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Most days she wakes up and lies perfectly still, letting the sun kiss at her bare arms and the warmth of the patchwork quilt keep her halfway to dreams. Frodo and Sam breathe softly, inside their memories that are forever beyond her reach. Their lashes flutter like strange skeletal insects, black against the blue-grey shadows under their eyes.
Sooner or later, they're going to leave her. She bites her lip and crosses two fingers and wishes for later to never come at all; but there's a place inside them, perhaps more obvious in Frodo with his stillness and his scars but there in Sam just as surely, a wound that won't heal. Such a little space, a tiny emptiness.
She kept all her father's ledgers in order for him when she was still a tween, she can sew a hem faster than any other hobbit she knows. Sam sighs sometimes and says he wishes people could see what Frodo did for them, and she wonders if he can see what she's doing even now. The darkness is still there, after all, and still needs fighting. It's not over until the cleanup's done, as Sam himself says, and there's so much inside them that needs repairing even now.
Rosie knows that they have reasons upon reasons to leave, pains that don't lessen even in sleep. But every day she searches out new reasons for them to stay, and perhaps some day the scales will be balanced again.
Her parents don't like the fact that she leaves her bed at night to go into the room where Sam's staying, but marriage is a question of when, not if, so they don't go so far as to actually scold her. Nothing happens, anyway. She just likes to watch him through the dark hours before dawn. And Frodo and Sam have been sleeping together for so long that they've forgotten how to do it apart, it seems.
Sleeping together. That says a different thing to what it means, usually, but Rosie's never been one to mince words, and sleeping's all that's being done in that room. When Rosie hugs in close and breathes the smells of Sam, he shifts without waking, making extra space for her. He's far too good at sleeping with people, no unwelcome arms across her waist when she wakes or stolen covers. Sometimes, when the nightmares are especially bad, Frodo cries out, or kicks, but apart from those moments Rosie can hardly tell she's sharing a bed at all. Even with the two of them so close, it's a lonely way to rest.
Sam's away now, planting and building and making things new and whole. Rosie stands by the front gate, watching the early morning traffic of carts and wheelbarrows along the lane, and wishes he was there with her. Make me new and whole, Sam, she wants to say to him. Wants to be selfish, wants him to be selfish too. Haven't they earned that, just a little? It seems she's been waiting for her life's journey to begin forever, but it just treads the same old paths in a circle.
With Sam gone, Rosie keeps to her own bed, the same bed she lay in all her girlhood with dreams of husbands and babies and fairy tales, and Frodo stays in the one her father provided for him. She worries that he'll be cold, but Frodo's not the same as Sam. Sam she can boss, because she knows him backwards and forwards and inside out, has done for years. Frodo, though, is a different creature. Rosie doesn't even know where to begin with puzzling him out, and doesn't have the faintest whether he'd mind her needing closeness after goodnights have been said.
There's a swirl of blood in the egg yolk when Rosie cracks the shell open on the edge of a bowl, and she can't remember if that's an ill omen or not. It hardly seems to matter. She puts the kettle on to boil and goes to see if Frodo's awake yet. The door's ajar, and her Dad's sitting by the bed as Frodo's fevered hands grasp at the cuffs of his sleeves and at the gem at his throat.
"It is gone forever," the words tumble out in a mutter, breathless and whispered. "And now all is dark and empty."
"Quiet now," Rosie's father says in a slightly uncomfortable voice, the same tone he used to use when Rosie asked about hens and roosters or new lambs. "You just rest, Mr Frodo."
"I'll look after him if you like," Rosie offers before she realises she's going to speak. But oh, it hurts to see Frodo so pained. "I've got the morning spare."
"Don't know that he needs much looking after. He's more asleep than awake." With a shrug, Rosie's father leaves his daughter to play nurse. He's never really known how to deal with his girl-child, wants to take care of her as if she's a baby still. Sons are an easy matter, you just raise them as you would an apprentice, but daughters require all kinds of rituals best left to womenfolk.
"Frodo?" Rosie asks, slipping her hand between his as she sits down. The room's all shut up and shadowed, but seeing how grey the sky outside is it wouldn't do much good to open the curtains anyway.
"Sam?" Frodo's eyes are half-lidded.
"No, it's Rose."
His hands are trembling, heartbeat like a frightened bird under his skin. At the sound of her name, Frodo seems to wake a little out of his delirium, and gives a dry chuckle. "When you were small, you used to creep into the gardens of Bag End when you thought we couldn't see you, and steal the blush roses when they were still buds. Bilbo thought it was adorable."
