A Bigger Picture

Alone, Pippin sat on the grass atop a great green hill overlooking the Whitwell Vale, were once as a very young lad he had run the small dirt paths and scattered trails without a care in all of the world. He could see in the distance his old family farm, its fields and pastures, stretching out into the edge of the horizon, stained gold by the slow and tired arrival of morning. He saw the little hole (compared to the Great Smials, anyhow) that he had called his home for fifteen years of his life, and there was smoke coming from the chimney, and someone was already up tending to the flock of white wandering sheep that bleated their soft voices in a yonder pasture. And inside him, his heart contracted, as if to stem the well of sadness and longing that threatened to rise up and overtake him.

He saw the sun rising far in the east, its rays of gold shining long across the lazy valley, dying the long clouds a palette of the lightest purples and pinks he had ever recalled seeing. He sighed, and in that sigh, somehow, sadness released from every part of him, and he looked long and lonely at the quiet farm down before him.

Inside him there was a hungry pit that seemed to drown all his happy thoughts and remembrances, and left a throbbing, aching void of sadness in their places; and while he gazed down at the small farm, the emptiness and longing smote his heart so deep and heavily he wanted to weep, but he would not let himself.

His stare transfixed into the distance, he did not notice when a sturdy figure came up behind him, or hear the person sigh in relief when he had seen him sitting there, watching the still-dim dawn burn away into the gentle gold of morning.

"Hullo, Pippin," It was Merry, of course. But Pippin did not turn, and was not surprised. For all that he had not really expected Merry to come looking for him, he really had not expected him *not* to all the same.

His cousin sat down next to him and drew his legs up and apart, resting his hands on his knees. He looked then to Pippin, who did not look back, but stayed staring into the distance at the little farm of his childhood, and wandered in a haze of heartache. Merry turned his face toward the fields and pastures of the land that he remembered just as well as Pippin did, and was reminded of many happy times spent there, in his carefree younger days, and felt the sweet wind of recollection blow through his mind, as he remembered the joy they had once felt bounding through the crops and pastures.

When Pippin did not speak again for a while, Merry turned to him, waiting for him to look back, but he didn’t, his searching gaze remaining lost in some unreachable sanctuary. But Merry was not discouraged or annoyed, and simply said, "Pippin, would you like to talk to me?"

It was a long while before Pippin moved at all, but Merry was a very smart and patient hobbit, and he knew his cousin better than the wind knew the tides or the seasons.

"I would talk, maybe, if I knew at all what to say," was Pippin’s response, his voice was sad, and in it were notes of wishes made for what had been and what would never be again, in a poignant, sorrowful melody. He seemed enshrouded in an almost glass-like melancholy, restless and dismal, and Merry knew that if he did not tread softly, it would shatter and cause more harm to the tender heart of the beloved cousin trammeled inside.

"Maybe you can start by telling me why you’ve come here," suggested Merry softly, but he already knew the answer. Pippin would always come here, whenever he was scared or lost or miserable. The little home in the distance was the heart of whom he had been for some of the most plentiful and nurturing years of his life, which had filled him with such full and honest meanings of: love and home and family, that whenever he needed to cry like the child he had been, he would come to this place, and though it would make him sadder still, to know that the life he had loved as a child was forever out of his reach, it would comfort him to know that it was not out of sight or memory.

There was another pause, and Merry kept his steady gaze on him, but it was another moment more until Pippin’s gaze broke from its hold, and with it, went Pippin’s resolve, and his control slipping slowly after. He looked down in between his knees, and Merry saw his bow-shaped lips dip into a powerful frown borne a powerful sadness, his eyes coming to close tightly as he tried to collect and contain himself. He looked up then to Merry, after a moment, and just stared, and Merry could not bring any words from his mouth either, as his brow suddenly knitted in quick concern, as he saw his cousin’s eyes more open and full of pain than he had ever remembered, their green depths cast with a shadow and drowned in unshed tears that glistened in the dim light of the grey dawn.

"Pippin! What is wrong?" was Merry’s worried question, and he reached out and touched his cousin’s shoulder.

But Pippin looked at him again, his eyes seemingly searching Merry’s blue-grey gaze, and then he sighed and shook his head, turning away.

Merry was hurt, and frowned, and squeezed his shoulder, "Won’t you tell me?"

There was a pause, then a laugh, a bitter laugh, and Merry’s frown deepened, "If I can’t tell you, then who can I tell?" asked Pippin, making a gesture with his hand that swept the area before them, not looking to Merry, but back out to the horizon far, far away. He snorted and shook his head again, then looked in the other direction, his voice a whisper being stolen away by the silence of the lonely dawn, "It’s foolish, anyhow."

"Pippin," Merry’s voice was taut with concern, and came to a squeaking peak, as it often did. "Nothing is foolish if it can make you so miserable."

