Disclaimer: I do not own anything in Middle Earth, save for my original characters.

Chapter 5: By Chance or Fate

[Two Months Later]

Though he did not think it possible, things had been quiet under the mountain for Tholi, son of Osk, ever since returning from his three days journey out into the hills surrounding Erebor.

While he did not expect a grand fanfare and applause waiting for him at the gates upon his return, he had not foreseen being shunned from all discussion about the allegedly found Palantír in Angmar. He had given his report quietly, bowed to the King Thorin, and was promptly led out of the chambers with the door near shutting on his heels.

The King of Erebor was not at all pleased with the discovery.

In the end, it would have been much less frustrating and dangerous, Tholi supposed, if the band of orcs had been some wayward band with incredibly poor judgment of direction. But instead, they brought with them a miasma of disdain, and it was seeping into the halls of the Lonely Mountain.

His days remained the same, attending the furnaces and fires of the forge, and sharpening the axes and swords smithed there, though the production had increased and he was working late into the evening hours more than ever. Tholi and Gholi shared food and drink in the grand halls, his cousin still harassing dwarf women and not understanding the connotation of the word 'no.'

But there was something different happening; something causing whispers and low turned heads in the near always loud and cheerful dwarves. Word had been spread, of course, of the attack on the third watch, and the people of Erebor were afraid.

Would the orcs attack the mountain again? Or did the sighting of the creatures signal that some greater evil was returning to the footsteps of the mountain?

The minds of all the dwarves had turned to focusing on darker, more menacing things.

But Tholi's thoughts were not clouded with fear of fire or warfare; they were not scrabbling to find meaning behind the gruesome attack.

Instead, his saw an arrow, flying straight and true over rock and stream, glistening under the starlight of the clear winter.

He saw Merésgaleth, with her dark locks caressing the gentle flush of her high cheeks, her eyes calling to him, tempting him in the firelight, promising him more than the silence and blackness under the mountain, and . . .

"THOLI!"

A sharp slap to the chest broke Tholi from his reverie, and he staggered backwards onto his back, falling from the low bench at which he was sitting. The dwarves around him pointed and laughed, most calling accusations that he had a bit too much ale for the evening.

"For Mahal's sake cousin, if five sips of a pint is all it takes to knock you flat on your arse, then you're better off dying of thirst then!"

Tholi, face reddened like an apple after his fall, reached toward the outstretched hand of his cousin before him, and brushed himself of the dirt he collected during his fall to the ground.

"If it's any consolation Gholi, I do believe that I've had ten."

"Ha!" Gholi chuckled, "It does not lad! You've gone soft from all this thinking you've been doing lately. You work more than ever, sleep less than you eat, and eat less than you speak! What's gone and grabbed hold of you?"

Nothing's grabbed hold of me or else you would have had the decency to stop me from falling.

Tholi sighed, sitting back at the bench, giving his cousin a small smirk, hoping that he would finally lay off his efforts to dissuade his self from his thoughts after this satisfactory embarrassment.

"Ever since you went off gallivanting into the unknown, without me I might add to my greatest displeasure, you've . . . changed. Ma and Da can see it as well."

"I'm just worried like everyone else, Gholi. It was strange that the orcs wandered that close to the mountain, and I'm worried about what it might mean same as every other dwarf."

Which is stretching the truth.

Gholi grimaced with a distasteful grunt. "All these dwarves would be far less accosted by images of death and ruin if King Thorin would simply tell them what happened. I have the greatest respect for the man, don't take my words wrong, but he's a secretive sort I'll tell you."

Tholi turned toward Gholi, and firmly grasped the upper of his arm, wanting to settle the matter once and for all for he was getting greatly tired of lying to his cousin, telling him that nothing had happened.

"Gholi. I've told you before, and I shall not tell you again. There is no reason to suspect that the orcs are going to attack Erebor again. There was nothing to suggest that they were any more than a mangled band of orcs wanting nothing more than to spill anyone's blood that they could. We found nothing there, Gholi."

Oh, no.

Gholi shot up from his seat, and slammed his fists angrily into the table sending a rivet of cracks through the dark cedar under the weight of their strike.

