Notes for readers: This is completely unedited. I write it, I look for major mistakes, I post. There's no such thing as polish unless we're talking character-used boot polish. It's barely even meant to be read by others and more than half self-therapy.

TW: suicide

Chapter 5: The Walls of Minas Tirith

As he promised, Boromir still bought our provisions for us. He was even able to find a jewelry maker who would buy two of the smaller pieces of ivory, for what feels like a small fortune.

"Sorry if I made your life difficult," I apologized between loading sacks into the back of a wagon.

He shook his head. "Once you're out of Gondor, he will calm. Undoubtedly the battle being won made his mood gentle, to simply order you away," he assured me.

To my surprise, he had not only bought our beans and grain and such, but also helped carry it down past the gates. That alone took several trips, what with us having two dozen people to feed.

When we got back from the last visit to the stores, I heard some kind of upset. It didn't sound dangerous so I mostly ignored it; now I saw Lance storming away into the city and looked to Boromir, wondering if he heard better than me.

"I think the lad wants to stay," he advised.

That was more than fine by me; he hadn't been much of a help so far. "He does nothing but complain anyways," I said rudely and tossed a bag of dried corn in.

"Are there many fractures in your group? The old woman who you look like always glares at you," Boromir asked, brow furrowed. When I raised an eyebrow, asking which one (we women do tend to look alike in this family), he eyed Mother where she sat smoking a crude cigarette.

Just looking at her sent a shiver of revulsion down my spine. "Oh, that's Mother. She and I have some bad history," I understated coolly.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brise approach, wiping under her eyes and visibly struggling to keep her composure. Oh no. Why is she coming to me? She knows I suck at comforting people. "Cass?" she croaked.

With a look of alarm, Boromir found somewhere else he needed to be.

Great, now it was just me left to deal with Brise, and no distractions. "What's up, buttercup?" I asked, stretching my back.

"I'm going with Lance," she sniffled, "But I don't know how to tell everybody. I mean, they're going to think I'm taking the easy way out, right? And I guess I am, but-" She gave an alarming sucking snort.

"I can't help it!" Brise cried out, going into a babbling nervous meltdown, "I'm not like you or Electra or the twins! I hate not being able to get clean every day, and I hate eating meat knowing that animal would still be alive if I wasn't there, and I really, really hate seeing everybody fight! Cressie's always panicking and Mom never says anything nice, and Lance is the first person who ever accepted me for who I am!"

Awkwardly I reached out and patted her shoulder. "Sorry, but there's no better way to tell them, I think," I told her sympathetically. Half the time when around other members of the family, all I wanted was to be elsewhere.

But lone wolves don't often survive the winter.

At least she'd have Lance with her, I told myself, despite my lack of faith in the pretty boy. Better than a woman alone in an unknown city.

"Can you tell them?" Brise asked hopefully.

I gave her a look, because she should really know better. So I simply shouted, "Oi! Everybody! Brise can't deal without a daily shower and she's leaving with Lance!" I then gave her a bright, fake smile and a thumbs up.

She looked properly miffed, as expected. At least it stopped her crying.

Aditi joined us then, black eyes wide in her dark face. "You're staying?" she asked Brise hopefully.

"Yeah, but I mean, it's not like I don't like you guys or anything-" Brise began babbling again, shrinking in the face of possible censure.

"I would like to stay also," Aditi interrupted, "I was told that the houses of healing here are like a hospital and they have the best medicine- they can cure almost anything here. Boromir told me that they take apprentices." She smiled shyly.

Now that was a decision I could get behind. "I like that you're running toward something instead of away from it," I told her, already missing her, "I've taught you what I can, and Mackey has too, so I think you'll have something solid to start from when they accept you."

The idea of 'when' and not 'if' sparked a joy in Aditi's face that reached out.

Her happiness made me smile with her.

"Go on, tell Aunt Libby and I think she might have something out of the coin purse to help you get started," I encouraged Aditi, only for her to fly at me with arms wide open. I barely put my arms around her in time to keep her from just bouncing off me, into the dirt.

She squeezed me tightly, a fond farewell. "Thank you," she whispered into my ear.

"You're so welcome," I told her as I set her down and smoothed down the fabric on her shoulders.

