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philtstone · 9 months ago

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Eowyn, 1

1 - in lonely beds ive finally scraped together a functional first scene for my accidentally-a-psych 3 hunters detective agency au. if you guys like this mess i'll turn it into a real fic. with chapters and a plot and everything!!!!! the prompt is ... interpreted but loneliness and my girl eowyn are well acquainted

It is four o'clock on a Tuesday and Eowyn Eomundsdottir has three significant problems.

Arrest, rapid-onset dementia, and laundry.

Each of her issues is easily explainable if considered separately. Eowyn is the first to admit that her brother Eomer’s always had a bit of a temper, and if she puts aside the necessary development of maturity and commitment to familial responsibilities that happened after their parents died, it was always a matter of time before some poor idiot pressed his buttons in just the wrong-enough way in front of another just the wrong-enough idiot to get him jailed overnight for knocking in an unwitting nose.

Plenty of people’s uncles develop rapid-onset dementia, she is freely ready to acknowledge.

And – if Eowyn may be so self-aware – she has certainly fallen behind on her laundry many times before.

But no matter how short her brother’s temper, he wouldn’t be arrested for trying to embezzle family funds. Rapid-onset dementia is far less likely when there is next to nil history of it in your family tree, and even less so when the Uncle in question is a scant fifty-three and doing perfectly fine not two months ago. And, most importantly: Eowyn has fallen behind on laundry before, but never because of the above-mentioned two issues, and never such that the only thing she’s got left to wear is a thin white sundress from when she was fourteen that is too short at the knees and not at all suited for the early spring cold spell they are currently experiencing, nor the creepy wandering eyes of Uncle Theoden’s new business manager, who routinely looks like he’s been doused in oil.

It’s fucking miserable, is what it is. Her knees have goosepimpled, she’s so cold. And to make matters worse, her cousin Theodred, whom she would usually text for help in a crisis, seems to have blocked her phone number.

That, Eowyn simply can’t believe.

It’s because of all these things that she finds herself standing at the dingy brick building by the docks, eyeing the circling seagulls warily, and clutching her backpack in one hand and her bike helmet — which has left her long blonde hair looking like a birds nest — in the other. It’s a small place, with a glass window in place of a front wall that’s got the blinds drawn on the inside. There’s no official sign, but someone has taped a small piece of cardstock to the back of the windowpane, facing out. It reads, in surprisingly elegant black Sharpie penmanship:

Telcontar, Gloinson & Thranduilion Private Investigators for Hire

Beneath this, there is an additionally taped series of brightly coloured post-it notes, which are scrawled over with the following in various hands:

Got a phone! +1591-334-9920 (If no one answers the door, call the number! We DO NOT have a website.) That’s because Gimli thinks the government is spying on us. SO DO YOU! All inquiries welcome :-)

Eowyn takes a moment to read through it all. Then she pauses, listening. There is the distinct sound of voices from within, muffled. So someone must be home, then – better just to open the door, rather than knock, in case no one hears her. She takes a deep, steadying breath, tugs at the too-short hem of her dress, and twists the doorknob.

Inside there is what can only be described as carefully organized chaos.

Within the small office space there is a cluttered desk housing a laptop and overlarge monitor. Boxes cover everything, as though someone has only just moved in, and a lopsided whiteboard rests against the far wall, covered in a far less elegant version than the hand that wrote the outside sign. Everything smells a little bit like camphor, and also cookies, and a very faint touch of gym socks. A man sits on a rolly chair in the corner; he is on his cellphone. Eowyn wouldn’t have even seen him if he wasn’t talking, so well does he somehow blend into the taupe walls and cluttered box decor, but as she does: he is tall (too tall for the chair), dark haired, and wearing an old grey hoodie, running shoes, and an abominably ratty pair of jeans. He’s talking on the phone in a low gentle voice that is nonetheless a touch put-upon, but nowhere near snippy or even frustrated. Eowyn (in a fit of fancy) doesn’t think a voice like that could be capable of snippiness, and then promptly feels very embarrassed by her own foolishness. At his feet, by the bottom of the whiteboard, a pile of dirty blankets rests. From within them sounds a plaintive meowing. Opera music plays from a speaker system Eowyn can’t see; a hammer (maybe?) is banging somewhere in the distant back room, the door to which hangs open on squeaky hinges; and two other voices can be heard arguing loudly from the same general direction.

Also, there is a young man, around Eowyn’s own age, standing very awkwardly with his green jumper and moppish brown hair to the immediate left of the door and looking as if he’s not sure what he’s supposed to be doing with himself. At Eowyn’s bewildered look, he offers her a pained smile and a weird little wave hullo. Eowyn waves weirdly back.

