Summer's LotR Story
Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the Rings. Nor do I own any of the characters except for my own pretty lil' OC -and I don't even own her name because it was Master Tolkien that created the language...
Author's note: this is based, I guess, on the book, The Two Towers and the movie The Two Towers, combined. See, I need Hama to die (I know, TearTear) in the battle for Helm's Deep which is in the book but not the movie. But I also need Eowyn and the rest of the lady folk to be present for that particular battle which is in the movie, but not the book. Got it?
This takes place before, during and after the Battle for Helm's Deep, respectively...
"War."
War. The word filtered through the crowd of nervous men and women, spreading like a virus and destroying all it touched. It was whispered by children to one another as if saying it too loudly would bring the event sooner, drawing closer their certain doom. Men (soldiers mainly) stated it grimly, the notes of matter-of-fact-ness in their voices served as attempts to mask the fear and despair they must have felt.
War. It was the most terrible word Faelwen had ever heard. She barely even knew what it meant. Well, that wasn't true, she supposed, what was true was that she didn't know what it would bring. Surely Rohan could not withstand an attack, not now of all times. The men would be slaughtered and the women and children... that was exactly what she did not understand. What would become of them? Surely the enemy would have some pity... for the defenseless, they must... mustn't they? But, deep in her heart, Faelwen knew what shameless lies she told herself. The dark forces that crept out of Mordor and Isengard like growing shadows had shown not even the most fleeting sign of sympathy before. Nothing would make them do so now.
The young lady was torn to the surface, out of the deep, ink-black sea of her reverie, by the sight of Eowyn striding purposefully through the cluster of people who were, undoubtedly, as disoriented as Faelwen, herself. The shield maiden's elegant skirts bloomed about her legs and her golden hair flowed out behind her, like petals of a helpless rose on a windy day. Unease was written on her face in her small frown and the ever-so-feint way her thin eyebrows pulled together.
Faelwen stepped forward. "My lady, Eowyn, What troubles you?"
Eowyn stopped and looked unhappily at her trusted friend. "The servants of the enemy move closer with every passing minute," she confided.
"Is it true what they say? That there are ten thousand orcs coming to tear down the walls of our stronghold?"
"At least," Eowyn sighed with frustration. "All the men are being sent to fight a battle they cannot possibly win. You and I were trained to wield blades, as were several other women. If we could be allowed to aid the men, to stand at their sides, then we would not have so much cause for fear. It is better to die an honorable death than to stand and watch helplessly as your companions are killed."
Faelwen stared wide-eyed, horror woven into her gentle features. "All the men? They are all being sent to fight?"
Eowyn knew she thought of Hama, for whom she had right to worry. She opened her mouth to say something sympathetic, in a last, already failed, attempt to ease her friend's agonizing wariness. But, before any sound could come through her lips, she was beckoned to by a soldier who apparently needed to speak with her. She looked at Faelwen one last time, compassion burning in her kind eyes, then turned sharply and made her way through the crowd.
Faelwen knew she shouldn't have been so painfully shocked. After all, if Saruman was sending ten thousand orcs to destroy them, the services of all of the men in battle would be needed. Only infants or the most unable of old men would be excused from this battle to end the race of humanity. And yet, she felt as though she had been slapped across her pale face. Her heart faltered in its ongoing, rhythmic beat. Stinging tears pricked her eyes and she found, when she tried to swallow, her throat had closed mercilessly, leaving her dangerously close to succumbing to sobs of fear.
She realized, with startling suddenness, that she could not let Hama fight. Although he had slain enough orcs to have lived through many battles, the odds of his survival were not in their favor. If she was forced to wait in the caves, listening to the jarring sounds of war and knowing he was out there, she felt quite sure she herself would die as well.
She had to find him.
She found herself stumbling miserably through Helm's Deep, calling "Hama? Hama?" when she failed to hear his familiar voice, answering her rasping plea, she began to despair. Could it be that he had been lost already, without the battle having even yet started?
She tripped over her own feet, trying to retrace her uneven footsteps. She put out a flailing hand to catch her fall and felt the skin rubbed bitingly off, as the rest of her body hit the stone ground with a thud. She looked tearfully at her bloodied hand and wondered how she would possibly live through this night, if she could barely walk without hurting herself in some way.
"Faelwen."
Upon hearing the merciful voice, she looked up to see exactly the man she had been so frantically searching for. A wave of relief crashed over her with such force that she thought she might drown in it. Do not be so heartened, she told herself, the battle has not yet begun. All the same, she attempted a smile (although she was regrettably unsuccessful) and held up her un-injured arm, in a gesture for him to help her up.
Hama took her small hand in his own and pulled her to her feet, so that she stood unsteadily before him. He frowned as he regarded her, thinking the war seemed to be taking more of a toll from her, who would not even be fighting, than himself, who was more than likely to be risking his very life in a matter of minutes.
