A/N: This chapter was a beast to write, hence the wait. Just a heads up, there's stuff here that has? A slight vibe of self-harm? I wouldn't call it self-harm, I'm only giving the warning to be very safe, it's Sybil purposely aggravating her pre-existing injuries to try and distract herself from her thoughts, rather than creating fresh injuries to do so. But I'd hate to set off anybody in a bad place, so I thought I'd warn anyway.
There are also bits of (somewhat modified) dialogue lifted directly from the books, but I tried to be sparing with it. I really want to minimise how much I just directly lift from the movies and the books, hence not showing all of the details of Haldir and his brothers finding them and the conversation that ensues, because like, we've seen it. Sybil has nothing much to add to it. I did merge the two ways Haldir & co find the Fellowship in the book vs the movie.
By the time they came upon the woodland, all but the strongest among them were wounded and gasping for breath – namely Aragorn, who was used to such hard pushing, Legolas, who…well, was an elf, and Boromir, whose stamina was legend. They still looked weary to the bone, though, in the brief glimpses she snatched of them before she found herself unable to look at any of the others at all. And though her body had been begging her to stop for some time, when Sybil did, she loathed it.
Her weary limbs still complained, of course, but not quite so loudly. Not enough to drown out her mind.
Aragorn being crowned – another good thing that would happen, in a future that did not involve her. Whether Boromir agreed or not (and she suspected he was beginning to see it, even if he was not quite ready to admit it), that was a good thing. Would her presence prevent it? Worse still, would her presence doom him outright, as it had Gandalf?
And maybe that worry could be turned on its head. Maybe, as she ruined all that was good, she would also prevent all that was terrible. Frodo mightn't lose his finger, Boromir would not perish, but was this to be the cost? The lives of Aragorn and Gandalf for them? Would she have to make that decision? Could she make such a choice? Was it her place?
…If she answered any of those questions, would it still stop her from deciding to make that bargain, when Boromir's life was on the line?
While she knew her answer, even if she would never admit it – even within the confines of her own thoughts – she also knew she might not even have to make the decision. Not consciously. In Moria (the thought of the name alone had her suppressing a shudder) she had not decided to let Gandalf perish. It had come about by her trying to avert disaster. It was very possible that she wouldn't know whether she'd failed or succeeded in saving Boromir until it was much, much too late.
Only when the halflings started flagging did they stutter to a halt, and she discovered that standing was actually more painful than running. But she relished in it, grinding her boots into the ground to aggravate the sore soles of her feet even further. Aragorn tended to Sam, and she made a wordless beeline for Frodo, glad at least that their patients had not been reversed. Frodo did not speak. But when she did force herself to look at his face, she found him staring vacantly ahead with the same look of dull horror that most of them wore – taking up his gaze so entirely that there was no room left for accusation. Nor, thankfully, to notice how her hands trembled as she checked over his minor cuts and scrapes.
It was his ribs that bothered her most, knowing of how he'd almost been skewered in the fight, but there was little she could do for them here – especially with much journeying yet ahead of them. Ducking her head, she pressed her ear to his chest and listened to his breathing. It was strained, but from the hard push they'd all been operating under and the pain he was doubtless in, showing no signs that there were any broken bones.
And what lay around his neck could send her home. Away from this. Away from all of this. From the death, the suspicion, the blame, the danger…
She reared back.
"Sybil?" Aragorn asked, pausing in how he tended to Sam's leg.
"Frodo's ribs aren't broken but he should not run," she said haltingly, then eyed Sam's cut a moment. "Nor should- er. Neither of them should. I expect."
Aragorn nodded slowly. "Boromir. You and I will carry them."
As he moved to pass her, Boromir's hand pressed to the small of her back for a fleeting moment, and she had to stare up towards the sky to dispel the tears that threatened to rise in response to the gesture. That was one thing she'd say for Bera. She never gave her cause to worry about any acts of kindness that would make tears unavoidable.
She flexed her arm – the one which had been torn by goblin teeth and who knew what else – and the shock jolted the tears away.
Sunset was well and truly upon them by the time they came to the edge of the woods, its trees silver-barked, their leaves glowing gold in the waning daylight and making the sun seem bright than it really was. They stuttered to a halt some twenty paces before the treeline, regarding it with varying degrees of wariness, curiosity, and relief. The trees, at least, would provide cover to shield them from the view of any pursuers. But the lack of Gandalf's voice to steer them forth was felt all the more strongly now, and Sybil sagged with relief when Legolas broke the silence.
