Title & Chapter Number: Brother/Sister 10/11
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: do
Cast: Éomer/Éowyn
Timeline: TTT/RotK
Spoilers: Maybe TTT & RotK
Summary: Two angsty boys on a bench
Notes: Intentional canon-tweaking - Éomer and Éowyn's parent's deaths are about a decade later than in Tolkien [non-intentional - in this fic the "founding moments" of Éomer and Éowyn's love have taken place in Edoras - it should be Dunharrow - been bugging me for ages, gonna fix it up for a new version after I finish the next chapter!]
Will he even consent to speak with me?
Éomer's thoughts kept pace with his rapid but measured steps as he followed Faramir's tracks through the dewy grass of the palace garden.
'He will marry me a free woman or not all,' Éowyn had said, but who knows how he will feel now morning has come. Will he denounce her now and wish to put her from him? Will he offer me violence in his pain? And should I simply take it for the wrong I have done him, as though a bloodied head might make up for such betrayal?
Éomer thought he saw a smudge of darkness upon the green up ahead.
All I know is I will brook no insult towards Éowyn, for nothing she did was for lack of love of him. And gods guide me now, that I may do them both some small good and not harm.
~*~*~*~
The smudge had resolved itself into Faramir's dark head. In a clearing at the top of a long gentle slope he sat on a stone bench facing the hills that stretched southward towards the hidden sea many leagues away, hands folded neatly in his lap.
Éowyn is right, Éomer thought. In repose he is like one of the statues of the stern kings that line the great hall of the palace. He and Aragorn both, they partake of Numenor of old, of eternity.
Whether Faramir's hollowed eyes took in what was before him or some inner view was not to be gauged.
Reflecting that he had possibly felt less trepidation riding into battle against the forces of the Dark Lord, Éomer hailed the Steward of Gondor. Faramir looked around to him and, where another man might have flinched away, he did not break Éomer's gaze as he walked towards him.
"Hail, Éomer King. You are not the peace I was seeking in this garden."
Éomer halted beside the Steward and gathered himself inwardly, hoping his voice would sound as steady when he replied.
"I doubt that not, my lord. Perhaps I will bring some all the same."
If I can but find words, he thought, feeling as if every one he had ever learned was fleeing away from him at a gallop. To his surprise, Faramir, as if sensing a conversation must occur whether he willed it or no, gravely gestured Éomer to take the empty space on the bench beside him. Éomer sat, outwardly graceful, shaking within, and there was stiff silence for long moments between them. Éomer was still grappling for a place to begin when Faramir spoke quietly.
"What would you have of me, Éomer, when you have taken back all I love most in the world?"
Éomer could find in Faramir's words no railing against Éowyn's forsaking of her vows to him, nor against a sister for seeking out a brother, nor even against that brother who sat beside him now for accepting her into his bed. He had steeled himself for condemnation and to his amazement was being dealt none. Yet there was an inescapable sting in Faramir's voice so familiar that at last he found his way to speak.
"That is your anguish talking. I recognise its tone, for it has been my constant companion these last months. I am sorry you have suffered it for even one night, but I tell you truly that suffering is over if you will allow it to be so."
Faramir made a small disbelieving sound in his throat. Éomer wished to be anywhere but where he was, but for Éowyn's sake he knew he could be nowhere else. He did not have to will himself to steadiness now.
"I cannot ask you to understand something that Éowyn and I have not been able to understand, grapple with it though we may, nor do I ask you to excuse us. But know this: she will return to you with a shadow removed from her heart and her love for you deeper than ever. I beg you, no matter how you choose to deal with me hereafter, forgive her for the pain you have endured and take her to you once more."
"What is there to forgive? This love had a prior claim." Faramir's voice was cold and hopeless, and his dull acceptance of grief cut Éomer deeper than any reproach.
"The mind can reason it thus, but I know your heart must feel betrayed."
"Do not seek to tell me what I feel."
"Faramir - "
"I feel nothing. My heart is dead."
How was he to answer him, when he understood him only too well? If someone had spoken to Éomer scant days ago about the state of his own heart, they might have been his own words. And yet they would not have been true.
"Ay," he said carefully, at last, "your heart has been felled by a cruel blow, but the wound is not mortal. When Éowyn stands before you once more be assured you will feel it quicken again."
"Do you say so, Éomer King?" Faramir's lip curled into the ghost of a sneer. "You think you can claim to know how it stands for me now?"
Éomer almost sighed in relief that the other man showed a flash of spirit at last.
"Both yes and no," he replied. "The only other woman I have loved with my whole heart, as you love now, was never my betrothed. But I know what it is to love Éowyn, even when she has gone to the arms of another man. Your heart will be dead only when she is."
Faramir's head snapped around to Éomer. Éomer's concern and remorse, the bravery he showed in coming to him at all, these things had registered with Faramir, but had fallen like muffled knocks upon the door of his stunned and remote consciousness. With these words it was as though Éomer had wrenched the wood from its hinges and roused the man dwelling within. Under Faramir's suddenly searching gaze Éomer remained calm, quiet, but his eyes burned with a dark fire fuelled by long-held passion. When Faramir had looked upon Éomer stretched in casual beauty at his bedroom window, he had only seen the man who had taken Éowyn from him. Now he saw a man whose love for her matched his own, and who had stood by in silence all these months while he himself had walked in happiness, unknowing.
His overburdened heart had nowhere to put his recognition that Éomer too had suffered, and he had to turn away.
Éomer sat with the man of Gondor in silence, eyes drawn to the hills rolling out beyond the garden walls.
It has been too long since I have sat a horse, he thought, looking wistfully, almost hungrily, at the green sea beyond. All this easy living. Too long since my mount and I together have mastered earth and air, flying hard and fast over the turf, heedless of all cares, until both horse and rider are spent.
He closed his eyes and let himself sink into a kind of meditation where he could feel hoof-beats thudding beneath him, saddle-leather against his thighs and warm hide against his calves, the familiar, comforting scent of horseflesh in his nostrils while his body moved as one with the proud creature who willingly bore him. Free in his mind, Éomer both waited patiently for whatever must pass next between himself and Faramir and was only tenuously aware that his body was still anchored to a stone bench upon the solid ground.
