Duty Bound

***

(Pippin)

The fear...it is too much. It is crushing him... he cannot see, cannot hear, but for the blood in his ears, his throat is dry, it is crushing... crushing him.

It is pounding, pulsing, in his veins, he wants to scream, to cry, to run away, but he can’t, he is frozen, paralyzed with it. He is shaking, but he does not notice, he cannot, he is shaking.

I am going to die. I am going to die, he tells himself. It is a wicked mantra in his head.

All the silent pleas leave him, ones he made for bravery, for chivalry, for trust within himself that he might withstand this, this whose premise was ever bigger than his step. All wishes for hope beyond doubt seem to mingle now where despair and trepidation once lingered. And he is no longer a soldier tempered by time and event, but left a hobbit, alone, with a sword instead of song. It has come to this.

He is gasping, he can’t breathe.... he can’t...

His fingers cannot hold his sword, it slips from his shaking, nerve-wracked grasp; slippery with his sweat. The fear is suffocating him. It is smothering him, and he wants to run away, the armor on his body does not fit, and he wants to run away.

Death is humid on his neck with damp, hot breath and he closes his eyes, the fear, it overcomes him, enveloping his heart like a tide, he is too young, and he knows he is going to die.

He cannot push it down, push it away. All thoughts of honor are far in his mind as he shakes, his hands... they shake...he cannot hold his sword.

He wonders what it will feel like; the death blow. The stabbing, the pain, the cold.

Duty, somehow, holds him, hardens him, keeps him from falling, collapsing to the ground under the unbearable weight that has dropped on his heart, the curtain over his eyes.

It is my duty. I am going to die. It is my duty.

The two thoughts conflict as a battle waging in his mind, like a cruel reminder of the hideous play that lays yet to be carried out before him, tearing him in half. Run. Stay. Run. Stay. Run.

This is no place, no place for a hobbit.

His breathing is ragged, like he has already been stabbed, but he has not; not yet.

I am going to die. He cannot block the thoughts away, he has no control over himself anymore, over his thoughts or his body.

He stands there, the fear racks his small frame like shudders of lightning. He stands there, waiting, suffocating, paralyzed.

I am going to die. It is my duty. I am going to die.

It is my duty...I am... It is my...going to die...duty...I am duty...It is my duty...to die

It is my duty to die.

Another fierce shudder overtakes him as the thought becomes the solely clear beacon in the fog of his confusion.

Somewhere in the back of his mind the green rolling fields of the Shire grow, and the birds sing high in the blue, clear sky to keep him faithful -- but it is nothing more than just a distant sound on the edge of hearing.

The fear eclipses it from his mind. He is suffocating with it, it is closing him in, and runs rampant through his heart so it beats, pounding in his chest like the cold stone of the city to which he is bound.

I can’t...breathe... I can’t...

A great roar overcomes the throbbing of blood in his ears and breaks him from his capturing thoughts, and he looks out in front of him like he has never before used his eyes.

They are screaming, he notices. The soldiers, a battle cry, a great roar, a tide to crash upon the rocks. He looks at the men, the tall men with their horses and their great gleaming weapons, and feels more out of place than ever, smaller than ever. He is so small.

Looking away from them a moment, he is struck at the sight that stands in the distance like the cruel glower of all that is horrid and evil in the world. Though it is just that.

The fire-mountain. It is surrounded in an awful aura of blood red and yellow to starkly contrast the black of the endless, fathomless malevolence that gathers behind it like a tempest of horrors and demons.

There is not light there, there is nothing. Now that he sees this he is frozen again, but not with fear, this new emotion bears down upon him so heavily that fear feels as if happiness.

A shadow lain over his heart – it is dread, dread that crushes him.

But the thought of the Shire again emerges in his stricken mind. Thoughts of Merry, of Frodo, Sam...his mother, sisters.... as the Black Gate finally opens, he can feel no more, but is full of apathy. He knows this is the end.

He could not have ever hoped to live. And now he realizes, he will be a nameless body in a force to whom remembrance will identify.  He tries to recall a life long past, in a land so foreign, it seems, doesn't anymore exist. His life and all his passings will merge as one with this final stand.   

None are now strong enough solely to battle an enemy so utterly terrible.

If there is hope left yet, he has forgotten it, for the hopelessness filling the void in his chest sweeps out from the black land like a stolen wind and makes all quail in its passing; finding in each soldier the last remnants of promise, and smothering them, to extinguish their ties to the world and what makes them strong against all odds.

But not Pippin. As the shadow-land seems to rise up and tower above him in inestimable measure, love flickers in his shaded heart like the last glint of an ember in a dying fire.

For you, Frodo... Merry, go home, go home and do not let this touch them. Go home, again.

I am going to die. It is my duty.

Remember me.