***Thorin***

When he woke up it was still dark, except for a faint light in the corner of the room. A night light she called it, to help one see one's way in the dark. It gave a faint orange glow and he looked at it for a while before he must have gone back to sleep again. The second time he woke up the sun was already in the sky and the orange light was gone.

"Lady Yeva?"

"In the kitchen!" came the reply. "I'll be right with you!"

He tried to stand and he was encouraged to see that he could. His hip was much, much better and so was his shoulder. He could make small movements without any pain, although he felt a twinge when he tried to raise his arm.

"I'm here," she bustled in. "Come on, I'll show you the toilet. I don't have indoor plumbing, but it's not so bad, you'll see."

The toilet was a metal bucket with a seat over it. Once finished he was supposed to throw a layer of siur to cover everything to prevent bad smells. It was all a bit odd - she had lights that needed no fuel to sustain them, but no plumbing.

The food too was a mishmash of known and unknown.

"I'm having muesli with milk, wanna try? There's also saucisson, ajvar, beans; and tinned tuna."

He understood milk and beans and that was about it, but she pressed him to try a bit of everything. The tinned tuna smelled like fish and felt like sand in the mouth, but in combination with the red mashed vegetables, it was passable. Before he knew it, he emptied both the jar and the can. There was no fresh bread to be had, but the dried loaf was good enough and not too hard.

"You were hungry, that's good. Anything else? Tea? Coffee?"

"Tea, if it is no bother," he said. "I would help you clean the table and then…" he did not know how to ask her again about her knowledge.

"You want to know what I know about your quest."

"Aye, that I do."

"The Spark Notes then because I'm not a very big fan of Tolkien."

He must have frowned because she spoke again right away.

"I mean to say that I will tell you the most important points. I don't remember the details because the story itself was not one I enjoyed reading when I was a kid, for many reasons. If you don't mind, please let me finish and then ask your questions."

"I will abide by your rules, Lady Yeva."

"Just Yeva," she said, rolling her eyes. "There are two major versions: the book and the film. I don't know the story well enough to know the finer points of what happens in one or the other, so what I'm about to tell you is a mix of the two."

He nodded to show that he agreed with the limitations of her memory, although in truth he understood nothing at all of what she meant.

"You met with Gandalf. He decided to help you reclaim your mountain. He told you to go to Bilbo's house; there he gave you a map and a key. Bilbo came with you as your burglar. Your role is to be an idiot who mostly doesn't know what he's doing and Bilbo's role is to be the unlikely hero - the guy who finds it in himself to be brave and honorable and loyal, even though he didn't look like much of a hero at the beginning of the story. In the end, you get to the mountain, poke the dragon awake and somebody else kills him for you. Then you and your dwarven potes become obsessed with your treasure. There's a great battle at the end of it all between goblins, orcs, and wargs on one side and elves, humans, and dwarves on the opposing side. Somehow you agreed to work with the rest against a common enemy or Dain agreed and you just followed him - I don't remember how it went. The elves, humans, and dwarves win in the end. You are mortally injured, and Fili and Kili die trying to protect you.

That's it. The details vary somewhat, although certain fixed points are common in almost all the retellings I know of, both canon and fanfics."

She made a pause and waited for him to say something or, more likely, to ask her to explain certain points, but he found he could not.

"Should I tell you why I don't like the story?"

He nodded, glad for the reprieve. His gut clenched and he could hardly breathe. She spoke with so much ease about their deaths, that he felt… horror.

"... then my father left, but my mother wanted me to know about his culture."

Thorin forced himself to pay attention, although little of what she said made any sense to him.

"...grew up on a steady diet of Slavic folk stories. I hated them. It's a never-ending stream of tales about how the youngest child - the smallest, the weakest, etc - is always the smartest and the bravest and always saves the day…"

He snorted at the thought. Might does not always make right, but it sure helps drive the point.

"...freakin Bilbo is always, always in the right place at the right time and anything he tries just works…"

Bilbo was supposed to be their burglar.

"…Gandalf could've just sent him all alone and spared me the aggravation of having to read the story, you know?"

Yes, Gandalf was a riddle, in more ways than one, Thorin thought with some bitterness. He never had any doubt the wizard had his own calculations and plans. But how did he not see that he would gladly send them to certain death if that would suit those plans?

"...then there's you and the dwarves. I loved the names and still know them by heart: Fili and Kili; Oin and Gloin; Ori, Dori, and Nori; Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur; Balin and Dwalin; and Thorin Oakenshield."

Hearing his name spoken made him focus again on what the woman said.

"...dwarves: some are pretty bad and treacherous; some are not, but only if you don't expect too much. You and yours are among the okay-ish guys. All you want is the gold and you do away with reason and hang onto the treasure until it's almost too late. "

"Some dwarves can be rather cunning and greedy."

