*The third and final installment in my aftermath of Helms Deep series; the shieldmaiden's story. Éowyn was forgotten in the battle of Helms Deep, but here is a look at her thoughts both during and after the battle, and evidence perhaps, that women do not have an easy role in the business of war.

*Movie-canon. Takes place just as TTT ends.

*****

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"How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer." -Sam

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She came from below as one blind, for long, dark, and maddening had the hours been in the caves. The rising sun was vicious in her eyes, and she could not yet meet it, was forced to shield her face with her hand and wait for the first cruel rays to stop piercing her eager, searching gaze.

Whatever met her, when she was able to look upon it, she promised herself, she would remember that it was victory. Rohan had survived. Rohan's children had survived. And Rohan's King had survived. Whatever else, there was that to hold to.

In the night it had seemed that the death of all would come to pass. Any life at all was reason for comfort, even though joy was unlikely.

But if her most desperate prayer was answered, and she was determined to find out very soon if it had been, the life of one in particular would have been spared.

********** The Evening Before****************

The earth shifted below the women's feet as the invaders approached, and the trembling increased as the enemy drew closer, until the rocky ground seemed to roll and pitch with the coming of the dark army, as an unruly sea. The women quivered with the world, wondering in ignorance and agony what would happen to the men they loved, somewhere above. What would happen to them, and the children they clutched to them, children that despite the terror all around were hushed with awe and an understanding of what was to take place, to even the youngest babe.

An orc call sounded, eerily reaching into the caves, echoing there before it died away into an unnatural quiet. For unbearable moments, there was silence. Silence as terrible and full of danger as the loudest battle cry. And then a great snarling, growing, growing ever louder and the earth tilted again as the army presumably charged for the walls.

And the quiet of night was forever shattered.

Éowyn listened to the battle helplessly with the other women, even as her hands gripped the hilt of her sword. Pointlessly. They were corralled in the caves like valued stock, she thought with the bitterness that would last through the night. The horses, after all, were housed nearby as well.

Only the order of her king kept her there. Giving comfort to the very old, the very young, and the women who had sent their men to die. She watched the entrance fiercely, but none came, not friend, not enemy. They were forgotten in the deep.

As the others did, she turned her eyes upward, as if trying to pierce with her gaze the glittering roofs of the caverns, as if trying to see and know what happened above. There were screams of men, shrieks of the Uruk-hai. Even so far below, Éowyn could hear the ringing of steel upon steel, and she longed to be up there with them, to feel the shock of impact run up her arm as she drove her sword home in the enemy.

At one point the entire fortress, and the caves below it, violently shook and swayed on the heels of a sound more massive and terrible than any they had ever heard. The torches on the cave walls had flickered and danced obscenely, as if in time to some unheard and horrible music while the world went on shuddering. There had been wild screams and deafening crashes from above, then a split second of such quiet that Éowyn wondered if the world above had simply collapsed.

Then came the sound of fleeing feet above and the heavier strides of those who pursued them. Éowyn knew it was a retreat for the keep, and she also knew that the enemy would accept no terms of defeat but death. Rohan would be ended. Helms Deep was falling.

Finally, Éowyn decided it was a torture too unjust to bear, waiting to live or die in the darkness with no say in her own fate. She started toward the mouth of the caves and the entrance into the fortress, willing to defy Theoden, her uncle and her king, so that she might meet her end in honor.

Theoden's knight, Gamling, with four other weary men, met her at the exit to the caves. Her breath hitched in her throat, and it was almost impossible to force words past. "What is happening? Is this all that is left of Rohan? Only five soldiers?"

"No Lady, but there are not many more who stand. The fortress has fallen. All is lost. You are to lead the women and children through the caves, to the mountain pass. Make for Gondor, for they are the last of the race of men and the only hope. Go at once. There is no time!"

"Does the King live?" Éowyn asked, an icy fist of fear closing around her heart. She was not willing to let him go after so recently regaining him from Wormtongue's poison. "For I will fight with him! I will not leave him here. I will not run from my King!"

