Title & Chapter Number: Brother/Sister 3/11
Author(s): - Author's Index
Website:
Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters I just make them do rude things.
Warnings: Het, Incest
Betas: Nope
Cast: Éomer/Éowyn
Timeline: TTT/RotK
Spoilers: Maybe TTT & RotK
Summary: While Éomer experiences a brief respite from his habitual pain, Éowyn is thrown back into hopeless memories of the brief moments they spent together; Arwen offers some sage Elven advice, and the chapter closes with Éowyn resolving to take action to end their torment.
Notes: Goofy factor: It's the summer of love in Minas Tirith and the kids are getting back to nature. The Faramir of my story is Tolkien's spunky dark one. I like David Wenham and think he's a great match to be Sean's brother, but I've been reading the books too long to shake the image.
Well well, if the Dark Lord could see us now, thought Éomer. The happy band of noble wedding guests-to-be who had only a season ago played out their valorous parts in the siege of Gondor, most of them currently naked as the day they were born, were frolicking about in a waterfall and the wide pool at its base, on a mountain slope above Minas Tirith.
Such an expedition had been the suggestion of several of the younger and more daring fry, whom Éomer judged simply wanted to see certain of their number without the annoyance of clothing, and Aragorn, puffing contentedly at his pipe, had declared a royal picnic.
They had retired to this secluded spot so as not to shock some of the city’s more prudish citizens, and taken to the water in varying degrees of undress, embarrassment, and abandonment. Yet it had been rather sweet to see as the afternoon progressed and wine worked its magic that inhibitions fell away, and nearly all the gathering were now to be found splashing and skittering like colts and fillies at play, Éomer himself included. Was it after all so very bad to be young and alive and free from the Shadow?
Pleasure has its own kind of honour.
“Éomer, duck!”
The bladder ball they had been shooting about in the water hit Éomer full on the side of the head, not so very hard, but enough to knock him off balance in the slippery surroundings, and he slid ignominiously into the water amid gales of laughter. When he re-surfaced, the first friendly hand to help him up was Faramir’s, and as he looked around him in mock fury for his attacker, Éomer found himself laughing too, really laughing fully and freely. The heroes of the peoples of Middle-earth, bare-naked and throwing a bladder ball at each other. He threw back his tawny head and roared and Faramir, infected by his good humour, laughed with him, solicitously holding on to him so he didn’t fall again.
Under a tree on shore, Éowyn watched them, in a kind of dream. She had already bathed, slowly and sensuously moving with Faramir in a secluded part of the pool, taking their accustomed sweet and gentle pleasure in each other’s bodies, and since then she had been lazily observing him still at play, loving to see his dark, long-limbed beauty stretching in all its glory in the afternoon light. The sight of his nakedness was so enjoyable that it almost stopped her noticing she was deliberately avoiding looking at her brother as he also, unexpectedly given his general mood these days, joined the horse-play in the water, seeming lighter of heart than he had been in an age. But now Faramir clung to her brother, laughing delightedly with him, and she could not help but let her eyes stray to Éomer also. The late afternoon sun turned his blond mane almost copper, his form a little shorter than Faramir’s, more tanned and muscled from his riding, but achingly and equally beautiful to her suddenly hungry eyes.
Éowyn was assailed by the images called up by what she saw before her… the soft, graceful movements of her nightly lovemaking with Faramir, an ever-unfolding dance that became more intricate and satisfying with each passing week… and inexorably, treacherously, she also saw in her mind the time she had spent with Éomer, a fleeting, frenzied cascade of minutes bringing only partial fulfillment, and yet the feel and taste and smell of them, of him, seemed forever burnt into her senses. And then unbidden came a third vision she tried to resist and could not, weaving a wild fantasy from the raw material whooping and splashing in front of her: that of Éomer and Faramir embracing in the water, hard and male, then striding out to lay her down amid the tall grass and together to pleasure her beyond thought and reason…
With a determined effort of will she forced that hot, sweet image away before it claimed her utterly, but in doing so only found herself falling further back into memories she had suppressed. How deluded she had been to think she could never be in danger from her feelings for Éomer again. For they had not simply ended when she walked away from his chamber that night.
