Behind a pale grey curtain of mist, an early sun hovered on the horizon, still only a promise and not quite real yet. Dew clung to grass and spiderweb, and aside from the reedy piping of a few birds, everything hung still. A few short months ago, the year had turned quietly, almost unnoticed, into fourteen hundred and ninety one, or seventy of the Fourth Age, as the men said.
Spring was returning to Gondor, and to Minas Tirith.
Pippin stirred the fire a few times, tutting at it, then, replacing the poker, paused for a moment before spreading his fingers in front of the bright welcome flames. He had always been told, usually through loud complaints, that he had cold hands, but he had begun to feel it himself. He cracked his knuckles once or twice, waiting impatiently for the warmth to return and the stiffness to ease in his bones, a slight grating that he had always felt more keenly in cold weather, as if, even after his old injuries had long healed, he had been left out of joint here and there, like a wheel that didn't quite fit on its axle. He often found himself impatient of late, frustrated when he was simply could not muster up the strength to take his feet everywhere that they wanted to go, and as if he were forever trying to answer a voice inside his head saying, hurry, hurry, hurry. Pippin had run his office as Thain entirely unaided for fifty years, and there had always been matters to attend to, or people to see, and at times he thought that that was it; that he was still too much of a Took and too full of wanting to see and do, and not suited to a life of nothing but pondering and pipeweed. And then just as quickly as he had made the decision, it would get away from him and he would lose it overnight, waking up with the feeling of having left something behind that he could never remember properly.
In the wide, comfortable bed carved as intricately as if it might have once been meant for a prince to take his rest, but that had had, in its most recent years, height cut willingly from each leg to make it suitable for the periain, Merry was dozing. He had woken in the small hours, as he was apt to do, and Pippin had made a little sweet chamomile tea for them both, steadying Merry's hand on the cup and letting him enjoy the golden scent of apples and honey for a while before slowly sipping. "When do you suppose it was that we got old enough to drink tea, Merry, instead of a good Shire ale?" he said, and the corners of Merry's mouth had tugged upwards, cracking a thousand fine lines around his eyes and mouth that only made him handsomer for the moments that had etched each of them. He had almost drifted off again before the tea was finished. He spent most of the time these days asleep or nearly so.
Satisfied with the blaze for now, Pippin padded back across the floor to where the low chair stood at the side of the bed. The same persistent voice that whispered inside refused to allow him to lay down and rest for more than a few hours at a time, but still he felt, more sharply and keenly than he remembered in the past, as if he didn't like to let Merry get too far away, and so on days when Merry could not come to spend time with him by the fire, he returned to the chair every so often. Sometimes Pippin brought paper and inkpot, and they would go over the map of Gondor that the writing-desk was littered with Merry's notes and sketches for, and sometimes he would read aloud from one of the books they had hoarded from the Minas Tirith's great library, Merry occasionally interrupting to correct his pronunciation of some Elvish or Rohirric word or another, but never without fondness.
As he sat, he reached for Merry's hand, and wound its fingers with his own. It was his cousin's weak one, where those who cared enough to notice could see the odd fleeting tremor, and it always looked a little whiter and more contracted. But in the early yet honest light, Pippin saw how paper-like the skin was, a transparent quality to it that caused a fresh, surprised hurt until he remembered that his own didn't look so very different, and that the coppery auburn had long since drained out of his curls and left them as snow-white as Merry's now were against the pillow. Time was passing. He leaned over the bed.
"Lazy Meriadoc," he said. "I love you."
Merry stirred. His eyes partly opened, and then seemed to focus, and he smiled. The squeeze of Pippin's hand was answered. "Hullo. What's the news from the King, then?"
"You know perfectly well I've been with you and not trotting about visiting." With his free hand, Pippin rearranged the comforter, patting it over Merry's chest, and it suddenly brought a vivid memory welling up not only of settling Farry like this, but of Merry and himself when Pippin was a tiny lad; Merry's big, strong hands pressing all the dangers and the troubles of the world out from around him. A lot of peculiar old things that he hadn't thought about in what seemed like far too long had been prodding at him lately. It was almost like he were coming around full circle, like a ring dance at Lithe, all the way back to where he had first started. "Get up for a while today?" he asked.
"Tired, Pip."
"I know. But it would make me very happy."
Merry's heavy brows creased, considering this. "I'd like to talk to you for a while." His smile returned, in the same slow way that he formed his words, as if he were remembering something from within a dream. "Or listen. You could always talk the hind leg off a pony. With or without a bellyful of beer."
"Then I shall stay here." If he let his eyes fall nearly shut, so that his hand in Merry's was all he could see, and the throb of Merry's heart was all he could feel, he could almost imagine that they were curled up in bed together at the Smials, or at Brandy Hall, that perhaps the pop and crackle in the hearth was the sound of bacon and bread frying, and that at any moment Merry might turn to him with his grey eyes still laughing and say, what about a bit of breakfast, Pip? That they had just made love. With the utmost care, he rested their joined hands on the coverlets.
"Is there much pain?" he asked.
One day last October, a blessedly mild October of swollen, mellow suns lingering long in the sky, they had been walking in the herb garden at the Houses of Healing, when Merry, who was growing less sure-footed, had stumbled. Despite Pippin's arm in his, he had fallen - not as heavily as he might, but enough to break bones that would have, and had, shrugged off the mishap and far worse in his youth. The fractures had been set by the healers as well as anyone could have asked for, but he had suffered a great deal throughout the winter, and it seemed to Pippin, watching, that all of Merry's years, that had been hiding somewhere around a corner, had finally tracked and caught up with him in a great rush. In another week, he would be a hundred and nine.
"None at all. Fire's warm. 's nice."
"I don't believe you, I listened to you crying after we went to bed and mumbling all night."
