Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

January, in the year 3018 of the Third Age, Mordor

Gollum woke to a black sky. He did not know where or what he was. Everything hurt, and the world was cruel. He curled into a ball, shivering and shaking, and tried not to remember anything.

The approach of footsteps penetrated his misery. He lifted his head and looked around with bleary eyes.

Gollum was curled up in the middle of dirty, dusty lands caked with ash. He was outside the dreadful tower, somehow, rather than inside it. He could not remember how he got out. He rubbed at his eyes. They hurt. The sun was far away over the cloud of ash, but the memory of fire and torment burned behind his eyes just like the sun did. He squinted, and saw that the footsteps approaching him belonged to a man.

Or something that wanted to look like a man.

The man was tall, with light brown hair that fell to his shoulders, and stubble on his chin to match. He was booted and cloaked, in coarse brown travel-stained fabric, wearing gloves and carrying a small knife at his hip. His gray eyes were fixed on Gollum.

It was a very strong, very dark, and very evil will that looked upon Gollum from those eyes. Gollum knew this hostile power intimately. He shrank away from the man's approach. He ought to flee, he needed to flee, but he could not. Something held him in place.

"Sméagol," the man declared, coming to stand and loom over where Gollum was curled in the dirt. "I've had a splendid idea."

"Don't," Gollum whimpered. "Sméagol is gone, lost. He is gone, it's not right for you to call us that."

The man seemed amused. He crossed his arms and peered down at Gollum with a funny little unkind smile.

"What would you like to be called, then?"

"Gollum, gollum," Gollum coughed.

"An awful name," the man declared. "But Gollum it is, then. I've decided we shall go on an adventure together. Doesn't that sound fun?"

"No," Gollum said, and started weeping. "No adventures, please, mustn't hurt us anymore. We told you everything we know. Gollum."

"The adventures won't hurt," said the man. "Much."

"Have pity," Gollum whimpered. "Leave me alone. Don't look at me. I don't know where it is, I can't find it."

"No, indeed," the man agreed. He was still smiling that slightly cruel smile. "But I think we can find it together. What say you?"

"No," Gollum said, giving a great shudder. "You are trying to trick me. It won't work, precious it won't. You didn't look like this before, but I know who you are. You mustn't get it. You will swallow us all if you do."

"Cheer up," the man said bracingly. He extended a foot and nudged Gollum with the end of his boot, but it was much gentler than expected. It was only a nudge. "It could be worse. There's always the dungeons again as your other option."

"No!" Gollum wailed. He pulled his hands into his chest to cradle them protectively. "Have pity. No, it hurts, it burns us, nasty cruel fires, we told you everything we know. Make it stop, please! Make it stop. Leave me alone, gollum. Leave us alone!"

"Enough of this," the man said, making a faint moue of distaste. "You will come with me."

"We won't help you, no we won't. You mustn't ever get it. Sméagol will die first, yes he will, torment and death and fire first." The memory of fire burned inside his fingers and he licked at them, trying to put it out.

"That's always still on the table," the man said, switching back to cheerfulness instantly.

"I hate you!" Gollum found the energy to spit out with a sudden passion, and his weeping ceased. "The precious is mine. I won't help you." He hunched his shoulders protectively against the pain he feared was coming.

"Ah," said the man. "You have little choice in this matter, I'm afraid."

The words were cruel, but pain did not come. He did not strike or kick or hurt Gollum. He did not make fires burn underneath Gollum's skin. He only kept smiling that awful smile.

"We don't know where it is," Gollum repeated. He gave a great sniffle. "We can't find it. They stole it from us. Thieves, liars, tricksy, false!" 

"I don't know where it is either," the man said. "But I am going to find it. I am going to find your Shire and your Baggins. And you must dog my steps, or else I might find the ring before you do. And you don't want to risk that, do you?"

Gollum peered up at him, shivering and hurting.

"You don't want to risk not being there when it's found, do you?" the man prodded.

