Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. I promise to put them back unharmed when I'm done with them, although I can't guarantee that Faramir won't still smell like ink.

His fingers hurt when he curls them around his quill, the joints stiff with age. Writing does not come as easily to him as it once did; his hand cramps more often, and he has to blot spills more frequently. His fingers smell of ink.

He had known when he'd asked her to marry him that her race was shorter-lived than his, that there would be ten or twenty or thirty years he would have to face alone. It had not seemed as real then, or as long; simply a lot of numbers that did not add up to time.

They add up now.

He keeps the letters in his desk drawer, the little rolls of parchment overflowing into the rest of his study. He opens books sometimes and finds letters he does not remember writing between their pages. He does not take them to her grave; what would be the point?

Their children visit him often. He is grateful for the company of all three, but he is gladdest when Théodwyn visits. She has her mother's lighter eyes and pale hair, the same angled cheekbones and bold smile. He knows that if any part of Éowyn still walks the garden of Ithilien, it will be in her. He lets his daughter see some of the less personal letters, holding out a vague hope that Éowyn reads them through her eyes.

He writes to his wife whenever he needs to feel her hair against his cheek again, or when the air tastes too thickly of silence. He writes to her about Barahir, who is seven now, and the terror of Elboron's house. He writes about her garden, which he still tends, burying his hands in the dirt for an hour every morning regardless of the weather. He writes about the Anduin, churning out disjointed, senseless poetry to describe its thousand shades of silver. She'd liked his poetry, although he wasn't sure why.

The letters mark time, each word another minute over with. The letters are years, ten or twenty or thirty of them; and he paces between their lines, waiting for the quill to dry of ink. He hopes to find her at the end of the letters, like gold under a rainbow's tail.

It is worth the ache in his fingers.