Notes: Thank you so much for all the lovely reviews...every time I get one I am reminded why I post. :-) Hopefully this story will just keep on building and building, and you'll never get tired of Faramir and his troubles, but we'll see how long we last. Just warning you, the story is going on 80,000 words now, so if you want to jump ship do so now! I realized my story is quite disproportionate in the amount of time I spend in the Houses of Healing and the amount of time I spend before the Houses, but I justify it by the fact that I personally would rather read about Faramir and Eowyn than about any other two people. Who wouldn't?
This may bore you, so feel free to skip to the story at this point if you want, but I thought I'd share with you all something that I thought was quite exciting. (And you're really the only people on earth who would understand.) I was writing a part about Faramir just the other day, and I must admit it's probably the most angsty part yet (don't worry--it's not for quite some time), and I realized as I wrote that I was getting very depressed. Why, I had no idea, until I stopped and took a shower, and as I stepped out and began towling off, I realized that (as I was only then beginning to feel better) I was feeling the emotions of my character. I hated writing that part, because Faramir hated going through that. It was incredible! If you've never experienced it, you'll think that was the stupidest thing ever, but it was quite exhilirating, actually. I'd never felt that way before--like I was Faramir.
So anyway, onward and upward. Enjoy Imrahil, Damla, and of course Faramir.
Chapter Seven: Lost
Damla never forgot how white Faramir looked against the sheets, nor how his eyes moved so quickly beneath closed eyelids. The sight of his half-opened mouth and shallow breathing, his twitching hands, and his sweat-soaked face remained burned into her mind until the day she died. Neither did she ever forget the feeling of despair as she saw her best efforts useless in the face of this horrible fever and wound.
The wound itself should not cause the fever, she told herself for the hundredth time. Why, why is his fever so bad? The arrow might indeed have been poisoned, but still it would not cause the ceaseless wandering that Faramir was enduring. Damla glanced out the window and shuddered at the sight of the ever-approaching darkness. That must be it—the arrow had come from the shadow and fear above.
Damla turned back to the bed and touched Faramir's hand gently. He jerked slightly, but his response was minimal. As the seconds passed he seemed to be slipping more and more into the world of shadow, away from the waking world. Imrahil had told her that Faramir had been conscious on the battlefield, and for a short time on the way back, but since he had arrived in the Houses he had not opened his eyes once, not even when she had dressed his wound. Now he lay, seeming so peaceful, but Damla knew his mind, which was so active in this world, was in even more agony in the world he walked in now.
"Oh Fama," she whispered, seating herself on the white sheets and touching his bandaged shoulder with a healer's care. "Has it really come to this?" Her mind refused to let her believe that this was the end, but deep in her heart she knew that all of this had been caused from some deep, inexplicable misunderstanding. Yet she simply could not wrap her mind around the fact that Denethor had truly wanted this. She bent closer to Faramir and touched his silent face. "Can you hear me, Fama? Please, if you love your people, and if you love me, please come back to us! I can heal your body, but I can do nothing for your mind, nor this darkness consuming you." Her voice broke as she finished, and she bent her head. "Perhaps that is not enough," she said slowly, watching a tear fall onto Faramir's cheek. How strange, she thought, that my tears should make him look so alive. And still I can do nothing.
There was a sudden, loud knock on the door, and Damla sprang up, wiping tears from her eyes. Her sorrow was soon gone, however, and replaced with a chill anger, for through the doors walked the Steward of Gondor, accompanied by four citadel guards. Damla was at once struck by the look in Denethor's eyes—it was sad, naturally, but there was something not quite right about the way his glance fell on the bed where his son lay. A sudden, deep mistrust came into Damla's mind.
"My Lord," she said softly, touching her forehead in respect. "You have come to see your son." She moved closer to the bed, setting herself between Faramir and his father.
