towercaptain (towercaptain) wrote in unfinished_logs, @ 2010-07-12 17:52:00 |
|
|||
Current mood: | thoughtful |
"The king is king in this city."
Who: Boromir and Finduilas
When: Game-time
Where: Imrahil's Undead Convention guest house
What: Family reunions!
Status: Long-form, complete.
Rating: G
Finduilas had never been one for handicrafts. She knew it was expected of her. Decorous, noble women in Dol Amroth sewed and embroidered, made lovely objects that spoke to having leisure and taste. As a princess, she should have been adept at that. Should was the operative word. It wasn't a matter of not knowing how -- she certainly knew, her tutors had made sure she was as accomplished as any woman of her status could hope to be -- it was simply a matter of loathing it. Embroidery, she had always been fond of saying, was a torture invented solely to keep accomplished young ladies from actually accomplishing anything. The first time she had been set to embroider a tapestry, a task laid upon her by a well-meaning governess, she had only completed the bare outlines of the stitches before running to her father and begging him for any other task but that. That was how she had become her father's scribe, for all intents and purposes, and at fourteen, that was a far preferable task than anything involving needles and threads of silk, no matter how lovely their outcome.
All of that made the fact that she was sitting in the little sitting area of her room with a needle and raven-black thread in her hand, snowy linen laid on her lap draping to the carefully covered floor rather uncharacteristic. However, as she considered the matter of Pelargir and the Captain's ambitions there, it became clear to her that they would have to move on the city soon, before the anarchy resolved itself, and possibly, before Thorongil's wedding. His distraction with the details and his new bride would give them the window they required to move without opposition or, if they were lucky, detection. Then, if they could present their lordship over the city as a fait accompli at a formal event before the assembled nobles and lords of Gondor, there would be little room for challenge, not without loosing face. And Thorongil needed to keep his face so early in his rule. This all meant that they would have to unfurl their banner in the city soon. And that meant having one.
Finduilas had considered the matter carefully, considered the symbols of Numenor, of Gondor and Dol Amroth, then began to design her lord husband's banner with care. A white field, and upon it, a sable falcon in flight beneath a single sable five-pointed star. A falcon, for vigilance, perseverance, and the sharp sight to see things for how they really were. And the star, guidance, hearkening back to the silver stars on Gondor's banner itself. It suited them, she thought. So it was to a fine, pristine piece of linen that she applied herself with her dark silks and her sharp needles, determined that no-one could give her lord his banner but her.
Granted, there was the small problem of her hating embroidery, and the fact that she kept stabbing herself with the needle, which led to careful if hurried manoeuvres so she wouldn't bleed on the linen, but those were small problems, Finduilas kept telling herself. This was going to be her project, and that was simply that.
Boromir paced around the hall, wondering what could be so important that his father would not open the door for him. He wanted to talk about his plan to rescue Lothiriel! He hated waiting. Did people not know he hated waiting?
The door that everyone told him belonged to his mother was cracked open slightly. He couldn't help but notice this, even in his impatience, and, slowly, tentatively, he peered through the crack. He had seen her, a few times, in passing, but when she hadn't spoken to him, he hadn't known what to say. Hello, I'm your son. Hullo Mother, you don't know who I am! It had been hard enough, even when Father had approached him and spoken to him as a son, knowing what to say.
Boromir stood at the door, afraid to disrupt her, but peering through the door in open fascination. This delicate thing was his mother? He could never remember his mother sewing.
Yet again, the needle pierced her finger, and Finduilas withdrew her hand immediately, muttering something under her breath that no lady should have known. (Ivri and Imrahil both had a love of teaching her profanity, much to their collective amusement when she actually used it.) "Blasted thing," she complained, slightly more decorously, watching as the little wound vanished, much as she expected it would. So strange, that, and yet, a valuable asset now. She wiped her fingertip on a handkerchief, one she planned on burning later, just to be safe, and sighed softly. Her project. Yes, indeed.
Still, she had that strange sense that she was being observed, that feeling like ghostly cat paws up the spine. Frowning, she set aside the banner and turned in her chair. Just through the gap in the door, she could see her observer, and she arched one eyebrow. "Do the hobbies of women amuse you, sir?" she asked, her tone wry. Of all the things to observe, her sewing had to be terribly disappointing, really.