"Lothlórien!" Legolas gazed at the woods in wonder. "Lothlórien! We have come to the eaves of the Golden Wood. Alas that it is winter!"
Even in her daze, Sybil could look forth and note – however dully – that the land ahead was beautiful. The notion of that beauty having been dampened by winter seemed laughable, and she wondered if the sight in spring would be enough to bowl her over entirely.
Aragorn strode forth, and then turned to face the Fellowship. "We must fend for ourselves tonight. We will go forward a short way, until the trees are all about us, and then we will turn aside from the path and seek a place to rest in."
But Boromir refused to move, even when all of the rest of them wearily prepared to set forth once more for another stretch.
"Is there no other way?" he said, his feet planted on the ground beneath him as he eyed the woods before them with open distrust.
"What other fairer way would you desire?" said Aragorn.
He had a point. After Moria, the woods before them now were a paradise.
"Against my will we passed under the shades of Moria, to our loss," Boromir said, and Sybil forced herself not to react.
It was his trust in her that had played a factor in how he'd folded. Yes, the Fellowship had agreed, and Frodo was given the final say, but her word still factored.
Boromir continued. "This wood is known to us in Gondor – 'tis a perilous land. None who escape do so unscathed."
"Say not unscathed, but if you say unchanged, then maybe you will speak the truth," said Aragorn. "But lore wanes in Gondor, Boromir, if in the city of those who once were wise they now speak evil of Lothlórien."
The unspoken, and admittedly unsteady, tentative sort of accord they'd appeared to reach over the last while was strained now, Aragorn's tongue unusually sharp and biting after the trials of the day. All the Fellowship watched uncomfortably as Boromir's lips thinned in response to Aragorn's frank words, that discomfort only growing as he continued.
"Believe what you will, there is no other way for us – unless you would go back to Moria-gate, or scale the pathless mountains, or swim the Great River all alone."
"Not alone," Sybil interjected quietly. "I will go with Boromir."
"Are you saying we should not enter Lothlórien?" there was an incredulous note in Aragorn's voice.
"No," she said quickly. "I've no qualms about entering these woods. But should Boromir feel so strongly that he refuses to enter, I will accompany him wherever he so chooses to go instead."
Though she'd only said a handful of sentences, getting the words out cleanly required a great deal of willpower and concerted effort – so much so that she had to tense her shoulders and clench her fists to steady herself enough to manage it.
"I should think he'd like to drag you through the alternative options even less than he'd like to brave them alone," Aragorn said, not looking at her but at Boromir.
"I've never been dragged anywhere in my life," she replied. "Carried, perhaps, but not dragged."
Boromir's gaze softened and he regarded her steadily, and she returned that gaze, though she'd struggled all day to meet the eyes of any other gathered. It was his call, and she'd offer no advice, only her presence wherever he so chose to go. The woods before them gave her none of the same dread that Moria had, but what good was her word anymore? For all she knew, sharing that fact would only make the rest just as reluctant to enter as Boromir was.
"Lead on, then," said Boromir finally. "But it is perilous."
What wasn't?
"Perilous indeed," said Aragorn, "fair and perilous; but only evil need fear it, or those who bring some evil with them."
Sybil folded her arms, ignoring the pain that shot up her bad one in response, all so she could resist the urge to motion pointedly at the great evil that hung around Frodo's neck.
The contingent of elves that found them – or rather, finally made themselves known – did so when it came time to set up camp, dropping from the trees only when Legolas made to climb one. The talks that followed, she barely listened to. Without the bandwidth (another unintelligible word carried over from whatever her past might've been) to comprehend, or even care overmuch for what was being said, she registered just enough to work out that with Legolas and Aragorn both among them, they would come to no harm from elf-kind, and then contended herself with what was truly important. Namely doing what she could to remain standing, and not crying while standing. The more she tired, the more those two occupations grew in challenge.
Especially when she made the mistake of numbly meeting the gaze of the ellon who acted as a voice for his group.
The ellon murmured softly in his own tongue, the words having the sound of a horrified curse as he took a step towards her. Boromir side-stepped, his body half in front of her own, blocking the elf's path.
"You've a woman among you?" he directed his first question at Boromir, before she felt the weight of his gaze upon her. "Are you well?"