"Faramir!" Denethor's voice was strangled in his throat, and he brushed past Damla to the bedside. He reached out a hand to touch his son, but it remained in the air, shaking visibly. "My son…" he murmured brokenly, "My son…"
Damla stared with wide eyes at the Steward, for she had never seen him so visibly shaken. She had the acute feeling that the Steward's very emotions were crumbling as he looked at the tortured state of his son. Denethor looked around wildly, then wiped his face with his hand. "How did this happen?" he asked hoarsely.
"How does you lordship suspect it happened?" Damla found herself saying, though never before had she been so bold and plainspoken. "He was wounded while out fighting to regain what was impossible to regain; he was struck down by a dart from a Nazgûl, no doubt, for else his fever and wandering cannot be explained."
Denethor turned with such force that Damla stepped back, realizing at once that no matter how different Denethor appeared, a part of his cold, calculated fierceness was still intact. His eyes narrowed and he searched Damla's face. Damla did not flinch. All her emotions were displayed on her face, for she had never been one to hide her feelings, but no emotion was more prevalent than her anger. Denethor saw it, and his eyes narrowed even more. Without turning away from her, he gestured to the men he had brought with him. "Take up the bier he lies upon," he said in a loud voice. "We will move him to my chambers."
Damla's eyes grew wide. With a cry of alarm, she sprang to move between the four guards and Faramir, lying still and pale on the bed. "Never!" she said. "He is ill, my lord!" Denethor turned away from her and walked to the window.
"Ignore her," he said. "She defies the Steward, and she defies her country."
"No!" Damla's cry was wrenched from her breast, all the emotions of helplessness and fear combining to convince her that now, finally, she could do something to help Faramir. "If he is ever to recover, my Lord, it will be here, under the care of healers and medicine. If you take him from this room his chances of survival diminish almost completely!" She gasped for breath and stared at the guards. "Stay if you wish, my Lord. Talk to your son and sit by him. But leave him here—for God's sake leave him in the hands of healers!"
Denethor turned with blazing eyes upon the brunette. He stood over six feet tall, and she was barely five feet, but as the guards looked at them, she seemed almost as tall as he, with her chin tilted up in defiance and anger. Denethor took a step towards her and his face turned to stone. "I will do what I wish," he said in a quiet, deadly voice. "He is my son, and you are a girl of no consequence. Who are you to defy me, the Steward of Gondor?"
"I am one who loves your son, as you must not," she said just as adamantly as he, and her heart grew brave. "I am one who cares about the man he was, and is, and not just the fact that the line of Stewards may very well end here. I stand here, next to your son who is slowly dying, perhaps, with the courage to say what needs to be said only because it has come to this at last. My deepest regret is that I did not have the courage to say this to you when it mattered, and when Faramir's life might have been spared. I say you cannot take your son, not now, not ever. You are the Steward, yes, but you are not worthy of your son now. Nor were you ever worthy!"
Damla's courageous and foolhardy words rang in the quiet room. She knew as her words died that nothing she could say would make the Steward change his mind—not with that look in his eyes. But she knew that someone had to say something, and if she did not try to save Faramir now, no one would. For a second the Steward and the girl stared at each other, and then Denethor stepped forward and slapped her across the face, hard. Damla's head snapped sideways and she reeled backward, clutching her face. As Denethor shoved past her, his shoulder threw her off balance and she fell against the bed; her head made a sickening thud as it hit the corner of the wooden frame, and she crumpled onto the ground, senseless.
There was silence in the room. On the bed, Faramir's breathing suddenly hitched and he gasped deeply; he soon subsided back into shallow breaths. Denethor stepped over Damla's still form and looked at his guards. "Take up the bier," he said in a emotionless voice. "We will bear my son to my chambers."
If another lash fell on his shoulders, Faramir would die. He knew he deserved the beating, but he had not thought his commanding officer had wanted this many lashes. His back was covered in blood, his head was covered in blood, his legs were covered in blood. In fact, everything he saw was covered in blood, right down to the sprig of blue flowers nodding at his feet. And the pain! He could no longer even feel his limbs for the fiery pain shooting through him.
Why does the last lash not come? Faramir thought through the haze of memories and flash-backs scattered across his brain. Why can't I die? What does he wait for?
