Chapter Title: Nightingale Chapter Rating: R (sexual situations, medical gore)

Frodo released his hold on the broken arm, reached over and handed a clean towel to Iris. The dead boy lay in a midnight pool of his own blood, candlelight flickering a strangely warm golden hue to an otherwise ghostly pale body.

From behind them both came a long wail of grief. Farmer and Mrs. Wyncot and their son, Jack, were standing in the doorway, holding each other as they surveyed the deathbed. The sturdy farmer had tears rolling down his weathered face. His son held his mother, a state of shock slowly working its way across his features.

Iris closed her eyes in resignation. Frodo tried to towel the blood from his hands, then went to Iris.

"He was talking!" Mrs. Wyncot sobbed. "He was awake! What did you DO to him?" She accused the doctor, "You killed my boy! You killed my Teddy!"

Farmer Wyncot gathered his wife into his arms as she sobbed and spat at the doctor. Iris opened her eyes and looked at Frodo. He recognized the look. It was one of abject and utter resignation at her failure. Her eyes were dry, though Ted's life-force dripped in slow rivulets through her hair and down her cheeks. She looked as if she was crying blood.

Iris could not will her body to move. Frodo wiped her face with the towel and moved her aside so the Wyncot family could gather round the bed.

"Please don't mind Ma," Jack apologized as the tears coursed down his face. "She's. she's not in her right mind. We know you did all you could, an' we thank ye, Doctor." He knelt beside his brother's side and wept into the sheets.

Iris finally roused herself and started methodically rinsing, drying and putting away her tools and herbs. Frodo gathered the unused arm splint as they made their way back through the smial and out into the cool night air, leaving the pitiful family to grieve in private.

Neither Frodo nor Iris said a word as they trudged back towards Hobbiton. Ted's blood was drying into uncomfortably crusty lumps on Frodo's shirt. It mingled with his own sweat to form horribly sweet-smelling sticky patches of reddish-brown moisture. Iris wouldn't look at him. She simply plodded on, mindless of the drying blood and dust covering her, or the darkness of the road ahead.

As they came to a small stream, Frodo reached out a hand to stop her progress.

"Iris?" he said, "I cannot take this any longer. I have to wash it off."

She looked at him in the gloom of the evening, her eyes unreadable in the dark.

"Come on," he continued. "Take my hand." He led her off the dusty roadway and upstream until he found a path down to the water. Iris suddenly loosed her grip from his hand and ran down to the shore, throwing her medical bag into the bushes. Frodo retrieved the bag and followed.

She stood fully clothed in the middle of the stream, looking up through the gently swaying trees at the twinkling stars set in a midnight sky. As Frodo approached, he could see the tears finally rolling down her cheeks. He placed his items on the sandy bank and waded out to her.

"I could have saved him." She continued crying to the stars, fists clenched and ridged at her sides. "He didn't have to die. If I had amputated as soon as we came, he would be alive right now. But no. I thought I could save his arm too. I should have amputated. I could have saved him."

Frodo clasped her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. "Iris, you did everything in your power to save him. You did nothing wrong. There is no blame. You tried everything. Sometimes we fail despite our utmost effort."

She lowered her face into her bloody hands and sobbed. Frodo gathered her to his bosom as they stood together in the flowing stream. She rested her hands on his shoulders and lay her head against his neck. He had unbuttoned the top two button of his shirt in the heat, and the softness of his fair skin felt cool against her flushed cheek. He stroked her hair and removed the pins restraining her wild curls. Her hair spilled out in a tangled mess, clumps of dried blood breaking away to dissolve in the murky water.

