Chapter Forty-Eight: Choices

Oh, my dearest Sam, how terrible things were for you after I got poisoned. I’m so sorry, more sorry than I could ever tell you. I shouldn’t have run ahead like that. But perhaps it would have availed nothing. Perhaps we would have both been stung and the Quest lost. Such things go about and about in my head, raising nightmares that only you, my most beloved protector and guardian, can rescue me from. Only then do I realize that they are not true, but while I am trapped, how real they are, how very real. Then you come and hold me and rock and murmur and stroke and I am safe again, shaken and in tears and despair of ever being well and free, but alive and with you. With you because you were so brave in the tunnel. So very brave. If I’m more sorry than I have words for, I am also more proud. I know it was hard for you to tell me what happened after I was stung, all the terror and horror and despair and grief you felt. Reading it amazes me, makes me smile that you were so much braver than I ever could be and more than anything, it makes me cry that you were so hurt, so alone, and I could not comfort you as I have tried to each time there has been a shadow on your heart. It also fills me with shame that you would return to stay by me, even if I were dead, but I will not reward you with the same devotion. You were faced with a terrible choice in the tunnel - leave me and go on alone or stay with me and let the world be doomed. I have faced much the same choice and I have made the same decision. I hope it is the right one and that good will come of it, though great pain for both of us and Merry and Pippin will follow in its wake. The realization and regret of that is a stab to my heart, colder but alas not deadlier than any sting or blade or tooth. I must leave you and my brother-cousins and all my beloved Shire and go on alone but for Bilbo. I cannot stay. The world will not be doomed if I do, but I feel I may be. With all my tears for your pain and mine, it’s a wonder these pages can even be read anymore, but they must be. Others must know of what you did for me. And they will.

You always wanted to be in a story and you are, my Sam, you are, a grand one and I am honored to have shared it with you. I hope there will be a page or two left when you are done writing all you would like, for I do not wish our story to end until I see you again and we will continue on together, just as we always have.

* * *

Oh, dear, I shouldn’t even be writing this. The page is going to be so smeared that nothing up or down will be able to be made of it, but I suppose there’s nothing for that. I don’t expect anyone will be reading this anyway and I know from you that writing things out is sometimes the only way to get the pain out or leastways try to. But I also know from you that some pain is too much for a little bit of ink and paper to take away. I thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much by now, that I could just maybe pass this terrible night by and not even have to think about it, but it came back all afresh today and I’m up with the oil burning down in this lamp, far past bedtime, just like you used to do when you had to get it all out before you let me lead you away to bed.

I thought it was written out in the Red Book, all my grief and despair and rage and darkness. What else more was there to write about? But there must be more. If there’s any nightmare that still wakes me crying out, it’s that night in the tunnel when I thought you were dead and my life in ruin. I don’t know what’s worse, reliving that or finding out that you weren’t dead after all and I had left you to be taken by those filthy orcs. I can’t tell Rosie about it, she’s too gentle to know of any of this and I can’t tell you because you’re gone and I wouldn’t want to add any new pain to you anyway, not with you healing that well now. Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin are away and Strider’s in Gondor and Mr. Gandalf’s off. There’s no one but me and now I know full well or leastways a little bit more, what you felt like in those dark nights and I understand a little bit more why I couldn’t comfort you more and why you had to leave. I tried to ask for forgiveness once from you, but you hugged me and kissed my head and said I had done nothing that needed forgiving. I know that’s how you see things, but it sure don’t feel that way sometimes. Then you asked for forgiveness and I said the same thing to you and I know you didn’t believe me anymore than I did you, though we neither of us lied.

I would have thought that the cry my heart made when I couldn’t rouse you would have brought the entire tower down on me. It should have. Nothing should have withstood that. But it did. The only one who heard was me and it’s not even waking any here. I thought of the ways I could silence that cry but none of them seemed right. Not even taking the Ring from you, to save Middle-earth, even if I couldn’t save you. Certainly not taking my own life or even Stinker’s. I just wanted to take care of you, dear, didn’t want to be ever parted from you. But I was and I am. I promised to return, to never leave you again, to sit by you and hold your hand until death took me too. Now I’ve let you leave without me.

I know you wouldn’t want me to be sad now, not with so much joy you made possible for me, but I can’t help it. I wish you were with me like you were the last time I felt this wretched, right after my mum died. I think you were just as heartbroken as me. You stood by me at the burial and I had one of your handkerchiefs crushed in one hand and my other holding onto you so tight it must have hurt but you didn’t say anything, just held onto me tight too. Tears were streaming down my cheeks so hard I couldn’t even see when we both put down flowers from the garden, then you took me aside, knelt down so you were at eye-level with me and wiped my tears and told me that Mr. Bilbo said it would be all right, if it was all right with me, that I could stay the night with you. I didn’t say anything, just hugged you with all my might and you hugged me back. Then you took me by the hand and we went back...back home. I know my gaffer didn’t hold to such things, being so ‘familar with the master’ as he put it, but it was Mr. Bilbo himself who asked him if I could stay and he were all too distracted by grief and he couldn’t say no to his own master anyway. So I stayed that night and curled up with you and you held me while I cried and you cried with me. You sang that lullaby your parents used to sing to you about always being there to defend and protect me and I renewed the promise I had made to myself that I would always do the same for you. I was finally able to fall asleep, listening to your voice and feeling your hand gently stroke my curls. You held my hand the whole night and I can’t tell you how much all your love helped me. Is it any wonder that when that terrible spider or anyone or anything tried to hurt you, that I would fight for you? Even the orcs recognized there was something Elvish about you.

I shouldn’t have said you were gone, dear. I know you are still watching over me. It’s morning now and I stood last night at the edge of your room after I wrote all this out and watched you sleep. And do you know what I saw? Your eyes were closed, you were smiling and your lips were moving. I couldn’t hear the words, but I knew what they were. You were singing me that lullaby.