This is a one shot about Sméagol turning into Gollum in the Misty Mountains, a short story about the (in my opinion) saddest fate of a character in the Lord of the Rings.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
The voice was hissing those words. Three little, but cruel words. Again and Again. It wouldn't stop. He would plead and beg and cry yet it wouldn't listen.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
Sméagol knew he was all that. The words were coming from his mouth. But they weren't his. Not his. Not he himself was telling the truth.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
Quiet was the reply of the Misty Mountains. They were confirming it. Whispering back what he was telling them.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
Dark was the hole. Cold was the water. Raw was the fish. Golden, glittering, perfect was the ring in his hand. His Precious.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
It was breathing them, too. In another language, one unknown to Sméagol. Still it was telling him what he was. He was repeating it merely, and yet he wasn't.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
The voice hadn't been there before. His Precious had brought it with him. He couldn't live without it now. Not without the voice, not without the Ring. They'd told him where to go when he'd been lost. "Away from the light", they'd sad. "Hide from the nasty sun! It wants to burn us!"
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
"You cannot return. They would not want you because of what you are. Because of what you've done. Look at yourself." And he did. He'd always listen. There was no one else to listen to. No one else talking to him.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
Those he saw in the water. They were glancing back at him. And he gave them a name, for they didn't carry his own. "Gollum, Gollum!", he coughed, because he hadn't been speaking for so long. Nasty. Beastly. Disfigured.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
"Hide us. Find us a place to live, far from the living and the source of them. Forget them. Forget everything but us." An old boat. He didn't know whence it came from. Carved of old wood. Doomed to carry him across the water. A small, dirty, rotten island, black and grey, of stone with peaks to cut his rotting skin. An island right for what he was.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
There he wept, through dark of night and light of day. Neither he saw, not stars and moon, nor sun and clouds. Forget he did them. The smell of rain, the taste of bread, the roaring of the pines on the bottom of the mountains. Soughing rivers and colorful flowers soon became strangers to him. Sméagol never saw them. There was nothing to see, only two bright yellow eyes deep in the water. And sometimes lips mouthing the cruelest of words.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
Never did the whispers of his precious seem to cease. Voices, not his own, not even that of the other, and he began to understand. "Love me," they said. "Keep me, and never let me go. I am yours and you are mine. We are bound to each other. We cannot live without each other. You need me." Still the other would claim, "You wouldn't be here without me. I rescued us. I led us to safety." And Sméagol would cry and listen till at least he finally believed all of their lies.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
A mail like silver, though it might not have been made of it. Shed it was easily. Beauty was fleeting and to him it was all but faded. He didn't taste blood, nor flesh, nor bones. Only swallowed.
Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking.
And yet they were everything his alert mind would think of. They, and a small golden ring on his island, where it did glimmer among the rocks, where its smooth surface was the only contrast to the sharp peaks. Where it was always speaking to him, no matter how far he was.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
Sméagol kept it clean instead of himself. He couldn't glimpse into the water anymore. Or a shadow of what he once was would glance right back at him, accusingly, hateful like all other eyes he'd met. His reflection was lost to him. And when he did by chance see it once in a decade he'd spit on it, and cough, and call it, "Gollum, Gollum!" Yet it would reply those dreaded, loathsome words.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
The voice of the other would follow him where even the Ring couldn't reach him. It maimed his heart, his soul, in its deepest places, it did what his Precious wanted it to. So in the end it was still the Ring. But not to Sméagol. To Sméagol it was always the other. The one he hated and loved. Despised and needed.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
Slaying goblins was like slaying fishes. They were bigger, but without feelings. "Do it," hissed the other. "You've done it already, you can do it again!" Never did they touch his heart. Not once. He ended their lives just like another's. But differently. Food they were. Naught but that. Yet still he would hear it.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
The beauty of his Precious did not fade, never in all the years in which it stayed with him. But everything else did fade. All memory of the world outside had long been gone, all illusions of the taste of fishes and Orcs, and even his darkest dreams faded, even if only into wakefulness where they would plague him, where he could not escape him. What did not leave, however, was the one he wanted more than anything else to be gone. The one that told him what he was, the one that lied what had become truth to Sméagol, the one that spoke with his mouth and took the Ring's words.
Thief. Liar. Murderer.
Sméagol did not see himself in the water anymore. There was not one trace left of him. And so he let the other talk, called him by his name until he forgot his own. Until, at last, he became the other.
A thief. A liar. A murderer.
Gollum.
Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking. ~The Hobbit, Chapter V Riddles in the Dark by J.R.R. Tolkien, not mine.