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lotessetitle: (bind you with love that is) graceful and green as a stem, 7-9/9
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. thanks and endearments to my beta,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lozlan.
1-3 4-6
7. Oh, I hope you run into them, you who've been traveling so long
Sam blinked his eyes open, finding it a harder task than he'd rightly expected. He was in his room at Bag End, and wasn't that a pleasant confounding of his expectations? He'd thought to have waked in some wild place free from help, hungry and thirsty and tired but with many more miles to go. Or perhaps to not have waked at all. Hungry he was, well enough, and thirsty too, but his attention was stolen from those wants by the warm weight pressed up against his right side. He turned in the bed to look, and there was Frodo asleep beside him, looking pale and drawn in his sleep.
The master was pressed so close by him that they were very nearly embracing, and he could feel Frodo's hand resting against his shoulder, as if Frodo had held on to him in sleep. Dark, bruised circles ringed his closed eyes, and his lashes were long and ink-black against the pallor of his skin.
Sam raised a wondering hand to cup the back of Frodo's neck, noticing as he did so the trembling weakness that assailed him. He pulled himself up on one shockingly weak elbow, still looking down at his sleeping master. “Have I been ill?” he wondered to himself, voice coming out dry and croaking and over-used – almost, he thought fleetingly, as if he'd been screaming. Then memory came flooding back: Frodo, the Quest, the illnesses, his wish. The pain and the misery he'd taken from Frodo, the way it'd felt as if nothing should ever be cheerful again, the darkness that had covered his eyes and mind and heart.
“Frodo,” he murmured, “what's happened to me? I don't remember the last few days at all.”
He nearly started out of his skin when Mr. Pippin spoke up from beside the bed, “That's because you've been unconscious for the better part of two of them, Sam. I'm glad to see you awake at last!” Pippin's voice was, indeed, brimming with suppressed jubilation, but his tone was little more than a whisper. “I imagine you're thirsty,” he said, “and I'll be off in a jiffy for some herb-tea for you, but I don't want to wake Frodo yet. He's sat by you, and taken no rest for himself at all, and he's got pretty run down. You'll likely sleep again soon, which is all for the best.” And with a forcibly sunny smile he popped up from his chair and was off.
“Two days, master?” he said. “It must've got bad, for you to be worked up in such a state. But bless me! I feel stronger this morning, for all that I'm a bit shaky and tired, than I have for weeks! Or mayhap not stronger, but better, somehow.”
He smelled the tea before Mr. Pippin ever cleared the doorway. It was a blend of his own devising: peppermint and rue, with a bit of lemon peel thrown in for bite. It smelled like heaven, and Pippin scarcely had time to hand him the mug before he was drinking it greedily down.
“Slowly, slowly!” said a new voice, and Sam peeked up above the mug's rim to see Mr. Merry smiling broadly at him, though his voice was cautioning. “Too much at once and you'll be sick, Sam. Take it slow, and then you can lie back down for another sleep. You look as though you needed it.”
“Thankee, Mr. Merry,” he said, and was relieved to hear his own voice sounding less like a death-rattle and more like a proper hobbit's tones. “Save for thirst, I think I might have been asleep again already.”
“Sleep, then,” said Pippin. “Everything can wait until you're rested.”
Sam very nearly resigned himself to sleep, pulling up at the last moment. “Merry!” he said, short and harsh. “Merry! The star-jewel. I still have it. He -”
Merry pulled the little white gem up from where it had been resting against Sam's breast. “He'll need it again, won't he? Don't worry, Sam, I'll see to it.” Sam felt a stab of sorrow, piercing and somehow sweet, as the jewel left his grasp, and he watched it glimmer at the end of its silver chain as Merry bore it off.
When Sam woke again, Frodo was gone, and he was alone.
He could feel renewed vigor and strength rushing through him, beating powerfully through his veins. The strength to carry on, to hope against hope, to set his shoulder to the wheel and never stint until the long task was done, was his again, and he gloried in it even as he lay still and quiet. The green and gold and pink of a Shire noon very nearly overwhelmed him with the sheer intensity of their sensation, and he marveled at how colorless his world must had become, that a simple day could cause his breath to come quicker.
Following swiftly on that thought's heels was the more sobering one that for Frodo, once again the world must be leeched of color. Nothing was mended. Instead, they were right back where they'd started, and soon he'd see Frodo grown thin and solemn again, lost in his pain and misery.
But it was worse than that even, for as Sam lay still he realized that he had not known, had never truly known, the depth of his master's suffering. He had known that Frodo was occasionally unwell, of course, and known too that he was often melancholy, but he'd had no idea that it was so all-encompassing a hurt as all that. It had been bad beyond his imagining.
Frodo must have hidden it from him, and must have taken some care to do so.
That was where they stood – not where they'd been before, which had been bad enough, but somewhere else all together. Sam had thought, before, that it wasn't so bad, or that it might be getting better. He knew now that neither of those things were true, for he'd felt them himself.
But it would not be the same with Frodo as it had been with himself. For one thing, there was the vast difference in temperament – and for another, the difference in history, for Sam was accustomed to exhaustion and discomfort, and Frodo had old sorrows buried away at the back of his heart to torment himself with. Frodo was no simple, cheery, bluff working lad such as he'd lived with all his life, such as he'd been himself, but a high-spirited, delicate soul, seeing further than most but needing more care as well. Not that Frodo lacked strength – he'd a formidable will, which once set was stronger than iron or steel, and as Sam knew well Frodo would pursue his task through suffering and past death. But sorrows struck in deep with his heart, buried themselves and put down roots that were both tough and tangled.
No, Sam was certain that things must have been very bad for his master, and were like to become so again. And a chill crept down his spine at the thought of what might lie ahead for them. Neither health nor long life, that Saruman had said. Sam was terrified that his words might prove a true foretelling after all.
There was a noise in the hall, breaking against his troubled thoughts, and then Daisy came bustling in, with Merry in tow, laden down with panaceas. “There you are, Sam,” she said. “I was wondering when you'd wake. We've been fair worried about 'ee, but the master said as you was but ill. Da would be here himself to see you up, but he's had a bad bout of rheumatism, and I told him not to bother coming out, for I'd see to you myself.”
Surrendering to the busy ministrations of his sister, whose will had always been the law in sickrooms, particularly since she'd been his dear mother's nurse at the end of things, Sam nevertheless tried to catch Merry's eye, wanting to know the place and condition of his master. Merry sat beside him while Daisy added her liniments and potions of the hot water he'd carried in, and nodded, as if pleased by something. “Frodo's all right,” he said in an undertone, “only resting, but he does not seem any more ill now than you do, for all that things seem to be the right way around again.”