When his sentence had been pronounced Faramir had thought that he could not have heard correctly. But the closer the time of the actual flogging came, the more he realized that he deserved death. He had, after all, committed open treason. He had let the prisoners go free, and now doom was upon them. He had practically sentenced his own men to death with his miserable strategies and battle plans, and he had openly rebelled against the Steward's authority. This punishment was just, alright.
But if only it would come! He waited, his breathing shallow and painful, for the final blow that would end it all—the lash that would send him reeling out of this world and into the next, freeing him from the pain and agony both emotionally and physically.
It did not come.
Suddenly, his shoulder began to throb, and he put a hand up to it. It came down sticky with blood, and he remembered the arrow. He had been struck down on the battlefield while fighting with his men, and his uncle had taken him back to the city. Was he in the city now? He moved his head to look about and the whipping post and blood melted away, replaced with a gray-black mist. Faramir could not find his way out of the mist, and he could feel absolutely no body. His mind, he realized with a jolt, must be completely removed from his body, wandering in this…this deadly place.
"Stop!" he cried out. "I must return! Gondor needs me, and I am not ready yet to give up my life!" He searched the darkness, trying with all his will power to make out a shape or pattern. "I was wrong," he whispered.
He felt himself falling, reeling into another delusion. He fought it, just as he knew his body must be fighting the fever raging in him, but the darkness was winning, and slowly, he returned to the world that seemed so real, but was so fake.
This time he was watching a young woman crying, and he thought it would break his heart to hear her sobs. She was thin and pale, but beautiful, with slender wrists and fingers clutching a soiled handkerchief. Her long hair, which had no doubt been bound atop her head earlier, tumbled down about her shoulders in a half-braid, and as Faramir looked closer, he realized that the girl was sitting in a bedroom, on a bed, and at her feet lay shards of glass. Faramir wondered if it was a simple bowl or vessel that had been broken, or if she was crying because the item that had fallen had been precious to her.
Suddenly, as if from a long way off, Faramir heard her voice coming to him, first in a long, thin wail, and then in intelligible words and sentences. She was speaking as if to someone, though as far as Faramir could tell she was the only one in the room. "Stop it!" she sobbed, "stop telling me these things! How is it possible? Oh, oh for my lost love! Who will be the husband of my heart now, and who will raise our children? All is lost, all is lost, all is lost, lost, lost…"
Faramir tried to stretch out his hand to comfort the woman, but his arm would not move. Instead, he began to speak. "Who is gone? Who is lost? Pray, tell me so that I might help you find him!"
She sobbed all the louder, shaking her head in her hands. "No!" she screamed, "No one can help now. Not even you—you who are to blame for all my misfortune!"
Faramir tried to shake his head in denial, but found he was completely unable to move. "I do not understand you," he began, "How am I to blame for—"
"You!" she cried hysterically, taking her head out of her hands, "you caused my husband's death! You, and you alone!" She lifted her head then, and Faramir's heart was pierced as he saw the face of Damla, bruised and tear-stained. She looked at him with such venom and hate that he could not stand it and tried to close his eyes. But those too would not move, and he stared at Damla longer and longer, until her hate and anger bored into his very heart and he could bear the pain no longer.
It was at that moment that he felt a sharp stab of pain in his shoulder, as if someone had thrust a knife into his flesh. He screamed in pain, and Damla, the bed, and the room faded from sight as the pain grew worse and worse, consuming his world. When he again opened his eyes he was in the mist again, and the pain of emptiness was worse than it had been last time.
"Please," he begged, searching the darkness for something, anything. "Please do not torment me with those that I love. Hurt me in any way possible, physically. But please, please don't make me see the suffering of my friends!"
