The Same Battles

by A Sweet Catastrophe

On a rare sleepless night, unplagued by nightmares, Eowyn wanders through the Houses of Healing and finds she isn't the only one who spends most nights revisiting her fears.

The Same Battles

When Éowyn awoke it was with an eerie calm, uncharacteristic from every other time she has opened her eyes to find nothing but darkness. There was always a jolt, a scream, a gasp, tears clinging to the corners of her eyes that she couldn't remember forming, and her heart beating in a fierce gallop as she took deep breaths to try to still her nerves and expel the nightmare images that flashed through her mind. There was no such violence tonight as she gently opened her eyes at the feeling of a sharp pain shooting through her shield-arm and she found her mind completely blank and unusually alert. She couldn't remember any dreams, good or bad, and the discomfort in her arm was so minor she was surprised it had even woken her at all after all the other physical suffering she had managed to sleep through.

With her dominant hand, she grasped the edge of the blanket covering her and pulled it back to try to get a look at the location of her pain. Through the dark of the room she could see the fingers of her left hand poking out of the sling holding her arm securely to her chest and she decided that the feeling was nothing to alert a healer about.

She laid her head back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling, her eyes gradually getting adjusted to the shadows with marginal help from the light of the moon shining through her window that was draped in sheer curtains. She turned her head towards it and estimated that it wouldn't be dawn for quite a while and that she had probably only slept half the night. In spite of this, she found that she wasn't tired in the slightest. She had been sleeping so much that any semblance of a normal sleep pattern had diminished and now she had been gifted with the privilege of being wide awake while the world slept soundly.

Flinging back the rest of her covers, she sat up in bed, still turned towards the window. A slight breeze came in tempting her to walk across the room and sit on the ledge. The night was cool but covered in a haze of fog. Osgiliath, which had once been so clear to her, was a dark blur engulfed by tall mountains behind it. The Pelennor Fields were a bottomless pit.

It was at times like these that she wished she could be released from the protection of the Houses of Healing so she could be free to wander. After her first two days of being confined to her room, she had gone over every passage and corner of her cage and while she did find some wonderful semblance of freedom in the gardens, she was all too aware of how stuck she was, how idle, and how useless.

Turning away from outside she considered her options for occupation now that sleep eluded her. On the sideboard near her bed, next to a pitcher of water and a cup, were two books that she thought could offer distraction. The one on the bottom was small in dimensions but thick in width: a historical text on the relations between Gondor and Rohan. While it wasn't as long as most of the books she had seen when she accidently found herself in the Houses' small library, the ribbon she used to mark her place indicated that she was only one third of the way through it. Her people didn't have a literary tradition outside of a few scrolls kept under lock and key in Meduseld so the act of sitting around for hours on end reading was very difficult for her. The text wasn't exactly dry, it was fascinating to get a different and more thorough perspective on a history she only knew through oral tradition which focused heavily on her own countrymen, but she found that in order to retain anything she read she needed to read in short bursts intercut with long walks or rests in which she processed the information. She may have been restless but she didn't feel up for such an undertaking at the moment.

She walked over to the books and admired the colorful cover of the book on top of the history text. It had far fewer pages, she had actually managed to read the entire thing in a day, but it was wider and as she opened it to fan through the pages, beautiful drawings passed by among the blocks of text. It was a book of children's stories but none she had ever heard before. The kind of stories she had grown up with were often about peasants who would rise up to win honor in the Mark or valiant riders or stories of horses who could perform amazing feats. These were tales for Gondor with lessons to be imparted and Eldar references. In a way, she had found them to be a more useful read than the history book when it came to understanding the culture of the land she was in.

When all the pages she had been flipping through were flat, she found herself staring at the inside cover of the book where an inscription had been written. She smiled as her eyes glossed over the message but closed the book when she was done. She didn't have the concentration for reading tonight. No, she was going to take a walk and she would return when she had finally tired enough to go back to sleep. Although she was weary of walks as it was one of the only things she could do, she hadn't been though the Houses of Healing at night and she thought perhaps that might supply some new interest for her, at least for a little while.