“Don't trust to that, Mr. Merry, for he'll hide -”
“The master's kinsfolk don't need you to tell them their business, Samwise,” Daisy said, cutting him off by putting a well-aimed lozenge on his tongue. “And at any rate, it's you who has been ill, not him. Silly lad. You never have been any good at minding yourself.” She was sharp, in her own way, but she also smoothed down the coverlet around him as she'd done when he was but a child, and Sam knew that her sharpness concealed an affectionate, if exasperated, fondness, for he'd always been her pet.
Merry did not stay long, and Sam dearly hoped that he'd gone to Frodo instead, for he was afraid of what resumption of his heavy burden would do to his master. He was absorbed for a time in telling Daisy the tales of the kingdom away to the south that she'd asked for, but remembrances of old terrors had a tendency to lurk underneath such things, and his mind was not entirely quiet.
He did not see Frodo until tea-time was past and supper-time was passing, not until Daisy made her excuses and went down to get the Gaffer a bite and a sup, not until he pulled himself out of bed on legs that only shook beneath him a very little bit and ventured out into the smial.
Sam found Pippin first, mainly by the racket that the young Took was making by way of washing up in the kitchen. “In his study, where else?” Pippin answered his enquiry as to Frodo's whereabouts, and then added, “Merry was with him for a while, but then he said he wanted to work, and we thought it best to give him some time to himself.”
“Best?” Sam said. “Aye, best if you want him lost in his own head! But I suppose he near ordered you outright, for he must be feeling a need for solitude about now, as he always does when he's troubled about something.”
“We can only do so much with him, you know, Sam.”
“I know it all too well, Mr. Pippin. But if you'll pardon me, I mean to go drag him out, if I can.”
“Better you than me,” Pippin said with a laugh, and then asked, “Are you hungry at all, Sam? For I'm sure there's something left from tea.”
“No thank you, sir,” Sam said, inwardly feeling very nearly angry that Pippin could still be laughing, after everything that had happened, and might yet come to pass. But then he shook himself – it was good that Mr. Peregrin's spirits had not been dimmed, and others hurting would not ease Frodo's suffering one bit. But it was with a galled heart that he knocked at the door of Frodo's sanctum, and with a fearful mind that he waited for the door to open, unsure as to what he would find.
The scene that met him inside was so prosaic and commonplace as to be anticlimactic: Frodo was sitting at the great desk, working – though the book was open to one side – on what looked to be correspondence. A cup of tea sat half-full and, Sam suspected, quite cold at his elbow, and there was an ink smudge at his left temple where he habitually reached up to push back his hair from his brow. His pen rested against his little finger, brushing against the gap of the one that had been lost.
He was pale enough, to be sure, but so he always was, and even before the quest he'd never had the same ruddiness of complexion that so many hobbits possessed. Tired, certainly, but not so badly – only tired as if he'd sat up nights, not tired as if he was being drained dry of life by eldritch powers or remembered scars.
As soon as he caught a clear sight of Sam, Frodo was on his feet and hurrying toward him. Sam was glad to see him steady on his legs, standing strong.
8. And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song
“Sam!” Frodo exclaimed, smiling and frowning and wrinkling his brow anxiously all at once. “My dear hobbit, how long have you been up? Ought you to be out of bed? Here, sit down at once. I'd give you tea, but I fear it's gone quite cold.”
“I'm all right, sir,” he said, “though I will take that seat, begging your pardon.”
Awkward silence covered over the room.
“It's changed back, hasn't it?” Sam asked at last, looking closely at his master's face for signs of unwellness.
Frodo sighed. “Yes, Sam, I think it has,” he said, “and that is very much for the best. I could not have borne many more such days as have passed of late.”
“And yet you still think I can,” Sam said gently. “Oh, Frodo, can't you see that you're asking me to do that very thing? To stand by and let you hurt, alone and helpless?”
“It isn't so bad as all that,” Frodo said, voice falsely bright.
Sam would have none of that. “It is so, sir,” he said, daring greatly to stand firm in his new-found understanding. “It can't be hid from me any longer sir, not now that I've felt it for myself.”
“No, I suppose I can't,” Frodo answered. “But I scarcely care about that, Sam; I'm so desperately glad to see you well and strong again.”
“No, don't you go changing the subject on me,” Sam said with a scowl. “This is important. I know, sir. I know everything. And I want you to swear to me, on all that we've ever held dear, that you'll not -” his voice broke raggedly, and he forced himself to swallow down a bitterness that threatened to become a sob, “that you'll not leave me on account of old hurts that are passed and gone by. I couldn't bear it, sir – it would rip my heart right out of my body, and then I'd die too for sure and all!”
Frodo turned his head, as if to gaze out the darkened window, but Sam could see that his eyes were unfocused, as if he were looking many thousands of miles off, or as if his eyes were turned inward rather than outward and he was bent on examining the workings of his own heart. “These have been such strange days,” he said softly, mayhap meaning his words only for himself. “Such strange days.”
Sam felt his chest draw tight, and his throat kindled with coals. So distant Frodo's voice was, so pale and grey, like mist before sunrise, burnt away in moments. His master had not answered his question, nor seemed aware of the deep desperation with which Sam had spoken. For all the passion Frodo showed regarding his own life, it might have been some old legend out of a song.
“Frodo,” he said, letting his voice, his spine, become straight cold steel, “you owe it to me to give me an answer. Promise me that you won't try to leave.”
Frodo blinked, as if awaking from a dream. “What do you know?” he asked, eyes gone flinty-sharp.
“I know how bleak it looks to you,” Sam answered back, steadfast and near afire with fervor. “I know how terribly your wounds pain you, and I know how dead the world looks to you sometimes, as if nothing would ever grow or be fruitful ever again. And I know, sir, from my own experiences, what you must be thinking. Of how release must tempt you.”
“Release? How so?”
Once again, as he had done in his delirium but now sane and self-possessed, Sam recalled those dreadful moments of anguish in Torech Ungol – the way that Sting's radiance had flashed upon Frodo's death-pale face, the easy seductive beauty of its mercifully sharp point.
“When you were – when I thought that you'd died, sir, and left me, back in that terrible dark place, I wanted nothing more than to fall down on your sword and die beside you,” he confessed at last, not allowing himself to hold anything back in secret, forcing the most naked description of the true way of things into the heavy air between them. He heard Frodo draw in a short, sharp breath, but he dared not look at his master until all his truths were spilled. “It was only the duty that stopped me,” he said. “But if I'd followed my heart, I'd have ended then and there. It's a good thing I didn't, as there'd have been no help for you then, in that tower full of orcs. But I wanted to so badly, Frodo, so badly – it hurt too much to be endured, and I only wanted it to stop.”
He could feel the tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, but he twisted them back; here was no time for crying. There was too much at stake. When he'd controlled himself, he met his master's eyes.
Frodo's face was buried in his hands, and his shoulders were hitching. “I'm so sorry, Sam,” he choked out at last, voice muffled by the nine fingers clamped over his mouth. “So sorry that I took you into that place of evil and despair. I ought not to have done it! For now I've darkened your life too, and you deserve nothing more than endless strings of sunlit days.”