"I... I'm sorry," Boromir had sort of hoped he could just sneak off after watching for a little bit, to see what sort of woman this mother of his was. Had been. Before she was his mother. It hadn't all been terribly clear when Denethor had explained it to him. "I didn't mean to disturb you. I... just wanted to know." He moved to shut the door. It was absurd. He, Boromir, who could face down the devils of the East, who had not shirked to do his good duty for Gondor, was afraid to talk to a woman. A woman who had loved him, that he remembered with much fondness and longing.
The door was shut before he could think of anything to say.
Well, that was a useful explanation. Finduilas frowned. He seemed familiar, somehow. Beyond the glimpses of him she had seen in corridors, coming and going. She had been terribly self-contained, hadn't she? Still, his hair reminded him of Ivri's for a brief moment, and that was enough to have her set aside her stitching to rise and go quickly to the door. There was a bit of black thread clinging to the grey of her dress. She was fairly certain this was going to prove a constant curse.
"No, wait, it's all right," she said as she opened it, her tone gentling a bit. "It didn't mean to chastise you. I simply hadn't expected anyone to be there." Ivri's hair, she thought, and something of her father in the shoulders, broad and strong.
Boromir was standing there, looking very like a chastised dog who had been sent out of the room and now was not sure where to go now that he was 'out'. His face was all confusion when the door opened again. "I..." Errrr. What did you say to your mother. "...I didn't mean to spy on you, but I understand it comes naturally from my father. Please don't leave your work for me. Though it didn't look like you were enjoying it anyway."
Finduilas frowned a little. "Your father? But you remind me of my sister," she said, not quite sure where the words came from as they leapt to her lips, almost unbidden. It was true, however, though she was not sure she could imagine Ivri with a child. Or at least, a child that was not her or Imrahil. She peered at him -- shamelessly, at that -- and the shape of his eyes, the colour of them, were so intensely familiar, it was like a blow. Was this...?
"Your father, the Captain?" she asked quietly, a slight quaver to her voice.
Oh. This was bad. Wasn't it. Boromir thought, for one brief, shining second, of lying. But that was no good. He couldn't do that. "...my father, your husband," he said, taking one of her tiny, delicate hands into his own. He had, at certain times in his life, felt like a giant. This was one of them. "...hello, Mother. I... I'm Boromir, your son."
What was he supposed to say! What was he supposed to do! Why wasn't Faramir here, Faramir was the gentle, clever, wise one. He was the soldier son. He remembered her, of course, but she had seemed so... different. Everyone seemed different than he remembered them.
"Oh," Finduilas said, which wasn't the most enlightened, intelligent reaction she had ever had. That explained the spying, she supposed, though that was hardly the most pressing issue at hand, now was it? She peered at him again, and his words actually sunk in as she looked. "Oh. You're -- oh. My son. My son." In the span of heartbeats, her expression when from puzzled, to overwhelmed, to delighted, her tone of voice following suit, and slowly, a beaming smile stole across her face, like a morning glory at the first rays of dawn. She squeezed his hand, a sort of reassuring gesture. Her son. Hers, full-grown and handsome, and her heart both fluttered and ached at the realisation. "You do have the look of your aunt. But your father's eyes. So much so."
"And Grandfather's build, I'm told," Boromir said, quietly, modestly, anything to keep from thinking about how strange the situation he found himself in was. "Faramir's got more of your looks, I think. And more of your mind." She was, somehow, lovelier than he remembered, but seemed so tiny. He had always remembered her over him, big enough to hold Faramir or carrying him. Not this delicate thing. "Oh, Mother, I... don't know what to tell you. I've never been re-introduced to family who doesn't remember me at all."
"I've never been introduced to a son I don't know, so I suppose we'll have to muddle through," Finduilas told him, her voice supremely gentle. "You're just...familiar. I look at you, and I feel as if I should know everything about you, and I don't. But I wish to."
She had not been prepared for this, and yet, she had been waiting for it since the moment the Captain told her they had sons, fine sons that had served Gondor well and brought honour to their house and line and country. She had been waiting for this, and now, she did not know what to do. She supposed the only way to proceed was to treat this as if it were utterly normal. That was what she would have wanted if her own mother had suddenly returned, she thought. She would have wanted to sit with her and relearn the sound of her voice, and remember what it was like to have her mother nearby. That was what should happen, she decided. "Come sit with me, if only for a little while," she suggested. "If you have the time. There's no reason to carry on in corridors, really."
