Archive of Our Own ^beta

Feel.

“Sam.”

More a breath than a word, a whisper beside his ear in a voice weak and breaking. Sam didn’t answer, didn’t have the will to speak. He squeezed Frodo’s hand. Around them the air was burning hot and thundering as the mountain broke apart.

“Sam. I can feel him.”

Sam opened his eyes, knowing at once what Frodo meant, who Frodo meant; and Frodo let out a desperate breath of relief, almost a laugh. “I can feel him, Sam,” he said, some strength returning to him through that knowledge. “He’s not gone. I can feel him. He’s still there.”

He pulled Frodo still closer and Frodo sagged into his embrace, shaking with all his body in his relief, and Sam, numb with exhaustion and grief, began to feel it too, feel that scant elation in the face of what was coming. They were together, wherever they were. Harebell and Gentian were together and neither was facing the end alone.

Alone.

Merry’s first thought was they’re dead, they’re dead and it came spilling out of his mouth before he could stop it, “they’re dead – they’re dead –”

And he’d known this was how it would end. He couldn’t say when he’d first realised – some time after they parted, but before he had sworn his service to the king – but it had come upon him, a creeping, dreadful realisation that he would not see Frodo or Sam again alive.

He covered his mouth, choking back sobs, his eyes swimming. A hand touched his shoulder.

“Merry. They are not dead,” said Gandalf. All Merry could do was shake his head in disbelief. He closed his eyes against the sight and tears spilled down his cheeks. “Merry.” A handkerchief pressed into his fist. “Wipe your eyes.”

He wiped his eyes, and looked again. At his side Grumpy hunched into his leg, shuddering with fear and dread.

Frodo and Sam lay before him, still and pale as dead hobbits, but breathing. He saw it now, what he hadn’t at first, the slow and faint but steady rise and fall of their chests. But that couldn’t be. Their dæmons were gone. If they weren’t dead they were as good as.

But Gandalf – he was a touch grim, but not cold and certainly not grief-stricken as he ought to be. Gandalf was not stricken with grief because he did not think they were dead or dying. And if Gandalf thought they were alive –

Merry balled up the handkerchief in his hand and said, “how?”

Gandalf led him away from the bedside. They sat him on the grass, quiet and still beneath the trees. Aragorn gave him a drink to settle his nerves and he drank it though his nerves were already settled.

He knew that they were alive, but he couldn’t quite believe it, yet. He couldn’t quite believe that he’d seen them again, after all that had happened. He certainly couldn’t believe that they’d be alive and alright and themselves again, without Harebell and Genty.

He did, though, believe that Gandalf had known and had not told him. He rubbed his eyes, and looked up at Gandalf, and said again, “how?”

“I mean to tell you, before you saw them,” said Gandalf. “I am sorry.”

Merry said, “how.”

Gandalf explained just how, and as his story went on Merry’s insides filled with worms and Grumpy lay down on the grass and flattened her ears, not wanting to hear it, needing to hear it. There was a way, Gandalf said, a way into Mordor, a tunnel or a cave; and dæmons could not walk there. “They aren’t gone,” said Gandalf. “They are apart from each other.”

“As me and Theryn,” said Aragorn.

Merry looked up at him. It had long since ceased to bother them, Aragorn’s way of going about without his dæmon. He’d got used to it. But then, there was so much of Aragorn that he never seemed incomplete or unfinished without Theryn; but then, seeing hobbits he cared for so dearly in that state, and freshly so –

“I think I’m going to be sick,” he said. Someone brought him a basin but the feeling had already passed. He held it on his knees anyway, just in case.

“They’ll come back,” said Grumpy. The first words she had spoken, since seeing Frodo and Sam. “Won’t they?”

Gandalf looked to Aragorn. Aragorn said, “they will come back, Merry, but they might not come soon.”

“What do you mean?” said Merry. Surely Harebell and Gentian would come as soon as they could, surely, surely. They wouldn’t be apart from their hobbits a moment longer than they had to. Surely.

“You must understand, it is a painful time, these first days after separating,” said Aragorn. “You are divided inside, as well as out. There are those whose dæmons do not easily forgive them for what they had done – there are dæmons who wish to be alone a while, to think.”

“How long?” said Merry. “Days, you said?”

“Days, months,” said Aragorn. “Sometimes years. I cannot say.”

“Years?” said Merry weakly. It didn’t bear thinking about – they couldn’t be alone, not for years, they couldn’t.

“They will return,” said Aragorn. “It is only that they will not return unchanged.”

Grumpy raised her head, and said, “what do you mean?”

Distance.

The citadel was the grandest place Sam had ever been. He felt too small for it, its columns and vaulted ceilings and archways towering over the tall men and women of Gondor and making him feel like a mouse.

