The first thing Nora thought when she saw the elves was that they were way too beautiful to be even the slightest bit human – the second was that she wanted a blood sample from one of them, to talk to them and learn about their culture, to ask about their lovely language. However, she said none of this because it was very apparent that the dwarves were of the complete opposite mind when it came to the elves. In fact, many of them seemed to harbor a great hatred and mistrust for them, and the elves as beautiful as they were bore a strong distaste for the dwarves.

"Perhaps Lady Nora would rather a room to bathe in and then feast," Gandalf had asked as the Lord Elrond offered them into his home. The elf nodded kindly, staring hard at her as though he couldn't quite place her, before leading them on. "I am afraid they are terrible house guests," Gandalf whispered so that the dwarves wouldn't hear.

Nora bit back a smile as she walked beside the wizard. "Thanks for getting me out of eating with them then," she said sounding horribly modern.

"I will be taking you to your room," the elf Gandalf had greeted as Lindir said when they came to a hall.

She looked up at him to find him unhappily looking down his nose at her, clearly displeased with having to escort her let alone speak to her. She glanced over him briefly before settling back on his face; and she found herself very offended. "I don't like you," she said simply before moving passed him down the hall, forcing him to follow after her with a shocked face. She barely even heard the dwarves as they laughed happily at that, thinking she most certainly had earned a place among them. The elf stopped at a room and bowed slightly before leaving her there to return to the others.

It had been no less than two days since last she'd had a bath, and she happily climbed into the warm water when she found a bath was already drawn for her. Though a shower would have been better to clean herself in she couldn't help but enjoy the process of getting clean, not realizing just how much she'd been wanting to bathe. With soap in her hair she had little else to do but hold her breath and slip beneath the surface. Not even a second and she was back in her car clawing at the roof as her lungs burned with the need to breathe – her chest felt as though it would explode from her furiously racing heart beating fear into her blood.

She gasped as she sat up, her entire body shaking with the memory of such terror, clinging to the side of the tub. And for the first time since she had woken up in a new land after dying, she allowed herself to cry.

It was hardly past noon when Thorin left the others to find her, hoping to convince them both that this was the best place for her remain. He found her sitting on the edge of a bed in an elven robe, her wet clothes drying in the sun, staring blankly at the floor. Several moments he waited in the doorway wondering if she would move at all before he stepped toward her. "Are you well, Nora?" he asked as he stopped beside her. If he could have seen inside her mind he would know she was not, he would see how deep her sadness ran and he would understand that though he had faced much in his life, so had she.

She looked up at him blinking as though breaking out of a daze. "No," she answered honestly, "no I don't think I am."

He was glad when her eyes returned to the floor, finding that he did not like the look in them – they were too sad, too haunted, too much like his own. There was not much he could think to say, Balin was better as these dealings than he; and so he was entirely at a loss for even what to do as she next spoke.

"I was supposed to pay my mother's home today. I'm sure if no one has noticed I'm gone then they will now."

Even then he did not know what to say to her, whether to try to comfort her if there was even a way. "Why do you pay for your mother to live in a home?" he instead asked.

Her eyes moved from the floor to the wall unsure of where to look when she didn't know what to do anymore. "She's sick, and I can't take of her."

Thorin nodded understanding, remembering first his grandfather's sickness and then his father's – and the threat of sickness that awaited him inside the Mountain. "What is she sick with?"

She shrugged not sure what to say because he probably wouldn't understand. "Her brain is being eaten away," she said looking up at him to see his furrowed brows. "She's losing her memories and bodily functions and eventually there won't be enough left for her to live and she'll just," she said raising a hand, "stop."

He watched her turn away from him again, her wet hair falling in front of her face as she stared at her hands in her lap. It sounded awful, and he could imagine watching someone he loved be driven mad by a sickness to where they barely even knew his face. "She does not remember you," he said not needing to ask when the answer echoed in her pained voice.

Her laugh was short and bitter. "Only that she didn't want me," she said shocking him. It startled even her for she blinked confused. "I don't know why I said that."

"It is untrue then?" he asked thinking it must be for he could not imagine living a life without anyone's love. But she did not answer and he realized it was true, and for some reason his heart grew heavy at the thought. "Nora," he said softly, turning her head toward him. "As of this moment there is no known way of getting you back to your land," he said repeating what Gandalf had said to him in private to convince him she should stay – among the circumstances of how she arrived here, the wizard was not sure if there was a way at all to get her back.

She looked at him strangely. "There isn't one," she told him, completely sure of her words.

"You do not know that," he tried to tell her, for she couldn't give up the hope that there were.

"Yeah I do," she said. "I'm not going back, there isn't a way and nothing will ever change that."

He stared at her unable to believe how much she'd given up, realizing if she had then they had no common ground to stand on. "You are letting yourself be defeated," he said callously, watching her turn to him startled and irritated.

"I am defeated," she said seeing he didn't understand. "I died, there isn't a way back." Her eyes were quickly growing damp as she was forced to realize all over again that she was stuck here for good, and it was something he now understood as well. "If life is a game then I've lost."

"Perhaps this is a second chance," he said trying to give her hope, which was a very strange feeling for kindness was something he did not partake in often.

She looked at him with knitted brows. "And what chance have I been given when you have made it so clear that I do not belong here, and that I'm incapable of surviving?"

He was left realizing he had been insensitively harsh to her, expecting more than she was able to give. He had not known she was mourning her own death, and in the face of that a new and unknown life in a strange land. And he was about to apologize, for there was little else he could do, but she spoke first.

"Get out," she said softly, shocking him with her audacity. "As a king I know I don't have the right to say that but please get out."

