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lotessetitle: (bind you with love that is) graceful and green as a stem, 4-6/9
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 7-9
4. When you’re not feeling holy your loneliness says that you’ve sinned
Sam slept like the dead all that night. He’d sent Daisy and May off home to the Gaffer well in time for supper, for he found that he couldn’t manage to keep his eyes open enough to get any good out of their company. He was unused to being ill, having never been one for taking sick even in his childhood, and it discomfited him mightily having even Mr. Frodo offering to do small things for him, as if he were not capable of doing them himself.
Now it was late morning, and he’d seen hide nor hair of anyone at all. He lay back against the soft cotton sheets, feeling the strength of the bolster at his back, and listened for any sound at all about the place.
It had been worse than he’d imagined. Not so much the pain of the sting-scar; he knew well enough the biting sharpness of wounds. It was the seeping exhaustion that had affrighted him, the feeling of weariness down to the bone, hopeless and helpless, without clear cause nor anything to be done. And Frodo felt this all the time? No wonder, then. So many things had become clear to him, and that was all to the good, for Sam knew well enough that when Frodo Baggins set his mind to keeping something hidden he was as stubborn as any weed about it, and he had no doubt that Frodo had meant to keep his pain and his illness secret from everyone, himself included sure enough in that number. He’d never have known, only mayhap guessed, just how bleak the world looked through his master’s eyes – and that even without Frodo’s way of worrying himself about might-have-beens and maybes.
He felt stronger now, more himself, but the memory of weakness hung like a pall over his heart.
He was glad that he knew, he thought to himself fiercely. And yet he had found himself near desperate to escape the grinding agony of the wound, the frailty that he couldn’t seem to shake. His dependence frightened him badly, and for all that he’d wished for it, he found himself near to spooking, like a skittish foal at the sound of thunder. Sam wanted more than anything for Mr. Frodo to save him, mend him, set him straight, just as Frodo had when he’d been nought but a boy with scraped toes puzzling over his letters and all.
But then, Samwise Gamgee, he found himself thinking, you’ll only be forcing it back on to him. And wasn’t that the thing you said as you couldn’t abide? He shouldn’t carry something this terrible, not after It, not with him being of the quality and too fine for dray-work and aches and pains. You can bear it. He oughtn’t to have had to.
The smell of toast tickled at his nose, followed by a scent of apple blossoms. Frodo pushed the door open with one foot, balancing a tray and a flower-bedecked ewer. “So you’re awake at last,” he said with a smile, and Sam felt himself sink down into the comforting gentleness of Frodo’s well-loved voice. “I thought,” Frodo said, “that you might be able to manage some dry toast, and also that you might be glad for a bit of a wash. I know that I always feel less than living before I get clean, after … one of these fits.”
Sam caught on to his hesitation and held on to it tight. “One of these? Sir, if you don’t mind my being a bit blunt, how often do you feel this unwell?”
Frodo blushed, pinkness flaring out along his cheekbones. “Never this bad, Sam, at least not since last October, when we left Rivendell. But … I often find myself tired, and sometimes my dreams are very evil, and creep into my waking hours, and I find myself ensnared by recollection.” He set the tray down beside the bed, but Sam had lost all interest in it.
“And you do all you can to hide it from me,” Sam said with a frown. “I ought to have known anyway, but I’ve had so much to do, these last months, and my Gaffer and the tree-planting and all. Though that’s no excuse.” His heart burned with guilt and sorrow, and he found himself haunted by the image of Frodo, alone, unwell, doing his best to care for himself without help or company.
Frodo was frowning down at him. “Sam,” he said sternly, heavily, and then he gave a great sigh and softened. “Sam, I don’t want you to feel, of all things, that you’ve somehow failed these last weeks. It’s quite the opposite, you know; you’ve worked marvels, both here in Bag End and across the Shire at large, and I could not be any prouder of you. I would not wish you shut up here caring for a weak old hobbit, when you are needed in the green world outside.” He looked distant, distant and sad, to Sam’s eyes, and his heart was wrung with pity.
“Master,” he said, taking the liberty of grasping Frodo’s hand and gently stroking over the gap where the lost finger had been, “You know that’s not what it is, nor how I feel, don’t you? That I would never choose to be from your side, if it were up to me?”
He watched as Frodo closed his eyes, relaxing trustingly into the touch, accepting the comfort, and Sam breathed out a sigh of relief that his gesture had been so accepted. But then Frodo straightened, and withdrew his hand, and Sam could not prevent himself from crying out softly at the loss.
“Are you all right?” Frodo asked him anxiously. “I’m so sorry, Samwise, to be speaking of my own troubles when you’re so unwell, and for such a reason. Forgive me? I meant to just look in on you for a moment, and then to go and research all that I could into what’s happened to you. I mean to put this back to rights as soon as possible, you know. It isn’t right that you should still be suffering so much on account of me.”
“I’d rather have your company, sir, if I may make so bold. And … well, master, things may well be better this way. Let your Sam do this for you, sir.”
“No, Sam, I’ll not have it,” Frodo retorted, at that moment every inch The Baggins of Bag End. “This, too, is my burden to carry, and mine alone. You have to understand, Sam, that this is required of me, just as the other was.”
“No, sir, I don’t understand that. I don’t see as how all those high people away back in the east would have said such either, nor left you alone in pain if you’d let anyone know what it felt like. Strider, now, I’ll warrant he’d not like the thought of you carrying any more burdens. And I don’t like it either, sir, and I’ll do everything I can to aid you, whether you like it or no.” His master was stubborn, Sam knew that well enough, but he himself had more than a slight reputation for persistence, and he would press Frodo’s will on this, though it wasn’t exactly proper for him to do so. Frodo mattered too much for Sam to give in without a proper fight.
“Then I will just have to make sure,” Frodo said, voice full of weary iron, “that you cannot aid me.”
“And that would be right foolish, sir,” Sam argued back, “when it's clear to all that you can't go on without aid. I may be only half-wise, but I have eyes enough to see you with, and to see how you've been like a tree too long without water, and haven't sprung back to greening nearly as fast as you ought.”
“As fast?” Frodo said, harsh and bitter and all twisted. “Say 'at all,' and you shall be nearer to the mark. You ask me to spring back, from that? How can I? How could anyone? Sometimes trees die, Samwise, and all the tending you can give to them is no more than wasted care.”
Tears sprang to Sam's eyes at the grim cast of his master's face and body, but he held them back as best he might. “Frodo, you know I can't help but try, whether you will it or not.”
“Very well, then,” said Frodo, the brooding tension of his voice lessening not one bit. “If you mean to oppose me, there's nothing I can do to stop you – but I do not agree with this, and I will not let it stand and be idle. Call out if you are in need of anything, and I will hear you; I shall leave the study door open. But I have a deal of work to do.”
His silence as he closed the door was as final as a grave, and Sam very nearly did weep in vexation and worry, for he was not used to being at odds with his master, and it pained him dearly.
Sam lay still all that afternoon, alone and quiet. He buried himself deep in thought, perhaps deeper in thought than he had ever been. He knew that he wasn’t one for thinking, and wished with all his heart that the task of understanding the terrible knots that bound them had been given to someone else, someone more suited for such subtle work. But there was no one else: Merry and Pippin were kept busy in their own homes, and Frodo, who would have been best able, was unwilling. Which left only Samwise Gamgee, alone in his bed, looking out at his mostly-fallow garden in the weak early spring light.
In all truth, Sam knew that he did not want to keep his master’s pain. The illness frightened him, and he lacked the patience to endure such weakness for months, years. But at the same time, he was bone-deep certain that Frodo would not be able to go on for long as he had been, keeping so much misery locked up tight and isolated in his heart. Sam’s master had begun to withdraw from Hobbiton society, becoming more and more reclusive. He was uncomfortable with any display of admiration, and downplayed his own heroics something terrible. But it wasn’t just the lack of honor he received that bothered Sam. Frodo spoke to no one at any length. He rarely left Bag End, save in the company of Merry and Pippin, and something about his manner forbade conversation.
I find myself ensnared by recollection, Frodo had said. And that was something that Sam couldn’t bide by. No matter what incantations Frodo found to restore Sam’s health – Sam had no doubt that Frodo would do it, having set his will entirely to its doing – Sam would have to find his own way through to cutting the cords that bound his master, to free him from his snare of dark thoughts and painful memories.
Wonderingly, he fingered the star-gem on its silver chain about his neck. It was so small, and so lovely, fine and perfect. He did not know if it comforted him because it was Frodo's, or because of some inherent virute of its own. He only knew that his mind was more tranquil when it rested in his grasp.
As the day crept on toward dusk, Samwise set his will to the sticking point. He wasn’t going to let Frodo seal himself away, nor would he lose his master to remembered pain. He had borne Frodo through far too much to bear such a loss now, when all the troubles were supposed to be past them.
But he would have to be both careful and clever about it, because Frodo would try to resist help if he could, Sam knew.
He almost didn’t hear Frodo’s knock when it came, so many fathoms deep in thought was he. When Frodo entered, Sam quickly took in his pale face, stained fingers, red eyes, the traces of flour on his hands and the smell of basil and salt clinging to him. “Are you hungry?” his master asked him. “I’ve made up some stew with the last of that beef stock, which should be mild enough to rest easy with you.”
