Author's Note: Wow, y'all! Can't thank you guys enough for the kind reviews; it's so nice getting back into this fandom, and I'm really glad that you're all willing to see where I'm going with this thing. Seriously, your reviews so far have really made it worthwhile and I'm so excited to share this story with you! Without further ado, here's the second chapter and enter the hero-though he's a little less than heroic upon first glance ;)
CHAPTER TWO
After all the time spent waiting with dread, when the fighting begins it feels as if she can scarcely keep up. The days pass in a blur; Faramir returns from Osgiliath, mercifully alive but having lost the city. Denethor would not accept this. Osgiliath was Gondor's! Boromir would have secured the city, he was certain! Lothiriel was of half a mind to tell him that even Boromir could not have held the city against such a host-but her uncle was far past logic.
So Faramir and his remaining cavalry are sent back to reclaim the city they had lost.
Mithrandir cautions against it, Naneth points out the folly of such a mission, and Lothiriel begs, past the point of decorum, for Faramir not to throw his life away so rashly.
He merely taps her nose, a smile curling the corners of his mouth but not reaching his eyes. "If my death will buy the city-you, your mother, my father-more time, is it not worth it?"
"What kind of time?" She cries, her accursed temper getting the better of her. "A few hours? A day? A week? Your life is worth more than that, Faramir! You are more than a weapon to be used at will!"
He hushes her and pulls her into a hug, allowing her to tuck her head under his chin the way she has since she was a child. She wishes she could feel as comforted now as she had then, when the worst of her fears had been of shadows in the dark and monsters under the bed.
"It isn't fair," she mutters. "It isn't right."
"No," he agrees, "it isn't. But it is what I must do."
And he departs then, leaving her in tears and knowing, beyond any doubt, that Boromir was not the only son of Denethor worthy of the title of hero.
Pippin is with her, on the walls, when the cavalry rides towards Osgiliath. His presence is a comfort, but it is not the one she wants when the arrows begin to pick off the horses and their riders. She longs for her father, always so level-headed and kind. She wants Elphir, stoic and noble, who would have called Lord Denethor out on the sheer insanity of this plan. She wants Erchirion, with his quiet smiles and quick wit. Or Amrothos, with his never flagging mischief and loud laugh. It could have been any of them, riding to certain death beside their sweet cousin. It still could be any of them, in the coming days. She wishes it was none of them; she wishes none of this-the War, Boromir's death, Naneth's summons to Minas Tirith-had happened.
If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, she thinks.
It is the last clear thought she can recall.
The city descends into chaos; the calvary is lost, Faramir with them, and the hosts of Mordor have come. She has no time for tears for Faramir, for the wounded begin streaming into the Houses. Pippin vanishes, to fulfill his duty as guardian of the Citadel. Naneth's expression, serene in even the worst of conditions, sharpens, begins to despair.
"Where are the Rohirrim?" One of the healers asks, fear evident in his voice. "Why have they not come?"
"Why should they?" Lothiriel hisses back, trying to secure a bandage around a squire's-no more than four and ten, he is a child-arm. "We did not go to their aid, what reason would they have to come to ours?"
But she is wrong. Perhaps the Rohirrim are braver than her people, perhaps they are kinder; because they come when the time is darkest, their horns heralding their arrival.
Time moves steadily on. The Houses are at their breaking point, packed to the gills with injured men, frightened children. She has not seen Naneth in hours; she is not sure she will ever see her mother again, much less the rest of her family.
In the wee hours of the morning, a surprise: a group of Citadel Guards, led by a white-faced Pippin, appear.
"We bear the Lord Faramir!" One of the men yells. "He is gravely injured and requires assistance!"
Lothiriel's heart leaps to her throat; Faramir, alive?
Mistress Ioreth appears, bustling forward and feeling for a pulse. "He lives, but only just. To the left-most chambers, and quickly!"
Lothiriel falters; she has her duties here, men that need her help, but-Faramir!
One of here patients-a Rohirric boy not much younger than herself-groans then, and she knows her cousin will be as safe as he can be under the care of the older, more experienced healers.
"What of Lord Denethor?" A healer asks. "Surely he should know that his son lives!"
"Lord Denethor has passed," Pippin says, voice carrying over the sudden hush of the Houses. "Faramir is your Steward, now."
Denethor, dead? The thought seems impossible; it had oft seemed that her uncle had been carved of stone, and to think of him gone...it does not hurt her, the way Boromir's death had, but it is a shock, if nothing else.
