Disclaimers: The order in which the following words are placed is entirely mine. Most of the words themselves, however, aren't.
A/N: Reviewers, know that you are well-loved. I know that many authors offer their readers cookies, but my baking skills are negligible. I can make a mean bowl of Ramen noodles, though… would anyone like some Ramen noodles?
The sun set over the vast plains of Rohan, setting alight the gauzy clouds in its death throes; they flared up in oranges, pinks, and reds, with dim purple shadows looming beneath them, while misted ruddy light burnished bronzed hills copper. In the east, the twilight was coming on, indigo and dusky purple, with a wan sickle moon hung in its translucent folds. Between silvery clouds, the first evening stars had begun to twinkle, one by one, punching pinholes in the velvety firmament, as the sun descended still lower beneath the brim of the western horizon, leaving the sky ravished behind it; its legacy, fleeting and terrible, left written upon the heavens.
Faramir stood on the summit of a gently sloping hillock, booted feet spread and planted firmly in the springy turf, his face aglow in the dying light as a westerly wind swept across the fields to tease the dark green hood from his shoulders and set his shadowy ranger's cloak billowing, and felt Very Silly Indeed.
Not that this was a particularly recent development. This sense of being Very Silly was coming over him with more and more frequency, and it wasn't particularly difficult to see why. Here he was, a Captain of Gondor, the Son of the Steward, mapless and in possession of only the paltriest provisions, wandering aimlessly across the Riddermark in search of his elder brother. And if that wasn't Silly, then Faramir, for one, didn't know what was.
What had possessed him to come out here in the first place? Well, there had been the dreams, and he'd heard the call of the Horn, and naturally he'd been very anxious about Boromir ever since he'd set out for Imladris… but here he was in Rohan without the leave of the Steward, and, having quite deliberately abandoned his post in Ithilien, he was undoubtedly guilty of desertion as well. Faramir would be surprised if there wasn't already a sizeable price on his head back at the White City.
Not to mention that he'd come here utterly unprepared, without any semblance of a concrete plan in mind. It had seemed so sensible at the time… what had he been thinking? This was rash. This was senseless. This was Silly. He ought to just turn around and go back… but he'd come this far, and he still hadn't found Boromir, and…
There he went again.
He was beginning to display various other strange lapses in character of late—indecisiveness, for one. Faramir had never been indecisive before that he could remember, and the experience was a highly unsettling one. And that wasn't all. He was now starting to also discover a strange propensity for embarking on long-winded, anguished internal monologues that just seemed to go on and…
(Censored). He was doing it again, wasn't he? He was staring into a bloody sunset and angsting! What in Eru's name was wrong with him? Faramir fought to repress a wail of frustration. He was forced to screw up his face and blink quite a bit, but in the end he managed it, though his eyes still watered a bit from the impulse.
Oh, yes. And there was the crying.
The crying.
The urge to cry had been coming over him so regularly and so insistently over the past few days that he could feel his internal will to resist it slowly beginning to crumble. His throat would go very dry and his nose would start to burn and his vision would cloud and there he'd be, with the desire to throw himself on the ground and weep so powerful that it was almost unbearable.
He thought about his father and he wanted to cry about that. He thought about Boromir and he wanted to cry about that. He thought about Sauron and Mordor and Orcs and Haradrim and death and war and forest fires and shipwrecks and orphans and small puppies being kicked and he wanted to cry about that, too.
Was this some strange device of the Enemy that set his lower lip aquiver and made his tear ducts behave like faulty plumbing? Or was it some wasting disease, like his mother's fatal sea-longing? Whatever it was, it was certainly affecting his ability to behave rationally. It was almost as if he was slowly morphing into another person. What next—was his hair color going to change, too?
An interruption to Faramir's musings came in the form of a large éored that galloped up the hill and surrounded him with a ring of spears.
"And what business does a Man, an Elf, and… wait…" The cross-looking rider who had spoken looked momentarily confused before continuing, "What business does a Man have in the Riddermark?"
"Er… I'm looking for my brother…?" said Faramir tentatively. His nose was beginning to tingle. Eru damn it, not now...
"Hah!" exclaimed the Rider. "Hah! That's what they all say! 'Oh, I'm just looking for my brother!' 'Oh, I'm just looking for some friends!' You know, that's what that hairy midget type told me when he came to border crossing yesterday, and he ended up getting into a drunken brawl at one of the pubs! Maimed three people! I need some ID from you!"