Sam went to him then, and gently clasped Frodo's hands, pressing them to his own heart. “You still can't see that you do too?” he asked. “That this is wrong for us both? That I would rather stand by your side in suffering for a hundred years than have you suffer alone?”
When Frodo looked back up, his eyes had gone distant and emotionless, and when he spoke his voice was flat. “I suppose,” he said heavily, “that I shall have to tell you everything, if I am to be let out of this bargain without grieving you beyond my ability to do so. Very well: I have intended for some time to leave, Sam, only not in the manner that you suspect.” He held up a four-fingered hand to forestall the objections that sprang to Sam's lips, and Sam obeyed the implicit command, not knowing what else to do.
“I was told,” Frodo went on, “that my wounds might be too grave for healing. So it has proved to be. And I was also told that if I so chose, I might cross the Sea with the Elves, and find what peace I might Beyond. So I mean to do.” His voice as he spoke these words was terrible, flat and lifeless, dry and dispassionate. Not murky, but horribly precise, weighted down with understood significance.
“But that's no different!” Sam burst out, his heart and mind crying out as one against the dead certainty in his master's voice. “No different at all! You might as well fall on your sword and get it over with, if you're so keen to be rid of me. I shall feel the same.”
Frodo blanched pale. “I cannot stay here,” he said. “The pain is too great, and it will come again and again.”
“If you'll forgive my saying so, I know exactly how great. And I know this too: when things were all dark for me, and it burned and froze at me, I still felt joy in my heart at knowing you were near me, and I still took comfort at the touch of your hand. I've not done by you as I ought, sir, and I've left you alone with your hurts. But I won't again, and it will be easier with me by your side. We've come through the worst and lived to tell the tale. We'll beat back the echoes yet.”
Frodo turned his face away, sighing deeply. “I shall never be well, Sam. I cannot continue to burden you, knowing that as I do.”
“Your loss would be the burden to break me, Master, not your need. But you're thinking only of the darkness, sir, and you oughtn't. I know it's right awful, sometimes, but sometimes isn't always, as you might say. There are good days enough.” Sam paused, drew in a deep breath. “It's not really fair for me to say such things, though, not when I'm not the one that would be hurting. I'll only say, Frodo, that if you were to leave me, I'd mourn you all the days of my life. And for all that Elves are wondrous folk, sir, I can't see that they can do anything to care for you that I can't! Not a one of them loves you so dear as I do, nor knows you so well.”
He drew Frodo to him, clasping his master to his breast. Bending over him, he whispered harshly against his temple, “Don't leave me, sir.”
“I don't deserve you,” Frodo said brokenly, turning away. “Not after -”
“After what?” Sam very nearly wailed into the long quiet gulf of Frodo's words. “After what, sir, for I've no idea what you could have done that would be so bad! After suffering, and choosing to suffer more, and doing all that was asked of you though they asked for far too much, and all coming back alive even so? Tell me.”
Frodo's eyes dropped like stones in a river, and he said nothing. “Frodo,” Sam choked out, “if I'm to lose you to this secret, at least tell me what it is. Please.”
Frodo sighed, and was suddenly abstracted once more. Gone was the tense-strung intimacy between them, and in its place were the cold comforts of philosophy, learning, distance.
“Well, then, my dear Sam, it's just this: I did not do all that was asked of me. And in not doing so, I ceased to be deserving of anything at all.”
Samwise felt himself very near laughing with the sick irony of it all, and hastily swallowed down his hysteria. “And you thought that was a secret from me? That I'd somehow managed to forget your face and your voice when you laid your claim to that awful thing? Never, Mr. Frodo. Not if I live to be a hundred and fifty.”
It was no more than the truth. Frodo had been terrifyingly beautiful, standing there at the edge of the Fire like a lord out of a tale, holding his prize aloft in the red light with its gold gleaming reflected in his mad, unseeing eyes.
“But you've always been stronger than me, sir,” Samwise went on. “Since I was just a lad, and you were the one to go for answers to the most tangled knots. And it's only proof of your strength that you could stand at all with It strung about your neck. I could tell well enough when I carried it that in a few months it would've eaten everything in me, left naught but a husk, just as it did to that Gollum. You, now – you carried it for years, sir, into all that fire and darkness where it only grew stronger. Even without It on my finger, I could feel the crushing weight of It once we reached the mountain. And you stood there like a king, or a wizard, and I knew watching you that you could've bent the world to your will easily enough.”
“As if I'd ever want such a thing,” Frodo muttered bitterly.
“Well, no, sir. Of course you wouldn't. But when I held It, It offered me all sorts of things that I'd never want for in my right mind, but there in the Black Land they were dreadfully tempting. And I think I could only give It up, in the end, because I couldn't bear to do you harm.”
“And you think I could bear it?”
“No. I think that temptation comes according to strength, and that's a fact. If It tempted me sorely, as It did, and me as unable to wield It as would be any bird or beast, then how could It not have pressed you all the harder?”
Frodo made as if to speak, his face terribly pale and set, eyes burning with suppressed intensity, but Sam pressed his advantage, and refused to allow his master to cut him short. “You must have known,” he said insistently, “that they weren't dreams It was offering you, but real enough chances. I'm saying that your burden was heavier than mine, sir, and that it was dreadful hard for even me to carry. But it was only heavier around your neck because, down at the core of you, you're stronger than the oldest oak, or the finest steel.”
Sam did not know what else to do, besides talk. He cursed fortune, away at the back of his mind, for leaving such important speech-making to one as awkward-tongued as he, but there was nothing else for it. Frodo yet looked downcast, distant, troubled. The thought of the Grey Havens, of the white ships and far-off Elvenhome, stabbed at him sharply.
“Frodo,” he said with a deeply-indrawn breath, “I truly don't believe that anyone could've done what you did. Not Strider, and not the Lady, and for sure not me. I saw everything, and what's more I understood it all. I've never once thought less of you for aught you may've done, sir, and that's a fact. Nor does anyone else. And if you … leave … me now because of something you never did do wrong, it'll break my heart and will, and I hope that if such a day comes I can lay down beside you and die, for it'll mean my failure more than yours. It was my task to keep you safe and whole and sane and living, and I'll have failed as completely as ever a hobbit could. I know I'm naught but a simple fool, but sir, I didn't think I'd done as badly as all that. Have I?”
He found that he was weeping, fat tears rolling down his cheeks, and he held tight to Frodo's maimed hand, pressing loving touches again and again to the scarred wound.
And then Frodo was turning in his arms, pressing back against Sam with equal fervor, weeping
openly and noisily. It was as if Frodo were grieving for the self that had died at the Fiery Mountain, for he was right to think that things could never go back to being the way they had once been. Frodo was changed indelibly, grown more solemn and sad, something in him broken forever and something in him changed irrevocably from earth and blood to pure light. He could never be the same; but Sam loved him all the more for those changes.