He could not have said how much time had passed in reverie when he was recalled to himself by quietly awful sounds beside him. He turned his head to see that Faramir's composure had broken at last. His body was shaking with near-silent sobs the more painful for being choked back in his throat, the tears welled in his eyes kept by an effort of will from falling.
Éomer shifted uneasily in his seat and regarded the Steward with both compassion and a guilt that stabbed through him and left a bitter taste in his mouth.
When Faramir finally spoke, the sound of his voice was ghastly, pulled through gritted teeth as though he fought a demon to keep it in and lost.
"If you have held her in your arms and loved her truly at last," he muttered, his head bowed, "how can you ever let her go? How? You will always want her, burn for her… if you love her as I do, how could you not?"
*Enough*, thought Éomer. He grabbed Faramir's shoulders and spun him around to look him full in the face, speaking low and urgently.
"Ay, I love her, but *not* as you do. For you may love her before all, with honour untainted, without shame. She is my sister. To be her brother and to desire her has been the torment of my life, one I thought must kill me before it had done. To have known her body at last - " At this Faramir gave a strangled cry and Éomer shook him violently. "No, you must hear me, Steward, no matter that it pains you, for I can only bear to say this once. To have known her body this night is to have put that desire to the flame and let it burn to ash. And I will not lie to you, Faramir, I will sweep those ashes into the urn of my heart and keep them there as memories so sweet I cannot see how anything in my life to come will match them. But she is my sister once more, and I bless the dawning of this day for it."
Éomer's grip was like iron, his stern face only inches away from Faramir's own, but his fierceness was good for him, it called forth the strength that lay at the core of him beneath his misery. Though he was taut in every muscle, his voice was unwavering when he spoke, his pale face resolute.
"She did not go to you lightly. And surely love lived unrecognised in both your hearts these many years before you ever touched. Do you think to tell me you can turn from each other now, easily, simply, as one closes a book and returns it to the shelf?"
Éomer realised that he still held Faramir as though he might shake him again, and that Faramir had not resisted him. He let him go, abashed, and spoke more softly, but no less intently.
"No, not easily. With tears and pain, rather, and regret for paths that can never be taken, or would lead to ruin if they were. And with joy, that at last, for brief treasured moments outside time, the love between us was honoured."
There was a long silence where it seemed that neither man breathed, then Éomer turned and faced forward, folding inside himself, for he had bared too much of his heart for comfort and desperately needed a moment to armour its nakedness once more. He looked down at his wide hands spread across his knees, and tried to return to calmness. Instead he saw in his mind those same hands moving over Éowyn's soft, beloved flesh, felt them tangling in her golden hair as he cradled her head against him and gently brought his mouth down upon rosebud lips already bruised from his kisses. He closed his eyes, willing the thoughts away, almost fearing they might have power to reach out to Faramir to taunt and torment him. But he was too late, his words had already set themselves to the task.
"With joy… your love was honoured…" The Steward's voice was a murmur on the breeze that stirred his dark hair.
He closed his eyes and shook his head once, slowly, from side to side. Éomer knew exactly what he was seeing in his mind, because he had seen its reverse in his own, night after unbearable night: knew Faramir saw him with Éowyn, saw them naked in each other's arms, bodies moving with the sweet force of passion, giving and taking pleasure and striving for fulfillment; knew exactly the length and breadth of that particular hell.
Éomer bit his lip. Let it go, man, he called to Faramir silently, let it go. The past cannot be changed, only the future.
At last Faramir opened his eyes.
"Éowyn…" he ground out, as if it hurt to say her name. "You say she is your sister once more… but if she should not see you now as brother…. if you have… touched her in ways I cannot… if…"
His words appalled Éomer, although from the depths of his own male pride he understood what drove him to say them.
"Faramir, don't, I beg you."
"You are a king among men, man of Rohan, and not only in title -"
"This is folly, my friend."
"If she should lay with me… and yearn for you…"
Éomer felt his blood rising. "By all that's holy, you must stop."
The heat in Éomer's voice silenced Faramir at last, but the dark grey eyes he raised to him were rebellious. Éomer placed his next words before him with deliberate care.
"Believe me in nothing if not this. No one knows better than I how much she loves you. How much she wants you, Steward."
Faramir swallowed. "I… I - "
"Don't feel very wanted at this moment?" Éomer finished for him with a bluntness that was yet gentle. "Nay, why would you? This night has been cruel for you. You will just have to let time prove me right."
Faramir gave a shuddering breath and looked away, pressing his palms to wet eyelids while Éomer tugged fretful hands through his blond mane.
Gods, we are neither of us in any fit state to be speaking of these things, he thought. Better we both took a sleeping powder and put ourselves to bed. For about six months, perhaps.
He had no idea if he had said enough or too much, whether he should stay or go, and waited upon Faramir for some kind of sign. The Steward's hands dropped to his lap and he lifted his tear-flecked face to the morning. Moments that felt more like minutes to Éomer's febrile senses passed before he spoke.
"I was in love with her before she even took her leave of me at our first meeting, do you know that?" Faramir said finally, his voice low and yearning. "I was like a man felled by a thunderbolt. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes upon, and her strength and grief and rage at her circumstances sliced through me like the sword she had used to slay the Nazgul king. There was so much passion beneath her despair, like a fire beneath ice. What would she be if that ice around her was melted, I wondered. And I longed to be the man to find out."
Éomer watched as even the pain Faramir felt now was softened by the sweet power of that memory, of the promise that had lain within those first moments he had spent with Éowyn. There was a raptness, a focus to his words that echoed Éowyn's when Éomer had bid her speak of her own love to him in his chamber, and it set hope fluttering through the fear that sat heavy within him.
"And to my soft amazement," Faramir continued, gently unspooling the thread of his reminiscence, "as we spent our days together at the Houses, I did find the woman beneath that frost she drew about her like a mantle, as she found me beneath habitual reserve and defences long held. Slowly, haltingly, 'tis true, for although we were brought there to heal our bodies, it was our spirits that were the more grievously wounded, and we were frightened to reach out to each other in trust, even I, who already knew I longed to lay her to my heart. But despite our many hesitations, which anyone looking on would have smiled to see I am sure, reach out we did, and companionship became friendship, and friendship at last seemed to teeter on the brink of something more."
Faramir's breath escaped him in a sigh.
