Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Interlude and the Interloping Female
Thorin Oakenshield felt like he was fighting a losing battle. Every time he and his company managed to move forward a step in the positive direction, something caused them to fall back three steps in the opposite direction. Mirkwood was more like twenty steps, but he refused to allow himself to wallow in that sort of negativity. His companions were already in low enough spirits as it was. He wouldn't allow himself, the leader, to lose hope like the rest of them had.
Thorin eyed them all warily, taking note of how frazzled and alarmed they all looked. He did not like stopping for any length of time, but he had been forced to once they lost their path. He felt annoyance flaring up in his chest when he thought about how much time his company had spent in the forest, ambling around without a clue where to go next. They had lost their food as well, making their situation even worse. His stomach twinged horribly with hunger as he stood there, arms folded over his chest. The hobbit was taking his time climbing up the tree to find the path, leaving Thorin with nothing to do but watch his company.
Bombur was still moaning about being hungry, not that Thorin was surprised. He had thrown himself down onto the ground the moment Thorin had called them to a halt and hadn't left since. Bofur was seated next to him, whispering something that Bombur found very little mirth in. Bifur was standing above them, eyeing them both while shifting his gaze to the trees around them. Nori was leaned against one of the trees, eyes blinking rapidly. Thorin imagined he was struggling to clear his head of the haze that had settled over all of them.
It affected them all differently. Thorin was a paranoid dwarf by nature, but ever since they had stepped foot in that forest, he had seen danger stalking them every moment of every day.
Thorin shook his head, turning his gaze towards his nephews. Fili and Kili were huddled together, discussing something with vigor. He moved towards them, nodding at Dwalin as he went. Both Fili and Kili seemed surprised to see him standing there. Fili immediately stopped talking, turning to face him with a slightly guilty look on his face. Thorin narrowed his eyes instantly, not liking the matching looks of guilt on both of their faces.
"Uncle." Fili's voice was higher pitched than normal. He was more fidgety than Thorin ever remembered him being.
"Fili, Kili." Kili refused to make eye contact with Thorin, which was troubling in of itself.
"When will be moving on?" Fili asked, glancing over Thorin's shoulder. His eyes widened for a moment as he looked at something. Thorin cleared his throat. Fili's attention immediately snapped back to Thorin, a sheepish look now on his face. "Sorry, Uncle."
"When mister Baggins returns." Thorin supplied, taking note of the distracted look on his youngest nephews face. Kili wasn't even bothering to look at Thorin. His gaze was on something behind Thorin. The something caused an alarmed look to take over his face completely. He even went so far as to lean around Thorin to get a better view. Thorin did not need to follow his nephews gaze to know what he was looking at. Thorin was not a stupid man, not by any means. He was aware, painfully so, of his nephew's infatuation with the interloping female, Emelia.
Thorin felt his mood sour even further to the point that he fixed Kili with a withering glare.
"Kili."
"Who is she talking to?" Kili asked, completely oblivious to the look on Thorin's face.
Thorin, despite his initial internal displeasure, could not stop himself from looking over at the redheaded female. He had a full barrage of anger filled comments for his nephew, all of them just waiting to explode out, until he saw her sitting on the ground. She was shaking, one hand inside her shirt the other rubbing her head blearily. Her eyes were wide and full of a fear that Thorin had never seen her express before. Thorin could just barely make out the paleness of her face in the dim light of the forest.
"I'm not imagined things. I mean, she really is talking to thin air right?"
Kili moved towards Emelia, an alarmed look that matched Fili's on his face. Fili opened his mouth to say something, only to cut short when Emelia stood up suddenly.
"Don't leave. Please." Her voice was laced with pain. She pressed her hand into her chest underneath her shirt, tears streaming down her face. Thorin had never seen her look so out of sorts in all the time he had known her. Thorin expected her to collapse in on herself like she usually did when she was in pain, emotional or otherwise. That had certainly been the case when he had first spoken to her shortly after meeting her. He hadn't been sure what he was supposed to then and he certainly wasn't sure what to do now that she was talking to herself. Thorin felt an unnatural amount of sympathy for the girl suddenly. He wasn't used to feeling sympathy for anyone besides those he was closest to and it made him slightly uncomfortable.
However, Thorin felt his sympathy for her evaporate as soon as she took off running into the trees, shouting in a wounded voice as she went.
"Emelia! Come back."
Kili made to follow her only to be stopped by Thorin. He gave his nephew the most pointed look he could muster, hoping to convey his expectations of Kili and his displeasure at Emelia all with one look. "You will stay put. The last thing I need is two of you gallivanting about the forest."
