#eomer oneshot

[random-imagines-blog]

Tip My Helmet {Eomer x Elf!Reader Oneshot}

Wordcount: 4004 Requested by: Anonymous Summary: You're an elf, the sister of Legolas, while he is a human. Though war brings you close to one another, is there a chance for after?

This was not where you expected to be during a time of war. Inside of Rohan, drinking human ale with all of the survivors of the Battle of Helm’s Deep - and the newly re-found Merry and Pippin. You stood with your brother as Eomer handed out tankards, one to you, one to Gimli, one to your brother. Some kind of juvenile drinking game. You played such things back in Mirkwood from time to time, but with alcohol that was much stronger than this. Your hands wrapped around the tin, feeling the warmth of the drink within. “No pauses,” Eomer was explaining. “No spills.”

“And no regurgitation,” Gimli added on, his eyes large like a child’s as he brought his lips to the foamy liquid swimming atop the ale.

“So, it’s a drinking game?” Your brother asked in an innocent tone, making you smirk slightly to yourself. Legolas was a lightweight, by Elven standards, but with this ale, he’d still be standing strong by the time that everyone else is passed out. Eomer’s eye caught yours with a look of amusement, and you smiled softly.

“Last one standing wins!” Gimli announced, sounding very sure of himself. His laughter filled the air, along with the cheers of the Men of Rohan. Both his large hands went around the cup and brought it to his lips.

“What’ll we drink to? To victory! To victory!” The men around us called out. You lifted your drink towards your mouth, taking a sip of it. It tasted much more earthy than you had been expecting. Not a bad taste at all. Your eyes went from the handsome ones of Eomer to your brother, who ventured a taste as Gimli was chugging his down. He was getting froth all over his beard, something which amused you to no end.

Every time a tankard was emptied, Eomer would hand over another. You stopped yourself at four, shaking your head towards the Rider of Rohan. But your brother and Gimli kept going, to the surprise of the men around. More and more of the metal cups riddled the tabletop. Another two gone, before Eomer could even finish filling two more. Gimli stood on his chair to look at all the empty cups, your own three included, and let out a very drunken laugh.

“I’m not sure we should be doing this,” you said to Eomer, as your brother sipped at his own drink more delicately compared to everyone else around. “I’m starting to suspect that this will damage him beyond tonight.”

“It’s the dwarves that go swimming with little, hairy women!” Gimli said out of nowhere, saying this as if it were a matter of pride. And then let out a burp that made even you grimace, his eyes crossing as he stuck his face back into his cup.

“I feel something,” Legolas said, looking at his fingers. Eomer looked bewildered, and you sighed, shaking your head again at how damn adorable he looked like that. “A tingling in my fingers. I think it’s affecting me.”

“What did I say?” Gimli said, his words coming out in a strong slur. “He can’t hold his liquor.” His eyes crossed again, then rolled back into his head and Gimli fell down onto the ground. Head over heels.

“Game over?” Legolas said. You chastised him with just a look, for being dramatic like this. It hadn’t been a fair contest - but at least no humans had decided to join in. That much would probably have killed them.

Your group parted, Legolas helping to carry the slumbering Gimli to his room, and you moved further into the party. You found yourself being caught up in the festivities, Eowyn asking you for a dance, though you knew this was just a guise. She really wanted to learn more about Aragorn - but you stayed tight-lipped about the subject, merely smiling and dancing with her in the center of the room. The mood in the air was good. You had all won a grand victory for Rohan, for the light. A large army had been vanquished. The dark was losing the battles. You then danced with Merry and Pippin, both of them holding one of your hands. You were laughing along with them, at their enthusiasm, at their positivity. You even caught sight of Gandalf and Aragorn sharing a smile while watching you. But as you were getting ready to go over to them, a familiar set of hands touched yours gently. “Time for one last dance, my lady?”

You met Eomer’s eyes, and you smiled at him, letting his hands take hold of yours. “I’ve told you not to call me that,” You reminded, chiding him gently.

“My apologies,” he said, bowing his head. “It’s a hard habit for me to break.”

“Perhaps you should try harder,” you said, as the jaunty music continued to play, and you started the dance with Eomer. Hand in hand, you went through the steps of a folk dance, picking it up quickly. It was simple, with a few foot movements. With your bodies being close to one another. Your tunic brushed up against this, your body proximity close. He merely chuckled again, and his breath was warm against your neck while you danced. It finished with a twirl, your long hair, blonde like your brother and your father’s, flying through the air, then resting against your shoulders as you found yourself in Eomer’s arms.

There were cheers from the men around. Whistles. They seemed to be more cheering for Eomer than for yourself, you noticed, as if he had done something bold, something - he should be rewarded for. “Thank you for the dance,” he said, bowing his head to you.

“A pleasure as always, Eomer,” you said, returning the gesture. But you didn’t let go of his hand as everyone went back to their own business. No longer looking at the two of you. “Would you like to go for a walk with me?”

He raised an eyebrow at you but then nodded his head, not a bow. He let go of your hand, but followed you through the throngs of people, his large presence making you very aware that he was there.

The sweet-smelling breeze of the night air cooled your face once you stepped outside of the castle. You didn’t move too far, not going down the stairs quite yet to the city. It felt like a welcome difference from the heat inside, with the fires and the humans all crowded together, sweaty and warm. Your eyes turned upwards, looking towards the skies. The stars were bright tonight. They, too, seemed pleased by the victory.

“The stars - I believe they’re shining for us tonight,” You mumbled towards Eomer. “Even the sky is pleased about our victory. We’re on the right path.”

“You think so?” Eomer said, leaning against one of the columns of the front of the castle, his arms crossed as he looked up and out as well. “How can you tell? They look like plain stars to me.”

You chuckled, finding his humanity endearing. “The stars are beloved to my people. We have a relationship with them. They help us during times of trouble - and have always been dependable.”

“Trees, stars,” Eomer said, his eyes coming down from the skies to linger on your face. “Is there anything that you don’t have a relationship with?”

His tone showed that he meant no offense. He was a curious man. He had told you, when you had been riding back from the Battle of Helm’s deep, that he hasn’t had much contact with elves before. He had asked you about your homeland, about your brother, about how you had learned the skills in battle that you had shown. He had some outdated ideas about how women should not fight. But he couldn’t deny that you had been an asset.

“Everything,” You grinned. “The air around us is beloved to us too. When the wind is strong, it lifts us. That is why it is so easy for us to live among the trees. We can be brought right up to the top where our homes are, thanks to a stiff breeze.”

“You mean-” he said, moving away from the column, and walking up to you, his expression baffled. “You can fly? The air can make you fly, like a bird, or a Nazgul-birds?”

“Yes,” You nodded, keeping a straight face. “You did not know this?”

“No!” He said, amazed. “Can you call on the wind? Can it take you wherever you want to go? Could you-”

Your straight face failed you. Your shoulders started to shake as you began to laugh. Unlike a lot of other elves, you had managed to have a sense of humor. Playing with the other races, this bit of mischief, was one of your favorite things about this whole adventure. “I’m sorry, Eomer. I was only telling tales. Although all of the elements are important to us, all have their uses, air does not help us to fly.”

“You almost had me there,” Eomer said with a chuckle. “We could have won the whole war if that was true. It would be done in seconds. Just fly over Mount Doom and drop the ring in.”

“Unfortunately, it cannot be so,” You sighed, and looked up at the stars once more. Even though you were in a different area, the stars were much the same as the ones you saw at home, and you could follow them like a straight path right on back if you so desired. “But there is still hope, written in the night skies. These stars, they’ll show Frodo and Sam the way, just as surely as they’ll show them the way back home.”

Galadriel had given Frollo the light of the star of Eärendil. They were already involved now.

“You see that, in the stars?" Eomer asked, his voice sounding incredulous. You didn’t blame him for not believing you. Men were … a lot more folly. They’d believe in Gods that they could not see, but they didn’t believe in the very lights in the sky that they could.

“As long as there are stars, Eomer, there is hope.”

You had spoken with your brother. He and Gimli were going to follow Aragorn through the passage in the mountains. The passage that would bring them either to a great success - a secret weapon of sorts - or deadly peril. But that was their choice to make, so you only wished them safety, and that you would see them again during the war. You weren’t going to join them. You felt like your place was here, more so with the people of Rohan. With Eomer, who you had grown close with over the journey. And Eowyn, whom you already thought of as a sister.

You had been walking back towards the speaking brother and sister, when you heard words that you didn’t quite agree with. And being the person that you were, you were going to say something about it.

“War is the province of men.”

“Men?” You questioned, making Eomer turn around. “No matter which way you mean it, whether gender, or race, you do not think that I am for battle? No - you must mean the gender, for you have had no problem fighting alongside elves, and dwarves.”

You had missed that he had been talking about Merry at first, though you were on Eowyn’s side in that argument as well. Just as you had every right to fight, as did Aragorn, Theoden, Eomer himself - Merry and Eowyn both had the ability to decide to fight. But right now, you were just defending Eowyn. And yourself.

“Though I don’t remember you having a problem fighting alongside me, either,” You spoke aloud, remembering the moment that you had caught eyes with him for the first time, while searching for Merry and Pippin. And then again during the battle for Helm’s Deep, when he realized that you were there, in the full swing of things, your armor stained with blood, cuts and bruises on your arms, just like everyone else. “So, it’s just your sister you’re coddling for the moment?”

“I am not coddling,” Eomer insisted, his eyes lit up by the reflection of the fire that he had been sitting near only a moment ago. “I’m explaining the way that things are. You - you are a valuable warrior; I will give you that but-”

“That should be in the end of your sentence,” you said, sharply. “You cannot respect me as a fighter, but disrespect your sister’s wish to be the same. She might not have the experience of war that you do, no, she does not have that. But she has the same amount of heart, the same determination, the same reasons to go into battle as you have. The only differences between you are what is in between your legs, and what expectations were put upon you by someone else.”

Eowyn looked surprised, and Eomer - he just looked stunned by your words. No one had dared to talk to him like that before. Especially not a woman. “I just don’t want her to get hurt,” Eomer finally said his real reason for thinking like this. There was something about you that made his heart go in front of his brain, in front of his reasoning. “I don’t want either of you to get hurt. But she,” He said, looking towards his sister, “-she is the future of Rohan. Eowyn, you are who everyone is going to follow if something happens to-”

The word went unspoken. The King. If something happened to Theoden, it would be Eowyn that would be in charge. She would be the Queen of Rohan, taking care of the survivors. Starting over again in the city after it had been ravaged by orcs.

“But - that is not a good enough reason,” Eowyn insisted. “I worry about you, about everyone that is going out there. My friends - my family - don’t I deserve to fight for them too?”

“But-” Eomer started, but then looked between the two of us, and he saw that he was going to lose this argument. It was two against one, and both of us were speaking logically - even though he had his own good reason nonetheless. Eowyn turned on her heel and walked back to her tent, most likely to practice her sword skills once more. You had caught her doing it before. Had even given her some advice on how to use her reach to her advantage.

You approached Eomer, and daringly, you put your hand on his shoulder. You were in close proximity to him. You could smell the stew on his breath, though this was not unpleasant. It was a hearty, human-type smell. His shoulder was large underneath the fabric that he wore, which had been made warm with his own body’s heat. His hair tickled at the back of your hand.

“You do have a good heart, Eomer, and she knows that you love her, and that you care. But restricting her, keeping her in a cage like a pretty bird, is not the way to do it. Nor, exactly, is trying to claim that only men should be in war. I took offense to that.”

“I apologize for offending you,” he said, his eyes intense. Beautifully bright while being lit like this. “But I have seen you in war. And you have had years of training for it, that much was clear. You’re very skilled,” he said, his hand reaching towards your waist now in a show that was as ostentatious, as audacious as your hand upon his shoulder. It brought you both closer together than before. “You’re like a dancer out there, when you fight, you make it look easy, while we both know that it is not.”

“It isn’t,” You agreed. You had trained for centuries to be as good as you were, against all manner of foe. “But is that not all the more reason to help her rather than dissuade her? You’re an excellent swordsman, Eomer. Only rivalled by your skills as a rider. She’s going to find a way to fight whether you accept this or not. Would you not do the same?”

Eomer groaned, his thick eyebrows furrowing as he was really listening to what you were saying. “I know my place -”

“So let her decide hers,” you said, firmly, your breath upon his chin now, close. “I will help her, if you do not. The last thing either of us want is for her to get hurt. So, relieve yourself of your stubborn nature for only a couple of days and allow me to do this. It will only benefit her.”

“Fine,” he said, gritting his teeth, his eyes drilling holes into yours. “You can teach her. But I cannot. I’ve got too much to do with the rest of the army, we’ve barely recovered from Helm’s Deep.”

“I understand. Leave it to me, Eomer,” you said, your voice hitting him like soft silk against his cheeks, cool but comforting. “I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t lose anyone you love in this battle.”

“Including you?” He asked, without missing a beat. Your breath got caught inside your mouth, whatever words that you were thinking of saying next just rolling around on your tongue, but not escaping. You closed your lips for a second, as he looked on at you, nervous, anxious, earnest.

“Including me,” you said finally with a curt nod. He breathed out in relief, the smell of ale tickling your nose. He pressed a soft kiss onto your forehead, the first sort of affection like this that you had, and then left you to talk to his sister about what was going to happen going forward.

The battle was won, though there were great losses all around. You had not been able to keep your promise to him, for he had ended up losing someone that he loved. His own uncle. Your heart broke for him when he had found his uncle’s corpse, Eowyn bent over it, crying, Merry standing there with tears down his own face. The sound that Eomer had let out sounded more pained than anything you had ever heard before. Like he was the one who was dying.

You knelt down on Eomer’s other side and you rested your hand on his back, over his armor. He could not feel your touch, but he could feel your presence, and that had to be enough for now. “I’m sure he fought valiantly until the last,” You spoke, looking at the still noble face of Theoden, King of Rohan.

“He did,” Merry said with a nod, the sob very evident in his voice. “He surely did, my Lady.”

You did little to try to stop the crying of those around you. You only offered a hand to Eowyn, your closeness to Eomer, and your great respect to the little hobbit who was also trying to keep things together through his own grief. The latter had gone to try to find his friends, to find Pippin, no doubt, and you wished him the best of luck as he went. You did not go searching - you stayed put, feeling a familiar sense that your own brother was still alive, wherever on the battlefield he was.

Time went on. Fallen warriors were identified by the living, and were loaded onto carts, respectfully, to be carried back home to be buried. The King was given special treatment of course, being overseen by Eomer and Eowyn, as well as Aragorn himself. You and Eowyn had picked flowers to lay across his body for transport, signs of love, signs of respect. And you rode with Eomer, the first woman to ever ride upon his horse with him, holding onto his waist from behind.

Your own feelings were divided between grief and love. It was easy for the two to mix together, to combine into something bittersweet. As you rested your head upon the back of his shoulder as his steed, Firefoot, trotted beneath you, transporting Theoden back, you had a lot of thinking to do. The idea of leaving Eomer made your heart ache painfully, something you had never felt before. You knew what this unfamiliar feeling was - it was love. But there was a divide between you two - your races, your lives. He was human, his life was fleeting, he was aging before your very eyes and would soon be the age his uncle was when he died, and then older, and older, until death would greet him, hopefully peacefully.

The war wasn’t over. Once you reached Rohan, word was coming that Aragorn was planning on bringing as many troops as would come to Mordor. For Frodo, to give him time, to destroy the ring and the evil that came with it. There has not been much news of the hobbit, but there was still hope that he was out there. That he was close to achieving the end-goal.

“Will you ride?” You asked Eomer. His eyes set upon you as they did many times before, darkened by the sorrow but with a bright, determined light still within.

“I will,” he said. “I need to see this war out to the end. Do what my uncle could not.”

You nodded, understanding him. He was preparing for a night of rest in his own room once more before the ride back to Minas Tirith to meet up with Aragorn and his army. He removed his helmet, his hair falling down around his shoulders, braided still from before the battle. You moved towards him, your fingers running through the strands, shiny with sweat and oils. “I will be coming too.”

“And there is no way I can talk you out of it?” Eomer asked, looking into your eyes, licking his chapped lips. “No way to convince you to stay here, and wait for me?”

“It would be like asking the sun to wait to rise,” You admitted, moving to cup his cheek instead, his bristly facial hair rough against the smoothness of your hand. “It is in my nature to go where I am needed, and that is where I feel I must be. Fighting with my friends. With my brother.” You paused for a moment. “With my love.”

