Birthday Present
by Bec
Author's Website: http://mix.eccentrica.org/bec
Category: Romance, Drama, Other, Angst
Characters: Gollum other characters
Warnings: Character Death, No Happy Ending, Hurt/No Comfort,
Graphic Violence
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "Because it's my birthday, my love, and I wants it".
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Feedback: is nearly as good as pears and toast.
Story Notes: Sméagol/Déagol, based on this passage
from FotR: (http://www.mix.eccentrica.org/bec/stories/deagol.html).
Dagol liked pears and could always tell, by pressing the
squat bases, whether they were ripe or not. He maintained that a
pear was only ripe for about five minutes of its existence, and
that it was a terrible shame not to capture that delicious slice
of time between his teeth.
He liked hot buttered toast and made tall stacks of the stuff
nearly every night, and burned his fingers, like as not, for he
made it in an unconventional way, spearing a piece of bread and
a pat of butter on separate toasting forks, so that the fire
browned and crisped the bread while it melted the butter. It
dripped slowly at first, hissing when it fell into the embers,
and then in a long pale stream of liquid it bathed the toast and
sank into the warm grain. Sometimes Dagol's small fingers
faltered in plucking the toast off the fork, and they touched
the hot, hot metal.
Smagol laughed at him, his downcast eyes bright, peering up
through his short lashes for once, and he took Dagol's burnt
fingers into his mouth, two, three at a time.
Together they devoured the stacks of toast, slathering each
piece with fruit preserves spooned out liberally from
meticulously labeled jars.
Dagol liked to hear stories, but never tragedies, never too
much danger. The best were comedies, and they always ended with
a wedding or a dance or a feast, preferably all three. He liked
fish skeletons, stripped of shiny scales and tasty flesh, and he
would study their clean lines and cleverly hinged joints until
they fell apart and were nibbled upon by the tiny crawling
creatures of the moist ground. He liked the length of Smagol's
twig-thin fingers, and his relentless curiosity and interest: in
the rocks (sometimes jewels) and roots (sometimes edible) of the
earth, in the depths (surely full of treasure) of the still
ponds, in Dagol. He liked being able to pick out the
red-speckled beak of a songbird in the shadows of a tree's
hollow from fifty paces away.
He liked his reed boat; he liked how fragile it felt when it
was all that kept him from the wetness of the river, how it
trembled so eagerly in gentle waters and, further down river,
playfully threatened to toss him out into the fierce currents.
He liked Smagol's eyes, how in the rare moments the light
caught them they resembled two moons side by side, and he liked
Smagol's back, sensitive under his own hands, and he liked
Smagol's dark hair curling and tickling against his own face. He
liked Smagol. Sometimes, when Smagol, sounding breathless and
bemused, murmured "my love", he knew he loved Smagol.
And one day, Smagol's birthday, they visited Gladden Fields,
not by any means for the first time. While Dagol knotted the
boat to a bankside tree and readied his fishing line, Smagol
leapt to the shore and plunged his hands elbow-deep into the
profusion of white and purple irises, and soon moved out of
sight.
The first yank of the great fish nearly pulled Dagol's arms
out of their sockets, and though he dug his heels into the side
of his boat and held fast with all his strength, he was soon
overboard. Like a crow or raven entranced by shiny objects, he
abandoned the line in favor of snatching something that glinted
despite the mud at the bottom, and then he hurried to the
surface, feeling a frantic burn in his lungs and furiously
kicking legs.
It was a ring, and when washed of the disrespectful river
scum, it was beautiful, the most beautiful thing Dagol had ever
seen. He gazed at it resting there in his palm, golden and pure
as the sun, and he felt heat flush his cheeks and he thought he
might never simply like anything again.
All the things he liked, hearths and birdsong and the
shrieking of tea kettles, were nothing in comparison to his ring,
and his memory of the entertainment they afforded suddenly paled
in his mind.
His ring was meant to be loved, served, worshipped even. That
would take more energy than he had to spare for liking things.
Dagol lifted his ring and admired it against the quiet blue
of the sky. A sunbeam glanced through it. He frowned; he felt
swallowed up somehow, overshadowed and confused, his mind full
to bursting with queer, ugly notions.
Smagol's touch on his shoulder was familiar and had never
been unwelcome until this moment, but Dagol forced a smile onto
his face, for it would not do to make him suspicious. Smagol,
perhaps, he could still like.
But Smagol pressed him, demanded of him the only thing he
could not give, said "my love" through clenched teeth,
with anger and envy in his eyes such as Dagol never had seen
before. Dagol felt a suffocating horror rise up in him, and he
choked, and then he realized it was Smagol choking him.
Smagol said "my love" with his hands around Dagol's
throat, and he said "my love" as he pressed Dagol down
into the river.
The water was cold now and Dagol was sobbing, great gulps of
murkiness and no air. He could still see Smagol above him,
though blurred, and Smagol's weight on top of his body had never
before been frightening. Dagol tried to say "take the ring;
happy birthday," but only bubbles left his mouth. He
watched, in a moment of chilling clarity, the largest float to
the surface and pop, releasing the last of his breath.
Dagol struggled and kicked until his limbs were heavy as
granite.
He was taking such a very long time to die.
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