Chapter 9: Evasions

7 April 3019 (Third Age), Minas Tirith

“Please... “

Searching for answers in her ice-grey eyes, he unraveled the stays that held her dress together, one loop after another, until the bodice was open and the rest hung loosely about her shoulders. And then he waited, wondering.

She gave him the briefest of nods, her meaning obvious. He wanted to ask if she was sure, but something about the intensity of her stare compelled him to silence. Cupping his hands around her shoulders, he slipped the shimmering white material down her arms. Gravity soon took the reins, and the long white sheath trailed through his fingers and fell to the floor, pooling around her feet.

Éowyn stood before him, naked and as flawless as an Elven sculpture. He could scarcely summon words, even from the most poetic realms of his mind, for her unimaginable beauty. Yet as his eyes outlined the majesty of her body he felt the heat of the untamable energy she radiated. Slender and graceful to a casual glance, her flesh rippled with untapped strength and passion mingled; power inextricably knit with a boiling sexuality at which their earlier flirtations had only hinted. At last I understand how she could face the dread Witch-king without cowering in terror; there’s something raw, wild, and utterly indomitable about her, even unclothed. Perhaps especially so.

His appraisal lingered, and her expression changed to one of approval and gratitude at his reaction. Still he searched for something to say that would be worthy of the vision before him. but as his lips opened to make the attempt she pressed a finger against them, arresting the thought.

“No. Not yet. First you will listen.”

Stepping out of the encircling ring of her fallen vestments, she turned in a circle as if presenting herself for his study. While he judged her painfully lovely from any angle, his breath caught at the perfection of her tight curves when she faced away from him, and when she completed her rotation he glimpsed the dew-sparkle of moisture between her legs. His own rising ardor trebled at this clear evidence of her desire.

Certainly my arousal is visible and manifest, he reminded himself, increasingly uncomfortable at the pressure of his cock straining against his breeches. But I must calm my baser instincts. There’s something unaddressed that she obviously needs to work through, and without any clear reason I suspect that the entire future of our relationship might hinge on successfully navigating this moment. She’s unquestionably determined, yet I sense near-paralyzing fear, which passes strange for one so brave. This may yet turn ill. It’s essential that I act without rashness.

Summoning as much equilibrium as he could with her exquisite body at such close quarters, he waited.

“Faramir, Steward and Captain, I’ve openly acknowledged my love for you. You’ve offered healing of body, mind, and spirit, and you’ve given me your love without reservation. No matter what might befall, whether we twine or sunder, I will love you until the end of your days and the end of my own.”

His brow furrowed at the distance in her words, but he remained silent.

“For still may our union falter, whether it be later or sooner. You’ve seen one pain to which I hold fast, and mayhap you’ve helped me take the first steps in overcoming it, yet you know only one of the many troubles of my heart, and not even the deepest nor the most recent. You must...”

She faltered on the verge of something terrible yet unsayable. He yearned to comfort her, but instinct restrained his enveloping arms; this was not the moment for physical contact. It seemed to him that she sought permission to continue. Perhaps I can help...

“My beloved Lady Éowyn, please don’t shelter yourself behind formality. Speak to me plainly, openly, and honestly. There is naught you could say that would diminish you in my eyes or in my heart.”

She shook her head. “You say it, but...” As she’d obviously feared, the difficulty of her entreaty doubled as her words turned more personal and intimate, and her eyes glittered with the onset of tears. “ ... but you say untruly. There’s so much I could reveal that diminishes me, whether or not your eyes are here to see and in despite of your heart. For if you are to love me in truth, then it is truth with which I will — I must — diminish myself. Only then may you judge whether or not you love what remains.”

“Éowyn, release yourself. Forgive yourself. Whoever you have been, whatever you have done, whatever the wreckage in the ruins of the past, you will be whole. This I promise, whether you love me or not. But this also: whatever you may say, be it from the past, of the present, or in the future, I will not love you the less.” Tears streamed down her cheeks, falling upon her bared chest. They clung to places that tempted and distracted, but he held his attention on her eyes.

“You speak comfort, beloved Faramir, as is your wont, but you do not and cannot know...”

