Strangers When We Meet:

Author: Nicky.

Rating: Mature for sexual content in part three.

Disclaimer: The Hobbit and all characters therein belong to Mr. Tolkien, and in part I suppose to Mr. Jackson as well. This is a non-profit work for recreational purposes only and serves to entertain. All rights belong to their respective owners, which are too many to list here. Credits go where credits are due :))

Spoilers/Warning: First person POV – third person POV – minor spoilers for BofFA/Hobbit ending – period-typical view of gender roles in society – canon-typical racism and prejudice – past underage extramarital sex and teen pregnancy – high-functioning alcoholism – poor parenting skills – feels – broken feels – talk of loss – talk of death – rubbish medieval medicine (my degree is neither bio NOR chem) – taking pride in your work – minor gore – sexual content in part three – part four post-Hobbit – it's not as bad as it sounds in the tags.

Pairings: Thorin/OFC (Original Female Character), minor Bagginshield at the very end, because I'm a shipper and I couldn't not, Fíli&Kíli&OMC friendship and teenage shenanigans.

Summary: Thorin has spent many years traveling the west in search of work and pay. He encountered many people, Dwarves and Men alike, but few were memorable. Loch was different. Loch he would not forget.

Story Notes: This story is COMPLETE after months and months of collective hard work. It is a short fic that will contain four chapters, and it is pretty much the first WIP story that I have actually completed in the four years I have been an author in the fanfiction community. Yay for commitment…? I think I might've bitten off more than I can chew with this little monster; I've been sitting on these thirty five thousand words since early December and oh, my God. FINALLY! I find it fitting that I should finish it exactly a year later. It brings this journey to a close rather fittingly, giving it to the world on its anniversary. Anyway, I hope a year was worth it.

Forest ecosystem: I have about 12 percent of a clue what lives in Middle-earth; wolves, horses, ravens, thrushes, etc., so I'm assuming the wildlife is relatively the same as ours. The flora, on the other hand, is another story, so I'll try to keep from naming much. Nevertheless, animals make numerous appearances so I'll be using real world animals, assuming the fauna is close to ours.

Chapter Notes: Chapter features gore and medieval (slightly progressive for that time period but still entirely ineffective in this day and age) medicine, and considering I never took bio in school it's a hit-or-miss shot in the dark for me. I'm deeply sorry.

Special Thanks: I'd like to profoundly thank onoheiwa for your brilliant insight and support and help. This would not have turned out without you! onoheiwa took the time to help make my work better and just, thank you, so much! Your help was amazing :))

Face Claims: You tell me. Should I give one, or shouldn't I? Do you want one?

Story:


STRANGER WHEN WE MEET

Part 1 / Wayfaring Strangers

"Verse. Chorus. Verse. I'm sorry. We know how it works. The world is no longer mysterious."

― Richard Siken, Crush


Spring came early that year.

Days grew longer and coats grew shorter, and the winter melted into puddles of sludge that froze overnight; icicles shrunk, dripping from windowsills and rooftops; the woodlands came alive with the mating calls of its inhabitants. Wet flakes of snow settled on lashes and red cheeks yet, but the sun was warm again.

It was a year of early harvest and plentiful trade and, for many people of the town, a change that blossomed with the summertime flowering of the fields. It, too, would wilt for the coming frost that the late month of September brought upon; but for the season of the sun, that change heated the minds and spirits of six hundred people who grew to appreciate and later even respect a simple and penniless man of labor who did nothing more than anybody else: his best. Yet, it was his coming that carried with it a peace that would last generations to my settlement and I, a young girl at the time, could not appreciate what he had done for us all while he had lived and broke bread among my son's people. It was, foolishly, a blind mistake of mine, for the impressionable mind of hope often clouds perception to all but the object to which it clings.

Still, as all stories, this has a beginning, and this beginning was in the wet spring snow that crunched underfoot and trailed mud. Spring snow, stained crimson.

~(TH\.oOo./TH)~

I was at the table with a torn quilt draped over my lap, a needle in my hand, and a dying candle on the table, lighting the journals I was studying as I mended the cloth. My Edrig burst in through the door, the chopping axe clutched in his hands, startling me half to death, but before I could reprimand him he exclaimed,

"Ma! There are folk! Three o' them, small as I, armed, hurt; they are bleedin'!"

I set down my work, blew out the candle and commanded him to stay inside, then lifted my skirts and sprinted out into the clearing surrounding my home. The ground was a patchwork of fresh snow and hardened earth, but the faded grass field was fighting through the thin remainder of winter that clung to the village like a leech. There, on the southern outskirts of my little plot of land, collapsed upon a fallen pine, lay three children. The storms had been bad the past winter, worse than typically, and many of the trees had broken. It was quite a distance away, and my sight was not what it had been when I was a girl, so I could not make out much beyond that fact that all three were injured to some extent or another.

I ran to the tree line as one called something out, too far and muddled for me to make out, then again, louder,

"Help!"

Then I was upon them, and faltered at what I saw, coming up short, unsure how to proceed. Unsure whether to proceed at all or if it would be better to leave them for their troubles, point them to Loch, go inside my home and lock the door behind me.

They aren't children, I realized then, not even Men at all, or at the very least not men of my own race. Male, yes, but these are Dwarves – one large one and two smaller, though none of the trio are anything that could be called 'big'. The tallest cannot stand taller than Edrig, and he comes up to just about my shoulders. The other two are quite the size of ten year old girls, I thought.

Spring snow was fluttering from the sky, kissing our faces and meting on warm cheeks. I bit my lip and took a step back. Two had sat the third to lean back upon the fallen tree and his injuries were by far the worse: his face was sweaty and pale, skin a pasty yellow-green. He had dark rings under his eyes, but it was hard to tell if it was from lack of sleep or illness. Beside him the other two sat heaving; one completely engrossed in the injured one, clutching his hand and muttering and petting his head, the other hovering above them like a shield, a wall, a cliff. He was looking around with wild eyes, as if searching for something, and his focus came onto me as I swallowed and finally knelt in the wet snow beside them.

The first thing that came to my mind was that the dirt under me ruined my skirts, but that was like as not the wine in my belly speaking, and not my sound mind.

