Chapter Text
"In here, sir," Nurse Ioreth said. "We've kept them isolated from the rest. Don't know enough about the foul wraith's curse to tell whether it might spread to the other patients."
"I don't think that's something we need to worry about," Aragorn responded, looking over the afflicted trio. His heart ached at the sight of them. Merry lay in a fitful sleep, Pippin anxiously at his bedside. But the fact that Merry had the strength to move and kick in his unconscious state, even if weakly, meant he was probably faring best out of the three. Lady Eowyn looked paler than usual, her face pinched with grief and despair, her shield-arm in a sling across her waist. Her brother wept at the foot of her bed, unable to leave her side. She had time, but little. And Faramir, who he knew least of all despite Boromir's best efforts with many a tale on the long road out of Rivendell, looked near enough death that Aragorn had to double check the man was even breathing at all. At least that made it plain who to start with first.
Aragorn turned to Ioreth. "You have the materials I requested?"
"Yes, of course." She pointed to the table by the window, and he indeed saw the dried athelas, the mortar and pestle, the steaming water.
"Very well. I am not to be disturbed during this process. There is no telling how long it will take, but rest assured, I will give it my all." He took up the tools and began to work.
The fog of unconsciousness crept over all, but with his well-trained mind, he was able to keep one foot in reality. He concentrated, listened carefully. Barking dogs to the west. The howling of icy winds to the north. East, the crackle of flames. He headed there first.
The smoke was easy enough to spot. It didn't come from Minas Tirith or the tombs of the stewards, but the fields and forests of Ithilien. He found the source quickly: a homesteader's old field of crops, turned wild and weedy with lifetimes of neglect. The farm had long been abandoned, and the wilderness crept in to welcome the land back to its verdant arms. An old scarecrow was tied to a post, hanging limp in green and brown sackcloth, black yarn hair threaded with crow feathers. The crops in the field were burning steadily.
Aragorn picked his way forward carefully, coming closer to the flames. He knew they were not real and couldn't harm him. But the mind was a difficult thing to master in some ways, and the instinct to avoid the fire was strong. "Faramir," he called.
The scarecrow answered, "I'm busy at the moment."
"Doing what?" Aragorn wondered. Because really. "You're tied to a post."
"I'm defending this field from crows."
"Faramir, the field is on fire."
"Fires aren't my expertise," Faramir answered morosely. "Really something Boromir was better at dealing with, I suppose." He shrugged, something difficult considering his outstretched arms were tied to the post, and he was made of straw. "But it's my duty to defend this field, so it's what I'll do, even if it's on fire."
"You've done your duty well," Aragorn said, beginning to at least understand how Faramir's subconscious had taken on the scarecrow avatar. "I'm here to put out the fire, and then you can go home. The field doesn't need defending anymore."
"But if I leave, that may change. So I must stay and keep it safe. It's my duty."
Aragorn crossed his arms. The fire popped. Faramir kept looking at the field with his grey button eyes and a stitched on frown. "Isn't it terribly hot, though?" Aragorn tried. Sometimes the reminder of the physical comfort to come with leaving this place was enough to get through to them.
"Hotter every minute. But I will not shirk my duties. I'll learn to live with it."
"Not for very long," Aragorn said, glancing pointedly to the flames licking at the dull brown trousers that were curling away into ash.
"You're terribly insistent."
"I've been told."
"Well I'm telling you again. You're distracting me."
"From dying?" Aragorn asked.
"Yes." A pause. "Wait-"
"Faramir, let me help you. You've done your duty well. You've served Gondor to the fullest extent possible. You've nearly given your very life for it. No more can be asked of you."
The scarecrow was quiet, contemplating the fire sadly. Or, well, maybe since his face was stitched on he had no real option but to look sad. His black yarn hair swayed a little in the breeze. "Did Adar say I came back well?" he asked finally. To Aragorn's ears he sounded almost like a child. The need for a parent's approval was a difficult thing to shake. For the second son of one of the most demanding parents in all of Arda, it would've been a hard earned thing on a good day. And though Aragorn couldn't be sure, it seemed as though there hadn't been many of those to go around in a long time.
"The Steward was quite proud of what you've accomplished," Aragorn answered gently.
"Ha!" Faramir barked abruptly. "Denethor II has never used the word 'proud' in conjunction with the name Faramir, first or second. Go away. You're clearly here to deceive me but I haven't figured out to what end. Likely to ruin these fields somehow."
