"No."
Gandalf looked very surprised. His bushy brows rose up into the depths of his hat. "No? These are three pivotal lives we are speaking of, Miss Chen. Surely you don't think they deserve to die."
Andrea's eyes narrowed. If there was one thing that brought out the fighter in her, it was passive aggression. "I didn't say that, and you know it. If you want their lives saved, why not save them yourself? You read the book, watched the movies, you know how it ends!"
"On the contrary, my dear, I have neither read the book nor watched the movies." Gandalf drew himself up slightly. "It is not for anyone, even one such as I, to know one's own future. But you are not of this world, and not of what you know to be a mere story. Your presence has changed things, and will continue to do so."
Andrea scoffed. "Great, so now I'm the butterfly flapping its wings? What if the hurricane turns out to be Frodo never throwing the Ring into the fire?"
Gandalf frowned. "Fate sees fit that all that must happen will happen. There are those who must die in some specific fashion at some specific time, and those whose lives are given to chance rather than fate. The line of Durin, I believe, lies in the latter category."
"Why me, then? Why not some other girl."
Gandalf shrugged. His expression gentled slightly. "I cannot say, my dear. Only that I know that it is you who must do this."
That was a nice sentiment. Andrea didn't let it soften her. Especially when a new thought occurred to her. "What about going home?" she asked, in a quiet voice, her ire fading at the prospect her mind presented her with. "Will I go home at the end of it? Or… stay here forever."
"You may go home, if you want to."
Andrea couldn't think of a single reason why she wouldn't. "I'll consider it," she said after a long time.
It seemed Gandalf knew that was the best he was going to get at the moment, because he nodded. "Very well." He smiled at her. "It's a walk still to Hobbiton. Would you mind coming to dinner with me? I'm familiar with the host. He's an excellent cook."
Through all of the stress, panic, and muddled thoughts, Andrea managed to find that statement funny. She laughed, high and a little bit hysterical.
"I guess I don't have much of a choice," she said.
And that was how she found herself walking alongside a wizard down the road to Hobbiton.
Andrea kept in step easily enough with Gandalf, though he kept a surprisingly quick pace, for all that he looked like a man well into his seventies or eighties.
He wasn't a man though, right? Andrea had never actually delved all too deep into the lore of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth; she was actually more of a science-fiction reader than a fantasy reader. She did remember reading some unofficial novel of some sort when she was young that mentioned that Gandalf and the other wizards were sort of like angels. Maia, was it? Maiar? Agents of the higher powers who did… whatever they did.
Well, she knew the basics of Middle Earth at least. Her childhood horse-phase had run parallel to a Lord of the Rings-phase, so she knew more about that story than she did about The Hobbit. She actually hadn't read The Hobbit in about six years, and she'd only ever watched the movies a couple times each. In fact, she'd only watched The Battle of the Five Armies movie once, in the theater. About two years ago.
That didn't really matter, though, because Andrea didn't actually have to remember it. Because it wasn't her responsibility to.
That argument was wearing just a little thin as she turned it over and over in her head.
"How are you going to explain my presence to the Company? And Thorin?" Andrea asked quietly. That was one of those things that always ended up being an issue in those girl-falls-into-Middle-Earth fanfictions. The girl falls into Middle Earth, meets the Company, and is ostracised for all of three to six chapters before being romanced by either Fili, Kili, or Thorin.
Andrea contented herself with the fact that she wasn't a girl in a fanfiction.
"When we met at Bree, I told him that I would be bringing along a companion of my own," Gandalf said.
"How is that going to turn into my joining the Company?" Andrea turned a skeptical glare on the wizard. "What happens when you part ways?"
Gandalf paused. "We will cross that bridge when we come to it," he said after a few moments.
Great, kidnapped by a wizard who didn't even have a plan.
Damn, did she really believe this? That this was Middle Earth, that the man beside her was Gandalf, and that she'd been unwillingly employed to save the lives of three Dwarves who existed only in the realm of fiction?
