DISCLAIMER: I don't own Lord of the Rings, its characters, its concepts or anything associated with it. They are the property of J.R.R. Tolkein, Peter Jackson and probably some other people too. I am using them for my own amusement only. I am not making any money from this. No infringement is intended.
SUMMARY: Eighteen years later, it would finally make sense. In the meantime, Pippin made him tea.
MARCH 14TH-15TH, 1420, SR
Merry falls asleep feeling oddly disconcerted and almost immediately dreams himself flying, whipped through air as if in the talons of a nazgul and heading toward a mountain range as black as ink and sharp as the teeth of a wolf. The stars are fading into black, one by one by one.
He spots the Fellowship standing on the crest of a hill. Gandalf gives him a glare of grim exasperation, absently tracing designs in the dirt with his staff. Boromir, several arrows in his chest, stands beside Legolas and Gimli; all of them watch Merry curiously, their arms folded, their heads tilted at identical angles. Behind them, Aragorn is teaching Frodo, Sam and Pippin how to jump into a campfire.
I warned you, Master Meriadoc, Gandalf says to him, less than a breath of a moment after Merry tries to scream for help. Soon the hillcrest is behind him, but Gandalf's voice reaches him easily.
I told you this would happen. He sounds smug, resigned. You knew. You knew.
Merry blinks, and the black mountains are directly in front of him; less than a second after he realizes it's going to happen, he hurtles face first into a floor made of stone.
He finds himself standing on a battlefield. Grassless, coated with thick gray dust and splintered stones, miles above ground and oddly blue in some places, it looks deserted and smells like death.
Don't move your feet, he tells himself, or is something telling him? Nothing is worse than disturbing the dead.
I'm looking for someone, he realizes, and instantly it is true. He needs to find them now before Middle Earth erupts.
Theoden appears, riding a horse with no head, the hilt of a tarnished sword sticking out of his abdomen. His hair is long and matted and white.
Why did you do that? The dead king leans forward, appraising him. His teeth are black.
I need to find someone, Merry says.
You waited too long, says Theoden as his hair blows away in a stale breeze. No one is here for you to save.
Merry has known this from the beginning but isn't going to let it stop him.
Can you tell me how to move without disturbing the bodies?
I will say no more on the matter. Theoden turns his horse and is instantly gone.
He is suddenly wearing armor. Merry gasps as the helmet grows heavy, oppressive, hot. His fingers tremble and his right hand slips two, three, four times as he tries to wrestle it off and it forcibly clings to his head. Panic rises in his chest, and when the helmet finally releases him, Merry flings it away. It lands in a river of molten lava sneaking across the battlefield. Trails of smoke begin to rise where the magma touches old bones.
No, he cries. I'm trying to help.
Of course it's too late. Already the wooden boat is floating by; Merry remembers sitting in it and feels sick. Carried on the stream of lava, it passes him and Merry sees Boromir's body, laughing and clutching the horn of Gondor. He opens his mouth to apologize but suddenly Boromir is gone and Eowyn, dressed all in black, leaps at him, screeching, and pins him to the ground.
You didn't know what to do, she growls, eyes glowing black, teeth bared inches from his face.
No one would tell me, says Merry. Eowyn's claws dig into the sand, trapping his wrists above his head. The touch of her skin on his is colder than ice.
And who was supposed to help you? She laughs; the sound is piercing and cruel. The trees?
Merry wants to speak and finds he can't. She rolls away and he can't move. The back of his head rests on bones; he knows he's going to get in trouble but can't command his muscles. The sky darkens, the air suddenly frigid.
Bones crunch with the sound of footsteps. He knows who it is but doesn't want to see, needs to see and can't. Merry blinks and is on his feet again, cold and numb and trembling. The figure in front of him, eyes yellow and wide as saucers, bends over, chewing on fingerbones, half-naked, emaciated. Under one arm, he holds the palantir tightly to himself.
Put it down, Pip, Merry says. His voice is dry and high-pitched.
