Main Characters: Aragorn, Éowyn
Rating: PG
Pairings: Aragorn/Éowyn unrequited; A/A, F/É
Genre: Drama/Romance
Length: Short story
Summary: The story tells Aragorn's and Éowyn's feelings when meeting again after their (canon) marriages
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HERE FOLLOWS A PART OF THE TALE OF ÉOWYN AND ARAGORN
As they came closer to Minas Tirith, Éowyn found it difficult to believe that almost one year had passed since she had last seen King Elessar and his Queen Arwen -- and from the day of her marriage to Faramir.
"Faramir! How lucky I have been in finding so much happiness in my road," she thought. She had never imagined that love could be such a complete experience, that so much sweetness existed on earth. The people of Gondor stopped to greet to the cortege of Ithilien. But what attracted most of them was the shine of the hair of Éowyn under the radiant morning sun: she seemed an angel of light. When she entered the main room of the palace, where all the corteges were received, Éowyn distinguished immediately the King and his wife, high and noble as the statues of the heroes of the past. She was surprised when she realized that she had not thought of Aragorn for a long time, and she found that an eternity had lapsed from those times that she believed herself to be in love with him.
When the doors opened up to open the way to the following cortege, Aragorn didn't need to see the banner to recognize the Princess of Ithilien: the strange overturn that his heart gave told it to him, when seeing the luminous figure of Éowyn as a piece of sky that had just entered the room. When they came closer, he looked her in the eyes, and he found in them the same shine, but accompanied by an overwhelming passion.
"Welcome, Prince and Princess of Ithilien," said Arwen's musical voice at his side.
Éowyn looked at Arwen and admired the unalterable beauty and the wise look that was common to those of her race. Then she looked at Aragorn, and she felt him sad, sad and tired and perhaps missing his days as a ranger. In that moment it was as if somebody touched her, and she realized that the King was looking her in the eyes. She raised her head toward him and smiled.
Aragorn's gaze followed the cortege of Ithilien until it left the room, and he found then that everything in the room seemed grayer.
Éowyn had not realized how tired she was until night came. During the day Faramir had been gathered with the ministers of Gondor, and meanwhile she had visited the Houses of Healing and the other places which knew her love's history with Faramir. She fell asleep and slept deeply but woke up suddenly at midnight, sure of having had an incredibly sad dream, which she didn't remember. She felt an unbearable thirst and stretched her hand to serve herself water, but there was not anything in the table next to the bed. "Again they have forgotten the water," she thought, and half asleep she put on a robe and walked toward the kitchen. She remembered that she was not in her house only when she turned for the corridor and met with some unknown stairways.
"In the darkness all the corridors are alike. I will ask Faramir to come with me to the kitchen", she thought while retraced her steps, trying to find her room. She entered a hall that she had not seen, and realized that she had gotten lost. She laughed at her luck and thought that soon she would find help. A long while Éowyn walked the corridors of the castle in which Faramir had grown, and where the beautiful Queen of Gondor now governed. She found it much more grandiose, but infinitely colder than their castle in Ithilien. Finally she arrived at a great white room illuminated by numerous candles. To the sides she discovered the statues of the old kings of Gondor.
Heading in the direction of his rooms, Aragorn entered the White Room. He walked like a ranger, without making any noise, but stopped when he saw a white figure standing near the image of Elendil. Slowly, as if she responded to a call, the woman turned and upon seeing him, she didn't seem surprised.
"What a pleasure it is to see a well-known face," Éowyn said, coming closer. "I feel a little embarrassed- I have gotten lost looking for the kitchen. I do need some water."
"It is always a pleasure to meet with the White Lady of Rohan -- Ithilien," Aragorn said. He added while offering his arm to her, "it will be my honor to accompany you." When she took his arm, they both were surprised at how pleasant the contact felt. "Time has passed since we saw each other last," Aragorn said while they walked.
"Since my marriage."
"Have you found the happiness that you looked for?" he asked, stopping to look her directly in the eyes. Éowyn felt that his direct look was as fire for her face.
"I found such happiness as I didn't believe possible."
"You spend an entire life pursuing a dream," he said, perhaps more for himself than for her, "and when you are finally living that dream, instead of enjoying it, you sometimes wish for other dreams you could not have."
