Title & Chapter Number: Brother/Sister 8/11
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: The lovers engage in some stalling tactics to spend just a little more time together, during which some of Éomer's romantic past is revealed. But finally parting is upon them.
Notes: The full story of Éomer and Semmeth would have made this chapter twice as long, so I've only sketched it in. It may turn up at some stage as a short fic.
For minutes that their love counted as hours they had been lying with each other since their passion had flamed for the last time, Éomer still inside Éowyn as she cradled him against her. They never wanted to break this sweet connection, this closeness, but somehow, almost as one, they seemed to sense when it was time to recede from each other, like the sea from the land after the tide has turned. Her hand moved gently on his back just as he went to raise himself up on his elbows and gently slide out from between her thighs. They kissed softly as he did so, giving a little sigh into each other's mouths as he withdrew from her.
Éomer swung himself up into a sitting position, held out his hand to his sister and gently raised her up. Ah, but he couldn't leave such beauty just yet. He left his hand outstretched and was rewarded when she crept into his arms as though they were the one haven she recognised. Her golden hair covered her naked body, and his mane fell about her shoulders as he held her close.
"Love..." she breathed, and could say no more, while he was simply silent, breathing her in, each heart too full for words to speak their measure.
Again they both sensed time pressing them forward, and let each other go as though using but the one mind, and again, as Éomer rose, reluctance pulled them back into stillness. It was Éowyn now who stayed the moment, stealing her arms around his waist as she had so many times that past night, resting her head on his belly and tracing there and back again as if in last remembrance the path of red-brown that flared upon his flesh from groin to navel. She smiled up at him.
"I like your fuzzy fur my love, I will miss it."
He stroked her hair and temples. "Don't ask me what I will miss then, Éowyn, or I must write you a book."
"Oh, Éomer..."
"There is no pain dearest, it is but truth. Things are as they are, and I am content."
He leaned down to bestow a lingering kiss upon her upturned lips then gently disengaged from her, walking to the window alcove and picking up her velvet gown from the floor. When he wandered into the bathroom she could hear water running, and some minutes later he returned with the gown and spread it over a chair.
"There love, I have... sponged it." He sounded a little embarrassed, but she smiled at him with nothing but love, and a kind of wonder, and took one of his strong hands in hers.
"That was the very first of our pleasures in this room this night. I touched you, and you spilled yourself on my robe - "
"Oh you call it touching, wench?" Éomer growled softly. "I call it half killing a man and turning his mind to jelly, but I'll not argue with you."
She grinned. "Best not, lest you tempt me to do it again. But does it not seem almost a lifetime ago?"
"Mayhap it was, Éowyn. I feel I have lived and loved a lifetime with you since you came to me."
She rose and embraced him. "Surely you are right, dearest. I feel it too."
They let this thought settle softly between them as they held each other. But the impetus of the new morning would not be stayed for long.
"Love," said Éomer, "I am running a bath for you, if you wish to have it. I will own it is a blatant attempt to keep you by me for a few sweet minutes longer, but if you take your leave of me now the gods know it shall not go to waste for I need one myself sorely."
"I think we could both do with a little grooming my stallion," smiled Éowyn. "Yes, I would like to bathe here. It seems more fitting than to return to my room to do so, as though this night were something dirty I must wash from myself in secret. I would wash it from me in your company, because we shared it."
She kissed him and walked towards the bathroom.
"Will you not come with me?"
Éomer looked pained. "I cannot bathe with you Éowyn. I need to give your wondrous body up, not be tempted further by its beauties."
"Not to bathe love. Just to be with me."
"If you wish it."
She was like a little child. "Yes, I wish it love. There, I shamelessly scheme to have you with me a little longer also."
"Well then," he relented with a smile, "since we are even..."
In the bathing room Éowyn knotted her hair loosely behind her head and lowered herself into the warm water with a small sigh. As she soaped her body gently Éomer sat beside her on a low stool. There was no stage of passion he had not seen her in that night, no part of her he had not touched, no closeness they had not shared, and yet just to watch her hand gently move the cloth over her shining wet skin or to meet her eye when she smiled at him felt so intimate it made him shy as a schoolboy peeping through a window and seeing a woman naked for the first time.
