Title: Frodo's Bane and Pippin's Stomach
By: Arwen Baggins

Chapter Five: It's NOT Your Fault
Setting: Amon Súl, October 6

Disclaimer: Am I the only one getting bored with this? Do I really need to repeat myself? I do? Aw, shucks! Alright, I don't own anything relating to Lord of the Rings in this short-story (which would be everything), it all belongs to Tolkien. There, happy now? Good.

Warning: This chapter is rated PG-13 for suicidal depression.  After all what would you do if you thought you were to blame for the near-death of a family member of close friend.

Pippin sat on the cold, stone ground of Weathertop's dell, holding his wounded cousin's hand. He hoped that he was hiding his fear, though he very much doubted this since he could feel - and see - his body trembling, but then again it was very dark, so perhaps -

Pippin's frantic musings were abruptly cut short as one of the wraiths let out a wailing scream. It hadn't occurred to the Tweenager that the hated creatures could even know fear or pain. They seemed so fearful and indestructible in and of themselves. But as he turned around, he vaguely saw Strider's smug grim of satisfaction as the last of the blazing shadows retreated from the dell. Pippin found himself wondering yet again, who this *Strider* really was. He clearly had dealt with these creatures before. What events had led him to gain such a proficiency in defeating them? Well, perhaps he better not know ALL of the details. One thing was for certain. He was more than a Ranger, the rest of the riddle would have to wait until later. Right now they needed to focus on taking care of Frodo.

At that moment, with the fear of his enemies gone, the terrified Ring- bearer's voice returned with a vengeance, and he let out a cry that did not pierce Pippin's heart, but instead went straight for his soul. But at the same moment, that agonizing scream had filled his with an unlooked-for hope. His cousin had seemed so weak and helpless at first, but this scream instilled Pippin with the hope that perhaps he could fight this. Maybe he could live through it! Then reality struck home. No, one could gauge a Hobbit's strength based on the first few minutes of trial. They were so far from Rivendell, even if Frodo lived through the night, there was no guarantee that he would continue to do so. There was no guarantee of any kind.

"Strider!" Sam's voice pierced through the stillness of the night, and either it was Pippin's imagination, or there was a commanding edge to Sam's voice. This shocked Pippin beyond words: Sam had not only dropped the "Mr." that he seemed to use when addressing anyone not within his immediate family. Even more shocking was that Sam had the nerve for once, to not only give orders, but to one of the Big Folk no less! Sam had shown quite enough reluctance as it was to scold Pippin for raiding the pantries on his visits to Bag-end. But this - ?

Noticing that he was sitting right where Strider needed to be, Pippin quickly (and gently) released Frodo's hand and went to join Merry, which was as far from trouble as he seemed to be able to get for the time being.

After looking around to make sure that some over-zealous wraith wasn't attempting to make a come-back, Strider the Ranger heeded Sam's order and knelt down next to Frodo's trembling body.

"Help him, Strider," Sam pleaded, the commanding edge having vanished without a trace.

Strider knelt down in the same place that Pippin had occupied a moment earlier. Strider, however, wasn't looking at Frodo. Instead his gaze was fixed on the ground. He reached down and brought into view a very long sword, something that Pippin had missed entirely. Strider sat still for a moment, examining the hilt, seeming to ignore his patient. And from the look on Sam's face, that would have to change within a matter of seconds, or else the Ranger would have to suffer the brunt of Sam's wrath. This the other Hobbits saw plainly, but as Strider wasn't looking at them, he remained oblivious and continued to examine the sword with a interest the only one of Big Folk could possibly possess under such dire circumstances.

When he seemed satisfied with his examination, he put the sword back down and finally turned to Frodo, who hadn't moved so much as an inch. The screams had gone out of his voice and were replaced by a pitiful moaning sound, which to Pippin seemed to convey not a lessening of pain, but rather failing strength - for indeed he had not the strength to release the scream that had pierced Pippin's heart and soul to their core only moments earlier.

Strider knelt down and very gently picked Frodo up and moved him towards the center of the dell and once again laid him down on the cold floor. The transportation was complete before Sam could utter a word, not that he would have known what to say to someone who seemed to be handling his master with a care that appeared to be beyond his capability. This by itself was enough to surprise the Tween, but he went the extra mile, so to speak, to prove his intentions, for the next thing he did was to remove his own cloak and carefully wrap it around Frodo's shivering form. Whether the shivering was from the cold or lingering fear, Pippin didn't know - nor was he sure he wanted to.

"Merry, Pippin?" The Ranger turned to the two Hobbits who had assumed that they had been forgotten. "Would you please go back to your camp-fire and retrieve your supplies? I want you to start a fire. Frodo must be kept warm!" Before either Hobbit could respond to this absurd and foolish suggestion, Strider quickly explained himself: "Fire may have been your demise just now. But it is also the only weapon that can be used successfully against such creatures. Should the Nazgúl return you will wield a weapon that even they fear."