"Lady, all hope has fled! We will fail. There is nothing left to do but to give you and the other women a chance to flee for life with the babes! You must go now!"

"Lord Aragorn. Does he still stand?" Éowyn demanded breathlessly, the first beginnings of despair stirring in her heart. She swallowed hard, forced down the feeling of loss, and gathered her courage around her shoulders like a warming cloak. Aragorn must still be alive. He was destined for great things. She saw it in his eyes, felt it in her heart when she looked into them.

And Rohan was destined for other things. They would not end like this, she decided. She simply would set all of her will against it and it would have to be enough.

And even if they would end so, then she would meet it with fight and love of the people and the land that were hers, not loss of faith.

"He lives yet. It is his order to send you through the caves and into the mountains, for King Theoden has given over to defeat, though Aragorn still fights for victory. Go now, and leave us to barricade the entrance of the caves. We will defend you as long as there is life in us, Lady. Our hope is gone, but we will fight for yours! Go quickly!"

"I will do as Lord Aragorn has asked of me. But do not be mistaken. If he lives, and if he fights, there is still hope for man! And for Rohan!"

And so it was that she turned back and shouted for the women to gain their feet. She stood at the narrow passage toward the mountain road and waited as the refugees of Rohan filed through, eyes blank with shock and cheeks streaked with their loss. She gave them what encouragement she could, but despite her determination, even her own sureness began to fail as she comprehended what the leaving meant.

They were in retreat. They were running for their lives and leaving the men above to spend their last strength so that they could do so.

She chose a brave young woman to lead the way, and herself waited as the endless line of them passed into the darkness, with only the faint glimmer of the leading torch to guide them. Many had lost hope, had resigned themselves to death, stubbornly holding to the caves, refusing to leave a man or child above.

Éowyn pleaded, and when that failed, ordered them to move, and at last had to give up on some to move to others with similar arguments.

And just as she was ready to take the passage and guard the rear of the line, there came a new sound. A ringing that any man or woman of Rohan would recognize. The sound of metal shod hooves on the stone of the causeway. They were riding out into the field, mounted again on the horses they knew how to fight upon.

She closed her eyes and paused, grasping cold stone for support. For the horses were so few, and the enemy's thunder was still deafening. This was it then. The final charge of the Riders of the Mark. And the heir of Gondor.

She could not suffer herself to go then, could not make herself turn and flee while the King, and Lord Aragorn, and the others that remained, went to their deaths.

She left the women and children to their fleeing, ran as one maddened past the souls who had chosen to wait for death, and came to a great barricade between her and the men above, constructed by Gamling's faithful hands. It had been designed to hold the enemy out, but it was victorious in holding her in as well. Balling her hands into fists, she struck at the heavy beams, again and again, until splinters of wood embedded in the sides of her palms and they were numbed with the beating.

Again above, a silence, a dying of the screams of men and orcs, raised the skin upon her arms in chills, and she was stilled by it, resting open palms against the wood with her head bowed low.

And then, against all possibility, against all she dared to hope, there was a great cry and the earth rolled again, but not as under the feet of orcs, but as with the hooves of the fine horses of the Mark. Thousands of them.

Reinforcements had come at last, and she forced herself to believe that it was not too late.

Her hands were roughened and bloodied, and she had been unable to make any progress against Gamling's cursed wall. At last, good sense prevailed and she slid down by the barricade and waited for the men to remember the women. Above, the sounds of the massive retreat had abated and there were hurried footsteps, but the light footsteps of men they seemed, and a promising number of them given that she'd feared Gamling and his four companions had been the only remaining men in her world not so long ago.

She heard several individuals approaching at last, and she swiftly rose.

"Who approaches?" she called out fiercely and touched her sword, wary but optimistic. "Make yourselves known!"

"She never follows an order but ever does she give them," a muffled voice floated through the barrier they were slowly knocking down. A voice familiar and dear and unexpected.