From a wooden chair in the corner of the room she took up a robe that had been laid out for her. The robe was a cream color made of a silky, shiny fabric that she was not particularly familiar with and the neck and belt of the robe were stitched with a gold embroidered vine design. The robe was not warm and as far as she could understand it only really served the purpose of protecting her modesty if she wished to walk around in a gown like the one she was currently wearing.

Another anomaly that had been provided for her, the gown was made of many thin layers of soft, sheer white fabric so delicate that if she were to rip it somehow, it would be impossible to repair in a subtle way without just removing the torn layers and adding more, which seemed terribly wasteful to her. The upper portion of the bodice consisted of thick, draped sleeveless straps that formed a v-shape and attached separately so that she did not have to take apart her entire sling to put it on. The gown closed with a row of hooks on her right side that she could do up on her own with her available hand. While she was grateful that garments like this one had been clearly made with her handicap in mind, everything about them otherwise was so strange to her. She was used to garments of sturdy fabric, made to accommodate the wearer through many years. This gown which she had been given exclusively for sleeping in was dearer than even her most luxurious gowns back home. To have something so impractical struck her as decadent and foolish but she didn't exactly have her own options to utilize. If nothing else it was comfortable.

With only days of practice behind her, she managed to slide her right arm through the sleeve of the robe and then drape the other side over her left shoulder with relative ease. The issue came when she went to tie the robe closed and had to settle for a very loose knot in front. It was all she could manage with one hand and she didn't think much of its insecurity since she knew she was unlikely to meet anyone on her walk. It was late enough, she imagined, that even the healers were no longer making rounds. Most were probably in bed, aside from maybe one on watch, and wouldn't rise unless someone called out for help.

When she opened the door to her room she was faced with two hallways she could choose to walk down, both dimly lit with lines of low-burning lamps. Her room was on a corner, giving her a bit more privacy, and she was allowed to have a closed door. All the others staying there from what she had heard had to keep their doors open so they could be looked in upon periodically and so they could be heard if they were calling out for a healer. She wasn't sure why she had been allowed this privilege but she assumed it was either because of her status or because she was a woman in a place that was presently overrun with men. It was likely the answer was both.

She decided to turn down the hallway on her left, soft light coming from inside the rooms spilling out into her path. She lowered her head as she passed by the first door, trying to respect the privacy of whoever slept inside but as she passed the second one, a noise coming from within the room drew her attention and she looked up to find the source. The man inside was visibly shaking, causing a rattling of the bed frame that was loud enough on its own but was also punctuated with the sounds of teeth grinding as if he was trying to bite down on small rocks. Even with the one small lamp inside the room, she could see the sweat beaded on his forehead. She wondered if it was physical pain or mental pain that had driven him to this condition.

She glanced down the hallway to see if anyone had noticed, and finding nothing she decided to wait. She didn't know if she could do anything for him or how she would even alert a healer but she didn't want to walk away from him in case something else happened. Perhaps this was an everyday occurrence that no one paid any mind to anymore, but she knew all too well the effects dreams could have.

Suddenly there came a scream from a room two doors down from where she stood and shortly after she could hear women's voices echoing from the other side of the hallway. She breathed a sigh of relief. If they were coming to check in on the screamer, they would surely also notice the man she had found.

Although, they'll also find me, she realized and she did not want them to request that she return to her bed.

As quickly as she could in her weak constitution, she hurried off in the opposite direction from where she had heard the voices of the healers and turned down the other hall, trying to stay her breathing so she would not be heard. She peaked her head around the corner and saw two healers coming down the hall. One immediately entered the room where the man had yelled while the other waited outside. Not a minute later she seemed to hear what Éowyn had and entered the room of the shaking man.