“Will you stay?” he asked, and in answer Frodo nodded wearily against his now-damp weskit. “It will be all right, Frodo,” he said, rocking his master in his arms as if he were no more than a faunt. “It will be all right. I'll never leave you in the darkness, sir, and I'll always be at your side, whenever you're in need of me. And things will start to grow again all over the Shire, and Bag End will look more itself with the gardens restored, just you wait and see. And then, maybe, someday it might not pain you so deeply. No hobbit could deserve more than you, my dear.”
At last, Frodo pulled back from the embrace, and to Sam's eyes he looked somehow washed clean, for all that his face was tearstained. “Keep telling me, Samwise,” he said softly. “Somehow, I believe you when you tell me that I do. My hope unquenchable.”
“Speaking of quenching, sir,” said Sam, winning a laugh from Frodo at his sudden change of tone, “there's Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin in the kitchen – or at least, they were the last I saw of them – and Mr. Pippin was in the way of making up a fresh kettle of tea. You said yours was cold, and for sure if it wasn't then it will be now.”
Smiling, Frodo rolled the teacup in his hands. “That's most likely so, but judging by how quickly the light seems to be going, I suspect a clear wine might be more to the right of it. Come on, Sam, time for another gasp!”
“Only if you're gasping at how good the wine is, sir. Only if.”
Frodo's eyes were dark and serious, and when he clasped Sam's hands in his own it felt almost ceremonial, as if he were about to swear a great oath. “So it shall be, Samwise,” he said, and then turned and headed out the dim passageway towards the bright-hot kitchen. Sam followed him.
Epilogue: You can read their address by the moon
The leaves above his head were knit into a fabulous net of gold filament and red flash, and Bilbo was once again struck by the wonder of the transformation which autumn worked in the woods of the Shire, for he'd swear he stood under the fabled leaves of Laurelindorenan – or at the very least, some equally elegant garden back in Rivendell.
He was unsure as to whether the hoofbeats were imagined or real until he heard hearty laughter, and then he knew. No Elf laughed like that – these were hobbit riders, and their spirits were joyful. His lips curled into a smile.
Round the next bend he saw them, riding four abreast. The two tall ones – Meriadoc and Peregrin, he was sure – kept the flank guarded, and they wore shining mail, and – yes, Peregrin for certain – it was the leftmost who'd been laughing so high and clear.
Samwise was easy enough to pick out, being the fairest-haired of the four, and the setting sun turned his curls to gold. Good – Bilbo hoped that it was an augury of fortune for the lad. He more than deserved all the gold in the Four Farthings.
Which meant that the fourth rider must be Frodo, and Bilbo found himself leaning forward in his saddle, squinting to make the lad out as best he could. It was difficult; Frodo was wrapped in a grey cloak such as Elves often wore, and it hid him amidst the shadows of the trees. But at the same time, he seemed faintly luminous, radiating a gentle pale light that made Bilbo's sleepy old heart swell with mingled grief and tenderness. He smiled at the grey-clad form, and then Frodo looked up and met his eyes. “Bilbo!” he called, clear and happy and sweet.
“Hullo, Frodo,” he said gruffly, reaching to clasp Frodo's outstretched hand as his boy drew near. Frodo sat straight as an arrow in his seat, swaying with the pony's gait in an easy grace. Bilbo blinked; for a moment, Frodo had looked more like a small Elf than a hobbit. And no wonder – had not the lad been eating? Thin as a willow switch, for all that his grip was strong and his seat was sure. But Bilbo did not quite know what to say, pinned by that solemn gaze. “Well, I have passed the Old Took today! So that's settled. And now I think I am quite ready to go on another journey. Are you coming?”
Frodo smiled at him, and the light flared from his lips and eyes. “No, Bilbo,” he said. “It's not time yet, not for me. I have too much yet to do. But someday.”
It wasn't the answer Bilbo had expected, and he made an effort to rouse himself, to examine the lad closely and carefully. Elrond had thought – it had been a cruel adventure for Frodo, filled with many unspeakable pains. Too cruel, he'd feared. But the countenance that met his investigation was peaceful, if somewhat worn. No longer young, but not crippled by age. Thin, yet hale, with an air of indefinable power. Certainly the merry tween of yesteryear no longer rode at his side, but neither did the wasted, twisted, tormented remnant he'd feared to find. Instead, Frodo had grown into a grave hobbit, wisdom and a maturity beyond his years evident in his face and bearing. And Bilbo did not miss the tender, joyful connection stretched between Frodo and the Gamgee lad. So. That was it, he thought to himself. The gardener. He was the answer.
At long last, he said, “I will miss you, Frodo. But, as you say, someday I shall see you again. And until that day, your hands and your wits will be needed everywhere. I expect you to read things out of our Book, and keep alive the memory of the age that is gone, and not let the Shire grow too complacent in their safety from the great Dangers of the world. Will you do that?”
“I will,” Frodo said. “You have my oath on it. And Sam will help me.”
It was growing dark around them, and the Elves gleamed like ghosts in the gathering twilight. Bilbo was aware of Elrond behind him like a silent, ancient tree, but he was properly startled when the Lady of Lorien, Galadriel herself, addressed Frodo and his gardener. “Well done,” she said to them, and smiled.
They sang together all along the way to the havens, and Frodo laughed as much as any of them, and it gladdened Bilbo's heart to hear it. And then Gandalf was there to meet them, and without a word the extraordinary wizard pulled Frodo down from his pony and into a close embrace.
The ship sat moored in the harbor. Bilbo had never seen anything so lovely, like a song built of timber and canvas, with all her lanterns hanging about her like sparks.
He turned to Frodo, whose eyes were shining. “You're sure you won't come?” he said. Frodo smiled, and looked back to where Sam stood beside Merry and Pippin, and then shook his head.
“I don't suppose there's any chance of you keeping a diary?” he asked, and Bilbo couldn't help but chuckle and ruffle the boy's hair.
“You'll be all right,” he said, pressing a kiss into the dark curls, and then releasing Frodo's disfigured hand from his own he turned, and climbed the gangplank, and felt the sea at last moving restlessly beneath him.
From the shore, four small figures waved to him, and one glittered starlike through the night.
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. thanks and endearments to my beta,
lozlan.1-3 4-6
7. Oh, I hope you run into them, you who've been traveling so long
Sam blinked his eyes open, finding it a harder task than he'd rightly expected. He was in his room at Bag End, and wasn't that a pleasant confounding of his expectations? He'd thought to have waked in some wild place free from help, hungry and thirsty and tired but with many more miles to go. Or perhaps to not have waked at all. Hungry he was, well enough, and thirsty too, but his attention was stolen from those wants by the warm weight pressed up against his right side. He turned in the bed to look, and there was Frodo asleep beside him, looking pale and drawn in his sleep.
