(bind you with love that is) graceful and green as a stem, 1-3/9

[lotesse]

title: (bind you with love that is) graceful and green as a stem, 1-3/9
pairing: non-explicit Sam/Frodo
wordcount(total): 22, 664
rating: pg

An au of the final chapters of RotK. Crack premise: if it were possible for Sam to take up the burden of Frodo's pain, and allow his beloved master to be free. Tolkien splits his ending evenly between comedy and tragedy, with Sam getting all of the one and Frodo getting all of the other. Sam has marriage and children and riches, the narrative of celebration, of life ascendant. Frodo has the tragic side: death, loss, all the things that never get better, and at last his martyr's end. But a different end to the story could be managed, if Sam and Frodo were to share both the joy and the sorrow of their victory and their adventure. drama, angst, hurt/comfort.

Note: forgive my elision of Rose. By setting my story in the first March after the Quest, I’ve effectively cut off poor Sam’s courtship of her. But there are only three ways, as I can see, for things to work out once she’s introduced into the mix. The first way is Tolkien’s, and clearly I’m diverging from that here. The second is Mary Borsellino’s, and I love PGY with all my heart and soul, but she’s already written it. The third is the one where Rose is the opponent, the Other Woman, the one who has to lose her man, and I really don’t want to write that story. I’ve no quarrel with Rose, and I believe very firmly that she was a nice lass who loved Sam. But Rose gets the canon. She won't mind my sending her off to marry some other lad for this au.

thanks and endearments to my beta, lozlan.


1. If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn

The study was dark, shadows reaching out from the open windows to engulf Frodo’s books and parchment sheaves. Sam opened the door silently, holding up a candle to look for his master. Frodo was not sitting at the writing desk, but his inked pen lay dripping on the tabletop. His lamp stood unlit by the door.

Calling Frodo’s name softly, Sam crossed the threshold. By the flickering light he saw that Frodo lay on the floor, a spilt cup of tea rolling away from his long, still fingertips. His eyes were closed, and his face looked very, very pale.

“Frodo,” Sam breathed, kneeling beside his master, taking the cold resistless body into his arms. He could feel Frodo’s eyelashes fluttering against his hands like a tiny heartbeat. “Frodo, I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”

Head pillowed in Sam’s lap, Frodo began to stir, at last opening bright eyes and looking up into Sam’s worried face. “Sam,” Frodo sighed. “I am sorry. I just feel so very tired. I couldn’t keep my feet. I’m sorry – I’ve failed, as I always seem to fail.” His voice was dark, twisting, tenebrous.

A torrent of pained love for him welled up in Sam’s heart, and he clasped Frodo to himself more tightly. “There now, my dear,” he said gently, “you’ve done nothing wrong. Just you let your Sam get you to your bed, and then you can rest a bit.”

He lifted Frodo up, and very nearly carried him to the master bedroom, supporting Frodo as he shuffled and swayed wearily. Sam wrapped the goosedown comforter closely around the small cold body – still too thin for a hobbit – and then for a moment took the liberty of resting a caressing hand in Frodo’s fine dark curls. Frodo leaned trustingly into the touch, silent and cold but at least safe, and fell asleep.

Sam crept away, choking back his tears to keep from waking his master. He made it as far as the Bag End kitchen before the sobs broke free, and then he nearly drowned in them. Clinging against the countertop, he wept until he was nearly bent double with the pain of it. “Oh Frodo,” he gasped out to the darkness, moved beyond silence in his distress, “Frodo, I don’t know how to save you.”

He dug his fingers into the scarred, wear-polished wood, taking comfort from the solidity and age of it. Old Mr. Bilbo's father had laid in the boards, long ago, before the Fell Winter. Before any other hobbit yet living could recall. It warmed beneath his hands, and he mastered himself somewhat. It had never been his way to give in to sorrow for long; work had always to be done, whatever might befall.

As his grief quieted, Sam stepped to the kitchen door, letting the cool night air dry his tear-streaked face. The stars were out, shining brightly with no cloud to mask them. They glimmered above his garden like a net of jewels. Looking up at them, Samwise murmured, “I don’t know what it is that I’m to do, don’t know how to help him. I could carry him through the dark land, and I could give him my water when there wasn’t enough. But how’m I to free him from such sorrows as he carries in his poor tired heart? And I’m afeard they’ll kill him yet, though all the orcs in Mordor could not.”

He sighed, trying to blow away his troubles, and went on to himself in an undertone, “There’s naught I can do for him, no way for me to mend him. He’s done what no man could and now he’s near to dying, as I know well enough, and I can’t do nothing about it.”

Sam's eyes overflowed again, but now he wept more quietly, shedding tears of resignation rather than anger. In heartache and worry, he found himself seeking out the Evenstar, Eärendil’s star as the elves called it, away up in the heavens. It had kept them safe, once, in their long crawl to the end of all things. “I would do anything,” he swore to that star, “give anything, were it to be of help to him. I would carry his pain and his sorrow, if I could, as I carried him before. Anything.” With tears still heavy in his eyes he went to his own bed, and to restless, dreamless sleep.

