A/N:  Some of these letters deal with Frodo's struggle against suicidal depression, hence the rating of PG-13.  If you've already read "Letters I've Written..." then you already know what's coming.  If you haven't, consider yourself warned. 

Chapter 2: The Stationery Box

He wasn’t ready for the next several days. He avoided the study all together, though each time he passed the open door, it was as though he heard the box calling to him. Sometimes he thought he even heard Frodo himself inviting him in to read the papers within. But he was afraid of confronting all that pain when he had so much of his own still. He repaired the damage he had inadvertently done to the garden. He fixed the squeak the front door had acquired and the wobbly stool in the kitchen. He painted Elanor’s high chair a bright yellow. He cut wood for the upcoming winter. He continued, though not as often, to go toward the study or the bedroom, only to stop himself.

It was a week before he slept all the way through the night and he had cried the first morning when he realized he had done that. So many things were going to change now, be different, not be done again, not at Bag End at least. How long would it be before he could do those things again – make a mug of tea, watch his brother sleep and marvel at the light shining from him even in the darkest times, hold him? He thought he would go mad if he didn’t have the hope of doing all those things and more again.

A week of avoiding the stationery box was making his mood no better and he finally took the box out of the study late one afternoon and sat down in the living room near the fire. His fingers trembled slightly as he put the key in the lock. He found himself holding his breath as he opened the box. It was stuffed with years of frustrations, fears and disappointments. Sam bit back a tear just to see how full it was. He gingerly reached in and opened one of the folded papers.

That Ted Sandyman, I wish I could just belt him one and show him that he can’t just go round and treat lasses in that way or beat on those lads who rush to defend them. How can he stand himself doing what he does? I will show him one day. He can’t get away with all he does.

Sam almost smiled at that. He well remembered the day Frodo had dropped Sandyman to the ground with only one punch and left him spitting out a tooth that had been knocked loose. The bully had walked around with an ugly purple and yellow bruise on his jaw for days and couldn’t talk or eat right for a week. Many of the younger hobbits had been thrilled to see the fight. Frodo had simply been disgusted and Sam had heard him scribbling furiously after he had returned home.

Bilbo heard about it, smiled and clasped his nephew’s shoulder and told him he had done the right thing and he was proud of him. Frodo, who had been afraid of what his uncle would think, returned the smile and relaxed after that.

Another letter read, Merry can’t come for Yule after all. I am so disappointed I could scream. I was so looking forward to it. I have half a mind to go down to Buckland myself, but with this blasted sprained ankle of mine, I can hardly even move out of my own bed without crying out in pain. Bilbo and Sam have been so good to me, bringing me all my meals and eating with me, reading to me, helping me to the privy, everything. I hate being so helpless, but after Sam found me on the floor after I had tried and failed getting around on my own, I have had to resign myself to being an invalid for the duration, probably for all of Yule. How that galls me! My favorite time of year and I am stuck in bed!

Sam pulled out another paper. Bilbo left a week ago and Merry and Pippin left this morning. I miss them so much already! Bilbo talked so long about leaving that I thought I would be prepared when he finally did, but how can one prepare when a piece of heart just leaves your life and you don’t know if you’ll ever see it again? And so I am Master of Bag End now and as such I have to deal with those despicable S-B’s. I am ready to cry tears of frustration as they are already spying on me, waiting for me to leave too and saying all sorts of things about Bilbo being cracked and all that. I am that ready to scream back at them, but that would only reinforce what they are already saying about me. I wish I could use Bilbo’s ring, but Gandalf warned me against that so I am stuck. If it weren’t for Sam, I think I would go mad.

Emotion threatened to close Sam’s throat as he thought of how much he missed both his former masters. He almost stopped reading, but he reached for another of the letters.

The dream came again last night. I stood on a vast, rocky plain, devoid of any life. In the distance, there was the tower with a red light in the shape of a gigantic eye on the top of it, rotating slowly, looking for me. I tried to hide, but there was no place to do so. I felt its gaze on me, then through me, as though a hot poker from the fireplace had pierced me. And last night I understood the voice I had never been able to before. “You cannot hide! I see you! There is no life in the void...only death...” Then I was lifted up and moving toward the eye, closer and closer, faster and faster. That burning orb filled more and more of my vision until it became my entire world. Then I passed through the center of the eye and was absorbed into it. It became me and I became it. I have no idea what it means, but it’s coming with more and more frequency. I must have scared Sam half to death because I woke screaming, nearly right into his ear. He had noticed that I wasn’t sleeping well and had stayed the night. Dear, faithful Sam. What would I do without him? But I wish Gandalf was here. I wish Bilbo were here.

