Percy is starting to believe nobody will ever love him for himself.
He embarrasses Ron and Ginny, while Bill and Charlie are never around. The twins just taunt him constantly. Even his parents seem distant: his father is obsessed with his gadgets, and his mother rarely speaks up to defend him from the others.
Worse still, Penelope, his first girlfriend, has just broken up with him, claiming he spent too much time in the office and not enough with her. Didn't she understand he was only trying to build a stake for the future?
So Percy throws himself into his work. If he can't have love, at least he can have respect.
****************************
Pippin can hardly breathe with the grief, and it's not just because of the Orc stench all around him.
Boromir is dead, and he thinks Merry might be too. If Merry doesn't move in the next ten minutes, Pippin intends to swallow his brooch, or something, just so he can die.
He wishes Merry would wake up: he wants to be with someone else who cared for Boromir (although Merry's affection for the Man never equalled his), who will grieve with him.
Because all he keeps seeing, over and over, is the look in Boromir's eyes when he realised Pippin and Merry were not running. And the way, already pierced by two arrows, Boromir rose and continued fighting for the hobbits' lives. And the defeat in the slump of his shoulders when he fell for the last time.
Pippin *wishes* Merry would wake up.