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14. The Shadow of War

The woman in the bed shivered and sighed lightly, her forehead etched in worries that were not real, talking in her sleep in all the different tongues she knew, talking to shapes in her dreams; she tossed and turned in the great bed, but she did not wake, and Éomer king sighed as he watched her with his own troubled thoughts. Éowyn had left a while ago, retreating to her own bedchamber, now that Lothíriel was sound asleep, hoping to find some sleep of her own. But Éomer could not find sleep, even though the darkness outside the windows told him of the night that slowly wore on, and even though he was tired and exhausted beyond compare.

Slouching in a chair next to the bed, one leg propped up on the mattress, the king fought with his fatigue, fighting to keep his eyes open, as he watched his wife in her troubled sleep, cautious of every twitch and sound, as though fearing it would be her last. In his lap, almost forgotten, lay the book that had caused such trouble, and he had spent some minutes perusing in it, until at last he had come upon the Alcea flower, a flower said to possess potent fertility powers. Upon seeing the image of that treacherous flower there on the yellowed pages, he had lost it then, burying his face in his hands and for a moment allowing the tears to flow the world was not permitted to see. Then and there he had allowed himself to wallow in his own shame and misery, but only for a moment and that had been hours ago.

Now Éomer king sat comfortably in that chair next to the bed, looking at his wife with watchful eyes, refusing to leave her bedside, and when she at last stirred to awaken, her blue eyes slowly, hesitantly opening, he was the first thing they saw, and Éomer silently thanked the gods for this second chance. Lothíriel looked at him for a moment with those deep, calm eyes, as though she had to learn to remember him, as though she had to learn to remember everything, and then she sighed deeply, as though everything were coming back to her now.

'How are you feeling?', her king asked her then, leaning forward slowly, and for a moment it seemed as though he were to take her fragile hands in his but then he refrained, and not knowing what else to do with his large paws of hands, he simply folded them in his lap – all this power in his hands and yet nothing he could do with it. Lothíriel could see the worry in his tired eyes, could see the worry etched in deep lines into his forehead and she wanted nothing more than to smooth out the lines of worries cut into his forehead by her own actions. But she knew she could not.

'I'm fine, I think.', she said at last, as it was all she could say, trying to offer a small smile, hoping it would ease some of his concerns but it did not, though he could not but be moved by her attempt at reassuring him. She really had to think that he saw her as nothing but a nuisance, and in that moment he wanted nothing more than to shout at her, demanding answers to his questions, or to take her into his arms and never let go of her, to keep her from ever trying to leave him again, or to shower her with kisses to really show her that he truly cared for her. But he did none of these things. He knew it would only confuse her, terrify her; he knew she was not used to these intense shows of emotions and he knew he was not the man to make them.

'What do you remember?', he spoke once more then, to break the silence that always seemed to stretch out between them, to say something, anything at all, and to her have answer and say anything at all – to remind him that she was truly still alive. It may be said that seeing was believing, but for all he knew she could be nothing but a figment of his wishful imagination, better to have her speaking to confirm that she was still truly among the living. But then again, perhaps he was also imagining her words, perhaps she was still at the black bottom of the lake, and him with her. Shaking his head then, horrified by his own rampant desperation, Éomer pulled himself out of this increasingly maddening stream of thoughts, and instead forced himself to focus on his wife and queen speaking.

' … the sound of the ice breaking beneath my feet, and I remember the coldness of the water. I was pulled under so quickly … I sank into the darkness … until you pulled me out – '

'Firefoot saved you. He pulled you out of the lake.', Éomer had spoken on mere instinct here; listening to her describe her close encounter with death itself was harder than he had anticipated and so he had jumped at the slightest chance to interrupt her without rudely interrupting her. However, perhaps even his subtleties were too blunt for this Southern princess as she tightened her jaws and thinned her lips, apparently in open contempt to his lack of manners. But then he became aware of how her face had blanched, how her eyes were wide with fear – she was scared. Not of her close encounter with death, mind you, nor the cold; she was shaken by fear by the very mention of the word horse – and just like that his sister's words came back to him, with a might that chilled him to the very bone, but as it so often did, fear for him was usually fought with fury, and this time would be no different. Before he would have simply ignored her reaction out of politeness or even sensitivity but they were beyond polite sensitivity now – they had faced death together, and now they would face life together.

