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It was getting harder every year. Sometimes Frodo tried to write it down, use his pen and ink like a bloodletting, trying to expel the sickness; but he could never find the right words. There didn't seem to be words at all for it, which made him glad. It meant nobody had every felt like this before.
Frodo wouldn't have wished the feeling on anyone.
The ground was warm under him, it was a peach-coloured evening. Sam and Rosie hadn't wanted to let him go outside, but Frodo didn't want to stay in his dark little cave of misery for another moment. The fact he carried it with him wherever he went made escape problematic, but he wasn't going to put his family through it for another moment if he could help it.
Family. Frodo never got tired of thinking that word.
Perhaps he would be at peace, over the sea. He could be sitting on the sand, holding a shell in his hands and watching the waves. Perhaps Sam and Rose would be happier, if he was gone.
It wasn't a matter of shelving the past in choosing a future, after all. All the reasons he'd had to leave then were still present, multiplied tenfold by time.
He'd heard Sam and Rosie arguing about it the day before; or perhaps he'd dreamed it. Time had blurred and doubled and folded for a while, there, reducing him to ancient wounds and emptiness.
"Why can't it ever be enough?" Rosie had been raging, pressing a cool cloth to Frodo's forehead. She'd been talking to Sam, who was trying to work some warmth back into Frodo's hands. They'd never found a way to balance his temperature, even after so many chances to trial and error different methods. He'd been slipping in and out of his daze, half-hearing them as they whispered.
"What's that, Rose?"
"We've never been enough for him. We can't make him whole, I used to think we could but there's never been a hope of it. Not you, or me, or any of the babes. When Sammie grew long enough to be born, I said to myself 'Well, Rosie, maybe this will make your Frodo right at last'. He's always wanted for family, it's not hard to see that, and though we've always thought of him as part of ours, perhaps he hasn't felt the same way. But now there's a bonny little boy sitting out on the front step with his brothers and sisters, serious and quaint already at four years old, and still Frodo doesn't heal. It..." Rosie paused, or maybe it was simply Frodo's perception of time that made a stretch of silence before she spoke again. "It almost makes me relieved, that Sammie hasn't changed him, and then I feel like crying for thinking something so terrible. But at least now I know it doesn't make a difference to Frodo if it's you or him who fathers the little ones."
A tear struck Frodo's arm, hot against skin gone to ice. Rosie cried less when she was really unhappy than when she was confused.
"He can't heal, love." Sam's voice choked a little, too. His hands on Frodo's skin were careful and tender. "And no number of babies, his own or mine - he thinks of them as his own no matter, can change that fact. We can't make him whole, but we can make him happy."
"Words. It's all just clever ways of putting words together," snapped Rosie. "He deserves better than this, Samwise, and so do we."
The evening was turning from peach to blueberry, the first faint stars shining silver-white. He'd have to go home soon, it was almost time for dinner. Elanor would be fussing about making sure the tablecloth didn't have marks on it, she took her role as the eldest child very seriously. Merry and Pippin would probably be helping her, or grumbling about being forced into helping. Rosie would be feeding wee Bilbo, and Sam might be going over the records and letters from the mayoral office.
The twilight wind brushed against Frodo's skin in a chilly gust, making him shiver. He smiled at the sensation. It was good to feel things.
Frodo-lad and Rose-girl were sitting out on the front steps again, watching Goldilocks and Hamfast trying to juggle three small yellow balls between them in the middle of the road. Frodo hung back around a small bend in the pathway, listening to the conversations of the children.
"Idiot! You can't stop once you've caught one, you have to throw it back straight away!"
"Easy, Goldy," Frodo-lad scolded gently. He was bouncing Sammie on his knee, watching to make sure Daisy didn't wander off too far as she explored the garden. Looking for bugs, it was more than likely, as the girl had recently developed a fascination with the way caterpillars became butterflies and spiders spun their webs.
"I love the way babies smell," said Rose, inhaling the scent of Primrose as she held the toddler carefully. "I'm going to have lots of my own someday, even more than Mummy and Daddy. And not a single one of them is going to be named after another person."
