God of Mischief I worship

“It’s all they want.” She chuckles. “Think you’ve found gold.”

“Eh,” the door swings open behind her. Arthur Shelby skids to a stop and smirks at Ruth. “Oi, lass, anymore of ‘em rolls?”

“In the oven, Art,” she playful swings a hand towel at him. “Don’t be gettin’ in the way.”

“And who says you’re the boss.” He retorts.

“Out!” Ruth barks.

You glance over at them. Arthur catches your eyes. “Not meanin’ to be in the way,” he shows his palm and backs out of the door. “Don’t tell Tommy, eh.”

Ruth follows him out. You go back to your pastry. You didn’t prep enough. Diedre comes in with empty trays, Benjamin lets her dump the dishes in the deep sink, and sprays them with the hose. His sleeves are rolled up as he scours away the grease and crumbs.

You switch between the rolls and the pan of eggs. You scoop out the poached whites delicately clouded around yolk onto the toasted biscuits and ring the bell. Deirdre and Ruth come to load up their trays and go out.

You lose yourself in the hectic flurry of orders, tearing up tickets as you make your way through them. You turn and elbow a wall you don’t expect. It isn’t a spontaneously appearing bit of plaster but rather Mr. Shelby.

“What can I help with, love?” He asks.

“Mr. Shelby? Oh, I think I’ve got it in hand.” You assure him as you turn put more biscuits in to toast. He takes the rack from you.

“Tell me. I have two hands.” He insists.

“Mr. Shelby, this is my job–”

“It seems it might be more than I pay you for.” He nods to the oven. “Think I’ll need to invest in more help.”

“Thank you, Mr. Shelby.” You open the left stove and let him slide in the rack of biscuits.

“I’ve heard lovely things about the sausage roll,” he backs up and takes off his jacket. He folds it over the stool at the end of the counter and places his cap on top.

“Still baking,” you say as you grab some brown eggs and crack them into the boiling water.

You double-check the ticket. Porridge. Right, you’ve got a pot warmed and ready to go.

You scoop up oats into the bowl and add cinnamon and milk. Two bowls up. Ruth sweeps them away.

As Mr. Shelby approaches, he rolls up his sleeve.

“Boss lady, tell me what to do.”

You scoff. “Sir.”

“Eh, you almost smiled,” he says.

“You can help with the rolls. Seems everyone wants one.”

You beckon him along the counter. “I’ve rolled out the pastry. It’ll need to be cut up.” You take a knife. “As such.” You point to the dish of sausage. “Then line it as thus.” You use a spoon to scoop onto the pastry. “Roll. Baste with egg.” You work as you explain. “Then a few slices in the top.”

“Ah, Stuart is a lucky man,” Shelby japes. You flinch and look at him. His brows draw together. “Apologies, ma’am, I only–”

“Nothing?” You ask. He shakes his head. You nod and set the roll onto the waiting pan. “No, I never had the fixings at home for this. Mincemeat, stew, beans. That’s most of it.”

“And even that must’ve been delicious.”

“Mm,” you hum dully. 

“I didn’t mean–”

“No, no, it’s… I’m only… two weeks.” You sigh and take out the biscuits.

“I’ve got all my people watchin’ for him,” Shelby assures.

“I know. You’ve done more than you should.” You scoop the eggs out of the water.

He’s silent, you are too. He watches you then turns away. “I’ll wash up first and get started on this.”

“Thank you, Mr. Shelby…” you murmur. “For everything.”

🖤

You untie your apron and fold it up over your arm. You wipe your forehead with your sleeve. You need to stop at the bank and be sure to deposit your cheque.

“On your way out?” Mr. Shelby surprises you as he enters from the back door. He picks up his cap and jacket. You can smell the tobacco wafting in with him.

“I think I’ve everything cleaned up. I set aside some leftovers for Charlie.” You bend to take your handbag from under the counter. Mr. Shelby nears as you head for the door. You stop as you meet him there. “Unless… I’m forgetting something.”

“No, I’ve a question.” He pulls on his jacket. “More a favour to ask. Though you will be compensated.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve some guests coming over. Very important ones. I thought you might be able to offer your skills this evening. For supper.” He says.

You’re taken aback by the suggestion. It’s not as though you have anyone waiting for you. Or any sort of responsibility outside of this.

“I suppose I could.” You say.

“Very well. I would need a list, you see. Ingredients, to be sure you’re equipped.”

“Right, er…”

“If you don’t mind. I’ll fetch you a pen and paper before you’re off.” He says.

“Certainly. I can do that.” You say. It’ll be a good distraction. You notice Stuart’s absence most at night.

He nods and sets off. You linger in the kitchen. You put your bag on the counter and slide out the cookbook you bought with your first pay. Shelby returns and hands you a ledger and pen.

You flutter through the pages. “Was there a set number of courses? It must be a fancy dinner?” 

He taps his fingers as he stands close. His gaze weighs on you.

“What’s this, then?” He taps the corner of the page.

“Study.” You say. “Recipe book. I’m afraid I’ve only experience cooking for one man.”

“Ah, clever woman.” He praises.

You shrug. “I always wanted a proper one. I’d cut the ones out of the paper and keep them in the drawer. Never had all I needed to try them.”

You pause and read the dish description. “A salad to start, I think?”

“Mm. I leave it within your judgement.” He drags his hand away from the book. “I’ll send a car.”

“Oh, no, I could take the tram.”

“I live quite a ways off the route.” He sniffs. “And I’ll not have you wanderin’ in the dark. Benny will pick you up.”

You don’t argue. You take the pen and jot in the ledger. His eyes follow your hand.

“Anything you don’t prefer, sir?” You ask.

You don’t get an answer. You peek up and find him staring. Your brow lowers and you touch your chin then cheek. “I’ve got some flour on me?”

He blinks and clears his throat. “No, no.” He lifts his chin and looks away. “No, I was only thinking.” He leans on the counter. “I’m easy to please. I’ll eat it all just the same.” He looks at the ledger. “You know, you have one taste of field rations and even rancid rat meat’ll have you slavering.”

You don’t say anything to that. Most men these days are veterans. Stuart was called up but never went beyond the channel. He was kept at home in a mine.

“Dessert… chocolate? Citrus? Preferences?” You prompt.

“Chocolate. Ah, that was a wonder over in France.” He purrs. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll get that, just put it on the bar.” He backs up. “I’ll have Benny wait out front for you.”

“Sir–”

“No arguments.” He turns and points over his shoulder. “You worked a hard day. You earned it.”

🖤

Benjamin gets you to Mr. Shelby’s around four. You thank him and step out, hiding your awe at the immense mansion before you. Of course, you assumed it would be a nice home, but you could not have imagined anything so ornate and daunting.

It’s clearer to you now how out of your element you truly are. Something else tugs in your mind. There’s more to Mr. Shelby than you’ve seen. Not just money, something more. It’s not a secret who he is; he has men at his disposal in their notable caps, he was concerned with back alley gambling, he never truly asks but tells. Details are better left unsaid.

You go to the front door and lift the heavy brass knocker, a falcon’s head above it. It thunders through the dark oak. You wait but not long. A maid in black and white answers. Of course he has ‘help’. Well, isn’t that what you are?

Her name is Margeret. She leads you inside. Mr. Shelby told her you were coming instead of someone called Louise. She takes you to a large kitchen and tells you to ring a bell in case you need anything.

You walk around the large kitchen. The counters are dark wood, the furnishings in a coppery brass, and the stove and fridge look right out of the shop. You stop as you see the folded note with your name on it.

‘All is in order. If you need anything, ring the bell and ask for me. Thomas.’

It’s kind. You think you might figure it out. Margaret reappears.

“These are Ellie and Mildred. They’ll be helping you.” She explains. The girls are young and skinny; one has string black hair trailing out in a braid from under her cap, the other shows straw-coloured roots but much of it is tucked under the white linen.

“Ellie, Mildred, I’m…” you introduce yourself. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too, ma’am.” They say in unison.

“I think it’ll be rather easy. Shall we start?”

They nod. “What do we do?” Ellie, the black-haired girl asks.

You hesitate then reach into your bag. You take out the notes you made at home from the cook book. You go to the girls and show them.

“Alright, we’ll start with the main. It’ll take the longest to cook and the salad will be simple enough.” You explain. “If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to help. If I’m honest, I’m still learning myself, yeah?”

The girls look at each other and back to you. “Yes, ma’am,” they say in unison.

“And you promise, if I need help, you’ll do the same?”

The tension drains from their posture. They nod again, less stiffly. “Good, good. I think we’ll make a rather good team, ladies.”

Once you start, the task isn’t so intimidating. You work between Ellie and Mildred, then set them to chop potatoes together. You go down your list and organise everything so you can move from step to step. 

You stand at the stove, melting the dark chocolate for the cake. The girls titter as they peel and pare. Then all at once, they’re silent.

“Mr. Shelby,” Mildred utters.

You glance over. Your employer barely looks at the girls before he nears you. You stir the chocolate away from the sides to keep it from burning.

“Evenin’, ma’am.” He greets. He’s wearing a nicer suit; with a bow tie and silk vest. “Things are well?”

“Yes, sir. I think we’ve figured it all out.” You say. “The ladies are a great help.”

“Mm. Anything you need?” He asks.

“No, sir. You?”

His brow arches. “Mm, no. Margaret is putting Charlie down. Guests will be here shortly.”

“Ah, well then, don’t let us keep you.”

He stares for a moment. “Rather, don’t let me keep you.”

He turns halfway, raises his finger as his lip twitches, then thinks better of it. He leaves you as the girls sigh in unison. You take the chocolate off the burner and look at them.

“You girls need a break?”

“No, ma’am.” Ellie says. “Potatoes are almost done.”

The night goes by with the mixing of batter, the boil of pots, and the dusting of seasoning over poultry, fish, and beef. Ellie and Mildred are diligent and polite. They leave you now and again to help clear away the previous course.

You send out dessert and tell Ellie and Mildred you’ll clean up. They argue but you convince them to call it a night. They’ve worked hard.

As you move a stack of plates to the sink, you hear a footstep behind you. “I told you, you’re done for the night.”

Your name comes in a higher pitch than you expect. You look over at Charlie as he stares at you bright-eyed, a stuffed rabbit in his hands as he wears a pair of linen pajamas. You pull your hands from the sink and dry them on your apron.

“Charles,” you say. “What on earth? Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?”

“I can’t.” He pouts. “I told papa I wanted to come down but he said no. He won’t even let me help you!”

“You should be getting your sleep,” you chide.

“But I don’t wanna.” He whines.

You harrumph and grip your hips. “Alright, Charles, you want to help?”

“Yes, ma’am!” He says.

You hush him. “Not so loud. You’ll bother the guests.”

He sticks out his tongue. You laugh at him. You wave him over and lift him up onto the counter. You pull a bowl over and scoop in some flour and put a cup of water next to it. You hate to waste it but it’ll keep him busy.

“Take this.” You gently move his stuffed rabbit against the wall then hand him the cup. “Only add a little at a time, alright?” You show him a whisk. “Stir with this.” You motion over the flour. “Remember, little bit at a time.” You put your hand around his and show him how to pour. “Stir.” You stir in the moisture. “More.”

You let go and he pours. You hand him the whisk and he puts the cup down. He uses both hands to stir.

You wash the dishes as he goes about his task. As you dry off a saucer, he says your name. “Is that good?”

You look in the bowl. “No, no, you want it smooth.” You gird.

“Oh…” he frowns and adds more water.

“Good job, Charles.” You praise.

“Yes, Charles,” a deeper voice gives you a start. “Good job.”

“Papa,” Charles drops the whisk and claps.

“What are you doing out of bed?” Shelby asks.

“He’s only helping,” you defend the boy.

“Helping?”

“Certainly. Keeping me company.”

“The maids are supposed to help.” He insists.

“I let them off. I can do it.” You assure.

“I didn’t pay you to clean.”

“Mr. Shelby, I messed the plates, I’ll tidy them,” you counter calmly. “Charles, more water.”

Charlie bounces and picks up the cup. He pours water in then stirs. Shelby approaches and watches him then peers over at you. You put another saucer in the cupboard.

“You know, I can never make him sit still.” He drawls.

“Children, so full of energy.” You say.

He leans a hand on the counter. “You never had any?”

“No. It… never happened.” You answer. “Sometimes, it doesn’t.”

He’s quiet. “Ah, I suppose it’s up to chance.”

“I’ve never had much good fortune,” you say. “But I do what I can with what I’ve got.”

“You do much and more than many. Hard work’s far more valuable than fortune.” He girds.

“Suppose.” You agree. 

Unfortunately, Stuart never had either. Perhaps that’s what got him into trouble. When he comes back, you’re going to tell him to get a real job. Back to the mines or factory. No more of those back streets and shady men.

With the female holding his attention, you didn’t expect Steve to suddenly snap into a pissy mood himself. Yet something clearly provoked him. He wasn’t even patient enough to continue in your pace, but picked you up and carried you home in long strides the last few meters. Inside the house, he put you down on your feet and glared at you. 

“I’m your mate,” he growled.

“I know, Steve.” Enough time passed for you to accept that fate and experience a certain, warm security that accompanied it. 

“Then why didn’t you stake a claim on me?” His blue eyes glinted with anger. A dangerous flicker moments before beastly ruin awaited you. 

You might be still lost in the lands your werewolf lived and brought you to, but your mind wasn’t broken or unable to put together the pieces. It started at the fruit stand, so it had to be connected to it. Apparently, while you fumed that he was flirting with the werewolf female, Steve was angry with you not displaying jealousy. 

“I’m human,” you gulped nervously. “She’s a werewolf. She could hurt me if I lashed out at her.”

“Nobody would ever hurt you, bunny.” Steve huffed, tracing your cheek with a sharp claw. “You’re mine. I’d rip out their throat for attempting to touch you.”

“Besides-” he stepped closer. Steve’s hand trailed lower, fingers brushing down the column of your throat. 

“I meant: claim me, not fight over me.” His lips curved in a sharp, hungry grin.

You blinked up at him, processing his words. Which was proving harder to do as Steve pressed even closer to you. Heat of his body radiated in waves that your body was already too familiar with, conditioned to react with readiness. 

“How?” Your voice wavered softly as scorching embarrassment spread inside your chest, rushing to the top of your head. 

With how many times Steve growled possessive words when he fucked you into a broken mess, you knew the word claim in the werewolves’ understanding was always connected with physicality. And you knew he didn’t mean to simply hold his hand as a sign of said right.

“How do you think I would claim you, if anyone looked at you with interest?” Steve’s fingers curled around the front of your neck. His other hand tugged loose the ribbons tying your dress in place. 

He asked about looking at you, because if anyone tried to touch you, he’d slaughter them. 

“I’d kiss that sweet mouth of yours-” Steve pushed your dress off your body- “or grab that lovely ass-” he trailed his fingers down your spine and under the curve of your bare butt- “or drive my fingers beneath your dress-” 

“I- I could kiss you,” your voice turned breathless as Steve’s touch drew wetness between your thighs. 

Steve tutted, nuzzling his nose under your earlobe. He gripped one of your legs and lifted it slightly, opening you up so your clit grazed directly against his jeans. 

“Now that I think of it, kissing is too tame.” He declared; you could feel his wolfish grin against your cheek. 

“But you’re not ready for more, huh, bunny? Not ready to rub yourself against your mate’s cock in public and have me leak in my pants? My shy little bunny isn’t ready yet to grab a fistful of my hair and demand I fuck you full in public, so hungry werewolf bitches see that I already have a tight pussy to breed?” 

A whimper. That was the only sound you were able to make as dirty words spilled out of Steve’s mouth and his pelvis kept grinding against your bare pussy. 

“Until then, I’ll have to fuck you like my bitch before every outing, so that you smell of me and I smell of you, and there is no doubt whose pussy came all over me.” 

In a sudden move, Steve kicked your legs from beneath you. Instead of dropping you onto the floor and pinning you to it, he pulled you with him as he went down. You landed on top of him, straddling his hips. 

“Claim me now, bunny,” he growled, taking off his own sweater and tossing it aside. 

His big hands landed on your hips. He purposely didn’t retract his claws, digging sharp tips into your skin. Sharply, he bucked up into you and a lewd moan spilled out of your mouth. 

“Come on,” he urged you, using one of his hands to force your smaller hands to work his pants open. 

His cock was already hard, slapping against your thigh as you released it. Thick and hot, and every bit as scary as the first time you saw it. 

“It’ll be too big this way,” you bit your bottom lip, palming him with one hand. 

When Steve had you on your hands and knees, it felt too big, but physically possible to take him. When he spread you on your back and tilted your ass up, it was somehow doable too. Or when he pinned you down and plowed you in prone bone, the stretch of him in your tightness brought you to near unconsciousness, but still proved you could take it.

With you on top, however, it seemed impossible to impale yourself on that cock. 

“Your pussy is going to take it all anyway.” Steve’s tone was unyielding. 

With a pouty sniffle, you lifted your hips up to line his dick with your entrance. The head barely pushed in and a shudder rocked your body. It opened you so much right on the first inches! 

Steve squeezed your hips. You lowered another inch. 

“All of it, bunny,” he growled, impatient. 

Bracing your hands on Steve’s hairy chest, you rolled your hips, swallowing more of his fat cock. The stretch was reminiscent of the first time he split you on his dick. 

