*takes gigantic breath* I'M BACK, BITCHES, DID YOU MISS ME?!
So, okay, I know, I know, I know ... I am sorry. I promised more and I promised it earlier and I failed at both. Sorry.
I got ... ah, distracted?
Sorry, but I brought you this chapter ... which, on retroperspective, I'm not sure will make you actually happy? *Le sigh*
I love you all! Glad to be back!
Enjoy reading and spread a little love by leaving a comment!
28. The Sea giveth and the Sea taketh away
Ivriniel was dead.
A lady of the most noble House of Dol Amroth, daughter of Adrahil II, sister to Lord Imrahil, and aunt to a prince, a knight, a pirate and a Queen. Her passing had been quiet, and yet the news of it caused ripples great enough to make massive waves. Éomer was with his wife when the news reached Dol Amroth, but he might as well have been miles and miles away from her.
It had been only a couple of days since their catastrophic argument that had begun in his discovery of her treachery and manipulation and had ended in an explosive fight that resulted in a standstill of sorts, a stalemate of two parties too tired to fight on, a sudden, all-encompassing silence that stretched out between the two companions. By now that silence had become a void, a void that caused a giant rift between them, separating the two parts of what had once been a whole, a void that was slowly but surely swallowing them, body and soul. In the days that followed their fight they worked hard to avoid each other as best they could; she had taken up residence in another room somewhere inside that palace by the sea and he only saw her when they took their meals together with her family, and even then it was easy to ignore each other as the rest of the family seemed only too eager to fill in the awkward silence they left hanging between them.
Lothíriel for her part was at first constantly accompanied by her brother Amrothos (so typical of a brother who was glad to finally have his beloved sister only to himself again) who chattered on and on about this pirate adventure or that, but even he and his hyperactive antics soon cooled down and backed off once he realised that she was in no mood for tales or adventures. Her mood in general, he had mused with unwilling compassion, had become one of depression and melancholia, leaving her to wander around the palace aimlessly and lost to her own thoughts and demise.
Éomer for his part had tried to cling to that anger he had felt before when they had fought together, but no matter how hard he had tried he had not been able to hold on to it; too great had been the worry for her well-being, too great had been his need and longing to be near her, too great had been the aching of his stupid heart that only wanted to love and to be loved in return. He had wanted to be angry with her, he had even tried to hate her, but no matter what he had tried, he could not stay away from her, could not bear to be parted from her. He had lived a life without her before and he had been content, happy even, at times, but now the very thought of her not being by his side brought him down to his knees in pain and seemed as unbearable and impossible to him as death itself.
What happened to me?, he had thought again and again in the silent dead of the night, when sleep had been hard to come by. Of course, sleep in general now came ever more rarely to him, and if he slept at all, the old nightmares returned (as his queen was not there to chase them away anymore), and he would have been able to suffer them in grim acceptance, had it not been for those new nightmares that crept into his mind and slowly drove him insane. Nightmares of his wife, lonely and afraid; nightmares of his wife, returning to her father's side with a cold, haughty smile; nightmares of his wife in the arms of another man with golden hair and a wicked grin …
What have I become?, he had asked himself over and over again when he had tried to will his thoughts away from her, only to fail, again and again. He had been a warrior of a hundred battles and yet against this fight he was as weak and defenceless as he had never been before; he was a king of a great kingdom and yet his own foolish heart would not follow his commands. Before he had met her, he had been a man of honour who had taken pride in his integrity and steadfastness – now, he was the kind of man pining after a woman who could not love him.
The final straw in this manic dance of longing and madness had been the evening that he had followed her to her new chambers – and to this day he wondered if she had been aware of him following her and perhaps had simply allowed it to happen? He had stopped outside of her door, listening for a sound from within that would welcome him in but there was just nothing there. It was in this moment that he had come to his senses again at long last and without looking back he had hurried back to his own chambers, or rather the chambers they had shared before their illusion of happiness had come crashing down like a house of cards. And as he had lain there, trying to will himself to sleep and yet fearing sleep and the nightmares it brought with it, he had wondered then if love could truly be such a cruel emotion.
After that he had tried to distract himself in whatever way he could. Erchirion, his wife's second oldest brother, had been only too happy to oblige in that regard, and he had more than just enthusiastically responded to the king's offer of sword training. Of course, sword fighting with a sprained hand had proven to be more than just a bad idea and he had given up soon enough – much to his increasing frustration. Following that embarrassment he had decided to sent a letter to this Ranger that called himself King now – it had been time to stop beating around the bush and to get some clarification directly from the source. Unfortunately, none of the scribes in this god-forsaken palace knew any Rohirric and so he had been forced to content himself with a letter written in the common tongue of Westron, so common in fact that he did not doubt that the good prince Imrahil had managed to sneak a peek at it before it had any chance of being sent away.
After that, there had been nothing else left to do other than waiting – waiting for a response letter to arrive, waiting for his sprained hand to heal, waiting for a miracle to happen that would undo all of this chaos and transport both him and his wife back to that short period of time when they had been truly happy. Of course, he had never been a man to whom waiting came easily, and the miracle he had been hoping for didn't occur either – instead, a messenger had arrived informing them of the passing of the lady Ivriniel.
The news had more or less ruined the noble family's breakfast. After being handed a small piece of paper, the prince had unfolded the letter and read it in silence, and that would not have been much out of the ordinary, had it not been for the expression on his face to darken then. All of the sudden, the usual mindless chatter at the breakfast table had ceased – apparently, such miniscule cues were quite easily read and understood by all members of that family – and the prince had broken the tragic news. Now, of course, there was some measure of grief shown, as was to be expected, though it was to such a minimal extent that Éomer had been almost perplexed at the composed and calm manner in which the family members had discussed the preparations for the funeral and the handling of the vacant estate.