Guess so, Andrea thought. It's hard to keep thinking the whole thing is a delusion when it seems so very real.
She wouldn't be giving up that coma dream theory quite yet, but for now… if this was how it was gonna be, so be it. Andrea was an adaptive sort of person. Moving countries several times during one's childhood did that to a person.
By the time they started to walk among hill-built houses, the sun had set below the horizon. The moon was bright, however. Andrea hadn't seen so many stars in she didn't know how long.
Hobbiton looked almost exactly like it did in the movies. Andrea couldn't make out what made it different. The lived-in look, maybe? The fact that there were a lot of windows lit with lamps, showing a glimpse of dinners around tables and reading around fires. It was so much more… alive.
She was so preoccupied with peering into every window they passed that she almost missed their meeting a group of Dwarves. Almost. Their arguing couldn't have been ignored by a deaf man.
"I'm telling you, we haven't checked that road yet!"
"And I'm sayin' we have! Your head's full of wool, Bofur, get out of here."
Gandalf stepped forward and leaned on his staff. He looked very tall, compared to the Dwarves. "Lost, are we?" he said to announce himself.
All the Dwarves turned towards him. Andrea counted eight of them, and thought that she recognized one or two. Bombur was definitely the fat one, and Gloin was probably the one with the full, reddish beard, though the color was barely visible under the pale moonlight.
"Gandalf!" cried one Dwarf, echoed by the others.
Gandalf laughed the sort of laugh a grandfather would have. "Follow me, my friends. I know the way."
The wizard set off up the hill. Andrea hurried to follow him, unwilling to get caught in the crush of Dwarves following behind.
If she remembered the movie and the book correctly, which was fairly likely, the group would show up at Bag-End and pile ungainly through the door the moment Bilbo opened it. And given that Thorin wasn't with the group (Andrea was pretty sure she would recognize a Dwarf known for being above-average in height) she could only assume this particular event was following the canon of the movies.
Was it going to be like that the whole way? Was this story going to follow the movies? But Andrea couldn't dismiss the idea that some parts of the book might occur, and damn she was taking this too seriously.
"Excuse me, miss," said a voice at her shoulder. Andrea looked down at saw an earnest looking face framed by a short beard and two braids of hair.
"Yeah?" Andrea said, immediately uncomfortable.
The Dwarf smiled a bright, earnest smile that had Andrea's stiffening shoulders relaxing a little. "Are you with Gandalf?" he asked.
Andrea nodded.
The Dwarf nodded back. "Very nice. My name's Ori." He extended a hand.
Andrea absolutely hated shaking hands. Still, she reached out and took Ori's hand, suffering through the uncomfortable sensation of a stranger's skin against her own. "Andrea Chen," she replied. "Nice to meet you."
Ori smiled a little wider. "Likewise."
Then Andrea was getting introductions from every which way. Thankfully she didn't have to shake any more hands, what with the whole group still walking along the narrow Hobbiton paths.
Andrea learned all their names –or rather, recalled their names and placed them to silhouettes and moon-lit faces– in the few minutes between their meeting and arriving at a low gate. Gandalf pushed the gate open with some aplomb, gesturing the Dwarves before him.
"Smells like dinner's already started!" Bombur said, trundling up the short path to the round door of Bag-End.
The rest of the Dwarves piled after him, quickly overtaking the rotund Dwarf. They all pressed up around the door.
"Go on!" someone said. Dori, Andrea guessed. "Ring the bell, Ori."
Andrea stood back and watched as things went exactly as they had in the movie. Ori rang the bell, somewhat frantically due to the physical and social pressure of his peers. An irate voice filtered through the door just as it was yanked open, sending all the Dwarves tumbling down at the furry feet of a Hobbit in a quilt dressing gown.
Bilbo Baggins stared bemusedly at the Dwarves now struggling to extricate themselves from one another. He lifted that weary gaze to Gandalf as the wizard leaned down to peer through the low doorway.
"Gandalf," Bilbo said with a heavy sigh.
