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“How about drinks tonight at the Red Wing?” Paladin had asked.
And now here they were, at what was widely considered the best inn Tuckborough had to offer. Paladin found them a private booth in a back corner, dim, nearly out of reach of the lanterns. He did not object when Frodo positioned himself with his back to the wall, sinking into his seat with relief.
It had been a long walk from Hobbiton.
Paladin ordered drinks for them both, and waved off Frodo’s offer to pay. It wasn’t about the money, Frodo sensed, though of course Paladin Took had plenty of it.
This was confirmed when, as soon as the maid deposited their drinks and whisked away to another table, Paladin ignored his own mug to set his elbows on the table and lean forward, fixing Frodo with a keen stare, with eyes as piercingly green as Pippin’s.
“How are you?”
Just three words, but they summarized everything about what Paladin was trying to do right now, and it unknotted something in Frodo’s heart.
He gripped his own mug with both hands. “You’re not the first hobbit to ask me that, you know,” he said quietly, “but you’re the first hobbit I believe actually means it.”
Paladin smiled knowingly. “The others mean well, but it’s all a bit over their heads. It’s over mine, to tell you the truth. I think Pip’s had it up to the ears with me, tryin’ to get me to understand everything you lot have been up to. I can keep the Shire running well enough, but that doesn’t mean I’ve a head for the politics of Men and Elves.”
“I wish,” Frodo began hesitantly, not wanting to seem ungrateful, “the others would recognize that it’s not about the politics. Not really.”
“And what’s it about?”
Frodo studied his face. So warm, so familiar. Like Pippin, except with age and wisdom etched in the lines around his mouth and eyes. Truth be told, he’d been intimidated of Paladin Took initially. As the Thain, Paladin somehow managed to be well-liked and well-respected despite being arguably the richest and most powerful hobbit in the Shire. But little Pippin became attached to Frodo immediately upon meeting him, and soon trips to Tuckborough were a regular part of Frodo’s life.
Naturally, Paladin was curious about the tween Pippin talked nonstop about. He began inviting Frodo into his study, then occasionally out for walks. Frodo was eager to learn as much as he could about the Thain’s duties, and Paladin was pleased by Frodo’s genuine awe over his deft handling of Shire matters.
“If my son was half as interested in all this as you,” he was wont to say, “I could soon retire.”
Their relationship changed slowly, if Frodo could be so bold to say it, into genuine friendship. As Frodo grew older and became Master of Bag End himself, the difference between their ages seemed nearly inconsequential. Their conversations deepened and respect became mutual.
Frodo had dreaded their first meeting upon his return to the Shire. Surely Paladin would be angry that Frodo had allowed Pippin to leave for so long on such a dangerous Quest, and without a word. But it turned out that he had no need to worry. Pippin had already had a thorough talk with his father.
“He wouldn’t have stayed behind,” Paladin had admitted, “even if you ordered him.”
And now, as before, there was understanding in Paladin’s eyes.
“Frodo?” he prompted.
Frodo blinked, coming back to the present, with the chatter of hobbits in the background, and remembered the question: What’s it about?
What, indeed?
He sighed. “Us, Paladin. It’s about us.”
“Tell me,” he said gently.
Frodo took an awkward sip of his drink. “No doubt you’ve heard all about it from Pippin already.”
“I have,” Paladin said, holding Frodo’s gaze, “but I’m asking about you.”
Frodo squirmed. He could not say quite why he felt so hesitant. Most likely he simply did not want to burden his friend, especially when Paladin himself was still healing from the hurts caused by the Troubles, and from the burden of protecting Tuckborough from Saruman’s Men.
But Paladin had arranged all of this so they could talk, and there he was, waiting so patiently, with his eyes widened slightly to convey just how completely Frodo had his attention.
It lit a warmth in Frodo’s chest, a warmth he was desperate to keep. Taking a deep breath, he stepped off the cliff-edge. “I suppose Pippin has told you about…about the Ring.”
Paladin nodded, quick and encouraging.
“Well, there…there are a lot of, um, politics, as you say, surrounding it. I won’t go into that. But if you’re asking about me…” He glanced up at the ceiling, seeking distance from Paladin’s attentiveness. “It was hard, Paladin. It was so, so hard.”
“It sounded incredibly dangerous.”
“Danger was the least of it. Death would have been a relief.” He caught himself, and hurriedly added: “So I felt, anyway. At the time, I mean.”
“What was so hard, if not the danger?”
