Lapsus Memoriae [Rávamë's Bane: Book 1]

Part III : Chapter 24 ~ The Gift of Life

"Boromir!" I all but shrieked, equal parts shock and relief.

He was alive. He was still alive.

He drew in another ragged breath, his chest heaving with the arrows still protruding, one in his lower torso, and the other just under his right collarbone. I could hear how painful and difficult it was becoming to breathe, but I was too thankful he was still breathing at all to be anything but relieved. Had he not been so badly wounded I could have kissed him.

Instead I placed as firm and steadying hand as I could on his unwound shoulder, trying to keep him from moving and making it worse. He shuddered and choked on a cough. Red stained his bottom lip as his hand came up and clutched my arm in a grip far weaker than I knew he was capable of.

"They took them!" He rasped frantically. "Merry and Pippin, they took them—"

"Lie still! Don't try to move!"

"Frodo," he got out weakly as I started carefully unbuckling his pauldrons without jarring the arrows. "Where is Frodo?"

"He's gone. Aragorn let him go," I answered quietly, trying to focus on keeping my hands and his shoulders steady. Boromir tried to exhaled in what seemed like relief, but it was difficult to tell his breathing was so strained.

"Then he did what I could not," he mumbled, stilling as I felt his eyes find my face. "Eleanor, you're bleeding..."

I felt the shaking touch of a thumb run over my lower lip, his fingers coming away red. Only then did I finally notice and feel the blood running down my chin onto my tunic. The Uruk-hai must have split my lip at some point in the fight, and I hadn't even noticed. I would have laughed were I not one tiny slip from breaking into hysterical sobs.

"Forget me! There's a bloody arrow in your chest, you chivalrous idiot! Two of them!"

"What you did... you should not have. You should have run... left me..."

"I'm sorry," I choked out quietly, trying to pretend I hadn't just heard him say what he had about himself. "I should have remembered sooner. I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for," he spoke in such calm softness that if it weren't for the blood on his hands and mouth I might have believed he was ok. His pauldrons unclasped and moved clear of the arrow shafts, I immediately went to examine the wounds. His hand suddenly caught on my wrist, gentle but awfully unyielding at the same time. "Eleanor, please, leave it. It's over."

Footfalls appeared behind me, more than one set. I knew immediately who it was, even before I saw Boromir's gaze track to the person who's just stopped right behind me.

"Frodo, he.... I-I tried to take the Ring from him," he rasped, just as Aragorn dropped down onto his knees on the other side of him to me.

"Be still," he commanded, and it was only the sound of his voice that seemed to galvanise the fact that he was actually there to me.

For a sickening moment I wanted to hit him, claw at him, scream at him, demanding where in hell he hand been when the both of us had needed him — but the feeling died as quickly as it had come upon seeing the anguish in the other man's face. His eyes tracked from Boromir's strained face, to his wounds, and then finally to me. My jaw clenched around a choking sob as I read the same understanding in his eyes that I'd come to moment before he's arrived too. Those two wounds were likely fatal. Even if by some miracle the arrows hadn't perforated any major organs or blood vessels, they were likely barbed. Removing them without nicking something crucial and causing internal bleeding would be a fools errand, even for a healer who trained under Lord Elrond.