Minas Tirith, February of 1437
In February the weather suddenly changed and warmer winds began to blow. The little snow that had fallen melted in an afternoon and within two weeks it got warm enough to spend a lot of time outdoors. People started going outside as much as they could, all inhabitants of the citadel save for Merry began taking long walks through the gardens of the Houses of Healing. The result was that almost everyone came down with a cold and Merry was permitted to help the medics hand out herbs and give advice to those who were suffering from headaches, sore throats and running noses. He was not allowed to help nurse those who were placed in beds at the Houses but at least he felt he was doing some use. In the end he ended up being one of few who didn't come down with anything, neither he nor Pippin fell ill during the first weeks of February.
One day Aragorn found Merry perched up on a windowsill, looking out at the city through a window which needed to be cleaned. He had a look on his face which made Aragorn stop and come over to see what was wrong.
"I realised that six months have passed" Merry told him. "Six months since I came here. Half a year. And do you know how far I have gotten since then?"
"How far have you gotten?"
"Nowhere. Not as much as a step. I'm still standing on the exact same spot I stood six months ago. I haven't remembered anything, not one single thing. And it's been six months! The idea of it depresses me…"
"Six months is not all that much time" Aragorn tried to comfort him. "Think of how many months you were gone!"
"135" Merry said. "135 months. Months I will never be getting back. Though who really cares about 135 short months when you consider the fact that there are 516 months, give or take, that I don't remember either prior to going missing, and I will never get those months back either. I am somewhere around 655 months old and I remember 6 of them. That's enough to make anybody depressed."
"If you ask Pippin that much math will make anybody depressed" Aragorn tried to joke. "Perhaps you've given this a little too much thought?"
"My whole life is lost to me and I can't get it back. What was my first memory, before I lost all of them? What was my mother like? What kind of childhood did I have, what was my favourite toy and my favourite song? Who was my first friend and who was my first crush? What scar that I carry hurt the most to get? What was my most embarrassing moment and what was my proudest? What was my fondest memory? I don't know! That's the answer to everything: I don't know."
"Somehow you will remember again" Aragorn said. "But the harder you try the harder it gets. Some things work like that, you have to just let them go and they will come to you naturally. You know how you can make yourself slaughter a pig even though you really don't want to, but you can't make yourself go to sleep just by wanting it? Other things in life work that way too. You can't force love for instance; you have to let it come to you."
"You can't force friendships either" Merry said. "It's really very odd… Pippin wanted to be my friend so desperately when I first returned, and I didn't want to be his friend. Now…"
"Now that you don't have to be his friend and you've stopped troubling your mind about it the friendship has begun to awaken in you" Aragorn finished the sentence. "Is that so Merry?"
"I guess it is" Merry said.
"Then there's your first trace of a memory back."
Merry looked unsure. He wasn't quite sure what he wanted as far as Pippin was concerned. Even if he did know he wouldn't have a clue how to get it.
"Talk to Pippin" Aragorn suggested. "You need to sort things out with him before you can begin to think of anything else."
Merry nodded. He knew Aragorn was right. He had to speak with Pippin.
XX
XX
With an uncomfortable feeling in his gut and great insecurity Merry walked into the gardens in search for Pippin. He had been told he could find Master Peregrin there, and though Merry preferred to stay away from the gardens he knew he had to find Pippin before he lost all the courage he had mustered up.
After quickly searching through the gardens for ten minutes he found him, sitting on the grass on a little hill, looking out over the gardens below. It was an odd place, one of the highest spots in the garden but shielded from view by a number of large trees growing below it. One could observe what went on below with little trouble, but no one could see you when you were sitting there. The perfect place to hide, it seemed.
"You will catch that cold if you sit on the ground like that" Merry blurted out.
Pippin slowly turned his head to look at him and then turned it back to whatever he had been looking at before.
"Can I have a word with you?"
"Go ahead and talk."
"Could we perhaps go someplace else? The gardens are unsettling to me."
Pippin turned and gave him another look, this one clearly telling him that if Merry wanted to go someplace else he could, but Pippin was staying put. Merry slowly walked over and unclasped his cape to sit on it. The grass was wet and his cape would no doubt be full of grass stains but he didn't worry about that at the moment.
"What do you want?" Pippin asked.
"I need you to help me" Merry said.
"Can we do it some other time?" Pippin asked, not taking his eyes from whatever he was looking at.
"I'd rather do it now" Merry said and tried to follow Pippin's gaze. He appeared to be looking at thin air.
"Aragorn might be able to help you, go ask him."
"I can't. It has to be you."
"Does it now?"
"I need your help because you are the strongest link to my past and without you I cannot remember. You don't have to do anything to actively help, but I need you to at least not stand in my way."
