Gandalf

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

#1: Names

He had so many that it was hard to remember them all. Gandalf, of course, the Grey, the White, Stormcrow, and Greyhame. The Grey Pilgrim. The Grey Wanderer. The White Rider. Lathspell. Tharkun. Olorin. Mithrandir. Every place he went he had a new name, shed and forgotten when he left, remembered with a smile when he returned.

#2: Frodo

Gandalf had met every one of his eight companions before they set off on the journey of the Ring. He'd met Frodo just after the death of his parents, right after the child had moved in with eccentric, unaging Bilbo at Bag End.

"Mr. Gandalf?" The small hobbit-voice had broken the stillness of the summer morning and Gandalf looked up, displacing his pipe from between his teeth. He smiled warmly at the young, serious, sad-looking hobbit at his feet.

"Just Gandalf, young one. I believe you are Frodo Baggins?"

"Yes, sir." Frodo wavered for a moment, debating whether or not to continue, then flew into the question he'd pondered a hundred times over. "Mis – Gandalf…is there a place on Middle Earth where I could see my parents again?" The words were rushed, stumbling over each other in their haste to get out. "Because Uncle Bilbo has been so many places…there must be a place like that, right?"

Gandalf smiled, and this time his, too, was sad, as he drew the young hobbit close to him and attempted to explain death in terms that a grieving, lost child could possibly understand.

#3: Attachments

Wizards do not get close, not to each other or to the people of the earth. They generally take no spouses and father no children. They are the enigmas of Middle Earth, they are old, and they are a dying breed.

But somehow, it was those hobbits. Their culture and small lives, their worries and hopes and fears. Their pipe weed and dancing and parties. It was the simplicity of the people that enticed him and kept him revisiting the Shire all those long years.

#4: Journey

He took two journeys of note: the one where he'd met Bilbo and the one where he saved Middle Earth. In his mind, the second couldn't have existed without the first, and for many years Gandalf would lie awake and wonder: if he hadn't pushed Thorin and Balan and the other dwarves on the journey, would the world have ever been in peril? Would the Ring have resurfaced? Could all that death have been avoided?

The question would plague him until the end.

#5: Traveler

He was a man of the world, traveling in a year from Weathertop to the Misty Mountains, from Isengard to Rohan, staying in each place for a night or a month, returning to the lands of elves to converse with those who had seen as much of the world as he. Yes, he was a traveler of lands, of people. He traveled light and often, walking or riding. And he loved every minute of it.

#6: Death

First it was fiery, like the Balrog, like the crack in the earth that was Khazad-Dum. Then it was as cold as steel, or the depths of winter when even the sun daren't shine for too long. And through the haze of blinding elements, Gandalf found himself praying that a certain small hobbit with a Ring as large as the world had made it out of the caves alive.

#7: Age

He didn't know how long he had walked the earth. Perhaps a hundred years, or a hundred hundred. He had seen the struggles between good and evil, the lure of temptation, the desire for righteousness that existed in all races and people. He'd lived long. Perhaps too long.

#8: White Shores

He meant what he said to the youngest hobbit. Death: he'd been there, done that. "White shores…and beyond. A far green country under a swift sunrise."

And the response of the soldier, no more than a young boy, had just about broken the heart of an old, decrepit wizard. "Well," said Pippin, clutching his sword tightly and smiling thinly around his cringe at the sounds of battle, "That isn't too bad."

"No," Gandalf agreed, returning the smile, "No, it's not."

#9: Pippin

Perhaps everyone had a soft spot in them for the youngest hobbit, the Fool of a Took who so nearly cost the Fellowship everything. He was the youngest on the journey, with the sweet, lilting voice of a child with the songs of a dove.

Gandalf's first encounter with the child repeated itself throughout the years. From the beginning he'd been a troublemaker, causing mayhem with his every action, especially at parties. Gandalf will remember until his dying day the expression on the hobbit's face after they let off the dragon firework early.

But the fact was that, despite his blustering and growling at little Pippin, Gandalf could not be prouder of the man the child had grown to be.

#10: Lessons

Letting a smile come to his lips, the old wizard pushed the elf off of him. "Now, Legolas, do you really think that necessary?"

