I don't own any rights, I don't own characters, settings, plots, or anything else.
The early evening breeze blew softly through the verdant grasses, comfortingly cool and fresh. A young woman lay against the green mound, her yellow mane sprawled about her shoulders, contrasting stark against the darkish grass of the hillock. Twilight was falling, the high, broad sky a dusky blue-grey. From the Hall above, the clamour of the feast faded as it travelled slowly down to her. The dark was quiet, calm. She felt tranquil, passive; a comatose sort of peace filled her, bound her limply in its unseen clutch. Red-eyed and numb, Éowyn lifted the flask gripped in one white-knuckled hand, and brought it slowly to her lips, closing her eyes as she felt the burn of liquor in her throat. Fingering a white star- flower, the Evermind, simbelmynë, she exhaled deeply. That morning had been the burial. She, being one, nay, the only, woman of Eorl's blood-house, had lead the ceremony, standing beside the open crypt, chanting, singing the warrior's death-ballad. Even then, she had not cried, though sharp tears had lanced her words, made her voice crack and flicker. After the tomb had been sealed and her cousin's body walled behind stone, beneath the ground, the sad party had made its way back up to the Hall, for the meal to honour her cousin's passing; an elaborate feast had been prepared in commemoration of the king's son. To her, it meant nothing.
Théodred's passing had been a heavy blow to the people, the throne-heir claimed by the icy shroud of death. The king was now childless, and with his own health erratically uncertain, any day the country might be bereft of its lordship, and chaos would hold sway over the throne. Éowyn gave a rueful smile. 'We have ever walked the sword's edge of late.' She blew heavily, driving the air violently out of her lungs. The dull aching in her chest had returned, stabbing with the beat of her heart. She rolled onto her side, winding her fingers into the grass, gripping the stalks hard, breathing in the sweet tang of bruised grass, the rich, wholesome, earthy smell of damp soil. Now, in the twilight, she was filled with a calm, empty silence. The air enfolded her like the embrace of cool, still water, and she drifted, inert. In the first, terrible days, two sun's passings, she had been anxious, fretful, fearing the worst that was inexorable, nursing wounds innumerable, praying that the fever would abate. When Théodred had been carried home, bloody and torn, she had cried like a child.
When the call rang out that riders had been spotted, Éowyn had gone to meet them at the gate.
The king's son had been borne into his own chamber; his own divan made sickbed, and ultimately, a premature deathbed. Éowyn had gone to him, frightened of what she would find. Théodred lay, bleeding, burning, a raging fever taken from fetid wounds, perhaps dying already. Éowyn clamped her mouth shut, forcing bile and tears, hopelessness and useless questions back down her throat.
When others had gone to their rest, she had stayed at his side, damp cloth held in deadened hand, prepared to keep this vigil with him. His breathing grew to a rasp, and he tossed, restless in a confused oblivion somewhere between waking and sleeping, living and dying. Éowyn wished the sun would never rise. Moments from her past drifted behind her eyes, bringing grief and consolation with one horrifying voice.
A sordid-black warhorse, tall and proud, rode riderless, its sooty coat spattered with gore. Beside her, clutching her hard with white-knuckled hands, her mother wept bitterly, keening to the grey heavens as thunder rolled overhead. A child knelt beside an ashen corpse in the dawn's grey light, sobbing as if her heart would break. Théodred knelt at her side, taking her small, shaking form in his arms, cradling his little cousin, against pain, against fear. A young woman crouched in the courtyard, sweating and dusty, a sword in her hands. "Again." Théodred hacked out at her, and eagerly she met blade with blade. Intent, she struck back, clipping him on the wrist, drawing blood with the blunted practice blade. Théodred was laughing, nodding his approval. A woman bent over the back of a wild mare with a silvery coat, bowed close over her sleek neck, frothed with sweat. A russet charger followed close behind, but the mare outstripped her challenger, her rider pushing her onwards ever faster, at one with her mount. A clear laugh rang out, a loud whoop of glee, flaxen hair streaming in the wind. A woman stood, eyes downcast, vexed to screaming, though she choked back her denunciation. Théodred touched her cheek, brushing away a stray tear, lifting her face. He roughly pulled her to him; held her tightly, held her close, muffling her suppressed sobs against his chest.
In the dead of night, after the midnight toll, exhausted and shivering with weakness, she had lain next to him, feeling the unnatural warmth of his body, so close to hers. For countless minutes, perhaps hours, heartbeats spanning forever, she had stayed there with him, waiting for the dawn, waiting for the respite that would not come. Éowyn wrapped her arms around him, syphoning a measure of the comfort and hope he had always given her back to him.
The tears had come slowly. Resisted and held back, silent tears slipped down her cheeks, hot and burning. She grasped him tightly, until her grip grew stiff, hard enough to leave marks. Smothered sobs died behind clenched teeth, until, unable to bear it any longer, she had let go her restraint, sobbing into his hair, whispering incoherently through her tears. She pleaded for him to live, not to leave her and tear away the light she had depended upon to lead her through the storm. How long she lay there, she knew not. The sound of dragging footsteps in the corridor roused her, and hastily, she tumbled away from her cousin, onto the floor, where she knelt, fruitlessly attempting to wipe away her tears. Her red eyes and swollen face could not be amended. The door opened with a gentle scrape.
