By: Dana
Summary: Merry waits in Minas Tirith.
Characters: Merry (with mention of others)
Pairings: None
Rating: G
Warnings: Angst Merry, Angst
Author's Notes: For sophinisba, on occasion of it... being Tuesday. ♥
This seems to be a lead-up for Upon a Field of Gold.
fanfic100 claim:
Prompt: Why? (#80). Words: 400
42/100.
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.

He dreams sometimes that Pippin won't come back, and Merry wants to tell himself, in waking, that he is being foolish, and overly so, losing himself to such despair. But despair is all he has now, and it has made a better companion than he could have made for either Faramir or Éowyn. It isn't like they need him, or ever will need him, no more than Pippin needs him, now. It isn't the first Merry's doubted his following after Frodo, even knowing he never could have let him go off on his own. It won't be the last, either.

Still, Frodo did go off, not on his own, but still without Merry – Frodo doesn't need him, just the same as Pippin doesn't need him, and Merry knows that he is altogether alone. Anyhow, he doesn't see what good he would have been for Frodo, though, or even for Pippin, and maybe it is best that Merry's been left behind, broken-hearted and alone. Now all the days are endless, or at least they haven't found a way to end, and Merry can't stop thinking about them, of Frodo and Sam, and of Pippin, and how he has failed them all.

He dreams sometimes that Pippin won't come back, and it wouldn't be any better if he had gone along with Pippin: but better they die together, than alone, and if Pippin dies then surely Merry will as well. But he dreams as well that Pippin does return, but that it's Frodo and Sam instead who have been lost, and his heart is broken still and there won't be any fixing that. And there are other dreams, of course, where he's dead already, dead all along, dead along with Théoden, and likely, Merry knows that really is how it should be.

He had lost hope that Frodo and Sam would make it through the fire, but word comes that they have and more, that they have succeeded in his task. Merry feels that he has failed them both again, having lost his hope: but hope has been too fragile a thing to keep hold of, and he would like to think that they would understand him, if only they knew. Pippin, though, Merry thinks that Pippin would have kept his hope until the end: and until he sees them all, all three of them, he will still count this an end.