for veryfond

[shieldofrohan]

It has been four days since the gates fell. Four days since the Steward of the City, maddened in his grief, barricaded the doors against all comers and tried to kill his own son; four days since Faramir's body was taken from the pyre and borne, with great care, back to the Houses of Healing. Four days since reinforcements came from the North, with the blowing of horns and the rush of hooves and the clash of spears against green-and-white shields, to meet the enemy before the walls of Minas Tirith; four days since the Witch-King was slain and the foe driven back. Four days since the King returned.

The city is reeling. The gates, shattered by the assault, are propped up and barred; the walls rebuilt where they may be. There is an uncertain silence throughout the streets and the Citadel: a silence waiting for resolution. The battle is won, but the war is not. The eyes of every person in Gondor are turned west, toward Mordor, waiting.

How many things can change, all in a day! Faramir, thought dead for two days, is alive after all. Gondor has a King again, and its Steward is gone. The King of Rohan is borne back dead and broken upon his shield. The most feared lieutenant of the Shadow is defeated; there is no body, but among the scattered corpses on the field, the great black mass of his wingéd mount lies beheaded. There are whispers, hushed and uncertain, of what happened: so far, no-one seems quite certain.

What is certain is this: the King has returned. If there was doubt of it from Aragorn's name, his bearing, how he is spoken of, then there is no doubt of it now. The word has spread like wildfire throughout the city. The hands of a King are the hands of a healer, it is said, and did he not save three lives that were thought past recovery? Did he not emerge from not one, but three rooms in the quiet halls of the Houses of Healing, having awoken the dead?

Of course, there were few witnesses to the deed itself. Ioreth the healer-woman, and her companion; and the King himself; and Gandalf the White. Prince Imrahil, who had led the sally to retrieve the man in the bed - to save his nephew. And Faramir's wife, who no-one would try to separate from him, now that it was known that he might live.

So she would know what few could speak to - how Aragorn knelt at Faramir's bedside, and placed his hand to the unconscious man's brow; and called Faramir's name, over and over again, as though to summon him; and how his voice had grown weaker and his skin almost as waxen as that of the wounded man, as if whatever he was doing was unbearably draining. How at last, he was brought dried leaves which, when he broke them in his fingers and dropped them into hot water, made a steam that was fragrant beyond all reason. How, when that steam was brought close to Faramir's face, his eyes opened. My lord, he had said, what does the King require of me? But the smile of relief, weary on a face made haggard by long fever and injury, was not for the King first, but for the dark-haired woman who stood nearby; and when the King and the wizard and all of the others left, she remained.

That, too, was four days ago. Whatever Aragorn did, it cured some ills, but not all; and Faramir has slept most of that time. It is sleep that claims him now, at least, and not the deathly unconsciousness of a few days ago; there is colour returning to his face, and he has taken a little food, and while he is rarely awake for more than a few minutes at a stretch, he does seem more himself each time.

Less than one day ago - that morning, in fact - things changed again. Not for Faramir, who still lies sleeping, but for the war, and for Minas Tirith. It is quieter than it has been in some time, now, and strangely empty. The commanders of the war - Aragorn, Éomer, Imrahil, and the Elven-commanders of Imladris - have set out for Mordor, to make an end of things, one way or the other. With them have gone most of the survivors still fit to seat a horse and carry a sword, a fraction of the number that stood in defence of the realm a week ago. There are still soldiers on the walls of Minas Tirith, guarding the shattered gates and ready to defend - but only a very few. There is that tension in the air, wherever you look. The end is coming, and soon. Nobody seems quite sure whether to hope.

In the Houses of Healing, the tension is no less, but it is, perhaps, better-hidden. This quarter of the city, at least, is well-populated. The halls are filled with the convalescent injured, men of all ages, lying in white-shrouded beds, sitting propped in half-raised seats, the fortunate few walking in the gardens. Men of Gondor, men of Rohan, men old enough to be grandfathers and men barely old enough to shave. Men with missing limbs and open wounds, with bloodied dressings bound tight. Men who gingerly attempt to walk, and who speak in whispers, and some who shout in pain, and some who sing. Men with hollow eyes and looks of grief.