"My lady, your charges," someone murmurs. Lothiriel pushes all other thoughts besides being useful away.
The night is a long one, and the morning dawns without fanfare and seemingly without much light. And then suddenly, the clouds seem to recede. Sunlight pours down through the sudden opening, revealing a ghostly army and the wreckage of the Pelennor Fields.
"My lady?" One of her boys whispers, voice weak. "Is it over?"
That they may survive this has not occurred to Lothiriel in hours, not since Faramir fell.
"I am not sure," she answers, not wanting to give him false hope.
"By the Valar, let it be done," says another man-Bergil, if she's not mistaken. "The city cannot survive another attack."
As if on cue, the doors to the Houses slam open, causing a cacophony of shrieks and oaths.
And then another familiar voice disturbs the newly-roused Houses: "Healers, I have a charge for you. A lady, in need of grave assistance."
This time, Lothiriel cannot stop her feet. She stumbles forward, blinking in the sudden sunlight. Her father stands in the doorway, a lady as fair as the morning in his arms. Injured, clearly, with the way her arm is cradled to her chest, but Lothiriel has eyes only for him.
"Prince Imrahil!" One of the healers shouts. "Of course, we are happy to assist-"
"Ada?" Lothiriel croaks, feeling as if there is no air in her lungs at all.
Imrahil jerks, head turning towards her. "Lothiriel?"
"My Prince, the lady…" the same healer protests. Imrahil nods, carefully passing off the unknown lady-Rohirrim for certain, with hair that golden-and then turns back to his youngest child.
"Oh, daughter," he breathes out and then Lothiriel is in his arms, despite the blood on her dress and the dirt on his mail.
"Ada," she gasps, "how are you here? Where are-are Amrothos and Erchirion alright? Are you injured? Who was that lady? How-"
"Peace, little flower," he interrupts, smiling slightly despite the weariness in his expression. "And I believe it should be me asking you why you are here...surely Lord Denethor would have sent all of the women and children from the city?"
"He tried, but Naneth would not be dissuaded," Lothiriel admits, "and I would not go without her-"
"My brave girl," he says again and Lothiriel presses her face against his chest, despite the dirtiness and coldness of his armor. Ada is alive! Safe!
"Your mother is here?" Imrahil asks after stroking her hair for a few moments.
"Yes, somewhere, I admit I lost track of her," Lothiriel says. "How is it that you are here, Ada? Truly?"
"We received word at the last moment from Theoden King, that they were marshalling a counter-attack to help Minas Tirith," he says. "And I could not abandon the city, for if Minas Tirith fell, Dol Amroth and the rest of Gondor would not have been far behind."
Lothiriel suspects Elphir had been writing letters after all, and Ada had not been so unaware of his wife and daughter's presence in Minas Tirith as he acts.
There is a soft gasp from behind her, and Lothiriel knows her mother has arrived. She unwinds herself from her father quickly; married these 35 years, there is still great love between her parents, and she would not stand between them for all the world.
"Dearheart," Ada says, reaching for his wife's hands, "what trouble have you gotten yourself into now?"
"Only a little more than you have, husband," Naneth answers, joy obvious on her face despite her weariness. "And I see you have found our wayward daughter as well. How fare our sons?"
"Amrothos is sporting a new scar that I fear will only increase his popularity with the ladies, and Erchirion has acquired a pair of bruised ribs. They are fine, Dejah, truly."
Her brothers are fine too? Luck must run in equal measure as valor in their veins, she thinks. And Lothiriel wants to stand there, doing nothing more than drinking in the sight of her parents together, but a healer tugs at her elbow. It's one of the youngest of the bunch, Farniel, only so recently promoted to her status, and she looks exceedingly nervous.
"Please, my lady, we do not know which herbs may help your cousin and the White Lady," she says in a rush, "and Mistress Ioreth says you are the deftest with the plants-"
"And so I must come," Lothiriel interrupts, nodding. "Of course."
In the end, it is not her knowledge of herbs, nor Mistress Ioreth's knowledge of the body that saves the White Lady-Eowyn of Rohan, niece to the fallen king and sister to the new-nor Faramir, nor Pippin's badly injured friend, Meriadoc Brandybuck.
"The hands of the king are the hands of a healer," Ioreth had whispered when Elessar-or Aragorn, as Mithrandir calls him-sweeps into the room with regal authority. "And so shall the rightful king be known."
