For drinkupmehearties

[shieldofrohan]

The door to Jack's cell opens just before dawn. Éowyn stands there, dressed for riding - breeches under her gown, her hair braided back close to her scalp - and looks at him for a moment, hand on hip, before beckoning for his things to be brought. His sword will be given back to him: his gun will not. She knows, after all, that if it comes to a fight with swords, she is a more than equal match for him, but her experiences in the Capitol have let her know just how dangerous a gun can be in the wrong hands.

Outside, the horses are waiting. She has chosen a mare for him, docile and easy to ride, with a high saddle that should be easy to stay in. Even with their experience in the Arena, she's loath to trust his riding. There's a big difference between staying in the saddle for an hour or so with adrenaline pumping through your veins, and staying in the saddle for the long day's ride that lies ahead of them.

Her own horse, of course, gives her no such worries. The grey stallion has borne her well since the Pelennor Fields, and she's more comfortable in his saddle than she could ever be with both feet on the ground. As they head out into the courtyard, he raises his head and whickers at her, making her smile.

Faramir stands beside the horses, though he is not dressed for travel. As she approaches, he goes to meet her, ignoring Jack for the moment as he ducks his head to kiss her. "You are sure of this?"

"I am sure," she answers, with a fond smile, and leans up to kiss him in return. "Do not linger here too long, love. Emyn Arnen is not nearly so fair without you in it."

He laughs, low in his throat, and traces his fingertips over her cheek. "How can it be made fairer by my presence, when you are already there to illuminate it?" Straightening up with a kiss to her forehead, he smiles. "I will be a few days, no more. Travel well, my lady. And for my sake, if you should see an enemy, ride away, and not towards them."

Éowyn smiles, shaking her head, and pulls away. "Jack, do you need help mounting, or can you manage?"

Comments

[drinkupmehearties]

His attention draws over to where she points, to the city that unravels around them as the two ride on and into the courtyard. As they pass by the populace, Jack returns the curious looks with mutual interest, watching as their reverence for Eowyn turns to inquisitive stares when their eyes find him.

Once she speaks, however, his gaze drifts back to her. "I imagine there's quite a bit of history to this place, then. Cozy, nonetheless." A short pause, filled with the noise of the horse's hooves striking the ground. "Where to, now?" He doesn't voice the thought, but all the same he's wondering whether he'll be returned right back to another jail cell.

[shieldofrohan]

"I'll have a room readied." She reins her horse in, slipping easily out of the saddle. She can imagine what he's thinking, and almost adds We have no cells here, but thinks better of it. Instead, shaking her hair back, she starts to lead her horse towards the stables. "It may not be the most luxurious, but I doubt you will find it too unbearable."

There's a certain dryness in her tone. She knows perfectly well that they've both stayed in far, far worse places.

[drinkupmehearties]

Jack follows suit, sliding down from the saddle and bundling the reins in his hand to lead the mare in the direction that Eowyn heads. He's relieved; in part, because he's sorely and obviously so unaccustomed to such long, tiresome journeys on horseback. An actual bed to sleep in sounded wonderful at this point. But, of course, it also eases him to know that he won't spend his time here behind iron bars.

He picks up on her tone and the corner of his mouth perks just a touch, tone wry in turn. "I'm much obliged. And I'll do me best to endure it."

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn doesn't hurry. She lingers in the stable a long time after sending one of the servants off to ready a room, and since nobody's directing Jack anywhere else, she's presumably expecting him to stay while she sees to the horses - not just feeding and watering them, but brushing them down as well. She's not one to cut corners, especially not when it comes to her beloved horses.

For the most part, she ignores him while she works, besides occasionally gesturing for him to pass her something. At last, she says, "You'll be across the hall from me. Where I can keep an eye on you, if need be."

[drinkupmehearties]

In between her silent requests Jack prods around the stables, not content to stand around in idleness. She doesn't seem to be interested in any conversation and so he doesn't bother, instead occupying his time by fiddling with various items. His hand stops atop a saddle when she finally does speak; Jack looks to her, an eyebrow perked.

"Keep an eye on me." He drifts over to where she is, leaning a shoulder against the nearest wall, arms folded across his chest. "You distrust me that much, now." Far from him to argue that any mistrust in him would be misplaced. But that doesn't stop him from feeling chafed at the idea of being monitored.

