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shieldofrohanShe had been prepared for the end. She had been ready to die with sword in hand, to watch Edoras burn and bring her down with it, while the Shadow covered the land and all that they clung to was swept away. She had done all that she could, and even doing it, she had known it would not be enough. She had been ready.
She had not been ready to survive it. Every day since, she has wished with all her heart that she did not.
He had tried to woo her, at first. If it had not been so terrible to see, it would almost have been funny: the sheer clumsy stupidity of it, to think that power was enough, that a grief-stricken captive would flee to the architect of her misery. He had brought her flowers, and tried to make himself a confidant. She had spat in his face, and bidden him to kill her too, or else she would kill him.
Even Gríma's foolishness had its limits, but his covetousness did not. He would have her, he told her, and she would be his wife and kneel for him, and she would know her place. At the time, she had laughed openly, certain that nothing he could do would break her will, knowing that she had resigned herself to pain and death, believing that there was nothing left for him to turn against her. Éomer was dead. Théodred was dead. The only leverage he had over her was Théoden, who lingered half-conscious and no longer himself; and he needed the King more than he needed his desires met.
She had been so innocent, back then. Even in what had seemed to her the darkest possible hour, with everything lost and all that she loved ripped from her, she had still been so naïve.
The first time he had tried to bed her, she had clawed her nails across his face, snarling and spitting like a wildcat; and Gríma would not have overcome her alone, being both smaller and weaker than his unwilling bride, but he was not alone. She had been held down by his new guard, muscular men of Dunlending stock, and her maidenhead was lost to her most loathed enemy beneath the eyes and hands of three uncaring strangers, and she had wept as bitterly as ever a woman wept - not for her lost virginity, nor even for its circumstances, but because that was the moment at which she understood fully how utterly helpless she had become.
She tried to rally. She tried to find some strength, some pride to carry her forward. At every turn, it was ripped from her.
She had not given way easily. She had made him fight for every inch: made him drag her by her hair sooner than go where she was told; met his demands with stony, proud silence; watched for any weakness. She had left her mark on him more than once, biting and scratching and kicking and punching, and in time, it seemed, he had changed his aim. If he had once seemed to hope that she would love him, he soon sought only to see her broken, like a horse to the bridle; if he had once intended to make her his wife, now he was content to make her his whore. Anything, it seemed, to make her crawl.
She tried to escape, more than once. She knew the King's hall better than anyone still living, and they could not guard her all the time. Her second attempt, in hindsight, had come close to success - would have been successful, in all likelihood, if she had simply fled. But she could not bear to flee and leave him living, and she had managed to come so close, had had the knife almost to his throat, when the men he hired had heard his screams and dragged her off. That she had been soundly beaten did nothing to dissuade her; that thereafter she was locked away for over a week without light or food only hardened her resolve. But then there had been the prisoners.
Gríma needed the King alive. He needed Éowyn alive. The other Men of Rohan, those who had survived his takeover... he needed them far less. He had brought her out of her captivity, weak with hunger and grief, to see the ends of the men who had tried to help her. Háma, Ceolfrith, Harbeorn, and the rest, all men she had known since her childhood, bloodied and beaten and trying to remain strong; he had made her stand there as they were hanged, and their bodies thrown onto the dungheap, and all she could do for them was to give them the honour of not looking away.
And then he had turned to her, and said in a tone low enough for her, Their wives, their children. And when the guards released her arms, and Gríma told her to kneel, she had knelt.
That was a year ago. She has rebelled since, in smaller ways; twice more she attempted escape, alone in her planning, but that made no difference to the deaths that came from it. The second time she came close to killing him, wrapping her hands around his throat so that he could not call for help, was the last time he was alone with her. He was still alive, and she was still a slave, and all that she had accomplished was that her humiliations were more public.
Little by little, he broke her down. She rarely spoke, rarely moved without being ordered to. For a time, she tried to kill herself: refused food and water, until they forced it down her throat anyway; sought any weapon to end things, without success; tried to break her skull against the walls of her room, until they bound her helpless to a bed. In the end, with even that escape blocked to her, she surrendered. She hated herself for surrendering. She hated Théoden, in his sickness and his weakness, for surrendering them. She hated everything, with a ferocity that was the only thing she could still feel, and she had no recourse.
When he told her to kneel, now, she knelt. When he told her to stand, she stood. When he told her to open her legs, or her mouth, or any other part of her, she did. She stood behind his seat, beside the empty throne, and she was a shell: she said not one word, nor shed one tear, nor moved a muscle unless she was told. She had spoken against him perhaps a dozen times since the winter, never for her own sake: to denounce some political cruelty, to refuse him some right that was not his to claim, to say aloud You are not King. Each time, she had been made to pay. Each time, her people had been made to pay. She would never allow herself to close her eyes, as the bodies were brought before her. She would never give their lives lightly, and so she surrendered, over and over again, and hated herself more every moment.
And then, the King died.
She did not weep, finding Théoden cold and stiff in his bed when she came to bring his breakfast. She felt no sorrow, only a dull ache where her feelings had once been. She thought, without the horror she should feel: I would that you had died two years sooner, and spared us all this end. She closed his eyes, and settled his withered hands upon his counterpane, and, despite it all, she kissed his brow.
If he was dead, then Gríma was King. He was King by her hand, by her claim. He was King because he had married the Queen, and so long as she surrendered to him, who was to dispute it? And in time, she knew, his attempts would bear fruit, and she would fall pregnant with his son, and then the line of Eorl would be reduced to a whore's get, and what remained of Rohan would mean less than the dirt.
