A/N: Love, love, love, angst, angst, angst, no slash, no slash, no slash.  Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! :)  More movie verse than book. Told from an observer's POV, that being me.

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You carried the Ring for months against your skin, like a viper clutched to your chest. It bit you again and again and you endured it because you knew while it was biting you, it wasn’t harming anyone else. You felt its poison course through your blood, taking more and more of yourself away and turning you into a vessel for itself and while you fought that with all your strength, you knew you were weakening. It became a race to see whose will would fail first and you became to be very afraid it would be yours. But the one who walked beside you, suffered with you and never left you, but when you abandoned him, would not let your strength fail. He became your strength, your hope, fighting to protect your soul as much as the Ring sought to devour it. You would complete the Quest only because he loved you with his whole heart and will. You would make it to Mordor.

And then you could die.

It no longer frightened you as it once had. You had had time to accept that sacrifice if it meant the Ring would be gone and everyone else would be safe. You knew from the beginning you wouldn’t be able to part with the Ring. You began to slowly understand what that meant. You had to destroy it, there was never any question of that. But you knew you would not survive its destruction. When you went over the edge with Gollum, you knew it was the end and you were glad. No longer would you have to listen to the Ring taunt your attempts to resist it, its contempt for you when you did not. You no longer had to feel it swallow your soul. It would have been so easy to give into what had become your dearest desire.

But then you made your mistake and had your victory. You looked into his eyes as he begged you not to let go and you knew your own eyes pleaded for permission to do just that. Permission you knew he would never give and you had no right to ask him of. Tears and grief were in his eyes, but also love, overwhelming love. And you realized you could not hurt him in this way. You already had in so many other ways, yet still he loved, unwaveringly, unconditionally. You couldn’t betray that again.

You took his hand and he helped you out. Death would still come. Even he understood that now. But it would not come in a way that would have torn his heart apart if you had let go. It would come with you in his arms, he in yours. The way it should be.

But wonders, it did not come. You were spared, he was spared.

He thrived in returning to the Shire, sinking his roots back down deep into the soil and you could only rejoice as he married and became a father. But the roots seeking to plant you back down found no purchase in you. You were hollowed out, but you accepted that as the price to keep everyone safe, or told yourself that you had accepted it, though the tears ran freely at night that showed you were not truly as empty as you thought, but empty of peace. You did not know that others cried for you in their own beds. Your cousins still sought you out for love and comfort and you amazed yourself that you could still offer it.

When nightmares caused you to cry out, he who remained your light in dark places, was always there for you, his arms so swiftly and tightly around you, guarding the guttering flame that was your life. You held onto him just as tight, feeling so safe, so loved as he stroked your curls and murmured comforts and rocked you like you were his child. You buried your head against his chest and listened to his heart beat and his voice as he sang your favorite lullaby and for that time the other voices that were never silent were drowned out. You knew even before he married Rose what a wonderful father he would be because of the friend he had been to you. Neither blade, nor stinger, nor Orc could reach you while he was near. The hateful, hated longing for the Ring that otherwise filled you was stilled. You wished you could stay in his arms forever. You knew he would let you. And how badly you wanted to be that selfish!

  But it was not to be. There was a price to be paid.