Story Downloaded from Open Scrolls Archive (https://www.openscrolls.net)

Title: Sufficient (#3237)
Author: Tanaqui
Chapters: 1

Archive: Tolkien
Category: Lord of the Rings
Description: Faramir, Legolas and a bow of the Galadhrim. The morning after Aragorn’s coronation, two archers find themselves down at the practice grounds. A few arrows, a lot of words, the start of a friendship, and how Faramir learns to let go of the things he no longer needs. Author’s Note: The story depends on understanding the usual translations of Boromir as faithful jewel and Faramir as sufficient jewel.
Published: 03 Jan 2007
Updated: 03 Jan 2007
Warnings: Mild angst
Type: Drama
Characters: Faramir; Legolas


Chapter 1 - Sufficient

To begin with, Faramir was a little in awe of the Elf and the Dwarf, the first he had met outside his books of lore. Later, of course, he grew to know them well (although he was never quite sure he understood them). And he met others who truly were in song and story: the Lady Galadriel, who had seen Valinor before the world was changed, and Lord Elrond, the herald of Gil-Galad in the Last Alliance.

Yet that first day, with all the bustle of the coronation and the feast that followed it, he had little chance to speak with any of the King’s Companions, except for Pippin. Faramir had positioned himself at the end of the high table, so that he could deal with the many small matters his staff brought to him without disturbing the others, and he had seated the Ernil i Pheriannath next to him, in part so that he might indulge his curiosity about the Hobbit who had helped rescue him. It was a good move: Pippin’s chatter about the Shire and about the many wonderful and strange things he had seen on his travels lightened Faramir’s anxiety about the day. Glancing along the table occasionally to where the White Lady of Rohan held a position of honour near her brother, he saw her often in conversation with the Elf and the Dwarf and marvelled at it and wondered what they were speaking of.

It was the bow of the Galadhrim, in the end, that brought the beginnings of understanding.

***

The morning after the coronation, Faramir rose when it was still dark and dressed in some of his old ranger clothes. He felt like he was playing truant, even though he was only going down to the second circle, to the practice grounds, for an hour or so. Later, he would be spending the day in the Tower Hall, helping his King to deal with embassies and dispense rewards. His King. The words tasted strange and wonderful on his tongue. Faramir knew King Elessar was a great Captain and Lord in matters of battle, but he wondered what he would be like as an administrator. He was still wondering that about himself. Would he make a good Steward?

Once he reached the butts, passing through a sleeping City worn out with joy, where only a few guards patrolled here and there, he set to his task quickly in the dawn chill. The first few arrows scattered to the edges of the target, but soon they were clustering thickly in the bull. Long experience meant he knew when his quiver was empty without needing to check. Shouldering his bow, he began to walk forward towards the target to retrieve his arrows.

“Your aim is excellent, Lord Steward.”

Faramir spun round, startled. His hand automatically reached for the knife at his belt. Legolas stood behind him, his bearing both alert and yet at ease. Faramir flushed and relaxed his grip on the weapon.

“And your stealth is unnatural, my Lord Elf,” he answered.

Legolas gave a wide smile and said, “Apparently so.” He nodded to where Faramir’s hand still rested loosely on the hilt of his knife. “Do you fear assassins here? In the heart of the White City?”

“No,” Faramir admitted, frowning. It was true he did not think anyone would try to kill him here, not now. He restrained himself from glancing over to the shoulder of land where the City backed on to Mindolluin and answered evenly, “But there have been many years when to allow another to get so close unnoticed would have been a death sentence.”

“That is so,” the Elf replied. An expression flitted across Legolas’s face so briefly that Faramir wasn’t sure if it was sorrow or pity. “But those days are now past, Lord Steward.” Legolas held Faramir’s eyes for a moment and Faramir was reminded of his father’s piercing gaze. He strove to hold himself steady under the Elf’s inspection. Then the Elf turned and gazed down the range at the distant target. “Is it the first time you have shot since you were wounded?”

Faramir nodded. He said, rather stiffly, “I go to retrieve my arrows.” He gestured with his hand to indicate that Legolas was welcome to walk with him, although he wasn’t sure the Elf would wish to.

Legolas gave a half smile and indicated he would come. As they measured out the distance, Faramir wondered what he could talk about. A dozen questions had sprung into his mind – I’m talking to an Elf! – but all of them seemed inappropriate or intrusive. There was one burning question he would have liked answered, but he could hardly ask it directly. Instead he took an oblique line of attack.

“I understand you have travelled far with the King and passed through many perils with him,” he said finally as they reached the target.