“ ... and I need not know. My love, hear me: I don’t pretend to know all your sorrows, but let me dispense with those I already perceive. Your unresolved love for Aragorn I see clearly, as you know, but even more than I’ve said; I know that, despite our declaration, it lingers still. That you might have acted rashly or, to your regret, disreputably in the pursuit of or escape from this yearning I suspect as well.” Her surprise at his penetrating insight was clear, but he pressed on. “To this I merely repeat what I said before: if you must give your love there’s no one of mortal kind higher or more worthy, save that you know it to be unreturned and thus without hope. In this I think you know more than me, for though I do no more than guess I deem his heart is already promised to another. Do I say truly?”

She nodded. “Such is the perpetuation of my shame: I know this more deeply than I’m willing to explain, yet freedom from my heart’s bondage remains elusive. That I accept and return your love yet am unable to mend this flaw is a stain upon my character.”

“It is not. I bear love for a father who would have betrayed us all to death and defeat, who would have burned my living body so that his despair might be fulfilled. Yet I love him still. And my brother as well, though he fell to the temptation of the Enemy’s Ring and himself almost doomed us all. So may the heart cleave to that which the mind rejects, yet be not stained by this love but rather ennobled by it. Let us cleanse ourselves together, dear Éowyn.”

Her breathing slowed as she considered his words, but she didn’t reply. Her tears continued to flow.

“You also hold to secrets from your past. I guess that these are secrets of a ... well, please forgive my bluntness, but of a sexual nature, for in this realm you are simultaneously bold and reticent, and you careen between the two in a potentially bewildering fashion unless there is a reason. Perhaps you were coerced or ill-treated, or perhaps you coerced and treated ill in turn. Perhaps there is someone known to me with whom you have lain, or perhaps you regret laying with someone you would not now choose. Perhaps there is something you seek to do but have not or will not out of fear, or there is something you have already done which you believe I could neither imagine nor countenance.”

She gasped, wide-eyed.

“Perhaps I’m wide of the mark in some or all cases, or perhaps I pierce the heart every time. But Éowyn, again I say to you that none of it matters. None of it! Did you believe me untouched when we met? I freely confess to you that I am not. Neither, beloved, did I expect or desire such from you. You are an incomparably beautiful woman with the demonstrated will to master her own choices in defiance convention or limitation, and surely she who could stand against and conquer the monstrous Witch-king could and would, if she desired, take one or many lovers.”

“Or do you expect perfection from me? I promise you that I shall disappoint, if so. I am but a latter and lesser scion of the downfallen West, and decay is my birthright. Neither do I expect perfection from you. Not now, nor in the past, nor in the future. Only one thing do I wish: for you to love me as I love you.”

Éowyn shuddered and her eyes closed. Torn between resignation and aspiration, between desire and fear, she was silent for a long and increasingly tense time. Finally, she found her voice.

“That, at least, I can promise ... though I don’t see how you could love me as you do while seeing me as I truly am. For I say to you, feredir*, that while you sight the target in almost every instance, you scarcely begin to penetrate to the still-beating horror within. I have been shamed by others, but I have done shameful things in turn. I have been used, but I have also used. I have known, but I have also chosen not to know, achieving my aims through means both laudable and dubious. I have wished for both light and darkness, and while in reward or punishment I have lived mostly in the latter, I have learned that I don’t always wish for light. Even now.”

[*huntsman]

She sighed. “We should have lain together by now, Faramir. Were you anyone else ... were matters between us less fraught by real hope ... we would have. Certainly my body has yearned, and you perceive correctly that delay is not my custom. That we haven’t is entirely due to my fear. Not of you, nor of anything we might do, but of myself. I don’t fear our love, but it’s now my heart rather than just my body that I must obey; heart and body entwined are so far outside my experience that I worry I won’t know how to listen if they speak as one or in conflict. While I’ve felt both love and passion, though — alas! — rarely together, I have always been ruled by the latter. My fear, Faramir, is that my passion will sully and consume our love.”

Her eyes were still shut tight, and her fingers worked in and out of fists clenched with tension. He waited for a moment, sure there was more to her final declaration than she could bring herself to say, but when she continued her silence he spoke again.

“Éowyn, if it’s truly necessary to speak words of regret and confession, then I hope we can do so together, for as long as it takes for you to release your heart to my care and to accept mine with yours. But my love for you is untrammeled; both the good and the ill. I will love you as you are or not at all, and as the latter is no longer possible I will be as patient as necessary. I pledge that whatever was, whatever is, and whatever will be, I place no condition upon that love save one already mentioned: that you love me in return.”