Title & Chapter Number: Brother/Sister 4/11
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: Éowyn has made her choice; now Éomer must make his
Notes:
Late that evening after the picnic, Éomer was enjoying the first good night’s sleep he had had since coming to Minas Tirith. The invigorating waters, fresh air, energetic exercise and good company had all worked their small miracles. He had lingered late with true friends, did not go to bed drunk, and did not take a paid stranger to his bed.
Even that moment by the riverbank with Éowyn had not shaken him overly much. Did not some veteran soldiers carry arrowheads or sword-tips within their bodies, beyond the reach of healers unless it be to kill their patients first, and yet still lived, still took pleasure from life despite the daily dull ache of their wound? It was such a familiar pain, this love, perhaps he was finally learning how to bear it.
Thus, when in the depths of the night Éowyn gently opened his chamber door, slipping inside quietly as a cat, and his warrior’s senses woke him to find her by his bedside, he simply took her presence to be the regrettable return of an almost nightly vision.
“Go away,” he murmured sleepily, “I don’t want you tonight.”
“Éomer?” Éowyn thought he was mistaking her for another of his harlots. Éomer for his part was not used to having his vision speak outside of his own head. He jumped into full wakefulness, reflexively reaching for his dagger until he realised it really was Éowyn, not the ghostly Éowyn of his dark nights and tormented fantasies, but his beautiful flesh and blood sister here inside his chamber at an hour she would normally be wrapped in the arms of her lover. She lit a candle she had brought and set it on his bedside table. She was wearing a midnight blue robe, her cornfield hair fanned out in all its glory.
He pressed himself into a sitting position, soft pillows against his back, while she knelt down beside the low bed. In the candlelight he looked like a magnificent beast at bay, not knowing whether to expect the gentle caress or the whip.
She took his hand. She was as nervous as he was nonplussed, and began hesitantly, as though unwinding a skein of thread that had been carefully wrought and must not be allowed to tangle as it was laid out.
“Éomer, I barely know how to begin, but I beg you hear me...”
He was silent, still unsure he wasn’t dreaming.
“Éomer, you and I, that night in your room...”
With just those few words, suddenly everything was real, and every breath they took weighed in the balance. They both willed themselves to stillness as the memories came flooding inexorably back.
“That night...” Éowyn went on softly, “we started something and we didn’t finish it. At least, I couldn’t finish it and live at that time. I know it plagues you, and while I long thought with my usual pride that my love for Faramir would carry all before it, my feeling for you lives still. We both know it can never be - you must father strong heirs for the Rohan and together we could never bring them forth. And I love Faramir. Éomer, I love him. With my soul I want to mate with his quiet strength for life and bear our babes for the house of the Stewards.” She laid her familiar hand to his cheek. “But still this wild love for you, born on a wild night. Let it finally be, let its power take us, let it break us this one night and burn itself out of us forever.”
When she finally spoke the words he had dreamt of her saying night upon anguished night he marvelled that he found himself only able to contemplate the prospect of more loss. For how could one be granted one’s hearts desire and then hope give it back?
He took her hand away from his cheek and held it between both his own. His words came out unsteadily.
“Burn itself out of you maybe, sister. You have another love to go to. How can I hope to be so fortunate?”
“Because maybe if you love me as I should have been brave enough to let you love me back then, and we know each other fully as man and woman, then I can return to being truly but your sister once more, and we will be able to let each other go.”
He gripped her hand, his eyes deep and dark, nostrils flaring, a Rohan stallion scanning the wind and catching the wild scent of a beloved mate. “What if you just become more woman to me? Can what you say really happen Éowyn?”
She looked into his eyes. “I do not know. I cannot tell. But I see how you’ve suffered. If your love does not go away, could it really be any worse?”
He held her gaze, and returned her honest words honestly. “I do not know. I cannot tell.”
She broke his gaze then, unable to brook the intensity she felt there. What right did she have to do this to him?
He looked away too, staring towards the window and on into the deep dark night for long moments, as though he might find his soul out there to search it. When he finally looked back to her his eyes were full and his voice was barely a whisper.
“If we take this chance, at least you will be free. Better one of us be free. I had thought you were.”
She took both his hands and kissed them. “No, my sweetest. I thought I was too, and I was wrong. I was protected by my new love, and that made me arrogant. But I fell from my mount at the very first hurdle.”
“What was that?”
