Summary: Faramir and his Aunt Caeveneth come to terms with Denethor's death, together.
Character(s): Faramir & OC
Rating: G
Word count: 4.9k
It was Mithrandir who told Faramir that she had come. “Did she give you a message?” he had asked.
The wizard had shaken his head. “I do not think that she wished to speak to anyone. She only demanded to know what had become of the House of the Stewards. When I told her of its destruction, she left immediately.”
Faramir had not been to visit Rath Dínen since his father had taken him there. His memories were dark and burning, little more than breaking voices and a jostling that had seemed to rattle his very bones, all perceived through the murk of fever and strung between dreams of overwhelming night and black wraiths whose touch scorched like a brand. Yet it had not been the heat or the shadows that had overwhelmed him, that made his mind darken at the thought of those dread hours. It had been the loneliness, the knowledge that, should he cry, no one would hear him, should he reach out, no hand would meet his own. He was alone, in the burning dark, and there he would die. Even now, more than a month since and spring livening the air, a cowardly part of him wished to wait for her to come back, to leave her to grieve alone. But you cannot do that.
He had grieved Boromir alone, as had she, as had their father. And yet have you grieved him? Do you not feel his death like a weight upon your heart?
So he swallowed his fear and descended to the fifth level. The street was cool and silent, the sun crowning the ancient heads of long-dead kings and heroes with golden fingertips, far from the fire and blackness of his last visit. The only sound to trouble the quiet was a sparrow in sporadic conversation with its neighbour as it flitted in and out of its nest, a ragged little structure perched on King Ondoher’s carven shoulder.
I followed her words to the sitting room, or rather, what had been the sitting room until recent years, when Minas Tirith began to empty in earnest and I finally gave up pretending that this house provided me more than a bed to lie in. In those years, it had come to be filled with plants, gifts from nobles, friends and former patients who were smart enough to know that I was more interested in foliage than flattery.
"Good morning, handsome!" Ivriniel called, from where she was collapsed on the floor. She raised an eyebrow. “I knew you were not in the mood to be woken but a knifing is a bit of an excessive response.”
I glanced down at my knife and lowered it somewhat as I stepped around cloth-draped furniture and overgrown potted plants. “I thought you were an orc.”
Both eyebrows were raised now. “I did not realise that I looked so frightful.”
I had to scoff at that. Ivriniel has a habit of looking beautiful in every circumstance. Drunk, hair in tangles, she was collapsed in the dark earth, broken greenery and shattered clay of one of my potted plants, her fine purple robes and golden jewellery smeared with dirt, yet I had half a mind to fetch a painter. They'd probably call it something poetic and sentimental like 'Yavanna's child'. Then I realised that Ivriniel’s hand was clamped over her left foot and red was leaking through her fingers.
For the minific, I would love F (an absent look or touch) for Caeveneth if you're up for it <3
Thank you! <3
The way I stared at this for multiple minutes trying to work out whether it meant absent as in 'not there' or 'not paying attention to what's happening'. I went with option no. 1 since I reasoned it's hard to look at someone 'absently'.
F. Caeveneth + an absent look/touch | AO3
Boromir was clingy even as a babe. I remember him clinging onto me, little fingers digging into the neckline of my dress, grabbing at my hair. When he was only about four, I have a memory of him grabbing onto my leg, giggling and grinning when I told him that I had work to do. It is a testament to the fear that I inspire in my servants that it is not widespread knowledge that the Steward's sister once spent an hour walking about the house with her nephew clinging onto her leg like a monkey.
I do not know why. His parents and Neithadis were around him more, and more accepting of such displays of attachment. Maybe he sensed that I was lonely. Maybe he was lonely himself. Maybe, like a cat, he sensed that I was discomforted by him and thus sought to attach himself to me.
Maybe, and the older I grow, the more I think this may be the reason, he already sensed the cool distance between all others of our family and refused it. And, without knowing it, he carved a new place for himself and his brother.
I have never liked to be touched. No, that is not quite true. Say rather that I have never been comfortable with it. I do not know how many men I have left insulted and relieved when I refused to dance with them. Even the prospect of physical closeness has me writhing like an eel, attempting to extract myself in advance. Another's shoulder, knee, hand against my own has me itching to slap it away. And yet I never had the heart to discourage Boromir. He wished to be with me, to be close to me, and all the bitterness that I had sworn to hold against my brother's child was but melting frost before the warmth of his smile.