"He certainly looks the part of a king," Naneth whispers in quiet amusement, offering Lothiriel an unapologetic look when she gapes at her.
Faramir is the first to awaken, having been pierced by an Orc's arrow and not anything made of the Witch King's magic. The White Lady and Merry awaken not a day later, but it is her cousin that Lothiriel chooses to to tend to, curiosity and Pippin's insistence aside.
"You are to never do anything that foolish ever again," Lothiriel chides him, gently wiping his still pinked face with a cloth, "no matter who you think you are protecting."
Faramir smiles softly at that. "I have often wondered how one so small could be so fierce," he teases.
It is good to know that he feels well enough to tease, though Lothiriel cannot repress the frown at his mention of an old joke against her. Her parents were of an equal height, and her brothers not much shorter than their father, but it seemed that all of their Numenorean blood had gifted no such stature to her.
"The tallest man can be a great coward, and the smallest child can possess the heart of a lion," she retorts. ""And I will tell you again, as I have so many times, size is no guarantee of fierceness."
"As evidenced by the lady your father discovered on the battlefield," Faramir says. "Tell me, what news have you of the White Lady?"
Lothiriel squints at her cousin, suddenly suspicious; there is no masking the admiration in his voice, no matter the fact that he and the lady have exchanged as many words as she has fingers.
"I do not know much," she answers, slowly, "but I can find out, if it would please you."
As she suspected, a tell-tale blush rises in her cousin's cheeks. "If you would, Thiri."
Oh, the scoundrel! He knows very well-as do her brothers-that she can refuse them nothing when they are injured, much less when they use her childhood nickname.
She wanders down the slightly-cleared hallways of the Houses; any of the men well enough to fight again have left, as the combined forces of Gondor and Rohan plan to march on the Black Gate in two days time. Even Pippin and Merry seem bound and determined to go, yet another example of valor having little to do with size.
The White Lady of Rohan is awake when Lothiriel enters, but looks less than happy to see her. "Have you come to force me to eat again, Mistress Healer? Or to tell me again how foolish I am to have ridden into battle in the first place?"
Lothiriel nearly recoils in horror; healers have been saying such things to her? She, who slayed the Witch King of Angmar and avenged her dear kinsman?
"Certainly not, and I would box the ears of anyone I heard saying such a thing," Lothiriel answers promptly.
The other woman blinks at her. "You are not the usual healer."
"No, and I am afraid I am no healer at all, for all of the work I have done in the Houses," Lothiriel admits. "I am Lothiriel of Dol Amroth, and it was my father who found you on the Fields."
The White Lady's posture relaxes somewhat at that. "Prince Imrahil has a daughter?"
"Yes, and three much more troublesome sons," Lothiriel says, before frowning. "Well, one is more troublesome. Elphir and Erchirion are usually quite well-behaved."
"I thought most Gondorian nobles were well-behaved," the other woman says cautiously.
"My family has always been somewhat of an exception to the rule," Lothiriel says. "My brother Amrothos and I the most so."
They sit in comfortable silence for a moment before the White Lady offers her a tentative smile. "I apologize for my rudeness. I am accustomed for people assuming things about me because of...what I did on the Fields, and I do not care for it."
"To be judged by one act alone and not the sum of one's worth is incredibly frustrating," Lothiriel agrees, "I would be annoyed, too."
"Yes, exactly," the other woman murmurs, sounding perplexed. "You have some experience with this?"
Lothiriel considers whether she should be so frank with this woman who she scarcely knows. But the Rohirrim have saved the city, her family, her people...honesty is only a small fraction of what she owes them. "I once dumped a bucket of water on a messenger of my uncle's for insulting my mother and sister-in-law," she admits, "and I suspect this one action will make it infinitely harder for me to find a husband, no matter all of the other times I have been on perfect, princessly behavior."
"Hah!" The White Lady laughs. "In Rohan, you would have the opposite problem. Many a man would be lining up to marry someone who defends her family so well."
Lothiriel smiles. "Perhaps you shall have to tell my father as much. I do not think he would believe me on my own, but with the White Lady's word-"
"Please, call me Eowyn," the other woman interjects. "I find I have little desire now to become a myth."
Lothiriel frowns, just slightly. "I think it's rather late for that, my lady."
Eowyn's brow furrows. "What do you mean?"
Lothiriel opens her mouth to explain when the door suddenly slams open, missing her by inches. An involuntary squeak is drawn from her mouth. Her brothers are fairly tall, her cousins taller still, but this man would dwarf them all-and not just in height. His shoulders seem to fill the doorway and the look he gives her could curdle milk.