Speaking was quite beyond her, though. Not least because his voice, distinctive as it was, sent that eerie sense of recognition through her, and being pushed into dealing with her abilities, here and now, was probably what it would take to hurl her entirely over the edge. So she closed her eyes, and tried to beat back that chest-seizing feeling of familiarity.
Not now. Not now. Not now.
On but one night of sleep she could have tolerated this. The resurgence of her ability that had proven so useless thus far. But now now.
"We've been through much. My lady is in need of a place in which she might rest awhile – safely."
My lady. Her eyes opened. None living could ever mistake Boromir as some form of servant of hers, but the way in which he carefully placed himself between she and the group of elves left no room to misunderstand the context in which he referred to her thus. A response of his own, she suspected, to her own profession on the outskirts of these very woods. I will accompany him wherever he so chooses to go instead.
The ellon – Haldir, he'd introduced himself as – turned to Aragorn.
"We must speak awhile," he then regarded Legolas and Frodo, too, a silent indication that they should join the conversation.
A ladder was dropped from above, and they began to climb it without hesitation. Sam, of course, followed Frodo without any protesting the addition. When they took to the trees, Sybil lowered herself gracelessly to the ground, rested her forehead atop her hands, and did her best to breathe.
On and on the conversation stretched until it had grown well and truly dark all around them, many of the Fellowship having followed suit to sit on the ground and wait, their thoughts occupying them far more than conversation, for they had no stomach for that. Only Boromir and Gimli remained standing, dividing their time between eyeing their surroundings, and then what little patches of the darkening sky were visible through the trees, their unease making it clear that they wish the talks might hurry along.
When they did, it was Aragorn and Legolas who came down, the former of which translated for Haldir.
"We sleep in the trees for tonight, that is all we've been able to agree upon for now. The hobbits are to take this flet. The rest of us must divide ourselves, as one flet cannot comfortably house all five of us to sleep."
As if waiting for his cue, two more ladders dropped down from two more trees, each one guarded – she guessed – by Haldir's brothers. The fact that he had not named them as his brothers only had another wave of discomfort rolling over her.
Unwilling to sit through an awkward discussion as to who should go where, Sybil broke wordlessly from the group and headed towards the furthermost ladder. It was likely what they wanted, and being dragged through an excruciating debate on the matter while they made all manner of hints would only be humiliating.
"Sybil-" Aragorn sighed.
"I will go with her," Boromir intervened, his footsteps following.
What small argument broke between the two men then, she did not linger to listen to. She was only focused on getting to the top of the ladder before her self-control snapped and the tears broke.
On the flet, they were offered water, which she sipped at just enough to ease the scratch in her throat, and food rations, which she could not stomach at all. Neither she, nor Boromir, nor the ellon who had been assigned to watch over them, spoke.
Somewhere through the leaves, though, Sam was in passionate conversation with his kin. Sybil suspected he had no idea that she could hear him at all, out of sight as she and Boromir were from the rest. Sitting atop her cloak, her knees beneath her chin, she listened silently as they debated.
"If she hadn't, I would have. She stopped me," Pippin was insisting quietly.
"She stopped you and then did it herself! What's the good in that? A seer who diverts disaster just to bring it about with her own two hands after? What's next? Will she stop Strider from being stabbed, and then do it with her own blade? Will she save that…it…from the enemy's grasp, and then-"
Boromir shifted where he sat beside her, shaking his head and then opened his mouth to call out, but Sybil grabbed his hand, squeezing it and shaking her head. The hobbit's voice was tearful, and it was clear he spoke from a place of grief rather than true hatred – or so she hoped, anyway. But even if not, could he be blamed? Would she react much differently in his place?
"That's enough, Sam," Aragorn, too far for her to stop, spoke up.
Whether it was because of the sentiment itself, or because of how close he'd come to discussing the Ring, she didn't know. She didn't particularly want to, either.
"They must be allowed their anger," she murmured to Boromir.
Her voice was hoarse and scratchy, even when quiet, for it was the first she'd spoken since Moria. But hobbit ears were keen, and the hush that fell in response to her words was all but deafening. He had not, she suspected, intended for her to hear him.
Only when the ellon on their flet knelt by her side, a pouch of healing supplies in his hand, was she saved from trying to listen to what was taking place through the trees. He had a kind face, but did not speak the Common Speech, gesturing between the pouch and her arm, her own blood mingling with the black of the goblin's, all of it quite dry by now.
