Chapter Text
“The hands of the King are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known.”
***
Five year old Faramir lay flat on his back on the floor of his father’s private study, tears leaking freely from his closed eyes. He was still too stunned to move, one arm outstretched towards the book that had been knocked free during his fall, now lying open with rumpled pages on the floor. He heaved in a tremulous sob and shuddered, hoping that Boromir were still in earshot to hear him, before releasing another anguished howl that echoed through the silent halls.
The chambers and corridors of the seventh level were typically silent in those days, the dark months following the death of Finduilas. With the shadow growing to the East had been years since Minas Tirith had been truly lively and gay, but the passing of the gentle steward-queen had cast the city into deeper melancholy and not the least in the private cells of her family.
Since she had passed Faramir and Boromir were typically left long hours to amuse themselves, for outside of their necessary studies Denethor considered it a waste in an austere age to employ someone solely to supervise boys too old for a wet nurse. When their mother yet lived they had spent much leisure in her company, but busy with the work of the stewardship there were days they barely saw their father. Normally the brothers entertained each other, playing at imaginary battles with wooden swords in the windy courtyard of the seventh level. However, as Boromir periodically sought the company of companions his own age, boys who were larger and faster and could be played with more roughly, recently Faramir had begun to spend his solitary time poring over books-- which at first he had only flipped through the pages of in imitation of his father’s meticulous study but one morning discovered with pleasurable surprise that he could decode himself. From there he was insatiable, raiding everything from the citadel library to the shelves of his father’s office and even his desk (a mistake he had made only once).
Today Faramir had sought a book beyond his reach-- more literally than figuratively, for once he was reading illustrated tales provided to him he was also reading the advanced texts written by scholars and documents that came across his father’s desk (much of which bored him, but he could nonetheless read). But usually-loyal Boromir had been no ally, refusing to retrieve from a tall bookcase the book that upset him so much the day before.
Attuned enough to his children's loneliness, Denethor had taken a short respite from his duties the day before to teach his sons the histories of the great kingdoms of Men, reading to them from a large tome on the later kings and early stewards of Gondor, including the lingering prophecy that the heir to the throne would one day return, by some accounts known by the powers of healing in his hands. “The hands of the King are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known,” Faramir had repeated after one of the serving-women who had indulged him in a tale, seeing how keen he was to absorb lore from any source. Knowing he could read, Denethor directed him to read aloud a passage on the fall of Isildur.
Faramir was impressed by the records of Gondor in ages past, when Osgiliath still stood as capital and kin-strife and plague had yet to afflict them, but Boromir was not satisfied to simply gaze back at what had been and inquired at what point a steward might be elevated to king if Isildur’s heir did not return; would his father ever be king, or Boromir himself? Denethor replied with measured composure that despite their family’s steadfast defense of the kingdom for hundreds of years, with all its ancient lineage Gondor still remembered and waited for the return of its king by blood and would wait ten-thousand years if necessary.
This clearly agitated Boromir, which in turn agitated his father, so Denethor had put away the book on a high shelf and fell silent on the matter. Yet Faramir wanted to know more about the king that was meant to return to Gondor and still mattered so much to their people. The idea that their family might not rule Gondor, in practice or in title, didn’t offend him nearly as much as it did Boromir; surely the reign of a king, as in so many of the stories, would be an era of revelry and song far more gay and glorious than the fortified austerity he knew of his father’s stewardship. He might even welcome his coming, for if the king were there to do his job his father would have more time for him and Boromir.
So Faramir had tried to scale the bookcase to reach his prize himself. However, his balance and coordination had developed in disproportion with his literacy; Faramir lost his footing on the fourth shelf and was unable to correct for it, falling a distance equivalent to his own height and landing sharply on his rear, the momentum tipping him back so that his head smacked hard against the floor.
It was still his instinct to cry for his lost mother, but at least Boromir came when he needed him, rushing in at the sound of the fall and Faramir’s piteous wail that began a moment later when he regained the breath that had been knocked out of him. He scooped him up and quickly inspected him for bleeding or worse, and then led him to their father, whom in those days as throughout his life he was certain in his wisdom could solve all concerns brought before him.
“I was in another room; I didn’t know he was climbing,” Boromir admitted, distressed by Faramir’s anguish and needled by the promises he had made to his mother that he would always watch out for his little brother.
However, Denethor didn’t hold his older son responsible. “What were you doing climbing a bookcase?” he demanded of the small weeping party at his knee. Faramir was surely old enough now to have the sense not to put himself in danger so recklessly. “Are you not responsible enough to consider your own safety? Is it necessary for someone to watch you constantly?”
Now stricken not only by his fall but also his father’s scolding, Faramir was speechless, his lip trembling and eyes continuing to well over with tears.
Denethor sighed in mild exasperation, remembering back to how his wife would have swept the boy up into her arms and soothed him without question until he had calmed. Denethor had cool nerve and nearly endless patience in matters of state and defense, but the early death of Finduilas had left him two children he had little knowledge in caring for and no time to learn. So instead of pulling his younger son up to embrace him on his lap as she would have done, he simply lifted him stiffly into the air, pressed his lips perfunctorily to the top of his head, and set him directly back down on his feet again. When Faramir gaped at him in confusion, he then patted him exactly thrice on the top of his head.
Faramir cringed, given it was his skull that had cracked so hard against the floor and Denethor had only narrowly missed where it still throbbed. However, at least the strangeness of his father’s awkward attempt at sympathy had distracted him from the pain. Presuming the issue resolved, the Steward sent his sons back out again with a sharp reminder to be more responsible with their own safety.
Rubbing at the sore spot on his scalp Faramir mused that if the legends were correct that the returning king of Gondor would have the hands of a healer, indeed his father would never be king.