The serious blue eyes of a very young elf (in elvish terms) stared back at him. "Mithrandir, you must have known you were walking into an orcish trap."

"Ah, Princeling, but did you know?" And for years afterward, Gandalf was able to pass his lapse of attention off as a training exercise.

#11: Fever

It was a young boy who brought him to the city of Gondor for the first time in…oh, half a century at least. He'd been spending his time comfortably in the elf kingdoms, learning, studying, practicing; but when a foot soldier begged him to come to the king's city in order to help the Steward's youngest son, how could Gandalf refuse?

Of course, it was that very visit that may have been his undoing, for it forced him to realize that the next great war was closer than any prophesy fortold.

#12: Boromir

Gandalf first saw Boromir when he was treating his younger brother for an abnormally high fever. Boromir would not leave the room, had not left it, apparently, for three days. "Oh, child, your brother will be fine."

"I know." Boromir yawned, crouching against the wall. "I wanted to stay here….just in case."

Gandalf had already had his suspicions about the kind of man the current Steward was – greedy and occasionally cruel – and yet he found himself smiling when he left the Houses of Healing because both young boys in there were fighters. It would be them, he was sure, and their bond, that would bring the world to its knees.

#13: Unlucky

He rarely thought of luck in terms of whether or not he possessed it. Men, elves, dwarves, hobbits, wizards – they all made their own luck in this world. It was only when he was stranded on top of the tower of a man he used to consider a friend – a good friend – did Gandalf begin to question if the line of circumstances leading up to that had been just a series of bad luck.

#14: Sleep

Bending over the hobbit nestled between him and Shadowfax's majestic head, Gandalf envied Pippin of his easy sleep, as if he hadn't just stared at the face of evil, as if they weren't riding into war. As if nothing was the matter at all.

#15: Injury

It was he who stayed by Frodo's bedside. He who sent away the steadfast Sam in hopes that the younger hobbit might find sleep. It was he who re-bandaged wounds and checked for fever and who – he could admit it now, so many years after the fact – prayed to a God he didn't really believe in to help Frodo, small and frail on the great Rivendell bed.

Because the facts boiled down to this: if Gandalf had been on time, Frodo never would have been hurt. If he'd been on time, they could have all been saved.

#16: Being

There are different theories to how wizards came about. In much later years, Gandalf would read up on these hypotheses and chuckle. Some said that a wizard was a man born backwards in time, others that they were the offspring of some crude, Titan-like beast, not so much unlike the immortal Gods of Rohan and Gondor.

Gandalf didn't remember how he came into the world. When the question was asked of him, he merely stared at the questioner, asking them right back if they could clearly recall the first years after their birth.

#17: Birthdays

He was old, so very old, and it was only when he was attending a birthday party – usually in the Shire, among the pleasant, simple Little People – that he looked back on his long, long years, and make his own privet wish on a birthday cake he'd never received.

#18: Wishes

Perhaps it was presumptuous or unimaginative of him to always wish for the same thing, but he did anyway. Gandalf would wish, in his own privet thoughts, that the world as he knew it would never experience major upheaval, that the various peoples could go about their various lives without them being interrupted by strife. And he could think of no greater wish to ask for.

#19: Camping

Somehow, being outdoors, on the run, on a Quest, was better with the Fellowship. Gimli spun new tales on the stars for the enthralled hobbits, and Legolas and Sam together made an excellent supper that tasted all the better after smelling it simmering all night. In good time, there were stories and songs and laughter.

And Gandalf speculated on how much he missed camaraderie after all those years of traveling alone.

#20: Regrets

There were a couple of regrets he had in his lifetime, mostly from when he was young and still thought that, single-handedly, he could fix a universe that always played team games. But the thing he regretted most was leaving (some would say dying, but still, leaving) Frodo all alone to try to pick up the pieces of a world that was too broken for any conjurer to put back together.

#21: Recognition

In the end, it had taken more out of him than he realized, traipsing all over Middle Earth and fighting battles along the way. He was more than happy to stay in the background and watch as the other surviving members of the Fellowship got their just rewards. When he saw the world bow to the hobbits, he let out a smile, because it was the mark of a good teacher to be surpassed by his students.

