She could not quite remember, you see. Settled with her back against the raised ramparts of Edoras, sun warmed stone soothing her as she perched on the ledge, she looked down at the milling of workers and townspeople rebuilding their homes and finding their lives anew. It seemed that today was the sort of day when remembrace was due.
Oh, the great events were no difficulty, of course.
Cries of the men and the dying horses. Quaking ground beneath oliphaunt feet. Strike! strike! Again and again and again andagainandagainand-- Fear? Courage? No time! Act, act now! Was this what the men so ardently dreamed of? Rushing feet of master and beast, keyed to the rushing blood. Too many! So much! A stench of unclean brimstone and a rush of wings. Chaos, then a sudden clarity of purpose and of mind.
"I am no man."
She still awoke atimes, gasping, heart pounding with the war drums once more. Beside her, he would stir, one hand searching blindly in the moonlit dark. He would draw her to him, and she would lie in repose with her head on his breast, still and staring, her fears slowly easing at the touch of his flesh against her, until warmth and sleep claimed her again.
Other nights, it was he who awakened. Two souls, still shaken by the death throes of an old world, but finding their measure of peace together.
No, the great events were no difficulty.
What she could not remember was more elusive than that, and she had not the talent to write of what sang within her. When did she first look on him and see the her own heart mirrored in his eyes? He himself had delighted to tell anyone who would listen on their marriage day how he had loved her from their first meeting. She, however...
It was most difficult to strike upon, really. At the time too tangled in her sorrows for those fallen, and for a dream that could not be, she had no such convenient line to draw, marking neatly the space before love, and all that had passed since. But some time before the coronation, she had begun to feel an ease within herself whenever he drew near.
Below, the clop of hooves sounded on flagstones still blackened in parts from the flames of Isengard. A string of horses, being led through to the newly-rebuilt stables. Grays, bays, chestnuts and a solitary black mare, her belly heavy with foal. She would perhaps go down to them later, to visit them, and to visit amongst her people. Truly her people now. She would honour Theoden's will, and she would see Rohan's strength flourish once more, like the summer fields grown thick from the amongst the ashes.
Ah. Yes, that was it.
Out from under the watchful eyes of the healers for a day, a pair of horses to carry them past the devastation, to a stretch of the river where the water still ran sweet and clear, and the grass grew lush and full.
"I used to swim here as a boy, you know." he offered, dismounting with a hidden wince and a favouring of his wounds and leaving his horse to crop at the grass. There was a light in his eyes as he looked at her, overlaying the darkness that often shrouded them, and a quality to his usually serious tones that suggested he was attempting to draw her out. She rewarded him with a distracted smile and that was enough for him to go on.
"That rock over there made an excellent fortress, and we used to lay many a siege to it..." was elabourated in a murmur as he removed his socks and boots and stepped into the shallows with his breeches rolled to the knees. Offering her a hand with all the manners of one who'd grown to manhood in the court of the White Tree, the warrior laid aside for a time, he grinned at her sudden decision to hike up her skirts over one arm and join him in the water rather than remaining on the bank. They waded along in a companionable silence for a time, before she felt him draw away, and something moved within her, shifting open a crack in the wall within her. (In hindsight, the wall was one of her own building. )
"Your moods seem alike to deep waters, Captain of Gondor." she said, her tone too forward for her liking, but not knowing of another to use. Comfort to her brother, to her family, to her people, such things were natural to offer, and came easily. But now, her ankles chilling in the water, she felt at loss for meaningful words. "The surface waves may play as they will, but beneath it lie powerful currents. You play at laughter, but the direction of your thoughts remains the same."
A short laugh was her answer, no humour in it as he turned from looking about at the surroundings to look again upon her, waving one hand about him. "I fear that my choice of locations for our day of rest was not a wise one. I wished to bring you forgetfulness for a time, my lady, to allow you respite from that which troubles you, and perhaps so win a smile from you... But this place holds nothing but memory for me."
"Memory is not always a thing unwelcome, Captain." she replied, more slowly this time as she felt her way through mazes of thoughts. "Memory makes us who we are, what we are."
"But memory is all I have left, lady, and I do not wish it! My brother, driven mad by lust for the One Ring they say, for all of the nobility of his death at Orcish hands. My father! Given over to the meddlings of the Dark Lord by too many gazings upon a palantir, and driven mad as well. Sauron is no more, but I am the last of my house..."
He'd raised his voice at last, the quiet murmurs at last giving way to the emotions hidden underneath, but at the last, his tone faded to near inaudibility. He sank upon a rock, hiding his eyes behind a hand with fingers pressed to his temples. "I am the last of my house... and everything reminds me of it, and nothing more than this untouched glade. Boromir and I, we played as boys here, and here I am, and here it stands, and yet..."
"And yet, he is not." she finished for him, joining him on the rock and allowing her skirts to drop about her ankles and trail into the stream. "And you wonder, why, amongst all those who have fallen, you have survived. For you were never the favoured one. You were never the one allowed to go forth and seek your place amongst the heros. You were the dutiful one, who obeyed orders, and did not venture forth too far from home despite your longings to prove yourself... Do I have the right of it, Captain of Gondor?"
"Faramir, my lady," he insisted, a somewhat odd inflection to his voice, and something hungry looking at her from within his blue eyes. "For if you would know me so well, then you must use my name... unless it is not of myself alone whom you speak?" The avid look only increased, and he seized her hand between both of his, sliding from the rock to crouch before her, looking up at a face she tried to turn away, trying to conceal the heat risen in it behind the fall of her flaxen hair.
"No..." she admitted, barely above a whisper and half stolen away by the running of the water through the shallows. "No, I speak for myself as well. We are akin to each other... a great deal more than I had allowed myself to see." Her hand tightened in his grasp, and she drew in an unsteady breath, feeling like one stepping through a doorway and out onto a limitless plane; a mingled sense of freedom and a sudden vulnerability as she turned her face to hims again.
Slowly, and without taking his eyes from hers, he lifted her hand to his lips, pressing the lightest of kisses to knuckles still bruised and roughened from the last great battle. "We are two who may well understand one another better than anyone else could dream. My lady.. Eowyn..., I have not spoken openly of my feelings towards you, but neither have I concealed them. Do think that perhaps in time--"
He got no farther in his words than that. She felt an immense sense that right there, right then was the path her destiny intended her to walk, and that a shieldmaiden of Rohan was no shrinking creature. Heedless of the fact that he was crouched unsteadily on a smaller rock, she came quickly to his arms and brought her lips to his.
The resultant loud splash as they tumbled backwards had quite startled the horses, she recalled, returning from her reverie with a smile. She nodded a little to herself, arms wrapping herself in an embrace as she sat forward from the supporting stone of the parapet, only to feel another set of arms encircling her from behind, and a whisper of warm breath against her cheek. "Your moods seem alike to deep waters, Lady of Rohan..."