Éowyn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shieldofrohan) wrote2022-04-23 11:55 pm
shieldofrohan) wrote2022-04-23 11:55 pm
for okhota
The war is done. The Shadow - so she has been told - is lifted. The King of Gondor sits once more upon the throne; the forces of Mordor are in disarray; peace is within grasp.
The Lady of the Shield-Arm is restless, and grief has not lifted its grip, and the Shadow feels darker than it ever has. Her uncle is dead. Her cousin is dead. Her brother is dead. In the barrows before Edoras, the grass begins to grow upon their graves: and here she is, and she is alive, and it gnaws at her with every breath she draws. What, she wonders, has been won? For all their sacrifice, for all their losses, what has been gained?
For months, she languishes in the Houses of Healing, in a foreign city, and grief is her constant companion. The celebration, the joy, the relief of the people of Gondor... it is nothing to her, washes over her like a tide and yet leaves her dry and stranded where she finds herself, still alone. More alone than ever. What for?
For her people, she tells herself. For Rohan. For nobility, and glory, and the valorous battle she craved so long; for the songs they will sing of her, and of her brother and her kin, and of the doomed ride of the House of Eorl; for right, for good, for duty. Always, always, for duty. For her people, who love her, and her land, which has raised her.
She returns to the land which raised her, to the people who sing her praises. They will not meet her eye. They sing of the White Lady, and of her grief, and of her valour; and they turn from her where she walks, and there is pity in their looks, and when she returns home, she is not needed.
No. She is needed. She is not wanted. The king they crown is a man she knows a little, a cousin of her father's; and he looks at her with that selfsame pity, and she feels her strangeness in his eyes, the woman who shed her womanhood, the daughter of kings who will never be Queen. He, she recalls, did not ride with Théoden's force; he kept the Eastfold in their absence, and never rode beneath the shadow of those terrible wings. He is a warrior of moderate renown; he is aging and greying, worn by remarkably little sorrow; and he is not an evil man, but neither was he there. He speaks to her, when she returns, with a tone of mild condescension, and in his every word she hears the truth of what he says: Now the war is done, now back to your purpose; back to your maiden's gowns and your stitching and your weaving; back to the silence and the shadows, and to bowing your head as you pour the wine. Now the war is over; now the game is over; back to the hearth, woman.
She is a daughter of kings, descended on both sides from the line of Eorl, and with her brother's passing, she is the most rightful heir. She is a hero of the war - though now in every song she hears, she finds that the wonder is not that she fought well and bravely, but that she did so while in the unfortunate possession of a cunt. She held Edoras together when all would have fallen - but from the shadows, the looks of her people seem to murmur, and to the shadows you must return.
She does not attend his coronation. She makes some excuse, some murmur of how her wounds pain her; and she retires to the same shadowed room where for all that time she prayed for rescue from the wearing weight of duty; and lying sleepless in the half-dark, hearing the music and cheer of a hall that does not need her, she feels the grief harden and sharpen into rage. And if the shadows darken in her lonely room, if the candlelight is of a sudden snuffed out when there is no breath of wind... she does not notice it. It has been dark in her heart already.
She could not say when the dreams began, but they began. Whispers in the night, reaching to her anger and the cold kernel of her hate. In her dreams, she stands upon the battlefield, and her sword is in her hand; but the blade is not bright, but black as obsidian, and the edges flicker with cold fire. And he comes to her: black-clad, dark-eyed, seeming in this dreaming landscape to glow with darkness. She wondered, at first, if what she saw was some fragment of the creature she slew: the Witch-King in life perhaps, gaunt and kingly. His face seems to shift; at times he resembles her uncle, her brother, Aragorn. He is none of them. He is, she thinks, herself: some version of herself, at least, who speaks what she will not say herself; who reminds her in almost kindly tones that she has been betrayed.
She agrees. Gladly, she agrees. She has been betrayed; she has given her life to duty and to blood, and both have betrayed her.