Pippin throws the pieces of chewed-on bone into Merry's face, lets out an earsplitting growl and jumps into the river. He and the palantir disappear into the lava. Gasping, Merry runs to the bank, falls to his knees, starts digging. The magma feels oddly like warm pudding. He can hear the skin on his fingers start to sizzle as his breath grows harsher, drier, higher. When the surface breaks, the shriek that comes from his throat is no different from Eowyn's.
The Witch King bursts from the river and grips Merry's left hand. Merry lets out a Nazgul's scream. The witch king holds his sword above his head before plunging it into Merry's right hand, up his wrist, up his arm, through his elbow, to his shoulder. The blade is cold and piercing and Merry can't tell his voice from that of the wraith in front of him, and
"Shhh, Merry. Merry. Merry, it's all right. Wake up."
He can't breathe. A hand rests on his forehead, while another one, as warm as flame, grips his fingers. Thick blankets weigh him down, warm and damp and suffocating.
"It's all right, Merry. I've got you. You're safe here. Merry. Merry it's me. Wake up."
The voice is gentle, soothing, familiar. Yet wrong somehow. Merry takes a deep breath and feels the muscles in his brow twitching.
"That's it. You're all right. I'm here."
The first hand goes away. Merry tries to open his eyes and can't, tries to shift and can only move one arm. Two hands clutch the other; their touch unnaturally warm.
"Hullo, Merry. It's me. I'm going to put something on your arm, to help you."
That voice shouldn't sound like that, but Merry can't figure out why. The accent is familiar and comforting. He opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is flickering candlelight illuminating curly hair.
A warm, wet cloth brushes his arm. His skin prickles, and he can smell something foreign and vaguely familiar at the same time.
"That's it, Merry." Pippin is smiling, but his eyes are wrong. "Just a nightmare. You're all right. You're back home now."
Candlelight dances in the corners of his bedroom. He takes a deep breath, studying it because he doesn't want to look at Pippin's face.
"Was I shouting?" he whispers. Pippin doesn't answer.
Silence for a few minutes, and that feels wrong too. The warmth of the cloth – the smell of atheas – grounds him and begins to chase away the long-forgotten numbness in his arm.
Later, Merry sits heavily at the kitchen table, and when Pippin passes him a full mug, he grips it with his left hand. He slides it back and forth, watches the foam swirl around the edges. His teeth feel too sharp and something inside him prickles and won't settle.
"Did you know this would happen?" he asks without looking up. He tries to put as much venom into the words as he can, but at the moment forming them is hard enough. Pippin, bustling around like a kitchen maid, banging pots and pans together for who knows what reason, doesn't notice. Fool of a Took.
"Not exactly," Pip replies, shutting one cupboard and opening another. "Aragorn told me it might, on the anniversary, but even he wasn't sure. He told me not to tell you, in case you knowing would make it happen."
Merry grits his teeth. He wants to say something mean. Pippin brings two steaming mugs to the table; Merry hadn't even noticed the fire in the hearth. His right arm feels no heat, but he takes a deep breath and smells mint. His favorite. Pippin has never cared for mint. Gently, Pippin sets the mugs on the table, the green one in front of Merry, the blue one at his own place.
"There," he says with a cheeriness Merry can't comprehend. "Ale and tea. Just in case."
Merry can't look at him. His anger fades like a candle under glass, leaving him empty and brittle. For a moment, the fingers of his left hand shake and he feels that if he moves, he will cave in.
He can hear Pippin slurping his own tea. He wants to apologize for snapping, for waking him up, for everything. Instead, he bows his head and scrunches his eyes shut.
The sound of a mug being set on the table. The scraping of a chair on the floor. A hand on his back, a hand gripping his shoulder. Gritting his teeth, Merry covers his eyes with his left hand, as if to rub away the stinging. Pippin is holding him tightly, and it's exactly what Merry needs and the last thing he wants.
He remembers the day Gandalf fell into the pit, how out in the sunlight Pip had cast himself to the ground and Merry held onto him. By steadying Pippin, he steadied himself and now Pippin is trying to steady him and it's all wrong. Pip is not the serious one. Ever since he rode away on Shadowfax, he's grown older, wiser, something Merry always told him to do but never actually wanted. Somewhere in the midst of this mess, Merry knows this is his fault.