The next morning dawned all pink and gold, warm for early spring, and Sam slipped noiselessly down the hall to pull back the heavy curtains and let the daylight in to Frodo’s room. Frodo looked flushed, almost healthy in the new light, and Sam’s heart gladdened at the sight. He busied himself about the room, putting things to rights, and then glanced back to the bed only to see Frodo awake, sitting up and blinking and smiling at him.

“Good morning, Sam,” he said.

Sam went to him, pressing a hand against Frodo’s brow, the sides of his neck, and then taking up one of his hands. “How are you feeling, sir?” he asked. “Only, you were poorly last night, and seemed near worn through.”

“I remember,” Frodo told him, his eyes going distant. “I was cold, and then – was that you? It must have been. Dear, good Sam. But I feel quite restored now, and as well as I ever do. In fact,” he added, smiling again, “I find that I’m rather hungry.”

And as the day wore on and the light shifted, Frodo’s face never lost that healthful glow. He was strong enough to walk with Sam down to the market towards midday, where he seemed to slip out of the isolated melancholy that had kept him separated from everyone and everything since their return. Indeed, Sam saw that his master was quite cheerful, greeting neighbors and examining the wares for sale with a bright interest.

All around them, in truth, the Shire was recovering – they had worked hard all through the winter to undo Saruman’s devastation. Renewal seemed promised; things were nearly back as they should be, tranquil and sunny and unchanging, and children ran riot through the spring-warm grass while their mums and das gossiped and haggled and complained of small cares.

And if Sam took care to not look at the maimed hand, he almost could have mistaken Frodo for the hobbit he had once been, before sorrow and war had taken hold. The happy, inquisitive master he’d served, admired, loved, as a lad.

As for Sam himself, he felt weary, and the noisy din of the outside world rang in his ears. The aftershocks of care, he told himself – it had been a bad night, and old fears had ridden him. He was bound to be a bit tired after such a thing. At any rate, the joy that he felt at Frodo’s newfound vitality made up more than completely for any such.

Together they headed back to the smial, and then Sam made their tea while Frodo retired to his reading. Sam quickly became absorbed in his current project – he was engaged in training a roguish wisteria to a fine whitewashed arbor he’d built in the cold months spent restoring Bag End, for all that the vine kept throwing off new shoots in the most wild directions, and early spring was the best time to head it off – and scarcely noticed the gathering twilight.

When at last he did so, he hurried indoors to see after his master. It had grown very late, and he’d left Frodo alone for many hours.

Frodo sat beside the dying fire, eating a honeycake and leafing idly through the book that lay open in his lap. His eyes were very bright.

“Mr. Frodo?” Sam asked quietly. “Do you need anything at all, sir?”

Frodo stretched like a cat. “No, Sam, I think I am quite ready to turn in,” he replied, and then looked at Sam sharply. “You look tired out, Samwise. Have I kept you from your bed? I’m sorry. I – ”

“No, sir, that’s all right,” Sam said, cutting short Frodo’s inevitable string of apologies. “Just a bit sleepy, is all. Nothing for you to concern yourself with.”

Frodo stood, knitting his brows. “I am not so sure of that,” he said, piercing eyes still turned full on Sam. “but I shall say no more tonight, for you are tired, and you should sleep. I’ll see myself off, Sam, and say goodnight to you now.”

The days passed. The earth was thawing, and soon the crocuses would bloom, and Sam found that he had a great deal to do. It wore away at him – a perpetual sensation of tasks unaccomplished and of strength insufficient. In the nights his sleep was strange and oft-interrupted, and in the days odd pains crept up on him – aches in his hands, pressure building at the back of his neck, sharp chills down his ribs that jarred him something fierce.

Sam felt Frodo’s eyes on him frequently, but he said nothing to him of his discomfort, because Frodo really and truly seemed to be feeling better, to be coming back to himself again after so long spent wandering in shadowed places. He was writing a great deal, but it put smiles on his features more often than sorrows, and when Sam brought in his tea he was always vivid, almost babbling, full to bursting of his work and the pleasure he took in it.

Watching Frodo, Sam remembered how youthful his master was still, and so swallowed down his own troubles. He couldn’t bear to be the one responsible for taking the light away from Frodo’s face again, and he was determined to keep him hale and hearty for as long as ever he could.

Frodo wrote and wrote, and took his tea with honey, and went rummaging about the hole for extra bottles of dark, dark ink, and then one evening the rhythmic beats of hooves and drifting snatches of jolly song drifted up along the Hill. Merry and Pippin were tying their ponies at the end of the lane by the time Sam saw them, and Frodo was already on his feet and waving to them.

“Hullo, Frodo,” said Pippin, tripping over the threshold and into the Bag End hall. “I say, have you seen that star hanging over The Water? Magnificent!”

Sam gathered together his tools and brushed the clinging earth off of his palms as the cousins retreated to the parlor. Frodo cast a brief look back at him, but then followed Merry and Pippin, laughing and speaking cheerfully. Sam made himself scarce, and made a note to himself to run down to the wine cellar before supper. Chances were the gentlehobbits would not be averse to a vintage.

