A/N: This story was written for the February Teitho challenge – First, where it received 2^nd place.  Thank you to anyone who may have voted for this story! :-)

The soup tasted just fine, thick with taters and chicken, mushrooms and a hint of onion.  Not enough onion for my liking, really, but of course the injured Hobbits that Papa brought home from the battle would be eating it in bed, and it couldn’t be too strong or it would burn their throats and sour their stomachs.  That wouldn’t do, not for such brave Hobbits as these.

A battle in Bywater.  Bywater. It would be beyond believing, except after all the Troubles lately—what with Pimple (Papa says I’m not to call him that, but Papa says it plenty) and the ruffians and that Sharkey fella, and with all the tearing up the trees and holes and gardens—probably just about nothing would surprise me right now.  Mr. Frodo says he was a wizard, that Sharkey, and I guess I believe that too, especially after what happened over at Bag Row this afternoon.  I’m glad I didn’t know it before, because with everything going on I’ve been scared enough already.  I’ve been trying that hard, but I don’t think I could have hid it anymore from Papa and Mama and the rest if I’d known that there was a wizard staying in Bag End and causing all this trouble.  Old Gandalf and his fireworks always seemed all right, no matter what Auntie Arnica used to say, but I think I’ve just about enough of wizards and Men both for a long while.

Mama put a stack of bowls by my elbow, then started setting out the trays with bread and tea.  Most everybody would just dish their own out of the kettle, but there were some as would be needing the food brought to them—the four injured Hobbits in the boys’ rooms, Mr. Frodo (who’d seemed right worn out but had still protested all the way as Mama’d shooed him back to her and Papa’s room), and Sam’s Gaffer, who was looking that much punier since I saw him a week back.  Ooo, those Men and their picks and shovels and flimsy board houses, not even taking care of those poor old folk they packed in there after tearing up their poor holes and …

“Rosie!”

“Sorry, Mama!”  I wiped up the soup I’d spilled on the hearth, and set the last bowl on a tray.

Thinking of Sam’s Gaffer got me to thinking about Samwise, of course, and I was glad we were standing by the cooking fire so that Mama wouldn’t notice the heat that sprang up into my face.  I peeked out into the great room as I gathered up the trays, and found him sitting in a corner by the fire.  The boys were gathered around him, chattering away and firing questions left and right, but they didn’t seem to be waiting for answers and in truth, that was probably for the best because Sam really wasn’t looking too lively.  His eyes were half closed and his answers, when he gave them, were low enough that I couldn’t even hear his voice from across the room.  He looked completely done in, and there was something about the way he sat there with his head down and his shoulders all slumped that made me take another look.  I’ve known Samwise Gamgee since I was just a little lass, and spent half o’ my growing-up years following him around Hobbiton and Bywater (which I’d never admit out loud to any of my brothers, thank ya), and I could tell pretty well by now when something wasn’t right with him.

“You bring these to Hamfast and the Hobbits in Jolly and Nibs’ room, I’ll get the other two and Mr. Frodo.”  Mama started off and I followed, looking hard at Sam without letting him know it.  I’d gotten a lot of good practice at that over the years, and he didn’t notice a thing.

Course, it didn’t seem to me like he was noticing much right now.

A lot had been going on these last days, and since Mr. Frodo and Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin had been in the thick of things, of course Samwise had too.  He’s a loyal one, is Sam Gamgee.  He sticks.  He’s not one to let any Hobbit in his care go it alone, not if he can help it.  Which meant that he’d been facing down Shirriffs and fighting ruffians and sneaking his Gaffer away from those awful houses since the minute he got back to the Shire, without even a good pipe for comfort at the end of it.  (Those Men and their greedy, thieving ways.)  Then, of course, there was all that time he was gone.  Who knows what happened to them out there?  Everyone talked the whole of last year about how no sensible Hobbit would go wandering off from the Shire, and that they were surely all dead.  They all said it was just a shame how Mr. Bilbo had rubbed off on Mr. Frodo, and how Mr. Frodo had rubbed off on Mr. Merry and Mr. Pippin, and that poor Sam had gotten caught up in it.  I guess I don’t know why anyone would want to go traipsing around out there either, but do I know that Sam Gamgee doesn’t get ‘caught up’ in anything he doesn’t want to be caught up in, and I never once thought they were dead.  Not if Sam had any say in it.  He’s got a lot of hobbit-sense, does that one.

