#25: Night
It was worse at night. "What's wrong with him?"
"Nothing, Frodo, go back to sleep." Merry held Pippin's hand, rubbed his thumb over the back of it smoothly, carefully. "He'll be alight."
"How long has he been having night terrors?" Sam asked quietly, his voice a breath in the dark a second before he lit a match, illuminating the room and his pale, pale face.
Merry didn't want to tell them, because it was Pip's secret and he should divulge it to who he deemed necessary, but they would find out anyway. The four hobbits always seemed to find out things about each other, things no one else knew. "Since before Fangorn." Merry paused for a moment, then lifted Pippin's thin sleep-shirt to reveal the long stripes that had come with their captivity at the hands of the orcs. He had matching ones on his back, though they were far fewer in number: a handful to Pippin's dozen.
Frodo and Sam's mouths settled into hard lines but they said nothing, not then, because these things were always worse at night. Or so they hoped.
.***.
Merry rubbed one hand across Pippin's collar bone, trying to soothe the younger hobbit's nightmares. Pippin's face was screwed up in pain, in fear, and Merry knew, as he always knew stuff about his cousin, that Pip was back in the orc camp.
He brooded, something that Merry didn't do very often. He'd always prided himself on being, along with Sam, the firm, even-tempered rock at the center of their group of four. Here, under the beautiful drooping trees with their foliage thick in the early summer air, it was hard to imagine the atrocities of war that had taken place a scant three months prior.
Sam woke before he got farther in his reverie, before he'd plunged down into the same black abyss Pippin found himself trapped in now. "Mr. Merry? Is everything alright?"
Merry turned to Sam and twitched his lips slightly, a sign that everything was still safe, if not secure. "You're a Ring-bearer now, Sam, you saved all of Middle Earth. How many times do we have to tell you to stop calling us Mister?"
"Always once more, Mr. Merry." Sam said, inching closer. He clung to his roots as working hobbit the same way Merry and Pippin clung to their worn and beaten pipes: because it was something familiar to hang onto in this world of big folk and magic rings and wars.
Their quiet words had woken Frodo from his half-doze. Frodo didn't sleep anymore, not really. He'd seen too much of death to really be confident that he would wake up if he let himself go into that halfway place, that dream world.
"What's wrong with Pip?" Frodo asked. He'd watched as each of the Fellowship members in turn fell in love with the youngest of the hobbits, but Pippin had been at the center of his heart long before the Quest.
Merry rubbed soft circles on Pippin's collar bone, mouth pressing into a hard line as Pippin's soft whimpers became keens of pain. He looked over at Gimli, sleeping next to Legolas, at Gandalf, keeping watch over the night. None of them turned, though whether it was because they hadn't heard or because they knew, instinctively, that this was for the hobbits alone, Merry never knew.
"It's alright, Frodo, go back to sleep."
The order was useless, of course. They were cousins, but that didn't explain the bond between them. Merry had many, many cousins, some closer to him in age than this newly nine-fingered Frodo. No, they were best friends, souls who must have known each other in the life that came before that they had now on this Earth. The four of them had a bond that transcended earth and time.
Sam crept closer, head tilted slightly to the side. He'd seen these things happen before, to his uncle. "How long has he been having night terrors?"
Merry hesitated. This was Pippin's secret, and though Merry trusted Sam and Frodo with his life, it was Pippin whom he would die for, Pippin whom he would never, could never betray. But in that moment, with dawn not even a thought on the horizon, Merry realized that there was another bond that linked him to Frodo and Sam, made them ideal to confide in where Strider and Legolas and Faramir could never compare or understand. They were hobbits all, and hobbits took care of their own.
"They started happening in Fangorn," Merry said. This time he didn't hesitate. This time he reached forward and slowly, gently lifted Pippin's sleeping-shirt to reveal the long stripes that had come with their captivity at the hands of the orcs. They glinted cruelly in the twinkling starlight, scars, war-wounds that didn't belong in the peaceful forest.
