Counterpoint, Movement XXV

Natural: A symbol in sheet music that returns a note to its original pitch after it has been augmented or diminished.

* * *

Next day Frodo woke early, feeling refreshed and well.

"'Refreshed and well'," Merry mumbled, rolled his eyes, shook his head, skipped down a bit.

'I feel ready for anything,' answered Frodo.

With a grunt and another shake of his head, Merry flipped the pages with his thumb, let the Book choose where next he would stop. 

Yet Frodo began to hear, or to imagine that he heard, something else: like the faint fall of soft bare feet.

"Never said a bloody word," was Merry's quiet mutter.  "The evil little schemer was following all that time and you never said a bloody word."

It was his third time through the Red Book.  All right, maybe his fifth.  All right, so he'd lost count.

It had taken Sam almost four years to finally finish his part of it before he eventually sent it along to Pippin; Pippin had taken another year to make his own copy to keep in the Smials' library and was currently in the process of compiling a chronology of the Second and Third Ages as regarded those events concerning Sauron's rise to power and subsequent fall, making sure to include relevant Hobbit history where it was called for.  He had been more than a little put-out when he'd discovered that the annals of Men and Elves held no mention of archers from the Shire in their accounts of the Battle of Fornost and was determined that no contributions to this history by hobbits be overlooked.

Having completed as much as he could in Tuckborough (with a few side-trips now and then to the Hall), Pippin planned to head to Rivendell in two weeks to make use of the massive library there.  There were dates and lineages of Men that Pippin felt should be included and which he obviously didn't keep in his head.  And since Smials' library and that of the Hall were equally lacking in histories of Men or Elves or anything else that didn't have a direct effect on Hobbits, and with Sam having exhausted Frodo's own private library, Rivendell seemed the logical place to continue the research.

Pippin had invited Merry along for the trip, of course -- had in fact bullied him into agreeing to tag along, though Merry wasn't sure exactly how much use he would end up being.  But Pippin had been right when he'd pointed out that it may well be the last chance they had in a long while for a trip like this.  And together.  The last had seemed like the most important part to Pippin and really the most important part to Merry, too, once he'd thought about it, considering all of the changes the past few months had brought.  And considering those changes the next few months would bring.

Of course, when Pippin had moved back to Smials to work on the Book last year, neither of them had thought it would be anything but temporary.  Then again, neither had counted on Eglantine; it wasn't even a week before she had pounced upon the opportunity to arrange a visit from her husband's Long Cleeve relations.  Pippin had written to Merry once or twice, complaining bitterly about his mother's incessant matchmaking, to which Merry had only snickered and sympathised and secretly blessed the fact that it was Pippin for a change and not himself.  Soon enough though, Pippin's letters went from truculent to optimistic to ecstatic.  Merry watched through twice-weekly posts as Pippin fell hopelessly in love.  When Merry came to Tuckborough for the engagement party, he understood why; Diamond was kind and beautiful and Pippin loved her so much it almost bruised Merry's heart.  And even better, Diamond loved him right back and just as hard.  They were wonderful to watch together and when Merry learned that Diamond had insisted that Pippin wear not only the formal coat of arms of the Took clan at the ceremony but the Silver and Sable as well, Merry knew Diamond was the one for Pippin.  Hero or no, Messenger to the King notwithstanding, it was the rare individual who would accept a symbol of the world of Men so completely and into her own marriage ceremony to boot, and to Merry it said that Diamond understood Pippin as completely as anyone could understand Pippin and loved him for everything he was.  How many people got that even once in their lifetime?

Certainly, no one got it twice.

Unfortunately for Merry, the engagement party was also where he learned that Pippin had decided to remain at Smials to oversee the digging of the new smials he and his new wife would share.  And while Merry had more or less expected it and couldn't have been more pleased for Pippin, he also found himself admitting that he was quite lonely, had been since Pippin had left and was now likely to stay lonely for some time.  He'd never lived by himself before and he was finding it not entirely to his liking.  When the festivities had ended, it had been a difficult thing for him to leave again for Buckland.

So when Pippin had begun pestering him via weekly posts for his help with the Book, Merry had put him off for as long as he could but relented in the end.  His reluctance to even read the Book, let alone participate in adding to it, held him back for a while but his newfound loneliness, coupled with a bit of nostalgia, plus the fact that this would be their last chance for something like this for a good long time -- perhaps forever -- finally convinced him of the futility and, when he was honest about it, the foolishness of resistance.  He agreed to come to Smials for a few weeks to help Pippin with whatever it was he needed help with and then they would travel together to Rivendell to complete the research.  They would make a quick stopover in Hobbiton on the way to drop off the original Red Book, take Pippin's copy to Rivendell with them, add what they felt was pertinent and then pass their addendums along to Sam for the original.  It seemed simple enough.

And so now Merry was ensconced in his guestroom at Smials and was supposed to be helping but all he'd really done so far was close himself into his guestsmial for almost two weeks to read.  To his credit, Pippin didn't seem inclined to fuss at him over it, though it was possible his reserve was due to the fact that it had taken Merry nearly three months to actually agree to read the thing in the first place and then another to arrange the trip to Tuckborough and then another week of stalling until he'd finally gathered the will and the courage to start reading.  And after he'd started, he'd found it impossible to stop.  He'd read it twice-through over four days and was now flipping back and forth, looking for…

He wasn't sure but he was bothered by… something.  The blitheness in some passages, the…

Bugger. 

And speaking of buggering, as it were, there was not a single 'bugger off' or 'stuff it' to be found.  The closest thing to it was Sam's 'Noodles!' and the like which, having actually been on the receiving end of Sam's sharp tongue once or twice, so to speak, made Merry snort and shake his head.  The somewhat formal prose was understandable, he supposed -- it was meant to be a history, after all -- but 'My dear and most beloved hobbits!'?  If Merry remembered correctly -- and he did -- what Frodo had actually said upon the revealing of the Conspiracy was, 'Well, bugger me!'.  And if Merry had ever said anything like, 'Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not,' he'd eat his hat.  It was a prettier way to put, 'No one back home would ever begin to understand or even believe all of this but I'll be glad to get there just the same,' which was what he actually remembered saying to Pippin then during his stay in the Houses of Healing, but it didn’t even sound remotely like him.  Of course, he'd been a touch overwrought at the time and it was only shortly after that he'd learnt that Pippin was to be marching on the Black Gate and Merry himself told he couldn't…

Best put all of that away and not dig too deep into that particular shallow grave.  There were other things buried deeper in these pages and Merry wasn't sure even he knew where to look for the bones he knew were there -- and he'd been there.

It wasn't so much a rearranging of facts or events -- the account was sometimes brutally honest and Merry could almost see Frodo writhing through the writing of it as he read -- but rather the emphasis put on some of those events… or maybe the non-emphasis in certain parts was the problem.  Writing about those first days in Rivendell as though he'd just leapt up from bed and commenced to feasting and celebrating, with no mention of the fact that Sam had served as a crutch for at least several days as much as a companion.

And speaking of Sam: where was the mention of all of the nurse-maiding he'd done between Weathertop and Rivendell?  To read Frodo's account, you'd think it was just a bit of, 'Ow, that hurt and I deserved it because I was weak and stupid.'  Nothing about how the pain was so constant and bone-deep that it was all you could see when you looked at him.  Nothing about Merry's own hysterics and delusions. 

It was… frustrating, bewildering… 

No, it wasn't any of those things; it was completely expected -- or rather, it should have been completely expected.  Because this telling, more than anything else, was who Frodo was: laying all his perceived-faults and mistakes before the world and almost completely ignoring the torment and agony, except when the exposition of it served to make someone else look good.  He probably wouldn't have even mentioned the pain of the Morgul-wound, had it not served to demonstrate Strider's healing skills and the benefits of athelas.  For pity's sake, there was hardly even anything in those chapters that dealt with Mordor that might even hint at the degree to which he and Sam had really suffered and Merry had seen them when they'd been brought back, he knew there was more to it than what was here.

Was he still, even then, trying to hide the truth, running away from his own story by only telling those parts he could stand to tell?  And was he deceiving himself or trying to deceive those who would read it?  Just how deep into his own untruths had Frodo sunk in the end?  And how had he let it get so far that he'd had the brass to think any of them would be fooled?  That Merry would be fooled?  Did he really not understand that at least Merry knew him better than this? 

Had he gone beyond caring by then or did he really think Merry that obtuse?

Merry huffed a breath, paged ahead: 'Gently are you revenged for my testing of your heart at our first meeting.'

"What test?"  A whisper, cold and quiet and in it, remembrance of things he'd laboured long and hard not to remember.  "What did you say to him?" 

“What did the Lady offer you in Lothlórien?”

He shut his eyes.

What did it matter and especially then, when they'd stood nose-to-nose and watched the dust of their lives bury them both?  What kind of question was that, anyway?

"Perhaps a better one," he murmured, fingers stroking soft against stiff vellum, "would be: what did she offer you?"

“Showed me your dead bodies – every one of you – twisted and drenched red with blood, burnt and blackened.  Told me all I had to do to make it untrue was to abandon my errand.”

And why wasn't that in there?  It seemed an important enough thing, something serving the theme of self-rebuke that littered the text and doing so quite nicely.  There was no lack of exposition on Frodo's part for those things that served to exhibit what he saw as his failures, no shortage of detail in those things that painted a very different picture of his strengths by turning them into weaknesses with the careful arrangement of words so that even those victories Merry knew as fact could be read as failures if one didn't know what to look for, if one didn't know the person who had done the telling.

He flipped some more, the pages settling quickly and more quietly than seemed right, considering the words contained upon them. 

Ho la!  You up there, dunghill rat!

Jaw clenched, he sucked in a steadying breath, reluctant to acknowledge the vision the words brought. 

There's a reminder for you!

An echo almost, loud and living and giving voice to a creature long-dead, yet he would have liked to have killed him again, if it were possible, wrap that whip about his slimy neck and watch as his eyes bulged, watch as blood vessels swelled then bloomed in spidery explosions within them.  Rage wanted to take him as it had every time he'd read these passages; he refused to allow it purchase, shoving it and the Book away.  This was exactly why he hadn't wanted to read the thing in the first place. 

He leaned back, scrubbed at tired eyes.

I am not hurt, Sam.  Only I feel very tired and I've a pain here.

These from his own memory, for he'd read it all often enough.  And every time, the same irreverent exclamation rose to his tongue:

"Bollocks!" he grumbled, reached out and slammed the Book closed again, stared at it.  "Not hurt."  He gave a surly grunt, took up the teacup and tossed back the dregs, grimaced; bitter and cold.  Lovely.

He'd reconciled all of this, settled it, gave it its own small home in a corner of his heart he rarely ever acknowledged, and he'd put it away.  He'd gone back to living, had done with dwelling on things he couldn't change, things he'd had no part in, choices that were not his to make.  He'd been done -- went back to life, work, family, home… even stepped out with Fatty's sister a few times, much to his mother's delight and Berilac's chagrin; when he'd finally twigged to the reason behind Beri's chagrin, Merry'd stepped away, of course, and let his cousin take up where he'd left off in the wooing… not without the occasional snicker directed Beri's way, though.

He'd rebuilt a life, had fought tooth-and-nail for every bit of peace he owned and here he was, dredging things up that had been officially put to rest when Frodo had handed over that Book.  Story.  Tale.

Tale.

Because as much as Sam and Pippin touted it as History, a tale was exactly what it was; embellishments were few but the gaping holes in the narrative were littered so generously that Merry could not bring himself to call it a 'history'.  Certainly historical events were depicted honestly and, so far as Merry could tell, the research Frodo had done as to dates and places and names had been exhaustive and the exposition of them accurate and truthful.  Now he understood even more fully why Frodo had been insistent upon visits to Helm's Deep and Dunharrow when they'd passed through Rohan.

But parts of it simply did not ring true and, knowing Frodo as he did… as he used to…

He dropped his head to the back of the chair, ignored the stretch and pull of stiff muscles, stared at the ceiling.  He could tell by the shadows scrimming gold-grey upon it that the fire needed tending; it was getting late -- almost midnight by the little clock on the desk -- and he should start thinking about getting some sleep.  He was determined that tomorrow he would finally get to work and help Pippin with filling in some of the information he'd said he needed.  He had, in fact, started inking over the pencil-outline of his own family tree just this morning and had every good intention of moving on to beginning an outline on Rohirric customs when he finished.  And had Pippin actually checked the supplies in the desk, he probably would have done exactly that; as it was, the desk had apparently gone unused for years and the inkbottles in the top drawer were filled with nothing but dried ink.  Well, Merry had given it a go and it was Pippin's fault, after all -- or so he planned on claiming.  So, he'd again spent the day flipping, scanning and re-reading, just as he'd done yesterday and the day before and the day before that. 

And still these things piqued him, like an itch beneath his skin that he couldn't quite locate or scratch with any effectiveness, a fist in his belly that refused to unclench.

I am not hurt, Sam.

"Bollocks!" he said again, louder and to the ceiling.  Merry'd had an orc-whip turned on him, he knew what it felt like.  Moreover, he'd seen the scar that twisted up Frodo's side and along his ribs; deep and long and ragged -- he couldn't have just got up and walked about and asked for news, for pity's sake, not after a blow like that.  And it had to have been bound -- probably by Sam -- or he'd have been leaking blood all over Mordor and that tracker afterwards would have sniffed that out, if nothing else.

All of it left out.

Almost killed Sam.  Ah, you know me so well but I bet you didn't know that, did you?  If I'd had a sword in my hand I'd've run him through.

Left out but for Frodo flaying himself through strokes of ink for calling Sam a thief.

Why don't you take a guess at what the one you love so much bargained with?

Left out altogether.

The man kneels, draws his arm back, murder in his dull, hate-filled eyes…

Nothing. 

The Scouring itself was addressed only enough to demonstrate the destruction and to exhibit the actions of Sam and Pippin and Merry himself.  To read it all, one would think that the things the people of the Shire said and believed about Frodo had actually been right.

And so much more and these were only those things of which Merry himself knew; who knew how much more there was?  Who knew what really went on in the Tower between Frodo and Sam?  Perhaps Sam's innocent-seeming proposal had been more threat than offer.  Even if so, Merry had to believe Sam would have been honest in the telling of it but would Frodo have been honest in the writing of it?  With the smearing of those events Merry already knew as fact, he suspected not.

He laced his hands behind his head, closed his eyes. 

The row in Bree and the subsequent days of anger and confusion; told as if Merry had bravely followed that Rider and then hadn't completely failed at Weathertop, as if he hadn't been going slowly and quietly insane.  Their stay in Rivendell and Frodo's long recovery; told as though there was no recovery and everything that had gone on between them reduced to footnotes and those only visible if one knew where to look.  There was more time and ink spent on Merry's convalescence in the Houses of Healing than there was on Frodo's own long recovery in Ithilien and that alone felt almost sickening or… obscene or…

"Just plain wrong," he said through his teeth.  "And just how much did you leave out, anyway?  What more don't I know?"

More to the point, did he want to know?  He had, after all, put it away, dealt with it, set it to rest.  He was finally somewhat content again, had both feet planted firmly beneath him, was perhaps even living up to his name sometimes, and it had taken years for him to achieve even this modicum of peace; so did he really want to dredge all of this up again?  What good would it do?  Frodo had written down what he'd wanted them to know and what would dwelling on it yet again serve?  And even considering his current state of level existence, there were still things he didn't think he really wanted to know.

He hadn't even had the courage to read the last chapter yet, despite all of the poring over the rest of the text he'd done.  Even just the title -- 'The Grey Havens' -- sitting there black and stark on the page, gave him a twist he had no wish to analyse.  If he couldn't even read what he now suspected to be an account just as fictionalised as that of their experiences over the year preceding it, was it really a good idea to go pondering things that were perhaps better left to lie quietly?

A knock at the door and Merry turned in his chair, said, "It isn't a question of wanting to dredge it up," to Pippin as he pushed the door open and took a step over the threshold.

Pippin stopped just inside the room, lifted an eyebrow.  "No, of course not, and I would never dream of thinking otherwise," he answered briskly.  "What are we talking about?"

Merry waved a hand towards the book impatiently.  "It isn't a question of want, it's a question of what's right.  And this isn't right."

Both of Pippin's eyebrows went up then and he nodded slowly.  "It had to happen eventually," he told Merry with an exaggerated sigh.  "Not to worry, Smials does this to everyone.  It's Pearl's influence, I think, or at least, that's what I bludgeon her with every chance I get.  But if you don't fight the insanity, you'll fit right in and no one will be the wiser.  It's quite nice after a while, actually.  If you're mad, everyone else seems normal."

Merry tilted his head.  "Even Pearl?"

"Well, now you're just being stupid," Pippin retorted.  He crossed the room and flopped down into the chair beside the desk, wicked up the lamp.  "Don't tell me you've been working in this light," he chastised then scanned the desk, apparently noted its obvious lack of evidence of anything resembling work and groaned.  He slumped into the chair.  "Merry, honestly, are you going to help or aren't you?  I knew I shouldn't've let you work on your own."

"I'm getting there," Merry defended, though he flushed a little.  "It's…"  He frowned, shrugged.  "I've just been reading, is all."

"You've been reading for three weeks!" Pippin informed him, as though Merry might have missed the fact.  "And that isn't what you said you'd help with in the first place.  Bother all, if I have to write to Éomer for--"

"You couldn't anyway because he wouldn't be able to read it, daft sod."

Pippin gave him a level stare.  "That's what heralds are for, lazy git," was his sharp reply.  "Don't give me lessons on Rohan custom -- write it down!  Because I promise you that if you don't, I have no problem at all with writing to Éowyn, and if anyone can send a kick in the arse through the Post, I have every confidence it would be her.  Now are you going to do this or not?"

"Yes, all right?"  Merry rolled his eyes, growled impatiently.  "And it won't take me long to write down what you need once I get started anyway."

"So then why haven't you done it?  You could have been done weeks ago and don't tell me you're just lingering about for the food because this new cook is awful.  He actually poached a brisket yesterday, did you hear that one?  Look who I'm telling, like you have any clue why that's a transgression that should be punishable by… well, something awful, anyway.  I swear he must be warming Pearl's bed, it's the only possible explanation for why he wasn't immediately tarred and feathered, ruining good beef like that, and he actually served the bloody thing, too, and stood there beaming, like it was some work of art, and then looked shocked -- shocked! -- when we all stared at our plates and refused to try a bite.  Looked like a giant slug, that's what it looked like, and you're lucky you were holed up in here and got a cold plate because, honestly, just the thought of it is giving me the quivers all over again.  She'd best get rid of him and soon and I certainly hope she doesn't expect he'll be helping with the reception; Diamond's father will have one look at his plate and haul her back to Long Cleeve and say bollocks to me."  He took a breath.  "So, what is it, then?"

Merry realised his mouth was hanging open.  He blinked a few times, vaguely noting that he'd been insulted in there somewhere, while he tried to remember the question and couldn't.

"Eh?"

Pippin rolled his eyes, sighed.  "You said you were going to help and unless you've done it all in invisible ink, you haven't even started yet.  So, what is it?"

"Er…"  When Pippin put it like that, it made Merry feel a bit like a layabout.  He flushed again, ventured, "Well, you gave me dried-up ink, you know," and peered innocently at his cousin, fully prepared to stick to that sorry excuse and suck every bit of redemption possible out of it.

Pippin, however, was apparently not in a cooperative mood; he lifted an eyebrow, leaned forward and peered under the desk.  "See those things?"  He pointed to Merry's feet.  "Very useful for getting about, and when used in tandem with one or more of these," grabbed hold of Merry's wrist and flopped his hand about, "can get you an amazing array of necessary tools to get a job done."

Merry yanked his hand away.  "All right, shut it," he growled then: "Look, I'm sorry.  I know I've been putting it off and after I'd promised and all and… and it isn't that I don't want to."  He stood, paced over to the hearth and stirred the coals.  "I've just…"  He didn't look at Pippin, only lowered himself into a crouch, placed new logs atop the glowing cinders of the old and began the process of bringing the fire back to life.  "Have you…"  He trained his voice into casual nonchalance.  "Have you noticed anything… well, odd about that Book?"

