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Frodo is exhausted.
He has been tired before. He has been tired this whole journey, as if the strength of his body and mind began to bleed away the moment he pressed his fingers to the golden circle that has steadily encroached on his identity every breath since. Whatever wound the Ring did to him is unhealing, unmanageable; all he has been able to do is watch his self trickle out of him like water spilling from a cracked cup, and keep walking, because there is no other option and no one else to help. The Ring is his to bear, has been his own burden since the moment he stepped forward into the midst of the chaos in Elrond’s Council, and it has sunk so far into him that the absence now leaves him feeling hollow, as if he has been cored out to leave nothing but what paper-thin shell of himself remained over the Ring itself. He has been weighed down, has been all but crushed by the weight of the task he undertook, and it is now, more than ever, that he appreciates Sam for what he has done.
It has been hard. Frodo was ready to leave Sam behind, before, on the bank of that river that feels as far away as a full-lived lifetime. He had thought he was strong enough, then, to carry on alone, to spare Sam the burden of this journey; in the last days he has found he was wrong, has learned that it is only with the solid, certain support of Sam next to him that he will have any hope of completing his mission at all. Frodo is sure he would have crumbled, to exhaustion or hunger or most of all to despair, and even answered by suspicion instead of the endless gratitude he deserves Sam has stayed true, has been at Frodo’s side to catch his elbow or feed his body or just to give Frodo a reason not to give up, someone to be strong for instead of feeling the overwhelming force of the world as crushing a burden as the ring itself dragging around Frodo’s neck.
It’s only now, Frodo thinks, from the distant ringing of loss and relief and pain and resignation in his thoughts, that he has space to even think of Sam. His heart has been scoured clean, stripped slowly of every good thing he has ever known and filled with the poison of paranoia and suspicion and always, always the exhaustion telling him to stop, to give in, to give up. There was no space for Sam in him, before, no room for the genuine affection that Sam’s clear gaze offers without so much as the glance of Frodo’s attention to call it. The closer they got the less space Frodo had, and the more he became a burden in himself, a weight as corrupting as the Ring pulling raw around his neck; and yet Sam has borne it, the hunger and the exhaustion and Frodo himself, cruel and capricious and as absent as if he were never really there at all, has borne it without complaint and without any support for himself. The thought tightens Frodo’s throat closer than the radiating heat of the mountainside melting around them, promising the agonizing end that Sam deserves no more than he deserves all of this, and at the inside of his chest something flickers, an emotion long since abandoned sketching itself back into place to the sound of Sam’s rasping breathing alongside him.
There is no happy ending for them. Frodo has resigned himself to that, accepted that long ago; the Ring is too much, he knew that as soon as Boromir’s smile turned to a sneer, as soon as protection turned to violence. He knew his own path was a tragic one, inevitably; he had thought to save Sam from the same, had hoped to leave space for Sam to turn his back and return to the happy home and quiet life he deserved, he belonged in. But Sam had taken that choice from him, had thrown himself into deep water for Frodo’s sake, and if Frodo had delayed the inevitable end at the river he can do nothing for it now. Flame for water, heat for chill; the end is the same, except for their effect on a world that seems so distant from Frodo now he can hardly believe there is anything, has ever been anything, but this mountain and this pain and this exhaustion. He gazes up, turning his bleary gaze to the arc of fire through the air, the whistle of stone blown as wide of its foundations as he has been from his own; and then he shuts his eyes, and lets himself stop fighting.
There’s a peace to it. Even with death creeping towards him with the speed of the liquid flow burning at the base of their temporary reprieve, there is a comfort in being still at last, in resting without feeling every moment slipping away like a surrender to some great, shadowy creature always chasing, ever gaining, however fast they move. Frodo’s neck aches, his shoulders are scraped so raw and bloody they throb nearly as much as his slow-bleeding hand; but the weight is gone, lifted and stripped and absent, and however strange the stillness Frodo can feel the relief of it in the whole of his body, in this chance to just lie still and breathe without anything weighing him down. This is a gift, a glimpse of the life he once had, the contented peace that used to form the whole of his life back in the Shire: and green blossoms into his memory, springtime spreading lush and deep and certain where there has been nothing but shadows and pain for so long. Frodo’s breath catches, his lungs work on a deep inhale; and then his lips shift, curving towards something so long-lost he can only find the motion of a smile by struggling into the outline of it.
“I can see the Shire.” The words lift from him as light as air, drifting free from his lips without any of the pain that has accompanied speech for so long, without the fight for breath that has made a cage of his lungs and a battle of his very existence. Behind his lids the green shifts, his view expanding out as if memory is gaining shape and form by the sound of relief on his voice, returning back something he had thought melted out of his grasp long hence. Names slide back over his tongue, sweet as the first springtime strawberries, cool as the splash of well water. “The Brandywine River. Bag End.” He can see a door opening, can feel the texture of smooth-painted wood heavy beneath his fingertips: a weight of home, of a security he had thought gone forever, now returned to him in the rasp of his breathing and the aching familiarity of memory behind his shut eyes. “Gandalf’s fireworks. The lights. And the party tree.” He can see it all, can see it clearly: pinpoints of color splashing across the nighttime sky, laughter warm as a blanket in the air, music rising to blend with shouts and cheers and the sound of friend’s voices, of those Frodo’s memory paints to presence as if they are right before him.
“Rosie Cotton dancing.” Frodo’s vision shifts, tipping away from his own mind as if spilling over into Sam’s with the sound of the other’s voice, with the focus of the other’s attention, and he can see it too: Rosie’s beautiful smile, her hair falling in golden ringlets around her shoulders as she clasped her hands at the shoulder and waist of her partner. And Sam, as he was, clumsy and sweet and flushed with embarrassment and pleasure at once, borne forward into the rhythm of the dance where Frodo’s own hands pushed him. Frodo can see him in his memory, handsome coat and curling hair and shy-skittish gaze, and his eyes open of their own accord, his gaze sliding to drift and land on the figure next to him instead of restraining itself to memory.