They had ceased to watch her so closely, now. It had been months since she had made any attempt at escape or rebellion. She had no contact with her own people, those who were loyal to the line of Eorl; she had no weapon and no horse. She had only one thing to aid her: the last scraps of Éowyn, Éomund's daughter, who had once sworn that she would never bend.
She would die, she swore, there in the dead man's room. She would die, before she lived a day as King Wormtongue's queen.
And she hurled herself at the guardsman, and as he stumbled back, taken by surprise, she scrabbled the eating-knife from his belt, and drove it into his eye, and then his throat, and she ran. There were few windows in the living-quarters of the hall, and fewer still large enough to climb through; she ran for the nearest door, a headlong and desperate dash which had no chance of success, no hope of escape...
And out into the summer sunlight, so dazzlingly bright after months almost entirely spend inside. She staggered at the heat of it like a hammer-blow, and tried to catch herself, looking back into the shadows of the hall and out into a city that was no longer hers, and wondered why they were not yet upon her; but there was no virtue in wondering, or in pause. She held the knife white-knuckled, turning toward the stables. It would do nothing to defend her, if armoured men came to reclaim her. It would not save her from capture - but it could save her from once again surviving it.
They did not come.
She did not discover why until she was outside the city. She had taken, of all among them, the King's own horse: Snowmane knew her well, and he had almost smashed down the door of his stall when she called to him. He charged through the street and down the Barrow-Road, and she clung bareback to his mane, almost flat against his back, the bloody knife still in her hand; and as the gates were closed to bar her leaving, the guards at last moving to prevent her, she dug her heels into the stallion's flanks and urged him on, with all the swiftness that only Rohan's horses could claim, and the guards were Men of Rohan, and they hesitated a split second to recognise the King's horse, and then he was upon them, and bursting out onto the open hillside, and he did not stop until the strength left him, and then he settled from a gallop to a trot, his white flanks heaving and dark with sweat.
And it was then, and only then, that she found she was not alone.
That was two weeks ago. Now, she and her strange rescuers are far from Edoras, outside the borders of the Mark, farther than she has ever been. She has spoken to them, by now: enough to know that they were sent to retrieve her, that their rulers seek an alliance, and that they will see her returned to the throne. It should be a hopeful thing, but it fills her with a terrible dread to think of it. Will she be Queen, who has already betrayed her people a thousand times, and surrendered them and herself to the man who would destroy them? Will she take up their cause, only to fail them anew?
She should have died, she thinks. She should have died in the escape. She should have died in the imprisonment. She should have died a year and a half ago, when she saw her people fall. But she is alive, and she cannot pretend that she has no duty to them, and even in the direst moments of her imprisonment, she has never been so afraid.
They brought clothing and supplies, and at last she is permitted some of the things she has been denied: she is given a knife to eat with, and a belt, and riding-gear. She looks, as they ride into the courtyard, almost the woman she was before the war: she is tall and fair and she sits upright in the saddle of a milk-white warhorse, her chin raised and her long golden hair fluttering in the August breeze. But there is an emptiness behind the grey eyes that fix themselves on some imagined point, and her hand clutches tightly to the horn of her saddle, the mark of a shackle half-visible on her wrist, and, inside, she is nothing the same.
She does not dismount when they draw to a halt. She barely seems to have realised that they have stopped at all. It is with the slowness of one moving through a dream that at last she turns her head, looking uncomprehendingly at the small party who have left the palace to meet them.
"They will follow me here, as like as not." Her voice feels rusty, alien on her tongue. It is the voice of the old Éowyn, who had never knelt with her head bowed and called herself whore and slave. It is the voice of a woman who expects to be taken seriously, coming from the mouth of one who has grown to expect mocking laughter. It is the voice of a Queen, and she is not Queen; she is not sure she is even human any more.
She wants to scream. She wants to say: Kill me or leave me to the wolves, but do not ask me to be Éomund's daughter now. She is dead, the Lady Éowyn is dead, and all is lost. Do not look at me as though I carry hope; I have none even for myself. She wants to say: I cannot offer you alliance, I cannot offer you help, I can offer you nothing at all. But there is no other Lady Éowyn, and she is needed, all the same.
"They will follow me," she repeats, and her hand winds tighter in the reins, her nails digging into her palm. They are longer nails than she would choose. It has been a long time since she has been trusted with either work to keep them short for, or with scissors. "Are you ready, if they come?"
She had not been ready to survive it. Every day since, she has wished with all her heart that she did not.
He had tried to woo her, at first. If it had not been so terrible to see, it would almost have been funny: the sheer clumsy stupidity of it, to think that power was enough, that a grief-stricken captive would flee to the architect of her misery. He had brought her flowers, and tried to make himself a confidant. She had spat in his face, and bidden him to kill her too, or else she would kill him.
Even Gríma's foolishness had its limits, but his covetousness did not. He would have her, he told her, and she would be his wife and kneel for him, and she would know her place. At the time, she had laughed openly, certain that nothing he could do would break her will, knowing that she had resigned herself to pain and death, believing that there was nothing left for him to turn against her. Éomer was dead. Théodred was dead. The only leverage he had over her was Théoden, who lingered half-conscious and no longer himself; and he needed the King more than he needed his desires met.
She had been so innocent, back then. Even in what had seemed to her the darkest possible hour, with everything lost and all that she loved ripped from her, she had still been so naïve.
