Immortalitui // Faramir 🥀

Chapter Nineteen - Close

Word Count: 2,647 words. 

Warnings: None.

They travelled far. Across hills and mountains that were older than she and ruins of cities and towers that the elf had watched fall. Arathiel stuck to the back of the company, content in watching from behind. Frodo led with Gandalf and although she was determined to protect the small Hobbit, it was hard to be close to the Ring that he bore. It whispered to her from afar, begging her to take it, but she would not. She was stronger than that.

"Are you well?" Boromir asked her. Aragorn had been next in line but as they moved to a stop over a small, boulder littered hill, he had moved ahead, making to set camp for the time-being.

They had been travelling for weeks at this point, although the she-elf was never a good judge of time and so it could have been longer, or perhaps shorter.

"Yes, perfectly, why do you ask?" she returned as they stopped. The others began to disperse, but Arathiel stood still, the first son of the Steward of Gondor at her side.

"You have been rather quiet these past weeks," he explained.

So it had been week. Not months, but weeks. "I only fear what is coming."

He smiled lightly. "The Arathiel that I met in Gondor did not fear the future."

"I do not fear the future," she countered, taking a deep breath. Her eyes glanced at the crest on the soldier's chest. Faramir wore a similar one.

"I think that perhaps you do," he told her sternly. "Now that it is possible for you to have one."

The elf's eyes met his. "I cannot do what you want Boromir."

"It is not what I want that I wish for. It is what you want."

Shaking her head, Arathiel looked at Frodo. He was the first to seat himself, taking a position on the large rocks. He looked tired, much worse than the other Hobbits of their company and Frodo played with the Ring on the chain around his neck. Not weeks had they been travelling and she knew that it was already taking its toll on him. There was to be no thoughts of a future that she craved nor a man that she loved. None of that. The moment was now and now... her friend needed her. Middle-Earth needed her to help destroy the evil that has grasped it in its claws. Then, and only then, could she think of herself. If she even made it that far.

"What I want has no value in a time like this," she muttered, eyes still on the young Hobbit. "We must save Middle-Earth Boromir and then perhaps I may think of something else."

Boromir took a deep breath and she could see him nod out of the corner of her eye. "Then do not fear that he will not wait. He has told me that he will wait for all of eternity if just to have you for a second more."

Her heart ached, something that it did so rarely, she questioned whether it truly could. She ached to see him again, to kiss him. They had never shared their love, nor had she ever told him, something that she now greatly regretted. Their time had been so short that there was no time for her to understand what she felt, to accept that there was no way around it.

Humans often worked through emotions so quickly and in their case, it was as though Faramir knew almost instantly. Years it had taken Arathiel, too many years.

It ached her more that she knew it would never happen. Arathiel would not see Faramir again. She hoped that his eyes would never meet hers in her lifetime, the life that was due to fall short rather soon. As darkness will leave Middle-Earth, as will the dark inside of her and she did not doubt that it was stronger than the light that she was born with.