'Lothíriel, why are you so afraid of horses? Why are you afraid of – ', he asked quietly, almost too quietly, and for a moment he feared she hadn't heard him. Why are you so afraid of me?, he would have almost added, but he had stopped himself short of it – once a question was asked, it could never be taken back, and he wasn't sure he was ready for the answer yet. For a moment, as he looked at her, he wasn't sure whether she would respond or simply evade his questioning, as she so often had done in the past, but to his surprise her forehead creased in hesitation made way to a deep sigh of resignation.

'You really wish to know, my Lord?', she asked then with another defeated sigh, eyes cast down, head bowed almost in shame, and for a moment Éomer hesitated, for as much as he wanted to know, he didn't want it to cause her any feelings of hurt or shame. So the mighty Lord of the Mark bit his lips, torn between his desire to know and his desire to protect, but in the end, it was his curiosity, his need to finally know, that won out at last, and so he nodded with the determination of an explorer daring to brace the unknown dangers that may lurk ahead.

'I was in Minas Tirith when the city lay under siege. My father had not wanted me to go; he said it was not safe, but in this war nowhere was safe. I worked in the Houses of Healing and tended to the weak and wounded. I might never have wielded a sword nor swung an axe or strung a bow but I have still fought in this war; I fought illness, injury and death – and I have seen the face of war, and it is an ugly grimace.'

The king was taken aback, to say the least. He had expected much and more, but never would he have expected for her story to start then and there at the worst days of the Greatest City of Men. Of course, he had known her to be a healer, Éowyn had told him often enough, and her handmaidens had spoken about it more often that he would have liked, but he had believed it to be a nice pretty little hobby as most nice pretty little ladies had, something to pass the time, a flight of fancy to brighten the boredom of the luxurious aristocratic lifestyle. Never would he have believed it to be a real calling for her, a calling that would call her to the most dangerous place at the most dangerous time, and the king realised how little he truly knew about his queen.

'My late uncle Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, he … he was very sick; it was a sickness of the mind. My father angered him by misspeaking himself, and thus, out of ill will he denied me entrance into the White Tower. However, the city was full and overcrowded with the weak and ill, the dead and desperate; there was simply no place for me to go, and so, my friends and I had no other choice but to seek refuge at the stables. It was hardly worthy of a princess but it was warm and dry, and, by Ulmo, in those days that counted more than all the riches and jewellery of the world.',

She made a little pause here before she continued, as though she were looking for the right words to continue, and it was good that she paused, because her king needed more than a moment to stomach the image of her sleeping in a stable. It was hard indeed to bring in line the image of the frightened woman before him with a princess in fine linens between the straws and dung of a stable. Had the situation been any lighter he would have broken out in roaring laughter.

'The fire broke out in the third night of the siege, and I still can't remember what woke me: the smoke or the screeching of the horses?', Lothíriel continued meanwhile, unaware of his thoughts, calling him back to her sombre reality, and she was breathing harder now, her voice shaking ever so slightly, and Éomer realised that she was arriving at the key point of her story, 'All around me the city was on fire; colours of silver and white and marble swallowed by colours of red and orange. I was looking for my friends but I couldn't find them; it was only later that I would find out what had happened to them. It was in this moment that I heard it; that sound, that terrible sound – and then I saw it. The horse was coming towards me: it was on fire. Red foam at its mouth, mane aflame, and its cries of pain sounded more human than anything else that night. It was in pain, it was afraid, panicking, and it was coming towards me; I knew it would not stop, and yet I could not move.'

