Faramir had been heartened by speaking with Mithrandir though the news he related to the Wizard had been troubling indeed. Cirith Ungol. The very name of the place cast a shadow upon any soul hearing it.  He thought of the two valiant hobbits alone on along that very path.  Sobering indeed.  He sighed, his path that he traced now up to the Citadel threw a smaller but no less disheartening shadow upon his own soul. His father. Boromir was always his son.  Faramir never was. For reasons too painful for both of them to acknowledge Denethor could barely even look his second son in the eye for more than a few seconds.  They say it was because of Faramir’s mother, Finduilas. They say that Denethor loved her greatly and the hurt he took upon her death so wounded him that he could never again look upon Faramir who favoured her much without pain.  Faramir was only five when she had died. He remembered her in the way only a five year could remember.  Her smell, full of the sunlight at least to a five year old mind and flowers, and love.  He remembered her love. That stayed within his heart. And her sadness. That stayed as well.  He never spoke of her, except to Boromir, he understood and never mocked him for his tears and melancholy.  He paused, now he never would speak of her again. Boromir was no more.  His beloved brother was gone from this world under circumstances he still could not fully accept.  It was a pain that wrapped his heart, almost curtailing each beat but he fought to go on. There was no other choice. Duty required it. Now with Osgiliath fallen and the ring of power placed out of reach by his own decision, he walked with purpose unsure of his reception. No, that was a lie. His reception was quite certain but he would face up to it yet again as he always had and always would. As a child and even a young man, his heart had yearned for something else, some sign of love or approval, but now he simply braced for the inevitable.

The inevitable was quick in coming. It cut him deeply to see the pain etched on his father’s face. He would comfort his father if he could but he knew it would be spurned.  Boromir’s death fell hard upon him.  Compassion for his father’s pain mixed with the sure knowledge that his own death would not evince these same emotions, he spoke what he could not seem to stop himself from saying,

“You wish now that our places had been reversed, That I had died and Boromir had lived.”

“Yes, I wish that indeed.”

Those whispered words. Pain, familiar in its course and pattern, but no less virulent for its familiarity, ripped through Faramir.  He knew to expect no different but it hurt in equal measure and placed another feather of disappointment on an overburdened heart.

He heard his father say, “I will not yield the River and the Pelennor unfought-not if there is a captain here who has still has the courage to do his lord’s will.”

The words fell on Faramir’s already weary soul with a death-soft finality. Silence and then a quiet, “I do not oppose your will, sire.  Since that you are robbed of Boromir,” Faramir heard himself saying, “I will go in his stead” it was every thus between Father and Son, “At least this son,” he thought as he felt his lifeforce dwindling away, “I will go.  But if I return think better of me.” With that he turned on his heel to prepare for almost certain destruction.

“That will depend upon the manner of your return.”

Faramir paused. Eyes closed briefly against the pain, He placed one foot in front of the other. Duty pulled him forward.  There was nothing left behind.

~*~*~*~*~

Riding out to retake Osgiliath bound by duty, bound by a need that didn’t bear closer examination, Faramir heard Mithrandir implore him, “Do not throw your life away rashly or in bitterness. Your father loves you and he will remember before the end”

Faramir yearned to believe that avow, but he just couldn’t, but it mattered not. He replied in a voice deadened with suppressed pain and dull duty, “Where does my loyalty lie except here? This is the City of the Men of Numenor. I will gladly give my life for it.”  The plaintive quality in his old friend’s voice should have weakened Faramir’s resolve but the time was past when that might have changed Faramir’s fate. He was bound to do this thing; there was no other choice.  He was trapped within this life, bound to act as he must.  Flowers fell to pavement. When the arrows started to fall and his men started to die he felt, as an arrow pierced his armor, a strange detachment that grew as time passed.  Outwardly he could hear himself call out orders and try to rally his men under the hail of bolts meant to end their lives. But inwardly as his men fell and part of his soul cried out for their unfair fate, another part drifted away moving slowly toward a blinking grayness calling to his very soul. He felt cold, so cold. He wandered around this grey place where time itself seem to have no meaning. He saw from a distance the field of slaughter, he saw himself barking orders and yet he was also viewing it from afar.   He wanting to rejoin the battle to help his men or at least die with them.  The greyness would not allow that however.  He watched from the mist the horror of slaughter.

