Work Text:
For the past half an hour, Théoden King was sitting on his bed. Not on his half, but on that of hers, next to the dressing table he had made and placed especially for her.
Elfhild’s dressing table.
Her half of the bed.
Her nightstand.
All her belongings and trinkets.
For more than twenty years, almost twenty-five years even, he had kept her things in the same place. The maids would clean and polish everything routinely and then place it exactly how he had wanted it.
He even continued sleeping on his half of the bed, as sometimes in the early mornings he would wake and yet be dreaming, his senses would fool him, tease him, by making him think Elfhild still slept beside him and not in her tomb. At those times he was glad to be the fool, for it would be closest to her than he would ever be.
Théodred had suggested remarriage plenty of times, but a new wife would mean that he would have to make room for her, and he could never have borne even the thought of removing Elfhild’s belongings.
Therefore, the idea that came to him after the news of Éomer and Éowyn’s impending arrival –
So much loss, so much death!
Oh, he could not fall into despair again; he was all they had left.
- That idea was odd and prickly, but it had not left his mind.
All he needed to do was muster up the courage.
And finally, he did.
Théodred picked up Elfhild’s silver hairbrush and walked to the room he had readied for his niece.
There was a small table and upon it a round mirror stand. It was the one his second sister Théodfrith had used, for she had used the tip of a knife to carve flowers – wonky and wonderful – along the woodwork of the looking glass.
On one corner was the pen that his eldest sister Théodhild had used for her correspondence. Next to the mirror was a bowl with the delicate jewellery that his third sister Théodgifu enjoyed wearing. On the other corner was a stack of equestrian lineage record books, written by his youngest sister and Éowyn’s mother Théodwyn.
Now these items had been readied for the little Éowyn to use.
He placed the hairbrush in front of the mirror on the tabletop.
And there it looked better than it had in his room for the past twenty years.