Turning away now that the man had found help, she looked down the new hallway she found herself in. This way she knew to be the easiest route to the small library that the Houses of Healing kept, likely the place where the history text in her room had come from, and to the gardens. She had walked it many times, always with the same discretion and detachment she had tried to offer to the men in the other wing before her curiosity had been sparked, but now she found herself interested in the residents of this rooms. Were they all suffering as the two in the other wing seemed to and as she did most nights?

At a leisurely pace but in only brief glances, she found herself categorizing the state of the men she saw in the rooms. She imagined her technique was not unlike a healer doing the supervisory rounds. In the short looks she gave them she could often see the reason why they were there: a large tourniquet, a missing limb, a strange sleeping position in order to decrease a less obvious pain. She could also see behaviors that laid bare their mental state. Most slept with an expression of consternation etched in their visage; many were shaking or kicking or even rolling back and forth. She felt a distinct sense of fear for the ones that slept peacefully for she wondered if they had found peace eternal in the middle of the night. Mercifully, none seemed as disturbed as the two in the hall she had left so she continued down a new hall without stopping.

She thought back to her brother's attempts to scare her into thinking that triumph in war is not the glorious, honorable prize that all of their country's society seemed to tell her in its songs and tales. She wasn't sure how to reconcile these conflicting statements at the time and now as she looked upon these men, so torn, half what they were in mind and body, she wondered if perhaps the glory she had hoped to find in death was not actually ill-conceived. To die in battle meant not having to live with the consequences of having fought; to not suffer the indignity of losing so much of yourself while still retaining the life spark.

After a time she had seen into so many rooms, men of Gondor and Rohan alike, and taken enough turns that she was not entirely sure where she was. Looking for a landmark of some sort, she saw the carved double doors of the library, closed at this time of night, and nodded in confirmation that she was not necessarily lost although she was less familiar with this area.

There didn't seem to be many rooms in this part of the Houses but she continued on past the library to another door. Giving a swift look to the person inside, she recognized the face of the man sleeping there and stopped in the open doorway of the room.

I've found Faramir's room, she thought, studying his sleeping form.

The dim light on a stand next to his bed illuminated his face which seemed to be plagued with the same sense of unrest all the others had. Periodically he would open his mouth for a breath or to mumble unintelligible words but otherwise he was utterly still. He was lying on his back and she could see the edges of bandages on his chest through the opening in the tunic he was wearing. She imagined he had gone to sleep with blankets covering him but they now lay in disarray near the foot of the bed, his left leg hanging off the side, his hair in a mess on the pillow he slept on. While he was tranquil now, at some point in the night he hadn't been so immobile.

After taking in his condition a good deal longer than she had any of the other patients, she found herself reluctant to leave. It wasn't as if she had been looking for him, but as the refutation made its way into her mind she started to wonder if subconsciously, instinctually she had been hoping to find his room. So much of her waking days were spent with him, why would it be unusual for her to want to see him now, to seek him out and see how she found him?

Her mental questioning was abruptly interrupted by Faramir waking violently, his whole body seeming to spasm as if he had just made some kind of escape. The fear that she saw in his face at whatever dream had just ended was reflected in her own, full of concern. He looked around the room in a panic, lessening steadily with each shift of his eyes as he realized where he was, and when his gaze fell upon her, still framed by his doorway, his worry subsided entirely as the corners of his lips turned up.

"Have my dreams improved or is the White Lady really standing in my doorway?" he asked softly.

At his words her worry for him turned into a kind of fear born of self-preservation. What reasonable explanation could she give for her attendance or for her observation of him while he slept? She hadn't yet had time to work out with herself why she had lingered there so long outside of the uncomplicated fact that he was her friend and she wanted to be assured of his health.

But when she saw that his smile did not falter and his eyes were leisurely taking her in, that he seemed to not need a reason for her presence because it pleased him, she found herself within the grip of a different kind of self-preservation originating from an incident that occurred years ago and she nervously readjusted the shoulder of her robe that had slipped down.