The master was pressed so close by him that they were very nearly embracing, and he could feel Frodo's hand resting against his shoulder, as if Frodo had held on to him in sleep. Dark, bruised circles ringed his closed eyes, and his lashes were long and ink-black against the pallor of his skin.
Sam raised a wondering hand to cup the back of Frodo's neck, noticing as he did so the trembling weakness that assailed him. He pulled himself up on one shockingly weak elbow, still looking down at his sleeping master. “Have I been ill?” he wondered to himself, voice coming out dry and croaking and over-used – almost, he thought fleetingly, as if he'd been screaming. Then memory came flooding back: Frodo, the Quest, the illnesses, his wish. The pain and the misery he'd taken from Frodo, the way it'd felt as if nothing should ever be cheerful again, the darkness that had covered his eyes and mind and heart.
“Frodo,” he murmured, “what's happened to me? I don't remember the last few days at all.”
He nearly started out of his skin when Mr. Pippin spoke up from beside the bed, “That's because you've been unconscious for the better part of two of them, Sam. I'm glad to see you awake at last!” Pippin's voice was, indeed, brimming with suppressed jubilation, but his tone was little more than a whisper. “I imagine you're thirsty,” he said, “and I'll be off in a jiffy for some herb-tea for you, but I don't want to wake Frodo yet. He's sat by you, and taken no rest for himself at all, and he's got pretty run down. You'll likely sleep again soon, which is all for the best.” And with a forcibly sunny smile he popped up from his chair and was off.
“Two days, master?” he said. “It must've got bad, for you to be worked up in such a state. But bless me! I feel stronger this morning, for all that I'm a bit shaky and tired, than I have for weeks! Or mayhap not stronger, but better, somehow.”
He smelled the tea before Mr. Pippin ever cleared the doorway. It was a blend of his own devising: peppermint and rue, with a bit of lemon peel thrown in for bite. It smelled like heaven, and Pippin scarcely had time to hand him the mug before he was drinking it greedily down.
“Slowly, slowly!” said a new voice, and Sam peeked up above the mug's rim to see Mr. Merry smiling broadly at him, though his voice was cautioning. “Too much at once and you'll be sick, Sam. Take it slow, and then you can lie back down for another sleep. You look as though you needed it.”
“Thankee, Mr. Merry,” he said, and was relieved to hear his own voice sounding less like a death-rattle and more like a proper hobbit's tones. “Save for thirst, I think I might have been asleep again already.”
“Sleep, then,” said Pippin. “Everything can wait until you're rested.”
Sam very nearly resigned himself to sleep, pulling up at the last moment. “Merry!” he said, short and harsh. “Merry! The star-jewel. I still have it. He -”
Merry pulled the little white gem up from where it had been resting against Sam's breast. “He'll need it again, won't he? Don't worry, Sam, I'll see to it.” Sam felt a stab of sorrow, piercing and somehow sweet, as the jewel left his grasp, and he watched it glimmer at the end of its silver chain as Merry bore it off.
When Sam woke again, Frodo was gone, and he was alone.
He could feel renewed vigor and strength rushing through him, beating powerfully through his veins. The strength to carry on, to hope against hope, to set his shoulder to the wheel and never stint until the long task was done, was his again, and he gloried in it even as he lay still and quiet. The green and gold and pink of a Shire noon very nearly overwhelmed him with the sheer intensity of their sensation, and he marveled at how colorless his world must had become, that a simple day could cause his breath to come quicker.
Following swiftly on that thought's heels was the more sobering one that for Frodo, once again the world must be leeched of color. Nothing was mended. Instead, they were right back where they'd started, and soon he'd see Frodo grown thin and solemn again, lost in his pain and misery.
But it was worse than that even, for as Sam lay still he realized that he had not known, had never truly known, the depth of his master's suffering. He had known that Frodo was occasionally unwell, of course, and known too that he was often melancholy, but he'd had no idea that it was so all-encompassing a hurt as all that. It had been bad beyond his imagining.
Frodo must have hidden it from him, and must have taken some care to do so.
That was where they stood – not where they'd been before, which had been bad enough, but somewhere else all together. Sam had thought, before, that it wasn't so bad, or that it might be getting better. He knew now that neither of those things were true, for he'd felt them himself.
But it would not be the same with Frodo as it had been with himself. For one thing, there was the vast difference in temperament – and for another, the difference in history, for Sam was accustomed to exhaustion and discomfort, and Frodo had old sorrows buried away at the back of his heart to torment himself with. Frodo was no simple, cheery, bluff working lad such as he'd lived with all his life, such as he'd been himself, but a high-spirited, delicate soul, seeing further than most but needing more care as well. Not that Frodo lacked strength – he'd a formidable will, which once set was stronger than iron or steel, and as Sam knew well Frodo would pursue his task through suffering and past death. But sorrows struck in deep with his heart, buried themselves and put down roots that were both tough and tangled.
No, Sam was certain that things must have been very bad for his master, and were like to become so again. And a chill crept down his spine at the thought of what might lie ahead for them. Neither health nor long life, that Saruman had said. Sam was terrified that his words might prove a true foretelling after all.
There was a noise in the hall, breaking against his troubled thoughts, and then Daisy came bustling in, with Merry in tow, laden down with panaceas. “There you are, Sam,” she said. “I was wondering when you'd wake. We've been fair worried about 'ee, but the master said as you was but ill. Da would be here himself to see you up, but he's had a bad bout of rheumatism, and I told him not to bother coming out, for I'd see to you myself.”
Surrendering to the busy ministrations of his sister, whose will had always been the law in sickrooms, particularly since she'd been his dear mother's nurse at the end of things, Sam nevertheless tried to catch Merry's eye, wanting to know the place and condition of his master. Merry sat beside him while Daisy added her liniments and potions of the hot water he'd carried in, and nodded, as if pleased by something. “Frodo's all right,” he said in an undertone, “only resting, but he does not seem any more ill now than you do, for all that things seem to be the right way around again.”
“Don't trust to that, Mr. Merry, for he'll hide -”
“The master's kinsfolk don't need you to tell them their business, Samwise,” Daisy said, cutting him off by putting a well-aimed lozenge on his tongue. “And at any rate, it's you who has been ill, not him. Silly lad. You never have been any good at minding yourself.” She was sharp, in her own way, but she also smoothed down the coverlet around him as she'd done when he was but a child, and Sam knew that her sharpness concealed an affectionate, if exasperated, fondness, for he'd always been her pet.
Merry did not stay long, and Sam dearly hoped that he'd gone to Frodo instead, for he was afraid of what resumption of his heavy burden would do to his master. He was absorbed for a time in telling Daisy the tales of the kingdom away to the south that she'd asked for, but remembrances of old terrors had a tendency to lurk underneath such things, and his mind was not entirely quiet.
