Their orcish guards soon fell back to watching the action, aside from muttered words to each other, and what sounded like the beginning of an argument. Pippin huddled close to Merry, and Merry to him, and they found words were still possible, if they spoke only a fraction louder than they breathed.

"Listen, listen... We're not entirely helpless. I've..."

"If you've some devise, don't show it now," replied Merry, glancing at the guards.

There had been a moment earlier, when he'd drifted back and forth between consciousness, where he'd remembered nothing of the Shire, and there had been nothing but death before him, and he'd thought her face kind. All lost, all lost, something had sang at him - stop - leave - let it be. If they lived through this, he might one day tell Pippin how sweet the song had sounded, absurd as that was. If he did tell him (and that seemed a dreamlike remote possibility now, when his body felt half-dead), he would perhaps find some way to tell Pippin what had made the song fade.

"Thank you, Pip."

Pippin's lips curved up slightly, he could see it even in the gloom, and the shadows shifting around Pippin's eyes as they crinkled. "What was that for?"

"I'll tell you when we're safe again."

---

The grass and fern felt so nice and soft and he felt fed and almost clean. Heaven, he was sure, felt like this grass and smelled like these scents, green life and rotting life all mixed together in a hum, for once as sweet as the song of death. He felt pleasantly sleepy, and turned on his side, curling against Pippin and impulsively hugging his cousin close. "I never want to move again," he declared happily.

He glanced up to see a wide grin spread on his cousin's face, even as Pippin's eyes stayed closed. "Me neither, Merry dear," he said, but contradicted himself immediately by turning to snuggle in even closer, his forehead against Merry's chest, a thin arm thrown over his side.

"I wanted to..." Merry had just now remembered, but hesitated, not wanting to bring that night into this moment.

"Mmm?" Pippin intoned sleepily.

"Pip, I..."

Pippin raised his head to look at Merry; something in his tone had caught his attention, and he was now looking at him with serious, beautiful eyes. Merry wasn't sure why he suddenly thought those familiar eyes beautiful, but it was a clear, sudden sensation.

"I would have been lost without you, you know," he blurted. "I would have given up. I wanted to, Pip dear; but you never even thought of it, and so when I saw you I didn't either."

This was probably the first time he had called his cousin dear, save for meaningless prattle like "my dear fellow" and "my dear cousin". These are subtle things, and by the shift of his eyebrows Merry could see the distinction slipping into Pippin's consciousness, and in return there was a wordless word, a further shift, and a closer embrace then they had ever had before.

Body to body. Even with friends - especially with friends, Merry mused as he surrendered to the embrace and pressed his cheek against Pippin's somewhat unfresh hair - there were lines, borders, a whole dance of what to do and what not to do; little sidesteps that become second nature as the friendship grows older.

Pip was so close.

Merry felt something breaking and falling apart. Perhaps it was his childhood.

Sometimes you had to make up your own steps.

Merry touched Pippin's brow, and found it sweat-slick and cool, but not too cold. He sighed in relief, at least of his cousin's immediate health, but another kind of worry didn't ease. "How are you feeling?" he managed, words that were redundant and out of place, somehow. He didn't know how to address a thing like this.

"Indisposed towards stealing magic stones, Merry dear," Pippin said with a wan smile, sitting up. "I don't need to be in bed, though."

"Good thing we sleep on the ground, then," Merry joked lamely.

Pippin looked over his shoulder, and Merry followed the gaze - Gandalf and Aragorn were talking, heads bent together. A word or two trickled to them on the night breeze - "secret" was repeated. Always secret.

They sat quietly, until the shadow passed over them. Pippin gasped and pulled into himself, staring up at the sky with frightened eyes that hurt Merry more than the cold stark fear that flooded his own veins. He saw the shadow against the night, knew what it was, heard the others move and position themselves, but felt strangely detached.

Death, I have seen you before, when you looked fairer.

His gaze was drawn back to Pippin, instead, with a strange urgency. He watched him as the shadow passed, and Pippin's muscles relaxed, limbs slowly unwinding from the crouch of animal panic.

He became aware, in a sudden crash, that he could be looking at Pippin for the last time. The young hobbit was pale, but very much awake and alert as he looked towards the others, listening to their voices.

By sudden impulse, Merry reached a hand to press his thumb gently on Pippin's chin, and turned his face towards him. The young hobbit blinked at him, confused and surprised.

"We'll find our way back to the Shire one day," he told him, "and buy a house perhaps, or a hole, and sleep on real beds every night. I don't think I'll ever feel quite at rest unless I know you're sleeping just a room away - not for years, anyway. You're making me prematurely grey as it is."

