God of Mischief I worship

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.

The forest swallowed every frantic breath.

Branches clawed at your bare arms as you stumbled between towering pines, your pulse roaring louder than the wind. Damp moss slipped beneath your feet, and the oversized shirt—his shirt—barely covered your thighs as you ducked behind the broad trunk of an ancient cedar.

You couldn’t hear a thing. No footsteps. Nothing. You pressed a hand over your mouth, forcing yourself to breathe through your nose. Have you lost him?

A twig snapped somewhere to your left. Your head whipped toward the sound. Nothing. Another snap. Behind you this time. Your heart sank. He wasn’t crashing through the woods. He wasn’t calling your name.

He was hunting. Very slowly. Very patiently, like he knew every inch of these woods better than he knew the lines on his own hands. You darted from your hiding place, weaving between the trees, ignoring the sting of bark scraping your legs.

Don’t look back. You couldn’t help it. You looked. For one terrifying second, all you caught was the empty forest. Then a broad silhouette stepped from behind a pine.

Curtis.

His flannel hung open over a dark shirt, sleeves rolled to his forearms. He made no move to hurry after you. He simply tilted his head, eyes fixed on yours from thirty yards away.

“You can keep running,” he called, his voice carrying effortlessly through the trees. “It’ll only make it harder to catch your breath.”

You turned and ran again. Your lungs burned. Every rustle of leaves sounded like he was right behind you. Every shadow became him. You slipped down a shallow embankment, catching yourself against a fallen log before ducking beneath its tangled roots. Your chest rose and fell in ragged breaths as you listened.

Just owls, and the breeze. Oh, and your heartbeat.

Then, close enough that warm breath ghosted over the shell of your ear…

“You hide pretty.”

You gasped, spinning too fast. He was already there. One hand caught your waist before you could bolt again. “You gave me a good chase.” His hand slipped from your waist to your hip. “I almost thought that this time it was going to be a challenge.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “But we both knew how this was going to end.” He maneuvers you onto your hand and knees, your fingers sinking into the soft earth.

“No… please…”

He pushes your cheek to the dirt and lifts up the shirt he gave you to wear after he had taken you. Two of his thick fingers dip between your folds, gathering the mixture of his cum and your juices from the times he’s taken you before he released you for the chase.

"No." He said it without harshness, the same flat correction he'd been offering all morning. "You're putting weight on the first syllable. The weight belongs on the second. Ai-MÊ-nu."

"Ai-MÊ-nu," you tried again.

"Better." A short pause, the closest thing to praise he tended to offer, and then he moved on without lingering on it. "It means 'upon you.' You'll have heard it before—Khazâd ai-mênu. The Dwarves are upon you."

"That sounds like a threat."

"It is a threat," Thorin said. "That is the point of a battle cry."

You turned the phrase over a few more times under your breath, fixing the rhythm of it, while Thorin watched your mouth with the same unembarrassed scrutiny he applied to everything in this lesson—assessing, correcting, entirely focused on the mechanics of what your tongue and teeth and breath were doing, with no apparent awareness that there was anything else worth noting in the proximity around him. You, on the other hand, had become increasingly aware of it, in a way you weren't examining too closely.

"What's the word for—" You hesitated, hunting for something you'd want to say. "What's the word for 'thank you'?"

Something shifted behind Thorin's eyes—not visible exactly, but felt, a small recalibration. "Akhminzu," he said, after a moment. "Though it's rarely used so plainly. It carries weight. It's closer to—gratitude offered with intent. Not the casual kind."

"So I shouldn't use it just because Bombur passed me some bread." Your found yourself laughing.

"You should not," Thorin agreed, with something that might, in a different person, have been the beginning of a smile.

You were midway through attempting the phrase again—your tongue catching badly on the second syllable, Thorin's expression settling into the patient resignation of a man bracing for several more attempts—when Gandalf's voice cut across the entire company with the force of an announcement specifically designed to be heard.

"There!" he called, his staff lifted toward a dark gap in the hillside ahead, half-hidden behind a fall of scrub and stone. "A cave."

The company drew up. Thorin's pony stilled beside yours, the lesson abandoned mid-syllable, and his attention swung entirely toward the dark opening in the hill with the immediate, total focus of a man who had already guessed, correctly, what it was.

It did not take long for the guess to be confirmed. Dwalin was first off his pony, moving toward the cave mouth with his axes already loosened in their straps, and the rest of the company followed in a loose cluster—Balin, Glóin, Bofur, several others, drawn by the same grim curiosity. You started to follow, more out of habit than any clear thought, and made it perhaps ten feet from the cave entrance before the smell reached you and It hit like a wall.

Something rotten and thick and wrong, the unmistakable, layered stench of old meat and old fire and things that had been dead for considerably longer than was decent, and your stomach revolted before your brain had even finished processing what your nose was telling it. You doubled over, one hand braced against your knee, the retch coming up hard and sudden and entirely outside your control.

"Here Lassie, breathe through this," Balin said as cloth appeared in front of your face, his voice low and entirely without judgment, pressing the folded fabric into your hand before you'd even fully registered it was him beside you. You took it, pressed it hard over your nose and mouth, and the worst of the smell dulled enough that your stomach settled, slowly, from open rebellion into a somewhat uneasy truce.

Balin's other hand found your back, broad and steady, rubbing in slow circles with the unhurried, practiced ease of someone who had done this for many others before, a long time ago, in some other context you didn't ask about. "There you are," he said. "Breathe slow. It will pass."

"That's disgusting," you managed, muffled into the cloth.

"Aye," Balin agreed, with feeling. "Troll cave. They're none of them tidy about their leavings." He kept his hand on your back a moment longer, until your breathing had properly evened out, and then withdrew it with the same unfussy economy he'd offered it, like the whole exchange had been entirely unremarkable. Which, you supposed, for him, it probably was.

"I really did not need that confirmed."

Inside the cave—which you elected not to enter, on the grounds that you'd seen quite enough evidence of its contents from the smell alone—the company had apparently found something considerably more interesting than rot and refuse.

"Gold," you heard Glóin say, his voice carrying out from the cave mouth with an enthusiasm that suggested he'd forgotten entirely about the smell. "There's gold in here. And good blades, too, look at the make on this—"

"Seems a shame to just leave it," Bofur agreed, somewhere further in.

You stood near the cave entrance, cloth still pressed over your nose, and watched with a kind of bemused fascination as several members of the company began the business of digging—actual digging, with actual tools, a short distance from the cave mouth, the dirt coming up in dark clods as they buried what looked, from this distance, like a respectable chest of the looted troll treasure.

"You're burying it?" you asked, when Glóin emerged to fetch something from his pack.

"Aye," he said, like this explained everything. "Can't carry it, consider it a long term deposit." He said it with the simple, practical satisfaction of a man for whom this represented an entirely uncomplicated good outcome to an otherwise unpleasant morning, and went back to his digging without further comment.

You decided not to interrogate the logistics of it further and instead drifted a little ways off, toward where the air was less troll-adjacent, and waited.

From inside the cave, beyond the part you could see, you could make out two voices—low, urgent, clearly Gandalf and Thorin, though the words themselves didn't carry far enough for you to catch more than fragments. Something about blades. Something that might have been a name, said with weight. You strained to hear more without much success, and eventually gave up, settling instead into the patient, slightly anxious waiting that had become a familiar part of your days with this company.

Thorin emerged from the cave a short while later, and the first thing you noticed was that his expression had shifted into something more serious than it had been before the cave —something turned inward, working through a thought that hadn't fully resolved yet.

He cqme directly to you and didn't say anything at first. He simply held something out—a dagger, sheathed, the hilt visible above the leather and unmistakably fine, worked with a detail that suggested craftsmanship considerably beyond what you'd have associated with a casual gift. You looked at it, there was scrollwork along the length of the blade, delicate and old, the kind of detail that spoke of care rather than mere function.

"For me?"

"For you," he confirmed. He turned it slightly, so the hilt caught what light made it down through the trees, and something in his voice when he spoke again had lost a measure of its usual flatness—not soft, exactly, Thorin's voice didn't really do soft, but closer to it than you'd heard from him before.

"You were unarmed in that clearing. I'll not have it happen again."

You took it, the weight of it settling into your palm with a solidity that felt entirely different from the blade Fíli and Kíli had handed you, days ago, in what now felt like a different lifetime.

"Thank you," you started. "This is—I don't know what to—"

But Thorin had simply nodded and turned, already moving back toward the company with the particular abruptness that seemed to overtake him whenever a moment threatened to extend past whatever internal limit he'd set for it, and your thanks trailed off into the empty air where he'd been standing.

Balin appeared at your shoulder a moment later, peering at the dagger with immediate professional interest. He took it from your hand with a gentle, requesting gesture, drew it partway from the sheath, and turned it in the light with the focused attention of a man assessing something he knew and respected.

"Good steel," he said. "Well-balanced. Whoever made this knew their work." He handed it back, hilt-first. "I'll teach you to keep an edge on it. A blade's no use to anyone if it's gone dull."

"Thank you," you said again, this time to someone who'd actually stayed to hear it, and tucked the dagger carefully into your pocket, where it sat with a new and unfamiliar weight against your side.

The rustling came without warning—a sudden, violent crashing through the undergrowth a short distance away, branches snapping, something moving fast and heavy through the trees, and the entire company snapped into readiness within the space of a single breath. Weapons were up. Dwalin moved to the front of the loose formation that assembled itself with no apparent discussion, axes raised, every face turned toward the source of the noise with grim, braced expectation.

"Something's coming," someone muttered, low.

The noise grew louder. Closer. And then, breaking from the treeline in an explosion of motion and very high-pitched shrieking, came a man—or something approximately man-shaped—atop a ramshackle sled drawn by a team of large, frantic rabbits, his robes brown, filthy and trailing leaves and twigs, his hair a wild bird's-nest, his face streaked with something that might have been mud or might have been bird droppings, and his voice pitched at a volume entirely disproportionate to the size of him.

And an expression of such complete, frantic alarm that the company's weapons—which had been raised against an entirely different category of threat—lowered slowly, uncertainly, as the strange figure skidded his sledge to a halt and half-fell off it in his hurry to reach Gandalf.

"GANDALF!" he screamed, careening to a stop in a spray of dirt. "GANDALF! Thank the stars, thank the stars, I need to speak with you—there's something terribly wrong, terribly, terribly wrong, the forest, the whole forest is—"

"Radagast," Gandalf said, with the long-suffering patience of someone greeting an old and well-loved friend who had, evidently, arrived in a state of crisis many times before. "Calm yourself. Breathe."

"I cannot breathe, that's rather the—there is a darkness, Gandalf, spreading through the forest, I've seen it, I've seen the trees themselves grow ill with it, and the spiders, the spiders have grown larger than—"

Gandalf produced, from somewhere within his own robes, a small pouch, and from the pouch a quantity of leaf that he packed with unhurried efficiency into the bowl of Radagast's pipe, which had been hanging, forgotten, from the brown wizard's robes throughout the entire frantic exchange. He lit it with a small, casual gesture of his hand, and the smoke that curled up from it seemed to do something almost immediate to the wild, panicked energy radiating off Radagast—his shoulders dropping fractionally, his breathing slowing, his grip on Gandalf's robes loosening into something less frantic.

"Old Toby," Radagast murmured, with the deep, unfocused appreciation of a man whose priorities had been very efficiently realigned. "Finest pipeweed in the Southfarthing." A long pause, his eyes drifting slightly toward one another. Then, abruptly, the alarm returned in full "Gandalf, the darkness—"

"Yes, yes," Gandalf said, steering him gently by the shoulder toward a fallen log, "you'll tell me everything. Properly. Sit."

It took some considerable time, and a fair amount of further Old Toby, before the conversation resolved into anything coherent enough for the rest of the company to follow, and by the end of it—through a combination of genuine concern and what you suspected was simple practicality, given the lateness of the hour—Radagast had extended an invitation for the company to return with him to his home for the night.

"It's not far," he said, gesturing vaguely with a hand that still had what appeared to be twigs caught in the sleeve. "Just through there. I've stew, I think. And mushrooms. Lots of mushrooms." He beamed at the assembled company with the open, slightly manic warmth of a man who didn't receive visitors often and had clearly decided to make the most of the ones currently available.

And that, with very little further negotiation required, was how the company found itself, some hour later, picking its way through increasingly dense woodland toward the lopsided, vine-strangled shape of Radagast's home.

Which was, in the most literal sense, a structure reclaimed—walls, a roof, the basic architecture of a dwelling—but it had long since surrendered most of its formal boundaries to the forest around it. Vines grew through gaps in the timber. Birds nested in the eaves with the casual proprietary air of permanent residents. A family of hedgehogs had apparently colonised a section of a nearby tree just left of the front step, and several rabbits—relatives, presumably, of the ones currently being unharnessed from the sled—wandered the interior with complete freedom.

It should not, by any reasonable architectural standard, have held together. It did, regardless, with the stubborn, improbable solidity of something that had simply decided to exist and had not consulted anyone about whether it ought to.

Radagast moved through all of it with the same casual, distracted fondness he extended to everything, occasionally pausing mid-sentence to murmur something to a passing creature before resuming whatever he'd been saying to the rest of you.

You found yourself drawn to it almost immediately—crouching by the basket of rabbits while the company settled in around the room, letting one of them sniff cautiously at your hand before deciding you were acceptable and butting its head against your palm with the blunt, uncomplicated affection of an animal that had never learned to be suspicious of people.

"They like you," Radagast observed, passing by with an armful of something that might have been mushrooms or might have been kindling.

"I like them," you said. "This is—your whole house is just full of them."

"Well, where else would they go?" Radagast said, with the simple, genuine bafflement of a man who could not conceive of an alternative arrangement.

Dinner was, by any standard, an event. Radagast turned out to be a host of considerable, if eccentric, generosity—bowls were filled and refilled with a stew that was heavy on mushroom and root vegetable and surprisingly good despite its somewhat alarming colour, and the dwarves ate with their usual unrestrained enthusiasm, second and third helpings vanishing at a pace that had Radagast beaming with the particular delight of a man whose cooking was finally being appreciated by an audience large enough to do it justice.

You ate more carefully—smaller portions, slower pace, the lingering habits of a lifetime spent in restaurants where manners had mattered—and caught Bofur watching you do it at one point with an expression of mild, affectionate amusement.

"You eat all proper like," he said. "Tiny wee bites, you dont have to stand on ceremony"

"I eat like someone who doesn't want to throw up again," you said. "I had a very formative experience with that cave earlier."

"Fair," Bofur conceded, around a mouthful of stew that rather undercut the comparison.

It was partway through the meal that you noticed the small, curled shape tucked into a nest of moss and leaves—quills visible even in its tightly balled posture, the slow, shallow rise and fall of something breathing but clearly unwell.

"What's wrong with him?" you asked, drawing close enough to look without disturbing whatever rest the creature was managing.

Radagast's face, which had carried its perpetual scattered cheer through most of the evening, shifted, very briefly, into something more careful. "Sebastian," he said, with evident fondness, crouching down beside you. "He's been a bit poorly." He didn't elaborate further than that, and something in the brief tightness around his eyes told you not to push, that there was more to it than poorly covered, even if he wasn't going to say what.

"Can I—" You gestured at the small, curled shape. "Can I hold him?"

"Gently," Radagast said, brightening slightly at the request, and showed you the careful way of it—hands cupped beneath, supporting the weight, avoiding the soft underside while the quills stayed safely tucked away.

Sebastian, once settled into your arms, uncurled with cautious, twitching slowness, his small nose working at the air, and you held him close to your chest and murmured nonsense at him with the same low, soft tone you imagined you'd used on small children or babies.

"Hey, it's okay, you're okay buddy, I've got you—" you felt something in your chest loosen at the way he gradually, gradually settled, the tight ball of him relaxing into the warmth of your arms.

You carried him with you back to your spot near the hearth, settling yourself between Bofur and Dwalin, who had claimed the space on either side of you with the easy, proprietary comfort the company had developed toward your physical proximity over the journey so far.

