Part One: Where there's life there's hope
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine
With a sharp cry, Billa Baggins bolts awake.
Her start is so sudden that she topples off the bed and onto the floor with a solid thump. Dazed, Billa takes in her surroundings–and promptly begins trying to scramble to her feet.
'Frodo?' She cries out, desperately seeking a sign of the lad she was watching over. Dangflabbit, how could she have fallen asleep! She wasn't supposed to take even one eye off the lad. 'Frodo!'
There is no reply, just an empty bed, dust and silence. Faint sunlight peeking into her room through the crack in her curtain and–wait. Billa's thoughts come to a halt, for surely this is impossible.
Billa isn't sitting in the room Elrond so graciously gifted her upon her return to Rivendell, nor is this any of the rooms within the Healing Halls, certainly not the one Frodo was residing in. Billa is sitting in her own bedroom, the one in the house she grew up in and lived in for over a century. The one that resides in Bag End.
She pushes out the tangle of sheets and rises to her feet. Her bones don't creak and ache and protest the way they usually do. In fact, Billa stands so easily, she has to grip the bedside table to stop herself from toppling over in shock. That's not quite right, she thinks.
Now that she's stopped actually, she notices that her mind is clearer, far clearer than it has been in years, as if someone took a broom to the cobwebs that lingered in the corners of her brain. As she heads towards the bedroom door, each step almost bounces off the floor.
But it's not until she catches sight of the young Hobbit lass in the mirror that the pieces click together. She almost cries out in fright, until she realises that the young Hobbit lass is in fact her. Gone are the deep lines in her face, purples bruises under her eyes, the wrinkly, liver spotted skin, the white wispy hair. Instead, there is a smooth-skinned, line-free, bright-eyed Hobbit–a face that Billa hasn't seen in many, many years.
'This is quite improbable,' she murmurs, pinching at her face. She winces. It hurts, so this is definitely not a dream. Some kind of afterlife perhaps? Billa reluctantly backs away from the mirror and towards her door.
The hallway is as silent as her bedroom, although it is less cluttered. There is a little sunlight to show her the way, so Billa follows it down the hall, checking each room as she walks past. Finally, she peers into her kitchen and then into her pantry, but like every room she passed before them, they are empty. Bag End is silent as a grave.
When she reaches her reading room, she sees a familiar sight, but a sight not seen in a great many decades. Her journal, leather bound with crisp white pages, sits open at her desk. She hasn't seen or written in it since she set off with the dwarves that fateful morning.
Billa approaches it cautiously, until the fresh black ink reveals itself to her.
She rears back in shock.
TA 2931.
She blinks, once, twice, and then stares at the bold wee numbers until her vision swims, but they don't change.
TA 2931. Years before The Quest–in fact, she blinks wearily at the full date, it's a full decade before Gandalf is due to appear on her doorstep, thirteen dwarves on his heels.
This cannot be right, she thinks. Billa turns towards the calendar that sits innocuously on her desk and it tells her the same thing the journal did. She stares down at her smooth, uncalloused hands, and it shows her the same thing both her journal and her calendar did. Billa Baggins of the Shire, who lived until the ripe old age of 131, has travelled back in time.
Good heavens, she thinks, collapsing into an armchair. This is not the answer she was expecting at all.
She looks at her window, the view over the rolling green hills of The Shire and beyond no longer hindered by the great, wild oak tree that had, in another life, been rooted in her front garden. There's a soft breeze outside, and a heavy dew on the grass she can see. The first light of day shines dreamily down on a green sea of fields; all is still.
Billa looks out over the place she calls home, and suddenly, it strikes her. She could change everything, save her dwarves, protect Frodo, stop Sauron years, perhaps even decades earlier.
Unbidden, the image of Thorin smiling at her, his blue eyes dancing with hidden mirth, comes to her.
An excited hip shake spills out of her and she pops to her feet like a cork from a good wine bottle. She could save Thorin. Fíli. Kíli too.
Billa wiggles happily as she shuffle dances out the room and throws open her bright green door. She stands on her front step, toes curling at the cold under her feet, face turned up to the sun. The birds sing loudly, a cheery high-pitched tune that complements the fresh spring breeze. She inhales deeply. The air nips at her lungs and for a moment, she remembers looking over Frodo from that balcony in Rivendell, the small frail creature her nephew had become.
Her will grows steely.
'No stupid ring is going to foil Billa Baggins!' She shouts, waving her fist at the sky. 'By the Valar, I'll save those dwarves, be rid of that ring and protect Frodo. You hear me! I'll do it even if the breath leaves my body first!'
A burst of air washes over her as if the Valar themselves huffed a laugh at her proclamation. Warmth spreads through from the top of her head to the tips of the curls on her toes.
'Nobody dies,' she whispers fiercely. 'Everyone lives.'
And if her neighbour starts to spread word of the respectable Baggins of Bag End going mad, then that's of no consequence to Billa. She has dwarves and a nephew to save.
As she settles on her steps to breathe in the fresh air and peace, Billa comes to the realisation that this is going to take quite a bit of scheming–and if there's anything the Took in Billa Baggins enjoys more than adventuring, it's making sneaky plans.