"Of course I knew, at first from Merry, and then later by her own quiet confessions, that she had loved the Lord Aragorn without requital. In our first days together I did not presume to think I could replace him in her heart. I just hoped my company could be a balm to her a little. A petty distraction, perhaps. Gods, man, all I really cared was that I could be in her presence. And yet the more time passed the more she seemed to turn to me like a rare flower to the warmth of the sun, delicately unfurling its petals and revealing beauty both within and without. How can I describe to you how it felt to me to hear her laughter for the first time, knowing I had caused it, to see her eyes softly shine when she saw me coming to seek her out, to feel the touch of her hand the day she first placed it in mine?"
My friend, you don't need to tell me, Éomer thought. You felt like a god invincible and a village idiot whose every birthday has come at once combined. You felt like I felt last night - was it really only last night? - when she told me she wanted me and laid her sweet golden head upon my belly waiting for my choice, as though I might have one.
But he dared not speak, wishing neither to wound Faramir with a reminder of the night past nor to break the spell of memory that he incanted. Though every soft word was digging into Éomer like a knife, showing him how deeply and dangerously he had transgressed upon Faramir's happiness, it seemed vital to him that the Steward should speak out his love, just as Éowyn had, so that like her he might know afresh it was too precious to throw away.
"I dared to hope that her feelings for me might be real all the more for being so carefully and tentatively put forth," continued Faramir, "as by one who has known such pain of the heart she dared not risk too much or too far. And I began to think I understood what her feelings for Aragorn had been -that in him she had loved a hero rather than a man and now, in me, the opposite. In the end I knew I must hazard all - for who would not hazard all if there was chance of winning such a woman? - and I bid her set her feelings for him beside her feelings for me and judge which were truest. And from the moment I declared my love and she hers I never doubted I had miraculously won all, and been blessed beyond my deepest dreams."
Faramir drew a swift, sudden breath and Éomer realised the other man had returned to the harshness of the here and now, gentle recollection banished and grief renewed. Faramir looked at him piercingly.
"Did I misapprehend her heart so utterly, Éomer? Had she but bent towards Aragorn so she might not have to know she yearned for you? And with one love forbidden and another denied, did she but cleave to me as a poor third choice so that at last she might find a small, safe haven and lay her many burdens down and rest? What think you, Rohan King? For I am lost."
Faramir bowed his head once more, knuckles clenching white around the rim of the bench. For awhile Éomer watched him, mystified that even in his anguish he could consider himself thus, as some kind of lesser prize for which Éowyn had settled, and then something clicked within his understanding.
Ah, but his father used him cruelly, Éomer thought. To love him, and yet favour Boromir so clearly. I would wager Firefoot against all comers and fear no loss that somewhere inside himself now he tells himself it was madness to believe he could ever be first in anyone's heart. Gods, why must it be that our old pain ever lives in us to compound our new?
He knew it would not help Faramir to speak of such things. Nay, he thought, at this moment it would but hurt him the more to know Éowyn, though only out of care for him, had ever mentioned them to me.
"What I think," Éomer said quietly instead, "is that if you had been with us in Rohan and seen the depths of the anguish Éowyn's feeling for Aragorn sent her to, you would not strip it of its dignity now by suggesting it was some strange ruse of her heart that had aught to do with me."
Faramir looked up, staring at Éomer intently, and Éomer was glad of it. Let all that is sure be spoken, he thought, when there are so many questions that still hang in the balance.
"You and I both know Aragorn's nobility of spirit calls all of us to him, man and woman alike, and that to be in his company for but a day is to love him ever after. That is his gift, his strength. With it he drew Éowyn to him when for too long she had walked alone carrying the weight of a country under siege, its King fallen to wizardry and its warriors forever away upon its borders. He brought the compassion for all creatures that is the keystone of his nature, brought a sternness of will that her own recognised, brought hope where there had been none, and a grace of bearing our proud people had been losing in our long battle with despair. It is small wonder her heart turned to him, yet I doubt not you guessed aright from the first - it was a love that arose out of admiration and need, a wistful dream that gave way at last before the real love she found with you, born as it is of a true meeting of spirits. But our dreams shape us, Faramir, and if she had not been blessed by your coming into her life perhaps that love might pain her still. Surely you know you could still find the scars of it upon her heart if you looked, just as you can find its tender healing in the friendship she shares with Aragorn now."
Faramir lips parted slightly in surprise, as though floored by this spirited defence, then he looked out to the hills once more.
"Ay, you are right, I know you are right. Save for the time she spent in Rohan at the outset of your rule, barely a day has passed since the fall of the Eye where Éowyn and I have not worked side by side with the King and Queen, and in this closeness the four of us share it has been clear to me that that she loved him once, cares for him still, and mourns him not, her deepest feeling always reserved for me - so it seemed."
Faramir passed a hand over his brow, pressing slender fingers against the vestige of the headache that still pulsed against his skull.
"Ay, her feeling for Aragorn has had its own life, that much is true at least," he murmured.
Despite the guilt that rippled through him anew, Éomer, warrior in all things, even this, pressed his momentary advantage.
"As for seeking safe haven in you - Faramir, the shock of this night makes you think you do not know Éowyn, but you do. You know as well as I that when first you met her the refuge she yearned for was no man's love but death in battle. If you had but granted her horse and sword she would have ridden out to find it again, for both life and love meant but grief and shame to her then."
Éomer shivered inwardly. As they did to me, he thought. Grief and shame, with only duty keeping my heart beating as I left her behind and rode to Mordor.
"But this I have heard from her own lips long ago, Steward - that she had as little choice in coming to love you as you tended her with gentle devotion as you say now you had in leaving that first meeting knowing she was already in your blood. Ay, there is a security that comes in sharing one's life with another, but do you think a woman of Éowyn's fierce pride would cleave to a man she did not truly love to find it? She wants you as her mate because she loves you, not for any other reason. She has no need of any other reason."
Faramir's eyes closed briefly, his long lashes fluttering against his cheek.
"In her arms I have never felt anything but beloved," he said softly, and the ache in his voice was like a threnody for times past. His gaze returned to Éomer, dark grey eyes steadily meeting deep brown. "But the fact remains that all this time she has loved you still."
"Ay," said Éomer simply. He would not flinch from it, nor soften it for Faramir's sake. But he knew he must try to help explain it, dread though he might to make the attempt.
