Faramir Fiction Archive

Memory and Time (R)

Written by Mira Took

21 December 2012 | 2754 words | Work in Progress

Title: Memory and Time
Author: Mira Took
Pairing: Faramir/Aragorn
Rating: R
Summary: Aragorn struggles to help a suffering Faramir; h/c, post-Ring War with flashbacks.
Disclaimer: The characters and legendarium are Professor Tolkien’s. I have no permissions and make no profits.
Warnings: Bad parenting. Do not do this at home.
Notes: I have adjusted the canon timeline: Steward Ecthelion II dies when Faramir is three years old, rather than a year old. Aragorn remains in Gondor as Thorongil until that time. I have also made a slight deviation from the request: Aragorn helps right after Faramir’s birth, rather than with it. All other discrepancies are unintentional.

Written for the 2011 Midwinter Swap. With profound apologies to the requester for the continued delay.

Request by LN Tora: Either one of the following: Aragorn/Faramir: Aragorn helped with the birth of Faramir and stayed until he was three, thinking he was in good hands with his family. After taking the crown he discovers just how wrong he was. Double hurt/comfort: Aragorn helping Faramir heal from Denethor’s abuse, and Faramir helping Aragorn with his self perceived guilt. The abuse can contain a sexual element, or not if the writer is uncomfortable with it. Requires: Ara/Fara pairing, and happy ending. Angst along the way encouraged.
Boromir/Faramir: Post RotK, Boromir!lives. Surviving the Ring War, Boromir slowly discovers Denethor’s mistreatment of Faramir was far worse than he suspected as he tries to cope with Faramir’s emerging PTSD. Negotiable: (regarding incest) While I’d like to see Boromir as the main character to help Faramir, he doesn’t have to be the one Faramir winds up with, so long as the other party is still male. Requires: Happy ending, slash pairing, road to recovery.

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Cries

“Captain, the steward calls for you. The child is crying out in his sleep.” The servant peering around the door to wake Thorongil was a familiar face in the barracks. He was nominally a footman waiting upon the Lady Finduilas, but he had trained as a swordsman and his particular charge was keeping an eye on the lady’s safety and that of her young sons: eight-year-old Boromir and three-year-old Faramir.

Thorongil released the hilt of the dagger he had reached for when the door began to open, swept his blanket aside, and pulled on his boots. He had slept in his second-best uniform, ready for travel, and it was necessary only for him to pick up the small satchel from beside the bed before following the servant out the door.

“Lord King, the steward calls for you. He is crying out in his sleep.” The servant was unfamiliar, but the summons was so close to the memory he had been lost in that Elessar took a moment to look up from the last embers of his evening fire and answer.

“Prince Faramir? Has he taken ill, do you mean?”

“I couldn’t say, lord. He shouted loudly enough to be heard in the corridor, and when the lass doing her night’s work ventured to see if he was wanting anything, she found him … well, moaning is what she said. She came running for me — I’m in charge of the under-servants for this wing, lord — and I went to the steward’s rooms. He’s asleep, sure enough, but he’s not resting easy and he keeps calling.”

“For me?” asked the king, who had risen from his comfortable chair to pull on a pair of boots and gather up a few things into a satchel.

“Well, lord, if you’ll pardon me, the name he says is ‘Aragorn.’” The man shifted uneasily, as if he might be taking a liberty by knowing that this was the king’s given name. “We tried but couldn’t rouse him, so I left the lass with him and came to you instead of the healers. I hope I did right, lord.”

“You did, thank you,” the king returned, taking a moment to direct a smile of gratitude at him. The servant straightened his shoulders and stood tall. In the days afterward, Pelham the footman would never allow a word of criticism of his king to be uttered in his hearing without offering to take the speaker outside for some of the homebrewed.

As king and servant approached the steward’s rooms, they could see a young girl leaning half out of the doorway, looking rather forlornly at an abandoned mop and bucket in the corridor. She came out as they drew near, dropping a curtsy, and then looked back and forth from one figure of authority to another. Elessar nodded in response to her salute, but moved immediately toward the door, so Pelham said “get on with your work, then,” and took up his own position hovering at the threshold.

Pelham much preferred the corridor and the maid her mop, because the scene in the steward’s chamber was distressing. The bed curtains had been drawn back, perhaps by the servants, so that the suffering figure on the bed could be seen at once. The Prince Faramir lay on his back, shivering violently and keening under his breath, with his eyes wide open and staring sightlessly at the canopy above him. As the king came to his bedside, Faramir seemed to seize up as though in pain. As the tension left him again, he moaned, “Aragorn.”

