What Darkness Beheld

A.N. - This is, yes, an Eowyn/Grima darkfic. It's dark and angsty but not really that inappropriate - and not horrible unbelievable, either, I think, if you're into DarkEowyn fics.

By the way – THANK YOU, Proserpina! I am always glad for help, and your advice was much appreciated.

Eowyn had never been afraid of the dark.

When she had moved to Edoras, ever since she was very small, she would sometimes blow out all the candles in her room and revel in imaginings that the light did not show.

Theodred had found her thus some evenings, her hair loose, lying on her back in complete darkness, her dinner the servants had brough sitting cold on the table. Over and over, she made her beloved cousin swear not to tell her brother.

Eomer had always sought to banish darkness.

She feared that - his discovery of her secret love for the darkness, the same thing that was an object of his everlasting and most open hatred.

He had always slept with a lantern lit at his bedside, or by the fire when his eored was out. That was rarely now, but not rarely enough to put either his heart or the heart of his sister at rest.

Her nights, ever bitter and lonesome. . .his with warmth and men he trusted surrounding.

For both of them, if for different reasons, a single watcher. . .a man who was alone and yet not, two who were one. Grima Wormtongue. . .and the darkness.

Who hated one must hate the other.

Who loved one. . .must love the other.

So it was: dark souls drawn together, secrets spilled to a heart that held just as many to return. In the celler, in storehouses, in many places they met to whisper broken stories to each other. But always and eternally in darkness.

It even began in innocence, but innocence in more than guise was familiar to neither, and it fled quickly to illicit relations - stolen kisses, clutching hands, fingers twisted in hair, secret glances and smiles that were not smiles. . .only emotions deep inside eyes that only they could read.

Winter lead to darker secrets spilled, his lips blue with cold when he spoke, his voice wavering.

They only trusted each other so much - there was an extent to which truth became dangerous for the cognizant.

She I danger, I danger, she told him again and again, promises growing harder and harder, she'd to anything to risk. To know.

He protected her from truth, the only attacker against which she could not defend herself.