There, Not Back Again by eris_of_imladris

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Chapter 4

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Once Asphodel had done the respectable thing and married Rufus Burrows, then given birth to little Milo and a pack of daughters with curly black hair, it fell to Primula to be the next – and last - unmarried daughter of Brandy Hall. Which apparently meant learning how to spread butter properly.

“Not too much, you’ll look like a glutton,” Asphodel said with her permanent sneer on her face. It looked like her littlest girl was starting to get it too; it would almost be enough to make Primula laugh if it was not another of her important days with a new potential husband.

“I thought you wanted me to eat more,” she said, trying to mimic the movement Asphodel pantomimed. The pat of butter rolled under her knife, the little blade suddenly so small when she concentrated on it like this.

“Yes, but like a daughter of our father, not like someone with no connections,” Asphodel said. “It’s a big day for you, after all. I certainly didn’t eat like that when I was trying to get Rufus to like me.”

“I don’t remember Amaranth having to do this before she got married,” Primula said, and she could read the response in her sister’s face.

It was almost as if she’d said it outright: Primula didn’t have Amaranth’s looks, even though they both had the same reddish-copper hair. Primula didn’t have Amaranth’s delicate face and soft features, nor did she have her eldest sister’s quietness. Nor did she have Asphodel’s own confidence that had apparently helped so much in securing a husband. All she had was her imagination, which was never anything but a problem.

“It never hurts to try to impress,” Asphodel said, then grinned. “And he’s a [i]Baggins[/i],” she added with a flourish of her tea towel.

“Don’t tease,” Primula mumbled, trying once again to scrape the butter in a ladylike way. Then again, her friendship with Bilbo might help here, even if his letters were sometimes sporadic and he hardly ever visited. Maybe it was Bilbo who told Drogo that she was looking for someone, and in that case, she really would need to try to impress. She had heard that not all of his relatives were accepting of his adventures, after all, and what if he had sent one of those over to her?

Then again, why would he? They were friends, even if they didn’t speak much. His stories still brought her great joy even though his letters were yet another peculiarity, first that she was corresponding with a hobbit who she was not courting, and of course, Bilbo Baggins himself was always a matter of controversy.

Asphodel didn’t let her stay in the kitchen until Drogo’s arrival. She sent her off with a sharp word about fixing her hair and her dress, and Primula put on the same dress she had once worn to try to impress Bilbo, now with a couple of patches but she doubted that would matter. What man cared for those things anyway?

She was the one to open the door to Drogo Baggins, who had dark hair like her mother, thin lips and a bit of a belly. He didn’t look too different from Primula’s brothers was her first impression, but she couldn’t let that get in the way. Not when he was, as Asphodel said, a Baggins. A member of a family who, now that they had a strange resident of Bag End, might be more tolerant of peculiarities like Primula. If he wasn’t one of Bilbo’s judgmental relatives, of course….

He didn’t seem to be, at least not at this dinner. He was polite and both of her parents seemed to like him, and he was even okay with the chaos considering several of her siblings and their children were home, scattering food and mud throughout the house.

He kissed her on the hand when he left, a little more than Bilbo did, and the meeting with her father went entirely differently – this time, he had a positive answer for her, that Drogo wanted to get to know her better. Not an immediate proposal, which was nice (even though surely some ladies would have preferred it), but an indication of interest, and he was enough of a normal boy that her family seemed very pleased when she indicated her interest as well.

Courtship let her see more of the world, giving her a reason to cross the Brandywine and go to the Shire proper, seeing all the markets and spending time in them before and after she saw Drogo. She also met his cow, an amenable animal named Belle, and Drogo put his hands over hers and taught her how to pull the udders and draw sweet milk that would soon turn to cheese to serve at her father’s table and butter that Drogo didn’t seem to care how she spread at all.

Months began to pass in their nice routine, and even though Primula liked that things weren’t going too fast, she also knew that it was just one more thing for people to whisper about. She and Drogo even chanced upon Asphodel and her husband in the Shire markets one day, her sister speaking viciously as a crying child latched onto her leg.

“I mean, I think she’s deluding herself,” Asphodel said, and Primula dragged Drogo behind a fruit stand, breathing in the fresh scents as she listened. “He’s not proposing for a reason. She’s always been an odd egg, but I don’t think even our father’s money will be enough to get her married,” she said to a friend, someone Primula had never even met. “I wonder if he’s trying to convince himself that the money is enough for a wife like her, but I don’t think he will. It’s not worth the trouble.”

Primula froze, part of her wanting to step out and confront her sister with Drogo in tow, the other part wanting to run all the way back to Brandy Hall in shame. She looked at Drogo instead, and he looked like he was about to say something before the merchant at the fruit stand inquired after Drogo’s cow, who had fallen ill.

“I think she needs some medicine,” he said slowly, watching Asphodel out of the corner of his eye until she left and the time for confrontation was gone. Primula took off running then, not listening to anything that anyone said, not caring if Asphodel or anyone else saw her. She fled in pain and terror, knowing that Asphodel was right, that there was no way someone so nice and ordinary would want anything to do with her.

It was a fortnight before she saw Drogo again. She wondered then if the cow was just an excuse, if she was never going to see Drogo Baggins again, if her sister had been right all along and she would never marry anyone at all.

She was thus utterly surprised on a stormy morning to see a hobbit making his way up to the front of Brandy Hall, running as fast as he could on the soaked stones, slipping but still moving forward.

“Is that Drogo?” her mother asked, and Primula dashed out the door without a moment’s hesitation, even though her mother called after her only for the sound to quickly become lost under the booming of the clouds.

