Away from the Window
By Pipspebble
Written for Marigold's Challenge #7
Thanks, as always, to my lovely betas, Marigold and Nickey
Rated G - otherwise I just get myself into trouble
Starter: "Come away from the window, ______"
Period: Pre-Quest
Starring: The cousins Baggins, Brandybuck and Took - with a dash of Sam thrown in for flavah

"Come away from the window, Pippin." Merry stood in the doorway, in his hands a tray laden with teapot, cups, biscuits, and, Pippin saw, the dreaded bottle of tonic. He swallowed reflexively, and the pain in his throat reminded him of the necessity for said tonic, although the knowledge of that necessity did not make it any easier to take the nasty stuff, no matter how much Merry tried to sweet talk him.

He turned back to the window, looking outside with bleary eyes. He knew his fever had spiked again. He could tell from the way the landscape outside the window wavered back and forth, how the limbs on the trees seemed to reach out to him one moment, only to recede the next. He knew it from the burning behind his eyelids, and the ache in his head and the way it felt as if his face had very bad sunburn. He ignored Merry, and leaned his head against the cool pane of the glass, sighing a little as the cold from the snowscape outside the window penetrated the heated skin of his brow.

He drifted about for an unknown period of time and then suddenly Merry was there, curled up beside him in the window seat, positioning his body so that he was closest to the window, with Pippin nestled against his warm shoulder. Merry's arm pulled him close and drew his head down to rest against his familiar and beloved chest, where the increased tempo of the heartbeat within told Pippin that Merry was worried. He was always worrying Merry.

"Stop worrying, Mer," he whispered, for it hurt to talk. "'s only a sore throat. Nothing to get s' upset about."

"'Tisn't the sore throat that worries me so and you know it," Merry said, his fingers stroking Pippin's brow in a soothing manner. "You've carried this fever with you for days now, and you aren't doing either of us any favors by constantly getting out of bed and sitting up here by the window where it's cold and drafty."

"But I'm so hot," Pippin fretted, shifting his legs a bit to ease the cramping in them. "And I'm tired of being sick. I'm always sick. Why did I have to get sick now?"

Merry stroked Pippin's curls back from his brow. "I know, pet, I know," he soothed. "It is miserable luck to fall ill just when the first real snow in years arrives."

Pippin turned what he hoped was a sufficiently pitiful look up to his cousin. "I want to go out and play, Merry. I want to run 'round and catch snowflakes on my tongue. Have a snowball fight with you and Frodo and Sam. Build a snow wizard and make him look just like Gandalf." He closed his eyes as a sudden wave of nausea swept over him, and he heard himself give a tiny little moan.

"Pippin?" Merry shifted about, his breath warm and sweet as he leaned in for a closer look. Pippin struggled to open his eyes a slit and when he did he saw that Merry's face had gone pale and his eyes were wide with fear.

#####

"'m sick, Mer," Pippin whispered. "So sick." His head fell limply against Merry's shoulder and Merry gasped as the heat from Pippin's brow touched the skin of his neck.

"Pippin!" he exclaimed, shifting his cousin in his arms and pushing his hair back from his brow, feeling the heat of his skin like a brand. He swallowed his panic and forced himself to think clearly. He had to get help, and right away. But he dare not leave his cousin.

"Frodo!" he cried, rising from the window seat with Pippin in his arms and carrying him back to his bed. "Frodo! Sam! Somebody, help me!"

By the time Merry got Pippin back under the covers, Frodo had arrived, with Sam right behind him. Frodo approached the bed, placed his palm on Pippin's forehead and gasped, recoiling at the heat that blazed in his young cousin. He turned quickly to Sam but Sam was already on his way out the door and calling over his shoulder.

"I know just what to do, Mr. Frodo. I'll be back directly."

Merry drenched his handkerchief in cool water from the ewer beside the bed and used it to stroke Pippin's sweaty forehead, crooning softly to him all the while, his voice pleading. "Please, Pippin, wake up, sweetheart. Wake up and stop scaring your Merry so."

"And your Frodo," the elder hobbit added, peering into his cousin's face worriedly. "Merry, did he get his tonic tonight?"

Merry started, jerked his head to the forgotten tray, and the bottle that sat untouched. "Not yet," he confessed. "I brought it to him with his tea and found him sitting in the window seat, shivering. I climbed up beside him to warm him up and next thing I knew he had passed out. Why is his fever so high, Frodo?"

"It's the sickness working its way through his system, and the fever is his body fighting it. But we must cool him off, for if the fever gets too high he could become much, much worse."

