The Worm and the Doe

Whenever she was inside these walls, a chill would take her. She knew it to be a mix of the perpetual darkness of the windowless halls and the deeper blackness of his bright blue eyes, watching her always. She could feel his gaze upon her like so many butterfly caresses, and she knew exactly where he was at all times. He with the voice soft as velvet, which whispered painful truths and poisonous lies. Gríma Wormtongue, advisor and councilor, permanently seated at her aging uncle’s side, tipping the scales as his whim dictated, poisoning the King of Rohan’s mind against any and all. Eowyn feared that man, loathed him… wanted him. Every time he spoke to her, too familiarly, whispering beautiful words of darkness, she wanted to give in, to kiss him and listen only to his voice forever. It was this wish that made her hate him. She was expected to love a man as glorious and golden as the sun, not as dark and mysterious as the night sky. She didn’t love him, but she wanted him, desired him… She knew he lusted after her. He did not hide it, touching her gently, his phantom caresses exciting and terrifying her simultaneously. She was tired of always fighting him, tired of having no peace in her own home, and tired of jumping at every sound, wondering how he was going to attack her now. And he did attack her, with his words, with his hands, with his eyes, with his very presence. Many times she’d thought of giving in, many times had she rebuked herself and him, spitting venomous words at him that she could not bring herself to regret. Today would be no different. Her uncle had fallen asleep on the throne just after dinner, and she was sitting away from him, on the opposite side of the throne room, writing in her journal. Poetry, drawings, songs, her dairy, all were contained in this one book, parchment bound in green hued leather. She was so busy concentrating on the words she wove onto the page that she didn’t notice Gríma approaching until he leaned over her shoulder to see what she was doing, a lock of his own black hair falling against her wheat hued tresses. His startling blue eyes quickly scanned the page.

“Your words are lovely.” he whispered to her, his breath warm on her neck. “As are you.” She sighed softly, her eyes slipping closed as she struggled to bring forth the strength to push him away.

He couldn’t resist the moment, and as he tipped her head back, he ran his tongue sensuously along the shell of her ear. She shivered, but didn’t pull away. Her brow was furled, and she was obviously going through some inner battle with herself. He pressed his smirking lips to her neck, relishing the warmth and the rhythm of her pulse.
“One so fair as you should not have such dark thoughts.” He told her, no longer reading the words she had written. The notebook had begun slipping from her fingers, and now it clattered to the ground unceremoniously.
“And one so dark as you should not have thoughts of one so fair as I.” She returned, her voice husky and her breath shallow.
“And how can one so dark as I am not dream of the light?” He asked, not mocking or taunting, but trying to get her to understand. “Eowyn, why do you loathe me so?”
Her eyes snapped open and she turned to face him better, a scalding retort probably hovering on her tongue. She had forgotten how close he was to her, though, and stopped dead, her eyes flicking from his lips up to meet his eyes. Her own eyes widened at the expression held in his. He leaned in before she could withdraw and pressed his lips to hers, his eyes slipping closed as he tangled his hands in the hair beside her face. She fought to free herself for perhaps a moment, then relaxed, her hands coming up to take hold of his arms, just below his elbows. She opened her lips to his probing tongue. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, hardly believing what was happening… wondering if he dared to do more. This princess was very like a doe, stalked until she trusted you for a moment, then easily startled back into her mistrust. He explored her mouth slowly, the edges of her teeth, the ripples on the roof of her mouth… he removed his tongue and plunged it back into her mouth, and she began sucking gently and inexpertly on it, pulling a soft moan from him. This sound seemed to bring her to her senses and she pulled away, her eyes narrowing with distrust. She wiped her mouth quickly on her sleeve.
“I do not know what you have done to me to cause this, but your spell will not bewitch me again!” She stood and ran out of the throne room, leaving her notebook behind. Gríma picked it up and closed it with a snap. He would look through it tonight after all else was taken care of. In the meantime, he had to speak with his Master about this matter. He believed Saruman would be most pleased with his progress. And today she had allowed him to kiss her, and had responded. The memory of those few seconds pushed her harsh words into the shadows of his mind.

