Tuckburough, June of 1437

That evening Pippin retreated to his bedroom early, glad to be back in his own room with his own bed and everything surrounding him belonging to him. He was there with Diamond, she was sitting up in bed waiting for him to get ready, he did not have to sleep alone in a slightly large bed in a stone room with Merry only meters away. The room was dug underground, it smelled faintly of earth and roots and the smell was the same that had filled his nose nearly every night of his life when he had gone to bed. The lights flickered comfortingly, casting shadows on the brown walls which gave the room a homey feel. The lights in the chambers at Minas Tirith had cast dark shadows on stone walls, unfriendly and unwelcoming. It was good to be home.

He stood by his dresser and slowly unbuttoned his shirt, being in no hurry to let this first evening back home end. If he looked up into the mirror he would see Diamond, sitting half under the covers with her arms resting around her legs and her chin on her right knee. He would see her there, his wife, with her white nightgown on and her long curly hair hanging loose down her shoulders and falling over her knees. The look in her eyes would be loving and welcoming, so far from the eyes that had looked at him in the chambers in Minas Tirith. When he got into bed Diamond would get close to him and he would hold her in his arms and feel the smell of her hair and her steady breaths as she fell asleep.

"It's funny…" he said to her, slowly unbuttoning his left sleeve.

"What is?" she asked after a moment when he had not continued his line of thought.

"All these years… I had this belief in my head which was utter nonsense really, I knew that, but I couldn't help believing it anyway. Now I could laugh at myself for ever having thought it but it was quite real to me then, no matter how corny… Now I know better."

"What belief is that?"

He took another deep breath of home air and put aside his cufflinks on the dresser. He had told her earlier in the evening about why he had been delayed in Minas Tirith. He had told her everything, what had happened, how he had felt and how things had evolved. She had said very little but he knew she had understood him.

"You came into my life at just the right time…" he said and looked up to meet her eyes in the mirror. "Just as I was falling apart… When I could not cope with the grief any longer, when I could no longer stand being just one where there had always been two for as long as I had lived. One day you were just there, here to work as a maid at the Great Smials, and you were so charming and so full of life. You knew nothing of my sorrows and you treated me as if I was not carrying any grief or being the one who was left behind. You taught me how to laugh and feel like I had a right to do so, you taught me how to embrace life again and you taught me how to love. I needed you then, almost as much as I need you now."

"It was indeed a fortunate coincidence."

"I believed with all my heart that it was more than that. I believed that Merry had sent you to me to ease my pain and show me how to love. Wherever he was I was sure he could see me and he found you and knew you would be perfect for me. So he sent you my way to help me get through the pain. Silly, isn't it? Now that Merry has turned out to be alive through all these years I fully realise just how silly it was. You were not sent by him, it was just all dumb luck. Doesn't sound quite as poetic, but that's the truth of it."

Diamond was silent for a moment, not really knowing what to say. Pippin pulled his old pyjamas over his head and got into bed next to her, tired but too preoccupied to be able to go to sleep.

"I'm sorry it had to be this way" Diamond said and gently put her hand on his shoulder. "Though I never saw the two of you together I know how much he meant to you."

"It makes me scared, you know? I know that we are all going to die someday, but I used to believe there were things that could be counted upon until you drew that last breath. Now I'm not so sure anymore. Merry didn't choose this, it just happened, but things are the way they are. I never thought we would be like this. I thought I could count upon him for as long as we lived."

"I don't know anything about that" Diamond said. "But I know this much for sure… You can count upon me. I will love you through everything; you are not going to lose that. It won't go away, not until my dying day."

"I know you think you mean that" Pippin said. "But the truth is you don't know."

"I do know" Diamond said. "For even if I should forget I ever knew you that would never change a thing. If I met you tomorrow I would still love you. You can't change things like that. Take away love once and it comes back over and over again."

"Why can't friendship be the same?"

"Because love is blind and friendship is not. You can walk away from a friend and miss that connection but you can't walk away from a lover. The feelings won't go away."

"Sometimes love ends" Pippin reminded her. "People fall out of love every day."

"I can't fall out of love with you" Diamond assured him. "You're my husband and the father of my son. I see you in everything that makes me happy. Things like that can't change, Peregrin."

"I hope that you're right" Pippin said with a sigh.

"Listen to me now… Life goes on without Merry. It has before and it will again."

"Nobody will understand" Pippin said. "They will expect things to go back to the way they were, me and Merry always side by side. I can't be by his side all the time, it hurts and it's not the same. But nobody will realise that. They will think I've failed him and turned my back on him when he needs me the most."

"Blame it on me then" Diamond said with a smile and rested her head by his shoulder. "Tell them your wife is jealous and doesn't want to share you with a ghost from the past that suddenly came back to life."

"Thank you, but that won't work either. A jealous wife would never have stood between us in the past."

