A/N: A snippet of the Red Book/BBC adaptation is used near the end.

Boromir looked up the cloudy sky, then down as Frodo joined him for their morning walk. “It is like to rain today.”

“Good,” the Ring-bearer said. “It was so dry and barren in the wastes of Mordor. I will be glad for rain on my face.”

“That is where you will travel today?”

“Yes, ever toward the Mountain, toward the Fire. Perhap one day away from it as well.”

“I would continue with you, if I may.”

“Please. I would have never made it there without Sam and I will need your aid to get there this time. I would beg all the Powers to be with me at the Fire, if I could. But let us walk first.”

“Tell me of your journey if you will.”

Frodo’s hand tightened slightly around Boromir’s. “It was more than I thought I could ever bear. But I had to keep going, through the miles, the hunger and thirst, and the despair that all but destroyed me. The Ring grew ever heavier and burned away all else in me. Its presence only was I aware as it stole away all memories of all else. It taunted me, compelled me, whispered and shouted at me. Sometimes I almost collapsed under its weight. It sought so hard to control me, to have me claim it, and at times, it almost succeeded. Its hold on me was so great that when Sam offered to carry it for me, I nearly drew my sword on him. I do not know how I endured it all, or how he did, but we knew we must. It had to come to its end and we had to come to ours. That this would happen at the Fire is something I had long known and accepted, but Sam never did. Even as he loved me with all his strength to what could only be my end, he refused to believe that was the only possible ending to our part in the story. But I knew, or thought I knew, better than him. I knew I could not part with the Ring. I knew that even before I began. I would go with it into the Fire. That was the only way the Ring would be destroyed. I would have peace and an end to torment. My only remaining pain would be that Sam would watch and then die as well.”

Boromir tightened his grasp on Frodo’s hand. It broke his heart to hear such words. “You continue to me a marvel to me, little brother. I do not know how many could bear to labor on with such seeming knowledge.”

“You would if there was no other choice. And yet, even that would have failed me, had Sam not been there to hope when I could not. He saved me and the Quest.”

“And yet you had a choice, just as he did. You made it with each step forward you took, even while you believed it would bear such a heavy cost.”

“The Ring had to be destroyed. If I was to be destroyed also, it was a price I was willing to pay, if all Middle-earth would be free of it. And it came nearly to naught. I almost doomed all Middle-earth to the dominion of the Shadow.”

“As did I when I tried to take the Ring from you. We could let our burdens destroy us, or we believe that despite our failures, the Nameless was still defeated, and you and I were given this great boon. The Powers would not have done so to villains.”

“Perhap not. My burden did destroy me, and yet I am still here. I wish Smeagol was. Mayhap it would have cured him.”

“I do not pretend to know all the answers, but I know Faramir would say Smeagol made his own journey, just as you continue to make yours. I do not know where yours will end, or mine, or our brother’s, but I do not think it will end in darkness for any of us.”

“I hope it is so.”

The rain began to fall gently and warmly. Frodo stopped, lifted his face up to meet it and closed his eyes. For a long while, he remained with outstretched arms, just letting it wash over him. He opened his mouth to let it go down his throat. Boromir had never liked to be out in the rain until now. He had endured it enough times in bitterness during battles or long marches, but it had never been the blessing it was now. Or perhaps it was just the little being beside him that was the gift.

“This is why you still live, little brother,” Boromir said after they began to walk again. “So you can be blessed and healed by the Powers.”

Frodo looked up to see the man’s smile. He spread out his free hand to cup more rain and drink it. “It rained like this in the Shire. I am ready now. Let us go inside. I would not have you stay outside because I do not wish to go in. And I can hardly write out here in the rain.”

After they returned home, they changed into dry clothes. Frodo had been tempted to remain in his wet tunic and breeches, but one look at Bilbo’s raised eyebrow disavowed him of that notion. The ancient hobbit returned to his nap. His heartsons went into the study and lit several lamps.

Frodo looked into their light for several long moments. “It was so dark in the Black Land, so very dark.” He sought to call to mind the Lady’s light as well. Then he traveled into the black, and Boromir could only wait outside in the light.

Such deep darkness. Only in the distance was there any light and ever before and around Frodo was the wheel of fire. He could feel its heat through his back as he lay burning upon it, could feel it spread through him, so it was him and he was it. If he had seen the Eye in Galadriel’s Mirror rimmed with fire, he thought this was how his body would look to anyone who saw it. There was nothing else to him anymore. He could see the flames lick around him. Yet even surrounded by it, shivers still ran through his body. How could he go on? Would it not be better to lay down and let the flames consume him, leaving only his ashes? No, he could not. He must continue on. Let the flames do what they willed. Through the fire, he looked to his side for Sam, who was but a shadowy figure. Was he truly there? Someone was.

Frodo reached toward the chain at his neck. Sweet oblivion rested there. Surrender to that and he would be free from pain. The Dark Lord would come. There would a long drawn out moment of agony, the worst he had known, as he saw his Ring on the Enemy’s finger, then there would be nothing. No pain, no hunger, no thirst, no bleeding from around his neck where the chain bit into his skin or from feet too often cut on sharp stones, no ache in his legs from so many long miles, no torment as his heart shattered and its pieces clung to the one thing that now encircled it. He would be free. So he was promised at the least.

The Ring-bearer moved his hand away. He could not surrender. Not yet. Not until it was over and the Ring was in the Fire. Not until he died with it, a moment’s agony as his body hit the molten fire, but he was sure no more painful than what he felt already. Then nothing. Not even the horror and sorrow of hearing Sam’s scream of grief would remain with him. It would be over. He would rather doom himself than all Middle-earth, even if it meant dooming Sam as well. There was nothing he could about that. His beloved guardian would be faithful to the end. He had to remain the same. Then he would have his reward, his peace, the end of everything, so others could go have a new beginning. He kept walking toward the light he saw in the distance. It was not red, but white and growing larger. If he could reach there, he knew he would be safe, even as the flames grew around him.

Frodo watched his burning hand reach toward the Ring again. Peace. Rest. The fire quenched. So its whispers reached him, circling around him like a mist. He watched those tendrils as he stumbled along. He longed to reach out his swollen tongue to touch the moisture there. But no, there was only one way to squelch the fire. Only one. He would remain bound upon the wheel until he leapt with it into the molten furnace in which it was born and where he and it would be unmade. He would not tell Sam.

Boromir watched from the outside as his little brother struggled against the same peril he had all the way from Rivendell. Better than anyone, he had an idea of how the Ring-bearer’s heart and spirit were riven by it, but he felt helpless to aid him. This battle, like his own, was fought inside, and it was terrible. He wished in this instance, Frodo would lose it and close his hand around what lay on its chain next to his heart, for it would aid him, he knew it would. But he knew the hobbit would not be aware that the Queen’s gem was there, but only the poisonous object that had nearly ruined them.

Softly Boromir heard Frodo speak, and he leaned closer to make out the words. “The Eye…the Eye. Help me, Sam! Help me, Sam! Hold my hand! I can’t stop it.” Glad to at last enter Frodo’s world if he could, the man grasped his brother’s hand and held it against him. The hobbit sagged against him. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief, as the white light surrounded him and quenched the fire for a time. He opened his eyes after a while and looked at Boromir and the hand the man held against his heart.

“Stay with me, please.”

“Through the end.”