AN:
I figured I should also post the second chapter tonight, since the first one didn't actually have any Middle Earth stuff going on in it. Enjoy.
Chapter 2: Tears and Fears
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
–C. S. Lewis
Thorin couldn't believe his luck. He had not survived the attack of Smaug and the Battle of Azanulbizar just to be eaten by a group of bumbling, idiotic trolls. Yet there he was, stuck in a burlap sack that reeked of mold and rot with only his head poking out the top, as half of his Company was roasted on a spit. Thorin had run out a curse words to angrily mumble a while ago, so he settled for glaring at that stupid little halfling. It was the hobbit's fault that they were in this mess, and he almost wished they had let the trolls tear Bilbo's arms off, so that they wouldn't have been caught. Even as he thought that though, Thorin knew it was a lie. He would never allow a fate like that to befall a member of his Company, no matter how useless they were.
With nothing else to do, he watched as the hobbit began to talk to the trolls. Thorin didn't understand what he was doing at first, but soon realised that Bilbo was just trying to buy time. Smart, he admitted as the hobbit told the trolls they all had "worms in their tubes". The other dwarves began to protest, clearly not realising what Bilbo was doing. Thorin rolled his eyes and gave a sharp kick to Kili's side, followed by an imploring and slightly exasperated look. The Company finally caught on.
"I've got worms the size of my arms!" one said, and they all began to agree in an attempt to save their own skins. Thorin stayed silent, rolling his eyes at their over-dramatics.
He didn't know what Bilbo was waiting for, but he hoped it would come soon. The trolls were becoming angry and he knew they'd soon figure out Bilbo's lie. Not a second after he thought this, something did come, but it wasn't at all what Bilbo, or anyone else, was expecting.
Gemma felt the crash, but didn't hear it. All she heard was a high-pitched whine, like feedback from a microphone, but continuous. The explosion must have damaged her hearing, hopefully only temporarily. Through the fading white light she saw a large grey something just before the SUV smashed into it. She was jarred forward, thankfully into the airbag that had just burst from the dash of the car. Dazed, she just sat for a moment as her vision swam. This shouldn't even be happening at all. She and Patrick should be grease stains on the pavement after the explosion. Patrick. She snapped back to attention and wrestled the air bag out of the way. The sight that met her eyes was not what she had hoped for. She expected an equally groggy agent, possible with another broken nose. That happened to Chang a lot. Instead she was met with a terrible nightmare. The airbag had not deployed, and the windshield had completely shattered, leaving broken glass all over the passenger side. A large, jagged piece protruded from Patrick's stomach. "No," she whispered.
Gemma sprang into action. Kicking open the driver's side door, she sprinted around the car without even looking at her surroundings. She yanked the door open and reached in, hooking her arms under Chang's elbows as gently as possible and smoothly pulling him out of the car. If Gemma hadn't been so preoccupied, she might have found it odd that she was setting him down on soft green grass, not the dirt and gravel that surrounded the terrorists' warehouse. But her best friend was dying, and that tends to cause distraction.
"Chang," she lightly smacked his cheek while checking his pulse with her other hand. Erratic, but present nonetheless. His eyes opened and slowly blinked things into focus before locking on hers.
"Gemma," he croaked, mouth curling into a ghost of a smirk as it always did when she was around. Then he coughed, blood spraying from his mouth. Gemma grabbed his hand.
"I'm here. You're going to be fine Pat." It was supposed to sound confident and reassuring, but it came out in a shaky whisper. Gemma removed her gray cotton jacket, revealing a dark green long-sleeved shirt beneath her bulletproof vest. She wrapped the jacket around the shard of glass in an attempt to staunch the blood that escaped the wound. It flowed sluggishly, thick and red-black. She couldn't remove the glass; its jagged edge would only rip the skin and the empty wound would bleed faster.
Her head pounded like a second heartbeat. This wasn't happening. It couldn't be. How could she lose Patrick? He was her partner. Her friend. The only person she had left. No, he couldn't possibly be dying. Yet the coppery smell of blood that overwhelmed her nostrils and the puddle of it that was spreading all around them indicated otherwise.
"Don't lie to me Gem," Chang croaked. "I can always tell when you lie."
"I'm not lying!" She shrieked back, her voice cracking, on the verge of hysterics. Calm down, she told herself. Think. What do you need to do to fix this? "First aid kit. I... I need the first aid kit." It was in the SUV. She made to stand, about to sprint to the car to find it, but was stopped by Patrick's hand around her wrist. His grip was weak.
"Don't leave. You can't fix it Gem. It's done." His voice was barely audible, words formed with loose lips in a raspy whisper. How could this happen so quickly? "I need... tell you...Gem." He was gasping now, unable to speak full sentences. "Gemma... I...love..." He gasped again, choked, but the word wouldn't come out. Then he stilled.
Her mind seemed to freeze, then go into overdrive. "Wait. No, no, no, no, no." She was hysterical. "Pat. Wake up. Come on, don't do this. Chang. Wake up." Tears streamed down her face, but she could barely feel them. She could barely feel anything. "Don't leave Pat. Don't leave me all alone. Tell me what you wanted to say!"
She knew what he wanted to say. I love you. She had guessed that he held deeper feeling for her some time ago. But what was she supposed to say? She couldn't tell a dying man that she didn't love him like that; that she only saw him as a friend. Her best friend, though, practically family since she didn't have any of that anymore.