Sam pulled himself up away from the tick, swinging his feet down to the cool smooth floor. His head spun for a moment, but then leveled, and after it had he felt better for the change. But Frodo gave a little worried cry when he swayed, and faster than blinking had knelt down beside the bedstead, baring his shoulder for Sam’s use.
“Sam! Are you all right? Be careful; you mustn’t overdo things. You've been so dreadfully ill, my poor dear, I don’t think you really realize. Here there, lad, you lean on me if you feel you simply must get up.”
“Thankee, master, I will, though I’m more steady now. It’s none so bad as that.” He made to stand, making use of Frodo’s support, but hesitated at the low, vulnerable cast of Frodo’s neck and shoulder. “Sir?”
“I wanted to apologize to you,” Frodo said, not looking up. “I’ve been horrid, and it’s all the worse for all you’ve done. I only … I fear that I won’t be able to repay all of your gifts in kind. I lack your heart and your knowledge, and your hope. But I will do my best, I swear to you.”
Sam looked down at his master’s bared throat, unsure and anxious. He was again assailed by a feeling of absolute wrongness, like looking at one of Mr. Bilbo’s books reflected in a looking glass and trying to make out the mirrored letters. This was not the way that things ought to be. “Mr. Frodo,” he murmured at last, “that bite of supper does sound good, if you’d be so kind as to help me along a bit. I’d not mind a change of scenery, neither.”
“Of course, Sam,” said Frodo, standing slowly and pulling Sam up with him. Sam marveled at the comfort he found in his master’s physical support, the feeling he had of being held up, cared for as he hadn’t been since childhood. “Come sit in the kitchen by the fire, where it’s warm, and I’ll get you some cider to go with.”
In the following days they fell into an uneasy truce, with many words remaining unspoken between them. Sam felt well enough to go out the next morning, and soon resumed his work about the place, though he continued to be bothered by the ghosts of old pains, and was periodically assailed by a drowning weakness that forced him to spend a deal more time resting than he would have preferred. Frodo said nothing more to him of any attempt to put back that which Sam had changed, but Sam was no more fooled by that. He knew well enough that his master would not allow himself to be thwarted in such a matter; Frodo could no more leave another suffering in his stead than he could turn into an eagle and fly away over the Blue Mountains.
Instead, Frodo very nearly hovered about him, watchful as a cat with a newborn kitten. Whenever he felt faint, or worn, or found himself lost in confusion, Frodo was somehow instantly there beside him, speaking soft words of encouragement and protection. Sam spent no more nights away from the smial, neither with his gaffer nor out at some farmstead where extra labor had been needed, but always slept within his master’s earshot.
He regretted being so burdensome to Frodo, and worried that he might be doing a wrong to the master he loved, but at the same time it felt so good to soak up Frodo’s care, to have his aches soothed away and his tiredness leavened with stories and songs and mulled teas. And so it was that near a week and a half slipped by, and Rethe drew near to its close.
5. Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned
Some silent, subconscious part of Frodo’s mind must have anticipated what was to come, because the sharp increase in Sam’s attacks toward the end of the month did not entirely surprise him – though if he knew the precise history that lay behind them, he at least did not allow that knowledge to rise to the forefront of his mind.
Meriadoc had written to him some days before, in reply to the desperate missive he’d sent off on the thirteenth. He’d said that it was clear that his old cousin needed closer looking-after, and had intimated that either he himself or Pippin could be looked for at any moment.
And so Frodo was not more than slightly surprised when his two tall cousins smiled down at him from his doorway on the afternoon of the twenty-third. But their smiles did not entirely reach their eyes, and as soon as Pippin had been placated with lemonade and they'd found their accustomed chairs in the parlor, Merry raised a questioning eyebrow.
“So, Cousin Frodo. You've been up to your old tricks again, keeping deep dark secrets. Will you tell us this one straight out, or do we need to convince Sam to go behind your back?”
“Speaking of,” Pippin piped up, “where is Sam? We looked for him in the gardens as we came up The Hill, but we didn't catch sight of him.”
Frodo drew in a long breath, looking for strength. He'd always meant to tell them, but now that it came to it he felt crushed under the weight of knowledge and secrecy. Sam had been very poorly the day before, the pain nearly as bad as it had ever been, and his nerves were still frayed by long nursing and care. The delirium had let up in the early hours of the night, and Sam had smiled at him again in the morning, but then had fallen again so terribly quickly into sleep. He let his head fall down into his hands.
“Frodo?” Pippin said, voice rising. “Are you all right? Whatever's the matter?”
Merry stood, and crossed over to share his cousin's settee. “Frodo,” he demanded, “Tell us.”
“Sam is ill,” Frodo said dully. “Very ill; he's done something, and I don't know how, though I've read everything I can find on the subject. But somehow none of the various scrolls of poetry or history or herblore I've accumulated have anything to say about taking on another's pain, or about reversing such a condition should one occur.”
“Taking another's pain?” Merry repeated, penetrating straight to the core of things. “Do you mean – is that what's wrong with Samwise?” He pulled Frodo down to rest against his green-clad shoulder, offering strength and support and encouragement, and it took all Frodo had not to close his eyes and forget everything but the safe cradle of familial love. “Frodo?” Merry prompted him again.
“Merry,” he said, “you know I've not been well since … everything …. But Samwise made a wish, of all things – a wish! - past three weeks ago now, and I've felt so much stronger, so much lighter. The darkness has not pressed me quite so terribly.”
“I do know,” Merry said gently. “And it's given me such joy to see it, Frodo.”
Drawing up his will within himself, Frodo straightened. “But this is not mine to keep. I am not healed, only pardoned for a while of my wounds. Sam has given me that, at considerable cost to himself – or rather, unacceptable cost.”
Merry's mouth set into a hard line. “So Sam suffers now from the same illness that has grasped you in the past year. And while you have new strength and vitality, he endures your wounds. Is that it?”
He had laid out all the secrets, and to Frodo they looked uniquely horrible for being so revealed. “It began with that dreadful sting I received at the edge of Mordor, which reappeared exactly a year later on Sam's body.”
“How in the world is that possible?” Pippin asked, looking somewhat thunderstruck. “How can he do that? I don't question that he'd want to, that he would, but this all does seem rather impossible!”
Frodo sighed. “Oh, Pip, I have no idea how. If I knew, then I could perhaps set things to rights, but - he's resting now. That wound is healed – but he is still unwell, weak and burdened and easily tired. I have been looking after him as well as I know how, but – it is difficult for him, I think, to need help from others rather than giving aid himself. And I am sometimes troubled so by my own thoughts and memories that it can at times be difficult for me to care for him as he deserves.”
“So you wrote to us for help,” said Merry. “It was well done, Frodo, for you know that we both consider any trouble of yours to belong to us equally, and we owe Sam a great deal for bringing you back to us from the Black Land. What is to be done?”
“Now? Nothing more than watching and waiting, I'm afraid. I wrote to Gandalf the same day I sent off to you, but somehow I do not think we shall hear from him. It strikes me that he has done with doing, as it might be said. And as of yet, there is not much that needs doing – only the care of Sam's garden, and the work of keeping the smial – but my heart forebodes disaster, though I cannot see it, and I fear that I shall be very glad to have my cousins beside me when the storm breaks.”
“It may never come, you know,” said Pippin, looking at him seriously. “Sam may turn the corner in time, and perhaps you both shall be healed. Things must not always end badly.”
Frodo was quiet for a long minute. Pippin's words fell against his mind like false hope, bright and tempting but essentially impossible. “Things must not always end well, either,” he said heavily, “and in the case of this entire business, the Quest, the … fortune has not seemed to be on our side, Pippin. I will not trust Sam's body nor his heart to fickle hope.”
It was as if he'd thrown a thick, black, muffling cloth over the room; both his young cousins sat silent, with their eyes downcast, and Frodo felt his fears climbing up from his heart, up his throat to choke and smother him, when Merry stood, and crossed to the round window that looked out the south side of the smial, down gentle terraces toward the water. “Can you tell me,” he said, bright as a new copper coin, “what needs doing in the garden, Cousin Frodo? Or ought I to discover that for myself? I know enough of herblore to tell a wanted plant from a weed, at any rate, and I'm sure Sam will be able to give me further direction when he awakes. Pippin? Can I trust you to scrape together an edible tea, or shall Frodo regret letting you within reach of his kettle and crockery?”
“I fear what calamity may befall, Merry, should I be expected to produce anything edible. I believe you recall the dire fate of the lemon pies last Afterlithe? But perhaps if Frodo wouldn't mind accompanying me, I might be useful without putting anyone's tea at risk.”
“And so I shall, you useless scamp,” said Frodo, remembering how Sam had stared at the lemony-smelling, egg-bespattered, liberally floured kitchen with round, amazed eyes, and how he'd said nothing of the yolk all over Frodo's weskit for quite some two hours in revenge for the mess. “You can chop vegetables for a soup, at least, so long as I give you the duller knife. I have a basket of early mushrooms put away, and I thought I might put on a cream stock for supper, and make do with a light tea until then.”