In the days after she had assumed Dernhelm’s guise, when she was not concentrating on battle preparations and the effort it took to hide her womanhood from her comrades-in-arms, she had been dazed in a desperate confusion, still mourning the loss of Aragorn yet every moment feeling her brother’s strong horseman’s arms around her, his mouth upon her, his desperate fingers seeking the sweetness between her legs and bringing her to gorgeous, gasping release, his manhood swollen and urgent against her. She had cried into her sleeping roll and fought the desire that twisted within her to crawl across the Rohan camp to his commander’s tent and make him take her, pin her beneath his hard strength and give her everything their bodies had been promising each other before cruel sense had intervened and denied them. The only salve to her torment was the cold comfort of knowing they probably would soon both be dead, trampled and left to rot beneath the Dark Lord’s invading forces. At least there would be peace at last in that.
But when on the field of the Pelennor she had felled the Lord of the Nazgul and fallen into darkness, her old world fell away. Aragorn, miraculously survived, was re-born - gods bless the day - as her friend and her healer, and Faramir, the companion of her convalescence, so strangely blended of the stern and the sweet, started to fill her whole world with his quiet strength as surely as she returned to him the hope for love and happiness he had given up years ago in his struggle to do his duty to his father and his people. She felt she had woken from a horrible dream to a fresh, dew-spangled new day, and following that premise her desire for Éomer had been but a part of the dream, to be shaken off and forgotten. Once again he could be, nay it seemed to her he really was, but her beloved brother again.
But she knew there had been no new day for Éomer. He had fought and commanded in battle with distinction, playing his noble part in the liberation of their world and winning through to be the new ruler of their people, but she had seen, when she returned to Edoras to help him take his kingship upon him and make ready for her departure to Gondor, that their moments together still lived in him as a course cruelly interrupted, a path that still burned to be taken. In the protective aura of her new love she had pitied him without meaning to.
Now on the bank of cool stream above Minas Tirith, she saw her arrogance with clear eyes. How sweetly superior she had been, and how naïve… it had taken just moments standing against the warmth of his body, his soul seared with the flame of his undimmed passion, to fire the strength of her own devious desires and drag her back to the world of their dark dream, where every second they had spent together still yearned for the fulfillment they had not allowed themselves.
“Lady Éowyn.”
As ever, Arwen’s arrival was like the gentle whisper of a spring zephyr. She sat gracefully down beside her, and Éowyn, glad as ever of her company and doubly glad to have a distraction from her roiling thoughts, took her hand as someone who had slowly but surely become a bosom companion. When Éowyn had met Arwen for the first time her soul had trembled within her that she had ever presumed towards the love of a man who in turn had the love of this walking dream of a creature in his keeping, and trembled even more when she sensed beyond doubt that the Elven woman could see straight into her heart and knew what had so painfully lain there.
And yet to Éowyn’s amazement the very first time they were alone together, sitting in the palace gardens in the sweet melancholy glow of a fading sunset one evening shortly after her royal wedding, Arwen had held Éowyn gently in the power of her blue gaze and spoken of the man they both cared for so much, Arwen as her life’s mate, and Éowyn now as her friend and her king.
“You think I should be angry with you that you loved Aragorn. Nothing could be further from my heart’s truth.”
Having never believed Arwen would deign to speak of this to her, and at a loss to think what might be coming next, Éowyn was even more surprised to find Arwen leaning in to her, smiling a little wickedly, like a schoolgirl about to share a joke or a secret.
“Éowyn, do you not know I find it simply amazing that every woman does not love Aragorn?”
Then she had burst out laughing, a rich sensuous sound almost entirely at odds with the circumspection with which she habitually spoke. And she had embraced Éowyn, and from that day there was an understanding between the two of them: knowledge, acceptance, and love.
Now she looked out with Éowyn towards the rough and tumble of the ball game in the water, her gorgeous face lifting serenely into a fond smile as Aragorn took a particularly fine catch. Her eyes swept Faramir and Éomer, who were still laughing together and putting up a formidable defence anytime anyone tried to get the ball past them. It didn’t take Elven intuition to see that Éowyn could not take her eyes away from them, but of all those present it would only be Arwen who might be able sense the steps that had led her to this pass.
“I see you have not quite made your choice after all, my friend,” Arwen said.
She spoke so gently her words seem to brush past Éowyn on the wind and it was almost as though she hadn’t heard them until all of a sudden their meaning ran home like a sword-thrust to her heart.
Éowyn looked at Arwen, stricken - for how could she accept her words as truth and live? - and found herself saying urgently, desperately, “But I have. I have made my choice. I love Faramir, I am marrying Faramir. I don’t love Éomer in the same way and we could never have any future together… it is just…. I cannot explain…”
Then she gasped, realising she had never until now spoken of these things to another living soul. Arwen had the grace to look a little abashed.
