"Drowning in Amber"
by s1ncer1ty

Notes: This is what happens when Pippin takes the reigns to tell a story -- things become a little more surreal and much less straightforward. This starts out with a wallop of angst that does ease up somewhat in future chapters. No slash, unless you'd care to interpret it that way. I won't stop you. Mostly movie-ish, but probably not too far removed from the books.

Musical Inspiration: "In the End" by Linkin Park. After seeing the movie, I thought this song fit perfectly with the hobbits' reactions immediately following Gandalf's fall to darkness.

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Chapter: 1/3

~*~ Quorin : Peregrin : Moria ~*~

"I had to fall to lose it all.
But in the end, it doesn't even matter."
~ Linkin Park

All is crystal. All is amber, melting in a suffocating stream, blurring my vision as it washes over me. All too soon, I find myself ensnared in the flow and held fast within its viscous web. Spiraling, sinking, I feel my entire being fast ensnared in the deluge of thick, biting tears. Are there hands upon my shoulders? It does not matter, for soon I shall be so far from rescue that none can reach me.

Every breath, torn hotly from an uncontrollably shaking chest, is white agony. A shadow crosses overtop my vision, crouches and converges into a tangible, luminous Elven face. I do not deserve to look upon such beauty. "Meriadoc, Peregrin, cast aside your grief. We walk." Although mere centimetres from my face, the muffled voice above barely reaches my ears, so deeply I've sunken.

It takes the greatest of will to force the blinding threads of amber from my eyes with the back of a hand, and I gasp in the desperate breath of one drowning and about to slip beneath the dark waters for the last time -– indeed, all I wish is to be left to sink in peace. The shadows will have none of that. I feel one pair of hands wrap about my shoulders and another intertwine with my fingers to wrench me from the blackness of an overwhelming despair.

"Come on, Pip. We've got to be going." As if in a dream, Merry's face swims before me, doubles in a fresh onslaught of sparkling pain.

"Leave me here," I manage to plead between numbed lips. "Please..."

"Stop it. Just stop it." He is angry now, poking my shoulder with more force than is necessary. "We're leaving, Pippin. Strider's orders."

More determined, I again shove wetness from my sight, breathing hard, painfully. The air in my lungs mixes wetly with amber, and I choke out a torrent of anguish.

As I am bent double, excruciating coughs wracking my chest, Merry's hand slides across my back, and his voice softens. "Easy there, Pip. Easy."

"It hurts. God, but it hurts," I whisper, feeling the residue of amber in my sinuses and tasting it in the back of my throat still.

"I know. But now is not the time to be making yourself sick over it. We must go."

"I can't," I plead in vain. He will not let me go, not even to retreat into a purgatory of my own design.

"You must." Merry grasps the edge of my cloak at the base of my neck and tugs roughly. His harsh voice then softens somewhat at the edges. "Please, Pip... Gandalf would want you to continue."

Sudden, grief-filled anger rises within me at Merry's last statement, and I scrub dirty fingers across my eyes in a harsh motion. "How –- how would you know what he'd have wanted?"

"He'd want us to live--" he begins, but I interrupt him with a sharp cry.

"Fool of a Took! Throw yourself in the well and be no more of a bother to us!" I exclaim in a shrill mockery of some of the last words uttered to me by Gandalf. The eyes of the Fellowship turn to me, settle, and then move on in embarrassed silence.

Merry stares at me, jaw agape, and for a moment I sense that he might well strike me, such anger blazes within his eyes. But he does not raise a hand to strike, but instead to grasp my shoulder in a hard grip and to shove me along the path we must take.

"Walk, foolish hobbit. Walk."

"It's true, Merry," I whisper, taking those first, painful steps from a vast catacomb hive of a tomb, where a once-great wizard lay broken at the bottom of the chasm below Khazad-Dum.

"You know not of what you speak. Walk."

I walk. The miles wear on, and it is not the threat of Orcs that might follow in our wake but of Merry that spurs me ever onward. Though he does not appear so visibly, he is livid, a fact that escapes the attention of all but perhaps Samwise; yet he is himself too concerned with attending to a numbed and shivering Frodo to have a care. Bleakly, vaguely, I wonder if Frodo too feels the unceasing pull of an amber tide at his ankles...

Miles turn to days, days turn to aeons. I walk, but I cannot escape the dim threat of suffocating amber. It follows behind me in a thick ebb, flowing snakelike against my feet as if seeking the perfect opportunity to strike. But when it finally comes, countless kilometres down the rough path from Moria, it is not in an expected tidal wave but in a thick, bitterly cold cascade that washes atop my ankles and rises in a rapid torrent. Like a wretched wasp drowning in the tide of the Brandywine, I am caught uncontrollably in its snare.

"Merry?" I mumble softly, and through blurred eyes I see his back tense visibly.

"Pippin," Merry returns, not bothering to turn and face me. He is angry with me still.

"I think –- I have to stop walking now." The ground sways perilously, the amber flooding over the top of my feet, bringing frigid pain at every step.

"Don't start that again. I won't hear it." His words are strained with irritation, and also with thinly veiled misery.

The amber swirls about my ankles, pulling fast like spidersilk with every step. "Merry, I don't want to drown," I mumble as I sink deeper into the blackening mire.

"Pippin?"

Staggering now, I cannot fight much longer against the rapid riptide of thick amber, building against my stomach and my chest, tugging the neck of my cloak fast against my windpipe until I cannot breathe. With numbed horror, I realize that I may very well drown right before Merry's eyes.

"Pippin! Hey, Pip!"

Merry's arms suddenly catch around my shoulders, struggling to hold me aloft in the sea of amber despair. I clutch desperately at the folds of his vest as my feet wash out from beneath me, and I feel myself beginning to tumble beneath the surface. My breath rattles harshly in my chest as I struggle for air.

"Hold on, Pip. We'll rest. I'll make them rest." Merry's voice rises sharply in pitch, cracking as he shouts for aid. "Strider! Strider!"

Shadows of faces circle above me, like scavenger gulls upon the Brandywine waiting to descend. Their words drift in and out with the pull of tide.

"...fever since we've left Moria..."

"...Mr. Pippin, can you hear..."

"...Orcs so close, we cannot afford..."

"...patrol the outskirts, so that the young hobbit may..."

And at the center of it all, Merry gazes down upon me, his brows knitting together in dire concern, lips trembling as if he may weep. His hands pull easily through my hair, unhindered by the sticky damp of an amber flood.

"Oh, Pippin, why didn't you tell me sooner?" he whispers.

But I cannot answer, as the threads of amber have sealed together my lips, and all I can do is stare up at him and breathe what may well be my last few breaths, even as the world blurs, crystallizes, and finally pulls away beneath a cold blanket of darkness.

...tbc...