He wanted to, he'd wanted to leave from the moment he had found her in such a despaired state; be it her sad life or the tears thick in her voice, he did not. It was obvious in the way her shoulders just barely tremored that she would cry, and still he reached out to her. The moment his hand gripped her shoulder all pretense fled her and she cried before him. For several minutes he stood staring uncomfortably at the wall as he kept his hold on her, breathing a sigh of relief when she finally composed herself and he released her. "When your clothes have dried join us on the balcony so that you will be near when we depart," he told her as he stepped away, hoping to flee from her feminine emotion that pulled needily at his heart.

"Would it not be easier if I stayed here?" she asked wiping beneath her eyes, not knowing why she'd allowed herself to cry in front of him.

He turned back to her glad she did not look up at him, not wishing to see the redness beneath her eyes and feel that strange twitch in his chest. "Incredibly," he answered honestly. "It was decided amongst us that you would not remain in this place," he said, still believing she would fair best in the Shire with Bilbo.

"You mean with elves," she said looking at him over her shoulder.

A small smile curled on the corner of her mouth but it left quickly and she turned from him once more. "Perhaps you should rest as well," he offered as he crept to the door, not wishing to be with her any longer when he felt the strange urge to place his hand on her shoulder once more. "It would do you good to gather your strength, we still have a great length more to travel." And with that he was gone.

...

Her clothes weren't dry until nearly supper, to which Bilbo had come by and asked if she wanted to explore - she tried her hardest to say yes because she was very interested in what they would find, but it seemed to be so much work to actually get to her feet that she finally said no. "I'll tell you all about it," he said kindly, earning himself a smile, before he too left her.

Even though her clothes were dry and on her body it took her several minutes before she convinced herself that this wasn't really so bad; though she nearly went back to the room when she'd finally made it to the dwarves, hearing their loud voices grating on her ears.

"Hello lass," Balin greeted when she rounded the corner to find them all sitting outside around a fire. "You look lovely with your hair pulled back, you must be the talk of the town."

She gave him an uncomfortable half smile. "Not really," she admitted, and she was right – people hardly noticed her.

The dwarves did though, for as common as she thought herself they thought her beauty sweet, and at that moment very soft. With a smile Kili moved to sit beside her, handing her a plate of food. "Thank you, for the dagger," he said.

She looked to see him smiling in a way he believed to be charming, but it made him look like the cutest little puppy. "It was nothing," she shrugged turning to the plate and finding herself not hungry. "Just a lot of practice throwing darts at our bar."

"A bar?" Bilbo asked thinking he might know what she meant. "Is that a place of drinking?"

"Do you drink a lot?" one of the dwarves asked causing the others to all turn to her expectantly.

She remembered their reactions to her not being wed and owning her own home. "No of course not," she said knowing how false she sounded let alone looked. So she looked back to her plate with the plan of busying her mouth with food, but again she wasn't hungry.

"It would do you good to eat," Thorin's low voice grumbled from behind her, knowing she hadn't eaten since the day before; and he thought her much too thin as it were.

The dwarves all watched her look up at him sullenly, expecting her to say something biting in return, but she irritably sighed and raised a spoonful of stew to her mouth. She then ripped a piece of her bread and ate that as well, hoping to chew it all and be done because even with the food in her mouth she didn't want it. "At least eat half," he ordered once more.

"You're pushing it," she said flatly though she complied and ate more, knowing he was right in that she needed to eat. Especially if they were going to run like they had earlier, because she hadn't eaten enough to give her the energy to do that.

She hadn't even noticed that Kili had returned to his brother's side, watching her and his uncle wonderingly as he stood over her almost defensive of her. It was something many of them wondered, namely the few dwarves who had known him over a century – for the two had butt heads not even a day earlier. But the dwarves resumed their previous loud chatter, singing a few songs and eating and drinking. And when next they looked over at their lady companion they saw her curled on her side fast asleep and Thorin's coat draped over her.

It was something Bilbo paused at when he returned from meeting with Elrond so he would read the map, if not for her head she would have been entirely covered by the thick coat. He took a step back when Thorin walked passed him, hardly noticing either the woman or the hobbit wondering just what his action meant, and instead laid himself beside Balin. "You grow fond of her," his oldest friend mused.

"I do no such thing," he said stubbornly as he stared up at the stars, not allowing himself even thoughts of whether it were true. And so Balin smiled amused and turned away saying no more, allowing Thorin to refuse what so obviously was true for the time being.

But whether he would admit it or not he knew it was true – as frustrating and entirely baffling as she was he enjoyed being unable to guess what she would say next, to have someone who did not care for his being king. And so when the sun was just starting to creep over the horizon and he made to gather his coat, he allowed himself a moment to look at her sleeping face before he woke her. She truly was lovely, in the way of man – she was not outrageously beautiful as an elf, nor as stout and hairy as a dwarf. She was soft, her face sweet, her lips and waist full and her hair smooth. Though it was only a moment and he quickly shook himself before grabbing his coat and waking her. "We are leaving," he said watching her blink slowly. Unlike many dwarves who grumbled at being woken, she quietly rubbed her bleary eyes and stood on not quite awake legs. He almost berated her for having no coat of her own, she would be incredibly cold as the weather slowly crept toward winter – but he forced himself to remember that she'd had no plans of coming here, and she was not at all prepared.

She fell in line behind Bilbo as the others all stood, having no time for breakfast if they were to sneak out of Rivendell unnoticed; and so they all quietly moved one behind the other as they left Imladris for the dangerous mountains ahead.


P.S.: that's the whole problem with Thorin, he really isn't the HEA type of guy - which is too bad. But I hope to make it not horribly sad. And I'm really glad you're enjoying it, I kind of am too. And I hope to make Thorin more understanding with her since he now knows more of where she's come from - which will allow them to be friends, and more.