Pippin sighed, his gaze constantly returning to the little farmstead in the valley below them, instead of looking back to Merry, and Merry could see the tears again in his eyes that he would not let escape.

"I’m just... scared," he confessed, the last word coming out of him like a bane of immeasurable vastness. "I’m just scared, and I know it's foolish and ridiculous... but I can’t help thinking, why me? Why, Why? Why? Why?" Pippin said, all his confusion and resent spewing from him like rain water from a shoddy barrel. "I’m not smart enough, I’m not good enough... I’m not like... like you," he said looking up to him, and Merry’s face softened, "I can’t lead a people...I just can’t... I just, don’t...don’t want it, any of it Merry! ... I don’t want it at all," he finished quietly after a fervent pinnacle. "I can’t do it... I don’t want to be like my father was, it was his life... I don’t want it to be mine... I want room for... other things, other things he could not fit," Pippin finished sadly, recalling his empty and estranged relationship with his father that had ended too late, and never truly disappeared.

"Is that all?" Merry asked, his brows climbing his forehead, relief and gladness in his tone, and a happiness seeping back into his hoarse voice. He laughed, "You had me really frightened for a moment, Peregrin Took!" And he smiled, and ruffled Pippin’s hair as he had when they were lads a long time ago.

Pippin smiled too, but it was half-hearted, and he still would not look at Merry, lowing his gaze once more as his smile quickly disappeared, "I told you it was foolish... typical of me, anyhow," and his voice was the same sad tone as it had been before, unchanged if a bit more self-depreciating.

"Pippin, you are one of the last people I would ever call foolish with just cause," said Merry, and Pippin turned to him quickly, a flash of anger in his eyes, but it faded suddenly when Pippin found no joke or sarcasm in Merry’s eyes.

"You’d be the only one, then," said Pippin, to this serious look in his cousin’s gaze, and turned away once more.

"Oh, I wouldn’t say so," said Merry, "What about Gandalf? I don’t think he’d agree with you."

Pippin laughed humorlessly, "You are sadly mistaken, Merry. He’d be the first one to tell you that you are wrong."

"Why would you say that?"

Pippin sighed, a bit vexed that Merry was forcing him to dwell on the one thing he was sure of, "O, I don’t know, perhaps for the fact of all the things I did, all the mistakes I made, the fact that everything I ever do has some regretful repercussion."

Merry could not hide his laughter, "Pippin! You have so little faith in yourself," and he put his hand on his stomach to quell his chuckling.

Pippin looked at Merry as if he had just told his cousin that the Shire had been wiped from the face of Middle-earth, and Merry had convulsed in uncontrollable laughter, "It’s not funny!" he said in indignation.

"Oh, Pip! Listen to yourself. You have just proven my point!" said Merry with jollity.

Pippin’s brow creased in puzzlement, a look of annoyance on his face, Merry’s utter senselessness driving him to forget the melancholy that had plagued him before, "What are you talking about?"

"You said the things that make you foolish are things you did, mistakes you made... those things are all in the past, Pippin."

Pippin’s face was still contorted in befuddlement, his irritation waning to become befuddlement as well, "What’s your point?" he added, still rather sharply.

"My point is," emphasized Merry, "That all those mistakes and misdeeds have helped you to grow and know better than anyone else, the seriousness of actions and the importance of love and friendship."

Pippin’s frown slowly changed to a look of realization, and Merry continued, "I know that you are scared, and I know you did not choose this, or want it... but then, neither did Strider," said Merry, turning away a bit, a grin hidden on his face, and Pippin glanced to him, suddenly intrigued and set wondering by Merry’s mechanizing mind.

"You think I’m like Strider – er, the King?" he asked incredulously.

"Indeed I do Pippin. And I’ll tell you why too," said Merry, and Pippin waited for him to continue.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well, this is just a bit of my own thinking," said Merry, a bit diffidently, which reeled Pippin in even more, "But, I was thinking one day, how Gandalf had told me that Frodo was meant to have the Ring...and so, perhaps the War was supposed to end the way it did, and He was supposed to be defeated." Pippin listened. " ‘It was not by chance that Bilbo found the Ring,’ I remember him telling me one night in Cormallen, when I was watching over you miserable and wretched... and it heartened me, and made me think, that indeed since no one else could have done what you did, you three being meant, or so he said, to take the paths you did, that no one else but you could survive, and it gave me hope then, that you would."

Merry paused then, but Pippin said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

He did, "And so... later, thinking over what he might have meant, I was dwelling and thought that, it was not by mere chance we had come to be in the Fellowship then, and so, consequently, not by mere chance that we both loved Frodo and would have pledged to follow him, anyplace, be it to death or disaster."

Merry stopped again, the more he spoke of Frodo, the harder it was to speak again, though it seemed to Pippin that he was very calm and collected, and Pippin admired him, for even now when he thought of his dear, dear cousin, he felt the urge to weep and be alone.