Merry and Pippin both stayed the night, and the sound of their merriment followed Sam about as he worked through his end-of-day tasks, washing down the tile in the pantry, closing up the round windows, dropping smoldering coals into the warming pan for the master bed. He was shaking out the crumbs from the breadbox when Merry Brandybuck scared the life out of him, speaking up suddenly from where he stood leaning against the doorframe.

“Sam,” he said, “I don’t know what you’ve been doing with him, but you deserve a medal.”

“How’s that?” Sam asked, abstracted, trying to remember if there was still enough raspberry preserve in the jam pot for tomorrow’s breakfast. He feared they might run short.

“We know that he’s not been well,” Merry said softly, and Sam looked up to see his face dark in the firelight. “At first, in the White City, I had hoped – but he’s been so pale and tired, ever since Rivendell. That damned Sharkey struck him a cruel blow, too, when he was too faint of heart to take it.”

The silence crept in from the shadows, and Sam felt as though all hope had gone from the world – felt dead tired, drained and old. “But he was better tonight,” said Merry at last, “almost the way he used to be, when we were lads. I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d seen him smile.”

Sam sighed. “If he is better, sir, then there’s none gladder of it than I am. I’d love of all things to see him restored. Perhaps it was yourselves as lifted his spirits? For sure he’s been lonely, and though I’ve done all I can to ease him, it hasn’t been enough.”

Merry’s replying smile was wan. “And perhaps things are truly changing, Sam. After all, wounds do heal.”

Sam returned the smile, but his heart was not in it. He felt tired, and his limbs ached and trembled in the dark.

In the morning, before Sam could get to the morning work, or slip in to wake his Master, Frodo leaned into Sam’s little room, and told him that he was riding out to Buckland, to visit Merry at Crickhollow while Pip was away on family business, and that he would likely not return until late the next night.

Sam scrambled up out of his warm bed, blinking in the light. “Shall I go with you, sir?” he asked, and Frodo shook his head decisively, saying that he should like a ride with his cousins, like the ones he used to take when he’d first moved to Hobbiton, galloping to and fro from Buckland through the twilight.

“Stay with your Gaffer, tonight, Sam, if you’d like,” he said. “You spend such time caring for my home that you scarcely have any time to spend in your own.” Sam smiled and nodded and thought of his Gaffer, gnarled and care-bent, gruff and taciturn, and was suddenly and overwhelmingly homesick for the plain life he’d lived as a boy, obedient and work-anchored and simple. Yes, he thought to himself, he’d go down to Bagshot Row after Mr. Frodo left, and perhaps even go so far as to pirate away the bread that lay ready for cooking in the Bag End kitchen for their supper.

Standing at the restored green door of Bag End, Samwise watched as Frodo rode off into the greening hills, and tried desperately to blink the grey shadows away from his bewildered eyes.


2. It begins with your family, but soon it comes round to your soul

Frodo rode the distance twixt Bag End and Crickhollow in silence, singing no songs and chanting no rhymes, though Merry and Pippin chattered like magpies, and Pippin’s keen voice was lifted more than once in song. Frodo was, in fact, buried several fathoms deep in thought, though his ideas were formless and unsure.

Pippin was on his way back to the Great Smials, having been so ordered by his father, who’d put the full weight of the Thainship behind his command. “Nothing less would have bound me,” Pippin said airily. “It’s quite remarkable how easy it is to ignore one’s parents, after dealing with great leaders and captains of Men.”

Frodo laughed at him. “Get home with you, Cousin, and mind that you don’t take that line with your sisters. Paladin may pale in the shadow of the Steward, but I don’t imagine that Pervinca will let you get away with much.”

“But ‘Vinca at least can be trusted to pay attention to the things that really matter! She has promised me roasted chestnuts with honey, if I’m back in time for afters, and you know how fond I am of 'thirty white horses on a red hill.'”

He rode off down the lane toward Tuckborough, raucously chanting: “First they’ll champ, then they’ll stamp, and then they will stand still!” Merry cut his eyes at Frodo, brows raised, but Frodo was grinning, and the world around him felt warm and cheerful.

They reached Buckland long before dark, when the heath was still bright-touched by pale spring sunlight. Merry slid down off his pony and hurried inside, calling back something indistinguishable about tea. Frodo saw to tying the ponies, and to filling their trough with sweet oats.

He’d not seen much of his cousin over the winter, for Merry had been much needed in Brandy Hall, and Frodo himself had been more than busy overseeing work in the Shire as deputy Mayor. Perhaps it was that interval of separation that caused him to blink in surprise at the tall, shrewd, lordly gentlehobbit his young friend had become – although he was wearing simple hobbit-fashion clothes in dark green, and not the Rohirric livery he sometimes sported – when Merry popped up unexpectedly at his elbow, and Frodo quite started out of his own skin.

“One would expect,” Frodo said plaintively, “to become accustomed to one’s cousins being quite gigantic.”

“But you never do,” Merry answered him with a laugh, “I can see it in your face. Come inside, my good hobbit, and have some tea – you must be quite chilled after that ride.”