And, stubbornly struggling out into the hallway, one woman.

She is as clearly a patient as the rest, and for the same cause. Her pale skin is mottled with healing bruises and half-healed cuts, and she walks stooped like an old woman, her face taut with pain, stopping every few steps to lean against the wall and catch her breath. Her waist-length golden hair hangs down around her, tangled from the effort of getting out of her room without the Healers' aid (they would not allow her out of the bed, but she is restless, filled with a deep and unbearable fear). Her left arm is bound in a tight sling, bandaged from shoulder to wrist, and it is difficult to see, under those bandages, but the shape seems wrong. It hangs limp from a broken shoulder, like it belongs to someone else.

Her right arm is whole, though, and it gropes along the white wall of the corridor, and the hero of the Pelennor Field, the fabled slayer of the Witch-King, lets out a low whimper of pain and effort as she fights past the complaints of her broken ribs to take another step towards Meriadoc's chambers. She exhales, shaky and triumphant, and looks up through the fall of her hair.

She sees a ghost.

Her grey eyes - bloodshot and one half swollen shut - widen, and she stares for a moment. Her mouth opens, and she seems to be trying to say something, to grope for words that will not come. The hand that holds against the wall flexes, grasping for purchase. She swallows, on a dry and rasped throat, and at last manages to speak.

"...Elia?"

Comments

[veryfond]

With all that has happened in the last few days, there is little need for anyone to consider Faramir's pretty, quiet, foreign-born wife. For those who have taken notice, though, her devotion cannot be denied. Her stoic demeanor, which had held up even as she sent her own children from the city of her own accord with her trusted maids, betraying her belief on some level that staying there meant certain death, had broken violently apart when her husband's lifeless body was returned from the front.

But when Denethor had ordered her out of the room, she who was foreign and untrustworthy and who had never deserved his son, Lady Elia found the strength to rise from where she'd collapsed to the floor weeping, standing at her full height and declaring that no one was deserving of as good a man as Faramir, but she would go to her grave (however soon that may be) regretting nothing of their marriage. She did not say whether she thought Faramir felt the same, but she did kneel beside him, take his hand, kiss his brow- and then she had taken her leave, head held high though tears still streaked down her face. She would not be dragged out, hysterical, by the order of a man who had never cared for his second son, until it was too late.

And Elia had thought it was too late. She had thought that Faramir would cling to life for an hour at most. If she had known what would go on, what Denethor would do... she wouldn't have left so easily. Though perhaps it was for the best, because she was no warrior, especially when it came to fire, especially when she was already wracked with grief. She could not save him, but she would stay with him now, because the men who had saved him had brought her to his side, and only made her step away so that Aragon could heal him.

It has been four days since then, and Elia feels a new woman, and not just because of the calming draught she herself had been urged to take by the healers when they noticed how gaunt and pale she was, or that she has finally been able to sleep. Ever since she heard her husband speak of some inexplicable dream he had, some part of her had been tense, waiting for the blow, for hadn't that been how it all started with Rhaegar, a dream he thought was prophecy? But the worst has come, and he is alive, and she is alive, and whatever happens next they will face it together.

She loves him. She knows that now, knows she has been foolish to pretend differently. Perhaps it had started that very first night they spent together, or the morning after, perhaps love could come on that strong, that fast, when you were least expecting. Elia whispers the words to him while he sleeps, and whenever he wakes she is there, to assure him of her presence. He always looks at her that same relieved way, and Elia does not deserve him, that is for certain, but by some trick of fate Faramir has managed to love her despite all her flaws.

It is not that she is unaware of the tension that still lurks, the battle yet to be fought, but she has decided to hope in spite of all. Maybe it is foolish, given what she has learned of the war, the enemy, the darkness- but it is all she has to cling onto. That one day the sun will shine again, and the children will return to her, and she will tell Faramir everything she was too frightened to say before, and he will love her just the same.

