Chapter Fifty: Hold Me

Oh, my beloved Sam, how wonderful it was to hear you sing! I feared it was but another dream, but all the other dreams had been so horrible. It is still so hard to figure out at times what truly happened on our Quest and what the Ring presented to me. I tried to respond to you, even though the orcs watched me ceaselessly and threatened to beat me if I didn’t lay still and sometimes even then they would whip me. But I had to try to reach you, if it was you.

Then to see you again, to be rescued by the great Elf-warrior Pantheal as we used to play, to hear your voice and feel your arms around me! If it was a dream then I didn’t want to wake. I was safe, I could sleep at last. I wonder how well I will sleep in the West, knowing you are no longer a heart’s cry away. Oh, my Sam, how can I leave you, how can I possibly go on without you? Will I still be able to feel you hold me, even if you can’t see you? All that terrible time alone, that you guessed but a day, was endless torture, but it will seem to be an instant compared to what is before me now, before us, though you know it not. Fears and despair were constantly gnawing at me then and now All was and is lost. All is gone. Even after you came, and woke me as cheerfully as you ever did back home, the despair wouldn’t leave me. How could it? The Ring was gone and it was only a matter of time before we were both taken to the Eye. That would have been a greater grief than anything I had ever known, for you to have been taken before him. He had already taken me, but he hadn’t yet touched you or so I thought. Then I saw the Ring in your hand and the nightmares came back of anyone having it besides me and I could not bear that.

There is no escape from that terrible hunger anywhere and in my darkest fears, I wonder if even leaving you in my last desperate hope to be free of it will too be in vain and all the sacrifices that I am forcing upon you, Merry, Pippin and myself because I am not strong enough to fight anymore will be for naught. But how can I explain to any of you that I must go? I can’t. The shame is too great. So I keep everything inside. The things I called you, my brother so pure and loving, because of that horrible longing for the Ring, the way I acted, the way I will act, fills me with bitter remorse.

Yet you forgave me and will, I hope, forgive me what I will soon do. You have forgiven me everything. You have seen the worst and you have continued to love. Do you have any idea how times I have wept out of gratitude for that? When I think of how terrible I have been toward you and deserve nothing of your love, you love me even more. You banish the lingering ghosts for a night and they dare not approach while you hold me, but they are always there. I can hear them, see them, feel them. I cannot bear that anymore or this terrible longing. I will lose you and you will lose me. What a bitter birthday present I will be giving you.

But one day I hope I will give you a better one. I have not found my way out from the black pit yet, but sometimes I think I can see it, impossibly far above me as I stand at the bottom. There are only few handholds barely carved into the sides and they and the whole area is slippery with slime and the holds not deep enough to help very much. It is terrible to touch them, but I do. I climb, fall, climb again, fall and climb once more only to fall. But I keep trying. You are at the top, stretched out on your stomach, reaching your hand down as far as you can, balanced perilously far over the edge. I fear so that you will fall and I beg you not to come down as I know you wish to so you can be with me. But you are an obedient servant. You stay above, though your heart demands otherwise. I can see that struggle play out across your face as I watched the pain I caused you in the tower and so many other times and I ache for causing it all. I try and try to reach your hand. One day I will. You have never given up on me. I will not either. I hope we shall meet again and I hope it will be on my birthday so I can finally give you a proper gift. But no matter what day it is, even it’s your birthday, you will be getting a gift, my beloved Sam, one long delayed.

* * *

It was your birthday today, my dear, and we spent it at the Havens, Rose and Elanor and Frodo-lad and Rosie-lass and Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin. We watched and watched a eagle fly far above toward the West, watched long after it was lost to sight, wondering if it would keep going until maybe you would see it. How we longed to be on its wings, soaring toward you!