The first time he had tried to bed her, she had clawed her nails across his face, snarling and spitting like a wildcat; and Gríma would not have overcome her alone, being both smaller and weaker than his unwilling bride, but he was not alone. She had been held down by his new guard, muscular men of Dunlending stock, and her maidenhead was lost to her most loathed enemy beneath the eyes and hands of three uncaring strangers, and she had wept as bitterly as ever a woman wept - not for her lost virginity, nor even for its circumstances, but because that was the moment at which she understood fully how utterly helpless she had become.
She tried to rally. She tried to find some strength, some pride to carry her forward. At every turn, it was ripped from her.
She had not given way easily. She had made him fight for every inch: made him drag her by her hair sooner than go where she was told; met his demands with stony, proud silence; watched for any weakness. She had left her mark on him more than once, biting and scratching and kicking and punching, and in time, it seemed, he had changed his aim. If he had once seemed to hope that she would love him, he soon sought only to see her broken, like a horse to the bridle; if he had once intended to make her his wife, now he was content to make her his whore. Anything, it seemed, to make her crawl.
She tried to escape, more than once. She knew the King's hall better than anyone still living, and they could not guard her all the time. Her second attempt, in hindsight, had come close to success - would have been successful, in all likelihood, if she had simply fled. But she could not bear to flee and leave him living, and she had managed to come so close, had had the knife almost to his throat, when the men he hired had heard his screams and dragged her off. That she had been soundly beaten did nothing to dissuade her; that thereafter she was locked away for over a week without light or food only hardened her resolve. But then there had been the prisoners.
Gríma needed the King alive. He needed Éowyn alive. The other Men of Rohan, those who had survived his takeover... he needed them far less. He had brought her out of her captivity, weak with hunger and grief, to see the ends of the men who had tried to help her. Háma, Ceolfrith, Harbeorn, and the rest, all men she had known since her childhood, bloodied and beaten and trying to remain strong; he had made her stand there as they were hanged, and their bodies thrown onto the dungheap, and all she could do for them was to give them the honour of not looking away.
And then he had turned to her, and said in a tone low enough for her, Their wives, their children. And when the guards released her arms, and Gríma told her to kneel, she had knelt.
That was a year ago. She has rebelled since, in smaller ways; twice more she attempted escape, alone in her planning, but that made no difference to the deaths that came from it. The second time she came close to killing him, wrapping her hands around his throat so that he could not call for help, was the last time he was alone with her. He was still alive, and she was still a slave, and all that she had accomplished was that her humiliations were more public.
Little by little, he broke her down. She rarely spoke, rarely moved without being ordered to. For a time, she tried to kill herself: refused food and water, until they forced it down her throat anyway; sought any weapon to end things, without success; tried to break her skull against the walls of her room, until they bound her helpless to a bed. In the end, with even that escape blocked to her, she surrendered. She hated herself for surrendering. She hated Théoden, in his sickness and his weakness, for surrendering them. She hated everything, with a ferocity that was the only thing she could still feel, and she had no recourse.
When he told her to kneel, now, she knelt. When he told her to stand, she stood. When he told her to open her legs, or her mouth, or any other part of her, she did. She stood behind his seat, beside the empty throne, and she was a shell: she said not one word, nor shed one tear, nor moved a muscle unless she was told. She had spoken against him perhaps a dozen times since the winter, never for her own sake: to denounce some political cruelty, to refuse him some right that was not his to claim, to say aloud You are not King. Each time, she had been made to pay. Each time, her people had been made to pay. She would never allow herself to close her eyes, as the bodies were brought before her. She would never give their lives lightly, and so she surrendered, over and over again, and hated herself more every moment.
And then, the King died.
She did not weep, finding Théoden cold and stiff in his bed when she came to bring his breakfast. She felt no sorrow, only a dull ache where her feelings had once been. She thought, without the horror she should feel: I would that you had died two years sooner, and spared us all this end. She closed his eyes, and settled his withered hands upon his counterpane, and, despite it all, she kissed his brow.
If he was dead, then Gríma was King. He was King by her hand, by her claim. He was King because he had married the Queen, and so long as she surrendered to him, who was to dispute it? And in time, she knew, his attempts would bear fruit, and she would fall pregnant with his son, and then the line of Eorl would be reduced to a whore's get, and what remained of Rohan would mean less than the dirt.
They had ceased to watch her so closely, now. It had been months since she had made any attempt at escape or rebellion. She had no contact with her own people, those who were loyal to the line of Eorl; she had no weapon and no horse. She had only one thing to aid her: the last scraps of Éowyn, Éomund's daughter, who had once sworn that she would never bend.
She would die, she swore, there in the dead man's room. She would die, before she lived a day as King Wormtongue's queen.
And she hurled herself at the guardsman, and as he stumbled back, taken by surprise, she scrabbled the eating-knife from his belt, and drove it into his eye, and then his throat, and she ran. There were few windows in the living-quarters of the hall, and fewer still large enough to climb through; she ran for the nearest door, a headlong and desperate dash which had no chance of success, no hope of escape...
And out into the summer sunlight, so dazzlingly bright after months almost entirely spend inside. She staggered at the heat of it like a hammer-blow, and tried to catch herself, looking back into the shadows of the hall and out into a city that was no longer hers, and wondered why they were not yet upon her; but there was no virtue in wondering, or in pause. She held the knife white-knuckled, turning toward the stables. It would do nothing to defend her, if armoured men came to reclaim her. It would not save her from capture - but it could save her from once again surviving it.
They did not come.
