Where I Cannot Follow
Boromir did not have to guess at the errand that had brought Arjunar, Faramir's head servant, for the unsettling signs were there for any man used to the battlefield. The grizzled ex-soldier came rushing in at a broken trot, his face white and shining with cold sweat. But what brought Boromir to his feet, pen falling from his hand, was the blood.
"Faramir?!" he cried and dashed past the man, his expert's eyes noting that the blood was on his hands and splashed across his tunic in a clean arc. Blood from a vein!
He crashed through Faramir's chamber door and almost fell to his knees. Faramir lay, still and seemingly small, on his bed. Bloody linens held testament to some violence against him, and as Boromir approached, it was indeed what he expected.
"Why?" he cried, staring at hastily bandaged wrists, still crimson. His eyes swept about, finding the knife cast aside on the marble floor, and the remnants of a sheet, torn into strips. Arjunar had done the best he could for his master before retrieving his brother. A Southron torturer had taken the old man's tongue and much of his strength, but the man idolized Faramir, his rescuer. There was no neglect in Faramir's care.
"Fear not, Elder Brother," Faramir murmured, his voice a mere thread. "A moment of weakness only, truly."
Boromir hauled a chair over and sat heavily, and bowed his head over his brother. Faramir's gray eyes were cloudy, and his face waxen, but a soldier knew when he was looking at a man who would live. He breathed out and bowed his head further into his hand.
"Forgive me," his younger brother managed.
"We promised," Boromir muttered. "You promised you would never go where I could not follow."
There was a deep silence, interrupted by Arjunar coming into the room, and bolting the door. The servant understood why this scene was not for the eyes of any other, even a father or a friend.
"Father would make us break all vows," Faramir murmured. Boromir breathed in in shock, knowing that this was part of the impetus for such rash self- destructiveness. It had only been that morning when Denethor had laid the journey to Rivendell on Boromir's shoulders. They would be parted, perhaps even in death itself. They both had felt the seriousness keenly, but Faramir had taken it like a blow, withdrawing into silence the rest of the day.
But surely that was not the whole of the reason?
"Suddenly I felt.my unworthiness." his younger brother continued. ".my burden on you. You must not be burdened, Brother, not now."
The eldest son of Denethor of Gondor was no lackwit, but this pronouncement did not meet any understanding in his mind.
"You are no burden," he pronounced, trying to be stern, but his self- possession broke upon his grief, like water upon rock, and he took Faramir's cold hand in his and he felt his tears drop upon it. "You are all that is worthy, Little Brother."
"Would that my heart believed your praises," Faramir said sadly. His fingers stirred only slightly. "You do not know, Boromir. My dreams."
Boromir stared down into his eyes in dread. Faramir's dreams were always uncannily perceptive of the future. "What did you dream?" he asked reluctantly.
But Faramir sighed. "I do not wish to add ill luck to ill feeling," he said. "But this thing, Boromir, this Ring."
Boromir glanced uneasily behind him, but Arjunar was piling the bloody linens for disposal in preparation for scrubbing at the marble floor. Boromir had a brief and dark vision of Faramir standing on that marble floor, a knife against his wrists. He swallowed down his panic.
"You cannot wield it; no one can."
"Faramir-" his brother sighed.
"You do not understand because Father does not understand. It can only unmake and corrupt, not create. There will be no peace to the one who carries it."
"You cannot tell me that you would not wield it."
"I would not." Gray eyes, clearer now, stared straight into his and Boromir felt dread again in his heart. There was a bleakness there that was so deep that he felt there was no bottom to it. "I would not take it up if it was handed to me with all the hosts of Mordor at my feet. I would not."
"That is Mithrandir's teachings," he told Faramir, surprised that even he could hear the reproof in his own tone, so like his father's.
"Then I am better for it," the other replied. "I would go in your place, but Father will have his way, and I fear what tragedy his pride and foolishness will bring upon Gondor." His eyes closed briefly. ".upon you."
Boromir gritted his teeth. A man who preferred dealing with things he could see and touch, he had often disliked Faramir's ability to incite in him the fear of what was to be, a weakness in a soldier and a son of Denethor. He sought to divert this moroseness.
"What was this talk of burdens?" he said lightly. "Surely you are not believing the old man's ramblings?"