All of that would surely be a good enough excuse to be looking like Sam did right now, but I couldn’t help being worried because he hadn’t been.  Least, not ‘til just recently.  When he first showed up at the farm, all skinny and travel-ruffled and wearin’ that outlandish mail shirt and lookin’ like the handsomest Hobbit I’d seen in maybe my whole entire life, there was nothin’ of this in his eyes.  There was anger and doggedness and hurry, but none of this … sad sort o’ blankness.  When he brought his Gaffer to us later, and again after the battle (a battle, there was a battle in Bywater), he seemed just the same.  It wasn’t ‘til they got back from Bag Row that I first saw it, and it’s only got worse since he and the boys all settled down in the big room.  It could be there was no time for things to catch up with him before, and I guess this is maybe the first he’s really seen o’ the mess those ruffians made o’ Bag End and all o’ Bag Row.  That would be enough to make anybody just want to cry for days.  Whatever the case, Sam has a whole night to sit and think on it now, with all the rest of everything settled down, and I’m not sure that’s a very good thing.

A teacup rattled on one of my trays, and I looked back to my own business as I followed Mama into the back hall.  I would keep an eye on Samwise too tonight, I decided—just in case this little something wrong decided ta turn into a big something wrong.

When I finished up and came back out to the big room, though, he was gone.  I tried not to be too obvious about my dismay, but Papa saw me and motioned me over.  I hid my blush at being caught and came up next to his chair.

“Papa?”

“He went out a few minutes ago.”

“Oh.”  There was no point in trying to pretend I didn’t understand.  Papa knew pretty well how things were with me.  “Did he …”  I tried to hide my disappointment.  I had been glad to see Sam back at the farm, and I had hoped—expected, even—that with both his Gaffer and Mr. Frodo here, he would stay as well.  “Is he going to help out with Mr. Merry or Mr. Pippin, then?  Did he say when he’ll be back?”  Papa raised one eyebrow, and I hurried on.  “Because I can put aside some soup if—”

“I didn’t say he left, lass.  Don’t you fret.”  My face turned a fiery red, I could feel it, and I looked quickly away.  At least the boys didn’t seem to be listening.  Papa only pointed to the door with his pipe stem.  I wondered sometimes why he still sat with it at night, since there was no pipeweed to be had, but I guess it was just habit for him—something familiar and comfortable.  We all had been taking comfort in the little familiar things lately.  “The others are coming here, anyway.  They’ll be by in a bit, said they’d check in at least if they decided not to stay.  No, your Sam stepped outside, said he needed some air.”  My Sam.  He was no such thing, even if …  Heat flooded my face again, but Papa didn’t notice his slip.  He smiled, but it was a sad one.  “Seemed like he could use a bit of cheering, if you ask me.  This afternoon’s sights were hard on him.  He’s been tending those gardens in Bag Row and up to Bag End since he was just a little lad, and they’re all gone now.  Can’t have been easy.”  Poor Sam …  Papa shook his head, and his eyes drifted back down to his pipe.  “All gone …”

He was finished talking to me, his thoughts far away on all the other things that we and everyone else had lost.  It didn’t matter, as my own thoughts were already out the door with Sam.  “Thank you, Papa,” I whispered, and squeezed his shoulder before hurrying toward the door.  Jolly called out as I passed, but I ignored him and slipped outside.  There I stopped, taking in a long breath of the dark night air.  Where to even start?  The coops or barn?  No, more likely Mama’s vegetable garden, or even one of the near fields.  I could be looking for a long time in the dark before …

I almost tripped over him turning the bend—seems I wasn’t in for a long search after all.  Sam was sitting against the hill beside a scraggly little rosebush, shadowed from the moonlight.  He looked up when I ran into him, murmuring an apology as if only half his mind was on the words.

“Sorry Rosie, thought I’d be out of the way here.”

“No, I …”  I looked down at the bent curly head, and my heart jumped right into my mouth.  No matter what he’d seen and done in the outside world, no matter what new thoughts and hurts lived behind those eyes now, this Hobbit who sat here silent in the dark was the same Sam Gamgee who had left us.  Everything I’d fallen in love with (yes, I’m willing to admit it if my brothers can’t hear) was still right there.  I’d seen it already in a hundred little ways—still so careful of others, so helpful, so respectful, so liable to keep himself in the background.  And that might be all well and good for Mr. Frodo and the others, but it also meant that if Samwise himself needed somebody, he wasn’t very likely to tell.  So.  I wasn’t sure how much I really wanted to hear—the few stories I had heard about the outside world would straighten your hair right out, and no mistake—but Sam Gamgee was my friend, whatever else we were or weren’t to each other.  I took a deep breath and inched forward.  “Are you hungry?  I can bring you some soup and bread.  Tea’s hot too.”