The corner of his lips went up into a smile at his admission, before quickly going back down again. “And - if I lose you?”

“Then that’s the path that fate had set us down upon,” You spoke. “It would be only too easy to stray, to find a way to another path without the potential of that hurt - but I want to remain on this one and take that chance. I want to be with you, as human as you are.”

His lips met yours quicker than you could have imagined, as if he was as swift as an elf. You closed your eyes and melted against him, feeling yourself growing rather than shrinking into this feeling. It was distressing, how fast your heart was beating inside of your chest for a man that you would only be able to hold onto for a short time. That divide - it was like the distance between two stars up there in the night sky. Further apart than one could feasibly imagine. And yet - you were both part of the same constellation regardless. Connected by a single link, and that was your feelings for one another. Whatever this final battle brought on, you’d hold onto that link, and use it to make yourself stronger, like how adding strands to a braided rope made it stronger. And you’d use it to your advantage.

For Frodo.

And for your future, as long as it may be, as much strife and loneliness might come upon it later, you would enjoy these moments of passion, of romance and of Eomer, and make each moment stretch to feel as if it lasts forever.

[ohnonotnow]

my library

here's some of the best the hobbit/lotr fanfics I've read cuz they can be quite hard to find and I wanna help

will update the list as I read

Thorin

Smoke, iron and Thorin

Fire and Gold

Learning Khuzdul

Braid of Gold

Thorin being soft

The Beauty of Chance

Those Hands

Misunderstanding

The arrival

A king's crown

Covered In Steam

There's just inches in between us

Thorin after a long day of training with his nephews

In This Moment 

Agreement

Symphony of your life

Oh so quiet

Confession

Find Your Way Back

Fili

fili oneshots

Moonrise

The Most Unpleasant, Defective, and Abominable Incident

Stay with me

The Redeemer

Durin's Garage

Restless

Lost My Way

Kili

The book keeper

insecurities

The beauty and the Beast

getting back at Kili for teasing

My Treasure

Madly in love

It's in his kiss

Love Bites

Sway With Me

Wood Carvings

Softly. . .

Sweet like nectar

A Shot in the Dark

Beorn

Early Mornings

Beorn takes care of you when you're injured

Linger

Legolas

Watcher of Wanderers

The Innocence of Brutality

Blessing

Sensitive

Being best friends with Legolas

Hazy Memories

Spellbound

Thranduil

Bookworm

Relax

Best friends father

Fascination

Flower On My Skin

To Meet Under the Stars

Passenger Princess

Autumn Thunderstorm

I Could Love You With My Eyes Closed

Haldir

Gentle Dark

Lindir

My Heart Is In Your Hands

Moonlight

Just a Little Help

Warriors Great Tales

The Fountain

Return to Me

Èomer

Burnt Bread

A Helping Hand

Wildest Dreams

Falling In Love With A Librarian

SFW alphabet

Happiness

A Roll in the Hay

Blessing

Turning Points

More characters

various characters oneshots

Imagine: elves having highly sensitive ears and you finding out by accidently touching them.

Journey to Erebor

Hair braiding

Elves + Braiding

What Type of Kisser is Each LoTR Character?

The Hobbit Characters + Physical Affection (Suggestive Version)

A Headcanon For Each Member of Thorin’s Company

Cuddling With Thorin's Company

Imagine some of the elves of Middle Earth find out how easy it is to make you (a human staying in Rivendell) blush and become aroused.

The LOTR characters reacting to a modern reader

[dreambigdreamz]

On Our Own | Éomer Éadig (part two)

Summary : Lothíriel braves through her wedding ceremony, trying to suppress her fears.

Author's note : I was having a bit of trouble posting this until I realised I had written over the maximum word count for a text block in one paragraph, now it's solved and I'm so heavened that I don't have to chop this up into several little more parts! Hope you enjoy Lothíriel!

Part One if you have not read it.

divider by @saradika-graphics

“I am Lothíriel, daughter of Imrahil. I am not afraid of anything — I have never been afraid of anything. And if I, a princess of Dol Amroth, can be made to suffer through this much humiliation, and still survive the ordeal, so can you.”

None of the ladies spoke a word.

“I am not afraid — I have never been afraid of anything. I know this must be done, and I will see it done. This is my destiny; this is my duty. This is my calling, to serve my father and my family, to change this nation, this world into a better place. And when they call my name, I will always step forward, ready to face anything. And I will face this martyrdom like a proper, dignified Princess.”

A silent sniff escaped the girl, and she saw her own lips quiver in the mirror. She took a deep breath, gathering all her strength to keep her shaking shoulders back. She turned to her silent ladies standing behind.

“And I certainly don't want any complaints from any of you.”

“We did not say anything, my lady.” The calm voice came from the elderly lady whose head was lowered in a small bow. She raised it now for just a few seconds, her dark eyes sweeping over the frame of the younger lady. “It must only be the jitters, princess. Nothing to worry about. You had better get ready. This King obviously does not like waiting.”

A hardly pretty scowl overcame the Princess’s face. She did not like to be reminded of the first meeting she had with her husband-to-be. Only Lady Saelwen alone witnessed what had happened, when the King strode into her tent. And, the Valar knows, nobody would ever understand what Lothíriel was feeling then.

Despite her eagerness to fulfill her duty as best as she could, the process was not without any setbacks. There had been several, in fact. The need for getting hot water to her room being one of the dire requirements. "You're right. Tell them to fetch the bath, please, Lady Saelwen."

The older lady immediately set about ordering the others with their different duties. Lothíriel, watching her lady-in-waiting masterfully distributing orders to everybody, recalled what she had said about her to King Éomer. She couldn't suppress a smile at that: Lady Saelwen was anything but easily agitated. She was highly and miraculously stubborn, and that had been the actual case when she refused to let the King inside the Princess's tent. But Lothíriel knew she had to patch up what she could to gain the King's goodwill. A task she knew she had to carry out enduringly, and one she awfully hated. She never liked having to please others to save face.

Lady Saelwen had always been in charge of everything — except when they had to deal with the fuming King the first evening, and Lothíriel brushed her aside as someone who could not help her any more. Indeed she then knew nobody could; she was on her own.

"It is all right," the Princess now wondered aloud again as she sat down at the vanity desk, staring at her reflection that seemed like a stranger to her. "Father and Mother will pass away one day, though, the Valar be praised, it may not be for many long years. Elphir has his own family to take care of, and Erchirion and Amrothos will in time find their own families, tread their own paths, and live their own lives. Nobody would have been able to remain with me, anyway. The important thing is, I still have me. I will always have me, myself, and that is all that matters." She quickly took a swallow of her trembling voice, blinked away the silver beads of tears forming at the corner of her eyelashes. Yes, she still had Lothíriel even if she felt completely deserted by all others.

In this distant land, so strange, so foreign to her. And so entirely abnormal.

"If only we had a proper bath-house," Lothíriel mourned, "with steam and a tepidarium and a proper clean marble floor! Hot water on tap and somewhere for us to sit and be properly scrubbed. I should not mind anything at all if only there was a proper bath-house."

"Don't fuss," Lady Saelwen cooed. "When you are Queen, you can have a hundred bath-houses built, my sweet."

Lady Saelwen had commanded a great tureen from the flesh kitchen which was usually deployed to scald beast carcasses, had it scoured by three scullions, lined it with linen sheets and filled it to the brim with hot water scattered with rose petals and scented with oil of roses brought from Dol Amroth. She lovingly supervised the washing of Lothíriel's long white limbs, the manicuring of her toes, the filing of her fingernails, the brushing of her teeth, and finally the three-rinse washing of her hair. The lady-in-waiting had insisted that Lothíriel should bathe like a Princess of Dol Amroth though all the cooks in the kitchen have had to stop what they were doing to boil the water.

This was one thing Lothíriel had decided she must learn to endure. The servants of Meduseld had been amazed that she was going to wash on her wedding day and most of them probably thought that she was risking her life in this wintry weather. Lothíriel, brought up in the liveliest court in Middle-earth, Dol Amroth where the bath-houses were the most beautiful suite of rooms in the palace, centres of gossip, laughter, and scented water, was equally amazed to hear that the Rohirrim thought it perfectly adequate to bathe only occasionally during the winter and that the poor people would bathe only two or three times a year. She had seen it as part of her destiny, her duty, to endure as a Maia from Valinor endures the privations of this world. She had come from Swansong by the Sea — the paradise, the heaven — to the ordinary world. She had anticipated some disagreeable changes.

"Everything will be fine. I had to come to Dol Amroth from Minas Tirith to marry your brother. Life adjusts easily to Change as Time passes by. And better, if you can learn to love your husband." That was what her sister-in-law told her.

"Yes, but you had the luck to come to the best of places. I am not as fortunate — I have to leave the best place in Middle-earth to go to who-knows-where buried under the grass." Lothíriel had retorted. As for the part about loving her husband, she had omitted.

But truth be told, her husband-to-be had made a very different first impression. He was so handsome — she did not expect him to be so handsome! He was fair and broad, like a knight in shining armour from one of the old romances. She could imagine him waking all night in a vigil, or singing up to a castle window as was usual for a courtship in Dol Amroth. He had pale, almost silvery skin only roughened by the weather, he had fine golden hair, and yet it looked untidy and unkempt, so was his beard which Lothíriel had disliked in any man except now when it was him. He was much taller than her, and she could just feel herself melting away like butter whenever she dared to look up at his face.

He had a rare smile, one that would come reluctantly and then shine. And he was kind. That was a great thing in a husband. He was kind when he took the glass of wine from her: he saw that she was trembling, and he tried to reassure her. But at times he seemed so distant, and he would even sound angry, though naturally his voice was low and deep and that alone could make her heart skip a beat. But Lothíriel could not make out the character of this foreign King. She wondered what he thought of her — she did so wonder!

Time after time, the incredulous maids of Rohan toiled to the door to receive another ewer of hot water from exhausted page boys and tipped it into the tub to keep the temperature of the bath hot.

"Your parents would be so proud of you," Lady Saelwen said dreamily as they helped the Princess from the bath and patted her all over with scented towels. One maid took her dark mass of hair, squeezed out the water, and gently rubbed it with a cloth of silk soaked in oil to give it shine and lustre. They led her towards the wardrobe and started to dress her in the layer after layer of shifts and gowns. "Pull that lace tighter, girl, so that the skirt lies flat. This is all of Dol Amroth's day as well as yours, Lothíriel. This is your father's victory, and he said that you would marry the King of Rohan, whatever it costs him."

"Hush. You make me sound like a parcel." Truly, that was what she felt like sometimes. As if she had been shipped off because she was unwanted. Of course, Lothíriel understood her father wanted the best for her, and this match was the best for her. But still.

"Of course not! Your father did this all for your sake although, quite frankly, it amazes me how he happened to choose such a person — I mean, he is King and all, but what a coarse and unrefined—"

"Hush!" Lothíriel repeated, now raising her voice slightly, her brows furrowed in distress. "He is kind, almost sweet, if it weren't for that rude incident." She didn't know why, but she found herself wanting to defend this man, the King of Rohan, who would soon be her husband. But she hardly knew him, and was terrified to speak to him when they were face to face. So Lothíriel was often led to her imaginations of what he might really be like. She hoped he was kind like her father had assured her. She didn't know about that, she had yet to learn about him to form her own opinion. And of opinions, there were so many different ones thrown about Éomer that she hardly knew what to make of him.

But that would not even matter once they were married, nothing could be changed even if she found him not at all agreeable. Again, she wished their period of courtship hadn't been only a year of correspondence and a couple of days in person.

"That was most certainly rude of him," Lady Saelwen remarked, sniffing her nose in disdain as she began to rearrange Lothíriel's hair. She did not answer to that anymore, wishing to drop the subject.

There would be no persuading the lady to any other opinion. She did have a right to feel bitter against the King: he had demanded to meet the Princess of Dol Amroth in front of his travelling party, without ceremony, without dignity, like a scramble of peasants. Lothíriel herself had been so embarrassed, horrified, but she gritted her teeth, and stood up her ground like a fighting soldier meeting the battle head-on. But she couldn't smile like her Mother told her to.

There was a knock on the door. One of her maids, Mylaela, rushed inside with her round face flushed. "It is the King. And he says he wishes to see the Princess."

Lothíriel immediately locked eyes with Lady Saelwen, the older woman raising her eyebrow. It seems this was another one of the traditions of Rohan, unlike Dol Amroth where it was absolutely forbidden for the wedding couple to see each other before the ceremony. Of course, in the same case, the bride would have also been secluded from the sight of every other man as well, but Lothíriel was pretty sure all the people in Rohan, all the pigs, geese and, of course, horses must have seen her face already by now.

"I will see him," said she, silencing her lady-in-waiting with a significant look. She put on a cloak, a dark blue one with lighter hue interwoven like ripples of water, and walked slowly and steadily towards the door.

She was, once again, surprised to see just how tall he was, but hid any emotion well behind her mask of serenity. She curtseyed, but did not say anything, waiting for him to start.

"I am sorry for this inconvenience, my lady."

She nodded her head once, not knowing how else to respond. She couldn't possibly pretend to say it was no inconvenience at all, because it really was. Who would want to meet her husband-to-be, hair drenched in water and face so bare?

"But I came to give you these," he held out a red velvet purse, and almost shoving it to her, immediately withdrew his hands to his back after she received it. She took it politely, with an inclination of her head, but she did not open it. She waited for him to say something more, but they stood silently for a while longer until he cleared his throat and continued, "They are the jewellery of the Queens of Rohan, heirlooms of the family, and it would be kind of you to wear them to the wedding ceremony."

Kind? She was going to be, she was already all but, Queen of Rohan — it wouldn't be a matter of kindness, it was duty, appearance, tradition.

"My lord honours me," she said with a small curtsey, and he took it as a sign to leave, and bowed stiffly. She opened the door behind her, and slid in carefully, feeling quite nervous as she always did whenever in his presence.

Her ladies-in-waiting were eager to see what was inside the small purse, and they wasted no time in taking out the contents, displaying them carefully on the desk. There were golden bracelets, and a necklace strewn with little rubies, and brooches. But what stood out particularly was the coronet. It was wreathed like golden flowers, and the light glistened off its surface like golden rays of sunlight. Lothíriel held it up, examining it in detail.

"Then I cannot wear my tiara," said she, with a hint of despair in her voice.

"You need not wear the coronet today. Perhaps later. You can wear your tiara, for the last time. It is the tradition, he will not object, surely," Lady Saelwen suggested.

"For the last time," Lothíriel murmured. She put down the coronet, pushed the jewellery a little bit aside, and took out her tiara. It had two endearingly lovely swans, and Lothíriel loved it dearly. It was like her own personal badge, her worth, her rank as the eldest unmarried lady of the royal house of Dol Amroth. It had been hers since she was 10, when her cousin Ariellë had married.

She put it on now, looked into the mirror with a close look as she never looked before. She searched for the traces of that little girl who had first tried it on secretly, before Ariellë's wedding day, enthusiastically waiting for that day which would make this invaluable treasure all hers, solely hers.

Now, it was time to let it go.

"Well, take one last look, Lothíriel. Nothing's ever permanent, anyways, and you've had your share of joy these years past." She didn't know what was ahead of her now. She couldn't think of it.

"Oh! darling," Lady Saelwen cried, flinging her arms around her. "I tell you, you need not put it away just yet, not today."

"But I will have to do it sooner or later," she replied determinedly, trying to be strong and not weep. And I had better make the King happy, she did not add this silent thought. She truly wanted to see him smile, though she will most probably be too busy looking at the ground to see even if he did. "It must be this way."

Slowly, she put the tiara down, and beckoned them to continue what they were doing. When they had finished, she looked a most stunning picture — her black hair let down in a thick wave down in front of one shoulder, the golden coronet round her smooth forehead, her silver mantle gleaming with a faint glow of blue as she moved, and to perfect it all, a sure, steady smile that could win any heart. She knew this. She knew she must look something beautiful. King Éomer had even said she looked prettier than her portrait! Of course, Lothíriel knew flattery was to be expected from him, he could just have been doing it out of politeness, the way he said it grudgingly.

She had been raised to feel confident in her looks, she had learned to love the way she looked, everybody always said how lovely she looked. And though Lothíriel did not necessarily believe it much herself — it would be wrong and quite vain — she believed it must be a bit true, at least, because others said so. She had long, dark hair that was often compared to the nightsky, and her skin was perfectly unblemished, and she knew she carried herself gracefully enough, thanks to the years of supervision under her Mother, Aunt Ivriniel, and Lady Saelwen.

