"But others *were* stronger, Frodo." Boromir said, absently pulling the petals from a flower of elanor and throwing them into the little brook chuckling at their feet. "Aragorn, my brother Faramir, you -" he broke off startled as the Hobbit jerked abruptly to his feet and stalked a pace or two away to stand with his back to the Man, his fists clenched.

"Me!" Frodo gave a bitter laugh. "You're wrong there, Boromir. The Ring took me just as it took you. At the very last I couldn't throw it away. I failed, it would all have been for nothing if Gollum hadn't bitten the Ring from my hand, finger and all. Sauron would have won."

"Frodo -"

"And don't you dare say it doesn't matter!" he whirled back to face the Man, eyes blazing behind a film of unshed tears. "That's what Gandalf and Elrond and Galadriel keep telling me. They're wrong! I gave in, after all those months fighting the Ring's power I surrendered just when it mattered most!"

"Remember, Frodo, I lost my fight too," Boromir said gravely.

"It's not the same."

"No indeed. You resisted far longer than I." the Man got up and knelt before the Hobbit, his hands on Frodo's shoulders blue eyes looking steadily into blue eyes. "Perhaps you did fail at the last, Frodo Baggins," he said solemnly, "but of this much I am certain; no Man or Elf or other speaking creature in all of Middle Earth could have done more. You are the strongest spirit I have ever known. If you could not do it - than nobody could."

Frodo's head drooped. "I don't feel strong," he said in a small voice to his furry toes, "I feel empty, and sick and sometimes even Eressea seems grey and bleak."

"I know." Boromir said unexpectedly. "Oh I know that feeling, only too well."

Frodo looked up at him, startled. "You've felt it too?"

"Many times." the Man smiled but his eyes were haunted. "All warriors feel so after a hard fight. Win or lose, you look around at the wreckage and the dead and you wonder if even life is worth this price."

Frodo's eyes widened with surprise and a new understanding. "That's how you felt when you came to Rivendell isn't it? Grey and hopeless like I do now," he shivered. "No wonder the Ring fixed on you."

"I was in darkness, Frodo, that's why the Ring called to me. To fail in hope is to open yourself to Evil. I should have known better."

"You're not the only one. Sam had to remind me there was such a thing as Good, and it was worth fighting for. And that the sun would shine again."

The Man smiled. "Sam is a very wise Hobbit."

Frodo smiled back. "He is. You call me strong, Boromir, but I wouldn't have made it without Sam." The smile faded. "I put him through hell, and at the last I failed him. If it hadn't been for Gollum..." his eyes filled with tears. "You never saw him, Boromir, he was horrible - and pitiful. And the worst of it was the Ring hadn't quite destroyed him. There was still a little crack of light, but not enough to save him."

"I never saw Gollum but I have seen Hobbits as well as Men in the Halls of Waiting on the Last Shore." Boromir answered quietly. "If healing is possible for him he will find it there."

"I hope so, oh I hope so." Frodo closed his eyes, but tears trickled from beneath the lids. "That's why I'm here in Eressea, to be healed." opened his eyes. "I'm still not free of it, Boromir, even though it's destroyed. Sometimes I'm afraid I never will be."

The Man pulled him closer into a comforting embrace. "You've taken a sore wound, Frodo, one that will take a long time to heal. You must be patient and hold to hope. You will be whole again, I know you will."

"I try to believe that, but it's not easy." He pulled away a little and frowned at the Man. "How did we get onto me? We were talking about you punishing yourself for things that weren't your fault."

"I broke my sworn oath to you, Ringbearer, and that was my fault."

"You expect too much of yourself." Frodo said sternly.

"No more than other Men have done," Boromir answered.

"Other Men weren't tried as you were. It wasn't you who attacked me, Boromir, it was the Ring. Blame yourself for giving in to it if you must, but not for what it made you do."

"It comes to the same thing, Frodo. By my weakness I endangered the quest, and you, and broke my sworn word."

The Hobbit disengaged himself from the man, throwing himself down wearily on the grass, his head pillowed by a hummock. "And you're going to go on torturing yourself over it no matter what anybody says." Frodo said bitterly.

"No. No, Frodo," Boromir protested, "I'm trying to heal just like you." He looked quizzically at his small friend. "I know Gandalf regards return to Middle Earth as some kind of punishment, but I didn't expect you to feel the same."

"He says you're going back to war," Frodo answered. "He says that they'll kill you again. It's not fair."

Boromir moved to sit cross-legged beside the Hobbit. "I was bred for war, Frodo, it's not my fate or my nature to sit in peace in Eressea or anywhere else."

He looked around the little glade, at the leaves dancing on the boughs overhead and the green sward starred with elanor and the clear brook sparkling in the sunlight, and he shook his head. "This is not for me. I will find no answers here. Frodo, the One would never have let me go if it wasn't the best thing for me. Trust His judgment if you won't trust mine."

"Good advice." observed a voice behind them, "and not just for Hobbits."

"Gandalf!" Frodo rolled to his feet and ran to hug the wizard who put an affectionate arm around the Hobbit but his eyes continued to rest thoughtfully on Boromir.

