Just a short one shot about one person's search for and ultimately find of freedom in a world full of fetters. (Faramir/Eowyn)

I do intend to get on with Jewel, but I had to do this one first.

Free

I wriggled my toes in the warm sand from the safety of my mother's lap as we watched my brother running through the waves. Up until a few minutes ago, my mother, my father, and myself had been running and leaping through the water ourselves. My favorite game had been to run from the tide when it came up. But we had all decided that we were tired, and had gone up on the beach to rest. My brother, however, could not be tired, and still ran.

We were visiting my uncle, Imrahil, at his tower in Dol Amroth. As soon as we got there, I had asked my uncle what Dol Amroth meant. He had told me that it meant the Hill of Amroth, and he proceeded to tell me the story of Amroth and Nimrodel. He said that if I ever met an elderly man by the name of Mithrandir, I must ask him about Amroth and Nimrodel, for it was the wizard's favorite tale and he would be delighted to tell me all about them and to even sing me a song about them. That was how I developed my love for Mithrandir. The Grey Wanderer.

A seagull cried overhead and I laughed as I watched it. It was so happy and free. I wished that I were like that. Happy and free. That was all that mattered. I didn't care about being glory-ridden, like Boromir did, and I didn't care about power and strength like my father did. Even then, when he was happy with my mother, he worried about his country. He was not very popular due to some captain named Eantungol by the village folk, and Thorongil by the more well read folk. But I didn't know for sure; I was only four. But my father was worried that he would not have enough control over the people when he needed it, so he ruled with a rather iron fist.

"Do you like the sea, Faramir?" my father asked, looking away from Boromir and to me, sitting in my mother's lap.

I didn't answer for a moment, for even then I wanted to find only the best words to describe my feeling. I looked out at sea, and then up at the bird, and then back at my father.

"The blue, blue sea,

Is not free.

I look to the blue, blue sky,

Where the sea bird flies."

Both of my parents laughed at that, but I was not ashamed of my poetry. I knew what made them laugh was not the poetry, but the spontaneity of it. My mother's laugh was a short joyful sound that tinkled it's way across to where Boromir was trying to slosh water an angry crab in order to distract it from running after him (while only making it angrier. Boromir does not understand that while sloshing water a ME might throw his chaser off, a crab belongs in the water. It will not be deterred by a little more water), and he looked up from his task to wave at her. My father's laugh was a full out laugh that lasted for some time.

When his laughter had finally subsided to chortles, he said proudly, "What a clever son have I, who can recite such poetry from memory at any given moment. What a quick thinker! You will make a good politician, my son!"

I raised my round, grey eyes to him—my eyes are no longer so large and round with childhood innocence, it was one of the things that I lost over time. While my eyes were never the slanted slits that my mother's were, they were longer and narrower—and I said, "But I didn't recite it, Ada, I just now made it up!"

I anticipated his surprise, and I had been hoping for it. Even when I was young my father was not as impressed with me as he was with my brother. This was natural, of course, seeing that my brother had so much with which he could be impressed, but I hoped that he would be just as proud of my poetry, however very pathetic, as he was of Boromir's talents.

However, I did not anticipate his surprise in the way that it was. My father stared at me for some time before he opened his mouth to speak. I think that it was then when he first realized how different his son was from himself. I think that he realized that I was on a different plain. I watched his heart waver from what it had always known as love and compassion towards me, to something else, confusion and doubt. I could see what he was thinking. I wasn't better, but he couldn't understand that I could be equal without being the same. So he convinced himself that I was worse. That was one of the many things that played into his ridicule of me over the years. He also realized that if I were different, perhaps I wouldn't see what he was doing. Perhaps I wouldn't be loyal to my Steward. Perhaps I would be the first to break. This was another thing. He watched me carefully from then on, and accused me of traitorous acts right and left.