She closed the door to her rooms behind her and leaned against it for a moment, pushing her hair behind her ear defiantly. She did not truly believe he had bewitched her, but she had to think of something to say to him… no matter how much she trusted him, he was still a man in a state of power, and she had to tread carefully. Thus far he hadn’t acted to punish her for her insubordination, but who knew when he might change his mind. Or perhaps he truly did feel as he said he did. Lines came to her for a song, and she had a sudden wish to set them to parchment. She reached into the pocket of her gown, but found that her journal was missing… what had happened to it? With a sudden flash of memory, she heard his words again, and heard as the journal slipped from her complacent fingers to hit the ground.
Oh, Valar, what if he read it? He’d read her heart… already he knew her better than she wanted him to… his gift with words somehow extended to seeing others’ thoughts, their very dreams. She could not stand it if he were to work out the riddles of her verses, if he were to fling her own words back at her as though they were arrows dipped in the vilest of acids. She could not stand it if he knew how she wanted him, and how she refused to let herself have him. ‘He would use it to torment you,’ she told herself firmly, pushing to the back of her mind the part of her that whispered in a voice so like his own, ‘or he would use it to win you.’
She resolved to get the journal back using any means necessary. After all, if all else failed, she could always play on his lust, and losing her virginity was nothing compared to losing the darkest secrets of her heart. She smiled coldly, donned her nightclothes, unbuttoned her night shift’s top three clasps, and stole out of her own rooms and into his.

