how to live when all is lost | for sent_to_try_us

[shieldofrohan]

She 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?"

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[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn is wet. She realises how wet only at the friction of Glinda's skin against her cunt; only then does she fully recognise the cool brush of air on slick, aching flesh; only then does she realise that she is not only enjoying this but truly moved by it.

How long has it been since she was so readily aroused, before even being touched? She knows there was a time, when sex was a vague fantasy and lust a private thing, that she found it overtaking her, that she touched herself for no sake but her own; but it was another woman who experienced that, a long time ago. This feels like a first, like something has been made new. Like everything has been made new.

"I want to touch you." Some of that wonder is in her voice, low and throaty from where she trails her mouth down Glinda's throat, laying small kisses along the soft line of Glinda's shoulder. There is a hint of fear in her voice, too, incongruous among their mutual desire. It is fear that drives her, more than desire: the fear that she is mistaken, that she may destroy what she touches, that all this is only another way to break. That she will break Glinda, as she herself has been broken.

But Glinda moves against her, an urging movement that cannot be ignored, and Éowyn's body yearns towards that yearning, and she has never been able to altogether flee what she fears.

"I want to touch you," she says again, barely a whisper, and her fingers still at the edge of Glinda's mound, her heart pounding in her ears. She pulls herself up enough to meet Glinda's eyes, the look in her own eyes a curious mixture of hunger and doubt. "I... May I?"

[sent_to_try_us]

Éowyn's mouth is on her neck, sending shivers through Glinda's body, and for a moment she thinks to hold the other woman there - reaches up, even, before she hears the slightest quiver in Éowyn's voice, and then her hand comes instead to rest on her lover's back. It is almost impossible to think when her body is sending such insistent messages of desire, but Glinda does her best, takes a deep breath in and looks down into Éowyn's eyes just as the other woman looks up.

And oh, the expression on her face - how clearly she is torn, how obvious the war of emotions. Glinda's fingers tighten against Éowyn's back, as if by holding her just a little closer she might shield her lover from fear. The warrior queen vulnerable melts her heart just as she did crying in the bath all those months (those few short weeks) ago, and Glinda's hand slides up into Éowyn's hair to pull her head down and kiss her.

She does not hold back. Clumsy, yes, she is still clumsy, and Éowyn's teeth bump against her lip before Glinda tilts her head properly again - but she pours her desire into the kiss, all the aching hours reading and rereading Éowyn's letters, wanting to be able to kiss her again and again until they are both sated. Without quite realizing it, she has pushed herself up on one elbow, her entire body inclining towards her lover's.

"Yes," she manages eventually, between kisses. "Yes, Éowyn, please - anything - only do not stop."

[shieldofrohan]

There is something she cannot quite name in the tightening of Glinda's fingers against her back, the way Glinda draws her down and kisses her as though that kiss were the only thing in the world that mattered. It is acceptance, it is desire, it is the answer to a thousand questions at once; it is the overwhelming sense that - even with Gríma still alive - it is over. Here, at last, is the thing she had hoped to feel when they retook the city, the sense of a victory not over her enemy but herself. She feels loved, and it is all that she can do not to weep at it.

Instead of weeping, she puts all of that intensity of feeling into the kisses they share, her eyes closing tightly as she leans into their kiss, as if they could absorb one another, come together and disappear forever into desire and care.

All the same, she does stop, for a moment: her lips still against Glinda's, her eyes closed and her brow furrowed, as if trying to gather herself. It is not too late, she thinks, to retreat. It is not too late to spare her honour.

It is too late, and she is too weak, and Glinda's body yearns against her, and Éowyn's heart yearns back. She lets out a long-held breath, warm air shuddering into Glinda's mouth, and it feels like a greater journey to move her hand down an inch than it was to ride all the length and breadth of Rohan.

Her eyes open, wanting to see Glinda's face, to gauge her reaction as slender, calloused fingers slide lightly over the contours of her sex.

[sent_to_try_us]

It seems to her as though time stops, just for a moment, as Éowyn sighs - as if some momentous decision has been made, something that could change the course of her life. Glinda's puzzlement lasts barely a second; Éowyn's hand moves, ever so slightly, and then there is nothing but the way her fingers trace a path over Glinda's skin, the intensity in her gaze, the heat of their bodies pressed together.

