milliways_bar | (no subject)

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One year ago, on this date, Sara was a crumpled sobbing mess on the lake shore, clutching a red spandex costume to her chest.

This year, she's not doing anything so dramatic.

A candle is lit and she stares out at the continuing destruction, almost entranced.

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"Because the table might get lonely." Clearly. Wouldn't do to hurt the furniture's feelings.

"Ooooh. Aw." Sad frown. "Can't have that, can we? That'd be... cruel."

He pets the table a little.

"Very cruel and you're not supposed to be cruel. That was your father's specialty. The asshole." In vodka veritas!

Faramir goes very still, and very quiet.

Even when drunk, Sara has a sixth sense about having screwed up.

"Shouldn't have said that," she says. Doesn't mean it's not true.

Faramir closes his eyes. "No. He was... you're right. He could be very cruel." It's nearly a whisper. "He did not know how to... love. He had treasures, hoarded them like a king." He looks hard at the candle.

Three days from now, two years ago, he'd lit a candle of his own for a vision he had known was truth.

"You didn't deserve that, Faramir. None of it."

"He's gone now," pointed out the perpetual optimist, though not without a twinge of real pain that could be heard in his voice -- whether out of a sense of loss, or something resembling self-pity... or what he would call self-pity, though simply to be hurt by another's actions, especially one's father's, is not so selfish and nonconstructive a thing as he tells himself it is.

"So's mine. He came here and I hated him and I wouldn't see him. Now he's gone and now I remember him beating me when I was younger and goddammit why do they do that? Why do they hurt us? They're supposed to love us."

Doesn't really matter who 'they' is, does it?

"Love's a hard thing to fit next to duty. Sometimes we can't... really understand..."

He's grasping at straws here.

"He didn't have duty as a fucking excuse! It isn't an excuse!" And here's the downside to drinking. Much more of this and Sara will be crying.

"But it's a reason..."

Grasping at invisible straws blindfolded in a windstorm.

"No reason is ever good enough to justify that kind of thing. None." She shakes her head. "That you can't see it makes me even angrier at him. Faramir, you're a treasure. So sweet. So kind. So giving, and protective. He threw you away."

Faramir looks away from her.

"Whether he did or didn't... what am I supposed to do about it? What should I ever have done about it? I was and am the Steward's son. I am no longer a child in need of protecting."

"No, but you're still hurt and you're still punishing yourself for that hurt."

"But I'm not..." He turns one of the shotglasses in his hand nervously. "I'm not punishing myself. How could I be doing that?"

"The same way I do whenever a case can't get solved or a cold-blooded murderer goes free. You're blaming yourself for your father's actions. Intellectually, you know it wasn't your fault. But emotionally...."

"Emotionally?"

He can't really explain what his emotions are right now... or what they've been... almost since he got here. He used to pine over his Eowyn, but it's been two years. He didn't stop missing her... he stopped feeling it. He arrived here such a short time after his father's death, yet spoke of it with almost no one. He accepted quickly that most people knew. Only two or three people had ever heard his side. He didn't dwell on it. And if he felt a kind of loneliness that was as ever-present as the air upon his skin... hadn't it always been so? And wasn't his brother here, and shouldn't that make him happy...?

"You tell me."

"Tell you what?" He looks at her, his grey eyes.... lost. He's never been that around anyone. "What is there to tell?"

"What are you feeling right now?"

Faramir looks at his hands and tries to focus. The alcohol both sharpens and dulls the senses. His emotions seem easier to define.

Which is not the same as approving of what he defines. And so the answer is, dully, "Nothing I can justify." Which makes it invalid, and allows him to push it away and pretend that refusing to accept its possible justification is the same as making it all better.

"What is, is," she says softly. "It's not up to you to justify it."

"What else am I supposed to do with it?" he asks, his voice very subtly strained.

"Accept it. I spent the better part of 20 years denying my history. Denying my anger. And it nearly cost me....well. It doesn't bear thinking about."