Evie rushed into the blacksmith's shop, sidling past two men who were idly browsing the establishment's steel offerings without a backward glance. She dashed towards the smith like an arrow shot straight and clean towards its target, excitement bubbling up within her like it was Mid-Year's Day in the Shire.

"Can I help you, love?"

She almost didn't hear the master blacksmith's greeting, and had to stop mid step to spin in place and acknowledge him.

"Oh- I… Pardon me, I would like to speak to Master Thorin, if he could spare a moment…"

She tried, clasping her hands behind her back to hide her anxiety. She looked like a child who had just found a brilliant new hiding place (Westfarthing was a mostly open space so such spots were hard to come by) and was itching to play hide and seek just to show it off. Burning with accomplishment and a blithe desire to share her new discovery, she could barely restrain herself enough to pretend patience with the shop owner.

"Ah, yes. His work is quite popular. Very finely crafted blades, and axes too, if that is where your interests lay."

"Yes, we are very lucky to have him here in Minas Tirith."

She conceded, too restless to explain her full purpose. Taking her opportunity, the hobbit nodded to the master blacksmith and dashed around toward the back of the shop where the smith burned just as hot as it had a day ago. Her indelible purpose led her true, and she found the dwarf prince leaning against the wall and drinking from a silver cup. His eyes were trained on the fire of the smith, his gaze lost in the darting flames as they consumed one another in their tenaciously malevolent, seductive dance.

"Thorin!"

Evie rushed forward with wind under her feet, springing to his side and placing her hand on his shoulder as he turned to look at her. They had expressed a desire to see each other again, but he had certainly not expected their reunion to come so soon. He had almost feared it, and how he would react to her after the unanticipated intimacy of the night before. Regardless, he had thought he would have more time to steel himself against her before he was once again confronted by her intoxicating, infectious sentimentality. Being around her was like being taken out of himself; he forgot who he was even as he was reminded of everything which comprised his steady, resolute spirit. It was destabilizing.

"Thorin, I've found it!"

She exclaimed, her grey eyes alight with youthful energy. It made the dwarf feel suddenly very old. He was sixty eight, and most dwarves lived considerably longer than that, even up to three hundred years of age (war, sickness, or wickedness notwithstanding), but in this moment, as he looked down at Evangeline with her cheerful grin and her golden curls, he felt very old indeed. He had seen too much of the world, travelled for too long. Her enthusiasm reminded him of his own lack of fervor. He lived each day in a stifling smog of brutal self-reliance and refused to come out of it, even for a chance at clean, fresh air- it was his penance for surviving the Desolation of Smaug and the Battle of Azanulbizar yet having so little to show for it. The would-be king worked tirelessly towards a better future for his people, but the road was long and difficult and full of treacherous pitfalls. The dwarves were not accepted in every part of Middle Earth, and keeping any large group together was impossible without a stable home, a place to call their own… And so they struggled, on and on and to what Thorin couldn't begin to guess. To reclaiming Erebor, perhaps, but the portents were against such a thing, and the dwarf prince felt in his bones that while the time would come, it was not now.

Yet those painful, destructive thoughts, the ones which gnawed at his conscience and robbed him of sleep, all fell away as her hands dropped and clung to his in the billowing heat of the blacksmith shop. He snapped back to the present moment, his piercing blue eyes falling to gaze down at their entwined hands like a crux. Just as they had the night before, the hobbit's dainty hands felt so small, so impossibly delicate in his iron grasp. An inexplicable fear rose in him that despite his intentions, their association would extinguish her vibrant youth; that he would take that invaluable, fragile joy away from her if he didn't turn away immediately. Even if she did claim to be an adventurer, her place was in the Shire- somewhere green and warm and full of comfort. He did not want her mixed up in the grim fate of his people, despite her natural inclination and the great service she had already performed for them. The deeper she sunk into their world, into the cold depths of the mountain, the more of herself must be lost. He was sure of it, and the idea brought him to despair.

