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Duet
(Spanish translation by Balboa HERE)
Author: Aratlithiel Summary: Merry remembers Frodo Rating: PG
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August 27, 2003
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DUET Part One
Merry Serenade mesto Sempre
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I saw you today, you know. I don’t mean that I saw some slender, dark-haired youth who reminded me of you and so I fooled myself into believing it. No. I saw you. You ambled along beside me as I wandered by the river strand…not speaking, not doing anything really except standing there with your hands in your pockets and giving me that soft, crooked smile of yours…and shattering my heart into about a million pieces.
You’ve done this to me countless times since you left and still every time I wander by the river, I hope for another glimpse of you. I’ve even gone purposely at times, hoping to conjure you by mere wish, even knowing what it will do to me when I see you. It’s a sweet pain and I’d not trade it.
I feel the same, sharp prick of memory every time I look into the face of our young cousin. The Tookish angles of chin and nose, the fine upsweep of cheek to temple – all of it serves to remind me of you for I see your reflection in his earnest face. I should take joy that some bit of you remains here within him, but instead I am reminded of the absence of the other half of my soul – the half that you took with you over the sea.
The sea always held such wonder and dread for me before. I understand why now. Now it fills me with loss and an emptiness as vast as its own reach. I do not wish to look upon it; I do not wish to hear its voice in my ears night after night when I think of you. I want the tides to stop, the moon to fall from its place in the night, the sun to cool its fire and sink from the heavens in disgrace – for you are gone and nothing is as it should be.
Oh, I miss you so.
I never knew it was possible to feel such pain and yet live; to carry it daily in my heart and still manage to draw breath. I find myself carrying on the business of life at odd moments and being suddenly surprised that I can. I might be in the middle of a conversation with a vendor or some such and it will suddenly strike me: Frodo is gone and he is never coming back.
Or maybe I’ve gone out on the raft alone – for simple, blessed solitude or perhaps to indulge in some introspection now and again. I’ll dangle my feet over the side as you used to do, watch the water slide past my ankles and listen to the rushing against the strand, the whisper of wind through the trees.
Do you remember the raft, cousin? Do you remember how many golden, liquid days we spent in the middle of the river pretending to fish? I’d lie on one side, close my eyes and let the heat and quiet of the day take me. You would sit on the other with your feet trailing in the water, staring into the dreams your nimble mind played behind your eyes.
I go there alone now, trying to keep you with me, trying to believe that still somehow your spirit walks beside me. I hang my feet over the side and stare off as you did, thinking to recapture some of the dreams that drifted from your heart and hovered over the water’s surface to mist and become one with the river.
You made it a part of you, this cruel betrayer - this thief of love and home. You forgave it its trespass and took it into your heart, accepting it as completely and gracefully as you did everything in your path as you wended through the muted maelstrom of your life. And you, in turn, became a part of it. It pulled the hopes bound to the tears of the youth who offered them and slipped them into its watery heart, keeping them safe, weaving them into the lands it touches on its wandering course.
So I look for you now in these waters. I look for those dreams you once spilled so freely from your heart into the silted depths of brandy-colored water. I lean over the rippling surface and try to catch the essence of you that plays on the scented breeze. Only now there is no counter-balance on the other side to keep the raft from tipping and I’ll think, Careful now, Frodo isn’t here to haul you back up if you fall. And it hits me yet again that you are gone.
You are gone and I will never see you again.
I will never again trek with you through fields of tall grasses, the dew clinging to its emerald tips, dazzling our still sleep-dusted eyes in the first rays of a rose-tinted dawn and wetting us up to our knees. I will never again drift into contented sleep to your soft tenor singing me to dreams with rhyme and melody. I will never again rise to your laughter lilting in from the sun-drenched kitchen of Bag End as you joke with Sam and prepare breakfast for your lay-abed cousin. I will never…ah, but there are far too many nevers now.
I’ve not been able to wrap my mind around that word, never. I repeat it to myself, both in my own mind and aloud when I am alone.
Never. Never. Never.
I say it over and over again until the word falls dead and wretched from my tongue and no longer holds meaning save for the empty reverberation that slams through my heart with each repetition. I speak it aloud, hoping that perhaps one of these times, the meaning of it will suddenly unfold before me and I will finally come to understand how this small word breached then broke my own humble universe.
How is it possible that the one person I cannot live without has been taken from me? How can the Powers be so cruel as to take from me the one thing I simply cannot lose?
I close my eyes and see your face before me and I hear your words to me as we clung to each other on that brine-misted quay. Please, Merry. Can you understand? Can you try? I looked into your fathomless eyes and knew there was no other way for you. Knew that to ask you to stay was to ask you to die. Had probably known it as I held to you in Minas Tirith and begged you to trust me…promised you I would find a way to heal you.
