Notes: Thank you for your reviews and comments! This chapter is a bit shorter but I wanted to get it up quickly. More to come!
When he saw Ella again, she was in the Houses of Healing holding a tray with ointments and bandages very, very still, with the air of someone who had stopped moving simply to make a point. An older woman with a stern face was occasionally shifting Ella from one side of a cot to another side, trying to find the light that would make her job easier, and when Ella tried to comment, though Éomer could not hear it, he could see the woman shake her head impatiently and again Ella froze into her position of assistance. Frustration was radiating off the girl, but if the older woman noticed it, it was obvious that she could not have cared less. It took three more tiny variations on positioning before the healer was satisfied and finished stitching what looked like wide, but relatively shallow slash to to a man's arm. Curiously, Éomer watched as the woman bandaged the limb briskly and efficiently, paying no mind to a question that the princess tried to ask, then answering in one word or two, and finding her way to another patient while Ella turned red with the effort of keeping frustrated tears down.
If Ella was needed with the next patient, she had not been informed, and if she had been and she was staying stock still in rebellion, then it seemed Ioreth, the older Healer didn't feel like indulging her, and so Princess Lothiriel stayed where she was and held the tray perfectly still and in perfect line and did not move a muscle.
"My Lady." Éomer inclined his head to the girl who didn't smile or even return the gesture. She was stubborn, it seemed, and her only response was a slight downcasting of her eyes before she glanced up again.
"I cannot move." She said, as way of explanation. "I am to stand very still, and talk very little, and keep everything just so. I mustn't even breath very hard, in case I should cause the instruments to fog."
"I ask, then, what are you doing?"
Her expression shifted slightly to some approximation of docility and her voice turned deadpan, almost earnest in her response. "I'm being incredibly useful, isn't it obvious?" Perhaps, he noted if she wasn't suffering, Ella couldn't accept that she might be contributing. She wore the same thick cotton robes as the rest of the healers, but unlike most of them, her's was pristine. Evidently she hadn't even been allowed to go close enough to the patients to sully her clothes. From the look of it, she hadn't been allowed to do anything but exist as a human shelf.
"Did you manage to break something?"
"No!" If she wasn't so awfully transparent, he might have thought he has offended her, but it was exasperation with the whole situation that he could hear. Rather than turning on him, she seemed to be saying See? See! This is insanity. I haven't done anything wrong, why then am I treated like this? Like a child of two who cannot do any more than carry? Her voice grew soft as she seemed to realize she was causing a disruption which was strictly against the instructions she had been given. "I just want to help." She sounded lost. She caught his eyes and he saw pleading in there, anger, and a ravenous need. . She just wanted to be worth something. To do something. It was that need that shook him. How could a desire for purpose seem so despairing? Éomer had seen that same devastation before and not heeded it and in consequence his sister lay here under this very roof. The two girls could not have looked more different and yet their eyes were mirror images.
"I am here to see my sister." She hadn't asked, and while enough of his people still dwelt here that he could have spent hours wandering from bed to bed, it was Éowyn who took up most of his spare hours. She spoke now, sometimes when she found the strength, but more often she slept and dreamt dark dreams.
"I thought so." For a moment Ella looked like she was going to move to walk him to his sister's side, but she thought better of it and again downcast her eyes as a sort of goodbye. As he started to leave, he saw her hold herself even more rigidly as Ioreth came looking for her. To her credit, the healer didn't try to fight the girl, or even chide her for her pettiness. If anything, Ioreth seemed not to notice the state she had driven Ella to, she was utterly focused, and it seemed that unless accompanied by blood or fever and screaming, she didn't notice much of people's emotional states. Ioreth gave the girl her orders and Ella nodded stiffly and went off to do another inane task that a small puppy with a little more enthusiasm might have accomplished.
Éomer did not have the luxury of spending the whole day with Éowyn. He had a meeting to go to and a dinner he was requested to attended after that. Today Éowyn seemed less troubled than usual, she breathed deeper and woke for longer periods of time. For the better part of three hours, Éomer recounted his day... something that she would have found dull before this war, but that now seemed to sooth them both. The minutiae of everyday tasks was a balm that covered what they actually ought to be saying to each other. "I love you." "I blame you" "I fear for you" "I fear for the future." "I cannot picture a world after this war." It was hidden behind the mentions of what he had for breakfast and the endless parchments that Gondorian Generals thrust in front of him. "Nothing in Gondor gets done without paper." He informed Éowyn, who had drifted back to sleep, "It's a wonder they have any forests... let alone animal skins left."
From the corner of his eye he say that Lothiriel had been relieved of shelf-duty and had been handed a broom. From the look of it, the girl was focusing less on sweeping and more on making sure she made the effort to go to every single bed in the whole House. In every face she seemed to see someone she recognized, and even though many slept, she had a word for anyone who wanted it and those who didn't got two words, from the looks of it, something saucy and pert which seemed to help. It was almost a peaceful scene until Ioreth yelled.