But Merry began once more, pulling Pippin from his own thoughts, "So, if you take all things into consideration leading up to the Quest, like Frodo’s parents...and us and...just everything, going as far back to the crossing of the hobbits over the mountains... and obscurely as your Tookishness... you can surmise that perhaps it was all meant to happen...to be... sort of like pieces falling into place for a great move to shake the world – one that we played a very small part in, as did everyone we ever knew."

Merry sighed and stopped a moment, and begun again, to clarify his words, "Now, it’s not that I’m saying that you and I were and are fated to certain destinies, and have no say at all in the lives we lead... that would be very discomforting." And Pippin frowned. He agreed. "I’m saying that, we were meant to, and so chose to by our own hearts and wills to do what we did. Every bit of who and what we are and know coming together like a web woven to catch the role we were meant for."

Pippin was speechless, but he still did not know how he tied into all of this grandness, "But... what does any of that have to do with me, Merry?" he asked searchingly, wanting desperately to find an answer in his cousin’s strong and comforting reasoning.

"I was going to say, Pip," said Merry, "That since things leading up to the Quest were not simply driven by chance, maybe, the things afterward aren’t either."

"A bigger picture," whispered Pippin, and he looked back then to the farm, and recalled again with another bout of overwhelming longing, his childhood there, and how happy and carefree it had been, the future stretching endlessly before him, when he was not at all pressed with the fatiguing and nettling codes of society and class, as his sisters were, his parents knowing that their time as a quiet farming home was waning to a nearing end.

Pippin liked to think that it was by some rare and strange compassionate foreknowledge on his mother’s part, as opposed to her usual casual indifference toward him, that had stemmed the hand of propriety and purpose before him when he was so young, so as to give him this bittersweet retreat when the future that was no longer trackless, but set on a certain rigid road, that came snaking underneath him, running out before him so he could no longer see the end, offering no way to turn around, and so forcing him to walk it.

"Yes, exactly," said Merry, smiling, "And I believe more than anything that you should live your life the way you want to, it's yours, after all, not something you should be shackled into by the expectance of others upon your birth," Pippin listened to him admiringly, "And I would support you wholeheartedly if you wanted to renounce your title," But then Merry stopped and there was a ghost of a grin on his lips when he continued, "But I have a strong feeling that if you were really given the chance to, your answer would not be one of 'yes'," and then Pippin looked back to him after another long stare at his old home, and slowly, he smiled too.

And surprising Pippin by starting once more, Merry said, "And as for your father Pip, you know what it was like to be on your side of the table. You’re different than he was... but the same too," and Pippin raised a brow, "Yes, yes you are," said Merry, "You are both dogged, and loyal, and capable of great accomplishments... but you will use all those things for reasons he could not, because he could not see what you can now." And Pippin smiled again.

They both turned back then, to the Whitwell farm, and watched the sun break over the land and fill the sky with fiery red and glowing orange that danced across the boundless sky like pastels swept across a giant canvas. The light spilled into the valley and Merry and Pippin sat, Merry’s hand around his cousin’s shoulders and watched as the little farmhouse was bathed in the glowing, warm sunlight of the brightened morning.

"Merry," said Pippin then, turning to his cousin, "I want to go now... no, I don’t want to, but, I know that I must, it’s my responsibility. I can always come back and visit."

Merry smiled, and helped his cousin up, and brushed his back off. Pippin looked once more at the farm, it was awake now, ponies out and plowing, and then looked to his cousin, who was smiling, and smiled back. They walked down the hill, Whitwell Vale disappearing behind them as they made their way to the brown roadway that Merry’s pony was stamping impatiently at.

As they were walking, Merry said, laughingly, "I never, in all my life, Peregrin Took, thought that I would hear you talking about accepting responsibility."

"Well, you had to go and turn all philosophical on me up top there, I felt obliged to say something mature. I’m not going to let you outdo me, you know."

Merry laughed, and pushed Pippin, who laughed and then pushed him back, and pretty soon they ended up rolling down the hill, their shirts becoming stained by the lush green grass.

"Ugh! Estella is going to have my head for this," despaired Merry.

It was Pippin’s turn to laugh, "No she won’t! You’re the one who is so completely absorbed with your appearance," and Merry shot him a stifling glare, but Pippin laughed again, his Tookishness gleaming in his bright, green eyes, "Vain," he said tauntingly.

"Why, you!" And then Merry began chasing after him, "At least I don’t go walking around as if I was born in a cow patch!"

"But I practically was, Merry!" said Pippin again, laughingly.

And so it was that Peregrin Took had come to accept his role of Thain, that had been thrust upon him not more than two days before, which following he had fled to his Whitwell home to despair and wish for a different plot. And running all the way down to Merry’s pony in delightful conflict, just as if they were tweens again, you could hear their laughter all the way to that very farm, if you listened hard enough.