She has never done anything like this before - never even come close, barely even thought of it - but her body responds to Éowyn's touch without any coherent direction from her, almost instinctive, and for once Glinda does not even try to overcome her instincts and do what she ought to. Her legs part a little further; her hips lift towards her lover's hand, her back arching.

It is wanton, undoubtedly it is wanton, and Glinda does not care. Not with Éowyn. Her gaze is focused on the other woman's clear grey eyes, her lips slightly parted and breath coming ragged. She ought to be afraid, and is not; she ought to be ashamed, and is not that either. Nothing seems to matter, at least not for right now, except the two of them so close together they might almost be one.

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn's touch is more inexpert now, far less certain. Here, she is entering uncharted territory; she has never sincerely tried to pleasure any woman but herself, and that not in some time. But that unfamiliarity is a blessing: something untouched by any moment but this, something real.

She keeps her eyes on Glinda, watching every shift and twitch of her features, the flush in her cheeks and the haze in her blue eyes. Éowyn's own breath comes quicker, her tongue darting out to wet her lips, and she has forgotten doubt for the moment in the face of that look on Glinda's face. Beautiful, is almost the only word she can think, over and over again: o! was anything ever so beautiful?

Her fingers find a place that seems to make Glinda twitch and moan, and she settles there, pressing harder, working her fingers against the slick, wet skin, rubbing slowly at first, and then faster.

"I dreamed of you," she whispers, lowering herself down over her lover to brush her lips to Glinda's cheek, jaw, ear. Soft kisses, but heated. "I dreamed of you, and I awoke wet and wanting, when I did not know I could want at all."

[sent_to_try_us]

At first there is not much to feel, and Glinda has just begun to worry that she is somehow incomplete - up until the moment that Éowyn's fingers stroke against her and a shock of pleasure goes through her body. Her breath catches, eyes closing, and when Éowyn does it again and again Glinda cannot quite hold back a moan. Her hips rock up against the other woman's hand, finding the rhythm of her lover's movements and quite accidentally sending more sparks flying inside her body.

And then Éowyn starts murmuring against her skin, soft words that make Glinda shiver and her breathing go ragged. She bites at her own lip, her hand sliding down to the other woman's back, fingers tightening against the muscle of Éowyn's shoulders. Somehow the very idea that her lover had imagined this, imagined the two of them together, is a new spur to the heat and desire coiling deep within her, and she makes a soft, needy sound.

She cannot seem to put together words - until now, Glinda has always been able to find words, but words seem so small and meaningless besides the way Éowyn is making her feel. Instead she tries to push herself up again, tugging her lover down as best she can for another slow, hungry kiss.

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn does not need much coaxing to be drawn down. She meets Glinda's mouth gladly, her free hand coming up to card through Glinda's soft hair. She can smell arousal on the air, thick and heavy, and between Glinda's thighs, her fingers are slick with it.

And the sounds. That low, throaty moan, the pleading moue that follows... it is blessedly impossible to think of anything else, to want anything other than to pull that sound out of Glinda again and again. She twines her tongue with Glinda's, her eyes closing, revelling in the taste and smell and feel of her lover beneath her. It is like water in a desert, like sunrise after a long night, to drink in her lover's pleasure; it washes over her and seems to wash her clean, until it is all that remains in the world, and all that she wants in the world.

Her hand shifts lower between Glinda's legs, fingertips dipping shallowly into the pool of Glinda's cunt, her thumb still working at the sensitive nub where she began.

[sent_to_try_us]

Éowyn kisses her as though there is nothing but the two of them, and it is all Glinda has ever wanted. Her hand tightens on Éowyn's shoulder, holding her just where she is; her hips lift up again, shifting so that her leg presses a little harder between the other woman's thighs. And when Éowyn's hand moves down that little bit further, Glinda cannot quite stop a sound that's awfully close to a whine.

Every movement of her lover's hand feels so good it is almost unbearable; whenever Éowyn's thumb presses down just as Glinda's hips rock up, the world seems to vanish beneath a rush of pleasure. It does not take long before she has to break their kiss, trying to catch her breath in between gasps - but she doesn't move far, her lips still brushing against her lover's every time she tries to speak.