A broken gasp puffed on your lips. Your eyes misted with tears - not from pain exactly, but the overwhelming intensity of it all. You caught Steve’s gaze; his blue eyes shining with predatory glee that heralded ruin. 

He didn’t give you a chance to plead for mercy as he gripped your hips tighter and slammed you down, at the same time driving up into you. 

“Ahhh!” You screamed, head thrown back, fingernails needling Steve’s chest. 

Your pussy spasmed. A heartbeat later a gush of wetness welcomed brutal intrusion. 

“Either ride me, like you own me, bunny.” Steve growled.

“Or I’ll fuck you like my little bitch. A cocksleeve for a werewolf’s fat cock and knot, and a cumdump to spill into.” 

A quiver rippled through your body, both in response to his filthy words and to the feeling of unbearable stretch. You had difficulty lolling your head back forward, your gaze glassy. 

Your thighs were burning. If you even found it in yourself to start moving and ride him the way he wanted, you wouldn’t hold the position for long. And the longer his cock was lodged deep inside you, the less you could think of anything - any comeback, any protest, any plead. 

“What’s it gonna be?” He asked, bouncing you on him in a rough move.

You fell forward, dropping your weight onto Steve and burying your face in the crook of his neck.

“Your little bitch,” you whispered, ashamed of yourself for wanting it that way.

“Yes, you are.” Steve laughed cruelly. “My little bitch that takes it in all her holes and cums from it so sweetly."

Raymond’s office was also dark, but less glamorous and more old fashioned with the oak wood, deep green suede of the armchairs, and rusty gold ornaments.

He didn’t expect Simon to change anything while he was gone, but it surprised him how not a single note of his trusted stand-in and friend’s persona could be felt in the office. 

Simon was sitting behind the desk when Raymond entered. As usual, in all black: black t-shirt with sleeves stretched around his bulging biceps (which gave many submissives wet dreams), black cargo pants, heavy boots. And the skull-printed balaclava mask.

Simon might have been officially out of the military, but Raymond knew his team worked black ops still. It gave him much needed secrecy, while also adding to his brutal aura in the club. 

“The place wasn’t blown up and Dicky Ricky’s body isn’t crucified at the gates,” Raymond gave a short round of slow claps. “Seems you weren’t as bad at minding the club as you threatened when I asked you to do it.”

“It was no fun. Everyone was scared and behaved themselves.” Simon shrugged, standing up.

Though Raymond didn’t ask him to, he moved out of the boss’ chair and took a seat in one of the armchairs on the opposite side of the desk. 

“Which is also ridiculous-” he stretched his legs out, hooking one ankle over the other- “You’re more dangerous than I am.”

“Our appearances serve the both of us, just in different capacities.” Raymond said, taking his place. It felt almost as good as sinking into his favorite wing chair at home.

Spending the last four months abroad, dealing with sensitive business and securing particular alliances, wasn’t all that bad. Food in some places was divine; Americans really knew how to properly make a steak. The thrill of balancing threats and diplomacy rejuvenated his bones. And some conversations were truly pleasant to have.

Like meeting with an old friend and former co-owner of the Black Diamond, Ari Levinson.

“Not that you ever needed additional oil to your fuckin’ Greek god glow, but what creamy subby sucked you this mornin’ that you’re relaxed like a trooper post a first fuck after years in the trenches?” Raymond snorted, glancing at Ari over the rim of his glass. 

Ari laughed, that easy, booming laughter of his that dropped panties and somehow made other men feel like grinning for no damn reason. 

“My sub.” He replied with a cheeky smirk, very pleased with himself for that revelation.

Raymond paused before taking another sip of whiskey. He studied Levinson for a second then shook his head. 

“Levinson settled down with some good girl, huh?” Raymond smiled knowingly.

Ari wasn’t against relationships. He was far from a cynic who didn’t believe in love. But his charming, playful demeanor veiled a deep intensity of a merciless Dominant. Not many submissives could handle that beyond two consecutive scenes. 

“Who said she’s a good girl?” Ari grinned, his eyes twinkling with delight.

Raymond burst out laughing at that.

“You got yourself a brat!” 

“The brattiest of them all,” Ari’s smile didn’t cease, instead turning into unveiled smugness. 

Figures that the submissive, who not only could survive Ari’s type of fun and punishments, but also provoked him to go hard on her, would be the one to catch his interest permanently. 

Raymond himself didn’t allow bratting in scenes with him. He dealt with brats in the club, if it was needed, catering to their need of being tamed. However, he himself held harsh discipline. Without violence, too. There were elegant methods to teach a submissive to follow rules and scrape their throat from begging for mercy.

“Any issues?” Raymond’s gaze slid from Simon’s covered face to the single file on the desk, then back to the man again. 

“No issues. No problems. A riddle.” Simon put his hands behind his head and lounged.

“A riddle?” Raymond arched a single brow, not impressed by his friend’s apparently happy mood now that he could push whatever dire situation on him. 

Simon recited a name. Your name. 

“A newbie submissive. You approved of her membership right before leaving.” He explained. “A good girl. Quite shy and not much confident at first, but bravely participated in anything I directed her to do. It’s clear she approaches every game at the club with fear, but she doesn’t back out. She’s determined.”

“What’s the riddle then?” Raymond opened the file and flipped through the first few pages with basic data and contracts you signed. 

“Lack of response from the Doms.”

At Simon’s words, Raymond’s gaze flew up in surprise. 

Usually, anyone fresh caused ripples through the club. Like a new, shiny toy the others could play with. Of course, it all depended on the person and their energy. Not every dominant had to be interested in a new submissive. Just like a submissive wouldn’t be interested in all the Doms. 

“She doesn’t draw interest. When she approaches a Dom herself, which we’ve been practicing a few times, she gets politely declined. Or, on occasions, politely welcomed, but the scene lacks what she needs.”

“And she’s fucking smart.” Simon continued, his tone sharpening with offence on your behalf.” Smart enough to know that when I order her into a scene with someone, it’s because I organized it, not because someone asked for her. Her pride hurts, but she agrees anyway.”

“She’s not a brat.” Raymond tapped a page with the list of your kinks. “Why don’t they want her?”

Simon sighed and changed his position. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and leveling Raymond with a look.

“One, I think quite a few of our Doms need to be put in BDSM summer school to be reminded that a scene works for both parties, not just to get their own kicks. Two, she’s physically responsive, but her emotional walls need scaling. None of the fuckers put any effort in that. Not even to break her shell with a proper spanking, so she could get some emotional release.” 

“So she’s a little icy and instead of melting her, they crush her to refill their own glass.” Raymond’s jaw tightened, the blue of his eyes turning colder. 

His gaze scanned your lists - kinks, soft limits, hard limits. Without taking his eyes off the files, he grunted at Simon:

“Be a good lad and share with the class what’s been bouncing in that skull of yours when it comes to solving this riddle.”

“Well-” Simon’s face was mostly covered, but even without seeing it, Raymond knew the fucker was smirking.

You'd found all three and were now on the lowest terrace sitting on a carved stone bench with your hands in your lap and the sound of the falls somewhere below and the general ambient beauty of Rivendell doing its composed, unhurried best to be good for you.

You didn't hear Lord Elrond approach. You heard him arrive—the sound of his step on the stone stair behind you, deliberate enough to announce itself without being loud, the particular consideration of someone who understood that appearing silently behind a person who could be startled easily would be unkind.

You looked up. He inclined his head, a greeting rather than a question you'd gathered, and gestured at the bench beside you—the same composed, unhurried courtesy he'd brought to everything since your arrival, not asking but not assuming.

"O-oh—sure" you said, and moved slightly to one side, which was less necessary than instinct.

He sat, and the proportional difference between you resolved itself into the particular familiar geometry—his shoulder several inches above yours, the reach of his legs considerably beyond yours on the stone—you looked very attentively at the flowering plants on the terrace below while you waited for something to happen with your heart rate.

He didn't say anything immediately. He sat with the garden the way you'd been sitting with it—looking at it, present with it, not filling the silence with anything, and after a moment you realised that the silence wasn't awkward, or wasn't only awkward, that there was something else in it too—the quality of someone who had decided to give you time and was genuinely doing it rather than waiting for you to notice they were waiting.

"The elanor," he said eventually, and indicated the low golden flowers on the terrace below. "They grow here because of the particular quality of the light in the valley. The same flower in open country above would bloom for three weeks. Here—" A brief, quiet pause. "—they have flowered in this terrace without interruption for longer than I know how to explain to someone whose measure of time is, perhaps different from mine."

You looked at the flowers. Small, star-shaped, a warm gold that caught the morning sun and held it. "That's—" you started, and then found the end of the sentence difficult, because every ending you reached for sounded either too much or too little. "Amazing" you settled on.

The faintest movement at the corner of his eyes. "It is," he agreed, without any irony in it.

He rose then, and walked to the next stone step, pausing there with a gesture that asked if you'd like to continue, and you got up and fell into step beside him, and you walked through the garden in this way — him a little ahead where the path was single-width, then beside you where it opened, pointing out things with the contained, considered enthusiasm of a man who had looked at this garden every day for several thousand years and still had specific things he wanted to show someone new.

A tree whose bark was white and smooth and warm to the touch—he stopped and let you press your hand flat against it without explaining why, and the warmth of it was faintly unbelievable, coming up through the bark like something living underneath the living wood. A fountain so small it occupied the hollow of a carved stone no larger than a cooking pot, the water cycling through it continuously from some source you couldn't see. A section of wall where something had grown directly through the stone—not breaking it, not forcing it apart, but incorporated so completely that the stone and the root had become one continuous material, the boundary between them impossible to find.

"This was a wall," he said, looking at the root-stone, "before the tree was planted. The tree was planted at the base of it to provide shade for the walkway above." He looked at it with the unhurried attention of someone doing the maths. "It took eleven hundred years for the root to reach the wall. It has been growing through it since."

You looked at the root-stone. At the place where two separate things had become one thing over eleven hundred years. "Did you plant it?" you asked.

"I did," he said. "I planted it for someone who has since gone from this world, and I have not had the heart to remove it."

You looked at the root-stone for another moment, and didn't say anything else about it, because there wasn't anything adequate, and he walked on and you walked with him.

"Mithrandir tells me he showed you something useful last evening."

You glanced at him. His expression carried its usual composed quality, but there was a very slight weight of something underneath it—not concern, something more like intent. "With the oil?" you asked.

"The oil," he confirmed. He looked at the path ahead. "It is old craft. Useful, in its context. He explained its application as a deterrent?"

"Yes," you said, and the word came out slightly careful, because the conversation had the quality of one leading somewhere, and you weren't entirely sure where.

"There is one further application he may not have mentioned," Elrond said. He stopped walking. Turned to face you, which at his height meant you were looking up at him at a angle, and the full, composed attention of his face was—considerable. Not intimidating, exactly. It was the opposite of threatening. But it was weighty, in the way that very old, very considered things were weighty, and you felt it in the same way you felt the falls—as something larger than the space it occupied.

"If the oil is present on your fingers rather than your palm," he said, "and the flame is produced with a flick directed outward—the angle of release carries it forward." He demonstrated the motion, slowly, without oil or fire, the flick of the wrist precise and short. "A small arc. Two to three feet, under most conditions. Sufficient, at close quarters, to interrupt an approach." He met your eyes. "You understand what I am describing."

"I—" You did understand. Very clearly. "Yes,"

"I offer it as information," he said. "Not as instruction. Not as an expectation." He held your gaze with that composed, ancient directness. "Do with it what you choose, as with all things. But you are travelling with this company into difficult country, and it seems better that you know rather than not know."

"I'm really," you said, and your voice came out slightly more strained than you'd intended, "really not looking to get involved in—in anymore fights. That's not—" You paused. "I'm not a fighter. I barely know which end of a dagger does what."

"The pointed end," Elrond said, with the particular quality of an extremely dry statement made with an entirely straight face.

You looked at him. He looked at you. Something crinkled, very slightly, at the outer corner of his eyes.

"Right," you said. "Yes. Obviously. I know that much."

"Then you know considerably more than nothing," he said, and resumed walking with the unhurried ease of a man who had made his point and saw no reason to labour it.

You followed, slightly wrong-footed, and was about to say something else—you weren't sure what—when the path curved around the end of the silver-tree stand and the terrace opened onto a broader level below, and the sight that greeted you stopped the sentence entirely.

The fountain was the largest feature of the garden — a broad, deep pool fed by a carved central structure of three rising tiers, a depiction of a ethereal elf woman pouring from a large bowl, was the upmost teir and each tier sending a sheet of water over its edge to the one below. It was clearly decorative. It was clearly meant to be looked at rather than used for anything.

However the company was using it for something else entirely, you took in the scene in the order that the brain absorbs information when it is genuinely not wanting to process what it is receiving, water first, because there was a great deal of it in motion. Then sound—splashing, shouting, laughter of the specific uninhibited volume that happens when people have forgotten they are guests somewhere. Then the detail.

Dori and Óin were in the pool itself, up to their considerable beards, arguing about something with the focused energy of a debate that had clearly been running since before they got in. Bombur occupied a significant portion of the pool's surface with the tranquil, philosophical composure of a dwarf who had found somewhere comfortable and was going to stay there. Nori was on the second tier, which he'd achieved by climbing the carved stone in a way that the carved stone had clearly not been intended to facilitate, and was in the process of pulling Bofur up after him by the arm.

Fíli and Kíli were on the top tier.

You took this in with the particular slow comprehension of someone whose eyes are receiving information they had not prepared for. They were on the top tier, and the top tier curved, and the water flowing over its edge made the curved stone slick, and they were—they were using that.

Taking a run-up and then launching themselves over the lip of the tier, down the curved stone face, and into the level below with the specific, gleeful, entirely committed energy of two dwarves who had independently arrived at the same conclusion about what this fountain was for and were absolutely correct that it was the most fun thing they'd done in weeks.

And to your horror all of them were completely, unabashedly naked.

Your turn was immediate and total, spine presenting itself to the fountain with the speed of someone executing a decision before the thinking part of the brain has finished formulating it, and you were staring at the silver-barked trees with your hands over your eyes and a very hot face.

"I am so sorry," you said, to Lord Elrond, who was standing beside you and whose expression you had not seen but could feel the quality of from approximately three feet away. "I am so genuinely sorry, this is—I had absolutely no idea they were—"

"So it would seem"

His voice was extremely flat, with a quality underneath the flatness that was doing the work of a very long and very comprehensive sentence that he had decided, with considerable self-restraint, not to say aloud. You could feel him looking at the fountain. You kept your eyes on the trees.

Behind you, Kíli crested the lip of the top tier and launched himself down with a sound of pure, uncomplicated delight.

"Nearly done!" called Balin's voice, from somewhere in the fountain, and you identified from the direction of it that Balin was not, in fact, standing outside the fountain supervising.

Balin was also in the fountain, up to his neck, looking extremely dignified regardless, which was possibly the most Balin thing he had ever done. "Give us ten minutes Lassie, You can have the next bath!"

You closed your eyes.

"I'm going to go—" you said, to Lord Elrond, to the silver-barked trees, to the general ambient beauty of Rivendell and its extremely thorough violation of it by thirteen dwarves. "I'm going to just—I'm going to excuse myself."

"I think that would be best," said Lord Elrond.

"I'm sorry," you said again, already moving, already taking the path back up toward the upper terrace at a speed that was not running but contained the aspiration of running. "I'm so very, very sorry."

Elrond said nothing further. You did not look back.

From the fountain, Fíli and Kíli completed another run in tandem, judging from the twin splashes, and someone—Nori, probably—made a sound of enthusiastic competitive assessment.

You made it to the garden and sat down on the first available bench, to the symphony of a loud crack and a yelp from a dwarf who had been slapped by a towel, or whatever passed for a towel in this world, you pressed both hands over your face and stayed there for some time.

In the private study that looked out over the courtyard above the garden, Lord Elrond set his hands behind his back and looked at Gandalf, who was engaged in the business of his pipe with the composed ease of a man who had recently removed himself from the scene below with considerable foresight.

"The dwarves," Elrond said.

"Yes," Gandalf replied without looking up from his pipe.

"In the fountain."

"Indeed."

A silence of considerable duration.

"The carved figure on it represents the lady of first age," Elrond said. "They were placed there by Celebrimbor."

"She appears to be unharmed," Gandalf offered.

Elrond looked at him with the patient weariness of a host long accustomed to the wizards ways, and had made his peace with it thousands of years ago. He let the fountain matter settle where it had settled and turned, with the deliberate shift of someone moving from one subject to something that had been waiting, to the point he'd actually come to discuss.

"The young woman," he said.

Gandalf's expression did not change visibly. "What of her."

"I have been in her presence twice now," Elrond said, and his voice had changed—the dry quality gone, replaced with something more careful. "At dinner yesterday. In the garden this morning." He paused, and the pause had the shape of a man selecting words with precision. "Mithrandir. She has no Fëa."

The study was quiet. Outside, distantly, the sound of the falls.

"Or none that can be distinguished," Elrond amended "Which is strange enough in itself. Every child of Ilúvatar bears that within them, however faint. The beasts, the trees of the wood, even the stones of the earth hold something of their being. But she—" He stopped. "There is a presence, a shape where her fëa should be. Yet the fëa itself—" He met Gandalf’s eyes directly. "In all my years I have not encountered its like.

Gandalf was silent for a time, turning the bowl of his pipe slowly in his hands. "I know," he said at last.

"You knew?"

"I know," Gandalf repeated, and the distinction was not lost on Elrond, who waited.

