[closed]

[lasttosail]

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?

Comments

[lasttosail]

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.

[elfstone]

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.

[lasttosail]

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."

[elfstone]

"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.

[lasttosail]

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.

[elfstone]

"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.

[lasttosail]

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.

[elfstone]

"...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."

[lasttosail]

"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."

[elfstone]

"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."