"Éomer?" Éowyn cried out, disbelief leaving her jaw hanging low as the beams level with her head were removed and she saw her brother, looking exhausted and dirty, but whole, standing there on the other side.

"Yes, young sister. And I shall skin you for not taking the path you were told to take by Aragorn! Why are you not leading the people to the mountains?"

"Try to skin me, brother, and see how short a man's life is," Éowyn returned as the obstacle was taken down low enough for her to clear. She needn't have worried about her own ability to do so though, for her brother caught her up and swept her over, crushing her into his arms so tightly that she could scarce draw breath.

She did not mind, and put her arms about him in return, inhaling deeply the smell of sweat, leather, and horse beneath the foulness of the orc blood, the scent that had always been part of the men she loved in life. It was an unexpected gift to have him here to greet her after a night of such fear and blindness.

"I thought I would arrive too late and find you had perished!" Éomer whispered, voice raw and full of the fear that remained in him at such a thought.

"And I thought you had abandoned us all! What became of you, Éomer?"

"You have been fed the poison of Wormtongue for too long if you believe I would have willingly left you, Éowyn. I believe we have many tales that we should share, but there is need for us above now."

Éowyn put her hand in her brother's, and Éomer, pulling back at the rough feeling of it, took her wrist and examined her palm. Éowyn watched him eye the many splinters she had suffered in the beating of the barrier.

"You have a heart of fire, sister," he said, shaking his head as he smiled, and leaned down to place a kiss first on her palm and then on her forehead. "Had they but set you loose as you wished, perhaps the army of Isengard would have fled ere an arrow flew."

****************************

Now, she grew accustomed to the sunlight and moved her hand away, and the carnage met her eyes, and all that she had not seen was revealed to her in a sudden, sweeping scene of desperate ruin.

She had not taken enough care to prepare herself, she thought. It was somehow worse than she expected, though she had thought she feared the worst. She had seen battles, and their aftermath, but before her were the spoils of war; hatred unleashed and unchecked, and it had very nearly swept Rohan from the face of the ravaged earth.

Éomer stood quietly beside her, even as she felt the blood drain from her face and toward her feet, and she fought to keep her body from following. She had never in her life felt that she might faint and she would absolutely not show such weakness now. The look her brother gave her told her that he knew this, and he did not put out a hand to steady her, even as her knees suddenly ran to water.

She could not stand to look upon the dead littering the rocks, the ground, the flats beyond the refuge that would never be refuge again, but would remain from all days forward, graveyard.

She clenched her teeth hard then. If her men had borne the battle, it was a small thing to stand and look upon the price they had paid in the winning of it.

And they had won, she reminded herself. Whether they could do so again was beyond her knowledge or concern for the moment. They had won the right to another day on Middle-Earth.

She would not spend it without hope.

Squaring her shoulders, she looked at her brother. "Where are the wounded?"

"Everywhere, sister. To the ends of the world." he replied darkly, then shook his head. "Forgive me. It is a bitter sight, though, is it not? Probably more so for the ones who spent the night fighting the battle. I have been here but a short while."

She nodded and started tending to the wounded that were there, sitting in a row on what remained of the wall. She moved from one to the next swiftly, doing what she could, which in many cases, was not much, and it was a bitter feeling to walk away from dying men after doing what little there was to do to make them comfortable.

Always, her eyes swept the field, and with terror, the men that were carried past to the field where they were burying the dead. She searched for him desperately. As time passed and she did not find what she was looking for, her heart plummeted lower and lower and dread coiled like a snake in her belly, waiting for just a word of confirmation before striking.

But finally, there came a glint of sunlight off steel and it drew her eye to him at last.

Aragorn was walking straight toward her, sun catching hilt of sword, but seemingly leaving the rest of him untouched. For in his face was no joy, only great weariness and sorrow, and he walked with a slight limp and shortened steps, not with the untiring strides she had always seen him take, even as he had come alone into Helms Deep after the attack of Isengard's wolves.

