Chapter Text
TA 1636
She curled her toes tightly, trying to keep the remnants of the warmth from the previous house before her feet turned back into blocks of ice. In fact, at this point, she wouldn't be surprised that her feet would leave her entirely, tired of the sorry amount of abuse she'd been heaping on them.
She, like any hobbit, was usually proud of her well-groomed toes but the last couple of months had been hard on all of her. Her once shining curls hung dark and lank against her cheeks, any healthy padding she had was long gone and her breath was coming in rattling gasps.
She wiped her curls off her face with a wet sleeve with a grimace. Here she was worrying about her curls and her feet! She blew out her breath in a snort and ignored the way it immediately misted in the cold air.
She may have lost that broach pin from the Bywater fayre; her hair ribbon had disappeared over a month ago, lost forever to the winds over the south downs, and her remaining waistcoat button was languishing by a single thread. But she had promised to make her way to this final house.
Nothing sweeter than a promise kept.
No matter the state of her buttons.
She raised her hand to knock on the door when she finally made her way through rainy streets to her next stop. The door opened before she could make a noise and revealed one of the big folk looking even worse for wear than she did.
“Hello, Ostir sent me. I have some healing ability-“
The look of relief on the poor woman’s face made it clear that she didn’t need further explanations, the hobbit was quickly ushered through the large, empty home and taken to a large, empty bedroom.
In better times a home like this would have a whole household, with servants and guards and business to fill all the hollow spaces but now it stood silent, with only two occupants left.
The woman chattered away, her voice hoarse as she listed a long anxious run of symptoms and treatments. They reached the bed and the lady of the house pulled over a stool when it became clear that the small healer was going to need some help getting up to the right height to render any assistance to the occupant of such a big bed.
She had walked through forests with trees the size of ship's masts and as thick as ten hobbits and felt less small. Belladonna sighed quietly under her breath, she’d spent over a month around the big folk this time around and the size of their furniture never ceased to overwhelm her.
Everything felt like it would overwhelm her.
She climbed up to get a look at her patient and looked down at a figure that made the big bed feel even bigger. The small boy was shivering, his face was pale and sweat beaded on his forehead as his whole body trembled.
He had golden curls that were sweat-slick and stuck in tight whorls against his face. He was too thin and when she moved to test his pulse she could feel too much bone in too narrow a wrist.
The sickness was burning up whatever his mother managed to feed him, sacrificing any nourishment to the flames of the plague that burned through him.
She had seen it too many times in the last month, the fever would burn grown men out like candles leaving them gaunt and broken.
And too many children.
Too many children with golden curls like her son who was so far away from her right now but hopefully still well. Under the protection of his father.
Belladonna pressed a cool hand against the forehead of the boy that reminded her so much of her Bilbo, and tentatively felt for any hope. The child was too far gone for her herblore to help him, and she had very little left in any case. This was her sixteenth patient today and there would be sixteen more tomorrow to treat with whatever she had left, or whatever she could gather from the fields around Tharbad.
She had been brimming with purpose with the best of the Shire's herbs to offer when she first joined Gandalf on this mission, but even her knack for growing things couldn't magic up herbs from nothing and the hobbit gardens she found in the fens above the greyflood were not grown with medicine in mind.
There was little hope left for those left within these walls and she looked up to see devastation already forming in the eyes of the mother. It was not just one life in the balance.
She looked down at her tiny patient and felt his next rattling breath. All the herbs in the world would do nothing except ease his passing.
The child's eyes blinked open, grass green and bright even though they were glazed with fever. Another similarity this child of man shared with her little fauntling.
She could do nothing less than her utmost.
She hadn’t been built for ease, not like her husband who was a cultivator and nurturer to the core of his very spirit. So like the hobbits they had long called family, built for gardens and good green earth.
Belladonna had been built for a different purpose. Storms over rich green wilderness, harsh winters and verdant springs. She hadn’t been built for standing still. Her nature required action.
She couldn’t argue with death but maybe, sometimes, she could bargain with it.
She closed her eyes and reached down into the core of herself, pulling a sliver of the energy that made her and pushing it into her hands. Pushing it to bolster the life that still strained in the child’s withering chest.
It felt like hours but it was probably seconds as she painstakingly planted that piece of energy, tending it until it took root and twined around the boy’s life holding it in place.
When she opened her eyes she could see the boy’s colour returning, not healthy yet but a blush stained his cheeks again and his breaths were easier, young lives were easier to hold. She reached out again to press her hand against his head, he would be fine.
“Cilion, oh Cilion," His mother cried, reaching to hold the still-warm hand of her son. Relief made her breath come in sobs. “Thank you, thank you, dear healer. You have saved my heart.”
Belladonna patted her hand, squeezing lightly at her wrist as she dismounted the stool. She staggered slightly on the dismount but kept her voice even and reassuring, “Just make sure you give him lots of fluids, start him on a clear broth as soon as he wakes and build back up to solid food slowly.”
Her next breath was harsh and she felt lightheaded, a feeling that had become unfortunately familiar.
The mother didn't notice, staring desperately at her son’s face, and gloriously a thin reedy voice emerged from the bed, “Mumma?”
“Oh darling, I’m here,” The tenderness in her voice could have softened the heart of an orc and Belladonna felt her heart breaking. Warring feelings of relief and worry battling in her chest.
Belladonna slipped out of the room and pressed herself against the wall outside, hand pressed against her mouth to prevent her groan from travelling to the next room. The last week had sent her to an edge that she hadn’t been close to since the wandering days.
She was close to passing a point she couldn’t come back from.
She knew what Olórin would say. He would say that she had done what she could and saved as many as she could, and she should go home whilst she still could.
She knew what Bungo would say. He would ask her to come home.
But she couldn’t leave, not when she could still save the life of a single child. This plague didn’t care who you were when it came for you and she had already seen too many children die that she couldn’t help.
“Oh green lady," she prayed, "please may little Bilbo forgive me."