1. Walk the memories
A chance encounter
He pushed the restaurant door open and stepped on the pavement, pausing to look at his sister's retreating form. Harriet's shoulders were rigid under the blue tailored jacket while she motioned to the taxi driver. A light breeze made her dirty blond hair spill from the tight bun at the nape of her neck. Her bony hand promptly flicked it away from her face and John could picture the look of annoyance in her blue eyes, the slight sneer of her carefully painted lips.
He smiled morosely before turning and walking away in the opposite direction. It was a long walk from the posh restaurant Harriet had chosen to the hotel he was staying in, but John needed to clear his head. The dinner with his elder sibling had been nothing short of excruciating.
Ever since their mother's death his sister and him had drifted further apart until nothing but an ingrained sense of fraternal duty for duty's sake remained. He supposed he was to blame himself the most. Despite Harriet's difficult personality he knew it were his own shortcomings as a brother and a person that had irrevocably ripped their bond, sinew by sinew. It came down to seeing one another twice a year more or less - although now that he was back in England for good it was possible to meet more often. But they didn't. They would talk over the phone when the occasion commanded it and send one another perfunctory gifts for they respective birthdays. It was the interaction of two unwilling parties, with Harriet's voice and posture ever holding an undercurrent of contempt for him. A contempt he could hardly begrudge her, no matter how irksome he found it.
It was altogether better than pity. Harriet might have thought him a maladaptive unsociable specimen of war veteran, but John preferred it to the alternative. To the truth.
He sighed, running his fingers through his short hair. He had long known there was something inherently wrong with his mind. For the entirety of his thirty-three years of life he had - his mind had - harboured thoughts and "memories" which were not his. He would find himself reminiscing people he never met, conversations he never had - and oh how completely surreal they were while at the same time devoid of the dreamlike quality daydreams and fantasies had. They were not bi-dimensional and focused solely on the main details while the rest faded into oblivion of synapses and brain receptors uncaring of the superfluous. No, these delusions were all-encompassing both in space and sensations, no different from real memories in anything other than their sheer impossibility. It had taken and it still took all of his willpower to remember they were just fabrications of his unsound mind and in no way real. Yet they felt real. John could hear the echoes of voices in his ears, ones that were painfully familiar and others that he couldn't quite put a name on. He could feel the ghost pain of injuries he had never sustained and remember - imagine - the sensation of a body different from the one he had, with limbs stronger and the balance point of it much lower. But moreover, he felt a diapason of emotions that swirled and coiled in his chest, which had no reason to exist. Grief and joy, chest-swelling pride and simmering, all-consuming rage. Rage against himself.
They were delusions. John had rationally known so even when he had been nothing but a too serious child and he had not forgotten it when he had turned into an angry teenager, almost unhinged by his frustrations. He had joined the Army the day after he had come of age, deciding to put both his mind and body under the yoke of martial discipline before it was too late. It had been either that or seeing a therapist. Years later, when the injury he had almost succumbed to had made it compulsory for John to see one - and he had to admit his nightmares had been, and still were to an extent, more often filled with sun-scorched sand and unbearable heat, with the deafening sound of a machine-gun firing, rather than with strange war-cries and dark blood, almost black, on his hands - he had not regretted his choice. Discipline worked much better than prescription drugs. And it didn't turn him into a person he had trouble recognising.
John shook his head, trying to stop the train of thoughts from derailing into the raw flesh of matters he could not deal with. He inhaled the damp autumn air and focused on the fairly empty street ahead, every now and then a car sped by, bright lights blinding him for a moment before they vanished into distant rumble. He enjoyed this part of Cardiff. Harriet - being as much a creature of habit as he was - had brought him to the Victorian-looking restaurant before and it was not the first time he had ventured down those streets, trying to process the aftermath of a dinner with her. It was a quiet area, almost quaint with its rows upon rows of Victorian terraced-houses with their grey brick façades and the occasional red-bricked one standing out. It reminded him of his first home, back in the day when their father had still been with them.
They had lived in a portion of London quite like the one he was currently strolling through. He still remembered fondly the afternoons spent chasing an old tattered football down the street with Adam, Harry and Jack.
Jack, who had been deployed to Iraq with him, but had never made it back. A grenade had taken away most of him. John could still see in his mind's eye the other man's bloodshot hazel orbs looking at him unseeing.
His breath turned leaden in his chest, refusing to ascend his windpipe.
They hadn't been close. After his parent's divorce they had moved from their Islington home and John hadn't seen any of the boys for over a decade. A few shared memories and some poor jokes in their camp reacquainted John and Jack, but only three weeks later the latter was lying sprawled, spilled, on the scorching sand in an alley in Basra and John could not erase the wrongness of the sight. He liked to remember his childhood mates with their hair sticking to their foreheads with perspiration while they ran on the hot tarmac, but Jack's forehead would forever be imprinted in his mind with a long smear of blood on it, pale in death.