"Please do not fight," she begged pitifully, "stay here with me."
"You know that is not possible." he reminded her and felt his heart wrench sharply as yet more tears welled in her eyes. They trekked thin streaks over her high cheek-bones before she brushed them away absently with her cut hand, unknowingly smearing blood across her face.
"I cannot sit calmly and wait for you to be killed. I would go mad."
He did not bother to make false promises that he would live to see the next morning, or to assure her that he would return from the battle without having suffered any harm. She was a smart woman and knew that said promises could not easily be kept. He simply said, "The men need me. Every soldier will make a difference and I intend to make mine."
She looked away dismally and did not reply. After a minute had passed, he assumed she had no response to give and let go of her hand, in the intent of leaving her. As soon as he had taken one step in the opposite direction, she grabbed his wrist, pulling him back. Her eyes still pleaded. "Then let me come with you."
"The battle of our time is not safe for a woman. It is not safe for any one."
"I know how to use a sword! If I was made to learn the skill, I should at least be permitted to use it."
His brown eyes burned into hers. "You could die."
Her grey eyes burned back. "I would rather die than be parted from you," and after seeing the sincerity in her frightened face, he never would have doubted it.
"Faelwen..." it was the only answer he could think of, all other replies evaded him. He laid a light hand on her long, tangled hair, wishing he knew how to comfort her more than he had ever wished for anything in his life. But, before he got the chance to, everyone was jolted alert by a sudden pounding of footsteps outside the fortress. The enemy had arrived. He looked at her one last time. "I'm sorry." he turned on his heel and stalked away, assembling, with the rest of the doomed soldiers, to face the devastatingly huge legion of orcs.
Faelwen stood stalk still, rigid and frail in her terror. Her face, already pale, drastically whitened with startling intensity. She tried to swallow and found she couldn't. She had forgotten how to move, how to breathe, and, for a sickening moment, how to think. She simply stood for a while, alone, until the ability came back to her. When it did, she heaved a deep, shuddering breath that shook her entire body.
What she had said was true. She had stated it with a saddening, almost frightening honesty. She knew that he would not have the chance to come back to her now, even if he could have lived with himself if he did. So she would have to follow him. She looked over her still weak shoulder, to her left was the armory. There was still enough armor to clad her with whatever small safety could be assured...
XXX
The two armies stood facing each other, the larger, more able force looming over the smaller one. Faelwen stood with the swordsmen, a part of their company. A helmet (with a heaviness she was irritatingly conscious of) cast the soft, feminine features of her little face in shadow. The thick armor she was swathed in rendered the womanish curves of her body utterly inconspicuous. She gripped at the hilt of her sheathed sword as if it was her lifeline, her short finger-nails bit into the thick, worn leather.
She stared at the massive sea of muscled bodies that made up the other army. They glared back at her and her companions with a viscousness that would have disconcerted the bravest of fighters. Terror knotted in her stomach and welled up behind her eyes. She wished fervently that she could be like Lady Eowyn, afraid of neither death nor pain, but her senses defied her.
To her right, only inches away from her huddled form, stood Hama. He, unlike the rest of the men that now surrounded them, had recognized her instantly, she knew it from the short glance he had spared her. He said nothing, to her nor to any of the battalion, he only stared desolately ahead. She knew he was as certain she would die, as she was of him. She loathed herself for causing him such distress, but her decision had been made. And there was no way of turning back now.
Before either of them were even fully aware of it, the battle had begun, ripping both away from whatever thoughts had been occupying them. Faelwen felt adrenaline sweep over her like a wave. The world around her operated in slow motion, which only made the gruesome spectacles of war more difficult to bear. A large orc (although, there was not one of them that wasn't large) raised an enormous hammer-like weapon, obviously intending to send it crashing down on her. She nimbly unsheathed her sword and swung it in a wide arch until it made contact with its thigh.
She cursed quietly, she had meant to hit it in the chest. The helmet perched on her head was obscuring her vision and that was taking its effect on her aim. She threw it off with the hand not occupied by her sword, no longer caring that she would be recognized. No one would be paying enough attention to her to discern her gender now, anyway.
Another orc barreled up behind a man near her, who was already fighting off two more and did not see it. She killed it swiftly to spare her fellow soldier.
The battle went on this way as an inscrutable length of time passed them by as if it were a runner in a race, far lass fatigued than they were. Faelwen thought it must have been hours, but all sense of time had taken its leave of her before the fight had began. She lost count of how many friends and companions fell around her, she forgot the number of orcs she slew. The only thing she kept track of, aside from defending her own life, was where Hama was (he never strayed far from her side) and that he was alive.
