Title: A Tear

Disclaimers: I don't own Grima, Tolkien does. But that doesn't mean I can't have my fun. ] Mostly, I'm following the plot of the movie here.

Author's Note: This is a POV fic taking place shortly after Isengard is unleashed on Rohan and shortly before the Battle for HelmsDeep.
 

Being ashamed of myself is not a unusual occurrence. Crying, however, is another matter. Not quite crying, I suppose. It is merely one small tear that no one else saw. It's more than I offered my father, a little less than I gave to my mother.

I have been working to the end of my own people, I have abandoned my own people, but then they never felt like 'my people' to me. Kinship comes from an inner closeness and outer similarities. What pray tell, did I have in common with any of the Riders of the Mark?

Certainly not their lack of intelligence, certainly no training in the ways of a warrior. I was suited for one purpose, one job. Whether working for Theoden or for Saruman, I perform the same small task.

I can only blame myself, I suppose for the path I take. I think it was my mother who told me to never trust wizards, to run from them if I could and to try to take their staff if I had to.

As a dispenser of false kindnesses, I should have sensed the same in Saruman the White, though soon he will be too stained with blood to keep that color as a part of his name. He is not the only one who wears White now either.

Still, where else did I have to go, but to Isengard?

I couldn't win Rohan over by false kindness so I helped destroy it with false bravado.

I still don't know what it is that could fill the emptiness inside of me. I had hoped it to be Eowyn, but hope has no place in Rohan. I could never have been the type of man she would have loved at any rate.

Poor Grima, in this world, you must be born a king in order to die like one.

Who was that tear for?

I move slowly inside. Saruman is too caught up in himself and his grand masterworks to notice one minion slipping back into the tower. I set the candle on the table near the door for it is about as useful to me as a tear is to Rohan. For Rohan will fall.

The tear wasn't for Eowyn, I am too selfish to cry for Eowyn.

Yet, as selfish, wretched and pathetic as I am, the tear wasn't for myself.

It wasn't for Theoden.

Maybe it is for Rohan?

I never loved that city or its people, but men have cried for lesser things. For the horn that never blew, the banners that never were flown, for the heroes that never were.

No, no.

I fear that is Theoden's lot. He will never recover from the heroes he never saw and the horn that never sounded for him, for the wars he never fought. Rohan was dying long before Theodred and Theoden. Eomer will be left with nothing anyway save an empty Hall, should Rohan remain.

And whether the Dark Lord wins or not, this world will grow old and it will forget the other Races and the evils or good that was done by them.

So I shed a tear for a world that never loved me.

There is no place on this Middle Earth that I could ever call home.  That is the lot of a traitor, but it was my lot before that, so really there is no change.

I find myself wondering, as I dab my eye with the blood-stained handkerchief my Master gave me, what I would do if I had the Ring. Would power, ultimate power or otherwise, change what I was born to be?

The roar from the Orcs seeps in through the windows and suddenly it is cold here, colder than Eowyn's cheek. Even now I savor the sensation of my fingers grazing her skin. The closest I ever was to her and yet, more than I could have wanted.

I wanted them dead, I might still want them dead, but it effects nothing. Nothing has ever changed me or shaped me, not even love. for what good is love to any man if he is not loved back?  I was given a part at birth, a birthright that acts as my cage.

The very air around me is full of death and stagnation. 

Is there no place in this whole world that is not like this? Is this only the world of men that feels this way.

Men.

So weak, so foolish, so afraid.

Not the perfect race, not even a favored race. We've ruined something here. Something that even the Elves cannot fix.

Saruman told me not so long ago that they were leaving. It makes him happy for he is like the creatures he makes and the machines he builds.

The only hope for this world lies in two small Hobbits, Saruman has said, a chuckle in his voice and perhaps a mimicry. He seems like a sad shade of another person. Since my last visit here, he has been reborn of some other metal than earth. Perhaps he is. A pathetic version of the True Master, of Sauron.

There is something in him that is even more perverse and repulsive. Saruman is rather like that Gandalf. I should have found a better Master, I should find a better Master. But who?

I fear it is a little too late to change sides or change Masters. There is no difference in them, anyway, just different manners, different campaigns. They all sound the same to me.

Whether the Hobbits die or succeed, this is Sauron's world now; men have made it that way. Maybe that is how he has kept going all this time, a great eye, seeing his evil wrought on the land even by those who would destroy him.

Ah, it is not a grand surprise that Grima the Wormtongue is ever the fatalist. I cannot escape what I am, what Men are, what everyone now knows that I am.  I don't think I believe in hope, I haven't for a long while.

Hope is for those who have something to loose and all I have in my hands is a tear-stained handkerchief. And all I have in my heart is a empty space that hatred should occupy.

What do I even have to show for loyalty?  For betrayal? For strength? For cowardice? The result is the same for every man, in the end. Men never had much hope for no one had much hope for my Race.

There is one small meaningless thing that I could loose.

My life.

I smile, it is thin and strained, but it is a smile nonetheless.

Death.

Poor Grima. He who can give death so easily to others can certainly give it to himself.

And my sad smile grows for I have something I can take hope in.