John ran his hand through his hair, wryly wondering if he was going to summon all of his demons on this particular evening or if there was hope he could make it back to his hotel with his mind still in one, albeit cracked, piece? He breathed deeply, trying to match the pace of his intakes and out-takes of air with his strides, willing his rapidly beating heart to slow down to a tamer pace. His feet still carried him forward, down another street that looked no different from the one before, still large and flanked with the one-story terraced-houses he was so fond of.
There were slightly more people about, mostly younger folk and John realised he must be nearing the University. The area he was passing was a notorious abode of students, which made it more lively, albeit still sedated. It was a work-day after all. His superior in the Ministry of Defence had practically forced John to take a holiday. And he had been overdue a visit to Harriet. He had actually been hoping to see Evan as well, but his nephew had been occupied with his step-father and had no time for his unsociable and foul-tempered uncle. John scowled, but a sigh escaped his lips nonetheless. The boy was fifteen years old, he could hardly be blamed for his choice.
John nearly slammed into someone, so engrossed he was in his thoughts about his scrawny nephew who hardly ever parted from his laptop. He caught himself a moment before he collided on them, cursing inwardly. The other person, a short woman dressed in a thick brown knitted vest had her blond head - or was it red, John couldn't quite tell under the yellow light of the street-lamps - bent over an oversized messenger bag and didn't even notice him. Seemingly finding what she had been rummaging for, she straightened herself and moved forward, giving an absent glance at the street behind, almost as if she had finally registered their near-collision.
In the split second she looked back, John took in the freckled face framed by straight chin-length hair and fringe, a pair of big dark eyes almost locking onto his and the thin line of her mouth pursing beneath a nose that was too imposing to be considered pretty and yet it suited her face to perfection. John's eyes took in her familiar face and his heart stopped for a long agonising moment before beating again, frantically so.
He knew this woman - or was it girl, she could be in her twenties, he mused - he knew her. And at the same time he had the unshakable certainty of having never met her before. Something tugged at the back of his mind, whether a glimpse of a memory or just apprehension, John couldn't decide. What he knew, though, was that he could not let her slip away - like she was currently doing, blissfully unaware of the landslide her appearance had generated. He could not let her walk away, disappear from his life - as evanescent a presence as a brief glimpse of her in the street could be - not before he figured out why she was so uncannily familiar to him. He couldn't rationally explain the urge. He didn't even try. He might be indulging his madness, but John knew he had to follow her, in spite of that cautious hyperventilating part of his brain that told him to ignore her, to steer clear from the proverbial can of worms he was about to tackle. There was something deep, something fierce that demanded him to find an answer.
She had almost reached the end of that particular street when John's feet decided to follow his thoughts. Carefully keeping his distance with deeply ingrained motions of stealth, he followed her.
Someone was following her. It had taken a bit to notice, but she was sure, someone was following her. Her heart hammered in her chest, but in spite of every instinct telling her to bolt and reach the nearby safety of her apartment, she forced her feet to keep calmly walking down the street. Every now and then she would cast a hopefully, inconspicuous wide-eyed glance behind her shoulder - like her brother had taught her in another life - only to find the tall man was still trailing behind her.
She felt her hands tremble while they clenched the strap of her messenger bag. She was scared. Why would that bloke follow her? Why would anyone follow her? Memories of her teenage years spent living in one of the poorer parts of Bristol surfaced unbidden and countless scenarios unfolded in her mind, tangles of possible reasons for the man's behaviour unravelled and knitted, but not a single thread led to an answer that didn't involve her getting hurt.
The edge of the knit nylon strap bit into the flesh of her palms as her grip tightened. She was close to home, she might escape him. No. She couldn't lead him to her home. He would know where she lived. There was a dull buzz in her ears and her breath came in huffs. She was scared.
She resisted the urge to look back. Maybe he didn't want to hurt her. Maybe she was just overreacting. Maybe he wasn't following her at all and she was just being paranoid. It was possible. But what if she was right?
Several brushes with trouble in the past had made her wary. She knew she would be at physical disadvantage against the man - against any man and most women for that part, she was a shy five feet something, after all - should he choose to attack her. And while she hoped against hope to be wrong, she would not gamble her safety, regardless of the amused little voice in her head that sounded eerily like her old hippy mother that told her she could be mistaken in her assumptions and the man simply walked in the same direction. But she tried to be rational about her situation, and asses the problem form all of its angles, preparing for the worst, should her adrenaline-fuelled fears come true.