"Yes, yes of course," Boromir felt immediate relief. If she was going to carry on as if all this was to be expected, so could he. He was confused, and did not know what to feel -- there was no immediate relief, the way he had experienced upon finding his father alive. He wasn't sure what this feeling was. So he came in with her. He would have to learn what it was like to be the son to a mother. He wasn't sure he knew how. He would figure it out. "What are you making?" He asked, finding this a safe thing to discuss as he sat down beside her. "It looks like a banner to me." But what did he know. Women made mysterious things all the time. Wouldn't he feel stupid if it was a teatowel.
Finduilas nodded, carefully folding the cloth and setting it aside. If anything spotted that white fabric before she gave it to the Captain, she was quite sure she would cry with frustration. "For your father," she said. "Though he does not know it. Or else he'd be concerned I'd lost my wits, I'm sure. I was never much for sewing." She plucked a bit of the stray black thread from her dress delicately. "But its use will become clear in time. Soon, I think."
Boromir's first thought was confusion. His mother, who hated sewing, sewing. A new banner. A new banner, for his father. Why would his father need a new banner? Unless his father was going to fly that banner. How could his father fly that banner in this city without it looking like a challenge? Unless he wasn't going to fly it in the city. But where would...
"...don't tell me let me guess," he burst out suddenly, much as he had done as a child. "You're going somewhere with Father to become its lord and lady, which is why he needs a banner." Yes, Boromir thought, Faramir might have been the clever one, but he wasn't too stupid, either.
Finduilas smiled at him, as pleased as a cat with cream. For all he declared his brother more clever, it seemed Boromir was perceptive. She was pleased by that. After all, with her and the Captain for parents, what child could have turned out slow or dull? "It would be better for the country if we weren't here as the new king makes his efforts to establish his rule. And I daresay we both would like a chance to make our own way, rather than hiding in my brother's guest quarters," she said, a smooth, political answer. She was not sure what she could reveal, and in the face of uncertainty, she resorted to the quiet ruses of court manners. She looked at him appraisingly, however, taking him in for a moment, making her estimation of him based on what she had read and what she saw of him now. "I cannot imagine you enjoy being cooped up much more than the rest of us."
"I loathe it," Boromir promised her. "I'm a man of action, asking me to sit on my hands and be good and quiet is a recipe for disaster, I will fail at it. I have failed at it, which is why I've decided to stop sitting on my hands and do what I'm good at." Which was taking back cities with armies. Well, at least he was good at something. It would be a terrible pity to have been thirty... no, he was older than that, wasn't he. To be a grown man and have no talents, or no knowledge of what they were. "...your niece, Lothiriel, has run off, I think I know where she's gone. I intend to summon the best of my men and retrieve her from danger."
That was not unexpected news, any of it. Finduilas had heard of Lotheriel's disappearance -- Amrothian to the core, that girl, or so it seemed -- and given her son's demeanour and disposition, it seemed unlikely that Tirith's former Captain-General would sit idly by. "Where has she gone?" she asked. If he planned on mounting a rescue, then he clearly knew the direction in which she had gone. Or at least, he had a reasonably good guess.
"She has to be in Pelargir," Boromir said, all confidence now, "her brother agrees with me. It's the more dangerous route, for Pelargir will be in a fine mess by now, and so she must have taken it. She's related to our family, after all, have we ever not taken the most dangerous of all roads?" It made perfect sense to him, anyway. And even if she wasn't in Pelargir, they could probably use a rescue party anyway. Not that it would be well-received to frame it like that. "I was waiting to consult Father before I sought out my soldiers."
"Pelargir, really?" Finduilas echoed. That was dashedly convenient, wasn't it? The Captain would be pleased. Not pleased that his niece had run off, but pleased that the rescue party would be heading that way. It provided a fantastic context for their movement, didn't it? And if one of Imrahil's sons accompanied them, it gave them plenty of legitimacy. Even if the girl wasn't there, this all lined up terribly neatly. She thought for a moment about the star stone they had found. Sometimes, things did come together the way they were meant to, didn't they?
"The city's in total anarchy, or so the reports say. No-one seems to have the strength of arms or will to assert mastery over it. If nothing else, the presence of some of Tirith's soldiers might do much to restore order," she observed mildly.
