Chapter 2: The Desolation of Smaug

Holly had everything she was going to say planned out. She had predicted Bilbo's responses and ordered them by likelihood. She would use that to convince him to forgive her. Everything would be all right.

But as the door opened, her mental dialogue disappeared like smoke in the wind. Bilbo. It hit her, like a blow to the stomach, how much she had missed him. For a moment, it seemed that everything would be all right.

Holly looked into his eyes and, as she saw the realization there, it occurred to her that she may have made a terrible mistake. It was like the time she'd knocked over a vase, and hadn't been quick enough to catch it. The fall had been so slow, like the descent of the moon, and she had been able to see each individual crack form as it shattered.

Five long, slow heartbeats of silence passed. "Well," Holly said because she didn't know what else to do. "Long story short, I'm not dead."

There was no mocking, hissing voice in her mind to point out her own tactlessness, but the look on Bilbo's face was enough.

More silence. "So, um, sorry. Should I have given you a bit of warning before I showed up in person? Or—sorry." Holly clasped her hands behind her back to keep them from shaking.

Bilbo drew in a shaky breath. "Two years." His voice was barely above a whisper. "Two. Years. I thought—I thought you were dead. How could you let me think...after you tried to…"

Holly could feel her nails biting into her skin. She had never seen Bilbo cry, but it seemed as though he might now. She hated herself, hated the fact that she had done this to him.

"How could you do that?" His voice finally broke and Holly felt something sharp and painful lodge itself in her chest.

She dragged in a deep breath. Perhaps she could still fix this if she laid out the facts, if she helped him understand why she had disappeared.

"I had to leave. I was hurting you. I wouldn't let you help me, and…" Eru, he had tried so hard to help her. "I wouldn't blame you if you hated me. I would have hated me." Holly pressed on, feeling a bit less numb. "What I was doing wasn't working, so—so I decided to seek out a different solution." Namely dying, but she didn't need to say that. "And I'm better now." It was probably too soon to try for a smile, so she fell silent, hands still clasped behind her back.

"You have no idea, do you?" Bilbo's words were frosty at the edges, with the barest heat of some greater anger lying below the surface. She had never seen him truly angry either, Holly realized. "You left."

"Yes, we established that." Holly didn't understand what she was missing. More silence. Clearly there was some gap in the understanding between them. "I needed to leave."

Bilbo stared at her, eyes burning with anger and hurt. "And did it ever occur to you, for one second, that I needed you?"

She felt as if she'd been slapped, and found herself slowly shaking her head. "No. You couldn't have needed me. I-I was—"

He couldn't have needed her any more than he needed to have his own limbs cut off. The Holly he had formed an attachment to, had drawn comfort from, was no more. She'd come back from the dead as an empty shell, something broken and useless. Why had she come back at all?

There was nothing left for her here. She should have stayed dead.

Her friends were all dead. Damon had killed them all because she'd been too slow. There was blood all over the floor and on her hands and in her hair—

"—can't help you," Bilbo was saying. "I'm sorry."

Holly stepped back, still trying to catch her breath, and the door swung shut.

Bilbo drew in a shuddering breath and backed away from the door. He raised both hands to rub at his eyes, trying not to cry.

The look in her eyes haunted him. Holly hadn't changed at all.

You couldn't have needed me.

After she'd said that, the same look in her eyes had risen up like a fog, the empty gaze that meant she had retreated into her mind, into whatever memories plagued her waking hours.

It hurt him more than he could describe to see her like that. And he was furious with her for pretending that none of it was real, that leaving him alone had somehow made things better. Things would never go back to the way they were—not after this.

Bilbo drew in another shaking breath and sat down. He needed to calm down. A whispering suggestion came from the hissing voice he couldn't stop listening to. Put the ring on—just for a moment. No one will notice.

WIth a brief glance at the door, Bilbo slipped his hand into his pocket, fingers sliding across the familiar smooth gold.

Just for a moment. No one would notice.

The cold wind bit at her exposed face and hands. Ravenhill loomed in the distance. The snow was freezing. A gust of it knocked her off balance into the wall—

—Damon held her against the cold stone, forcing dark magic into her body. Wave after wave of agony rolled through her. She couldn't stand it, the cold, the pain threatening to drown her. Holly struggled, each movement causing the dagger in her hand to tear further into flesh—

Holly gasped, darkness and stale air overwhelming her senses as she jolted back into the present. She was in Erebor, not Ravenhill. Her legs gave out and she slumped to the floor, back still pressed against the wall.

The hallway was empty and unlit. Holly had no idea where she was. She remembered wandering off after leaving Bilbo's house, and then...she hadn't bothered to keep track of where she was going. This part of Erebor was unfamiliar.

Holly buried her face in her hands. Her breathing still refused to slow to a normal rate. Where would she go, now? There was no reason to find the others, if Bilbo had reacted to her that way. There was nothing left to do, except…

She wouldn't do it here. She would leave first. Holly pushed herself to her feet and surveyed the area. Both ends of the hallway were identical, as far as she could tell. It was too dark to make out any further detail.

She turned right and began walking. Her footsteps echoed eerily in the dusty silence. Holly shivered, feeling hollow. She'd spent months alone in the wild. Her memories of her friends, of what had happened before, had become blurry. The lands south of the Long Lake were full of flat plains, bisected by the valley of the River Running. Living there had been maddeningly lonely. Yet she felt more alone now than she had then.