Ah, he wished he could bathe with her. In fact, he realised he wished rather a lot of things. He wished he could take her back to the pool they had all swum in the day before and make sweet love with her there, as he knew she had with Faramir. He wished they could saddle Gondor's most mettlesome pair of horses and take a soaring ride over the hills by Minas Tirith together until nightfall, make a fire and love each through the night, warm beneath travelling furs, reverent beneath the wide dark sky, awed beneath the all-seeing stars... but in the end what did it matter, he already knew what it would be like to love her again: as perfect and as beautiful as all the pleasures of this past night had been.
Éowyn looked into his dark, dark eyes and felt their power drawing her down inside of him.
"Whatever you are seeing now, beloved, a part of me will always be there with you," she whispered.
He nodded slowly. "I know it, Éowyn. That gives me strength."
At last when her bathing was done and she lay back, her eyes closed, letting the warm water caress her, Éomer fetched a bristle brush and wooden comb from the dresser and sat behind her. He freed her long golden hair and slowly, gently began to brush it out, softly sweeping over and over down its length, then combing it until all the tangles were gone, then brushing it again but from underneath, from the scalp where the sheer sensual pleasure of the act always feels doubled.
All the while under his tender hands she gave small murmurs of pleasure, lulled and soothed and drifting away.
"Love, this is a task for which men with the best will in the world usually have but little talent. What woman has taught you so well?"
There was a pause, and she heard Éomer draw a swift breath. Then he resumed his gentle brushing, and answered softly.
"Semmeth."
Semmeth, beautiful and wild.
Éowyn felt a tremor that was part chill and part sad sympathy run through her. She supposed she should have known.
Semmeth, the Whore of Rohan, the wizard's daughter, as she'd been called. Éomer had loved her exclusively and to distraction at an age where most young bucks were out chasing every creature in skirts who crossed their path. Semmeth, who had died in his arms, a sacrifice on the altar of another man's jealousy.
Éowyn had not meant to recall her brother to such pain.
"Oh love," she breathed, "I am sorry..."
"You need not be sorry, Éowyn. It is so long ago now..."
"Does time mean anything when the heart has loved, Éomer?"
Behind her he was silent. She wanted to turn to him, but his hands moving upon her hair did not falter, so she waited. When eventually he spoke, it seemed to her he came to her wistful and remembering from deep in his past that was yet hers too.
"Your hair is like honey poured over ripe corn, my sweet one, it couldn't be more opposite in colour to hers, and 'tis without doubt finer and softer too, hers was thick and barely tameable. You say your love's hair is like a river of midnight, and if that is so then hers was an ocean. I used to watch her face when she brushed it out, she took such a simple animal joy in it, it made me smile, and I made her teach me because I wanted to be able to give her that pleasure myself, to let her know she was cherished at least by one person on this earth. So many men's hands upon her all the time, always taking... I wanted to her to have something that was a gift from my hands not debasement, something that was not lust, even though I did lust for her like the rest, I can claim no difference."
"You were different, Éomer," said Éowyn gently. "You saw the woman that lived beneath the spell she wove. You were the first to care for the little child in her, abandoned and outcast. You loved her."
Éomer made a soft sound in his throat. "What can a green youth really know of love, Éowyn?"
"Oh my dearest, would you try to re-fashion a history when I share it? Yes, you were a boy of fifteen when you met her, but a man at eighteen when you lost her, still young but truly a man with all the responsibilities of a warrior and one of the leaders of our people. And in that time you cleaved to no other woman but her, loving everything she was when every other man saw in her but the crowning beauty amongst the choice of the night's women they could barter their battle-pay for. You would have taken her to wife if you could have."
She heard his voice catch. "If she would have had me."
Éowyn felt they had slipped back in time to years before, when, barely past a child as she then was herself, she had struggled to counsel and comfort him.