"Is that what Father told you?" Boromir asked agreeably. "It's what I suspected. I doubt the king has heard, though. I have not seen any of his messengers come and go in the street, as they did when Father was steward. Indeed, I see few messengers at all, save Imrahil's. But if Father says that is what is going on, no doubt it is true." He paused. Something important was escaping his attention. What was it? What was so close that he could smell it, but not quite get his mind around it?
"...you and Father have been discussing Pelargir." Why had they been discussing Pelargir? "...you mean to go to the city?" He asked. "To take it back?" Could this really be happening? Were they just going to waltz into Pelargir and take it for themselves, in the name of Lothiriel? She'd like that. Oh, she'd love that. Anything that would make Denethor happy, she'd love.
Finduilas made an expansive gesture with her hands, all grace. "The city presents strategic possibilities worth exploring," she said diplomatically. "And it's too valuable to Gondor to allow it to remain in anarchy and chaos. The in-fighting amongst the nobles alone over who should take it could prove disastrous. It would be best is a strong, capable hand came in to restore order. And from there, well. There are many possibilities. It would depend on many things." She shrugged slightly. "Lothiriel's presence there would present a useful window of opportunity. Especially if one of her brothers joined the rescue."
A pretty little speech, that one. Had she rehearsed it, or did all that political babble come naturally to her as it never had to Boromir? He'd have had to rehearse it. Somehow, he thought she was just good at all this. Theodred called it the lies of the Gondorians. Boromir supposed it was a form of lying. Tell the truth in the way you need it to be understood to get the maximum result. Dol Amrothian, through and through, his mother.
His mother. That was still an odd thought. "You needn't waste your pretty politics on me," he told her, "I am loyal to Father first and always. Indeed, would I be here, if I was loyal to anyone else? Faramir may have made a new king, but he did not unmake the past. I am here because I remain who I always was, a son of this city, a son of my father. No matter what other people tell me I became, this is what I know myself to be, and that won't change."
Finduilas smiled at him, a tender sort of thing. "You were a good Captain-General, then, weren't you?" she asked, the question careful, supremely careful. She knew of his fate, as much as anyone knew. The story had wings of its own, as if it had leapt directly to the air from his spilled blood like a hawk tossed to the sky by the falconer. It had powerful wings, that story. But models of sacrifice always did during times of war. But the words that came from her mouth weren't from a lady of the city to a knight. They were maternal, or at least, what she knew of maternal. Ivri's model and her faint memories of her mother weren't really enough, she supposed, but she was trying, sincerely trying. "I wish I could have seen it, seen you installed and serving Gondor. I really do."
"I did my best," Boromir said softly, his tone quieting. "I would do it all over again in a heartbeat, to serve Gondor, if it did not mean fealty to a false lord." How could he serve Gondor if a fool sat enthroned, who did not know the people, who claimed to know Boromir himself, but whom he had no knowledge of? How could he do anything, these days? Not for Tirith. Not in Tirith, anyway. It would take time, to learn what there was to life other than captain-generalship. He still felt as if he waited for his father's impossible orders. Take this untakable thing. Win this unwinnable battle. Take back the city. Push back the enemy. Keep the men believing there's victory at the end of this unwinnable war. Was that why he'd sat so long? Waiting for orders?
Sometimes Boromir wondered if he was still here because his father had charged him, Return, so many times that it had become a law of the world, a thing Boromir would do no matter what the cost or expense. Return. He had returned. He was here. That was something, in a world of many forgotten and frustrated dreams.
"Hush," Finduilas told him, and for as gentle as the command was, it was still a command. "Speak softly of dissent, if you must speak of it at all. The king is the king in this city."
For now, was the unspoken coda, hanging in the air between them, a silent and deadly thing.
"We all wish to serve Gondor, my son. And we shall," Finduilas continued, her voice low and calm, as smooth as velvet. "I promise you that. The Captain has given too much to this country to abandon his loyalty to it now."
What were they really planning? Taking Pelargir was one thing. A thing for the good of Gondor. But what of for the good of the family? What would come of their banner? What was to become of his father, his mother, he himself? Boromir wondered, but had no answers. The puzzle pieces remained frustratingly out of order. Why wasn't he smarter, he thought. He'd never been good with these games. He hated political games. It had been so much easier just to take Denethor's word as law, to be the obedient son. To know these games were beyond him, and that he would have Faramir to help him understand them as steward.