Éowyn felt her heart beating stronger and stronger in her chest. That look! So deep, sweet, sad, full with serenity and at the same time disturbing. Aragorn looked once more at Éowyn and imagined her as the blissful Queen of Gondor. Would they have been happier that way? No matter how much he had wanted it, would he have been able to offer her all that she needed? Next to Faramir the coldness of Éowyn had opened the way to the warm sweetness of a flourishing Spring. Would he have been able to achieve the same thing?
Could he have been happier? She reminded him of the freedom, the pleasure of riding a horse, the scent of the prairie after the rain. To have her at his side would have been as recovering a little of all that he missed so much. If things had been different! If their fates had been others! Then they would have ridden together over the prairies of Rohan.
In a way Éowyn felt what he thought, and his sadness invaded her. In spite of himself, Aragorn reached out his hand and touched, smoothly and with the tips of his fingers, the delicate face of Éowyn.
"What we lost, we never had," he whispered.
Then, attracted by an external force to each other, they brought their lips nearer, and with their mouths hardly touching, they shared the beginning of a kiss. In that moment, the emotion in their quick hearts allowed them to glimpse the intensity of their never-born love.
When they withdrew their faces they said "I am sorry" in unison, without knowing what they really referred to. They continued to walk in silence, until they arrived at the kitchen. There they found a sleeping maid, who woke up upon hearing them enter.
"Lady Éowyn needs some water," Aragorn said to the maid, "after she has had a drink, please direct her to her room." And with a slight head inclination, he said goodbye to her.
When walking toward his bedroom, Aragorn wished that sometime he could be able to hug his sleeping wife and see her dreaming, as Faramir would with Éowyn every night.
Although none of both counted them, Aragorn and Éowyn met many times in their lives. But only a long time later did they feel free to meet alone again. In Éowyn's nintieth year, Aragorn went to Ithilien, though his family had stayed in Minas Tirith. Every time that he saw Éowyn, noticing how time had aged her, Aragorn felt that he also became a little older. The last time he had seen her, fifteen years ago, he had been moved in noticing that for the first time, Faramir seemed younger than Éowyn.
When he met with Éowyn he was not surprised at her many wrinkles, but he noticed that her voice sounded vaguely different, perhaps more tired. Her hair, that used to be the reflection of sun in the earth, had become moonlight. They walked together, at the slow pace of her step, along the spring gardens of Ithilien. They talked during several hours ("All leave the old ones alone," Éowyn thought) and they spoke of their growing families and of their long past. While they were seated under the shade of a tree of pink flowers without leaves, Éowyn said:
"That time that we met in the White Room of Gondor I understood something very important. I had already understood it a little bit when I knew Faramir: that happiness is not always where one waits to find it. But that day, when I saw you again, I could not avoid thinking of what could have been." He looked into her eyes, those eyes that still conserved the defiant shine of the first time that he had seen them. He looked at her, while primarily looking for something kept in the deepest part of his heart, and when he spoke his voice had some forgotten sadness.
"I also thought it then- if the War of the Ring had been in another time, if my heart had been free to choose another path, if we had only been you and me, the ranger and the shieldmaiden..." His memories took him to the first time that he had seen her- how much he had wanted to be young and passionate as she was! And he did not know that she had desired the serenity of his years. The voice of Éowyn returned him to the present.
"For a while I thought that I had been a toy of destiny, a flower that fell to the river, and that the current took where it wanted. But that night, when I went to bed next to Faramir again, I had an inexplicable revelation: I knew that I was pregnant with my first child. Then I understood that, although some unavoidable things happen to us, we choose our own destiny with the decisions we make in those moments. I had seen the darkness and well-known despair, and I knew that light and hope always exist. I understood that the being that grew in my womb was the fruit of the roads that we had chosen, and that was infinitely right. I could not spend my life missing what I never had, if that made me lose all that was truly mine!" Aragorn was moved when he recognized the same feelings in himself were in the words of Eowyn.
"My heart is filled with happiness to see what a great woman you have become," he said, and bowing, he kissed her hand.
After the days of celebration Aragorn said goodbye to Éowyn, and she told him: "Next time that we meet, we will finally have a true understanding of why life has brought us here." As their cortege left Ithilien, Aragorn looked back, and he saw Éowyn standing at the outskirts of the castle, an image filled with light and peace. And that was the last time that Aragorn saw Éowyn in the world of the living.