Somehow this became a companion to having and holding, probably because I just needed to share more BOTFA feels. Many thanks for the folks at TheBetaBranch for looking this over for me. Thanks to everyone who reviewed having and holding, as well as all of my other fics.

growing and grieving

There's always been an old oak in Frodo's memories. That doesn't mean it always was.

(After all, the acorn had to make it back to the Shire, just the same as Bilbo).

To Bilbo, it felt as though each step made the acorn gather more weight. Each pace away from Erebor dropped the small acorn further into his pocket, dragging him down until he wanted to turn, to run back, to say, "I've come back to the Mountain because I could not longer stand the thought of returning home".

He didn't. Of course he didn't, just as he never cried for Thorin besides that one terrible day. Bilbo walked and walked and walked, pack on his back and acorn in pocket. Just as he'd walked to Erebor, he walked to the Shire. Over hill he went, each step under the endless sky bringing him another pace away from a mountain to which he would never return.

(Sometimes he thought that he might like to return.

He knew that he would never bring himself to make the journey again.)

At night, he camped. Sometimes he went right to sleep, curled up in a fur with his pack serving as a pillow for his head. Other nights he sat by the fire and stared at his path until he was left with nothing but dying embers beside him. When he slept, he'd occasionally be awakened by a lump digging into his side and he'd roll over until the acorn no longer dug like stone into his thigh.

"What is that in your pocket?" he said to himself on those nights, and then he'd no longer be able to find any refuge in sleep. If he didn't set out immediately into the night in attempts to run from the whispering ghosts, then he sat alone turning over a simple acorn in his hands.

If not an acorn, then a mere gold ring.

There was something about Rivendell – Imladris, he learned from the silver-tongued elves – that soothed him. He didn't want to – couldn't have if he did – put a name to it. It would have ruined the magic, the sense of wonder that permeated the air to give that sensation a name in the mortal tongue. He didn't stay there long, although there was none of the urgency of their first visit left in him.

It felt too peaceful and still in the sheltered glen. Imladris was a haven, a refuge meant for the shattered and the survivors.

Bilbo had a home waiting for him. He had a small hobbit-hole in the Shire, humble and quiet and all that he had left of his kin. He had a small hobbit-hole with the barest of memories of adventure and dwarves. Bilbo didn't need to stay in Imladris then, surrounded by memories and phantom-laughter from ghosts he refused to acknowledge.

He considered planting his acorn here, of letting it grow tall and strong in a land untouched by mortal troubles. He considered letting it sprout and grow, until it stood strong and tall in the forest. It would be a good life for the small acorn, undisturbed by war and time.

(Bilbo had tried that life. It hadn't taken.)

When Bilbo left Rivendell, the acorn was nestled in his pocket where it could bump against his leg with each step.

(Bofur would have shook his head, hat flapping about his ears as he tried to hide his laughter. Bombur would have scoffed.)

The Shire was the same as it had always been, and in many ways, that made it hurt all the more. Bilbo found it easy to fall into the simple rhythm of Shire life, and for a time, he let himself forget his journey.

Bilbo hung up his coat on the rack, left everything neatly in place, and let himself forget about the journey.

Or rather, he tried.

(He didn't succeed.)

He didn't realize it at first, but the rest of the Shire took care to comment on his threadbare clothes, his missing buttons, the little sword he sometimes forgot to take off when he left the house. Even if Bilbo didn't realize he'd changed, the rest of the Shire noticed with some suspicion and glee each new peculiarity the hobbit had acquired. Even if Bilbo wanted to forget his journey, the rest of the Shire would never allow it.

(No matter how quietly they tried to gossip, they were loud enough for even Oin to hear.)

It was after a fight with Lobelia Sackville-Baggins that Bilbo remembered the acorn. It was odd, he knew, that after carrying it across all the lands he didn't plant it in the end. Maybe it was another remnant of a time past that he refused to let go. Maybe he just didn't want to stare at a constant reminder in the future.

That day, he strode into his house with a mutter and a grimace. He flopped a bag of rescued spoons onto a shelf above the hearth with a heartfelt curse he'd learned from one of the members of the company. He couldn't remember which of them had taught it to him first, and that startled him. Each of the memories had begun to bleed into one another, until they were all one inseparable unit in Bilbo's mind.

(Nori, maybe? It seemed like it would have been Nori. Except… he could have almost recalled Ori saying the words, only to be scolded by a laughing Bifur.)

The bag of spoons disturbed the weight, and the shelf almost toppled over. It tilted precariously, and a single bag dropped off the end. It wasn't anything he remembered placing there, nothing significant that jarred his mind. Curious, Bilbo picked it up. Easily he untied the lip of the bag, slipping out handkerchief and the object wrapped inside.

(And oh how it hurt – it hurt in the way that only a festering wound gone ignored could.)

