Disclaimer: I did not create, nor do I own, Hobbits or the Shire, nor the other characters and settings which appear in the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien did. Now they belong to his estate and heirs.


Chapter One: Healing the Long Cleeve

Great Smials, Afteryule, 1420

“Is the ale not to your liking, Pippin?”

“Hmm? Oh, it’s fine, Da,” Pippin responded, bringing his mug up to his lips for another drink. “Guess I’m just a bit tired, ‘tis all.” He stretched out his long legs, resting his feet on another chair placed across from him in his father’s office. The shadows of the winter evening flickered against the room in the dim light of the flames from the hearth, while a single lamp burned on the desk.

“Suppose you had much finer stuff on your travels,” Paladin commented from his own seat behind the desk.

“Aye,” Pippin smiled softly into his mug. “Food and drink fit for a king, some of it ‘twas.”

Thain Paladin, called Paddin by his friends and relations, ran his fingers idly down the length of the mug set upon his desk as he watched his son. No further information was forthcoming.

His lad had not spoken overmuch of his adventures with his cousins and the Baggins’s gardener. ‘Course, he hadn’t been home much to speak of since his return to the Shire early last Blotmath, being so busy with the routing of ruffians and leading other hobbits as they carried out this duty. Paladin did not care that his son was not yet Thain, nor was he officially of age; he had let his Tooks know that he considered Peregrin to be captain of the shire-muster and the hobbitry-at-arms *now*, and that they would do well to listen to him.

In fact, he had been convinced during his son’s long absence that the lad was off preparing for just such an eventuality. Quite sensible the Brandybucks could be, at times, and so when young Meriadoc had undoubtedly heard rumors of troubles coming to the Shire from the Baggins cousin, who seemed just as likely to keep in touch with outlanders as old Bilbo had been; well, then, it seemed that Merry had decided to take Thain Paladin’s heir off to learn proper fighting skills for defeating Men.

That was the explanation Paladin conceived and convinced himself of when Men began to infiltrate the Shire and he fought to keep Tookland safe and ready for the return of his heir. Any other explanation for Pippin’s absence ... well, it just didn’t pay to go down that road. That way lay a despair from which Pad would never recover. He would maintain the confidence in Pippin he had kept since the lad was a babe, and his son would be all right, would be more than all right, because -- well, he just had to be.

Pad projected such confidence in his beliefs that some other hobbits in Tookland began to take them on as well. And when Pippin reappeared, clad in armor and expertly wielding a sword, it cemented Pad’s notions. His lad had fighting skills now, and had returned to lead an army of Tooks in the rescue of the Shire.

And, now that that task was done, Pad’s lad was sitting in his father’s office, the Thain’s office, drinking his ale. But not talking.

Mayhap this new, quieter Pippin was a part of his growing up as well, like the growth spurt he’d evidently experienced while away. Taller even than his father now, Pippin was, and Pad was glad to see it in a lad who had always been rather small for his age. He did hope his tweenager had finally reached full height, though, or they would have a time of it if he kept outgrowing more wardrobes before he came of age.

Paddin ran his fingers around the rim of his mug. “Was your birthday to your liking, then, son?” he asked. “I’m surprised you didn’t want a larger party -- you’ve always enjoyed them.”

“No, no, it was fine to just have the family together this year,” Pippin said while staring into his mug. “That was all I wanted. Mayhap we can have a grander party for ... some other occasion,” he trailed off.

He thought of the feasting in Gondor that would take place in Rethe, and how impossible it was to explain all that that meant to hobbits of the Shire. Hobbits who, with the ruffians gone, were settling back into their lives and had just recently celebrated their Yule holidays with joy and contentment.

Pip and Merry had spent the first three days of Yule -- the last days of 1419 -- with Aunt Essie and Uncle Saradoc at Brandy Hall. Then, late in the day on First Yule, Pip had swung astride his pony and headed to the Great Smials, in order to arrive with the dawn. Merry had given him a hug and an early wish of happy birthday as he left.

Pippin had held some silly hope that riding through the magical night when the year changed would make things different, somehow. It hadn’t, though. Everything he wanted to change remained the same. His family had had to move their private gift exchange to Second Yule, but that seemed to be all right. A lot of things were different this year, too.

‘O’ course, Pip,’ he thought to himself, ‘’twas silly of you to think the day -- or night, as the case may be -- had such meaning anyhow. You know the time of the New Year can be changed. ‘Tisn’t significant as to such dates.’