Evie saw the way he was looking at their hands and immediately realized her mistake. She had grown too comfortable, thought too much of their conversation the night previous- her words died upon her lips and her hands slipped out of his as if they had never been there. She folded them tightly against her waistline, her left hand clamping down around her other thumb and forefinger like a vice. How could she have been so wantonly foolish? Consumed by imprudent eagerness, she hadn't realized how recklessly presumptuous she had become. The very fact that she had hurried here so hastily; carelessly dashed in to tell him her brilliant idea, her solution to all his problems and the salvation of his people… The hobbit groaned inwardly, suddenly disgusted by herself and her audacious folly.

"I- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"

There she was again, stammering. It wasn't like a hobbit to be so daring- they were simple folk who lived modest lives and didn't barge into the paths of others and expect to be welcomed as a savior. If her mother could see her now, rushing into things and claiming to know what was best for others… Evangeline had taken her father's obsession with helping strangers a step too far; it wasn't for her to suggest or decide, and she had no cause sticking her nose in other people's business without invitation. And certainly not those the likes of Thorin Oakenshield.

"What did you say of Blue Mountains?"

Thorin felt like he was stepping out of a dream. He had been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn't realized she had been speaking to him, let alone what she had been saying. Yet he had gathered that name from her words despite the haze of his reverie.

"No matter," she dismissed it clumsily, turning aside. "It was wrong of me to even suggest-"

"Evangeline." She straightened, the harshness of his voice stunning the healer out of her self-destructive embarrassment. There was a tight knot in her chest which made it harder and harder for her to breathe, and she fought it with each shallow inhalation.

"Tell me of the Blue Mountains."

Evie turned slowly, her instinctive alarm rendering her incapable of looking into his eyes. She played the part of the reluctant child, refusing to reach out for fear of getting her hand roughly slapped aside. One word from him could hurt her more than a blow from a mountain troll, and she loathed herself and him for that reality. Why she continued to see him, to put herself in these situations where he could make her feel even smaller than her already diminutive four foot height, she couldn't understand. And now he was urging her to share her imprudent news, and up was beginning to look like down again. Evie didn't know if she could bear it much longer.

"The Blue Mountains are close to the Shire... None are as large or as grand as Erebor and I know not what can be mined from them, but… They could be a home. At least a temporary one… Few creatures venture to them- it is a peaceful space… I shouldn't have come here; it was foolish of me to-"

Evie went silent as she felt him take her hand in his, but this time with an explicit sort of intimacy rather than the casual blunder of her earlier enthusiasm. This was an act of purpose, and it made her breath catch in her throat. Evangeline's startled grey eyes met his searching blue ones and she gave up all hope of their affairs making sense again. The hobbit relinquished her designs of understanding him or the life he led, of guessing how he would react to her or what he would do… It was a hopeless cause, and she felt helpless under his gaze. Thorin Oakenshield proved again and again he was far more unpredictable than she thought, and the hobbit might as well accept the fact that she would never know him with enough familiarity to comprehend his actions.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, however, the pair inched closer to one another in the scorching, overpowering heat of the smith. Evie felt flushed, and she mentally tried to blame it on the blazing warmth of the fire nearby and not the dangerous reality that the dwarf's face was only inches from hers. He was agonizingly handsome- her eyes lingered on the perfect shape of his long, pointed nose, the gentle, stark line of his jaw, the inviting curve of his lips. Their closeness was intoxicating, almost uncomfortably so. She didn't want this, to be so close, to have such possibility only inches away, even though it felt like miles.

"It was good of you."

He whispered, his voice rumbling in his throat. She thought she could drown herself in the sound, in that rich, coarse tenor, if the overwhelming heat didn't claim her first. Had she been less courageous or if she had proven less of a Took, she might have fainted. But Evie was no such hobbit, and she clung to her senses like a lifeline even as her eyelashes fluttered and her breath broke as it left her lips.

"What is your meaning?"

She begged, and he answered more simply than how she had meant it.

"It was good of you… Not foolish."

