A/N: A long chapter, because I'm very ready for them to be done with this stretch of their travels. As is Sybil, bless her.

The day following Boromir's first glimpse of Sybil's burn – a terrible one, no less, that spanned the back of her thigh, trailing down in angry blistering splotches of dark purple-red to just below the back of her knee – did not offer much promise. It was growing painfully clear that she was set to worsen by the day. When they first met, she'd walked stiffly with a slight wince, but otherwise she'd managed. The next day, conversation had grown more stilted, and a near-constant sweat had beaded its way across her brow. Even the salve he'd applied had helped little in that regard, although either that or the tea had managed to work some semblance of colour back into her face.

But the next day, she could not walk. Having let her sleep longer than was technically her share, he'd awoken her so he could rest a few hours himself expecting perhaps a gentle grumble or two, but she'd hardly seemed to notice that the dawn was lighter than in should have been. He'd left her sitting in the same patch he'd kept his watch with a portion of dried meat in her hand, and when he awoke he found her unmoved and the food uneaten, her boot propped up on his pack so that a gap remained between the back of her leg and anything that might touch it. She was paler than she'd been the day before.

All of this he'd pretended not to notice for fear of his own worry spooking her, but he couldn't hide how he turned his gaze to the eastern mountains with increasing determination. He ate his own share of the rations and packed up their 'camp' while she watched through fluttering eyelids, and when the time came for her to stand, she managed to rest weight on her injured leg for all of a second before she cried out and the leg buckled. Boromir caught her before she could hit the ground. She'd spoken truthfully, he knew, when she said so long as she could move, she would move. It seemed, however, that the time in which she could not had reached them sooner than they might've hoped.

It had also come upon them sooner, he quickly saw, than Sybil was willing to accept. Although she remained clinging to his arm with both hands, one at his bracer and the other twisting itself unconsciously into the sleeve of his tunic, once her legs were straightened beneath her, she made to let go and attempt it again. As she did so, her jaw was clenched so tightly it was a wonder her teeth did not crack. How hard she tried not to cry out. Something about the sight – not only her pain but how fiercely she tried to deny it – paired with the tale she'd told him not one full day past, saddened him.

"I shall have to carry you, I think," there was little point in dancing around the matter – but he kept his voice light, hoping to show he did not begrudge her that.

What was the alternative? Leaving her here at the mercy of anything and everything that may wander past, with a vague apology called over his shoulder alongside a promise of sending help once he was safe and cozy, enjoying Lord Elrond's hospitality? In response she did not argue as he feared she might, but her lips downturned and her brow furrowed.

"Ordinarily I might take offense to your reluctance," he teased. "Then again, ordinarily I smell better than I do now."

A hundred days of travel, little of it easy, would do that to a man. Her eyes, a dark shade of blue all the more vivid for how pale she'd grown, immediately flew to his – but when she saw he was only teasing, the alarm seeped from them and was replaced by a weary sort of humour.

"I've encountered worse."

He breathed a laugh. "Then you have my condolences. Perhaps you can regale me with the tale while we progress."

As he spoke, he removed his cloak – the day wasn't so chilly that he needed it badly, especially given the sweat he knew he'd work up carrying her throughout the day. Still, the task wasn't so arduous as to be a dire one. She was small in stature, it would certainly be manageable. No, his concern was the burn. There was no way he could think of that he might carry her without aggravating it – that much was a foregone conclusion – his only hope was in negating it as much as possible, and that he'd be doing less harm than walking on it would have done.

"We'll have to make for the Road," he said. "Carrying you should be little trouble, truly, but I don't like my chances of navigating us both in and out of ravines and who only knows what."

Half expecting an argument on the matter, for she'd certainly been against the notion only just the previous day, he looked down at where she still gripped his arm for support, and found her eyes – the ones he'd just been admiring in the back of his mind – threatening to grow hazy. The sooner he swept her off of her feet (for lack of less suggestive phrasing), the better.

"I must ask you to humour me," he said with a note of awkwardness. "Hopefully this will act as sufficient padding around your injury, so my carrying you won't aggravate it too much."

As he spoke, he folded his cloak up a few times over so that it formed a thick bundle, and then he draped that bundle over his forearm. Now would be the test. Bending low, he brought the arm to the backs of her legs – brushing her skirts rather than her legs. At his nod, she snaked a hand around his shoulders, looping the other around the front of his neck so she could clasp them together. The angle brought her face very close to his, but if she shared his mild sense of embarrassment (something he scolded himself for, as this was hardly the time), it very likely vanished when he placed his other arm at her back, and began to lift her.