"Tonight..." - Éomer's mouth could not even frame the words 'before she came to me' - "... did she say aught to you of the one night we touched e'er this?" He faltered. "The circumstances surrounding it, I mean."
Faramir's voice trembled slightly as he replied. "Ay, being Éowyn, having committed herself to speak she told me all. I know it was a dark night for Rohan, the eve of the Rohirrim's ride to Gondor. I know it was darker still for her, for Aragorn had taken the Paths of the Dead, refusing either be stayed by her or to take her amongst his companions." He looked down at the slender, graceful hands in his lap. "Thus at last it was made plain to her she held no sway with him and though it was all against his wish that Aragorn hurt her, still she was grieved beyond measure."
Éomer nodded grimly. The sound of the tears Éowyn could hold in no longer that had wrung his heart that night, and would have taken him to her room had she not come to his, would remain with him always.
"I know too," Faramir continued resolutely, "she had long been brought low by the attentions of the worm Grima, even after his banishment the memory of his lust oppressing her spirits."
"Ay, curse the traitor," muttered Éomer reflexively, as he ever did when Wormtongue's name was mentioned, "it was but one of the many evils he wrought."
Useless though he knew it was, he felt a familiar dull rage spark within him, along with the desire to throttle life from a man long as dead as the countrymen he had sold to Saruman's slaughter.
Faramir's body was preternaturally still.
"And so it was, feeling stained by one man, and with the dreams she had dared to harbour for another crushed and her heart at its uttermost extreme, she came to you seeking the comfort she had long in her pride denied herself."
"And I held her meaning only to give it, I swear," Éomer assented, voice barely above a whisper. The memory of the moments that had followed the realisation, as Éowyn lay warm and soft in his embrace, that his love for her was that of a man for a woman still held a terrible power. Even now when that love had been lived to its fullest and the consequences were being faced he felt the fear, felt a part of him crying, stop, stop, let it not be so, let all things be as they were, safe and known.
But nay, things could never be as they were, and all that had happened and not happened that night had created a web of circumstance into which the fine, trusting and blameless man who sat in pain beside him now had been drawn. Éomer had to do all he could to cut him loose.
He turned his head towards the Steward, looking into haunted grey eyes and a pale, determined face, its lines, so beautiful and gentle when at peace, now set into a stony will to endure whatever fate might next deal out.
Gods, how was he to do it? How could he sit beside his sister's mate and speak of the moment she had first laid her gorgeous mouth to his own, of the confusion and denial that had sealed Faramir's betrayal before he had ever met either of the Rohan kin?
Faramir held himself taut and waiting while Éomer tugged his mane tight around his fingers, a storm raging behind his dark eyes.
I did not ask for this love, he thought, but I was granted it and its fragile life has been lived to the fullest. What deeper joy will I know than that it has given me this night and what deeper pain can I know to speak truth to Faramir than it has already afforded me? What did I come here for if not to do so? I will not be bested by my own fear, nor be weak when for Éowyn's future I must be strong.
His eyelids dropped briefly over his clouded eyes and when he looked at the Steward again they were clear.
"Faramir," he said steadily, "the love that revealed itself between Éowyn and me that night is one every single one of us grows up regarding as dark and unnatural, abhorrent before all, surely never meant to be. I cannot express to you how it was for me to hold her and understand at last what I truly felt for her, as if every joy and every shame I could ever know had been pressed upon me in one blinding instant. But for Éowyn, at that time - with the taint of Grima still upon her and her love for Aragorn in ruins - to find that we were turning to each other in desire seemed more like proof of some final madness come upon her, a last cruel joke of life to tell her she would never be fit for a lover she could stand beside in joy and honour. The simple truth that we wanted each other was something she had to put from her, as far away as she could. And thus it was she left me e'er passion had barely kindled between us, and resolved to join the Muster."
And thus perhaps, Faramir thought in his turn, she helped to change Middle-Earth's fate, but beyond doubt my own. He felt the pain inside his head throb dully once more but ignored it.
"Why is it you choose to take me back to this night, Éomer?" he asked coolly. "Once I assure you was enough to bear."
Éomer grimaced. "It is not my wish to give you further pain, Steward, believe me. But if I tell you again what Éowyn has surely already told you it is because you must know - you must know - that all these months you have tenderly loved each other she has been utterly yours. She walked away from me that night and did not look back - "
"With her will she walked away," corrected Faramir quietly. "Her heart stayed with you all the way to Gondor."
Gods, Éowyn, thought Éomer raggedly, your candour will kill us all.
"It matters not," he said, with more harshness than he intended. "The fact remains that when Aragorn brought her back from the evil vales the Witch King's wounding had sent her to, whatever feeling she had had for me that night was buried so deep I deemed it gone from her."
His voice dropped. "Not that I cared then. I only cared that she lived."
"Of course, Éomer."
In the story of the circumstances that had brought Éowyn to him, Faramir had always found it an awful thing that Éomer had had to find his sister fallen upon the Pelennor as though set down there by some malign power, and believe her dead. Now he realised how much deeper the agony must have driven, if that were even possible, for he knew Éomer would have held himself responsible for her being there at all.
"When she awoke, how my heart swelled within in me to know that she had survived," breathed Éomer, "and more than this that there was true, sweet joy in her that I had not fallen in battle as the voices of her dreams had told her, that she loved me still as brother. But as we spoke further, of Theoden's death and Merry's valour, I saw remembrance of all her many griefs rising behind her eyes, reclaiming her happiness like the tide rolls in to reclaim the shore, and I sensed in her afresh a dull anguish that we had ever shared any feeling beyond that of kin, and further to this a nameless despair that seemed to reach to the very core of her. In the two days in which the commanders took counsel and re-grouped our forces for departure from the city I spent every second I could spare with her and she was nothing but gentle and kind with me, and knew better than to speak to me of riding out again because I would not have stood to hear it, but I knew she saw little use else in the life Aragorn had saved."
Faramir's brows drew together in remembered pain.
"The Black Breath is cruel, Éomer. Its genius is to work upon whatever fear and doubt and self-hatred you already carry in your soul, severing you strand by strand from the anchor of all that is good and true within you until at last it breaks your will to live. Even when one is recalled to the world by a loving hand, as we were, it is not a malady to be sloughed off all in a moment."
