Thorin slammed the door behind him and stomped back in the direction he'd come from, completely forgetting that he'd placed Dwalin as a guard outside Lori's door before going in. His thoughts were in a turmoil and he felt as if a force was tearing his chest apart. He hadn't felt such betrayal since Thranduil had abandoned his people in their hour of need after just extending the hand of friendship to them.
And now this woman, who had saved his nephew from the wolves, saved himself from wargs, and somehow wormed her way into the hearts of his men turned out to be an elf. An elf! The most deceitful, beautiful and cunning creatures of Middle Earth. She had even played to his lust and want to gain his trust and manipulate him. Like the elves that came before her, she was likely after the wealth of Erebor and the Arkenstone, the one thing that would prove their right to rule.
"Thorin!" The ever broody Dwalin was hot on his heels and caught up to him in a courtyard of grass where a fountain trickled it's water in the center.
"What?" He snapped over his shoulder and kept walking. He knew he was taking his anger out on the wrong person, but at the moment he had little, oh so very little control over himself.
"I need to talk to you." Dwalin grabbed his arm and turned him around.
If they hadn't been comrades in arms for the last 142 years, this action would have cost him physical pain due to the state Thorin was in. Instead he fumed at him, but held his tongue as he waited for what Dwalin had to say.
"It's about the girl…" He started.
"What about her?" Thorin growled.
"I don't think we should trust her." Dwalin never was one to beat around the bush, so he pressed on, "I've seen how you two look at each other, and she's not right for you, you know."
If at all possible, Thorin's scowl got even deeper. "And why is that?"
"We're on a quest to take back Erebor from a dragon, and you're going to be our king after that, our thane! Who is she to be queen, but an orphan half-human witch? Vorum dwarkar geddum?" Dwalin forcefully pleaded.
"You would speak to me of our ancestors?" Thorin asked in a deceitfully low voice. "My ancestors, who brought the dragon down on our people with their greed. My father, who abandoned us to pursue his own revenge when our people needed him the most? No, do not speak to me about my fathers, or what they would think of Lori. They have no right to disapprove in my book."
Dwalin crossed his arms and looked discerning at Thorin. "And your people?"
Thorin sighed and rubbed his face. "As far as I can tell, everyone she meets would fall in love with her," He sighed and shook his head, "But you needn't worry, Dwalin. She's no longer welcome in my company."
Dwalin looked bewildered at this proclamation. "What changed your mind?"
He sighed deeply. "Nothing worth mentioning. Let's just leave it. She's not coming with us when we depart for the mountain." With that, he patted Dwalin on the arm and left him.
..o00Ô00o..
The next morning Thorin woke up with a hollow feeling inside, and not even a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes and fruit could sate the emptiness. He found himself sighing at odd times as if his lungs were depleted of air and there was a weight on his chest.
As the day blossomed, so did his temper, and whether he was shining his sword, cleaning his armor or washing his clothes, it was all done with an angry vigor that clearly signaled to all other dwarves to leave him well enough alone.
By noon, the incessant cheer and peace of Rivendell had him ready to knock whoever would disturb him into next week, and he realized he needed to vent before he accidentally killed one of their hosts and started a war.
"Bombur! Bofur! Stay with the camp. The rest of you come with me to the arena." He ordered.
Several of the dwarves looked at each other with worried glances and careful shrugs. None of them wanted to face the fierce and furious leader in a sparring match that day, but orders were orders. Dwalin, Nori and Bifur were the first to follow him, whilst Fili and Kili needed a good nudging from Balin before they got going. They knew their uncle too well to look forward to this exercise.
The first elf they met Thorin grabbed by the arm and gruffly asked without preamble where the training grounds were. The startled ellon pointed them in a direction and quickly stammered that it was on the mountainside by the far end of the waterfall, before he hastily retreated to a dwarf-free zone.
The training arena was a large grassy area with targets for bow-practice standing or riding on horseback and throwing-weapons practice, as well as rings for wrestling and hand-to-hand combat and sparring. Only a few elves were present and they mainly stuck to the shooting range, whilst the dwarves took on the sparring rings.