Slowly, very slowly, Gollum lifted his head and shook it.

The man smiled again. Apparently satisfied that Gollum would follow despite his protests, the man turned and started walking away from the dreadful black tower. Gollum rubbed at his eyes again, gave a great shudder, and pushed himself up from the ground. He coughed, and he wept a little more, but he followed.

They walked and they walked and they walked.

Gollum understood that the compulsion to follow the man was of the same sort that took Gollum to Mordor in the first place. He did not want to follow—he knew he oughtn't—but to fight it would have required more effort than he could muster.

The journey seemed quite endless, but Gollum did not cry or complain. He was kept silent by both fear and exhaustion. Gollum's presence did not seem to be noticed by his companion one bit, and he thought it might be better that way. The man set a steady walking pace—steady, at least, for his own long legs—and left Gollum to follow in his wake as best he might.

They walked and they walked, but the land didn't change. It was dirt and ash and deep fearful crevices, although the man knew the land better than Gollum did and chose a route that stayed mostly level and steady. Gollum knew that there was a road from the dreadful tower to the gates at the border of this land—the orcs had dragged Gollum in that way. But the man walked nowhere near the road. They took strange paths through the dark, threading between pits in the ragged ground and other unknown obstacles.

Gollum was tired, and hungry, and thirsty, and pained from his long days of torture. His hands hurt dreadfully, sending pain through his wrists when he put weight on them. Though he was hardier than anyone could have imagined him, eventually he could go no more.

He collapsed on the ground, and whimpered pitifully, with no coherence to his words.

The man did stop at that, and turned back for him.

"Oh, I see," he said, and his voice was almost kind. "I have tired you out. Shall I carry you?"

"Don't touch me," Gollum cried. "Gollum, gollum. No more. We cannot bear it anymore."

The man laughed. That he could laugh in such conditions was exhausting. His laughter stabbed Gollum like knives, and Gollum shivered and cried.

"Look," the man said, and took something off his back and placed it on the ground. It was a large, sturdy pack, made of strong canvas of a dirty gray color with a good stout frame. "Ride on this, and we need not touch anyone we don't wish to."

Gollum was too far gone to protest. His will was sapped. If this man got his ring back, it would be utter disaster, but Gollum had nothing left with which to defy him. He managed to crawl on top of the pack, and the man swung it carefully back onto his shoulders, without dislodging the new occupant. Thus there was a little spot for Gollum to curl up and nest in, and the man's gait was soothing and steady, and soon Gollum knew no more.

Gollum woke. They were still under the ashy cloud, and there was no telling what time of night it was. The man was walking in the low foothills of a taller, darker mountain range off to their right.

Gollum was still curled up on the man's pack, and he was not quite so tired, but he was aching with hunger and thirst. His position was cramped and uncomfortable now that he was awake.

The man apparently heard or felt him stirring, and called back a cheerful-sounding inquiry as to how Gollum fared.

"Put me down," Gollum begged. "Please, put me down, we don't like it."

To Gollum's very great surprise, the man stopped at once. He took the pack off, and lowered it to the ground. Gollum crawled off of it and fell face-down on the ground, crying in happiness to be reunited with it.

The man gave him a few moments to relieve himself, and then started walking again. Gollum coughed and shivered but slunk along behind him, keeping low to the ground. It was less ashy, in these hills; the dirt was more like dirt. But it was slightly harder going, up and down and up and down, in gully and crevice and cliff.

After a while, they climbed higher in the hills, but all the hills had become smaller; the dark towering peaks of the taller mountains were behind them now. They started passing entrances to dark tunnels and caves, and Gollum paused to sniff around them. He found some bones to gnaw on, which helped with the hunger and thirst a little. The man waited during his poking around in the caves for a time, but always kept walking before Gollum was ready.

Once, Gollum poked his head in a cave and found it occupied. A great roar came from the rear of the cave, a troll screaming that it would eat the intruder's bones. Gollum shot out of the cave like an arrow and cowered down in the shelter of the man's feet.

