A.N. Yeah, not my usual. This fanfic is the result of an ELA assignment. And sorry if you're a Wuthering Heights freak…I was told to find a random book and copy as much of it as I needed until my own thought took over. I know nothing of the book. Please don't flame about that. Needless to say, it turned into a LotR fic. So yeah, enjoy! Oh, and it has characters from my Guardians series. Namely, Kestrel.

Disclaimer: Warriormaid doesn't own Wuthering Heights or LotR.

Confused as Catherine was, her wits were alert at applying our conversation. "Ah! Nelly has played traitor," she exclaimed passionately. "Nelly is my hidden enemy. You witch! So you do seek elf-bolts to hurt us! Let me go, and I'll make her rue! I'll make her howl a recantation!"

"Elf-bolts?" I asked. The only Elves I know of – being from Middle-earth – were those that had lived in Rivendell, Lothlórien, and Mirk…Greenwood. "Since when do Elves shoot bolts?"

Catherine calmed down now, but a mad glint was still in her eyes. "But you forget what world you're in, my dear Éowyn. This is not the land of your birth."

"True, but my mind still works like an inhabitant of Middle-earth. I was born a lady of Rohan, and I will die a lady of Rohan." I said, recalling memories of the Golden Hall where my brother lived and the White Tower where my love lived.

She cackled wildly. "But you are not lady of Rohan now, right, Éowyn?" She spat out my name as if it was poison. "I rename you Elisabeth Roan, resident of the Dark!"

"No." I whispered as a dense gray fog surrounded me. "No. No. No!" Catherine, what happened to you? What evil has changed you from the innocent girl you once were?

I woke up in pitch blackness, a dark so deep it was like peering into a Nazgúl's soul. I felt myself floating in this sea of blackness. What unnerved me the most was not the veil or the dark, however. It was the silence. I could hear nothing except the sound of my own voice.

Suddenly I remembered one of my childhood tales, tales that my uncle had told Éomer and me on Midwinter's eve. It told of those who could steal others' souls, and then take those soulless as slaves. The soulless could do many things, Dark Arts and the like. One of those was the ability to send another person to the void.

"And those who enter…never come out!" I heard my uncle's voice echo in my head. Normally, this would be followed by him leaping at us and me giggling frantically as I ran away from him.

Another voice came into my head. "Beware the ReNaming, Éowyn, White Lady of Rohan!" I couldn't place this voice at first, then I realized who it was. Kestrel, that strange girl a couple years younger than me, who had come to Rohan with Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. Kestrel, who possessed an incredible secret that she didn't reveal to anybody, least of all me. Kestrel, my best friend, if only for a short while. She had no gift of foresight like Lord Elrond had, only common sense.

"It will be your undoing." This was Galadriel, the Lady of Light. She had sailed to Valinor along with all the other Elves in Middle-earth except for those who resided in the Greenwood. Of those, only Legolas was gone – with Kestrel.

I turned my thoughts back to my current situation. According to the Rohirric myths, those who went into the void stayed there for all eternity, always alone, always lost. "But I have a destiny to follow! I have many battles to win! I have much love to share!" I didn't realize I had spoken my thoughts out loud until I heard the words echoing back at me. It was then that I realized that here were boundaries to the Void, that it was not endless, as the legends led me to believe.

I grasped at that thread of hope, and the whole cloth of doom unraveled. If the legends failed there, could it be possible that they would fail somewhere else, too? I wasn't sure, and I didn't know how to find out.

Suddenly, I heard a small whisper behind me. I turned to look, and I saw what looked like the ghost of a boy around Kestrel's age. I don't know how I saw him in the pitch-darkness, but I somehow could see that he was transparent.

I picked up on the sound that was coming from his barely-moving mouth. "Allemro. Alli. I'll find you. I promise." He repeated that over and over again.

I felt a sense of utter hopelessness come over me, and I succumbed to utter despair, believing that I couldn't do anything to save myself, that I was doomed, that some Fate had created my thread black and unbreakable by accident, then tossed it into a churning black underground sea.

There was no hope for me now, I thought. Nothing to look forward to but that never ending dark. Nothing to carry me through, nothing to live for but I couldn't die, either. This was the Void, that piece of the dark where souls that had nowhere else to go went. This was that place that haunted the young children of Rohan in their dreams. The place that amused the older children as they talked about it in the bright light of day. This was the Pit of Despair.

Suddenly a flash of light enveloped me from the sky, if that was what it could be called. I squeezed my eyes shut at the unexpected intrusion. Then I felt a strong hand clamp down on my wrist, pulling and yanking with all its might. My hand involuntarily closed around the wrist, and I was pulled up through an infinity of blackness and the Void.

My head broke into the light and suddenly I felt myself lying on a bed in the once-familiar Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith. Five people who I recognized stood around my bed, and my heart leaped with joy at the sight of them.

There was Kestrel, and Legolas with her; the inseparable couple. There was my brother Éomer, king of Rohan. There was Aragorn the King Elessar of Gondor. And there was Faramir, my beloved. The light of my life. My soul mate.

He was sitting by my side, gripping my hand with a desperate anxiety and looking VERY worried. I smiled weakly at him.

"Don't worry. I'm back." At those words, a surge of movement surrounded me, first my brother hugging me tightly, then Kestrel presenting me with my sword and hugging me just as fiercely.

And then Faramir pulled me to his chest and kissed me with a fierce passion. I melted in his embrace, safe in the knowledge that he was there with me. That he would face everything with me. That we would always be together.