thecapitol | [closed]

Entry tags:

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Who | Sam Gamgee; Arya Stark; Dorian; Thorin; Aragorn
What | Sam's not in the best of places following his sad, dramatic space-death, and experiencing a sad lack of Frodo. He's working on distracting himself.
Where | AROUND? ABOUT? PLACES. AYYYY.
When | An unspecified number of days following the Arena.
Warnings | Potential discussion of Arena death; otherwise, will add as needed!

He keeps dreaming of it. The... groundlessness of it. He dreams of being weightless, of suddenly finding the earth shrinking beneath him, of kicking his feet and moving his arms and finding that it does nothing. Sometimes, he's in the Capitol, moving slowly up between the great glass towers and tipping with the breeze; sometimes he's back in the wilderness of Middle-earth, with the clamor of Orcs under his feet and his stomach sinking as the great Eye begins to emerge from the surrounding mountains; and sometimes he's simply back in the Arena, floating useless and helpless toward the stars, flailing with every limb and crying Frodo, Frodo--!

He keeps himself busy, as best he can, so that at least his waking hours will be free of it. He visits the markets and the shops, and uses the coin they've allowed him (though it's invisible coin, and not altogether trustworthy) to buy things, food he knows and food he doesn't but thinks he might find a way to cook. He's small, but many of the ones out buying are Avoxes, come only with a list to give the salespeople, and-- well, they're easy enough to shout his order over, anyway.

He buys himself a couple of books (one a children's history, and one a book of local flowers, with pictures, and a cookbook called District Cuisine: Rustic Chic in the Outer Districts!) and sits in sunlit places in the commons areas and reads them, slowly, with furrowed brow and lips moving. He draws his feet up on the chairs, which all feel to him much too big, and sometimes just sits on the floor instead, quiet and out of the way and concentrating so, he hardly notices who comes and goes.

He goes afield some evenings and finds welcome reception in a few bars around the Tower, themed on various Districts or other such gimmicks, and gets into discussion (sometimes heated) with folk about the oil they use on their chips, and whether a pale ale should be properly counted as beer. He doesn't usually stay longer than it takes to finish a single drink, though; it's hard not to look around at the people gathered there, and wonder how many of him look at him and think, Well, look there, it's him that died when that room with all the windows exploded--!

And, well-- sometimes, when Mister Bilbo's not about, and the kitchen's occupied, -- sometimes he finds himself a place in a garden, whether in some park near the Tower or even (though he's loath to do it) up, up, up on the roof, past even District Twelve's nauseatingly high suites. He walks in them, and bends to prod at the soil (which smells unpleasantly of chemicals, to him), and turns leaves and petals over, and tries to see if he recognizes any of them out of his book, pinches dead stalks, and shakes his head at the gardeners' every small mistake, and sometimes says it aloud: "You'd think they had no one looking after it at all, to see it!" This is, of course, never true - the gardens are magnificent, taken as a whole - but it's a familiar complaint, and therefore comforting.

Sometimes, no matter where he is, he looks into his cup, or his book, or just down at his hands, and sighs, deep. But mostly he just-- just keeps on moving. For what else can a body do, really?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Arya didn't realise that she'd miss books. They weren't anywhere near as high up on her list as proper food, a warm bed, her family around her and the feeling they were finally all safe and together ... the lesser of which she'd managed to get here, the more important she would never have again. And besides, she'd never been much of a big reader in the first place, preferring Old Nan's stories to the dry, dusty tomes in Maester Luwin's library. But books contained knowledge, and Arya's innate curiosity was something she'd had to repress in the months she'd been on the road, partly to conceal her identity, and partly because there were far too many sombre thoughts and memories occupying her mind to give much thought to something that would have seemed so trivial. She especially can't resist when she sees that the volume Sam's perusing is about history - perhaps it would tell of the great warriors of the past, this world's Nymerias and Visenyas and Rhaenyses, women who she could draw strength from to stay alive here.

She crouches behind him, peering over his shoulder to see what the book says.

Sam's not greatly enamored of this book, thus far. It certainly doesn't have the charm of any of Mister Bilbo's stories, nor any songs in it at all. The first bit has what might be called heroes in it - men and women who fought in battles, anyhow, and the king that conquered all the Districts - but they're not drawn the way he's used to, and he's not sure what to make of what the Capitol calls heroism.