And Gandalf thought that he might just have been surpassed by seven of them at once.

#22: Rules

There were laws of Man and then there were laws of the Earth, which were different rules entirely. Though Gandalf spent his life studying the rules of Mother Nature, he didn't think he, or anyone, would be able to understand Her completely.

#23: Sam

"Gandalf?" The quiet, sleepy voice of a very young hobbit echoed in the cavernous rooms of the Houses of Healing. "Is Sam going to be alright?"

Gandalf looked down at the prone body of Samwise Gamgee, just back from Mordor and badly hurt. Burns covered his torso and blackened one of his arms, and a fever racked his too-thin body. Gandalf set Pippin on his lap, so the hobbit could see over the lip of the high bed. "He is in danger, my very young Took, and perhaps his body won't be able to handle the fever," he didn't want to be saying these words, but giving Pippin false hope would be worse, "But he has done his job," he smiled, pressed a cooling hand to a hot hobbit forehead, "And he has made me very proud."

#24: Dirty

There was nothing, nothing, that was better than plunging one's head into a bucket or basin or stream of cool water after a day of riding or a night of battle, and there was nothing Gandalf liked more than watching his companions smile as they became clean as if by magic in a place where there was very little to smile about at all.

#25: Friendly Fire

He would never forget the look on the elf's face, pushing and twisting off the ground so that he could look into the face of his attacker just before he died. "Mithrandir?"

And that's when Gandalf knew he was getting too old for this life.

#26: Lost

The search took an hour that stretched into a day, then a month. "Estel…" He knew better than anyone, with the possible exception of the man-child's adoptive father Elrond, how very important this broken teenager was. "My dear Estel, you have done all you can for your friend."

But the listless boy wouldn't even look at him. He sat, perched on one of the balconies of Rivendell, staring out into the forest, holding onto the hope that his mellon would come home unharmed. How was an old man to explain loss and death to a boy who should know nothing of such horrors? "There are white shores…" he began, clinging to this last hope that if the young prince of Mirkwood was no longer being taken care of in this world, perhaps he was thriving in the next.

#27: Found

A small, damp weight and a dimpled smile greeted Gandalf in the Shire. "Don't you like hide n' seek?" Then, the voice dropping conspiratorially, a very young Sam added, "Please play with us, Mr. Gandalf, we're trying to make Frodo play again."

Make him play again. It was a noble wish from the young friend, who didn't understand why Frodo hadn't said a single word in the week since his parent's deaths. And what else could a child do? "Please play…"

And Gandalf found himself answering, bizarrely, "It would be my pleasure."

#28: Gimli

The first time Gandalf met Gimli was three or four years before the meeting of the Fellowship. He had known Gloin once, of course, had even, at that time, been renowned as one of the foremost scholars on the elusive, occasionally archaic dwarf culture. Most of his knowledge came from Gloin, the easy-going right hand of Thorin, the story teller, the soldier.

When he died, Gandalf took it upon himself to see how the once-thriving dwarves were fairing. Not well. The mines were going, or gone, dried up or, more likely, overrun. There was fight left in the dwarves, but only just, mostly originating from the young dwarf who had stepped up to be leader of his clan.

Gandalf knew that if there ever came a time for the dwarves to take up arms to defend their way of life, Gimli would be in the front of the charge.

#29: Grace

Gandalf dared only a single backwards look at the carnage. "There but for the Grace of God go I." It was a phrase he'd often heard, something distant, a memory, a dream, words that held little meaning and yet more possibility than he could conceive.

#30: White Shores

Not all shores had to represent death. Once, when Gandalf was younger (he was never just young, not in his memory) he had foolishly volunteered to play chaperone to elfin children, too young to leave their homes by themselves and too old to be content to stay in the forest. One elf-child (a child who grew to be Legolas, but that was a different story) with serious eyes asked him if these were the white shores he spoke of when comforting about death.

Gandalf replied that he hoped so, because he'd never been anywhere so beautiful in his life.