The hobbit looked up when he saw her, and she grabbed his hand and ran over to the well, finding a tree that didn’t shelter them entirely but was enough for the moment. It was Drogo, she realized, and she was standing very close to him, close enough to hear his heart thumping through his shirt. Half of her wanted to scream and berate him, but the other half needed the warmth of someone who might be here just for her.

“You’re soaked, Drogo, and – are those flowers?” Primula exclaimed as she looked down at Drogo’s hands, where a handful of waterlogged yellow flowers sagged.

“Primroses, like your name,” he said. “I didn’t realize it would rain like this, I’m sorry, I lost half the petals along the way,” he lamely presented her with the soaked stems and limp flowers. She held onto them weakly, knowing that a squeeze would likely kill them altogether.

“But what are you doing here? I thought your cow was ill?” There was a second question there, and surely he knew it, but she was not quite brave enough to ask why he had come after he had overheard Asphodel’s remarks.

“She’s doing better,” he said, “and I missed you and wanted to ask you a question.”

“About cows? I don’t know much about them, you know the chickens were always more of my responsibility… I mean I met Belle, she seems nice, but I don’t know how to help her with anything except the milking.”

“I didn’t come here for my cow,” Drogo said, wiping his soaked hair out of his eyes. “I was coming here to ask if you would do me the great honor of becoming my wife.”

She knew it was supposed to be the happiest moment in her life, and yet a thousand things ran through Primula’s mind in an instant, culminating in her blurting out, “Are you sure?”

“I’m the one who asked you,” he said, fussing around in his pocket until he produced a ring. “Why would I have asked you if I didn’t want to marry you?”

[i]Because you want an “in” with a wealthy family[/i], Primula remembered her sister’s words. [i]Or because no other girl will have you, or any of a thousand reasons that have nothing to do with me.[/i]

“You heard Asphodel,” Primula said, trying to be brave.

“I love you, Primula Brandybuck,” he said when he noticed tears prickling at her eyelids. “I haven’t been coming here all these months for your father or anyone else. It’s just you.”

“But I’m strange,” Primula sniffled. “I daydream and sometimes I burn the food, or just forget to eat it altogether…”

“I can’t say I will join you there, but I can make sure you always have a place to dream about and a place to come home to,” Drogo replied, and Primula wondered if he’d practiced that response even as she launched herself forward into his arms. He was warm and held her tightly as she shuddered against him, crying onto his wet suspenders.

“Don’t think about what Asphodel said,” he whispered. “Just listen to me here and now. I wouldn’t marry you if this wasn’t something I wanted a great deal. I want to build a home with you where we daydream and eat whenever we feel like it and have children who do the same.”

[i]I want my children to be normal[/i], Primula almost said. But then she thought that it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. Not to mention if strangeness was nurtured, who knew what might happen?

“Yes,” she said into his shoulder, “yes, yes, yes,” she repeated, each word driving what Asphodel said from her mind. She had a future of her own now, a place to go where she wouldn’t be the littlest girl in a chain. She could finally take charge of her life and do it with someone accepting and loving and kind by her side.

It wasn’t like Asphodel described her own proposal, sitting on a bench in the sun with her friends surrounding her, accepting a bouquet of perfectly dry flowers. And technically it wasn’t even the real proposal, since Drogo did the proper thing the next day and asked her father for her hand in Brandy Hall over elevenses. But in Primula’s mind, her proposal was always that moment in the rain, her hair soaked into limp strands with nobody caring at all.

 

“He’s dead,” Primula cried over the mushy cheese, her fingers trembling just like they had on that knife so long ago. “He’s not coming back.”

The elf, even though he was supposed to be from a people who never experienced grief, almost looked like he understood. “No, he is not,” he said solemnly, then looked at Primula again.

She supposed it was nice that he wasn’t blabbering on – she had heard elves were the type to treat everything like a moral and impose their opinions on others – but she had to admit it helped to not have to hear some parable of loss that was supposed to make her feel better. None of that was real; the lunchbox in her hands was, and the hobbit who created it for their beautiful son was somewhere out there in the river. She wondered if anyone would even find him, if he would get a proper burial by the windmill he loved so much, or if he was doomed to her idea of a good fate, wandering around forever.

“What am I supposed to do?” she moaned as details of their life flooded her mind. How was she supposed to fix their garden after the storm without him to help her put up the posts? And what about the crops that were likely dead, and who knew if the house was still standing, and even if it was, there was probably water coming in from the ceiling and she had no idea at all how to fix that…

“There is no one way to answer that question,” Maglor said. “I have been trying to answer it for centuries.”

“Centuries? My folk don’t have that long,” Primula replied, sniffling as she tried to stop the tears.

Maglor paused for several long moments broken only by the spattering of the rain and Primula’s quiet sobs. “From what I hear, you do not seem weak to me,” he said. “I think you can go through this and come out the other end.”

“It’s not just me,” she said blearily, somewhat registering the compliment but not entirely able to deal with it. “My son is only twelve, how is he supposed to carry on without a father?” All he would have was her, and she was… she had stuck to Drogo’s words from years ago. Sheltered under the safety of his normalcy, she was protected from the whispers and gossip that plagued hobbit society. Even now they talked about her, about why she only had one child, as if it was a choice.

“Children can adapt,” Maglor said solemnly. “Not all is lost.”

It certainly felt lost as she sat under the tree with an elf who she barely knew, who was not hugging her and telling her that he loved her, and her tears of sadness now melded with the rain instead of long-ago tears of joy.

“Tell me about him,” the elf said, perhaps trying to distract her, because she couldn’t possibly be sad like that when she thought of her little boy. She was proud of him from the moment he was born, of course, even with his daydreaming, or perhaps especially because of it. He lived for her stories, and she realized as she absentmindedly chewed on a tomato slice from his lunchbox that she lived to tell them.

“His name is Frodo,” she began. “Frodo Baggins.”