The mist began closing in around Faramir's head again, and he let out another agonized yell. "Father!" he cried, and the mist paused for a moment, as if by that one word and the emotion behind it he had overcome the darkness somewhat. Suddenly, almost too fast the realize it, Faramir felt his body, and he was lying on something rough that bit into his back and shoulders. His shoulder throbbed with pain, but he was so glad to be away from the darkness of the mist that he didn't care. He felt weak—weak beyond anything he had ever felt before, but he knew he was lucid. If only he had the strength to open his eyes! He was suddenly aware that he was covered in something sticky and heavy, and there was a strange smell about the stuff he lay on. Everything was so muddled and confused he could hardly make any sense out of it; but suddenly he heard his father's voice beside him. He could not make out any words, but at the sound his heart gave a great leap, and he knew that his father had come to see him and care for him.
Suddenly, he felt something hot touch his skin. Something warm and suffocating was covering his mouth, and he wanted to scream at the lick of pain along his arm and chest. What was it? He began to panic—if only he could open his eyes and see what was happening; if only he could move out of the way of this pain! Where had his father gone? Why was it so warm?
This must be another hallucination, he thought, trying to breath normally, for his breath came in irregular gasps. But why does this one feel so real? He asked himself. Then, just when he thought the pain could not increase, what with the throbbing in his shoulder and the heat filling his body, he felt a pair of hands pushing on his side, and his nerves stood on end in a rush of agony. He was pushed onto his wounded shoulder, over something higher than what he had been lying on, and then he felt himself falling.
He hit the ground with a thud that sent him reeling out of his senses for a moment, only to become once more acutely aware of the stench and pain and horror of this nightmare that seemed so real. And suddenly he found that he had the strength to open his eyelids. Little by little he managed to open them, and as his efforts grew, he saw before him, swimming in a sea of red, a pyre with smoke and fire billowing from it. His father, the Steward of Gondor, lay on top, looking straight at him, and as their eyes met the Steward's mouth opened. "Faramir," he said, and then his gaze shifted and he screamed.
Faramir sank back into oblivion, but this time all he could see were red flames licking up his body. He screamed, again and again, but no one could hear him or help him. He was lost.
"Please miss, you must go lie down," Kitha said quietly. "You need to rest and regain your strength after that fall. We will need you greatly in the next few days."
Damla shook her head silently, continuing to hold the wet cloth to her head, where the blood had now been wiped away. She sat upright in the chair, watching the bed where Faramir once more lay. Kitha looked silently at Imrahil, who shrugged. Kitha turned away with a sigh and took up a bottle holding some salve. Of this she poured a quantity onto her hand and began to ease some onto the angry red burn marks covering Faramir's arm and part of his chest. Imrahil stepped up to her and beckoned her to follow him to the door.
"What happened?" he asked, gesturing with his head into the room. Kitha looked back at Damla and shook her own head. "I do not know, my Lord," she whispered. "No one does. All I know is that the Lord Denethor came to fetch Faramir, and when he left and we entered the room, she was lying on the floor, her head bleeding. I—I assume she fell," she finished, looking down.
Imrahil swore under his breath. "Very well," he said. He returned to the bedside, lost in thought for a moment as he looked down at Faramir. Ever since they had brought him back to the Houses he had not stirred or given any sign of life, except his constant, shallow breathing. Even that was growing dimmer, as if Faramir was simply fading away before their eyes. Imrahil put out a hand and touched the skin just beneath a burn on Faramir's shoulder, hoping that the contact would, just this once, warrant some reaction and bring his nephew back to him once more. But, just as he knew it would, the touch did nothing, and Faramir did not move.
"How…" Imrahil looked away from the bed and swallowed, then looked back. "How do you think he…" he trailed off and shook his head.
Kitha glanced at Damla and back to Imrahil and bit her lip. Using her most soothing tone, she said, "He seems to be slipping farther and farther away, my Lord. Nothing we can do is helping him. I fear he…anyway, at least he doesn't seem to be in much pain," she finished gently, unaware of just how wrong her words were.
Imrahil nodded silently. "Do you think," he began in a throaty voice, gesturing to the thin marks on Faramir's skin where the fire had licked him, "that this has anything to do with…it?"