Merry left his good coat and waistcoat hanging on a peg at the door, and with his shirtsleeves rolled up above the elbows he stated his intention to tackle the berry bushes first, and then perhaps start some lettuces to seed. Frodo could hear him whistling cheerfully but rather tunelessly as he mixed together his broth. First flour and butter for thickness, and fresh heavy cream, and herbs and a bit of salt. He'd add in vegetables once Pippin was done with the lot of them; he didn't want to get too close while the heir of the Tooks was still in possession of any sort of sharp implement.
It was just afternoon, to judge by the angle of the light, when Sam wandered into the kitchen with his braces hanging loose and his shirt askew. “My goodness, Master Pippin!” he exclaimed, still blinking sleepily. “Mr. Frodo, if I'd've known you had guests -”
“Nonsense, Sam,” Pippin said. “Merry and I scarcely count as guests. Now you have a cup of tea – don't worry, I can promise you that I've had nothing to do with its brewing!”
Sam sat heavily at the table, and slowly drank from the proffered cup. Though he'd clearly just woken, he looked tired, and Frodo put down his ladle to go and pull up a chair close to his gardener's, so that their knees touched together. “Sam,” he said, “how are you faring, my lad? You still look worn.”
“No, sir, I'm all right,” Sam said, clearly trying for a reassuring tone, and missing it by quite a bit. “I just … well, I can't seem to get warm, sir, and either it's later in the day than it ought to be, or my eyes are having trouble coming awake, for the room seems to blur every now and again. But this cup'll help more than a bit – thankee, Master Pippin.”
Frodo's own jacket hung on the back of a chair, and he grabbed it up to drape around Sam's shoulders. “Do you need to lie back down?” he asked. “I can set you up in the parlor, if you want a change of view. But you were very ill yestereve, Sam, and I don't want you over-exerting yourself. There's no need.” He pressed his hand against Sam's brow, looking for extremes of any kind, for he'd learned that bad spells could be harbinged by either feverish warmth or deadly chill. But Sam was only as warm as a hobbit should be, and he leaned against Frodo's palm with a happy sigh.
“I'd like to stay here, master, if you don't mind, and take in a sight and a smell of the waking world, as it were. I've been getting so tangled up with dreams and waking.”
“Stay, then, but if I don't attend to my cooking, we shall have a cold supper tonight!” Frodo said, heartened by Sam's cheerful manner and at the same time troubled by his report. But then Merry came in with twigs in his hair, and between his engrossed talk of planting with Sam and Pippin's chatter all the time, the kitchen was quite a cheering prospect.
The meal was at last enjoined, with candles lit along the table to ward of the swift fall of early spring nighttime. The soup was lovely, all sweet cream and savory salt with the rich mushrooms floating at the top, and Sam took a second bowl, which lit Frodo's hopes up like a taper. They talked of things within the Shire and outside of its borders, and pulled out old and merry memories for new examination – profitable for several parties, for Merry and Pippin had not heard several of the more ridiculous recountings to which Sam was party, and he did not know many of theirs.
But after the dishes had been cleared away to the sideboard, and the quiet of the sleeping world was beginning to steal over the smial, Sam spoke less and less, and his smiles seemed faded and old. And then, with a choked-off little cry, he seemed to lose all his strength in a moment, and wavered and clung to his chair. Frodo slipped quickly to his side, kneeling beside the table and offering his arm as a better support than wood and wicker. Sam's transferred grip was tight enough to bruise, and the gardener's eyes were shut tight against something Frodo could not see.
“Sam-lad? There, dear heart, lean on me a bit and you'll feel steadier.”
“Frodo?” Sam whimpered, and the sound of it cut Frodo like a shard of ice, like a knife-blade.
“I'm here, here with you. We're in Bag End, and Merry, and Pippin, and everyone is safe. The journey's ended, dear, and there's nothing left to fear for or to worry about. You've done everything you meant to do, and triumphed over all adversity, and now there are no enemies left.”
Sam opened his eyes a bit, and peered blearily into Frodo's face. “It is you, sir? Only it wasn't, not for ever so long, and I couldn't find you wherever it was you'd gone.”
“I've never left you,” Frodo said, reassuring, puzzled.
“Not in body,” Sam said in a pained whisper. “But after a while, that wasn't you walking beside me, sir, and I wanted you so in that terrible place.”
Understanding at last, Frodo found himself quite overcome, and with a tearful “Oh, Sam,” he buried his face in Sam's tawny curls.
Recovering himself, he said “Can you stand? You need to be abed, and though you've not been eating nearly enough, I still don't think I can carry you entirely.”
“I can try,” Sam said gamely, and Frodo's chest tightened at the braveness of him. He'd not been so strong himself under the onslaught of this same suffering, but had broken down like a reed, like a thing rotten at its core. He'd been reduced to a weak, solitary invalid, incapable of enjoying the new life rising all around him, or rejoicing in the victory they'd won. Why could he not have been made of sterner stuff, such as Samwise? What deep thing was wrong in him, that he could not seem to manage any sort of success?
He had quite forgotten the presence of anyone else in the room, until Merry recalled him with a tactful cough. “Merry,” Frodo said, realizing himself to not be alone, “will you help me get Sam to his room? I can manage well enough after that. I'm afraid,” he added, turning to look at Pippin, “that I am going to have to be a dreadful host to you two, but you know well enough where the bed-fixings are kept, I think?”
“We'll be fine, Frodo,” Pippin reassured him, and Merry nodded his agreement, and stepped round the table to help. With Sam leaning heavily against Frodo, and with Merry giving a strong arm on his other side, they got cleanly away to Sam's bed-room, and Merry pulled back the coverlet so that Frodo could ease Sam down. Sam's face was hot against Frodo's neck, but his broad hands were grown chilled and clammy.
“I'll fill the basin,” Merry said softly, and Frodo nodded his assent.
“Sam?” he said, but there was no response; Sam had slipped into sleep or unconsciousness, and gave no sign of hearing. He was flushed hectically, and his mouth was set even in his swoon.
That night, when Sam spoke he spoke of the Ring, of visions Frodo knew he could never have seen, images from his own nightmares: binding circles of fire, evil might-have-beens, and woven through every word was the desperate, sick longing that Frodo remembered so well. He sat by Sam's bedside, washing the beloved face with a clean cloth soaked in hot water and steeped athelas, and heard each word with a miserable heart.
Sam did not lie quietly until dawn, and long after morning had turned to noon, he still had not awoken.
“It's never been like this,” Frodo fretted, pacing up and down the length of his study. Merry had dragged him away from Sam for a bite and a sup and a change of clothes, and was now plying him with tea, but Frodo could not rest. Not while Sam lay so still, so pale, so silent. Not while he feared that such a sleep, no matter how frightening, might actually be better for poor Samwise than waking awareness. Not while he knew with every footstep, every heartbeat, that it was all on his account.
“Frodo, for heaven's sake, I fail to see how you wearing a hole in the carpeting will do Sam one single bit of good! Now sit down, and have a bite of seed-cake before you faint yourself.”
Taking no notice of his cousin, Frodo continued to mutter distractedly to himself. “The twenty-fourth of Rethe this morning – on the twenty-fourth we were – the last gasp, he called it then, and there was no water left, and the Mountain was the only thing I could see, when I could see at all and was not locked up in my own pathetic head.”
Merry asked thoughtfully, “You think that's why? That Sam's illness is tied to the events of last Rethe?”
Frodo looked at him, somewhat wild. “How could it not be? The sting-wound on the thirteenth … and last Winterfilth, when we were leaving Rivendell, I felt ill with an echo of the Morgul-blade.”
“I didn't know that. You never told me.”
“Gandalf knew,” Frodo said tonelessly, “and he seemed to think then that it was like enough to reoccur. He told me that I might very well never be healed, and might bear with me all my days the remnants of past pain.”
Merry crossed to stand quite close to him. “Frodo,” he said, “why did you never tell me of this?”
“There was nothing you could've done about it,” Frodo said with a sigh. “And I didn't want to be any bother. It does get tiring, being the one always holding everyone else back.”
“Frodo,” Merry began, exasperation evident in his tone, but before he could begin any remonstrance Pippin poked his curly head in at the doorframe.
“Any change in Sam?” he asked, and Merry shook his head in reply.
“He's neither moved nor spoken, Pip,” Frodo said. “And I begin to wonder if he shall wake at all these next days. It was a dark time, very dark, and if -”
Pippin's face grew pale. “Shall we send for a healer?”
“There would be no help in it. This is in spirit, not in body. And even Gandalf said it was beyond his help, before. There's nothing for it but to do the best we can, and hope as much as we may. I'm going back to him, now, Merry, and I don't care what you say to stop me. I can take my tea there as well as here, and he ought not to be alone in the darkness.”
Merry nodded. “We'll take care of things about the place. You needn't think on them.”
“Thank you,” Frodo said, and walked slowly back to the bright room where all his hope could soon go dark.
6. Yes, you who must leave everything that you cannot control
All that long day was an agony. Sam still did not wake, but he spoke louder now in fever-dreams, shouting, screaming, crying out Frodo's name with one breath and with the next hissing orcish obscenities, and then dropping down into a horrible sobbing begging that was worse than any of the more voluble cries.
