Chapter Text
One early morning, a week after Bilbo had come home to his family, the Baggins boys rose very early and walked for several hours in the cool autumn weather. They were quiet as they walked, munching on apples that were almost too soft, and with each step, Bilbo grew more wary, more nervous, more anxious. His hands shook and he almost could not contain his horror, looking around at the dark landscape. But he walked, still, holding on tightly to a white wooden post in his hand, Belladonna Baggins carefully written in bright blue ink. An old white lily, dried long ago from some wedding or birthday, was tied around his mother's name with yellow ribbon.
At the center of Hobbiton had long stood a tree in a field now yellowed and greyed, that had long been a place of celebration for the Shire's inhabitants, who had loved to throw parties that would attract every Hobbit around. The Party Tree was at the center of the Shire, and long had it withstood rambunctious galas, teas, weddings, and birthdays.
Still the Party Tree stood, among the blackened landscape, the only bit of color amongst the grey and brown of a land torn asunder. Leaves hung onto its long branches, the orange and brown of autumn, but they were limp and dark against the grey sky.
But the Party Tree stood, despite the scorch marks on its trunk, despite the broken branch that someone had once hung a swing on, despite the yellowed grasses at its roots. It had not died, and that gave every Hobbit in the Shire hope.
The Took ancestrial home was where Hobbits wrote the names of those who had fallen with the Shire. The Party Tree was where where Hobbits went to honor them.
Hundreds of thin white posts rose out of the ground around the Party Tree, with dried lilies, forget-me-nots, and chrysanthemums tied to them, loved ones' names painted onto the wood. Every lower branch had dozens of papers bound to them -- letters to the lost, carefully tied with ribbons of black silk, fluttering slightly in the wind. The names of every Hobbit who had died in Shirefall and of every Hobbit who had disappeared in the chaos were gathered around this Tree. Calling them home, giving their spirits a place to rest, when everything else was lost to the darkness of the world beyond.
The Party Tree was no longer a place of celebration.
Bilbo trembled as they walked toward the Tree, so long etched in his memories alongside fireworks, happy grins, and wild dances under the stars. He ached to see the desolate ground dotted with so many white posts. One of those posts had his father's name on it -- and another, clasped tightly in his hand, for his mother.
When they reached the Tree, Drogo and Otho silently led Bilbo to a small scattering of posts that faced Bag End, which Bilbo had not yet dared to look upon. Upon seeing his father's name in dark blue ink, posted amongst his aunts and uncles and cousins, Bilbo gave a cry and fell to his knees, clenching his fingers over his eyes as tears welled up.
He sobbed, and Drogo and Otho stood guard over him, their hands gripping his thin shoulders tightly.
Soon, though, his tears dried up, and Bilbo sat emptily, gripping the white post in his hand and watching the yellow daffodils, tied with white ribbon, shiver slightly in the cool morning air. He shivered with the flowers, and then he carefully set his mother's post into the ground beside his father's. He tried to set it perfectly straight, but no matter how he drove the post, it always leaned slightly toward his father's, and after a while Bilbo gave up, thinking it suited them. They had always leaned on each other in life -- why not in death as well?
He hoped that his mother rested peacefully. He hoped that his father's spirit would look after her.
"I miss you," he whispered, and the wind carried the words away.
Then he gathered himself and stood, allowing Drogo and Otho to lead him from the Tree, toward the round green door that sat atop a lonely hill.