Author: Aldalas

Disclaimer: If you think I'm Tolkien, you don't know the man's work at all.

Warnings: Small ROTK spoiler, POV, angst... My first real attempt at POV. TISSUE ALERT!

Feedback: ((puppydogeyes)) Absolutely!

A/N: This turned into quite a project for me. Originally it was intended to be a tribute to the garrison of Gondor that died in the attempt to retake Osgiliath in The Return of the King, but it evolved to be much more than that. It turned out to be about the garrison, along with a tribute to Faramir and Boromir, even Faramir and Denethor. It's written as if Faramir had written this down in a letter for a friend to read. It's a little crazy and I'm not entirely satisfied with it, so any help or suggestions would be very appreciated.

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How it pains me to recall this.

I remember that day, the sky so dark it seemed to block out even the light of a fire. I remember the darkness, spreading over the land like tendrils of despair. I remember the driving force behind it, urging it forward, urging it to sweep away the life, to claim the hope.

I remember that day. But the evil of it is not why I remember with such vivid clarity.

I remember a garrison of Gondor. I remember men whose spirits rose in a defense that few cannot now bear in mind without shame.

I do not feel the shame, I do not feel the guilt. There is a lesson in this that took many weeks for me to understand. The lesson has many lines, yet it is one.

And parhaps, if I recount what I remember, it will no longer bring me the ache I know so well.

There is something to be said of the strength of those men of Gondor, the ones who rode to retake Osgiliath. Something to be said of their loyalty, and later, of their selfless sacrifice. Something I can no longer leave to reside only in my heart, for I was the lone survivor of this battle. It is a deed and a strength that others need to honor, if only for a moment, as well. This is what I know, and this is what I honor above all else. Even after the order was made that the nigh impossible should be attempted to achieve, not one of that now forgotten garrison revolted, not one backed down. While I was among them, I heard only the submission of the brave. Soldier after soldier embraced their families, kissed their children goodbye for the last time.

I remember the pain.

How my heart burned that day, how it wept within me behind a mask of barely stable eyes, behind words that spoke only when they did not say what I felt. My emotions were full of turmoil. How I felt torn to shreds with only one pillar in me left standing; my devotion to protecting those in my care.

My father wished me dead. He wished that his loss had not cost any quarter of his kingdom, any ounce of his rule; that it would not have brought the devastating wildness in his eyes that meant all was lost. And for the first time, I agreed with him. At that moment, I could not remember missing my brother more. This is what I know about myself, and it is something I must say. I love my father, beyond all reason and doubt. He, whom day in and day out I sought to please, so I could parhaps earn the love I longingly needed to feel. But he is not the reason why I live, he is not why I chose to rise every morning and breathe. The one who held that desire deep and safe in my heart is dead. Though I live, I do not. The pain I felt should have sent me crashing to my knees, but pride kept me on my feet, duty held the tears back. The love of my people is all I have left and I no longer feared to lose my life for them.

I remember feeling as though I had been cast in stone. Several soldiers held flowers in their hands, given to them by friends and kin; some woven into their chainmail, their breastplates, even the gauntlets about their arms, barely perceptible against the silver and black. I carried none with me. I had ignored the offers and with a wave of my hand let the flowers pass me by. Little did I say to those men, little more than orders to line up, to begin. To draw swords. To run into what I knew would be all their deaths. All but mine. Ai, how this knowledge pains me!

It should not have been they who died, they who had something to live for, to hold onto, to give meaning to their world. It should have been me. I, who had nothing; I, now the only one to live. My soldiers, my friends... gone. It should have been me.

I remember the wonder.

If only my people could see its soldiers in the midst of battle. Never again would they doubt the power therein. Though we may lose, we also win. We have come together against a defying force, we are one. We have become who we were meant to be.

Not one of the men on both my sides faltered. There was such loyalty in them, such valued honor and duty. Even before the gates of Gondor opened to admit them passage into the open plains that separated us from our stolen fortress, they knew they were lost. They all knew. Yet still, they rode. They brought their weapons, ready for the fight. Their faces were set, their wills firm. The white petals of the flowers were held fast in the hands that held up their swords. These men were warriors, bearing a vastly misunderstood love and respect for their fallen country in the light of their eyes. It was different than every other confrontation... it was the same.