"Éomer, you know why she would not. It was not for lack of love it was simply that she accepted hard truths better than you could in your headstrong youth and your passion. She knew neither Theoden nor our father would have permitted a son of the ruling house of Rohan to wed with the most notorious woman of pleasure in Edoras. In their minds only a chaste daughter of the nobility would do for you."
Éomer grunted in a grim kind of amusement. "Hard-pressed they would have been to find such when there was barely a one of them who had not thrown herself at me or been bedded soundly by Theodred - and half of those were the ones who had simply offered to take us both together."
Éowyn sighed softly. "Well, it is hardly fair to judge Rohan's high-born women for desiring its two most beautiful young men. But as to their suitability as mates for a king's nephew, as ever it is what the world believes that matters, and surface seeming is often more acceptable than truth."
A heartbeat later she saw deeper implications in what she had said, and knew that Éomer had seen them before her when he started to speak, his voice wretched and unravelling into hoarseness.
"Ay, the world appears to hold many opposing views about the women I have cared for. The world believes a man of noble birth - so called, though in truth 'tis deeds make nobility not blood... a man of noble birth may bed a whore but not love her. The world believes no man of any station should love his sister as more than kin. It seems to me that what the world believes has blighted every honest, yearning feeling in my heart, has turned sweet, unmitigated joy into shame and torment, and I am left to wonder if the world and I will ever align so that I might share my life with any woman I truly love..."
As his voice tailed away the brush clattered to the floor, and Éowyn turned to find Éomer with his head buried in his hands, his shoulders heaving.
She rose so quickly from the bath she nearly lost her footing in the water, so great was her need to reach him. She threw a towel around herself and knelt beside him, sliding her arms around him and pressing his weeping face to her warmth. His arms went around her in return, and he held her as though for dear life while great sobs ripped through him. She was almost afraid for him for it seemed to her that flesh could not stand such inner convulsions but that it must crack and break.
"Éomer... Éomer, love..." she murmured, stroking his shaggy blond mane. It did not surprise her that, just as she had, he should face a storm inside when they had loved so vehemently. And since without meaning to she had re-opened for him his oldest wound of love, how much more must he weep. She prayed she could somehow save him from anguish as he had her, but he had led her back to love, and she had nowhere to lead him except back to his own strength to endure.
"I should not grieve... I should not...." Words escaped Éomer in fits and starts as though dodging past his best efforts to keep them inside. "But you are right, Éowyn. I did love her. How can I pretend otherwise, when no other fond and yielding beauty of the Rohan who has come to my bed since has left it with my heart in her keeping? Nay, not until the night you lay across my lap all golden hair and sweet softness and tears and I knew I was utterly yours, and must have been for years without seeing it was so. When she graced this earth I loved Semmeth, even with my foolish untried young heart, as I love you now -with all my senses and the deepest parts of my soul..."
"Éomer - " She tried to speak but he held her more tightly and cried against her.
"No matter what the world says should or should not be, is that not what is important?... and if I lost her, if I must lose you, what of that? No one gets to choose how life unfolds. If I have truly loved someone who has loved me in return, even for the briefest of stolen moments, is it not enough? Not everyone is so blessed, nay not even some who are mated their whole lives... I should not grieve..."
Éowyn pressed her cheek against his.
"Ah, but you must, dearest," she said softly. "You can set all your warrior's strength against a tender heart that longs for its birthright of love and for all you may hold the upper hand from day to day sometimes it must win a battle. My brother, there is no shame or weakness in your tears."
Her words unlocked the few chains that had remained intact and guarding his self-control, and he wept afresh while Éowyn cradled him upon her shoulder and found herself travelling back through memories of the life they shared together.
He had walked a hard road these last years.
In her mind's eye she saw him young and impetuous, railing against their father and uncle as he burned with his first real love. She saw him cold and mute, too shocked to cry, sitting with Semmeth's lifeless body in his arms in the Meduseld chamber where, having tried fruitlessly to save her, he had brought her to die. She saw him again as she herself walked away from him the night they first touched, rampant and longing for her but steadfastly adhering to the prohibition she had set on the sweetness they had both ached to share. She saw him bow and honourably withdraw in the face of her betrothal to Faramir, thrusting his desires into an oblivion of night-time fantasies, self-criticism and loneliness so that she might be free.