Thorin was certain Emelia was sent to give him practice in being patient. He clenched up his fists for a moment before he ran after her, cursing her with all the foul words he could think of in all the languages he knew. He kept his gaze on what little red hair she had left, cursing her once again when she made it to a part of the forest that the dismal sunlight didn't touch. Her hair, which was normally a nice indicator of where she was, blended into the darkness, making it almost impossible for Thorin to find her amongst the trees.
Thorin followed the sounds of her footsteps, doing his absolute best to remember the way back to rest of his company. The sounds of the arguing amongst each other was soon lost to him; the first of many signs that troubled him. Shortly after, he lost his way entirely. He forced himself to keep following the sounds of her footsteps, anger welling up inside him with each step he took. His hunger gnawed at his stomach, adding fuel to his already outrageous amount of rage.
"Emelia!"
Her footsteps finally stopped. He recognized the familiar sound of someone skidding to a halt not too far in front of him. He pushed and kicked his way through the thick underbrush, mumbling under his breathe the whole way.
"I saved you."
Thorin didn't have the foggiest idea about who she thought she was talking to or what she was talking about. He did know that her tone of voice was something that should cause him concern, as much as he chagrined to admit it to himself.
"I saved you."
Thorin arrived at the clearing Emelia had stopped in much quicker than he anticipated. Without the frame of reference of the sun he found he was almost useless at finding his way in the dark. He imagined it was worse for Emelia, considering she was a human and not a very good one at that. Thorin was a dwarf at least and dwarves were made to live in dark caves. He walked forward, looking for her. He didn't look down and as a result almost tripped over her in the darkness. Her small body was in the middle of the clearing, smashed into the dirt in a way that would make most women cringe. Her breathing sounded labored and forced, almost as if she was forcing herself to take each breathe with all the willpower she possessed.
"Emelia?" Thorin spoke hesitantly, moving closer to her crumpled form.
He had never been very comfortable around women, even less so around crying women. Dis, his sister, only cried once and that was when she was giving birth to Kili. Thorin had heard it from outside the birthing chamber. It had set his teeth on edge. Emelia's crying was much the same.
Thorin stood in the clearing for a moment, thinking for the briefest of seconds that perhaps he should have let Kili come find her after all. He quickly pushed that thought aside. If Thorin was having trouble in the damned forest, he could only imagine how Kili would fare. Besides, he didn't exactly like the idea of purposely pushing his nephew into alone time with the female. They were already ogling each other enough with Thorin aiding them in their endeavors.
When Emelia did not acknowledge his presence Thorin began to grow worried. He moved closer to her, leaning over her body slightly to get a better look at her state. She sobbed to herself, much like Fili and Kili had when they were babes. It was the kind of sobbing that sounded like she was choking on something. He bent down, arms extending out to her. He wasn't sure how to go about this sort of thing, but he knew he couldn't leave her in her current state. He placed a hesitant hand on her shaking shoulder, turning her thin frame over to face him.
Her wide green eyes looked up at him blearily through her tears before they fluttered closed. Thorin immediately removed his hands, panicking slightly. He wasn't sure what was wrong with her and didn't have the skills or the supplies to fix it if it came down to it. He did the only thing he could think of. He pulled off his over cloak, balling it up before he placed it under head gingerly. The silence in the forest was deadening now that Emelia's sobs weren't filling up the air. They had bounced off the trees, reverberating to the point that it had sounded like a hundred Emelias crying, rather than just the bothersome one Emelia.
He looked at her for a moment, barely making out her outline in the darkness as he decided the best course of action. He looked around at all the trees, struggling to see anything that would indicate he had come from that direction. They all looked the same, which infuriated him to no end. Caves he could handle with ease. He was born and breed reading the stones. Trees, however, were about as foreign and infuriating to him as the elves that lived in them. He bent down to pick her up, thinking only about getting back to his company when he came to the horrible realization that he didn't know which way his company was.
The thought made his insides run cold.
Thorin glared down at her before depositing her back on the soft earth. He kept his cloak under her head, despite thinking she didn't really deserve it, before he sat down next to her. Normally he would fight his was back until he found something, anything, but he didn't dare do that while carrying someone. He would need the use of his arms and Emelia, thanks to her fainting spell, would deny him of that.
Thorin ran his hands over his face, resigning himself to wait, hoping that he wouldn't die of starvation, or worse, in the meantime.