It reads sort of like one of the programs on the screens - almost too fast to follow, and all the plots sort of the same. It's more doggedness that's got him this far in the book than real interest.

It takes him seconds too long to notice there's someone behind him. He doesn't notice the prickle at the back of his neck until he catches sight of the shadow over his shoulder-- but he turns around right quick once he does, putting a finger in his book and a few more inches' space between him and Arya.

The look he gives her would be unfriendlier if she weren't a child - as it is, it's stern more than actually angry, and more at being caught off-guard than anything. "Look here!" he says. "Hasn't anyone taught you it's rude to sneak up on one? If you've business with someone, you might make some sign, rather than creeping around like a cat!"

Whether she comes from another world or not - the same manners apply across all times and universes, in Sam's estimation.

Arya smiles at the comparison. Cats were quick and light on their feet, everything a Water Dancer should be. Syrio had set her about chasing cats for days on end; she'd still had some of the scratches on the backs of her hands until she'd arrived here, and the Capitol had fixed up all the scars and bruises she'd accumulated.

"I just wanted to look."

"Then the proper thing to do would be to ask," Sam replies, in the lecturing tone he might use for a young Hobbit recently caught pilfering in the orchard. He feels awfully small, still on the floor, and so he picks himself up - it doesn't put them eye-to-eye, but it makes him feel a bit more authoritative, anyhow.

"...It's not much use anyway," he has to admit, a little less sternly. He turns it to show her the cover (which doesn't look much different from a magazine cover, the way it's posed and shot - there are even designer credits in small print on the bottom). "Have a look, if you'd like-- but I've yet to find a story in it I'd tell again."

Arya's face drops a little, and she shakes her head at his offer to have a look. "I thought there'd be tales of the knights and conquerors of this place, something to help in the tourney." For that's the closest she can approximate the arena to.

"The tourney-- you mean the Arena, then?" He can't think what else it would be, and so he goes on, with a disapproving shake of his head. "Oh, there's tales of the tourney, all right - in fact, it's near all they have to tell of. Here--" and he flips to a page containing a chart, with cheerful pictures, detailing the names of the Victors of the first twenty-five Hunger Games.

"Those're the only conquerors they have in this place. Just murderers, all of 'em! There's no heroes among them, and a story ought to have a hero - one doing as he does, whether for good or ill, because he's got the choice to do it. And he ought to travel-- there ought to be a quest, in lands strange and beautiful, and all." He doesn't even mean to go on so - he didn't realize himself just how many opinions about this he had. "This is all the same story, again and again - all that changes is the Arena, and there's none of them that do it because they want to. When it isn't dull, it's just... sad, is all it is. There's no purpose to it."

He shuts the book and looks back up at Arya. "...Though if those are the sorts of heroes you're in search of, then I suppose you're welcome to them. But there's better, I say."

"I never said heroes." She peers at the neat, printed lines of the page he's holding out to her, surprised at just how different it is to the intricately inked manuscripts of her own world, and how much easier to read. They were the sorts of stories Sansa would have liked, the sort he thinks there ought to be. Brave heroes and fair maidens and the straightforward triumph of good. Arya had always preferred the bloodier stories of conquest, though the harsh reality of them had become far too familiar to her. "A hero would come and save everyone. I just want to know how to survive." And even if the Victors were murderers and worse, they'd at least managed that much.

[ooc: Apologies for how late this is - will pick it back up at speed gladly, but no hard feelings at all if you'd prefer to pick up something new later on instead!]

It's not as pretty a book as Sam's used to, but then, he's not read many of them - most of the one's he's read out of were all in Bilbo's handwriting, save those few he'd been able to look at in Rivendell and in other people's small libraries. It's nice in its own way, he supposes, with its even lines and glossy pages.

"They wouldn't like that sort of hero much here, would they." It makes him sad, that that's what a child would be looking for in a storybook. Stories teach lessons, of course they do, but that isn't the sort of thing you're supposed to take from them. It's no fault of hers, but of the Capitol's, he's sure in his own mind.

"...There's one in here who survived by hiding," he says, with a look back down at the book. "For eight days, beneath a waterfall. Though he starved when he was taken back, before they could save him. And there's another who survived by-- by digging out a hole, under snow, for others to fall into; and she took 'em when they froze there, and ate 'em." He looks back up at Arya, troubled-- "Is that the sort of help you were looking for?"

