Work Text:
"Mister Baggins, what is sprouting in your garden?"
Bilbo had often gotten that question after he came back. "That, good sir, is a tree. I brought the acorn back from my adventure," he'd always say, looking into the distance and sighing deeply.
And now his little nephew, Frodo, loved that tree. He kept climbing on it, sitting in the branches and watching the daily going-ons in Hobbiton.
-/-
It was only the night the storm came, that Bilbo feared as much as he did on his adventure. He had been out, down by the waters, and left Frodo unattended in their home.
Rain thrummed on the ground, making roads muddy and drowning fields. Deafening thunder rolled over the Shire, a storm like this hadn't passed in over three decades.
All eyes looked over the hill. The highest point in Hobbiton. Bilbon ran. His feet splashing on the wet ground. His breath sputtering raindrops everywhere. He was drenched and shivering but he had to get to Frodo before disaster struck.
And strike it did. Right before Bilbo's eyes a lightning raced into the hill. The pale light shone for a second and then everything was overtook by the warm glow of fire. A terrible inferno on the hill.
Tears were gathering in his eyes. His home. His memories. His nephew. Everything he brought home from his adventure. Everything that reminded him of his friends, of Thorin.
When he came to a halt on the street in front of Baggend, he fell to his knees, holding a hand in front of his mouth, sobbing.
-/-
That night he wrote in his book: "And so it came, that I had an oak to shield me and my home from the terrible inferno of the world. And this oaken shield just made me realize how incredibly lonely my little mountain is without my king."