He keeps vigil over Frodo, lying silent and wounded in a too-large bed, and it is all too familiar - nauseatingly so. Bandages and sheets white against pale skin. Elvish healers in their calm, lilting voices. The smell of herbs crushed into steaming water, yielding pungent brews and sticky poultices.
A Nazgul blade, the Ranger had said. A stab to the shoulder. One wound.
Not axe-wound upon spear-wound upon bites and gashes and shattered bones - he reminds himself, repeatedly.
Frodo sleeps for four days, a peaceful, untroubled sleep, and that is one more thing he can be grateful for.
It is in the early hours of the fifth day, that he feels his own exhaustion creep up on him, and he cannot recall how he gets from the chair to his own bed. Still, a large warm hand on his brow lulls him into a slumber, and he only awakens late in the afternoon to the high chatter of Hobbit voices and a soft, familiar laugh.
He staggers out the door and into the bright sunshine of the balcony, and his eyes are most certainly failing him, for he does not see any sign of his boy until his arms are full of him.
"Bilbo!"
He returns the embrace equally fiercely.
"My dear Frodo," he says. A sound escapes him, and he hopes he is laughing.
They have one day. One day of peace, of bliss, and reminiscing.
He spends it with Frodo, who thumbs the well-worn pages of his Red Book, and it is as if the lad is fourteen again, sitting by the hearth enraptured by the tales of his uncle's adventures. And it is good to hear him laughing once more.
Dusk comes quicker than he anticipated, though possibly just in time as they come to the last pages of his writings. They had never reached the end of the stories in all these years, and he always kept his recollections brief and sketchy. No need for details, he had thought, everyone knows what happened. Best that it is remembered in silence - the Battle in the shadow of the Mountain.
Frodo gazes at the drawings, roughly, crudely inked onto the parchment. The Changeling Bear and the Eagles, an Elven archer in flowing steel, a Dwarven soldier with a readied spear facing down warg and rider.
Flip of a page, and it is the Mountain, proud and cold. Below her, three tombs and a fallen statue. Next to that, a large white stone.
"You remember," Frodo says, then, almost as if he had believed otherwise. "You remember everything."
And his throat tightens, as if a hand (two hands, large, rough, hot - burning - so hot) had wrapped around his neck and squeezed, and he gags on the memory.
"Yes," is all he can give, when he finally does. Stares at the young hobbit before him, long-buried questions re-surfacing once more: I remember - those who survived, those who did not.
But do you?
He starts as Frodo suddenly draws back, as if burned, hand flying to his shoulder and clutches there tight. He makes to hurry to retrieve a Healer, but the boy stops him.
"I'm fine, Bilbo, it - it just hurts a little. It's been a long day. I suppose I should be resting more."
It is with a wan smile that Frodo takes leave, still clutching gingerly at the shoulder that bears no mark of a Morgul wound.