/-

"I made a mistake," she announced.

He did not trust the tiny little box to know the way, but still, they were moving north, at least as far as he could tell. "Is that contraption broken too?"

She huffed but did not look offended. "No, this cannot break the same way a phone can. And even if it did, I can still find the north in a dozen other ways without it, as can you, I imagine."

It was true, he could. Which was why he did not understand what she meant by mistake, his suspicion of Yeva's many small boxes notwithstanding; they were useful. Some of them were, he amended.

"Do you remember the map?"

"Aye."

"I'll have to teach you how to say something else besides Aye and Nay. In any case, if you remember, we are on a mountainside. Either way we go we should be ascending or descending."

He understood now and felt foolish for not noticing any sooner. They haven't been walking on an incline for who knows how long. Certainly from before they stopped and decided to head north.

"Is there anywhere we could be that is flat?"

"No."

He waited, but she did not elaborate. "You shall have to take your advice then, Lady Yeva," predictably, she rolled her eyes, "and say something else besides No." It had the desired effect and she smiled a bit, but then she was serious again.

"I'm starting to get worried, Thorin; not to mention that I'm a tad afraid."

"Worried, aye, I am too, but I see nothing to be afraid of." If he was very honest, not only was he not afraid, he was eager. Being lost in the woods would not be his preference, but it gave him something to think about besides fretting about his quest or this new world.

"Listen, I'm going to have to take my pants down -"

"You what?"

"- and tape my knee. If you'd kindly turn around, I'll be done in a sec."

Mahal help me! He should have been used to her by now, yet he was not.

"Do you need tape anywhere?"

"You taped my shoulder before we left, although I do not believe I need it anymore."

"Yes, but anywhere else? And suffering in silence doesn't work if you want to get better, just so you know. Take my knee for example - I can walk very well, but I never know when it will give out on me so it's better to just tape it now to have extra support than to wait until it's starting to pain me and prevents me from moving at all."

"I do not need anything else presently. We should go." Her comment about her knee worried him though. It explained why she walked slowly and how he had never considered an injury he could not understand. "What happened to your knee?"

"Ski accident when I was a teen; not quite broken, so the docs - the healers, I mean - decided against surgery, but not quite right either. That's why I stopped fencing, besides my height. The way we do it as a sport is pretty hard on the knees."

He did not know what ski was, but it was as he thought: an old injury that never quite healed. He would have to take this into account in the future. Argh, but he should have asked himself before, the signs have been there. The more he thought about it, the more it annoyed him. Her usual pack was too heavy for her frame, especially with a bad knee, and of course she never said anything. Stubborn woman, never asking for help even when she needed it.

They continued north, hoping to find either the road or the stream shown on the map. The more they marched, the more he concluded that Yeva was right: they could not possibly be anywhere in the vicinity of her home. Her country was littered with water: rivers, springs, streams, ponds - some large, some small, they were everywhere. They haven't encountered any since they left the place where they ate soup.

Two hours later they found no path and no body of water. The forest stretched and stretched in all directions and everywhere it looked the same.

"You are scowling, dear," Yeva's voice floated to him. "I guess you have a right to not be happy with our situation, but lighten up. Ben never came with me but insisted that I have all manner of… stuff - things that I would need in an emergency. I never had an emergency before. I guess now's the moment to see how that works. In any case, I believe we must be doing something right - I cannot tell if we are ascending, although I believe we do, albeit gently, but there are rocks everywhere. So at least we are on a mountain, right?"

/-

Thorin didn't light up, not that she thought he would. He did not look tense, not exactly, but there was a nervous energy around him. It made her uneasy in turn. Thorin's film character looked… kingly, yes, that was certainly one of his attributes, but more than that he looked like a man in the prime of his life. When it came to it, film Thorin looked the warrior. The real Thorin, well, he didn't. His hair was almost all gray, not black, the hairline receded noticeably on his temples. And maybe she was not used to how dwarves walked, but it didn't look to her that he moved with any ease or grace.

