Yule, 1380
Sometimes a celebration brings more pain than joy.
A/N: It's only fair to warn you - this one will probably hurt. A lot.
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Frodo Baggins was crying over ginger stars.
Actually he was crying over multiple things, but the ginger stars were the culmination of it all.
They weren't there.
Just as the special Yule tea hadn't been waiting for him after he'd come in from helping gather greens to decorate Brandy Hall.
Just as the woodland animals he and Mama had always tucked into the greenery decorating the hearth and the shelves and tables weren't there.
Just as the new-dipped candles that he always helped to make weren't there. The new candles were there, of course, giving off their warm, waxy glow. But they were plain, not all of the different colours that he and Mama could possibly make, nor had he been asked to help with them.
The meals had been the same and the games had been the same, because this was Brandy Hall, after all, and Frodo had come here every Yule since before he could remember...
...but Mama hadn't been there to join in the games and pooh-pooh at grown-ups' stuffy nonsense. She hadn't set the dancers on fire, as Uncle Bilbo and Papa liked to say, nor had she danced privately with Frodo, teaching him new steps.
Papa didn't come stomping in from his workshop deliberately shaking wood-dust and shavings all over the decorations and declaring that "as the right of a wright this hole will smell as much like browns as greens". And Mama would squeal and scold and Frodo would laugh and in the end Papa would catch them all in a big hug and get all of the shavings left on his clothes all over them whilst Mama laughed and called him a silly goose.
He missed Papa's hugs.
There had been no special private telling of the Starkindler on First Night at bedtime, nor would there be the story of the coming of the sun and moon tonight. Instead, Frodo would spend this night as he had the last several; alone in a silent bedroom whilst his roommates curled up in front of their hearth sleeping with the rest of their family, as was tradition.
He wasn't family.
He had tried curling up before the library hearth by himself, but without Papa's stories and Mama's Yule tea and ginger stars and their warmth pressed around him he had crawled back to bed before the night was over.
Last year the wishes he had thrown on the Yule log had been simple: a pony, some siblings, more walks with Bilbo, that Papa would teach him to carve.
This year...
Last year the regrets and releases that he had thrown into the Yule bonfire had been short, and fairly small.
This year...
He'd left the bonfire before even two hours had passed, slipping quietly away as he often did when the world seemed happy and unlikely to notice him.
One had noticed though.
Bilbo had come for Yule this year, and he had found Frodo in the library —the one place his aunts and uncles and cousins never thought to look for him— a cushion pressed tightly against his face, screaming his rage and grief into it. Frodo hadn't heard anyone come in at all and nearly leapt out of his skin when a hand landed on his shoulder. The pillow had immediately dropped to the floor as he guiltily turned to see who had caught him.
Bilbo hadn't said anything; he'd only opened his arms with a sad smile, and Frodo had almost leapt into them.
Now they sat on the settle before the hearth, Frodo on Bilbo's lap, his face pressed against the older hobbit's shoulder.
Bilbo smelt of bonfire and Brandy punch and Old Toby and mint and ink and walks through the woods.
Papa smelt of sawdust and Longbottom Leaf and lavendar soap.
Frodo's hand tightened around the handkerchif that Bilbo had pressed into it as he cried.
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A/N: The Yule bonfire and the lists of wishes and regrets come from Larner, and the gathering of greens from Dreamflower02. I love their beautiful Shires.
If you are mourning someone right now I am sorry. I wish that I could hold you in a big hug for a few minutes. No words; just hug. Please take care of yourself, and stay close to the ones still with you. Loss hurts. I'm sending you all the love I can. (After i hurt you by writing that, sorry. I'm still mourning too.)