Pippin is whispering to him. Over the sound of his own voice shaking, Merry can't make out the words. A hand is rubbing his back. Merry's right arm hangs dead and useless in his lap.
When he finally opens his eyes, through vision that has been heavily blurred, he can see the dull glow of sunrise out the window.
"March fifteenth," he says, his voice gruff.
"March fifteenth," Pippin echoes.
Merry takes a deep, shaking breath, rubbing his eyes with his mobile hand. "M'sorry Pip."
Pippin almost laughs. "It's all right, Merry. It's not your fault. It could have just as easily have been me."
But it wasn't, Merry both wants and doesn't want to say. Pippin has never woken up screaming, and they both know it. If he's dreamed about the palantir within the last few months, he's said nothing. To chase away the silence, Merry takes a sip of his tea.
He wonders if Eowyn is feeling the same thing. In his mind's eye, he can see her, sitting in the window of a castle somewhere, the White Lady of Ithillen. She is crying, Faramir is holding her, and Merry doesn't know if it's real or his mind or another dream or what. The image is comforting in its own way, and when Merry bows his head a second time, when Pippin hugs his shoulders and holds him close, he lets himself be consoled.
MARCH 14TH-15TH, 1421, SR
Stop it! Merry cries. She's not dead.
His voice comes out a whisper. Pinned between the roots of Old Man Willow, Merry watches Eomer and Treebeard shovel dirt onto Eowyn's body. Bits of gravel crumple and slip to the ground when her chest rises; Merry tries to scream for help but makes no sound. Off to the side, Boromir and Theoden laugh over quarts of ale as the clearing begins to flood and Old Man Willow coils his root tightly around Merry's right arm, like a snake.
Someone is stroking his forehead. He opens his eyes and cannot stop himself from moaning.
The branches of an elderly tree brush his bedroom window, illuminated in the light of the nearly full moon. Merry thinks of Treebeard, wonders how Isenguard looks these days. Avoiding Pippin's gaze, he rubs his right hand in his left, flexing his fingers.
"Not so bad this year," he feels like he should say. "Did my shouting wake you up again?"
Pippin withdraws his hand. There's a small, wry smile on his face that Merry can't explain.
"Aragorn said it wouldn't be," he said. "He said if it happened, that every year would be a little bit better." He shifts his position on the bed to allow Merry to sit up. As Merry covers his eyes with his left hand, Pippin rubs his back. "And," he adds as an afterthought, "You didn't actually wake me up. You haven't been shouting, or talking, not really. Not last year either. I never told you…I stayed awake, just in case."
"You what?" Merry looks at him, stunned. Pippin shrugs.
"I didn't want the shadow to take you," he says, looking guilty and amused as only Pip can. "I wanted to be there if you needed me."
"You didn't have to do that," Merry whispers. Feeling small, feeling foolish.
Pippin's eyes twinkle, but he doesn't say anything, because they are both well aware. "Do you want some tea?" he asks.
"You didn't do it this year…" Merry stammers, "right?" His voice grows desperate, rises in pitch. "You actually went to bed, tonight, right?"
Pippin gives him a sad smile. Merry is crying before he even understands what's happening.
"Oh, Pip," he says, half choking.
MARCH 14TH-15TH, 1422, SR
Sunset finds his right arm growing stiff and tight. Absently, gazing at an indeterminate spot on the sitting room ceiling, Merry shrugs his shoulder and flexes his fingers. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Pippin looking at him, and refuses to return the gaze. The evening finds neither of them at the Green Dragon yet no one acknowledges it, leaving the silence to hang between them until Merry sees fit to break it.
"You're not going to stay up again, are you?" Merry asks. Pippin doesn't answer.
Hours later, after all nine Ring Wraiths surround him atop Carhadras, Merry wakes to Pippin sitting on the edge of his bed, rubbing his right hand. He's grateful, but frustrated, and when he's finally able to get up, Merry makes sure it's he who builds the fire in the hearth while Pippin sits at the kitchen table and watches.
