Mordor looked even grimmer than before. Not even their fires could burn with ease, for whatever fueled them was likely something crude pulled from the earth, and burned with an eerie greenish glow. Whatever else they were burning cast up such smoke that it blackened their sky, and the light that shone through was like the weakest rays that make it through in a storm. We all stared up at the tall, imposing gate. "The Dead City…nasty place…full of enemies." Gollum informed us.

"You said you knew another entrance for us." Frodo said, to which the creature nodded. "Bring us there."

Gollum did so, bringing us out from our hiding place, and too far out into the open for everyone's taste, even his, as he hurried us along. "Look! We have found it. The way into Mordor. The secret stairs." He motioned to our path into Mordor, a winding path of steps hewn into the rock. They were so steep that at times they appeared to be almost a vertical climb. A child could have made better steps.

"Is this really the only way?" Sam asked, disheartened, and looking over the stairs with worry. It would certainly make a difficult climb.

"Does the gate over there look any better?" I asked him. "Don't worry, we'll climb it one way or another. Won't we Frodo?"

I turned around to find Frodo not beside me as I thought he was, but wandering closer and closer to the gate.

"No! Mister Frodo!" Sam shouted, realizing his absence as well.

The two of us ran to him, grabbing an arm each and pulling him back. Frodo seemed to stumble on his feet, as though he had little control over where he was walking. Even Gollum was at his side, pulling on the end of his cloak.

"What are you doing?" I demanded of Frodo. "This is foolish!"

"I can hear them calling me." Frodo said, as though he was partly in some sort of trance. I though of moths drawn to flames and hurried to bring him back to a safer location, pulling harder and giving little thought if I was hurting him in the process. Sam and I shook him, trying to break his focus on the gate. "Don't listen to them, Frodo! Get back where it's safe!"

There was a sudden explosion of light. Our eyes could only view it for a second, it's brilliance among the weak torches almost blinding. "Now!" I shouted. "Get back now!" Sam and I all but lifted Frodo off his feet and tripped over our own as we hurried back to the cover of the rocks, hoping it would shield us from view.

What followed next was a blur of light and equally intense noise. The gate rolled open, stone grinding on stone, and then the thunder of hundreds, if not thousands, of footsteps emerged in the form of heavily armored orcs. It was loud but bearable until there was an awfully familiar shriek in the air that send chills down all of our spines. The hands I had firmly grasping Frodo, trying to hold him back, now shot up to my ears trying to stopper some of the sound. Frodo dared to look over the stone we were hiding behind and his look back at Sam and I confirmed it. The Riders. A tiny glance afforded me the glimpse of a serpentine tail lashing back and forth. I removed my hands from my ears and pulled Sam and Frodo farther down behind the stones.

For a few minutes we were shaken, and backed away up the first steps more than walked, trying to put a little more distance between our enemies and us. "Do you think they know it is nearby?" Frodo asked, in a whisper.

"They might." I answered, unsure myself.

"We don't know what may be happening elsewhere." Sam said. "They could be leaving for any number of reasons."

"None of which are good, I'm sure." I said. "But so long as we are not what their eyes are focused on, we have a little less cause for worry." I assured Frodo.

"Come." Gollum finally spoke again. "We must climb."

The three of us stared at the perilous steps again. A single misplaced step and the result seemed like it would be a fatal one.

Frodo took the first step, and we followed, gingerly placed hand and foot on stairs that looked as though they were decomposing as we climbed.

It was going to be a long climb.

/

"One of us ought to go and walk in between them." I nodded at Sam and then toward Frodo and Gollum.

"Yes, one of us should." Sam nodded.

"Well…" I urged him in a whisper. "Go on."

Sam said nothing, but shot me a look that appeared almost pained. I groaned at his silent protest. "Really Sam, you'd think after so much traveling, and being captured by Faramir and his men, Gollum wouldn't be able to have any ill effect on you."

"I know, but it's only that Gollum character, he's…"

"No need to go on, I know what he's like, just as well as you do. I'll go ahead."

I hurried forward a few paces, slipping past Frodo, and joining the front of our party, almost walking beside Gollum.

Of course, my presence did not go unnoticed by him. "What does it want?"

"Nothing." I shrugged. "It's a narrow staircase you led us too. We can't help it if we run into each other."

"Can't help…can't help…" Gollum repeated me, and then coughed until he couldn't speak anymore.