And it did not go away as he grew. Even when other boys his age pulled away from their mothers’ embraces, embarrassed and annoyed, Boromir would grin and reach to take my arm, declaring that soon he would be able to join me in my work, warrior and healer, aunt and nephew together. And then suddenly he was grown. It must have happened gradually, and yet to me it was as if one day I was greeted by a scrawny youth and the next this great mountain of a man was enveloping me in a bear hug.
It will never come naturally to me, the little pieces of affection that mothers offer their children, thoughtlessly, with ease. It is as if my body, my heart, my soul, were not shaped right for it, always clumsy and unnatural. Boromir never seemed to mind. It was always easier with him and Faramir than anyone else, and in truth I have no interest in it being easy with anyone else.
I feel my nephew's absence in many ways. I find myself looking for letters from him, trying to catch him among the de-commissioned soldiers I see gathered at taverns. I catch myself searching for sweets that he would like when I pass through the market. But the moment that his loss strikes me, every time, a little knife, is when Faramir arrives from Ithilien, calling a greeting as he shrugs off his cloak, smiling as he bends to give his old aunt a kiss on the cheek. I catch myself glancing just over his left shoulder, waiting for Boromir to follow, rain in his hair, mud on his boots, calling a greeting before he strides forward and pulls me into a crushing embrace.
Faramir sees it, and his eyes sharpen, sadden, a moment of shared pain passing between us.
We do not say anything. There is nothing to be said. Instead, I squeeze his hand and bid him to tell me everything that has come to pass since last I saw him. I do wonder if he knows that his brother's ghost is in my fingers, if he truly understands the debt we both owe that boy, clinging to my leg as I walk around the garden.
Jealousy is a messy emotion for Caeveneth because when she wants certain qualities in another person or certain aspects of their life, her kneejerk reaction is to tear them down mentally, finding some sort of flaw that will make her feel better about whatever has provoked her jealousy. Usually it's a very internal thing, as with most of her emotions, but there are instances where it manifests outwardly when she's forced to interact with the person.
She was jealous of Denethor for receiving more attention from their father (bearing in mind how low the bar is, this isn't a huge brag on Denethor's part), which manifested in her relentlessly baiting and bullying him when they were children. She was also jealous of him and other men of their generation who got to go out and fight against the Haradrim and the forces of Mordor. Not because she craved glory, but because it would have been a way to feel even slightly useful, and certainly more straightforward than the soft, cloying politics she grew up with as a child. She spent a lot of times hanging about on the edges of war councils and battle preparations, making herself sick on what she couldn't have. She was also very jealous of Thorongil for his apparent equilibrium and confidence within himself (she could smell the lack of parental issues on him and boy did it annoy her), resulting in her being short with him, while simultaneously wanting to study him like a bug under a microscope and work out what his deal was. Cue a lot of very uncomfortable, awkward conversations where Aragorn was never quite sure whether she was going to threaten to have his throat cut at the end of it.
You'll notice that all of her jealousy in the previous examples is toward men, and Caeveneth's jealousy is largely focused on the role they get to inhabit and the sense of control and purpose that comes with it. When it comes to women, however, she did go through a period after having her daughter taken away of being jealous of mothers around her, resulting in her being even more curt and evasive around children than she would have been previously. Any attempts to converse with her about babies would be shut down abruptly and without mercy. Her jealousy of Ivriniel is actually rather similar to her jealousy of men, envying Ivriniel her independence and freedom regarding sex and relationships, less because Caeveneth wants those last two things than out of a delightful cocktail of internalised misogyny and an ingrained from childhood hatred of people getting to have the toy you want even though you don't want to play with it. This fuelled the general passive-aggressive atmosphere of their early acquaintance, occasionally flaring up into outright aggression, until Caeveneth's learning curve caught up with her and she realised she was just replicating her sister's behaviours toward her.
💖 Developing a crush
Okay first of all brief caveat to say that Caeveneth's relationship with romantic love and all such attached feelings is very complicated. In the 'baseline canon universe' which I have worked out, I have no clue what her deal is and it's all very open to interpretation (is she aromantic? bisexual and repressed? lesbian and even more repressed? straight and really weird about it? i truly couldn't tell you, believe as you will). Any other fics that I write wherein she shows clear, concrete, unavoidable interest in anyone is me interpreting off that baseline version of her.
And now that that's out of the way:
Caeveneth pre The Incident (having an affair in her 20s & getting pregnant) would have been very awkwardly obvious. Lots of staring and nervous laughter and fidgetting and attempting her very best to be charming (she's cringing internally the entire time and the minute she's out of sight she's hissing, "What the hell was that?").