It had been the heat of summer and she had woken in the middle of the night with her throat drier than the deserts of Harad. Thinking only of her thirst, she left her room to seek out some water as the cup beside her bed was empty. It was expectedly quiet and on quick steps she had made her way towards the kitchen wells, taking great heed to not wake her brother or her cousin whose rooms were near hers. Unfortunately, the lights had all been extinguished and she hadn't expected anyone to be awake so she was unprepared when she found herself colliding with someone who had been standing in one of the hallways.

She took a step back and lifted her lamp to the stranger, finding herself facing Grima Wormtongue. Nonplussed and suspicious of his lurking which she had originally thought was mostly confined to the daylight, she had been about to demand that he state his intentions when she noticed the way he was looking at her.

She was no stranger to the thoughts of men having grown up alongside Éomer and Théodred who never saw fit to censor their speech in her presence but, as far as she knew, she had never been on the receiving end of such thoughts. She spent so much of her time in only the company of family, guards, and servants all of whom either treated her with the respectful distance and distasteful gentleness befitting her station and gender or with complete indifference. She had never been courted and often found more pity in the tender smiles of the men in service to her uncle than anything resembling thoughts of romance.

But Wormtongue's look spoke not of reverence, ambivalence, nor pity. His stare was hard and unblinking, lecherous, as his eyes unhurriedly ran over her body starting at her face, fixed with a defiant glare, and then trailing over her visible collarbone, along her arms that were exposed from the elbow down, and to her legs, also bare from above the knee. She was wearing a summer gown she had worn since she was a child that had covered her up sufficiently when she had been smaller. The only reason she had not abandoned it as she grew was because of how much cooler it was to sleep with bare limbs when at the height of the warm months. It was only now that she was seeing the garment through someone else's eyes that she realized how naked she was and how foolish she had been to not think to cover up before leaving her room.

She was frozen in place as Wormtongue continued to inspect her, terrified he might attack her as she was unarmed and at a loss for words that might condemn him. He had never had such an effect on her before but then she had never found herself so vulnerable.

In a lucid moment she realized that his gaze had held steady for a while and she followed the line of his eyes to her chest. While she didn't think he could see much with just her lamp present, she was made more aware of the sheerness of the gown which, when she was younger, she had always worn with some sort of shift. In one fluid motion she moved her free arm to cover where he was fixated on, turned back from whence she came, and ran the way back to her room without a second glance behind her, locking the door once inside. For a long while, she sat on her bed and watched the crack under her door, listening for footsteps. She heard what she thought might be him passing by her part of the hall but thankfully her door itself seemed untouched and the sound soon dissipated as she fell into a troubled sleep.

Unwilling to put herself in such a precarious position again, she always checked more than once to see if her door was locked at night and carried a dagger with her everywhere. However, for the first few days following the event he seemed unable to look at her at all and would often confine himself to a shadow-laden corner if she entered the room. He seemed ashamed of what had happened, or perhaps fearful of punishment, but either way the incident left her rattled. Even if he was not the sort who would engage her physically, a fact she was unsure of, she knew all too well the influence his words seemed to have and would do everything in her power to make sure she kept her distance from him.

A few weeks after that night, seemingly without provocation, her brother asked her if Wormtongue had ever done anything untoward and she told him about their encounter. He had demanded to know why she didn't say anything sooner and she said boldly that she didn't want to make more of the situation than there was and that she had been more than careful since then, detailing the precautions she was taking. Éomer had seemed to accept her explanation and she had no evidence whether or not he had confronted Wormtongue about it. It seemed likely that he didn't because while she took some solace in her preparedness, she could still feel his eyes on her. He never stopped looking and she remained ever on edge.

