Chapter 13: Brothers

[ Setting the scene: the events of this chapter take place after the battle of Helm’s Deep. Aragorn, the Rangers of the North, and the remnants of the Fellowship are preparing to leave Dunharrow for the Paths of the Dead. Éowyn has again openly declared her love for Aragorn and her desire to ride with him, and has been rejected on both counts. Elladan and Elrohir, the twin sons of Elrond, arrived with the Rangers and will journey with Aragorn’s company. Historical people and events to which this narrative refers (often obliquely) include Melian, Maia and wife of Elu Thingol; Beren and Lúthien wresting a Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown; the capture and torture of Elrond’s wife Celebrían; and the relationship between the sons of Elrond and their sister Arwen (Aragorn’s fiancée) in the aftermath of their mother’s premature departure into the West.]

7 March 3019 (Third Age), Dunharrow

Éowyn raced through the night, fleeing her chaos. Fleeing her shame. Fleeing to escape, even though she knew it was hopeless, for that which she sought to leave behind was with her still.

I’m not even running towards any particular destination. Only away. If I run much longer, my nudity can’t help but be noticed. Shouldn’t I care? I don’t. All I can hear, all I can see, all I can feel is failure and humiliation. What more damage can be done? What does it matter if someone sees me like this? Only escape can save me now.

Despair overwhelmed her.

Death is an escape. Perhaps the only one left to me.

She ran faster ... blind, deaf, numb, and heedless.

Elrohir peered into the mists that flowed from the sinister mountain pass. The Dimholt held no special terror for him, for Elves didn’t fear the mortal Dead, yet the endurance of his immortality was far from certain. I could be slain on this road. So could my brother. Despite this grim knowledge they’d willingly set forth from Rivendell, for the fate of their entire family — indeed, their entire race — was at stake. For them, it was an opportunity to (at last) be on the front lines of the eternal fight against darkness. For their sister, the culmination of all her desires ... and also the eternal sadness that would follow ... might be conditioned on their success or failure. For their father, their journey began the final countdown to a long-feared but long-predestined farewell. And for the Firstborn, any outcome at all would mark the end of their role in Middle-earth’s ongoing story. Some might remain, whether in bondage or in lingering memory of what once was, but...

But the alternative is inaction, and that is worse. We are here now, and we must do what we can.

While he was far from young, neither was he old by the long measure of the Elves, and despite millennia of bravery a scion as yet largely unproven outside Rivendell’s environs. As a result, he was in no way immune to the pressures he faced. He wandered the camp in deep contemplation, ignoring all others, and his brother followed close behind, silent and lost to identical thoughts.

Neither perceived the swift misery bearing down upon them until it was too late.

Uttering no cry to disrupt the night, Elrohir was nevertheless caught by complete surprise as a moonlit whirlwind laid him low. Elladan leapt to grapple with his brother’s assailant, but was instead carried to the ground by the force of their toppling.

A grunt. A gasp. Another grunt. Simultaneous, yet from three disparate sources.

What a fitting end to my most abject humiliation yet. I’m on the ground in full view of any who might pass, sandwiched between two men I don’t even know. Worse, I’m naked and weeping like a simpering idiot. I hope that, whoever they are, they’re high in the King’s counsels. Better yet, I hope they’re already well-known to me, and I to them. I hope they’ll depart and tell everyone they know what has happened on this night. All is now absolute perfection, and my well-earned shame complete. Perhaps I’ll be fortunate enough to die of embarrassment. Or maybe, sensing my unsatisfied arousal, they’ll instead decide to bear me away to some remote glade and have their way with me. In my desperation, why wouldn’t I let them? For what does anything matter, anymore?

She opened her eyes.

Elladan reacted first. Grasping the unknown attacker, he pulled him from Elrohir and pinned him to the cold ground.

Well ... not exactly “him.”

Elrohir preceded his brother in recognition, but he was slower to react. Even amidst the confusion of his fall, he’d felt her smooth flesh and smelled her musky perfume. Immediately, he identified it not as some artificial unguent, extracted from the flora of meadow and mountain, but instead the heady scent of a woman’s arousal. Yet as stunned as he was, he still hadn’t moved when she was pulled from his splayed form by his protective brother.

Nevertheless, he was equally shocked at his first sight of her.

She writhed against Elladan’s restraint, yet with little apparent effort he held her in place. “Stay your struggle! We do not mean you harm. But the nighttime assailant should first identify herself and her purpose.”

Elrohir was momentarily bewildered. Certainly my brother knows her name.

“Unhand me!”

It was Elrohir who spoke next. “Having been unsubtly tackled to the ground for no obvious reason, you must forgive my brother’s caution. The answer is no, at least until his question is answered.”

“You know who I am!” she sputtered. But I don’t know who they are.

“That may well be so, and yet,” he gestured at her naked body, “here you are, in a most unexpected state. So while we may or may not know your name, the question remains: who are you?”

She gaped, lost for words.

She bears no shame regarding her nudity. That much is clear, though it is somewhat unexpected from a mortal. Elrohir let his question fester and decay in the cold evening, not failing to notice her crisply erect nipples, nor in fact any other detail of her body. She is, mortal or otherwise, an exquisite specimen of beauty, despite her mood. In another place, another time, another context...

But she was wracked with despair, and with his finely attuned senses he could guess much of a story he suspected she’d rather not tell. The question is: why? And more importantly, to what does she run? The “from” I already know. He spared a thought for his sister. Has she already been betrayed?

Elladan caught his eye, as though the thought had been spoken aloud. No, she hasn’t.

Then what has happened?

Elladan’s and Elrohir’s minds merged. All Elves could accomplish this to some extent, and the most powerful of them with practiced ease, but among close family in direct proximity the skill was among the very first learned as a child. If Men retained the talent, absent the aid of the long-lost Palantíri even those of noble lineage had long forgotten how to use it. “Instinct” or “intuition,” they named it, mistrusting all it told unless it reinforced what they already believed. They are blind to one another, missing so much that is essential. But perhaps that is their destiny, mused Elrohir.

No. We cannot. Feel her. She needs, she yearns, but if we ... no. I am sorely tempted — beyond tempted, actually — but it is wrong, and she has not consented. Even if we gained that consent, we would leave her more damaged than before. Nor is there sufficient time.

I agree. So again I ask: what do you propose we do?

Allow me to win a throw in my fight against temptation and think.

As with all such Elvish dialogues, in which minds communed in instantaneous concert, their entire conversation had been accomplished in the space between moments. She was still struggling to free herself from Elladan’s hold, but he paid her little mind.

We might try...

What?!? Think about what you are saying, brother! Elladan’s mien was shocked, verging on true outrage. You cannot possibly be serious!

Do you have an alternative suggestion?

Yes. Let this poor woman suffer her unavoidable mortality and the pain which comes more sharply and more often to the short-lived, regrettable though this choice might be. Their passions are not like ours, nor are their struggles, for they have so little time. We cannot salve that which is native to their race — that which is the gift of Illúvatar — no matter how strange it seems to our minds. We should ever be slow to interfere.

I do not think this is part of His gift, save in the sense that all that transpires is part of the Music he commanded. Look more deeply. Surely you see that all is not ... well, do you not sense the wrongness within her?

There was a fractional pause.