"She is no threat," Gandalf continued before Elrond could press further. "Of that I am certain. Had I any doubt, I would not have suffered her to walk free among us, nor taught her to wield fire, which might i add you completed this morning."

Elrond’s gaze sharpened. "You speak with great confidence Mithrandir."

"And you speak as one who has forgotten that the Ilúvatar is wiser and stranger than even the Ainur first understood," Gandalf returned, though there was no heat in his voice—only the steady weight of long thought.

"She is not of the Children as we know them. That much is clear. Yet I have watched her. She carries no shadow of our enemy. If anything, there is in her a quality that we have long lacked, a perspective unburdened by the long grief of the ages. She may yet prove a good influence, Elrond. Perhaps even a necessary one."

Elrond regarded him for a long moment, the ancient weight of his counsel turning behind his eyes he exhaled, a sound almost like surrender, though not quite.

Elrond studied him for a long moment. "She is no threat," he said again. It was not a question.

"None," Gandalf answered. "Of that I assure you."

Elrond said nothing further. Outside, Balin's voice rose in a firm, affectionate directive toward Kíli, and the splashing finally stopped.

That night, the company arranged itself for sleep in the alcove with all its usual comfortable chaos—bedrolls in every direction, boots removed and placed with varying degrees of care, the particular symphony of wind-down that thirteen dwarves a hobbit and one human produced when they were tired and fed and relatively warm, which was a symphony with several sub-movements including argument about optimal sleeping arrangements and Dwalin's preliminary snoring, which began before he was technically asleep.

Ori was crouched near the centre of the alcove, attempting to start a fire.

You noticed, in passing, that the materials he was attempting to start it with appeared to include a section of what had, until recently, been a spindle-backed chair.

You did not comment on this. You had learned when to comment on things.

You crouched beside Ori, who looked at you with the slightly embarrassed expression of someone who has been struggling with a task for longer than he'd like to admit in front of an audience. He'd managed kindling—the chair contributed generously in this department—but the catch wasn't happening, the small pile of shredded wood not finding the spark it needed.

"Can I try?" you said.

Ori sat back. Looked at you with the open, uncomplicated attention he brought to most things. "Can you—?"

You reached into the pocket at the side seam of your dress and produced the vial of oil. Uncorked it. Tilted it carefully over the tips of your right hand's fingers, a small quantity, enough to coat the pads without excess. Corked it. Set it back in your pocket.

You positioned your hand above the kindling, fingers pointed downward toward the driest part of the pile, and thought about what Elrond had told you that morning—the angle of the wrist, the direction of the motion rather than the snap, the release rather than the ignition.

You flicked.

The flame came off your fingertips in a small, bright arc—barely a foot, a generous flicker rather than a serious throw, but it landed exactly where it needed to land, in the dry heart of the kindling, and the catch was immediate, the fire finding its hold and beginning its careful, certain climb through the pile with the satisfaction of something that had been waiting for exactly the right conditions.

The sound that came from the company was—a lot.

Cheering was perhaps too organised a word for what occurred, but it was in the same territory—a burst of noise, spontaneous and genuine, the specific blend of startled and delighted that you'd learned was one of the few responses that could produce genuine unanimity in a company of thirteen dwarves with strong individual opinions about most things.

Bofur said something enthusiastic in Khuzdul that you didn't catch, Glóin thumped the floor once with an open hand.

Kíli made a sound that was most accurately described as a whoop.

Even Dwalin, who was already three-quarters of the way to sleep, opened one eye and looked at the fire with an expression that on anyone else's face would have been simple approval but on Dwalin's face required significantly more interpretive work.

The fire popped and caught on a larger piece of the former chair, and the alcove filled with warm light.

Ori was looking at you with wide eyes and the expression of someone recalibrating several things simultaneously. "Where did you—how did you—"

"Radagast," you said, which seemed to answer most questions from the company, and settled yourself on your bedroll while the fire established itself and the company's collective excitement wound back down into its comfortable, sleepy baseline.

The last thing you saw, before you closed your eyes, was Balin across the hall watching you with the specific, private expression of a very proud dwarf.

Sleep didn't find you, It came near—the familiar teasing proximity of it, close enough to feel the weight of it—and then your chest would shift with some unnamed thing, and you'd be staring at the ceiling again, and the ceiling offered nothing useful.

After the third attempt you gave up, wrapped your blanket around your shoulders, and picked your way with careful feet over Ori's legs and around the considerable territory of Dwalin's bedroll, and out into the cooler air of Rivendell's open corridors.

You walked without direction. The corridors breathed with the particular night time quality of the valley—cool, and faintly luminescent, the pale stone holding the day's light in a soft ambient glow that was just enough to walk by. The falls were louder in the dark, or seemed to be, the way all water sounds larger when the visual world has contracted.

You took a passage you hadn't taken before, curiosity rather than intent, and it deposited you into a small garden—a different one from the morning's terraces, more enclosed, three walls of carved stone and one open side facing the valley, a scattering of the low golden flowers and a pair of stone benches set at an angle to each other near the open side.

Thorin was on one of them, He was not looking at the valley, He was looking at his hands, forearms on his thighs, and the quality of it was the particular private look of a person who has come outside to think and has not yet finished thinking, and would probably have preferred not to be found.

He heard you—you'd never once managed to approach Thorin without him knowing you were coming before you arrived. His head turned slightly, not fully, orienting.

You hesitated at the garden entrance.

"Sorry," you said. "I didn't know anyone was here. I'll go."

"Sit down," he said, not warmly, but not unwelcoming. The flat, direct shorthand of a man who'd decided and saw no reason to elaborate.

You came into the garden and sat on the other bench, angling yourself so you were facing him across the narrow space between them rather than beside him, your blanket pulled around your shoulders. The valley opened behind him, the falls audible and the pale stone luminescent in the dark.

He looked at you. You looked at him.

"You can't sleep ?" You asked

"No," he cast his eyes around the valley. "Not in this place of—Elves."

"I couldnt either," you said. "Mostly due to Dwalin's one man orchestra."

Thorin huffed what was the beingings of a laugh, in the tone he used for statements that were doing double duty as acknowledgements.

You fell into a silence, one that was comfortable in the way that silences between people who had accumulated enough shared space became comfortable—not requiring filling, not requiring explanation.

"Could I ask something?"

"You can ask." He murmured without lifting his eyes.

You looked at the golden flowers catching the ambient glow from the stone. Your hands tightened slightly around the blanket.

"What was it like? The mountain." You kept your voice careful and quiet.

He was still for a moment. Then he turned his head and looked at you, and the expression on his face was something you'd seen in fragments but not assembled—a quality that wasn't quite guarded and wasn't quite open, sitting in the space between.

"Erebor," he said. Not a correction, exactly. The way you'd say a name to someone who'd been using a nickname—gently, establishing the right thing. "The Lonely Mountain. It has a name."

"Erebor," you said, and tried to say it the way he had—the weight of it in the first syllable, the slight roll on the r.

Something in his face shifted at hearing it said. Not dramatically. A small thing, privately noted. "Your getting better," he said, in the tone he used for lessons.

"Could you tell me about Erebor, please." you said again.

He was still for a moment in the way that meant he was going somewhere in his memory. In the pale glow of the stone he looked like something from an old painting—all strong line and stillness, and something underneath the stillness that moved.

"Erebor," he said, and the word landed with all its weight. He looked at the valley for a long moment. "It felt like—" He stopped. Considered.

"You cannot understand the scale of it until you have stood inside it. The great hall alone—the pillars are two hundred feet. Perhaps more."

You looked at the carved arch at the garden entrance, the tallest thing visible from where you sat. "Higher than that?"

Thorin looked at the arch. Something moved briefly at the corner of his mouth—not with humour, but somewhere close. "That," he said, "is decorative stonework— it's competent."

"The pillars of Erebor are load-bearing. Each one the width of six dwarves standing shoulder to shoulder, carved from the living rock of the mountain itself, not placed—revealed. The stone is always there. The craft is in finding what was already inside it." He paused.

"There is no comparison."

"I didn't mean to—"

"You did not offend me," he said, and the directness of it was its own kind of reassurance. "You have not seen it. There is no frame for it in what you have seen." He looked at his hands again, briefly. "I am trying to give you one."

You pulled the blanket tighter around yourself "What did it feel like? Being inside something that big?"

He didn't answer immediately, and you'd learned that Thorin's silences had their own grammar—some of them were refusals and some of them were consideration and some of them were the particular quiet of someone going somewhere in their memory that they didn't visit casually.

This one was the last kind.

"Warm," he said, finally. "The deep halls, the ones cut furthest in—there is a quality of stone that has never seen daylight. It holds differently. A particular temperature. A particular quiet." His voice had shifted, very subtly, from the measured register he kept for most things to something with less distance in it, the careful control of it loosened by a fraction by the dark and the late hour and the valley below.

"My grandfather would take me—into the deep halls when I was still young enough to be carried. He said you could hear the mountain breathing."

"Can you?" you said.

"I don't know if it was the mountain or the forges below," Thorin said. "There were always forges lit, in the deep levels. The vibration came up through the stone. When you lay your hand flat against the floor—" He stopped. "You could feel it."

You looked at him in the dark, at the profile of him against the pale luminescence of the valley—the line of his jaw, the particular set of his shoulders when he was not being held in the tension of responsibility, which was different from his ordinary posture and rarely visible.

"The foundries were the heart of it," he said, and the word heart sat differently in his voice than any of the others, heavier, with a directness that the rest of the description had been building toward without you realising. "The craft that came out of them—armour, weapons, jewellery, mechanisms—things that the world had not seen before and has not seen since. Not because the skill is gone." He looked at the valley.

"The skill is in this company. In Fíli and Kíli who will surpass even what we can do, given time. In Dwalin, in Bifur, in all of them." A pause. "The craft is not gone. What is gone is the mountain to practise it in. The space of it. The stone beneath your feet that is your own."

He stopped talking. The falls went on below, indifferent and continuous.

You moved, without deciding to, settling yourself sideways on the bench so you could sit on it properly, your knees came up naturally, and you rested your chin on them, your arms wrapped around your shins, and looked at Thorin from this new angle.

He glanced at you. At the way you'd arranged yourself. Something moved at the corner of his mouth that wasn't quite anything.

"Go on," you said.

He looked at you for a moment. The particular expression he had—the one he'd been restricting since the beginning, that wasn't warm exactly but had something underneath the not-warmth that was warmer than anything he'd have named—and then looked back at the valley, and went on.

He told you about the market that ran through the eastern passage, the one where merchants came from three directions and the noise of it was audible two levels above. He told you about the library his grandfather had maintained in the upper halls, maps and records going back to the founding, about his grandfather's handwriting and his great-grandfather's before that. He told you about the gardens of carved crystal in the deep levels, where the light of the foundries below caught in the crystal faces and threw colours across the stone walls that had no equivalent aboveground—colours, he said, that had no names in any surface language, that existed only in that specific quality of reflected light in that specific place.

His voice, as he talked, went through a change that was slow and specific—not toward something soft, exactly, but toward something less contained. The careful guard that he maintained over most of what he said, the deliberate management of what reached the surface, relaxed by degrees, the way a fist can relax one finger at a time, until what was left was something that had the quality of the thing underneath rather than the thing he used to manage it.

He was telling you about the mountain, and what he was also telling you was what it had cost him to leave it and how much of himself was still there, waiting, and he wasn't saying any of that, and you still heard all of it.

Then the details, arriving in pieces as you walked. The archways running column to column like a sentence repeated in stone. The way trees grew into and through sections of the architecture rather than being arranged around it—roots following wall lines, branches threading past open windows, everything growing together over centuries into something that was entirely, specifically itself. The sound of voices from somewhere above, carrying in that language you couldn't follow, liquid and careful, each word placed with the deliberate precision of someone who had never been in a hurry and saw no reason to start.

You walked through all of it with your right hand curled inward, fingers toward your palm. The black blood had dried. Balin had done what he could before you'd come down into the valley—his broad thumb working in circles across your knuckles with the brisk, matter-of-fact care he brought to most things—but it had found the places under your nails and between your fingers where dried blood settles in and stays, and what remained was a dark stain along the edges of your hand that had resisted the cloth and was simply going to have to wait for something more thorough.

You walked with your right hand curled, and tried to look at Rivendell, and almost mostly managed it.

Lindir led the company through the open corridors at a pace measured precisely to be neither hurrying nor dawdling, his hands folded before him, his expression the composed, gracious neutrality of someone who was very good at being a host and considered it a matter of personal pride to remain so regardless of circumstance. The corridors opened on one side to the valley below—a drop of open air and the falls—and the rooms beyond the doors you passed were light and high-ceilinged and smelled of flora and old, clean stone.

He stopped before a set of open doorways and turned to the company with a small, measured gesture inward with his hand. "These rooms have been prepared. I hope they will be to your comfort."

There was a pause, Thorin walked past the door without looking at it.

You looked at the rooms. Looked at the beds—which were, to be fair, extremely good looking beds the kind of bed that announced its own quality through sheer visible softness. Looked at Lindir. Then gave your best attempt at what you hoped was a apologetic smile.

Dwalin looked at the rooms. Made a sound that was not a word.

Lindir's hand, still extended toward the open doorway, remained exactly where it was for a moment. His face remained exactly where it was as well—composed, attentive, showing nothing—while every other muscle involved in the gesture of welcome underwent a very small and very controlled adjustment.

"These rooms?" he tried a little louder.

"We will take the alcove," Thorin said, already moving further up the passage.

"The—" Lindir looked at the alcove. At the open stone floor. At the beds visible through the separate doorways. Lindir's extended hand, moved very slightly—a brief, fractional adjustment of the fingers that he stilled immediately. "I—I beg your pardon?"

"The alcove," Thorin said. "The company sleeps together. We will take the alcove."

"Yes. Of course." Lindir replied after a brief pause in which something worked very quietly behind his eyes. "Shall I have—"

"We have our bedrolls Lad" Dwalin said, passing him.

"Naturally," Lindir said.

He turned and walked back along the corridor with the same measured pace he'd arrived with, and the only indication that the last thirty seconds had affected him in any way was the precise, slightly-too-deliberate quality of the fold of his hands.

You were standing in the middle of the company with Balin at your side, Lindir had glanced toward you as the company began moving—a look that carried the specific polite inquiry of a host wondering whether every member of the group had the same preferences—when Balin's hand appeared at your elbow — not grabbing, not insistent, just present, redirecting you gently sideways with the quiet authority of someone who had already made a decision about where you were going.

"This way, Kiyanê" he said, steering you around Lindir in a half-circle that was deliberate yet so smooth and unhurried it barely registered as a steering at all.

"I was just going to—wait, I dont know that word ?"

"Aye," Balin said clearing his throat, and kept walking "Just an old word. Slipped out.”

“What does it mean?”

“Means you ought to watch your step, Lass” Balin said with a pleasant redirecting you imagined he'd employed before to much younger people, ushering you forward faster, as if speed alone was enough to erase your question.

You looked back at Lindir, who was still watching the last of the dwarves file past him into the alcove with an expression that was doing significant structural work, and then to where Fíli and Kíli had already begun the optimistic business of identifying the best spots on the stone floor.

The dinner invitation arrived through Lindir, who delivered it at the alcoves archway with the composed dignity of a elf who had already had an instructive afternoon and was approaching the remainder of the evening with managed expectations.

"Lord Elrond extends invitation to the company," he said, to the alcove in general, "to dine with him this evening on the open terrace. It would be—" A brief pause. "He would be honoured by your company."

Silence from the alcove. Several dwarves exchanged glances.

"There'll be food?" Bombur asked.

"Quite a great deal of it," Lindir said.

"We accept,"

Gandalf closed his eyes briefly, then opened them and looked at Lindir with the expression of a man offering a wordless apology on behalf of a situation he had created and was responsible for. Lindir received it with a fractional tilt of the head and withdrew.

The terrace opened onto the valley—the falls audible below, the amber light of early evening falling across long tables set with a grace that the company regarded with varying degrees of suspicion and appetite. Elvish lanterns burned at intervals, throwing warm light across the excellent arrangements of food that Bombur had zeroed in on immediately upon arrival and was now orbiting with professional focus.

Elrond was already present, standing at the head table with the ease of someone entirely at home in their own hall, and as the company arranged itself he gestured to the chairs at his table with a warmth that was neither theatrical nor forced.

"Please," he said. "Welcome."

Thorin moved toward the round head table. Glanced back at you, once, as he moved through the crowd of settling dwarves, and then he stepped slightly backwards—and turned—extended his hand toward you, not asking, not uncertain, simply the presentation of a possibility, his eyes on yours.

You looked at his hand.

You looked at your own, the dark stain still there along the crease lines, and something in your chest did a small, horrible flip of recognition before you curled your hand back—not sharply, just a quiet withdrawal, your fingers folding further inward, your eyes going sideways.

"I-I should sit with Balin," you said, very quietly.

A beat. Brief. Thorin lowered his hand without comment, turned, and took his seat with the same composure he brought to everything, and said nothing further about it.

You went to where Balin and Dwalin had already established their position at one of the side tables, which were lower than the head table and built, you understood immediately for dwarvish proportions. You stood beside your stool for a moment doing the arithmetic, then sat down on it.

Your knee was approximately at the table's edge, you looked at Balin, who looked at the table, who looked at you, who looked back at the table. "Ah," he said.

