A/N: I'm sorry, this took longer than expected. I got sick and was in no state to write at first and then my brother installed a new computer which lead to more delays. Anyway, here it is, chapter one. I've got some of chapter two planned out in my head but I got finals this week, so I make no promises. Read and enjoy.


I found her on same balcony ten years to the first night, indeed, very little had changed save the lines on her face and the swell of her stomach. There was no child there now, Morwen was born and grown.

"Mother?"

She does not turn to me, only lifts a hand to beckon me near.

"Always you find me first child." She says, though the mirth in her voice is clouded by another emotion.

"I am gifted."

"Very…" her voice trails off into the silence of the night. I look out at the gardens, my mother's work illuminated by the pale spring moon. I look at her, her golden head raised so that she may look out as well. In the moonlight the years are not so many, not so noticed, and she looks like the maiden my father sketched long ago in different gardens. Different gardens where she was Eowyn of Rohan still, a shieldmaiden first and foremost.

"Mother?"

"Yes Elboron."

"Do you ever miss Rohan?"

She leaned forward a little, hands like pale claws around the stone. She never spoke much of Rohan, of her brother, her cousin, her uncle, always with a bittersweet tone, but never of Rohan. I had been there a few times in my life, the only one of my siblings who had seen the Land of the Horse Lords yet.

"Ithilien is my home, Elessar my King."

My brow furrowed at her response.

"Perhaps it is so, but you were raised there. Surely you must wish to return sometimes."

She shook her head at the night, eyes cast up to the star above as though they would give her an answer.

"Ithilien is my home. Here I have my garden and my house. Here is my family, my husband, my son, my daughters." She looked down at me then. "This is all I need."

"But you had a family before us, a home—" The words do not make it out of my mouth.

She looks at her hands, still tight around the stone, moving her left hand so that the light reflexes off the two bands on her finger.

"Yes I had a family. A father who rode for honor and glory and did not return, a mother who could not live without him, and a brother who faced the deaths of all his house, myself included." He voice rises as she continues. "An uncle who was dearer than father, who, blinded by trust, would not see the snake at his right hand, and a cousin who would not hear my pleas. Seven mounds on the left, nine on the right, more praise to the dead than to the living!" She stops and steps away from me. She takes a deep breath and steadies herself. "I love my brother, but I am a Lady of Gondor and Ithilien is my home. You and your father and Morwen and Nienor and Haleth, you are my family."

There was nothing either would say on the subject and we fell into silence.

The sounds from the gathering inside the hall reach my ears and I thought back to why I had come to my mother again this night.

"Mother," I begin, long fingers toying with a loose strand of hair, ignoring the white strand that, like steel, glints in the light. "There are a host of guest inside, all looking to congratulate you on your marriage which almost a score old. Master Meriadoc even has some trinket to present you with. Why are you not inside?"

Her shoulders shrug and she reaches for my toying hand. "I needed to breathe,"

It seemed as though the only thing that drove my mother outside was lack of breath; in the last ten years, it has been the only excuse she offered whenever I found her outside. Tonight, however, something was different, I could tell. There wassome burden on her that she could not bear, something too great for her to keep locked within her. More than a flicker of her usual uncertainty, this was something that threatened to devour her whole if she did not purge herself of it. Rough fingers and a clammy palm wrapped around my hand and for a moment I looked into her eyes and felt her fears as though they were my own.

"And think."

"Are you feeling well?"

Her eyes were sad and her pale face drawn. Slowly she shook her head, bringing her other hand up to my cheek.

"You look more like him everyday." Her fingers traced my cheekbones, my jaw, my brow, like they had when I was a child, only now the touch is unsettling and I long to step out of it.

"Mother?"

"Do you remember," She starts quietly, " a time not to many years ago when you found me crying outside a gathering not too different from this one? You asked me why I wept and I answered that was remembering."

My mind flew through different memories before coming to a halt on the one she spoke of. I recalled the same sad eyes, the same fearful look, almost as though she was coming undone and could do nothing to stop it. I placed a hand on her shoulder and looked into my mother's eyes, trying to find the root of her fear.

"What is it you remember mother? What is it that drives into the shadow when the light opens its arms to you?"

She bent her head so that her brow rested onmy shoulder, andI felt the moister on her lashes as they brushed againstmy cheek.

"You are a good son. If ever the Valar have rewarded an unworthy soul with peace it has been I. You are everything, I would ask for no other son."

I could not understand, she seemed delirious in her grief and her words made no sense to my mind. She straightened and pulled away.

"Mother? Please, tell me."

"A lie."

Her answer confused me as much as the things that had led to it, and I found myself at a lost. My mother had never been a simple creature, and there were days when it was easier to sit with her in silence than to try and understand the happenings of her mind. I did not ask of her, thought better of it more often than not, both my father and mother has passed through the Shadow and waited in doubt only to have the old world fall away in the silence, and there will always be some things that are best left untouched.

My mother sat wearily on the bench, tears shimmering on golden lashes, leaving twin trails on her pale face.

"I love your father."

Her statement caught my attention, and I lower myself at her feet.

"He is your husband of many years, I would expect no less."

She shook her head sadly, fingers tugging on the string of sapphires around her neck.

"I love your father. Your sisters and you are my greatest joy. I am happy here. Ithilien is my home."