Frodo glanced over Paladin’s shoulder, at the bustling inn behind him, full of cheerful hobbits enjoying a well-earned respite after a hard day’s work. “I changed.”
“Yes,” Paladin said softly. “I think we can all see that.”
Frodo flinched, but there was no judgment in Paladin’s eyes. Only concern. Frodo dropped his own eyes down to the table. “Feeling the change as it was happening…I don’t know how to describe it, but it was so…well, in some ways, it was terrifying. In other ways, I suppose it was simply…uncomfortable. But that was difficult enough.”
“What sort of change?”
Frodo closed his eyes. His fingers twitched, remembering the Ring clutched at his chest as he looked at Sméagol, the wretched creature he had once pitied, and cursed him. Then he opened his eyes. “Do you remember,” he began softly, “the first time you saw something bad?”
Paladin tilted his head. “Bad?”
“Yes. Something you knew instinctively was wrong.”
Understanding lit his face. “Oh. Yes. Well, I was just a bairn at the time, too small to play with the older children, but I crept after them anyway. Curious, you know, to see what they were up to. Turns out they were up to mischief. They cornered a smaller child and beat him soundly.”
“Why?”
Paladin shrugged. “Who knows? I ran away in tears. I hadn’t thought hobbits could treat each other like that.”
“It hurt, didn’t it?” Frodo asked quietly. “Seeing something like that?”
“Hurt,” Paladin echoed in thought. “That’s a funny way of putting it, since I wasn’t the one taking the beating. But I suppose you’re right. It did hurt, in a way.”
“Well.” Frodo clenched his jaw. “That was what it felt like. Nearly every day, there was some new evil. Orcs, goblins, evil Men…even the land itself, in places, was corrupted. And it just…” The word was so inadequate. “It just hurt. And I hated…” He narrowed his eyes. “I hated knowing I could never go back and…and be who I used to, before I knew about these things.”
Paladin reached a hand across the table and squeezed Frodo’s wrist. “That’s mighty hard.”
The warmth grew in Frodo’s chest at the reassuring touch. “Has…has Pippin said anything like this?”
“No, not really. But then, you’ve always been better with words than the rest of us.”
Frodo smiled tightly.
“I’ll ask him, though. See if there’s some of this he’d like to say, if only he could figure out how.”
“Thank you.”
Paladin laughed, but there was a strange note to it. “Don’t thank me for asking after my own son.”
Frodo blinked. “Of course. Sorry. I didn’t mean…sorry.”
Paladin drew his hand back, but his expression was gracious. “Well, I suppose you got used to looking after him, didn’t you?”
“I…I did, sir,” Frodo said, speaking with difficulty past the lump in the back of his throat. “As…as long as I could, at any rate.”
“Yes, Pippin said you and Samwise went off on your own.”
Frodo opened his mouth to…to what? To apologize for not taking Pippin with them? But he couldn’t have.
“I wonder,” Paladin said, “if that’s not part of why you’re so changed, as you say.”
Frodo blinked again. “Sorry?”
“Well, you took on a great burden. It sounds like you chose that burden, and we all admire you for it, of course, even if I still can’t say I quite understand it all. But if you chose such a burden, shouldn’t you have known you’d need more help?”
“I—” Words died on Frodo’s tongue. The warmth in his chest began to cool.
But there sat Paladin, looking steadily at him with those green eyes that were so very like Pippin’s. “Why didn’t you come to me?”
“I…I didn’t come to anyone.”
“Yes, and that’s my point.” Paladin sighed deeply. “You went off on your lonesome, on some treacherous adventure, and you did it all without any support. No wonder you’re changed now.”
Frodo’s mouth was still open, but what could he say?
Gandalf warned me against telling others. Yes, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from asking one or two hobbits to accompany him, and besides, Paladin wasn’t likely to put much stock in what the wizard thought.
I didn’t trust any of you. No, that wasn’t quite true.
I didn’t think any of you would actually be any help. Well, yes, but Paladin wouldn’t be happy to hear that.
“It…it wouldn’t have made a difference,” Frodo said at last, a bit desperately.
“Whyever not?” Paladin asked in disbelief. “We hobbits ought to stick together, especially if we’re going to be adventuring out beyond the Shire.”
“Respectfully,” Frodo said with a struggle, “the problem wasn’t that I didn’t have enough hobbits with me.”
Paladin shrugged, disappointment in the slope of his shoulders. “Well, of course, if you’ve decided this thing you endured was something insurmountable, I can see I won’t change your mind on the subject.”
