In which certain things swing full circle.

You wake in the dark to a hand covering your mouth. You flail about and something grunts when you strike it with your knee, then hands grab you close and a heavy weight pins you down.

"'Ware," comes the warning in a sharp hiss in your ear.

Holy fuck! Your heart's jackhammering so loud, you're surprised Estel isn't telling you to take the noise down a notch.

"Somewhat prowls outside," he whispers in a low hush and you groan and go limp, bouncing your head against the webbing of your cot in frustration.

God fucking damn it! You'd really hoped to get away before this became an issue.

The two of you, you and Estel, had spent the day in preparations. The plan was to creep through the shadows and alleys skirting about Ferny's house up to where the great hedge and ditch meets with Bree-hill. There Estel knew of a place overshadowed by outcroppings of rock where the hedges thinned and you could worm your way through and so avoid the gates in and out of Bree, and well, Harry Goatleaf and his men and his dogs, too. You were just waiting for the moon to set some time in the early morning hours.

Yes, you're leaving with Estel.

No, you have no idea where you're going.

Well, you don't know exactly where you're going past the fact that you'll be traveling along the Great East Road. The two of you finally crawled out of bed after your nap, like literally crawled out, you sliding off the side onto the rushes because there wasn't any way you'd be able to sit up on the cot while Estel lay sprawled out and heavy-limbed on it. He blinked and smiled sleepily before closing his eyes and falling still again. His light snoring filled the hut until it was time to eat. He sat at your hearth while you stirred wheat berries in a broth with hard cheese, chopped greens, and rosemary. He set aside rushes to dig out a map of Eriador in the dirt below them with the tip of his knife, with little hillocks of soil for the mountain ranges and hills, scratching in lines for the road and the rivers.

The plan was to make for The Forsaken Inn, where he knew someone who could send out messages for him, and then proceed east from there. Where exactly after that you were headed, he would only say that he'd speak more of it once you were away from Bree. Excess of caution and all that. You didn't press. It had kept him alive this long and you weren't about to challenge it. What was one more leap of faith in the canyon-sized hurdles that were teed up for you? But god help you if you were separated from him.

Apparently, you rolling your eyes and trying to give yourself a concussion against the webbing of your cot wasn't exactly the response Estel was expecting to the news that some unknown someone was creeping around your hut after dark. He stares at you in the dim light, a confused frown on his face.

"Fish, Fish, Fish," you hear below your window, and then rustling through the leaves blown up into a pile at the foot of your hut and a tapping on your window shutter.

Welp, no mistaking that voice, nor the alcohol that it's soaked in.

Shock and then a fuck-ton of flat-out, teeth-grinding, adrenal gland-dumping rage chase their way across Estel's face.

Ferny just had to give it one last attempt, didn't he. Had to try to prove himself to his allies or they'd be just as likely to turn on him as keep him around. He'd taken a big gamble, spreading rumors about you like he had, hoping he could isolate you even further and put the pressure on, get you under his thumb just in time for the good folk of Bree to move on to the next piece of gossip and Barliman to take you back. That Blackthorn and Harry had given up on the plan and sidelined him probably just pissed him off even more. You know who he blamed.

Fucker.

Estel's face settles on a cold fury that drops ice into your belly when he thrusts himself up from where he had crouched by the cot and turns away for the door.

Oh shit.

What is he about to do?

You launch yourself to sitting and swipe blindly at his hand in the dark, somehow making contact and grabbing onto his tunic sleeve and tugging him back toward you.

"You can't kill him," you hiss and Estel starts back and stares at you when you refuse to let him go, hurt and angry and more than a little confused.

"Fish! Come, come, you're not asleep, no not asleep. Aye, the night is young, and the moon and the moon is out, aye, the moon shines bright tonight," comes Ferny's mumbling voice as he sloughs through the leaves, knocking his knuckles along your wall as he moves toward the back of the hut where he knows your cot is. "Fish! Fish, Fish, Fish."

Estel's breath huffs harshly from his nose when he leans in close.

"I have no intent to kill Master Ferny, nor need to," he says, his voice low and barely heard, "should he not give me one."

"Just wait and he'll tire of it and move on," you say and Estel's finger lights on your lips, pressing them closed. His eyes flit to the wall beyond which came Ferny's voice and then back to you.

"I can hear you, Fish," comes Ferny's voice at the same moment as Estel's, "Shhh."

"Come now, don't make me wait for you, ye slippery cunt!" Ferny shouts, and "Bang!" goes his fist against the wall beside your head and you jump, a small chunk of daub rattling on its way down to the floor in the corner.

