Author's Note: This is the first out of a number of stories which belong to my "Unforgettable" series. They are not in chronological order, but in the order I wrote them. They were either written after the original story had been posted, or I decided not to include them in the original because they gave away too much information too soon or slowed the pace down. They are basically side stories that serve no purpose to moving the original plot forward, but I wanted to write them anyway to fill out blanks. I am open for suggestions if anyone has an idea for a chapter in this section.

Disclaimer: Based on characters and places created by JRR Tolkien. Used without permission but also without profit.

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On a river bank, May of 1425

At first he barely noticed hitting the rock, or even that he stopped moving. All he could feel was pain, in every inch of his body, a pain which was not eased but rather increased by the paralysing cold of the water. But then his head bobbed into the rock that had stopped his journey down the river and his head cleared long enough for him to notice that he was no longer out in the middle of the river, carried by the streams, but that he had been tossed towards the shore and now stopped. For a brief moment it mattered, then he stopped caring. All he wanted was to escape this pain, this horrible pain which made it hard for him to breathe. He could feel a sharp pain in his arm and in his thigh, but nothing was worse than the overwhelming pain coming from his chest. Gathering some of the little strength he had left in him he reached up his hand and felt a wooden stick and with it something warm in the midst of all the cold. His own blood escaping him from a deep wound.

He was already beginning to forget. He could not recall where he was or why he had ended up there, all that existed was the pain. All that mattered was to get away from it. Gathering his last strength he reached out his hand and grabbed on to the gravel on the shoreline, pulling himself out of the water. What felt like an eternity and a great pull was in fact a brief second and brought him no further to the shore. His strength was spent. He relaxed his body and gave in.

All sounds of the raging river went away and slowly the pain began to fade. He was dry now, lying in woodlands, slowly his strength was returning. There were no sounds around him, no wind in the trees, no birds chirping, no animals. He opened his eyes and took a moment to focus. The pain was fading faster, and slowly he began to be able to smell the woodland around him. And he could hear. He could hear someone approaching him. Somehow he knew not to fear, the orcs that had attacked him did not walk with such steps. These steps belonged to somebody else. He could see clearly now, see Boromir walk up to him through the woods, looking just like he remembered him from that last fatal day they had spent together, so long ago.

Boromir stopped by his feet with a grim look on his face.

"I didn't expect you so soon" he said. "Merry…"

A smile spread across Merry's face.

"I'm safe now" he said, his voice trembling. "Dear friend, I have been longing to see you… and thank you."

"I cannot accept this" Boromir said and kneeled by him. "I did not die for you to be killed by orcs in the end anyway. This is not how I will allow you to end. Why are you giving up? Why are you not fighting?"

"I don't want to feel the pain anymore" Merry said. "I don't want to feel the cold. I don't want to feel my life slowly slipping away from me. Here I am safe. Here I want to stay. Here I want to travel with you once more."

"Fight it" Boromir said through gritted teeth and rose again. He gave Merry a less than gentle kick causing the Hobbit to crawl up in foetal position and whimper.

"Stop it!" he complained. "It hurts when you do that!"

Boromir kicked him again and the pain he had been feeling in the water came back for a long horrible second.

"Get up!" Boromir said in a tone that didn't accept any arguments. "Get up Merry! I will not welcome you here, get up!"

Merry looked up at him with desperation in his eyes. Boromir had always protected him and now he was pushing him away. Away from the wonderful release of pain, away from the warmth, the light and the safety.

"Get up, on your feet!"

Merry tried to fight it with all his might, but each kick from Boromir forced him back onto his feet until suddenly he was no longer in the shelter of the woods but pack in the river, all the pain returned to him. He could not open his eyes, and when he opened his mouth to cry out in pain all he managed was a whimper.

"Fight!" he could still hear Boromir say.

His hands grasped the arrow sticking out of his chest, and Boromir's hands were there too. He was alone in the river, but Boromir's strength pulled the arrow from his chest and tossed it aside. He turned on his stomach and tried one more desperate attempt at getting out of the river, crying, wanting nothing but to get to go back to the woodlands. But Boromir's angry orders kept ringing in his ears and he fought to pull himself out of the water before it would be too late.

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When they found him he had gotten half way out of the river. He was lying unconscious on the ground, still bleeding but not as badly as before. Though one look at him told them he had no chance of surviving if they did not assist him at once.

Five of them grabbed a hold of him, one by each limb and one by the torso, and they lifted him up and carried him away.