I own nothing except Annwn. If you find a reference to something it's because I appreciate the writer, author, singer, song writer, actor ect.

No infringement is intended.

A Catching Fire reference for you all, see if you can find it.

The pun from last chapter was the littlest hobbit. There was a TV show called the 'Littlest Hobo' about a dog, it was referenced in 'Corner Gas', a TV show made in my home Provence.

I still haven't given up on the chapter title challenge.

Chapter 21 The Nagging Dark

It wasn't long until they were at the entrance of the Moria and Boromir was still not talking to her. So she talked to the hobbits instead. They always liked to talk. Annwn was still leading Bill. Sam was looking sad beside her. Aragorn had told him that Bill wouldn't be joining them.

"Mines are no place for a pony Sam, especially not this mine. Now a canary on the other hand..." she said not realising that she was the canary. The only time when she wasn't humming under her breath or singing was when she was worried. Better known as right now.

"A canary Ms. Annwn?" she had finally convinced him not to call her Lady Pirate

"Never mind. He'll find his way to Rivendell Sam. He's a smart pony."

"I suppose so, bye-bye Bill." He said as she and Aragorn pushed the pony on his way.

"The elves will look after him, I promise." She patted Sam on the shoulder and slowly walked away. She really didn't want to go into that mine. 'I guess I was hoping that somehow this hallucination would be different enough that I...we wouldn't have to go down there.' Annwn thought to herself. 'but if you didn't go down there then there would be no Gandalf 2.0.' she reminded herself.

Annwn didn't want to steal Frodo's one shot at appearing smart and she wanted a rest as well as postpone entering the mine so she sat on a rock and took off her boots. Sitting cross-legged the others looked at her.

"This is no time to rest." Said Boromir.

"Holy shit!" She exclaimed "Mark it on the calendar, you said something to me! Even if you did sounded truly pissed about it." She continued more seriously "It'll take them a while to figure out how to get in. And Pippin!" she turned from the man to the hobbit by the water. "Can you contain yourself for a few minutes and not throw things in the water?" her words came out sounding much harsher then she intended. Pippin flinched and wandered over to Merry looking sad. Annwn was sorry, she was never very nice when she was like this, on the edge, however she said nothing, she would only have made things worse.

When it finally did come to Frodo that they needed to say the Elven word for friend the others had all taken her hint and sat. Rising they all looked into the entrance hoping to get a look inside. They followed Gandalf who went in first with his little crystal light. In a hushed voice Annwn said

"And they call him the dull one." No one noticed, rather no one made any comment.

"This is the home of my cousin Balin, and they call it a mine, a mine!" there was that Dwarf pride she had read about and apparently inherited...she just hoped that she wasn't related to Gimli. That would be just...weird. Ick!

"This is no mine, it's a tomb." Said Boromir looking around his feet. There were long dead dwarves scattered around. Thankfully they were long dead, rather than recently dead, the smell was nearly gone. It wasn't nearly as bad in her nose as burning flesh but it still made her eyes and throat burn.

Annwn hung back by the hobbits. She was waiting for the kraken thing from the water while the guys were trying to get out of the mine as fast as they could. Then the first tentacle came out and grabbed Frodo. It had to be Frodo, the Ring bearer. The one that couldn't die if the quest was to succeed yet was the most likely to. But alas that was the way things like this always work thought Annwn as she hacked at the tentacle with her sword without thinking twice about it.

The others came when they heard Sam yell for Strider. Legolas had his bow out and was firing off shots like no tomorrow. While Annwn actually managed to sever one that that was about to smack Boromir into the wall. He looked at her, shock written all over his face. And she said

"You're welcome." With a little head tilt

Then a moment later Frodo was caught by Boromir and they were hurrying their collective asses into Moria as the kraken thing pulled down the entrance behind them. Honestly that thing was just scarier than the one in Pirates of the Caribbean. I was real, well as much as a dream could be and she was one who knew about scary dreams.

As they stood there in the dark Annwn was the only one to say something

"Shit." Was all she could get out. Her voice was flat. A hand was put on her shoulder and squeezed it gently but when Gandalf lit his crystal it was removed. She knew it wasn't the hobbits or Gimli, they were too short. It had to be one of the others. But who?

"Now we face the long dark of Moria, it's a four day journey to the other side. Let's hope we go unnoticed."

