By: Dana
Summary: Pippin has found Merry wandering in the city as the smoke clears.
Characters: Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, Aragorn, mention of Eowyn and Faramir
Pairings:: Merry/Pippin
Rating: G
Warnings: None, really. The slash is almost subtextual but I know it's there.
Author's Notes: For the Twenty Rings challenge community: Set #1, Theme #2, Stone.
Three double drabbles. 600 words.
Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with J.R.R. Tolkien or New Line Cinema. Any and all characters and situations that have been borrowed are for the author's personal use only, and for the entertainment of others.

It is a shallow slumber in which Merry sleeps, as though his body struggles to wake – what dark dreams Merry must face, to have him seem so deeply distressed. Even the light of day is not strong enough to cast off this shadow – no, the pale spring light falls thin like rain.

A murmur of dream-speak. Merry's brow creases and his left hand twitches where Pippin holds it – his right is icy-cold, yet, and still. Even the stone about them is warmer – the pavement and the wall behind at which they sit. Warmer, perhaps, however they are yet cold; though not as cold as ice.

Winter seems to flood the air. Pippin gives Merry's hands – dear hands that they are, the hands of his friend-cousin-love, the hands of the hobbit who has almost always been there for him – a gentle, yet firm, and reassuring squeeze.

He is near grown and he has seen madness and he has seen shadow and flame, and though he has known fear and doubt, never has been so frightened as he now is.

Merry. Come back to me, please.

Pippin rests his head back against stone and closes his eyes. Gandalf should not be long.

Gandalf came with great speed. Intent he seemed, and deeply sorrowed, as though tending on the some great lord of elf or Man – perhaps a fallen King. He stoops low above the both of them, and his shadow is long. It is with finite grace that he caresses Merry's troubled brow – not what might have been expected, when Pippin knows that Gandalf is no simple Man.

He cannot speak as Gandalf lifts Merry from his lap – Merry, pale and ashen, afar in some distant land of dreams, cold and still and slipping away.

Gandalf speaks: "He should have been borne in honour into this city. He has well repaid my trust – "

There is more, still, that he says, and Gandalf cradles Merry gently as Pippin rises to his own shaking legs. There is so much he would like to ask, to say – the battle, Gandalf says, yet hangs in the balance, and the day is troubled, and fire is burning bright in the besieged sky.

Merry, Pippin thinks, must be the least of all Gandalf's worries. And yet, they pass through the city, intent upon the Houses of Healing, and Pippin thinks, again, that that is a hobbit's place.

Two times now Pippin has stood and watched as Aragorn called to wound-weary souls, bidding rest and then to waken: first with his Lord Faramir, and then with the Lady Éowyn, and now Aragorn stands at Merry's bedside (a bed that is far too large for a hobbit, Pippin thinks), as unmoving as some great statue of a King of old.

He stands with Gandalf at the door, but he rushes forward to look upon Merry – and Merry's expression is haggard and exhausted and as grey as ashen stone. He had feared, yes, before, more frightened than he had ever been: and he has seen madness, and flame, but such fear now seizes him that it near crushes his chest.

That his Merry might die.

"Do not be afraid," and that is not all that Aragorn says.

Pippin clutches hold of Merry's right hand, and presses his mouth to the ridges of his knuckles. Come back to me, dearest Brandybuck. Please.

As the scent of athelas washes over him, Pippin feels that he can clearly think, and breathe, and it has been three times now that he has stood and watched Aragorn as he bid back light from the dark.