Faramir could not suppress the barest of shudders, and Éomer nodded slowly. Éowyn had never spoken at any length about her time in thrall to darkness but he knew the memory of it lived in her and her mate still, as doubtless it did in Merry too.
"All the more credit, then," said Éomer soberly, "to the bond you and Éowyn came to share that upon my return to the city I found her as strong and sure as I had not known her since the shadow of Isengard had fallen across our homeland, and moreover glowing with the quiet joy of a woman who has found her life's companion. The hope she found in you gave her the strength to put all her darkness behind her, a darkness that included the moments she and I had shared. It is but scant days ago that the feelings for me born that night returned to haunt her. She gave herself to you as you have given yourself to her, Steward, in good faith and profound love. She came to you with a free heart, I beg that for all you have endured you understand this. She did not deceive you."
Faramir's grey eyes rested sadly upon Éomer's earnest face. "Ah, but she did, just a little."
Éomer frowned.
"She let me believe that it was love for Aragorn that had driven her to battle," said Faramir. Éomer made to speak. "Oh, she did not lie to me, and say that herself. But she did not gainsay me when that is what I put to her."
"Because she loves you, Steward!" Éomer burst out vehemently, his determined calm overcome by the impetuousness that was truer to his nature. "If it was not the bare unvarnished truth it was no lie. She had cleaved to you and looked to make her life with you. Believing feeling for me was dead and gone, why would she wish you to know it had ever lived? By the gods, if nothing else surely you must forgive her that."
Faramir eyed Éomer almost dispassionately, as he might size up a captured foe brought to him in chains to blurt out his story.
"You fight for her with both the ardour of a lover and the fierceness that defends kin before all."
Éomer coloured but would not look away. "How else would you have me fight for her, Steward?"
As the two regarded each other Faramir felt all but overborne by the force of the other man's gaze and as though he must put up walls within himself to protect the pure steady flame of love still burning in his heart for Éowyn being consumed by the wildfire of Éomer's. But against the helplessness that lay beneath the horselord's strength his native sympathy had no defence.
"Be comforted, Rohan King," he said finally, with a small sigh. "That I even make the point is simply the small rebellion of a man who finds himself in circumstances he did not choose. I do not feel deceived by her, Éomer. I only feel her loss."
Éomer schooled himself to patience. "She is not lost to you, unless you would have it so."
Faramir's voice dropped, slipping in its authority. "Nay, 'tis not for me to decide. Who can say where any of our hearts will end up in this business?"
Éomer knew it was useless to try to argue further with Faramir. In any case, he thought, it is not I but Éowyn who should be sitting here beside him now. I have done all I can.
He turned to the Steward with the idea of taking his leave to find the other man looking at him, forehead creased in thought, and he spent several uncomfortable moments beneath his scrutiny before he spoke.
"How did you bear it, Éomer?"
Éomer's dark eyes widened in surprise.
"I have never felt anything less than wholeheartedly welcomed by you as Éowyn's mate," said Faramir, "and I have known a quiet pride that you have found me acceptable to wed with her. That all this time you have carried the weight of your love alone whilst offering me a friendship I can only find sincere is nothing less than a marvel to me."
Of all the things Éomer had expected to hear from Faramir it was not this. He barely knew how to answer him, and looked briefly up to the rosy banners of cloud that streamed away from the dawning sun as though they might tell him how.
"You are worth anyone's friendship, Faramir," he said simply at last, "and many are the demons a man may wrestle with in the night and yet face the day with calmness, when he must."
"Ay," breathed Faramir, "a strong man."
Éomer shrugged.
"What strength I have had has ever been aided by knowing that the love between you and Éowyn is true and deep. All who look upon you together know it but I, watching over you both with double vigilance for a sister twice-beloved… I know it best of all. I could not ask for a finer man to be her mate, nor one who better understands her or treasures her more for all that she is. How could I not want for her a happiness with you she could never find with me? And if the sweetness of the love you bear her were not enough to keep mine silent, still it would remain that Éowyn never once spoke openly with me of our moments together. I could have had no clearer sign that she left them far behind her. Save for a glancing reference on but two occasions I could name you, I might have thought it a crazed dream of mine that we had ever even touched."
Faramir nodded slowly.
"She told me of this. And with the same determined defence of you that you have shown for her, she told me also that you respected her silence and never once broached the subject of what had passed between you even though she knew it pained you still." Faramir twisted a lock of his dark hair around one strong, slender finger as he pondered this. "I cannot but deem it strangely unlike her, who in all matters else never flinches from speaking of what is hardest. Cruel, almost."
You would debate Éowyn's cruelty towards *me*? thought Éomer wonderingly.
"I do not deny it would have aided me if we could have spoken of it just once. But I think perhaps, knowing I loved her still, her instincts told her to be afraid. I cannot reproach her, Faramir. She had much to protect. Everything she risks now."
"Yet for all her efforts it was not words that were to be feared."
At Faramir's quiet statement Éomer felt a twist in his belly, sensing what was coming.
Faramir gently pressed his fingers against his forehead once more. "Such a little thing in the end to bring her back to you. By chance to see you at midnight in another woman's arms."
Gods, thought Éomer, and I believed I felt shame at that moment when I realised Éowyn had seen me with that bold little creature. It was nothing to sitting here with her mate while he calmly tells me of it.
"But after all, love is of the senses as well of the soul," said Faramir measuredly, with the resignation of one who has had a long night of pain in which to arrive at his conclusion, "and even when the heart and mind have counselled to forget, flesh remembers. It is a canny ally to any truth that yearns to be known once more. When she saw you there, like that, she remembered not the brother she had made you all these months, but the lover she had wanted so desperately, and had run from. And somewhere deep within her it was as though she felt an affront that another woman who did not love you as she did should stand in her place."
"Faramir - "
"That morning when we awoke, I knew she was troubled. I did not know she was no longer mine."
"Please - "
"When she told me of this tonight she said to me - "
"Gods, Faramir, why do you speak of it?" Éomer's hushed words escaped him despite himself.
"Why did you come hence to me when you knew it would rend me?" Faramir shot back. "Because you must, to ease your soul's ache."
Éomer stared at the ground, his hands wound so tightly in his mane he thought he might pull it out by the roots. He wondered vaguely if he was going to be ill, but beside him Faramir continued as though the words Éowyn had spoken to him had been imprinted upon his very being.
