There is a strength in the hobbit that few could openly see. It is one that is buried beneath layers and layers of suffering, an occasional madness but it is there. It is all that keeps the hero's feet moving, all that keeps him going when his body has long felt the limit passed.

Yet Frodo Baggins is a powerful little thing, even if he does not fully know the extent of how deeply that rings true. Perhaps not in the way of wielding a blade but there is a will and strength in him that has granted him an evil fate to begin with.

So he can bear this, if he can bear the world, he can bear his dear friend Kili's pain, feel it keenly as if it were his own. Shed tears for the brave, compassionate dwarf that he was. And maybe weep a little in his heart, that he had not ever been granted the blessing of meeting him in reality.

The words he says are painful but sweet, as are all the tales of Middle-earth, and Frodo laughs but it sounds a bit like a sob, gently smoothing back dark strands of hair in a tender gesture.

"Yes, you might have been there to see me in all my wildness, before I became a gentlehobbit."

Before he became what he could see. Someone unfixable and broken.

"But I might not know you then, but I know you now. And that is enough, I think, for now. For I would see darker days here if we had never met at all."