"Why would he need to be kept warm?" Sam shot back angrily. Any confidence in the Ranger that his master had drilled into him was long- gone. "He's wounded not sick! Why not keep the fire out and wrap him in blankets if it's so important? The fire will just bring them back!"

"You must trust me, Sam!" The Ranger insisted, meeting the gardener's defiant glare. "I do not think they shall return, but if they do, you must be prepared. He is your master and it is your decision, but it shall go better for you if you heed my advice, however ill it may seem to you." Having said all that was required of him, Strider turned around and without a second thought, began to descend the watchtower and was soon out of sight.

"Come on, Pip, let's go get that equipment," Merry said softly, helping Pippin to his feet. Pippin nodded his agreement and solemnly followed his elder cousin down to the lower-level of the watchtower, using the same trail they had ascended no more than 10 minutes earlier. They had barely left when they heard a sudden burst of tears. The tears, however, seemed not to come from pain, but from grief, which meant it could only be one Hobbit: Sam. Pippin did not need to turn around to know that Sam was bending over his master's prostrate body, weeping in his grief. Putting a hand to his mouth to stifle his own cry and threatening tears, Pippin followed the barely-visible form of Merry. With the moon absent and the fire behind them, it would be impossible for anyone (save perhaps an Elf) to see more than a couple feet ahead. He remembered Strider's warning about Hobbits falling to their deaths - but he didn't care anymore. In fact, he began to wonder if perhaps they wouldn't be better off if he had fallen in the ascent or drowned himself back in the Marshes. For a second he contemplated the possibility of "accidentally" taking a bad step off the edge of the cliff -

*NO!* "No," Pippin whispered, almost regretfully, shaking his head. The damage had been done already. He would gladly have taken his own life for the chance to go back and change the events of that night, but since such a thing was not possible, the idea of suicide would have to be abandoned. Having come to a decision, Pippin aided Merry in gathering up their firewood and travel packs, without inflicting any personal harm upon himself. While completing his share of the task, Pippin bent down to retrieve a large piece of firewood and noticed a conspicuous plate of now cold bacon, sausages and fragments of a burst tomato.

*Stupid food* Pippin shouted in mental rage as he kicked the cookery against the stonewall. He thankfully wasn't facing westward towards the cliff-edge, or else the plate surely would have landed with full-force on some innocent animal on the forest-floor - as if he hadn't been the catalyst of enough misery already. His feelings of self-damnation had yet to dissipate and looking once again at the dirty, ashen, travel-worn plate, he realized that the thought of filling it with warm, delicious food did not settle his nerves as it once had. In fact, it served no other purpose than to further ignite them. His destructive intentions against the plate had proved fruitless, indeed it hardly looked worse for the wear and tear it had just received against the hard wall. Unlike Frodo - The memory of his cousin's agony and bleeding shoulder, sent him into a violent rage - which basically consisted of attacking the wall with his newest weapon - the plate. *Why was it so hard to cause harm to something that had already created more than its fair share?* The ferocity displayed in his attack astonished him, but that didn't stop him. What eventually DID stop him wasn't a "What" but a "Who". And who eventually did stop him, was Merry.

Merry, having retrieved his share of the supplies, turned around and headed back up the summit. The rational part of his brain told him that Pippin was following close behind like he usually did. Unfortunately, what he didn't know was that Pippin was everything but rational at that moment. "Pippin, come on. Hurry up," he said to the cousin who was supposedly following at a lagging pace. When he received no answer, he turned around and felt his eyes bulge at the sight that greeted them. His young cousin attacking a wall with a plate was the last thing that he expected to see. He wouldn't have been too surprised to see the Nazgúl return. Alarmed, yes - surprised, no. But this? Yes, this was defiantly unexpected. Two seconds later he had dropped his pack and firewood and ran over to the distraught Tweenager. "Pippin! Pippin, stop! Pippin!" Merry wrestled the "weapon" away from his distraught cousin, and held him close. He wanted to say that everything would be okay, but he couldn't bring himself to tell such an obvious lie, so he just held him. It took only a matter of seconds for Pippin's fury to turn into worry and hopeless grief, soon he was sobbing on Merry's shoulder, soaking his clothes with hot tears, but if Merry noticed he gave no sign of it. He didn't need to ask what the matter was. There was only one thing that could be bothering his cousin. But why? Why was Pippin reacting so violently? He knew that different people had different ways of handling grief and pain but this was ridiculous! Pippin had never been one to resort to violence under any circumstance. He had about a dozen different questions that needed answering, though figuring that Pippin wouldn't even pay attention to any question that might be posed, he kept his mouth shut and waited for Pippin to explain himself. The question was just one of "when" not "if". Pippin had far too big of a mouth to keep feelings like this to himself for long. All he had to do was give him ample time.

A few minutes proved to be more than enough time. "It's my fault!" Pippin sobbed, his voice shaking almost beyond comprehension. "He's going to die! And I could have saved him!"

"No, Pippin," Merry soothed. "It's not your fault! You musn't think that!"