Film Thorin had a huge sword. She would have been surprised if her Thorin could wield what was supposed to be a two-handed sword. In a way she understood better why he pressed on with his quest - he was a dwarf at the end of his life. Soon enough he would not be able to fight at all and it would fall to Fíli, as his heir, to try. But that mountain, she always forgot the name - it wasn't Fíli's home, was it? The Blue Mountains were and maybe Thorin felt it would never come to pass were he to die.

If that was how he felt, she agreed with it. In Fíli's stead, she wouldn't risk his people on a wild goose chase to fulfill the dreams of his uncle when they made a good life for themselves and had their mountain fortress.

Such thoughts kept her from noticing that she was becoming more and more tired and that the light was starting to fade. And so she tripped and fell. Her backpack propelled her face forward to narrowly miss a rock. Embarrassing, to say the least.

"The fuck!? I stepped in a… a sort of a hole or something, I don't know."

"I was about to say we should remain here for the night. Your ankle?"

"My ankle's good, thank you for asking. I wonder - "

"Would you -"

They spoke at the same time and then both waited for the other to continue.

"It was nothing, I was just wondering about that hole. Maybe it's a hedgehog's hole, I hope I didn't ruin his day. Your turn."

"We should stop for the day."

Wasn't book Thorin supposed to be long-winded? Just her luck that she stumbled upon the abridged version.

/-

He rolled his eyes at the dirty look she gave him and turned to survey the place to decide where they should sleep. Yeva was already gathering firewood, although he wasn't sure they would need it - not for warmth anyway. The night would not be all that cold and their bedrolls were enough. He suspected he could very well sleep in the snow in his and still feel plenty warm.

He looked again at the small depression that made her trip. The earth must have been soft and damp, but now it has hardened. Forest litter did not cover that spot very well and something must have left an impression. Thorin did not make decisions hoping for lucky breaks. One had to pay attention to stay a step ahead. Mahal favors the prepared.

He sucked in a breath and looked again: he could hardly believe it, but the mark in front of him was a warg's imprinted paw. He had seen enough of them to know he was right and even if he wasn't whatever made that footprint was large and therefore dangerous. Where were they? Where? Dared he hope?

"Thorin?"

"Aye," he answered, still looking at the ground.

"Tomorrow my period should start; just so you know. Normally we would have been based at the lake resort so it wouldn't have mattered, but we are not and I don't know when we'll reach a hotel - an inn - or other accommodations. I hope it will be tomorrow, of course, but I just don't know."

He thought about what she said, but couldn't understand what she wanted of him. "I do not take your meaning."

"Period? Monthly bleeding? Do you know what that is?"

Indeed he did. He could not help the string of curses that came to his mind, but at least he did not voice all of them, just some.

"I should've met a doctor. Or a farmer," he heard her mutter under her breath.

She did not know about his find and his reaction must have irked her. Rightly so, she could not help being a woman and that was what women did. "What will you need?"

"Nothing. I might get backaches, headaches, whatever-aches and I might be irritable. Might - it's not certain. I might also not walk very fast, I'll probably slow us down. If not for this I wouldn't have even mentioned it at all."

Not walk very fast. She was slow to begin with, now she would be slower still. Mahal help them, could anything else go wrong? He was punished for his thoughts right away, as he felt the first drops of rain on his face.

/-

"Rain! How lucky!"

He did not see it quite the same way.

"Come on, this is good. The first thing we should ration is water, but now we'll have enough to fill the bottles for tomorrow too. "

"The first thing we should ration is ourselves." It wasn't unexpected that she would think of water first. It was sensible to do so, but all around the trees were strong, and the forest wasn't suffering from lack of moisture. They would find a stream somewhere, he was not worried.

"Right you are." Then she frowned. "Erm - what do you mean? We cannot just remain here and not move!"

"We should take stock of what we need and what we do not and not carry more than we have to."

"My laptop? But tomorrow we'll surely get somewhere!"