[shieldofrohan]

She looks at him long and hard, her hand resting on her hip, before she speaks. "Last night, you were in a cell. Yesterday, I swore to my King and to my lord husband that I would be your guard, that I would see you held until I am told otherwise." Patting her horse's neck, she turns to face Jack more fully. "So, yes, I distrust you that much. Enough that I will not stake my honour and Faramir's on your sense of right and wrong. Be glad I have put you in a room that locks from the inside."

There's no rancour in it. If anything, there's an undercurrent of dry humour. She means every word, though, and makes it clear, not breaking eye contact and barely blinking until she's said her piece.

[drinkupmehearties]

Jack keeps his eyes locked with hers, a steady look that's accompanied by only a subtle upward twitch in the corner of his mouth. He's realized, by this point, that having patience in this whole situation will benefit him the most in the long run; this conversation, then, mostly helps to paint a clearer picture of where he stands with her.

"O' course. I'm immensely glad for it." He taps a couple fingers to his temple, a mild smile pressed to his lips. "Wouldn't want to offend your enduring sense of honor with me terrible, roguish nature." His gaze shifts briefly to one of the horses for a beat, then back to her. "So then, besides that, where's this wine you spoke of earlier?"

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn holds his gaze for a moment, then relaxes a little, her expression softening along with her stance. "Five minutes," she promises, with a huff that might be a laugh. "Let me check their hooves for stones, and then we will go inside and you may have enough wine to pickle yourself."

[drinkupmehearties]

At that, Jack appears to ease up a bit as well. Her last remark has wrested a small half-smile from him, and there's hint of humor in his expression. "That's just about as much as I'll need, I suppose." A beat passes, then he nods towards one of the horses. "Could I lend a hand with it?"

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn considers for a moment, looking him up and down, then nods. "Just be sure you get any stones or mud from under her shoes. If she goes lame, I'll hold you accountable." She tosses him a short, blunt metal hook. "Use this. Don't get kicked. Stand next to her, not behind."

Honestly, she's a little proud of him for asking. She remembers how uneasy he was around horses when she first taught him to ride, so that he's asking to help with them... it means a lot more than she'd expected it to. Besides, she's always believed that if you're going to ride horses, you should know how to care for them, as well.

She beckons him over, squatting down to pick up one of her horse's hooves. "Like this. Be gentle, their feet aren't so hard as you'd think, and if you prick them, they'll know it."

[drinkupmehearties]

He catches the hook, rolling the tool in his hand to inspect it with some light curiosity, then glances over to her. "Aye, o' course. I'll be sure to be gentle an' thorough." He'd surprised himself with asking, too, honestly. But she's made him more comfortable with the beasts than he'd ever expected to be, and he really didn't mind lending her a hand.

Jack follows over to where she is, kneeling next to her and watching intently as she cleans the horse's hoof. Once she's finished with that, Jack shifts over to the next one and tentatively reaches forward, imitating the gentle way she'd raised up the horse's hoof and supporting it in his hand.

"I wouldn't have expected their hooves to be sensitive as such. 'Course, I don't know too much about horses. But even so." Then, as Jack starts to clean it with the hook, he adds, "Be sure to tell me if I'm doing it wrong, luv."

[shieldofrohan]

She watches him closely, and nods. "Well enough," she says, after a moment, and smiles. "And it isn't their hooves, as such. You see that fleshy part, there, that you're working around? To jab a horse there is like sticking something under a man's fingernail. It's part of why we shoe them, to guard their feet in harder riding." Turning, she picks up one of the other horse's hooves, clicking her tongue gently as she examines it for stones. "One of the few things the Capitol did right. I don't know who was shoeing their horses, but he did a better job than most of their grooms."

[drinkupmehearties]

He pauses for a second to glance closer at where she'd spoken about, intrigued, then continues on working. "Blimey, no wonder they don't care to be pricked there. Sounds like it'd be very much unpleasant." Finished with that one, Jack navigates around the horse and settles into examining the next hoof. He may've been fairly hesitant a few minutes earlier, unsure how wise it was to place himself so close to a horse's hooves like this, but he's slowly become more relaxed.

"A wonder that any Capitolite would've cared long enough to do it right."

