Chapter Text
This is a story that should never have been written. It is not a tale of bravery but of caution. Perhaps even cowardice. This is a story about hobbit stubbornness, adaptability, sensibilities… and how they doomed us all. The world hung on a single turning point. One thread in the great tapestry of fate had the tinniest of kinks. It dragged when it should have passed through smoothly. After all, Eru Ilúvatar sang his children awake with free will ringing in their ears.
The year is 2941 when Bilbo Baggins gains a golden ring. It is 3001 when Gandalf convinces Bilbo to leave the very same ring to his adopted heir Frodo Baggins.
Bilbo had used the magic ring for silly little things. The occasional prank of crotchety Otho and his wife Lobelia, startling a flock of chickens out on the green, little things like that. If you were to ask young Frodo, Otho and Lobelia deserved it. Especially after she tried to steal the lovely smial Bag End time and time again. As the years passed Bilbo Baggins used the ring more and more. That is not so strange as the old soul always longed for adventure and there is not much to do in the sleepy little Shire. When Frodo inherited Bag End (and kicked the hobbits out who were trying to loot the place down to the studs in the search for old Bilbo’s fabled treasure hoard) he also inherited Bilbo’s will and his golden ring set atop the mantle. Gandalf came by and instructed young Frodo, who had just turned 33 and become an adult, to “use the ring seldomly.” Seldomly, however, is not never.
Gandalf came and Gandalf went as wizards were wont to do. He would stop by at strange times through the years before vanishing all together. Gandalf was never fully trusted by the hobbits of the Shire, though he was tolerated more than most Big Folk, so it was somewhat of a relief when the elderly wizard finally stopped pestering the poor hobbits. The Shire had nine peaceful years without any wizardly ruckus, thank you very much.
One day in early April of 3018, Gandalf returned once more to the Shire. He promptly fell asleep. There was quite a dramatic morning, however, when Gandalf finally decided to verify what he had learned the previous year, that is in March of 3017, and cast Frodo’s golden ring into the fire. Many stories were told then of the dreadful Dark Lord Sauron and his golden Ring. The One Ring that Sauron had made himself, that he had poured so much of his own power into. A Ring that was his greatest masterpiece, that Sauron had thought utterly destroyed. Stories were told of Gollum whom Bilbo Baggins had spared and how Gollum had been questioned by Sauron himself in Mordor where the shadows lie. The truth had come out and now Sauron was relentlessly searching for his greatest masterpiece, searching for “hobbits” and “the Shire.”
Plans were made for Frodo Baggins and the eavesdropping Samwise Gamgee to set out come late September of 3018. Quite a significant delay. Gandalf stayed with Frodo for two months before trotting off into the world once more. Things might have gone very differently had Gandalf told the hobbits about doubling the Rangers protecting the Shire, or even that there were Rangers in the first place. Alas, wizards are not the best at communicating. All Frodo knew was that Gandalf had simply up and left one sunny June afternoon leaving Frodo all by himself with the magic Ring.
Frodo Baggins stepped outside of his cozy little smial and sat down on the lush green grass covering his roof. He pulled a pipe from his shirt pocket and tapped some pipeweed into it. Firmly gripping the stem between his teeth he lit the pipe and drew in a deep breath. Everything that had happened recently was quite bewildering. Was he really going to sell Bag End so he could go gallivanting off into the world to destroy a ring, or rather the Ring? It was such a pretty little thing, he thought as he pulled it out to admire it as it shone in the sun. It was masterfully well made, silky smooth to the touch with not a single blemish marring its surface.
Frodo sat and had a good long think. The longer he sat the more he thought, and the more he thought the longer he sat. Clouds of pungent smoke spiraled around him as he sat and stroked the golden Ring.
Lobelia destroyed and tried to steal so many of his things. He had had to tackle her before she left the door those seventeen years ago and reclaimed his mother's fine teacups... one of the few items he had left to remember Primula. She drowned when Frodo was but twelve. The gourmand Rorimac Brandybuck, Master of Buckland, had taken care of him for nine long years before kind Bilbo took him in.
He thought and thought and thought some more. Finally he thought a small thought. A quiet, traitorous, thought.
It's not right to destroy someone else's stuff.
A pause. “No,” he said, “I suppose it isn’t.”
He slid his finger round and round on the rim of the gold Ring as he closed his eyes and thought. Sauron is actively looking for the Ring, he thought. It is his dearest possession. He wants nothing more than the One Ring’s safe return. Gandalf had said that Sauron would enslave the hobbits for revenge. Revenge for keeping something precious from him. Isildur had chopped the finger off Sauron’s hand but it was Sméagol who had kept the Ring hidden for so many years. It was Bilbo who had kept it and used it for another sixty years and Frodo himself who had had it for another seventeen years.
If enslavement is the revenge for keeping the Ring from Lord Sauron… what might a reward for the return of the Ring be?
Gandalf had said that Sauron wanted control. Not destruction, not devastation, but control. It had been quite some time but the Shire was ruled by the kings of Arthedain for over a thousand years. Did it really matter which of the Big Folk ruled it?
Lord Sauron controls the orcs, the goblins, all the things that go bump in the night. He could protect the Shire better than anyone else.
Would the Bounders even be needed? Every year Bounders died protecting the Shire from ravaging animals and hostile men. What if every Bounder lived to see the summer. What if Men treated Hobbits with respect. What if…
Even the wizard is hesitant to go against Lord Sauron.
Gandalf had said that he would help bear this burden… but he is not here.
Olórin… Gandalf has left again. He may not return for years to come. After all what is a decade or two to a wizard?
A dark shadow seem to stretch across the knoll where Frodo sat. It lingered on each blade of grass and pooled around him. Frodo wrapped his arms around his chest for warmth and looked up to the sky. Not a single cloud marred the beautiful blue of an August morning.
How strange, he thought, how very strange.