He shrugged. At least half of her pack by weight was useless if they were in trouble. He could see she did not like the idea of leaving her tools behind. In truth, he was not sure it was warranted, not yet, but they had to open up their packs and take stock. It was better to leave off now the things that served no purpose. Or at least move them to his pack, so hers would be lighter. If they were back home - his home.

"We could move everything heavy to my pack."

"No. We can always come back or someone else will pass by and take them somewhere." He liked that in her, that she listened to him and did not discount what he said even when she did not like it or did not like him all that much.

At the same time, she would never do something just because he said so and that was something he did not like. A vision of him trying to explain to Yeva that she was better off running from a pack of wargs floated through his mind and he shuddered.

She did not trust him enough to do as he wished without understanding and judging his reasons. To a large extent, it was his fault. She felt no inclination to trust and obey him based on his name and lineage, but also did not know him enough for a large measure of trust to exist between them. He knew himself enough to recognize that he would not just take Yeva at her word, without good explanations. They were alike.

For all that, she was still too stubborn.

She was making piles of things - what to keep and what not. Her tools went in a large plastic bag which she tied with duct tape. A use for both the bags and the fabled tape. Then she put the parcel on a branch at eye level and taped a brightly colored cloth to it. "Laptop, batteries, spare camera, spare laptop battery pack, miscellaneous. Wow, I cannot believe how light my pack is!"

He, on the other hand, had no problem believing just that. She had in her pack all the things she would need for her work and all of them were heavy. "We should repack so that both of us have half of everything."

"Sure. It was unfair that you had to cart around all of our food and both sleeping bags and who knows what else."

Ah, so that was why she agreed so fast to leave her things behind.

He could disabuse her of the notion that he found it difficult or unfair to carry the pack. It was light by any measure. He would have had no problem carrying everything they both had while keeping up with her. She was not a fast walker and she did not seem to care if it took more time than she first thought to get from one place to the next.

After a moment's thought, he decided against explaining his reasons. He would do his best to protect her and he would try to see them both to safety. However, there was always the chance for mishaps. Should they be parted, she should have enough on her person to keep herself alive. He hoped it would not come to that, but they would be prepared as best they could.

"We should take out both pails and let them fill through the night. Though we might not have enough, it looks to be only a light shower."

The next hour was spent haggling with her to have everything packed the way he preferred it. He put his mail on and would have fastened his bracers too, although it seemed excessive when they were preparing to sleep. "It's as good a time as any," was all he was willing to say. He had the hatchet and the messer attached to his belt and his dagger's sheath was fastened to his trousers - with duct tape; clearly, it had its uses.

She was looking at him with disbelief in her countenance and made some snide comments about men taking every opportunity to play knight, but other than that she did not question him.

/-

"About the other day," she began, "can we talk now? Or would you rather have more time to think?"

"Aye."

"Which one is it, Thorin?" she didn't want to play games and felt herself becoming annoyed already at what she saw as flippancy.

"Now. Say what you have to say."

Oh, for fuck's sake! Is the royal toddler going to throw a tantrum? Tantrum or not, she had already decided he could benefit from an outside opinion.

"You are what we call a bully. You use intimidation and aggression to get others to behave or do stuff, even when they don't agree." She saw him wanting to cut in. "No, please listen first. It worked for you, I have no doubt. You were probably young, younger than expected when you started to be responsible for your people. And yours is a culture that values a forceful, determined leader, right?"

He nodded and looked interested. That was good.

"So when you are challenged this is how you will respond. A part of this is your own personality - you are forceful and determined - and another part is because this is how everybody around you expects you to respond. Some people might start to grumble otherwise. Would you say I am right?"

"Aye."

"In the book - I know you don't think it's fair to compare you to how you are described there, but I don't have any other info. You don't talk much, you know? Anyway, in the book it is said that you were so forbidding that nobody was bold enough to tell you that you were making a mistake. Do you remember that part?"

"Aye."

Like pulling teeth.