The second was that my hands were shaking, and ball them into fists that I might, I could not stop them nor the rapid beating of my heart in my ears.

The shorter Dwarf (a child perhaps?) was breathing shallowly – too shallowly. I pushed hard at the Dwarf who sat with the injured one's hand in both of his, and it was either his distracted state or lack of experience that came with youth that had him falling back: he was twice as heavy as Edrig.

"What are you doing? Unhand him!" he shouted.

"Fíli," the other barked, and the Dwarf closed his mouth.

I looked over the dark haired one, asking question upon question as to his condition, its length, its most recent effects. From the story they told depicting the ailment I was able to construct a hypothesis. Poison was the ultimate answer; it was in his blood, moving to his heart and stealing his strength quickly. He could hardly keep himself awake now.

"Loch is a quarter hour away from here," I told them, not looking at either of the other two. "Ye will find Master Carrig in the Town Hall. He can help ye there. It is downhill so the travel should not be troublesome overmuch."

Then I stood and brushed the snow from the skirts. It had melted and wet the wool, leaving a large dark spot all down the front, and the fabric heavy.

"A quarter… Miss, he can't walk a quarter minute!" It was the younger who said it; in tears, in panic, in despair. I bit my lip, looked between the three, kneeled back in the snow with trepidation, holding as safe a distance as I could from the other two.

The wound itself is superficial, hardly grazing flesh, I thought. It would heal on its own in close to a week, no stitches needed but… Poison. Infection. His shoulder is inflamed, swollen to the size of an apple, violet veins branching over his chest, down his arm. Bandits. Or Orcs. Either is a possibility in equal measure.

I can save the Dwarf, I thought. Take him to my home, clean him up, make an antidote, nurse him back to health as the illness burnt out of him. But that isn't my job. My job is to determine the extent of his injury and then have the Dwarf taken to Loch's healer to be treated under the care of a properly experienced man, in a clean medical area, with hundreds of books and scrolls to help. My job is to report to someone who knew what he was doing: a proper physician, not some girl from the woods outside of town, I thought.

… It had been a day and a half, I was told. The poison was Widow's Kiss, had to be, the symptoms were too close of a match for it to be anything else and…

… He should have fallen unconscious long ago, but Dwarf biology is different from that of Men. Has to be, otherwise they would not be so short, I thought.

I bit my thumbnail. Looked between the three. Back to my home. Back to the Dwarf laying at my knees and the two looking at me, pleading without word to help their dying friend, terrified and helpless. Back to my small home that had only room for two, and few valuables. I didn't live there alone. I had taken patients there many times, but this would require an overnight stay at the very least, in the place where my son and I slept.

… Loch is a one quarter hour's walk northwest of here, I thought, and he made it this far by some miracle as it were.

I looked back down at the Dwarf. He uttered something and the other smaller one was back at his side, hovering over him and petting his face.

"It's alright, Kee. I'm here. We're going to take care of you."

The Dwarf, Kee, made an indiscernible sound that may have been a word or a moan of pain. The other shushed him and stroke his hair and brow, sniffing, trying to smile, to give brave reassurance, to channel some of his strength.

They are children, I thought, they cannot harm you or your son.

I looked to my home, to the place where my son had spent the majority of his life, the place where we lived together. I lit a candle in the window every night; what would it say of me if I ran to town now? If I turned them away? They were Dwarves and could rob me blind of all of my valuables, few though they were, hurt me—hurt my son. They were wounded, struggling to walk. They were a greedy and selfish people with a complete disregard for anyone who wasn't them, violent, brutal cave-dwelling savages. They needed help.

I looked up from the boy under my arm to the older Dwarf, his eyes hopeful and desperate and tired; Help him, they begged, Save him.

"Help me get him up," I said, pushing to my feet and pulling him carefully by the arm. They hoisted him up and in a disoriented path stumbled back to my home, the home of my son, the place that was our sanctuary, the place that was always safe for us... The place that was always safe, period, because there was nothing more left to say after that word, nothing to add to discredit that one, simple fact, Dwarves or not.

Once inside I threw my arm across the table to clear it, spilling bowls of food and candles and journals to the floor.

"Take his clothes off!" I ordered, rushing about the house from cabinet to cabinet for supplies and potions and herbs and incantation scrolls as the other two started undressing him. Cloak, coat, vest, armour (armour!), tunic, undershirt; all came away with little care to their integrity. The tunic and undershirt were torn down the front once the mail shirt lay discarded on my kitchen floor.

My son helped me set up my materials, cleansed my equipment. I shoved a bucket in his hands and ordered him to get me water.

"Water – nae, Ma! I won't leave ye here alone with—"

"Get me the water," I barked. "And stay out o' the house when ye dae."

"Ma, I won't—"

"Edrig. Dae as ye're told. Is there not firewood for ye tae finish choppin'?"

Edrig cast a hard glare, chopping axe pointedly in hand, at the three Dwarves, but left the house without more protest. I turned to the Dwarves.

"Fetch me a rope or a belt; somethin' tae tie off his arm tae lessen the blood flow." I had to try to stop the poison from spreading any further, if it could be helped.

What happened was not what I was expecting to happen: I have done this before, and many times have received snaps and slaps for the orders. Things like, "'Fetch me', she tells us," and, "Next she be tellin' us tae cook her food and mend her skirts," and, "If she were my wife…"

What I got was a belt in my hand before the final word left me. For a long moment I was silent, staring at the straw haired Dwarf who handed me his belt, then focused back on cleaning the wound and the surrounding area while the other two held him down as he jerked and twisted. He cried and cursed and then did it again using words I could not understand.

"Is it wise that you perform this procedure?" the black haired one asked.

"The lad is dyin'," I said, the words muffled by the belt between my teeth. I took it from my mouth and began wrapping it around his shoulders. "The village is too far away, yer friend said it himself. He won't make the trip."

"You are a woman. I hardly imagine you have had proper training and research, apprenticed under a master or at the very least have sufficient experience in the field."

"Aye, I am and nae, I didn't. Ye have brilliant observation skills, ye dae."

"That is a fact, lass, not an insult," he said. I hummed but didn't respond, because what could I say to it that wouldn't be a lie?