He shook his head without looking around.  “No thanks, lass.”

Now, that just wasn’t right.  A Hobbit doesn’t turn down food when it’s offered.  “I’ll have you know I made that soup myself, Sam Gamgee, and I—”

“We saw such awful things, Rosie.”  I swallowed my protest, and all my half-formed plans to make him talk flew right out of my head.  “There were amazing things, too, and beautiful things, and things that … that were so wonderful and magical I wouldn’t know what to say about them even if I thought for twenty years.”  Samwise shook his head and scraped aimlessly in the dirt with one hand.  I inched closer and sank down, hoping that my nearness wouldn’t stop him—but I didn’t need to have worried.  “But there were lots awful things, and we just barely escaped from some of them.  Those Black Riders that stabbed Mr. Frodo on Weathertop…”

Stabbed?  I couldn’t stop a gasp, but I smothered it with a quick hand.  He didn't seem to hear.

“That blizzard on Caradhras where we all almost froze to death.  Moria and all the orcs and the … the Balrog.  We were all running for our lives, and Legolas was screaming—Legolas—and Gandalf died fighting it.”

Dead?  My brain and my stomach both swirled.  The old wizard … but …

“And the Emyn Muil, and the Dead Marshes, and the pass of Cirith Ungol.  Shelob …”  His voice broke on that.  “She stung him and I thought Mr. Frodo was dead.  He was so still and he wasn’t breathing, and I thought she’d killed him.”

Stung …?  Just what was a Shelob, anyway?  I swallowed back horror and terror and nausea.  No, I was sure now that I didn’t want to hear, but he just kept on …

“And then the orcs took him, because I was too slow to realize.  I was just too …”  He shook his head and roughly swiped at his eyes.  “And they locked Mr. Frodo away, and they hurt him, and I thought I’d lost him again but I hadn’t and we escaped from there too.  And we got taken by an orc army, and we almost didn’t make it up the mountain in the end because there was no food and no water and no living thing for days and days.  And Mr. Frodo was so weak that I had to carry him the last bit, and that Gollum followed us and made trouble every step of the way.  And after all that, Mr. Frodo …”

I was numb now, so shocked by words and scenes I didn’t understand that I don’t know if I could have spoken even if I’d wanted to.  Sam stopped for a long minute and I wondered if he was done—please let him be done—but then he spoke again, in low, flat kind of voice.

“But we got through all of it in the end, we escaped it all, and you know what?  It was the Shire that kept us going.  No matter how scared or thirsty or tired or hopeless we were, we remembered the Shire—though sometimes Mr. Frodo couldn’t, and I had to remember it for him.”

I didn’t understand …

“We knew the Shire was still out there somewhere, and as long as it stayed beautiful and …”  Sam’s voice broke into a sob, and snapped me out of my daze.  “… and innocent and green …”  His shoulders shook.  I laid a hand on his arm and Sam leaned into it, his shoulder nearly touching mine.  “And then we were saved.”  His voice took on a tone of puzzled wonder.  “Saved.  Even now I can’t believe it sometimes.  We finished the quest—Mr. Frodo did it, he finished it—and we thought we would die, neither of us had anything left … but then we were saved and it was all over.  For a little while it seemed like everything was good again.  Like none of it could ever touch us anymore.”

Sam’s shoulders shook again, and he curled his face down into his knees, rubbing his eyes on his trousers.  Somehow I knew what was coming, and my heart ached for him—for all of them—and I tightened my grip.  I don’t know if he even noticed.

“And then we came back here, Rosie, and the Shire wasn’t ...”  Sam shook his head and scooted closer, and I leaned into him, shoulder to shoulder.  “It’s not green or … or innocent anymore.  It’s all torn up and burnt down and …”  He took a shaky breath.  “And now it seems somehow like all those other things aren’t really gone, either.  Like we maybe didn’t completely leave them behind, like I carried some of it here along with me when I hoped it was all gone for good, and now the Shire is the worst of it because we can’t escape it.  We can’t go anywhere or run from it.  This is home.”

