A/N: AZANARUKÂR- The Reaches of the Imminent Shadow

They emerged bramble-crusted and messy-headed from the thicket of forest when it was nearing the setting of the day. The low evening sun came down upon a rocky outcropping just beyond the edge of the beech grove, sitting above a steep bowing decline into the valley below. Far on the other side, a bare hill crested jaggedly. Meisar squinted as a black fleck moved closer from over it. A raven. It circled above them, its flight lowering and circling, a little more each time, until it came down finally and landed squarely on the saddle of Jenny the pony. The nag tried to shake it off. "See what it wants," Thorin ordered her, his voice definitively sullen.

Delicately, she unpinned the scroll from the raven's foot. "It is from Lord Elrond of Rivendell. He bids you welcome in the Last Homely House."

Thorin pulled a dour face. "I have no business with elves."

"No business, but some respite. We could use it, my king."

"I wish not to waste our time commiserating with elves. We will continue toward the mountains without further delay."

"Perhaps it could be for some other purpose that he summons you? You have no doubt piqued some curiosity across this land since you have… come back." His hard face was unmoving. "My king, it is my duty to this company only. A bit of food and a comfortable rest is in all our best interests. We would only linger but a night."

"Lord Elrond's curiosity may be allayed at a later date."

"Very well. Then you may take your dwarves onward and if it pleases you, we will meet again at the High Pass." "No!" he barked suddenly. His arms were crossed and in them, his fingers curled against his palms to make stubborn fists. It made her jump back. "No," he repeated. "I do not wish to leave you- our companies will better together." He fumbled over his words and expressed himself further with a harsh exhalation through his nostrils. She could see the peaks of his cheekbones flush over the cropped veil of his beard.

She swallowed hard and bowed her head to him, with purposeful grace. "Rivendell it is," she concluded, too low for him to hear.

II

In the mid-night hours she woke. The wolf-pelt mantle she had used as a pillow was damp with her own sweat, her cheek cold and clammy against it. She had been dreaming, but as always, could never be sure of what. It was always fire, fire and a blackness that never seemed to lift.

Away from her, breath sucked in and made a high whinnying sound. She could hear the distinct sound of mail and weaponry clanking and thumping against the earth as he rolled. He never undressed, even for sleep. She propped herself up on her left arm to strain her eyes through the dark at him. There were shadows in his eyes, dark ones, haunted ones, but he was not awake. His eyes squeezed closed again and he gnashed his teeth, roughly. "Thorin…" her voice whispered hoarsely across the sleeping row of dwarves between them. He didn't answer. She dared not repeat herself any louder. The 'Ri brothers were the lightest of sleepers, Dori the fusspot and Nori the scoundrel the worst two. Ori was the baby and slept like it, a small fortune in an otherwise incommodious night.

Thorin rolled over again and made a wounded sound into his bedroll. As his hand grasped at his sword and nearly unsheathed it in his unconsciousness, Meisar moved herself swiftly and quietly out of her bedroll, hunched close by the embers of the fire and kept watch for a few moments more over him. Hurmul. She had sworn it by him, to protect him even from himself, though she had not told him that.

The other dwarves were all sleeping. Gimli and his mother both snored louder together than Bombur's children, both supine and weirdly elegant even in sleep so their beards would not muss in the dirt. Their snores were a serene rhythm for this otherwise troubled night-music.

In the dark, a pair of feet shuffled heavily near her. The sound of creaking bones followed, the "bump" of a body coming to sit. She shied away from the barely-present glow of the embers.

"Meisar…"

"Mister Balin." She dipped her head to the old dwarf who had come to sit, creased with worry, by the near-dead fire. "How long have you been awake?" he asked grimly.

"He woke me," she said flatly. Thorin rolled over again and drew a ragged breath. She flinched when Balin drew nearer to her, his hands clasped palm to palm. They sat close in the tight circle of light made by the glow of the embers.

"Murûd," she whispered heavily.

.

"Yes… yes, ghosts. So very many of them I'm afraid."

"Are all of his years anything but tragedy?" she questioned, earnestly, but with purposeful curiosity. He had begun to intrigue her too much. She shivered as Balin leaned in closer to her, remembering the tightness of Thorin's hand, the need in his grasp. She should have known the answer then.

