"Here." Rosie put a tall glass of slightly opaque brown liquid on the bedside table, giving the spoon resting in it a final stir. "It's milkthistle, which is for drinking the morning after too much ale, but a headache's a headache after all, and I expect it'll do you more good than harm. Nothing else has helped, so perhaps this will."

She smile as she said it, but there was a twist of desperation in the corner of her mouth.

"Thankyou, Rose." Frodo sipped the drink and made a face. "If the taste's anything to go by, it's sure to work wonders. Nobody could stomach this without the promise of miracles." That got a laugh out of Rosie as she sat herself down on the edge of the bed beside Frodo.

"I'll get you a honeycake to take away the bitterness when you're done. I hope it offers you some relief." She brushed along his hairline with the back of her fingertips. "I hate to see pain on your features."

"I'm sorry, I know you wanted us to all go to the market today."

"The market can wait, it'll still be there when you're better. I wish I knew how to mend you, I fear there's some deep infection in your scars and I don't know how to draw it out."

"I don't think there's any way."

"Oh, don't you start with that talk again, half the fight to getting well's in your head. And if you give up now, well, Sam and I are such healthy hobbits, we'll live nearly forever at my guess, and you'd have to wait in that elven country from your books for years without company, until we died and came to join you."

"I could use the time to learn to knit." Frodo took another quick swallow of the sour liquid. It wasn't having any affect on his head. "Or play the harp."

"Seems more sensible to stay and raise a brood of lovely little ones, and then all go to our rest together. You spoil Elanor twice as much as Sam or I do, you can't leave and deny her that." Her tone stayed light but her hand was on his shoulder, as if she was strong enough to keep him pinned in reality.

"Elanorelle doesn't need me, she'd got the best mother and father the Shire's ever seen."

"And if you'd had your mother and father, I suppose you wouldn't have cared at all about Bilbo, then?" Rosie raised one eyebrow. "Come on, outside into the sunshine for you, best headache cure I know."

"That's ridiculous." Frodo couldn't help but grin, despite the pain he was in. "Light isn't good for headaches at all."

"Well, it's dusk anyway, so most of the sun's been spent. I won't get your honeycake if you don't get out of bed."

"That's bribery and blackmail, and I won't stand for it!" Frodo laughed. "All right then, help me up."

The setting sun threw a deep gold wash over the world, heavy and warm as a kiss. Sam was tidying the edges of the front path, a smudge of dirt down one cheek. He looked up and grinned when Rosie pulled the door open and forced Frodo outside.

"There? See, wasn't the view worth getting up for?"

"Yes. It's lovely. It's so beautiful," Frodo nodded, and Rosie's heart hurt with wanting him to be well. A flock of noisy birds flew overhead, breaking the serenity of the moment, and she wasn't entirely upset about that. It was too easy to be sad and quiet, lately.

"Are we going to the markets tonight after all, then?" Sam asked, wiping sweat off his brow and leaving another smudge of dirt in his hand's wake.

"Maybe tomorrow, Sam," Frodo suggested. Rosie didn't know if he meant his words or not. "It'll be the twenty-fifth, Elanor will be four months old. We can put her in her prettiest dress and make all the other babies envious of her beauty."

"She'll like that. She loves preening." Sam's smile at the thought of his daughter was even more wrenching than the sunset to look at when the world seemed so fragile.

"Let's go around to the back." Rosie's voice sounded husky, like she'd been crying the tears that had been held in all day. "We should spend a while in the fresh air."

Frodo rested his back against a small hillock of grass, Rosie could feel his eyes burn on her skin as Sam unlaced the bodice of her dress and slipped the soft muslin sleeves off her shoulders. Frodo hardly seemed alive at all, except for those eyes, but when she began to undress Sam she saw a little colour come into his pale lips, his chest move with rapid shallow breaths.

They could make him live again. They would make him live again. If his heart ceased beating, they'd give him theirs. If his breath stopped, they'd breathe kisses into him. Love was strong enough to fight any sickness, Rosie promised herself.

And nobody ever went back on their promises to Rose Gamgee.

~

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