Then Bilbo seemed to gather himself together, stepping aside and waving a hand inwards. "Welcome to Bag-End," he said. And then, in a quieter, more irritated tone, "Make yourselves at home."
The Dwarves spread out through the house, quickly vanishing from Andrea's sight. Gandalf turned to her, waving her in.
"Come, ladies first, my dear."
Andrea scoffed, but walked up to the door anyway. She stepped over the threshold, ducking her head. Gandalf ducked in after her, stooping low to fit under the doorway. Andrea didn't take off her shoes, despite the sound of her grandmother's admonishments in her head– the mud and dirt on the floor was enough of a deterrent to old Nana's voice.
Andrea could hardly move without bumping into some Dwarf with his arms laden with food from the pantry. She fought her way over to stand by a wall, arms wrapped tightly around her body.
This was why she hated parties.
Bilbo darted about, struggling to regain some form of control over his own home. Andrea watched, torn between amusement and sympathy. Someone came by with an old chair, only to be pushed back by an irate Bilbo saying something about antiques. Then he was off to wrest some other family heirloom from the hands of a callous Dwarf.
These Dwarves, Andrea decided, had absolutely no manners or sense of respect. That sort of thing had always irritated her. Even if they had thought Bilbo was a willing host, they were certainly very rude to their host. Andrea's lip curled with disdain.
"Andrea, my dear," Gandalf said from the dining room. "Could you come and help set the plates?"
It was like being home again, Andrea thought. She'd always hated setting things out for family gatherings.
Still, she pushed away from the wall and began to help set the plates and cutlery with as much high disdain as she could exude.
Someone put a platter of sliced ham in her hands, and Andrea fit the plate into the rapidly growing pile of food in the middle of the table, though not before stealing a slice and shoving it into her mouth. Good ham. It'd been too long since she'd had ham.
Distantly, Andrea heard Dori offering Gandalf tea, just like in the movie.
"Miss Chen," said Ori from somewhere to the left. "Would you mind helping me fetch some mugs?"
Andrea sighed. "Sure."
She walked past Gandalf, who stood in the hall counting names. Stepping into the kitchen, she and Ori gathered as many mugs as their hands would carry. Andrea doubted they were all required –she'd already seen a few drinks in hands– but better safe than sorry.
"We appear to be one Dwarf short," Gandalf was saying as Andrea and Ori sidled past.
"He is late, is all," came the low drawl of a Dwarf that Andrea had not yet been introduced to. His head was bald. She could only assume that he was Dwalin.
Then she was swept away, and didn't hear any more of that exchange. Andrea tried to remember how it had gone as she dumped the mugs onto the table where the beer barrel had been set. Thorin had gone to meet Dain, right? Or someone. Had he gone to the Blue Mountains?
"Oh, hello. Who are you?"
Andrea looked up and met the eyes of a dark-haired, youthful looking Dwarf who was in the process of securing the barrel. On the other side of the barrel was a blonde head, which turned towards her in interest.
They looked so much alike they could only be Fili and Kili, the brothers. The other two Dwarves who would die at the end this venture.
"Andrea Chen," said Andrea, shaking away those thoughts.
The Dwarf smiled. "Kili, at your service. That's my brother, Fili." He nodded to the blonde Dwarf.
"What brings you here?" asked Fili, expression polite and interested. "This is something of an invitation only dinner." Despite his jesting words, there was something more intent in his eyes. Andrea could see why Thorin had intended to make Fili his heir.
Still intended to, she reminded herself.
"I'm with Gandalf," she said, beginning to stack the mugs up beside the barrel.
"Really? Has he brought you in to help our quest?" Kili asked.
Fili shot his brother a warning look and spoke before Andrea could. "Where are you from? Your accent is unfamiliar."
"Nowhere, really," Andrea said, feeling her tongue curling into a likeness of the two Dwarves' accents– the unshakeable instinct of a child growing up in linguistically-diverse countries. "The East, thereabouts."
"The East?" Kili said with interest. "How far east? Are you of the Easterling folk?"
