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“It’s me.”
Sting’s blade quivers against his neck, almost glittering in the moving light cast by the shadow of the setting sun and the wings of beasts overhead.
“It’s your Sam.”
Fingernails carve blood-red crescent moons into his shoulder – from rage, fearful desperation, or a volatile combination of the two he can’t discern.
“Don’t you know your Sam?”
Frodo’s chest heaves as he hyperventilates above him. The blue of his eyes shifts from something unending and unwielding, something holding Sam under and forcing water into his lungs, into the melancholy-tinted hue he knows.
The sword clatters against the stone floor of the keep. Frodo’s face crumples into familiarity. A return to the well-worn wrinkles of grief and exhaustion.
Moments ago, he could’ve left Sam nothing but an arc of glistening red against the walls of Osgiliath. But here he sits, straddling Sam’s legs and trembling with an unknown fear, as small and teary-eyed as a child lying wide awake in the stagnant night.
It wasn’t him, earlier. And it isn’t quite him now, not so much the person he was as much as the person he was forced to become, but it’s as close as they can get in the circumstances.
Frodo’s shoulders fall.
“I can’t do this, Sam.” He chokes on the sentence.
“I know,” Sam says, the words fighting to be heard against the gasps of a residual panic. “It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are.”
Frodo swivels his head, glancing to the side.
“We are.”
The faint sound of battle weaves its way through the walls. The metallic clang of swords and shields was a sound Sam previously imagined only on the couch of Bag End as supplement to Bilbo’s tales.
He’d never intended to leave any of it behind.
Never a second of doubt, and never a second of regret, but he hadn’t intended this.
Nobody had.
Frodo collapses, pitching forward into Sam’s arms. His fingers grasp for purchase. Sam can feel the light tug of the cloak around his bunched fist.
The nails no longer leave marks. They latch, the tightness still reeking of desperation, but with a softness indicating a hunt for comfort rather than intent to hurt.
Sam’s hands find Frodo’s back and return the hold.
“I’m sorry.” Frodo’s breath warms his neck. “I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me, someday.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Sam says. “Don’t you dare be sorry.”
He lifts himself against the wall, pulling Frodo up with him.
It shouldn’t be as effortless as it proves to be.
Frodo curls against his chest. Breaking himself down to the smallest version possible, as was his new tendency.
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. Full of darkness and danger, they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?”
Sam’s voice shatters. He turns his face toward the sun, trying to remain whole and hold back the wave of grief which continues to follow.
“But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.” A beam of light emerges from the cloud and strikes his cheek. His fingers trace Frodo’s jawline, tilting his head toward the sun. “Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer.”
Frodo blinks and casts his eyes downward. His gaze returns to Sam.
“Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why.
“But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t.” Sam pauses. “Because they were holding onto something.”
The weight leaves Sam’s chest. Frodo retracts. His body is bunched in on itself, arms clinging to his side and back sunken in. Almost entirely closed off, save for the eyes, which bore into Sam’s own.
“What are we holding onto, Sam?”
Tears threaten to crest down Sam’s face.
“That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo.” A hand comes to rest on Frodo’s shoulder. “That you are the good in this world. You had lots of chances of turning back, only you didn’t.”
Frodo’s eyes fall to the floor.
“It shouldn’t be you holding the whole world ‘round your neck. But you’re doing it anyway, because that’s who you are.”
He nearly reaches for the screaming ring of red searing into the back of Frodo’s neck, but his hand pauses midair. It finds his face instead. He swipes his thumb across his cheekbone, washing away the ghost of tears unshed.
“You’re everything that’s good about this world. You’re the little acts of kindness that keeps it all running smoothly, and you’re the big acts of courage when we all need it.”
Frodo leans into the touch, almost imperceptibly.
“You’re in so much pain. And don’t try to tell me you’re not. I can feel it. But you amaze me every single day. Because you keep going.”
A crash rings outside. Neither move.
“It shouldn’t be you, but you keep going.”
Sam cradles the back of his head, pressing a kiss to his crown before tucking him into the crook of his neck.
“And that’s what I’m holding onto. That’s how I know there’s good in this world. Because there’s people like you in it.”
A brief sob escapes Frodo.
“It shouldn’t be you, either, Sam. It never should have been you.”
“I promised I wouldn’t leave you, sir,” he says. “And I don’t mean to. I’ll follow you all the way to Mordor. And I’ll hold on to you every step away from home, and I’ll fight for you at every turn. I promise.”
Frodo’s face lifts, now streaked with monochrome grime and the clean paths of tears.
“And whenever it’s all just a bit too much, you can hold on to me, too.”
He finds Frodo’s lips and imparts a kiss, hoping it will communicate the things he can’t quite find the words for. The sorrow and the anger, coupled with battle-scarred hope and a love that’s led him willingly to the ends of the earth.
“I won’t let go.”