Every article of clothing she wore was soaked in blood. Her mind was numb with grief and remorse. She could do nothing for herself at the moment. She allowed Frodo to completely undress her and lay her clothes on the bank, momentarily forgetting modesty or convention. It was simply too painful to think. Frodo removed his own filthy vest and shirt, laying them beside Iris's clothes. Glancing back, he was shocked. Iris was squatting down near the shore, grabbing handfuls of sand and mud, violently scrubbing her skin with the abrasive mixture. Frodo rushed back and grabbed her wrists before she could abrade her skin even more than she had already. Dark scratches wept her own blood to mix with her dead patient's.

"Stop it, Iris," Frodo commanded. "Hurting yourself won't bring him back."

She twisted abruptly, freeing her hands from his control, and violently threw the sand and mud at his naked chest. "What do you know?" she snapped sarcastically. "Maybe pain is better than silence."

Frodo reached out and held her hands in a firm grip. "I know. I know. I have been there," he sadly said. He would not let her go despite her struggles.

"Iris. Iris. listen to me. You tried your best. You did what you could. It's all that could be expected of you."

Frodo released on wrist and brought his maimed right hand up under Iris's chin, forcing her to look at him. Starlight magnified the white gem hanging from a thin silver chain about his neck. To her tear-bedazzled eyes it appeared as a star shining from his breast, piercing her heart with beauty beyond life or death or caring.

"Is there still beauty in this world?" she wondered, staring at Frodo's dark curls and smooth skin glistening alabaster in the starlight.

Their struggle in the water had awakened sleeping birds in the surrounding cottonwood trees. A nightingale trilled his cadenza into the night air. Frodo's beauty and the bird's carefree oratorio broke her heart.

She cried in her nakedness and need as he gently gathered her into his arms. They sank into the stream, letting the cool water wash over their bloody and muddy forms in the starlight. Frodo lowered her hair into the water and let the flood wash away the matted gore. She no longer resisted him, but clung to his form with a desperation born of despair.

After what seemed like an eternity, Iris opened her eyes. Frodo was still cradling her nakedness, her own arms clasped about his neck. He pulled her wet curls away from her sorrowful face and gently kissed her cheek. She turned towards him to find a face full of understanding and love. He kissed her lips in the darkness, tasting her mouth with his tongue. kissing the corners of her mouth. her chin. and back to her lips. She responded in a desperate desire to imprison his honey-sweet mouth with hers. She lusted to capture his beauty in the night - to wipe out the despair and death.

Frodo lay her upon the sandy banks of the stream and removed the remainder of his clothing. His skin gleamed silver in the darkness, the water glinting on his form with reflected starlight; his raven hair a dark halo against the sky.

She wanted him as she had never wanted to possess anything in her life. Her loins ached with desire to have his hot flesh fill her; consume her; release her with an absolution born of shame. She reached up and brought his body atop hers, her hand desperately seeking to immediately force himself into her womb. But he would not permit it.

"No, Iris," he gently whispered as he captured her grasping hands and held them above her head. "No. Not this way. I will not let you use me to punish yourself."

She writhed under his weight, trying to twist her arms out from his grasp. But he would not let her go.

"Take me," she wept into the night air. "I need you."

"I shall," he whispered. "I shall, dearest. But only in love. Not in lust or as some twisted punishment. Only in love."

He continued to restrain her as he kissed her neck - a slow sensuous kiss full of sighs and the wind. A kiss that traveled up over her chin and then captured her mouth. She groaned with pleasure and frustration. He slowly moved down the other side of her jaw and began caressing her breasts. She involuntarily arched her back, exquisite jolts of sensual pleasure instantly connecting her breasts to her loins as he kissed and lightly suckled.

He released her hands, half expecting her to claw at him again. But she momentarily left them stretched above her head, then languidly moved them down to caress his tangled midnight curls. Tears escaped her eyes as she silently wept. Frodo stopped and moved back to her side.

"Frodo," Iris whispered through her sobs, "why do you do this to me? What do you care so much?" She looked into his hypnotic inky blue eyes. "Why did you come back to the Shire?"