To say that he had been almost shocked at the composed manner in which this family had concluded the rest of the breakfast would have been an understatement. Surely, he understood the impulse to try and not give in to the maddening maelstrom of sadness and sorrow – he himself had not allowed himself much room to grieve when his cousin had died and when his uncle had been discovered dead that day on the Pelennor field. However, afterwards, in the quiet of solitude, he had shed his tears, and when he had found the body of his sister, apparently lifeless, he had nearly been driven to insanity by his grief. But this family … there had not been a tear shed nor even a heartfelt word said in that regard – their manner had been almost cold and uncaring, had it not been for the brooding silence that had followed in their discussions.
It was in this silence that followed (when the other members of the family were moving to get up and to return to their own preparations and their engagements of the day, when they were too distracted to pay much attention to the royal couple sitting wordlessly side by side) that he had turned to his wife, and he wasn't sure exactly what he had tried or wanted to do in that moment. Perhaps, he had simply wanted to make sure that she was not as dead inside as the rest of her family seemed to be, or perhaps, it was more than that; perhaps, he had simply wanted to connect or perhaps, despite his best efforts, he had still cared too much for her to let her carry her pain alone.
As he had turned to her he had watched her for a moment. She had made no move to leave with the others, or to be exact, she had made no move whatsoever – the breakfast before her had been hardly touched, the tea in her cup had grown cold. All she had done was stare at a spot on the tablecloth as though it contained the answers to a thousand questions, and a thousand more seemed to have been running through her head at the same time. The king had leaned over to her then, mindful not to draw the attention of the others, and offered his sympathies and assistance.
I'll come with you, if you need me, he had promised.
I'll come with you, if you want me to, he had offered.
But, of course, she didn't ask, her eyes never looking up, her gaze vacant as ever, as she barely acknowledged him, as she (perhaps intentionally?) continued to ignore him. Nevertheless, the king had decided to accompany his queen, because she was his wife and he was her husband, and what sort of husband would he have been, had he abandoned her in her hour of need? Not that she would have ever overcome her pride and stubbornness and admitted that she needed him, of course, but it didn't matter – despite all, despite the cold shoulder she was giving him, despite the things she had done, despite the way things had fallen apart between them … despite it all, he still cared for her.
So, long story fucking short, that's how he found himself here now – reeling on yet another fucking boat, green around the gills, gripping the railing as he held on to all the strength he had left to not abandon all dignity and to vomit all over the fucking deck. AGAIN. Of course, he had hoped that one such water-based journey would have been enough for him during their Southern trip to the in-laws, but apparently the Valar took no fucking pity on him. Again he was forced to abandon all kingly graces and to suffer the constant whisperings of Ceven thrown his way – and he didn't need to know the Elven tongue to understand that this name of the hero of that tragic ballad had long since come to be used as a derogatory word for a man of the lands who had no business being on the sea.
Leaning back to try and catch his breath (after yet another attack of nausea had taken its inevitable toll), Éomer sought to distract himself from the queasy feeling in his stomach and the dizziness throbbing inside his head by focusing his eyes on the solid, unmoving parts of the boat they were currently on. The Noble Swan Barge – as that pirate-brother Amrothos had titled it (and the king was still unsure whether this was truly its official name or whether that sea-fucker was only messing with him again) – was a large rowing vessel manned by twenty of the finest oarsmen. However, speed – even though a remarkable talent of the barge – was not the main attraction of that boat. With a salon built in at the stern end, the vessel was unparalleled in its splendour and luxury and unrivalled by anything he had seen before. Most members of that family had retired to said salon for the length of the journey – with only two exceptions: that fool Amrothos, who had wagered that he could best any oarsmen on that ship and was currently doing his best to keep up with the trained rowers, and … Lothíriel.
His wife and queen stood alone at the bow of the vessel, and with her hair and clothes blowing in the wind she was looking ahead. To Éomer she appeared almost like one of those finely crafted figureheads he had seen on the many ships in the harbour, and those had always been mythological beasts or beautiful women with tails for legs, and just like them, she was like a figurehead for her family – a representative of her family's honour and status – and just as immovable and beautiful and tragic as those carven wooden figures.
Ever since they had started out on this journey to her dead aunt's estate this morning she had remained a fixed point at the bow of the longboat, always looking ahead, always on the lookout for the peninsula estate to come into view, always lost in her own thoughts. Very few people had approached her since then; her brother Amrothos had been one of them, but even though he seemed closest to her among her family, he had soon enough left her side too. As for himself? He had mostly kept to himself as well since he was not really in the mood for exchanging any more mindless pleasantries with the rest of that family, gritting his teeth as he forced himself to answer with a grim smile whenever someone dared to ask him how he was doing. And the rest of the time? Well, the rest of the time he really was too busy with not spreading out the entire content of his stomach on the whole fucking deck.
So, no, he had not talked to her either. That was not to say that he purposefully avoided her, quite on the contrary in fact. Ever since the message had arrived informing them of the passing of the lady Ivriniel, he had gone out of his way, again and again, to try and stay close to her, but again and again she seemed to slip from his grasp. She had been like water he tried to scoop up with his bare hands but no matter how tightly he tried to keep his hands together, at some point the liquid would always eventually spill from his palms.
But despite all, despite the nauseating feeling churning away in his guts, despite the anger he still felt over all that had happened, despite the many times she had turned away from him – despite it all, he still found himself walking towards her now. Of course, that was easier said than done, and not just because the boat was dangerously swaying with each wave that crashed against it, but also because his head felt like bursting – it was as though he was completely drunk and was having a hangover at the same time. But he got there in the end – even if he was staggering all the way over to her like some drunken, imbalanced fool.
As soon as he arrived at the bow end of the boat, his hands gripped the railing to keep himself from falling right over or slumping backwards or even throwing up all over again. His wife and queen did not seem to have noticed his presence at all, or at least, she did not seem to acknowledge it in any way, although he could have sworn she had given him a wary side-eye just now. For a moment then there remained like this, silent statures untouched by one another, each lost to their own thoughts, each dealing with their own troubles, each suffering under their own burdens.
