Hello again everyone! As promised, here is another story with my main character, Luna! This time, it's based on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I already mentioned it at the beginning of my previous story, and hopefully I got better now but I repeat it again here : I am not an English native-speaker, I just love this language and wishes to improve myself so please be nice to me and I am always very glad to get reviews on my writing style as well in order to work on it. I hope you will enjoy it! :) Charlie
For those of you who haven't read my previous fan fiction, here is a little summary : Luna is a young dwarf, last heir of the long line of the captains of the royal guard of Erebor, sworn to protect the line of Durin until death and follow her king no matter what. After the destruction of what remained of her family by the orcs who hate her line, she found herself as the last captain and took part in the quest for Erebor. Many things happened on the way, including her falling in love with Kili, heir of Durin that she has to protect and her childhood friend. Their love was reciprocal and more than that, they were each other's Ones. Unfortunately, Kili died during the battle of five armies and, while she thought she would die as well, she was saved by an elf from Rivendell, Haleth, that Elrond had sent to rescue her as he had had a vision in which he had seen that her part in the History of Middle-Earth wasn't over yet. Seriously wounded, with a leg amputated, she then woke up three months after the battle in Rivendell and when she learned that the line of Durin was now extinct and that everyone thought her dead as well, the shock caused her to loose all her memories.
Chapter 1 : The girl from Rivendell
It was strangely cold, a cold such a she didn't remember she had ever experienced. Snowflakes were starting to fall around her and she was shivering. She was standing in the middle of what looked like an old watchtower that was now only ruins.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of steel clashing against steel and snapped her head up. There was a fight nearby and she didn't know why but she felt that she had to go and find out more.
There were a couple of steps in front of her that she quickly climbed up then turned a few corners, climbed a few more steps and finally arrived on a high, solitary platform. Again, she was too late. At her feet laid a giant orc, a dagger planted in its neck. From next to him started a trail of blood that her eyes followed until they landed on the two silhouettes laying together on the ground a bit farther.
She couldn't quite discern their features from where she was, she could just see that the one who had left a trail of blood when he had crawled towards the other one was a dwarf with messy dark hair hiding his face that was turned to the other person with him. The only thing she could see from that second person was a flash of auburn curls.
She stepped forward, decided to walk to them and finally see who they were but like every other night, the platform suddenly collapsed underneath her feet and she fell into darkness with a soundless cry.
"There you are, I've been looking everywhere for you"
The young girl looked up from her book at the person who had just talked. He was an elf, which wasn't surprising regarding that they were in Rivendell where the lord Elrond lived.
"Everywhere? I wasn't even hiding" she replied, shrugging her shoulders.
He sighed and looked at her with more attention. Her long auburn curls were framing her beautiful face where two extraordinary eyes were shining. They were dark blue like the sky by a warm summer night and although stars always seemed to be shining in them, they had lost their light sixty years ago and had never seemed to have found it again.
Those who didn't know the young girl just found her beautiful and didn't notice that little detail, but for those who had known her before she lived in Rivendell, it was plain that her eyes had never shone with the same light that they used to before.
She bore another surprising feature on her face : a white moon-shaped scar just underneath her eye, on her left cheek. She didn't know it anymore, but she had gotten that scar the day of her birth when the dragon Smaug had settled into her kin's home ; Erebor. However, whenever she asked where it came from, everyone here told her it was just a birth mark that she had probably always had.
Hiding her the truth had never been easy from the start. Besides that scar on her face, she bore many others that she had gotten in what some who knew her story called her "previous life", and particularly in the event that had marked its end sixty years ago : the legendary battle of five armies in front of the doors of the dwarfish kingdom of Erebor.
She had been so close to death after that battle that it was a miracle that she was still alive and amongst all her injuries, her right leg had been so badly hurt after Bolg had smashed it with his mace that Elrond had had to amputate it up to her knee and she now had a wooden leg and walked with a staff.
He, Haleth, was the one who had found her still alive in her lover's arms and had brought her to Rivendell at his lord's request after the last had had a vision in which he had seen that she had to live for her part in the story of Middle-Earth wasn't over yet.
Did she know any of this? No.
When she had woken up three months after the battle in Rivendell, the shock she had had learning that the line of Durin was over and that everyone thought her dead had been too much for her and she had collapsed. When she had come around again a couple of hours later, she had forgotten everything except her name, Luna.