And she is trying to speak, albeit incoherently; the words might be Éowyn, and please, and yes, although more than a few turn into oh as her breath stutters with another stroke of Éowyn's clever fingers. Her nails are starting to dig into the other woman's back now, her entire body tensing a little more with every movement, every wave of pleasure. Something is building inside her that Glinda does not recognise; she would be afraid, were it not that Éowyn is the one touching her, holding her, urging her on.

[shieldofrohan]

This is new. This is all wonderfully, terrifyingly, beautifully new. Éowyn is strikingly aware of her own power in this: that she has robbed Glinda of speech and made her writhe and buck and twist, that with nothing but her touch she has turned a graceful lady into a whimpering beast, held close and holding tight.

The fear lingers at the back of her mind, that she is becoming all she has feared. But when she looks at Glinda again - when she hears those whines and whimpers, the pleading edge to Glinda's voice; when she sees the pleasure on Glinda's face and feels how she rocks against Éowyn's hand - even fear cannot convince her that she is doing harm, or that Glinda does not want her. No: perhaps this is not wise, perhaps they will regret it, but it is not the same. This is a lover's power, and she slowly relaxes into it, revelling in it, a comfort she did not find even on the battlefield. Nobody is hurt. Nobody is damaged. Nobody grieves.

She ducks her head, kissing along the tops of Glinda's breasts, her tongue lapping at the salt of her lover's sweat. She wants to see Glinda reach a peak, climax and be overwhelmed by pleasure: at the same time, she wants to linger, wants this moment to last forever, so that she can live as long as possible in the moment where she is no longer a victim, no longer broken, but able to give pleasure at her own will.

[sent_to_try_us]

It is getting harder and harder to bite back the sounds she wants to make; when Éowyn's kisses move downwards, Glinda claps her own hand over her mouth in an effort to at least muffle a moan. It is not as effective as she would like, but she is running out of coherent thought and the idea of being heard is no longer enough to make her want to stop.

Tension is rising within her, tension and that aching need that Éowyn's hand both stokes and eases, and Glinda closes her eyes and lets her head tip back as she allows the pleasure to begin taking over entirely. Her body seems almost to be moving by itself: back arching as if to offer her breasts to Éowyn's mouth, hips rolling against Éowyn's fingers, leg drawing up until she can feel the slick heat between her lover's legs sliding along her own thigh with each movement.

And then it becomes too much, far too much: Glinda gives up on silencing herself, curls her fingers into Éowyn's hair to pull her head back up and kiss her - or try to kiss her, anyway, between shuddering breaths, as her body goes tense and waves of pleasure flood through her until she almost feels that she is drowning in pure bliss.

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn is not, in that moment, easy to kiss. She cannot bring herself to be pulled down; cannot seem to do anything but watch, spellbound, how Glinda tenses and shudders and moans.

She has never seen anything like it. She has never felt anything like it. She can see, in Glinda's expression, an abandon that she has never felt: a bliss and a lightness that belies the tension underneath, which seems to stand fast against the shadows of the world. It seems to her that she can see the world fall away from Glinda, or Glinda away from the world, and there is a beauty in Glinda's contorted expression which makes everything seem to stop dead.

"Glinda..." she whispers, hoarsely and breathlessly, and her hand trembles as she brings it up to the other woman's cheek, tracing the softness of skin. Her other hand still moves between Glinda's legs, slowly and absently, wondering at what she finds there. Her eyes remain fastened on Glinda's face, wondering at what she finds there, too. "Oh, love..."

[sent_to_try_us]

Love.

The word is potent enough to break through Glinda's dreamy, blissful haze: for a moment her eyes widen and her breath catches, although she can hope (and does hope, very swiftly) that Éowyn will not notice anything different. She is, after all, already breathing as though she has been running, and no doubt blushing a deep pink, and if she swallows hard and looks up at the other woman surely it is understandable. Under the circumstances.