"No." Andrea could only thank her mixed blood that she hadn't been outright mistaken for an Easterling so far– she'd never really considered them, beyond the thought that having vaguely Middle Eastern and East Asian peoples as 'bad guys' was kind of iffy on Tolkien's part.
"No Easterling's come this far west in centuries, Kili," Fili said in a scolding voice, casting his brother yet another warning glare. "Go and sit down, brother. Eat your dinner."
Andrea made her escape, and found that during that short conversation the rest of the Dwarves had completely filled up the table with food and were now passing plates and platters around.
"Miss Chen," someone said. Dori, Andrea guessed, judging by the neat grey braids. He waved her over. "I've saved you a seat, miss."
Smiling thinly, Andrea sat down in the wooden chair. Chatter rang out about her, and hands kept coming in close to grab food from the plates near her. Andrea was, in short, incredibly overwhelmed. She stifled the sensation and grabbed a sausage from a nearby plate with her fingers, biting into it. The skin burst under her teeth, and god but it tasted delicious.
"Bombur, catch!" called the Dwarf at the end of the table nearer to Andrea. Bofur? He was wearing that ushanka hat, like in the movies. Then he threw something across the table that Andrea couldn't identify. Way over on the other end of the table, Bombur caught it in his mouth.
The table erupted with shouts and laughter. Andrea laughed as well, even as her ears thrummed and her hands ached to reach up and cover them. The perks of being an introvert with anxiety, she thought, and took a vicious bite of her sausage.
Andrea stood up a bit and took a sun-dried tomato and a new slice of ham, ducking her head under the hail of food now being thrown Bombur's way.
Then there were shoes on the table as Fili called, "Who wants an ale!"
Andrea smacked his leg, a wordless cry of indignation coming from her mouth. The Dwarf turned and looked down at her with a wide grin.
"Ale, miss?" he said. Andrea only scoffed, resolving to check all food carefully before she put something in her mouth.
Dinner was a very loud affair, but once Andrea adjusted to it, she found it wasn't much different from family dinners. She was introduced to Dwalin and Balin at one point. Dwalin only grunted, but Balin gave her a kindly smile that was even more grandfatherly than Gandalf's.
"So what do you do, Miss Chen?" Balin asked after swallowing his food. "Have you a husband? Or do you work your own trade."
Andrea shook her head. "No husband for me," she said, pursing her lips in a brief, wry smile.
"No husband? A lovely woman like you aught to have been snatched up by now!" Dori declared passionately, with the air of an indignant uncle.
Andrea shook her head again. "I just don't have the personality for it, I guess." Not to say Andrea didn't fairly often fantasize about having a handsome husband to open jars for her. She just wished she could skip the dating and getting-to-know-one-another part.
Bofur leaned in to say, around a mouthful of masticated meat, "Well, no woman needs a husband to make her trade. There's plenty of Dwarven women who go without husbands until they're quite settled."
Gloin and Bombur nodded sagely, and murmurs of agreement went around the table.
"So what trade do you work, then?" Ori asked earnestly.
Andrea grimaced, and considered how much of herself she was going to have to give out to these people. "I'm between jobs right now, but I'm something of a jack-of-all-trades for the arts. I draw and write best, though."
A wave of amiable murmurs swept the table. "Good, good." "Very nice, quite agreeable."
"Maybe you can help Ori keep record, then," said Kili.
"What sort of writing?" Fili said over his brother. "Scribing?"
"Fiction. I tell stories." Not very well, though. She had yet to even finish a book, let alone get published.
"Stories!" declared the Dwarves with some excitement. And then the conversation devolved into discussion of Dwarvish tales, leaving Andrea forgotten. She much preferred it that way.
By the time dinner wrapped up, Andrea felt quite fat. She hadn't eaten so much in one sitting for weeks, perhaps even months.
Everyone started to go off for their own thing, perhaps to the toilet or to find more of poor Bilbo's things to examine. Andrea reached out and caught Balin's sleeve as he passed.