"What is that," Dwalin said, looking at Sebastian with the flat, deeply unimpressed expression of a warrior confronted with something entirely outside his frame of reference.

"A hedgehog. His name's Sebastian."

"It has spikes."

"He's very sweet, actually."

Dwalin looked, profoundly, unconvinced, but made no further objection, and over the course of the evening you fed Sebastian small scraps of vegetables from your bowl, his nose working at each offering before accepting it, and Bofur—who had initially regarded the whole enterprise with the same mild scepticism as Dwalin—found himself, by the end of the meal, leaning over with genuine curiosity to watch the small creature eat from your fingers.

"He likes you," Bofur said, echoing Radagast's earlier observation, and there was something warm in the way he said it.

"Can I feed the little lad?" He smiled not taking his eyes off Sebastian's twitching nose.

You ended up wedged between Bofur and Dwalin, which hadn't been a deliberate choice so much as the natural consequence of the bench filling up around you, and spent a significant portion of the evening with Sebastian curled in either your lap, or Bofur's, both of you murmuring quietly to him.

"He's a good listener," you said and Sebastian, as if personally invested in proving your point, uncurled enough to accept a crumb directly from Bofur's fingers.

Dwalin, on your other side, said nothing at all, but you noticed, over the course of the evening, that he'd angled himself slightly so that you and the hedgehog were tucked safely between him and the wall, in the same unconscious, automatic way he positioned himself nearby in the open nights, and you decided not to comment on it.

The evening's hospitality extended, eventually, to baths—a genuine novelty after weeks of road dust and stream-washing, and the company accepted with an enthusiasm that bordered on hectic.

Bombur went first, on the grounds of volume and the rest of the company cycled through in the rough, good-natured chaos that characterised most of their group decisions.

When your turn came, Radagast pressed a small folded bundle of clothing into your hands with a flustered, apologetic mumble about not having much in your size, exactly, but it should serve.

You looked at the bundle with mild confusion—fabric you didn't immediately recognise, in colours and a cut's that looked nothing like anything in your own world's wardrobe.

Gandalf, catching your expression from across the room, offered, mildly "Wizards are known to travel. It's not so strange that something might be kept on hand for various—circumstances." There was something in the way he said circumstances that suggested more than the sentence strictly contained, but you were too tired and simply thanked Radagast and went to find the bath without examining the clothes any further.

The bath itself was a small miracle—actual hot water, heated over Radagast's fire and decanted into a battered but serviceable tub tucked into a side room, you sank into it with a groan that came from somewhere very deep in your chest, weeks of road grime beginning to loosen from your shoulders.

While you were curled in the bath, Radagast settled himself beside Gandalf, his expression considerably more sober than it had been for most of the evening, his voice dropping low enough that the conversation stayed well beneath the general noise of the dwarves.

"Gandalf," he said, quietly. "The girl."

"Hmmm"

"She doesn't appear to have—" Radagast's brow furrowed, the wild, scattered energy of him momentarily focused. "Well that is—she just—"

"Radagast."

Gandalf's voice. Sharp. Immediate. Cutting cleanly across whatever Radagast had been about to finish, with a finality that left absolutely no room for the brown wizard's sentence to continue.

"I only meant—"

"I know what you meant," Gandalf said, lower now, urgent in a way that made Radagast go very still beside his fellow wizard. "I am aware of it. I have been aware of it for some time now. But this is not the place, and certainly not the moment, with thirteen dwarves and a hobbit within easy earshot of every word spoken in this house. Do you understand me?"

"Yes. Yes, of course. I only thought—"

"Later," Gandalf said, with a sharpness that was unusual, his eyes flicking briefly toward the direction of the company still gathered inside Radagast's den. "When there is time, privacy, and considerably less risk of being overheard."

Radagast looked at him for a long moment, something working behind his cluttered, anxious eyes. He didn't push further. He simply nodded, once, slowly, and let the subject drop, though the troubled set of his expression lingered for some time after, even as the conversation moved on to other things.

Eventually, with the water cooling around you finally outweighing your exhaustion, you finished washing and climbed out, towelling off with the rough cloth Radagast had left, and turned, finally, to the bundle of clothing.

It was a dress—foreign in every line of it, nothing like anything you had. The fabric was soft, a deep forest green, the bodice outfitted with simple embroidered detail at the neckline, the skirt falling in a way that suggested it had been made for actual movement rather than display. You pulled it on, and it fit, for the most part—a little loose at the waist, but close enough that the fit itself felt like its own small impossibility, one more thing in this world that had no business making sense and did anyway.

You emerged smoothing the unfamiliar fabric with both hands, self-conscious in the way that came from wearing something entirely new in front of an audience you hadn't fully prepared for. It was, you thought, looking down at yourself, about as far from a blazer and business slacks as it was possible to get.

The room went quiet. It wasn't a long silence. Just a handful of seconds, at most. But it landed with enough collective weight that your hand went immediately and instinctively to check the front of the dress, scanning down for some obvious wardrobe malfunction, some visible disaster you'd somehow missed in Radagast's bathroom.

"Is it on wrong?" you asked, genuinely alarmed. "Oh crap, is it on backward, I didn't really look properly, I was tired—"

"It's not on wrong," Bofur said quickly, recovering first, his expression shifting into something warm and teasing. "No, lass, nothing's wrong. You scrub up rather well, is all."

"Very well," Kíli agreed, with the bright, unguarded enthusiasm that characterised most of what he said, earning himself a sharp elbow from Fíli that didn't entirely disguise his own agreement.

"We didn't realise you'd been hiding all that under road dust," Glóin added, with a rough wink and a fond sort of humour that took the edge off any potential embarrassment.

You felt your face heat, and tugged self-consciously at the sleeve, the teasing landing warm rather than unkind, the company's collective attention settling into something more like fond approval than scrutiny.

Across the room, Thorin had gone very still. He wasn't staring, exactly—his eyes moved to the fire, to his hands, to anywhere else, with the deliberate discipline of a dwarf actively managing where his attention landed. But something in the set of his jaw had tightened, something in the particular careful blankness of his expression working considerably harder than usual to stay careful and blank, and he said nothing at all through the remainder of the teasing, and did not look at you again for some time, though Balin caught him once, the briefest flicker of his eyes finding you and then sliding away with a speed that suggested he hadn't intended for them to find you in the first place.

You didn't notice it. You were too busy being mortified and accepting Radagast's effusive compliments, and trying to work out whether the slight ache in your face was from smiling too much at Sebastian or the general overwhelm of the day.

Later, once the fire had burned low and the company had begun settling into bedrolls scattered through Radagast's cluttered front room, you slipped outside to return Sebastian to his family.

The night was cool and clear, the small hedgehog nest tucked into a hollow near the base of an old tree where several others of his kind were already curled together, and you knelt carefully in the dark settling Sebastian among them with the same murmured nonsense you'd been offering him all evening.

"There you go," you said softly. "Back with your family. Feel better soon, okay little man?"

You straightened, brushing the dirt from your knees, and turned to head back toward the house, and very nearly walked directly into Thorin, who had apparently been standing a short distance behind you for long enough that you had no idea how he'd gotten there without a sound.

You jumped, a small, sharp gasp escaping before you could stop it. "Shit—Thorin, you can't just—"

"You shouldn't be out here alone," he said, without preamble, his voice low in the quiet of the night. "Not in unfamiliar woods. Not after dark."

"I was just putting Sebastian to bed."

"The hedgehog." He said flatly.

"His name is Sebastian"

"A strange name for a hedgehog."

"Radagast named him. I think Radagast names everything." You looked sideways at him.

Something in his expression suggested he found this both entirely unsurprising and faintly, privately amusing, though he didn't comment on it directly. Instead he fell into step beside you as you started back toward the house, the path lit only by the faint glow from the windows ahead and whatever starlight made it down through the canopy.

You found yourself, without quite deciding to, telling him about Sebastian's enthusiasm for vegetable scraps, and the way he'd butted his small nose against your palm, and Thorin listened—actually listened, with none of the distracted half-attention you might have expected from the Thorin you had met several weeks ago— he offered the smallest huff of something that might, in someone less guarded, have been the beginnings of a laugh.

"You are very taken with small, prickled things," he observed, as you reached the door.

Disclaimer: The author of this work claims no ownership of characters aside from the reader, and original secondary characters mentioned. This work is not intended for those under the age of 18 due to explicit sexual content and darker themes. By reading this work or any works on my blog (jtargaryen18), you agree that you are at least 18 years of age. I do not consent to have my work hosted on any third party app or site.

Sunday morning should’ve been quiet, allowing him time for his family. Just one day. 

Tommy had been in London for the last three days. Instead of staying in that city for one more night, he travelled home overnight, arriving in Birmingham in the early morning hours. Unable to sleep after that and not wanting to wake his wife and baby son, he came down to his office to get some work done. 

Tommy had been working at his desk for about an hour when the door opened with no preamble. He was hoping it was his beautiful wife, already smiling.

But it was Rory who stepped in. 

“He’s here,” Rory said meaningfully. 

Tommy didn’t need to ask who. Somehow, he knew Alfie Solomons would turn up soon. Just not at his home. 

Reluctantly, he said, “Bring him in.”

Only a moment later, Rory returned with Alfie at his shoulder.

He wasn't sure if Alfie was an ally or an enemy. The man took one step into the room before stopping, measuring the place. His hat was still atop his head, his cane tapping the floor as he walked.

“Right,” he muttered, glancing around. “So, this is where you do your thinking, yeah? Bit tidy for my liking, Tommy."

Tommy had no intention of rising to it. “I'm sure you’ve seen worse.” Gesturing to the chair on the other side of his desk. “Sit.”

But Alfie didn’t sit. Turning ever so slightly, he glanced back towards Rory. Tommy's new business partner took his time, sizing up his brother-in-law, the young man who had earned a reputation for himself as one of the most deadly men in Birmingham. 

Rory stood by the door, too calm and still for a man his age. His gaze didn't leave Alfie for a second.

“Interesting one, that,” Alfie said, almost to himself.

Rory didn’t react at all. He just stood there, motionless and waiting.

Alfie smiled faintly. “Go on then. You can leave us. I promise I won’t rob him blind in the next five minutes.”

Rory still didn’t move, his gaze shifting to Tommy. 

When Tommy gave him a small nod, Rory left without a word, closing the door behind him.

And in the silence of his exit, Alfie watched the door a moment longer. Letting out a slow breath, he turned his attention back to Tommy as he finally took a seat in front of his desk.

“Bloody hell,” Alfie muttered.

Tommy lit a cigarette. “Problem?”

Alfie shook his head, making himself comfortable in the leather-backed seat. “No, no problem. Just didn’t expect him, is all.”

Tommy didn't answer. Alfie kept talking. 

“That one’s cold, Tommy.”

Tommy didn’t answer.

“I’ve met lads like that,” Alfie went on, his hands moving as he spoke. “War leaves ‘em like that, yeah? Takes everything soft out and leaves… something else.” Alfie frowned faintly now. “Thing is, I’d usually say war did that, yeah? Seen it a hundred times. But he’s too young for that, isn’t he mate?”

Tommy exhaled smoke, letting Alfie work his way through it. “He’s seen enough.”

Alfie gave that a moment. “Right, so it’s not war.”

Tommy watched him nod to himself, like he’d just solved a puzzle he didn’t enjoy solving.

“Because war, yeah?” Alfie continued. “War’s simple. You know what did it. You know where it came from.” Tapping his temple, he said, “But when it’s not that. What's in that lad was built. Bit by bit.”

Tommy just waited while Alfie’s gaze shifted to the door again.

“Which means,” he said, almost conversational now, “he didn’t end up like that by accident. No, he chose it.”

Finishing his cigarette, Tommy crushed it in the tray. “He’s loyal.”

Alfie let out a short breath through his nose. 

“Oh, I don’t doubt that.” Looking back at Tommy, he went on. “Until he isn't anymore. What happens then?"

Tommy wasn't about to engage in the conversation. Alfie was posing the question of what would happen if Rory ever turned on him, went against him. It wasn't impossible Rory would ever challenge him, just not in the way Alfie was thinking.

Finally, Alfie straightened, realizing Tommy wasn't going to take the topic up.

“I like him,” he added, lighter now. “I don’t trust him, obviously... but I like him.” A faint grin. “I wouldn’t turn my back on him, mind you.”

Tommy’s voice was flat. “No one asked you to.”

Then Alfie clapped his hands once, like shaking it off. “Right. Now we’ve done the introductions, let’s talk about London.”

Tommy leaned back in his chair. Finally.

“Camden’s not Birmingham,” Alfie said slower now. “You don’t just walk in and take a piece, yeah? You negotiate the air before you breathe it.”

Tommy leaned back in his chair, another cigarette between his fingers. “I’m not asking permission."

Alfie grinned. “Course you’re not. That’s why I’m here instead of sending someone else to tell you you’re wrong.”

Before he could say anything else, his study door opened again. No one knocked, and Tommy’s head snapped up instantly.

And there she was. His stunning wife was smiling and happy to see him. with the soft light from the hallway catching on her hair as she crossed the threshold. 

“You came back last night,” she said, already moving toward him. “You didn’t wake me—”

She stopped short when she saw the man sitting across from her husband. A stranger in his black clothes and hat, running a hand over his beard as his gaze swept over her. 

Tommy was already on his feet, but it was too late. There was a single moment of silence as Tommy walked over to his wife.

That's when Alfie lit up.

“Well now,” he said, slow and delighted. He was already out of the chair, stepping forward. His manner wasn't threatening as much as it was just inevitable.

Tommy moved, subtle but firm, placing himself just enough between them.

“This is my wife,” he said, tone controlled.

Alfie nodded like he’d expected nothing less. “Yeah. I can see that.” To her, his smile widened. “Though I'm not so sure I expected Thomas to find a wife that could put up with him and that looks like... you."

At the faint smile on his new partner's face, Tommy tried to guide her quietly from the office with a hand at her lower back. It was bad enough Alfie had gotten a look at her. He certainly didn't want her to linger. 

“And there it is," Alfie said loudly. "You’ve got the lad's eyes.”

Tommy cut in, sharper now. “Alfie.”

Of course Alfie didn’t stop.

“No, hold on,” he said, lifting a hand. “Because now I’ve got it, yeah?” Gesturing loosely toward the door, he said, "That one, Rory, cold as winter, barely says a word...” Back to her. “Then you walk in smiling... Brother and sister, right?” he asked with no small amount of satisfaction. 

Tommy didn’t confirm it, but his graceful wife nodded at his side. 

Alfie was pleased with himself. “Right,” he said. “That makes sense now.” When he glanced at her again, he said, “You’ve got his way of standing your ground. You just look a lot better.”

That had her smiling. Goddamn it.

Tommy stepped in fully now. “That’s enough."

She didn’t shrink away from Alfie or retreat. She wouldn't. His wife had held her own alone with Luca Changretta. It wasn't really a surprise she wasn't intimidated by the latest stranger in front of her. Still, smiling, she met Alfie's gaze calmly.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to welcome my husband home.”

Alfie’s expression shifted just a fraction. He remained respectful. “Yeah, I imagine you did.”

Tommy wasn’t smiling, steering her towards the door. 

"I'll find you as soon as I'm done here," he told her quietly, willing her to leave the room. Now.

Alfie just chuckled under his breath. 

“Right, right. Business first,” he said, moving back toward his chair. “I’ll behave. Lovely to meet you, Mrs. Shelby. I have to say you're a strong reminder of why men make poor decisions.”

Tommy glared him down, but Alfie just grinned.

Nodding, she quietly made her way out of the office, leaving the two of them to talk business. The door closed behind her, but Tommy didn’t move right away. For a moment, he just stood there wishing his wife hadn't come looking for him.

And wishing he'd been alone so she could have. She would have kissed him, pressed her body against his like soft fire. He wouldn't have had a problem with it becoming more. All the way home last night, he'd considered that he'd only ever had her once on his desk. He was thinking he wanted a repeat of that...

