Ch. 19: Never Again

Kili had to fight down the urge to grin as he bolted up and over fallen timber. At the last moment he let his heel connect with the fallen trunk, thrusting himself high into the air in an unnecessary but entertaining leap. He could see Fili not far behind him, just barely dashing in and out of his peripheral vision. Fili didn't hurdle over anything; rather he weaved hastily around each obstacle, obviously having no fun whatsoever.

Serious as the situation may have been, Kili simply could not restrain himself when he felt the open air kiss his skin; he beamed when both his feet lost contact with the ground. They had escaped the tunnels through no small amount of Gandalf's magic and an even more generous dollop of good fortune. This left Kili with a light feeling of invincibility which he felt would be well expressed in the exhilaration of flight, no matter how brief. They had dashed out of the hands of their captors with a saving burst of light from the wizard, and by some miracle Gandalf had led them out of the mountain safely. It was only when the old man slowed to a trot, counting passing dwarves as he went, that Kili halted with Fili hot on his trail. The blonde dwarf barely stopped short of bumping into him and immediately gestured at the fresh cut which wept a small but steady stream of blood into Kili's dark eyebrow.

"How'd you manage that?" Fili frowned sourly, huffing a bit as he adjusted his coat, underneath which there was a tangle of straps that held his many weapons in place. Kili could only imagine how they must be digging into his brother's shoulder blades after all that running and jumping, but Fili did not complain or even sheath his swords.

"Goblin with a particularly nasty manicure," Kili huffed, catching his breath and paying his brother's fussing no mind.

"Have Oin look at it."

"Later. And what about you? You're the one bleeding everywhere," Kili gestured haphazardly with the tip of his sword to the matted clump of bloodied hair on the back of Fili's head. He was surprised to find how heavy his own sword felt in his hands, the adrenalin must have been wearing off.

Fili fingered the spot, it was sore and there was a scabby lump, but his fingertips came back dry.

"It's stopped ble-"

"Bilbo?"

The voice was low and rasping for breath but not concerned. Fili paid no mind; it was only Gandalf doing a headcount. He continued to feel his scalp to see if he was still bleeding anywhere.

"Where is Bilbo?"

This time the voice was more urgent, and Fili brought his gaze up, blue eyes ablaze under his dirty blonde brows.

Kili's eyes were dancing across the mountainside even as he blinked to keep his hair from flying into his eyes, but he was stiff as a statue just as Fili was. He could have sworn Dori had the halfling.

"Last I saw he was with Dori," someone blurted.

"Don't blame this on me!" Dori shouted.

Fili's lungs felt like they had shriveled inside him, he wanted to catch his breath but couldn't; the hobbit could not be gone.

"Where could he be? We must find him!" Kili burst, pushing forward and nudging Fili for support.

But Fili could not support him. If Bilbo was still in that mountain, it would be his final resting place, as would theirs if they were foolhardy enough to go charging back in for him. He could feel himself drawing inwards, his emotions constricting into his body like a vacuum, the rest of him turning to stone. He felt heavy and numb. He had tried so hard to protect the hobbit, and now he was simply gone?

"Where is our hobbit?" Gandalf bellowed.

Bilbo's whole body ached with pain; his clothes were dirty and heavy with sweat and he breathed deep of the liberating scent of pine and cool air.

What had occurred in the bowels of that mountain between that wretched creature and himself would take years for him to process in its entirety, and he could not have known how the repercussions of such a seemingly small event would reverberate across the fabric of Middle Earth itself. He was like a small child gazing up into the eyes of a colossal and ancient monument; incapable of comprehending the antediluvian hands that built it, or the meaning behind it, only the whisper buried deep inside him that he was somehow connected to it.

All he could know now was that the cool metal wrung about his finger and knotted tightly in his small fist was a comfort to his sweating palm.

He had followed the party out, hot on their trail but invisible. He followed their voices like it was the road home, relieved to have found them and forgetting completely that he had not so long ago intended to leave them to run off and betray their quest to Eily. Their voices were a comfort, and he had not as yet adjusted to the idea of being invisible, so he was dumbstruck when he heard angry voices echoing through the trees to him.