"My love, she said, I know that one day he will hold another woman thus, one who will not be simply some sweet distraction or passing pleasure - nay, she will be his true beloved, his heart-mate and his home, as he will be hers. But since that night in the hallway, when I knew him once more as the man I had loved and deserted, it has grown upon me that I cannot live, nor cleave to you as is my deepest desire, until I have been his and he mine, if only for one fleeting night, so that we might be released from the bond already forged between us. On the night we touched in Rohan, body and soul we made a promise to each other, unspoken but unbreakable. In my fear I fled, and out of fear I found you, Faramir, when least I looked for any love, let alone a life's mate - but that promise holds me still, and I must fulfil it even should I lose you. For I know if I do not we are already lost."
Finally Faramir ceased to speak, his voice fading away into a long, slow exhalation.
Éomer closed his eyes. He felt the whole of the last night pass through him, from his waking to find Éowyn by his bedside, through all their hours of sweet, fierce loving, to watching her walk away from him to her own room, the golden hair he had tenderly brushed the tangles from flooding down the back she held straight and determined. Precious, beloved Éowyn.
His eyes flickered open once more, and he looked at the Steward, Éowyn's mate and her equal, her heart's dearest wish.
"And it is done, Faramir. The promise has been kept and she is free from its spell. Please let her prove to you that the passing of this night means all her future happiness - if you will but grant it back to her - lies with you."
The Steward's returning glance was shrewd and considering.
"And what of your happiness, Rohan King?"
Éomer took a breath. "My happiness will be to see Éowyn in your arms, forgiven and still beloved, and to stand beside you both before your people and see you wed."
Faramir's eyes narrowed. "Such would be the wish of the man of honour I know you to be. But what of the man who loves Éowyn?"
Éomer's gaze was steady.
"His wish is the same. As long as you are wed I can swear to you without fear I have all the happiness I need to endure whatever fate brings to me hereafter."
"Tell me how that can possibly be."
Éomer sighed softly. "Faramir, the tenderest hand has healed my most grievous hurt - which has been neither the shame of loving my sister, nor the pain of knowing she loves another man, but rather the pain and shame combined of having to believe her love for me had lived and died in Edoras, a swift awakening from a madness that has claimed me utterly ever since. Now I know the woman I have loved has loved me in return. Some are never granted such true joy, even for a single night. If I must take up my life without her, still I know our love has been real, and shared. It will suffice."
Faramir looked dubiously upon the vital, passionate stallion of the Rohirrim.
"For the rest of your days, Éomer?"
Éomer laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, there will be distractions for me soon enough if others have their way. Rohan's new King must have a Queen, oh yes, and together they must give the throne its heirs. Already those closest to me within my court chide me for not looking harder for a wife since my coronation. Theoden was always soft with Theodred, thinking there would be time enough for him to leave his wenching ways and come at last to heel, and they do not intend to make the same mistake with me. They believe a royal marriage and children's laughter ringing out from the corridors of Meduseld will gladden the hearts of all and hasten the healing of our land so long in darkness. No doubt they are right."
Éomer's grim face softened a little.
"I don't suppose I shall mind so very much. It has always been my wish one day to be a father, and in all ways I would try to honour my wife, even one pressed upon me by the will of others. A tribe of children about us to vex us much and bless us more might bind us together over time even if we do not stand in perfect union from the start."
Faramir frowned. Éomer was a man born to love a woman from the depths of his soul to her full deserving, not make some marriage of royal expediency, of that he was certain. Something Éomer had said to him earlier snagged at his thoughts.
"The woman you once loved, Éomer, what of her?"
"Steward?" Éomer groped for a connection, making it just as Faramir replied.
"You told me you gave your heart to a woman who was never your betrothed. Why was that?"
Éomer felt himself hesitating.
"Not for lack of longing to wed her, you may be certain," he said shortly. He had already spoken of Semmeth more this night than in years and had no wish to do so again. "There were certain - obstacles."
"Will you tell me of her?"
Éomer swung sharply to look at the Steward. "That you may know I have loved before Éowyn, and perhaps may again?"
"Perhaps… probably…" Faramir faltered, and in the bare blink of an eye he seemed deserted by the composure he had fought for and regained throughout their conversation, and to Éomer looked as miserable as the first time he had lost it. "I should not have spoken."
Éomer sighed and tugged his mane.
My friend, you need to be held, he thought, tight and close to cry out your pain, as Éowyn held me. She is surely looking for you by now, and pray gods she comes to you soon. In the meantime if you asked me to stand on my head and sing all three hours of the lay of Eorl the Young I would do it, if you thought it would help you. To speak of her again surely cannot be so very hard.
"Semmeth," he said softly. "Her name was Semmeth. And if you would have me speak of her for moments rather than days I will not dwell overlong upon the wild dark curls that fell to her waist or her blue eyes slanted like a cat's or her smile that could melt a man with its promise - beauty that left me speechless every time I beheld it anew - nor upon her free spirit or her loving heart or her rich laughter or any one of the thousand things about her that drew me to her. Perhaps you will not wish me to speak of her at all when I tell you she was a whore."
While Éomer had spoken Faramir had slowly found his calm again.
"And perhaps the fact that we have sat together all this while," he returned mildly, without rancour, "will tell you the judgments I make are my own, not the world's."
Éomer bit his lip and looked away, but Faramir was not thrown from his course.
"So that is why you could not wed her," he prompted gently, "because she was not deemed a fitting match for a son of a ruling house."
"Ay," concurred Éomer, "but I loved her still, foolish stripling youth that I was, who had known nothing but the fond embraces of a few kindly kitchen-maids and tavern wenches e'er Theodred gave me the gift of her favours when I managed to return from my first proper campaign without being spitted by an Orc. Perhaps in Gondor your ways are similar."
"Ay, and no doubt they are everywhere, young men being what they are," said Faramir. "As I recall it, Boromir was particularly stringent in enforcing the custom with me."
The two men looked at each other, and despite everything that lay between them now their eyes were soft. More than once over the months of their acquaintance they had shared stories of the brother and the cousin they had lost, each gentle reminiscence a small contribution towards the healing of grief still fresh.