Later.

Behind him, Alfie let out a low whistle. “Right, that’s… something, that is.”

Tommy got himself under control, slowly turning to face his unexpected guest. “Say what you came to say.”

“So,” Alfie said as he returned to his chair, his cane tapping. “Let me get this straight, yeah?” Gesturing toward the door, he said, “You’ve got that walking around your house. And then you’ve also got that cold little bastard for a brother-in-law.”

To Tommy's annoyance, Alfie was mapping out his family. 

“Now I’m trying to work out, who came first?” He paused. “The beautiful wife? Or the cold lad?”

Tommy’s voice cut in, low and lethal. “Enough, Alfie.”

Alfie stopped, just looking at him. His smile was faint, but deliberate. “Yeah, you don’t like that, do you?”

Tommy moved closer now, slowly and quietly. There was nothing casual about it.

“My wife isn't your concern,” Tommy finally said.

Alfie let out a soft, almost amused breath. “No.”

The silence dropped like a weight, as Tommy regarded him coldly. Internally, he was cursing the bastard for just showing up to his home. His home was his private life. Not business. She was not part of his business. 

Alfie held up a hand before it went any further. “I’m not after her, Tommy. I’m not suicidal. But I can't unsee a woman who looks like that."

Tommy didn't blink, still staring Alfie down.

“Didn’t you realize what you did, Tommy?” Alfie asked. “You went and married a woman who looks like that. Now you're building everything around her. And your son. I hear you have a boy with her.” 

When would the man realize, he wasn't going to discuss his family and bloody get on with it?

Alfie’s voice dropped, sharper now. "Now I understand something I didn’t before.”

Tommy’s gaze lifted to his.

“Luca Changretta,” Alfie said.

Tommy exhaled loudly. He didn't want to talk about the Changrettas. He wanted to move on to any subject that didn't involve his family. Her.

“All that noise. All that obsession.” Alfie shook his head. “The stories got really fucking loud, yeah? Territory, revenge, some girl your lot didn’t want near Angel Changretta. Some other girl.” His gaze locked onto Tommy’s. "That wasn’t just about business, was it? No, it was her.”

 The man's words hung there, ugly and true. 

"Luca Changretta is dead," Tommy said quietly.

Alfie didn’t argue that. “Yeah. And a good thing that is. But he won’t be the last man who notices her.”

Tommy stepped back then, just enough to reclaim the space. He lit another cigarette with steady hands.

Alfie watched him, but he wasn't smiling now. “That’s the problem, Thomas. It appears you’ve got something real. And men like us? We don’t get to have those things without someone trying to take ‘em.”

After one long, tense moment, Alfie clapped his hands, snapping the moment in half.

“Right,” he said, voice lighter again. “Now that we’ve established you’ve made your life unnecessarily complicated…” A smirk. “Shall we get back to discussing London?”

Tommy walked back to his desk and sat in the chair behind it. Finally. 

“Sit down, Alfie.”

But the man's warning lingered in the back of his mind.

***

Since your husband was busy, you decided to tend to your roses while Malachy was asleep upstairs. You'd been trying to make time for days, but something else for you to do always arrived whenever you remembered. If you didn't do something about them soon, they'd be out of control. The men of your house could care less about the garden outside. Tommy would always tell you to leave it to the servants. 

But when you'd been a girl, you loved books about fairytale princes and their castles. The princess who spent her days in beautiful gowns, wandering her garden and sipping tea. It had been fun to dream about anyway.

Now? Tommy was certainly not a prince, nor you a princess. But you'd never expected to live in a house like this, with so many rooms and staff to help maintain it. Only they weren't really staff to you. They were your friends. You certainly never imagined having a huge, beautiful garden either. But you were grateful, spending time there each day when you could. You were particularly fond of the roses and had, over time, taken over their care. Sure, you could have asked the gardener to do it for you. But it wasn't the same. 

You loved the silence of the garden, an escape from the voices, footsteps, and constant movement of the house. Kneeling in the dirt with your sleeves pushed back, you carefully worked around the stems. The blooms were coming in strong in deep reds and soft pinks. There were white blooms but not many this year. Clipping one branch cleanly, you leaned back to inspect your work.

“Delicate work, that.”

You stilled at the sound of that unfamiliar voice, turning your head slightly to see a man standing a few feet away. You hadn't heard him approach, and that was something. 

The man your husband had just been talking with didn't look like someone from Small Heath. The cut of his coat, the way he held himself, was deliberate and commanded authority. In that regard, he reminded you of Tommy. 

But Tommy had just been talking business with him in his office. What was he doing out here? He was studying you.

With the shears in your hand, you slowly rose to your feet. “I suppose so,” you said, keeping a polite tone. “It took me a while to get the hang of it.”

That got a flicker of amusement from him. “I imagine it was the same with your husband.”

Oh, it was. But that was a little too familiar from a man whose name you didn't know.

You met his gaze fully now. “And you are?”

He tilted his head slightly, as if considering how much to say. “Someone your husband’s been spending time with."

"So you're curious about me, but you won't tell me your name," you pointed out. 

He was fighting back a smile, trying to hide something that looked suspiciously like approval bleeding through his expression.

“You're a sharp one, yeah?” He shifted his weight slightly, hands casually gripping his cane before him. “Names are a bit of a commitment, aren’t they?”

You didn't answer right away. You'd watched Tommy do it enough times. He'd wait until the other person resumed talking just to fill the void. You started working on another branch.

“Alfie Solomons,” he said a couple of moments later like it really didn’t matter. 

You introduced yourself.

“And you’re right. I am curious.” Another moment of silence, and there was mild tension in that quiet. Alfie moved closer but still kept a respectable distance. “You don’t seem particularly concerned, Mrs. Shelby."

You kept pruning. You weren't dismissing him, but you were hardly welcoming him to stay either. “Should I be?”

He paused behind you. “Depends."

You worked on clipping another stem. “On what?”

“On whether you know what kind of man your husband is,” he replied.

You were smiling now. Turning around, you met his gaze again. “I do know.” 

“And what kind of man is that?” he asked.

You considered him for a moment. "Not the kind who allows strangers to wander into his garden."

Alfie smiled properly then. “But here I am.”

“For now," you said, still grasping the shears in your hands.

Interest sharpened his expression. “You’ve got a way about you. Like none of this troubles you.”

Glancing down at your hands, at the dirt under your nails, you spotted a small thorn mark along your finger. You thought about how you wanted to answer. “It does. But there's little point in letting it show.”

“That’ll either serve you very well,” he murmured, “or not at all.”

You looked back up at him. “I guess that depends on the day.”

That was when you heard Tommy’s voice. “Step away from her.”

His tone was calm, but for you, it only made it sound more menacing. 

Turning, you already knew what you would see. You husband had entered your space as silently as your visitor, every line of him was braced and locked in. He wasn't looking at you, but the man a couple of feet away. And that told you everything.

For whatever reason, the man mattered. Was he dangerous? Was he trying to do business with your husband? Did he intend to harm him?

Glancing back at your unexpected visitor, you said, "Excuse me.”

Alfe inclined his head slightly. “Of course.” Then, as if he couldn’t resist, he added, "Didn’t mean to overstay my welcome.”

You stepped forward, passing Tommy. You were close enough to feel the heat of him and the tension he held just beneath the surface.

“Inside,” he said, quieter but no less firm. "Now."

You didn’t argue. You just nodded and kept walking. And as you crossed the threshold into you home, leaving the garden behind, you realized that you hadn't been afraid. But Tommy's reaction made you wonder if that was the wrong response.

reaction made you wonder if that was the wrong response.

***

Tommy's attention focused on Alfie even as the door shut behind her. For a long second, neither man spoke. 

“You don’t listen very well, do you?” Tommy's tone was low and even.

Adjusting his coat, Alfie looked like he had all the time in the world. “I listen fine. I just don’t always agree.”

Tommy stepped closer. “You don’t come to my home and make yourself comfortable.”

Alfie glanced around the garden. “Comfortable’s not the word I’d use. Bit tense, if I’m honest.”

"You were supposed to have left. Now I find you still at my home, in my garden, with my wife. So why are you really here today, Alfie?"

"Just wanted to see exactly who I'm doing business with," Alfie said simply. "That's what we do in our world, innit?"

Unmoved, Tommy continued to stare him down. His wife was not part of his business. He'd already ended the Changrettas for her. He wasn't above making that list longer. 

“You won’t speak to her,” Tommy told him, "or come near her again."

Alfie looked at him then, really looked. "I know what I needed to know.”

It was then that Tommy realized exactly what that meant.

Taking a step closer, Alfie looked him in the eye. “Your reactions say a lot about who you are.”

Tommy’s voice dropped another degree. “You’re done here.”

Alfie gave a small, humorless smile. “I am.”

Finally stepping back, Alfie adjusted his hat. “Nice garden, by the way. Worth protecting.”

Tommy didn’t respond, just watched Alfie turn and walk away.

***

You were quietly looking through the cabinets for Polly's emergency bottle of whiskey. You knew she probably took it with her when she moved into her new house, but it was worth a try. You'd just checked on Malachy who was still napping. Now, you just needed something to calm your nerves. It was rare for you to turn to spirits to do that, and you weren't proud of it. 

You didn't immediately realize your husband was silently watching you from the doorway. As you closed the last cabinet, you noticed a slight tremble to your hands. You blew out an exhale, trying to center yourself.

“That bad?” Tommy's voice alerted you to his presence. 

You didn’t turn right away. "Oh, I'm okay."

“Yeah,” he replied. “I can see that.”

You really hadn't sounded very convincing. “I just... need a minute.”

When you turned to face him, Tommy's gaze was intent on you. 

It was all very odd. A man he was doing business with showed up at your house unexpectedly. That never happened. The same man found you in the garden by yourself. You'd handled yourself well enough, at least you thought you did. But you had to wonder how their second conversation went after you were told to go into the house. Tommy didn't look furious just now. But, as you knew well, that didn't necessarily mean anything.

“If it’s a drink you want,” Tommy said, calmer now, “come with me.”

The way he'd so easily guessed your intentions stopped you cold. His office door shut behind you once you reached it. You watched as he moved to the cabinet and pulled out two glasses. His hands were perfectly steady, unlike yours, as he poured even measures. It was the whiskey he favored, and it was a bit strong for you. But when he handed you a glass, you took it. You took a couple of drinks right away, closing your eyes as it burned its way down into your stomach. 

Tommy's gaze stayed on you. “Sit.” 

Taking a seat in the same chair where Alfie Solomons had been sitting, you took another drink. For a moment, neither of you said anything.

“What did you think of him?” Tommy asked.

That got your attention. Tommy wasn't asking if you were okay or if you were scared. No, he was asking what you thought of the man.

Looking down into the glass in your hand, you could only be honest. "I wanted to like him. But he made me uneasy."

Tommy didn’t react. “Why?”

Taking another small sip, you continued. “I mean... He was polite and charming... It's hard to explain." 

Tommy crossed in front of you, sitting on the edge of his desk as he drained his own glass and placed it next to him. Then his attention was right back on you, watching you closely.

And you knew, you knew, Tommy used small silences like that to prompt you into saying more. To expand on what you were saying. And damn it, you did it anyway.

“I just felt like there was something under all the charm and conversation,” you continued. 

Tommy pulled out a cigarette and lit it, taking his time. “And what was that?”

You considered that carefully. “The only thing I can say for sure is that it was really about you." Draining your glass, you leaned forward and placed it on the desk next to his. "Now when I think about all the questions he didn't ask..."

Tommy exhaled smoke before grabbing your glass with one hand, bringing the cigarette to hold between his lips with his other. "And what did he learn?" he asked, refilling your glass and bringing it back to you.

You took the glass back, meeting his gaze solidly. "There are things you care about. Your family."

Your husband's expression didn't shift. "And does he view that as a weakness?"

The whiskey had eased the tension in your body that the man's visit started. You took another sip.

"It's not a weakness." You shook your head. "The way you protect your family, Tommy? It's you at your most dangerous."

"No, I asked if he viewed that as a weakness." 

Your husband's cool blue eyes took you in as you took another drink. The burn was less now, and warmth spread through your body.

"I don't know for certain what the man was thinking," you had to say.

Exhaling slowly, Tommy held your gaze for a moment. "Exactly."

You frowned. "I don't understand."

"No, you don't, and you can't." Tommy leaned back slightly, cigarette balanced between his fingers. "That's the point."

You watched him carefully. 

"I held my own with Luca Changretta." Folding your arms across your chest, you said, "And despite that, he was civilized with me."

"Civilized?" Tommy actually laughed. A short, disbelieving sound. "Changretta wanted you."

Where was he going with this? "Yes, but—"

"No." His voice remained even. "He wanted you."

The room fell quiet. 

You lifted your chin. "He never laid a hand on me, Tommy."

Tommy leaned forward, his gaze locked with yours."You were less than a month from having a babe. He threatened you, ordered his men to hunt a pregnant woman. Laying a hand on you is the only thing he didn't do because he never got the chance."

You opened your mouth and closed it again. Was he right?

Tommy's expression softened slightly. "I need you to adjust your beliefs when it comes to our world."

Our world now?

Your answer came immediately. "I guess you're right. I'm your wife after all."

A corner of his mouth twitched. 

"That's only one aspect of it." Your husband took a final drag on his cigarette, taking his time to expel a plume of smoke. 

You drained your second glass of liquor, realizing it was spinning your mind. The drink went straight to your head, making your skin warm. 

"Solomons wasn't interested in me, Tommy." You shook your head, but the movement made you a little dizzy. Your hands gripped the arms of his heavy leather chair to steady yourself.

And your husband watched you like a predator the entire time, catching every movement.

"It doesn't matter. You don't understand how men like him, like me, think." The intensity of his gaze froze you to the spot. "You don't understand how we evaluate risk, how we choose targets... I need you to be smarter in how you handle yourself. I need my wife, and Malachy needs his mum.”

While your heart squeezed in your chest at that last thought, Tommy was still studying you in a way that set your nerves on edge. 

Snuffing out his cigarette in the tray on his desk, he turned that high-powered perception back on you. “You will not be talking to anyone I do business with from this point on. Not unless I'm there and only if necessary.”

You tilted your head slightly. "How is that going to be possible, Tommy? I get the feeling that you didn't know Mr. Solomons was coming to our house today. I'm supposed to just hide when something like this happens?"

Tommy shook his head, still entirely focused on you.

You frowned. "What?"

Tommy sighed, looking at you like he was trying to decide how to explain something impossible. “If you were a man, you’d understand it.”

Understand what?

Tommy’s gaze held yours. "You look in the mirror every day and you don't see it.”

"Really?" That pulled a nervous laugh from you. But it was false bravado and he saw right through it. “Luca was one man."

“His brother Angel was another.” There was no humor in his expression now, and all you could do was stare at him. His gaze dropped to your lips, slowly roamed over the rest of you. “There will be others. The Changrettas weren’t even the worst.”

Confusion had your brow furrowing. "Who was?"

Something darker bled into his eyes. “You married him.”

His words settled heavily between the two of you. You married him.

Your breath caught at that. But Tommy continued before you could answer.

“I remember the first time I ever saw you,” he said quietly. “I had a coat that needed mending. Arthur gave me the address of your mum's shop. Said the girl on Gray Street could fix it proper.”

You remembered that day. It had been terrifying enough when Arthur Shelby started bringing his mending to your mother's shop. Still, from his first visit, Arthur had been kind to you. In time, he became just another customer.  Until the bet...

Tommy Shelby had been another story. You'd recognized him standing in your doorway with his expensive clothes and unreadable expression, light winking off the razors sewn into his cap. The energy in the entire room changed the moment his gaze found you. 

You'd been polite and brief, trying your damnedest not to draw more of his attention. But he'd lingered, his gaze intense on you. Much like it was right now.

“I saw you,” Tommy went on. “And I wanted you.”