"Put pressure here," I instructed, letting the smaller of the two press the wine-drenched cloth over Kay's shoulder in my place as I turned to the salves and antidotes.

The Dwarf on my table choked and coughed and tried to spit out the potion I mixed so I covered my hand over his mouth and nose until it went down and stayed down. He gagged but didn't regurgitate.

"Tear these intae long halves," I commanded to anyone who would take over the job as I slathered the other, a dark green salve that was thick and pungent as hot piss, over Kee's skin. The older of the two tore three bandages in half lengthwise and handed the strips to me one by one. The lad jerked and fought the hands keeping him down as I tied off the clean cotton, his face reddening and his breath growing more shallow and hitched. Tears ran down the sides of his face and disappeared into his hair.

The poison I battled now, the infection could wait until he made steps to recovery. I didn't know enough to be absolutely sure that if I fought the infection as well, it would not do further damage in contrast with the antidote; had neither the means nor opportunity to have learned enough.

I gave him something to put him to sleep. Three drops in a cup of water that he coughed and sputtered and nearly puked over me, but it went down and he stopped moaning and gasping at the burn in his shoulder. Shortly thereafter he stopped moving.

"Kíli? Kíli! Can you hear me? You have to open your eyes! What did you do to him?" the smaller accused, turning to look at me with murder in his face as he shook his friend by the shoulders, his voice cracking and breaking and thick. Is eyes and face, too, were misty and drenched with tears.

"He is in pain now, and it will get worse tonight, tomorrow. Until the poison burns out o' him. I gave him a potion from the flowers of sleep tae help him through the worst o' it. Don't wake him," I told him as I unrolled a casting scroll and found the prayer I needed.

The young Dwarf turned back to his sleeping friend, brushing his hair and murmuring for him to wake up and look at him, to be all right. I placed my hands, one on Keelee's (Kiely? Killey?) brow and the other on his wounded shoulder, and began to murmur in the old tongue of the Northmen.

"O, Great Maker o' the world, our spirits sing tae ye tae hear our plea. O, mòr 'dèanamh an t-saoghail , ar spioradan seinn thu a 'cluinntinn ar n- ùrnaigh. Our ask is humble, but our hearts despair. Tha ar n- iarraidh 'S e iriosal , ach ar cridheachan eu-dòchas. As we hold our love he fades. Mar a tha sinn a 'cumail ar gràdh e a' sìoladh. He dwells in the land of the Eternal Night, his strength stolen and his heart weakened. Tha ea ' còmhnaidh ann an tìr na h-oidhche shiorruidh , a neart agus a ghoid chridhe lagachadh. But his spirit cries strong tae ours. Ach ighidh e spiorad làidir a rinne. We reach intae the Night for him but, we prey tae ye, Creator o' Creators, tae guid him home, tae not steal him away in his youth, tae let his days be long and many—"

"Mahal made him, and Mahal will unmake him, at the time that was charted in the Stone. We pray you grant him courage to brave the Night and strength to wade it home." It was the dark haired one who completed the plea. He did not tear his watchful gaze from the boy when he said to me, "I know that prayer."

I nodded solemnly, "It is old. There are few whom are not of the North ken it."

"There are few left of the Northmen know it," he corrected.

"It is the dying who have most to offer to the world." The smaller one stood beside me, holding Keelee's hand in both of his. I placed my hand upon his shoulder, feeling him flinch in pain. "He dwells in the darkness o' his weakened spirit. Call tae him." Call him back.

He did that, muttering encouragement under his breath, stroking Keelee's hair and face, pleading with him to be a little stronger, fight a little harder, return to him.

"You're strong. You have always been. Stronger than even me. Like mother. Strong and persistent and stupid, and you don't know when to stay down. Don't stay down, Kee." His words were swallowed by tears but his grip was strong and sure and faithful in the way only one who had kenned death could have.

My son came back with water and I sent him back outside, bringing the bucket to the foot of the table and dipping a cloth into the cold, washing away the sweat and illness that pushed out of Keelee's skin. The blonde one asked to do it by himself and I let him climb upon a chair on his knees and finish for me. It was a pitiful sight; one in a death sleep on my kitchen table, another hovering atop him, pleading him awake, the third trying to be larger than life, to stand vigilant and powerful despite his weakness and fatigue and injury. A tiny family cracking and breaking into fragment like the dry leaves of autumn.

I wiped my hand on my apron, red and brown from the blood and dirt, and shifted uncomfortably, feeling guilty for disturbing the long silence that had settled like a blanket about my home.

"I should look tae ye, also," I said, gesturing with my hand. "And… I can take yer things, if ye like. Coats and… all else that ye don't need indoors," I added, when it occurred to me that I had three strangers in my home, two of whom, while battered and beaten and half asleep themselves, were armed for a war. Swords, axes, knives—the wilderness was never a safe place to be unarmed, but there was self-defence and then there was a mad killer on a rampage and they were blurring that line. My only really weapon, a hatchet for chopping firewood, was with Edrig, and I would not call to him.

I couldn't help but stare, and I was sure I looked at frightened as I felt, at the sheer number of weapons that I suddenly couldn't help but notice… and my Edrig was just outside, a young boy who would rush in at the first sign of danger in spite of my warnings.

As several grotesque scenarios tore through my mind the elder left the table and began to unload his things on the boot rack by my door. As more came free I realized I had hardly seen half of what he carried, and again searched my home for the heaviest and hardest objects to throw or swing, anything to do significant damage within my arm's reach. He ordered the younger (Feily? Feelee?) to follow his example. My stomach clenched at the sight and I quickly began feeling nauseous. I tried not to let on how hard I shook.

When I caught the elder's (Torin? Corin?) eye and he nodded a wave of relief washed over me at the silent agreement, the understanding of how uncomfortable they made me feel and the acceptance that took me rather by pleasant surprise. My thanks was a brief and tight smile.

I saw to the younger first, treating his bruised back with as much tenderness as I could afford before giving him something to ease the pain and help him sleep. He fell into oblivion with his friend's name on his lips, head pillowed on his folded arms and Keelee's hand in his. The older (his Father? His Uncle?) helped me dress him again and I left a quilt folded on Keelee's knees for when Feelee got cold.

