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Faramir leans against the easternmost wall of the garden above the houses of healing and looks out at the empty plains and sky. He feels much more well than he did in the days past, yet his heart somehow feels half empty.
With quiet footstep, Eowyn moves across the gardens to the wall next to him. Her left arm has just recently been removed of it’s sling. They are both still healing. She places both her hands upon the wall and breathes deeply in the cold air of early spring.
They have been meeting quite frequently in this garden ever since their first meeting. They’ve lingered here and shared comforting words and stories as they watched the Eastern sky for news.
It’s been six days since the armies of Gondor and Rohan marched over the horizon. Aragorn leading their foolish charge against the Black Gates of Mordor. And for six days, they’ve not heard a single word of their fate.
He worries much, and Eowyn worries too, especially over her brother, who leads Rohan’s forces. There’s a sadness the lingers in her eyes that he knows all too well. Faramir worries over the men of Gondor, the soldiers and captains who ride in his stead. The man who would be his king. The hobbit who guarded the citadel during the last battle. And who saved his life too.
“Somewhere out there is our friends.” Faramir says, welcoming Eowyn to their lonely watch. “Our countrymen and allies. Those brave, brave hobbits.”
“You talk much about your hobbit.” She says with a weary smile. Faramir has, really, he’s been loose with his praises of Pippin with each of their meetings. Repeating tales that Pippin spun, telling her about their many meetings, how he bravely defied orders to save him from burning, how he had woken in the houses of healing with Pippin near at hand.
He has not been silent on the topic of Pippin once in all of their meetings. Eowyn wonders if he is even aware of how frequently he speaks of him.
“As you do about yours.” Faramir replies, thinking about how Merry came and told him all about his journey with Eowyn and how Eowyn, knowing this, still told him her side of the same story.
Not nearly to the same caliber, Eowyn wants to say. It’s not quite the same.
“What is it that you feel?” She asks, her hands grip the smooth stone of the walls, her eyes fixed on the distant battle neither of them can see. “When you think of him.”
Faramir blushes. He is glad that she is turned away. “What do you imply?” He asks.
“I don’t know.” She says, slow with her words, careful where she treads. “You care for him.” She turns and examines the blush upon Faramir’s cheeks. “But that is not all, is there?”
“No.” He says. “I care for him deeply. His smiles and jokes brought me such joy in the midst of despair. He risked much to save me from my father. I can never repay him. I do not know how he considers me but –“ He swallows. “But I would wish to be by his side, always. I would wish to love him and have that love returned.”
Eowyn smirks up at him. “Your face betrays what your smooth words do not.”
Faramir knows his face must be a right shade of scarlet. He brings a hand up to his cheek to feel the warmth that his flustered state brings on. How Pippin has not yet noticed that he gets this way around him is a mystery. Perhaps the hobbit just thinks his skin looks like this – though it didn’t when they first met.
No, this a feeling so deep that could only be developed by getting to know Pippin Took and all his stories of mischief and bluster. His deep fears and hearty courage. His smiles and jokes and far-off looks. His fidgety fingers and his surprising might with a sword.
“I am glad to hear it.” Eowyn says. “Merry has such joyful stories of Pippin, and while we have met, I did not know him long. It must be wonderful, to love him so.”
Faramir looks upon Eowyn. The wind pulls her hair back from her face, her blue cloak billowing out in the wind.
“You speak with sadness , Eowyn, why is that?”
Eowyn waves a hand to the wind. “It is nothing.” She says curtly. Then after a pause, turns to him. “I thought, once, that I experienced this same kind of love that you do. It turns out, that what I really wanted was friendship.” The corners of her mouth tick upwards in humor. “And this has happened three times just this last month.”
Faramir lets out a little laugh. “Three times! Well, if I had been one of them. I would have happily given you my everlasting friendship.”
Eowyn lets out a little laugh at that. There is a twinkle in her eye at his words. He reaches out and takes her cold hand.
“It is well to see you smile like this.” He says. “You’re much happier than you were the first time we met in this gardern. You were all cross and gloomy then!”
“Well I had to do something to cheer you up while dear Pippin is away. And it seems that it has cheered me up as well.”
“I am very glad to have you as a friend.” Faramir says, and together, hand in hand, they keep watch over the eastern skies.
They have waited together for so long, the Steward of Gondor and the White Lady of Rohan, when the news of the fall of Sauron reaches them. But still, they wait, and wait and wait, looking East together, watching the horizon for any sign of their friends return.
And finally, on a day that he and Eowyn were not watching the horizon, the armies came to Minas Tirith.
At the news, Faramir ran first for the Eastern windows. There, already over the horizon and slowly approaching, were the grey shapes of the armies of men.