But what if Éomer's taste wasn't like all the 'others' who praised her beauty?

What if he liked his women lighter-haired?

That would be a misfortune, indeed, since nothing could be done about it. He would just have to put up with it, probably regretting his foreign dark-haired Queen. But that would be really unfortunate, Lothíriel couldn't help despairing over it.

What was it that her Aunt had told her?

"Consider your husband carefully. He will own all your property, your good name will be in his keeping, and the happiness of your life will be decided by him. If you cannot be a loving wife, then be at least a wife of whom he can make no complaint. That is the best advice I can give to you, Lothíriel: be a wife of whom he can make no complaint. You will be his wife, that is to be his servant, his possession. He will be your master. You had better please him."

The words still echoed in her mind like some sort of prophecy. She had put up a smile, thanked her Aunt archly that it gladdened her heart to be reminded of it, while secretly she scorned and said to herself sarcastically, "No wonder she is a spinster!"

But Lothíriel had held that advice close to her heart, subconsciously, trying to be pleasing to this stranger on whose goodwill her fate, the rest of her life, depended.

She wondered whether he would make a complaint against how she looked. She wouldn't be able to help that. She might be sent back, and the business of searching a husband for her would have to be done all over again — except she would then bear the shame of having been rejected by the King of Rohan.

At least she would get to spend a couple more years in Dol Amroth, before being sent away again.

These different thoughts made her eyes leak somehow, and suddenly she was crying full on.

"La! What is the matter, dear?"

A hiccup escaped before Lothíriel took a gulp of air. "I — I don't really know? It's just — it's just happening by itself and I can't stop it? May—maybe it's what you said, the jitters, the wibber-gibbers like Alphie would say — and, oh! my darling boy, I have forgotten my darling boy, how shall I live without him? And Elphir, and Andrídha, and Erchirion, I miss him already — I admit it! I know I swore I won't but I do! And, and I miss Gwyneth, that dairymaid who ruined my blue-ribboned shoes, Cael the stableboy, even though I always made a point to glare at him whenever he winked at me, and, and everybody!" Lady Saelwen was the only one whose face was still calm and composed, others already baffled by this outburst of the Princess. Lady Saelwen did not speak, and she continued to pat Lothíriel's heaving shoulders in a loving embrace, silently. The words now poured out of her mouth, and suddenly there was no stopping anymore. "I think he doesn't like me very much, this King Éomer, he doesn't talk to me, and he is probably disappointed with how I look. What if he sends me back? Or worse, what if I disappoint him even as Queen of Rohan? What if I am terrible at it? What if I bankrupt the country and ruin everything? — I always forget my numbers, you know that."

"Now, now," Lady Saelwen soothed her, gently rubbing her back, "you are getting too carried away. It's just not possible for you to bankrupt an entire country, and you probably won't be burdened with those crazy duties. You'll just have to keep the accounts in order, the household in order, like your dear Mother does. The rest—" At this, Lothíriel let out a wail, for she could not possibly strive to be anywhere near her Mother's efficiency. "Don't distress yourself like this, dear. It will happen by and by, and you won't even notice it — you'll be such a beloved queen. And as for the King not liking you, why, I never heard such an abominable thing! He would say something about it, wouldn't he, if he didn't like you? That is absurd. And anyways, the men of our court can teach him a thing or two, perhaps a black eye if you request, you see if he doesn't like you then. And today, when you go in with your long, dark hair falling over your white gown, looking like Elbereth herself, the Star-queen, you'll see if there's a soul in the whole of this country, wretched enough to not fall in love with you!

"Now, stop this silly nonsense. You are going to look a mess."

"Well," Lothíriel swallowed a hiccup, now feeling foolish when Lady Saelwen pointed out things that way, and wiping her runny nose feeling like a wayward child, "I suppose I am being silly. There's no point in worrying over things that I cannot change. I will do my best, and leave the rest in the hands of the Valar. But, wouldn't it be more natural to look the blushing bride?"

"Yes, but you are going to get a red nose and red eyes, not alluring, red cheeks." She pinched Lothíriel's cheek lovingly, and again they set to work.

When the bells started to toll, Lothíriel stood up from where she sat, ready and secretly nervous, and said,

"Well, ladies, we have got a wedding to attend."

"Only, you're the bride this time," one girl teased boldly.

Lothíriel mustered all her courage, and strength, and smiled graciously and gaily and giggled, "All the more reason for me to look dazzling!" But a sudden gloom seized her heart, remembering that the joys of childhood would be denied to her after this day onward. And she would not be a maiden any more . . . She shook herself out of that train of thoughts.

She found to her pleasant surprise that her brother Amrothos was waiting outside the door.

"Ready?" He asked with a lopsided grin that made her laugh despite her heavy heart.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, amazed.

"Why, to escort you, of course. We can't risk you being attacked by some ambushing savages, can we?"

She gave him a look of caution.

He chose to ignore it, and remarked with a comical look, "You are so beautiful, I fear I may go blind from your dazzling-ness."

"So do you, dear brother," she said generously.

"Ah, but all the rest of us are only stars and stars cannot be as dazzling as the Moon, no matter how bright they shine."

"I thought dazzling was used to describe the Sun?"

"Spare me the poetry lesson for this once, love." He then asked again light-heartedly, "So, is the beautiful bride ready to mesmerise these petty people?"

"I was born ready, brother."

"Oh I don't know about that — you had such a terrible cry when you were born, I wept for days, terrified of your cries. I remember Auntie soothing me, saying you must be very mad about being brought into the world so early."

Lothíriel couldn't help smiling, a little sadly, at the mention of them as children. It didn't seem that long ago, and yet at the same time it felt so very long ago. Amrothos noticed her half-hearted smile, and turned her round to face him fully, and pulled her into a tight embrace.

"You've come so far, Thiri. I still can't believe you survived that terrible drowning when you were four. To think, we could have lost you then! I am glad we did not, sincerely." He placed his hand upon his chest soberly.

"I will survive anything, beloved brother, you need not worry about me," she said coolly, her eyebrow raised.

"Of course, my sweet sister," Amrothos smirked back. "I believe all this is just a piece of cake for you as well?"

A whole bakery, Lothíriel thought, but she answered anyways, "It is."

Amrothos studied her face carefully, saying slowly, "You know we love you."

"I do."

"And this is probably for the best."

"It is."

"Then why looking hang-dog?" He slapped her arm playfully.

She rolled her eyes, scoffing unbelievingly. "Every bride needs to look a bit hang-dog before the wedding."

"Not Andrídha, she did not. She was beaming enough for the both of them."

"That's because she's a fool half-sodden in love." She was pretty sure she failed to keep out the bitterness in her voice.

"And you are not?" Amrothos was looking as if he was trying so hard not to laugh out loud. "Hmm, you probably are not."

She didn't answer, because she didn't know. She was drowning in a sea of worries.

When they reached the door, beyond which was the Hall where all the guests were assembled, a guard bowed at the siblings but told them that the Lady must walk in alone, as was the custom.

"What! This is strange indeed, and if I weren't so nice as I am, I would call this exceedingly stu—"

Lothíriel tugged at her brother's elbow, hissing, "Mind what you say, Amrothos." Already she could feel the terseness of the lords since her arrival, and while Amrothos may not need to care about them, she was to remain here for the rest of her life and she knew she wouldn't survive long if she didn't make herself liked. Another inward sigh. "And really, you couldn't have stuck with me all the way through this marriage anyways, it's all on me." On my own. She tried to smile brightly, and hoped it was convincing enough. "So off you go now, my little star. Go twinkle somewhere else."

"It'll be all right. I know you'll be all right," and with a warm kiss on both cheeks, and one last concerned look, her brother left ahead.

She turned to the guard again, and ordered coolly, "Announce me."

He nodded, knowing this particular about the new Lady, as did many of Rohan by now.

"The Lady Lothíriel, Princess of Dol Amroth, and Queen of Rohan!"

The heavy, wooden doors creaked open. Lothíriel, daughter of Imrahil, armoured only with steely determination, stepped forward, her head held high and her footsteps unfalteringly in-beat.

Only she could hear her heart hammering in her eardrums.

Nobody must ever find a Princess of Dol Amroth falling back for fear.

No one will ever know what it cost her to smile, what it cost her to stand before all these people and not tremble.

She was not yet twenty-two, she was far from her Mother, she was in a strange country, she cannot speak the language, and she knew nobody here. She had no friends but the party of companions and servants that she had brought with her, and they looked to her to protect them. They did not think to help her. They could not help her.

Nobody could help her.

No one would ever know that she had to pretend to ease, pretend to confidence, pretend to grace. Of course she was afraid. But she will never, never show it. And, when they called her name, she would always step forward.

Amidst her own heartbeats, she could faintly hear the whisper of voices around her. She could not understand them, nor did she want to. Her eyes, fixated straightforward, fell onto the tall figure of the King. He stood proud and regal, like a pillar of strength. He wore the great woven cloak of gold and green, with the sigil of the horse, and on his head was the heavy crown wrought majestically in gold and white jewels. His face, Lothíriel stole a quick glance as she reached up to him and he took her hand in his, was solemn, almost even stern she would imagine.

She listened attentively, and repeated the vows in her best manner, but heard little. Her thoughts were busy elsewhere. She only registered dimly the voice of the King beside her, standing close by. In fact, she realised, they were so close she could almost discern the faint smell of musk and ambergris wafting around with the underlying notes of sweat, leather, and horses. She remembered it from the first evening when he barged into her tent.

Other than the thud-thud of her heart, she could not acknowledge his presence beside her. Neither did he seem to.

She knew what she had to do. She had to be a princess of Dol Amroth for Rohan and a queen of Rohan for Dol Amroth. She had to seem at ease where she was not and assume confidence when she was afraid.

Éomer may be her husband, but she could hardly see him, she had no sense of him yet. She had no time to consider him. She was absorbed in being the princess that he had bought, the princess that her father had delivered, the princess that will fulfill the bargain and secure the friendship between Rohan and Dol Amroth.

Every now and again, she glanced very briefly at his face, but he stood as still as a statue to reveal any answers to her incessant, whirling, silent questions of what he was like. He stood so still, she could not even tell whether he was breathing or not. Both his hands held her right hand between them, as if ensuring safety and comfort. But Lothíriel was uneasy, wondering if this was one of Rohan's different traditions as well; in Dol Amroth, the bride only held on to the man's arm.

The only thing that disconcerted her throughout the process happened when it was time for them to exchange the rings.

The ring-bearer was a man whom Lothíriel remembered to be one of Éomer's near-kin, but all these lords and Riders had the same bearded faces, the same fair hair, the same silence. If she hadn't mentally prepared herself for it months before she came to Rohan, Lothíriel was pretty sure she'd have gone insane by this unfamiliarity in the strange, foreign land. She wished she could see somebody from home, somebody who hadn't followed hither — she would even be glad to see Wat the groom who sang bawdy songs with his obnoxious voice.

The rings were brought on a small pillow-cushion while she was meditating these worrisome thoughts. When she saw Éomer taking the smaller one, she dutifully held out her hand for him to put it on her finger.

But he didn't.

Éomer took her hand, and turned it so her palm was held upward, and placed the small golden band on it. Confused, Lothíriel looked up at him, and her cheeks flushed warmly when she saw him smiling gently.

"In Rohan, we exchange the rings and wear it ourselves, my lady."

He explained kindly, but suddenly the former warmth in her cheeks grew hotter and she looked down at her palm, possibly looking furiously crimson.

"Oh," was all that she could say, blinking nervously as she reached for the other one and placed it in his upturned hand. Embarrassed, and wishing the wooden floorboards would open up to swallow her, she hastily put her ring onto her finger. Only after that was she able to recollect herself, braced herself, and looked up with a positively bright smile to say, "I wish I had thought to learn of it beforehand. But no matter. It is done."

He smiled again, and Lothíriel noticed, for the first time, the little crinkles near his eyes when he did so. For some reason, the discovery made her feel somehow light-hearted, and she found that she could return his smile with equal sincerity, without at all feeling the tiresome stretch in her cheeks when she had to remind herself to properly regulate even the degree of her smile. "It is done," he echoed, and in her natural maidenly reserve, she lowered her eyes. She felt him leaning down, felt his rough hand under her chin, felt her head being raised up to look at him. Only, she didn't want to look yet, and closed her eyes tightly. Then she felt his lips on hers, the warm kiss making her head spin around in circles, and she felt his hand brushing against her cheek, all in a daze. She only felt, and knew nothing of what was going on. It was done. When Éomer stepped back, she saw the timid smile on his face, as if he wasn't sure how much he should be smiling as well. When she looked around, she saw the smiling faces stretching from her feet to the doors of the Hall. And when they went down the aisle together, past the rows of benches and guests, to the bright wintry sunlight outside and heard the roar of the crowd for Éomer and his bride, the King and Queen of Rohan, Lothíriel started to realise that she had done her duty finally and completely. She had been promised to Éomer for more than two years, and now, at last, they were married. She had been named Queen of Rohan since she was twenty years old, and now, at last, she had taken her name and taken her place in the world. It had felt impossible until it was finally done. She looked up and smiled, not as shy as one might expect of a blushing bride on her wedding day, but a real confident smile of a queen that promised strength and courage to the people she was now to call hers, her own; and the crowd, delighted with the free wine and ale, with the prettiness of the young princess, with the promise of safety from threats both internal and external that could only come with a settled royal succession, roared their approval. They were husband and wife; but they did not speak more than a few words to each other for the rest of the long day. There was a formal banquet, and though they were seated side by side, there were healths to be drunk and speeches to be attended to and the musicians playing. No one had ever seen so much money flung at a single occasion. It was a greater celebration even than the King's own coronation — it was a redefinition of the Rohan kingly state. Lothíriel was perfectly at ease with everything, having expected this all her life since she learned her duty and destiny as a princess, a woman in a largely male-dominated world, where she could only ever amount to be a bridge to the next generation of great men.

But perhaps it wasn't exactly as she had always thought it should be. Given that she was not marrying a lord or knight of Gondor. The people of Rohan obviously did not like talking much, and after the formal ordeals were done, everybody sat down to eating and drinking by themselves. Truth be told, Lothíriel was looking forward to poems composed for her and recited in her honour, like they did for the brides in Dol Amroth; she would have been disappointed about the lack of attention, if it were not for the dreadful prospect of the night's end looming over her head for almost the entire time. That was the chief occupying thought of her mind, and since nobody paid much heed to her except now and then to drink her health, and the members of her own party being a bit distantly placed, and her own lord husband scarcely turning his head towards her, Lothíriel was left to ponder her own dread and dismay. She was brought back to reality by a voice addressing her from below the board. "It would be a great pleasure for us all if the queen would give us a dance. Or is that not allowed in Dol Amroth either?" The boldness of the question startled her. She noticed that it was one of the highl lords of the King's council, an elderly man who particularly was frosty in his manners to her since her arrival. Lothíriel turned her head to Éomer, and asked cautiously, "Since I am now Queen of Rohan, I must learn your customs. Would a Queen of Rohan get up during her wedding and dance for everyone like she is at a village fair?" She saw that Éomer's face was broody, and uneasy. He shifted in his seat before answering her shortly in that deep, gruff voice of his, "If she would like." This was enough for Lothíriel, who had grown up in the court of Dol Amroth where conspiracies and gossips went around like bees buzzing from flower to flower, and she immediately understood his answer as an hesitant yes. She did not yet know the ongoings of this court and the country, but she knew it was her duty to please the King first and foremost, and she had to learn later on of his affiliations and animosities alike. So, for the present, she decided to oblige the possibly harmless request. She threw a small, demure smile to the other lord, and said, "Then I will dance," and rose from her seat at the high table. She was expecting the King to follow suit, but he did not; she realised they meant dancing as in all by herself, like some performer, and not a proper courtly dance with her new husband. She stood still for a second there, feeling very much embarrassed and whacking her mind wondering what to do next, before she finally added with some recovered grace, "With my ladies."

