Gifts, Part II

Faramir sings the wrong laments.  He is thirteen; he is angry and alone, and standing upwind of the battlefield's bountiful crop of pyres, he sings some ancient lay in the tongue of long-dead Kings, whose language ebbs and swells like the sea over which they came on ships with sails like the wings of gulls.  Faramir is thirteen, angry and alone, and he sings the wrong laments in a voice whose piercing beauty hasn't yet begun to crack.

It's late May - early summer, the vast plains of eastern Gondor blushing green-gold blending into the silver-violet haze of sage, the high desert of no-man's land where Vanka's people's skins of brown and grey and green lend them an advantage unattainable to even the stealthiest of Rangers.  The air, musical with fat swift-winged bees, had smelled of grasses, warm earth, and far-off rain.  Now that flies had replaced the bees, the field reeked of blood, shit and fear, and roasting meat.  Soon it would smell of burning meat.  War lent no time to bury the dead in un-tilled soil, sun-baked in Gondor's dry summers.

When the monsoons of August and September came, when their mother was alive and their father sane, the water ran off the russet soil in rivulets, curling into hollows, etching out gullies and shooting, sudden and lethal, down the arroyos of years and centuries gone by.  The monsoons seldom come now; and when they do, often, their violence robs the earth of the good they once brought, hail battering to death even the hardy roots of sage and gorse and long golden grasses, winds twisting the limbs of olive trees past what even their gnarled strength could bear.

Through the burdened air rises Faramir's clear voice.  The men stir restlessly, for none know the words.  They'd been ready to sing the old grave-songs, the ancient memorials, the bawdy drinking-songs commemorating not the ale but those with whom they had shared it and now could share no longer.  But these words are strange to them; this song is strange to them, and the restless tide of gathered minds shifts toward bewildered anger for their stolen grief.

Boromir glances over at his brother, knowing what he'll see.  The boy stands too far away for a touch to warn him; eyes opened but fixed on the far distance might as well be closed.  His voice soars higher than the carrion birds.  His elder brother's is not half so fine; he had not Faramir's time for lessons and weariness has long deadened his ear.  

But his voice – the voice of the great horn – is stronger than his brothers. He sings soft at first, low, his deep baritone a tide rising, gently and inexorably, under his brother's crystalline soprano.   It's one of the old songs, tracing back, he thinks, to the First Men, meant to be carried a capella – a bit off-key, his voice carries it nonetheless, weaving word and tune up through the centuries of soldiers singing around scarred wooden tables, around grumbling campfires and the crackling pyres of their comrades. His brother will be angry, but it's better to be wroth with Boromir, who loves him, than wounded by soldiers who have not yet learned to.

By the time Faramir's fine Numenorian verse falters and fades into it, the men have joined, some with eyes closed and faces tear-streaked, some just mouthing the words, others shouting to the sky. A proper send-off, for the valiant dead – that day had fed many crows.

After that, the rest lead. With so many pyres, there are many songs to be sung. Some walk amongst the burning wood, throwing mementos into the flames for their dead friends and brothers. Boromir, the commander, stands still, monumental, the hot wind of summer's afternoon tugging loose curls of black hair from their braid. He sings quietly now, letting his voice form a bedrock to the songs of love and mourning and, though it is his men he watches, he feels his brother's approach.

Faramir sidles up beside him, leaning into his arm a little. He shifts slightly and wraps an arm around the boy's narrow shoulders and wraps a broad callused hand around the boy's slender one. Tension holds his brother's body rigid. From above, he can't see Faramir's face clearly but he knows the expression all the same. He wears it regularly; his family passes down mulishness like an heirloom and, on a lonely boy of thirteen, it carries a petulance that doesn't in the least diminish the obstinacy.

“I really can't do anything right, can I?”

Boromir tightens the embrace around his brother.

“You can, but not without thought -”

“You do!”

He blurts a small sound, of pain, indignation, or surprise he knows not which, as Faramir, wrenching away, wrenches his wrist. He cradles it reflexively, staring at his little brother – Faramir stands a couple yards off, flushed and panting, eyes bright with unshed tears.

“You do! You're fucking perfect.” The boy's voice has risen to a shout. Some of the men will be staring. “They'd cheer you for taking a piss!”

They're definitely staring now. Faramir turns sharply on his heel; stunned into irrelevancy, Boromir thinks that he must be very pleased with the dramatic billow and snap of his cloak, if he even notices, that it's a shame if he doesn't...Was I like that at thirteen?

He knows the wrath is genuine. Faramir can't lie worth a damn, but the sincerity doesn't cut the melodrama. He feels like somebody has stabbed him – it's the same sort of cold draining, the same simultaneous hyperawareness and paralyzed numbness.

His wrist throbs, but he can tell it's sprained at worst, and slowly releases it, letting it fall back to his side as he searches for the lost thread of song. It eludes his grasp several times, since many have petered off into private mourning or mingled curiosity and concern. He catches Beregond's worried glance and offers a smile. It's all right; it's just an argument between brothers.

That's all. It's not as if they haven't argued before. It's not as if an adolescent lashing out is some strange phenomenon, and Faramir only does so to him. The thought has occurred to him before, but this time it slides in at just the right angle, like a knife between the ribs. Faramir only loses his temper at him. He's the one, the only one, who won't leave. With him alone gentle Faramir, who wants so badly to be loved, can entrust his humanness, with the frustration and the anger that entails.

Pain for his brother robs him of breath for half a heartbeat. He stumbles, catching it back – as if he truly has been stabbed, it hurts to breathe, leaving his voice a limping rough-edged thing that can't afford to hurt too badly to exist. Pain is a luxury for those less busy.

He draws in a deep breath of summer air and makes himself sing strong again, unbowed under Faramir's wounded anger, his father's stern despair, his people's need, not despite their weight but because of it. Because someone has to, and no one else will, he carries all of them, and when Faramir comes to him that night, wretchedly apologetic, he enfolds him in strong arms and tells him it's all right.