When they stopped for the night the hobbits asked her to start another story because she had finished Macbeth.

"I would start Hamlet if we weren't...you know, here. I think something more light-hearted is in order. Let's see?" she thought about stories she could tell them. She was trying her best to put the fear growing in the pit of her stomach to the back of her head, the story would help. All of the ones she could tell them were by the Brothers Grim and they were all too...grim. So she told them a story she made up on the go about whinny the Pooh and his friends. She even had Gandalf chuckling at the end as well as the hobbits. They story hadn't moved the others. Nor did she expect it to. It was a silly one about how Pooh didn't have any honey left but really did only he had forgotten about it, since his head was full off fluff, go figure. Definitely not Pulitzer worthy, but that wasn't the point.

They went on like this until they came to the three passages that Gandalf had no memory of.

"Are we lost?" Merry asked Aragorn

"No one is lost yet, Merry." Annwn answered for Aragorn who didn't have an answer.

"Merry?" Said Pippin

"Yeah Pip?"

"I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry." Annwn pointed out. "Try to rest for a bit, ok."

Maybe Annwn wasn't so bad thought Aragorn. She had handled that situation at the entrance well enough and she had saved Pippin before, even if she did snap at him that one time. She had a way of calming the hobbits down when they were scared and they really did like the stories she told.

Annwn had closed her eyes but heard Frodo scurry up to where Gandalf was sitting and tell him that there was something following them.

"It's Gollum."

She heard the whole thing. When Gandalf got to his 'some that live deserve death', speech Annwn opened her eyes and looked at Boromir. When he noticed her looking at him he glared at her. She stuck out her tongue at him. She caught him off guard with that. Surely he was one that deserved to live, yeah The Ring drove him mad but he was a good man wasn't he. He didn't deserve to die even if he had an unexplainable grudge with her. But there was the story to think about. What would happen if she did something? She could seriously screw things up...more than they already were. She had to take a lesson from Elphaba, she would do nothing. She couldn't do anything.

A few minutes later

"Ah! It's this way!" exclaimed Gandalf

"He's remembered!" said Merry.

"No, but the air doesn't smell so foul down here. When in doubt, always follow your nose." To Annwn it seemed pointless to tell a hobbit this. They knew that if you followed your nose you'd end up at food eventually, which in the eyes, or rather the stomachs, of hobbits solved all troubles.

They descended the stair and entered a great hall.

"Let's risk a little more light." The crystal glowed and bathed a small fraction of the great hall of the dwarf city.

"There's an eye opener, no mistake."

"Yup Sam, this is one to tell your grandkids some day." Annwn said to him equally as impressed, she was too impressed not to smile. Seeing it on a screen, digitally made by a computer was one thing, seeing it made out of stone was a whole other thing. The scale was astronomical; there wasn't anything on earth that could compare. Even if it was a dream.

They walked along in stunned silence until Gimli made a detour and took them into a small side room where in a ray of sun there was a tome. Gimli was grieving at the foot of it.

"I'm sorry about your cousin Gimli." Annwn said when she was at the dwarfs shoulder, before Gandalf read the inscription, she already knew what it said.

"You read Dwarvish?" Legolas asked when it was proven that she was in fact correct.

"Nope, not a word." She grinned at them. They looked at her perplexed while Gandalf started to read from the record book. She heard Legolas say

"We cannot linger." Before she turned away rather quickly. 'That was brilliant of you Annwn.' She mentally kicked herself. She really didn't want them to find out about who she apparently was.

This is when she noticed Pippin. He was about to drop a rock down the well.

"No Pip don't-"CRASH! "-drop the rock." Annwn winced as she finished her sentence.

"Fool of a Took! Throw yourself down next time and rid us of your stupidity." Gandalf said sounding pissed. Annwn thwacked Pippin on the side on the head with her finger nail.

"Hey!"

"You deserved it." She pointed out.

Then they all heard it.

Boom, boom, boom. The drums.

Boromir ran to the door while Annwn waited for the line that made her laugh every time, even though it was a serious line or how terrible she felt at the time. It was just so god damned funny.

She saw him flinch back as two arrows went whizzing past his head into the wood of the door. He pulled it shut with Aragorn. When he turned to the others he said it.

"They have a cave troll." She had to giggle.