“Yeah – yeah, just a second. We’ve got a client –” The man in the rolly chair looks up at Eowyn and smiles. It is such a very nice, genuinely kind smile that Eowyn cannot help but smile back immediately and then feel her whole face go red; she’d be thoroughly soothed if she wasn’t also feeling so completely out of her depth. Bang bang bang, comes the hammer from the back room, along with a swelling of the arguing voices. “Someone will be with you in a second,” whisper-mouths the man. Then he reaches down, takes off one of his running shoes, and flings it very expertly through the open door. There is a small noise, like a crash, and the other two voices stop. He returns to his phone call.

“... what I was saying. No. No, I don’t want you to be halfway across the world. That’s not the point, the point is your dad stopped practicing ten years ago and now owns a bed and breakfast. He’s not the one who’d be navigating a corrupt healthcare system. Do you know how much lobby money lines the pockets of mega corporations? Remember the whole Nestle baby formula thing? The media definitely doesn’t …”

“Good afternoon!” declares a second, much louder voice, minutes before its owner materializes behind the cluttered desk. He is more beard than man, wears a very formal and very 1990s plum coloured suit and one single gold earring, and comes up to about Eowyn’s shoulder. He claps his hands together. “Now, which of you was here first? No – don’t tell me, I will guess!”

But his imminent guessing is interrupted by the third voice, floating in:

“I still can’t find it!”

Desk man deflates by a margin. Without turning his head, he calls,

“I told you to look in the third box!”

“I looked there. It’s not there, Gimli. I’ll try going through the books.”

“Why would a thing like that fit in a book?”

“Try the kitchen,” mouths the man on the rolly chair. A muffled woman’s voice comes through his mobile. He has one hand covering his face now, and his head tipped back to face the ceiling. “Well, yes – I do know that. You’re really telling me you don’t want to go to Paris for a year.” While Eowyn watches the meowing blanket pile moves and from within it a truly horrible looking little cat emerges. It shoots one paw out as if intending specifically to scratch its phone-occupied companion; the speed at which he moves his foot to pin the blankets hem and thwart the little paw is bordering on superhuman. Cat hisses pathetically from under its blanket prison. On the speakers, the opera singer has reached a uniquely high pitch in her stanza. “No, obviously I don’t want to do long-distance, I just think — uh huh. Yes. I’d tell anyone to go to Paris. I’d tell Gimli to go, if Gimli’s university was offering to send him to Paris.”

“He’s already tried the kitchen,” says the man at the desk – presumably Gimli. Still, he yells out, “Try the kitchen, would you?”

“I’ve already tried the kitchen!” calls the disembodied voice. “I can’t find it!”

“You can’t find it because of your terrible organizational system.”

“It is not my terrible organizational system, which you know, and besides which I have never had problems with it before.”

“No,” from the rolling chair, “Legolas is maligning my organizational skills. I know you think they’re fine, so you can tell your cousin that on Sunday …”

“Try the kitchen.”

“I’ve tried the kitchen twice.”

Bang bang bang, continues the sound from the back room. Eowyn wonders if there isn’t an ongoing construction project. The young guy on her left, with the moppish hair and jumper, gives her a look as if to say, Filing cabinet, maybe?

“As you can see, gentle lady,” explains Gimli the desk man, very politely to Eowyn, while the second voice declares somewhat redundantly that he is, in fact, going to check the kitchen, “we are a tad busy this afternoon. Someone will be with you momentarily.” He turns, presumably in the kitchen’s direction, and calls out, “if you ask my opinion on the subject again, I’ll wallop you with Aragorn’s dratted guitar!”

Eowyn looks. There indeed is a battered old guitar, perched merrily on a pile of papers behind the front desk, ready to be used for walloping.

“I could come back later,” says Eowyn. She looks over at jumper guy, who’s staring at the still-hissing pile of blankets with some concern. “Can’t really speak for him, though.”

Jumper guy looks aggrieved. “Er – no, I’d rather not come back later. Gandalf said you’d be free to help.”

“And help –” begins Gimli, while there is another crash from the back room (they all wince, though Gimli does it with serenity) “-- we shall! If you give my colleague Legolas a moment to get his head on straight –” (the disembodied voice says something very rude in response to this pointed inflection), “-- then the two of us will be at your disposal.”

“Three of us,” interjects the first, almost forgotten voice.

Eowyn and her jumper-clad companion turn startled to look: cellphone put away, rolly chair man has stood up to his quite considerable height and is looking at them consideringly. Despite his mildness of expression Eowyn experiences the uncomfortable feeling of being looked at by someone who could in a more fantastical setting have, like, laser vision or something – how is he doing it? And she is sure he isn’t really seeing right through her but she does get the sense he is understanding a lot more than she’d like to let on. Almost defiantly she tugs at her dress and clutches her bike helmet closer to herself. Jumper guy clears his throat. Then from the back room comes – presumably – Legolas, who is fair, thin, and for reasons unexplained wearing sunglasses indoors. He is also covered in what Eowyn hopes are pillow feathers and holding, in one hand, a very large glittering silver sword, and in the other a dingy looking VHS tape. It has cartoon vegetables in cloaks on the front.

