Frodo wrote stories, Hope wrote histories, but truth and fancy overlap in patterns. Sometimes they worked together, taking battles and important events from the past and putting a fairytale sheen on them. They never changed the facts, but they edited them for clarity and flow; it was easier to deal with some of the things they studied when it was at one remove, through the glass of imagining.

More than once Rosie had snapped at Frodo for the ink marks on his clothes, where they'd thought of an idea when no paper was handy. One of his finer shirts had been demoted to a playdress for Ruby, due to the scrawl across one arm. But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead. Neither Hope nor Frodo could remember which of them was actually responsible for the line, and neither particularly wanted credit for it either. It seemed too final, and too unknown. There didn't seem any way for the line to belong to a happy story.

"She's sweet on you, you know," teased Rosie after Hope went home late in the evening one day. "El went with her to a dance and said the lass wouldn't give a round to anyone, not even our Merry, and he asked every time."

"I'm too old for Hope." Frodo climbed into bed beside Rosie, careful to hide the new dark splotches on his cuffs from her.

"I hope that's not the only reason you have for turning her down, then." Sam was putting a bandage around his wrist, he'd banged it on a doorframe the day before and a bracelet of bruises was rising through the skin. Walking from room to room in a house full of children and children's toys was, seemingly, a task beyond even the heroes of the age.

"Well, one can't remain an eccentric old bachelor forever, you know," Frodo mused. "Rose, you're stealing all the covers, as usual."

"I'm not, you just feel the cold more. And most bachelors, in my experience, don't know half as much about nappy-changing or how to keep a home as you do."

"You are, it's not me 'feeling the cold' or whatever you call it. You've got at least half the blankets there. How many bachelors have you experienced anyway, dare I ask?"

"There, have more covers then." Rosie kicked the blankets towards Frodo. "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."

The years had been kind to them, in Sam's opinion. Rosie had been pretty in her youth, but like most girls with peaches-and-cream skin and blushed lips, the prettiness had faded away to a comfortable softness, warm smiles taking the place of plump pouts. She'd never fully regained the weight she'd lost before Sammie's birth, which was a pity, but Sam thought that she looked fine indeed, and still held a candle to those quite a bit younger.

Frodo's strange fairness had eroded, worn away by illness and time, yet he'd never lost the still, strong cast to his features that had caught Sam's eye before he'd scarce been old enough to understand what he felt.

As for Sam himself, he'd ended up looking much like he'd expected to look - perhaps a little rounder, more cared for, more given to smiling than the gaffer had been.

Put together, they were an old and long-lived piece of bedding, worn at the edges, not as smart to look at as once upon a time, but moulded to a perfect fit, and as comfortable as a thing could be.

"So while I was engaged in my illicit affair, what did you two do with your day?" Frodo wriggled until he was pressed against Sam's side from hip to shoulder.

"Illicit affair? With Prim and little Annabel Fairbairn in the room?" Rosie chuckled. "What a terrible example you set for the young ones. How is the child, anyway?"

"Very thoughtful. There's not much call for talking in her household, because her father's hearing's all but gone."

"I still have trouble thinking of Jack as anything but that boy who used to sauce everyone and steal new bread off the windowsill," said Sam. "Even after you fished him out of the river with his ears ruined, he was the cheekiest lad I've met for longer than I care to think of."

"Oh, Anna's got her share of that spark, believe me. And she asks a thousand questions in one breath. But I want to hear about your days now, I didn't get outside the study much at all and I want to know what I missed."

"Well, Goldy and Fro helped clear out the hayloft, or so they say. There seemed to be more throwing of straw than scrubbing of floorboards, from where I stood." Sam slipped his leg over Rosie's thighs, her skin warm against the cool bedsheets. The bedding smelled like lavender.

"I had to call in allies," Rosie confessed. "We were invaded by a rabble, Delphinum Grubb and Meli Took and Molly Brandybuck. As if there aren't enough terrors in residence here already! I lasted until afternoon teatime but it was too much for one hobbit to deal with, so Marigold came to the rescue. We don't get along as sisters-in-law should, perhaps, but I'll admit she's good with the children, and sweet when she wants to be."

"What were the children doing that was so difficult?" Frodo asked. They were all drifting off to sleep, the pauses between questions and answers growing longer.

