"I should have been watching her," Nori mutters as she watches Kíli lead Briar to the rock pit where they have made camp while Fíli heads to the lakeside.
"There's no harm done," Dwalin winds his arms around her from behind. "You said there was something here, you were right. It probably wouldn't have made itself known if one of us had been with her and decided to come for us when we were sleeping instead."
"Briar isn't bait," Nori snaps.
"Never said she was," Dwalin tightens his hold reassuringly. "I'm just saying that better now than later."
"I know," Nori huffs. "I just…"
"We'll get out," Dwalin assures her. "We'll have a hot meal, get some sleep and by the time we're done we should have a sense of which of those tunnels will take us out. We can worry about what comes next once we're out."
"I want to go home," Nori whispers. "Just take the lads and run back to Ered Luin. Forget this whole ridiculous mess and take the lads and Briar and go home." She is shaking. "I can't do this."
"Look at me," Dwalin turns her in his arms. "Lass… what's brought this on? This can't be the worst scrape you've ever been caught in."
Nori's mind is racing. There was always going to come a point where the risk of Briar, Fíli or Kíli being killed would become a stark reality. The battle will always come. To come so close to losing Briar now, however, has reminded her just how much risk there is to their lives now. It makes the fact that she is living through this a second time that bit more real.
"I can't lose you," she whispers. "I can't lose them."
He frowns and then pulls her away from the base of the wall towards one of the passages, although it is really little more than a short corridor to nowhere.
"What's going on?" He demands, voice low enough that the echoes will not carry. She shakes her head. "I've never seen you like this. Not even when we fought Azog. Tell me what's going on." She glances behind her. "Just you and me in here, Kíli's with his lass, Fíli'll watch the lines. Whatever it is, you can tell me."
She wants to. Nori has kept this inside for fourteen years and she had truly believed that she could carry it to her grave. Maybe it is too much for one dwarf. Maybe it is too much to keep in any longer. But when she opens her mouth to tell him the words die in her throat. He will think her mad, he will turn from her. She will finally drive him away when she has tied him to her even past her secrets. She cannot tell him, cannot lose him. Not now. Maybe when this is all over, if she succeeds, she will finally tell him the truth about herself. But for now she cannot take the risk. It will be one distraction too many.
"Is this about him?" Dwalin whispers. "The one you lost. Is it about him?"
"Him and those lads." Nori breathes. The lie is close enough to the truth, will still be close enough when she exposes the full truth of it all. "I met Briar when I was still grieving them. Promised myself I wasn't going to get close to anyone again. I was leaving Ered Luin, and then she was there and she needed protecting like I hadn't protected those boys and…"
"Breathe," Dwalin orders, pressing rough hands to her cheeks so that she looks up at him. He is filthy, but then so is she. "Briar isn't those boys. Fíli and Kíli are not those boys. Those boys didn't have you teaching them for thirteen years. They didn't have you fighting at their side. Not like Kíli has, and he's taught his brother everything he knows when you weren't teaching the pair of them. Those boys in there, they have every advantage me and you could give them. Briar has all the advantages we could give her. We'll be alright. You just need to stop and breathe. This mess we're in now? We could not have seen this coming. The cave was unstable but there was no reason to think it would go when it did. It was a risk we had no choice other than to take."
Which…
Frustratingly, she realises that Dwalin is right. He cannot know that Fíli and Kíli are the two boys she lost all those years ago, but at the same time, they are not. Especially Kíli, who was adrift and craftless in her last life. He lacked the focus of a craft, the training he might have needed to succeed. Fíli is different too, although he possibly does not realise it. Fíli's marriage might be rushed but it has been built on a solid foundation and the time spent with Hela has matured him in ways that spending his entire childhood being reminded of his duties and destiny could not. Somehow, having Nori in their lives has helped to change these boys for the better, even if it is only marginally. In her last life they were good lads, if a little too desperate for their uncle's approval. In this life, as long as she can keep them alive, these boys will be great and they know that they do not need their uncle's approval to do it.
Nori means to keep them alive. Everything else she has achieved over the last fourteen years aside, Nori's only goal is to keep those two lads and Briar alive.
"You good?" Dwalin asks her, obviously noticing the change in the way she is holding herself.
"I'm good," she breathes. "I just… it's too like last time."
"We've all been through that," Dwalin assures her. "Went through it the night you killed Azog. I've been too close to losing you too many times, you want to go back, we'll go back. You want to carry on once we're out of here, we'll go forward. I chose you, Nori. I swore myself to you above everything, above those lads, above Thorin. If you want to go home, really and truly, we'll find our way home. I'm not going to make you relive your past to satisfy Thorin."
"We wait until we get outside," Nori says. "Once we're out we'll work out where we are, work out which way we go; home or onwards."
"You sure?" He presses and she nods. "Alright. Let's get back to the kids. Probably best we don't leave them alone for too long." He kisses her before she can move away. "Relax," he orders. "Breathe. I know you're on edge, but you've been on edge since before we left home. You're going to shake yourself apart if you carry on. Something else is at play. We both know it. There's nothing we can do while we're down here." He touches his forehead to hers and she feels some of the tension leak out of her.
