I wrote this for the ficvariations community on livejournal - the June theme is dark/light. Enjoy )
They were alone now. Parentless. Orphans. No one to love them as a mother would, no one to love them as a father. They had an uncle, but he was the King. He wouldn't have time to comfort the children when they had bad dreams. They had a cousin, but he was years older than them – too old to play, too busy to take care of them. Besides, Theodred was a prince, he had more important things to do than spend time looking after his baby cousins.
Eomer was old enough to understand all that. Eowyn wasn't – she was only small, just seven years old, still an age where she expected everyone to nurture her. Eomer wouldn't, couldn't explain that life didn't work that way.
Their father had told them tales of the elves many times; he'd seen an elf once near the north border of Rohan and loved to tell them all the tales he'd heard of the immortal beings. It had become Eowyn's favourite bedtime story and Eomer had sometimes listened in, wondering how many of their father's tales were true and how many were just hearsay, myth and drunken nonsense mixed into one fascinating story. Then the stories had suddenly ceased to be told, because Eomund had been killed in an orc ambush.
"I wish we were elves," Eowyn said sleepily. Eomer looked up from the fireplace. He was waiting for her to fall asleep, as he did every night, so that he could be sure she wasn't going to cry into the darkness.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because then mama and papa would still be here," she said. Eomer suddenly realised her eyes were red and her lip bitten and puffy from her efforts not to cry out loud.
"We'll see them again one day," he said finally, not really knowing how to comfort her. Eleven-year-old boys were never the best at such things, and Eomer was one of the less disposed towards comforting females. But Eowyn was his beloved little sister and so he did his best to manage. Eowyn nodded at his words and curled up again, inserting her thumb into her mouth. Eomer wondered whether he should tell her not to suck her thumb; their mother always scolded her for it and he wanted to do the best he could at raising Eowyn in his parents' stead, but she needed something to comfort her.
"Eomer?" Eowyn asked a few moments later in a small voice.
"Hmm?" he replied, jerked out of his thoughts.
"Can I come and sit with you?" Eomer sighed. It was all very well vowing to be the best big brother he could, but when she clang to him it could get very frustrating.
"You have to go to sleep, Eowyn," he told her.
"But I'm scared of the dark," she whispered. She'd been surrounded by boys all her life, and they'd taught her to be strong and fearless, ashamed of being scared.
"Can you sleep on the floor?" Eomer asked. The room they were staying in had a cold stone floor, not comfortable for the most hardy of boys and certainly not for the niece of the king.
"If it's not dark," Eowyn said. Eomer waited.
"Well, are you coming here or not?" he asked.
"I can't, because the dark might hurt me before I get to the light," she replied fearfully. Eomer rolled his eyes. He was sure he'd been past the stage of monsters in the night by her age. Then again, she was a girl, and their father had just been killed by orcs. Understandable, then, to be afraid of the cave troll lurking in the shadows. He stood up and took Eowyn's hand and led her to the couch he'd been sitting on. Then he put a pillow on the floor with her blanket.
"You're supposed to let the girl sleep on the couch and sleep on the floor yourself," Eowyn chided him sternly. Eomer scowled and rolled off the couch onto the floor with a thud, allowing his sister to clamber up onto the soft makeshift bed.
A few minutes later, Eowyn's breathing evened out and Eomer sighed in relief. Now he could go to sleep himself. It didn't take long for the exhausted boy to fall into a deep slumber, and he was only awakened in the morning by Eowyn falling off the couch and knocking the wind out of him.
"You know, you could have slept on the other sofa," Eowyn pointed out with the smug look that only young children who've just got one up on their siblings can carry off properly.
"And deprive you of something comfy to land on?" Eomer grumbled. "How long has it been light for?"
"I've been asleep, so I don't know," Eowyn told him, tacking a silent 'silly' onto the end. "I'm hungry."
"Go and get some food from the Golden Hall, then," Eomer told her, still catching his breath.
"But… fine," Eowyn said petulantly, holding back the protest. Eomer grinned, relief becoming a more and more familiar emotion every time Eowyn learnt not to complain about each fear she held. He may have been a loving and caring brother, but her incessant presence was still infuriating.