Written for my hc_bingo square "purgatory".
_Purgatorium_
With every step closer to his destination, another piece of him fell away and joined the trail of blood and sweat in the dust of Mordor. They were small pieces, no more than momentary thoughts and remembered sensations, but the whittling away had begun so early that by the time he was aware that something was missing, sizable swaths of what had made him who he was were gone.
The visions had started long ago, but turned darker and more menacing the closer he drew toward Mordor, and they seemed to drive out any memory of what had been. After he and Sam parted from their company, he tried to bring to mind thoughts of his cousins, Bilbo, and Gandalf when sleep fled, but so too did those memories flee from his grasp. Every concerted effort he made to remember made it all too clear that he'd forgotten, or been forced to forget by the gaze of the Eye that had long tormented his dreams and now followed him into the waking hours.
Then he woke in the Tower, sick and aching and weary, and was stripped of everything he had; only by clinging to the thought that it must be a dream did he endure the orcs' endless questions, their glaring eyes, and the gleaming knives they fingered in warning. Sam rescued him from the orcs, but the endless questions took root in his mind, the taunts and false promises of the Ring growing more strident with each step further into the land of shadow.
The constant heat of the place brought to mind a smith, the use of fire to purge the impurities from a piece of metal so it would better serve its use as shoes on a pony or the blade of a plow. But can a fire that is itself impure serve to purify anything? Or does it merely corrupt all it touches? The wheel of fire beckoned, promising an answer, and he plodded toward it, following the faithful Sam to the mountain of fire.
With every step he strove to resist the call to claim the Ring and bring an end to his suffering, and instead clung to his purpose: take the Ring to Mount Doom. To achieve that was to achieve all, no matter the cost. 'Naked in the dark', he'd said to Sam, and sometimes his will was strong enough to bear the burden even so, but all too often he fell into the dust and struggled to rise again.
Afterward, when they had been returned to green lands, to their friends, to life, he longed not to remember that bitter ending, being emptied of himself only to be filled at the crucial moment by something else. He fulfilled his charge, that was true, but at a cost no one could have foreseen, and he was left to wonder how to carry on when all of his previous life seemed a distant, half-forgotten memory.
His return to the Shire was a disappointment, for that land had been scarred by mischief and malice. He helped to put it right, but the balm he'd hoped the familiar, happier surroundings would bring was not to be found.
And so all that remained to him was to leave, to seek healing with the Elves over the Sea.