But that was not how he wanted it to be.
Turning his head just a little so he could really look at her, it was not hard to see the strange paleness of her skin or the dark shadows under her eyes and Éomer quickly deduced that she must not have been able to sleep at all last night. Instinctively, reflexively, concern flooded his thinking, the impulse to protect flaring up inside of him like a forest fire, and he had to fight the urge to reach out to her just then. In that moment, all his instincts told him to take care of her and yet his wounded honour seemed to resist that urge with every fibre of its being – and so he was caught somewhere in the middle, torn between one side of him and the other.
Of course, it would have been fascinating to watch a proud warrior like him weasel himself out of such a moral dilemma, but the decision was quickly taken out of his hands when his stomach cramped, heralding the coming of the next eruption of sea sickness, and he effectively doubled over. And that would have been a sight to see, surely, to have a mighty warrior king slump down on his hands and knees and throw up his pride and dignity and this morning's breakfast right at the feet of his distant, cool ladylove – but that's not what happened.
The touch of a hand on his snapped him out of his misery for an instant, and he wasn't entirely sure what it had been that affected him so in that moment: was it the sudden experience of human touch or was it not rather the knowledge to whom that touch belonged? Éomer only needed to turn his head but a little to catch a glimpse of her hand on top of his, and that image of those slender, delicate fingers gently pressed onto that giant, calloused paw of his hand sent a strange shiver down his back that he couldn't quite place, and it was because of that shiver that he heard her voice then in a surprisingly gentle tone.
'Close your eyes and lean yourself into the wind. Breathe in. Focus on the things that are solid and unmoving. Imagine a land with a vast field of grass. Keep that image in your mind. Breathe out.'
Éomer did as she told him, taking deep breaths, in and out, keeping his eyes closed and his mind fixed on that calming image of his home all the while tuning in the on the comforting sensations of solid wood under his feet and the relaxing cool of her touch. And Béma, help him!, it worked, it really fucking worked. Of course, the feeling of nausea still throbbed in his head and churned in his guts, but it had lessened so much – like balm put on an aching wound to ease the pain – that he was able to breathe easier again, to stand straighter once more and to throw off at least some of the tension that had been plaguing him all day.
However, not all the tension was gone.
As though through a haze of his dizziness he thought he heard her hum in an act of positive reinforcement, and that very sound pulled at his heartstrings, making that sore, bitter muscle beat with life once more, and it was killing him. It shouldn't be so easy for her to spin him around like that, it shouldn't be so easy for him to fall for it all over again, but he did – Béma, help him, he did. One kind gesture from her and he was already hers again, body and soul, hanging on her every word, cherishing every little tenderness, hungering for more. And perhaps, she could sense that too, that part of him that wanted nothing more than to be hers; perhaps that's what frightened her so; perhaps she had been taught to fear a love that was too deep, too uncompromising, too … raw.
Or perhaps she only feared that she would be falling too.
A sudden movement pulled him out of his seemingly endless bitter musings then, and though he was still overwhelmed by all the sensations (good and bad) surrounding him, he reacted quickly and without hesitation. As she slowly pulled her hand away from him – no doubt to retreat again into that cool, distant poise of hers – he went right after her and seized those delicate fingers in an almost desperate grip … to never let her go again.
Under the touch of his hand on hers she froze, his queen too stunned by this act of affection from him, too stunned to brush off his advances as she would have done at the beginning of their marriage, or perhaps she was simply as starved for their old connection as he was – and so their hands entwined. Looking up he saw her considering the image of their hands folded together, the way her eyes softened with a yearning for what had been and for what they had lost, and he could understand that yearning so well because it burned in him too. When she met his gaze then there were so many emotions running wild in her eyes that he could barely keep up with them and read them all, but some of them he recognised with a terrible ease.
There was surprise and uncertainty, a vulnerable insecurity that made his heart break and beat faster at the same time – was it truly so unimaginable for her that he would love her still after all that had happened? And then there was a deep longing too, a desire to leave all of it behind, to simply return to his arms as his wife and his lover, as though the world with all of its burdens and troubles didn't exist. But of course the world with all its darkness was still out there, and even if they chose to ignore it today, in favour of a world without duty and without memory, a simpler reality of love and happiness, the world would inevitably come crushing down on them again tomorrow.
Perhaps that's what made her eyes fill with tears then, perhaps that's what made her gaze darken with melancholy, the bitter knowledge that the things you might want the most, were simply not meant for you to have, because a place such as this, without memory and without scars, no longer existed for them. But Béma curse him!, he wanted that dream and he wanted that dream to be real and he was not yet ready to give up on it, and even as she tried to pull her hand away, he came after her with all the fervent belief of a man in love, 'Lothíriel – '
A sudden shout from the stern end of the boat pulled them out of this moment, effectively startling them, but while he recovered quickly enough from the distraction, intent on recapturing that moment between them, she had already withdrawn her hand. And even as he tried to win back her gaze, hoping to rekindle whatever connection they had just shared, she would not look at him, and he sensed instantly that the walls of her inner self had gone back up again and whatever emotional vulnerability she had allowed herself just a few moments ago, it was gone now and she was lost to him all over again.
'We're here.', she mumbled then, before she turned away and left him once more to, undoubtedly, return to the quiet of the salon to prepare for when they would have to go ashore. Éomer looked after her for a moment; but even though the manic idea flared up inside him to call her back or even to run after her, he simply shrugged it off and turned back towards the sea – he was a seasoned warrior, he knew when a battle was lost. So, once again he was alone with his thoughts and with his pain, and already the nausea was getting to him again (now that she was no longer here to help him drown it out), and with no small amount of frustration did he grab hold of the railing then, groaning and cursing as he doubled over.