A long silence from Pippin then: "I suppose," he said slowly, "that would depend upon exactly what you mean by 'odd'," and Merry noted that old caution in his tone and felt an immediate bite of shame for being the one who'd put it there only several years ago; its presence now was a bit jarring after so long and only served to make the warning all the more sharp.

Merry turned to look at his cousin.  "I'm fine, Pippin," he told him, "and I'm not falling into old habits and I'm not imagining things where they're not.  There are things missing from the account and I want to know if it's as obvious to you as it is to me.  That's all."

Pippin looked down, shrugged a little.  "Of course it's obvious," he replied steadily, "and anyone who knew Frodo would see it more clearly than I'm sure he'd like.  You expected different?"

A pause while Merry studied his cousin; he'd turned from cheerful to churlish all too quickly, which told Merry more things than Pippin probably wanted him to know -- like, for instance, perhaps Pippin hadn't ever really stopped watching him and waiting for him to trip himself into oblivion again; like perhaps, now that the time when he couldn't watch anymore was quickly approaching, maybe this was not the best time for something like this to come up.  Pippin returned his regard with carefully-blank eyes, his face showing nothing of what might be going on behind them.

"I don't know that I expected anything, really."  Merry turned back to the fire, poked at the coals some more.  More quietly, he said, "I never expected to actually read the bloody thing but there it is.  Forget I said anything."

Silence for several moments.  Merry continued to stare at the growing flames, poker propped loose in his hand. 

'But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring.'

"You would believe that, wouldn't you?" he whispered.  And why not?  Merry himself had almost believed it and he knew Frodo better than Frodo did himself.  And it had been an easier thing to believe because if even Frodo could fail, it made your own failures pale, didn't it?

'Blame myself?  For what?'

Had that been the first lie, then?  No, not the first; perhaps the first said aloud but there had been plenty of silent untruths before that, some of which Merry had only really seen in hindsight and some he might never allow himself to see.  And Frodo had allowed it, had in fact encouraged it, enabled it and sometimes even demanded it.  Because Merry had been completely right about at least one thing: Frodo would throw himself on the sword to keep another from cutting their finger on it.

"Perhaps the heaviest burden," he said in that same soft whisper, "was not the Ring at all."

"What's that?" Pippin asked and did Merry detect just the slightest note of challenge in his tone?  "Didn't catch that."

Ill-advised or no, Merry had never been able to refuse a challenge; louder, he said, "Did you know that Gandalf once mused that Frodo meant to throw himself and the Ring into the Fire?"

The silence thickened behind him and Merry turned; Pippin still sat slumped in the chair, head propped on his fist and now his eyes were closed.  Almost as though he felt Merry's eyes upon him, he stirred a little, twitched his mouth into a frown but didn't open his eyes.  Tension rose and stretched wide and full between them.

"What would you like me to say, Merry?" Pippin asked, his voice flat.  "That was a worry right from the start, wasn't it?  You think I never guessed that was the better part of the reason you were so wild to follow to Mordor?"

"See, that's exactly what I'm talking about!"  Merry stood, went back to his chair and sank into it.  "You wouldn't know it to read that book unless you knew what you were looking for!"

"So, what?" Pippin wanted to know and he opened his eyes, flashed a glare at Merry.  "It isn't as though we can get him back here for edits and re-writes, is it?  It's finished and in the way he wanted it done."

"Well, he wasn't always right, was he?"  Merry could feel his temper start to rise.  "He tried to leave the Shire without us and then wanted to send us home in Bree; who knows what might have been altered had we let him?"

"Oh, so now you're a believer in Fate, is that it?" Pippin shot back and his temper wasn't just rising -- it had already near hit the roof.  "And what good will digging it all up and tossing his mistakes about do now?  People don't understand it the way it is, Merry, and it couldn't be more simple!  What good will making it more complicated do?  Sure, go ahead -- tell them that Frodo would have thrown himself in and that he had such goodness and humility in him that even he didn't believe it.  Do you know what they'll say?  They'll say they could have admired him a lot more if he actually had!  That a 'Real Hero' would have.  Is that what you want to hear bandied about?  Is that the legacy you'll hand his memory?"

"I don't care what they think!" Merry grated.  "I care what I know and that's apparently precious little."  He waved a hand at the book.  "It's like a bloody puzzle with pieces missing!  And now that I see all of the holes, I realise that the few missing pieces I hold in my hand are nothing to the whole of what's not there."

Pippin stood, shoved his chair back with a grating screech of wood-on-wood, leaned over the desk, eyes a-glitter.  "And why," he asked through his teeth, "is it so important to you to have those missing pieces?"

Stone me, Merry thought, if I didn't know I could take him, he'd scare me right out of my shorts.  He watched for a twitch of the lip, didn't detect one, so he kept himself seated and still.  Merry had done this to Pippin, turned him into someone who watched too carefully, held on a little too tightly, someone who would throttle someone he loved just to protect them, though Merry supposed he couldn't discount Frodo's influence either.  And he didn't need this sort of protection, not anymore.

Merry didn't answer Pippin's question, only met his fierce gaze with a calm one of his own.  "Why isn't it important to you?" he asked instead.

Pippin's nostrils flared and he pushed away from the desk, straightened his back, hands curling into fists.  He glared at Merry for several charged, tense moments before the gaze levelled itself into tight composure and he shoved his hands into his pockets.

"It is," he said thickly then he shook his head, went over to the window and peered out into darkness, jaw still set hard.  "I'm just surprised that this is what's upset you about it.  I would have thought…"  He trailed off, shifted his shoulders.  "I shouldn't have made you read it and I'm sorry," he said quietly.  He shrugged, loosed a small bitter chuckle.  "I thought it might help you to lay it all to rest, once and for all, you know?  I don't know why I didn't guess at…"  He shrugged again, went silent.

"I'm not sorry, Pippin," Merry told him steadily.  "And trust me not to take the same treacherous road twice, yeah?  It has nothing to do with old habits, nor anything to do with wishing for things I know I can't have.  If you believe nothing else, believe that I have accepted what must be and put it away as best I can.  But this…"  He waved at the book again.  "This just isn't right!"

"I know that, don't I?"  Pippin leaned against the wall, still staring out into the night.  "And yes, it does matter to me and I don't like it any more than you do but it was what he wanted!  Why can't you ever just give him what he wanted?"

That one stung and Merry flinched a little, swallowed.

Because sometimes, what he wanted was not what was best for him and you know it as well as I do.

"And he wanted to leave the Shire alone; he wanted us not to mourn when he left forever."  Merry's voice was almost gentle but relentless in its soft insistence.  "Could you have given him either of those things?"

Pippin's jaw tightened yet further; he closed his eyes, shoulders rounded, and he dipped his head.  "'The End' is written," he said, his tone weary.  "I shouldn't have… I thought it would help."

Merry didn't answer, only turned back to the fire.  He sat quiet while Pippin pondered the darkness, listening to the small clock measure out the silence.

"What will you do?" Pippin asked softly.

Merry hadn't realised he'd made the decision until Pippin had asked the question.  "You said you saw some of his notes."

A slow nod from Pippin.

"How different were they from what's here?"

Pippin shrugged.  "Ironically, two of the bits that I got a look at were actually in there… perhaps slightly changed."  A pause.  "All right, yes, quite changed.  Shortened.  Less…"  His brow twisted and his gaze was thoughtful and far away.  "Less him, though that's not entirely right.  Almost as though he was trying to explain it to himself in the notes and wrote down in the book a shortened version of the explanation he'd come up with… or at least the explanation he thought might be understood by others.  I don't think Frodo knew what either of them meant when he jotted them in the notebook.  I don't think he really understood until…"  He trailed off, shrugged again.

"The bits about the jewel, you mean."  When Pippin only nodded again, continued to study the night, Merry nodded, too, drew in a deep breath.  "I'll ask Sam for the notes, then," he said then: "Unless he gave you the notebooks, as well?"

Pippin turned, seemed taken aback.  "You still want to see Sam?"

"Of course.  More so now than before."  Merry frowned, tilted his head.  "Why wouldn't I?"

Pippin only shook his head slowly in answer, slid his gaze back to the window, sighed.  "Nothing, I…  So… Hobbiton, then?  Now?"

"Come with me or stay, as you like, Pippin," Merry told him gently.  "But I'm going in the morning.  I'll wait for you… I don't know; I'll check into the Dragon or something.  Or maybe I'll go on to Buckland and take care of some things and we can start to Rivendell from there.  But try to understand -- this can't wait."

Another long, pregnant silence as Pippin regarded the blank black outside the window then: "Promise me," he began, "that you won't… that this isn't--"

"It isn't," Merry insisted.  "It isn't about me," and told himself even as he was speaking the words that it was the absolute truth; it wasn't about him -- it was about what was right.

Pippin remained still for several moments then he sighed again, straightened and turned to Merry.  "I'll write Sam and warn him to expect us sooner.  We'll leave day after tomorrow.  Will that do?"

* * *

It turned out that a warning was entirely necessary.  One would think that growing up in Brandy Hall would have inured him to the tribulations of a rambunctious homestead. 

Glory, every time Merry started to feel the slightest bit regretful about the childless state of bachelorhood, he had only to make a trip to Hobbiton.  One afternoon of jam on his trousers and tactfully averting his eyes while trying to appear as if he wasn't averting his eyes as Rosie nursed the newest, not to mention being climbed like a tree every time he stood still for more than three seconds, and that would do him for a good solid year.

Pippin, on the other hand, revelled in it and took no small amount of pleasure in siccing whichever fauntling he was done with on Merry.  They saw Pippin more than they did Merry, after all, and 'Uncle Merry' apparently hadn't worn out the novelty yet.

They were like cats: they zeroed in on the one person in the room who didn't know quite what to do with them and went to work.  Next time, he would be sure to time his arrival for well after their bedtime… which he hoped was fast approaching.

Even with the relative-chaos, he had to admit to feeling more comfortable here than he had before.  He still didn't know exactly what it was Rosie held against him, and didn't dare ask, but they seemed to have reached a comfortable truce over the years; she even looked happy to see him on those occasions when he'd stop by on his way through for tea or somesuch and more often than not would invite him to extend his stay into supper or an overnight; he never accepted the invitation to stay for the night but he'd enjoyed many a fine meal at New End's table.

It had taken him a while to get used to the place and he still found himself peering about, noting small changes here and there -- the couch in the main room pushed against the wall to make room for a play-mat and toys; small statuettes moved from lower shelves to higher ones -- until the changes were so many that he stopped counting.  It wasn't Frodo's anymore, hadn't been for too long and would never again be the place he'd spent so many happy times.  Another thing he'd slowly got used to and it only rarely gave him a small pang in the chest. 

And yet Frodo's presence was still very much here and Merry sometimes watched Rosie from the corner of his eye, wondering if that was more her doing than Sam's.  She referred to her once-master in conversation so much more easily than any of them could, spoke of him fondly and casually and never paused at the brief ensuing silences, discussed events of the War with them when they'd speak of it, though that was rare.  It helped.  And Merry knew Sam was grateful for it, even if it made him sad sometimes.

He watched her now, rocking slowly beside the fire, Rosie-lass asleep in her arms.  She'd listened to their small-talk serenely, smiled often, the smile broadening when Sam offered to put Elanor and Frodo-lad to bed.  She'd slid her eyes slyly to Merry's at that and flashed a knowing grin; Merry squirmed, flushed a little and gave his own apologetic smile.  His relief must have been apparent.  So he was worthless as an 'uncle'; not many would find that surprising.

Sam led Elanor by the hand, Pippin bringing up the rear with Frodo-lad perched on his shoulders, his little limbs wrapped about Pippin's head, small hands nearly blinding him; Pippin stooped a little through the doorway, careful not to knock the small head into the top of the lintel, and Frodo-lad giggled -- apparently at nothing -- and took a handful of Pippin's hair in a sticky hand, yanked.  Snorted threats of horrible retribution followed them down the tunnel then faded.  Rosie chuckled a little, shot another glance at Merry with a lift of her eyebrow and a small shake of her head.  Merry grinned, shrugged, let his eyes fall on Rosie-lass and rest there.

This one looked like her mother.  Frodo-lad was a miniature Sam, and Elanor… well, Elanor was Elanor.  But Rosie-lass was her mother's daughter; rose-blushed cheeks, all appled and plump, gingered hair in soft waves, rather than the loose kinks most little ones sported, and an easy way about her, quiet and cheerful until someone did something to hack her off and then she'd scream hellfire for a good solid hour.  Luckily, it wasn't an easy thing to hack her off.

"You've read the book."

Merry blinked, lifted his eyes from daughter to mother.  He almost asked Rosie what she was talking about but of course, he knew.  He nodded, cast his eyes about the room, searching for something neutral to let them light upon; he found the wooden duck, resting upon a high shelf, and he smiled a little wistfully.  He wondered if either Rosie or Sam suspected the inside-joke; he thought perhaps one or both might have done -- why else would a toy be kept out of the reach of children?  He would never ask, of course.  It had come to Sam and his family right along with everything else of Frodo's; Merry had no claim over it but memory.  Still, he had to admit that he liked the thought of it sitting up high, presiding over the room, better than he liked the idea of it lost beneath a bed somewhere, full of small teeth-marks and stained with drool.  Though, he knew Frodo would have preferred just the opposite.

"I've not always been kind to you."

Merry jumped at that one, snapped his gaze back to Rosie with a frown.  "Er… sorry, what?"

It was Rosie's turn to flush; she pulled her eyes away, shrugged a little, adjusted the baby's blanket.  "When you all first came home and…"  A rueful little smile and another shrug.  "And after.  I didn't understand and I was cruel."  She paused, lifted her chin and looked at Merry.  "I'm sorry," she told him.

'Floored' was probably a good way to describe Merry's reaction at the moment.  He frowned, shook his head, knowing of course to what she referred but bewildered as to what brought this on now, after all this time.

He cleared his throat.  "Well, one can't expect to like everyone," he offered.  "I suppose I just assumed that was the case -- I rub some the wrong way, always have, and you've been kind to put up with me, despite--"

"That wasn't it," Rosie interjected, voice quiet.  "It was… I didn't really understand until I read Mr. Frodo's Book and I'm sure there are more things I've no right to even try and understand.  But I was wrong for thinking those things about you and for being the way I was to you.  I've tried to make up for it a little bit over the past couple of years but you don't come around very often and I don't think the air can be cleared proper without an apology anyway, but I didn't think you'd understand until you'd read it yourself.  So I'm offering one now.  I really am sorry."

Merry was gaping; he knew he was gaping yet he couldn't make himself stop.  With a great effort of will, he closed his mouth, nodded.

"You're forgiven, of course," he said then paused, considered.  Cautiously, he asked, "What exactly did you think about me?"

Rosie sighed, looked away.  "You must understand that Mr. Frodo was a friend of my mum and dad for years; I used to sit on his knee in my mum's kitchen when I was no bigger than Elanor."  She smiled down on her daughter, shrugged a little.  "I remember once, when I was, oh…"  She shifted her gaze to the ceiling, closed one eye.  "I must have been about fifteen, I think."  She grinned, peered over at Merry.  "Too mischievous by halves, that's what Mum used to say.  But we got Miz Lobelia good that time and I should probably feel ashamed of myself for it now but I doubt I ever will."

She grinned, wide and lovely, and Merry couldn't help but answer it with one of his own.  He tilted his head, still rather bewildered.  Rosie's grin turned apologetic.

"Jolly and me were down at Number Three messing about with Sam when we saw Miz Lobelia trundle by.  She sneered at us -- sneered!  Told us to quit 'gawping at the gentry' and to go wash our faces, that we looked like urchins, then lifted her nose up and high-stepped up the Hill.  The cheek!"  She shook her head a little but kept her grin.  "So far as I know, she never twigged it was us as put the clippings and leaves in her umbrella."

Merry's mouth dropped open.  "You didn't."

"Oh, yes, we did," Rosie answered.  "And a howl like that you never did hear, leaves and grass and dirt all raining from inside that umbrella of hers.  You remember how she was about her hats and her hair."  She smirked, shrugged.  "'Twas her own fault for leaving the bloody thing out on the porch, I say."  She twinkled a little at Merry.  "Poor Mr. Bilbo, trying to calm her down and swearing he'd hunt down the culprits and have them drawn and quartered, just to get Miz Lobelia to quit hollering about raising the Shirriffs. 

"We were spying over the top of the Hill when Mr. Frodo caught us."  A snort.  "Caught dead, that's what we all thought, and all imagining the very worst as he led us down the Hill and through the back into the kitchen.  Didn't say a word to us, either, just left us all sitting at the table, staring at each other, each as wide-eyed as the next and thinking he was going to go get Miz Lobelia and let her have at us and then send for our parents.  I mean, he had to, didn't he?  He was a tween, after all -- almost a Grownup."

"But he didn't," Merry said and smirked -- not a question because he knew, didn't he?

Rosie shook her head, smiled.  "Came back with biscuits and cider.  And when Mr. Bilbo finally got rid of Miz Lobelia and found us all in the kitchen, relieving him of his tin of gingersnaps, Mr. Frodo told him we'd all had a tiring afternoon, achieving daring feats of courage, and were in need of proper reward."

Merry chuckled, watched as her smile turned warm and fond.  "You loved him."  Again, not a question.

"'Course I did," she answered and her eyes were bright when she turned them on Merry.  "Everyone as knew him did, didn't they?  Why should I have been different?  It's why I got so angry with you, though I know it's no excuse."

Merry shook his head, sighed.  "I'm afraid I'm still not sure what you mean."  She made to answer and he held up his hand.  "You don’t need to explain, of course.  I said the apology was accepted and I meant it.  And perhaps I'm just being dense but I would like to understand, if you don't mind telling."

A hoot from the direction of the nursery and Rosie cocked her head, listened.  Quiet laughter rippled into the room from down the tunnel and they both smiled; Pippin was probably getting them too riled at what was supposed to be a quiet storytime and Sam was probably half-heartedly trying to hush them all.  Rosie rolled her eyes and Merry chuckled.  Her smile dimmed a little.

"More than fair, under the circumstances," she continued quietly.  She adjusted the baby in her arms, sighed.  "I didn't know that you didn't know, you see."  Merry frowned and Rosie looked away, fiddled with the fringe of Rosie-lass' blanket.  "Until I read that book, I thought he was sad because you went away; I didn't realise that he was sad because… because of other things."  She looked up then.  "He was such a lively hobbit; Mum used to say he left a trail of faerie dust behind him.  Oh, not like he was always bopping about and clowning off or any such; only that he made a person smile just because he was about -- and that sharp tongue!"  She shook her head fondly.  "Quite a caution, was our Mr. Frodo."

"You mean is," Merry corrected gently.

"No," Rosie returned, just as gently.  "I mean was.  Aye, I know he isn't dead but when he came back from your Travels…"  An uncomfortable shrug.  "It wasn't him, if you see what I mean.  Least not how I knew him.  Like Sam had gone and brought back an entirely different master.  He was changed, so very different and I never seen such sorrow in a person's eyes before, like looking into black pits of grief covered over with a thin layer of branches to hide the diggings but oh, you could see 'em."  She looked Merry in the eye then.  "I thought you did that to him.  And then my dad found him that day, sick and off his head, and I was just so angry that it was my dad as had to find him and not someone as it should have been -- you or even my Sam."

"Find him?"  Merry frowned, shook his head.  "Wait, what?"

"That day in Rethe."  When Merry's brow only creased deeper, Rosie furthered, "The Anniversary."  She peered into Merry's bewildered face, leaned in a little and her eyes narrowed.  "You said you'd read the book."

"I have," Merry told her slowly.  "And several times."