And just like that the dam broke: slow, quiet tears came and went without almost a sob. For a moment Éomer debated whether or not to take her hand and to give what little comfort he could give, but in the end he didn't do it. He didn't know how long she had been holding on to this pain and sorrow without telling a soul of it, perhaps she had never before allowed herself to feel all of it; so, no, she was allowed to feel that sadness for her herself, and he wouldn't be the one to take that away from her. To be confronted with such an image, a dying animal in desperate fury, well, it was enough to traumatise even the most seasoned of warrior, and he remembered well, after his mare had bled out under him all those years ago, it had taken him a while too before he had been able to ride a horse again without feeling his chest tighten in melancholy. And to be ridden down by a panicked beast like that – well, if it didn't kill you, it was sure enough to traumatise you for the rest of your life.

'I awoke three days later to a new world. The war was over, and peace had come almost over night; but not all was well, and there were many dead and wounded to be grieved. No war is won without sacrifices, after all, and my friends and I, we had come to the city in spite of the full knowledge of the peril and the pain and suffering at our enemies' hands. Yet bitter was the realisation that a woman has many a foe to fear in war.'

Éomer had been surprised when she continued, thinking that all of the story had already been told, but he was chilled by the tone her voice carried now. Gone were the sobs and tears from before, gone was the small voice of a frightened girl, instead her voice was hard and cold as steel, full of a bitterness and a hatred he would never have believed her to be capable of.

'I went looking for my friends … and found their bodies in the privy of a shabby tavern; tossed-away, broken, dishonoured. It didn't take much to figure out what had happened. The night the fire broke out my friends must have come from their shifts, and in their panic they must've sought refuge at that inn. Usually they would never have entered this tavern, we knew well enough to shun this place; it was a shabby spot inhabited by even shabbier creatures.'

She paused once more to take a deep breath, but when she continued there was no struggle, no bite, not even hatred in her voice, instead she was calm, eerily calm and detached, almost inhumanly so, 'They made a game out of it, and at some point it went out of control. But two dead bodies more or less, what's the difference? We were at war.'

And then she laughed, she actually laughed; but it wasn't the sound of mirth and merry humour, it was cold and bitter, joyless, heartless, and the sound pierced his very heart like a series of slashes, and Éomer, seasoned warrior of a hundred battles, actually twitched back from it, disturbed, and when she spoke once more there was this hard, steely voice again that belied her fragile appearance, 'When I brought their bodies back to their families, I told them what they needed to hear to be able to grieve; the truth, however, was a completely different matter.'

When she paused this time, however, there was none of that cruel laughter, instead she bowed her heard in a sign of defeat, as though all struggle had left her body, as though telling it all had drained all the power she had left, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded weak and broken, strained with emotion, 'Back then, I could not understand why these things had been done, or why these crimes would go unpunished, even unspoken of. I remember when I asked my father about it, he would not look me in the eye. He told me that there was a time and place for justice, that there was a time and place for honour. But he said that this was not the time for it. This was to be a time of peace, of reconciliation and rebuilding – where heroes would be sung of and old wounds would be healed, and no one wanted to know that even some of our heroes had done terrible things. No one wanted to hear the words of a frightened little princess.'

For a long, long time she was silent then, as though her tale of woe was over, and yet there was more to be told, and though it seemed more than he could bear, Éomer forced himself to listen, reminding himself that she deserved that at least, to be heard, to be listened to, for it would seem that few people had ever done that, 'After that terrible awakening I was consumed by fear and my ghosts and memories haunted me. Whenever I tried to approach a horse, I would smell burnt flesh and hear those terrible cries. Whenever I passed by other men, I would see nothing but the beasts that had savaged my friends. The world had been saved, my Lord, but not for me.', swallowing hard, she ended her story with a heartbreaking snivelling sound, and when she looked up at him with fresh tears in her ears, it was the gaze of a person who had lost all hope in the goodness in this world, 'Does this answer your question, my Lord?'

And Éomer felt his heart break, and unable to speak, he stayed silent. What was there to say? What words could he simply say that would encompass all the ways in which he felt for her in that moment? There was pity and compassion, but also anger; anger over the betrayal she had faced by the people closest to her, by the people she had trusted; anger over the pain and sorrow she had had to face all on her own; anger over the injustice of this world; and lastly, anger over his own powerlessness to do any damn thing about it.

