One Day at a Time

It was a silent morning, and although feasting and jocund company would normally be expected, it was not there, not yet, anyhow. It had been so cold during the night a messenger couldn’t ride through, Pippin wouldn’t allow it, so the letters were to be sent today. It still being early, feasts in the Smials would not begin until much later, when the sun rose.

Pippin paced the room, his hands in his pockets, his gaze to the floor, and he was very quiet too – careful, almost. His hair was tousled from the eventful night, and his shirt was half untucked from his breeches, a few buttons coming loose at the top so the collar hung low on his chest.

As he walked the room from end to end he was cautious not to make any noise. The silence was deafening and seemed to stretch all throughout the Smials like some heavy spell. He did not want to break it with a sound of his own.

The window at the far side of the room was filled with pale, winter dawn-light, blue and silver, like the last glance of the moon before it ducked beneath the hills. It reached with fragile beams, that seemed to twinkle like moonlight on icicles, into the room, and spilled onto his desk, casting a dark shadow to the floor.

The rest of the room was in a bluish aura, as if the breath of winter had snuck inside, but was no longer cold.

Pippin could hear his own breathing, slow and soft, and the floor gently groaned beneath him – he cringed. Frozen a few moments with a regretful expression, he waited. Nothing. He sighed, quietly relieved, and continued walking once more.

But suddenly he heard a soft gurgling sound, and turned quickly to the source. The sound began to elevate, but Pippin’s lanky limbs carried him over hastily and he swooped the cluster of soft blue linens up into his arms before the crying lifted, "Hey, now," he cooed into the swaddled bundle in his gentle lilt. "There’s no need for th’t, is there?"

Pippin smiled down at the child, "Merry is going to be so jealous," he said quietly, "His little Took is all grown up and now has a little Took of his own... and I’m not sharing!" Pippin giggled.

Normally he would have preferred to be at Crickhollow last night, but the healers at the Smials were the best in the Shire, and his sisters where there to assure him, and calm his frantic nerves. Though, he still couldn’t help but miss his cousin at such a wonderful moment in his life.

Gently rocking the tiny parcel he realized anew just how large he was in comparison to most other things, and then rocked even gentler, afraid with all his heart he might do something terribly wrong.

Pippin moved his hand to steady the babe in his arms, and took his other hand and unwrapped the bundle a bit. He saw a small pinkish face amidst the blankets, scrunched up in malcontent, with large, Tookish green eyes staring up at the father with the same smiling gaze. The baby’s unhappiness slowly faded, as he looked into Pippin’s smiling face, giving way to a soft contentment. The bitty child emanated his love for the company of this strange, giant, and silly hobbit with his every tiny breath.

Pippin’s smile turned to the softest expression of love he had ever made, and he cuddled the child more protectively, feeling the baby’s incredible warmth through the blankets that wrapped around the tiny body.

A horrible feeling of fear raked him once more and his brow knitted. It was not as if he’d never held a baby before. But before, it was never his baby. The shadow of doubt on his mind, which teased that he would not be able to care for the lad properly, or show him right from wrong, or that he would be a sorry example (this one in particular), haunted him mercilessly. The unsurmountable joy of becoming a father was pale in comparison to the utter fear he felt in the face of responsibility and expectation. Of failure.

The tiny, innocent, helpless baby in his arms was all his. His to nurture, to love, to adore, to teach, to steer into life as he would. But how was he supposed to teach a child the ways of the world when he still considered himself – even for all his travels and experiences – naive and, what everybody else felt, foolish?

The notion that if he did not care for the child properly, a life ruined would be his own fault, scared him tremendously.

Pippin did not ever think he could do something so terrible as to lead his son in the wrong direction, but it was clear enough, even to him, that some of the choices in his own life were not entirely well-made. He felt sick at the thought that he would ever do anything to harm his new son, even unintentionally, and a surge of protectiveness coursed through him.

He had been called many names by his friends and family and those who looked down on him (charlatan, wastrel, fool... the list went on) and he had never been so irked by them until now. What if all those things were true? He knew he was foolish sometimes, and careless mostly... and he had quite a time containing his curiosity... all those things he could never before help, or stop, or quell. But staring into his son’s little face, the babe’s eyes closed in a gentle slumber against his father’s chest, Pippin knew, with frightening recognition, that this time he could make no mistakes. And stroking the baby’s small, round cheek, and feeling his soft, new skin, he knew he would try everything within his power not to.

