A/N: This story takes place shortly after the events of “A Tale That Grew in the Telling”. That is, the ‘present-day’ events of the prologue and epilogue that bookend Sam’s tale. It was inspired by Frodo’s drabble in “The Master of Bag End”, which was in turn inspired by “A Tale”.

#13 - By Any Other Name

30 Halimath, 1451 SR

Sam is 70, Rose 67, Frodo 28 (about 45, 43, and 18 in Man years)

“You’ve been thinking about somewhat awful hard, Sam,” Rose said, coming up behind her husband as he stood in the study, staring out the window at the warm autumn day. Sounds of the children playing somewhere in the garden drifted in through the window with the whispering breeze, and over Sam’s shoulder she could see Frodo hunched over the flowerbeds, Bilbo at his side. “What are you fretting on, dear-heart?” she asked.

At first, she had thought Sam’s silence was nothing more than exhaustion from his long night of story-telling. Certainly Daisy hadn’t been very chipper the day following Sam’s tale. Not until that night, when Sam and Frodo came to table late for dinner, did Rose begin to suspect there was something else amiss. They had acted normal enough, but Rose could tell that her son had been crying and Sam was pensive. That was three days ago and though the days were as sunny and warm as could be hoped for, a dark cloud continued to loom over Sam’s head.

Rose wrapped her arms around Sam’s waist and he covered her hands with his own. He leaned back only slightly into Rose’s embrace, so as not to put too much weight on her. Rose rested her chin on his shoulder and followed his gaze to their sons digging in the dirt.

“Is it Frodo then?” she asked. If it wasn’t that then it was something business-related and Sam wouldn’t necessarily tell her about that.

Sam nodded, the curls at his nape tickling her cheek as he did so. “Fro asked me if I love Mr. Frodo more than I do you or the children. He seemed so resigned to it when he said it, like he’d known all along and was just now admitting it to himself. I’m not sure if he really believed me when I said I didn’t, that I love you all the same. You don’t think all the children wonder that, do you? You don’t think that?”

Rose tightened her embrace for a moment, reassuringly, before answering. “Oh, I know you were Mr. Frodo’s lad long before you were mine. But to ask if you love him more than us, that’d be like asking if you love breathing in or breathing out more. Some things just can’t be thought on like that. The children know you adore them to no end, and so does Frodo.”

“Then why would he ask such? Why would he even think it? He must have doubted it for some reason, and if he has, it’s been for a good long while,” Sam said.

“I don’t know the answer to that, dearest. You’re going to have to ask him,” Rose said as down the tunnel in the kitchen, the timer sounded. “That’s the biscuits for half-tea. Call the children inside, will you?” She turned her head to the side and kissed him lightly on the neck before letting go. She was at the door before she thought of something and turned about. “Wait until I fix up a tray for you and Frodo. You can talk outside while the rest of the children are in here.”

Sam nodded and smiled at her appreciatively. “Whatever would I do without you, lass?” he asked, smiling for the first time in days.

“I’d hate to think,” she replied, grinning back.

After a time, Sam left the study and made his own way to the kitchen, where Rose was deftly preparing half-tea, a special Gardner meal served half-way between luncheon and teatime. After half-tea, the youngest children would have naptime and the others would help with chores. It was the perfect time for Sam to have a private word with his eldest son.

He waited as she prepared the tray with a pile of warm, gooey sugar biscuits, cucumber sandwiches, diced apples and a couple of glasses of cold tea. She handed the tray to him and quickly went about fixing glasses and plates for the other children. Sam knew she would have all eleven places set and ready for the stampede before he even set foot outside. Still, he helped her load the rolling tray and led her way to the dining room. They rarely used the kitchen table for it was too small for their large family, and they employed the dining room for all their family meals. Sam was suddenly struck with the irony of it, how his family would make a fuss if they had to eat in the kitchen whereas there had been a time when Sam was petrified to even set foot in the dining room.

He chuckled at the change and exited the smial through the back door. “Children! Half-tea!” he called at the top of his lungs. He then made his way to the flowerbeds where Frodo and Bilbo were. Bilbo was already on his feet and running; he dodged around his father effortlessly, hardly pausing to acknowledge his father’s presence. Sam could hear the other children coming up from the lower gardens or down from the roof, but he paid them no heed. He stopped beside Frodo, who was wiping his soiled hands on his breeches.

“Good day, Fro,” Sam greeted.

Frodo blinked up at him. “Hullo, Dad,” he greeted back, his expression showing his confusion. “Are we eating out of doors?”

“You and I are,” Sam said as Frodo stood. “I thought we could sit under the elm and have a bit of a chinwag.”