“She had ribbons in her hair.” Sam is gazing into the distance, his mouth trembling with the same emotion choking his voice, even if his face is too sweat-streaked and dusty for the marks of tears to show clearly for what they are. His lips are chapped with the heat of the air, his face is smudged with grime and torn here and there with a scuffed-in wound or a long, dragging scratch. He looks exhausted, as worn down as Frodo feels himself to be, as if it’s only through inattention to the world around him that he is still sitting upright and not collapsed flat to the uncomfortable support of the rocks beneath them; he looks like home, like he always did, as if a piece of the Shire itself somehow tore itself free of its surroundings to strap on a backpack and follow Frodo across the whole of Middle-Earth. Frodo can’t recall the last time he really looked at Sam, the last time his attention was still whole enough to even recognize the true identity of the companion hunched at his side; he wonders if he would have seen this, then, if Sam has always been bearing that fragment of home within him as stubbornly as Frodo has been dragging the weight of the evil they have finally destroyed.
Sam’s gaze is fixed in the distance, out over Frodo panting before him, staring at the spill of liquid destruction pouring around them as if he’s seeing home there too, as if he can conjure up the comfort of the Shire with his eyes still open, with a strength that Frodo can only wonder at as Sam’s tear-bright eyes overflow to trickle a line of wet across his cheek. “If ever I was to marry someone it would have been her.” He drags at a breath, his lips press tight together as his inhale sticks to a sob in the back of his throat. “It would have been her.” And his head tips forward, his voice breaking entirely into shaky sobs as he finally lets his strength give way to the acknowledgment of loss that Frodo can’t even recall how to feel.
Frodo looks at Sam for a moment, feeling his heart ache with secondhand pain the easier to feel for the distance it keeps from where he is. Frodo long ago tore loose all his own hopes, he has spent every step of this journey hardening his grief into the numb distance he needed just to let himself go on moving. The fact of Sam’s tears -- the proof of the other’s heart, still present, still warm and real and aching even after all they have been through -- seems to him a miracle, a gift so generous his own eyes burn with tears of sympathy and relief in equal parts. He had thought himself empty, hollowed, stripped from hope of anything but the silent relief of death; to feel anything again, even the throbbing pain of borrowed hurt, is like being granted the gift of a second life he had never expected to have.
Frodo can’t stay still. His body aches, every bone and muscle in his existence protests the very thought of motion, but it’s not thought that pushes him up from the rough rock beneath him, that brings him sitting up to reach out for Sam’s trembling shoulders. It’s a need, a desire for connection that goes beyond rationality, that goes beyond logic, until when his fingers touch Sam’s shoulder he imagines he can feel the cool of soft grass winding around his touch, until when he leans in to press against Sam he can feel the support of the other’s presence like the weight of the front door at Bag End, solid and steady and unchanging, a haven just by existing in the world. He can’t help but lean into that support, sliding an arm around Sam’s shoulders as much to warm the near-frozen ache of his own heart as to offer the comfort that he has been so unable to muster before now, that has been as far away from his grasp as this their final destination always seemed in his mind. Sam hiccups over a sob, his eyes shut over the force of his grief, and Frodo’s heavy head tips forward to settle against the side of Sam’s own, to press the dark of his own hair close to wheat-gold. Frodo’s attention fixes to Sam’s face, familiar features made new by his own renewed attention, by the proximity of them one to the other, and when he draws a breath he feels the tension in his chest unwind itself into the simplicity of sincerity at his tongue.
“I’m glad to be with you, Samwise Gamgee” Frodo says, and feels the words resonate in his chest as if to gain force and substance by the truth of them, by the relief of feeling anything at all when there has been nothing but spreading cold for so very long. His throat tightens on emotion but his breathing deepens, easing as if some great fist that has been tightening around him is suddenly loosened, as if he is only able to realize his own stunning freedom in the support of his comforting arm around Sam’s shoulders. He turns his head to look before them again, to fix his gaze once more on the crimson illumination of the mountain pouring past them, destruction given the same ceaseless flow of a river as it spills, but even the death it promises doesn’t strip away the warmth in his chest, doesn’t remove the ache of affection spilling in to fill all the spaces in him stripped bare by their journey. Frodo takes a breath and lets it go with force enough to feel the relief of it on his tongue. “Here at the end of all things.”
Frodo lifts his arm to reach around Sam, to make an embrace out of what was simple comfort, and when Sam lifts his hand to clasp against his arm Frodo shuts his eyes in answer, feeling the weight of his eyelids too heavy to bear as his brief strength gives way. He can feel the huff of Sam’s breathing coming as hard as his own as the other shifts against him, his head turning in as if to match himself to Frodo’s lean. The air is warm between them, humid with the rasp of their breathing over the parched-dry air, and when the corner of Sam’s mouth brushes Frodo’s chapped lips Frodo tips in against the contact as easily as Sam lifted his hand to clasp against Frodo’s arm. There is no grand revelation, no startling epiphany: just the grip of a hand at his arm, and the rasp of breathing in their throats, and the press of chapped lips fitting together with as much perfect ease as Frodo used to feel in the Shire that was once his home.
Frodo doesn’t know if he’ll ever see the Shire again, and less if he’ll ever be able to truly go home in the way he once did. But right here, right now, he has Sam’s mouth against his, and Sam’s shoulders solid and real under his arms, and if this is all the reward they ever have, Frodo thinks he can be content with this.