He mounted the stairs with his head lowered, and to either side, soldiers sat and wept into their hands. Below him, still on the field, she saw that the elf and the dwarf watched his going, looking at a loss of what to do without him, or perhaps what to do for him…she wasn't sure of which.

And still he was kingly, she thought. For there was a peasant boy there, younger than most, who leaned against the stone and cried alone, and he paused and lowered himself on one knee before the child, though it cost him pain to do so. He placed his hand upon the boy's filthy cheek, giving him some words of comfort that were lost to Éowyn. But the child looked up, dazed, into his eyes, and it seemed that whatever he saw there gave him strength and his tears slowed. Aragorn nodded, as if to confirm his words, and straightening, continued.

He slowed as his eyes fell upon her, and she thought that some of the mask fell away and she could see more clearly his pain, pain that went beyond the wounds he'd suffered or the heaviness of his feet. Pain that went down in the deep parts of him, the very places he had stirred within her since he'd stood below her sword and had spoken of her worth.

She stopped and waited for him at the top of the stair, and there was such overwhelming gratitude in her for his life that she smiled, incredulously, even in the midst of the destruction. Joy rushed over her like a stiff warm wind of the West.

And all who saw their Lady's happiness in that moment took heart from it, save the one that it was meant for.

He stopped before her and bowed his head, and a slight smile curled his lips in seeing her well, but there was no humor in it, no real joy, and it never reached into his eyes. Still, tears rose in hers, and she was somewhat shamed to realize, but couldn't deny, that his life meant more to her than those of her own people.

"Bless you, Lord Aragorn," she whispered fiercely as she tentatively touched the hard line of his cheekbone, heedless of the dried dirt and blood there. It was her first contact with him, the first time flesh had met flesh, and she was surprised at the leaping of her heart and pulse. He gave off such warmth, she thought. As one always burning, always a source of hope and heat.

Joy and relief to have this evidence of his vitality, his life, threw propriety from her shoulders and she moved to embrace him. He opened and closed his arms around her, holding hard for a moment, bending his head into her hair. The feeling was so right to Éowyn that she clung for a moment longer than was necessary, not wanting to let him go.

He stepped back first and she saw that his eyes were more troubled than before. Still, he gave her another bow and went forth to the infirmary, and she followed, thinking as she did so that she would willingly follow him to the ends of the very earth.

And knowing that he would never let her do so.

Éomer watched her speculatively as she passed him, and she raised her eyes to him in challenge and defiance, but he said nothing. He only watched with regret that she did not care to contemplate.

*

Would they ever stop bleeding? Éowyn wondered. She felt as if she was up to her elbows in the blood of Rohan, as if there was no escape from it. It smeared her dress and her skin; the ends of her tangled hair trailed through it.

It was maybe even more frustrating than waiting below, she thought, walking among these men and not being able to do a thing to save their lives. She wanted to scream at them to stop their dying. Wanted to flee from the chamber where they were packed together, overlapping at the elbows, and never return. She wanted to find a place to lay down and let the tears come, where no one could see.

In the end, she went from one to the next, and laid her hand in theirs, or upon their brows, and spoke softly to them. Telling them they fought bravely, and with honor, and that they had done Rohan proud. Telling them, when they knew what was coming, that they died a noble death.

She did not say what she thought next. Yes, they died a noble death. And a pointless one. They had been attacked with such hatred, such irrational, unfounded hatred that she couldn't even begin to understand why so many had to perish. And for what? The hatred was still there, this morning, boiling anew in the East.

Despite her determination to remember the victory, her hope began to wane.

At the passing of a young boy, one she did not even know but who had died calling for a mother too deep in the mountain passage to return in time, Éowyn recognized she was reaching the end of her courage.

Feeling the trembling of her lower lip and the burning at the back of her eyes, she left the healing room suddenly and turned down a dark corridor before putting her face in her hands and giving over to her tears. They came violently and silently, until her shoulders shook hard even as she made no sound.

