Thorin sat bolt upright, the nightmare gripping him again. Covered in sweat under his furs, he kicked them off and wandered a bit further from the fire. Every night since the first after the party had ventured out from the Shire, he'd been beset by terrors. Not long into their first encampment, an elf had slipped from the trees, his hands up in a sort of surrender. He spoke fluent Khuzdul. "Not all of us care so little for others. If you'll allow me, I would help as I know what you are attempting, Oakenshield. I do not want payment."
There was something about this young man that struck Thorin as both deeply and intimately familar and very strange at the same time. This is the sole reason he did not immediately raise an alarm. He crossed his arms, old animosity finally slipping past the confused curiosity. "Why?"
The young man visibly hesitated at this. "Because Erebor is your home. And I...well I know what it feels like to be adrift, to never feel as though you have a home. To always feel like an extra, floating from place to empty place."
"I meant why do you know Khuzdul so well?" The hairs on Thorin's arms raised themselves up.
"Elves have hobbies too, Oakenshield. I like studying languages. Will you let me in, or not?"
Thorin considered this. "I will ask the company when they wake. I suggest you stay on the edge of the camp, right where you are now."
x
The group, although very weary had ended up letting the elf stay. After all, he wasn't even looking for payment. About the time they made their third encampment, rumors were already rampant. "Perhaps he feels the need to make up for some great sin." Thorin didn't listen to whispers, instead watching the young man as he settled into the group. It also didn't escape the king-who-would-be's eyes that their resident wizard had a keen interest in the young man. He eventually said they could all just call him Seeker. When pressed on what he was seeking, he simply replied "answers".
This was the night Thorin's nightmares started not to leave him with the morning light. He was strung up on a cross of sorts, unable to look down at himself, but perfectly able to see the woman speared through the chest in front of him. Impaled, she was suspended off the ground at such an angle the blood from her wounds fell across her eyes, blinding her. It was a long, suffering death. She kept calling out to him, pleading for him to explain he was still alive. He tried to answer and instead found his tongue cut and his lips sewn shut. He could do nothing but make gurgling noises of agony that were drowned in the sounds of her ordeal.
He was dying too, he could feel that much. What felt like a bladed whip dug into his throat, cutting deeper everytime he moved in pain. More than once the thought of ending it quicker and on purpose crossed his mind. No. He chided himself. I told her until the end.
Thorin woke up with alarmed swears and drew an eyebrow from Dwalin and Oin, who were up on watch after the mishap with the trolls. Something was wrong so he scanned his surroundings, taking a better look. "Where's the knife-earred boy?"
"Seeker went to the creek." Said Oin. "Seemed like he was having a horrible night terror. Like you."
Thorin, rife with suspicion at their new guest stalked off to accuse him of witchcraft and demand to know what had been done to him. As he drew closer to the water's edge he heard the sound of sobs, punctuated by sharp, nigh airless gasps of hysteria. The boy rocked by the water, his kness drawn up to his chest. Again something about the situation struck Thorin Oakenshield deep.
He pulled back on his aggression and just watched the rock, clutching his belly and occasionally rubbing at his eyes like he couldn't see. Eventually, Thorin turned away and went back to camp. This was a pattern that would continue for a long ways into the journey.
x
"You have dreams about my mutilated body?" Seeker was less unnerved than she probably should be. "Well...I guess I do too. It sounds like I'm not alone either. I just can't tell because-"
"Because blood had run down into your eyes from the pain in your belly." Seeker stared at him, an intent hunger for answers filling her face as she ever so slowly nodded.
"Yes." Thranduil watched this, not a word leaving his lips.
"You look different now than you did in the dream. Your hair. It's longer and not red at all. You don't wear strange blue battle leathers. Even the pitch of your voice... It's all different."
Finally, the elvenking found his words. "This is most unusual, but the deal I offered stands." He turned to the nearest guards. "Let the dwarves out and see them fed and equipped with healing salves for the journey. We will get our gems back. The least we can do is send a little...good will." He was staring at Seeker when he said this. "After all, my daughter has given her word. Oakenshield, go with my man to free your people. I would have a few moments alone with my children." The dwarf practically sped out, and Seeker tried not to feel abandoned. "Child of mine, do you remember when you were less than a decade old and you kept insisting you could do wonderous magic?"
Seeker was surprised. Before she had rejected the name given to her at birth and chosen what she had, there had been a period of her childhood where she had the most vivid imagination. "Of course. I embarrass myself thinking of it now."
"There is something I have not told you." Thranduil seemed to almost steel himself. "When you came out of your mother, moments before she...before we lost her, your mother noticed that you clutched something in your tiny, pink fist." He reached into his robes and pulled out a shred blue cloth. He held it out to her, and Seeker gingerly took it, running her hands over the old, dull red stains.
"Blood."
"You really did do magic a few times in your youth. Then there came a time when something seemed to shock you to your core. More than it should have, probably." Thranduil paused. "The patrollers were training with the spears and someone missed their cue, stabbed their partner in the side. You just started screaming and screaming. When you finally calmed you stared at a wall for hours and wouldn't eat for a couple days. Then you were...yourself again, as if nothing had ever happened to upset you. Just no more magic."
Seeker was staring at the blood. "That's my blood." I don't know how, but that's my blood." A sick feeling was rising in her stomach and when she looked up the throne room was gone. She stood to the side of a woman, speared through the chest. She matched Thorin's description and was taking her last breaths as Seeker watched. To the left of her was a man on a cross, his mouth sewn shut. Tears streamed down his already tear-stained face and he screamed a muffled, agonized scream, looking with a broken heart down on the impaled lady. She wore a familiar shade of blue.
Seeker frantically blinked until it went away, vomited on her father's floor and fainted. All she could think as she fell with her consciousness still fleeing was that at least she was getting away from the sudden crushing feeling that she was going to die.