Gríma Wormtongue entered slowly, his face inscrutable. A glint of glass shimmered against the stars before it disappeared into the depths of his robes. He moved towards her, his eyes full of feigned grief and sympathy, unwanted. Mesmerized by terror, Éowyn lay still, static and vacant, feeling the deafening roar of her pulse in her ears, the rasp of her breath. He bent beside her, his hands on her shoulders. She looked blankly down at his fingers, too shocked to wonder why or feel the fear rising in her throat. He spoke to her then, words slithering from his tongue like venomous serpents, falling on her head. His voice filled her lungs with a noxious miasma, blurring the world around his face. She could not hear his words, though they etched themselves into her heart, condemning her to their labyrinth to wander, until she saw the dark reason they told. He moved closer, intoning all the while, pulling her deeper into his abyss, and crushing her in the coils of his voice, numbing her soul, drowning, suffocating her with his words. She glared up at him from under knitted brows, behind rivers of golden flax that choked her face.
With a ragged scream, she tore the dirk from her belt, wanting an end to it.
Éowyn looked up, realized her cheeks were wet. Swallowing her tears, she lay on her back, tracing the heavens with an upraised finger. Various stars glinted through the receding rain-clouds. Mother had taught her to name the stars when she was a child. After her death, lying awake at night, keeping tears at bay, she had named the lights dancing through her window. After a time, her uncle had joined her, sitting beside her on the bed, finally rocking her in his arms as she sobbed, the tears flooding down her cheeks that she could not hold back.
"Éowyn!" The shout rang out above her head. Éomer stood, outlined dark against the sky, coming slowly down from the Hall, in search of her. She lowered her arm and lay back, looking at nothing, thinking not-anything; waiting for she knew not what. Let him look. If he found her or no, she cared not. She took another sip from the thin-rimmed flagon, wanting to slake the emptiness that filled her soul. Her lips twisted into a perverted smile at the uncanny irony. Odd, to be filled with nothingness…
"Éowyn!" He was closer. With the blatant white fabric of her gown flowing about her bare ankles like wisps of feather, violently contrasting with the grass stalks waving and bending over her head like a bower-guard, black now in the deepening darkness as night drew on, she doubted that he would have much trouble finding her out before long…
There was a terrible hollowness in her chest, where once there had been something, something that she would not name. Now, a black, bottomless cavity lay where it had been, filling her heart and lungs with a despondent sort of futility, and a sense of insignificance that seemed to crush her being and what little hope that was left to it. Éowyn closed her eyes again, fighting back bitter tears that stung her eyelids and burned her throat, tears that she repulsed with hopeless shame. Swallowing a shallow sob, she controlled her breathing, eyes still clenched tight, she lay, watching the inversed shadows of light and dark pass behind her eyelids. She opened them as she heard Éomer thump down onto the loam beside her, exhaling slowly. He sat, acceptant, his arms resting on his knees, staring out to the faintly grey horizon. She turned her head to stare glassily at him, silent and rigid. He cleared his throat slightly, tactfully signalling his annoyed discomfort, shaking his dirty-yellow hair out of his eyes. She blinked, catlike, and did not avert her unyielding gaze. She hardened her expression, in spite of herself enjoying their age-old game: a test of wills, in which one vexed the other to the limits until finally they buckled under the force. Nearly always, Éowyn would win at these, for she knew just how to disconcert her brother, and did not often yield under force of glare or knife-point.
After a long moment, Éomer let out his breath, which he had been holding, chuckling good-naturedly. "Leave off, 'Wyn. You know I can't stand you glaring at me like a stubborn mule, about to kick my innards out." Letting out a sigh that was half a sickly laugh, Éowyn lay back to face the sky, the ghost of a smile on her wind-chapped lips, bloodless. She knew why he could not stand to have her gaze on him for long, though he would not have her know it. It pained him to see her this way, because his thoughts were open and plain to her acute, disturbingly shrewd, perception. Also, the unwavering tension that held her gaze in place made him uncomfortable. In this manner, she outlasted his patience, although in other matters, she would be the first to scream, intolerant impatience winning over her perhaps better judgment. But of late, the rough, uncontrolled conduct of youth had worn away, or been trained down, and she gripped her exasperation more firmly than she had for years… had grown tight. Fear had taught her that. He could see its ice-cold gleam where once carefree ease had been, and it gripped him hard, harrowing, to see his sister such. She blinked slowly, waiting for him to speak. He didn't. Instead, he took a long, noisy draught from the leather flagon he had brought with him. He offered it to her, and she took it companionably, her own flask long since drained.
"I thought you'd run out; and it was getting loud up there. I thought you'd be glad of the company… dead men's words are hollow, and their arms are cold." He said it gently enough, although a pain wrenched her chest at his words. However solitude was good for her mourning, and healed her spirit, she had been lonely. But when wasn't she? She acknowledged that she was glad of his presence with a brief, taut smile. He moved closer, and put an arm around her shoulders. Together they sat, their backs pressed against the grave of their cousin, one whom had been dear as a brother and more, unmoving in the spent silence. For a little while she could pretend to forget all the obligations and all the intrigue and the fear and uncertainty that would swallow her world again, come morning.
In the shocked aftermath, the night after, before much had time to sink in and leave an imprint, Éowyn did not yet admit that inside she was screaming. All life seemed frozen, dead and unbreathing. Shock numbed the brunt of the blow, that which could have felled her entirely. Too sedated by shock, flaccid beyond concern, she did not concede that she was shattered, and exhausted: too pale, too thin, and too quiet. Éomer saw, though he said nothing. Too many others had already, and she would not listen to him; at best she would dismiss him from her side with a bitter, scornful glare, and he would not see her again until next he returned from the Foldes. Sighing heavily, he leaned into her embrace, thankful that she would not listen, keeping his worry to himself, grateful that she did not speak to him. He pressed her slight form against him; brotherly protection and comfort, and she wrapped her arm around his waist, breathing deep, denying the repercussions that morning would bring, the sorrows, the worry and the care stalled for this moment in time at least.