They try to comfort each other at night; but one or the other of them is always reaching for a third, another mouth, other hands, night-dark curls under their fingers, and without Frodo they cannot find their center. They have spent too many nights frantic with worry and loss, with the pain of being two where they were once three; the thought of Frodo going into danger without them was agonizing in the Shire, and is unendurable now.

Merry has no tears left. Instead he holds tightly to Pippin, as if trying to staunch the blood from a severed limb.