And in between Semmeth and herself, no one. Oh he lay with women, that she knew well enough. He was too a vital and passionate a man to forego such pleasure and comfort. Many a morning in the Rohan she had gone to his chambers to wake him to find someone sharing his bed, perhaps a sleek, smooth-bodied daughter of rank who had melted against him at a feast the night before, perhaps some saucy-mouthed serving wench bold enough to proposition her master. Éowyn had eventually learnt not to blush as she met the eyes of these women, sleepily triumphant and sated with the pleasure they had received from his beautiful body. Most often these liaisons lasted but a night, sometimes for some weeks or even months, but Éomer never gave any of his partners the lie that he loved them, no matter how some longed to hear it. Éowyn recalled one disgruntled aristocratic beauty, offended that Éomer had bedded her as she desired yet showed no signs of falling at her feet in the worship she was used to, commenting that he had no heart. Éowyn had restrained the urge to slap her pouting face and had merely answered softly that she did not understand, rather he had too much, too much indeed to waste on a vain creature who would regard him but as naught but a trophy of conquest or a pedestal for her own dubious glory. At which the woman's eyes had flashed and she had muttered under her breath a phrase well-born Rohan ladies were not meant to know, and Éowyn had smiled sweetly and simply walked away.
Did I love him even then that I was so scornful of those I considered unworthy of him? she wondered now. Did I burn inside that they were granted and so lightly used the one closeness to him I could only dream of in some deep unacknowledged part of my woman's heart?
Meanwhile Éomer had watched as most of his comrades wed their sweethearts and started to raise families. In the dark times the Shadow cast upon the world, all too often it had fallen to him to return from the latest battle or border skirmish with the tidings for these same women that they were now widows, and the children each had brought forth with her mate in striving and shared joy were orphans. And yet, when Éowyn would sombrely stand with him, holding his hand tightly as another cherished friend was committed to the earth or the fire, she knew Éomer believed it was better for a Rider to fall honourably in battle knowing he was beloved and for his grieving wife to see him live again in their children's eyes than that both die having known neither love's pleasure nor its pain. And if love had come to him young and left him early then he must simply steel himself against the loss and set himself to the grim task of defending his country...
Something precious and vulnerable had hidden itself away for protection inside Éomer the day Semmeth had died. He had built a formidable fortress around it, not because he wanted to but because he must. The passion Éowyn had shared with him this night had thrown down these walls at last, and she had been swept away by the tenderness that had always lived inside them, by his desire, by his love, all the wondrous gifts of himself gathering her up and overwhelming her. Blessed would be the woman who was his true heart-mate, when she would be lavished by such richness all the days of her life and could return it in kind.
Oh gods, Éowyn prayed, bring her to him soon, no one is worthy of love if not he, and he has waited so long.
She realised that Éomer's grip upon her had loosened somewhat and against her shoulder his tears were easing. The next moment he lifted his face to hers and she could see his dark eyes had lost much of the pain that had wracked him.
Éowyn laughed at herself inside a little ruefully. Why should I think to lead him back to his strength when it is innate?
Éomer scrubbed at his wet face with his fingers and gave her a crooked smile. She could see he was slightly embarrassed even in front of her.
"Well woman, tears have had their way with me, what say you now?"
She knew he looked to her to make light of things with him, but as she brushed a stray tear from his cheek she was still lost in pain and tenderness for him.
"I would say, Éomer my brother, that the world has been cruel, to give you such a heart to love and then keep love from you. You have had to be so strong..."
Éomer's eyes closed and he swallowed hard. Éowyn softly kissed his eyelids and his temples.
"I'm sorry, love, that is not what you wished to hear but 'tis how I feel when I think of all that has passed for you."