"Well, then you know that he had an attack on 15 Rethe and that he had black dreams about… things."  Merry said nothing, didn't move but for the increased surge of his chest as his breaths came faster one upon the other, his heart picking up pace.  "You know that he had another in Winterfilth and Sam found him that time.  And then another the next Rethe but I didn't have the heart to let him know that I knew about that one; he tried so hard to hide it and I thought it would hurt him more if he knew he hadn't."

Merry only continued to stare, his heart trip-slipping behind his ribs now, his palms slightly sweated.  Rosie leaned in again, narrowed her eyes further and her lips thinned to a single line on her face.

"You've not read the whole of it, I'm thinking."

Merry shook his head and his tongue was suddenly thick in his mouth.  "Not the last of it," he told her and his voice was strained.  "I couldn't."

She only stared at him for a long moment then she nodded, sat back.  "I suppose I can understand that.  A difficult thing it would--"  She stopped and her eyes widened, blinked.  "Then you don't know…"

Merry waited but when she didn't go on, he prompted, "Know what?"

A slow shake of the head.  "My Sam, he--"  She closed her eyes, turned away.  "It isn't mine to say it, if you'll forgive me."  She turned back to Merry and her eyes were softer than a moment ago, apologetic.  "You should read the last of it," she told him and pointed her chin to where Sam had laid the Red Book on the tea table.  "He wrote it down and left it for everyone but more for them as knew him, I'm thinking.  You should read it."

Merry stared at the book, his stomach lurching and shifting.  He'd been wrestling with himself for weeks, careening between wanting answers and being sure he didn't, yet digging for them all the while nonetheless.  And all the time, there had apparently been at least some answers right at the ends of his fingertips, only now that he knew they were there, he was almost certain he didn't want them.

He swallowed, looked at Rosie.  "I'm not sure I can."

She shrugged, gave him a sad smile.  "Perhaps not," she answered.  "But you should."

* * *

And so, he did.  He was still reading it when Sam and Pippin came back from the nursery, their laughter tapering into chuckles and then into silence when they realised what Merry was doing.  Merry didn't even notice them enter the room, didn't notice the loudness of the silence as he closed the book, slipped it back onto the table, sat back and closed his eyes.  Didn't notice the uncomfortable glances shot from Pippin to Sam and back again, or the calm resolve in Rosie's face as she stood, kissed her husband goodnight and quietly took Rosie-lass to bed.

"You've been given permission to follow."

He didn't try to make his voice kind, didn't try to dull the sharp accusation beneath the words.  Silence followed the statement, thick and heavy, and he didn't try to soften that either.  He opened his eyes, turned them to Sam and if there was hurt and resentment in them, he didn't try to cloak it.

"How lovely for you," he said and his voice was flat.

"Merry--"

"It's all right, Mister Pippin."  Sam turned to Pippin, said calmly, "I'm surprised this didn't come when you first came through the door.  I've been expecting it."

For some reason, it twisted the knife deeper in Merry's gut.  "Well, then, I'm glad not to be disappointing you," he said and his tone was bitter this time.

Sam turned back to Merry, gaze level and frank.  "Lovely, is it?" he asked.  "What do you think you'd do with a choice like that?"

"You know very well what I'd do with it," Merry said between his teeth.  "And right now I'm not sure if I'm more enraged that it was you it was offered to or that you didn't take it."

And the bugger of it was, he wasn't.  All he was sure of was that, had the choice been offered to him, he'd have been on the gangway before Frodo was and dragging him up behind.

"Oh, you're so sure, are you?" Sam asked and shook his head.  "It would be such an easy thing, choosing between the people you loved best in all the world, one of them as could only ever love another and one of them as loved you and held your future on her hip."

"He needed you!"

"So did my wife, so did my daughter!  How am I supposed to make a choice like that?  And I almost did anyway, didn't I, and how do you suppose I look myself in the glass every day, knowing I almost left my family and feeling guilty for almost leaving and not leaving at the same time?  He needed more than me and always did!  And he needed more than you and don't you ever try and tell me what he needed, you as still can't give him what he needed most!"

It curled heat in his belly, ran him through like a lightning-strike.  Merry lunged forward, was stopped by Pippin's iron grip on his arm.

"All right, that's enough!" he growled.  He pushed Merry back, looked between them, clenched his teeth.  "Save me, will this never be done between you two?  You're like a couple of five-year-olds squabbling over the last biscuit."  He closed his eyes, took a breath and turned to Sam; Sam opened his mouth but Pippin jabbed a finger at him.  "You just shut it for a moment," he told him.  "You could stand to be a little more understanding right now and you well know it."

Sam snapped his mouth shut and Pippin turned back to Merry.  "Now?  You've just found this now?  Almost a month you pored over that book and now you're just reading the one part I dragged you out there for?" 

Merry felt like he ought to be embarrassed but he was well past any emotion that didn't involve anger.  "Yes, Pippin, I have failed in adulthood once again, though you knew I would, didn't you?  See-all, know-all and why don't you go ahead and tell me what's best for me, now, eh?  I was perfectly happy not knowing any of this but you would insist, wouldn't you, so spare me the righteous reprimand, if you please."  He yanked his arm from Pippin's grip, stood and paced over to the door, stopped and turned. 

"Didn't know what he needed, did I?"  He pointed an accusing finger at Sam.  "What about you?  Why do you think he was so obsessed with that book?  When he couldn't or wouldn't speak of something, he wrote it down and who even tried to listen to what he needed to speak of?  Bilbo, who could barely tell whether it was day or night?  You, Sam, who shut him up so quickly in the Tower because you couldn't bear to hear what they'd done to him?"

Sam's face coloured with dull red fury.  "That ain't fair," he said slowly.  "And you know it."

"No, it isn't," Merry agreed.  "None of it's fair.  It isn't fair that you were so caught up in the choice you had that you didn't even consider how hard it probably was for him to even tell you that you had one.  'Live your life, be who you will and then one day maybe you'll come,' was more or less what he said, isn't it?  And did you look into his eyes when he said it, Sam?  Did you see him throwing himself on the sword one more time?  Or did you look away like you did when he was struck ill in Winterfilth and Rethe?  Refuse to see it, when it's so bloody plain on the page that even he couldn't cover it up?"

"And where were you?" Sam wanted to know.  "I was setting things to rights, bringing his home back to him, not crawling into a barrel of ale and drinking it dry!"

"Because you said you'd take care of him!  You swore--"

"Bloody sodding bollocks, that's enough!" Pippin shouted.  He looked between them with wondering eyes.  "You're right," he said to Merry, "there is no such thing as Sight and if there is, I certainly haven't got it because I never imagined this!  What is wrong with the two of you?"

Sam clenched his jaw, looked down but the fire didn't leave his eyes.  Merry took several deep breaths, willed his heart to slow, his blood to cool.  When he'd calmed himself, he turned to Sam again.

"Sam, try to understand," he said, kept his voice even and composed.  "I'm not trying to hurt you and I'm just as angry with myself as I am with anyone else -- probably moreso because I knew that it was all there and I let him distract and deceive me and I…"  He paused, breathed a small bitter laugh.  "I really should have known better."  He shook his head, leaned against the frame of the door.  "I thought it was his health and that made it all right because certainly they could fix that, right?  It didn't occur to me that perhaps it was more and that maybe that was what was causing him to… I don't know… fade, as they told him.  And even that, I could take, if I thought they would heal that, too, but now I'm not even sure they had any idea at all that there was more and that doesn't just make me angry -- it scares me to death."

He paced the room a few times, the silence thick, until he spun about, almost lifted an accusing finger again and made himself stop.

"Both of you--"  His hands clenched into helpless fists.  "Neither of you have ever understood and I know that it's my fault because I am selfish and I don't let go easily; but this…"  Frustrated, he ran both hands roughly through his hair, growled.  "Can you not see how this is wrong?  It's only yet another thing they all got wrong to add to the list of all the others!  You think I didn't know what he needed?  What about them?  To put him through what they put him through and then to just walk away?  And not just one of them but all of them  -- even Gandalf and he was supposed to be Frodo's friend!  Sure, let's just stick him on a boat and sail him off and away from everything he loved, that'll fix him right up.  Right.  They didn't bother to try and fix him up while he was here, did they, and what makes you think they'll know what to do for him there?  All that talk about how 'Elvish' he was but he isn't an Elf -- he's a hobbit and what did they ever really know about any of us?  I have been consoling myself for years that it was what was best for him, that they would take care of him there better than any of us could have done, but how can I believe that, now that I understand that they had no clue about what he wanted -- that they didn't even ask?  Think me arrogant or think me self-absorbed because you do anyway, but he loved me, I know he did, and if they'd given him a choice, he'd have let me come."

"You couldn't," Pippin put in and his voice was almost startling for its quiet.  "You'd never even touched the Ring.  You didn't need that sort of healing."

"That's not the point!" Merry cried.  "Don't you understand -- they didn't know!  And they didn't know because they didn't know him.  They had no idea what his reasons were for sailing; they took the half of the story that he admitted to and then just assumed the rest, but they didn't know."

"Of course they knew."  Pippin again, more slowly this time.  "They had to have known."

"And how do you know that, Pippin?  How can you be sure?  Read the things they told him, really look at what they did or didn't do.  No one even came out and said he had leave to sail -- they all just hinted about and left him to figure it out for himself.  Who knows what else they left him to figure out on his own?  Aragorn healed his body as best he could and I know Gandalf at least spoke to him often in Minas Tirith, but did you see any of it doing him any good?  And what did they do for him after we got home?  Did any of them come to check on him?"  He turned to Sam.  "Do you remember any message at all from any of them?" 

Sam didn't answer, only continued to study his hands.  Merry nodded, set his jaw hard.

"They didn't know him," he furthered, his voice quiet and even.  "And I am now more afraid than I ever was before that they had no idea at all what they were doing when they took him away."

Long silence, dense and heavy, then:

"I couldn't hear it."  This from Sam in a voice small and thick.  He lifted his head, looked to Merry and his eyes were damp.  "Not then, not in that place.  And he wouldn't want to say, after he'd heard what I… the orcs and… after I'd told him how scared I was and how hard…"  He closed his eyes, turned his face away.  "It weren't nothing to what he probably went through and there he was after, holding my hand and comforting me and even then…"  A small shudder went through him.  "I was glad he didn't say."  His voice shook.  "You're right -- I shut him up and I was glad I did it and even after… I kept shutting him up, kept not wanting to know."

Merry sighed, slumped, walked slowly back to his seat and lowered himself into it.  Sam wouldn't look at him -- wouldn't even look up -- and Pippin was staring at a spot on the wall, his eyes distant and clouded.

"Sam, please, I don't mean hurt you," Merry told him and the kindness in his voice was genuine.  "I doubt you'd have got him to say anything at the end that might have helped.  And what you did for him…"  He sighed again, reached out and put a hand to Sam's shoulder.  "Sam, you have to know that no one else could have done what you did -- I know I couldn't have.  And who knows?  Maybe telling then would have done more harm than good."  He squeezed Sam's shoulder, shook him a little until Sam peered up at him with sad, wet eyes.  "I don't blame you for anything, Sam, and I don't want you to blame yourself.  Glory, all the things I've done wrong or could have done better…"  He squeezed a little harder, wrestled a small smile to his face.   "I'm sorry," he said.  "I'm suddenly more angry than I've ever been and really quite frightened and feeling all too helpless."  He shrugged and his smile turned rueful.  "I'm very good at lashing out; ask Pippin."

Sam lifted the corner of his mouth in a humourless smile and nodded.  Pippin started at the sound of his name, as though emerging from a dream.

"He'd have gone anyway, you know," he said then turned to Merry, his face thoughtful.  "Even if he knew they couldn't give him what he needed, he would have gone anyway.  And you said yourself that none of us could have given him what he needed -- not even you; you know that, don't you?"

Merry nodded slowly.  "I've known that for longer than I wanted to admit," he confessed.

"Then exactly what is it that you're trying to do here, Merry?"

His resemblance to Frodo had always thrown Merry more than a little -- the hair lighter and the eyes different but always Merry had been able to see Frodo when he looked at Pippin just the right way.  Now it was as though, rather than being sat in Bag End's parlour, lit bright with four lamps and the winter wind whistling at the window-casings, he stood in Bag End's study, dim-lit with only the fire throwing shadows and Frodo's voice bringing his world to an end.

Exactly what is it that you're trying to save here, Merry?

He shook his head slowly, turned his eyes away.  "I don't know," he said and didn't know if he was answering Pippin's question or Frodo's.  "I'm only trying to understand.  Every time I think I've put it away, something else springs up and drags it all back out again.  I don't want to feel like this, Pippin, and I don't want to have these questions.  But you said yourself that I shouldn't forget, that I shouldn't stop loving, and I'm not--"

"Had I known that you hadn't stopped being in love," Pippin interjected softly, "I never would have made you read the book."

Merry said nothing to that because right now, he sincerely wished he hadn't.  Instead, he said, "There are just so many things I wish I'd known, so many things I wish I might have said to him at the end, even as we stood there at the Havens.  The way he wrote about it -- as though we simply shed a few tears and had done -- it makes me wonder if that's how he saw us, if he had any understanding at all as to--"

He stopped as though struck, turned to Sam.  "Sam, that last chapter was in Frodo's writing."

Sam blinked and his eyebrows went up.  "Well, 'course it was.  He wrote it, didn't he?"

"Yes, but how could he have written it?"

Sam frowned, clearly bewildered, and turned to Pippin; Pippin only looked back blankly for a moment then his eyes widened and he whipped his head 'round to look at Merry.

"It was all in his writing, every bit of it -- even the bits about what we did after he left."  He shook his head slowly back and forth.  "We sang on the way home."  A small dazed laugh.  "Did I just say there's no such thing as Sight?"

"I'd thought it was just dreams now and then," Merry said.  "And sometimes he knew things that he shouldn’t but…  But he mentions it all throughout the book and I suppose I just wrote it off to the Ring or to Gandalf or Galadriel nosing about his head." 

He slumped, rested his head back and closed his eyes.  What did it mean?  He hadn't a clue but that it meant something he was somehow certain.  Frodo Saw things, knew things he couldn't have known and it was more than any Sight -- real or imagined. 

"How could he have known?" he asked no one in particular.  "And how could he have Seen all of that with such clarity but not…"  He opened his eyes, turned to Sam.  "I mean, he named your children!"

Sam shook his head.  "We named our children.  Mayhap he knew and mayhap he just guessed; it ain't like it'd be hard to guess at the names we'd choose." 

"Oh, please, 'Merry-lad'?  I think you and I have managed to mend fences over the years, Sam, but certainly not when he'd left.  Why would he ever dream that you'd name a child after me, of all people?  And especially with the way Rosie felt.  Unless…"  He trailed off, looked away.

"What?" Pippin asked sharply, his keen gaze narrowed to Merry.

Merry thought Pippin probably knew what he meant to say; he shrugged, looked down.  "Well, we honour the dead by giving the living their names, don't we?  Perhaps he thought--"

"Why do you talk like that?" Pippin snapped.  "For a hobbit with a name like yours, you slip into the morose a little too easily."

Merry sighed.  "Sorry," he said and meant it, though what he'd said was true and they all knew it.  Perhaps he'd been meant to die by the River that day and Frodo had somehow known it; he certainly hadn't rattled off a list of names of future children to Merry, had he?  But if that was the case, it brought new questions to the fore that Merry would rather not ponder.  "There are just so many questions -- both old and new -- and I'm trying to make sense of it all and at the same time, not entirely sure I want to."

Sam quirked a humourless smile and sat back.  "Oh, you want to know all right.  You sure do like to know things as can't do nothing but send you mad in the thinking about them, don't you?  It ain't like it makes a difference anyhow.  What can we do about it now?"

Merry opened his mouth, not entirely sure what might come out of it, but instead, "Maybe nothing," Pippin put in quietly, tossed an apologetic glance at Merry.  "But it does make a difference.  And I don't want it to make a difference because I'm afraid of what the knowing might do to you but you're right -- it does matter."  He turned to Sam.  "He told us only what he wanted us to know in that book, Sam, and not everything we needed.  We want a look at his notebooks."

Merry was overwhelmed, smiled at Pippin.  He hadn't realised how alone he'd felt with this until he wasn't anymore.

Unfortunately, Sam was shaking his head.  "They're gone," he told Pippin.

"Oh."  Pippin frowned.  "He took them with him?"

"No," Sam answered, looked down.  "He burnt 'em up."

"He…"  Merry sat forward, all of the warmth that filled him a moment ago draining away.  "He what?"  He shook his head.  "All of them?"

Sam was nodding this time, slowly.  "Yes, all of them.  I stood there in the doorway and watched him do it, too, though I doubt he knew it.  Fed every one of them books into the fire and stood guard over the grate until every page and scrap was ash."  He turned his eyes towards the hearth, said softly, "I should have known then that he were planning something.  Rosie did, I think, but…"  A shrug and Sam lowered his eyes.  "I've not wanted to ask her and she won't say 'less I do."

He fell silent -- they all did -- until Pippin asked, "Are you sure, Sam?  He had three, last I saw."

"Five," Sam corrected, "plus a stack of loose papers and what looked like scraps of cloth with notes scribbled on them.  I'm sure."

Merry slumped into the couch.  He remembered that stack of papers, remembered the anger that moved through him when he'd seen the notebooks and the stacks of parchment sitting beside the Red Book on that night so long ago when his world had stopped.  If only he'd taken a look then; Frodo would have tried to stop him but he could have managed it.  If he'd just taken the time to understand, perhaps that night might have ended differently.  And afterwards, he'd sat for hours in the same room with them lying right there on the desk and they'd been the last thing on his mind then.  If only he'd thought more clearly, had a look through what Frodo was thinking, perhaps then he'd have actually been able to help and not in the way Pippin thought he'd try.  It was so obvious now that Frodo had needed above all a confessor and had used the notes when no one stepped forward to take the job.  And after he'd come to what explanations he could, after he'd put the bones into History and left the blood to footnotes, he'd simply killed the confidante.

"Well," Merry breathed, "I suppose that's that then."

Perhaps it was better so.  Letting himself slide back into all of this had been a bad idea from the start and the empty feeling in his chest right now convinced him of that wisdom more than before; it had been all too easy to slip back into the anger and confusion and therein lay a dangerous path and Merry well knew it.  He'd stood there and told Pippin he had no intention of walking the same treacherous road twice, yet here he was, all ready to set his feet upon it until Sam had stopped him cold.

"Maybe," Sam said, "but… maybe not."

Merry and Pippin both eyed him keenly.  "What do you mean?" Pippin wanted to know.

* * *

Merry had not stepped foot in Frodo's bedroom since that night before he'd left for Crickhollow.  It was like stepping backward in time; even knowing all about and having seen the destruction of Bag End and then Sam's careful restoration, it was hard to believe that anyone had touched this room since all those years ago.  It even smelled of bayberry.

Somewhat in a daze, Merry let his gaze stumble over the worn and familiar quilt on the bed that his mum had given to Frodo when he was but a tween embarking upon his second and far from last leave-taking.  The chair by the hearth, frayed and faded just a little on the arms where Frodo's elbows would rest as he wrote or read; the spiked Dwarvish helm that Merry himself had helped him mount to the wall beside the wardrobe and that Frodo used as a peg to hold his braces, and the shield right beside it that he'd used as a mirror to tie his ties; the oversized birdcage that sat on the floor beneath the window and which never held anything more lively than potted ivy… which Frodo made a regular habit of neglecting and subsequently killing then replacing at least once a year.

He felt as though he had stepped into a half-forgotten dream, almost dizzy and completely unaware of anyone or anything else around him.  His arm felt disconnected from the rest of him as he reached out, pulled open the wardrobe… closed his eyes and clenched his teeth.  Out of habit or simple coincidence, Merry would never know, but the right side was empty as it always had been but for those times when Merry would come to stay, take up the space Frodo had left open for him in the wardrobe; he had no desire to open the two bottom drawers of the bureau, for he was quite certain those were just as empty.

You were a habit I couldn't quite break, were you?  And what of you?  Even at our worst I knew you missed me but I never suspected…

I will never stop being sorry for the things I didn't understand.