The troll came out of its cave, swinging its heavy club and yelling about filth and scum and thieves.

The man laughed, scooped Gollum up in his arms, and ran.

It was the last thing Gollum expected him to do, and it was a horrible, jostling sort of way to move. He closed his eyes and put his hands over them and whimpered.

The man eventually stopped running, and crouched and gently placed Gollum back on the ground. Gollum did not hear the troll anymore. Gollum had stopped whimpering, but he was still disoriented. He licked his hands again, shuddering. The man had touched him, with those horrible hands that burned. Though he had not made any new fire, the memory of old fires was strong.

The man, for his part, was still laughing.

"You didn't think the hills around Udûn were empty, did you?"

So that was where they were. Gollum shivered. It made sense, if the man wanted to head north to look for the ring. Although Gollum still didn't understand why they were not down on the road.

"Maybe stop poking your head into the caves," the man suggested, his laughter lingering in his words.

"Why does it go through the hills," Gollum muttered. "The way is tricksy and nasty and full of things that want to eat you. There are solid paths down below, not so hard."

"Our errand is very secret," the man said. "Enemy spies may be watching. I will not open the Black Gates for their eyes to see our exit. It is a tad ostentatious, in retrospect. Either way, we cannot use any roads unless we are a long way from Mordor. Do you want the elves and wizards to get the ring?"

"No," Gollum said, coughing again. "Gollum. Not the nasty elves and wizards, precious, never. We will never let them have it."

Gollum managed to follow the man a little longer, padding along behind him, but soon the man turned and started climbing sharply uphill in a narrow gully, scrambling up enormous rock walls and treading over sharp thorns and brambles. Gollum collapsed weakly after a short section of this. He was so hungry and thirsty.

Without saying anything, the man turned and crouched and held out his pack. Gollum had just enough energy to crawl on top of it again and curl up and pass out.

When he woke again, they weren't under the black ashen sky anymore. He could see stars. He hated the stars.

As soon as he stirred, the man instantly sat the pack down on the ground. The ground was wet. It was squishy and marshy. Gollum shuddered. The marshes were not much better than the ashy dirt inside Mordor. Dead things were in the marshes. But Gollum was by this point driven mad by thirst, and he crept forward until he found water, and lowered his head.

"Don't do that!" the man cried, alarmed, and leapt forward and grabbed Gollum by the shoulder to haul him away from the water. "That's disgusting. You can't drink from there—you will fall in and become one of them."

"So thirsty!" Gollum whined. He writhed and wriggled and tried to get away from the hand, the horrible Black Hand. The man let go at once. "Endless thirst, it burns, don't care about the dead things."

"I have clean water," the man said, in exasperation. "Come here." The man bent, took something out of the pack, and held it out to Gollum.

Gollum snatched at it. It was a canteen of water, generous and cold and clear. He poured it down his throat greedily, shivering and sniffling and still crying a bit.

"You needn't try to eat the dead things either," the man said, smiling his funny and mean little smile again, the kind that said the man knew a good joke at your expense you didn't know anything about. "Here." He reached into the pack again and pulled out strips of dried meat.

Gollum tore at them and swallowed them without breathing or chewing. It was salty, tough, and stringy, but he ate it all in an instant and then gulped down more water.

"You'll make yourself sick," the man declared, but he made no move to stop Gollum's gluttony.

"Maybe if the Eye hadn't starved us," Gollum said reproachfully, finding a little of his spirit back after the sleep and the food and water, enough to sass even this man. "We wouldn't be this way now."

"The Eye," the man repeated, as though tasting the words. "Interesting. Oh, yes. Very cruel of him."

Gollum shivered. He did not know if the man was making fun of him or not. His eyes were actually warm and human looking and not particularly cruel right now, but Gollum was not fooled. His tormentor looked out at Gollum from inside them. 

