by Willow-wode

Great halls, and evil times. A barren hall, cold and harsh and empty. Even song cannot warm it, or fill it.

"Home is behind, the world ahead..."

They rock easily to the pony's smooth amble, his father and he. A soft call of fare-well follows them; the warm, sweet lights of Brandy Hall spill from behind them as they ride into the evening. His father takes in a deep breath and begins his travelling song; a soft, minor-keyed refrain. Pippin sings it with him, as always, and once the last stanza has lost itself into the trees, Pippin leans forward. He looks ahead, beneath the crook of his father's arm, winding his arms as far as they will go about the woollen-clad waist. A quick expansion of ribs, a chuckle soft into the nip of the twilight air, a familiar, cultured tenor once more echoing through that torso and thrumming against his cheek—but this time in speech, not song.

"Don't tell me you're already weary of riding pillion on old Elf," Paladin teases. "She's carried us on many a long jaunt, comfortable as a worn couch."

"No," Pippin answers, breathing in the scent of damp trees, of horse, of the spice of his father's nearness. "I just want to hold to you. I just want to see."

Another chuckle, and Paladin twists in the saddle, angling one arm about his son. A quick kiss to Pippin's curls, the feel of fingers along his cheek. "You always want to see." Then his father turns back to face forward. His laugh rings into the night.

"Let's find how quickly you can, then. Hold on, sleepyhead—we shall ride!"

And Pippin gives a delighted cry as the old mare lifts into a canter, then a gallop, and the world races past them, almost too swift to take in...

Cold stone beneath his feet, empty and spotlessly clean. Swept dry and sterile, no hint of the earth from which it was wrought. No grass to roll in, no fresh air to suck deep, no warm companion to cleave to, no hidden, sweet secrets to explore. Only the one road, winding up the precipice, leading to this hall and this unquiet throne.

"And there are many paths to tread..."

The dirt is soft as silt, the grass is soothing and damp beneath his feet. It lays a carpet for him yet nevertheless contains sustenance for Elf, who tears greedily at it with her long, flat teeth. His father tends the fire of their camp, having gained their own sustenance with a stone from the roadside and the unwitting assistance of a small coney that had chosen the wrong time to pop from its burrow.

"Why did we come this way, Dada? The bridge is the long way 'round."

"Sometimes the long way 'round is the best. If treading a longer path means we are to spend a little time together, just you and I and the night?" From over by Elf, Pippin beams happily as Paladin continues, "You've been long at the Hall, and I've missed you, son." White teeth flash in the half-light; his father's eyes glint golden—otherwise he is as much a part of the earth as the pony, the stone, the coney, the grass. "And riding that ferry makes me sick as a dog!"

Pippin giggles, and his feet make a light, nigh-unheard tread on the moist loam as he runs over and tackles his father into a huge, hard hug...

It's dark here, with hardly any light to bear hope within or without. Even the silver winking upon his tunic is shrouded by the sable, the glimmering tree emblazoned upon his chest taken over by a void of empty black. His new liege is weighted, too, weighted with shadows.

"Through shadow to the edge of night, until the stars are all alight..."

He lies by the fire, propped up on saddle and bags, held close in strong arms. As he looks up the sky is alight with silver, shadowed in sable. The balance of light and darkness is strangely stirring, and he shifts in his father's embrace.

"Did you and Merry lead the Hall a chase again, my laughing lad?" says Paladin against his curls.

"Well. Yes," Pippin answers slowly, caught in that night sky. "Then Frodo arrived, and taught us new names for the stars that cousin Bilbo taught him."

"I understand that they all have names, somewhere. I suppose I'll never know them." Paladin doesn't sound unhappy, merely accepting. Pippin looks up; the firelight planes his father's face both light and dark, gentle and harsh. "But I'd be glad if you would share a few of them with me..."

Storms rising about them, storms in his new liege's eyes, shadows in the grey eyes of Faramir, who looks so like to Boromir that Pippin aches, and wonders why Denethor cannot see the willing gift of love through the treacherous mists of loss.

"Mist and shadow, cloud and shade..."

The rain-clouds have settled in about them, misting their cheeks; he rides no longer pillion but athwart the pommel of Elf's saddle, wrapped in his father's cloak.

"The next time you tell me you remembered everything," Paladin grumbles good-naturedly, "I'll still check your smial."

Pippin is secretly glad he forgot his woollen cloak. He can see the world coming at him much better this way, even if the saddle occasionally bumps him in tender places. He shifts back onto his buttocks more, snuggling back into the weather-proof warmth of his father's cloak. They are in the Tooklands, now, and the land wraps itself about him, green and fecund and home.

"Aye," his father reads him easily. "And you'll have the lairdship of it some day."

"Nay," Pippin declares. "For you'll live forever, Dada."

A laugh. "Not forever. Who'd want that? But when I'm gone, you'll have the Shire, lad. Life ends, we accept it, and love what time we have with who we have. Even the best of us shall fade, like the sun into the West..."

Once he knew the loving warmth of close-knit touch, fecund earth between his toes, delirious joy within his breast. Now he stands disconnected and alone, in a cold hall bound to a cold lord, and this Man is like to no father that Peregrin, son of Paladin, has ever in his life known...

The burrows of Great Smials rise ahead, filled with love and laughter, framed with wet green, warm as fires of heart and hearth can make it. Home. And for once, his father sings his travelling song at the end of the journey, as well as before:

"Home is behind, the world ahead
"And there are many paths to tread.
"Through shadow, to the edge of night
"Until the stars are all alight.
"Mist and shadow, cloud and shade..."

Pippin's voice rises, small and clear and choked with longing, into the barren stone of Minas Tirith:

"All shall fade...
"All shall fade."

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