"Put a little faith in people then" Diamond suggested. "It's been a decade. They must realise that things have changed; your lives have gone in separate directions. They can't expect you to pick up where you left off."

"You were never here when Merry and I were inseparable" Pippin said. "Time could not affect us, and everyone knows that."

Diamond stroke his arm gently and wondered what she could say to help him. He seemed convinced that nothing could improve and had an answer for every logic argument she could think of. He was right, she didn't know how things had been when Merry was still around, she had come into his life after Merry's disappearance.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't be arguing with you" Pippin said with a sigh.

"You're not arguing."

Pippin kissed the top of her head and put his left arm around her. Her closeness was so great to feel, her warm body and her calm breath, her fragrance which he had loved from the moment he met her. Things would be better now, no matter how hard the future months would be. Diamond was with him now and things could go all wrong with Merry but he would still be safe when she was there. At least he hoped so.

XX
XX

Merry couldn't sleep. The bed was wide and comfortable, the room cosy and welcoming and everything was as it should be. Yet it was impossible to sleep. For one thing he felt like he was sleeping in someone else's bed, which could be explained by the fact that his parents had slept in this bed but he never had. But it was probably the fact that Berilac and his wife and slept in this bed the very night before and now they had moved to a smaller bedroom to make room for him. Berilac had not said a word of complaint but Merry knew he had come in and shoved his cousin aside. Poor Berilac, he had woken up that morning not knowing that before the day was over he would have been reunited with his dead cousin and forced to give up all that had been his since that cousin was presumed dead.

Merry wondered what it meant to be Master of Buckland. With a little luck it was mostly a ceremonial title, but since he apparently owned the large smial known as Brandy Hall he assumed that there would be a lot of work involved. He would have to learn all of it over again; if he had been trained for it in his earlier life he could not recall it. But that was the lesser of his problems.

His first problem was Pippin. After spending the afternoon and evening at Brandy Hall Merry had begun to feel that he would not be as dependant of Pippin as he had expected, even though Pippin was the only one he knew from the past months who was still around he would have no problem bonding with his cousin Berilac and his family. But Pippin and he still had a large gap separating them and it had begun to dawn on Merry that the friendship Pippin had spoken of was something that the Hobbits of the Shire took for granted and would expect to still be there. He had heard conversations on the other side of the doors talking about how things would be back as normal, with Master Merry and Thain Pippin being as inseparable as Hobbits and mushrooms. Merry had a feeling that the Hobbits would not just accept that the two of them were no longer friends; they would require it even if they accepted Merry's memory loss.

His other problem was all the Hobbits he had known before he last left the Shire. There were over a hundred Hobbits living at Brandy Hall and he had known each of them once in his life, except for the ones that had been born while he was away. How they would react to not being remembered by him was something he did not look forward to finding out, and he wondered if there would be problems. How he would be able to step up as their leader when he couldn't remember a one of them was beyond him, but he couldn't worry about that right now.

His third problem was Estella. She had taken the news very calmly but it was obvious that the reason for that was that she didn't expect anything to change because of it. In her mind her fiancé had come back home and now the wedding would be planned anew. If he remembered her or not was a minor issue, he had a whole year to remember her and there was no reason in her mind why he wouldn't.

All alone in the large room Merry realised he was lonely. He had grown accustomed to falling asleep to the sounds of someone else being nearby, the shifting in a bed, the heavy breaths, the occasional sighs. During the past two months there had always been three other people and three animals present during the night. Before that he had shared his chambers with Pippin for half a year. In the far too quiet night he found he missed Pippin, the room was too silent without him.

He rolled over on his side and felt a headache come creeping. The next day he would have to investigate the medic room and see what they had to offer. That was one thing he knew he could do and could do well, his practice of herbal medicine had been well nourished over the past months and with some excitement he thought of going out to scout the surroundings for interesting plants.

He closed his eyes and hoped for sleep to come. No doubt he would need it. Tomorrow would be an exhausting day.

XX
XX

"Say it again" Pippin mumbled into Diamond's hair.

"I love you" she whispered in his ear.

"I need to hear that… I really needed to hear that…"

She couldn't keep in a giggle.

"Darling I think you're getting a bit theatrical. Don't tell me you've been sitting around for the past months thinking nobody loves me?"

Pippin had to giggle as well.

"No, I haven't gotten that tragic. I just needed to hear you say it. I never intended on being gone for so long when I left, and I promise you that I don't ever intend on being away that long again. My travelling days are over from now on."

"You say that now but you are a Took and I don't think you can get away from it" Diamond said and sighed.

"You are also born a Took."

"A Took of Long Cleeve. We don't suffer from your poor reputation."

Pippin gave a cry.

"Poor reputation? I'll have you know that us Tooks are very well thought of."

"Yes, among yourselves. But the rest of the Shire thinks that you are queer."

