Disclaimer: I don’t own them, and I’ll put them back safely when I’m done. I don’t own the poem, either; it was written in A.S. Byatt for the romance “Possession”. I borrowed it for the sake of this story.
Author’s Note: This is rather dark. I am rating it PG-13, just to be safe. My thanks go out to Rabidsamfan for the beta.

For the third day in a row, rain poured down upon Minas Tirith. Pippin stared glumly out of the window, boredom written all over his sharp face. The rain was good, he knew, good for the earth and for the cleansing of the world, but it did not stop the fact that this was the third day that he had not been able to go out of doors.

Besides, he mused, there was absolutely nothing to do in the Citadel besides guard duty. Frodo was busy reading all of the books in the Great Library, and Sam was beside himself, helping Legolas with the heated greenhouses that they had found abandoned in a great tangle of garden. Even Merry was essentially busy-essentially only, Pippin knew, because like the rest of them, Merry had absolutely nothing to do. To keep himself busy, his cousin was quite happily learning to speak Rohirric.

“Too, too, too bored,” Pippin muttered, thumping the wall disgustedly with one small fist. “Everyone busy, and nothing for a Took to do but stand around and watch the rain fall!”

All at once, he heard a loud crash and a shriek. Strangely, it came from somewhere above him. But how could that be, Pippin wondered. As far as he knew, there were only empty rooms in this section of the Citadel. He had been exploring them halfheartedly, but as most were either empty or locked, he had soon abandoned the attempt.

“Half a moment,” he muttered, glancing up as flakes of white plaster drifted down onto his shoulders. What he saw startled him greatly.

A leg hung from the ceiling. It had not been there a moment ago, and it was both legging clad and moving, and so Pippin realized that someone had probably been unfortunate enough to fall through the floor. But who?

“Um, hello?” he called up to the leg. “What’s going on?”

“Pippin?” yelled a faint, distinctly harried voice. A female voice.

Pippin started. “Eowyn?!”

There was a sound of scrabbling, and the leg kicked wildly. “Yes! Can you get up here and help me?”

Pippin looked around; there didn’t seem to be any way to get up to the next floor.
“Yes, but how? The nearest stairs are halfway across the Citadel.”

“Are you by the window, the one that looks out over the garden? Yes? All right, go to the room on the left side of the corridor, which has blue walls. There is a hole in the ceiling, and a table with a chair on it leading up. Come through there, and you’ll see me,” Eowyn instructed.

Pippin hesitated, then set out. Curiosity killed the Took, he thought resignedly, and perhaps the Lady Eowyn.

The blue room was easy enough to find, and Pippin was soon climbing onto the table, and hauling himself up through the hole in the ceiling. It was a tight squeeze, and he was very glad that he was not wearing his chain mail under his livery. Once he was in the room above, he looked around.

“Hullo,” Eowyn said, sounding both petulant and relieved. A fallen lantern lay nearby. “Good to see you.”

Pippin grinned at her, crawling carefully over to her. “Hullo, Eowyn. What are you doing up here?”

“I got bored,” Eowyn said, “And so I went exploring. I wanted to see what the rooms on this floor were like, but there was no way up, and it looked like a staircase had been removed. I came in here to look around, and there was a very convenient hole in the ceiling, so I climbed up. I’d just made it up here, but the floor gave and my leg went through. Can you help me?”

“I can try,” Pippin replied, setting her lantern upright. “What is this place?”

They were in a large room, one with several windows, the drapes of which were shut tightly. A massive stone fireplace dominated one wall, a wide blue rug in front of it, and a slender bed with a dusty white canopy was set kitty-cornered to it. There was a desk and a chair across the room, and a large, glass-fronted cabinet on the other side of the fireplace. Paintings and sketches decorated the walls, and there was a stack of much-loved books next to the hearth. Decades worth of dust covered every surface.

“I don’t know,” Eowyn said softly. “It’s very grim in here. It’s cold.”

Pippin shivered. “I’d noticed. Come on, let’s get you out of there.”

Gripping Eowyn under her arms, Pippin inched backwards. Slowly, her leg came free of the hole, and she was able to stand and put her dress to rights.

“Thank you, Pip,” she said. “Careful of the floor, now. Walk lightly. I want to see the rest of this room.”

Stringing Pippin’s long belt between them as a link in case the floor gave again, the lady and the hobbit went to a window, and drew the heavy velvet drapes back. Weak light illuminated the room, and they were able to see more clearly, though not clearly enough. Holding the lantern high, the two of them began to explore.

