Quiet

Posted: March 2003
Title: Quiet
Author: Archet
Type: FCS
Characters: Boromir/Faramir
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of any of JRR Tolkien or New Line Cinema/Peter Jackson's works or characters.
Warning: Implied Boromir/Famamir!
Author's Note: Can be considered a companion to my A/B drabble Silent Rooms.

Summary: Faramir remembers.

*****

Quiet. It is so very quiet here now and though nothing has been disturbed, I know I am not the only one to visit your vacant rooms. It is difficult to believe that once, years passed, when you were a boy and I followed everywhere you led these chambers, your chambers rang with laughter.

I smile now to think of how your patience was tested by me, your little brother so different from yourself. And you were patient; I can see that now, despite the many complaints that I asked far too many questions for my own good. Yet truly, you were the only one I asked them of then, as I held you above all others.

In this very room you often said I spent too much time reading and spinning dreams, yet still you listened more often than not when I told you of the lore stories I'd found. Still you smiled when I spoke of my impossible dreams. You were my world then, and I had the luxury of believing I was yours.

How well I remember the days before war took you afield, those lingering afternoons we passed here where the sun slid golden through these tall windows. How I long for them. For them and for those that came later, those rare times that found you returned home from battle where we shared our woes and our hearts before the warmth of a fire long into deep dreamless winter nights.

Yet that was long ago and you, my solace, have gone and I remain. I remain here in your place of office, in our land freed from the shadow at long last and though the sun still enters in through the windows just as golden today as it did in memory, there will be no more fires kindled in this stone hearth. Here I remain with our king, with my wife, with my duty and my memories and without you.

Now I ask your silent chambers, why did you not return to your White City? Why did you not return to those that love you best? I know of what befell you; I know your tale yet this knowing does not answer the questions in my heart and I require answers, yet who can give them? Not my king, for all his glory, not my wife, for all her honor and not my memories for all the comfort and torture that they offer.

Quiet... Your rooms will not answer, your belongings unmoved from their places offer nothing except the echoes of things past, never to be again. For me, these chambers will never be warm again except in memory.

My brother, I miss you still.

Brother mine, I'll miss you always.

*****

THE END


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