"I'll tell you what happened: Master Baggins saw his chance and he took it! He has thought of nothing but his soft bed and his warm hearth since first he stepped out of his door. We will not be seeing our hobbit again. He is long gone."

This gave the tender hobbit a moment of pause. Thorin's words did not strike him as particularly painful or surprising, but something about them struck him in a foreign but intimate way.

If you were to find yourself in Hobbiton today, and you asked that old hobbit what exactly it was that the fallen King had made him feel, even now he probably couldn't tell you; only that it made him want to surprise both the dwarf and himself.

"No. He isn't."

Gandalf smiled quietly under his beard as the dwarves exchanged smiles and words with the hobbit; it would seem Bilbo had it in him to win these dwarves over yet. Kili beamed a toothy smile, and even the stoic Fili seemed to express an almost physical relief at the hobbit's return. However, as the wizard turned to give Thorin a knowing glance a long howl sounded over the trees.

He could feel Bilbo shuffle a bit closer to him, his little body anxious and shivering with a chilled sweat, and as Gandalf looked about him the dwarves all gave him wide eyed expressions, conveying frustration and exhaustion. But they had more in them, they would have to.

"This way!" he bellowed, and the wide feet of the dwarves moved with a shocking swiftness down the slope to follow him.

He could hear the snapping of jaws and the joyous mewling of orcs not far behind as he saw the slope ending abruptly, nothing but open air forming the distant landscape before him.

"What is that?" Ori cried in a voice resembling the pained cry of a creaking hinge.

Gandalf shot a look over his shoulder towards Ori's shaking finger, and immediately he knew what it was, twisting the deception about in his mind and eyeing Bilbo's approaching form with reproach. But there was no real time to address it.

"It's a pony!" Kili blurted, bounding towards it instead of the party with a grimace on his face and a curse on his lips.

For a moment the wargs were forgotten so that he might inspect the lump of mangled hide, bone, and maggots. It seemed the only thing holding it together were the remnants of a saddle, strapping the exposed ribs together in the haphazard fashion of a child stitching a gutted toy.

Before he even got within ten feet of it Kili's lungs burned and constricted on the scent of rot and warg. The corpse was not fresh by any means, and by the looks of it had been dragged for some miles, keeping the wargs fed whilst they set what was now an obvious ambush.

"They dragged this down from the pass, they knew we were coming," he called darkly over his shoulder, having little else to discern from the poor creature and leaving it before approaching further.

"To the trees!" Gandalf demanded, and the others were glad to follow.

Except Fili, who came up behind and stood over the creature for seemingly long moments after his brother had left it, seeing something still strapped to the saddle.

A small dwarvish knife, strapped to the elvish saddle, difficult to discern, as both had been chewed, torn, dragged, and stained with blood and viscera. But when he drew the small knife its make became undeniable. Even if he could convince himself that the leather sheath was manmade, that was dwarvish iron: iron from the Blue Mountains, stamped with the sigil of a craftsman he knew, who plied his wares up and down the Greenway near the Great Road, now stained with dots of horse blood that had seeped into the sheath. This knife belonged to a dwarf, traveling from the west, riding an elvish pony.

No amount of positive thinking or pleasant repudiation could undo the reality. Eily had been following them, and this must have been her pony just as surely as he knew this must be one of her knives.

Did that mean…?

Just as he had been spared the grief of Bilbo's loss this new blow was dealt to him and he felt like he had taken a breath underwater.

He had known she was in danger, he knew that she, like him, could die. But maybe he hadn't, maybe he had just thought he understood the concept. Now it all seemed very big and so real that it couldn't actually be real. His breath staggered and he fought the stinging wetness in his eyes. He kept swallowing vainly at the lump in his throat. Nothing seemed to make any sense; he felt too warm, wanted to move but didn't know what to do. He shifted on his feet, his muscles contracted as his mind went blank with the impossibility of it. The absence he should feel but didn't. Could he feel her? Was she gone? Had he ever felt her? The foreign yowls of the wargs were mere white noise.

