Disclaimer as before: no money being made, more's the pity, and no copyright infringement intended. I borrowed a line from Christine at the end of the second full paragraph, cos Stephen King said it better. This chapter has been so long in coming for several reasons: one, it's damn hard to type with Saruman-nails, two, I'm working seven days a week, and three, I've been as inspired as a cheap romance novel for quite some time. Having taken a detour through some of the better sick-Frodo fics out there (I'm looking at you, Frodo Baggins of Bag End) I thought it might be time to have another go.
Red flame and black void and laughing, always the laughing, as the hideous creatures screamed and raked their claws inside his chest; the roaring on and on of the Eye, so big it filled the world, the thick bestial heat of it, the darkness and the fire and the heat and.........
And suddenly it faded, as if someone had closed the door of the biggest furnace in the world; the heat and the roaring and the pain faded, and there was a sharp sweet scent of green apples and rain.......cold greenness washed over him like water. The voices snarled with fury, digging deeper into him, and for a moment the pain came back in full; but there were hands holding him, he could feel them, cool dry hands holding him tight as the thing inside him struggled to keep its clutching hold. Insistent voices murmured at him, but all he could hear was that roaring, that singleminded purpose, that unending fury, as it rose into a thin high shriek.
There was another wave of the pale cool scent of apples and rain, and suddenly Frodo was pulled, as though two separate things had caught him and were trying to tear him in two. He cried out, curling against the hands that held him steady.
Someone was talking to him, quite close; he found he could hear, and understand. Arwen, he thought. Arwen is here, with me.
The thought gave him a little strength. Voices came and went in great swooping heaves around him as the awful pulling went on and on, and he could hear, and understand, and even as he knew what they wanted the coughing seized him, seized him harder than ever before, and he gave up thought and effort and just curled into a miserable knot while his lungs shredded themselves to pieces. It wasn't just the ordinary deep thudding pain he had grown used to these past days; it was as if burning liquid metal filled his chest and throat, as if it was hanging on in there, not wanting to come up. They held him gently. Somewhere inside all that pain he was still aware of that; their cool hands steadied him as he choked and gasped, they spoke to him in soft meaningless murmurs, and slowly, very slowly, he felt it beginning to ease.
At first he couldn't breathe at all, it was as if he was trying to gasp in breath underwater; but slowly the agonizing tightness eased, and his coughing became ragged, less harsh, and finally trailed off into miserable retching. The pain was fading too, now, and there was a silence in his head where for days there had been nothing but roaring fury. He had time to realize that he was free, finally free, before the darkness rose around him and bore him away.
Clear autumn light dripped down through the leaves of Rivendell. Gold and crimson and brilliant orange dipped and swayed in the breeze; slowly, as if the air was thick and heavy as syrup, the leaves danced downwards to land in drifts on the old carven balconies and verandas of the city.
Frodo lay, propped up by pillows and draped in pale blankets, on a couch they had carried out for him, in the sun. Arwen sat beside him, her fingers tracing the delicate shape of an aspen leaf, as if committing it to memory. The sun struck dim red sparks in the darkness of his hair; there was a little colour in his face, now, but he still had the bluish shadows under his eyes, and his skin had the pale transparency of the invalid. It had been almost a week since the spell-weaving, and Sam had left his side for the first time to go and get some rest; he had been watching over Frodo ever since he had been allowed into the sickroom.
"It wasn't always like that," Frodo said, absently. His voice had suffered, too; it was rougher than it had been, a little lower. It was the voice of a much older hobbit.
"What do you mean?" Arwen looked up from her leaf, struck by the musing quality of his voice. He started a little, as if he had forgotten she was there.
"The thing. Whatever it was......we called it Sauron, but I don't know if that's really accurate." He gave her a quick little smile, but it didn't warm his eyes. "I touched it, you know. When I was there, inside the blackness......I touched it." He coughed.
Arwen's gaze was steady, but her fingers were shredding the aspen leaf into fragments of gold. "And what was it you touched?"
