A/N LOOK AT US. ANOTHER CHAPTER WITHIN A WEEK. YEAH BABYYYYY. Honestly the last chapter was the one I was struggling with cause it was a lot of action and not a lot to do but now. NOW. OMG.
Also writing is totally helping with healing from the bullshit of the past month soooo thanks for coming y'all.
Josephine tried to let the power of Rivendell ease her worries but there were some things even that couldn't touch. With Gandalf in the lead they trailed over the bridge two by two with the dwarves looking around curiously behind them. They spread out over the courtyard and Josephine looked up at Gandalf.
"Now that we're here, I need to speak with you and Lord Elrond privately. And soon."
The peace on Gandalf's face fell and he leaned in to speak quietly. "On the dangers ahead?"
"In a way, but more like I'm making preparations for my past."
With a firm nod he pursed his lips. "Very well. I will see to it."
"Mithrandir." A familiar voice called as Lindir descended the stairs to them. The unchanging faces of the elves didn't help her nostalgia fade any.
"Ah! Lindir!" Gandalf said happily.
Behind them, the dwarves muttered to themselves and side eyed the exchange as Lindir slipped into Sindarin.
"I must speak with Lord Elrond." Gandalf answered gravely.
"My Lord Elrond is not here." Lindir answered.
Josephine looked up over her shoulder towards the path behind them, awaiting the arrival of the hunting party and drawing several sets of eyes from the dwarves towards the same place.
"Not here? Where is he?" Asked Gandalf.
Then the same horn that had called over the Trollshaws echoed through the valley and the horses appeared around the bend.
Thorin yelled in Khuzdul and then in the common tongue for the benefit of her and Bilbo.
"Close ranks!"
Two hands grasped her shoulders and shoved her into the center of the party where she smacked into Bilbo. They were jostled and shoved as the horses circled them and Josephine caught Gandalf's eye through the fray with a tired frown. All she wanted was a hot meal, a change of clothes, and a soft bed for the night.
"Gandalf!" Elrond greeted with a smile.
"Lord Elrond." Gandalf smiled back and began greeting him in Sindarin.
Josephine elbowed the nearest dwarf in her way and shoved until she was back at Gandalf's side. Her Sindarin lessons were ongoing, but she knew enough between that and her memory that the two were talking about the warg hunting party.
"Strange for orcs to come so close to our borders. Something or someone has drawn them near." Elrond said pointedly.
"Ah, that may have been us." Gandalf confirmed as she reached him.
Elrond took his first full look at her and the party behind her and Josephine dipped her head. "Mae govannen, Lord Elrond. Josephine i eneth nin."
"Mae govannen." He answered curiously, then turned to greet the company. "Welcome, Thorin, son of Thrain."
"I do not believe we have met." Thorin essentially spat back.
"You have your grandfather's bearing. I knew Thror, when he ruled under the mountain."
"Indeed? He made no mention of you."
Deep healing breaths, Josephine told herself. The dwarves were just like that sometimes. Deep healing breaths. Fighting the urge to intervene was not going well for her and if Thorin had any further snide comments to add to the exchange, she wasn't sure she would've been able to stop herself.
Elrond, naturally, didn't rise to any of it but did slip back into Sindarin, assumedly just to annoy them.
Gloin, naturally took offense. "What is he saying? Does he offer us insult?"
"Oh for the love of god, Gloin!" She snapped before she could stop herself, having intended not to say it out loud. "He's offering you all food."
The dwarves went into a huddle and discussed amongst themselves for a moment and then Gloin nodded. "Well, in that case, lead on."
They fell in behind Lindir but she lingered behind with Gandalf and Elrond, making it clear she had other business more akin to theirs than the dwarves.
"I would come to expect such strange company to be held by you, Gandalf. But a lady of Gondor who has chosen to follow Thorin and his kin…it brings strange tidings."
"Stranger still, you'll find her tale and tidings once you hear them." Gandalf confirmed.
"And by your tone, it seems such a tale should not wait. Come."
Once again she found herself passing through the door of Elrond's study and accepting as he poured her and Gandalf each a goblet of wine. Gandalf said nothing, seeming to be quite sure he should stay to the side until asked in case his level of knowledge of her would be deemed different than Lord Elrond's.
"Now, I have little notion of what to ask given that I have no notion of why you are here." Elrond began, doing little more than to remove his sword belt and breastplate. "So perhaps it would be best if one of you should begin.
This she'd give more thought to than her first conversation with Gandalf. There wasn't much time, but there was time enough to chose her words more carefully.