She never heard the whisper of footsteps approaching her. But suddenly, Aragorn's tired voice came to her, full of concern as he stopped before her.

"Are you unwell, my Lady?'

It started her so that she flung her head up, and he saw her tears, though she would not have had him do so. Face flaming into embarrassment, she started to dash at them with her hands, before noticing in dismay that they were still covered in blood.

"Forgive me, Lord Aragorn," she said, straightening her spine and leaving her tears upon her face because she had no other choice.

"What injury have you done to me that you should have need to ask my pardon, Lady?" Aragorn asked gently, cocking his head slightly to the side as he studied her.

"I cannot bear to see Rohan dying." She said simply. "The men have fought the battles and I have not the strength to see them suffer for it. I am weak."

"Nay, Lady. It would be the very weak of heart indeed who could bear to look upon such a sight and not feel sorrow," he murmured, and sighed heavily.

She looked up at him, doubt and wonder warring for control of her heart. He could ease her soul with a word, a look. Even when his own was in peril.

"No, Éowyn," he murmured, addressing her familiarly for the first time, and speaking almost as if to himself. "You have a spine of iron. You are stronger than us all."

"No, My Lord, I am not. But I would put on a brave face for these men, as you have done. As you still do." She hesitated, then looked into his haunted eyes. "I would wear that face for you as well."

"It is a dear face," Aragorn told her, and reached out as if to touch her cheek. His hand paused in midair when he saw that it too was covered in blood, both his own dried blood and fresher blood from the wounded. Éowyn felt her heart, which had surged in anticipation of a touch from him, plummet in disappointment when he lowered the hand again. She dropped her gaze so he would not see her thoughts.

"Don't cause yourself more pain, Lady. Go now, and rest. The wounded will be well cared for."

Éowyn raised her eyes to his. "Would you take rest now? When the men in that room wait for you?"

Aragorn shook his head and gave her a look that told her he knew what she would say next. "Nay."

"And neither shall I," Éowyn said, and won a small smile of admiration from him.

"As you wish, Lady. Your men do love you. The sight of your face gives them hope. I shall leave you, then, to your thoughts, if you need nothing else of me."

Éowyn had stopped her tears as they spoke, harnessing her grief with her will, but as she watched him walk away, so bent, so hurt, so lost, even though he had followed her and tried to encourage her, her tears betrayed her and blurred the sight of him.

She would have given anything to ease him. But he did not want comfort from her, did not need it. She knew he respected her and cared for her. But only as he cared for all men and women of the world.

That was hard to bear.

As he turned the corner, she saw his fingers go to the jewel at his throat.

And that was bitter too.

*

Eowyn had not intended to sleep, but the quiet, even breathing of the injured men had lulled her eyelashes further and further until the room had been but a narrow slit of candlelight. She had sent the other healers to their beds, for all had been tended, and now there was little need of more than one to remain, to hear them if they called out for help in the night.

It had been the most exhausting and dismal day of her life. It was more bleak than the one before, when she'd thought Aragorn dead and all had waited for the Army that was bearing upon them with no real idea of what would take place, but an understanding it was a battle in which the odds were against them.

There had been one comfort in the long day. Earlier in the afternoon, Legolas had run into the infirmary with a child clinging to his neck. It was Haleth, son of Hama, King Theoden's first knight. Hama had been lost on the way to Helms Deep. Soldiers of Rohan, perhaps in memory of Hama, but more so for love of the future generation, had put themselves in the path of whatever harm had been coming to the boy. Legolas had pulled him from underneath the bodies of six men earlier in the day. The child had been spared of physical injuries, though he'd understandably been terrified by all he'd seen.

She had positioned herself at the child's beside in the night, holding his hand, for he was alone in the world, having lost his mother the year before. Eowyn knew very well what it meant to feel alone. So had she, for many bitter months, while the young men were away at war, while Grima had haunted her in the shadows of the Golden Hall and Theoden had looked at her through eyes that were not his own.