She reached a zebra crossing and waited for the cars to speed by. Stepping off the pavement she used the opportunity to see her pursuer better. He was nearly a foot taller than her, with broad shoulders filling the dark suit jacket with a promise of muscles. He seemed strong enough to be able to easily overpower her.
His head turned in her direction and she swiftly diverted her gaze, catching a glimpse of short dark beard. She stepped on the pavement and veered right. Did he follow her? Maybe he didn't, maybe he was still on the other side of the street. He wasn't. She exhaled a quivering breath. She needed a plan.
Ahead of her, tucked between two houses was an alley - a short-cut that connected the street she was currently on with the one her lived in. She used it seldom and never this late because it was narrow and dimly lit, a perfect place to be attacked. A perfect place for an ambush.
There was a cautious part of her mind that tried to point out that ambushing someone, attacking them was not self-defence and she could - and most likely would - get in trouble. But the survival instinct within her, coupled with a deep ingrained loathing for cowardice made her feet turn in the direction of the alley, stopping just as she rounded the corner and press her back flush on the stone flank of the building.
The street lamp nearby cast a sickly white light on the narrow lane. Maybe the man won't follow. Her heartbeats drummed in her ears and she adjusted the strap of her bag. She had half a mind to take it off, so it would not hinder her movements, but she planned on incapacitating her pursuer for long enough to allow her to run away from him into the safety of her home. She was not going to forfeit her books.
The moments stretched like bubblegum, ever thinning until they inevitably snapped and footsteps resounded on the pavement. Her body tensed, ready to make a leap. The man stepped into the alley and she detached herself from the wall. She was about to lunge forward and knock him off his feet when she saw his face and froze.
"Thorin?" the woman breathed, an edge of incredulity in her soft voice. John felt his whole body grow tense. She had called him... The instinct to flee, to put as much distance between himself and that name lingering in the autumn air, battled viciously within him against a gut-wrenching feeling eerily akin to recognition. He felt himself split down the middle, unable to form a coherent thought. She had called him...
She was looking at him with dark eyes wide in disbelief, her mouth opening and closing with words about to drip from her pale lips but just never spilling. Almost as if she were waiting for him. But he was stuck, chained to a whirlwind of emotions, of ghost voices inside his skull, of ephemeral glimpses of faces, her - no his- face, John's face - reflected in a silver mirror - and that name, whispered, spoken, shouted, a pleading voice begging with those two syllables. Thorin.
He was Thorin. But he was John. He was Thorin. No. He couldn't. What was it that he couldn't do? Remember... He felt his chest burn with the weight of a breath he was unable to let out. It was as if his whole body rebelled against the notion. But the monsters he had locked in the deepest dungeons of his mind were breaking down the gates and he was choking, helpless. Overwhelmed.
He looked at the younger woman, pleading her with his eyes - his mouth was a foreign part of his body, estranged beyond the reach of his control - begging her to undo her words. But she couldn't, could she? She had broken the dam and now John - no, Thorin - he was swept away, even if he hadn't moved a single muscle.
She was looking at him in expectation, nervously biting her lip. She - he - had not used to bite her lip before. No. It was a new habit. But she had been nervous, she - he - had used to fidget with her hands the way she was fidgeting now. He - she - had always been nervous around John - no, Thorin.
"Ori" Thorin said almost tentatively, his blue eyes widening in surprise. His voice was the rich baritone she remembered well, but there was an edge to it - desperation? - that made her frown. Thorin was perturbed, as far from him usual stoic composure as she had seen him be. And she had seen him. Ori could not forget the weeks under the Mountain, the fruitless search for the Arkenstone. It had been one of her most vivid memories for many years, before the other ones crystallised in her mind. The gold-sickness of her King... But his eyes were wrong. They were not absent, gazing longingly into distance. Quite the contrary, they were too present. Conflicted. Pleading. Scared.
His whole body seemed ready to bolt away, just like hers had been minutes prior and at the same time he seemed rooted into place. Long limbs petrified beneath the grey fabric of the suit. Ori was at loss. What should she do?
She had never truly entertained the notion of meeting anyone from her past life, and now that none other than her King was standing in front of her, Ori had... done what exactly? She wasn't sure. The only thing she knew was that it made her stomach constrict to see Thorin looking at her with that array of emotions in his cornflower eyes. To see him look like the universe was collapsing into a super-massive black-hole, swallowed bit by bit.
So she pulled her best impression of Dori and asked
"I know it's late, but would you care for a cup of tea? I have chamomile..." she trailed. He blinked twice, his gaze piercing her, then, tensely, he nodded.