((more than happy to carry on, though if you'd prefer something newer that's fine too!))

Arya nods, encouraged by that. It was possible, then, to win by keeping a low profile and outlasting everyone else. She could do that. She'd be useless in a contest of bare strength, she knew that, but she was good at staying alive, and she was no stranger to taking the opportune moment against her foes.

"Yes. Apart from eating them." That was a step too far even for her. It was the sort of thing the wildlings north of the Wall would do, she was sure of it.

[I'd love to continue! (Will also be quicker now I'm properly caught up...)]

Hiding was among Sam's favored Arena strategies, as well, though when he tried to picture himself digging a trap and waiting for folk to fall into it, he just felt a bit queasy.

"...What District are you in, then?" he asked, in an attempt to move the conversation away from what she would be willing to do, short of eating someone. "I suppose I ought to know who to avoid, if it comes to that! Or who to inquire for if I find myself at the bottom of some hole, at least."

"Ten." She shrugs, the number not really meaning anything to her yet except the place she was supposed to sleep while she was in the training centre. "And it's Arya. But you don't need to worry, I wouldn't put you in the bottom of a hole." He seemed nice enough without having to worry about that, or at least not likely to go after her. Although she hadn't been in an Arena yet, and didn't know how people could change once in there.

"Sam," he replies, "Of District Twelve. At your service." Well, he isn't, technically, her being so young, but there's no harm in being polite. He likes the name Arya. It's clean and simple; a girl of the Shire could have it, maybe, and not turn any heads.

The assurance, though, got a smile out of him, and a laugh disbelieving but not at all unfriendly. "I know my way around holes, having grown up in one," he says. "So if I'm caught, I'll be sure to shout, and if it's your hole I'd be much obliged if you'd pull me up."

"--Though I warn you," he added, "There wasn't anywhere to dig holes in the last Arena. It was all up in the sky, like, in a great flying house, flung up right against the stars."

"In the sky?" Arya's eyes widen, finding herself equally amazed and disbelieving. She couldn't even imagine such a thing, but then she'd been unable to imagine most of the strange technology she'd come across in the Capitol so far.

Samwise was not exactly an easy man to notice. Or - actually he was - which is what made him stand out so Dorian so distinctly. There was something about Sam that made his eyes sort of slide over him, accept him as normal and carry on. Except that he wasn't. He mistook him for a dwarf, at first, but he was a touch too small, and he'd never seen feet like that on a dwarf. So when he caught sight of Sam in a bar one evening, in the middle of a row with a patron over whether or not pale ale was beer, his curiosity took over and he took a seat beside the hobbit.

"There's no point arguing with them," Dorian said cheerfully, "They have absolutely no concept of taste. I found a decent brandy, but I am convinced it's creation was more by accident than design."

The bar stool, of course, was rather tall for Sam; but the establishment had kindly provided a cushion and a stack of back issues of Celebrus, so at least the gap between himself and the bar was of a manageable size. It still put his head a good bit lower than everyone else's, and left his feet dangling in space, but at least he didn't have to risk upending his half-pint glass every time he wanted a drink.

When Dorian came in, in the gap before Sam's next fervent point, he interrupted himself to turn and face this new addition to the conversation. (Sam's conversational partner, who clearly did not have as great a stake in the argument as the Hobbit, returned to his own drink with obvious gratitude.)

"I wish I could show 'em," he said, with real regret - he was disinclined to be too suspicious of people met in bars, as he'd never seen much point in going just to drink alone. "Just one barrel of the Green Dragon's finest, to show 'em what's meant by real beer." A deep sigh. "But in a place backward as this, might be they'd not think much of it anyway."

He glanced up at Dorian sidelong, as though to ask if they were in conspiracy on this point - Sam had him pegged for a Tribute, just from that statement, and wanted to know if he'd called it right.

"They would probably try to lace it with gold and set it on fire," he agreed. He didn't need to wonder if Sam was a tribute - that much was obvious. "The subtlety of a good ale - or, indeed, anything else - is completely overlooked. Barbarism, indeed."

He waved a hand and the barkeep appeared with the brandy in question - Dorian didn't even ask for it. He made a mental note to himself that he was drinking too much.