“Sam,” Frodo called till his voice grew hoarse. “Sam, I'm here! Please, Sam.” But Sam did not turn to him, or quiet underneath his desperate caresses.
When Merry came into the sickroom, long past full nightfall, Sam's cries had lessened to moans, though he still whispered pleas below his breath. Frodo had at last found a way to settle him somewhat – by climbing into the bed himself, and wrapping himself around Sam so that the other hobbit's head rested against the sound of Frodo's heartbeat, and so that Frodo might pet through the sandy curls when Sam's visions drew in for the kill.
He felt delirious himself, cocooned in a world of mingled love and horror: the sweet close warmth of Sam's body, the softness of Sam's hair combed round his fingers, the sick pain evoked by Sam's murmured words, the ache in Frodo's heart when he looked down and saw Sam's pale twisted face written over with lines of suffering and fear.
“Frodo, no!” Sam called, voice cracking, and Frodo hurried to quiet him, rocking him in his arms.
“My Sam, my dear, hush now, rest. Let the dark thoughts pass, and come back to me. Hush.”
“Frodo?” Merry said. It took Frodo a long moment to pull himself away from Sam, to bring his mind back to some semblance of waking order, and when he did so he saw Merry standing in the doorway, brow knit with worry. “Frodo,” he said again, “I want you to come with me. No, don't argue. You can leave Sam for a moment – Pippin will sit with him, and tell you if there's any change. Don't fight me, dear fellow, for you shan't win, and at any rate if I let another half hour by you'll be asleep, and then I can do as I like with you.”
Wordlessly, Frodo untangled himself from Sam's limp frame, pressing a kiss against his temple as he slipped away. Sam did not stir, and Frodo did not know if he felt pleased or bereft. He passed Pippin by as he left the room, but his cousin seemed ghostly and insubstantial, and Frodo did not speak to him.
Merry led him straight to his own room, and unceremoniously stripped him and handed him a cloth and a basin full of steaming water. “Wash first,” he said, “and then you are to eat, at least. I don't ask that you sleep, for I know you'll not heed me, but I will not have you filthy and faint, Frodo, no matter how ill Sam is.”
“But I should be,” Frodo murmured, still not free of an odd feeling of dream-tangledness.
“What?”
“It is my burden to bear.”
He looked up, and then wished that he had not, for Merry's dark eyes were full of fire. “Frodo Baggins,” he said, low, almost dangerous, “give me one reason why you ought to suffer – if you can.”
“Sam, at least, should not,” he fired back, finding in himself some last reserve of outraged energy. “He did everything – everything and more! He went where he never should have gone, and loved me long after he should have given me up in disgust, and even found it in his heart to speak to me kindly, even after – what he saw.”
“And so we come to it,” said Merry grimly. “Since that day when you first woke in Gondor, I have known that there was some secret left untold, and since then I see that it has poisoned you. Out with it! It cannot be so terrible that you cannot even tell me.”
“Very well, Meriadoc,” Frodo said, and his voice was terrible. “If you really want to know, I shall tell you. After weeks of hard travel, after enduring and forcing Sam to endure beside me every imaginable hardship and privation, when we came to that fiery place I failed utterly.”
He sat down, feeling as if every bone in his body could go to jelly. But it was not enough. Merry said, very gently, “What do you mean by that, cousin?”
“I claimed the Ring,” Frodo said, weary, exhausted. “I slid that accursed trinket onto my finger and claimed for myself dominion over the world. I must thank Gollum for this,” and here he held up the maimed hand, with the strange empty space between the small and the middle fingers, “for if he had not attacked me I should either have been destroyed by Sauron Himself, or become something else, something unthinkably horrible.”
“But my dear old hobbit, you say that as if you think I ought to be surprised! I knew, Frodo – if not the exact details, then at least the gist.”
Horror rose like a tidal wave to swamp Frodo's mind. “But how can you have known?” he grated out.
“Oh, Frodo. How could I not? I watched that evil thing sink its fangs into you, watched it eat your happiness and your youth. I saw what the loss of it had done to Cousin Bilbo, in Rivendell. I never thought that you would be able to just toss it into the Fiery Mountain without a backwards look.”
“You've known what I am for a long time, then,” Frodo said, numb with misery. “Why would you ask me why I deserve any suffering I have?”
“Because you are nothing more than your own dear self, Frodo. No one else could have carried the Ring even so far as you did. All the Wise refused to even touch the damned thing – and I wish sometimes that you had not done so either.” He sat down on Frodo's bed, holding out an entreating hand. “Frodo, you did nothing wrong! You took and held It, and withstood it, and in the end you did destroy it! Who else could have done more?”
Frodo looked back into the smial, to where Sam lay fevered in his sickbed. “Samwise fulfilled his quest, Merry. He was with me until the end. But mine would have ended in ashes and dust but for the malicious intervention of a twisted, selfish being. Sauron was defeated only by chance!”
“Not by chance,” Merry insisted. “You told us of this before – how Gollum saved us all because of your kindness and pity for him. You, Frodo, were the only one to understand how necessary he’d become, and for that you must take some credit.”
“But don’t you see,” said Frodo in a pained whisper, “how much worse it is than that? Merry, I still want It back! I can hear it calling for me, pulling at my waking mind, and in dreams it’s even worse. I did not give It up. It was taken from me. And so I am not free of It, shall never be free. I will love It and wish for It and suffer for It until the day I die. And every yearning moment forces me to despise myself all the more, for who could want such a terrible thing?”
Merry paused. “You are bound and determined to believe badly of yourself,” he said at last, “and you have an answer for every point I can make. But answer me this: if you are indeed such a loathsome failure, why do the best and greatest men that I know give you such honor? Why did Aragorn ask you to bring his crown? Why did Gandalf ride beside you? Do you say that they are wrong?”
“No,” Frodo answered, “only that they do not understand. Aragorn does not know what I did, not in full, and so he gives praise to the hobbit he thinks I am, unaware that I am but the sign and semblance of my honor. As for Gandalf – I have not told him aught of this, but I am sure he knows more than what's been said – he pities me, and forgives me out of that pity. But that does not make me worthy of his forgiveness, no more than my pity wiped away Gollum's evil deeds.”
“You have this miserable net pretty well sewn up,” Merry said, “but I was not speaking only of them. You say they do not know? Very well. Samwise does know, for he saw it all with his own two eyes, and he loves you yet well enough to suffer that you might be spared. He loves you with all his heart. Are you saying that he is a fool, that he has given his love unworthily?”
Frodo had no answer for that. He felt very tired, and rather dizzy, and he swayed a bit where he stood at the dark window. Merry stood, and placed a steadying hand at his elbow. “You need to eat,” he said, and guided Frodo to a seat beside his small table. “I have fresh bread and some of that soup here for you, cousin, if you'll take it, though I will make anything else for you that you'd like.”
“No, that's all right,” he said to Merry, and picked up the small silver spoon. “You needn't worry about me, Merry-lad. I'm just worn through with worrying.” But somehow he felt that some bitter weight had been lifted from him, and as he ate he felt new determination coursing through him.
“Help me,” he said, finishing off the soup. “I need to get back to Sam.”
Pippin was sitting beside the bedside when Merry helped Frodo into the room, and Sam lay very still in his bed, the candlelight throwing strange gentle shadows across his lax face. Pippin made to give Frodo his seat, but Frodo instead sat on the edge of the bed, taking Sam's hands in his own, and then caressing his face. “My Sam,” he breathed. “You do love me, all the same.”
Never taking his eyes away from Sam's face, Frodo spoke quietly. “I have hated myself for a year now,” he said, “for failing at the last to do what was needed. And though others may not agree, I still say that I failed.”
He heard Pippin move to say something, and Merry shush him. Sam's face was turned towards his own, and the sight of it was very dear – the freckles that dusted across Sam's nose and cheekbones, the generous turn of his mouth, the beginnings of laugh lines at the corners of the closed eyes. “And yet, Sam still loves me, all the same.” Frodo laughed quietly, joylessly, but without pain. He turned to look up at his cousins. “It was his bravery, and not mine, that saved us all,” he said, “but how can I mourn that, when it means that he survived?
“Sam,” he said, urgent, “if you leave me like this, what will there be left? How can I take joy in your victory if you are not there beside me? For I should rather have you at my side and well than anything: more than I want to have destroyed It myself, more even than I desire possession of It again.”
He was weeping now, quietly and uncaring, and he lay down again beside his gardener, needing to feel the living warmth of Sam's body, the sturdy reality of him. “I think I know now how you've felt,” he whispered in Sam's ear, “worrying that I was going to leave you. It's the worst feeling in the world.”
Crossing the little room, Merry pulled back the curtains from the window, and Frodo could see from the bed the beginnings of dawn streaking greyly across the horizon. “It's the twenty-fifth,” Merry said softly. “Frodo?”
“Everything shall be at an end soon, for good or for ill. 'The end of all things,' I said it was once, and so may be again. We will know soon, I think.” He peered anxiously into Sam's face, looking for any change, but it did not come. Sam raved no longer, but nor did he wake. And Frodo did not know it when he dropped off into an exhausted sleep, lying curled at Sam's side and clutching his hand to his heart, but he must have slept for several hours. When he woke, it was late morning, and he could hear the whistle of the tea-kettle from the other end of the smial.