This just brought on another bout of weeping. She took Patrick's body in here arms and rocked him gently, like a mother rocking a baby. She was barely breathing now, shrieking incoherent pleas to her friend's body. She just kept going until she ran out of energy to weep. Her head was still spinning from the explosion and the crash, and the woozy feeling suddenly hit her again. She began to dry heave, holding herself above the ground on her knuckles. Calm down. Breath. She was slowly regaining control of her senses and she finally realized that she didn't know where she was. She wasn't at the warehouse anymore. She smelt pine when she should have smelled smoke, felt damp grass beneath her, not the unforgiving gravel road. And she heard... Gemma froze. She heard the soft thump of footsteps, approaching slowly, sneakily, from behind.
CRASH!
The sound came from nowhere, loud and shrieking. And then the boulder behind the trolls moved. It didn't roll far (thank goodness, or it would have crushed the immobilized dwarves) but it was enough to let the sunlight peek into the clearing. Before the trolls could even exclaim their surprise, the three creatures turned into ugly, though morbidly amusing, statues.
Thorin didn't know what happened. He looked to the left of the boulder, where Gandalf stood. The wizard was wide-eyed and frozen in place, as if he had been about to step onto the boulder before it move. He probably had. He was probably on his way to save them in some grand spectacle of magic. But Thorin knew this wasn't his doing, because the Istari wore an expression Thorin had never seen on him before: confusion.
Bilbo, surprisingly, was the first to recover from the shock. With his small body he was able to wriggle his way out of his sack, and proceeded to free the others. Gandalf strode over to them to help, and soon the dwarves were all on their feet. The Company looked to Thorin, who sent a glance at Gandalf. The wizard locked eyes with him, and they somehow reached a silent understanding; they would investigate the cause of the crash.
Thorin crept forward as silently as possible, waving the others to follow. They didn't know what happened, and there could easily be enemies lying in wait on the other side of the rocks. Thorin climbed over the smaller rocks beside the boulder, which formed a sort of barrier between the trolls' clearing and whatever was behind the boulder. On the other side lay a larger clearing, which could almost be called a field, of soft grass still damp from the morning dew. Towering pines surrounded the field on all sides.
Thorin noticed all this in the back of his mind, but his focus was captured by something much more interesting. A big black… thing sat right where the boulder had been. It seemed to be made of metal, with glass on the front and sides, though that had shattered and tiny pieces now littered the ground, sparkling like frost. Smoke leaked from the front of the thing, which seemed to be crumpled as though it had smashed right into the boulder. It would have had to be moving, Thorin reasoned, and at quiet a fast speed to have the power to move the boulder. The thing even had wheels, like a carriage but with no horse to pull it. Thorin had never seen anything like it, and he doubted any of the others had either. The Company spread out on either side of him to peek over the rock wall at the strange object.
Then things got even stranger. Some sort of door on the side of the object opened, and out jumped a woman of the race of Men. She was quite beautiful, Thorin thought, in a strange and shocking way. Her face was all angles; a sharp nose, large eyes, arching eyebrows, defined cheek bones, and a wicked mouth characterized her pale face to give her an intense, almost fierce, look. Her hair, however, was in complete contrast, black-brown tresses falling in loose waves to her shoulder, as if they couldn't decide whether they should be curly or straight. She was probably just over average height for a human, but she would tower over most dwarves, probably half a head taller than he. The woman wore rather strange clothes, the kind that no decent woman should wear. Black trousers and some sort of gray coat hid what Thorin guessed was a toned body. He could tell by the way the woman moved.
And move she did. The Company watched as she nearly flew to the other side of the large object she came out of. She did not appear to notice them, or anything for that matter. The woman ripped open another door on the other side and pulled out... Thorin heard some of the dwarves gasp, and he signalled for them to be quiet, though he too was shocked. The woman had pulled out an equally strange-looking man who appeared to have a huge shard of glass lodged in his stomach. They watched as the lady lay him down on the grass, the man's blood staining his clothing, which was just as odd as the woman's, and pooling around the two figures. Thorin knew the man was beyond saving, for no one could lose that much blood that quickly and survive, but the woman did not seem to know this. Or perhaps she did but refused to believe it. He watched her say something to the man, though he could not hear it properly, then watched her remove her coat and use it to attempt to stop the blood flow. She was unsuccessful. Thorin could only see her back from his vantage point, which was now clad in an even stranger dress: a navy blue vest of some sort over a dark green, tight-fitting tunic. The female hunched herself over the dying man, shaking her head at him and saying something more as he tried to speak. Finally, the man grew still, and the Company watched as the woman began to sob. Thorin could hear this sound perfectly clearly. Broken moans filled the clearing in a way that made his heart grow heavy, though he did not know the lady.
The other dwarves, shaken as they were, seemed to feel it too, some even bowing their heads. They all understood loss. The female's sobs finally subsided, but then she began to heave and retch, as if she couldn't hold the air in her lungs. Despite himself, Thorin felt concerned. He didn't understand why; he didn't know the woman, and as a general rule he didn't sympathize or care for random strangers, simply because he didn't like most people. But he noticed now that the woman had cuts on her arms from the glass, and her laboured breathing meant something had to be wrong. So he motioned for the others to stay still while he slowly and silently moved forward.
Thorin still did not know if the woman was friend or foe, so he crept forward cautiously. He did not know where she, or her large metal contraption, came from, but he felt the overwhelming urge to help her. Unfortunately, it was then that he stepped on the shattered glass littering the ground, and his boot made a soft crunch. The sound was barely audible, but it was enough. Before he knew what was happening, Thorin was pinned to the ground, the strange woman's forearm on his neck. Her eyes were red from crying, and held a delirious quality which was, quite frankly, terrifying. He could see the front of her bizarre vest now, because it was right above him.
And on it, in bold white font, were the letters F.B.I.