But for now, all there is to do is wait. It is harder now, with all the men gone, with the knowledge of what their failure may bring. Elia wishes she had something to do, but she would not want to burden the Healers with finding her a purpose when they are already stretched so thin. She decides to focus on Faramir, willing him to wake up even as she knows the rest will heal him. Then, she hears her name.

Just hearing it at all is strange- she is always "my lady" in this land, except to her husband. As she turns, as she stands, she feels a new sort of shock hit her, for she does indeed recognize the injured woman in the hallway.

"Éowyn?" How could this be? No one in Gondor knew much of Westeros other than the name of a far-off land. She had heard, distantly, that warriors from nearby kingdoms had come to assist, that they had turned the tide, but there was no reason to connect that to the beautiful woman with golden hair and sad eyes she had known so many years ago.

Without even thinking, she has done what she promised never to do only a few days prior: left her husband's side. The incongruity of the moment is so great she almost thinks she is dreaming- but no, she would never dream Éowyn with such injuries. Soon she is in the corridor too, looking far more pale and worn and concerned than she had ever had reason to look in Dorne. "How are you- how are you here?"

A question that she should be answering, really. But it isn't so much that Éowyn is here in the House of Healing (she must have fought in the battle- hardly the strangest thing Elia has heard in the past few days) but that she is suddenly back in her life, a person who knew her when she was unmarried and childless and free.

[shieldofrohan]

How are you here? Éomer asked that of her, too, fear and anger and relief and pride all mingling in his tone, before he left: How are you here, among my soldiers? And she has asked it herself, too, every moment since she woke to Aragorn leaning over her, his voice calling her back from the promise of oblivion: How are you here, among the living?

And now a ghost from the past asks it of her, and Éowyn cannot even answer. She can only laugh: laugh, despite the agony in her ribs, until the tears roll down her cheeks, and until her already-shaking knees give out under her; and when she falls back against the wall, sinking to the ground, the pain jolting outward from her arm so great that her stomach lurches violently and her vision blurs at the edges - only then does her choked laughter peter out. She sits on the flagstones, the tears still flowing, and looks up at the Dornishwoman who, long ago, she loved.

Long ago does not cover it. A lifetime ago. A time when the extent of her uncle's sickness, of Gríma's blandishments, was not yet clear; when he lived and walked whole and hale; when Théodred was alive, too, and when the kingdom was not yet so hard-pressed that she could not set foot outside the prison of the palace. She had been so young, then. She had been so different, before the poison took hold.

And Elia... Elia had remained with her, in the dark watches of the night, in the deepest shadows of her self-imposed imprisonment. When duty pressed too hard, when the losses were too great, when it seemed that the sun would never shine again, she remembered Dorne and its princess, and the too-brief days when she had felt herself a woman first and a king's ward second; and in the past few years, those memories have taken on the same glow as the songs of kings and heroes and glory, the same fabled nature as the histories she longed to emulate.

She had preferred it so. She had never wished, even in her darkest moods, for Elia to be with her, in a kingdom embattled within and without, in the shadowy halls of a grief-stricken city. She had wished to be in the gardens of Sunspear, her fair skin burning scarlet and painful in the too-hot sun, feeling cool water sting against those burns, hearing Elia Martell laugh.

She blinks, and Elia does not disappear, and despite her own broken, breathless laughter, Éowyn cannot imagine laughter in the other woman's hollow eyes. How are you here? she thinks, and there is a hopelessness in the thought. Must you be taken from me, too?

"Gondor called." Her voice is a whisper, a rasp. What strength it had has, for the moment, been drained into that first hysterical response. "Rohan answered."

She swallows. For all the tears, her throat is dry.

"Help me up. I cannot sit in the hallway."

Below it, a plea she cannot quite keep back, just as she could not keep back the laughter, or the tears. She is too tired to be steel. Touch me. Prove that you are real, and not some mockery of my madness.

[veryfond]

She is, to put it mildly, horrified at herself for unwittingly asking a question that hit such a nerve. There is something almost painful to seeing Éowyn in such a state, when all those years ago she had been so proud about drawing a true smile from her new friend, had such confidence in her ability to navigate any conversation. Where was that bright-eyed girl now?