"Everything and then some. Miss Meli was in a bit of a sour mood to begin with, because Molly had declared she planned to live with 'Pippin and Meli' in the future, and I think the poor girl was hurt is wasn't 'Meli and Pippin'. She and Daisy were off somewhere, and Sammie and Delphinium were playing spies on them. Then the four all raced back to where I was watching the others and insisted that they had found a baby dragon behind the chimney. Ruby and Robin wanted to see it, of course, and Bilbo too - though he pretended he didn't, as usual. Then the four story-tellers said the dragon had run away already, and Meli and Molly chummed up merry as a pair of larks, their quarrel forgotten completely. To make up for the absent dragon, the five of them took all the smaller ones down to where the new smials are being put into the hill. They were playing at the Battle of Bywater, and they all wanted to be killed so they could be buried in the piles of dirt. Daisy was in her new blouse, but she was the cleanest of them by the end because she's careful of her clothes. Sometimes I think I should dress the rest of you all in brown sacks and save myself a great deal of trouble."

"Trouble nothing! We're an excellent example to everyone in our behaviour, the whole lot of us." Frodo laughed, flicking at Rose's nose with his thumb and forefinger.

"Oh, to a storyteller we'd seem nice enough, I suppose. But stories and life don't always match. I mean, on paper your sicknesses might seem sad and romantic, I'm sure fairytales would paint you as a marble-skinned doll, frail and languishing in bed and coughing once in a while, and not a crabby, ill-tempered fellow who refuses to eat out of contraryness more than stomach upset, who grumps and grumbles if he's forced into a bath or, goodness forbid it, out into the sunshine."

"Hush." Sam's order was good-natured, because Rosie's tone was obvious teasing. "We'll start on your faults and failings if you don't shut it."

"If we started that, we'll never get any sleep." Frodo pecked a kiss on Sam's cheek, close to the point where his jaw reached his ear, then turned and reached out to kiss Rosie in the same way. "No bickering at bed-time, just as we tell the children."

They all settled down into comfortable breathing, thoughts slipping into dreams. Then Rosie propped herself up on one work-red elbow, face scrunched up in thought.

"Why do you suppose it is we hardly ever fight, the three of us? We argue from time to time, but never like my Ma and Dad did. We're none of us easy to get along with."

Frodo groaned, annoyed at being woken out of his half-doze, and turned over without answering.

Sam thought about the question for a while, then answered carefully.

"I reckon it's to do with how much trouble we've had from others, if you take my meaning. We'd never have any peace at all if we fought each other. Or," he smiled. "It could be that we're just out of energy by the end of the day, and that makes us placid."

"Hope thinks we're adorable," Frodo muttered, his face still buried in the pillow. "She says seeing us so happy has spoiled her, that she won't ever be content with an ordinary match now that she knows how happy love can be."

"So you're not sneaking down behind the mill with her, then?" Sam chuckled, remembering the numerous times his sons had been chased home by peevish fathers after being caught with a hand up a skirt or down a corset.

"I remind you again that Annabel was there with us today, and Primrose, and Elanor was in and out as well. Even if I wanted to, I'd scarcely have a chance. Anna was helping us collect fairytales today, and she never wants them to end. 'And then what happened? And then what?' - she never lets it rest."

"That reminds me of someone else I've known," Sam teased. Rosie smiled sleepily, and kicked her heel gently against his shin.

"So what did you tell her?" Rosie asked Frodo.

"Well, she was particularly interested in the story of Winter's road. Demanded to know how the story would end."

Sam scratched his eyebrow and yawned.

"I've wondered that myself. What was your answer?"

"I told her the truth. That one day Winter heard a child crying for help, and even though his legs were tired and his heart was heavy he knew he'd have to help. So he bit through the black thread with a chomp of his teeth, and ran to save the child."

"And then what happened? What happened then?" Rosie asked with a giggle.

Frodo laughed. "You sound just like her. And then they all lay down and went to sleep, because it was bedtime, and lived happily ever after."

"Finally! I thought the poor dears would never have a rest. It must be a hard life, being a player in a tale," Sam mused. "I'm glad it ended well."

"Annabel was too." Frodo smiled, thinking of the little girl. "She adores Elanor, wants to be her when she grows up."

"No wonder, Ellyelle spoils her rotten. Now, we've talked enough for tonight, it's time to sleep, and in the morning the whirlwind can start all over again," Rosie declared.

"Ah, now that's my sort of ending." Sam settled down happily with a goodnight kiss for Rose and for Frodo, and the three of them slept together.

~

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