Warning: A character death.

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Sam stopped halfway up the stairs when he heard the platform crumble to pieces behind him. He turned around just in time to get a glimpse of Aragorn and Legolas gracefully rolling across the lower level onto their feet. A split second later, he heard the last of Gimli's armour crashing around.

He was tempted for a brief moment to run back down to help but he saw Frodo sprinting up the long, steep staircase and ran to follow.

They ran up the stairs, the two Hobbits chasing after the creature Gollum to the higher levels of the Lair. The staircase curled and wound its way through the tower to a floor that was two levels above the entrance where they had come through. After they stepped onto level ground, Frodo turned to face Sam.

"You don't need to follow me, Sam," he said between breaths, "I can do this myself. Go and help the others."

"I'm not leaving you, Mr. Frodo," Sam replied firmly. "I'm going to keep that promise I made to Gandalf and I'm going to see this through with you."

Frodo grinned and patted his back. "You really do take promises too literally sometimes, Sam. Let's go."

Together, with swords drawn and hands near their guns, they went through the door that they saw Gollum run through. They made their footsteps as silent as possible as they tried to feel for a source of light in the dark environment. A faint glow filtered through the windows to their right and cast a small shadow on the opposite wall.

Frodo switched the light on where the small shadow was and both boys blinked in the sudden flood of fluorescent light. They looked at their environment and struggled to describe what they saw.

"Civilized chaos," Frodo said out loud after a minute. He stepped forward on the floor made of huge slabs of stone and filled with cracks. Sam followed behind.

"It's like the halls we saw outside of that room with the broken TV, isn't it, Frodo? It's an office wall on this side but the other side of the hall gives us such a wonderful view of that bubbling field of pods. It's such a beautiful view," he said sarcastically.

He had slowed down his pace to look out one of the small patches of clear, unbroken glass and saw Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli fighting a humongous Hunter together near the pods. His hand ran over the rough, cold stone that made the railing below the windowsill.

Straight down the right wall of the hallway were the windows that overlooked the rest of the Lair. The stone was jagged but dull enough not to cut a finger by a mere touch. Flakes and chunks were obviously chipped off with poor craftsmanship but the raw power that lingered in that corridor was more than enough to create the illusion of artistic horror.

Sam drew his hand away from the railing and the mesmerizing demonic patterns that created that side of the hallway and looked at it. Flecks of dried blood, human and otherwise, stuck to his skin. He hastily wiped it all away on his pants.

Frodo was already a few meters ahead of him, still focussed on finding Gollum.

"Frodo, wait a moment!" Sam picked up his pace to catch up. "We should probably stick together since we don't know what the Lair has in store for us."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," replied Frodo. He glanced back with a grin.

Sam took a single step onto a particular slab that shifted under his weight. He exchanged nervous looks with Frodo as the ground opened up beneath him and swallowed him up.

"Sam!" Frodo dropped to the floor and looked into the rubble for any sign. "Sam!"

"I'm all right, Mr. Frodo," Sam coughed from the floor under him. "I'm not hurt. I'm not sure how to get back up there, though; this mess doesn't make a good ladder, does it?"

"No, it doesn't, Sam," sighed Frodo. "Look around. There has to be another way to get up here."

Sam coughed and tried to wave away some of the dust cloud that still hung in the air as he squinted to see beyond it. "I think there might be some stairs ahead, past that curve in the corridor."

Mutterings drifted down the hallway where Frodo was looking down to the level below. He craned his head to hear who would be there.

"… take it back, Precious. We must take it back…"

From Sam's point of view, he just saw Frodo look up like something had startled him and run off further down the hallway above him. He didn't hear the mutterings of Gollum that came from the depths of the Lair.

"Mr. Frodo! Mr. Frodo, where are you going?"

When there came no reply, he braced himself with his weapons and off into the darkness of the hall. His eyes tried adjusting to the gloom but it was taking much longer than he had liked. He walked carefully down the hall, keeping his hand touched to the left wall so he wouldn't collide into something.

His hand ran across a small crevice in the wall and he felt something soft, cold and… squishy? He felt for the wall behind it and found the light switch.

The electricity crackled and the sparks ignited the torches that lined the wall. The one above Sam shed light onto a human corpse that had its skull torn open and its face horribly disfigured. It sat propped up against the wall, slowly spilling red blood on the floor. As far as Sam could tell, the human was alive very recently until Neos and other Dark creatures decided it would be a tasty meal.