Horses whinnied and snorted; deep, rich voices sounding clear and full over the plain. Hooves pounded into the ground, muscles slamming them deep into the grass to push them farther. Strong and graceful, their bodies like waves of fierce wind. Such majestic animals, such powerful beasts. War horses of battle, war horses of fear. They were masters of death. They knew the fear of their riders though not one showed it; they knew the hopelessness of this battle though not one stated it. Yet still, they ran. Their cries rendered up to the heavens, roaring in their fury and their pain. Already the plain faded with a breath of death, though there was no blood to stain the ground. There didn't need to be.

I remember riding slightly ahead of those men, as if I wished to somehow guard them against the onslaught that would come, save them from their deaths. Hope of a fool. I could save none. How the spears did rise up and forward, the flags whipping and snapping through the wind, the sharpened points glinting like stars.

My blood rose as I drew my sword and kicked my stallion into a full gallop. It pounded in my ears, dimmed my vision. But still, I did not flee from the mass of black scar over stone before me that I knew to be the fortress of Osgiliath overrun with creatures of agony and darkness. From there, time has no meaning. It could have been minutes or hours, but the end does not change. All events blend into one another in a vast web of obscurity, and though they were but a few to recall, I know what I saw and what I felt.

As one they had come. And as one they did fall. Black arrows flecked with red screamed through the air, piercing through armor and flesh and bone. Man and beast fell to the plain, wounds fatal, strength fading. They knew this end would come should they ride, but they rode against the staggering odds without a second thought. How dearly did they pay for the love of their people.

One black arrow drove into my shoulder, another into my side. The force knocked me out of my saddle and my stallion reared in sudden fright, unhurt. As I fell my foot slipped into the stirrup and I slammed to the ground in an awkward, incomplete heap. The stallion pranced, away from me, mindful of my presence yet not willing to do me harm. Some part of me wished he would.

My eyes took in the scene around me once my vision cleared. It was one of complete catastrophic destruction. Within minutes, that driving force behind the darkness had won, the lives it had claimed counting into the hundreds. Hundreds of precious souls.

But I had been pierced more than once, the one in my side I knew only from experience would eventually prove fatal. Why did I still live?

The stallion began to walk forward, back toward the city of Gondor, away from the spreading bloodbath of the plains. He pulled me through the broken forms of soldiers and horses, all with their eyes growing grey and listless. He took me away from them, away from the chance of my life being stripped away from me as well. His head dipped low to avoid being shot, struggling through beaten and bloody grass, taking both me and himself out of the range of an orc's arrow.

I looked back, and only then did the tears come... they had finally come. The tears of pain for my fallen comrades. And somehow the pain drove deeper, opening a floodgate into my soul from which I could vent and release. I had held them in far too long. Tears of days and months and years of my father's rejection. Tears of a lifetime for which I had never found an outlet but forced them to stay and harbor within my soul. The tears of every pain since I discovered Boromir, my brother, fallen... and how the loss had crippled my heart.

I should die with my men. I would be an insult to their memory if it was I who rode for death and in the end the only one who found life. My brother was dead, my father wished for my death. Was that not enough?

But it was not my time to die. I know that now. It was my time to learn.

The screams of battle faded away from my ears, and some unnatural stillness overtook my senses. My mind could not settle on one particular thought for several moments, still trying to absorb the fact that I was now unable to move and fight against my horse. Gradually, the light faded from my eyes and the black void took its place.

Somewhere in the realm of my thoughts, a voice, strong and proud, dredged itself up out of my mind. "This city, once the jewel of our kingdom..."

Boromir?

That speech, those words, spoken with such firmness of mind within my memories that it was almost as if I had gone back to that day, when my brother still lived and Osgiliath back in Gondor's arms. I found myself sinking into the memory, wanting the last thing I heard to be my brother's voice.

"A place of light, and beauty, and music, and so it shall become once more! This city of Osgiliath has been reclaimed – for Gondor! For Gondor! For Gondor!"

Several times, I saw that glorious, painful day in my mind's eye. I chose to only focus on what good came of it, and the thoughts that arose because of it. Such joy; utter, inexpressible joy that I had not felt since.

Boromir truly had been the soldier... and Ai, how he had protected me throughout my life. I remember a rare smile lifting from forgotten depths and growing over my face.

