AN: Guess who finally finished all her exams today? This girl! So here's another chapter to celebrate.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hobbit, or anything associated with it.

Chapter 11: Gimme Shelter

There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.

–Willa Cather

"Why would you possibly choose to go this way? Are you all complete morons?!" Gemma LaRoche hissed in Thorin's ear as she covered her head with her arm to protect against the torrential rain, over which he could barely hear her.

Thorin was seriously beginning to regret inviting her along. "We were trying to save time. Balin said this was the quickest way," He shouted back, miffed that she was questioning his judgement yet again, even if the reasons were sound. "Besides, you are not even from this place. How could you believe that you know a better route!?"

"We had two choices: go through the lush, green, sheltered valley, or take the path that led through the dangerous rocky mountain cliffs, where we'd have no shelter at all. Any advantage we gained from this shorter route has gone out the window because this weather is just slowing us down!"

"You think I do not know that?!" Thorin yelled back. He was saved from a biting response when a streak of lightning lit up the sky, followed almost simultaneously by a loud crack of thunder, which made Gemma and the others jump.

"Oh you are fucking kidding me!" Gemma yelled seconds later. He followed her line of sight to see that the path ahead narrowed significantly, so that the Company would have to inch along the ledge. They did so slowly, doing their best to cling to the rock face, though it was wet and slippery. Thorin almost wanted to turn back, but they had already come this far, and going back now would be a huge waste of precious time. He knew everyone thought the same thing, which was why no one, even Gemma, voiced their desire to turn around, no matter how strong that desire was.

There was a commotion behind him as Bilbo Baggins nearly lost his footing, the rocky edge giving away slightly. Thorin saw Gemma tense, but from her place beside him she could do nothing to help her friend. "We must find shelter!" he called over the storm.

He'd turned back to yell this, and so did not see the great boulder flying towards them until Dwalin yelled "Look out!"

The rock smashed on the cliff wall above them, and they all braced themselves and covered their heads as the fragments rained down on them. Gemma had found a solid grip on a small jut out, and she grabbed his bicep with her other hand to hold Thorin in place.

"This is no thunderstorm, it's a thunder battle!" Balin cried, and the others looked up to see an enormous creature rise from what they'd thought to be a rocky cliff-side.

"Well, bless me, the legends are true! Stone giants!" Bofur yelled as another rock was launched at a second giant behind them.

"Take cover, you fools," Thorin yelled at the few dwarves who had leaned out to get a better look at these terrifying creatures. Their rocky ledge began to shrink as it crumbled, and then there was a sudden break between half of the Company.

"Kili, grab my hand!" Fili yelled at his brother as the divide between them widened. A look of utter fear crossed each of Thorin's nephews' faces as they were split apart.

"Oh God, we're on one of them," Gemma cried, and Thorin looked up to see that she was right; they stood on the legs of a colossal stone giant, and another was charging straight for their own. The giants collided, and the head of the giant they stood upon was shattered. "Great," Gemma yelled, "we're not even on the good one; we're stuck on the loser!"

Their leg swung towards another rock face, this one unmoving and with a sizably larger ledge. Thorin jumped across to it and yelled for the rest of the Company that was with him to do the same. More rocks shattered overhead as their group watched, helplessly, as the others swung by, and then crashed into the rock face beside them.

"No!" Thorin yelled in despair. His friends, his nephew, all gone. This could not be real. Gemma fisted his shirt and yanked him back from the edge, which he had moved towards. He looked to her in utter despair, but her face was blank, that cold, emotionless stare of concentration that she took on when things went badly. He had seen it twice before; once when she held her gun to his head, and once when they fought the orcs together. He yanked himself out of her grasp and ran forward to where the others had crashed. "No, Kili!"

He inched around the corner and was relieved to see that they were all okay, although badly bruised. He sighed in relief as someone yelled "It's alright, they're alive!"

His relief was broken when Bofur cried, "Where's Bilbo?" They began to look around, panicked, and their attention was drawn when Gemma shrieked. She was leaning over the edge to reach the hobbit, who was holding on by his fingertips to a tiny crevice just out of Gemma's reach.

Bofur joined her as the two, who had both grown to be especially good friends with the hobbit, leaned farther to reach him. Fili ran over to help, holding Gemma at the waist so she did not fall. Gemma looked up at Thorin, and her face was no longer impassive. Instead it reflected back the fear he himself had felt at the prospect of losing his nephew. She leaned farther, and would have slipped over too, if Fili had not been holding her. The stupid hobbit would get her killed as well. Thorin swung himself over the edge to grab Bilbo, hauling the hobbit up and then tried to pull himself back to the ledge. His grip slipped, and he thought for sure that he was a goner, but Dwalin and Nori grabbed him and lifted him up.

