By Oscura
Warning – slash, faint suggestion of necrophilia, plays about with canon, shockingly AU… Oh, and major character death. Please do not read if any of these things are likely to upset you!
Disclaimer – I do not own or make any profit from these characters.
Sam is proud to be helping the Gaffer. He can recognize eight different weeds now – that's three more than last summer. He sticks to these methodically, a fine drizzle dampens his hair but he ignores it. Gamgees are hard-working: Sam is not very old but he knows this, it translates into dull things like drying dishes (although standing beside his mother in the herby, soap-smelling kitchen is not dull at all), and fun, almost-grown-up things like weeding. A foot of flower-bed is looking splendidly clear and neat, thanks to him.
Sometimes he almost thinks he can hear the soft little green voices of plants, the white low song of their roots; he doesn't want the weeds to choke them. Right now, he can't explain why he loves the plants, but it is a feeling which is very clear in his head, standing out and glowing when he thinks about it.
Through the light rain a slim erect figure in a dark blue cloak is coming towards him; a mop of dark curls and two bright, bright eyes, Sam thinks, like stars in a spring sky. (In April, the Gaffer woke him one night because it was so clear, the clearest night for twenty years, he remembers the strong hand holding his to guide him, the myriad pinpricks of light growing large and close.)
"Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket…" That is a song that Sam's mother sings, she has a sweet rich voice like cider, every night she sings to him and gives him a kiss on the nose when he is in bed.
The hobbit in the blue cloak is a new arrival, his name is Frodo Baggins, and there is a strange thing about him: he has no mother. He also has no father. Sam has never before met someone with no father or mother (except very old people like Mister Bilbo, but they're different, you wouldn't expect them to have a mother), and for a moment he wonders if it is infectious, a horrible illness, maybe he should run away: really, there could be nothing more awful. Nobody to kiss you at night, nobody to hold your hand and show you the stars. Possibly it is not terribly fun being Frodo Baggins, even though he is very rich, and looks much as Sam imagines elves must look.
But walking along the edge of the lawn – tentative, head bowed – silver rain catching in his hair, he looks extremely isolated, too small to be so entirely alone.
So Sam teaches him the four most common weeds in the low flower-bed, and after a while the lost blank look seems to have slipped away from his eyes, their brightness is unimpeded, and Sam thinks even more of the April stars.
Lay down
Your sweet and weary head
Night is falling
You have come to journey's end
Rosie has fallen asleep in her sunlit parlour with the rose-patterned curtains and petit-point cushions; Sam finds her still warm (perhaps it is just from the sun's caress?) and smoothes back the white hair from her lined tired face, kisses her cheek.
Elanor holds his hand all through the funeral, the words in his head are these: "I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil". Sam looks at Elanor's fair hair streaming over her shoulders, the round swelling of her stomach with his third grandchild – her eyes are wet and over-brimming with love, he doesn't want to leave her, but his bones ache more with the passing of each icy Yule. He doesn't quite know if he can bear to stay.
Don't say
We have come now to the end
White shores are calling
You and I will meet againThey are more than twice his own height, their skin lends a pale glow to the mists (and what a pedestrian, prosaic word for it "skin" is, that light sheath that clothes their bones), their slenderness makes Sam feel particularly conscious of his paunch. They are inscrutable in their loveliness, Sam feels out of his depth – there was a time when he thought he would understand them, as he himself grew older, but now he is old, and he still doesn't. There was one moment – when the Lady Arwen laughed with such joy and pressed her lips to the King's like any innocent hobbit-lass (although perhaps with a little more dignity), he saw the light that was blooming in her eyes and thought of Rosie. A long time ago now, the Coronation when petals flowed down like a river from the sky, the white tree of Gondor bursting into leaf and the great nobles kneeling to him, him, Sam Gamgee. Oh yes, a long time ago.
On the boat they don't talk to him very much, although they are always really courteous, providing him with delicious food and cool drinks; a simple cabin with white linen sheets and soft blankets, delicate furniture carved from a silver birch tree; and an unending, exquisitely complex river of music flowing from the bows of the ship: it unlocks all of him, he grieves for his Rosie and tears fall into the wide white sea.
Sleep now
Dream – of the ones who came before
They are calling
From across a distant shore
They take him to Lord Elrond, and Sam is slightly afraid of the grave, old face – his success, his achievements, his years as Mayor and head of the family recede all at once and he feels young again, remembers the great Council when he stood tall at Frodo's side trying not to tremble, and the relief in Frodo's great blue eyes was worth any fear, and worth any pain.
Sam wants to see Frodo so much, more desperately than he has for years, more desperate is this longing, now, than it has been since the acute pain of Frodo leaving at all passed slowly away. Sam supposes that it is the custom to attend Lord Elrond first on arrival, but already his mind is skipping ahead to another great reunion, the kisses and the laughter for no reason (except joy, or rapture, or some such word), the feel of Frodo in his arms again.
With the prospect of meeting again so acutely, exquisitely close, all his thoughts are bursting with Frodo like buds turning to flower: tumbled curls spread over the sun-dappled grass; mouth closing over a strawberry (oh serendipity, verisimilitude, something like that, never was a mouth more sweetly matched) awkward in grey velvet suit (for distant mourning, that soft beguiling colour) bending over to weed the flowerbed, giggling at mistakes. Those are the happy times.
Waking in Lothlorien curled up together and he is sobbing against you, golden leaves drifting down into his hair, the high swell of eleven choirs; a cool kiss on your forehead and sweet, calm eyes facing yours, the high swell of eleven choirs; the whole world collapsing round you, and all thoughts of the future vanishing, all the world contracting into a hand clasping yours, fire and blood and two pools of blue, the only blue you have seen for so long, here at the end of all things. Those are the sad times, but they are over.
Now there is – a presentiment – of something. The Lady Galadriel comes from the mists to stand at the side of Lord Elrond, and Sam thinks he doesn't know these elves at all, that really he is afraid of them, their strange pale-dark eyes and the music of their voices. Something, he thinks, is wrong, that they will look at him with such pity, such sorrow, such hunger.
And you'll be here in my arms Just sleepingSam's mind has found a little ditty, long forgotten, first told, probably, in childhood.
"They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake."
Sam thinks that the elves long for mortals to love, mortals like butterflies to glory over for a summer's length. He sits beside Frodo (who has taken on some of their whitish glow, through being here so long), he tangles his hand in Frodo's soft shadowy hair, gently touches his eyelashes where they lie still and sooty on the fair cheek, presses his old mouth to Frodo's still cold lips to wake him (but Sam is not a prince), entwines his hand in Frodo's smaller one and lies close to his side, and sleeps.
And you'll be here in my arms
Just sleeping
As ever, comments will be very greatly appreciated.