And among them would be the living, who would bring tales of the dead, but Faramir still did not know who of his friend and compatriots would return. He hopes that Pippin would be with them. Alive and well.
He met them at the city gates. Faramir would have run to Pippin when they arrived, but Pippin was not leading the group with Aragorn as he was at first.
The soldiers of Gondor poured into the city, parting around him and Aragorn, Legolas, the captain from Rohan and the second from Gondor. “You made it back!” He said joyfully. “You survived!” He scanned the group for the hobbits. “But where is Pippin? Where is Merry?”
“Injured,” Aragorn spoke quietly. “Merry would not leave his side.”
“Bless him –“ Sobbed Gimli as he slid off his horse. Faramir hadn’t registered that he sat behind Legolas. “-I thought him dead, when I found him, almost crushed by a troll!”
Faramir fells his heart stutter and start as Gimli continues his story.
“But he was alright! The ressilence of hobbits indeed! He’s improved greatly as we rested on the fields of cormallen. But the other two have barely stirred since we received them.”
Faramir’s brow furrowed. “What other two?” All the captains of the army seemed to be accounted for.
“The two hobbits, tasked with destroying the one ring, the ones you met in Ithilden.”
He remembered the two brave hobbits that he did meet there. Frodo and Samwise. The ringbearer and the gardener. And he had heard many stories from Pippin, less tight lipped about them once Faramir revealed that he knew of their task. “I am glad to hear that they still live.” He said, joyus.
But still, his mind lingered on Pippin, who must have been escorted past into the houses of healing. He would have ran to him, if he had not just gotten out of that place, and knew just how cross they would be at his presence.
He waited a day, until he knew that Pippin was awake, and well, if all accounts were to be considered, though Faramir doubted them until he could see the hobbit with his own eyes.
It was early morning, when he finally worked up the courage to walk to Pippin’s rooms. There was still an air of great cheer over the entire city. The war was won. Sauron was no more. What greater reason for celebrating was there.
Eowyn had teased him mercilessly about his lingering glumness. ‘Moping over Pippin’ she rudely called it.
He was not moping. He was worried. There’s a difference.
Faramir knocks quietly on the door. Hoping not to wake him if he’s resting.
“Yes!” Calls Pippins voice quicky from the other side. “Do come in.” He sounds awake, and bright, and cheery. How Faramir has longed to hear that voice again!
He opens the door quickly. Pippin is lying down on his back, his eyes fixed upon the ceiling. His golden brown curls bright against the pale white sheets. His forehead looks bruised and a thin cut graces his jaw. Bandages peek out around his arms and legs. One of his feet is heavily wrapped.
He tilts his head towards the doorway and their eyes meet.
“Oh!” He shouts out, trying to sit up and failing with a small gasp of pain. His head falls back on the pillow with a mighty grin. “Faramir! You came to see me.”
“Of course I came to see you.” He blurts out. Faramir can feel the beginning of his Pippin-induced blush start to creep onto his cheeks as his heart speeds up.
“I wasn’t sure.” Says Pippin. “It’s been a little while since I got back, I think, and I haven’t had many visitors. Just Aragorn and Merry.”
“I thought you might have still been asleep, like I was.” Faramir had slept for a long time, besieged by fever after the battle. He didn’t even remember Pippin’s efforts to save him. But he knows the story well now. He hopes it’s not a sore subject for Pippin, and curses himself for even bringing it up.
“Oh nonsense.” Pippin scoffs. “I’m perfectly fine. These healer types are so annoying, however did you manage it.”
Faramir takes in a deep breath. “But I heard that you were almost crushed under a troll.”
Pippin nods, confirming the tale.
Faramir wants to reach out and touch Pippin. From the way Gimli had told it, Pippin was mostly dead when he was finally found. He takes a fair step towards the bed, but no further. Pippin looks up at him with wide eyes that make Faramir’s heart warm. “You’re really here? Alive and awake? I would think that falling under a troll would have killed any mortal man for sure!”
Pippin grinned up at him. “Hobbits are remarkably resilient you know. I once watched a hobbit get nearly crushed by a cart at marketplace and stand right back up out of the mud. Much dirtier than before, mind you, but she was perfectly healthy and ready to slap some sense into the man and his cow with the cart. She was my aunt actually, well, my great aunt on my mother’s side’s daughter, which in the shire, counts for some sort of…”
Faramir’s worries begin to fade away as Pippin rambles on about his family relations and crazy second cousins back in the Shire. He sits gingerly at the foot of the bed as his brain begins to process that Pippin is really right next to him.
“Here.” Says Pippin, pausing in his tale. “Lie down next to me.”
Faramir is too shocked by the forwardness of the gesture to refuse. He wants too badly to wrap the hobbit up in his arms and just squeeze until he’s sure that he’s there. But he wouldn’t dare do that to someone so injured.
