Frodo Baggins (theseabell) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-06-22 09:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, frodo baggins, merrill, samwise gamgee |
Who: Samwise, Frodo, and Merrill
When: Last Week
Where: Baggins Home
What: Samwise visits to discuss the dreams he’s had
Rating/Warnings: PG
Status: Complete
trying</i> to avoid them, but he was still trying to figure out exactly what the dreams meant. After all, not only had he dreamt about being Mr. Baggins’ gardener in The Shire, but he wasn’t exactly human either. It was all just so much to process.
He hadn’t even intended on telling Mr. Frodo about his dream, but it happened to come up that he’d had a dream and that was all he’d said before clamming up and making an excuse about needing to get back to work. Now, he was standing at the front door, about to go in and actually talk about the dreams. Taking a deep breath, Sam rang the bell.
Frodo’s heart jumped inside his chest and he clutched at his shirt for a moment, catching his breath. Carson, the butler, had been given the day off. Sybil and Mary were busy with school and work, respectively. Apart from the three--four, including little Samwise--the house would be an empty, safe place to discuss everything. “I should get the door,” he said, waving a bit, as his looked over his shoulder at Merrill.
Merrill raised an eyebrow. She supposed after marrying a man so much older than her that she should be used to him clutching his chest, but it was a bit disturbing. "I'd better come with you. Make sure you don't faint," she said, teasing affectionately. She reached out to brush his elbow.
As he waited, Sam got the sudden urge to turn and leave and then make up some excuse later. Just because he’d rung the bell didn’t mean that they knew it was him. Didn’t kids still play ding dong ditch? Okay, so maybe they didn’t actually, but Sam could still get back in his truck and leave before Carson or Frodo or Merrill or someone else answered the door. If asked what he was afraid of, Sam couldn’t tell you. He just knew that he was extremely nervous about the prospect of this conversation and he didn’t know why.
Merrill, as always, was Frodo’s security blanket. The simple touch at his elbow calmed him more than comfort food and drink ever could. He took a breath and let it out, and began to walk to the door.
Less than a minute later, the door was opening.
As the door started opening any thoughts of leaving left Sam’s head and he stood there, watching as Frodo or Mr. Frodo, as he called him in the dreams, appeared in the doorway, “Hi, Mr. Baggins.” It was strange, being there, that close to the other man after the dreams. Sam might have been his gardener in the dreams, but it was clear from the way they interacted that they were friends as well.
The hardest part for Frodo, or what he at least anticipated would be very difficult, was knowing that Sam’s dreams would not come all at once. No one’s did. And that meant he would still have to hold many memories and stories back from him. He would still have to keep secrets. They’d gone through too much for Sam to handle all at once.
He stood in the doorway and gulped. “Hello, Sam,” he said. It was all he seemed able to say. Frodo looked sideways as his wife for a little help.
Oh, boys. Standing there so stiff, the both of them. Merrill leaned out, wrapping one arm around Sam's back like he was family already. "Sam, come inside!" she insisted. She had been trying to get Frodo to invite Sam over for dinner for some time, even before Sam started dreaming.
“Thank you, Mrs. Baggins,” Sam said as he stepped inside. He shouldn’t have been nervous, considering he’d been at the house on multiple occasions, but this was not like those other times when he’d come over to work in the garden. Of course, he wasn’t exactly sure how this should go.
Frodo stayed back to closed the door and collected himself before following them into the kitchen. He scolded himself for being a bad host. “I am sorry it took us so long to get around to finally sitting down together,” he said, stepping into the kitchen, where all the food was waiting. Gently, he patted the top of baby Samwise’s head as it emerged from the sling across Merrill’s chest. “As you can imagine, we’ve had our hands full.”
Merrill smiled, always charmed when Frodo played with the baby. The happy gurgling noises their son made indicated he was pleased, too. "Please, call me Merrill," she told Sam. She wanted them to be friends!
“No, it’s fine. I understand.” Sam knew that they had been busy with the new baby, so he didn’t blame them for not having time to invite him in for dinner or anything. He glanced at the baby, who had been named after him. It was still a little strange, but he supposed he understood now, “Right. Merrill.”
Yes, the issue of the name had been a concern of Frodo's the moment Sam appeared. He watched the way he looked at the baby and swallowed. "I suppose it came as a bit of a shock that we'd chosen Samwise as a name." It was not a common one, after all.
Sam nodded in response, “Yeah, it kind of was. I mean, Sam is one thing, but Samwise is really uncommon.” Exactly where his parents had come up with the name, Sam still wasn’t really sure. It was such a strange, old and uncommon name that he could only imagine that they’d seen it in a book somewhere or something. “But, he is named after me, right?” He’d realized that much the moment he’d woken up from the dreams about The Shire and Bilbo’s birthday party.
Merrill nodded. "He's named after you. Frodo--" she stopped, realizing maybe she should let her husband speak for himself, rather than telling Sam how important he was to Frodo. Merrill had a bad habit of blurting out 'spoilers' before people were ready for them, especially when she got excited. "I'm sorry. I should have waited until you were ready." Those weren't exactly the thoughts at the front of her mind at the time, though.
"I was so excited when I saw you on the network!" Merrill confessed. "I'm glad my son will get to know the person he's named after." Sam wasn't just a person in Frodo's dreams anymore.
Frodo touched his wife’s back to let her know everything was okay, and that he thought she was adorable even when she was running at the mouth. He nodded at Sam, sitting across from him. “Yes, he’s named after you.” Just like you named one of your sons after me. But he wouldn’t say that out loud, of course. “How much have you seen, in your dreams?”
