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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"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."

"Accept it... and then what? How can I accept what adds nothing, what comes from nothing?"

"Accept it and then let yourself break. Nothing can heal properly if it's not set back right in the first place."

Faramir rests his hands on the table, one covering the other, and stares at them.

"I am a Steward and a Prince," he says, a touch hoarsely. "I cannot afford to break."

"Can you honestly afford not to?"

Faramir presses his thumb and fingers into his eyes, then covers his mouth with his hand as he looks out at the stars, and finally looks to her, grey eyes shining silver.

"Not here. Not... out here."

"C'mon." A friend in distress is a great way to sober up. She puts a hand under his elbow and leads him outside, by the lake.

He follows her out into the darkness. Finally he stands by the side of the lake, silent, seeing yet unseeing, and very, very still -- it would be hard to tell he's still breathing if not for the clouds of mist from his parted lips.

"Standing on one foot at a time is how everyone walks, Faramir," she says. Maybe a non-sequitor, but maybe not. "Let go."