Just Close Your Eyes

Rated T

Summary: Naomi, Vivian, Lauren and Benny have lived through a lot in the last 24 hours, and this is just the beginning. Azog the Defiler has taken from them all that they have ever loved and they have been sent into Middle Earth to get it back. Third and final installment of "Found" Trilogy.

Disclaimer: Tolkien gave life to the characters that I love, Peter Jackson gave them the faces I've come to know. As for me? I'm playing with them in my writing-sandbox. I'll give them back eventually. Maybe. Probably not though.


THIS MARKS A NEW BEGINNING. IF ELEMENTS IN THIS CHAPTER ARE UNFAMILIAR IT IS BECAUSE I HAVE ELECTED TO START ANEW, AS PER MY LAST TWO PSA'S. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. ON WARD!


Chapter 1, Exit Life

It felt like falling from a cliff. There was only the sensation of air flowing past the back of her head, only the absent knowledge that Benny and her mom and her aunt were close by and falling with her. Naomi didn't know when or how she came to be lying in the poor straw mattress, hell she couldn't remember what had happened to the others. As she sat up in bed she felt burdened with new purpose. Gandalf had told them that they would have to win their beloved's hearts back, that meant that Kili would not remember her, Thorin wouldn't either, or Fili. They wouldn't remember the children, or anything. That thought alone nearly brought Naomi to tears.

Making up her mind she called into the surrounding darkness. "Mo-om? Auntie? Benny?" Naomi started to rise, curious about her new environment

A strong arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back down onto the bed with a shriek. "Oy! None of that! Back to bed with you."

Naomi almost screamed with joy and wrapped her arms around his neck. " Oh my god you're alive! I had such a bad dream!"

Kili found himself rolling off of the bed with a small body that had just tackled him.

"Oomph! A'right lass!" Gingerly untangling her hands from his hair he spoke gently. "I didn't know I'd died. Maybe if I get more mornings like this I'll do it a bit more."

His tone was playful and he flipped them over, kissing Naomi deeply. Her heart cracked a bit more as she realized that she hadn't dreamt it.

Naomi scrambled out from underneath him and blushed. "I'm sorry! I thought you were someone else. Didn't mean to act like that. Sorry."

Kili got back up on the bed and chuckled. "I don't suppose it's unusual for a woman of your….erm…. Particular trade."

Naomi quirked an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

Kili started his sentence but was quickly cut off by the sound of ceramics being thrown against the neighboring wall. A woman's unintelligible shouts echoed through the walls shortly afterward, a powerful male voice overlapping it within seconds.

Naomi winced. "Who is in that room?"

Kili, too, was wincing. "Uncle Thorin. Dear Aule, he always gets the fiery ones."

Naomi laughed dryly. If she woke up in Kili's bed she had a reasonable guess as to where Vivian had ended up. "You have no idea."

Naomi walked out of the bedroom just in time to see Lauren, much shorter than she remembered, and a very shirtless Fili sharing a soft kiss. "Thank you." Naomi almost retched at Fili's gentlemanly comment and her mother's subsequent giggle. Bypassing them and knocking on Thorin's door Naomi braced for screaming and shouting.

What she found was almost more terrifying.

"You weren't complaining about height last night were you?" Thorin's voice was seductive and his hands were pulling Vivian closer by her hips. It was fairly apparent that they had just shared a deep, mind-numbing kiss.

Naomi cleared her throat awkwardly. "Viv, we need to go. Now."

Vivian pulled away and ran after Naomi and Lauren down the hall, stunned.

Once the girls were in the quiet of the stables they started crying. Loss stung them with new fervor and the shocked happiness of waking up with their lovers quickly faded as they realized that those Dwarves at the inn were not the men that they had come to think of as their lovers. They were what they had been before, and the girls would just have to make do.

Lauren voiced the thought that they were all having. "We got one last good morning for some time, at least.."

The girls straightened and made up their minds to find Benny and Gandalf. Naomi noticed that they were still wearing the bloodstained Kevlar, t-shirts and jeans that they had been in yesterday.

Vivian nodded her head toward the clothes. "Gandalf?"

Naomi nodded. Lauren still looked about ready to cry, and Naomi walked closer to her mother and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. The pair were joined by Vivian as they approached the door, and they each took in a deep breath through their noses, releasing it slowly through pursed lips.

"Let's go." Vivian said, looking ahead at the wooden door before them, proclaiming the as "The Prancing Pony".

They entered and were met with the stern grey gaze of Gandalf the Grey. "It's about time. I have a bag of necessities for each of you. Go get changed and we will go and retrieve young Benjamin."

Naomi looked to Gandalf curiously. "Where is Benny?"

"Right where he needs to be. Now go! We must make haste!" Gandalf made shooing motions toward the three girls, after handing them each a hiking pack, complete with sleeping roll and canteens, as well as other necessities for the trek to Erebor.

"I have your weapons, as well,"Gandalf called after them. "You won't be expected to have any weapons, or to be here at all."

Naomi bounded p the stairs, giggling slightly, after her mother and aunt. The girls all knew, to varying extents, the adventures of their boys. They knew to be prepared for anything.