He picked it up, the last treasure the Lonely Mountain had given him. Bilbo clutched it in his hand, letting small ridges dig into his palm. A year ago, he would have scarcely felt the object chafing his skin. Now, callouses faded and skin lotioned soft, it felt strange to clutch such a ragged object in his palm. The tip nicked him, and Bilbo grimaced as he rubbed at the sore.

Bilbo planted that acorn that day, planted it at the edge of his field and patted some dirt over it. He didn't know much about oaks, but knew enough to hope that he hadn't planted it too late.

Perhaps some of Beorn's wild magic or the magic from Imladris lived in that acorn still. It took root and began to grow, and Bilbo was hard-pressed to keep annoyed hobbits from removing the tree that marred the rolling countryside.

Still, it didn't grow as quickly as he expected. He didn't know why until one day, another hobbit he'd never bothered speaking to came and grumbled, "Too much water."

"What?"

"You're giving it too much water. Any self-respecting gardener would tell you that. It's a tree, not a flower."

Bilbo spoke to him and learned his name was Hamfast Gamgee. He learned that Gamgee – Gaffer, as was conveyed to him via grunt - was not just a gardener, but also one offended on principle by Bilbo's treatment of his crops and garden. Gaffer didn't care if the acorn was a symbol or a promise or any of that vague nonsense; he just cared that Bilbo wasn't going about it the right way.

(Whatever 'it' was.)

He hired this 'Gaffer' who reminded him more than a little of Dori on the spot, and told him his first priority would be maintaining the small shoots coming up where he'd planted the acorn.

(Bilbo wanted to do it himself, of course, but this was something that he could not leave to chance.)

Under Gaffer's guidance – and not Bilbo's, to his eternal annoyance – the shoots became a sapling, and then a tree. Bilbo spent many afternoons talking to Hamfast Gamgee, picking his brains over the best way to ensure the oak not just survived, but thrived.

"Sun's all wrong for it," Gaffer told him one day. Bilbo couldn't do much about the sun, but he organized the building of several hedges to give it just the right amount of shade.

(If only Dwalin could see him now)

Sometimes it was "you've been giving it too much water" and others just "what did you think, planting taters so close to it?" Bilbo fixed what he could, and trusted the rest would work itself right out.

And then came the day when Gaffer said, "You've done all you can. Either it will live or it won't."

It lived.

Frodo came to live with him, eventually. The lad was eleven, and at first, Bilbo despaired over his decision to give his nephew a home. Not that Frodo was a poor housemate by any means – indeed, it was quite the opposite – but because Bilbo simply did not know how to give Frodo what he needed. Somedays, he even admitted to himself that he didn't know what Frodo needed. Frodo was quiet, solemn and still and full of sorrow in places where he should have been bursting with life. There were gaps in him that Bilbo didn't think he'd ever be able to fill by himself.

(It took him a few years to realize he didn't need to fill them, because Frodo was perfectly capable of finding others to patch over what Bilbo couldn't.)

They spent many an afternoon talking, sometimes in their hole but just as many times under the leafy oak. Sometimes they talked in circle and other times, they cut to the heart of each matter. Bilbo could have written books about their conversations under the oak, even if they were about nothing at all.

(Balin would have appreciated that, he thought.)

"Bilbo?" Frodo asked him one day. "Gaffer said that you hired him to take care of the oak. Where did it come from?"

Bilbo, several decades removed from the Lonely Mountain, laughed. "I was a fool that thought you needed a gardener to take care of trees, Frodo. I'd forgotten that trees could take care of themselves."

(It didn't answer Frodo's question.)

Frodo stared. His nephew did that sometimes, these days. Stared at him as though he thought Bilbo had gone wonderfully, delightedly, surprisingly mad.

Bilbo had seen madness. He didn't think this was it.

"You've been speaking too much with Gandalf," Frodo scolded with a laugh. Bilbo considered. Smiled. Decided it was probably a good assumption to make.

(His answer was true, after all.)

He held his eleventy-first birthday under the oak. They'd taken to calling it "the Party Tree" as though that was its sole purpose. Bilbo didn't think it was a bad name for it, even if it was misleading. He also didn't think Thorin would have minded.

(Even if the tree had only ever belonged to Bilbo.)

It seemed fitting that the last sight the Shire would have ever had of him would be of Bilbo under that tree. Maybe they wouldn't understand the significance.

Maybe it didn't matter if they did.

It seemed right that the tree would stand long after Bilbo left the Shire. It seemed right that the Shire would look at the tree years from then and say, "Look there! That's where Old Bilbo was last seen. On his birthday, no less!"

(It was a joke that Fíli and Kíli, at least, would have laughed themselves silly over long after it ceased to be amusing)

Frodo told him later that Saruman's forces had cut down the tree on their way to the Shire. It was the last stroke of evil out of Mordor that ever reached towards Bilbo.

Bilbo cried. He didn't tell Frodo why. Frodo didn't ask.

(Frodo Nine-Fingers knew.)