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 7-9
4. When you’re not feeling holy your loneliness says that you’ve sinned
Sam slept like the dead all that night. He’d sent Daisy and May off home to the Gaffer well in time for supper, for he found that he couldn’t manage to keep his eyes open enough to get any good out of their company. He was unused to being ill, having never been one for taking sick even in his childhood, and it discomfited him mightily having even Mr. Frodo offering to do small things for him, as if he were not capable of doing them himself.
Now it was late morning, and he’d seen hide nor hair of anyone at all. He lay back against the soft cotton sheets, feeling the strength of the bolster at his back, and listened for any sound at all about the place.
It had been worse than he’d imagined. Not so much the pain of the sting-scar; he knew well enough the biting sharpness of wounds. It was the seeping exhaustion that had affrighted him, the feeling of weariness down to the bone, hopeless and helpless, without clear cause nor anything to be done. And Frodo felt this all the time? No wonder, then. So many things had become clear to him, and that was all to the good, for Sam knew well enough that when Frodo Baggins set his mind to keeping something hidden he was as stubborn as any weed about it, and he had no doubt that Frodo had meant to keep his pain and his illness secret from everyone, himself included sure enough in that number. He’d never have known, only mayhap guessed, just how bleak the world looked through his master’s eyes – and that even without Frodo’s way of worrying himself about might-have-beens and maybes.
He felt stronger now, more himself, but the memory of weakness hung like a pall over his heart.
He was glad that he knew, he thought to himself fiercely. And yet he had found himself near desperate to escape the grinding agony of the wound, the frailty that he couldn’t seem to shake. His dependence frightened him badly, and for all that he’d wished for it, he found himself near to spooking, like a skittish foal at the sound of thunder. Sam wanted more than anything for Mr. Frodo to save him, mend him, set him straight, just as Frodo had when he’d been nought but a boy with scraped toes puzzling over his letters and all.
But then, Samwise Gamgee, he found himself thinking, you’ll only be forcing it back on to him. And wasn’t that the thing you said as you couldn’t abide? He shouldn’t carry something this terrible, not after It, not with him being of the quality and too fine for dray-work and aches and pains. You can bear it. He oughtn’t to have had to.
The smell of toast tickled at his nose, followed by a scent of apple blossoms. Frodo pushed the door open with one foot, balancing a tray and a flower-bedecked ewer. “So you’re awake at last,” he said with a smile, and Sam felt himself sink down into the comforting gentleness of Frodo’s well-loved voice. “I thought,” Frodo said, “that you might be able to manage some dry toast, and also that you might be glad for a bit of a wash. I know that I always feel less than living before I get clean, after … one of these fits.”
Sam caught on to his hesitation and held on to it tight. “One of these? Sir, if you don’t mind my being a bit blunt, how often do you feel this unwell?”
Frodo blushed, pinkness flaring out along his cheekbones. “Never this bad, Sam, at least not since last October, when we left Rivendell. But … I often find myself tired, and sometimes my dreams are very evil, and creep into my waking hours, and I find myself ensnared by recollection.” He set the tray down beside the bed, but Sam had lost all interest in it.
“And you do all you can to hide it from me,” Sam said with a frown. “I ought to have known anyway, but I’ve had so much to do, these last months, and my Gaffer and the tree-planting and all. Though that’s no excuse.” His heart burned with guilt and sorrow, and he found himself haunted by the image of Frodo, alone, unwell, doing his best to care for himself without help or company.
Frodo was frowning down at him. “Sam,” he said sternly, heavily, and then he gave a great sigh and softened. “Sam, I don’t want you to feel, of all things, that you’ve somehow failed these last weeks. It’s quite the opposite, you know; you’ve worked marvels, both here in Bag End and across the Shire at large, and I could not be any prouder of you. I would not wish you shut up here caring for a weak old hobbit, when you are needed in the green world outside.” He looked distant, distant and sad, to Sam’s eyes, and his heart was wrung with pity.
“Master,” he said, taking the liberty of grasping Frodo’s hand and gently stroking over the gap where the lost finger had been, “You know that’s not what it is, nor how I feel, don’t you? That I would never choose to be from your side, if it were up to me?”
He watched as Frodo closed his eyes, relaxing trustingly into the touch, accepting the comfort, and Sam breathed out a sigh of relief that his gesture had been so accepted. But then Frodo straightened, and withdrew his hand, and Sam could not prevent himself from crying out softly at the loss.
“Are you all right?” Frodo asked him anxiously. “I’m so sorry, Samwise, to be speaking of my own troubles when you’re so unwell, and for such a reason. Forgive me? I meant to just look in on you for a moment, and then to go and research all that I could into what’s happened to you. I mean to put this back to rights as soon as possible, you know. It isn’t right that you should still be suffering so much on account of me.”
“I’d rather have your company, sir, if I may make so bold. And … well, master, things may well be better this way. Let your Sam do this for you, sir.”
“No, Sam, I’ll not have it,” Frodo retorted, at that moment every inch The Baggins of Bag End. “This, too, is my burden to carry, and mine alone. You have to understand, Sam, that this is required of me, just as the other was.”
“No, sir, I don’t understand that. I don’t see as how all those high people away back in the east would have said such either, nor left you alone in pain if you’d let anyone know what it felt like. Strider, now, I’ll warrant he’d not like the thought of you carrying any more burdens. And I don’t like it either, sir, and I’ll do everything I can to aid you, whether you like it or no.” His master was stubborn, Sam knew that well enough, but he himself had more than a slight reputation for persistence, and he would press Frodo’s will on this, though it wasn’t exactly proper for him to do so. Frodo mattered too much for Sam to give in without a proper fight.
“Then I will just have to make sure,” Frodo said, voice full of weary iron, “that you cannot aid me.”
“And that would be right foolish, sir,” Sam argued back, “when it's clear to all that you can't go on without aid. I may be only half-wise, but I have eyes enough to see you with, and to see how you've been like a tree too long without water, and haven't sprung back to greening nearly as fast as you ought.”
“As fast?” Frodo said, harsh and bitter and all twisted. “Say 'at all,' and you shall be nearer to the mark. You ask me to spring back, from that? How can I? How could anyone? Sometimes trees die, Samwise, and all the tending you can give to them is no more than wasted care.”
Tears sprang to Sam's eyes at the grim cast of his master's face and body, but he held them back as best he might. “Frodo, you know I can't help but try, whether you will it or not.”
“Very well, then,” said Frodo, the brooding tension of his voice lessening not one bit. “If you mean to oppose me, there's nothing I can do to stop you – but I do not agree with this, and I will not let it stand and be idle. Call out if you are in need of anything, and I will hear you; I shall leave the study door open. But I have a deal of work to do.”
His silence as he closed the door was as final as a grave, and Sam very nearly did weep in vexation and worry, for he was not used to being at odds with his master, and it pained him dearly.
Sam lay still all that afternoon, alone and quiet. He buried himself deep in thought, perhaps deeper in thought than he had ever been. He knew that he wasn’t one for thinking, and wished with all his heart that the task of understanding the terrible knots that bound them had been given to someone else, someone more suited for such subtle work. But there was no one else: Merry and Pippin were kept busy in their own homes, and Frodo, who would have been best able, was unwilling. Which left only Samwise Gamgee, alone in his bed, looking out at his mostly-fallow garden in the weak early spring light.
In all truth, Sam knew that he did not want to keep his master’s pain. The illness frightened him, and he lacked the patience to endure such weakness for months, years. But at the same time, he was bone-deep certain that Frodo would not be able to go on for long as he had been, keeping so much misery locked up tight and isolated in his heart. Sam’s master had begun to withdraw from Hobbiton society, becoming more and more reclusive. He was uncomfortable with any display of admiration, and downplayed his own heroics something terrible. But it wasn’t just the lack of honor he received that bothered Sam. Frodo spoke to no one at any length. He rarely left Bag End, save in the company of Merry and Pippin, and something about his manner forbade conversation.
I find myself ensnared by recollection, Frodo had said. And that was something that Sam couldn’t bide by. No matter what incantations Frodo found to restore Sam’s health – Sam had no doubt that Frodo would do it, having set his will entirely to its doing – Sam would have to find his own way through to cutting the cords that bound his master, to free him from his snare of dark thoughts and painful memories.
Wonderingly, he fingered the star-gem on its silver chain about his neck. It was so small, and so lovely, fine and perfect. He did not know if it comforted him because it was Frodo's, or because of some inherent virute of its own. He only knew that his mind was more tranquil when it rested in his grasp.
As the day crept on toward dusk, Samwise set his will to the sticking point. He wasn’t going to let Frodo seal himself away, nor would he lose his master to remembered pain. He had borne Frodo through far too much to bear such a loss now, when all the troubles were supposed to be past them.
But he would have to be both careful and clever about it, because Frodo would try to resist help if he could, Sam knew.
He almost didn’t hear Frodo’s knock when it came, so many fathoms deep in thought was he. When Frodo entered, Sam quickly took in his pale face, stained fingers, red eyes, the traces of flour on his hands and the smell of basil and salt clinging to him. “Are you hungry?” his master asked him. “I’ve made up some stew with the last of that beef stock, which should be mild enough to rest easy with you.”