The first sign that she was waking up from her sobbing induced stupor came when she stopped twitching. Thorin, who had been eyeing the trees with disdain, looked down at her. He wasn't sure how long they had been sitting in the clearing, but he knew any hope of finding his company had evaporated long ago. He glanced down at her, taking note of how much hair she had truly lost when the orcs attacked her and Ori outside of Beorn's home for a brief moment before he turned his attention back to the trees.
Thorin ignored the hunger pains in much the same way that he ignored Emelia. More often than not, he found it was easy to disregard her presence when she wasn't actively making his life harder. He had found it increasingly harder to ignore her as of late thanks in no small part to all the attention his nephews had been giving her.
He did not consider himself to be an uncaring man, not by any means. He could see that she brought them happiness on their journey, although he could not explain why, and he did not begrudge her for that. He did begrudge her the fact that she extended beyond happiness for Kili. Thorin had first thought he was merely infatuated, as most young dwarves of his age are prone to, but he found as time progressed that it wasn't quite the case. Kili talked about her even when she had nothing to do with the conversation, he watched her when he thought no one was looking, he always made sure she comfortable even when there was no comfort to be found in the wilderness.
Even if she was a dwarf, which she was obviously not, Thorin would not have approved.
There was a time and a place for those sorts of things, and Thorin hardly thought their quest was the place.
Emelia moved in her sleep, twisting herself into a position that looked painful. She pulled her legs into her chest for a moment before she extended them, almost as if she was stretching. She opened her eyes, blinking rapidly in the darkness before her gaze settled on Thorin.
"Obviously, I'm not dreaming if you're here." She said it more to herself than to Thorin. He noticed her voiced sounded oddly thick and forced, like it was painful for her to speak. "More like a bloody nightmare."
Thorin ignored her.
"Where are we?" She asked after a moment, forcing herself into a weak sitting position. Her skinny arms seemed to struggle to support her weight but she managed it all the same.
"Mirkwood." Thorin said, reaching out to retrieve his cloak. He shook it off before throwing it back around his shoulders.
"I figured that part out for myself, thanks. I mean, where is everybody else?"
"We are wherever you went during your neurotic fit." Thorin said, his voice taking a sour tone. He wondered if she had completely forgotten about the events that had happened earlier. Perhaps she had. He wished she hadn't, that way he could hold her accountable for her actions. Emelia shrank back slightly, folding her knees up so that she could place her chin on it. She brought her dirty hands up to her eyes, scrubbing at them for a long moment before she spoke in the darkness, her voice much quieter than before.
"I feel like I should apologize."
"I feel like you should as well." Thorin bit back, gritting his teeth together to keep from saying something worse.
"I have no explanation that you would understand." She said, looking away from him. He thought he saw a tear run down her cheek but he couldn't be sure. "It was stupid."
"An understatement." Thorin said, looking away from her as well.
"You're kind of an ass, you know." She said after a long moment. Thorin thought he heard her incorrectly. He turned to face her, a look of disbelief on his face. In all his years, of all the people who had insulated him, never once had a child like her done so in such a manner.
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. You are an ass. You never seem to realize that other people have more going on in their lives beyond what you're involved in." Emelia spat, sounding as if she was gearing up to say something harsher, more honest. "I get that getting your home back is important or whatever, but you don't have to be such an insufferable ponce about it. Honestly, I have never met someone with such an ego combined with such a disregard for other people in all my life. And I'm including myself in that, because let's be honest, I only thought of myself for the vast majority of my last eighteen years. You however, you claim to be a king and all I see is the actions of a self-righteous child."
"Are you done?"
"Not even close. Gandalf told me that you took me away from Rivendell despite knowing there were people there that could help me."
"They were elves." Thorin pointed out through gritted teeth. The word twisted in his mouth, making a bitter taste rise of up in it.
"Right, they were elves and I'm a human and you're a dwarf and Bilbo's a hobbit and Gandalf is," She paused, seeming confused for a moment. "Well I don't really know what Gandalf is, but that isn't the point. The point is that they could have helped me get back to my family and you, being the obnoxious ass that you are, couldn't see past your own obnoxiously straight nose and plans."
"Emelia."
"No. I have to say this because if I don't I will just resort to taking my anger out other ways, like punching you or putting cockroaches in your food when you aren't looking and I don't think you want that." She took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. "You have treated me like I am not even worth licking the muck off your shoes and I'm sick of it. Didn't I keep my trap shut with the Goblin King? Didn't I not tell a soul when we were in Rivendell, just like you said? I'm sick of it and I'm sick of you. How someone like you could have had a hand in raising dwarves as spectacular as Fili and Kili is beyond me."