Caeveneth post The Incident would be overwhelmingly Annoyed. Seriously? This again? At this stage in your life? She put a lot of effort into finding a rhythm of life that suits her and she doesn't want to disrupt that with the sort of silly, sparkly feelings that almost tanked her life in the first place. This would result in lots of hostile staring at the poor person in question, giving the impression of an eagle that's trying to decide whether it should shred you, while she tries to mentally take them apart and work out what strange quirk of nature has made them find a weakness she'd thought dealt with. Looming and judgemental silences are going to go up about 40%. Of course this is the sort of behaviour that will put off most normal people, ensuring that the crush goes nowhere. (This of course does not work in Ivriniel's case.)
Hello, finally getting round to answering this! Thank you for asking about our no. 1 hater, I do love talking about her!
🌟 What’s something small they did as a child that hinted at who they’d become?
As a kid she would constantly run off to play outdoors, seeking out gardens, woodland, anywhere that was green and full of natural life. The fewer people the better; she did not play well with others. Throughout the rest of her life she is happiest in green, outdoor, quiet areas and she struggles with large cities full of people (Minas Tirith is not great for her). This foreshadows the way she consistently removes herself from court, politics and the expected responsibilities of the Steward family to make herself useful as a healer in war zones on the edge of Gondor. She consistently, from her childhood, removes herself from the theoretical, moral concerns of ruling Gondor and the tangled up mess of emotions surrounding her family, to throw herself into the physical, tangible outside world where she can feel a sense of real control. Even if it is spending a day desperately trying and failing to save the wounded, Caeveneth would pick that over sitting in the Tower of Ecthelion wringing her hands over what could have, should have happened. And also, at the end of the day, it foreshadows where her life will end. Her first ten years are spent in the woodlands of her mother's home in Lebennin and her last ten years are spent in the woodlands of Ithilien, except this time she is finally content.
🧋 What food/drink do they hate that everyone else loves?
Dates. They're popular in Gondor, particularly as trade with Harad becomes more and more restricted and difficult, but Caeveneth loathes them. She's not a fan of dried fruit in general, but dates are the greatest culprit in her eyes.
🧣 What texture/clothing item makes them feel safe?
Blatantly stealing from my own mannerisms, Caeveneth has had a habit of fiddling with her wrists and pinching her skin ever since she was a kid. It's a stress response that is both inbecoming of a woman of her age and stature and also results in lots of small bruises and peeled skin. So when she becomes serious about becoming a healer, a position that she knows will put her under a lot of stress, Caeveneth buys herself a pair of heavy black bracelets that she proceeds to wear for basically the rest of her life. They're clunky and somewhat ugly but they're reassuringly heavy and it's better that she tug and fiddle with them than with her own skin.
She also has a scarf given to her by Ivriniel that she wears in her hair sometimes. It's very soft and pretty with a sea pattern on it, so she doesn't wear it often, but she likes to wear it as a treat on a day that she's sure she won't get anyone's blood on it and even when she's not wearing it she'll sometimes just sit with it a while before bed, just running it through her fingers as a soothing technique.
House of Húrin and House of Dol Amroth face-off i mean friendly gathering circa 2974. Denethor is entranced by Finduilas, Caeveneth is sizing up Ivriniel for an argument and Neithadis is eyeing Imrahil like he might be evil. what could go wrong in the blending of these two families?
Thank you for asking about her!!! My best beloved 'exists by implication' woman of maybe all time!
🩷 Super relaxed and happy
Caeveneth doesn't exhibit happiness in an obvious manner. She tends not to get more smiley so much as less frowny. Relaxed and happy Caeveneth mostly tends to come out when she's with people like her nephews or Ivriniel or the few other people who she would call friends. As someone who's pretty high-strung and busy most of the time, either with family politics and drama or avoiding family politics and drama by getting involved in warfare, she tends to sort of collapse when she's given a chance to relax, just spending an afternoon lying about her garden or Ivriniel's, or maybe going for a walk somewhere that no Lord of Gondor can find her or getting a drink at a tavern where no one will know her.
With time, she also manages to carve her niche among the soldiers that she works alongside, after making it very clear that she is not their mother/grandmother/aunt or any other female relative they might see as their carer but she will tell them how to avoid STDs and she is down for a drinking game, so her nephews have also had to get used to occasionally finding her hanging out with soldiers playing cards or adjudicating wrestling matches. It's the sort of scenario neither younger Caeveneth nor anyone who knew her would see her fitting into but the fact that no one there has known her as a child and that she can reply to their idiocies by yelling that she will fuck their mother/father/fiancée without worrying about causing a political incident actually really helps her chill out. Who knew.