In a long, silent passage he walked side by side with Frodo, their fingers brushing, not quite holding hands. He didn’t look back. If he looked back even at a moment he’d balk.

Light came from a row of high windows on their right, yellow afternoon sunlight, dust dancing within it. There were distant voices but their part of the citadel was empty. The city had been emptied, and was still filling up once again.

At the end of the passage was a tall window set with coloured glass, red and green and gold. They stood before it, looking out over the city and its walls, the confusion of stone and glass and metal he couldn’t quite make sense of.

Frodo looked back first. Sam steeled himself, and did likewise.

The distance they’d walked, he could hardly see Gentian, but he could see Hare. She sat in a square of sunlight, her tail flat on the stone, and he couldn’t see her face but he could feel her aching loneliness.

It didn’t feel as it should. He could still feel the place inside himself where they’d been tethered to each other since they were born. It was like a scar. It hurt when he was sad, as an old wound ached in cold weather.

But three paces away from her or a hundred, it didn’t feel any different. A touch queasy, seeing her so far away, but no pain, no wrenching, no desperate yearning to be with her.

Beside him Frodo shifted, folding his arms. It had been this idea, this test they were doing. Sam had thought he was doing it only for Frodo’s sake, to give him some company, but standing beneath the tall window he saw the worth in it. Those past few weeks he and Harebell had stuck to each other, skin to skin as much as they could, and it had been easy to pretend nothing had changed.

Nothing had changed, between then; but seeing her a hundred paces away he couldn’t deny that everything had changed.

He said, “well, then?”

“I want to say it feels strange,” said Frodo. “But it doesn’t. Does it?”

“I suppose,” said Sam, “it’s that it feels strange that it don’t feel strange.” He couldn’t hear their voices, but Gentian and Harebell were talking to each other. He knew that they were speaking but couldn’t say how he knew.

“Yes,” said Frodo. “That’s what it is.” His hand went to his chest, and whether he was feeling the place where he’d once been bound to Gentian or the place where it had sat, Sam couldn’t say.

His nerve broke and at the same instant so did Harebell’s. They raced down the passage, meeting in the middle, and before he could think he was on his knees with his arms around her, and they were together again.

Touches.

“Better than I was. And you?”

“Better than I was.”

The exhaustion still came upon her sometimes, swiftly down to the core of her being, but it passed just as swiftly and she could bear it. Genty had been the same, and he had recovered, and his illness had been far worse than hers.

Genty was in deep conversation with Pippin and Sam. Nearby Windflower and Merry sat talking with Legolas. It was still strange to Grumpy – to all of them, most likely – that in Gondor they were expected not to mix in public. She didn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t talk to some of her friends just because they were hobbits and she was a dæmon.

But now there they were, in private and at last able to act like themselves.

She lay upon the grass, resting her weary legs and talking to Frodo. Not, though, talking about what had happened to her. She hadn’t talked to anyone about that yet, except for Merry who did not count as anyone, being her hobbit. She might in time but not now and certainly not to Frodo, now. Whatever he and Genty had been through made her own ordeal look like a sleepless night.

Harebell wandered over to them, and with a huff of breath laid her head in Frodo’s lap. “Hello,” said Frodo, and absently he put his hand upon her back.

Grumpy’s ears pricked up but, with some considerable self-control, she said nothing about it. She had noticed this before, or rather Merry had, this change, this shift in their relationship. Merry thought it might be down to their separation, but it wasn’t that. It was something personal.

Harebell would happily drape herself across Frodo’s lap, let Frodo touch her, tangle his fingers in her fur, scratch her behind the ears; and Genty would just as happily perch on Sam’s hair or on his hand, just as he would with Frodo. It was as if the boundary that had once existed between them had dissolved. She’d ask Harebell and Genty how that had happened, in time, but not yet.

Harebell said, “I’m tired.”

“Me too,” said Frodo, tugging fondly upon her long ear. Twisting her head, Harebell licked his fingers.

Hurt.

“It didn’t hurt like I thought it would.”

Not that Sam had given much thought, to just how it might hurt.

“Tis different for every Man – and every hobbit, I should say,” said Strider – Aragorn – King Aragorn. The King. Sam still marvelled at that.

They sat together beneath the boughs of a fair tree. Harebell was in his lap, her ears down, her eyes turned up to his face. Sam’s fingers were buried in the thickest part of her fur.

Theryn – Nanwë, he could call her by her name openly now that she was a king’s dæmon – was not with them. She was somewhere above Cormallen. Not scouting, for there was no need. Perhaps just watching, listening, drinking in the sights and sounds of peace. It was growing dark. She’d come back to her Man soon.

Sam looked up at her, a black dash against the pale sky, and shivered. “I don’t know how you can stand it.”

“You grow accustomed to it,” said the king. “With time.”

