The thunderous pitter-patter of fat raindrops beating against Bilbo's kitchen window turns out to be rather a soothing thing. It's been so long since the last good storm and Bilbo has always loved the smell that lingers in the air after a good rain. It doesn't hurt that the dark, low-hanging clouds and the biting winds have been enough to keep most respectable hobbits well within their homes. The exception being the children playing blissfully in the mud and the occasional man or woman off on their way to see to family members or perhaps a very close friend.
There has been no one to entertain, no gossip to listen to, nothing to ruffle Bilbo Baggin's perfectly laid feathers.
Most of his time is spent reading, and organizing, and snacking, and enjoying his pipe next to the cracked open window in his kitchen where the rain can't get in due to the ledge above the glass. It's rather peaceful. Much more peaceful then Bilbo's found himself becoming used to over the past several days, which is likely why he finds himself vaguely uncomfortable... All the same, he finds himself rather put out when a series of urgent knocks startles him just enough that he somehow manages to spill freshly brewed tea across his lap.
Rather a shame, Bilbo thinks to himself as he stumbles out of the kitchen with a napkin which he uses to dab at his pants, to spill such fine tea!
The knocking doesn't stop and it makes Bilbo want to roll his eyes.
"Yes, yes," He calls as he nears the door. "I'm coming! I'm coming!"
Annoyance flaring in his chest Bilbo pulls the door open with a curt greeting that catches in his throat when he sees the young woman balancing precariously with one pale hand against his door frame while the other hovers in the air, prepared to knock once more upon his door.
"Are you alright, miss?" He asks the stranger, shocked to find a woman from the race of man standing at his door... And in such poor weather too.
She manages to catch his eyes before responding.
"I'm terribly sorry." Her mouth moves but something seems very strange about the way she's speaking, "But I'm rather lost and I think I may be injured."
Now, Bilbo's father raised him to be a proper gentle-hobbit and so it is with no reluctance that Bilbo steps forward to help the young woman into his home, carefully guiding her so that she doesn't accidentally knock her head against the door frame. Once the door is shut and Bilbo has her situated on the small bench against the wall the hobbit quickly goes to light some of the oil lamps on the wall.
He almost wishes he hadn't.
The woman's face hadn't appeared too odd in the low light offered by the kitchen and the singular hall light. But now? With more light to gaze upon her injuries Bilbo finds himself growing panicked. Because there is quite a bit of bruising on her forehead and a fair bit of blood smeared around her temple. The amount pales in comparison to that which covers her shirt and drips onto his bench, however.
"Oh my, one moment miss and I'll fetch you a healer!" He cries before slipping her arm over his shoulder and guiding her trembling body into the kitchen.
Bilbo settles his newfound guest in a chair next to the fire; wooden and covered with an old cushion which Bilbo has no personal attachment too other then he likes the pattern of the cloth. It can catch any blood and water that might drip onto the chair and Bilbo can dispose of it properly later. It also seems to be the best place to put the injured woman and once she's settled Bilbo grabs several towels from the linen closet, one to staunch whatever bleeding she has and the others to help her dry off faster, and makes his way back to her side.
"Thank you." The woman's words are slurred and thick with an accent he's never heard before but her eyes are focused as she looks into his.
Again, the feeling that something is off makes Bilbo a bit more nervous.
But surely the fact that her words are slurred and her mouth is moving oddly is due to her pain or the amount of blood she's lost in the time between her accident and the moment she found his home. There's no way to tell how long the woman's been wandering but Bilbo knows just as well as the next person that blood loss can do strange things to a person's head.
Without thinking Bilbo grabs a plate of lemon-raspberry biscuits from the table and thrusts them into the girl's trembling hands.
He isn't sure what it will do for her but he hopes that if nothing else she can keep herself focused while he runs to get help... Who knows, maybe she'll get a bit of her energy back in the process.
"Now just you relax and try to eat something. I'll be off to get Old Hob Cotton. He's a healer and doesn't live too far from here." Bilbo explains slowly.
The girl nods jerkily and obediently raises one of the yellow-and-red-tinted biscuits from his plate. For a moment Bilbo worries about the girl breaking his china but shakes the concern away as it's an old plate and not one of his better ones. He supposes it's a foolish thing to worry about, broken china.
With one last panicked glance at the pale girl nibbling absently at her biscuit Bilbo pulls on his jacket and rushes out the front door, which swings closed with a light thump behind him.
It's typically a ten minute walk to Old Hob Cotton's smial but Bilbo manages it in less than five. Probably because he has an injured young woman relying on him to get the older hobbit to her in a timely manner and no one around to distract him from his task. Most likely because he'd run from his gate all the way to the chipped green door of his more tolerable neighbor's home.