"WE?! We found nothing there?! Well there's a tad bit of information that I've yet to hear!"

I would rather slay a thousand dragons with nothing more than a spoon and a broken pipe stem than have this conversation.

"Gholi sit down you oaf, for Mahal's sake."

"I will not," his cousin retorted, fuming, "sit down and let you worm yourself out of this one!"

Tholi rubbed his fingers into his eyes, already telling that he was developing one very large headache.

"I'll not argue with you while you're likely to stab me from where you stand, Gholi. I couldn't tell you any more than you had already known, and all you had known was that I had gone. I had to keep some things from you, and I am sorry."

Gholi was unsatisfied, and grumpily crossed his arms over his chest.

"Well ain't that just the way then!"

Tholi ceased rubbing his temples, and looked up to the staring faces of no more than twenty other dwarves, all greatly confused at the scene unfolding before them. Hoping that he had not already compromised the trust that Fili had put in him with the outburst that was sure to become the mountain's most popular topic of conversation, he got up, and led Gholi to a place where he could yell all he wanted without letting all of Erebor hear.

After a few minutes descent from the halls, the two found themselves clustered between the dusty, cobwebbed bookshelves of the library.

No less angry than before, Gholi stared at Tholi, still crossing his arms and demanding information.

Tholi sighed, and wondered where he should begin, starting the tale in a hushed tone.

"Before I tell you what had happened, I need you to give your word that you will breathe none of this to anyone else. There are very few that need to know what went on, and I suppose you are one of them now."

"I should have always been one of them if you would ask me!"

"Gholi!"

A few moments passed by, Gholi eyeing Tholi intensely, likely debating whether he should put an axe in his cousin where he stood. In the end, he resigned, and sat with a heavy thud on top of a short stack of dusty tomes.

"Alright. You have it. But you'll begin with this we business. So who did you take, then? Was it Falur from down in the forge? Or Inge maybe? Even those choices would have been a piss decision because I can't possibly fathom why you hadn't thought to say oh I have this wonderful burly cousin with the biggest beard and the longest- ''

"Are you planning on letting me continue, or are you going to continue to pout like a whining newborn?"

He was quiet, then, so Tholi went on.

"I was brought to the bedside of the dwarf who was fatally wounded during the orc's ambush. Inside was a small council of the wise dwarves, and Fili as well. He tasked me with following the band of orcs on account of my tracking skill. I was told to find them and kill them or follow them the way they were heading as long as I could. NOT to bring someone along with me."

His cousin snorted at the remark and raised a questioning tone. "Aye? Then did you sprout some companionship out your arse then?"

"No. I followed them with every intention of seeing them to their target so long as they did not attempt any trouble along the way. But as I followed them on the third day I saw a shadow out the corner of my eye, thinking it was one of them that had noticed me behind them. I drew my dagger and waited behind a rock in ambush, and . . ."

He paused, remembering Merésgaleth's arrow flying toward him, the flash of steel against steel, the cold dagger against his neck, and his shock as he gazed into her frenzied eyes.

"And what," Gholi asked, sitting on the edge of his perch in interest, "did you slit the damn things throat?"

"No."

Gholi started, quite confused by what Tholi was letting on. Tholi looked past him, trying to reach for the right words to say. He had thought hard during the two months that had passed.

First, trying to rid his mind of all thought of the fair warrior that had met his blade with her own. But to his malcontent, he could not stop thinking of her. Dreaming of her even. By Mahal, he knew that he was crazy for what he had begun to feel, to even entertain any level of affection for an elven woman. And yet, despite knowing that any other dwarf would have thought him mad for his thoughts, he knew that his heart was justified.

But at the same time, what could he possibly come to expect from accepting his feelings like this? She was elven, and resided within Mirkwood, quite away from him under the Lonely Mountain.

And better yet, did she even bear any amount of affection toward him? For all he knew he had been wasting away the past two months, chasing nothing less than feelings founded on a now fleeting memory; a scenario far more likely than the one he was wanting.

