A/N: Written for Marigold’s challenge #7 – write a post-quest story using the first line, "Hullo, ___."

Pipspebble was kind enough to beta this for me at the last minute.

***

Somewhere in the hills south of Tuckborough, 3^rd of Thrimidge, 1440 SR.

"Hullo, Da!"

"Farry?" Pippin whirled around to face in the direction from which he thought he had heard Farry calling. He sighed with relief, thankful that the lad had apparently not taken advantage of his father's inattention to wander off into trouble, as Pippin was still a little dazed from his unexpected after-tea nap. "Where are you?"

"I’m here!" Faramir called out, giggling. "Can’t you see me?"

Pippin shielded his eyes from the late afternoon sun and scanned the countryside around him, thinking he might have been a little hasty in presuming that Faramir was not engaged in some mischief. The lad was, after all, a Took. Pippin silently berated himself for dozing off, when he knew better than to take his eyes off Farry for a moment on this, his first camping trip. The lad had been irrepressible, a bundle of boundless energy, from the moment they left the Smials, even as Pippin's own strength began to wane.

His parents would never have made such a mistake when he was this age, he thought. Of course, they had learnt long before that if he were left alone for even a moment, he would take himself off as fast as his small legs would carry him – following a rabbit’s trail, or the flight of a bird far above, or the scent of an elusive crop of blackberries. But here he was now, nonetheless, and his own little lad was nowhere to be seen.

"Can you see me now?" The cheerful little voice was followed by the crack of wood and a stifled squeak, and Pippin’s heart stopped as his gaze fell on a tall fir tree to his left; the lower branches of which were waving dangerously under the weight of what could only be a hobbit lad. His hobbit lad… as if he could possibly belong to anyone else.

"Faramir…" he groaned. He rushed toward the tree, panic welling up in him when his son did not answer immediately. "Farry?"

"It’s all right, Da," the disembodied voice of his son reassured him somewhat shakily, "I’m just a bit stuck, that’s all."

"That doesn’t sound all right to me, lad," Pippin muttered apprehensively as he struggled through the low, hanging branches; scratching himself on the needles in his haste. He looked up worriedly into the shadows, "What happened?"

"I climbed out a bit too far," Faramir admitted, seemingly unconcerned despite his sudden fright. "Don’t worry, Da. It is all right. You can get me down, can’t you?"

Pippin finally spotted his son, waving down at him with a smile. He was crouched like a cat on a narrow branch far above; perhaps, he estimated sickly, higher up than five hobbits stood on top of one another. Staggering back to lean against the trunk for support as his knees threatened to give way, he cursed himself for being such a ridiculous child when he was this age; for surely the dilemma he now faced was payback for all those times he had so worried his own parents.

He used to climb tall trees such as this all the time, just for the sheer joy of being so high, one of many habits that caused frequent dismay to those around him. Perhaps he should have known that his son would also have such an unnatural fondness for heights. He sighed, feeling suddenly very weary and old, and fingered a long, raised scar on his elbow, one that was older than all the rest.

"How did you get up that high, Faramir?" he asked weakly, trying to keep his voice steady.

"It was easy," Faramir replied proudly. He grinned down at Pippin, his eyes wide with excitement. "Look, it’s like a ladder!"

As he tore his eyes away from his son’s predicament for long enough to look around him, Pippin noticed ruefully that the boy was right. The branches were quite close together, making the tree remarkably easy even for a lad Faramir’s size to climb.

Remarkably easy... Dread settled in Pippin’s stomach as he looked up and up, his eyes following the route that Faramir had most likely taken.

"Are you all right, Da?" Faramir called down anxiously. "You look a bit pale. Can you come and get me down now, please? I’m getting hungry."

Pippin closed his eyes and tried to pull himself together. "Yes, Farry, I’m coming. Just hold on tight please, lad." Gritting his teeth, he put his foot on the first branch and reached up to grasp another one near his head. He tested the next branch gingerly before putting his full weight on it, and carefully made his way up, sweat beading on his brow, his hands shaking. It had been so long since he had last done this, and in such different circumstances.

Faramir let out a sudden squeal, and Pippin’s head snapped up in alarm. "Help!" Farry cried. "Wolves! The wolves are going to eat me!" A shower of twigs fell, one hitting him on the shoulder, another on his head.

Pippin clenched the branch he was holding onto with all his might, struggling to suppress a cry of rage. This was a tense enough situation to be in as it was, clinging to the side of this giant tree, without projectiles to avoid as well – and though he wanted very much to be patient with the lad, when he was hit by another twig, followed by an ear-splitting shriek, he could contain himself no longer.