"You have grown wise, my friend."

"Not really, but I have learned some things I think." The Man answered modestly.

"Indeed you have." Gandalf came and sat down at the brook side between the two Mortals.

"That's another good thing about having you here, Boromir," Frodo grinned. "We haven't seen this much of Gandalf since we came."

"I'm sorry about that, Frodo." the wizard apologized. "I've been away for a long time and there were many things that needed seeing to. I'll try to do better in the future."

"I was just joking, Gandalf." the Hobbit said quickly. "I'm sure you have much more important things to do than visit with Bilbo and me."

The wizard pursed his lips thoughtfully. "No, I don't believe that I do." He smiled down at Frodo. "You and Bilbo are very important to me." Then he raised his eyes to Boromir's. "As are you, my friend."

….

"It seems to me the Valar are so quick to forgive because they expect little better from a mere Man." Boromir said drily.

"No!" Gandalf stamped his staff for emphasis. "I cannot deny we have been guilty of such thinking in the past but I promise you we have learned better. We do not forget it was a Man who threw Morgoth from his throne and wrested a Silmaril from his crown.*1 A Man who defied him to his face in spite of all torments.*2 And a Man who saw through his unlight and tracked him to his lair at the End.*3" The wizard's staff had sunk deep into the soft loam under the flowering boughs of Eressea's fair orchards and he had to tug hard to get it loose.

Boromir laughed at the sight then sobered to say: "I don't deserve to be named in the same breath as those great heroes, yet I accept your apology on behalf of all Men."

"You have more in common with one at least than you think." Gandalf answered. "I told you I had known only one other Man who'd freed himself from Darkness unaided, and that was Urin."

Boromir stiffened in outrage, eyes flashing. "I am nothing like him! Urin wrestled with the will of the Dark Lord himself and won. My struggle was with a mere instrument and I lost."

The wizard looked at him thoughtfully. "So that's it," he said half to himself, "stupid of me to assume you understood." he shook his head. "Boromir, the Ring of Power was no mere 'instrument' it had will and purpose and power of its own, the power of Sauron himself that even I feared. Why do you think I reproach myself so? I left you to fight alone against a foe I dared not face."

The Man was shaking his head in confusion. "But it was just a ring." *4

"Just a ring!" Gandalf cast his eyes upward, "Eru give me patience! It was the One Ring, forged by Sauron and invested with all his strength and his malice!"

Boromir stared disbelievingly. "But if that was so - Frodo! Mithrandir how could you do such a thing to him?"

"Not willingly, not at all willingly." the wizard answered unhappily. "He was our only hope, Boromir, with his Hobbit innocence and his Hobbit strength. But remember he offered freely to take the burden – I would never have allowed it else."

"I do remember." the Man agreed quietly. "And you're right no other could have done what Frodo did. Certainly not I."

"Frodo at least consented to his danger. You didn't even know your peril. The Ring sensed your vulnerability -"

"My weakness you mean." Boromir interupted

"Oh very well! 'weakness' if you will have it so." the wizard snapped impatiently. "But no strength would have availed long against that foe. You were pitted against a will far older and more powerful than your own, Boromir, there could be only one ending."

"And yet you claim I somehow freed myself from this great power?" the Man shook his head. "I think you contradict yourself, Mithrandir."

Astonishingly the wizard smiled. "You are fogetting, as I did, the Gift of Men. You are not bound to this World or to its Fates. It was the Freedom of Men that saved you, my friend. You turned aside from the path laid down for you and made a new destiny for yourself, even as Urin did long years ago."

"Great is the power of Morgoth, yet I am the master of my own hands, my own mind, my own deeds." Boromir quoted softly. "And I choose not to be his thrall."

"Exactly," Gandalf agreed quietly, "just as you chose not to be a tool of Sauron."

"Pity I didn't do so a bit sooner and spare Frodo a bad fright." Boromir said grimly.

"No, no, my friend!" the wizard answered emphatically. "Had Frodo not fled from you both he and the Ring would certainly have fallen into Saruman's hands and all would have been lost. Your 'weakness', as you are pleased to call it, saved the quest."

"That the One can turn even wicked folly to his service makes it no less evil." the Man answered.

Gandalf threw up his hands in despair. "You are the second most stubborn Man I have ever known!"

Boromir had to ask. "Who is the first?"

"Aragorn." the wizard answered and the Man laughed.

Gandalf glanced at the sun. "Nearly teatime, we'd better get back to Bag End or Bilbo will send Frodo to find us. As they turned their steps homeward he continued. "I am very pleased with Frodo, finally he is making some progress." He gave a sharp, sideways glance at the Man. "You have something to do with that I think."

Boromir shook his head. "You give me too much credit. Frodo has strength and courage enough for any need he just had to be reminded of it."

"I think you do yourself too little credit, in this as well as greater things." the wizard retorted. "However you did it, you have helped Frodo."

"And he has helped me," said Boromir.

…

1. Beren of course, with Luthien's help, but that doesn't make his role negligible. I think it's pretty clear neither would have gotten far without the other.