It wasn't until Merry saw the wounds bared, felt the numb throb of pain ripple over his own back, that he realized he had never told anyone what had happened in that orc camp. It was their tale, of course, one that made the bond between himself and Pippin, already strong as iron, stronger still.
But Frodo and Sam had related to the other hobbits the painful details of their travels through Mordor, heartbreaking stories that they hadn't told Strider or Gandalf, despite their many insistences to record everything for posterity. Some things were best left between hobbits.
And Frodo and Sam were looking at Merry, not backing away from the wounds and going back to the sleep they all craved desperately after the many months on the road. Merry continued to rub Pippin's chest, noticing quiet tears dripping down the youngest hobbit's face. He told the story.
"We worked out early on the orcs thought we were you two, that we had the Ring. Didn't expect there to be more hobbits, I guess. We knew they were taking us to Isengard, that we'd be tortured there and they'd kill us when they found we had nothing. I guess they thought they could just start early. The journey was getting long and they were getting bored."
Merry shuddered, remembering the bright blaze of the campfire, the terrible laughter of the orcs as they pulled Pippin out from under Merry's arm, dragging him to the center of the crowd.
"They wanted to eat us you know," Merry said, surprised that he laughed a little when he said this. "Hack off our arms or legs, because they had really rotten…I don't know why I'm laughing." But Merry was, reams of laughter exploding through the fingers that he'd clamped over his mouth in an effort to fight back the hysterics.
"Sometimes it's either laugh or cry, Mr. Merry." Sam said knowingly.
The bubbles of laughter eventually died down, and when they left it was as if the forest was suddenly missing something. An owl hooted dolefully in the distance, a mournful sound that Merry could relate to.
"I guess they took Pip 'cause he'd made a break for it the day before, running to the side in order to leave a breadcrumb for Strider and Legolas and Gimli. Or maybe they took him because I was sick and I wouldn't be as much fun. Or maybe because he was smaller. I don't know…"
Merry found himself touching his temple, to the place where a thin white scar ran down his cheek, another left-over from the orcs.
"It was the Uruk'hai who did it, you know. The orcs and goblins…they were afraid of these big ones, I think, but they also enjoyed the pain. When the Uruk'hai pushed Pip into the center, they were all jeering, clapping. They wanted entertainment." Merry's voice broke on the word and Frodo opened his mouth to say something, probably along the lines of you don't have to tell us, cousin, but Merry cut him off before he began.
"I need to tell it, cousin Frodo. This story can no longer be mine alone."
But the other details came in stutters, as Merry watched the instant replay in his mind. How the Uruk'hai didn't let Pippin remove his own tunic but ripped all the clothes from his body, leaving Pip naked and shivering in the cool night air.
How at first the orcs weren't hurting but touching, groping, poking and prodding Pip, always with threats to cut off one of his or, worse, Merry's limbs if he tried to run. How when the whip was pulled out, Pippin didn't scream until the fourth stroke, and by the sixth Merry was tottering over, his body hot with fever and rage at the sight of his favorite person being subjected to such torture.
How the whip rained down on his own back, on his legs, how he'd collapsed to the ground, shaking the throes of his sickness, and how Pippin had leapt on top of him, protecting, hiding, taking blow after blow as the crowd of monsters laughed and laughed and laughed…
The words were forced out by the end, and Merry was crying with the effort of it all, with the sheer emotion that came with remembering.
Frodo used the heel of his hand to wipe the tears from Merry's face, and Sam put his arm around Merry's shoulders, holding him tight in an embrace that was entirely comforting, sympathetic.
And, over Merry's head, Sam and Frodo exchanged a glance, one that willed away the pain of Merry's story. They looked at each other and nodded slowly, sadly. These things were always worse at night.
Or so they hoped.
We wanted to tell the story and try to explain the relationship between these hobbits. They're just so cute...
As always, please review.