His blonde hair marks him as one of the Rohirrim, but Lothiriel has never met him and is unsure what she could have done to draw such ire.
"Can I help you, my lo-"
"You can help me by dismissing yourself," comes the short response. "My sister has no need of hair-brained healers pestering her at all hours of the day."
Lothiriel is certain she can feel her eyebrows hitting her hairline. So this was Rohan's new king? Lothiriel knows enough from her own heritage that being assumed to be barbaric and uncivilized by merit of culture alone is wrong, but for him, she may have to make an exception.
Still, he is a king, and she likes Eowyn well enough already to try to maintain a civil tongue. "I am no healer, my lord," she says, keeping her tone even. "And I had no intention of pestering Lady Eowyn-"
"Then you have come to berate her then?" He interrupts, dark eyes flashing dangerously. "To mock her for not being as you and your Gondorian kin are; little more than trinkets?"
"Eomer-" Eowyn tries to interject, frowning, but Lothiriel can feel the tendrils of her control over her temper slipping away entirely.
"Trinkets?" She repeats in an incredulous tone. "It was Gondorian women who have spent the past two days tending to the wounded, both our men and yours. It was Gondorian women who brought the hobbit under your charge back from the brink of death. Warriors we may not be, my lord, but neither are we mere ornaments."
He scoffs. "Ornament or not, you have no right to impose upon my sister-"
"I was sent by my cousin, the Steward," Lothiriel spits, drawing herself up to her admittedly unimpressive height, "to check on the lady's well-being. If that is an imposition, then we truly have differing standards here than in the Mark."
Eowyn interrupts before her brother can answer. "Lord Faramir sent you?"
Lothiriel takes a deep breath, pulling her gaze away from the irritating king before offering Eowyn a much warmer smile. "Yes, my lady. He wanted to be sure that you were feeling better."
"I am," Eowyn answers, a small smile playing on her face. "Tell him I appreciate his concern."
She's as smitten as he is, Lothiriel thinks. Good. Faramir-and Eowyn-deserve happiness.
Lothiriel nods, dipping into a deep curtsy. "I shall be on my way now, my lady, as my presence is unwanted-"
"Not by me!" Eowyn interrupts, shooting her brother a look. "I would speak to my brother in private, but then perhaps you would return for the noon meal, my lady? I..it has been some time since I have had female companionship."
"I would be delighted," Lothiriel answers; and truly, she is. She cannot fault Eowyn for having such a rude brother, just as others have not faulted her for her own rude siblings in the past. "Until then, my lady, my lord."
Meeting his fierce stare with one of her own, Lothiriel curtsies again before exiting the room.
"Who was that woman?" She hears the king ask.
"Lord Imrahil's daughter," Eowyn answers, amusement plain in her voice. "The princess of Dol Amroth."
The king's groan of horror makes Lothiriel smirk.
She and Eowyn-and both women agree to quickly drop the formality of their titles-become fast friends. Both have always felt more than a little out of their depth in the roles they have been born into: Eowyn has always wanted to be a warrior, not a lady, and Lothiriel has always wanted to be useful, more than the trappings of princess and noblewoman allow.
Even so, it is not Lothiriel's presence that Eowyn wants when the combined forces of both Gondor and Rohan begin their march to the Black Gate.
It is Faramir she turns to for comfort, and Lothiriel can only smile and watch from behind a pillar as they embrace upon the wall in the view of the entire city. She is not sure when this love-for it is that, surely, Lothiriel knows it in her very bones-sprung up between them, but it has, and it has made one of the people she loves most in this world happy, and made her new friend smile again so that it reaches her eyes. In times like these, that is something to be grateful for.
"So Faramir has found a worthy lady," Naneth says, startling her. "I did not think the task possible."
"Eowyn is the best choice I could have imagined for him," Lothiriel assures her mother. The entire royal family of Dol Amroth is protective of Faramir, and has been for most of his life. As the son of Imrahil's beloved sister, and the clear second-favorite of his stony father, it would have been hard not to be, even if Faramir had been any less kind and brave.
"You quite like the Lady of Rohan, do you not, my Thiri?"
"I do, though I would guess that Faramir's affection far surpasses mine," Lothiriel laughs, as her cousin and friend's embrace continues before them.
Naneth smiles, tucking Lothiriel's hand into the crook of her elbow. "I pray that you find the same kind of happiness, little flower."