When we were young, he had helped me with my studies and sparring in the fields, woken me before dawn so we could escape outside together to watch the sunrise, was at my side every time I was promoted through the ranks of a warrior... there for me the day our mother died. That day, when my father first began to pull himself away from the inside of my life and began to direct it as a liege whom only saw what I did, not who I was. That day, when he became my fiercest ally, my most trusted companion. The day she died, father had cursed at me in his pain for interrupting him and demanded that I leave his presence, not to return until I had a useful problem for him to solve. I escaped to my room as quickly as I could physically run, only stopping to finally bolt my door, fall amid my pillows in privacy and softly water them with my tears.

My body jerked, my stallion stumbled, one hoof nearly colliding with my ribs. I could sense it close even though I could not see. But he righted himself without injury to either of us and started forward again. Knowledge of my horse faded away, leaving me alone in a field of memory.

It was not my father who later had come to give of his comfort. It was Boromir. Passing by my room he heard my muffled cries. Without thought he dropped all he had been doing and picked the lock to my door. Without a word he entered, bolted the door again, pulled me out of my pillows, gathered me up in his arms and held me, cried with me... for a measure of time I will never know the length of he comforted me. Never have I cried so hard, nor have I slept so deep since then. I do not believe I ever shall again.

I was drawn back to that speech about Osgiliath when the memory left me. But suddenly, he wasn't talking about the once great fortress anymore. No; the name, however so beloved, drifted away from the replaying speech. Pitch and tone did not change, but the words spoken did. My own name surfaced into his voice.

"This man, once a jewel of my family; a warrior of strength, and devotion, and servitude, and so he shall be forevermore! My brother, Faramir,has been reclaimed – for Gondor! For Gondor! For Gondor!"

The words were like molten fire across my senses. They brought me back to myself, for a moment I could again make out the sounds of my stallion, and farther off, noise of the gate rising.

Could it be? Was I still meant to live? Was my brother protecting me even after his death?

My memories of the outside world are fragmented now, but I will tell what little I remember.

A cool hand touched my forehead, small and gentle.

A cry, whose words I could not make out though I knew they concerned me.

My body lay against something great in quantity, hard and brittle on my smarting wounds. I was drenched in something foul-smelling and slimy, reeking of another death that waited for my mortal ties to come within reach once more. I had winced, unable to move and shake away the feeling.

An angry roar of another stallion, not my own.

Sudden warmth, and a roar I recognized to be the sound of fast-spreading flames.

Suddenly, I was falling, landing hard on a stone floor with a much smaller body colliding into mine moments later. The impact sent me reeling and for a moment I feared it would tip my consciousness over the edge to oblivion, but rather, it woke me up.

Finally, I could again open my eyes.

There was fire where I was, and the form of a familiar person caught in the middle of its writhing, angry control.

Though I could physically show no reaction beyond moving my head to the side, within I was badly shocked. Father- FATHER! What happened! Father? Father... The look in his eyes confused me. A gaze I had not seen graced on me since before my mother passed away. One of fear, and regret, and... pleading?

But before I could look farther, the flames had reached his skin. In his fatal pain, he fled.

Again, I felt a tender hand touch me again, redirecting my gaze away from my father. I accepted the touch almost gratefully. It was Pippin, and behind him, standing next to a great white horse, stood Mithrandir. The wizard looked so tired, so old, though I knew his age was beyond my comprehension. Though I could barely control myself, there must have been some terror in my eyes, for the little hobbit studied me fearfully, taking my hand. I had no strength, none to tell him I was fine or to reassure him that I did indeed live... though I doubted myself at the moment.

Pippin again placed his hand on my forehead, and I knew his touch from the time I was barely coherent and sudden realization hit me - he must have remained close to my side since the time of my return. After a few moments, he smiled shakily in relief, sensing something that let him know...

"You live," he said, as though saying the words would reinforce them deeper into both his mind and my own. "You still live."

My eyes slid shut. I felt strangely content. Why did I? Parhaps for the first genuine concern someone had so openly shown me since the time of Boromir's departure to Rivendell, parhaps knowing I could let my guard down and let someone take care of me now... parhaps.

Slowly, I had nodded my head. Thank you, Pippin.

Yes, I did live. To understand what all these events meant to me took a great amount of time, but now, finally, I am at peace. Now, I live.

It was not until much later that I found out what had really happened that day. It was the telling of that story that caused me to again remember all else. So now you know, even if the telling was short and fragile. You know.

But now, there is one last thing I must say at the close of this tale, but it will not be to you, dear reader. Something I have considered and pondered, and now can say with perfect clearness of mind.

Father, you are forgiven... for everything.

Brother, I now know where you are.

The End