"Faramir Took!" he bellowed. "Do you want me to rescue you or not? Because I am not in the mood for a game of Bilbo in the Tree!" He instantly regretted his outburst, as he heard a small intake of breath above him, and a wounded silence.

"Don’t know why you’re so grumpy," Faramir muttered. "Bilbo and the Tree used to be your favourite game." A pause, and then he added more bravely, "I suppose I could make it down by myself." Pippin heard more rustling and creaking, and the soft patter of needles falling onto the earth below.

"No, Farry!" Pippin cried, fear for his son winning out over fear for himself. "Stay where you are!" A frantic determination to rescue his lad at all costs suddenly seized him, even if it meant conquering this daft fear of his… even if it was the last thing he did. He was not going to stand back and watch Faramir do this, even if his son really could make it down without help.

Faramir looked down at him, frozen in place, his eyes round with surprise and worry. Pippin understood why, for he had surprised and worried himself too. He sounded horribly afraid, even to his ears.

"Why, Da?" Faramir asked in a small voice. His air of resentful bravado had melted away in an instant as their eyes met, and the lad paled, no doubt utterly confused by the look of desperation he saw in his invincible father’s eyes. "What’s going to happen?" the lad whimpered, clutching his branch more tightly. "What did I do? Why are you frightened?"

"Nothing’s going to happen, dearest," Pippin replied in a shaky, unconvincing voice, "if you just stay where you are, and don’t move."

"Don’t move?" Faramir squeaked, looking even more alarmed, and clearly working himself up into quite a fright, although Pippin was not entirely sure why. It was taking enough concentration just to keep climbing, as his hands were now sticky from tree sap, sweaty, and shaking from the effort besides. He swallowed his fear and continued to climb. His feet were sticky as well, and he feared he might slip, despite his care for where he put his feet.

Then, stepping higher, he choked off a panicked cry as he made the mistake of looking down. Feeling suddenly quite light-headed, he imagined how much it would hurt if he fell now, even though a little voice at the back of his mind told him that it was ridiculous that he should be so frightened. He thanked the stars then that Merry had not joined them on this trip. Oh, he would have found this delightfully amusing… and still would, of course. There would be no keeping this secret.

He came back to the present with a start to find Faramir watching him silently, his knuckles white from gripping the branch so tightly. Pippin realised with a jolt that the lad was trying not to cry. Faramir had always been so very fearless when it came to tree climbing, and Pippin felt even more ashamed to think that his own weakness was having this effect on his son. He hoped fervently that Farry would still respect him after this.

He had always been proud that he was, in his son’s eyes from a very early age, the bravest hobbit in the Shire, yet he found himself wishing now that he had not set such high standards for himself – not when the act of bravery that he had been asked to perform was so entirely unworthy of the panic he was causing them both. It would be quite another matter if Faramir needed rescuing from the jaws of a dragon, after all, and Pippin felt another wave of shame wash over him.

"Faramir," he said, as calmly as he could, climbing up the last few branches more swiftly as he forced himself to concentrate on his son, and nothing else. "I’m just beneath you now. We’ll be down in a minute, and then we’ll have something to eat and go down to the stream and clean up."

"All right, Da," Faramir replied tentatively. "How are you going to get me down though?"

Pippin had not thought very clearly about this part and realised he would have to improvise. "Well, I’ll just… hmm, let go of the trunk, I suppose." He stepped towards his son carefully, clinging to the branch above him with both hands, then swallowed, and summoned up the courage to take one hand off the branch. "Here, take my hand, dear. You’ll have to shift along your branch a little bit, but it looks sturdy enough… That’s right – there… you’re all right now, love." Faramir clambered across the rest of the branch to stand beside him, and Pippin grinned down at him, profoundly relieved. "Now, how about I lead the way down?"

"I’m frightened, Da." Faramir whispered, looking up at him woefully. "Can’t you carry me?"

"I think we’ll make it down more quickly if I don’t, dearest," Pippin replied gently, caressing his son’s pale face. His heart clenched painfully as Faramir met his gaze and he saw fear and determination warring in those clear green eyes. What was he doing to the lad? He resolved to get to the bottom of his odd behaviour once they were back on solid ground.

Faramir took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "All right then," he agreed, if reluctantly. "But I want to go first." He twisted around and began his descent, climbing down so quickly that he nearly lost his footing several times. Every time he slipped, Pippin’s heart skipped a beat, and he descended hastily too, in his efforts to keep up with the lad. By the time his feet touched the earth again he felt almost faint with relief.