He honestly had no idea. Her bell-like laughter drifted out of her.
“Seeing you at midnight half-naked.”
There was a moment of shock before he joined her in a deep guffaw and they were children again, laughing at a wicked private joke, yet at the same time Éomer felt the force of the desire in her simple comment arouse him with a jolt.
“Ah love, those wenches Legolas and Gimli send me could take a few lessons from you in stirring a man’s passion.”
Her eyes flickered towards the door. “Are you expecting one soon?”
“I think our comrades saw that an afternoon in nature’s sweet arms did me more good than the embraces of all those creatures put together, and had the grace to leave well enough alone, bless them both.”
A silence fell between them that she knew she must bridge but found he had made the leap before she did.
“And Faramir… he does not come to you tonight?”
Éowyn breathed out slowly. “He will not come tonight.”
A tremor passed over Éomer. “You - gave him some excuse?”
Éowyn knew that for all her brother longed for her when she was claimed by another, he was a man of honour and had nothing but the highest regard for her mate. The idea of her deceiving Faramir to come to him twisted like a knife in his guts. At this moment, Éowyn knew she could walk away once more and he would never reproach her. But there would be no walking away this night unless he made her, and she wanted only truth between them.
“Éomer,” she said quietly. “Faramir stays away tonight out of consideration, not deception.”
She let this sink in, and when it did it was as though he had been thrown from his horse as it reared in the face of a sudden, terrifying obstacle. He sat up bolt upright and grabbed her slender shoulders in his strong hands.
“You told him?”
She was almost afraid of him, but did not flinch.
“For too long at Edoras we lived with lies brother, pouring into the ears of our king and poisoning the very air we breathed. I don’t want any more lies in my life.”
“And he understands?”
Éowyn trembled. It had taken all of her shield-maiden’s strength to speak truth to Faramir and her heart still marvelled that he was stronger still to be able to bear her words.
“I would not say understands. Accepts. I had believed him to be without any sense of this at all in his trust and love, but he is not a fool, Éomer. He told me tonight he had noticed moments between us, a look here or there from me or you, but he put it down to fearing being parted as brother and sister after so many years of closeness, our bonds forged even tighter by what we endured those last years of Wormtongue’s ascendance in the Rohan. He thought it must be very hard for us to contemplate being separated, and he debated within himself whether to speak of it with me in case to do so might cause more pain, sweet soul of kindness that he is. He just did not know the feeling ran differently, deeper still.”
Éomer’s grip loosened and his voice was unbelieving.
“How can he suffer you to come to me?”
Éowyn’s voice cooled, as though recalling hard, difficult words passing between her and her betrothed.
“Because he will marry me a free woman or not at all. I would not have him a different man, but I tell you Éomer, here is a one to match us both for pride. He would rather risk whatever may come from this path than bind me to him knowing there is desire in my heart for another.”
Éomer took her hand between both his.
“Éowyn, how did you possibly bear to speak of this with him? Many a man would strike their woman down if they learned she felt desire for another. I doubt not there are some who would kill in their rage if they learned she felt desire for one of her blood kin.”
“Faramir is no such man,” Éowyn flared hotly in her mate’s defence.
“Of course not love, I did not mean it so. I only ask where you found the courage. I know the length and breadth of your bravery, none better, and would hope I could match it in all things - but this...”
Éowyn turned this over for a few moments in her mind before replying.
“Brother, when we rode into battle against the Dark Lord and his minions could we have done anything other?”
“No, for there was nothing other to be done, no other path to take.”
“And such is the pass now. It is when we can see some other, maybe easier way that we flinch from what seems hardest. When no other way exists we tread the path, and who can say if it is courage or merely embracing our doom.”
“Oh it is courage, shield-maiden. You are made of steel. As must Gondor’s steward be, and therefore your fitting match. I can barely credit he can hear of this and does not run mad. He is...”
Éowyn quietly finished for him. “He is remarkable. I love him.”
Something cold clutched at Éomer’s belly.
“You’re doing this for him. So the memory of me cannot lay between you in your marriage-bed.”
She shook her head gently.
“You cannot unpick the weave of this, love, it is too intertwined. I do this for him, for you. For me, you gorgeous fool of a Rohirrim stallion, because you set a fire in me and I want to quench it.”