"Yavanna's green garters, you're going to be a trial," Aragorn sighed, rubbing at his eyes with thumb and forefinger. He held up his hands in surrender. "Let me be straight with you, then."
"How disappointing."
Aragorn blinked. "You might regret having said that..."
"Scarecrows have needs too."
"You aren't a scarecrow, Faramir. You're the Steward of Gondor."
There was something like a cough, or choking. Curious, because again, he was made of straw. "You're an idiot."
"I am your king."
"You're a delusional idiot."
Did not everyone tell him how unlike Boromir Faramir was? Yet now he felt like he was speaking to the ghost of the elder brother himself. But then...this was exactly how Denethor would've greeted this revelation, and many comparisons had been made between him and his second son. Maybe it was simply in the family's blood to be frustrated by him. "I am Aragorn, son of Arathorn."
"I'm Glorfindel, slayer of balrogs."
"I do not make this claim in jest, Faramir. And I will prove it to you by bringing you out of this dreadful hell of your own making." It was the worst time for a bird to trill out a lovely song and for the breeze to blow sweetly, but Aragorn pressed on. "You fell in battle, struck down by a Southron's dart."
"Fell from a single dart? Wonderful. I'll never hear the end of that. Boromir, as I understand it, took a half dozen or so."
"One's manner of death isn't a contest."
"You really haven't met my father."
Aragorn nodded. "I have. Many years ago, I served alongside him under your grandfather, Ecthelion."
"Ah, I see. You're Thorongil too? You're the reason he's got such a complex about rivalries and self-worth and all of that?"
"I don't, ah..." This was not going terribly well. Usually, he didn't have such a fraught history with the afflicted's family. And usually the afflicted wasn't so argumentative, what with the impending death and all that.
"It's terribly obvious. You were the Boromir to his Faramir. Which. Says strange things about how much he doted on Boromir if he hated you. Or I suppose his hatred of you was less about you and more about himself, and how inferior he felt. "
"You're remarkably insightful for a scarecrow," Aragorn mumbled. Now he needed to keep this fellow alive for more selfish reasons. A good analytical mind that read others well made for a priceless advisor.
"Well. Gondor isn't paying me for my insight, I'm told."
"They are now. You are its final ruling Steward."
"Did Adar quit because you showed up?"
Ah. How to put it delicately...
"Your silence is a bit alarming, Thorongil."
"Well..."
"Did he cause enough of a scene that you had to arrest him?" Faramir asked, incredulous.
There was a scene, alright, Aragorn wanted to say, but he stopped himself. Denethor had never been dramatic. But Aragorn had no other way to describe the man's end. Maybe the typically stoic man had been saving it all up for the final act. "He's unavailable to govern, and so the responsibility falls to you," Aragorn said, hoping the call to duty would distract him.
"Well, I'm not interested. I have a field to tend."
"I thought you were defending it?"
"And what are you? My king or my continuity advisor? Don't you have other things to be doing if you are who you claim to be?"
My. Hadn't he gotten cranky. Aragorn took a breath, remembered this man's utterly tragic existence, and gave him a pass. Maybe this meant he was getting somewhere. "There are, indeed, others needing my aid. But your situation is most urgent. The Southron arrow was not fatal, nor was it poisoned. It was your grief, and the Nazgul's Black Breath, that brought you here."
"So I am dying, then?"
"Not if I can help it," Aragorn told him.
"Well, I'm still on fire, so you aren't helping much at all," Faramir answered, kicking his legs a bit. This dislodged some of his straw and the fire crackled louder.
"Alright. You have to help a bit, too." Aragorn spread his hands to indicate their need to cooperate. "If I put out the flames, will you leave your post?"
The flames exploded in intensity as Faramir snapped, "This is my duty. What are you not understanding?"
Aragorn backed away quickly, shielding his face from the sudden heat with his arms. Faramir was well and truly on fire now, and Aragorn felt his pulse jump. He owed this not just to Boromir, but to Denethor. He had to save this man from death. "It was your duty. Our duties change. I was once nothing but some carefree fool wandering the woods of the North. Then I was a Captain of Gondor. Now I come back as her king. You were not always a soldier, Faramir, and so there is no reason you must always be. The war will end, soon-"
"It will not end," Faramir said. He shook his head, loosing a flurry of straw and crow feathers. "It is the only constant of our reality. The one thing that never stops and it is so sickening and horrific, I can not stand it any more. I can face my duty and the end it demands with dignity, so let me have that!"