Merry took Frodo’s cloak himself, and led him to the small kitchen. Frodo felt his mouth twist down when Merry sat him gently down on a chair, put a china teacup into his hand, and asked him solicitously if he wasn’t really too cold. Bitterness flooded through him. “Meriadoc,” he snapped, “for heaven’s sake, you needn’t treat me like glass! I can ride gently for an afternoon without breaking, as a point of fact.”

Merry stood stock still, and a dull red blush crept up his throat. “Frodo,” he said, “I’m sorry, I –”

Frodo sighed, quickly regretting the sharpness of his tone. He'd never been wont to speak to Merry in that way, not even when his cousin had been a foolish fauntling grabbing at his heels. “Oh, Merry,” he said, “I’m sorry, dear heart. I’m only a crotchety old hobbit who ought to learn gratitude. I can sometimes forget,” he added, looking upwards into Merry’s warm brown eyes, “when I see how tall and strong you’ve grown, that none of us yet possesses all wisdom.”

“I’ve missed you,” Merry told him, and Frodo sighed with relief that all was forgiven, silently giving thanks for Merry's generous heart. “There’s been so much to do, these last months,” Merry went on, “and my father has kept a near grip on me.” He smiled wryly. “I do not think that he approves entirely of my rash and sudden way of leaving the Shire, and without his permission to boot.”

“Those sound to my ears like his words, not yours. I suppose he’s over the moon with contentment that you’ve been staying here, and not moved back into the Hall?”

Merry snorted boyishly, dropping for a moment his new dignity. “Oh, he’s spitting nails. And I shan’t even mention Mum’s views on the matter. But I don’t care. I am a hobbit grown, and I intend to manage my affairs as best I see fit.” His lower lip jutted mulishly, in a gesture that Frodo remembered well from his boyhood.

“Your poor, poor parents,” he sighed. “How I’ve repaid them for their long kindnesses to me!” A deep feeling of culpability arose in his heart, and he looked in dismay at the changes he’d wrought in the once-peaceful family of his long-ago benefactors.

“They’ll be all right, once they get used to it,” Merry retorted. “At any rate, Frodo, you’re not to go getting any ideas that this is somehow all your fault. You did your best, cousin, to hide your troubles from us all, and to keep us safe. You’re certainly not to blame for our travels! I’m not sorry, you know,” he added gently. “It was very much for the best that we went with you. Don’t carry sorrow about with you for a failing that was all to the good.”

Frodo put down his teacup; the tea tasted over-strong on his tongue, intense and bitter. “And yet how can I not?” he asked, looking at his tall-grown cousin. “How can I not see traces of the hurts you’ve suffered, and Pippin, and my Samwise, and not be reminded that I was the cause of it all?”

Merry looked at him sideways. “Perhaps in the same way you’re entirely too intent on pretending like your own aches and scars don’t exist?” he said. “My dear Frodo, you cannot expect to wrack yourself with guilt over our war wounds and yet have your own – which are far, far worse, I might add – remain unnoticed. Or did you think we didn’t know how unwell you feel, and how often?”

Frodo sagged in his chair, heavy, boneless. The setting sun painted everything over all crimson. He might have been sitting in a dream for how real the world around him felt. “Sam knows, of course, for how could I keep anything from him? And of course he anticipates me always. He was there beside me through it all, and saw the worst with his own eyes. But Merry, I don’t want you to know those things about me!” he very nearly wailed. “I would give anything for things to be as they were before, to not feel the weight of your eyes on me at odd moments, to not have to carry with myself for all time the memory of that torment and my - ” He stopped himself just short of saying failure.

“You forget, Frodo, that I saw you at Cormallen, where the Eagles brought you down. Do you truly think that I could ever forget? You’ve been holding apart from the world, Frodo dear, burying yourself in with that book, and I shan’t have it.”

Worry welled up like a poisoned spring in Frodo's thoughts. “Merry, you would tell me, wouldn’t you, if there were anything amiss with you, or with Pip?”

“Of course, cousin. You’re the one who likes to keep secrets. For that matter, have you ever known Pip to take a hurt of any kind and not immediately send out a post bulletin? Poor Pippin – the Tooks have set their talons into him firmly, and I sometimes wonder if he will be let to leave the Great Smials before he comes of age.”

“Now, then, Merry,” Frodo admonished, clinging tightly to the less agonizing direction of conversation, “you can scarcely expect Paladin to let his son gallivant about with you forever! You young hobbits have a great deal of settling down to do, a fact of which I’m sure your elders will frequently remind you. And after all, it’s not like you haven’t carried their prized heir off to live in an out-of-the-way house in Buckland!”

Merry’s eye twinkled, and the sight of it salved Frodo’s heart. “It’s no trick, really,” Merry said, “once you realize that no one, not even the Thain, can stand up against Pippin’s pleading looks. I know I cannot. But bless the lad, he doesn’t take too much advantage, and he only mentions his great prowess in slaying trolls three or four times a week.”

Frodo laughed, and Merry took away his full teacup and pulled the cork from a bottle in its stead. “Mind,” he said offhandedly as he fished out a plate of cheese and flatbread to go with the wine, “that you don’t push Samwise away from yourself because of all this. I know that you don’t like having been seen by anyone in your time of trouble, but you need his help and his understanding. There are scars on you that I cannot understand or heal. Nowadays it’s Sam that knows you best, as it used to be me. Trust him – he has hobbitsense to spare, and a deal of love for you.”