Pulling herself back to the present, her face grew a dark cast, not just because of the trepidation she had felt while reliving her memory but because here she had found herself with a kind man looking at her in an admiring way and the only past reference her mind could make was to the lustful stares of a manipulative man who had haunted her for years. As similar as the looks may be in mechanics, for Faramir also examined her from her face to the hem of her dress with deliberate care, his eyes did not linger on her once exposed shoulder or the small hint of collarbone visible but on her eyes and the downturned curve of her mouth. She did not regret leaving her dagger behind.

Faramir had originally felt joy at seeing her so beautifully attired in nightclothes befitting of a Gondor woman of her statue but his enjoyment was dwindling as she seemed to grow more and more distraught. It had struck him as so intimate to see her as such, the thought passing his mind that perhaps it was his own upbringing that lead him to this interpretation, but he now wondered if she was uncomfortable by this new level of familiarity.

Longing to put her mind at ease, he decided to try another approach and make as if the situation were in no way unusual.

"Would you do me the honor of talking with me awhile?" he asked, motioning to the end of his bed.

She took in a deep breath, pushing away all her doubts, and focused instead on the offer he presented. She still found herself in the grip of alertness and could think of no better way to pass the time than in the company of someone she had grown quickly to care for. She slowly nodded in response and he seemed to let out a sigh of relief as his smile returned at her acceptance.

As she traversed the confines of the doorway, she realized now that his room was rather similar to the one she had been staying in. It was on a corner like hers and therefore slightly larger than the rooms she had seen on her walk but, because of the location of the room, she could see buildings outside his window and not the fields that she knew. Somehow in her mind she had imagined that the Steward of Gondor would have been provided with quarters far beyond that of the common man and herself, but instead it was refreshingly utilitarian. It had the same nightstand and lamp next to the bed upon which was a book and a cup. There was also an unlit fireplace and a sideboard with the crest of Gondor, filled with linens, where he had piled more books. The only real difference she found was in the clothing hanging from wall hooks and the fact that there was no chair for her to sit in. When she had seen him motion to the foot of his bed, it hadn't initially crossed her mind that he was indicating the offered seat. Realizing her mistake, she approached his bed and gingerly lowered herself onto the nest of sheets, making sure her loosely tied robe would not fall and again showcase the poor job she had done without the use of her left arm.

"Most nights when I wake, I have no comfort but to read until I drift off again," he admitted, folding his legs in front of him so that she would be given ample space. "I'm privileged to have you here but I fear it may be for similar reasons."

"Is this a nightly occurrence?" she asked, her brow furrowed in concern.

He nodded solemnly.

"Sometimes I wonder if the touch of the Black Breath is still upon me."

For a moment Éowyn looked away from his eyes as her mind drifted to the men she had passed on her walk. Every one of them could not have also encountered the tortured slumber that she and he had faced and yet, the behavior bore such a resemblance that she knew they all possessed a common wound.

"If it were still upon you, I would fear most of the men at these Houses were similarly afflicted," she said, drawing her gaze back to him. "Myself as well, for I also dream."

"What do you dream of?" he asked unhurriedly, caution and curiosity in equal measure.

She closed her eyes and shook her head so slightly it was barely noticeable.

"You do not wish to hear of my darkness."

"I do."

She opened her eyes again to see him watching her fretfully but with a look of compassion on his face of such earnestness that she knew truly that he wanted her to unload her burden, that it meant so much to him that she would be willing to share this with him. She could not recall anyone in her life asking after her like that and for a second she was almost frightened at how close she felt to this man after such a short period of time.

With a deep inhale, she started slowly, reluctantly, the words falling heavily in the silent room.

"I dream of corpses, or just body parts, pieces of what were once men strewn across a field run red with blood. Sometimes I am trying to help them, collecting what I can find, but more often I am killing them."

She paused, allowing herself to work up the courage to continue with more assertion.