He raised his glass to Sam. "Dorian Pavus, at you service. Illustrious tribute and representative of District 7." He last was said with such heavy sarcasm, he could have just as easily rolled his eyes.

"Samwise Gamgee, lately of District 12, and once of the Shire-- at yours and your family's." Sam raised his glass in return. He was pleased by the greeting, which was traditional in a way familiar to him - it was a courtesy he knew how to return. Even if the second half of it was clearly not intended with any kindness toward the Capitol (though this wasn't something he was going to begrudge this Dorian Pavus).

"See, it all seems terribly backward to me, and, I suppose, to yourself as well," he went on, with that bit of politeness out of the way. "Great towers built all of glass, and drinks that have to be given names so as to be kept apart, and all!" It was clear from his tone how little he thought of this, as a concept. "But to hear them tell it, you'd think it was only want of cleverness that kept anyone else doing just the same as them. When, if you ask me," and it was clearly not terribly relevant that no one had, "It's less want of cleverness on our part as want of sense on theirs."

He wondered, often, if he was the only one who'd got this sort of treatment - as though the place he came from had existed far as in the past, and the world in which Panem sat had come further than his own, and was therefore somehow better. They wanted him to be excited about it and all its advances, and all he was, time and time again, was baffled by the expectation.

And, well: It helped, a little, to be able to rail against the Capitol's smaller crimes, its general lack of sensibility rather than its atrocities. It was far easier than giving too much attention to the more immediate problems - like the Arenas, and the murder, and the fact that this many days later, Frodo still had not returned.

Edited (GOD I JUST WANT TO WRITE SO MANY WORDS) 2015-01-17 21:31 (UTC)

"I agree, absolutely and completely," Dorian said, smiling widely down at Sam, and leaning over the bar a little to lower himself closer to Sam's eye level.

He liked the strange, small creature. He'd already decided.

"I have never seen a culture so absolutely devoted to squeezing out any semblance of knowledge and refinement from their day to day existence. It was nearly impossible for me to find a library. But their beer is nearly as bad as Ferelden's."

Refinement wasn't something Sam had a great deal of experience with; what others might call "refined," he'd be more likely to describe as "a bit over my head, I suppose." It was less lack of subtlety that troubled him about the Capitol as lack of simplicity. Why, he wondered, must something be complicated when it could simply be good?

At any rate, he believed he agreed with Dorian on principle, and that was enough to get by on. He nodded along, sitting up a little straighter to put them a bit closer to eye level.

"...I can't say as I've heard of Ferelden," he admitted, with a slight frown. But then, decisively: "But if they've managed beer worse than this, then I don't think I'll be visiting, thank you kindly!"

Going out of the Tower is like stepping into a strange dream where nothing is like he remembers things in the world should be, the big buildings looming everywhere and the Men bustling about, everywhere he looks -- but staying inside the Tower is hardly an option, either.

So Thorin ventures out, not often, but often enough, to get used to this place he's been thrown into, to make sense of his surroundings, because everything native to this city is to be treated as the enemy, and one needs to know his enemy to ever be able to beat him.

Now, no one would ever call Dwarves great gardeners, or even concerned about the matters of the land beyond what food it can provide - and yet, more often than not, Thorin finds himself drawn to the parks, with the greenery that makes him think of the wilderness, the greenness of it, or even Beorn's fields and gardens... or the Shire, what little he saw of it, of the garden and trees Bilbo talks about with such warmth.

What first catches his attention are the words, spoken aloud from behind a bush, with a voice that sounds - not familiar, exactly, but there is something about the accent that gives him pause. Something about the words that makes him hasten, to go round the bush - and indeed, there he is, a Halfling if there ever was one.

"I much doubt the gardeners of Men possess the same skills or love for the land as all Halflings seem to have," Thorin says, with the smallest upwards tilt of his lips.

Sam turns quick, a wilted stalk of some brilliant red flower whose name he doesn't know in his hand-- not out of startlement, but because that wasn't a voice he'd expected. Not the lilting twitter of a Capitolite, nor any of the strange accents out of other worlds he's run across, but one-- not familiar, but--

--but belonging to an honest-to-goodness Dwarf, stepping out from the bushes like he'd been summoned by magic--! Dressed in strange fashion, of course, but there can be no mistake. Sam takes a moment to stare, until he has the presence of mind to catch himself, and to scold himself for it. Sam Gamgee! Where are your manners?