She cried out immediately, squirming in his grasp as her grip around his neck tightened to steel. Boromir was grateful, at least, that she had the presence of mind to direct the shout into his neck, and not directly into his ear. Carrying her, he quickly realised, was going to be more difficult on Sybil than it would be on he himself. Hesitating, he tried to distribute his hold on her – carrying more of her weight at her back than at her legs, but it was a nigh-impossible task, and no matter what he did, there would be pressure on the burn in some manner or another. With the distinct feeling that any pressure would be agonising, it left him luckless.

"I could try carrying you on my back," he said. "But it would pose the same problem – and you would be required to hold onto me more strongly than you do now."

That would also mean she'd have to wear both his pack and his shield in order to free up his back, and he had little wish to place that weight on her while she also had to cling onto him, no less. Not to mention how she'd once again need to ruck up her skirts for any hope of clinging onto him with her legs. She'd suffered enough embarrassment to last a lifetime thus far – and were it the best option, he'd be trying to talk her into suffering through yet more of it now, but it was not.

"If I'm being honest," she breathed, and then had to pause before continuing in a laboured voice, "I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to stay conscious."

Well. The matter was settled, then. Once she was settled – securely, if not comfortably – in his arms, all that was left to do was push on, and Boromir did so, trying to keep his hold as still and his pace as even as he could so that he'd jostle her as little as possible. For her part, Sybil endured it uncomplainingly, her fingers curled in his collar and her face pressed into his shoulder, breath ragged as she gritted her teeth and breathed through the pain.

It was a mixed blessing when she finally fell unconscious a little over an hour into the journey.

Being shocked back into consciousness – lucid consciousness, no less – was a jarring experience for Sybil. Her eyes flew open, and she had no idea where she was, how long had gone by since Boromir had first begun carrying her, or even where he was for that matter. It was night. That much she could glean from the darkness all about her. Sadly, patting herself on the back for those impressive powers of deduction might as well have been an acrobatic feat in her current state, so that would have to wait for later.

They – or he, rather – must have made considerable progress over the course of the day. Where she'd seen little other than hills, ravines, and rocks before falling unconscious, there were trees all about them now, and the eastern mountains loomed larger than they last had, black in the night. A soft, rumbling snore sounded at her other side, and the mystery of Boromir's location was solved. As awareness trickled in more and more, she realised with a guilty tug at her chest that he'd place her atop his bedroll before finding his own rest in the grass, resting flat on his back with one arm sprawled over his eyes.

She soon found what had awoken her, too, the dryness in her throat so severe that it almost stung. Licking her lips proved a fruitless endeavour, and she was beginning to contemplate whether a search for a stream was even feasible (she wouldn't have him carry her all over Middle-earth and take his bedroll from him while drinking all of his water), when something shifted in the corner of her eye. Dread seized at her before she could even squint to make out what exactly it was – or what they were, for there was more than one.

Instinct moved her more than much else. Stretching an arm out, she clamped a hand over Boromir's mouth. It probably wasn't the best way to wake him, but all she knew was that she didn't want him to make a noise if she shook him. She didn't want to do anything that might draw the attention of those…those shadows. And that included allowing him to keep snoring. Grunting, he otherwise made no noise – although his beard tickled her palm as he reacted to her touch. The instinct to be quiet must've been a product of his being a soldier. As was the iron grip that immediately clung to her wrist. But it vanished as soon as it appeared.

Her hand slipped away from his mouth, catching the hand that had just gripped her wrist, hoping dearly that he'd understand her unspoken urging to stay silent. He did. Did he feel it too? That strange dread? A look towards him found his eyes pinned on the shadows as they drifted eerily over the landscape, moving southwards. Relieved that he'd understood what she was trying to tell him, she let go of his hand, but he held fast. The unspoken instruction was clear. Be still, and be silent. Sybil had no trouble obeying.

It was difficult to say whether they'd been noticed, because these…these things had no faces, only black shadowy shapes. But if they did, they gave no indication of it. On and on they continued southward, until finally they slunk behind a rocky outcropping and were visible no more. The dread, reaching bone-deep and so real it might as well have been tangible, faded then but only a little – and not enough for her to kid herself that her response had been an overreaction, nor a product of her nerves offset by her recent ordeal.

When a long while had gone by with no sign of the shadows, but lots of her eyes playing tricks and trying to see them where they were not, Boromir's grip on her hand loosened. Even if she'd been set on convincing herself that she was overreacting, his response would've killed that tactic good and dead. Did he know what they were? An unwillingness to break the silence stopped her from asking.

"How are you feeling?" Boromir asked.

By that point, she'd have had no trouble believing it had she been told that a full hour had trickled by since she'd woken him. The fact that he didn't address any of it only stoked her fear.