“Yes,” Legolas answered. He began to help Faramir pull the arrows carefully from the target. “Gimli and I have been with him since we left Rivendell.”

Faramir had heard from his betrothed that the Elf and Dwarf were inseparable and had noticed they had always seemed to be together at the celebrations the previous day. Yet now here was Legolas, alone. He could not help asking, “Your friend the Dwarf is not with you this morning?”

“Nay.” This time Legolas definitely smiled as he contemplated his friend. “I believe it will be some time before we see him. He very much enjoyed the hospitality you provided.”

Faramir laughed. “Yes, I do remember seeing him… partaking.” He paused and then, his curiosity overcoming him, added cautiously, “Forgive me for my rudeness, but from much that I have read, it seems strange that an Elf of the Wood and a Dwarf should be friends.”

Legolas quirked an eyebrow. “It is one of the great mysteries of the Age, is it not? I cannot explain it myself. Except to say that the world is changing.”

Walking back up the range, Legolas said, "I too came down here in the hope that I might test my skill against your targets. It has been some weeks since my bow last saw service. May I take advantage of your facilities, Lord Steward?"

“Elves need to practice?” Faramir asked, again startled.

“Of course. Elven skills are not so different from those of Mortals.”

Faramir looked at Legolas doubtfully.

“We just have a little more time to perfect them,” Legolas conceded. “And perhaps our sight is somewhat keener.”

“Perhaps,” Faramir said drily.

“Of course,” Legolas added with a small frown, “There has been no need to ‘practice’ these past years. There has been business enough to keep our skills sharp.”

“For us also,” Faramir nodded soberly.

When they reached the firing stations, Legolas swung his own bow from his back and readied it. Faramir watched, caught between admiration and just a touch of envy, as the Elf shot twenty four arrows more quickly than he could have shot half a dozen – and with even greater accuracy than his own shafts.

Faramir saw that, when Legolas was done, he took just a moment to run his hand along the bow, an odd gesture that almost looked as if he was thanking his weapon.

Faramir, too, felt compelled to speak his appreciation for the grace and skill he had just witnessed, but found again – and since when have I been at a loss for words? – that he did not know what to say. He settled after a moment for a simple comment: “It is a beautiful weapon.”

“It is,” Legolas said, still running his hand down its length. “The Lady Galadriel gave it to me. Would you like to try it?” He held it out to Faramir.

Faramir looked at him in some surprise. "Would I?" He could scarcely breathe, not quite believing the offer was being made. He laid aside his own serviceable but very plain longbow and took the other. While Legolas went and retrieved his arrows, Faramir examined the Elven bow. It was decorated with a tracery of fine lines: leaves and flowers. Faramir unconsciously mimicked the way Legolas had caressed the bow, feeling the patterns under his fingertips. There were many handsome weapons and other artefacts in the White City that had been made long ago with knowledge gleaned from the Elves, yet Faramir had never seen anything to rival this.

It was a recurve bow. Although the Rangers favoured the longbow, some of the horse companies used recurves, so the weapon was not completely unfamiliar to him. While he waited for Legolas to return, he tested its balance and found how easily it sat in his hand. He tentatively pulled the string back a little and sighted along the bow, remembering how the Elf brought the anchor point to his lips rather than his cheek.

Legolas returned and exchanged his arrows for the ones in Faramir’s quiver. Faramir nocked the first shaft and drew, raising the bow to aim. The draw weight was heavier than he was used to and he had barely reached three quarters of the draw length for the arrows before he felt his grasp slip and the arrow went springing away.

It fell several feet short of the target.

Faramir looked at it ruefully for a moment before he pulled a second arrow from the quiver. This time, he aimed roughly before he began his draw. This arrow winged away more forcefully and ended shivering in the target - the target next to the one he had been aiming at. Irritated with himself now, yet trying to keep his frustration under control, Faramir pulled out and nocked a third arrow.

He was remembering the heavy fall of his brother’s hand on his shoulder and hearing the shout of Boromir’s not unkindly laughter as he contemplated the pitiful patterns the arrows made on the target. When you are grown up, little brother, when you are grown up! He had been full grown some fifteen years, but always his brother had outmatched him in arms and always their father had watched Faramir with that disdainful curve to his mouth.

As he drew and shot the third arrow, other images from the past crowded his mind. Practising at the post or with the sparring swords until his shoulders and his legs and his arms – and every other part of him – ached, while the blisters on his hands stung and burst and grew new blisters of their own, until they finally grew calluses. Always his father stopping by late in the day and demanding one more demonstration from his younger son, eyes narrowed as he watched Faramir falter with fatigue.