The corridor opened up into a large, torch lit cavern. Holly gazed around the circular room, taking in the stone walkway that spiraled up toward the ceiling, which was obscured in the darkness.

Words and numbers were carved into the walls. Holly ran one hand across the Khuzdul letters and the four-digit numbers—dates. She was standing in a tomb.

A faint scratching reached her ears, and she looked up again. The sound was muffled, and far above. Holly walked to the center of the room, squinting up into the darkness. There were torches spread at intervals along the walkway, but she still couldn't identify the source of the noise.

A thump sounded, hollow like wood against stone. It came again, and a chorus of them rang out from above.

Clearly something wasn't right. The wisest choice would be to leave the room. But Holly crept up the walkway, staying in the shadows near the wall. She wished she still had a knife.

By the time she reached the fourth level, the thumping, accompanied by the splintering of breaking stone, resounded from every part of the room. It was coming from the walls, Holly realized with a shiver. She took a step back. There were cracks forming in the stone.

Further up, Holly could see a figure moving down the walkway, towards her. A dwarf, judging by the height and stature.

Small bits of stone clattered to the floor at her feet. Holly backed away from the figure. She needed to leave.

She spun around as the wall behind her burst open, sending clouds of dust into the room. Holly scrambled back, heart pounding—

—the bridge crumbled under her feet and sent her crashing down into the chasm below—

—someone grabbed her arm and spun her around. Holly wrenched her arm away with a snarl. She froze, nausea rolling through her stomach as the torchlight flickered over the figure's face.

Thorin's reaction was the same as all the others. His eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in recognition.

Your words are poison, snake.

Holly took another step back. Her hands were shaking. A strange clicking sounded behind her, and she turned in time to see another dwarf emerge from the dust.

No, not a dwarf—a corpse. There was nothing left of the body but bone and scraps of hair. That, and the rusted broad sword clutched in its bony fingers. More skeletons appeared from the shadows.

Holly struggled to draw in breath as snow swept across the walkway. Her hands were bleeding again. She could hear the crackle of bone behind her as well. They were trapped.

She tried to slow her breathing to a normal rate. If she froze up now she would die.

Focus. Focus. Holly held out one hand, fingertips directed at the advancing undead. She took a deep breath, letting the dust and the air settle her nerves, if only for a moment. She wasn't helpless anymore.

"Galthel perien ceberis forven." The incantation flowed steadily from her lips as the air around her crackled with magic. White-hot lightning rushed forth and exploded upon impact with the skeletons.

Holly blinked against the bright lines branded in her vision, swaying a little. She wasn't strong enough to cast spells like that on a regular basis.

"Go. Run!" Thorin's voice behind her startled Holly out of her daze. She stepped away before he could touch her again and sprinted for the opening she had created.

Her footsteps kicked up bits of ash dusting the floor—right. That had likely been Thorin's ancestors that she'd just incinerated. She could add that to the list of things she'd destroyed in the past hour.

They ran for the exit, the footsteps of the undead echoing behind them. Holly's vision swam as more nausea passed through her. Only powerful dark magic could have reanimated the dead, most likely from a powerful mage.

Damon is dead, she reminded herself. She had no logical reason to be afraid. But he might have done something before he died. She wouldn't put it past him.

They slowed to a halt after a few minutes, and Thorin turned to her, his gaze guarded and a bit accusatory. "How did you do that?"

Holly backed out of his reach, breathing hard. "While I was gone, I learned how to—" She grimaced, realizing how that sounded. As though she'd abandoned her friends and disappeared for two years to learn how to use magic.

"I—" It wasn't as though she had any reason to explain herself to him. It wouldn't matter, anyway. "It's irrelevant."

Thorin furrowed his brow, but before he could speak the footsteps of the undead grew in volume and they were forced to run again.

Holly could feel her legs burning and her vision blurred a little. She ignored it and pressed herself to run faster. She didn't know where they were going, but since Thorin was leading the way she could only assume they were headed to a safer location.

The hallway swirled like milk in black coffee as another wave of dizziness threw off her center of balance. Holly winced as her knees hit the floor. Thorin reached out to help her up but she pushed his hand away. "Don't touch me."

There was blood in a watery stripe across the back of her hand, leaking onto the snow that bit into her palms—

Holly pushed herself to her feet. There was a light at the end of the hallway and she focused on that as she ran.

They passed through the doorway and Thorin slammed the door behind them. Without looking back, Holly began walking away from him, down another hallway.

"What are you doing?"

Holly could hear him following her, and tried to shake the feeling that she was still being chased. "Where does this hallway lead?"

"What were you doing in the tombs?"

"I was trying to leave." A likely story, seeing as the tombs were fairly deep within the mountain. Perhaps he thought he was responsible for what had happened with the undead. The bitter taste of old guilt swelled within her, along with another wave of dizziness. "I wasn't trying to—"

But before she could finish, the hallway filled with golden light and opened up into a familiar chamber.

The sea of treasure swirled before her eyes, and Holly felt herself falling again.

Well, Holly didn't quite get the welcome she expected (or hoped for). And Bilbo obviously isn't going to forgive her soon after everything that happened.

Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Please feel free to leave a comment letting me know what you think. It helps me out a lot.