Believe in Me

Disclaimer: ApologiesinadvanceforthelengthatworkheresoI'mjustg onnagoaheadandeliminatethatriskbyomittingspaceshop efullythathelpskaythanksbye. Iownonlymyownridiculousoriginalities!

A/N: Whew! Back. I have very few adequate words for my incredible experiences in Peru. And this is me we're talking about, here; I don't just run out of words! It wasn't entirely just seeing nature at work in amazing and strange ways in the Amazon, or even the wonders of the ancient people who built Machu Picchu and just casually climbed those huge-ass mountains to get news all the way across the Inca empire in a mere two weeks. It was the land itself - I've never seen anything like the Andes region. This is stuff you just plain can't get on camera. The massive scale aside, the perspective is a whole 'nother challenge to tackle, never mind the feeling that your heart just wants to press right out of your chest (and for once it isn't just the altitude talking). It's so beautiful that it hurts. As a result, I've resolved to work out some way to do an art study abroad in college that involves backpacking through New Zealand. Because 1) LOTR etc. filming, 2) mountains, and 3) me. That's about all I need. I'm a creature of the elements, of land and air, fire and water. I don't need much more to feel alive.

So I mean I guess I highly recommend the area to others :) Although if you take all the times I've been stared at in my life and combined them all, the amount my group and I got stared at in Lima far outweighs that. It was pretty much our whiteness and stature, to be honest. I'm tall already, and Peruvians are in general dark-skinned and shorter. And they don't exactly get many tourists, so I guess it makes sense. Let's not go into the hordes of teenage boys trying to take our pictures. That is a whole other barrel of worms or whatever the expression is.

SO! Many thanks throughout this too-long waiting period to: Hiding in the Shadow (oh you are so, so right, my dear :), i am a Fire-jay (indeed she is, chuckle), ZabuzasGirl (I try :P), FlamePumpkin32, Snittycakez (haaaaahahaha), AemiKili (indeed!), Guest (awww, yay :), Belliwing (thanks! here it comes at last :), ChaoticLogic, Ayrtha21keybladewielder, Pyrassion (ooh why thank you!), Bandersnatch16, F4llingToGrace, the Random Olliphaunt, DrAnime203, dingbat1723, pacifica somnia, Marie3009, Reikal, Lady of Myth and Legends, moon.maniac2012 (I feel so loved :'D), and as always, all the readers!

Enjoy, lovelies! Thanks for waiting :)

Chapter Ten

In Which There Are A Few Minor Revelations, For Better Or For Worse

Eisa returned to the camp not long later. The sky was beginning to darken, and Bofur and Bombur would be starting supper soon. She didn't want to worry Fíli and Kíli by missing it.

"Bofur?" she addressed quietly, coming back into camp as subtly as she could. "This could help."

The dwarf stared somewhat blankly at the rabbit that Eisa was holding out to him. "You weren't joking, then," he stated.

He was referring to her unladylike claim that she could catch anything with a trap. "No, but this I got with a throwing knife," she admitted. "Lucky shot, really. Would you like me to skin it, too?" Her mouth quirked to the side, but it didn't quite reach her eyes.

"No, that's all right. Bombur?" Bofur took the rabbit by its hind legs and handed it to his brother. "Thanks very much, Miss Eisa," he said in honest appreciation.

"Think nothing of it," she nearly sighed, and walked away, probably to Fíli and Kíli.

Bombur and Bofur looked from each other to the rabbit, then to each other again. There was very little blood on it, and upon further investigation, it was apparent that she had achieved such a clean kill by flinging the throwing knife straight through its eye. The fat dwarf grunted his approval, and Bifur voiced his agreement in gravelly Khuzdul.

Kíli and Fíli stood immediately when they saw Eisa approaching.

"What did Uncle want?" asked Fíli.

"Where in Dúrin's name did you go?" demanded Kíli at the same time.

"All in good time, all in good time," Eisa chuckled dryly, sitting between them against a rock when they moved aside for her. She self-consciously smoothed back the braids at the back of her head with one hand and tried to figure out the best way to explain what had transpired.

Suddenly Kíli's eyes widened and he grabbed her hand and pulled it to him, turning it over almost frantically. "What happened? Are you hurt?"

Eisa was going to ask him what he was talking about when she saw there was still some dried blood on her glove and fingers from carrying the rabbit. "Relax," she told him. But his concern warmed the pit of her stomach, and she smiled. "The blood isn't mine. I saw a rabbit in the woods and killed it—in fact, I've just given it to Bofur."

"Oh. Right." He released her hand and folded his own together in his lap.

"Really?" Fíli looked a bit impressed. "I didn't know you hunted."