Sam listened to Merrill, not really sure how he was supposed to respond; at least not until Frodo spoke. That question was easier to respond to without having to think of the right thing to say, “I’ve dreamt of The Shire. And my family there. Of Merry and Pippin. Your uncle’s birthday party and being your gardener.” Out of all the things he could have been in the dreams, he had to be a gardener there too.
Frodo found himself stop short of reacting and then realized just how much he’d hoped Sam dreamed just a little more. He knew nothing of the Ring or the Fellowship, he certainly didn’t know about Mount Doom. Frodo had hoped the burden of memory would be lessened by the sharing of it, but apparently it would not be so. Not yet.
And then he felt a bit guilty for wanting Sam to remember all those horrible things.
Frodo swallowed and tried to latch on to something happy. “Merry and Pippin, eh? Getting into trouble of some sort, I’m sure.”
Sam nodded, “I think they may have set off a giant dragon firework at the party.” He was fairly certain it had been them, because he recalled seeing them both covered in soot afterwards. It was strange to think that he had memories of both his real life and now these dreams. They weren’t like normal dreams where he’d wake up and they’d be fuzzy and he couldn’t really remember them later. They had been so real and he’d remembered them vividly when he’d woken up from them.
“Oh!” Merrill remembered seeing something like that while she was awake, courtesy of Gandalf. “Like at Fourth of July?” she asked Frodo. She couldn’t help smiling. She and Frodo weren’t dating by that point, but they were both at the party, and they’d been thinking of each other--at least, she liked to think they were.
“Gandalf was famous for his fireworks in both worlds,” Frodo replied. He reached over a gave baby Samwise a caress on the top of his head. What little hair he had seemed to be curling. He turned back to the adult Sam and tilted his head. “Actually, Merry owns a business here, but he lives in Texas, now. He goes back and forth, but not as often as he used to.”
Sam nodded, "I saw Gandalf on the network right after I had the dream. It was...bizarre, to recognize him just from a post on a message board. But I knew it was him." This whole situation was bizarre, but Sam was going to have to get used to it, "Really? Did he have the dreams too?" Was there another person out there that knew him that he didn't know?
Frodo nodded. “He did. But... as you may see later, Merry and Pippin had a path to follow that was very different than our own. He and I parted ways early in the story.” In fact, he had Sam had been utterly alone on their journey, but Frodo wasn’t sure how much he should share just yet.
Sam nodded once again, trying to follow what Frodo was saying, "So, how often do these dreams happen now? Is there any way to stop them?" Not that he was saying that he wanted to, but it was a valid question and he wanted to know a much about the dreams as he could.
Frodo, however, didn't quite take Sam's meaning. To him, it sounded like his old friend might be hoping for a way out. He felt concerned, and a little hurt, but he swallowed his pride. "They seem to come in bursts, and they come and go. I think one thing everyone agrees upon is that there's no controlling them."
“So, I might not have another one for months? Or I could have another one tonight.” Sam was silent for a few moments as he thought about this then looked back across at Mr. Baggins, “Are you still dreaming?” If anything, the man across from him could tell him everything that happens in the dreams since it sounded like they shared quite a few, if he wasn’t mistaken.
Frodo swallowed. There was a small lump forming in his throat. “I am. From time to time. Occasionally the old dreams repeat themselves.”
Merrill tilted her head. "I haven't had a new dream in a while," she said. "It's been mostly reruns." It sounded funny in her accent. "They aren't all bad, though."
Sam glanced over at Merrill, “Are you...do you have the same dreams?” He hadn’t seen her in the dreams, but then again it had really only been one, so it was entirely possible that she was somewhere in the dreams.
“The same as yours? Oh, no,” Merrill answered. “Elves are much different in my dreams.” And it was fairly obvious from her pointy ears that she was an elf, if someone considered elves a possibility. “People don’t like us very much in Thedas.” She shrugged, not too bothered by it. Frodo had said that people in Middle-earth thought elves were beautiful and wise. In Thedas, the prevailing belief was that elves were dirty and poor. But in her dreams, Merrill had bigger problems to worry about.
Frodo reached over and held Merrill’s hand all the same. He could sense the things that troubled her, the things she wasn’t saying now. “No, Merrill and I are from different worlds... if that’s the way you want to look at it. I know it’s probably very troubling, Sam, to think you had a life before this one, but that is essentially what these dreams are about.”
Sam’s brows rose slightly at the mention of elves. He had noticed Merrill’s ears before, but only after he’d had his own dream. Somehow he hadn’t noticed them before that. It was a little confusing as to why someone wouldn’t like someone like Merrill, because from the first day he’d come to the house, he’d liked her quite a lot and that wasn’t going to change now that he knew she was an elf, “So, it’s like we forgot and now we’re remembering?” He wasn’t sure if it was troubling or just really confusing.
Merrill squeezed Frodo’s hand lightly and gave him a small smile before turning back to Sam. “Sort of,” she agreed. “But you don’t have to think of it like that just yet.” It would likely come with time. It was an easier realization for some than others. Merrill had taken rather quickly to the idea her world, in part because she had Hawke to anchor her. She hoped Frodo could do that for Sam.
Again, he couldn’t read Merrill’s exact thoughts, but his own were quite the same. His connection with Sam had been so strong in their old world. Here, he felt like he was looking into the wide eyes of a child, so confused and unsure. He felt for him, truly; and Frodo knew he would do everything he could to help him through this challenging time. And the even more difficult dreams that would follow all too soon.