I placed my hand on her lap and she tenses at my touch.

"There was a time, in the beginning, when things were not the same. I was unhappy. I looked around me and saw death; I looked into the distance and saw nothing but the darkness. A worm tracked my very step and there was naught my brother could do for me when battled called his name. Glory and honor, that's what he rode for and with his sword many foes would fall."

There was bitterness in her voice that stopped my heart, but her sadness was as clear as the moon in the sky above and I did not know what my mind found odder.

"Hope arrived from the West and I thought perhaps my salvation had come at last. But I was sent away and I knew no more of that hope, for when I saw it again it was dimmed. I became a creature of war. I took up my sword against my enemy and laughed. Men sing of me in lays and women stitch my deeds into tapestries, meant to adorn their halls and give them hope."

The heaviness in her throat grew with reach word that passed her lips.

"I acted without fear because it is hard to fear when you have no hope. I sought death on that field and glory as well, so that all who came after might remember the maiden who lingered in the shadows, waiting on others. And glory was granted, my sin forgiven by those I abandoned but death the Valar would not give me. For all the honor I had claimed, I was none the richer, still alone, in a foreign cage waiting for doom that would come whether the quest failed or no."

"I asked the Warden to take me to the Steward of the City and he did. I met your father for the first time in those healing gardens, looking out for some sign of our fate."

"I know the story. You asked him leave and he would not grant it. He called you beautiful and asked what grieved you, for if it were in his power, he would make you happy. He gave you a window on the east and asked for your company, which you granted and walked the gardens with him everyday. He gave you his mother's mantle to keep as your own and on the fifth day the Shadow fell and he spoke to you of Numenor. You say that is when you knew you loved him, though you did not say and he left the Houses only to return again and tell you of his own love. He offered you his heart for your hand and a garden beyond the rivers. The Shadow left you then and you were healed. A year later you married in Rohan and returned to the White City before finally coming to Ithilien in the third year of your marriage."

She smiled sadly at me even as her tears doubled, her hands falling limp on her lap.

"You know that tale well, but, I must confess, that is not the whole story. The shadow fell and I saw before a bleak future in a hall of horses and hay, waiting ever for my brother to return. I saw myself as I had been, only there was no Dark Lord to blame. Then I looked at your father who stood at my side, and he loved me, it was clear, clearer than the sorrow in my heart at that moment. He loved me, a wise man of Numenor, and I knew he would do anything if it would make me happy. Something held him back that day, my own fondness of the dream that has ridden to the East, perhaps fears of his own. He left and visited it me seldom, and I found myself missing him. He had been my first true companion in many long years and in my heart the first seed of love was planted. I did not it then, I was too tangled in my doubts, my despair, everyday was some new tragedy and I could understand my purpose in this New Age. When he came back, it was like the Valar had handed a solution."

My heart stopped at my mother's words and something sharp and cold pierced it.

"He asked for my hand and I accepted and I saw myself in a garden, with tall trees and healing plants, I saw an opportunity to be happy. In my heart I thought it was nothing more than a dreamt that would not come to light, but it would grant me freedom from my gilded cage and I could not denymyself that."

I backed away from her, slowly standing, feeling as though any movement too quick would shatter me. She had used him. My father who, as she herself confessed, would do anything to see her happy, he had been used by the sorrowful maiden on the walls.

"You used him?"

"I saw no other way."

"You lied to him."

"No! I did not claim to love him. I made no false claim, I merely accepted—"

"To marry him!" I laugh mirthlessly. "Of course he had no reason to think you didn't love him."

"He knew the truth, Elboron."

I stand slowly, feeling as though any movement too quick who shatter me.

"He would not have agreed to such a thing."

She bent her head, eyes fixed on her limp hands.

"He knew. The blood of Numenor runs in him as it did in his father before him, as it does in you. He can read the hearts of Men as easily as he does a book. I know now that, even if I had lied to him, he would have known. He is a good man, and he wished to see me happy. I think to myself, now, that he accepted because he looked at me and saw the same opportunity, the same possibility, to find happiness."

"And so you pardon yourself…"

"No, not pardon, never pardon, never forgive. I know that there are things that should have been done differently but I would not trade this life away."

I shake my head and move away from her, not stopping til I lean against the door frame. In so few moments both my mother and father have been stripped of their silver lining as the words flow from my mother's mouth.

"If all this is true, why do you tell the tale you do? Why can you not tell your story as it was?"

"I found my self with child for the first time and I knew he would one day ask to know his parents' story. I thought of what I would say. In the end I thought it best to tell the tale the way it is told in the Red Book, so that all that was ever less than what it should have been could be forgotten."

"So you lie to your children for the shreds of comfort it provides!"

She looks at me then, her eyes blazing.

"A mother finds no comfort in lying to her children! I have made decisions that can not be unmade, and I must live with that. I did only what I did because I thought it would be best." My ears barely catch her next words. "I told you the story as it should have been."

I turn away and begin to make my way back into the house. I stop once more, turning my face towards her though I cannot see her, she is hidden in the shadows.

"Do you regret it?"

"I would not change my life."

"Even though it is founded on lies?"

She hesitates for a moment but when she speaks her voice is firm.

"Lies are sometimes stronger than the truth."

I walk away, leaving her in the dark.