"Always awake, always looking at us, a gaze rimmed with fire," Gollum muttered compulsively. "He knows, he sees. Don't! Don't make us talk about it."

"Terrible," the man agreed, shaking his head.

"We have other names for him, but we won't share, no, we are not stupid," Gollum added, inclined to be sly all of a sudden.

The man threw back his head and laughed heartily.

"I'm sure I can guess at them."

He took the water canteen from Gollum and placed it back in the pack, then straightened up and shouldered it again.

"Shall we continue?"

Gollum lifted himself off the ground and sat up. He shivered. The night air was very cold.

"We don't know where it is, precious," Gollum repeated, and started weeping again.

The man gave a great, dramatic sigh and lifted his eyes to the sky for a moment. Then he crouched down until his face was level with Gollum.

"I believe you," he said patiently, almost gently. "I believe that you told me all you know. I am going to find Baggins and the Shire, and we're going to start by looking for the land of the halflings along the banks of the Gladden. See? We are investigating. Together."

"I don't want to investigate with you," Gollum whimpered. He gave another great sniffle. "The precious is ours. It was our birthday present, it's mine, it came to me. My own, my precious. It's mine! It's not yours! We hate them all. Thieves, liars, they stole it from us!" He finished on a howl.

"Well, my patience is up with this sort of talk," the man announced. He stood, then turned and started walking away.

The man threaded his way through the marshes without hesitation, finding the firmest ground without ever slowing his stride. If he was bothered by the dead things with lights, he made no sign of it. Gollum padded after the man on tender, painful limbs.

Gollum endured the journey through all of the marshes without asking to be carried again. Everything hurt, and movement was agony, and worse, a few hours into the night the moon peeked out from behind the clouds. Still, it was better than curling on the man's pack like a dog. Gollum was not his dog. Gollum was not anyone's dog. Oh yes, they would all find out and they would all be sorry for how they had treated Gollum.

But his energy and even his spite were fading by the time they reached the cliffs of the Emyn Muil. The man knew the best paths through here, too, even though the land was twisted and confusing and broken. It was hard going, suddenly very steep, and the rock beneath his hands and feet was cold and sharp. The man he was following seemed to need no rest, nor food, nor drink. It was too much for Gollum, and he started falling behind.

Once again the man stopped and came back for him.

"Just say something when you are too tired to go any further," the man said, sounding a little frustrated. The man handed Gollum the canteen of water and more strips of meat. "No need to martyr yourself."

Gollum ate, and drank, and consented once again to curl up on the pack and sleep.

When he woke, it was bright out. Much too bright. Gollum buried further into the pack, hiding from the harsh light in the sky, and slept again.

Gollum alternated walking during the nights and hiding in the pack during the days. The passage through the Emyn Muil was miserable enough that he walked only seldom. At long last, they came to lower hills giving way to brown lands ahead of them, and Gollum could smell the great river winding to their left. It was blessedly dark; Gollum had slept through the day and the moon had not risen.

A little delighted to be on decent ground again, and far away from the horrible lands of his torment, Gollum kicked up his heels and raced down to the streambank. He swam, and found fish, and tore into them happily.

When he looked back up for the man, he was standing beside the bank of the river, giving Gollum a smile that was not cruel. His eyes were warm and friendly.

"Do you want one?" Gollum offered, a little shyly. He held out a fish he had not yet torn into.

"Thank you," the man said, laughing. He bit into the fish raw, like Gollum did, spitting out the scales and little bones. "Delicious."

"Very tasty," Gollum agreed, and smiled back for the first time.

Gollum's newfound ease persisted. He still consented to ride during the days when the sun was out, but came to enjoy prancing along the riverbanks on the ground during the cool nights. The man never faltered in his stride or seemed to want to pause for anything but Gollum's needs, but he remained surprisingly patient with those.