Benny, meanwhile, was scared shitless.

He didn't now how or why, but he had woken up curled around a child-sized person who looked exactly like his ex-boyfriend! This small person upon waking entangled in the octopus-like, lengthy appendages that belonged to Benny, wriggled away so fiercely that he fell off of the side of the bed.

Benny rushed to his aid and found that the little person (little with the exception his feet, which appeared abnormally large and hairy, even for humans) had effectively put himself back to sleep. Benny chuckle-sighed and rearranged the small man on his bed and, finding himself hungry, went to find the ingredients for tea and possibly for cheese biscuits.

Benny puttered around the kitchen, slowly gathering the ingredients for his cheese biscuits. He threw some batter together and onto a greased equivalent of a cookie sheet. After he put his biscuits into the oven, Benny looked around for some tea. Rather than finding the teabags that he was used to, he found loose leaves. He found peach, chamomile, and some Earl Grey. Benny chose the peach tea and set the kettle to boil over the fire, attempting to arrange himself in an armchair in the living room.


When Bilbo woke about a half an hour later, with a pounding head, and the assumption that the raven-haired, pale-skinned, exceedingly tall man with which he had woken earlier, was simply a dream. Suddenly the smell of baking cheese biscuits and fresh tea hit his nostrils, and Bilbo was convinced that he was hallucinating. That is until the spindly body stretched across his armchair, sipping tea and alternatively taking minuscule bites of the biscuit in his hand, convinced him otherwise.

Benny looked up at the soft sound of padding feet on the hardwood floor. "Good morning."

Bilbo was rather shocked by the young man's cordial tone, and even more so by the shocking blue of his eyes. "G-good morn-ning."

"Well are you going to just stand there gaping?" Benny was a bit irritated by the small person's silence.

"I'm sorry. I don't quite know you. What was your name?" Bilbo was bewildered. How could this person feel so familiar, when Bilbo was sure he had never seen him in his life?

"Right. Of course, where are my manners?" Benny extended his hand. "Benjamin Jones, at your service. Do call me Benny"

Bilbo gave the extended hand an incredulous look, and bowed low. "Bilbo Baggins at yours. Now were those cheese biscuits and peach tea that I smelled?"


Naomi, Vivian and Lauren were seated on horses within minutes of dressing and coming back down stairs. Gandalf had given them each a loose-fitting, long sleeved, white shirt, a leather vest, knee-length tweed trousers, and oilskin boots with leather soles. The long leather overcoats were stowed safely in bags, until there was real use for them.

"Aren't these Ranger's clothes?" asked Vivian.

Gandalf nodded, "You will be posing as Rangers whom I have elected to go on this quest as good faith bodies."

"But you said we wouldn't be expected to have weapons?" Naomi was rightly confused, this particular wizard liked to talk in circles, but those circles tended to be ovals.

The girls and Gandalf mounted their horses, all of them having had some experience on a horse, and began the ride from the inn near the Bradywine Bridge to Hobbiton. Gandalf filled them in on the particulars of their ruse, and his reasoning for them being there, if they were asked by any member of the Company itself.

" Of course you won't, you're women. Bearing in mind, I don't agree with that assumption, that is how you will be perceived. You are to be Rangers from the North, aiding a "feeble, old" wizard, myself, obviously, in the protection of certain artifacts, which shall remain nameless, but will ensure the success of the reclaiming of Erebor."

"What artifacts?" The girls asked simultaneously.

"There ARE no artifacts, really. It's just a cover. However, I have added a copy of a certain novel to your packs. For informational purposes, of course."

Vivian nodded, hurriedly asking, "Did anything that was in our pockets make it through the transfer?"

"If you mean your pack of cigarettes and lighter, my dear, then yes. I would advise against using your lighter around the Company, they will not understand what it is, and will probably attempt to destroy it. In fact I would advise against smoking at all, but I have tried to tell you that for an age," Gandalf admonished with a knowing look.

"Understood," Vivian said, looking firmly at the road before her.

Lauren cocked her head toward the wizard, "Why are we shorter, by the way?"

Naomi answered, having figured it out some time ago, "Compatibility. But won't that conflict with the "We are Rangers" thing?"

"Very good, Naomi, but it will not. Lauren and Vivian are children of Dwarves who survived the Sacking Of Erebor, who were orphaned in a winter trek through the Blue Mountains. The Dunedain took them in and reared them as their own. Naomi, your birth was a result of a night in Bree with an unknown Dwarf from The Iron Hills."

"You thought of everything, didn't you?" Lauren said.

"Just about." Gandalf smiled, satisfied with himself. His face quickly fell to a contemplative scowl, "There will be a point at which their memories will come back, but it will not be soon and it will not be an easy point to reach. Young Benjamin has an altogether different task ahead of him. You recall that I told him that he would find himself with a tattoo like the three of yours when in Middle Earth?"

Naomi gasped, "Oh my God! The Hobbit?!"

Gandalf nodded, smiling impishly. "Should be getting the scare of their mutual lives right about now."