CALL ME OUT/OPEN RP POST

[shieldofrohan]

(Art by Donato Giancola)

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[tyroshi]

[ In the weeks that passed since Éowyn and Daario had returned to Edoras - both injured but whole; and both irrevocably changed by the full events of that night and following morning; he's spent the majority of his time burying his focus into the various tasks required of him to prove that he would be worthy of joining the ranks of the other riders of the Mark. Granted, his successful rescue of Éowyn did about half of the work for him, considering their gratitude; but that didn't mean he did not also have to prove his worth as a fighter and a skilled rider.

It was a task swiftly accomplished, given his lifetime of experience when it came to fighting and survival. And soon the days passed by with him being given different duties; joining the rest of the soldiers on their patrols, slaying parties of Orcs that wandered too close to their territories.

It was good, exhausting work; enough to occupy his mind and his restless body during the hours when the sun was in the sky; after nightfall however, was another story entirely. Plagued by dreams of their stolen moment together, Daario sometimes got very little sleep - if any at all. At night, there was nothing to distract himself from the memory of her - her body, the intensity of her kiss, the sounds she made when he'd managed to coax out her pleasure; and her lips against his skin - her touch invaded his thoughts as if she'd placed a spell on him. Though he knew he hadn't.

He was just a man who wanted what he couldn't have. And even as the ache for her seemed to grow in intensity every day that passed; he could never bring himself to consider leaving. It wasn't in his nature - stubborn as he was.

The few interactions they did have were polite, civil; and completely lacking in anything of substance. His gaze followed her when he knew no one else would see him looking; but as far as he could tell, she'd been successful in shutting him out.

After a day spent helping train a new horse for the rigors of battle, Daario leads the mare back toward the stables; feeling the ache in his muscles and focusing on that - it was far more preferable than the ever present ache in his heart; one for which he had no solution, and there could be no comfort to be given. He stops somewhat abruptly at the entrance of the stables, catching sight of Éowyn tending to one of the horses. ]

I didn't expect you'd be here at this hour.

[ It's all he can manage, though the words feel like they hold a far greater weight; just based on the tone he speaks with - surprise, softness, and the yearning that is echoed in his gaze. He leads his his into it's stable and closes the gate; taking a few steps toward Éowyn. He leaves a bit of a distance between them initially; unaware of how welcome she will find his presence at the moment. ]

aphro thread for perforo - CW: dubcon/noncon, sexual assault and harassment

[shieldofrohan]

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?"

for aleifr

[shieldofrohan]

She is sore.

No surprises there. After the hammering she took at the melee, the real wonder is that she is still able to get up at all. She had been prepared for some injury - it is the nature of fighting, after all, even the toothless playfighting they practice here in King's Landing, and while she may be proud of her own prowess, she has enough sense to know that she is hardly the only warrior with any skill. Besides, it was the first taste of battle she has had since the Pelennor Field, and it is not as though her arm or her shoulder have ever fully healed. She was prepared to take some injury, particularly on her shield side, and to risk pain and embarrassment for the sake of feeling, for a moment, that she could act. Being in King's Landing, even with Elia's company, has begun to feel as stifling as Meduseld in the darkest days of the war; except that at least in Meduseld, people heard her when she spoke. She is weary to the bone of biting her tongue, trying to respond with grace and gentle politic to the indignities heaped on her. If it were not for the princess, she would have left with the last fair wind, and never looked back.

But she remains, and will remain a while yet; and so, yes, she had been prepared to risk Elia's displeasure and greater scorn from the people of King's Landing, as well as bruises and blood, for the sake of even a momentary catharsis.

She had not been prepared to fight a giant.

She held her own as long as she could, and far longer than many of the other competitors; and by the end, she had no longer been on the tourney field. The pain, the sinking hopelessness of defeat, was too familiar; for a time, she had lost all sense of where and when she was, found herself again standing before a nameless shadow, the last defence of a fallen King; she had not been playing any sort of game then, but fighting in deadly earnest, all other foes forgotten, staggering and swaying, and refusing to fall.

