13/10/03
Fandom: LotR (remix)

Summary:  You can't go walking in the Black Land in naught but your skin, Mr Frodo.

Tolkien's.  Not mine.



He's used to the smell.  It would be worse in another country, but it's cold here, and always dark, and in the end it's just comfort.

When he can't walk anymore, he curls into Sam, and Sam strokes him through it.

Like armour.  It's better than the shirt they took off him.  Almost worth the hours with their hands on him to have gained this protection.  Black tongues.  Whips.  Fingers.  He wasn't fully awake for most of it.  He was poisoned.  Sick and cold and drifting, and mostly all he remembers is a belly-twist of wrongness that he pushes aside.  Most of his brain devotes itself to the Ring, these days.  What came before doesn't much matter.

Crouched on basalt, watching the army move.  Sam burrows down behind him, elf-invisible against the rocks.  Soldiers turn to look at him, and Frodo lifts an arm, bloody and holding the too-heavy scimitar he stole.  And they salute and move on.

Even Sam had to admit that an orc wouldn't do.  Cold and filthy in Cirith Ungol, and Frodo had nothing around him but Sam's cloak.  Only some of the filth on his skin was blood.  He remembered someone coming in and touching him with fingers too narrow to be an orc's.  Spider-whisper voice cracking through his sleep.

He used Sam's knife to do it.  There was one man in the tower, and they had to dig to find him.  A single head wound was the only real damage.  Blood at his temple.  Dragged him into a chamber smelling less like a charnel house, and Sam bathed them.  He doesn't know where Sam found water, nor soap, but he did.  His own shirt provided the cloth.  Both of them bare-chested in the cold, Frodo's back to Sam's chest while Sam washed the worst of the night from him.

Tilting his face while Sam wiped him, turning his lips toward Sam's fingers.  Soft-spoken, "There, my dear, it'll be alright."

The elf-dagger Sam carried was still sharp.  Sam would have done the cutting for him, but Frodo wanted.  He wanted to do it.  Knelt wearing nothing but the Ring and cut.

The skin slides along his own when he shifts, now.  He's bigger wearing it, fiercer.  Mordor opens in front of them, naked rock and dust running up to the volcano.

In the night, Sam peels back his leathers and his skin and strokes Frodo all over.




jane
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