If the tides were fairer, she would have left King's Landing - left Westeros - by now. It is clear, after all, that all the renown her deeds have won mean nothing in the eyes of these men; it is clear that they will heed no political discussion that comes from the mouth of a maid, even the King's sister; it is clear that, while her duty is by no means discharged, it is a futile errand that she has come here on.
Futile, and dangerous. Not in the way that she had expected and half-hoped for: the distance, the threats of the crossing, the knives in the dark. All these things, she was prepared for, and knew herself capable of facing.
She was not prepared for a nobleman of the court - a Kingsguard, no less - to throw propriety and politics to the wind, and accost her in the stairwell, to pin her against the wall with his full bulk and do his level best to take her with or without her consent. Even Gríma Wormtongue was never a fraction so outrageous in his advances.
Ser Jaime, it seems, was not prepared for a woman who, weak shield-arm or no, has trained herself rigorously in combat as long as she has been able, and who has stared evil in the eye without flinching. A woman who was prepared, in the breach, to knee him in the exposed crotch, almost break his nose, and tell him with a knife to his throat and steel in her eyes, that if he laid hands on her again, she would castrate him before she killed him, and face the consequences if she must. He was not prepared for a daughter of Eorl, and she escaped that night with her honour and her maidenhead intact - but the experience has shaken her to her core, and she has slept every night since with her door locked and barred, two of her own men at watch outside. Not that she has told them why, of course. She is too proud to admit to such a thing, much less to how it has awakened her to a depth of fear and anger she did not know she could still feel.
No; she will not remain in this place a moment longer than she must. As soon as the tides are favourable, and the summer storms passed, she will do what she has never done in her life before: she will admit defeat, and turn away, and set sail for home.
But for now, she is here, and what can she do but play her role? She wears her sword openly, now, hanging at the hip of her fine embroidered gowns: it is clear that they will not respect her regardless, so she may as well be disrespected with a weapon close to hand. Beyond that, she is a model of restraint and cold dignity, speaking softly and holding herself tall, maintaining at all times the etiquette that her position demands. She does not even look at Ser Jaime on the unfortunate occasions when she must be in a room with him - although she keeps him in her periphery, the way a horse that has been bitten may watch a rabid dog, ready to kick or bite at a threatening move. She will not give him the satisfaction of her attention, and she will not let him know that he has hurt her. She is ice and steel and stone, as she learned to be in those dark times when Gríma held sway. There is no warmth in her - but there is nothing to be impeached in her behaviour, either.
And so she makes her way, and will not give ground to the feelings that threaten to make themselves known, the anger and fear and grief, to have come through so much and still find herself back where she began, a maiden adrift in a world of men, biting her tongue and holding her peace and suffering the indignities of an inescapable situation. At least this one, she thinks, has an end. The tides will change, and she will be gone.
The tides have not changed yet.
She is sitting at the high table, a polite smile carved onto her marble countenance, listening to the revelry without being any part of it, when she feels something else change. At first, she thinks it is only the wine (of which, it must be said, she has drunk more than she is accustomed to, in the days since the encounter in the stairwell): that she has begun to grow drunk already. There is a strange light-headedness that seems to have come upon her, and a heat in her belly and all through her, as though the hall is suddenly much warmer than it was a few moments ago. Something prickles at the back of her neck, where her hair is swept up into a Westerosi style; a shiver, like unseen fingers caressing her spine. It is not unpleasant.
Éowyn shifts a little in her seat, clearing her throat, and resolves to drink no more tonight, unless it is soundly watered. She has overindulged, that is all: but it will pass soon enough.
It does not. Not the heat - which she now realises is not centred in her belly at all, but somewhat lower - and not the sense of drunkenness, and not the growing feeling that her dress is too tight and restricting all of a sudden, and not the breathlessness that seems to have overtaken her. Her skin prickles, absurdly sensitive; she is unpleasantly aware of the colour that must have come to her cheeks.
It is drink, she reasserts to herself; it is stronger wine than Rohan's, and she is drunk, but she is still herself, and she can carry herself through this. It is, if she is entirely honest, not the first time she has felt this kind of inappropriate desire - even if it is by far the strongest. She managed, did she not, to keep herself from throwing herself wholesale at Aragorn, even when she might have done. She wonders, with aching clarity, whether he would have held true to his elf-maiden if, instead of begging him to let her fight and die with him, Éowyn had instead dropped to her knees and shown him what else a shieldmaiden could offer to her lord. Or climbed into his lap, mounted him, and ridden him to an ecstasy that...