Sam looked at his blood hand and realized what the squishy mass was.

"Oh, God! Ugh!" He screamed as he wiped the blood off his hand onto the victim's clothes.

He continued walking after one last disgusted look at the corpse and noticed something that looked like it was thrown to the side from the battle. As he walked closer, he saw that it was a very battered book and he saw that it was a diary of sorts when he opened it up.

The writing inside was uneven and crooked, like the writer only had a basic understanding of writing words and literacy. However, the text told Sam that the mind behind the pen was not a child and could clearly understand what was going on.

'Humans,' it wrote. 'Endlessly multiplying, consuming, unnecessary creatures. What purpose do they serve on this earth if not to consume and destroy everything it touches? The only usefulness I can see they do is to be sufficient hosts for my comrades and me. Even then, they do not serve us for very long.

'They are frail and weak. Yet they dominate this world with an iron fist. But they cannot dominate each other. Or themselves, it seems. They are vile creatures that have bloodthirsty hearts and uncontrollable minds. What purpose do they serve?'

"This is a Parasite's mind," Sam said aloud as he read as fast as he could while walking down the hall. "At least one Parasite got strong and smart enough to figure out how to get their Host bodies to write."

'Watching these hosts perform makes me wonder what purpose there is in life. These… human beings were born by the thousands each day in a couple of populated areas only to be enslaved by the darkness of the Master's magic. My kin and I use them and Orcs to do the Master's bidding. Is that my only purpose? To enslave?

'I have moved Hosts,' it wrote with significantly different handwriting. 'This time, I feed on the memories and mind of an Orc. So far, I have depended on and killed three Hosts: an Uruk-Hai and two humans. The Uruks and Orcs have simple minds compared to humans'; they think of nothing but the pain and suffering of others and the means of achieving that pain. However, the two human minds I observed viewed many other humans as cold, heartless and brutal as the Dark creatures.

'It is amazing how some humans can see both the good and bad of their own kin while other humans delight in being in Darkness.

'As I stood guard in front of one of the prisons, I noticed a small male in the far corner of the jail cell. He seemed… almost indecisive of himself though there was nothing to decide in front of him. I watched him for a few days and he still showed the same behaviour for the great majority of the time.

'One day, he ventured towards an older female who was surprisingly calm and casual. I had observed her as well over the past few days and heard snatches of her singing.

'"How can you sing?" the male asked her. "Those scary monsters can get us anytime and eat us but you can still sing. How do you do it? Aren't you scared?"

'The young female did something strange with her mouth. The ends of it grew further apart and her lips curved up, showing her teeth. I learned from my human hosts that it was a sign of amusement and happiness.

'"It's easy," she said. "You block out everything around you and you look deep in your heart, where your favourite songs lie. You listen to them and you sing.

'"You might not be able to do it the first time because it can be hard to ignore the monsters and our cage but that is what hope is for."

'"Hope?" the male asked. "What can hope do?"

'"It keeps our spirits alive. We might not be able to do anything now but other people can and they will. Even if they don't come in time for you and me to live, it'll be okay because they'll do justice on the evilness here."

'"But we'll die! Aren't you scared?"

'"Of death? No! What's there to be afraid of? If we die, we leave this awful place and we join our families in the afterlife. Even if we die and we just… don't exist, it's okay, too. We won't feel any pain or suffering and we won't need to think about war and what happens. All we'll feel is a peace so deep that we won't need or care about what happens.

'"Do you see why I can sing in a time like this? I'm not afraid of dying because I know that I can't do anything here and I know that someone, something, sometime will come here and destroy this place. Because where there's a shadow, there must be a light nearby. So the reason why I can sing is that it's the only thing I can do right now."

'The male was listening to her as intently as I was. He sat closer to the young female and just said this: "Teach me a song, please?" Her lips curved up again and taught him a soft song.

'I destroyed another Host. I received another human, to my disgust. Ever since I heard the female's words, I can't accept a human Host because I learned of their purpose and the purpose of life, though I suspect it is only a fraction of its purpose. Humans are a perfect balance of good and evil as a whole though they practice more evil without knowing it. Life itself is a balance of good and evil and war is the result of it.

'I cannot bring myself to control this Host any longer. I have begun losing integral control. I know that I will soon be executed since I have voiced my beliefs to several of my kin. I can hear the footsteps of death coming.

'I have done many wrongs and taken many lives. May the wings of Light swiftly come to bring balance to the world.'