The grass in the three rings was cut short and even, but there were obstacles planted in various heights and forms to make up for the lack of challenge in the terrain. Barrels, boulders and poles were spread out to use as one saw fit in a fight, for coverage, height advantage or even missiles if you had the strength for it.
"Spread out and warm up. We don't need injuries." Thorin said, and started on his own warm up kata, having the men followed his lead. Exercising and focusing his thoughts around the training helped him get his anger somewhat under control, and after a little while he was ready to face his first opponent in the ring.
Dwalin had long since figured out what his bad mood was caused by, and wasn't about to let Thorin put punishment on one of the others for whatever was going on with him and the girl. Not without them knowing why at least, and so he stepped forward and took his stance against Thorin.
"Are you going to tell them?" He asked Thorin between the two of them.
"Tell them what?" Thorin was not in a mindset to talk feelings when he had the perfect opportunity to avoid it with a sword in his hand. He charged Dwalin, who parried and ducked out of his path.
"Don't be daft, Thorin," Dwalin narrowly escaped another strike aimed at his head. "That you kicked out the ruddy wench, of course!"
Something about the way he spoke of Lori grated on Thorin's nerves, and he couldn't help but respond. "Watch what you say. She's no wench."
"No wench?" Weapons clashed and bodied rolled to evade injury. "Haven't you seen her?" He made a vulgar gesture to illustrate the size of her breasts.
Thorin saw red and charged in a frenzied cadence of clanging metal and punches. "Her name is Lori, and she's a bloody elf! That's why She's staying. I can't have an elf with us!" He spat.
"An elf? Says who?" Dwalin stood and lowered his guard in surprise, earning him an elbow to the face that knocked him flat on the ground.
"She did," Thorin panted as he stood over him and offered him a hand up. "Yesterday. Her father was an elf."
"Well that settles it then. She's inherently evil and will stab us in our sleep if we bring her." Dwalin's sarcasm was dripping from his words and Thorin didn't know what his point was.
"I thought you said we shouldn't trust her?" Thorin was beginning to get annoyed by this confusion as well as the fact that Dwalin even thought he had the right to question him in the first place.
"Aye. But not on account of her father. On account of you," he explained. "Look, she's nice and all, and very easy on the eyes, but we need you level-headed and focused on the quest. You won't be if you're watching some fine piece of arse all the way to Erebor, s'all."
"You insult me." He charged again, putting the balding dwarf in the defensive. "You say we should leave her because I would fail the men if she was there to distract me?"
"Yes."
Thorin knocked the mattock out of Dwalin's hands with Orcrist and pointed the sword to his neck. "This conversation is over! From now on, stay out of it," he panted slightly, but more due to his anger than the exertion of the fight.
He walked to the next ring briskly before he could do any real damage to Dwalin, and cursed under his breath that his temper hadn't abated in the least.
"Fili! Kili! Nori! With me."
Thankfully he failed to see the terrified faces of the boys as he got ready for another round of sparring.
..o00Ô00o..
Lori lay on her bed wearing only the bath sheet she'd been wrapped so gently in the night before. When all her tears had been spent, she'd stumbled to the bed in a daze and hadn't moved or slept since. Her shoulder was hurting greatly from lying in the same position for so long, but the physical pain felt better that the one inside her, so she cultivated it as much as she could by not shifting at all.
She knew it was a self-destructive action, and that Gandalf would be in a tiff about it when he found out, but for right now she claimed the right to wallow in grief and self-pity. She didn't know what she'd expected, but Thorin's reaction had taken her completely by surprise and she was devastated.
As she tried to think back on how she could have avoided, or at least diminished his violent reaction, she couldn't think of a single moment where the information would have been better received. If she'd told him in the wilderness, she imagined he would have left her to the wolves. At least in Rivendell she was safe from bodily harm.
In a manner of speaking, anyway… She noticed that her fingernails had turned blue and that her skin was as icy pale as the wet sheet she was wrapped in. There were many appealing qualities to the open and daylight soaked rooms of Elrond's home, but the temperature wasn't one of them. The elves didn't get cold in the way a human or dwarf did, and so they had designed their walls as visual covers for privacy, but not for shelter from the air.
