When they first came to me that night in my rooms and told me my cousin was dead, for a moment, sitting there by the dark window, my head went very light, and my stomach hollowed inside me. 

I was not surprised. I knew Theodred would die. We all did, even if no one dared speak it. I'd expected a few hours more, that was all. 

When they had first brought my foster-brother home, and the healers had peeled the blood-soaked and ruined shirt off his chest, my only sane thought on seeing the mess of his torn flesh was how hard they must have hit him. The image echoed inside my head for days, completed with the sickening crunch of bone I hear when they slaughter the sheep before winter. The strength of that blow, of the black-burning hatred behind it, filled me with horror.

I have treated the injured many times before, I have stitched their terrible wounds, watched them die weeping in fevers, screaming as their flesh hangs raggedly in the gaping red mouths dealt by the blades of the Uruks. But still, seeing death marked so violently on my own kin for the first time nearly made me retch. It tore something inside me. It broke through something I have patched over too many times to count, and that finally could not be anymore.

I know well enough how to wield a sword, but I do not know battle. The men hit at me when I practice with them, but not hard as they do to their fellows. I know it is so. I am the King's niece, after all. I am a noblewoman. For all I wished for so long to be a warrior, I am but a child in the ways of war. I know that, now.

It made me think of the day my father died, seeing Theodred that way. I never saw my father's body. Eomer saw it, and he has never forgotten, I know. But what I remember most of that day are my mother's screams. I was afraid of her screaming. My nightmares of that day are of her voice crying-- that sound woke me for years afterward. I will never forget it. Her scream was what first prompted me to pick up the wooden practice swords alongside my brother. I never wanted to hear such a sound again, and I never wanted it to come out of my own throat. But though I heard my mother, I never saw my father's body. When I came running down the stairs to her, Eorhild caught me and pressed my face into her stomach, and would not let me come further. She was the one who held me, and who told me that my father was dead. I never saw his body.

When Thedored died, I was ready. No surprise, besides the physical reaction, no more emotion than the slow-churning storm that had taken up residence in my belly for the past few days. I'd done most of my grieving already, curled in blankets at night with a fist of cloth stuffed in my mouth so as not to wake the others with my sobbing. When they told me, I gathered myself and went to see my cousin's body, and then when it was asked of me, I went to my King. Not quite dry-eyed, perhaps, but calm. Calm is dignity; dignity is my shield. I do not break. And so I knelt by my uncle's side, and I told him that his only son was dead, and my voice did not quaver.

And he did not hear me.

I think that was the moment when I decided to die.

When I had helped to clean and stitch the rent flesh of my cousin's body, it somehow brought home to me again the hatred and horror of battle. Before my father's death, I was a child. Before my cousin's death, I was a woman-- but a woman who wanted to be a man. A woman ill-fitting in her own skin. And that, I think, is worse than naivete.

Now, I do not long for a sword to use in revenge, or for honor, or glory. I do not think I could ever want to fight again. I do not think I could ever bring myself to hit anyone that hard-- to rip and tear and grind at the muscle and bleeding veins of a body.

But I do long for my own death. That is the only purpose I can see in a sword anymore. My death, because death is an escape from this world that is a nest of horror and the slow-creeping blackness of fear. The blackness of death. I do not fear dying, myself. No, not my own-- nor do I think I even anymore fear a cage, as I once did--  as I told Lord Aragorn because I did not want him to know the truth: that I am afraid of watching death. Pitiful coward I may be, but I cannot stand to see another man die!

I am a coward. I know that I am. A true daughter of the house of Eorl would do her duty, stand strong, defend her people and not flinch away.

Perhaps my Snake has ruined me after all, no matter how I tried to hide and fight. Perhaps he has somehow taken my honor and strength of will, as he took my uncle's mind... 

But, no. That might be easier to believe, but I know in my heart it is not true. It is I who am weak, and I have no-one to blame for it but myself. I must at least accept what I have done. I have chosen to abandon my people to torture and death-- to take their last leader from them, when I should stand firm with them, to rule as best I can. 

Damn the responsibility, damn my people for holding me back! I must go, I have no choice-- but even as I go, they will become another stone on my chest, tearing off another piece of me as I leave them. I have no choice. Curse them. I wish that I did not care. 

But how can I not? And, how can I not leave? I must die, and alone, in battle, I have decided, because I cannot bear the weight of my life any longer! It is breaking me-- breaking me!--I feel myself cracking apart under it. It must stop it. I cannot take this, and I was not meant to. I was never made for it, no matter how I should have been! I must find another way. Any way, a way that is not this one. An escape, by any means I can. Ah, just let me go, and let me finish this!

For if I take that hated sword, and I ride out into battle, then it will be my body taking the wounds instead, I who fly away into the halls of the next life; and that alone is the reason why I would go to fight. I know we will lose this war, that Sauron's armies will conquer all, and spread like a black river over the fields of my land.

But I do not want to see it! I do not want to. I do not want to see the ones I love die.

I know that my people will fall to ruin-- and such irony it is after the brief, hard-bought victory of Helm's Deep that I thought was salvation. I prey, and I grieve-- oh, how I grieve, but I cannot not shirk from the truth. I see clearly what is coming, and I cannot bear to see it any longer. If must die, I would rather it be sooner than late. I would rather die quickly, and be remembered at least a little-- and not have to anything more to remember myself. If I cannot stand the death of even one man, how will I live trapped between walls, listening to the screams of the dying and grieving as they bring in the bleeding bodies of one soldier after another, how can I make myself I see, finally, the deaths of women and children as well? 

The other women say that the men see the worst of war, that what we must tend to is only edge of the horrors of battle. 

Perhaps that is true, and I am even more a coward. And even more a fool for riding out. But I disagree in any case-- and I do not plan to live to remember. 

I have no choice, you see. The only way I can survive is by doing this. I must keep the promise I made to myself. 

I must make it so I will not have to see anything, anymore. 

.o.O.o.

A/N: Yes, I've given Eowyn PTSD. One more mental issue to round things off didn't seem so far out there to me. :) I hope I've gotten it fairly accurate, and I tried to do it as tastefully as possible. I really wanted to make the point that you don't need to have ever killed anyone, or have even been on a battlefield, to have it. 

I want Eowyn to be canonical, so please, let me know if you think I made her too OOC in exploring her personality and my alternate reasons for the things she did.

Concrit (or any reviews) are as always, greatly appreciated. 

Thank you!