There had been a moment between them back there, he thought with biting bitterness, trying to distract himself from the throbbing headache and churning feeling in his guts. A moment when she had allowed her walls to be lowered, a moment when she had been almost willing to open that thorny heart of hers to him again, a moment when she had been slipping and all he would have had to do was catch her with open arms. So, of course, the gods fucked that up for him too.
Looking up to take in the fresh, salty sea air then (just as she had taught him to do), and to look for further distraction, Éomer laid eyes on the island and estate of Tol-en-Naur for the very first time, and very few things indeed could have prepared him for such a sight. The estate was placed upon that unusual island, which used to be a volcano but had long since become extinct (or at least, so he had been told by that pirate Amrothos, though the fucker was probably only trying to unnerve him) – hence the way the island snaked up like stairs leading up to the palace. But, surprisingly enough, the island was not an island at all, but rather a peninsula, as he realised when he looked down onto the glassy surface of the water and saw their boat gliding over an underwater bridge of sorts. As it would seem the island was only connected to the mainland upon ebb tide; during high tide it was only accessible by boat – and of course that just had to be the time he came to the place.
Typical, just my kind of fucking luck.
The first thing Éomer noticed was that the chambers were so Southern it nearly had him vomit all over again. From the top to the bottom, from the stained-glass windows to the intricately painted folding screens to the myriads of blue and grey and red and orange silk fabrics hanging from the ceilings, from the marvellously polished and lacquered room dividers to the exquisitely crafted furniture and the dozens of candles in incredibly detailed bronze casings hanging from the top of the room – these chambers screamed colour and life and Southern mystery.
He had already marvelled at the breathtaking architecture and craftsmanship and attention to detail that he had seen in Dol Amroth, but he realised that, apparently, he had seen nothing yet. The rest of Dor-en-Ernil was regal and pure in its expression of beauty in buildings and furniture, but the island and estate of Tol-en-Naur was not so aloof and reserved, and especially in this room was that unique essence distilled. It still held that distinctly Southern touch of nobility of course, but there was something so vibrant and chaotically beautiful about it that it just screamed of influences from other places that were a lot further down South than the more haughty noble folks of the country would probably care to admit.
Somehow it just figured that this was her room.
Of course, his wife was a noble lady through and through, a woman of remarkable poise and control, a person who had always been so very diligent in upholding that carefully constructed image she used to show to the world. But in the privacy of her chambers it stood to reason that the public mask would fall off and the facade would be abandoned and she would simply be allowed to indulge in her own tastes for colour and chaos and multicultural memorabilia. Indeed it seemed only logical that a person with two faces, who would be so very inhibited by societal expectations, would, in the intimacy of her own space, simply … well, let her hair down, so to speak.
A rustling sound to the side far off pulled him out of his musings and just like that Éomer was back in the here and now, and of course, there was no need to look towards the source of the sound, because he already knew what it was, but he did it anyway, because he couldn't help it. Looking towards the direction of the sound, he could see some movement shimmering through the folding screen, and he knew that behind it was his wife and queen changing out of her worn-out travelling clothes, cleaning herself up and slipping into something clean and dry.
Strangely enough, and all of the sudden, the king became aware of the surprisingly still very warm November air – as it would seem, down here in the South, it was unbearably hot throughout the whole damn year. Naturally, he refused to believe that the sweat under his palms could have been caused by anything else – and surely, the goosebumps on his skin could only be another symptom of that weird foreign weather?
Ah, Béma fuck him, who was he trying to fool?
Any man would react to a beautiful woman undressing, even if it was only the shadow of her movements enticing him and his imagination, even if that man was a king. Éomer had always known he was far from kingly … and apparently he had been staying in the South for far too long already, because by now he had become far from honourable as well. How else could he explain it then that when he sat down on the bed – in the hopes of distracting himself, of distancing himself – he would be faced with more than just the shadows of her movements? Mortified at his own spying, he swore to himself that he had only chosen this place because it was closest to him, but then again, how could he really be sure that he had not sat down on this particular spot precisely because it would gain him such an advantageous view?
Groaning Éomer leaned forward and let his face fall into his hands, closing his eyes to try and block out all of those thoughts of guilt and defensiveness and feelings of shame and desire that were plaguing him. He should have probably thought himself lucky that he was no longer on a boat but on good, solid ground, but somehow he felt sick all over again. Opening his eyes again, he could not help the peek he took towards the folding screen, and even though he was now no longer at risk of accidentally spying on his half-naked wife, he still felt like an intruder to her privacy, especially when he saw her carefully washing her tear-stained face that she had been so careful to hide from the world. Swallowing hard, Éomer could not find it in himself to look away, a somewhat morbid fascination holding him enthralled as he watched her wash away the last pieces of evidence of an emotional outbreak that not one had been supposed to witness …
… when they had at last stepped unto the island, his queen had taken his arm as naturally as though they had never fought before, as though she had not shied away from his touch earlier, as though they both had not gone out of their way to avoid each other in the past few days. It was just for show, of course; a king leading his mourning queen up the steep slope of the island, or perhaps, people thought it was the queen that led her weakened, unseaworthy king up towards the estate?Éomer didn't care; he had held on to her hand on his arm all the same, and if she had stiffened in response, he had chosen to ignore it. Beggars could not be choosers after all.
When they had arrived at the palace on top of the island, the first thing he had noticed was the sheer openness of the place – there seemed to be balconies at every turn, windows that always opened towards the sea, open doors that invited, welcomed, connected. If the palace of Dol Amroth had been like marble cage made of silver and gold, then this place right here was a villa without doors and locks, a house full of air and liberty. It had made him wonder then, exactly what kind of woman the late lady Ivriniel had been to keep such a house – or had it all just been for show as well?
They had been greeted by a host of servants then, and he had noticed that, oddly enough, all of them had been women, and they had led them onto one of the many balconies. As it turned out, this balcony was something like a winter garden, with circles and rows of flowers of all shapes and colours surrounding them, and in the very centre of it, there was a marble divan. Here now, laid on top of that divan as her last resting place before the sea would take her, was the body of the most honourable and most infamous late lady Ivriniel.
