milliways_bar | (no subject)

Faramir wraps his hands around the mug and stares at the swirling steam, his eyes half-lidded.

"I do not want you to..." He licks his lips. "It should be your business. My brother trusts you, and I trust his judgement of people -- if of nothing else." He sighs. "The simple explanation is that I have always suffered occasional bouts of melancholy. I could name for you troubles that weigh upon my mind, but in such a mood, I have come to doubt that most can be as pressing as they would seem to me in my own darkness. Every man has his shadows. Mine sometimes like to hold on a little tighter."

"I know the feeling," April says softly, staring down into her mug with a slight frown. For someone who was made to smile, she has spent far too much of her life looking upset or shadowed or bitter. And she knows just how tightly shadows can grip a person. "Can I just..." she looks up and a not-quite smile barely flickers across her face. "Y'know, in my experience, it doesn't really matter if your problems don't seem like they can be as important as they feel. They can still have an awful lot of effect on you."

This is the girl who still fights against saying and thinking that she's upset over something stupid or that she should be over by now whenever her shadows latch on too tightly. She knows what she's talking about.

And Faramir is a man who learned within his first month in the bar that he could avoid having to deal with his problems by telling people to read the book.

He takes a sip of the hot drink, not particularly caring if it burns his tongue a little.

"What troubles my nightmares pretend that I have are two years old or more. Why should they stalk me now?"

Because he has refused to deal with them at all until now, that's why. But Faramir, for all his wisdom, hasn't gotten quite that far.

April shrugs a little. "I've got shadows hanging on that're... two, three, four years old. Some more. Doesn't matter how long ago it was, it can still give you hell."

She looks up and tilts her head a little. "Did Boromir tell you much about me? How I got here and stuff, I mean."

"No. I fear we became distracted trying to shove snow into each other's clothing before we could get that far."

Well that gets a surprised laugh, and a smile back on April's face, for a moment. "Oh, I can just see it now. The distinguished lords of Gondor acting like teenagers."

She obviously finds the thought endearing.

She sobers up pretty quickly though. "I don't know whether to start and the end and move backwards or start at the beginning and move forwards. It's... kind of a long story."

"I like long stories," Faramir tells her, smiling from behind a curtain of steam from his cup. "They're good for quieting demons."

"On a condition." April mirrors his smile - a calmer version of her usual fare. "You have to reciprocate when I'm done."

"Boromir hasn't told you?" Well, that's only fair, though. So he nods. "Very well."

"He's told me his side, or most of it. Everybody's got a different story, though."

She sighs and leans back in her chair. "Well, to start with, I was born when my youngest sibling was seventeen years old. My brothers were both off at college, and Miranda was going to be in college in a year, and all the sudden there I am, totally screwing up my parents' plans for what they were going to do after Miranda left. They didn't want me, and made it abundantly clear to me from the start." It's said very matter-of-factly, with much less bitterness than there would have been had he spoken to her even two months ago.

It's still there, though. That's never going to go away entirely. "One of my first memories, I think I was four or five, and my mom told me that I was a mistake and never should have been born."

"Then you, too, are a youngest child." He tilts his head and brushes his long hair back out of his face. "That, I understand too well."

"Yeah. Didn't have the luck to get along with my older siblings, though." she runs a hand through her hair. "My dad was a doctor and my mom... I don't know, I think she'd been to law school or something at some point but she mainly just did things at the country club. My siblings were all in 'useful' careers, and fawned over and shown off, and then there was me." she actually smiles wryly at this. "I wanted to be an artist. Ever since I was little. Sometimes it was acting, sometimes it was painting or writing or singing or anything artistic, but I didn't want to do what the rest of my family had done."

She pauses to sip her hot chocolate. "They tried so hard to turn me into my sister, but I wouldn't let them. I was miserable for my entire childhood because of it, but at least I was me." Another short pause - the next bit is still almost as painful as the day it happened - moreso, because she really did prove it correct, partially. "The last time my dad tried to change my mind about being an artist, and I told him to fuck off, he told me I was going to end up a starving, homeless, drug-addicted whore. Verbatim."