When the door was bared with old axes the two Gondorians came back to middle of the room with their weapons out. Annwn already had her sword out. She wasn't nearly good enough with her bow to do any damage. Likely as not she would hit one of the fellowship and that would not help their situation.

"Stay behind Gandalf. You'll be safe there. That means you too." Said Aragorn, pointing at her after telling the hobbits the same thing. "Women shouldn't be getting scars."

"Well it's too late for that." She disregarded his order. It was a good thing they weren't in the military. She would have been court marshalled.

The orcs were hacking through the door faster than Annwn would have liked. She hoped that she would actually be able to kill when she needed to. 'There're orcs Annwn! If you don't kill them they'll kill you.' She told herself sternly. It was time she showed her muchness, as the Mad Hatter would say.

As she brought up her blade to block the attack of an orc Annwn was just pleased that they were just orcs, not Uruk-hia. She blocked a few more shots from the orc then ran him through. 'One down' she thought.

The rest after that was a blur. There were orcs everywhere. The troll was smashing things like the walls, Balin's tomb and orcs indiscriminately. She quickly lost track of the hobbits. Though Gimli was easy to find as he was cussing at every orc that came his way, rather loudly. Annwn had cut her way through eleven orcs by the time Legolas took down the troll with the help of Pippin. Score one for the Shire! The orcs left them alone after this, hurrying out the door.

The others all rushed over to Frodo who was lying on his face in the rubble. He looked a lot deader than Pippin had, though was much more alive. Annwn didn't really care about the mithrel shirt he had, she just wanted to get the hell out of that room. Let's just say, orcs don't smell too great, that was a given just looking at them, but the smell of their blood was making her want to retch.

Finally they were all satisfied that Frodo wasn't dead and they, thankfully, left the room. Annwn didn't think tossing her cookies would help the point she was trying to make with the guys about women.

They were running full tilt through the great hall when they were surrounded by orcs. As she was running the strangest though came to her. 'How the hell do women in movies run like this in heels? Damn Hollywood.' She would have pondered it some more, happy to have a distraction but the orcs were still coming, they were catching up. Their eyes were wide, round and staring. They clattered and banged their swords at them. The fellowship was surrounded. They were intimidating, if asked at this moment Annwn would admit that she was scared. Not so much of the orcs but of what she knew would happen after. She tried to betray none of her feelings when she said

"Gimli, I think your cousin needed better pest control. Or at least an alarm system."

"Moria has seen better days Lass, I assure you."

Then as quickly as they had been surrounded the orcs were leaving. Running away actually. At the other end of the hall the red glowing shadow a flame creates was spreading and growing. They could hear its growling and its footsteps.

"What is this new devilry?" asked Boromir in a hushed voice

"Oh no." Annwn breathed. "On no, oh on, oh on."

"The Balrog." Gandalf said in a dark voice. Annwn knew that she had to run before she saw it. She shouted

"Run away! Run away!" and turned tail and ran.

They watched her run. Aragorn was just forming the thought,' just when we could use another sword she abandons us', when Gandalf cut in saying

"This foe is beyond any of you. I suggest we follow her advice. Run!" They did. Annwn had a good lead but was still passed by Boromir who thought that a man should lead the way into danger. Damn him for having longer legs. Was all Annwn was thinking. Annwn really had to stretch to keep up. He turned ahead of her then went out of sight. She thought for a second that he had fallen but found that he was only teetering on the edge of falling.

She didn't wait for Legolas and did it herself. She scrambled down the stairs and grabbed him round the middle and threw herself back. When they landed the force knocked the wind out of her. When she regained it she said again

"You're welcome. I'm so gonna have a bruise from that."

The others had arrived and looked at them on the ground questioningly.

"He was going to fall." Answered Annwn matter-of-factly before Gandalf started pushing them down the safer stair.

"You know what else your cousin could have invested in Gimli?"

"What lass?" He asked through heavy breathing.

"Stair railings. And if he had observed safe building codes, there wouldn't be this giant gap in the stare either." They had arrived at the gap. First over was Legolas then Gandalf. Aragorn threw Pippin then Boromir threw Merry. Then went Sam via Boromir. He took him with this time and made part of the rock stair fall into the darkness beneath them.