His voice trailed off, and soft sobs overtook him.  They tore right into my heart, and I knew then and there that there was something worse than having to listen to all those horrible stories.  It was listening to my Samwise cry.

I wouldn’t let it keep on, not if I could do anything to stop it.

I leaned into him and reached for his cheek.  Sam’s skin was rough beneath my fingers, battered with weather and travel.  I pulled his head away from his knees and turned his face toward me, and my heart was hammering so hard that I could barely breathe.  His eyes glittered with tears even in the moon-washed dark, and I tasted the salty wetness when I pressed my lips against his.

I didn’t know what he’d do—Sam hadn’t spoken before he left all those months ago, though I’d hoped he would—but his hand came up to grip my curls and he returned my hesitant gesture with an intensity that left me in no doubt of my welcome.  For a long minute my entire world narrowed to my racing heart and Sam’s ragged breathing and his warm lips on mine.  Suddenly, though, he broke off, pulling away as if a hornet had stung him.  I opened my eyes and he was staring at me, tense and shocked.

“Rosie …”

“No, Sam.”  I touched his cheek again and Sam’s own hand followed slowly, fingertips brushing mine.  His eyes were wide with surprise and wonder.  “When you need somebody, you come to me, you understand?  I know you won’t be wanting to worry Mr. Frodo and the others, but it seems like you’ll be needing to talk sometimes, and when you do, you find me and I’ll listen.  There’s no need for you to be sitting out here alone in the dark.”

Sam’s grip tightened, and he let out a long, slow breath.  “Rosie, I …”

“Sam?”  Neither of us had been paying any attention to the yard around us, and we weren’t expecting the sudden fall of yellow lantern light.  Mr. Merry’s voice was relieved.  “Sam, they said you left almost an hour ago without saying where, and we didn’t know—”  He trailed off, and for a long minute we all three just stared at each other.  Mr. Merry’s gaze flickered from Samwise to me and then back again, and I thought I saw a hint of a smile starting—though it could have just been the mix of light and shadows from the lantern.  He stepped back and nodded, directing his next words to me.  “You take good care of him, Rosie.”

“I will, and you needn’t ask it!”

I was horrified even as I blurted the words.  But I’d known Sam forever, and even though he’d been away with Mr. Frodo and the others for so long—even though I could see that these important Hobbits thought the whole world of him—it still felt wrong for Mr. Merry to be asking me to take care of Sam.  I would have done that anyway.  I hoped—oh, I hoped—that Samwise might even want me keep on with it.  I shook that thought away and ducked my head, smiling a shy apology.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Merry.  I only … of course I will.”

He didn’t seem upset.  In fact, his smile widened and to my surprise, he swept a brief bow.  “I have no doubt of it, Miss Rose.”  Mr. Merry glanced toward Samwise, and his eyes danced in the flickering light.  “In fact, I’ll just leave you to it.”  He backed away, still grinning, then swung around toward the front of the family hole.  I looked to Samwise as Mr. Merry disappeared, and what I saw in his eyes before the last flash of lantern light faded sent shivers straight through me, from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes.

“Rosie …” Sam whispered again.  He tightened his grip on my fingers, and brushed my curls with his free hand, and then his lips found mine again.  I relaxed against him and let myself fall into it.

Our first kiss had been that anxious and desperate and needy—comfort given and received in a world where everything else seemed to lay in ruins around us.

Our second kiss was something else completely.

Their picnic would be ruined.

Rosie sighed as she stood on the doorstep, basket in hand, and eyed the dark sky above her.  If it rained, of course, it was time for it to rain.  They’d been getting just the right amount so far this spring—no more, no less—and the newly planted crops and trees and shrubs and grass were springing up like … well, like an Elf queen had blessed their land.

Was the Lady a Queen?  She couldn’t quite manage to keep it all straight, somehow, with so many Lords and Ladies and Kings and Queens and Elves and Princes and …

Well.  It didn’t really matter.  What did matter was that the sun shone and the rain fell like someone had planned it out minute by minute just for the Shire.  What they had all feared would be a hard, lean year looked to be anything but, and her Sam had been right there in the middle of it.

