i know this is hella early, but i was just too excited. x'D next chap might come in the next weekend, not sure. love you guys!

~all rights go to JRR Tolkien and Peter Jackson, except for Fheon and Elijah. they're mine. they're having problems.~

Seven weeks in, they arrived at Bree, and stayed there overnight. Each member of the Company paid for their expenses, including Bilbo, Fheon, and Elijah—and none of them had brought many coins to begin with. Somehow, they got by.

After a night scarce of sleep, they left Bree at dawn. The Rangers were forced to become more cautious with their approach as scouts. As always, Elijah went first, yet this time he did not run mindlessly into the wilderness. He advanced in a hunter's crouch, with an arrow nocked constantly. Purposefully, he did not reach very far, and Fheon did not tease him for it. She assumed his same position and ventured away from the Company, her ears pricked. Even when hunting for game, the two of them had decided that it was best they hunt together, rather than alone. Sometimes, Caligula would appear out of nowhere. Fheon knew she had been following them from day one.

It was then that Fheon stopped taking note of the days that passed. With each passing day, their survival grew more important than her displeasure in travelling with such an oblivious bunch. The Company went first, always.

She was high enough up a mountain that she stopped in her tracks, putting her scouting duty to a pause. Her chest was still heaving when she felt someone pat her shoulder; she did not need to look up to know that it was her brother, rushing up to take the burden of mountain climbing off her shoulders. Gulping for air and trying to calm her heart, Fheon slid down to sit on the cool ground and laid her bow down beside her. She slipped her pack off her shoulders, rummaged through it for her water, and brought the lip of her canteen to her mouth; her heart dropped when she emptied it after only three gulps.

A pony came trotting up in front of her, and she shook her head.

"We need to find more water soon," she told Thorin, "or this quest will be coming up short."

The Dwarf King turned his head, staring out at the view of the mountainside. "There's bound to be a source of freshwater somewhere on the mountain," he said. "A spring or a cove. A waterfall."

Fheon said nothing in reply, only nodding her head as she struggled to regain her footing. Her legs were tired, aching from using them so much every day. But she was not going to say that to anyone. Not even to her brother, who would try to lighten her load. She did not need to look weak. Taking a deep breath, she trailed after Thorin and walked a little ways behind him, sometimes having to push against his pony's backside so as to keep from falling over. For what seemed like an eternity, Fheon did her best to ignore the pain within the heels of her feet, pay no attention to the way her mouth felt like it was filled with sand, to disregard the ache gathering in the base of her back. Nothing else mattered but to keep on walking.

Then her brother entered her line of sight. She sighed audibly. Normally, she would not have been so relieved to see him, because it meant having to take over. But she saw the incline stop in the clearing he stood on, and she rushed forward to check if it was true, and it was. They had reached the top of the mountain; which meant that, the following day, there would be nothing but declines and only a few inclines.

"Good," said Thorin, dismounting his pony. "We will rest here for the night."

Fheon and Elijah literally collapsed onto their bedrolls. Elijah immediately made to pull his boots off, while Fheon pulled her cloak tighter around her; yet the longer she watched her brother rubbing his blistered feet, the more she desired to do the same. She ended up slipping her boots off as well and arranging them beside her sleeping roll.

Bofur and Bifur started a fire. Bombur pulled some of their leftover food out of his pack and heated it on Ori's pan with some water. They had been eating nothing else but leftovers turned into stew for three days, and Thorin was convinced that they would soon be left with nothing but spoiled food. Fheon and Elijah had done their best to procure fresh meat, killing any animal that strayed onto their path, but there was never enough to last the night.

Ori handed small, wooden bowls to Bombur, who filled each one to the brim with the cream-colored stew. Bofur handed each of the Company their bowls, and it was the first time Fheon accepted hers with utter gratefulness. She took a long sip of the soup, not caring that it burned her mouth. She sighed as the heat travelled down to her stomach, warming her. Since everyone else was using their hands, Fheon brought the single piece of meat to her lips, biting into it and letting the soup flood her mouth. Beside her, Elijah let out contented hums as he dug into his stew, and she smiled.

