You were not so very different from a Hobbit once...
The words echoed in his ears, his flat, wrinkly ears that were too big for his shriveled head. Above him, stars twinkled, high above the fuming smoke rising over the land of Mordor, many, many miles away. He shivered under their frosty light, covering his eyes with his hands and rocking back and forth, muttering to himself.
"We were never a hobbit, no, precious. Hobbits are nasty thieves and we hate them, hate them, oh yes we does! We were never a hobbit!" The insistent, creaking rattle of his voice whispered through the night, but he was careful not to disturb the two sleeping figures several yards away. "Mustn't wake the fat one, the fat one suspects us, always watches us, precious," he breathed softly.
Dropping his hands from his eyes, he slunk quietly over the sharp stones on the ground to a small pool of water a little ways away. He sat staring into it, his pale, bulbous eyes narrowing slightly at the sight of his gray, pockmarked face. A face that, once, very long ago, had resembled that of the two sleeping hobbits. A face once crowned in thick locks and with normal features, not marked by spherical eyes and a pinched chin and scraggling wisps of greasy hair.
A fish swam by, but he didn't notice, or if he did, he didn't care. He sat hugging his frail body, gazing at his reflection in the water.
Sméagol...
He scowled, his face twisting in a sneer. "We were never a hobbit, no, precious." But even as he said the words, memories flashed through his mind, memories of a weedy pool lined in gravel by a sunny bank, of moonlight silvering miles of fields, of the high-pitched laughter of his grandmother as she taught him how to fish. His eyes softened slightly, and he sighed. Then his lips pressed together and he shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. "No, no, mustn't think of that," he reprimanded himself. "Gollum, gollum!"
His grandmother's voice sprang to mind.
Sméagol! What happened? Déagol was just found dead! Strangled! You were with him, you should know! You must tell us! We must know! Sméagol!
"We detests you," he snarled, the words sliding over his broken teeth and into the night. "You drove us away. You called us murderer. It was your fault. We hates you. Leave us alone."
In his head he saw his grandmother's eyes peering at him sadly, their light extinguished by the deed he had done.
Why did you do it, Sméagol...
He squeezed his eyes shut as though to block out the mournful tone of her voice, the agonized whimper that slid from her mouth, the heartbreak in her eyes. And then her eyes had hardened and she chased him away. Like he was no better than a mongrel. Like he was nothing.
Why do you do that?
What?
Call him names. Run him down all the time.
Because. That's what he is, Mr. Frodo...
"We heard them, precious, yes," he sighed gently to himself. "They didn't know, but we did. And we tried to pretend we didn't, but we can't forget their words. Their nasty stinging words."
A single tear slid from his eye and hit the ground, as the figure who had shed it sat frozen and alone.
A figure who was nothing.