Lori couldn't be bothered to care. She had been there since the stars came out, had seen them fade and the new day start, and unfortunately she was still alive enough to feel the immense sting of rejection. Amazing how cold could bite her skin, but the only thing she noticed was how her insides convulsed in pain, and of course the blissfully distracting pain in her shoulder.
What could she have done..?
What could she have said..?
A treacherous half-breed!
That's what he called her.
How had it come to that?
How could he!?
Didn't he know her at all?
Another wave of grief hit her and more tears came. It wasn't right… It wasn't fair and she didn't deserve it! Damn him!
She punched the mattress hard, and the action made her realize just how stiff, sore and freezing her night with no animation whatsoever had truly made her. She shivered with cold and rage as her senses woke to find her in a near-shock state.
Deciding that she wasn't going to kill herself over a bigoted prick who couldn't see past his own prejudices, she hobbled to the bath and poured herself another hot one, just to soak up the heat of the water. A she lay fuming, and occasionally crying, all she wanted to do was to escape from her own thoughts. The memory of how his hands had felt on her as she bathed last night had her bolting upright and getting dried before the images could force themselves to the forefront of her mind.
She would never think of it again if she could help it! Damn her weak heart for wanting him in the first place!
Quickly, she dressed and tore open the door Thorin had so vehemently slammed an eternity ago. There was a tray of food and drink laid out for her on a table outside the door, and next to it she saw Ori reading a book.
"Hey Ori," she almost started crying again at the thought of how greatly she would miss them all. "What are you reading?"
"'Morning miss Lori." He kept his eyes in the book until he finished a passage. When he looked up, his smile instantly fell. "What's the matter?"
"How do you mean?" Her dull voice said. Funny, she didn't remember her voice being dull this way since before Gandalf had found her in the days when she had mourned the loss of her beloved mother.
"Well, pardon me for saying, but you look awful. To look at you, I would have said you were very sick… Are you coming down with something?"
"Oh…" Think fast! "Could be… I didn't sleep very well last night." She hated lying to him, but she couldn't very well tell him everything that had happened. Thorin was his king, and it was obvious that Ori idolized him with every fiber of his being.
"I think I just need a few day's rest."
"Right... In that case, I can tell you where the library is. Some elvish bloke named Elladan said we could use it as we pleased. It's this way, miss." He jumped up and went to take her elbow. She must really look a fright if he thought she needed support to just walk down a hallway.
She smiled feebly at him. "Thank you Ori. You've always been very nice to me."
He blushed and smiled shyly. "My pleasure, miss."
"Oh, and the bloke, Elladan, who told you we could use the library? That was Lord Elrond's son." She gave his hand a squeeze. "Just so you know."
"Really? Oh, that's exciting! I was talking to a prince of the elves!" His eyes lit up and there was a skip in his step. "I'll have to write it down in my journal."
Lori smiled her first genuine smile in what seemed like ages. "I guess you will, then."
"Here we are." After a bit, he stopped in front of two great double-doors with intricate organic carvings that made the doors look like they had grown by their own volition to fit the frame. "Will you be alright miss? I need to go and get my journal, but I'll come back with a cup of tea for you, if you'd like?"
"Oh, I'm fine. Take your time, I'm not going anywhere for a while, I think. And thank you for your help, Ori." She couldn't quite meet his eyes, but she squeezed his hand before letting go and entering the immense library of Rivendell.
There were countless great columns of book shelves twisting towards the ceiling high above her and as she looked for the top of them, she realized that they were tree trunks that accommodated for the thousands of books with hollows and twisting branches, as they themselves reached for the light. Great canopies of green leaves shaded the books from sun and rain and left a living atmosphere under their shelter.
The white and corn flower blue marble floors were swept clean and their patterns were suspiciously geometric and meticulous considering the elves' penchant for the more organic shapes. If Lori didn't know better, she would have said that they were dwarven-made, but the way they complemented the trees' roots suggested that elves had at least been consulted in the making. In any case, it was extremely beautiful.