"Begging your pardon," he says, He feels suddenly self-conscious-- because Mister Bilbo'd mentioned, hadn't he, had said it wasn't just him and Strider and Sam here out of Middle-earth? Sam doesn't want to make assumptions, but unless there's another Dwarf here, then....! He twists the stalk in his fingers, and takes a tentative step forward, out of the bush, anyway. "I didn't see you-- or, didn't think to look, rather." He glances at the great red flower bobbing next to his head, remembers he's been paid a compliment, and adds, a little abashed, "They're fine gardens, on the whole! Just, they go about it like they do everything here, with more fuss than is needed-- these plants'd be fine without all this mess tucked around their roots..."

A pause, to let this fumbling deflection sink in; and then, remembering his courtesy, he bobs his head in an awkward bow and adds, "Samwise Gamgee, at your service. ...Begging your pardon."

When the Hobbit steps out of the bush so Thorin can see him better, his first, involuntary thought is that this Hobbit looks just as unused to harder life and war as Bilbo did, when they met in his comfortable lodgings. But now, he knows better - even to those who don't know him, Bilbo would look soft or weak, and yet he is far from being so... and this gardener might be just as bold and brave. Thorin has learned not to underestimate Hobbits.

"I am no gardener, and as such, I must take your word for the state of the greenery of this place." There's a slight amused edge to his tone, still, the kind he gets where there is no smile on his face but the softer look in his eyes betrays it - a polite one, this one is.

"Thorin, son of Thrain, at yours." He inclines his head, not quite bowing but still far more polite than he might be, with someone else.

It's been long enough since his return from the Arena that Sam's begun to look healthy again, not the tired, near-wasted Hobbit he was when he was taken from the stair at Cirith Ungol. They spring back quickly from hardship, Hobbits, and Sam is no exception. All his remaining hurts are fears, which even rest and good food can't assuage.

But he doesn't look afraid, at the moment - at Thorin's name, his eyes go wide, and the flower drops from his fingers to the path at his feet. It's wonder in his expression, that turns shy after a second; he bows again, at a loss for what else to do. He knows that name - has heard it dozens of times, for it's dozens of times he made Bilbo read to him out of his book, of the journey to the Lonely Mountain and all his adventures along the way.

"Thorin," he says, and there's excitement vying with nervousness in his voice. "You don't mean-- Thorin Oakenshield, that led the company across the world to the Lonely Mountain-- who came all the way to the Shire to hire our Mister Bilbo--?"

He looks like he wants to step closer, and doesn't quite have the courage - for what's one to do, when someone out of his favorite stories has appeared on the garden path in front of him, and bowed to him for all the world as though he'd done something to merit it?

"Aye, the very same." For someone who was, although only initially, raised to one day become a king, Thorin is not quite used to being regarded with such wonder as the hobbit looks at him with, now - in the Blue Mountains, there was little merit in the title of King Under the Mountain, and he grew to feel uncomfortable with overt shows of reverence, as what had he done to merit it? Not get back Erebor, that is certain.

He very nearly comments that it was hardly "all the way to the Shire" as the Blue Mountains are situated fairly near, and their journey would have taken them near Bree regardless; but he refrains, instead nodding his head at Sam once again, his expression shifting into a slight frown.

"I see now that Master Ranger is not the only one who bears knowledge of events I know not. You see, Master Gamgee, you speak as though the quest for Erebor was over, and yet as far as I recall, the dragon yet lives, and our home is not yet reclaimed."

He does not ask, knows there is nothing but harm in asking about the goings-on of years and years ahead his time, and yet he can't help but hope that the words, led the company... it must mean they succeeded. Must it not?

Mahal, but let it be so. Let the Mountain be theirs once more.

The world as Sam understands it is vast. He's already traveled a good deal further than Bilbo ever did, but the story of Thorin Oakenshield and the dragon still carries all the hugeness of legend to him, the same as it did when he was a boy who couldn't even conceive of any distance further than the borders of the Shire. It's the scale of stories in which he thinks, more than miles and steps.

