When Seeker's eyes cracked open, she was in her old bedroom and the vines that used to curl up the window were in full bloom. Oin sat to her side, where he was wringing out a cloth he placed on her forehead. "Are they all still angry at me?" She croaked, her throat feeling dry and starchy.
"Aye, I'm afraid. Apart from the twins, who claim they just always knew." Oin dabbed gently at her face. "I understand. It's not safe for anyone to travel on their own, let alone beautiful young elves." He sighed. "That said, Dwalin was already skeptical of you, on account of your elven nature. Now he murmurs, wondering what other womanly trickery you have planned."
Seeker felt a sour taste in her mouth. "But I'm getting us into Erebor a lot faster. With help." A strange tight feeling was over-taking her chest. "I told my da that the party was my people now, dwarves and all." Her voice got really small and hurt. "Does...does that mean nothing?"
Oin didn't have time to answer before the door opened to let in Legolas and Thorin. Seeker looked away, not truly willing to meet his eyes after hearing all this. "Seeker." Thorin sounded civil, and she was surprised. "I need to speak to you just for a moment before we leave."
Seeker sat up a bit more. "It's not witchcraft. I don't know how you keep seeing me mangled, nor why I look different now. I'm sorry. I'd rather not have the terrors in the night either, but I do. It is why I continually beseeched you to let me travel with the company. I think you more than anyone else has the answers about why I feel so hollow."
Thorin stepped closer to her bedside and looked up at her. "I know it's not witchcraft, my lady." His entire demeanor was changed. "I just wish I knew why your pain fills me with such rage and helplessness, each and every night. I too feel rather hollow. As if I have only half of myself."
He gently clasped the hand next to him in both of his and Seeker flinched a little, expecting another violent memory. What came instead was the familiar warmth of a campfire and the sound of laughter that only camaraderie could bring. She could hear Thorin next to her, even if she couldn't see anything. There was a third voice, belonging to neither of them. He was laughing too. "Only you two idiots could make a suicide mission feel this cozy." A pause. "Trevor. No matter what happens tomorrow, I'm thankful for-"
Seeker blinked hard, coming back to herself to see Legolas standing between her and Thorin, posed threateningly and ready to attack. "What have you done to her now, dwarf?"
Thorin answered with more anger. "Nothing living with you lot didn't. I'll-"
"Thorin." Seeker croaked. The arguing continued.
"I told da this was a singularly wretched idea. You're going to break her mind to get what you want." Legolas spit with a poison tone.
"Thorin." Seeker tried again, throat feeling raw with unshed emotions. Nothing.
"She chose and it was us, elf." Thorin answered in kind, a cold bitterness seeping into his voice. "She chose us, and not you. We're her people now, didn't you hear? Another elf who can't get the message-"
"Trevor!" Seeker yelped and gripped her throat, surprised at her own volume. Both men turned to look at her.
"Yes?" He was past Legolas and by her side again in an instant. He answered to it. That seals it. He really is the man propped up on the cross in those night terrors.
"Please. I'm so terribly thirsty." Thorin and Legolas moved for bedside water pitcher at the same time.
Scowling, Oin got there first. "Get out! Both of you! I'm the healer and I say she needs a bit more time." He poured her a drink from a small clay cup he produced from inside his coat. Seeker gratefully downed the cool water and relaxed a little.
"I hope I survive those two. Smaug is starting to look pretty tame in comparison."
x
When it was last time to depart from Mirkwood, the company was given two additional elves as escorts. Legolas smirked at Thorin when he got the job. They were also provided with healing salves and plenty of rations, which Oin took charge of. Seeker felt full of nerves when she quietly took up her place at the back of the group, keeping one hand on her bow the whole time. She kept glancing at Thorin toward the front of the travel train, her gaze stuck on him.
"You let your attention stray." Her older brother said from right beside her. "The dwarf consumes your thoughts."
"He has the answers I need." Seeker was a little embarrassed to be caught gawking so she diverted her gaze to the other side of the river as they walked along. "What about you? The elf woman you came with...Tauriel...I see how you look at her."
This shut Legolas up for a short time, at least until he saw Seeker looking at the dwarf king again. "He answered to Trevor. I'm curious if he... remembers more than I do. Why wouldn't he help me if he did?"
Legolas snorted. "Dwarves, sister. You can't ever be sure they aren't hoarding something from you. Gold...gems...memories... It's all the same to them." Seeker felt uncomfortable at this too and also shut up, turning inward to her thoughts. She was the first one to see movement on the opposite bank and tuck and rolled to knock Kili out of the way. The arrow that would've took him in the shoulder instead pierced Seeker through her side, scraping across the top of her hip bone and poking out on the other end.
There wasn't any blood, but she still stared down at where the arrow protruded on either side and sick feeling over took her. Her vision blurred in the edges, an effect that only moved inward with her increasingly panicked breathing. Her hearing deserted her, falling away with any feeling in the tips of her fingers and toes.
x
The party erupted in battle as orcs swarmed out of the brush on the other side. In mere seconds, Seeker somehow ended up taking an arrow to the ribs and went down, staring at it in a state of catatonia. Thorin struggled to get through her to the arrows, when it happened. Seeker started to float, limp and hanging mid-air at first, then her head snapped uo and she grabbed it with a loud cry. Screams rang from her lips, pulsating waves of sound that attacked the ears of everyone below. Most everyone around him hit the ground, clutching the bleeding holes on the side of their face.
She cried and thrashed mid-air, magic shooting off and flatening nearby trees. One of the orcs trying to cross the water stiffened and went face down, dead. The river carried him away. He was still no closer when she started to glow orange and give off an intense heat. Thorin had to think fast. Dig deep. What if it makes her remember something even worse? Then he saw something on her face that wiped all previous thought away. Even as rapidly heating as Seeker was, tears glittered at the corners of her eyes, fighting to be shed.
"Sypha!" He shouted. "Sypha, you have to stop!" The magic field surrounding her flickered and went out, abruptly dropping her on her side. He winced and rushed over to her before realizing...Of any of the orcs turned out to be unconscious and not dead, his unconscious dwarves would be in danger. He draw a dagger from his boot and got to working poking out eyes. Then he found Oin and shook him. Failing to rouse the older dwarf like this, he patted him down until he found the jar of magical salve and rushed over to Seeker. I'm sorry. He thought. I remember more than you. I wanted you to have a chance on your own to realize your past life, but I was getting scared. He began to tend her wounds, waiting for anyone at all to wake up.