But when he thought of her in the cold hours of the morning, her strength, and spirit, and will, he knew he could never think of another quite like her. She had taken his gaze and fixed it solely upon her.

In the end, he realized, she had stolen his heart.

There was never any question, Tholi thought, of what he needed to say of her to his cousin. He was only wary of the anger he would receive upon speaking it. But it was now that the time had come, and he tried his best not to make his cousin hate him.

"I didn't find an orc come to attack me . . . it was an elven warrior. She had been dispatched by her king for the same reason as I, and on that day we had managed to cross our paths. I had meant to ambush an orc, but instead was met with her own blade, and we found ourselves with our daggers to each other's necks."

Gholi sat there, taken back by the appearance of an elf within the story.

"An elf? Lad I'm surprised she didn't silt your throat without a second glance!"

Tholi chuckled, "Well she did try to shoot me with an arrow at first, if that's any better."

"Better?!" Gholi cried, "It sounds as if you almost died! No wonder you've been actin' so strangely, you're probably spooked from almost getting offed by some fiendish, uppity, elf bit- . . ."

"She's nothing like that, Gholi. She would have never done that to me."

And I would have never done that to her.

Gholi stood up again, this time not in anger, but in caution, and walked to Tholi, placing a hand on his shoulder in a comforting gesture.

"Tholi, you know as well as I that neither one of us truly hates the elves. At least not as much as most dwarves do. Our kin fought alongside them when they took back Erebor, so I realize that they are not truly evil. But you've got to realize how you sound, lad. Orcs or no orcs you were close enough to their forest that any one of them would have plucked you off, given the chance. Never have done that? To you? Don't fool yourself into thinking you're so special. I don't want to carry your corpse back into the mountain one day. I've done that enough for one life."

He sat back down then, expression turned somber, and the pain of loss swimming in the tears in his eyes, though he would never let them fall.

Tholi felt terrible then, and greatly wished that he had not been so selfish as to hide what had happened from his cousin for this long. But this was not the time to reveal what had transpired on the plains of Erebor, not with Gholi under the impression that he was almost lost.

For awhile at least, Tholi would have to keep mention of his raven haired elf to his self.

"If you think for one moment that I could be so easily stuck like a pig, then you have forgotten many years of our friendship, Gholi. Besides, you've gotten so fat after coming to Erebor that if anyone was going to be flayed like a squealing hog it would be you, I'd bet! Much more meat on the bones."

Gholi laughed heartily, wiping one eye on the back of his hand, and stood up, brushing some bits of cobweb off of his lap that had fallen from the musty walls of the room. He eyed Tholi with a sideways glance, punching him hard on the arm that had received his more tender gesture moments before, all previous gloom forgotten.

"Is that so, then? I can't help it cousin, the ladies love the stomach! Means I'm well bred, and even better fed!"

"Ha!" Tholi laughed, walking in tandem with Gholi back out of the library, "Is that what that means? I don't think it does, else that Valbryn you continue to harass would be swooning over every inch of you, and I don't think repeatedly being slapped and punched in the face is making you any more handsome!"

"Like I said before, cousin, no lady can resist. Besides, the punching is how she shows affection; she's a wild one, I'll give ya that! All the more reason why she's absolutely stu- . . ."

And Gholi trailed off, starting up a rousing story about his various attempts to win over the dwarf woman, who would, as always, have absolutely nothing to do with him. Tholi thought she sounded just as spirited as Merésgaleth.

But who has the easier way here? At least she isn't an elf.

He wondered then, just what would happen to his feelings. It wasn't as if he could see the elf again if he was to be completely honest. Would it be better for him to erase her memory from his mind? He did not know.

All he knew, in that moment, was that no matter the cost, he never wanted to forget.

Authors note: Thank you all so so so much for the views, reviews, follows, favorites, and support for this story! So many of you have been so kind that I decided to write a longer chapter in celebration! Not to mention that it was recently Christmas, so for those of you that celebrate, think of this long chapter as a small gift.

It seems that some tension is developing in regards to Tholi's feelings. And does Merésgaleth even feel the same? We'll find out in the next chapter, but until then, thank you again!