Disclaimer: The usual...these characters don't belong to me but to J.R.R. Tolkien and to New Line, Peter, Fran, and Philippa. I make no profit from this story except any positive feedback that happens to wander in my direction...(hint, hint)

Author's Notes: The first part of this takes place somewhere just before Cadharas, the second after the Battle of Bywater. And did this one ever go somewhere on its own after Marigold gave me the prompt... Book-verse, with hints of movieverse due to Billy and Sean B. in my head as I wrote, as usual.

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"It was a way for Pippin to keep hold of the Shire..." -Billy Boyd on getting to keep Pippin's scarf after the end of filming the trilogy and its importance to his character

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Knitting

by Songspinner

1.

(The Quest, on the approach to Caradhras)

"Aragorn, slow down. We cannot keep up this pace." Boromir's gruff voice cut through the haze of exhaustion in Pippin's mind. The young hobbit looked up just in time to stop himself from crashing into Sam's back, as the others had apparently stopped short along the path.

"There is no time to delay, Boromir." Aragorn called back from his place at the back of the line of travelers.

"Just a small break, perhaps..." Gandalf countered gently, with a swift glance to where Frodo was leaning on Sam, who was leaning on Bill.

"Very well," Aragorn acquiesced, somewhat reluctantly, and Pippin heard Merry draw in a huge breath of relief.

Boromir's hand rested briefly on the youngest hobbit's shoulder and squeezed slightly. "Rest a bit, little ones."

As the warrior sat down, Pippin nestled close to him for warmth, shivers interrupting his words. "I th..think that I shall n...never be warm enough again."

The soft laugh rumbled through Boromir's chest, vibrating against Pippin's ear. "Ah, give yourself a bit of time. This part of the journey will not last forever, and my little brother often tells me that I am rather like a furnace in winter. Come on, tuck this scarf of yours closer around your neck." Callused fingers caught and freed themselves from the delicate, patterned wool.

"I highly doubt that my mother meant it for a place like this." Pippin murmured, and Merry laughed as he joined them, curled up against his cousin.

"Auntie Eglantine may not have known of this journey, Pip, but she surely knew your tendency to get caught in trouble and bad weather. You scared her often enough when you were a faunt, never mind myself."

"Oh, he did, did he?" Boromir inquired with a grin. "Why am I not surprised to hear that?" He absently traced the maroon and yellow patterns in Pippin's scarf. "It's a fine piece of work."

Inspecting the intricate embroidery on his friend's collar, Pippin couldn't hold back his own curiosity. "Who made your things, Boromir?"

"Seamstresses, mostly." The man tugged at a couple of errant curls to tease his friend. "I am the son of the Steward, after all. I must look the part."

"Not your mother, then?"

"No, Pippin, not my mother. She died when I was a boy."

Pippin squinched his eyes shut in sorrow for his thoughtless words and reached up to touch the man's hand. "Oh. I didn't know, Boromir, I'm sorry."

"It's all right, you couldn't have known. I don't have many things she made for me left now. But it's good that you carry something of your mother with you."

Pippin huddled closer against the worn leather of man's jerkin with a wistful smile. "Keeps me warm and safe even here, she does. So do you."

"Well, stay warm and when we make camp, we can have another lesson, right? You'll beat your cousin this time, I'd wager." Boromir's voice resonated with his own smile.

"Oi! I don't think so!" Merry cried indignantly and reached over to thump his friend on one broad shoulder.

Sighing, Pippin closed his eyes to rest, but opened them again.

"Boromir?"

"What, Pippin?" Boromir replied, with a tone suspiciously like Merry's when the other hobbit was exasperated by too many questions.

"You do have something of your mother's, you know."

"Oh? What is that, pray tell, young master hobbit?"

"Your brother." Pippin waited nervously, afraid he had overstepped the bounds of friendship with his comment, but Boromir pulled him a bit closer.

"Indeed I do, Pippin. Thank you for reminding me." The man murmured. "Perhaps you shall meet him someday. I should like the two of you to meet."

"What is his name?"

"Faramir. Now hush and let us rest."

"Yes." Merry echoed. "Hush."

"But..." Pippin began, only to have Boromir's large hand come down and cover his mouth.