She did not discover why until she was outside the city. She had taken, of all among them, the King's own horse: Snowmane knew her well, and he had almost smashed down the door of his stall when she called to him. He charged through the street and down the Barrow-Road, and she clung bareback to his mane, almost flat against his back, the bloody knife still in her hand; and as the gates were closed to bar her leaving, the guards at last moving to prevent her, she dug her heels into the stallion's flanks and urged him on, with all the swiftness that only Rohan's horses could claim, and the guards were Men of Rohan, and they hesitated a split second to recognise the King's horse, and then he was upon them, and bursting out onto the open hillside, and he did not stop until the strength left him, and then he settled from a gallop to a trot, his white flanks heaving and dark with sweat.
And it was then, and only then, that she found she was not alone.
That was two weeks ago. Now, she and her strange rescuers are far from Edoras, outside the borders of the Mark, farther than she has ever been. She has spoken to them, by now: enough to know that they were sent to retrieve her, that their rulers seek an alliance, and that they will see her returned to the throne. It should be a hopeful thing, but it fills her with a terrible dread to think of it. Will she be Queen, who has already betrayed her people a thousand times, and surrendered them and herself to the man who would destroy them? Will she take up their cause, only to fail them anew?
She should have died, she thinks. She should have died in the escape. She should have died in the imprisonment. She should have died a year and a half ago, when she saw her people fall. But she is alive, and she cannot pretend that she has no duty to them, and even in the direst moments of her imprisonment, she has never been so afraid.
They brought clothing and supplies, and at last she is permitted some of the things she has been denied: she is given a knife to eat with, and a belt, and riding-gear. She looks, as they ride into the courtyard, almost the woman she was before the war: she is tall and fair and she sits upright in the saddle of a milk-white warhorse, her chin raised and her long golden hair fluttering in the August breeze. But there is an emptiness behind the grey eyes that fix themselves on some imagined point, and her hand clutches tightly to the horn of her saddle, the mark of a shackle half-visible on her wrist, and, inside, she is nothing the same.
She does not dismount when they draw to a halt. She barely seems to have realised that they have stopped at all. It is with the slowness of one moving through a dream that at last she turns her head, looking uncomprehendingly at the small party who have left the palace to meet them.
"They will follow me here, as like as not." Her voice feels rusty, alien on her tongue. It is the voice of the old Éowyn, who had never knelt with her head bowed and called herself whore and slave. It is the voice of a woman who expects to be taken seriously, coming from the mouth of one who has grown to expect mocking laughter. It is the voice of a Queen, and she is not Queen; she is not sure she is even human any more.
She wants to scream. She wants to say: Kill me or leave me to the wolves, but do not ask me to be Éomund's daughter now. She is dead, the Lady Éowyn is dead, and all is lost. Do not look at me as though I carry hope; I have none even for myself. She wants to say: I cannot offer you alliance, I cannot offer you help, I can offer you nothing at all. But there is no other Lady Éowyn, and she is needed, all the same.
"They will follow me," she repeats, and her hand winds tighter in the reins, her nails digging into her palm. They are longer nails than she would choose. It has been a long time since she has been trusted with either work to keep them short for, or with scissors. "Are you ready, if they come?"
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Date: 2025-07-04 05:46 pm (UTC)Her fingers flex against the surface of the water, and she presses her lips together tightly and moves to do as she is bidden. Standing aches worse than settling, her worn thighs aching and trembling under the strain. She steadies herself against the sides of the tub, teeth gritting as she stands. A part of her is aware, dimly, that she is being unfair: that this is not a just way to respond to someone who is trying to comfort her. Galinda does not seem hardened, the way Éowyn has become; she seems kind and genuine and soft, and she does not need to know the worst of it, nor be made to feel guilty for not speaking to it.
But it is difficult, now, not to let herself be honest. For once, she is almost safe, and there is so much that has so long gone unsaid. She turns where she stands, meeting Glinda's eyes.
"I know that everyone says it. I know that in the eyes of the world, I am his wife and he is my husband, and so even in my absence he is King; and if there is one relief it is that he is not man enough to have gotten a child on me, so that he will never rest easy in his ownership. And he will be my husband by that accounting until I prove otherwise, and he will claim so until I cleave his head from his shoulders, and even then, there will be those who say that I allowed him mastery over me, that I sold the Mark to preserve my own skin and turned against him only to sell it to another lord. I cannot make it otherwise. I can fight all my life, with an army or with my own bare hands, and I can rend him limb from limb and cry out all that he has done to me; but the histories that are told, even if they sing my deeds and acclaim a victory, will make me his wife." There is a gleam of tears in her eyes again, but there is a sharper glint there too, a ferocity that cries out for an outlet. "And I will not fight history. If he were my husband, then I divorce him utterly, and if I were his wife, still I would be the one to see him choking on his blood. But I would have you know it, Lady Glinda; I would have it clear between us, if nowhere else. He is not my husband, not my kinsman or my King, and he never was."
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Date: 2025-07-06 05:24 am (UTC)Then and only then does she reach out her hands towards the young queen, not touching - just coming close enough that Éowyn could take her hand for support, should she wish to, or her arm, or lean on her shoulder with only a step closer.
"I understand," she says softly, gazing into those clear grey eyes. "I will not forget it." It seems suddenly very important that Éowyn should know it to be truth, that Galinda should remember. For a moment there is nothing in the world except the two of them: Galinda, and this entrancing woman who has cast a spell over her within minutes of their very meeting.
The rumble of voices passing by the chamber startles her out of it, and Galinda recollects herself enough to remember that Éowyn is still in her bath and will soon be cold. There is a towel just by her, and she reaches to take it and wrap it around the other woman, smoothing it down over Éowyn's shoulders.