Torin's injuries were far more extensive where armour couldn't protect him.

"Come and sit. I must tend tae ye also."

"I am unhurt."

Oh, aye, and I am a forest giant, I thought. I wanted to tell him not to be proud and stupid. Instead I told him,

"If I don't right yer shoulder it will swell. Yer blood will clot and form a blockage. Ye can lose yer arm. And yer life." It may or may not have been an exaggeration, but what he did not know could not hurt me. "Ye shouldn't argue with yer physician," I said.

I was surprised when he leaned once again onto my chair for support, without a comment about my tongue. I smiled stupidly to myself as I prepared the things I needed to see to him. It felt good, not being questioned.

Torin watched his friends when he thought I wasn't looking, and when I saw his face my own fell. I have seen the look so many times and too often it was followed by the heartbreak and anguish of losing someone beloved. It was the absolute, paralyzing dread that every breath the person on my table drew was their last. He watched them and could do nothing, helpless, useless, weak.

I averted my gaze before I could be caught staring and embarrass him.

I helped the Dwarf upright again so that I might undress him and he swayed drunkenly on quaking legs, latching onto the edge of my kitchen table to steady himself. He tried to remove his own clothes but I caught his hands, gently pushing them back down to his sides.

"Let me," I asked. "Ye don't have tae dae this by yer lonesome." He didn't look at me, and it might have hurt a little if not for the furrow in his brow and intense focus in his face as he struggled to remaining upright.

We didn't speak as I worked to unclothe him. His skin was thick under my fingers, rough with time and labor, his hands marred with scars and cracked from dryness.

Ribs first, I decided, setting up everything I would need in order.

He swayed in my periphery when I turned away, losing his grasp on the edge of the table, fingernails scraping across the wood as his knees bucked, giving away under the weight of him. Torin collapsed, his strength leaving him, and I surged forward to catch him, supporting the Dwarf before he could fall, draping his good arm over my shoulder as I held him around the waist. He growled like some wild animal when I moved his dislocated shoulder and I whispered apologies as I adjusted my grip, struggling to keep him upright.

"Ye're heavy for a little folk," I said.

I helped him back into the chair, and though his eyes were wide open, there was exhaustion in them, and sleep. I wanted to allow him rest, grant him the relief of oblivion, but I had to tend to him first and the process would be unfortunately lengthy.

His ribs were in sick shades of green and purple. He breathed slow and shallow and he screwed his eye shut when I pressed my fingers to his side. I closed my eyes.

"Here," I said, extending a vile to him, one of my last. He looked at it as if it had done him some great injustice, then at me with a look that was little better. I pursed my lips and tried not to be offended. "For the pain," I explained. "It makes a fast habit in concentrated doses, so I cannot give ye more, but it will take some o' the edge off."

He tipped his head back and swallowed it down in one slip, then nodded at me. I used the same medicaments for his ribs as I had for Feelee's back, before carefully, so as not to disturb his arm, wrapping his midsection in clean cotton cloth. As I did, with his friend fatally wounded and struggling to stay alive and his other friend half-lucid, all I could think of was how much hair he had on his back and chest. He was like a bear or a beaver; some furry animal in a thick pelt to keep him warm in winter. He could likely braid his back and chest if he so pleased.

I had been with two people in my life (one too many than any self respecting lady should, but I surely wasn't that), but I have seen more naked men than was anyplace near the realm of proper for a lass, and this was the most hairy person that I had ever laid eyes on, which perhaps was why it was so much easier to see the scars.

They were everywhere, bold pale lines sprayed over the expanse of his back and sides and front. A stab on his back between third and fourth right rib; a line running downwards just left of his spine, missing it by a hair; a decade-old burn on his right forearm, hardened over pink and rough; a long scar from perhaps a sword running diagonally across his chest, as if someone slashed downwards over his heart in an attempt to open his ribcage; another, a curving crescent rightward of his abdomen that should have put his innards on the out…

I couldn't stop myself from touching them, some fresh, a few years old perhaps, and others half a lifetime, and all intertwined with pale black lines that drew shapes I had never seen before. He had stories written on his skin in blood and ink, a history of wars and demons like a map, blade and needle pressed into his back, his chest, his arms, and each carried a tale I felt little more than pity over as I traced them. Stories of old; of blood and corpses and familiar wide-eyed faces on the battlefield at dawn's first light. Stories of the dead, of the lost, of things that were important, of things that should have been; stories that spelled out his life like the roots of a tree, small and delicate on the nape of his neck and branching out over his shoulders and down the length of his spine, all thick and bold and fire and fury. Stories that all boiled down to a brutal, terrifying fact: he won.

No one should have to live through that, live with the memory of it etched into their dreams and into their skin.

"Valar…" I whispered, ghosting my fingers over one of the more prominent scars that stretched over his back to his right shoulder blade, disfiguring his skin and bone structure.

"Is your gawking quite satisfied?" he demanded, and I felt my face heat up, bowing my head.

"Forgive me, sir. I had not meant…" I struggled with words for some time, then whispered, "I'm sorry, sir," because someone had to, for every burden he carried on his back and across his chest and upon his shoulders. "Right away, sir."

I wrapped his chest careful as I dared, trying hard to not move his arm more than I absolutely had to.

"They will heal in three tae four weeks. Until then don't exert yerself overmuch," I told him. He nodded for me to continue. I did. He had sprained his left shoulder and I inquired after how it had come to be as I treated it.

"Early this morn," Torin said, his voice rough and exhausted. "We slept in the trees for safety. There wasn't enough rope to secure us all. I caught the majority of my weight with my arms, but I was hardly awake. I landed wrong," he explained. "I tried to move it as little as the situation would allow, but the pain has yet to relent," he said, then, almost as an afterthought added, "It is more intense than I recall it being in the past."

"As it should be," I supplied. "… Memories fade over time, change. Some things we only imagine to recall correctly. Sometimes we bear memory o' things that have never come to pass. Others we cannot recall at all."