I noticed then that my mother had gone quiet too, and I glanced up at her as she watched my father staring down at the little boy sitting on his beloved wife's legs. I was confused by the sudden silence, and began to wonder just what I had said to ruin our previous happiness. But my sudden movement seemed to shake my father from his reverie. He opened his mouth to say something, probably jovial and off the subject. But before he uttered a syllable, probably before he even figured out just what to say, Boromir let out a great wail that might have been mistaken as a banshee cry for miles around.

Both of my parents leapt up and ran down the shore, leaving me to struggle to catch up. Soon, I didn't even bother. Boromir had wandered quite far away, and he was now deep in the water as well as far along the beach. I couldn't run as fast, so I just sat on the ground and waited for them to come back—which took an awfully long time, I can tell you. When my parents and my brother returned, my father looked at me strangely, and looked like he might scold me, but then he didn't. Instead he gestured to Boromir and said, "Stepped on a Sea Urchin."

What a foolish brother I have to do such a thing like that. Do you have any idea how much that would hurt? Fortunately, I do not, as I have never, in all my years of playing at sea, done such a thing; but my brother had done it five times. This was the first though, and he swore that he would never do it again each time, but then he did.

My mother looked like she wanted to say something to me, but then she glanced over at Father and seemed to change her mind due to his rather hard look. So instead the three of us walked back to my uncle's house with my father carrying my brother.

Late that night, as my mother was coming in to say goodnight, she whispered, "Me too." I didn't respond at first, trying to figure out what it meant as she dimmed the lamp and pulled my blankets higher, she then went to the door and said, "Goodnight, Faramir." I smiled at her, but still pondered what she had said. As she was closing the door behind her I called her back to ask her, but she was already gone by the time the words escaped my mouth.

Mouths can be such prisons sometimes. But if they are prisons, then they must be more like locked doors with other cells' keys in them. I have learned that I can release and inspire any emotion from anyone by my mere words, and I have never considered myself very eloquent at all.

It was late that night when I finally solved my mother's riddle. I had finally fallen asleep, and was dreaming of myself as a sea gull. I then saw another gull, crying along with me. I saw her eyes, and they were those beautiful grey orbs that my mother owned. We flew together for some time before my mother suddenly fell from the sky. I cried after her and was trying to fly down myself, but instead I found myself held back from doing so. I could do nothing but watch her fall. Then, suddenly, I realized that she was spiraling back up to me. She was alongside me again, and again we flew together. But this time, her eyes were glittering blue like the sea in the morning.

I woke, and realized that my mother had meant that she, too, looked to the blue, blue sky. She, too, wanted to be a sea bird. We both longed for a freedom that was not ours to have.

I didn't understand it. Why did the people who wanted such freedom fail to receive it? I later realized that no one is free. We all are tied to whatever society surrounds us, and that there is nothing that we can do about it. We are all tied to our responsibilities, and our positions in life, no matter how unsatisfied the majority of us are. It didn't seem fair, and it still doesn't, but as I thought about it more, I wondered whether there was any way to escape the chains. Was there a way, when just for a short time every day, I could be free?

At first, I thought that books released me. But then it did not seem to do so. I quickly realized that I had no time for books. My chains were too heavy, and my father was adding weight to them every day.

I tried to find salvation from my bonds, but nothing seemed to satisfy me. Even when I managed to read to my heart's content, which was only the rare times when I was on leave, I never managed to face my reality again with a cheerful face. I didn't have anything that would help me hold out against the storms. That was what freedom I needed. Something that would really mean enough to me that I could loose all my worry about my lacks of freedom, and I didn't think that it existed.

I never mentioned my mother's words to her. I wanted to, but I didn't know what she would say. Perhaps she didn't want to talk about it. Perhaps she would rather keep it as an silent din between us. Those words that said so much but could not be uttered.

But four months later, I regretted it. It was two days after my fifth birthday when she died. I was the last person to whom she spoke. "Goodbye, my sea gull, I love you," she said. I opened my mouth to say something but she put her fingers to my lips and shook her head. She then lowered her hand and placed it next to the other one, which was laying across her stomach. She wanted to die nobly, but it seemed to me at the time that she was giving up. She wasn't even trying to live. I didn't understand why she was acting like she was already dead, because she wasn't.