"I like having a name that belonged to somebody before me. Look at us here, we're Frodo and Rose and Sam, just like our parents. They gave us life, and they gave us their names," replied Frodo. "And Goldy and Prim are named after other people, but have nicknames that are just theirs. Nobody gets you confused with Mum."
"I suppose." Rose shrugged. "I reckon we're going to have another brother or sister before too long, Mum's been sick in the mornings."
"Hope it's a brother, then. Too many girls already."
"Oh, you shut your mouth." Rose laughed, swatting at Frodo's head before raising her voice so the other children would hear. "Come on, you lot. Time to wash up for dinner."
"Not yet," Sammie complained. "I want to stay out here with Fro."
"We'll be in soon," Frodo promised Rose. She nodded, ushering the others inside.
"Fro, Grandpa Tom and Granny Lily were talking about me with Mummy yesterday, and they said I was an apple in a pear tree. What does that mean?" Sammie asked when the two boys were alone.
Frodo paused, considering.
"I don't think I should be the one to explain this to you, lad. It might be a job better done by Mum and Dad and Uncle Frodo."
"But I want to know now."
"Wouldn't you rather hear a more exciting story? I could tell you about Merry and Pippin, not your brothers, the older ones, and how they got so tall and splendid looking."
"Please?" Sammie begged, resting his chin on Frodo's shoulder and twining his small, chubby fingers in his brother's sandy hair. "I want to know why I'm an apple in a pear tree. Does that mean I don't belong?"
"Sam-lad, no." Frodo shook his head, more angry than sad. "Never think that. Hm... when a mother dog is going to have puppies, there are things about the puppies that depend on who the father dog was. It's the same for trees, I suppose. Different seeds in the same earth make different trees, and different fruit."
Sammie nodded, forehead furrowed as he thought about this. "I think I understand, Fro, but I don't completely. It's about Gamgees and Bagginses, isn't it?"
Frodo nodded. Sammie chewed on his small thumbnail, and then nodded to himself. "I thought so. But we're Gardners now, aren't we? So I don't know why it's important at all."
"You're wiser than your grandparents, then, but don't let them catch you repeating me on that," Frodo-lad laughed, hugging Sammie. "There are more important things, much more important things, than who sires which baby in a family. Things like who teaches you to read, or to plant a flower in a pot, or ride a pony. Those are what matters, and we've got the two best Dads, and the best Mum, in all the Shire."
Frodo the older, still hidden by the bend in the road, blinked back a sudden prickle in his eyes and walked around the corner.
"Hullo, Uncle Frodo!" Sammie cried, jumping down off Frodo-lad's lap and running to meet him. "We were just talking about you. Fro said you have to teach me to ride a pony."
"Not quite," corrected Frodo-lad, standing up with his hands in his pockets. "Trust this one to pick that up as the most important part of what I said, though. Are you feeling better?"
"Much." Frodo nodded, smiling and picking Sammie up. "The bad days come, and they're bad, but they pass again. Storms and rainbows, as your mother would say."
"I'm glad to hear you say that," Frodo-lad admitted. "Sometimes I think you wish you'd gone, over the sea with the Elves. I can't say I blame you, if you do."
"And miss this? Not likely, my boy, not likely," Frodo laughed. "Come on, I can smell your mother's coffee cake from out here, and my stomach wants to see if it tastes as good as it promises."
They walked up the stairs and through the front door, sitting down around the long table with the others. Dinner was as noisy and bright as ever. Frodo reached past the knocked-over cup of milk that Pippin had spilled seconds before and took Sam and Rosie's hands.
"I might now be whole on my own," he told them softly. "But you fill all the spaces left empty, right up to the brim and over. I'm sorry you have to go through the dark days with me every year."
"What else could we do? Leave you to weather them on your own?" Rosie asked, smiling. "Now eat your carrots, Mister Frodo, or I'll mash them up and spoon them to you like I do for little Bilbo."
"You don't to say sorries for it," Sam assured him, and Frodo realised that was the truth. It didn't need to be said, anymore. It never had.
~
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