"Aye. That I know enough of," he said. I bit my lip, his words like in icy breeze in my chest, and pity born out of empathy cloaking my bones. Loss was a weight borne by one's lonesome, but the gaps it left in one's mind were more terrible than those it left in one's life.

"How does it feel? Is it hurtin' less? Are ye comfortable?" I asked once I had secured it to his side.

"Better, yes, and as comfortable as I might be. Thank you, lass," he said, still not looking at me. I focused on the gash in his right arm. His skin was shredded and the scar would stand out rippling over his skin but that was luckily the worst of it. Any deeper and there would have been a problem less easily fixed.

"I will need tae clean and stitch it," I warned as I set out the sewing kit.

"Leave it, lass. We can take care of ourselves."

I shook my head and shoved a thumb over my shoulder to my kitchen table. "Pardon, sir, if yer reassurance doesn't reassure me." I paused, dropping a thread into a cup of wine standing on the edge of the table, then added, softer, "Orcs are unpopular with us."

"As they are everywhere else," he said, as if I didn't know that already.

"Aye, but here they are also frequent. We are used tae them: solitary attacks, raids… we've seen it all. It would be cruel tae charge penniless families for the terror and death those creatures spread," I explained, because I had no doubts left it was not cutthroats. Too much damage for a trio of Dwarves armed for battle. "I need tae clean the cut. Fire or wine?"

"No fire," he snapped, so sharp that I jumped back away from him. He lowered his eyes and shook his head. "Wine, if it is all the same to you."

I bit my lip, making no comment and instead wet a cloth with wine and pressed it to the cut. He gasped through his nose, grit his teeth. It had scabbed over when it was wrapped and the crisp dried blood was pulled away with the improvised bandage. It took to bleeding down his arm again, and I was sure the sharp sting of alcohol in his veins burnt.

"How did it happen?" I asked, kneeling on the stone floor by his side, the reek of raw flesh sweet in my nose and a cleansed needle in my hand.

"Ambush," he said plainly. "We are traveling for work. I brought the boys with me to teach them business and sales. They came at nightfall, four of them."

"Considerin' ye're here, am I tae understand that the world is rid o' four Orcs?" He said nothing, but he didn't need to. I smiled. "There was a raid only three moons ago," I said. "We fight them as best we can, and Rangers are never far. We lodge at least a pair in the local inn at all times. I never understood why those creatures loved the Northlands so much."

"It is the unprotected people they love."

"We are hardly unprotected," I scoffed. "Torches and pitchforks or swords and arrows. Loch makes dae with what it's given. Ye ought not judge afore kennin'. We might not look like much, but I promise we may surprise ye yet."

"That is no life to live; in fear."

"Nay, it is not. But, Loch stood here for four hundred year and it will stand for four hundred more. We fight and we teach our children tae be brave and tae fight. It's the best we can dae."

He didn't offer that we could leave, settle elsewhere, someplace safer as most other travellers I've treated said. That was the first reason for which I respected him.

We were silent as I sewed Torin back together. I ran my fingers across the chaos upon his skin again, and eventually had to close my eyes. They were watering.

"Who did this tae ya…"

"Time." I hadn't realized I had said it aloud until he answered it minutes later. I flushed. "I haven't need of your pity," he said, nay snapped.

"Nae, ye don't. Forgive me, it is not my place."

When I was finished I wrapped it and diverted my single-minded focus to his right ankle, sitting on the floor at the foot of the chair with my legs folded underneath me. It wasn't broken, but the sprain was a rough one. I didn't get back up when I finished. Instead I remained sitting on the floor by his feet, letting the serenity settle like mist over my home. I placed my hand on his knee and he didn't look down at me for many minutes.

I looked up at him, and he looked up at his sleeping friends, so peaceful and untouched by the woes of the world they were in their mindless oblivion. A thing of envy, that, if not for the near fatal circumstance.

He said, "He will wake," and it was as if he was ordering fate to wake the lad on my table and it was not up for negotiation. Perhaps it was not. The boy looked so much like him; a son, likely. I could not imagine what I would do had my Edrig lain on that table in Keelee's place. His recovery was not a choice and I knew Torin himself would die and travel to wherever Dwarves go to in death to get his son back.

"He is strong. Has tae be, else he'd not have been awake when ye came. He will fight." After another aching moment of silence I added, "Speak tae him. He needs tae ken he is not in this fight alone, tae ken ye are in the darkness with him." I helped him back into his boot, knotting the ropes for him.

When I was finished he said, "Many thanks, lass. You will be repaid in full for your efforts."

I scoffed and waved him off. "Nonsense. Injuries by Orcs are free o' charge; I said. Think nothin' o' it." I paused, then, "He's close tae ye. Keelee," I said as I began helping him back into his clothing. "Tae yer blood, I'm meanin'." I wanted to confirm my theory before naming the lad his son. He shook his head and told me he could do it. He could, true to his word, but just barely. I restrained myself from helping again.

"Kíli is my nephew."

"Oh. From a brother or sister?"

"Sister."

"And the other?"

Thorin nodded. "He is also."

I nodded. "I suppose I should have kent. The way he was with him. Yer other nephew with yer first nephew, I mean… Tonight will be hard for him. For both o' ye. Rest. Gather yer strength. Yer body will need it." I stood, cleaning the table of medical supplies and then leaned back on the edge.

"Kíli."

I looked up and frowned at him. "I beg yer pardon?"

"Kíli. Not Keelee."

I looked down, cheeks colouring pink. "Oh. Pardon, sir. Kíli. And ye are…?"

"Thorin."

"Thorin," I said, nodding, blushing deeper. Stupid: Thorin, not Torin. There is a large difference. "It is a nice name. Thorin…"

~(TH\.oOo./TH)~

I did not know then, a young girl without foresight that I was, how long I would remember that name for, and what it would come to mean for me and for my son. I only hope my own name had come to mean to him a fraction of what his carried upon my lips. Perhaps, had I understood then the weight of that meeting, and who the Dwarf sitting before me was, I would not have said the name so thoughtlessly. I would have given it the honour it deserved.

~(TH\.oOo./TH)~

"Oh! It is becoming late. Are ye hungry? I will be starting on supper soon. There are not enough leftovers, but I can cater something up. I don't imagine ye've eaten much in the last few days. Ye eat grains? I am not sure what Dwarves eat. It is said yer kind eat stone…?"