And now, here you were, begging me without words to understand that I couldn’t heal you, a promise to me in your eyes that you would find your own way. I saw the sun dazzle umber from sable hair and turn salt tears to faceted diamonds on ashen cheeks. I wept and nodded my assent, told you I understood. You smiled a soft, wavering smile and answered my nod with one of your own…but of course you knew. You knew that I did not understand at all. I still don’t understand, but I promise you that I am trying.
I can still feel your arms about me as we held to each other that day. Thinner than they used to be and with a tremor humming beneath the tensile strength, belying the calm face you wore for us all.
Were you frightened, cousin? Did you worry that perhaps the Blessed Realm would not have one who is of a kind bound to the earth? Did you fear a great wave, vast and misted, might seek out the pretender, wash you callously from the deck and cast you into the boiling sea for your cheek in daring to attempt to enter such a place?
Ah, but I could have told you – not a soul on that ship deserved to be there more than you did. A hobbit you may have been, dear cousin, but bound to the earth you were not. I think I am finally beginning to understand that now. You were always too good for this world and I should have expected to lose you to some mystical reward – should have known that you were simply too high a soul to linger here for long.
But I never could have guessed it would happen this way. Never would have expected that your reward for your noble deeds would be more a cruel punishment to us all. We have lost you and you…you have lost everything. Oh, Frodo, I am so sorry.
Your departure, your Quest, your life – all of them a study in contradiction, just as you, yourself always were. Fragile many thought you, but woe to any creature who thought to cow the iron will that lay hidden beneath your gentle exterior. The orphaned wanderer who was yet a son of his country and lover of home and hearth. The merry eyes and youthful countenance that cloaked a soul as deep and ancient as time. The heart that found forgiveness for wanton betrayal, yet could not find enough of it to soothe its own desperate ache.
Oh, Frodo, have you found your peace? Have they helped you to understand your victory over the evil that sought to strip you of your soul? Do you believe now?
I want to believe that you are whole. I want to believe that letting you go was worth this grief at your loss…my loss. I must believe else this emptiness I feel at my side where you used to stand will take hold of me, rip my breath from my chest in wails that beat at the heavens with the sorrow that crashes through my yearning heart. For how could I go on, knowing that your last sacrifice was for naught? That you left all you loved merely to die in despair alone and never understanding your own triumph over the evil that sought to enslave you?
Ah! I cannot bear to think on it! I console myself with the thought that the great ones you sailed with would not allow you to go on thinking that you failed, would not see you crawl within your heart and punish yourself for lacking the strength to accomplish the impossible. I try to convince myself that they will care for you, nurture you, feed your spirit, restore your soul.
But then I remember that these great ones are the very same who set your feet on the path that led to your destruction and I cannot find trust in my heart for them now. For they have already used you, cousin. How can I trust that they will not again?
Pippin certainly doesn’t. I sometimes wonder if the Ring-bearers sailed with you because it was their time, or whether they were simply wise enough to escape our wilding cousin before his Tookish wrath fell upon them. They stole you, he thinks; tricked and betrayed you then spirited you off from all that you have ever known.
I worry for him.
He thinks to carry you with him by keeping his anger ever near; taking it out and caressing it when the pain grows too great for him to shoulder. He does not begrudge you your departure – never that. The thought that you may have finally found your peace is the only solace he clings to.
Rather, he has recently decided that he is really quite angry with Gandalf and probably every elf he has ever met. You would shake your head and chastise him sharply, cousin, for he is quite intractable about the whole affair. Ironic really, since you are the only one who could probably ever talk sense into him. But no fear, Frodo love – Sam does his best for Pippin, as do I.
Sam, now – Sam has no doubt at all that you are enjoying the respite you’ve earned through blood and sacrifice. It’s taken him some time, mind. But the sadness has left his eyes and he can now remember you with joy and pay homage to your memory by living the life you bestowed him. He has taken your parting words very much to heart and truly is living the life you were denied. I do not know where his confidence comes from…but I so wish I could share in it.
But I am trying, cousin. With each day, I rise and ponder on what you would want for me then try with all my heart to make it so.
But still I cannot help but look forward to the Breaking of the World with no small amount of anticipation. Does that make me wicked, do you suppose? That I would wish for the destruction of time itself so that I might once again feel the comfort of the warm embrace that was so much a part of my life for so many years that it has embedded itself in my skin? That I would look with joy upon the time when the stars cease their dance in the heavens so that I might once again look into the eyes that throughout my life held the very meaning of love and kin?
Then wicked I shall be, for I cannot help but look to the day when the sea stills and the heavens shout so that I might run to your arms and finally fill the void in my heart your absence has left.
And I’ll not apologize for it.
And so I walk along the river with you beside me, your frame misted in sunshine, mine aching to reach out and hold to the dream at my side, but I dare not. I would not lose this small favor by grasping for more.
So instead I turn to gaze upon your beloved countenance and I return your crooked smile with one of my own.
It’s infectious, that smile. I never could resist it.
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A/N – Serenade = a piece of music in honour of someone or something Mesto = Sad Sempre = Always
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