5. Living without living.
T: This final part is dedicated to Chaos who has reviewed constantly and given me warm fuzzies. Not that I'm the type that needs warm fuzzies, it's just nice to get them! LOTR not mine, though I really wish it was at this point. This part is bitter sweat and talks of death and other such things very casually so beware.
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"'There is but a little left of the tail now and though I'm still not sure if I want it told, I write because I know it should be.
'I said that I was torn in two by Frodo's departure, but perhaps it is better said that I was ripped asunder. For always when I was just finding my feet, just beginning my life again, I would be reminded of him. Sometimes it was by the simplest of things, such as finding the remnants of his soap or by the empty chair at the table. Other times it was something else, like the echo of the Sea in the hole of my heart, or the bright stars in the night sky.
' I found ways to cover over the void in my heart, though I could never fill it; the garden, you my dear child and your mother and sometimes I'd go and visit yourselves, Merry, Pippin and we'd talk about the happier times before the quest.
'A few times I took Bill and road out to The Havens and stare out at the Sea for hours. There I was closet to my heart and there I was at home, if only for the smallest of instants.
'I had responsibility though, and I always came back, First your sake Elanor and then for your brother's. My little flower and my dearest boy, both so much a part of my life, of the Shire that watching you sleep I thought of the tales you'd grow up on and eventually I thought of opening the Red Book and seeing what Frodo had written there.
'You've read his tale and you can imagine how the separation in his words hurt me. For it seemed as he was trying to erase away the memory of our love from all but our hearts.
'The more I read, the more I was confused, for he'd written clear enough my love in each angled word and through that had made me the hero even though we had pulled through together.
'On the last page written in his hand a scrap of paper had been pressed into the crease of the spine. It contained a note that bides still with me, both in the spiritual (for it is always in my heart) and the physical (for it has been under my pillow from that day to this).
"Samwise.
My most beloved of Hobbits.
I do not wish you to think that I have forgotten my own heart, nor that we were holding one another up against the darkness. But it is better that the story is told this way for a while, for to give the truth now is impossible for the both of us.
"I have said goodbye to this love already you see. In the empty joy of living and finding others alive, I realised that I was empty, that everything I had was yours now. And so I kissed you for the last time, kissed your sleeping face and bade goodbye to you and to myself.
"You also have said goodbye at last, for I felt the whisper of your lips as I dreamt empty dreams and I knew; my time was drawing to a close.
"I can not be sad, Sam and I ask that you too will one day let your pain go and live happy. I love you, you see, all too much and to prove that love I let you go so that you might carry the both of us in your heart.
"Do not forget our love, Sam. For I will not and perhaps between the both of us we can make it light up more lives than just our own; When the time is right that is. When the time is right.
Frodo."
'That note was why I set to writing this, just a little each year when the winter set in and all the sadness was grouped together. Thinking back on it helped, you see, because I could see clearer things that had gotten fogged up during the war. It was then that I got the inkling that you two, Merry, Pippin, had know about our relationship, for I'd seen the glances you'd shared. Seen and not comprehended until then. You'd known everything and though you yourselves had things you might have wish to share, you kept them between you for you saw the light of our love sparking out.
'If you'd just kept your eyes focused a moment longer, you'd have seen the light kindle again, brighter that before. You see I began to live enough for the both of us. Yet as you kept your secrete I kept mine. Yet that never hurt us did it? For we were bound together by the Quest, our loss and later by blood when my Goldilocks married young Faramir.
'You told me that you envied me my family, Peregrin, for you'd lost Diamond in childbirth, while my Rose endured to bare me so many beautiful children. I tell you now that I envied you Merry, for he has been there always by your side watching and waiting for you to see what has been right there before you from the instant you were born. I envy that love, for you have now your other half while I…I dwindle away now but half, never again to be one within life.
'I lived without living, laughed without joy, cried without grief and always in the emptiness beneath this life was the cry of the gulls. Not melodic, not in the least, but a scream all too reminiscent of the cry of the Nazgul: So much in fact that sometimes I'd wake in a cold sweat having dreamt about those black things coming fro Frodo in Valinor.
'I often had nightmares, yet they came more often in the year leading up to Rose's death, perhaps because my subconscious knew and was trying to warn me, or mayhap because age was finally bringing degradation to my mind I could not tell ye.
'It was in waking from a nightmare that I found her, cold and lifeless at my side and for the first time since I had bade my farewell to Frodo I wept truefull tears. She had been a kindness in my life after all, tending the barren wasteland of my heart in hopes of growth one day. Growth that never came until she was gone and though that is my greatest of regrets, that I could not blossom for her in life, I believe somehow that she saw the change and was pleased for me.
'After the funeral I road down to The Havens intent on crossing over, yet as I gazed at the ship…my ship…waiting there in the harbour for me, I knew somehow that that was not to be my path. That Frodo and Rose had given me everything so that I might live and so live I would, the best that I might the last years of my life.
'I came to Ceridian and gazing into the agelessness of his eyes I said,
"Will you tell him that I will keep our light burning until mine is almost spent? And then I shall pass it on into the hands of those that shall see it burns forever." And then I turned and road back up the path.
'You were waiting there for me as I passed, my flower and as you passed me again the Red Book you said,
"I knew in my heart you would not leave, I just had to hope that you knew also."
'And now I have done as Frodo had wish for me to do and our love and it's light will live on in your hearts to be passed on. As for me… I can see his spirit out of the corner of my eyes and I know that, somehow, one life has faded from me he shall be again by my side.'" As she finishes there are tears in her eyes and as she looks to the other two they are weeping also, their hands linked together for the strength it gives them.
In the silence the gulls scream in an echo of those that have perished crossing the sea. Or perhaps they too are weeping…
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T: Please RR. I'll be putting up a list of things I'm working on in my profile should you be interested.