Disclaimer: The Shire and everything else in Middle Earth belongs to Tolkien. I just get to visit from time to time.

"Shall I fetch a healer?"

A voice penetrated the fog of pain and confusion cocooning her thoughts. Someone (was that Frodo lad?) wanted to send for yet another healer. There had been too many already and they could do nothing to ease her pain.

"No," she tried to answer. Had they heard her? It was important. She must make them understand. Before she could speak again, someone took her hand and held it gently.

"Hush, my love. Don’t try to talk." Sam. Her Sam was here. Everything was all right then. He would take care of things, he would remember his promise to her. His promise to let her go when the time had come.

That time was very close, now, she knew. She wanted to see him one last time. She needed one last glimpse. One last look at his beloved face. One last image of her dearest to take with her so that she would not be alone on this final journey.

Opening her eyes was hard, the hardest thing, perhaps, that she had ever done. Harder than birthing thirteen children. Harder than burying two of them. Harder than accepting that her time was at an end when she still wanted so much more.

Opening her eyes was hard, but she did it. It took long minutes for her eyes to see anything but grey. Formless grey blobs against a grey background. Then shapes began to coalesce out of the grey. Walls, furniture, items as familiar as life. At first, just shapes. Then light and color followed, highlighting and defining the shapes surrounding her.

The light was warm, warm and flickering. A fire, then. She would be able to see the fire if she turned her head ever so slightly to the left. See the flames dancing over the logs, logs placed carefully in the grate by her beloved Sam. "Sam." Was that her voice, so weak, so frail and powerless?

"I’m here, Rosie dear." She felt a gentle squeeze of her hand. Sorrow, unbearable sorrow washed over her. The tentative peace she had made with her fate faltered. She wanted more time. More time with her children, her husband, her life. Time, she didn’t have time for regrets. She gathered herself together. Turned her head to take a last look at her husband.

His face was wet with tears. Tears of sorrow and pain. So much pain. Her pain, but his as well. He held so much pain inside. She had seen it growing in him over the years. Pain that he tried to hide from the world. Pain that he could never hide from her.

She drank him in. Curly white hair, faded brown eyes, skin tanned and wrinkled from years of working in the sun and wind. She knew this Sam, this old hobbit whose years were writ on his face. But this was not the Sam she saw when she looked into the eyes of her beloved. She saw a tweenaged hobbit sitting in a meadow eating strawberries. She saw a dashing young adventurer riding up the lane on a pony, glowing with life, strength and confidence. She saw a father holding his first child in his arms, looking simultaneously about to burst with pride over this creature he had helped to create and terrified he might break this fragile new life.

That was the image she would take with her, that young husband of hers, cradling his child in his arms with such an expression of love in his eyes that it almost broke her heart.

She captured his eyes with hers for one last loving look. "No tears, love," she whispered. So much pain. It hurt to know she was adding to the burden he carried. There was no help for it. It was time. He would have to find his own healing. There would be a boat waiting for him at the Havens, if he would only go. But they had gone over that before and she had no time left for arguments.

"My . . . love," she breathed as her eyes slid shut. She no longer had the strength to keep them open. No more will to fight this unwinnable battle. As darkness descended on her mind and thoughts she felt his lips on her hand and then a final kiss on her mouth, the sweetest kiss she had ever known, the last kiss she would ever know. She let her breath out one last time and surrendered to the dark, but with her own light, her love, taking her on this, her last journey, in peace.