"Come, we shall get you out," she says gently, "and then I will get your clothes and perhaps some spiced wine, if you like? I would not have you catch a chill." And this is only the ordinary courtesy of a host to a guest, but to Galinda it feels oddly like it ought to be something more.
hopefully this is an okay time to fast-forward? idk lmk if you want something different obviously <3
Date: 2025-07-06 05:05 pm (UTC)"I would like that. Thank you." It is palpable, the way she is working to gather herself, to regain some kind of distance between them, as if hoping the bath has washed away the weakness that overcame her. She clears her throat, lifting the corner of the towel to wipe away both water and tears from her face, and lets go of Galinda's hand to lean over and wring out her hair into the tub. "Though if there is a comb or a brush, give me that first, and I will get my hair a little dryer before I drench fresh clothes."
There is more to it than just practicality. She wants to feel like herself again, or at least to look like herself: to seem put-together and ready for whatever comes. Not tangled and filthy, nor wet and bedraggled. Given half a chance, she wants her hair properly braided back from her face, fastened up out of the way; she wants clean, dry clothes and the knife back at her belt; she wants to retreat into looking untouched by anything, as though that will make it so.
And spiced wine. She has not, for the most part, been deprived of such small luxuries - not unless it has been a specific punishment - but it has not been soothing, for some time. Nothing has. Spiced wine drunk by the fire, without haste or horror, is a thing of the past: it speaks to her of winter nights with her kinsmen, in the rare moments of peace, sharing songs and reminiscences. There is pain in that memory, grief unhealed and unaddressed - but it is the kind of pain that calls out in invitation, like an old friend.
It is not a winter's night, of course. It is a summer's afternoon, and this place is a stone holdfast rather than the ancient welcome of Meduseld in better times, and the company she has is like her kinsmen only in the colour of her hair. But it is something. It is enough to start gathering herself again, and to settle into a silence that is a kind of exhale after two years of held breaths and fury and fear. She should take the opportunity to ask more questions, to plan the road ahead and to determine what other interests - beyond the obvious ambition of Arduenna - are at play. At the very least, she should find out something more about the woman who has set herself as her companion.
But slowly, it sinks into her nervous system that she is safe for the moment, that the flight from Edoras is over; and with that slow realisation, the exhaustion sets in fully. Her shoulders, held so stiff, begin to slump, her back softening. She feels leaden in every limb, all the aches and pains and weariness dragging her down, until raising the cup to her lips feels almost more than she can manage. The last thing she wants to do is talk - to ask questions, and have to answer them, and to risk another of those ugly moments where she is set off by the smallest misstep. It is exhausting to be around anyone, even - perhaps especially - someone friendly. She cannot be rude, or risk damaging her situation further; she cannot keep being weak, when all that is asked of her is strength; and she certainly cannot be intelligent right now.
The sun is still quite high in the sky outside, and perhaps two hours have passed since she arrived, when she slowly pushes herself to her feet. "I should rest," she says, and it is clear from her voice how true that is. "You may as well go, Lady Galinda, and make better use of your evening." Then, because she is still prone to honesty and because Galinda has been subjected to enough of it already that there is no sense in dissembling: "I have not been properly left alone for some months. I would like to be by myself a while."
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Date: 2025-07-08 09:42 am (UTC)And yet Galinda is quite unable to look away from her, fascinated by the way she shrugs her shoulders, by the calluses on her hands, by how rare and sweet her smiles are. It makes her nervous, which perhaps makes her talk too much, but they are both floundering in a situation neither has encountered before. She had not expected to be lady-in-waiting to a queen such as this, had expected someone more like her mother - elegant and withdrawn, regal and cool. Éowyn is not the kind of woman in the songs and stories Galinda knows, and it makes her even more intriguing.
She stands as Éowyn does, smoothing down her skirts and offering the other woman a smile. Éowyn's voice is a little ragged, her eyes dark with exhaustion, and even if Galinda would have been happy to keep talking for hours she is not about to be unkind to her guest.
"Of course," she says, "and I shall fetch my pallet into your privy room, if you like, so as not to disturb you." There will be other women sleeping there - there are women sleeping all over the hold, and they are lucky to be inside when some of the soldiers have had to resort to the stables - but needs must, as her mother says, and surely Éowyn's wishes are the priority here. "Shall I have the cooks send up supper for you, later on?"
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Date: 2025-07-09 11:42 pm (UTC)She can be alone. She can be obeyed. It is a rush of relief that, in her current state, almost makes her sway where she stands.
"No," she answers, after a moment. It takes a moment to settle on an answer. She is aware that she should be hungry - should be ravenous - but she is too tired to think of food, and in any case, all she wants is to be alone. "No, I think food can wait until morning. Besides, it is as well to waste none of it." Not knowing, after all, what force may be sent to fetch her back. Under such circumstances, it is always better to be careful.
(The food she had stocked against siege, two years ago, had all been eaten in the feasting when the gates were opened: a grotesque celebration of a more grotesque peace. It still makes her sick to think of it.)
"I will be myself again in the morning." Will slips out instead of shall, a small truth that belies that it is not a promise to Galinda, but a determined order to herself. She wills it. With all her heart, she wills it. "And then we may talk properly, and determine what comes next. But for now... as I said, all that I desire is to be alone, to regather myself."
And yet, when she is alone - when Galinda has gone, and Éowyn is lying between clean sheets in the dying light of the fire - she finds she does not want it at all. The shadows seem too many and too deep. Her eyes keep drifting towards the door, locked from inside for once, but still a door. She is not alone, she knows; she is never alone. She is only ever waiting, when she is by herself.
