[
Setting the scene:
the events of this chapter take place after Aragorn and company depart for the Paths of the Dead. Éowyn has once more declared her love for Aragorn and her desire to ride with him, but has again been rejected. King Théoden arrives mid-chapter and prepares to lead Rohan's army to Gondor, ordering Éowyn to remain and rule in his absence. Elfhelm is the Marshal of the East-mark and a leader of Rohan's forces. Caution: some of the sex in this chapter is nonconsensual.]
8-9 March 3019 (Third Age), Dunharrow
"Nay, lady."
Hours later, the words still rolled through her mind. She'd been holed up in her quarters for most of those hours, trying to gather strength.
Hiding, you mean,
admonished her internal scold.
Yes, and what of it?
demanded her wounded heart.
More crying seemed not only pointless, but physically impossible. At the moment of his final rejection, tears welled just long enough to blind her sight during her stumbling escape to the safety of her bedroom. But once she arrived they stopped as if her heart abruptly atrophied, to be replaced by a dulling numbness and a throbbing headache. She sat on the bed, staring at the wall. Staring into nothingness. Staring into her future.
"Nay, lady."
As she wondered how long she'd been unable to cry, even in the privacy of her room where there were none to see, she suddenly burst into renewed tears, pounding her clenched fist into the coverlet.
Oh, you simpering, weak-willed
fool!
But recrimination didn't help. Nor, for that matter, did the resumption of weeping. The truth was at last laid bare: Aragorn did not,
would
not, return her love. He, in whom her wounded heart had blindly invested so much, no matter how ephemeral that foundation. And now he was on a hopeless quest from which there would be no returning. For his future happiness she couldn't even nobly wish, because a future was something he no longer possessed.
None of us do. Yet his was a needlessly wasted life...and now the waste of mine will, perforce, follow. Wasting away here, babysitting the frightened, the infirm, and the useless...though none more useless than the hollow imposter who pretends to lead them.
"Nay, lady."
She steeled herself.
Am I not still of the House of Eorl? I must go and be seen by my people. Even if I have no hope left for myself, I owe them that much.
Wreathing herself in an illusion of authority, she straightened, attempting to don a visage of resolution.
<<<<<<<>>>>>>>
Has a full hour passed? More? Why can't I remember?
Despite her resolve she'd yet to set foot outside her bedchamber. One hand still gripped the armor she'd intended to wear but hadn't yet donned. It dangled, limp and pointless, from her hand.
Everything's a metaphor today, isn't it?
Her mind aimlessly wandered her past, searching for insight that proved frustratingly elusive. Hopelessness had long been her closest companion, yet she remained bewildered at how she'd arrived at this particular present despite the changes and disruptions all around her. She'd made mistakes, certainly, but were they all so unforgivable as to bring her to this desperate pass?
I was foolish to believe that my only enemy was Wormtongue. The true danger was much closer to hand.
The temptation to blame the traitorous snake for everything that had happened was difficult to resist, and upon his manipulations much fault could reasonably be laid. Indeed, his guilt was even more plain since the Wizard's extremely public declaration that he'd been Saruman's agent all along. The poison of his voice sullied many, and even now — despite the King's restoration, despite the victory at Helm's Deep — the people weren't entirely healed of its damage. Hesitation, doubt, even treasonous murmurings...all lingered like a penetrating stain, and it would be long before the realm finally rid itself of his corrosive influence.
I had ample opportunity to reject his most insidious words and deeds, though. Not at the beginning, but thereafter. Instead, I responded to, and even willingly participated in, his foulest degradations. He bewitched me, and then he restrained me, but to the rest I eventually acquiesced and then walked into with eyes as open as my legs.
Though the memories were as horrid and unwelcome as ever, from them she'd gradually started to sift essential truths about herself, her explosive sexuality, and the dangerous power it afforded.
How I long for simpler days: romantic foolishness, unfulfilled curiosity, furtive self-pleasure imagining over-idealized warriors.
The last thought lingered with a particularly bitter aftertaste.
"Over-idealized warriors," indeed! How has
that
turned out?
Wormtongue was right: sex
is
my power. What I failed to understand until it was too late is how perilous that power is. How easily it's corrupted, but also how easily it corrupts.
For what may have been the hundredth time she wondered what might have happened had she approached Aragorn not with her body, but with her fragility. She'd treated him as a man like any other...greater in so many ways, to be sure, yet still a man to be aroused and enticed by the mere prospect of sex...and it had cost her not only him, but a majority of her dwindling self-respect.
If I'd only appealed to his nobility. To his kindness. And without that thrice-damned vial!
Flinging her armor across the room, she fumed at her self-pitying foolishness.
I've no time for this. There's no purpose to it, either. All my hopes rode into the mountains without me, and the paths left to me are no less dark. There's only....
"Lady Éowyn? You have a visitor."
<<<<<<<>>>>>>>
Weakness obscured the focus of her glistening cloud-grey eyes. She wanted to shut them, to deny him a window to the painful revelations within. But she couldn't.
