"Washed Away" by Alma Heart

[almaheart.livejournal.com]

B2MeM Challenge: I18 Grief, Emotions Card.  Arrow wound, Injuries.
Format: short story
Genre: angst, h/c
Rating: PG
Warnings: reflections on death, drowning islands
Characters: Faramir, Finduilas, Eowyn, Boromir, Denethor,
Pairings: Faramir/Eowyn
Summary: And again he dreams of the great wave.  But this time is not the same.

The dark sea rose to its awful height before the fields of Numenor. He struggled to catch his breath, muscles burning as if he had been sprinting. Strange that this path long drowned beneath the ocean seemed so familiar to him. As he watched the Valar’s wrath bear down on the trembling land all around him, Faramir realized this was time was different. They were gone. He stood here on the brink, at long, long last, and for the first time he stood utterly alone.

Boromir had disappeared on the hillside somewhere below, and the steady grip that had dragged Faramir up this slope had loosened without his realizing, as if it had only been a mere memory in the first place. Now it fell away completely, like water or blood slipping from his wrist to join the ebbing tide, seeping out into the horrendous might of failure and finality that sought to crush them all. The pain of loss was a sudden thing, fierce and cruel, as if the arrows trembling in the forest litter an ocean away had struck his body, tearing him and tearing his brother away.

He could not breathe in thundering silence, and it may have been air or water or blood in his throat.

Faramir raised his eyes to the darkening sky. Something cruel bent in his heart as he bit down on the tears; what was the point of weeping when this great hatred of water was about to wipe all away? In the dim recesses of his memory there were clouds there instead, a dawnless day cast down over the land. But here it was a devouring ocean reared high in the air over them all, to crash and to destroy. The shadow washed over him with drowning surety, and there was nothing to do but wait.

Ever in this dream they ran to Father. Father called them to this summit. But now Faramir could not turn to search for him, held transfixed by the doom of his kind. Regardless, there was no need; he knew what he would see. He had been here too many times since shadows had deepened, seen despair in dark eyes as darkness swallowed the sun, and watched his father crumble to ash even as he reached for him, blown away in the wind. Unable to cope, unable to stand, leaving Faramir standing alone, with naught but dust sifting between his fingers to the earth.

They were gone. Both of them.

The roar of the sea crashed like thunder in his ears.

Something defiant, like rage, surged in his veins, even as stinging tears blurred the memory of them disappearing beneath the weight of the shadowy sea.

“You gave up? You gave up and died!?” His angry words drowned in the wave, hurled uselessly into the din. “You could not stand it, and so you left me to fight it, on my own!?” Rage twisted into something deeper, his words breaking in a desperate gasp. “How could you!?”

Every so often the wave’s thunder and the wind’s howling would let gasped snippets of cries surface from the doomed cities below him. The branches of the gnarled white tree at Faramir’s back creaked and groaned as they whipped in the fierce wind. With a sound like a thunder crack a branch snapped and was hurled to the ground with a clattering cry.

The wind swallowed his words. “How could you…?”

The tears trailed down his cheeks now, and he could no more stop them he could stop the wave, than he could save his land, than he could stop them slipping through his fingers. Borne down by the weight of the shadows, Faramir sank to his knees amid the doomed stones of Numenor.

The sea spray fell like driving rain, soaking him to the skin, leaving him shivering. Faramir raised his eyes to Ulmo’s final wrath, saltwater streaming down over tear-trails. Ever he had been struck with wonder and fear to see it engulf the sun and plunge all he loved into its endless shadow, leaving him naught but to wait until it came for him, too. But now fear drained away into the deepening darkness with his anger, swallowed like all memory of the land that bore him now.

“Why spare me…? Why me and not them?”

The wave crashed down over Numenor.

Why did you not take me, too…?

It tore the very land from beneath him, knocking any breath from his lungs and filling them with choking, crushing silence. The world reeled in shattering glimpses of black and blue, he could not breathe, helpless in the current. His throat burned, he choked, cried out but made no sound.

Darkness, cold, familiar darkness deep enough to end all things, and he thought maybe he, too, longed to end, to pass to that other side, where his dear ones would be.

The wind blew softly against his skin, smelling of salt. Water thundered nearby, but gently now, sleepily, the reassuring sound of waves on shore, the sound that his mother had so adored. Dried salt made his hair scratchy against his face, and Faramir cracked open his eyes, confused. The sky was vividly, blindingly blue above him, stretching out forever into the sea.

Blearily, he sat up, shedding sand grains as he moved. A beach stretched out around him, sloping gently to the ocean’s edge. He sat just beyond the breaker’s reaching edges, the foam lapping at his toes.

