thecapitol | supper's on the table

Who| Sam Wilson, Samwise Gamgee, and OPEN
What| two times the Sam and delicious food
Where| in the kitchens, south wing common area
When| After the arena
Warnings/Notes| None for now, will update if needed!

Usually, Sam just cooks in District Five’s kitchen. But he’s been doing that kind of a lot these days, and he doesn’t want to monopolize it for the amount of time what he’s got in mind is going to take. So today, he heads down to the bigger kitchens in the lower levels of the tower, trying not to think about how the last time he was down there, it was with Jet, helping him learn how to cook for Albert.

Soon as he gets there, though, he sees that someone else already had the same idea. For a moment, Sam considers backing out, leaving the guy to do his thing - but nah, he wants to cook, and the guy looks like he knows what he’s doing.

So Sam asks if he can help, and before long they’re working together, swapping prep tips and recipes and filling the kitchens all kinds of fantastic smells.

When they’ve got more food than probably either of them know what to do with, it only makes sense to share it with the rest of the Tributes. They set up in one of the banquet areas in the south wing of the central common area. It’s a pretty tempting spread, and hopefully the scent of all that good food will draw people in.

If not, Sam isn’t shy about waving people over.

[If you want a particular Sam or want to thread with both of them, feel free to specify!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She hesitated a moment, unsure how to answer, but though she had many flaws, over-caution had never been one of them. She nodded, at last, even smiled. "I mean to say just that," she confirmed, ducking her head, and pushed a stray lock of hair back out of her eyes. "In my time, he is fallen, his armies scattered. 'Tis a year past that we saw you and your friends leave Gondor for the Shire, with all due honour. For it was you, Master Samwise, and your master Frodo, who vanquished him."

Again she hesitated, and then reached out to him, clasping his shoulder for a moment. Her smile faded a little, her stern grey eyes holding his. "Know this, Master Samwise, if ever we should be returned to our own places; that there is light beyond the shadow, and by my reckoning, you have not so very far to go. There is strength in you and your folk which shames the best of us, and in those darkest of days was it revealed to us."

Sam was quiet for a moment. Not so much out of confusion, or uncertainty this time, but because what the Lady Eowyn is saying to him felt impossibly... big, somehow - a revelation encompassing all their world, and every person he ever cared about in it. It was far too big a revelation for him, being as he was only a very small part of the proceedings (or so he believed). It was you, Master Samwise was a statement that barely registered with him, the impossibility of it being altogether to big to fit into his head.

He let every piece of that go through his head one at a time, and took in each sentence as it came; he dropped his eyes and listened with furrowed brow, and his hands were still. One always felt small in a world built for people twice one's size, but he thought he'd never felt so small as this, not since he came here.

"Begging your pardon," he said haltingly, after a long pause, and he looked back up at her. "But there's something I'd like to be sure of - and that's what you said about my master Frodo having vanquished him, and all." His own part in it he didn't think worth mentioning, whatever it may have been. It felt arrogant, somehow, to want to know of that. "I... I don't mean to demand of you news of the future, if my own future it's truly to be. I worry it's too much even to ask what you mean by leaving Gondor, and who it is you count among my friends-- Knowledge is a gift, after all, and like a gift I think it's not one's place to demand it. But--" And he leaned in a little closer, earnest. "--but you do remember Master Frodo. Folk do know of his part in it, and remember him as he ought be remembered."

He hadn't quite put together yet that Frodo had survived the ordeal. He'd learned from others that his last memory of weeping over Frodo's cold body would be proved a lie, but he still held no hope whatsoever that Frodo would live through the war. He could reconcile only one thing at a time - he'd start with the fact of the war's end itself.

"If knowledge is a gift, it is one I will all too gladly give." Éowyn had to look a long way down to meet his eyes, tall as she was, but there was nothing condescending in that look. A faint, slightly sad smile played at the corners of her mouth. It was hard not to be a little touched, really, by where his priorities lay. "Your master's part is well-known indeed, fear not. If you wish, I could sing you some of the songs I have heard name him, since the war ended." The sadness in her smile is, for a moment, replaced by something almost like mischief. "Indeed, there is a man among my lord husband's band, Maenir, who is even yet working on his Lay of the Halflings. I could hum you a few bars, should you wish it. The verse that speaks of Samwise the Bold, and how he shouted down the Captain of Gondor... that ever raises my spirits."

It surprised her, a little, to find that gentle teasing still in her. But even as it surprised her, it lifted her heart, for she had half-begun to fear that side of herself lost again.

But she didn't want to push that teasing too far, not when she still feared the loss of this one tenuous connection to home. Biting back her smile, she sobered herself again, and said more seriously, "All four of you who left the Shire... you did great deeds. I jest, true, but there is not a one of your fellowship whose name does not ring from the eaves of great halls to the close walls of the lower taverns. You may fear many things, Master Samwise. But do not fear that he will be forgotten."

At "Samwise the Bold," Sam's eyes went wide, and he flushed over his whole face, bright as a summer strawberry. He couldn't find words for a moment-- he made a stammering attempt at speaking and finally just ducked his head, pleased and embarrassed in equal measure, and feeling better equipped to look at his own feet than into Eowyn's face.

He anchored himself to thoughts of Frodo, and so won his composure back - what use was it, standing here and stuttering like a ninny, when she'd been kind enough to tell him something so important? He took a deep breath, looked back up at Eowyn, and said, more or less steadily, with the blush only just fading, "Then-- that's as it should be. I won't ask no more of you, so as not to-- upset things, as Strider might say. But--"

And he couldn't stop the smile that broke over his face, warm and shy. "--But that does my heart good, to hear that. For-- there's none as deserves a song as much as him. And I hope someday I'll have the chance to learn it, so it's not forgotten, if I should ever find my way back to the Shire from this place."

He shook his head, and said, a little more slowly, as if considering-- "It's funny, ain't it? That that should perk me up so much, when it can't do me or anyone a lick of good here. But it's-- it's a comfort, I suppose, to know something good might somewhere happen, sometime, even if it has nothing to do with me anymore."

Éowyn's laugh was a wonder to her, for since her arrival, she had not felt so purely and thoroughly glad. It was impossible not to be touched by him, by his relief and his joy, and - yes - his shyness too. "You will find your way home," she says, with sudden certainty. It may not last, but for now, there is something too strong to even be called hope. "How can you not? For all that is to come awaits you, and I have seen it."

And did that mean, then, that she might find her way back, too? She dared not think too hard on it, for fear that sudden burst of joy and hope would fade the faster. But that he would escape... that, she could believe, for now. She had seen him, after all, beyond this point. She knew his story did not end here, far from home and with his adventure yet unfinished. He, at least, could escape and be free, and that was joy enough.

supper's on the table

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THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR PATIENCE, SORRY

WORTH IT

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