Summary: A few years after Frodo’s departure, Pippin tries to write a letter.
No slash, and no plot, either :p.
Rated: PG would certainly do it, am making this PG 13 just to be sure.
There Is Always Hope
When I was five you locked me in my father’s wardrobe and made me swear never to tell what you and Pearl had been doing behind the huge holly bush. I had no idea what exactly you had been doing, and thus could not promise anything. You had me stay in there the entire afternoon.
Three years later you knocked me out with a broom stick when you tried to teach me how to fight (Fortunately, Boromir was a better teacher than you).
Seven years later I got myself into serious trouble, almost entirely without yours or Merry’s help.
With the two of you being my best friends, and me always wanting to be like you, I grew up to be a very … well …mature child.
The average young hobbit lad will steal his first mushrooms at the age of twenty-one. Unless he is called Frodo Baggins, of course.
I, however, will proudly tell my children that I was fifteen when I first explored farmer Maggot’s fields.
Luckily, while farmer Maggot went on about how he would ‘whip me raw’, you were busy in the close strawberry fields – the tips of your fingers were still red from their juice when you came running to save me. If I remember correctly, you told Mr. Maggot that you had made me do it, had forced me to steal each single one of the mushrooms in my pockets by threatening to hurt my sisters.
Dear cousin! We had to learn that there are threatening hobbits after all, but you certainly are not one of them, and if there is somebody, who would never hurt my sisters, then it is you, even though Pimpernel and Pervinca always enjoyed getting you into embarrassing situations.
Still, farmer Maggot had had you in his fields once too often and was obviously convinced that, considering you were stealing strawberries at the ripe age of thirty-seven, he could trust you to terrorize me.
I daresay your poor back never looked the same anymore when Maggot was done with you!
On your next birthday I got you drunk, which was fun. I was - and still am - convinced to have done you great favour, since this certain birthday led to you reuniting with Pearl, at least for a while.
So. Yes. Well. What am I writing this letter for?
Because it is your birthday in about half an hour. And probably to tell you how much I miss you, still miss you. I don’t think I will ever stop missing you.
For you, there has been a long and certainly comparatively peaceful time without me.
For me, on the contrary, there has never been a time without you.
As you grew up your visits to Great Smials would become increasingly rare, but still I knew you were there, I knew that if I was in danger, you would come running, just as you had done when you had saved me from farmer Maggot.
I loved you, Frodo.