“Did anyone know we still had this?” he asks pleasantly, and it is not clear to which find he is referring, “Arwen and I used to stare at it for hours as kids.” He spots Eowyn and her jumper-clad counterpart. “Oh – hello!”

Eowyn gapes. The three of them make a fascinating picture, standing there alongside each other.

“Now then,” says the man called Gimli. “Faramir, we know of already –” he nods at the boy beside Eowyn, who looks a bit bewildered by this, “as Gandalf sent him here! But this young lady we do not. How can we help?”

Perhaps it is the blinding reflection of the hopefully-a-prop sword, but Eowyn is suddenly overtaken by an awful affliction of watery eyes, which has nothing at all to do with her general feelings of overwhelm — until now expertly repressed — she is sure. She feels at once full of despair and yet shaking with eagerness, and everything she’d been desperate to explain to a listening ear gets stuck in her throat in the face of three, admittedly sort of weird (somewhat stern, verging on intense, dipping into outright comical), thoroughly kind faces looking right at her. It suddenly occurs to her how horribly, horribly alone she’s felt for the past six weeks.

She remains rooted to the spot and tragically mute while Faramir, from beside her, begins all at once,

“I wasn’t sure where to go. I didn’t want it getting back to dad, so Gandalf seemed like the best option — and he said you were very trustworthy, and I do trust Gandalf of course – but it's my brother, you see, he’s disappeared,” vaguely Eowyn is aware of a grim look of surprise rippling through the collective at this reveal, “and it’ll sound crazy but I had this awful dream two weeks ago …”

While Eowyn attempts to wrangle her misbehaving emotions like one would a wobbly-legged yet stubbornly misbehaving colt, an impromptu consultation begins.

“Gone missing?”

“I bet he went hiking or something and lost his phone. It’s happened before.”

“Boromir hates hiking, though. Remember when Aragorn tried to bring him camping with us?”

“No wonder Gandalf sent you here.”

“I have odd dreams too sometimes; they are usually because of indigestion. I’m sure old Boromir’s just fine.”

“No,” insists Faramir, who seems – in Eowyn’s half-attentive estimation – to be doing an admirable job at hiding his surprise at this existing knowledge of his brother. “He’s not answering my texts – it’s like he’s blocked my number, which doesn’t make any sense!”

Eowyn’s head jerks around to stare at him.

Could it be a coincidence? That is exactly the thought she herself had, not an hour ago, about her own cousin. Is it possible that she isn’t crazy, and her awful yearning for Eomer to be here and not in overnight jail, so someone who is not Eowyn could deal with things, is not childish? She opens her mouth, but her words are stuck again. All she can do is inhale like a small bird puffing up its chest and make a very very faint squeaking noise, which she is mostly sure no one can hear.

“Legolas,” interjects rolly chair man. His sharp grey eyes, which had flitted around briefly and shrewdly throughout the hubbub, are now fixed again on Eowyn, and thoughtful. The commotion dies down. In a mild voice he says, “Maybe you could fetch a clean pair of gym shorts and a blanket to lend our new friend, so she’ll be a bit more comfortable.”

Eowyn, swaying a bit on the spot, hadn't even realized she was tugging at her dress again.

“Oh,” she manages.

“Aye, I’d say you’re about the same size,” agrees Gimli, to Legolas, after a beat. “Aragorn has a good eye for these things,” he adds, as if needing their prospective clients in crisis to know this.

“I’ll bring her a comb, too,” says Legolas, not at all meanly, and goes to fetch these things.

“And I’ll put on some tea,” says Aragorn, so named, and for a second time his face softens with that warm, open smile. “I’m Aragorn,” he continues. “Let’s all sit down, and you can both start from the beginning; everything will be alright.”

In the moment after this offer Eowyn locks eyes with Faramir. He is standing next to her. His jumper looks particularly sad now that she is paying attention. He isn’t looking at Aragorn or the sword or the pillow feathers Legolas left behind, but at her. Right at her. There’s a solidarity there. It would be a touching exchange, Eowyn thinks, if not for the fact that the feral cat in its blanket pile has started talking to itself in oddly pitched meows.

A large crash sounds from the back room, accompanied by the sound of a child swearing.

“Yeah, okay,” Eowyn says.

For the rest of today, at least, she has decided that she refuses to feel alone.

#my writing #taylor swift prompt memes #lord of the rings #eowyn #faramir #eowyn x faramir #aragorn #gimli #legolas #legolas x gimli #aragorn x arwen #for those wondering yes the veggie tales vhs is lord of the beans #and the cat IS gollum

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