Frodo squirmed in his seat. He should explain. He should try to explain, at the very least, difficult—and painful—though it would be.
Certainly the explanation was, on some level, purely academic: there was evil in the world greater than anything they had ever seen in the Shire, perpetuated by beings of far more power than they could imagine…and there was a magic item, a Ring, that enhanced that evil. It even drew evil out of those who tried to do good.
Academic.
Yes, all he needed to do was keep it academic for himself, while driving the point home to Paladin. He could manage that much, couldn’t he?
He owed it to Paladin, to their friendship, to try.
He cleared his throat. “Do you…do you remember Saruman?”
“Sharkey?”
“Yes, him. He was an evil wizard, you know—”
“I don’t care what he was.” Paladin scowled down at the table. “Now, he was truly evil. If that’s what you’re trying to say, I agree wholeheartedly. Never saw the like of him in the Shire, but at least he’s dead now, and good riddance.”
Frodo tensed. Good riddance. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
Paladin’s head jerked up sharply. “Oh, forgive me, but I forgot. You didn’t do any fighting.”
Frodo flushed, even as the room suddenly became ice-cold. “I…”
“Now, I’m not saying you should have,” Paladin went on, “but maybe you should be a bit slower before you judge the rest of us.”
Frodo pulled back, head spinning somewhat at how the conversation had gotten so turned around. “Judge?”
“Aye, that’s what you’re doing, and it’s not a good look for you.” Paladin’s eyes narrowed. “You may be the Master of Bag End, but you’re not the Thain, and you were gone during the worst of the Troubles anyway. You don’t know what the rest of us were dealing with.”
“I—I don’t need to know what you were dealing with to know Saruman was not a being we had a right to kill.”
Paladin snorted. “See? You are judging us. Well, I should’ve known. You and Bilbo, you’ve always been like that. No, you won’t always say it outright—except hidden in a joke, in Bilbo’s case. You, it was more that you’d go silent, and give the rest of us that look.” His upper lip curled back. “Like you know better than every other hobbit just from something you learned out of a book—”
“Stop.” Frodo felt himself reddening and cursed his fair complexion, cursed that his friend could see so clearly the effect his words were inciting.
“Don’t tell me to stop,” Paladin growled. “You and I, we’ve always been straight with each other. Well, I’m just telling you how it is.”
Frodo clenched his hands under the table. “Am I not allowed to have my own opinion that you’ve done something wrong? Is that what judging is to you?”
Paladin drew himself up. “You can think what you want, of course, except you’ve no right to think we all handled something wrong when you weren’t even here to live through it yourself!”
“But what difference does that make?” Frodo burst out. “Saruman was a wizard, Paladin! He was a creature who lived for ages, thousands of years, and he had power none of us can dream of, and I—I think he was sent here for some good purpose, in the beginning. He fell into corruption, yes, but for all we know, he could have changed—”
“Why are you so eager to defend the likes of him?”
“I’m—I’m not defending him!” How, how had the conversation gone so wrong? “Listen to me, I’m just telling you why I think it was wrong to kill him. And if it was wrong, it’s wrong, regardless of whether I suffered from his hands the same way you did—”
Paladin slammed his hand down onto the table. “And that’s just it, Frodo! You always think you can tell the rest of us what’s right and wrong, and here and now I’m finally telling you I’m done with that.”
Frodo went very still. “I’m sorry.”
Paladin cocked his head. “You are?”
“Yes,” he said as whatever warmth still lingered in his heart died. “I’m sorry that we seem to have had different understandings all this time about what friendship means. You seem to think friendship means constant affirmation. I happen to think it’s rather about holding one another accountable.”
Paladin’s eyes darkened. “When you’re my age—”
Frodo cut him off. “Age has nothing to do with it.”
“Only the youth would say that. You think with your books you’ve got some wisdom the rest of us haven’t, but there’s no teacher like age or experience, and you’d do well to—”
“What about what I’ve experienced?”
Paladin gathered himself. “My dear young Frodo, clearly you experienced…well, something out there. I’m not discounting that. But please understand, I’m trying to be patient with you right now. I recognize you wouldn’t be saying all this about Sharkey if you’d seen the sort of evil he was up to. That’s real evil right there, you know. But no,” he said with a shake of his head, “you don’t know. And that’s my point.”
Frodo slumped down in his chair. “I see.”
“Do you?”
Frodo stared at the ridge of the table. There was no point in speaking. Let Paladin think what he wanted.
