Disclaimer: I don't own this

Author's Notes: This is a new story, separate from "The Haradrim." It is an AU story based on the challenge seen below.

For Nimloth, who wanted someone to answer her request…I sort of answered it.

The challenge:

Aragorn has married Eowyn. One night, she breaks down and confesses that she's madly in love with the Steward...

1) Eowyn is a very proud woman, so it must be under tremendous pressure from her conscience/Faramir/other that she caves in and confesses.

2) Either this should take place on their wedding night before the consummation or say a year into their marriage. If a year later, the confession might take place after some sex, but for dramatic purposes only.

3) Rating: depends on whether you could use the sex to further the plot. No gratituous sex please! Say either PG-13 for suggestiveness, or R for more explicit stuff.

4) Word-count. The whole story should take place on one evening--unless at the last resort you have to make it longer to come up with a solution. Aragorn must, in this one evening, decide on a satisfactory solution. So--short word count.

5) Eowyn would be called 'The Queen Elfsheen'.

6) Though she loves Faramir, she should NOT (repeat NOT) have slept with him, due to their sense of honour. Yet. Perhaps they are having trouble and Eowyn could hint that they wont' be able to hold on much longer.

7) Story should be told from Aragorn's POV.

The plot should focus on Eowyn having gained honour by her marriage, but now coming close to losing it through an affair with the Steward. She suddenly realises that if she had foregone her dreams of honour she would have found happiness and true honour. That should come out subtlely in her conversation with Aragorn. Try to convey the idea that Eowyn is trying to lay bare her heart before she freezes over forever. And don't make Aragorn unfeeling or nasty to her: he deeply pities her, and this catastrophe is coming just when he's learning to love her.

9) Finally don't make Aragorn's solution a stupid or cruel one like leaving things the way they are. THIS IS THIS RELATIONSHIP'S LAST CHANCE TO END HAPPILY. WHether it does or not is up to you.

10) Come up with the wisest and most Tolkien-like solution possible. Think very carefully about it.

Untitled

by Jenni

A Gondorian Schoolboy's Song:

Elessar Elendil's heir

Took to wife a lady fair,

With lips like reddest rose's hue

And eyes of deepest azure blue.

He sent her chests of ebony

Filled with pearls from the sea,

He locked her in an ivory tower;

Where golden chains adorned her bower.

And I walked by to hear her shout,

"I cannot get out, get out!"

"No, I cannot get out, get out!"

Aragorn did not like the winter.

He hadn't liked it when he was a ranger and he'd had to shiver outside under a tree or, if was lucky, under a ledge somewhere. He didn't like it now when he was king and he was covered in fine furs and standing over a roaring fire, rubbing his hands together so hard that the skin was beginning to feel raw.

Nor did he like it that there was only one room small enough in the whole palace to retain a comfortable level of heat, and he did not like that he had to share this room with his wife, who was not speaking to him and had not, in fact, spoken to him for the past two days. "Tar-Elfsheen" they called her for her hair and for her fame with the sword. They called her other things too that were less flattering…

Currently, his wife was reclining by the window on one of the wooden chairs, absolutely decked in gorgeous furs that he had purchased from the dwarves especially for her. She had the giant hood pulled tightly around the neck, so that he could barely see her face since the animal hair obscured most of it. If she would let him look, he knew her beauty would overcome him, but for now she looked sullen and unhappy. He snuck a peak at her once in a while, to see whether or not she had moved. She had not.

Her bare hand rested on the stone window sill just brushing the glass, and it must be freezing. It was bitter cold outside. Aragorn had heated up a cup of spiced wine and then left it on a table in his chambers. When he had returned for it a few minutes later, the condensation on the sides had turned to ice.

Éowyn did not seem to be bothered, however. She merely leaned on her other hand, the one farthest from the window, and continued to stare off into the darkness outside. It seemed that the chill between him and his wife might actually rival the chill outside.

Aragorn kept rubbing his hands together for lack of anything better to do. He gritted his teeth and tried to keep his temper.

But when he looked at her a few minutes later and she was still in the exact same position, he felt unable to play her game any longer.

"Does it not disturb you to hear what is said about you?"

At first she showed no sign that she had heard a word he had spoken, but when he turned fully from the fire, she slowly raised her head and looked at him. Aragorn saw immediately that there were tear tracks on her cheeks, and her eyes were still shimmering with all the tears to come.

"I know of nothing ill said about me that is not a lie," she answered. "And so, no. It does not disturb me." She turned back to the window sill and did not attempt to engage in further conversation.

With a sigh, Aragorn turned back to the fire. But he did not cease from speaking. "When we were married, you were so full of life and happiness, but I often wonder now if you have not fallen again into shadow."

"I admit," she said, "that I am not as content as I once was in my life here, but that is not your fault. Therefore, do not let it trouble you, my husband."

