Immortalitui // Faramir 🥀

Chapter Forty-Eight - The Blade

Word Count: 2,305 words. 

Warnings: None. 

It had been forged by blood, the metal a morphing of elements that were not made to fuse together. It contained the steel of more than a hundred blades, blades of which Arathiel had taken from the elves she struck down. Together, it formed the strongest blade it could, imbued with the dark, decaying blood of Sauron and the struggling, drowning blood of the naive Arathiel.

She took his gift with a smile, a smile that was not aware of the blood on her hands, the dirt on her skin, the wounds that should have rendered her dead. Arathiel had taken that blade as thought it was the most important jewel in any Dwarven mine. It had killed more, injured less. The sword had been named Decaui, Harbinger of Sauron. That was what they had called her... his Harbinger.

Arathiel woke to the screams of Gondor, to the smoke of the cities that burned and the people who had not consented to the desecration of their homes. She lay in her chambers, bandages on her wounds and skin cleaned by another's hand.

To her left, Faramir continued his work, ensuring that every speck of her skin was free from ash. Their deaths were not something that she needed to face. Arathiel watched, revelling in the moment in which he did not know she had awoken.

"If you rub any harder, I fear that the skin my come off with the soot," Arathiel muttered,

His eyes, bloodshot from lack of sleep, looked up at her. Faramir sighed in relief. "I did not want you to wake with the memory of death."

She swallowed, pulling away and using her hands to straighten. The wound on her side festered – the one that she had not earned in the battle passed but from one that should have healed years ago. Arathiel knew what it was now.

It was not his point of entry, but his re-entry. Sauron had started his decay years ago, and the wound inflicted by the Nazgul simple revealed what had been hiding. Arathiel was rotting from the inside out.

She knew what it was that he held over her – her guilt, her pain, her anger, and there was no way to let go of that. How could I let go of it? How could she forgive herself for the death that she had caused, for the promise that she had made to Durin and broke, to the people she had sworn to protect and failed to? It was better to look to a broken, unchanging past than the uncertain future that was laid before her should she find a way to cast the image of Halbrand from her mind.

Faramir rushed to help her, holding a hand to her back as gently as he could. He drew pillows to help. "You should not move so quickly," he wanting caringly.

"We are at war," she reminded him, laying a hand on his arm to calm him. Faramir stopped, looking down at her. Arathiel watched him. "My love, with war there is no rest."

"Arathiel..."

"Sit with me," she requested.

"I am sitting with you."

With a titled expression, the she-elf sighed. "Sit by me then."

Faramir nodded slowly, rounding the bed and taking his position by her side. With an arm around her back, Arathiel could find no strength in her to remain apart, leaning against his chest and listening to the rise and fall of his breath.

"What of Osgiliath?" Arathiel posted.

"It is lost. As was Madril."

"Nothing is lost," she tried, running a hand up and down his arm, "only taken."