As she wandered through the enormous halls of books collected over several millennia, perusing titles and volumes as she went, she slowly began to feel a bit more at peace even though the ache never completely subsided. Many of the books were written in languages she had no idea what were, and others were of subjects so obscure that she felt almost unintelligent skimming the texts. But some caught her interest, and by the time she'd found a couch to sit on, her arms were full of treasures.
She even found a few on dwarrow culture, but as she started to read, memories of the previous night's conversations with Thorin stabbed her with renewed pain, and she decided to save those for another time.
Then there were those that addressed the subjects of magic in the various races of Middle-Earth from the orcs and elves to the dwarves and ents, explaining which races were generally disposed for which magical talents. As usual, she found no clear picture of where she belonged, but the read was interesting, nonetheless.
"I see you've found the library," Bilbo's gentile voice interrupted her, making her jump in surprise. "Oh, sorry! I didn't mean to startle you."
"Bilbo! You gave me a fright!" She grinned as she held her chest to calm her heart. "But yes, Ori showed me."
"Ah, good. I always find that reading calms me. It's fantastic, the way you can find whole new worlds and amazing adventures in stories, don't you think?" He mused.
"I suppose. But I usually try to find information and research for my reading pleasures, not so much adventures. Though I agree that it soothes me as well." Lori admitted.
Bilbo smiled and pulled out a pipe from his pocket. "Mind if I join you?"
"No, please. It'll be just like studying with Gandalf." She smiled and scooted to the end of the couch to make room.
He sat and lit his pipe weed making the soft, palliate smoke drift around them. "May I ask what's caused you to appear so careworn today, Lori?"
She stiffened slightly, but realized that she hadn't the strength to make up an excuse to her friend.
"I… I think the journey from here on out will be without me, Bilbo…" She sighed. "I don't see how I can travel with you, or if I'm even welcome to."
"Why? What happened?" He looked truly concerned now and turned to her.
"I'm half elf, did I ever tell you that?" Knowing she hadn't, since it had been on her mind since the beginning to tell the company, she needed him to know now. "My father is Hador, or Lorindol, the golden head, as he was called in sindarin. One of the oldest elves in Arda's history, in fact."
"Wow, really?" He looked enthralled at her. "What's he like?"
She chuckled bitterly. "I wouldn't know. I never met him, and he's long gone from these shores now... But it seems that his legacy to me is to be solitude and loneliness." Lori cast a telling look at him, "Can you imagine what Thorin thought of this when I told him last night?"
"Oh my…" Bilbo grimaced. "He's not very fond of elves, is he?"
"Ha! That's an understatement!" She sobered and looked dejectedly at her hands in her lap. "And this is why I don't think I'll be able to come with you to the mountain."
"Hmm… I see. Well, at least you get to stay here with the elves in this wonderful place." He looked dreamily on their surroundings with a blissful expression on his face. "I think I could stay here forever and be truly happy."
Lori looked at him as if he'd sprouted another head and started to gargle out poetry through a mouthful of vintage wine. Her distaste of the notion sat so deeply with her that she almost shuddered. Stay here? With only the elves for company? Their refined tastes, impeccable manners and impregnable beauty encompassing her every day for an undefined amount of time? Absolutely not!
A plan started to form in her mind that she hadn't thought of before. The quest for Erebor had given her a sense of purpose and the company had gifted her with great friendships and adventures of the like she had never had before. She would not relinquish those for one cantankerous, prejudiced bastard dwarf, king or not, and it was time she did something about it instead of just moping around and hiding in the library.
She might not be able to travel with the company, in fact she was sure that Thorin would forbid it, but he couldn't stop her from going altogether. She would make it to Erebor or die trying. She owed it to her friends, and she owed it to herself to finish what she'd started.
"Please excuse me, Bilbo. I think I'll retire to my room." She gathered her books to put them all back.
"Sure Lori. I hope you feel better soon." He smiled.
"Oh, I'm sure I will," she agreed. "See you around, my friend."
And then she was off to pack her things for what would likely be the most dangerous journey of her life.
..o00Ô00o..
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