Sometimes, though, giving up is the only way to be free.

I sat there and watched her slip away. I don't know if she had planned that to happen or not. It was, of course, my first encounter with death. It was horrible how her cheek became cold against my hand, how the tears that fell from my eyes ceased to be felt by the hand that caught them. If she had planned that I should witness her death, I almost want to call her cruel. I died that day myself, after seeing what I saw, and I will never forget how I felt when I realized that she wasn't with me anymore. It wasn't like she was asleep, where she was easily reached, all I had to do was sleep myself and I could reach her and wander alongside of her. No, she was gone forever. I could no longer see her. Even though her body lay next to me, I didn't recognize it as my mother's any longer. I sat there and cried for hours before my brother finally found me and pulled me away. I never understood why I had to be there for that event. I was only five.

I didn't speak to anyone for three days after that. I avoided life. Anytime I saw someone living, I remembered how far away my mother was, and how she never could breathe again. The simple act of breathing brought so much joy and anguish in my soul, for I still could breathe, but she could not.

One night, I woke up with tears running down my face as I remembered my mother's face as she died. I ran into Boromir's room and cried into his shoulder for hours. Finally, my voice hoarse from not speaking for so long, I whispered, "Why? Why did she die?"

"I don't know, Mir. I don't know," he whispered back. Tears ran down his own cheeks, finding their destination in my hair. He held me for some time longer, before I finally fell asleep.

The next morning seemed to have meaning for me, I had to find a way to live, so that my mother would not have died in vain. For I had thought a lot about the answer to my question and I think that I found it.

I went to my father and I spoke to him for a while, trying to repair our relationship that had been thrown into turmoil since Mother died. He was still shaken and he didn't speak much, so we ended up just sitting in silence until he finally broke it with these bitter words: "It's not fair. Why couldn't she live? Was she so unhappy? I know that she longed for the sea, and I know that she was terrified of the Shadow, but we're still alive! Why couldn't she go on? Why couldn't she fight? We needed her to fight! Oh, Finduilas!"

I thought about this for a while, and then quietly said, "She didn't die because she was unhappy, and she didn't die because she wanted the sea. She didn't die because of the Shadow. It was somewhat of an odd mixture of that and others too. Mother died because she wanted to be free. She wanted to be a sea gull. She always has. Do you remember when we went to Dol Amroth and I made up that poem about the sea gull and the blue, blue sea? Later that night, Aimee told me that she felt the same way. And now I know that she's happy, and she died so that we could be free. She died so that we could face our fears and find a way around them. She died to make us look."

I wondered in his silence if this made any sense, and I was beginning to think that it didn't, when he quietly and tensely said, "You know nothing of what she thought. I knew her better than any. I knew what she wanted and I knew what she could not have. Unfortunately, they were the same. I knew Finduilas of Dol Amroth better than you could dream to."

I didn't even think about what had made him angry or what was going to continue to make him angry, I spoke again, trying to prove my point. "Are you saying that Aimee didn't love Boromir and me? Are you saying that she didn't love you? You're wrong. Are you saying that she loved the sea more than the three most important people in her life? Aimee was not an artificial woman. You're wrong. She died for us, and she died for herself. She saw giving up as the only way that she could be free of life, and she wanted us to learn. I don't know what she wanted us to learn, but she wanted us to learn from her actions. Aimee loved us!"

"Of course she loved us," Father replied. I could tell that he was trying to be patient, but was not succeeding. "But that did not kill her. Her agony over her loses killed her. Again, I will tell you. I knew her better than you could even dream to know her!"

"I am her!" I cried before I even thought (forgive my grammar, I knew no better at the time). I didn't know what drove me to say that, but I knew that I was like my mother in more ways than one. "When I was born she was split into two people, one of them has lived and one has died. Don't you understand Ada?"

