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Someone As You Can Trust  by Lindelea

Chapter 1. ...Or Following You Like Hounds

‘Just what sort of mischief have you been up to, Peregrin Took?’

‘It was nothing,’ Pippin said again, but his tone was flat and he did not meet Frodo’s eye.

Frodo turned to the older cousin. ‘Merry?’ he said. ‘I thought I could count on you to keep an eye...’

‘It’s not his fault,’ Pippin said, at last raising his gaze to Frodo’s face. Sam saw that the young hobbit was tense, perhaps anticipating disappointment from his much-admired older cousin, but how could he disappoint Frodo, seeing as how he’d done something to earn the title “Knight”?

‘Not his fault?’ Frodo said, turning back to Pippin, and then he swung to confront the wizard. ‘Really, Gandalf, I think you’ve rubbed off on them! They’re as close as...’

‘As the stable door after the ponies have run off,’ Merry said lightly. ‘Come, now, Frodo, your glass is empty!’

(Pippin looked down at the two glasses he held; somehow he must have drunk from Frodo’s when his own was done, without noticing. He brightened suddenly.)

‘I’ll just fetch another bottle, shall I?’ Pippin said, turning away, but Frodo caught him by the fine black cloak of his uniform; soft wool it was, but sturdy and unyielding and an excellent tether.

‘Not so fast, Pip,’ he said, but unexpectedly he found himself catching the tween as Pippin, pulled off balance, toppled into him, bringing them both sprawling to the ground with a tinkling of broken glass and a muffled oath from Pippin.

‘That tears it! Ouch!’

‘It’s not like you to be so clumsy, cousin,’ Frodo said from under his now-tall young cousin’s bulk, made heavy by the mail the tween wore, no mithril was it but finely hammered rings of honest iron. ‘Get off me, now, before I’m crushed to crumbs!’

Merry and Gimli froze a moment at his choice of words, but Legolas moved quickly to lift Pippin away, even before Sam could take a hand.

‘I’m sorry, Frodo, I seem to have broken your wineglass,’ Pippin said. ‘I’ll just go and...’ He sucked in his breath as the Wood Elf, with his keen sight undimmed by darkness, extricated a sliver from his hand.

‘You will not,’ Frodo said, allowing Sam to help him to his feet. He brushed at his clothing and gently shook Sam’s supporting hands from their grasp. ‘Are you hurt, Pippin?’

‘Nothing but a scratch,’ Pippin said brightly, and tried again. ‘I’ll just go and...’

But Frodo interrupted him. ‘Can I not take my eye from you for a second without...?’

‘No,’ Merry said. ‘You cannot. He finds himself in all sorts of mad scrapes, whether an older cousin’s eye is upon him, or not.’

Frodo sighed heavily, rolling his eyes to the stars peeping through the leaves above them. ‘You really ought to have stayed at home,’ he said. ‘Here I imagined I was saving you from fear and injury by taking myself off...’

Merry spoke again, but his light tone had dissipated and the words came out between his teeth. ‘Did you now, cousin? Just what did you think—we’d take ourselves off, back to the Shire, if you crept away...?’

‘No,’ Frodo said in surprise. ‘As a matter of fact, I had little hope of getting away, Merry, especially of getting away in a boat, knowing how you are with boats. I hoped only to gain enough time for the Men to argue you into staying with them. But I fully expected to look around and see you following...’

He shook his head and added, lower, ‘It gave me such a turn to hear Faramir tell that he’d seen his brother, dead. I thought, perhaps, ill fortune had fallen on you all and Sam and I alone were left of the Company. But Faramir hastened to reassure me that someone must have survived, to care for Boromir’s body and set him on the water, that the Anduin might bring him home at last.’

Merry bowed his head. ‘And follow I would have,’ he said, fisting his hands at his side. ‘Nothing would have kept me from following, and Pippin as well.’

‘But you didn’t,’ Frodo said. ‘You went, instead, to Minas Tirith. And so I can only assume that Boromir brought you there, and went out again to meet his fate.’

‘You do your young cousins a disservice,’ Gimli growled, coming up to place a protective hand on Pippin’s shoulder, and another on Merry’s, as the two stood, tense, facing Frodo. ‘They would have gone after you, have no doubt of it, and Aragorn as well, had they been able.’

‘Then you were attacked at Parth Galen!’ Sam broke in excitedly, and looked to Frodo. ‘I knew I heard the clashing of steel in the woods, Mr. Frodo! I knew it, though I didn’t know what it portended at the time...’

‘I left it too late,’ Frodo said regretfully. ‘If I’d taken myself off earlier, into the Brown Lands...’

For the first time since his refusal to tell a tale that was not his, the white wizard spoke. ‘I’d say that your timing worked out for the best,’ he said quietly, and drawing on his pipe fanned the coals within until his face was lit with a reddish glow and sparks shone in his black eyes.

‘For the best!’ Frodo said. ‘My cousins, in Minas Tirith, as the city was attacked! ... in the midst of battle, as was said...!’

‘O it was worse than that, Frodo,’ Merry said tightly, forgetting himself and all his resolve to spare Frodo in the wash of emotion: remembered fear for Frodo, as they’d run about Parth Galen shouting Frodo’s name, followed by fear for Pippin as the Orcs tried to seize them, desperate hope at Boromir’s bursting into their midst, turned to grief and despair...

‘Worse,’ Frodo seized on the word. ‘What could be worse than being in the midst of battle?’

‘Now you’ve done it,’ Pippin said under his breath. He’d been sucking on his wounded hand, but now he stood straight, flashing Merry a glance before standing square before Frodo once more.

But Merry was not so easily reeled in. The long days of watching, first after the armies of the West had marched away, and then at his cousins’ bedsides in Cormallen, had taken their toll, and he was not as rested as he might be. ‘Not being in the midst of battle,’ he said. Pippin reached over to take his hand, and Gimli squeezed his shoulder, and he took a sudden deep and shuddering breath, recalled at last to himself, and fell silent.

Frodo scrutinized the faces before him: Merry, his face ghostlike in the moonlight, his lips drawn into a thin line; Pippin, his jaw stubbornly set; Gimli behind them, impassive, but with a glint of sympathy in his eyes.

Not being in the midst...’ he said, puzzled. ‘What ever do you mean, Merry?’ He passed a hand over his brow. ‘Either I’m still muddled from that long sleep, or...’

‘Perhaps you ought to sit down, Mr. Frodo,’ Sam said, tugging at his arm, but Frodo turned with an absent smile and patted Sam’s hand.

‘I am well, Samwise,’ he said. ‘I am merely trying to find out what it is that my cousins are keeping from me.’





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