But this boy would not be alone, she determined. He was a hero of Rohan. She thought of the relief that had come upon her when the elf had carried him into the dark room where they tended the wounded.

Legolas' sharp features had been almost soft in wonder as he called for Aragorn to come tend to the child. His voice had been terse and fearful as if in the hardy young life, he'd found hope again and was almost frightened to believe in it. She wished that Aragorn might have found similar comfort, but though he tended the child with tender hands, his eyes remained dark and his mouth grim.

She'd wanted to shout at him, to shake him out of his despair and dangerous state of mind, but she had known that she could offer him no words that would outweigh what he'd seen and what he knew was still left to do. She left him to his brooding in the end.

She didn't remember dropping off to a doze as she kept her vigil there at the boy's side, but the hand that came down upon her shoulder startled her out of bloody dreams. Still within the grasp of them, she leapt to her feet and prepared to fight, to defend the child she watched over.

It was Legolas, Aragorn's dear friend, who stood there though, hands raised and open to show her he meant no harm, though as soon as she recognized him she would have known that well enough. This elf loved Aragorn as brother, and Aragorn loved him back as deeply, and had she known nothing else about him, that would have been enough. But she also knew that Legolas had stayed at Aragorn's side and fought for Rohan when there was no end but death in sight, and that the victory was as sweet and sorrowful for him as it was for any of the people of the Riddermark. Eomer had told her earlier of the elf's grief and rage and his maddened attempt to pull the dead bodies of the Uruk-hai away from his kindred.

"I am sorry, my Lord. I was taken off guard," she told him quietly and sat back down as Legolas looked to Haleth, as if still surprised that he'd discovered him alive after the bloody battle in the night.

"You have been on guard for too long. You do not take rest, Lady?" Legolas returned his gaze to her after a moment. It was gentle, understanding, soothing. She wondered if all the elves had this empathy about them for man, or if it was just this one.

She sighed, shaking her head. "There are others who have greater need. I cowered in the caves while the men did the work of battle. I have not earned my rest."

His gaze was as piercing as it was gentle, and she felt as if he stared down into the darkest corners of her mind and threw light there. "Nay, Lady, you have. I have learned this day that the fighting is the easiest part. It is the other business of war with men that is hard to bear."

"Men are hard to bear," she growled, and turned to look at Haleth so that Legolas could not see her expression. Haleth was one of the lucky ones. "They would rather put swords in the hands of lads who know not how to wield them than let me step into battle, when I am capable and willing! When all women who were herded and pinned below like cattle would have proudly stood between their sons and harm!"

The bitterness was upon her tongue, hot and sour and almost too much to abide. She did not like feeling this way. But how could she not? What fools men were, to let the children perish rather than she, who had been trained to use a sword! Yes, she might have died, but not without taking several of the wizard's army with her to her grave. Instead, they had barricaded her inside stone walls while the children above had screamed.

"It is the way of the world that men fight wars," Legolas murmured, as if trying to reassure her, but in him she saw great uncertainty, as if he could not comprehend such reasoning either.

"The world is failing!" Eowyn cried and tears flooded into her eyes because it was so apparent to her that indeed the lives of all men would be ended in the coming war. She did not wish for him to see her tears, any more than she had wanted Aragorn to see them, and she wiped at her eyes angrily. She had been determined not to lose her hope this day, but she had never imagined the things that would come to pass or the lives that would slip away beneath her impotent fingertips while the sun passed overhead.

"Aye, Lady Eowyn," he agreed. "It seems that it is."

It surprised her that he agreed, that he did not offer false words of hope to her as men might. She looked into his eyes, dark and fathomless, a thousand years of secrets, hopes, and sorrows there, and saw that he understood her frustration. That he didn't think she was foolish or brazen or unladylike. He simply understood her and he did not underestimate either her intelligence or her abilities. And that was a rare and needed gift just now.

"Then why not allow me to choose my own end? I would take the enemy with me to death rather than cower and wait for the sky to fall upon me! I am a shieldmaiden of Rohan!"

