You decide – someone - Denethor maybe? Or Marek? Or something?
The Silent Pool by which I Lie
'by Vanwa Hravani
...and then he gasped as he saw the blood.
His head was pounding where it had pressed upon the hard stone, but trying to move it made the world swim nauseatingly. Where was he? Why was he on the floor? Thinking hurt like a blunt spear. Never mind. The stone was cool and felt soothing. He was content to rest his face upon it again. As long as it wasn’t in the sticky blood.
The blood…
His eyes reluctantly opened. There had been some on his thighs and backside – he knew there would be – but this was different. This was too much blood. This was a puddle, a pool. This blood spoke of sickness, of no survivors.
Faramir braced his aching hands against the floor and forced himself upward shakily. He paused and closed his eyes, waited for the fuzzy ugly world to right itself. The Ranger checked his body, but other than the bruises and contusions from the night before, which were more than plentiful, he had no serious wound. He could tell he had a concussion and really didn’t want to think about what else might be wrong. But the blood wasn’t his.
In terror he glanced over at his own bed, now occupied by naked Aragorn and Boromir, snoring off their exertions. He swallowed hard. No blood on those sheets. He signed in relief. Mostly.
Turning back, he saw that the area where he’d been sleeping had been protected from the pool only by the bulwark of a large, richly dressed and very dead Haradrim. Prince Marek lay only a few feet from where Faramir had fallen. The mithril dagger Faramir kept under the pillow was buried to the hilt in his chest. From the pattern of marks on the Southron’s tunic, he had been stabbed wildly and savagely multiple times.
Looking down at his own hands, Faramir stretched fingers caked with dried blood. It cracked and some flaked off. Horror dawned on him. He looked at the dagger again. But how...? His knuckles were raw and scraped and his hands were stiff. The skin on the back of his scalp began to crawl, touching off a shudder that reached deep into his core with cold dread. Ignoring the screaming pain of his body and battered skull, Faramir leapt up to reach the balcony before retching violently over the side. Green bile and acid stung his throat and sinuses as his empty stomach heaved. Still his skin crawled.
Someone stirred in the bed.
Oh gods, No. Mind wailing, Faramir sank to the balcony floor, clutching his head in his hands. No this could not be happening. Flashes of last night began to break through the haze of his exhausted and injured brain. Gods his head hurt! This couldn’t be right. He shouldn’t even be sitting up. He needed to lie down, to sleep, to make it all go away.
Marek
darkness ---
Boromir coming – too late --
no
Aragorn egging him on. Asking for it. Commanding it.
No
Stroking himself
NO
Aragorn fucking Boromir while Boromir
NO!
Raped him
NO!
Rape
NO!!!
His brother Boromir
NO!!!
Marek raping him
NO
Marek coming back again
NO MORE
Faramir let out a strangled cry as memory upon memory flashed in his head, detailing the dark sickness that was the night before. Everything he thought he knew was shattered with the knowledge that he had been raped by his own brother. His protector. His Boro. Himself. Betrayed. Soiled. Here he was, garbage on his own floor, discarded.
And swimming in blood.
Another noise from the bed, mumbling. Sleepy sweet nothings between the lovers entwined there, whose wine-laden breath Faramir could still smell on his skin. Feel clumsy hands. But strong. Too strong. He gagged again.
“Mornin love…hmmmm…wh…where are we? Boromir…” Aragorn sat up lazily in the bed – *his* bed – rubbing his face. His eyes focused and registered Faramir’s room and Faramir…and the bloody remains of the Haradic envoy. “Morwen g...! What in the names of the Valar…?”
“Good morning my love. I must say you’re up early – hope it’s for the right reason…”
Boromir’s cheerful voice sickened Faramir only for an instant before it faded off into silent shock. He too was staring open-mouthed at the scene on the floor and details of the night before began to flit visibly across his features. Faramir’s battered naked body, darkly bruised head and bloody hands, crouched on the flagstones near the congealing blood that leaked from Marek’s butchered chest. As his eyes fell on the Haradim’s gray and purple face, Boromir’s own bruised hand flexed in unconscious recognition. After an endless dull moment the connection seemed to be made. Mouth still hanging open, his gaze found Faramir’s. The brothers stared at one another for a long moment. Boromir swallowed painfully. Faramir looked away.
“Fara? Little One? I didn’t…I didn’t mean…” His voice broke as he reached out a hand ineffectually toward his younger sibling. What could be said? Nothing would undo this. Nothing would change it, or make them forget or be able to laugh it off as a night of revelry. What had he done? “Oh gods! Faramir!”
Boromir nearly fell off the bed reaching for his brother. Disentangling his legs from the sheets and a silent Aragorn, he dove to his brother’s side and reached to embrace him, to hold him tight, make it all go away. Keep him safe, as he had promised their mother so long ago.
Faramir flinched and pulled away. How could he? How could he even touch him? Nothing would ever be safe again. This could never be right. Denethor was right. Denethor always won in the end.
Boromir fell sobbing at his brother’s feet, eyes wild with grief. Faramir met Aragorn’s eyes over his bowed head. Both had the look of dark negotiation.
“Do you want to tell me what happened here?” the King asked in a hard voice.
Faramir shook his head slowly, so as to keep the room level and not lose eye contact with his king. He spoke in a monotone, his lips tight. “I don’t know. He came back – he must have escaped his guard. -- You did put a guard on him? -- I don’t remember. I think he meant to take me with him. Either that or kill me. In any case it looks like I’d had enough. By then.”
Faramir‘s black gaze met Aragorn’s unswervingly as the words hung between them. His insides had been shaking so hard it seemed they’d finally found a place of silence, of dead calm, of cold. Something inside him switched off. He waited patiently for Aragorn’s reply, outside of time.
Elessar was silent for some while. Finally he inhaled through gritted teeth, curling his lips back. “He was an important envoy. A prince. This will take some explaining. There will be consequences. They may call for your execution. Or your extradition.”
At the word ‘execution’ Boromir stirred from his sobbing to stare at his King, his lover, in horror. “Aragorn, you wouldn’t…!?”
Aragorn met his gaze for another long silent moment.
“There will also be other questions.”
The two on the bed stiffened at the words now vibrating before them.
There would be the question of why the King and his lover were in Faramir’s bedroom all night. Why Faramir was visibly injured. And of what had driven Faramir to the undisciplined ferocity of the attack, when he was well respected as a master of both the sword and unarmed combat, capable of skilled self-defense. Self-defense alone would have left far cleaner evidence. These would be awkward questions to answer.
The silence stretched deep and thin as each man lost himself following dead end plans to escape reality, and ruminations or recriminations on the actions that had led them there.
Aragorn broke it.
“Your love for Boromir drove you to it. No one who knows you can doubt your devotion to your brother, and none can fault you for it, as it is most noble. Marek came to your rooms in another attempt to sway you, or take you to Harad by force if need be, and Boromir surprised him at it. Marek seized Boromir and threatened to harm him if you did not relent, and in a blood-rage for your brother’s sake, you killed him. I came along looking for Boromir afterward.”
Faramir stared at Aragorn, stunned. The king was preparing a good lie. To get himself out of trouble. One that would make Faramir look crazy, but endearingly so, and that, worst of all, would imply that of the two brothers, it was he who was inappropriately enthusiastic about the fraternal bond. This on the heels of last night. While the blood was still damp on his ass and their seed still sticky. The bruises still fresh. And he was 'devoted'?
Boromir was nodding his head. “Yes. This just might work. Yes…”
Faramir’s attention was diverted by the urgency of deciding whether to swallow the bile rising in his throat, or to violently disgorge his body’s acids yet again.
What happens next?
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