Pippin gave her a playful boxing on the arm and couldn't help but laugh a little. He knew that she was right, or at least that she had been. Tooks had indeed been considered queer and too prone to adventure, but even the Hobbits had to admit that the great adventure of the Fellowship had been for the greater good.

Pippin knew however that most Hobbits felt that the adventures should have stopped once the Shire was safe and sound again. Frodo Baggins had left on another adventure and never returned, which had said it all in most Hobbits' opinion. Meriadoc and Peregrin had continued to go on their adventures to the southeast, which in the end had cost Merry his life, and secretly most Hobbits had felt that he had only had himself to blame. Hobbits seeking adventure would end up in a world of trouble that they had no business being in. But not even Merry's death had stopped Pippin; he had gone back to Gondor eleven years later, much to everyone's disapproval. The Thain going out on adventures, instead of staying at home in the Great Smials where he belonged!

The only one out of the four Hobbits who had gone on the Great Adventure who had been sensible enough to know that one adventure out of necessity might be acceptable but no more had been Samwise Gamgee, later Mayor Samwise. He had gone back entirely to being a normal Hobbit, one who spent most of his days eating, smoking and doing what little work there was to be done, never giving a thought to leaving his home again. He had a wife and an ever growing family in Bag End and he was becoming more and more respectable with each passing year. Unlike Peregrin, who was too much of a Took to keep his feet off the road.

"Let's not talk about these things anymore" Pippin said. "I don't want to give another thought to adventures and travels, the last time around it did not end so well. And I promised myself I would never leave home again after that. I didn't keep my promise to myself, so now I'm promising you instead."

"I'll be happy to have you at home for the rest of your life" Diamond said. "And you're right, let's not bother talking about journeys or adventures anymore. You should get some sleep and some rest, you have a tough time ahead of you."

"Indeed I do" Pippin said. "At least I'm not facing it all alone. Honestly Diamond I don't care if you came into my life through dumb luck or through someone else's thoughts and plans. All that really matters is that you are here and you were here before when I needed someone the most. When I had lost hope of life ever turning into something I could consider normal you were there to show me that all I needed to do was choose another path and settle with it. Sometimes the path you have walked on for years and years can no longer be treaded and when that happens you should choose a new one instead of fighting your way through an impassable road."

"Those are awfully big words to say a small thing" Diamond felt. "When something isn't working, change it. That's the way I see it."

"Well now my two paths have collided and turned into one… The new one I embarked on has become the same as the one that was impassable. How do you combine the life you left behind and that is no longer working with the life you built up for yourself?"

"I don't know" Diamond said. "But if you don't mind I'll stay out of this one. I don't know your Merry and that past life you speak of. This is something you must sort out on your own. Only you can. I'll be there when the storm is through, but weathering it is something you must do alone."

"No not on my own. Merry and I must do it together. The bonds we had still tie us together, if for no other reason than because people still expect it. Whatever the end result is we must reach it together, if one holds on the other can't walk away. And partly I guess I owe it to him to help him settle in and find his place here."

"How might you owe him that?"

"People will give him a hard enough time, whether they mean to or not, as it is. If I'm not in the picture at all they will only react harder. Cutting our bonds must be done slowly."

"Peregrin, is it not possible that you think they care more about your friendship than they actually do? What difference is it to them if you and Merry are friends or not?"

"I never thought it mattered to them. I don't care much who is friends with who and I never expected them to care who my friends were. But after he died it became clear to me that they did care. Not so much for my sake but because they were used to things being a certain way and Hobbits don't like it when things change. Have you ever seen identical twins?"

"No, I don't think there have been any for generations."

"I saw identical twins among the Elves when I was on my Great Adventure. Not only are they indistinguishable for those who do not know them, but they are always side by side. You get used to seeing them that way and when one is not there it makes you blink your eyes and wonder what's wrong with your vision. After Merry died people looked at me like people looked at those Elves when they appeared only one at a time. It's what they're used to, and they want things to be that way for otherwise they think it's queer."

Diamond didn't reply. She was growing tired of the subject, and she didn't believe Pippin when he said that it would matter to people whether or not he and Merry were friends. Perhaps it had mattered when Merry was first gone but who could possibly care about that anymore? She thought it was more likely that Pippin made it up as an excuse in his mind because in spite of everything he didn't know how to just walk away from Merry. It would be queerer for him than for anyone else but it was easier to blame the larger crowd than to blame oneself. In her heart Diamond was more concerned for what would happen to the life she knew now that Merry was back. It had not been difficult to replace a ghost but now that ghost was back and Pippin still loved him. Though her relationship with Pippin and the love they shared was much different Pippin had still spent his whole life up until Merry's departure loving his cousin more than anybody else. No doubt he would be conflicted now that he had to fit Merry into the life he had now with Diamond and their son. No matter what Pippin said Diamond knew that he still cared very much for Merry.