Faramir ran out through the branches into the waning sunlight, and Pippin emerged after him, feeling utterly drained, dishevelled and ashamed; and nearly fell over backwards as his son jumped into his arms, burying his face in his neck. Not since he was a much smaller lad had he come to his father like this for comfort, and Pippin smiled, embracing him tightly as his pounding heart gradually slowed. He had missed holding his lad like this.

After a long, quiet moment, Faramir finally pulled away, glancing over Pippin’s shoulder at the tree, and then back at him, with a puzzled frown. "Da, it’s still just standing there. It hasn’t done anything. Even after all that time we were up there."

Pippin frowned back at him, and followed his gaze; then felt his brow as a precaution. "What do you mean, dearest?"

"The tree," Faramir replied patiently. "Maybe it wasn’t hungry. Do you think maybe it wasn’t hungry?"

Pippin peered into his son’s wide, green eyes. "Faramir, did you think the tree was going to eat us?"

Faramir nodded. "I was really frightened. You were too, weren’t you?" He pressed close to his father again, watching the tree warily.

"What in the Shire possessed you to climb it, lad? Especially if you thought it was going to eat us?" Pippin was truly baffled, wondering if the lad might have knocked his head when he nearly fell.

"I liked it, Da. It’s all big and dark. I wanted to pretend that it was Treebeard and I was you. I didn’t think it was going to eat me until you shouted like that," he said reproachfully. "I thought that was why you were frightened."

"I was frightened because I thought you might fall," Pippin replied gently, stroking Faramir’s curls. It was the truth. Not the whole truth, but perhaps enough to get himself through this with his dignity intact. "Where did you even get the idea of Hobbit-eating trees from, anyway?" he asked.

Faramir flushed. "I’m hungry, Da. I thought you said we were going to eat now."

"Not until you tell me where you got such an idea," Pippin returned; an edge of steel creeping into his voice that he knew would prevent his son from arguing with him.

Faramir heaved a dramatic sigh. "Last time we were in Buckland, some of the lads were talking about the Old Forest. They said that some trees like to eat Hobbits. They said they swallow them up whole, and they were daring each other to go in there." Faramir looked up at his father worriedly, "I thought it was silly, but… is it true? I thought it must be true, because you looked like you thought the tree was going to eat us." He looked up again anxiously at the source of all the turmoil, so much like his father that Pippin could almost picture the visions dancing through the young one’s overactive imagination.

Pippin could not keep the amused smile from his face, and drew his son closer again.

"It’s not funny!" Faramir exclaimed, half-heartedly resisting his father's embrace and refusing to meet his eyes. "I can’t help being frightened. Even you were this time, Da, and you’re not frightened of anything."

"I’m sorry, dearest," Pippin replied, and kissed his brow. "Your imagination is vivid enough as it is. You’ll have nightmares if you hear too many of my stories."

"Well, I’d rather have nightmares than get eaten by a tree because you didn’t tell me that trees eat Hobbits," Faramir stated, his fine brows drawn together in as stubborn a frown as any Pippin had ever seen on his sister Pervinca's face. "Is it true?"

Pippin paused, looking thoughtfully into his son’s ingenuous eyes. This was just one of many subjects that he tried to avoid talking about, at least with Faramir, though he always tried to give the lad an honest answer to his questions. In the blink of an eye Pippin made up his mind. "Faramir, I was frightened, but not because I thought the tree was going to eat us."

"Why, then?"

"Because we were up so high," Pippin sighed. "And I prefer to stay on the ground. I don’t like climbing trees."

"What do you mean? Of course you like trees," Faramir protested. "What about all those stories you told me of Bilbo and the wolves, when you were Bilbo and Uncle Merry was the wolves? And what about Treebeard?"

"I do like trees. They’re very nice to look at… from the bottom. And you’re right about that game being my favourite. We used to play it all the time when I was your age, but Merry would never climb up with me, unless he had to because I got stuck. I used to think it was funny that my brave Merry was so frightened of such a silly thing." Pippin grinned at his son fondly. "But in the end, I understood why, when I fell out of a big old tree and broke quite a few branches on the way down. I was twenty, I think, and once Merry had finished fainting and Frodo had got us back to Hobbiton so I could be put back together, they were both delighted to hear that I’d decided never to climb another one ever again, though, of course, I did, when we were on our journey, and so did Merry, but only because we had to. And Treebeard… well, he was different. We knew he wouldn’t drop us."

He rolled up his sleeve and pointed to the scar from his ill-fated tree climbing days, grinning at the look of astonishment on Farry's face, for the lad couldn’t take his eyes off it.

"I thought you got that in the war," Faramir protested, and then he looked up at Pippin again and frowned. "You are still going to take me to see Treebeard though, aren’t you, one day?"