He is not there, she reminds herself. He is a hundred miles away. But she cannot shake the sense that he is there, all the same: that he is outside the door, his hand on the latch, his key in the lock; or worse, that among those many shifting shadows there is one that is dark enough to hide a sallow figure, watching her in that gloating way he has. Or perhaps that this is all some trick to lure her into a false sense of security, so that when she is seized upon by her seeming allies and dragged before him, the despair will be greater. The terror and the despair seize her now, pre-emptively, and she bites her lip hard to keep herself from weeping. He has always loved to see her weep.
This is a dream, she decides, in the half-sleeping wakefulness she drifts in. She has finally gone mad; she has dreamed herself a world where she is free, where she can avenge her kin and her country. She has dreamed herself allies who will give her shield and sword, and set her at the head of an army, and give her some justice. But it is only a dream, and this room, this keep, this hope is only a fading thing. If she sleeps, she will wake, and find herself back in the cold darkness of her own rooms in Meduseld, with nothing ahead of her but shame and grief.
Her mind seizes onto that thought, repeating it over and over. This is a dream. Her escape, a dream. Her reprieve, a dream. Her allies, a dream. Her lady-in-waiting, a dream. The lock on the door, her solitude, her safety: all only a dream.
She does not quite know how long she has lain here, with the world shrinking around her. When she finally rises, white as a ghost in the gathering darkness, the fire has burnt down to its embers, and it is fully dark outside. She feels her way through the shadows until she finds a candle.
The privy room. She finds it, and her hand hesitates on the door-handle. Beyond it, she can hear the rise and fall of several sleeping breathers; she is suddenly struck by the thought of how she must appear, with hollowed eyes and the pallor of the sleepless, trembling where she stands, barefoot and dressed only in her shift, her hair loosely braided down her back. She is a sleepwalker caught in a nightmare, desperate in ways she cannot even name. If this is how she appears, how can anyone ever see her as the Queen she must be?
She cannot be that. And it is all a dream; and she cannot bear it to be a dream, and she has to test its reality, to push open the door as quietly as she can, expecting it to be locked, or for all that lies beyond to melt away at once.
"Glinda?" she whispers, as softly as she can.
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Date: 2025-07-10 06:40 am (UTC)She is used to sleeping with others around, of course, but not so many others. And not with people who snore, and mutter in their sleep, and thrash around. And not on a pallet, which is so much less comfortable than her own feather bed that she can hardly believe anyone could ever sleep on one. Perhaps she is spoiled, as her mother occasionally tells her, but is she not also a princess? Someday to be a queen? And queens do not sleep like this. Indeed, a queen not sleeping like this is the very reason she is.
And yet she cannot begrudge Éowyn a good bed, and privacy, and quiet. Not after seeing her cry; not after the bruises on her body. Galinda cannot imagine how such bruising can come to be, and the thought of it being done to an anointed queen is far beyond the realm of her imagination. The mere existence of Éowyn's injuries are an affront to everything Galinda has ever known to be true.
The door opening is something of a relief, after tossing and turning for what seems like hours. At least it is something new, and a person who isn't making her lose her mind with snoring.
"I am here, Éowyn," Galinda says, just as soft. "Wait there." She pushes herself up, doing her best not to accidentally lean onto someone else, and carefully steps over and around the other sleepers (although how they can still sleep she does not know) by the dim light through the windows, the single candle left alight coming in useful; she collects it on the way, holding it up to light her path. As she comes closer it becomes clear how pale Éowyn is, and how she is trembling; Galinda has reached out before thinking about it, resting her warm hand on the other woman's cool forearm.
"What has happened?" she asks, almost whispering. "Are you well?"
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Date: 2025-07-10 11:39 am (UTC)She knows, of course, that that is not quite what Galinda means, but she cannot bring herself to answer as she should, to say: yes, all is well, I only needed to check something. Galinda's hand is warm and gentle and real, and it proves the reality of the world. But it is only real for this moment, and as soon as she walks away, it will be a dream again, only darkness and shifting shadows.
Her pride does not sustain her as it should. She meets Galinda's eyes, and sees concern in them: the innocent concern of someone trying to understand the incomprehensible, of someone who still retains gentleness in the face of such a world. There is a knot in the pit of Éowyn's chest, choking her, the hideous sense that she will corrupt that gentleness by touching it, that she should flee here, too, and run and keep on running, where neither cruelty nor kindness can find her.
No. She is not well.
"I cannot sleep." It is all she can think to say, the least incriminating truth. Her voice is low and soft, trying not to disturb the stillness of sleeping bodies. She does not want to ask, to admit defeat. She finds she has no choice. "Will you keep me company a while?"
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Date: 2025-07-11 08:55 am (UTC)"Certainly," she answers, voice as low as the other woman's. "Come." She knows the bedroom well; it has been her mother's when the family has been on progress here, and Galinda has grown up running in and out of the room. She knows where the chests have been put, where the clothes-poles, and where to find wood for the fire. As soon as the door is closed behind them she is moving to add wood to the embers, poking them into reluctant life, before setting down her candle on the small stone table in the fire's glow.
"I could not sleep either," Galinda confesses, going to the less-rumpled side of the bed and sitting down. "It is always difficult, the first few nights, is it not?" This is probably not Éowyn's problem, but she knows how to give the other woman an out, a courteous thing she can agree with. "Will you sit with me?" This, she tells herself, is for Éowyn's sake, and not her own. Certainly Éowyn's presence is not exactly calming; Galinda feels herself to be almost on tenterhooks, absurdly aware of everything the other woman does for no good reason at all. But neither does she have any desire to leave, especially not if Éowyn wants her to stay.