The first thing that came to Éomer's mind was that the lady Ivriniel had not exactly been a beauty, but there was, unmistakably, an air of nobility to her appearance that must have served her well enough in life and even now transcended into death. With a strange feeling in his guts, he had noticed that she reminded him of Lothíriel. Surely, the lady's face was lined with the inevitable marks of age, and there was a certain hardness to her features that spoke of an even harder heart, but yes, those were the same regal cheekbones, the same delicate nose, the same black brows and the same fine lips … a mouth that would only open to lie and cheat, to manipulate and spin the truth … to entice and entrance, to drip the deadliest poison with the sweetest honey …
A quiet but sudden sound had pulled him out of his daydreaming then and he had been surprised to see that all the servants had left and that the doors to the balcony had been discreetly closed behind them, leaving the family within to their own business. As soon as the family had been alone, the masks seemed to have fallen off then, and with a bitter ache in his heart he had noticed that one of the first things that had happened, had been his wife letting go of his arm quicker than a hand holding red-hot embers.
Without so much as a word, the family had gathered around the body on the divan then, getting to work. Now, Éomer knew next to nothing about the funeral customs of the South, but even he understood the significance of water in their faith. So, when he saw the siblings each take small pieces of cloth and dip them into buckets of water (probably laid out beforehand by the servants) to wash the body of their deceased relative, he had taken a step back, leaving them to their rituals of purification, not to be disturbed. And it had been fascinating to watch the utmost care with which the children washed their aunt's body, and here at last one could see the deep, unspoken affection these people held for one of their own. Even Imrahil, as the head of the family clan, had showed his devotion and respect as he took his place at the head of the divan, muttering prayers under his breath, all the while stroking his sister's forehead with the gentlest of touches.
So, yes, perhaps he had been too harsh and too rash in his judgement of their grief, perhaps their sorrow was a thing only truly allowed in the intimacy of their seclusion from public, perhaps the love and loyalty they showed could only ever truly be held for one another? Family ties were a curious thing. Together they would walk through love and hate, and no matter how far they tried to run from each other, their connection they could not escape – after all, water ran in their blood, but even for them blood was thicker than water.
When the body had been washed and all words had been spoken and the ritual preparation had been complete, it had been Imrahil himself who had wrapped the body of his dead sister in silken veils before carrying her out from the balcony and down a flight of stairs that would lead to the stony beach of the island. There – and this Éomer had been told by the quietest brother, Elphir, en route to the island of Tol-en-Naur – her body would be put on a boat the next morning, and that boat had been built exclusively for her and the funeral, with the sole purpose of carrying her out onto the open waters and to return her to the sea.
That image alone – of a brother carrying the dead body of his sister to her grave – had been enough to shake him, having something constrict painfully in his chest, and he had had to look away to keep his mind from drowning in memories of things that never came to pass. And as he turned away from that image and its ramifications, his gaze fell upon the siblings still in the room, and upon one person in particular did his eyes focus.
Lothíriel still stood before the divan, and while her brothers had already disposed of the washing cloths and had dried their hands, she had remained as she had been, as if frozen in time or shell-shocked, cloth still clutched in her grip, eyes wide as they stared at the empty marble surface before her – and though everybody threw sheepish glances at her every now and again, no one had dared approach her at first. Too dark and too heavy was the air of sadness coming off of her. Perhaps it was only natural, this impulse not to disturb another person's melancholy, perhaps it was simply a thing too personal to intrude in such a manner, or perhaps there was simply the fear that once reached out, the crushing sorrow would reach oneself too? And so, Lothíriel stood there, remaining as she had been, overwhelmed by what she felt, unable to free herself from the grasps of her grief, sinking ever deeper.
It had been her Amrothos then, closest to her in all things, who made the first move to approach her. At first he had tried to speak to her, soft, comforting words whispered under his breath, before he touched her shoulder and then her cheek in an attempt to draw her out of her frozen state. When none of that worked, however, he simply slipped his arms around her pulling her back against his chest, burying his face in her hair and holding her close, to give her the comfort with his body that his words had not been able to provide.
And that at least seemed to get through to her as she started to mumble her own prayers, unintelligible and low, her voice rising steadily as her breathing became heavy and laborious, and then she was sobbing, and as the tears flowed freely her whole body seemed to lose all energy as she slumped down, and it was only her brother's arms around her that kept her from crashing down upon the cold marble ground with the full force of her pain weighing her down. For some reason or another, Amrothos had her turn around then, and as she sought refuge in the comforting space of his chest, so did his arms enfold her completely, soothing her with his hands stroking her back in slow circles.
The king had met the pirate's gaze for only a moment then, and he had read something like embarrassment in them, but perhaps not so much embarrassment for the spectacle of the sister in his arms falling apart, but rather for an outsider to witness it. But even though the pirate brother had turned away ever so slightly, to try and shield his sister from her husband's piercing gaze, and Éomer had felt embarrassed himself for staring so openly at something so private, he could not have, for the life of him, managed to tear his eyes away from it either. So, he had simply watched on because he had not known what else to do in that moment, cursing himself for his own useless helplessness. All the while, his wife, there in her brother's arms had wept on and on, crying out in all the tongues she spoke, and even though her king had not understood her words then, her pain he had understood all too well …
'So, you believed that show just now?'
Startled and torn out of his memories, Éomer blinked rapidly, and at first he was too stunned to register the actual meaning of the question, but as he looked up and his gaze fell upon his wife, he began to understand. Seeing her standing there in her pastel-coloured robe, methodically cleaning her hands with a towel, refusing to meet his eyes – oh, yeah, he understood perfectly. He knew she was lying here, but he allowed her this chicanery – after all, he should know best that people who hurt other people often were the ones hurting the most.