[shieldofrohan]

"A wonder that any Capitolite would have stooped themselves to any such messy work as blacksmithing," Éowyn responds wryly, stroking the horse's flank absent-mindedly as she moves on to the next hoof. "I imagine they had some Districter do it. Or one of their slaves." The horror and fear the Avoxes instilled in her is still there in her voice, underneath the contempt. That memory is one of those that hasn't even begun to fade, a thought that still wakes her sweating in the middle of the night from dreams of being docile and tongueless.

She shakes her head, clearing her throat, and straightens up as she finishes off her work. "I said I would leave it in the past," she says aloud, sounding annoyed as much as upset. "Why does it keep returning to my tongue?"

[drinkupmehearties]

On the last hoof now, a subtle tension works its way into his shoulders at the mention of Avoxes. He shares her horror on the matter; not only for what the Capitol could've done to him -- to step too far out of line could've meant his voice and mind taken from him in the most brutal way -- but also for the poor souls that had endured such an atrocity before he'd ever arrived in Panem. The best that Jack had ever been able to do was place himself between those Capitolites and the Avoxes and redirect their attention elsewhere, hope that they'd momentarily forget their contempt for the Avoxes and focus it on him instead.

"Aye, that wouldn't surprise me in the least." Jack is slower to finish than she is, but climbs to his feet once he's done and moves to offer her the hook. "I wager such things aren't easily forgotten. Give it time."

[shieldofrohan]

She doesn't intend to laugh, but laugh she does, short and hollow. "Time," she repeats, bitterly, taking the hook from him and dropping it into a leather bag that hangs from the stable door. There's a twist to her mouth for a moment, and a hardness in her eyes that is almost scorn.

She shakes her head, and pulls herself together. "I am sorry," she says, quietly, and beckons him out of the stable. "Time and patience are all the counsel I seem to hear. But I have little patience, and so time seems my enemy." It stretches out so far ahead of her, and she sees no end to it, to this sense of lostness in her own land. The worst part is how trapped it makes her feel - but worse than Edoras in the days of the War, worse even than the Detention Center, because the prison she finds herself in now is one she knows she built herself, and has no idea how to escape. "I promised you wine. Come."

[drinkupmehearties]

Jack dusts his palms against his breeches, quiet, giving her a soft, considering look.

"You haven't a need to apologize. I understand the frustration, probably more'n most around here." Even when he'd done his best to forget, relegate the memory to being some ridiculous bad dream, it'd been hard not to speak of it with someone else. Not without earning those disbelieving, dismissive looks.

He follows after her, then, a bit of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Seems the both of us might need a drink or three, eh?" His tone is lighter, hoping, in some small way, to lift the somber mood.

enjoy this unnecessarily long tag

[shieldofrohan]

"That ought not to be so quick a recourse," Éowyn scolds, but she smiles back, taut but genuine. "But I cannot say you are wrong."

She leads him back across the courtyard, nodding to the guard as he bows and turns to open the door for them. "Welcome," she says to Jack, over her shoulder, as she gestures him inside, "to my home."

The hallway is narrower and plainer than those he was marched through in Minas Tirith. This is a prince's palace, not a King's. The beams and rafters overhead are of wood still visibly fresh, and the recent rebuilding is clear, if you look. Still, the tapestries that hang from the walls are finely-worked, and the light lancing through from the high windows lights the stone up in gold. And, of course, he isn't in shackles, which no doubt helps the effect.

Éowyn pauses a moment, looking around. Since her return from the Capitol, she always has this sense when she comes home, as if a weight has been lifted anew, while at the same time she is so much more aware of how easily this could be taken from her. The feeling lasts only a moment, though; then she shakes her hair back and sets off down the hallway, moving with an ease he can rarely have seen in her. Down a corridor, up a small flight of stairs, around a corner... At last, she beckons him into the room where the wine is set out.

The doors onto the balcony are open, letting in a cool breeze and a fine view onto the woods. The room itself is small and simply-furnished; a chest here, a few chairs there, a spinning-wheel near the wall and a loom in the corner with a half-finished tapestry still hanging on it. Éowyn nods Jack towards a chair, and goes to pour the wine.

shh long tags are never unnecessary

[drinkupmehearties]

Jack trails behind Eowyn with that ever-casual stride of his, letting her lead the way past the guard and through the hallway. Of course, it's intriguing to see these places that she's often spoken about with his own eyes. But, mostly, Jack notices the effect this has on her -- the peace that just being here appears to give her -- rather than the architecture itself; perhaps the only times that he's seen her this way is when she's been outside, riding confident atop one of her horses. It's certainly a great difference from the misery and rage that being in the Capitol had caused.