He did not see Frodo until tea-time was past and supper-time was passing, not until Daisy made her excuses and went down to get the Gaffer a bite and a sup, not until he pulled himself out of bed on legs that only shook beneath him a very little bit and ventured out into the smial.
Sam found Pippin first, mainly by the racket that the young Took was making by way of washing up in the kitchen. “In his study, where else?” Pippin answered his enquiry as to Frodo's whereabouts, and then added, “Merry was with him for a while, but then he said he wanted to work, and we thought it best to give him some time to himself.”
“Best?” Sam said. “Aye, best if you want him lost in his own head! But I suppose he near ordered you outright, for he must be feeling a need for solitude about now, as he always does when he's troubled about something.”
“We can only do so much with him, you know, Sam.”
“I know it all too well, Mr. Pippin. But if you'll pardon me, I mean to go drag him out, if I can.”
“Better you than me,” Pippin said with a laugh, and then asked, “Are you hungry at all, Sam? For I'm sure there's something left from tea.”
“No thank you, sir,” Sam said, inwardly feeling very nearly angry that Pippin could still be laughing, after everything that had happened, and might yet come to pass. But then he shook himself – it was good that Mr. Peregrin's spirits had not been dimmed, and others hurting would not ease Frodo's suffering one bit. But it was with a galled heart that he knocked at the door of Frodo's sanctum, and with a fearful mind that he waited for the door to open, unsure as to what he would find.
The scene that met him inside was so prosaic and commonplace as to be anticlimactic: Frodo was sitting at the great desk, working – though the book was open to one side – on what looked to be correspondence. A cup of tea sat half-full and, Sam suspected, quite cold at his elbow, and there was an ink smudge at his left temple where he habitually reached up to push back his hair from his brow. His pen rested against his little finger, brushing against the gap of the one that had been lost.
He was pale enough, to be sure, but so he always was, and even before the quest he'd never had the same ruddiness of complexion that so many hobbits possessed. Tired, certainly, but not so badly – only tired as if he'd sat up nights, not tired as if he was being drained dry of life by eldritch powers or remembered scars.
As soon as he caught a clear sight of Sam, Frodo was on his feet and hurrying toward him. Sam was glad to see him steady on his legs, standing strong.
8. And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song
“Sam!” Frodo exclaimed, smiling and frowning and wrinkling his brow anxiously all at once. “My dear hobbit, how long have you been up? Ought you to be out of bed? Here, sit down at once. I'd give you tea, but I fear it's gone quite cold.”
“I'm all right, sir,” he said, “though I will take that seat, begging your pardon.”
Awkward silence covered over the room.
“It's changed back, hasn't it?” Sam asked at last, looking closely at his master's face for signs of unwellness.
Frodo sighed. “Yes, Sam, I think it has,” he said, “and that is very much for the best. I could not have borne many more such days as have passed of late.”
“And yet you still think I can,” Sam said gently. “Oh, Frodo, can't you see that you're asking me to do that very thing? To stand by and let you hurt, alone and helpless?”
“It isn't so bad as all that,” Frodo said, voice falsely bright.
Sam would have none of that. “It is so, sir,” he said, daring greatly to stand firm in his new-found understanding. “It can't be hid from me any longer sir, not now that I've felt it for myself.”
“No, I suppose I can't,” Frodo answered. “But I scarcely care about that, Sam; I'm so desperately glad to see you well and strong again.”
“No, don't you go changing the subject on me,” Sam said with a scowl. “This is important. I know, sir. I know everything. And I want you to swear to me, on all that we've ever held dear, that you'll not -” his voice broke raggedly, and he forced himself to swallow down a bitterness that threatened to become a sob, “that you'll not leave me on account of old hurts that are passed and gone by. I couldn't bear it, sir – it would rip my heart right out of my body, and then I'd die too for sure and all!”
Frodo turned his head, as if to gaze out the darkened window, but Sam could see that his eyes were unfocused, as if he were looking many thousands of miles off, or as if his eyes were turned inward rather than outward and he was bent on examining the workings of his own heart. “These have been such strange days,” he said softly, mayhap meaning his words only for himself. “Such strange days.”
Sam felt his chest draw tight, and his throat kindled with coals. So distant Frodo's voice was, so pale and grey, like mist before sunrise, burnt away in moments. His master had not answered his question, nor seemed aware of the deep desperation with which Sam had spoken. For all the passion Frodo showed regarding his own life, it might have been some old legend out of a song.
“Frodo,” he said, letting his voice, his spine, become straight cold steel, “you owe it to me to give me an answer. Promise me that you won't try to leave.”
Frodo blinked, as if awaking from a dream. “What do you know?” he asked, eyes gone flinty-sharp.
“I know how bleak it looks to you,” Sam answered back, steadfast and near afire with fervor. “I know how terribly your wounds pain you, and I know how dead the world looks to you sometimes, as if nothing would ever grow or be fruitful ever again. And I know, sir, from my own experiences, what you must be thinking. Of how release must tempt you.”
“Release? How so?”
Once again, as he had done in his delirium but now sane and self-possessed, Sam recalled those dreadful moments of anguish in Torech Ungol – the way that Sting's radiance had flashed upon Frodo's death-pale face, the easy seductive beauty of its mercifully sharp point.
“When you were – when I thought that you'd died, sir, and left me, back in that terrible dark place, I wanted nothing more than to fall down on your sword and die beside you,” he confessed at last, not allowing himself to hold anything back in secret, forcing the most naked description of the true way of things into the heavy air between them. He heard Frodo draw in a short, sharp breath, but he dared not look at his master until all his truths were spilled. “It was only the duty that stopped me,” he said. “But if I'd followed my heart, I'd have ended then and there. It's a good thing I didn't, as there'd have been no help for you then, in that tower full of orcs. But I wanted to so badly, Frodo, so badly – it hurt too much to be endured, and I only wanted it to stop.”
He could feel the tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, but he twisted them back; here was no time for crying. There was too much at stake. When he'd controlled himself, he met his master's eyes.
Frodo's face was buried in his hands, and his shoulders were hitching. “I'm so sorry, Sam,” he choked out at last, voice muffled by the nine fingers clamped over his mouth. “So sorry that I took you into that place of evil and despair. I ought not to have done it! For now I've darkened your life too, and you deserve nothing more than endless strings of sunlit days.”
Sam went to him then, and gently clasped Frodo's hands, pressing them to his own heart. “You still can't see that you do too?” he asked. “That this is wrong for us both? That I would rather stand by your side in suffering for a hundred years than have you suffer alone?”
When Frodo looked back up, his eyes had gone distant and emotionless, and when he spoke his voice was flat. “I suppose,” he said heavily, “that I shall have to tell you everything, if I am to be let out of this bargain without grieving you beyond my ability to do so. Very well: I have intended for some time to leave, Sam, only not in the manner that you suspect.” He held up a four-fingered hand to forestall the objections that sprang to Sam's lips, and Sam obeyed the implicit command, not knowing what else to do.