As soon as Bombur was finished with his stew, he tossed his bowl—licked clean—to Ori, right before tucking himself into his bedroll and closing his eyes. Seconds afterwards, he started snoring. Half the Company followed in his example; Fili, Kili, and Gandalf were the only ones who did not succumb to fatigue. Fheon could see why. They had ponies to carry them up the mountain, while she and her brother only had their own two feet. Grimacing, she laid down on her bedroll, staring at her quiver. It was still full, which she supposed was a good thing. Behind her, Elijah started snoring as well.

Out of nowhere, Fili started singing. And it wasn't a tune fit for sleeping. It was loud and merry. Gandalf hushed him immediately, and the nephews of Thorin lapsed into a respectable silence. Fheon allowed her eyelids to finally drop closed, sinking into a dreamless slumber…

…and this was interrupted by the utterance of a single word.

"Orcs?"

Fheon shot awake, hand already gripping her bow and an arrow nocked a second afterward. Wildly, her eyes scanned the area. Everyone in her immediately line of sight was still asleep, except for Thorin, whose eyes were wide open—yet she could see the weariness in them. She turned to her right and found Bilbo on his feet, his eyes trained on Fili and Kili, who sat closest to the fire. To her left, Gandalf was sitting by the mountainside, smoking on his pipe. Nothing was happening. Nothing seemed out of place. Slowly, Fheon forced herself to slow her breathing and return the nocked arrow to her quiver.

She put her bow back down, as Fili said, "Throat-cutters. There'll be dozens of them out there. The lone-lands are crawling with them."

"They strike in the wee small hours when everyone's asleep," Kili continued, "Quick and quiet, no screams. Just lots of blood." Bilbo looked away from the pair of them and to the lands that lay below them. Kili shared a look with his brother and then the two of them were chuckling. Suddenly Fheon was overcome with the urge to draw her bow again. But thinking against this, she merely slipped back into her bedroll and rolled to her side, facing away from the two princes.

"You think that's funny?" she heard Thorin snap. "You think a night raid by Orcs is a joke?"

"We didn't mean anything by it," Kili replied in a quiet voice, so quiet that Fheon nearly missed it.

"No, you didn't," said Thorin. "You know nothing of the world."

"Don't mind him, laddies," a new voice said. Fheon did not have the energy to roll back around and see who it was, but it definitely was not Gandalf. It was one of the dwarves. Knowing this, she settled for pulling her cloak over her head and listening in with closed eyes. "Thorin has more cause than most to hate Orcs." Hearing this, she bristled slightly. She did not know whether his experiences could even compare with hers, but with what she'd seen in the world so far—it made her doubt.

"After the dragon took the Lonely Mountain," the dwarf continued, "King Thror tried to reclaim the ancient Dwarf kingdom of Moria. But our enemy had got there first. Moria had been taken by legions of Orcs, led by the most vile of all their race: Azog the Defiler."

Fheon seized up beneath her cloak. If any of the dwarves behind her noticed, they did not acknowledge. But memories of what had happened years ago in her hometown of Evendim flooded into her mind, rendering her mute. Unconsciously, her body started to shake.

"The giant Gundabad Orc had sworn to wipe out the line of Durin. He began by beheading the King. Thrain, Thorin's father, was driven mad by grief. He went missing, taken prisoner or killed… we did not know. We were leaderless."

She remembered the song her mother had been singing that night, how peaceful everything had been. Then her father had run into the house, covered in blood, and everything went downhill from there.

"Defeat and death were upon us… That is when I saw him."

The monsters that came running down from the hills had murdered so many already. The river was gushing with blood. One of the monsters stabbed her father first, and then pulled her mother and sister out of the house. She followed soon after, but the Orc tugging at her hair was so much larger than the others. His face and chest were as pale as the moon, and covered with scars. He ran his finger across her cheek, and his nail was sharp enough to draw blood.

"A young Dwarf prince, facing down the Pale Orc. He stood alone against this terrible foe, his armor rent, wielding nothing but an oaken branch as a shield. Azog the Defiler learned that day that the line of Durin would not be so easily broken."

She felt his blade cutting into the skin of her jaw, and closed her eyes. But death did not come. Only darkness and pain. His hand left her neck and she was thrown to the side. A new sense of agony overwhelmed her, worse than the shock she had felt to seeing her parents killed. When she opened her eyes, her arm was on fire.

