There, Not Back Again by eris_of_imladris

Chapter 5

“I think I’m pregnant,” Primula said only a few months after the midsummer wedding where it seemed like their whole house was filled with flowers. “I think that’s what this means, at least,” she pointed down. She was finally eating like a proper hobbit lass, if the empty plates were any indication.

“What did you eat? All the beans – and what are these?” He picked up a handful of greens before biting into one. “They’re so bitter!”

“I wanted them,” Primula said, and it was really that she needed them, just like she needed Drogo’s arms around her, spinning her around, and the big smile on his face that made her feel like she had done everything right just like she was supposed to.

She had the growing belly too, which made her look like the other hobbit lasses her age, not just in the pregnancy but in that she was actually eating more, remembering her mealtimes and spending more time with Drogo, and everything seemed to make sense to everyone except for the dandelion greens that she always seemed to have with her – but weird cravings were part of pregnancy, and for once, something strange she did was normal.

The first pains came in the morning of September 22^nd, Bilbo’s birthday of all things, and came as a series of tightenings in her back that made it impossible to stand, that made Drogo run down the road from their little house near Brandy Hall to summon her family and the midwife. Thankfully the midwife was actually there – the baby was early, of course, and then her house turned into a flurry of activity as she concentrated only on herself and the baby inside of her.

Asphodel wasn’t there – she was at the wedding, of course, because Primula couldn’t make drama like that – but in her time she only wanted those she trusted, and that meant her old mother and her sister Amaranth, a Took for many years, and her eldest daughter Poppy, and the midwife who informed Primula that her pains being in the back made the labor worse and also uncommon, and she could have laughed if not for the way she could hardly even draw a breath.

In the end she had Amaranth on one side and her mother on the other, and the baby came after what felt like an eternity but was apparently only one very long day, and then he was on her chest and crying so loud, looking just like her father, and she wept for old Broadbelt’s death five years before until she saw that he had some of Drogo’s features too, like his bright blue eyes, and by the time she welcomed him, that was the story she told.

He was called Frodo, mimicking the pattern of his father’s name, and the memory of the long labor made her all the more determined to raise him, especially when the years went by and no more babies came along. Amaranth had six, and Asphodel seven, but Primula had just the one, cherished boy to inherit not Brandy Hall or anything fancy like that, but her stories, her imagination and her dreams.

It was a mixture of pride and defensiveness when she noticed he did strange things, like always having his nose in a book from the moment he could read, or playing pranks on the farmers, or not wanting to pet dogs, or snacking on dandelion greens in a clear sign of her weirdness both during and before her pregnancy affecting him.

She tried so hard, she really did, to make him normal as he grew, to teach him what he would need to know about being a proper Baggins, but at the same time she loved showing him how to dance like an elf would, or telling him story after story about the trees at Brandy Hall that she named all those years ago, even though they weren’t alive.

It was fine for the first few years, but then he got older. He was twelve now, a nice age where he still listened to her but was starting to go off on his own adventures, alarming many people with the ease at which he ran off like a little boy still.

Some said it was what happened to a child without siblings – without responsibility, how were they supposed to learn? Others whispered behind their hands that it was the Baggins thing coming out in him, the same strangeness that Bilbo had, which made Primula smile. And then there was the mother, of course, Broadbelt’s young and odd daughter who seemed to still be odd even within the context of marriage, feeding the boy dandelion greens and tainting his mind with tales of adventures, letting him see Bilbo and come to know his family’s black sheep as a friend.

In the end, it all boiled down to what Primula knew all along: the boy was hers. Her strength and will, to be sure, as he shrugged off any complaints without second thought, but also her strangeness. She had tainted her boy, and there was nothing she could do about it.

“I had sons once,” the elf murmured when Primula finished speaking, carefully picking apart some of the soggy dandelion greens.

“You had sons? Where are they now?” Primula asked before internally berating herself for being too nosy.

“One died many years ago,” he said in far too even a tone, and Primula’s breath caught in her throat. “The other lives in the vale of Imladris – Rivendell, as you probably know it.”

“Bilbo told me of Rivendell,” Primula said quietly, not knowing how to even begin to speak of the dead son. Even just thinking of it filled her heart with dread. “He said the elves there were kind.”

“Not to me,” Maglor said quickly, then sighed. “I know what you are thinking, but I cannot go to Imladris. I had to let my sons go for their own good.”

“For their own good?” Primula said, astonished that such a thing even existed. How could it be for their own good if they were away from their father, from the one who loved them and took care of them? She thought suddenly of Frodo back at home, hopefully waiting inside, but probably looking out the window to see when his parents would be back. His father had left him now, but not by his own choice.

And now she would be coming back… a scary idea burst into her mind that frightened her to even think of it, but for whatever reason it was there and it stayed, making her crumple the greens in her palm.

It wasn’t a given that she had to go back.

It was an assumption she had made, true. The Shire was her only home, and that little swath of land between Brandy Hall and Bag End was all she ever knew – and wanted to escape from. And now she was out in the wilds, out with a real elf, and after all that had happened she knew that this would be more than enough of an adventure for her.

But then she thought of Drogo slipping under the water. She had seen him disappear, even if she hadn’t said anything, and she had tried to pull him back, but it was her fault, it was all her fault… how was she supposed to go back and face her family like this? How was she supposed to face her son after she had killed his father, even though it was an accident?

No one would believe her. No one did now. And no one would look at her son the same way. He wouldn’t even have the ground he had now, which Drogo had reminded her all too painfully was not enough.

“How did you know?” she asked. “How did you know it was right to give up your children rather than stay with them?”

The elf was quiet for several long moments and Primula wondered if she’d gone too far.

“When they were better off without me than with me,” he eventually said, that simple thought making Primula shudder as she thought of what Drogo had said to her, why he was dead, the truth she had not been strong enough to tackle….