"FILI! KILI!"

It was a sound so familiar that his body fell back into the motions: he must go to his uncle. He knew that, he understood it. His uncle and his brother.

He could feel that: he could trust them.

Dwarves are not known for their climbing, but that is only because so few races have witnessed it firsthand. Though they do not appear graceful their strength and powerful hands allow them to scale rock faces with relative ease, and trees are an artless facsimile to slippery cavern walls. So when the wizard beckoned him and his kin into the trees Thorin did not pause or falter until his nephews passed from sight. His eyes were sharp, and cut through the branches in search of them. And when they were not instantly in view he instinctively called for both.

"FILI! KILI!"

Off in the distance he saw Kili returning down the slope towards him, leaping into a nearby tree. Not far behind him, closing the gap with a face like stone was Fili, who scrambled up a tree with his eyes steady and calm. In that moment Thorin wanted to tell Fili he was proud of his performance on this journey, how he had endured his burdens with poise and confidence, but it would have to wait.

He quickly took stock of his companions. All were safe for the moment in the branches of the pines, but he was not foolish enough to think it would last; the stink of warg was thick in the air now.

The bodies of the great wolves knocked into the trees like battering rams, sending tremors up the old trunks and shaking their helpless occupants like overripe apples.

Fili fidgeted against the trunk of the tree, shifting his palm uncomfortably and noting absentmindedly at the sap that tugged stubbornly on his skin. He should have been eyeing the wargs who encircled them, but it seemed he was having trouble remaining focused. He looked almost disoriented.

"Fili?" Bilbo yelped, the blonde dwarf turning to him with glazed eyes and brows pressed together in severity as though he were locked in combat. He did not seem afraid, but he was not the dwarf from the goblin tunnels. He was not daring or self-possessed in this moment, he was far away.

Something about Fili's demeanor inspired even more fear in the halfling, which a moment prior he would not have thought possible. The jaws of the wargs were so close he could feel their hot breath on the pads of his feet. Just thinking about it made him clench his bladder, but something told him to reach his hand into his pocket, and as he clutched the small gold band his nerves were somehow steeled. He reached a small palm out to Fili, who stared straight through him.

Was the dwarf in shock?

"Fili wha-"

Before he could finish the tree shuddered again, rumbling painfully as its roots rose into the air. Bilbo locked his hands to the trunk like a vice, realizing quickly the tree would soon be upended.

"Fili!" he snapped, "We must get ready to jump!"

He reached his hand out to tap the blonde, but when he did the dwarf grabbed his hand out of the air and clenched it like a vice. Even over the snarls of the wolves he could hear his knuckles and their unhealthy popping. He winced against it but rather than simper something in him let out a snarl.

"Fili!"

But Bilbo was halted by a murmur, calm but rumbling deep in the dwarf's barrel chest.

"We have lost her," he said, releasing Bilbo's hand and casting his eyes elsewhere as though he could no longer stand to look at the hobbit. He muttered darkly in an ancient language Bilbo could not understand and cast his eyes down at the wargs below, nostrils flared and teeth gnashing. He sounded almost like Thorin. It was then that Bilbo realized what it was Fili was doing.

He was praying.

"Fili what-"

Realization struck the clever hobbit like a needle's prick. The pony.

"You can't- You're wrong."

Fili's eyes shifted over to eye him darkly; he did not pause in his prayer.

In that instant the pine gave one final groan and they all began to tumble backwards. Fili wasted no time and leapt into the arms of his brother in the adjacent tree. Bilbo watched him go, a weight in his stomach. In the last instant he regained his senses and hurdled into the nearby branches of the next tree.

Yet no sooner had he landed in the branches that represented safety did that tree begin to be assaulted by the ravenous animals below. It rapidly became clear that they were postponing the inevitable, not avoiding it.

They were going to meet those jaws eventually.