Panting, Bilbo knocks on the door and shakes some of the rain water out of his eyes.
When the door swing's open to reveal Old Hob's wife instead of the elderly hobbit himself Bilbo flounders for words for a brief moment.
"There's... Is Old Hob in? I... I need... There's an emergency." Bilbo managed to say, it's a garbled mess but he can't find it in him to be embarrassed.
Aster Cotton merely stares at him for a moment before disappearing back into her home, forcing Bilbo to wait an agonizing untold number of moments before the door swings open once more to reveal Old Hob himself. He's dressed in a broad hat and an old jacket, a leather bag gripped tight in his hand.
"Well, we'd best be off then." Old Hob says, stepping out into the deluge without so much as a flinch.
"Thank you!" Bilbo breathes as he steps back to allow Old Hob further away from the door where his wife watches them with worried blue eyes.
Bilbo offers her a thin smile and polite nod before turning to lead Old Hob back to his home and the young woman bleeding all over his kitchen.
Neither of them truly speak much as Bilbo leads the older hobbit through the rain. They only exchange the necessary words and even that is a struggle for images of finding the poor woman dead in his kitchen seems to conjure itself to Bilbo's mind whenever he goes to tell Old Hob about the woman of man, hopefully, eating his biscuits.
So when the two of them enter Bilbo's home and make their way to the brightly lit space the younger hobbit is relieved to find that the girl has finished two of the biscuits and has somehow managed to get them back to the table without breaking his china or injuring herself further. Unfortunately, that is the only positive note to the situation Bilbo finds himself stumbling into.
Because the woman's skin is pallid, her eyes are closed, and her head is hanging limply at the neck.
She looks dead.
Bilbo thinks she very well might have been dead if it weren't for the rattling, irregular breaths she keeps drawing.
Thankfully Old Hob is a far deal calmer then Bilbo as he carefully shimmies the woman out of her strange coat and pulls her shirt up to get at the worst of the bleeding after checking her pulse. He doesn't even balk at the long gash that starts at her hip and runs up the side of her body to end somewhere around the middle of her back.
It looks like something got her with its claws.
Movement from the corner of Bilbo's eye pulls his attention away from the bloody mass of torn flesh. Old Hob doesn't even seem bothered by the amount of blood that's currently oozing from the girl's body. Instead, he prepares his equipment with practiced ease. Bilbo watches, with a sick sense of fascination, as Old Hob goes about cleaning the girl's wound by pouring a healthy amount of red wine onto the wound and dabbing a the wound a bit with a fresh cloth.
"Come here, boy." Old Hob commands and Bilbo rushes over to the his side to help the man manipulate the woman's dead-weight around. "Hold her steady."
Bilbo doesn't say anything as Old Hob begins carefully stitching the girl's torn flesh back together.
The pain of it seems to pull her from her sleep for the woman's eye flutter open to stare at them blearily before she clenches them shut and grits her teeth as Old Hob's needle pierces her flesh.
It's a slow process seeing as Old Hob has to stop every once in a while to make sure he's stitching everything back where it needs to be stitched. Bilbo only manages to watch for a few moments before his stomach begins to churn. He continues to help where he can, of course, but there's only so much he can do aside from dab away the blood when he's told and hold her body in position.
After a while Old Hob ties off the last stitch, puts his equipment to the side, and goes to his bag to gather bandages and a large container of honey from his bag. Bilbo watches as Old Hob carefully spreads a generous amount of the golden substance of the bandages before he turns to the woman.
She's staring at him through wide, surprisingly lucid blue eyes.
"Miss..." Bilbo isn't sure what he's trying to say.
It doesn't matter. She doesn't seem too interested in what he has to say anyway. She just continues to stare at him and Bilbo finds himself lost in the deep blue of her eyes. Bilbo feels like a bug pinned beneath her gaze. Small and fragile, completely at the mercy of something bigger and more dangerous then he is. Something must amuse the red haired woman because she smiles weakly at him; teeth almost impossibly straight and white in the light cast by the fire and the lamps.
Her smile turns to a grimace as Old Hob begins applies the bandages to her wounds.
After her torso is completely dressed Old Hob turns his attention to her head wound, carefully wiping away the drying blood to get a look at the source of the bleeding.
"It's just a scratch, nothing to worry about." Old Hob remarks after he finds the wound and takes a look.
"Are you certain? There was quite a bit of blood." Bilbo remarks.
"Common for a head wound, boy, she'll heal up well enough in a few days."