"How am I standing in your way?"
Merry was getting frustrated. This was not at all going as he had hoped. Pippin still had his eyes fixed on the random spot in the sky and his voice was calm and steady as if he was speaking from a dream. He seemed to be in a world of his own and Merry couldn't shake him from it.
"I don't know exactly. I just know that you are. We used to be friends once and it feels like you've turned your back on that, and it disturbs me because I don't know why. Until I do I cannot remember anything because I'm too wrapped up in what secrets you might be hiding from me."
"My secrets are my own and they are no concern of yours."
"Pippin please!"
Pippin broke his gaze for a moment and looked at Merry. Then he returned his eyes to wherever they had been before.
"I'm not sure you are ready for me to try and make you understand."
"I won't be anymore ready further down the line."
"Very well then, if you say so. Yes we were friends before; yes I'm turning away from that now. You want to know why? Because it hurts. It has been hurting for nearly twelve years and it's enough, I can't hurt anymore. I thought it would stop when you came back to me but it didn't. It changed. And it still hurts, very badly. So I turn away from you, because there is nothing you can do to make it stop hurting and talking to you about it won't do any good because you are not ready to understand."
"You can't wait until I've remembered, for I can't remember without it."
"That's the paradox. You see, when you remember again the whole thing will be moot. More or less. Things will have changed forever but I won't have to talk to you about it. You'll know on your own."
"Help me then, Pippin. Make me understand. Maybe if you'd open up to me and tell me everything I will start to remember again. Maybe what's keeping me from remembering is that I don't know what's bothering you, and when I do everything will come back to me in a flash!"
"You don't believe that anymore than I do."
"As a matter of fact I do. I want to remember, I want to remember badly, and without you I can't."
"I wonder who you will be when you remember" Pippin said. "If you will be who you are now or if you will be whoever you were before."
"I suppose I'll be a little of both. Back to my old self again but marked by the events of the past years. None of you are who you were when I disappeared, are you?"
"No, but it's different when it comes to you. It makes so much harder to face you, and it's another reason why I shy away. Little things you used to do… patterns, behaviours… things you used to say… they are no longer part of who you are. Does that mean you are a different Hobbit than the one who disappeared, or are you the same?"
"I don't know anything about that. All I know is that I can't seem to please you or do the right thing as far as you're concerned. Whatever I say it seems to be the wrong thing, you criticise everything either by words or by looking at me like I'm out of my mind. It's in everything you do. The way you look at me, or sometimes refuse to look at me. The way you speak to me, or refuse to speak to me. The brisk way in which you wake me up in the mornings, the coldness which I can feel coming from you. Every now and then I get a glimpse of what I hope is the real you, a warm and caring Hobbit who smiles at me and lets me in to his world. But those glimpses last only a moment at a time and then you're at my throat again. I can feel how you wish I wasn't there at all; do you think that by treating me this way I will disappear again?"
"I don't want you gone. Believe it or not I am very glad that you are alive. It's a miracle I never even dreamed of or hoped for. I am happy for your sake but that does not mean being happy for my own. I want you to be alive and you are. But you're not my friend Merry and that hurts more than you will ever know. I want you to live but I don't want to have to live beside you. That's why I look at you that way, talk to you that way and stay away from you. I can't handle being near you."
"What have I done to make you feel this way?"
"I used to mean the world to you and now I'm nothing but a roadblock. Can you sink any lower than that? And all in about five seconds, for that's how long it took for me to realise that you no longer knew me. And I was once so important to you…" He finally turned and looked at Merry. "You once looked at me and said… What if I never knew you? You said it with a lump in your throat and true fear in your voice. If I never knew you… I would never have been me. Always empty as a vase and without ever having the chance of knowing why. I have been thinking about those words of yours a lot lately. Now the unthinkable has once again happened. Now you've never known me. It used to be your greatest fear and now it doesn't concern you at all. And it's not just me, Merry. Everybody that you loved… You would never have wanted to live without them. Now you're not even giving them a chance."
"That is not true."
"I see you snarl at them and how you sigh at them at times" Pippin said, returning his gaze to the sky. "You're not doing it out of spite or cruelty I know that, but the real reason why is almost worse. You're doing it because you don't know them and you don't care to know them."
"All I want is to know them."
"No you want to remember so that we will all lay off your back."
"I want to have at least a chance to be who I used to be. Why are you so angry with me Pippin, is it because I haven't shown enough remorse that I don't know you? If I don't remember you then how am I supposed to miss you, I cannot miss what I don't know! That's impossible!"
"There's something else… Something else you said to me. Something I never forgot and now it's come back to haunt me."
"Then tell me what it is."
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I know this chapter ends a bit abruptly... I'll have the next chapter up within a few days, I promise!