"I see myself trapped in a tomb with my uncle or my cousin, dead with the flesh falling from their faces as they tell me of everything they regret about their actions that lead them to this fate. I see my brother dying and leaving me alone with the crown of Rohan; or worse, I see him being tortured before me and I am helpless to do anything to stop it. I dream of my arm never healing and having it fester and rot in a disease that spreads throughout my body, destroying all my limbs and rendering me a mind in a useless body that can be manipulated as one sees fit. I see the Witch King. I see myself never escaping his torture and becoming like him."

She looked into his eyes, her voice growing quiet again.

"I dream that it will only get worse; that we are not at the end but the beginning."

With furrowed brows, he watched her speak, her pace increasing, the distress on her face growing with each new horror. All the trials he had suffered seemed paltry in comparison to the thoughts that occupied her mind and he wished there was something, anything he could do to take away her suffering. His normally skilled tongue was still as no suitable words could be found to bring her relief. Although he knew it was not much and could perhaps even be met unfavorably, he looked down at her good hand resting on the bed and moved his own towards it, giving her a generous amount of time to pull away.

She glanced at what he was doing for a moment before bringing her gaze back up to him, letting his hand take hers which he cradled in silence for a minute.

"I'm sorry these things so haunt you," he murmured. "Did they wake you tonight?"

"No. It was my arm that woke me."

"Is it not healing?"

She tilted her head to look down at the sling.

"It's almost healed," she assured him. "The pain in my arm is very slight but I believe I sleep so much that anything will wake me."

Faramir smiled slightly as he thought about all the times she had drifted off to sleep while sitting under the trees in the garden. She was always aware enough of her tendencies to warn him when she was starting to grow unfocused so she would not accidently fade away while he was speaking and he was perfectly contented to sit beside her in stillness while she rested.

"Perhaps I should occupy you even more with conversation to prevent the dangerous consequences of too much sleep?" he suggested.

The corners of her lips turned up at his proposal and for the first time since he had woken, she looked pleased.

"I would not be sorry for it," she admitted with a touch of lightness herself that was regrettably short-lived as a look of unease crossed her expression. "What do you dream of?"

The smile faded from his face at her question.

"Nothing so dark as you do," he said obscurely, looking down at their clasped hands. "I still dream of the fall of Númenor, as I told you, but less frequently as of late. More often I dream of fire. Of men whose deaths I feel I could have prevented: men I've killed, men I failed to save, my brother, my father," he paused to look up at her, "losing all that I have found still worth caring for." With his free hand, he touched the edge of the wound dressing near his neck. "And this."

"Does it still ail you?"

"As your arm, only slightly. But I think often of how I came to have it."

She nodded in understanding.

"I can never forget it," she confessed grimly, her eyes gaining a far off look that he had seen many times before on the men he commanded. It would come as no great news to him that he also displayed the same stare at times.

In a comforting gesture, he ran his thumb along her hand and felt her shiver at the contact. He was afraid she might pull away but instead she curled her fingers around his a little tighter as he traced a pattern on her unexpectedly soft skin.

"I do not think these things will ever leave us but with time I think we will not dream so much," he mused, knowing that optimistic words for the future do not help much at the present but wanting her to know more than anything that she was not alone.

She let out a shaky breath.

"Thank you," she said sincerely, a small, sad smile gracing her lips.

Thinking his meaning had been understood, it seemed that the best thing to do would be to bring her onto more agreeable thoughts with a change in subject.

"Are you enjoying those books I sent you?" he asked, remembering that he had neglected to ask her about her reading for some time. Not long after they had met, he had asked one of the healers to deliver a book to her room, thinking she may take enjoyment from having something else to do while she was confined to the Houses other than resting all day. He had imagined her education to be notable because of her high standing but he knew Rohan taught matters of international relations and cultural exchange differently than Gondor and thought she might be interested to learn about the countries from another perspective. He had found a book on the topic, not the best in his opinion but the only one available on such short notice, and waited a mere day to ask her what she thought of it only to find that she had barely finished reading the introduction. He chastised himself for forgetting that Rohan was a country built on oral tradition and vowed to give her a while before he asked again.

