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Moonlight.

Moonlight and stars and one needs no sharper knife in the darkness than the sky reflecting against the bright white snow. And so it is the stars on the snow that light his path as he walks beside the lake.

Winter is a cocoon. The stars are freedom. He could walk here like a man through dreams until sunrise and never know the time had passed.

Perhaps he could use some company, though...

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"No one can prevent an unknown future, and it is folly to regret..."

But the words trail off as he realizes, even as he whispers them, that they are hypocracy of the deepest kind. He sighs and says, as quiet as the white noise in the snow, "I'm sorry."

Steph is quiet for a little. It's hard to talk, anyway. Eventually, she controls her breathing with an effort of will, and puts her mask carefully back on. Night-vision, plus, warm eyebrows. Warm eyebrows are so very underrated.

"So ... yeah. That's my story. How 'bout you?"

"My story..." He laughs a little too harshly. "Why is it something that should be shadowing me now? Why now, of all times? It was two years ago. My story can be found in a book. Ask Bar for it."

Which is why he's never actually told it to anyone but his brother. Never since the anniversary of his father's death almost two years ago (though it had been only months for him, then...) had he spoken of what had happened.

"I," he says to Stephanie, "am a fool, and plagued by occasional bouts of foolish melancholy. I have no excuse for it but foolishness."

Steph looks over at him, anxious.

"I don't think you're a fool," she says, earnestly. "There's - Two years isn't a very long time."

Two years is not long enough for Steph's nightmares to stop haunting her. Why should it be different for Faramir?

"If - if you do want to talk, I'm always around."

He looks at her, but his eyes are far away. Light a fire in my flesh... the White City is falling, the White Wizard rides, and in the end, even my death is not a great enough sacrifice.

"You wish I had gone..."

Had he ever even pretended to love his second son?

"It is... not an easy thing to speak of."

Finduilas...

He blamed me for her death.

"And it is... very complicated. I should not burden you with ancient memories."

She'll understand daddy issues, if no more than that.

"I understand." Now it's her turn to reach out to him. "Really, though. Sometimes it helps to talk about it."

Faramir is quiet for some time, staring at the stars. When at last he speaks, it is... hesitantly, and softly, as if he hopes the wind will muddle his words or tell him which ones ar the right ones.

"In two years, it seems I should have forgotten... but there are things that seem to have happened only yesterday. A month before I came here..." He takes a deep breath, steadying himself. "My father died. It was the worst days of a war whose ending would decide the fate of all men in my world. The tide had seemed to turn against us. I... I had been struck by a poisoned dart while leading a suicide charge at my father's bidding. He in his madness ordered that a pyre be built in the place where the dead are laid to rest. I was saved, by valiant and treasonous efforts by a hobbot and a guard named Beregond. My father was not."

There is more to the story. Much more. The way his eyes die when he speaks of his father... the way he sits stiff as a statue and stares seeing nothing... there is more to the story.

Steph waits, quietly, hand steady on his shoulder. She'll wait until he's talked it out.

And then she'll let loose on his dad. Fucking parents. Never get it right.

"Do not misunderstand me -- I loved my father." Oh, more than she can comprehend. "It was not returned. I think... I think he blamed me... in a sense... for my mother's death. He thought my birth weakened her somehow. Weakened the whole of our bloodline. He never tired of reminding me of my own weaknesses. But my mother... he loved her. I can remember them together, though I was but five years of age when she passed on." He sighs. "She loved the sea..."

The Prince turns to Steph. "I talk too much. I am sorry."

"No - no, it's fine."

She hitches herslef a little closer, so she can lean gently against his side. (Steph has very little concept of others' personal space.)

"I know what it's like. Fathers. I mean." Well, her father didn't love her mother, or Steph, much, but Steph loved him. When she didn't hate him. It's not the same situation, but she understands daddy angst.

He frowns and absently puts an arm around her shoulders, the cloak still covering them both. If it is possible to touch another person with no more romantic or emotional undertones than if they were a stone wall, he very nearly manages.