“I was told,” Frodo went on, “that my wounds might be too grave for healing. So it has proved to be. And I was also told that if I so chose, I might cross the Sea with the Elves, and find what peace I might Beyond. So I mean to do.” His voice as he spoke these words was terrible, flat and lifeless, dry and dispassionate. Not murky, but horribly precise, weighted down with understood significance.
“But that's no different!” Sam burst out, his heart and mind crying out as one against the dead certainty in his master's voice. “No different at all! You might as well fall on your sword and get it over with, if you're so keen to be rid of me. I shall feel the same.”
Frodo blanched pale. “I cannot stay here,” he said. “The pain is too great, and it will come again and again.”
“If you'll forgive my saying so, I know exactly how great. And I know this too: when things were all dark for me, and it burned and froze at me, I still felt joy in my heart at knowing you were near me, and I still took comfort at the touch of your hand. I've not done by you as I ought, sir, and I've left you alone with your hurts. But I won't again, and it will be easier with me by your side. We've come through the worst and lived to tell the tale. We'll beat back the echoes yet.”
Frodo turned his face away, sighing deeply. “I shall never be well, Sam. I cannot continue to burden you, knowing that as I do.”
“Your loss would be the burden to break me, Master, not your need. But you're thinking only of the darkness, sir, and you oughtn't. I know it's right awful, sometimes, but sometimes isn't always, as you might say. There are good days enough.” Sam paused, drew in a deep breath. “It's not really fair for me to say such things, though, not when I'm not the one that would be hurting. I'll only say, Frodo, that if you were to leave me, I'd mourn you all the days of my life. And for all that Elves are wondrous folk, sir, I can't see that they can do anything to care for you that I can't! Not a one of them loves you so dear as I do, nor knows you so well.”
He drew Frodo to him, clasping his master to his breast. Bending over him, he whispered harshly against his temple, “Don't leave me, sir.”
“I don't deserve you,” Frodo said brokenly, turning away. “Not after -”
“After what?” Sam very nearly wailed into the long quiet gulf of Frodo's words. “After what, sir, for I've no idea what you could have done that would be so bad! After suffering, and choosing to suffer more, and doing all that was asked of you though they asked for far too much, and all coming back alive even so? Tell me.”
Frodo's eyes dropped like stones in a river, and he said nothing. “Frodo,” Sam choked out, “if I'm to lose you to this secret, at least tell me what it is. Please.”
Frodo sighed, and was suddenly abstracted once more. Gone was the tense-strung intimacy between them, and in its place were the cold comforts of philosophy, learning, distance.
“Well, then, my dear Sam, it's just this: I did not do all that was asked of me. And in not doing so, I ceased to be deserving of anything at all.”
Samwise felt himself very near laughing with the sick irony of it all, and hastily swallowed down his hysteria. “And you thought that was a secret from me? That I'd somehow managed to forget your face and your voice when you laid your claim to that awful thing? Never, Mr. Frodo. Not if I live to be a hundred and fifty.”
It was no more than the truth. Frodo had been terrifyingly beautiful, standing there at the edge of the Fire like a lord out of a tale, holding his prize aloft in the red light with its gold gleaming reflected in his mad, unseeing eyes.
“But you've always been stronger than me, sir,” Samwise went on. “Since I was just a lad, and you were the one to go for answers to the most tangled knots. And it's only proof of your strength that you could stand at all with It strung about your neck. I could tell well enough when I carried it that in a few months it would've eaten everything in me, left naught but a husk, just as it did to that Gollum. You, now – you carried it for years, sir, into all that fire and darkness where it only grew stronger. Even without It on my finger, I could feel the crushing weight of It once we reached the mountain. And you stood there like a king, or a wizard, and I knew watching you that you could've bent the world to your will easily enough.”
“As if I'd ever want such a thing,” Frodo muttered bitterly.
“Well, no, sir. Of course you wouldn't. But when I held It, It offered me all sorts of things that I'd never want for in my right mind, but there in the Black Land they were dreadfully tempting. And I think I could only give It up, in the end, because I couldn't bear to do you harm.”
“And you think I could bear it?”
“No. I think that temptation comes according to strength, and that's a fact. If It tempted me sorely, as It did, and me as unable to wield It as would be any bird or beast, then how could It not have pressed you all the harder?”
Frodo made as if to speak, his face terribly pale and set, eyes burning with suppressed intensity, but Sam pressed his advantage, and refused to allow his master to cut him short. “You must have known,” he said insistently, “that they weren't dreams It was offering you, but real enough chances. I'm saying that your burden was heavier than mine, sir, and that it was dreadful hard for even me to carry. But it was only heavier around your neck because, down at the core of you, you're stronger than the oldest oak, or the finest steel.”
Sam did not know what else to do, besides talk. He cursed fortune, away at the back of his mind, for leaving such important speech-making to one as awkward-tongued as he, but there was nothing else for it. Frodo yet looked downcast, distant, troubled. The thought of the Grey Havens, of the white ships and far-off Elvenhome, stabbed at him sharply.
“Frodo,” he said with a deeply-indrawn breath, “I truly don't believe that anyone could've done what you did. Not Strider, and not the Lady, and for sure not me. I saw everything, and what's more I understood it all. I've never once thought less of you for aught you may've done, sir, and that's a fact. Nor does anyone else. And if you … leave … me now because of something you never did do wrong, it'll break my heart and will, and I hope that if such a day comes I can lay down beside you and die, for it'll mean my failure more than yours. It was my task to keep you safe and whole and sane and living, and I'll have failed as completely as ever a hobbit could. I know I'm naught but a simple fool, but sir, I didn't think I'd done as badly as all that. Have I?”
He found that he was weeping, fat tears rolling down his cheeks, and he held tight to Frodo's maimed hand, pressing loving touches again and again to the scarred wound.
And then Frodo was turning in his arms, pressing back against Sam with equal fervor, weeping
openly and noisily. It was as if Frodo were grieving for the self that had died at the Fiery Mountain, for he was right to think that things could never go back to being the way they had once been. Frodo was changed indelibly, grown more solemn and sad, something in him broken forever and something in him changed irrevocably from earth and blood to pure light. He could never be the same; but Sam loved him all the more for those changes.
“Will you stay?” he asked, and in answer Frodo nodded wearily against his now-damp weskit. “It will be all right, Frodo,” he said, rocking his master in his arms as if he were no more than a faunt. “It will be all right. I'll never leave you in the darkness, sir, and I'll always be at your side, whenever you're in need of me. And things will start to grow again all over the Shire, and Bag End will look more itself with the gardens restored, just you wait and see. And then, maybe, someday it might not pain you so deeply. No hobbit could deserve more than you, my dear.”