"Well, the first is very informative," she said diplomatically and he couldn't help but think she was being overly forgiving and careful with her words.

"But dull?" he offered.

She chuckled at his comment which made him smile.

"No, not dull just . . . extensive. I need time to really think about what I have read so I do not forget it." He nodded as she spoke. "But I really have learned much from it of the relations between our countries prior to the establishment of the Mark. I have only just gotten to the Battle of the Field of Celebrant which we have many tales about but I would think to you they would seem riddled with bias."

"I am not sure if I could not say the same thing about the book you read," he admitted. "It is true that historians in Gondor make it their life's work to present information as truly as they can but I do not think personal opinions and experiences can be avoided entirely."

"If I could remember one of the stories my people tell from memory I would recite it to you for comparison. It would surely make the Éothéod seem infallible."

He shrugged at her perseverance.

"As I am sure you noticed in the books I've sent you that works by men of Gondor show favoritism for their own people."

Éowyn let out a sigh as she shook her head.

"Even with our different customs at least there is something we have in common then," she said with a fading smile. "That and the fact that we so often fight in the same battles."

Her mind strayed back to her walk and the rooms and rooms of men from both her country and his. She looked up at Faramir to see that he was no longer smiling either and she found herself speaking before she could stop herself.

"When I could not sleep I took to wandering the halls and I looked into the rooms of the other men staying here before I found yours," she confessed, her eyes downcast. "By comparison, I would say we were particularly fortunate."

He nodded as he began to run his thumb along the outside of her hand again, distractedly. He was not blind to those recovering around him either, perceptiveness was in his blood, but he could see that now she was as keenly aware of their suffering as he had been. During the first few days after they had met, she had seemed adrift so much of the time, lost to the world around her except in secluded moments when she would take notice of him, but at some point her awareness had started to expand and he hoped this might be a sign of her enduring recovery.

"I know," he said softly. "And even if I had not gotten through with all my limbs and my eyes and most of my nights, I would still be able to look fondly on the fact that I have had you to keep me company."

The corners of her lips turned up in the shadow of a smile and she squeezed his hand to show appreciation that she could not voice.

"And I am pleased you have found some interest in that book," he mentioned, trying to clear away the sadness she often fell back to, "What of the other?"

The second book he had been inspired to send to her after she had asked about his childhood and he had told her of a memory close to his heart from a summer spent in Dol Amroth. It had seemed a fitting companion piece.

"I have read it twice since receiving it."

They looked at each for a minute, her smile spreading, his face in shock for a moment before he let out a quiet laugh at her admission.

"You are not often predictable, Lady Éowyn of Rohan," he said appreciatively.

"You must admit that it is much shorter than the other book and meant for children at that," she said in her defense. "In some ways I learned more about the culture of Gondor from that book than the other."

"Are the children's tales in Rohan so different?" he asked curiously. He knew a fair amount about the geography, history, and traditions of Rohan from the books he read and even knew a little Rohirric, but all he knew of children there had come from stories she had told him.

"Some of the tales felt a bit recognizable but, if they came from the same source, they had clearly evolved over time to better suit where they are being told," she explained. "In one of the stories that I felt I had heard before, an elf delivers a message to the son of a Prince but I remembered a similar story in which a horse leads the son of a Marshal of the Mark to various clues that reveal the same message."

Faramir thought about what she told him for a minute, wondering what the most likely origin of these story exchanges was.

"I would like to hear some of the children's tales from Rohan if you can remember any clearly enough to share," he told her.

"Tomorrow I will think of some for you," she promised languidly and he nodded, sensing that she was starting to tire and would need to sleep soon. He had to admit that he was falling into a similar state.

"The book is yours," she said after a pause, more as a statement of fact than a question.

"Yes."