Éomer opened his eyes and looked at her, touching her lips with gentle fingers.
"You speak thus because you care for me, and if as you say the world has been cruel to me how kind also when it has given me you as my sweet sister. Perhaps sometimes the world is even-handed in what it grants and what it denies."
At this she could not but draw him to her for a long, soft kiss that yet bore the traces of the hunger they were both trying to renounce. Her hands moved in his hair and on his bare back, and she was glad she knelt against him while he sat, for if they were stretched out on his bed once more she might want him all over again.
When at last they broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers, and spoke softly, and she could hear in his voice that he was still working through to the bedrock of his loneliness.
"As for strength, my love, perhaps it is easier to find it when others need it from you, nay, even demand it. From boyhood my body has been trained as a warrior, my mind shaped towards the welfare of our people. I know I act with determination, I try to temper my unruly pride with prudence, and if I command respect it is because I have learnt how to give it, and thus, all told, I pray that our country will never suffer under my care. But I am not made of iron, Éowyn. I shoulder these responsibilities willingly but how much more easily would I with love to aid me, how much more joyfully if I could set them down each night at the door of my bedchamber and lay with a dear wife who reminds me that I am a man before I am a king. And I would joyfully do everything I could to remind her that she is all sweet, intoxicating woman before she is Rohan's queen, and gods willing the mother of our children, and whatever else she may choose to be, I care not - scholar or musician or healer... or indeed shield-maiden who rides into battle unbidden and slays our greatest foe."
He looked at her now and the ghost of a smile played about his lips as he paid tribute to her greatest act of bravery. Or reckless foolery, some might say, Éowyn reflected wryly.
She laid a gentle hand to his dear face.
"I wish I could remain your shield-maiden, love."
His smile now was no ghost but real, and warm. "Gondor has a new path to forge, Éowyn. It has need of your courage. As does another man forced for too long to bear his burdens alone."
Éowyn knew he spoke truth of Faramir, and many nights when they had lain together she sensed beyond that as her mate lost himself in her he let go memories of pain and grief so that he might live life anew with her, but it was Éomer's pain that had been laid bare and wretched before her these last moments.
"My brother, this is my deepest fear - that I have but added to the load you carry to let our love live fully and then to leave you."
He looked at her with such tenderness she felt she must drown in it.
"Éowyn, you must feel no more remorse, it has fallen out for the best. I stand by everything I said when I held you in my arms by the window, there was no lie in my heart: I am bound to the Rohan by my kingship, and our love could neither live there openly nor thrive in secrecy, I am sure of it. How much better then that fate has brought to you another, the best of men, with whom you can share your life - how much better that if I must lose a sweet love once more I lose her to a happiness and fulfillment that I can never give her. Hear me Éowyn, to lose Semmeth was to put her in the cold ground, all her goodness and beauty destroyed in its prime by a cruel, useless fate... but to lose you is to have you bless this earth and my life still..."
His words finished on a whisper, and he took her face in his hands and kissed her for long, long moments. She felt the embers of her passion stirring at the core of her, and knew it was the same for him when they parted and he still held her face to his, his voice husky with longing.
"But where will I ever find lips so tender, so knowing, so rich with the promise of all the pleasures they can draw forth from me? Can you tell me that, Éowyn?"
His words were gentle, held no steel pointed against her, did not even really seek a reply, but in her love for him she felt driven to give him what answer she could, scant of assurances though it was.
"Éomer, I cannot tell you where or when, but think on this - the world is wider now that it is peaceful. There will be freer contact between the many lands of Middle-earth in days soon to come, embassies and trading parties and treaties, and you will be in the thick of it, my vital, active King. If the Rohan does not hold the sweet love you have sought these many years, perhaps it is because she dwells elsewhere. I have no doubt that somewhere in this new dawning for people of goodwill is the lovely woman who has been dreaming of her wild-hearted mate and longing for him come to her."
"You are sweet to say so, love, and maybe you are right. Best poke me in the ribs if you think you spot her though, for I may still be dreaming of your lips."
