Éowyn is filthy. There has not been a chance to wash thoroughly until now, and while Gríma has made sure she was kept clean and (relatively) healthy in his care, a lot of dirt can accumulate in the course of killing a man and fleeing for one's life. Small remnants of days-old dried blood are still caught in the thicket of her long hair, tangled from riding, and when she steps into the bath, the dust of the road blossoms off her, clouding the clean water.
"I did not know you looked for me at all." The water is warm, at once stinging and soothing on her blisters, and she sinks into it readily, trying to look up at Galinda. She wants to say something of how it felt, to flee without hope of rescue, expecting at every moment to feel the hand at her throat; how she did not know why she fled at all, had thought a thousand times in those few moments that she should give in and drive the knife through her throat sooner than wait for them to catch her. How, when the strange knights bore down upon her, she had almost done so, thinking them sure to be Gríma's allies. How part of her still wondered why the knife had not done its work, why she had stayed her hand long enough to see them fighting the Dunlendings at the gate. How impossible it seems that anything should be ready, or here at all.
There are no words for any of it. She can only sigh, and let Galinda slowly ease the knots out of her hair.
"I do not need any of this," she says at last, after several more moments have passed. "Neither your kindness nor your armies. If you give me weapons to bear, and time enough to sit a horse without pain, that will be enough." She would die, of course. But it is all she hoped for from the first, the most that had ever seemed possible: that she might die fighting, carving the Wormtongue's head from his shoulders.
(But you are all there is, the voice of reason whispers, and she wishes she could not hear it. You are the last of Eorl's line. You are Queen of the Mark. You have a duty, even now.)
And as abruptly as that, and without any clear trigger but her own thoughts, the foundations crack, and the tears begin to flow, and this time she cannot hold them back. She lies in the water which she has made dirty with her own body, and there are gentle hands against her hair, and she is safe and warm and there are men fighting for her, and she weeps as she has not wept since her brother's death, the kind of wracking sobs which tear themselves up from the very pit of her and shake her in every limb.
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sforzinda
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Date: 2025-06-16 03:36 pm (UTC)"I did not know you looked for me at all." The water is warm, at once stinging and soothing on her blisters, and she sinks into it readily, trying to look up at Galinda. She wants to say something of how it felt, to flee without hope of rescue, expecting at every moment to feel the hand at her throat; how she did not know why she fled at all, had thought a thousand times in those few moments that she should give in and drive the knife through her throat sooner than wait for them to catch her. How, when the strange knights bore down upon her, she had almost done so, thinking them sure to be Gríma's allies. How part of her still wondered why the knife had not done its work, why she had stayed her hand long enough to see them fighting the Dunlendings at the gate. How impossible it seems that anything should be ready, or here at all.
There are no words for any of it. She can only sigh, and let Galinda slowly ease the knots out of her hair.
"I do not need any of this," she says at last, after several more moments have passed. "Neither your kindness nor your armies. If you give me weapons to bear, and time enough to sit a horse without pain, that will be enough." She would die, of course. But it is all she hoped for from the first, the most that had ever seemed possible: that she might die fighting, carving the Wormtongue's head from his shoulders.
(But you are all there is, the voice of reason whispers, and she wishes she could not hear it. You are the last of Eorl's line. You are Queen of the Mark. You have a duty, even now.)
And as abruptly as that, and without any clear trigger but her own thoughts, the foundations crack, and the tears begin to flow, and this time she cannot hold them back. She lies in the water which she has made dirty with her own body, and there are gentle hands against her hair, and she is safe and warm and there are men fighting for her, and she weeps as she has not wept since her brother's death, the kind of wracking sobs which tear themselves up from the very pit of her and shake her in every limb.