She beckoned towards where they were grouped nicely, a little apart from the men, called out to them by their names. Four young women, dark-haired girls of youth and beauty, pretending shyness but eager to show themselves off, came forwards. The Princess Consort of Dol Amroth, Lady Anarïen, herself had personally selected the ladies, not very willingly acceding to her lord husband's blunt but well-founded request that all his daughter's companions should be pretty. The party of Dol Amroth could not appear in any less honourable manner or fashionable style — except King Éomer had jeopardized the whole plan by forcing his way rudely into the Princess's tent. But nonetheless, all the girls were good-looking, well-mannered, and perfectly suited to be considered close companions of a royal princess of Dol Amroth, but none of them outshone the Princess, who stood composed and confident and then raised her hands and clapped, to order the musicians to play. The dance was a pavane, a slow ceremonial dance, and Lothíriel moved with her hips swaying and her eyes heavy-lidded, a little smile on her face. She had been well schooled. Any princess would be taught how to dance in the courtly world where dancing, singing, music and poetry mattered more than anything else; but she danced like a young woman who let the music move her naturally. She was doing all her best to prove everybody watching that she would be the greatest ornament to this court where they only discussed war-strategies and the meal-times were, simply, for eating meals and not for civilised conversation. She stopped as the music came to its last note, and swept a curtsey at the King, and came up smiling. "Do I please you?" She demanded, flushed and a little breathless. "Immensely," a faint smile was lingering on his lips as he said so, and Lothíriel found herself smiling back with gratitude at his praise and wonder, wonder at what kind of a man he was. When, later on, she was sitting in front of the mirror in her new room, the Queen's room — which, Lothíriel sniffed inwardly, should have been hers since her arrival — she was still left wondering about the mystery of his smile that had stayed in her mind for the rest of that evening.

Sincerely Snow,

19th April — 8th June 2023

[apricusapollo]

legolas to aragorn but she is eowyn and he is eomer

[severussnapedamagedlove]

Do Not Ask - LOTR One Shot

(EomerxOC, Helm's Deep, Love, Fluff, Gore, Blood, One Shot, Grief)

Helm’s Deep was full of the last remains of its people. They were all gathered in the aftermath of what was set to be the battle of their lifetimes, for it saved them all. Blood coated the grey stone walls. Black and red blood of both enemy and ally. It smelled as battlefields do; the foul stench of rotten corpses, excrement and hot iron blood.

Eomer frowned as he stepped through the Keep. It was thick with bodies. How far they’d come into their last defense, how close Rohan was close to being an extinct race of Men.

His legs burned as he climbed the final ascent of stairs. He entered a grand hall. Only it was not lit with torches and the smells of roasting foods as he remembered it.

Women and children were out of the caves. They were frightened. The looks on their eyes as they searched for their survivors reflected a fraction of the terror in their warriors eyes. The things on this battlefield were harsher than most. Uruk-hai made war a vile, horror filled with atrocities too filthy to be recounted.

Eomer was Third Marshal of the Riddermark. His place was out in the field in search of survivors. It was where he was needed. He fully intended to join his Eored once his search was complete. There were two he needed to find first.

Selfish need drove him further into the room. It was duly noted that it was out of line for his position. Still, he walked farther inside the hall until he saw them. All he needed was a glance. One look, and his heart would be settled.

He caught sight of his sister. She had her hand pointed, where supplies were to be set as they tended to the wounded. Her eyes were rimmed red. The caves were a savior to the men’s mind, but it did not save their loved ones of the sounds of the deaths. It only amplified the fears of what might come find them in the cave whether it be freedom or death.

Eowyn found his gaze. Her body gave slight give, weakness to her knees, a kind breath out of her chest, as she gave a wobbly smile.

He, too, shared the same relieved breath.

There was a face he sought out in the crowd. Through the endless waves of faces, some familiar, some not, he yearned for a face that was known to his heart by instant fluttering.

The longer the absence, the harder his heart pumped.

Where was the face he longed for?

It took too long to walk through the survivor people until he located someone who was bound to know. An elderly woman with crooked fingers and a boy near thirteen in age. The boy’s clothing dragged on the floor behind as he walked.

Eomer placed a hand on his shoulder. “Maynard. Where is your sister? Her face is lost to me.”

The woman and boy exchanged looks. Their faces told of a restrained guilt. He was not let in on their silent exchange. Tensions in his gut quivered. The battle fear was not yet over for him. There was relief still to be awash his body in victory. Their hesitation did not ease him.

            “Speak,” he barked.

Maynard gathered the billowy fabric up to move. “We don’t know.”

Eomer stood straight. His eyes squinted as he took in the boy’s slumped shoulders. The woman’s deepening frown.

            “I’m sorry, my lord.” The boy trembled.

He staggered a step, startled by his own thought he’d come to.

She wouldn’t.

Now he saw it. The clothing was sizes too big for the young boy. A young boy who – if by recollection – should have been out on the battlefield alongside his countrymen.

The elderly woman held a stiff face as he turned to her in anger.

            “Do not ask to send our young ones,” her voice said, “when there were perfectly fit soldiers ready to fight.”

Eomer flew to the battlegrounds. He searched the dead before they made safe the castle. There were wounded to tend to, provisions to secure, men to regroup, efforts and rebuilding all to be concerned with yet his solider heart could not rest until he found her.

The frantic wavy grip of his throat struggled to keep breathing as he looked through bodies. Their helmets pulled from their heads. Blood, mud, disgust smeared around. A singular stench of death on the wind. It cloaked the stronghold with its inescapable melancholy.

He moved through the bodies on the wall – what was left of it. There were men with crushed ribcages. Their insides leaked out onto the stone.

His stomach flipped. Eyes turned to sadness at the innocent round eyes of children that gazed up from their limp corpse.

All he pictured was instead her: light colored eyes of sky blue with perfect golden hair, more flat than wavy. The coloring of her cheeks perfectly pink turned white, ghost-like in death. Broken bits of her body torn from her flesh like an animal consumed the life straight from her living tissue.

He fought every want to succumb to his emotion. They were bottled so tight, ready to release. He did not know if he would weep or scream. Perhaps, it was the brewing of both: his sorrow at losing the woman he loved so deeply and the anger at himself for not keeping her safe.

A foot solder approached behind his back. The clinking of the chainmail against the armor chest plate echoed in the silence of the dead.

The loud clank of a helmet dropped to the stone.

            “Keep that helmet on, solider,” he said through his gritted teeth. “There is still reason to fend for your head.”

            “Is your head forfeit then, my Lord?”

It was a voice he convinced himself would never sound in his ears again. He turned around.

There she stood, much like a man, in her armor. An empty sheath hung from her belt. The chill of morning left her breaths clouds sourced from her chapped lips.

She panted heavily. The effort to remain standing dwindled as she swayed.

            “Brona,” escaped his lips in disbelief.

Eomer rushed to hold her in his arms. His hands trembled against her body. It was real. No figment of his imagination. It was her. Alive.

He pulled her against his chest. Her weight impacted him fully. She was exhausted.

            “Yes, my Lord. I am here.”

            “Why did you not come find me?” He murmured. It was a selfish yearning in his heart. To have known she was there would have had him fight harder. Harder to protect her. Harder, to keep them all alive.

She winced as slid his hand between the plates of her shoulder and pulled them down her arms. “You’d have sent me back to the caves.”

Glimpses of her flesh below her tunic showed deep purple and black bruises. Red rashes at her neckline were from the metal chainmail too close to her neck below the armor. He pulled the last heavy pieces off her body showing what woman laid inside. She was not small, nor slender, but woman all the same. A woman who loved flowers and song and enjoyed riding in the yellow light of dawn.

He collected her body into his arms. It relaxed, limply hung by a thread of her energy.

The cots were assembled for the wounded. Eowyn tied a knot at the back of her head to keep it out of the way as she wound a linen wrapping around a bleeding arm. She directed the others tending to the injured around the room.

She rose, wiped the blood from her hands to the white apron tired around her waist, when her eyes caught at Eomer. Her face went pallid.

Not a breath exited her chest as she rushed across the room. A finger ran along her friend’s face. “Is she?”

            “No.” He shook his head. “She’s passed out from exhaustion. Dehydrated.”

            “Bring her here.”

There was an open space on the floor. A wooden crate was covered with spare comforts that were available. A flat pillow and course blanket.

He frowned. He pulled the cloak from his uniform. It was a luxurious cloth. He slid the fabric over top her body.

His sister handed him a bladder of water. “Drip some into her mouth. I’ll massage her muscles. It will ease the pain.”

He tried to hold the bladder steady. His hands trembled too much. It flicked water over her cheeks down her neck.

Eowyn frowned. “I’ll do this.” She took the water. “You massage her.”

The room was thick with energy. The battle left many wounded, some beyond repair, and many young men dead on the fields that surrounded the grand hall. There were cries of loss, cries of reunion, cries of pain around them.

Neither sibling said a word as they worked on their friend.

Eomer gave a long glance at his sister. Her hands worked at the joints of Brona’s shoulders, rolling them and stretching the muscles with her long fingers. She discovered a split in the skin of Brona’s underarm like the slice of a sword come from behind.

A cold sweat formed at his spine.

War was no place for those with tender hearts. It was horror and gore. It was for the field of monsters and those who became monsters in their fight against monsters.

His innocence was lost on those death fields. The slain bodies full of blood and hate and anger and other worldly tissue filled his mind with no impact anymore. It was like a tapestry woven of a scene. He saw what was before him, but it did not illicit emotion. Just a barren stare.

There was no hope for him. But his love. The beautiful pieces of her soul were light and delicate and glee. They were the bits that he adored. She felt emotions that he could not bring his heart to feel.

What had she endured that night? What savage action had killed that spirit, he wondered. Would she even be the same?

            “Did you know?” He bumped his sisters arm with his shoulder. His fingers worked at massaging the left hand. It was the one that held the sword. The grip on a sword for extended periods of time cramped the hand woefully.

Eowyn swallowed but said nothing.

            “Eowyn,” he said sternly.

            “I only suspected,” she replied with no give in emotion. There was fear for her friend, but no guilt in what had befallen her. “There were too many around. I-I could not see what happened until it was too late.”

            “She could have been killed.”

His sister put a palm against Brona’s cheek. She leaned into the touch. “You don’t know what its like. That feeling. Left behind, to wait for everything you love to be stolen from you bit by bit.” His sister placed a gentle kiss atop her forehead. “There is ache in surviving. Being the only one to not be killed in bloody battle. To carry on with the weight of the dead as a reminder of why they perished. It would have killed her, Eomer. Killed her. To have Maynard slain in battle while she lived. She would have not been the same woman we love. I could not ask that of her. Could you?”

Eomer sat there for a few long hours while his duty called at him to rejoin his uncle and regroup his men, he remained by Brona’s side.

His sister’s words echoed within his head.

The shrill heartbreak of cries that came from the caves when the boys were pulled from their mothers. Old men pulled from grandchildren. The women of his country asked to give more than they were willing to survive.

He’d not allowed himself to consider what was done to Brona when they came for her brother.

The fact she changed her clothes with him, made herself a man, just to save his fate from being skewered by an Uruk-hai lance.

Tears were in his eyes when her eyes started to slide open. Her brow flexed in confusion as she looked around her. They stilled when she caught sight of him on side of her cot.

                    “Eomer,” she breathed.

Her hands touched his cheek. A slip of water fell from his eye. Her thumbs wiped it away.

                    “Am I dead?”

He shook his head. “No. You should be, but you are not.” His hand trembled as it cupped her cheek. It held her close. The coloring of her face returned. Peachy pink hue touched the tops of her cheek as she stared up at him with those loving eyes. The fear of losing her had near come to fruition. “Forgive me, my love. Forgive me for what I asked of you. Our land was in need. Our people nearly extinct.”

She held the hand against her face. “Forgive me for doing what I must.”

Eomer pulled her into his lap. Her body slowly wrapped around his. Lips pressed against his cheeks. They both forgave what awful betrayal they had done to one another without fulling realizing the devastation it could have caused.

The land was safe. Their loved ones survived the long battle.

The world was far from perfect. It had more trials to endure, but they did not doubt the strength of one another as they faced the terror that grew in the east. For a dark cloud hung over their life, but it did not shade their love.

For more stories on Eomer Eadig and Rohan, please check out my Eomer collection on fanfiction.net!

[welikeimagines-andfandoms]

🍃Tolkien Masterlist🍃

Smut: 🔥🔥

Fluff: 🌸🌸

Heated Fluff: ⭐️⭐️

Friendly: 🌈🌈

Angst: 🌨️🌨️

💙 Collage

💚 Oneshot

💖 Preference/Headcanon

💜 Quote

💞 Blurb

Aragorn

- Just A Girl 💚🌸

- Waited So Long 💚🔥

Arwen

- Warrior Girlfriend 💙🌸

Bard

- Baker 💙🌸

- Break Stuff 💚⭐️

- Mermaid 💚🌸

- Mermaid Partner 💖🌸

Bilbo

- Tease 💞⭐️

Boromir

- Sleepy Reader 💜🌸

- Princess 💖🌸

- Waited So Long 💚🔥

- Lean On Me 💚🌨️🌸

- Teasing As Flirting 💚🌸

- Competition 💜🌸

Eomer

- Heart-Shaped Box 💞⭐️

- Queen of Pain 💞⭐️🔥

- Competition 💜🌸

Eowyn

- My Sweet Girl 💚🌸

- Thunderstorm 💚🌸

Fili

- Size 💚🔥

- Loved You Before 💚🌸

- Undressed 💙⭐️

- Elf Princess 💙🌸

- Braid 💚🌸

Glorfindel

- Chanel 💚🌸

- S&M 💚🔥

- So Tight 💞🔥

- Sunglasses and Flower Crowns 💚🌸🌈

- Lyrics 💙🌸

Kili

- We Didn’t Start The Fire 💚🌸🌈

- Elf Princess 💙🌸

Legolas

- She Knows It 💚🌈

- Big Girl 💚🌸

- Edge Play 💚🔥

- Tongue Piercing 💚🔥

- Waited So Long 💚🔥

- Sweet Prince 💚🔥

- Training 💚⭐️��

- Lyrics 💙🌸

- Go To Sleep 💚🌸

Lindir

- Toys 💚🔥

- Rebellious 💙⭐️

- Birthday Present 💞🔥

- Mermaid 💙🌸

- Warrior Love 💚🔥

Thorin

- 9 to 5 💚🌸

- Accidental Confession 💚🌸

- Courting Gifts 💚🌸

- Queen Under The Mountain 💜🌸

Thranduil

- Relaxing Day 💙🌸

- NSFW Alphabet 💖🔥

- Old Lady Reader 💖🌸

- Leaving A Party 💙🌸

- A Kingly Tour Guide 💙🌸

- Sleeping Loves 💜🌸

- Jewellery and Paintings 💙🌸

- Breath 💚🔥

- The Kiss 💚🌸

- Never Tried 💚🔥

- King To The Rescue 💚🌸

- Secret Conversation 💚⭐️

Multiple

- Meeting 1 💖⭐️

- Meeting 2 💖⭐️

- Meeting 3 💖⭐️

- Meeting 4 💖⭐️

- NSFW 1 💖🔥

- NSFW 2 💖🔥

- NSFW 3 💖🔥

- Lindir x Reader x Glorfindel 💞🔥

- Lindir x Reader x Glorfindel 2 💞🔥

- Favourite Position 💖🔥

- Fairy x Mermaid 💚⭐️

- Elves x Hobbit Women 💞🌸

- Elves Kissing 💖🌸

- Human and Elves 💞🔥

- Love Triangle 💙⭐️

- Kink Alphabet 💖🔥

- Two Lords and a King 💞🔥

- Poems 💞🌈

- Mediating The Kings 💞🌸

- Forehead Kisses 💞🌸

[hottpinkpenguin]

Blessing - Eomer X Fem!Reader

Oneshot, word count: 4,4045 Summary: Loving a Lord of the Riddemark comes with its fair share of trade-offs. Even more so when you're riding into battle right next to him. Warnings: steam (mutual bathing, nudity, kissing, heavy petting if you squint), canon-typical violence, some playing with the timeline,

You unsheathed your sword in one swift, strong movement, the grating sound of steel on steel as the blade scraped against its scabbard. Your horse, Túrion, reared up on his hind legs as Saruman’s Warg-riders charged across the empty plain in front of you. You had only moments before their forces would smash against your company’s line. Turning back to face your comrades, you lifted your sword high into the cold, early dawn air. 

“For King, for country, for your families and homes!” You shouted as loudly as you could manage, hoping your voice carried over the sound of whinnying horses nervous for battle and the growing roar of the Wargs. The faces of the six dozen female warriors at your command – your swordsisters - broke into a unified scream. The battle cry echoed across the dusky plain, and you noted with a grimly satisfied smile that some of the foe balked at the sound. 

