All Éowyn has wanted, since the moment she was dragged here, has been to return home. But now she has the chance, now that this whole long torment has reached its end and the gate is open... now she is unsure. She has always had a strong sense of duty, and now it tells her that it is her duty to stay, to see an end to this battle and to this crisis, to join her hands with the others and aid them. That is what honour is: to do what one must to save others, no matter what it would cost.
But what it would cost is Faramir's smile, and the wind in her hair, and the thunder of hooves over Rohan's grassland. Other things, too, less sweet but no less necessary: the work to be done in Ithilien, Théoden King's barrow to be tended, her training with the Healers. She's been too long away, and though her honour tells her to stay, to put duty above joy... she can't. For the first time in months, today, she's breathed what feels like free air, outside the confines of the Detention Center, and whoever wins now, she can't risk returning there. She can't risk being part of this world, where she has no place. She would sicken, she knows it, sicken and die as her mother did of grief, torn from the land and the people that are so deep a part of her. No, she must go, or perish trying.
But then... the Ring. Oh, why did she have to think of it now, remember that duty and that danger? Was she not torn enough, leaving her friends to an uncertain fate, without taking that information with her? It might damn this world, and all who stayed in it - and when she looks around wildly, her long hair whipping around her and the tears starting unchecked to her eyes, she sees too many she cares for in that building line of joined hands.
There is no time for this doubt, no time for shame at the tears wetting her face. She has tarried too long already. Still she fights against the pull of the portal, fearing every moment, fearing the time ticking away, but knowing she cannot leave without even a word or an embrace for those who have come to mean so much.
"I must." She says it out loud, into the raging noise, tries to find her way over to Firo and Roland, to say what has to be said. "I have to. I..." Words of grief and guilt have never been her forte.
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But what it would cost is Faramir's smile, and the wind in her hair, and the thunder of hooves over Rohan's grassland. Other things, too, less sweet but no less necessary: the work to be done in Ithilien, Théoden King's barrow to be tended, her training with the Healers. She's been too long away, and though her honour tells her to stay, to put duty above joy... she can't. For the first time in months, today, she's breathed what feels like free air, outside the confines of the Detention Center, and whoever wins now, she can't risk returning there. She can't risk being part of this world, where she has no place. She would sicken, she knows it, sicken and die as her mother did of grief, torn from the land and the people that are so deep a part of her. No, she must go, or perish trying.
But then... the Ring. Oh, why did she have to think of it now, remember that duty and that danger? Was she not torn enough, leaving her friends to an uncertain fate, without taking that information with her? It might damn this world, and all who stayed in it - and when she looks around wildly, her long hair whipping around her and the tears starting unchecked to her eyes, she sees too many she cares for in that building line of joined hands.
There is no time for this doubt, no time for shame at the tears wetting her face. She has tarried too long already. Still she fights against the pull of the portal, fearing every moment, fearing the time ticking away, but knowing she cannot leave without even a word or an embrace for those who have come to mean so much.
"I must." She says it out loud, into the raging noise, tries to find her way over to Firo and Roland, to say what has to be said. "I have to. I..." Words of grief and guilt have never been her forte.