'Ivriniel was a stone-cold bitch – even while she was still alive. Death will most certainly not have improved on that.', she went on then, carefully hanging up the towel at the side of the folding screen before she moved to sit at the dressing table, intent on rearranging her appearance and readjusting the mask she had let slip back there on the balcony, 'Tears could never touch her in life and they sure as hell won't touch her now. So I'm not going to waster another fucking tear on her.'
'I understand that grief is complicated. It's never simple.', Éomer offered then, and he was really trying here; but to be honest, he was shocked at her cold callousness, and even though he tried to hide it, she could see it – his shock reflected in the mirror she was facing, 'And she might have been only your aunt, but that doesn't change – '
'Ivriniel was more than just my aunt. She was the mother I never wanted.', Lothíriel snapped then; it was the first time since her breakdown on the balcony that she lost her composure and it was enough to shut him up. Her cryptic interjection left them both shaken, frozen, and he could see that she hadn't wanted to disclose such emotionality just now and that slip-up of herself was setting her teeth on edge, but not nearly as much as her annoyance at him for luring her so easily into a trap like this. She was fuming with silent fury at having allowed him to get to know her so well that he just knew what to say and do to have her lose her cool like this – that she had allowed him to make her vulnerable in the most dangerous of ways.
Éomer, for his part, simply looked at her, his gaze unwavering as he watched her lower her head in defeat and he had to swallow this apprehension he felt at his own trick of deception just now; he was not a man fond of manipulation, but he had spent enough time with her to pick up a few tricks here and there, and he was desperate enough to use what tools he had. That was not to say that he felt particularly good or bad about the low blow he had just dealt out, it was simply that at this point he would have tried everything and anything to get her to respond to him, to be with him.
With a sigh she looked up then, meeting the reflection of his gaze in the mirror, and though there was hesitation in the blue of her eyes, there was also determination. He could tell that she understood very well that he wouldn't back down now, and though she seemed angry at this persistence of his, she also appeared to be ready for his challenge – perhaps, she thought, he had wanted the truth, so he better be ready for all of it?!
'I grew up here, you know? This used to be my room actually.', she started then, giving in with yet another sigh as she began to brush out her hair absent-mindedly, her mind already tuning in on the past and the memories that came with these chambers and halls, 'But I didn't always live here. Before I came here Dol Amroth had always been my home … until it was a home no longer.'
Éomer didn't say a thing, didn't ask the roughly thousand questions that were throbbing in his mind, but he was determined to remain quiet, determined to just listen and let her speak – she would open up on her own when she was ready.
'After my mother died, my father … ', she continued then, trying to find the right words, trying to recall events and emotions she had sworn she wouldn't relive, 'No, even before she died, he was not the most affectionate of men, but after she died … he changed.'
'I guess he never was a man to whom fatherhood came easily, and after his wife died, he … ', she went on, and in her reflection in the mirror he could see her brow creasing at the effort to try and explain that difficult chapter of her childhood, 'I expect he just didn't know how to deal with his wife's death and with the four children she left behind. It was simply too much for a man like him to handle … and so he sent us away.'
'Not Elphir, of course, my father kept him close. He was the heir, after all, and he was almost a man when our mother died, so he'd already learned how to keep his mouth shut and his head low.', she quickly added then, making sure he understood the differences in upbringing that the four siblings had experienced, 'Erchirion was sent off to naval academy shortly after, to make a real man out of him, a mariner, someone to bring honour to our family name. And Erchirion, I guess, was happy enough with that.'
'Father tried to the same with Amrothos, only it didn't work out quite so well. The boy got himself expelled soon after he'd arrived.', she continued after a moment of consideration, and now he could have sworn that something like a smile seemed to be audible in her voice, but that probably should not have surprised him, after all, she and her brother had always, always been close, always practically joined at the hip whenever he saw them together, and had he been a less proud or stubborn man, he would have admitted that he envied the brother for the close bond he shared with his wife.
'After that my father tried placing him in some administrative apprenticeships, to have him rise and take up some role in the government. That didn't work out either.', she went on to say, and now she was actually fighting to keep herself from grinning at the memories of witnessing past teasings and adolescent defiance and one very mischievous boy and one very overwhelmed father, 'Father tried to make a scholar out of him next; Amrothos soon enough alienated all of the Southern academia.'
'Last but not least, father pushed him to try his luck at priesthood, and, well, we both know how that worked out.', she continued, her smile taking on a dismissive tone, but it was a smile nonetheless, one that was only elevated by her rolling her eyes, though afterwards her mood grew more sombre again, 'At some point father just had to accept that my brother simply would not fit into the narrow world he wished to create, and so he let him go. He ignored Amrothos for most of his life, and Amrothos, probably, was happy enough with that.'
'And what about you?', Éomer threw in then, seeing an opportune moment at last to remind her that he would not be so easily thrown off her tracks, and the tone in his voice suggested that he knew very well that she was stalling here. And as she met his gaze through the reflection in the mirror, there was something like reluctant respect in her eyes, as though she didn't like that he had seen right through her but still gave him credit for that. With a sigh she put away the brush and turned to face him at last, and again there was that expression on her face, not quite a warning, not quite a challenge – daring him to look closer, to dive deeper into her mysteries, and to see her for who she truly was.
'Of the four of us, I was the only one sent away to live with my aunt. Father sent me there to make a lady out of me. I'm not sure he quite envisioned what I would learn here.', she started off vaguely then, her words meant to unnerve him and to offer him a last way out before they would go done this path from which there would be no return, but when his face showed nothing but his determination, she simply shrugged and continued, 'Now, over the years, many young girls were sent to my aunt, to be trained in courtly education, but sooner or later most of them would leave and return home. Some of them simply didn't have the stamina or stomach for the kind of training my aunt would grant us. I was the only one that was never sent back … because I was the only one that simply had nowhere else to go.'
