J.M.J.
Author's Note: Hello! Thank you for reading! This is just something I was thinking about the other day, and I decided to write it down. Even though I have been a fan of LOTR for literally three fourths of my life, this is actually the first LOTR fanfic I've written. If you have any thoughts on how I could improve, I'd love to hear them!
Naturally, I don't own The Lord of the Rings or any of the characters. Also, the conversation in the last scene is from the movie The Return of the King. I did not write it and it is not mine, though I wish I could write something that brilliant.
Slaying Dragons
Smoke and fire. It was everywhere. The dragon had alighted on the top of the citadel. It was a huge, horrible worm. With its every breath, flames poured out of its wide-opened jaws. There was an evil which burned fiercely in its eyes. To oppose it could be nothing but certain death. Yet there was no choice but to fight it. It was his duty as a Captain of Gondor.
Faramir drew his sword and held it up as a challenge to the dragon. It breathed a stream of fire at him, and he just barely escaped by holding his shield over his head. "For Gondor!" Faramir shouted as he ran toward it.
"Faramir!" The gruff voice brought the young boy to a stop and he turned from his imaginary dragon to the speaker.
"Yes, Father?" Faramir asked.
Denethor frowned at him, disappointment obvious in his face. "You'd do better training for real fights, rather than wasting your time on dragons. Boromir wouldn't waste his time this way. He's preparing to be a Captain of Gondor and to defend us from real threats."
"Yes, Father," Faramir replied in a quiet voice.
"A man of Gondor shouldn't mumble," Denethor reprimanded him. With a disgusted scoff, he added, "Get back to your studies. That's all you're fit for."
Faramir swallowed hard as he trudged away, his head bowed slightly and his arms drooping at his side. He was trying hard not to cry at his father's harsh words. He was nine now, much too old to cry. But even so, sometimes – Maybe his father was right. He would never be as good at anything as Boromir. Boromir wouldn't cry.
Faramir found his tutor in the library where they were accustomed to study. Boromir was there, too, listening to the lesson. He was fourteen and almost old enough to focus more on practical training with arms and to be able to become Steward of Gondor one day. For now, however, he had to sit and listen to the tutor talk. Or at least pretend to listen. Right now, he looked like he was closer to falling asleep than to learning anything at all from the lesson. Both Boromir and the tutor looked up when Faramir came into the room.
"Oh, so there you are," the tutor said. "Slipping off again when you should be studying. Not even Boromir here, with all his headstrong ways, does such things."
Faramir tried to hide a sigh as he sat down next to his brother and the tutor continued the lesson. Boromir noticed his brother's downcast attitude, he gave him a curious look.
For a few seconds when the tutor's back was turned, Boromir leaned over and asked Faramir, "What's the matter?"
Faramir didn't get a chance to answer before the tutor had turned around again and continued his lesson. What the lesson was about, neither boy could have said later, for each was preoccupied with his own thoughts.
It wasn't that Faramir wasn't interested. In fact, he loved his lessons. He especially loved the history lessons and the old tales of great heroes. He often wished he lived back in those days when there when greatness wasn't so hard to find.
But he didn't live back then. Instead he lived now, when heroes and greatness were far rarer. Of course, he knew that his father was a great man and Boromir would certainly be one, as well. Faramir wished he could be like them, but no matter what he did, it wasn't enough. That was why he would sometimes leave his lessons and go to practice with the sword and the armor that his father had had made for him. He liked to pretend he was slaying dragons. They were so much more fun and exciting to pretend to kill.
His father always said it was unpractical, that there were no dragons in the area, and that the real threat was from the orcs and the growing, ominous threat from the east. Minas Tirith was practically right on the border of Mordor. Perhaps, after all, Denethor was right that that was more likely to be a threat that Faramir would one day have to face.
Even so, it wasn't completely impossible that he would see a dragon. Not all the stories of dragons were so very long ago. Several years ago, King Bain of Dale had paid a visit of state to Denethor. Faramir remembered him well, since he had been told about how Bain's father Bard had slain the dragon Smaug. That hadn't been so very long ago, and so who was to say that there were no more dragons somewhere in the world even these days?
Finally, the tutor finished his lesson and dismissed his two pupils. By then it was growing late in the day, and evening would be coming on before long. Boromir and Faramir walked out onto the courtyard built high up at the top of the city and past the White Tree.
"I thought he was never going to finish talking today," Boromir said. "You were fortunate not to have to listen so long. Where were you, anyway? What happened?"
Faramir looked down at his hands. For a few moments, he hesitated on what to say.
"It was Father again, wasn't it?" Boromir asked. "I've told you before not to take it to heart when he starts going on like that."
"I try," Faramir said, his voice shaking just a little. "I try to do what he wants. It's just never enough. I'm not enough."