“Why?” Frodo asked and rightly so. His father didn’t often play favors with any of the children, and when he did it was usually because they needed to ‘discuss’ something. Frodo quickly racked his brain for any hint of misbehavior on his part that would justify a special audience with his father. What had he done?

“I want to talk some more about what we were speaking of the other night,” Sam informed. He nodded toward the back of the garden. “Come along.”

Frodo followed his father around the smial to the back of the property. Sam set the tray on the reading bench and sat to one side. Frodo sat to the other side and grabbed a biscuit to munch on. “Meal first,” his father said and Frodo meekly took a sandwich and wolfed it down in three bites. He popped a handful of apple slices in his mouth, devouring those in a wink, and followed it with some tea. Then he returned his attention to the biscuit.

“Do you even taste your food?” Sam asked, a fond smile on his face. Frodo ate just like his Uncle Halfred at that age.

Frodo nodded. “I do. It was delicious.”

“I hope you don’t mind if your old dad takes longer.”

“What is this about Dad?” Frodo asked instead. He had hoped that their discussion from the previous night was ended and he couldn’t fathom why his father would feel the need to bring it up again. The last thing Frodo wanted to do was talk again about his father one day leaving them all for the Sea. He wanted to think about that as little as he could.

“You said somewhat that night as got me thinking and I don’t much like what I’m thinking either,” Sam said.

Frodo made no comment, but he was glad that he wasn’t the only one not enjoying his thoughts of late. Still, he worried about what his father was fretting over. Whatever it was, he couldn’t imagine it would be anything he wanted to talk about.

“You asked me if I loved Mr. Frodo more than all of you,” Sam began.

“I was just being silly,” Frodo said. “I see that now. It’s like what you said. He’s your family too, and if it were one of us over there, you’d come to us just the same.”

“Indeed I would, and a whole lot sooner at that,” Sam agreed. “You see that truthfully now, do you?”

Frodo nodded again. “I do. It still hurts, knowing you won’t always be here, but then you always would be leaving us someday, one way or another. It just seems more definite now, somehow. But I guess, so long as I know you’re with him, I’ll be glad for you.”

“Aye, I can see as it would seem more real to you now,” Sam said. “It's still a long way off, and I might not even go, not if I pass afore your mother.”

Frodo winced at that. Something else he didn't want to think about just yet. “Is that all you wanted to talk about?” he asked.

Sam shook his head. “No, but that was part of it, and I’m right glad to hear you’re accepting of it, for all I know it must tear at you a bit. No, what I really wanted to talk about was why did you think that in the first place? This couldn’t have just popped into your head all of a sudden,” Sam said. “Now what started all this?”

Frodo gazed down at the grass beneath his feet and fidgeted. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug.

“Yes you do,” Sam said gently. “Come, now, lad. What’s going on in that head of yours?”

Frodo didn’t answer right away and continued fidgeting as his father finished his meal, giving him time to gather his thoughts. He wondered how long he could delay answering before his father pressed him to do so. This was a conversation he wanted to have even less than the other.

All his life, he’d been weighed down by this knowledge he held, weighed down because it placed such a doubt on his shoulders he could hardly look up to see his way clearly to a resolution. He had thought about revealing to his father that he knew, that he had figured it out, but he could never bring himself to do so. Truth be told, it scared him, the thought of putting that weight down now. It would feel like tossing away a part of himself, a part he’d held close to protect both himself and his father, and that would hurt no matter how glad he would feel to be rid of it.

“Fro?” Sam said at last.

Frodo’s time was up. He sighed deeply and kept his eyes on his toes. “You never say my name,” he said. “You say, ‘Fro, come to dinner’ or ‘Did you weed the petunias Frodo-lad?’ but you never say my name by itself. You say everyone else’s name but mine,” Frodo said, his voice breaking as the emotions, suppressed inside him for so many years, came to the surface. “You say everyone else’s name but mine, and that can only be because I’m not like him. I’m not good enough to have his name. I’ve shamed you somehow and I don’t know why.”

Tears spilled down his cheeks unheeded and he barely noticed when Sam moved the tray to the end of the bench and slid over to sit beside him. His father’s arm pulled him into a warm, comforting embrace and Frodo sagged into his father’s side, just as he had done three days before.

“Oh, Fro,” Sam said, his voice breaking also and Frodo felt his father’s breath hitch in his chest as he struggled with his own emotions. “Is that what you think? No, love. No, it isn’t that at all. I couldn’t be more proud of you and if Mr. Frodo had known you, he’d be just as proud to have you for his namesake. You’re the best hobbit to carry his name there ever was.”

“Then why?” Frodo sobbed. “Why can’t you say it?”