"Are you quite finished?" Thorin asked, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable with all the insults she was throwing at him.
"Hardly. You just don't get it. You haven't bothered once to ask me why I might be scared, or sad, or lonely to the point that I want to spend time with Fili and Kili. I miss my family and you don't get that. I might not ever see them again and you can't be bothered to give a damn. You don't know me and you don't know how I am feeling every moment of every day. How would you feel if you were suddenly whisked away from Fili and Kili and you thought you would never see them again? How would you feel if you thought you would never get to see them grow up, or have kids, or get married, or whatever the hell you dwarves consider to be high points in life? How would you handle that? Not very well from what I know of you."
"I think you've said quite enough." Thorin said, cutting across her before she could say any more. Emelia was breathing heavily, a look on anger masking her gaunt and dirty face.
"Why, because you don't like a human telling you the truth? Or do you just not like the truth in general?"
"Emelia, enough." Thorin said icily. "You have made your point."
There was an uncomfortable silence that followed. Emelia was breathing heavily, pointedly looking away from Thorin. Thorin could see her shoulders heaving. Never in his life had someone spoken to him in the way she just had. He wasn't sure if he should be angry at her, or appreciative for the honestly that she had just hurled at him. Dis had said things like that to Thorin more times than he could recall, but she was his sister. Those sorts of things were to be expected. Emelia was another case entirely.
He felt shame, which was an emotion he felt very rarely, creeping up inside him as he processed her words.
"I don't know about you, but I feel better." Emelia said after a long silence. Thorin looked over at her, confusion etched all over his face."God, that felt good to say. I don't think you know how many mean things I've been bottling up."
"I think I understand." Thorin said, allowing the slightest bit of humor into his voice.
"Oh, right." She dropped her knees, placing her hands on either side of her. "I was chasing my brother, or what I thought was my brother. It's completely stupid, looking back on it, because he's in Alaska and I'm, well I'm here. With you. In the dirt. Sharing my feelings." Her voice grew more and more depressed as she babbled on. Thorin looked away, feeling the discomfort radiating off her.
"We should move on. We will surely die of starvation if we don't at least attempt to find our way back to our companions."
Thorin had purposely put in the 'our companions' in the hope that she wouldn't start yelling at him again. She still sounded angry, so he wouldn't put it past her to do so.
"I'm still not happy with you." She said, pushing herself up into a standing position as he did the same. She pulled her pack over her shoulders to make it more comfortable. "You've had months and months of assery, so…"
"I apologize." Thorin thought the words sounded forced coming out of his mouth, but he truly did mean them all the same. He still did not like Emelia very much and he disliked his nephews feelings for her even more, but he was not so proud that he could not see when he had been wrong. He seemed to more incorrect than correct as of late, if the situation with the hobbit was any indication, so he did not think Emelia was so far outside of the realm of possibility with her rants. "A king, a man, should know better than to treat a lady in such a manner regardless of her…"
"Of her humanity?" Emelia asked, smirking to herself. "I don't care that you're a dude. I don't think that has anything to do with it, because I can be a pretty big ass as well, just ask Kee."
"I'm sorry, ask who?" Thorin asked, looking around at the trees, trying to decide the best way to take.
"Kili."
Thorin looked over at her so sharply, his neck might have popped.
"And Fili, but more so Kili." Emelia seemed oblivious to the look on Thorin's face. He opened his mouth to say something, only to close it again. He knew what battles were worth fighting and which ones were not. He would wait to see if the situation progressed before he spoke to her about it. He had already told his nephews to stay away from her, but that might have selfish on his part. He had a line of succession to maintain, and he certainly didn't think Emelia would fit into that. He had been proved wrong before though, so he chose to keep his thoughts to himself. He could have been over thinking the entire situation. It was possible that Emelia might not even feel that way about either of his nephews in the first place.
"We will go this way, unless you have an argument about that as well?" Thorin said, pointing towards the trees to his left. It looked less ominous and dark that way, which was promising.
"Is there food that way?" Emelia asked, hitching her pack up on her shoulders with a look of misery on her face. "I think my stomach might have shriveled up. I could eat a whole cow right now. Or thirty hamburgers. Or fifty pizzas." Her voice had taken a morose tone.
"Thinking about food will make you more hungry."
"Being hungry makes me hungry."
They walked, Emelia behind Thorin, for what felt like days. They stopped intermittently to allow Thorin to check their path, their depression growing when they saw no signs of their companions. Emelia's stomach had stopped growling long ago, having reached the point of hunger where it all blurred together. She imagined passing out and not waking up was the next step.