The days had passed in peace (though not ease or comfort) for Eily. Her journey to the edge of the mountains had been unharassed, and her rations while still small were now frequent to maintain stamina. Her feet were blistered and she was cold, but somehow the physical discomfort sharpened her, added conviction. She imagined this hardship as being just another part of her test, another way by which she would earn her beard. And she was grateful for it. She swore to herself she wasn't going to make any more miscalculations, no more errors. She was the daughter of the mountain, she would reclaim the honored place of her mother and herself be it in one life or the next.

Without her pony she knew she would lose time, but she was confident she was nearing the eastern break in the range, already grass and thick shrubbery cluttered her path and her shadow grew long in the setting sun. She knew that Bilbo would be waiting for her on the other side, probably hiding just outside the Greenwood as a hobbit would be want to do. Or at least she hoped he would. She had absolute trust in him, but while she was sure of her location she was neither confident in her safety nor comfortable with the presence of orcs on the mountain pass. It would not bode well even had she not known they were hunting her companions, and she prayed to the Mountain Mother and the Father Mahal that they had made it clear of the mountains without encountering the foul creatures or their beasts. For a short moment she marveled at her own good fortune of having eluded them since her last encounter.

Had her own nose been a little sharper she may have understood why.

She could see the tops of the trees of the Greenwood getting closer in the distance, and she smiled, relief washing over her.

Until she heard it.

A low growl, deeper than anything she had ever heard in all her time traveling the road. The creature that made it must have been enormous.

Then came the throaty exhalations, loud snorts from the nearby brush.

A bear.

Mahal, she could not contend with a bear on her own. She had no pony to outrun it and no spear, only her axe and daggers, and if it got close enough for those well, she would likely already be dead. She could not see it yet, and that was a bad sign. She tried to pinpoint where exactly she heard it as the wind began to turn, it seemed at least a short distance away, but bears are shockingly fast. The grunts erupted again, from behind her this time and closer still. The breeze picked up and she realized she had become downwind of it, the oily stink of its coat finally signaling its approach.

She began to pick up speed, still walking but with more purpose and through the thick brush to obscure her location, making for a clearing she could see in the distance. There was no tree to climb or high ground it could not overtake. She would have to make for the opening and hope it did not intend to follow. If it was hunting her it would not have made those noises, it would have stalked her quietly. She hoped if she left the area it would cease to be threatened. She began to dart over stones and through the dry brush, shielding her eyes with her forearms.

She heard a crashing in the brush behind her, it was coming. A low snort erupted through the leaves, it was coming fast. She broke into what she knew to be a hopeless run, there was no way she could outrun it.

She could not even see where it was she was running.

Then the wrong footfall; her foot reached out for earth where there was none. She hardly knew what was happening, only that she was suddenly looking at the sky, then the distant trees, then dirt, then more sky, and so on. She was summersaulting down the mountainside, limbs flopping out on either side, striking rock and plant alike. Her stomach began to weaken as her vision spiraled. She closed her eyes to combat the nausea.

CRACK!

Her head smacked into a sharp piece of limestone, breaking off a piece in her temple as she lost consciousness. Her body going prone probably saved her several broken bones as her pliable form continued to roll down the drop, finally coming to a sliding stop. Her breath was ragged and sounded wet, and her skirts were rich and heavy with blood.

And bears have formidable noses.

The fires crackled and spat, making the air hazy even against the chill of the wind. The tree groaned its own requiem as its branches began to snap just as its powerful roots had when it fell. Its trunk now dangled out into the empty chasm like a bridge to the afterlife; as indeed it was. Bilbo held fast to the sliding bark, his arms wrapped across the branch like a clinging squirrel. They had been treed like bear cubs, and now clung to the fallen pine with no viable escape. The orcs cackled in amusement behind the wall of flames, their slathering mounts and their brood pacing in irritation, eyeing their dangling pray impatiently. Gandalf seemed to have no ideas left, and who could blame him? His fire had bought them only time, which seemed may last forever, dangling them all in the agony of uncertainty waiting either for the tree to give out, the flames to consume them or the wargs to shred them.