#31: Hero

Gandalf had been called a hero many times in his life. He's saved children, families, villages. He's been the turning point in a losing battle, the commander in many victories. But at that moment, he felt that the only person in the world who deserved to be called a hero was Sam, kneeling by Frodo's bed after walking across the continent on nothing but the faith that a wizard and his Mister Frodo were always right.

#32: News

It wasn't often that he would meet someone from the Shire on his travels across Middle Earth, but every time he did he would sit down and listen to stories of parties and weddings and harvests, news that meant, if nothing else, that a race of people could live entirely free of strife.

#33: Aragorn

"The boy needs a tutor."

This would be the last time Gandalf ever did a favor for an old friend. Now he was left in a room with a man-child who thought he was an elf, a descendant of Isildur who knew next to nothing about the historic battle at the base of Mount Doom, a young boy who didn't want to learn about history with an old man but enjoy a beautiful day with his elvish family.

#34: Merry

The first time Gandalf met Merry, he didn't know quite what to make of the boy.

Laughing smile and mischievous nature were juxtaposed by his extremely protective nature and serious eyes. Gandalf watched, curious, as the hobbits whiled away an afternoon talking and laughing and swapping stories of this or that small going-on. At the end, Gandalf's opinion of the Brandybuck was that he was an interesting young fellow but not anything to take interest in.

It was only later that night, when Gandalf saw Merry fling an arm in front of Frodo so the rabid dog would bite him instead of the older cousin, that the old wizard realized there may be some brave stuff in this young lad after all.

#35: Games

Gandalf had almost forgotten how to play them. He played Advisor to dignitaries and commander to armies and historian in the many great libraries of the world, but it had been long, so long, since he'd sat down and played games with children.

It was little Estel and his friend Legolas, the child-Prince of Mirkwood, who reminded him that sometimes the greatest things in life were clean air and cool grass and the sound of high, unashamed laughter echoing through the beautiful woods of the world.

#35: Old Friends

When he first learned the language of the Ents, he was young and somewhat foolish and thought he could help. "When did you last see the Ent-Wives?" He asked an Ent that was Treebeard, though back then he went by a different name.

It was then that he learned that friendship could be formed very easily by a common quest. It was then that he learned that time traveled differently in different races, and a week and a lifetime were much the same thing to nearly-immortal beings like the tree and himself. It was then that he learned that everything in his world was relative.

#36: Packing

He was so used to traveling light that he had only a few sentimental items with his small pack of absolute necessities. A chain woven around a strap on his bag, made for him by an elfin prince for good look. A precious gem dug from the depths of the earth by a group of grateful dwarves. A woven circle to keep away nightmares from a Gondorian boy in thanks for saving his precious baby brother. A carved pipe from a man child who grew up like an elf, the result of hours of lessons in the word patience.

#37: Safe

He drew his cloak closer around his shoulder and gratefully accepted another flagon of drink from Butterbur as he gazed out of the windows of the Prancing Pony, glad that he was not out in the storm that raged outside.

#38: Savior

Habit, not skill or luck, forced his hand out when he did to push the elf out of the way of the arrow. When Legolas, teenaged now and terribly independent, blustered his way to his feet, he demanded how Gandalf knew the arrow was coming, since his superior elfin perceptions did not notice it whizzing out of the forest.

"There is no substitute for being very, very old, my very, very young pupil." Gandalf said, eye twinkling as he turned around so Legolas could grumble about how being nearly six hundred was not "very young" at all.

#39: Saved

It was embarrassing how he'd been disarmed so easily by a passing adversary, left struggling for breath in a ford on the outskirts of Rohan. This was years after the adventure with Bilbo and months before his adventures with the Fellowship, and his quick descent towards the slippery slope of death made him smile at the irony of being beaten by so small a lapse in attention.

A young Théodred, months away from his own death and riding with a scouting party around his kingdom, pulled him from the river and brought him back to Edoras. It was the most important thing the prince would do in his short life.

#40: Wonderful

The wonderful thing about wizards is that he may not be the only one, but he was damn close.

And he knew that, sometimes, that wasn't such a wonderful thing.

#41: Irrational

Often – too often – Gandalf was thought to be the rational side of every problem. The advisor with the perfect counsel. The one with all the answers.