"You are in a bad position. You don't have a huge army to conquer and rule by strength. You don't have good advisors because nobody wants to go against you, so you won't be able to conquer and rule by convincing others - namely men and elves - to join your cause. And lastly, you are not quite so able as a negotiator to manage from a position of inferiority. Am I right in my assessment?"

This time he did not say a thing. It was time to stop. Probably. Definitely?

"I'm not saying that I know of a better way to govern, because I don't. I'll ask you to consider this: you already know that Fíli and Kíli were not entirely in agreement with you; neither was Bombur. Start there. Instead of giving them orders, ask them to come up with tasks for themselves. Ask them to tell you what they see as a problem and come up with a solution and let them make mistakes, at least where it's not too costly. Use Balin when you need to politik your lords into submission and Dwalin when you need a fighter willing to follow you in death. Use all your people, even those who are never mentioned in the story, to maximize their strengths."

He still said nothing, but this time she let him be.

/-

Whatever he thought she would say to him, it did not come even close to what she said.

He did not form expectations beyond the obvious: that she would tell him he crossed a line and she would kick him out if he did it again. He did not need the warning; he was determined he would not behave so appallingly again. That was no way to treat a woman and he could still not believe he lost his temper so fast.

Besides, he cared for her opinion. He depended on her to a large extent - for the moment - and he was grateful for her help, especially since she never asked for anything in return and did not seem to even consider the possibility.

To hear her teach him what he should do as a king was… ridiculous.

Just the same, she was largely right in her calculations. He did not like it one bit.

He also noticed she did not like Balin and Dwalin, she made that very clear by the tone of her voice. Why that was, he did not know. If they were indeed back in Middle Earth and if he could manage to guide the both of them to safety, he would have to be careful there. She wore her heart on her sleeve and any likes or dislikes would be readily apparent.

Nonetheless, one consideration trumped everything else; there was a point where her advice would be more valuable than all the gold in the world:

"If we - I mean I - if I find my way back, should I leave Fíli and Kíli behind? Or send them back, prevent them from fighting? I could not live with myself were they to die."

She sighed then studied him for a moment and he was struck by how sad she looked.

"Are you even in a position to do so? Let's say you are now back at Bilbo's house and tomorrow you'll have to be on the road to the mountain."

"Erebor." She never remembered the name and it was starting to annoy him.

"Right, Erebor. Let's say you send them back. If you don't live, then they won't have a kingdom. Dáin won't send his men to die just so your heirs stay safe and warm in the Blue Mountains -"

"Ered Luin," he interrupted again. She should learn the proper names.

"Ered Luin?"

"The Blue Mountains - Ered Luin."

"Right. Anyway, if they remain there they cannot come to Erebor and start to order everybody around. I don't see how this would work, but you know your cousin better."

She was right. Dáin would not give up Erebor once he had it - and once he had the Arkenstone.

"And your advice?" He could see she was surprised by his question. He was surprised by his question, but he would hear what she had to say.

"Send Fíli to fight with Dáin. Send Kíli to Thranduil - he's an archer, isn't he? He'll be fine with the elves."

"You are jesting." She must be, it was out of the question that he would do so.

"I am not. Dáin has many more men than you do. He's got a fucking army. Let Fíli fight with them. Send one of your companions to guard him, someone who would give his life for Fíli if need be. Do the same with Kíli. The chances that one of you three will live are better than even; neither Dáin nor Thranduil are supposed to die in that battle."

"You see no other way."

"There must be something else," she waved her hand, "this is by no means the perfect or the best idea, but right now I cannot think of anything. Keep in mind that I don't know any of these people. There might be - I don't know - political considerations or even military ones that would make such a plan entirely wrong."

Any consideration would make such an idea entirely wrong in his opinion. His mind was refusing to contemplate it and his heart gave an uncomfortable lurch when she spoke. And yet… and yet it had merit. It seemed reasonable to send his sister-sons to people who would be better able to protect them. It could be easily done too; they would be his envoys and speak with his voice. Nobody would think to question the arrangement.