Túrion pulled sharply at the bit in his mouth, signaling to you his anxiousness for battle. You felt the same frenzied energy; it had been ricocheting through your bones ever since King Theoden had given you his begrudging permission to mount up and join the rest of the Rohirrim in guarding the citizens of Edoras as they made the dangerous march to the mountain keep at Helm’s Deep. Your nerves came partially from the knowledge that this was the only change you and your swordsisters had of proving your mettle to the rest of Rohan, and partially from knowing that, although you had the king’s blessing to fight, you distinctly did not have the blessing of his heir and your lover, Eomer. 

As another bloodthirsty cry erupted from the lines of mounted soldiers behind you, you gave Túrion his head, kicking him into a gallop as you thrust your blade high and forward, signaling the charge. 

“For Middle Earth!” The riders behind you echoed your call to arms as the company leapt to action. 

The sound of hundreds of hooves pounding into the frostbitten ground roared to life as your unit charged forward to meet the oncoming Warg-riders. Your mind slipped into a red haze of battle-fueled fury as your sword sliced through its first victim, then its next, and so on, until you and your sword were one and the same. 

* * * * *

The sun was high in the sky by the time you re-sheathed your sword. The muscles of your sword-arm shoulder screamed in relief as you let go of the weight of your blade. You swung down off Túrion’s saddle, examining your stallion’s wounds. Most were superficial cuts, but there was a deep gash cut into the meat of his left flank. Dark crimson blood stained his grey speckled coat, and he whinnied in protest as you gently prodded the rough edges of the wound. It would require cleaning and sewing, you decided, which meant you wouldn’t ride him for a few weeks while it healed. 

“My brave, brave boy,” you cooed at him tenderly as you moved to the front of his body, stroking his sweaty neck sweetly. You saw his eyes soften at the sound of your voice. You let your forehead fall forward to connect to his snout. He chuffed at you lovingly, rubbing his nose on you as if to reassure you he was alright. Túrion had been your horse for almost ten years, and he’d joined you in every battle you’d fought in so far. 

“It seems your horse fared better than you, my lady.” The voice behind you was reproachful but laced with relief. You smiled, ignoring the admonishment in Eomer’s words as you turned to face him. 

“Eomer,” you sighed dreamily, your voice misty with exhaustion as you let him envelop you with his arms. The layers of armor and chain mail and fighting leather between you left you unhappily separate from his reassuring warmth, but the knowledge that he – like you – had survived the Warg attack made you weak in the knees with joy. 

“You’re hurt, Y/n,” he mumbled gruffly against your hair as he placed a tender kiss on your forehead. 

You pulled back from him, puzzled. You hadn’t noticed any injuries during the battle, although it was very possible that adrenaline had dulled your awareness. 

“I am?” you replied in bewilderment. You lifted your arms gingerly, trying to feel for the injury more than look for it. There was an appalling amount of blood and sinew and entrails staining your armor; all of it from your enemies, you’d assumed, although Eomer seemed to disagree. 

“Your head,” he said by way of clarification. His expression was pained as he touched the side of your face up towards your right temple. Although his pressure was gentle, you noted a tenderness at his touch, and his fingertips were tacky with half-dried blood when he withdrew his hand. Your mind idly flicked through the memories of the battle, trying to identify when you’d been injured. You knew some of the Warg-riders dipped their blades in poison – usually the officers – and if the injury had come from one of them, you’d need to see an apothecary for the herbal antidote. You had a vague recollection of your helmet being knocked from your head by an errant arrow. As you tried to piece the memory together, you realized that the arrow must have sideswiped your skull, leaving a shallow albeit bloody gash there. 

“I’m fine, it was an arrow,” you sighed in relief as you gently ran your hand along the cut. It was narrow and straight – most certainly the work of an arrow rather than a blade. You saw Eomer’s shoulders visibly relax; his mind must have raced to the possibility of poison just as yours had. 

“Thank the Gods,” he breathed out, cupping your cheeks in both his hands as your foreheads connected. Your eyelids fluttered shut as you enjoyed the sound of his breathing syncing with yours. The sounds of the fading battle and dismounting riders around you faded into the back of your awareness as you let Eomer’s presence wash over you. 

When you finally drew back to meet his gaze, you saw the anger that he’d tamped down just long enough to ensure you’re safety flare to life in his honey-brown eyes. 

“What in the devil are you playing at, exactly?” he snarled accusatorily. You had to suppress a chuckle at his rage. He was the bravest man you knew, like one of the royal knights of old out of a children’s fairytale, but when it came down to you, his protective anger reminded you of an hissing, spitting kitten. You wanted nothing more than to pepper him with kisses and have him walk you to a nice, warm bath, although you knew that your doting affection would only enrage him further.

In an attempt to hide your smile, you turned back to Túrion, undoing his breast collar and easing the saddle off his back. 

“Whatever do you mean, my Lord?” Try as you might, you couldn’t quite extinguish the note of teasing in your sarcastic question. Eomer’s nostrils flared in response. He grabbed your upper arm, pulling you about to face him. His eyes were simmering, his handsome lips pursed so tightly they were white against his sun-tanned skin.

“You rode into battle knowing you didn’t have my blessing,” Eomer growled. He released your arm as a few of his men walked past, eyeing the two of you surreptitiously with sidelong glances. Your romance with Eomer was no longer a secret, although both of you tried to keep your personal affairs separate from your roles in Rohan’s military. 

“I had the King’s blessing,” you snapped back once his men were out of earshot. “Last I checked, the King’s blessing still outweighed yours, Lord of the Mark.” Using Túrion’s saddle as a buffer, you brushed past him, leading your horse by the bridle towards the line of soldiers pulling back from the corpse-riddled battlefield towards the shadowy mountains off the west, where the safety of Helm’s Deep thick stone walls awaited. You could practically feel the heat from Eomer’s gaze boring into the back of your head as you walked away. 

Let him burn himself out, you told yourself as part of your instincts yearned to turn back and make peace. You knew Eomer’s anger came from a place of protectiveness, and you loved him for his devotion. By the same token, you also wanted him to realize that a warrior’s blood pulsed through your veins. It wasn’t your fate to be a lady of Rohan’s court, waving embroidered handkerchiefs at him as he rode off into a glorious death in battle. Your fate was to ride out next to him and meet your enemies standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Like him, you would lay down your life to protect those you loved. You’d never dream of taking that away from him; and you expected him to give you the same latitude in return. 

Holding your chin high, you let your feet carry you away from him, eventually getting lost in the crowd. You’d be lying if you said your pride wasn’t a bit wounded that he didn’t chase you down, but he didn’t. Eomer was far too proud for that.

* * * * *

It wasn’t until nightfall that you reached Helm’s Deep. The adrenaline of battle had long worn off by then, and you were beginning to feel every bump and bruise covering your body. Based on the scattered reports you’d picked up on from the other unit commanders, you knew that the battle was far from over. Saruman’s main force was marching towards Helm’s Deep as you spoke. The Warg-riders had been little but a scouting force. You only hoped to have enough time to eat and, if the Gods were merciful, rest. 

Once you’d seen Túrion to the stables and tasked a stable hand with patching up his wound, you made your way towards the main hall of the keep. Theoden’s court had assembled there, and he’d ordered all of his unit commanders to adjourn there for a hot meal and battle strategy. Thankfully, your company had lost relatively few of its number, while others had sustained heavy losses. Despite the bone-deep fatigue that pulled at your eyelids, you forced yourself to stay keen to the king’s brief on his strategy for the coming conflict. Given that your company was still majority intact, you suspected that you’d be part of the castle’s main defensive force along the lower ramparts. 

It wasn’t purely exhaustion that threatened to pull your focus elsewhere; from across the dimly lit hall, you could see Eomer at his usual place to the king’s immediate left. His expression was somber, and you doubted that anyone noticed the slight groove between his eyebrows that betrayed his inner turmoil. But you knew his face the same way you knew the feel of breath in your lungs. You’d be able to feel his emotions in the dark. 

After the king dismissed the company leaders under strict instructions to rest as much as possible, you felt your feet automatically lead you up towards the head table where Theoden, Gamling, and Eomer sat together, their heads bowed as they continued to talk of strategy. Noticing your approach, Theoden smiled at you warmly and waved his nephew off.

Eomer protested his uncle’s dismissal, partially out of a sense of duty and partially to spite you, but Theoden would hear none of it. “Soldiers are never guaranteed another sunset, Eomer,” he chided his nephew sternly but not unkindly. “Don’t waste this one mulling over the details of tomorrow’s doom. Go. Be with your heart.” 

Theoden’s words touched you, and you bowed your head gratefully at him as Eomer rose with a sullen pout. As you turned to follow a very surly Eomer out of the hall, you swore you saw Theoden shoot you a conspiratorial wink. 

The walk to Eomer’s chambers was quiet, although not tense. There was an understanding between you two: despite your quarrel, both of you expected to spend the evening together. And although there were differences of opinion, you knew that you were secure in his affections, just as he knew the same of you. You and Eomer had been doing this dance for too long to let something so petty drive a wedge between you, especially on a night like tonight. You weren’t sure if it was your imagination, but at times you swore you felt the faintest tremor in the mountain that Helm’s Deep was cut into, a foreshadow of the unimaginable force marching your way. Theoden’s scouts had reported an army as large as ten thousand strong, pouring out of Isengard’s gates. The very notion of ten thousand was almost beyond your imaginings, and it pierced your heart with an unmuted terror. You knew Eomer felt it too - everyone did. 

Perhaps it was that shared terror that kept both of you silent as you entered Eomer’s chambers. He closed the door behind you softly, dismissing the guard who stood watch by the doorway. You’d only been to Helm’s Deep once before, but the chamber was exactly as you remembered. The court servants who had fled Edoras with the rest of the nobility had brought with them precious few luxuries, but among them were a pile of freshly laid towels, a bar of soap, and an array of candles spread throughout the room. You breathed a sigh of relief when you saw steam rising from the simple, porcelain tub in the corner of the room. A warm bath was exactly what you needed right now. Sweat and dried blood from the morning’s battle had dried on your skin and in your hair. You weren’t a particularly vain person - your lifestyle hadn’t afforded you such luxuries - but you were not above enjoying a thorough soak and a soft bed to lay your head on at night. 

Without sharing a word, you and Eomer began removing your armor. Unlike earlier, where his anger hung around him like a stormcloud, his mood now moved in the direction of contemplative. You felt his gaze on your face as you lifted the heavy chainmail tunic you wore under your leather armor over your head. With the weight of your armor removed, your limbs felt loose and light. As you swung your dirty braid over one shoulder and began undoing the plaits, Eomer finally broke the silence. 

“I never get tired of seeing you like this, you know.” HIs voice was softer than you expected, and it caused your breath to snag in your chest. You lifted your eyes to him as you shook out the roots of your hair. His face was streaked with dirt from the fight, and there was a dark blue bruise that you hadn’t noticed earlier blooming under one eye. But beneath the grime and his week-old stubble, you saw a soft smile gracing his lips and a gentle light in his eyes. You couldn’t help but smile back. 

“Like what, my lord?” you replied teasingly as you unlaced the bottom layer of your armor - a heavy tunic made of quilted wool. The chill damp of the air felt delicious against your bare skin. You didn’t relish the idea of re-donning everything in just a few hours, especially given that you wouldn’t have time to wash the tunic or clean the plated armor, but for the moment it felt incredible to be rid of those putrid, heavy layers. 

“Undressed, in my chambers.” Eomer’s reply was somewhat muffled by the hem of his own tunic, which had snagged around his head while he was undressing. You laughed at the sight of the Lord of the Riddemark, future King of Rohan, half-naked with a dirty tunic wrapped around his neck. You stepped over to him and helped untie a few more laces at the neck of the tunic, easing his head through the opening and freeing him from the confines of the tunic at last. 

“Such language in front of a lady,” you replied mirthfully as Eomer gestured towards the tub. You accepted his invitation gratefully, stepping one foot into the warm water and then another. The bathwater turned grimy as you let your body sink beneath the surface of the bathwater, dipping your head back to wet your hair. 

From outside the tub, Eomer grabbed the bar of soap and wetted it before running it over your hair to form a lather. When he began rubbing your scalp with firm fingers, you let out an audible moan as you let your head lean back against the edge of the bath. 

He chuckled as you gave yourself over to the incredible sensation.

“I see no lady here,” he replied after a moment, earning a playful glare from you and a splash of bathwater in his direction. He dodged the blow easily, letting out a laugh of his own. 

“Your manners need work, my lord.” Your retort had little bite to it; you were too mesmerized by the patterns Eomer’s fingers wove against your scalp. Your eyelids fluttered closed as you let relaxation seep into every fiber of your body.

“No lady,” he continued, bending down until his beard tickled your ear. “Only a woman. My woman.” Your toes curled under the surface of the water as he dragged those last two words over the gravel in his voice. Sensing he’d plucked the right chord, Eomer chuckled proudly as he planted a kiss to the soft skin in front of your ear. You reached up to grab his hair and pull him to your lips, but he’d already withdrawn. Your eyes opened just in time to see him sink into the bath next to you, the water level rising dangerously close to the lip of the tub. Like you, he grunted in appreciation as the warmth of the water began to work out the kinks in his tired muscles. 

You allowed him to settle against the far edge of the bath before you moved towards him. He opened his arms in a well-rehearsed move, allowing you to settle between his strong thighs and lean back against his firm torso before wrapping you with his arms. Your head lolled back against his shoulder, his cheek coming to rest on your freshly rinsed hair. This was not the first time you had shared such intimacy with your lover; far from it, in fact. But, much like he had pointed out earlier, there was no dulling of affection between you two. Instead, you felt your feelings for him deepen with each passing day. 

As the two of you sat together in the cooling water, you traced absentminded circles over his forearm. Your gaze landed on the dancing flame of a nearby candle as you let your mind wander into a space just shy of sleep. You felt Eomer’s breath deepen against your back as he too relaxed into the quiet. 

After several minutes of companionable silence, you squeezed his arm to rouse him from his reverie.

“Do I have your blessing for the battle ahead, my lord?” Although you used the same playful tone you’d employed moments prior, the question was a serious one. You felt Eomer tense ever so slightly behind you as he considered his response. 

Sensing his hesitation, you pressed on.

“You know I will fight tomorrow, with or without it.” Eomer tensed further at your callous words, although both of you knew they were true. You let your tone soften as you added, “although I would feel all the better for it if I had your blessing.” 

He let out a soft sigh, shaking his head slightly. 

“Whatever did I do to find myself in love with a woman such as yourself?” Each of his words was drenched in devotion, and the sound of it made you curl against him as he squeezed you tightly. It wasn’t a direct answer, but you understood his meaning. His blessing wasn’t something to give or take away; you always had it. Eomer had known what you were long before he’d fallen into your bed, and you’d been certain not to soften those parts of yourself that found a home in battle just for his sake. 

“You are truly one of the lucky few,” you cooed back, relishing the sensation of him nuzzling down against the skin where your neck and shoulder connected. You reached a hand up behind you, lightly gripping the back of his head and encouraging him to let it hang gently against yours. He obliged, sighing contentedly as you began twirling strands of his hair around your fingers. 

“I swear to the Gods, y/n, sometimes I don’t know if you’re my salvation or my downfall.” His confession came with a distinct note of pain. You knew that pain well: it was the pain of loving a warrior. The pain of having to say a potential goodbye each time they rode into battle. The pain of subsuming the urge to protect him at any and every cost under the need to follow orders. It was the pain of frantically searching for an all-too familiar face amongst the bodies of the dead on a battlefield. It was a unique kind of pain, and one that both of you had known you’d always live with when you’d allowed yourselves to fall in love. 

You ignored the way the bathwater sloshed over the edge of the tub as you turned to face him. His eyes were misty as you cupped his handsome face in your hands, running your thumbs tenderly along his cheekbones. 