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Date: 2025-07-14 12:19 am (UTC)She has stood by, a ghost in her own view, while Galinda busies herself with the fire; now she moves to join her, climbing into the bed she has so recently vacated. It feels a less terrible place, when she is not alone in it.
She feels like a child, somehow, crawling into bed to be soothed from a nightmare. She feels small, helpless in the face of all that has happened and all that must be done. She feels... better, even so, as though Galinda might be able to soothe away the darkness and convince her that all the monsters were in her mind.
Galinda, of course, can do no such thing. The monsters are real, and the darkness may at best be delayed; to comfort Éowyn as she wishes would be to lie barefacedly, and she would never ask that if someone. But it helps to have her here, all the same.
She shifts closer, shoulder to shoulder in the bed. For a moment, she is silent.
"Tell me something of yourself," she says at last, quietly, wishing to fill the sucking void of the silence. "I do not know you at all, yet."
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Date: 2025-07-15 08:40 am (UTC)And yet she feels terribly guilty, for no obvious reason at all, and tries very hard not to imagine how it might be to reach down and curl her fingers through Éowyn's. It is ridiculous, and it is unworthy, and the selfish little voice inside her is hoping very quietly indeed that Éowyn will want her to stay all night, and perhaps tomorrow night too, and - but then she will never sleep, for fear of whatever is happening inside her, and a fine lady in waiting she will make then!
When Éowyn speaks she startles, and hopes that the little movement will somehow go unnoticed. Words seem clumsy, useless things when every breath the other woman takes seems to communicate a strange meaning. Galinda takes a quick breath in, trying to collect her thoughts enough to come up with an ordinary, normal sort of answer.
"You know my father, of course," is what she manages, "and my mother - or know of them, I suppose; and then there is my brother too." None of this is answering the question, but it is what people are usually more interested in: power, the kind of power only the royal family holds, and Galinda is a shimmering moon orbiting her lord father the king, her lady mother the queen, her much more important brother the crown prince. "But I..."
There are many things she could say, the things she's been taught are how to measure an unmarried daughter's worth: that she can dance, and sing, and play the virginal; that she can read, write and speak several languages (although not, and it now seems inexplicable as to why not, Rohirrim); that she can sew, and embroider, and make poultices and tisanes; that she can manage a household, has been managing her own to the extent any woman can manage her own since she was twelve.
"I hardly know what to say," Galinda says, after a pause that feels several eons long. "Is there something - I could tell you? That you have wondered?"
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Date: 2025-07-16 10:38 pm (UTC)As if to soften the irritation that may show on her face, she touches Galinda's wrist, a friendly gesture intended to communicate that she is not taking offence, that she knows it would be unreasonable to do so. She smiles a little, too: a weary, drawn smile that does not for a moment touch her eyes.
"Tell me something true," she says at last, when she has gathered her thoughts sufficiently. She has never had female friends, nor particularly close relationships with her handmaids, and if she had ever had the confidence to navigate the thought of friendship, it is long-gone now. But she wants a friend, if only for tonight: selfishly, she wants to feel human for a time, before dawn brings back reality and she must feel herself at once a plaything and a leader. She cannot be the Lady Éowyn; perhaps she can be someone else, then, someone less hard and less hollowed-out. Or perhaps it is just the easiest thing to say, to convince them both that she cares about the answer, and does not just want the silence filled. "Tell me what you like; what you hate; what you dream of. If you were free, what would you do?"
Because Galinda is not free. None of them are free - none of the people of Middle-Earth, who must live under the fear of the moment Mordor's gaze swings their way again. And none of the women of Middle-Earth, who are bound from birth by their sex. Still, she had once known what she would do if she were free, even if those dreams feel hollow now. It seems fair to guess that others have such thoughts, too.
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Date: 2025-07-17 06:40 am (UTC)"If I were free," Galinda echoes, surprised by the question. She has not really thought of it that way, has not thought of herself as caged - but Éowyn is right, she is. They are both of them held fast in a cage of another's devising, even if she rather thinks Éowyn is breaking free and very likely to stay that way. "If I were free...well, I shouldn't marry, for a start." This is a major rebellion, from a king's daughter, and very possibly treason as well. "Or have children. Or - or if I did marry, it would be for love, but I hardly think...well, and how would I ever meet him?"
The idea is off and running now, Galinda sitting up a little straighter as her imagination is caught. She turns towards Éowyn, her hand reaching out for the other woman's arm, unconsciously drawing her in as well. "I should travel, far and wide, and see - oh, all the different places, and dresses, and buildings - there are these darling little towers, minarets, I should love to climb one, imagine the view - and have a friend to come with me, for someone to talk to."
It is a beautiful dream - but only a dream, and fading swiftly as she remembers what reality looks like, and for a moment Galinda sits very still and only...thinks.
"What would you do?" she asks, eventually, her voice soft and small. "If you were free?"
cw suicidality
Date: 2025-07-17 04:20 pm (UTC)And then the question is returned to her, and her smile drops away at once, because she knows the answer, and she searches too long and too hard to find no better truth. There is no other truth. She has thought of only one end to her pain, since before it was half so great.