He returned from his daily duties, to both his lieges. After he’d put Théoden, the old fool, to bed, he’d been forced to succumb to Saruman’s invasion of his mind, and he felt that somehow his few brief moments with the White Lady of Rohan had been sullied by the wizard’s interference. He was exhausted by his master’s unforgiving force, and he’d been made to go through his day again, wholly, in just a few short minutes, compacting every stress into a very dense knot that rested in the muscles of his neck. In a perfect world, he mused to himself, pausing with his hand resting on the door of his chambers, he’d have a woman who was waiting for him to come home, who would rub these pains out of his neck with deft fingers, and soothe his confusion with soft words. But sadly, he knew this world was far from perfect. Wasn’t it?
He was no longer sure when he opened the door of his bedroom and saw Eowyn lying on his bed, her hair beneath her head spread out before her, her eyes shut, her face relaxed and smoothed of all lines. Her breathing was steady, and as he followed the soft rise and fall of her chest, he flushed slightly to realize that the first few buttons of her nightgown had fallen open, revealing to him a great deal of her cleavage. What if she decided to roll over? The fabric would stretch, and her right nipple would be revealed to him. He licked his lips self consciously. What had caused her to seek solace in his empty bed? Had she been looking for him? His heart leaped. Of course she had been, why else would she be in his rooms? And how innocent she looked, her pale skin and golden hair contrasting with the deep red of his coverlet. He sat down in the hard wooden chair that he reserved for keeping himself awake on long nights of paperwork and boredom. Tonight, he stayed awake to see her reaction when she found herself here. He’d watched her sleep before, he’d admit to himself that much, but he’d never been there when she awoke, and he wondered how she did so. Did she stretch like a feline? Or stumble about like an Ent until the cold water splashed on her face roused her mind? He couldn’t imagine that, the graceful shield maiden of Rohan stumbling blindly into furniture as she fought to break free of sleep’s grasp.
As she slept, he remembered the journal she’d dropped earlier, and he pulled it from the inner pocket of his robes. He flipped open to the first page… she’d not held a quill for quite some time as she wrote this, for the blotches and uneven stripes gave proof to her lack of knowledge in the department of writing. As she went on, though, her strokes became more assured, more comfortable. The first entry held the prattling of a woman-child, a girl of no older than twelve. He was mentioned in this entry as a studious man of dark appearances, but with an endearing grin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d grinned. Could he? Did it matter? He flipped forward through the pages, pausing when he noticed a large drawing done in ink. He’d flipped past it so quickly he hadn’t been able to tell what the subject was, but when he found the page again, he drew in a breath. She’d drawn him, and relatively well. His nose was badly proportioned, and his hair was not so lank and greasy as it now appeared, but it was obvious who the portrait was of. He was holding an unhappy looking cat by the scruff of its neck. But why should he be in her journal if she despised him so? He looked at the next entry… Not a true diary entry at all, but it appeared to be a song. A song of forbidden love. About himself. Who would have thought that she may have felt these things for him? Certainly not he, but then, perhaps that was the point. He wondered now how deeply she slept, and what he could do before she awoke. Could he brush her hair, or run his finger slowly across the slightly parted lips? Or did he dare to loose another button on her top, revealing parts of her that only his imagination had seen before? He decided that there was no time like the present and crawled carefully onto the bed beside her, facing her, careful not to pull on her hair. Her warm breath puffed rhythmically across his nose, and he could smell the soft, sweet scent of the wine she’d had after dinner. He could see her veins pulsating on her neck, and gently he traced her collarbone. She murmured something unintelligible and rolled just as he’d hoped she would, her shirt stretching and her soft pink nipple peering out at him. He felt himself growing excited and fought to dampen his arousal. When he felt himself to be suitably under control, he leaned forward, and lay a shower of feather soft kisses along her collar bone, gently stroking the skin of her neck under her ear while he did so. He closed his eyes and took in a deep, calming breath before laying his lips on hers and kissing her soundly.
She moaned and her eyes flew open. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, not here, in his quarters, not now, when her hopes and dreams and plans lay on the line. And when she’d awakened, she’d found herself highly aroused, both from the rather embarrassing dream she’d been having about the owner of these rooms, and the real man’s physical manipulations. She sat upright quickly, and Gríma called Wormtongue rose as well. She wasn’t sure what to say to him, in her current state of dishevelment and embarrassed arousal.
“What are you doing?” She snapped angrily at him, buttoning her blouse up all the way. She imagined that she looked angry and modest, and hoped that she did. She watched him cringe, for once without a reply ready. He cleared his throat and licked his lips, and she could see the intelligence in his eyes as he worked up a suitable answer. Just as his lips… so thin, but so very soft… parted with his reply, she held up her hand for silence.
“Never mind, Worm. I believe you have my journal. I’d like it back.” That was fairly straight forward, she thought. She didn’t know why she’d thought she’d have to trade her virginity for the silly book. And she wasn’t sure why she’d worried… her songs and stories only made sense to her own mind.
Grima stood and walked to his desk, flipping the book on it closed. In the brief instant before the cover closed, Eowyn saw what page he’d been looking at. Her portrait of him, from back when she was fifteen. She felt the blood draining from her face at the thought of the words on the page beside it. She’d had a horrid crush on Grima back then, and she’d been quite upset when her brother had told her of Grima’s misdeeds of the past. It was true that the man was not beautiful like her brother or her cousin, but he was beautiful in his own way, or so she’d believed. She’d loved the sound of his voice then, and the quaint cold color of his eyes. And his darkness complimented her brightness so well… Such a shame that her brother had threatened to kill him if she’d acted on her foolish infatuation. Even more of a shame that he had decided to turn traitor, or so she believed.
“As you wish, My Lady.” He whispered, his voice low and soft as any silk. She thought that was all he’d say and reached out for the book, but as he handed it to her, he held on.
“For one who is thought to be so light, your heart and thoughts are black.” He told her, his fingers tracing hers under the book. He was not trying to be hurtful, merely making an observation.
“Is there anything I can do to ease your mind from these shadows?” He asked her, his pale face distorted by the shadows in the lamplight.
“You can stop poisoning the king’s mind with your sweet words, you can let my brother return from his exile, and you can let go of your pull on my heart!” She cried, wrenching the book from his grasp and running from his rooms and into her own.
She slid down the length of her door and sobbed once, chiding herself for even that small release of her emotions. Shield maidens didn’t cry, they didn’t love their enemies, they were not so weak. And she’d revealed her secrets, both through her writing and her words. And yet-- when she’d awoken in his quarters, his mouth had been on hers… her pulse still raced from the experience. And it wasn’t cold, like his hands and eyes, but warm, and comforting, but still it was wrong.
Eomer would happily slay the worm for having touched her, were he here. Though she wouldn’t tell him if he had been. And it was true, Eomer wasn’t here… it was her alone who had say in her life now, with Theodred laying now in his bed, wounded and wasting away to nothing… it was true, Eowyn expected that Grima had something to do with her cousin’s attack, but she knew, too, why he’d done it.
Theodred had tried to rape her just a week before his ill fated ride, and that was one of the few times she was grateful for Wormtongue’s persistent dogging of her steps. Had it not been for him, she would have lost her virginity already, and could have been pregnant by now. She supposed there were a few times he’d helped to save her… like when she was fourteen and had been angry with her brother and had taken one of the horses out for a run. She’d fallen from the animal’s back and had broken her arm. When Grima had ridden after her, he was in such haste that his own mount nearly trampled her. Se remembered his hands, so cold and soothing, and how he’d set her arm on the spot, and made a splint of some shrubs nearby and his cloak, and how she’d ridden back to the castle in his lap, curled against his chest for the warmth and the soothing rhythm of his heartbeat. How she wished he was still the same man he’d been back then, the man she’d foolishly thought herself in love with. But as the years changed, so did they, he to defect and be bought by Saruman, and she to grow up and into a woman.

But back then, he’d been… sweet, almost. Understanding. She’d come to him for instruction. She wanted to learn elvish. He taught her some, mostly the conversational elvish, as she wasn’t sure exactly how often she’d use the high elvish. When he’d asked her why she wanted to learn one evening, she’d responded with something along the lines of, “So when I am free of Meduseld, I can ride across the world and converse with the elves.” She’d been expecting him to scoff, or laugh derisively, but instead he’d nodded, smiles crinkling the corners of his eyes. She wondered what he’d thought of her then. Silly chit of a girl, probably, she mused bitterly. She fought to remember the words she’d been itching to write down when she’d discovered that the journal was missing.