It was no comfort knowing she had been hurting long before she had been thrust into his life, but knowing that with all her sadness and her fears she had been given to a man who for her must have seemed like the embodiment of all her trauma, well, it made him desperate with anger, because anger had always been a much easier emotion for him than sadness – sadness was passive, with anger you could act. Yes, he could feel it now boiling in his blood, this rage of a hundred battles, this righteous wrath that he desperately wanted to unleash now. He wanted to ride down this enemy he couldn't see, thrust his sword deep into the neck of this foe he couldn't even begin to comprehend – but he knew that wouldn't change anything. There was no one for him to fight, no evil for him to kill, no foe for him to strike down; he was useless to her, a raging warrior that for all his strength and courage was powerless to do a damn thing for her. What good was his anger for her? It wouldn't do a damn thing. And the despair he felt over that realisation nearly broke him.

Éomer didn't know how long he had stayed quiet, how long he had been silently wallowing in his own misery, anger and shame, when, suddenly, he felt a hand take his, and then another one, and just like that she held his hand, and his hand looked so huge and crude in her small, fragile hands, so out of place, as if he could crush her with a single stroke. It was just so like her, for her to reach out and wanting to comfort him, when really it should have been him comforting her. And as he looked at that image of their hands entwined, his big paw of a hand littered with little subtle scars of years and years of sword training and battle, and her little white hands unmarked by all the horrors she had seen, all the disappointments she had faced, all the pains she had endured, it reminded him that not all scars could be seen with the naked eye, some scars were buried on the inside, and those were much harder to heal.

A touch brought him back then, pulling him out of his miserable thoughts, and he shivered at that touch. Her finger subconsciously traced the lines of scars engraved into his palm, as though she was seeing them for the first time, as though she had never noticed before how stained his hands were compared to her marble skin, as though she couldn't see how imperfect he was compared to her. He was no good to her, and he was not good for her, he was only a big, uncivilised warrior-king who knew only how to kill and destroy, how to rage, how to fight; he knew little of compassion and comfort, and he knew nothing of love.

He wished he had never met her; he wished she had never been given to him, at least then she would have been living in peace at her home, at least in contentment, if not in happiness – but what happiness could he ever hope to offer her? And wasn't that the thought that infuriated him the most? That for all his rage at the unhappiness she had had to face, he had not been innocent of that unhappiness, or at least, he had done next to nothing to turn her unhappiness into happiness.

And just like that his sister's words were coming back to him, haunting him, taunting him with the knowledge that whatever tragic path unhappiness had compelled her take that hour on the frozen lake, he'd had some part in it – no matter what his sister insisted. Yes, in a way, he was as much to blame for this tragedy as the men who had attacked and murdered her friends, or as her father who had ignored her pains and fears, or those councilmen who had blamed her for things she deserved no blame for, or that stupid fucking book – that fucking book he had given her, and with his stupid attempt at salvaging some solace (if not happiness) for her in this grim life he had forced her in, he had ruined it all, even more so than it already was.

And wasn't that the worst of it? Knowing that in some part he had been responsible for whatever decision she had made down in that water – but, no, that was not the worst of it. The worst thing was that she didn't blame him, not even after everything that had been done to her, after everything he unwittingly must have done, after everything he had failed to do; and yet, never had there been blame in her gaze, only compassion, only ever compassion. Yes, that was the worst of it, that was the very worst of it. And Éomer so wished for her to cry and lash out, to beat him senseless with those pretty little fists, to blame him, accuse him, to state the truth he had come to see in all of this, to do anything but hide her own pain and comfort him. If she said it, if she blamed him, he thought, at least then he could absolve himself of some of his guilt, at least then he would no longer have to feel guilty for receiving her undeserved compassion, for allowing himself to buy into her charade of the strong princess handling everything so well, for allowing her to think it was her duty not to burden him with her true feelings, her pains and fears.