Looking at the mithril in the horrible Speaker's hands and knowing that he would never see the bright spark of Frodo Baggins again made Gandalf realize definitively that sometimes even wizards were only human.

Sometimes wizards weren't about the feeling of wanting to burn every evil thing to the ground.

#42: Legolas

He didn't meet the young Prince until the even younger Estel was on his way to growing up and it became obvious he needed a companion. Elladan and Elrohir were too old to be playmates, and Gandalf had an inkling that using Arwen would be disastorous. So he asked around the other kingdoms and found the youngest son of Thranduil was restless in Mirkwood. Bringing the headstrong elf and stubborn man-child together was like watching mountain collide with mountain, but never before had Gandalf been prouder of his matchmaking skills than when he watched Estel and his mellon.

#43: Tempo

There is a tempo to the world, a timing, a rhythm, a feel to the whole of the land. Gandalf was attuned to it, knew that a babbling brook and cackling stream meant very different things, that a sighing Southern wind and whispering Eastern gust could predict the coming of wars and births and years. He knew the ways of the world, of nature, and sometimes tapped his great staff along to the tempo, just to remind himself that he was part of this glorious place.

#44: Wander

For years he just wandered, going where the wind took him, and then the elves claimed him as their own and he listened to their wise words and offered a few stumbling sentences in return that they nodded and laughed and he was accepted into the trees and magic of their world. And then he wandered again, leaving the majestic land behind until he found a smaller people, quieter, slower, and they didn't want wise words but fireworks to light up the night and they loved him for his magic and he found that he wasn't just accepted amongst these tiny hobbits – he belonged.

#45: Ramble

He was interested in the dwarves long before he brought Bilbo into the affair with the gold and the dragon, the affair that started that other, longer, bloodier affair of the Ring. He loved the dwarves for the simple fact that they did not love him, did not want him, and did not need him. And sometimes it was nice to see such stubborn independence in such small folk.

#46: Question

"Are we almost there, Gandalf?"

Gandalf the Grey smiled behind his snow-covered beard and picked up the tiny Took, the one who had been trudging through snow-drifts twice his size all day, the one so tired he kept rubbing his eyes with his tiny, frozen fists.

He scooped the hobbit into his large, dry cloak and felt Pippin shiver against him. "We're very close now." Gandalf said, because sometimes certain things needed to be said when Rivendell was only a week behind them and there was an entire country of horrors to traverse.

#47: Relief

When Aragorn told him that Frodo had not gone to Mordor alone, as Gandalf had feared, but his faithful servant had also followed him into those forsaken lands…relief is not even the word. For Gandalf knows that Sam would rather die himself than watch Frodo consumed by the power of the Ring.

#48: Battle

So many of his friends had died over the course of his long life (so long he couldn't even quite pinpoint the moment it began) that he used to think that new deaths could not hurt him.

But the visions of battle – Frodo being speared by the troll; Legolas consumed by Uruk'hai in Helm's Deep; Merry, looking pale and still in the Houses of Healing; Pippin's foot peeping out from under the troll; Aragorn's suicide charge towards the legions of Morder – were still enough to make his breath hitch and his heart clench, still enough to remind him that life could be loved and lost in an instant.

#49: Death

When he'd died, he just wanted to die. Wanted it to end. He'd lived past all his old, old friends, had lived past his time. There was nothing, nothing he could do for a world in so much turmoil.

He thought of the Ring and still wanted to die. Thought of Sauron and Sarumon and still wanted to die.

He thought of the Fellowship and decided that life might have something left after all.

#50: Love

The coronation, with everyone alive and happy and whole and alive. That was when Gandalf looked up to catch Aragorn's eye (the King had his hand intertwined with an elfin Princess's) and Legolas gave him a small nod, and Gimli made a gesture with his hand, a fist pump for success, and the little hobbits were smiling so proudly…well, that was when Gandalf knew it was all over. They'd won the battle for Middle Earth, and an old wizard had fallen hopelessly in love with the young charges that comprised the Fellowship of the Ring.

So there's old Gandalf for you, from your two loveable Gandalfs over here. Any ones you particularly liked, just drop us a line and we'll write a one-shot next.