The Haunting of Faramir by Raiyana

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The Haunting of Faramir

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"He is here, Prince Imrahil," Ioreth said gently, picking her way between beds filled with the slowly dying. 

Imrahil swallowed his first response, abject denial that this should be the fate of Finduilas's last child, wasting away in darkness and bitter wrought breaths that rattled in his chest. 

"Faramir…" 

He reached out, seeing an echo of his own hand shifting a long dark lock off Faramir's brow. The hand trembled almost not at all, a familiar scar curving around its sun-burnished palm, flicking whip-like at the wrist. 

Imrahil closed his eyes. 

In his mind, the hand withdrew slowly, clenching around the pommel of a sword he knew better than most, wide shoulders bowed beneath a grey cloak he did not. Dark hair, so similar to his own, trailed across the fabric, unbound and dull with travel dust. 

"What is being done for him?" he snapped, hoping to banish the sad spectre. 

For the weary traveller grieving at the deathbed of his brother was not truly there. 

And never would be again. 

Grief choked him, a harsh breath trapped in his chest; there was no time now, for mourning, and yet… 

Boromir's face turned to him, his expression too young and desperate for the commander who had set off on Denethor's orders so long ago, the man who was used to the perils of war and the terror of loss. It was the expression of the young boy who wanted his mother back, wanted Imrahil to save him, drag his mother back to health by his presence alone. Denethor had not, and if Faramir was the scholar between them still Boromir had been the first of them to devour tales of the powerful Line of Dol Amroth and believe them. 

Belief that had not saved Finduilas from the darkness of her tomb. 

Belief that had grown bitter with time and the reality that even Prince Imrahil was just a man, yet still wanted some sort of reward of his faith. 

Wanted him to save Faramir, now. 

"We have tried much to combat the Black Breath," Ioreth offered, her tone cool but not offended by anything but the failure of her craft he saw in the beds around him. "But we have found no remedy among our stores of efficacy, my lord." She sighed, leaning down to wipe the sweat-soaked brow of another fallen warrior. "I have seen nothing like it in all my years in the Halls." 

"He's… there is no hope, then?" Imrahil prayed there would be even as he knew there would not, this healer's head shake as much a death knell as the one who had left him to say his final farewell to his sister so many years ago. He squared his shoulders, forcing away the memories of his sister's dark eyes in her sunken gaunt face, and the look of abject betrayal in young Boromir's. 

"I… 'if there is life, there is hope' , master Daeris said," Ioreth replied but he saw the truth in her eyes, her gaze as bleak as the guard who had directed him to the Hall of Rest. 

Denethor dead, Boromir also, and now Faramir would never again tease Erchirion with a well-worded argument that sparked hours of fervent discussion and research or laugh when Amrothos recited a new bawdy song.

Imrahil nodded to her, forgetting for a moment that the young man wasn't really there as he tried to offer the same consoling hand on the shoulder that had been so harshly rebuffed once. 

But Boromir's shoulder wasn't there to squeeze. 

"I must go, Mistress," Imrahil said, covering up his near stumble. "Let me know if there is any change… just… let me know." 

The way she bowed to him, respectful and kind, made him want to scream against the unfairness of it all. 

If only Denethor had sent for him. 

Glaring at the wizard Mithrandir, Imrahil stewed in a helpless anger – had the wizard truly been powerless to stop the pyre, or had he meant all along to hasten the end of the Line of Stewards? He paid little mind to Faramir, bent over a different bed, and gone was the kindly mentor of Faramir's letters years before, leaving only the hardened chess-master before him. 

The Kingmaker. 

And then Aragorn himself entered the room, and Imrahil froze on his way out. 

This man – Thorongil – would claim the King's crown, taking the sceptre from the Stewards and even if Denethor could no longer oppose it, Imrahil would not abandon his last child to a dagger in the dark even if it might be a kindness to spare Faramir the agony of languishing in the arms of waiting death. 

"Aragorn," he greeted, voice as calm and dignified as he could make it, drawing on decades of experience from the court. 

 

Later, he would marvel at what had been wrought that day, remember the gentle hands of the King as he spoke, calling back those for whom there had been no hope, but as Aragorn worked, Imrahil could only watch, bearing witness where Denethor could not. 

"The hands of the King are the hands of a healer," Ioreth breathed beside him, an air of ancient prophecy about her that looked strange on the no-nonsense healer. 

And Imrahil knew himself a supporter in that moment, watching Faramir's eyes open, directed at the face of the ghost lingering by his side, a soft sorrowful smile on his face. He murmured something, asleep in the next moment, and Imrahil shivered beneath his armour. 

You need not wait to guide me on now, Brother. 

The soul of his nephew rose, his eyes now fixed on Imrahil himself, a question burning in his eyes. 

Looking at Boromir, Imrahil offered a solemn nod, his geas accepted. He would see safe the people Boromir had loved as best he might. 

"A dark day for the White Tower, indeed," Imrahil muttered to himself. "But not yet for Gondor, this I swear." 

He had work to do.