Gollum did not forget his torment in the man's dark dungeons, but nor did he dwell on it. He was not built to dwell on such things, for his thoughts—as they always did—centered around the ring. Though he did not know it, he had this in common with the man traveling beside him.

Gollum began to think that perhaps the man was right. They would find the ring, working together, and when they did—Gollum would be there.

They crossed the brown lands without incident over the course of a few days, or maybe a week—Gollum had no concept of measuring and keeping track of time. This had made the questioner in the dungeons very angry, that he did not know when he found or lost the ring. But he truly had no notion that his life had lasted nearly six centuries or that he encountered Baggins many decades ago but less than a century. Time was meaningless. There was only himself, distant memories of another self, and the pull of the ring.

After some amount of time, the man left the banks of the river, climbing uphill towards the eaves of the dark forest that was looming ahead of them on their right.

"This is an evil place," Gollum whimpered, as they drew a little too close to the trees for his taste. Gollum shivered, and stopped walking. He sank to the ground. Unfriendly eyes were everywhere. "It lurks in the trees and does not sleep."

"Don't worry," the man said, flashing the almost-kind smile down at Gollum that Gollum had grown to like. "The stronghold is empty."

"It's not empty," Gollum contradicted. The man at his side might not be in residence, but the dark tower on the hill was still riddled with terrible dark things that would eat you from the inside out.

"But it is. The wraiths have been sent away. They have gone south, to draw unfriendly eyes to them, and away from our journey."

"It won't ever be empty again," Gollum argued. "We won't go near it, no precious we won't. Torment and death and ash."

"Nienna grant me mercy!" the man exclaimed, throwing up his hands. "I thought you knew who I am. What do you think is there that will threaten you if you are with me?"

"Don't make us do it," Gollum whimpered, cowering. "Have pity, have pity! Poor Sméagol, the Eye is very cruel to poor Sméagol, who is only trying to help his investigations."

"We have little choice in our path," the man said curtly. "We mustn't get too close to the river in this area."

"Nasty elves on the other side," Gollum agreed, choking a little on the word 'elves'.

"Nasty elves on the other side," the man echoed, with no trace of irony. "They cannot learn of our errand."

The man stooped down, picked Gollum up, deposited him on top of the pack without ceremony, then stood up and continued walking north, choosing a path that was just underneath the edges of the dreadful canopy of tainted trees. Gollum did not struggle or try to get down to the ground, but burrowed into the pack and refused to look out of it again for a very long time.

They passed away from the area of great evil without anything coming after them. Gollum relaxed only once it was long behind them and the man finally consented to walk closer to the river.

It was bountiful country here, as long as you didn't fear an attack by orcs or their wargs. Gollum did not know whether the man controlled the creatures all the way up here, but whatever the reason, nothing attacked the travelers. There was fresh flowing water, with plenty of fish, and other crawling things that were nice to eat. The ground was steady and the lands were empty. If Gollum had been traveling on his own, he would have kept to the foothills of the Misty Mountains on the other side of the great river, but he didn't mind the path the man chose as long as he could hide when the sun was out.

They journeyed through the green vale for many days, perhaps weeks. Eventually, they swam across the river and found the swampy marshlands that were, once upon a long time ago, the home of Sméagol's people.

The man explored the Gladden for a while, beginning with the marshes at the confluence with Anduin. They lingered here and there, rustling bushes and treading through great fields of tall grasses and peering into all the little dips of the land. Gollum slept during the days, and explored with the man at night. They found dragonflies and frogs and other tasty things, but no halflings.

The man eventually reached the rocky edges of the Misty Mountains, far away from the great river and no longer a nice place to live in.

"These lands are very empty," the man observed as they stood on a small, bare hill beside the stream that gave them a view of the wide, empty lands: the marshes below them, the green vale east of the great river, and the vast forest beyond that.

His voice was very quiet and calm.

Gollum sank to the ground on his belly and cowered.