"The king is king by consent of the governed," Boromir mused, "as the stewards before him." That, his father had taught him well. You are steward if the people heed you. If they obey you. If your commands are carried out faithfully and willingly. You are a tyrant if you must force your way, with the sword, with harsh laws. If you are a tyrant, you won't last. That's what Denethor had taught him. A steward governs because the people choose to let him. So the people had chosen a king, an unknown and strange foreigner among them. What did that mean? What did any of it mean? He felt so close to understanding, and yet couldn't seem to grasp on. "...I do not consent to his being my king." He said, after a moment, slowly, with some confusion. "I did not choose him."
"Then perhaps," she said lightly, "you should remain in Pelargir with your father and I." Lightly, yes, but there was a sort of sharp intensity in her blue eyes as she watched him, watched his face and the thoughts pass behind his own eyes, so much like Denethor's, but so different, too. He was endlessly fascinating, this child of hers that she did not remember bearing or raising, did not remember as a sweet babe in her arms. But for all that she did not remember, she wanted him with them. It felt right. If nothing else, the picture they presented was powerful. The undead noble lord and his unchanging lady, with their gallant son, brave even unto the grave and yet beyond. A powerful picture, indeed.
"After all," she added, her voice still soft, as if the wind could blow it into nothingness, "the king is the king in this city. It makes a person wonder as to the state of his rule elsewhere."
King in the city. King in the city. She'd said it twice. What did she mean? What did it all mean? He wasn't king in Dol Amroth, Faramir was steward in Dol Amroth and Imrahil was prince but it was clear, from what Boromir had heard the knights say, their loyalty lay with the Prince first and always. The prince and the ruling family of Dol Amroth. The prince and...
"...surely Father doesn't want civil war," Boromir whispered. "I'm no scholar but I remember the stories of the Kinstrife." No. He was missing it. Stupid. Wake up. What was he missing? "...but where the king is accepted only reluctantly there will be many looking for new loyalties. Or old ones."
He sat back, thinking. Could that be right? They didn't have to be the king's rivals. Not with an army and a kinslaying and a denouncement of his reign. His father had insisted Boromir do nothing to present himself as a rival. But why? Why not? Was there a better way, to have the loyalty and love of their people? Was there a better way? Boromir brooded, letting it come to him. His father thought he had a better way to restore the fortunes of Gondor, while avoiding war and the attentions of the usurping king. That was the only answer.
"No civil war," Finduilas assured him. "Enough blood has been spilled. No war. Merely a vision of Gondor to which the reluctant might flock. Better than letting them run unchecked, isn't it? After all, we would not do anything to harm the country. Never. And the people know it."
Boromir was clever, she thought approvingly. Not as dazzlingly intelligent as his father, but even she couldn't match the Captain, not really. She just managed to keep up. But he could make the jumps and leaps she wanted him to, he could make the connections and piece things together if shown which way to turn. That sort of mind with his unwavering loyalty, they needed that. He was theirs, and she was glad of it. The only question was his brother. But it was a question that would be answered in time.
"So we shall take Pelargir, restore it to order, and then bring it to glory. For the good of the country. All the gems of the kingdom cannot be handed over to Elves to restore," she said. "This one will be done by the will of Men, and to show all they can muster on their own. The king shall have Tirith for his own, and we shan't stand against him. No, we shall retire to the city by the sea and make it beautiful. And should it come to have power, well. One cannot help the pull of old loyalties and the peoples' love of your father. These things do happen."
Boromir sometimes felt as if he was the only sane man surrounded by visions of insanity. Sometimes, listening to his father talk and his brother argue, about politics and offending people and military action as symbolic gestures, he felt as if he was the only one who could see through things to get at the crux of them. For a moment, he felt it again. His mother was proposing to make Pelargir a symbol, for the rest of Gondor, a place where she and his father could make their own meaning and sway other people to see the world as they did. A world in which a king was as powerless as the throne when it had sat empty.
But Boromir was not a man of visions and dreams. He was a man of numbers, of statistics, of battles and wars. He saw things more plainly than that. A strong fleet in Pelargir, strong walls, a defensible city, soldiers whose loyalty was to the lord of the city and not the king. A stronghold against Harad, a defensible place on the wild border of Harondor. This was power. They would talk of visions and restorations and the glory of Gondor, but they needed power. Real power. Power that spoke of authority too great to ever conquer or tame, without blood and great loss. And for this, they needed him. The Captain-General of Gondor. Well-loved, much admired, to build strong walls for Pelargir and a strong, defended border to the South, and an army in the guise of self-defense, that did not heel to the king's commands.