Frodo stared at him open-mouthed, not knowing what to say or to do, but Merry peremptorily dismissed his anxieties by sitting down to table with nothing more shocking to say than the latest Buckland gossip, and Frodo allowed himself to relax into the comforting flow of engagements, snubs, and various other small scandals.

He and Merry went walking the Marish the next day, and Frodo decidedly enjoyed the strong green smells of the woods and fields, the feel of spring sunlight on his back, and the comfortable, simple friendship of his cousin. His find of half-a-dozen early mushrooms did nothing to dampen his mood. And when he said farewell to Crickhollow, riding home alone and leaving Merry to prepare the larder against Peregrin’s imminent arrival, he was almost overwhelmed by the hopeful joy that swept through him. It was spring in the Shire, and all the hurts of the land were disappearing behind a lace of sticky buds and early snowdrops.

He was blessedly free from pain, and though old ghosts still threatened from the back corners of his mind, he felt for the first time, perhaps, since they’d left Ithilien nearly a year before, that there was some chance of his story ending well after all. But he held in his thoughts Merry’s warning – he had been hiding himself from Sam somewhat, trying to efface himself and let Sam get on unhindered with his task of replanting and replenishing, and if he told true he missed his gardener nearly as much as he’d missed his cousins.

Frodo urged his pony into an out gallop, feeling the wind rushing against his face and pulling at his clothes as he rode home through the sweet green-scented air.


3. They were waiting for me when I thought that I just couldn’t go on

Number Three Bagshot Row was shut up tight, with no light nor noise emanating from within, when he rode by in the gloaming. Frodo frowned – he’d meant to collect Sam on his way up the Hill, but clearly neither Sam nor his Gaffer nor any of his sisters were in. Which did not seem entirely right, for a Hevensday evening. But he trotted on up the path, meaning at least to change his travel-worn clothes before setting out in search of his errant gardener.

He need not have thought of searching, as he soon found to considerable dismay.

Bag End was ablaze with lamps, and when Frodo tested the latch the unlocked door swung open. There was no one visible in the hall, and he could hear no voices in the front parlor, but it was clear that someone was present in his hole despite this. He left his grey cloak hanging on a peg and walked back into the smial, towards his rooms and Sam’s, to see if he could discover the commotion.

He heard a moan from Sam’s room, and then a sound of low voices, and then Frodo stood aghast in Sam’s doorway. Sam was prone on the bed, bare to the waist, and an ugly wound to his neck slowly bled onto white linen. May Gamgee bent over him, holding a bowl of steaming, pungent water, and she started up with a cry when she saw Frodo. The Gaffer, who had been nodding at the small table, awoke at the noise.

“Oh, Mr. Frodo!” May gasped. “Oh, thank all stars you’ve got home! We weren’t sure if we ought to send for you, but Sam wouldn’t let us, though if he’d worsened any the more I’d have sent for all that.”

Frodo wavered, shocked, dizzy, and clutched at the doorpost. “May?” he said faintly, “what – “

“Here, May,” Gaffer Gamgee said, rising to his feet. “Do be letting the Master come in and set hisself down. Here, then, Mr. Baggins.” he said, taking Frodo by the arm and leading him to the seat beside Sam’s bedstead. Sam did not move, but lay perfectly still on the counterpane, insensible. His skin was pale beneath his tan, and his bright hair straggled with sweat.

The Gaffer resumed his own chair. “Sam were took ill early this morning, sir,” he said, “and as he was already here going about the place I didn’t think it good to move him. Fell badly, when the fit first took him, and wasn’t nowise in his right mind when I found him – I’d come up with him to take sight of the gardens, and I heard him call out. Was cold and still as the grave, and quiet, sir, but for some Elvish-sounding business that I didn’t hear at any way clear. And then there was that ghastly hurt to his neck!”

Frodo gently pulled back the bandaging that surrounded the wound, noting rather distantly as he did so that the torn flesh surrounding the puncture was fever-hot. Sam twitched and moaned beneath his touch, and the sound of his friend’s pain was so terribly familiar to Frodo that it sent him reeling back into dark memories – suffering, fear, fever, long hours of dust and emptiness and fire. Unthinking, he pulled his hand back from Sam’s sickened body and clutched at Arwen’s jewel, where it hung about his neck.

“We did go for the Widow Rumble,” May was saying, “and she did all that she could for him yestereve. But she hadn’t much to do, or so she told me, but to keep him clean and to give him what doses she could for the pain. We’ve been nursing him all this day, sir, and not seen much improvement noways.”

“Has he been awake?” Frodo asked.

May shook her curly head. “No, not as I would say, though he does mumble on time to time. Nought to my understanding, sir, and nothing as would tell us how he came by such a hurt.”

Frodo leaned forward again over Sam’s prone form, and looked once more at the wound. He felt as though a terrible knowledge were waiting at the back of his mind, waiting to tear through him and out. “It’s 13 Rethe today,” he said abstractedly, and May nodded.