'When I arrived at this palace not quite a fortnight after my mother's death, I was still in mourning, dressed in the black garbs we honour our dead with. My aunt made me throw them into the ocean and forced me to wash my face until all traces of my tears were gone. My face was so red afterwards the pain of it made me want to cry all over again.', she said then, and though she tried to appear nonchalant and untouched by that memory, it was very much clear to Éomer that she was still deeply scarred by the cold, harsh treatment her family elders had given her, 'She never hugged me, never kissed me, never told me that she loved me – she never even acknowledged that I had just lost a mother, or that she had lost a sister, or that I had been effectively shipped off by the one remaining parent that I had. She only told me that my old life was over now and that I could either learn to swim or that I would drown.'
'My aunt taught me everything I know. The lessons she taught were harsh and sometimes cruel but they were always useful for the world I was born into – even if I was too young to understand that.', she said pensively, the expression on her face showing a woman intent on painting the mistreatment she had endured as tough life lessons, though, of course, there was no small amount bitterness in her voice and, perhaps, as grateful as she told herself to be, there was still a part inside of her that felt pity and fury at the abuse a little girl had had to suffer through all these years ago.
'When I needed to learn how to curtsey with the grace of a swan, she bound my hands behind my back, with a stick shoved in between, and whenever I bent my back while curtseying, she would simply tell me to do it again.', as she spoke, she rose, demonstrating with perfect ease and accuracy the way in which she had been trained by holding her hands behind her back, 'For weeks I could barely use my arms – I learned how to do a perfect curtsey though.', and as she finished her tale of her first gruesome lesson, she smiled – she actually smiled – as sweetly and as artificially as only a lady of the court could while performing an impeccable curtsey just for show.
'When I needed to learn how to walk with the grace of a swan, she took me down to the beach and made me walk in the shallow waters, again and again and again. The shells buried in the sand beneath the water are some of the most beautiful you will find in all of Dor-en-Ernil, however, as beautiful as they are, they are also sharp as knives. But she ordered me to keep on practising, to keep on walking, even while I was crying and my feet were bleeding. I carry the scars on my feet to this day – but I learned how to walk as gracefully as a feather floating across the ground.', she explained next and as she did so she demonstrated her learned skills by walking up and down the room with the same elegant ease he had come to associate her poise with, though now, knowing the literal pains she had taken to achieve such perfection, it had lost all its previous charms and left behind only an eerie, disconcerting overtone.
He actually remembered having seen the very same scars she talked about – some evening, after a long day of walking around the halls of power, when he had offered to give her a foot massage – and he had wondered then where they had come from or what had happened to her that could have left such scars at the soles of her feet. But when he had asked her back then, she had only shrugged it off and changed the subject – deflecting his attention back then as skilfully as ever and as she had been taught to do.
'Did you know I didn't learn to swim until I was almost thirteen years old?'
The question and the sudden shift in narration startled him and he was effectively pulled out of his sombre thoughts and back into a reality where his queen was looking at him with a wicked grin and an almost mad twinkle in her eye. The jarring change in her attitude was almost frightening, but then again, if he were being honest, this manic, almost morbid sense of humour, was exactly the kind of defiance she had shown before – it was probably just … the more he heard, the less he wanted to hear, but he needed to hear this nonetheless.
She had never been this open with him before, so completely unguarded in the information she disclosed, and even though he knew she was only bringing up all of these memories to hurt him, because she was hurting herself, he could not bring himself to fault her for that. It was strange to see that in that way at least they were eerily similar – lashing out when hurt, turning pain into anger, always pushing people away even while still trying to draw them in – as though in a way they were each other's mirror, an inverted image of oneself perhaps, but all the beats of truth and recognition were still there.
'You told me you learned to swim before you could even walk.', he countered then at long last, fixing her with a suspicious glare, wondering whether he had – again – been caught in another one of her nets of lies. Or perhaps she had lied back then? Or perhaps for her truth and lies were two sides of the same coin? Could someone like her even be honest? Had she ever learned that skill? Was any of it –
'Oh, yes, I did. I did learn to swim as early as that.', she answered with a dreamy smile on her lips as she stretched her arms up into the air like a lazy kitten in the sun, 'But if your foolish brother takes you out on a boat in the middle of a storm, you are bound to end up in the sea, and the sea is … unforgiving.'
Watching her smile to herself like that as she walked over to the bed, Éomer had a pretty good idea which brother she was talking about here, and when she confirmed his suspicion, he groaned in angry annoyance, forcing himself to focus on her telling her story.
'I didn't drown that day, but only because Amrothos pulled me back to the shore. However, I was afraid of the sea from that day on.', she continued, and now standing next to him as she leaned against the bed post, arms crossed before her chest, she looked more or less mildly amused, or perhaps that was just for show as well, 'Can you imagine that? A princess from the sea that is afraid of the sea? '
'Now, my aunt couldn't have that. My father couldn't have that. That wouldn't have looked good for our family, now, would it?', she proceeded to say then, rolling her eyes and with cynicism dripping from her tongue as she spoke, 'So, one day, my aunt took me down to the beach again, there where the cliffs are barely high enough for jumping, and she pushed me into the water – '
'SHE WHAT?!'
' – she pushed me into the water, and it wasn't very deep, mind you, but it was not exactly shallow either. And so there I was, afraid for my life as only a child can be, helplessly, desperately, treading water, but when I looked over to my aunt to call for her help, I was only met with her stone-cold expression. Swim or drown, she told me, over and over and over again.', she went on to say, simply talking over him, because at this point she was already too caught up in her own reminiscing of childhood terrors, and even though she was chuckling morbidly at it, she was also sobbing – caught somewhere in between her buried, heart-felt emotions and the defence mechanisms she had been forced to build up over the years, 'Well, I learned how to swim, alright.'
And with a sigh she ended her disturbing childhood tale then, wiping away the few tears that had dared to be spilled, before she turned to him with a hard and bitter smile and a challenge in her eyes.