The scrawl stopped there. Embedded on that page was the severed tip of a Parasite's tentacle. Sam was a few feet from the bottom of the stairs when he found the tentacle bit and looked back down the hall to see the mangled corpse beneath the light switch.

He listened carefully for any sound of trouble from the above level and heard none.

"I'll only be a quick second," he whispered and sprinted back to examine the corpse.

The flickering light of the flames cast the mangled corpse into sharp relief. It lay slumped on the ground below the light switch and torch with its palms up and head down, like it simply surrendered with little resistance. It was hard to tell but Sam could just make out the lethal blow of an Orc dagger at the jugular. He could just see the bottom of the deadly wound and quickly surmised that the dagger was only the beginning of the Host's death of the soul.

Just beside the corpse were the shattered remains of the Parasite martyr. The tentacles were ripped apart from its body or missing. The main body part had been crushed with a swift blow, splattering the black blood across the hallway walls and mingling with its Hosts'.

Sam stood at the feet of the remains of the unknown human and the Parasite in silence. With the journal held tightly in his hand, he said a quiet prayer for both souls. "May they find the salvation and forgiveness they both deserve."

A faint scream echoed through the deserted halls from above.

"Frodo!"

He tucked away the journal and sprinted to the stairs and to the upper level. He looked down both ways of the hall for any clue to where Frodo had gone. He saw a narrow strip of red light come from the far left side and ran to that room.

While Sam was making his way through his level, Frodo had tried to follow the sounds of Gollum's ramblings. He relied on Sam's tracking abilities to reunite with him alive. All he wanted to do now was to find Gollum.

He tightened his grip on Sting and rose from the ground. It faintly registered that Sam was calling him from under him but he ignored it and set down towards Gollum's mutterings.

His Hobbit feet tread silently through the stone hallway as he walked as swift as a shadow along the wall. Every now and then he would take a quick glance at Sting to make sure that Orcs weren't around. Luckily, it never once shimmered blue on his trail to Gollum.

"…we must, Precious, we must. It is ours and we wants it back, we do…"

Frodo followed his voice down the hall, disregarding the red letters of rage written on the walls. His large blue eyes glinted with an anger that was buried within him for thousands of years. Gollum had caused him so much pain, so much torture in his soul. Gollum had given him so many scars in his mind and so many bad memories and feelings. Gollum needed to pay for his deeds.

Frodo crept towards the slightly opened door at the end of the curving corridor and peeked inside to see if he was there.

And there he was, huddled on a small rise of stone by the side of the room, rocking back and forth with his bony knees tightly drawn up to his chest. His long, scrawny hands were balled up tightly in fists that dug his fingernails into his palms. Blood dripped down from his hands and trickled down his legs to the stone floor. With his head down, the creature Gollum, or Smeagol at the time, looked like he was crying tears of blood.

"We must takes it back, my love. Yess. We must takes it back so Smeagol will be happy. This is what Smeagol wants. We needs to takes it back from the Hobbitses, yess.

"Takes it back, takes it back? We can't takes it back!" Gollum broke out of his huddle and leapt to one of the several mirrors that lay around the room. "The nasty Hobbitses will never let us take it back, Precious. We must take the other thing we had in our minds. We must! Only then will Gollum be happy."

"We can't, we can't!" Smeagol put his hands on his head in frustration and smeared his blood onto his skin. "Looks at what we did! Master will shame us for what we does, he will! Master hurts us and won't let go. We must… we must…"

"This blood that we see is because of the nasty Hobbitses! The nasty Hobbitses and their Fellowship and scary Elveses sent us here. It's their fault! They need to know the pain that we felt here, the pain of the Dark Master."

"The pain… the pain…!" Smeagol ran on all fours and huddled in the corner only to begin rocking back and forth once more. "All we knows is pain…" He started to sob into his knees, not knowing that Frodo was at the doorway, listening to his conversation with himself. "All we remembers is pain and torture… All because of the Precious, it is. It is!"

"Smeagol?" Gollum asked fiendishly between sobs. "Smeagol? Why does it cry, Smeagol? Why does it cry when the thief is right before our eyes, alone and suspicious? Can you tell us why, Precious?"

"The thieves…?"

Smeagol's lapse of control proved to be disastrous for Frodo. Gollum seized control of their body and glared at him for a split second before dashing at him with his bloody hands outstretched. Frodo fell backwards from the blow and immediately felt two gangly hands grip tightly around his neck.