"There's someone else still coming, isn't there?" she asked. "We should save him a plate."
The white-bearded Dwarf nodded. "Indeed so, miss. Why don't you get one together for him? We'll count that as your clean-up duties," he added with a conspiratorial wink.
Getting a plate together was easy. Andrea pulled a fairly clean, large plate from the table and began to load it up with food. Sausages, ham, assorted meats, some bread rolls, and a good amount of vegetables. Even Dwarves had to eat their vegetables, Andrea thought as she walked over to a dumbstruck looking Bilbo.
"Excuse me," Andrea said, bending a little to catch the Hobbit's attention. He looked up at her, startled. Andrea held up the plate. "Could I store this in the pantry for a bit? There's another guest coming, wouldn't want him to go hungry."
Bilbo shook himself visibly. He seemed to die a little inside at the mention of yet another guest. "Yes, of course."
Andrea snagged some cutlery from the table and stored the plate in the empty pantry. This probably wasn't where people stored food like this, although maybe they did? They didn't exactly have refrigerators.
Brushing her hands on her jeans, Andrea stepped out into the hall and heard Ori say, "Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt, but what should I do with my plate?"
Interest piqued by memory, Andrea looked over and saw Fili take the plate from Ori's hands while Bilbo and Gandalf looked on with bemusement and amusement respectively.
"There you go, Ori, give it to me," said Fili, who promptly threw it past Gandalf. Kili caught it and slung the plate back into the kitchen. Bilbo made a sound of concern as another plate was thrown Kili's way, and the Dwarf repeated the maneuver.
Andrea smiled, stepping back against the wall. Someone threw a pretty blue and gold plate at Fili, who threw it to Kili, who threw it to someone in the kitchen.
"Excuse me!" Bilbo cried indignantly. "That's my mother's Westfarthing pottery, it's over a hundred years old!"
Fili and Kili didn't care, clearly, nor did the rest of the Dwarves. From the dining room, Andrea heard the horrible sound of metal against metal. She looked around the doorway to see the Dwarves around the dining table striking knives and forks together and stomping their feet under the table.
"Can you not do that," Bilbo exclaimed, leaning into the dining room. "You'll blunt them!"
"Ooh, do you hear that, lads?" Bofur said wryly. "He said we'll blunt the knives!"
And then they began singing.
"Blunt the knives, bend the forks!
"Smash the bottles and burn the corks!
"Chip the glasses and crack the plates!
"That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!"
Andrea couldn't help but laugh as dishes and cutlery flew about, tossed and flung by expert hands as they continued to sing. Bilbo darted around frantically, but no disaster occurred, and they certainly did none of the dreadful things they were singing about doing.
It really was an art to sing three verses of an improvised song in tune and in harmony. Andrea went from room to room, smiling wider than she had in a long time, watching the proceedings. The Dwarves cleaned the plates, with Bombur consuming leftovers. They juggled and tossed the pots and pans about, scrubbing them thoroughly.
"That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!
"So carefully, carefully, with the plates."
In no time at all, everything was clean and stacked in the kitchen. Gandalf laughed, pipe in hand and smoke around his head, spreading his hands to display the completely intact kitchenware to a haggard looking Bilbo.
Andrea couldn't help it; she clapped. A few Dwarves bowed to her, said, "Thank you very much." and "It was a pleasure to perform, miss."
Everything was bright, warm, and yellow. Andrea had quite forgotten that she didn't want to be here in the first place.
Then three solid thumps sounded against the door.
The laughter quieted as all heads turned to the hallway. Andrea's spirits plummeted instantly. Her hands, raised for clapping, wrapped about one another nervously.
"He's here," said Gandalf.
Though she didn't say it out loud, Andrea felt the sentiment deep in her heart: fuck.
A/N: updates are unlikely to be this quick usually, but I had to get this one out. Thank you Shetan20 for the review, it was very encouraging :)) I've done my best to make this chapter as little copy-paste as possible– feedback as to how I did would be very appreciated. Thanks for reading!