Pippin smiled, the terror forgotten, and that was a sweet sight indeed. He slipped his fingers around Merry's wrist. "I never want to sleep without you next to me," he confessed, eyes as clear and open as always. "I want only one bed, in our little house."

Merry gave him a lopsided smile. "Wouldn't the old gossips love to hear that?" He wasn't even sure Pippin would understand the reference, but to his surprise, Pippin remained perfectly serious.

"I love you, Merry. The old gossips can say what they please."

Merry eyed his young friend cautiously. Perhaps Pippin hadn't understood. But Pippin smiled then, old and sad - when had he grown old? - and brought Merry's hand to his mouth to kiss the knuckles lightly.

Their hands were tangled together when Gandalf walked briskly to where they sat, Merry's confusion still hanging unspoken in the air, only further deepened by Pippin's serenity. And before he knew, before he could speak, before he could figure out what they had promised, Pippin was gone, and all he could see was the back of Gandalf's white robe and white horse and white head, and the darkness all around their speeding form.

---

A moment follows a moment, a touch follows a touch. When you travel, each new place is a new life, and when there is only one face before you, it becomes the only face in the world. You can forget without forgetting, because the one that does not remember, is not the same that remembers. So when Meriadoc Brandybuck came to know the dirtied face of Dernhelm, then …owyn of Rohan, with her bright blue eyes like polished gemstones in fluid ground, the other Merrys of his past slept in the back of his mind.

She was easy to read if you looked at her the right way, and he found most didn't. He couldn't fathom why. She was like an attic to a child looking for adventure, a storeroom behind a great hall, where you find the secrets of the lords who only show one of their many faces in the torch light, in the hard cold halls.

She looked at him across their little campfire, and he looked at her, and a smile ghosted over her lips. They recognised each other.

Later, she began to talk - and talk - and he discovered the little treasures of her, those things no other knew - crows that came to her windowsill to be fed, for as a child she had loved the black birds best - the smell of stone and old fabric in the library of Edoras, wrestles with stable boys and a bright, harsh, steely love for an old man with rough grey hair.

And she came to know him, as well - Merrys of old dangled on a string like pearls, and he picked memories from each, and shared them, and his warmth when night fell, and as she whispered against his ear he wanted her to have something very special, something that would be only theirs, something to make a moment last, make it solid, make it forever.

Her body was hard, quivering muscles and her fingers sharp strength, and there seemed to be no end to her, and every inch was smoke and river and earth and woman. It was dark; the fire had burned out; tomorrow they would die. And he touched what he could reach, and she touched more of him, through the soft fabric, under it, fingers slipping against skin, and their breaths were the same, hobbit and woman and man and animal and god.

---

He sat up bolt upright suddenly. He found himself staring at a wall on the inside of a house, blue-grey now in the dark. He blinked. He smelled clean, and the linen smelled clean, and he felt loose cotton cloth against his chest. He brought his hand up to it, and looked at the cloth - white, perhaps - he could not tell - everything was blue-grey and black. He looked around - the room was empty, except for two quiet forms on the two beds beside him, on his right, breathing softly.

Somehow, through the shape of her hip, the shadows on her face, he knew who it was who lay beside him, and the memories flooded back.

She had fallen - and the dark - and then a voice full of memories that seemed a lifetime ago -

Oh, breathed the Merry who had lain thigh to thigh with Pippin amongst fern and grass, as he looked upon the sleeping form of another Merry's lover.

Oh.

He woke again, not knowing when he'd fallen back to sleep, his arm aching dully, and a low grumbling in his belly. There was sunlight on the pillow next to him, and before him, an empty bed.

He rose up on his elbows, suddenly fully awake, and noticed an arm thrown over his waist. It was Pippin, tall and dressed in a black uniform, but still Pippin, now waking slowly with a yawn. He had lain himself fully clothed beside Merry on his man-sized sick-bed. He blinked and looked sleepily up at Merry, a smile on his face like a hundred post-nap smiles Merry could remember stretching back through years and years.

Perhaps he said Pippin's name in a breaking voice, perhaps not. All Merry remembered was that suddenly he found himself tangled tightly with Pippin, his face buried in Pippin's shoulder, thigh against thigh once again, chest against chest. Pippin's hands were in his hair and on his back, soothing, a palm stroking his back in circles, and whispers in his ear, "Merry, my Merry." He soaked the uniform with tears, and didn't even know what he was crying for.