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Because everyone should have a f/s story
Rooted
G
Summary: And love is like a seed that grows in the longest winter.
The first time I saw him, I was learning how to plant my first sapling. My Gaffer was still young then, impossibly strong to his son's eyes. We were tending the borders of Bag End and as usual, my Gaffer turned my casual play in the dirt into a lesson.
"Now look, lad, when you plant a tree it's for a long time. You've got to be thorough. Not throwing down like corn seeds."
"Yes, sir."
I watched his hands in the earth. Some say the Gamgees were born from the earth that's how good he was and his father before him. But it's not quite that. We've just all learned how to listen. It's impossible to really make a garden great if you don't listen.
In any case, I was planting that sapling when I heard a clatter and looked up to see a carriage coming down the lane, being led by two strong ponies. At the reigns was a smiling man, who bore a slight resemblance to Mister Baggins and a lovely woman who was laughing gaily about something. The carriage stopped short outside the gates and the man descended to help the lady out.
Some folks will try and tell you that I was too young to remember this. I was wee lad of only five or six at the time, but clear as day I can see the lady moving to the back and plucking a smiling child from the back. He ran up to the gate and opened it, wild dark brown hair rioting every which way. Perhaps he saw me out of the corner of his eyes because he stopped his crazed run to the door and stared at me.
I can't imagine what he saw, a great child of ten looking at a near infant, who was covered in dirt and brown as a nut from too much time in the sun. Our gazes held for a long minute until his mother called for him to hurry up. After he left, I returned to planting and for the first time, I knew what to listen for.
The second time I saw him, I was ten or so. I had started to help the Gaffer with his daily rounds and I could see the proud figure I worshiped was beginning to bend and falter. I took on the menial chores. Things that could be handled by a child without too much worry. I was finishing up watering the flowers on the North side of Bag End when I heard again the clattering of a carriage.
He was alone this time and the wild joy of his childhood was already gone. Pale skin stained with tears, tousled curls hung low and unbrushed and blue eyes clouded with tears, he stumbled out of the carriage himself. Mister Baggins emerged from the house and together they unloaded his possessions from the rear.
I did not have the words then or the right to go to his aid, but even then I could feel it stirring in my breast, another type of seedling. He'd come to live here, with Bilbo, I found when I reported the sighting to my Gaffer an hour or so later. And his parents were dead. I could not imagine not waking up to my mom's porridge or working without the Gaffer nearby. For a child, the thought was so terrifying that I nearly wept in sympathy for the boy's plight.
For the first few weeks, I rarely saw him and got the feeling he had locked himself away in a room. I tried to be quiet when I tended the plants around the window of the guest bedroom I knew he had taken. Once, I thought I heard him crying, but it might have only been the wind howling through the knotted tree.
Then he emerged, into the sunlight, book in hand and a determined look on his face. At that moment I was clearing away weeds from the young trees on the border, including the one I had planted five years ago. I could feel his eyes on me as he settled down with the oversized tome. He always read books that were larger then his slight frame could handle, overwhelming his lap until it looked as if he might just crawl in to be among the characters.
He liked to come out of the house when the Gaffer and I were there. We had other houses to tend, but none with such extensive gardens, so we worked there first in the morning before the sun grew too hot. After a while, I could count on his quiet arrivals and grew used to the sounds of thick parchment pages turning and the creaking of a leather spine.
"What are you doing?" Were the first words he spoke to me, one May morning. His voice was low and sweet, a little cracked from disuse.
"Pruning the bushes, so's they don't overrun the place, Mr. Frodo."
"Mr. Frodo?"
"Well, I can't very well call you, Mr. Baggins. That'd be awfully confusing."
He gave me a weak grin and nodded at my pruning sheers.
"Isn't it harmful to cut it back so much?"
"Oh, no! It's important to prune carefully. Cut back the dead or sick pieces, so that it grows even healthier." I wiped the sweat off my forehead with a gloved hand. "And these bushes really will just keep going until they own the place."
"Bilbo says your the Gaffer's son."
"Ai. Samwise Gamgee at your service."
"Samwise..."
"Oh, everyone just calls me, Sam." I fidgeted under his steady gaze and turned back to my pruning. But from then on, when he came out with his books, he called me Sam and asked politely after my family.
I couldn't tell you when we became friends. If that's what we really ever were. He may have thought I was just being formal when I told him I was at his service, but it was as real an oath as I had ever made. Anything he ever asked of me, silent or spoken, thought or unuttered even in his mind, I gave. The two seeds planted, the sapling in his garden and the one in my heart grew strong, roots twisting ever deeper into fertile soil.