Nearly, but not completely. A part of him is starved for some kind of closeness. A part of him he doesn't often admit to himself.

"Your father was... difficult?"

"Well... he never set me on fire," Steph admits, sighing. "But he ... he was my father."

So that made it okay when he tried to push her off the roof, or let a pedophile babysit her, or gave her to his friends to use as a hostage.

No, he didn't think much of her. But Steph's never been able to sort out whether she hated him or loved him.

"I ... I used to hover between thinking he was evil and thinking he was weak. It's like my whole life, I was torn between those two. Evil, or just weak. And then he died, and I ... gave up, I guess."

Then she came here, and the men of Security have, often without knowing it, substituted as father figures - and done a much better job than Arthur Brown could have dreamed of. Or Batman.

"Someone suggested to me once that my father was weak. But he was not. He lost so much. He broke only because he stood at the edge of the end of the world. He had dared to use the Enemy's tools for his own gain, thinking he could control them, but they corrupted him. He... was a good man..."

And he wants so badly to believe that.

"He was a good ruler, fair and just, and a good father. He loved his kingdom." But not his son.

Power corrupts.

"But you didn't. Break, I mean. You're still - whole."

Right?

"Sometimes I don't know. Am I? Would you say so?"

There's something in his voice that's a little more than just rhetorical.

He needs an anchor outside his darkness. Even if it's only someone to tell him he hasn't gone off the deep end yet.

"Sometimes I'm so afraid I'll end up... like him."

"You won't," Steph says, and this she can say with certainty. "That won't happen. You're - look, you're, like, one of the most awesome people I know."

This is true. Steph has rock-solid faith in Faramir. He could do worse than a little dead girl for an anchor, all things considered.

He looks at her then, his eyes focusing more than they have lately.

"Awesome?" he repeats. The word sounds strange coming from him. He smiles a little. "I wish I could see myself as you see me. I think... it is less difficult for men to face their own demons when they understand their strength in another's eyes. That is what... what makes women so strong. They understand their power as mothers even without having borne children."

Steph isn't sure - she rubs her nose thoughtfully. "I ... don't know. I had a baby, and I didn't feel very strong..."

It took her till after she was dead to really feel like she had a place in the world, ironically enough. But if she can help Faramir out of his current woes, that'll make her feel a little more like it.

"But ... yeah. It's, well, it's kind of embarrassing to admit, but you know, you're kinda one of my heroes. I mean, seriously, you really are awesome."

"I am honored. When did you have a child?"

"When I was alive."

Steph apparently realises this is a pretty stupid answer, and adds "I was ... too young. I was only, like, fourteen."

She's quiet for a moment, and then says softly "Her name is Carrie. Carrie Kelley."

"That is a beautiful name. It has its own kind of music." He smiles to her. "You do not realize your strength. You do not realize how much stronger you are, and can be, as a woman. You remind me of Eowyn, in that way. If you could have seen her..." His eyes sparkle. "She was... is... in so many ways the perfection of her gender..."

Steph's not quite as sensitive to medieval attitudes towards women as her mun is, so it's pretty much sliding past her, with just a quirk of people from history are so weird.

"I'm sure you'll find her again," she says, comfortingly. "She'll come here, or you'll be unBound. It'll happen."

Faramir is actually quite progressive for his time. He does intend to marry a crossdresser, after all...

"I would wait several lifetimes for her," Faramir murmurs. "But... thank you."

Steph settles back into the snow quietly. She hasn't much more to say. And strangely, talking with Faramir has made her feel better.

She lets her gaze drift back towards the stars. They're pretty. Kon would approve. Would have approved. No - would approve.

Though he has no children, though even a lover's touch was still something strange and new to him when he arrived here two long years ago, he guides her like a father to lay her head on his shoulder, and tucks the fabric of the cloak around them both.
Be everybody's hero...
It is protective above all else. That is what he does: he can nurture even blossoms in the snow.
...but your own.
And his soul wanders the lights in the sky, and forgets for a while that it is winter.

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