"I'm not entirely sure," he sighed. "It wasn't always like that. Once it had been......alive, I suppose, and less evil. It had been eaten, as it was eating me. The.....the dark power....is older than Sauron."
"You are sure of this?"
Frodo nodded, simply. Arwen sighed.
"You have given us a great deal to do, Frodo," she said, wryly. "You keep waking up old legends, and showing us that there is something to them, when we have given them up as nothing more than superstitious foolery."
He coughed a little. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Arwen's hand reached out and took his, gently. "We need to be reminded, from time to time, that we do not know everything yet."
"Yet," he repeated, with a smile. "Gimli once told me that there is nothing quite so arrogant as an elf."
Arwen smiled back, and her face changed subtly from porcelain mask to lovely young woman. "Ah," she said, "but at least we have the grace to admit our failings, unlike our dwarven friends."
Frodo chuckled, carefully, so as not to cough. "Perhaps you do, but I wouldn't try that on with Galadriel."
"She would merely look impassive and ethereal," Arwen agreed; "I wouldn't bother. Drink your medicine." She handed him a glass, decorated subtly—as everything else was, here—with gentle flowing designs of interlacing feathery shapes. He made a face.
"Must I?"
"Yes, you must. Iriliath will be cross with me if you have a relapse."
Frodo scowled at the glass, but took it from her fingers. "Then you might ask her if there's any way she can make it taste better. This stuff is awful."
"Iriliath isn't the potion-brewer of the two," Arwen agreed, "but in Gerylon's stead, she does well enough."
Frodo drank with bad grace, shuddering. "When can I get up? I'm tired of being wrapped up in blankets and carried around by a brace of supercilious-looking Elves."
"You will get up when Iriliath decides you are well enough," she told him sternly. "Your cough isn't going away as fast as she'd like."
He sighed, flopping back on the pillows. Arwen reached out and stroked his hair, the brown curls glinting red in the sun, springing back as she gently drew her fingers through them. "I'm tired of being ill," he muttered.
"I know," she said softly. She had not yet mustered the courage to tell him what she must tell him, that the Life had one most permanent effect on its recipient. That he was no longer quite mortal. "I know, Frodo."
Impulsively he reached out for her, burying his face in her shoulder, and she held him gently, as she had held him once before on the river-shore. He coughed, coughed again, caught his breath. Arwen began to rub his back, in long slow circles, her fingers soothing away his fear and his pain and his frustration. "Hush," she murmured. "Have patience, Frodo. You have all the time in the world to recover."
And she was glad she had left her hair down, for the dark, shining tresses curtained her face and hid the suspicious brightness in her eyes.
**
Gerylon rode hard into the dawning, his horse's hooves churning up the mist like a solid thing. If one legend had been true, then others might follow; and if that held true for the old, old story of the Wellspring, then the Houses of Healing would never again have to fail in their duty. He ignored the tendrils of damp hair that flicked into his eyes and plastered themselves to his face; he ignored the gnawing hunger of a day and a night without food or rest, and he rode into the dawn that no longer stank of the distant pits of Mordor, but bore a freshening breeze with the edge of autumn.
**
Frodo couldn't sleep, not with the windows wide open and the soft sounds of night rain drifting in through the casements; but he loved the rain. Ever since he'd lived with Bilbo, at Bag End, he had loved the rain; Bilbo had told him such stories of adventures and campouts in all sorts of weather.......and for a while he had wished for adventures of his own, before one had fallen into his hands engraved with the language of Mordor. Still, he loved rain, and he found himself slipping out of bed and making his unsteady way over to the windowseat.
He still felt horribly weak, and even the short hobble from the bed had tired him, but there was a strange new feeling in his bones; it was as if he seemed to belong here more than he had before, as if this his second awakening at Rivendell had been, somehow, more than his first.
Frodo pushed away the vaguely disquieting thought of having changed, curled up on the windowseat, fighting down his cough, and looked out into the darkness. The sussurus of rain on leaves filled the night up to the brim.
He had almost fallen asleep where he sat when the door of his room opened silently, letting in a dim flood of light and the silhouette of a hobbit. Frodo turned with reflexes so fast they surprised him, and his body was already tensing when he knew the silhouette and its owner, and leaned back against the windowseat again. "Sam," he said, tightly, so he would not start coughing. "What are you doing here?"