He looked at me with that look that he had given me on the beach. He began to realize even more how different I was, and how unfathomable to him I could be. He also realized that maybe I was right. He realized many different things. Things that I wonder every day whether I should have enlightened him about. It would have made my life a bit simpler, for sure, but it would have created a different sort of chain. I was unaccustomed to lying, and I always had been, so it would have been torturous to pretend that I was different from what I was.

Finally, in the tightest voice I had ever heard him use, my father told me, "Get out, now."

I obeyed.

It was then that it all began. My father never trusted me again. Many people say that he didn't love me because I reminded him of my mother, and every time that he would look at me, he would see his beloved wife staring back at him. I know this to be true. But it was more than physical similarities, for Boromir and I looked very similar and he loved Boromir. No, it was in every way. Every time that I would do anything, my father would remember my words and realize them to be true. There were many things that angered him over this. I knew my mother more than he did, I was the last one to whom she spoke, and I was so much like my mother myself in a way that he never could be. He had loved her so that it drove him mad when he thought that his son was more worthy of her love than he was. So he made me unworthy. I know that each time I did something and he ridiculed me he was secretly saying in his heart, "See, my darling Finduilas? He doesn't deserve you. I am much more worth you love and effort. Don't you see? Don't you see?" But there was nothing that he could do to make her see. My mother was dead. His darling Finduilas was dead. She was dead.

But all of his hate towards me placed another chain on me. He added more and more responsibilities to my plate until I overworked myself so hard that I fell ill many times. I just tried to please him, and it chained me again. I realized when I was eighteen that I would never please him, no matter how wonderful I was. I realized then, too, that I would never be free of these chains, for no matter how in vain my efforts were, I would continue trying until I succeeded.

But before I knew it, he was gone too. I often wonder if he ever saw what he had done to me before he died, or if he passed away in blissful ignorance. I knew which one I hoped. I hoped that he understood me and loved me finally, at the end. But every time I told myself that surely he had I doubted again and told myself that it was just what I was hoping, and that there was nothing to support that.

I never succeeded, as far as I knew. I would be chained forever to nothing. To air. I began thinking about my mother's tactic of escaping inevitable and unwanted chains. Was it worth giving up? Who was I living for, after all? My family was dead, and the King had returned. I was unneeded. Why not? I knew that I had to wait until I could get things in order so that When Aragorn returned from the Black Gate all would be ready for him, but after that, I would have nothing left to live for. It didn't seem unreasonable or awful when I thought about it that way. In fact, there were only a few people of whom I could think who would actually have a reason to grieve. Beregond, Pippin, and a few rangers, they would mourn my death, but they had such lives to lead that it wouldn't trouble them very long. Besides, I'm afraid that the only person that I let see the true me was Boromir. I was so focused on my father that I didn't even care what others thought of me.

But then she came into my life, and it was turned quickly upside down.

"Do not misunderstand him, lord. It is not lack of care that grieves me. No houses could be fairer, for those who desire to be healed. But I cannot lie in sloth, idle, caged. I looked for death in battle. But I have not died, and battle still goes on," she said to me when the Warden brought her to me.

She wishes to be free of chains too, I thought. She knows what it feels like. She detests her cage as I detest my chain. We were both bound to what we did not love.

I noticed then her eyes. They were the color of the glittering blue sea in the morning. Though I could tell that she would never understand that. Her face told me that she had never been to the ocean, for one's face changes after one has seen the sea. I swore then that she would see it before she died. This woman could not die without seeing that which her eyes told me she would be eternally linked to.

We spoke, and I watched as she faltered, and tried my hardest to bring her back to the proud woman that I had seen before. I told her of all the beauty that she possessed. I didn't know if she believed me, but I felt better when I had told her.

Over the next few days, I realized that something had changed. I had chained myself to Eowyn. Every time I found myself with someone whom I admired, would I tie myself to the person and refuse to let go? Would I do whatever I could to please the person and never please myself?

So I thought about what would please me.

Many days passed before I figured it out. Eowyn had not gone to the Fields of Cormallen, and it made me wonder. But I did not feel that it was my place to speak to her until the day the Warden came to me and spoke to me. I went to her then. We stood up on the walls and I asked her, "Eowyn, why do you tarry here, and do not go to the rejoicing in Cormallen beyond Cair Andros, where your brother awaits you?"

