A/N: this story is a companion piece to my other work, Blood, Sweat, and Leather
Disclaimer: if I owned Lord of the Rings, it wouldn't be nearly as good
I.
After the army leaves, Faramir feels empty like the skeleton of his city. He counts the levels of white stone, equates them to the spaces between his ribs, guarding the hollow underneath that has been scraped clean.
He has forgotten how to breathe so he tries to reach deep inside his chest to start again but his fingers are stopped by walls of bone. He wonders why he is not dead. The House of the Stewards lay in ashes, and when he closes his eyes he can still taste smoke and ash, and his hair falls into his eyes, heavy and black and he can't breathe can't breathe
Your son has returned, lord, after great deeds.
Always he dreams of ash and fire, and wakes choking on the smoke lingering in his lungs. And he wonders why he would choose to be saved now, why he was worthy of being saved when he doesn't know how to live anymore. It was foolish to hold onto his dreams— visions of the Tree in bloom, of a city restored. The tree is dead, the city in ruins, the line of Stewards broken and its house in ashes. Ashes that are on his hands and in his chest and if he just reached deep enough...
He remembers he promised the King to keep the city strong for him. But Faramir and the city are the same, and he doesn't know how to heal this. They had both needed a savior to pull them from the fire and now Faramir doesn't know how to save himself. Because the city is empty, and so is the space underneath his ribs.
He is not enough for himself.
He never expected to be Steward. Denethor had made it clear the highest position he would achieve in life equated to a glorified aid with a hollow title of Lordship. He is not ready for this. But he tries to find strength to pour into the empty shell, until his blistered fingers are covered in blood, ash, and ink stains, and no matter how much he tries to wash his hands they won't come clean.
He is not enough for this.
Denethor isn't the only one who wishes Boromir and Faramir's places had been exchanged. He is not meant to lead men, not when he feels so thin and cracked. He doesn't want people to turn to him because all he can do is turn towards the shadow and wonder. Minas Tirith will not be full until the King returns. Until then he walks and wonders and feels the remnants of flames under his skin. He chokes on the air he breathes and tries to remember
It is temporary it is temporary it is temporary
(But so is he).
II.
Dreams and nightmares are both dead things that crawl at night; the only difference is nightmares know they are dead.
All his dreams are hollow things. It was cruel, to see the Tree blossoming behind his eyelids—to see the dead reality when his eyes opened. The White Tree, slowly rotting, hollowed out and still a symbol of strength. And Faramir, who poured himself into Gondor, is bound too closely to be anything else but another dead scion of Númenor. He too is rotting from the inside out.
He hungers for something but can never be full.
Not when he is slowly losing every bit of himself. He feels emptier now than when he rode to Death, when he had closed his eyes and hollowed himself as a sacrifice to War. He remembers the pyre. He remembers burning and thinking I have felt this before. And he knows now that he does not want to think or feel, doesn't want to breathe or open his eyes because the Tree has been dead for years.
They are bound too close for Faramir himself to be anything else.
III.
His skin feels tight and drawn, stomach aching and lips thin. The sun no longer shines, but in this eternal night Faramir finds no rest. He walks the walls, restless, searching East, wandering on the winds and missing the light of the stars. He is the white walls, the night sky; something grounded in bone and ancient beyond time and measure. And he hungers.
Oh, how he hungers.
He swallows down his deep breaths, trying to fill his stomach with the winds and the vast oceans and the dreams underneath his eyes. He tries to fill himself with stories and purpose but no matter how hard he tries it all slips through the empty spaces of his ribs, until he has lost more than he gained. He has nothing left but this hunger he cannot sate.
(He hungers without hope of being full)
His Eyes point ever towards the shadow, from where he ran and where the King now marches. He remembers the dark shadows preying on his men as they raced across the Pelennor. He remembers the jagged claws tearing at his armor, and how black, inky, despair leeched its way into his skin. (He was made hollow, a burnt out candle, and sent out again to be used when there was nothing left of him. As if riding back towards the darkness would reveal some light he had not touched.)
And perhaps Denethor was right—he found fire after all.
And he burned. Until he couldn't breathe, until his lungs were ash falling between his ribs, until the whole city and his father burned with him. And still he saw the White Tree behind his eyes, and it was the only thing not burning.
He tries to fill himself with fantasies of the King returned. But Aragorn came in a desperate hour only to ride out to certain death as Faramir himself had. Ever your desire is to appear lordly and generous as a king of old, gracious, gentle.
And there, at that, Faramir laughs, because for once Denethor was wrong.
He is no King.
IV.
He spends most of his time in the gardens, trying to learn how to breathe again.
He doesn't sleep in fear of going back to the realm of shadow and fire. The dark shadows cling to his skin, a sign that he is slowly slipping back anyway. He scratches at his skin until it bleeds, because he needs to know that he is living, that he can breathe, that there is something underneath his skin.
The sun that breaks through the darkness is weak and wilting. There is no warmth in it.
But in the gardens there is a lady dressed in white, and her golden hair reflects the sunlight so that it glows. He can't help but wonder if it's warm. She looks at him, and he sees a lily sheathed in frost. He sees himself trying to survive by drowning. And he thinks, that if one of them should be saved, it should be the lady that reminds him of spring and sunlight. He can read hearts, and knows that she is much stronger than he.
(After all, the only heart Faramir is blind to is his own)
She comes to him, slowly, asking to look at their hope and their destruction. He, who has done the same thing cannot deny her, and so he invites her to walk with him, so that they may die or be saved together. She is cold, but as one preserved by frost. Faramir bears the cold of the dead.
He hungers, so much that he has forgotten what it is like to be full.
But the Lady Eowyn, she will know fullness. She will know the sunshine on her skin. Faramir swears it. And so he pours himself into her, digging deep to find what he didn't know he had. He looks at her and knows she has once felt full; that for her this is a passing hunger.
He gives without hope of being satisfied, without hope of being full in return. Slowly, she thaws, and he can almost feel the sun on his skin.
The eagles come, and Faramir has nothing left to give. He looks at his hands (his worn, careful hands) and they are trembling. He looks West with empty eyes and smiles with skeleton teeth. The King did not die. He can lay down his crown and surrender every burden.
He no longer has to pretend to be full.
V.
He offers up the White Rod with something that is almost joy.
The King (the King returned, who did not die as Faramir did) builds a new House of Stewards, one that does not lie in ashes. Faramir holds the new rod, made from the branches of the dead White Tree. They have both been reborn, with new purpose. They no longer carry the burdens of a diminishing race. A new Tree has been planted, a new King crowned.
For the first time, Faramir feels full.
oooo
A/N: it's my personal head-cannon that Faramir was probably feeling a little depressed after fighting a war for over half his life when he didn't want to be a soldier, and then losing everything within a month. Those kinds of wounds need time to heal.