At some point, I began to cook for him. Bilbo loved his ward and took good care of him, even going so far as to include me in his story tellings and teaching me to read when he saw that Frodo had taken a liking to me. But he didn't always remember things and he was a bit scattered as he grew older. By then, I was fifteen and Bag End was my job. I spent the whole morning there while the Gaffer attended other properties. In the afternoons, I was free, but more often then not, I was cooking in the cozy kitchen, neatening up the bookshelves while all the time, Frodo was close and we talked to wile away the long green days.
It wasn't very surprising that after Bilbo disappeared, I became the sole servant of Bag End. I did everything from cook to garden to clean and do laundry. It was glorious. The Gaffer never said a word when I went out to the pub with the man who was supposed to be my master or when I started sleeping there occasionally if I had noticed Frodo seeming especially sad or talkative when I went to leave.
Then there was a long space of a dark year. I don't have the words to describe the quest or my own part in it. That is for him to tell in his dark scribbling. I don't want to think about hard days over harsh landscape when our hope slowly faded and I lost entirely the boys we had once been. We came back old to the Shire. We came back tired and ready for a long sleep.
The last time I saw him, he was on the boat. He had smiled at me and made promises of a reunion one long far away day. As I held him close and the love that I had nourished for so long swelled so much I could barely breath, I knew that I had to see him again. Even if it meant learning to swim and getting to the Havens that way.
"I love you, Mr. Frodo." I whispered as he turned to leave. I was sure he couldn't have heard me. But he did, in the way that he has always heard my silence.
"How else would I have survived?" He asked softly. He reached out one last time and we held hands for a long time. "You have to know that I love you too, Sam. Since the day you were a knee-high among the weeds."
"No." I shook my head. "I was never...I didn't know."
"Well then, now you know and not a moment to soon."
His lips were soft against mine, a soft breeze filled me with the earthy smell of him and then he was gone, slipping onto the boat and out of my life. I know I will see him again. The tree still grows in Bag End, reaching towards the heavens. I love him in his absence and when I find him again on those brilliant shores, we will finally have time to forget our roles and our troubles, to set aside the ugliness of our adult lives. Together we will be children again, in love and filled with joy.
G
Summary: And love is like a seed that grows in the longest winter.
The first time I saw him, I was learning how to plant my first sapling. My Gaffer was still young then, impossibly strong to his son's eyes. We were tending the borders of Bag End and as usual, my Gaffer turned my casual play in the dirt into a lesson.
"Now look, lad, when you plant a tree it's for a long time. You've got to be thorough. Not throwing down like corn seeds."
"Yes, sir."
I watched his hands in the earth. Some say the Gamgees were born from the earth that's how good he was and his father before him. But it's not quite that. We've just all learned how to listen. It's impossible to really make a garden great if you don't listen.
In any case, I was planting that sapling when I heard a clatter and looked up to see a carriage coming down the lane, being led by two strong ponies. At the reigns was a smiling man, who bore a slight resemblance to Mister Baggins and a lovely woman who was laughing gaily about something. The carriage stopped short outside the gates and the man descended to help the lady out.
Some folks will try and tell you that I was too young to remember this. I was wee lad of only five or six at the time, but clear as day I can see the lady moving to the back and plucking a smiling child from the back. He ran up to the gate and opened it, wild dark brown hair rioting every which way. Perhaps he saw me out of the corner of his eyes because he stopped his crazed run to the door and stared at me.
I can't imagine what he saw, a great child of ten looking at a near infant, who was covered in dirt and brown as a nut from too much time in the sun. Our gazes held for a long minute until his mother called for him to hurry up. After he left, I returned to planting and for the first time, I knew what to listen for.
The second time I saw him, I was ten or so. I had started to help the Gaffer with his daily rounds and I could see the proud figure I worshiped was beginning to bend and falter. I took on the menial chores. Things that could be handled by a child without too much worry. I was finishing up watering the flowers on the North side of Bag End when I heard again the clattering of a carriage.
He was alone this time and the wild joy of his childhood was already gone. Pale skin stained with tears, tousled curls hung low and unbrushed and blue eyes clouded with tears, he stumbled out of the carriage himself. Mister Baggins emerged from the house and together they unloaded his possessions from the rear.