- And what will you do?
The sword in her hand. The bodies at her feet. She seems to see Gríma in the shadows, laughing. She seems to see the throne of Rohan, beckoning through the mists.
- I am a shieldmaiden of the Mark. I fear neither pain nor death.
Aragorn's voice; gentle, pitying: What do you fear?
The man in her dreams is a liar. She has known too many lies to doubt it. She seems to see, floating before her eyes, the axe in her father's skull; her mother's tears; the scream of her uncle's horse as it crushed him. Somewhere: cold, high laughter. The bedroom resolves around her, dark and empty and cold. There is a man at the foot of her bed.
- I fear a cage.
- Then leave it. Come find me.
And so she awakes; and so she turns with ever tighter jaw and ever heavier spirit to the work of being what she is not; and with every day's work and every night's dreaming, the trammelling weight of her bridled duty chafes more deeply, the anger burns more raw, her hand itches for the hilt of a sword now hung back in the armoury. She tries to overcome it. She dresses once more in a maiden's garb, and she wears no sword, and she cannot breathe for the crushing weight of her own invisibility. They speak of how she is fair, how she is sad, how she must pine for company. They look, as they have always done, past her and through her. The cage door closes, and is locked.
- I am stronger than they are. I am nobler than they are. I am more warrior than they are.
- Then prove it. Come find me.
There is, she has realised, nowhere in the world that is not a cage. For a moment, with the thunder of hooves around her and the hideous crash of battle in her ears, she had felt free. She had believed, for a moment, that she might be free. But even in that freedom, she had been herself: and now they weave tapestries of a bloodless maiden in white with her shield held aloft, and wonder at her beauty, and they give her no sword. She has proved herself a warrior, proved herself Eorlingas. She has given everything. They have given her nothing but galling pity and the sickly insult of complimenting her beauty and her virtue; and she was not even granted the warrior's end. And for all her beauty and her virtue, the King would not have her; and for all her courage and her steadfastness, her uncle died; and though she slew the Shadow, it lives still, and eats her alive.
She is a woman. Always, she has suspected it: now, with a sinking disgust, she knows it - she is a woman, and they will never let her be more. The only glory she has ever known, the only flash of freedom through the dark bars of her cage, came by deception; and now that she must show herself again, that freedom is gone.
- I want to be free.
- Then be free.
She is not a fool. The man in her dreams is a liar. He does not offer her freedom; there is no freedom to offer. He offers her, at best, a larger cage.
But in his dreams, she bears a sword, and the world is at her feet. And a larger cage may be enough, for a trammelled thing that has never once stretched its wings.
It is a year since the war, and her shoulder still aches; and the King who should not be King has begun to speak of what will be done with her. What minor lord she might wed, to make her happy; what scraps of life might be gifted to the woman who has given heart and soul and body to the Mark. She could, he muses, wed his son in turn; her children might be kings, in time, and the line restored.
Éowyn does not stay to listen. She is not sure that they mark her passing, when she goes. Her children might be kings. Her husband might be king. Her brother, her uncle, her cousin...
She takes the sword she drew against the Witch-King, and the shield down from the wall. She dresses in riding-clothes, binds back her hair beneath a hood. She sets her spurs to Windfola's flanks, and she bursts from the gates of the hill-fort like lightning from a stormy sky, and she does not look back.
The dreams guide her, from there. Not only the dreams: there is something else, too, which tugs like a hook in her chest, sharp and black, darkness calling to darkness. She needs no map, no half-sketched record of the terrain beyond the mountains and the marshes; she crosses the Isen and passes the mountains, and when she is beset by a band of unkempt hill-men, she does not hesitate in bloodying her sword. She does not bury them, either: leaves them for the wolves, and returns to the saddle, and rides.
At the gates of the Little Palace, she stares down the men in their strange coats, stares down from her saddle with eyes hard as iron and twice as cold. Her Ravkan is halting, but her tone is steady. "Fetch your master. I am expected."