"Do you not know?" she responded.

"Two reasons there may be, but which is true, I do not know," I answered, to buy myself time, for I wondered what I still should do. Should I answer following my heart, and my intuition, or should I answer as I thought that I should—as would be appropriate? I then remembered the question that I been asking myself for the last passing days. What would please me? My heart would give me the answer.

"I do not wish to play at riddles. Speak plainer!" she replied sharply.

"Then if you will have it so, lady, you do not go, because only your brother called for you, and to look on the Lord Aragorn, Elendil's heir, in his triumph would now bring you no joy. Or because I do not go, and you desire still to be near me. And maybe for both these reasons, and you yourself cannot choose between them. Eowyn, do you not love me, or will you not?"

I surprised myself with this speech, but I knew that it was true. It would decide where I would go with the rest of my life.

"I wished to be loved by another. But I desire no man's pity," was her only response. But I anticipated such a response.

"That I know." I told her. And with I deep breath I said the words that so dearly needed to be said but that I was so afraid to say. "You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn. Because he was high and puissant, and you wished to have renown and glory and to be lifted far above the mean things that crawl on the earth." As do I, I thought to myself. For what else is freedom but the lack of that which we loath? "And as a great captain may to a young soldier he seemed to you admirable. For so he is, a lord among men, the greatest that now is. But when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle. Look at me, Eowyn!"

Had I said too much? How was I to know? By the time I finished, I was speaking from something much deeper than mere thought processing liked I normally did. There was only one other time that I had ever spoken to anyone like this. Of course, this emotion had come through much of my poetry and music, but never but once had I actually voiced it to another human being.

That once I was punished severely by my father.

She looked up at me, returning my gaze with gentle but stony gaze. She was not a woman to be wooed by words. No, she would only care about what was in her heart. But did she even know what was in her heart? "Do not scorn pity that is a gift of a gentle heart, Eowyn! But I do not offer you my pity. For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Eowyn, do you not love me?" I repeated my question once more, hoping that she didn't hear the begging that had seeped into my voice. I knew that she would not grant me her heart unless it was fully given, for she was a woman who would rather have everything or nothing. She looked at me softly, and I saw something deep down inside of her brighten.

"I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun, and behold! The Shadow has departed! I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, or take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren. No longer do I desire to be a queen."

Everything she said echoed in my head for I time that I did not know had passed. But finally it boiled down to no longer do I desire to be a queen. For such words meant so much to me. They meant the world to me. More than the world.

I suddenly realized what I had been searching for all this time. The key to those chains was finally resting in my hand. Love. I realized that the only release from hate and fear, the world's greatest burdens, was love. Someone was there for me and always would be. I didn't need to worry anymore. Every man fears being the only one, doesn't he? He fears leaving behind the safety of the life he knew for unknown territory. All of our doubts derive from that fear. Every man hates when he is not enough. He hates when someone else has what he cannot.

But if I love, and am loved, I needn't fear or hate, for I have everything with Eowyn, and I knew, because she is a woman who would rather have everything or nothing, and because she was such a wholehearted person, I knew that she would never desert me. Wrong or right, we would find a way to make it through our troubles and forever forgive each other.

This realization broke loose all of those emotions that I had buried for so long. I didn't know if I'd rather laugh or cry in my joy. I settled on laughing, and I told her, "That is well, for I am not a king. Yet I will wed with the White Lady of Rohan, if it be her will. And if she will, then let us cross the River and in happier days let us dwell in fair Ithilien and there make a garden. All things will grow with joy there, if the White Lady comes."

"Then must I leave my own people," she asked me, "Man of Gondor? And would you have your proud folk say of you: 'There goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North! Was there no woman of the race of Numenor to choose?'"

And when I answered her, it was with my whole heart. And when I kissed her, it was with my whole heart. For now I was healed from the wound I had thought unhealable. I was cured from the disease that I had thought incurable. I was free.