A/N: Full disclosure, I'm reaching a point where I'm considering solely posting my fics over on AO3 (my username over there is eriathiel) - I have no official plans as of yet, but it's definitely a consideration these days, so maybe something to keep in mind. Sad because I've been using this site to upload stories for over a decade and I absolutely value the folk who choose to read on here, I've made several good friends on here even, but I think we can all see that it's spiralling a bit around here, I've dealt with several spam reviews (entirely unrelated to the contents of my fics or even my writing in general, and just people spamming every recent story in different fandoms leaving a bunch of hateful shit about topics like racism and so on) over the last couple of months, too, which doesn't add to the enthusiasm I have for keeping my stuff up to date on here.
Like I said, no concrete plans as of yet, but just something to keep in mind. If/when I do decide to make the call, I'll let you guys know well in advance.
It was only their first morning waking up together as a Fellowship that found Sybil kneeling on the ground with one of the rosemary-lavender phials beneath her nose. She'd learned her lesson from the last time, at least – knowing now how powerful it could be, and that there was no need to smother herself in the stuff. A good thing, too. If she ended up in that state again, she wouldn't be able to bathe half so successfully as she had in Rivendell, and they'd probably end up carrying her for miles, stopping only so that she could vomit.
And that would be no good for morale.
"Surely it is too early for such measures," Boromir protested on the other side of the fire. "We've not yet run into any trouble."
"You've seen more than enough trouble to know that should it find us, we would not have time for this in the fray of it," Gandalf responded.
As the wizard spoke, he did not look at the man who he was actually speaking too – eyes fixed intently on Sybil instead. It didn't exactly lessen the pressure.
"We make for the Dimrill Dale – but that will take us some weeks," the wizard spoke gently to her, offering guidance. "Do you see peril on the road ahead? I do not expect it, for enemies "
Sybil closed her eyes and, counterintuitively, it was like doing so allowed her to see. But they were not the same vivid apparitions that had plagued her in Rivendell – a mixed blessing, to be sure. An image flickered across the inside of her eyelids, flashes of bright daylight invading what had once been dark, but they were dispelled at the clatter of pots and pans across the camp. Irritation flitted through her.
Screwing her eyes more tightly shut, she used her free hand to cover the ear closest to the noise.
"Quiet," Gandalf barked to the others, understanding her difficulty immediately.
The order was followed without question, and she took her hand from her ear, curling it instead around the one that held the phial, breathing in more deeply still. It was like a blade driving up into her sinuses, fanning upwards and out towards her temples and throughout her skull. It was strange. She saw the image as if she was a bird - the Fellowship marching onward on the ground far below, mere specks against the land they walked across. Was she there? The images were too fleeting for her to be sure, and they numbered just too many for her to properly take count, but she failed to notice herself if she had been there.
Foreboding gripped her, but she shoved it aside to speak more of what she saw.
"Mountains, and great hills."
"Yes, we see those too," Pippin added cheerfully.
The levity helped her spirits – but only up until Gandalf sent a withering look in the direction of the hobbit.
"And…something dark. In the sky."
Boromir stiffened where he stood, the leather of his gloves creaking as he balled his hands into fists.
"Dark?" Gandalf himself appeared alarmed, too. "How did it look? A winged creature?"
"No," she shook her head, and Boromir's fists unfurled. "It…it looked like a cloud, but less substantial."
The wizard's bushy grey eyebrows knitted together as he leaned on his staff, straightening and considering her words carefully. Whether he was troubled by some strange omen in her words, or the fact that this was all her sight could offer them at this stage, she did not know – but neither boded well.
Sybil bowed her head and made to take another deep breath in from the phial, but Aragorn's rough hands closed over hers and gently pried it away, picking up the cork from the ground and stoppering it.
"That is enough," he said.
"You didn't bring me along so that I might report the weather," she argued. "I shall see if there's more-"
"You shall not," he said, firmly and with a note of finality.
Sighing heavily, she leaned back where she knelt. Seeing her disquiet, Pippin spoke up again.
"Were we in the Shire, you'd be celebrated like a king- er, queen. Being able to foretell the weather in such a manner, I mean. The farmers would-"
"Were we in the Shire, your input might be welcome in this matter, Peregrin Took," Gandalf snapped.
Her already frazzled nerves frayed further still.