“I am here,” Aragorn said. He knelt beside the bed, so that he could lean his long frame against it and reach out with both hands to cradle the younger man’s head. “I am here with you, dearest Faramir.”

Faramir’s eyes still stared without seeing, but the shivering and moaning gradually began to fade away. Aragorn remained still, holding on and stroking one thumb ever so slightly against Faramir’s temple. After a while, he spoke, “Faramir … Faramir.”

Faramir’s body relaxed against the pillows and his eyes closed. Aragorn waited another moment before saying again, “Faramir.”

This time when Faramir’s eyes opened they held real, if somewhat bewildered, awareness.

“My king.” Not a greeting, just a half-asleep acknowledgement of who was before him.

“My prince.” This said smiling.

It was rather a joke of theirs, started in the days just after Elessar’s coronation when both had been learning to respond to their new titles. Elessar had called Faramir “my prince” once, and Faramir had objected on the grounds that it sounded as though Elessar was acknowledging allegiance, as when Faramir himself used the words “my king.” Elessar had pointed out, with solemn mien but a glint in his eye, that he had bestowed the title on his steward and so it was only fair that he be allowed to use it. His steward, equally straight-faced but with an undoubted glint, had pointed out that in that case he needs must address his lord as “your most high and excellent majesty” — a title Faramir proposed to bestow on him forthwith — since Faramir had not given Elessar his plain title of king and so in fairness could not use it. At which point the quiet joke had turned into something more serious, as the king told his prince that Faramir had indeed bestowed his title and his kingship upon him, the moment Faramir woke to see Aragorn before him. Faramir had smiled and lowered his eyes and they had not spoken of it further, but there remained something of that laughter and that seriousness between them when they addressed each other thus.

“Lord?” asked Faramir, shifting onto his side as Aragorn moved back a little from the bedside. “Did you need me? Is something wrong?”

“A personal matter,” said Aragorn slowly. “Come and sit by the fire, while I send away the good servant waiting outside.”

He did so and turned back to find Faramir had seated himself on the footstool near the hearth, leaving the armchair for Aragorn. There were other chairs in the room, but the arrangement struck neither man as unusual, though it was only Aragorn who remembered sitting before the fire with Faramir this way. The king sat now, half facing his prince, half facing the fire, and asked, “Faramir, what do you remember of the place the Nazgûl sent you? The place where I found you?”

Remedies

When the baby reached his sixth month, he was strong enough for the healers to be more assured of his survival. Every one of them knew that little Faramir’s continued health was solely due to the efforts of his grandfather’s favorite captain. When the infant, then only weeks old, had first begun to ail, Thorongil had begged leave to try some Northern remedy he had been taught. The learned healers had been suspicious of the captain’s ability, but the results had borne out his modest claims. The captain had continued the treatment over the following months, spending an hour or two each evening with the steward’s youngest grandson.

At first, the captain had been accompanied on these visits, so someone might study the cure, but that had ended after it became apparent that Thorongil’s work was efficacious. In truth, the young healer-in-training assigned to observe the new methods had been rather bored by them; Herion’s proposed specialty was in brewing and mixing herbal medicines. While Captain Thorongil did indeed make use of an herb, what he did with it could hardly be termed medical. He simply immersed the weedy flower in warm water, as ladies did with lavender, to soak the cloths he used to soothe the baby. As to the rest, all the captain seemed to do was touch the child, with his sure, steady hands moving and pressing in regular patterns. The young herbalist soon lost interest and spent the time reviewing his notes for his tutor, which now and again he and the captain would discuss after the baby was asleep. Thorongil was knowledgeable about plants and herbs, for a solider, and he had some very sensible things to say about the importance of harkening to one’s patients’ individual needs that somehow never came up in tutorials. Many of the ill of Minas Tirith had cause to be thankful for these quiet talks, when Herion became himself the master tutor of healers in the Houses.