"You seem to have one thing habit in common, little one, with my brother. You ask too many questions when it is time to rest."

Keeping his mouth closed with great effort until Boromir removed his hand, Pippin tried very hard not to think. Unfortunately, this only resulted in the opposite. He turned over carefully until his face was an inch or so away from his cousin's.

"Merry?"

"Oh for...what is it, Pippin?"

"Do you think she's warm and safe?"

Merry's eyes popped open, confused. "Who?" he whispered back.

Pippin swallowed hard. "My mother."

"Aunt Eglantine? Why are you asking that, Pip?"

"Well, it's just...the Black Riders, and what Strider was telling us about the Orcs. If we help Frodo get the Ring to this place where it can be destroyed, then they'll be safe, right? Our families?" Pippin tried very hard to keep his voice from shaking.

Merry didn't answer right away, but leaned forward until he could kiss Pippin on the forehead. "They're tough, Pip, they'll be all right."

"I don't want them to have to be, Merry." The younger hobbit blurted out softly.

"Me either." Merry agreed, and green eyes met blue for a long, silent moment.

"Arise, my friends! It is time to go on." At the sound of Gandalf's call to rise, Merry groaned and buried his face in Boromir's cloak for a moment. Then he wiggled to the side to free both hands and mirrored Boromir's earlier action, moving the scarf around Pippin's neck to cover his whole throat.

And then Pippin was pulled to his feet and walking again through the cold night.

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2.

(Great Smials, Tookland, a day after the Battle of Bywater)

The typical chill air of Blotmath evenings filled the room, and Pippin moved quickly to the window to close it. Returning to the packs that sat on one end of a bed he knew he'd never fit again, he sorted through the clothing his friends in Gondor had insisted he take. Silks, linens, and fine sable wool slipped through his fingers as he folded the beautiful things and began to put them away.

Eglantine Took entered the room and crossed it to explore the bags with the same curiosity her son had inherited. She reached into the largest pack and pulled out his old scarf, stroked the soft and battered wool with a trembling hand. "Oh, Pippin, love. You kept it all this time?"

"Aye, I did. 'Twas warm in some very cold places. Wore it until I put on the uniform of a Knight of Gondor. And then it seemed somewhat out of place. I kept it close, anyhow." He smiled a little at her and took the scarf in his hand. "It stayed in one piece through a lot, Mother. Things and places I'd rather you not yet know about, if that's all right. Maybe never."

He tucked it into the top drawer of his bedroom dresser and closed the drawer with a bit too much force. The resulting loud thump made both of them jump a bit where they stood, and Pippin sat down on the edge of his bed.

"Sorry, Mother." He murmured as she sat down beside him, carefully smoothing her skirt over her knees. As he watched her, Pippin suddenly reached out and took her hand in his. "Oh."

"What is it, dear?" His mother inquired, stroking her fingers over his.

"Your hands. They've got... they look like you've worked so much." For some reason, Pippin found himself fighting back tears that had flowed so freely before.

"Peregrin Took, did you think that under these circumstances, with the Tooks resisting, that I would stand idly by? Of course I worked, just as hard as the other hobbits in the Smial." His mother's indignant words were tempered by her sudden worried expression. "Why-ever do you have such a look on your face, dear?"

Pippin tightened his grip on her hand. "I just...I suppose that I thought that you were safe through all this. That as I was going through everything and seeing all that I saw, that you'd be safe here, unchanged. I think that's why I kept the scarf on so long. It was you keeping me warm, safe, but then I had to take it off when things...oh! I'm not making much sense." Frustrated, the young hobbit flopped back onto the bed.

"Yes, you do, actually, Pippin."

His father's voice from the doorway had him sitting up as fast as it ever when he was a little hobbit.

"Eglantine, dearest, would you give us some time alone?" Paladin's voice was kind, but firm. The Lady of the Smial kissed her son, rose, and went off to supervise the restocking of the kitchens.

The bed creaked as Paladin took her place and his son's hand. "You did what you had to, Pippin."

Eyes wide, the young hobbit looked desperately at his father. "But Da, you had to take up the sword and bow, you all had to fight and none have done so for generations."

"Well," Paladin said with an eyebrow raised. "What did you think the Tooks would do, hmmm?"