“Forgive me Éowyn, it is my gift.” She stroked her hand gently, silently giving Éowyn permission to feel the bittersweet relief of being able to share a confidence at long last. She could not look at her in her shame, but Éowyn knew beyond doubt Arwen did not judge her, offered her only love. Her words tumbled over each other.
“Lady Arwen, it was a moment of madness. When we came together I was in such despair, and he wanted so much to help me - I was so fearful and alone and in need because…”
She suddenly remembered to whom she was speaking.
“Because Aragorn had gone to take the Paths of the Dead, taking your love with him,” Arwen finished for her, without rancour. “Éowyn, you need not flinch from these things with me. Glad am I for you that pain is over, I care only that it seems to have left another one in its wake.”
Arwen’s enveloping empathy was an invitation for Éowyn to let go, to throw herself upon the Elven woman and be stroked and soothed and feel no reproach, but it also stirred her Rohan pride.
“Your kindness touches me, my queen, but there is nothing to be done. Some things have simply to be endured until they pass.”
“Will this pass, Éowyn?”
Arwen’s cool question ripped at her already ragged spirit, and tears sprang to her eyes. In the water before her Éomer raced for a catch like a golden steed flying over the plains of her homeland, and when she closed her eyes the image remained as though branded upon her sight. Her reply was barely a whisper.
“I cannot say.”
“Éowyn, look at me.”
When Éowyn turned her head the full deep crystal gaze of the Evenstar was upon her.
“My friend, hear me. When I came here to wed, I would have brought you to Aragorn’s bed myself if I thought you still had need of it, or he did, and let my fate ride on the knife-edge. As it was, your love had passed into memory well before I journeyed from my home, and it cannot hurt either of you now. But this love lives. It has never stopped burning your brother, that much has been clear to me since the day I met him, and its flames have started to lick at your heart again. I feel it everywhere. You know it to be true. And I tell you Éowyn, as someone who loves you dearly, you cannot go to your marriage with this between you. You must act.”
“Act?” Éowyn looked at her blankly. “My lady, what can I possibly do?”
“What your heart tells you you must,” Arwen answered simply. “For you to be free. For him to be free.”
Éowyn looked back to the water, this time to Faramir. His dark beauty filled her gaze, and even in the midst of the carefree play he joined, the nobility and kindness that were his deepest qualities radiated from him.
“My heart is not to be trusted. It would have me betray my life to come and the love that would share it with me.”
Arwen looked to Faramir also, and took Éowyn’s hand.
“Our steward is indeed the best of men. But betrayal is a harsh word, Éowyn. Is it betraying your future to prise loose the grip of the past?”
“The one way to do that feels like betrayal to me.”
She felt in her mind rather than heard Arwen’s reply to this.
“Éowyn, pleasure has its own kind of honour.”
Éowyn blanched at the phrase, in her mind seeing herself standing beside Éomer in the palace hallway scant nights before.
“How did you…?”
The Queen of all Gondor smiled ruefully, and Éowyn knew it was for Arwen as though the midnight scene between brother and sister was laid out before her and etched in fire, because she had but to look in their eyes to know their hearts. Éowyn was swept by a kind of sympathy for the ravishing, ethereal creature who sat by her side. Was it after all so very easy to be Elven, to live so long and see so deeply into those around you, to hear in your mind the echoes of the words they had used to others, to be burdened by their doubts and their pain?
“I am sorry my troubles impinge upon you thus, my lady, without your choosing.”
“Ah my friend, I suppose it is of my own choosing, in a way,” Arwen said, with a sweet smile. “In loving Aragorn there was no choice to be had, you of all people will understand that, but it was my choice to come here and live with him in the world of men, and I knew that it would be ever thus. Among my people we learn to put a veil between our thoughts and each others’, which we can move aside or not as we will it, but the hearts of men are ever open to us, wish it or no.”
She laughed that throaty, unexpected laugh of hers. “And here I am surrounded by mankind! What is a poor Elven woman to do?”
Éowyn squeezed the slender hand she held between hers.
“Put your unbidden skills to good use, my lady, as you do now.”
“You are kind to say that my friend, and it will warm my heart if it should happen that I have been helpful in any way. Your brother’s pain has been crying to me, that is all, and when I sensed yours beginning again I felt I must speak. My father always told me I was too concerned with the affairs of men.”
