“Come on!”

He is here, my brother, and I struggle to my feet.  Some part of my mind tells me that this cannot be, but I ignore it - hearing only those dear familiar imperious tones.  As always, he is in front of me, calling me on: thus was it ever so through our childhood.

The world is grey around me and my feet find the unseen ground uncertainly.  Times I wish to stop, to rest, to give up – but always that voice calls me on.  It chides me, encourages me and comforts me.  When I falter it steadies me, when I know not where I am going it guides me and when the darkness of shadowed wings sweep over my mind it warms as once his arms did after nightmare’s flight.

“Come on – you can do it,” my brother whispers - and I believe him.  Just so did he say it to me, and just so did I believe him, when he taught me to swim, when he kissed me farewell before I left on my first campaign and when he dared me to climb the watchtower.  Though that time I did fall and break a leg I remember with a dry chuckle.  The greyness around me seems to lighten as I laugh and I catch a glimpse of my brother far ahead.  There is sun where he is and it catches on his armour and mighty shield, so he is limned in gold like a god of old, terrible in his beauty.  Some long forgotten pain catches at my heart and I call, “Boromir!”

He turns, just for a moment, and I think I see him smile.

“Come, Little Brother Snail!”

With a lazy wave of his hand, he turns away and bounds up the mountain again, vanishing into the clouded grey so I am left once more to follow his voice.  The way is steep and a dull weight seems to press me down.  Once, twice I fall and stumble.  Darkness drags at my thoughts.  Only for Boromir would I have got up again.  When I am weary beyond exhaustion, his voice offers caresses: baby names and endearments that he used when I was a small child and our mother was gone.  In memory I feel his arms around me once more, and feel the hot tears he pressed against my neck even as he soothed me.

My brother’s voice is all I know now.  Scarcely do I notice the shadowed greyness fading from around me; scarcely do I notice the levelling of the ground beneath my feet.  I step unnoticing through the last clinging filaments of grey and stand panting, breathless with surprise and exhaustion, in a sunlit field.  Boromir is there, and I can see him clearly at last.  He stands smiling at me, both pride and affection in his grey eyes. 

“Well done; I knew that you could do it.”

I smile back at him, albeit shakily, as I remember all the other times I have heard those words from him.  It is warm here and I sink down on a nearby stone, feeling the heat soak up into my bones.  The air is full of a fair fragrance: memories stir of my mother’s garden where roses and all lovely things bloomed.  I look over at Boromir to share the memory and see for the first time that a light still shines from him, a clear light that wavers across him like water.  For a moment, sadness marks him and then the light fades into a golden warmth.  Bathed in it his face is as peaceful and strong as I have seen it on a thousand battle eves.

“Another will take you now, Faramir.”

He half-turns, nods as one soldier to another at change of duty, and is lost behind the light.  It is another face that I see now beyond that radiance and another voice I hear.

“Walk no more in the shadows, but awake!”

**********************************************************

AN: 

*For Annmarwalk’s birthday

*What can I say – I think I’ve been reading too much Star Trek fanfiction  ;-)

*The last line is taken directly from ‘The Return of the King’.

*All feedback and nitpicking welcome.

*Definitely AU to what Tolkien intended – slightly AU in hard cold facts.

*Yep, I know unnoticing isn’t a word.