"You stole it from us! Horrid Baggins stole the Precious from us and he will feel the pain it caused us!"

Frodo had dropped Sting when he fell but was now much stronger than he had been on the slopes of Mount Doom. With one quick punch to the head, he got Gollum to release the murderous grip on his neck. He gathered as much strength as he could and pushed Gollum away.

Gollum's light frame was a disadvantage to him now since Frodo had gained so much more physical strength through reincarnation. He flew across the room, hit a table and crashed into one of his mirrors, shattering it to pieces.

He looked at all the pieces scattered on across the floor, each reflecting a different angle of himself. He could see the rage and malice that corrupted and possessed him snarling and leering back at him, angering him even more. Among all the shards of the mirror, all he saw were the pain and madness that he believed Frodo had caused him. He didn't see the reflection of a tired, restless soul inside him and snatched the largest piece of jagged mirror he could find.

Disregarding the stinging feelings in his slashed hands and feet, he ran back to Frodo, who was coughing and reaching for Sting, with his mirror shard poised and ready to drive itself straight into Frodo's heart.

Frodo was so close to reaching his beloved sword but quickly rolled away from it when he saw the glint of the mirror shard rushing down upon him. He rolled onto his feet only to have Gollum jump up and try to stab his eyes. He backed away fast enough to avoid being blinded but suffered a vertical slash biting the skin across his right eye.

"Aaahh!" Frodo screamed and clutched his eye in pain. He struggled to wipe the blood out of his eye but more kept flowing down from his wound.

Seeing that he had blinded Frodo in one eye, Gollum leapt onto the table and jumped onto Frodo to try and injure his other eye, causing him more pain.

Even with just one eye and almost no depth perception, Frodo stopped Gollum's attack inches from his face. He tried throwing Gollum off of him again but he could feel the rage fuelling his opponent's actions, giving him more strength. The jagged edge of the mirror shard glistened ominously at him mere inches from his functioning eye.

Both of them were shaking, trying to best the other in this battle of strength. It was everything Frodo could do to keep Gollum's shaking sliver from killing him. Gollum, using his madness to summon more strength, managed to push his weapon closer and closer, weakening Frodo's own strength.

At last, Frodo used Gollum's momentum against him and swung him off like using a catapult. He watched Gollum crash into the table that was sitting in the middle of the room. As quick as he could, he ran and took Sting into hand once again.

Without his weapon, Gollum was helpless against Frodo's Sting but he was having trouble getting up from the rubble of the broken table.

Frodo raised his arm, ready to kill Gollum once and for all, when Sam came rushing in.

"Mister Frodo! No!" Sam held Frodo's arm back just as he was bringing Sting down in an arc.

"Sam, get off of me! This wretched creature is why we lost everything in the past. He's the reason why we didn't return to the Shire, Sam! He is why I'm still, to this day, being tortured about what I didn't do and why I can feel the Darkness so close to my heart. The bastard needs to die!"

"Don't you understand, Frodo?" Sam gripped his shoulders and looked straight into his eyes. "That was the Ring. It got to you and the little Stinker that he is. It got to everything that it touched but it's gone now. It can't hurt you or anybody else anymore."

"You're wrong, Sam. I can still feel it wrapped around my soul." He put his hand to his heart. "It still hurts."

"Then Hobbit Master understands what Smeagol wants, doesn't he?"

Smeagol lay in the pile of broken wood, looking more tired than either Hobbit had ever seen him. He was looking at them with a desperation that had been growing in his mind for years.

"The Hobbit Master feels it. He feels the effects of the Precious even though the Precious is gone." He spoke with a low, weary voice. "Smeagol feels it, too. Smeagol hates it. Smeagol hates the Precious. Smeagol… Smeagol doesn't wants to feel it anymore. Smeagol takes it back from the fat hobbit, we does."

"Take it back?" Sam echoed, clearly confused. His hand strayed to the sword on his belt. "What're you taking back from me?"

"All the nassty things Smeagol has said to you," he replied. He climbed out of the broken table. "All the things… we has done… we takes it all back."

"No!" Gollum snarled and tried to retake control.

"Yes!" Smeagol showed incredible strength of character as he resisted the murderous urges of Gollum. "We takes it back… especially what we said to the fat Hobbit on Mount Doom, we does."

Sam stared at him for a moment, struggling to organize in his mind what memories were real and what he could understand in the chaos of Mount Doom. He remembered the fire, the struggles and the despair they had faced as clearly as he could remember Rosie Cotton dancing. Suddenly, he remembered the words that Smeagol had spoken to him.