Sam pulled himself up away from the tick, swinging his feet down to the cool smooth floor. His head spun for a moment, but then leveled, and after it had he felt better for the change. But Frodo gave a little worried cry when he swayed, and faster than blinking had knelt down beside the bedstead, baring his shoulder for Sam’s use.
“Sam! Are you all right? Be careful; you mustn’t overdo things. You've been so dreadfully ill, my poor dear, I don’t think you really realize. Here there, lad, you lean on me if you feel you simply must get up.”
“Thankee, master, I will, though I’m more steady now. It’s none so bad as that.” He made to stand, making use of Frodo’s support, but hesitated at the low, vulnerable cast of Frodo’s neck and shoulder. “Sir?”
“I wanted to apologize to you,” Frodo said, not looking up. “I’ve been horrid, and it’s all the worse for all you’ve done. I only … I fear that I won’t be able to repay all of your gifts in kind. I lack your heart and your knowledge, and your hope. But I will do my best, I swear to you.”
Sam looked down at his master’s bared throat, unsure and anxious. He was again assailed by a feeling of absolute wrongness, like looking at one of Mr. Bilbo’s books reflected in a looking glass and trying to make out the mirrored letters. This was not the way that things ought to be. “Mr. Frodo,” he murmured at last, “that bite of supper does sound good, if you’d be so kind as to help me along a bit. I’d not mind a change of scenery, neither.”
“Of course, Sam,” said Frodo, standing slowly and pulling Sam up with him. Sam marveled at the comfort he found in his master’s physical support, the feeling he had of being held up, cared for as he hadn’t been since childhood. “Come sit in the kitchen by the fire, where it’s warm, and I’ll get you some cider to go with.”
In the following days they fell into an uneasy truce, with many words remaining unspoken between them. Sam felt well enough to go out the next morning, and soon resumed his work about the place, though he continued to be bothered by the ghosts of old pains, and was periodically assailed by a drowning weakness that forced him to spend a deal more time resting than he would have preferred. Frodo said nothing more to him of any attempt to put back that which Sam had changed, but Sam was no more fooled by that. He knew well enough that his master would not allow himself to be thwarted in such a matter; Frodo could no more leave another suffering in his stead than he could turn into an eagle and fly away over the Blue Mountains.
Instead, Frodo very nearly hovered about him, watchful as a cat with a newborn kitten. Whenever he felt faint, or worn, or found himself lost in confusion, Frodo was somehow instantly there beside him, speaking soft words of encouragement and protection. Sam spent no more nights away from the smial, neither with his gaffer nor out at some farmstead where extra labor had been needed, but always slept within his master’s earshot.
He regretted being so burdensome to Frodo, and worried that he might be doing a wrong to the master he loved, but at the same time it felt so good to soak up Frodo’s care, to have his aches soothed away and his tiredness leavened with stories and songs and mulled teas. And so it was that near a week and a half slipped by, and Rethe drew near to its close.
5. Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned
Some silent, subconscious part of Frodo’s mind must have anticipated what was to come, because the sharp increase in Sam’s attacks toward the end of the month did not entirely surprise him – though if he knew the precise history that lay behind them, he at least did not allow that knowledge to rise to the forefront of his mind.
Meriadoc had written to him some days before, in reply to the desperate missive he’d sent off on the thirteenth. He’d said that it was clear that his old cousin needed closer looking-after, and had intimated that either he himself or Pippin could be looked for at any moment.
And so Frodo was not more than slightly surprised when his two tall cousins smiled down at him from his doorway on the afternoon of the twenty-third. But their smiles did not entirely reach their eyes, and as soon as Pippin had been placated with lemonade and they'd found their accustomed chairs in the parlor, Merry raised a questioning eyebrow.
“So, Cousin Frodo. You've been up to your old tricks again, keeping deep dark secrets. Will you tell us this one straight out, or do we need to convince Sam to go behind your back?”
“Speaking of,” Pippin piped up, “where is Sam? We looked for him in the gardens as we came up The Hill, but we didn't catch sight of him.”
Frodo drew in a long breath, looking for strength. He'd always meant to tell them, but now that it came to it he felt crushed under the weight of knowledge and secrecy. Sam had been very poorly the day before, the pain nearly as bad as it had ever been, and his nerves were still frayed by long nursing and care. The delirium had let up in the early hours of the night, and Sam had smiled at him again in the morning, but then had fallen again so terribly quickly into sleep. He let his head fall down into his hands.
“Frodo?” Pippin said, voice rising. “Are you all right? Whatever's the matter?”
Merry stood, and crossed over to share his cousin's settee. “Frodo,” he demanded, “Tell us.”
“Sam is ill,” Frodo said dully. “Very ill; he's done something, and I don't know how, though I've read everything I can find on the subject. But somehow none of the various scrolls of poetry or history or herblore I've accumulated have anything to say about taking on another's pain, or about reversing such a condition should one occur.”
“Taking another's pain?” Merry repeated, penetrating straight to the core of things. “Do you mean – is that what's wrong with Samwise?” He pulled Frodo down to rest against his green-clad shoulder, offering strength and support and encouragement, and it took all Frodo had not to close his eyes and forget everything but the safe cradle of familial love. “Frodo?” Merry prompted him again.
“Merry,” he said, “you know I've not been well since … everything …. But Samwise made a wish, of all things – a wish! - past three weeks ago now, and I've felt so much stronger, so much lighter. The darkness has not pressed me quite so terribly.”
“I do know,” Merry said gently. “And it's given me such joy to see it, Frodo.”
Drawing up his will within himself, Frodo straightened. “But this is not mine to keep. I am not healed, only pardoned for a while of my wounds. Sam has given me that, at considerable cost to himself – or rather, unacceptable cost.”
Merry's mouth set into a hard line. “So Sam suffers now from the same illness that has grasped you in the past year. And while you have new strength and vitality, he endures your wounds. Is that it?”
He had laid out all the secrets, and to Frodo they looked uniquely horrible for being so revealed. “It began with that dreadful sting I received at the edge of Mordor, which reappeared exactly a year later on Sam's body.”
“How in the world is that possible?” Pippin asked, looking somewhat thunderstruck. “How can he do that? I don't question that he'd want to, that he would, but this all does seem rather impossible!”
Frodo sighed. “Oh, Pip, I have no idea how. If I knew, then I could perhaps set things to rights, but - he's resting now. That wound is healed – but he is still unwell, weak and burdened and easily tired. I have been looking after him as well as I know how, but – it is difficult for him, I think, to need help from others rather than giving aid himself. And I am sometimes troubled so by my own thoughts and memories that it can at times be difficult for me to care for him as he deserves.”
“So you wrote to us for help,” said Merry. “It was well done, Frodo, for you know that we both consider any trouble of yours to belong to us equally, and we owe Sam a great deal for bringing you back to us from the Black Land. What is to be done?”
“Now? Nothing more than watching and waiting, I'm afraid. I wrote to Gandalf the same day I sent off to you, but somehow I do not think we shall hear from him. It strikes me that he has done with doing, as it might be said. And as of yet, there is not much that needs doing – only the care of Sam's garden, and the work of keeping the smial – but my heart forebodes disaster, though I cannot see it, and I fear that I shall be very glad to have my cousins beside me when the storm breaks.”
“It may never come, you know,” said Pippin, looking at him seriously. “Sam may turn the corner in time, and perhaps you both shall be healed. Things must not always end badly.”
Frodo was quiet for a long minute. Pippin's words fell against his mind like false hope, bright and tempting but essentially impossible. “Things must not always end well, either,” he said heavily, “and in the case of this entire business, the Quest, the … fortune has not seemed to be on our side, Pippin. I will not trust Sam's body nor his heart to fickle hope.”
It was as if he'd thrown a thick, black, muffling cloth over the room; both his young cousins sat silent, with their eyes downcast, and Frodo felt his fears climbing up from his heart, up his throat to choke and smother him, when Merry stood, and crossed to the round window that looked out the south side of the smial, down gentle terraces toward the water. “Can you tell me,” he said, bright as a new copper coin, “what needs doing in the garden, Cousin Frodo? Or ought I to discover that for myself? I know enough of herblore to tell a wanted plant from a weed, at any rate, and I'm sure Sam will be able to give me further direction when he awakes. Pippin? Can I trust you to scrape together an edible tea, or shall Frodo regret letting you within reach of his kettle and crockery?”
“I fear what calamity may befall, Merry, should I be expected to produce anything edible. I believe you recall the dire fate of the lemon pies last Afterlithe? But perhaps if Frodo wouldn't mind accompanying me, I might be useful without putting anyone's tea at risk.”
“And so I shall, you useless scamp,” said Frodo, remembering how Sam had stared at the lemony-smelling, egg-bespattered, liberally floured kitchen with round, amazed eyes, and how he'd said nothing of the yolk all over Frodo's weskit for quite some two hours in revenge for the mess. “You can chop vegetables for a soup, at least, so long as I give you the duller knife. I have a basket of early mushrooms put away, and I thought I might put on a cream stock for supper, and make do with a light tea until then.”