As if in sympathy, and agreement, he lay a hand against her shoulder. The touch was feather-light, yet carried in it all the weight of a comforting friend. He stood silently for long moments, as if thinking carefully of his next words. At last, he spoke.

"You are treasured by the men of Rohan. They love you, Lady, even more than they love their King, I believe. Their courage withers and their heart wanes, but they still have the love of you and their brave women. To see you fall in battle, to watch you pierced with blades would be more than they could bear. You cannot ask them to do so! They would encircle you with their own blades, they would put their bodies between you and what enemy approached. They would not leave you to face the swords and do the business of war."

"Why does no one understand that I do not fear blades! I do not fear death!" Eowyn insisted softly, just as she had to Aragorn days ago.

Giving her a look that saw all, that pinned and leveled her, Legolas asked her, "what then?"

 She could not have lied to him. She gave him a more truthful answer than she had given even Aragorn when he had asked her what she was afraid of, if not death or pain. "I fear being left alone with my grief, when all that I love are dead and gone. When all the men have fallen and I have done nothing to stop it."

"We understand one another, Lady, for that is my fear as well, and heavy on my heart has it rested this long day," Legolas said softly.

There was such an infinite sorrow in his tone that she was moved to cover his hand, which still rested easily upon her shoulder, with her own. His skin was warm and smooth and the heat seemed to flow into her.

They remained like that until Haleth, in the grip of a nightmare, murmured something and jerked his head to one side. Legolas left her then and lay his comforting hands upon the boy, speaking in the melodic and ancient language of the elves that she knew nothing of.

As if he'd put some magic upon the child, Haleth stilled and the scowl on the child's brow lightened to peaceful oblivion.

"What did you say to him?" she asked when Legolas stepped back and stood over the child, as if still guarding him.

"I told him that all the ancient armies of the elves protect him while he sleeps. I told him he was safe."

"I hope you speak truth," Eowyn returned, very quietly.

"By the grace of the Valar he lives," Legolas whispered, amazement in his tone.

Throat tightened, Eowyn shook her head and disagreed. "By the love that men bore him, he lives."

Eowyn looked upon Legolas as he watched Haleth, and so it was that she saw the candlelight reflect in a tear that spilled over his dark lashes and down his warrior face. Another followed, silently, though his expression remained as still as a mask. To see him weep was to watch raindrops racing down stone.

"You are weeping, my Lord." Eowyn murmured, and rose from her chair to stand before him.

Even in the warm orange light of the candles, the tears seemed to gleam with cool and soothing radiance and almost before she was aware of herself, Eowyn's fingertips touched the smoothness of Legolas' cheek and the teardrop there. It was as cold as mountain water, and her fingertips seemed to glitter with silver as she rubbed the tear away.

"I did not know that the elves shed tears," she said finally, looking back into his eyes, seeing that the tears had stopped and he watched her curiously now.

"Yes, Lady, we may shed tears just as you do, but it is a rare thing. Only in times of great hope or the abandonment of it do tears fall from elf-eyes."

"And which tears are these, Legolas?" she asked him, and reached out to put a hand on his arm, smiling at him softly when he covered it with his own again.

He turned his head suddenly, as if he heard something calling, perhaps the morning. Giving her a look that let her see into his heart, even as he looked into hers, he murmured, "dawn is approaching, shieldmaiden. I will go and be at the King's call when he wakes. There is much left to do and many battles yet to wage."

And what she learned from his bared heart was like warming sun, for she saw his love for the one who would be King, even as she understood that he had seen her love for the same man. For any other to have the knowledge of her feelings would have injured her pride and given her cause for denial, but she knew with Legolas it was not something he took lightly, that he did not mistake her for a foolish girl pining for a handsome face. Though his love of Aragorn was as friend and as brother, it was something they shared together, a bond between them of admiration and fondness and concern and love for the heir to Gondor.

