1. The Ring

Merry knew that the Ring had been watching him since he was nineteen years old. There was that time when Merry was twenty one and he had slipped quietly into Frodo’s study as only tweenagers can while his cousin was taking a bath. The chest had opened as silent as he wished and the Ring was waiting at the bottom. As Merry held it up to the light and watched the sun shine off the gold, he thought he heard a voice, like a waterfall in the back of his head, whispering “Meriadoc”. He threw the Ring across the floor and then it was only Frodo, calling across the smial to his cousin for the third time, asking how the huckleberry picking had gone earlier.“Fine,” Merry called, trying to keep the panic out of his voice as he frantically stuffed the Ring back in its hiding place and closed the lid.

It wasn’t any surprise to him then, to hear that same rushing whisper as Rivendell disappeared behind them.

At first Merry tried to shove it away and put it out of his mind, but the nights were long and silent with walking. Any company was welcome. He let it sit and tried not to pay it much attention, but it was insistent and soon, Merry started listening and stopped being horrified.

He was scared that Aragorn or Gandalf or Frodo might know, might somehow sense his treacherousness. Whenever one looked his way, he fell behind the others, where he knew no eyes were watching and wondered what to do.

Take it.

He didn’t, but he let the thought sit and fester until he could think of nothing else. He tried to rationalize it, but he never quite managed. There were times—usually when he was eating—when he knew that, somewhere along the line, things had gone horribly wrong. It would last and he would be almost cheerful again until Frodo or Gandalf looked his way. Then the whisper would come back, eating away at him until he crumbled. Ever so sweetly it wheedled and cajoled and promised.

It should be mine.

It will be mine.

2. On the Shores of the Anduin

Merry was always a little resentful that he was the only one to take time to think before acting. It made him the one to scamper off after Pippin when he had another scheme that didn’t involve thought, only action, made him responsible when those schemes went wrong. It was Merry who orchestrated the conspiracy, who studied Elrond’s maps and it was Merry who stopped to think about where Frodo might be running to. He had expected better of Strider and Legolas, but the Fellowship had scattered and then there were orcs and Merry was thinking and then he was the one running down to the shore, away from everyone else, so he was the only one to know that Frodo was running.

Merry stood at the edge of the water and watched Frodo clumsily dipping on oar into the water. It crossed his mind that this was where Sam was supposed to be and wherever Pippin ran off to was where he was supposed to be.

He doesn’t want anyone following, Merry thought, but it was a coward’s thought, a reason to turn around and forget what he saw. He didn’t study the maps; he doesn’t know where he’s going.

He’s going to fail.

Merry had spent his nights worrying and planning and figuring, but two was always two, no matter how you tried to split it. Merry had known that Frodo would fail ever since the Black Riders in Bree. If that was what the Ring did, then what was one hobbit against it? Nothing in the end, that’s what. Once they had four hobbits, two men, an elf, a dwarf and a wizard, Merry thought that perhaps there was a chance, but now Frodo was setting out across the water and ruining what little chance he had.

In the end, Merry didn’t have time to think. Thinking would have had him on the river bank, waiting for Aragorn and planning the best way to get to Frodo when the Fellowship gathered again. Instead, Merry threw himself into the water, knowing that if he wasted any more time, Frodo would be gone forever.

When he pulled himself up and over the side, Frodo was mad and Merry was mad and then they were both crying.

“You can't be on your own,” Merry said, “It won't work if you’re alone.”

You’re going to fail, Merry’s eyes said.

“Besides,” he added as he wiped water and tears away from his face, “You don’t know where you’re going.”

3. Outside the Shire

When they returned, Merry was waiting. He had been waiting every day for a year, sitting under a tree by the road that led to Bree at the border of the Shire. Merry rose and hailed them with a grin. They smiled in return, but the smiles never reached their eyes and Pippin would not smile at all, or even look at his cousin.

Merry shot a worried glance at Gandalf. The wizard sighed.

This was not how it was supposed to go. Sam, Frodo and Pippin would come back, they would laugh and joke with Merry and tell him wonderful stories of their adventures.

“Gandalf,” he began, but Gandalf beckoned him to watch. Immediately Merry turned his attention to his friends. They had dismounted and now stood together in a clump just a step outside of what passed for the border of the Shire. Pippin had his head resting on Frodo’s shoulder and Frodo had an arm around Pippin’s waist.

