Disclaimer: I don't own, and the world is grateful.

Starring: Frodo/Sam

Author's Note: Because I haven't written LOTR in forever.

Summary: Sam Gamgee made a promise and he'll see it through.

Sam is panicking. He's been fretting and doubting and worrying over everything – have they got enough rope, how much lembas is left at the bottom of the rucksack, how far they can hobble until that cloudburst breaks and keeping an eye out on the horizon for the ring wraiths. He also worries about Frodo, how much sleep he's getting, how he drinks only because Sam pushes the waterskin into his hands, and how the looks Gollum casts over him are getting darker and sneakier. Frodo can't see these things because all he knows is the fire and the doom that is slowly choking all the life out of him.

Frodo is dying. He's dying and Sam can't do anything about it. He won't lighten the load and Sam has learned not to ask (he'd never actually want to keep the thing afterall, just wrap it in old faded woolens and stuff it deep down in Frodo's rucksack), he refuses to sleep – or can't anymore because Frodo is seeing things in the space between waking and dreaming, and he sits a little ways away from him and whispers with Gollum. The land that they're walking through is bad enough, nothing grows, nothing lives.

Sam is not sure how he's going to save him. He isn't sure if there is anything left of Frodo to save. Sam isn't sure that Frodo even wants to be saved anymore because his friend is changing in ways that he can't. He's begun to take risks, silly risks that could get all of them killed because he finally starting to snap and listen to whatever lies that ring is telling him.

He knows that this is the end; that he will never ever dance with Rosie Cotton again, or feel dirt between his fingers as he helps Gaffer in the garden or the smell of paper in the Baggins's study. He will never see the Shire again. He is going to die here – whether in his sleep by Gollum's hands, or by some sort of monster, or dare he even think it, by Frodo's own hands. He's never once thought about how he could avoid it because that would mean leaving Frodo and that is not an option.

Sam Gamgee made a promise and he'll see it through.