She has imagined it, of course, in the dreamy, wistful way of thinking of a future romance - and has pushed it away from her mind quickly, because whatever she feels about Éowyn matters very little when they will both have to marry, and bear sons and heirs, and rule separate kingdoms. Kings and queens very rarely leave their realms; once she is married, she will never see Éowyn again. And so she has come to the conclusion that the best thing to do - for both of them - is to simply never think about it.

Glinda is very good at not thinking about difficult things.

Even so, there is an aching sweetness in the way Éowyn says it, and she wants to hear it again - and again, and again, for as long as Éowyn is willing to continue. Instead she smiles up at her lover, turns her head towards the other woman's hand, and catches one of Éowyn's fingers in her mouth. It feels oddly right to suck lightly, to roll her tongue around her lover's finger, the same slow and steady rhythm Éowyn is still stroking her with. Glinda shivers at another little wave of pleasure, and reaches up to see if she can tug Éowyn down to rest against her.

[shieldofrohan]

It feels oddly right, and so bizarrely intimate that it makes Éowyn shiver, feeling a clenching heat deep inside her. That heat joins the insistent ache in the pit of her belly, the pleading wetness of her cunt, and she wonders what she will do with it. It is one thing to touch a woman whose whole body invites it, who meets every kiss and brush of skin with blushing delight. It is another thing altogether to be touched. It is too familiar.

But it is another thing again to be embraced, and she readily lets herself be drawn down, shifting until her head rests on Glinda's shoulder, her lips brushing the soft arc of Glinda's jaw. At last, the hand between her lover's thighs slows and then stops, trailing up to cup one full breast instead, with thoughtless indolence. There is a restlessness deep in the core of her, that hunger itching to be sated, but it is for the moment offset by the comfort of skin on skin, the deep sense of wellbeing that comes with hearing the heavy rise and fall of a lover's breathing.

Safe. She feels it, almost hears it, in the warmth of Glinda's form against her and the way it shifts to welcome her. It is a fanciful thought, which has no right to be as sure as it is, but it is sure, just the same: Glinda must know, in this moment, that she is safe.

"Are you all right?"

[sent_to_try_us]

There is a new delight in the weight of Éowyn's body against her, in her lover's warmth and strength, and Glinda basks in it. Her hand comes up to cradle Éowyn's head against her shoulder, and she lets Éowyn's finger go only so that she might kiss the other woman's forehead.

"Mmm," she says, and then, "yes, dearest." Her voice has become soft and husky, unlike anything she has heard before, and it almost makes her laugh. "No one ever said it might feel good," Glinda adds - which seems to her to be quite an important consideration to have left out; almost every woman she knows has gone to her wedding night somewhere between stoic and terrified, not knowing that she might find pleasure in it instead. Unless the difference is in the way a man does it, in which case they ought perhaps to take notes from the women in their lives and learn how to be better.

Her free hand finds Éowyn's shoulder, trails down her arm. There is still an ache in her, but not the same one as she had felt before: this one is a longing to touch Éowyn, to see her lover find the overwhelming bliss that she has so recently discovered. The only difficulty is that she is not entirely sure what to do, or how to do it - but Glinda prides herself on being a quick learner, and surely it cannot be too hard.

"May I touch you?" she asks, very softly. "I should like you to feel good, too."

[shieldofrohan]

She believes it. That is what frightens her, more than anything. She believes that is all Glinda wants, as Glinda's pleasure is all she wants. She believes, even, that it can feel good. She cannot believe anything else in this moment, when all her senses tell her the truth.

And yet...

She tries to keep it from her face, but it shows, all the same: she stiffens a little, her face losing its softness again and becoming a blank mask. She wants, very badly, to say yes. She wants to know for herself that it can feel good, to have touch be a delight and to taste some of the bliss that still lingers in Glinda's expression. She wants to feel those warm, soft, loving hands all over her body, meeting the hunger that still coils and throbs in the pit of her belly. She wants.

She shakes her head.

It feels unfair to refuse Glinda this; she wants to refuse her nothing. It feels cruel, a rebuff where none could reasonably be expected. Not explaining herself feels cold and brutal. Explaining herself feels worse, dragging this back - as all things are dragged back - to the ugly past.