"I thought we'd lost our burglar," Dwalin said in relief as Gemma grabbed onto Bilbo in a tight embrace, which he returned. She shot Thorin a look of gratitude, but he would have none of it.

"He's been lost ever since he left home," Thorin growled, "He should never have come. He has no place amongst us."

"Hey!" Thorin heard Gemma yell at him, but he ignored her, calling Dwalin up to the front with him and leaving her to cling to the pathetic hobbit.

"Hey jackass!"

As soon as the Company found shelter in a tiny and thankfully uninhabited cave, Gemma accosted Thorin. "What the hell was that about? Bilbo didn't do anything wrong and you nearly bit off his head!" Gemma was furious at the dwarf king. She and Bilbo had bonded over the fact that they were both outsiders, and had ended up spending a lot of time at each other's side; Gemma had come to know the hobbit quite well. He may have been out of his element, but that was only because he wasn't used to this kind of thing. She had a feeling that underneath, Bilbo might be hiding the soul of a fighter.

"He is a burden! I do not have time to look after him and fix his mistakes." Thorin was equally mad at her, Gemma could tell. She briefly considered the fact that fighting wasn't helping anything, but quickly brushed that idea aside. There was just something about Thorin Oakenshield that pushed her to the edge of her self-control, which she normally had a good hold on, and brought out all her anger and emotions.

"He slipped! It could have happened to any of us. In case you didn't realize, we were walking along a ledge that was barely bigger than the size of our feet, and the Armageddon of all storms is raging out there. This wouldn't have happened if we took the valley route!" Gemma was trying (very hard) not to yell, so her voice was coming out in a hiss. Thorin clearly did not have the same idea.

"Enough!" he roared. "I will hear no more about our route. We cannot change a decision of the past. And as for Master Baggins, he is a fool to ever have come. He is not at all cut out for this, and has only created greater problems for me!"

Gemma glared at him, straightening to her full height so that she towered over the dwarf king. "I would bet you anything that one day Bilbo is going to make you eat your words. I can only hope that I'm there to see it."

"Must you always question me? I am the leader of this Company, it would do you good to respect that. Do you always act this way to your superiors?!"

She wanted to argue that he wasn't her superior, but technically, as the leader, he was.

It wasn't like she was always this wild, this rebellious. As a cop, she'd been exemplary, but it was different then. More laid back, less political. Her superiors had been her brothers, not some posh men in suits who just didn't understand her job. But even in the Bureau she'd been a perfect little soldier, until the incident. After, she'd honestly just stopped caring. She couldn't let people have power over her any longer. The Bureau wouldn't fire her; her record was still impeccable, her unit leader liked her and would vouch for her, and most importantly, they wouldn't dare fire her after all she'd sacrificed for them, after they had so utterly ruined her. They wouldn't dare. Thorin, on the other hand, had no such qualms, and he had been kind enough to allow her to join them after Rivendell. Heaven knows she needed the distraction.

But good God, he just drove her crazy, the bastard. Why couldn't he try being nice for a change?

Rather than dignifying him with a response (which she didn't really have because, she grudgingly admitted to herself, he was right, about the superiors thing at least), she spun on her heels and stalked away to the other side of the cave (which was only a few steps away, somewhat defeating the purpose of this action), setting up her bedroll near between Bilbo and Fili.

Fili and Kili had been shamelessly eavesdropping on her conversation with their uncle, which was not difficult, as it was less of a conversation and more of a shouting match. Gemma shot them her worst glare, warning them not to talk about it. Fili held up his hands in surrender, and Kili mimed locking his mouth and throwing away the key. She smiled, satisfied with their comical reactions; those two certainly knew how to cheer her up. Rolling over on her bedroll and covering herself with a wool blanket which was surprisingly only slightly damp, Gemma fell asleep; completely missing the expression of gratitude and guilt a certain hobbit wore as he looked her way.

Gemma was woken when something, or rather someone, bumped her foot as he silently walked by. She cracked an eye open. It was still night time and the cave was in almost complete darkness. She waited, unmoving, to see what this person did. A few seconds later she heard a thud, a muttered swear, and then Bofur's brogue. "Bilbo?" Ah, that's who the night walker was. "What are you doin'? Where are you goin'?"

She heard a sigh, and then Bilbo replied, "Back to Rivendell."

Gemma heard the night watchman (Watchdwarf? Oh forget it, she couldn't it figure out, and she was done trying) jump to his feet. "No, no, you can't turn back now. You're part o' the Company. You're one of us," He insisted.

