And here it is, the final chapter (sniff). In which Faramir proves he is indeed worthy of Eowyn's love by taking on the scariest challenge of all... wrestling with the home office. But our noble knight does need to prove his mettle, and faint heart n'er won fair lady.

~o~O~o~

Faramir hung from the strap dangling from near the ceiling of the carriage, swaying in time with the movements of the tube. Truly, this was happiness indeed. He had washed the grime of work from his hands and was on his way to his latest wondrous discovery, a Proms concert. (Mozart, Brahms, Shostakovich, what could be more sublime?) And to make the experience perfect, Éowyn would be home on leave tomorrow.

The decision in the end had not been hard. However much Éowyn tried to convince herself, she was not happy in Middle Earth. And it was no great wrench for him – father and brother both dead, distinctly a spare part since the arrival of the king. When one threw Radio 3 onto the scales as well, the balance tipped decisively.

~o~O~o~

Galadriel had said it was possible for her to send them back to the time and place from which they'd left the modern world. So that was how they found themselves, swept down the rapids of a Welsh river. They had been fished out by the group of kayakers, who had seen the bridge collapse in the distance. When they described what had happened to the police, they'd reported with great sadness that while initially they'd seen three people in the water, the third had gone under before they could get to him. Police divers spent several days trying to find the missing man's body, but were unable to recover it.

Éowyn was given compassionate leave. She and Faramir had told Theo and Jane what had really happened, but it wasn't until Éowyn showed them the scars on her left arm which hadn't been there the day before, and yet which looked like old scars (and the slight bend in her forearm, set without recourse to the stainless steel pins that the modern world would have at its disposal), that they fully believed her.

"Éomer is a king?" Theo said in astonishment.

"A good one," said Faramir.

They dithered over what to tell the children, but in the end, told them the truth (safe in the knowledge that if the children told anyone, it would be dismissed as the fanciful imaginings of children trying to deal with grief before they were old enough to really understand death). Over the following years, the children came to love the stories of Éomer leading the charge across the Pelennor.

For Faramir, there was still the issue of how to make himself at home in the new world. However, it was Jane who had provided the idea, and Farouk who had provided the means. Jane had said idly, one day, "Couldn't you just do a Day of the Jackal?"

"What?" Faramir had asked.

"It was a film, decades back… inspired by a true story, I think. An assassin got a passport in a false name by tracking down the tombstone of someone who'd been born the same year as him, but died young, applied for a copy of their birth certificate, then got a passport," Jane had explained.

"Wouldn't work now," Theo had chipped in. "They have births and deaths cross-referenced these days."

But when Éowyn had gone to pick up her bike a few days later, she had returned with some news. "Farouk had a part time mechanic who lodged in the bedsit above the garage. Poor guy went home to his own country for Christmas, and got killed in a hit-and-run. When I arrived, Farouk was boxing up his stuff to send back to his relatives. Anyway, I told him about Faramir (Farouk knows people who know people… if you know what I mean), and he handed me this. Said the rellies probably wouldn't care one way or another about getting it back." She had produced a somewhat dog-eared ID card, the language unknown to any of the others. "Maybe this country doesn't cross-reference birth and death certificates."

Which was how Faramir (feeling somewhat guilty, for deception didn't come naturally to him) came to apply first for a replacement passport at the country's consulate, then, on the strength of the passport, for leave to remain as an EU national in the run-up to Brexit. After that, he moved into Farouk's bedsit (when Éowyn went back to her regiment), and started doing manual labour round the garage for cash in hand. There was now a jam-jar on the mantlepiece of the bedsit, in which he stashed a fiver a week in the hope of saving up enough to turn his leave-to-remain into citizenship eventually. Farouk had kindly faked up a rent book going back several years, and even some utility bills, to provide a paper-trail of sorts.