Merry left his good coat and waistcoat hanging on a peg at the door, and with his shirtsleeves rolled up above the elbows he stated his intention to tackle the berry bushes first, and then perhaps start some lettuces to seed. Frodo could hear him whistling cheerfully but rather tunelessly as he mixed together his broth. First flour and butter for thickness, and fresh heavy cream, and herbs and a bit of salt. He'd add in vegetables once Pippin was done with the lot of them; he didn't want to get too close while the heir of the Tooks was still in possession of any sort of sharp implement.
It was just afternoon, to judge by the angle of the light, when Sam wandered into the kitchen with his braces hanging loose and his shirt askew. “My goodness, Master Pippin!” he exclaimed, still blinking sleepily. “Mr. Frodo, if I'd've known you had guests -”
“Nonsense, Sam,” Pippin said. “Merry and I scarcely count as guests. Now you have a cup of tea – don't worry, I can promise you that I've had nothing to do with its brewing!”
Sam sat heavily at the table, and slowly drank from the proffered cup. Though he'd clearly just woken, he looked tired, and Frodo put down his ladle to go and pull up a chair close to his gardener's, so that their knees touched together. “Sam,” he said, “how are you faring, my lad? You still look worn.”
“No, sir, I'm all right,” Sam said, clearly trying for a reassuring tone, and missing it by quite a bit. “I just … well, I can't seem to get warm, sir, and either it's later in the day than it ought to be, or my eyes are having trouble coming awake, for the room seems to blur every now and again. But this cup'll help more than a bit – thankee, Master Pippin.”
Frodo's own jacket hung on the back of a chair, and he grabbed it up to drape around Sam's shoulders. “Do you need to lie back down?” he asked. “I can set you up in the parlor, if you want a change of view. But you were very ill yestereve, Sam, and I don't want you over-exerting yourself. There's no need.” He pressed his hand against Sam's brow, looking for extremes of any kind, for he'd learned that bad spells could be harbinged by either feverish warmth or deadly chill. But Sam was only as warm as a hobbit should be, and he leaned against Frodo's palm with a happy sigh.
“I'd like to stay here, master, if you don't mind, and take in a sight and a smell of the waking world, as it were. I've been getting so tangled up with dreams and waking.”
“Stay, then, but if I don't attend to my cooking, we shall have a cold supper tonight!” Frodo said, heartened by Sam's cheerful manner and at the same time troubled by his report. But then Merry came in with twigs in his hair, and between his engrossed talk of planting with Sam and Pippin's chatter all the time, the kitchen was quite a cheering prospect.
The meal was at last enjoined, with candles lit along the table to ward of the swift fall of early spring nighttime. The soup was lovely, all sweet cream and savory salt with the rich mushrooms floating at the top, and Sam took a second bowl, which lit Frodo's hopes up like a taper. They talked of things within the Shire and outside of its borders, and pulled out old and merry memories for new examination – profitable for several parties, for Merry and Pippin had not heard several of the more ridiculous recountings to which Sam was party, and he did not know many of theirs.
But after the dishes had been cleared away to the sideboard, and the quiet of the sleeping world was beginning to steal over the smial, Sam spoke less and less, and his smiles seemed faded and old. And then, with a choked-off little cry, he seemed to lose all his strength in a moment, and wavered and clung to his chair. Frodo slipped quickly to his side, kneeling beside the table and offering his arm as a better support than wood and wicker. Sam's transferred grip was tight enough to bruise, and the gardener's eyes were shut tight against something Frodo could not see.
“Sam-lad? There, dear heart, lean on me a bit and you'll feel steadier.”
“Frodo?” Sam whimpered, and the sound of it cut Frodo like a shard of ice, like a knife-blade.
“I'm here, here with you. We're in Bag End, and Merry, and Pippin, and everyone is safe. The journey's ended, dear, and there's nothing left to fear for or to worry about. You've done everything you meant to do, and triumphed over all adversity, and now there are no enemies left.”
Sam opened his eyes a bit, and peered blearily into Frodo's face. “It is you, sir? Only it wasn't, not for ever so long, and I couldn't find you wherever it was you'd gone.”
“I've never left you,” Frodo said, reassuring, puzzled.
“Not in body,” Sam said in a pained whisper. “But after a while, that wasn't you walking beside me, sir, and I wanted you so in that terrible place.”
Understanding at last, Frodo found himself quite overcome, and with a tearful “Oh, Sam,” he buried his face in Sam's tawny curls.
Recovering himself, he said “Can you stand? You need to be abed, and though you've not been eating nearly enough, I still don't think I can carry you entirely.”
“I can try,” Sam said gamely, and Frodo's chest tightened at the braveness of him. He'd not been so strong himself under the onslaught of this same suffering, but had broken down like a reed, like a thing rotten at its core. He'd been reduced to a weak, solitary invalid, incapable of enjoying the new life rising all around him, or rejoicing in the victory they'd won. Why could he not have been made of sterner stuff, such as Samwise? What deep thing was wrong in him, that he could not seem to manage any sort of success?
He had quite forgotten the presence of anyone else in the room, until Merry recalled him with a tactful cough. “Merry,” Frodo said, realizing himself to not be alone, “will you help me get Sam to his room? I can manage well enough after that. I'm afraid,” he added, turning to look at Pippin, “that I am going to have to be a dreadful host to you two, but you know well enough where the bed-fixings are kept, I think?”
“We'll be fine, Frodo,” Pippin reassured him, and Merry nodded his agreement, and stepped round the table to help. With Sam leaning heavily against Frodo, and with Merry giving a strong arm on his other side, they got cleanly away to Sam's bed-room, and Merry pulled back the coverlet so that Frodo could ease Sam down. Sam's face was hot against Frodo's neck, but his broad hands were grown chilled and clammy.
“I'll fill the basin,” Merry said softly, and Frodo nodded his assent.
“Sam?” he said, but there was no response; Sam had slipped into sleep or unconsciousness, and gave no sign of hearing. He was flushed hectically, and his mouth was set even in his swoon.
That night, when Sam spoke he spoke of the Ring, of visions Frodo knew he could never have seen, images from his own nightmares: binding circles of fire, evil might-have-beens, and woven through every word was the desperate, sick longing that Frodo remembered so well. He sat by Sam's bedside, washing the beloved face with a clean cloth soaked in hot water and steeped athelas, and heard each word with a miserable heart.
Sam did not lie quietly until dawn, and long after morning had turned to noon, he still had not awoken.
“It's never been like this,” Frodo fretted, pacing up and down the length of his study. Merry had dragged him away from Sam for a bite and a sup and a change of clothes, and was now plying him with tea, but Frodo could not rest. Not while Sam lay so still, so pale, so silent. Not while he feared that such a sleep, no matter how frightening, might actually be better for poor Samwise than waking awareness. Not while he knew with every footstep, every heartbeat, that it was all on his account.
“Frodo, for heaven's sake, I fail to see how you wearing a hole in the carpeting will do Sam one single bit of good! Now sit down, and have a bite of seed-cake before you faint yourself.”
Taking no notice of his cousin, Frodo continued to mutter distractedly to himself. “The twenty-fourth of Rethe this morning – on the twenty-fourth we were – the last gasp, he called it then, and there was no water left, and the Mountain was the only thing I could see, when I could see at all and was not locked up in my own pathetic head.”
Merry asked thoughtfully, “You think that's why? That Sam's illness is tied to the events of last Rethe?”
Frodo looked at him, somewhat wild. “How could it not be? The sting-wound on the thirteenth … and last Winterfilth, when we were leaving Rivendell, I felt ill with an echo of the Morgul-blade.”
“I didn't know that. You never told me.”
“Gandalf knew,” Frodo said tonelessly, “and he seemed to think then that it was like enough to reoccur. He told me that I might very well never be healed, and might bear with me all my days the remnants of past pain.”
Merry crossed to stand quite close to him. “Frodo,” he said, “why did you never tell me of this?”
“There was nothing you could've done about it,” Frodo said with a sigh. “And I didn't want to be any bother. It does get tiring, being the one always holding everyone else back.”
“Frodo,” Merry began, exasperation evident in his tone, but before he could begin any remonstrance Pippin poked his curly head in at the doorframe.
“Any change in Sam?” he asked, and Merry shook his head in reply.
“He's neither moved nor spoken, Pip,” Frodo said. “And I begin to wonder if he shall wake at all these next days. It was a dark time, very dark, and if -”
Pippin's face grew pale. “Shall we send for a healer?”
“There would be no help in it. This is in spirit, not in body. And even Gandalf said it was beyond his help, before. There's nothing for it but to do the best we can, and hope as much as we may. I'm going back to him, now, Merry, and I don't care what you say to stop me. I can take my tea there as well as here, and he ought not to be alone in the darkness.”
Merry nodded. “We'll take care of things about the place. You needn't think on them.”
“Thank you,” Frodo said, and walked slowly back to the bright room where all his hope could soon go dark.
6. Yes, you who must leave everything that you cannot control
All that long day was an agony. Sam still did not wake, but he spoke louder now in fever-dreams, shouting, screaming, crying out Frodo's name with one breath and with the next hissing orcish obscenities, and then dropping down into a horrible sobbing begging that was worse than any of the more voluble cries.
“Sam,” Frodo called till his voice grew hoarse. “Sam, I'm here! Please, Sam.” But Sam did not turn to him, or quiet underneath his desperate caresses.