His admission had your heart racing in your chest. He wasn't even trying to soften it or paint himself in a better light. 

“I put Arthur up to that wager with Sean O’Grady,” Tommy admitted. "I gave him the idea of making a night with you his prize."

You knew the entire story now. But the two of you had just never talked about it before. The dark greed in his gaze sent just a hint of fear racing through you.

“I knew Arthur would win. I also knew I'd never let him claim that prize." Tommy straightened, taking the glass from your hands just like he did that first night, and placing it on the desk behind him. “I took Arthur a bottle from the Garrison that afternoon and I made sure he wouldn't be upright for long.”

The room felt smaller now. You remembered John Shelby and another blinder, Liam, escorting you from Gray Street to Arthur's apartment that night. You hadn't been there long when Arthur passed out cold. Hope had swelled in your chest, had you thinking you could run from the most dangerous men in Small Heath.

"I knew you'd run." Your husband's icy blue eyes stayed locked on yours. “All I had to do was wait.”

You remembered that too. The fear and panic you felt darting out of that apartment, praying that no one saw you. You'd planned to claim that the deed was done, praying Arthur would assume you had since he'd been so drunk. 

But you'd run right into Tommy. He'd caught you so easily.

"You remember that night." His voice dropped lower. “I caught you. Then I took what I wanted.”

The honesty of his words hit harder than if he’d tried making excuses. 

Your gaze searched his face. Yes, you remembered all of it. He'd taken you that night just because he could. But to have him lay it out so baldly?

“I'm no different than the Changrettas," he said, "or any other man who will take one look at you and make the same decision."

Slowly, your husband pushed off from the desk. Planting his hands on the arms of your chair, he invaded your space. Crowded against the back of the chair, your heart hammered away in your chest so loudly he could probably hear it.

His gaze never left yours. 

"Look at you. All alone with me and a locked door." His gaze shifted to the whiskey bottle on the desk and back. "You've had two glasses now, sitting here proving my point."

The silence between you felt electrically charged.

"If I weren't the man you know," he said with unbearable calm, "well, you've already given me every advantage. You trusted me enough to follow me in here, to drink with me. You've allowed me to get this close to you." He skimmed a hand up your arm to cradle the side of your face in his warm hand, his thumb brushing covetously along your cheek. "You don't have your brother here. You don't have Polly... You don't even have a clear head anymore."

Just like you had that first night with him. You had more experience now than the scared girl you'd been in that quiet apartment. Yes, your stepfather had put you up as a wager in a bet, an agreement you hadn't consented to. Even though it was hard to push thoughts through the haze of the whiskey you drank, you understood now. You'd just gone along, assuming you had no other choice than to allow Tommy Shelby to just take anything he wanted from you. And he had.

"That's what concerns me. Because there are men in this world who would see every one of those things as an opportunity... They don't even have to force their way in." Tommy's face was mere inches from yours when he leaned in. "You're trusting and kind. But those are qualities dangerous men know how to exploit. And I need you to be more aware of that."

You swallowed hard. The words felt like the ending to his lesson. So why was he still staring at you like he was ready to strike any second?

"You took me home with you after that." Your voice sounded as small as it had that night. "After you got what you wanted. Why?"

Tommy didn't back away, his expression didn't soften. "Before the war, I wanted what any lad did. To find a pretty girl to marry. Start a family, have a simple life."

His kiss was slow and deceptively careful.  But you could feel the restraint behind it. 

"But I came home from the war a different man," he whispered against your lips. "I'd watched soldiers become corpses and I'd watched officers make decisions that buried entire sections alive. I saw men who did everything right but died anyway. Good things didn't just come to good people who waited their turn... I watched good men die waiting their turn."

Tommy very rarely spoke so intimately about the war, how it changed his views on life. You didn't dare interrupt.

"If the world wasn't going to play fair with me," he went on, "I was going to respond in kind." 

Anyone who didn't know him would think Tommy's greatest desire was power. He'd built so much from pure ambition, from the betting shop and street gangs to the expansion and all the violence holding it together. But now, looking into the haunted depths of his eyes, you realized power was never his goal. It was security. Everything he'd done was to protect his family, to keep all threats away. To ensure Malachy never in his life faced the fear his father knew.

You were now part of the family he worked so hard to protect. You'd given him a son. And in rare moments like this one when he opened up just a sliver, you realized Tommy would never crown himself king. Your heart ached to realize that scared young soldier who returned from France was still in there, believing that if he became powerful enough, he could protect those he loved from tragedy.

"I rejected that simple life I once wanted." His plush lips pressed soft kisses over your forehead, over your mouth. But you felt the raw need just beneath the surface. "Until I saw you."

Lifting a hand, you smoothed it over the back of his arm. The lean muscle beneath his crisp shirt shifted powerfully beneath your touch as you kept listening.

"I knew you were scared of me," Tommy said in a deeper tone. "I knew I didn't deserve you. But that didn't stop me. All I could think about was how you'd look sleeping in my bed, walking the halls of my house every day, waiting for me to come home."

When he kissed you again, there was heat and need. You welcomed it. 

"I took you home with me. And the next morning, there you were, sleeping away." His lips blazed a trail over your jaw, seeking out all the spaces that made you tremble, the way only he could. "You were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. You'd never learned a woman's artifice. You'd never known another man's touch."

His tongue tasted the salt of your skin, his lips teasing your flesh in a way that left you shivering.

"I promised myself another night with you," Tommy explained. "Then another. But it was never enough."

His palm was rough and warm as it skimmed over your face and hair. Slowly, it dropped to the front of your blouse, undoing each tiny button efficiently.

You sucked in a desperate breath, making no move to stop him.

"I convinced myself that I wanted to send a message to Small Heath," he said finally. "I wanted everyone to know what happens when you cross the Shelbys. But the truth was... I just wanted you. Guilt pushed at me every day to give you back. But I left selfishness win."

Faster than you could blink, Tommy snatched you out of the chair. He roughly dropped you onto the hard surface of his desk, sending one of the empty glasses flying off the desk to shatter on the floor. Your breath came out in a rush when he pushed you onto your back, his impatient hands grabbing your blouse and ripping it open. The tiny white buttons he hadn't undone flew everywhere.

When your husband ripped open your chemise, you just stared up at him in alarm, excitement running through your veins. 

Tommy's expression was dark and feral. One rough hand slid possessively over your breast before sliding up to wrap around your neck, squeezing lightly.

"This is what men like me want," Tommy whispered, pinning you in place. "To claim and take... And you're so fucking beautiful."

You knew you should have been embarrassed to be as turned on as you were in that moment. The flesh between your thighs was slick, your body was literally humming in need. 

"I took you that night," Tommy whispered, dropping quick scorching kisses over your skin. Teasing your nipple with his lips and tongue. "And I'm going to take you again now."

The moan his words pulled from you was a desperate plea. You were pushing yourself into his palms, up for his mouth. The hand on your neck didn't move, even when his other hand yanked up your dress until it could slide into your drawers to find you wet and aching for him. 

"Please, Tommy," you whispered.

"You survived Luca Changretta because he underestimated you." Your devilish husband chained more kisses over your chest, blazing a trail down your body.

"I survived you." You could barely breathe to talk, taking all the challenge out of your statement. You just writhed under him in need.

"You survived me," Tommy's words were muffled against the warm flesh of your tummy, "because I fell in love with you."

And you could read the truth of his words in the deep blue of his eyes. You felt it in the possessive way his hands explored your body like it was his as much as yours.

"No other man will ever touch you," he said heatedly, tearing your drawers away from what he wanted. "No one touches what's mine."

All you could do was nod, everything else was forgotten. You were struggling to breathe, focusing on the devilish touch of his fingers on your clit.

The hand at your throat slid down to play with your breasts as he buried his face between your thighs. Your hands scrambled for something, anything, to hold onto as he took you apart in the most intimate way. While his tongue twisted in your folds, lashed at your clit, your hands grabbed at the edge of the desk, his strong shoulders, and the short black locks of his hair. Pleasure rose fast and intense, he was relentless. Your high cries filled his study when you came on his tongue, his tight grip keeping your hips immobile.

Those blue eyes stayed on you, enjoying the sight of you drowning in pleasure. Tommy lifted his head, triumph bleeding into his expression as you lay there trying to breathe.

"As much as I enjoyed how needy you were when you carried my boy," he said, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, "I forgot how much I love watching you scream for me like this."

Your husband dove back in, this time wrapping his arms around your thighs to hold them open for his torment. With the whiskey still running through your veins, you were somewhere between trying to escape his sensual torment and pushing yourself at him, begging for more without words. The second time you came with his fingers sliding against your front wall and his tongue a barely-there flutter against your clit that had you begging for me. 

Tommy left you wilted on the desktop as he stood, his hands fumbling with his fine leather belt. Once he'd pushed down his trousers, he took himself in hand, red and swollen. Your gaze was riveted on the movement of his hand, the sight of his cock. You needed him so much.

He let go of himself only long enough to grab your thighs and drag you to the edge of his desk. Pulling your thighs over his hips, he positioned himself at your entrance. Tommy roughly grabbed your hips with his hands. You weren't sure if he was thrusting roughly into you or working you back and forth on his cock. 

All you knew was that you craved being filled by him, and he gave you what you wanted. You arched your back, pleading like a mindless thing atop his desk as he fucked you like he never meant to stop. Your thighs clamped around his slim hips, your slick inner walls trying to grab him with every pass. You moaned and pleaded, an indecent chorus that kept in time with the rhythmic sound of slapping flesh. 

Tommy kept shifting his thrusts until he found that space inside you that shattered your sanity and sent you sailing over the edge. At some point during your release, your husband captured your hands, pinning them to the desk on either side of your head. Now he hovered over you, watching your face as he fucked you harder and faster. The expensive fabric of his waistcoat was a cool slide against your breasts. The chain of his pocket watch was a cold shimmer against your heated skin. 

"Want you to feel me for days," he whispered hotly into your ear as his lips seared the side of your neck. "I want to keep coming in you until my spend is dripping out of you."

You wanted to grab him, to hang onto him, but his hands held yours to the desk. His thrusts came harder and faster as he chased his own release. 

"Want you full with my child again," he whispered as his lips and tongue teased the shell of your ear. "Swollen and beautiful... needing my cock to split you open every night. You begged me so sweetly..."

His eyes squeezed shut as he came, pumping into you with everything had. His lips parted as he struggled to breathe, furiously pushing into you over and over until he gave you everything he had. Until he had you trembling under him, making you take everything. All of him.

***

Ledgers lay open across his desk, untouched. The fire had burned low and the midday sun was dimming as clouds began to gather in the sky beyond his study windows.

Tommy sat in his chair with his six-month-old son asleep against his chest, one impossibly small fist wrapped around the fabric of his waistcoat.

For once, business could wait.

A quiet knock at the door drew his attention. 

"Come."

Frances stepped inside carrying another stack of correspondence, but paused when she saw them, smiling. The older woman he'd hired to help run his house was more than capable, but she was also caring. 

"I didn't mean to disturb you."

"You haven't," he said.

Her gaze drifted toward the ceiling. "Mrs. Shelby is asleep."

Tommy glanced upward instinctively.

"She usually isn't at this hour," Frances added. "I hope she's feeling well."

A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "She's tired."

Frances smiled knowingly. "The little master keeping everyone awake?"

Not the little one. Tommy looked down at the sleeping boy. "Something like that."

The woman hesitated. "I could take him if you've work to do."

"No." Tommy shook his head. "He'll stay with me."

Frances nodded, leaving the correspondence she brought where she always did. "As you wish, Mr. Shelby."

Once she left, the room settled back into silence.

Tommy watched his son sleeping. Malachy stirred, making a tiny dissatisfied sound before settling again.

With a hand smoothing against his son's back, he said, "You've no idea where you've landed, have you?"

Another sleepy sigh.

"You'll meet dangerous men one day," he explained, watching the tiny fingers flex against his waistcoat. His thumb absently stroked the boy's back. "Men like Alfie Solomons. They'll make you laugh. That's the first thing."

His smile faded as he thought about Alfie catching him off guard today. Showing up at his home, getting an eye full of his wife.

"Never mistake a sense of humor for harmlessness," he continued, shifting the baby higher on his shoulder. "Men like Alfie want you comfortable because comfortable men stop paying attention."

Tommy watched the dying embers of the fire for just a moment. 

"He'll tell you a story, and half of it will be true. The other half's there to stop you asking the questions that matter."

Malachy's eyes fluttered open, gazing up at him for just an instant before closing again. Eyes that looked much like his own.

"If a clever man starts talking too much..." He quietly chuckled. "...listen to what he isn't saying. And don't underestimate him. The moment you do, you've made a mistake."

Tommy thought of his wife sleeping in the safety of his bed. The moment he had with his son, knowing the devils were far from his gates. For now. That security was earned through hard work and calculation. He'd teach his son what do and he'd adapt to whatever path life took him on. 

"Respect dangerous men, Malachy," he said slowly. "Never admire them."

Admiration clouded judgment, and he'd seen men become fascinated by power, reputation, and charisma. Alfie Solomons possessed all three.

"You'll like him," Tommy went on. "Most people do."

His wife had although she'd also feared him on some level. Not enough. But he'd teach her too. 

"That's what makes him dangerous."

A long silence followed. 

"But you'll learn," he told his son with quiet certainty. "I'll teach you."

Tommy chuckled under his breath. "You'll think your father's suspicious, probably tell your Mum I'm impossible. And she'll agree with you."

His wife still believed there was good to be found in most people and somehow married a man who searched every room for exits.

Tommy sincerely hoped he inherited his mother's heart. But he intended to give him his eyes.

He sat there without moving for a little while longer, the warm weight of his son in his arms, something he wanted burned into his memory. His ledgers remained untouched.

"Right," he said. "Khuzdul lesson."

You looked at him. "Gandalf told me your language was secret." You teased.

"It is, but since it is in fact our language, we're the ones that can make exceptions." He said it with a wink and complete airiness, as though this were a minor administrative point. "Balin says it's practical. If you're going to be with us, you should know a few phrases. Useful ones."

"Like what?"

"Greetings, first." He held up a finger. "Oytarg—that's hello, more or less."

You tried it. The Y sat wrong in your mouth, somewhere between the sounds you'd normally make, and what came out was approximately in the right region if the right region were a fairly large and loosely defined area.

Bofur's expression did something heroic, in that it didnt move save for a twitch of the left corner, and barely a snort of laughter.

"Close," he said.

"That was terrible," you said.

"It was a—attempt."

"You're doing the thing Kíli does where you say attempt because you can't say good."

Bofur laughed at that, open and genuine, and Dori, riding on your other side, made a sound of agreement that he immediately tried to disguise as a cough when Bofur looked at him.

"Oytarg," Bofur said again, more slowly, breaking it into its components. "The second syllable—your tongue needs to go here." He pointed, unhelpfully, at the general region of his own mouth.

You tried again.

From behind you, Kíli said something in Khuzdul that made Fíli choke on whatever he was eating.

"What did he say?" you asked.

"Nothing," said Bofur, in the tone of a man deploying the word nothing as a very strategic manoeuvre to avoid warfare.

"It sounded like something."

"He said it sounded like you were trying to sneeze and could not commit," Fíli said, from a diplomatic distance.

"Fíli," Bofur said.

"She asked."

You pulled a face at Kíli, who was grinning with the uncomplicated delight of someone having an excellent morning, and tried—"Oytarg" again. This time it was better. Not good—you could hear the gap between what you were producing and what Bofur had said—but the Y had found its place, at least approximately.

Bofur looked genuinely pleased. Not the diplomatic pleased of a teacher managing expectations but the real kind, and it settled something in your chest that had been quietly insecure about the whole exercise. "Nan'ith,"he said. "That one you can try—it means little sister."

"Nan'ith," you repeated, and this one came out better because the sounds were closer to things you already knew how to make.