He was quiet, brooding. "You make it sound so clean," he said, at last. There was something almost like reproach in his voice.
"It won't be," she admitted readily. He was a commander. There was no sense in trying to hide the truth that they all knew. "But people are willing to believe in clean things. We just have to deal in the dirty, difficult ones so the people can see something better. Politics -- and this is politics, Boromir, not just war -- is the art of the possible. So we make it seem as if anything is possible. But you and I know better. We all know better."
"We're all expecting that Aragorn will act the way we have judged his character," Boromir said, after a moment of heaviness. "But we don't know that. How he'll respond. We don't know. What if we're wrong, and he sends an army of his own to subjugate Pelargir, snatch it from Father's hands? We can't know, how he'll respond." They needed Faramir. Badly. Faramir would tell them Aragorn's character. Faramir would structure reports and arguments so that Aragorn would think it pure good to have them in Pelargir, and worry not at all. They needed Faramir. Clever, cunning, Faramir, Father's spy. They needed him, and only Boromir knew him well enough to find out if he was on their side or not.
"In the infinite possibility of the future," Boromir said, each word very slow, "have you considered that we may not be the pieces of the gameboard we think we are? What if we are all pawns? Even you and Father. What if you're pawns, in some grander game we cannot yet see?" He did not entirely know where the question had come from. But it troubled him, it vexed him, it had keep him in doors and not sent him out on the street where he ought to have been.
Both good points, and for a moment, Finduilas admired her son. He was her son, wasn't he, thinking about the gameboard, the way it must lay. "Thorongil is distracted now. If we move whilst his attention is focused elsewhere, it buys us the advantage of presenting the lordship of Pelargir as a finished thing, something he cannot publicly oppose without making it seem he has lost complete control of his kingdom. That is not to say he won't move against us quietly. But that requires a different sort of plan. I am not terribly worried about Thorongil. If he moves against us, he is striking down at a beloved Steward who tries only to bring security and order to his people. If he doesn't move against us, we still have our objective. Either way, we come out the better for it," she said softly. "Though knowing his measure moreso than your Father does would not hurt. He served with Thorongil, once. And remembers him clearly. Time may have changed the man, but it behoves us to know, all the same."
The latter, the latter was more troubling. Finduilas took a slow breath and let it out, pushing the thick braid of her hair back over her shoulder. "Sometimes, when you cannot clearly see the board, you can only take the strongest position available to you, and carry on as if you know what will come anyway," she said thoughtfully. "We have time, the three of us. Infinite time. Nothing can harm us, and we can look to a longer end-game than of which anyone can yet dream. Even if we are pawns, my son, we have time to turn the board to our advantage. Even pawns can force checkmate."
"Unless we're wrong," Boromir said quietly, "and we don't have forever, and we don't have the long game at all. None of us know what brought us here, how this came to be. How can we know we'll stay here?"
And there it was. The crux of it all. He didn't know. He didn't know, what if he fell over on the street and died as he had been dead? He didn't know. What if it was all borrowed time, running out. What do you do, on borrowed time? The thought made him feel desperate, paralyzed him. What if he hurt Gondor, playing the long game when he had months. Days. Hours. Seconds. What if he made a mistake he wouldn't be around to fix?
"...we have to move as if we can die, and plan as if we can't." Boromir said, after a moment. "Have to be seen preparing for the possibility of death and failure. I don't think anyone but us ourselves, and Imrahil's family, knows we can't die, that we have all the time in the world. They can't know. Not yet."
Finduilas nodded and she smiled at him, utterly pleased. "Wisely put. If we have the time we think we do, we'll become an enduring symbol. If not, then we leave our long-game in hands we train and prepare ourselves. It's the best we can do," she agreed. "But I think your father's right. I think we are deathless. Or rather, we've evaded it, somehow. And we have to seize that advantage solidly."
"Not being able to die and being deathless are different," Boromir brooded. "The elves are deathless, but they can die. So we are immune to wounding unto death. But we have not conceived of every way a man might die. I won't believe I'm invincible, impervious to ending." There was something comforting in that, somehow. There. He could die. He must be brave, in the face of his inevitable ending. He would end, he would end, eventually. He might be long lived, longer than any other human, but something, someday, whether it was the breaking of whatever had summoned him back or the world splitting asunder or simply great weary exhaustion, would make him like any other man.