In the middle of it?  No, he’d been leading the way.  Rosie sighed happily and leaned back against the round door behind her, disappointment for a moment forgotten.  Her Sam had been working nonstop since the Troubles had ended and the Ruffians had been driven out, and all that hard work had just brought their land back to life again.  The Lady’s special dirt had helped, of course, but Rosie really put even that mostly up to her betrothed.  The Lady had looked in his heart, after all, and this is what she had gifted him.  If Sam wasn’t exactly who he was, they wouldn’t have this soil from an Elf forest far away to make their Shire beautiful again.

Her betrothed.  The thought made her shiver happily—and in only a few short weeks, he would be her husband.  She had spent a long time waiting for Samwise Gamgee, and with all that waiting about to end she was as happy as she had ever been.

He’d not been around much lately, of course.  Sam had been all over the Shire since he and the others had been home, rebuilding and planting at first but lately checking up on all that had been done over the past months.  Sam’s hand was in almost everything, since it seemed that wherever he had been flourished best.  He had got back last night, though, and was home to stay until the wedding and for at least a few weeks after.  Rosie had greeted him at the door when he had stopped by on his way through to Bag End.  They had taken a few sweet moments together, but he was tired and she had sent him quickly on his way with the promise of a picnic lunch on the morrow.

And now the blessed rain coming.  Rosie peeked under the cloth that covered her hamper, surveying the roasted chicken and fresh-baked bread and cinnamon apples and fresh strawberry tarts—strawberries, this early in the season!—with the jar of thick cream to pour over the top.  A small bottle of plum wine was tucked in, too.  She wore her nicest everyday frock (Sam was always somewhat dirt-covered these days, and it wouldn’t do to ruin a party frock for a picnic), had tied back her hair with the ribbons he had brought her last time he had come home, and had dabbed a little drop of her new scent behind each ear.  She was ready for a picnic and some time with her Hobbit!

Rosie sniffed and pushed away from the door.  Well, they would just have to find someplace under cover.  It wouldn’t be the same as to be out in the middle of the party field, but they would be together and that was the important part.  She hurried along the front path to the road, then turned toward Hobbiton and set off for her betrothed and her picnic.

It was past noon when Rosie reached the party field, but she wasn’t worried.  Sam would be wanting to check in on his tree anyway, and would be perfectly content until she arrived.

That tree!  Another wonder come to the Shire from the Elf Lady.  Rosie had never heard of a mallorn before her Sam planted this one, of course—no one had, because none grew in the Shire or anywhere west of the Misty Mountains, as far as Sam knew.  The tree had shot up this spring with a speed that just didn’t seem believable, even with all the other amazing growth happening this year.  There it was in front of her now, though—tall and straight and strong, with the most beautiful silver bark and delicate golden flowers.  In all her life, she could never have imagined something so fair and wonderful.

Rosie had expected to find Sam beneath its branches, hand on its trunk and speaking soft encouragement to the tree as he often did when he was alone or in the company of close friends.  Instead, she found him out in the center of the party field, standing still as stone, eyes turned up toward the dark, rain-laden sky.  She approached from behind, wondering what had caught his eye.  Sam was more pensive since he had returned, that was certain.  Whenever she’d had the chance to work alongside him over the past months, she’d often seen him stop in the middle of his task—whether digging or planting, building or cleaning—and his eyes would take on a distant look.  He would spend a few moments with his hands buried deep in the soil, or his nose buried in the leaves of a shrub, and then he would shake himself and move along with his work.  Rosie wondered what he thought about during those times—if he was remembering, or planning, or just getting to know the Shire again—but he’d not offered any explanation, and she didn’t feel it was best to ask.

Not yet, not about this.  There were other things they talked about, but for the time being, these moments were still his own.

Something was … different about this time, though.  Something in the set of his shoulders, tense and tired at once, and in the way his hands curled into fists as they hung limp at his sides.  Her own heart started to beat faster, and Rosie picked up her step.  Rain started to fall as she circled around Sam to look him in the face.

“Sam?”

He looked down at the sound of his name, and his eyes were blank and unfocused.

“Samwise?”

She tried to keep the fear from her voice, but didn’t think she managed.  Rosie set aside the hamper and reached for one fisted hand, taking it gently into hers and trying to thread her fingers in with his.  Sam shook his head then and blinked, and when he looked back down he was her Samwise again—strong and sun-browned, sleeves rolled up and collar open at the throat, smelling of rich soil and green leaves and good honest sweat from a morning’s work.  His eyes softened as he saw her, and then he tensed, stepping away as memory of the last few moments caught up to him.  Rosie scooped up the hamper and went after him, taking his arm and tugging gently toward the mallorn.  Sam followed without protest, for which she was glad.  So far they had done all right together, she and her Sam, working through his memories and fears from his time away, but it seemed somehow new to her every time—what to say, what to do to comfort him, to make him feel safe.