"Yes,"

You picked up your stool, moved it entirely beneath the table, and sat cross-legged on the floor of the terrace instead, which put you at something approaching functional table height, if a little lower then everyone else and required no further discussion. Dwalin, next to you, looked down at this arrangement. Then forward at the table. Then back down at you.

"Comfortable?" He asked with a smirk.

"It's adaptable," you chuckled nudging him with your shoulder "I've been learning from the best"

"Aye," he said, and served himself.

Balin, to your right, passed you the bread.

"What is this," said Glóin, looking at the dish in front of him with the expression of a man confronting something he suspected of being nutritionally inadequate.

"It's a salad, I think," Bilbo said, from the next seat.

"It's leaves," Glóin said.

"Well, yes, partly, but there are also—"

"I'm not eating leaves, where's the meat ?" Glóin said, with finality, and looked around for something else.

"It's very good," said Bilbo, who was already on his second helping and had positioned himself at a dwarvish table with the resigned expertise of a hobbit who had learned, over the journey, that proximity to dwarves at mealtimes was either an advantage or a disaster, and had decided to take his chances.

"It's leaves dressed with oil," Dori said, from further down, lifting a small piece of something with his fork and examining it. "Which is an improvement, but—"

"There are mushrooms," Ori offered, helpfully. "In the thing at the end."

"Mushrooms in what?"

"The—the grainy thing. With the green bits."

"What grain?"

"Glóin," said Balin, mildly.

"I'm just asking what grain."

"It's very good grain," said Bilbo.

"You've said that about everything."

"Because everything is very good, if you'd only—"

Bombur, who had been silent through all of this, had eaten approximately twice what anyone else had managed and was now applying himself to a third serving of the herb grain with the focused, reverent concentration of a dwarf having a genuine culinary experience and declining to be interrupted by conversation.

You ate your own portion in the smaller, more measured way that hadn't left you, taking actual bites rather than the dwarvish approach of making meaningful progress, and felt Bofur glance at you from down the table and then look deliberately away with the expression of a man who had made a decision not to comment on it this time.

"You eat like you're being watched," Dwalin said, beside you.

"I eat like someone raised me to have table manners," you said.

"Raised well," Balin said, with the particular approval of a dwarf who had, himself, very good table manners, and considered this worth noting.

"Raised to use a fork," you agreed, "which feels suddenly very relevant."

Kíli had been quiet for most of the first course, which was unusual enough that Fíli had noticed it and was now watching his brother with the patient, expectant attention of someone who knew something was coming.

Kíli's eyes had been moving at intervals to a point somewhere past Fíli's shoulder. Fíli did not look. He served himself more of the grain with the focused calm of a man waiting for an inevitable thing to arrive in its own time.

The Elf playing harp at the edge of the terrace had long, dark hair, arranged simply, and played with the specific unhurried quality of someone for whom music was as natural as breathing.

Kíli's posture shifted. A small, deliberate adjustment toward the harp player. And then, with the particular calibrated casualness of a dwarf who thought he was being sauve, he winked.

The harp player did not look up. The music continued without interruption.

Kíli maintained his expression for approximately three more seconds before becoming aware, with the particular awareness that arrives when something large and solid is suddenly nearby, of Dwalin.

Dwalin was looking at him with the flat, utterly unimpressed regard of a man who had seen everything and was not surprised by this specifically.

Kíli straightened. Cleared his throat. "I can't say I fancy Elf-maids myself," he said, with the conversational ease of a person introducing a topic that had definitely not just been prompted by anything.

Fíli, beside him, looked at his plate.

"No?" said Dwalin.

"Too thin," Kíli said. "They're all high cheekbones—and creamy skin"He picked up his fork and applied it to his plate with decisive energy. "Not enough facial hair for me they're all—it's all very— no."

"Although," Kíli jerked his chin in the direction of a ethereal musicain who had just entered the terrace "that one there—she's not bad."

"Mm," said Dwalin a twitch forming on the edges of his mouth.

"I'm just saying."

"Kíli," Dwalin said with a smirk that had reached maturity "That is not a Elf maid."

Kíli cleared his throat and ate a large portion of something with the expression of a man who hoped the ground would claim him.

You pressed the back of your hand to your mouth and said nothing.

"Something funny?" Kíli said, looking at you.

"Oh—absolutely not," you said.

"Good," he said.

"Im sure he's lovely," you offered.

Kíli pointed his fork at you. "Do not start"

Bofur hadn't eaten very well, which meant Bofur wasn't excatly happy, which meant Bofur decided to remedy the evening.

"Alright, lad's there's only one thing for it!" He exclaimed as he climbed a side table.

It did not start quietly—and by the second verse it had acquired significant volume. By the third, Bifur had found a cup to bang on the table in time, which was all the percussion required to bring in Bombur on the downbeat, and from there the song had its own momentum.

"There's an inn, there's an inn, there's a merry old inn," Bofur sang, with the committed delivery of a man who knew every word and intended to use them, "beneath an old grey hill—"

"And there they brew a beer so brown," Óin joined in, apparently knowing this song in the way dwarves apparently knew all songs, completely and immediately, "the Man in the Moon himself came down one night to drink his fill—"

"Does this seem like an appropriate—" Lindir said, appearing at the edge of the terrace with the expression of someone who had been given limited preparation time and was doing his best with it.

"The ostler has a tipsy cat," Bofur continued, undeterred, "that plays a five-stringed fiddle—"

"It's a very old song," Gandalf told Lindir, in the tone of a man offering context rather than an apology.

"I'm—yes, I recognise that," Lindir said, with a quality in his voice that suggested this recognition was not entirely comfortable. "It's just—"

"And up and up she swep' the room," sang the better part of the company, now, "and chased the dog to bed—"

At the head table, Elrond was watching the proceedings with the particular quality of attention that was also, you thought, something very close to concern masked as entertainment, though he'd clearly had centuries of practice at keeping the two things separated in his expression.

You were attempting to maintain a neutral face, which was undermined entirely when Ori—sweet, careful, sketchbook-Ori—joined in the chorus with the specific loud enthusiasm of a dwarf who had drunk something from a very tall Elvish cup and had not accounted for the potency of Elvish alcohol.

"He's doing very well," Bilbo said, beside you, watching Ori with the fond exasperation of a hobbit who had also encountered unexpectedly strong Elvish drink.

"He's—trying," you agreed.

The bread started somewhere around the fifth verse, and you were not entirely sure who threw first, though the trajectory of the first piece suggested Nori, and the velocity of the return suggested Dori had been waiting for an excuse, and from there the logic was as inevitable as it always was.

You ducked. The piece that had been heading toward you sailed past and caught Dwalin squarely in the side of the face.

Dwalin turned his head very slowly and looked at the direction it had come from.

The responsible dwarf was looking elsewhere with total conviction.

You pressed both hands over your face, and the sound that came out from behind them was not something you were going to describe as a laugh in any official capacity.

"You're smiling." Balin said, beside you with a grin of his own.

"I can't help smiling—"

"You could help it," Balin said "You choose not to."

This was accurate enough that you couldn't argue with it, and so you pressed your hands harder over your face and made a sound that Balin very charitably declined to categorise, while above the head table Lindir stood with the expression of a man doing something very difficult with his face and succeeding at it and Gandalf looked at the sky with the expression of a man who had set all of this in motion several months ago by knocking on a door in the Shire and had no one to blame for the consequences but himself, and found he didn't actually mind.

Later, when the company had returned to the alcove and the organised chaos of thirteen dwarves and a hobbit settling for the night had completed itself save for the grumbling, shuffling and the onset of Dwalin's snoring—which proved to be fully audible through Rivendell's open architecture, the falls providing no competition whatsoever—you slipped out to the carved overlook above the falls and sat alone with your legs dangling over the edge.

Below you, the water fell white and continuous from its shelf of rock, and the sound of it filled everything, which was what you'd wanted. Not silence. Silence left too much room.

Your right hand lay palm up in your lap.

The stain had faded with soap—you'd scrubbed it twice, efficiently, before dinner not that it had helped much—what remained was faint, a slight darkening in the crease lines of your fingers. You could still see it in the angle of the lantern light from the passage behind you, and you kept looking at it the way you couldn't stop pressing a bruise.

The rider had been wearing armour. You'd seen that much in the fraction of the moment before the momentum had carried everything forward. Armour meant a person who made choices. A person who had chosen to ride toward a company of travellers and had died when that company had fought back, which rather meant you, which meant your hand, which meant that rider had consequently died on the blade of someone who hadn't meant to do it and couldn't take it back.

The specific sound of blade sliding into flesh would be living in your chest at this particular depth for a while, and the question you kept arriving at, from every direction you approached it, was whether any accounting of the rider's death produced a result you could live with.

You weren't sure yet.

"You're not sleeping?" said Gandalf, from directly behind you.

You turned. He was there—materialised in the way Gandalf materialised, from the passage behind you, as though he'd been just out of sight and was now simply no longer bothering to be. You'd been listening, in a vague way, to the company, and so you hadn't jumped, which felt like progress.

"I don't think I can" you said.

"Mm." He settled himself beside you on the overlook with the care of someone whose knees had technically been the same age for several centuries and had still experienced a great deal of speed without the difficulty those centuries should provide. His staff leaned against a nearby stool and he looked down at the falls with the contemplative ease of someone who had looked at waterfalls for a very long time and continued to find them worthwhile.

"Bombur made something with the leftover bread," Gandalf offered.

"I'm not hungry," you said.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't be" Gandalf agreed. He looked at your hand, briefly, and then at the falls, and said nothing, and let the sound of the water fill the space between you.

"I keep thinking about the rider," you said.

He didn't try to redirect you. "I know."

"Is that—does it stop? That thing in your chest when you think about what you did?"

"It becomes managed," he said. "It takes its proper proportion, over time. It does not disappear." A pause. "The fact that it doesn't disappear is not a weakness."

"It doesn't feel like a strength," you scoffed.

"No," he agreed. "It rarely does, from inside it."

"I didn't even decide to do it the blade was there and it—" You made a gesture, causing your stomach to catch in that specific way that meant dinner might vist the conversation and stopped.

"Yes," Gandalf said. "Yet here you sit."

Gandalf reached into his robes and produced his pipe, and began packing in his usual unhurried ritual you'd watched him perform a dozen times, and the smell of it came over you warm and familiar, old and sweet, and you let the silence run for a while.

"The fact that you are here, and that you are thinking about it, which is what people of conscience do after difficult things. The thinking means the outcome preserved the right being."

You looked at the falls. At your hand. The crease lines.

"Radagast gave you something," he said, when the pipe was almost finished, in the specific tone of a person raising a topic they've been waiting to raise.

"Oil," You found it in the pocket at your side seam—a detail of the dress you'd discovered with genuine delight, a small sewn pocket that you'd been using as a makeshift bag ever since—and held it up. Small, dark glass, stopped with a cork, the liquid inside clear and slightly viscous. "He didn't quite finish saying what it is. Radagast is kind of—well—you know."

"Mmm," Gandalf said, with the warmth of someone noting a well-loved characteristic. Gandalf looked at it in your hand with an expression that managed to be both entirely unsurprised and privately delighted at the same time, the expression of someone who has arranged for a thing to be somewhere and is watching it arrive in exactly the right place.

"If I may?" he said, and you handed it to him.

He turned it in his fingers. Uncorked it carefully and tilted it over his own palm, letting a thin stream of oil cross the skin from below his index finger to just below his thumb, a specific, deliberate line, then across the centre of his palm in a slow arc. He recorked the vial and handed it back.

He held his palm up and looked at the oil glistening across it in the lantern light. Then, with the unhurried deliberateness of a man who has decided to show you something and is going to show it properly, he positioned his thumb to his finger and snapped.

The flame was immediate. Not tentative—a full, confident bloom of fire that caught along the line of oil and settled into the centre of his palm with the composed familiarity of something that knew exactly where it was. Bright, warm, orange-white at the core and paler at the edges, throwing moving light up across Gandalf's face.

You made a sound.

"Yes," Gandalf said, looking at the flame in his palm with the mild satisfaction of a man who has achieved the expected result through reliable means.

Then he rolled his wrist, and the flame followed the line of oil, sliding along his palm in a slow arc, steady and self-contained, and held there. He looked at you over the top of it with a very mischevious expression.

"Gandalf?"

"Mm."

"Are you—" You watched the flame move again, following another deliberate tilt of his hand. "Are you doing tricks?"

"I'm demonstrating," he said, with perfect composure, tilting his hand again so the flame tracked back the other way along his palm. It followed the oil exactly, burning cleanly, maintaining its height through the movement with the kind of obedient consistency that suggested the relationship between this fire and the hand it was sitting in was one of long familiarity.

He caught your expression, and something in his own shifted—the corner of his mouth, very slightly, the particular micro-expression of Gandalf being amused at something and declining to confirm it.

He brought his other hand up alongside the first, held his palms together for a moment, and then separated them slowly, and the flame divided between them with a smoothness that had no business being that neat, sitting in both palms now, smaller and lower but burning steadily in each hand, and he held both out toward you and raised his eyebrows at you over the top of them like a question.

"Okay," you said, watching the two small flames, "that is—your showing off."

"A very old trick," Gandalf said, closing both hands together and separating them again, and the flame reunited as though it had never been divided, sitting in his right palm exactly as it had started, complete and steady. "Radagast's recipe is particular. Brief contact produces no lasting harm to the wielder." He looked at you. "Would you like to try?"

You looked at his palm. At the flame. At the vial in your hand. "On my actual hand."

"On your actual hand."

You uncorked the vial and tilted it over your own palm, watching the oil settle in a line across the centre of it — less certain with the angle than Gandalf had been, more of it landing slightly off-centre, but enough, the viscous clear liquid sitting in the whorls of your fingerprints and catching the lantern light the same way.

You recorked the vial. Held your palm up. Positioned your thumb and finger.

"Confidence matters more than force."

You snapped.

Nothing. A faint warmth where your fingers had contacted each other, a ghost of friction, no flame.

"Perhaps a little quicker," Gandalf said.

You tried again. A flicker—there for a half-second, a pale catch of something that extinguished before it fully arrived.

"You're anticipating the flame" Gandalf said. "There is no need to pull back."

You set your jaw. Positioned again. Snapped with the sharp, total, committed completion of someone who had decided they were going to do the thing.

The flame caught.

Small—considerably smaller than Gandalf's, lower to the surface of your palm, with the tentative quality of something that wasn't entirely sure of its welcome—but there. A real flame, actual fire, burning in the centre of your hand with a warmth that was not pain, the heat of a candle held close, and the light of it threw moving shadows up across your wrist and the underside of your arm and you looked at it and felt something very strange happen in your chest that was almost entirely the opposite of what the last several hours had felt like.

•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•

"There," Gandalf said, quietly.

You watched the flame. It moved slightly with your breathing, bending toward you on the inhale and away on the exhale, and you took a careful, wondering breath and watched it bend, and took another, and it bent again.

"In the context of a fight," Gandalf said, after a moment, returning to something practical, "a sudden flame at close quarters produces a moment. A distraction. A moment of surprise in the dark, especially, is often sufficient for distance."

"Or for calling for help," you said, still watching the flame.

"Or for that," he agreed. "The light carries."

You turned your hand very slightly, the way you'd watched him do, and the flame followed the oil, sliding a small distance across your palm and holding there, and you made an involuntary sound of surprise and delight that you would have been embarrassed about if there'd been anyone else around.

"Blow it out," Gandalf said, "before it burns down to bare skin."

You blew it out, gently, and the surface darkened and went still, and a thin thread of smoke rose from your palm in the lantern light, and the warmth remained for a moment after, and you sat with your hand open and looked at where the flame had been.

"Why does my life deserve to be 'preserved'," you said quietly.

Your fingers made small quotation marks in the air. Gandalf watched this with the mild interest of someone who had simply accepted that as a feature of conversation with you.

"More than anyone else's," you said. "The rider—" You stopped. "Why should I be here when he is not."

Gandalf looked at you. Not at the falls, not at the overlook, directly at you, with the full undivided weight of that very old attention.

"The fact that you are asking the question," he said, "is answer enough."

"That's—" You stopped. "That's not actually—"

"It isn't a deflection," he said, before you could get there. He held your gaze steadily. "Someone who does not value life does not ask that question. They conduct a different accounting entirely. They do not sit on an overlook in the dark and ask whether they deserved the result of a altercation they had no hand in starting." A pause, the falls going on below you both. "The fact that the question costs you something—that is not a burden. It is the thing that means you are the kind of person worth the difficulty of keeping."

You were quiet for a long moment.

The sound of the falls filled the silence, layered and continuous. The lantern light moved slightly in the air, and the pale stone of Rivendell caught it and gave it back, and the valley sat in its amber, unhurried dusk the way it had apparently been sitting for a very long time and intended to go on sitting for considerably longer.

"That's either very wise or completely circular," you said.

"I find, it is frequently both."

You huffed a breath that was definitely a laugh and were not going to confirm this, and the cold thing in your chest, which had been sitting there since the Warg and the rider and the black blood, shifted — not gone, not fixed, but shifted, the way a weight shifts when someone adjusts how it's sitting rather than taking it away, which is sometimes the most that's available, and is enough.

You looked at the vial in your hand. At your palm.

"Can I light it again?" you asked.

"As many times as you like," Gandalf said, reaching his pipe back up to his lips. "There's a reasonable quantity in the vial. Radagast was generous."

You tilted the oil onto your palm again. Positioned your fingers. Thought about completion.