Years later, wearied beyond belief in the midst of a battle or at the end of some frantic, pursued patrol, Faramir would still hear his father’s sharp voice in his head Keep your guard up, boy! Don’t drop your elbow when you release! Move your feet! And would find himself, as he had as a boy, redoubling his efforts so as not to disappoint.

Then there had been history lessons and protocol lessons and politics lessons. At frequent yet uncertain intervals, his father would call Faramir to stand before him and quiz him on some incident from the past or ask him to describe how a particular ceremony should be performed or present him with a political problem to resolve. Denethor would sit like an old patient spider and listen and, when Faramir was done, would correct a fact, or make him repeat the proper pronunciation of a word in the ceremony, or destroy the logic of his argument with a few pithy sentences. And woe betide him if his father caught him reading anything that was not on the approved curriculum. Faramir had disciplined himself to read and remember, to consider each problem from every angle before he made a decision, and to choose his words carefully before speaking.

While he aimed and released the fourth arrow, he recalled the sessions of his father’s Council that he had attended when he was first given his Captaincy. He had been expected to make proposals for the disposition of his troops and suggest tactics for actions against the Enemy. Always, he had been aware of his father’s keen gaze on him as he laid out his ideas. Always, he had known that, when he was finished, the Ruling Steward would be applying his sharp intellect and close knowledge of Ithilien (gained during Denethor’s own thirty years of commanding garrisons in Gondor) to slice to the heart of any flaws in Faramir’s offerings.

And so Faramir had travelled ceaselessly with each of his patrols, seeking to learn from them all they knew of the way the hills lay and the waters ran and the trees grew. At night, here in the City or as he sat in Henneth Annun, he would pore over reports of old encounters, noting how foes had handled themselves and which tactics had worked and which had failed. He had poured all of this knowledge and insight into his proposals before the Council - and he remembered now the burst of pride he had felt when, for the first time, after a long and heavy pause, he received that cold nod of approval without any query.

And, always, his father reminding them that it was by the valour of Gondor that the wild men of the East were restrained and the terror of Morgul kept at bay. That in the strength and wisdom of his sons, entrusted with the great task of leading the soldiers of Gondor, lay the defence of all the free peoples of Middle-earth. And then his father would smile at his elder son….

Against the whirl of thoughts, Faramir let a fifth arrow fly. Not even taking the time to register its flight, he drew a sixth shaft. Taut with anger at himself that both gave him greater strength to pull the bow and yet destroyed the accuracy of his aim, Faramir sent the arrow towards the target.

As he released the string, Legolas’s voice came quietly from behind him. “Faramir, you do not need to master this weapon.”

Faramir whipped round to look at him. The Elf’s features were unruffled but Faramir knew it must have been pitifully apparent to him that Faramir had neither the strength nor skill needed to handle the bow. Faramir was quite sure that if Legolas had been a Man, his face would have displayed the contempt he had seen so often from his father.

“For one thing,” Legolas continued, “it is my bow and I do not plan on parting with it. And for another, the War is over.”

Faramir stared at him for a moment longer, then silently handed the bow back to Legolas and went and sat down on the low wall that separated the range from the courtyard beyond. He dropped his head into his hands.

The War was over, yet he had had no part in its ending. All that he had been striving to achieve and become was for nothing and he, the last of the sons of the Steward, had not served Gondor in its final need. And now his father was dead, and it would always be too late to win his love. His voice came muffled through his fingers. “All my life I have been sufficient. And yet never enough.”

“Sufficient?” The Elf’s tone was questioning and Faramir thought he would say more, but there was silence. After a moment, he glanced up and saw through his own misery that Legolas appeared to be thinking. Faramir dropped his head again and abandoned himself once more to contemplating the many ways in which he had failed his father.

Legolas’s voice broke into his thoughts. “Faramir, who gave you your name?”

Faramir looked up at him. It seemed an odd question in the circumstances, although he knew the Elf must have understood his cry of despair. There was no reason not to answer.

“My mother,” he said. He heard a rough edge to his voice as the suppressed emotion tried to force its way out. He swallowed, determined to speak indifferently. As it was, the Elf quite likely already thought he was mad. Like father, like son he thought hopelessly.

“And did she have a measure of the foresight of your people, as you do?”

Faramir shrugged. “I don’t know. She died when I was very young.” He remembered how all the colour had been sucked from the world, leaving only the sable and silver of the Tower to surround him. To clothe his beloved in his mother’s cloak had been to reclaim a part of his past that he had thought forever lost to him, even though he had scarcely begun to hope when he did so that Eowyn would love him in return.