"I don't, usually. It really just came right to me, so I guess I was being quieter than I realized," Eisa shrugged.

"But what happened?" pressed Kíli.

"Well." She sighed. "Let's put it this way: your uncle isn't terribly fond of me." At their looks that told her to elaborate, she obliged. "He asked me why I am still here. He's not very pleased with my presence, you know, and what's more, he said—" she began to blush but plowed on with determination— "he said I was…distracting you two."

Kíli might have reddened a bit as well, but Fíli snorted dismissively. "Uncle's paranoid, and I mean that in a very caring way. He's only trying to look out for us."

"Mm. Well, I'm already a problem, evidently, and it didn't make him very happy when I told him I know that your quest leads to Erebor," she mumbled. "Oh, but don't feel bad, Kíli," she reassured him. "Even if you hadn't dropped that bit about the dragon, I still would've figured it out."

The brothers stared at her, and Kíli's mouth began to open and close like that of a freshly caught fish. "Is Uncle angry with me, then?" he asked meekly.

Eisa grinned conspiratorially at him, feeling a bit better. "I didn't mention that part. Must have slipped my mind." Then she sobered. "I was too busy being insulted. No, that's not quite fair," she amended immediately. "We just…disagreed. I…lost my temper." Looking down at her hands rather than at either of the brothers, she fiddled with her gloves.

"Disagreed over what?" Fíli asked.

"I'm not sure I even know," Eisa realized. "Perhaps the validity of my arguments. He doesn't trust me worth beans; I hope you know that."

"We do," grimaced Kíli. He shared a determined look with his brother that the young woman didn't see. "We do."

An hour or two later, Eisa was absentmindedly tying tiny knots in strands of grass in her lap. Supper was already over, and the camp was settling down, but she got the feeling that sleep wouldn't take her so readily tonight.

Suddenly, she flipped her head up abruptly from her mindless task. The dwarves had begun to hum softly a moment ago, as a group and as they often did in the evenings, but somehow she recognized this tune over all the others before. Bofur and Dori began to sing the quiet melody, and the dwarf maid nearly gasped aloud.

She drew her knees up to her chest and spent the next few moments in a sort of daze, sifting through fragments of memory and the tune to a song whose words were long forgotten to her. It wasn't until all the verses of the song came gently to a close that she became aware that she had lost track of time and space entirely for those several minutes. And she only realized that she had cried a bit when she felt a warm finger brush her cheek to come away tinged with moisture.

Resisting the urge to shake herself and then stubbornly bury her head in the ground, she met Kíli's warm brown eyes a bit defensively. But instead of whatever she had been expecting, she only saw upturned brows and a grieved pout on his face.

"Don't be sad," he told her simply.

She couldn't maintain eye contact with him, and, deciding something, held up a finger to tell him that she would speak after a moment. Lowering her head and breathing into her knees, she tried to organize her thoughts and eventually came out with a simple muffled statement: "I know that song."

Fíli and Kíli looked at each other over her back with three parts worry, two parts curiosity, and one part helplessness. They decided it was best to maintain silence, and it didn't appear that anyone else had noticed anything amiss.

Once she started, something strange came over her and she simply couldn't stop. "Someone who took care of me used to sing it to me all the time. I don't remember ever knowing all the words, because not long after I left I suppose I'd forgotten them. I just knew that it made me proud of my people, or the ones who could have been my people, but of course I didn't realize the significance, I mean, I was raised in a tavern, not in great halls under the mountains, and I never made—" She halted, surprised, as though someone else had been speaking using her voice. "A-anyway," she stuttered, glancing not quite at the faces of the princes on either side of her and attempting a shaky smile. "Maybe now I can relearn the words properly, hm?"

That night, the brothers laid out their bedrolls on either side of her (with her permission, of course) and, despite their being on the verge of tone-deaf, hummed her into drowsiness to soothe her mind.

The next day, the weather finally broke for good. The sky remained overcast, though, as the Company plus Eisa made their way over another hillock. Another hillock with more trees. And rocks. Lots of rocks. And some more dirt, and some more scrubby undergrowth. On another hillock. With rocks.

Although it was still very pretty in its untamedness, Eisa supposed, this part of Eriador was in serious danger of dropping in its landscape ratings due to relative monotony. Amon Sûl had been interesting while they passed within range of it, but in all honesty, there just wasn't that much to see.

That was why she had taken to studying her companions instead, as the day began to dim prematurely due to the cloud cover. Not surprisingly, her grayish-brown gaze kept wandering its way over to Fíli and Kíli's backs.