‘So do I,’ Sam thought. ‘I wish you were all here.’ He reached for one other. Rosie would be calling soon for supper, he knew.

I think this will be the last time I will be writing for a while; for I doubt I can bring this box with me, though I fear I will long for it ere I return...if I return. Gandalf has finally returned and with the most evil tidings. He told me Bilbo’s ring is really the One Ring of Sauron’s and the entire Shire is in peril if it remains. So I must leave. I must go from my home into danger and peril that I don’t even know if I will survive. I offered the Ring to Gandalf but he refused to take it. He was actually frightened by it, frightened by what he could do with it, what it could do to him. And that terrifies me. If the power of the Ring is too much for even a wizard to withstand, how can I, a small hobbit, possibly do it? It has to be destroyed and I already know I can’t bear to part with it. I tried and it just ended up in my pocket again, but Gandalf trusts me. If all he said is true, then this is all meant to be, so I must trust in his trust. I can do this. No one else can and I wonder how even I can, but there is Another too, I sense, that trusts me as well as I felt tonight the same peace, reassurance, comfort and strength that I’ve felt at the most grievous times of my life, after my parents died, after those dreams that are only getting worse. I am not alone. And I am so glad of that and I am so afraid. What dangers are out there already hunting for me? And soon will be hunting for Sam as well? I do not even want to think of it. If I did, I would never leave and I must.

I have spent so many years longing to leave, but it was always on an adventure with Bilbo or like the many I have had with Merry and Pippin and Sam, tramping all over the Shire. Those have been full of fun and thrills and we imagined all sorts of dangers, but we have always come back home, to a warm fire and a half-pint of ale and our pipes and laugh about it. I don’t know if I’ll be coming back from this. My heart quails within me, but I must be strong. I will be strong. I must protect the Shire. I must protect Sam because for worse, or better, I don’t know which, he is coming with me. Worse because I don’t want him to be going into such deadly danger as I am about to enter. He is far too dear to me to risk losing, as I’ve already lost my parents and Bilbo. I can’t bear to think of enduring another loss. But better because he’s been my steadfast friend and companion throughout all my years here at Bag End and if we had been born brothers, we could not be closer. I treasure him as much as I do my cousins, but I fear for him as well. What am I taking him into? And now the S-B’s will finally sink their claws into Bag End. I can sense their predatory anticipation and glee already. I can’t bear the thought of them being here. Even if I do return, I won’t have this home to return to. It’s making leaving even more bitter, but leave I must.

I will bring this box with me to Crickhollow at least. Merry is coming tomorrow with Pippin and will make sure the furniture and everything else will make it there all right. And then I will have to tell them that I can’t stay. That I am fleeing from terrible danger into terrible danger. At least I have the comfort that they will be safe here at home. But I fear, no, I know, that is only an illusion. They will follow, curse them, bless them. I don’t know whether to scream at them for such folly or hug them tight to me and tell them how much I love them for it.

Sam smiled at that last. He put down the letter, locked the box again and left the room to eat with his Rose and Elanor. There were other letters, but he needed the light around him again before dealing with those.

The next morning, after second breakfast, Sam took the letter box out into the garden. It was still warm enough even this late into October and he needed the sunshine around him for such as he feared he’d be reading.

I still want it. Why do I still want it? I hate it but I hate myself more for the longing that fills me. I don’t want to want it, but I do. And I can’t have it. It’s gone forever. And it’s not. At least Smeagol and Bilbo had the hope of seeing and holding it again. I don’t even have that. I will forever want it, knowing I can never have it. That would be enough to drive one mad, but I know I already must be. What sane person would long for something so evil? It consumed me, violated me, bit by bit, until it took nearly every bit of myself. Every time I resisted it, it taunted me and every time I gave in, it jeered at me. I became it and it became me. It tore me apart until I went mad. I tried to kill Sam and Smeagol because of it and in the end I claimed it for myself and I was glad then, glad to call it my own. And so I want it, after all the terrible things it did to me and I did to others because of it. If that is not madness, I don’t know what is. It drove Smeagol mad. It even made Bilbo mad when he was around it. That grieves me sorely. But it is gone now. It filled me with its incessant whispers, then shouts, then screams, then emptied me, leaving me with nothing but itself. I am nothing but a shell now.