As long as he was like any other man, he could do what had to be done. "So we go to Pelargir together," he said at last, "to find the princess of Amroth. We find chaos, so we stay, to stabilize the city. Father takes the lordship of Pelargir, we sweep back in for the coronation of a queen. What then? And what between? And what work for Boromir, son of Gondor?"
Finduilas considered this, considered the mental map of Gondor and the South, considered what they might do, what they could do, what they could make manifest with the Captain's mind and her will and her son's courage. For all that Boromir believed that he might end, she did not. She could not. Not when their plans relied on their invincibility, their patience, their long-tested cunning. And such plans they could yet make. They could do almost anything, with enough thought and courage and determination. The art of the possible. What was possible? "We could push into South Gondor," she said softly. "Retake Harandor."
"Ah," Boromir said softly. There was a vision he could understand. Retake Harondor. Resettle it, with Gondorians. What had Faramir told him of the place? That they could dig wells, build cisterns, dig channels from the river and the mountains, make water, foster life. Harondor had not always been a desert. It did not have to be a desert. If you had the long game. "Push to Umbar? Retake the lost city of the South?" He asked. "There's a long game, indeed." And he knew, he thought, he knew, just how to do it, too. How to push.
It was madness. Retake Harondor. It had been lost for generations. Take Umbar? It had been lost even longer. Push south? Go deeper in? Endless war and misery waited in the southern sands. All that awaited any Gondorian there was misery and death. It was a harsh and merciless place. And yet. And yet...
He understood, all in a rush. A vision of the world, just not as it could be, but as you'd always wanted it to be. A vision of the world for generations, building upon hundreds of years of labor and work and training and teaching. Until you expected. Of course Harondor will belong to Gondor again. Of course Umbar belongs to the West. Naturally. Because this was the map of Gondor thousands of years ago, in the days of the West. The days of Numenor. They wanted to move the world backwards. And they had time to go slowly about it.
Finduilas saw understanding come alight in his eyes, and that catlike smile curled across her lips. "The world as it was. Our world, as it was in the days of Numenor. It could be done, with knowledge, and patience, and courage," she said softly, so softly, the words seductive in their power. "The Captain believes this. And I believe it as well. Is that not a vision that could move men to greatness?" More greatness than could be had, watching Elves hold their once-fine cities, more greatness than could be had, watching a king upon the throne who did not understand from whence he came, never mind what the country had once been. It was tempting. Seductive. It burned with possibilities. And she was certain they could light the hearts of all of Gondor with the flame.
"This is madness," Boromir told her plainly. "You are mad, and Father is mad, and the king is mad, if he thinks he can stop you. It's utterly insane. No... sane general, thinking of his men, consents to this vision. It is sly, crafted like an illusion, a thing that looks one way from one angle and like something else from the other. All of it might be a trick of the light. You haven't told me anything."
And yet....
"You'd best hurry with the banner," he told her, calmly. "I will need a day or two, maybe three, to find my men. Time runs out for my cousin. The longer we delay the greater her danger. Do not forget, we are going to rescue Lothiriel."
"I don't forget. I forget very little," Finduilas replied, just as calm. She had not told him much. It was for the best that way. She did not doubt his loyalty; he had the ring of conviction when he spoke about the Captain and about Gondor. No, what she doubted was his willingness to be silent. What she had said, she could counteract and contain, if she had to. It was a hard calculation, but she found more and more, she was excelling at making them.
What kind of lady of Gondor had she made, she wondered. Great and terrible, she thought. Did the people actually love her, or was it what her Captain wished to see in his grief at her passing?
Finduilas looked at her son for a moment, a thoughtful frown crossing her face. "I am not what you expected to find in your mother, am I?" For all that her voice went up at the end, there was very little of an actual question in her words. More of an observation that she expected him to confirm.
"I expected nothing," Boromir said softly. "I remember fondly a lady who used to sing to me, and who told me I was one son among a great line, and must live up to my potential, and never waste my opportunities to do Gondor a good deed." His eyes were a little sad, as he studied her. "So I find that woman before me. Younger and colder than I remember, but you were older, and softer then, and being a mother had made you so."