"But it is, Meriadoc!" The grief was gone from his voice, and in its place was raw anger. The seriousness of which was conveyed through his use of Merry's proper name: something that Merry assumed Pippin had forgotten, since he had never used it before. "I cared so much about food! If I hadn't insisted on that cooking-fire this wouldn't have happened! Frodo would be in his warm blankets sleeping right now. Safely! Not curled up on the cold floor in pain and his shirt wouldn't be soaked in blood.! It's my fault! I should have taken the blow! But I didn't! I let the Black Riders throw me aside! I was his last defense and I failed him." He looked down at the floor and added in a barely audible whisper, "I deserve to be drowned in the Marshes for all the help I've been!"

Merry felt the blood freeze in his veins at the sound of those words. He had known that this journey would effect Pippin, after all he was so young and so far from home, but he could never have imagined this. To hear his young cousin speak of suicide so seriously drove home the full magnitude of how much it really HAD changed Pippin. "No, Pippin, it's NOT your fault! The Ring drove them here. The could sense IT. The fire just made the locating easier for them. It brought them here sooner. They would have caught up with us either way! Pippin, look at me!" Pippin, who until that moment, hadn't given any acknowledgment to his cousins to his cousin's words, complied.

Merry looked into the depths of his green eyes and where he had once seen joy and laughter, he now saw a guilt that they had never been known to harbor in the past twenty-eight years. Even the worst beating from Farmer Maggot for thieving mushrooms hadn't produced this kind of effect. "Pippin," he began again, reaching out to wipe the tears from his cousin's cheek, "IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT!"

Pippin, at that moment, felt an uncharacteristic urge to punch Merry in the face for having the folly to say such ridiculous words. But violence wasn't his way - it never had been and he didn't want to change that any time soon. So to restrain himself he kept his fists clenched at his side and out of Merry's sight. "Yes, it is," he choked looking at the ground. From first glance one might think that he did this in shame, which he did, but it was also another part of his self-control to keep himself from inflicting harm on yet another cousin. Not that a black-eye was lethal or anything. "Yes, it is," he repeated softly, hardly believing his own words. In the past, when the adults had declared him innocent of a charge that had been laid upon him by either his cousins or sisters, he had never dared to argue the final decision.. But tonight his overwhelming sense of guilt caused him to act out of character in more ways than one. "If I hadn't insisted on that confounded fire, then the wraiths would still have come - yes! But Strider would have been here also! You saw him fight those Black Riders! He would have been able to protect Frodo! But he wasn't there! The least I could have done was to WAIT and ask Strider - then everything would have been fine! But it isn't."

Merry thought about it for a moment and found more than a grain to truth to what Pippin had said. Yes, Strider would have been able to save Frodo from being wounded. Yes, the wraiths wouldn't have found them until later - until after Strider had returned. But even then what was to stop the incident. They already knew where the Ranger stood on the fire issue. Had he just now ordered the Hobbits to construct a fire for safety purposes? But, then again, he might be telling them to use the fire as a safety measure (now there was a novel idea), but that was probably because the wraiths already knew where they were. And Merry doubted that Strider would have approved of its use while the location was still hidden. Thus finding no words of comfort to offer to his very young (at least for an adventure of this magnitude) and very distressed cousin, he simply gave him a fake and sympathetic smile as he handed Pippin his pack. "Come on, Pip. Sam's probably wondering where we are. And Frodo needs this fire if what Strider says is anything to go by."

Pippin wondered for a moment why Merry was even taking Strider's advice seriously? Perhaps it was because he had fought so hard to protect Frodo - a department in which some of them were still lacking a great deal of skill, or luck as some might call it. Head bowed and pack loaded, Pippin took the lead and headed back up towards the summit. When he came within sight of Sam, singing some unidentifiable tune to soothe his master's pain, Pippin had a sudden urge to flee. He remembered his previous thoughts in the Marshes, the one about Sam's inevitable wrath, should any harm come to his master. At the time Pippin had been thinking about Frodo spraining a wrist if Pippin tripped him while they were walking blind through the vapors. But now that it came to the point, Pippin realized that Sam was probably over the shock and shaking with rage at Pippin's stupidity and selfishness. He was about to turn back, but Merry stopped him.

"Go on, Pippin," he urged, giving his cousin a little nudge up the trail. "I'm here. You have to face him sometime, and Frodo could use a fire. We have to help him in any way he can." Finding no way to deny the obvious truth of Merry's words, he turned back around. He would deal with Sam's wrath - come what may. It could hardly more emotionally crushing than the guilt he already harbored. But physically? Pippins shuddered at the image of himself lying on the floor with every bone in his body in pieces. But that image was soon replaced by that of Frodo in his current state, and his fear dissolved. He had said that he should have taken the blow for Frodo, but he hadn't. What ever Sam gave him could hardly be as painful as the pain and death he deserved. He would face Sam's wrath head-on, come what may, he was ready for it!