He gave a wry smile, still looking into his mug, and said, “You know, Da, last year I forgot ‘twas my birthday a’tall.”

Paddin’s fingers stopped their motion around the rim of his mug, and he stared at his son for a few long minutes before replying. “Surely you jest,” he finally said flatly.

“Nay,” Pippin continued to look into his ale and not at his father, and to smile the same smile -- although it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I even told a lad in Minas Tirith -- that’s where the king lives, you know -- that I was still 28 in Rethe, as that’s how I’d been thinking for so long.”

Paddin was very confused. His lad’s cousins had always taken such good care of Pippin until now -- how could they forget to celebrate the day of his birth? “Didn’t your cousins remember for you, then?” he asked.

“Well, they weren’t with me at the time I said that, and besides, we were all quite busy while we were gone. We dinna have time to think on such things,” Pippin said. He raised his mug to his lips and took a long draught, then set it back down on his lap and turned his face toward his father.

“Frodo saved the world, you know, Da,” he informed him earnestly. “And Sam, too, mostly. Merry and I just did our little bits. Frodo took the most evil thing there was and destroyed it, and now everyone in the outlands looks upon him with honor, even the king!”

Paladin looked at the great, wide green eyes in his lad’s earnest face. He found the words confusing, and near to meaningless, save for the fact it was clear that Pippin still greatly admired his elder Baggins cousin.

Still, what was this to talk of saving the world? Despite the incursion of Men into the Shire, and his position of Took and Thain, Pad knew little of the lands beyond the borders. He supposed it was all well and good that Frodo had saved this world; but his son had saved the Shire.


“Are you busy, Mama?” Pippin asked one afternoon from the doorway to her sitting room.

“Nae too busy to see you,” Eglantine replied, scooting to the very end of her sofa with her stitching in her lap. “Come and sit a spell.” She patted the seat beside her.

Pippin came in and knelt before her, placing his head on the cushion next to his mother’s lap.

“What was it you wanted, darling?” Eglantine asked as she continued to work at her stitching.

Pippin shrugged his shoulders from his kneeling position. “Just...just for you to tell me what happened while I was gone, I guess,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I missed Pervinca’s wedding.” He raised troubled green eyes to Eg’s face, but kept his head on the cushion.

“’Tis all right, lad,” Eg sighed, letting her hands and her stitching sit still in her lap and staring across the room. “’Twas meet that she wed such, but you’re not to blame for missing it.”

Pippin opened his mouth to protest, but his mother glanced down and caught the movement, and laid a finger on his lips to still them, a faint smile on her face.

“Come,” she said, withdrawing that hand in order to pat her lap. “Come up here with me, and I shall tell you of all the doings you wish to know.”

Pippin blinked back a sheen of tears as he scrambled up onto the couch. His feet and lower legs dangled over the arm at the far end, as he lay with his head in Mama’s lap, his face pressed into her tummy.

This was what he’d longed for, sometimes, when he didn’t feel good in Minas Tirith, or even earlier on the Quest. And it was so nice, now, for Mama to be talking to him and smoothing his curls as she did so, and calling him her baby, as he drifted into sleep.

He forgot, for the nonce, how much it had hurt him to be called a baby by others during his travels. And he forgot how funny he had felt, when he arrived home on Second Yule still clad in his Gondorian livery, the white tree emblazoned on his surcoat and sword at his side, and his mother had led him to the hearthside where his gifts of sweets from the Yule Dwarf awaited. “For you may have grown, but you’re not grown-up yet,” Eg had said.

Eg continued to stroke her little lad’s hair as he snoozed in her lap. Well, not so little anymore, she thought with only a small touch of regret, and more of thankfulness that he was returned to her, whole and in such seemingly good health.

She reached out a finger to trace the outline of an ear, as she had done since he was tiny -- and stopped short when her finger was caught in its path. She leaned forward and folded the ear back to see a thick scar formed behind it. A lump in her throat, and her fingers no longer making their soothing motions, Eg desperately pushed aside curls to reveal more scars hidden along the hairline. She picked up a hand and brought it to her lips -- and saw more scars there and, faintly, along the wrists. She craned her neck to see his legs without jostling him overmuch. There -- she thought she could detect more scars along the backs of his legs, mostly hidden by the hair and hard to see if you didn’t know what you were looking for, but there nonetheless.

And this was just what she could see with his clothes on. What terrible secrets did her son’s body keep hidden underneath them?

She was still clutching his hand when Pimpernel entered the doorway and gave a start at seeing a strange hobbit lying in her mother’s lap. It still took her a moment to recognize her brother.