I am ready. If I must be caged, then let me choose my prison - and who must suffer with me.
The Lady of the Shield-Arm is restless, and grief has not lifted its grip, and the Shadow feels darker than it ever has. Her uncle is dead. Her cousin is dead. Her brother is dead. In the barrows before Edoras, the grass begins to grow upon their graves: and here she is, and she is alive, and it gnaws at her with every breath she draws. What, she wonders, has been won? For all their sacrifice, for all their losses, what has been gained?
For months, she languishes in the Houses of Healing, in a foreign city, and grief is her constant companion. The celebration, the joy, the relief of the people of Gondor... it is nothing to her, washes over her like a tide and yet leaves her dry and stranded where she finds herself, still alone. More alone than ever. What for?
For her people, she tells herself. For Rohan. For nobility, and glory, and the valorous battle she craved so long; for the songs they will sing of her, and of her brother and her kin, and of the doomed ride of the House of Eorl; for right, for good, for duty. Always, always, for duty. For her people, who love her, and her land, which has raised her.
She returns to the land which raised her, to the people who sing her praises. They will not meet her eye. They sing of the White Lady, and of her grief, and of her valour; and they turn from her where she walks, and there is pity in their looks, and when she returns home, she is not needed.
No. She is needed. She is not wanted. The king they crown is a man she knows a little, a cousin of her father's; and he looks at her with that selfsame pity, and she feels her strangeness in his eyes, the woman who shed her womanhood, the daughter of kings who will never be Queen. He, she recalls, did not ride with Théoden's force; he kept the Eastfold in their absence, and never rode beneath the shadow of those terrible wings. He is a warrior of moderate renown; he is aging and greying, worn by remarkably little sorrow; and he is not an evil man, but neither was he there. He speaks to her, when she returns, with a tone of mild condescension, and in his every word she hears the truth of what he says: Now the war is done, now back to your purpose; back to your maiden's gowns and your stitching and your weaving; back to the silence and the shadows, and to bowing your head as you pour the wine. Now the war is over; now the game is over; back to the hearth, woman.
She is a daughter of kings, descended on both sides from the line of Eorl, and with her brother's passing, she is the most rightful heir. She is a hero of the war - though now in every song she hears, she finds that the wonder is not that she fought well and bravely, but that she did so while in the unfortunate possession of a cunt. She held Edoras together when all would have fallen - but from the shadows, the looks of her people seem to murmur, and to the shadows you must return.
She does not attend his coronation. She makes some excuse, some murmur of how her wounds pain her; and she retires to the same shadowed room where for all that time she prayed for rescue from the wearing weight of duty; and lying sleepless in the half-dark, hearing the music and cheer of a hall that does not need her, she feels the grief harden and sharpen into rage. And if the shadows darken in her lonely room, if the candlelight is of a sudden snuffed out when there is no breath of wind... she does not notice it. It has been dark in her heart already.
She could not say when the dreams began, but they began. Whispers in the night, reaching to her anger and the cold kernel of her hate. In her dreams, she stands upon the battlefield, and her sword is in her hand; but the blade is not bright, but black as obsidian, and the edges flicker with cold fire. And he comes to her: black-clad, dark-eyed, seeming in this dreaming landscape to glow with darkness. She wondered, at first, if what she saw was some fragment of the creature she slew: the Witch-King in life perhaps, gaunt and kingly. His face seems to shift; at times he resembles her uncle, her brother, Aragorn. He is none of them. He is, she thinks, herself: some version of herself, at least, who speaks what she will not say herself; who reminds her in almost kindly tones that she has been betrayed.
She agrees. Gladly, she agrees. She has been betrayed; she has given her life to duty and to blood, and both have betrayed her.
- And what will you do?
The sword in her hand. The bodies at her feet. She seems to see Gríma in the shadows, laughing. She seems to see the throne of Rohan, beckoning through the mists.