Sam appeared at the doorway with a large bowl and several linen cloths. He set them on the bedside table and Frodo immediately picked one up and soaked it in the cool water, wrung it out and placed it over Pippin's forehead. With a skill born of many hours spent cooling down his frequently ill cousin, Merry soaked another cloth and wrung it out. Starting with the right hand, he ran the cool cloth up Pippin's arm, across his neck and as much of his chest as could be reached through the opened neck of his nightshirt. He retrieved the cloth, dipped it in the bowl again and wrung it out before repeating the procedure with Pippin's left arm. A third time he dipped the cloth and wrung it, then wiped gently at the beloved face, calling to his young cousin all the while.

"Piiiii-pin. Piiiii-pin. Come back, dearest one, come back to us. You can't see the snow if you're asleep, you silly goose." But Pippin did not respond.

The two cousins worked on the third all through the evening and into the wee hours of the morning, faithful Sam keeping them supplied with plenty of cool water and clean cloths. They had managed to get a dose of tonic down Pippin's throat, and as daybreak neared prepared to give him another.

Merry had fallen asleep at Pippin's side, one arm protectively across the tween's chest and he woke as he heard Frodo approach. He looked guiltily up at his elder cousin. "I'm sorry, Frodo. I must have nodded off. How is he?"

Frodo reached a hand to Pippin's brow and Merry held his breath until Frodo's face relaxed into a relieved smile then released it in a rush. "I do believe his fever has broken, Merry. Look how damp his curls are, and his face glistens with moisture, yet his brow is cool."

Merry looked down at his young cousin and saw these changes, yet worried still that Pippin's condition was far too tenuous to make much of a small victory. He had only barely turned a tweenager, and was smaller than any other tween in all of the Shire, a fact of which he was all too aware. Merry suspected that it was because of his penchant for catching every single illness that crept its way into the Shire that he had not grown any more than he had.

"He's so small, Frodo," he whispered, taking one of Pippin's slender hands in his, stroking softly with his thumb. "So small, and still so frail. How is he ever going to have a chance to grow into the hobbit he is destined to be if he continues to get slammed with illness after illness after illness?"

"He will overcome them, every one," Frodo assured him, squeezing Merry's shoulder gently. "With Tookish tenacity and the love of all who know him, he will triumph over them all."

As if to illustrate the point, Pippin stirred, moving his head ever so slightly from side to side, licking dry lips, eyelids fluttering. When they fully opened Merry wanted to make sure that his face would be the first one Pippin saw. He squeezed the small hand in his own, leaning forward anxiously.

"There's my good lad," he crooned. "Come now, Pippin, my love, that's it. Come back to us now. Come back to your Merry."

"And your Frodo," Frodo added, taking Pippin other hand in his own and patting gently. "Come back to us, dearest, for we love you so very much, and we have much to teach you. You have so much to be and to see and to do."

"And I'll be right there with you, Pippin," Merry promised. "Just please wake up and give me that sweet smile I love so much."

Moments passed, and Merry held his breath as Pippin struggled to wakefulness. At last the long lashes parted and he looked up at them through weak, green eyes.

"Promise me?" he whispered to first Merry, then Frodo.

"Anything, dearest!" they answered in unison, fighting back tears.

"Tomorrow, when I'm better, take me outside in the snow, just for a wee bit."

"That will depend on you, my lad," Frodo said, mastering his emotions as he pointed a finger in the young Took's face. "You stay in bed and take your tonic - without a fuss! - as you are supposed to, and tomorrow if you have no fever, Merry and I will take you outside for ten minutes, no more. And then in the afternoon, after you've had your tonic and taken a nap, if you still have no fever I'll have Sam fix you up a nice cozy spot where you can sit at the window and direct your cousins in the building of a proper snow wizard."

"A right good deal, Pippin," Merry added his two pence worth. "What say you to that?"

Pippin nodded, glanced sideways at the tonic on the bedside table and obediently opened his mouth, resigned to his fate.

Pippin was very cooperative all that day and into the night, taking his tonic when given, sleeping when ordered, and staying away from the window seat, no matter how the snow outside called to him. The next morning Merry and Frodo kept their promise, and the next afternoon a very respectable snow wizard stood proudly at the gate at Bag End, guarding the precious occupants within.

That evening, very late while the three cousins slept, the skies opened again and blanketed all of Hobbiton in white.

And the next morning, because he had been such a very good patient, Pippin was allowed to go outside with his cousins to play.