"I feel good," she says at last, and it is true, even if her voice is a little thicker and her expression a little tighter than a moment ago. She tries to soften the blow with a kiss, slow and lingering and - unavoidably - hungry. "I feel better than I have in years, here with you. But... no. Not yet." Clearing her throat, she shifts closer against Glinda's side, wrapping her arms around the smaller woman. "We should both rest."

[sent_to_try_us]

The moment that Éowyn's face goes blank is a terrible one; Glinda is not fast enough to put up her own courtier's mask, and her lips compress for a moment before she too mirrors her lover's expression. They have both learned it through long practice, she thinks: looking calm and serene, regal and in control, even if the world should be falling apart around them. The only difference is that Glinda has been taught always to smile, while Éowyn - a queen - has no need to appease.

But she is not upset, only uncertain, and when Éowyn kisses her again her response is more than willing. She watches the other woman's eyes, turning her head as Éowyn settles against her, and does not take her hand off her lover's arm. If the desire they have kindled burns as bright inside Éowyn as it had inside Glinda, she has no idea how Éowyn thinks she can simply tamp it down and ignore it. The aching need had not been something that could so easily be put aside.

"Are you certain?" she asks, gently, almost a whisper. "I would not leave you wanting, my sweet." Her hand smooths over Éowyn's shoulder, her back, and Glinda tilts her head to press a soft kiss against the other woman's forehead.

[shieldofrohan]

"I am..."

She is not. She is not certain at all, and that is almost the worst of all: to be robbed of certainty, too. But Glinda's hand is warm and comforting, and her kiss even more so, and as much as she feels vulnerable and afraid, Éowyn feels safe and secure. Both are intense and undeniable: the yearning towards, and the recoiling against. Glinda does not seem, to her, like she could ever do harm. Being touched feels like it is only harm, even after seeing how it has transported her lover.

She lets out a long, shaky sigh, and her hand grasps the back of Glinda's head, pulling her in until their foreheads are pressed together and their noses touch. Éowyn's breathing is ragged, her eyes closing for a moment as if in pain, as if she is gathering herself somehow and needs an anchor to cling to as she does.

At last, her grip slackens, and she draws away a little.

"No," she says quietly. "No, but... but hold my hand, and I will do the thing myself." And keep my eyes on you, and know that you are here, and no-one else.

[sent_to_try_us]

It seems forever that Éowyn is silent, thinking, and Glinda has to make an effort not to hold her breath. The intimacy of gazing into her lover's eyes, feeling her breath shake and hitch, is more intense than she could ever have anticipated from something that seems so close to ordinary. But then, really, nothing about this is ordinary - nothing has been ordinary at all since Éowyn's throne was usurped.

When Éowyn finally answers, Glinda knows herself to be blushing from the sudden heat in her cheeks and ears. She bites at her own lip, manages to nod, tries to keep her eyes on Éowyn's. Even the idea of it is - scandalous, unthinkable, not something a maiden should ever know about - and yet desire is coiling low in her belly again.

"May I - watch?"

The words are out before she can bite them back, and Glinda is certain she has gone crimson. It is without question not something one should do, not something one should even consider doing, and yet - she wants to. Wants to see Éowyn experience her own pleasure; wants to know how Éowyn might wish to be touched; wants to admire her, undistracted by Éowyn's clever fingers and sweet kisses. She swallows hard, and manages to keep looking at her lover, and tries to pretend she has not just said something no young woman should ever think of.

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn does smile then: weary and aching, but a smile nonetheless, and one which is heartfelt.

"I had hoped you would," she murmurs, and kisses her.

She has been watched before, and it has been a horrible, ugly thing - one of the worst of all the torments he put her through, because it robbed her even of the ability to remove herself when she must be her own attacker. But it has the advantage over being touched that, so long as she remembers she is being watched, she can remember who is watching her. She will not close her eyes and forget whose hand is between her thighs, whose breathing is hot and ragged against her ear. Looking at Glinda's fair face flushed crimson at the very thought, it is hard to imagine that she will urge things past the point of safety, or slaver uncontrollably at the sight, or take it as an invitation to greater depravity. Indeed, looking at the depth of that blush, Éowyn finds herself wondering a little uneasily whether Glinda has even thought of it before.