Kitha shrugged. "It—it cannot have been very good for him, my Lord," she said quietly. "But he was slipping away from us before that, too."
Imrahil suddenly put a hand up to his face and pressed it there, hard. "I'm sorry, my Lord," Kitha said with a break in her voice, "I should not have said—"
"You are honest with me," Imrahil interrupted, not looking up. "That is what I want." There was silence for a moment, and then Imrahil said, "If there is nothing else you can do for him, you may go tend to others that need it more." The words were harder to say than he thought they would be, but Kitha nodded.
"Very good, my Lord." She curtseyed and left the room without a backward glance. Imrahil stood, undecidedly, next to the bed, staring at his nephew. Then he took up a cloth and wrung out the excess water. He glanced back at Damla, who had not moved from her vigilant spot and smiled thinly. "Do you mind if I talk to him?" he asked, and Damla shook her head. Imrahil turned back to look at his nephew.
"I suppose you can't hear me, Fama," he said softly, wiping his nephew's drenched brow, "But if you can, perhaps you will find my words soothing. I cannot fix my actions now, Fama, but I can beg your forgiveness for them. Was there ever anyone in your life who does not have a burden on their soul to beg your forgiveness? Why were you so easy to hurt—so loving and caring, and yet so vulnerable? You of all people were the most giving, and the most honorable, yet even the most giving cannot keep on giving if all people do is take from them."
Imrahil paused and laughed softly. "At a time like this, all I can remember is the time you came to visit me, on the shore, and your first glance of the ocean was monumental to you, a small boy. You looked up at me with those big, green eyes of yours and said, 'Uncle, why does the sea swallow the sun? It must hurt very much.'" Imrahil shook his head and wiped his eyes. "I can still remember that, after all these years. You were such a curious child, Faramir. And you grew into such a strong, wise man. I was so surprised at your wisdom, when I saw you grown. I remember sitting in counsel, listening to you give your report, and I thought I understood why Denethor was so proud of his sons. He was proud of you Fama, but he wanted more. He needed someone to give and give, for he was not capable of giving himself. He found that person in you.
"Did you ever have a moment to yourself? Did you ever eat for yourself, or sleep for your own wishes? Even when you were not at Denethor's disposal, there was Boromir and his wishes. You loved him so much, but your love blinded you to the way he sucked life out of you, too. You gave so freely, Fama."
Imrahil stopped, and on the bed Faramir's lips moved, then stopped. "I knew you were lonely, Fama, and unhappy. And I as much as anyone should be blamed for allowing you to continue your life, filled with so much loss, and loneliness, and giving. I don't know how I could have helped you, Faramir, but I should have found a way. I should have tried harder. And now…now I can do nothing but watch you die, and you will never know the depth of anyone's love for you." Imrahil bowed his head and rubbed his forehead, in between his eyes. There had been a piercing ache there ever since he had found Faramir on the battlefield. With a sigh, he stood from where he had seated himself on the bed and laid the cloth on the bedside table. "I cannot stand this anymore," he muttered. "If there is truly no help, fine, but I cannot yet believe that. Not until I try to find someone who can heal you." With that, he strode out of the room.
The room was completely silent. Damla's breathing was scarcely louder than Faramir's, and other than the occasional cry echoing through the walls from elsewhere, the room was completely quiet. Faramir's face flinched, once, but after that he made no more movement. Eventually Damla stood, softly, and laid down her wet cloth. She crossed to the bed and stared down at Faramir silently. All her words had been spent; her actions had failed. She knelt by the bed and took Faramir's hand in hers, then pressed her forehead to it. For a long, silent moment nothing happened, and then she burst into tears. Her sobs were choking and deep, and they seemed louder than they really were in the silence of the room.
And still, Faramir did not wake, but continued his slow descent toward death.
Notes: This chapter is one of my personal favorites, just because of the way it always makes me hold my breath when I get to the part where Faramir isn't dreaming and thinks he is, and then falls from the pyre--I can just imagine the sickening thud and the pain. Man, I like that part. Is it wrong to like your own work this much?
Review below...