But Aragorn did not listen to her, because for the first time in several days he could sense the beginning of a conversation. A real conversation that was not just limited to the minimal pleasantries that were exchanged more often by strangers than by husband and wife. He left the fire and came down to sit by her, slapping his knees as a way of pretending that Éowyn was not crying. She seemed surprised at his gesture and looked uncomfortable, but he pressed on. "You know, I have heard there is this silly rhyme…"

"I have heard it," she cut him off, hastily wiping at her eyes.

Aragorn nodded, then reached for the handkerchief buried within the folds of his robe so he might hand it to her. She stared at it with a strange reluctance, but after a moment of deliberation, she took it from him and used it to dab her face.

"Would you care for a sleigh ride? I recall that you once found sleighs fascinating. We might go to Ithilien. Prince Faramir has always managed to extract a smile from you…"

"No, please!" she exclaimed, far too quickly.

Aragorn saw she was flustered. She was wringing her hands in the handkerchief, which was a nervous habit of hers he had discovered. It seemed odd to him that she should be nervous at the mention of a sleigh ride, and so it must be the mention of Faramir that was making her nervous. But that didn't make sense either, for she and Faramir had always been good friends.

"He is getting married soon," Éowyn reminded him. "I don't wish to interfere with his preparations."

Aragorn nodded, but his pleasure in the conversation had diminished. He sensed there was much more to what his wife was saying, and he sensed that he did not want to know what it was.

But he wanted her to explain herself. She should say something or give a better excuse than "He's getting married," because Faramir was not the sort of man who would care about his friends dropping in for a visit. And even if he did mind, he would have set aside everything in order to make way for his lord and king.

Aragorn waited for her to elaborate, but she did not. Éowyn said nothing at all, because she didn't want him to know the reason she did not want to visit Faramir before he was married.

Just as Arwen had said nothing when she hadn't wanted him to know she was leaving for the Havens: she hadn't wanted to hurt him.

"Éowyn?" he leaned forward to touch her face. "It is you I love."

She flinched at his unexpected touch, and he felt his heart constrict. He was only grateful that she did not pull away. "What can I do?" he asked. "I will do anything."

Éowyn raised her head, allowing her tears to fall freely down her face. "Turn back time, Aragorn," she said. "I love him… I cannot bear it any longer. Oh, if you can, then turn back time so I can change it all."

Aragorn withdrew his hand as if he she had spat upon it, but found that at this moment he was incapable of anger. He was certain anger would come later, but for now it was merely shock.

"Do I mean nothing to you, then?" he asked. "Nay, do not answer. I dread what I may hear."

"Aragorn," said she, "you I loved as a woman to her idol, or as a soldier loves his king. But I find now that riches...all this wealth that I once desired...I desire it no longer."

Aragorn found that he was shaking. All those times he had watched her and Faramir, smiling at their mirth, she had loved the Steward instead of him. During all their kisses she had been thinking of Faramir. And when he had held her at night, so grateful that he had set aside the memory of Arwen, Éowyn had been in love with Faramir. Anger wasn't a word strong enough for what he would finally feel after going over every single second of his blissful married life and reassessing to incorporate the new, and unbearably painful realization that Éowyn had spent those exact same seconds being in love with another man.

But all that Aragorn could say in reply to her request was, "I regret that what you ask of me is impossible."

"I know it," she said. She was weeping now, covering her face and her shame and releasing all the pain of what must have been months and weeks and days of loving another man into this one moment of abject misery. He couldn't hate her for her misery.

He remembered the feeling well, and sometimes he still felt it when he thought of Arwen. But whether the agony would diminish from this hour or whether it would consume her, who was he to say?

"Can you not learn to love someone else since you cannot have him?" he asked, even as he knew this was not the time to ask. "…I did."

But Éowyn could not answer through her sobs, or if she did he did not hear her. And as calmly as he had taken the news, Aragorn felt unable to be near Éowyn at this moment. Knowing...

Perhaps she hadn't been able to help herself. Perhaps she hadn't been able to prevent herself from meeting the Steward in secret or holding his hand just a little too long whenever he kissed it in public or kissing him with all the passion she ought to have reserved for her husband, who loved her, or doing any of the other things that secret lovers did.

But Faramir had been able to help himself, for Faramir had gotten betrothed.

What was he supposed to do as a husband and as a king? For now, he could do nothing but leave the room. "I can stay here no longer," he said. "I will leave you now to your grief."

When he began to walk away, his wife caught his hand and kissed the seal of office upon it as if she were begging for her life.

"Forgive me…" she cried. "I have been faithful to you. I swear now that I will always be faithful."

Aragorn gently freed his hand from her grasp and bent low to kiss her beloved head. "Do not make promises you cannot keep," said he. And he left her alone to ponder his meaning, but as he departed, he felt the warmth seep from his body.

Theirs would be a frigid existence forevermore, for he would be like Aldarion the mariner, ever faithful to a woman who refused his bed. Yet his honour would not allow her to go to Faramir.