Faramir Fiction Archive

Lust for possession (R)

Written by Anastasiya

18 April 2010 | 3838 words

The next day was tense. Faramir left Minas Tirith heading for Osgiliath and Aragorn restlessly rushed about the palace burning with impatience to talk to him, to beg for forgiveness. To do anything to see his Steward looking at him with such esteem and affection he looked at him earlier with again. However Faramir was absented all day and when he appeared in a town in the evening Éowyn, his wife, was with him.

The Ball was dazing. Ladies, dressed in expensive festive attire, sparkled with smiled and jewels while their cavaliers flied about trying to oblige.

Faramir with Éowyn approached the throne of the King.

“You Majesty,” said Faramir quietly as he lowered his head. Aragorn tried to catch his gaze but the Steward carefully avoided it. And all that stayed to do for Aragorn was to bow graciously his head in a silent greeting to the piercing look of Éowyn.

Aragorn was sitting at the head of a table wordlessly observing his courts who were joyfully talking to one another. Arwen was at his left hand but he didn’t notice the troubled looks that she periodically shot towards his direction. His own gaze constantly settled on an empty place at his right – the place of Gondor’s Steward. But Faramir was not there. In the morning after the ball, he had asked to go to Ithilien and Aragorn had found no reasons to refuse him in presence of his court. “In vain,” Aragorn thought, trying not to notice a weight that suddenly squeezed his chest, “you should delay him at any price. You are King.”

But now it was too late for anything to change and he dart a blank look at a guard that appeared in the door. The guard spoke something to livery and the last one quickly made his way to the King.

“Your Majesty,” he started quietly as he bowed, “her Highness the Princess of Ithilien sent a courier with a message that their troop was assaulted by bandits. His Highness Lord Faramir was seriously wounded.”

To say that Aragorn felt terrible in this moment meant to say nothing. He felt as if his entire world had suddenly turned over. He felt like all his life rolled down. And he didn’t need anyone else word anymore. All that he knew was that ‘Faramir was wounded. Heavily wounded’ and he was guilty of it. He felt, he knew, he should have prevented it.

With one sudden motion he stood up from the table not noticing as a dead silence fell in the hall and left. Arwen stood too and saying something tender to the courts headed for her husband.

“Estel, where are you going?”

“There,” he said but then turned around darting guilty look at her, “I’m so sorry, my love, but I have to be there.”

Arwen took his hand and gently squeezed it. “Then ride. Ride and May the Valar help you, my love.”

There he was laying, unmoved and unreceptive to the outer world, when Aragorn entered into the tent. Éowyn was silently crying, holding a hand of her husband.

“Éowyn,” Aragorn froze at the entry, feeling how painfully his heart squeezed from the sight of motionless body. “Tell me that he is not dead.”

“He is not dead,” Éowyn whispered through the tears, “but he is dying.” And she sobbed then loudly and hopelessly, leaning her head over Faramir’s chest. “What will come of us?”

Aragorn walked around bed and knelt, touching a brow of the young man with his hand. He was cold. So cold, that Aragorn felt as if a chilled wave of death passing through him. Life was leaving Faramir.

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