"Oh, er, no," she shook her head. "Thank you."
He persisted, a furrow in his fair brow, until she remembered the word she was looking for – the one she'd learned in Rivendell.
"Nestando," she spoke the word for healer, motioning to herself. "I'm well."
The forced smile that she added at the end was not convincing, but the elf did take his leave, returning reluctantly to his watch on the other side of the flet – but only after setting down the healing supplies by her side.
Boromir did not take her refusal quite so gracefully.
"Is this how you plan to proceed, then? Denying yourself food, water, and healing? Separating yourself from the Fellowship?"
"Only before they could ask that I do so," she answered.
She had no argument for the first part of his statement, so she left it unaddressed.
"You don't know that they would have."
Yes, she did.
"Don't worry about me," she murmured.
"Don't worry about…don't worry about you? How could you ask such a thing of me?" he breathed an incredulous laugh. "Of course I worry about you, Sybil. And I will not stand idly by as you punish yourself like this. I will not allow it."
"You won't allow it?" her outrage was a tired, half-hearted thing.
"No! I will not allow it!" he doubled down regardless. "If you lose your arm? Is that the price you will force yourself to pay as recompense for Moria? Will you stop blaming yourself then?"
The lump in her throat doubled in size in a matter of moments.
"Stop it," the words came out as a reedy plea – entirely in spite of her own intentions.
"I have seen this often. Too often. And none who inflict it upon themselves ever truly deserve it."
Sybil's breath hitched, her teeth clenched tightly, and her shoulders tensed into steel as she looked furiously away into the golden leaves of the neighbouring tree, refusing to blink in an attempt to dissipate the tears that threatened to build. She would not weep. She would not. She wouldn't be so pathetic as to turn her own grief into a spectacle – one that might make the others feel as though they could not be angry with her because of it. Or, worse, that she was doing it to purposely rob them of their anger and avoid accountability.
When Boromir's hand came to rest between her shoulder blades, she did not relax an inch. Because if he kept being so damn nice to her, she'd lose what control she had over herself and the tears would refuse to be subdued any longer.
He noted her tension, and leaned closer, speaking softly.
"Company…it can often help…"
"Oh, I know," she snapped. "Do not talk to me like I'm some sort of alien lifeform which must have the very bare bones of human interaction explained to them at every turn! I'm not a simpleton! I know what comfort is, Boromir, I do not need it spelled out to me."
"I do not doubt that," he said readily enough, entirely without bite, which added a keener edge to the guilt already cutting through her chest. "But I think you've known little of it firsthand. I would remedy that, if you would but allow it."
A breath caught in her throat, she shuddered, and then she began to sob. She reached blindly for Boromir and he was there, strong arms enveloping her as he pulled her with ease into his hold. Even as she cried, she kept her entire body clenched tightly, silencing the sobs, trying to quell her ragged breathing until black spots danced before her eyes, and aching with the effort and the ever-present exhaustion that it only fuelled.
"I'm sorry," she managed, haltingly, between silent sobs.
He ignored her apology, and only held her tighter. They were both badly in need of a bath, but neither of them cared, her face pressed into his neck as she sobbed.
On one of the other flets, she could hear Aragorn but not see him, in passionate conversation with Haldir as he made a case in Sindarin for…well, she didn't know what for. Safe passage? A few more nights up in the trees? At least then, though, she knew that Boromir's words to her would be drowned out, as would the few sobs she could not quite manage to keep entirely silent.
"You did this in Moria – in the beginning. Something troubled you, and you withdrew, and I bore it without complaint for I know how you value your space, and then you came back and it was done. Although what troubled you then, I still know not. But you cannot do this again. This…this cannot be the way of things! Not if…" he hesitated, and then continued, his voice a little softer, "not if we are to stand a chance, you and I."
"I've no wish to burden you with-"
"Burden me!" he interrupted, drawing away just enough so that he could look at her and impress upon her just how much he meant what he insisted. "I tell you now that it is no burden. You are no burden, Sybil, but if you cannot believe that, then at least believe that I welcome it either way. That is the point of this."
The intensity of his sheer sincerity threatened to knock her off her feet, and she blinked through yet more tears, looking away.
"I thought the point was shared body heat."
The joke was weak and half-hearted, but it earned a tired smile from him and a flat quip of his own, one hand smoothing over her back. "One thing at a time."
