#grima Gets It re: Dernhelm and he doesn't want to think about Why for too long

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

When Gríma visits Dernhelm-Éowyn-whatever-the-name-is-now, it is dusk and the army is two days out from Minas Tirith. He has put off this visit, thinking it wouldn’t be appropriate. Or warranted. Or anything either of them would want to experience.

Yet, despite his reluctance, Gríma ends up knocking on a tent pole as a horn call signals the changing of the guards. Dernhelm-Éowyn says, ‘I suppose you can enter.’

So Gríma does. It's dim, inside the tent. Lit by two lamps and a small, charcoal brazier. Grabbing a stool, Gríma seats himself at a reasonable distance from the cot.

They proceed to stare at each other with no discernable emotion on either face. Then, Dernhelm-Éowyn speaks, wanting to know: why did he do it?

Why did he do what?

‘The Witch King. You helped. Or tried to. I must admit I’m surprised. I thought you would have run. Why?’

The first instinct is to say: I wished to not be murdered by your overprotective brother for standing by as you went and did something so stupid it can only be called inspired.

But that is not the truth. What is the truth? He hardly knows himself. And look at the two of them, in this moment. Dernhelm-Éowyn with arm bandaged and slowly healing, drinking athelas tea after athelas tea, bathing the wounded limb in athelas draught after athelas draught. As for Gríma? He is shaky, frenetic, longing for a bath in a way he has never longed before and gods he wants to get drunker than a lord at midsummer jol after a good first-harvest.

So he says, ‘I think. Well, I wasn’t thinking. Not exactly. Nothing beyond: I suppose fire could be helpful. And it’s something I can do with a fair bit more authority than swordplay. I suppose, if I had been thinking. Properly. Philosophically. I would say that I did it out of a fear of death. I could die swiftly, as collateral in your fight with the Witch King, or I could die potentially slowly. Bleed out from a dagger stroke. Break something inside and it takes days. Poisoned blood from an unhealed wound. Intestines spilled over saddle. How I saw one man die at some point that day. He looked at them and then tried to put them back in and he couldn’t because his hands were slippery because of course they were. Though, there was less blood than I expected—’

‘Gríma.’

‘—what?’

‘Stop.’

‘Fine.’ He glares. ‘I was only trying to be honest for once, out of some misguided attempt to meet expectations laid out in my weregild to your uncle. Please inform him that I was honest.’ He sucks in a rattling breath. ‘Also what name is it? Your brother says Éowyn but I disregard most of what he has to say at any given moment. Also, you chopped all your hair off and it looks worse than my brother after a pub fight. Either of them. Dernhelm suits, I suppose.’

‘Whichever.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘It very well is. Anyway, I fail to see why I should be gracious to you.’ Dernhelm halts his speech. Attempts to master himself. ‘Well, I will say that for once your cowardice served a useful purpose.’

Gríma sneers.

Dernhelm chews something over in their sudden silence. Gríma isn’t sure where to go with this conversation. They are in a small tent, the smells of campfire drift in and Gríma is certain Éomer is hovering nearby to make sure he doesn’t go and do anything untoward with the sweet, baby sister he has yet to acknowledge is not longer a baby and has never been sweet a day in his life.

‘You feared death,’ Dernhelm says, eyes cutting. ‘But you have your friend. The one who saves you.’

‘Indeed,’ Gríma replies. ‘But that has never stopped me from being afraid of death in the past. I fail to see why it would stop me now, or in the future.’

The god—they are gone and whatever agreement they had ended. A fact Gríma is loath to admit to anyone, let alone Dernhelm.

‘I suppose.’ Dernhelm looks him up and down. ‘You are remarkably spineless. It’s a wonder you can stand up.’

‘And you remarkably stupid, it’s a wonder you’re alive.’ He glances as Dernhelm’s arm. The discoloured fingers that peak through the bandages. ‘Was it worth it? Being a rider, a soldier—is it what you always imagined?’

What a studious expression. Dernhelm’s always cold face narrows, a knife point of interest in this question. Gríma does not expect an honest answer. Éomer may be an honest man. Dernhelm is not. Well, not to the same degree. No matter how much he might wish to believe himself to be.

A state of being Gríma sympathises with for there are some existences that by simply living as the world expects you to live, you are necessarily lying.

‘No,’ Dernhelm replies at length. ‘It was different. But I have no regrets and would willingly, happily, do it again.’  

‘I see.’ Gríma tilts his head to the side. Weighs the young soldier before him and thinks there’s a point he can slide in a little blade. ‘And the future? When we all return to Éomarc and you go back to being Lady Éowyn, Shieldmaiden of the Éotheod. Do you fear that life, my lord?’

‘Do you?’

Gríma shrugs. ‘I’m not returning to what I had been before. You are. To go from what and who you are now, back to a lady expected to marry, have children, heal the rifts and wounds this war made. Would that make you happy?’

Dernhelm glares. ‘That is an impertinent question. Inappropriate too. You are not a friend, you do not get to ask me those things.’

‘I shall take that as a yes, then.’

‘What is it that you want, Gríma? You’re making insinuations with your questions. Speak plainly for once.’

‘I want nothing. My lord.’ Gríma pushes the stool back, rising and bowing at the same time. A fluid gesture he perfected from sitting at Théoden’s sickbed for two years.

What a lifetime ago. It feels another world. He could not go back to that country, even if he tried.

‘I’m sure you are tired,’ Gríma continues. ‘We are marching again tomorrow. I’m sure you wish to be well rested.’

At the tent flap Dernhelm’s voice comes over, ‘And what about you, Gríma?’

Gríma’s hand is on canvas, ready to pull it back to show them the cool purple of sunset. ‘What about me?’

‘One time, I can’t remember when, but you said we weren’t too different. I had thought you were trying…’

‘Trying it on?’ Gríma supplies.

‘Yes. Were you?’

Gríma smiles.

Dernhelm becomes deeply unimpressed. ‘Regardless, I can’t help wondering: what did you mean by that?’

Gríma looks at Dernhelm in a clean tunic someone procured (it is in Gondor's style), unevenly cut hair sticking out at angles filled with grease and dirt, his eyes distant and grave. If Éomer were not to be king, Gríma could easily see Dernhelm on the throne.

‘Nothing more and nothing less than what I said.’

‘If you could be someone else, who would you be?’ Dernhelm asks, insistent. Hanging in these questions is a heavy need to know. Gríma cannot bear it.

‘That is a dangerous question, my lord, and one I do not ask myself for I suspect I would be scared to see the answer.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I have spent much of my life being one thing, and it is a fearful notion to think you’ve done it wrong for over forty years. I will bid you good-evening my lord.’ With a solemn bow, he sweeps from the tent.

hands down my favourite scene in the entire Swimming Through Fire series. Like every scene with Eowyn-Dernhelm and Grima is sheer gold, but this one is my absolute favourite. Mostly for the ambiguity of the ending the things they’re both talking around. 

#what things are those? gender things they're gender things #grima Gets It re: Dernhelm and he doesn't want to think about Why for too long #writing #cycles of song #swimming through fire #grima wormtongue #eowyn #dernhelm