When Merry came into the sickroom, long past full nightfall, Sam's cries had lessened to moans, though he still whispered pleas below his breath. Frodo had at last found a way to settle him somewhat – by climbing into the bed himself, and wrapping himself around Sam so that the other hobbit's head rested against the sound of Frodo's heartbeat, and so that Frodo might pet through the sandy curls when Sam's visions drew in for the kill.
He felt delirious himself, cocooned in a world of mingled love and horror: the sweet close warmth of Sam's body, the softness of Sam's hair combed round his fingers, the sick pain evoked by Sam's murmured words, the ache in Frodo's heart when he looked down and saw Sam's pale twisted face written over with lines of suffering and fear.
“Frodo, no!” Sam called, voice cracking, and Frodo hurried to quiet him, rocking him in his arms.
“My Sam, my dear, hush now, rest. Let the dark thoughts pass, and come back to me. Hush.”
“Frodo?” Merry said. It took Frodo a long moment to pull himself away from Sam, to bring his mind back to some semblance of waking order, and when he did so he saw Merry standing in the doorway, brow knit with worry. “Frodo,” he said again, “I want you to come with me. No, don't argue. You can leave Sam for a moment – Pippin will sit with him, and tell you if there's any change. Don't fight me, dear fellow, for you shan't win, and at any rate if I let another half hour by you'll be asleep, and then I can do as I like with you.”
Wordlessly, Frodo untangled himself from Sam's limp frame, pressing a kiss against his temple as he slipped away. Sam did not stir, and Frodo did not know if he felt pleased or bereft. He passed Pippin by as he left the room, but his cousin seemed ghostly and insubstantial, and Frodo did not speak to him.
Merry led him straight to his own room, and unceremoniously stripped him and handed him a cloth and a basin full of steaming water. “Wash first,” he said, “and then you are to eat, at least. I don't ask that you sleep, for I know you'll not heed me, but I will not have you filthy and faint, Frodo, no matter how ill Sam is.”
“But I should be,” Frodo murmured, still not free of an odd feeling of dream-tangledness.
“What?”
“It is my burden to bear.”
He looked up, and then wished that he had not, for Merry's dark eyes were full of fire. “Frodo Baggins,” he said, low, almost dangerous, “give me one reason why you ought to suffer – if you can.”
“Sam, at least, should not,” he fired back, finding in himself some last reserve of outraged energy. “He did everything – everything and more! He went where he never should have gone, and loved me long after he should have given me up in disgust, and even found it in his heart to speak to me kindly, even after – what he saw.”
“And so we come to it,” said Merry grimly. “Since that day when you first woke in Gondor, I have known that there was some secret left untold, and since then I see that it has poisoned you. Out with it! It cannot be so terrible that you cannot even tell me.”
“Very well, Meriadoc,” Frodo said, and his voice was terrible. “If you really want to know, I shall tell you. After weeks of hard travel, after enduring and forcing Sam to endure beside me every imaginable hardship and privation, when we came to that fiery place I failed utterly.”
He sat down, feeling as if every bone in his body could go to jelly. But it was not enough. Merry said, very gently, “What do you mean by that, cousin?”
“I claimed the Ring,” Frodo said, weary, exhausted. “I slid that accursed trinket onto my finger and claimed for myself dominion over the world. I must thank Gollum for this,” and here he held up the maimed hand, with the strange empty space between the small and the middle fingers, “for if he had not attacked me I should either have been destroyed by Sauron Himself, or become something else, something unthinkably horrible.”
“But my dear old hobbit, you say that as if you think I ought to be surprised! I knew, Frodo – if not the exact details, then at least the gist.”
Horror rose like a tidal wave to swamp Frodo's mind. “But how can you have known?” he grated out.
“Oh, Frodo. How could I not? I watched that evil thing sink its fangs into you, watched it eat your happiness and your youth. I saw what the loss of it had done to Cousin Bilbo, in Rivendell. I never thought that you would be able to just toss it into the Fiery Mountain without a backwards look.”
“You've known what I am for a long time, then,” Frodo said, numb with misery. “Why would you ask me why I deserve any suffering I have?”
“Because you are nothing more than your own dear self, Frodo. No one else could have carried the Ring even so far as you did. All the Wise refused to even touch the damned thing – and I wish sometimes that you had not done so either.” He sat down on Frodo's bed, holding out an entreating hand. “Frodo, you did nothing wrong! You took and held It, and withstood it, and in the end you did destroy it! Who else could have done more?”
Frodo looked back into the smial, to where Sam lay fevered in his sickbed. “Samwise fulfilled his quest, Merry. He was with me until the end. But mine would have ended in ashes and dust but for the malicious intervention of a twisted, selfish being. Sauron was defeated only by chance!”
“Not by chance,” Merry insisted. “You told us of this before – how Gollum saved us all because of your kindness and pity for him. You, Frodo, were the only one to understand how necessary he’d become, and for that you must take some credit.”
“But don’t you see,” said Frodo in a pained whisper, “how much worse it is than that? Merry, I still want It back! I can hear it calling for me, pulling at my waking mind, and in dreams it’s even worse. I did not give It up. It was taken from me. And so I am not free of It, shall never be free. I will love It and wish for It and suffer for It until the day I die. And every yearning moment forces me to despise myself all the more, for who could want such a terrible thing?”
Merry paused. “You are bound and determined to believe badly of yourself,” he said at last, “and you have an answer for every point I can make. But answer me this: if you are indeed such a loathsome failure, why do the best and greatest men that I know give you such honor? Why did Aragorn ask you to bring his crown? Why did Gandalf ride beside you? Do you say that they are wrong?”
“No,” Frodo answered, “only that they do not understand. Aragorn does not know what I did, not in full, and so he gives praise to the hobbit he thinks I am, unaware that I am but the sign and semblance of my honor. As for Gandalf – I have not told him aught of this, but I am sure he knows more than what's been said – he pities me, and forgives me out of that pity. But that does not make me worthy of his forgiveness, no more than my pity wiped away Gollum's evil deeds.”
“You have this miserable net pretty well sewn up,” Merry said, “but I was not speaking only of them. You say they do not know? Very well. Samwise does know, for he saw it all with his own two eyes, and he loves you yet well enough to suffer that you might be spared. He loves you with all his heart. Are you saying that he is a fool, that he has given his love unworthily?”
Frodo had no answer for that. He felt very tired, and rather dizzy, and he swayed a bit where he stood at the dark window. Merry stood, and placed a steadying hand at his elbow. “You need to eat,” he said, and guided Frodo to a seat beside his small table. “I have fresh bread and some of that soup here for you, cousin, if you'll take it, though I will make anything else for you that you'd like.”
“No, that's all right,” he said to Merry, and picked up the small silver spoon. “You needn't worry about me, Merry-lad. I'm just worn through with worrying.” But somehow he felt that some bitter weight had been lifted from him, and as he ate he felt new determination coursing through him.
“Help me,” he said, finishing off the soup. “I need to get back to Sam.”
Pippin was sitting beside the bedside when Merry helped Frodo into the room, and Sam lay very still in his bed, the candlelight throwing strange gentle shadows across his lax face. Pippin made to give Frodo his seat, but Frodo instead sat on the edge of the bed, taking Sam's hands in his own, and then caressing his face. “My Sam,” he breathed. “You do love me, all the same.”
Never taking his eyes away from Sam's face, Frodo spoke quietly. “I have hated myself for a year now,” he said, “for failing at the last to do what was needed. And though others may not agree, I still say that I failed.”
He heard Pippin move to say something, and Merry shush him. Sam's face was turned towards his own, and the sight of it was very dear – the freckles that dusted across Sam's nose and cheekbones, the generous turn of his mouth, the beginnings of laugh lines at the corners of the closed eyes. “And yet, Sam still loves me, all the same.” Frodo laughed quietly, joylessly, but without pain. He turned to look up at his cousins. “It was his bravery, and not mine, that saved us all,” he said, “but how can I mourn that, when it means that he survived?
“Sam,” he said, urgent, “if you leave me like this, what will there be left? How can I take joy in your victory if you are not there beside me? For I should rather have you at my side and well than anything: more than I want to have destroyed It myself, more even than I desire possession of It again.”
He was weeping now, quietly and uncaring, and he lay down again beside his gardener, needing to feel the living warmth of Sam's body, the sturdy reality of him. “I think I know now how you've felt,” he whispered in Sam's ear, “worrying that I was going to leave you. It's the worst feeling in the world.”
Crossing the little room, Merry pulled back the curtains from the window, and Frodo could see from the bed the beginnings of dawn streaking greyly across the horizon. “It's the twenty-fifth,” Merry said softly. “Frodo?”
“Everything shall be at an end soon, for good or for ill. 'The end of all things,' I said it was once, and so may be again. We will know soon, I think.” He peered anxiously into Sam's face, looking for any change, but it did not come. Sam raved no longer, but nor did he wake. And Frodo did not know it when he dropped off into an exhausted sleep, lying curled at Sam's side and clutching his hand to his heart, but he must have slept for several hours. When he woke, it was late morning, and he could hear the whistle of the tea-kettle from the other end of the smial.
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Date: 2009-07-02 10:58 pm (UTC)