"I'm not though," The reluctant burglar to be said. "Thorin said I should never have come, and he was right. It was kind of Gemma to defend me, but she has too much faith in me. I should never have left Bag End."

Gemma hated that he felt that way. She knew the journey had been hard for Bilbo, but she had not realized until that moment how hard. It had been much easier for Gemma. She had always been good at adapting, and by now she was a pro. Her colleagues occasionally called her "The Chameleon" because of the way she could alter who she was to fit any situation; there was the flirtatious Gemma, the assertive Gemma, the stone-cold emotionless Gemma, the jokester Gemma. Sometimes she hated it; it got so lonely when you discovered you had so many fronts and plays that nobody knew the real you. But the talent had saved her skin too many times to count. Adapt to survive. Bilbo didn't have that defence, or any others. He was simply thrust into a violent and horrible world that he was completely unprepared for. He reminded her of the victims she often saw on the job; people who were just now realizing how terrible the world was, their innocence crumbling away. Gemma had lost hers a long time ago. Bilbo still had some left. Perhaps that was why she liked him so much.

"You miss home. I understand," Bofur told Bilbo, still intent on making him stay.

"No you don't!" Bilbo said, and now Gemma can hear the agitation highlighting his voice. "You're dwarves; you're used to this life. I'm used to... to handmade doilies and lemon iced tea. You're used to adventures. Always on the road, never belonging anywhere!"

Oh. Oh, that was definitely the wrong thing to say. Gemma heard Bofur suck in a breath, and she could tell the words had affected him. Bilbo knew it too.

"I...No, I didn't mean...," he tried to take back what he said.

"No, you're right. Look at us," Bofur said bitterly. "We have no home. We don't belong anywhere."

Poor, sweet Bofur. Gemma's heart broke for him, and that was the moment she decided to stay and see this quest through to the end. Her life was already screwed; she couldn't make it any worse by arriving back in her own world a few months after the accident instead of a few weeks. If she could help her new friends, she would.

"I wish you all the best, I really do," Bofur told Bilbo, and the hobbit turned to leave.

Gemma wanted to stop him. After all, he was the one she had most connected with, and she liked to think that they were friends. But to be honest, she was still a bit annoyed about what he had said to Bofur. Plus, neither of them knew she was awake and eavesdropping on their conversation.

There was another Company member listening in as well, though Gemma didn't know it. Thorin Oakenshield lay awake on the other side of the cave, watching the same exchange. He could not say he was upset about the hobbit's decision to leave; Thorin still stood by what he had said earlier, despite his argument with Gemma. In fact, he was probably so intent on sticking to his opinion of Bilbo because of his argument with Gemma. In truth, he really didn't hate the hobbit like he'd said; sure Thorin still thought Bilbo to be a bit weak and stuffy and at times a burden, but he'd really grown used to the hobbit's presence among them. If Bilbo stuck around, it wouldn't be quite the terrible thing he had made it out to be. What he said had been the rash thoughts of a stressed and terrified man, and he knew that he had overreacted, even if it was what he believed to be true about the hobbit. But if he went back on it now, he would never live it down. For the dwarf king, pride and stubbornness outweighed the fact that they were losing a member of the Company whom he now only really considered an insignificant distraction.

Thorin was pulled out of his musings when Bofur asked Bilbo, who was on his way out into the pouring rain, "What's that?

He knew something was wrong before he even saw it, because he saw her shoulders tense. He should have known Gemma would be awake, light sleeper that she was. From the position he was in, Thorin had the perfect view of her back, specifically her shoulders and bare neck, which arched in a way that was rather alluring in the blue light. Blue light which he at first thought was coming from Gemma's moonstone necklace, but was not. This light was a different blue, harsher, electric, and it came from Bilbo's tiny sword. Bilbo's elven sword which glowed when foul creatures approached.

Thorin heard a hissing sound and felt the slightest shift beneath him, and he knew something was about to happen, something bad. He barely had time to yell "Wake up!" to the others before the cave floor beneath them fell away, swallowing the Company into darkness.

AN:

You guys are the best! I got so many wonderful reviews last chapter. Thank you so much, I'm really glad you're enjoying my writing. It means so much to me, and I love to hear your feedback. I'm surprised at how many of you have mentioned how funny you find the story. It's so difficult to make people laugh, but it's very rewarding, so I'm glad my attempts at humour have paid off.

In other news, I'm currently writing chapter 26 (hooray for being ahead of the game), and it's pretty awesome, if I say so myself. It introduces a new minor OC who is pretty much the best character I've ever written. So yeah, look forward to that!

Review?