She ruffled his hair. "I will not need to do anything of the kind, Éomer, you will not be able to take your eyes off her."
For the first time he seemed to notice she only had a towel around her.
"Love, I am sorry. 'Tis a rude interruption to a woman's bath, having to hold her brother while he cries like a baby."
At this there came the tiniest wicked sparkle to Éowyn's eyes.
"Indeed it is, love - and in recompense I think you should let me bathe you."
"Éowyn, did I not say..."
"I know you did, love. But would you deny me one last soft sweet pleasure?"
Éomer sighed. "Or myself. Nay then, do what you will with me."
She smiled, let the towel fall to the floor, stepped into the tub and held out her hand to him, drawing him in after her. She ran fresh warm water into a wide wooden bowl and set it on the rim of the bath, fetched the soap and cloth and started gently to rub him down. Éomer could hardly decide whether to close his eyes the better to feel her soft touch against his skin, or leave them open to watch her as she went about her work, her face half serious, half enjoying, and her golden hair tumbling about her shoulders.
"Ah woman, it was never like this when we were children."
"Ay," Éowyn laughed, "you were too busy pulling my braids or trying to push my head under the water."
"Monstrous. Ah well, I am at your mercy now, beautiful creature."
She swept the cloth over his broad chest and shoulders, then leaned up to give him a tiny kiss.
"Nay, I think we are evenly matched."
She continued to wash him, slowly, gently, firmly, the sensuality of her touching his body for them both an act of love. When she pressed the cloth against his manhood he moved her under her hand.
She smiled up at him.
"Well is that not miraculous, that it can still stir after the prodigious work it has done this night?"
Éomer snorted dismissively.
"Ay, the feeble stirring of an old man upon his pillow, lifting his head to smile at his loved ones one last time before oblivion claims him."
Éowyn chuckled.
"Do you think so? I wager there will be a score of beautiful women laying claim to your manhood before oblivion does."
"Éowyn - "
"Hush now and turn around, I must wash the back of you as well as the front."
He gave up trying to admonish her and obediently turned instead, and she began to soap his broad back and shoulders, then buttocks and thighs.
She sighed. "Your lines are so clean and smooth, love, like a racing stallion. I feel I should have a curry comb and brush in my hand not perfumed soap and a wet cloth."
"I care not what you use, wench, when your touch is so sweet. But no doubt I will smell better this way."
When she was done she fetched another towel for him, and while he dried himself she went out to get her robe from the chair and found his sleeping tunic tucked up under a pillow. She tossed it to him as she returned and they dressed silently, both feeling another of those moments of being pushed forward in time. He was done before her, and came over and gently tied her sash around her before gathering her into his arms.
"I think I shall have to abuse my privileges as king and have a pretty Rohan maid bathe me each and every day after such pleasure."
"Nay, love, I shall be jealous," murmured Éowyn against his shoulder. "Only a woman who truly loves you should handle you thus."
She lifted her face to kiss him, winding her fingers through his hair, and found herself smiling as she realised how tangled the night had made it.
"I can see I must make my last delaying tactic brushing your hair as you brushed mine. By the feel of it, it may have to hurt a little."
He kissed the tip of her nose gently.
"Éowyn, if it keeps you by me a moment longer you may pull it out by the roots."
She laughed as she broke their embrace to pick up the comb from the rim of the bath and the brush from the floor where he had let it fall.
"Well there's a compliment to arrest any woman, you must remember it for future conquests."
She took his hand and led him back out to the bedchamber, sitting on the bed herself and drawing him down to the floor beside her so she could begin her task. She did indeed make him gasp once or twice as she drew out the most recalcitrant of the knots, but when his hair was smooth and flowing once more and she merely brushed it for pleasure she was glad to hear she drew forth from him the same murmurs of appreciation he had from her. Now his thick tresses were neat and tidy however, she could not help but notice how split their ends were, and ran them through her fingers with some disapproval.
"Your mane is dire need of attention, my stallion."
"Truly wench?" returned Éomer equably. "Well this is why I need a wife, clearly, not to keep me warm and beloved but to keep me presentable."