"Faramir, it is perfectly normal to feel-"
"If it is so normal, then why does it not stop?" Faramir asked. "It is not as if Sauron is the progenitor of warfare, even if he's good at it. Always, forever, even before Man or Elf awoke, the Valar themselves, no one knows how to live in peace. If it is beyond the reach of gods, what hope do men have?"
Aragorn's mouth moved but no words came out. He was at a bit of a loss. Leave it to a son of Denethor to turn his own death throes into a philosophical debate. He shook his head. "What hope men have is the hope that we make for them," Aragorn said.
"Oh that's vague and meaningless."
"And your nihilism helps what, exactly?" Aragorn asked with a sigh.
"Nothing. That's the whole point."
Aragorn ground his teeth. "Your father is dead!"
The scarecrow collapsed to the earth in a heap of straw and burlap like it'd been cut from its post. The fire was briefly silenced. Enough for Aragorn to take a breath and think this might soon be over.
And then it sprang back tenfold, everything engulfed in cracking flames and stinging smoke. Aragorn coughed and sank to his knees, trying to find fresher air beneath the smoke. Maybe it was too late. Maybe the fever held too tight, or the necessary will to live had simply been erased. Why had he lost his temper like that! "Please, Faramir! Do not die with him!"
"I left without saying goodbye," Faramir mumbled into the dirt, hardly audible above the roar of the flames.
"I know that it hurts. I lost my mother and father many years ago and the ache, it never leaves, but they would not want to see you follow them before your time!"
"I thought I might tell him that I hate him if I saw him again," Faramir continued. The flames stuttered and choked, like so many candles teased by strong winds.
Aragorn pressed on. "But you know that is not true."
Now flaring to life in one final surge of anguish. "Maybe I did, maybe I didn't!" Faramir shouted at him. "Did he think he was the only one who ever lost anyone? I lost my mother and my father that day! It isn't my fault he was so miserable all the time! Nothing I could do would please him! I could bring him Sauron's head on a platter and he'd scoff and criticize the presentation! Nothing was enough, it was never enough!"
Lightning cracked sharply overhead and Aragorn flinched. Those clouds had rolled in quickly, and they looked ready to burst with rain. Close, close- "Your father wasn't well. It was neither you nor Boromir's responsibilities to fix him. Somewhere in that sharp mind of his, he knew this but it is a difficult truth to face and so he covered it with other truths-War would come, you both needed to grow up with endurance and fortitude-"
"I don't care how he rationalized it! It was shit!"
"I know, Faramir, I know," Aragorn told him. He felt Faramir's anguish as if it were his own. He could've been there in Minas Tirith. If he'd spoken with Ecthelion before it was too late, revealed all, would he have been able to change things for Boromir and Faramir? Would that have made them less hardy, less ready for this war? Denethor had been his friend once, and Aragorn knew he'd failed the man himself just as much as he'd failed his sons. There was nothing left for it but to do right by Faramir, the only one of the family left. "I can't undo the past. But I can help now, and I would, if you let me."
"I only wanted to make him happy," Faramir told the dirt.
"I'm sure that you did, even if he did not often say." The first drops of cool rain began to fall. The knot in Aragorn's chest loosened some, but the flames were not extinguished yet.
"Now I will never know." A pause. "I don't remember the last time I told him I loved him."
"It doesn't matter the number of times it's said. What matters is that it's meant."
"I am so empty," Faramir said. The fires hissed away into steaming embers. The whole forest was dead and ashen, and flimsy cloth fingers dug weakly at the untilled soil.
"Please come home, Faramir," Aragorn told him. It was hard to say where button eyes looked, but it seemed as if they didn't see much of anything right now. Somewhere in the woods, something howled, a horrible, mournful thing. Other terrible noises joined in a chorus of desperate cries. Despair of this depth was not fixed in such a short time, even if the most immediate threats had been dealt with. "This is no place to linger."
"What home is it now? I have no family. I have no duty. I have nothing. I am nothing."
"You have Gondor, and it needs you. This is my kingdom, and I want to rule her well. I can't do that without you. You're loved by the people of your country. They trust you."
"You want a puppet to manipulate the opinion of the citizenry with."
"I want a knowledgeable steward to consult with. I swore to Boromir that I would return as king. I can not fulfill that oath to him without you." Aragorn gently gathered a clump of straw that'd fallen out of Faramir. He held it out.
Grey button eyes stared, and the stitched on frown seemed almost thoughtful. Faramir reached over, took the straw, and stuffed it back into his body.
One down, two to go.