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“Hullo,” said Pippin.
Too tired to glean proper amusement from the sight, Pippin watched Boromir startle rather ungracefully half-up from the grass, hand reaching for his sword.
Rather belated in thought, as Boromir’s muscles tensed and silver flashed, Pippin realized it may not have been particularly bright to sneak up on a seasoned warrior. However, the man stopped just short of drawing the blade out in full.
“Pippin,” he said after a moment, expression disquieted but not entirely displeased. “Forgive my aggression, I did not hear you approach.”
“No, forgive me, sir,” Pippin said. His hands itched awkwardly at his sleeves. “I didn’t mean to give you a fright. I just was awake and saw you sittin’ out, and I thought…”
He trailed off. He could think of no reasonable excuse for his loneliness, nor his inability to stay asleep.
Boromir tilted his head, scrutinizing Pippin thoroughly, and then slowly settled back into his relaxed position.
“It is not all your doing,” he said. “Though Lothlorien is beautiful, the trees do not agree with me. I feel as though there is something foul about the air. I have been set on edge since we first stepped foot in these woods.”
Taking the unspoken invitation, Pippin scrambled to sit down next to Boromir. In his haste, their elbows knocked together, but Boromir did not react or admonish him. Indeed, he seemed content to let the sounds of the forest do his talking, the two of them surrounded by humid air and the thrum of distant Elvish singing.
Pippin stewed for a few seconds more, breath heavy, but could not stop himself.
He blurted, “Mr. Boromir, can I ask you something?”
Boromir sighed, nodded, and then spoke. “You may, master Hobbit.”
“Do you think Gandalf meant to die?” Pippin heard his own voice through layers of cotton, the nightmares he’d just escaped from fresh behind his eyes.
He felt Boromir stiffen. Pippin did not know what he wanted the Man to say. Yes, and in knowing it he hated you - no, yet he despised you nonetheless…
“Gandalf chose his sacrifice,” said Boromir evenly. “He knew the price to save us. He knew death was the cost.”
“He did not think me worth saving,” Pippin scoffed, picking deeper at a stray thread on his waistcoat. “He didn’t think I was worth dying for. Yet he had no choice. I gave him no choice.”
He could not tell if his guilt bled through his words, but something must have, for before his next sentence Boromir’s demeanor shifted slightly.
“A secret, young halfling,” said Boromir, “is that Gandalf cared little for me, as well. Yet still, I benefited from his decision.”
For a moment Pippin smelled bitterness on Boromir’s breath - dandelion stems, or thistle leaves - but it was gone as quickly as it came, replaced by the overwhelmingly Elvish scent of moss and clean, cold air.
“Unlikely, Mr. Boromir,” Pippin said. “You’re tall and strong, useful. Brave. And you can weather anything.”
He thought of snow, of numbing cold, of being carried when it became impossible for him to walk, even speak. He turned his reddening cheeks into his arms, wrapped them tight around his knees. Had he just been stronger, Gandalf would have lived. Had he just died on the mountain, frozen solid without a sound, Gandalf -
Boromir laughed, a hollow thing.
“Anything,” he repeated softly. “Of that, I’m not so sure. I have been fighting a terrible war since I was old enough to know of it. Blood has sunk into my skin. Into my heart.”
There was a pause in which Pippin turned over the bones of Boromir’s voice in his mind - hollow like a bird’s. Weighty like a millstone. He did not know what he could say.
“It has been a very long time,” continued Boromir. “Sometimes I wonder if I have not already…”
True silence followed. Pippin peered at the Man through his protective curtain of unruly hair. In the moonlight, he looked almost as ethereal and unreadable as Galadriel herself.
“It matters not,” Boromir said. “What’s done is done. We make choices in our lives, and the consequences vary. Sometimes they are good. Sometimes they are horrible. Either way, it is set. All you can do is make your next choice.”
Gandalf had not believed so. Pippin closed his eyes and felt his feet on a stone ledge, a well beneath him, toes slipping down into darkness. The smell of Lothlorien’s leaves turned heavy with rot.
“Do you smoke, Mr. Boromir?” Pippin said suddenly. He did not shiver. He did not look anywhere except up at the cloudy sky.
Boromir let the question hang suspended for some seconds. When he spoke again, he sounded amused. “Not for many years. I haven’t the time to afford.”
“You’ve got plenty now,” grumbled Pippin. “No one’s too far gone that a little pipeweed can’t fix.”