The flame came faster this time, more certain of itself, with none of the preliminary hesitation—it caught and held and sat in your palm like something that had always been there and was simply waiting to be called.

"If I win this bet, you owe me a date."

“Uh-huh.” You roll your eyes. If Lloyd Hansen has made an agreement with you once, he’s made it a thousand times: bets, predictions, whether or not he makes a specific mark, terms for anything from a coffee order to the next Nobel Prize winner. And yet, for all Lloyd’s talk, he’s never once tried to collect. Not that you have much to fear—he’s the type who’d rather make you squirm in anticipation. You know he likes the idea of a date more than the date itself.

Scratch that, you know Lloyd is not the dating type. Hates and ridicules the colleagues who do go on dates.

He flashes a smile that should be illegal outside of toothpaste commercials. "I’m serious this time. Put it on the record."

You don’t even look up from your laptop. "You owe me more dates than you can count.”

“Ninety-nine.”

You jerk your head up to look at him. “What?”

“You heard me: ninety-nine dates.”

You open your mouth only to close it again.

“Ninety-nine,” he repeats, smug as ever. “If I win today, that’s one hundred.” He laces his fingers behind his head, elbows angled with showoff laziness, leaning back in his seat on the chartered plane. “At that point, I’m cashing in. No more IOUs. You, me, three uninterrupted days. I take you to my place in the Bahamas, and we see how many times we can fuck before your brain completely short-circuits.”

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

Twelve years ago…

"Honestly babe it's insane that you're already like two sems away from graduating. Like the three of us just got here," Sydney said as you took your seats at Professor LaTorre's class. You signed up for his Business Laws & Documentation class purely as an elective so you could at least still have a class with your friend. 

The same went for an introductory C++ Programming course so you could spend time with Shane and Isaac. 

"Don't worry babe I'm drawing it out," you said casually. "I'll be damned if I can't manage to actually graduate with you guys this time around, especially since I have control over how many classes I take in a semester. Besides…might be fun to have a lighter class load. I signed up for the cleaup initiative that Stark Industries is leading after the big alien invasion last year." 

"Ooh! Maybe you'll meet an Avenger! The god with the hammer and the lightning is smoking hot," she gushed. "If you do, best believe I'll sign up that same day. I'll cut class if I have to."

"You know what, I'm gonna fully support you there. Even if Mr. Asgardian Barbie doesn't really do it for me." 

"Oh, and what pray tell is doing it for you? The Captain? The Archer?" Then she gasped, her eyes lighting up as she teased, "The redhead? It's the redhead, isn't it? 'Cause like I get it she's hot." 

"Not exactly…" You took a moment to brace yourself before answering. "More like…the other god? Thor's brother?" 

"Girl, what?!" 

You covered your face with your hands. "I know," you groaned. "I'm starting to get why our classmates thought I was a freak now. Like how fucked do I have to be that I see a hot guy in armor towering over a town square in Germany wielding a glowy magic staff and scaring everyone into kneeling submission and my first thought was Damn wish I was there?!" 

"Okay you're not a freak for that, we all have a bad boy phase. It's just that this specific bad boy?Babe he destroyed like half the city."

"No," you argued, bringing your hands down and looking at your friend dead on. "Those ugly looking aliens destroyed the city. He destroyed like what, maybe two letters out of the sign on Stark Tower?" 

"Okay fair, but he was leading those aliens destroying the city. He was in charge."

"Uhh…no. He wasn't. You saw how his mind controlled minions in Stuttgart had these creepy glowy blue eyes?" She took a moment before nodding. "He had them too. He's not the one in charge. He was the one put in front by the guy who was actually in charge. He was the fall guy." 

"Okay maybe I can see where you're coming from…but still babe, really? Him?" 

"What can I say? The heart wants what the heart wants, I guess," you told her with a shrug. "And anyway even if I do end up meeting Thor during my volunteer work, it's not like I'll ever get anywhere. Like what, I meet him and go Tell your brother I think he's cute?" The mere thought had you both breaking out into laughter. 

Just then, the door swung open and Professor LaTorre walked into the classroom, taking his place on the dais and standing on top of his little soapbox. "Ladies, if you could stop with your giggling about…what is it this time? Vampires? One Direction?" He took a moment to let the jab marinate, a self safisfied smirk pulling at his mouth as some members of the class laughed. "Regardless, that's enough of that. Settle now, class." 

He set down his briefcase, pulling out a stack of yellow legal size pad papers and waving it around. Like he was taunting you all. 

"Here are your latest quiz papers. I looked over them all and I have to say, most of your ambitions are…respectable. Admirable, even. Working in local government, internships at local shops. You know…reasonable. Some of you though…" he trailed off, making an awkward expression before doing a pseudo-dance. "I don't like using inflammatory words but…little bit delusional." 

"Respectfully, Sir…delusional how?" you spoke up, challenging him. 

He ended his pseudo-dance, straightening his stance before answering you. "Well some of you apparently have your sights on working for Anna Wintour and organizing for the MET Gala. Another one said they want to manage an NBA team. Ohh and get this." He took a moment to let out a ridiculing laugh. "One of you even said they want to collaborate with Tony Stark."

You dug your nail into your palm to keep yourself from reacting. He was talking about you. 

"Not work for Stark Industries, not intern at one of their child companies. But collaborate." He laughed some more before putting on a mocking voice. On a whim, you whipped out your phone and sneakily started recording him. "I would like to collaborate with Tony Stark on his efforts to create sustainable energy. Maybe even on research and development for the Iron Man suit."

The class broke out into laughter. Well, almost the whole class. Neither you nor Sydney found anything funny about how he was behaving. 

"I mean, I understand that you all had big shiny reputations in your respective high schools. You had guidance counselors who held your hand and tell you you can be anything, and parents who bottle fed you and told you to shoot for the stars. But you guys are in college now; we're trying to prepare you for the real world. 

"Keep your goals proportionate to your potential. Chances are, maybe a handful of all the students in your graduating class will make it big. If that. So no, you're not going to work for Vogue or probably even steam clean the carpet for the MET Gala. No, you're not going to be the next NBA superstar. And no, you're not going to be an Avenger. Stop shooting for the stars and wondering why you keep falling on your asses. Aim low. That way you can still celebrate even your tiny victories." 

You stopped recording him, and made another split second decision, emailing the recording to the Dean. 

A message from Syd came in. Where the fuck does this dude get off?

He told the class to approach his desk and retrieve your papers, telling you to look for your student number seeing as he was making a show of making his treatment seem impartial. 

"I think he wants to keep us small so he doesn't feel too bad that when he hit every single branch of the Ugly Tree when the stork dropped him on his head as a baby, it took his height, too. And his hair," you said in a low voice, making your friend grab on to your arm for dear life as she tried to control her laughter. 

When it came your turn, you and Sydney looked at the remarks he left on your papers. You had to fight the urge to roll your eyes as you read his comments in red ink.

Wow! So ambitious! right there next to your grade of 90. And he put the same thing on Syd's paper next to her paragraph about wanting to be involved with Vogue. 

"What a mega cunt," you grumbled in unison, already shoving the papers in your bags. 

After the last of the students grabbed their paper from his desk, Professor LaTorre dismissed you all for the day. The second the words left his mouth, you and Sydney were already on your feet, making your way to the door. 

"Uh oh, we know that look," Isaac said as he and Shane waved you over to their little gondola at the student square. "What's the sitch?" 

"The sitch?" you shot back, and the boyfriends gave you a carefree shrug. "Well, Kimberly Ann, we just got our quizzes back from LaTerror." You both slapped your papers down on the table, letting them peruse your answers for a minute.

"This 'so ambitious' sounds passive aggressive," Shane observed, squinting his eyes at the red ink like he was waiting for it to confess.

"Oh no, he was just aggressive aggressive," you shot back. "Before he had us get our papers from him, he made sure to launch into a whole tirade that had both of us catching strays. Basically telling us to 'keep our dreams tiny'."

"Yeah well fuck that," Syd screeched, her voice going a bit 'gremlin mode" towards the end. "Not only are you going to collaborate with Tony Stark, babe. You're gonna be a fucking Avenger. I can see it now."

"Jury's out on the whole Avenger bit, but I'll happily take the support on working with Iron Man," you told her, taking her hands and speaking your vision for her out into the universe. Manifesting it, really. "And you, girlie…not only are you going to the MET Gala, you're gonna design a gown that'll be worn to the fucking MET Gala. You're gonna make it and make it big."

"The only time we're aiming low is if we're aiming a dodgeball at LaTerror's family jewels," she said with a cackle. 

Today

"Ohh good God, Shane nooooo," you groaned the second you opened the garment bag he brought you, catching the quickest glimpse of the gorgeous dark emerald silk inside. "I remember telling you to put in the order for the black one."

"And I told you that much as you slay in black, this is your color, babe," he countered, pushing the garment bag back into your arms. "What is it exactly that's keeping you from wearing a dress that's gonna have you looking like a million bucks at your party?" 

"I told you, there are certain colors these days where you need…permission."

"To what? Wear a color?!" 

You simply nodded at him, the scientist's eyes widening from how absurd he found the concept. You took it upon yourself to try and explain. "You notice how people in the building try to avoid wearing like dark red?"

"Yuh huh…"

"Well that's because dark shades of red are Thor's color. The only exception he makes is for Stark's suits. And that's just because the Iron Man suit leans more stoplight than maroon, you know?"

He nodded, trying to follow along. "Okay I'm really trying here, babe, I promise. But last I checked, nobody owns a whole color. We're not in Riverdale and we're not dealing with Cheryl Blossom."

"Sure, but things were…different back in Asgard. There, when you wear a royal's colors it's like you're declaring yourself to the whole kingdom, you know?" You motioned toward the dress he brought you again. "So this dress…gorgeous as it is, isn't something I can just throw on. Because dark shades of green? That's Loki's color."

"What about my color, darling?"

Your heart started skipping at the sound of Loki's voice filling the dining area.

"Uhm…well, last weekend Shane and his husband took me dress shopping and we found something. But I don't know, I think the store made a mistake and gave me this instead of black." You opened the garment bag to let him glimpse the dress.

The god couldn't help the way his breath hitched as he saw the light hit the silken fabric, perfectly set in his color. From the image that was placed upon the garment bag, he could tell that the dress itself was something not far from what women would wear at a ball back in Asgard.

A stray thought even hit him that there were wedding gowns in their realm that were cut in a similar way, and he had to shoo away the image in his mind before he became tempted to lose himself in the fantasy. Picturing you in the same dress and walking toward him, only this time in the Royal Hall. Adorned with a gold that matched his armor. To swear yourselves to the Norns.

He took a step toward you, reaching out to lightly touch the fabric. "Well darling, if you truly wish to change it to black, you only need ask."

A sputtering sound came out of you as you looked upon him with visible disbelief. "What? Like you'll use your magic to--"

"Precisely. If that is what you wish." He took the garment from your hands, gently placing it down on the table before taking another step toward you. Just barely enough to be within your personal space. Close enough he could see the quickening rise and fall of your chest as you breathed. He lightly touched his fingers to your chin, urging you to meet his gaze. "But if it is my assent that is hindering you from wearing this dress, then you have it."

A frantic look entered your eyes and he could feel a slight tremble in you under his touch. "Hang on, you've thrown an absolute fit before just because some junior agent wore a green sweatshirt." 

"There are always exceptions to the rule, little mortal." He moved his hand to wrap around yours, running his thumb across your knuckles. "The choice is entirely yours." The god brought your hand up to his lips, pressing a tender kiss to your knuckles as he held your gaze. "You would make the most captivating sight either way." 

Had another moment passed precisely like this, Loki might have been moved to relinquish his self control and press his lips to yours. The moment seemed so perfectly quiet, and far too many images of what a life together with you would look like were bombarding his mind. However, he also knew far too well that doing so would most definitely cause you to put as much distance between you and him as you could manage. 

So perhaps it was a quiet blessing from the Norns that at that precise moment, Stark had walked into the sitting area, the tinkerer's grating voice doing the work of breaking the tension that was quickly thickening between you two. 

"Jellybean, I had someone reach out to your professors and some of them are coming to your party," his voice filled the room.

"Aaaaand pop goes the bubble," your friend Shane muttered. "Damn it."

Your eyes blinked rapidly, as if you were coming out of a stupor, and something sunk in the god's chest when you stepped out of his hold with an apologetic look in your eyes. "Sorry," you murmured, the ache worsening for him as he begun to ask himself why in the Nine were you apologizing when he had been the one to approach you. 

His brother had relayed to him a story your scientist friend told him about a callow, short-sighted boy named Justin. About how he had taken advantage of your kind nature, and how he was now more than likely the reason behind the walls you'd built around yourself. Why you chose to put so much distance not just from him, but from everyone in the Compound, with the exception of Stark's daughter.

Thor told him he needed to ready himself for the possibility that he would be chasing after you for a long time, given how horrendous prior situations turned out for you. That every sliver of affection might be met with more distance, and if he truly cared for you then he would have to put in even more effort just to close the distance. That if he truly thought you were worth it, then pursuing you would require a different approach from what he'd normally done back on Asgard.

No games, no illusions, no mischief. Just his heart, laid bare. For you to either take or spurn.

And you were more than worth that risk.

You smoothed your hands over your shirt before facing Stark, and Loki took that as his cue to subtly sidle closer to you once more, in an attempt to at least close the physical distance you put between you. "Which professors?"

"Right now I've got your thesis advisor, Louis Doherty?"

"Ohh, I remember him. Pretty cool guy, but I'm willing to bet he RSVP'd more so that he could see Natasha in the flesh," you said with a strained laugh. "Who else?"

"Ethan Sy? Said he was your academic advisor."

"Yeah he was. Strict dude, but fair. And he never gave off any creeper vibes, so he's good people. It'd be nice to see those two again."

"And then there's another one. Boy this one loves to talk. Sent over a long performative ass-kissing note along with this RSVP. Pulcifer LaTorre?"

That name brought out a rather visceral reaction from you, your face contorting into a rage that was simmering just beneath the surface. "LaTerror?!"

"Ohh Boss I can tell you right now, anything he said in that note was a thousand percent performative as all fuck. He was a bitter tyrant of a prof," Shane spoke up, moving towards the pantry to open a small bag of candy popcorn, as if he knew what was coming next.

You took a deep breath, once again side stepping away from the god as you started off with a raised tone, "That fucking shiny bald headed miniscule manchild had the audacity to make a mockery of me and Sydney because he didn't like our answers in one of his stupid generic motherhood statement quizzes. Called us delusional, even."

"What was his question?" Stark asked you, clearly engrossed in where this story was going.

"What are your long term career aspirations?" you quoted, shifting your voice in a way that Loki surmised was to mock your former instructor. "I said, and I quote, I would like to collaborate with Tony Stark on research and development for the Iron Man suit."

"And collaborate you did, Jellybean," he affirmed, raising a glass in your direction. "And not just that, you're family. Maguna loves her princess godmother Auntie Y/N."

"You have to tell her one of these days that I'm not a fucking princess, Stark. But anyway, he quoted my answer word for goddamn word and then proceeded to tell us all that high school was the time for guidance counselors to lie to us and tell us that we can be whatever we wanted, but we're in college now. And fuckers like him are here to prepare us for 'the real world'."

It was at that moment that Thor walked into the common area, hearing only a portion of your story. "And pray tell, my friend, what exactly does your instructor think is this 'real world'?"

"Beats me, Barbie, but he went into a whole spiel about how not a single student in his class will end up organizing for the MET Gala, or playing for the NBA, or become an Avenger. Told us to 'aim low', so we can still celebrate the tiny victories in life."

You'd gotten so animated that your face began to go red from how flushed your cheeks were. It took the god a considerable bit of effort to stop his thoughts from wandering into a fantasy of seeing you in a similar state again. Only in a more private setting. And under more pleasurable circumstances.

"He was a halfwit," Loki told you, stepping toward you once more.

"More like a none-wit," Stark quipped. "Makes his whole message about I'm so proud of Miss Y/L/N, I always knew she was destined to be great a steaming pile of bullshit. Jellybean, you better have something ready for your speech that puts this abysmal excuse for a professor in his place."

"Nah, Tony, I couldn't possibly. I don't wanna make a scene." You'd retreated back into your quieter, more reserved demeanor, picking at the skin of your fingernails.

"Babe, listen to me, if there's ever any time to make a scene, it's at the party that's being thrown to celebrate you," Shane said, a knowing smile pulling at his mouth as he kept going. "Sometimes you gotta make like your old college self and…choose the chaotic path?" For a fleeting moment your friend's gaze flickered in Loki's direction before going back to you.

"Shane? Don't." You kept your voice low, hesitant even. As if you were pleading for him to stop talking rather than tellinghim. 

"I concur, Lady Y/N," Thor spoke up, grabbing his own snack from the pantry. "If this past instructor made a mockery of you in your youth, then it seems only right that gets to learn how bitter that form of ridicule tastes." 

"Look, just--can we drop this?" you addressed the room, a dismissive, almost defeated tone to your voice. "Just because I'm a veteran at receiving it doesn't make me an expert at dishing it out. Besides, I remember reading somewhere that 'living well should be the best revenge', so I'm just gonna do exactly that." Then you turned toward the blond Asgardian, addressing him directly. "Ohh by the way, my plus one? Sydney? She's got a thing for you. Had it bad for over a decade. She'd be over the moon if you took a few minutes to, I don't know maybe talk to her? She's smart, she's gorgeous, she's creative, and it's not gonna be a dull conversation, I promise." 