Old Hob still spreads a bit of honey over the wound - to promote healing and keep infection away - before gathering up his tools and putting them away. Bilbo watches as he tosses the bag on the table before motioning to the girl then to the house. Bilbo nods before carefully ushering the girl up out of the chair and, with the help of Old Hob, manages to half carry the woman to a guest room. The bed's a bit small for her but when she's on her side and her legs curled up it's not a terrible fit.
She dozes off pretty quickly after Old Hob arranges the blankets around her shoulders.
"I suggest a few days of bed rest but I'll be back tomorrow to check on her." Old Hob says once they've left the room and shut the door behind them.
"Should I do anything?" Bilbo asks, suddenly very cold.
"Check on her throughout the night, every hour or so, might want to wake her up and get her to drink something but I'd let her rest if I were you." Old Hob replies as he shuffles back into the kitchen to gather his things.
"Thank you."
Old Hob nods his head as he puts his hat on his head. Bilbo doesn't understand how hi hands can be so steady after what they just witnessed, after what they'd just seen. Most folk around here don't get hurt like that very often, sometimes accidents happen but Bilbo's never seen a wound that bad before in his life. Maybe that's the difference between him and Old Hob Cotton.
"Not out of the woods yet, boy, thank me in the morning." With that Old Hob turns and leaves Bilbo's home, pausing only to make sure he's got all of his things before stepping out into the rain.
Bilbo remains standing in the foyer for several long moments before shaking himself from his stupor.
Needing something to do, something other then fretting and worrying, Bilbo gathers this mop and a few other items before beginning to clean up the mess that's been made of his home. He starts with his bench, scrubbing until the watery blood is cleaned up, then he travels into the kitchen. He mops up the blood on the floor, disposes of the soiled cushion, cleans up the china, and quickly disposes of the food.
Eventually his kitchen is nearly spotless and the trembling of his body can no longer be ignored.
Making his way to his own room Bilbo stops momentarily to check on the young woman and, after finding her breathing rather normally, leaves her to rest. He needs to change out of his clothes, he can wash them later but they're damp and uncomfortable. Grabbing a set of night clothes out of the dresser Bilbo makes his way to the bathroom to change and throw his soiled clothes in the hamper.
Once dressed, and less chilled, Bilbo makes his way back to his bedroom where he pulls back the covers so that he can climb into bed and settle down before drawing them up to his nose.
Briefly, he wonders if the woman is too cold.
He hadn't thought to start the fire in her room and Old Hob had only put a light blanket over her. While she hadn't looked cold when Bilbo checked on her last he'd hate to check on her later and find her trembling. With a sigh Bilbo flings the covers off and rises from bed, padding down to the linen closet to gather some lighter weight blankets.
His new housemate is sleeping rather peacefully when Bilbo comes in to spread the new blankets over her form. Bilbo leaves one of the blankets folded around her hips to offer warmth to her legs without overheating the rest of her body.
Would now be a good time to wake her and have her drink something? He doesn't have anything with him but that doesn't matter all that much. The trip to the kitchen isn't a long one and Bilbo makes sure to grab a pitcher and a sturdy cup before returning to the woman's room.
"Miss," Biblo is gentle as he shakes her shoulder, "miss? You must wake up now. Old Hob said you needed to drink something... Miss?"
The fiery haired woman groans lowly, brows furrowing.
Bilbo sags as the tension leaves his frame.
"Miss, I need you to drink."
Blue eyes, dazed and unsettled, flutter about the room for a moment before landing on him. Bilbo offers what he hopes is a reassuring smile as he offers up the cup to the woman. She stares at it for a long moment before reaching out with trembling hands to take the cup. Unfortunately, she doesn't drink immediately. Instead she just stares into the cup for a long moment before looking back at him.
"It's just water." Bilbo promises.
Bringing the glass closer to her the girl sniffs at the contents once before taking a sip.
A sip turns into a completely empty glass soon enough and when Bilbo offers another the girl drinks it without hesitation. After she places the cup on the bedside table and lays back against the pillows where she continues to stare at Bilbo.
The hobbit clears his throat.
"I'm Bilbo Baggins of Bag End."
It's a bit late to be introducing himself, or maybe too early, but Bilbo isn't sure if the woman trusts him or not and... And he really just wants her to know that she's safe. Whatever attacked her, whatever happened to her before she came to him is over now. Nothing can touch her while she's in his home and Bilbo just wants her to feel safe.
"Rose." The woman says after a moment, "Rose Weasley."
Bilbo's smile feels too big for his face, maybe too big for the situation.
"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Weasley... I'd best let you sleep now."