Another question: how had she forgotten Rohan? For she remembers now, opening up a map (a map that certainly would have contained the same lands she is standing in now) and learning of the place, in preparation of their esteemed visitor. She has no excuse for the confusion now, except for that as the years dragged on, and her life began to feel so very small compared to what she once hoped, she too, thought of her former lover in only the most romanticized ways, thinking not of any of the politics that were discussed, or of when they spoke of her homeland. Only Éowyn's golden hair, her gray-eyed gaze, the noises she would make when they went to bed together.

She had never forgotten that, though she has admittedly dwelled less on the memories since Faramir and her had become intimate. It had started to feel like more of a betrayal, when she was married to a man who was so loyal, to think so fondly of a past dalliance. Still, sometimes when her husband was away for weeks on end, and the nights grew long and cold, Éowyn would come to mind. In her fantasies, Éowyn always understood instinctively everything Elia couldn't tell Faramir, for who could recognize suffering like another woman?

But that was a fool's dream. She will have to explain herself at some point, even if now there are far more important things to worry about. Like poor Éowyn down against the wall, asking her to help her up. What can she do but nod, and reach for her? Gently, carefully, she moves to the other woman's right side (and if her eyes widened slightly when she noticed fully for the first time the left arm hanging limp in a sling, she did a good job of hiding it). When her hand takes Éowyn's, the other one supporting her back, her touch is just as warm as it was when they last met.

"I have you," she whispers. She may not be very strong at all, but her body is free of injury. If Éowyn were to fall against her, it is a burden Elia would gladly bear.

[shieldofrohan]

Her touch is warm, and firm, and real. It does not dissolve into smoke and dreaming. There is no cold, lifeless laughter, no shadow falling upon Éowyn; there is only a woman's hand in hers, and the warm press of support at the small of her back, palpable through her shift; and she wants to weep all over again, in relief that is so sharp it is worse than pain.

Though there is pain, in abundance. Her head spins with it, and it lances through her, making her grunt as though struck, when she moves to stand. It had seemed so much more manageable on the battlefield, when adrenaline pushed it into the background, when all she had needed to focus on was one movement, one last rally. When she had been certain that it would be her last, and so all that mattered was one instant.

It means that she must put more of her weight on Elia than she would wish, especially as she has only one hand to steady herself. It has struck her often, since she awoke, how strangely the loss of an arm can echo out into everything - into walking, and standing, and sitting, and every movement. Everything is out of balance.

(Though, perhaps, that is not because of the arm.)

Standing is a labour, and one that takes almost a full minute to accomplish. For the first time since waking, too, she is fully aware of how she must look: her hair a tangled cloak around her, her face shiny with sweat and tears, her shift clinging to her everywhere that the bandages do not wick the sweat. Her feet are bare. She cannot think why that should seem to matter, but it does. It is a particular cruelty, to see again the only lover she has ever known - the only true friend - and, when she would most wish to be beautiful, to be as ugly as she has ever been.

She wheezes, catching her breath, and looses Elia's hand to steady herself against the wall. The wall, at least, will not struggle under her weight.

"I did not think," she says at last, her voice thin and strained, "that I would ever see you again." It is all that she can think to say, in the moment, and it is as much as she can say, before she has to pause to catch her breath again. "Are you certain you are not a dream?"

[veryfond]

It does hurt, a little, having Éowyn's weight on her, but Elia can bear it. She can bear seeing her once-dear friend in such a state. But she cannot deny that beneath her immediate support, there is a heaviness settling through her at this additional weight, at this additional burden. It was hard enough having to worry for the children as she always did, and for Faramir more and more as she felt less and less sure he would return to her alive. And when things had somewhat settled, if only for a moment, if only until the battle, now this shock.

Still, if any time, why not now? Her children are far from her, and while that grieves her immensely, there is nothing she can do besides hope the realm is one day safe again so they can reunite. Faramir sleeps while she frets over him. Éowyn is alive and here before her, and Elia may not know all that happened since they last saw each other, but she knows when someone needs help that can't be provided by a healer. When they need someone, anyone, to take notice and see them.