"I suppose I have Theodred to bless or blame for all that came after," said Éomer. "He was always extravagant, as though he somehow knew he must take life in both hands e'er he lost it so young. He paid for me not just to have an hour but the whole night with her. I think he just wanted to see the dazed look on my face when I stumbled into the morning light the day after, like a puppy that has never had its belly so expertly scratched. But he did not expect that I would have fallen into love as deep as a well of cool water, so deep I would drown in it for three years and the memory of it would never leave me. And he would have laughed out loud if someone had told him that in time Semmeth, goddess of the night, would come to love his cub of a cousin in return."
Faramir tried to picture what that younger Éomer would have been like. His frame would have been slighter, large angular shoulders suggesting growth still to come. The frank, honest brown eyes, forever startling in their intensity, had probably been almost devastating in their vulnerability then, and the ardour and vitality that were so much a part of him would still have been raw, yet to have their edges rounded by experience. Young, yes, but the gods knew he would still have been singular enough to capture the attention of many, even a beautiful worldly woman.
"But here is the wonder of it, Faramir," said Éomer, his voice hushed as though still somewhere inside himself amazed, "that she, seven years my senior and filling the fantasies of every man who ever looked upon her, had never really known love either before she met me. Ay, she had known all the ways of lust from the time she was an orphaned girl-child pushed from farm to farm in the northern vales of our country, used and discarded by every second man along the way, feared and reviled for her feyness and beauty by their womenfolk, who muttered and gossiped that Saruman himself had sired her in his wanderings before the days he shut himself up in his dark tower. In the end, because she could not settle to any job in town or country without being pawed at by a master or turned out by a jealous mistress, she decided she might as well use the desire she inspired to her advantage, and in time became the most celebrated of all the night's women in Edoras, and men came the length and breadth of Rohan to pay for her favours. But in all that time, in all those fevered couplings, with all those men in thrall to what her body could give them, no one had ever really cared for her, all of her."
"Until you," murmured Faramir.
Éomer shrugged. "I suppose that little lonely child still inside her warmed to the child I still half-was when I met her. And with all that she had seen and endured, she was strong, and wise in the ways of the world, and the woman she already was helped to shape the man I became, strange though it may sound to say it."
"It does not sound strange, Rohan King."
"Nay? Perhaps not. Certainly others found the way we lived our life together strange. To those who did not know us well it barely seemed a union at all, no more than a young warrior and his favourite, for in loving me she did not cleave to me only but remained what she had become, a queen of the midnight world. You can imagine at first that went hard with me, but in time I came to understand that in her house of women her beauty was her strength and her power, where once it had only been her curse, and that amongst her sisters there she found bonds of friendship and a simple stability of life she had never experienced until then. For a few nightly hours of a trade from which she had long learned to divorce her feelings she had a place where she was respected and accepted as she had never been in her life before. Why, since she was denied a place among my household as my bride, should she wait out empty days in an empty house praying I would return safe and whole from the borders in its stead?"
The vague bristling in Éomer's tone told Faramir how many times he had had to present this argument to others who had no doubt thought him some kind of pitiable fool to give his heart to a woman who gave her body to other men.
"But the day did come," Éomer went on more gently, "when those who laughed behind their hands about us no longer bothered me, for I had learnt the lesson she had long had in her keeping, that we were lucky to know love at all. She had seen that men came to her because they had none in their lives, or their hearts were closed to it, or their wives were cold. And when I looked around at my fellows I saw so many of them chasing this girl or that simply for the conquest and the pleasure of it not for true feeling, or being led merry dances by women who only wanted their pride fed or marriage vows, and cared little which man did the supplying. But I - I got to walk with her under the drifting blossom upon a riverbank, swing her atop my horse with me and ride out over the plains beneath a glowing sky, love her until neither of us had breath left for endearments, talk and argue and laugh with her and know true joy of the heart. Who can really understand the mystery that brings one person together with another in harmony? All I know is we were two souls, Éomer and Semmeth, and when one called, the other answered, that is all."
Faramir looked searchingly at Éomer, whose turn it was to look out to the southern hills before them, lost in memory. This had been a true love, that much was clear, not an infatuation of youth for all that he had been young, and it lived in Éomer's heart still. So where was this woman now, that love for Éowyn could have claimed him so utterly, against all the world's prohibition, and against the stern strength of his own honour that would never have wished to take her from another man?
The answer came to Faramir with a chill.
"She is dead, isn't she?"
Éomer fixed him with a look that Faramir knew must be the last thing the foes of Rohan saw before they fell beneath his sword, and could not but feel glad to know also that he himself was not the enemy in Éomer's field of vision.
"Ay, these many years." Éomer turned away again, and his words fell heavily, like dull blows upon a door which, having shut, will never open again. "Another man came to love her, if you can call blind obsession love, a jealous, violent man. He hated it that he was a man of property and influence who would have wed her and let the gossip-mongers be damned, and still she preferred the whelp of the house of Eorl who could offer her nothing but himself. He did not understand that no matter how many times a woman's body has been bought her heart and her spirit remain her gifts to bestow where she wills. Perhaps no one had ever said him nay in his whole life. I suppose wanting to possess her ate his mind in the end… because…"
"Because he killed her," Faramir finished softly for him.
"Ay," Éomer whispered. "Or at least, her body could not survive the horror he dealt her." He closed his eyes. "One night he came to her house of women. He was drunk and cursing her. I think he meant to abduct her and keep her somewhere until she agreed to be his. At any rate he laid a hand to her and she fought him, as she would do. In the struggle she got his knife from him, which enraged him. He got it back from her. And he took his revenge upon her. For loving me instead of him."
"Éomer - " Faramir wanted to tell him that he need not go on, but he himself had demanded that the floodgate be opened, and what was within must pour out.
"I was home from the borders at the time, gods be praised that I was granted some last moments with her. I was dining with my family and intending to be with her that night when her house sent word of what had happened. It was my mother who said she must be brought to Meduseld where we had healers with skills that might help her. Women know, in the end, that underneath all our rules and customs, which divide as often as they bind, it is only love that matters. Only love. But it was not enough to save her in the end. Her wounds were too severe."
Faramir watched Éomer's hands twist into fists upon his lap.
"Was this man brought to justice for her murder?"
Éomer scowled. "It depends on what you call justice, Steward. He was not brought to trial before the laws of our country. He did not live to see the morning."
Faramir drew a quiet breath.
"Most would deem that justice and not call you to account, Éomer."
Éomer shook his head.