He knew then that he had many, many faults, and he recalled with softened rancor that his father before him too, had his shortcomings. But he was determined, as he was sure most new fathers were, to amend them as best he could. Though he was still weary of his fallibility.

The child being born last night, he still could not fully grasp the fact that the baby was alive, was his own. It was a miracle that was greater than anything he had ever seen or known, one he could not understand, but felt like the luckiest hobbit in all the world for experiencing. 

The babe looked like him, he thought, with green wondering eyes that sparkled already with some of the irrepressible curiosity he had of the world around him. The lad had the softest, downiest hair Pippin had ever felt, like silk, but it was his own color, and the small pointed nose was Tookish through and through. But it struck Pippin then, as he realized it, that whenever the baby was about to cry, he looked just like Diamond.

To him his son was like some surreal blessing, which he was afraid may or may not be real, and he was awake pacing the floors of his chamber with these thoughts swirling in his restless mind.

To say he was incredibly, utterly and completely paranoid would be an understatement. Part of the reason he was awake the entire night through was his reluctance to sleep with this new baby in his care. Nurses had come to him several times insisting that he get some rest, and the babe be put in the nursery, but he would have none of it. He justified this for them by saying Diamond was near and needn’t be roused in case the baby needed to be fed, and they reluctantly let him have his way.

But still, the startling fact that the tiny, delicate life in the basinet by the bed could be taken from him at the merest fancy of fate kept coming back to him, and shook him to no end.

"But I wouldn’t let that happen would I?" said Pippin, his voice barely a whisper as he looked down at the baby. "I’ve double-crossed fate one too many times to take any more chances, though," he said, doubt seeping into his tone.

Pippin heard some stirring in the bed and looked up, to see his wife Diamond awake and staring at him with her wintry blue eyes, still with traces of sleep and weariness in their cold, hard depths. He cursed under his breath, though it did not go unnoticed by her, and said, "I’m sorry, Diamond. I meant not to wake you," a remorseful care in his lilting voice, still lowered in a whisper for fear of waking the baby in his arms.

"You did, though," she said, and her voice was not one of the weary exuberance of a mother of one night only, though her light-colored hair was still dirty from her labor.

"Do you love me, Diamond?" Pippin asked, and she was startled at the bluntness and unexpectedness of the question.

She blinked a few times, the quilts pulled up close to her breast, her gaze still cold and distant, and she asked, "Do you love me?"

Pippin frowned and look to the floor, "Can’t you answer me that? It’s all I ask."

"You act as if I have a choice in the matter."

Looking up sharply, Pippin’s brows lowered, but upon meeting her gaze, still uncannily steely even though for her obvious tiredness, his resolve withered. That gaze always bothered him. It always seemed to look through him, past him, to someplace else, far, far away that he could never get to, or see for himself. But with another look into her frosty blue eyes, he knew that wherever they were looking was a cold and icy place. A frozen place, which was no spot for him, or the great green hills that came alive in his own lighthearted gaze.

"What are you going to name him?" Diamond asked, curious, if only for her son’s sake. There was some stifled ire in her voice, some resentment for not having a say in the matter. It was the Thain’s heir’s duty to name the Thain’s heir, after all.

Pippin noticed all this, but ignored it, it was no different than the usual snide looks that passed on her face (and he thought maybe, his too) that she thought went without notice. "I thought to call him Faramir," he said, anticipating the sigh or show of disapproval that she was sure to make. But he heard nothing, and looked back to her. "What do you think?" he said.

She was slow to answer, and she blinked her large, blue eyes tardily, as if she was pensive in thought a moment, and then said, "Why would you name him such?"

Pippin sighed. Every opportunity he gave was thwarted. A question responded with another question. There never seemed to be any answers.