A gruff, "You'll pardon," from behind as Sam squeezed between Merry and the side of the bed.  He sidled around to the foot, pulled at the chest that squatted there and threw it open.

Merry blinked, heard Pippin loose a small noise that could have been a groan or a heavy breath.

"I don't know what's in here," Sam told them.  "It weren't my place to look, just like it weren't my place to go through the rest."  He waved a hand about the room.

"It's your home, Sam," Pippin said, his voice perhaps a little shaky.

Sam shook his head.  "Not this room," was all he said.  He stood.  "I've been meaning to tell you that you should maybe come look through and see if there was maybe some things you wanted for your own but…"  He shrugged.  "The time never seemed right somehow, if you'll pardon me."  He peered about him, avoided catching the gaze of either Pippin or Merry.  "Rosie keeps it nice but I never… I don't like to come in here, if you understand."

Merry did.  The hazy 'other world' feel had leached away and now he saw those things his eye had skipped over only a moment ago -- a secret self-indulgent wish to wallow or survival instinct, he couldn't say.  The helm was not slightly-crooked as it had been when they had finally managed to make it stay put after too many pauses for uncontrollable bouts of laughter and far too many mugs of beer; the birdcage held only an empty pot and not the one that had stood silent witness to the ritual sacrifice of ivy plants due to Frodo's refusal to admit that he simply forgot about it until someone noticed the dead plant on the floor.

"Ivy's supposed to die every year, even Sam says so."

"Yes, but it's supposed to come back the next year.  I think yours has committed suicide."

It had always amazed and amused Merry that Frodo could keep Pippin from impaling himself on random broken fences or throwing himself into abandoned wells for fortnights at a time but he couldn't manage to take care of one lousy ivy plant.  A wild little Took with no concept of fear he handled with aplomb but watering a plant was simply too much for him.

A smile ghosted at Merry's mouth and his eyes felt hot.  He closed them again, took a deep breath.  He shouldn't have come here.  It wasn't the same as it had been when he'd tried packing up the room at Crickhollow; this was different, deeper, closer.

I'm falling right back into it and I can't make myself stop.  Pippin was right: save me, I've never stopped being in love.

He cleared his throat.  "He left a lot behind," he said and winced a little at the unintentional double-meaning.  He'd only meant that Frodo had taken hardly anything with him.  Most of his suits and jackets still hung in the wardrobe and Merry couldn't see much missing from about the rest of the room.  It was too neat and orderly -- no sketches pinned to the wall by the window to dry and then be forgotten; no stack of books or scattering of pens about the chair by the hearth -- but Sam had said that Rosie kept it clean; it was more than Frodo ever did.

"That he did," Sam answered then shook himself, straightened his back.  "I doubt there's any of them notes in here but you never know what else you might find.  I'll leave you to it," he furthered with a nod and quit the room before either Merry or Pippin could gather themselves enough to invite him to stay.  Though Merry had the distinct impression that he wouldn't have anyway.

Merry looked over at Pippin, saw him eyeing the open chest with the same trepidation he felt.  He gave a nod, as much of a smile as he could manage and moved slowly to sit on the floor at the foot of the bed.  Pippin came to sit on the opposite side and they peered at each other again, quirked matching weak rueful smiles then set to it.

* * *

There was a stack of sketches layered carefully in a cedar box; some were maps and some were landscapes -- pulled from imagination or dream, neither was willing to speculate, but Merry was sure he recognised the Dimrill Stair and since the ink had faded to sepia and the paper was yellowed with age…

Several portraits lay in the mix.  Frodo had always been good at capturing likenesses and Merry recognised several people he knew among the lot.  The Gaffer smiled back at him from behind a wreath of pipe-smoke, his weathered face cragged and full of humour, but Frodo had managed to capture a sombre cast beneath the cheer in those eyes crinkled at the corners.  There were two of Freddy: one casting back to the innocent days when he'd been Fatty, round face and belly to match and eyes soft and kind above a happy grin; and the other, more recent, the face thinner, the smile wider and the eyes almost frightening for their depth.

There were none of Merry or Pippin, nor of Sam, and Merry didn't have to say that it was because Frodo had taken those with him; Pippin would, of course, know that.

A tied-off bundle of letters sat in the corner at the bottom but again, none from Merry or Pippin were among them; some of them looked to be old correspondence regarding Frodo's official adoption, some possibly love notes from a few hopeful girls if you read between the polite pleasantries, and some from Grandmum Gilly, apparently sent after Frodo's departure from Buckland.

A broken arrow with half the fletching torn away and neither Merry nor Pippin could guess at its significance.  What appeared to be Frodo's first primer, the round, childish script in it faded but still legible.  Drogo and Primula's official declaration of marriage rolled together with their death certificates along with copies of their wills and of the deeds to the lands Frodo had inherited upon their deaths.  An ivory pipe that Merry knew Grand-dad Rory had given to Drogo and that Frodo used to smoke sometimes when he was feeling a little melancholy but mostly kept put away.  A sapphire ring that Merry suspected had belonged to Primula but had no way of knowing.  Stacks of handkerchiefs, now somewhat stiff and yellowed, and Pippin grinned at Merry over that one, chuckled a little and shook his head.

Merry paused when he saw the book -- The Art Of Home Wine Making -- remembered vividly the last time he'd seen it, and shot a quick glance to his cousin, weighing out whether he should casually snatch it up and lay it aside without opening it, or let Pippin find what it held.  In the end, he thought Pippin had a right to see and so Merry just pulled back a little, watched and waited.  He wasn't even sure Pippin would remember it -- he'd been but a lad, after all -- but curiosity gave way to recognition almost instantly and then the tears came, slow and thick.

"I remember this," Pippin whispered.  He stroked the browned petals, careful to keep his touch feather-light.  "I made this for him the day he taught me to shoot."  He looked up at Merry, eyes full of loss and memory.  "You were there," he said and his voice was almost as small and high as the lad he'd been.  "I wove it as we walked and you were trying not to laugh but I could tell you were and then I shot Frodo by accident and--"

"--and he cursed so loud and so long that we fell down laughing," Merry finished.  "Do you remember that?"

Pippin smiled and he nodded.  "And you hugged me and spun me about and that was when I first started to think I might like you after all but I waited to be sure because I thought it might just be that I'd got dizzy and lost my senses."

"Is that so?"  Merry reached out and brushed at Pippin's cheeks with his fingers.  "And when did you finally decide?"

"I haven't yet," Pippin replied and he grinned, dragged his sleeve over his face, sniffed.  His smile dimmed and he looked away.  "You didn't like to share."  His voice quavered a little and he shrugged.  "That's what it was, you know.  You didn't like to share and I was afraid you were going to steal him away from me."

Merry rubbed at his brow, tried not to sigh.  "He never would have stood for that."

"Oh, I know," Pippin told him, his voice so soft it was almost a whisper.  "But I didn't like that you would try it.  But then you did share and with me and so I knew that you had to love me, too, or you'd never.  Of course, I couldn't know then…"

He trailed off, gently closed the book, ran his fingertips over the stiff cover.  Merry didn't ask Pippin what he couldn't know then but that didn't stop Pippin from telling him.

"You always knew."  Finally, Pippin looked up, turned his eyes to Merry's and Merry was the one to look away this time.  "Didn't you?"  Merry didn't answer, only continued to look down, studied the weave of his trousers.  "You broke into a million little pieces when he left but you never seemed surprised," Pippin went on and Merry clenched his teeth and wished he'd just… stop.  "You knew."  A long sigh from Pippin.  "I imagine that might make anyone hold on too tight.  I can't imagine losing love, now that I've found it, now that I know what it is."

Merry closed his eyes tight, told himself that this was important for Pippin, that Merry had dragged Pippin through more painful revelations and memories than these and that he owed it to him to listen, to let Pippin know that he understood, that he was here.  And yet all he could do was sit there with his head bowed, his tongue like a brick in his mouth.

"Merry?"  Pippin's voice was soft in the silence between them. 

Merry swallowed, said, "Hm?" and forced himself to look up.

Pippin only stared at the book in his hand.  "How have you … I mean…"  He shook his head, frowned.  "I don't know how you've managed," he said and he looked at Merry then, eyes kind.

The weight in Merry's chest grew heavier.  He looked away again, cleared his throat, said, "Neither do I," and it was true -- he didn't know; all he knew was that he'd had a choice he hadn't wanted or asked for and the only thing he could do was choose the path Frodo had asked him to.  There was nothing noble about it, nothing sweet or romantic, and Pippin had been wrong when he'd accused Merry of never giving Frodo what he wanted; in fact, he suspected that the only reason he was still here and breathing was because he had given Frodo at least that much.

"I've known Diamond for a year now," Pippin went on, fiddled with the book in his hands.  "And already I honestly can't imagine life without her."

Merry turned his head, pretended to peer into the trunk, closed his eyes and hoped Pippin didn't notice his breathing stutter.  He nodded. 

"You've found something not everyone is lucky enough to find, Pippin."  He pulled a smile to his face, hoped it looked sincere and looked back at Pippin.  "You're very fortunate," he said and was glad his voice was steady.

A slow nod from Pippin.  "I am," he agreed, looked down.  "You and Frodo--"

"I was lucky, too," Merry cut in, made himself busy with straightening out and re-tying the letters, forced a light tone to his voice and changed the subject.  "How about we finish this after a bite?  I'm sure Sam--"

Pippin's hand on his wrist and Merry looked up, his tongue stilled by the expression Pippin wore.

"There wasn't anyone else for you, was there?" 

Merry stared.  He said nothing, only clenched his teeth, tried to control the impulse to snatch his arm back and flee the room.  How could there have been? he wanted to shout.  You can't have someone that deep in your heart, in your soul, and still even think of wanting another.  You can't have everything you've ever wanted and then think of wanting more.  There wasn't more -- there was only him and why are you doing this to me?

Pippin studied him closely, it seemed like forever, while Merry struggled for composure.  Then another slow nod. 

"I think I knew that but… I still wondered sometimes.  Not anymore, though."  He squeezed Merry's arm.  "There was no one else for Frodo, either, you know."

Merry did try to snatch his arm back then and perhaps he meant to leap to his feet, escape, but Pippin wouldn't let go.

"Merry--"

"We should get this done," Merry said, his voice shaky now, hoarse.  Please, I can't do this, not now, not tonight, maybe not ever.  He forced breath into his lungs, trained his gaze steady, and looked again at his cousin, swallowed.  Don't give me pity, I can stand anything else, I think, just don't--

"I didn't always understand," Pippin said.  "I think I do now."

Apology and Merry almost loosed a weary sob; it came out as a sigh.  Well, it seemed this was the night for apologies.  Another time and Merry might have appreciated it; now…

He extracted his wrist from Pippin's grip, gently this time, flicked him a small smile.  "Let's get this done, shall we?"

A clear message and Pippin nodded his acceptance of it this time.  Merry took a deep breath, peered at the contents of the trunk spread out on the rug between them.  He shook his head.  None of it had told them anything except that they both missed him just as much today as they did when he'd disappeared into white light.  He closed his eyes, bowed his head.  He might have known that any peace he'd gained would be temporary.  He did not abide the Unknown and the answers he'd clung to over the past few years had been thin at best.  He was glad Pippin had talked him into the trip to Rivendell, gladder still that his own impatience had hastened its beginning; he didn't like to think about going back to Crickhollow alone, not now, not after all of this.

"Merry," Pippin said quietly and Merry lifted his eyes, got caught in the intensity of Pippin's own.  "I've been thinking -- we're off to Rivendell anyway, yes?  I mean, you're still coming with me, aren't you?"

Stars, he hated it when Pippin did that -- made him wonder if he'd accidentally spoken his thoughts aloud. 

"Yes, of course," was all he said.

Pippin nodded, dragged a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped at his still-damp eyes.  "Good, because I've been thinking: Elladan and Elrohir haven't sailed or anything and from their talk in Minas Tirith, I think they planned on hanging about Rivendell for at least a little while, though a little while to an Elf could well be three of our lifetimes and I doubt very much--"

"Pippin, please," Merry interrupted, not annoyed -- just unable to take the prattle at the moment.

Pippin stopped, shrugged a little.  "I've just been thinking that their mother had a wound very much like what Frodo got from the Witch-king and she ended up having to sail, so…"

Merry was tired and sad and really not in the mood for riddles; he sighed, looked dully at his cousin.  "So…?"

"So, perhaps you could talk to one or both of them, find out what's done over there and all.  Maybe they know more about it all than we think and we're worrying for nothing.  I mean, it's possible that they knew very well what they were doing, isn't it?  It's possible that they knew even more than we did, right?"

Anything was possible, Merry supposed.  And he was really just too tired and wrung-out to ponder any of it at the moment.  So, he smiled a little, nodded his agreement and kept everything else to himself.  He'd already put Pippin through too much; there was no reason in the world to further burden him with Merry's own growing fear that he'd been right all along -- that Frodo'd had no idea what he was doing at the end.  And they'd all just stood there and watched him do it.

* * *

PART TWO

* * *

"Are you sure this was where it was?"

Merry pursed his lips, looked at Pippin, blinked slowly; Pippin sighed his concession.  Merry was sure.  So was Pippin, probably, but he would have to ask.  Normally it would make Merry smile or growl in frustration but now it only made him sigh.

He peered again into the foliage, turned back to the Ford, scanned the ground between.  It had only been five years -- there really shouldn't have been such thick undergrowth.

"Well," Merry offered, peered up at the Sun and then down again through the tree-brake.  "It is supposed to be hidden and all; perhaps we're meant to wait for a guide."

Pippin frowned at him.  "What do you mean, 'hidden'?"

"I mean hidden, Pippin -- the opposite of obvious," was Merry's terse reply.  "It's meant to be a haven, yes?  You're not supposed to be able to find it unless they want you to."  He stopped, turned a sharp look on his cousin.  "You did send a message that we're coming, didn't you?"

"Er…"   Pippin cringed a little then caught Merry's impatient scowl and turned defensive.  "Well, I sent one back in Afteryule."

"And it said…?"

Pippin looked away.  "That we'd be here in early-Rethe."

Merry was rather proud of himself for not exploding.  "It's still Solmath," he pointed out.

"Well, I know that, don't I?  And anyway, you're the one who insisted on starting out early and you wouldn't wait, would you, and I can't be blamed that you rushed me and I didn't think ahead."

"You didn't think at all.  We could have sent a message from Bree." 

"You rushed me there, too!"

Merry scrubbed a hand across his face, blew out a long breath.  "Did they say anything in their response about how a person's supposed to find his way in?"

A shrug and a truculent glance.  "There was no response," Pippin muttered.

"No re--"  Merry's fist clenched on the reins.  "Then how do you even know they got your message?"

"Well, I don't, do I?  How am I supposed to know how it works?  It isn't like there's a mail-slot on the door or anything, is there?  And it isn't like we had trouble finding it from the Bridge before."

"We had a guide then, didn't we?" Merry snapped.

Pippin stared at him for a good long moment, an angry rebuke right on the tip of his tongue; it never came.  Instead, he drew in a deep breath, dismounted and began leading his horse down the bank to the Ford for a drink.

"You know, you're not the only one having a difficult time with this," he said over his shoulder.

Merry watched him go, sighed, squinted up into the sun again then bowed his head.  His horse gave a bit of a tug at the bit and Merry absently scrubbed his fingers through the rough mane.  Well, bugger it all and sod it, too.  He swung down from the saddle, clucked at the horse and followed after Pippin.

"You're right," he said when he'd reached his side.  "I'm sorry.  It isn't the jolly time we'd had in mind, is it?"

Pippin didn't answer, only shucked his pack, let it fall to the ground and then sat on it.  He watched the water, moving swift and clear and catching orange fire from the low-sitting Sun.

It had been fine until they'd got to the Bridge.  And then… and then it wasn't fine anymore.  It wasn't anything they'd said, it wasn't any specific memory, it wasn't a sight or scent or sound that brought things rushing back at them; just one moment they were riding along in companionable silence and the next, as though each feeding off the other's mood, they'd sunk into melancholy.  The few words exchanged since then were snappish or brooding and now, here they were, beside the Ford, brooding some more.

"It isn't so bad," Merry said quietly, squatted down beside Pippin and with his free hand, picked up a small stone from the strand, tossed it into the water.  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.  "It's flat enough up there that we can make camp if we have to.  And plenty of dry brush and kindling for a fire.  If nothing else, someone will probably see the smoke and send out a scout."  He shrugged, smiled a little, nudged Pippin with his elbow.  "The worst that can happen is that they don't recognise us and take us captive and you'll be forced to engineer a daring escape, complete with barrels."

Pippin rolled his eyes, shook his head.  "I'm not in the mood," he said, continued his study of dying sunlight on water.

Merry's smile slipped away.  He stared at his cousin, considered his options and decided the best was to let him come to it in his own time.  He wasn't really in the mood, either. 

He stood, led his horse back up the bank and relieved him of the saddlebags.  Next came the bedroll but before he'd made to loose the thongs that secured it to the saddle, Pippin was behind him.

"What do you remember?" he wanted to know and his voice was soft.

Merry's hands stopped their reach for only a quick second or two then he forced them into motion again,  "Everything," was his terse reply.  The blasted thing was knotted; he leaned in, picked at the tight-wrapped leather.

The water seemed over-loud and yet he could hear Pippin breathing behind him.  He picked some more, muttered a quiet oath.

"You were very fierce," Pippin furthered quietly.

Merry stopped again, closed his eyes briefly.  "I had to be," was all he said.

He didn't want to talk about this.  He didn't want to talk about anything.  He wanted to get this bloody bedroll detached from this bloody tack and start a bloody fire so he could bloody well lie down and wait for some stray elf to find them and he wanted to not think about any of it.

Long silence but for a string of colourful curses from Merry while he worked at the knot then: "Did you mean what you said to Sam?"

Merry dropped his head to the saddle, sighed.  Slowly, he turned to Pippin, finally acknowledging the dull aching weariness that had slipped into his heart while he wasn't looking.

"Probably," he answered and even he could hear the tired edge in his tone.  "Which thing in particular are you referring to?"

Pippin looked down.  "When you said you couldn't have done what he'd done."  He shrugged, flicked a glance at Merry then slid it quickly away again.  "Do you really think that?"

Merry ran a hand through his hair, crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back into the sturdy haunch of his horse.  "Yes," he answered steadily.  "I really do."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, 'why'?  Because I couldn't have done it, that's why."

Pippin looked up then, ran him through with a narrow gaze.  "No, I mean why?"

Merry found his teeth gritting and he wilfully forced himself calm.  "Why what?  What do you want me to say?  Because I loved him too much and held on too tight, all right?  Is that what you wanted to hear?"  He levelled a surly glare at his cousin.

Pippin looked back, shook his head.  "No, Merry, I'm not trying to beat some sort of confession out of you; I really want to know."

Of course Pippin really wanted to know because Pippin was Pippin and Pippin watched him and Pippin worried about him and Merry had brought it all on himself and soon enough Pippin would be married and unable to watch and he'd worry even more and none of it, none of it made the blood in Merry's temples pound any less harshly.

"Well, I really don't think I want to talk about this, if you don't mind.  I rushed you to Hobbiton and I rushed you to Bree and I'm all set to go off the deep-end again -- there, I've admitted it, I'll write it down for you if you'd like, sign it in blood, so that you can have proof that you told me so after I've mucked it all up once again."

Merry turned back to the knots, cursed again when they remained just as stubborn.

He didn't need this, not now.  He'd heard it all before and he'd let people talk him out of things he'd known and it had been for his own good and he knew that and he knew that this trip was supposed to be full of laughs and reacquainting and he was mucking that up too and none of it--

"I think I'd have taken It," Pippin said low behind him.

Merry stopped, spun about, narrowed his eyes.  "What?"