“That can only be our gain.”
They looked out towards the pool once more. The westering sun was just starting to put a chill in the air, and people were beginning to leave the water. Faramir, Éomer and Aragorn strode out together towards the two women and the pile of fluffy towels beside them. Éowyn and Arwen could not but take in their proud male beauty, the tall and dark, the tanned and blond, and the battle-scarred and majestic, and it seemed they both breathed a little more shallowly.
“Gods Éowyn, should we just take all three together?”
“Arwen!” Éowyn turned incredulously towards the Elven woman to find her smiling wickedly.
“I’m joking.”
She looked back toward the approaching trio.
“At least I think I am.”
She laughed her throaty laugh, and Éowyn couldn’t help but join her. They were indeed the finest men in all the kingdom, and the sight of their naked glory was enough to make any woman’s head swim with unaccustomedly lustful thoughts. Or even accustomedly, thought Éowyn wryly, realising Arwen’s suggestion was not so very far from the vision of herself with Éomer and Faramir she’d had to banish just a little before Arwen sat down with her.
Aragorn swept up like a summer storm, grabbing a towel and throwing one each to Faramir and Éomer before dropping to Arwen’s side and giving her a resounding kiss.
“So you are in a merry mood, wife? Ah, perhaps it will be an easier job to woo you tonight.”
They laughed together at his nonsense as they kissed again. Everyone knew the royal couple were as likely to be found embracing in palace corners or retreating to the privacy of their bedroom as attending to matters of state.
Faramir, ever more shy in public than his king, settled his long form gracefully at Éowyn’s side and kissed her hand gently.
“My lady, you adorn the bank of this stream like a sweet water-nymph of legend.”
So gentle and noble, always her heart did a little flip at his tenderness.
“Well for my part it does my heart good to see my sister settled amongst such love and good cheer,” said Éomer, smiling as he wrung out his long mane and towelled it dry.
Éowyn looked at him and saw he was not mouthing empty or cynical platitudes, but spoke with sincerity. This afternoon’s high spirits had been good for him, freeing him somewhat from the shackles of his hopeless desire, and letting him dwell instead on the things they all had to be thankful for in this new world where the Shadow had no power.
“Ah comrade,” said Faramir cheerfully, “we hope to say the same one day when we journey to Edoras to see you wed with the new Queen of Rohan, whoever she may turn out to be.”
There were smiles and murmurs of assent at his gallant words, which were truth too after all, but it was a perilous truth. Unbidden, a look flashed from Éomer to Éowyn that told her he was unable to contemplate plighting his troth to any other woman while his mad passion for her still ruled his soul. And she trembled, trying to picture someone else sharing his bed for life, tasting the delights she herself had burned for, and burned for still, and something in her rose up in revolt at the image.
She looked to Arwen, knowing when she met the Elven woman’s gaze that she had sensed all that had just passed so quickly and silently between the Rohan kin. At her side, even Aragorn’s grey eyes seemed dark with some kind of sympathy and understanding she had never noticed was there before, and she realised in a sudden flash he must also know of this unresolved agony. Arwen had spoken to Éowyn this day to try to help her, yes, but also because her own heart was troubled. Éowyn knew the Evenstar would never have idly gossiped of this with her lord, but, lying beside his beloved in the depths of the night, how could Aragorn not sense whenever there was some sorrow making her lovely brow droop a little? Perhaps he had already gained his own sense of what lay between brother and sister before noticing it pressing upon his mate also. He was not the king of all men for nothing.
She looked back to Faramir, the only one of the five of them seemingly trusting and oblivious. Arwen was right. She could not wed with this beautiful man, share her life with him as she longed to, with a shadow on her soul. She had thought the only honourable course was to keep silent and push her desires away. Maybe the true path was otherwise.
Pleasure has its own kind of honour.
She realised Éomer was speaking again, trying to put distance between himself and his involuntary reaction to Faramir’s words.
“Aragorn, friend and king, I have enjoyed myself supremely this afternoon. I can only say that if some of your younger subjects want to see each other naked again I would be most happy to join the expedition that provides the excuse.”
They all laughed, looking about them to see some new couples appeared to have been formed as a result of all the unrestrained goings-on.
“You are welcome, my friend,” returned Aragorn. “And your skill with the ball has given these old bones of mine a good work-out. I believe you and my noble steward here should set yourself up as tutors, or at the very least the Mark should grace us with your presence when the royal games are held next year.”