Well.  They would get through this as they had all the rest.

They ducked beneath the branches of the young tree, where it was somehow still dry even though its leaves and flowers couldn’t possibly have stopped all the rain that was now falling.  Rosie set the basket down again and then turned, taking both of his hands and lacing their fingers together.  She caught his beautiful dark eyes with her own and held his gaze.

“What was that, then?”

Sam took a long breath and started to look away, but she shook his hands gently and he returned his eyes to hers.  Rosie saw the beginnings of a pink blush on his cheeks.

“It … it’s only happened one other time.  Well, two, I guess, but I was asleep the first time.  Strider—the King, that is—wasn’t worried, didn’t think it was a big thing.  He said it was possible it would happen again, though, and not to worry about that either, if it wasn’t bad or often.”  Rosie remained silent, waiting for him to get to the point.  She had learned quickly that trying to help him organize his thoughts only ended in an argument.  “It’s just …”  Sam nodded out toward the field.  “The sky.  It … when it’s heavy like this, with all the clouds, it reminds me of Mordor sometimes.”

“Mordor?”  How could that be?  The little he had told her of that cursed land had drawn it as a stark, hot, dry place.

A faint, crooked grin touched his lips.  “Well, these things don’t always make too much sense, I don’t think.  I mean, look how often it’s rained since we got back and it hasn’t happened any of those other times.  Maybe I was … who knows.  But, the sky in Mordor was always … it was like it was pressing down on us, pushing us down into the ground.  And when the clouds get so low like that …”

Rosie nodded, though she didn’t fully understand.  “So, you were remembering Mordor?”

“Well …”  Sam’s body tightened again, but this time he didn’t look away.  “Not remembering, exactly.  This time wasn’t quite the same, I was just on the edge, but the last time … I thought I was in Mordor.  I didn’t know I had ever left.”

She sucked in a quick breath.  “How …”

“Strider says it happens sometimes,” Sam hurried to reassure her, stepping closer and drawing their joined hands to rest against his chest.  “He says there’s nothing wrong with me, that sometimes it just … happens.”

“Samwise Gamgee!”  Rosie pursed her lips, gripping his fingers tightly.  “Of course there’s naught wrong with you!”

He laughed softly, and it was like the sun shining through the rain.  “Thank you kindly, lass.”

She hmmphed softly.  “The very idea.”  Of course she would need to think on this more, and they would likely have to discuss it further, but for now her fussing was what he needed.  “And how did you … how did it stop?  Did Mr. Frodo or one of the others wake you?”  It was strange, trying to decide how best to speak about things such as this that she knew naught about.

Sam laughed again and shook his head.  This time when he stepped back she let him.  “No, I wasn’t even in the house.  I ended up sleepwalking all the way from the sixth level to the second.  I woke up sitting against a half-torn down building with no idea how I’d got there, and I had to ask directions back.  I was halfway up the third level when it … it happened again, only this time I was awake.”

“Sam!” she gasped.  “You could have been hurt!”

Some might have said it was a silly thing to say, after all the truly serious danger he had faced on his and Mr. Frodo’s quest, but Rosie knew that Sam appreciated her concern for him.

“I did tear up my feet a bit.  Strider wouldn’t let me walk anywhere but to the sitting room and back for the next couple of days, and Mr. Frodo hovered something awful, when he should have been worried about his own self.”  He shrugged, sighing.  “But really it could have been a lot worse.  I ended up in a little herb patch behind a house—I smelled the plants, and even … wherever I was, knew that wasn’t right, not for Mordor.  And I just … came out of it.”

Came out of it.  What a terrible, frightening thing to happen—and who even knew such things were possible?  She was sure he’d been more disturbed by it all than he was letting on, but that was his business for now and she wouldn’t press him.

“So …”  Rosie looked around them, at the tree and the party field.  “What about now?  It smells like all kinds of green things here.”