She grinned and ran off into the crowd of people heaving sacks and equipment around.

I turned back to Brise, who had her arms wrapped around her hunched figure. "You don't agree," she said gloomily.

All her life she had come to me to show me her grades and art projects and such, her favorite sister right after Mackey; the rest were too intense or rambunxious for her preference to scurry unnoticed in the background. When she moved away to Colorado the first thing when she turned 18, I didn't exactly approve but I couldn't fault her for wanting to get far from that horrible apartment. Now she was running away again and I still couldn't approve.

I wasn't about to pretend otherwise. "Honey, you're always running away from everything," I told her, folding my own arms uncomfortably, "Maybe try running toward something next time."

For a long moment there was awkward silence between us. It looked like Brise was going to leave without another word, maybe a hug that's barely a hug. "Maybe you should take your own advice sometime," she said, "You're always running toward death. Why not try life for a change?"

Shaken, I barely noticed her leave. How long had she known?

Then again we were all death seekers, I supposed. Mother was so tired of living that she had hid behind alcoholism and drug addiction so she didn't have to face it, but she was too much of a damn coward to finally kill herself. Andy went into training knowing that in case of a war, her lifespan was expected to be approximately 13 seconds. Mackey gave herself the worst professional card draw she could, and Matt would have also been one of the first to die in a potential war. Electra and I had gone into the toughest services we could find, knowing that they were practically a death sentence. Aunt Libby used to fly spy planes over Easter Europe during the Cold War and Anahera used to routinely get into what I liked to call a massive steel coffin, in the form of her submarine. None of us had even expected to live this long and now we were scrambling to figure it out.

A sudden, painful wish filled me for Dad to be here. Not Pitaajee, no matter how wonderful he is, but my first dad, the one who died when Liam was two. He had always known what to do or say.

My thoughts were interrupted by the one voice I really didn't want to hear right now. Or ever, for that matter. "Ajit and I are staying here," Mother announced coldly, smoldering homemade cigarette at the corner of her mouth.

"Thanks for letting me know, I'm gonna go give him a hug," I said, and turned around to do exactly that.

"Nothing for your mother?" she asked haughtily.

"Goodbye," I told her, and this time I did leave.

While Pitaajee hadn't exactly been the most useful person in the caravan, he had been a source of such laughter that it was hard to give him up. Aditi and Brise would need him more than the rest of us ever could, I told myself as I circled around to find him.

There was an air of not-quite forced joviality as we unpacked the belongings of everyone who had plans to stay. Grandpa gave them each a little sack of the proceeds from the ivory sales, advising them that, "According to that strapping lad over there," pointing at Boromir, "This should cover rent in a good house and food money for a couple months. Enough time to get on your feet, I should wager."

On that note, one of the wagons was taken apart and by night time the materials of it were mostly sold on. The draft horses freed from it were hitched to the carriage.

Well, after Matt and I rolled the orc corpse off the roof of the carriage. In all the excitement, it had apparently been forgotten about for a while despite the stink. When it hit the ground not even the corgis or Gander would come over to inspect it; they hid behind wagon wheels to watch but stayed far away.

"These things are the worst," I complained to Matt as I carried the torso section to some grassland a ways away. The stench was so palpable that it seemed to hang around us like a Los Angeles summer haze.

He shrugged. "Remember the Uruk-hai things Nan told us about? I get the feeling those might be worse," he pointed out.

Now that I knew what an orc looked like, I imagined one of these but crossed with a human athlete. The idea was enough to make me shudder.

Shouts of alarm from the top of the walls had my neck crick in the haste to see what was happening up there. Was an attack coming?

Movement caught my eye and I watched a large blur fall from the walls, at least a hundred feet up. A person sized blur wearing burgundy. "Oh my gods," I muttered and dropped my half of the dead orc.

There was no way I could get there in time- there was no such thing as 'in time' when facing a fall from that height. All I could do was see how quickly the person died after they fell. Help carry the body back into the city, to grief stricken relatives.

I was close enough to hear a sickening splat that some part of me recognized from the grenades all those years ago. The noise of bones breaking and stabbing into vital organs. Bile rose up in my throat as I ran and was quickly outpaced by Matt's longer legs.