Something happened at the edges of the group—a subtle shift, a slight drawing-in. It would have been impossible to point to any single thing and say there, that is the change, but it was there. Nori, who had been riding a horse-length ahead, dropped back half a pace without any apparent reason. Glóin looked over with the quick attention of someone responding to a signal he hadn't consciously noticed. Even Dwalin, who communicated primarily through his physical presence and the weight of his general regard, angled his pony slightly inward.

None of them said anything about it. The lesson continued.

"Khemnar," Bofur said next. "That one means—well, roughly—you have my thanks. Though its a bit formal. You'd use it for something important."

"Khemnar," you said.

Ori, who had been riding very quietly nearby with his book closed—he'd stopped trying to read on horseback after the incident on day three—looked up and said something quietly in Khuzdul that you didn't catch. Balin, ahead of him, smiled without turning around.

"What did Ori say?" you asked Bofur.

Bofur glanced at Ori, who had gone slightly pink. "He said your accent is charming," Bofur said, which you strongly suspected was a generous translation.

You made it through Tâhalj—which meant friend, and which Bofur delivered with a matter-of-fact warmth that made you want to memorise it immediately—and Tharâkh, which meant something like the road or the path ahead and had a rolled r that took you six tries and a commentary from the peanut gallery, before Bilbo, riding up alongside from where he'd been thoughtfully near the back, offered that your pronunciation was markedly better than his, which was kind and probably somewhat true.

"You speak Khuzdul?" you said.

"Ah—No," said Bilbo. "Not exactly"

"Not a single word," Bofur confirmed. "He tried 'Oytarg' once and his pony bit him."

"She didn't bite me because of the Khuzdul—" Bilbo sighed.

"We can't be entirely certain," said Kíli with a wink.

"I can be quite certain, Myrtle bit me because Bombur startled her, which had nothing to do with—" He stopped. Looked at the general run of faces turned toward him with varying degrees of innocent attention. "We're not going to have a reasonable conversation about this, are we."

"No," said Fíli, pleasantly.

Bilbo made a small, undignified sound and looked at the path ahead, and you bit down on a smile and asked Bofur what the Khuzdul word for mountain was.

"'Urâd," he said.

"'Urâd," you repeated.

"There you go," Bofur said, and there was something in his voice that was not quite sentiment and was very close to it. "You're on your way."

The camp for the evening was set up at the edge of a shallow valley as the light was beginning its long gold lean toward evening, next to some sort of ruin and calling it that was rather generous—a chimney, still standing, in the stubborn way of chimneys, the stones dark with old weathering. Beside it the ghost of a frame, a few cross-beams leaning against each other without the walls that had once supported them. A handful of roof tiles had survived, some scattered in the grass with the randomness of things that had given up being in a specific order. Whatever it had been, it was a long time ago.

Thorin looked at it from his pony, said something to Dwalin that you didn't catch and gestured toward the slight depression of ground beside the ruin's remaining chimney. Good wind shelter. Reasonable sightlines.

The unpacking proceeded in the familiar orchestration of it—packs down, ponies seen to, Bombur immediately engaging with the question of the fire with his characteristic single-minded focus. You were in the middle of unloading one of the supply packs when you noticed Gandalf.

He was standing at the edge of the campsite, slightly separate from the activity, and his head was turned toward the south with the very specific quality of attention that meant he was listening to something that wasn't a sound. His staff was in his hand. His brows were drawn together—not concerned, exactly, but engaged with something you couldn't see.

Then he walked away.

Not we're stopping for the evening and Gandalf has elected to take a walk. Not a gradual increase in distance. He simply turned and walked, with purpose, toward the low ridge to the south, and kept walking until the trees took him, and then he was gone.

You looked at Balin.

Balin was watching the treeline with an expression that communicated, without any words whatsoever, that he had no more information about this than you did. He picked up the pack he'd set down and carried on with the evening.

You looked at the treeline for another moment.

Then picked up your own pack and carried on, because the alternative was standing in the middle of the camp looking at trees, which was not useful and Dwalin was already watching you.

Dinner was Bombur's barley again, with a variation involving something leafy that had been foraging-obtained by Óin during the afternoon and which he presented with the brief satisfaction of a man who considers self-sufficiency a virtue. It was good. Bombur had a way of making field food taste like something a person would choose, which was a gift you'd developed a serious appreciation for.

You'd taken over the task of distribution—it had happened organically, sometime around day nine, when you'd been closest to the pot and had just started handing bowls along and no one had objected. It suited you as much as the collection and washing of the companies many dishes. It was something concrete to do, a small shape of usefulness in a context where most of your useful skills were stubbornly inapplicable.

Kíli appeared at your elbow while you were filling the second round of bowls, with Fíli a half-step behind him and both of them wearing the specific expression of co-conspirators who had been workshopping something.

"We've got one for you," Kíli said.

"For what?"

"Khuzdul Phrases."

You looked at him. The expression on his face was the wrong kind of helpful. "How suspicious do i need to be ?" you asked.

"Don't be suspicious. It's a—it's a greeting. Respectful. You can use it when you're handing out the bowls."

"A respectful greeting," you said.

"Very respectful," Fíli confirmed, with a completely straight face.

You should have trusted your instincts, you would reflect on this later. "Abanjabl," Kíli said, carefully, with the conscientious pronunciation of a teacher who wants their student to get it right. "Abanjabl. Try it."

"Abanjabl," you repeated.

"Perfect," said Kíli, with a delight that should have been your second warning.

You picked up the bowls and moved around the fire, handing them out in the order you'd fallen into—Balin first, then Dori and Ori, then the cluster of Glóin and Óin, then Bifur and Bombur. You murmured 'Abanjabl' as you went, partly because you were genuinely trying to practise and partly because the camp was loud enough that you were mostly saying it to yourself, a quiet repetition to cement the sounds.

Ori made a sound when you handed him his bowl. Something short and sharp and immediately suppressed. You glanced at him. He was looking fixedly at his dinner.

Glóin cleared his throat. Pointedly. In a direction that was not toward you.

You kept going, filing it in the back of your mind, and reached Thorin.

Thorin was seated slightly apart, where he often sat in the evenings, looking at something in the middle distance that might have been the view or might have been a thought he was working through.

You held out the bowl and said, automatically, "Abanjabl, Be careful its hot." because you'd been saying it for the last two minutes and it was already in your mouth.

Thorin's eyes came to you, they were sharp in the specific way that meant he'd heard something he had not expected, and the sharpness was not warm.

You held the bowl out. "Dinner?" you repeated, because the silence had taken on a quality you didn't understand but were fairly certain meant you'd done something wrong.

Thorin took the bowl without a word. His gaze tracked past you to where Kíli was sitting by the fire, and the look he sent across the camp made Kíli become very interested in his own soup with an immediacy that was its own form of confession.

You turned around.

"What does Abanjabl mean?" you said as you straightened.

Kíli had found something fascinating in his soup. Fíli had his hand over his mouth.

"Kíli, Son of Víli" you said firmly, as you gave him a pointed look and what you hoped was the dwarven equivalent of his full government name.

"It's—it's affectionate," Kíli said. "In context."

"Which context makes it is affectionate?"

"A very specific context," he said. "That doesn't—that isn't this context, actually, now that I think about it—"

"What does it mean?"

Bofur, across the fire, made a helpless gesture. "Roughly," he said, with the expression of a man watching a situation unfold from what he hopes is a safe distance, "your brain is made of stones."

A silence.

"Your brai—oh shit." you repeated.

"The stone comparison is—it's not complimentary, exactly—"

"I've been saying it to everyone."

"You have, yes."

"I said it to Balin." Your stomach dropped and did a small summersault.

"Balin's a forgiving sort," Bofur offered.

You looked at Kíli. Kíli had the expression of a person who had calculated that the outcome was going to be worse than anticipated and was now processing this in real time. "It seemed funnier in planning," he said. "In my defence—"

"There is no defence for that," Thorin said, low and precise, "Neither of you will teach any maiden or member of this company words to use against another for your own amusement. You will apologise."

Across the camp, you heard—very distinctly—Balin make a sound that was absolutely a laugh that had been converted, at great personal effort, into a cough.

You turned back to Thorin, who was looking at you with an expression that you could not fully read but which had, possibly, a very faint suggestion at the edges of it that was not entirely severe.

"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't know what it meant."

Thorin looked at you for a moment. Then he looked passed you at Kíli, and whatever the look contained made Kíli sit significantly straighter. Then he finally took his dinner, his expression shifted It wasn't warm, exactly. But it wasn't cold or dismissive either and there was something underneath it—not quite amusement, but adjacent to it, the faint suggestion of a thing he was actively declining to let his face show. "You'll know better next time."

You went back to the pot, picked up your own bowl, and sat down with deliberate calm.

"You said it to Dwalin as well," Fíli said, from what he had decided was a safe distance.

"I know," you said.

"Just—for completeness."

"I know, Fíli—could you please. Stop. Talking. About it."

The camp had wound down in its usual way—fire lower, voices quieter, the company finding its evening rhythms. You were sitting with your back against the ruined chimney stones, which retained traces of the day's warmth in a way that was very welcome as the night air sharpened, you had a book from Balin's saddlebag—borrowed, with permission—open in your lap, though you were spending more time looking at the stars than reading in the dim light.

Gandalf had not come back. This fact had been sitting in the back of your mind since before dinner and had not diminished with time. You'd asked Balin about it during the meal and he'd said, he'll be back when he's back, which was true and helpful in the way that things were sometimes true and not helpful at all. Fíli had said, he does this, which told you something about frequency but nothing about what this was. Thorin had said nothing, which told you, on this evidence, that this was a known and not entirely welcome pattern.

As the fire burned low, most of the company was in various stages of sleep—Bombur definitively, Óin with the medically useful ability to be immediately unconscious and immediately alert, Dori with what appeared to be sincere dedication to the concept of unconsciousness.

Kíli and Fíli were on watch at the northern edge of camp, a shape in the dark outside the firelight.

The southern treeline where Gandalf had disappeared was black and still.

You heard Fíli before you saw him—that sound of someone going running at speed, which was distinct enough to pull you upright before the fire had registered the movement, and then he was at the centre of camp and his voice was carrying the specific tight quality of someone delivering urgent information in as few words as possible.

"Trolls," he panted, sucking in breath from the sprint. "They've got Bilbo."

It happened almost faster than you could track—weapons were up, voices low and clipped with the particular efficiency of dwarves who had done this kind of thing before, Dwalin already moving toward the trees with his axes drawn, Thorin's voice cutting through the chaos with short, sharp instructions that the rest of the company fell into without question.

You were on your feet too, moving on pure instinct and half-formed thoughts propelling you toward the treeline with the rest of them.

"Bilbo, oh gods, Bilbo"

You made it fifteen steps before something closed around your arm—not rough, but absolute, the kind of grip that had no interest in your momentum—and you turned to find Thorin.

"Stay," he barked.

"What? No — I'm coming, I can't just—" you started.

"Stay at camp." he said, and there was nothing in it now of the warmth that had briefly flickered earlier in the evening—this was flat, immovable, the voice of someone who did not have time to argue and was not going to indulge you. "You cannot fight. You will be a body to protect in a fight that needs none. Stay here."

The word hit somewhere in the chest that it was clearly aimed at. You opened your mouth.

"Stay, please." He offered not waiting for your nod before he was gone, following the company into the dark between the trees, the sound of them diminishing quickly into the silence of a forest that has absorbed a group of armed people and given nothing back.

You stood at the edge of the camp in the firelight with your heart slamming against your ribs and absolutely no idea what to do with any part of yourself.

Okay, you thought. Okay. He's right. You'd be a liability. You know you'd be a liability. Thorin has physically corrected your grip on a sword, multiple times. You have absolutely no business—

From the direction the company had gone, you heard shouting. A clash of metal, brief. Then voices—not battle voices, something different.

Then nothing.

You paced twelve step from the fire to the edge of the camp, then turned worrying your nail with your teeth.

The fire was dying and you didn't feed it because the light felt conspicuous, and you paced the width of the camp in the dark with your thoughts

They're fine, they're thirteen dwarves and they've done this before—centuries collectively and they're fine.

You turned and paced back the length of the camp.

Bilbo is not a dwarf and hasn't done this before, shit, and they said the trolls had him—wait, trolls are a real thing ? which is honestly a lot, I wonder if they live under bridges ?—ugh, focus, the point is trolls are real and Bilbo is— and the company is—

No sound came from the trees. What if something has happened and I'm here pacing like an idiot I'll never forgive myself.

You turned, if I go in there and make it worse I will also never forgive myself.

Shit, shit ok ummm at what point do those two options change places, because right now I've been pacing for what feels like forty minutes—

You checked your wrist for a watch that wasn't there. You'd stopped doing this, mostly. It happened still, sometimes, when the disorientation peaked.

You were so deep inside the spiral of it—so thoroughly lost in the increasingly unhinged internal argument between stay and go—that you didn't hear Gandalf arrive until his hand landed on your shoulder.

You very nearly screamed—the sound that came out was closer to a strangled yelp, your entire body flinching sideways hard enough that you nearly went down, your heart slamming up into your throat with a violence that left you genuinely lightheaded.

"Where did you—Gandalf?—you can't just—" you breathed, pressing a hand to your throat. "Where did you come from?"

"Later," Gandalf said, and his voice had a quality to it that was different from usual—not alarmed, Gandalf did not alarm, but focused, in a way that its usual mild layers were not there. He was already looking toward the trees. "The company—"

"I know, I know, Fíli said trolls — they went, Thorin told me to stay—"

"Good." He was moving. "Come."

"But Thorin said—"

"Do you listen to every instruction given to you by dwarves ?"

"Well no, b-but that's because until 15 days ago—"

"Good, follow me." Gandalf said, which was not the same instruction but had the quality of finality, and you went.

He moved fast for a person with a staff, and you had to keep up rather than keep pace, and you did it without making more noise than necessary because the dark between the trees was thick and the quality of quiet ahead of you made every additional sound feel like an error.

Gandalf made no sound at all, which was—really quite strange, for someone his size and you were adding it to the growing list of things about him that you were going to think about more carefully when, or if you ever found the capacity.

The clearing appeared through the trees like something out of a dream—not a pleasant one. Firelight flickering orange between the trunks, the low rumbling murmur of enormous voices, a smell of woodsmoke and something else underneath it that you didn't want to examine too closely.

You registered the size of them first, the size and then the shape, and your brain did a brief, absolute shutdown and then rebooted with the information that these were real.

These were trolls, and they were real.

Gandalf drew you down behind a fallen log at the edge of the small clearing, and you peered over the top of it with your heart still lodged in your throat.

Three trolls. Enormous, grey-skinned, lumbering things, easily the size of a house, gathered around a roaring fire with the slack-jawed stupidity of creatures who had clearly never been mistaken for clever. And there, strung on a long spit positioned over the fire, were several of the company—Dwalin's extraordinary head, Dori, Glóin, others you couldn't immediately identify in the firelight, all of them tied at wrist and ankle to a turning pole, equally helpless and furious. The rest were crammed into a pile of burlap sacks lined up nearby, only their heads visible above the rough fabric, an assortment of expressions ranging from outrage to grim resignation.

And in the middle of it all, at the base of three enormous sets of troll feet with the desperate, improvisational energy of someone whose plan was being made up in real time, was Bilbo.

"—the secret," he was saying, breathlessly, to the nearest troll, "to cooking dwarf—properly, I mean, if you want to do it right—is in the preparation. You can't just—you can't just throw them straight on, that's—that's sort of errr amateur frankly—"

"What's wrong with how we do it?" rumbled one of the trolls, a vast hulking thing with a particularly unfortunate nose, pausing with a hand halfway to grabbing for the spit.

