Title: "A Mother's Hands"
Characters: Éowyn, Faramir, Elboron
Rating: K+
Summary: Éowyn loves her son too much to love him.
"What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands."
-Macbeth, 5:1:26
When her son staggers into the sitting room soaked in blood, she is flying at him in a moment: where are you hurt? Tell me where you're hurt, but it is only some frantic, pounding moments that she hears his little voice, his child's hands on her face, patting, grasping, seeking to escape.
"Ma," he is saying, "Ma. It's just paint."
She falls back a little. "Paint?"
He nods, eyes wary, and she sees that the crimson that stiffens his tunic is indeed brighter and redder than blood's wont.
Relief sharpens her voice. "Paint! And what were you doing to spill paint all down your front? Never mind. Go to your room and have Nurse help you wash."
Once she is gone she holds herself tightly to still her shaking hands, standing at the blazing fire, and thinks.
Her son's eyes, regarding her as he might a strange, untamed beast, a rabid wolf. Is that what she has become- unstable, unloving? The hands that reach out to smooth her son's hair are soaked with blood, coating her palms, under her nails, slickening her grip.
Out, damn spots!
She rubs them together restlessly. It had never occurred her to consider this blood, not until she held her own child and realized that her hands were ungentle and callused, and though she might spend her days studying her leechcraft now, does she still not tear the pants from the ground? It seems she cannot help but wreak destruction, that it clings to her like the stench of death. Oh, to clasp him tightly to her, to hold him, to love him as she wishes, but her hands are stayed; she cannot touch him, she may not touch him.
Faramir finds her there and she wants to rage at him, to lash out in anger, but find she cannot. His grey eyes are understanding but without pity. Had she seen pity, she would have struck him.
"He does not love me," she says.
"He loves you."
She nods, crossing her arms across her chest. I cannot touch him with these bloodied hands because I love him so.
When night comes she finds she cannot sleep, though Faramir does, and she slips out of bed, padding through the halls in bare feet, nightgown billowing about her slender form. She does not need a light; she knows this house well. She goes to his room, kneeling by his bed, and there she studies his little face, hears him breathe. If only he knew how much I loved him, she thinks, that I love him enough to break my heart, enough to hold myself away from him, enough to stay my hands.
In the morning Elboron wakes to find his mother kneeling by his bed, her head slumped onto the covers, hair like a shining river of cold across the white of his quilt and he puts a trembling hand to her cheek.
In the quiet of the dawn, she smiles oh-so-faintly and he whispers I love you.
She says nothing because she cannot find the words but he understands the love in her eyes, in the hands that she, tremblingly, reaches out to take his.
