Author's note: I'm uploading this chapter again because I followed the movie timeline, making the Company leave Rivendell way faster than they are supposed to. I'm trying to write a mix between book and movie-verse, but being honest, it's been a while since I've picked up the book. I'll try to be more accurate from now on, hope you are enjoying the story so far! Also, there have been slight changes in some of the chapters, nothing too relevant to the plot, just in case somebody gets confused about why some things sound different.

For once in her life, Rin went where she said she was going. She passed by the door leading to the balcony where the rest of the Company was quickly, ignoring the laughing and cheer coming from there. Then she climbed a staircase, turned left and stopped in front of a white door. Rin pushed it open.

Nothing had changed in the room from the last time she had visited. Rin threw her cloak, her traveling pack, and her swords next to the door as she walked in.

The curtains covering the arc that led to a small balcony were swinging in the warm night breeze. On any other night, Rin would have gone outside to enjoy the warm evening and maybe go for a walk around the valley. Now she collapsed on the bed without even bothering to take her boots off, trying to put her thoughts in order. She had learned more about her family in the past two days than in the last fifty years.

Frerin had been the second-born prince of Erebor. Which made Rin a princess of the dwarf kingdom, if they ever reclaimed it. Thorin was her uncle. Fili and Kili were her cousins. Did she have any more relatives she didn't know about?

It sounded stupid. All of it. And it still somehow made sense.

Rin didn't know how she fell asleep, and together with the sleep came a wave of memories.

There was the same room and the same crackling fireplace she had dreamed about the night they left the Shire. This time however Rin was facing the people sitting around it. A tall and slender woman, looking no older than twenty-five in human years, with long dark-brown hair and piercing blue eyes. She looked almost identical to the portrait in Greenwood, but there was something in her face that the painting hadn't managed to capture. The mischievous spark in her eyes, the warmth that seemed to radiate from her. Meril, Rin's mother. People hadn't lied that they looked alike. Yet, Meril's features were softer, her expression somehow less wild and fiery.

Her gaze was fixed on somebody across the room. As Rin turned, she thought she was looking at Fili. No. Fili's eyes weren't brown. Rin was looking at her father.

There were no portraits of him she had ever seen, and she had never managed to remember what he had looked like. His face wasn't old, but Rin could see the same battle-worn look in his eyes that warriors who had lived through wars and countless battles normally had. Still, he was smiling; the same smirk Rin had seen in the mirror more times than she could count.

A dwarf stood at the doorway, leaning on the doorframe. Thorin, even though a younger version of him, his hair not yet run through with white.

Rin suddenly felt as if she was falling backwards. The memory blurred and disappeared, its place taken by another, and another, too many to count. Two dwarflings, one light and one dark-haired, chasing each other in a meadow, a dark-haired woman laughing and shouting at them to come back. A market full of people dressed in colorful clothes. The smell of just baked bread. Hiding behind her mother's leg as a scary looking man made his way towards them. Stormbringer, propped against a wall in a narrow hallway lit by a candle. Then a fire.

There was the smell of smoke. Shouts. The metallic stench of blood. Then the feeling that the world was flying around her.

Rin jolted awake, instinctively reaching for the knife she always kept on her nightstand at Greenwood. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was. There was no fire, no smoke, just the moonlight and the night sounds outside. The moon was not high in the sky yet, she hadn't been asleep for more than two hours. Yet, it felt as if she had relived years. Rin realized her eyes had watered.

She stood like that for a few minutes, just staring into the nothingness, then she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. This did nothing but water them more thanks to the dust that was covering it from the previous days. As much as she wanted to go back to sleep, Rin kicked herself out of bed and dug through her pack, pulling out some clean clothes. She needed to take a bath.

As she was brushing her hair afterwards, trying to get it not to fly in every direction, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror that hung on the wall. Her hair was longer than when she had left Greenwood, now reaching her shoulders. There had been a time when it had been down to her waist, but that had finished after an encounter with an orc pack. One of the orcs had grabbed her by the braid, and would have probably smashed her skull with the heavy club he was carrying if she hadn't sliced the braid off, getting herself free. She had kept it short ever since.

She threw the brush aside and slumped on the bed, spending half an hour trying to fall asleep. She finally managed to doze off.

The next morning she woke up to somebody repeatedly knocking on her door.

"Alright, alright, I'm coming, no need to break the door down." Rin jumped from the bed and opened the door. Instead of a guard or an elf outside however she found Kili.

"For Valar's sake, it's barely dusk, don't you dwarves sleep?" Rin grumbled, while debating if slamming the door in his face and going back to sleep was worth it.

"I came to tell you that we are having breakfast on the balcony from yesterday, if you want to join." He was averting his gaze, as if he didn't want to look her in the eye. So Thorin had told them.

Rin grabbed her boots and followed him out of the door.

The corridors of the House were quiet, everybody either outside or somewhere else in the valley. The only noise was the quiet, rhythmic tapping of their boots against the floor.

"Are you alright? You look like you're going to be sick."

"Thanks Kili, you also look great." Rin's smile didn't reach her eyes. "I'm fine. Didn't sleep well, that's all."

"If that's going to make you feel better, I didn't sleep at all."

Rin's smile became a bit wider, but disappeared soon after.

"Does everybody know?" The question was quiet and unclear, but Kili got it.

"Thorin told us. It's been quite a long time since I last saw him this angry. The others didn't seem too happy either.

Rin raised her eyebrows.

"They remember me?"

"Everyone does. Even me and Fili, even though the memories are a little blurry. The question everybody is asking themselves is if you remember us."

"Two days ago I didn't. Now, I'm not so sure.