"I… hold on, wait a minute…" Faramir rummaged through his pockets for a moment and then groaned, "Oh, it's no use… I've gone and left my 'Steward's Favorite Son's Younger Brother' card in Ithilien," before bursting into tears.
"I hope you have a good explanation for this, young man," said Finduilas irritably.
Boromir scowled. "Look, Mother, it wasn't like I bled to death again on purpose. This whole affair is ten times more uncomfortable for me than it is for you, I assure you."
Finduilas shrugged in grudging assent and pursed her lips. "I can only say that it most trying, getting plucked unexpectedly from the midst of one's tea and whisked off to serve as somebody's deathbed vision. It really throws my whole day out of line. And the fact that it has happened twice in the…"
"I told you, it isn't my fault," growled Boromir through gritted teeth. "And if your precious Thorongil would get a move on, we wouldn't have to wait here quite so long."
"Don't you dare talk back to me, Boromir!" she snapped. "And don't bring Gil into this! He has quite enough on his plate without having to gallivant through the afterlife every other day!"
"Oh, yes, because stealing my throne and my glory and my vambraces takes up so much valuable time," muttered Boromir sulkily.
The aforementioned Thorongil (also known as Aragorn, also known as Estel, also known as Strider, also known as Elessar, also known as Elfstone, also known as Dúnadan, also known as Wingfoot, also known as Evinyatar, also known as Longshanks, also known as Telcontar…) was in fact lying abed, suffering from the worst hangover he had ever experienced in all his eighty-eight years.
Well, excepting that one occasion in 2977, when he'd gone clubbing with Denethor. But that was different. He'd been trying to get Denethor intoxicated so that he wouldn't notice that he and Fin were… anyway, never mind that. It hadn't worked, in any case.
He really shouldn't have gotten into that drinking game with Gimli. But he'd already had a few ales in him and he was feeling so hazily overjoyed at running into his Dwarf companion that he'd agreed and… well, he couldn't really remember anything that had happened after that, but, judging by the dull pounding behind his eyes, it had been something monumental.
There was a knock at the door.
Aragorn ignored it.
The knocking continued persistently, the resonations of the wooden door matching the throbbing in his skull with almost unerring exactitude.
He growled something that even he couldn't understand and rolled over, pulling the sheets more snugly around his shoulders.
The knocking ceased, and silence fell once more.
Then, there was an almighty bang as the door blasted open in a flash of crackling light, rotating on screaming hinges to crash against the stone wall opposite and bounce off again, shuddering violently. Aragorn opened one eye blearily and saw Gandalf the White standing on the threshold.
"Arise, Son of Arathorn. You are needed."
"Nrrrrrgggghh," replied Aragorn dismissively, pulling the coverlet further over his unwashed head.
"Aragorn!" barked Gandalf sharply. "Are you listening?"
"Mmrrff."
"Because if you aren't, I'm going to turn you into a newt and have done with it. Gondor has no use for a King who can't rouse himself from bed when there's a crisis at hand."
"Fine, 'm coming," mumbled the Dúnadan resentfully, sliding out from under the sheets and colliding with the table by the bed. "(Censored). Who put that there?"
The wizard rolled his eyes heavenward as if praying to the Allfather for patience. "Glad to see you so amiable. Come along—we have work to do."
Aragorn kneaded his eyes with grubby knuckles as he trundled after Gandalf down the stone corridor. "So, what's going on? What's this crisis?"
"Crises, more like. Théoden's making difficulties about the defense of Rohan; I will need your diplomacy at my disposal."
"I'm not feeling very diplomatic at the moment, I'll have you know," grumbled Aragorn.
"Oh, yes, and Boromir's at death's door again."
Aragorn stopped dead in his tracks. "Oh, no. Oh no no no no no."
Gandalf raised a bushy eyebrow. "What?"
"I see what this is about. And the answer is no. I am not healing that idiot again."
Gandalf sighed. "Don't be difficult about this, Aragorn. If you do it right this time, it will only take a few minutes and…"
"No. I refuse. I will not. Never again. No."
"You know, I didn't make that threat about the newt lightly," cut in Gandalf ominously, fingering his staff.
Aragorn's eyes widened momentarily and then returned to their customary groggy squint. "Please, can't we just leave him dead, just this once?"
"No."
"Whhhhy?"
"Because I said so."
"It's a pity he didn't just die properly in the first place," muttered Isildur's heir.
"Pity?" said Gandalf incredulously. "It was pity that saved him. Many who live deserve death; many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be so quick to deal out death in judgment. Even the wise cannot see all ends, and I sense that Boromir will have some part to play before the end—for good or evil."