The bedsit was tiny, but it was his. Theo had provided him with some left-over emulsion to brighten it up, he'd got a bed from Freecycle, and cheap bedding from the supermarket. The junk shop down the road had supplied a small table and a couple of chairs, and he'd spotted a suggestion online on how to make a serviceable bookcase from planks and house bricks. He'd scrubbed the cupboards and filled them with cheap crockery and glasses; Theo had checked the wiring on the rather ancient electric cooker. Jane had given him some pot plants for the windowsill, and Kelly and Callum had drawn him some pictures for the walls. He'd even managed to squeeze in a small sofa.

The first time Éowyn came home on leave and stayed with him, he'd felt so proud that he now had a home (of sorts) to offer her. He thought wryly that once he could have offered her a palace and a country estate. He had even succeeded (here he couldn't help a smile) in becoming a prince. Then laughing at himself, he reflected that somehow this tiny bedsit meant more. And the sofa had proved comfortable, and the bed plenty big enough for two people who in any case wanted to be as close to one another as they could be, and the cooker worked just fine for cooking their meals, and the cheap glasses held wine just as well as expensive ones would have done. As he lay there in the early morning, a sleepy Éowyn in his arms, that cloud of glorious gold hair around his shoulders, yet more lines of Mardil came to him: She is all states; all princes I/ Nothing else is/ Thou, sun, art half as happy as we/In that the world's contracted thus/ Shine here to us and thou art everywhere/ This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere.

He had settled into a routine. Every evening, he would Skype Éowyn (and mornings too, most days). He worked. He studied. Firstly the language that was supposedly his native tongue – helped by another of Farouk's mates a couple of times a week (just in case the Home Office got on his trail). And secondly English and maths at evening classes a couple of times a week. He could now read and write pretty fluently (he had an ever-expanding shelf of books purchased from the charity shop on the high street – novels, plays, history, geography, popular science – he wanted to know everything about the world he now found himself in), and his teachers said he would be ready for GCSEs next year.

His pride and joy was another discovery in the charity shop – a second hand oboe to replace his hautboy, left in Minas Tirith. It had been in rather a mess when he got it. But Farouk, though not a musician, was skilled at anything mechanical, and with the aid of YouTube, had got the keys and pads into playable shape. YouTube had come to the rescue again, when Faramir needed to work out first the correct fingerings, then track down pieces of music to learn. And Farouk's father was always ready for a game of chess.

Weekends were spent partly round at Theo and Jane's house (they'd adopted him as a member of the family), and partly (of all unlikely activities) playing football. He lacked anything approaching ball skills, but his height, reflexes and background as an archer somehow meant he turned out to be quite a skilled goal-keeper (though the centre half had to take the goal kicks). Again, there was a slightly uncomfortable feeling of having stepped into a dead man's shoes (the former inhabitant of the bedsit having been the previous goal keeper for Farouk's team). But it gave him something to do on a Sunday morning, and, equally importantly, a group of people – gradually becoming friends – to hang out with.

And then there were many sources of complete delight. London was only a train-ride away. The train cost money, but once one was there… The British Museum, the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery – all these wonders, all of them free. And the joy of simply walking, through the huge city, absorbing the sights, the beauty (and in places, ugliness) of the buildings, walking for miles through the parks, walking along the river banks. Concerts (with the exception of the Proms) were too expensive, but one could go to church services and hear magnificent music for free as part of their religious ceremonies. And if he didn't exactly believe the same things, he was sure Eru and the Valar would understand. After all, had they not forged the whole world with song and music? This world too, he presumed.

And if he felt nostalgic for Minas Tirith, he had discovered (on randomly buying a train ticket one Saturday out of curiosity) that the mellow stone buildings of Medieval Oxford somehow reminded him enough of the city of his birth that they could soothe his homesickness.

No, all things considered, as he sat in the sunshine on the steps of the Albert Hall, keeping his place in the queue that snaked towards the building, he felt truly content.

But things got even better the next day. Éowyn arrived, glowing with happiness at seeing him, but also bubbling over with pride. The access courses she'd been taking online, studying hard in her small amounts of free time, had finally led to the qualifications she needed. She had got the results just the day before she left, and despite being on the brink of exploding with excitement, had managed not to blurt it out to Faramir over the phone, but had waited till she saw him in person. She had enough money saved to buy herself out of the army, and could start medical school as a mature student in September.