~*~*~*~*~*~

A far away ratcheting up of the massive main gate and Faramir was vaguely aware he was being dragged in by his horse. He closed his eyes. Within his mind he saw grey mist, beyond he saw his body battered with bolt fletchings having pierced his armor.  He felt himself jostled as he was carried on a bier up to the Citadel, but curiously there was no pain, until he saw a sight he never believed possible. His father running, frantic and in tears, for him.  Faramir tried to call to him.  Tried to show him he was not mortally wounded. He looked again and felt rather than heard his father cry “Faramir!  Say not that he has fallen. I sent my son forth, unthanked, unblessed, out into needless peril.” Again Faramir tried to reach out through the mists tried to reach his father, to comfort him and tell him not to despair, but to no avail.  Faramir’s heart broke anew and he fell into hopelessness, the grey mists growing thicker with each tear dropping.

Despair. A despair so acute as to cripple him.  Faramir could view from afar his father’s torment but could give him no comfort. Emotions pouring forth, spilling out into the cold light of day.  His father, once so noble and so strong, devolving into a tormented wretch forsaking all he held dear except, at the last, his love for his second son.  A love that Faramir had ever yearned to see and but had given up hope had ever really existed.  Yet, combined with he knew not what as he had never been in his father’s consul and knew nothing of the inner workings of his mind, it was this love that was proving his undoing.  Faramir watched brokenhearted from the grey shadows his mind had traveled to, the love and emotion that his father was finally showing and he could do nothing in aid of.  He yelled, “Father, I love you.  I forgive you.  Please do not do this thing. Please do not torment yourself in this way,” as he saw his body being carried to Rath Dinen, the houses of the dead of the Kings and Stewards, The Silent Street from which no one returns.  He saw his heartbroken and despairing father, fight off all comers seeking to separate father from son. He felt rather than heard him shout “I must stay by my son.  You will not take my son from me!”  Faramir shouted, “I’m here, Father. I’m here.  I won’t leave you.” Only to have the grey mist swallow up his words and echo them back in an slight mocking fashion.  Tears fell unto Faramir’s heart, his very soul was being rent.  Some evil was at work here, showing him his heart’s desire, to see his father’s love for him but to see that very love tearing his father apart.

The grey had turned to darkness, no longer a soft smothering grey but now a harsh jangling darkness.  A darkness that would steal the soul. Faramir sunk into new depths of desolation.  He would have fallen further but for a bright, white light filling his senses and he looked up and saw Mithrandir bathed in a circle of light as he raised Faramir up.  Faramir saw that Mithrandir was carrying him away from his father.  Panic and a fear more real than he had ever known lit his heart.  He would not, he could not leave his father.  Ripped from the bottom of his soul, he screamed “Father!!!  Help me!”  This time the dark mist receded ever so slightly and Faramir again felt his father’s words as he saw his face is collapse further in pain and regret, weeping as he exclaimed, “Do not take my son from me, He calls for me!”  Faramir, rather than taking heart that his father finally heard him, could not bear to behold the torment etched deeper across his father’s face.  Faramir shrank back from the unbridled agony that he was forced to bear witness to, but never to comfort.  Faramir watched as his body was taken from the door out into the weak spring sunlight.  His father trembling behind him, looking longingly upon Faramir’s face, he had become a pale shadow of the man he once was. But as Faramir turned away unable to see anymore words struck his heart and shattered what was left of his hope,“Didst thou think that the eyes of the White Tower were blind!”  He looked up and saw that his father’s visage had changed from one of despair to one of arrogance, a face more like the Denethor he knew so well.  Held within his father’s grasp was the Seeing Stone of Anor. "I have seen more than thou knowest, Grey Fool." At that all reason fled and Faramir was left with only emotion to contain his grief.  His father had fallen victim to the subtlety of evil.  Anger, fear, disappointment, sorrow raged through him as the grey mist closed in cutting off his air and blinding him to all that had surrounded him.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Disclaimer:  There are various instances in which I quote from either the films or the books. I do not specifically note them as I have in the past as I felt it disrupted from the flow of the story.  But there are various quotes and I wanted to acknowledge that.