To Capture the Heart of a Warrior

for Foofy...because she really liked this chapter...


Chapter fifteen: The War for the Heart of the Warrior





They had been in Lothlorien for some days now. It was a place of great beauty and purity, a healing place, full of grace and all things good in Middle Earth. It was a wonderful place. It was so very wonderful that it seemed worry never lived there.

Only it did.

Pippin was worried.

He was worried because Boromir was not himself.

He seemed to be drawing away.

He had bad dreams.

He sometimes talked in his sleep.

He stared at blank air.

It was disturbing.

He spoke little or not at all.

Boromir wasn’t even making love to him anymore.

Pippin didn’t know what to do except keep loving him. Boromir sometimes slipped away from him and walked the Golden Wood alone, and on this particular day, Pippin decided to follow him. He watched Boromir ramble through the wood, scuffing his big boots through the leaves, eyes always cast down at the forest floor. Pippin watched as Boromir sat with his back to a tree. Boromir’s head bent as though his heart was a bow with sorrow as its arrow, and he heaved a sigh. It seemed he was weighed down with the weight of the world. He leaned back against the tree, and Pippin could plainly see dark circles under his eyes. He looked exhausted.

The warrior soon dozed off. Pippin sat quietly, watching him sleep for about an hour, he reckoned. He didn’t know what to do. How he wished Gandalf… No! He couldn’t bear to think of it. Not just yet. He sniffled and brushed away an errant tear. Pippin crept around the tree and settled himself next to Boromir. He lay his head in Boromir’s lap and sighed. Boromir stirred. His hand drifted to Pippin’s hair and fingers idly twirled a rebellious curl, but he didn’t wake.

“Boromir?”

No response.

“Boromir? Acushla?”

Boromir started like a horse stung by a wasp.

“Poppet!” he said, gasping from the surprise of being wakened. “What are you doing here?”

“I followed you. What’s wrong? You seem so troubled. Please, please talk to me?”

“It isn’t anything you’ve done.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Pippin said stubbornly. “I asked what was wrong. Don’t tell me something isn’t wrong. You and I both know something is bothering you.”

“I don’t wish to trouble you with it,” said Boromir, rather curtly. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

Pippin sat up. “You’re going to make me very angry if you keep talking this nonsense.” Pippin stared him in the eye, and Boromir looked away. It cut Pippin to the quick. It hurt so badly. But Pippin was a stubborn little thing, and would not walk away from this. He crawled into Boromir’s lap. Boromir’s habit of bending his legs at the knee to make a backrest for Pippin was still there. It made Pippin’s chest tighten. He wanted his old Boromir back. He looked Boromir in the eye once more, and once more Boromir looked away. Pippin angrily took Boromir’s face between his hands.

“Look at me, acushla.” He commanded. Boromir tried to avert his eyes and Pippin gave his face a pat that was almost, but not quite a slap.

“I said, look at me!” Pippin said, this time letting his voice rise with desperation and ire. And Boromir looked at him, looked at him and Pippin saw a great heaviness of spirit in those opalescent eyes. Tears spilled down Pippin’s soft little cheeks in spite of the control he was exerting.

“Is it the ring?” Pippin asked, his voice tremulous. Boromir said nothing, but was unable to look away. “Acushla, you have to tell me! Is it? Is it the ring?”

Boromir began to tremble, then to shake. A sob caught in his throat and he squeezed his eyes shut and winced as if he had been struck. He made a soft, strangled sound, almost a sob.

Pippin’s mouth hung slack. He didn’t know what to say. At a loss, for once in his short little life, Pippin was robbed of words. He threw his arms around Boromir’s neck and held on as tightly as he could.

“No!” cried Pippin, “No! He can’t have you! He’s the Enemy and he can’t have you! You’re mine! I won’t let you go! I won’t! If he takes you, then he has to take me, too!”

“Don’t say this!” Boromir said. “Pippin, you mustn’t! You don’t know what you say. You mustn’t let Him take you, Pippin, you mustn’t!”

“Then you mustn’t either, because if He takes you, He takes me, too.”

Now it was Boromir’s turn to be robbed of words. His jaw worked. His mind scrambled to put thought to word, and when it couldn’t, all he could do was circle Pippin with his arms, bury his face in Pippin’s little neck, and weep like a child. Pippin stroked his hair and made little soothing sounds.

“Ssh, acushla, my acushla. Don’t be afraid. I won’t let Him have you. I won’t. I’ll help you, I promise. We have to help each other, acushla.” He lifted Boromir’s face once more and kissed a circle around Boromir’s mouth; his lips leaving a damp and tingling trail in Boromir’s facial hair. Usually Boromir kept his appearance in iron order. Now his face was covered with stubble. Pippin became first saddened, then angry that Boromir had been so haunted by this evil. Well, he wouldn’t give up his only love so easily!