He felt his father’s weight shifting and realized why when a handkerchief was suddenly pushed into his hand. Frodo sat up and wiped his eyes. His father kept a reassuring hand on his knee as Frodo struggled to compose himself, and silently he admonished himself for crying so much. He was making a habit of this and it was a tad embarrassing. He was grateful that none of his siblings had been present to witness either of his displays.

He dabbed at his tears and sniffled, forcing himself to take deep, slow breaths until he thought he could look at his father again. When he did finally meet his father’s gaze, he saw that his father was equally as shaken, though he held onto his tears still.

“Why?” Sam repeated. “That’s a bit of an answer, but you deserve to hear it. Maybe telling you will make up for how utterly I’ve failed you all these years.

“Now, I did say your name at first. Your mother and your Uncle Meriadoc and Uncle Peregrin will tell you that. But something happened, something I hadn’t expected. It took me by surprise one day, when you was a faunt and starting to get into things. You were poking about in the library and were near to toppling a pile of books atop your head and I called out to stop you, and that’s when it happened.

“You got to realize, that before you were born, I’d been saying ‘Mr. Frodo’ for years, to the point where I didn’t hear the title no more and thought of it as one word rather than two. I started calling Mr. Frodo by his rightful title when I was in my teens and by the time I reached my tweens, I’d made a habit of it. From that time on it was always ‘Mr. Frodo’. I couldn’t imagine calling him aught else, could hardly remember a time I didn’t address him formal-like. Even so, there are two other times afterwards as I can remember calling him ‘Frodo’: Cirith Ungol and Mount Doom.

“You know how black all that time was, so I don’t got to be explaining that to you now. What I need to explain is that when you were playing with them books and they were getting ready to fall, and I in my panic cried out to you ‘Frodo! No!’ it took me back to that time. I’d had the memories afore then, plenty often enough while we were in Minas Tirith, and more times than I care to remember once we were all home and the Shire on its way to being rebuilt. Dreams and such as leave you shaking and sweating. But it had been a good few years since my last one and I’d thought they were over for me. I’d even got to the point so as I wasn’t expecting them, not even when I was especially tired or during the month of Rethe, which was when they usually happened. On that afternoon, I was wide awake and it was a warm summer day. So you can imagine how it knocked the wind out of me when I called to you and I was suddenly right back there on that mountain, seeing it all over again, and it was so real. It was the worst turn I’d ever had and even to this day, if I think on it too long, it gives me shivers straight to my heart.

“After that, I just couldn’t say your name anymore. I tried, I did, but every time I started it reminded me of that tower and that mountain, and I just couldn’t. Rose kept saying as I’d get use to it, I just had to keep saying it and be done with it all. She was right in a way. I can hear your name now without any trouble, but to say it… I took the coward’s the way out and that’s that.

“So now you know the truth, son. Your old dad’s just too scared. What do you think of me now?”

Frodo didn’t know what to say. During the course of his father’s confession, the weight had lifted from him and he felt a freedom he had never thought he was missing. Yet now that he knew the truth, he could see the weight that sat upon his father’s shoulders and he wished there was something he could do to relieve him of it. Not knowing what else to do, he returned his father’s earlier hug, fierce and protective.

“You’re not a coward, Dad,” Frodo said. “I could never think that.”

Sam kissed his brow and sat back, smiling fondly again through his tears, now spilled. “You make me proud. Did I say that already?”

“You did,” Frodo said. “And I understand now. It’s all right if you don’t say my name.”

Sam shook his head. “No, it’s not. I should be able to say your name and not cringe at it. To honor you, as well as your name-father. If you’ll be patient with your old dad, I’ll try to start saying it. I want to,” he added the last when it looked like Frodo would protest. “I’ve been hiding from my memories long enough. You can’t vanquish your foe by hiding from it. I’m not going to hide anymore.”

“My dad, the stout-hearted,” Frodo said, grinning proudly in turn.

“My lad,” Sam said and hesitated. He drew in a breath and let it out slowly before cupping Frodo’s face and saying softly, almost whispering, “Frodo.”

Frodo couldn’t help beaming. He had meant what he said and if this were to be the only time he’d hear his name pass his father’s lips, that would do. But he was pleasantly surprised again when his father instantly repeated it, more strongly and a bit louder, though still timid, as though he were getting himself used to it again. “Frodo,” he said and beamed himself. “I like the sound of that.”

Then Frodo laughed, and his father followed his lead, and they embraced for both joy and comfort.

From the dining room window, Rose smiled at the embrace. She would find out tonight what had passed between her husband and eldest son, but for now she was content to know that whatever had stood between them was resolved. She let the curtain fall back into place and went to put the little ones to their naps.

The End

GF 6/12/06