He had stopped several feet short of the corpse and had an expression that I had never seen on him before. When I made to run past him, he grabbed me by the shoulder to stop me. "You don't want to see this," he said hoarsely and tried to turn me around.

But I had already seen the stick-like legs and ball-like knees, the split skin and still-warm blood pooling on the ground. "Mother," I breathed.

It was sort of like the world stopped. I couldn't hear anything for several minutes, couldn't even think of moving; my legs trembled and my body felt like lead. Taking my eyes off my dead mother was impossible.

A bite of pain on my cheek had me jerk away and snarl at who had done it.

Matt lowered the hand he had used to pinch me, fingers spread wide and empty. "Go tell Aunt Libby," he told me quietly, "I'll bring her back." Pity was in his brown eyes as he patted me on the shoulder and guided me in the direction of the caravan.

I stumbled back on wooden legs. What just happened? How had Mother even gotten onto the ramparts to fall from them? The image of her broken corpse was in front of my eyes even as they landed on Gran.

Forgetting all about my dirty hands, I clapped one over my mouth to stifle a sob. How could I tell her that her daughter was dead?

The same way I told anyone else, I answered myself.

"What's the commotion up there?" Andy asked, jerking her scarlet head up at the walls.

"Mother's dead," I announced to the whole camp, voice croaking.

Instantly, there was silence as everyone tried to process that thought.

When I turned my eyes to Nan, for some kind of advice on this new medieval situation, I wished I hadn't. Already she was crying her eyes out into her bandaged hands with great heaving sobs. Her first grandchild, dead, and I could only imagine how much blame she must be piling on herself.

Pitaajee had slumped down onto a small pile of lumber, looking like he had lost everything in his wife's death.

Shock was the only emotion on Grandpa's face as he held my horribly quiet grandmother.

But I couldn't do anything to help them when I was folding in on myself. Why am I reacting this way when I hated her guts for half my life? In many spiteful moments I wished she would just die already and was even tempted to do the job myself during the worst year of my life. So why was I wiping tears from under my eyes? Collapsing against the side of a wagon, legs unable to hold me anymore?

She had already pushed me into a fucking campfire! I reminded myself fiercely. She didn't deserve my tears.

But she was still my mother. For half my life I had loved her, and I hadn't been able to stop craving her approval even when I knew I would never get it. Even though I hated her, she was still a major force in my life. And despite that she was a loathsome, unhappy sore on the face of humankind, she was still a person who I knew whose life had unexpectedly ended.

It was simply human to mourn.

Matt arrived after what felt like seconds and hours, easily carrying the shrunken, broken body in his arms. He laid her down on the ground in a place where the horses couldn't accidentally step on her, eyes shining with tears as he stepped back.

A howl made me jump. My heart broke all over again when I saw Pitaajee fall to the ground, sobbing, only held together by his children who laid a hand on his head or rubbed his shoulder or let a hand lay on his thigh to let him know that he wasn't alone.

From my side Aunt Libby approached, eyes bloodshot and red, but her face was blank.

Behind her, a guard walked warily. His face was haunted.

I wondered if my expression was anything like his. My entire skull felt like it was being vacuum sealed and contorted. "What is it?" I asked softly.

"Beregond has some… troubling news," Aunt Libby murmured.

The guard nodded jerkily. "Apologies for the distress this will bring, but I felt it important that you should know what happened," he said.

My mental health wasn't up to knowing, but it would torment me not to. "What happened?" I asked.

"The lady had come up onto the ramparts to see the view, she said. I thought nothing of it and went on with my duties," Beregond told me haltingly, and then swallowed.

Somehow, I already knew what he was going to say.

"When I turned around to look at her again, she had climbed onto the balustrade," Beregond said, voice cracking, "I shouted for her to stop, but she- she jumped." Several tears fell and he hastily wiped them up, apologizing for them. "I've never seen anything like it," he confessed.

I wish I could say the same. Second to last time I saw Wyrzykowski, he was smiling and laughing as he lost at cards. The last time I saw him was with half his head blasted off.

"I am so sorry. No one should ever see a suicide," Aunt Libby murmured, patting his arm, "Thank you for telling us what really happened, even if it does hurt."