"Excuse me," she said, clumsily pushing herself to her feet. "I'm going to make the most of the stream while we still have access to it."
It was near enough that the matter of whether one of their number should venture to it alone or not was a matter of choice rather than necessity. Here, at least, with their relative proximity to Rivendell. As the days passed, she suspected such a journey would be considered far more high-risk.
"I will go with you," Aragorn said.
Sybil was already trying to think of an excuse to stop him when Legolas called.
"I'm afraid I require your assistance, Aragorn."
She took her leave before it could devolve into a debate. The tightness in her chest would only demand to be felt if she did not seek out solitude swiftly, even if only for a moment. In solitude, she could ground herself. And then she would be fine.
Sybil knelt over the stream on the rocky shore, cupping her hands to bring the frigid water to her face. If she thought it might help, she'd start funnelling the stuff up her nostrils – although it didn't seem the best of plans. Drowning in water barely two feet deep seemed a less than graceful way to make her exit from this quest.
Boots crunched on the ground behind her, but she barely had time to turn before a familiar voice met her ears.
"None of us should wander alone," Boromir greeted softly.
You least of all.
The knives in her temples dug in deeper and she hissed, closing her eyes. The latter of the words had been in his voice, but he had not spoken them. Had he?
"What did you say?"
"None of us should wander alone," he repeated, worry laced throughout his voice.
"That was all?"
"…Yes. Why?"
"It's no matter," she shook her head, turning back to the stream.
He continued to approach until he stood to the left of her kneeling form.
"Is it your head?" he asked.
Sybil smiled a little. "Yes and no."
If she'd expected Boromir to swiftly excuse himself upon hearing her response, she'd have been proven dead wrong. In fact, he nodded and drew nearer still.
"You should not be disheartened. It is early yet – and surely if there was little to see, that means there is little to come. For the time being."
"I agree with you," she said…and caught herself before she added it's not that which bothers me.
She endeavoured to never find herself in need of learning the same lesson twice, and spilling her guts to Boromir in a moment of weakness had been a very recent lesson. His sudden warming in his treatment to her was reassuring, and she did appreciate it. Whatever the reason. They faced too much now for her to go on bearing grudges, and even if they didn't – even if times were absolutely rosy…she didn't want to. If only out of respect for what goodness had lain between them back in the beginning. And the bits and pieces of it since then.
"What weighs upon you, then?" he asked, and then added with a wry, tired smile. "Other than the obvious?"
"Less than what weighs on you," she shook her head.
Because what were her worries compared to an entire land full of men and women, all of whom he was responsible for?
"I would hear it, all the same."
And he said it so earnestly that she felt her resolve slacken.
"I…" she paused and laughed quietly, because she knew it was going to sound daft. "I do not like how he speaks to Pippin."
"How who…you mean Gandalf?"
"I'm being foolish."
"There is nothing foolish in kindness," he argued gently, moving to kneel beside her, removing his gloves to wash his hands in the stream. "But I do not believe he means any harm."
"I know he doesn't. He cares for the hobbits deeply."
"And I don't believe any harm is taken, either."
Sybil said nothing. For she'd seen the downcast look in Pippin's face several times already when Gandalf snapped at him, and it bothered her.
"Perhaps not."
"You disagree?"
Once again, she was silent. He shook the water from his hands and knelt back. Then, he returned his gloves to his hands, and made far too intent a study of the hole forming by the thumb of the left one for it to be sincere. When she didn't speak, too concerned with trying to root herself to reality – focusing on the feeling of the ground beneath her knees, the breeze that pulled at the stray curls about her face, the droplets of water that trailed idly down her fingers – he finally turned to her again.
"Sybil," he entreated quietly. "You…you can speak to me. I know that we…well. I hope that you know that."
What had he been about to say, before he thought better of it?
"I bear no dislike towards Gandalf."
"I did not think that you did."
"The…the way he speaks to Pippin. It reminds me of Bera at times, and it…throws me off. That is all. As I said, foolishness."
She waited patiently for Boromir to laugh at her, but he did not. Instead, he considered her words – and her face – carefully, and then he answered.
"You said she was not cruel."
"Nor is Gandalf."
"But he only reminds you of her when he speaks harshly. And it upsets you. Surely you can see the cause for my confusion."
None could ever argue that he was not shrewd. Although she was hardly grateful for it, here and now.
