Frodo stood in the doorway, and here his light was dimmed, too faint and ghostly to compete with the red fire that filled the room. Still, though, he didn't look dirty. He looked perfect. His expression was one of mild concern.

"You know, I'm actually surprised you made it this far," he said, and he walked up to where Sam stood like it was easy, stopping just a few feet away. "I told him over and over again that you'd give in for me, but here you are."

Frodo smiled, and he said these things like they meant nothing, like he was discussing day-to-day matters, errands and chores. Sam didn't deserve this, surely.

"Are they dead?" Sam asked weakly, a thought bubbling to the surface of his mind. "Our friends...my friends...did you kill them all?" Why else would Frodo have come back?

"No," said Frodo, looking over his shoulder like he could check (maybe he could, who knew how far he could see with those frightening eyes, he wasn't a hobbit at all anymore). "They're fighting. But I think they will die. They are rather outnumbered, after all."

Sam felt his face wrinkle up as though in preparation to cry, but no tears came out, or if they did they evaporated instantly in the violent heat. He looked over the edge of the bridge again. What was he waiting for-? He took the chain off from around his neck, and the Ring shimmered innocently in his palm, still a pure and clean gold in colour.

"Oh, Sam," Frodo murmured, and he took Sam's hand, which startled him. The chill of his touch was surprisingly comforting here, even though it never had been before. "You don't need to do that."

Sam shook his head. He didn't want to look at Frodo, afraid of what would happen if he did, even though he could feel the cold air from Frodo's words on his cheek.

"Yes I do," he managed. "This is why I came here. This is why you died."

Frodo hummed, the sharpness of the sound somehow not cutting as deeply as it had before, and with a touch he turned Sam's head, forcing him to look.

He was still so pretty. Sam couldn't tell the difference anymore, between real sympathy and lies. Had Frodo been lying to him? Had Frodo ever lied to him? He was supposed to look different, but Sam couldn't remember what that difference was. He couldn't remember anything, really, from beyond the first moment he had seen this Frodo in the forest that night. What did the Shire look like, which he was fighting for? Suddenly Sam didn't know, even though he was sure he had known just moments ago. What were the faces of his friends, of the Fellowship? He couldn't see anything but a blur.

"I know," Frodo said. "But I don't believe in that anymore. Do you?"

His cold hands enveloped Sam's, hiding the Ring beneath them, and Sam knew he was standing on a precipice in more ways than one, but he felt paralyzed. His own heart was eating him up inside. He couldn't answer Frodo's question, because he didn't have an answer.

"If I get rid of it, it will be over, right?" Sam asked, shaking. "It will all be over, and everyone will be safe...and you'll be gone, won't you?"

Frodo looked hurt when he said that, white eyes shining as though with tears, maybe they were tears, Sam didn't know. He had never wanted to make Frodo cry. Even after all the horrible and frightening things he had done, Sam didn't want to see him cry.

"You want me gone?" Frodo asked, his voice very quiet, and then he closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again they were clear, but there was a sadness there still, and Sam was surprised to find that there were still enough intact pieces of his heart to have it break again.

"I would be gone," Frodo said. "Gone forever. But it wouldn't be over...the army would still be there, and the tower, and the Eye, and everything else. There would still be fighting...I don't know how much fighting. The elves would still leave."

Frodo gathered all of Sam's hopes in his mouth and spat them out like this, carefully and delicately, letting them fall into the fire-lake below where they dissolved to nothing. It didn't seem like a cruel act, not this time. It barely seemed intentional.

"...and I think you would die, dear Samwise, which would be the worst of these things to me."

"Die?" said Sam feebly, feeling dumb, his mind paralyzed by the bleakness he saw before him, the cold future waiting just outside the intense heat of this place. Frodo looked at him imploringly, his eyes still sad, and the contrast of his icy touch and the Ring's burning pressure on Sam's palm was almost too much.

"How would you get out of here?" Frodo said, and Sam didn't need to look around, because that was enough.

"I wasn't planning to, Mr. Frodo," he said with a sigh. "Maybe at first...but there's no way out, I see that now. And even if there was, there isn't much reason to be going back, not for me at least."

"...no?"

Sam shook his head. It was easier than ever to meet Frodo's gaze, for it meant more to him than all the fire and stone ever could- more, even, than the Ring, which had been his only constant companion for so long.

"Seeing as you are the way you are," Sam said, the only explanation he could offer over the tight pain high in his throat, and the familiar one buried in his heart. Frodo looked away for a moment, like that had hurt him more, and Sam knew he had been understood. It hadn't been a lie, for him, that love he had confessed- though he couldn't say if it was the same for Frodo or not, that much didn't matter, not here. Not at the end of all things.

"You're very strong, Sam," Frodo murmured after a moment. "And I do love you. I would rather…"

He bit his lip, then, looking first out at the fire, and then behind him again, back into the black night/day, but instead of casual his expression now was furtive. He looked for a long moment back out that way, while Sam stood stupefied with nothing inside him but despair, mind absent of any sense of urgency or duty or need.

"...I would rather you be the one to have it, instead of him."