We both were people who preferred to know the truth than believe a lie. Unable to speak but wanting to offer some kind of comfort to this poor man, I patted his forearm.

Quickly Boromir excused himself to take the guard back into the city. The doors were closed behind them.

Wordlessly Aunt Libby pulled me behind a wagon while everyone else was absorbed in their grief.

"What do we tell them?" I hissed.

"We can't tell Cressie or Dezzie," Aunt Libby said immediately.

That went without saying; their minds would break open even further and there's no putting them back together here, without modern psychology or medicine. "We need to keep this to ourselves," I concluded in a low voice, "We're a bunch of fucking gossips, if anyone else finds out then they all will." It was only the horror of what really happened that would keep my lips mouth glued.

Aunt Libby swallowed and nodded jerkily. "Nan would blame herself and Ajit would be even more destroyed than he already is. No one can know," she agreed. Her hands were remarkably steady as she tapped the side of her nose in the signal for hush-hush.

I copied her and then we separately sneaked back to where everyone else was congregated.

A coffin was built of the remaining lumber from the disassembled wagon and hastily buried in the city's main graveyard, which was thankfully outside the gates of the city. I didn't go; someone had to keep an eye on the horses and cargo. The mere idea made me feel sick.

Despite that it was past midnight by the finish, we got into travel order and started to move. No one wanted to stay any longer.

Among us was Pitaajee, bent low on the seat of a wagon that Electra drove. He couldn't bear to stay in Minas Tirith after his wife's sudden death that afternoon.

We were exhausted but wired and moved through the rest of the night and the day, barely getting through a small forest before in the late afternoon we all just couldn't go any further. At least we were out of sight of that damned city as we set up camp.

It was a quiet night, full of nightmares.

During the next day's travel I couldn't help wondering… "Do you think we were too hard on Brise about adjusting to this?" I asked Andy.

She hummed thoughtfully. "I dunno." Her expression was torn.

"This is the sort of world where either you adjust fast or you die," Mackey provided, at her twin's side as ever.

"Why do you ask?" Andy finished.

I shrugged half heartedly. "We have survival training and discipline that she never got the chance to learn, and it feels like we were trying to hold her our standard," I explained, brushing my hand through Damascus's mane for comfort.

"Maybe," Mackey said with a helpless grimace.

"Either way, she, Lance, and Aditi are stuck in that city and the rest of us are out here," Andy pointed out, "They've reached the closest thing to civilization we've seen, they'll be fine there."

As long as Boromir keeps control of the river crossing, I thought but didn't dare say.

"Cressie's only hyperventilated three times this week, so I'd say she's doing fairly well," Andy said cheerily, "And for being an egghead before all this, Pitaajee's a tough little fellow." She shot a smile and wave over her shoulder at him, learning to ride one of the short horses.

He smiled tightly and waved back.

"I'm most surprised by Dezzie," I confessed, "After she got over not having a phone or video games, I expected to hear a lot more out of her about boredom."

"Life back home was always too fast for her to keep up with. Maybe this is the right kind of place for her," Mackey offered.

I hoped so. That would make one of us, at least.

Even knowing that I would make it here, I still wasn't sure if I was cut out for this Middle Earth. It seems I'm too mouthy for civilization and not sure if I can deal with isolation.

"We're coming up on the border with that Rohan place, right?" Andy asked her twin abruptly.

Mackey nodded, scanning ahead. "When we get to the stream in the middle of the next forest, the other side is Rohan."

"Why?" I asked.

"So we know when to belt your jaw shut," Andy threatened, giving me an unimpressed look, "We don't need you getting us thrown out of a second country."

While Mackey laughed, I scowled. "I didn't get us thrown out of the country!" I protested, "Just the city!"

Semantics were waved off. "To-may-to, to-mah-to," Andy said with a wry smile,

"Just no more insulting mind readers, okay?" Mackey suggested.

My scowl only deepened. "I didn't think he could really read my mind! I mean, that's crazy talk!" I protested.

"Not here," the twins chimed together. With an exchanged look they broke into giggles.

Even though I was the butt of the joke, I couldn't help my own smile. Rain clouds linger but sunshine must always find a way.