THE DARKNESS AND THE STAR, T
Faramir undertakes the Quest of the Ring. Behind him in Minas Tirith he leaves his brother and his brother's wife Éowyn.
“Do not touch the water!” Lady Galadriel warns. Faramir tears himself from the water’s embrace. His face is not wet, and the water is still and undisturbed. But he can feel sweat prickling on his scalp and the back of his neck, and he is breathing as heavily as if he has run all the way through all of those visions. “It is not given that all you see will come to pass,” Lady Galadriel says, watching him closely and not without sympathy. “For good or for evil.” “Some that I saw was good,” Faramir says. He does not elaborate, although he is almost sure that she knows what he saw. Perhaps she too has seen Éowyn in her Mirror. It would explain much. “Some was evil. Some of it has already come to pass, some - I cannot say. How is one to know which is true?” “That comes with time,” Lady Galadriel says. “It cannot be told from the water itself.” Faramir ponders that in silence. It is impossible to know whether she means that one can only wait and see which visions are true, or that experience teaches one. She might mean both. “You saw much that gave you pain,” Lady Galadriel observes. “Yet you will not stray from your purpose.” “I will not,” Faramir replies, though it was not a question. If there is anything he can do to save Éowyn or his city from the battle that is to come, it will be done with the Fellowship. This is their best chance of destroying Sauron, and Éowyn would not thank him for abandoning it now. May the fate he saw in the Mirror never come for her. He thinks uneasily of the day he named her Emeldir, though. The ring of steel that accompanied the name. “I did not think so,” Lady Galadriel says. The water shivers. But all that it reflects is Eärendil’s star in the first pink light of the dawn.
Read on AO3 (locked to users)