"If any one of us needed help…" I sighed, tripping a little over the hem of my skirt. '…it would be you' I finished my thought. I glanced down and saw that my skirt had torn in one section, probably long ago. I glanced far back at Frodo and Sam. There was enough distance between us to stop for a few minutes. I seated myself on one misshapen, eroding step. Surprisingly, Gollum slowed his pace and stopped as well. I slung my bag off my shoulder and began rummaging through it.

"Where is it?" I searched along the bottom of my bag.

"What's it looking for?" Gollum asked.

"Nothing too special." I answered. My fingers found the objects that the search was for. "Just these." I opened my palm to display a needle and thread. "I brought them with me, thinking I'd help make more tablecloths for the festivities we were having in the Shire." I snickered, recalling I had done no such thing, gallivanting off. But I was glad that my simple needle and thread, and one of my few ladylike talents with sewing, would be of some use. I turned my attention fully to the mending at hand. "Poetry, penmanship, and pin needles." I muttered under my breath. "That's what Grandmother said my ladyship skills amounted too, though she also said I showed great talent in them."

The hole in my dress was closing as the thread which had once been a crisp white (now a sort of grey that one would find on pigeon wings) began to pull the rent fabric together again.

"Amazing how I can be sitting on something so steep, it's almost as though I am standing upright, and yet I can still manage a straight line of stitches." I went on, chatting with myself to help that my only conversation could come from Gollum at this moment. "Kegan would tease me endlessly if he knew."

"Who's to know?" Gollum asked.

"A friend." I answered. "Someone who I hold very dear…though he would also tease me of that if he heard it." I glanced upward at the endless stairs. "How much longer do you think we'll be at this? Days? A week?" The stairs seemed to wind slowly up the cliff, and then to stretch further along the wall of rock, and then ascend higher, maintaining the same steep incline with every step.

"On it goes…on and on it goes…" Gollum muttered, more to himself than to me, but I had grown used to such frustrating responses.

"A week then." I nodded. "More or less and then…" I sighed. "Onward to Mordor." I couldn't help but notice some part of Gollum seemed to flinch at the mention of Mordor, despite the landscape matching his character so well.

It took me a few stitches and a moment of uncomfortable silence while the creature gazed emptily at our path before I recalled something said long ago. Gandalf's voice through the front door of Bag End. The night all this could be said to have begun. The detail had not stuck with me at the moment, my chief concerns being Frodo and not being found out for listening in on the private matter. But I recalled it now…Gollum tortured for the information that placed Frodo in danger to begin with, in Mordor.

I felt something for Gollum again. Not sympathy. I could not find that emotion within me. Some part of me didn't care, the detail taking on a story like element. Something that removed the details from me or made it sound like it had happened long ago, such distances breaking its effect. But there was brief pang of something in my chest for the creature. Something that spoke of his pathetic nature, and his long held suffering from the Ring, and his entire miserable life.

Pity.

A dangerous feeling of pity.

I grimaced. How dare I pity such a wretched creature?! The very reason I was here, far from home, and watching my friend undergo the burdens of this journey was because this creature refused to die under all his torment, and instead blurted out the name and address that would endanger us all.

Anger very quickly replaced pity. I was angry with Frodo for forming such an attachment to the beast, I was angry with myself for not saying anything and not finishing the creature off when I had the chance to, and overwhelmingly, I was angry at Gollum for his own existence.

He turned back, finally snapping out of his empty spell, and seeing the thinly veiled hatred on me face, which only seemed to deepen when I had to look him directly in the face.

I detected a snarl from him, also barely hidden.

"What does it want?" Gollum asked, his tone taking on a growl like quality.

"I should be asking you the same thing." I said tensely. "What do you want, coming back to this place?"

There was no verbal response, only a hard, intense look and an annoyed sniff.

"You do know we're destroying that precious token of yours?" I asked outright.

He jolted at my question, giving the clear impression that he hated the thought. I caught his reaction. "This journey will end, and soon." I said. "The path is getting shorter every hour."

"I will help Master."

"You say that, but I have trouble believing you." I replied. "Frodo doesn't need your help anymore. When we reach the top of this ridge, we may even be able to see Mount Doom on the horizon. And then what will happen?"

Gollum suddenly found it very difficult to look me in the eye, and I found my temper growing and fueling something in me that was making me bold. For once, I felt like I was the one watching Gollum and not the other way around. Now it was his turn to feel my hard gaze and be made uncomfortable under my watch, and fear me. I rose from my sitting position. The stairs were steep and I had to crouch low to avoid swaying too far out and face a deadly fall. "We're going to go into the fires of Mount Doom and cast that dreadful thing…your precious thing…" I spit out the word with venom. "…away for good. The world will be better for it. Finally, all this struggle will be worth it." Gollum began to back away from me, climbing stairs again, and I followed him, step for anxious step. "Just to see that little thing that caused so much pain fall down…" I eyed the edge of the stairs, thinking of how one misplaced foot or a single shove could end this, and my hand reached out a little closer to Gollum. "Fall far, far down and be gone…gone…"

"Fali."