'Lothíriel, why did you not try to swim?', he asked quietly then, remembering well his sister's words, and, truth to be told, he was not careful in his phrasing here; he was direct, almost to the point of tactlessness. Perhaps he had thought that he could simply jump on a running horse, so to speak; that she would be more open about today's tragedy now after already opening up about her past tragedies, but once more, he had underestimated her upbringing, her training; she was all princess here and she would not lose her composure so easily, and thus, as she spoke, a sharp intake of breath was all the emotion she offered, 'I did, my lord.'

'Why did you not try harder?', he started once more, determined not to give up this time, not to give in so easily, as he normally would have done, not to back down and allow her to retreat into that shell she had built around her inner self. And now her walls seemed to crumble as her hands began to shake, and even as she tried to pull them away, he held onto them, not letting her go, not allowing her to retreat, not this time, not anymore. Her voice shook as well as she tried to speak, as she tried to plead with him in more than just words to not inquire further, 'I-'

'Please, don't lie to me.', he countered quickly, cutting her short, realising her futile attempt at hiding behind that mask before she even had time to fully phrase it, 'It's not going to work. And it would only insult me.'

And then at last she looked up, and in her gaze he could read the shock of a person who had been figured out, and with eyes wide in surprise and shame she carried the look of a person whose tricks and guises had all been seen through. And so naked to his scrutinising gaze, she felt herself blush with embarrassment at having been caught, and for that she gave him credit. She had always thought that because the Rohirrim were said to never lie, it would make them easier to be lied to, but perhaps their words rang true here as well, that they were not so easily deceived.

And she wondered then: how long had he been seeing through her deception? Had he known from the very beginning what it looked like in her heart? Unbidden all the moments came rushing back to her, all the moments when she had tried to hide her inner self from him, moments of false smiles when she had wanted to cry, moments of silence when she had wanted to speak and shout and scream, moments of submission when she had wanted to defy, moments of closeness when she had wanted distance, and moments of distance when she had wanted closeness. She had been a fool to believe she could learn to know him without being known in return, she had been a fool to believe she could open his soul and still hide her own, she had been a fool to believe she could change him without being changed in return. With a sigh she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before looking up again, at last to speak the truth, after all, what use was there in lying to him anyway? She wouldn't be able to deceive him, or herself, and she didn't have the energy to do it anymore anyway, 'My Lord, I did try to swim, I swear it, it's just after what was said yesterday in the council meeting – I thought, I thought … '.

Éomer watched her as she trailed off, choked up, head bowed in shame as though she was fearful of his reaction but he didn't need to hear her say it to know what she had wanted to say: that she was of no use to anyone, that they were better off without her, that no one would miss her – and the very thought of it broke his heart with such pain and anger, he could scarcely breathe. He wanted to tell her that she was needed, that she was wanted – that he needed her, that he wanted her, that he would miss her, that he could no longer live without her, that he would not leave her alone with this anymore, that she could trust me, that he would trust her …

Béma, he wanted to say it all, but the words just wouldn't come out, as much as he wanted them to. He had never been a man of many words, but he had been a man of action, and so instead he took her little face in his hands, keeping her from looking away, needing her to understand this, and as his green eyes bored themselves into the deep pools of her blue eyes, gazing past her facade of princess and queen, past her all too human insecurities and fears, he made a promise to her that had nothing to do with the duty that bound them in marriage and politics, and had everything to do with the deeply fierce trust and intimate connection between two people on the very cusp of something like love, 'You are my Queen, Lothíriel, my wife – and I would have no other beside me.'

FUN FACT #1: So, at long last, the cat is out of the bag, and we know the cause of Lothíriel's PTSD. I'm curious - are you satisfied with that explanation or do you feel let down?

FUN FACT #2: The Alcea flower is not really a fertility increasing plant; however, in the Victorian era, in the language of flowers, it's meant to represent fertility - and somehow, that's kinda the point here, innit? Lothíriel trying to solve a problem with a superficial solution. Well, that backfired, but, perhaps, she got a solution for her problem out of all that mess anyway ... just not the one she had hoped for ...