The more he thought about it, the more he saw its benefits. Perhaps he should be alarmed by how fast he came to change his mind when she wanted him to? He would not have thought so of her, but Yeva could be a shrewd politician when she put her mind to it.

"However -"

"Yes?"

"You read the book. There are two important things that have to happen: that a dwarven kingdom is established in Erebor and that the blasted Ring is found by Bilbo. The rest doesn't matter.

If you don't care about having the kingdom for you and yours, then by all means send your nephews back home. You have even odds to make it through the battle, but even if you don't, you will have protected Middle Earth from the worst threat it will have faced.

You don't know the rest of the story, but please believe me that this is indeed the case. I cannot stress enough how important it is that both of these events come to pass."

"I do not want them to die." That and he resented having to consider that the fate of his world hinged on removing Smaug from Erebor, but not on him being alive to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

"I am so sorry, Thorin."

"I want the kingdom for them too. It is their birthright -"

She scoffed and rolled her eyes and he felt his temper flare. "Spare me the birthright speech if you please! What exactly did they do to deserve to be kings?"

"They are my heirs! We trace our ancestry directly from Durin!"

"So does Dáin and dozens - if not hundreds - of other dwarf men and women. What's your point?"

She did not understand. "I shall be king, just like my father and his father before him."

"If that's the only reason you want power - to be on par with your ancestors, then you will fail. There must be something more to it. There must be! You cannot live your whole bloody life trying to go back to the past. You don't have many years left. You'll take risks and you'll push beyond what's wise just to see this dream realized and it won't work. You'll drag Fíli and Kíli with you and It. Won't. Work."

"You know no-" He stopped himself, but not quite soon enough.

"Nothing; we already established that."

"I did not mean it."

"Really."

There would be no reasoning with her now, she was angry. He was too. Her flippancy when it came to the importance of his line was maddening.

"I did not. I value your words, Lady Yeva."

"Mhm."

She did not believe him, yet he was honest. He did not especially like the way she saw him or talked to him, but he did value her insight. He valued her.

"I believe I'll turn in now."

He waited for her to settle down, and then took his bedroll right next to her. She smiled a bit. "Don't you need some space?"

"Nay. Besides we can prop the oilskin," his words made her giggle "over the rocks and it will cover us both."

The 'oilskin' was a large cloth of woven plastic which could be used for just about anything, including building a shelter to protect them from the rain. He now understood what plastic was, he just didn't remember the word each time he needed it.

"You did not believe me earlier," he looked at her from where he was unrolling the bedding. She shrugged and continued to wriggle to find the best spot she could. "Nonetheless I respect you. I would not have you change on my account."

This time she looked at him.

"Likewise, Thorin."

Was she in earnest? He hoped she was. He was involving her in his affairs as if she would become a permanent addition to his life. She would if they were still in her world. But in his?

In his too, he decided. He would charge his sister-sons to care for her or even the Laketown archer, if they got that far. He hoped he would not die, but it was only right to see that she was provided for.

And if he should not die? He fell asleep before he could settle the matter.

Sometime later he heard her calling his name softly.

"Hm?" He was not quite awake.

"I said I don't know where we are. This place looks like nothing I've seen before."

"I know." He took it as a confirmation of sorts that they left her world, but he was tired and wanted to sleep. It could wait.

"You know?" She was up now, propped on her elbow.

"Sleep now, we'll speak of it tomorrow."

"I'm scared. I don't want to give in to panic, but I can't help it."

She was afraid, her voice broke at the end and he suspected she was trying to stop herself from crying.

"Come 'ere," he reached out for her hand. He was unfit to soothe someone, especially of the female kind. His voice was too rough, his hands unused to the job. Yet they were alone and she was in distress. She almost succeeded in waking him up fully when she not only took his hand but scooted as close as possible. A little later she was asleep against his chest, his whole arm trapped by hers. In the morning he found she wiggled out from her bedroll and half draped herself on him.