Stare at me with unseeing eyes…
He Uncle, blind to the world, or how she wished the Worm’s eyes were… unseeing, rather than able to see into her very soul.
You see my face, not the pain inside…
Her people looked up to her, but no one really saw into her, saw the grief, the confusion. None.. Save him.
My heartaches, the dreams you take, the hopes you cast aside…
Growing up with Theodred and Eomer, learning to fight, to ride along side them, but never allowed to participate, to help her country when it was in need.

She sighed. She was throwing herself into depression, and that wouldn’t do at all. The White Lady of Rohan couldn’t mope, she had to be strong. And yet… she had enjoyed feeling so weak in his arms…
‘Stop it!’ she chided herself angrily. ‘You are not fourteen years old anymore, and he is not the same Grima that you knew then.’ She tore a page out of her journal and placed it close beside the waning candlelight.
She wrote in the elvish he’d taught her, the secret language that they two alone in Meduseld knew. This poem was intended for him to read, not to be private. She took a deep breath and began writing. She hadn’t used the language in years, and her hand shook with nervousness, pictures of the past and present Grima flashing through her mind as she fought to sum her feelings for him up in words.

be hens at mol
Alta et hrive
lamba mornie
be mera et nena
hrave ninque et mornie
Ar anto
morn et sangwa
elye nar vanya


When she was done, she left the paper there, that the ink may dry, and lay on the bed. But she was too restless to sleep now; she needed space to think. She hurried from her bed and out into the corridors. She burst through the large wooden doors of the entrance hall, aware that he was following her, as ever. As soon as her bare feet hit the grasses of the field, she broke into a run, wasting no time in trying to silence herself. She ran until her throat was sore, her feet cold, and her tears had run dry, and then she broke down and lay on the grass, sobbing quietly.

He watched her running, and was reminded again of a frightened deer, dashing heedlessly through the underbrush and running with abandon. He heard her animalistic screeches, and left her alone, gave her the space she so obviously needed, let her vent. The moon bleached the gold out of her hair, turning her truly white. And when she collapsed onto the grass, he longed to go to her, to reach for her and comfort her as he knew he could, but it was the fear that he was the cause of this tirade that held him back. He came closer, though, until he could hear her pitiful sniffling. She sat up and wrapped her arms around herself, not facing him, fighting to control her breathing. When she’d calmed herself, she raised her chin proudly.

“Gríma?” she asked, her voice hoarse and unsteady. He needed no further invitation, and went to kneel at her side.
“My Lady.” He acknowledged. She leaned her head against his shoulder, taking him by surprise.
“When did you change?” She asked, and he stiffened. “I mean, when did you change from such a warm person to a cold servant of some unknown master? You didn’t used to be this way…” He sighed, and brought his hand up to gently caress her hair as he organized his thoughts.
“You were… probably almost seventeen. So beautiful, so young and vibrant… I wanted to be someone worthy of you, wanted to be someone you could love. I heard of a wizard… Saruman, the white. He taught me the craft of guile, and promised me many things if I would only help him to accomplish his goal. He was subtle, and cunning. By the time I realized I was in over my head, it was too late. One word from him, ad my treason would be discovered. I couldn’t stop, and for you… it all seemed worth it.” He pressed his head against hers, drawing comfort from her shivering form. He pulled his cape from his shoulders and threw it over the both of them.
“So I am to blame?” The words were strong, but her voice was that of a lost child, and he couldn’t help but wish none of this had ever happened.
“Never. If anyone is to blame, it is me with my foolish naivety.” He moved his hand down around her shoulders and put the other under her bent knees.
“Let us get you home Princess. It is cold.” she was perfectly warm against him, though, and he carried her up the stairs and through the doors of the castle, kicking them gently closed behind them.
She was grateful now that she’d left the doors of her rooms open, and he carried her in and sat her gently on the bed. He lay his cape over her, mistaking her unmoving form as being taken by sleep. He made to leave.
“Gríma?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, but he heard.
“Yes, Lady?” He asked.
“On the desk, that poem is for you.” She smiled sleepily and closed her eyes. He came back to the desk and lifted the parchment. His eyes filled with tears. He took the poem with him back to his rooms, lay on his bed, and read it again.

“With eyes that enslave
Full of ice
tongue blackened
With want of love
A face pale from the shadows
And thoughts
Dark as poison
You are beautiful.”

They understood each other well, the White Lady and he.

A/N: Just to be clear, I'm a review whore. I live for reviews. So please, feed the author.