The joy of the Yule days overwhelmed the darkness in Frodo for a time, but it could not conquer it completely. Slowly the shadow crept back into the hobbit’s heart as nightmares troubled him at times.

Bilbo and Boromir woke one night to panicked cries. “Where is it?! I can’t find it! I’ve lost it! It’s gone!!”

They watched as Frodo thrashed in his sleep and frantically clawed at his neck for an object that was no longer there.Bilbo reached Frodo’s side first and placed his heartson’s flaying hands around the gem Arwen gave and then clasped his own ancient ones around Frodo’s. Once the younger Baggins calmed enough to be held, the elder wrapped his arms around his beloved.

“It is gone forever,” Frodo murmured, still half-tangled in sleep. “I will never hold it again, but it still holds me. Will I ever be free?”

"I don't know," came Bilbo's grief-filled response.

For a long while, the only sound was that of the old hobbit weeping. Frodo woke in a cold sweat and looked up to see tears running down his uncle’s cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, my boy,” Bilbo said softly “I’m so sorry.”Frodo kissed what tears away he could. “‘Tis not your fault, Uncle.”

“But it is. If only I hadn’t picked the Ring up...”

“The world would have fallen to the Shadow if you hadn’t,” came Boromir’s voice. “I know that now. I had said before it was the men of Numenor who should have had the Ring and not halflings. But that is not correct. It was such men who could not withstand it, speaking of Isildur and myself, but you did.”

Bilbo looked at the man and then down to Frodo, who trembled with cold and loss in his arms. “I still wish it never came to me. If I had known the cost...”

“It would have so much higher if it had not come to you - and to me, Uncle. It was better that I bear the cost myself than all Middle-earth.”

Bilbo hugged his heartson tighter. “Oh, my dear lad, that cost is far too much for any one person to bear.”Frodo’s only response was to begin to weep. Bilbo stroked his curls gently and murmured what comforts he could until the younger Ring-bearer feel back into sleep.

“I used to have dreams like that too,” Bilbo said, half to himself. “What have I done, what do I continue to do to my lad?”

Boromir looked at the tortured hobbit. “You have done nothing but loved him. He spoke of you many times during our travels and it was always with love and appreciation in his voice. He never blamed you that he had to bear the Ring. Do not blame yourself.”

“Who else should I blame then? It was I who picked it up, I who left it for him after I went away, I who did not have the strength for the journey that he took up, and I who cannot heal him now for hurts he never would have had to bear if I hadn’t found that cursed thing. Even now I can hear its call.”“My brother was much more a learned pupil of Mithrandir than I and he spoke of me at times of that wizard’s wisdom. Faramir believed there was a purpose and a reasoning behind everything that happened, even things that caused great sorrow. I do not pretend to understand it all myself, but I do not doubt my brother is right. I watched Frodo suffer under the Ring’s influence and weight, even as it pursued me almost as much as it did him. I blame myself for my fall, as he blames himself for his, and you blame yourself for picking it up, but there had to have been a good thing that was meant behind the fact that you were the one who found the Ring and Frodo was the one who bore it to its end. The cost of that journey was not borne alone, for indeed it would have been too much for one to pay. I have seen men under my command try to do so and who failed. Frodo had others with him to help him bear the weight, even as he does now. Even if you were not there beside him bodily, he still carried you with him inside his heart, and you were one of those most dear to him that he was glad to pay the cost of bearing the Ring away. If you must blame someone for the hurts he suffered, blame the one at whose feet it lies. The Nameless chose to make it. Under its power, Isildur could not forsake it and neither could I. You gave it up so it could pass to the ones through which it would be destroyed and never harm anyone again.”

Bilbo sank into thoughtful silence for a long while. “I know you speak the truth, Boromir, but the wounds are still too raw for me to accept them wholly. There are pains a parent feels when their child is hurt that sometimes I wonder are worse for the parent than for the child who bears them.”

“I would not know, but I saw the sorrow my brother held for those under his care. I do not doubt now that he will feel those himself with his own children, but that he will also rejoice over them and be glad they do not have to live under the threat of the Shadow as he and I did. That he and everyone else no longer does, I am only glad, even in my own grief over the pains Frodo suffers.”

Bilbo looked down at his sleeping treasure. The light within his dear one softly glowed and illuminated him with the Elvish beauty that he always had. Boromir was right. There was torment still so great to bear but the Ring would no longer trouble the world. There were reasons to rejoice, as in the love and courage and strength that was in Frodo to have accepted the burden and the light that shone even in brokenness. “I will take your counsel as much as I may,” Bilbo said. He closed his eyes, with his arms still around Frodo, and Boromir saw peace come to both their features. Yes, good always comes.

“Thank you, my brother,” Boromir murmured as he lay back down himself and returned to sleep.