"Right. Anyway, lastly, there's Gandalf. Gandalf knows stuff, but it's not clear how. He just does. And somehow he's got it in his head that the mountain must be rid of the dragon and returned to the dwarves. In another series of books Gandalf's character is better illustrated, but I read The Hobbit first, so I hated him and nothing in the other books made it better.

He is a hero of sorts and employs his powers for good, in case you were wondering, but he's also ruthless in pursuing his aim. I can see him at the castle gates talking to the troops: "Some of you might die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make!" You know what I mean?

A lot of people in the town near the mountain are caught unaware by the dragon and killed - because what else would a dragon do?"

She was right. She saw that as a child, yet Gandalf hoodwinked him, a king of almost two hundred years of age. More fool him.

"For example, when you talked to him about taking back your mountain, did he ever tell you how you were supposed to kill the dragon?"

"No. You said that somebody killed the dragon, so it can be done."

"That scene is the epitome of literary shit, Thorin," she said and flicked her hand as if to wave aside his objection.

"Literary shit?" She had a filthy mouth.

"Literary shit," she replied very seriously, "and pure laziness and an unhealthy fixation on how having certain ancestors determine what you can and cannot do in life. Like everything is set in stone long before you were even born, you know?"

He must have looked as ill as he felt because she patted his shoulder awkwardly and smiled at him.

"Look, Bilbo sees that the dragon has a missing scale and tells the dwarves and a crow hears and flies into the town and tells a man and the man is the heir of whatever, son of whoever, and he has this special ass arrow from a hundred years ago and retrieves it and he manages to not get turned to ashes by the dragon and shoots just once - because he only had the one fuckin arrow - and he gets it right and the dragon croaks."

Yes, the way she told the story, it was beyond belief.

"As I said, I grew up with these stories. I read The Hobbit and LOTR when I was twelve or thirteen years old and then at fourteen I received the first Dune book for my birthday and never looked back: from then on it was only SF for me. Except that I married Ben and he was obsessed with the whole Middle Earth concept: he went to conventions, he had a ton of costumes, armours, shields, swords - you name it, he had it. He spoke Elvish, for fuck's sake!"

"Your husband spoke Elvish?"

"Indeed he did. Here I was, at almost thirty, married to the guy who lived and breathed Middle Earth lore and me hating the whole bordel. We never talked about it because it would invariably lead to a fight. Doesn't matter. So, do you have questions? If you ask me something I might remember details."

"Am I so reckless that I would lead my sister-sons to their deaths for a pot of gold?"


***Yeva***

That brought her up short. How could she have done that to him?

"Thorin, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I'm an idiot!" And she was; the most insensitive, careless, idiot person that ever walked the Earth. "I'm speaking of a story, but for you all of it is real."

"You told the future as you knew it, Lady Yeva, I cannot fault you for this."

"Then to answer your question. I don't know, but I'll tell you this: I woke up before you and just stood there and watched you - I wanted to feel your forehead, see if you have developed a fever during the night," she saw him watching her with a mild look of alarm and smiled. "Don't worry, I did not. Consent first, right? I watched your hands for quite some time. And I just can't square it, you know, the man - the dwarf - that you are, all the work and hardship you and your people must've been through and everything you built, with how The Hobbit ends. I just can't."

She waited for him to say something; he didn't.

"When you fled the mountain -"

"Erebor."

"Right, Erebor. When you fled, you went to another mountain, if I remember well."

"We wondered here and there. Most of our people went to the Iron Hills."

"Did they? I didn't know."

"My grandfather tried his luck in Moria and was killed by Azog. The clans avenged his death and Dain killed Azog."

"Dain did? Not you?"

"No. I fought that day and lived, but it was Dain who avenged both Thror and his own father, Nain."

"And then?"

"Very few chose to remain with my father and none would help us take Moria back. As I said, most of our people went to the Iron Hills, where they still live, under Dain. We wondered for some time and then established a new settlement in Ered Luin. It was not inhabited by my people at that time. We had to build everything, we had nothing, no help."

There was enough bitterness to him to last a few lifetimes and maybe this was enough to answer his question. Although if he wanted to change, Yeva suspected that he should come to this conclusion all by himself.

"You had plenty of help, Thorin, just not the kind you - or I should say your father - would appreciate. In the end, I cannot answer you, but perhaps you should take these days and think about what you want to accomplish when and if you go back. How is it possible to go from who you are now, a dwarf I imagine many can and do admire, to gold madness?"

He did not say anything and she again cursed her too loose tongue. She really ought to start to think things through.

One of the things Thoring said was interesting though - someone else other than him killed Azog and then someone else killed Smaug too. For all he cut an impressive figure in The Hobbit Trilogy, Thorin was more of a builder than a fighter. He took whatever his father left to him and built himself a kingdom of some renown.

It was too bad his heart's desire could only be obtained by fighting and ultimately dying for it.

In a way, it was fitting that he would die. Not that she wished that for him, because she didn't. But Thorin went to re-conquer his mountain for all the wrong reasons and apparently there's a price to pay when you do that.