"It was not I. I stayed with Semmeth until she died when the sun rose, its first rays caressing her beautiful face as it passed into stillness. No, some of my eored were at the house when he attacked her. They took him captive, too late, after her screams had alerted them to the danger she was in. When word was sent back to her sisters that she would not survive the night they were still holding him there. They were his judges."
Faramir saw in his mind fell-faced Rohirrim sheathing their blades over a crumpled figure. And saw in a Meduseld chamber that young Éomer, who already knew the exigencies and outrages of warfare, holding the pale hand of his beloved and smoothing stray raven curls from her cheek as she lay slipping away from life, learning the bitter lesson that passion has a dark side and love, some way, somehow, will always have a cost.
"I am sorry, Éomer."
Éomer dashed away the tears he had known must come with a bark of bitter laughter.
"As well you might be, Faramir, for if Semmeth had been my heart-mate these last years gone I would never have fallen into the madness of loving the only other woman Rohan has to match her in my eyes."
"That is not what I meant."
The two men locked gazes.
"Ay, I know," said Éomer huskily, "forgive me my harshness. It is one of the things Éowyn loves most about you, Steward, that you have kind words and an understanding heart for all who cross your path. Even now, even for me."
Faramir grimaced. Saddened though he was by the conclusion of Éomer's story, it had almost been a relief to think about something other than their own situation for a moment. But now Éomer had put his ancient grief back into the bottom of his heart where he kept it and was dragging him almost unwillingly back in to the present. He rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"What would better suit you then, Rohan King? Recrimination? Anger?"
Éomer stared at the ground.
"If you dealt me either it would only be my due."
Faramir sighed. "Believe me, I have anger enough to satisfy you, Éomer - and ay, not just for you but for Éowyn, that she could hurt me thus when I have sworn my life to her. And for myself, for being but living proof of the oldest saw there is, that love is blind, because in the happiness of my own heart I failed to divine the secret of hers and yours. But it is an anger I cannot keep a hold of. It slips away from me like quicksilver the moment that I feel it, and I am not sure what purpose it would serve could I gather it to me in any case."
Éomer was looking at the Steward now.
"You did not set out to hurt me, nor she," said Faramir wearily. "You did not even know me when first you understood that there was feeling between you. And tonight, when she came to you offering fulfillment of the passion forced to lie dormant for so long… perhaps I would have the right to reproach you if I could honestly say that in your stead I would have refused her, but can any man who loves such a woman stand up and make that claim? I cannot. You love each other, and ay, this I believe in the face of the doubts you swear in any case are unfounded, she loves me still. No one planned this, nor willed it happen. It simply is."
*It simply is*.
His words sat upon the breeze until it gently blew them away, and there was silence between the two men.
Faramir's dark head drooped a little, as though he had used up the last of his strength to speak, so it was Éomer, glancing back towards the palace, who first saw the pale slender form moving in and out of the trees at the bottom of the slope. His heart leapt, and he gripped Faramir's arm.
"Mark, friend."
Faramir gave a sharp intake of breath as he followed Éomer's gaze and watched the slight figure take shape as the Lady Éowyn of Rohan walking gravely in their direction.
The play of emotions over his fine face was grievous for Éomer to observe.
*Sweet gods, what have we done to you?*
But when he looked back towards Éowyn, he felt his heart constrict with love, and his grip on Faramir's arm tightened imperceptibly.
Don't hurt her, please don't hurt her, he found himself silently begging, as if Faramir were not the one who was devastated and as he would feel if he himself had played no part in calling the love that lay between his sister and the Steward into question. Does any force exist, he wondered, with more strength and less logic than the ties of blood? Couple it with the love of man for woman and I am half a lunatic.
"'Tis too soon... " breathed Faramir beside him. "It feels... too soon..."
Éomer rose and clasped Faramir's shoulder briefly.
"It cannot be too soon to know she loves you still and wants you only. Courage, friend, let her draw the thorn from your heart. It need cause you pain but for a little while. I deeply thank you that you have borne to hear the words I came to say, and take my leave of you trusting that next time we meet you will have found them to be true."
Faramir looked up at him. "Stay a moment longer, Rohan King."
Éomer paled.
"This is not the weather, Faramir, that the three of us may stand around and blithely discuss it. I have already tarried here too long. You and Éowyn should only be with each other now."
"Just until she reaches us, grant me that."
Éomer looked at the Steward, right into him to see his soul stretched tight as a drawn bow. He needs us to be together before him, he realised, to know this night has really been true. Perhaps even to see how she looks upon me and upon him so that he might judge where her heart lies. Would I not want as much, were it me?
Éomer nodded slowly. "Ay, then."
He watched as Faramir slowly unbent his lean body from the stone bench and stood at graceful attention, as he would do in deference for the approach of any woman, and as if the next moments were not ones that might determine the course of the rest of his life.
Ah beloved, Éomer thought as the two of them faced towards Éowyn, what a mate you have here. And what a gift you have given me, that for the first time I do not die a little knowing as you walk towards us both it is him you come for not me.
Quiet words reached him. "I am afraid, Éomer."
Éomer looked at Faramir, then at Éowyn treading straight as an arrow across the greensward.
No more afraid than she I am certain of it, he thought, and the gods know I am petrified.
But all Faramir saw when Éomer turned back to him was a set jaw and burning eyes.
"Fear nothing."
For a moment Faramir felt he knew what it was like to be a soldier under Éomer's command, sure that he dealt the same unyielding sternness and fierce encouragement to his men before battle. Let no thought of an evil outcome be countenanced, a strong spirit steadies the sword-arm, and victory must first begin in the mind.
But this is love, not warfare, thought Faramir, and I cannot help but fear. I fear to lose her, and forever live without the light she has brought to my life. I fear that if she stays by me I can never truly trust her again. I fear I am not strong enough to bear it either way.
He felt the presence of the Rohan King beside him, so close he could smell the scent upon his skin. Fresh soap. They bathed together, I suppose, Faramir thought, a last benediction before parting. He felt his heart tighten against a wave of sadness, felt the anger he had spoken of flare briefly and recede, leaving in its wake a realisation he did not expect.
When I saw him coming from the palace I wished the ground would swallow me up, so little did I wish to speak to him, he thought. And yet, strange to say, I am almost glad he is here beside me now that his sister follows after him.
Together, in silence, the two men waited for Éowyn to reach them.
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