Jack offers a cursory glance around once they've found their way to the room, then moves to sprawl onto the chair, settling in and draping an arm over the back. As she busies herself with pouring the wine, Jack draws the worn tricorne from his head and lets his gaze wander -- his attention lands first on the spinning-wheel, then eventually over to the loom and tapestry.

He nods, indicating. "Are those yours?"

[shieldofrohan]

She nods, setting the wine jug down and holding out one of the horn beakers - no goblets, not for a casual occasion - to him. "I have done little such work of late," she admits, taking the other beaker and sitting down opposite him. "Even before Panem, I had so much else to do."

She almost says the thought that flits into her head - that she would have killed for that loom and thread back in the Detention Center, when boredom seemed as like to kill her as any of the Capitol's warring - but it would only take the conversation back to those dark places. So she swallows it down, cutting herself off, and takes a long draught of wine. "That piece," she comments instead, "I began back in Edoras." Her smile is sad and a little bitter, but it's still a smile. "Look too close, and you can still see where I was learning to use my arm again, after the war."

[drinkupmehearties]

"I would imagine so with a war goin' on, and then dealing with what was left after." And of course, with Panem. He accepts the beaker from her, tipping the cup to briefly consider its contents, then takes a couple slow, hefty swigs from it. The wine isn't as bitter or harsh as Jack usually prefers his alcohol, but he's clearly thankful for the drink either way.

His gaze shifts to the tapestry as she speaks, dark eyes drawing over the woven patterns with quiet interest, then returns to her. "You learned to use that arm quite well, I'd wager. Can't say I've ever seen someone fend off a dragon all by their lonesome, with no more than a sword and shield." A good-humored smile, accented by a glint of gold in his teeth. "But it's a lovely piece. Better'n I could ever do, for certain."

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn snorts, ducking her head a little. "I would thank you not to mention that battle to my husband," she says, with a smile that's just a little sarcastic. "Not when he has aided me so greatly in setting sword and shield aside. But I cannot deny I was proud of it." It had been one of relatively few times in Panem when she had felt like herself, like someone proud and strong and noble. She treasures the memory for that, if nothing else. "As for the tapestry, well... I am a noblewoman. Some skills are expected. That is the least of them."

[drinkupmehearties]

Another smile flickers across his face. "O' course, I'll do me best not to mention it -- mum's the word, as they like to say. Though, truth be told, I'd be proud of such a thing too." Jack tilts his beaker towards her, grinning, then takes another swig. The subtle warmth that the drink brings to him is pleasant, familiar, welcome. He takes another sip.

"Alas, I've no great familiarity with the pastimes of noblewomen. What else is expected?"

[shieldofrohan]

She raises her glass in answer, and mimics him in drinking. "Ah," she answers, after a moment's thought, "many things. Manners, of course, and grace. Dancing, and singing, and to know the histories and the tales of the land. When to speak, and when to be silent - though," she adds, with a certain laughter in her eyes, "you may think I am not too accomplished at the latter. But, too, she must take the reins of the household; must know how to order a kitchen and lay the tables, make the beds and oversee cleaning, account the money spent on such things against the money made on the lands. And she should know a little healing, enough that if a servant falls or a child grows sick or a woman begins to birth her child, there is someone to be turned to who has some idea what to do. When anyone is visiting, it is the lady of the house who ought to see to their rooms, and make them welcome, and treat them as accorded by their station. And bring them wine," she adds as an afterthought, nodding to the tray and smiling as she takes another sip. "There is less to do here than in my youth in Edoras, but then I am here less often."

[drinkupmehearties]

The amusement in her eyes is reflected in his expression, and Jack teases with a soft chuckle, "Aye, to the great distress and concern of those around you." Many times in Panem he'd wondered if (or when) her headstrong personality would clash at the wrong time with one of their captors. He had to respect her for it, though, nonetheless. "Not that I've a mind to complain, o' course. Bein' able to speak your mind is commendable."

As Eowyn details the rest, Jack drains the remainder of the wine from his cup and leans back comfortably. Once she's finished, the corner of his mouth perks with a smile. "That's quite the list. Must keep you busy, most times."