He simply nodded at you, accepting your request, and you took that as your cue to leave the room. 

Before you could reach for the garment bag that held your gown for the gala, it disappeared with a flash of green magic, and you turned back to see Loki with his gaze trained on you, a playful smirk gracing his features. "Give it back, please." You couldn't help but smile back as he shook his head at you.

"Only once I have escorted you back to your chambers, darling." He closed the distance between you, gently taking your hand in his as he led you toward the apartment complex. 

Once you were both out of earshot, Tony got to work, firing up a tablet and instructing for FRIDAY to put together everything she could find on that awful excuse of a professor of yours. "What're you doing there, Boss?" 

"Well, Jellybean might not be well versed in dishing out a hefty serving of humble pie, but lucky for her, I wrote the book," he answered Shane, creating a new file in his system simply named LaTerror.

Thor walked over to where Stark had begun his work, peering over his shoulder to see what exactly he had in mind. "How can we help?" 

A/N: Whatever Tony's up to, I fully support it. Also once again, yes…I can confirm that LaTerror is based off of an actual professor I had in college, and he really did mock one of my answers in his quizzes in front of the class. Like bro, how was I supposed to know you had a limit for what you wanted to read as an "ambition"? Fuck all the way out of here.

Anyways, I'm working on part 3…and I'm planning on putting a mango ride in there somewhere. I'm also working on phase 3 planning for RTC Season 2 and a whole bunch of other stuff that are kind of refusing to get to the top of my head despite (or maybe because of) the energy drinks I've already slammed…we'll see how this goes…

You hum and keep from leaning to the side. A car passes and footsteps scrape up the sidewalk. You hover the smoke in front of your lips, hunching forward as your fingers nice away without meaning too. You catch yourself and your eyes pop open.

A blurry figure approaches and you snort. You inhale the tobacco and puff it out as your vision clears just enough to make out the man in his tweed jacket and glasses. You pull the cigarette away and salute with your other hand.

"Rrray..." You slut. "Fine night."

"Rain let up." He shrugs as he stops at the bottom step, just three below where you sit on the stoop. "How's it goin' then?"

"Goin'," you drone and take one last drag before you butt out the ashy tip. "You sellin' or cashin' out?"

He tilts his head. "Not selling what you're on, dear." He grabs the railing as he lifts a foot onto the bottom stair. "Told ya, you needs get off that stuff."

You giggle. "Easy 'nough to say if you never tried it, Ray Ray." 

You reach up and latch onto the railing. You struggle to get yourself to your feet. You sway and stumble down one step. Raymond moves to catch you. You manage to stay upright and wave him off.

"Don't you worry for me," you point at him and sag. "I needa sleep. Thatsall."

You stick out your tongue and turn your back to him. You saunter up the stairs and stop at the door. You twist and look back at him.

"Comin' or gon' buzz up?" You prompt.

Raymond sighs and climbs the steps. "Coming." He answers as he hurried forward and grabs the door. "Listen, you ever get off them things, I'll get you some of my stock for free. Take the edge off." He crowds you as he pulls the grated door shut behind him. "Better 'n pharmaceuticals."

"Not strong enough," you scoff and turn up the staircase. "Tell Billy to open his damn windows. Tired of smelling that skunk.”

You lean on the railing as you climb and sway down the hallways to your door. You push through and close the door without any care for the dangling chain or lock. You yawn and smile at the numb ripple flowing through you. 

You fall onto the couch and moan. Your eyes roll back in cloudy content. You sink further and further away from reality, not thinking, not feeling. Just lost in oblivion.

💜

You roll over, arm numb from the weight of your body, and groan. Your shoulder aches at the socket and your head swims with the dregs of the pills. This is the part you hate. When you have to feel again. When you have to get up and face the world.

You throw your hand over your eyes and think of popping half a perc with your coffee. Those losers at the shop can be patient while you find their brand. Especially that idiot who expects you to remember which lites he prefers.

You sniff and rub your cheek hard. You wonder if Tonya got her new script yet. You really don’t want to pay Gregory double for his grandma’s sock. You flop your arm down on the bed and open your eyes.

Your heart floods with adrenaline. Bed? You don’t remember getting that far and this is much cushier than the stiff old futon on the floor. And the wooden trim around the ceiling isn’t dusty and faded like the old plaster of your flat.

Where the fuck are you?

Sitting up makes your head pound. You blink and look around at the dark wainscotting. Shit, did you somehow wander off and break into someone’s estate? You’ve done some zany shit on pills but mostly you just sleep.

You shake your head and it pulses again. You groan and rub your temples. You cradle your skull as you move slowly to the edge of the bed. You’re still in your loose pajama bottoms and baggy tee.

You stretch your neck and stand. You grab onto the orb at the top of the footboard’s post to keep from tipping. You scan the room again.

The windows have iron grating across the outside…

You turn and stagger to the door. The long curled handle doesn’t turn. You grip with both hands and jiggle. You crank down as hard as you can. Nothing.

You huff and let go. You cross the room, tripping on the edge of the carpet, and grab the window frame. You can slide it open but the metal cage doesn’t budge on the other side. The hell?

This can’t be real. You back up and stomp back to the door. You thump on it with your hand and holler, “Hey!” The echo shakes your brain. You cup your ears and whine.

You back up and sit on the bed, bending over your lap as you rock. Goddammit. You need out of this place. You need pills.

You stay like that, slowly leaning to the side as your eyelids droop. You’re weak. The thunder in your head travels down your spine.

A click makes you flinch. You turn your head and peek out from under your arm. You force yourself up to stare at the man that steps inside. It’s Raymond.

“Ray..” you murmur.

He stares at you, eyes pensive, disapproving behind his lenses. He tilts his head. You gape back at him, confused.

“You need to stop running away from the inevitable.” He says. “I told you to quit that junk.”

You blink again.

“Ray Ray, what do y’mean?” You gurgle.

“I walked straight into your place. You never knew. Not the first time.” He crosses his arms. “Coulda been someone a lot damn worse than me.”

You frown and shake your head. “What are you doing? Where am I?”

He tuts. “Cleaning you up.” He backs up and turns to the door. “You’re welcome.”

A surge of terror and rage strikes in you. You lunge up to your feet and towards him as he grabs the handle. He easily elbows you away and you fall to the floor with a thud. You cough and look up at him.

“You can’t do this!” You cry out.

He calmly opens the door. He stops inside the frame and looks back at you. You shakily sit up.

“And who’s goin’ to look for you, dear.”

He spins and slams the door at his back. The lock clicks. You growl and kick your heels into the floor.

Holy shit.

💜

Click.

You’re ready this time. The door opens and you jump. He’s ready too.

Raymond catches you by your jaw, squeezing until you’re still as he balances a plate in his other hand. You groan as his grip thrums in your neck and skull. He marches you back to the wooden chair at the desk.

“Sit.” He demands.

You whimper. It’s been hours since you had anything. Getting close to a day. His thumb pushes in behind your jaw until you obey.

“You need to eat.” He lets go and places down the plate of food. Mandarin slices peeled and divided, cottage cheese dressed with pepper and sesame, and baked chicken sliced with zucchini and broccoli.

You growl through your teeth. “I need some damn pills.”

He lets go and taps your cheek, enough to just sting.

“No. Eat.”

You touch your cheek and glare at him. “What’s wrong with ya? Why are ya–”

“Helping you?” He interrupts and points at the plate. “Eat.”

“Let me go–”

“You can eat or I can feed you.” He warns and shoves you..

You look down at the plate and curl your lip. There’s a plastic utensil; one end a spoon, the other a curved spork. You sigh and reach for it.

You hover it over the bland white heap.  You grip it tightly and act as if you might take a bite. Instead you twist and jump up, aiming the tines at his face. He catches you and knocks the utensil from your hand.

He grasps the back of your head and turns you back to the desk. He pinches your neck and forces you into the chair. He bends you over until your face is right over the plate.

“Act like an animal. Eat like one.” He smushes your face into the food. “I’m not leaving until the plate is clean.”

The cheese smears all over your face and a piece of broccoli nearly impales your nostril. You cough and grip the edge of the desk.

“You choose how this goes.” He snarls.

You wriggle and grunt. “Let me go. Ow! I’ll… eat.”

He pinches until you whine but relents. You sit up and he reaches into his pocket. He offers you a fabric kerchief. You rip it away from him and wipe your face.

You keep your head down, crumpling the cloth in your fist as you grab a mandarin wedge with your other hand. You put it in your mouth and bite down. You eat quietly. Your stomach churns at the smell of the broccoli. The taste only makes it worse.

You cover your mouth and your shoulders rack. He backs up and returns with the bin placed at the corner of the desk. He holds it patiently beside you. You turn and wretch into it.

“First few days will be bad. Week or so, you’ll feel better.” He pats your back and you stiffen. “Drink water. Stretch your legs when you can.”

“You’re an asshole.” You mutter into the bin.

“And you’re an addict.” He drones back smugly. “No one else’d do anything for ya.”

💜

“Hey, jerk! Hey, Hey!” You yell and stomp, stomping to hammer on the walls with your fist.

For hours, you laid in bed, restless and dizzy, until you just couldn’t stay still. Now you’re pissed. And sweating. Somehow soaked in sweat but freezing. You sniff through your clogged nose and hit the wall again.

“Lemmeouttttttt.” You shout so loud it makes your ears ache. “Lemme–”

You stop as your stomach clenches. Ugh. Not again. You hurry into the bathroom and panic. You don’t know what end it’s coming out of.

You end up sitting, curled over your knees, shaking and sniveling. When you’re done, you barely have the strength to get yourself off the bowl. You flush and wash your hands, shivering endlessly.

You’re light-headed. You stumble into the wall and turn your back to it. You slide down and hug your legs. You hang your head forward and close your eyes. You stay like that for a while, dazed and dull.

The scent of something sweet tickles your nose. You lift your head. You didn’t hear him. You’re embarrassed as Raymond lights three wicks of the candle and slides it back on the counter.

He turns to you. You stare dumbly. He picks you up and drags you to the tub. He sits you on the edge and grabs the top of your tee shirt.

“What’re you–”

“Told you to wash up, didn’t I?” He tears the cotton over your head. “You need to keep care of yourself.”

He exposes your chest and you quickly hug yourself. He tosses the shirt. You sway.

He takes your arms and you struggle to keep them closed. He shakes his head and forces them open and around his neck. He stands you up and pushes the elastic of your pajamas past your hips and ass. His palms graze your skin firmly.

It’s been days. He told you yesterday to take a bath. You ignored him, too anxious to do more than pace and ramble. What the fuck is this guy’s problem? Why is he doing this to you? Can’t he mind his damn business.

He leans you against the tub again. You lift your hand and he mirrors it with his own. He points at you.

“You do not want to do that.” He sneers.

You believe him. You drop your hand and look down. He bends over the porcelain and cranks on the faucet. He tests it with his thick fingers.

“Ray, why…”

“Does it matter why I’m helping you?” He stands up, his hands on his hips.

“I don’t want help. I want to be fucking high.”

“Ta!” He slaps your cheek lightly.

You recoil and cradle your cheek. You glower at him. His eyes bore into yours then drift down. You cower and cover your nudity.

“Get in.” He orders. “I don’t want to hurt you, otherwise I’d have left you as you were.”

“What do you care about me?” You scowl.

He’s quiet. He grabs your arm and forces you to turn. You lift your leg over the edge and he helps you down into the deep basin.

He stirs the water with his hand. You cross your arms and bend your legs. He stares into the clear ripples around his fingers. “You’ll feel better once you’re clean.” 

💜

“You’ve been good.” Raymond declares as he enters. You sit on the bed, exhausted. You can’t shake the fatigue. “You can choose your reward; chocolate, caramel, or cherry?”

You stare at him. “I don’t care. I don’t want it. I want to go.”

He clucks. “You’re doing so well, don’t make me rescind the offer.”

You sigh. “Caramel.”

“Good girl.”

Later, he brings you a salted caramel sundae with your dinner. You don’t admit it out loud, but it’s delicious. You could cry. It’s much better than what he’s been serving you; unseasoned protein and fruit.

“If you’re good tomorrow, you can choose your supper too.” He says as he puts the empty dishes on the tray.

True to his word, he lets you choose supper the next night. You ask for Nandos. He acquiesces, though he seems less than impressed by the meal as he watches you eat. He clears away the remnants and tells you to brush your teeth and clean your face.

You don’t do either of those things until he returns to make sure. You don’t need him shoving the brush halfway down your throat again. He supervises you until you’re dressed in the satin nightie he brought you.

He kisses your cheek with a good night and leaves you to your cage. You don’t sleep. You shut off the lamp beside the bed and stare up at the shadowy ceiling as the static silence fills your ears.

You toss and turn. Rolling one way then the other. You just can’t settle down.

Your hand goes to your cheek. Why did he do that?

Click. You tense but don’t let on that you heard it. Maybe you didn’t. It can’t be.

It is. You hear him approach the bed behind you. Feel his weight dip at the edge. He whispers your name and touches your arm.

“You can’t sleep.” He says.

You don’t react. He spreads himself behind you, his warmth swathing over you.

“Can’t either.” He slings his arm around you. You twitch.

He lays like that, right against you, for a while. Quite, breathing in the scent of your hair, exhaling out his thoughts. He nuzzles behind your ear.

“You’re doing better. Do you feel better?” His lips graze the rim of your ear. You don’t answer. His hand stretches along your stomach and he pulls himself even closer. “I’m proud of you.”

You bite down. His touch slowly crawls higher, tickling you through the thin satin. You shift.

“You’re almost ready.” He purrs. He presses his palm over your tit. You growl and catch his hand.

“Ray…” you whisper.

Screenshot. Blocked. Done.

Bucky walked in with a mug in his hand and took a seat beside you, which brought a small smile to your face. He liked being close. You were one of the only people he let into his personal space bubble.

“You okay?” he asked when you set your phone down. “You’re being quiet.”

“I’m quiet sometimes,” you tried to tease.

He tilted his head. “No, this is a different kind of quiet. Something happened,” he said because he knew you so well. “And I want to fix it.”

You smiled again. Of course, he wanted to fix it. That was the kind of man he was. 

“Apparently, I’m too old to have hobbies,” you stated.

An adorably confused look crossed his face and you wanted to kiss him for being so cute. “You’re… what?”

“I got some anonymous ask on my blog basically telling me to stop posting fanfiction because I’m too old and I should do something my age,” you explained, showing him the screenshot.

Bucky stared at the screenshot, his fingers twitching before they curled into fists. He didn’t say anything. It didn’t even look like he was breathing.

The cold that filled his blue eyes told you he was about two seconds from somehow climbing into the internet and finding this person.

“And before you asked, I didn’t respond. I blocked them,” you explained, keeping the phone out of his reach. “They’re just trolling or trying to get a reaction.”

One of the wonderful things about your blog was that you could curate it for your own experience. If you didn’t want to respond to rude asks or messages, you didn’t have to. If you wanted to, you could. It was that simple.

A downside of the website was that some people seemed to forget to curate their own experiences, like simply unfollowing or blocking blogs and tags if they didn’t like, agree, or want to see them.

“I am reacting,” Bucky said in a quiet voice tinged with building rage.

“I noticed,” you said, not flinching when he set the mug down with a little more force than necessary and took a deep breath.

“That… is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a lot of stuff.”

You almost laughed, but he was dead serious.

“Does this…” He gestured to your phone and flexed his fingers again. “Askhole really thinks that there’s an expiration date on hobbies? Because there isn’t.”

You shifted and tucked your legs underneath you, giving him your full attention.

“That’s so fucking…” He let out a bitter laugh. “People collect baseball cards into their seventies. Eighties. They paint miniature trains. Build model airplanes. Knit. Garden. Fish. Hunt.”

“They do,” you agreed, running your fingers through his hair just because you could.

He closed his eyes at your touch before he continued. “People go to comic cons and cosplay. They play D&D. Video games.” His voice was starting to rise and your nails touched his scalp again. “And what about grown ass men paint their faces and spend entire weekends yelling at sports games?”

“You sound personally offended.”

He looked at you incredulously. “I am personally offended on your behalf.”

You snuck in a kiss because you couldn’t help yourself. You felt some of the anger leave his body when your lips touched. It meant a lot that he cared so much.

“Don’t distract me,” he whispered.

“I’m not,” you whispered back, smiling when you pulled away. “You just have very kissable lips.”

“So do you,” he said with a smile before he frowned. “But I’m still not happy because they’re acting like people writing stories is somehow less respectable because what? Other people read them online and not from a book?”

You shrugged a little. “It’s fanfiction,” you said softly.

He shrugged, too. “So?”

“So…” You tried to find the words. “Some people think it's an inferior form of writing and a waste of time.”

His brows pinched, something sad filling his eyes. “I think creating something that makes you happy is one of the most adult and superior things you could do.”

You were quiet for a moment. “Really?”

“Really.” He opened his arms for you to move close. “You have two kids who love and adore you and vice versa, and they’re busy with so many activities that you have a calendar to keep it all straight. You make sure they’re never without.”

Your heart swelled. Your babies. No matter how old they got, they would always be your babies. And you wanted them to thrive in life. That was one of the reasons you worked so hard to give them not just a nice home, but a loving one.

“You work 40 hours a week. Sometimes more,” he said, his lips brushing the top of your head. “You pour so much of yourself into that job and your teammates that it wears on you by the end of the week.”

