Happy Thursday to my silent (so, so silent...) readers!

This would be a good time to mention that this story is also crossposted over on ao3. I'm A_Modwinter_Night_Dream86 over there. It's just that version is a few chapters behind because I so seldom use ao3, I forget I have it. Oops?

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Chapter Ten — The Strange Case of Dr. Watson and Mr. Gollum

Ulfric looked around the inside of the cave and frowned.

Leara was not in the current vicinity.

As the dwarves moaned and groaned and grumbled on the ground around him, the Jarl of Eastmarch sat, dumbfounded.

The bean was supposed to take him to his best friend! Not to some Talos forsaken cave in the middle of Talos knows where in the heart of some stupid mountains which obviously held no shrines to Talos in the middle of some weird land that did not worship Talos!

...upon reflection, maybe he should stop going to the tavern with Leara's cousin. For an Altmer, that dude swore by Talos a lot.

"Where in Durin's name are we?" Thorin, Dwalin, Fíli, and Glóin all exclaimed.

"Um..." Ulfric trailed off.

"We're in a cave," Kíli said, again, as he stood up. He checked out the ruins of his manicured feet with a perturbed pout.

"No sh—"

"Don't you dare!" Ulfric threatened Dr. Watson, who looked dumbstruck, flabbergasted, and all around gobsmacked.

Twelve of the dwarves stared at Ulfric in wide eyed wonder dash horror. Thorin, however, stood up.

"We're in a cave."

"We've established this, Uncle..." Fíli began, before being cut off.

"A CAVE!"

And just like that, Thorin hugged the cave wall.

And started vibrating.

"Are you all right?" Balin asked as Thorin continued to shake on the wall.

"My face is going numb!" he squealed.

Balin sighed before stepping forward to pull Thorin off of the wall. He placed his hand on the stone — and immediately began vibrating as well.

"Now my arm is numb!" he exclaimed.

Kíli and Fíli exchanged matching grins before they too plastered themselves on to the wall next to their uncle and distant cousin.

"Oh! This is epic!"

"Wonder why it does this?" Fíli mused.

"Maybe It's an earthquake or a volcano or—"

And then the ground split open and they fell on to a literal rock slide.

"AHH!"

"SWEET TALOS!"

"AHH!"

"MAHAL'S FORGE!"

"AHH!"

As they screamed, Kíli put Aly & AJ's 'Like Whoa' on, which caused more screaming.

"Like a rollercoaster ride, holdin' on white knuckles like—"

"SHUT IT OFF!"

"NO!"

"Everytime I'm like up and down and side to side, every inch of me is like—"

"TURN THAT IPOD OFF!"

"OI! LEARA GAVE THIS TO ME!"

"YOU STOLE HER IPOD!?"

Ulfric made a grab across the slide for the pale red iPod but Kíli rolled away—

—and on to a twiggy wooden platform.

Moments later, the other fourteen fell on top of him and the iPod slipped out of his hands and into the shadowy crag below.

"Oof!" he huffed.

"Ohsa! Looksa!"

Suddenly they were swarmed and jostled and tugged upon by icky filthy little goblins!

With much yelling and screaming and cursing (courtesy of the Watsobbit) and threats (courtesy of Thorin and Ulfric) they were bound and dragged away deeper into the dark tunnels.

Except, for Dr. Watson.

On shaking legs, John got to his feet and looked around. He took a step forward and something pointy pricked at the bottom of his foot. Curious, he bent over and picked the object up.

And found Lord Glorfindel's old blue letter opener. Something about it seemed off, the once clear blue plastic seemed fogged...

"Whatsa issa thissa!?"

The Watsobbit sprang up to see a goblin jumping toward him.

Well, not so much as jumping, as it was catapulting.

Personally, the Narrator wonders if the goblin thought it was Superman.

John held the letter opener out in front of him like a sword, a spear, a pointy projectile — and the goblin collided with it. It stared at the letter opener sticking out of its tummy and proceeded to let fall great big crocodile tears.

And now we know Super Goblin's kryptonite.

Moving on.

Unfortunately for our dearest and only Watsobbit, the force of the impact of the collision of the goblin with his body caused him to lose his balance. They faltered and fumbled there together on the edge of the abyss for a tense moment, but with the advent of the goblin's tears, they lost whatever chance either of them had of making it away.

And then they tumbled after Leara Rose-blade's iPod into the deep dark crag.

As they ping ponged down, Dr. Watson was oddly reminded of that time Sherlock jumped off the hospital and faked his death.

If he died, Mary was not gonna be pleased.

So, with very clever precision, the Watsobbit did an areal maneuver and the dying goblin (it turned out that the wound he'd delt it with his letter opener might have proved fatal...oops) ended up underneath him, kinda like a sled or a toboggan.

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, depending on who you ask) the ride down to the bottom was rather fun. Dr. Watson made a mental note to take Mary and Sherlock skiing that winter when he got home. Maybe—

And then, he hit the bottom, with only a goblin carcass as a cushion.

Moaning, the Watsobbit rolled over and over and over until he landed in a comfortable little hidey hole behind a few imposing rocks.

Minutes ticked by and he felt as if he could fall asleep when he heard a distant hiss and a faraway splash.

He bolted up in an instant.

From his hiding place behind the oh so convenient pile of rocks, John Watson peered into the shadows.

Something moved.

He held his breath as, from the darkness, a strange skinny thing emerged.

It was by far the weirdest thing Dr. John Hamish Watson had ever seen.

It was...a Gollum.

