Title: Riding Out the Storm
Author: Pipspebble
Rating: G
Category: Merry and Pippin, comfortfic
Time: Post-Quest, non-specific
Note: My first hobbitfic
Written: Especially for Marigold's Challenge #4
Thanks: To dear Marigold for the bodacious beta

"Shhh, Pippin. It's all right. It's only thunder."

Merry ran his hand soothingly through his cousin's curls, damp with the sweat of fear. He had hoped the nightmares had finally gone away. For him, for the most part, they had. For Pippin, obviously, they had not.

It had been the thunderstorm that seemed to have set him off. He wept in his sleep, tears leaking from the corners of his tightly shut eyes to trickle down his flushed face, calling out frantically, but not for Merry.

"Gandalf!" he shouted hoarsely, his voice thick with tears. "Gandalf! Denethor has lost his mind! He's burning Faramir alive!"

Merry shook him a little, moving his hand from the damp curls to curve around a fevered cheek, his thumb rubbing across a sharp little chin. "It's all right, Pippin," he tried again. "It's only a thunderstorm."

Pippin's eyes fluttered, as if he were coming awake, as if Merry were reaching him through the ironfisted grip of the nightmare.

"No, 'tisn't," Pippin whimpered, sounding for all the world like the wee hobbit lad who often climbed into his older cousin's bed during summer thunderstorms, years ago, before the Quest. Before their lives had been turned inside out. "It's him!"

"Who is it, Pippin?" Merry asked, his hand once again smoothing the curls from his cousin's fevered brow.

"It's him," the tweenager moaned, thrashing his head from side to side. "The one who stabbed Frodo! And he's on that thing! That horrible thing that makes such a horrible noise." A deep roll of thunder crashed nearby and Pippin wailed anew.

"Gandalf!" he cried, over and over and over again until Merry thought he would himself weep with frustration, and worry. Gandalf had left them, set sail with Frodo and Bilbo to the white shores of the Blessed Realm, and there was now no one left who knew first hand exactly what they had endured.

Though Sam was still around, he had risen above his grief at Frodo's departure and had thrown himself headlong into his new life with Rosie and the children. Merry was loathe to approach a subject which clearly brought pain to him, and therefore kept the nightmares, his and Pippin's, to himself, assuming full responsibility for calming his cousin's fears. Most of the time Merry managed well enough.

But there were nights, like this one, when Pippin would dream about the horror of Minas Tirith under siege. Or he would think himself back before the Black Gate, beneath the massive body of the troll and choking in the black blood that gushed from the mortal wound he had inflicted, soaking him as he lay dying beneath his foe.

Other times Pippin dreamt of the trouble he had got himself into when he looked into the palantir and would scream with the same note of terror Merry had first heard when Pippin had his hands on it, and the Dark One had sought to gain a hold over his mind.

The worst dreams were those when Pippin thought himself back on the Fields of the Pelennor and relived holding Merry's wounded and bloodied body in his arms. It was in those moments of anguished memory that his cousin would weep the hardest, and Merry along with him, even as he sought to reassure him that he was alive and with him and all was well.

But this night it seemed that Pippin dreamt of the Witch King, and only Gandalf knew what images filled his mind. Only Gandalf truly understood what had happened to Pippin in the White City. He, too, had lived through the nightmare assault, had withstood the attack of the Nazgul upon the City itself. And it had been Gandalf who had fought with Pippin to save Faramir from the madness of his father. Gandalf alone knew the effect the experience had on the young hobbit, for he alone was there with Pippin to see the flames consume the Steward of Gondor, to smell the burning flesh. Only Gandalf knew what sights Pippin's young eyes had seen, what horrors he had witnessed in the Tombs.

But Gandalf was gone, and could no longer help Pippin through the night terrors. It was up to Merry to comfort his young cousin as best he could.

Whispering soft words, he climbed up onto the bed and took Pippin gently into his arms, turning him so that his ear pressed against Merry's chest, where he could feel his own heart pounding with the ache of watching his loved one suffer. Perhaps the sound of his heartbeat would be enough to pull Pippin away from his nightmares and back into the present, where he was safely enveloped in Merry's loving arms.

"It's all right, Pippin," he murmured in the pointy little ear at his chin. "I've got you, my lad. I've got you. I'll not leave you, I promise." He placed a fervent kiss among his cousin's curls.

"Merry," Pippin sighed, the tension already leaving his body. Merry smiled and tightened his arms.

"Yes, my Pippin. Your Merry is here. All will be well, dearest. Sleep now, and leave the past behind. I have you and I'll not let you go. You are safe here with me."

"Safe," his cousin whispered, then a sleepy "Merry … " before relaxing completely into the deep sleep of exhaustion.

The thunder continued to boom, and the lightning to flash, but Merry stayed where he was, holding his precious cousin close, and together they rode out the storm.

~~~~~~~

Many, many thanks to Marigold for being so warm and welcoming and for the generous beta, to Baylor for inspiring me in the first place, and to all the rest of you wonderful writers out there helping to feed my passion for all things hobbit.