Disclaimer: None of the characters or settings mentioned are mine.
Description: Arwen was not the only woman in the Third Age to give life up in favour of love... Finduilas tries to help Denethor accept what is to come.
Author Note: So I was listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack the other day, particularly 'Council of Elrond', on the Fellowship soundtrack as well as 'One of the Dunedain' and 'Sons of the Steward' on the Two Towers. I had just been listening/watched the cast commentary too and John Noble during the scene with Denethor, Faramir and Boromir discusses the importance of Finduilas' early death. It is just a beautiful and tragic tale... I kind of saw a parallel between Denethor/Finduilas and Arwen/Aragorn (of course, it was not such a dramatic choice for Finduilas as Arwen but had she not gone to Minas Tirith perhaps she would have lived longer... we don't know). I am not sure if it works but the comparison would not leave me alone till I got something out of it... so I hope you enjoy it!
Sunsets and Regrets...
The sands of Dol Amroth were bathed in the rays of the setting sun. The evening was drawing in and the wind was blowing a little colder.
The makeshift tent which had been built towards the top of the beach provided the perfect refuge for the women who lay inside of it, carefully watching the lads playing in the tide which was going out. By her side, her husband sat, his grey eyes poorly hiding the apprehension he felt for the future.
"You thought these sands would heal me," she said to him suddenly.
"You always felt stronger here in the past," he sighed, his heart a lead weight in his chest. Simultaneously, it felt as if it were a pane of glass, waiting to shatter; as it surely now would.
Turning to face her, he reached out and touched her cold cheek. "I should get you inside."
"Not yet, Denethor. Not yet."
Finduilas moved closer to him, urging him to take her in his arms. He willing complied. She could not remember a time when he had not held her when she had needed him too. Her eyes strayed back to her sons and her nephews, the four lads enjoying themselves, thoroughly unaware of how ill she truly was.
Perhaps the only ones who truly understood were the two of them.
"You will manage, Denethor; the boys will take good care of you." When I am gone...
"Please," sighed the Steward. Her body shivered involuntarily in his arms. Reaching for the blanket they had packed for the day, he soon covered her. "Do not speak thus, dearest."
"We must; you know we must."
He shook his head. He wanted to ignore what was happening to her. She was so young and so beloved by him. To think that she might depart before he did was a dagger to his soul as well as his heart.
Denethor's eyes too strayed to the sea to the spot where their sons played with their cousins. Boromir was a child – Faramir was barely more than a toddler. They needed their mama far more than they did their papa to his mind. He could not raise them as well as she would be able too. She was a wonderful mother, the very best of mothers – yet, he knew himself to be just an adequate father.
"I wish now you had been spared me. That you had married a man of Dol Amroth. At least then I could comfort myself that you were... living; and living a life you loved."
"I would love no life without you in it," she said, as she huddled under the blanket and in his arms. "And I could never have seen another woman as your Stewardess. I would have wanted to claw her eyes out every time I saw her at your side."
"If we had never met-"
Finduilas shook her head and raised her hand to his lips to hush him. "Then I would have lived half a life."
But he knew she was already doing that. His wife was of the blood of the Dunedain – she should have lived longer than he. Decades longer... but for her to die before she was forty. It was preposterous, it was wrong, it was...
He had no words for it.
"Most people do not know the happiness we have known these past twelve years in a lifetime. If I went back, and had to chose between a day in yours arms in the White City, and decades with another, there would be no choice at all... you are my heart, dearest," the words she said trailed off as she rested her hand on his cheek, swallowing back the tears she would later sob into his chest when they were alone. But she had to hold herself together when the boys were so close.
He kissed her palm.
"And I would rather –" he did not know. He had never been worthy of his princess, but in his heart of hearts he was far too selfish to wish she had been the wife of another man – he too could not bear the thought of the two of them having had different spouses. Likewise, he could not truly wish they had not met. She was his all. "I would rather you – you were well."
He knew it was what they both wanted. It was foolish and childish of him to say so. But it was all his heart desired. He had three great loves; the first lay in his arms; the second was the two little boys who played in the waves; and the third was the country he had been brought up to rule. Minas Tirith held a special place in his heart, but he loved all of Gondor. It was more than land to him. It had a life of its own.
And he knew he had to put the duty he had to it before his own feelings – and yet, gladly would he cast it into the shadows if he could make Finduilas's life sunny and safe once more. If he could move the White City out of the sight of Mordor... if he could change the geography of Middle Earth... but he could not. He was a man. He was not a God.
"You can do so much good for so many – and I will be with you as you build a better, safer world; not for our people, but for our sons. Faramir and Boromir... think of them."
"I do not know if that strength is within me."
"I do... I know it is beloved lord of mine."
Looking down into her beautiful face, he knew when she drifted away from him, as they both knew she would, that his heart would cripple and die. He had never contemplated marriage before her; something which had caused his own Father no end of concern, for without a wife he also lacked an heir. Even if he was no romantic, he had known he could only enter into a marriage for love. He could not have tolerated being wed to a foolish woman who excited no passion in him, who cared for nothing but the title he gave her. If he had been born a peasant, he believed Finduilas would still have found and married him.
"Please do not regret us," Finduilas sighed. "My lord, would you wish now there was no Boromir to rule Gondor after you? There was no Faramir to light your life up?"
He shook his head. "I can't regret them. You know what a great part of me the boys are." He said as his eyes wondered to his beloved sons...
"And as I keep telling you, they will lead you through the darkness."
He shook his head, still desiring to close his ears.
The wheels of his mind turned. "If you stayed here, Finduilas... if you did not return to Minas Tirith... Faramir could stay here with you. Boromir could return to the White City with me for his lessons... we could all go on. I'd visit as often as I could."
"No. I will tell you what would happen in that scenario. I would die not of this illness in my body, but of grief and a broken heart that I could no longer lay like this in your arms, as I do now – and the boys would never accept their separation for months at a time, I don't have to tell you that. Beloved, it would drive Boromir to distraction and it would cause Faramir more loneliness than any five year old boy should feel."
Tears stung his eyes. He did not know how to make safe his family. He had gone to war so many times... yet this most important battle was the one he could not win.
"How do you explain death to a five year old, Finduilas?"
Silence.
"I don't know, my love. I just don't know."
Long after they should have called the boys in, the two laid there watching them play, holding one another almost too tight.
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