"Our forces rallied and drove the Orcs back. And our enemy had been defeated. But there was neither feast nor song that night; for our dead were beyond the count of grief. We few had survived."

Fheon felt someone gripping her wrist, and even though she did not know who it was, she curled around it.

"And I thought to myself then, 'There is one who I could follow. There is one I could call king.'"

The same hand gripping her wrist travelled to her face and wiped away the single tear that fell. Fheon opened her eyes and found her cloak pulled back, with Elijah's tear-sheened eyes staring back at her. Her trembling stopped. She was thankful that the dwarves were all facing away, and that she was too far away from the campfire to be noticeable. "Thank you," she whispered to her brother, and in reply, he squeezed her wrist again.

"And the Pale Orc?" came Bilbo's voice. "What happened to him?"

"He slunk back into the hole whence he came," Thorin said. "That filth died of his wounds long ago."

Seeing the Dwarf King start to walk towards them, Fheon gave Elijah's wrist one final squeeze before pulling her cloak back over her head. And when Thorin's words registered to her, she shook her head.

The following morning, Fheon did not wake up by herself. She was shaken out of her slumber—by whom, she did not know. For when she felt the heavy hand shaking her shoulder forcefully, her first instinct was to reach for her long dagger, unsheathe it, and press it against the stranger's throat. Her mind thought it was an Orc, and it was only when she blinked the sleep out of her eyes did she register that it was one of the dwarves who was shaking her awake.

Bifur's eyes stayed wide, afraid. Fheon's heart beat wildly, and she was sure it would fly out of her chest in any moment, but she removed the blade from the dwarf's throat. "Apologies, Bifur," she muttered hurriedly, sheathing her dagger again. Bifur bobbed his head vigorously and pounded on his chest, grunting; his eyes remained wide. And then he pointed over his shoulder. Fheon craned her neck to find almost the entire Company awake and ready for the day's journey. She glanced around, looking for Elijah, and found him not among them. "Where is my brother?" she inquired, though Bifur had already walked away.

Gloin answered her. "Lad's already scouting ahead," he said gruffly. "Thorin wanted you awake ages ago, but Gandalf told him to let you sleep in for a while. Says yesterday really drained ya."

Gandalf was right, then. As Fheon stood up, she could already feel the ache in her arms from having to hold her bow for practically every day, in her back from the weight of her pack, and in her legs for walking up a mountain for three straight days. Leaning down to keep her bedroll, she had to hide her grimace as the pain hiked up twofold. She slipped her quiver over her shoulder and grabbed her bow, and she was looking to make her way to the front of the Company once more when Bilbo stopped her. But even more confusing was the fact that he held his pony's reins in his hand.

"What?" said Fheon, frowning. "Is she sick?"

"No, no, not at all." The hobbit shook his head. "But, ah, G—Gandalf told me I should lend Myrtle to you for a while. At least, until we meet up with your brother. It's because—well, Gandalf and I thought that perhaps your job must be tiring. And well… horses can help."

She regarded the pony, which was constantly whipping its tail and neighing. Behind her, the Company mounted their ponies. "I suppose she'll be able to carry Elijah as well…" Fheon pondered.

"Oh, yes!" said Bilbo. "She's a very strong horse."

"We'll have to transfer the bags on her already… Don't want her fainting and falling off the cliffside, hm?" When a look of fear edged onto Bilbo's face, Fheon shook her head. "I'm joking. But yes, we will have to transfer the bags. Or some of them, at least."

"Oh, of—of course!" The hobbit shuffled for a while before getting up the nerve to lift two heavy-looking bags off Myrtle. He dragged them to the pony tied to Thorin's, and planted them on its back. The pony neighed loudly and dug its hooves into the dirt, but did not throw the bags off.

Satisfied, Fheon mounted Myrtle and let the pony adjust to her weight for a moment before gently spurring her. Myrtle threw her head back and whinnied softly, but otherwise trotted forward. Fheon let her skip ahead the rest of the Company, even past Thorin, to lead them down the slope of the mountain.

A few minutes later, the King Under the Mountain finally spoke his mind. He said, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Riding a pony," Fheon answered dully.