"Not my best," she admitted quietly, her voice raspy.

He handed her the waterskin, and she murmured her thanks before she drank. She choked down the strip of meat that followed next.

"You're more lucid now than you were throughout the day," he said. "I tried to make more of your tea around midday, but I'm unsure whether I carried out all of the steps correctly without your guidance. And I could barely get you to take a sip, regardless."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said firmly.

"I didn't ramble, did I?"

Bera made no secret of how she used to talk in her sleep – and while she seldom filled her in on the details of what she'd said, her reaction had Sybil suspecting little of it made for good listening.

"Mumbles, here and there. Most of it incoherent. Fear not, your secrets remain safe."

The joke fell flat, quashed by the clear tension in his voice…and by how he drew his sword, then retrieving a whetstone from a pocket in his pack.

"Should we move?" she asked quietly.

Maybe her sudden bout of lucidity was a good sign. Maybe she'd be able to walk. She knew that hope to be folly the moment it crossed her mind, but he could hardly carry her and fight at the same time.

"No," he answered immediately. "Not in the darkness. When dawn comes, we press on. How is your leg?"

He was asking in order to turn the conversation away from those strange figures. Not that she doubted he cared. Nobody carried another through the wilderness for miles upon miles without caring. But he really didn't want to speak about those shadows. She could grant him that, at least, for lack of any other way of displaying her gratitude.

But her leg…? As her adrenaline waned, she could hardly believe she'd even been distracted from injury. The pain now was but a fraction of what she'd felt when he first lifted her, but that only spoke to how bad that had been, rather than how well it fared now. No, now the entirety of her leg throbbed in time with her pulse, and the headache was back, prying at her temples until she was certain she could feel each section of her brain individually. The longer she lay on her back like this, the more she felt like the bedroll beneath her was swaying – like it rested atop waves rather than ground.

"How far to Rivendell?" she asked quietly.

Mostly to give an answer, even if it was a non-answer. He had no way of knowing when they'd reach Rivendell any more than she did. Whether or not he knew that she knew that, he still humoured her.

"Not far, I should think. You should rest. We press on at first light."

Given how her eyelids were already rebelling against her, she didn't have much choice but to obey. Her last though before she drifted off again was a faint hope that the stars glimmering above were not quite so indifferent as they appeared.

Sybil had grown worse. Every time he looked at her, in fact, Boromir feared he could find yet another new detail that indicated how she suffered. Her pallor had turned from easily explained by her ordeal, to utterly corpse-like as it even reached her lips, standing in sharp contrast to the dark curls that stuck to her face as she stirred in his hold.

It had been tempting to take her ability to talk, and drink, and nibble at provisions in the dead of night as a good sign, but those results had proven impossible to replicate come morning – and she'd threatened to choke on whatever water he'd tried to drip between her lips until he'd had to stop trying altogether, resolving instead to get her to the Elves as swiftly as possible.

All in all, it worried Boromir greatly. Not solely because he felt responsible for her, not just because it would worry anybody who might boast of having a heart in their chest. No, what struck him was how her current state was such a far cry from how she'd been only a few days past. To see the woman who had gritted her teeth and walked on an injured leg for leagues, the one who'd looked at him with a fire in her eyes and insisted softly that all that had just befallen her had done so in the best way possible, cast so quickly into this shuddering delirium…it pained him to see. She was short in stature, that was true, and there was something in her that seemed to instinctively shy away from being observed, but this was the first time he'd seen her look truly small. Not least because there was so little he could do.

Other than resolve not to fail her.

So he pressed onward, and onward, and onward, until the mountains loomed large ahead, his dilemma became less about reaching them in general, and more about finding the path from there to Imladris itself.

To relief that seeped down into his very bones, he was saved from navigating blindly around when the hoofbeat of horses sounded – followed by bells, of all things – and all he could do want stand and watch on in disbelief when a company of the very people he sought came riding through the trees.

They caught sight of him before he could even get a chance to call out, unsurprisingly, and slowed to a stop before him as he stood, tightening his hold on the woman in his arms as if that alone might urge her to hold on just that bit longer.

"Well met," one called in the Common Speech.

The horse that was littered with the bells he'd heard, a fine beast with a coat that was near-blindingly white, cantered to the front of the small company, its rider being the one who spoke, keen eyes quickly taking stock of Boromir, and then of Sybil. He slid from the horse as Boromir nodded slowly and returned the greeting.

"Is your wife injured?"

The elf was tall, even taller than Boromir himself, with long golden hair that flowed unbound behind him as he moved.