"It's only that...nothing's the same anymore." Pippin spread out his father's hand against the colorful quilt his eldest sister had made for him so long ago. "Our hands...sword cuts and calluses..."

"Just marks of our lives, laddie. Scars fade." Paladin commented, stroking his thumb across the still-visible scars at Pippin's wrist and the ones criss-crossing his hand. "You've not any reason to tell me where these came from, for I know from Merry that they were gained in courage and that's all I need to know." He grinned as Pippin stared in surprise. "We had a few moments before we confronted those miscreants, so I asked a few questions."

"But Da, I wanted to believe that what we were doing, it would mean..." Pippin shook his head, trying to gather the words. "I'd hoped it would mean that you would be safe, and never have to take down Great-Granda's sword from over the mantel, and never have to know what we'd seen and learned. The battles changed us; what we saw changed us."

"Frodo's eyes changed a long time before we even left, Da." Pippin said softly. "It's how I knew he was going to leave even before Merry told me of his plans. He was already far away in his mind, I think, not long after Bilbo left. And I can...I can see it in his eyes again, now." His voice trailed off and he stared out the window.

"You know, lad, that he loves you. He'll not leave 'less he has a good reason to do so. And you'll tell me things when you've a need to and you're ready. You know it, aye?" Paladin responded, and he rested his hand gently on his son's shoulder.

"Oh, I know it, I do." Answering his father in a rather forced calmness, Pippin kept his eyes on the tree outside his room. "It's just that...Sam's not changed much, not where it counts, you see, but Merry...every time the Fellowship was separated, his eyes changed more and more. I think it happened at...well, when Frodo and Sam left to go their own way, and we lost... His eyes, Da. They were so much older than they'd been before."

Paladin's hand moved from his Pippin's shoulder to cradle his son's face. "And when did yours change, my son?"

Pippin froze and darted a panicked glance at his father. "Have they?" he said. He felt his father's strong hand hold his face still, preventing him from looking away. Green eyes so much like his own searched his.

"They've seen more than I wanted you to and more'n I can understand. They match your cousins' eyes sometimes. But the laughter in them isn't lost, Pippin. It's stronger for fighting the darkness, that's all. You've just grown so. It's no matter that you've a few years before you come of age. Outside the Shire, they consider you grown, did they not?"

With a quiet release of breath, Pippin pulled away from his father. "Aye, they do, Da." He leaned his forehead against the window glass, tracing patterns in the condensation with his finger as he used to when he was little.

"Then the family shall as well." The older hobbit caught his son's wrist and Pippin felt the strength in that grip. "These scars...yes, I'd noticed, despite your trying to hide them from us...these scars and the others I know you bear. I wish I could have prevented them, my son, but from what Frodo and Merry told me, they were earned with valor. And your eyes are still that of Peregrin Took, lad. Full of mischief and caring. It's only that I can now see the Thain you'll be someday reflected somewhere in them."

With a wordless cry, Pippin buried himself in his father's embrace. "I don't want to lose you. If that's what becoming Thain will mean..."

Paladin chuckled against his son's curls. "Ah, you've some time before there's any fear o' that."

Pippin felt his father pull away a little. "Da..."

"Come on, then, your mother will be all a-flutter about having to make you new clothes since you've become so tall."

"She'll have Aunt Esmerelda to complain with her, then." Pippin said, finally feeling that he could smile again. "I'm a bit taller than Merry, of course."

"Of course." Paladin responded, with a smirk that said that remembered that particular ongoing argument between the cousins far too well. He gave a little pat to his son's shoulder and winked at him. "And I know that this sudden growth has a long tale behind it, yes? Oh, put that fancy outfit of yours back on, then, son. You've an impression to make at dinner tonight. Wouldn't want to disappoint your sister and their friends, would you?"

Pippin rolled his eyes and groaned at the thought. "I'm thinking, Da, that I need Merry and Frodo here to protect me, and possibly the King as well."

"A Knight needs protection against pretty hobbit lasses, eh? I didn't know they could be so fierce."

"Da, you married a Banks and made her a Took, remember? And let me tell you about the lasses I met in my travels. They all seemed to know how to wield a sword..."