Lothiriel bounded for the source of the scream... not so bitter that she could stop herself from attending to the woman who had been her commander all day, Éomer stood up to help too, but Lothiriel was quicker, like a cat that had been coiled up and ready to be called.. The problem was a pregnant woman. Where moments before the young woman had been returning to her bed, something had shifted and she convulsed in Ioreth's arms. The older woman struggled to keep from dropping the soon-to-be mother and it took both Ella and Ioreth to lower the woman to the ground. Without being told, Lothiriel began to push the cot away, then the chair that also presented a risk. A healer ran over with a wooden stick, but Ioreth pushed him away with a hissed curse. Didn't he know not to interrupt a spell like this? The body knew what to do, and no damned stick was going to help. Lothiriel grabbed a blanket and tried to get close enough to put it under the woman's head but Ioreth held her back. "Enough. You've proved you're not a complete idiot. Don't make me doubt you now." With a quickness that Éomer would not have guessed, the old woman turned the mother on her side to help her breath and before too long it was over, and the House seemed to sign and returned to normal.
Ioreth put a hand on Lothiriel's shoulder, and spoke quietly to her. Éomer stood to get closer, "Go home, Princess." Ella opened her mouth to protest, but the Healer put up a hand, "You've been here since dawn. Rest. Come back tomorrow and we can begin the real work."
Lothiriel had finally tasted use and didn't seem to know when to give up, so Éomer took her arm, gently but firmly. "Besides, Princess. We have a dinner to get to. I hear it's important." He tried to communicate that he was on her side. That he was trying to help her. In response she stared at him, like she had forgotten he even existed and her mouth open and closed for a moment. It took another moment before she bowed her head both to him and to the healer.
"Of course. I'll return tomorrow."
The last sunlight of the day caused them both to blink furiously, the Houses of Healing were left quiet and dark and cool, and the rest of Minas Tirith was anything but. Ella turned to him as they stood outside, "The dinner tonight isn't important at all, you know. The part that's important is the few moments when you walk in, and the few moments when you walk out. The rest is commenting on the food and trying not to fall asleep."
He frowned at her, "That sounds like a waste of time."
"It is." She shrugged then glanced up to where they were both going. The city bustled around them, repairing, and mourning and living loudly. "Let's walk."
Éomer nodded, Ella seemed to know more about how Gondorian politics worked than she imagined. To her it was a fact of life and dull beyond imagining, but this could be the difference to him between being respected as a commander, or his men becoming fodder in the next battle. He knew he had Aragorn's friendship but that did not translate to a whole city's respect. It did not translate into being a King."
"You'll want to walk in like it's your dinner." He hadn't asked, but she had understood. She spoke casually, her blue-grey eyes scanning the city as she walked, she would occasionally turn to look at him to see if he was keeping up, but she didn't act like she was bestowing advice, there was no heart to heart here. She was merely talking and he was listening. "Not as if you hosted it yourself, of course, but certainly like you'd sit to an important meeting at home. It is not a special event, it is not an 'honour', it is a meal and you are participating in it, where you sit is your space, what you have to say is worth saying. It's not a family meal."
In their way was a load of stones, covering the whole path and stacked high and wide... the remains of the battle, of the high towers that used to line this street. Éomer was sure there must of been a way around, but Ella started to climb over them and he was forced to come along. Her skirts made it harder than it was for him, and a few times he had to help her over a particularly daunting or unstable obstacle. Each time she would thank him softly and his hands would leave her waist or arm as quickly as they had found it, neither of them commenting on the propriety or lack thereof.
"After the meal, where you have comported yourself with nobility and a... weight of words, which is to say do not speak overmuch and make sure what you do say has a reason and a sense of import. I- Yes... so- after the dinner, the men will retire and the women will be dismissed. Only they won't call it that, but everyone will be separated. Pay your respects to the highest ranking woman in the room, calmly and without too much flourish, and hold yourself straight and with a sense of gravitas as you move into the next room. Know your rank, which is higher then most of the other men, and never forget it. They will try to make you trip- figuratively- you shan't, of course."
Éomer nodded, thinking of his Uncle who had been able to hold a room with a single word. His cousin who had commanded his men with an inner strength that demanded to be followed. He felt young suddenly, and rough. He felt like a man plucked from battle and given a golden crown and told not to twist it out of shape. He glanced over at Lothiriel. Her hands were still bandaged though evidently doing much better as they danced in the air as she talked. Evidently a morning of silence had left her with no absence of words, she was positively brimming over with them. He got the feeling she wasn't often asked her opinion and then genuinely listened to and it bought out something beautiful in her otherwise pretty but nondescript features. She held herself straighter, she moved with grace and purpose, her eyes were alight and her cheeks and lips pink with the briskness of their walk. That was a woman who men would fight over. It was a pity that she got so little chance to show her. "Who is the highest ranking woman?"
She looked back at him and suddenly her face lit up with an impish smile, her eyes dancing. "Me."