Evie had never felt more alone in her life.

She had not received a letter from Thorin in many weeks; now they sent them as they were able to find the time to write and the resources to write with. He had little of the first, she of the second- it had become harder and harder to keep in close contact with each other, and to connect across hundreds of miles and so many months she had lost count. Evie did not regret her choice to come here and lend aid to her friends and their people, but the hobbit could not deny that it had come at a cost; one she was only just now beginning to accurately appraise.

Evie was sitting in the canvas tent they had built for her living quarters while she remained on the fringes of Gondor's territory; it was light and portable so they could move their camp if necessary, either closer or farther away from the skirmishes still taking place between the scouts sent to secure their borders and the Harad who threatened them. Sometimes Evie thought it was senseless- all this brutality, this overwhelming violence, but in her heart she knew it was about more than who owned which piece of land. It was about defending territory, fighting for the safety of families and settlements, protecting homes. And so the hobbit bandaged wounds, invented new salves, called for supplies, and, worst of all, held the hands of the dying as they breathed their last and the inescapable hand of Death reached for them with fatal purpose.

They were close to the skirmish lines now; fairly large groups of men had been sent out to try and dislodge the attackers, and many had been returning with injuries. Their camp had moved closer so the scouts would have a shorter distance to travel in order to get medical attention, and Evangeline had not protested. The danger meant little to her- she was much more concerned with saving lives than worrying about her own. Whatever her fate would be, she was resigned to it. She believed she had been saved from her stabbing for a reason, and perhaps it was so she could help these men protect their families and their strongholds. She dared to hope that it was for more than just this grim destiny, but that was not for her to decide. Or was it?

.

She heard a shout and the stirring of the troops being alerted. Evie stood, wrapping her outer cloak around herself and pulling the front flap of her tent to the side so she could trace the source of the disturbance. Who would have thought that her little party of adventurers all those long years ago could have led to this? They had not known the cause of the missing travelers in the hinterlands of Gondor then, but they certainly did now.

As she had unfortunately suspected, a party of six men had returned- three were injured. Evie immediately set to work, steeling herself as she entered the medical tent. The men were laid on cots set up for that purpose, and the hobbit's small hands flew along the shelves of her collapsible kit with a deftness which spoke of many years of experience employed curing ailments in need of urgent care. She worked with two other healers- Leona and Feanore, two women of Gondor who had decided to brave the dangers of the south so they could try and save as many of their kinsmen as possible. Leona was quite accomplished in healing, but often deferred to Evie's well-traveled expertise, and Feanore was a novice eager to hone her craft and help where she could. They had originally been joined by two more, one of whom had lost her husband while working with them and decided to return to her home and mourn for him in peace, and another who could not cope with the intensity of healing injuries of such a gripping, horrendous nature and turned back due to her weak constitution.

.

Leona was already tending to one of the men, making him drink the antidote Evie had concocted to combat the Harad's most recent poison and praying they had not already fashioned a new one. Evie went to another of the victims and tried to do the same, although it was clear he was already beyond their help. He had been struck with an arrow to the chest, and it did not take a healer of Evie's caliber to recognize that the poison was coursing freely through his veins. He was pale and quivering, his body seizing more and more with every rasping breath. The hobbit asked Feanore to come and tend to him; she brought a wet cloth to calm his perspiring brow and a sedative to numb the pain, as was their custom with men terminally injured in this way. He was muttering something to himself, about a wife and children, but his words were largely incoherent as his tongue began to swell in his mouth, the deadly ink of the poisoned arrow taking its final effects. He was a man, desperate and needy as any other, and yet she tried to see him as a medical case- as an ailment with or without a cure. If she thought of him as a person, if she thought of them all as people… It was too much; the hurt was too real and the pain too stifling to imagine, let alone submit to. The blonde took a deep breath and tried to ignore the lump in her throat as she moved on to their final patient.

The gravity of his injury was intermediate, somewhere between that of either of his two companions. So she tried to help him navigate through that terrible plane between life and death and miraculously escape to the other side. He choked on the antidote she helped him drink, tilting his head back and encouraging the burning liquid down his sputtering throat. Evie cleaned his wound (which was along his shoulder) and rubbed a pulpy salve on the bleeding cut, clearing it of the foul discharge which erupted from its opening. She bandaged it, wrapping the thin sheets of linen around his shoulder and trying not to react as he hissed in pain despite his obvious attempts to be brave.

The hobbit laid him down in his cot, bringing a blanket for her patient once there was nothing else left to do but wait and see if the antidote would do its work with purpose. If he survived the next few hours, she had additional tricks she could use to try and cheat Death- but until then there was little she could do for him except attempt to make him more comfortable. The healer was about to leave him when he caught her wrist in his hand. Evie's breath stuck in her throat and she looked down at the injured Gondorian, her startled grey eyes meeting his cloudy blue ones.