“You are kind my lord, but the water slows us all down and gives but the illusion of skill. Believe me on land I am nothing without a horse beneath me.”
“Or a wench!” roared Gimli as he stumped past, a towel far too big for him draped like a robe over his gnarled form.
“Forgive him, my liege, he knows not what he says, he has hit his head on a rock,” deadpanned Legolas at his side, barely breaking his casual stride to deal an almost imperceptible wink to Éomer as they passed by. The Elf prince wore no towel, as comfortable in his silken nakedness as a faun in the forest. He seemed quite oblivious to the wistful stares he drew from many of the party, male and female alike dreaming of his deigning to be their bedfellow for the evening.
“Head be damned, lad,” muttered Gimli as they ambled on to where they’d left their clothes. “I’m a dwarf, I don’t fall on rocks, I mine them.”
“I’m sorry my friend, did I say rock? I meant to say large sack of wine.”
“You watch your impertinence or you’ll feel the handle of my ax across your bare buttocks Master Elf.”
“Promises, promises,” murmured Legolas serenely, but as the pair moved out of earshot the royal party was not graced with Gimli’s harrumphing reply.
The sunset was starting to flame in earnest as everyone languidly started to dress and gather their belongings for the walk back down the mountain to the city. Aragorn stared towards the banners of cloud that streamed out across the western sky lit with purple, red and gold, and held Arwen to him gently.
“Glad am I these days have come, and I watch the setting sun with only a remembrance of dread, not dread itself.”
“Dread my lord?” enquired Faramir.
“Ay, friend. Dread that I would never fulfil my quest, dread that our best efforts could not prevail against the dark, dread that I would never hold this ravishing creature in my arms again before death claimed us all. Always, when the day died, I felt our hope dying with it, and feared we would never wake to the new dawn.”
“Your burden was great, Elessar,” Faramir returned softly, “and joyous are we that you were strong enough to bear it.”
At this Aragorn smiled and tossed his head slightly, as if to shake his sudden melancholy like a dog shaking away water after a wetting. “Ah come my friend, you are kind to indulge an old man when a fey mood comes upon him. Let us return for a good meal and a pipe and some songs, and be thankful.”
Arwen murmured something against his ear in Elvish and he smiled gently at her as they turned to walk down the slope. Faramir offered his arm to Éowyn, and they fell in quietly behind their lord and lady, a faithful steward and his consort.
Éomer looked at the two couples before him, and smiled a little awkwardly.
“Well for my part I shall go on ahead to catch up Legolas and Master Gimli and see the latter has not made good on his threat of violence. It is clear our comrade’s buttocks are coveted by far too many that any harm should be allowed to come to them.”
Their gentle laughter enveloped him as he saluted them, with an inevitable, reflexive last glance at his sister’s untouchable beauty as he turned and started to pick his way down the slope.
Here on the mountain in the last sweet breath of the day, with her king and queen before her and her mate at her side, Éowyn felt almost complete, almost serenely sure that this was exactly where she was meant to be and these the people she was meant to be with. But an errant part of her heart followed her beloved brother down into the velvety dusk, wound around him and held him tightly to her as if no one else should ever be allowed that privilege. And she knew it would ever be thus, a part of herself in Éomer’s keeping, as surely as his whole soul was in hers, unless she heeded Arwen’s words and chose to act.
Pleasure has its own kind of honour.
Above them the first stars were starting to sparkle softly in the deepening sky. Aragorn had feared the coming of night, feared that no new sunrise would follow, in the times when eternal Shadow had threatened the world of men. But something was stirring now in Éowyn’s shield-maiden’s spirit, a slowly strengthening resolve that it would be in the dark of this night and no other that she would determine how things were to stand with her in all the breaking days of the rest of her life.
She felt the warmth of Faramir beside her, and clung a little more tightly to him, in love and fear. He was watching her brother moving on the slope below. His soft voice sounded against her ear.
“He only left us out of courtesy. You have so little time before he must depart. Why don’t you go to him?”
That was her mate, so kind and thoughtful of others.
“It’s nice to be here with you now love, under the stars”, she said, truthfully. “But, yes, later I will go to him.”
Nothing was certainer, she knew that now.
Later, she would go to him.
She prayed to her ancestors for strength as slowly, under the spell of the evening sky, the wedding party made its way back to Minas Tirith.
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