"I wonder if there ever was a youngest child who could live up to their siblings' shadows and parents' expectations and not go mad." He sips his drink. "My brother was all I had. He still is." Then, after another pause, "I would like to see your artwork sometime, if I may. I am myself something of a rusty poet."

"You may." April smiles a bit. "Though most of my recent work is on a subject you are... quite familiar with." Don't worry, Daisy, she doesn't do nudes. "I'd like to see your poetry, though. I write. More professionally than I draw, if getting published posthumously can be considered professional."

But enough tangents. "Well, anyway, that long bit of the story short, I didn't finish school and left home the day I turned 18. Legally of age and all. I moved to New York and got a job, made some friends, and eventually... I met Roger."

Oh, Roger.

"Roger?" he asks.

"Roger. The only person besides your brother I've ever been in love with." She still is, always will be, really. If only a little. "He was a rock star. A musician. Beautiful and untameable and god did I love him."

A pause. There are a lot of those in this story. "And he... started using drugs. And so I did, too. And it was so amazing, it made me feel good and made me not care about all the shit they'd put me through." and there's something in her voice that hints at a need hiding deep inside of her, something she'll never quite shake, never quite be rid of. Addiction is a frightening thing. She lets out a shaky breath. "But then it would end and I'd come down and... everything would be exactly the same. Went on for a while... and then we got sick."

He peers at her with steady sympathy.

"How do you mean, sick?"

April closes her eyes, hugging herself lightly, her mug of cocoa forgotten (for the time being). Deep breaths. It's over, you don't have to be scared anymore. Deep breaths. "There is a disease, in my world. It... it destroys your body, sort of. It destroys your body's ability to fight illness and infection. It eventually gets so bad that... the slightest illness that even an infant's body could handle could kill you. It's called AIDS." then, softly. "And I found out that we had it."

Faramir slips out of his chair and into the one beside her instead of across. He rests a hand gently on her shoulder.

"Was it painful?"

April laughs a little - a choked sort of laugh, the kind you make when you're trying your damnedest not to cry. "It probably would have, if I'd stuck around for it."

It's a simple motion, pushing up her sleeves, but it takes a bit of effort, mentally. Her arms aren't lacking in scars, though most of them are thin faded lines of shallow razor-cuts, and on her left arm, there's faint track marks still visible. But what stands out on the inside of both arms is a raised scar from an obviously deep cut, running from her wrist to the crook of her elbow. "I got scared," she explains softly. "I didn't want to die like that. So I wrote a note and... and ended up here." What happened in between the note and the arriving is pretty self-explanatory.

Faramir lowers his hand, slowly, the way he would approach a frightened animal, until his fingers brush against the line on her arm.

"Fear," he says in a low, rough voice, "is... a great motivator. Even to the end of life. That is where my own story starts. I think you know it."

April shivers when he touches her arm, but doesn't pull away. "I know... the facts," she says slowly, her voice a little shaky. "I know what anyone would know if they were there. But there's a difference. Just like there's a difference between someone seeing the facts of my life and... and hearing me tell it." It's the best she can do to explain what she means and she hopes Faramir understands.

Faramir pulls his hand away. He becomes instantly and expertly alone within himself.

"What... part would you like me to recount?"

"I don't know," April says honestly. "Whatever part's... whatever shadow's holding on the tightest."

Faramir closes his eyes.

"Lately I have had... dreams. Call them nightmares, or visions -- I do not know which is closer to the truth. But I have seen through sleeping eyes my father's death. I have felt again the fire in my flesh, and smelled the smoke and the ashes -- not merely those of the fire I was saved from, but the ever-present plaguewinds bearing ashes from Mordor into Ithilien... my own land now, Ithilien..."

He opens his eyes, pale and grey. "And then I dream of my mother."