"Thorin is capable of enduring more than you could ever imagine, my lady. He was brought up to lead, to rule, under whatever terrible circumstance would befall us. And long before the dragon, he took up many a burden."

"Don't all kings?"

"If they are good kings. Alas, all are imperfect. Thorin not the least of them. There is still good in him. Surely you see it my lady?" She nodded, tacitly. She hadn't the words or fortitude to tell Balin what she had come to see in him, whether he desired her to see it or not. "I see it," she murmured.

"Good, good. Yes, though he frightens me now more than ever, I know his heart. How much I though I do not. There is a gap to fill in, but he will in due time I suppose, confide it to me."

Balin looked to her tongue-tied and awkward. "Ah, my lady… Meisar, he has spent some time with you, privately, for purposes I am quite sure are official business." He chuckled lightly but it did not seem to ease her. So he sighed and went on. "If he said… if he told… anything…" He trailed off and it seemed to become, fuzzily, a question.

"He said… he couldn't protect them."

Balin tried to hide his surprise from her but he was not very good at it. The kind old dwarrow, so forthright. She gave him a reassuring half-smile. "He protected Frerin from the troubles of Thror, as he protected Fili and Kili from the woes that come with a life in exile. The truth is, he protected them all of their lives, and would have done so with his own life forfeit, my lady."

He rested his chin quietly upon his hands, between the opposing forks of his great white beard. "Death claims all in the end. And we dwarves know very well it comes, far too often, at the most inopportune of moments." He shook his head, as if trying to loosen a stubborn, ugly memory. "He could not have saved them when it came for them. It was not the gold lust but the reclaiming of the mountain itself that drew the armies of darkness."

"Do you think he will ever believe that?"

"No," Balin answered flatly. "But he will live again. He will go on." She drew an unsteady breath. "How does that toe heel, Mister Balin?"

"Oh, fine enough. I can still ride, walk. I am growing old but it takes more than that to keep me down. And for the fortune of meeting your lovely company here upon the road, we have the services of two healers. I have a better-cared for toe than the rest of my body has known in years."

He managed to draw a serene smile from her. "You are hardy, Balin, in body and in mind. I would hope, most sincerely, that the king is as well. Though I fear he is not." The serenity of her face returned to its weary expression quickly enough. "You care for his soundness," Balin smiled, avoiding the obvious question. "That is good. It is noble, honorable." She pursed her lips, uneasily. "Is that a question, Balin?"

"Well, now that you ask I suppose it is," Balin chuckled. "Do you ask me that as your brother did? He likes and trusts me not, I know as much," she confided, self-deprecatingly.

"He likes to believe that he is the only one Thorin can trust. That he is very possessive over." Balin laughed easily. "There must be something about you, my lady that Thorin finds of trustworthy quality. Whether my brother likes it or not, to have Thorin's confidence is a rare gift."

She thought on it briefly and sighed. "I am mostly friendless in this world, and safe to keep his confidence."

"You are not friendless," Balin smiled. His wizened face was comforting; it had a warmth to it his brother lacked. "He does… appear to the observing eye, to… take some… oh shall I say, comfort in your company."

What did he see in her, if he saw something at all? Her face was a mystery that he could not read, taciturn and weary, but kind somehow, kind and uncannily curious. She was no comely spring maid but a short, stout, rather unpolished lady around her middle years, not entirely ugly even to a dwarvish eye, with the robust femininity of her form ill-concealed, layered in no more than her tunic for night, the heavy, bowing bosom unbound beneath it. Balin glanced sidelong for a longer than polite moment at the pattern of her braid, the color of the fire that it was.

Surely it was not that, the old dwarf reasoned stolidly. In nearly two centuries, there had never been. Balin reached out and patted her hand tentatively. Even through the thick wool of the fingerless gloves he donned, she could feel his hand was heavy and callused, but it was not like Thorin's. Its weight did not settle on her, weaken her and strengthen her together, the way his had, aggrievedly as he had sought her. "If he seeks some comfort in you, give it, as best you can manage."

"I am not used to giving such. What could he possibly ask of someone like myself?"

Thorin settled, quieted into a series of low, gravelly snores and after a few moments, was quiet entirely. Balin's tension seemed to lift, his shoulders a bit less stooped. "That I do not know. Yet. But I am quite certain my lady, that you are capable of giving more than you know. It could have just… it could have merely been a matter of the right person coming along to show you it."