She guides one of Glinda's hands to her cheek; reaches down to lace her fingers together with the other; settles back against the covers, her head turned to the side so that she can keep her eyes fixed on her lover's face. She wants that face to be all she sees, all the world: it seems to her that is the only way this will work.

"Do not let go," she whispers, and there is that vulnerability again, the fear that she cannot bear to admit too much, now cresting above the surface. But it is not only fear that rules her, now. Slowly, she lets her hand creep down, over her belly and the arching hollows of her hips, to where despite it all she does cry out for touch.

She does not open her legs at once. It is a small defence, to try to make this for her own sake and not an audience - even a beloved one. She curls her fingertips between thighs pressed close together, and the gasp shudders out of her at the press of skin against wet, aching need. Her eyes, still fixed on Glinda's, widen a little, her lips parting before her legs do.

He did not teach her this. Long before the end came, she had learned how to rein her body into obedience, how to most effectively silence the ache and loneliness that had reared into unmanageability in the solitude of darkness. She knew, before it was ruined, how to saddle desire and ride it as swiftly as possible to resolution. She knows, in short, where to touch: her fingers at once find the hood of her clit, and start to rub it roughly and mercilessly. Her other hand tightens on Glinda's, her breath catching and then releasing in a low, undeniable moan, and she twists where she lies, her thighs spreading and her hips bucking in small, restrained movements; but all the while she keeps her eyes open, even as the focus blurs, and her lips move a little, repeating Glinda's name.

[sent_to_try_us]

Part of Glinda - in fact rather a lot of her - had expected Éowyn to refuse: the assent is surprising, and makes her colour even more pink, eyes wide. She twines her fingers through the other woman's, watches Éowyn's eyes, and is very soon biting her lip first at the note of fear in her lover's voice and then at the way she gasps.

Her breath is shaky already, but it hitches when Éowyn says her name; it seems even her heart stutters in the flood of emotions that overwhelm her. She had asked to be allowed to watch, and Éowyn had as much as told her to, but Glinda does not seem able to take her gaze off her lover's storm-grey eyes. Her thumb strokes Éowyn's cheek gently; she shifts, pushing herself up just a little on her elbow, and squeezes Éowyn's hand in her own.

"You are beautiful," she murmurs, and does not hide the awe in her voice, nor the tenderness. "My darling, you are so very beautiful." And even now she does not look down, though the desire to do so is becoming near unbearable - instead Glinda leans in to kiss Éowyn, sweet and soft at first, but it does not take long before the little sounds and movements are striking blazes inside her and she cannot help but make the kiss deeper, more full of hunger.

[shieldofrohan]

There is tenderness in that kiss, even as hunger overwhelms it. Glinda's lips are soft and warm, like all of her is soft and warm, and her tongue is questing rather than demanding, her voice and her body both gentle.

Éowyn's fingers tighten, gripping Glinda's hand until her fingertips dig into the skin between the knuckles, so tight it must begin to hurt. She whimpers softly against Glinda's mouth, and there is nothing else, there was never anything else, but this moment: this press of tongue on tongue and skin on skin, this warm and writhing comfort, this wildness underneath. She must forget that there was ever any other moment, any other hand tracing her cheek, any other mouth devouring hers. She must forget that anyone else has ever called her beautiful.

Her eyes, which have screwed tightly closed, open again, seeking Glinda's face at far too close a distance. Her hand keep moving between her thighs, mechanical in its work, ruthless in its intent: stoking the fire in her belly, raising the ghost of a fearless woman. But fear has returned, creeping in through the space between ragged breaths: an old fear, the one that consumed her when they first met, that all this is only a dream. She squeezes Glinda's hand tightly, and tries to remember the solidity of the moment as the cliff-edge rises inexorably up to meet her.

[sent_to_try_us]

Éowyn makes a sound so soft, so vulnerable, that it is like to break Glinda's heart. Her grasp is painfully tight, enough to make Glinda wince, but she does not complain - cannot bear to think of it, or for that matter to think of what Éowyn might be thinking of. Perhaps it was wrong to kiss her; perhaps it is too much. She knows so little of what to do.