Sam began to cry again. ‘Oh my dear, why didn’t you tell me? Why couldn’t I have known what was truly hurting you? All these months I watched it consume you and still I did not know that it did not die in the fire, but still held you.’

After I was stabbed on Weathertop, a gray veil fell over my eyes that made it hard to see what was around me. I was glad when night came and hid the veil from me, when things could look almost normal again, when I didn’t feel so cut off from everything. I feel it again now, but instead of it being in front of my eyes, it’s around my heart. Sam comes to me every night I scream out from nightmares, from the terrible longing that can never be assuaged and he holds me and rocks me and sings to me until I can sleep again. What a wonderful father he is! And not just to Elanor. It is the only time I can sleep, the only time the Ring is silent, drowned out by his voice and heartbeat in my ears. Dear, loving, faithful, sweet Sam. I wish I was selfish enough to stay in his arms forever, but I know I can’t do that.

‘You could have, dear. If it would have helped you, of course, you could have. I wish I was holding you now. I hope Mr. Bilbo or Mr. Gandalf or one of the Elves is doing it for you or even more, that despicable thing has finally let you go.’

Sam barely had the strength to reach for another letter, but he did. His brother had had much greater strength against much greater evil than merely reading a letter filled with pain. He could at least be brave enough to read through that torment.

I hated the darkness during the Quest. It was all I had at the end and I mourned every bit of light that disappeared day by day within my soul. I devoured every bit that still lingered, holding onto it jealously, but it was like trying to hold sunlight or moonlight. I could only watch as it slipped through my fingers.

But now when it should be all over but I know all too well that it’s not and I fear so greatly that it never will be, I love the dark. It’s a comforting presence now. I can hide or pretend to at least. I can have peace or the pretense of it. I don’t have to pretend in the dark that I’m not hurting. I don’t have to hide my tears or see them. I don’t have the chance of a glance in a mirror and see the eyes of a stranger look back at me or grieve at the hollowed out soul that stares back from those once bright eyes.

I see the sparks that still fly from that burned out place, see in the reflections of my dear Sam’s tears, the dying embers that he still so fiercely guards. I don’t know if he realizes that’s all they are. I pray he does not. For if he does, then all my hope is lost and I will not be able to withstand the voices that call all the more insistently that I just let go. But while I hold onto that, I hope, unbreakable thread of my dear guardian’s faith and love, I can endure the unendurable a little longer, for him, my brother, who I do not wish to be parted from. Not in the way the voices keep insisting. So I pray for his strength as much as I pray for mine.

If I don’t look at his tears, but just into his eyes, I can see the one place I still exist as something other than a burned out shell. That is the only reason I don’t stay in the dark forever. I need to see all that love he has unceasingly given me nearly as much as he needs to show it. I see it everyday in so many ways, in his constant care for me and I am so grateful for it.

‘You’re welcome, my dear treasure. Oh, how I wish you were still here to let me still take care of you!’

Sam sobbed silently all the harder, shoulders shaking as his grief took him, but he pulled out another letter and kept reading.

I am beginning to fear the dark again. The voices are getting louder and more insistent that I cut the thread that binds me to this life, to Sam and Merry and Pippin, to everything and everyone I hold so dear. Even if I don’t, I know I won’t see Sam’s children. I won’t hold them and look upon their sleeping faces with wonder and awe and so much love I would think my heart would burst with it. I won’t run with them and laugh at their bright, shining faces and play games and read to them or do anything with them. I won’t be there to share in Sam’s pride of them or smile at his great heart swelled with so much love for them. I know there will be many and I know I won’t be there to see anyone of them, but the first.

I think on some level Sam realizes this, though he hasn’t said anything. I wonder though if I have burdened him with that terrible knowledge through murmurs during the night when my struggle is the greatest against that which seeks to destroy me. I know he has come into my room, lamplight glinting off his tears, checking on me. Sometimes I will wake in the morning, exhausted from the battle to find him asleep beside me, holding me or my hand and I know then that’s how I survived the night. Other times, I stare at a lamp he has left for me for hours and hours as the long night passes, mesmerized by the light, drowning in it, drawing it into my soul. It is only when dawn comes that I can finally sleep, to try to find the strength to endure the next battle.