'Would you like me to go on?', she taunted him coldly then, and the pain she felt herself at being made to disclose her past like this – or perhaps just the pain she felt at that part of her life in general – was perhaps enough excuse for her to want to cause him pain in return. But Éomer didn't take her bait, understanding only too well what she was trying to do, and when she saw that he wouldn't give her what she wanted, she became all the more bitter and defiant because she felt all the more hurt and betrayed.
Turning away from him, she returned to her dressing table, and perhaps she intended to resume her maintenance of her appearance, to have herself change back into the proper lady with the unshaken poise, but even though she took up the brush once more, she seemed like she just couldn't bring herself to try and put the mask of the untouched, haughty lady back on. Instead she simply stood there, brush in head, thinking, staring at the mirror and the reflection that was staring back at her.
Éomer, for his part, didn't say a thing; he simply watched as she stood there, as she watched herself considering the woman that looked back at her from the mirror – but the king did wonder what she was thinking about. Did she think back to that point in her life when fate had first abandoned her? Did she think back with anger at the mistreatment she had faced at the hands of her parental figures – the abandonment from her father and the cruel lessons from her aunt? Did she think back in gratitude at the harsh lessons she had had to learn and what strength they had given her? Did she think back to that little girl who had been moulded by unkind hands and words into a true lady of the court that knew how to please and tease, manipulate and intrigue? Did she have any regrets?
The sudden sound of glass breaking tore him out of his musings and the king jumped up, his instincts kicking in and reflexively his hands went towards his sword, only to realise that he hadn't brought it with him to Tol-en-Naur – right, no swords at a funeral. But his initial panic of sudden intruders or sinister assassins had been unfounded because all that had happened was the glass of the mirror shattering, and the brush that had broken it lay in the shattered heap of glass before the feet of that shattered mess of a woman. She was shaking; shaking from anger, shaking from sadness, shaking from the confusion of not knowing what to feel and instead feeling it all at the same time. In that moment Éomer considered going to her to … to do what?! Talking to her? Holding her? Comforting her? The king had never seen his queen quite like that, and even if he was a brave warrior, he didn't dare approach her just now – but he didn't need to.
'Yes, my aunt taught me everything I know. Everything I needed to learn. Everything I never wanted to learn.', she choked out then with harsh bitterness, and when she turned around to face him, there was a fury in her eyes, a cold flame fed on by water, because as much as she was in pain she wanted to resist accepting it, because as much as she wanted to survive with the help of her anger she was still too wounded by her grief. And her inability to detach herself from all of this, her inability to play the role of the untouched lady, her inability to use the skills she had been forced to learn through the heartless lessons she had been taught, infuriated her even more – because that would mean that all her suffering had been for naught and the little girl who had been broken into a fine lady had died for nothing.
'And I am grateful, for all the lessons she taught me, for all the pieces of advice she gave me, for all the things that I learned from her. And I miss her.', she pressed out with a voice as much laden with cynicism as it was with honesty; because, surely, after all she had just told him about the cruel ways she had been brought up, there was still truth in her words, because as unbelievable as it might seem, in that moment, she did feel the loss of her aunt keenly. It was neither logical nor healthy but she did miss the woman who had created her with such cruel means – because, perhaps, grief was not a thing of the head, but a thing coming from the heart, and even people who had been mistreated, felt attached to the hands that had mistreated them.
'But I'll be damned if I shed a single fucking tear for her.', his wife snarled then furiously, her defiance even unbroken by the treacherous tears that kept running down her face, and he understood then that she wouldn't, that she couldn't, acknowledge them, and so he simply went over to her without saying so much as a word and brushed them away for her in a futile attempt while fresh ones were already following right after. And Éomer felt then that if this was all he could do for her, if this was all he could be for her – a human touch to wipe away the tears she didn't want to cry but would cry all the same – then, Béma help him, he would gladly accept it.
Under the touch of his hand she sighed then and with a shudder she closed her eyes and gave in to the comfort his touch provided, leaning into his hand, and for a moment at least it seemed as though the old connection between them had returned and all that had happened between them was no more and they were once again two halves of the same whole. But when she opened her eyes to look at him, there was a strange melancholy in her gaze again and her voice was thick with something like contempt almost, 'If my aunt could see me now, she would call me a fool.'
'Well, she's not here now.', Éomer answered then, stroking her cheek with the gentlest of touches, feeling his heart break for the woman in his arms, and he could see that she could feel that too, and they both knew that what he had meant to say was, she can't hurt you now. But even though she flashed a grateful smile at him, her eyes brimming with a deep emotion she as of yet had still to name, let alone to admit to herself, the king realised then that the ties that bound her to her old life would not be so easily severed, not even by love. And before she slipped from his grasp for good then, she stepped on her toes to breathe a kiss on his temple, as it would appear to say her final goodbyes to the life she could have had.
'Oh, my sweet naive king, if it only were that simple.'
FUN FACT #1: So, funny story here. I said I got distracted and I guess you have a right to now what that means? It's called WEBTOONS, lovelies; it's Purple Hyacinth and Midnight Poppy Land and Lore Olympus and Atnomen and ... well, you get the picture. WAIT - you get the picture ... *facepalms in pun language*
Seriously, check it out - it'll make waiting for the next chapter of this story A LOT MORE bearable. Lemme know what you found!
Also, I promise betterment!
FUN FACT #2: I often take inspirations from things out of my life - people I've met, things I've seen ... you know, stuff. So, in a way, I reckon, my reason for usually featuring subpar parental figures is because my own parental figures were pretty much rubbish each in their own way. Hell, you know Lothíriel's tale of how she learned to swim? Yeah, that's me. It worked though. Was a professional swimmer for many years.
FUN FACT #3: To be honest, the whole funeral story-line happened because I wanted to explore some Southern cultural phenomena and idiosyncrasies a little bit more. But lo and fucking behold, it became so much more. Just you wait!