Chapter Seven: Love Endures

It’s time to go home, dear, came Sam’s voice one bright morning several weeks later.

I am home, Frodo answered, digging up a weed and planting another bulb near the gazebo that he and Faramir and his cousins had worked hard to restore. It was nearly noon, the sun was warm and the troubled hobbit a tad less troubled, for the sun was bright on his face and he was earning an honest sweat during his labors, instead of waking sweat-soaked from nightmares that still haunted him at times.

I mean your own home, your own bed, your own Shire.

I don’t want to leave you. I can’t leave you. I won’t.

Oh, my Frodo dear...

Frodo felt filled from the top of his head to the bottom of his toes with Sam’s love. Not just the constant presence that had never deserted him since he had moved into Bag End thirty years before, but an overwhelming sense of love that, if he hadn’t been already on his knees, would have brought him there. He cried and felt his tears dried even as they fell.

I can’t go back there, Sam. I would see the Gaffer and Rosie and everyone else and I would have to tell them.

I will be there with you. I won’t ever leave you.

Frodo changed tactics. What about the garden?

He felt Sam’s smile. I’m sure Captain Faramir will see it well tended.

Frodo sighed. I should know better by now than argue with you.

Sam’s smile widened. Yes, my dear, you should. His love filled Frodo even more if that was possible. The hobbit felt so full he was sure he would burst. For a moment, just a moment, there was no room for his piercing grief.

I still feel like I am leaving you behind. How can I ever tell anyone what happened? That I don’t even have a body to bring back? That you are buried in a foreign land that is too far for your gaffer to visit? That it’s my fault that you are dead?

This time Sam sighed. You are not leaving me behind, dearest, for I shall always be with you. And don’t you worry about the Gaffer or Rosie neither. I’ll explain it all to them. It’s not your fault, my Frodo. It’s not your fault. There was a reason for it. A good reason to be drawn out from the evil the Ring used you for.

I can’t see it.

Not yet. But I hope you will.

Do you know it?

Yes, and you will too, but you need to go home first.

Frodo sighed again. He stood slowly. He looked at the garden. It had flourished in the months he had tended it and he was quite proud of it. He didn’t want to leave it. It had given him purpose and a reason to continue living.

There will be other reasons.

Slowly he became aware of someone standing behind him. He turned and squinted into the sun. A ghost of a smile teased the edges of his mouth as he greeted Faramir.

"Sam wants me to leave, to go back to the Shire," he said.

The Ranger captain smiled. "As well you should. I wish I could go back there with you. I feel as though I’ve seen a little patch of it right here and I do marvel at what the whole place must look like."

"The most beautiful land there is in all of Middle-earth," Frodo said. "I wonder though if I will feel the same when I go back or whether all the colors will be washed out, the sounds of the rippling brooks flat and the taste of apples off the tree nothing but ashes."

"I would only worry about you if you said the same thing of mushrooms," Faramir said with a larger smile and Frodo’s features quirked into a more genuine smile of his own as he looked up at his friend.

"Will you take care of the garden?"

"It would be my honor. You’ve been uprooted long enough. It’s time for you to set your heart back into your own soil."

Frodo sighed. "It is settled already in the best soil there is - Sam’s heart, but I suppose it’s settled. I don’t want to leave, but if I don’t get going, then I’m sure Sam will figure out a way to carry me home bodily. Stubborn Gamgee."

Faramir smiled at the love and frustration in that voice. "Thank the Valar for that stubbornness."

"Indeed," Frodo said very softly.

The three hobbits left the next afternoon. Frodo spent his last morning at the grave, tending to the garden there for the last time. As the others waited silently, he slowly traced each engraved letter and gently and reverently kissed the top of the marker. He knew Sam was still very much with him, but it was still a wrench to his heart that was slowly beginning to beat once more to turn away.

Aragorn and Faramir kissed their brows and hugged all three hobbits. Frodo they held the longest and he them. Gandalf bestowed his own blessing and then they were off. Frodo looked back many times until the grave site and its garden were lost to view. Merry and Pippin each took hold of their cousin’s hands. They did not travel alone.

* * *

For days and weeks they traveled, the four of them. The exercise, sunshine and his cousin’s company assuaged Frodo’s grief, as did knowing that Sam remained ever near. Merry and Pippin knew when to be quiet, but not so much that Frodo would remain lost in his pain. He rarely spoke, but the younger hobbits’ gentle banter washed over him and soothed him. Sometimes they were able to draw him out which only redoubled their efforts and antics to get him to smile. They even dared to hope that one day he would laugh again. They were not yet rewarded with that, but just to see their beloved cousin look at them tenderly and smile a real, though still sad, smile, had them wanting to do cartwheels and shout their joy.

But any sort of cheer faded the closer they got to the Shire. The last steps they took were the hardest. Frodo turned back from entering Hobbiton or at least tried to many a time, but Sam turned him back around each time. Merry and Pippin kept hearing his cousin muttering about how terribly stubborn Sam was. "I’m the master, I should have my own way," they heard him grumble, but still he trudged on.

At last, at night, Frodo stood alone and not alone in front of Number 3. The Gaffer came out of the hole and peered at him with some surprise. "Well, Mr. Frodo! I didn’t think I’d see you again. Mr. Fredegar came babbling back with such a frightful tale of what happened yonder that we had all given you up for dead. But you got more lives in you, I see, just like Mr. Bilbo. Right glad I am to see you again." He looked over Frodo’s shoulder, squinting into the night. "Where’s my Sam? Always your shadow, he was."

The old hobbit was much taken aback when Frodo burst into tears. He stood on his front stoop for some long moments, torn between knowing his place among his betters and being a father who had once soothed his young children after falls and other hurts. It was the father that won out and he wrapped his arms around the sobbing, trembling younger hobbit.

"I’m so sorry," Frodo repeated over and over again. "I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry."

"What have you got to be sorry for now, Mr. Frodo, begging your pardon?"

Frodo felt Sam’s presence very near him. "I’m afraid....I’m afraid Sam was unable to come back." He clenched and unclenched his fists. He was sure the Gaffer would see the blood on them, Sting in his hand, dripping with that blood, Sam’s blood. "We left the Shire to protect it from danger, but I failed to protect Sam. It overtook me and I...I couldn’t stop it and...Sam...Sam’s...dead now...because of me."

The Gaffer stared into the tormented eyes of the hobbit he still held. His arms went stiff. "My Sam is dead? Because of you?" he asked in numb disbelief.

Anger and grief almost disabled him. He let Frodo go and would have collapsed to the ground, but something kept him from falling. He didn’t quite understand it. He looked up then and saw a ghostly figure shimmer in the moonlight. He closed his eyes and opened them again, but still that figure remained and smiled at him.

"It wasn’t his fault, Da," Sam said, addressing his father as he used to as a child. What seemed to be a warm breeze wiped at the tears streaming down those weathered cheeks. The old hobbit’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

Sam turned to Frodo. The Ring-bearer’s eyes had grown very wide, then he threw himself into his Sam’s arms and sobbed harder. He felt not so much a physical embrace, though he was certain he felt that too, but one wrapping around his soul, stronger than it had ever been before. The Gaffer sat on his stoop agog at the tremendous love and light that surrounded his son and that reached out to engulf that one who had just admitted being responsible for his death. The old hobbit could almost hear his son’s murmured words of comfort, could actually see his lips moving and the gentle stroke of hands against curls. His Bell had always said there was something special about their youngest lad and from the moment that one had met Mr. Frodo, he had adored him. He still does, the Gaffer thought in wonder. The anger died in his heart and he cried anew for his own grief and the beauty of the sight before him.