"My lady?"
There is a hand on her arm, and the touch is almost unbearable. She realises, then, that she is holding her goblet so tightly that it shakes; that she has spilt her wine; and that people are staring at her - the cold, unapproachable maiden, flushed and fidgeting, so tense now that she has begun to tremble.
She looks up at the man whose hand is on her arm - a man of Rohan, a minor lord, married and well thirty years her senior - and is suddenly gripped with the question of what his cock looks like, and whether that hand on her arm might not be put to better use. It is at that moment, finding herself giving real thought to the question of whether he fucks his wife gently or with the boldness of a warrior, that Éowyn realises that she cannot stay here.
She stammers out something - she scarcely knows what, or even whether she is speaking to him in Westron or Rohirric - about how she has been struck with a megrim. No, no, she does not need a healer. She does not need an escort. She needs to go to her room, and rest. Alone, she tells him, and then again: alone.
Under the circumstances, not that it is much comfort, she is holding herself together admirably. She is largely steady as she rises, despite the aching awareness of every movement of her thighs. She keeps her back straight and her hands at her sides, and she settles her goblet down on the table, and reassures her retinue that she has no need of them, and with all the dignity that her considerable willpower can summon, she flees.
It is a little better in the corridors, though not much. The air is cooler, and there is less noise, and, most of all, there are fewer people. Fewer women with their breasts heaving beneath their gowns, begging to be cupped and kissed and sucked. Fewer men laughing with mouths ripe for the kissing, and cocks that she cannot help but imagine hardening for her. Fewer eyes, watching her shame, making her wonder whether their enjoyment of it would be solely political.
...She is lying to herself. It is no better. She lets out a low, stifled moan, and lengthens her pace, almost running now. She cannot think far ahead, but far enough to know that there is only one clear route forwards through whatever madness, whatever enchantment, whatever curse has gripped her. She must be alone, yes, but not to rest: she must exorcise this desire the way she has exorcised lesser shadows of it in the past. Alone.
When she at last reaches her room, she is beyond thought. The ache in her loins is maddening, a hunger so great it has become pain. Her heart hammers in her chest, against her ruined ribs. The fine linen of her shift feels like coarse sandpaper against nipples that have grown hard and swollen, aching to be touched. Desire is a beast, coiling in her gut, clawing at her until she can hardly breathe.
There is no question of finding her keys. It is all she can do to close the door behind her, slamming it shut and at last releasing the tension that has kept her somewhat straight-backed and dignified. Panting, she stumbles towards the bed, her hand already moving between her legs, grinding clumsily through the layers of skirts and shift. The sharp, aching pleasure of that touch makes her stagger, crying out, catching herself against the bedpost; and then she is tearing at her skirts as well as her weak left hand will allow, yanking at the too-thick fabric in frenzied desperation, trying clumsily to pull her gown up high enough to get her hand properly underneath; and, falling forward again until she is almost doubled over against the support of the bedframe, she thrusts her hand up against the wet, clinging linen of her ruined shift, letting out an obscene moan that she no longer has it in her to stifle, and begins to rut against the unnatural, unbearable need that has her straining her damaged arm, rocking between the hand between her thighs and the steadying grip she has on the bedframe, and--
And she hears the door click shut behind her.
She is not, it seems, entirely lost. She has strength enough, pride enough, even now to stop her vain, frantic ministrations; to stagger upright and turn, face aflame and eyes gleaming with tears of sheer frustration and want, to face the man who, she realises with a sick lurch when she sees the gleam of gold, is the architect of all her suffering.
Her hand is damp with her own arousal. Her skirts are no longer pulled up to her waist, but neither are they in any kind of array. She is panting, her grey eyes almost black with wild lust, the reek of sex thoroughly clear in the air. Still, unsteady as she is, she manages to get her hand to her sword, manages to face him down - even as she must lean against the bedpost to keep her knees from buckling.
"You." She spits it: lust, it seems, does not preclude venom. At the same time, unwelcome thoughts crowd her mind. His is the first man's cock she has seen, actually seen, harden for her; his mouth the first that has found hers in passion, outside of dreams. She wonders what he would have done, if she had not been stronger than he expected: for the first time, there is more to the thought than horror. She wonders what he tastes like. She feels the urge to vomit, hating herself for the thoughts that assail her, hating herself more for their allure. Her hand, unsteady as it is, tightens on the hilt of her sword. Her voice, unsteady as it is, is not an invitation. "What have you done to me?"