2. This is Hurin Thalion of course.

3. And this is his grandson Urin, son of Turin and Nienor (warning! fanon!) *nothing* about him is canonical. (see note below).

4. Boromir always thought of the Ring as an inanimate object, a thing of power tainted by its association with Sauron (like the Palantiri) but not an active agent of evil. This failure to recognize the Ring's agency undoubtedly contributed to his fall - and his guilt. He never realized he was being influenced by an outside force and was too ashamed of his treacherous temptations to confide in Gandalf or Aragorn.

….

Appendix: On Urin son of Turin.

As those who've read the Histories of Middle Earth will know in the earlier drafts Turin's story is given an odd ending in which he becomes a redeemer figure who will return from Death at the End and, with his Black Sword, end Morgoth's evil forever. Needless to say this makes very little sense as Turin was Morgoth's dupe and tool throughout his life which he ended himself in a fit of despair, (mortal sin according to Catholic doctrine). Thus my invention of Urin, son of Turin and Nienor, and doubly doomed both by the curse of Morgoth and by his incestuous begetting.

Urin was but two months old when his parents killed themselves. Mablung, Thingol's captain, took the infant, the Dragonhelm of Hador and the shards of the Black Sword back to Doriath where Hurin found him. He consented to stay in Menegroth with his grandchild but just a few years later Thingol was slain and his realm laid in ruins by the Dwarves of Nogrod. Hurin blamed himself and the curse of Morgoth that lay on him and his kin so he took his grandson to live away from Men and Elves on the banks of the Teiglin near the Stone of the Hapless where the rest of their family was buried.

He died when Urin was fourteen. Left alone the boy decided to go to the only kin he had, Tuor and Idril hundreds of leagues away at the mouth of the Sirion. He stayed with them for five years, helping raise his younger cousins Earendil and Elwing, but when he was nineteen Elwing showed him the Silmaril and it burned his hand when he touched it.

He knew this for a sign he was unclean and accursed and despairing resolved to carry the curse back to its source, to challenge Morgoth as Fingolfin had – and die. He had the Black Sword of his father reforged and started North but stopped at the Stone of the Hapless to bid his family farewell and as he knelt there it suddenly came to him that his despair was from Morgoth and by acting on it he was doing his will.

It was then he spoke the words Boromir quoted, "Great is the power of Morgoth, yet I am the master of my own hands, my own mind, my own deeds. And I choose not to be his thrall." Urin spent the rest of his life acting on them.

Morgoth's curse worked by using the passions of its victims against them; Morwen's stubborn pride, Turin's impulsiveness and hot temper; Hurin's grief and anger over the hard fates of his kin. Urin mastered it by mastering his despair. By finding hope and holding hard to it in the face of all obstacles and all temptations to give in.

He learned also to control the hot temper and impulsiveness he'd inherited from his father Turin, to consider his actions and their consequences carefully and never to act out of anger. Turin killed a number of people he shouldn't have; Beleg, Brandir, himself. His son spared some he had good reason to kill, even at the last Morgoth himself.

Urin rescued his young relatives, Elros and Elrond from Maglor after the fall of the Havens and took them to live with the Mortal survivors in the fens of Lisgardh at the mouth of the Sirion. As the senior living descendant of the three Fathers of the Edain he led the remaining Men of Beleriand in their guerilla war against Morgoth, allied with the remaining Sindar and Laiquendi.

In Urin the Maiar commanding the Host of the Valar, and their Masters, saw for the first time the power of the Gift of Men and finally realized the Second Children were not just a feeble and rather unnecessary imitation of the Elves but the only hope for the final Healing of Arda Marred.

Urin and his Men fought beside the Maiar, Vanyar and Noldor of Aman in the War of Wrath and, as Gandalf says, it was Urin who tracked Morgoth to his final hiding place dispite all the Vala, once the mightiest being in Arda, could do to stop him. But Urin didn't strike Morgoth down, though he might have. Because, he said, he'd never yet slain any creature who cried for mercy and would not start now.

And it was a good thing Urin did hold his hand for if he hadn't Morgoth, disembodied, might have succeeded in escaping and hiding himself, as Sauron and others of his fallen Maiar did, but trapped in physical form he was taken prisoner and banished to the Void beyond the Walls of Night.

Elros married Urin's firstborn daughter, Indil (which means Lily). His two elder sons went to Numenor where the younger became Lord of Andunie and the older Lord of Hyarnumen. But Urin himself remained in Middle Earth crossing over the Ered Luin with his wife and remaining children to spend the rest of his life, lengthened far beyond the normal span, in Eriador.

He settled at the foot of the Weather Hills and his descendants were Princes of the Midlands, largest of the little principalities and lordships that made up Old Arthedain. Thousands of years later the Numenorean and Eriadoran lines were reunited when the last heiress of Hyarnumen fled Numenor with the Dragonhelm after the execution of her father and brother and married her distant kinsman the Prince of the Midlands, who had inherited the Black Sword. The House of Turin, descended from them both, still survives in the Ranger Wardens of the Weather Hills.