Faramir had done that for her. Their marriage hadn't been perfect, but he had always tried, and she had appreciated that more than she had ever told him aloud. Surely he would forgive her for leaving him this one moment- if he even wakes before she returns. She must hope that.

"No, I am not a dream." She stands by her side, fidgeting slightly, unsure whether to move her hands away or press closer. Éowyn must have a room somewhere- though the thought of escorting her back when she's in this state makes her anxious. "I'm real. I'm here." Though what she is beyond that, and how exactly she wound up in Gondor, is something she's not quite sure how to explain.

[shieldofrohan]

Real. It is a strange word: so filled with meaning and possibility, and yet so impossible to grasp. Nothing has seemed real since she awoke, feeling one nightmare lift and another settle in its place.

"You should not be." Here, that is. It is no place to be, this battered city, this bastion against a falling shadow. This is a place that seems, in its own way, as heavy with waiting as Edoras ever was; this is a place of darkness and grief. She cannot shake the knowledge that, somewhere in this city, her uncle's body still lies in state, awaiting a homecoming that may never come; that the men she rode with lie beside him; that she should have lain there, too. She cannot forget that it is not over.

No, Elia should not be here. Elia should be in Dorne, in the bright sunshine, with the light reflecting off the water and shining in her dark eyes. Safe, as nothing here is safe. Happy, as Éowyn has forgotten how to be happy.

"Still," she continues, her voice hoarse; and this time, when she fumbles for Elia's hand, it is not to support herself, only to touch her: "I am happy to see you."

Selfishly so, foolishly so, but it is so, all the same. She sniffs, clearing her throat. Meriadoc will wait; she cannot hold much conversation with him in her current state, in any case, and his friend is no doubt with him, as she has been told he so often is. What strength she has is gone, and she needs to turn back to her own quarters, to her bed, to rest and recover. Her own weakness horrifies her.

"Will you stay with me a while?" Knowing, as she says it, that she has no right to ask: knowing, in her heart, that it has been too long, that their lives are too separate now. Elia was not here alone, or for nothing; even knowing no more than that, it is enough to know that things have changed, and her duty is not to a long-lost friend. And yet, there is a plea in Éowyn's voice, all the same. Do not leave me alone, not now. I am afraid you will disappear. "My room is nearby." Then, with more than a hint of bitterness: "I could not walk here if it were not."

[veryfond]

At those words, she doesn't know what to say for a moment. This is no place for her to be, but where exactly does she belong? In Westeros, there will always be a target on her back, and she will not put Dorne in danger. Even if she could return, it would never be the same as when she was young, free, unaware of what was to come. Sometimes she feels much older than her years, and it is likely living in such a city has made her darker moods all the worse. Still-

"Thinking of what should be has never gone well for me." It's spoken matter-of-factly, with only a trace of bitterness. She makes do with what she has. And has she not found peace in this city, whenever she lay next to Faramir? Had she not found a swell of happiness even in the darkest of times, when he opened his eyes and smiled at her?

And there is some tender emotion spurred in her chest when Éowyn takes her hand, the plain honesty of her words almost too much to bear. She shouldn't go. What if Faramir wakes, and wonders where she is? What if someone else sees, and finds it odd two apparent strangers are so close? This is hardly a time or place for gossip to spread, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Even as she thinks of these valid concerns, a part of her knows there is no way she is leaving Éowyn in this hallway in this state.

"Of course I can sit with you for a time." Her voice is kind, her tone is warm. She gives Éowyn's hand a gentle squeeze, and for a moment her eyes flit back to where she sat mere minutes ago, to the bed where her husband lies. He is just the same and yet for her much has shifted. "I- I have missed you, my friend."

[shieldofrohan]

Her eyes follow Elia's, that glancing look, the sleeping man. She will not acknowledge the pang of jealousy, any more than she will ask the question that has been nagging at her for several minutes: Who is he? Who is he to you? She will not ask it, because she can guess the answer, and so long as she does not confirm it, she is free to pretend.

