“Pippin!” Beregond’s voice echoed behind him as he fled, but Pippin paid no heed. He instead concentrated on running back to the Houses of Healing as fast as he could. How could he have been so foolish? He knew Denethor would have been angry; why hadn’t he realized that bad things might have happened to innocent people as a result? He had even seen Beregond and Tarannon that day, though he hadn’t known that was who they were at the time. Guilt stabbed at him repeatedly.

Pippin skidded around a corner and bolted for the door to the Houses. He sped past many healers, apologizing as he passed, and came to the door of the Warden’s office, pounding loudly. The Warden opened the door, puzzled with the urgency of the knocking. “Yes, Master Peregrin?” he asked when he saw who his guest was.

“Please, sir, I need the key for the room next door. Please!” he exclaimed before the Warden could ask why. “It’s very important Guard business!”

“Pippin!” Merry called from his seat in the Warden’s office. He was rather annoyed with his cousin’s interruption, as they had been discussing the finer points of herb lore. “What in the Shire’s name are you doing?”

Pippin didn’t answer; he took the key from the Warden’s outstretched palm and unlocked Tarannon’s makeshift prison. Tarannon was sitting on the edge of the cot, head in his hands. Pippin closed the door and ran over to him, apologizing profusely.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’ll make it right again, I promise. I didn’t know!” Tarannon looked at the frantic hobbit before him, bewildered. “I didn’t know you were the beacon guard, Tarannon. I didn’t know what was going to happen to you.” Tarannon continued to stare at him blankly. “Tarannon, I lit the beacon.” Tarannon’s sickly face drained to a deathlike pallor. Anger flickered briefly in his eyes before he shook his head and turned aside, hiding his face from Pippin’s anxious gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Pippin whispered, his eyes filling with tears. “I can find a way for you to stay, I know I can.”

Pippin watched the Man’s shoulders shudder as he drew breath. “It doesn’t matter,” a rasping voice said, rusty with disuse. Pippin realized that it was Tarannon speaking, perhaps for the first time in a month. “It doesn’t matter,” he repeated laboriously, “if I should stay or if I should go. I care not. What happens to me will happen, whether I want it or not. Let it happen, I say.” The Man lapsed into silence once more.

“Tarannon, please, I want to help you.”

“Leave me,” the Man choked, his voice rough with neglect and emotion. “Do this one thing and give me peace. I wait for my doom, Halfling, and have resigned myself to it. All of my friends believe me to be dead; why should I change what they believe? It will be easier for me to take leave of this city knowing that they will not suffer the thought of me wandering in the wilderness.”

“But Tarannon-”

“Leave me.” There was finality about his tone, coarse though it was, and Pippin found himself obeying. He crept from the room, locking the door behind him, and found himself face-to-face with Merry. One look at Pippin’s ashen, tear-streaked face told him something was very wrong.

“Come on, Pip,” Merry said, putting an arm around Pippin’s shoulders. “Tell me what happened.” Merry took the key from Pippin’s limp fingers and popped his head into the Warden’s office.

“I must be going, sir, I’m sorry. Something has come up.” He handed the key to the Warden and bid him farewell. Merry led Pippin down the hall with a mind to make for their dwelling.

“Tell me as we walk,” Merry suggested, and Pippin began to tell him everything.

Tarannon stared at the wall in his cell, his mind slowly turning over the developments of the day. Many emotions had risen from deep within him- anger, grief, fear, and the slightest sliver of joy at seeing Beregond again. He felt as though he was going to be torn apart by these overwhelming forces, so he lay down on his cot and covered himself with his blanket, seeking the oblivion of sleep.

His imprisonment in the Houses of Healing had not been kind to him. True, his wounds had healed extremely well, but his strength had deteriorated from lack of use. He could not walk because of his leg, and he could not use his hands to keep himself occupied. The fingers on his right hand were hard to move, and his palm protested in pain whenever he tried to do more than curl his fingers. He found himself thinking more, for that was all he had to do. He thought of where he might go once he was released. He considered escape, though it was a passing whimsy on his part. He thought about his friends and what they might be doing. But mostly he pondered on the question that had sent his mind down a dark path: Why?

During his first week, he had been delirious with pain most of the time but had still thought about this. The first why that had set him thinking was, “Why will I not be accepted by the citizens of Gondor?” The answer was simple: the brand on his hand. In his delirium, he had thought of the perfect solution: cut off his hand, and the brand will be no more trouble. He had stolen a scalpel from one of his keepers then, using the sharp blade to slowly slice through his flesh. It would have worked had they not returned and found him nearly fainting in a pool of his own blood. They stitched him up and took away his ill-founded hope.