"Thank you."

He whispered hoarsely, and the mingled gratitude and fear lighting up his sallow face was almost more than she could bear. The blonde sat down on a stool by his side, swallowing. It was only now that she looked at him and truly saw him… His face was weathered with wrinkles- payment for far too many battles, perhaps more than any man could expect to safely endure. Yet underneath all that he seemed a relatively young man, only five or six years beyond the start of marrying age. His youth was masked by a full beard and the blunt lines marring his face, but the longer she stared at him the more she recognized it. This man wasn't babbling like his companion (who had recently gone quiet); she guessed that he had no wife or child to remember him, no name to call as he fell silent and was overcome with the fatigue of fighting the poison running through his body. She watched his hazy eyes close and the wrinkles of his tanned flesh even out as sleep drew its foggy curtain over his consciousness. There was something about him which struck her, and she was almost afraid to know why.

Evie sighed and stood up, moving to check on the other two patients. Leona's man was doing well, and it looked as though he would heal without any permanent damage. The other was already gone- Feanore placed the cloth over his face and had already called for some of the men camping with them to come and remove the body, which they did promptly. The hobbit bit the inside of her mouth, resigned.

"Thank you both for your work tonight. You did very well… Why don't you get some rest and I will look after these two? If tonight is any sign of what is to come, we should expect more arrivals over the next few days… We will need to take shifts."

She explained, and the women agreed. At first it had felt strange, for all of them, to have a hobbit giving orders. But after the first few waves of attacks, Evie had swiftly proven her mettle and her skill at healing, despite her diminutive size. The foot and a half the women had on her felt much smaller when matched with her quick wit and even faster hands. Now they were all friends, and they worked well together, always ready to do whatever it took to save as many lives as they could. Evangeline placed a tender hand on Feanore's shoulder as she shuffled somberly to the door. Nothing needed to be said- every loss hurt and there was little they could do about it but try even harder to save the next patient. Evie's stormy grey eyes fell upon the bearded man she had just tended to, and she sensed the growing knot in her stomach gain even more girth. Her friends left, and soon it was just the hobbit and the injured men. She checked the bandage of the first, glad to see the graze he had received was faring well. He would be fine if offered another small dose of her antidote in an hour or two. She retreated again to her seat next to the other patient, her troubled brow furrowing as she did. He shifted in his sleep, his hand clenching into a fist at his side. The healer had a feeling it was going to be a long night.

.

Over the next few hours she watched as he grew more and more pale, succumbing to the poison creeping through his veins like dye staining clear water. It was a slow, terrible process, to die in the way he was. His body fought the sickness every moment, and although it consistently failed it continued to struggle, like a hand reaching out for something just outside its grasp. Evie wished she could do something to shorten the distance between his groping fingers and the promise of life he so urgently sought, but nothing she could do would make a difference. It was a futile thing, to hope in a time like this, but despite that learned understanding she found herself closing her eyes and folding her hands and daring with whatever audacity she had left to hope he would survive.

.

.

It took another hour for him to die.

His trembling got worse, his skin beading with the sweat of his intolerable fever. His brow dripped with sweat, his fingers grasped weakly at the cot, at her- Evie's hand held his, steadying him as the tremors took over his wilting body. His face screwed up in pain; his eyes adopted the hollow sheen of terror, the look of a man who knew he was about to lose not only a battle, but an entire war. He couldn't breathe- the hoarse sound of the gasps rattling through his throat made the hobbit feel sick inside. She administered the sedative she had concocted for this very unhappy purpose, and it calmed him somewhat. She had waited to give it to him because she knew when she did, it was admitting defeat. Once his body grew calm it would begin to flag; his muscles would relax and he would slowly stop fighting.

Yet it seemed to happen much more quickly than Evie expected- as soon as she gave him the potion it took immediate effect. The man's eyes opened, eyelids sagging as he tried to look up at her. Her heart froze in her chest, her throat tightening as their eyes met one last time. There was something in his gaze she would never forget, something in pain but also at peace. It was the tragedy of a lost life, and, perhaps, the gift of a warning.

He shuddered, his hand tightening inside hers for a brief, all too temporary moment before going limp. His head turned against his pillow, his eyes still open but now devoid of life. It was all over.

.

She had never asked him if he had a family or not- someone to mourn him when he was gone. Perhaps it was true he had no one. Or perhaps he had pretended that Evangeline was another woman- a wife, a mother, a lover... Evie couldn't keep her mind off of it, but why? What did it matter? He was gone now, whether or not there was anyone out there to miss him. She had seen so many (too many) men die under her watch before... Why was he so different?