‘But where am I going to find the strength to endure mine?’ Sam wondered ‘I will not harm myself, I won’t. I have Rose and Elanor and I still have you, my dear, to look forward to seeing again. But it is that hard now just to breathe without you near!’

The gardener’s courage to keep reading faltered, but did not fail. He had to do this. He reached for another letter, another shard of pain that he wished he could have thrust into his own heart instead of letting it harm his beloved master and brother.

Sometimes I want so badly to give in. I cry so long. I am so tired, but I go on, dismissing each terrible idea as it comes to me, because I know no matter how carefully I make it look like it was just an accident, Sam will always know or at least wonder that it wasn’t. And I will not do that to him, my dearest, faithful friend. He nearly gave his life to safeguard mine. I have promised myself that I will not abuse or betray that tremendous gift. I counter each of those ideas with a prayer for light and endurance and courage, but every day my resolution weakens and I am praying harder and harder day by day for the strength to keep my promise.

Sam put the letter aside and looked at the box that still had many left to read. He didn’t feel strong enough though to continue. ‘Oh, my dearest, you always seemed so fragile to me, but you are so strong, so very strong, to endure all you did without breaking completely. It is your Sam that is weak, that he can’t even endure to read of your pain all the way through.’

The young hobbit took a deep breath, wiped at his tears and carried the box back into the smial. He’d read more later, but he needed Rose and Elanor now.

Just as, dear Sam, I needed you, came Frodo’s voice so clear it was as though he had spoken it into Sam’s ear. You are stronger than you know. But go now. Your family will always be there for you, just as you were always there for me. Le hannon, gwador nin.

Sam half-expected to see his brother standing next to him, eyes sad but smiling lovingly. He raised his hand to touch that beloved cheek he could almost see, then the vision faded from his eyes and he entered the foyer.

The next day was cloudy and the day after that and Sam could not bring himself to read anymore of the letters and cursed himself for being the weakest of ninnyhammers that he had not even the courage to pick up a piece of paper when his brother had carried the weight of the world’s evil around his neck for months.

But I needed the light, too, my Sam, to endure what I did. Your light. Don’t be so cross with yourself. You were my strength the entire time we were together.

The voice came so clearly again that Sam half-turned to see if Frodo was standing there and again, in his heart’s eye, he did. The same sad smile was there, but the love was even stronger. He stared and stared and stared as Rosie watched.

The next morning was sunny and Sam took the box back out into the garden. The weather was turning cooler, but he sat out there for some hours reading and crying.

My precious

My precious

My precious

My precious

My precious

My precious

My precious

My ----

It’s not working! Why isn’t it working?! The pain won’t leave! Words cannot bleed it away as it always used to. I looked tonight at some of my earliest writings I’ve kept in this box and almost laughed. Such terrible things I thought at the time, consuming my whole world. I thought I knew what pain was. I had no idea, no idea at all. I thought I knew what despair was. I never knew that until the Ring came.

Always before I could write out my torment and leave it behind, no longer a part of me, but just some ink on a piece of parchment, no longer able to harm me. Oh, how I wish I could do that now! Why can’t I?

My precious

My precious

My precious

My precious

My precious

My precious

My precious

My…

Leave me alone!! I have to leave. I must leave. NOW! Please let it be by ship. There are so many other ways I could. So many. The voices are getting ever stronger and it is taking all my will not to give into their cries.

I stood for a long time tonight at the threshold of Sam and Rose’s bedroom and just watched him sleep. My light in dark places. No night has yet been blacker and I so wanted to wake him and have him hold me and listen to his voice as he sang to me instead of the incessant whispers that haunt me day and night. But he has already spent far too many nights awake, watching over me, so I just watched, watched for hours, until I thought I could be on my own. But I know now I can’t be.

Earlier tonight, a small drop of ink dropped onto my wrist. I turned my hand over and watched fascinated as more dripped on it. My wrist became black as I drew the quill across it over and over again. It was sharp, but not enough to cut. I must never let it be. It would be so easy... I kept darkening my wrist with the ink, wasting it shamefully as it dripped down onto the paper. I raised my hand and the ink dripped down my fingers. I wish it could be all the poison in me coming out, but it isn’t. To do that, I would have to break the skin. It is tempting to do that, so tempting. I pressed the quill down a little harder onto my skin. But it was still not strong enough and I was glad. If it could break the skin, I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop. I would dig deeper and deeper until I was bled out.