The last word hung between them like a warning, but neither proved wary enough to notice. Evie felt her muscles tense as the space between them diminished alongside the slow, deliberate passage of time. Each heartbeat filled her chest like the heavy roll of a drum, filling her body with fear and anticipation. Succumb to whatever force it was that relentlessly drew them together, Evie reached out to place her hand on his face. Her fingertips floated ever so gently across his smooth cheek, then the thick, wiry hair of his beard... He bore the marks of his trade- his skin was warm from the fire and he was decorated with dirt and sweat, but Evangeline was of no delicate sensibility and she was intrigued rather than repulsed by it. Thorin closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the feeling of her hand on his face. She felt him instinctively lean into her touch, and the thrill of the sensation made her heart skip a beat. She had wondered, when out on her wanderings and looking aimlessly up at the velvety sky or in quiet moments by the fire of a tavern, if she would ever see him again, and perhaps she had even dreamed of something like this coming to pass, but it had never been a true possibility. She had never actually thought that the closeness of that confused, thoughtless moment at Moria could ever be repeated or, more hopelessly yet, built upon.

Similar thoughts plagued Thorin's mind, and even as his skin prickled sensationally in response to her delicate, yielding caress, he knew this could not be. That he had responsibilities, duties, obligations… He had an entire people to care for, and it would be a betrayal for him to abandon them by indulging himself in the tender touch of a female. That was not the life set out before him- happiness, a family, a home… He refused to allow himself such luxuries if he could not assure them for his people.

"Evangeline.."

He whispered her name, and the despair ringing in his voice left no doubt that it was all over before it had even begun. The hobbit breathed out, relief and stinging disappointment surging through her small frame. It was as though he was begging her to stop because he didn't know if he had the strength to break away first. At least, that was what she told herself. That was what she would keep telling herself every time she looked back at this moment in somber disappointment. Thorin opened his mouth to speak, but it was obvious he could not find the right words to explain his complicated sentiments.

"I understand."

She freed him, her brow furrowing. Even so, even if she could guess at the composite pressures and obligations and notions of guilt which bound him to his characteristically stoic exterior, Evie refused to be dismissed without some small moment of grace. She leaned forward, trying not to react as she felt him stiffen against her, and placed an affectionate, expressive kiss on his bearded cheek. He relaxed, and she was brazenly slow in backing away from him. Her fingers skimmed his jawline, falling from his chin with compunction. The action could not have been more different, more tense and heavy with purpose, than her kiss of the night before.

Thorin drank in the sweet scent of her, savored the intolerable softness of her curls as they brushed his skin when she kissed him and the warmth of her for that exquisite, stolen moment when she leaned forward and placed her lips upon his cheek. He had always thought it just and right that he had been given his particular lot in life, and had submitted to the yoke of his family lineage without complaint. But in this moment, this singular, terrible, heartbreaking moment of yearning, he mourned it. He would never forsake the legacy of Thrain, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain, and yet his unyielding loyalty did not make this any easier.

"Will you let me take you there?"

She asked, half of her wanting to run as fast as she could and never look back and the other half owning up to the strange sensation of responsibility she felt- whether it was for the dwarves and her grandfather's legacy or for Thorin in particular, she was not sure she wanted to know.

"To the Blue Mountains. Tell me you will go and see them." She urged him, hoping their latest exchange had not ruined his prospect for a new future. She refused to be the cause of such a mischance. "This life of wandering must be challenging… While I doubt there is any ease to carving into the side of a mountain, at least the Blue Mountains can promise safety and a life of plenty. The surrounding area is prosperous and well-guarded…"

The hobbit offered, and Thorin gazed down at her with another one of his looks which could have meant a hundred different things, all of them adorned with a shade of longing.

"I cannot promise that you will find a home there, but I dare say you may be able to build one."

Despite all else, everything that had passed between them and now the imminent threat of what might still come to pass, Thorin could not resist the opportunity she offered him. The chance, at last, to settle somewhere and start a new life away from the infernal blacksmith shops and armories, from the men and their downward glances, their judgment and their discontent… Legacy, honor, and duty aside, Thorin Oakenshield sought the same thing everyone desired. A place to call home.

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Author's Note: Thank you once again for all your lovely comments! I really can't say how much it means to me- this is the first thing I've ever shared so it's nice to hear what you think! And great thanks for your patience- I usually take some time editing and making sure I like things before posting them and that's an important part of my writing, so I appreciate your understanding. Much love!