"I saw what your mother had written inside," she elaborated, sure he knew how she had discovered this but wanting to hear him say something of the inscription. It was nothing too unique, just a mother's declaration of her love for her son, but she had been honored to know he had trusted her with something so meaningful to him.

"It was the last gift she gave me before she died," he said with a reflective tone, devoid of melancholy. It did not hurt him to think of his mother. Unlike his brother, whose age and awareness had meant he bore the brunt of the pain of loss for both of them, he had been so young when she died that it had always felt better for him to hold tightly to what little he could remember of her than to wish for a longer time with her that had not been meant to be.

"I have been very careful with it," she insisted.

He grinned at her assurance.

"I knew you would be."

They fell into a comfortable silence and Faramir found his eyes following the soft folds of her gown again now that there was no conversation to focus on. The white fabric of the fine gown, complementing her fair complexion and light hair, made her seem to glow in the lamp light with an otherworldly beauty that rivaled a full moon over Ithilien.

"That gown is very becoming on you," he said, the smile on his face unwavering from before.

She looked down at her attire as if to assess the accuracy of his compliment and remembered her thoughts about the dearness of the clothing from earlier. She raised one of her legs off the floor, the fabric falling gracefully around her, and along the hem she could already see discoloration from walking around the dusty halls. No doubt her bare feet were in an even worse state. Surely acceptable for a Lady of Rohan who tends to her own horses or a shield-maiden trained for battle, she thought, but a noblewoman from Minas Tirith would not have soiled her wears so quickly.

"I'm not sure if I'm quite suited for the opulence of Gondor," she said dubiously.

"Could you be?"

She furrowed her brows at his question, thinking for a second that he was asking if she liked the clothing that had been provided for her. She was about to speak in her defense, her lips already parted, when she took in the serious, slightly nervous set of his countenance and she realized he may have intended a different meaning with his question.

Before she could even begin to ponder what he meant, she felt a yawn rise up in her throat and habitually tried to move her right hand to cover her mouth. She realized that he still held it and, rather than pull her hand out of his, she turned in towards her shoulder to prevent the indignity of yawning at him and making him believe that she was bored by him. In spite of her efforts, he still saw what she was doing and leaned in towards her.

"You are tired. Do you wish to return to your room?" he asked thoughtfully.

As he had promised earlier that he would make it his mission to keep her awake during the day, the notice he paid to her present wakefulness was expected. The phrasing of his question, however, made her intently ponder what he asked. Back in her room were the sheets she had grown accustomed to, the east facing view he had granted her, books he had lent to her with the best of intentions but here, there was him. And she truly could not think of a time when she was more content in sleep than when she was sleeping in the garden by his side.

"I would rather stay here," she said slowly, her voice wavering in apprehension.

He regarded her curiously, his head tilting slightly as if he was considering her words and unsure of what to make of them.

For a long moment, they sat watching each other, her face controlled and his tense. In the still of the night she could hear a change in the depth of his breaths and the sound of him swallowing. She remained silent, wondering if he was making a decision or if she had not been understood and he was waiting for more to be said.

"I wish to sleep here," she finally clarified.

His tense expression relaxed, the lines of thought softening and reappearing in a confirming smile, not as if her clarification had necessarily changed his interpretation but as if the idea had finally settled. Slowly, he let go of her hand and moved himself over to the other side of the bed, allowing her the side closer to where she sat.

With a whispered, "thank you", she stretched herself out in the space, satisfyingly warm from his body, and rested her head against the very edge of the pillow. She had lain on her side with the pressure away from her injured arm, facing in towards him. When she no longer seemed to be settling in, she watched him as he got comfortable lying down facing her. Taking the other side of the pillow, there was a considerable gap between them but she still marveled at how close she felt to him and how soothing his company seemed to be to her. His face with its affectionate smile was the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes and fell quickly into a blissful sleep.

And for neither of them did the dreams come.