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sforzinda
aphro thread for perforo - CW: dubcon/noncon, sexual assault and harassment
Date: 2023-08-14 02:54 am (UTC)Futile, and dangerous. Not in the way that she had expected and half-hoped for: the distance, the threats of the crossing, the knives in the dark. All these things, she was prepared for, and knew herself capable of facing.
She was not prepared for a nobleman of the court - a Kingsguard, no less - to throw propriety and politics to the wind, and accost her in the stairwell, to pin her against the wall with his full bulk and do his level best to take her with or without her consent. Even Gríma Wormtongue was never a fraction so outrageous in his advances.
Ser Jaime, it seems, was not prepared for a woman who, weak shield-arm or no, has trained herself rigorously in combat as long as she has been able, and who has stared evil in the eye without flinching. A woman who was prepared, in the breach, to knee him in the exposed crotch, almost break his nose, and tell him with a knife to his throat and steel in her eyes, that if he laid hands on her again, she would castrate him before she killed him, and face the consequences if she must. He was not prepared for a daughter of Eorl, and she escaped that night with her honour and her maidenhead intact - but the experience has shaken her to her core, and she has slept every night since with her door locked and barred, two of her own men at watch outside. Not that she has told them why, of course. She is too proud to admit to such a thing, much less to how it has awakened her to a depth of fear and anger she did not know she could still feel.
No; she will not remain in this place a moment longer than she must. As soon as the tides are favourable, and the summer storms passed, she will do what she has never done in her life before: she will admit defeat, and turn away, and set sail for home.
But for now, she is here, and what can she do but play her role? She wears her sword openly, now, hanging at the hip of her fine embroidered gowns: it is clear that they will not respect her regardless, so she may as well be disrespected with a weapon close to hand. Beyond that, she is a model of restraint and cold dignity, speaking softly and holding herself tall, maintaining at all times the etiquette that her position demands. She does not even look at Ser Jaime on the unfortunate occasions when she must be in a room with him - although she keeps him in her periphery, the way a horse that has been bitten may watch a rabid dog, ready to kick or bite at a threatening move. She will not give him the satisfaction of her attention, and she will not let him know that he has hurt her. She is ice and steel and stone, as she learned to be in those dark times when Gríma held sway. There is no warmth in her - but there is nothing to be impeached in her behaviour, either.
And so she makes her way, and will not give ground to the feelings that threaten to make themselves known, the anger and fear and grief, to have come through so much and still find herself back where she began, a maiden adrift in a world of men, biting her tongue and holding her peace and suffering the indignities of an inescapable situation. At least this one, she thinks, has an end. The tides will change, and she will be gone.
The tides have not changed yet.
She is sitting at the high table, a polite smile carved onto her marble countenance, listening to the revelry without being any part of it, when she feels something else change. At first, she thinks it is only the wine (of which, it must be said, she has drunk more than she is accustomed to, in the days since the encounter in the stairwell): that she has begun to grow drunk already. There is a strange light-headedness that seems to have come upon her, and a heat in her belly and all through her, as though the hall is suddenly much warmer than it was a few moments ago. Something prickles at the back of her neck, where her hair is swept up into a Westerosi style; a shiver, like unseen fingers caressing her spine. It is not unpleasant.
Éowyn shifts a little in her seat, clearing her throat, and resolves to drink no more tonight, unless it is soundly watered. She has overindulged, that is all: but it will pass soon enough.
It does not. Not the heat - which she now realises is not centred in her belly at all, but somewhat lower - and not the sense of drunkenness, and not the growing feeling that her dress is too tight and restricting all of a sudden, and not the breathlessness that seems to have overtaken her. Her skin prickles, absurdly sensitive; she is unpleasantly aware of the colour that must have come to her cheeks.
It is drink, she reasserts to herself; it is stronger wine than Rohan's, and she is drunk, but she is still herself, and she can carry herself through this. It is, if she is entirely honest, not the first time she has felt this kind of inappropriate desire - even if it is by far the strongest. She managed, did she not, to keep herself from throwing herself wholesale at Aragorn, even when she might have done. She wonders, with aching clarity, whether he would have held true to his elf-maiden if, instead of begging him to let her fight and die with him, Éowyn had instead dropped to her knees and shown him what else a shieldmaiden could offer to her lord. Or climbed into his lap, mounted him, and ridden him to an ecstasy that...
