By: Dana
Summary: Pippin goes wandering in the morning snow.
Characters: Merry, Pippin
Pairings:: Merry/Pippin
Rating: G
Warnings: Slash
Author's Notes: A Christmas-ficlet for Lynn.
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.

Snow had fallen in the night, and the morning air is cold and crisp and clear - the world outside is white. Pippin wakes long before Merry, and though he puts another log onto the fire, he does not wake Merry; pulling on warm clothing, long trousers, both a shirt and a sweater to go beneath his long coat, an old scarf that had once been Merry's, and a pair of new gloves that he'd been given as early Yule gift, only this year.

Outside, the sun seems too bright, and rainbow motes spark and drift in still air. Pippin breathes in - the cold stings his nostrils, and his lungs, and he can feel it stabbing through his bones - there are those times, and he blames it all on dreams, and memory, when the heat of fire is still too hot, and the memory of growing madness is hotter than any crackling flame.

Pippin walks out, listening to the wet crunch of snow beneath his feet, as it pushes up between his toes, wetting the fur atop. The cold is white, and clear, and pure - something untouched, pristine. It numbs his ears, and his nose.

Merry does find him, as though to remind Pippin that he has lost track of the time, and Merry wraps Pippin in his arms. Merry is bundled in heavier winter clothing than even Pippin.

"I woke, and you were gone." Pippin knows that voice. He's had that dream.

"I didn't want to wake you. I hope I didn't."

"No worries about that, Pippin. I slept like the - well, I slept rather well."

"Good," Pippin says, and closes his eyes. Sunlight burns brightly behind the darkness, and shapes float in it, indistinct in the spaces that have been left between all of the cold and the flame.