“Eomer… my love…” Before you could finish your thought, he pulled you against him, his lips meeting yours greedily. In an instant, you recognized the intention behind his kiss. A knot of desire began to coil in your stomach as your fingers tangled in his hair. He pressed his kiss down into your mouth harder, and you felt the mingling of fear, pride, devotion, and love in behind that pressure. Your chest bloomed with heat as the kiss deepened. Suddenly, Eomer rose from his seated position and stepped out of the bath, his muscles tensing enticingly with the quick, agile movement. Bending down to lace an arm under your legs and one behind your back, he lifted you quickly from the now tepid, grimy water. He carried you to the bed with a purposeful heat simmering in his eyes, making that knot in your stomach tighten further as butterflies began to take flight in your lungs. He laid you on the soft blanket, his arms coming to frame your shoulders as he settled his body over top yours, caging you in between his flexed biceps. Just before his mouth met yours again, you lifted a finger and pressed it to his lips. He froze, his eyes on you with curiosity and a hint of frustration. 

“Your blessing, Eomer,” you said breathily, trying to tamp down your own impatience. “I want your blessing.” It had never felt important before, but the longer your mind lingered on the battle ahead, the more compelled you felt to hear those words. 

His honey brown eyes danced with delight as you withdrew your finger, allowing him to speak freely. He didn’t hesitate.

“You have it.” He leaned down, pressing a kiss to your lips. 

“You have my blessing always.” Another kiss at the corner of your mouth. 

“Today.” Your jawline. “Tomorrow.” Your collarbone. “For all of your days.” Your shoulder. “And all of mine.” Back to your lips. 

Your heart seized in your chest as the tenderness of the moment bewitched you. Eomer hovered over you, each of you basking in each other’s gaze for another heartbeat. You saw the tender light in his eyes turn molten just as your own mind turned back to the needs of your body. 

“Now, my lady,” he whispered. “Allow me to show you exactly how much of this lord’s blessing you’ve earned.” He dove down to kiss at the now cleaned skin above your breasts, earning a delighted cry from you as you let your eyes flutter close. 

Somewhere in the darkness covering Rohan, an army ten-thousand strong marched closer; but for that moment, your love chased away the dark…

[maironsbigboobs]

End of Year Fic Recs!

Recommend up to 5 series or multi-chapter fics from 2023 that everyone should read (multi-year WIPs count, if the last update was in 2023).

Recommend up to 5 single chapter fics/one-shots (long or short) from 2023 that everyone should read.

Recommend up to 5 fics NOT from 2023 that everyone should read (oldies but goodies).

Recommend up to 5 of your own fics (completed or WIP) from 2023 that everyone should read.

I wasn't tagged by anyone, but I can't resist the chance to share some faves:

Multi-Chapter Fics/Series

Reconcillation – by @transmairon –  T, Sauron/Celebrimbor, ongoing – Fourth Age Sauron facing the consequences of his actions and trying to reintergrate himself with the world. I cannot wait to see Celebrimbor’s reaction to meeting him again.

From Mother to Daughter – by Galenfea – Gen, 5k – The fiber arts passed down through the generations. This is the kind of topic I love; a peek into the everyday lives of elves.  I loved the world-building!

companions in shipwreck – by spellworth – T, multiple, ongoing – An exploration of canon of female characters. I love this one, wonderful writing and creatvity – especially when writing about characters where canon gives them a name at most.

Haunted, Hunted  - by @imakemywings – T, Elwing & Maedhros, 9.3k - Elwing goes for a walk in the woods… This one is so cool, I loved the fairytale elements and Elwing’s horror was palpable!

dye me, nocturne – by @solmarillion – T, Daeron/Maglor, 12k – Darron finds a stranger on the shore and they get talking. I love how messy Maglor is here, trying to get what he wants out of Daeron, and how raw this fic was in the grief and bitterness in these two exiles at the end of the First Age.

Single Chapter Fics/Oneshots

elvenkings – by @meadowlarkx– Gen, 1.5k – A look through history at Menegroth’s fall. This one had me sobbing, it’s so beautiful and full of tragedy.

Bow and Helm and Hand –  by @jouissants – E, Beleg/Mablung/Túrin, 3.5k – Mablung joins Beleg and Túrin on the marches. Very sexy and filled with wonderful characterisation and delicious hints of angst and foreboding.

Echo of the Music – by @starspray– Gen, Thingol/Melian, 471 – A sweet look at Melian and Thingol’s relationship to each other, to art and to music (and the Music)

"…on a place of insecurity." – by @carlandrea – Gen, Thingol/Melian – This is one of my favourite Thingol/Melian fics, it’s so tender and Melian’s foreboding makes me so emotional.

At the Moment of Parting – by @daegred-winsterhand – T, Beleg/Túrin, 1.5k – Sweet and sad, Turin’s grief is so thick and real.

Pre 2023 Fics

The Gleaming Road – by melblue – E, Éomer/Faramir, 28k – Misunderstanding is a favourite trope of mine and it adds to the Drama here, with poor Eomer not knowing what Faramir is expecting from him. I don’t read a lot of LOTR era fics at the moment but this one is an old fave!

The Marchwardens – by roseofthebrightsea – Gen, Beleg, Mablung, Haldir etc, 6k – I love fics that are snippets of characters lives and this has some wonderful writing and sharp characterisation in short words.

A Challenge  – by @polutrope – M, Daeron/Maglor, 1.4k – The fic that got me into Daemags! Such a fun and entertaining fic!

Unkinged – by @arofili – E, Finwë/Miriel/Indis, 1k – Looove this, a beautiful moment between the three of them in a happier time.

The Gold Are Venomous – by @aipilosse – E, Sauron/Celebrimbor, 3.1k – I love Fourth Age silvergifting and I love mischievious Annatar is here, still up to no good after all this time… though Celebrimbor isn’t complaining (much) 😉Sexy and amusing.

My Fics

I risk my life to make my name – E, Galadriel/Melian, 10k – Gawain and the Green Knight AU. This was my first attempt at something multi-chaptered and I really like it still; it was fun to write and I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Starlight – M, Mablung, 944 – Mablung falls in Menegroth. This is was fun because I love angst and I liked playing with the structure with flashbacks.

Feast – Gen, Idril & Turgon, 1k – Idril reflects on her time on the Ice and how her father looked out for her. I love thinking about Idril & Turgon.

Reunion – Gen, Andróg & Andvir, 858 – Andvir finds his father in the wilds. I am never not thinking about the Gaurwaith.

Jealous Kiss –  Gen, Celebrimbor/Sauron, 370 – Annatar teases Tyelpe. I love it when Annatar causes problems on purpose.

[iknowimdespicableme]

Whatever the opposite of a writer’s block is, I have it and now I want to write like nobody’s business. So! Those who come across this, feel free to throw me a request!

Key -

Type of writing

Oneshot 🌻, Word Vomit 🌿, Poem 🍂, Analysis 🥀

How the character is related to the work

Perspective character 🌕, Main Character 🌖, Central Side Character 🌗, Peripheral Side Character 🌘, Mentioned Character 🌑

I will write prompts including:

Rings of Power

- Young Galadriel

- Young Sauron

- Young Elrond

- Durin

- Disa

- Young Gandalf

- Nori Brandyfoot

- Arondir

- Bronwyn

The Hobbit

- Thorin Oakenshield

Voice like a drum, love like a melody 🌻🌖

- Bilbo Baggins

Voice like a drum, love like a melody🌻🌕

- Gandalf the Grey

- Any members of the company, just may need to do some extra research and it will be delayed a tad

-Thranduil

-Bard the Bowman

Lord of the Rings

-Gandalf the White

- Aragorn

- Legolas Greenleaf

- Gimli

- Frodo Baggins

- Samwise Gamgee

- Pippin Took

- Merry Brandybuck

- Boromir

- Faramir

- Eowyn

- Eomer

- Theoden

Dream SMP

- C!Tommy

A Lighthouse and a Void 🥀🌑

- C!Tubbo

A Lighthouse and a Void 🥀🌖

- C!Philza

A Lighthouse and a Void 🥀🌑

- C!Karl

Flame🍂🌑

- C!Ranboo

A Lighthouse and a Void🥀🌖

- C!Technoblade

- C!Quackity

Flame🍂🌖

- C!Charlie

Flame🍂🌗

-C!Fundy

In and Out (Of Sync)🌿🌕

-C!Wilbur (I will not write about him again, but I am proud of the work I have done with him)

Life Before You🌿🌕

Flame🍂🌗

In and Out (Of Sync)🌿🌑

If asked, I can also talk about my oc’s:

Searing, Scorching, Blistering

Modern Fantasy

Wherein two brothers attempting to lay low from their oppressive colonizers get swept into a underground society consisting of heists, blackmailing, and corruption. As they navigate their relationship with each other and themselves, could they learn to trust again?

- Wiljem

An Introduction to my Searing, Scorching, Blistering original characters 🥀🌖

- Taher

An Introduction to my Searing, Scorching, Blistering original characters 🥀🌖

- Liizesk

An Introduction to my Searing, Scorching, Blistering original characters 🥀🌖

- Rahn

An Introduction to my Searing, Scorching, Blistering original characters 🥀🌖

- Aire

An Introduction to my Searing, Scorching, Blistering original characters 🥀🌖

- Jeb

An Introduction to my Searing, Scorching, Blistering original characters 🥀🌖

- Tirakem

An Introduction to my Searing, Scorching, Blistering original characters 🥀🌖

Apprentices!

Semi-Satire Fantasy

In a world long after the dark lord evil thing gets destroyed, it is a rite of passage to go on a journey to mark the end of their apprenticeship, mirroring the tales of old. But, is there any real quests left? 5 apprentices and their resident exhausted chaperone expect nothing when they set out on a simple transportation mission. However, there is something deeper brewing within their adventure.

- Aminah

- Ikal

- Ruaridh

- Xhemal

- Dumi

- Aglaia

- Linh

- Yati

- Iustus

- Folayan

- Ailean

- Ix Kaknab

- Phiesak

[random-imagines-blog]

Lord of the Rings Masterlist

In an attempt to organize the blog and keep everything in order, masterlists are being made to join together into a masterlist of masterlists to make it easier for those on mobile. Thanks for being patient! 

⭐ contains smut

Legolas

Oneshots

Prove You Wrong {Legolas Oneshot}

Imagines

Imagine volunteering to be part of the Fellowship just to annoy Legolas.

Imagine Legolas spotting you’re in trouble.

Imagine trying to sneak up on Legolas but he senses your presence.

Aragorn

Oneshots

Taking Pain in Large Doses

A Different Canvas ⭐

Imagines

Imagine being injured in battle and Aragorn taking care of you.

Imagine singing songs with Pippin and Merry, and catching Aragorn’s attention.

Imagine Aragorn coming home to you, bringing you your favorite exotic food.

Imagine being Legolas’s ex but falling for Aragorn.

Imagine Aragorn hearing news that you are betrothed to another.

Gimli

Imagines

Imagine Gimli coming across you in the Mines of Moria.

Boromir

Imagines

Imagine spending your afterlife with Boromir.

Imagine finding yourself in Middle Earth, and becoming close to Faramir and Boromir.

Imagine Boromir taking you home after a battle.

Imagine telling Boromir that you’re pregnant with twins.

 Merry

Imagines

Imagine Merry thinking you’re someone from the fairytales he heard growing up.

Imagine Merry swearing to protect your life with his.

Imagine trying to get Merry’s attention but he’s too busy eating to notice.

Imagine Merry trying to impress you by proving he’s taller than Pippin.

Pippin

Oneshots

A Moment Sometimes

Starfall

Behind the Crimson Door

Imagines

Imagine living with Pippin in The Shire and he brings in a surprise pet one day.

Imagine being put in charge of Pippin.

Imagine Pippin receiving the news that you’ve been injured in battle.

Imagine causing mischief with Pippin.

Frodo

Oneshots

Jenny of Oldstones

Imagines

Imagine Frodo teaching you things he had learned on his adventures.

Imagine taking care of Frodo when he has nightmares after his adventure.

Samwise Gamgee

Oneshots

Imagines

Eomer

Oneshots

Fallen

The Dream

Tip My Helmet

Under the Rose

Imagines

Imagine Eomer seeing you swimming nude.

Imagine Eomer growing angry with the other Riders of Rohan for getting close to you.

Imagine braiding Éomer‘s hair while he sleeps.

Imagine Eomer not being happy that you took Merry under your wing.

Imagine Eomer catching you imitating his speeches.

Faramir

Oneshots

Waiting

We

Personal

The Way Back

Gathering Light

Imagines

Imagine tending to Faramir’s wounds.

Imagine Faramir catching you talking to an ex.

Imagine finding yourself in Middle Earth, and becoming close to Faramir and Boromir.

Imagine Faramir thinking he’ll have to spend his birthday alone.

Imagine always tripping over Faramir’s armor.

Imagine Faramir tickling you.

Imagine Faramir taking care of you while you’re sick.

Haldir

Oneshots

Tonight Tonight

Imagines

Imagine being a bard, and impressing Haldir.

Thranduil

Oneshots

The Bad Place

The Sky is Falling

All the Love

Seeing Stars  

Imagines

Imagine enjoying a rainy day with Thranduil. 

Imagine Thranduil being entranced  by your sleeve tattoo.

Imagine meeting Thranduil to build a bridge between your elven colonies. 

Thorin Oakenshield

Oneshots

Over

Imagines

Imagine Thorin coming across your sketchbook.

 Fili

Imagines

Oneshots

Kili

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine catching Kili staring at you.

Imagine Kili helping you to button your dress before a feast.

Imagine Kili realizing you’re no longer by his side.

Imagine making Kili lose a bet.

Elrond

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine being an elf from a place Elrond had never heard of before.

 Bilbo

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine attempting to entice Bilbo on another adventure.

Imagine packing Bilbo’s bag for him before he leaves.

 Bard the Bowman

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine Bard the Bowman finding out that you’re one of the few witches in Middle Earth.

 Tauriel

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine Tauriel being unable to ease your pain.

Galadriel

Oneshots

Imagines

Imagine seeing Galadriel under the light of the Full Moon.

Imagine being an emotional human who falls for Galadriel, a cold elf.

Fellowship in General

Oneshots

The Wild

Imagines

Imagine being a fire mage and being part of the Fellowship.

Imagine the fellowship seeing your face for the first time.

Imagine having a skill with enchantment magic, and joining the fellowship.

[ass-deep-in-demons]

✦ demons writes fanfiction ✦

Lord of the Rings:

Under Our Darkening Skies - A peek into Boromir's life before the War of the Ring. Ch. 1 - Boromir's Day in Minas Tirith; Ch. 2 - Defense of Osgiliath. Here's some related Boromir headcanons.

Seeing White - a slice of life comedy with Faramir, Boromir and Eomer, rated G, oneshot.

Healing Touch - Boromir x OC, awkward bedsharing, canon setting, rated T+, oneshot.

Speaking Tongues - Boromir x OC, smut, canon setting, rated E (minors DNI!), oneshot. Link to some bcg-info.

A Song of Ice and Fire:

Never the Same River - Ned x Catelyn Stark, Nedcat Week 2024, prompt "I want you to feel at home".

requests: CLOSED

I'm DeepInDemons on AO3 and FF.net

[last update: 21 Nov 2024]

[dreambigdreamz]

On Our Own | Éomer Éadig (part one)

Summary : Éomer demands to meet his foreign bride for the first time.

Word count : 5,023

Rating : Umm, I don’t know, maybe an M? Just, mild hints so . . .

Author’s note : Well, one of my first proper one-shots. I am enjoying the various takes on this favourite couple. Hope you enjoy as well!

Part Two is out for you to read!

divider by @saradika-graphics

“I am honestly going to tell you one last time: you can either tell her to come out right now or I damned well will come in.”

“I say, you cannot come in! Even if you were the King of Rohan himself — you cannot come in!”

“I am the King of Rohan,” said the tall, broad man in his armour, without a flicker of amusement but a tone in his voice of rather getting tired and irritated at what was supposed to be a simple matter settled quietly. He had ridden forth from Edoras as soon as news had reached him of the party’s entering the lands of the Mark. And he was not in the best of moods right now to be dealing with nervous chaperones who insisted on keeping him away from the business which he meant to carry out no matter what.

“We have already sent word to the King that no man is to see the Princess until her wedding day,” the lady said witheringly. “The noblemen of her court rode out to explain to him that she is in seclusion, as a proper lady of Dol Amroth. Do you think the King of Rohan would come riding down the road when the Lady Lothíriel has refused to receive him? What sort of a man do you think he is?”

“Exactly like this one, and he will see the bride he is to marry, now,” said Éomer King, tapping himself on his chest and took a step forward to show that he meant to do exactly what he said.

