Pippin only realized that he was making his way to the kitchen when he had left the main corridors of the Citadel and couldn’t turn back easily.  “Stupid habits,” he muttered, and decided it was best to press on.  Harder to be pursued in a clutter, after all, especially a clutter full of folk cooking for a very important feast that night, and he doubted Strider, at least, would be the type of insensitive clod that would interrupt a busy cook.

Clang!

…Unless, of course, he was feeling very upset, and, come to think of it, Pippin had given him reason to.  Pippin burst into the kitchen, and, apologizing as quickly as he could to everyone he bumped into (a hobbit, at least, remembered his manners to the folk that fed him), ducked and wove his way around legs, kettles, tables, and a few rather large-looking fires until he had nearly made his way to the back door—

And felt a Mannish hand grip the back of his shirt.

Pippin turned around slowly, holding his hands out a distance behind his back.  If it wasn’t the very fellow he and Merry had woken at four in the morning! he thought quietly.

“If I recall what you told me of your people,” he said slowly, “disrupting my kitchen like this—not once in the day, but twice—is considered most rude.  I might add that it is unbecoming of a man of Gondor.”

Pippin swallowed, as he saw guards—and the King—enter the kitchen from behind.  If he was supposed to be the great hero all the folk here thought he was, how was it that a man in an apron with a wooden spoon could make him feel like he was ten years old and face to face with the Thain all over again?

Aragorn strode up to Pippin, thanked the cook for his service, and then asked Pippin to hold out his hands.  In one of them was a roll of parchment.  He took it, and without so much as a second glance, cast it into the fire.

“Well,” said Pippin glumly, though his heart was still racing, “I guess that’s that.”