I still stand, sometimes for hours, at your bedroom door, just watching you sleep. I thought I didn’t need to do that so much anymore, but sometimes I do. If I didn’t have that, I’d rush out the door and run all the way to the Sea and not stop even then until I’ve seen you and held you again. We have all felt that way, me, Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin and I. You’ve always held half of our hearts, just as Rose has always held my other half. I know I won’t be leaving until she passes, and I dread the wrench that will be, but I also know I will be coming toward you and you will gently take the pieces of my heart just as you did when my mum died and mold them back together. I tried so hard to do that for you, my dear love, but I suppose there are some hurts that no one can mend. But if anyone can, it’s the Elves and you always did have an Elvish air about you. Seemingly not fit for darkness, but for beauty and light but in the darkness, you shone the brightest. I know you are shining now in the light just as brightly.

But I miss you, dear, I miss you that much. I miss holding you like I did in that tower where I could have stayed and been perfectly happy to hold you forever. I couldn’t then, but when I come, I will and the joy I had then will seem to be nothing compared to what I will have. I miss singing to you like I did then and have so many other times. I miss looking into your eyes and hearing your voice and all that love streaming out. I miss holding your hand. I miss waking you in the morning and kissing you goodnight. I miss making you meals and teas and going on walks. I miss everything.

We all do. It ought be getting better and it is most days, but some days it’s worse. We all have those days, me, Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin, days when those we love try to comfort us but don’t know exactly how to because we are lost in some memory of terror and helplessness that we don’t want to tell them about. Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin have each other, but I have no one to talk to about it, them being so far away. But we’ve learned to be together on certain days, on the 6^th and the 13^th and the day Mr. Merry was hurt by the Wraith-king and Mr. Pippin nearly killed by that troll and they were both almost killed by that terrible tree and we were all almost done in by those wights. The dreams are worse then and we can’t tell anyone but each other about it, and most times we don’t even need to talk. We just need to be there. So when one of us starts to get all cold or cry out from a nightmare, the others of us are there to hold and comfort. It took me a bit to get used to that, being taken care of and all, but it helps, my dear. We are all a mess on the 6^th and the day of wights, but I am the worst on the 13^th and 14^th when I dream that I am climbing and I can’t find you. I near despaired that I would ever find you until I heard that weak response of yours to my song. I had never heard anything so beautiful as that. But I think hearing your voice when I see you next will be even better.

It’s much better than what I hear in my nightmares. Sometimes you are screaming like I was afraid I had heard you before and you are calling out for me to rescue you and I just can’t find you for nothing. Sometimes I am calling out for you and there is no answer. At first I didn’t know which was worse, but I know now that hearing you panicked is better than hearing you not at all because at least you’re still alive. It tears my heart apart to hear that, just as each silent tear you tried to hide from me and sometimes couldn’t, stabbed it, but better that cry than my other dreams when I find you dead, better than all the days and years now that we’ve spent without your voice. I can’t talk to anyone of those dreams, though I think Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin guess well enough and I bet have had a fair share of their own. They have their own worst days and we do our best for each other, but it hurts that you aren’t there because you used to take such good care of us and you can’t do that anymore and we aren’t there to take care of you. We understand more and more why you had to leave. And I know I will be ready to leave when it comes my turn. I held it for so little a time, but I can feel and hear it at times. I don’t know how you were able to bear it so long. Every year on the 25^th Rethe and at the Green Dragon most times, if Mr. Pippin’s aches aren’t too bad, and even most times if they are, we toast you silently with our ales.

Rose has been so wonderful. She knows well that I’ve loved her as much and as long as I have loved you and she is letting me feel my way out of this black pit that I sometimes still fall headlong into. She is always there beside me, holding my hand and I would be lost without her and the children. She isn’t rushing me, just loving me. They all are. Elanor I think has the closest connection to you because she saw you even if she don’t remember that anymore. Still she knows she did and considers that important.

One night I stood at your door nearly all night, just looking at you and she stood with me part of the time, holding my hand. I don’t know if she can see you, she’s never said so, but she thought it best to be there with me. I wish you could see her, dear, how fair she had become and how our Frodo reminds me of you and yet is his own perfectly beautiful hobbit self as well and Rosie-lass is so much like her mum.

I wonder how many more are to come. I know my heart can hold them all because your heart held all of Middle-earth.