Pippin was still looking at the ground.  "I think I'd have tried to take It from him."  A frown, a small shrug.  "Not an altogether pleasant thought, I'm sure you can guess, but there it is.  If I'd known what It was doing to him and if I'd seen the things Sam saw…"  He paused, lifted his gaze back to the water.  "I wouldn't have been able to stand it.  I think I'd have taken It from him and then…  Well."

Merry slumped against the barrel of his horse, rubbed at his temple.  "Pippin--"

"You were right, you know -- there had to have been so much more that he didn't write down.  For him to even make mention of something enough to brush it off as nothing should tell anyone who knows him that it had to have been a horrible thing indeed.  And I think the thing that bothers me the most is how very little he wrote down about how difficult it was once they got into Mordor.  He makes passing comments about how heavy It was and how he couldn't see anything but It towards the end but you know it had to have been bad for him to have said anything at all."

Merry looked away, sighed.  "Why do you want to do this now?" he asked dully.

Pippin was quiet for a moment before he answered, "Because I did see some of it, even before Weathertop."  He turned to Merry and his eyes were sad.  "And I saw it even more after and still I stood back.  And I never once tried to convince him not to go on."

"You couldn't have," Merry told him.  "You know that as well as I do.  If anyone tried to stop him, he'd have just run off, wouldn't he?  You know that."

"Yes, but what about after we got home?  Where was he going to run to then?  I didn't understand what I'd read in the notes until Gandalf's message; I had no idea sailing was even a possibility.  And I still stepped back, didn't I?"

"You saw how he pushed me away and didn't want it to happen to you.  And I have been blessing your good sense for years."

"Sense?"  Pippin shook his head, clenched his teeth.  "Fear," he grated.  "And what do you think that makes of me?  I am quite sure -- sure, mind you -- that I would have attacked my cousin and taken him and the world down with me, forced my 'help' upon him when it was the very last thing he needed, and yet when he did need someone--"

"Stop, Pippin, just…"  Merry dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, took several deep breaths.  "It makes you fallible, it makes you normal, all right?"  He dropped his hands.  "And what was normal about any of it?  How were you supposed to know?  How were any of us supposed to know?"

Pippin studied Merry closely for a moment.  "You knew," he answered.

Merry gave a slight nod.  "Some of it," he agreed.  "But not all of it, not by halves, and he pushed me away so I couldn't know, didn't he?  I still don't know because he didn't trust me and he didn't trust you and I don't even think he trusted Sam, not since he woke up and realised he was alive and maybe not even before that.  Sam told me once that It took away his trust and I think that was burnt out of him for good, along with too many other things.  And how do you get someone to talk to you, to tell you how to help them, if they can’t trust you?  How do you win back trust when that person can't even remember having trusted you once to begin with?"

Pippin's chin quivered.  "You really think that?"

"I know that," Merry replied then turned back again, attacked the knots a third time.  "And since we're playing true confessions: I would have tied him down if I had to and hauled him to Minas Tirith; I'd actually even thought about it half-seriously before the Orcs got us, how do you like that?  And then he pushed me and I went, so tell me, cousin-mine: what does that make of me?"

It seemed Pippin had nothing to say to that; he was still for several minutes before Merry heard light footsteps retreating back down the bank.  It had been a long time since Merry had been made to feel guilty after just about every conversation he had with his cousin; he decided he didn't like it any more now than back when he'd had daily cause for that guilt.  He closed his eyes tight, took a long swallow of clean late-winter air then redoubled his efforts on the knot, contemplated just leaning up and having at it with his teeth, gnawing right through it and maybe even growling and snarling and snapping as he did--

"It has been long," said a melodious voice to his left, "since I have been pressed into service as hobbit search-party."

Merry jumped, turned towards the voice, even managed a weary smile when he saw who it was.  He tipped his head.

"Hullo, Glorfindel.  How are you at getting out knots?"

* * *

No Elrohir; no Elladan.  They had not, as yet, even returned from Minas Tirith.  It seemed Pippin was right in his assumption that 'a little while' had entirely different meaning to an elf than a hobbit.  And so there were no answers from that quarter and the literature Pippin managed to dig up on Celebrian and her wounding and grief told them little they didn't already know or could assume through their knowledge of Frodo's own struggles.  Glorfindel spent a draining afternoon with Merry and Pippin, winding his way through explanation and conjecture, and trying to be reassuring, but Merry could tell that he himself, while ancient and the keeper of knowledge unsounded in its depth, didn't really know.  His most convincing theory -- that at least Elrond must have had what knowledge he needed to be assured that she would be healed; he loved his wife deeply, Glorfindel told them, and would have accompanied her West, had he not been convinced -- went a little way towards smoothing the jagged fringe of panic Merry had only just begun acknowledging.  But it didn't quell it entirely.

It was different, acknowledging something with your head and letting it sink into your heart.  And adjusting himself from pushing things away, burying them deep, to opening himself to them, allowing himself to see, was unnerving and more than a little depressing.  He fit back into it all a little too easily and he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding it from Pippin.

The worst, he supposed, was the uselessness of it all, his own helplessness.  Sam was right: even if he somehow did confirm his growing fears, it wasn't as though he could actually do anything about them.  Frodo was gone and gone for good and anything Merry wished he might have said or done before he'd left was wish and only wish and the only purpose new knowledge might serve was to add to those regrets he'd already come to terms with, rip the scabs of them open afresh.  He had told Pippin he was ready to go off the deep-end again and he'd said it out of anger but that didn't make it any less true.

It was having its effect on Pippin as well.

Glorfindel had assigned himself the task of research assistant to the two of them and he spent a great deal of time hunting down materials he thought would help them.  Apparently, the Captain of the Host of Rivendell no longer had much to do, since there was very little to defend against these days.  Assistant To Curious Hobbits didn't necessarily suit him entirely but he seemed happy to do it and he was a wonderful source of information and quite an entertaining storyteller.  Merry was pleased to see he and Pippin getting on so well.  Not just because it made it all more pleasant and took the pressure of keeping it more pleasant off of Merry himself, but because it helped to drag him out from within himself, keep himself focused on the task at-hand.

And so it happened that one grey afternoon, one week into their stay in Rivendell, Glorfindel and Pippin fell into a discussion of past Stewards and their differing opinions of what the title meant.  Pippin related those things he and Frodo had found in the records the King had opened to them while they still remained in Gondor, talked about how Frodo had found it interesting and ironic that the War had really begun during the rule of Denethor I and ended with the death of Denethor II.  Merry watched the conversation go from lively and animated to stilted and uncomfortable as Pippin steadily withdrew, his thoughts apparently moving inward with each 'Frodo said…' or 'I told Frodo that…' and Merry realised that those times he remembered Frodo and Pippin disappearing together for long afternoons to dig through the old records had meant more to Pippin than Merry had had reason to contemplate before. 

Pippin remained subdued and thoughtful for days afterward.  He begged off their usual routine -- library, snack, library, lunch, library, tea, library, supper, garden, bed -- and opted instead to spend his time wandering about alone or standing over the cleft in the valley and contemplating the great waterfall.  Merry reluctantly left him to it since the few times he tried to coax conversation from him, Pippin had looked at him vaguely, his thoughts obviously elsewhere, and asked him, "What was the question again?"  It was a change from the quick-but-almost-always-dead-on assessments he had come to know and expect from his quicksilver cousin and it gave Merry a bit of a turn.  But Pippin would not be coaxed and Merry was forced to concede defeat, though he would only make that concession on a temporary basis; he fully intended to draw Pippin out as soon as he figured out how.

And so, since he'd exhausted all of the resources that might give him the information he really wanted, Merry threw himself into the research, set his teeth against his own worries and got lost in those of others.  He had intended to stick to those histories that had a direct connection to Rohan and leave those having to do with Gondor to Pippin but they were so intertwined that separating them was impossible.  He discovered that the men of Rohan shared direct lineage with those of Gondor, that some of them descended from the Old Kings of the North Kingdom, and wondered if perhaps that explained his own instant attachment to Théoden and Théoden's to him.  Merry had thought Théoden somewhat alike to Arveleg and perhaps now he knew why.  Who knew?  If he dug deep enough, he might even unearth a blood-connection.

"I should apologise for upsetting your kinsman," Glorfindel said, pushing a large, untitled volume across to Merry with one hand and offering a glass of chilled tea with lemon with the other, a question in his eyes.

Merry pulled the volume towards him, shook his head and smiled his thanks for the offer of the tea; they liked their tea weak and sweet here and when it was chilled, it made his teeth hurt.  "Apologise?"

A small shrug from Glorfindel as he sipped at the tea himself.  "His father is a steward himself, is he not?  And Peregrin will inherit the title, or so I would assume.  I should not have presumed to debate."

Merry gave a shrug of his own and a small smile.  "I'm sure it wasn't anything you said," he told Glorfindel.  He flipped open the book, paged a little; ah, good -- Glorfindel had guessed well again and brought him a text that spoke on the Dwarves.  The Rohirrim had a long and not entirely pleasant history with them and Merry had just been wondering if he should delve into it and see if there was anything worth spending time on.  "We've both been… a bit off."  He shrugged again, flipped some more, frowned a little.  It looked like someone's notes.  There were things crossed-out and footnotes squashed into the already-crowded margins.  He cleared his throat, continued, "Some questions have come up and…"  Another shrug.  "I suppose if it's anyone's fault it would be mine, so please don't--"

Stopped.  Stared.

He would say no more that day.  But later we brought the matter up again and he told us the whole strange story; how he came to arrange the journey to Erebor, why he thought of Bilbo…

His chest felt tight.  He swallowed, flicked a glance towards Glorfindel then turned his gaze back to the book, flipped back and forth, seeing the pages with new eyes.  There were three versions of the story, each more condensed and economical than the last, even the title changing from one draft to the next.  History and imagery and motivation detailed in the first; concise, almost dry relation of the course of events in the last.

"All right, yes, quite changed.  Shortened.  Less…  Less him, though that's not entirely right."

A small curl at the tail of the 'g'; the slash across the top of the 't' slanted upwards; the 'r' looking almost like a stunted 'y'.

He flipped forward, scanned the pages, then back again.  He looked up at Glorfindel, mind whirling, head light.  Colours started to spangle and pop at the fray of his vision and he blinked.

"These… did you…?"  He had no idea what he wanted to say or ask, only that every sense was abruptly overwhelmed, reeling.

Glorfindel only peered at him soberly, countenance calm.  A small nod and Merry knew that there had not been anything casual about the apparent-casualness of Glorfindel's presentation of this particular book; he'd wanted Merry to see this.

'I was very troubled at that time,' he said, 'for Saruman was hindering all my plans.'

He remembered this story, remembered the telling of it and Frodo sitting right next to him, ankle propped on his knee, a writing-desk stretched across and pen in-hand.  Could almost hear the scritch of pen over paper beneath the rumbling voice of Gandalf as he told the tale, could feel Frodo's arm pressed against his own and the minute pause and shift every time he dipped into the inkwell, could smell the unfamiliar scent of the ink, and he remembered absently wondering what the ink in Gondor was made of that it would have such a different smell to it.

"How?" was all Merry seemed able to force out.

"There were notes," Glorfindel replied.  "Bilbo was a collector and a lover of the written word; it seems he rarely let go of anything that he thought might be useful."

That brought a small, wondering smile to Merry's face.  "A packrat," he breathed.

Glorfindel's smile was broader.  "He was quite prolific in his own writings.  We found volumes upon volumes in his rooms after he left and have since catalogued them and added them to the library."  He paused, turned a direct, sober gaze upon Merry.  "Not all were his own writings."

Days and weeks spent holed-up in Bilbo's rooms and Merry remembered thinking that perhaps Frodo was avoiding him, but he'd let it go, even condoned it, for he'd hoped there might be some sliver of hope for Frodo within Bilbo's meanderings.  Remembered peeking through the crack of the door slightly ajar more often than he should have done, watching Frodo watch Bilbo, and sometimes Frodo would be reading aloud to a dozing Bilbo and sometimes Frodo would just be sitting there, looking at him.  And sometimes he would be writing…

Merry felt his jaw quiver, clenched it, and a burning began beneath his brow.  He opened his mouth, tried to speak and failed, swallowed, tried again.

"Frodo?"

A nod.  "Not all were added to the library," Glorfindel said gently.  "Some were…"  A pause and a softening of his glance.  "Some were of a more personal nature."

Merry closed his eyes, tried to push away the hope that flared bright and hot in his chest, damped it with the fear that swelled right along with it.  He opened his eyes, turned them to Glorfindel and didn't even try to hide whatever it was that might be careening within them.

"Will you…?"  He didn't finish, just let the half-formed question hang between them.

Glorfindel gave him a small, warm smile.  Nodded again.

* * *

He would no longer fool himself that he didn't really want to know, would no longer invest thought and emotion into denial.  He would not even deny that it all might prove his undoing; he realised now and admitted to himself with brutal honesty that it would never be over for him, that he would never stop wanting to know everything and he no longer cared what the knowing might do to him.  He now understood that he had been heading towards this point since he'd first realised that there was something wrong with the Book -- perhaps even before then -- and Fate or Destiny or whatever it was that had put him in this place at this time would see the end of it, even if he somehow didn't.  Pippin was wrong: 'The End' had not yet been written, at least not for Merry's own part of the tale.

He knew when Glorfindel handed him the thick folio that he was accepting not only Frodo's hidden thoughts but the responsibility of learning them, acknowledging their truths, however painful they might be to know.  Someone should know, someone should care and it only seemed fitting that the someone should be the one who loved him most and best.

He found Pippin on the porch outside the kitchens, charming the small gathering of elves there with assurances that the food in Rivendell surpassed even the King's own table and he should know.  Merry made polite excuses for both of them, hauled a bewildered Pippin to his feet and made a quick exit, Pippin trying to draw back a little but Merry not allowing it.  He gripped Pippin's arm firmly, tugged him along the path from the kitchens to their rooms, the folio clutched under his free arm.

"This is it, Pippin, I know it is, I can feel it!"

"What's it?" Pippin wanted to know, twisted himself from Merry's grip but continued to trot along the path beside him.  "What are you talking about?"

Merry held up the folio.  "Notes, Pip!  Notes written by Frodo, can you believe the luck?"  And bugger all if he wasn't grinning like a loon, despite all of the back-and-forth he'd done over it all.  "Glorfindel gave them to me.  Apparently, they were left in Bilbo's rooms, mixed about with his own things…"

He paused.  Pippin had slowed then stopped and Merry turned, frowned.  "Pippin?"

Pippin wasn't looking at him, instead blankly gazing off to his left.  Merry took the few paces back to him, touched his arm.

"It isn't like at Sam's," Merry told him softly.  "These are real and he wrote them -- I've seen some of it already and there's pages of it."  He held up the folio again, so thick that he only just managed it with a one-handed grip.  "There has to be something in here that can give us answers."

Pippin pulled his eyes from their study of nothing, turned them to the folio and then to Merry.  A small, strained smile and a slow nod.

"Right, of course," was all he said.

Merry's frown deepened.  He tilted his head, unsure, but when Pippin only began walking again, Merry kept quiet and followed him to their rooms.

He'd already been busy setting up.  He'd lit two lamps and begged four more, just so that if they burned them into the night, they wouldn't have to stop to go hunt down more.  He'd also managed to procure a tea tray and some finger-foods to have about so that they wouldn't have to leave the room for supper, and the tea sat steeping now on the table between the two comfortable chairs arranged before the fire.

Pippin didn't comment, only shucked his coat and tossed it onto the couch then made his way over to one of the chairs and sat, waiting.  He made himself busy with undoing his cufflinks and storing them in his waistcoat pocket before rolling up his sleeves, while Merry eyed him with confused unease.  He'd expected Pippin to be as excited as he was over it all, to at least seem interested; this distant cool composure threw Merry but good and not the least of which because it reminded him too much of Frodo.

He decided it would have to keep.  He'd been searching for this boon before he'd even realised he was searching for anything and it was now in his hands, in his very grasp.  And even if it was just a collection of drafts of stories on Dwarves, it would tell him something he didn't know right this minute.  Frodo was very good at hiding things but he wasn't that good; there would be hints in there at least and now that Merry knew what he was looking for, he was confident he could find them.  What he would do with them was another matter entirely but he'd think about that when he got there.

He took off his own coat, unbuttoned his waistcoat as he made his way over to the other chair.  Neither said a word as Merry slowly opened the folio -- careful not to even glance at the words on the top page -- and handed the bottom half of the loose papers over to Pippin.  Pippin's hand shook a little as Merry handed the pile to him but that was understandable; Merry's own hands hadn't stopped shaking since he'd realised what he held in the library.

Pippin was wordless as he bent his head and began to read.  Merry studied him for a moment longer before turning his eyes to his own half of the notes and doing the same.

I have been wondering just lately if things might have been different; if a chance turn of events could have altered my course even slightly, shifted it into a… different outcome.

Sam told Bilbo today of catching Sméagol 'pawing' over me whilst I slept upon the Stair.  No, that isn't right; he told me, I suppose, because Bilbo was dozing and heard little of it.  Yet I think perhaps there was a measure of safety in pretending he was telling Bilbo, for I am uncertain now whether Sam truly saw what he believed he saw then and has convinced himself that he believes now.  I think Sam saw something very different, for I see it myself with an inner-clarity that I have learnt not to question.

And it has caused me to wonder if it was meant to happen, as Gandalf and Aragorn would tell me if I asked them, or if it was an opportunity lost.  Was Sméagol on the edge of repentance, as seems to me so clear now?  And if so, had it not been interrupted, and Cirith Ungol never happened at all, would I have had that last bit of strength at the end?

Could I have…?

It's no good, pondering it all now.  It happened as it happened and if it was meant to happen as it did, then I was meant to fail at the last.  I suppose I could call it all terribly unfair, but I can't seem to summon the anger one would need to cast blame.

I do, however, wonder how it should be recorded, if at all.  If I write the truth behind my eyes, surely it's a betrayal to Sam?  After all he's done, after all I've done to him, laying that sort of blame on ignorant shoulders seems cruel.  Though, if I put it down as he spoke it, it makes of Sméagol a creature who deserved his fate.  I don't know that I have the heart for that; not when I know his fate should have been my own.

"I knew it," Merry breathed, half-chuffed because he had known it and here it was, in Frodo's own hand, and half-crushed because… because…  "I let him get away with it.  I knew it and still…"

He closed his mouth tight, took a deep breath, peered over at Pippin; Pippin might not have even heard.  He was staring into the fire, his gaze sunk deep within himself, pages clutched to his chest.  He turned slowly to Merry, looked through him.

"I'm taking these to bed with me," he said quietly then got up and quit the room before Merry even had a chance to respond.

Merry just watched him go, mute.  He couldn't even make himself move from the chair until Pippin shut the door to his room and Merry heard the very distinct 'snick' of a latch being thrown.  He hadn't even realised the doors around here had locks.  He shook his head, roused himself, crossed the room swiftly and knocked on the door.

"Pip--"

"It's all right," Pippin called from the other side.  "I just…"  A pause and a 'thump' on the door as what Merry suspected to be Pippin's head dropped against it.  "I need to be alone, Merry.  I'm sorry.  Can you understand?"

He'd gone and done something, of course, and true to form, had no idea what it might have been.  Perhaps his snappishness on the way here, plus his single-minded ploughing through the library and sudden enthusiasm over the notes had simply built up until Pippin just couldn't take it anymore.  He had, after all, fit too easily into the skin he'd shed years ago and had again become someone who he knew from experience was not at all a pleasant person to have about.

"Pippin, I'm sorry."  A phrase at which he was all too practiced.  "Whatever I've done to upset you, I didn't mean to, and I'm sorry, all right?"  He pressed his own brow to the smooth wood of the door.  "I lost my head, is all, got too excited and I'll--"

"Don't!" from the other side of the door and then the handle jiggled, turned and Pippin's fiery glance was filling up Merry's vision.  "Don't do that!" Pippin snapped at him.  "Don't just assume that whatever it is it's entirely your fault and start kicking yourself across the room because of it, all right?  You've been proved right how many times just over the past couple of weeks, so why are you still assuming that you're the one who's got it wrong?"