"I would die," she says quietly, and turns away, sober again, staring across the room at the fireplace. There is a lump in her throat, to say it aloud. She does not like to say it; but she cannot bear to lie. Lies are all she has lived and breathed for months. "If I were free to do as I wished, I would die. And if I died, perhaps I would be free." She cannot help it; she is crying again. Not loud, wracking sobs this time, but a quieter, softer weeping, mainly visible only in the glint of firelight off the tears. She turns her face away, clearing her throat in a vain effort to master herself. "I am sorry," she says miserably. "I should not have asked; I did not wish to answer."
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Date: 2025-07-18 05:41 am (UTC)"Hush," she says, and reaches out for the other woman, drawing Éowyn into her embrace. Her shoulder is quickly wet with tears, and she does not care. It seems far more important to cradle Éowyn close, smoothing her hair gently with one hand, the other wrapped around her back to support her. "Hush, my dear, do not think of it." The words are tumbling out of her now, almost desperate to convince Éowyn, and Galinda cannot quite seem to stop herself. "It has been awful, I know - not all of it, and you need say nothing - but it is past now, my father will never let anything of the like happen again, you shall have justice, I promise it."
Not that she can do much to make that promise true. But she is sure, with a deep and unyielding certainty, that her father will be outraged at the treatment Éowyn has suffered. It is his firm opinion that royalty is half-divine, sacred and untouchable, and he sees as heresy any commoner's attempt to raise themselves up so how, much less to do injury to a queen. Wormtongue may have convinced the people of Rohan to accept him as their king, and perhaps might have kept his life and endured only imprisonment if he had treated the young queen of Rohan with respect and care, but he did not and so Galinda knows his days are now numbered by how long it takes word to reach her father and return again.
Without thinking about it, she kisses the crown of Éowyn's head, squeezes her a little tighter. Beneath the floral scents of lavender and rose that the sheets and clothes have been stored in, beneath the sweet meadowgrass scattered through the rushes, there is something uniquely Éowyn and uniquely attractive. Galinda wants very dearly to hold her close forever, to simply breathe her in and feel the warmth of the other woman's body against hers, the strength as she moves - but she cannot, and so she reluctantly lets Éowyn go.
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Date: 2025-07-18 02:49 pm (UTC)(And it is just as well that she cannot see Galinda's thoughts, which would have done nothing to heal her hurt and much to anger her. It is bad enough to feel that the Mark must rely on outside help to rise up. It would be far worse to think that the outsiders might be in any way more outraged than the Eorlingas themselves.)
But in any case, she can find no words to express any of it, nor the will to try. She can only accept Galinda's embrace, throwing her arms around the smaller woman and burying her face against her shoulder, clinging to her as tightly as to a spar in a storm. Too tightly, perhaps - there is no thought left in her for Galinda's comfort, for the moment, and for all that she has lost, she still maintains a degree of wiry strength. She is hugging very tightly indeed.
Even when Galinda lets her go, Éowyn's grip loosens only a little. She has stopped crying so openly, but her breathing is still shuddering and raw-edged, and she cannot quite bear to pull away. How long has it been since she was held? Not forcefully, not to restrain her, but with love and comfort and kindness? She cannot bear to part from it; and so her voice is still muffled against Galinda's shoulder when she says bitterly, "Justice would see me dead as surely as freedom. You do not know all that I have done."
You were not there when he hanged them. It was Gríma's doing, and his crime - but Éowyn is too conscientious to absolve herself of her part in it. Both in letting them be caught, and in letting their deaths break her will.
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Date: 2025-07-18 03:30 pm (UTC)"I do not care what you have done," she says instead, bravely. "You have done nothing so bad as to deserve - " Everything. The bruises, the scars, the ruined clothing and boots, the dirt and the pain and the grief. Galinda decides against finishing the sentence; Éowyn knows all too well what she has gone through, and needs no further reminder. She tightens her arms around the other woman again, as if holding her closer will somehow make the words sink in a little more. Besides, Éowyn has not pulled away, and so perhaps she wants to be held, and Galinda need not berate herself over her desire to keep the other woman cradled in her arms.
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Date: 2025-07-18 10:08 pm (UTC)Galinda is still almost a perfect stranger, and there is little reason to trust her, or for her to trust Éowyn. There is no safety here, surely: the world does not offer safety freely these days. But exhausted as she is, it is so easy for Éowyn to simply forget that and melt into the warmth of a genuine embrace, the support of another body next to hers. Through their nightclothes, she can feel the living heat of Galinda's body, the rise and fall of her breathing; imagines she can even feel the beating of her heart. And she does not care what Éowyn has done, and she does not suppose that Éowyn has deserved her suffering, and for this moment, that is enough. Éowyn can breathe again, even if that breathing is thickened with tears.
It is as though she can feel something coming back together, inside herself. It is a small part of a much greater destruction, but it is something: the memory that there is kindness in the world, that even in dark times there may be people with open hearts. It has seemed impossible, more and more, that this could be the case; all those she loved best are dead, and she has had cause to be glad for it when she thinks of all that living entails; and all those who love her still have been kept from her, by herself almost as much as by her captor. She has been so lonely, she realises: so impossibly lonely, and never with a moment to herself. It could be almost anyone holding her now, and it would make her weep the more, just to be held at all without threat or hunger. The fact that it is someone who has treated her with gentle sympathy already only sharpens the point of her gratitude, which is worse than a knife in her heart for how it seems to open her chest. Her fingers curl against the back of Galinda's shift, and she can smell the other woman's perfume, light and floral, and the gently human scent of her beneath that; she can feel every movement and breath, and it is almost as good as the massage earlier, for how the tension begins to melt out of her.
"Thank you," she whispers, when almost a minute more has passed. "You need not be so kind. But I am grateful for it."