They celebrated by going to bed, getting up just long enough to eat a meal and drink some wine, then going back to bed again. As he lay there that night, with Éowyn in his arms, Faramir felt that when she wove their story, despite the moments of sheer horror and despair, taken as a whole, Vairë had surpassed herself.

~o~O~o~

A decade later, it was Christmas eve. The house glittered with the glow of Christmas lights, the tree sat in the corner decked with tinsel and baubles. Éowyn found herself gazing fondly at Faramir as he sat on the (slightly newer, rather larger) sofa, reading aloud to their three children. The Grinch who stole Christmas, and their absolute favourite, Robin Hood. Who would have thought, in her darkest hours hiding from Gríma in Meduseld, that eventually her life would turn out like this?

Her medical degree had gone well – not without its ups and downs, of course, but nothing she couldn't handle. (In particular, she remembered the very old-school consultant on her first clinical rotation trying to tell them that women couldn't cope with the pressure of trauma surgery. She pulled down the edge of her scrubs to reveal her bullet wound and said firmly that she personally found, when trying to apply a tourniquet under live fire, that the presence of bullets had much more of an impact on one's performance than the possession or otherwise of a uterus.)

In the end though, she'd gone into obstetrics and gynaecology, feeling that really she'd seen quite enough death (no specialism was without death, of course, but at least this way the new lives outnumbered the patients with really poor prognoses). She was now a senior house officer, and enjoying the additional responsibilities that brought.

While she'd been doing that, Faramir had worked quietly at filling in his education in this new world: first GCSEs, then A levels, then a part-time degree in history, which he juggled round looking after first Elboron, then Theodwyn, then little Éomer (how she missed her brother – but she consoled herself with the thought that somewhere out there, he was alive and well and thriving, probably with a wife and handful of children himself, and of course, horses – lots of horses). Faramir's offer to take on much of the childcare had at first astonished her, when he announced that he had discovered (courtesy of an article online) that in Scandinavian countries such a shared approach to parenting was considered normal in the early years. Coming from his background, she had not expected this in the slightest.

Faramir, however, had not really reflected on his background (or at least, not much, and not until slightly later). He had simply spotted an opportunity to do what he wanted to in any case, without adverse comments being passed (or at least, not too many of them – he got a bit of ribbing from the blokes on the football team, partly he suspected, because at least two or three of them secretly wished they had the balls to do it too). It also occurred to him that perhaps it was yet another way of setting the demons of the past to rest, by proving that he was an altogether different man from his father. But mainly it was because he found toddlers endlessly entertaining.

But little Éomer was due to start pre-school this year, and so Faramir had got a place on a teacher training course. Of course, Faramir being Faramir, he still suffered occasional twinges of guilt at the thought that all this was being accomplished on false papers. But he was getting better at living with it. Perhaps inspired by that Christmas day so long ago when Kelly (now a self-assured young woman) had made him play at schools, he wanted to become a secondary school teacher.

And as she'd once dreamed, she and Faramir faced the world side by side, and fought each other's battles (mercifully not literal ones any more), and talked, and squabbled, and made up, and made love. For he was still beautiful, and she still melted at his smile, his voice, his touch, and he still made her giddy with joy. Even if she had to put up with Radio 3. (Though really she harboured a secret fondness for it these days, and, presence, or rather, absence, of the children permitting, there was still one tune that could get her to drop whatever she was doing and leap on Faramir with approximately 30 seconds notice. Faramir, it had to be said, took full advantage of this.)

All in all, both of them couldn't imagine a way in which their lives could have been bettered.

~o~O~o~

AN: Thank you so much to all of you who have reviewed, followed and favourited this story - your encouragement has been greatly appreciated. And Earthdragon, I hope this sets some of your worries to rest. (I did smile at your review though - 17 chapters into a crazy AU with people skipping between worlds, and general disregard for canon which must have left the good professor turning in his grave, and suddenly you worry about the implications for strict canon... :-D We've all been there as readers I think - that "but, but, but... no... jumped the shark now" moment.)