MARCH, 1423, SR
The night between the fourth and the fifth, Merry stays awake, sitting on his bed with his door open, listening to Pippin sleep and marveling at how clearly he can hear his cousin's breath in the other bedroom. He is both relieved and ashamed when the first rays of gray sunlight tell him that the night has passed without incident. He watches Pippin cook mushrooms in the morning, sees no cringe on his face and no shadow under his eyes. For the next ten days, Merry convinces himself that this Shadow is all in his head and he'll be done with that nonsense starting this year. They dance on tables at the Green Dragon, regal the crowds with stories about knighthood and wizards and grand palaces and talking trees. They stumble home, gripping each other and laughing, and Merry collapses into bed with the taste of Old Toby on his tongue.
The night between the fourteenth and fifteenth, Merry dreams that he is the one who stabs the Witch King under his helmet. Shrieking and shriveling, the Witch King transforms into Theoden as soon as the blade strikes. The fallen king of Rohan grips Merry's right arm with two icy hands as, in the distance, Frodo and Gandalf sail over the edge of a cliff, waving.
Merry sits up in bed, gripping his hair with his left hand. He grits his teeth as Pippin pats his shoulder, but this year he refuses to let tears fall.
MARCH 14TH-15TH, 1424, SR
This time, neither of them go to sleep. Instead they sit side by side on the grass of an open field, watch the moon rise and share a barrel of Longbottom Leaf. Every so often, Merry shakes his arm, unwilling to let it grow numb even in the cold night air. After a long silence, he works up the will to ask, "Do you ever dream about the palantir?"
Pippin lowers his pipe, surprised. "All the time. Why?"
"No reason," Merry replies, but as he takes his next whiff, he feels lighter, somehow, than before.
MARCH 14TH-15TH, 1425, SR
Relishing the unseasonable warmth, Merry closes his eyes and feels the shadow drain from him like the smoke from his pipe. Pippin exhales a near perfect circle and they watch it dissolve. Beyond the trees, laughter and singing pierce the stillness, but Merry doesn't mind. They'll visit the Green Dragon tomorrow night. And the night after. And so on.
"You'll still want to do this next year, right?" Pippin asks. Merry nods, surprised. Somewhere cicadas begin their chorus and Merry finds himself wondering if there are many elves left in Middle Earth, what Legolas and Gimli are up to these days.
"What about after I'm Thain," Pippin continues, his mouth pressed, his eyebrows wrinkled, "and you're Master of Buckland? Can we still do it then?"
"Of course," says Merry, leaning forward to peer more closely into his Pippin's suddenly despondent expression. "I wouldn't miss this night for all of Middle Earth. You know that, right?"
Yet something in Pippin's eye says he is not so sure. "I know," he whispers. A moment's pause. "Diamond understands," he continues, as if reassuring himself, "she said it made perfect sense."
"You told her?" says Merry,.
"Not about you," says Pippin quickly. "I would never tell anyone that without your permission. I told her on the eve of the anniversary of a great battle, we stay out and remember everyone who died." His eyes are distant, faded, and Merry's mouth opens with the realization that for Pippin, this is exactly what these nights have become.
"Estella will be fine with it," says Merry gently. "I'll speak to her, just in case, but I know she will."
What he doesn't say is that Estella will understand precisely because she knows that she cannot understand. She's always been like that, seeing things in people that they fail to see in themselves. It's a perceptive ability on which Merry has always prided himself, yet this time she has clearly bested him. He takes another puff of his pipe, stunned that he didn't notice it sooner, that the Black Breath has blinded him to the most important aspect of the night between March the fourteenth and fifteenth: that Pippin has always needed the comfort and company as much as Merry has.
"Fool of a Took," Merry says. "We can keep doing this every year until we're too old and gray to remember why. And then we'll just do it to celebrate Old Toby."
Long, still silences are customary for these nights, but as Pippin's gaze fails to lighten, Merry wraps his right arm around his cousin's shoulders, and forehead to forehead they watch the moon sink below the trees.
MARCH 14TH, 1438, SR
"Winnie!" Estella cries to the young girl rolling in the grass. "You're covering your dress in mud." Winnie looks up but does not stand.