The man settled down cross-legged onto the ground. He took measured, even breaths. He rested his gloved hands lightly on his thighs. It was all very non-threatening. But Gollum tried to slink backwards, away from the man, towards the safety of the great mountains behind them.

The man did not move. He did not lift a finger. Yet Gollum did not get very far before his limbs gave out. He lost all feeling in them. They refused to move. Gollum collapsed in a limp heap.

"You told me you thought the halfling was from a place called the Shire, which in turn was near to the places you once dwelt beside the banks of the Gladden," the man reminded him, very softly.

Gollum wept a great storm; he hiccuped and he coughed and he cried.

The man sat very still and did not move. If Gollum was weeping because he anticipated more torture, the pain did not come.

"You lied, I see," the man said at length. "Tell me the truth."

His voice was almost gentle. He was not smiling; neither his cruel smile nor the nice smile. His face was soft. He might have been wearing an expression of pity.

Gollum's tormented brain fell back into the patterns it had developed under torture. He cried, and he babbled the same story he'd repeated over and over again in the dungeons, before he'd eventually given up the name Baggins.

"Elves and wizards," he whimpered. "They tricked us, they stole it, they put us to fire and they have it, too powerful, poor Sméagol, they stole it and they hurt him. Elves and wizards!"

Even Gollum didn't know why this was the story he'd picked to tell. It was perhaps a combination of a wizard being involved in Baggins' thievery, and the hope that 'elves and wizards' were such lofty targets that the Enemy would destroy himself going after them.

It had not, however, fooled the Enemy for even a second. He knew 'elves and wizards' did not have the ring. They would have used it against him already if they had.

"If you say 'elves and wizards' one more time, I will kill you," the man said very evenly, for he had heard this phrase fifty thousand times before and was thoroughly sick of it. "I do not need your company on this journey that badly."

But he still did not make any moves to pierce Gollum with fire, and he wasn't even directing the terrible dark force of his will at Gollum.

The man simply sat there.

Gollum sobbed, but he managed to stop babbling. He bit down on his hand every time he felt an urge to start talking again.

They waited each other out in protracted silence.

In due time, the sun rose in the east. As the first rays of its light shone on the hill, Gollum was forced to bury his head in the grass.

"It burns," he whined. "It hurts us, precious, make it go away!"

The sun did not go away. It burned hotter and brighter as the day wore on. Gollum cringed from it but could not escape it. He wailed his displeasure.

He eventually grew too weary to continue in this fashion, and his sobs dissipated into gasping coughs and ragged breathing. He was drained of every emotion.

Gollum never knew how long he resisted. Hunger and thirst grew in him. The sun set; Gollum had outlasted that foe. For now. It would come again. And he knew, deep in his bones, that he could not win against the man. His stubbornness carried him even past that realization, until he simply could outlast the terrible enemy no longer.

"We met Baggins deep in the roots of the Misty Mountains," Gollum said with a sniffle, staring at those very mountains as he lay on the ground shivering. "Beneath the home of the Great Goblin, the chieftain of Goblin-town by the High Pass. He stole the precious from us there. Baggins came from a realm far away on the other side the mountains. The Shire."

"Very good," the man said softly. "Let us travel to the High Pass, then."

He rose, and Gollum found he could move again as well. But his arms and legs didn't feel right. They tingled, numb and weak. The man strode to him, gathered Gollum in his arms, and deposited Gollum on top of his pack and left him to rummage for strips of meat and the water canteen.

They went north.

The man eventually let Gollum down from the pack to drink and fish and hunt. Gollum didn't dare go far. He had learned his lesson. His helplessness in the face of that terrible, powerful silence was nearly as bad as the torment of the dungeons. One wielded the heat of fire, while the other was the chill of the void.

They walked through the wild country north of the marshes without finding another nice path. The journey was full of ravines and crevasses, ups and downs, great big piles of rocks and trackless wildernesses. It was hard.

Eventually, after what seemed to be a very long time, they came upon the Old Forest Road.