Fucker.

God damn it. Yeah. He's been escalating.

"Ai, Hala!" you can barely hear Estel breathe next to your ear and then he sighs. "Prepare yourself."

"Done waiting for you," you hear as Ferny curses and moves away, shuffling back through the leaves.

With that, Estel leaps into action, going to the pegs by the door and, with a smooth, nearly silent move, pulls his long hunting knife from its sheath. The metal glints in the dim light as he takes a position between your hearth and the door as the rustling of Ferny's feet in the leaves makes its way toward the front of your hut.

Well fuck. Guess we're doing this.

You kick off your blanket and, stepping as softly as you can on the bundles of rushes, grab your kitchen knife from where it hangs off the rafter overhead.

When you reach Estel, he glances at you and your knife, and then his hands and face say, "WTF. Do. That thing?"

You make a jabbing motion with it toward his belly. "Stab. D'uh."

"Have ye not tired of being lonesome, aye?" comes Ferny's voice and the door rattles with him tugging on it and shaking it. "I could see you set right. Bring you back into good company," he goes on to the creaking of the door as he puts his weight on it, so close that it's like he has his face pressed in the crack between the door and its frame.

Estel grabs your knife out of your hand with an exasperated look and, in a swift move, jabs it into his own stomach.

"Jesus fuck!" your face says, and then, "oh," because the blade does nothing more than glance off the tough leather of his vest in which he is wrapped.

The door creaks again, this time straining against the latch holding it closed as Ferny grunts with effort.

"Where. Hasnaghwqh?" says the motion of Estel's hands in the dark as he glances swiftly around your hut. You may have missed half of the message to the shadows.

You frown and squint at him. "What?"

"Where. You. Thing held in hand like a dick but way too far up in the air," he motions with more urgency.

"What?"

He makes a motion with his whole body like he's walking with the aid of a tall stick, either that or cross country skiing. Is that a thing here?

"Oh!" Now you get it. "My. Thing held in your hand like a dick but way too far up in the air."

You break the imaginary dick over your knee and toss it aside and his face screws up.

"Och!" comes Ferny's cry. The door slips from his grasp and rattles in its frame as his footsteps stumble and then a blow from his foot shakes the door. Dogs take up barking down the Road at the noise, though there's not a voice of complaint from your neighbors to be heard.

With that Estel holds up your kitchen knife by its blade in front of your face. "This?" the irritation and disbelief on his face says. "This. Not a knife." He tosses it to bounce on your cot and then holds up his hunting knife, beautifully engraved and deadly and nearly as long as your forearm. He then hands it, pommel end, to you, his face grim. "This. A knife."

Well, that's just peachy.

"WTF. I. Do with this?" you gesture.

With that he jabs his thumb at the sound of the creaking of your door and then takes your hand and, with it, holds the edge of the blade beneath his jawline right on the carotid.

Ferny swears and, clearing his throat, spits.

Practically the whole hut shudders with the next kick. And then another. Fuck!

Shit! Okay, okay. Sure. You guess so.

Before letting it go, Estel points at the knife and then rather emphatically at the grunting outside your door, just in case you were a little unsure about that part of his instructions.

You grab the knife from Estel.

"Got it," your face says. "Not a total fucking idiot."

"Should you not let me in, there'd be none who'd care to stop me, you block-pated dolt!" Ferny shouts, kicking the door with all his weight. The latch splinters and slips in place. "Should ye need a lesson in that again, 'tis but your own fault."

And with that all hell breaks loose. The door booms open, the latch flying across the room and narrowly missing Estel's shoulder and Ferny stumbles, only to then be yanked into the hut like a stuntman on a wire. Somehow you manage to avoid slicing up either Estel or yourself and next thing you know, Ferny dangles from Estel's grip, his fists wrapped about Ferny's coat beneath his neck as he slams him against your wall and holds him there with his full body so he can't move. Miraculously, the wall holds and although you miss Ferny's neck given how much like a turtle he looks right now, you get Estel's knife pointed at his ear. You count it a win.

"You!" says Ferny's face, meaning, of course, the Ranger glaring at him, though he's a little too short of breath to actually say it out loud.

Estel's nostrils flare as if he smelled something particularly offensive. "Yes. Me. Motherfucker," says his face in return.

Wow. Okay. This is more like it.

I mean, it's all you can do to not poke at Ferny with Estel's very sharp, pointy knife. Not like the whole thing, like just the very tippy tip of it. Just to see Ferny squirm every time he says something gross, which, let's be real here, would be pretty much every time he opens his damn mouth. But this will do. Ferny on his tiptoes and clutching Estel's wrists and struggling to not strangle himself on his coat and Estel, the muscles of his arms like rocks, looking like he could do this all day? Yeah, that'll do.

