Nori hurries back to the apartment she shares with Dori, not willing to risk lingering any longer and being caught by anyone else she does not wish to speak to. She knew that training Kíli would mean having to spend time around Dwalin, she prides herself on the fact that she is not as stupid as some would like to think, but she had hoped to avoid becoming too involved with him for a while longer. Her evening of flirting aside, Nori has no real wish to have Dwalin become a fixture in her life again. Until the quest for Erebor is over and she has determined whether or not she can keep at least the princes safe she does not need the distraction of a love life. Her head needs to stay in the game but there are things she will need to do to improve her chances of success. Training Kíli and Briar is part of that.
In fact, Briar will be the one that she takes Kíli to when it comes time for him to learn about poisons and their effects. Nori has a feeling that Briar knows about some more obscure options which will be handy for a prince protecting his brother. Not to mention she does not want Mavik anywhere near Kíli if it can be helped. If memory serves, Kíli was not the original catalyst for the Guild Master's death, although he may have been a contributing factor. Mavik is greedy, Nori could see him ignoring the wishes of the gang leaders if not for her insistence that she was taking Kíli as her apprentice.
"I left your dinner in the stove," Dori says when she enters the apartment. "I didn't want to keep our guest waiting for her meal and you certainly took your time."
"It got more complicated than I expected it to," Nori admits, settling at the small table as Dori pulls a plate from the stove to set in front of her before he turns his attention to the kettle that is boiling with a mutter. "I'll have an apprentice by tomorrow afternoon, though."
"Is that wise?" Dori asks. "You said you would never train another after the last one."
Nori pulls a face. Her brother has a point, Staal was not the best apprentice and she had not wanted to train him in the first place. Like Kíli, however, Staal was a case of be trained or be killed. He had made it abundantly clear that he had no wish to learn the trade and no desire to do well. Mavik had foisted him on Nori to prevent her from joining the ranks of the gang leaders after the head of her group had been killed during a raid gone wrong, likely fearing that a position there would result in Nori eventually replacing him. Once, Nori might have liked the idea of becoming Guild Master, but that was before working for Thorin, before Dwalin, before Erebor.
"This one wants to learn," she tells Dori, picking at her now dry pie. "He isn't like Staal, he's been trying to get past his mother and find a sponsor for a while now. He'll be alright."
"So you will help him break his mother's heart the same way that your sponsor helped to break our mother's?" Dori huffs.
"You would rather I just let him be killed?" Nori demands. "Because that's what will happen to him if I don't train him. And the boy dying won't be good for anybody." She clenched her fist around her fork, her appetite abandoning her. "I'm making him a thief, Mahal has taken care of that already, I'm going to help him become what he needs to be to protect his family." She picks her plate up and scrapes the food into a bucket. The boars will eat anything and their keepers collect household food waste regularly enough that it will not spoil. "This situation is different, and your argument is old and tired. I am what I am, and there is nothing which will change that." Not even having her heart broken and waking up fourteen years in the past apparently. "Perhaps you should learn to accept it. And try not to be snide when I bring my apprentice by tomorrow. I suspect his mother and uncle will already have given him enough grief over it all."
"You know very well I would never dream of trying to parent someone else's child," Dori sniffs and Nori snorts, well aware of the fact that Dori will mother anyone in grabbing distance if he decides they need it.
Still, Nori is not in the mood to argue with it. She knows full well that no matter how pleased she is to have finally gotten her way over training Kíli it will come with it's own set of complications. Instead she makes her way into the small sitting room where Briar is sleepily curled in one of the three wingback chairs which take up the majority of the room. The hobbit has obviously made good use of the small bathroom, her skin free of dirt and her thick curls still drying in the warmth of the room, the fire lit to ward off the chill of the interior of the mountain even in the early summer.
"You're back," Briar smiles. "How did it go?"
"Not quite as well as I hoped, but better than I expected," Nori slips into her own chair with a sigh, though she knows that Dori will berate her for it when he brings the tea he was obviously preparing through. "You should get Dori to show you a few braids while you're here," she adds with a sigh. "He's good, and it would keep your hair out of your face when we're travelling."