"Well, for one thing," Bilbo said, edging backward as the troll's attention swung toward him, "they're not —they're not seasoned. At all. You want to—you should rub them down first, get under the skin a bit, otherwise you're just—you're just going to be chewing on smelly boot leather, frankly, and who wants that—"

"He's lyin'!" came a furious, muffled voice from one of the bound dwarves—Kíli, you thought, twisting against his ropes with limited success. "Don't you dare give them ideas—"

"I'm trying to buy us time," Bilbo hissed back, with the particular strained whisper of a person whose deception is rapidly becoming common knowledge to the very people he's trying to save.

"Skin off, is it," said the second troll, considering this with the slow, grinding deliberation of something that did not think quickly under the best of circumstances. He reached for Bombur with one enormous hand.

"NO—no, not—don't take the skin off, I mean you season through it, with herbs, like—" Bilbo's voice climbed in pitch, increasingly desperate. "Like, sage, perhaps, or—do you have any sage?"

The third troll, who had said nothing up to this point and had instead been peering with deep suspicion at the row of sacks, gave one of them an experimental, contemplative poke. "What about this lot," he said. "Could just eat 'em raw."

"Raw," Bilbo said, in the strangled tone of someone watching their entire improvised strategy collapse. "No, you absolutely don't want —that's—that's how you get parasites, actually, this lot is riddled with them, you'd be sick—honestly I wouldnt risk it—"

Beside you, behind the log, Gandalf had gone very still, his eyes fixed on the eastern horizon with a focus that had nothing to do with the chaos unfolding in front of you.

"Stay here," Gandalf said, very low.

"What? No, you can't just—"

"Stay here," Gandalf reiterated, firmly and quietly and with a look that communicated that this was not negotiable in the way that Thorin's instructions hadn't been negotiable.

"This is the second time tonight that someone has—"

But he was already gone—simply gone, the space beside you empty, his shape vanishing into the dark trees with no more explanation than that, and you sat there behind the log with your mouth still open around the protest you hadn't gotten to finish and the very distinct, very uncharitable thoughts.

"—you've got to be kidding me right now."

You sat there for several long, agonising minutes, watching Bilbo's improvised culinary lecture grow increasingly strained, watching the trolls' patience visibly fraying, watching Dwalin strain uselessly against the ropes binding him to the spit, and the fear in your chest curdled, slowly, into something with a harder edge to it.

"I'm not just going to sit here."

You looked at the row of sacks. At the dwarves bound nearest you—and there, at the end of the row, unmistakable even in the dim firelight, was Thorin, jaw set, eyes scanning the clearing with the sharp, contained fury of someone calculating every possible angle of escape and finding none of them currently viable.

You feet moved, well before your brain caught up.

You stayed low, your heart hammering, every snapped twig underfoot sounding to your own ears like a gunshot, and you made your slow, careful way around the edge of the clearing, behind the cover of the trees, until you reached the back of the row of sacks where Thorin lay bound.

His head turned the instant you got close, and his eyes, when they found you, went wide with something that was not relief.

"What are you doing," he hissed, the words barely audible, furious in their quietness. "Go back. Go back to the camp."

"I'm not leaving you here," you whispered back, already working at the rope binding the sack closed at his neck, your fingers clumsy and shaking against a knot that had been tied by hands considerably larger and stronger than yours.

"This is not a place for you. You cannot fight three trolls—"

"I'm not fighting them, I'm untying you—"

"You should be back at the camp, where it is safe—"

"Shh," you breathed.

Thorin's expression had done something complicated in response to that. "You were told to stay at camp," he repeated, at a volume that was mostly breath and ferocious exasperation.

"I know," you whispered, working the knot, which was tight and your hands were not entirely steady. "I was."

"You should not be here."

"Also something I know."

"If they see you—"

"Then—well—guess I'd stop being here," you breathed, and got one loop of the knot free, which was progress. "How are you?"

"How am I—" He stopped, as though the question was too absurd to navigate in current conditions. "I am in a sack."

"Yeah, I see that. Sorry—" the knot had tightened when you pulled the wrong end — "one sec—"

"You should be at camp."

"You want me to go ? Leave you here—let you get squashed like a dwarven panini," you hissed, with the quiet intensity of someone making an important point while also committing a small act of heroism. "I am not going to leave you."

A breif pause. Thorin looked at you and his expression had changed again, though you couldn't spare enough attention from the knot to read the change. "What is a panini?"

"It's—" The second loop came free. "It's a—it's like a sandwich. That's been pressed flat. By something very heavy."

"A sandwich."

"Like—bread with things in it—you know flour water—"

"I know what bread is."

"I know you know what bread is, that wasn't—" The knot came loose. You felt it go and let out a breath that you'd been holding since you left the log. "Can you—"

Thorin was already working the sack open from inside with the efficiency of a person who had been waiting for this exact moment and had his strategy entirely ready. He came out of it in a controlled movement that barely made a sound, which was impressive given the circumstances, and crouched beside you in the shadow.

He looked at you. Close, and dark, and with an expression that had several things in it that would have been very interesting to examine if you were not currently beside a troll fire trying not to be noticed.

"Go back to the treeline," he said.

"I can help with the others—"

"Treeline." And because you were about to argue, he added, quietly "I'll get the others. You've done what you came to do. Go."

Thorin flexed his hands and looked at you—properly looked at you, in the dim light, with an expression that had shed most of its fury and left something else underneath it, something you didn't have time to examine because at that exact moment, a voice—enormous, booming, entirely unexpected—cut across the clearing, making you flinch at the suddenness of it.

"The dawn will take you all!"

Gandalf. Standing atop a boulder, his staff raised, his grey robes catching the luminous pale edge of the waking sunrise as it began breaking over the hills. He brought the staff down with tremendous force, splitting the boulder beneath his feet clean in two, and the light came pouring through the gap and across the clearing in a single decisive wave.

The trolls turned. Saw the light and froze.

You watched, with your hand still wrapped around the edge of Thorin's burlap sack, as three enormous grey shapes stiffened, mid-motion, mid-argument, mid-everything—and then, with a series of low groaning cracks that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside the rock itself, turned, entirely and completely, to stone.

It was—very strange, actually. Watching something that large and loud and present simply stop. Three shapes in the early light, arms mid-gesture, frozen in their argument, grey and still and permanent.

Bilbo sat down in the grass, you understood the impulse.

•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•

The walk back to camp had the feeling that walks sometimes have after the worst of something is over—the particular loose quality of limbs that were ready for something to happen and are now standing down, the brain trying to resettle itself into normal operations and finding the transition slightly uneven. Dwarves talked. Bilbo described his strategy in a tone of continued mild disbelief at himself. Dwalin, emerging from the clearing, had looked at you with an expression that acknowledged what he'd seen you do without commenting on it, and had moved on, which from Dwalin was a form of approval.

You sat at the fire that Bofur rebuilt without being asked, and held a cup of water that Balin pressed into your hands, and let the light grow around you, and were very quiet.

You felt, rather than saw, someone settle beside you. Close enough that your shoulder registered his proximity, not close enough to touch, facing the fire the same direction you were, one knee bent and his arm resting atop it. He said nothing for a moment. You said nothing back. The fire crackled. Bilbo somewhere behind you was still talking.

"Abanjabl," Thorin said.

You turned and looked at him.

His expression was—not warm, exactly. Thorin's expressions had their own vocabulary and you were still learning it, but there was something at the edge of his eyes that was different from his normal registered settings. "You said it to me at dinner," he said.

"I know. I'm sorry. I didn't know what it—"

"You also said it to Dwalin." There was something in the delivery that was not quite a smile but occupied the space in his voice where a smile might have been if Thorin were a different kind of person. "Dwalin has not had his brain compared to stone in living memory."

"That's—that's not—I'm very sorry about that."

"Don't be," Thorin said. "The expression on his face was—" He huffed the begins of a laugh at the memory before he stopped himself with a cough. "In any case." He shifted slightly, and his weight settled into a different posture, still but deliberate, a person choosing to stay rather than preparing to leave. "You want to learn Khuzdul."

"I want to stop accidentally insulting people."

"The goals are related." He looked at the fire. "Then we'll begin properly." His eyes came back to you with the focused directness that was simply the way he looked at things, and you had learned by now to hold it rather than glancing away. "Not from Fíli or Kíli. From the beginning." A pause. "If you want."

You looked at him. The light was fully morning now, gold and clean across the hills, and the camp was alive around you with the low movement of dwarves doing practical things, and Gandalf was somewhere producing tea, and Mindy was visible at the edge of the tether line with her blaze catching the light.

"Yes," you said, fiddling with the edge of your sleeve. "Yes, please."

Thorin nodded once. Looked at the fire. And then, with the careful, deliberate quality of someone who does not do things carelessly and is choosing to give you something that is genuinely valued. "Khuzdul begins with address," he said. "How you speak to something tells you what you think of it. In our language, this is not incidental. It is the first thing." He looked at you. "Our word for joke is Gamâk. Say it."

"Gamâk," you said.

He was quiet for a moment, hearing it. "Your vowels are short," he said. "Khuzdul holds them longer." He said it again. You said it again. "Better," he said, and it was specific rather than diplomatic, which meant it was true, and the small, precise warmth of that settled somewhere it was needed.

You held the word in your mouth. Gamâk. Felt the shape of it.

"Gamâk," you said again.

Thorin's expression did something at its edges. Not quite what you'd seen from anyone else, not Kíli's open grin or Bofur's easy warmth. Something quieter and less practised.

"Again," he said.

The morning moved on around you. The camp woke into itself. Bilbo finally stopped talking. Somewhere Bombur began the quest of beginning breakfast.

The guards along the wall jumped to attention, but their spears lowered the instant wide a spread of wings cast a shadow in a known shape.

A massive, majestic form followed. Scales harder than diamonds. Head with a crown of horns.

Golden eyes stared right at you as the dragon hovered. No guards came rushing. They knew not to come between a dragon and a person they chose.

Talons scraped along the sandy stones as the dragon curled its feet on the wide wall, resting its weight into a crouch as it brought its head closer to you.

Shaking, you slowly reached your hand forward. There was an instinct calling to run away in terror, but another pull tempted you to come forward. A new, unknown urge that you couldn't resist.

Witnesses saw. The word of it would spread within a day.

No one would stand between a dragon and its chosen rider. And you wouldn't step away.

The dragon's claws wrapped around your body with unexpected gentleness, though it was still scary to the point of nearly fainting as it lifted you and flew away.

In a few weeks you'd return to your people for a visit and proof of your new role, once the other riders taught you how to mount and communicate the dragon. At least, that's how the stories and rumours presented the process of learning the skill.

But when you're brought to the Dragon Mountains and into your dragon's lair, all of your previously formed imagines shatter into pieces.

You’d expected a lot of things when you agreed your husband’s oldest friend should come spend the holidays, but not this: naked and splayed open, your back against Bucky’s chest, and Steve knelt between your legs, focus absolute as they took you apart.

Bucky’s lips moved against your neck, not quite kissing, hand sliding to cup one aching breast. “You want to feel for the ridge, the soft roof inside. Feel it?”

Steve nodded, learning by the tremors that rippled through you.

And you? You could only moan as his fingers found the place only Bucky had touched before tonight.

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

Wiping at your brow, you stood up straight, taking a break from the boxes you were organizing. You looked around the room and took in the progress you had made the last couple of days. When you told Ms. Lange you were looking for work, she pointed you in the direction of city hall. She had an acquaintance there that had lost their assistant recently and they needed someone in the archives. It kept you out of the public eye and provided income. When they asked you your name, you gave them the same one you had given Ms. Lange – your first name along with Cora’s surname. Ms. Lange’s word on your character was reference enough. She had only known you a week, so you were grateful she had put in a good word for you.

The clock struck noon and you walked out of the room to go have lunch with your supervisor, Betty. She insisted on sitting together outside in the sun to get out of the building for a real break. And so far, she had brought two biscuits in her lunch, one to share with you every day.

Sitting outside initially had put you on edge until you realized there were tables behind the building, off away from the busy street. Betty was a chatterbox, so it saved you the trouble of having to think of stories about yourself. You listened while she again started talking about her newest grandbaby. She was proud and you could tell she loved them very much.

It was hard to not let your mind wander… wondering if you would ever be comfortable enough to settle down and have grandbabies of your own, let alone children.

Maybe some things were not meant to be.

<><><> 

As soon as Polly had given up Y/N’s address, Thomas threatened Ada to not sabotage him further before storming from the room to grab his jacket and cap. He was not going to bother even changing before going after her.

Arthur was still at a loss for words, looking at Polly and Ada in incredulity.

Raising his hand, he pointed at the door Thomas had just left from, “Do either of you know the shit I’ve had to deal with these last two weeks?”

“Arthur, this isn’t about you,” Polly told him, rolling her eyes slightly. “Y/N was suffocating, we helped.”

“And now how do you think she’s going to fare?” Ada demanded, leaning in towards Polly, fury rolling off her. “You thought Tommy was bad before?”

Polly sniffed, “It’s family first, Ada. As it always has been.”

“You’ve damn well made sure that Y/N is going to be part of the family!”

Ada made to leave the room but Arthur stopped her. “Oh, move, Arthur!”

“What are you doing?” he questioned.

“Calling the boarding house to warn her! What do you think?”

“Ada, you heard Thomas,” Arthur retorted.

“I don’t fucking care!” she snapped, trying to step around him.

Arthur grabbed her shoulders, fixing her with a hard stare. “Don’t make this worse. For anyone. He’s already riled up enough. He takes care of her. And she makes him happy. You have seen it.”

“He doesn’t make her happy! Why does no one care about that?”

“Tom needed her,” Arthur said firmly. “He still needs her.”

Ada cocked her head, searching his face. Slowly, she shook her head. “You knew the whole time, didn’t you?” Her gaze went to John momentarily. “You both did, didn’t you? She said he wasn’t alone when he took her from her flat.”

John started, “I didn’t—”

Arthur cut in, getting her attention again, “It doesn’t matter, Ada. What matters is business. Pol knows. I know. And I know you do too. Despite your reservations. Don’t make more of a mess. He’s fucking serious about taking things away from you. You’ll be able to watch over Y/N better from here anyway.”

Ada scoffed, “I can’t believe you all.”

Polly’s shoulders slumped as Ada shoved Arthur’s hands away from her. Arthur looked guilty but before he could say anything else, Thomas came back in, coat on and all. Ada looked away from him angrily, crossing her arms.

“Ada, you can see yourself out,” Thomas announced. She gave a scornful laugh, still refusing to look in his direction. “Pol, you go with her. I’ll call on you once we are settled back here.”

Polly stood, “Don’t you want us to wait to continue this discussion once you’re back?”

“No. We’ll need the night to settle. Y/N’s generally docile but I don’t want to go assuming things. It always gets me in a mess. But the conversation will happen. Arthur? John?”

Without another word, Thomas turned on his heel, strolling out of the room. Arthur and John followed, shooting apologetic looks in Ada’s direction who was still ignoring them.

“This is fucked!” Ada said after a few moments. She unfolded her arms and told Polly, “Y/N is never going to trust us again.”

“She’ll want for nothing, Ada,” Polly said, again trying to reassure someone who did not want to hear it.

“She’s going to be alone.” With venom, she mocked, “But at least Tommy gets what he wants. Damn everyone else as long as he is happy and continues bringing in cash.” She scoffed again, tears pricking once more. “Christ.”

She stormed past Polly, snatching her coat on the way.

<><><> 

Bag from the grocer tucked under your arm, you walked down the street towards home. You had stopped to pick up additions to dinner for tonight – a thank you for Ms. Lange getting you the job – as well as for your lunch the next two days.

Humming, you kept an eye out around you at everyone on the street. Some faces were becoming familiar along your route and you nodded in acknowledgement. Liverpool was not as populated and bustling as London, but it had its charm; it was a small concession to make being here instead of there. You did not feel comfortable being outside longer than necessary now anyhow.

Turning the corner onto your block, you stopped short, almost dropping your parcel. Your breath froze in your chest spotting John standing on the steps leading up to the boarding house. A second later, your knees almost buckled seeing Thomas exit the building, Arthur at his back.

As if he could sense you, Thomas looked across the way. He did a double take, recognition taking a second because of your new hair color.