Faramir opened his eyes again. "Love can be a burden, can it not?" he breathed. The shock of his words was a like a cold dash of water on warm skin. Boromir sat back, away from his brother, and avoided his eyes, glancing at the weak, cold sunlight streaming through the high glass windows.
"If this is about Osgiliath." he said, warning in his tone.
"I will not repeat what you would prefer to forget," Faramir said, but his voice now was softer and sadder.
Boromir had reasons to want to forget, but forget Osgiliath, he could not. It was in Osgiliath that he and Faramir had overstepped the bounds of filial affection, over ale and heart-gladness and the relief that comes after the battle. He could still feel that forbidden warmth, strong arms so like his own, and an even warmer mouth that had outraged him with its expertise. Even now, his body warmed at the memory.
And then he remembered the look on his father's face, the day they had returned, laughing and loving one another with an exuberance never before rivaled. Had Denethor seen their sin in their glances to one another, or did he, as he had always, only seen his sons far closer than he wished? Had he seen Faramir's influence on Boromir; had that pushed him to order Boromir on this rash quest?
"Are you saying that it should not be forgotten? It was wrong." Even to himself, his voice sounded insincere.
"Was it?" the younger man murmured. "I often wonder if love is ever wrong, in the end." Boromir watched the lame and tongueless Arjunar scrub the marble free of blood, and his mind was for one moment on the Southrons and their base cruelties. Of Faramir in their hands, and what those decadent and sadistic commanders would do with a man as fine as his brother. He swallowed. They might cut out his tongue, after.
Love was a burden, he realized, for it brought a sense of helplessness, of weakness, as a man feels when he guards a citadel of many gates. He can only guard one gate, and the rest.how are they defended? In how many ways could they be breached, to his grief? He turned and looked at Faramir, whose clear gaze was upon him. Faramir was so good, so fine, like a sword made with the skill of the Elves, but in his heart and underneath that cool gaze he was as any other man. Boromir knew this, from the days of their childhood, to the night when, all constraints having fallen from them, he had found an answering savagery to his own. Men of their own minds, who were not ruled by Denethor's blindness, said of Faramir that he was a good man, and it was true. He was better and kinder than many a mortal being, more learned, and wiser than many in the land was. A brother could either love such brilliance, or resent it, and Boromir was too big-hearted for the latter.
And big-hearted enough to know that he was the true burden, the one that kept Faramir from shining. His secret guilt was that his love for Faramir besmirched his brother's fineness, like dirty fingertips against a pristine blade. And that led to a knife and a dance with death. Faramir's love for his brother had brought him to this pass, this near-death.
And Faramir thought himself a burden!
"We made oaths, you and I," Faramir said. "Clinging together in the darkness, we made them, in fear of him, in sorrow of her, that we would go together if we went by our own hands, that we would not go where the other could not follow."
Boromir gazed at him, frozen in recollection of two brothers, with only themselves as sanctuary. It had not much changed in manhood, what had begun in childhood. A father's uneven temper, and a hierarchical system hadn't wrenched them apart.
Nay, thought Boromir, but cemented them closer together!
"Aye," he said. "I do remember, and would hold to them. But, then, why did you --?"
Faramir sighed. "It was a selfish wish, to keep you to me, to bind the sun, for the moon to burden. It was folly, weakness' folly! In this, Father is right. I may not be the fool he thinks me, but I am a hindrance to you."
Boromir could only laugh, caught in ideas so recently his own but that they were infinitely reversed. How much they were alike, who were so different! How much he loved Faramir, who would open up his wrists rather than feel he was an impediment to his brother's glory. How tragic this was, that Boromir would leave this man behind, forced to break his vows. Faramir's expression was all consternation at Boromir's wry mirth, and settled into himself, taken aback by levity when he had expected solemnity. But Boromir took his hand and pressed his mouth against cool fingers, not caring that his own damp face would assure blood to smear against himself. "Then we hinder each other, my brother, for never have I seen such as we, two fools who would surrender all to each other and leave nothing for ourselves!"
Faramir's eyes went wide. Boromir tuned his head and told Arjunar: "Leave us for a time, my friend. You do not want to witness this sibling caterwauling."
The old soldier nodded, hoisting the soiled linens with him, and left. Boromir followed and bolted the door.
Faramir weakly levered himself up, watching this strangeness with a wary look. "What is this?" he asked.