"I was going to ask you," Briar replies, "but… well your hair is so eye catching and I wasn't sure if there was some hidden meaning to it all when we got here and I saw the way so many dwarves seem to wear elaborate styles."
"Well," Nori says, "asking me would have been a bit odd. We aren't family or courting, but hair is Dori's trade, and he's good at it."
"What am I good at?" Dori sighs as he walks in.
"Hair," Nori tells him. "I was offering your services to Briar." She gestures to her friend and sees Dori's fingers twitch.
"Nori said you could teach me some ways of keeping this mess out of the way," Briar explains. Nori has seen Briar put her hair up before, both now and during the quest. It seemed to involve a large number of small pins, a great deal of muttering and a vast amount of frustration on both Briar's part and the watching Company.
For a moment she thinks that Dori might refuse, for all the styling and care of hair and beards is Dori's trade and craft, it is still an intimate thing to do for another. Dori is known for making his own high quality combs, dyes, and oils, the elaborate styles he weaves with ease are popular in this part of town and, in the future where Nori had begun to work for Thorin they had begun to become popular with the upper levels of the city as well. Dwarf hair needs care, and care for it they do, but there are those without close family and no one wants to risk trimming the ends of their beard or hair too short, or clumsily if they are cutting their beard to show grief. That is where dwarves like Dori come in, who trim and style and repair where a clumsy move with a blade has taken a chunk of hair with it. As far as Nori is concerned he should have been able to make his future in a better part of town than this, his work is worth it and there are not enough parties and occasions to show off money and wealth here to bring in the money that she knows her brother should be making.
"I have never worked with hair quite like yours," Dori says to Briar after sparing his sister a slightly irritated look, "but I would be delighted to try and see what I can create for you." Then he scowls back down at his sister and, none too gently, knocks his fist against her knee. "You're filthy, get out of that chair and get cleaned up."
"Yes, mother," Nori mocks, although she is grateful for the normality of the interaction. After her encounter with Dwalin she needs a little bit of normal to take her mind off the fact that she has lost something that none of them is aware she ever had.
Briar giggles softly from her chair, accepting her tea from Dori with quiet gratitude and Nori knows that it will not be long until the hobbit also retires for the night, something she intends on doing as soon as she has washed the road from her skin and so she bids her brother and her friend goodnight as she gets out of the chair with a low groan. Now that she has stopped moving for more than a few minutes and is in a place where she can relax she keenly feels the exhaustion of weeks of travel that has crept through her.
They are fortunate to have a small private bath in this apartment, something Nori knows that Ori has sacrificed in moving out. It is not large enough to stretch out in, at best Nori can kneel in it and submerge herself to nearly her shoulders in hot water that has been heated by the kitchen stove over the course of the day while Dori cooks and heats his kettles for his tea. So long as the tank remains filled, a hot and dirty job in itself, there is hot water for bathing and Nori enjoys it for a time.
It is not a feeling that can last, and as she sits in the water with her freshly washed hair cascading down her shoulders she feels her chest go tight with tears that she has refused to shed. She has been able to convince herself, for the most part, that she is not broken-hearted over how things with Dwalin ended and that she is not pining over him. Her last couple of encounters with him are going a long way towards showing that such a conviction is a lie at best. She should have stayed away from Ered Luin entirely, she should have made herself a new life in Ered Nimrais or the Iron Hills, and now she is tied here.
For the most part.
Apprentice thieves travel more than other apprentices, even when they are not of age. Getting it past Dís is going to be a complete pain, but if Kíli is going to be of any use he needs to get used to slipping in and out of places unnoticed and learn to assume a new identity at the drop of a hat. The best place for him to learn that is away from all the people who know him. Dís and Thorin will not like it, they do not have to like it. Nori will do it regardless, starting with a short trip in a few weeks to escort Briar back to Shire and complete her side of their contract, which she will have to draw up based on their last one and have Briar sign in the morning. Nori is skilled enough at forging the odd signature to place a witness there for the purpose of it.
She refuses to acknowledge that her motives are not just centred around Kíli's training, although the timing of all of this could have been better.
A.N: So I've been functioning on not enough sleep and forgot to save before I updated the chapter. All fixed now