Her voice had dropped to a low tone he had never heard before as she looked up at him, and he realised that indeed she was on fire and, more wondrous still, it was he who made her feel that way. Her cheeks and lips were flushed, and the candlelight edged her yellow hair with flame, and flickered brightly in the storm-waves tossing on the mountain lakes of her grey-blue eyes.
The cold feeling was gone, and now it was Éowyn’s warm hand that gently assailed Éomer, not his doubts. She stroked his midriff softly. “I will lie here with you as my pillow. And you will think about what you want and let me know your wish.”
Even as she laid her soft cheek and golden tresses over his warm skin, his battle was over before it had begun and he knew it, but he willed himself to stillness and contemplation. Let it come quietly this time. Let the tidal wave begin as the merest breaker lapping upon the shore. Let it begin with their breath falling into one rhythm as she lay below his heart, her sweet face turned towards him and her eyes closed, lashes fluttering against her cheeks like tiny butterfly wings, his fingers tracing circles through her soft, soft hair. He let his eyes drift closed like hers, breathed in the sweet familiar scent of her, felt the soft weight of her warm against his body. Long moments passed before he thought to speak again.
“Why can we not have this forever, love? Nothing more, just this peacefulness.”
She sighed softly against his skin, making a tiny tremor run through him.
“Because it’s a veil, a soft soothing piece of gossamer twitched over what really lies beneath.”
“And what is that?”
He just wanted to hear her speak of it.
Her hands moved in small gentle circles over his muscles, hard from riding but satiny smooth like the lovingly groomed coat of a prized mount. Everywhere she touched him, her palms would sooth the skin her fingers had just teased, or was it the other way round, Éomer wondered, artful little minx.
“You know what it is,” Éowyn breathed at last. “I don’t have to tell you. I don’t think I even can, it has no proper name this love of ours. We drank it in with our mother’s milk that such a feeling is not even meant to be - and I do not know if that is truth or simply belief but we will never escape it. And yet still here we are. Our hearts beating under our veil.”
Éomer lay still a few moments longer, balancing on the brink of embarkation into the unknown. Was there anything he was certain of? Yes, that for this one perfect moment they were in complete accord, and this moment would never come again. If it was ever to be, it was now. He unhitched the boat of dreams that held the two of them and pushed off from the shore.
“Éowyn, look at me.”
Her eyes flashed open, their blue outweighing the grey in the glow of the candlelight and the midnight blue of her robe. Éomer’s deep brown eyes catching hers were like wells she could cast herself into and never see daylight again.
“You ask my choice, sister, and my choice is this. I will love you this night with all the strength I have in my body and my soul, until I am simply a husk you can throw upon the midden in the morning and let the last frail dregs of me sink into the earth. But I must ask this one thing of you Éowyn. It is but a small thing, yet I need it sorely.”
She couldn’t think what it might be, but she lifted herself from his body so she could face him squarely.
“Tell me love.”
Éomer gathered his breath, as though it cost him all his pride as a king, as a Rider of the Mark and as a man before a woman to speak the words.
“That night in Edoras… you walked away from me, and you were right to do so. But I wanted you so much Éowyn I couldn’t bear it. Do you know what I did when you left me? I took myself in my wet hands and thrust and thrust against myself until I exploded, and all the time in my heart and my mind and my poor tormented body it was you I drove into. Éowyn, do you know how many nights I have done that since, how stained and broken and awash with you I have been?”
She was touched to the quick by his pain. And yet, with a soft gasp, she was suddenly, totally, wet between her legs. She dare not speak.
“Éowyn, if we are to love this night you must claim me again. You left me when I was hot and hard and aching for your sweetness, dropped me in the dust like a poor discarded thing, and there I lie still until you choose to take me up again. You asked me to make a choice, and now I ask the same of you.”
“Éomer…” she said, but no more words would come.
He was so vulnerable before her, his soul so naked she felt ashamed. And yet his body was so warm and hard…. she could feel her own arousal wreaking a sweet torment at the core of her being… her vision swam…
“Claim me Éowyn.”
The desperate intensity in his low voice sent her desire soaring, freed her from her stillness.
“Ah love…”
Still kneeling beside his bed she placed a small hand either side of his broad chest and gently lowered her sweet face towards him, her hair falling upon him like soft golden rain, until she was a breath away from his full lips.
“I claim you.”
Her kiss upon his mouth was small and soft, opening his lips just enough for him to feel the wetness inside hers, a sweet promise of all that was to come.
“I claim you…”
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