He claps a hand to his forehead, because think in stories he might, but he'd forgot that for those to whom they aren't just stories, they don't have endings. He's allowed to think of Thorin's tale as being all packed up and tied off neat, but that's not how it is for him, is it?

"Of course you wouldn't know," he says, with real chagrin. "For how could you have come from the end of it, when--!"

He's clever enough to break off before he finishes that thought, at least. A fine impression you're making! the Gaffer says in his head, and Sam knows he deserves it.

"The quest is over," he says, spreading his hands in a way that is both explanatory and beseeching. "At least-- to me it is. But, well, there's others here who say that my story-- that is, Mister Frodo's story-- is over as well, and to me that ain't true." He's doing a horrible job of explaining this. He wishes Strider were here, to explain it as he'd explained it to Sam. "So-- it's over and it isn't, I suppose, and the same either way. If you'd like, we can say that it's not over. It's easier to think of it when it isn't both at once, anyway. So, only tell me, sir, and I'll say no more of it, and make like it's not happened, as much as I can."

"Hello, Sam."

His approach of the reading hobbit was quiet indeed -- enough to startle Sam, perhaps, especially with Sam as engrossed as he is. Thorongil's aspect is serious but not unfriendly, more sober than grave.

He does startle, a little - that's something remaining from the Arena, for he didn't used to jump like a rabbit when someone came up behind him. But it's a relief to see who it is, anyway - and that's something come from the Arena, too, where this Strider behaved exactly as Sam would have expected him to (and much to his benefit, which helps). There's not the suspicion of their first meeting in his voice as he replies.

"Str-- Thorongil," he says, shutting his book and sitting up straighter in the chair (because there'd be little point in standing - it'd just put them further apart, after all). "Bless me, but you gave me a fright! You might have called to me-- you won't draw any trouble to us here that way."

The name's still a bit strange to say, but the greeting's friendly enough. Sam looks weary, but not in the way he did when he first came; the fear and exhaustion of his last days journeying is altogether a different kind from that following the Arena.

He circles the chair and sinks into one next to it, all long legs and quiet heaviness.

"I needed to speak with you," he says. "When I awoke in the Capitol, I found myself with memories I did not possess before." He glances around, knowing that they are being watched by unseen eyes. He can do nothing about those, but he can keep other Tributes who might recognize what he's talking about by keeping his voice down. "Memories of a journey south; and a parting at Parth Galen."

He seeks confirmation, more than anything else: rare is the occasion when Aragorn feels he cannot trust his own mind, but he has not yet found the limits of what the Capitol is capable of. If his memories are false, Sam, he trusts, will know.

Sam still has little conception of what the cameras that watch them are, outside of the general understanding that they can look at the Tributes at any time, much like the Tributes watch what appears on the screens. But he can understand the need to keep their voices low, and their conversation between them.

He can't, however, keep his eyes from going wider for a second. It's obviously recognition - the words have memories hung on them, though so much has changed since then recalling them feels almost like a Capitol television program about someone else's life.

Sam folds his legs under him and sets the book down on the cushion beside him, the better to lean in and still be heard.

"...That wasn't the end of the journey, not by far," he says softly. "But it was months after Bree," the point of his and Strider's meeting, "and... there were only the eight of us there." He's looking into Thorongil's face, seeking further recognition, as he goes on-- "There was a parting there, sure enough. There were two as continued on south, and east. What came of the others, I couldn't know." Outside of what few things he'd been told since then, without knowing whether or not he could trust the truth of them. But that parting, at least, he can verify - he doesn't know how Thorongil came by the memory, but it's one he shares.

"...Maybe," he says, "you'd better tell me just what it is you remember."

"I remember finding you in Bree," Aragorn begins. "I remember the journey to Rivendell, and the council there, and the matter that was discussed. I remember setting out in winter, and the names of those who traveled with us. I remember nearly leading you to disaster on Caradhras, and I remember the other road we took." He leaves off there -- he has no desire to speak of it further. "We came to Lórien, and we tarried there -- over-long, I fear. I remember leading us down the River, and coming to Parth Galen. And it was there, as I recall it, that the Fellowship was broken."

There is a shadow in Aragorn's eyes, an uncertainty, a grief. What happened on the western shore of the Anduin weighs on him.