Tears rose up in her eyes again, and a smile, unbidden, stretched across her face. Nodding her goodbye, because she did not trust her voice just yet, she lowered her head and bowed to the Prince.

In a moment, his hand cupped her chin and raised her head again. "You shall lower your head for none, Lady."

He bowed and turned away, and she watched him go, without sound or effort across the stone floor, and the sleeping did not stir as he passed.

She needed reassurance from him though, and only hesitated a moment before she asked him for it. "You will look after Lord Aragorn?"

"I will stand beside him until the strength is gone from my arms and no longer can I hurl an arrow or raise a blade, Lady. Yes, I will look after him."

It was a promise of sorts, Eowyn thought. A pledge to her, and to the man they loved. Perhaps there was hope yet.

Because man and elf and dwarf alike adored Aragorn. Armies would follow him for love of him, even into the darkest reaches of the earth. And Legolas in particular, she thought. He would never face any battle alone, Eowyn knew, so long as Legolas was upon the Earth to stand beside him.

Eomer came to her not long after Legolas had departed, and insisted that she go and find a few hours sleep before it was time for the riders to start for Isengard and she back to Edoras.

She found that she was not tired, or perhaps she was simply too tired to sleep, and she walked from the keep and onto the now deserted walls of the fortress just as the sun cleared the mountains to the east.

She turned her face towards it, and stretched her arms high, wishing to touch the sun. Wishing for it to touch all the hurt men in the dark room below, as well as Aragorn somewhere high above in the King's chambers. She wanted it to warm away their dread and fuel their courage.

The sun fell fully upon her and she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply and tears, tears of exhaustion and grief and hope and love and hate and every other emotion spilled down her cheeks and she didn't try to stop them, alone in the dawn. She did not know what was coming. What she knew was that everything right and good, everything left that she loved in the world was just directly behind her now, safe in the fallen fortress. And that soon they would ride away to their fates. And she couldn't stop them, any more than she could stop the climbing sun.

But she would not be a spectator any longer. She would not be kept in darkness again.

Feeling suddenly as if she were not alone, though none came to the parapet, she turned and almost as if she had known they'd be there, looked upward. There, high in the tower, she saw both Legolas and Aragorn standing in the window, looking out.

Legolas was looking directly at her, and she saw that the smile that lifted his sunlit face was one of admiration and encouragement.

Her eyes shifted toward Aragorn, and she watched his face as he stared out toward the east and the sunrise. He did not seem so old, nor so weary as he had after the battle. Fingers of sunlight reflected and extended in all directions from the talisman he wore around his throat.

When he'd returned against all hope after the Warg had taken him over a cliff, she'd seen the relief light up his eyes when Legolas had put it back into his hand. It had stopped her in mid-stride from going to welcome him back with open arms.

Aragorn had said that the woman that had given him the beautiful piece was gone forever, but as his fingers reached unconsciously to hold the gift from her, as that jewel seemed to glow even brighter than the sun to Eowyn's tired eyes, she began to understand that the greatest distance could not drive the other from his heart. He had found an end to his despair, and it was in the memory of another.

And still, she rejoiced, because he stood tall and proud and there was determination about him again.

She did not know what the future might bring. She did not know the fate of man, of the one above, nor of her own people. But she watched Aragorn and Legolas standing together, as brothers, those of different backgrounds joined together by love and respect of one another and of what was just in the world. And they presented such a picture of solidarity and brotherhood among warriors and races that she did not understand how the free world could possibly be ended with them riding at the head of the line.

In the space of two sunrises, she had learned a lesson that she would not try very hard never to forget again.

Even when the day comes crashing down about the shoulders of man, and the moon rides high and wild across an endless night, the sun will rise again and the answer to all the questions, to all the doubts of darkness, is in dawn.

**********

The End

*Last in a trilogy which begins with Aragorn's point-of-view of the aftermath, "When Day Comes Down," and is followed by "And Moon Rides High," in which we see Legolas' reaction to war.

*Any feedback is most appreciated.