Hello dear readers!

I had this idea for quite a while (ever since I went to the movie) and now my other story is finished, I decided to publish this one. I hope you'll like it.

Enjoy and please let me know what you think about it!

Oh, and of course I don't own The Hobbit, but since this is fanfiction, that is pretty obvious, isn't it?


The Journal


"She told him she'd rather fix her makeup

Than try to fix what's going on

But the problem keeps on calling

Even with the cell phone gone

She told him that she believes in living

Bigger than she's living now

But her world keeps spinning backwards

And upside-down"

Gone, Switchfoot


Chapter 1

Funeral

Thoren

The closing of Thorin's tomb sounded rather too loud to Thoren's ears. To him it made his father's passing all that more final and he had to swallow, hard, to get a grip on himself. He could not let his tears escape, not now. He was the new King under the Mountain; people expected him to be strong. And the same was more or less true for his younger siblings. Royalty did not cry, not in public at least.

But they didn't have an easy time either, he could tell. Thráin was staring right ahead, looking at a point in front of him without actually seeing it. Duria's face seemed to have turned to stone, as had Jack's. Cathy was the only one who didn't have enough control over herself not to shed tears. She was sobbing silently, trying her hardest not to give in to her grief, but failing spectacularly.

The guests were turning to leave, leaving the family to have a few final moments before they too would need to return to the Mountain. The setting sun was shining on the mountainside, where the tomb was situated. Some had deemed it a strange place for the King under the Mountain and his wife to be buried, but Thoren knew that this place had held some kind of meaning to his parents, although he had never been able to find out what that meaning was.

'It's not fair.' Cathy's voice was feeble, sounding like that of a young girl and not the grown woman that she was. 'He could have lived for decades still.'

He could have. Thorin wasn't that old, not for a dwarf anyway. But Thoren also knew that his father had not been happy for the last few months, not since the queen had died.

The new king still felt a stab of pain thinking about his mother. It had not been four months ago since they had been in this exact spot, making a campfire and spending the night singing and making fun. There had been stories and music, nothing to suggest that it would take less than a day to turn their joy to mourning.

So yes, of course they knew the queen was old. She belonged to the race of Men and everyone knew their lifespans were very short in comparison with the other races of Middle Earth. From time to time Thoren had seen his father look at his wife, worrying about how long they would still have together and, as their children, Thoren and his siblings had shared that concern.

But that night on the mountain there had only been joy and laughter. His mother had made it all too easy for them to overlook her high age. She was as lively and sharp as she had ever been and in truth, nobody had wanted to pay attention to what was right in front of them. And the queen did still attend the councils and did all her normal duties. So yes, she tired more easily than before and her eyesight wasn't what it once had been either, but everyone had conveniently ignored that.

There was no ignoring it the next morning, when they found the queen lying still in her bed. She looked like she could have been sleeping, but the lack of heartbeat and breath told them all something they neither wanted to know nor accept. Thoren hadn't seen his father smile since that day and maybe it wasn't that much of a surprise that he had followed his wife so soon after.

'He didn't want to live without her,' Thoren heard himself say, knowing it to be true.

Duria nodded. 'I know.' She put a comforting arm around her younger sister. 'At least they are together now, even if we have to learn to cope without them.'

Thoren agreed, as much as he hated the thought. The entire weight of the kingdom now rested on his shoulders and with something dark stirring in Mordor again, the burdens of responsibility would now be even heavier than they would have been otherwise. And he was still young for a dwarf, hardly considered an adult. How he wished his parents would still be here to guide him through this time.

But they weren't and it wouldn't do him any good to pretend otherwise. This was the situation and that was what they needed to deal with, but that didn't make the thought any easier to bear. And he was the son of Thorin Oakenshield. He could do this. So he forced himself to put on a brave face and face the few guests that had come for his father's funeral. He was glad that their number was so small. The danger on the roads had made sure not many foreign officials had risked the journey to Erebor to pay their last respects. Maybe he should have been mad about it, but as it was, he was only relieved.

He excused himself from the company fairly early in the evening, knowing his absence would hardly be noticed. Most dwarves had entered a drinking game in his father's memory and while Thoren used to think of this behaviour as amusing, now it only struck him as too enthusiastic, too loud and even inappropriate. He could all too easily recall his father's amused expression as he watched his subjects drink and his mother's mild disapproval at such abuse of alcoholic drinks.

That spoiled it all for him. He whispered his excuses to the people closest to him and slipped out of the hall. He could see Jack amongst the drinkers. His youngest brother was trying to drown his grief, and tomorrow he would discover that it wouldn't be that easy. Thoren had tried that remedy himself and found it to be failing. His other siblings were politely conversing with the guests, although Cathy had left early as well. No surprise there either. Jack's twin sister seemed to have more trouble controlling her grief than the others.

'Where are you going?'

Thoren was almost jumping, because he hadn't heard the other coming. 'Thráin,' he acknowledged his younger brother.

'Where are you going?' Thráin repeated. Only two years separated the two in age and they had always been close, sharing laughter as well as tears.