Dwalin is not belittling her concerns. He knows that she has them, he knows that she must have come across something in the course of her work to make her so wary and even though he does not know what it is he is showing his support for her as much as he can. As much as she will let him. She may not be able to tell him everything yet, but she will. Instead of saying anything else, though, she nods and squeezes his hand before turning back to the cavern to find Briar, Fíli and Kíli.
There is a fire in the ring of stones when they get there, Briar huddled next to it wrapped in one of the dust covered blankets which they had managed to salvage after the cave in. The mix of firelight and bioluminescence gives her skin a sallow appearance, the warmth of the flames fighting with the sickly light of the mushrooms to bring a bizarre shade to the hobbit's face. She is staring at something as Nori approaches, a confused frown pulling at her face. Kíli is over with Fíli, helping his brother gut several fish near the waterside and Dwalin heads over to them while Nori approaches Briar.
"I thought he'd be with you," Nori mutters as she sits next to the hobbit. They have been gone for a while, but surely not long enough for Kíli to get bored of making a fuss.
"I told him to go and help Fíli," Briar replies, hand snapping closed. Nori sort of understands that, she hates being fussed over when she is hurt too.
"What have you got there?" Something flickers on Briar's face momentarily, then she opens her hand again.
"A ring," she says. "I found it before that… thing, whatever it was, turned up. I think it belonged to a hobbit once, it's the right size and style."
Briar hands it to Nori, seemingly without thinking, dropping it into Nori's gloved palm and the weight of it is sudden, unexpected. Nori knows the weight of a simple gold ring and this, this is not the weight of a simple gold ring. It is too heavy for that, as though it should have some massive embellishment or stone embedded into it. There is a moment when she thinks that her eyes are deceiving her, where the ring seems to shudder and expand in her hand to fit one of her thicker, blunter, fingers. She looks at Briar, only to see the way that the hobbit has reared back a little, her face taking on an expression of alarm.
"You saw that too?" The thief asks. Briar nods. "Strange. I assume magic rings aren't something your people are known for?" She shakes her head and Nori bites her lip in thought.
She is not highly educated. Not in the same way that Briar is, nor Fíli, Kíli and Thorin are. Her family simply did not have the wealth to send her to a school which would do more than teach her how to read and write and count high enough to manage day to day life. Much of her knowledge has been gained from books, books she stole as a youth to feed Ori's insatiable curiosity about the world, books borrowed from Ergart and listening to the stories of older thieves and marks. She has heard stories of magic rings, and that they have come across such an innocuous looking one worries her.
A whisper flashes through her mind. Temptation, something she is far too familiar with, flickers with it. Put the ring on, what could it hurt, it is just a simple band of gold and nothing to worry about. Perhaps it has some power that might help her to achieve her goals. Some power which might help her to save Fíli, Kíli and Thorin. Normally, that temptation would be almost too much for her, Nori has never been good at resisting. In the same moment as she feels that urge, however, disgust fills her so quickly that she thinks she might vomit from it. Nori has never felt such intense revulsion in her life. It makes her almost want to throw the ring into the middle of the lake where it can lie forgotten for the rest of time.
"I don't like this thing," Nori says after a beat. "It feels… wrong."
"It didn't feel like anything to me," Briar is still frowning. "But I don't like what it did when you took it."
"Part of me wants to bury it here and forget about it," the thief whispers. "There's something dark about it and that worries me, enough that I don't want to leave it where we can't see it." She passes it back. "Look after it, if it doesn't affect you like it has me it's probably best you have it, when Gandalf catches us up we can talk to him about it. Don't put it on, I feel like bad things will happen if you put it on."
"Put what on?" Kíli asks as he approaches with several fish impaled on long pieces of broken wood.
"Nothing," Nori shakes her head as Briar tucks the ring into a pocket. "Nothing to worry about anyway."
He gives her a quick look, head tilting in the way that it does when he realises that she is keeping secrets. Then his face clears again and his lips quick in a slight smile as he sets the fish around the small fire to cook. For now it is better that the ring stay hidden, and Kíli trusts her to tell him what he should know when it is needed. If she tells him about the ring now he may decide he wants to carry it for Briar and the same instinct which tells Nori that the ring is some dark and evil thing insists that Kíli not touch it, even if he one day has to know about it.
For the moment, however, ignorance is bliss as far as the lad is concerned.
A.N: Is Nori on the edge of having a breakdown? Why yes, I think she might be. She's a strong lass, our Nori, but fourteen years of waiting for something tragic would wear on a person. She came so close to telling Dwalin. I wrote her telling him but then it sort of... fizzled and Dwalin stormed away and vanished and I couldn't do that to her. Besides which, I'm still not entirely sure that Dwalin would be the one she would tell first anyway. Part of me still thinks that will fall on Kili or Briar. Probably Briar.