Holding him up, Merry thought. That should be me.

It was then that Merry realized that they were barely standing—barely alive, even. Merry recoiled, stricken.

With tears pushing at his throat, he realized that they meant to leave him and that Gandalf would not allow him to interfere.

“But where will they go?” he asked.

“Into the west.”

“Even Pippin?” he asked. There were tears in his eyes that thickened his voice and his chest hurt.

“I’m sorry Merry.” Gandalf fussed with his reins to give Merry enough time to scrub furiously at his face and take a few, shivering gulps of air. By the time he had mastered himself, Frodo, Sam and Pippin had mounted their ponies and disappeared without a word to him. His chest hurt so much he thought he might be dying.

“This was not how it was supposed to end,” he said, his voice shaking. Gandalf nodded curtly and urged his horse into a trot, disappearing quickly from view. Merry turned his feet towards home and arrived soon before dusk.

He stood with his hand on the door handle and looked over the west, where his friends would soon be sailing.

Somewhere there is a Shire with all four of us in it, he thought, and went inside.

4. The Fourth Age

Merry missed Pippin after they left from Rivendell. He would have liked to have his cousin by his side, even if Elrond had judged that he should return home. When they passed through Moria though, he suspected that Elrond was right and as he struck down the Witchking he knew Elrond was right, this was not a place for Pippin. Even if Pippin would never forgive him for letting them send him home, at least he was spared this darkness.

When he returned though, Pippin was as bright and cheery chatterbox as ever and Merry found that he could no longer match him. Pippin was a child still, chasing lasses and pulling pranks. Merry found that he wanted to shout at him and shake some sense into the fool boy. Grow up, Peregrin Took, there are more important things in life.

He couldn’t talk of the quest after Rivendell with Pippin and he knew it hurt his cousin, but how could he explain Sauron and orcs and Frodo lying so still after Mount Doom? So if it hurt Pippin that Merry would no longer speak to him unguardedly, it hurt Merry that Pippin looked upon him with scorn that he was now so silent and solemn.

It was inevitable then, that Pippin drifted away from him and left him in the dust. Merry watched him grow older and more distant and knew that Elrond was wrong after all. Pippin did not need saving, but Merry needed Pippin and now Pippin was slowly but surely breaking Merry’s heart.

When Merry decided to take the road that led east he told Pippin and Pippin looked up briefly from his duties as Thain and said “Go then.”

Merry went.

He visited with the people of Rohan and talked to the ents and wondered what Pippin would be like if he had a little bit of entish in him that made him think before he spoke and tempered his brashness. He came to Minas Tirith and spent his days with what remained of the Fellowship. He had thought that he would be returning to the Shire but found that he could not leave this place where he had finally found peace.

When his days were winding to a close, he realized that Pippin had known that he would not be returning. He thought of Pippin’s brisk, hassled dismissal and closed his eyes and did not wake up again, for how could he live with a heart so broken?

When they found him in the morning they laid him to rest among the greatest of Gondor and when the king died they set Merry beside him.

5. After the Last Battle

They would not let him travel to Cormallen for fear that he was too fragile yet after the Black Breath, so when Merry finally arrived he was two days too late. The soldiers made way for him and Legolas and Gimli were there to meet him so that he would not wander the battlefield. Merry wanted to run and sing and bounce on a bed with someone else his size, but instead he followed his companions to a dark tent and knelt before the king.

Nothing smelled quite right after that. His nose had stopped working as had his eyes. As had many things. Years later, bad news and dark times always smelled like that small tent with the king’s large hand on his head and Gandalf standing by—and if Gandalf had returned, maybe there was hope left.

In the midst of the victory celebrations, Merry found that hope had deserted him.

The next day they took him away from the fields to a small spot where three child size mounds of stone lay—except that they were just Merry’s size and there was only one child among them. Merry knelt on the ground and found that he had no tears.

“I will not return to the Shire,” he told Gandalf soon after, and then, when Gandalf was silent, “What would I tell his parents?”

“Then I will go with Legolas and Gimli and we will tell them for you,” Gandalf said gently.

The remains of the Fellowship rode for the Shire and Merry remained with the king in Minas Tirith.

He kept a garden for Sam and wrote a book for Frodo, but he could do nothing for Pippin except look at the Mountains of Shadow and curse.