He falls down upon the sheets and gazes long at him as Pippin finishes off his story, starting to pick up a new one about the Shire as he turns onto his side to face Faramir.
Pippin hisses with sudden pain and Faramir jerks away from him. “What happened?” He asks frantically. Had he been in the way? Had Pippin reinjured himself?
“It’s nothing.” Says Pippin. “I just moved my leg a little strange.”
Faramir looks down at the bandages that peek out from under his pants. “It hurts that bad?” He asks. Maybe he should leave him to rest.
“No!” Pippin tries to reassure. “I’m alright, Faramir. Here, lie back down.” He pats the thin sheets that he lies upon. Slowly, and only at Pippin’s insistence, does he lie back down. And as Pippin begins another tale, he watches his face. The face he longed to see for long. The bruise over his forehead looks worse than at first glance, though luckily not bad enough to scar. But his eyes remain bright as he talks away.
Slowly, Faramir’s mind drifts to those long watches. Him and Eowyn unable to do anything to their aid, just waiting and watching the east for the news of the battlefield. For news of Pippins fate.
And he almost didn’t come back. His fate almost ended right there upon the battlefield, at the gates of Mordor. And Faramir would have been helpless to stop it. Locked away in his white tower, unable to protect Pippin from any danger. He would never want that to happen again. Not now, that he has Pippin carefully curled next to him.
He wants to move closer, to wrap his arms around him and hold him close. But he’s scared of hurting him. The gasp of pain that Pippin had let out mere moments ago still lingers in his ears.
He reaches out, or maybe Pippin reaches out first, hearing his quick, damp breathes.
“Hey, Hey Faramir.” Says Pippin, clutching a hand into the sleeve of his shirt and tugging. “Hey Faramir, It’s okay. Look, I’m okay! I’m right here, safe as can be.”
Faramir won’t move closer, so Pippin does, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and smoothing a palm against his back. Faramir’s face falls against his chest, his arm hovers above his still-bruised ribs, before Faramir finally lowers it, gentler than any touch Pippins known before.
“You almost died.” Faramir says.
Pippin shushes him softly, the way that his mother always did when he said something stupid.. “But I didn’t. See, you can feel me, I’m right here.” Faramir begins to cry quietly against his chest.
“But you saved me,” He gasps out. “When I almost…. But in turn I would have been helpless to save you. I would have been locked away in this tower, and you out on that battlefield, crushed. I could not bear it.”
“You were injured, you needed to heal, you did not need to protect me, you did not need to be there when you were hurt.” Pippin’s rambling at this point, trying to find the right words to console him.
“I would never wish for you to be out of my reach like that. I care for you. Too much. Pippin.”
Pippin stills. If Faramir could see into his brain he would have seen the gears grind to a halt and pale blue sky of nothing appear. Pippin blinked. “Wait….Do you love me?”
"Yes." Faramir says into his already damp tunic. "Yes I do." He feels his face boil. Why had he said that? And so quickly at that! He almost moves to retreat out of sheer embarrassment.
"Oh well that's great news." Says Pippin, feeling a smile break over his face. "Because luckily enough I'm still alive to love you back."
“What?” Faramir carefully moves back away from Pippin so that he can see his face. It seems like those were either the magic words of comfort, or he managed to shock Faramir so much he stopped crying.
“Faramir.” Says Pippin softly. “I care for you. I love you. You are very charming you know. Although I did not realize what I felt at first, but I understand. I would not see you hurt any more than you would I. But don’t grieve. I’m here.”
Faramir sniffles slightly as he looks wide-eyed and hopeful at Pippin.
"You're crying a lot" he teases. Faramir removes one hand from around pippins arm to smear his tears across his cheeks and palms.
"That's not very kind of you too point out mister hobbit." His voice still sounds tear struck and miserable
"Well it's a fact. And it's not very nice to call me Mister Hobbit when you’ve been using my tunic as a towel for your tears. Are you saying that you'd cry on just any old hobbits shoulder."
"Yes, Pippin." He jests. "Maybe I should go sob over Merry next."
"You'll do no such thing" says Pippin and he reaches up and places his hands on both of Faramir’s cheeks. And firmly drags him into a kiss.
Faramir’s lips are slightly damp where his tears fell, and he shivers under Pippin’s touch.
The kiss turns into two, into three. The last one lingers for a long moment before Faramir pulls away. "I shouldn't." He says, gently brushing his hand down Pippin’s side. "You're still injured."
"Oh hell!" Says Pippin boldly. "I injured my legs and ribs, not my lips! You can kiss me again without hurting me!" So Faramir does gladly.
He thinks, too, as they kiss, that Pippin must have found his courage on that battlefield, for he is acting very forward, and far braver than Faramir would have dared to be alone.