Merry blinked, opened his mouth, waited for something to come out of it but it stubbornly remained flapping and uncooperative.  Pippin rolled his eyes, reached over, grabbed a fistful of Merry's hair then pulled him in and roughly kissed his brow.

"It's not to do with you," he told Merry, eyes intent and sombre.  "It's me -- I need some time to think, all right?"

"Well… of course, but…"  Merry frowned, shrugged.  "Pip, you can talk to me, you know.  I know I'm not the best listener sometimes but I do mean well and I could--"

"There you go again," Pippin cut in.  He shook his head in troubled wonder, sighed.  "You really have no idea how amazing you are, do you?  You would think that being loved so much by someone you think so highly of would maybe make your head double in size but you always have been rather contrary."

Merry flushed a little, snorted, looked down.  "Well, Frodo never did know what was best for him."

"I was talking about me," Pippin told him with a smirk then punched him on the arm, shoved him away.  "It's fine, Merry, I promise.  Just do this for me, all right?"

Merry studied his cousin, knew that Pippin wouldn't lie to him and certainly deserved his trust.  He nodded.

"All right," he said, though he still didn't much like it.  "I'll see you in the morning, then."

Pippin gave him a tired smile, nodded back and closed the door.  Merry pretended that the 'snick' of the latch didn't bother him in the least.  He paced back to his chair, sank slowly into it, wicked up the lamp and went back to reading.

* * *

He didn't sleep at all but for a bit of dozing now and then in the chair.  The evening wore into night and then began its steady ascent into dawn and Merry noticed none of it for the most part but for a vague acknowledgement that time was indeed still moving.  With the exception of pauses to refill his tea and picking at the plate of food, he'd barely let his eyes wander from the pages.

Some of it was indeed simply historical notes and try as he might, Merry found no hidden meanings within them.  Some of it was flat-out confession and those were the worst, watching Frodo spiral down into self-blame for things beyond his control, and there was some anger there on Merry's part, helpless frustration that Frodo could even think he held responsibility for some things.

I've not had the courage to ask much about the ordeals my cousins suffered at the hands of the Orcs.  Pippin offered to write down what he remembered for me and I barely kept myself from weeping -- whether in gratitude or shame, I won't ponder.

It was bad, I know, but then I would, wouldn't I?  I think Pippin wants to talk about it but he's kind to me and doesn't.  Merry won't talk about it -- won't talk about too many things, in fact -- and that more than anything else tells me that it's probably worse than I'm imagining.  I should be there for him, should be offering a shoulder, pulling confessions from him as he's done so many times for me, lancing the wound, and I'm not strong enough.  Double-cowardice, for it's not only my responsibility as elder cousin, but as the one who brought them both to it.  Had I been stronger…  So many times I might have sent them away and… couldn't.

I look at them both now, so changed, so beautiful in their cloaked ferocity, yet I can't help but mourn the loss of the lads they were while still celebrating their warrior hearts.  Perhaps it's only a matter of time now before they see me for what I truly am.  I'm not sure yet if that's something I will mourn or celebrate.  Perhaps both.

They will see, of that I've no doubt, for I've not the strength to pretend to much effect and they have both always seen more than perhaps I'd want them to.  And when they do… perhaps I'll know for sure if what Galadriel proposed had truth.

If they draw away in revulsion, I'll know It's truly gone.  If not…

Too much in that particular passage that needed further explanation, too much that made him by turns clench his teeth in helpless rage and blink away prickling heat behind his eyes.  Too much and he couldn't decide which direction to begin flailing in first.

Another thing he'd been right about: Frodo thought he was poison to those he loved and why would he think something like that?  Had it been one of Its tricks?  A way to further distance him from those who would try to stunt Its influence?  Or was it a trick of Galadriel herself?

He remembered very well the quarrel in the woods of Lothlórien, remembered feeling the need coming from Frodo's skin as though in waves over Merry's own, remembered the abrupt withdrawal, the brutal pushing away…  And he remembered all of it playing out in a cluttered corner of his mind that night in Frodo's study as he tried to make sense of how everything had careened out of control so quickly.

"What did the Lady offer you in Lothlórien?"

He still didn't understand the question, still had no idea why Frodo had pulled it seemingly out of thin air and then, of all times.  Still had no idea what any of it might have had to do with what had been happening there and in that moment.

A desperate attempt to expose himself as a would-be murderer and so give Merry leave to walk away, and he'd seemed so surprised when Merry hadn't; seemed, in fact, terrified of the very idea that Merry would want to know and understand.  Would want to stay. 

And what could the Ring possibly have had to do with anyone's motivations then?  It had been gone for months when Frodo wrote this; did he think otherwise?  Did It still haunt him as Pippin had wondered once?  That Frodo had lamented Its destruction Merry was aware and even had he not been, that last chapter of the book would have informed him without doubt.  And Merry could understand how Frodo might think to punish himself for that lament.  But this seemed to indicate that he didn't think It truly gone, or at least Its influence.  This seemed to portend that Frodo had been waiting for something, some sign or action or word that would tell him that It might still be with him.  That It and Its influence might not truly be dead.

It was too much to hope for plain, clear explanations; Frodo was too good at presenting puzzles and horrible at providing the necessary pieces to solve them.  Even when he thought the things he wrote would never be seen by any but himself, he was careful and reserved in what he committed to paper.  Then again, considering that Merry was right now in the process of reading those things Frodo very obviously wouldn't have wanted him to, he supposed there was good reason for that reserve.

He finished his half of the notes just as the Sun began to bloom into wavering prisms through the mist of the falls.  There was no movement from Pippin's direction yet, so Merry got up, stretched, went into his own room and splashed his face with cold water.  He suffered through a quick wash and then pulled on fresh clothes.

Breakfast was the thing now and some fresh tea, though he would almost kill for a cup of coffee, if anyone wanted to know.  Elves were apparently too… something for coffee.  And pipeweed but at least he'd thought to bring that with him.

Convincing himself that he at least looked presentable if not terribly good, he left the rooms and headed to the kitchens to try Pippin's trick of charming a tray out whomever might be hovering about.  Elves did tend to hover rather frequently.  It turned out charm was entirely unnecessary, which was a good thing because Merry realised he was exhausted and quite distracted and probably less charming than a troll at the moment.  He waited quietly while the tray was prepared for him, smiled and demurred as nicely as he could when an ebony-tressed elf offered to bring it to the rooms for him.  He was glad when he returned to realise he'd left the door ajar; the tray was large and heavy and he needed both hands to manage it.

He kicked the door open, manoeuvred himself through it.  Ah, good, Pippin's door was open and Merry could hear the soft sounds of movement through it.  Merry wouldn't have to wait for long to get the other half of the notes and maybe Pippin would want to tell him what was bothering him as well.  He laid the tray down on the couch -- he'd neglected to clear the one from last night from the table and it was too small for both -- paused a moment to make sure its perch was secure.

"Pippin!"  Merry made his way to Pippin's door.  Stopped.  Frowned.  "What are you doing?"

Pippin looked up from his packing, gave Merry an apologetic shrug then turned quickly back to his task.  "I'm going," was all he said then shoved the last odds and ends into his pack, fastened it.

Merry tried to speak, failed, leaned against the doorframe.  Managed to finally force out, "What?" and felt his frown deepen.

Pippin straightened, peered about the room.  "You've two weeks before you have to start back or you'll miss the wedding," and his tone was brisk.  His eyes lit upon a pair of cufflinks on the table near the window and he paced across the room to retrieve them.  "I will warn you now that missing the wedding is not an option."  He looked at Merry then with a bit of threat in his glance as he re-crossed the room and stowed the cufflinks in his pack.  "I expect to see you in Tuckborough before 5 Astron and I expect you to throw me a spectacular lads party very shortly after, so if there are any arrangements you can make through the Post, I'll be happy to take those along with me."

Merry had yet to catch up with it all -- he was still stuck on, 'I'm going'.

"Pippin…"  Merry rubbed at his eyes, tried to think clearly.  "Pippin, what are you doing?"

Pippin re-fastened his pack, pushed it aside and now Merry saw the stack of parchment that the pack had previously blocked from sight.  Pippin sat on the bed, looked at Merry.  "The only thing I can," he answered.

The notes.  Pippin had started behaving oddly days ago but he hadn't seemed really odd until the notes turned up.  And if the ones Pippin had were anything like the ones Merry had read…

Merry shook his head.  "I don't understand.  You wanted this trip -- it was your idea!  And you said the answers mattered, you said--"

"And they do," Pippin told him quietly, still gentle but serious, too.  "More than I'd imagined and I understand now that I owe this to you."

"Owe me what?"

Pippin picked up the papers, placed them carefully on his lap, caressed them softly with his thumbs.  "I almost took some of them and hid them in my pack, you know," he said and he wouldn't look at Merry.  "But that wouldn't be right and it wouldn't be my right besides."  He paused, lifted his eyes and there was pain within them.  "Did you ever wonder what happened to all those letters Frodo sent to you his last year here?" 

Merry didn't answer but his frown deepened yet further.  He hadn't wondered, in truth; he'd never opened a single one of them but he'd kept them, every one, in the bottom desk drawer in his room.  Had he ever even opened that drawer in the years since?  He was fairly certain he hadn't but then he wouldn't have, would he?

"I took them," Pippin said, low and in the tone of one admitting to having tupped another's wife.  "I didn't open them but I took them.  And I let you do what you did over that last year for as long as I could stand it because I knew it was the only way you would let Frodo be; you wouldn't have stood for it if you'd seen what I saw and you would have seen it if you hadn't been…"

He trailed off, lowered his eyes.

"I believe the word you're looking for is 'drunk'," Merry said quietly then narrowed his eyes a little.  "And what exactly did you see?"

Pippin ignored the question, merely picked up where he'd left off.  "I gave him what he wanted, I let him hide inside himself because you're right -- how could I possibly know what he needed?  And if I didn't know what he needed, how could I not give him what he wanted?"  A slow shake of his head and Pippin's hands rolled into fists.  "And I made you read the book because I thought it would force you to put it all away for good and all.  It didn't seem right that I was getting married and you were still stuck in mourning and I…"  He paused, clenched his teeth and blinked several times.  "I just wanted you to be happy."  His tone was fierce now and raw and he took a breath, closed his eyes briefly before he trained a level gaze on his cousin.  "I wanted you both to be happy and to have what peace you could and…  I did my very best by Frodo and by you but I could only act on the knowledge I had, do you understand?"

Merry shook his head slowly.  "No," he answered.  "I don't understand any of this."

"You will," Pippin told him and slipped his gaze away again.  "And you need to come to it on your own.  I'm sorry.  I can't do this with you anymore, Merry; I can't go to these places with you again.  It's not mine to make this journey with you, not when I've my own to start soon and it's yours to do alone anyway.  I've no place in this."

"You've a place wherever you want it," Merry argued.  "You know that, Pippin.  He's your cousin as well and you love him just as much as I do; you have just as much right--"

"Not to this," Pippin cut in, peered up at Merry.  "You know it's different, Merry, it's been different all along.  And it's only very recently I've come to understand that.  I don't know if what I have with Diamond compares to what you and Frodo had between you but it's at least close and I…"  He paused, drew in a deep breath.  "I was too young, do you understand?  I hadn't been in love and I had no idea how deep and strong the love could go, how your very life could hinge upon a smile, your entire world balance upon the touch of a hand."

"You're not making sense!"

"I was wrong!" Pippin told him.  "All those years, I thought he was just playing along with you and your 'protection' because I never dreamed he actually needed it but…  I mean, you're pushy and bossy and you always think you know what people need and it really is amazing because most of the time you really did know -- at least when it came to Frodo -- and I should have known, I should have trusted, but I didn't know he needed you like that.  I mean, not him, right?  He could do anything, couldn't he?  But he fell apart after and I watched it all and did what he wanted me to do and never once demanded he do what he needed.

"I was wrong, " he repeated, his voice shaky now.  "And I was wrong because I didn't understand.  I misread things, I overlooked things I shouldn't have, I pushed in all the wrong places, and I did all of that because I didn't know about any of this--"  Pippin clutched at the notes.  "--and because I thought that what I was doing was right.  I thought I was helping."

"You were!" Merry said, adding force to his voice because stars, could Pippin really think he hadn't helped when he'd been the only obstacle between Merry and the abyss for so long?  "So, you've made some mistakes -- who hasn't?  I forgive you, all right?  You did what you thought you had to do and I survived because of it but…  Pip, I don't know what you've found in those notes but you can't honestly believe--"

"He wasn't himself, Merry.  The very existence of these notes proves that he was thinking less clearly than even I knew.  I don't know what all he burnt up at Bag End but it could hardly have been as revealing.  And I can't believe that he'd have left these lying about if he'd had all his wits."  Pippin closed his eyes tight, took another deep breath, looked again at Merry.  "You were right about so many things and you've been right all along and all along, I have been trying to talk you out of being right because I didn't understand.  I didn't understand that you were right, I didn't understand why you were right and I can't do this with you, Merry, else I might muck it up and I couldn't stand it if I did, not again."

Merry just stared for a moment, shook his head.  "I have no idea what you just said."

A weary chuckle from Pippin.  "I don't wonder," he answered.  "You look like you've not slept and I've not slept much either and I don't think I'm making all the sense I could."  He stood, took the few paces to stand in front of Merry, pulled the papers from where he had them clutched to his chest and held them out.  "You'll want to start from the top," was the quiet instruction.  "And when you sit down to over-think it, as I know you will, and before you talk yourself into or out of anything, I want you to always keep in the back of your mind that he wasn't thinking clearly, that there were some things he didn't understand himself and some questions he didn't even think to ask."  He pushed the notes at Merry.  "Can you do all of that?"

Merry looked from Pippin to the papers in his hands, reached out, took hold.  He looked back at Pippin, nodded, and Pippin smiled a little… let go.

"And Merry," Pippin furthered, a tiny note of fierceness in his tone.  "I know you think you got most of it wrong."  Pippin gripped Merry's shoulder, shook him a little.  "Now is when you decide what you got right."

* * *

Merry saw Pippin off after breakfast, during which they spoke of the upcoming wedding and little else.  It was clear that Pippin had said all he intended to say on other subjects and Merry's head was still murky and slightly awhirl, so he didn't push it.  The notes lay on the table between them, untouched.

Glorfindel arranged for an escort for Pippin all the way to Bree and Merry felt gratitude and some measure of relief that he wouldn't be travelling the whole way alone.  And anyway, with the trouble they had finding their way in to Rivendell, he was glad Pippin wouldn't have the same trouble finding his way out.  Hidden paths and all that bother.

He'd stood and watched Pippin and his new companion as they walked their mounts towards the rise; Pippin stopped at the summit, turned back and Merry thought he might say something then but he only smiled, waved.  Merry waved back and then Pippin turned again, began his descent and was gone.

Merry went back to the rooms, stared for countless minutes at the notes, even reached for them once but drew his hand back instead.  He shook himself, turned to the couch, threw himself upon it and slept.

* * *

Of all the things I've somehow forgotten, of all the things that have faded into a reality as dim as someone else's half-remembered dream, I think perhaps the one thing I would choose to forget, if I could choose only one, would be what she said to me then as I stood before her in my own mind, tried to defend my heart, bared to her sight.  I tell myself sometimes that she lied, that it was a test, and after all, she herself used that very word.  I remember Boromir's suspicion that she had offered things she had not the power to give and so perhaps she spoke of things she had not the power to know, guessed at things she had not the power to divine.

And then I remember Boromir's eyes, bright and baleful in cold afternoon sun, centuries of honour burnt away beneath the flash-fire of a moment's incendiary lust.

And so I wonder.

And I watch.

'How can you be sure they have a choice?  How can you be sure it is you they love?'

And how am I to answer that now?

'You begin to see truly.  Evil is drawn to you, Ring-bearer, but the Ring takes all within Its grasp.  You cannot know what has been given to you freely and what It has taken for Its own purposes.'

Did I believe her then?  I can't remember for sure.  I suppose I must have and still it makes an appalling sort of sense, so how can I question it with any real conviction?  Hope, perhaps…  No, not hope, not really -- a blind wish when I let myself look away from Truth, but Truth remains, whether I would wish it or no.  Lessons learned at the expense of… too much.

A test, it was a test, just a test and nothing more and I… she said she passed the test, that she would remain Galadriel.  And did I pass the test?  What do I remain?  What was I to begin with and what is left for me now?  I was the Ring-bearer and now… do I bear It still?  Is that all I am?  All I ever was?

What is left?

Who is left?

I could have asked her.  We travelled together for weeks, spoke together often.  So, why didn't I?  Wouldn't knowing for certain be so much better than this almost-knowing?  This surety slightly coloured on the fringes with cruel hope?  Easier, perhaps, but no, not better.  At least not better for me and there we have the character of the noble Ring-bearer in a nutshell, haven't we?  Praise him with great praise.

They know, they have to know, even if they don't know they know.  They look away, call me 'Ring-bearer', but they don't call me by my name and…

What am I?  What is it that they see that is so unsettling that they look away, pretend they don't see at all?  And why am I the only one who can't seem to look away and yet I don't know what it is I see!

Look at me, look in me, tell me who I am, let me look in your eyes and know that you see me and let me see something reflected there I can bear to look at.  'I see you.  All I've ever wanted,' you said that, you said it and what did you see, what do you see and how long before you look away?  Will I be strong enough by then?

Perhaps if I knew what it was I was really hoping for, it wouldn't be quite so…

A chance to make up for it all somehow?  Though, no -- recompense is impossible, setting things back to rights an almost laughable dream, for it was never right to begin with, was it?  Touched by It, tainted by It, all of it, everything, everyone -- them, him -- and all before I even knew… even guessed at…

I made it easier -- I did -- and all because I can't bear to be without him and yet it's the only way, isn't it?  It's always been the only way.  I let It touch him, let It hold him in Its very palm, even as I thought to pull It closer, even as I stood between It and everything I loved, thought to trick It, yet I was the one deceived and all because I could not -- cannot -- make myself turn away.  I thought I was handing It myself when all the while, it was him I offered and all because I dared to love. 

Even that?  Has It left nothing untouched?  Even that?

'Ring and Bearer are one.'

And what does that make of me now?  Its ghost?

What have I done?

What am I?  I don't even know myself and I am terrified of what I'll find in his eyes.

And yet still, because I cannot do otherwise, I watch.

For what exactly, I can't say, but I know I'm not the only one; Pippin always has seen things more clearly than people give him credit for, but he will look away because he knows I want him to.  And if he does see more than I would like, I will be the very last to know it.  And bless Sam, for he still sees Master Frodo and that's all he ever will.  I doubt I'll ever have the heart to teach him otherwise.  Merry, though…

Merry sees too much.  Those eyes… like grey-black knives and so sharp and precise that you don't even know they've pierced you until you see your very soul, cut out and bared before you, and all reflected back at you from within them.  He sees even now, I can see him seeing, yet I've not the courage to show him fully those things he has yet to understand.  He sees the shadows but not the pits of blackness from which they are birthed; sees the emptiness within but has not yet guessed that its depths are unfathomed, bottomless.

It's only a matter of time before he sees all.

When he touches me, when I bend beneath his hand, I can almost believe that she really did lie, that it was a cruel and wicked game warped into the testing of an ignorant heart by a ruthless warrior Queen of timeless legend.  A touch of his hand and I'm lost as I've always been, sure of the love I'm given even now, after all I have done and not done, after all I have lost and caused others to lose.  The beat of his heart lifts beneath my own breastbone and for moments I am free of it all -- of doubt, of sorrow, of pain and guilt and a hundred other things I've not the heart or the words to set to paper.  I tell myself that he sees me, he knows me, as he always has done, and it hasn't anything to do with what I held.  What held me.  And that It never -- never -- held us both.