The lines on Merry's forehead shifted into puzzlement. "You're hearing things." Just barely, his hand flexed, and Pippin felt a gentle pressure against his thumb. "Talk to me, Pip."
Pippin began to speak. He talked about the coming spring and finding the first early primroses in a little garden, and the tilling of the fields in the Shire, and Teddy and Farry hunting for birds' nests when they were lads. He talked about Gwaindir, Bergil's small grandson. He talked about sitting up telling and embellishing war stories with Aragorn (oh, never King Elessar on those long nights) until they swore they could hear the Nazgul screaming again in the blackness outside, and about Meriadoc the Magnificent, and how Merry and the Lady Eowyn killed the Witch-king and he himself an enormous troll, and lived to tell about it. He talked about Frodo, and the elves, and the undying lands, and Bilbo's dragon hidden away under the Lonely Mountain with his treasure. And with those old tales, he drifted, into a time when they were only tales and nothing more, until he might have been talking or might have been singing a song he had forgotten for many years, and they were no longer in this room or this house. They were boating on the Brandywine in August. They were walking back ten miles from Bywater to the Smials after the new pony they were fetching for Paladin ran away while they were picking bilberries. They were down in the meadows below Buck Hill helping with the hay, and kissing in the clover before supper on a Friday evening.
Pippin didn't remember his head drooping, but it must have at some point in time, because he felt fingers, faint but insistent, tugging at his curls. He looked up into Merry's eyes, and saw ghosts there. And he suddenly realized what it was that Merry knew, and had accepted as a gift, and he had not been able to yet: that there was a door standing ajar, just a little distance away, and it was open far enough that he could see through it.
"'m sorry, Pip."
"Why would you be sorry? I love you too much for you to be sorry for anything."
"Missed you, sometimes." Merry's fingers worked aimlessly in Pippin's hair.
"I've never been away, Merry."
"Yes, you have. And so have I. Too much." The hand still moved gently, rhythmically; the motion of a lullaby. "Always something to do, wasn't there? I'd mean for us to have you over next week, or go to the Smials, but it would turn into a month before I knew it... and every once in a while, we got lost to each other."
"Merry..."
"I'm rambling, aren't I?" There was a tiny vibration, and Pippin realized that Merry had laughed, no more now than a flutter of breath in his chest. "I'm boring nowadays. Boring and very old. I think I should probably have a sleep now, but... Do you remember how, when you were little, you always made me leave a candle burning at night because you were afraid that you might not be able to find me in the dark?"
"Yes," Pippin said. His voice sounded so quiet to his own ears that he wondered if Merry had heard his reply, then wondered if he had really been waiting for one. It didn't seem to be very important. All that was important was the feel of Merry's hand in his.
"Now I'm the one who's afraid."
Pippin found himself leaning into Merry's caress, permitting himself for a sweet, fleeting moment to be, for the last time, a child in his arms. Whatever they had done and wherever they had travelled, there had been Merry: Merry to wipe his nose and wash his scraped hands when he fell, Merry to put on shadow plays for when he was in bed with the measles, Merry to swab his mouth and put cold cloths on his head after they carried him back from Cormallen, Merry to hold onto when his cousin stood numb with bewilderment as he and Estella laid tiny Eowyn-lass under the flowers. Merry-and-Pippin had, simply, always been. From somewhere across the Anduin, the sharp, fierce call of a wren cut through the mist, echoed shortly afterwards by a cascade of notes from a thrush, and he had a sudden, unshakeable feeling of endurance and continuity.
I will not say: do not weep, for not all tears are an evil. Gandalf had spoken those words, Pippin thought, just a short lifetime ago. His tears were long overdue now. He kissed Merry's cheek.
"Can you hear the river?" he asked, softly.
Merry paused, blinking drowsily, and after a long moment, he smiled, and nodded.
"So hold me very tightly."
Pippin slipped his arm around Merry's shoulders, and Merry's came up to pull him to his chest. He imagined he could feel the Anduin rushing away, carrying them out to sea. If he lay still, he could feel the thump of Merry's heart, like the slow ebb and flow of a tide.
"I searched for you once before," he said. "When you were lying on the battlefield, and nobody could see one hobbit in a thousand men and orcs, I searched for you. And I found you, Merry. And I shall search for you and find you again. Don't you know that I would always find you, no matter where you were or how far away?"
"I think it might be a grand journey, Pip. Even further and stranger than anywhere we've been."
"I don't mind."
Merry's arm tightened around him, almost imperceptibly. "Then don't keep me waiting too long."
Pippin kissed him again. He laid his head on Merry's shoulder, and outside, the light grew and the mist slowly faded, giving way to a bright, fresh wind and a clear sky.
In his chamber, Aragorn stood before the window from where his ancestors had looked down over the city, fingertips resting lightly on the wide sill, lost in thought. He had dreamed strangely in the last hour before dawn, and woken with an indefinable sense of loss, and now, with his Numenorean blood that still carried the magic of Elros half-elven and of Luthien, it came to him: the image of a small candle, that glowed as brightly as Earendil in the west, and then faded out. A quiet sigh left Aragorn's lips.
"Speed your way, Master Brandybuck," he murmured. "There are no others more worthy than you and your kin to be laid alongside kings."
He felt Arwen's touch on his arm, like a little breath, and he turned to her. "I should go to Pippin."
Her eyes met his, the undying blue of summer seas, and he knew, as he always did, that she had been his heart's companion on many journeys, in many lifetimes. "He is crying. Give him peace for a little while, and later it will be time for friends to comfort each other. For this is our loss too."
She lifted her hand, and her fingers slowly brushed his hair, where what had once been dark was now deeply shot through with silver.
"He was quite old," Aragorn said. "We are all growing old. All that remains of the Fellowship."
Arwen bowed her head.