And then Ferny laughs, breathless and scornful.

"Aye, two birds with one stone," he says and then coughs when Estel tightens his grip on his coat, practically choking him with his own collar.

"Master Ferny," says Estel, his voice harsh. He looks like he would take very great pleasure in spitting in Ferny's face and then beating the crap out of him. "Mayhap you should exercise more restraint."

"Nah, Stick-At-Naught, ye can't touch me," Ferny says with a sneer. His eyes dart to you and then back to Estel. "Tell him, Fish."

You do nothing but snort, not wanting to ruin the punchline.

"What do ye think you'd find when you return in the spring, eh?" Ferny goes on to Estel, not waiting for you to say anything. He sticks out his chin. "That depends on me, see? So you best-"

Estel twists the cloth in his fists so that Ferny chokes and claws at Estel's hands. Fucker. That's when you prod Ferny in his cheek and he jerks away from the point of the blade.

Estel leans in very close and speaks oh so softly. "Tell your friends, Master Ferny," he says, "that I am coming for them."

The breath whistles from Ferny's throat as he wheezes and writhes in Estel's grip, his eyes darting from the blade you're holding to Estel.

"And the first thing they shall discover upon our meeting," Estel goes on, slow and cold, "is that you have failed, yet again, to obtain the one thing they wanted of you, to bind one of Barliman's folk to you to spy upon him and the comings and goings of travelers at his inn. Your days terrorizing his folk are at an end. But take heart. Your friends who prey upon folk upon the Road need not be in dismay for long. I may have spent the summer harrying them from place to place so they had no rest, but when I return I will not be alone."

Well that shuts Ferny up. He clamps his mouth closed and glares at Estel.

"The folk of Bree are under my protection, Master Ferny," Estel says. "I will not permit their abuse."

"Like you did for Ruby?" sneers Ferny, choking the words out.

Estel's eyes narrow.

"Fish, you be careful with your friend here, our Strider," gasps Ferny. He grins before going on. "Took off with Ruby nigh a year ere you joined us. I hear she came to no good end."

Ferny shuts up like he suddenly can't pull in any air.

Shit. You've lost Estel. His face is caught in a silent snarl, his jaw clenched tight and ticking as he glares so intensely at Ferny you can practically see a smoldering line of light between them. Your ears ring and pop like you're buckled into a plane that's skimmed over mountain peaks and is practically falling out of the air to a runway in the valley below.

Jesus! He's the one doing that?

"You shall hang for what you have done, Ferny," Estel spits, his mouth trembling and grim. "I will see to it myself."

You're not sure exactly how much control Estel has over himself right now in this state, but Ferny's eyes were bugging out of his head and his face was turning purple as he clawed at Estel's hands and so you've dropped the knife onto your cot and practically dumped the contents of your big basket all over the floor and cot.

"Estel!" You grab at his arm and shake him and he blinks. Ferny's more or less limp in his hold. When he looks over, you're holding up a mess of strips of wool you grabbed out of your collection of linens.

"C'mon," you say and Estel sucks in a harsh breath and blinks, clearing his eyes. He shrugs his face against his shoulder, looking less enraged and more grief-stricken. Fuck. You don't know what Ferny was referring to, but whatever it was, it haunts Estel and Ferny knew just where to prod to trigger him.

Estel eases Ferny down your wall and onto the rushes, where he starts coughing and weakly squirming about. He's starting to come to, groaning and cursing, but at that point you and Estel have got him trussed up with his arms behind his back. While Estel binds the gag about his mouth, you've grabbed a sheet from the pile of linens and are winding it into a makeshift rope. Estel watches you from out of the corner of his eye, but it's not until you sling the sheet over the thickest rafter overhead that he speaks.

"Hala," he says from where he checks over the knots at Ferny's feet, "I am unsure your house can take his weight and that of your roof both."

You shrug. You're having a hard time caring. If Ferny brings down the roof with his own weight, it will be his own fault. It's not all that long of a fall. In fact, Estel can hardly stand upright in your hut without risking banging his head on something if he's not careful.

"Could we just skip ahead to the part where you help me string him up?" you ask when Estel continues to give you and the rafters a skeptical look.

He's on one knee, his hand spread between Ferny's shoulder blades, more or less holding him in place with his weight as Ferny starts writhing and yanking on his bonds. You think Ferny might be cursing, but it's a little muffled.