Boromir merely returned, and maneuvered himself to his satisfaction, taking Faramir's weak frame against his own. "You know, it does not follow that we must obey Father. He could not stop us if we both went."
Faramir tensed in his arms, then relaxed with a small laugh. "I, go to Imladris?" There was a boyish awe in his voice, for Mithrandir had filled Faramir's head with the love of the Elves.
"And why not, as long as we can get you fed and your blood back up? Who would stop us?"
"You know he would."
"Not if you leave for Ithilien on the same day. Who of your company would bear witness against you? Then you can ride about and meet me on the road north. We will not be parted. And if we hinder one another, so be it! Why should we bow to a lesser fate when we can grasp a higher one?"
Faramir was silent for a long moment. "And the One Ring?"
"Yes?"
"Would you bow to my wisdom concerning it?"
Boromir resisted tensing at the phrasing there. "I will admit that it is a dire thing, and I do not think myself so great that I would resist its corruption. But you, Faramir."
"Do not pull me down that road, Brother. It would corrupt even an Istari, so we are no proof against it."
"Then how must we prevent Gondor's destruction?"
Faramir paused. "Destroy it."
Boromir frowned. "Destroy such a thing? Is it even possible?"
"Isildur would have done, had he himself not been corrupted."
The elder of the two had never heard that part of his country's history. It dramatically altered his perception of his own fallibility. If Isildur himself could not resist the Ring, what proof were they against it, sons of a lesser age that they were?
"Yes," Faramir answered his unsaid thoughts. "Now you begin to see why Father is so wrong. He sees both of us, equally unclearly. Me he sees more inept than I am, and you."
There was a smile in his voice.
"He sees something greater than I am," Boromir admitted, and although he knew the truth, it stung a little, that he could not be what his father wanted. Even now, it stung a bit. But it did not wound. No.
Wounding would take a dearer man than his father; it would take Faramir's disregard to truly wound him.
"It will be days before they have all the supplies together, and the needed letters of passage,"
Boromir said. "In the meanwhile, you will feign a chill and rest yourself. All will be well, Little Brother. You shall see.
"There is no place I can go that you cannot follow." ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Boromir did not have to guess at the errand that had brought Arjunar, Faramir's head servant, for the unsettling signs were there for any man used to the battlefield. The grizzled ex-soldier came rushing in at a broken trot, his face white and shining with cold sweat. But what brought Boromir to his feet, pen falling from his hand, was the blood.
"Faramir?!" he cried and dashed past the man, his expert's eyes noting that the blood was on his hands and splashed across his tunic in a clean arc. Blood from a vein!
He crashed through Faramir's chamber door and almost fell to his knees. Faramir lay, still and seemingly small, on his bed. Bloody linens held testament to some violence against him, and as Boromir approached, it was indeed what he expected.
"Why?" he cried, staring at hastily bandaged wrists, still crimson. His eyes swept about, finding the knife cast aside on the marble floor, and the remnants of a sheet, torn into strips. Arjunar had done the best he could for his master before retrieving his brother. A Southron torturer had taken the old man's tongue and much of his strength, but the man idolized Faramir, his rescuer. There was no neglect in Faramir's care.
"Fear not, Elder Brother," Faramir murmured, his voice a mere thread. "A moment of weakness only, truly."
Boromir hauled a chair over and sat heavily, and bowed his head over his brother. Faramir's gray eyes were cloudy, and his face waxen, but a soldier knew when he was looking at a man who would live. He breathed out and bowed his head further into his hand.
"Forgive me," his younger brother managed.
"We promised," Boromir muttered. "You promised you would never go where I could not follow."
There was a deep silence, interrupted by Arjunar coming into the room, and bolting the door. The servant understood why this scene was not for the eyes of any other, even a father or a friend.
"Father would make us break all vows," Faramir murmured. Boromir breathed in in shock, knowing that this was part of the impetus for such rash self- destructiveness. It had only been that morning when Denethor had laid the journey to Rivendell on Boromir's shoulders. They would be parted, perhaps even in death itself. They both had felt the seriousness keenly, but Faramir had taken it like a blow, withdrawing into silence the rest of the day.
But surely that was not the whole of the reason?
"Suddenly I felt.my unworthiness." his younger brother continued. ".my burden on you. You must not be burdened, Brother, not now."