"I used to be overweight." Emelia said to Thorin's back, blinking blearily. "I used to want my bones to stick out. What an awful thought. How could I think that?" Emelia ran her hand along her hip, wincing to herself at the sharpness of it.
"Women often have odd notions about their bodies." Thorin said, not realizing that what he said could be perceived as rude.
"I wish I was overweight right now. Being well-fed seems like such a luxury. How can people want to be skin and bones when they have all the food in the world while people who have no food want nothing more than to be round in places besides their head?"
Thorin allowed her to talk to herself, thinking it best not to interrupt.
"Maybe we could eat leaves."
Thorin had to interrupt that thought, despite his resolve not to. "No. It would make us sicker than we already are."
"The bark then." Emelia said, stumbling slightly behind him. "Or the squirrels, if we could catch some. I could try squeaking at them to draw them in, and then you could go for the kill." She made a noise that Thorin imagined the thought sounded like a squirrel. It was possibly the most pathetic noise he had ever heard, but he allowed her to continue.
"The only thing that noise will accomplish is scaring them off." Thorin said over his shoulder, amused at the noise she made in response.
"Is this what hell is like?" Emelia asked, more to herself. "Walking through a forest with King Sassafras himself, starving to death."
Thorin kept walking, pushing through the trees aside to make it easier for her to walk through. She hardly noticed, what with her talking to herself, but Thorin still pushed forward. His own hunger was gnawing at him, making him weaker with each step he took but he didn't allow himself to wallow in it like Emelia did. It would be a truly miserable experience if they both wailed about their stomach pains for all the owners of the eyes to hear.
It was miserable regardless, but Thorin had no desire to add to that.
They walked on for, by Thorin's estimate, another six hours before he saw a light. At first he thought he was imagining it. It was hardly recognizable in all the darkness. He wouldn't have put it out of the realm of possibilities that his own hunger induced borderline delirium was affecting him more than he thought. He didn't tell Emelia about it for a while, choosing instead to keep walking towards it in the hopes that it would turn out to be more real than not. He was able to keep her in the dark, metaphorically and literally speaking, only for a few moments longer before she too noticed the light.
"Is that a light?" She asked, not really believing it. She peeked out from behind him, her voice taking on a reluctant excitement in spite of her disbelief. "Please tell me I'm not seeing things."
"If you are, then so am I." Thorin responded, moving forward quickly. He paused only long enough to see if she was keeping up with him before moving onwards.
"Maybe it's the rest of the company." Emelia said, stumbling slightly as she moved with him through the underbrush. "It feels like we haven't seen them in ages."
It very well might have, for all Thorin knew. Time passed so differently in the forest, he could no loner keep up with it.
The light was getting bigger and bigger as they rushed towards it. Thorin could feel his mouth watering more and more with each step he took. His hunger was the worst he had ever experienced. It felt like he was dying. Both to them tripped as they moved, neither of them caring about where they were stepping. Thorin knew the light was not a mirage. It was getting bigger and brighter and more inviting and more wonderful. He could practically smell the food that he was hoping would be there.
"Maybe they'll have enchiladas." Emelia said behind him. "Maybe it'll be a chocolate fountain."
It only took them moments longer to reach the source of the light. They threw themselves in the clearing it was coming from, eyes scanning around for something to eat. They were distracted for a moment, searching for what they craved. Neither of them noticed the people who were making the light, or the looks of disgust on their faces, or the weapons that were being brandished at them instantly. Thorin registered who they were before Emelia did, although it only took her a moment longer.
"Or maybe it'll be elves." Emelia said, not sounding as upset that Thorin would have hoped for. He imagined she didn't have a reason to be upset by the sight of a group of wood elves.
For his part, he couldn't have imagined anything worse.
"Bollocks."
So I know I said one of them would admit their feelings, but I couldn't work it in the way I wanted it to. Sorry. Soon, I promise.
I hope you guys enjoyed reading from Thorin's POV. I thought it would be a nice break before we dive into all the Mirkwood shenanigans with the dwarves and elves. In case you were wondering, this is sort of based of the book where Thorin gets separated from the rest of the company. I was tired of Emelia and Thorin hating each other so I thought it was high time she got to tell him how she feels. They arent the best of friends but I felt like this was a good starting point for their relationship to progress.
Tauriel, Legolas, and Thranduil are all in the next chapter!
Thank you for all the reviews! Keep em' coming. I promise they make me write faster. I was going to wait a whole other week for this one, but couldn't wait due to all the feedback.