“I think she must have been gifted with some foreknowledge, even if she did not fully understand what she saw,” Legolas said softly and with some wonder in his own voice. “Faramir, you are indeed a sufficient treasure. And it was exactly enough. Exactly what was needed.”

Faramir looked up, not understanding what Legolas was saying. The Elf saw his confusion and smiled. “Faramir, since the end of War, people have been constantly singing your praises to me. The Ringbearer himself told me of your great kindness to him when you met him in Ithilien. And of your wisdom and the strength of your heart to reject the Ring and send him on his way to complete his appointed task.” He paused, just for a moment, and then went on, “I do not wish to cause you pain by speaking ill of your brother but I travelled far with him and, when all was done, learned something of what was latest in his mind and heart. He indeed kept faith with your father: he tried to take the Ring – and if he had succeeded, we would all have died for it! You faced the same test, and you were sufficient, as your father and brother were not. And we are here to speak of this now because you were enough.”

Faramir stared at him in amazement, trying to make sense of the understanding Legolas had gifted him. Then he put his head down again, shaking it, feeling like he was looking into the kaleidoscope he had played with as a child. The same pieces, yet a shake and a turn and it was all to see anew.

“And if that is not enough, my friend,” Legolas’s voice fell quietly yet with a hint of laughter, “I think the King thinks you more than sufficient, judging by his responses to your many despatches while we were at Cormallen.”

Faramir looked up in alarm.

“Faramir, I jest,” Legolas said quickly, laying a reassuring hand on Faramir’s shoulder. “Aragorn has often expressed his gratitude that he should find so fine an administrator to help him govern his realm. And,” he continued, another smile crossing his face. “I believe the White Lady of Rohan considers you rather more than sufficient. She kindly told me of your many fine qualities, at some great length, when we were at feast yesterday.”

Legolas’s voice softened still further. “You have made her so very happy. Can you not do the same for yourself?”

Faramir looked into the Elf’s clear eyes and saw not contempt but admiration and pity. His own words came back to him. Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart. But Legolas did not just offer him pity. He offered him testament of the admiration of others who were themselves admirable: the Ringbearer, the King, the White Lady. The praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards. And the Elf – the Elf! – was offering his own admiration and friendship to Faramir.

Faramir looked down at his hands clenched on his lap and tried to make sense of the new shape of the world that Legolas had shown to him. As strange as if the seas had unbent and ships could sail once more by straight paths to the Blessed Realm. Could he seek out his own happiness? Ought he to do so?

While Faramir turned over his jumble of ideas, Legolas waited patiently for an answer to his question. Finally Faramir spoke. “Duty has guided my steps all my life,” he said slowly. “I have been a soldier though my heart bid me be a scholar. And now I must be a Steward too, though I never expected to come to it, and spend my days in care of my people. And there are still many threats to our lands that we must deal with and many ills to be healed. I do not think I could be happy if I abandoned Duty. And yet I no longer know if Duty will make me happy.”

Legolas smiled down at him. “I think your new duties – and a loving wife and the love of your friends – will serve. Think, Faramir: we are no longer at war against a Foe who would devour all. You can lay down your sword and your bow with no dishonour. Indeed, I believe you must, for is it not the Law that the Steward may not go to war? And, my friend, I think your Duty to your King now asks, nay, demands of you that you spend the rest of your days on those things that please you most. On study and lore, so that you may both preserve and renew your great City and your beautiful land.”

Legolas held out a hand to Faramir to help him up. “I promised the King that I would bring him birds that sing and trees that do not die for the gardens of this City. There is too little here that grows and is glad. In honour of one who was and is and will always be sufficient, let me also make a garden for you and the White Lady, so that here in the City, she may recall the green fields of Rohan and you may have a reminder of the glades of Ithilien.”

Faramir was still for a moment, pondering Legolas’s words. Then he unclenched his hands, as he began to learn to let slip away the unneeded parts of his old life, and he lifted his head and looked down the range “Tell me, Legolas,” he said, “what do your Elf-eyes see? Did I manage to hit any of the targets?”

Faramir’s voice was grave and for a moment Legolas thought he was still upset. Then he saw that the corner of Faramir’s mouth was twitching just a little as he tried to suppress a smile, and he sensed there might be another meaning behind Faramir’s words that he could not yet fathom. Now it was the Elf’s turn to wonder, as Faramir reached out and clasped his arm, if even a lifetime’s friendship would allow him to truly understand this Man.
------------------------------------------------------------------

Printed from Open Scrolls Archive (https://www.openscrolls.net) on Sat Nov 14, 2026 9:35 pm