By: Dana
Summary: Three different points in a very long life together.
Characters: Merry, Pippin, Estella, Diamond
Pairings: Merry/Pippin/Estella/Diamond
Rating: G
Warnings: OT4
Author's Notes: This is a set of ficlets based on larger, as of yet unposted, stories in my Very Long OT4 Story. Posted at sophinisba's insistence. ♥
Hopefully soon, I will be posting more of this story.
Series Index: Roads Go On and Years Go By.
Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with J.R.R. Tolkien or New Line Cinema. Any and all characters and situations that have been borrowed are for the author's personal use only, and for the entertainment of others.

          I.

A look, a smile, the sharp mind behind the pretty face, and Estella falls for Diamond of Long Cleeve, and falls hard (all things that, one day, would lead Pippin to do the same – though, when Estella falls for Merry, the second great love of her life, it doesn't seem like such a silly, silly thing, that she would love him for his laugh and his smile). And much too quickly, too, which really isn't Estella at all, the Estella who'd always been more likely to stumble into love, more than fall: but it was like the after of spending long hours the blackest darkness, dazed and reeling and then finding herself standing in the bright-blinding light of the sun. And unable to look away.

          II.

They'd lived together once before, and that feels like it's been a lifetime since, at the least, but at the most, an age. Diamond hadn't thought that it would be a turning point, with Pippin showing himself at North Tunnels after she had been there for a while, and him at Brandy Hall; and they made their way back to Great Smials together, her and Pippin and their son. She hadn't thought that Merry and Estella would be waiting for them, that spring and summer could be Great Smials and that autumn and winter could be Brandy Hall, with them making their way between as was needed. And they could blame it all on Pippin, this turning point, that led them back together, and home.

          III.

The thing about endings, his mother would say, was how very well they lent themselves to new beginnings. Now, he sits in his office, in the black of night: the office that had been his father's, his grandfather's before him, all the way back to when the Brandybucks had first settled the Buckland, before they'd even taken Brandybuck as their name. His father is gone, and his mother is, too, and the whole of Brandy Hall is about them, despair and hope. And Pippin and Diamond and Estella are still there with him, still (well, not right with him, as they're all more sensible that he is where it comes to sleep), and the children, too.

He really can't see an end to all that.