Gollum avoided roads at all costs, normally. But the man stepped onto the road without fear, gave it a look both east and west, and turned west and kept walking just as he always did.

Gollum moved a little more carefully, holding his head lower and crawling alongside the edge of the road. The man made no comment, but slowed his pace slightly to accommodate the new gait of his companion.

The instant he realized they were not alone, Gollum swiftly disappeared into the shadows.

"Greetings, traveler!" a man's voice rang out. Not the man's voice; another, different one. Someone who was actually a man, Gollum thought. Someone who was carrying a lantern, of all absurd things. Gollum cringed away from it. "You walk a long road."

"I come from the south," the man said, stopping and lifting a hand in friendly greeting to the second voice. "Things go ill down there. I may not be the only traveler you see in the near future."

"There isn't much to the west of us," the second voice said. "You'd do better to head east, and look for Dale."

"I believe I have family in the west," the man said. "It is my goal until I discover otherwise. Is the High Pass open?"

"It is. There have been a few snowstorms lately, but it's clear today. I wouldn't advise climbing in the dark. You'll want to camp before the path leaves these plains."

"Noted," the man said in a mild voice, although Gollum knew he would do no such thing. "I thank you."

"You will see some of my fellows up there," the second voice added. "There is a toll. For all the work we do to keep the pass free of snow and other dangers."

"Noted," the man said again. "Where do you hale from? Dale?"

"Nay, we live in this region. We always have. I hope we always will. But I fear the dark tidings you bring from the south may eventually reach us here. This is not the first I have heard of them."

"They may," the man said, his voice mild and very neutral. "Only time will tell. Do you have any information about the road west of the pass?"

"There is a great elven realm at the base of the mountains. I have never walked that valley, but I hear the road goes by it. Of course, you will never see elves if they do not wish you to see them."

"And west of that?"

"No," the second voice said. "I do not know anything about the road west of that, save that it is used by dwarves."

"Thank you anyway," the man said, very politely.

The man strode forward without further ado. Gollum followed, keeping well out of sight of all the other people with lanterns lurking around the area.

When they got to the base of the High Pass, the spot where the path began to climb steeply into the mountains, the man began pestering Gollum with more questions. Where was his old home in the tunnels of the mountains, where and when did he encounter Baggins, where did the orcs live around here, where had he lost the ring exactly, on and on until Gollum began crying again.

"I don't know," he said, sobbing softly. "We don't remember. Please don't hurt us!"

"I am not going to hurt you," the man said, his voice very patient. It was not at all like the dark, terrifying voice that had questioned Gollum in the dungeons. But Gollum knew it was the same one, and it had hurt him, very much, and he wept at the memories.

"The sun is rising," the man pointed out. "Enough. We will talk more later."

And Gollum was very glad to crawl into the pack and shut out the world with sleep.

When Gollum woke, it was dark but also it was not: they had encountered more people with torches. The man had stopped walking, and was conversing quietly with them. Gollum burrowed deeper into the pack, wishing to hide from their eyes.

Eventually Gollum understood that the man was asking for food and drink, and Gollum slipped out of the pack when the man turned and left the path for an area blazing brightly with more torches.

Gollum was left to lurk in the dark alone. It was very bleak. The pass was windswept and it was the coldest part of the night. Gollum shivered and huddled in the lee of the rocks, and wished the man would come back so they could keep going.

Then the thought occurred to him that now was his chance. The man was busy! Gollum could leave. It was the ideal place for an escape: he could creep into the tunnels of his old haunts and get far away from the man. He could continue west on his own, avoiding the road. He could find Baggins and the Shire, and the ring would be his—

But even as he thought it, a great dark force seemed to press on him physically. It was the Eye, and it was always watching. Gollum trembled and his limbs lost all strength. Gollum cringed and cowered and knew he would not be able to move.

So be it, then. He would continue to follow the man. But it would be Gollum who got the ring at the very last second, on the edge of desperation. Then they would all see.