Chapter Fifty-Four: Captured

My dearest Sam, I think over and over again how well you have taken care of me, how very well you have loved me. We nearly perished from lack of water on our journey, but at the same time I was drowning in darkness. You were the only thing that kept me going. Even when my will began to fail and my strength fade away, you were there to help me, to encourage me, to comfort me, to save me. I wish I could say as much. I did all I could, but it was not enough to save myself. I have been so hurt, Sam, so deeply hurt. It is an open wound that even your love cannot heal completely, though how hard you have tried, my heartbrother, how very hard you have tried! I can never tell you well enough how that has blessed me.

I know you felt and suffered from the darkness outside us, and I have grieved that I had brought you to that place, but always you were my light. I was in despair much of our journey, but you refused to give in yourself. You have hope even now and it is that I wish not to betray when I see you next. Your hope will be rewarded, though I have been too long captured by the darkness that the Enemy surrounded himself with for it to happen here, but there is a light, there is always a light I can see through the chink of my prison. I start at it for hours and hours and it consoles me that it is there, even if it is right now outside my reach. It is still there and I hope to reach it one day.

Until then, I wish I could stop thinking the way I tried to when we were captured by the orcs, when I only tried to keep one foot in front of the other and not think of what they were going to do to me when they found out about us, when they found the Ring. It was bad enough to once again feel the sting of the whips, their eyes boring into me, worse still to know that you felt that lash too.  It brought back all they did or I fear they did to me in the Tower all over again and that is a nightmare I still live.   

You have tried to comfort me and that has sustained me this long. I wish it could forever. Each night, either at its beginning or during the long black when your heart answers the call of mine, you lay beside me, place my hand on my back or in my own and sometimes that is all you need to do and we can both sleep. Sometimes I hide my face in the crook of your neck and find solace that way. Sometimes you hold me, even on nights when I know it’s too hot for you to do so, but you know that’s what I need and so you do it. I listen to your heart then, hold you and feel you hold me, stroke my curls, and sing softly to me. My shivering calms and a gentle light and peace brings me blessed release for a moment. You do each night whatever is necessary for me to sleep and I bless Rosie every night that she understands that part of your night is spent away from her and at times, the whole night. She knows your heart.

And your heart knows mine so well that I wonder if all my shameful secrets are laid bare. That frightens me but it comforts me at the same time for if you know all that is hidden there and still love me evermore, then I can believe there is nothing, not even the wound I have yet to give us both, that you will not forgive. But I do not know whether you know and I cannot, will not ask for my shame is too deep and there are some griefs that should not be shouldered by another, not matter how strong and broad and loving those shoulders are. They have already borne too much already and though they have not bowed under even all that, I will not add another burden. I will not tell you of my lingering desire for the Ring or the fears of what the orcs would do to me once we reached their camp and they realized how I was, the thing they had tormented and taunted in the Tower.

I had so many terrible dreams on the way to the Fire, increasing in darkness and intensity and they were so vivid I cannot tell at times whether they have been dream or reality. That I lust still for the Ring and fill empty without it is a nightmare I know is true and I can only hope for relief and peace from this terrible hunger once I pass West. That I was taken over and over by the Enemy is I know is true and that violation has left me torn.  And there are the horrible dreams in the tower that I wonder whether they were dreams at all or terrors after I woke about what the orcs did to me. 

I grieved as my memories were stolen from me one at a time when we labored to the Mountain, but I realize now it was a blessing and now that my memories have returned, they are a torment for I cannot tell at times the true from the false. Some of them I must merely endure until time blurs the edges and the memories do not cut my hand and heart each time I brush against them. Others are the only things keeping me from being completely swept away from the dark torrent that wishes to drown me.

Even worse than the tower are other wonderings and I will never know the truth of those either because I am too ashamed to ask. I have a vivid memory of drawing Sting on you, my dearest heart, holding it at your throat with one hand, straddling you as the orcs did me in the Tower when they whipped me, holding you down with my other hand, so you couldn’t escape, could hardly move. I nearly killed you or did I? I look at your throat sometimes, trying to see if I left a mark, trying to see if it was real or not and hoping so much I won’t see anything even if I distinctly remember pressing Sting there.

I tell myself it’s not important because real or not, you have continued to love me more and more. The Enemy tried to take everything from me, including you and that’s another nightmare it gave me or a reality it inspired. I remember ordering you to go and then realizing I feared too late that it was him who wanted you to go, not me. Or were you with me the entire time except for that endless day while you searched for me? I don’t know and I will never ask. He tried to take everything from me, but he did not take you, not for long at least. I will be doing that myself. That is the reality that this nightmare has inspired. That is the one thing I wish wasn’t real.

* * *

Oh me dear, that was a terrible time we had being taken by the orcs. I didn’t know how we would get out of that, but I think the Lady must have been watching over us even then, because just as our strength was about to fail, the orcs defeated themselves again just as they had in the Tower and we were able to escape. I wish I could have thanked her more for all she did for us. I tried to, but she just smiled and said that indeed we had been and still were being looked over, but she did not say it was her doing it. "For I am but a servant myself, Samwise, just as you are," she said. "And you have been more loyal than I have been. I go now to my reward after trial and so will you. I am going back home, forgiven. And you will go home yourself, to your Shire and your garden. And yet another home awaits you as well."

I know it does, though I did rightly understand all the rest she had said about needing forgiveness and such. But I know home is ahead as well as around me because you will there, just as much as Bag End was home when you were here and home now because Rosie and all my lads and lasses are here. We have seven now and we wouldn’t have any if you hadn’t kept going even when your strength was not enough. I think of you every day, every time I see them, everything time they run around the garden, squealing in laughter and delight at a new flower or a sunset or a rainbow and jumping into the autumn leaves. And I think of all you did, all you endured, all you suffered, crawling when you could go no other way, just so we would all be safe. Thank you, dear, thank you, thank you, thank you. I can never say that enough for all the blessings you have given me. I love you that much and I know I will never be able to tell you how much. Perhaps I will just have to hold you and never let go, sometimes so tight you can barely breathe, something loose enough that I can look into your lovely face and see you smile again and your light.