“Mama?” she asked, and Pippin jerked awake to find his mother staring at him with despair in her eyes.

No! He never wanted to see that look on his mother’s face! He didn’t want to tell her of some of the things that happened on the Quest; he didn’t!

Pippin scrambled off his mother’s lap and the sofa, running from the room. He stumbled a little as he passed Pimpernel in the doorway, his leg betraying him just as the rest of his body had.


Pervinca heard noises coming from her brother’s room as she came down the corridor. Well, good, then -- she’d wanted to talk to him, hadn’t she? she asked herself nervously. Sometimes it could be good to have a lad around who was your brother.

Pervinca had been visiting with some of her friends who still lived at the Great Smials, while she was here for this long visit. Pearl had gone home to Whitwell with her husband and children soon after Pippin’s birthday dinner. Pimpernel was married, too, but she still lived at the Smials.

Now that Pervinca was married, she lived where her husband chose -- and that was not here. It was something about her husband that she wanted to ask her brother -- it seemed Pip might have become a lot more mature while he was away.

That was what Pervinca was thinking, anyway, as she pushed open the door to Pippin’s room. “Oh, honestly!” she said in exasperation as she caught sight of him, speaking before she thought. “You’ve got dirt smudged all over that coverlet from your feet, you great oaf! Even a child knows you’re supposed to wash your feet before you put them on your bedding -- have you any idea how much laundering that will take?” Her voice was raised in strain.

Pippin had given a small jump and looked almost -- frightened? -- when she called him an oaf, and now she saw his mouth work a moment before he said, “I’m not a --” and then he snapped it shut again before getting off the bed -- scattering more dirt from his feet onto the coverlet as he did so. He grabbed a coat and a pipe and pushed past her without another word.


At least it was quiet in the barns, Pippin thought. He had tamped out his pipe long before he had come to stand among the hay -- it was hard to smoke when you were trying to sob quietly, anyway -- but it was comforting to clench the stem of it in his teeth.

Even if he did have his face buried in the mane of his old childhood pony. Which he was much too big to ride now, even for one turn around the yard for old time’s sake, like he’d done the summer before he left.

He hadn’t told Pervinca he wasn’t a child because, truth be told, he wasn’t so sure anymore whether he was or he wasn’t. He did know that sometimes he wanted to be.

Pippin gave a loud sniff and lifted a hand to wipe across his eyes, even as he kept his face pressed into the pony’s mane. This wasn’t working out well at all! The plan had been for him and Merry to each spend the month of Afteryule with their own families, to see if they could fit back into those lives or if they’d need to take Frodo up on his offer of Crickhollow. It was becoming clear to Pippin what his decision would be.


“You know, Pip,” Paladin cleared his throat from where he sat behind his desk, his own ale still hardly touched. He was hesitant to bring up this subject with his son, yet do so he must. He cleared his throat again.

“Yes, Da?” Pippin prompted, curious now.

“Pervinca’s marriage was -- was expedient,” Paladin said, looking down at his desk and running a thumb along its grain.

Pippin sat for a moment as a look of confusion flitted across his face, then was replaced by a grim determination. He made to put his mug down and unfold himself from the chair.

“Nay, lad!” Paladin looked up in time to forestall him. “Nay,” he said in a softer tone. “I dinna mean like such. ‘Twas ... ‘twas more political, you understand.” He clutched one hand into a fist, then made an effort to straighten it.

Pippin shook his head no. He didn’t understand.

“Tookland was -- well, it was almost as if we were under what is called a ‘siege,’ you see,” Paladin explained.

Pippin shut his eyes against the memories the word conjured.

“Now, now, ‘twas not so bad as all that,” Paddin hastily tried to reassure him. “We kept the ruffians out, we did, and we all survived!

“But, well, you see, that is where I needed a bit of help,” he went on. “No one got in or out of Tookland without my knowing about it -- but we needed to count on some of the hobbits in other areas along our borders to get a might bit of things in, on occasion -- such as messages, you know, for they had no foodstuffs or aught to truly ‘share.’” Paladin said the last word with contempt for the practice of “gathering and sharing” he’d heard had occurred in other parts of the Shire.

Pippin was listening intently now, wondering where this tale was going and what it had to do with Pervinca and her marriage.

“And sometimes we needed the support of some of those rebel bands if there were skirmishes along our borders,” Paladin continued.