"There are many degrees between cruelty and kindness," she shrugged. "One can speak harshly while ultimately meaning well. In their way."
A manner of understanding dawned in his eyes, then, and she wondered what experience he had in such matters to prompt that change. Or if he thought she was speaking of him with that last addition. But asking felt too much like prying, especially with how tentative a truce they had. Sybil continued.
"She was not…kind. Didn't much see the point in it – it was coddling, in her mind, and therefore unhelpful in the long term. In fact, she was rather harsh most of the time, especially towards the end. But she was not uncaring."
At first she was reluctant, but the more she spoke, the more her shoulders slackened, and the tightness in her chest eased. Although a vague worry chipped away at the back of her mind that the last time she'd spoken so frankly to him, it had proven to be a rather selfish mistake on her part. Instead, he smiled slightly. Bitterly, yes, but a smile all the same.
"That certainly explains how you so artfully contend with harsh words."
"She gave me good practise," she offered a rueful laugh. "Another thing for which I must offer her my gratitude."
"Yes. Well. I…I regret how much practise I have given you."
The noise fell away from her mind all at once then. For she had no idea how to even begin responding to such a sincere confession, suddenly keenly aware of how his eyes were fixed on her face for the barest hint of a reaction.
"You should not encourage it," Aragorn warned Legolas, buckling the bedroll they had just packed onto the supplies Bill already bore.
"What?" he asked.
"You did not need my assistance to stow a bedroll, Legolas. You knew Boromir would follow when I could not."
The elf prince was serene in the face of the accusation.
"I'm not denying that, you misunderstand me - I'm asking what particularly I should not encourage. Amicability within the Fellowship?"
"Amicability," Aragorn snorted. "I doubt that is what he has in mind."
Legolas stared at him, aghast.
"Neither of us had the best introduction to the son of Gondor, but surely you cannot think-"
He interrupted swiftly.
"If I thought he posed a danger to her, I would be there with them now. I do not think him malicious – nor ill-meaning."
But one could do harm without meaning so. And Sybil? Sybil was very sheltered. Aragorn had no wish to see her reading more into Boromir's interest than may necessarily be intended, for that could easily lead to heartbreak and to disaster. For the Fellowship, and for her personally. The young woman had been through a curious mix of much and little over what they knew of her life, and such an experience could lead to much upset in a situation as muddled as this. Heartbreak, even, if it proved disastrous.
None of this he could voice, however, for Sybil would not thank him for it if she caught wind.
"I became better acquainted with him while you were gone with the scouting parties. With both of them in fact," Legolas replied. "I think he would surprise you. And that Sybil might, too."
Aragorn sighed and stood. The camp was almost entirely packed, he would have to fetch them back now. There was no time to waste.
Leaving Legolas' assertion hanging in the air between them, he turned and made for the stream.
It was Boromir's voice that reached his ears first.
"That certainly explains how you so artfully contend with harsh words."
"She gave me good practise," Sybil replied. "Another thing for which I must offer her my gratitude."
Were they speaking of Bera? They had to be.
"Yes. Well. I…I regret how much practise I have given you."
"It's…" Sybil trailed off and said nothing, instead ending her words with a small shrug.
Legolas would have been pleased to find himself proven right so swiftly – for both surprised him with that. Boromir, with his frank confession, and Sybil for not immediately insisting all was well, as Aragorn would have expected her to do. He was relieved that the ellon was not here. No doubt he could hear it from where he sat, but at least Aragorn could not see his smugness, however humourful it would be. All the same, his reservations remained.
And perhaps he had no right to them. He was of no relation to Sybil, neither her father nor her brother, and he doubted she considered him as such, but that didn't mean he could not look out for her.
"I mean to remedy it. If I can," Boromir said quietly. "If you wish it, and if it is possible."
He asked no question, not explicitly, but there was one within his words all the same. Turning her head, Sybil eyed him, surprise plain on her face – but the action put Aragorn squarely in her peripheral vision, and he was spotted. Although she appeared far more caught than he, flushing and lowering her gaze.
At her reaction, Boromir turned too. He appeared far less guilty, annoyance pulling at his brow as he sighed.
"It is time to depart," Aragorn said.
They rose and turned to follow without a word – Sybil flushed and Boromir frowning.
A/N: tumblr - esta-elavaris