Pippin pressed his lips against Boromir's, a fierce and possessive kiss. “Mine, my acushla, all mine. No one can have you but me, I won’t let them!” Weeping, Pippin kissed him again, this time roughly, even biting Boromir’s lower lip. Pippin pressed his mouth almost painfully against Boromir’s. “You’re mine!” he said, “Mine, and I mean to have you. Give yourself to me. Do it!” Another rough kiss, possessive, demanding…Pippin’s little fingers dug painfully into the muscles of Boromir’s face, another kiss, almost violent.

Boromir’s hands were suddenly everywhere, almost ripping Pippin’s clothing off. Pippin felt suddenly overwhelmed and almost frightened. But he meant to help his Boromir, to heal him, and if that meant Pippin had to use his body like a bandage on a wound, then he would do it. He let himself become completely compliant at first, trying to give Boromir back his Manhood, for Pippin understood that this weakness had unmanned Boromir. That was why he had become so distant. Now Boromir was undressing, nearly ripping his own clothing off. Pippin suddenly felt a fierce and unrelenting desire to possess Boromir, to mark him as his own. A white-hot burning gathered in his belly, coursed through his veins. Pippin grabbed a double fistful of Boromir’s hair and roughly pulled his face in close, taking Boromir’s mouth almost as if he was launching an attack. Pippin took one of Boromir’s hands and wet his fingers with his mouth, then, grasping his wrist guided his hand where he wanted it.

“Do it.” Pippin said, almost fiercely. His other hand still grasped Boromir’s hair, tugging it roughly.

“Pippin, I…what’s wrong with you?”

“I said do it!” Pippin shouted. “Take me, damn you!”

“Pippin, you’re hurting me…”

“I said do it!”

He spit in his small hand and wet himself, then grabbed Boromir’s member, slicking it up, too. He lined himself up and put his weight into it, impaling himself violently, painfully. He cried out with pain and anguish, desperate to make things better for his lover.

He rode Boromir with a ferocity that was nearly terrifying to Boromir; it overwhelmed him, yet he couldn’t help responding. He grasped Pippin by the waist. Pippin was clinging to him, digging his nails in, teeth gritted, eyebrows drawn down and fiery green eyes grim and unforgiving. Little fingers curled into Boromir’s hair, little nails scored his chest, his sides, leaving bright red welts.

“He can’t have you!” Pippin growled through gritted teeth. “You belong to me! To me! Do you hear me? Do you?”

As Pippin pulled Boromir’s face to his own, Boromir saw a fierce and savage light break from Pippin’s eyes, so bright he was nearly blinded, and as his mouth was taken by the halfling, Boromir felt himself suddenly pulled out of Lothlorien and into the realm of Fae.

And there they were, in that place of unearthly yet earthly beauty, and there his Little One was, his body enveloped in a cold, white flame. His wings beat violently at the air; his eyes were flames of emerald green, like a rare green sunrise at sea. Pippin seemed to be a thing of primal, timeless beauty, as beautiful and terrible as a storm at sea, and as ancient as the sea itself. Lightening danced across his skin, danced in his eyes…

As Boromir’s mouth was violently taken, Pippin’s sharp little teeth bit down on Boromir’s tongue so that there was no escape. Boromir tasted blood like copper in his mouth, and a heat like a blast-furnace entered Boromir, slipped along his tongue, down his throat, scorching a path into his chest. He felt as though he was being immolated from the inside out. His entire body burned and only began to cool after he had spilled himself in the ferocious heat inside the body of the fierce little being, this creature of terrible and heartwrenching beauty…

And the oddest thing was that in his mind, he heard the voice of the Lady of the Wood.

“You have taken a mighty and terrible being as your lover, Son of Gondor,” she said, “and he has taken you, as well. Into your keeping he has given a great gift. Into your spirit he has commended a fearsome magic. It will not touch him again until either he has died, or the Enemy has been defeated. It is a great honor and a great gift, though a perilous one. Hold fast your dreams, Son of Gondor, hold fast your love and his heart, for it will serve well all the world, or if you fail, spell doom for us all.”

And then they were back in the Golden Wood, and Boromir, battered and bloodied by this fearsome act of love and sacrifice, had his arms full of a sobbing halfling. Pippin clung to him as though to life itself, sobbing over and over, “You’re mine, mine, don’t leave me, acushla, please don’t throw our love away…”

And Boromir wept right along with him, murmuring, “Never, my sweet, never, Little One, will I cast our love away. Though the whole world be turned to ash and coal, our love shall live. Always and forever will I love you. Nothing but death can keep me from it. Nothing but death.”


To Be Continued