And then he smiles and his eyes are somehow older, wiser, and his smile more serene, more knowing, yet the love is there, unchanged, and I wonder… how can this be?  Someone who has learnt too well how to root out darkness, cut it quick and clean from the skin of the world, and yet he cannot see that darkness in the very place his eye is trained most often.

And so I know Its fading is not complete.  Gandalf's Ring has not yet lost its fire and the love in Merry's eyes has not lost its own; surely it's only a matter of time before both are revealed for just another of Its tricks?

What do I hold to now?  What do I believe in, where do I hang faith when everything I've ever had faith in has been a trick?  Something to keep me content until I was called for.  Something to keep me complacent until it was time to take up the Task for which I was made.  And who made me for it and why and… why me?  Why him?

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I never meant…

A gift, I used to think you, bestowed by some benevolent chance of Fate and I never understood why.  What did you see when you looked at me?  Oh, and you did see, you knew and sometimes that knowing terrified me but I wanted it, too.  And what made you want whatever it was?  Ah, but I know, don't I?  Another lesson learned a little too well.  I never understood why you loved me enough to think me suitable company, let alone putting yourself in danger for me when I hadn’t the courage to stop you.

I thought I was blessed, you see.  I didn’t know why you loved me but I took that love as my own and I believed in it.  It never even occurred to me that it might be part of some Plan, something to be used against us all.  You've been duped, even more so than I, and I…

I am sorry.  And 'sorry' is… inadequate.

You were made for your course, as I was made for mine, and it isn't fair that your heart has been so tangled in the process.  It isn’t fair and it isn’t right and it must stop.  I cannot keep taking the love you offer when I know that you cannot freely give it.

And yet I cannot make myself turn away.  Oh, save me, but I have tried.

So, I leave it to you, for I can do nothing else.  You blind me, burn me, still bright as the Sun and like the Sun, you will turn away.  This I know, for it is what I've made of you, and I both dread and anticipate the day.  But more, I await the return, for that, more than anything else, will tell me what I need to know, what I both hope for and fear.

Is this really the only hope I have left?  Is this all there is now?  Breaking you from a bond formed through darkness and deceit in the guise of love, and is this the only redemption for me?  Break you to save you and is that saving for you or for me?

Does it matter?

It all comes to the same in the end, doesn't it?  It only remains to be seen from which crack in the façade the breaking comes.

Should you see all of what I am and still return, then I will know that she spoke only the truth.  And I will know It is not truly dead.  For a heart so pure and golden couldn't possibly abide the darkness of my own.

You are lost to me already and I try to tell myself that it's for the best.  You were never truly mine and had I but known… had I guessed… I think I might have had the courage then to refuse, before months turned to years turned to decades.  Before I stole so much of your life from you.  Before I became what I am.  Before you became the last shred of bitter hope I can't help but cling to.

Ah, and there's a hope; still indefinable, true, and so not quite real, for I have gone beyond hope and so Gandalf named me once.  I wonder if even he could have guessed at the irony.

You, though -- you still call me 'love'.  You call me by my name.  You tell me it will be all right, 'I can help if you'll only let me, turn to me, let me in…' 

And what will you do if I show you?  What will you say to me if I… when I bare the creature you have 'loved' to your keen sight?  You hate It, you have always hated It and what will you do when you finally see me, when you look at me and see only Its pale reflection?  And why can I not gather the courage to force you to see it now?

I could weep.  Only… it's almost funny because I can't.  Strange.

You tell me we've changed and you have; you've become god-like in your strength and stature, yet moreso in things that cannot be measured in the physical.  You've grown beyond me, boundless and sublime, and I worry now that the Golden Son of Buckland will no longer be enough for you.  I worry that you've grown beyond your own life; that your love of Home, that you've always worn like a second-skin, will fit ill and chafe.  I worry that I've taken more from you than either of us will ever truly realise.

And I worry that I haven't really changed at all; that this is what I've been all along.  And now that the magic that slept uneasy in my pocket is gone… how could you not see?  And how could I even try to hide it from you when I know what I've already taken?  And once you have seen… 

You cannot unsee it; you cannot unknow it.

I am so sorry for the years I have taken from you and I am more sorry than I can say that I've not the courage or the strength to stop taking what you give from a place that is not your own.  My weak and paltry recompense is that when you do go, I will let you.

I am sorry.  It's all I can do.

It's better so.

* * *

"Sorry," Merry breathed, forced his hands to relax on the pages where their reflex had been to curl into fists, crumple, rend.  He bent his head, stared at nothing.  "Don't be sorry."  And a small, bitter laugh escaped him.

He'd woke hours ago to mid-afternoon sun glaring through the window and directly onto his closed eyelids.  His head had been pounding but a quick soak in the baths -- and a quick soak in Rivendell's baths was a shame but he had other matters on his mind -- had taken it down to a sluggish throb and a late lunch taken in the gazebo with Glorfindel and two others for company -- Círion and Finglas, warriors of Rivendell's Host, also somewhat idle these days -- had knocked it to a barely-noticeable thrum.

He'd been thoroughly amazed that he'd been able to sleep, yet further amazed that he'd had the wherewithal for niceties and had taken the time for necessaries before plunging back into the notes.  Perhaps it was the fact that Pippin had so thrown him.  More likely, it was that the things that Pippin had apparently found within those pages had so shaken him.  If Pippin could be so rattled, Merry had no idea what to expect from himself.  And yet, even as he'd sat and listened to ancient stories from ancient beings, he'd found his mind wandering impatiently back to the notes that still sat where he'd placed them before Pippin had left that morning. 

His companions apparently noticed his less-than-courteous lack of attention and teased him good-naturedly until he flushed and grinned and Glorfindel shut them up with a soft reprimand in Elvish.  Merry appreciated the sentiment but he was sorry the pleasant laughter had dried up so quickly and so thoroughly and even sorrier that they peered at him then with sympathy clear on their kind faces; he wondered how many knew and understood about what he was doing here.  Probably not many -- Merry knew the notes had been kept separate and out of access from most -- but Merry would prefer it be none.  If he wasn't going to have Pippin to wend through this with him, Merry would rather go it alone.

And alone he sat now, staring at the pattern of the rug beneath his feet without actually seeing it, a small clutch of parchment in his lap and three thin sheafs in his hand.  Per Pippin's instruction, he'd read it first, decided he would not weep, would not slip into regrets and might-have-beens so damned quickly, and then doggedly went on to the next and the next.  And then came back again to this one.

… like the Sun, you will turn away. 

"But I always came back," he whispered, clenched his teeth.

It made a sickening sort of sense and how many times had Frodo told him he burned like a sun, called him golden?  He'd never made the connection before, had always thought that it had everything to do with hair and skin and never guessed it had a meaning to Frodo that now made Merry burn with shame.

He had turned away, hadn't he?  How many times?  Did he dare try to count?

"I didn't know."  And he closed his eyes.  Even in this new grief, he knew, could see, that regardless of what Merry had done then, Frodo would have convinced himself that it was the work of the Ring, that he was so ruined that no one could see him any way other than how he saw himself and if they did, it had to be because of Its influence.

"You will stand here now, after all we've been through, and tell me that 'we' never existed -- that it's no more than a habit?  All this time I've been fooling myself and I don't really love you, is that it, then?"

"How could you… when you have no idea what I am?”

"Oh, but I did and I do and… why wouldn't you talk to me?" 

Because with this, he could have helped and he didn't need Pippin to tell him so.  He could have helped, he could have kept at Frodo until he got angry enough, shot daggers from his mouth that would bite and sting but would have some meaning in them Merry could have discerned.  Walking away wasn't the only thing he'd been good at and he had somehow always known when to push and when to back away and how was it that he hadn't known this?  The most important thing unsaid between them, the one time Frodo really needed the kind of fight only Merry could or would give him and Merry hadn't known.

"Because you shut me out so thoroughly that I couldn't see past the pain, couldn't bend my mind around it all, and you knew that, didn't you?"

Of course he had.  If Merry was the only one who really knew Frodo, Frodo, in his turn, was the only one who really knew Merry, and if Frodo didn't want him to know the things that had pushed him to this point, he also knew exactly how to keep Merry from finding out.  The right words flung in just the right way, and Merry would walk away, would retreat, because it was how he'd managed to hold on for all those years, and old habits die oh, so hard.  The irony was sharp and left a metal-bitter taste in his mouth: Frodo knew exactly how to force Merry into the most unselfish thing he'd ever done for Frodo, knew exactly how to make him let go, and how to make it so Merry never even questioned his reasons when it mattered most -- when he could have actually done something.  And Merry had known that there was something beneath it all, had known it even as it was happening and him unable to stop it, but this...   It was beyond even his suspicion, and if he'd only known...

"I could have helped you."

And the worst part about it was the absolute certainty that he really could have, but that the knowledge was five years too late.

It wouldn't have kept him from leaving.  Pippin was right: Frodo would have left anyway and Merry now saw that no amount of confessing or talking things through would have changed that, and he understood it, was even glad of it.  Regardless of what was going on inside Frodo's head, his body was failing, and Merry knew that sailing had been the only option.  But if he'd known this… at least Frodo wouldn't have sailed thinking that he wasn't truly loved -- that he couldn't be truly loved.

He wanted to be angry with Frodo, wanted to be hurt that Frodo really had thought Merry didn't know his own mind, that his love couldn't possibly be real, and Merry had been so close to it that night in Frodo's study, had known something was beneath it all, but he'd groped about in his own pain and missed it. 

"What are you trying to save me from?"

Oh, but he'd been so bloody close and Frodo had known it, and now Merry understood the flickers of terror he'd seen beneath all of that cool reserve.

And then Merry had left but worse, he'd come back, and that had only confirmed to Frodo that he was poison and would stay poison.

"Was that the real reason you left, then?"

"It's past time you were free."

Merry's teeth clenched.  "You bloody sodding idiot!"  And for once he wasn't talking to himself.  “Is that what you thought?  That I hadn't enough brains to know my own heart?  That I couldn’t possibly love you unless some all-seeing Power forced me into it?”  He bolted up, tossed the papers to the chair and just stood, trembling and white with rage.  “Who are you to tell me what’s in my heart and why?  Who are you to decide what my motives are?”

Now he understood that last chapter and the sorry excuse for grief Frodo had described in the last of it.  He'd written it that way because that's what he really had believed, that he was solving everyone's problems by sailing off and Away, and once the poison was gone, they'd all go merrily about their lives.

"Idiot!" he snarled and picked up the plate from the table, hurled it at the hearth just to hear it shatter.  Pippin was right -- it did feel good -- and so he snatched up a cup and hurled that, too.

"… I want you to always keep in the back of your mind that he wasn't thinking clearly, that there were some things he didn't understand himself and some questions he didn't even think to ask." 

Pippin's voice, calm and reasonable as it always was, and Merry wanted to snarl at Pippin, too, but Pippin wasn't bloody here and Merry wanted to snarl over that as well because calm and reason had nothing bloody to do with any of this!  Of course Frodo wasn't thinking clearly because he'd had bloody Galadriel poking about in his head, giving him the wrong answers to questions she had no business even asking, and when it wasn't bloody Galadriel, it was the bloody Ring, and when it wasn't the bloody Ring, it was bloody Gandalf, and bloody Aragorn, and probably bloody Elrond, too, because why not just make it a party while they're all at it, and none of them, not a single one of them, really knew Frodo, and how dare any of them even guess at Merry's heart?  At Pippin's, at Sam's?  Who did they think they were, setting that ball rolling, and not a one of them even considering that it might be a good idea to explain that it was nothing more than conjecture and irresponsible conjecture at that and might -- just might -- not be the least bit true!  What was wrong with them?  They were supposed to be ancient and wise and not a single one of them had the sense given a troll!

The waterglass was the next to go sailing.  "How could you?" he shouted, dimly thought he heard the door open and he spun about, glared at the pale face blinking back at him, shouted some more, "Go away!" and refused to care that he was being a complete ass.  Especially when it was so effective; the elf didn't even take the time to reprimand him, simply swung the door shut again, and Merry glared at it for a moment before beginning to pace the room.  Thunder was exploding inside his head and he wouldn't be surprised if lightning came flashing from his eyes and struck down the next person who dared to come near.  Galadriel her-bloody-self could come wafting through that door and Merry would very cheerfully throttle her.  Frodo could bound through, bright-eyed and laughing, and Merry might just clock him a good one.

How could he have been so blind?  How could he have believed any of it?  'Threw his trust about when it came to Big People,' that's what Pippin had said once, and Merry wasn't sure if he was more angry at them for abusing that trust so thoroughly or at Frodo for giving it in the first place.  Bloody idiots, every damned one of them -- bloody Bilbo was probably the smartest one of any of them on that sodding ship--

"--and he was bloody senile!"

A soft knock at the door and Merry spun again, shot daggers at it with his eyes.  They were so good at seeing into people's heads -- maybe they could see through doors, too, and he could scare whoever it was away without actually having to look at them.  It was just his luck that now, when he would be just as happy if he never saw another elf, he was smack-dab in the middle of a mob of them.

"We prefer to call it a community," from the other side of the door.

Merry slumped, deflated.  All right, he supposed he could take Glorfindel. 

He slow-stepped it to the door, threw it open, gave a vague gesture of not-quite-welcome then took himself over to the window and stared out at nothing, seething.  A thin shuffle of paper-on-paper and Merry glanced over his shoulder, saw Glorfindel examining the notes Merry had tossed on the top of the pile, and turned away again.  He'd felt for a moment that he should tell him to put them down and mind his own bloody business, but of course, Glorfindel had seen them before Merry had; what would be the point?  So he simply expelled a heavy breath, leaned against the window-casing and closed his eyes.

"You still love him," from Glorfindel, soft and soothing.

Merry was not soothed.  He opened his eyes, shot another disgusted glare over his shoulder then turned back to his study of nothing.

"Do you suppose he still loves you?"

A surly grunt from Merry.  "How would I know?" was his truculent answer.  "Who knows what they've talked him into by now?  Or out of."

A long pause, then: "Surely you understand the necessity of--"

Merry rounded on him.  "I don't want to understand the necessity of it!  There is too much I've had to understand and learn and accept and I'm weary of understanding that nothing is fair!  They didn’t have to do that to him, not that!  And if they'd had any clue at all about the things that really meant something to him, they wouldn't have dared."  He turned away again, muttered, "Or at least they'd have tried to fix it while he was still about, told him the truth, but then what did he need with the truth?  He was just their bloody tool, wasn't he, and better he not know the whole story, just like they never bothered to tell him that throwing the Ring into the Fire was impossible."

"You doubt that sailing was the right thing for him?"

Merry thumped his head to the casing, took a deep breath.  He turned slowly, crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back into the wall.

"No," he said, clearly and without hesitation.  "There was nothing else for him and perhaps I didn't understand that at the time but it didn't take me too awfully long after to be grateful for it.  And I am grateful.  Only now I see that he left here believing that no one could have loved him had it not been for that Ring and there is something so deeply wrong with that that I am going nearly out of my mind!"

Glorfindel glanced at the hearth and the shattered remnants of the dishes.  "I see that," he said with the lift of an eyebrow.

But for narrowing his eyes a little, Merry ignored it.  "And the worst is that there is nothing I can do about it.  Sam might sail someday, and he might be able to set him straight, but he's got a family and I don't know if he'll--"

"Sam?"  Glorfindel frowned.  "Master Samwise?"

And why did that still sting?  Glory, would he ever grow up?  Merry nodded, sighed. 

"Yes, right.  Sam has been given leave to sail one day but who knows if he actually will?"

Glorfindel's frown deepened.  "Frodo chose Samwise to accompany him?"

Thank you, Glorfindel, perhaps you can use a duller knife to gut me next time.

"He didn't choose anyone.  That's the point, or at least my point -- they chose for him.  The Ring-bearers were given leave and Sam was a Ring-bearer."

"For a day?"

Merry blinked, gave a churlish shrug.  "It isn't mine to judge how long was long enough or whether Sam will need to sail because of it.  He was given leave because he did bear It and there is yet another thing I've had to understand and accept."  He looked down.  "Now, however, I'm actually beginning to wonder just exactly how cruel and wicked it might be of me if I were to try and talk him into leaving his home and his family to go now."  He peered up at Glorfindel and for the first time, let himself feel the shame.  "I can't bear to think Frodo might go to his grave thinking what I know he thought when he left here.  I can't bear to think he'll go on thinking that for even one more day."

Glorfindel stared for a moment, shook his head.  "Meriadoc…"  He paused, shifted, waved towards the couch.  "May I?"

Merry shook himself.  "Of course."  He pulled himself away from the wall, slouched over to the chair; he moved the notes from its seat and back to the table then sat himself down.

"I don't think you quite understand how sailing to the Undying Lands works," Glorfindel told him.

"What's to understand?"  Merry's tone was probably a little more impatient than it needed to be.  "Arwen gave Frodo her place and Elrond granted places to the other two Ring-bearers."

As ever, Merry's tone failed to flap Glorfindel.  "Arwen had not the power to grant her place to another," he said and his voice was smooth but his eyes were intense.  "She had no more power to grant another passage than Lúthien had to grant passage to her Beren."

Why did Merry's chest suddenly feel so tight?  "What do you mean, she hadn't the power?"  And then it hit him and Merry felt the blood drain from him.  "What…?  Are you telling me that Frodo might not have--"

"No," Glorfindel assured him quickly.  "I've no doubt that he arrived safely and was welcomed.  Please, be at ease."

Easier said than done but Merry wilfully relaxed the coiled muscles in his limbs, found he could breathe again.  He sat back, boneless.

Glorfindel leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers.  "Forgive me for asking, but did you read the book I gave you?"

"Yes, of course I did."  All right, so he'd scanned it because he'd felt a pang of guilt when he'd gone to slip it onto the bookshelf without opening it, seeing as how it was old and treasured and had been gifted to him by a friend.  But he'd known the tale since he was a lad; he was cousin to Bilbo Baggins, after all.  "The tale of Eärendil."

"Then you should know how it works." 

Perhaps a soft rebuke but Merry let it pass.  Well, perhaps he didn't exactly let it pass but his response was less snappish than it could have been.

"Half-Man/Half-Elf sails off to where he's not permitted to go and gets rewarded for it by having his love restored to him.  How bloody brilliant for him."  He levelled an insolent glare at his companion.  "How what works?  Only Elves are permitted and exceptions were made for the Ring-bearers.  Whether I understand how it works is rather beside the point, isn't it?  Frodo is gone, so what more do I need to understand?"

All right, that was pretty snappish.  He pinked a little, looked away.

Again, Glorfindel was unperturbed.  Which was really starting to hack Merry off.

"Exceptions were not made for the Ring-bearers, Meriadoc," Glorfindel said slowly, waited to be sure Merry was paying attention before going on, "An exception was made for Frodo."

A bewildered frown and a shake of the head.  "And Bilbo.  And Sam.  The Ring-bearers."

Glorfindel sat back and now he was the one shaking his head.  "Bilbo was granted passage as a gift to Frodo," he told Merry.  "So that Frodo would not have to leave all that he loved behind."

Why was it that every time Merry needed to think clearly, his blood would start to thump in his ears and a buzzing grey seemed to cover his mind?  He stared, all his awareness narrowed to Glorfindel.

He moved his mouth, managed to force out, "But… Sam…" before his tongue rebelled and went silent.

For once, that unflappable mien twisted a little; Glorfindel looked nonplussed.  "I can only guess that Frodo misunderstood."

A cheerless huff of breath from Merry.  "Well, considering that they never actually told him anything, I don't suppose that ought to be surprising."  He paused, blinked.  "Wait, misunderstood what exactly?  What are you saying?"

"I am saying," Glorfindel answered in a gentle voice, "that for his deeds, Frodo was granted passage to the Undying Lands, where he might heal.  And since Frodo loved Bilbo and he was failing rapidly, Bilbo was also granted passage as a gift to Frodo."  Glorfindel's head tilted to the side and now he looked troubled.  "Bilbo was not granted passage for healing or because he bore the Ring, Meriadoc; he was granted passage for Frodo."