C'mon! Impact, man! Impact!" You tug on the sheet and, grabbing it in both hands, bend your knees, hanging your weight from it. The hut groans, but nothing really shifts or bends.

"Listen," you say when you're satisfied but Estel's not looking terribly convinced, "you're going to tell me that someone is going to miss him sooner rather than later, and yes, that's true. Especially since I don't have a door to close any more. And when his oathmen come looking for him in the morning this will be the second place they look, after The Pony, right? They find him tied up here and that makes me like suspect number one. And then I'm going to say that I want to say goodbye to Bob and Poppy because they deserve a goodbye for all they've done. And then you're going to say that if I care at all for Bob and Poppy there's no way I should lead the chase back to their door, right? So then I'll agree, no stopping by there to say goodbye, cuz god knows Harry's seen them with me. And then you're going to say that we have to leave, like now, and take the chance in the moonlight and get as far from Bree and Harry's dogs as we can, right?"

"Aye, this is true," he says and gives Ferny a shove down. He grunts when Estel shifts about and puts his knee in the small of his back.

"Well, this is the best way I can think of letting everybody know this is a big, deliberate 'fuck you' to Ferny and that I'm okay," you say, one hand on the improvised rope and the other gesturing for Estel to bring Ferny over to you. "Plus, you know, everybody from here to Archet's going to be telling the story of it over and over again in the common room for, like, the whole winter. Give the story a little dramatic flair and it's just going to grow and get bigger and more absurd the more it pisses Ferny off. And so it'll go a long way to giving the people of Bree heart that they don't have to put up with him and his friends' shit."

Estel gives you a thought-filled look and then snorts a soft laugh and shrugs.

"Aye," he says, shaking his head, "your thinking is sound."

And with that, he drags Ferny about by dint of pulling on the cloth binding his ankles. Between the two of you, you tugging and putting your weight on the wound sheet and Estel picking Ferny up off the floor, you get him secured.

"Once more, I think," says Estel when Ferny's dangling upside down from your rafter. He pulls the sheet from your hand.

"I thought it just the once," he says, glancing at you as he winds the sheet about itself.

"What?" You hold the sheet in place as he pokes the end through the hole he's made.

His voice strains with the effort of reaching overhead and tugging on the sheet. "Not that it was so frequent you had become accustomed to Master Ferny's attempts to frighten and intimidate you with these…" and here he stops, uncertain what word to give what he had just witnessed.

"Visits?" you offer and he makes a sour, scoffing sound and tugs harder on the sheet, tightening the knot.

When done, Estel steps back to examine your handiwork.

Ferny's squirming about and cursing, spitting through the rag in his mouth, his hair dragging across the bundles of reeds as he swings in a slow pendulous arc between you.

Estel's looking rather satisfied. He's got this amused glint in his eye that you're almost not sure what to make of. Not that you don't agree with him. He did say that he'd see Ferny hang, after all.

"Yeah, well," you say, "he's not going to be doing it any more, that's for sure."

Fucker.

You grin at Ferny and he grunts something muffled, and, twisting about, swings between you. Estel gives him a prod, pushing him out of the way.

"One day, Hala," Estel says, catching your eye, "I hope to have the pleasure of introducing you to certain of the Elven folk of Imladris. I think, mayhap, they would much appreciate your boldness and thoughts on the matter of story in the heartening of your allies."

You have no fucking clue when that might be. Right now you're just hoping you can find someplace in which you aren't the pinpoint focus of your enemies. In the interim, Estel, rolls up your cloak and blanket together into a tight bundle and lashes it to your handmade pack while you pull on your boots and scoop up the potatoes you were going to bake for your early breakfast before you hit the road. You're about to tuck your pennies into your pocket in the front of your tunic when Estel shakes his head from where he's pulling on his coat and buckling his great belt with his sword about him.

"Nay, best put that in your pack than someplace it might be marked at a mere glance," he says and so you take your little purse and your phone and tuck them deep in your pack where they'll nestle against your back.

See if a pickpocket can get at them there.

Estel slips out first, halting just outside your doorway, still and tense and listening, his eyes glinting in the shadows, before he turns about and gestures for you to follow him.

You turn around before you go through the open doorway and watch Ferny glare at you as he sways to and fro. He's turning all red and trying to shout something that would probably sound like your name if only he could get his lips to meet. You kind of wish you had a big red bow you could tie around his middle, cuz fuck Harry Goatleaf and Thomas Blackthorn, may they rot in whatever this world's version of hell is.

Right before you spin around and follow Estel you give Ferny a little salute, tapping two fingers in a vee against your forehead before pointing them at him.

"Peace out, bitches."