"
"Oh." Boromir paused, then sighed. "Damn, being a Húrin is altogether too uncanny a profession." Another pause, and then Boromir exploded, "Then you insulted my brother in your thoughts?"
Aragorn leapt back as though scalded, hoping that the panic in his eyes would overshadow any potential traces of guilt. "I'm—!"
"Because Faramir is not a preten—!"
"Stop, stop, I've got it!" Legolas cut in triumphantly. "We're all upset because Saruman is walking in our direction as we speak!"
The two bickering Gondorians halted their debate to consider this proposition. Aragorn stroked his stubble thoughtfully. "You know, that really would do it, wouldn't it?"
"Too true, too true… I suppose that must be the case…" Boromir asserted dimly; then, the implications of this statement suddenly jumped out of nowhere and throttled him. "Wait a minute, did you just say that Saruman is walking toward us as we speak?"
Before the alarm had fully registered on the faces of his two comrades, Boromir found himself dazzled by a blinding surge of fluorescent white light. Blinking bloodshot eyes furiously, he strained his visage against the light, while a conveniently digitalized voice rambled on about Hobbits and unexpected visitors until Aragorn cried out, "Who are you?"
It was still impossible to perceive the features of the personage with the conveniently digitalized voice through the blinding surge of fluorescent white light, but Boromir suspected that he (or she, or it) had just rolled his (or her, or its) eyes. "Who am I? What, do you want a trivia question?"
"Yes, please," prattled Legolas. The two Men groaned.
A low exhale. "Well, if you insist. I am one of the following persons: A. Gandalf the White; B. Saruman; C. Gandalf the White; D. Merlin; E. Gandalf the White; F. Albus Dumbledore; G. Gandalf the White; H. Obi-Wan Kenobi; I. Gandalf the White; J. Gandalf the White; K. Gandalf the White. Right, the clock's ticking."
There was a noise not unlike the combined squeals of ten thousand Harry Potter fans, ten thousand Star Wars fans, and six Arthurian-mythology fans, in addition to a well-placed smattering of "Jeopardy" music.
Presently, Aragorn scoffed, "Of course, we know you're Saruman!"
"Oh, for pity's sake!" cried the voice, which suddenly ceased to be conveniently digitalized, as the blinding surge of fluorescent white light subsided to reveal the scowling features of…
"Gandalf!" cried all three travelers in perfect sync.
Gandalf rolled his eyes quite plainly this time. "Honestly, if you were any more oblivious, you'd be dead."
"I wish that people would stop making that bloody joke!" exclaimed Boromir.
Gandalf cast a cool and unsympathetic blue-eyed gaze in his direction. "Trust me, kid, you'll get used to it after a while."
"What exactly is this concoction, Mithrandir?" asked Boromir dubiously, holding the bottle Gandalf had conferred to him at arm's length, as though he expected it to implode at any given moment.
"Ent-draught," replied the Maia. "Taken from the waters of Fangorn itself. It won't heal your wounds, but it will give you strength enough for the time being."
Boromir sighed and slipped the bottle into his pack. "I'm beginning to think it might have been easier if I'd just died back at Parth Galen."
Gandalf surveyed him sternly. "Do not doubt the will of the Valar, Boromir of Gondor! If they have seen fit to send you back to Arda, even as they have sent me, then there is some part for you to play yet in shaping the fate of Middle-earth."
"Or maybe there was a kettle boiling over in the kitchen at Valinor and they were too distracted to make sure I died properly," muttered Boromir.
"Well, yes, that happens too," conceded Gandalf with a shrug, and commenced to turn to the left, facing the swaying grasses and billowing wind, and whistle as loudly as possible.
"What's he doing?" asked Aragorn.
"Maybe he's trying to summon aid," suggested Legolas.
"Why would we need to summon aid?" said Aragorn.
"Well, we could have used the Horn of Gondor, if that was the case," put in Boromir.
"No thanks; that thing sounds like a truck horn."
"What's a truck?"
"Never mind."
"Look, there's a white cow coming over the crest of the hill!" exclaimed Legolas.
"That's not a cow, you imbecile, that's a horse!" sneered Boromir; then, looking at Legolas suspiciously, "And you thought that Gandalf was Saruman, back in the Forest, didn't you?"
"So did both of you!"
"Yes, but you're the one with the sooper-kewl elfan eysite."
Legolas turned a striking variation of the color pink, somewhere between magenta and a light fuchsia. "I lost my contact lenses while we were running in Rohan."
"Contact lenses?"
"Yes, my contacts, and I was going to look for them, but then those horrid men came stampeding by and I…"
"What are contacts?"
"Oh! Er, nothing."
Boromir put the hand that was not in a sling on his hip and glared around skeptically. "Is there something going on here that you lot aren't telling me?"
"Shadowfax," said Gandalf loudly, cutting off the conversation. "Lord of all… hang on a moment, where are your horses?"
Aragorn was perplexed. "Our horses?"
"Yes. Your horses."
"Er… what horses?"
"Your horses!"
"Oh. Those." Aragorn paused. "We haven't got any horses."
"Yes, you do! The ones Éomer gave you!"
"Who's Éomer?" asked Legolas.
"He didn't give us any horses," said Boromir.
Gandalf sat down heavily. "This grows stranger by the minute. How will we get to Edoras with only one horse?"
"Well, I have good news," Aragorn piped up.
"What?" inquired the other three.
There was a noise not unlike that of ten thousand people praying vehemently that there was no impending Geico joke to follow up this statement.
"In this world, time and distance have no congenital meaning," explained Aragorn.
"What, so we could conceivably walk to Edoras?"
"If we wanted to, yes."
A/N: The more you review, the more I'll be compelled to write, and the more Faramir we can squeeze in! See, it's a win-win situation for everybody. Well, except Faramir, that is ;).