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Duet
(Spanish translation by Balboa HERE)
Author: Aratlithiel Summary: Pippin remembers Frodo Rating: PG
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August 27, 2003
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DUET Part Two
Pippin Lament Aubade da Berceuse
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It was you I dreamed of. I’m sure of it. I woke with a smile on my lips and warmth in my heart and I knew it was you who had held me just before I opened my eyes to the first gentle fingers of lavender-misted dawn. I only wish I could remember – wish that I could see your face.
I need to see you and know that you are happy…healed. I need to know that I have not let you go to a strange land only to suffer your ills among strangers. I need to know.
Let you go – I could laugh for when have I ever let you do anything? Your will was always your own, beloved cousin, and that more than anything else was our salvation and your undoing. For your will was what kept you crawling through the Black Land when your body wanted nothing more than to surrender to the death that slathered at your heels with deceitful promises of rest and blessed silence.
I’ve heard the tale, you know. I know that you lost something of yourself with every step you took toward that vile center of all evil. How after being stripped of all that you were, you stood naked before it, unable to cloak even your heart from it anymore once it pinned you within itself.
Is that when it happened? Is that when the emptiness invaded your soul? Is that when you realized you could never return? Or even before then, perhaps. Was it when you lay bared and helpless before razor-toothed enemies in the Tower that you understood?
I ask only because you did not seem surprised. As if destroying the most evil thing in all the world deserved exile from your home and kin. As if doing the will of the Wise were justification for losing all you loved and fought for.
You accepted it all with a grace I could not, cannot comprehend when all I wanted to do was take someone by the throat and squeeze until they took the sadness from your eyes and brought you back to me.
My tears are but useless weapons wielded against those who took you from me, but still I shed them anyway. For what other choice have I now? What other recourse do I have against the fate that has used you so cruelly then taken you from everyone and everything you love? A fate that dangled peace and home before you after you had done what was asked of you, only to snatch it back out of reach when you were finally able to gather the strength to grasp for it.
Merry thinks I should be grateful – happy for you that you have been allowed this chance at the peace you so well deserved. And I am. Truly, I am.
But, oh, cousin…why could they not have left you alone in the first place?
Why was it your slender shoulders the burden had to fall upon? Your heart was the fiercest and kindest I’ve ever known – so why was it chosen to be ripped from your chest and held before your eyes while you wept into the emptiness it left behind?
Your love and wisdom had no equal and the vile thing you carried knew it…and used it against you at every turn. It spoke softly to you of reaching for those you loved so that you would pull it close, let it into your heart, wrap your soul about it as a shield for us and let it devour you in our stead.
And I wonder to myself how I could have stood by and watched it happen.
Oh, naturally I console myself with the knowledge that I simply didn’t know it was happening…couldn’t see what you kept cloaked beneath the love that flowed from your eyes and lay warm and tactile in your embrace. I didn’t know. I didn’t. And I do not think I will ever forgive myself.
I should have known. I should have seen, should have understood. For you see, I know you. And it should have occurred to me what you were doing, how you battled that monstrous thing every second it hung round your neck. How every assault of its malice was met with your defense of love and oh! cousin…it must have trembled when it realized the greatness of the soul it had pitted itself against.
I hope it feared you in the end. I hope it wept with dread as you crossed the threshold of that dark door. I hope it writhed in agony as the flames consumed it. I hope it died in pain and horror and knew in its last seconds that you were the one who brought it to its doom. I hope it saw you in your light and glory at the end of its evil life and died in terror at the beauty of the soul it beheld.
I hope it suffered.
And Valar help me, I hope the Wise who put you on that path have suffered too.
I know what you would say – that I should not be angry, that I should gentle my heart and forgive, that bitterness will only serve to further my pain. You would be right of course. But I cannot help but burn with rage at those who set you on your road and watched as you staggered about your empty heart, weeping into the void of your spirit.
It took you in the end – shattered you, broke you, stripped you bare and left you hollowed and spent. It took your love and twisted it into guilt, took your courage and told you it was pride, took your strength and tricked you into believing it weakness.
And they let it happen.
They watched as the ghost whispered to you still and did nothing to stay the voice, did nothing to quell the ache, did nothing to help you heal save whisk you away from your home and kin. And I want them to feel the pain I feel now. I want them to look into your heart and see the sorrow and depthless grief I saw there. I want them to weep at the damage they have done to one so noble and good that they, immortal or no, could not live enough years to equal the beauty of your gentle soul. I want them to know what they have done.
But I know what you would want of me, my gentle cousin, and so I try to turn my anger to generosity, my bitterness to acceptance. I try with all my heart to believe that it is as you would have it – that sailing was a reward for you and not the last, desperate act of a soul who has lost all other hope.
But my world has become colorless with shades of grey, you see. Grey wizards, grey ghosts on grey ships sailing off into a grey mist and so I am hard pressed to see the radiant hues of the warmth and love you left behind. I want nothing more than to wrap myself in the Shire you have bequeathed us – the lands where you wandered and left your footprints behind. I want to walk in those footprints, feel the warmth of your arms about me, taste the love that seeped from your pores while you walked here among us.