Except that she fell on the field before Minas Tirith, and she fell on the tourney field, too. There is only so much even the strongest-willed warrior can take, especially when her weakened shoulder was driven - far too easily - out of joint, her shield falling. At least she did not fully lose consciousness, was still helmed when she was carried from the field.

Now it is two days later, and she can remain out of sight no more. Her arm is once again in a sling, as it was following the battle; to her surprise and disgust, she has faced remarkably little questioning of the idea that she somehow fell hard enough to account for both that and the bruises littering her face and arms. (The rest of her body, too, of course - but only Elia has seen those. A blessing of keeping her own manner of dress, even if it is too warm for the weather, is that high collars and long sleeves cover a multitude of sins.)

She suspects that the lords of Westeros know better, and that they are well aware that she was beaten: further suspects that they are glad of it, for none of them have been all that subtle in their belief that she is too proud and too cold. But none of them even seem to have thought to question where she was beaten. It makes her wonder what would have happened, in the end, if she had unmasked herself at the tourney. It makes her angry.

At least anger is a feeling. These days, while Elia has thawed some of the ice in her, Éowyn so often feels numb. Pain is better; anger is better; even frustration is better than nothing at all. Perhaps that was part of it, too. Why she fought, and why she kept getting back up.

These are the thoughts that follow her out into the gardens, where the uncomfortably warm air is at least cooler and fresher than inside. Not for the first time, she wonders why she stays; she could leave with the next tide, back to her own home and her own people, away from stifling silences and warm air and cold stone. She could leave, and all she would leave behind would be...

She is not alone.

He is hard to miss, tall as he is; hard to forget, too, particularly with her arm still aching to remind her. Briefly, Éowyn considers turning and walking as fast as she can (which is not all that fast; she is quite stiff still) in the opposite direction, but her pride balks at that. Instead, she turns, and while the bruises on her face make it a little less convincing, offers him a coolly polite smile, as demure as a lady can be while sporting a black eye.

"I do not know you, do I, my lord?"

[primedirectives]

[ The most mortifying thing of all is that, really and truthfully, he should have known better.

Chris was supposed to beam down, take a look around, and then beam back up again. The whole endeavor was really just a way to sate his curiosity instead of an actual data-gathering mission; if it were, more people than just him would have come. He had to argue against them coming, actually, had to convince Una and Spock both that no, he didn't need a security detail, and no, he didn't need anything more than a simple tricorder to pick up whatever information he could.

This world is pre-warp. He was only going to look around, it wasn't like he was going to make contact.

Except, obviously, he did. And while he was doing so, a growing cloud on the horizon started to creep across the sky, one he had more or less dismissed as unimportant, one that now blankets the heavens above him and, he assumes, is making it impossible for his hails to be heard by Enterprise.

Chris is, for all intents and purposes, stuck here.

A voice in the back of his head that sounds irritatingly like Una starts chiding him for breaking regs — he adores her, she's his best friend in the whole world, she's single-handedly saved his life more times than he could count and he'd gladly lay down both his life and his professional reputation for her, but she's so fucking annoying about the rules sometimes — that he does his best to ignore as he tries to figure out what the hell to do. Five attempts in a row to be heard do nothing, which means there's no point in trying any more. When this happened on Hetemit IX, he and Spock had to seek shelter so that they could survive the oncoming ion storm. The clouds above don't look that dangerous, but seeking shelter isn't a bad idea.

He could probably return to the village that Éowyn originally found him approaching, the one he bought their wine from, but something has him turning the other direction, facing down the plains where an outcrop stands proud, tiny little buildings dotting it and the land surrounding. He doesn't know, but he'd bet dollars to donuts that that's Edoras.

His new friend is the Lady of Edoras. She said so herself. Blithely walking into the lion's den isn't one of his better ideas, but it's the one place he knows he'll find at least some modicum of welcome.

Lacking any other ideas, he starts to walk. Maybe while he's en route, the clouds will part and he'll get beamed up. Until then, he might as well see what he can see. ]