"Whoever said it is an imbecile," he snapped.

"Oh. Forgive me, sir. I had not kent…"

"Now you do, and I would thank you to refrain from such assumptions."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I had nae meanin' tae offend, sir." I scrambled to remedy the embarrassment by starting on supper even through his assurance that they would live without it, that it was not necessary. I put a cauldron over the fire and started on oatmeal through his protests.

Tentatively, casting Thorin a wary look over my shoulder, I called my son in and together we warmed up leftovers and finished on the extra supper. My stores were thinning but even with three new mouthes to feed this evening it would last me until the harvest trade.

"Are ye good with those?" my son asked as we ate, jerking his chin to the weapons the Dwarves laid out by my door.

"I have seen more battle than your mother has years in this world, lad. Aye, I am experienced," Thorin said, and there was regret in his voice, and anger. At the circumstances that gave him his prowess with a blade? At Edrig for once again sticking his nose where it did not belong? I did not know. Edrig nodded, chewing noisily, and asked the next question around a mouthful.

"If ye're so good, why dae ye look like ye tried tae kill death and lost?"

"Edrig!" I exclaimed, striding forward and cuffing him on the head, and then apologized for him. Edrig continued.

"I find it concerning that someone who has seen more battles than me Ma years would come out o' one lookin' so awful."

"I was not fighting with skilled warriors at my back," Thorin explained. "I was fighting with two boys hardly old enough to blood their blades." Edrig nodded, feet swinging back and forth where he sat on the edge of the table, his back to me.

"So, if ye got it in yer head tae point a sword at someone, how many unarmed people would it take tae kill ye?"

"I am afraid that number is higher than you would be comfortable with, lad." Both of us tensed. "Should anyone decide to visit your home now, uninvited, they would find themselves unwelcome and leaving shortly."

"Aye? Are ye certain about that? Because I am not convinced that my good mother would appreciate having tae fight off intruders with a cast iron frying pan."

I hit him again and hissed for him to stop. He whined and winced but otherwise remained unfazed by my boiling anger.

"So, how many o' ye were traveling? Bit a small party, by any account. Where is everyone else?"

I grabbed his ear and pulled him off of the table, pushing him to our room.

"That's it, that's enough for the night. Away with ye. Make yerself scarce afore I tan yer hide." I turned to Thorin and blushed. "Forgive my son. Sometimes he forgets he was not raised by wolves."

"The lad has a good heart, if somewhat tactless. He has done no wrong."

"It was rude."

"It was cautious," Thorin said. "Does he know how to fight?"

"A little," I said, setting my empty bowl aside and taking his away once he had scraped it clean with his fingers. I took wine from the cabinet and poured two cups. "He plays guards and thieves with the other boys in the town, but we live a distance away. He does not get the chance tae practice as often as I would like. The Rangers demonstrate things occasionally, and the lads spent days tae dae the same, but..." We drank.

"You fear for him."

"Would ye blame me tae fret over that boy? He's as much brains as he does brawn, and he does not have very much brawn. He is eager to bloody his sword and become a man grown."

"There is little joy in being a man grown," Thorin said, and I held my cup up in toast to that truth. We finished our drinks in silence and I took to cleaning up. I pulled the washbasin from the shed and started washing clothes, theirs included, and hung them by the fire to dry. Edrig came back out as I busied myself and when Fíli awoke he sat beside him and tried to get the Dwarf boy to eat a little. Fíli said he would only eat when his brother did, but that didn't deter Edrig from his mission to force feed the poor lad at least five spoons of porridge.

Between murmuring for his brother to wake up and petting his head and face, Fíli listened to Edrig recite all the accounts of Orc victims coming to my door and leaving happily with their families shortly thereafter. It must've helped, talking with someone his age. Eventually he became more comfortable in the presence of strangers and agreed to eat a little bit, though moving was a terrible chore so after fighting Edrig he submitted to his fate of being fed.

Edrig found some of my journals and went through them with Fíli reading out loud and showing pictures of flowers and herbs, explaining how they would help his brother. Fíli didn't smile, he wouldn't for some days yet, I imagined, but his eyes were brighter with a new hope that was not there before, and a faith only a child could bear, and my heart smiled with parental pride.

"I am thirsty," Edrig said suddenly, jumping to his feet. "Are ye thirsty? Dae ye like tea? I will make ye some tea. A warm cup o' tea makes everything better." He rushed to it without hearing a response. Fíli relaxed into himself a little more.

It was black outside when it was finally time. I've done it many times, too many. Now was not easier than all the hundreds of times before, when mothers and fathers and siblings had to be dragged out by other people, away from their loved ones' sides as they lay unconscious in Master Carrig's office or, less often, on my kitchen table. The guilt, I knew, would kill me, but they could not stay.

Then I heard a grunt of pain.

Thorin was frowning in his sleep, his breath becoming uneven as his head twitched. He started growling, fighting some unseen enemy in his sleep and foolishly, forgetting he had the instincts of a warrior, I approached him, pressing a hand on his good shoulder.

Edrig and Fíli silenced, and then Fíli whispered to me, "Missus, don't do that! Step away!"

"Sir?" I shook him gently. "Sir?" He jerked in his sleep, causing me to jump back a step. "Thorin?" I whispered. His eyes snapped open and he had me by the arm in a grip that had surely bruised it. He growled low, glaring at me with fire in his wild, unseeing eyes. I grasped his forearm with both of mine, heart beating in my throat and in my ears. Behind me, I could hear Edrig searching for a kitchen knife.

"Thorin!" I squeaked. "'Tis alright. T'was but a dream," I assured him voice trembling, eyes tearing up, still fisting the sleeves of his tunic until my knuckles were white. "This is a safe place. T'was nought but a dream."

He blinked twice, then shook his head, blinked twice more.

"Apologies, lass. I'd no meaning to frighten you. You should not approach me when I sleep. No good comes of it."

"Oh, aye, I can feel it. So if ye can just let go o' my arm now…?"