Sam put down the letter and sobbed loud and hard. ‘Oh, my dear, my dear...’ Rose came out to him, hearing it, and held him and rocked him, singing to him softly. He held onto her tightly and cried all the more until finally she was able to let him go and return inside where Elanor’s cries echoed his.

Rose wiped at her own tears and picked up their daughter. Sam followed her inside. There would be no more reading today. Elanor reached out her arms to her father and Sam held her and rocked her in the chair Frodo had given. He stroked her back and kissed her head and sang to her of how much he loved her, and in doing so he found a comfort which nothing else could give.

Sam reached for another letter the next day, thought it was raining and cool enough to have a fire going. He looked at the fire for a long time and thought that he had brought Frodo back from it, but in many ways, his brother had never left it. It remained inside of him and continued to ravage him. But fire was also light and life and warmth, not just destructive force and it was those elements of it, the young gardener drew on for strength as he started to read.

Sam knows now. He saw my wrist at breakfast, darkened with ink that I couldn’t scrub off and I know from the look in his eyes that he didn’t see black, but red. I had tried to clean myself up, but I couldn’t get it all. He didn’t say anything, just got a cloth and some soap, then he took my hand tenderly in his and wiped at the ink until it was all gone. I cried so hard at his gentleness and my torment, unable to stop. When he finished, he brought my wrist to his lips and kissed it, then looked up at me. There was so much pain there for me, but so much more love and compassion just like there had been at the Fire and throughout the entire Quest, throughout the last thirty years. I cried even harder looking at it all. He still didn’t say anything, not with words, but we have long passed beyond the need for that. The voices keep telling me that I am all alone, that there is no hope, that only pain will attend to me the rest of my life. And it is when Sam is not near that I fear they are right and I look down the long path of years that stretch before and I know I can not endure that, not alone. But then Sam comes. He always does, my dearest, most beautiful friend. He held me then and rocked me until there were no more tears in me. I looked back up at him and wanted to beg him to forgive me for what he had seen of my weakness and pain, but I saw that he already had. He wiped my tears and kissed my head, then let me go.

We spent the whole day out. He packed a large basket, holding it in one hand, my maimed hand in the other. He didn’t let go the entire time we walked. It was a bright, sunny day and I felt it slowly seep into my body and heart and soul. We didn’t talk as he led me past all the places I’d be missing if I let it all go. We had lunch at my favorite tree and I rested in his lap as he stroked my curls and sang to me. I fell asleep listening to his heart and slept, truly and deeply, for the first time in months. We didn’t return until it was nearly dark and there was a warm light in the window welcoming us back. The basket was empty, but my heart was fuller than it has been for longer than I want to remember. He spent the night with me, too, sitting in the chair next to me, holding my hand all the night. I know the voices are all lies. Perhaps the pain will not ease much, but I shall always, always have my Sam guarding me and loving me far more than I deserve. I shall never be alone.

‘No, dear, you never will be. And I won’t be either. I know that now.’

The next letter was very short and written in shaky handwriting. The thread is fraying so quickly, growing so thin. I have to decide soon what to do, before the power to make that decision is taken from me.

The next was in a stronger hand, more akin to the elegance that Frodo’s writing had nearly always had. Gandalf has told me that the ship is ready to sail. I will be on it. I must be on it. There is no choice anymore. Or there is, but this choice is the least evil. But how to tell Sam? How to tell my dearest, most faithful guardian and brother, the one who never abandoned me, that I must now abandon him, with only the hope of healing, not even the certainty of it? It will hurt him, but better this way than any other and this hope is more than I have had in a long time.

Sam put the letter down, covered his face with his hand and sobbed. ‘I hate that you had to leave, dear, but better the way you did, with hope, than any other way. Oh, I hope you can somehow tell me you are happy and when this dark night passes for both of us, I hope I can tell you too. If only when we meet again. And we will, my treasure, we have to. I have to know you’re all right.’

He put the letter back into the box. Then he looked to the fire. He wondered if he should burn the letters now that had so much pain in them, but that didn’t seem right. The letters also had much of Frodo’s love in them too and Sam couldn’t bear to part with that.

Dear Sam, his beloved brother’s voice and smile came in his head and heart, you will always have that, whether you keep the letters or not.

And you, my love, will always have mine, he replied.

I know, my Sam, I know. Thank you.

Sam locked the box and put it away in one of the drawers in the study, then walked away.