"My lady?"
There is a hand on her arm, and the touch is almost unbearable. She realises, then, that she is holding her goblet so tightly that it shakes; that she has spilt her wine; and that people are staring at her - the cold, unapproachable maiden, flushed and fidgeting, so tense now that she has begun to tremble.
She looks up at the man whose hand is on her arm - a man of Rohan, a minor lord, married and well thirty years her senior - and is suddenly gripped with the question of what his cock looks like, and whether that hand on her arm might not be put to better use. It is at that moment, finding herself giving real thought to the question of whether he fucks his wife gently or with the boldness of a warrior, that Éowyn realises that she cannot stay here.
She stammers out something - she scarcely knows what, or even whether she is speaking to him in Westron or Rohirric - about how she has been struck with a megrim. No, no, she does not need a healer. She does not need an escort. She needs to go to her room, and rest. Alone, she tells him, and then again: alone.
Under the circumstances, not that it is much comfort, she is holding herself together admirably. She is largely steady as she rises, despite the aching awareness of every movement of her thighs. She keeps her back straight and her hands at her sides, and she settles her goblet down on the table, and reassures her retinue that she has no need of them, and with all the dignity that her considerable willpower can summon, she flees.
It is a little better in the corridors, though not much. The air is cooler, and there is less noise, and, most of all, there are fewer people. Fewer women with their breasts heaving beneath their gowns, begging to be cupped and kissed and sucked. Fewer men laughing with mouths ripe for the kissing, and cocks that she cannot help but imagine hardening for her. Fewer eyes, watching her shame, making her wonder whether their enjoyment of it would be solely political.
...She is lying to herself. It is no better. She lets out a low, stifled moan, and lengthens her pace, almost running now. She cannot think far ahead, but far enough to know that there is only one clear route forwards through whatever madness, whatever enchantment, whatever curse has gripped her. She must be alone, yes, but not to rest: she must exorcise this desire the way she has exorcised lesser shadows of it in the past. Alone.
When she at last reaches her room, she is beyond thought. The ache in her loins is maddening, a hunger so great it has become pain. Her heart hammers in her chest, against her ruined ribs. The fine linen of her shift feels like coarse sandpaper against nipples that have grown hard and swollen, aching to be touched. Desire is a beast, coiling in her gut, clawing at her until she can hardly breathe.
There is no question of finding her keys. It is all she can do to close the door behind her, slamming it shut and at last releasing the tension that has kept her somewhat straight-backed and dignified. Panting, she stumbles towards the bed, her hand already moving between her legs, grinding clumsily through the layers of skirts and shift. The sharp, aching pleasure of that touch makes her stagger, crying out, catching herself against the bedpost; and then she is tearing at her skirts as well as her weak left hand will allow, yanking at the too-thick fabric in frenzied desperation, trying clumsily to pull her gown up high enough to get her hand properly underneath; and, falling forward again until she is almost doubled over against the support of the bedframe, she thrusts her hand up against the wet, clinging linen of her ruined shift, letting out an obscene moan that she no longer has it in her to stifle, and begins to rut against the unnatural, unbearable need that has her straining her damaged arm, rocking between the hand between her thighs and the steadying grip she has on the bedframe, and--
And she hears the door click shut behind her.
She is not, it seems, entirely lost. She has strength enough, pride enough, even now to stop her vain, frantic ministrations; to stagger upright and turn, face aflame and eyes gleaming with tears of sheer frustration and want, to face the man who, she realises with a sick lurch when she sees the gleam of gold, is the architect of all her suffering.
Her hand is damp with her own arousal. Her skirts are no longer pulled up to her waist, but neither are they in any kind of array. She is panting, her grey eyes almost black with wild lust, the reek of sex thoroughly clear in the air. Still, unsteady as she is, she manages to get her hand to her sword, manages to face him down - even as she must lean against the bedpost to keep her knees from buckling.
"You." She spits it: lust, it seems, does not preclude venom. At the same time, unwelcome thoughts crowd her mind. His is the first man's cock she has seen, actually seen, harden for her; his mouth the first that has found hers in passion, outside of dreams. She wonders what he would have done, if she had not been stronger than he expected: for the first time, there is more to the thought than horror. She wonders what he tastes like. She feels the urge to vomit, hating herself for the thoughts that assail her, hating herself more for their allure. Her hand, unsteady as it is, tightens on the hilt of her sword. Her voice, unsteady as it is, is not an invitation. "What have you done to me?"