Little Faramir’s parents never came when he was receiving his healing. Denethor, who thoroughly detested Captain Thorongil and hated to be beholden to him, was only too pleased to let the healers and the nurses do the job of supervising. He was careful, too, to keep his delicate wife away, lest the foreign captain say something upsetting about the baby’s condition. It was bad enough that Finduilas had had to stay abed for weeks before the birth, worse that the baby when it came had been a puny, red, wrinkled thing, as unlike plump, bawling Boromir as one babe could be from another. The final insult was that the miserable creature was awakened at night with these unexplained fits, frightening his mother and puzzling even the most experienced nursemaid. At first, everyone had said colic but then the diets and remedies for that had done no good. Next they had suspected some trouble of the mind or senses, but the baby had responded excellently to all the tests devised by healers for such a young infant. He was not colicky, nor blind, nor deaf, nor without the proper reflexes, nor inclined toward palsy in the limbs. He was not sickened by any substance except baked pears, which his elder brother had also rejected in no uncertain way upon first being introduced to solid food. Nothing was wrong with Faramir except his terrible, unsoothable hysterics in the night. Yes, Denethor was only too pleased to leave the healers, and the nurses, and the detested Captain Thorongil to deal with the problem. He was all fatherly solicitude in public and before the baby’s keepers, as befitted the steward’s heir, but he kept himself and his lady away.

So it came that more and more Captain Thorongil was left alone with the child. The nursemaid was always happy at the chance to snatch some rest or a word with the night servants, among whom she had a particular admirer. The nice captain never minded and would spent at least an hour with the dear baby anyway. She could slip out with an easy mind, leaving little Faramir asleep on the captain’s lap as they sat before the hearth.

The king sat now, half facing his prince, half facing the fire, and asked, “Faramir, what do you remember of the place the Nazgûl sent you? The place where I found you?”
Faramir stared at the fire. “I try not to think of it, my king.” he replied honestly. “I remember being cold, bitterly cold, as though I stood naked in a winter wind. And I remember — voices. Telling me things. I am not certain what they said. It was all mixed together: the cold, the voices, the pain. I think I could feel the words against my skin, leeching away warmth, and hear the cold, roaring in my ears. — Forgive me. I know that doesn’t make any sense.’

‘I remember the cold, too, for I felt it against my own spirit as I sought for you in the dark.’ Aragorn turned slightly to watch Faramir’s averted face. ‘Do you remember what you saw in that place?’

Faramir’s brow furrowed in puzzlement and he looked up to meet Aragorn’s gaze. ‘No, my king, what was it?’

‘I asked because I do not know. My only concern at the time was to draw you back to the waking world. But now I wonder if there were a greater injury than your wounds or even the corruption of the Nazgûl.’

‘My king?’

‘You were crying out in your sleep this night, Faramir, in the grip of some evil dream.’

Faramir looked away again.

‘Do you remember what you were dreaming?’

‘No, lord, I am sorry. Only that it was not my wave dream, that is, a dream I have had often before. I remember those vividly. But I rarely recall my other dreams upon waking.’

‘I think this was a dream that had meaning, Faramir. One that will haunt your sleep if you do not discover its purport.’ Aragorn hesitated to go on. It was difficult at this moment to be Faramir’s king as well as his healer. He doubted the younger man would think to deny him any request, however unwelcome. It was hardly fair to ask anything of him. Yet to have the certain means to alleviate Faramir’s suffering and not to use them —

‘How can that be done, my king?’ Faramir’s tone made it clear he expected Aragorn to know the solution. ‘Is the treatment very unpleasant? For you look as though you fear I will balk at it.’

‘Not balk, my prince. But you may do well to consider whether the remedy is better than the disease. You were in some distress when I came in, and I believe this will continue or grow worse if the meaning of your dream is not addressed. But the only way I know to do so, since you cannot recall the dream yourself, is for me to share it with you and so draw it out into your waking mind.’

‘Will that be dangerous to you? If I am in such distress and then you share it?’

‘No, my de- my prince,’ Aragorn smiled a little at Faramir’s protectiveness. ‘I was taught by my foster father Elrond the proper way to enter another’s dreams. The danger is rather that I will be seeing more than you would wish me to, beyond the single dream and behind it to all the images and associations that your mind uses to create your dreaming world. There is no way to avoid that, for without such moorings the visions come adrift and loose coherence. I would not seek out your private thoughts, but I would assuredly come across them.’

Faramir again looked Aragorn in the eyes. ‘My king, I think that no man can say his inmost thoughts are fit to be seen by another. But since you offer this remedy, I willingly give you leave to carry it out.’

‘Then look into the fire, Faramir. Sit thus,’ Here Aragorn placed his hands gently on the younger man’s shoulders and turned him so that his face was toward the hearth and his back almost against Aragorn’s knees. ‘And breathe deeply. Look into the fire, Faramir, and let your eyes rest on its light…’

To be continued…

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