It occurred to her that the both of them had been unrealistically lucky so far. It seemed jarringly unnatural that they should both be alive and faring well, as they were now. It was as if his death had known it was plaguing her thoughts, because it chose that moment to enter the scene. Before her horrified gaze, an unusually strong-looking orc loomed over him. He stabbed at it with his sword only to watch his weapon shatter into glinting shards at his feet. He now stood completely defenseless, with literally no chance of surviving.
It was with torturous detail that she watched him fall. She managed to tare her eyes away, and look out at the field of death that stretched out before her before the blow struck. She didn't want to see that, she knew if she did, she would faint... and whatever time she had left to spend with him would be wasted.
When she looked back (which she did not do without an agonizing amount of difficulty), he had fallen like a stone to the blood-spattered ground at her feet. She hurriedly dropped to her badly skinned knees beside him. He was alive, but the fact gave her little joy, for it was clear he did not have long. She placed her little hand in his, feeling the warmth of life leave his skin with awful speed.
He looked slowly up at her. It was clear from the sadness, and even something resembling an accepting calm, on his fast paling face that he knew what would become of him, and had excepted it. "Don't forget me."
She tried to speak around the suffocating sobs that rose in her throat, but the words came out jaunty and whispered. "Never. How could I?"
"But, all the same, you must promise me to live a happy life... Lock your memories of me away, so that they do not hinder your joy."
"I won't lock up my memories... when I think of you, I will remember the happiness you brought me. They will not hinder my joy, but heal it."
"I love you." they were his dying words.
The orcs around them showed mercy to none. They slaughtered any human they saw with no conscience to stop them. No acceptions were made for the distraught woman and the dying man in her arms. Faelwen was so isolated by her love and grief that the world around her blurred and ceased to exist in her weeping eyes. She never even noticed when she was struck down.
XXX
Aragorn had known all along how minuscule their chances of victory were. He had done his best to console the men just before the battle, saying they would out last the force from Isengard. But he had never even believed his own comforting lies. To have won the battle for Helm's Deep had been the answer to all but his most desperately fervent prayers.
And yet, he could not feel relieved or happy. This field he stood on was not one of triumph, but one of death. The fallen Rohirrim lay scattered on the stone floor of the fortress, serving as grim reminders of the human sacrifices that would have to be made if they were to win the War of the Ring. He struggled with uneasiness as he and his companions miserably gazed at the human corpses, taking account of the losses.
He stopped in his dismal stride when he came across a body he recognized -yet another. "Hama, the king's guard," he remarked to Legolas, who stood over the remains of another unfortunate soul lost in battle, a few yards away.
As the elf slowly came over to join him, Aragorn perceived an age old sadness in his sea blue eyes. Legolas had lived far longer than he and therefore seemed to have a much sharper comprehension of grief. This, it appeared, only made the pain for him more immense. Aragorn did not know what to say.
"That is a grievous shame," Legolas said softly, "but who is that?".He gestured towards body sprawled directly next to the one in discussion. Whoever this man (for of course they couldn't help but think Faelwen was a man) had been, he had been quite slender, almost femininely so. His hair had been blonde, hinted with dark yellow, as was common in Rohan. Said yellow hair covered his face, making identifying him impossible for the present.
Eomer approached them from behind. Out of the trio who now stood over the two bodies, it was he who suffered most. He had known an overwhelming amount of the dead he had taken account for. His friends' and relatives' mangled forms littered the ground. He knelt beside Hama and the other elusive body. He brushed her hair aside and gazed her stone still face for a moment. Then, he stood up and murmured, "She is Faelwen. A handmaiden of Eowyn's."
Aragorn, Legolas, and Eomer soon moved forlornly on to see which other friends and allies had been lost in the devastating sweep of death that had overcome them the previous night. Seemingly, none of them had enough remorse to spare a decent measure for the doomed lovers. They had sadly seen far too many doomed souls to give enough sorrow for any of them.
Hama and Faelwen lay where they had fallen. Their stillness never again stirred by any breath or heartbeat. Their blood mingled and stained the ground, gradually cooling, as the memory of the two of them faded from the minds of their loved ones. She would rather have died than be parted from him. She was granted that wish.
That night, the clouds wept tears of rain for the valiant guard who gave his life for the people he cared for. And the wind wailed a requiem for the handmaiden who chose to die rather than see her lover fall alone.
I'm sorry if this was confusing. I'm sorry if it was way too long. I'm sorry if it was boring enough to put you to sleep. I'm sorry I couldn't squeeze Gimli in there somewhere. I'm sorry if it was worth flaming on multiple levels. I'm sorry that I over used words like 'devastating' and 'companion'. I'm sorry if Hama and Faelwen seemed like Romeo and Juliet wannabes. I'm sorry if they seemed like Rose and Jack wannabes (from Titanic). I'm sorry about the absence of accent marks. I'm sorry my grammar is horrendous. I'm sorry if I misspelled Tolkien words such as Rohirrim and Isengard.
Please review.