She didn't remember where she was and couldn't recognise Elrond nor Gandalf. She didn't remember where she came from, that she was a dwarf from one of the oldest lines of Erebor. She didn't remember her family and how they had all died, she had never heard of the lonely mountain or its captains and had no memory of the quest that had brought her there with a company of dwarves.
Even worse, she didn't remember the ones she had almost died for ; the king under the mountain Thorin and his two nephews, Fili and Kili, and especially Kili who had been her One but who had died with the two others during the battle. She had no memory of fighting Bolg or taking a blow for him and no memory of succumbing to darkness in his arms while he was dying.
"Haleth? Can you hear me?" she called, snapping him out of his thoughts.
"Sorry, I was thinking. I came to find you, you are invited to Elrond's table tonight, you should go and prepare yourself"
"Yes, I know" she sighed, rolling her eyes. "You've been saying that all day long"
"It's just that I know how forgetful you can be"
He ignored the dark glance she shot him.
"You look tired" he noticed, raising an eyebrow.
She shrugged her shoulder.
"I didn't sleep very well last night, that's all"
"Did you have the same nightmare again?" he asked in a lower voice, suddenly a bit worried.
She slowly nodded.
"Always and always the same. The cold, the snow, the abandoned towers…then the two silhouettes lying on the ground and every time I try to get near them, everything collapses, as if I wasn't supposed to see who they are"
He bit his lip. How were they ever going to tell her that the two people she saw almost every night laying on that platform were no other than herself and the love of her life?
"I'll ask someone to prepare a nice tea for you tonight, it will help you sleep" he said. "But for now, we should go, it's getting late and it's almost dinner time. Are you coming?"
He held out his hand to her and she closed her book then took it and he carefully helped her up on her feet -or at least, on her remaining foot.
"I'm fine" she said, pushing his hands away when he tried to help her walk and she grabbed her staff. "I'm capable of walking, thank you"
He did not insist. She had more in common than she knew with the old Luna, and her stubbornness and hate of appearing weak was one of them.
He still remembered the first time he had met her, when she had been facing down a whole pack of wargs on her own to save the lives of the company of Thorin Oakenshield…and here she was sixty years later, only the ghost of what she had once been, forever wounded both physically and mentally, not even remembering who she truly was.
They walked for a bit towards the palace in silence then she stopped and turned her eyes towards the mountains surrounding the valley of Imladris. A little sigh escaped her lips as her eyes trailed on the landscapes around them, searching for the horizon that she could not see.
"Have you been beyond these mountains?" she absentmindedly asked and a little smile stretched his lips.
"How many times will you ask that question?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I like to hear you talk about what's out there"
"Plains, forests, lakes, mountains, small villages, great kingdoms,…and if you go West, at the very end you'll find what my eyes have yet never seen but crave for"
"What's that?" she asked although she knew the answer by heart.
"The ocean. An immensity of water, stretching farther than even elves can see. And beyond it, the land where I shall hope to go one day"
"Valinor"
"Yes"
She paused for a little moment then turned towards him again.
"Do you think I have ever seen it?" she asked in a lower voice.
He bit his lip. He knew she hadn't, she had always lived in the blue mountains with her father and brother before joining the quest to reclaim Erebor but as he had done for the past sixty years, he had to pretend he had never met her before she arrived in Rivendell.
"I don't know" he vaguely said, shrugging his shoulders.
"I don't think I have" she pensively said.
"Why not?" he raised an eyebrow.
"I don't know, it's just a feeling…but if I had seen such a wonderful thing, I'd at least remember that, wouldn't I?"
"I am not sure, Luna. When you woke up here sixty years ago, the only thing you remembered was your name"
"I wish I could remember" she sighed. "You know, sometimes I have a feeling that going away from here might help me"
"Luna…" he started with a sigh.
"I know, I know, we've already been through this at least a hundred times…but from what you and Elrond said, I had never been here before sixty years ago…maybe if I left and passed by places where I have already been, I'd remember. Memories might come back to me if my eyes landed on things they have already seen"
"Maybe…" he vaguely said.
He knew she was probably right. Elrond had already said the same thing : to make the same journey she had made with the company of Thorin Oakenshield sixty years ago or to go back to Erebor or even only to be told about Kili would probably bring back her memory but he also knew that all this was because no matter what had happened, she was still more or less the same Luna she had once been and that Luna wasn't made to live for so long in only one place.