Instead, she pulls her gaze back to Elia, and her smile, if wan, is real. "I have missed you, too. You cannot know how much."

How lonely she was, all that time, with Théodred and Éomer gone, with the sickness heavy in the air and Théoden ailing more by the day. How cold her bed had been, in the dark watches of the night, when fear and grief were nearest and loving warmth felt farthest. How, under the heavy weight of a city rotting from its heart, she had thought more than once to the princess of Sunspear, and wondered how much easier it might be to bear if she were there. Dorne is so far away, and that has been its magic - but, with Elia here now, it is clear that her magic was not only in memory and distance. She is still, even in her sorrow, so beautiful.

Éowyn clears her throat, wincing at the jarring of her ribs, and looses Elia's hand so that she can start the long, long journey of a few dozen paces to her chamber. The effort of that, for the time being, robs her of thought, and of any chance of conversation; and perhaps that is no bad thing.

The room is much the same as Faramir's, as all the private rooms here; save that the bedclothes are in far worse disarray, because getting up was a terrible trial and not a neat one. The other difference is that, where Faramir came dressed for his own funeral, Éowyn was still armoured, and there is no place else for it to go: the chair against the wall is laden with a battered and bloody suit of mail, and, beside it, her sword and shield. Not that there is much left of her shield: the white horse that once ran on the painted green wood has been thoroughly decapitated, and all that remains is a fragment of splintered wood and leather straps around a deeply-dented boss. That, no doubt, explains the sling.

Éowyn sinks down onto the bed, flushed and sweating, her breath rasping heavily, and looks up at Elia. It is a moment before she can find breath enough to say, in a low tone, "Will you tell me how the Lady of Sunspear comes to Gondor? Or is it better left unsaid?"

Hoping against hope that there is some answer, however unlikely, that does not include the man in the bed.

[veryfond]

The journey back to the room is as slow as she might expect, given Éowyn's injuries, and it gives Elia time to think, to consider. In the times where she imagined what might have become of her old friend in the years following their dalliance, she had always hoped that she was happy, that somehow their fortunes had been reversed, the freedom Elia once felt she had gifted to Éowyn when it was lost.

In her heart, she knew it was unlikely, but she still could not have expected this, to see Éowyn sapped of her strength, seemingly more alone than ever. She should not be here any more than Elia should. How had she even gotten onto the battlefield? Women do not fight here any more than they do in Westeros, and Éowyn, Elia recalls, has a brother as protective as hers are. Why would she put herself in such danger? The horror shows on her face as they enter the room, and she notices the bloody armor, the broken shield. For a moment, she's not in the House of Healing, she's finding out that Faramir-

But no. No. It's fine. He is alive, and she is alive, and Éowyn is alive, even if they are worse for wear. She forces herself to relax, sitting down in the chair next to the bed, hoping that Éowyn had not noticed her expression change. Unfortunately, there is no way to hide the way she stiffens anew at the question, glancing at the door as if she's worried they'll be overheard. How long has it been she has heard the name of her birthplace spoken? She's always been vigilantly careful not to name any specific locations when asked. And very few have asked, with Faramir to act as her shield.

Her eyes dart back to Éowyn, her voice hushed . "I am not the lady of Sunspear anymore. I am no one important." Just a wife, just a pitiful foreign-born widow forced to marry for safety. "There is no home for me in Westeros anymore. I had to leave- they were, they would have-" Her voice goes increasingly tight and fraught, and she realizes with horror that are once again tears in her eyes, ones she attempts to swallow back, forcing herself into a more stoic tone. "I had to. For my children."

[shieldofrohan]

"Your children." She echoes it without thinking, with a strange numbness on her tongue. It is not, if she dwells on it, surprising. The women of Westeros marry and have children young, by the reckoning of Éowyn's people; and it is only because of the war that Éowyn herself has not sought marriage. It cannot be a surprise at all to hear that, in a far-off land, without the darkness so near, life carried on as it should. And they had known, even at the time, that it would happen; that what they had between them was a temporary thing, and the truth of the future was in duty.

