Chapter Forty-Nine: Alone

Warning: Frodo’s section is PG-13 just to be on the safe side

Oh, my Sam, it was so terrible without you in the tower. I woke and they were standing over me, fingering their knives, leering, grasping, demanding, whipping me when I didn’t speak loud enough or give answers that satisfied them. I could not tell them. Even when I realized how very alone I was, that I had not even the Ring with me, I did not say anything. All was lost. I feared you dead or captured. All the toil had proved vain. I could not protect myself or anyone else. I had tried and I had failed. I stared into the black pit and fell headlong into it.

But there was one small mercy given me before the greatest blessing of your coming. The orcs did not take from me the one gift I thought I would always give to my bride. There won’t be one now. I won’t know the joy you do, my Sam, but still I have known great love, through my parents, Bilbo, Merry, you, Pippin, Gandalf, Aragorn, the Lady, Faramir, Queen Arwen. I have been very blessed. No, that one gift will be forever unopened or at least I hope it has not been. Some of the orcs were very eager to tear into it, standing over me as I cowered on the floor, but Shagrat, on the point of his blade, dissuaded them, saying I was to remain "unspoiled". He sneered when I thanked him quietly.

The orcs were frightened away that time, but one of them said that Shagrat would not always be there to watch over me. I shivered there in cold and terror, not daring to move for then the whip would fall again. The end was near but not near enough. Naked I had come into the world, naked I would leave it. I was exhausted, but I did not wish to close my eyes from the fear they would come to me. At times though my body betrayed me and I fell into dark dreams so vivid I wonder whether I was taken after all.

Oh, Sam, there are some things about that time I will never tell anyone, least of all you and my other brothers. I wonder if you suspect part of it from my nightmares for while I am having them, I do not realize I am at home, in my own bed, and I throw your arms off, then the dream fades as it did in the tower when first I saw an orc, then it became you. I crumple into your arms then, bury my head in your chest and try to forgot what had me so ensnared. The Ring showed me very vividly what it would be like to be taken to him. The worst was that I would see him with the Ring on his finger and I would be deprived of it. I could not bear the thought of that, the thought of anyone having it besides myself. Even now I am filled with longing for it. Sorrowfully well do I understand what Gandalf about Smeagol loving and hating the Ring.

You have long stopped asking me about what my dreams are about and for that I am grateful. It is bad enough that I can see the tears in your eyes matching that ones bright in mine. I can’t tell you all I thought and felt and feared in the eternally long and dark hours I lay there, alone and not alone. How I wish that was true what Shagrat said, for I have been spoiled. No orc took me, but the Enemy did, over and over and over. You saved me from being taken to him, but no one was able to keep me from being taken by him. Keeping inside the pain and knowledge of that violation is destroying me, eating away at what little is left of me that he hasn’t already taken and I can only watch as it happens. I cannot stop it. To do that, I would need to admit to you or to Merry or to Pippin what he did to me and I will not do that. You have all suffered enough and there are some things you should never know. I thought I was beyond all help and hope in the tower.

Then I heard you sing.

* * *

Oh, my Frodo dear, it was so terrible without you in the tower. I woke and you were far away and all I could do was try to get to you before it was too late. I was that terrified, all alone, surrounded by enemies, but what kept me going was knowing you were the same. And I learned a little of what you had to bear so long with the Ring. I don’t know how you did it and now I know why you had to leave. I kept going for the same reason you did, because I had to, because I loved you just like you loved me and all of Middle-earth to do what you did.

Remember so long ago in the Shire when all was bright and there was no shadow covering us and we played Elven warriors? I did it all over again, trying to find you. I wish it could have just been like it was back then, not all that terrible darkness and fear and danger, those horrible Watchers at the door or all those Orcs, though thankfully most of them were dead.

The worst was that scream I heard and I didn’t know whether it was you or not or what they were doing to you or whether you were even still alive or I had just heard your dying cry. I think it was you, leastways it’s that way in my nightmares and I try to get to you and I can’t. You keep screaming for me and I keep calling out to you, that I’m coming, but you don’t seem to hear for you just call and call and your voice gets more desperate all the time. I’m climbing and climbing and climbing and there seems to be no end. While I’m dreaming, it’s the most terrible feeling there is to not be able to find you, to not be able to reach you, but I think sometimes it’s worse to wake and realize you are farther away now than you ever were in the tower and there’s no way I can reach you no matter how hard I try. At least in the dream, I know you are near, I can hear you, even if I can’t see you. There’s so little I’ve told Rose of what happened to us. She’s too gentle a lass to bear what we had to. But I think she’s knows a little of it from what she hears me cry out in my dreams. We hold each other so tight and I cry for you, for me, for her. Oh, dear, you were too gentle to bear all you had to too.

I wonder how I go on sometimes now that you’re gone. I miss you that much, especially after one of those terrible, wonderful dreams. But then I think that you kept going under much worse and that’s how I can keep going myself and there’s so much here that keeps me wanting to go on too. But I long to see you again and hold you just as I did while I was searching for you for so long. I know I will and I will never, ever let you go again. I’ll look into your eyes and see you smile and feel your hand in mine and your arms around me and hear your voice. That will be the happiest day of my life, my dear. I’ve had many happiest days already, some of them with you, some of them since you’ve left, suchlike each time Rose tells me I’m a father again and when I hold each lad or lass for the first time. You and she have blessed me just that richly. But I know that the best is still coming.

I sing to you still sometimes just as I did in the tower. Do you hear me, my love?