The monster chuckled; his face pale and terrible like the specter of death itself. He sat comfortably, running the cruel metal which served as his hand lazily across the fur of his mount as his thralls snorted and hooted at them.

Azog.

He spoke again. A guttural and crude language, the ugliness of its words matched only by the cruelty of the lips that formed them.

The exchange was brief; Thorin would deign to exchange few words to the brute, none of which Bilbo understood. But the context was clear enough; the followers of Durin were marked for death. Himself included.

The tree creaked a little strangely, and there was the sound of something. Not of speaking, or burning, or breaking or scrambling for a better hold. Not even of wailing. Bilbo was hardly the wiser; he was contemplating larger things.

So that was it then. His friend was dead, now he was going to die as well, and for what?

A boot passed directly in front of his face. Someone was walking past him. Who? He cast his eyes up.

Thorin, bearing his oaken-shield, sword drawn: ready for death, his grandfather's death, and he was unafraid.

And again Bilbo was stricken by him, stricken by that same feeling he had felt on the mountainside not hours ago.

If all Thorin accomplished was to give Azog another scar, to delay the death of his party for a few short moments, it seemed he did not care.

Perhaps now, as Bilbo watched the crown-less king run steadily towards certain death, he understood what it was Eily had been so desperate to save, the nobility and pride she would do anything to preserve for her people.

And it lived in Thorin, just as Bilbo had seen it had lived in her.

The refusal, not to die, but to forget: forget the courage; forget the greatness that was their birthright, and never hesitating to earn that birthright by trial and fire.

If Eily was dead, she was with her mother. The mother she loved so deeply as to only live for her glory. Just as Thorin lived only for his people, for their glory, for the memory of his father and grandfather.

Both fought to restore something that was stolen from them, from their people, something that was more precious than life itself, something which should never, ever be taken away.

Their sense of self; their memory, their culture, their land, their purpose, their home, their dignity.

Their identity.

The white warg lurched from its perch atop the large stone, and Thorin was struck down by the force of the beast's hide legs smashing him as its body hit the ground.

Even now there were dwarves who could not remember Erebor, would not recognize their mother halls. Who would only know the brassy, somber song of iron and coal, and not recognize the soprano of silver or the contralto of gold. Soon the dwarves of Erebor would cease to exist.

Yet he took to his feet again, sword brandished, eyes ablaze with blue fire. The mounted orc turned upon him again, striking him down with his mace, the sheer force of it enough to render a human body broken.

If they allowed themselves to forget, if they put aside the memory of who they were, if they forgot what it was they lost, they would fade away forever.

The white orc groaned in satisfaction at the fallen king's pain, blood already running down the dwarf's proud face. Azog nearly moaned with pleasure as his warg's jaws clenched across the dwarf's body, the oaken-shield the only thing sparing him from the beast's fangs puncturing his lungs as his ribs cracked under the pressure.

Thorin cried out in pain, immobilized and alone.

His cries were met only with the loud snap and crunch of his bones, crumbling like stale bread inside his body. His spine would soon break.

And the world would be the poorer for it.

In a last gesture of defiance Thorin struck at the beast's muzzle with the tip of his blade. The sacred elven steel burned the foul creature, and it yelped and flung his limp body away. He struck the nearby stone violently, but he could not feel it.

And Eily would sit alone with her mother in the afterlife, beardless and shamed.

Before he knew what he was doing Bilbo had stood, drawing his nameless short sword.

Perhaps this would be the day it earned its name.

His loss would not be in vain, his precious friend's memory would not be sullied.

He had taken her chance at life as a true dwarf, at restoring her beard and her honor, and he had failed her to her death. He would not fail her in the afterlife.

Never again.

.: Author's Note: HUGE apologies for the infrequency of my updates. But I'm not dead and this story is NOT ON HIATUS. As always reviews and follows are love (but please be gentle because I agonized over this chapter for quite a while until finally saying "screw it on to chapter 20")! And of course BIG thanks to everyone who has stuck with it this far! :.