Author’s Note: In Ithilien, a few months after ROTK. Bookverse.

Gaining As Much As You Give

By Songpsinner

*****

Brushing a stray vine out of his way, Faramir moved through the garden. His garden…at least it had begun as his, according to Legolas. The elf had designed it for him out of one of the little places that survived the war, but to the amusement of both princes, it had swiftly become Eowyn’s. There were definitely still traces of the original – plants, carried carefully from Minas Tirith that Faramir had loved in his mother’s garden. And now there were beds of healing herbs, neat and tidy, and flowers from the Shire for which Sam had sent seeds, and occasional greenery brought from Rohan.

The young Steward wandered down the shaded path, and halted to lean on a low stone wall to watch his wife. Eowyn was sitting on a bench, one of her husband’s Guardsmen in front of her. From her gentle scolding and fierce concentration, he could only guess that the young man was being treated for a minor injury. Faramir smiled and thought how content she seemed in this new role: healer. She had indeed promised to take up the healer’s trade and eschew all fighting (which had been amended slightly to allow, she said, for protecting her family), and his golden-haired princess had taken to the study quite seriously.

“There. Keep the bandage on for the next two days. You must take care to keep it dry and next time, try not to get distracted by pretty girls during sword practice.” She teased the lad, who blushed mightily and scrambled off to the barracks, saluting his lord as he passed.

“Eowyn, my love, it is quite normal for a young warrior to be distracted by beauty. It is part of what he fights to save, after all.” Faramir spoke with mock tones of chastisement, flinging a loving arm around his wife’s shoulder.

“Indeed, my lord? I should hate to think of injury as a natural result of love.” A gentle kiss to his temple as he sat down beside her took the sting out of her teasing.

“Nay, my lady,” he responded softly. “It sometime does, but I have found love to heal rather than injure of late. It is a welcome change.”

She stood up with a swish of blue skirts, pulling him to his feet. “I might finish this work sooner if there was an extra pair of hands to help me.” Eowyn’s smile had its usual effect on him.

“I might be able to help you there.” Faramir suggested, and spent the next half-hour cutting herbs at her direction. His hands were soon stained with green and somewhat sticky with pungent sap, but he rather cherished doing something so calm and simple.

As Eowyn laid another sheaf of sweet lavender in the basket at her side, she tilted her head to one side to gaze at him. She pushed unruly wisps of hair out of her face and grinned. “You have a smudge, just there beside your nose…”

Faramir brushed his hands off against his thighs and grinned back. “You should have seen Boromir and myself in these garden when we were small. Mud in the fall and grass stains in the spring. And I remember that Aragorn mentioned that he and his foster brothers were much the same in Imladris.”

“When we were there,” she said, plucking a sizeable sprig of mint, “I tried to imagine him as a child. It wasn’t very difficult, actually, as Lord Elladan had already shared far too many tales of our king’s childhood for Aragorn's comfort, I fear.”

Chuckling to himself, Faramir cut one last bit of athelas, inhaling the scent with bliss. “I heard some of them.”

“When you emerged from that library, my love,” she teased gently. “Which was perhaps only when hunger compelled you to do so.”

“Perhaps.” He readily admitted to that particular habit, one he’d had since childhood. “Even Mithrandir had to remind me on occasion in my youth.”

Eowyn’s next words were so quiet as to almost be missed even by his good ears. “Do you miss that, my love?”

Puzzled, he laid the basket down on the damp earth. “Miss what, Eowyn?”

Resting one strong hand on his knee, she continued softly. “I only wondered if you missed things. Being a ranger, or being a scholar.”

With a quick tug, Faramir pulled her into his lap, causing her to let go of a handful of herbs. She squeaked in surprise and then relaxed into his arms.

“Do you regret giving up being a shieldmaiden?” he asked, half-afraid to hear the answer.

“Perhaps the challenge of sparring, the excitement…” Eowyn reassured him honestly. “But given the fear and the darkness that accompanied that particular honor, I do not wish to go back to it. Truly.”

“We both learned from our earliest memories that nothing is certain. Even if the Dark Lord is gone from this land, neither of us, I think, can ever truly forget needing those skills.” Faramir held his wife tighter. “Would you join me, sometimes? In the mornings, I mean, when I keep in practice with the Guard. Beregond insists I not lose my…edge.”

With an elbow to his ribs for the wordplay, Eowyn laughed all the same. “I would love to join you.”

“The books, I cannot miss, you know. Aragorn keeps me poring over documents in the archives so regularly that I have not entirely given up that obsession.”

“Hmmm…” She murmured sleepily against his shoulder, and he was reminded of a cat in a sunbeam. “He knows it pleases you, so he does not give such tasks to others.”

“I’ve found my place here, love.” Faramir stated, and realized that it was true beyond all he had ever hoped.