“The king!” someone cried out from behind, and he turned around to see the dark-haired young man, Amrothos son of Imrahil, whose stunned expression showed that he at least recognised the king. He immediately strode forward, kneeling down in front of Éomer, purposefully blocking his way however, and hissing at the lady-in-waiting, “It is the king!”

The poor lady let out a gasp of horror, and attempted a low curtsey.

“Get up,” Éomer said shortly, “and fetch her.”

“But she is a princess of Dol Amroth, my lord,” the woman said, rising but with her head still bowed low. “She is to stay in seclusion. She cannot be seen by you, or any other man, before her wedding day. This is the tradition. The gentlemen went out to explain to you—”

Yes, and it was exactly what set him off into this fey mood, Éomer thought as she recited the same sentences again as if he were a creature too stupid to understand the words. The way the men had repeatedly told him that she was to remain secluded from sight, that had set Éomer into thinking perhaps they were playing false with him. Already, the men of his council were wary towards this foreign band, and Éomer couldn’t help the doubts crawling into his mind as well.

“It’s your tradition. It’s not my tradition. And here, since she is to be my queen in my country, under my laws, she will obey my tradition.” He secretly swallowed a nervous gulp, feeling the beads of perspiration gathering on his forehead by now and wondering how long he would have to keep up with this intimidating charade. Why did he even think this was a good idea, again? Oh right, because the high lords of his council said so.

“She has been brought up most carefully, most modestly, most properly—”

“Then she will be very shocked to find an angry man in her tent. Madam, I suggest that you get her up at once.”

“She is the daughter of Prince Imrahil, and my sister, and a princess of Dol Amroth. We are under the orders of my lord father to make sure that every respect is shown to the Lady Lothíriel and that her behaviour is in every way—”

It was Amrothos who joined in, and he had now risen to his full stature again, standing face to face with the king, and his face a concerned mask of courtesy.

Oh, that awful phrase again. Éomer secretly glanced around, hoping none of his lords were nearby to hear that or they would be outraged. “Lord, you can take your working orders from anybody you wish, I do not care. But you are now in the Land of the Mark, and I am the King. And if I am to marry your sister, and if she is to be Queen of Rohan as part of the marriage, it is the least I can request to see her, or I may refuse to have her at all. That alone would make all the difference in the world, and then it would not matter whether she is seen before her wedding day or not.” He didn’t know if his sentences had more of authority or pleading. But wouldn’t that be an idea, if the marriage tract was broken off because of this little folly. Certainly, the lords of Rohan would not object much. Some might even rejoice in the prospect.

Amrothos clenched his jaw tight, before speaking coldly to the lady sideways, “Fetch my sister.”

The lady went quite white at the sudden order from Amrothos himself, and seemed momentarily at a loss for words. Then at last, she announced stubbornly, “I cannot fetch the Princess. She is to remain in seclusion.”

“Dear Béma! That’s it. Tell her I am coming in at once.”

She scuttled backwards like an angry cow, her face blanched with shock. Éomer gave her a few moments to prepare and then called her bluff off by striding in behind her. Amrothos cried from behind, “My lord!” The younger man held Éomer’s arm, all the strength and sternness passing in his grip, and his eyes blazing. The king met his glare with the same fiery expression, and the two men stood staring at each other coldly. Then, Amrothos’s eyes went towards some thing behind Éomer, and he let go, without a word, letting the tent flap close.

The small tent was lit only by candles. The covers of the bed, at the corner, were turned back as if the girl had hastily jumped up. Éomer registered the intimacy of being in her small tent, with her sheets still warm, the scent of her lingering in the enclosed space, before he looked at her. She was standing by the bed, one small white hand on the carved wooden post. She had a cloak of dark blue thrown over her shoulders, and her white nightgown trimmed with priceless lace peeped through the opening at the front. Her thick dark hair, plaited for sleep, hung down her back, but her face was completely shrouded in a hastily thrown mantilla of dark lace.

The lady-in-waiting darted between the princess and the king. “This is the Lady Lothíriel,” she said grouchily. “Veiled until her wedding day.”

“Not on my word,” Éomer King of Rohan said bitterly. “I’ll see who I am to marry, thank you.”

He stepped forward, and the desperate chaperone threw herself to her knees, “Her modesty—”

“Has she got some awful mark?” he demanded, driven to voice his deepest fear. “Some blemish? Is she scarred by the pox and they did not tell me?”

“No! I swear.”

Silently, the young lady put out her white hand and took the ornate lace hem of her veil. Her chaperone gasped a protest but could do nothing to stop the princess as she raised the veil and flung it back. Her cool, grey eyes stared into the angry face of the king without a sense of wavering. Éomer drank her in and then gave a little sigh of relief at the sight of her.

She was an utter beauty: a smooth, rounded face, a straight long nose, a full, sulky, sexy mouth. Her chin was up, he saw: her gaze challenging. This was no shrinking maiden fearing ravishment. This was a fighting princess standing on her dignity even in this most appalling moment of embarrassment.

He bowed. “I am Éomer King of Rohan,” he said.

She curtseyed, without a word.

He stepped forward, and he noticed her curb her instinct to flinch away. He took her one smooth hand firmly and kissed it. The perfume of her hair and the warm female smell of her body came to him, and he felt desire pulse at his temples. Quickly he stepped back.

“You are welcome to Rohan,” he said. Why had his voice turned suddenly husky? He cleared his throat, wrinkling his nose in disdain of what the atmosphere was doing to his brain. “You will forgive my impatience to see you, I hope.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said icily, speaking in a low and lilting voice. “I did not know until a few moments ago that my lord was insisting on the honour of this unexpected visit.”

Éomer fell back a little from the whip of her temper. He certainly did not see that coming, and now he did not know what else to reply. “I have a right . . .”

She shrugged nonchalantly, an absolutely Southern gesture, as if she had not a care in the world and could shrug anything away. “Of course. You have every right over me.”

At the ambiguous, provocative words, he was again aware of his closeness to her: of the intimacy of the small tent, the sheets invitingly turned back, the pillow still impressed with the shape of her head. It was a scene of ravishment, not for a royal greeting. Again he felt the secret thud-thud of lust.

“I’ll see you outside,” he said abruptly, as if it were her fault that he could not rid himself of the flashes in his mind.

“I shall be honoured,” he heard her reply coldly from behind, and got himself out of the tent briskly enough and nearly collided with Amrothos, hovering anxiously outside. The latter’s face wore a cool, austere expression that seemed to ask him how well he liked his sister now that he had seen that she wasn’t one to cower easily like the chickens that surrounded him at his court.

“Forgive me, lord. I was only anxious.” Much as he hated sounding apologetic, that was one thing Éomer couldn’t help being, especially when he knew it rightly to be so. But, ah, a King must put up with the appearance, or he’d be considered an ineffectual angel. That was mostly what his counsellors kept counselling him these days, preparing him to meet with this Dol Amroth party. It was nerve-wrecking, he wished he didn’t have to think about these things; he accepted to marry Imrahil’s daughter because he thought he needn’t think about these things if it was only the Prince Imrahil, in whose opinion and character Éomer held high esteem.

“That my sister’s face should not be scarred by the pox? Of course,” Amrothos replied courteously, but as cool and crisp as his sister had been. He smirked dourly, adding, “I hope my lord is satisfied now.”

Éomer could only attempt a nervous laugh.

Then, he was led to a pavilion and Amrothos left him with a word of sending the Princess when she was ready. Looking around the large campsite, with people scurrying to and fro, Éomer started to ponder. There would be at least fifty of them, this entourage escorting his foreign bride, not counting the knights scouting round the lands. It was almost a little court, and he was reminded of what the lords of his own court said, especially Déorbrand’s words. We cannot let them make a little Dol Amroth in Rohan, my lord. The country wouldn’t stand for it, his high lords wouldn’t stand for it, and Éomer damned well won’t stand for it. Many had not been very warm to the idea of the royal household using the speech of Gondor in the days of Thengel, and in the later years they had grown wary of outsiders. He’d send that lady-in-waiting home at the first moment he could. Stubborn, old cow. If only she had quietly acceded . . .

But even he could not deny one thing: the people actually didn’t object — the country people particularly seemed to adore the princess. But then again, it might only be because she wore a stupid, fancy headdress; because she was different — foreign, rare; because she was young; and pretty. No, Éomer recollected, the people might not have even seen her at all. He only heard news that they had been giving out alms in the name of the Lady Lothíriel, so no wonder the people might love her for being kind — even if it might be little more than a strategy on her side.

But then she was pretty, no one could possibly help falling in love with her once they saw her. Perhaps ‘pretty’ did not justify her at all . . .

The King’s musings were interrupted, not unwillingly, by a herald announcing loudly and emphatically, “The Lady Lothíriel, Princess of Dol Amroth, and Queen of Rohan!” It was at least interesting, that she was already using that title.

The Princess — with her face naked to every man’s gaze — stepped out of her tent with her head held high, dignified, and walked into the pavilion calmly, only a little flame of colour in both cheeks betraying her composure. Éomer swallowed nervously. She was far more beautiful than he had imagined, and a hundred times more haughty. She was dressed in a gown of rich dark velvet, slashed to show an undergown of carnation silk, the neck cut square and low over her plump breasts, hung with ropes of pearls. Her dark hair, freed from the plait, tumbled down her back in a great wave of dark shadow. On her head was a pearl tiara, in the shape of two swans together. She swept a deep curtsey, and determinedly came back up with her chin slightly up, graceful as a dancer, looking at him straight in the eyes defiantly.

He faltered in his bow in return, amazed at the serenity that she could muster in this most embarrassing of moments. For Béma’s sake, he must be gaping like a fool in contrast.

She started speaking in a ceremonious manner, “I beg your pardon for not being ready to greet you, my lord. If I had known you were coming, I would have been prepared.”

The lack of former coolness in her tone, and the absence of the snides, provoked him to be sarcastic this time. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear all the racket,” he said, almost a scoff. “I was arguing at your door for a good ten minutes.”

“I thought it was a pair of porters brawling,” she said coolly.

The servants waiting nearby suppressed gasps of horror at her impertinence, but the King was eyeing her with a smile as if a new filly were showing promising spirit. “No, it was me, threatening your lady-in-waiting. I am sorry that I had to march in on you.”

She inclined her head slightly. “That was Lady Saelwen. I am sorry if she displeased you. She gets agitated easily. She cannot have understood what you wanted.”

He did not know what to reply to that. Her calm composure was making him feel agitated. He was having a difficult time, trying to rack his brain for some sensible answer.

She did not make him struggle for long. She continued, “Have you dined, my lord? Shall I order dinner?”

“As you wish.” He hoped it came out naturally enough.

“Can I offer you a drink first? Or somewhere to wash and change your clothes before you dine?” She examined consideringly the tall length of his height, from the mud spattering his golden hair to his dusty boots.

“I’ve washed,” he said. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he could have bitten off his own tongue. He sounded like a child being scolded by a nurse, he thought. ‘I’ve washed,’ indeed. What was he going to do next? Hold out his palms so that she could see he was a good boy?

“Then will you take a glass of wine? Or ale?”

She moved towards the table where the servants were hastily laying cups and flagons.

“Wine.”

She raised a glass and a flagon and the two chinked together, and then chink-chink-chinked again. In amazement, he saw that her hands were trembling. Pouring the wine quickly, she held it out to him. His gaze went from her hand and the slightly rippled surface of the wine to her pale face.

She was not laughing or smirking at him, he saw. She was not at all at ease with him. His initial rudeness had brought out her pride in her, but now, alone, she was just a girl. He recalled that she was almost eight years younger than he, still just a girl. The daughter of a formidable ruler of a principality in Gondor, but still just a girl with shaking hands.

“You need not be frightened,” he said very quietly. “I am sorry about all this.”

He meant — your failed attempt to avoid this meeting, my own brusque informality, my inability to stop this happening for you as well as myself, and, more than anything else, the misery that this business must be for you: coming far from your home among strangers and meeting your new husband, almost dragged from your bed under protest. Oh, how Éomer felt he had not been pressed by the general agreements of his lords to ride out and meet her. And analyse her, they particularly instructed. How he wished he could have done things on his own.

She stared at him, the look in her eyes bordering on incredulity, until she lowered her eyes down. He stared at the flawless pallor of her skin, at the long eyelashes and the dark eyebrows. After a while, she looked up at him. “It is all right,” she said, only the faintest of quivers audible in her voice. “I have seen far worse than this, I have been in far worse situations than this, and I have known worse men —” She stopped, biting her rose-red lips hesitatingly, and stealing a quick glance his way while he tried to check his wince. “You need not fear for me. I am not afraid of anything.”

The dinner was brought in. Éomer, determined to overlook their introduction, tried to be as affable to the Princess as he could be without seeming like a doormat for everybody to walk over him. Once or twice he glanced at her sideways, as if to get the measure of her. Finally, she turned to look at him, full on, one eyebrow slightly raised as if to interrogate him.

“Yes?” he demanded, flustered that he had been caught, and instantly donning the mask of King.

“I beg your pardon,” she replied equably. “I thought my lord needed something. You glanced at me.”

“I . . . was thinking you’re not much like your portrait,” he admitted nervously.

She flushed a little, and replied uneasily but slowly as if choosing her words with care, “I’m afraid portraits are usually designed to flatter the sitter — especially when the sitter is a princess of Dol Amroth, on the royal marriage market.”

Oh, the way she phrased that hurt him just a little too much. “You consider this, er, as a selling-buying business? You consider yourself bought?” He tried not to wince, not to show the discomfort on his face.

She shrugged. “That is one way to view these marriage transactions.”

Éomer could only gaze at her, this cold, seemingly heartless beauty.

“When I said you weren’t much like your portrait . . . I meant, better-looking,” Éomer said begrudgingly, to reassure her. “Younger. Softer. Prettier.” He could swear his face was probably steaming, but somehow he just needed to get that out.

She did not warm to the praise as he expected her to do. She merely nodded as if it were an interesting observation. She remained cold and rigid as an iceberg, and Éomer was falling deeper into the pit of despair with every passing minute.

“You had a long voyage, I hope it was not much difficult,” the King remarked, trying not to let the silence take over and make things more awkward than they were already.

“A bit,” she said. They were then in danger of falling into silence, but she miraculously took up the topic and continued, “We set out from Swansong in August, so the heat was terrible. When we reached the Drúadan Forest, we had to send scouts ahead to ask leave to enter it from the Wild Men to whom the King Elessar gave the Forest as their own. It was not very pleasant, and we were all quite sure we would get lost for a year or two. I think the trees were quite interesting, very different from what we are used to seeing back at home, though Amrothos was particularly adamant in his despair; he is scared of the dark trees — he always has been.”

A laugh escaped Éomer — a real, genuine sound that came unchecked, something rare since they brought back Theodred’s body from the Fords. But, when he saw her looking at him alarmingly, he cleared his throat. “Forgive me, my lady. No disrespect was meant.” He swallowed, not knowing what else to say. “The Wild Men of Drúadan Forest helped us when we were coming to the aid of Mundburg — forgive me, I meant Gondor — for the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Their help was sorely needed, for without them we would never have been able to come in time.”

He shifted slightly, noticing her grey eyes on him, unwavering. “You were there,” she remarked with some awe. “At the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. And . . . the Black Land.” Her face went through a change of expression, softened into something like sympathy. “It must have been terrible.” The tone came a little bit fatuous to his ears, but all thoughts of that vanished when he saw her round eyes covered with a thin film of silver, and he saw the earnestness in them.

Éomer made himself smile with some effort, reassuring her and bringing her to lighter subjects, “Well, it is all over now. And perhaps in the future you will be glad to visit the Entwood near our borders, though certainly your brother might not.”

“Can I?” She asked, amazed. “And is it true, there are talking trees there?”

He noticed that her manner of speech had mellowed. She was speaking faster and her words fell more freely, and unguardedly, though that proud, elegant lilt in her voice remained. “Yes, I have seen some myself. I could have written more to you about them, if you were interested.” He wanted her to be pleased, and more than that, he wanted her to be at ease with him. He felt like he wanted to do anything for her that could please her, like a little pet to indulge in.

She inclined her head a little bit to the side, as if hiding her flushing face purposefully. “It was kind of you to write to me so often. It made me feel that we were not complete strangers.”