Sam turned troubled eyes toward the field and the rain.  “I know.  Maybe it didn’t help this time because there’s green growing things everywhere now?  Minas Tirith was nothing but stone all over.  Any kind of plant  stood out.  Here, though …”  He sighed.  “I’ll sleep with some athelas for the next few nights, it helped the last time, but overall I’m just going to have to be careful, I guess.  Don’t know what’ll happen if it comes on again.”

“Someone could watch you, to make sure—”

“Rosie.”  He took her hand again, making a face.  “I can’t be having somebody follow me everywhere for the rest of my years, just in case.”

It was true.  They were both silent for a moment, as the rain fell all around the slim young mallorn and the breeze swirled droplets underneath to land upon them.  She smelled the wet grass and the light fragrance of the mallorn blossoms and …

Ah.  Yes. 

It might not work … but then again, they’d naught to lose.

Rosie smiled up at him.  “What do you think of my new scent?”  Sam’s brows drew down, bewildered and a little hurt at this sudden shift in topic.  Rosie shook her head and reached for his other hand.  “I’m not changing the subject, my Sam.  But, what do you think of it?”

“I don’t …”  Sam hesitated, searching her face for some clue what she might be thinking.  Finally, though, he shook his head and leaned in.  He took a long, deep breath and then went still, eyes closed.  After a long moment he glanced up at her.  “What is it?”

“And you call yourself a gardener!”

His grin flashed then, and her knees went weak.  Sam shot a glance around the empty, rain-drenched field to be absolutely sure before ducking close, his nose just nuzzling the soft skin behind her ear where he knew she applied her scent.  Rosie concentrated on her breathing, and then he whispered, lips moving against her neck as soft as butterfly wings, “Buttercups.”

She shivered, and gasped, “Buttercups,” before moving out of his grasp.

Sam grinned unrepentantly.  Rosie straightened her hair.  He laughed out loud, and she was that thankful to see the sparkle back in his eyes.

“I didn’t know they made buttercup scent.”

“They don’t.”  Rosie shook her head and sat down beside the hamper, uncovering their luncheon meal and setting out plates and goblets.  He was quick to join her.  “But there’s a Hobbit lass in Bywater who makes unusual scents, and I was feeling like I needed something new.”  She handed him bread and half a chicken.  “Do you remember what buttercup means?”

Sam worked the cork out of the wine, brow furrowed.  “Buttercup is for … good cheer?”

“Yes.”  Rose smiled at him, that smile she had always kept just for him.  “And I’ve been that happy since you came back, that I just wanted a scent that matched how I felt.  She agreed to make up a batch and see how it turned out.”  She lifted a brow at her betrothed.  “What do you think?”

“I like it.”  Sam poured the wine and handed over a goblet to her, grinning.  “And I’m not saying that just because it’s you wearing it.”   

Rosie laughed.  “That’s good!  I’d not want you to!”

“Ah, you say that now, lass …”

She snorted softly, then shook her head.  “Now we are off topic.”

“Right.  But what about this is on topic, exactly?”

“Only this.”  Rosie leaned forward.  “You know that scarf of mine you like so well?”

“Aye, of course I remember.  It’s the only bit of your clothing I do remember.”

He was rather blind about that sort of thing, her Samwise.  “I will put buttercup scent on it and give it to you to carry.  You keep it close.  If you ever feel whatever this is coming on again, you hold onto it and remember that buttercups mean Rosie, and they mean good cheer, and neither of those is to be found in Mordor, so you can’t be there either.”

Sam was quiet for a long moment, and his eyes glimmered briefly.  Then, he reached across the hamper and took her hand, bringing it to his lips for a gentle kiss.  “I do love you, Rosie Cotton.”

“And I you, of course.  Never anyone else.”

Gentle thunder rumbled.  Rain soaked the party field and New Row, Hobbiton and Bywater … everywhere but the ground beneath the young mallorn.  And Rosie and Sam picnicked in its shelter.

“Can I smell your new scent again?”

“You can eat your lunch, Samwise Gamgee.”

“Just so I know I’ll remember it, just in case.”

“You’ll remember it just fine.”

“You never know …”

“Samwise?”

“Yes, Rosie?”

“Eat.”

A soft snicker.  “Yes, Rosie.”

A/N:  I had always thought I might add onto A Bit of Cheering someday – just little Sam/Rosie stories here and there, as I got around to them.  When I received a request recently for a follow-up involving Sam and Rose to my story “Heavy Is the Sky”, I thought this would be a good place for it.  Hope you enjoyed.  :-)