- I am a shieldmaiden of the Mark. I fear neither pain nor death.
Aragorn's voice; gentle, pitying: What do you fear?
The man in her dreams is a liar. She has known too many lies to doubt it. She seems to see, floating before her eyes, the axe in her father's skull; her mother's tears; the scream of her uncle's horse as it crushed him. Somewhere: cold, high laughter. The bedroom resolves around her, dark and empty and cold. There is a man at the foot of her bed.
- I fear a cage.
- Then leave it. Come find me.
And so she awakes; and so she turns with ever tighter jaw and ever heavier spirit to the work of being what she is not; and with every day's work and every night's dreaming, the trammelling weight of her bridled duty chafes more deeply, the anger burns more raw, her hand itches for the hilt of a sword now hung back in the armoury. She tries to overcome it. She dresses once more in a maiden's garb, and she wears no sword, and she cannot breathe for the crushing weight of her own invisibility. They speak of how she is fair, how she is sad, how she must pine for company. They look, as they have always done, past her and through her. The cage door closes, and is locked.
- I am stronger than they are. I am nobler than they are. I am more warrior than they are.
- Then prove it. Come find me.
There is, she has realised, nowhere in the world that is not a cage. For a moment, with the thunder of hooves around her and the hideous crash of battle in her ears, she had felt free. She had believed, for a moment, that she might be free. But even in that freedom, she had been herself: and now they weave tapestries of a bloodless maiden in white with her shield held aloft, and wonder at her beauty, and they give her no sword. She has proved herself a warrior, proved herself Eorlingas. She has given everything. They have given her nothing but galling pity and the sickly insult of complimenting her beauty and her virtue; and she was not even granted the warrior's end. And for all her beauty and her virtue, the King would not have her; and for all her courage and her steadfastness, her uncle died; and though she slew the Shadow, it lives still, and eats her alive.
She is a woman. Always, she has suspected it: now, with a sinking disgust, she knows it - she is a woman, and they will never let her be more. The only glory she has ever known, the only flash of freedom through the dark bars of her cage, came by deception; and now that she must show herself again, that freedom is gone.
- I want to be free.
- Then be free.
She is not a fool. The man in her dreams is a liar. He does not offer her freedom; there is no freedom to offer. He offers her, at best, a larger cage.
But in his dreams, she bears a sword, and the world is at her feet. And a larger cage may be enough, for a trammelled thing that has never once stretched its wings.
It is a year since the war, and her shoulder still aches; and the King who should not be King has begun to speak of what will be done with her. What minor lord she might wed, to make her happy; what scraps of life might be gifted to the woman who has given heart and soul and body to the Mark. She could, he muses, wed his son in turn; her children might be kings, in time, and the line restored.
Éowyn does not stay to listen. She is not sure that they mark her passing, when she goes. Her children might be kings. Her husband might be king. Her brother, her uncle, her cousin...
She takes the sword she drew against the Witch-King, and the shield down from the wall. She dresses in riding-clothes, binds back her hair beneath a hood. She sets her spurs to Windfola's flanks, and she bursts from the gates of the hill-fort like lightning from a stormy sky, and she does not look back.
The dreams guide her, from there. Not only the dreams: there is something else, too, which tugs like a hook in her chest, sharp and black, darkness calling to darkness. She needs no map, no half-sketched record of the terrain beyond the mountains and the marshes; she crosses the Isen and passes the mountains, and when she is beset by a band of unkempt hill-men, she does not hesitate in bloodying her sword. She does not bury them, either: leaves them for the wolves, and returns to the saddle, and rides.
At the gates of the Little Palace, she stares down the men in their strange coats, stares down from her saddle with eyes hard as iron and twice as cold. Her Ravkan is halting, but her tone is steady. "Fetch your master. I am expected."
I am ready. If I must be caged, then let me choose my prison - and who must suffer with me.