"We met on the Road," he shook his head, forcing himself to recover quickly from the shock of their appearance in order to seek their sorely-needed aid. "She is burned. Badly. And she has been mostly unconscious these last two days. We sought Rivendell before she weakened, and now we seek it with even greater need."

At first, in truth, it had been tempting to roll with the assumption that Sybil was his wife – simply so that they had less inclination to part the two of them unless entirely necessary, and so he might swiftly be excused of any suspicion. But it would be too tricky a lie to explain and to unfurl at a later point, especially when his identity and his purpose in seeking Lord Elrond was revealed. He had little desire to come to the Elves a liar.

"Her name?" the elf enquired, brushing stray curls back from her face so he could look her over.

What could he see what Boromir did not, he wondered? Whatever it was hardly likely to make their current circumstances any better.

"Sybil. I am Boromir, Captain of the White Tower."

The elf nodded.

"We can help, but we must move swiftly. My name is-"

Half-conscious in his arms, Sybil stirred then, one arm weakly reaching out so that she could brush the bells littered across horse's headstall with a weak, delirious laugh.

"Glorfindel."

Bright eyes widening, he regarded her with surprise, hesitating and then speaking slowly.

"Do we know one another, my lady?"

Boromir could see from the elf's reaction that he knew they did not, and was asking out of politeness more than anything. But if she heard the question, she didn't show it, instead murmuring in words so slurred he could barely discern them – nor their meaning.

"…should've been in the movies…"

The elf, Glorfindel – for, based on his reaction, Sybil had been correct – regarded the both of them strangely for a moment, and so Boromir had to forgo good manners and move proceedings along.

"She is correct. We should be moving. Forgive me, but I fear for her condition if she does not receive proper treatment soon."

One last, strange look at the woman was all he offered in response, before he sighed and nodded. His brethren shared his curiosity, too, based on the strange looks she garnered from where they remained situated on their horses.

"Give her here," Glorfindel said, reaching towards her.

Boromir hesitated without fully meaning to – out of some strange instinct rather than distrust. After her being in his care for so long, a responsibility he took keenly seriously no less, it felt wrong to hand her over to an unknown rider with such ease. Luckily, the elf understood.

"Here, then – you mount Asfaloth, and I shall hand her up to you and ride back with one of my kin."

The horse's headstall had no bit attached, a fact which Boromir observed with hesitance. That hesitance was doubled when it came time to hand Sybil over, doing so as gently as possible, glad to find none of the elves seemed to take offense to that reluctance.

"He has borne stranger riders than you as of late," Glorfindel assured. "Our business here is concluded – your timing was fortunate, we return to Imladris."

"What business was that?" Boromir questioned as he mounted the horse.

It stirred little in response, and he hoped the lack of a bit and bridle was a testament to the horse's temperament rather than the skill of its rider. He'd asked the question mostly out of politeness, but at the shadow that crossed Glorfindel's face, he had his answer.

"Simple scouting measures. It matters little," he replied, adjusting his grip on the woman in his arms as she stirred at the aggravation of her burns. "It is concluded."

A number of five seemed excessive for simple scouting measures. His refusal to speak of it – of them – only made Boromir all the more certain. Which was what compelled him to speak.

"We saw them," he said, his tone laced with meaning. "A handful of leagues past. Last night. They were turned southward."

At that, those around him stirred (as did their horses), and Glorfindel's eyes darkened.

"If they were here," Boromir hedged. "They are long gone now."

All that earned him response was a slight nod, and then they were too concerned with manoeuvring Sybil up onto the horse for more conversation. Until, once she was situation, Glorfindel offered yet another solemn nod, followed by thanks.

The encounter only made Boromir all the gladder to be leaving the wilderness behind.

A/N: I'm playing a wee bit with timelines here. In movies it's not crystal clear how far prior to the Council of Elrond that Boromir arrives. He meets Aragorn the night before, so we can safely guess the day before? In the book, it's outright stated that he arrives the very morning of the Council. I want to have him and Sybil present for the feast that's thrown in Frodo's honour in the book once he's woken up after his ordeal – so in my head, Boromir and Sybil get to Rivendell while Frodo is still asleep/recovering, which gives Sybil some time for her own healing (which should be much smoother than Frodo's, all things considered) before we meet some more characters.

All in all, it means Boromir arrives at Rivendell earlier than he did in either medium, but it's my fanfic and I'll meddle if I want to. Maybe Sybil's help on that first day saved him a bit of wandering before he found his way, maybe his need to get help for her had him moving more quickly than he would have, we can inject logic here if we want. But I mean, flouting aspects of canon is crucial for the mental wellbeing of Boromir enjoyers, so.

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