The short walk to Ori's apartment had been the most awkward three minutes of her life. Thorin had wordlessly followed her, his eyes fixed on the back of her head while she had been biting her lip raw - a habit she had picked from her current mother. Upon reaching the two-story high terraced-house her apartment was in, Ori had fumbled with the keys, his silent presence making her nervous.
"I'm sorry for the mess." she told him upon entering her small attic apartment, cringing at the unseemly state of it and feeling the heat pool on her cheeks. There was half a dozen books open on her kitchen table, with loose sheets of scribbled paper scattered everywhere and several balls of yarn on the chair - she had been picking the right colours for her next knitting project. "I wasn't expecting visitors" she apologised, gesturing him to take a seat while she put the kettle on and tidied the table.
Several minutes later Ori sat with a steaming mug of mint tea when Thorin's voice finally broke the heavy silence that had settled on them.
"I don't understand." he said in his deep voice, an edge of something Ori could not identify lacing it. "How... how is this possible? What is this?"
His eyes were looking straight into hers, demanding.
"Well" she begun, hands fidgeting with her mug, while her eyes locked on the tiny ripples forming on the surface of the amber liquid. "We know each other, at least we knew each other. I was Ori son of Miri, scribe in your Company and you were Thorin Oakenshield, my King."
Ori timidly lifted her eyes and got trapped in his flesh-piercing, soul-boring gaze. His eyes were scorching with the intensity of that gaze, but he didn't speak.
"And I was," she continued fishing for courage "well, actually it seems we both were, reborn."
"Reborn?" he asked in a drawl, unblinking. Ori took a sip of her tea for a reprieve form that gaze.
"Yes." she replied "We have lived, and died, before. I believe it was a distant past. And at some point, for reasons I cannot scientifically prove, we were reborn. I... I know this because I remember it all."
Ori had dedicated herself to those memories, painstakingly cataloguing them, organising them in chronological order. She had read every work available on the subject - hardly scientific papers, but she worked with what she had - making her own theories and assumptions, but still she could give Thorin conjectures at best. She didn't have sufficient proofs. For anything really. Even the world she remembered living in was not mentioned in any historical record. The closest reference she had were those found in the folklore and mythology of the Germanic tribes. It was frustrating sometimes, to be the only person around with knowledge about Middle Earth and Dwarves.
But Thorin was here, sitting at the other end of her Formica table, shaking his head - she noticed when she finally peeled her eyes away from her tea - with a frown knitting his dark eyebrows. A long-fingered hand ran through his short-cropped hair - how strange it was to see him without his mane of black curls. He was looking at her, but Ori still saw his expression and it made any possible elation she may have felt at the prospect of not being the only one, shrivel. He looked haunted, battling an inner conflict she was not privy to. Ori didn't understand.
Or maybe she did? His last days had been spent in the haze of dragon-sickness, making him almost unrecognisable to his companions who had followed him on his quest. He had seemingly overcome it right before he had rallied them and joined the fray in the slopes of Erebor. Had he? Was his mind sound?
It was a horribly disloyal thought to be conceived and Ori refused to believe it, shaking her head in a mirror motion of her King's, She would not doubt him. Still, the dwarf - the man - currently pushing himself to his feet with the screech of the chair on the tiles of her kitchen floor looked on the verge of a breakdown and Ori was at loss. Had she done it? The more she had spoken the more troubled he had seemed. Her stomach clenched.
Ori sat wide-eyed, her knuckles white as she gripped the orange polka-dotted mug, watching him pace down the length of her kitchenette. He had to duck his head to avoid hitting the ceiling where it sloped towards the floor. But he couldn't sit still, not when his thoughts spiralled out of control.
The things she had said. The rightness - the wrongness - of her words made his head feel like it was splitting into a thousand shards. Something tight coiled in his chest, spiralling towards his throat, at the same time squeezing painfully his rapidly beating heart. It was too much. It was wrong. It was right.
He was losing his grip, he could feel it. His breaths came shallow and the last shred of rationality he was holding to, warned him, recognising the harbingers. And he knew he had to get out of there. But his lungs were refusing to breathe and his vision began to blacken at the edges. He saw Ori get out of her chair and he knew he needed to get out of here. No one could see John fall apart. Thorin. John. He needed to get out of here.
Marvelling at how oddly compliant his feet were, he strode towards the door with a belated apologetic look towards the redhead and grabbed the brass doorknob, yanking the door open.
"Are you alright?" she was raising from her chair, strawberry blond eyebrows furrowed in concern.
"I'm sorry." he croaked without looking at her and closed the door behind him. He managed to get out of the building before he collapsed to his knees. He hoped she wouldn't follow.
A/N Chapter title taken from "Lavender moon" by Haroula Rose.