Lothiriel frowns. "Naneth, the War is not yet won. It is hardly the time for...that, surely."
Naneth merely shrugs. "Lothiriel, if I know anything about this life, it's that things rarely appear when and where we expect them to."
"Could that argument also be used for disease? A swarm of locusts?" Lothiriel answers.
Her mother smiles. "There's that wit of yours, my dear. May you never lose it."
The sky lightens a few days later. It feels like a weight has been lifted from everyone and everything; Lothiriel cannot remember a time that the air has felt so light, so...free.
Eowyn says much the same, for all that her home is removed from Mordor and its familiar dark clouds. She's been allowed to leave the Houses, per Mistress Ioreth's direction, and Naneth had been quick to offer her a place in their rooms.
Lothiriel suspects her mother's motives may not have been purely out of kindness; everyone had seen Faramir and Eowyn on the walls, after all, and Gondorian society was certainly not known for its forgiveness regarding a woman's reputation. Naneth understands better than most what it means to be regarded as an outsider. For all of her high-birth and intelligence, many of Minas Tirith's court still refer to her as the Harradrim, for all the fact that she has as little Harad blood in her veins as they do.
Lothiriel had tried to explain as much to Eowyn, but she feels inadequate to the task.
"What should it matter what part of Gondor your mother is from?" Eowyn asks, frowning. "My father was from Aldburg, and my mother from Edoras, and no one opposed the match once they knew his character."
Lothiriel sighs, running a brush through her hair. "Eowyn, surely you have noticed that my mother and I do not look as other noblewomen in Minas Tirith do, and my brothers share our complexion. Only Elphir takes after Ada more, and he is still too...southern for many of the court's taste. It helps very little that his wife is the daughter of a merchant prince of Umbar and is darker than any of us."
"...they judge you on your skin?" Eowyn asks, the idea clearly dawning on her. "Bema above, what petty people!"
Lothiriel cannot help but laugh. "In part, but it is more than that. Pelargir is on the border of Harad, as close to the country as Osgiliath is to Minas Tirith. Most Gondorians from that region look as we do, but Minas Tirith is leagues away and so we are seen as...other."
Eowyn scowls at that. "And to think they call us the barbarians."
"You do not have a similar discrimination in your country?" Lothiriel asks, brow furrowed. She has seen many a Rohirric soldier in the past few days, and they have all been blonde or red-haired to a man, with the fair skin to match. No matter how much their years as farmers and warriors and horsemen have darkened their skin, it will never be as Naneth's is, nor like hers or Alycia's or any of her brothers. She is willing to believe that perhaps the more informal nature of Rohirric culture lends itself to less rigid social mores, but a lack of prejudice? In all of her reading, she has yet to find a culture free of it.
The other woman thinks for a moment before grimacing. "I suppose the Dunlendings would be similar, but they are little more than savages-"
"-which is exactly what many nobles would say about the Harad," Lothiriel interjects. "And since my mother's family hails from the nearest Gondorian city to Harad…"
A look of horror passes over Eowyn's face. "But your mother is one of the most proper ladies I've ever known!"
"She has had to be," Lothiriel admits. "My brothers get away with more, as men do, and because they are all charming and handsome to a fault, possible Harad blood or not."
Eowyn seems to sense what she's not saying. "And you?"
Lothiriel flashes her a helpless smile. "My unladylike temper had to come from somewhere, did it not? After all, a true Gondorian noble maid would never allow her mouth to run away with her, or to insult the king of Rohan to his face."
"She should if he deserved it, which he did," Eowyn retorts. "If anyone has barbaric manners, it's the ill-tempered oaf I call brother."
But the fondness is plain in Eowyn's voice, just as it is in Lothiriel's when she talks about her own brothers. They can only stand to make jokes like this now that a rider has been received, bearing a message for the Steward; Sauron has been defeated, and the armies of Men are marching home.
"Please, let us speak of other things," Lothiriel murmurs, setting her brush down on the table. Smiling slightly, she turns her head in Eowyn's direction. "Like what you plan on telling said ill-tempered brother about my cousin when he returns."
Eowyn swats her, a blush on her fair cheeks, and the matter of Harad and the Dunlendings is forgotten, for a time.
Author's Note: Talk about a bad first impression! Fret not, my lovelies, our duo will get more interaction in the next chapter, with hopefully better results.
(Also, Faramir is one of my favorite characters in the entire series, can't you tell?)