This Frodo whispered, like it was the worst secret in the world, his pale limbs trembling in a way Sam had never seen before. His grip around Sam's folded hands became firmer, he was close enough now for Sam to feel the cold wind that was his breath on his cheeks. Close enough, then, to kiss, but Sam didn't have the heart for that anymore.

"What do you mean?" he asked, and Frodo shivered, he looked so earnest, what could that mean? The pain from the Ring touching Sam's skin was forgotten, for in its place there was now a faint warm glow.

"The Lord of this place is cruel," Frodo said softly, almost too softly to be heard, and Sam understood now why his eyes darted back and forth to the gate in the mountain, why he sealed the Ring under Sam's palms the way one might cover the ears of a child. "...you could have guessed that, of course. But even to me…"

Frodo sighed, and somehow that tiny sound woke something in Sam again, a tiny candle was lit inside, even though all the others had been snuffed out. He didn't know why. He was beyond understanding anything that he felt anymore.

"...it was painful, Sam, the way he remade me," Frodo whispered in his ear, and Sam could feel a wetness where their cheeks brushed, and was certain the tear was not his. "I didn't want him to, but he forced himself inside my head...inside my bones…"

Sam wrapped one arm around Frodo's back, the other still holding the Ring tight in his fist, squeezing it to drown out anything it might hear. But he couldn't not hold Frodo, hearing that. The candle he had inside grew bigger, brighter, and he realized that it wasn't hope, but rather anger.

"I'm not the same anymore," Frodo continued softly. His voice was shaking. "I have terrible thoughts, Sam- I want to hurt people, I like it. I wanted to frighten you, and betray you, and tear you to pieces and give your head to my master, just like he told me to."

"I know," Sam said, the words were dry in his mouth, and they startled Frodo enough to look up again- and just like Sam had thought, he was crying, cold tears from empty white eyes with trembling lashes. "You didn't just die, you became a monster, and I'm sorry for it, Mr. Frodo."

Frodo shook his head, wordless, and Sam saw the pain in him, as clear as day. The anger was brilliant inside him now, feeling hotter than even the air, which just moments ago he would have thought was impossible. It was a clearer feeling than any of the others he had felt on this quest- clearer even than the despair, than the fear, than any affection for this ghostly, terrible Frodo, who was shuddering in Sam's arms. And with this clarity of emotion came a clarity of thought as well- an idea that hit him like lightning, pure and bright white and all-consumingly powerful. The Ring screamed in his hand, and maybe it was a scream of rage, or maybe it was a scream of triumph. Sam didn't care.

He knew what he was going to do, now. The dreams of tossing the Ring into the fire were cleared away like cobwebs under new sunlight, and he realized that such a future had never any chance of existing at all- no matter how hard he had strived under that pretence, it couldn't have come to be. That end had vanished the moment he had seen Frodo in the forest for the first time- if not long before that, the day he had seen Frodo for the first time at all, and felt the beginnings of something bloom in his heart.

And besides, he didn't want to destroy it, not anymore. The Ring belonged to him, as it rightfully should, because he didn't want to die anymore. He felt more alive, more awake than he had in his entire life.

"I'll take it," Sam said. "I'll take it and I'll destroy him for what he did to you. I'll destroy it all, and I'll save our friends, and save the Shire. I'll save all of Middle Earth, and make things the way they are supposed to be."

Frodo stared at him in shock for a moment, his eyes huge, and then he started to smile, a smile that was somehow both wonderfully sweet and unbearably cruel. Sam could see the edge of every little fang in his mouth, and didn't care- if Frodo wanted to keep those teeth, he would let him, and if he didn't he would remove them for him. That's how things would be, from now on.

"Oh, Sam," Frodo breathed, and the wind had picked up inside the mountain, the lake of fire sending its waves high around them, so everything lit up in brilliant clouds- just like Gandalf's old fireworks, Sam supposed, and he decided there would be plenty of fireworks, from then on.

"Yes," Frodo said, and he kissed him, throwing his slender arms about Sam's neck. Sam kissed him back, happier than ever for the chill of his touch, feeling all of his fears melt away. As they did, he realized something, something that turned his memories of the quest to crystal. Understanding. Frodo might have lied here and there, but he hadn't lied about his feelings. He might have tried to hurt Sam, but he hadn't let him fail, even though he could have time and time again- could have let Gollum kill him, or the Men find him, or the seamstress eat him...

"This was what you really wanted, wasn't it?" Sam said when the kiss broke. "You wanted me to do this...for it to turn out this way."

Frodo nodded, he looked so desperate it was cute, and Sam laughed.

"I'm glad," he said. "I love you, Frodo."

He kissed Frodo again, as joyfully as he had ever done anything...

...and slipped the Ring onto his finger without even needing to look.

Neither the hobbit nor the once-hobbit heard or felt any of this, but in that instant the entire world shook. The mountain and all the black, infertile earth around it split, and everything for miles was toppled in a second, turned to dust that spun in the wind. The sky turned to a fire brighter than the sun, banishing for an instant all shadows, and the air was stolen from every pair of lungs. Even the distant ocean trembled, down to the darkest parts of its depths, where there were no thinking creatures. Everything changed then, for the rules of power had been completely broken, all sense shattered and left in the dirt.

This moment was the end of the world.