It didn’t matter anymore.
“I can see you don’t,” Paladin muttered. “Don’t do this thing you do where you pull away from the rest of us. I know it must be easy enough when you get such pleasure from books, but your books won’t be there for you when—”
“Can I beg one thing of you?” Frodo asked exhaustedly. “Not another word about my books.”
Paladin’s face tightened. “Well,” he began, and there was something new in his voice now—a warning edge that, once, would have made Frodo anxious to think he might have done something wrong.
There was no anxiety now.
It didn’t matter what Paladin thought.
Paladin sat even taller than before, with all the righteous authority of the Thain. “If you think whatever evil you experienced out there was so terrible that it should give you the right to ride back into the Shire to cast judgment on the rest of us, then I have to question what right you think you had to drag Peregrin along with you.”
Frodo felt like he’d been slapped. He sat upright. “Pippin?”
A spark flashed in Paladin’s eyes. “He’s changed too, you know. Not as bad as you, mind, but bad enough.”
“I didn’t…” Frodo couldn’t breathe. “You said you understood! You said he wouldn’t have stayed behind, even had I ordered him!”
“But did you even try?” Paladin snapped.
“How could you…” Frodo trailed off. The cold in his chest was replaced by heat, the scorching heat of heartbreak. “Paladin, please, do you…do you even know me at all?”
Paladin took a long drink from his mug. “Not anymore, Frodo. Not anymore.”
Frodo shoved his chair back into the wall and stood up, heart pounding.
Paladin stared up at him, unmoving, with pain and defiance pinching his mouth.
Without a word, Frodo turned on his heel. Head down, he used his shoulders to push a path through the crowd of drunken hobbits filling the inn. All were too drunk to realize anything was amiss. A few called out, laughing, for Frodo to join them for a round or a game. None seemed to even notice when Frodo failed to acknowledge their requests.
He burst out the front door, drawing a hissing breath as the night air stung his heated cheeks.
It didn’t matter. None of it. It didn’t.
The road was quiet. He was alone, so alone, and so far from Bag End. He should never have come here.
He should have known.
How? How could he have known what Paladin really thought of him? Was this what Paladin really thought of him? Or was this just words, flung out in cruelty like knives, but only because Paladin felt embattled? Perhaps tomorrow he would apologize…perhaps, when both their heads were cooler, Paladin would take it all back….
Frodo wrapped his arms tightly around himself. What difference would that make? He could never again look into Paladin’s green eyes and not hear the accusations.
Or was he being unfair? He had given such mercy to Sméagol and even to Saruman. Should he not extend a second chance to Paladin, even after—
“Mr. Frodo?”
Frodo whipped around, eyes flying wide in amazement. There stood Sam in the inn’s doorway. “Whatever are you doing here?” he blurted out.
Stepping outside, Sam shut the door behind him, eyes searching Frodo’s face. “One of Rosie’s brothers got a job out here.”
“In Tuckborough?” Frodo asked stupidly, not quite able to believe Sam wasn’t some sort of strange vision.
“Well, yes, and I thought I’d visit him, see,” Sam explained. His words were matter-of-fact, but there was nothing matter-of-fact about the concern in his eyes. “Are you all right?”
Frodo swallowed hard.
“I saw you in there speakin’ with Mr. Took, and then I looked away for just one moment, and suddenly you were tearing out of there like you was on fire. What happened?”
What happened, indeed?
I was a fool. I should have seen this coming. I overreacted. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m insane. Of course I’m insane, after everything….
“C’mere.” Sam’s hands settled, sure and steady, on Frodo’s shoulders. He pulled him around the side of the inn, into the shadows away from lamplight and moonlight alike. “Tell me.”
“Sam…” Frodo’s voice broke.
Without another word, Sam drew him in close. Arms wrapped around him and Frodo shuddered in Sam’s warmth.
“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered. “Whatever happened in there, I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Frodo bit out, the words muffled by Sam’s shoulders.
“I’m thinkin’ it does,” Sam said in a low voice that rumbled in his chest. “To you, anyway.”
“It shouldn’t,” Frodo said fiercely, still shuddering. “He’s wrong. I know he’s wrong. Nothing he said even made any sense! I don’t agree with any of it and it wasn’t even reasonable and—”
“Who’re you trying to convince right now, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“It just—” Frodo pulled back, stared at Sam’s face, tried to find the words.
“Tell me,” Sam repeated quietly.
Frodo closed his eyes. “It hurts.”