* * *

Merry stayed for another week.  He spent two days in his rooms, poring over the notes, though he no longer needed clues.  He found too many things that were disturbing, too many things Frodo or someone else had got wrong, and it wearied him now, rather than enraged him; made his eyes burn, rather than his teeth clench. 

One page, all to itself:

When I looked into the Mirromere… I saw nothing.

Found himself shaking his head, "Oh, Frodo," on his tongue and his heart dripping slow and thick down his breastbone.  Too many times he wanted to stop, push it all away, but he would do Frodo this honour -- he would know -- because someone should.

His last several days were spent back in the library, compiling his contribution to Pippin's book as he'd promised.  Glorfindel seemed to appear whenever Merry might need him, hand him a text or two and then hover somewhere else until Merry needed him again.  He didn't try to draw Merry into conversation and Merry was grateful because he was sad and he was tired and had absolutely nothing to say but, "Why?"

And so on 19 Rethe, Merry closed the folio one last time, tucked it into his pack and swung his pack onto his shoulder.  With one last look about the room, he stepped through the door and made his way to the stables.  He had a fortnight and to spare to make it back to Tuckborough as he'd promised Pippin and today at least promised fair weather for travel.

Glorfindel waited for him in the stableyard because Glorfindel would and Merry had to smile a little as he approached.  "Are you to be my guide then?" he asked, reached up to scratch at his horse's neck; he'd already been saddled and Merry was a little surprised when the horse nickered a happy greeting to him.  Merry had quite neglected him during their stay but he supposed, what with the reputation of Rivendell's stables, he hadn't exactly suffered.

They were silent on the ride until they reached the Ford and Merry halted at the crest of the riverbank, turned to his friend, meaning to express his gratitude for all he had done for both himself and Pippin.  Instead, all of what had been spiralling through his heart for too many days unspoken, fell from his mouth like stones into depthless waters:

"There is nothing I can do."

Long silence while Glorfindel studied the water then he turned to Merry, reached out, clasped his shoulder.  "What would you do, Meriadoc?"

The answer was easy but Merry pondered it for a moment nonetheless, turned to Glorfindel.  "Anything," he said, soft but resolute.  "Still and always -- anything."

Glorfindel peered at him for so long that Merry thought he might drown in the clear grey of his eyes, then: "Do you know of ithildin?"

Merry frowned, paused while the gears in his head ground then switched.  "Er… yes."

He glanced at Glorfindel with a questioning lift of an eyebrow but Glorfindel only smiled softly, nodded.  "Some stories are best read by moonlight," was all he said.

Merry looked at the water, thought about that statement for some length, turned to back Glorfindel.  "What the bloody blue blazes does that mean?"

Glorfindel only gave a small smile, shook his head.  "You will know, if it's meant.  If not…"  He shrugged.

Glory, Merry hated riddles, and Elves -- even this one -- were always so full of them.  He stared -- all right, glowered -- for a long moment but when it was clear that Glorfindel had no intention of explaining, he sighed, said his thank-yous, expressed his regrets and then said his goodbyes.  He was on his way before the Sun had risen above the bruises on the distant horizon that were the Misty Mountains.

* * *

And grey eyes watched him, turned back to the waters and asked a boon of their lord.

* * *

He took his time, without having consciously decided, backtracking the route they'd taken so many years ago as closely as he could.  One or two of the nights were bitter as black winter and Merry had momentary regrets that he hadn't chosen a route that included the occasional inn, but he was glad for the solitude just the same.

He'd read everything there was to read, knew everything he could know and it hadn't done him in, he had no desire to wash his sorrows down with a bottle and he was still moving, breathing, had every intention of feting Pippin to a rollicking lads party and then dancing 'til his knees buckled at the wedding.  Had every intention of going back home after and seeing to the lambing and the tilling and the pruning of the south vineyard.

Yet, now there was an emptiness inside him and it rang echoes through his heart, woke laments he'd set to uneasy rest long ago.  There was anger, oh yes, and enough for everyone, and there was a new sort of pain that he hadn't yet identified, all tied-in with a buzzing need to do, to fix, to set right.  And every bit of it was useless, plunked down into the new hole in his chest and came nowhere close to filling it even a little.

Merry mourned but this mourning was not for himself.

There was nothing he could do, nothing left to fix and any setting right to be done he could only hope was being done across the vast-deep of time and crashing waters.  Or perhaps by proxy when and if Sam decided to scrape the earth of his home from his feet one last time and follow.  Though, with the way Merry knew Sam loved his wife and his children, he couldn't honestly see how that might happen and if it did, not any time soon, and he wondered again at how wicked it might be of him to try and push and hasten that decision for Sam.

Eärendil.  He of the Star-glass and wasn't it just the tiniest bit ironic that the white light Merry had always feared would take Frodo -- and in the end, did exactly that -- came from such a one as he?  That Glorfindel would gift Merry a book about it all and what was that meant to mean anyway?  Bloody Elves and their bloody puzzles -- he was worse than Frodo.  It meant something, of that Merry was sure, and he would read it when he got back home -- really read it this time.  Perhaps there was something in it that would comfort, though Merry couldn't imagine that anything could, short of building his own boat and daring to pose the very same challenge Eärendil himself had, lack of Elf-blood notwithstanding. 

His thoughts were hazy, wandered back on themselves too often, and he sipped an ale at the Pony in solitude, remembering frightened, angry eyes and Frodo's voice demanding that Merry turn away, and that time Merry had stood his ground, refused to buckle to the fear, and oh, he'd been afraid then and of too many things to count.

“I don’t know why you came, Merry.”

Merry closed his eyes and the pub around him ceased to exist.

“You really don’t know, do you?”

Frodo hadn't known and now it seemed as though he'd never known, not really, not so he could depend upon the knowledge when it was challenged.  And certainly not in the way it was challenged and by whom and when.  She'd cut deep and known exactly where to aim the knife and, Save me, why didn't I know?

It was when he realised that his eyes were in danger of leaking in the middle of a crowded inn that Merry tossed a few pennies on the table and collected his things, made his way back through the gate and turned his face west again.

He dreamed, every night he dreamed, and he remembered none of them; only woke with the familiar longing piercing his bones, his arms feeling empty and a vague panic that closed his throat on a cry.  And when he closed his eyes against the dawn, he saw Frodo.

He came upon the Barrow-downs as the Sun set gold upon the bolt of winter-pale green that swathed the hills.  No choking mist roiled, no oppressive weight fell upon him; he dismounted, wound the lead to a bush and walked towards the barrow without fear.

He had promised a proper goodbye.

It was musty and dry and Merry eyed the bones that lay scattered with nothing more than respect and sorrow.  There were no daemon spirits here, not anymore, only the dust of Men who died with honour in the service of Right. 

He let himself remember, let himself watch.

Cold be hand and heart and bone

"Will you tell me what happened?

"I dreamed in the barrow and I remember dying."

The flash of the Moon, its crimson face caught and twisted in polished steel, fear that climbs up from his belly and chokes him, but he stands, he stands until his knees meet the earth then blood and flame and water, water and it shimmies over him, soothes him, and he calls a name and he sees kind grey eyes dripping with stars, feels a kiss and hears a command.

"He tried to send you away."  A long breath, a slow shake of the head.  "And you wouldn't go."

"I have loved no other as I have you…"

"Have I lost enough yet?" he whispered, swallowed.  "Has he?"

Glory, when would it end?  When would losing everything you'd ever wanted be enough?  When would one injustice stop rolling into two and then twelve, until there were so many that you dared not even count them?  When would the pain just…stop?

A sob caught loose and shaky in his throat and this was not why he had come.  No answers here, only a warm breeze that riffled past his ear and he shifted his shoulders.  There wouldn't be, of course, there were no answers and certainly not from two who had lost everything.  He closed his eyes, bowed his head, spoke his thanks silently, hoped they had entered the Halls of their Fathers with pride at their deeds and met each other with a warm embrace.

He was finished here and they no longer needed anything from him.  They were silent. 

He smiled a little, turned to go--

Is this how you would see it end, then?

--stopped.

Warm and kind and heard with his heart, rather than his ears.  Merry closed his eyes tight and no tears pressed behind them, though he almost wished for them.

"I can do nothing else," he whispered.  "Thank you.  But there are no ancient evils to slay and I have done what was in my power to do.  You cannot help me this time."

Duty-less, purpose-less… powerless.

The moon rose behind his closed eyes, blooded and fat, before a drift of ragged, roseate cloud scrimmed across and cleaned its face.  And then it smiled, round and bright as a new silver penny, hung there, waiting.

I have loved no other, as I have you…

He drew a deep breath, stepped out into the sun, the mouth of the barrow wafting warm breath on his nape.

Is this how you would see it end, then?

Almost a chastisement, or at least it had the feel of one, and there was a reflex of culpability that swamped Merry, made him stop again and bow his head, close his eyes. 

He was walking away.  Again. 

And yet, what else was there for him to do?  It wasn't how he would see it end, never, but still it had ended, and he hadn't any choice in the matter.  Choices had been made for him, for Frodo, Fates designed, and who was he to even pretend the strength to stand against it?  And he'd tried, until it almost killed him, had fought against it with everything in him, even when he'd been told or told himself, over and over again, that he was nothing more than a small player in an affair vast and awesome in its reach, that it was fate, it was meant, and who was he to...

He shook his head, clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes tighter.

Who was he?

Who are you and what do you stand for?

Who was he when he'd stared Death in the eye and spat?

Who was he when he'd defied kings and rode feral into battle, the nauseating-intoxicating scent of blood hazing his mind?

Who was he when he'd walked away from home and safety for a love that defined him and a fear that defied him?

"Who was I when..."

And he choked a little, bent his neck.

Who was he when he'd spied Frodo through the newly-awakened eyes of a teenager, only just coming to understand his own yearnings, and knew with more clarity than he'd known anything in his life that he was looking at the one person he could love?  That he was lost with that first moment of revelation, well before he'd even made his first overture?

Who had he been then and...

"Who am I now?"

Who are you and what do you stand for?

And Merry thought about that one, a tingle pricking at his heart, pulling at him.  He blinked, peered up at the sky, found the Moon, faint and muted and biding in the realm of the Sun, but still smiling, still waiting.

"You will know, if it's meant."

And what was 'meant' and by whom and for what Purpose?

Will you go so gently?

He closed his eyes again, jerked his head.

"I've never gone gently in my life."  Ground out through clenched teeth.  "And if there are no choices, I make my own."

Because some things should not be suffered to stand as they were 'meant'.

Merry took a deep breath, set his shoulders and retrieved his horse, set off for home.  He still had four days and there was something he needed to do before Tuckborough.

* * *

The house was cold and dark, the smell of stale dust greeting Merry as he unlocked the door and swung it open.  Door closed, cloak tossed to a peg, pack dropped heedless on the floor, he made his way down the hall.  The first hour, he spent building fires -- one in the kitchen, one in his bedroom and one in the parlour.  The second hour, he spent pillaging the house in search of the book.

He refused to think about why.

He'd put it on the bookshelf in the parlour, he was sure of it -- could actually remember the weight of it in his hand, the cool feel of the leather against his palm as he'd slid it into place beside the small volumes of lore Frodo had bought for him in Minas Tirith.  He remembered thinking he really should read it first -- it had been a gift and was obviously treasured by its giver -- but he'd heard the tale before.  And anyway, he'd been depressed and distracted and so he'd skimmed it while he stood there, flipped through the pages, only pausing once or twice to give an illustration or two a longer glance, before he slipped it onto the shelf.

It wasn't there.  And removing each and every book from the shelf, examining both book and empty shelf twice, did not make it any less not there.  It was not lying on any of the tables of the main room, it was not in what used to be Pippin's room, it was not in any of the guestrooms, it was not in the kitchen, nor hiding in the near-empty pantry.  He even checked the bathing-room.

So Merry tore apart his bedroom.  Literally.  By now he was beginning to get frustrated and even a little bit angry and a need was burning in small cinders behind his breastbone that he didn't want to think too hard on; if he thought about it, it might wisp away, chased into nonsense by reason.  He let it burn, let it feed on itself and every shelf and drawer in the room suffered for it, with Merry yanking and tossing and pulling haphazardly until just about everything in his clothespress and wardrobe littered the floor and bed.  It wasn't until he'd exhausted every nook and cranny in the room that he decided to start again at the beginning, only a little more thoroughly this time; with some effort, he upended the heavy trunk against the wall and dumped everything in it onto the floor. 

And there it was -- exactly where he knew he hadn't put it.  Merry took a look about the destruction of the room, rolled his eyes then snatched up the book and headed towards the parlour.  He would sleep on the couch tonight; not quite as comfortable as his bed, but moreso than the ground he'd become a little too acquainted with on the trip home and anyway, he couldn't even see the bed beneath everything he'd heaped on it and he had no intention of cleaning it up tonight.

He would curl up on the couch with the book but first, he was dusty and slightly sweated and the jerky and cheese he'd had for supper beside the Withywindle seemed insistent upon leaving its remembrance on his tongue.  He needed a wash and he needed to clean his teeth and he needed a long cold drink.  He quit the room, started down the hall, reaching to unbutton his shirt along the way.

The book was still in his hand.  Which made the unbuttoning a little awkward.  He frowned, rolled his eyes at himself.  He could swear he'd put it on the tea table.  He really was a puzzle to even himself sometimes; no wonder people worried about him.  He continued to the bathing-room, let the book slip from his fingers onto the wooden bench beside the door and went about his business.  A refreshing wash and a good mouth-scrubbing later and he was humming--

That the Man in the Moon himself came down

one night to drink his fill

--as he made his way to the kitchen, stopping to drop off the book in the parlour, shirttails flapping with the breeze he stirred and braces knocking lightly at his thighs.  He angled his way into the kitchen and stepped to the basin, primed the pump, reached for a glass.

And the book was in his hand again.

He wasn't remembering wrong this time -- he knew he'd dropped it on the tea table in the parlour -- but there it was, in his hand.  He frowned again, stared.

Perhaps it was like that Elvish rope that held firm when you needed it to then unknotted itself when you wished it would.  Or a boat from Lothlórien that didn't sink even when pitching over a massive waterfall, if you believed Faramir had actually seen his brother and not dreamed it.  Though a book that kept jumping into one's hand seemed a little extreme, even considering the person who'd given it to him.  Especially since it had been so hard to find this particular book when he'd wanted it, to which the destruction of his bedroom would attest.

Merry gave a little snort, laid the book beside the basin and pulled himself a glass of water.  It was almost shocking on his tongue and throat and felt incredibly good sliding down and tendrilling through him… and yet even as he gulped it down in smooth swallows, he found himself slanting his eyes to the side and peering at that book.  He lowered the glass, narrowed his eyes.

"I mean to read, you know.  You don't have to keep jumping at me."

The book, of course, said nothing.  Though Merry wondered if he'd actually have been surprised if it had answered.  He decided that yes, he would have, and snorted at himself again.  He was feeling almost chipper and even a touch giddy, refused to think about that, too.

"Just give us a tick."  He refilled his glass, banked the coals in the stove that he'd apparently lit for no good reason because he didn't think he could eat now anyway.  Not that there was anything in the pantry that would even begin to qualify as actual food.  He took up the book again, half-expecting it to already be in his hand when he turned back to reach for it; it wasn't -- only waiting patiently where he'd left it.  He shook his head at himself, chuckled a little.  "You'd make a good pet," he told it, refusing to think about the fact that he was actually standing alone in the kitchen, talking to a book.  "Never have to feed or water you and you still follow a person about."

He'd start to worry only if the book ever answered him back.

Merry doused the lamp in the kitchen and took his drink and his book to the parlour with him.  He flopped himself onto the couch, reached to wick up the lamp and stopped.

Some stories are best read by moonlight.

Easily said for someone who could read by moonlight.  Still, he regretted now having built a fire in here.  The prickle was burning hotter, flaring through his chest and starting a low tremor in his limbs.  The air itself seemed to vibrate through him and he was becoming impatient, jittery, and yet still, he felt… expectant.  Good.

He doused the lamp entirely, forcibly relaxed the tension that had wound itself about his chest, opened the book.  No good; he couldn't read a bloody word, the shadows thrown by the fire writhing and curling in fluid stutters over the page, the text dancing and smearing beneath his eye.  A low growl and Merry pursed his lips, breathed through the steady thrum that ran through him like a note through a tuning-fork.

Ithildin.  Moonlight.

All right, then.  Fine.

He bolted up, arrowed through the murk of liquid shadow to the front hallway and threw on his coat.  If he was supposed to read this thing by moonlight then by bloody damn, he would read it by moonlight.  Perhaps it would reveal nothing, perhaps Glorfindel hadn't even meant what Merry thought he meant and Merry would freeze his arse off and be made a fool.  But something was pulling at him, something was demanding in a low wordless hum things that he couldn't quite hear, but he could feel it and all he could do was follow.

He pulled open the door, paused, snatched up his cloak just in case; it was rather cold and if he could help it, he was not about to show up sick in Tuckborough.  Pippin would see him nursed back to health just to have the pleasure of killing him after.  He draped the cloak over his arm, stepped out… tripped over his pack.  Careless nit.  Reached for the frame of the door to steady himself and the book went flying.  Merry cursed, round and thorough, followed the book's trajectory with an annoyed glare…

Stopped.

It seemed it took hours instead of seconds for the book to land in the brittle cushion of thick frosted grass.  Merry watched pages flutter, ripple and spin, then jog and settle, splayed and open on the ground like the wings of a silver moth.  Slowly, he bent forward, reached out his hand, his breath locked full and still in his chest.

For a moment, salt-spray licked at his cheeks, sun beat down on the crown of his head and briny wind riffled his hair.  A gull cried, he was sure of it -- so sure that he snatched his hand back from the book, threw his glance towards the sky.

No sun, no salt wind, no gull; only the light of the Moon bleeding through the skin of the night.

He looked back at the book.  There was a slight chill breeze wafting, stirring the grass, yet the pages remained still.  Ithildin, he thought, and reached to run his fingers feather-light over the page.  It wasn't here before, he was sure of it; he'd paged through the book, had seen all of the illustrations and this, he would have remembered.

Again, the gull cried and Merry resisted the urge to search the sky for it.

He pulled his eyes away from the page, squeezed them closed, shook his head.  It was just a book and just a drawing -- incredibly detailed, certainly, but it wasn't that life-like that he should be suffering hallucinations when he looked at it. 

"Some stories are best read by moonlight."

Just a book.  Just a drawing.

Just a boat. 

He'd seen boats before.  For pity's sake, he lived on the River, of course he'd seen boats, had sailed his father's little dinghy when he'd been but ten, moved up to a skiff of his own when his uncle had taught him how to read the winds and waters: how to tell that a certain liquid swirl and lurch of white-capped foam meant you had to keep your eyes sharp for rocks too close to the surface; how the wind could whisper to you and warn you when it was about to gust or die if you knew how to listen.  He even took a summer on his uncle's boat once, until he'd figured out that Merimac's legendary temper was not the stuff of myth and he spared no one in its wake -- not even a favoured nephew.

"I have carried it for years but only now do I understand why."

Merry opened his eyes.  He leaned down, lifted the book to lie across his palms.  The moonlight skittered over the page, crossed shadows over it in abstract patterns that blurred his eyes.

'Now fair and marvellous was that vessel made, and it was filled with wavering flame, pure and bright; and Eärendil the Mariner sat at the helm…'

A shaky breath pulled itself from Merry's chest, stuttered in his throat.  His fingers tightened and he found he was numb, tingling.  Slowly, he shook his head, the hole in his chest suddenly filled with… possibility. 

"You will know, if it's meant."

It wasn't just a drawing; it was a schematic.  It was almost a blueprint.

"What would you do, Meriadoc?"

And Merry smiled.

"Anything," he whispered.  "Still and always -- anything."  He closed his eyes, pressed the book to his chest.  "I always came back."

A laugh rolled up from Merry's chest, deep and rich, and he threw his head back, let it come.

* * *

EPILOGUE - FINALE

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