“I won’t,” said Sam, and at that Strider quirked an eyebrow and Sam knew what he was thinking. He was remembering the fervour with which Sam had once sworn he’d never be apart from Harebell.

They had been apart – ten days – twelve? As little as that? It had felt like months.

He’d thought the pain would be the worst of it. The crushing pain and searing loneliness of being part, the constant and yearning knowledge that she was so close and in a handful of heartbeats they could be together –

But he’d not been alone. Frodo had been with him and he had been with Frodo and neither of them had been alone, or at least they’d been alone together.

The worst of it had been after. The worst of it had been the silence.

He’d never known silence so complete, so suffocating. There had always been Harebell, her voice and her breath and her soft, tender footsteps. There was only his own desperate breaths and heartbeat and a ringing quiet in his ears.

He’d sat in the darkness and the silence, alone, more alone that he’d ever dared dread he might find himself, Frodo cold beside him his only company. He’d spoken aloud to himself and no-one had answered. There’d been no-one there to answer.

Sam had thought the loneliness, the confusion and sheer blinding panic, would break him for good. He’d thought the pain inside himself where he’d ripped her away would never go away. He’d though it would never end, until he died.

But now he was sitting beneath a tree in the last of the spring sunshine, breathing fragrant air and drinking out of a cup that was a size too big for him, and now he was holding Harebell in his arms again and he couldn’t say which felt real and which felt false, those foul memories or the bewildering present.

Every time he blinked it changed around. He was dreaming, he’d never left that awful place. He’d woken from a nightmare and none of it had ever happened.

“Does it,” he said, “still hurt?” His did, it ached when he thought of it, but then it had been only weeks.

“You will grow accustomed to it,” the king said again, “in your own manner.

Harebell raised her head, and said to him, “I’m never letting Sam out of my sight again.”

Changes.

Gentian came back after four days. No-one saw him arrive. In the evening he was not there and in the morning he was. He sat upon Frodo’s pillow, fast asleep, his wings occasionally twitching and fussing as he dreamed. Peaceful dreams, Merry hoped.

Harebell took more than a week and when she arrived she made an entrance. Not that she meant to; Merry had no doubt she didn’t mean to. It wasn’t the sort of thing she’d do on purpose. It was only that a dæmon arriving alone couldn’t help but make an entrance.

“She didn’t talk to anyone,” he said to Pippin. “She walked across the fields from east to west and didn’t speak a word. She went straight to Sam and hopped up on the bed and went to sleep.”

Pippin, of course, did not answer. Pippin had not opened his eyes since they’d brought him off the battle ground and would not open his eyes for a few days yet. Aragorn had seen to that.

Pippin had been spared the sight of Frodo and Sam without their dæmons and for that Merry would thank all the stars in the sky.

Harebell had climbed up onto the bed beside Sam, flopped onto her side and closed her eyes, and at once she’d been asleep. Sam had sighed, and curled around her, colour returning to his face. Whole, and entire, but not unchanged.

“Hare’s going grey,” he said to Pippin, trying to sound nonchalant even though Pippin couldn’t hear him. “She’s gone sort of grey around the muzzle.”

“Like an old gaffer’s dæmon,” said Grumpy. She lay upon the bed, curled protectively around Windflower’s tiny body.

“Quite,” said Merry. He yawned. “Maybe one day we’ll tease her for that.” No day soon, he thought.

What Sam had been through to make his dæmon age, Merry didn’t know and didn’t dare to imagine.

“And Gentian,” he said. “Gentian. He’s –”

Gentian had lost his colour. Not the way he had after Weathertop – not the way they told him Grumpy had, after Pelennor – not like that, not pale and muted like fading ink. He was white as fresh snow, white as clean linen, all of him white except for the black points of his eyes.

Merry knew what had done that to Frodo’s dæmon, but he didn’t think he’d understand it, as long as he lived.

“Well,” he said to Pippin, “you’ll see.”

Greeting.

He knew before he opened his eyes that Harebell was beside him, but for long moments he forgot they’d ever been apart. Harebell’s presence was as familiar to him as his own breathing and pulse and he didn’t think to question it.

But then the memory came back, the pain and the aching loneliness, the long march through dust and ashes and burning air; and then without a thought or a care Harebell was in his arms, crying out his name and licking his face in delight and he was saying her name too, and other things besides but he couldn’t keep track of all the words that were tumbling out of their mouths.

And beside them Frodo was laughing and at that sound Harebell wriggled out of Sam’s arms and greeted Frodo in the same manner as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Gentian was talking but Sam didn’t listen to what he was saying for the mere sight and sound of him made him ache with relief.

Harebell was there with them and so was Gentian and if they were a little changed it hardly mattered; they were together and whole and entire, and Sam ached with love for all of them.