Stumbling back, you fought to find your footing seeing him alert Arthur and John. You heard him shout out to you but you paid no heed. You still clutched the bag, tears beginning to blur your vision as panic threatened to overwhelm you. You wove in and out of the people on the pavement, trying to put distance between you and them.

You dove into an alley, dodging the garbage bins. You risked a look over your shoulder, hearing your name shouted again. Arthur and John had turned into the alley. Your face twisted up in confusion not seeing Thomas.

Looking forward again, you turned out of the alley.

And directly into Thomas’ arms.

You gasped as his hands clamped down on your biceps, steading the two of you after you tried to stop from colliding into him.

“Please—” you began to beg, trying to yank back from him.

He leaned in, and warned in a low tone, “Not a single word.” Your lip warbled and he squeezed on your arms tighter, making you wince. “Or a scream.”

Arthur and John ran out of the alley you heard behind you, blocking your escape that way.

Thomas glowered at you, displeasure swimming in his eyes. He was extraordinarily vexed; you could feel it radiating off his person. Your chest rose and fell rapidly, frightened of what he was going to do. People passed by without care, not noticing your predicament.

He would not dare hurt you here on the pavement.

Would he?

His eyes ran over you, lingering on your hair. Disappointed, he murmured, “Look what you’ve gone and done to your beautiful hair.” His eyes met yours. “Couldn’t hide you from me though, could it?”

How had he found you?

With a chiding tone, he said, “I don’t know what you thought you were fucking doing. But you’re going to go grab your things and we are going home.” Almost against your will, you started to shake your head in disagreement. Thomas nodded mockingly, repeating himself, “You’re going home, Y/N. Enough of this foolishness.”

He turned, bringing you to his side, beginning to march back in the direction of the boarding house.

“Making me worry for nothing other than pure selfishness,” he fumed. You struggled to keep up with his stride, holding back tears. But it was in vain. “I hope you’re proud of yourself. Driving me sick with worry that something terrible had befallen you. That you were hurt or worse, dead!”

He rounded the corner with you, bringing your house into view.

“But no. You plotted with me sister and me aunt to run off,” he sneered.

Your heart sank at that. They had told him where you were? Ada had seemed so concerned for you!

At the base of the stairs, you pulled away as Thomas reached for your bag.

“No,” you rasped, wiping at your eyes sloppily.

“Y/N, give it to me,” Thomas ordered. “John can put it in the car.”

“It’s for dinner,” you choked out. “For Ms. Lange.”

“Right. Then you give it to her and then we are grabbing your things,” Thomas muttered, leading you up the stairs. You hesitated again and he reached into his coat, aiming for his gun. "Y/N, if you make me have to threaten your landlady--"

"No!" You blurted. "Don't please. I'll do it."

His hand dropped and he scowled, "That's what I thought."

<><><> 

Arrow House loomed over you as you peered up at it from inside the car, Thomas holding your door open. You had sat stiffly when he parked, panic threatening to overwhelm you at the sight of the mansion again. Thomas had came around the car, opening the door and stood there, staring down his nose at you, impatience painted on his features.

“Come now,” Thomas sighed.

Slowly, you unfolded from the front seat and stood up beside the car. Arthur and John had already grabbed your things and were heading in through the front door.

“Don’t make me force you inside,” Thomas warned.

You took his warning seriously, remembering how he had handled you that night you called Florence when he was drunk. Your arm ached at the memory.

Elsie was standing in the entrance hall. “Dinner is almost ready, Mr. Shelby,” she informed him.

“Put it in the ice chest for now. Y/N and I have some rules to reestablish,” Thomas remarked coolly, walking past her.

As you passed her, her expression was unreadable. But you thought you sensed pity.

When Thomas slammed your bedroom door behind the pair of you, you flinched. Your bags were sitting near your wardrobe that Arthur and John had brought up. You stole a quick look around the room. Nothing had changed in your absence.

“You can forget about another show,” Thomas said, drawing your attention back to him. He was staring you down, watching as always. “Away from here of course. I could be talked into hiring some dancers to come perform with you around the holidays. I'm not a complete monster. That is… if you atone.”

He closed the space between the pair of you, coming into your personal space. You held yourself close, trying to avert your eyes. But his hand came to cup underneath your chin, lifting your head back up. His cologne wafted around you mixed with the lingering hint of cigarettes at his fingertips.

His voice was barely above a whisper, “You hurt me, love. I can’t trust you anymore.” He held both sides of your face, staring deeply into your eyes. “How am I to trust you? Eh?”

“Thomas—” you stammered.

“No. No more lies,” Thomas interjected, shaking his head. “I can’t trust what you say to me.”

His hands gripped you underneath your jawline, pulling you closer. His breath was hot as he scorned, "You need to show me again how sorry you are when you hurt me. Make me feel it."

His kiss was harsh, suffocating. Your head spun when he pulled away, dragging you to the bed. You barely avoided tripping on the rug. You put your hands up trying to stop him from forcing you onto the bed.

Thomas' lip curled and he spat, "The hard way then, eh? Maybe you aren't ready to apologize yet."

He whipped you around, yanking you back to his chest. Thomas pressed his face to your own, nose digging into your cheek as he drug his lips, sucking in roughly.

He husked in your ear, "You'll never belong to another man -- not while I breathe."

You had, in the absence of alternatives, found a routine, the dishes were your contribution, which had begun as a tentative offer on the second evening and had solidified by the fifth into something the company simply relied on, with the easy organic efficiency of people who were very good at distributing labour and not in the habit of questioning what worked.

Bofur helped. This had also settled into pattern without anyone explicitly deciding it—he simply appeared each evening at the end of the meal with his hat at its habitual angle and an expression of complete willingness, and the two of you worked through the camp's considerable collection of bowls,spoons and cutlery in a companionable division of labour that required very little conversation on your part because Bofur was capable of maintaining enough of one for both of you.

Today the light was still golden and good, the camp only half-assembled, the air smelled of woodsmoke and the cold sweetness of coming evening and Bofur was telling you something about his uncle and a goat that had clearly been funny the first time and remained funny in retrospect, and you were laughing—actually laughing, which was still occasionally surprising, the discovery that your body remembered how—when Gandalf's long shadow fell across your work.

He offered his bowl and his spoon with the slightly ceremonious gravity of a man who considered even small transactions worthy of his full attention, and you took them and handed him a cup of something warm that had been sitting near the fire—not quite tea, but hot and faintly herbed and the closest thing available to the sort of comfort a warm drink provided.

Gandalf wrapped both large hands around it and looked down at you from under the brim of his considerably sized hat with that expression he sometimes had—the one that looked like idle interest and was almost certainly something considerably more active.

"Bombur said it would help with my ribs," you explained. "I think it's just tea, honestly. But I thought—you look like you might appreciate it."

"I do appreciate it," Gandalf said, with a gravity that was not entirely serious and not entirely not. He turned the vessel in his long fingers. "And how are the ribs?"

"Better," you said. "Getting better." This was true. The sharper edge of it had softened over the days—closer to a general soreness that reminded you of itself when you moved carelessly but had stopped interrupting your breathing.

"I think another few days and I'll stop thinking about them."

"Good," he said. He looked at you over the clay vessel with eyes that had a quality you had not yet found the right word for—depth was the closest, but not quite right, because depth suggested distance, and this was more like the opposite of distance. Proximity to something very large. "You are settling in," he said.

"I'm—trying to," you said. "It's a lot."

"It is," he agreed, simply, without diminishing it. "And yet."

"And yet," you agreed, equally simply.

He took a sip of the drink. An expression crossed his face that might have been approval before he moved away.

Bofur appeared at your elbow. "He does that to everyone," he said, cheerfully, which confirmed that whatever it was had been legible enough to notice.

"Does what?" you asked, mostly to see what he'd say.

Bofur made a vague gesture toward the direction Gandalf had gone.

"The look," he said. "Like he's reading a letter you didn't know you posted to him"

You handed him a wet bowl to dry. "That's extremely accurate," you said.

Fíli found you before you'd finished, this was characteristic—he had a talent for appearing at the precise moment when you were nearly done with something and suggesting you do something else, which you suspected was a skill honed across many years of being an older brother. He had Kíli with him, as he almost always did, and Bilbo trailing slightly behind with the cautiously curious expression he deployed when he wasn't sure whether the thing being proposed was going to end well and had decided to come along and find out anyway.

"We're going to tend the ponies," Fíli said, in the tone of a person who was announcing something settled. "Come on."

"We've not finished—"

"Bofur's got it," Kíli said, looking at Bofur.

Bofur, who had not been consulted about this, looked at the remaining dishes, then at you, then at the brothers. "Yeah go on, I've got it," he confirmed, with the generosity of a dwarf who was sufficiently entertained by watching other people do things that he was willing to absorb the remaining workload.

The ponies were tethered at the edge of the camp on the far side from the fire, a comfortable distance away in the long grass, and they stood in the evening light with the calm, solid patience of animals that had made their peace with dwarves. They were short—sturdy, broad-bellied, with thick feathering around the hooves and the kind of temperament that suggested they had survived more difficult things than this journey and were not especially worried.

One of them, a pale grey with a blaze, turned her head toward you as you approached and her ears came forward with an attentiveness that was almost conversational.

"Hello, Mindy," you said, because you'd learned her name three days ago and horses were something normal, which distinguished them from approximately everything else in your current situation.

Mindy put her nose against your palm with the directness of an animal that liked you and was not shy about communicating this. You produced the apple you'd been hiding—slightly battered from being in your coat pocket, which seemed not to concern her—she took it with the efficient delicacy of a very well-mannered pony and you scratched her nose, and she leaned into it with a sigh that reorganised some of the tension in your shoulders.

"She never does that for me," Kíli observed, arriving at your elbow.

"Do you ever actually talk to her?" you said.

"I do talk to her."

"What do you say?"

A pause. "...I tell her to go faster."

"That's probably why," you said turning your full attention to Mindy who flicked an ear in what you chose to interpret as agreement.

Behind you, something landed in the grass near your feet.

You looked down at it. It was a sword. A real sword, short-bladed in the manner of the ones the brothers wore, its point stuck in the earth at a precise distance from your boots that suggested it had been placed rather than hap-hazardly thrown, but only just.

You looked up at Kíli, he's joking, said the part of your brain that processed these things. The rest of your brain looked at Kíli's expression and concluded that he was not, in fact, joking.

"I don't—" you started.

"You need to be able to defend yourself," Fíli said, arriving at Kíli's side with the tone of someone who had agreed this with his brother prior to the conversation and was here to provide backup. "Not well. Just—enough to whack something if the company is caught somewhere."

"I really don't—"

"We're going into dangerous country," Kíli said. His tone had dropped slightly from its usual brightness into something more serious. "There are things out there that—" He stopped and glanced at Bilbo, then back at you, with the specific calculation of a person deciding how alarming he should be. "Just. It would be better if you could. A little."

You looked at the sword.

You looked at Bilbo, who was looking at the sword with an expression that you suspected mirrored yours precisely.

"Apparently," Bilbo said, "we are going to learn to use swords."

"Apparently," you agreed.

The next twenty minutes were—well. Bilbo was game, which you respected enormously, and which did not entirely translate into aptitude, which you respected in a different way, because neither did yours.

Fíli had given you the very basic mechanics—hold it like this, not like that, the point goes toward the other person, which illicited a roll of your eyes—you had understood these instructions but found understanding them in motion was an entirely separate skill.

You'd been trying to do the thing Fíli had shown you—the basic deflection, with the footwork, nothing fancy—and Bilbo had moved slightly sooner than you'd expected, and the blade caught the side of his finger with the flat, which was not sharp and was not dangerous but was solid, and Bilbo made a sound and you dropped your sword immediately.

"Oh shit, I'm so sorry,"

"It's fine," Bilbo said, examining the finger with the affronted dignity of a hobbit who is not injured but has had a principle violated.

"I didn't mean to, I was trying to—"

"I know," he said. "I know, it's fine, it's not—" He looked at the finger. "Not even red," he confirmed, with mild surprise.

"Are you sure? I can—"

"It's fine," he repeated, with the kind patience of a person who was used to people worrying and had decided it was endearing rather than annoying.

"Try again?" You offered sheepishly.

"That's the spirit," said Kíli, from behind you, in a tone that communicated fond encouragement and the effort required not to laugh.

You and Bilbo looked at each other. An entire conversation passed in the glance—something about being the two people in this company who were least equipped for adventure, who had ended up in it anyway, who were standing in a field being gently mocked into action by two dwarves who meant it entirely kindly.

"I think," Bilbo said, with the measured dignity of a hobbit making an executive decision, "that we've done enough for this evening."

"Agreed," you said, and put the sword down with more care than it had been picked up with, and went to sit on the grass nearby, and Bilbo sat beside you, and after a moment Kíli gave up on the pretence of continuing and came and sat across from you, and Fíli settled beside his brother, and it turned out that what the four of you were actually good at was talking, which required no instruction and improved with practice.

It was into this that Balin arrived with the unhurried step of a dwarf who had a thing to do and had been thinking about how to do it for a while, and he was carrying something—a folded document, several pages worth, with the air of something official. He settled himself on a rock nearby with the composure of a person conducting business and looked at you with his kind, serious blue eyes.

"I've been meaning to speak to you," he said.

"Okay," you said, putting down the conversation you'd been in with Bilbo and giving him your full attention, because Balin's full attention always warranted your full attention in return.

He unrolled the document. It was—thick. He smoothed it against his knee and held it out toward you.

"Your contract," he said.

You looked at it. Then at him. Then at it again. "Pardon?"

"Your contract," Balin said. "With the company." He said it the way you said words to someone who was perhaps hard of hearing—clearly and without additional elaboration, under the assumption that the words themselves were sufficient.

"I—" You blinked. "I have a contract?"

A small pause in which Balin seemed to be recalibrating. "Bilbo has one," he said, by way of orientation.

"I know. I—yes. But that's because he's—" You gestured toward Bilbo, who had gone very still beside you with the expression of someone who had remembered something they should perhaps have mentioned sooner. "He's the—the burglar. He has a role. I just—I fell into a field."

"Aye," Balin said. "And we've brought you along. Which means—" he indicated the document, "—you ought to have the same provisions and protections as the rest of the company. In writing." He looked at you with the patient gravity of a dwarf who considered administrative thoroughness a form of respect. "It's only proper."

You took the document and looked at it. It was—comprehensive. You would give it that. There were clauses about provisions and there were clauses about the conduct of travel and there were several about the management of situations that sounded very alarming in print, and there were sections about the distribution of the—

Your eyes drifted down the page.

There were, you noted, quite a lot of clauses. Including some that seemed—unusual. Including one specific section, partway down the third page, that your eyes landed on and stopped.

"Balin,"

"Mm."

"What is—" You looked at the clause again, certain you'd misread it. You hadn't. "What's a hand clause?"

Balin looked up from where he'd been pointing out a different section. "Ah," he said, and something in his expression became careful in the way of a person who has been waiting for this question and has prepared for it. "That's simply a standard clause. For any maiden in the company who is—unattached."

"What does it mean?"

"It means," Balin said, with the particular kind of diplomatic composure that required effort, "that should anyone within the company—or encountered on the road—wish to—" He paused. "Wish to make an offer for your—"

You stared at him.

He finished the sentence with the expression of someone pushing through a door they know is going to lead somewhere difficult "—hand."

"My hand?" you said after some silence.

"Your hand," he confirmed.

"You mean they'd literally—" Your brain tried to construct the image and failed miserably. "They'd—come and—take my hand?"

You made a sawing motion across your wrist with your other hand.

"Not—no." Balin's composure had developed a faint quality of a man standing in water that was slowly rising. "An offer, for your hand. In—" He seemed to be choosing the next word with care. "In union—in marriage lass."

You stared at him for a very long, very vacant moment.

"Marriage."

"Aye, It simply means the terms would need to be—"

"I'm going to a—we're going to a mountain."