Aragorn paused, considering this. "That argument makes no sense whatsoever."
The wizard thought it through a second time. "No, I suppose it didn't. Curses—and it was so eloquent." He peered down at Aragorn. "But the newt offer still stands."
Aragorn sighed. "Fine. Where is he?"
"… and if your father were here…"
"Given where we are, Mother," interrupted Boromir tetchily, "I think that statement is somewhat ill-chosen."
Finduilas opened her mouth, doubtless to spout forth yet another reprimand, but it closed and rearranged itself into a fawning smile as her gaze shifted from Boromir to someone standing immediately behind him. Boromir didn't even need to turn round to guess the identity of the intruder.
"Hello again, Gil," said Finduilas coyly. "I see you've come to retrieve my son again. I'm sorry he's made himself such a bother."
"Only Denethor could have fathered someone so interminably vexing," griped Aragorn. He reached down to haul Boromir to his feet, but the Captain-General was a step ahead of him; he sprang up and, a moment later, had spun around with his dagger drawn and pointed menacingly at a spot between Aragorn's eyes. "Did you do the healing properly this time? Because if I wake up and find out you've sliced me open again, so help me Eru, Aragorn…"
Before Aragorn had time to say anything, Finduilas leapt forward and wrenched the dagger from Boromir's hands. "Boromir! What have I told you about pointing sharp objects at people?" she chided angrily before turning back to Aragorn, "I meant to make you some muffins to take back with you, you know, but there wasn't time…"
Aragorn let forth a reminiscent sigh. "Ah, the famous blueberry muffins of Dol Amroth. I haven't had those in nearly fifty years."
"Well, perhaps next time… not that there shall be a next time," she added sharply, glancing at Boromir. "Here is your dagger, son. Put it away, please… in its sheath!" (Boromir resentfully complied.) "Now, be off with you. Stay out of trouble, and keep an eye on your little brother. Farewell, Gil… it really has been lovely seeing you again. If you end up in neighborhood anytime soon—Eru forbid!—remind me about those muffins. I remember how much you used to like them."
"Oh, I liked them alright," affirmed Aragorn with a suggestive waggle of the eyebrows.
Finduilas giggled.
Boromir found himself slightly nauseous. Thankfully, Aragorn soon seized him by the elbow and steered him away from his mother, along the mist-wreathed pathways and foggy avenues that led back to life.
"Boromir," he said presently. "It is early in the morning. I am tired, I am hung over, and I am seriously pissed off at Gandalf. And if you make one single smart comment on our way back, I will turn around and pummel you into the ground. Is that clear?"
Nearly ten dozen smart comments immediately sprang to Boromir's mind, but the one he chose to use was admittedly rather childish.
"Oooooh, I'm so-o-o scared!"
Gandalf breathed a sigh of relief when he saw both Men of Gondor, one seated in a chair and the other laid out across the bed, regain consciousness. "A job well done, Aragorn! I must say…" He trailed off, glancing back and forth between the pair of them suspiciously. "How come both of you have black eyes?"
"We, er… we had an accident," said the Dúnadan. The sullen reciprocated glare that passed from Aragorn to Boromir did not go unnoticed by the Istari, but he rather wisely chose not to comment.
Boromir meanwhile, sat up with a slight wince and peered around, his gaze finally coming to rest on the nightstand. "Where's my Ent-draught?" he asked with a slight desperation that made Gandalf nervous.
"You drank it all yesterday, you greedy lummox!" snarled Aragorn as he stalked from the room, prodding his swollen eye gingerly.
"Did I? Yes, I suppose I did." Boromir paused, looking confused. "Gandalf, do you have any more, by any chance? It was quite helpful. More than helpful, actually. In fact, I feel as though I might throw up if I don't have some at this minute. Is that normal?"
Gandalf felt that the time to confess had finally come. "Well, not really. You see, the Ent-draught was more… more of an experiment, really…"
Boromir stared at him expectantly.
"It doesn't have any real medicinal value, as it were. I just wanted to see if it would help you psychologically—the placebo effect, you see. The fact was, it, er… it wasn't actually Ent-draught."
Boromir gaped. "Then what, exactly," he began slowly, "was it?"
Gandalf exhaled deeply. "Coffee. Starbucks, to be exact."
There was a noise not unlike that of ten thousand readers stating flatly that product placement has its limits.
A/N: Well… I feel like I owe you lot an apology for this chapter. It wasn't particularly funny, and I intended for a lot more to happen, but I got a bit sidetracked while I was writing it and… well, here we are. The next installment will be better. I hope.