Darkness and foul dreams, he thought, and seemed to hear from a great distance Sam’s voice, broken through with tears, begging him not to go. A feeling as of being consumed from the inside out, and a torment of loss mixed strangely with a childlike peace. “Torech Ungol,” he muttered, still more than half lost in recognition, and then as if the words had torn aside an obscuring veil he saw everything clearly – Sam was bleeding from the exact spot where, on Frodo’s body a year before, Shelob’s sting had pierced and poisoned.

“How,” he gasped, breathless with the shock of it. “It isn’t – no sense – ” But it did make an awful sort of sense, as Frodo thought back over the last days, remembered Sam’s tiredness, and the extra layers of clothes he’d worn to ward off chills, and more than anything else the dampening sorrow and depression that had clung about the usually ebullient hobbit. “Oh, Samwise,” he said, letting himself curl around Sam’s pillow, burying his face in the tousled tawny curls, “how on earth did you do it? And why? My poor dear Sam., I would have given anything for you to be spared this, but the way has not been kind to us yet, and I suppose I should not be so surprised.”

Behind him, Gaffer Gamgee coughed, and Frodo recalled with a start that the world did not in fact contain only himself and Samwise. Disentangling himself from Sam, he rose to fairly steady feet. “I know what the matter is with him,” Frodo said to the Gaffer, but then hesitated, not wanting entirely for what was after all his private business to be noised abroad. “An ailment left over from our journey,” he said at last, telling no lies but hiding the entire truth.

The Gaffer looked up at him with damp eyes. “Do ye know ought to do for it, Master Baggins?”

“It should pass by morning,” Frodo said, trying to puzzle through what seemed to be one of his anniversary illnesses from the outside in – he hadn’t remembered much of the dark spell he’d had in October, being then himself consumed with pain and recollection. “But if not … Sam brought some athelas back with us from Rivendell, unless I’m much mistaken, and I would be very surprised indeed if that did not give him some ease. I will go and look.”

May wordlessly slid into the place beside the sickbed Frodo had vacated, and at her gentle touch Sam made a small, low sound of pain. In a quick, instinctual response, too quick for notice or conscious thought, Frodo slipped the white jewel over his head and pressed in into Sam’s limp hand, and then hurried away, for the moment unable to bear the sight of the torn, fevered body that had carried him through so much.

The purse of athelas was tucked away at the top of the spice rack, asëa aranion jumbled with tarragon and rosemary and ginger. Frodo smiled at the sight of it and then felt very near to tears – it was so like Sam to keep it there with all the other mundane trappings of their everyday lives. He got water heated despite the trembling in his hands, and bore the resultant infusion back to the sickroom.

The Gaffer sighed deeply as the scented steam drifted into the air and May’s face brightened and relaxed. Frodo did not feel his spirits lift, but watched Sam’s lax face closely as May took the bowl from him and bathed the wound. “Bind the leaves to it when you’ve finished, May,” he said. “The virtue should continue to work in him that way.”

They ceded to him the nearest seat, and after May finished wrapping her brother’s neck in clean linen bandages, she bobbed her head to him politely and took the Gaffer’s hand, leading him away.

“Feel free to stay as long as you’d like, May, Hamfast,” Frodo said. “There are accommodations open on the south corridor, I believe.”

“That’s all right, Mr. Frodo,” May said quietly. “I think it best Da rests for a night in ‘is own home, though it’s sure as sunrise some one of the family will be back in the morning. You don’t mind doing the nursey work? As I could send Daisy up, were you to want a rest yourself, sir.”

Frodo shook his head, stroking down along Sam’s broad shoulders, tracing the bone curve of the shoulder blade. “He’ll be better soon,” he said, “and your family needn't be in a hurry tomorrow, either. I can care for him well enough myself.” May bobbed her head again and left, helping the Gaffer along down the hall.

Left alone, Frodo slipped into strange half-dreams, waking only to puzzle through stranger labyrinthine thoughts. Sam lay in his bed, the scent of athelas still clinging to him, and Frodo was comforted by the radiant warmth of Sam’s body, the rhythmic rise and fall of his breath.

Sometimes Sam was stirred by anxious fever dreams, crying out Elvish invocations, calling for
Frodo in long lamenting wails, and more frighteningly muttering at times beneath his breath of
dark things he should not know, ancient nightmares and terrible echoes of the Ringspell that
Frodo himself remembered so terribly well. Frodo found himself turning Sam’s resistless body,
cradling Sam’s head in his lap, repeating over and over to him words that had been spoken
before, telling Sam that he was not dreaming, that all was not lost. Frodo felt utterly adrift in time
and place, was not at all sure of where or when or who he was. In the long hours of the night,
everything took on a strangely indeterminate quality, and it only added to his confusion that his
own dream-memories so often bled into Sam’s delirium, but backwards.

Frodo had been so happy, these last days. The veil of pain and weakness that had covered over
his world had lifted, and he'd felt strong and cheerful, able to join the waking world. Able to enjoy Merry and Pippin's company, as he used to. Able to care for Samwise, as Samwise had so often cared for him. But he realized, as he looked down at Sam's twisted body amid the bedclothes, that he had become more of a burden to his friend than ever before, and that the price that Sam had paid for his joy was in Sam's own sweat and tears and blood.