What Sam knows of what happened at Parth Galen is scant, compared to what Aragorn knows. He's not yet been told the full tale, or what happened to every person who was there. But he thinks he knows whence that look in Aragorn's eyes comes, at least, and his own expression grows more somber.

He catches that Aragorn is using the names of places, but not of people, and that he won't speak of their errand. He keeps it in mind as he speaks.

"...Yes," he says. "That's how it was. For that was where Mister Frodo decided to part ways with the company - and I realized it, and followed him instead of you, once I'd lost you in the woods." He wonders what would have changed, had he followed Strider instead, or held Frodo back long enough to say where they were going-- but that's a useless train of thought, and unthinkable besides. He wouldn't have left Frodo for a minute.

"But-- you came away from it," he says. It wants to be a question, and isn't quite. "You-- you were alive, at the end of all you remember." It's hopeful. Faramir hadn't been able to tell them a great deal; Sam's eager to fill in this small piece of his own past, which he couldn't possibly have any way to recall.

"Indeed, I came away from it," he says heavily. "And so did the Elf and Dwarf in our company. We three live; and we believe Frodo's kinsmen live, as well, though in the hands of the Enemy. My last memory is of our pursuit of the company that took them."

He will not bring up Boromir of his own accord, but Sam isn't stupid. He'll realize who is missing.

Sam knows. It's hard, to have that confirmed-- It wasn't that he hadn't believed Faramir, but he'd only been able to tell them what he'd learned days after it all had happened. What had actually taken place at the shore where they'd all parted, he hadn't been able to imagine before.

He's silent a moment, head bowed, looking at his hands in his lap. He can think of no better way, at the moment, to pay his respects, or to show that he knows who's missing.

"...I wish I could tell you more," he says. "I do. But that was the last we saw of any of you. I wish I could say Me-- that Mister Frodo's cousins had been found. But in all the weeks since we parted, we didn't hear even a whisper, of you or them."

There's real regret in his voice, and doubt-- though not of what Thorongil's saying. No, he's moved past that doubt now, hearing that, even more than he already had following the events of the Arena. But he's regretting, in a way he hasn't before, having broken away from the rest. He wishes he could say more, that their combined knowledge wasn't still so useless.

"...I will not ask how you fared," says Thorongil heavily, after a long moment of consideration. "It is not for me to know." For if Sam explained how badly it went, and Aragorn found himself back on the quest, and gave in to the temptation to turn aside and avert disaster, who knew what would happen? Foreknowledge is dangerous, and Aragorn will not take it.

"But it grieves me to hear that it went badly. Of all the ill choices I made at Parth Galen, perhaps that one was the gravest of all."

"And I won't tell you," Sam replied, and his voice was just as heavy. "If you don't want to hear. It's a bleak tale, anyway, and one that I don't know I'd have the strength to tell." With a glance up-- "Perhaps a Sam come from an earlier page in the book, as it were, could tell you something more hopeful; but, as it is..." He trails off. (The book is still the way he organizes this strange idea of time to himself-- it's the clearest picture he can form in his own head, not knowing as he does that to some folk in the Capitol, he is come out of a book.)

It's been a few days since he's recounted, even to himself, what he saw in his last moments in Middle-earth. He'd driven himself half-mad with remembering in his first few days, spent hours curled up alone and wracked with guilt, and woken in the night many times calling Frodo's name. A Hobbit's resilience only goes so far, and now he's saving it for the Arenas. If he's to get back-- to where he was, to where he might yet do some good-- then he's got to do the best he can here, and he hopes in himself that Frodo might understand that, and forgive him if there are moments when Sam doesn't think of him.

"Now-- I wasn't at Parth Galen," he adds, "So perhaps I shouldn't speak to what happened. But I think there's a good deal you couldn't have known of, til it happened. What B-- that is. What sent Frodo away, for instance."

"I know well what sent Frodo over the River," says Thorongil, taking Sam's gaze with his. "He who was the cause of it told me all, in his last moments."

There is a lot to unpack in Strider's face and tone. I know, he says. We need not speak of it, he implies. I pity him, his eyes reveal, and grieve for him.

"I will repeat his final words to no one. But I will say that he died well. He fought bravely against a force far greater than any one man could hope to conquer, for the sake of Frodo's kinsmen. They were still taken, in the end, but that does not make his sacrifice less."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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WOW I am so sorry this is so late

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