Mist filled your eyes. You did put a lot into your job because your parents taught you the value of hard work. And as frustrating as growth in your job could be, there were perks to your job and you had a great team. That wasn’t easy to come by.

“And when you aren’t pouring yourself into the kids or work, you have a pretty amazing husband who always wants your attention,” he teased, tilting your chin up with a tender smile. “Seriously, I can’t keep my hands off you half the time.”

Heat filled your cheeks and a laugh bubbled up. It amazed you after so many years how your husband still wanted you. Still admired you. He was an amazing partner and father.

You couldn’t ask for anyone better.

“And when you aren’t dealing with a handy husband.” He smirked a little. “You’re paying bills, handling responsibilities, and checking on others. Online and offline.”

Your heart sank a little. Messages sometimes went unanswered. Asks got buried. Comments got late replies. Not on purpose. Never on purpose.

But you felt guilty just the same. It didn’t feel like enough some days. There wasn’t enough time. There wasn’t enough of you to go around. 

“I try,” you said sadly.

“You do your best, and people see that,” he said proudly. “And after all that, you write.”

“Yeah.”

You wished you could write every single day. Life rarely gave you the opportunity to do so. You accepted that.

“I’m in fucking awe of you,” he said so seriously that your mouth fell open. “And not just you, but the community you all have online. They may not have your same kind of life or schedule, but they have their own struggles and they still find the time to create and share. You all help keep fandoms alive.”

Everyone had a life and a story to tell. Everyone had their hardships. That was one of the reasons so many of you gravitated to certain characters and communities. Life was tough enough. Building connections helped.

“I guess we do,” you said, much softer.

“Does that piece of shit askhole realize that your creations have touched people? Helped people?” 

“I haven’t-”

He silenced you with a deep kiss, the words dying in your throat.

“Don’t you dare say that your writing hasn’t touched or helped at least one person because it has,” he said fiercely, cupping your cheek. “Fluff, smut, angst, soft, dark. There’s something for everyone.”

You did your best to provide a variety of stories, and you adored your readers. They were cheerleaders, supporters, and friends. You wanted them to feel loved and cared for. They deserved that. 

“And some coward.” The word tasted bitter in his mouth. “Hiding behind a button doesn’t get to treat you like you don’t belong in your own space because of your age.”

Your eyes burned again. “Bucky…”

“Not to mention, you do this for free in the very limited free time you have.” He brushed his thumb along your cheek. “I’m glad you blocked them. You don’t need that trash in your inbox.”

“I’m glad, too.”

It wasn’t the sort of energy you needed in your space, and blocking them helped take your power back.

“And look at me? I’m over a hundred years old. I’m an old fucking man, and I still have hobbies.” He smiled when you snorted. “Like jumping out of planes.”

“You take after Steve,” you joked. 

That beautiful man could be reckless in the best way.

“I like old records.”

“And we dance in the kitchen while listening to them.”

You always felt cherished when he held you close.

“I read,” he said, nodding to the chair where he usually sat to read.

“I should get you reading glasses,” you mused.

Even if he didn’t need them, he’d look sexy in them.

“I’m a science nerd,” he stated proudly.

“I still want to get your glasses.”

Because nerds were sexy as hell.

“I like fixing motorcycles.”

You sighed dreamily. “And you look good on your bike.”

Maybe he could take you for a ride later… in more ways than one.

“I bake with Sam’s nephews.”

You sighed again because the man looked good with kids. “They do love when you add extra chocolate chips to cookies.”

“Extra chocolate chips make it better.” He winked. “And I’m still saving the world every so often.”

You put your hand over his. “My hero.”

“So, if I can still have hobbies at my age, why can’t you?” he asked rhetorically. “If this person really thinks people should stop once they hit a certain, they’re going to live a sad life. If anything, people get better at their hobbies because they’re getting more experience which happens with age.”

You didn’t disagree.

“I don’t care if you’re in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, whatever age,” he promised you. “If it brings you joy? If you love it? Then don’t stop creating. Don’t stop writing your stories.”

You closed your eyes when he kissed your forehead. “Even the self-indulgent ones?”

He smiled against your skin. “Especially the self-indulgent ones.”

“Even if I write about other characters?” 

“I’ll support you,” he promised.

“What if someone else says I’m still too old?” you asked.

“Then I’ll remind them, once again, that I’m over a hundred years old and they can get fucked.”

“You look very good for your age.” You giggled when he playfully growled and managed to grab your phone. “Hey!”

“You look very good for your age.” You giggled when he playfully growled and managed to grab your phone. “Hey!”

“Forget about them,” he ordered, tucking the device away. “And talk to me about one of the next ideas brewing in that beautiful brain of yours.”

An almost shy smile appeared on your face. Almost. He knew better.

“It might be better if I… show you.”

He leaned back against the cushion and helped you straddle him, his eyes dark as his hands settled on your hips. “I like the sound of that.”

You stopped him before he could pull you down for a kiss. “Bucky?”

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

You gazed at the man who brought so much light into your life. He helped you connect to others. He fueled your creativity. 

You felt very lucky.

“Thanks for loving and seeing me,” you whispered.

His eyes softened. “Thanks for loving and seeing me, too,” he said, meeting you halfway. “And if some askhole bothers you again, send them my way.”

“Yes, sir,” you teased, letting him kiss you.

So, yes, you’d keep posting your stories on your blog.

The self-indulgent ones. The ones you struggled to tell. The ones you put your blood, sweat, and tears into.

You’d joke about the writing process. You’d apologize for late updates. You’d keep on doing what you were doing.

Because there was no expiration date on creativity and hobbies.

And anyone who thought there was?

Well, they didn’t need to read your stories. 

Yep. I'm a mom. A wife. A friend. I work. I adult. Fanfiction isn't just fanfiction, lovelies. It's community. Keep doing you. Curate your own experience. Love and thanks for reading. ❤️

It wasn't uncomfortable—if anything it was more comfortable than the business casual you'd been living in since your arrival, the fabric soft and broken-in, the belt giving you somewhere to hook the dagger that actually made practical sense. But you were aware of it in a way you hadn't been aware of your own clothes, the hem doing things at your calves that trousers didn't, the embroidered cuffs catching on things you rode past. You'd caught the skirt on a bramble twice already this morning and freed it both times with the specific irritation of someone still recalibrating a new spatial awareness.

"Third time," Bofur said, cheerfully, from just behind you, watching you unhook the hem from another branch with focused concentration.

"I'm aware, thank you."

"There's a trick to it," he offered, with a earnest chuckle. "You sort of—gather it here, at the front of your saddle, when you're moving through—" He mimed a gesture that you watched carefully and attempted to replicate, and the next few minutes of were slightly smoother, which you counted as a genuine victory.

"How does a dwarf lord come to know about a woman's dress Bofur?" You teased, with a raised brow.

"I've spent a time or two around a ladies skirt," he winked at you his grin turning wolfish "But never you mind about that, Lass."

The forest was dense, old growth pressing close on both sides of the path, the light coming through in long, filtered bars that made everything look a little like a painting. It was beautiful in a way you'd stopped being surprised by—this world was relentlessly, exhaustingly beautiful, and you'd given up expecting it to let up about it.

Thorin called a halt at the edge of what looked like a potential clearing, and the company spread out to assess it with the practiced efficiency of a group that had made this assessment many times.

"There's a stream," Kíli reported back, from somewhere ahead, his voice carrying clean through the trees. "Good one. Looks clean."

That was all that was needed. The company moved toward it with a collective, purposeful ease, and within the space of half an hour the clearing had been converted into something resembling an organised rest stop—ponies tethered in the shade, several dwarves crouched at the stream's edge filling waterskins, Óin already taking inventory of the medical kit with focused attention.

You gathered up a few things that needed washing with the same quiet, practical competence you'd been building into the daily rhythm of travel, and found a flat rock at the stream's edge that was good for the purpose, and got to work alongside Ori, who had brought a considerably more impressive volume of laundry than your own and seemed to consider the whole process a rather boring chore.

A single sharp howl rose from somewhere in the trees to the east—not long, not sustained, just one clean note that split the afternoon air like something thrown in a pool of still water—every head in the clearing snapped up at the same instant. The kind of total, collective stillness that wasn't calm at all. Every body in the company had gone tight and ready, and even you, who didn't yet have the vocabulary for what that sound meant, felt the air change.

"That's—what is that ?" Bilbo's voice had gone high and thin. He was standing shin-deep in the water with his waterskin still in his hands, frozen. "That's a wolf, isn't it—are there wolves out there?"

"No." Dwalin's voice was flat and immediate. He was already moving, axes out, the metal catching the filtered light. His eyes swept the treeline in a single, rapid arc. "That is not a wolf."

"What is it?" you asked, and the way every face in the company swung briefly to you—just briefly, just a flicker, before swinging back to the treeline—told you the answer was something you were about to experience rather than be told.

"Wargs." Thorin's voice cut across the clearing, low and controlled and carrying the specific authority of a man issuing orders in a situation he has been in before and survived. "Everyone up. Now. Move."

No one hesitated. Not one of them. The camp dissolved in seconds—packs grabbed or abandoned by some rapid tiarge, weapons up, the formation of the company tightening and consolidating with the practiced compression of a group that had lived this and lived it enough times that the motion was now bone-deep. The washing fell from your hands as you scrambled to your feet, heart lurching into a rhythm it had no business being at, and Bilbo was suddenly beside you, one hand briefly touching your elbow—not grabbing, just contact, just confirmation that he was there—and then they were moving and you were moving with them.

The second howl came from the north.

Closer.

And then a third, from what sounded almost directly overhead, and you looked up—you looked up at the rocky outcrop that bordered the clearing's eastern edge, twenty feet of loose stone and scrub—and it was there.

Your brain tried, for one awful, lurching second, to give it a shape it recognised. A dog ? some part of you suggested, grasping at something familiar. Just a very large—a very, very—

It wasn't a dog.

It was the size of a large horse, mottled black-brown and massive, its legs built wrong for a dog, too long, too angled, the joints moving with a force that made your stomach turn over. Its head was enormous, jaw hanging open, and the teeth it showed were not dog teeth—they were too many, too long, stained dark at the roots, and the saliva that swung from its jaw caught the light in thick, ropey strings.

Its eyes were pale and fixed and there was nothing behind them that you could identify as anything other than appetite. A ridge of coarse, matted fur ran up its spine and stood raised now, and the sound that came from its chest was not a howl, it was a continuous, rolling growl that you felt in your back teeth.

There was a hunched figure on its back. You registered that too—armoured, broad, gripping the Warg's scruff with a grey-green hand, a crude blade already drawn— and your brain tried to process the totality of it and simply failed, the information arriving faster than it could be organised.

"Three of them!" Kíli's voice, from somewhere to your right. "On the East side."

Three.

There were three more.

The one on the rocks had locked its pale eyes onto the clearing and was already crouching, haunches gathering, and the sound that came from it deepened into something that had nothing to do with communication and everything to do with intent.

"Run!" Thorin yelled.

You ran.

The company moved fast—faster than you'd expected, faster than their build suggested, dwarves built for endurance rather than sprint and somehow managing both—and you pushed yourself to match the pace, the dress's hem gathered in one hand the way Bofur had told you, the terrain turning rocky and broken underfoot the moment you cleared the stream. The clearing disappeared behind you. The trees thickened. Someone was shouting directions somewhere ahead and the words were fragmenting in the noise of movement and your own blood loud in your ears.

"Ponies are gone!" Fíli's voice, sharp and furious, from somewhere to the left. "Tethers are snapped—they've bolted!"

"Leave them!" Thorin, from ahead. "Keep moving"

An impact behind you—ground-shaking, enormous —something landing at force, and then a sound that was not the Warg's growl but its voice, a different register, and a crash of undergrowth and a dwarf's shout and the specific brutal sound of axes meeting something biological, and you could not look back, you could not afford to look back—

Dwalin had put himself between the company and the first Warg with the total, unambivalent commitment of a man who had decided this was his ground and by his beard he was keeping it. His axes moved at a speed and a precision that should not have been possible for their size—one blocked the lunge of the Warg's rider, the second bit deep into the creature's shoulder—and the Warg screamed, a sound that was all wrong for something its size, high and enraged and in pain, and the rider was already on its feet beside it, blade swinging, and Dwalin was already inside the swing and—

You ran.

The terrain turned into a broad rocky field, the grass long and yellowed, stone outcrops jutting at irregular angles like broken teeth, the sky vast and pale overhead. The company spilled into it from the tree line more Warg's were already waiting, circling the far edge of the field with rider's low on there backs, a third trope was coming from the trees to the north, and the arithmetic of it was—the arithmetic was very bad.

"We're surrounded!" Came the sharp shout of Kíli's voice, all concern, no whisper of the playful cheer you'd grown accustomed to.

"Hold your ground!" Thorin's voice, cracking like a whip across the noise.

It happened so fast you barely processed it. The company pulled inward and at the inward point, the center of the circle that formed—blades out, axes raised, bows up—was you. Not by your decision. Not with any particular discussion. They simply moved and you were at the middle of it, Bilbo a half-step to your left and also clearly where they'd decided he belonged, the two of you in the eye of a ring of armed dwarves that closed around you like a fist closing.

You reached for your dagger. Your hands were shaking.

"Kíli—shoot them!" Thorin again, positioned at the foremost point of the circle, his sword forward.

Kíli's bow came up, the string drawn smooth and fast, and the arrow left it before you'd processed he'd released it—a sound like a whisper and then a wet sound and a Warg's rider pitched sideways off its mount with Kíli's arrow through the meat of its shoulder, crashing into the long grass.

"Ori—stay close!" Balin, somewhere to your right.

"Down—get down!" Fíli and Bilbo dropped without question, and you went with him, crouching, and something enormous passed over your heads, the displaced air of the Warg's leap pressing against your hair and the back of your neck like a hot hand.

The sound of it landing was behind you now, and the sounds that followed—metal and impact and the wet, terrible sounds of a fight that was close and real and not remotely like anything any action squence had ever prepared you for—came from everywhere at once, the circle of the company breaking and reforming around individual engagements.

Thorin's voice cut through all of it.

And Balin "watch your backs Lads, watch their flanks!"

"second rider's up —it's UP—"

And underneath all of it, the continuous, overlapping sounds of the Wargs themselves—that wrong, deep screaming-growl, the sound of them in pain and the sound of them attacking—and you were crouching in the long grass with the dagger in your shaking hand and you were looking at all of it and you couldn't—you couldn't make it into something manageable, couldn't find any edge of it to hold—

"Move!" Fíli's hand hit your shoulder and you moved.

You didn't see what separated you, one moment you were moving with Fíli, the long grass closing behind you both and the next the ground dropped sharply to the right and you went with it—stumbling, catching yourself on your hands, the dagger scraping stone—when you looked back the grass was a rock wall and the sounds were on the other side of it, you were alone in a narrow channel of rock, a natural gully between two outcrops, barely wide enough for two people to stand abreast.

You pressed your back to the stone. Tried to control your breathing. Failed. Got partway there on the third attempt.

Okay. Okay. Just go find them. Go back the way you came. You can hear them—that's them, that's shouting, that's Balin and Kíli, the yelling is Thorin, if he's yelling they are fine, it's fine—just go back and—

The shape that appeared at the end of the gully was not one of the company.

The Warg came low, head swinging, its rider still mounted but listing badly, one arm hanging wrong and dark with something that glistened black in the afternoon light. Injured—you could see that, even through the blind static of terror, the creature's gait hitched, one foreleg dragging slightly, the rider's grip on its scruff loose and unsteady.

It didn't make them any less terrifying. The Warg's head swung toward you and those pale eyes found you and it stopped. Planted all four of its enormous paws in the earth of the gully and stopped, the sound that came from its chest was the continuous, escalating growl, getting louder, louder, and it was so close in the narrow channel that you could smell it—blood and animal and something rotten underneath, the hot, fetid wave of its breath reaching you as its lips peeled back.

The rider raised its head and looked at you.

"Goth-izub shulg brogb lat matat, Shulg-izg brogb akr grish-ob" it's words where like hate given form.

You didn't understand the them, guttural and harsh, consonants that weren't made for a human throat, spat at you like something thrown. But the tone needed no translation. The tone was a thing you understood somewhere below language—contempt, and rage, and intent—the rider was sliding from the Warg's back, slowly, its remaining good arm raising the crude blade, and there was nowhere to go. The gully wall was at your back, solid rock, and the Warg was at the gully's mouth, and the rider was between them, and the gap between you was closing.

Back against the rock. Back against the—

Your back hit stone. Already there. Already against it. Nowhere.

The rider was close enough now that you could see the texture of the armour—rough, crusted with old blood and something else, pieces of what might have been multiple creatures and multiple materials fastened together in no way that was meant for looking at. The face was—you looked at the face and your brain made a sound like a door slamming shut, refusing to catalogue it, storing it as wrong and not human and do not look.

It said something else. Lower, close enough now that the heat of it was physical.

Your hand was shaking so hard the dagger was vibrating. You could feel it. You could see it.

It's going to—it's going to—

Move. Move. MOVE.

The rider lunged.

Your arm came up—not a decision, not a technique, just your body doing the only thing available to it, the blade up between you and the descending weight—the rider's own momentum drove it forward and down, and the dagger found the angle between its jaw and its throat with a horrible, giving resistance that your hand and forearm absorbed all at once, and the weight of it slammed you back into the rock, the stone digging into your spine and shoulder blades with a force that would bruise, and the blade was—your blade was—

The rider's weight listed sideways.