"Because I love," he replied simply and honestly. "I have seen evil from without and the evil each of us carries in our own hearts. I have experienced the bitter taste of power and lust. I reject them. I have been purified through the wheel of fire and rescued only by the mercy and love of others. I only desire to return the love I have received." He moved closer. "And I find love here. Back where I least expected it."

"I love the Shire as I love myself." His hand caressed her face. "I love you as I love Middle Earth itself." A soft kiss on her eyelids as he carefully positioned himself on top of her.

"I love the land." A kiss on her ear tip. ". the trees." A tongue from ear down to collarbone. She moaned and caressed his naked back. ". the air." His mouth on her nipple again, sucking it into its own instant erection then lightly blowing upon it. ". the water." His hands on her knees, separating them. ". the sun." An unexpected kiss on her stomach, making her groan. ". the night sky." A finger slipped into her moistness, causing a soft cry to escape her parted lips. ". the stars." His fingers left her, only to be replaced by what she most desired. ". you." As he pressed his entire length deep within her velvety shelter.

Iris writhed in the ecstasy of his rhythm; the sand under her; his weight upon her, pinning her to the ground yet freeing her soul. Her breath came in ragged pants as he thrust into her time and time and time again. They were coming towards climax. She could feel him swelling within her and her own heart replying.

"Yield me your love," he demanded as he continued towards their peak. "Will you yield me your love?"

She finally opened her eyes and gazed into his depths.

"I do. I yield unto thee."

At that, Frodo curled down and placed his forearms on either side of her face, releasing some of his weight from her. Iris was finally able to tilt her hips upwards, forcing his strokes deeper within her womb. She wished he would split her in two, and as if he could read her mind, he moaned and drove even harder into her as he came.

Her orgasm was an almost instant reaction to his. They groaned as wave after wave of orgasmic bliss captured their minds and bodies in locked delight.

He lay atop her as they recovered. He attempted to disengage, but Iris quickly reached around his body to restrain him.

"Please don't go," she pleaded to his warmth. "Don't leave me."

"I shall stay as long as I am able," he replied, "but I fear eventually all good things come to an end."

"Even love?" she suddenly asked. "Does love come to an end?"

"No," he smiled in the night, "I stand. or rather, I lay corrected. Iris, love has no end. For the world was sung into being with love as its foundation. And all things in the world are based upon that love. While the seas and the mountains endure, love will endure."

"If love is the basis for the world, why do we feel such pain?" she sadly asked as she ran her hands up and down his back. "I've lost patients before. But I feel so guilty with this one. Ted asked me to help, but I could not. Where is the love in this death?"

Frodo stroked her hair. "Do you not know? The Elves call death the Gift of Eru to the Second Born. They envy our mortality. Death is not punishment, Iris. It is a release from Time; from the physical world. Neither the Second Born nor the Eldar know what follows death, but since it is a direct creation of the One, it is not to be feared.

Death was created out of love. Never fear death. For your patients and for yourself, death is the ultimate blessing."

He kissed her and gently withdrew. This time she did not cling to him, but let him reposition himself beside her on the banks of the stream. She drank in the beauty of his slim body gleaming in the starlight.

"I will stay with you as long as I can," he caressed her body, "but death will come to me as well as it did to Ted Wyncot today. We feel the pain and frustration of our inability to stop death, but it comes as a grace. We feel the pain because we care. And if you did not feel this pain, I could not love you."

They lay in each others arms for awhile, listening to the nightingale and watching the stars. Finally, Iris sighed and sat up.

"Where are my clothes?"

"Over by the bushes next to your medical bag," Frodo answered.

"I need to rinse them in the stream," she said as she rose to retrieve her soiled clothes. Frodo also arose and joined her again at the water's edge. They scrubbed Ted's blood out of the fabric as best they could. It was a struggle to put all the soaking wet clothes back on in the dark, but eventually they were ready to leave.

The nightingale had ceased his solo. Clouds covered the stars. Rain began to fall.