"Why are you riding ahead of us?"

"That's what's on my job description." And then she called over her shoulder, "Isn't it, Gandalf?" No reply came from the wizard, but Thorin said nothing more of the matter as well. They lapsed into a tense silence. It was too late for Fheon to edge back, anyway; the path was too thin for there to be two lanes. Thorin would just have to swallow his pride long enough for them to reach another clearing.

Only mere minutes into the ride down did Fheon finally remember her extreme thirst, as well as her hunger. Had the others eaten already? Was that why Thorin had wanted her woken up earlier, because the food was running out? She glanced over her shoulder anxiously, and found that none of the dwarves were complaining about empty stomachs. Was she going to have to hold out until lunch with gulps of water from her brother's canteen, then? She groaned inwardly, displeased with herself, and started counting in her head.

Six hundred seconds later, Thorin spoke again.

"Ori told me about your little incident with Bifur earlier this morning," he said, "and I couldn't help but wonder what had caused you such distress. Would you care to share with us?" If he was really interested on hearing her answer, he hid it well.

"Unfortunately, master dwarf, it is none of your business," Fheon replied dully, determined not to let him see her waver.

"Could it have been the story Balin was telling last night?" another dwarf—Dwalin, she thought—inquired. "Tis not a very good image to fall asleep to, lass."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I must have fallen asleep earlier."

"Nonsense!" said Fili. "Why, I saw you shaking with laughter after I and Kili told Bilbo about the Orcs—which we must apologize for, by the way."

"Yeah, sorry, Bilbo," said Kili. Bilbo accepted their apologies graciously, while Fheon thought furiously for an excuse.

She sighed wearily. "If you must know, it was freezing last night."

"That may be," said Thorin. "But it does not answer my first question. You've heard our stories. I think it is time we heard yours."

Gandalf tried to interrupt—"Thorin."—but was cut off anyway.

"She's kept it from us long enough, Gandalf," said Thorin, a bite in his voice. "If she wants to truly be part of my Company, then she must tell us everything."

"Why must I," Fheon said, "when the great Thorin Oakenshield has given me no good reason to?"

"Do not ever mock me, girl," his voice shot back at her from behind. "You and your brother have only stayed in this Company for this long because of Gandalf. He thinks your prowess may help us. But so far, you've done nothing very helpful. Exactly what I expected from two humans. Weak, prideful creatures—"

"I'm prideful?" Fheon finally snapped, turning Myrtle around with a hard tug, forcing the pony to rear her head back and then block the Company from going any further with her wide-enough body. Fheon met Thorin's gaze with eyes blazing, and they were locked in such hated reverie, neither of them saying anything, but Fheon so deeply wanting to. She found herself filled with such contempt for the Dwarf King; she gripped the hilt of the dagger on her hip, her feet digging into Myrtle's side just so she wouldn't dismount and stab the dwarf in the eye.

Feet crunching on the dirt behind her were the only reason she needed to look away from the King and dismount Myrtle. A bit calmed down now, but not enough, Fheon whirled around and slipped the reins into her brother's hands, before storming down the mountain slope, getting as far away from the proud Heir of Durin as she could. She took her bow into her hands and nocked an arrow; her fingers were shaking, either with anger or fatigued limbs, though she was careful not to release the arrow.

Only a minute later did she look over her shoulder to find Elijah jogging up to her. "I gave Bilbo back his pony," he said, breathless. "Never was good with riding anyway. What happened?"

"Sticking his bloody nose into other people's bloody businesses," Fheon muttered unhappily. Her brother said nothing, only sighed, and they fell into a companionable silence.

When they finally stopped to rest and wait for the Company to catch up, Elijah said, "We should tell them, Fheon."

"Thorin doesn't deserve to know—"

"But the rest of the Company do," he retorted gently. "That the Pale Orc still lives. They had their kin killed by Azog as well. It is only right."

Fheon said nothing. She did not look at her brother as they waited for the Company to appear from behind the corner. And when they did, she told Elijah, "Our past is for us to keep, and for them to earn." Turning around, she scouted ahead once more, and her brother silently followed.

any guesses on what happened to Fheon and Elijah before all of this? feel free to leave a review!