Fell.

The Warg, let out a single keening howl that bounced off the gully walls and echoed back wrong, and then toppled and folded down in one heap, it's neck oozed black from a arrow lodged to the flecthing in its fur, it was only then you became vaguely aware the black wasn't simply liquid it must be blood.

You were standing.

You were still standing.

Your back was against the rock and your arm was still raised and the dagger was in your hand and your hand was—

Black. The blood that was black was everywhere—your fingers, the back of your hand, tracking up your wrist toward your forearm, more of it than you'd imagined, impossibly wrong against your skin, and the rider was on the ground at your feet and you were looking at your hand and you were not moving.

You were not—you were not anywhere, particularly. You were looking at your hand and somewhere in a great distance there was shouting and footsteps and voices calling your name but they were far away and you were here, looking at your hand, at the black blood drying between your fingers, at the specific and undeniable reality of what you had just—

"Here—Fíli— I found her—" Kíli's voice, close, suddenly very close, and then his hands were on your arm, and then Fíli was there from the other side, and they were pulling, actually pulling, your feet dragging before they remembered what they were, and then you were moving with them through the gully mouth and out into the field and the fighting was everywhere and the sounds of it were enormous and wrong and—

"Go, go, GO—through there—" Fíli's hand at your back.

A gap in the rock face. Hidden behind an overhang, invisible from twenty feet. The company was already moving through it, filtering fast into the dark, Thorin at the entrance directing them through with short, sharp gestures, Gandalf counting heads as each one passed.

Thorin eyes found you as you came through and something in his face shifted—fast, and only for a moment—and then you were inside and the rock closed around you and the sounds of the Wargs outside were muffled, and then distant, and then the passage turned and they were gone.

The interior of the passage was dim, the walls close, the company pressed together in the near-dark with the specific tight, urgent energy of people who were not sure, yet, whether it was over. Weapons still drawn. Breathing hard. Several of them with fresh wounds—Glóin's forearm wrapped in a makeshift bandage that had already began to soak red, Ori with a cut above his eyebrow tracking red down the side of his face, Dwalin's knuckles split open on both hands, the old, professional damage under his bracers showing the signs of someone who had been in the middle of it throughout.

Balin reached you first. His hands came to your shoulders, and his eyes moved over you with the quick, practiced assessment of someone who had done this—checked soldiers over after a fight, checked them for damage, catalogued what was salvageable and what wasn't—more times than he'd ever wanted to count.

"Are you hurt?" Flat, quick, direct. No softening of it, because there wasn't time. "Tell me where."

I'm not hurt you thought, but your voice was trapped somewhere slightly behind you, refusing to come out. That's not—it's not mine your mind catalouged for you looking at the sticky blackness on your hand, mine's red.

His scan reached your hand. Stayed there. Something shifted in his face, an internal adjustment he kept from becoming external for your sake, and he said, carefully and steadily "All right. Your all right, lass, you're safe."

Thorin moved through the press of the company with the specific, controlled urgency of a man completing a head count and arriving at the last entry, when he reached you he took your arms in both hands—not gently, not with ceremony, a grip — and he looked at you, the way he looked at things that needed assessing, and his voice came out rough and immediate

"Are you hurt? Where—"

You heard the words the way you'd hear something through water. The shape of them arriving without quite connecting to meaning. You could see him—you were aware of his face, the set of his jaw, the particular tight control of someone managing urgency—but the whole of it had a quality of distance, a glass-wall thickness between you and everything happening on the other side of it.

He shook you once. Not hard. But sharp—the shake of someone trying to bring something back from a distance he himself couldn't afford to travel too, trying to reach something that had gone somewhere it wasn't supposed to.

"Are you hurt?"

Still water. Still distance. You were aware of his voice. You were aware that his voice had a quality of concern underneath the bark of it. You were aware of your own hand and what was on it. You were aware of all of it, individually, in pieces, and the pieces were not assembling.

"Faslibkhêz!" You did not know that word, it was one the company refused to translate.

His hands shifted. One moved from your arm and came to the side of your face, palm flat against your cheek, fingers curving behind your jaw, and he moved your head—again, not gently, deliberate—until your eyes were pointed directly at his.

You looked at him.

He was talking. His mouth was moving. You could see the line between his brows, deep and drawn, the dark of his eyes with the dim light of the passage behind them, the specific expression of a man who is not alarmed in ways he lets himself show and who was currently working very hard at that. You could see all of it. You were looking directly at it.

The glass held.

"—answer me. Can you hear me?"

"She needs a moment." Gandalf's voice. Not loud. Not dramatic. Simply—present, arriving somewhere behind the company, his grey shape at the edge of your peripheral vision, and something in the particular, deep steadiness of it—the quality of very old patience, of someone who had stood at the edges of more crises than you could imagine and had never, once, let one become larger than it needed to be.

"Are you all right?" he said. Just that. Just the question, offered directly, without any of the urgency that had surrounded everything else in the last thirty seconds.

His calm eyes met yours and the glass cracked.

The sound rushed in, Thorin's hand dropped from your face. Your own breathing, unsteady. Glóin's muffled cursing from further back. Balin saying something quietly to Óin. Kíli's voice, very low, talking to Fíli. The drip of water somewhere in the rock. All of it, arriving at once, with the sudden completeness of a picture snapping back into focus.

"Sorry, I-I'm ok—I'm fine," you said. And then, because it needed a qualifier, because Gandalf deserved the honest version "I just need—I think I needed a minute."

"That will do for now," Gandalf said. His hand stayed on your shoulder another moment, dropping only after a short pat.

You leaned against the rock wall and looked at your hand in the dim and breathed, and nobody said anything, Balin appeared after a short while with a cloth and cleaned what he could of the black blood from your fingers with the quiet, practical efficiency of a man doing the necessary thing for the person he deemed necessary to do it for, and around you the company processed in its various overlapping ways, and slowly, you attenpted to reassembled yourself from the outside in.

Then the company was moving again, Thorin's voice resuming its quiet directives, and you pulled in a long breath and followed.

The passage opened onto a hillside track that wound down through country which grew gradually greener and more deliberate, the wild scrub giving way to something older—not farmed, not managed in any way you had a word for, but attended to, with patience rather than intervention.

You walked or rather let yourself be walked, the remaining black blood had dried on your hand, and you pressed your palm against the fabric of your skirt as you moved, and thought—in the careful, slightly removed way you were still thinking in—about the weight against the blade. About the sound it had made. About the rider.

Who you could not stop thoughts about with the specific quiet horror of thoughts patient enough to wait until the immediate danger was over before it arrived properly.

I have never—

I didn't mean—but I did.

The path curved around the face of a cliff, and the world opened.

Sound first a deep, resonant falling, water meeting water from a height, the specific acoustics of a very large space. Then light—impossibly warm and bright, flooding upward as though the valley itself were lit from within. Then, as you came to the true edge of the path and the full view resolved beneath you, the shape of it.

A valley, cliff faces rising on all sides in columns of pale stone streaked amber and copper in the afternoon sun, and in its floor, spreading along the winding thread of a river, something built in stone and open arch and flowing water, terraced and rising, architecture that had not been designed to a deadline or a brief but simply constructed, over more time than you had numbers for, into whatever it needed to be.

Nothing in your life had given you vocabulary for what you were looking at. The part of your brain that had been running cold and quiet since the fight went briefly, completely still.

"Imladris," said Gandalf, at your shoulder, and said it the way you said the name of something that required acknowledgement.

The path wound down along the cliff face, longer than the view suggested, before depositing the company onto a broad stone road leading into the valley proper. The quality of the air changed as you crossed into its borders—cooler, green, carrying the particular freshness of deep shade and moving water.

The figure who came to meet you from the direction of the first set of stiars was tall.

Your brain noted this before anything else, because everything else it needed a moment to process. Tall in a way that reframed the space around you, made the bridge and the stone archway and the flowing water look correctly scaled in a way that everything else since you'd arrived in this world had not, for you. Your eye found the top of the figure's head and drew a line across to the stone arch beside him and did a quick, involuntary calculation, and the calculation produced a result that sat outside the range of dwarf or hobbit and settled in the range of Gandalf or perhaps someone from a catwalk.

Dark hair, braided back from a face that had the kind of bone structure that shouldn't physically exist, the proportions of it too exact, too even, too—much. Bright eyes, clear and unhurried, carrying a quality of depth that your brain kept glancing away from and back to like a light that was slightly too bright to look at directly.

And then the figure drew closer, and you saw the ears, they where not aggressively but distinctly, unmistakably pointed, the tip curving upward to a delicate, deliberate peak that no human ear had ever ended in, and your brain emitted a small, clear signal that something fundamental about the category of person you had been operating with required immediate revision.

The figure's gaze swept the company, and something in your chest did the thing it did whenever you were being assessed by someone whose assessment you couldn't predict, and you moved, without quite deciding to, a half step closer to Bofur.

"Mithrandir," the figure said—a name, Gandalf's name in some other language you registered, confirmed by the way Gandalf's face shifted into the warmth of recognised greeting.

"Ah, Lindir!" Gandalf stepped forward and inclined his head, his eyes crinkled with the ease of an old and well-worn friendship. Then answered in kind, the same language, Gandalf's voice taking on a cadence in it that was different from his usual measured English—a stone-over-water language you couldn't follow, each word shaped differently from anything you'd ever heard.

"We heard you had crossed into the Valley" Lindir replied— his eyes moving across the company again with that composed, unhurried assessment.

"I must speak with Lord Elrond," Gandalf said, switching back, glancing once at Thorin, who stood with his arms crossed and his jaw set and the particular expression of a dwarf performing patience.

Around you, the dwarves had drawn closer together —not dramatically, nothing you could point to as a single action, but the radius of the company had contracted by a few degrees, shoulders tighter, feet planted slightly wider. Thorin said something very low to Dwalin, barely audible.

Dwalin said something back, barely above a murmur, and you didn't know enough Khuzdul yet to catch it, but the tone made the meaning clear enough.

"What did he say?" you asked Bofur, just as quietly.

"Don't trust them," Bofur said, out of the side of his mouth.

"Don't trust—" You looked at Lindir. At the impossible bone structure, the pointed ears, the quality of unhurried attention in the eyes. "What is he?"

Bofur looked at you sideways. "You don't know?"

"Did you miss the part where I fell from the sky a couple months ago?"

"Fair," he conceded. He dropped his voice another degree. "Their Elves."

You looked at him.

"Elves?" you said.

"Aye."

You looked back at Lindir. At the ears. At the height. "Right," you said, after a moment. "That's—okay. That's a thing too."

"Do not trust them," Bofur said again, with the firm, practiced certainty of someone reciting an inherited principle.

"I genuinely don't know enough about any of them to have an opinion," you said, which was true, and Bofur accepted this as an adequate if unsatisfying answer.

Gandalf and Lindir were still speaking—back and forth, something being negotiated or arranged in the easy, unhurried manner of people who had done this before.

The horns came without warning. From behind—the sound of them carrying down and around the valley with a resonance that put your teeth together, and you turned with the rest of the company to find a group of mounted figures coming along the bridge at speed, hooves ringing on the stone in a fast, controlled rhythm, armour catching the valley light along every edge.

Tall. All of them tall, helmeted, armed with the considered economy of people who wore weapons the way other people wore clothing—not in display, not threatening with them, simply having them, the way you had a coat, because it was sensible to have a coat.

Pointed ears beneath the helmets. Several pairs, visible even in the motion of their approach.

Thorin's voice cut through the company, clipped and hard "Ifridî bekâr, close ranks!"

The company moved with a speed that was slightly alarming even now, even having watched them fight—weapons out, bodies turning outward, the loose group compressing into a tight, outward-facing ring with a speed and coherence that spoke of something drilled so deeply it didn't require thought. A hand closed on the back of your dress—the fabric just below your shoulders, firm and decisive—and pulled you backward into the center of the ring, it happened fast enough that you were already in the middle of the company before you'd registered the movement.

The mounted figures arrived at the outer edge of the ring. Not a charge. Not an attack. A circuit—the horses moving in a controlled, deliberate loop around the perimeter of the company, the riders' faces unreadable under their helmets, spears held at their side's and the sound of the hooves on the stone and the quality of the encirclement—the studied, unhurried competence of it—produced a specific kind of fear that was different from your earlier fear, which had been immediate and animal. This was colder. More deliberate.

Around you, several of the dwarves were muttering, lowly, the sounds of people who had opinions they were keeping below the threshold of a confrontation but not by much.

"Nogothrim," one of the riders said, as they completed the circuit and drew up in a circle—the tone of it was neither friendly nor hostile and was somehow worse than either would have been.

One of the riders, swung down from his horse with a movement that was entirely too fluid for the amount of armour involved, and crossed the remaining ground on foot.

"It's Dwarves to the likes of you" Glóin offered in response from behind his teeth.

•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•

He was taller than Lindir. Taller, a little broader in the shoulders, the armour catching the valley light differently at this proximity—intricate work, you registered, even through the general overwhelm of the situation, the kind of craft that had cost serious time. The face beneath the helmet, once removed, was the same impossible construction as Lindir's — the bones too exact, though where Lindir's face had carried something quietly welcoming, this face carried something else. Ancient, and measured, and entirely composed.

"Mae govannen," he said then, to Gandalf, as the figure arrived at his side, and the two of them inclined their heads with the warmth of a long and complicated friendship.

"Lord Elrond", Gandalf said and the warmth spread to his features as the Elven Lord turned back to the assembled company.

You were still in the middle of the ring, surrounded by dwarves on all sides, the press of them close and warm and familiar in a way that your body had apparently accepted as normal somewhere over the journey without you noticing. You watched Elrond from above Dori's shoulders and the edge of Glóin's axe—which was still raised, the whole company still armed, nobody having given the order to stand down—and tried to reconcile everything you were currently looking at with anything you had a prior reference for, and failed, and filed this under the increasingly long list of things for later.

He held up something—a blade, black and curved, which he displayed to the company with the particular gesture of a man providing evidence rather than making a threat.

"We have been hunting a pack of orcs that came up from the south, we slew a number near the Hidden Pass" He looked at Gandalf with a slight, deliberate emphasis on the second half of that sentence.

"Ah," Gandalf said, with the serenity of a man who was not going to volunteer information under mild pressure. "That may have been us."

The corners of Elrond's eyes moved in a way that was not quite expression but indicated internal activity. He looked at the company. At you, briefly and specifically, in a way that lasted exactly one second longer than the others and left you with the distinct, uncomfortable feeling of having been placed in a category rather than simply noticed. Before his eyes moved to Thorin and stopped.

"Welcome, Thorin, son of Thráin," Lord Elrond addressed—with a quality of antiquity that you felt rather than heard, syllables shaping themselves around Thorin's name with precision.

Thorin stepped forward, the two of them regarded each other across a distance of perhaps five feet, and the quality of the silence between them had the particular density of two people conducting a full conversation through posture alone.

Thorin's chin lifted. "I do not believe we have met," he said, in flat, deliberate English.

"You have your grandfather's bearing." Lord Elrond's eyes moved across Thorin with recognition. "I knew Thror when he still resided under the Mountain."

The faintest tightening around Thorin's jaw. "Indeed. He made no mention of you."

A pause in which the Elrond absorbed this without visible reaction, which you suspected was itself a kind of response.

His gaze returned to the whole company, and he addressed them—in Elvish, measured and formal, several sentences, the words flowing with the particular ordered grace of a language that had been arranged carefully.

Glóin made a sound in front of you that communicated a specific flavour of deep, immediate and long held suspicion.

"What is he saying, does he offer us insult!" he growled.

"No Master Glóin, he's offering you food" Gandalf sighed, in the long-suffering tone of a man who had anticipated a misunderstanding with enough lead time to be tired of it before it arrived.

TTD Steve isn't reluctant when it comes to celebrating his birthday, so he'll agree to a party in his name at Stark's club, or simply the few of his most trusted people coming over with crates of alcohol and gifts in form of bloodied victories in his name. But the best treat is you - at his side, trying to play your composed Princess persona who doesn't fit in it and was forced into this life, yet you're so strained in readiness to be defiled by him. Steve gave himself the best gift when he opened the little box and told you to get on your hands and knees on your marital bed before you left for the party. The plug he got you was black, finished with black sapphires that catch light in a myriad of sparks. And he's going to keep sneaking his hand beneath the skirt of your dress, teasing your puffy folds and tapping on the plug while you're surrounded by people. Later, you're going to ride him, with the plug still in your tight ass, and singing broken moans instead of Happy Birthday.

Enforcer Steve starts his special day in his favorite way - spreading you open and feasting on your sweet pussy. Lifting his gaze up to look at you from between your thighs turns him on even more now, because your rounded belly is in his line of vision. He's already calculating that next year he could celebrate his birthday by knocking you up on that day. But honestly, with the way he can never get enough of your shy, innocent face transforming into a masterpiece of ruin when he defiles you, it's possible he'll keep forgetting the condoms before it's July. After taking his time to fill you for good morning, he'll treat you both to some nice breakfast in one of the places you both enjoy, then take you on a drive outside the city. There's this spot in a private area (which he bought) that oversees the city. There's a picnic ready to last not only for lunch but a whole night, too. Steve's going to enjoy you thoroughly between all the cuddling and sightseeing. Then he'll fuck you from behind, one hand cradling your pregnant belly, so you both can watch the fireworks burst across the sky.