milliways_bar | (no subject)

"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."

April knows that his mother's dead. That's... pretty much the extent of it. She leans forward intently. "What do you dream about her?"

"I dream that we stand upon a high wall overlooking the sea in Dol Amroth, and the gulls circle above us. It is like another dream I have of the wave that covers everything. It comes, oh yes. And it rushes towards us, but the wall his high, and we are safe. She is afraid for me, but even as she stands to protect me, I push her into the surging water. I look down at my hands, and they are my father's, wrinkled and old." He pauses, breathing deeply. "I hardly remember my mother's death. I was too young. But she always longed to be near the sea, where she was born. But for the River Anduin nearby, Minas Tirith was landlocked."

April thinks about that silently for a moment. She doesn't know him too well and she doesn't know what he's thinking. She can hardly even guess, really, not knowing him. But...

"What we dream... if it's a recurring dream, especially, it's... supposedly it's a dream about something that you need to work out. Something that's..." she sighs. "I had a lot of dreams about people... people leaving me. After I got here, I mean. Still do, sometimes." She pauses. "I think it's... either 'cause I'm scared people are gonna realize that I'm not worth hanging around, or because I feel guilty for leaving."

"The dream ends," he says softly, "in darkness. I flee from all things and am alone. And that is all. Loneliness."

He cannot look at her. He dislikes confessing any pain that is so deep to him.

April is an impulsive person. That's why she bussed out of Hartford at 3 am on her 18th birthday, that's why she killed herself, that's why she hung mistletoe around the bar and went around kissing people.

So, if you know April at all (which Faramir doesn't as much), it should be no surprise that she does something impulsive now.

She hugs Faramir. A tight, sisterly hug that Mark and Collins and Angel - hell, even Benny - have received many times. She can't think of anything to say, so that's... the best she can do.

At least she does it well.

He freezes. It's so unexpected a thing, and he is so unused to physical affection. He's not sure whether he should sit still and thank her, or return the gesture... but eventually, slowly, automatically, he finds his arms around her, and his head against her shoulder.

And it's just a little harder to breathe.