"One day," Pippin replied, kissing him on the cheek. "And you can sit up in his branches and look down at the world all you like then. I’m sure he won’t mind. In fact, I should think he’ll find you quite fascinating."

Faramir’s eyes shone with anticipation as he wrapped his arms around Pippin’s neck. Pippin smiled, delighted yet strangely sad that his son could accept the tallest stories of talking trees and magical forests as being a part of everyday life, and invent similarly unusual explanations for his father’s simple fear of heights. It had long been a source of great amusement for Merry, Diamond and Sam that this little boy took after his father in every possible way, and despite the trials of raising a mischievous little adventurer so like himself, the lad was a delight. Indeed, his Farry-lad was everything he could ever have wished for.

Although he did not want to stifle the lad’s inquisitive spirit, it pained Pippin to think of him growing up and discovering all the wonders of Middle-earth for himself one day. Despite all his father had told him of the world that lay beyond the borders of the Shire and his acquaintance with Elves and Dwarves and Men, Faramir had grown up loving the Shire first and foremost; and Pippin had wanted just that for him, that he love his home most of all. But he sensed now that it would not be long before this bright little bird stretched his wings.

Pippin looked down at him thoughtfully for a moment, committing to memory the look on the lad's face at this moment, now, when he was still his little Farry, and adulthood was far, far away. He smiled and reached to ruffle his son’s curly hair, chuckling softly. "How about a game of Treebeard now?"

Faramir grinned and nodded vigorously, eagerly clambering up onto his father’s shoulders. He grabbed on to his hair by accident, and Pippin winced.

"Sorry," the lad giggled. Once he was safely positioned, the pair made their way to the stream, stopping for their packs first, and as Pippin knelt down and leaned over a little too far to pick them up, he earned himself a delighted shriek in his ear.

"This is much better than being in that dusty old tree," Faramir declared, gazing about him at the green hills glowing in the light of the setting sun. "I can see everything from up here!"

Everything. Pippin smiled, and squeezed his son’s hand gently, wondering whether he and Diamond should begin to talk about that oft-mentioned journey to Gondor.

"Da…" Faramir piped up again, unaware of the promising turn of his father’s thoughts.

"Yes, Farry?"

"You still haven’t told me if trees really eat Hobbits."

"If I told you that they do," Pippin mused, "would you never climb another one?"

"Maybe. But I’d have horrid nightmares."

"That’s all right, lad. I can protect you from those." Pippin looked up at him and winked.

"Da…"

"There are no Hobbit-eating trees in the Shire, Faramir Took," he finally relented. "And since you aren’t going to leave the Shire until I take you with me, that will have to satisfy you for now."

"All right, then…" Faramir sighed. "Da?"

"Yes?"

"I still don’t understand… If you get frightened being up a tree, what about when you went to Isengard and Mordor? Were you ever so scared then too? Those bits always sound so grand to me, but the only stories you ever tell me are the ones about Treebeard’s songs and the Golden Wood and things like that."

"Oh, Farry…" Pippin sighed. Faramir was still far too young for the darker tales he had to tell, and Pippin wished fervently that the lad were less perceptive, for he would lose his sweet innocence the more he understood what it was truly like in the War. For a moment, the whimsical thought came to him that Bilbo might have disappeared when he did for just this reason, to avoid difficult questions of his own, and he silently congratulated the old hobbit on a fine idea.

Something in his tone must have made Faramir reconsider, because the lad kissed him on the top of his head then, and said, "If you pretend to be Treebeard, then I’ll feel like I’m in Fangorn, if I close my eyes."

Pippin grinned, and his heart lifted gladly. "Hoooom…" he began, in his deepest voice. "Well, young Master Faramir, what would you like me to talk about? I would be glad to talk to you for however long you wish… as long as it’s something I wish to talk about, mind. Do not forget that I talk very slowly, which means that though I talk for a very long time, I really say very little at all... which I suppose can be rather tiresome for a hasty little lad like you… and you must be quite the hastiest of all the hasty little folk I’ve encountered yet… Faramir?"

Met with blessed silence, Pippin carefully hoisted the sleeping lad down from his shoulders and cuddled him close. He walked on quietly over the hill and down to the stream, gazing out toward the setting sun, its golden rays lighting up the sky. As he did every evening, he thought of his dear old cousin, somewhere over the sea; and smiled, all at once feeling utterly at peace with his little bit of Middle-earth. He looked down at his son cradled in his arms.

Thank you, Frodo. Thank you for saving the Shire, so my lad can love it as you did. As I do. And thank you for saving us all, so that he could be here to enjoy it… trees and all.