The eldest son of Denethor of Gondor was no lackwit, but this pronouncement did not meet any understanding in his mind.
"You are no burden," he pronounced, trying to be stern, but his self- possession broke upon his grief, like water upon rock, and he took Faramir's cold hand in his and he felt his tears drop upon it. "You are all that is worthy, Little Brother."
"Would that my heart believed your praises," Faramir said sadly. His fingers stirred only slightly. "You do not know, Boromir. My dreams."
Boromir stared down into his eyes in dread. Faramir's dreams were always uncannily perceptive of the future. "What did you dream?" he asked reluctantly.
But Faramir sighed. "I do not wish to add ill luck to ill feeling," he said. "But this thing, Boromir, this Ring."
Boromir glanced uneasily behind him, but Arjunar was piling the bloody linens for disposal in preparation for scrubbing at the marble floor. Boromir had a brief and dark vision of Faramir standing on that marble floor, a knife against his wrists. He swallowed down his panic.
"You cannot wield it; no one can."
"Faramir-" his brother sighed.
"You do not understand because Father does not understand. It can only unmake and corrupt, not create. There will be no peace to the one who carries it."
"You cannot tell me that you would not wield it."
"I would not." Gray eyes, clearer now, stared straight into his and Boromir felt dread again in his heart. There was a bleakness there that was so deep that he felt there was no bottom to it. "I would not take it up if it was handed to me with all the hosts of Mordor at my feet. I would not."
"That is Mithrandir's teachings," he told Faramir, surprised that even he could hear the reproof in his own tone, so like his father's.
"Then I am better for it," the other replied. "I would go in your place, but Father will have his way, and I fear what tragedy his pride and foolishness will bring upon Gondor." His eyes closed briefly. ".upon you."
Boromir gritted his teeth. A man who preferred dealing with things he could see and touch, he had often disliked Faramir's ability to incite in him the fear of what was to be, a weakness in a soldier and a son of Denethor. He sought to divert this moroseness.
"What was this talk of burdens?" he said lightly. "Surely you are not believing the old man's ramblings?"
Faramir opened his eyes again. "Love can be a burden, can it not?" he breathed. The shock of his words was a like a cold dash of water on warm skin. Boromir sat back, away from his brother, and avoided his eyes, glancing at the weak, cold sunlight streaming through the high glass windows.
"If this is about Osgiliath." he said, warning in his tone.
"I will not repeat what you would prefer to forget," Faramir said, but his voice now was softer and sadder.
Boromir had reasons to want to forget, but forget Osgiliath, he could not. It was in Osgiliath that he and Faramir had overstepped the bounds of filial affection, over ale and heart-gladness and the relief that comes after the battle. He could still feel that forbidden warmth, strong arms so like his own, and an even warmer mouth that had outraged him with its expertise. Even now, his body warmed at the memory.
And then he remembered the look on his father's face, the day they had returned, laughing and loving one another with an exuberance never before rivaled. Had Denethor seen their sin in their glances to one another, or did he, as he had always, only seen his sons far closer than he wished? Had he seen Faramir's influence on Boromir; had that pushed him to order Boromir on this rash quest?
"Are you saying that it should not be forgotten? It was wrong." Even to himself, his voice sounded insincere.
"Was it?" the younger man murmured. "I often wonder if love is ever wrong, in the end." Boromir watched the lame and tongueless Arjunar scrub the marble free of blood, and his mind was for one moment on the Southrons and their base cruelties. Of Faramir in their hands, and what those decadent and sadistic commanders would do with a man as fine as his brother. He swallowed. They might cut out his tongue, after.
Love was a burden, he realized, for it brought a sense of helplessness, of weakness, as a man feels when he guards a citadel of many gates. He can only guard one gate, and the rest.how are they defended? In how many ways could they be breached, to his grief? He turned and looked at Faramir, whose clear gaze was upon him. Faramir was so good, so fine, like a sword made with the skill of the Elves, but in his heart and underneath that cool gaze he was as any other man. Boromir knew this, from the days of their childhood, to the night when, all constraints having fallen from them, he had found an answering savagery to his own. Men of their own minds, who were not ruled by Denethor's blindness, said of Faramir that he was a good man, and it was true. He was better and kinder than many a mortal being, more learned, and wiser than many in the land was. A brother could either love such brilliance, or resent it, and Boromir was too big-hearted for the latter.