The sudden sound of Frodo's voice caused my knee to slip on the eroding edge of a step and the loss of balance brought me (literally in some ways) crashing back to earth. My head drained itself of it's fiery temper, my foot caught me on the step below, bringing me a pace back from Gollum and my hand caught hold of a solid piece of rock.

I blinked, trying to focus myself again, eyes sweeping up to Gollum, who looked down at me with as though he didn't know what I might do next, and when his eyes lifted to meet Frodo his confidence in his safety returned. He glanced back down again with a bizarre smile. "This way. We climb." He said, and he was off.

"Fali, are you alright?" Frodo inquired.

I turned back to Frodo and Sam. "Am I blocking your way?" I asked, lightly. "Sorry. I was getting far ahead, and thought to stop and mend the hem of this." I plucked at the edge of my skirt. "I didn't want to trip over it, especially at this height."

Frodo nodded. "Let's move on. We must reach a decent cliff to sleep on by nightfall." He excused himself as he stepped carefully past me on the narrow steps and began to follow Gollum. "Be careful." He reminded me. "It's a long way down."

"Oh please, I'm already too worried about you and Sam to think of where my own feet land. Instinct has long taken over, and one can trust that to make it through. Now hurry along, unless you want me climbing over your ankles."

He smirked, and I rejoiced at making him do so after so many days he had been without such humor.

Sam followed and paused to give a hand to set me back on steady feet. "For days it seems like there is a distance between us, and then in small moments, just when I feel hope for him leaving me, it returns." I smiled. "There is hope that one day he may leave all this behind him, scars on both body and mind."

"Did you have any idea what you were doing just now?" Sam hissed at me, strict as an old school professor.

"Climbing up these stairs, what else could I be doing?" I replied.

"It was the way you were climbing up these steps, Miss Fali. All hands and knees, like you were stalking prey…you looked like…"

"No." I shook my head. "How dare you even compare me to him!" I snapped at Sam.

"Let me place myself between Frodo and Gollum." Sam volunteered. "He has a way of upsetting you…" I glared at him and he changed his words. "…of upsetting everyone, it's just his character. You've been around him a bit too long is all. It makes you temperamental."

"You're testing my temper right now too." I added.

"Gollum had that Ring an awfully long time. He's part of it now. The ring has a certain effect on Frodo, maybe Gollum…"

"I am nothing like Frodo. I'm not being corrupted by anything." I shook my head. "I don't have the same weakness that my family had before me."

"I never mentioned anything about your family." Sam said.

"Not aloud." I retorted, and the rise in the volume of my voice made me quiet myself. "Oh." I said. "Oh no. Sam I didn't mean to antagonize you."

Sam looked hurt at my aggressive tone, but said, somewhat sadly "Don't worry, it seems everyone's taken to getting frustrated by me as of late."

"Oh don't say that, I was becoming brutal, I should be the sad one here." I sighed heavily. "t seems we'll be tested even more, Samwise. If this is our first taste of what Mordor will bring us, we can't climb these stairs fast enough."

"Frodo will be getting worse I expect, and that's the thing that's truly sad." Sam said.

/

From the youngest of ages Frodo could only recall there being one voice in his head. The one that sorted out his daily thinking, had pondered over problems during his schooling, and more than a few times provided a witty remark which he had kept silent out of politeness. But now more and more, he found there being…other…voices. Strange, grim whisperings that buzzed along the back of his skull and drowned all thought at times. At first they had rattled his nerves, but now it happened with such frequency he had learned to live with it.

Increasingly, there seemed to be a second voice, one that came forth unexpectedly at times. Something that sounded like one he had all his life but filled with more anger. A first he thought it was only himself growing more temperamental. The uncomfortable circumstances of traveling were good enough evidence, surely this could shorten the temper of anyone. But now he was unsure. One moment he would be thinking and the two voices would speak overtop of each other, until one was eclipsed by the other.

One was kind, one was fiendish.

One knew friendship, and the other did not understand it.

One was focused on what happening around him and the other could think of only what he wore around his neck.

On and on they fought to be heard.

More and more it was the fiendish one that was winning out.