They had quickly understood that their biggest challenge would be to convince her to stay in Rivendell. It had taken her a couple of years to properly heal from her injuries and find enough self-confidence after her memory loss but soon afterwards, they had started to catch her more and more often absentmindedly staring at the mountains around them and at the road that lead out of the valley.
Very quickly, she had started to read books about Middle-Earth, its people, its kingdoms, its geography,…It had sometimes proved quite hard for the elves to keep away from her all the informations that could, one way or another, awaken her suspicion. She had also asked many times about her past but all they always said was that they did not know anything. She inquired about people looking for her after her accident, they said they had never seen anyone. And at the beginning, she had asked many times if she could just leave for a couple of days or a couple of weeks to explore Middle-Earth and they had always found good reasons to dissuade her : the world was full of dangers, especially for a young girl like her, she wasn't able to walk very properly anymore, even less run,…it was a miracle that it had lasted for the past sixty years. It was true that anyway, she would have a hard time wandering very far on her own with only one leg but she was still Luna and the young girl was capable of very surprising things.
"Come on" he said, gently pushing her forward. "Let's go"
"Lord Elrond, you called for me?" Haleth humbly asked with a little bow as he entered the elf's impressive office.
"Indeed, I have. Please take a seat"
So did he, shooting a questioning glance at a third person present in the room as well.
"As you see, Gandalf joined us a bit earlier" Elrond said.
"It's nice to see you again, Mithrandir, although I have a feeling your coming isn't as good an omen as it looks"
The wizard chuckled.
"You always see clear in any situation" he softly said. "But indeed you are right, I fear that my coming here is the beginning of great perils. Tell me, how is Luna?"
"Not much different from how she was last time you came. I was just with her actually, she still talks about leaving the valley and wishes to remember. She has had the same dream again, they come more and more often I fear"
"I think her wish is about to be granted. The time will soon come for her to remember who she really is and what happened sixty years ago"
"What do you mean?" Haleth asked, his eyes passing from Elrond to the wizard in worry.
"Big powers that I am afraid we still don't quite understand are on the move" Elrond gravely explained. "Sauron, the dark lord of Mordor, has returned"
"Sauron?" the elf gasped. "But…wasn't he destroyed three thousands years ago?"
"His body was, but his soul is linked to only one thing that we had thought lost for a very long time"
"The One Ring" Gandalf nodded.
"What does that mean? Was it found at last?"
"It was right in front of my eyes for the past sixty years in the Shire. I knew Bilbo Baggins had found a ring of power during the quest for Erebor, but I had no idea it was the One Ring. And now, Sauron wants it back as much as the ring itself wants to go back to his master"
"But…the hobbit needs to be warned, doesn't he?"
"No, not him. The ring is actually not in his hands anymore, he left it to his nephew a couple of weeks ago before leaving the Shire. I outran him, he should be arriving in Rivendell in the next couple of days. He means to go back to Erebor and will stop here. Before he comes tough, I will be gone in the South. There are some things I must make sure are true about that ring before taking any important decision. Nonetheless, things are on the move and I have no doubt that the vision lord Elrond had sixty years ago about Luna is about to happen"
"Wait…Bilbo Baggins is on his way to Rivendell?!" Haleth repeated, his eyes growing wide. "But…if he sees Luna, he will recognise her and maybe that if she sees him…"
"She will remember" Elrond nodded, finishing his sentence. "It is time"
"But what if…what if she reacts like she did sixty years ago when she woke up? We can't just…"
"Haleth, the memory loss she suffered from was her mind's very last way to protect her but sixty years have now passed, she is able to face the truth"
"How do you know that?"
"There is more to her than you ever wanted to see"
"When she learns that we lied to her and kept her away from her kin for sixty years, she will despise us"
"She probably will at first, but Luna is smart and reasonable, she will soon understand that we had no choice and get over it"
"But she…"
"Haleth" Elrond interrupted him in a softer voice. "You were her friend before she lost her memory and you still are now. You know how strong she is, and that we can't hide her the truth forever. Sooner or later, she will end up leaving Imladris and then she will remember. Do you want her to do this all on her own or do you want to be there for her?"
He sighed and stood up, ready to leave.
"Do for the best, I'll trust you on this. But please…don't hurt her more than necessary"
"I promise" the elf lord swore.
Sixty years. He couldn't believe it had been that long since the last time he had come here. Bilbo paused for a little moment on the way leading to Rivendell, at the spot that gave the best view on the valley and a little smile stretched his lips.