The restless sea brushed something onto the beach at his feet, leaving it there in the sand. Something in his heart shuddered in instinctive recognition of the small blossom dancing in the gentle breeze, cradled by a single sprig of white wood.

Faramir took it in his hands, cradling this last remnant of the sunken lands. His gaze turned to the sea. When he touched the white bark of the tree, he gasped, his mind’s eye full of her granddaughter in the courtyard of his city bedecked in flowers, sending down the roots that had held onto the stones of the old world and now entwined with the new, reaching into the fresh earth, exalting in freedom of the great shadow that had loomed over all so long.

Sitting there, covered in the salt and spray that had taken and given him life, clutching a tiny, water-tossed twig, another bout of tears threatened to overcome him. Faramir scrubbed them away, only to get sand in his eyes and draw more.

He chuckled shakily. Boromir would laugh if only…

His heart clenched, the thought lurching to a stop. Faramir bit his lip. But you did not make it. I am here safe, and you are both lost beneath the sea. Something small and hurt in him twisted again. WHY?

The spray caught the breeze in a sudden gust, misting across his sand-scored face. Faramir closed his eyes, letting the cool touch soothe his irritated skin.

And then it seemed to him the mist became hands, forms around him, so near that he could feel their closeness. Someone sat shoulder against his shoulder, arm around him firmly, holding him close to armor and hauberk. Faramir’s breath caught in his throat. His heart ached for him to open his eyes, but he dared not for fear he would be gone. Then other fingers brushed his arm, thinner than the first, weakened with age and grief, but now stronger than he ever remembered them.

He could not stop his tears now. But, as never may have happened in life, neither phantom deserted him when he wept. Instead the sense of nearness magnified, as if they were settling around him, pulling him closer.

Yet they were silent, no matter how much he longed to hear their voices, and now that he had so much to say his throat choked and he had no words. He wanted to ask why, to say sorry, to say goodbye, even, but he could only sob softly and bury his head against strong shoulders.

Then a small, gentle hand cupped his cheek, thumb brushing away the tear trails. A voice whispered on the breeze. “There, there, my son.”

The shock at hearing her after so long brought Faramir’s eyes open with a soft gasp, all fear forgotten in the instant of mixed shock and child-born joy at the sound of her voice. His sight was smudged with tears, but he still could make out sparkling grey eyes, a cloud of sun-lit curls around her bright, gentle smile.

The sea sang, and Finduilas smiled down at him. She brushed the bangs back from his face in a brief, tender caress before reaching to the blossom he still clutched in trembling hands.

Gently twining her fingers with his, his mother pressed the flower to his heart. Faramir strained to hear her whisper over the waves, and the trembling heartbeat in his ears. “Plant it anew, Faramir, and that which was lost will live on forever.”

A brief, confused moment of overwhelming warmth, wrapped in a tight embrace until he knew not where he ended and they began. Then of a sudden there was naught but him, the sea, and the flower cradled to his breast, beaded with his tears.

The sunlight blinded him when first he opened his eyes, and for a moment Faramir still heard the low rumble of waves on the sand, singing of all the ages of hope and pain. It was only when, blinking, he brought the familiar patterns of his chambers into focus that the sound faded.

Sunlight streamed brilliantly through the eastern window of his bedchamber, so that the white stones seemed to glow. The muted symphony of early morning Minas Tirith fluttered upwards from the city with the chirping birds visiting Eowyn’s garden.

Eowyn sighed in her sleep, turning to nestle closer to him. Waking must have moved him away from her, a loss of warmth of which she seemed to disapprove. A smile crossed Faramir’s face as he shifted to accommodate her. As she settled with a smile, he let himself marvel, not for the first time or the last, that this incredible woman lay beside him. Valar above, it could not be possible. Peaceful in sleep, bathed in the light of the sun, he never thought he had seen any being so beautiful as she was now, and if it had not seemed a shame to wake her he would have embraced her and told her so.

Her hair brushed his cheek, and Faramir closed his eyes as the touch brought the dream forward again. So strange. He had dreamed of Numenor and the wave all his life, but ever before he had awakened on the brink of drowning beneath the weight of sea. Never had he survived. Never had he seen that beach. And then, they…

A tear slipped from his eye, then, but for once Faramir let it fall, rather than move and wake his wife. And yet, strangely, he found that even with the ache he could smile. This morning was bright and alive, and Eowyn‘s embrace was warm. Spring flowers were just peeking through the window, and he knew the buds on the White Tree would open soon.

When his land fully awoke from its long-shadowed slumber, Faramir resolved to take Eowyn to Dol Amroth‘s white beaches, and show her the sea song that his forefathers, then his mother, father, and brother had each adored in their turn.