"So?"
Pippin throws his head back and laughs.
"Like father, like daughter," he says, looking at Merry. Merry, a wry but secretly proud smile on his face, simply shakes his head.
Winnie keeps rolling. Near her feet, two identical hobbit lasses toddle in circles around each other.
Two young screams pierce the relative quiet of dusk, just before two hobbit lads emerge from the forest at a run. Pippin and Merry stiffen automatically as their sons slip into view, panting, trembling eyes wide.
"What is it?" says Pippin, readying to stand.
Faramir Took looks at his father with his hands in the air. "We heard it," he says, panting, pointing wildly behind him "in there."
Merry's heart skips a beat. Absently, he rubs his right forearm to keep it warm. "What is it?" He looks at his own son, "What did you hear?"
"We were standing under a tree…" Boromir begins.
"On the road," says Faramir, "like you told us…"
"…and we heard it…"
"…the biggest…"
"Owl!" they shout together. Merry and Pippin exhale. Diamond smothers laughter behind her hand. Fawn and Fiona Took reply by holding their hands in the air and shrieking. Fiona then runs to her father, leaving Fawn behind to suck on two fingers.
"An owl!" cries Winnie, scrambling to her feet, "I wanna see, I wanna see!"
"Well, hush then," says Estella, "and maybe we'll hear it call."
What follows is the longest silence ever witnessed in the presence of Brandybuck and Took children. The adults raise their eyebrows at each other. Diamond takes another sip of her ale. Little Theo sits in Estella's lap, eating his mushed carrot, oblivious.
Out of the darkness, they hear a single, distant hoot. Most of the children shriek and dive behind their parents for comfort. Diamond laughs heartily as Pippin tickles Faramir and a wrestling match threatens to disturb the contents of the picnic. Fawn watches, Fiona screams, Merry and Boromir make certain to move the basket of chicken out of the way. Theo spreads orange goo across his cheeks and forehead and blows a raspberry, gurgling in delight as bits of carrot fly everywhere.
"Boys are crazy," says Winnie, rising.
"Eowyn Brandybuck," says Estella, grasping the hem of her skirt. "You have finished rolling about in the muck. Now sit down while you still have all your clothes in one piece."
Winnie sits next to her father, arms folded, scowling. Merry pats the top of her head and puts his arm around her.
Not long into the night, after the twins have fallen asleep on the blanket, Estella gives Diamond a significant look, which she returns, unnoticed by Pippin but not by Merry. The two hobbit women rise, collecting what little remains of the food and ordering the elder children to help carry baskets.
"Are you sure you don't need our help?" Merry asks.
"Two of you and six of them?" Pippin says quietly to Diamond.
"Oh, we're fine," says Estella.
Diamond agrees. "After all," she points out as Boromir and Faramir stumble away with the majority of the empty baskets, "we're used to having two of us and eight of you. This will be a nice break, really."
Pippin and Merry exchange looks, unsure whether to laugh or be offended. In the end they choose both.
"Say goodnight to daddy," Estella says to the baby in her arms. The namesake of the late King of Rohan mashes bits of carrot into Merry's hair.
"Why aren't they coming with us?" Winnie demands. "I wanna stay out too."
"Daddy and Uncle Pippin stay out because this is a very important night for them," says Estella sharply. "It was very nice of them to share the first part of it with us. Now say good night and we'll go. Otherwise we won't do this next year."
Winnie pouts, but picks up a basket, kisses her father on the cheek and reluctantly follows her mother home. Merry has a vision of her staring down the riders of Rohan, refusing to be left out of a battle. For the first time, he understands the real reason King Theoden had told them both no.
Fawn slumbers peacefully in the crook of her mother's arm, but Fiona has woken up, and she buries her face in Pippin's shirt as he kisses her goodnight. They can see her eyes over Diamond's shoulder, watching them.
"Da no go?" they hear her chirp. "Da no go?"
"Da go later," they hear Diamond say, just before she too disappears into the darkness around the field and they are once again left alone with the stars and cicadas.
Merry opens the only remaining basket and takes out two pipes and several pouches of Longbottom Leaf.
END