And big-hearted enough to know that he was the true burden, the one that kept Faramir from shining. His secret guilt was that his love for Faramir besmirched his brother's fineness, like dirty fingertips against a pristine blade. And that led to a knife and a dance with death. Faramir's love for his brother had brought him to this pass, this near-death.
And Faramir thought himself a burden!
"We made oaths, you and I," Faramir said. "Clinging together in the darkness, we made them, in fear of him, in sorrow of her, that we would go together if we went by our own hands, that we would not go where the other could not follow."
Boromir gazed at him, frozen in recollection of two brothers, with only themselves as sanctuary. It had not much changed in manhood, what had begun in childhood. A father's uneven temper, and a hierarchical system hadn't wrenched them apart.
Nay, thought Boromir, but cemented them closer together!
"Aye," he said. "I do remember, and would hold to them. But, then, why did you --?"
Faramir sighed. "It was a selfish wish, to keep you to me, to bind the sun, for the moon to burden. It was folly, weakness' folly! In this, Father is right. I may not be the fool he thinks me, but I am a hindrance to you."
Boromir could only laugh, caught in ideas so recently his own but that they were infinitely reversed. How much they were alike, who were so different! How much he loved Faramir, who would open up his wrists rather than feel he was an impediment to his brother's glory. How tragic this was, that Boromir would leave this man behind, forced to break his vows. Faramir's expression was all consternation at Boromir's wry mirth, and settled into himself, taken aback by levity when he had expected solemnity. But Boromir took his hand and pressed his mouth against cool fingers, not caring that his own damp face would assure blood to smear against himself. "Then we hinder each other, my brother, for never have I seen such as we, two fools who would surrender all to each other and leave nothing for ourselves!"
Faramir's eyes went wide. Boromir tuned his head and told Arjunar: "Leave us for a time, my friend. You do not want to witness this sibling caterwauling."
The old soldier nodded, hoisting the soiled linens with him, and left. Boromir followed and bolted the door.
Faramir weakly levered himself up, watching this strangeness with a wary look. "What is this?" he asked.
Boromir merely returned, and maneuvered himself to his satisfaction, taking Faramir's weak frame against his own. "You know, it does not follow that we must obey Father. He could not stop us if we both went."
Faramir tensed in his arms, then relaxed with a small laugh. "I, go to Imladris?" There was a boyish awe in his voice, for Mithrandir had filled Faramir's head with the love of the Elves.
"And why not, as long as we can get you fed and your blood back up? Who would stop us?"
"You know he would."
"Not if you leave for Ithilien on the same day. Who of your company would bear witness against you? Then you can ride about and meet me on the road north. We will not be parted. And if we hinder one another, so be it! Why should we bow to a lesser fate when we can grasp a higher one?"
Faramir was silent for a long moment. "And the One Ring?"
"Yes?"
"Would you bow to my wisdom concerning it?"
Boromir resisted tensing at the phrasing there. "I will admit that it is a dire thing, and I do not think myself so great that I would resist its corruption. But you, Faramir."
"Do not pull me down that road, Brother. It would corrupt even an Istari, so we are no proof against it."
"Then how must we prevent Gondor's destruction?"
Faramir paused. "Destroy it."
Boromir frowned. "Destroy such a thing? Is it even possible?"
"Isildur would have done, had he himself not been corrupted."
The elder of the two had never heard that part of his country's history. It dramatically altered his perception of his own fallibility. If Isildur himself could not resist the Ring, what proof were they against it, sons of a lesser age that they were?
"Yes," Faramir answered his unsaid thoughts. "Now you begin to see why Father is so wrong. He sees both of us, equally unclearly. Me he sees more inept than I am, and you."
There was a smile in his voice.
"He sees something greater than I am," Boromir admitted, and although he knew the truth, it stung a little, that he could not be what his father wanted. Even now, it stung a bit. But it did not wound. No.
Wounding would take a dearer man than his father; it would take Faramir's disregard to truly wound him.
"It will be days before they have all the supplies together, and the needed letters of passage,"
Boromir said. "In the meanwhile, you will feign a chill and rest yourself. All will be well, Little Brother. You shall see.
"There is no place I can go that you cannot follow." ------------------------------------------------------------------------