"I will send one of Arwen's Elf maidens to you. Perhaps the one who blushes prettily whenever you are in the room. On second thoughts, no, she might be so overwhelmed she will keep dropping the scissors."
Éowyn pulled Éomer's hair back in one small fist and tugged at it meaningfully. "Or perhaps become distracted from her task..."
"Oh do you think so, my sweet?" challenged Éomer. "I suggest you keep your insinuations to yourself and send Gimli and his axe to mend my hair, for I am swearing off womankind for a spell and will require no Elf maidens, blushing or otherwise. I need time for stillness and contemplation, yea, I shall be like a wise hermit in the forest, appreciating the beauties of nature and taking daily meditation - what, do you not believe me, wench?"
Clearly she did not. Éowyn's laughter pealed from her so strongly she had to put down the brush.
"Oh that's rich, Éomer, that's priceless. Had you not loved me so soundly this night I would still know you of old. And of recently, come to think of it. She was a very pretty young thing that one trying to steal a few extra moments of your company the other night, as I recall."
"Now Éowyn, you cannot hold her against me, nay, nor the others Legolas and Gimli saw fit to send me. A man must seek some kind of distraction when he is trying not to burn with love for his sister. I'm sure that's written down in a book somewhere."
"Oh ay, we must consult Gandalf."
They were both laughing a little hysterically now, and Éomer pulled Éowyn squeaking off the bed and onto the floor and kissed her soundly.
"Gods, we need sleep Éowyn."
Beneath him her face suddenly fell, and she took a shuddering breath.
"There is something I must do before I lay me down to sleep, whatever may come of it."
And with that, reality was finally having its way with them.
Éomer's face matched Éowyn's for seriousness.
"Ay, love, you must. You must go to him. Forgive me for keeping you by me so long, you are too sweet a temptation."
She touched his cheek, her brow creased in fierce tenderness.
"As are you, my love. I would not forego a moment of our time together."
Éomer nodded slowly, silently, then rose to his feet and held out his hand to her. She took it, and he drew her upwards and into his arms. As he held her there he felt her begin to weep, and as he registered this he realised his own eyes were wet.
"I thought I had no more tears to cry for you, love," he whispered. "I must have borrowed some from future griefs."
He felt her body convulse in his arms. "So much pain..."
He lifted her face to his. "And from future joys, Éowyn. It is joy that will weigh most in the balance when I think of this night."
Her blue-grey eyes, shining with tears, seemed to glow with a sombre light from within.
"Gods I love you, beautiful, beautiful Éomer."
"As I love you, Éowyn."
It was their last kiss as lovers, and they knew it. As their mouths met, and his tongue stole between her lips seeking her own and tasting the sweetness of her mouth, he tasted too everything this night had brought them, passion, pleasure, tenderness, tears and laughter, tasted aching regret that their time was ending, tasted the certainty that it must, tasted love as deep as the ocean and deeper still in its mystery. Her arms had stolen around his neck and her hands into his hair, and she pressed him to her as though in a kiss she could take him inside her forever. With an intensity that was the same as if they were making love with each other once more they reached a moment of fever that seemed to pitch them from their bodies and out into eternity, and then they were returned to themselves, to an aftermath where their lips had left each other but they stayed close, holding each other, stroking each other softly.
In this last moment of stillness and love a thought struck Éomer, and he laid his hand upon her belly.
"If... if you should conceive, Éowyn..."
She placed her hand over his.
"There will be no child, love. The wise-women of Gondor know their herbs as well as they do in the Rohan."
Éomer closed his eyes, feeling the warmth and softness of her flesh through the velvet of her gown.
"The fruit of such a union is not always blighted. 'Tis but fate and chance."
She pressed her arms back around him and laid her head to his chest. "Then let us believe that a child of ours would be beautiful."
It was a thought as sweet as it was strange and fearful, but she knew the yearning in his voice really had its source elsewhere.