It had been a girl’s room, Eowyn thought. The paintings on the walls were of rolling green hills, and a great expanse of water that could only be the sea. The tattered books on the floor were all in Elvish, so neither she nor Pippin could read them, but the illustrations inside were stunningly beautiful, the top book’s of a lovely elvish lady dancing under the trees, and a man watching her.

“Beren and Luthien,” Pippin murmured. “We heard that lay sung at Rivendell. It’s beautiful.”

“Look in the front cover,” Eowyn replied. “Maybe she wrote her name inside.”

Pippin looked in all of the books, but there was nothing. He sighed, and Eowyn stood and looked around again.

“Oh, there’s something on the bed. In the bed, I should say,” she said.

Pippin stood up and seized her hand. “You don’t think…” he began.

Eowyn hesitated, then gasped, grasping his meaning. “No! No, there couldn’t be…no, we’d have had some sort of feeling…”

“I feel sad,” Pippin whispered. “It’s sad in here, Eowyn.”

Eowyn took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “There can’t be a body in the bed, Pippin. There can’t be. I’m going to take a look.”

Pippin nodded, but he neither said anything nor released her hand as they went to the bed. It was a single person’s bed, covered with a white quilt and white curtains over the canopy. There was a slight bulge in the covers near the pillow, as if something small were hidden there. Eowyn and Pippin traded a glance, then Eowyn reached out and flipped the covers back.

“Oh,” they breathed in unison.

It was a doll. A porcelain doll dressed in a dress of faded red velvet, her hair a soft, silky black. Her glass eyes were green, and stared up at them, unseeing. She had obviously been lying there, hidden, for years.

The silence was so thick that Pippin felt that he could have reached out and touched it. He looked up at Eowyn; she was staring at the doll as though entranced. After a moment, she spoke, her voice a soft, deep, rhythmic murmur,

“Dolly keeps a Secret
Safer than a Friend
Dolly's Silent Sympathy
Lasts without end.
Friends may betray us
Love may Decay
Dolly's Discretion
Outlasts our Day.”

“Eowyn?” Pippin whispered, squeezing the White Lady’s suddenly cold hand. “What was that?”

Eowyn shook her head, frowning. “I heard it in a tale once, when I was very small. I can’t imagine why it came to my head now. Unless…”

She let go off Pippin’s hand and reached for the doll. Lifting it up, Eowyn raised its gown, revealing delicately sewn underclothes. The lifted shift showed a porcelain body…and the corner of a piece of paper, sticking out from the embroidered drawers. Eowyn gently pulled it out and handed the doll to Pippin, to rearrange. Pippin, however, just clutched the doll to his chest and gazed up at her apprehensively.

“What does it say?” he asked.

Eowyn unfolded the small square of paper slowly. It was crackly with age, and yellowed at the edges, but other than that, it was in good condition. “It’s written in Westron,” she began. “It says ‘I am locked away here in my chamber, under the orders of my father. None may serve me, not even for the slightest thing. I have only one pitcher of water, and one basket of food. My room is heavily guarded; none may leave or enter. And so, I await my death. Perchance, the Overheaven will look kinder on me. Perchance there, I will not be condemned to death for the treason of not wanting to marry an old man. If any should find this after my death, I want them to know that I died here, in my bed, in the year 2848, at the age of fifteen. My name until the day of my death is Alatarial, daughter of Belecthor the Second, Steward of Gondor.”

Eowyn lowered the paper and met Pippin’s gaze. The hobbit’s green eyes were huge, and he clasped the doll tightly.

“Fifteen, Eowyn,” he whispered, tears starting in his eyes. “She was fifteen.”

Eowyn nodded and put a hand on his shoulder. She looked around the room again, and this time, saw two things that made her already hammering heart rise to her throat. The first was the empty, dusty pitcher and basket sitting on the desk. The second were the marks on the door, the door that she knew would be locked, if they tried it. The marks of someone desperately trying to escape from the room, scrabbling at the door, beating and kicking it as though life depended on it. As it had.

“We must leave this place,” Eowyn whispered to Pippin. “Come. Leave the doll.”

Pippin nodded at her, but kept the doll, hugging it closely. “I want to keep this,” he murmured, his voice low and thick with unshed tears. “She deserves her freedom, after being in here for so long, and seeing her lady die. She was this girl’s only friend, she deserves to escape even if Alatarial couldn’t…” he trailed off and looked up at her, his low voice growing clearer. “Yes, let’s go. I want Merry and Frodo and Sam. And I want a hot drink.”

Eowyn nodded, and together, they climbed from the dusty room and hurried back to the inhabited section of the Citadel. Both spent the rest of the day as near as possible to those they loved. Neither had any desire to visit that room of tears again.