Immortalitui // Faramir 🥀

Chapter Thirty-Six - Limits

Word Count: 1,475 words. 

Warnings: An update? Me? The world may end. 

Mordor... too long ago to remember...

"We took the keep," Arathiel explained, watching Sauron on the throne. He was clean, not a speck of dirt to blemish his perfect skin, but the she-elf that stood before him, that had sworn her loyalty to him, could not remember the true colour of her skin. It had been so long since she washed the blood. None of it belonged to her, it never did.

"And destroyed it in the process," he finished for her, placing one leg over the other delicately. "I thought I detailed that I wished the keep intact."

He was disappointed in her, and Arathiel felt that in her heart. She anticipated how he would scream, how her lover would shout and scold her, but she did not fear it. Fear had left the elf a long time ago.

"Your Orcs were – "

"My Orcs?" he questioned in retaliation, taking careful, silent steps as he rose from his throne. Sauron drifted towards her as though the very air around him lifted his feet. "They are our Orcs, my love."

A gentle hand on her cheek, Arathiel flinched slightly at the memories that resurfaced. He loved her, and she knew that, she had convinced herself of the fact. His anger was not at her, but at their slow movements in attaining power.

"Of course," she countered, looking up at his smiling face. Arathiel realised now, looking back on that moment, that his expression had been false, that everything about him had been a mask.

Her pace slowed as she approached Rohan before looking down at her hands. If she looked closely enough, if she remembered enough, Arathiel could see the blood that had been on her hands that day and the day before. In fact, she struggled to find a memory of Sauron that did not involve death.

His voice whispered to her, and attempted to find its way back in. It was getting stronger, he was getting stronger, and it was only a matter of time before he took her back. She did not fear death, only what she would leave behind.

"Visitors!" the soldier of Rohan announced from the top of the ramparts, but it was not to alert them to her presence, but rather to the four figures that approached the front gate.

"Arathiel!" Éowyn's shout came quickly, pulling on her arm as she tugged the elf through the side door. She thought it the perfect place to get the villagers in.

"Is everything alright?" she questioned, turning to the woman who was in a panic. Several steps behind her stood Thenfric, his expression a similar sombre frown. She did not need her to speak, but Éowyn did regardless.

"Theodred is gone," she explained and Arathiel closed her eyes in thought, a sharp ache in her heart.

Nodding despite the clear grief, the she-elf looked at Thenfric. "The visitors. Find out who they are."

He nodded curtly, casting the crying woman beside her a small, pitied glance before hurrying away. Arathiel rushed to the side of the King's son.

There was no doubt that he was dead when she entered, immediately noting the uncommon paleness of his skin and the lack of rhythm to his chest. His lungs did not inhale nor exhale any longer.

Dropping to his side, Arathiel took up the poor boy's hand. She brushed past how cold it felt, instead running her thumb along his rigid palm. The good dying young was something that she would never become accustomed to.