For drinkupmehearties

[shieldofrohan]

It's been a month. A month of waking from dreams of the Capitol, of clinging to Faramir as though he may vanish any moment. He doesn't understand it, she can see it in his eyes. Why would he? For him, no time has passed. For him, she slept one night and had a vivid dream, and although he is the last to deny the importance of dreams, he cannot understand the importance of this one. He cannot understand a year of being imprisoned, to a heart that so longs to be free.

She's stopped talking to him about it. It hurts too much to see him try and fail to understand, see him straining to put himself in her shoes when he has no frame of reference. She lets herself believe it was a dream, and the memories are already fading a little, leaving only the dull ache of a remembered hurt. She dreams of Arya and Firo and Roland, the family she made for herself far away.

She goes back to work. In the Houses of Healing, she tends to broken bones and minor hurts, and tries not to remember a place where they could all be healed with the push of a button. She applies herself to learning, spends night and day in study, and when she is not studying, she rides, and when she is not riding, she seeks Faramir out, and holds him close as if she can make up for a year of his absence in a few weeks.

It's been a month. It turns out it's also been a week since two ships clashed off the shores of Gondor, a trading vessel and a corsair. She knows a little of this through her husband, but it isn't strange enough to pique her interest, not even when she hears it had black sails. The corsairs of Umbar have black sails, and there are enough of them still on the seas to make it unremarkable. But when the corsair captain is brought to Minas Tirith, and Faramir orders him taken to the cells to await the King's return... Éowyn only catches a glimpse of him as he passes, but a glimpse is enough.

As soon as her work in the Houses of Healing is done, she hurries to the cells. They are better-appointed than what Jack will be used to, probably; furnished sparsely but with care, and scrupulously clean. Gondor treats its enemies well, when it can afford to.

Éowyn sweeps in, gowned in white with her hair pinned under a cloth, and with a few brisk words compels the guard to let her into Jack's cell. The door closes behind her, and for a moment, she can't find a single word to say.

Comments

[drinkupmehearties]

No one had believed him. He'd awoken on the familiar berth in his captain's cabin, head filled with a dizzying blend of unbelievable and nightmarish memories, but otherwise physically no worse for wear. Describing the Capitol -- the gladiatorial games, the glitzy Capitolites, the Tribute tower, cars, anything -- had received disbelieving chuckles and a hearty slap on the back. Gibbs and the rest of his crew were convinced that it'd been a nasty fever dream, brought on by a bad batch of grog or from imbibing too much the night before.

And eventually, wanting to forget the entire torturous ordeal, Jack had started to believe that too. He had his beloved Pearl back. Nothing else really mattered.

But sometime during the dead of night, when the late watch had been distracted or passed out drunk, they'd sailed deep into strange waters. And not long after that, after a scrap with an unusually foreign ship, the pirate had found himself captured and hauled off to jail. With not much else to occupy his time, he's spent most of his imprisonment patiently waiting, marking time, thinking up absurd ways to escape from his cell.

This time, Jack is half-reclined on the simple bed that'd been provided for him, tricorne hiked down over his eyes and arms folded across his chest. He doesn't move when the door to his cell opens and closes, but merely drawls out a flat, "Ah. You've brought out the rum this time, I hope." When no one answers him after a moment, Jack thumbs his hat up to take a look at who'd entered -- and starts. He pulls himself up and swings his legs around and off the bed, bewilderment knitting his brow.

"Eowyn."