Tarannon’s link to the world was his healers, a man and a woman. He did not find out anything of the War as they did not speak to him. Therefore he could not know that Lord Denethor was dead and there was a King on the throne; he thought that the Steward still reigned and, for all he knew, the War still raged on. Of his keepers, Tarannon did not like the man at all: he was deft and heartless in his care when it came to attending to his wounds. The woman was kinder, though; she made sure that Tarannon was at least comfortable and gave him small smiles of encouragement. Tarannon had been determined not to like his jailors after his experience in the prison, but he found himself liking the woman in spite of that, and smiled back from time to time.

Even the small kindness of the woman had not stopped him from thinking so much that his thoughts came out in twisted knots. Whys filled his head until he could no longer bear it. Why did they even care enough to heal him if they were going to banish him? Why had he survived his injuries? One that plagued him greatly was how the beacon had come to be lit, which had started the whole terrible plunge in his life. He came up with his own answers, self-incriminating and hateful. The healers were only making sure he lived so Lord Denethor would have the satisfaction of throwing him out of the city. He was alive because he was being punished by some higher force. Fate had led him to be the one on guard that day. All of his answers pointed to one thing: he deserved this. He didn’t know why, but surely he must.

His thoughts became blacker, his temperament more resigned to his fate. He stopped responding to the woman’s kind gestures, preferring to sever his connections with anyone who knew he was in here. The knowledge that he would leave the Houses of Healing, comfortable despite his imprisonment, for a life that held no certainty, was hard to bear. He lived in a perpetual void of numb self-hate and resignation to his doom. It came to the point where he did not notice if somebody came in to tend to him. The male healer had brought him crutches after a few weeks, but Tarannon did not stir from his bed, so they were taken instead to someone who would use them. He ate little and slept for many hours. He only had his thoughts to keep him company, and soon he believed that dark, nasty voice that told him he deserved it, that he should stop caring. And he did.

Until, today, when that Halfling had come in and shaken things up. Tarannon had been absently chafing his wrist against his cot, pursuing that original thought that his hand was to blame. The woman had caught him out again and went to fetch the other healer. She had left the Halfling with him, and he was a Guard of the Citadel! Tarannon felt fear stirring deep in his heart: perhaps his day had come at last, and he was to be sent away. The Halfling, however, did not seem to know of his status, even when Tarannon had showed him the brand. It had been nice to hear a new voice, however strange it was, but he sank back into his numb state soon afterwards.

It was only an hour later, though, that the Halfling had re-opened a wound in his heart by bringing Beregond. Perhaps it set Beregond at ease to know of his friend’s survival, but Tarannon felt only grief: had the first parting not been sufficient? He was tormented by the knowledge that Beregond would know that he lived when he was sent away.

But now… now the Halfling had returned to tell him that he had lit the beacon! Rage coursed through his veins at the very thought, but Tarannon could not support his anger for long. He had no energy, and his anger at the Halfling was wasted. Anger would not fix what had happened, and he had lost his will to care. If the Halfling thought he could sway Lord Denethor to pardon him, that was his affair.

Somewhere deep inside, Tarannon knew that his old self, his self before he was arrested, would have been horrified to see himself as he was now. That old self kept trying to regain the upper hand, but Tarannon pushed it down continuously; he did not like thinking about Before, as he called it, and he loathed himself for his lethargy whenever his old self showed through. His old self would have welcomed the help, even if it was from the Halfling who had started all this, but it seemed hopeless now that he had sent away the one person that seemed to care and had the power to do something.

Tarannon wrapped his blanket tightly around his shoulders and drifted into the refuge that sleep offered, not noticing the tears that slid down his face and soaked the pillow.

“…And then he told me to leave,” Pippin finished. He and Merry were sitting at the table in their kitchen. “His words frightened me. He has lost all hope. He… he sounded like Lord Denethor did before he burned himself. He stopped caring.” Pippin stirred his tea that Merry had made to help him calm down. “Merry, this is all my fault.”

Merry sat pensively for a moment. “No, I can’t say that it is.” He looked Pippin squarely in the eye. “After all, it wasn’t your idea to light the beacon, was it?” he asked shrewdly.

“No, it was… Gandalf’s.” Pippin’s eyes widened. “You don’t think that he knew this would happen, did you?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Merry said. “I think he suspected that the soldier in question would be punished, but I don’t think he expected that the punishment would be so bad.”

“What am I going to do?” Pippin asked, miserable with guilt. “He doesn’t want my help, but I want to fix this.”

Merry considered this. “I think the best thing to do would be to talk to Gandalf and Strider. They’ll know what to do. If we go now, we can catch them both before dinner and talk to them privately.”

“That’s a good idea.” Pippin set aside his tea mug and stood, hugging Merry. “Thank you for helping me,” he said into his cousin’s shoulder. “I don’t think straight when I’m upset.”

Merry laughed. “I know that well, Pip. Let’s go now, and see if we can find Gandalf and Strider.”