John watched with bated breath as the creature called Gollum proceeded to skin, clean, cut, and fry the goblin. Kinda like fried chicken, except without the chicken and with extra grease. As he watched this, Dr. Watson noticed that the fog had vanished from the clear blue plastic of the letter opener.

This was because it was an elvish letter opener and the letter openers made in Gondolin fogged up whenever orcs or goblins were near. However, the Watsobbit was unaware of that fact.

"Breaks us and curse us, precious, we's forgot the saltses!" Gollum cried in horror, and John watched as he disappeared back into the murky dark from which he'd come.

Expecting the odd Gollum creature to be gone for a few minutes at least, our dear Watsobbit stood up and gazed around at Gollum's handiwork. The goblin was prepared like a bucket of fried chicken at KFC's, the unwanted bits were cast off into a hole, a shiny ring was on the ground, Leara Rose-blade's iPod was there...

John pocketed the iPod.

And then paused.

He turned and looked down at the ring in wonder.

And it seemed to get closer and closer and closer—

And then he realized that he'd been bending down toward it.

"Hmm," John hummed under his breath. And with that, he snatched up the ring and pocketed it.

And then he heard a splash.

Drip.

Drop.

Drip.

Drop.

John was getting rather bored listening to the 'drip, drop, drip, drop' of the water, which was obviously dripping from the—

"Bless us and splash us, Precious! What is it?"

Uh, yes, the Gollum creature was back.

The Watsobbit smoothed the front of his Bilbo Baggins' costume, turned, and gave Gollum a shallow nod.

"My name is John Watson, and I'm a doctor from London."

"Watsonses?" Gollum peered up at him in both curiosity and confusion. "What is a Watsonses?"

The Watsobbit blinked. "I am a Watson and Watson means...me!"

Then Gollum did something that the Watsobbit was not expecting, at all, at all.

He sniffed him.

"Coleslaw!"

John stared at him. "Excuse me?"

Gollum started clapping his hands together and bouncing with a rather creepy and nauseating amount of excitement. "We've had fried stuffs, taters, and hushed pupseses! But we've never had coleslaw before!" He began to creep forward, a creepy serial killer horror movie kind of grin on his face.

Dr. Watson was having none of that!

"No! You cannot eat me!" he screeched girlishly.

Gollum gave him an obvious look that said 'like, seriously dude'. "Why?"

Without hesitation, Dr. Watson cleared his throat and spoke. "Because...because, because, because...I," he rolled his head, looking for any quick escape routs. There weren't any. Although... "Because I am also a detective."

Sherlock was going to kill him.

Gollum gave him a funny look. "De-tact-of?"

John nodded. "Yeah, yes. I investigate things, annoy things, solve things—"

"Solveses? Likes a riddle game!" Gollum cheered, all of a sudden invading Dr. Watson's personal bubble.

We're still not sure how he was smart enough to make that loose connection, but oh well!

The Watsobbit cleared his throat and stepped back from the excited creature. "Yeah, like a riddle game."

Gollum grinned, "What has roots as nobody sees, is taller than trees, up, up it goes, and yet never grows?"

"Um...the mountain?"

"Yes! Yes, yes, yes..." Gollum's face changed. "No! No, no, no riddles."

"Um..." John was confused.

You see, Gollum has a Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing going on, but without the 'Doctor' part. Though, John could probably give him a few doctor type pointers and stuff.

"Yes...let's play a game of riddles..." the creepy Gollum whispered. "If Watsonses loses, we turn him into coleslaw."

Smoothing his jacket and straightening up, Dr. Watson nodded. "Yes, and if the Gollumses—"

"Gollum, Gollum!"

"—Gollum loses, he has to show the Watson—"

"Watsonses."

"—Watsonses the way out of this dank dark pit!"

Gollum bobbed his head in vigorous affirmation. Then there was silence. "Well, Watsonses first."

Feeling numb, the Watsobbit swollowed, then, clearing his throat, he belted out a riddle from some book he had read years before. "Thirty white horses on a red hill, first they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still."

He sat down and waited as Gollum fumbled around and twitched his nose and blinked his eyes and clamped his jaws and smacked his teeth...

His teeth!

"Teeth...?" Dr. Watson gave him a slight nod and Gollum started clapping again in excitement. "Teeth! Yes, but we only has nine." And he showed John his nine semi rotten teeth.

"Yes...very nice," the Watsobbit assured him with a cringe.

Gollum did not notice this aversion, however, as he was quick to fire another riddle at John, this one being somewhat (a lot) creepy. "Voiceless it cries, wingless flutters, toothless bites, mouthless mutters."

This stumped the good Watsobbit most furiously.

Until he felt a strange breeze puff on the back of his head, Like the Narrator breathing obviously on him.

"Wind, of course." The fact that he had gotten it right seemed to feel Gollum with a tremendous amount of annoyance. He fell backward with a dramatic moan.

John knew the Gollum thing WANTED him to lose, and he, in turn, wanted Gollum to lose. Since there was an obvious conflict of interests there, he was quite sure things were gonna get nasty sooner or later (probably sooner). Suddenly he regretted leaving his gun at home, not for the last time!

"Well, let's see, shall we...?"

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Originally, this chapter was so different. I had the whole riddle game and everything. The Narrator (aka, Me) even put a filter on the increasingly mouthy Watson. Well that got lost. So we have this! And personally, when we join back up with Dr. Watson and Mr. Gollum, I think it's better than what I originally had. Ah, the magic of rewrites.

Join us next week when we rejoin Leara, wherever she is, for an evening of stimulating cave art and conversation with, well, a certain person from Skyrim .