'Out of here,' Thoren replied in a hushed voice. 'I just can't face this, Thráin, not yet. I can see their faces everywhere I look.'

The younger dwarf's sad smile indicated that he wasn't alone in that. 'Then go,' he urged the new king. 'I'll cover for you.'

'I owe you,' Thoren vowed.

He left the hall, unnoticed by anyone else. Behind him the noise slowly faded away until he couldn't make out what caused it anymore. And for once, he couldn't care. He had slipped into a mood where he could care about very little anymore, too numb to even care about the cares of the kingdom and the evil that was now lurking in Mordor. It could all wait until tomorrow, or maybe the day after. Even that didn't really matter anymore.

His feet guided him to his parents' bedchamber. Soon it would be cleaned and cleared so that Thoren could take up residence there. It was the king's chamber, yet in Thoren's mind it would always belong to them, and never to him. It didn't help that their scents still hung in the air and that their things were still scattered all over the place. His father's favourite cloak was draped over the arm rest of the chair, his mother's books were still dotting every surface. Thorin must have left them, not wanting to remove all traces of her.

I shouldn't be here. This room still felt too intensely personal for anyone else except the owners to enter. Standing here, he felt like they could just walk in any moment, picking up a book from the table, or grabbing the cloak off the chair, after which life would continue as normal.

But things are never going to go back to how they were and you had better get used to it, lad. He half turned around, ready to leave, but the sight of a great leather-bound book on the very centre of the desk made him change his mind. He could have sworn he had never seen that before in his life and by now he was pretty familiar with all his mother's books.

He had been curious as a little boy and growing up hadn't changed that one bit. If anything, he was a bit more careful than he had been back them. But he was the king now and no one would reproach him for going through his parents' belongings anymore.

He moved a bit closer, now noticing other objects on the table as well. He recognised the strange looking book called Chronicles of Narnia, the book with fairy tales his mother had read to Thoren and his siblings when they were still small. The memory caused a faint smile to grace his features. The book was now old and worn. Next to it lay a small device that Thoren had seen with his mother often. She claimed there was music on it. Thoren of course had wanted to hear it all for himself and had been surprised to find she had told the truth. The small object had been an item of wonder ever since. Close to it lay his father's small dagger. He had once told he had carried it with him on the quest that had led to the reclaiming of Erebor and that very fact had made it a relic of ancient and heroic times to the younger Thoren's eyes.

Each object on the desk had obviously been carefully placed there. Thoren couldn't escape the notion that they told a story of their own for those who knew how to read it. He knew most things here. They all had belonged to either of his parents. There were some books, a small knife, a strange looking water bottle, a strip of leather, a dried flower, some maps, a precious stone on a necklace and a piece of parchment with a written note on it.

That last one caught his attention. The parchment was old and soft. It looked like it had been folded and unfolded more than once, but the letters on it were still perfectly readable, even if they had faded a little over time. The question of why his parents would keep such a small note for so long, made him look closer at it.

Dear Miss Andrews,

The company Magical Trips offers its sincerest apologies for the lack of your means of transport. We hope your inconvenience wasn't too great. We hope to see you soon.

Yours truly,

Mr G. Grey

The note provided him with more questions than answers. He had no idea who Miss Andrews was. He couldn't recall ever meeting someone with that name. The only thing that could link this note to them was the mention of G. Grey, who Thoren expected to be Gandalf. He knew the old wizard sometimes chose to go by Mr Grey whenever he didn't want to be recognised.

Somehow he felt all these things linked to the green leather-bound book that was still lying on the table, almost begging him to pick it up and read its contents. And Thoren was by now so curious he couldn't resist. He left the note and turned his attention to the book. The cover revealed nothing, so he opened it.

He found his mother's handwriting staring back at him. She had scribbled something in the far left corner: Property of Catherine Sarah Andrews. Catherine was his mother's name, Thoren knew that, although she preferred to go by Kate in daily life. Her name was unique in all of Middle Earth as far as he knew. But it was the surname that really struck him. Andrews, that was the same name that had been on the note. For reasons yet unknown to him, Gandalf had once sent her that note. He was trying to decide if this cleared things up or just made them even more complicated than they already were.

There seemed to be so many things about his mother that he couldn't even start to guess. Her life before the quest had always remained a mystery to him, he realised. In all his curiosity he had never even thought to ask her about that. He had always assumed his mother just originated from one of the villages of Men, leading a life that was both dull and uneventful. It was only now that he slowly started to understand that there had to be a whole lot more to her story.

His eyes drifted to the right page. The title was situated in the very middle of the page, written in his mother's neat handwriting, the writing she only used on official and documents: There and Never Back Again. It was like the title of an adventure story, the kind he had so enjoyed when he was small, and secretly still liked.

He hesitated only a moment before turning the page, overcome by curiosity and a desperate need to lose himself in something, anything that could take the edge of the pain. The following pages were all filled with a mix of his mother's "official" script and his father's slightly larger writing:

My dearest children…


The real story starts next chapter. I hope you all enjoy it so far!