.

It hit her like a great shock to her system. First her hands began to tremble. The hobbit felt her body give way beneath her so that she slouched forward in her seat, collapsing onto the edge of the bed and letting her head fall gracelessly into her folded arms. The tears came out of nowhere, furious and relentless. She had remained resilient throughout her time in Gondor- she had always been strong and proud and ready for whatever came her way. She had to be, if she wanted to lead a team and save lives. The victims she treated were at their darkest hour; they were weak and tired and often dying... They relied on her to lend them courage, or else to care for them with the tenderness they needed when that stalwart bravery fell apart in their final moments. But now, here, in this moment... Evie's chest ached and she found it suddenly very hard to breathe. Each gasp proved more frantic than the last. She tried to quell her abrupt hyperventilation, but to no avail. She hiccupped, tears streaming down her full cheeks in little torrents of unstoppable grief.

The world turned upside down, and everything blurred together before her eyes. Dazed, confused, and visibly distraught, the healer closed her eyes and buried her face in her arms, sobbing uncontrollably.

No matter what she did, it never felt like enough. Her salves, her hopes, even her tears… They could not bring back the dead. Nothing could. And the worst of it was, these would not be the last victims of the border skirmishes. More would come, and others after them. Wave upon limitless wave of death would hang like a shadow over her life, and unless she stopped it, it would never end. But what could she do? This was her purpose, her calling… To fight for all those families in Gondor who these brave rangers were defending- the wives, the mothers, the children, the adolescents who had their whole lives ahead of them… Her tears fell, one upon another, tumbling down her cheeks without creed or purpose. Heartsick and utterly unwell, the hobbit collapsed in a broken heap beside the fallen man.

.

.

.

For how long she stayed there, weeping, she would never know. Evie cried herself to sleep, and when she woke it was daylight and Merein, the leader of their camp, was standing over her. He took one look at the little hobbit, tear tracks dried upon her cheeks and clothes wrinkled from last night's desperate vigil, and placed a sturdy hand on her diminutive shoulder. It was an act, she guessed, of sympathy, although she did not feel very consoled by it. He gave her arm an expressive squeeze and let her go, his eyes hard but adopting a flicker of compassion she might have mistook for pity.

"Go home."

It wasn't advice; it was an order, and one she was not about to argue with. Taking a deep breath which cracked in her throat, Evangeline sat up. The blonde brushed her hair out of her face and rubbed her eyes with the fragile fatigue of someone who had just crossed a threshold. In her own way, she had... And there was no going back.

Home. What did that even mean? The word felt so hollow, so forgotten… Did she even have a home, anymore? The Shire certainly didn't feel like one. It was a place of comfort, yes, of early memories… But it wasn't home. It never had been.

Evie closed her eyes, instinctively wrapping her arms around herself as though she could try to hold the broken pieces of her life together through such simple physical contact. She heard Merein leave- he wasn't one to stick around when he wasn't needed, and it was clear enough what was wrong with his friend. She was a healer; she would figure it out for herself if she hadn't already.

Home. The word rang in her soul like a bell, reverberating through her consciousness until it was all she could think of, all she could feel… She pushed away the pain and the sorrow and the sheer exhaustion caused by watching so many good men die and feeling like she had failed each and every one, somehow- the hobbit tried to focus on the idea of safety, of security and comfort and all the things that the word 'home' was supposed to mean. Somewhere she felt she belonged.

It was like a dream, the way she remembered everything that had happened. His soft lips on her forehead, her head on his shoulder, his hands on her cheeks… Every inch of intimacy they had shared flashed before her eyes like an epiphany. Her gentle brow furrowed as Evie retrieved the ring from under her shirt and held it between her thumb and forefinger. The dwarven runes almost glowed in the morning light, and her thumbprint skimmed across the little engraved lines with sudden clarity.

It is a promise.

Evangeline didn't know if those words still held true today, over four years after they had been spoken, but there was one thing she was remarkably certain of.

For the very first time, she was going home.

.

.

.

.

.

Author's Note: Thank you for sticking with me, everyone! 2.5 more weeks and then my thesis is due! (ahh!) My computer has also not been working, so it's been tough to be able to write, despite how much I've wanted to in order to destress! So, in any case, more apologies for any delays in updating.

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! I've been working on it for a little while now, and I personally really like it… I always (naturally) think of Thorin and Erebor when I think of the title of this work (and the redefinition of what home could be to him), but this is really Evie's story and I think this chapter was where it all finally fit into place for me about what 'home' means to her as a character and what she has been experiencing on her adventures out on her own.

Much love to you all, and thank you for your kind comments!