It takes an effort to draw away, but Glinda does, trying to control her breathing and the desire leaping inside her. She wants to kiss Éowyn again - oh, how she wants to! - and she wants to touch her lover, too, to explore her body with hands and mouth. It is almost painful to resist, but if it is what she ought to do for Éowyn's sake -

"I am here, dearest," she murmurs instead, smoothing her thumb across the arch of Éowyn's cheekbone. "Look: it is only me." It feels as though her body is almost vibrating with the effort of not pressing herself against Éowyn, not kissing her, not letting her hand slide down to caress her lover's shoulder or breast or stomach. The heat coiling inside her is becoming insistent once again; she wants Éowyn to touch her almost as badly as she wants to touch Éowyn. But more than anything else, she wants to see Éowyn find her own pleasure - to have a moment entirely relaxed, full of nothing but bliss. And so she keeps her gaze on the other woman's eyes, and stays just where she is, and even manages a smile.

[shieldofrohan]

Only you. She wants to say that there is no only, that in this moment Glinda seems more to her than anything else. She half-wants to say that there will never be an only, that in the shadows behind Glinda's golden hair she can see the ghost of other eyes.

She can say none of it. All that comes out is a low, shaking moan, and the sinews of her neck stand out like whipcords as she arches her head back, her eyes still fixing on Glinda. The need inside her is a separate thing, both alien and familiar, shivering and pulsing like a lightning-storm, sending tendrils of tight need up through her chest and down into curling toes.

Only you. Glinda is here, sliding in and out of focus, kind blue eyes and parted lips, and her hand is warm against Éowyn's cheek. There is need in her look, a tension that cries out for touch; but she does not touch, for Éowyn's sake. She holds herself in abeyance, and it is enough to prove that Éowyn is not helpless here, that Glinda is hers as much as she is Glinda's. Only you. Only me. Only us.

She comes with a strangled, raw-edged cry, shaking like grass in the wind, bucking and arching and, at last, falling back against the covers panting and flushed. Her hand slackens in Glinda's, but does not let go. For a moment, just a moment, the tension lifts from her face, all else forgotten, and she is young again: a woman of five-and-twenty, whose face is soft if not gentle, robbed of its armour.

[sent_to_try_us]

There is a moment where time seems to stop, and there is nothing but the two of them - Éowyn's gaze somehow both fierce and desperate, Éowyn's hand grasping hers painfully tight, Éowyn's voice making Glinda shiver and gaze back with wide eyes. She is beautiful, almost unbearably beautiful, even as she cries out and arches and writhes on the bed.

It is the next moment that utterly takes her breath away: the sight of Éowyn relaxed, content, allowing herself to enjoy something fully even if only for a very little time. Even asleep she has not looked so vulnerable, so young and tender, and Glinda finds herself near to tears. She blinks them back hard, bites at her own lip - but she is smiling again by the time Éowyn seems able to focus on her once more.

"Sweet Éowyn," she says softly, "oh, my dearest," which means very little but carries a world of warmth and affection in the tone. Gently she reaches out to smooth back the hair plastered to Éowyn's forehead with sweat; gently she traces her fingertips down her lover's neck to her collarbone, careful not to stray too far. Her other hand is still in Éowyn's grasp, and Glinda is not about to let go; instead she squeezes Éowyn's hand, and offers her another smile, and marvels at what she has just witnessed.

[shieldofrohan]

It is enough. For that moment, for those few precious seconds, it is enough; and even the wandering of Glinda's hand does not bring to mind other hands' touch, and even the ache of her ragged breathing is sweet and comfortable. She draws up their joined hands, fighting the pleasant heaviness in her limbs, to press her lips to Glinda's knuckles, and for a moment, the only gratitude she feels is for the pleasure of this instant, because she has truly forgotten the pain it blots out.

"You are a wonder," she whispers, her voice still raw-edged and hoarse, and sinks back against the pillow. Her eyes close, despite herself, warm comfort opening the gates for the months - years - of built-up weariness. Her free hand, still slick with her arousal, fumbles clumsily to draw Glinda down against her, pulling her close. "You are a salvation."

And if that does not make perfect sense, or if it is too big a claim to place on a woman who - in truth - she still knows so little, then she is past caring. For this moment, at least.