"After you lass. Gimli" said. Annwn took a breath and leaped. She landed short. Her chest slammed into the rock. She grasped for something to hold onto while her feet tried to find purchase below. She was sure she was going to fall when two strong hands lifted her up. When she was standing she was face to face, rather face to chest, with Boromir.

He swept dust off her shoulder. He would have done the rest but it was, you know, her chest. He didn't want to out step his boundaries or make her feel uncomfortable and there was his rule, he was glad to see that she didn't bite his head off.

In a slightly breathless voice she said "Thank you."

"You're welcome"

"Not the beard!" Cried Gimli

Legolas pulled it anyways. It was that or let the annoying dwarf fall. To the dwarf Annwn said

"Get over it Gimli, you're crazy facial hair is fine." She was a little embarrassed that Gimli could jump farther than she could, and it came out in derision. Aragorn was about to throw Frodo across to Boromir when a large chunk of the ceiling fell and landed on the stairs, breaking through it. This destabilized the section that Fordo and Aragorn were on. Their feat of balance was more impressive in real life, most things were. Their hunk of stair crashed into the part the rest of them were one and sent the man and hobbit crashing into them.

"My physics teacher would be so proud." Annwn told them. They would have asked why her teacher would be proud of them but they could hear the Balrog drawing nearer. They ran.

The Balrog had found them. There was fire coming out of a chasm in the ground and Annwn saw it. She froze remembering what it felt like. She was aware that someone was tugging on her hand but the fire was consuming her. There was nothing she could do to stop it. Then her feet left the ground and she was moving away from the fire. Someone had picked her up, in the fireman's carry ironically. She saw the bridge pass under her and shut her eyes until she was on her feet again.

Boromir had carried her across the bridge. He looked at her and said as she had done to him

"You're welcome." She didn't respond other than to nod. Her eyes were wide with fear and dread. Boromir pushed her behind himself to relative safety.

Annwn watched from behind Boromir. It was fire come alive, she would have nightmares about this for a long time, forever maybe. Then Gandalf got pulled down into the chasm. Down, down he went. She had heard his presumed last words, fly you fools. And then Frodo screamed, a shrill, annoying, yet honest scream. It was Boromir that hauled his little ass out of the mine. And it was Annwn who hauled Aragorn's hard ass out of the mine behind them. Somehow she had snapped out of it first.

When they reached the wide open world Annwn breathed for what felt like the first time in an eternity, she was shaking. She was safe out here, the fire couldn't get here. Slowly with the cool breeze and sunshine on her face she calmed down. Around her were people stricken with grief she knew was premature and needless.

"Legolas, Boromir, get them up." Aragorn's tone was flatter than it usually was, he felt the hurt that they all did but he had it contained, he had to. He was now the leader.

"Give them a moment for pities sake!" Exclaimed Boromir

"No, there'll be time to grieve but that time is not now." Annwn said to him quoting Gandalf the white from the future, while pulling him to his feet by his arm. She smiled a weak smile. It was meant to be reassuring and comforting. It was a good thing Boromir didn't know that she had used a line that was from a conversation about his own death, that she had no intention of interfering with.

Here he was grieving whilst this woman in front of him was not. She had witnessed the same thing he had and had been much closer to Gandalf that he had been. He knew that she was capable of feeling. He had seen her eyes wide with fear in the mines and he had seen them wet with tears in the forest. How could this be? However it was, he knew that she would make a good match for his brother. The only problem was that she was bound to another.

Aragorn was sure when he saw Gandalf fall that he would have to scrape the hobbits and Annwn off the ground they would plunge so far into grief. But he was wrong. Here she was agreeing with him and not showing any sign of remorse or sorrow, only a general sadness. Maybe he was wrong about her. She had done well against the orcs despite his orders; maybe she was stronger than she looked.

Favourite story thanks to sarabqh, KitanoChi, Mishka2 and cheer1589

Story alert thanks to sarabqh, Lira-leigh54 and cheer1589

Review thanks to sarabqh, Kyonkichi9 (I could never kill Pippin, in fact one day I want to have two cats...Merry and Pippin), PatonxJulia (CPR is a handy thing, that's why I'm Red Cross certified), and to Lira-leigh54(I'm glad you think so).

Wow! That was a popular chapter. Thanks for the support!

Also on a side not I have a poem up on fictionpress now as well. There is a link on my profile but I'm under the same name K Finance, so I'm not hard to find. ;)