"We are."

"Why would I get married on the way to a mountain?"

"Well," Balin said, with the measured reasonableness of a dwarf who had thought this was going to be a much simpler conversation, "it's not common, certainly, but it's not unheard of, and the contract should cover all—"

"I'm not going to get married," you said. You could hear that your voice had gone flat. "I'm going to a mountain. I don't—I came through the pavement, Balin. I've been here a little over a week. I am absolutely not—" You stopped, because the end of the sentence came out much higher than the beginning, and took a breath.

"I assure you It's standard—"

"Does Bilbo have that clause?"

A pause. A short one, but present.

"Master Burglar is—" Balin began.

"Does. Bilbo. Have. That clause."

Bilbo, to his credit, looked genuinely apologetic. "I'm not sure I read mine all the—"

"Bilbo has different provisions," Balin said, which was not an answer but was delivered with the authority of one, and you recognised the architecture of a statement that was going to require more excavation than Balin appeared to be currently offering.

You looked at the contract. Then at Balin. Then at Bilbo, whose expression confirmed enough.

"Right," you said, and your voice had taken on the very particular flatness of a person who has identified an injustice and is deciding how to feel about it. "So Bilbo has different provisions, and I have a—a hand clause—because I'm—" You stopped, and rubbed your temple with your free hand.

"Because I'm a woman?"

"Excatly, you cannot be unprotected," Balin said, and there was a gravity in it that was entirely genuine, with no apology in it but also no dismissal. "Without family represented in this company, without a patriarchal representative—"

"A what now."

"Someone to—to act on your behalf. In matters of—" He looked at you. "In the traditions of the Dwarven people, a woman traveling without the representation of her family—"

"I don't have family here," you said. "I don't have family anywhere near here. I'm from a different—" You stopped, because explaining this was still a work in progress. "I'm not from here," you said instead. "I don't have anyone."

"Yes," Balin said, with a gentleness that was worse than impatience would have been. "That is precisely why the clause exists." He looked at you over the top of the contract with those blue eyes. "It is not meant as an insult, lass. It is meant as a provision. To ensure that if such a situation arose, you would not be—" He selected the word carefully. "Disadvantaged."

"And who would act as my—patriarchal representative," you said, and the words felt extremely strange as they passed your teeth.

"That is rather what I was going to ask you," Balin said, with the expression of a man who had been trying to get to this point for some time and was relieved to have arrived there. "If you have—"

"I don't," you said. "I don't have anyone to—there's no one." Something in saying it out loud landed in a way you hadn't anticipated. You looked down at the document so that the expression that crossed your face could do so without an audience. "So just—take it out, there's no one to—it doesn't apply—"

"It does apply," Balin said, patiently. "And there are—options."

You looked up at him, and something in your expression made him press his lips into a thin line.

"Moving on," he said, with the composure of a man making a tactical retreat to a better position, "there are other matters in here worth your attention—"

You let him move on, because your ribs still ached slightly when you breathed and you had decided that was your quota of difficult things for this segment of the evening.

"I may have offended her," Balin said.

He had found Gandalf at the fire, where the wizard was engaged in the practice of doing nothing in particular with the appearance of someone doing something very important. Balin settled himself nearby with the expression of a dwarf who had reviewed the entire conversation and arrived at a conclusion he was not entirely comfortable with.

Gandalf looked at him through the smoke trails of his pipe. "Did you?"

"The contract," Balin said. "I was explaining the terms. The patriarchal representative clause, and then the—" He cleared his throat. "The hand clause."

Several dwarves who were near enough to hear this exchange developed a sudden and intense interest in their various tasks.

"She took it poorly?" Gandalf said, in the tone of a man who already had a theory about this.

"She seemed—she seemed to think—" Balin looked uncomfortable, which was not an expression he wore often. "I'm not entirely sure what the lassie thought. But she went very quiet."

"Ah," said Gandalf.

Nori, who had not been invited into this conversation, offered from his position by the fire "I thought it was a fine contract, Balin."

"The terms were entirely standard," Dori agreed, from slightly further away, in the tone of a dwarf who had reviewed a contract or two in his time. "Better than standard, in fact—the compensations alone are quite—"

"She asked if Master Baggins had a hand clause," Balin said.

A small collective silence.

"...Well he doesn't need it, does he?" Kíli's voice finally broke the silence, from somewhere to the left.

"He does not," Balin said.

"Ah-Mmm," said Gandalf while slowly rearranging his lips around his pipe.

Glóin looked up from whatever he'd been doing. "She shouldn't be offended It's protective. My wife's contract when we first—well, her father negotiated the terms, but the protective clauses were the first thing he—"

"She doesn't have a father here," Balin said. "She doesn't have anyone." He looked at Gandalf. "I was wondering whether perhaps—whether you might serve as—" He cleared his throat again. "As her representative. Formally. Given that you seem to know a rather broad scope of things. I'm sure she would grow to—to trust your counsel."

Gandalf considered this for a long and slightly theatrical moment, in the way he considered things when he had already reached a conclusion and was simply allowing the appropriate amount of time to elapse before sharing it.

"I think," he said, "that this is a conversation best had with her directly. In time." He looked at Balin.

"You think she was offended ?" Balin said.

"I think," Gandalf said, carefully, "that she comes from somewhere with very different customs. And that what seems to her like one thing may be something else entirely." He drew on his pipe.

"She is not unlike our Mr Baggins in that respect. Full of assumptions that fit very well where she came from and require revision here."

Balin digested this. "Should I have explained it differently?"

"The difficulty is not in the explanation itself but in the context around it," Gandalf said. "Which she does not yet have." He looked in the direction you where sitting. "She'll understand. I suspect sooner than you'd think."

Gandalf came and sat beside you later, after the fire had been built up and the camp had properly settled, with the careful proximity of someone who has chosen to have a specific conversation and is deciding how to begin it.

"Balin is worried he's upset you," he said.

"He hasn't," you said, which was mostly true and was entirely what you intended to say regardless. "I just—that contract had—" You trailed off.

Gandalf looked at the fire for a moment. "May I tell you something?"

"Please," you said, because you were beginning to understand that when Gandalf offered information, the correct response was to accept it immediately.

"What you encountered today," he said, "and what you may encounter again—matters of representative clauses, of patriarchal provisions, of the particular administrative customs of Dwarves—these are not what they appear to be from the outside."

"They appear to be sexist from the outside," you said, because you were many things but you were not dishonest.

Gandalf looked at you with something that was not quite a smile but operated in the same territory. "But consider." He settled his staff against his knee. "Dwarven women are rare. Considerably rarer than you may appreciate." A pause, in which he seemed to be selecting the shape of the thing carefully. "For every three Dwarves in the world, there is perhaps one Dwarven woman. Perhaps less."

You looked at him. "That's—"

"Yes," he said.

"That's—that's not very many."

"No." He looked at the fire. "As a consequence, they are—not considered lesser. Not by those who know Dwarves, and who know their history. They are considered—" He turned the word over. "Esteemed. In the truest sense. To be protected above all other things. Above gold, above stone, above the great treasuries of their ancestors." He glanced at you.

"Dwarven women, in most cases are guarded better than their gold. And that, you should know, is not a thing to be said lightly of dwarves."

You were quiet for a moment. "So when Balin asked about a —a-umm representative?"

"He was not suggesting you required supervision," Gandalf said. "He was ensuring that you had the same rights and protections that any Dwarven woman undertaking something this dangerous would receive. The clause, the representative—these are not restrictions. They are provisions." He paused. "He was trying to make sure you were not left out. Or alone."

You sat with that. The fire shifted. An log fell.

"I didn't know any of that," you said, finally.

"No," Gandalf said, with the patience of a man who had expected this. "You didn't." He was quiet for a moment. "It would have helped to understand it before drawing conclusions."

He said it gently. It landed anyway.

"Yes," you said. "It would have."

The morning came cold and clear, with the sharp quality of early light in open country, and you lay awake for several minutes before the camp began to stir, looking up at the sky and constructing what you wanted to say.

Balin was by the fire when you found him, doing something with the maps with early-morning focus. He looked up when you approached, and his expression was the expression he'd been wearing since yesterday—composed, warm, but with something slightly more guarded in it than usual.

"Morning Balin,"

"Good morning," he said.

"I owe you an apology."

He looked at you. Waited.

"I didn't understand," you said. "What you were trying to do, or why, or—any of the context for it. And I was—" You stopped. "I think I was pretty unfair, and I'm sorry."

Balin looked at you for a moment with those steady blue eyes, and his expression shifted—the guardedness easing, something warmer taking its place, though it didn't reach the full warmth it might have.

He nodded, once. "Apology accepted," he said.

He looked back at the maps.

"Ahh, I'll just go get—"

"You are," Balin said, without looking up, in the tone of a dwarf delivering an observation he has been holding for some time, "far too skeptical for your own good."

You blinked.

"Strong-minded," he continued. "Which is not a criticism, it'll serve you well. But it does lead you to conclusions before you've gathered the necessary information." A pause, in which he turned the map slightly. "There are things in this world you don't know yet. A great many things Lass and the wisest thing, when you don't know a thing—"

"Is to ask before assuming," you finished, quietly.

"Aye, that's the one." he said. He turned another section of the map. He did not say anything else, and he did not look up, which confirmed the conversation was, for now at least, closed.

You walked away feeling approximately two inches tall, which was, you reflected, the thing about Balin—he never raised his voice and he never needed to.

The rest came mid-afternoon, a rocky plateau wide enough for the ponies and with a flat expanse of grass that someone had decided was useful. The company took advantage of it in the efficient way they took advantage of most things—packs down, boots checked, the small maintenance tasks of people who knew that the difference between a journey going well and a journey going badly was often in the details attended to at moments like this one.

You were sitting, trying to decide if your left boot had done something to your heel or if you were imagining it when a shadow fell across you.

You looked up.

Thorin stood with his arms crossed and his expression doing the thing it did, which was to be almost entirely unreadable while still communicating something. He looked at you for a moment in the way that made you want to check you had all your belongings about your person.

"On your feet," he said.

"I—" You looked around to confirm this was directed at you. "Sorry?"

"You practiced with Fíli and Kíli two days ago," he said.

"I—attempted to," you said carefully.

"Aye." Something in his tone confirmed that a report of this had reached him and that the report had contained specific information. "You'll practice with me."

You stood up. Not because you'd made an active decision to stand up, but because Thorin said on your feet and your body apparently responded to that tone independently of your brain's involvement.

You moved to a grassy area out of direct line if sight of the company, Thorin handed you a short blade—not the one from your last practice, a different one, slightly better balanced, maybe ? Regardless your hands immediately recognized an improvement even without understanding why.

"Your grip," Thorin said using his chin to gesture to your hand.

"I know," you sighed. "It's wrong isnt it."

"Show me how you were taught."

You adjusted to what you thought was correct. Thorin stepped forward and moved your fingers with two brief adjustments, and the difference was immediately, irritatingly obvious. The balance settled differently.

Your wrist stopped compensating.

"Strike," he said, and stepped back.

You struck, at a target he indicated with a nod—a post he'd apparently stuck in the ground at some point, which suggested this had been planned at least a few minutes in advance. It connected. Not well, off-centre, but connected.

"Again."

You went again. And again. And again.

Thorin said very little, which you found more pressuring than commentary would have been. He watched each attempt with the focused attention of someone cataloguing errors, and when he corrected you he was precise and economical—two words at most, a demonstration if words weren't enough, a slight adjustment of your stance or arm or the angle of your elbow.

You hadn’t improved, by the end of it, in any way that would help you in an actual crisis. But something had clarified—the basic shape of the movement, the intent of it, the understanding that what you were building was going to take a consistent effort and time you hadn't been given yet.

Thorin looked at you when you'd stopped. His expression did the thing it did, where it was entirely composed and told you very little, except that he was still thinking.

"You're afraid of the blade," he said.

"I'm—not afraid of it, exactly."

"You are. You pull back at the last moment. Barely, but you do." His eyes were direct and not unkind, exactly, but not cushioning anything either. "That's the thing to address. Not the grip. Not the footwork. That."

You looked at the blade in your hand. "How do I address it?"

"By doing it again," he said. "Many times." He took the blade back, and for a moment he looked at you —not the assessment-look, something slightly different, though the distinction was difficult to name. "Fíli and Kíli, they explained that this is necessary."

It wasn't a question, but it had the quality of one underneath. "Yes," you said. "They did."

He nodded once. Turned and walked back toward the company without elaboration, and that, it seemed, was practice done.

You stood on the hillside for a moment with the wind coming from the south and looked at the post in the ground and thought, with the specific stubbornness that was becoming ypur coping mechanism out here.

"Right. Many times." You muttered mockingly to yourself, in a poor imitation of Thorin's voice.

•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•●•

The evening camp was smaller than usual, tucked tighter into a valley that offered shelter and not much else, and the fire was lower than some nights and the company was quieter in a comfortable rather way—the quiet of people who had covered good ground and were tired in a satisfied rather than a depleted fashion.

You found Balin at the edge of the firelight after supper, doing what he often did in the evenings—the quiet administrative work, keeping the company's affairs in order as a matter of personal principle, maps and tallies and the various pieces of paper that accumulated around him like his own brand of barnacles.

You sat down beside him without asking, which you thought was probably the right move with Balin—he was the kind of person who received consideration better than hovering.

"Can I see it?" you said.

He looked at you. "Your contract?"

"Yes please."

He regarded you for a moment, then reached into the flat leather pouch beside him and held it out.

You took it. Read it properly this time, from the beginning, with the full attention and the full information you hadn't had yesterday. The provisions clauses, which were actually quite reasonable. The safety terms, which were clearly there in good faith. The distribution clause, about the gold—you read this section twice, because it was specific about what was entitled, and the terms were specific and not small.

You took up a small piece of charcoal from the pile of implements spread near Balin's feet and crossed out two sections. The hand clause, which—even understanding it now, even knowing what it meant and why it existed—you drew a single clean line through each line of text, because regardless of the intention, it remained a thing that did not apply to your particular situation and probably never would. And the distribution clause, the one about the gold, which you crossed out with slightly less certainty but with the feeling that arriving in a field and contributing very little to the actual retrieval of a mountain's treasure was not a basis for a share of it.

Balin had been watching you do this without speaking, which was one of his better qualities.

"You don't want a share of the—" he began.

"I haven't earned it," you said simply. "It's not mine."

A pause. "The clause is standard—"

"Balin." You looked at him directly. "I came here by accident. I haven't—I haven't contributed anything yet. Maybe I will. Maybe by the time this is over I'll have done something worth—" You stopped. "But I'm not going to sign for something I haven't actually earned."

He looked at you for a long moment with an expression that moved through several things and settled on something you couldn't name precisely, but he didn't argue further.

You looked back at the contract. The remaining sections, the ones you'd left intact—the provisions, the safety terms, the commitment to remain with the company and contribute what you were able to, the terms of conduct on the road.

These were reasonable. These were, if you were honest with yourself, things you would have agreed to anyway, in some form. You'd been relying on their food and their fire and their protection and you hadn't signed anything, and that felt—off balance in a way you hadn't quite acknowledged until it was in front of you on paper.

At the bottom, the signature line.

And below that, the line for your patriarchal representative.

You wrote your name on the first line, in your ordinary handwriting, which looked slightly alien against the formal script of the rest of the document.

You looked around the camp for a short moment considering each of the dwarves in turn, with the consideration of a person choosing not a family member per-say but an ally.

Then on the second line you wrote, Master Balin, Son of Fundin.

You folded the contract and held it out to Balin, who tucked it back into the leather pouch with the same care he gave everything he considered worth keeping.

"Goodnight, Balin," you said as you stood and moved to your bedroll.

"Goodnight, lass," he said, and the warmth in it was whole and unguarded, every bit of it back.

Balin opened the leather pouch one more time that evening, unrolled your contract to transfer details and dates into another leadger, and noticed the name on the second line.

Closed it again.