He looked down as if realizing for the first time he held me fast and snapped his hand away as if he had been burned. My arm was hurting something mighty, a black and blue handprint quickly forming where he had gripped it. I hissed as I rubbed at it, shaking my head against the tremble of fear that overtook my body.

Thorin looked guilty, sitting as far from me as the chair would allow and glaring at his own hands with something akin to hate. A working man's hands. A killer's hands. Dripping with red, trembling. Only weapons have been let to make a home in those hands, wide and rough and disfigured.

"It's late, Ma," Edrig said, and I jumped back, heart in my throat. "Ye should go tae bed now." He stood with a knife in front of him, pointing it squarely at Thorin. Fíli, eyes wide, had both hands wrapped around one of Edrig's, head darting wildly between the three of us.

"Of course it's late: what are ye doin' here? Get yer little arse tae bed, Edrig," I snapped. He didn't lower the knife.

"Edrig, please put the knife away." It was Fíli who asked. "It was only a battle dream. Uncle has them sometimes. He didn't mean to hurt your mother."

"But he did."

Fíli squared his jaw and said, "If you try to hurt Uncle, I will have to try to hurt you. Enough people have been hurt already. Do not make the rest of us."

Edrig put the knife away without a word and sat back down beside Fíli, anger welling up in his eyes in the form of unshed tears. The gash on Thorin's arm took to bleeding again so I fetched more dressing.

Edrig whispered to Fíli, "I always tell Ma that one day the people she invites intae our home will hurt her. She never listens."

Fíli said, "Because if that day ever comes, everyone she helped will stand at her back. My mother is like that, too, and this is what she always tells me. People always remember kindness."

"Maybe where ye come from," Edrig whispered, and I stopped listening in on a private conversation, smiling to myself nevertheless. When I was done I looked outside and said something I would never say on a sober head.

"It's snowin'."

"It looks like it might be a blizzard," Edrig said, staring at Fíli like he was daring him, and I didn't correct his statement.

"Aye," I said instead. "So it might. It will be a cold night. Edrig…?" My son nodded and went to fetch the spare sheets. I crossed my fingers.

Prove your nephew right, Thorin, I thought. Prove that kindness is remembered among your people as much as Fíli believes it to be.

Thorin looked torn between propriety and the fact that it was his nephew laying on my kitchen table, fighting for his life, sweating with illness. His nephew, whose shoulder was nearly twice its normal size. His nephew, who was in shades of yellow and green like a rotting corpse.

They remained. Of course they did. Everyone would, if offered the chance. Edrig was in the sitting room with some spare bedding – a pillow, several quilts and a winter fur I had yet to put away – before I even made the conscious decision not to send them away. I added more wood to the fire, willing it to burn through the night, to give us warmth in winter's parting kiss.

Before bidding them goodnight, I set a candle in the window and lit it, then removed as many valuables as I could from the main room of the house and took them to my chamber without being outright rude much as I might. Once I did bid them good night I went to my own room, where Edrig was waiting for me on our shared bed.

I locked the door and double checked that it was closed right, and got into bed. Edrig slept closest to the wall, and though I knew how to wake up at a moment's notice, I put a paring knife under my pillow just the same. It took me a long time to start falling asleep, but by then, hours later, the Dwarves seemed to have fallen back asleep also, and then I couldn't sleep for an entirely different reason than the strangers with weapons in the home I shared with my son; these strangers snored like they would wake the dead.

That night I tossed and turned, my mind galloping like a wild stallion, and when the morning came it was too soon.

The bed was cool when I woke, surprised that I slept at all with the previous day plaguing my every thought, my memory returning to the Dwarves and what they had done. Or rather, what they had not done, which was everything I had expected them to. I didn't realize its emptiness either right away, my mind still asleep, and something smelled like breakfast. So I smiled and shuffled further under the covers and didn't open my eyes until I reached out and felt only the wall.

To say I was on my feet as fast as lightening was not an exaggeration, heart pounding in my ears.

"Edrig? Edrig!" When I tried to open the door it was locked from the outside and it took me several terrifying moments to remember that this was the standard procedure: whoever woke first locked the door from the outside and slipped the key under the door. When I rushed into the kitchen Edrig was crouching by the fireplace with a pan over the meagre flame and a hushing finger at his lips.

"They are still sleepin'," he whispered, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.

I looked at the state of my dining area and sitting room. The space was one room, divided only by the placement of furniture.

The older Dwarf slept on the wood couch. It and its straw mattress have always been too short for me, my feet hanging over the edge whenever I, more often than not, fell asleep on it. He fit on it without an issue, but the fur over him made him seem even smaller than he already was. No, small was the wrong term. Short, yes, but he was by no means small to any stretch of imagination. He looked warm, if not particularly comfortable.

It was my kitchen table that drew my attention and my person. Kíli was still asleep, even as the sun had already begun rising, painting the overcast sky from black to grey. Fíli sat in the chair, half laying on the table itself. The pillow I set to save his back some pain had migrated under him and he used it as a boost, letting him better lay half on top of his brother. His head was on Kíli's belly, hands still holding one of his brother's as if holding his hand was the only thing that kept Kíli alive and if I were to be honest it might as well have been. He had a furrow in his brow, pained and restless, and he was making small noises in the back of his throat.

His quilt, the one I had not finished mending the day before, was wrapped around him securely. He either woke up to adjust it or Edrig had before I came.

Kíli was burning up still, but he was cooler than he had been last night. His heart was as steady as it ought to be in sleep, and he breathed easier, if still a little laboured. He was still in shades of olive and sweating right through his clothes and blankets. Carefully as I could, so as not to wake his brother, I unwrapped the cotton on his shoulder to take a look. The smell was horrible. The poison was drawn out, along with worms of pus, and the bandages were coated in a sickly green slime on the inside. They clung to his skin and made a wet noise as they pealed back.

"Oh my… stars, Ma, wrap that back up, for the love o'… that's horrible!" I shook my head and chuckled.

"What are ye makin'?" I asked.

"Eggs. I don't ken how much they eat or if they even like eggs, but I made three for Thorin and two for Fíli. Did ye ken they are brothers? They look as far from brothers as a snowy owl and a woodpecker."

"I'm sure they will love tae hear that analogy, dove."