"Don't be a fool, at least no more of one than you can help." Boromir gave his brother a playful shove to show that he was joking with the last half of the statement. "You'll be a great man one day. You ought to be, for as hard as you try. And then, besides that, you are my brother after all."
Faramir smiled a little, but his father's cutting words came back to him. "He doesn't think so." There was no need to explain who he was. "He said I'm not fit for anything but my studies."
Boromir stopped walking and placed his hands on his little brother's shoulders so that Faramir had to look up at him. "Even though Father doesn't often act like it, he does love you, Faramir. And he'll realize who you are one day."
"Maybe he already does." Faramir pulled himself away and kept walking.
Boromir shook his head in frustration. He wasn't sure what to do about this. There was only one thing he could think of. "Then you probably don't want to practice slaying dragons."
Faramir turned around. "Are there any dragons to be slain?"
"Who knows?" Boromir replied. "But if there are, they won't be able to get past you and me."
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Several years later, Faramir was leaving the library with a stack of books under his arm, full of poetry and old tales. He hadn't known that there were so many books of such fascinating lore in Minas Tirith, not until he had met the wizard, Mithrandir, and he had told him about them. Faramir had come to love whenever Mithrandir would come to the city on some errand of learning, for he always took time to speak with him.
Mithrandir had just been there a few days earlier. Faramir had had several questions for him, which the wizard hadn't had time to answer, but he had told him which books he might find the answer in. Faramir had finally found the time to go and fetch them.
As he was walking past an open doorway, he heard his father say from within, "He's a fool."
Faramir stopped, knowing from those three words alone that Denethor was speaking about him. With a weary sigh, he lingered outside as if he couldn't pull himself away.
"He does his best," he heard Boromir say. "Why can't you see that?"
"His best?" Denethor scoffed. "He wasted his childhood with his head in the old tales about dragons and such. Now he'll waste the rest of his life following that wizard around. All Mithrandir wants is to supplant me. If he can do so by poisoning my son against me, he will."
"Faramir would not betray you," Boromir protested. "Can you not see that? Can you not see who he is?"
"I want to hear no more about Faramir," Denethor said.
Whether Boromir would let the subject go or not, Faramir did not linger to find out. He hurried away to be alone. As he went, he dropped one of the books. When he stooped to pick it up, he saw that there was a red dragon painted on the cover. It had been a long time since he had pretended to slay dragons. It had been a long time since he had given up the childish hope of proving his worth to his father by really slaying a dragon. But then, he had also realized since then that perhaps there were more than one kind of dragon that needed to be fought.
Yes, there were others, even if they weren't the same as the ones in the old tales. But the old tales all agreed on one thing – that the dragons could be slain. One day, Faramir told himself, he would slay his dragon and his father would see his worth.
XXXXXXXX
Many years later, much had changed. Mordor had grown to be a grave threat. The men of Gondor were constantly fighting the orcs that attacked their strongholds. Boromir had gone to seek the aid and counsel of the Elves in Rivendell – and he would not now return. Mithrandir had come again and he had brought a hobbit with him, the third that Faramir had seen in less than a week.
But some things had never changed, and never now seemed that they would. Faramir had never found favor with Denethor. If anything, his father thought less of him now than he ever had before.
There were many things to think about. His father, Boromir, the halflings, the war, the Ring of Power which he knew was even now perhaps passing into the land of Mordor, and whether that desperate hope could possibly be realized, who could say?
He was thinking these things over as he walked through the halls of Minas Tirith, when he overheard the halfling talking to himself in an adjacent hallway.
"What were you thinking, Peregrin Took?" the hobbit was lamenting to himself as he sat on a wooden bench. "What service can a hobbit offer such a great lord of men?"
"It was well done," Faramir told him as he walked into the hallway. The hobbit stood up in surprise while Faramir continued, "A generous deed should not be checked by cold counsel. You are to join the Tower Guard." Faramir added the last when he realized that Peregrin Took was wearing the armor that he had once played in as a boy.
"I didn't think they would find any livery that would fit me," Peregrin replied.
"Once belonged to a young boy of the city," Faramir told him, recalling those days. "A very foolish one, who wasted many hours slaying dragons instead of attending to his studies."
"This was yours?" Peregrin asked.
"Yes, it was mine. My father had it made for me." Faramir straightened the left sleeve as he said it.
"Well, I'm taller than you were then," Peregrin said. "Though I'm not likely to grown any more, except sideways."
First Faramir and then Peregrin chuckled, but then Faramir added on a more serious note, "Never fitted me either. Boromir was always the soldier. They were so alike, he and my father. Proud. Stubborn, even. But strong."
Peregrin looked back at him, equally seriously. "I think you have strength of a different kind. And one day your father will see it."
Faramir smiled ruefully. He had heard that before.