He was tired, more than he had thought he would be even when he would reach Erebor. The journey from the Shire had seemed long and he was slowly coming to the realisation that he was now very old.
However, as his eyes trailed on Imladris, none of that mattered and with tears dwelling up in his eyes, he remembered the first time he had come here with the company of Thorin Oakenshield. That time, they had come from a hidden path in which they had fallen after a chase against a whole orc pack. He remembered well that at the time, despite the magnificence of this place, he hadn't been able to chase the worry away from his mind as Luna hadn't been able to follow them down the path and had remained behind to face the orcs.
Like in a dream, Bilbo crossed the bridges leading to the palace where he was only half-surprised to find Elrond himself waiting for him with a fond smile on his face.
"Welcome, dear friend" the elf warmly greeted.
"Lord Elrond" the old hobbit muttered.
And before he knew he was doing it, he stepped towards the elf and hugged him. Elrond seemed surprised at first then returned his embrace.
"It is good to see you"
"I am not entirely surprised to find you waiting for me. Who warned you of my coming?"
"I always know who passes by here, my friend. I hear that you are on your way to Erebor?"
"Yes, that was my plan…but I must say, I am exhausted from my journey, much more than I thought I'd be. I'm getting old, and I think I shall rest here for a little while if you allow me"
"You are always more than welcome. Come, I see you're tired. A good meal and a warm bed have been prepared for you"
The cold, the snowflakes and the watch tower again. This time, she was decided to not lose any time and without even taking the time to look around her, she raced up the stairs and stepped over the dead orc on the little platform. There they were, the two people laying together on the ground. She kept her eyes fixed on them. She didn't know why but she needed to know who they were. As she got closer and closer to them, she saw for the first time that the second person, the one she had only ever been able to see the auburn curls, was also a dwarf and was a young woman. She didn't quite see her face that was turned towards the other dwarf's but before everything collapsed again, her eyes landed on the girl's right leg that looked all but destroyed.
The next morning, Luna had woken up so early that she met no one on her way to the gardens where she wanted to sit in her favourite spot on a little bench to try and clear her thoughts.
She had woken up so suddenly from her dream that she had had to bit down on a cry as pain irradiated from her amputated right leg. At first she had thought it was just the same dream once again like almost every night but then as she had pushed her blankets away and that her eyes had landed on her leg, she had frozen.
The girl in her dream had auburn curls, she nervously tugged at hers, the exact same ones she saw every night. And her leg…her right leg had looked so damaged and destroyed that front a single look she had known that it was beyond the point of saving. She absentmindedly rubbed what remained of her own right leg that Elrond had always described to her, whenever she asked about what had happened, as so damaged there was nothing even he could have done anything to save it.
It had been vain to try and fall back asleep after that so she had just waited in her bed until the sun rose then she had taken the direction of the gardens. She needed some fresh air to clear her thoughts and she didn't want to be disturb. At this time, she knew no one would come to find her there and it was for the best.
Since she had woken up from that dream, the girl's hair and leg came back in her mind even when she tried her best to push them away. Was it possible that all these nights she had been seeing herself laying on that platform? So many questions were echoing in her head that it hurt. If it was really her, what had she been doing there, obviously in the middle of a fight? And, especially, who was that other dwarf in whose's arms she had been ready to die?
She was walking at a slower pace than usual due to the pain in her leg that hadn't disappeared yet and although she had put on her wooden prothesis and was leaning on her staff, she was happy to know that after the next turn, she would have arrived at her little bench where she would finally be able to sit.
When she arrived there however, she suddenly froze when she saw that it was already occupied by someone who she had never seen here. He wasn't an elf, not even a dwarf and she recognised from what she had read about them a hobbit. A very old hobbit, reading a book on her little bench.
She hoped he hadn't heard her and that she would be able to discreetly turn her heels and go away before he noticed her but of course, the sound of her staff taping against the ground had caught his attention and he turned his head in her direction.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt" she quickly said. "I'll just go and…"
He didn't even listen to her. Bilbo had heard the person coming and had expected some nice company to read his book but as his eyes landed on the young girl, he stopped breathing for a moment.
The auburn curls falling freely in her back, the white moon-shaped scar on her cheek and the amazing deep blue eyes…there was no mistake possible. Either he was dead too, either he was dreaming. He didn't even realise that he dropped his book that fell to the ground.
"Luna?!" he gasped.