"I don't think they'll be carin' much right now," Edrig said, then turned to look at Kíli. "Is Kíli goin' tae die?"

"I don't ken," I admitted as I cut away the bandages. "Dwarves are different from Men. I'm goin' intae it half blind with only books tae guid my hand. He's fightin' it hard, the lad, but…"

Edrig was silent for a moment, then said, "I don't won't him tae die. It would kill Fíli."

"It would kill them both," I said, looking at Thorin.

"Have Ye ever lost someone like that?" he asked, and I levelled him with a warning look.

"Edrig. Ye ken we don't talk about me life afore Loch." Edrig hung his head.

"Where dae ye think they came from?"

"Ye can ask Fíli when he wakes up."

I layered another dose of salve over Kíli's shoulder and wrapped it in clean cotton. The swelling and redness has gone down significantly but not yet entirely. If he woke he would be in my care for a week at the very least and, not that I could not afford it but, I still had two patients from three moons past that had had an arm and a foot respectively amputated. Carrig had preformed the amputation but he was too busy to look after them thereafter.

The old bandages I threw into the coals, stoking the flames until they caught fire and burned, taking with them the foul stench. Edrig moved the pan away until the reek of illness cleared.

We broke our fast and I was washing the dishes when I heard it: there was a sharp intake of breath behind me, and then something heavy fell on the floor. I had a kitchen knife in my hand and was shoving my son behind me at once.

The Dwarf, Thorin, was half-crouched defensively on the floor with a blade in his hand, too. It took us both a moment to return to our senses, and I placed the knife back on the counter and shook my head, my back to him even as my face began to burn.

"Apologies, lass. I had no meaning to frighten you."

"Ye also forgive me, sir." I squandered the fleeting thought of explaining why I had a knife pointed at his chest from across the small room, but I didn't need to explain myself to the stranger. From the look on his face, the fleeting realization of, oh, of course, I felt maybe I didn't need to say the words: he was well enough acquainted with instinct by his own.

He didn't ask what exactly I thought I was going to do to him with that knife, didn't laugh in my face from shoving a weapon in his. He simply stood and put his knife back in his boot and I pursed my lips, scowling in anger and a little bit of fear at the fact that he had not emptied all of his weapons at the door as I had requested.

Right, I thought; warrior, and sleeps like one; with one eye open and a weapon in his hand.

Thorin looked up, then respectfully averted his eyes from my person and it took that for me to recall that I was still in a flimsy nightgown. I excused myself, face reddening, to dress. The handprint on my arm was blackened and swollen, standing out vividly against sun-starved skin, and ached with a tight fire as I got back into my clothes. I came back into the kitchen in decent dress in time to see Edrig extending a plate of eggs to Thorin.

His adult face was distorted by the fact that he was a palm's width shorter than my five and ten-year-old son.

"No, lad. I can't. You and your mother have already done more for my family than I can ask."

"Take the bloody plate, sir. I made this and ye are not wastin' three eggs worth o' food."

"Edrig!" I snapped, cuffing him on the head. He whined but said nothing.

"Please forgive him, sir. He doesn't ken when tae keep his mouth shut," I hissed pointedly. "But, he is right: ye must eat somethin'. Ye're injured well enough and malnutrition isn't goin' tae help yer case. Please. I insist."

He took the plate with a nod and ate quietly, sitting in the chair that he occupied the night before.

"How is he?" Thorin asked when I was done washing the dishes. Edrig excused himself to go about his other chores, leaving us to our own.

"Hard tae say," I told him with a sigh, moving around the table to press a hand to Kíli's brow. Feverish, as he was a half hour ago; pulse steady, as it was a half hour ago. He was just a lad, couldn't be older than my Edrig. I couldn't fathom what Thorin must've been going through, watching the boy sweat and shiver in his sleep, hanging onto life by a thread.

"His body is strong, and he is taking the medicaments well. The poison is leavin' him, but the fever and infection can kill him just the same."

He looked at his nephew and for the life of me I believed he would never look away, counting every breath, terrified it would be the lad's final, every beat of his weakened heart the last. I averted my eyes, giving him the privacy he deserved. Men didn't like it when people saw them crying.

Fíli woke up soon after, jumping like a startled deer with a muted, "Huh—wha—I'm awake, I didn't do it." He looked around like a lost animal, then his attention zeroed in on his brother. He went back to stroking his hair and touching his face like the brunette boy would vanish before him if he looked away for only a second.

"You have to wake up, Kee," he pled, but Kíli remained asleep. "How is he?" he asked without looking away, and I told him the same thing I told Thorin. He sniffed and shook his head. "Kee will wake up. He always gets back up. Even when he loses he still gets up. Dwalin always chastises him for not knowing when to give up, even though everyone knows it's just a cover; he's always been proud of Kíli for that. He'll wake up." I wasn't sure who he was trying to assure – himself, maybe, or all of us, too.

His Uncle tried to encourage him to eat. He tried for close to an hour, but Fíli shook his head and said again, "I will eat when Kíli eats," and that was that.

I realized very quickly that I couldn't very well leave the house with these people still in it, and throwing them out now of all times would be a cruelty. That was well enough as there was no shortage of work I could do from home.

I set out a hamper of clothing that needed mending and a sewing kit and sat stitching on the couch. It was a good way to make a little money on the side, mending people's things; women too busy at home to do it, unwed lads, half-blind elderly. I mended clothing, altered it; occasionally I would sit with the other women to dye fabrics for the seamstress, thought it wasn't a particularly enjoyable task.

I sent Edrig out about his chores in the village and instead set my focus between keeping busy with chores and checking on the wounded trio.

At high sun I made lunch and served it, then found another task to busy myself with. I set the plates, poured a drink, but the two awake could not bring themselves to eat much of anything as the sun passed its peak and Kíli had yet to return to us. Fíli muttered sobbing pleas every now and again, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

"Come back to us, Kee," he begged. "Open your eyes." But Kíli didn't listen. He didn't listen the first time, he didn't listen the seventeenth time, and he didn't listen now. We sat wordlessly, and the only sound was the wind, as it whistled through the draft in the kitchen window, and the blonde lad quietly sobbing over his brother.