"Well, we don't have any roses half as nice here in Bywater," Rosie teases back, gripping Frodo's clammy fingers tighter as another spasm of illness or pain ripples through him and makes him gasp.
"But you never waited until they were fully grown, it used to perplex Sam. 'Roses are nicest when they've bloomed, why can't she wait?'" Frodo keeps his tone light but can't hold in a small whimper.
"I'm not the patient type," she touches Frodo's forehead and finds it clammy and cold. He's running chills and fevers all at once, and there seems no cure but to wait it out.
"Merry... Merry said that coming back was like waking from a dream," Frodo says, wetting his lips with his tongue. "But I feel as if I'm falling into one. Nothing... nothing quite feels real, now."
"Don't talk if it hurts you."
"No, I want to talk. I have to, it makes it real." Frodo forces himself to sit up on the bank of pillow behind him, shifts to make room so Rosie can sit on the matress cross-legged. "Why didn't your father join up with the rest, Rose? Almost all the other hobbits with a bit of money did."
"He's a good sort," Rosie offers eventually. She's never thought about it before. "They'd've made him richer, but... he would have ended up poorer, if that makes any sense."
"Everyone's got their price," Frodo says, but Rosie doesn't take offence. She knows he's not talking about her Dad anymore. "Their breaking point." Frodo sounds utterly lost.
"I wish I could understand what you and Samwise went through," Rosie admits. "But I can't. It's all as unreal as piglets flying or fire burning cold."
"You're not meant to. Strider... I should call him King Elessar, I suppose, but he's still Strider in my head, spent years of his life protecting the Shire, in order that the hobbits would never have to know all the work he did for them. Do you see?"
"You're a hobbit, and you know it."
Frodo gives her a small, tight smile, but it's more like a grimace and it's obvious that the pain's terribly bad for him. It's a while before he can even speak again, and Rosie tries to remember if there's ever been another sickness like this in the Shire before that would give her clues to remedies.
"Perhaps some day you'll see the white city, meet its ruler," Frodo says. Rosie wrinkles her nose.
"Maybe. I'd love to see other lands, but there's grander things than kings. In fairy stories they're always the ones who get their heads chopped off or their castles knocked down."
Frodo laughs a little, and the sound makes Rosie's heart a little gladder.
"You'd make a good princess, Rose," he says, and she smiles politely even though she doesn't agree.
"Do you think you could eat a bit? There's broth if you can't manage anything stronger."
"No, there's no point."
"Please?" She doesn't mean to push but he's so frail, which is doubly sad seeing as how healthy and fair he used to look. It's as if all the years he's held off have fallen down on him at once.
Frodo nods, and Rosie goes to get him something to warm him, feed him.
The worst part is, she thinks as she hunts for a clean spoon, the worst part is that she's all pulled in two directions. She loves Sam, but she spent so long worrying about the journey he was on that it all got tied up together in her head and now she loves Frodo too. And it doesn't take more than two good eyes to see that Sam's stuck in much the same dilemma.
The worst of the worst, though, is that there's no real dilemma to it, because Frodo's not...
"Save your breath to cool your porridge, Rose Cotton," she chides herself, even though she wasn't speaking out loud. There's no sense in moping about like a wet kitten, somebody needs to buck up and do what needs doing. If Frodo's taught her anything that hobbit's don't generally know, that's it.
He seems to be dozing when she goes back in, it's hard to tell after the way he was earlier. But the lines are smoothed on his face, breathing more even. Rosie remembers one of the stories she grew up playacting, the story of the princess who couldn't wake.
"Pricked her finger on a spindle," Rosie whispers, looking at the terrible scar where Frodo's knuckle ends abruptly. "And fell asleep, and nobody could rouse her."
It seems painfully apt, and a few hot tears fall from Rosie's cheeks into the broth. It isn't fair.
But there's always a way to make things right, in the stories. The soldier traps death in his sack, the youngest son defeats the dragon, the sister doesn't speak and turns her brothers back from ravens.
A kiss cures the sleeping beauty, if you can cut through the thorns.
Rosie leans over, putting the bowl on the nightstand where Frodo can eat it later if, miraculously, he's hungry. His breath is sickly-sweet and damp, hot little puffs of air. He barely stirs as she brushes her lips against his and then stands again.
"Sleep well, but not long. I'll wake you soon," Rosie tells him, closing the door behind her as she leaves.
~
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