The two might seem similar, but Eisa had come to realize that in reality they were like night and day: so different, yet fusing effortlessly at the edges. Where one might be reckless, the other was cautious, but they managed to have fun without doing anything entirely too foolhardy. They might finish each other's sentences, but speaking at the same time could just as easily result in simultaneous answers of "absolutely" and "absolutely not." And yet one never seriously belittled the other, and would attack anyone foolish enough to do so. They were brothers in more than blood.

Besides that, you had to look closely to be able to tell that they could even be related. Fíli's neatly waving blond hair and even braids were a stark contrast to Kíli's loose dark locks, and the eyes of sky blue and rich earthen brown were about as far apart as one could get. And although they were both relatively slim for dwarves, Kíli was the leaner of the two, not to mention that he had apparently not inherited outstanding beard-growing potential or an impressive nose. (Eisa wondered absently if he was secretly self-conscious about these shortcomings. In her opinion, he looked just fine, but everyone knew that a magnificent beard was the way to get all the dwarven women.) But after the several days spent with the two, their physical similarities were clear to Eisa. They had the same tendency to stare intently at things, albeit in their own ways, and occasionally smirk secretively. They had the same bend to their upper lips and the same ears, and carried similar swaggers even when they weren't trying. Which, granted, wasn't often.

And of course, they were quite good-looking. To her, at least. Mahal knew she hadn't been raised with dwarven standards, but she liked to think that she could recognize a handsome man when she saw one. Those sorts of qualities tended to run in families anyhow, she thought as she watched Fíli trot up next to Thorin. The king would be a lot nicer-looking if he would stop scowling all the time, besides. She liked his carefree nephews much better, and that thought reminded her of the way she had lost both her temper and her composure the night before. She smiled softly at the princes' backs, but then frowned at the remainder of the memories and went back to studying the landscape.

Fíli, meanwhile, had a purpose in riding close to Thorin. "I thought it was bad manners to argue with a woman, Uncle," he greeted him with what they both knew was false innocence.

"She went running to you, did she?" Thorin somewhat sneered.

"Hardly," his nephew frowned. "I had to force out of her what went on." He had cornered Eisa earlier that morning when Kíli was out of earshot, and as he had suspected, it was for some reason easier to get the details out of her then.

"And?" prompted Thorin, implying that he get to the point already.

"Forgive me for this, but had you been any other dwarf, her actions would have been entirely appropriate," stated Fíli bluntly.

"In what way?"

"You insulted her unnecessarily and without cause."

Thorin got the distinct feeling that Fíli was warming up in preparation to recite a long list. "How so?" he felt he had to ask. He would probably regret it, as he shouldn't be allowing his nephew to speak his mind with such freedom in the first place. While the due respect that the boys had always shown him hadn't slipped in the slightest, the strict control that he exercised over what they were permitted to say to him had lapsed a bit over the past decade or so as they matured. And although he wouldn't publicly admit it, it was becoming increasingly valuable to at least listen to what they had to say.

"She is not exactly unintelligent, nor is she without use. Are you aware that she killed part of last night's supper without even trying?" Fíli didn't seem likely to slow down, and against his better judgment and perhaps out of exhaustion, Thorin let him get it all out of his system. "She's been nothing but polite to you this whole time, and have you seen the way she looks at you? You're a legend, Uncle. A hero. And not just any hero; you're a hero of our people. Her people. Don't you realize what she said to you?" he demanded further when Thorin looked like he was about to protest.

The king paused in his version of surprise, and it was clear to his nephew that he was completely unaware of where Fíli was going with this.

"Oh, come on, Uncle," Fíli muttered, clearly convinced that his king had no sense at all. "She gave it right to you."

Still nothing.

"Why she wants so badly to remain with us!" he revealed in exasperation. "She might not say it outright, but she admitted to me that she doesn't want to leave. She's not going to just take off in the middle of the night and abandon us and tell the whole of the countryside that you're off to Erebor—yes, I've thought of that," he put in at Thorin's double take. "And she was being honest when she said she wants to help us. Do you know why she wants us to regain our homeland?" It was another rhetorical question. "Because she has never had one. All these years she's been alone, completely alone, never settling anywhere, never having a family or even a people to call her own. She's trying to empathize with us, and you know, she's right. We're not all that different."

The lash of Eisa's parting words came back to Thorin. In your loss, at least you've had each other! That had been bitterness, he suddenly realized. There was nothing else that it could have been. The girl did not share information willingly, and her outburst was most revealing now that he thought of it.

Which, of course, he didn't want to. He clamped his jaw shut and looked at his nephew, whose cheeks had reddened slightly with his blustering. Nodding tightly, he nonverbally dismissed Fíli, who had expected quite a bit more of a reaction and was left wondering whether he had done more good or more harm.