"Éomer, you will find your sweet love and sire your own babes, you know that don't you? And I will be the fondest of aunts and spoil them utterly."
He gave a faint laugh into her hair. "As I will yours, my love, I look forward to the day."
There was silence as they held each other and then he gave a sad sigh.
"And to that end if no other I must send you from me or how else will those children come to be? You must go and seek out their father."
She touched his cheek. "Ay, I must. 'Tis time."
She took a deep breath, took her arms from around his neck, then laid her palms against his chest.
"There are no words to speak my feelings about this night Éomer," she said softly, "but I think you know them."
Éomer nodded. "Yes, beloved, they are my own."
Dark eyes regarded blue-grey for long moments. Then Éowyn leant up and kissed Éomer's mouth.
"I love you, my brother."
He kissed both her cheeks, and then her lips.
"I love you, beautiful sister."
The ending began as she turned away and looked at the door of his bedchamber.
"When I walk through it, do not close it upon me, I beg you love. Watch me until I reach my room - I will need your strength to bear me there. If any see us and wonder, I care not what they think."
"I will watch you, Éowyn."
She took his hand, walked towards the door, and opened it. Braziers still burned softly in the hallways even though the sky was light through the window. Éomer observed vaguely that the world didn't appear to have ended while they had loved against all supposed natural laws this night.
Éowyn was trying so hard to be strong, but when she let go Éomer's hand and stood alone she faltered, and she looked back to him, stricken.
"If he will not take me to him once more..."
Éomer reached out and held her shoulders gently.
"If he will not, then fly back to my arms and I will be your lover no matter what grief and woe may come of it. But he will, Éowyn, nothing is more certain. I do not mean to say your way back to him will not be hard, it may be the hardest thing you will ever endure, but I know you will be his again, and soon."
She took his hands and held them tightly. "You say that because you love me."
"Nay, Éowyn. I say it because Faramir loves you."
"So I pray..." she whispered.
"Pray not, sister, believe it as I do. And let your love for him guide you now."
She kissed the hands she held in hers. "You are too good to me."
"Hardly, love, though good enough to suffice I hope. But I beg you leave me now for my store of goodness runs dangerously low. If you stay another second I must steal you back into this room and keep you by me forever."
She looked up at him. "Éomer..."
Moving as one he held out his arms for her as she stepped into them and their last, chaste, tender kiss spoke of longing and loss overlaid with love, and of a farewell that was yet a promise to care for each other still all the days of their lives to come.
When they parted Éomer smiled at her softly.
"Courage, shield-maiden, in all you must do now."
"I will take my strength from yours, my king."
They squeezed hands in a last goodbye, and finally Éowyn wrenched herself away. She drew herself up straight and paced firmly down the hallway. At the door to her chamber she turned back and they saluted each other solemnly.
Éowyn opened the door to her room and disappeared inside. Éomer kept watching until the door shut, then closed his own, turned around, and leant heavily against it.
And again, the world didn't end, he reflected.
He looked at the bed, its sleeping furs rumpled and in disarray. He looked at the few last tendrils of steam escaping from the bathroom.
But I think my heart is broken in two, and may take some mending.
He wandered over to the chair, pulled it up to the window and sat down, staring absently out into the breaking day but seeing only Éowyn.
In her own room, Éowyn sat dazedly down on her bed. In her heart and her mind and her body she felt Éomer, his touch and his love, while before her she saw all the tell-tale signs of her life with Faramir, clothes and books and trinkets of his scattered about the place, crying out to her in grief and accusation as she knew he must have cried out to her through the long night.
I regret nothing, she told herself fiercely. I trod the only path that remained, and I reap both the joy and the desolation of it willingly, as I must.
But gods give me strength, she begged silently. Protect my beautiful brother from despair, and let my beloved mate accept me still. I have no right to ask any of this, but I do.
Éomer. Faramir.
She felt her tears softly begin to flow. She had cried too much this night to have any rage or fear or passion or pain to accompany them, she must just let them pass through her. She laid her hands in her lap, and waited, patiently and composedly, wondering if they would ever stop.
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