I did not have the words then or the right to go to his aid, but even then I could feel it stirring in my breast, another type of seedling. He'd come to live here, with Bilbo, I found when I reported the sighting to my Gaffer an hour or so later. And his parents were dead. I could not imagine not waking up to my mom's porridge or working without the Gaffer nearby. For a child, the thought was so terrifying that I nearly wept in sympathy for the boy's plight.
For the first few weeks, I rarely saw him and got the feeling he had locked himself away in a room. I tried to be quiet when I tended the plants around the window of the guest bedroom I knew he had taken. Once, I thought I heard him crying, but it might have only been the wind howling through the knotted tree.
Then he emerged, into the sunlight, book in hand and a determined look on his face. At that moment I was clearing away weeds from the young trees on the border, including the one I had planted five years ago. I could feel his eyes on me as he settled down with the oversized tome. He always read books that were larger then his slight frame could handle, overwhelming his lap until it looked as if he might just crawl in to be among the characters.
He liked to come out of the house when the Gaffer and I were there. We had other houses to tend, but none with such extensive gardens, so we worked there first in the morning before the sun grew too hot. After a while, I could count on his quiet arrivals and grew used to the sounds of thick parchment pages turning and the creaking of a leather spine.
"What are you doing?" Were the first words he spoke to me, one May morning. His voice was low and sweet, a little cracked from disuse.
"Pruning the bushes, so's they don't overrun the place, Mr. Frodo."
"Mr. Frodo?"
"Well, I can't very well call you, Mr. Baggins. That'd be awfully confusing."
He gave me a weak grin and nodded at my pruning sheers.
"Isn't it harmful to cut it back so much?"
"Oh, no! It's important to prune carefully. Cut back the dead or sick pieces, so that it grows even healthier." I wiped the sweat off my forehead with a gloved hand. "And these bushes really will just keep going until they own the place."
"Bilbo says your the Gaffer's son."
"Ai. Samwise Gamgee at your service."
"Samwise..."
"Oh, everyone just calls me, Sam." I fidgeted under his steady gaze and turned back to my pruning. But from then on, when he came out with his books, he called me Sam and asked politely after my family.
I couldn't tell you when we became friends. If that's what we really ever were. He may have thought I was just being formal when I told him I was at his service, but it was as real an oath as I had ever made. Anything he ever asked of me, silent or spoken, thought or unuttered even in his mind, I gave. The two seeds planted, the sapling in his garden and the one in my heart grew strong, roots twisting ever deeper into fertile soil.
At some point, I began to cook for him. Bilbo loved his ward and took good care of him, even going so far as to include me in his story tellings and teaching me to read when he saw that Frodo had taken a liking to me. But he didn't always remember things and he was a bit scattered as he grew older. By then, I was fifteen and Bag End was my job. I spent the whole morning there while the Gaffer attended other properties. In the afternoons, I was free, but more often then not, I was cooking in the cozy kitchen, neatening up the bookshelves while all the time, Frodo was close and we talked to wile away the long green days.
It wasn't very surprising that after Bilbo disappeared, I became the sole servant of Bag End. I did everything from cook to garden to clean and do laundry. It was glorious. The Gaffer never said a word when I went out to the pub with the man who was supposed to be my master or when I started sleeping there occasionally if I had noticed Frodo seeming especially sad or talkative when I went to leave.
Then there was a long space of a dark year. I don't have the words to describe the quest or my own part in it. That is for him to tell in his dark scribbling. I don't want to think about hard days over harsh landscape when our hope slowly faded and I lost entirely the boys we had once been. We came back old to the Shire. We came back tired and ready for a long sleep.
The last time I saw him, he was on the boat. He had smiled at me and made promises of a reunion one long far away day. As I held him close and the love that I had nourished for so long swelled so much I could barely breath, I knew that I had to see him again. Even if it meant learning to swim and getting to the Havens that way.
"I love you, Mr. Frodo." I whispered as he turned to leave. I was sure he couldn't have heard me. But he did, in the way that he has always heard my silence.
"How else would I have survived?" He asked softly. He reached out one last time and we held hands for a long time. "You have to know that I love you too, Sam. Since the day you were a knee-high among the weeds."
"No." I shook my head. "I was never...I didn't know."
"Well then, now you know and not a moment to soon."
His lips were soft against mine, a soft breeze filled me with the earthy smell of him and then he was gone, slipping onto the boat and out of my life. I know I will see him again. The tree still grows in Bag End, reaching towards the heavens. I love him in his absence and when I find him again on those brilliant shores, we will finally have time to forget our roles and our troubles, to set aside the ugliness of our adult lives. Together we will be children again, in love and filled with joy.