It was Éomer’s turn to flush. “I was ordered to write to you,” he said awkwardly. “As part of my duties.” He didn’t even know why he said that. He just wanted to get that out honestly. “But I liked getting your replies,” he added hastily. Oh Béma, he didn’t exactly excel at this, Éomer despaired again, and flushed scarlet to his ears. He saw her staring down at the ground. Perhaps there was no need to tell her that he was ordered to write — yes, he was still being ordered around, more or less — perhaps it would have been better to let her think that he was writing of his own choice, that he was master of himself. He took her silence as offended, and apologised again, “I am sorry.” At least he was good at this one thing, apologies.

“I don’t mind,” she said quietly. “I was ordered to reply as well. My letters went through my father, and family, and my tutor before they were sent. And, as it happens, I should like us to always speak the truth to each other.”

“You would?” He looked astonished.

“Yes, I would,” she said, looking at him now. “I would like us to be honest with each other, unreserved, with our opinions and wishes and concerns in all the matters of the marriage. In fact, I would like to tell you now of all that I believe should be known and settled between the two of us before the wedding takes place.”

Éomer leaned an inch forward, his attention caught and curiosity roused, wondering what she would have to say. But a part of him felt dissatisfied at this change of mood, the way she was now speaking formally like an envoy rather than a blushing bride. There was no doubt that the stateliness became her immensely, but Éomer was already missing that twinkle in her eyes when she talked of her journey and the forests.

She didn’t continue, instead looking at him with studious observation. He realised that she was waiting for his approval, encouragement, anything. He replied, “I’m listening, my lady.”

Nodding her head slightly once, she began, “I understand that this marriage is intended to form friendship and allliance between Dol Amroth and Rohan and, as such, it is expected to bring about prosperity for both nations. I will not pretend to say that my ties with my homeland, my family, and my people, are severed by my marrying you and becoming Queen of Rohan. My loyalty must always lie there where my life was started. However, I hope you will be happy to know that you, your country, and its well-being, will now be my first priority — as a dutiful wife’s priorities must be. And as a personal request for my side of the marriage, I only ask you to be honest with what you require of me, so that I may be able to fulfill them. And, if there is anything I should be made aware of regarding your personal life, you need not hold it back. Nor would I meddle in your, er, affairs, you can be assured of that.” She sealed her lips in a pause, eyed him for a moment. “My lord?”

She is nothing if not dutiful, this bride of mine, was what Éomer was thinking as he listened to her reciting, for he believed she must have learned it by heart. He wondered if it was all to her credit. “Um,” was all he could manage to get out, under her soul-staring gaze. “It is all right. I — I appreciate it, thank you.” He didn’t know what else to say anymore. The only thing he wanted to know, he couldn’t possibly ask her. He had deduced from her letters that she was reserved, and even aloof. But he didn’t think she would be this forward. And cold. And distant. Éomer was beginning to consider throwing away all thoughts of passion in their marriage, it didn’t seem likely that passion was in her list of agenda.

They fell silent. But to his amazement, he saw that she was struggling to speak as well — she was biting her lower lip uncertainly, her eyes cast down but blinking, and her fingers were tracing the goblet absent-mindedly.

“My father said he found you amiable. That no doubt you would be kind and understanding.”

This caught him by surprise so much, Éomer couldn’t help raising both his eyebrows. He was disconcerted at least, by this somewhat outburst. He didn’t know whether to have this as a compliment, or an expectation strategically laid down for him to live up to. He let out a chuckle, nervously. “And, what do you say to that?”

She raised her eyes to his — cool and grey and stormy — and yet his eyes went to the lips that were parted slightly, looking like a red rose in full bloom in the morning mist. After a few seconds, she lowered her eyes to the floor and said quietly, “I do not know yet. But I should like to learn better in the future.”

Éomer felt his breathing grow shallow, faster. There was something provocative in her words he felt his heart almost pounding in his ears in the silence with the two of them. He rose up, unable to sit any longer, lest he might be overcome by the desire to pull her across his lap.

“I thank you. It is late, and I will leave now. My company shall ride ahead of you tomorrow morning. Good-night, my lady.”

He bowed. She stood up, looked surprised, a little alarmed and almost disappointed at his leaving so soon. But she seemed to think better of it, and dropped into a curtsey, “My lord.”

He started to leave, satisfied knowing that he did the correct thing to do before he made an awkward situation out of it. But before exiting, he turned around and said, “Lady Lothíriel, I have one thing to ask of you as well.” She did not respond to it, standing and waiting patiently, as if she wouldn’t accede to it until he had named what he would ask. He thought hesitantly as well, taking his time, trying to moisten his dry lips. He couldn’t possibly be honest with her about everything yet. He couldn’t possibly admit to the throbbing pulse at his temples and in his groin. These Gondorians were real prudes — Éomer even wondered if his bride even knew anything about what goes on behind the bedroom door. Surely they must have told her something about it. They couldn’t have always walled her up; but he remembered her being veiled and sequestered and he smiled grimly. “I only ask that you will be honest about everything in the future as well.”

A small smile crept onto her serene face, and she curtseyed again, saying, “As you wish, my lord.”

Sincerely Snow,

7th April — 18th April

[ofstardustanddreaming]

the lord of the rings masterlist

updated: 8/17/24

everything gender neutral unless specified otherwise

imagines

aragorn

imagine impressing aragorn with your knowledge. (gender neutral reader)

legolas

imagine legolas starting to catch feelings for you after seeing you in a fight. (gender neutral reader)

oneshots

n/a

headcanons

n/a

preferences

well loved: what they do to remind you you're well loved (characters: frodo, sam, pippin, merry, boromir, faramir, aragorn, legolas, arwen, eowyn, eomer, galadriel, elrond)

chimera form: they react to you, their s/o, having some kind of superpowered battle form that they take on in combat while protecting them. you’re like a giant half-beast form (like Chimera Falin from Dungeon Meshi) and they get like 10x as powerful as they already were. (original ask here, for the full ask for this particular preference for both LOTR and BG3) (characters: aragorn, boromir, faramir, frodo)

fighting battles: reader who’s a very seasoned warrior and is covered in scars and wounds from past battles, and how the characters would react to seeing their scars or watching them fight (original ask) (characters: aragorn, boromir, faramir, frodo)

[severussnapedamagedlove]

Here is my newest oneshot of Eomer Eadig (because I'm obsessed)

The Art of Service

"and there was only one bed", inexperienced Eomer, rescue, mentions of death, pre-war of the ring/AU

The rain poured across the Riddermark. Grasslands turned to oceans of confusion. The pounding rain, endless hills and cover of cloud. Travel in a downpour was impossible without losing the way a few times. Any experienced Eorlingas would know that it was fruitless. Best to take cover and weather out the storm under protection.

That was what landed him in an old forgotten house on the edge of the mountains. It was large and desolate. Not a soul resided in the expansive estate, overgrown with grasses and vines over the outer stone walls. The sharp echoes of nothing answered the clacking of their horses hooves against the stone courtyard.

“We’ll make camp here for the night,” Eomer declared as he put his saddle through the front door. The leather saddle bags sloshed with the excessive rainfall. It stained the stone threshold with its wet. “Edoras is too far in these conditions.”

His companion shivered. Her dress was soaked through. The cloak at her back was plastered to her backside, sticking to the length of her dress skirts. Bluish color touched the center of her lips.

Her eyes were hesitant, observing the abandoned estate house around them, the luxury cracking and decayed from years of neglect. “What is this place?”

The softness of her voice still punctured the silence with a faint echo.

Eomer brushed the beaded rain off his chest plate. “Years of war have left many estates empty across the riddermark. This was once a nobles house or possibly someone of royal blood.” He eyed the long shadows all around them. “Long forgotten now.”

His heavy footfall echoed down halls in every corner of the house as they searched.

There was not much left. Most of the furniture was gone or broken. It was possible it was stolen in the years it laid empty. The cellar stores were depleted. Waters remained at the bottom of an ancient well, long ago mined in centuries before his people populated their lands. It was old, ancient, with waters sweet of time untouched.

The young lord was used to mess with his Eored. A place out of rain and wind was suitable enough.

The lady at his side, though, was not a shieldmaiden. She was a traveling scholar with whom his sister adored. He had never much cared for her educated ways. Mostly it was at his expense that her explanations came. Still, he was a gentlemen who knew better than to let her suffer.

Hicela trembled in the wet of her clothes. She was no longer exposed to elements, but the cover of night was cool.

Eomer ventured outside through the rain in search of firewood. The storeroom was a round building near the main house. Its door was wretched open against years of green growth.

His arms filled with logs that remained without rot, and he marched back inside.

“There is not much. We cannot waste it.” He proclaimed.

She nodded, seeming in agreement. “Should we burn it where we intend to sleep?”

The suggestion was sound. A warm bed would work wonders for their bodies.

The second floor was creaky. Some boards were weak and cracked. He did not risk leading her through a maze of rotten floorboards. The door nearest was kicked in.

The master of the house once resided in that very room. A dense bed overtook the back portion of it. Though coated in decades of dust, it was clear fur blankets were still intact.

Eomer gestured her inside, earning a curious look as he latched the door close behind them.

“Preserves the heat,” he explained gruffly.

It became apparent that the situation strayed from innocence. Both were capable of simple math. One room, one bed. If they were to sleep, it would have to be together.

He kept his eyes focused on his fingers. They worked with the firewood to spark life in a flame. It was a practiced skill he learned as a young child.

He cleared his throat. “You may take the bed.” The growth of the fire shielded the obvious blush grown over his face. “I have slept worse places than a floor.”

Hicela glanced back at the bed. Her brows flexed tightly in the center as she stared a moment longer.

Finally her lips shuddered a breath. “We really should sleep together.”

Her words snapped such a surprise that he burned his fingers when he dropped a log into the young flames.

“It will warm our bodies best,” she replied quickly. Her eyes stared at his hand. “We won’t freeze if we share body heat.”

Read more on

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/1358129816-the-art-of-service

Fanfiction.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14250563/2/A-Collection-of-EOMER-LOTR-Short-Stories

A03: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48273979/chapters/121745308

PLEASE BE SURE TO FOLLOW. I'll post my other stories of Eomer under the same story.

[lemeute]

fic stat game

rules: give us the links to your fic with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.

tagged by @arafinwes!!

first-most hits: that would be And You Find Some Way to Survive. this fic is from april 2017, at which point I'd been fucked up about Takashi Shirogane from Voltron: Legendary Defender for about six months. unfortunately for him, I needed a character onto whom I could project my feelings about teaching, grad school, and being the only one emotionally responsible for various teenagers. he also had space trauma so this was like. perhaps not very fair to him. but in this fic he doesn't have space trauma yet!! only "my mentee is dealing with a Crisis that I don't have the resources to fix" trauma!!

second-most kudos: fdjksljf apparently Conditional Acceptance, which I think of as a companion fic to the above. more of the teaching projection, less of the Crisis vibes. I think these two are at the top in part because Voltron fandom was so big compared to my other fandoms, and also in part because the specific flavor of gen they are picked up readers on both sides of the Big Ship War

(sneaking in a shoutout to Severance, a Tatooine-centric Star Wars prequel fic which has the third-most kudos, because I'm still fond of it and the oneshot series it's part of, oh rise with me forever)

third-most comments: also a Voltron fic, because when I sort by comments the top sixteen are Voltron. If You Trust Me is abandoned after three chapters, and is also one of the few ship fics I've ever attempted (there may be a correlation). it's an Disney!Aladdin fusion, and I got sucked into writing it because of a stray "cut off your hand for stealing" reference in the movie; Shiro is canonically missing a hand, and I canonically cannot resist a fic idea that? involves amputation????* but despite this bewildering quirk of my personality please do not be alarmed; the fic is cute, what there is of it. my favorite thing about it is that a minor character who goes missing at the start of canon has been transformed by a curse into the flying carpet, and this is also a pun.

(*uh. there is also a prequel to this fic, Try To Try Hard. which is perhaps not so cute.)

fourth-most bookmarks: for a second I thought this was the same fic as above and I was like wow sorry everybody but NO, it just starts with the same word! If Only In My Dreams is. also Voltron. it is CHRISTMAS WHUMP IN SPACE.

fifth-most words: And You Find Some Way to Survive puts in a second appearance here (at 8,354 words if you're curious)

fewest words: ok look the one with the fewest words is a 72-word prompt fill that I didn't really like even at the time and I am simply going to link you the third-fewest words, because A of all it is still only 166 words and B of all I got only Voltron for all the other answers even though I've written for So Many Things and so I think I should be allowed little a Picking. as a treat. and C of all because and now my heart stumbles is Eomer and Eowyn, who are SIBLINGS and the bestest bravest darlings and all should love them. ok there you go.

with this set of results I think it is only appropriate that I should tag some of my VLD-era writing pals @curiosity-killed @demenior @lookforanewangle and then I will also add @kcrabb88 and @amarguerite :) if anyone else would enjoy doing this please grab it and feel free to say I tagged you!!!

[seviiul]

( writing rules + dni )

𝒐𝒏 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈

𝒐𝒓

𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕'𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒐𝒅𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆, 𝒘𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆, 𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔

RETURN TO NAVIGATION

REQUESTS: OPEN

ASK BOX: OPEN

𝑨𝑹𝑻𝑰𝑪𝑳𝑬 𝑰 : 𝒇𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒐𝒎𝒔 𝒘𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒇𝒐𝒓

— To say the least, I will strictly stick to writing for historical / fantasy esque fandoms ( assassin's creed, lord of the rings, the hobbit, pirates of the caribbean, our flag means death ). It is a possibility I could include more over time, but as of now this is it. The following is a list I composed of characters, just to be specific and create less disappointment for individuals who sought for someone I won't write.

ASSASSIN'S CREED

𝐈 :: Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad; Malik Al-Sayf

𝐈𝐈 :: Ezio Auditore de Firenze; Leonardo Da Vinci

𝐈𝐈𝐈 :: Connor Kenway; Haytham Kenway

𝐈𝐕: 𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐆 :: Edward Kenway

𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄 :: Shay Cormac; George Monro

𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐘 :: Arno Dorian; Elise De La Serre

𝐒𝐘𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐄 :: Jacob Frye; Evie Frye

𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐀 :: Eivor Varinsson/Varinsdottir

TOLKIEN

𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 :: Frodo Baggins; Samwise Gamgee; Peregrine "Pippin" Took; Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck; Aragorn II Elessar; Legolas Thranduillon; Boromir; Faramir; Eomer; Eowyn

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐁𝐁𝐈𝐓 :: Bilbo Baggins; Thorin Oakenshield; Fili; Kili; Thranduil; Elrond; Lindir; Tauriel; Bard

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

Jack Sparrow

James Norringron

William Turner Jr.

Elizabeth Swann

OUR FLAG MEANS DEATH

Stede Bonnet

Edward "Blackbeard" Teach

Israel "Izzy" Hands

Jim Jimenez

(THIS LIST IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE)

𝑨𝑹𝑻𝑰𝑪𝑳𝑬 𝑰𝑰 : 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆, 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆

— I don't have a specific preference for what format ( i.e. headcanons, oneshots, full on fics etc.) I would write things in, so you can expect a mix of all of them if I have the energy. I write for female, male, and gender neutral readers.

— I AM to include dark content in my writings: that includes things like violence/blood, yandere behavior, and alcoholism; but I WILL NOT get to rape or incest. Speaking of sex, I WON'T write any sexual content in general: the closest to that is suggestive content, like kissing/making out and touching. I won't write any angst either, simply because I'm bad at invoking sadness in writing.

𝑨𝑹𝑻𝑰𝑪𝑳𝑬 𝑰𝑰𝑰 : 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒓𝒆𝒒𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 / 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈

— My update schedule can be slow, or just generally very wonky considering I'm an IB student, and I additionally have ATROCIOUS procrastination issues. Basically, please have patience.

— Again, I do NOT write full on smut, rape, nor incest. Any request or ask hinting at that will be deleted immediately.

— I won't tell adults beyond something something age to not interact, as the fandoms I intend to write for ( assassins creed) would draw adult readers here anyway. But I need all of you, minors AND adults, to be mindful of what tags and warnings I include to the fics you read from me, as the dark content I write can be triggering to some people.

𝑨𝑹𝑻𝑰𝑪𝑳𝑬 𝑰𝑽 : ��𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔

— I would say people with any beliefs can come around, but I will not tolerate when the individual interacting with the blog is racist, homophobic, pedophilic, sexist, or religiously intolerant. Just don't be disrespectful in general.

— Do know that this is a minor - seventeen (07) - working behind this blog; you are in your right to block me if you don't want me to interact.

© SEVIIUL do not repost, steal, use for AI.