O67 - Self-Medication

[altariel.livejournal.com]

B2MeM Challenge: O67: Facets of Faramir: Writer; Poetic Forms: Sonnet; Scientific achievement: Pharmacy
Format: Drabble
Genre: Gen.
Rating: Whatever the letter is for innocuous.
Warnings: N/A
Characters: Faramir and Éowyn
Pairings: N/A
Summary: "The dream-brought knowledge that not even the virtuous survive the end of the world..." Dwimordene and Aliana asked what would happen if Faramir saw what Denethor saw in the palantír. But he's already seen it in his dreams.

Self-Medication

Over the years he devised many tricks to distract from the fact of imminent annihilation, the dream-brought knowledge that not even the virtuous survive the end of the world.

Music helped; fast finger-exercises transmuting conscious thought into muscle-memory. Words were better; ever-increasing mastery of complex tongues and forms. Meditations on the natural world. Rainbow sunsets to persuade him of a world beyond death.

One ash day, his strategies fall in ruins. Then she walks into the garden. If you live, he thinks, artless as a schoolboy, there is still life.

Self has limits - but beyond the self is infinite.

Comments

[starli-ght.livejournal.com]

I *love* this. It's always pretty hard to go along life with Faramir, to see the depth of what he has suffered through his coping mechanisms, but here you show, exactly, how healing works for him. I really liked it! Your creative use of the prompts is just amazing.

(The palantír Drabble was fabulous, too)

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much Starlight! I thought this one was possibly a bit of a cheat as I'm sure the "sonnet" prompt was intended to get me to write a sonnet, but Dwim and Aliana's prompt put this into my head, so I had to go with it.

[starli-ght.livejournal.com]

You had mentioned on the list that you were doing the poetic forms card, and when they announced the prompts yesterday, I could not wait to see where you would go with it! I think you did great!! Your language is poetry, anyway, so I think it was a very well-handled exercise :-)

(I picked this card, too-- who knows why! I'm very uninspired with today's prompts. I'm having more fun reading all of the works posted, they're amazing!)

[aliana1.livejournal.com]

Oh yay! Because it's me, of course, I was expecting some sort of pitch-black AU, but instead you do a wonderful service to Faramir and Eowyn. I love how, at times, all his sophisticated coping mechanisms fail, and yet Eowyn's able to pull him out with simply her presence, and the fact of life continuing must suffice. I think this is one of the things that sets Faramir apart from Denethor, and that saves him from becoming his father--despite all his knowledge, he is able to live in the present and accept the things he cannot change.

Thank you!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

They save each other's lives, I think.

Yes, he does live in the present (when not thinking about the past or dreaming about the future), although I worry for him sometimes that his acceptance of things he cannot change sometimes leads him to acquiescence. I suspect he bit his tongue a lot when Boromir and Denethor were in full flow.

[blslarner.livejournal.com]

Aha! He has tried all the tricks to keep from facing the fact he may well not survive the next battle--until he finds the perfect reason to want to live well and happily!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Eowyn is a godsend for him.