An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 3/?
Fandom: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Éomer Éadig/Gríma Wormtongue
Additional Tags: There will be additions to the relationships, Eowyn will get to have some fun, because she deserves it, Multiple Pov, Manipulation, Psychological Torture, perhaps some physical torture, Saruman is being Saruman, Mind-fuckery, Canon-Typical Violence, Hate Sex, Enemies to Lovers, enemies to ??? to ??lovers??, Seidr, magic~~~, Saruman is everyone's favourite local Tower Top, no horses are harmed in the making of this fic, you are allowed to become emotionally attached to Isthunn
Summary:
Eomer and Grima are commencing on their risky deal where Grima agrees to play double-agent and spy on Saruman in return for some promise of future safety should Sauron lose. If Sauron and Saruman triumph, and his deception is not discovered, well, Grima is sitting pretty in a position of helping certain people if he feels they've earned it. He and Eomer also continue to mutually live in each other's brains rent free and they're very normal about one another.
Meanwhile, Eowyn decides that it is time to make her mark on world events and strikes out on her own, giving her brother a hundred heart-attacks in the meanwhile. (Don't worry about it, she tells Eomer, I'll be fine.)
Isengard means to attack, Gondor's defenses are weakening, and no one is ready for the war that lies ahead.
But time marches forward flowing out of his hand, a ribbon caught in the breeze. As the old song has it: the days have gone down in the West, behind the hills, into shadow.
‘Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning?’ a soft voice asks. Footsteps, a stick tapping on stone. Éomer twists on the bench and Jorunn is before him. Or, he presumes it is truly her and not one of her souls. The raven, perhaps. Come to talk to the wild-cat-wolf child she bore. She finishes quoting: ‘Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?’
‘I suppose I shouldn’t ask how you knew my thoughts,’ Éomer says, turning back around. He has never seen her with a staff before but has heard that she will sometimes go about with one.
‘I know a great many things, Éomer son of Éomund.’
Eomer gets some quality time with his mother in law in this brief little interlude before we get our first Eowyn chapter.
Eowyn, like her brother, will make rationale, well informed life choices that aren’t at all completely bonkers.
The amount of weight Jorunn and Eothain hold is insane. They are propping up the entire country I swear.