"I would name him such," Pippin began a bit tartly, a tad insulted, and looked down to the tiny lad in his arms, "For Faramir of Ithilien. I have told you of him," Pippin said looking to her, and she nodded indifferently, remembering. Pippin was hesitant at first, feeling whatever he opened up about himself would be disregarded, but sighed and resigned to tell her anyway, "Well... he reminded me of myself a bit, if it can be possible to see even a small amount of myself in such a noble man. And his father," Pippin paused, and Diamond’s brows lowered, perhaps in concern, perhaps in tedium, as Pippin recalled the memory, "His father could not love. He could not love for grief blinded him, and even before that madness seized him. He was not capable of it... there was always something else. He was bad father, at least in my eyes, if only for the fact that he wounded both his sons by disregarding his youngest... even if he couldn’t help in doing so. And I feel ashamed for saying that... for who I am to judge? But I cannot help it, after the things I heard him say."

Diamond listened.

"I always felt for him. For Faramir. It hurt so much... just to hear the steward speak to him. As if he was nothing, worthless, just a pathetic shadow of his older brother, unworthy in every manner for not being his brother himself.

"I always wanted to tell him his father loved him, but... I could not, because I could never see any love there, in his cold, dark eyes. None. It was a terrible thing... how could a father not love his son..." Pippin felt anew a surge of emotion to support this question that had plagued him for so long in the great Lord’s court and in the Shire of his youth, while he held his newborn baby. "How could he not love his son... even through a veil of madness, how could he not know him?

"Anyways, I told you all that before," Pippin’s mood lightened, as he climbed back up the ladder from his dismal memories, still vivid and raw after all these years. "I thought to name him for Faramir, so I could love our son, like Faramir’s father did not love him." Pippin shrugged, "It’s a shoddy reason for such a peculiar name, really," he said lightly to overly his true feelings, but in his heart he felt he could give love to his son unconditionally always, (in case, in some way, he ever made a terrible mistake, which he feared now more than anything). For Pippin felt whenever he would recall his son’s namesake he would remember the devastating, heartbreaking effects of a loveless father, cruel in his madness and estrangement, and he would never, ever allow himself to take his beautiful son for granted. Diamond watched Pippin then, as he seemed to sift through recollections of things long-past but deep-setting.

The memories of the Lord Denethor’s disaffection reminded him starkly in some removed way of his own father, and so reminded him even more of the importance of the care and pride they could give – things that he long desired to have himself for many a day.

And Pippin felt, in some detached way, that he could somehow make up for the love lost to both he and the steward’s son, in some small manner, by loving this precious son of his to no end, giving him Prince Faramir’s name. He glanced back down to his slumbering lad once more, and grinned in pride, love already bursting through him with every smile and laugh. Delighted with his boy, he knew adoring this child was not going to be hard.

Pippin forgot he had been explaining something to Diamond, and looked back up to her, "Well, that’s the reason, anyhow," he said, a bit apologetic for going off into his own thoughts.

Diamond was silent for a moment, but then, "I like it."

Pippin looked to her, a brow raised slightly, "You like it?"

"Yes."

Looking at his wife, Pippin felt a smile tug at the corner of his lips, a sincere one, though it was very small. He looked back down to his son, "So, your name is Faramir, I guess. I hope you like it," the baby gurgled in his sleep, almost in approval, and Pippin let out a bark of laughter, and looked to Diamond, his green eyes shining with love for his new son. Diamond had giggled slightly, and Pippin thought he almost saw her smile, but it was gone too quickly for him to be sure, and her blue eyes still looked out to him in the supercilious way they always seemed to.

Walking over to the cradle, he placed his sleeping son inside of it and sighed gently, stroking the soft tiny face, his uncertainties returning slowly once more, "We’ll take it one day at a time, is all," he said, so quiet, that Diamond did not hear him, but it did not matter.

"I am going back to sleep," she announced, and moved to find a more comfortable position.

"You should," Pippin agreed, concerned for her health, if not anything else. And while he watched her turn her back to him and Faramir, he wondered passingly what a life without the love of a mother would be like. 

A/N: This little fic was partially inspired by Tom Fairbairn's 'Girl of the North Country', a wonderful tale telling of Diamond and Pippin's rocky marriage. She is portrayed amazingly in that story, and exactly the way I have always pictured her to be.