It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning, when the wan light was beginning to be enough to see by, that Sam clearly spoke.

Frodo saw the light reflecting off of Sam’s eyes as they fluttered open, and he leaned in to clasp Sam’s hand in his own. “Good morning, Sam-lad,” he said, brushing Sam’s hair back from his brow. The fever-heat was gone from Sam’s skin, and he peered up sensibly.

“Mr. Frodo? I didn’t expect you back from Buckland so soon, or I’d – oh!” he broke off with a cry, having tried unwisely to spring up from the bed, and feeling the pain and exhaustion of the previous day fully. “Have I been ill?” he asked, hazel eyes as wide as saucers.

Hot tears sprang unbidden to Frodo’s eyes, and he felt lightheaded and shaky. “Oh Sam,” he said, pressing Sam’s hand against his cheek. “My Samwise. I don’t know what it is you’ve done, but I swear to you that I’ll put all to rights.”

A crease appeared between Sam’s brows. “Sir, please, if you’d just be telling me what’s come to pass? I seem to’ve lost a fair bit of time, and I’m right moithered at present.”

Frodo said nothing, but guided Sam’s hand round to the bandaged wound. Sam’s fingers felt round the edges, and then his open, cheerful face went blank. “There’s a puncture at the back of your neck,” Frodo told him, “too large to have been made by any beast in these parts. Your Gaffer found you yesterday morning, and you were already quite insensate with the poison of it. Sam, it’s mid-Rethe, a year now since you fought off the great spider in Torech Ungol.”

Frodo looked at Sam steadily, trying to conceal his wince at how pale and drawn his gardener’s broad, cheerful face had become. “Sam, do you recollect aught of how you came by such a wound? For I more than suspect that I’ve known these symptoms of illness before.”

Sam’s brow furrowed anxiously. “For all truth, Mr. Frodo, it’s beyond my kenning. And … sir, I take your meaning plain enough as to the illness, which I’ll admit are right enough the twin of that awful sting you suffered yourself, away at the edge of the Black Land. But I don’t know what any of it means, sir, and that’s a fact.”

Frodo examined Sam’s well-known face closely, poring over each beloved, familiar, pain-stained feature. He knew that Sam could no more tell him a sober untruth than he could fly off to the moon, but a prickle of intuition, perhaps of the hobbitsense that he’d begun to despair of in himself, warned him that nothing about this matter was simple.

But before he could press him further, Sam spoke up of his own volition. “The only thing I’ve thought of,” he said slowly, “and the thought has been rather running through my mind, sir – and you mustn’t think me foolish for it, but – well, sir, nigh on a week ago now I made a wish, and I wonder if it hasn’t come near to coming true.”

The blood drained from Frodo’s face in a rush; he had a horrible presentiment as to the nature of Sam’s wish, though he could not find words for what he felt. “Tell me,” he said.

The words did not come easily to Sam’s lips, and in the long moment of his silence a spring frog struck up a repetitive, peeping note outside the open window. At last Sam’s honest face twisted round itself, the curve of his mouth harsh with tension. “Frodo,” he said, low, guttural, “I’ve eyes well enough, and I’ve seen for a long time now that you’re not well. You’ve tried to hide it from me, aye, but how could you think to blind me to your suffering when you’re all the sights in the world I’ve any liking to see? And it only seems to get worse, sir, when by rights things ought to be mending up.” He broke off with what sounded a great deal like a stifled sob. But quickly he mastered himself, and went on, “I remembered, sir, that in that black place all I could do was to help you carry the weight of it. And – oh, Frodo, I wished that there were some way I could do that work for you again.”

“You wished to take my pain upon yourself,” Frodo whispered, aghast. “Oh, but Sam, why?”

Tears stood bright in Sam’s eyes, and his voice was tight with sorrow. “I don’t regret naught of it, Mr. Frodo, not now that I’ve some feeling of what it’s been like for you. I did know of the nightmares, and of the pain at your shoulder, but I’d no idea … every moment of every day, you feel it still? And you didn’t tell me? I’d rather suffer so myself, sir, than see you borne down with it. You’ve been happy these few days, I’ve seen it plain as speaking in your face. Like it used to be, sir, before, and it’s given me such happiness to see it.”

“You know that I can’t let you do this, Sam.”

“I know no such thing, sir, and what’s more I don’t see as how you’ll be undoing this, considering how’s we don’t know how t’was done.”

Frodo felt like weeping, felt mocked by the bright happiness of the Hobbiton morning around them, felt utter revulsion and disgust at the health and comfort and strength of his own body – borrowed, as he now knew, at Sam’s expense. It could never be repaid. The debt weighed heavy on his heart.

“I will mend this; you have my oath on it,” he said. “In the meanwhile, let’s turn towards getting you back on your feet again, Sam-lad.”

Sam smiled at him softly, and Frodo wondered how much of his own mind Sam could read, even as ill and drained of vitality as he was.