"I fought for my place in the Fellowship – I insisted that my knowledge would be invaluable. And now, not only did it help nothing, but I got-" her voice cracked, but she forced herself to continue, and would not let herself get away with not saying it out loud – for keeping it unspoken did not make it any less true. "I got Gandalf killed."
"You did not, Sybil," Boromir sighed heavily.
"Yes I did! You were there-"
"And so I know of what I speak," he said. "This is…this is the way of these things. Do you think that I cannot understand what it is that you go through?"
"How could you?"
"How could I?" he echoed with a rueful sort of snort, but it was without bite. "Do you forget my title? My duty? I cannot count the number of days where decisions of my own making have sent men – good men, young men – to their deaths."
"That's not the same," she disagreed.
The ache that emanated from her chest rolled throughout her entire body, down her legs and throughout her arms, thrumming in agreement with her words.
"Indeed not, some would argue it is worse, for I do so knowingly. With far more experience than you might boast of. I never know that they will perish, that's true of course, but I'm aware of the risks."
"So are they."
"And so was Gandalf," replied Boromir. "If you believe yourself a monster for what happened in Moria, for an honest mistake that any of us might have made, then what am I, for the decisions I make in warcraft?"
"That wasn't your fault."
"And this was not yours!" he punctuated his words with a squeeze – albeit a gentle one.
"But look at how quickly all of them believe otherwise. I cannot blame them, but they do. I'm mostly amazed that you do not."
"Not all of them do, either. Pippin fervently defends you to any who will listen – along with those who will not."
"Those who will not," she echoed.
"A turn of phrase."
"Sam," she pointed out, feeling little need to elaborate.
"Is grieving."
"Aragorn, then," she said, her voice wavering. "He's known me longer than any living, and he doubts me."
"He only said what he did on the mountainside to keep the peace when emotions ran high. If he thought you complicit in what happened to Gandalf, I expect he would have made it known. Sybil, this is…this is the way of these things. In Moria it was you with the skeleton, but it could have very easily been Legolas and I – if he hadn't stopped in time, he would have knocked me right over that edge as we fled. Next, it will be another, and perhaps we will avert disaster but maybe we will not, for that is how these things go. The risks are calculated, but they are risks. You save five lives, hoping none will perish in the process, all while knowing that one might, or ten might, but acting all the same because it is better than doing nothing. Because if we do nothing, evil will triumph."
Her sobs had slowed a little by then, broken up by heavy, ragged breaths that she tried to match to his just to dispel the black spots that danced before her eyes.
"Gandalf's death was not your fault," he said each word slowly and deliberately, as though fearing they might be lost in translation. "As we speak, Frodo blames himself for bearing the…that thing, Gimli blames himself for pressing the matter of Moria so fiercely, Aragorn ponders whether he should have agreed with me and risked the Gap of Rohan, I wonder if I should have made a better case for that route – and if we had taken it, who knows who we may have lost? You cannot carry this weight, Sybil. It was not your fault, and we are better off with you in the Fellowship than we may have been otherwise."
How far they'd come since she'd blinked away angry tears while she bathed in Rivendell, brooding over his naming her a hindrance and a detriment. Now she thought herself thus, and she wept as he insisted she was not.
"What good is a seer who can't foresee something like this?"
"I was not speaking of the seer. I was speaking of the woman who trudged for miles through the wilderness on injuries she should not have been able to bear standing on," there was a note of grim humour to his voice, but also something else – something akin to the fondness with which he so often regarded her, but even softer still. "The one who elbowed a goblin to death. The one who told me off for all of Rivendell to see, when I dared to doubt you. I must warn you now, it is a mistake I won't be making twice."
But had it been a mistake to begin with? She was too tired and heartsore to know. She could only hope, and hoping was difficult at that time, in that state. But what little strength she found to do so, she found thanks to him and his arms.
A/N: God. So originally this was all one chapter, then it was two chapters, then it became one chapter again. Primarily because the bulk of Boromir's pep talk was going to take place when they actually reach Lothlórien, but I cannot have Sybil beating herself up to this extent all the way 'til then. I can't do that to her, it's too much. ANYWAY. Thank you guys as always for the insane amount of love you show this story, I'm so grateful for it, I hope this chapter was worth the wait, I'm VERY excited for Boromir and Sybil to finally get some quality time together in the upcoming chapters – y'know, without the combined forces of the Fellowship acting as wingmen.