Somehow, the words he said instead of the confirmation Finduilas expected stung. She was cold, wasn't she? And yet somehow, she felt as if she had failed him on some level. It was a terrible feeling, one that made her heart twist and constrict tightly in her breast. She did not know how to be a mother, she realised. Moreover, she did not know how to be one to this man. And on some level, it was ridiculous she should be so. He was older than she, older and tired, combat-wise and combat-weary. He was the age the Captain had been when they had last been together in the garden. How could she ever be his mother? And yet, she wished she could be. She wished she remembered. She wished for a thousand things, each sharp as the needle sitting idle in the banner by her hand.
"I am sorry," she said at last, her voice soft, and she looked down at her hands in her lap for a moment before lifting her eyes to his face. "I wish I were the lady you remember, for your sake, and your brother's. It is cruel that I am not, and I do not know how to change that. If it is even possible for me to do so. But I would, if I could."
"Do not try," Boromir said quietly, taking her hand into his own. "My mother is dead. She has been dead a very long time. Let her lie quietly. You are the wife of my father, and he loves you very much. I am glad that he remembers you, though I do not. As the wife of my father, I am glad to finally get to know you, whomever you are. Faramir will feel the same, when you meet him." He smiled a little. "I remember my mother as supremely beautiful, and very magnificent, deeply wise. I think, in all those respects, you will suit my father perfectly as his companion."
She smiled a little back at him, a soft thing, still a touch sad. "I hope I can make him as happy as he deserves to be. It's what I've always hoped to give him." She squeezed his hand gently, aware of how small hers was in his. "I want to get to know you, too. Deeply. He loves you very much, and in so many ways, you remind me of him when he first came to Dol Amroth. I hope we'll have the chance to come to know each other. And I hope the same with Faramir, as well."
Denethor loved him? Boromir was unaccustomed to hearing such things in such plain talk. Of course, he knew, the steward valued and cherished his sons. Both of them. But Boromir was a grown man, had left off talk of loving his father and his father loving him long ago. They talked of loving Gondor, now. How much safer was it? Nothing could be safer. They were both Gondor, or had been, the steward and the steward's heir, the captain-general and his lord. In loving Gondor, one could love its servants, without the mess and complication of familial emotions. One could be loyal to one's steward and lord and do one's filial duties in a single breath.
But it was changing now. Boromir realized he would have to try and keep up. "If, as you say, we have all the time in the world, surely some of it can be spent learning who we find ourselves sharing the road ahead with," he offered gently. "I suspect you shall see more of me than you wish, I... have been known to irritate and vex those of certain temperaments."
Finduilas laughed a little. This was a sort of peace offering, in a way. An acknowledgement of where they stood -- or rather, where they might come to stand. She saw the value of that immediately. Only a fool would not. "Imrahil warned me," she told him honestly. "But that's all right. I've been known to irritate and vex those of certain temperaments in my time, too. I did grow up with him and Ivri, after all."
"Well, you're a member of this family," Boromir reasoned. "If you were not irritating and vexing, at least sometimes, we would have to question if you really came from Dol Amroth and had the nerve and tenacity to love my father." He was smiling now. The last was almost a joke. Almost. Denethor was not exactly the softest, most lovable person on the earth.
She laughed again. There was a wicked wit running deep in him, she could sense it, and it made her happy, really. "I think the question is rather, does he have the nerve and tenacity to love me?" she said, returning the joke easily. "Somehow, he rather does. It's a marvel."
"I don't think he ever found it hard," Boromir replied honestly. "You're lovely." He meant that more than just that she was very pretty, though she was very pretty. But she had all those qualities Denethor liked in people, or at least, that Boromir thought made his father approve of people. The cleverness and the quick wit and the calm and, well, the way she made that seditious streak sound like perfect reason. She was mad, just like his father, just like all of them. Too clever by far, and too well-versed in the arts of deception, and he was the only sane one among them, because he hadn't any brain at all to be mad with.
"Thank you," Finduilas said softly. "I hope that's true. I honestly do." Everyone spoke of the Captain's love for her as absolute, something unquestioned and unwavering. It was so wonderful, she could scarcely believe it herself. Once, she had despaired of him ever feeling anything for her, ever wishing to court her. And now...now, somehow, their story had become this romance of myth and song. In the blink of an eye, how everything had changed. How much more wonderful must it all have been when she remembered every moment of it?