“I couldna save the whole Shire,” Paladin said earnestly, staring at his son grown tall and hobbitish whom he believed had done just that, “but I had to keep the people of the Tooks safe and to make sure Tookland stayed ready for...for, well, you know.” He waved a hand in the air.

‘For me,’ Pippin thought dully. ‘For my return.’ For his whole life, his father had been eager to remind his lad that he would someday be the Thain.

“But some of the hobbits wanted...something in return for their cooperation,” Paladin continued as Pippin swallowed against the distaste in his mouth. “’Tis the way many were beginning to think under Lotho’s rule.

“Rollo Proudfoot was one of them,” Paladin sighed. “He sent word that he would help defend Tookland as much as need be if I had a lass whose hand I would give in marriage to his son.”

Pippin was sitting absolutely still now, his eyes wide and his breath coming quickly. He could not believe that his father, who loved all his children dearly and who had delighted in telling his youngsters stories of his and Eg’s loving courtship, had done such a thing.

“I wouldna have,” Paddin said, seeming to read Pippin’s thoughts. “Save that he was not the only one who asked. I couldna see how we would end this without Pervinca wed, willingly or no, and I thought to give her the choice of a younger lad, rather than one twice’t her age. I explained the situation to her and presented her with her options. This is the one she chose. The wedding was conducted here, in near-secret, and Pervinca smuggled out to his smial only in Blotmath, after you had drawn the ruffians away,” he concluded.

There was a long moment of silence as both Pippin and Paladin drained the remainder of their mugs. Paladin filled them again from a pitcher on his desk and then took another deep drink from his before saying, “There’s more, Pip,” in, if possible, an even more somber tone.

“More?” Pippin echoed, dazed from what he’d just been told.

“Aye,” Paladin sighed heavily, and placed his face in his hands for a few moments before withdrawing it to ask, “You’re familiar with the issues with the North Farthing?”

Pippin nodded uncertainly. Although the North Farthing, like the rest of the Shire, acknowledged the Thain to be the hobbits’ ruler, sometimes that acknowledgment from the North Farthing was nominal at best. Various tensions had festered over the years between this rather remote part of the Shire and Tookland. Many hobbits there believed that their own noble family’s direct ancestor, Bandobras “Bullroarer” Took, had showed more courage and more deserving of the title of Thain than his brother had.

Paladin sighed again and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, the North-Tooks sent word that they would be willing to send their farmers from the south part of the North Farthing over the farthings’ borders to support Tookland in our time of trouble. And they’ve since sent word that they would also come to acknowledge the authority of the Thain without rancor, and to act as all other parts of the Shire in future, if their condition was met.”

“What condition?” Pippin asked as his father stopped there and seemed as if he would not go on.

“I think the North-Tooks, at least, saw what it could do to have the Shire truly divided by such as those Men,” Paladin said in further explanation, but still did not answer Pippin’s question.

“What condition?” he asked again.

Paddin swallowed, closed his eyes, and lowered his head toward the desk before forcing himself to open his eyes again and look at his son. “They asked for the hand of my child to be joined in marriage with a North-Took,” Paladin said.

A puzzled look crossed Pippin’s face.

“I told them I had no more lasses to give in marriage,” Paddin continued heavily. “They -- they said,” he had to choke the next words out, “that it didna matter, for they wanted the hand of my lad.”

Pippin was dimly aware of his mug slipping from his grasp and landing upon the floor to splash ale upon the rug.

‘Twas near unheard-of for a hobbit lad’s parents to arrange his betrothal or marriage without his consent -- although not quite so rare in the case of a hobbit lass. And for the son of the Thain to come home to such news, ‘twas -- ‘twas a great shock.

And yet, when he became Thain, Pippin knew his duty would be to the Shire. To serve the Shire. To protect it. How could healing the long cleeve between Tookland and the North Farthing do aught but good for the Shire? And to marry a hobbit lass, even were she to be as ugly as a troll, couldna be so bad as the duty Frodo had carried out to save them all. Frodo. Frodo knew where his duty lay, Pippin thought, as he became aware of his father talking to him again.

“I willna hold you to it if you do not wish it to be so, my lad,” Paddin choked out from where he now stood in front of Pippin. He clutched his lad’s shoulder and tears filled his eyes as he said, “I couldna do that again.”

“But, Da,” Pippin said around the lump in his own throat as he tilted his head back to meet his father’s tear-filled green-eyed gaze with his own, “’Tis my duty to the Shire.”

Father and son then held each other and wept for the loss of the future’s innocent dreams.