"I knew your windows was open, Mr. Frodo," said Sam stoutly, "and I thought as how the damp would be bad for your cough."
Frodo grinned in the dark. He knew Sam had demanded the room next to his, would be alert for any sounds of movement when he ought to be in bed. Nevertheless, he suffered himself to be helped back under the covers and tucked in, strangely aware of the way Sam had grown up since they had known one another back in the Shire, before all of this had happened; aware of how the other hobbit had grown, aged, and changed. Strangely, he himself felt as if he would never change again, as if he had frozen time here and now. He was not sure he liked the idea.
Sam bustled about, closing the windows and coming back to the bed to lay a hand on Frodo's forehead. Frodo sighed. "I'm all right, Sam," he said, and, predictably, began to cough. Sam frowned at him.
"You don't sound good, Mr. Frodo," he said sternly, "not good at all. Haven't you been taking the medicine that Elf healer makes for you?"
"It tastes," said Frodo, catching his breath, "like rancid dishwater. Go to bed, Sam, I'm all right."
Sam managed to look even solider than usual and lit the lamps by the bed. "Just you stay there, Mr. Frodo. I'll be back in a moment."
Frodo laced his fingers behind his head and lay back with a sigh. Sam was distressingly observant, he thought, as the itch in his chest rose again. He hoped the other hobbit wasn't waking the Healers, who would be less than thrilled to be rousted out of bed at this hour and made to visit a recalcitrant patient. Luckily, Sam returned with nothing but a small bottle, corked and wax-sealed with a seal Frodo thought he'd seen before, somewhere.
"Just you lie back and relax," said Sam comfortably, and unbuttoned Frodo's nightshirt with deft fingers. Frodo watched him suspiciously, but said nothing.
Sam snapped the thread and worked the stopper out of the little bottle, and immediately a sharp cool scent filled the air, smelling of crushed mint and lemon-balm and something else, something high and sweet and clear. He poured a little of the bottle's contents into the palm of one hand, then rubbed his hands together and gently began to rub Frodo's chest, slowly, his stubby fingers moving in little circles.
Frodo let his breath out; he had been holding it so as not to cough, but the scent of the oil was like a drink of cool water, quelling the itching in his chest, clearing the thick feeling, the tightness, the pain. He closed his eyes as Sam kept rubbing, firmly but gently, working from his collarbones to the base of his ribs and back again, and for the first time since this had begun, he found that he was no longer thinking about breathing; it came naturally, as it had not been doing for days and days.
Eventually Sam straightened up and wiped his hands on his breeches. "There," he said, drawing Frodo's shirt closed over his chest and pulling the blankets up to cover him. "Is that any better?"
Frodo nodded sleepily and gave him a smile—a real smile, not the distant half-smile he'd been using recently. For a moment he was just Frodo Baggins and not the Ringbearer or the victim of Sauron or the hope of Middle-Earth....and then the lines of tension and worry and pain and effort slid back into his face. Sam sighed a little and squeezed his hand. "I'll stay till you're sleeping, Mr. Frodo," he said. He knew about the nightmares.
Frodo squeezed back and closed his eyes. Sam had settled himself to another sleepless night of watching when a strange sound made itself known to him. For a moment he wondered what on earth it could be, and then a wide, simply happy grin spread over his face as he realized Frodo was snoring.
***
to be continued........Gerylon valiantly journeying afar and feeding the eagles in the east, confessions, explanations, and understandings; and yes, hope does continue, if a fine small thread of it. Also Legolas's triumphant reappearance. And stuff. I'm thinking, if this gets any kind of happy response, to keep doing this sort of thing—I have several ideas for stories of this kind in my head. You should see the bookshelf over my desk: Merck Manuals 11 through 16, Pulmonology Today, Medical Nursing, An Everyday Herbal, John Hall's Casebook, Drugs A-Z, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, and so on. Look for all sorts of interesting things to happen to our darling characters.