When she is happy/relaxed does noticeably loosen up a bit, she tends to sit less dramatic/looming/rigid and more slumped all over the place like some long-legged spider that's taking the day off. And she jokes a lot more, hence why Faramir, Boromir and Ivriniel can all attest that she does, contrary to popular rumour, have a sense of humour. She's also more open to giving and receiving physical affection when she's in a good mood. (Boromir: Why are you squeezing me with your body? Caeveneth: It's a hug Boromir. I'm hugging you.)
💝 Really grateful for someone or something
Gratitude is one of those emotions that Caeveneth really struggles with. ("Are there any emotions that Caeveneth is good at?" I hear you ask.) She's really bad at expressing strong positive emotion. She can't express how she feels effusively because she hates it and it doesn't feel genuine when she says it. If the person concerned is one of her family members or very close friends she'll probably give them an awkward, meaningful shoulder squeeze and try to express her feelings in a gift of some sort. If not, she'll probably choke out a brisk and professional 'thank you' and leave it at that. I mentioned in like a bullet in the back that she has lots of plants given to her as gifts and little though the gifters may know it, she absolutely loves and treasures them. The first time she got one was from a soldier from Lossarnach and you best believe she sat down next to that potted plant and cried.
🧡 Extremely tired/overworked
Caeveneth's work as a healer on the front lines of war is extremely stressful and she takes it very seriously. This, combined with the fact that she has the sort of vicious contempt for her physical health that comes from spending your formative years hating yourself and your body, means that in her first few years as a healer she pushed herself way to hard. However, she realised that led her to make mistakes and ultimately be less efficient. She managed to work out her limits, although it should be noted that in her case her 'limits' are past where most sane people would just straight up pack it in. She tends to get very focused, homing in on the one thing she's meant to be doing and just letting it consume her for a while. This is okay for individual tasks but if she has to do team-work or discussion that's when the problems start because that woman does not want to do that on a good day but when she's not slept in 30 hours she is going to be even snappier and more ill-tempered than usual.
☀️, 😂, and 🃏 for Finduilas of Dol Amroth and Caeveneth please!
ooh, thank you for asking about Caeveneth in particular!
☀️ What’s their happiest childhood memory?
Finduilas: A day out in the summer when she was about thirteen with both her siblings, swimming in the sea, watching the whales off the coast, clambering on the rocks to look for crabs, going up on the cliffs so that they could dry off in the sun and make flower crowns and watch the fishing boats and distant trading vessels out to sea. And then they walk home as it gets dark, with Ivriniel carrying Imrahil on her back because he's fallen asleep. It's just a perfect day with the people she loves most in the world and after she leaves home it's a memory that she holds close like a talisman and constantly returns to when things get rough, even when it hurts to think back to it.
Caeveneth: When she and her siblings were younger they spent most of their time at their mother's home in Lebennin since Ecthelion was not at all close with his wife and was not eager to get attached to children who might die young anyway (he was the only one of his siblings to make it past ten, for context). Although she was far from feral, Caeveneth did still get away with wandering off alone a lot of the time and she remembers one summer in particular spent exploring, climbing trees and playing with a cat that she befriended. She distinctly remembers walking home in the evening with scratches and bruises on her legs and hearing the local farm workers singing as they went home.
😂 What’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever laughed at for way too long?
Finduilas: She and her siblings were absolute menaces when they were younger and once at some event or other Imrahil made fun of the overexaggerated posh accent of one of their father's courtiers. He was basically saying nonsense but Finduilas had drunk a little too much that evening and so she spent about ten minutes cackling herself into a delirium.
Caeveneth: During discussions with the other lords of Gondor at one point Duinhir was going on a drunken rant about the Lay of Leithian, a bold feat for a man whose only experience with the tale was through unofficial street plays, and he called Finrod 'Goldenrod', like he's some phallic Bond villain. Caeveneth, who was the only one listening at that point, began cackling in a manner which can only be described as deranged.
🃏 Are they the type to forgive / hold a grudge until the end of the universe?
Finduilas: She is tolerant to a point but if someone truly offends her or does her wrong she will definitely hold onto it. Forlong has her eternal enmity for the terrible crime of being the one of Ivriniel's fancy men that she had to endure the sight of the most. She's not going to say or do anything about it, but he's not getting anything beyond glacial pleasantries from her, much to his confusion.
Caeveneth: Hold a grudge, baby! This woman holds onto every ounce of negative emotion she can, whether its directed at herself or others. She never forgets and she never forgives and she also never talks about it. I'm sure this isn't why her relationships with her siblings are utterly disastrous.
