Merry stared at Pippin's hunched back, barely visible in the dim moonlight for the Elvish cloak wrapped around his quivering body. He stared and stared at him, and although his gaze felt harsh even to his own eyes, but he couldn't do anything else but stare. "Are you angry at me?" Pippin's voice was small and weak beneath the hood of his cloak, although Merry wasn't sure if it was of his own doing or due to his ordeal with the stone.
"I don't know," Merry replied curtly. "Should I be?"
"Don't be, please," Pippin pleaded, and Merry thought he had a long way to go before he could be as cajoling as that Saruman.
"That wasn't what I asked," Merry finally said, still staring at Pippin's back. He wasn't sure what to say to his cousin. He barely had words to berate his idiocy; he wasn't even entirely sure of the scope of what Pippin had done, only that it had angered Gandalf and worried the others. Finally, he said, "I told you to stay away from it. I thought maybe you'd at least listen to me, but no, you're going to do what your fool head wants no matter what, and now you're paying for it! Maybe we're all going to pay for it."
"Don't say such things," Pippin said mournfully, sighing deeply. "I didn't mean to..."
"No, but you did. We take one step forward and then you cast us two steps back! We'll never see home again it seems..."
"That won't be my doing," Pippin protested, but Merry cut him off sharply.
"Whatever path Gandalf had decided for us changed the moment you stole that stone, Pippin! We don't know what he would have done, and now we never will. We'll probably die out here."
"At least I'll die next to you, then," Pippin said quietly, but Merry snorted.
"Says who?" He sighed at Pippin's look of horrified bafflement. "Nobody says we're going to stay together, Pip. Nothing's for sure any more. They might have to take you far away, or hide you, or something else."
"I'm not going to die alone," Pippin said, his voice catching mournfully in a way it hadn't in many weeks, since the times he would complain about being hungry in the early stage of their journey. "I won't die without you, Merry, and you can't die without me! No matter where they take me!"
Merry sighed at Pippin's emotional outburst, and slowly laid himself down behind his cousin. He draped an arm over the shuddering body and patted his side. "Working yourself up isn't going to solve anything, Pip," he said, trying to sound confident and soothing, suppressing the anger that was going to get him nowhere. "What will come, will come. And hopefully sometime in the future we'll light a pipe together and chat over it, and laugh at how we were ever worried about death, or being separated, because it all had a happy ending."
"What makes you so sure it'll have a happy ending?" Pippin asked, turning over in Merry's arms and facing him. He looked many years older than his age suddenly, but his eyes were still bright and tremulous in the dim light, shimmering with uncertainty.
"It has to have a happy ending, Pip," Merry replied, giving him a light kiss on the forehead. "Or else what's the use in continuing? You want to make sure it all ends happily ever after, right?" Merry felt as though he were consoling a little child, but they were simple, naive words that they both needed to hear at that moment, and both needed to believe were true, even if they weren't, exactly.
"If I don't muck it up before we get there," Pippin replied sullenly. "It's always me, isn't it? What if the story ends, 'And they would have lived happily ever after, if it hadn't been for Peregrin Took?'"
"It won't end that way," Merry said, stroking Pippin's thick curls and leaning toward him again. His heart had softened and his irritation had fled; Pippin was reckless and was just learning the idea of responsibility--he was just learning it in the hardest and most inconvenient way.
"How do you know?" Pippin's breath, which smelled of the comforting scents of beer and pipeweed, and sweet bread and home, caressed Merry's face, and Merry reciprocated the gesture with his fingers, touching Pippin's skin and sighing to see care lines already starting to etch into his young face. He kissed the corner of one eye, then the other, willing the lines and the burdens that caused them from Pippin's soul. He then kissed his sun- and wind-burned cheeks, and the tip of his nose, and then finally his lips, which he lingered upon for several moments. Pippin gasped softly but made no move to draw away, nor to ask for more, merely taking what he was given, although his fingers tightened in Merry's clothes.
Merry pulled back from the kiss and swallowed, waiting for Pippin to open his eyes. When he did, and their gazes were held fast by each other, he replied, "Because you won't let it, Pip."
Pippin did not reply, and just stared into his cousin's eyes for a long time, body and mind still a bit weak, but sharpness and resolve beginning to show in his eyes. "That's a Took," Merry thought, his lips curving into a smile, which Pippin slowly echoed.
"It doesn't have to be that way, does it?" Pippin whispered. Merry shook his head.
"You've got just as much to say in what happens as the rest of us, Pip. You've done things that have made things go for the worse," he paused, kissing Pippin again lightly when he flinched at the reminder, "and you can do just as much to make them go better. I know you can."
Pippin nodded resolutely, then laid back against Merry with a sigh. "It's just as well I can't sleep then, if--"
Shouts from across the camp drew their attention, as a dark shadow appeared over them. "Nazgūl!" Gandalf's voice sounded strained and rushed.
The Wizard hurried over to where Merry and Pippin lie, and scooped up Pippin into his arms. Pippin clung to Merry's hands for a brief moment, and Merry leaned over, kissing his lips one last time. "Go, Pip! Write your own ending now!"
"I will, Merry!" Pippin said, clinging to Gandalf as he was tossed onto Shadowfax and they took off into the night, everything spinning past him in a blur as he struggled to gather his wits and figure out just where to start. "I will."
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Interlude by Jai Marie
Story notes: Book canon, my first attempt at a 'missing scene;' takes place in TTT when Gandalf leaves Merry alone with Pippin for that short time after the palantir. Feedback and constructive crit about style/characterization very welcome.
Followed by Morning Light.
