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But oh, she needed it. His name was Gálmód, and sometimes she blamed the name for her fall. Too many memories - her mind skipped the process of making a decision and instead her feet brought her to him, an impulse amounting a decision. He was no relation to the Gálmód whose heritage had once been claimed by a man with cool clever fingers and a voice that awoke tiny serpents in the pit of her belly. He was a strong-shouldered Rohan stablemaster, come to Gondor in the wake of the lord he served. He had calloused hands, and a pattern of round scars on his abdomen where he had been pitted with a pitchfork once - she sought out the bumps of his scars and the rough surfaces of his work-worn body with fingers grown soft from luxury, and a mouth grown hungry from tasting only wine and kindness. Hurt me, pound me, be strong, be unkind, she whispered to him. He wasn't. He took her as roughly as she wanted him to, with her knees and palms scratched and bleeding on rough stone or unpolished wooden walls, her fine hair yanked and pulled until her scalp bled; but he was kind, even so. Gálmód spoke little, but afterwards he'd kiss her, kiss her like a man, artless and wet, but kind, so kind it made her want to scream. Sometimes she'd cry. But it wasn't enough. It would go away. This all would. It had before. She needed these things every now and then; she'd be all right and back to her old self, given time. So she told herself; and the months passed, rolled into each other, sore thighs and clumsy lies carving their marks into her.
2. Swan
Her dress was dark green; sometimes she didn't notice it when Gálmód had made her bleed. White was out of the question. And, as it was, she'd grown fond of darker colours. As midnight closed in she saw her last guests to the door of the hall, and smiled and laughed until the door closed. Then she stood still. She looked at the wood, the sinuous decorations running down the length of the tall door, the sound of it closing still ringing in her ears, and the taste of sadness back on her tongue. She walked the tall white halls, echoing steps, one two one two one two, inevitable like the ticking of a clock. She had had too much to drink again, and the ghosts were stirring in the shadows. She began to wish Gálmód was with her. She'd called him Éomer, once, when he'd held her wrists in one large hand and ground her bare hips against the cold wall. Always so many men. Always one who loved her so that it made the fire burn stronger, made her spirit roar like a coursing river; and always one who would render her so weak she felt she couldn't even lift a finger, let alone stop him from coaxing out whatever self he wanted of her. As she threw her chamber's door closed and threw herself unwashed and fully clothed on her silken bed, Éowyn realised just how gracelessly drunk she was. "I always liked the black birds best, you know, but I just can't tell anymore," she murmured in the uncaring madness of drunkenness and solitude. Mad miserable whore princess, she thought, addressing the empty air. "I can't tell what colour they are on the inside. If I cut them open there's only blood and bone and guts, you can't see the colour of what they truly are." She raised herself on her elbows and stared into the shadows in the corner. "Do you know what I speak of, my love?" she said. And how easy it was, then, to say that word: love. "There was never only one colour," the shadow answered, a mocking tone that made her heart leap. He was there; she couldn't see him, but oh, she knew he was there, and his voice spoke as clear and loud as if he was standing next to her. She was too drunk to be afraid, and instead let out a small laugh. "I am mad!" she exclaimed. "Nothing is one colour only, maiden," he hissed, and she thought it absurd, her maidenhood taken a hundred times already before the day he had died. "There is no madness either except that which we choose. We do what we choose to do - and see what we choose to see. "I went back to being what I had been as a child, and that place, where I was a dog again with no pretensions of lordliness, is where I died. I could have chosen otherwise. That much was given to me. That much is given to you. "We die as we choose to die. We live as we choose to live." "I miss you," she choked. She felt it then - a touch not like ice at all, but hot and penetrating, a warm surge across her breast, like five fingers pressing into her flesh through the cloth. She gasped, her inebriation gone, and opened her eyes wide to the darkness. The room was empty. He was gone. "Why can't I be happy?" she asked, but it was a question thought by one Éowyn, spoken by another. As she spoke the words, she realised the question was no longer important. She slept deeply, dreamless, fully clothed, and woke before dawn without having decided to do so. She drew the curtains and saw the sky stretching cloudless above the land. A crazy joy filled her, unlike any she'd known since childhood. She was looking out across a boundless land, under a boundless sky, and she knew that she was free, and that she had always been.
3. Robin
Faramir set the note back down on the windowsill. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. She will come back, he told himself. He opened his eyes. She will come back.
So many colours.
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