"Come Undone"
A/N: A rather Dark one-shot born from a few days' time of rather depressed thoughts and I wrote this to siphon off some of those darker in nature. I wanted to write a story dealing with the horrible effects of the Ring, and what would have happened to Frodo mentally if he had done something he deemed "unforgivable". AU, Dark, character death. Like all of my other stories, there is NO slash.
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"But now the vision had passed. There was Sam kneeling before him, his face wrung with pain, as if he had been stabbed in the heart; tears welled from his eyes.
'O Sam!' cried Frodo. 'What have I said? What have I done? Forgive me! After all you have done. It is the horrible power of the Ring… But don't mind me, Sam. I must carry the burden to the end. It can't be altered. You can't come between me and this doom.'"
-The Tower of Cirith Ungol", Return of the King
The blood from his wounds was internal, not external, and not even physical to begin with. There were only scars to show his troubles—old burns mapping his legs and feet, old bumps and scrapes having left dark brand-like markings on his otherwise pale skin. And, of course, the other more obvious mementos: the silver now lining his hair, and the missing finger on his right hand, an unnatural maw of a gap he tried to never look at.
Internally, he was bleeding, a mass of shredded, raw nerves left shuddering in a private Hell. Internally, he had been skinned, flesh riddled and torn from his bones so that his blood poured from long tears that even now allowed his soul to escape.
This was not cold ice from a knife he could remember from half-snatched memories.
This was agonizing flame from the Mountain that had taken everything from him.
He could barely remember much before the flames—his mind had come undone from the terror of his journey and from the terrible sins he had committed, so much so that he could not remember his past life, much less his own name. Somewhere he could recall his old home, the Shire, from the back of his mind, hidden deep in the recesses of memory that had not been burned away. He could remember an uncle who loved him and could on certain days catch a glimpse of said uncle's warm brown eyes looking at him from across a well-worn table and several years' time. Those who visited him here in the city he could recognize, but only because they reminded him daily: Merry and Pippin, his younger cousins, the ones he could barely look in the eye from guilt, although he couldn't remember what he felt guilty about. He could recall Merry's smiling face, Pippin's laugh, but they did neither of those things anymore.
They were older now. Wiser. Worried.
Worried about him.
He didn't know why they were worried about him. He tried to understand their concern, but he had always been the object of their loving concern, so what had changed? With them came Gandalf, dear old Gandalf, although it seemed odd to him that the wizard was now dressed in white. He had always thought Gandalf had dressed in long grey robes, but maybe he had just been mistaken. He thought that grey was better-fitting for the wizard anyway, since every time Gandalf looked at him his whole being was grey with his own guilt and sorrow. He always gave Gandalf a smile to see if the wizard would smile back but he never truly did.
Then there was the king. He could remember nothing about the king except for an old name—Strider—and a strong bearded face hidden deep within a cowl. The king came to visit him every day to check how he was doing, but he never spoke to the Man.
He hadn't spoken to anyone since the Mountain.
Merry and Pippin spoke to him often, though. "Hello, Cousin," they would say with strained smiles. The lines on their faces seemed to deepen every time he saw them, which he thought was quite sad. They would speak about anything and everything and ultimately saying nothing at all until their voices were hoarse.
Everything, that is, except Him.
Maybe they thought he could not remember Him; after all, they had to remind him who they were every day.
They were wrong. He could remember Him clearly, and guarded those memories jealously, afraid to let them go, unwilling to let anyone else catch a glimpse of them.
Sam.
In the dead of night when he was alone, he would get up and look outside at the stars, feeling that familiar ache in his chest, and say the name quietly to himself. It slipped from his mouth easily, barely a breath on his tongue, that he felt fall uselessly to the cold, hard stone beneath his feet because there was no Sam to respond. He would say it again, a little louder this time, and would feel his torn heart tear just a little more. He needed Sam, needed him desperately, cried out for him, begged him to come, but he never came. He would go back to his bed, lay awake the whole night, remembering Sam's dark eyes, his voice, and remember himself a little, too, because Sam, he knew, had been the one who held his soul.
But Sam was dead.
He had killed Sam.
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He never cried. Not for anyone. Especially not for Him. The Mountain had burned his tears away as it had Sam's body. He drifted into nothing most of the time, wrapped in Shadow, cut off from the world and quite content to be so. Perhaps he was insane, but why should he care? Everything he cared for was gone. Sam was gone. Guilt was his only friend now and guilt cared for no one.
The Precious was gone.
It had been evil, but It had been his, and It had been taken from him by the small creature that had called itself "Gollum".
It had led him to kill Sam. For that, he hated It as much as he coveted It. But still It lingered, It's memory clinging like a fiber of a cloak, and in nightmares (on the rare nights he would actually fall asleep) he could recall a terrible roaring in his ears and a beloved voice calling to him. He could remember in sleep his own hands striking down one who had come so far with him, maddened in his pain and fury of losing the Precious. On nights such as this he would wake up on the verge of screaming but unable to remember what had frightened him so.
He always wondered, however, why he often thought his hands should be stained red even though his hands were naturally white.
A/N: I wanted to explore the possibilities of what would happen if Frodo, blinded in his madness for the Ring, murdered Sam and only later realized what he had done. I think that if Frodo were to actually kill his best friend with his bare hands it would drive him to insanity so that he didn't have to live with his guilt.