He itched for his pipe, for something to shut down the whirling in his mind. He dared not light a fire amidst these trees that seemed almost alive, though, and it was late enough as it was. His hands would just have to stop shaking on their own.
There was another chuckle that passed from the large Man through Pippin’s ribs, the heat of Boromir’s body a welcome change from Lothlorien’s airy chill.
“One day, perhaps,” Boromir said amicably. “When my city lies safe. I should take you and Merry up the parapets and squander the day with such indulgences.”
He was at once very far away. Pippin watched his lined face ease, his eyes grow foggier.
“Yes,” Boromir mumbled. “You shall see. When I return home…”
“You miss Gondor a great deal,” Pippin said. “I’m sorry.”
Boromir’s gloved hands clenched over his knees. “It is no fault of yours.”
Pippin soured. “These days I can hardly tell.” Immediately the immature whine in his voice echoed back to him and he flushed. “I know - I know my mistakes. It’s just that I cannot seem to - to stop making them.”
“You are brave to be with us,” Boromir said gently. “I understand you are young for your kind. You cannot be expected to know the weight of our task.”
“I am not a child,” snapped Pippin, the back of his throat stretching tight, “nor am I ignorant. I -“
“Forgive me.” Boromir interrupted him, raising a hand. “I meant no insult. Make no mistake, you are formidable, Pippin. But I was once like you,” he said; Pippin grew still. “Young and determined, but overwhelmed with decisions. I knew only that I had something to protect and a long, tiresome road ahead of me.”
Pippin swallowed. “Aye,” he said quietly. “Frodo, he…”
“You were brave to accompany him,” Boromir said again. “He will need friends such as you before the end.”
“Every day, I feel more strongly that I should have stayed behind,” Pippin admitted. “Gandalf was right, I was a fool to underestimate the journey, the importance…I wonder if I shouldn’t just slip away and head home.”
Boromir stayed silent. The scratchy press of his tunic against Pippin’s arm grounded him.
“But I would not make it home on my own,” Pippin said into the dark, ashamed. “I have to go forward until it’s done, or die trying.”
He thought of dust and gravel, of his legs sliced open on rusted metal, of growling, shrieking, shadow, flame. Of the singular sound of a pebble down a well. He thought of the word sacrifice and wondered if there was a worse word in the world. He thought that he should like to never have to hear it again.
“You will not die,” said Boromir firmly. A strange steel was in his voice.
Pippin hummed in discontent, but could find no words to explain his frustration to Boromir.
Frodo will need him, yet his presence on the journey has only served death and pain. The ash of Moria had clogged his lungs, yet still he breathed. Contradictions and more contradictions.
The chill of the peak had frozen his tears to his cheeks as he sobbed while Merry’s warm arms trembled around him. There was a scab on his knee, his most grievous wound, from how fast he had fallen to the ground upon their break to safety. He had curled stiff upon the rocks and snow, adrenaline gone, grief as thick as blood.
Guilt, his mind whispered. As white as snow. As piercing as arrows.
Boromir’s voice broke through his thoughts. “You must try and rest again, Pippin,” he said. “We have a long road yet ahead of us.”
“Yes,” Pippin agreed, albeit despondently, loathe to leave Boromir’s side and face his dreams again. “Will you try as well?”
It was perhaps a trick of the light, but Pippin thought he saw Boromir’s eyes crinkle. “For you, little one, I suppose I could.”
Pippin nodded. Indeed, exhaustion had finally crept up on him, making it hard to rise to his feet.
He pushed through. He stood, legs sore yet steady, feeling the soft grass beneath his feet.
Boromir followed suit, towering up and up into the sky. Pippin’s eyes fixed on his chest, on his tunic decorated with silver tarnished from time, his collar stained with old sweat.
“One day,” said Boromir, sure, “you can show me your land. The hills of the Shire. And I will show you the warmth of Minas Tirith, the true glory of my people. You will walk the halls of my home without fear.”
Pippin looked up at him. There was only concern and desperation and, yes, a shimmer of guilt in his eyes.
“I think so,” Pippin said, and for the first time in many days, smiled. “I think you’re right.”
The clouds parted. The moon shone.
“One day, Pippin,” Boromir said, for a moment bright with Lothlorien’s glow. “Both you and I shall be men Gandalf would be proud to know.”
Pippin bit his worried tongue, closed his eyes tight, and believed.