At last, Frodo pulled back from the embrace, and to Sam's eyes he looked somehow washed clean, for all that his face was tearstained. “Keep telling me, Samwise,” he said softly. “Somehow, I believe you when you tell me that I do. My hope unquenchable.”
“Speaking of quenching, sir,” said Sam, winning a laugh from Frodo at his sudden change of tone, “there's Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin in the kitchen – or at least, they were the last I saw of them – and Mr. Pippin was in the way of making up a fresh kettle of tea. You said yours was cold, and for sure if it wasn't then it will be now.”
Smiling, Frodo rolled the teacup in his hands. “That's most likely so, but judging by how quickly the light seems to be going, I suspect a clear wine might be more to the right of it. Come on, Sam, time for another gasp!”
“Only if you're gasping at how good the wine is, sir. Only if.”
Frodo's eyes were dark and serious, and when he clasped Sam's hands in his own it felt almost ceremonial, as if he were about to swear a great oath. “So it shall be, Samwise,” he said, and then turned and headed out the dim passageway towards the bright-hot kitchen. Sam followed him.
Epilogue: You can read their address by the moon
The leaves above his head were knit into a fabulous net of gold filament and red flash, and Bilbo was once again struck by the wonder of the transformation which autumn worked in the woods of the Shire, for he'd swear he stood under the fabled leaves of Laurelindorenan – or at the very least, some equally elegant garden back in Rivendell.
He was unsure as to whether the hoofbeats were imagined or real until he heard hearty laughter, and then he knew. No Elf laughed like that – these were hobbit riders, and their spirits were joyful. His lips curled into a smile.
Round the next bend he saw them, riding four abreast. The two tall ones – Meriadoc and Peregrin, he was sure – kept the flank guarded, and they wore shining mail, and – yes, Peregrin for certain – it was the leftmost who'd been laughing so high and clear.
Samwise was easy enough to pick out, being the fairest-haired of the four, and the setting sun turned his curls to gold. Good – Bilbo hoped that it was an augury of fortune for the lad. He more than deserved all the gold in the Four Farthings.
Which meant that the fourth rider must be Frodo, and Bilbo found himself leaning forward in his saddle, squinting to make the lad out as best he could. It was difficult; Frodo was wrapped in a grey cloak such as Elves often wore, and it hid him amidst the shadows of the trees. But at the same time, he seemed faintly luminous, radiating a gentle pale light that made Bilbo's sleepy old heart swell with mingled grief and tenderness. He smiled at the grey-clad form, and then Frodo looked up and met his eyes. “Bilbo!” he called, clear and happy and sweet.
“Hullo, Frodo,” he said gruffly, reaching to clasp Frodo's outstretched hand as his boy drew near. Frodo sat straight as an arrow in his seat, swaying with the pony's gait in an easy grace. Bilbo blinked; for a moment, Frodo had looked more like a small Elf than a hobbit. And no wonder – had not the lad been eating? Thin as a willow switch, for all that his grip was strong and his seat was sure. But Bilbo did not quite know what to say, pinned by that solemn gaze. “Well, I have passed the Old Took today! So that's settled. And now I think I am quite ready to go on another journey. Are you coming?”
Frodo smiled at him, and the light flared from his lips and eyes. “No, Bilbo,” he said. “It's not time yet, not for me. I have too much yet to do. But someday.”
It wasn't the answer Bilbo had expected, and he made an effort to rouse himself, to examine the lad closely and carefully. Elrond had thought – it had been a cruel adventure for Frodo, filled with many unspeakable pains. Too cruel, he'd feared. But the countenance that met his investigation was peaceful, if somewhat worn. No longer young, but not crippled by age. Thin, yet hale, with an air of indefinable power. Certainly the merry tween of yesteryear no longer rode at his side, but neither did the wasted, twisted, tormented remnant he'd feared to find. Instead, Frodo had grown into a grave hobbit, wisdom and a maturity beyond his years evident in his face and bearing. And Bilbo did not miss the tender, joyful connection stretched between Frodo and the Gamgee lad. So. That was it, he thought to himself. The gardener. He was the answer.
At long last, he said, “I will miss you, Frodo. But, as you say, someday I shall see you again. And until that day, your hands and your wits will be needed everywhere. I expect you to read things out of our Book, and keep alive the memory of the age that is gone, and not let the Shire grow too complacent in their safety from the great Dangers of the world. Will you do that?”
“I will,” Frodo said. “You have my oath on it. And Sam will help me.”
It was growing dark around them, and the Elves gleamed like ghosts in the gathering twilight. Bilbo was aware of Elrond behind him like a silent, ancient tree, but he was properly startled when the Lady of Lorien, Galadriel herself, addressed Frodo and his gardener. “Well done,” she said to them, and smiled.
They sang together all along the way to the havens, and Frodo laughed as much as any of them, and it gladdened Bilbo's heart to hear it. And then Gandalf was there to meet them, and without a word the extraordinary wizard pulled Frodo down from his pony and into a close embrace.
The ship sat moored in the harbor. Bilbo had never seen anything so lovely, like a song built of timber and canvas, with all her lanterns hanging about her like sparks.
He turned to Frodo, whose eyes were shining. “You're sure you won't come?” he said. Frodo smiled, and looked back to where Sam stood beside Merry and Pippin, and then shook his head.
“I don't suppose there's any chance of you keeping a diary?” he asked, and Bilbo couldn't help but chuckle and ruffle the boy's hair.
“You'll be all right,” he said, pressing a kiss into the dark curls, and then releasing Frodo's disfigured hand from his own he turned, and climbed the gangplank, and felt the sea at last moving restlessly beneath him.
From the shore, four small figures waved to him, and one glittered starlike through the night.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-03 09:13 pm (UTC)It was as if Frodo were grieving for the self that had died at the Fiery Mountain, for he was right to think that things could never go back to being the way they had once been. Frodo was changed indelibly, grown more solemn and sad, something in him broken forever and something in him changed irrevocably from earth and blood to pure light. He could never be the same; but Sam loved him all the more for those changes.
Sam would love him all the more, that's so very true.
Sam being given the grace to share and understand Frodo's suffering so that he can help him to deal with it and overcome it, is a believable twist in the story. I'm so glad Frodo can stay in Middle-earth.
Thanks for this lovely fic!
(BTW, starting at the end of this line: '“No, don't you go changing the subject on me,” Sam said with a scowl. “This is important. I know, sir.' the story becomes all italics. You might want to doublecheck your coding.)
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Date: 2009-07-03 09:26 pm (UTC)I'm so glad you enjoyed the story!
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Date: 2009-07-05 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-05 11:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-05 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-05 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-05 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-05 08:54 pm (UTC)I especially love the lines
Have you read Tolkien's epilogues published in the History of Middle Earth? If not, I think you'd really enjoy them.
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Date: 2009-07-05 09:47 pm (UTC)