All through that day Sam continued to grow steadily stronger, life returning to his face and steadiness to his limbs. But it was a strange sort of reversal, and Frodo felt that Sam must feel it as keenly as did he himself. Such familiar circumstances they’d become in the last month, now happening backwards, wrong sides out. Frodo quickly found that shared experience of pain was no match for Sam’s long habituation to care, attention, and nurturance. He felt awkward and unsure, and was more than relieved when Daisy and May came tromping up the Hill toward midday.

Daisy, who’d always regarded herself in the light of Sam’s mother, blustered in with chatter and inquiries and swift busy hands. Sam was quiet, but smiled at his sisters, and Frodo grasped at the chance to slip away from the sickroom to the sanctuary of the parlor.

It had been terribly unnerving, to see Sam so frail. Always Samwise had been as Frodo’s own strength, his sturdy staff, his anchor through storm and wind. Faithful Sam, never faltering. Sam’s strength had lasted them through torment and hunger and endless miles of hostile land, and the very idea of it wavering shook Frodo deeply. He depended so completely on Sam – was there food for the day in the larder? Would the delicate new shoots in the garden die, now that they’d gone days without water? In truth, Frodo had only the vaguest of ideas as to how one went about watering a garden.

“Pull yourself together, silly Baggins,” he said to himself aloud. “If you cannot manage your own smial, being in strong health, then you are either brainless or spineless, if not both at once. See to the food stores, and ask Sam about the garden, or perhaps the Gaffer can tend to it, and then … well, you can think about then when you get there.”

It turned out that May had already considerately taken care of her brother’s green and growing things, but Frodo found that numerous accounts had accumulated during his absence in Buckland which had completely slipped his mind due to the events since, and furthermore there were several legal matters which required his attention as Acting Mayor. He spent the rest of the afternoon cloistered away in his study, letting the quiet methodical work steal his mind away from its worries.

The book lying open at the workdesk mocked him with its recollection of pain, but he shut it up and cleared the table of all his notes. Never the less, it preyed on his mind. At long last, Frodo gave up on pretense and let his head fall forward into his hands. His mind shied away from notice of the empty space where the fourth finger should have pressed against his temple, recoiling desperately from yet further dark recollections. Was he truly as weak, as deeply ill, as all that? To so quickly reduce a hobbit of Sam’s strength and constitution to such a pass? He felt a deep revulsion at his maimed body, too thin and marked with scars, crowned by that terrible, ugly wreck of a hand. He had not realized, until he saw his own fragility writ large on his gardener’s body, just how pathetic and lifeless he’d become.

Taking up his pen again, he began a letter to Merry and Pippin. He didn’t think he was strong enough to mend this tangle on his own.

4-6 7-9

Comments

[aiffe]

Ahhh, this is beautiful. The mood is perfect. Please tell me there will be more!

[lotesse]

oh yeah. The whole thing should be up by the end of the week! Last parts just have to be proofed.

Glad you're enjoying it!

[aiffe]

:D This makes me very happy. I look forward to it!

[(Anonymous)]

This is such a lovely piece of work. Poor Sam, it is terrible to see him suffer, but they all have such love for each other.

Incidentally, I was delighted to see the Saltmarsh poem on your sidebar. I haven't seen it since I was ten, and now I can hear my teacher reciting it. It's very Gollum-like.

[lotesse]

Thanks!

I always associate "Saltmarsh" with "The Morlocks," from the Adventures of Tom Bombadil - I read each for the first time in the same anthology of children's poetry.

[lbilover]

Oh, this is such an intriguing premise, and so beautifully written. It is very heart-breaking for both of them: Sam taking on Frodo's illness, and Frodo wracked with guilt for gaining his health at the expense of Sam's. I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the story. Thank you.

(Came via a link in a google alert, btw...)

[lotesse]

(google alert? that's pretty cool!)

thank you so much - this whole fic is pretty much me trying to UN-break my heart, so :)

[lbilover]

The google alert linked to your post in the hobbit_slash community, just so you know. Hopefully others will find it that way, too. There's precious little new Frodo and Sam these days, especially long Frodo and Sam! :)

I was taking comfort from the hurt/comfort part of your description. There can't be enough un-breaking of hearts where Frodo and Sam are concerned. Thanks again!

[lavendertook]

Oh wow! This is so wonderfully written! The dialog is spot on, and the way you've drawn the natural details around them of the weather, the garden, the spring growth, is very much to the spirit of the source. Of course Sam would do this if he could, and of course Frodo would be completely wrecked and full of self-loathing about it and the skillful care-taking he had been the recipient of from Sam--and yet ready to do all he could about it. Oh, I hope his cousins are as capable of helping them as they had once been.

I like how respectfully you've sidestepped Rosie. Mary's PGY is wonderful, and I don't know if you're not familiar with them, but timberwolfoz has some great S/F fics working toward S/F/R in her Pagan Shire series

[lotesse]

Thank you! I do quite like Rose, and I really don't like being *that* fan with regard to her, so respect is important to me. I'm really glad that came across.

I will have to check out the Pagan Shire series - it's not one that I'm familiar with. Yay! New fic!

[lavendertook]

My link didn't go thru--it's here:

http://timbersfics.insanejournal.com/profile

[slashfairy]

yes. just yes.

[lotesse]

*grin*