A quick glance at the clock on the wall tells Bilbo it's far too early in the morning to be carrying on a conversation. No good hobbit would keep an injured guest up for longer then strictly necessary and Bilbo feels no small amount of guild for doing exactly that. Rising from the chair he bows to his new companion, offers a kind smile, and slips out of the room to let the poor woman rest.
Lingering in the hall with his fingers wrapped firmly around the door Bilbo begins to wonder if it's a good idea to leave the young woman, Rose, alone for the remainder of the night. Old Hob did tell him to check on her and her injuries were severe. Deciding that he'd rather have to explain himself to a terrified woman then find her in even worse condition then he left her, Bilbo opens the door and reenters the room to find his newly acquired house guest already asleep.
Bilbo makes his way over to the desk where he pulls the chair away and over to the bedside. He steals a blanket from the folded pile at the foot of the bed and wraps it around his shoulders before lowering himself into the chair. Once he's settled Bilbo takes a moment to observe the woman laying in the bed.
She can't be much older then twenty, he wouldn't say that she's twenty exactly but she looks younger. There's a scar bisecting her right eyebrow, freckles splattered across her cheeks, her hair a wild mess of fiery red curls that look slightly orange against the white of Bilbo's pillows, and the rim of her ear is covered in piercings. It seems as though she's regaining her color as well, flesh going from a pallid hue to something richer and Bilbo's glad to see it.
Pulling the blanket tighter around him Bilbo wonders what happened to the woman. He'll simply have to ask when she wakes as there's no point in speculating. For all he knows she could have been traveling, fallen, and somehow managed to catch a rock or heavy stick wrong. Her story could be completely mundane and here Bilbo is trying to make it something it isn't.
Casting one more look at the woman Bilbo settles further in the chair to get comfortable and crosses his arms over his chest.
~X~
There's no startled gasp when she wakes, no pawing at her chest to soothe her racing heart, nor is there any frantic attempt to pull herself up the bed. Rose has woken up in enough hospital beds at this point to know better. Besides, she remembers last night. It might not make sense to her, she might not have any idea where she is, but she remembers Bilbo and she remembers him helping another man stitch her shut.
Peeling her eyes open to cast a glance around the room results in a wave of dizziness that leaves Rose swallowing rapidly until the dizziness passes. Once it does Rose allows herself a more tentative look around the room.
It's quaint - well organized and homey.
With a soft groan Rose tentatively rubs grit out of her eyes, hoping that the simple action will help her orient herself a little bit. But when she pulls her hand away and the world is still attempting a lazy spin the young witch merely closes her eyes and begins counting backwards from ten. Once she feels like she's calmed down enough to take in her situation critically Rose opens her eyes again and takes a deep breath.
She'd known, in an abstract sort of way, that something big was going to happen to her when she'd taken the portkey to Peru where she'd be joining a team of curse-breakers at a recently discovered ruins that her employers were entirely too sure housed some ancient treasures. Rose just hadn't been prepared for the mess she'd found herself in her second week there.
And now here she is; injured, displaced, and more then entirely sure she fucked up somehow.
Because when she slipped into Bilbo Baggins' mind those first few moments after he'd opened his door Rose learned that she managed to stumble to some place called Hobbiton and her savior was a hobbit. Rose has never once in her life heard of a hobbit, and considering Hugo is absolutely obsessed with magical creatures...
The door swinging open and the shuffling of steps Rose nearly jumping out of her skin, but one she sees that it's just the man who stitched her up and another Bilbo she quickly relaxes back against the pillows that have been provided for her. She makes sure to make eye contact with Bilbo so that she can slip into his mind and suss out what's being said to her.
His mind is pleasant; warm and gentle and full of sweetness. Rose enjoys being in his head even if she does find it a bit invasive.
Rose makes sure to keep looking at him as the older man, hobbit, talks about removing bandages to check her wound. She thinks he might be shocked to find that despite it not being anywhere near healed it looks a fair deal better then it had last night. The older man poked and prods, cleans the wound, and then re-bandages it while Bilbo watches with avid interest.
Once she's been tended too and given something for the pain Rose looks to the healer - for surely that's what he is - and utters a soft, rasping, "Thank you."
It seems to shock both men, the foreign words that spill from her mouth, but neither of them remark on it. The older one merely bows his head hesitantly before guiding Bilbo out of the room, leaving Rose with nothing to do but attempt to listen in on their conversation. It's a futile attempt but at least it gives Rose something to do as she's not sure where her wand's gone off too.
"Fuck me." Rose breathes quietly to herself as she reaches up to pinch the bridge of her nose.
First things first, after she's well enough to get out of bed she needs to go looking for her wand.