And yet, she is surprised. And yet, it hits her like a blow, sinks into the pit of her stomach like a boulder into water. Your children. Your life.

She reaches out, her good hand shaking a little, to take Elia's hand, to squeeze it as tightly as she can. She saw no children in that room, but that means nothing; who would bring a child here?

Who would bring a child here, to the centre of the war, to the edges of the world? She cannot have known, and yet, there is a lump in Éowyn's throat to think of it, to imagine fleeing one shadow only to find another.

"I will say no more of it," she promises quietly, and if her eyes are a little too shiny when she looks at Elia, she will not be ashamed of that. It is all that she can do not to weep again openly; if her voice is a little choked, then they must both live with that. "Of any of it, if you do not wish it. But of all places, of all the world, I would that you had not found yourself here at such a time."

No matter how glad she is to see Elia, how much it warms the heart which was frozen under the Witch-King's shadow. No matter her own selfish desire to forget all the time and distance that has come between them. No-one should be here, at the end of everything.

There is another question; and like the question of the man in the bed, it is one she does not at all want to ask; but unlike it, she feels she must. "Your children, are they...?"

[veryfond]

If Elia had been asked a week prior, she would have considered it impossible that Éowyn had not married in their time apart. Years had passed, after all- long enough for Elia to be married twice over, to bear two children, to survive a war, to run straight into another one. She could recall, hazily, Éowyn's own uncertainty, her shock at learning the lengths Elia's mother went to in an attempt to secure her and Oberyn betrothals, but the woman was so beautiful, so noble, she felt it impossible that someone wouldn't take notice.

Now she recalls how Faramir had found her questions about his marital status bemusing, his explanation that during war such things fell to the wayside. Odd, considering wartime weddings were hardly uncommon in Westeros, but she had accepted it, and now she accepts again that she was wrong, that Éowyn and her had lived very different lives indeed.

"We cannot change the past." Her eyes are shiny too, but she has been reminding herself of what her husband told her months ago, that she should focus on the present, and the future. The belief that there will be a future at all, a real one with no grim darkness, is hard to imagine at a time like this, but she has to, or else how can she survive? She has lived life with the certainty she would soon be dead, and she cannot do that again. What's coming will come whether or not she worries about it.

"My children?" She isn't sure what question is being asked of her, shaking her head slowly. "No, they are not- I had their maids take them, when the city was evacuated." Being raised on the tale of Queen Nymeria, she has more faith in a band of women and children surviving in the direst of situations then many, but she still shivers despite a lack of chill in the room, and sadness pervades every word. "I am not used to being without them, I'm afraid."

There are certain questions she is unconsciously avoiding. The man in the bed. Why she is still here, at what may be the end of all things. What she is hoping for- that she is still able to hope. She would like to share all of this with someone, but she doesn't know if anyone would understand, even an old friend.

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn wishes, as soon as Elia answers, that she had not asked. She thinks bleakly of how painful it has been, each time her kinsmen ride out into danger, the bitter uncertainty of waiting and not knowing - and they are men, warriors, not children. She can hardly imagine how hard it would be, to be parted from someone no less loved and far more vulnerable, the fear that she must have reminded Elia of.

Her hand still on Elia's, she shakes her head. "I am sorry."

What else, after all, is there to say? There is no soothing those fears, for they are justified; there is no claiming that she understands, for she knows that she does not. She could say that it will end soon, for that she does believe: but she does not believe that the end will be any improvement. But she knows that she is sorry - sorry to have left Elia to find herself at so bitter a pass, sorry for the grief that life has brought upon her, sorry that she can offer nothing more than sorry.

She swallows, and, loosing Elia's hand with another squeeze, begins the difficult process of rearranging herself and the covers so that she can lie down. Now she is no longer exerting herself, now that the sweat on her skin has cooled, she is shivering.

"We cannot change the past," she repeats, more to herself than to Elia, and sighs. "Would that we could. Would that I never left your side."

Except that knowing all that would come, all that it would cost, would have changed nothing. Her duty would have remained the same.