"You begged me to let you live," he said slowly. "You said that you'd die anyway when the Ring was destroyed and I spared you life."

"But we're lost!" Smeagol wept. "We're still lost because death has lost us. Master understands the weariness we feels. Master knows that we wants to end the pain." He crawled to Frodo's feet. "Master knows that there is only one way to end this pain."

Frodo's throat closed and he swallowed hard. He knew what had to be done if he and Smeagol could be free but he suddenly felt unsure if he could do it.

"Gracious, nice Hobbit Master always trusted us," Smeagol hissed as softly as he could, "and Master shares our pain. Hobbit Master knows… He knows that Smeagol must die if we can have peace."

Sam's eyes widened when he heard this. "Frodo, you're not really going to kill him, are you?"

A battle of ethics and passions was happening in Frodo's mind. His dark side yearned for him to kill Smeagol for the horrible torture he had to endure but he knew that it wouldn't solve anything. The modern beliefs that every life should be lived and let alone until natural death took them kept rising in his mind but what good was that belief if Smeagol wanted to die after millennia of slavery?

Even as these thoughts were running through his head, Frodo could see that Smeagol had changed. He had apologized for every wrong that he had committed against them and he wasn't attacking them.

At that moment, the air seemed to purify around them and a bright, pure light shined from the large empty space of the wall. Frodo immediately recognized it as the Light of Earendil being unleashed upon the forces of Darkness. On the far side of the Lair, he could see the reflections of the pool dancing.

"I will not kill you, Smeagol," Frodo choked out. "But know that you have redeemed yourself in mine and Sam's eyes. We cannot take your life now that you achieved redemption."

"Hobbit Master… forgives us?" Smeagol looked at him with disbelieving, bulbous eyes. "Fat hobbit, too?"

Both boys nodded.

"Smeagol, come." Frodo wiped away some of the blood trickling down his eye and led him to the edge of the room. He looked down at the crystal-clear pool of Light-infused liquid and pointed to it for Smeagol. "Do you see that, Smeagol?"

Smeagol peered over the edge and nodded.

"If you really want to be at peace, you must touch the Light liquid. Because you've been serving the Darkness for so long, it will send you straight into Death's arms." Frodo kept a steady voice and a straight face as he said this but was trying to keep his emotions from breaking loose as he sent Smeagol to his death.

Smeagol stared at the pool below with great relief and happiness. He turned to look at both boys with happy tears streaking down his face. "Thank you, Hobbitses."

He jumped and fell, directly towards the purified pool. Frodo and Sam watched his splash, disintegrating his body in seconds and saw the fine mist that rose from the surface of the pool. Both of them believed that they could actually hear Smeagol sigh in tremendous relief as he was taken away by Death's swift wings.

"May he rest in peace for all eternity," Frodo said lowly.

Sam nearly made Frodo fall off the edge when he saw the Sting was glowing blue and fired a few rounds into three Uruk-Hai that happened to come into the room. He apologized profusely and quickly began to tie his hithlain rope for the two of them to climb down to a raised precipice on the level below.

It was then when they heard the piercing scream that was heard throughout the Lair and even affected the Dead.

"What was that?" Sam frantically asked Frodo. "Do you think it might've been one of the others?"

"God, I hope not," Frodo replied darkly. "Though I wouldn't be all too surprised…"

He took hold of the rope first and climbed down the vertical rock wall first, all the while trying to see who had screamed. He saw Legolas and Gimli running towards a giant hole in the ground like a horde of Dark creatures was behind them.

"I think it came from below this level," Frodo called up to Sam. "It obviously wasn't Legolas or Gimli."

They climbed down as fast as they could and ran to their friends to see if they could locate the source of the scream. They looked down into the lower level to barely make out two figures on the floor. Frodo could see who they were and knew that Legolas could as well.

"Oh, no…"

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A/N: As an added bonus, here are the lyrics of Pippin's Song in RotK:

Home is behind
The world ahead
And there are many Paths to tread.
Mist and shadow
Cloud and rain
All shall fade
All shall…
Fade.

Muahaha! Go RotK: Extended Version!

By the way… I don't think suicide and assisted suicides are okay. I just needed the method for it to be all dramatic and such. And I don't think that Gollum/Smeagol is evil! He just needs some serious psychiatric help, that's all.

2 chapters left.

Next chapter: Path of the Past.