And for short moments, when I can put aside my anger, quell my bitterness – for short moments I can close my eyes and feel you. I can feel your arms about me, holding me tight and oh! cousin, I weep from the depths of my soul, for I miss you so.
Sam understands better, I think. We rode back that day in utter silence, you know. I would glance to Merry at times and see his jaw set, eyes glittering with the tears he refused to release. He was taking on your mantle of leadership, do you see? You were gone and the burden now fell to him and he refused to succumb to the tears we all knew were there. Even then he was determined to make you proud.
But Sam…oh, Frodo. It nigh broke my heart to see him so. His shoulders slumped, his head hanging til his chin near rested on his breast. But his eyes, cousin. His eyes were as empty as Strider’s saddle. I never thought I would live to see the day when Samwise Gamgee was bereft of hope.
He’s better now, I think…at least he seems so. He is convinced that you have found what you needed across the Sea and I pray that he is right. How he could possibly know I cannot even guess, but I’ve had enough proof of his simple, earth-bound wisdom in my life to take his word for it.
He says you have healed and you are at peace and I want to believe. I do believe. He would know, after all and I see in his eyes that somehow he does. I believe. I do.
But I still cannot help but want you back.
I know why you did not tell us you were leaving, why you tried to give us the slip. You knew that if one of us were to ask you to stay, were to throw ourselves at your feet and beg you not to leave us that you would not be able to go. I held to you so tight as I said goodbye that I feared I might crush you in my embrace. I stayed my tears, tried to be brave, buried my face in your hair, inhaled your scent so that I might keep it with me. I smiled, looked you boldly in the eye…and lied - told you I would be fine.
But heaven help me, Frodo, for one wild moment I was tempted - I thought of asking you to stay…even knowing the consequences. For one panicked breath I did not care what might befall either of us as long as it meant that at that moment I would not have to release my hold on you and watch you sail away from me on that cursed ship of ghosts. Forgive me, cousin. I have no defense save that I would have followed you to whatever end if I were able, if only to keep you from having to endure yet one more thing alone.
Merry worries for me. He sees my anger and thinks to still me as you would. Thinks I make a harsh world for myself when seen through the red tinge of wrath. He does not understand that I need my anger – I need my tears. For without them, I am adrift and lost to the sorrow that enfolds me.
I always expected to lose you, you know. Some part of me always knew that you would not be mine to hold for long and that I must take every moment with you as a gift. And I hold to those moments now. I take them out and examine them with the intensity of a dwarf putting value to a gem. I turn them into the light, watch the facets reflect the moments of our lives and take joy in the beauty that pierces my heart, stings my eyes.
I think of lying in the grass on a clear night, your arm warm about me as you point to the heavens and paint pictures in the stars with tales of elven kings and righteous battle. I think of hiding in shadowed doorways and trying desperately not to betray ourselves with laughter as we make our silent path past Bilbo’s door and to the pantry like thieves in the night. I think of breathless twirls in sunlit grass, flying through the air as a bird set free but safe with your sturdy arms around me.
I think on these things and let the anger seep from me as so much mist. I release my heart from the bonds I’ve placed upon it yet my tears still wash my cheeks on their scorching path to my soul.
I love you so and I miss you more than I could ever find words to say. Merry is my heart, dear cousin, as I am his. But you, Frodo…you were our soul. And each day is now a struggle to build one anew for I cannot resurrect one that would make you proud from the ashes of the old. For those ashes are still gritted and bitter on my tongue.
But make you proud I will. For you I will lighten my heart with the treasure of your memory and live the life you sacrificed so much to offer me in your generous, outstretched hand. What else can I do but thank you in the way that you wished?
So I go to my bed each night, hoping that I’ll dream of you. I climb under the thick quilts, close my eyes and remember your voice, speaking to a young lad of dragons and great warriors. I remember your laughter, soaring across the sky as a young cousin plays the jester for you, just so he can hear the music fall gentle and merry from your lips. I remember your smile, slow and crooked, but soft and full of ready mirth. I remember your eyes, blazing with fierce love, glowing with soft humor…young and ancient all at once. I try to forget them bereft of hope and instead choose to remember them full of fire and life. For I know that is what you would want of me.
And so I lay me down each night, enfolded in my memories and the ghost of your warm breath in my hair. I take your hand and walk with you through the wilds of Tuckborough, treading in your footsteps and following the path of the dreams you spent here so many years ago. Picking up the wishes you scattered here for me like so many rose petals.
You squeeze my hand and I look to you and smile. You have not spoken, but I nod my head anyway and answer a question you did not ask.
Yes, dearest cousin, I will try.
For you, I will try.
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A/N - Lament = Mourning Aubade = Morning song Berceuse = Cradle song or lullaby
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