"I'm a Seer." She started simply. "And I'll give you a simplified version of things and we can go from there. The Valar brought me to Middle-Earth from my home several years ago. In my land, Middle-Earth is a story that I was very, very familiar with. I arrived in Middle-Earth suspiciously well timed and became part of a quest that had enormous ramifications for the future of Middle-Earth."
She then paused as Elrond looked like he had something to say.
"Odd that no such lore exists of your kind, Lady Josephine. And of such a quest I would wonder of which you would speak?"
The suspicion was clear so it was time to start tiptoeing further. "This is where things get…convoluted and weird. Trust me I think it's kind of bullshit too. The year I will arrive in Middle-Earth is the year 3018 of the third age. I'll be found in the wilds of Dunland and travel here where I'll stay for several months before I leave on a quest that I can't speak any further about. Then after some time had passed I found myself in the Shire the day before Thorin's Company was set to leave. The connotations of the timing were obvious."
Elrond's eyes narrowed and he looked to Gandalf. "Surely you have found some reason without doubt for such an outlandish claim or you would not appear to believe her."
"Not as much reason as I would like, but she speaks of things she should have no way of knowing and for that I cannot help but listen. But I will admit there are questions I have yet to have answered."
"And of what things should she have no knowledge of?" Elrond prodded, pinning her with a firm gaze.
Josephine didn't want to say any of it, but she didn't know what else about Elrond and Rivendell couldn't be known by people of the right education and travel. The words felt like glass in her throat but it was also a very convincing backup to her story. Aragorn would have agreed.
"You're sheltering Isildur's heir here. You call him Estel and he doesn't know his true name for his own safety. He also has a habit of running off when it's time for his Tengwar lessons with you."
Elrond's face turned to stone and he hid his surprise but she knew she'd caught him off guard. Gandalf too, had frozen.
"Gilraen came here with him after Arathorn was killed in the north when…when Aragorn was very young."
She could see Gandalf out of the corner of her eye, putting the pieces together. Her claims to status in Gondor, her knowledge of Estel, and the date she'd given for her true arrival in Middle-Earth fit together all too well.
With a flick Elrond glanced back over the stars on her vambraces and she took a sip of her wine, hand trembling, to try and collect herself.
"If such a thing were true-" Elrond said, trying to cover things up.
"Don't take my telling you that as some kind of blackmail, I'm just trying to make my case so I can protect my past and your future."
"That information is dangerous to hold." Gandalf admitted gravely.
Josephine looked him in the eye. "And you'll believe me when I say I'll give my life before I speak of it to anyone else."
Some of the tension in his shoulders relaxed and he nodded, backing down. "Yes, I do believe that."
Clearing his throat, Elrond poured himself a goblet of wine and paced to the railing. "So, Lady Seer. You come bearing a tale from our future, and yet you walk with us now. Why is that? If you are here to join in this quest with Thorin, why would the Valar treat time in such a strange way?"
"Other than the fact that I was a blubbering, terrified, totally untrained woman who barely lasted two days in the wilds when I got to Middle-Earth? I never would've joined this quest back then, ever. But they have leverage against me now, I don't want anything more than I want to get back to the time they took me from. I'll go on this quest and try to save the people who aren't supposed to make it and fix anything that strays dangerously off the path of the story and I have the skills to do that now." Whether that had been the Valar's plan all along, or if it had simply been something as basic as her abilities, she'd probably never know.
"If you were so resistant to such things at your arrival, what drove you on the quest of which you will not speak?"
Josephine smiled wryly, finally admitting to herself why things had been the way they were in Rivendell before. "Your counsel, and Gandalf's. You impressed upon me the convenience of the timing of my arrival, how we shouldn't ignore the will of the Valar. In hindsight…" Preparations had to be made. She had to make sure it all went as she remembered. "If you don't believe me, if you don't do anything else in regards to this, please just remember what I'm about to say."
She set the wine aside and pressed her hands together. "When we meet again, eighty years from now, I won't know you beyond knowing you from the stories. You can't let on that you've met me before, no one can. When the time comes for the quest you'll know it, it'll be obvious. And it's imperative I go on that quest no matter how much resistance I give you. You have to convince me to go and you can't breathe a word of my existence now to anyone, even me, until…" Until what? Until she got back? Until so much time had passed that it was clear to them she was never coming home? Until she disappeared from Gondor and they could report that she'd died trying to complete the quest?
"Until you return to your time, in our future." Elrond finished for her.
Josephine was the harbinger of her own fate during the War…just not in the way she'd realized.
"You should also be aware, Lord Elrond…" Gandalf began. "That there will be far reaching consequences to the future of Gondor if she does not return."
"That's enough, Gandalf!" She snapped. Not everyone needed confirmation about her standing, especially not a wise elven lord who could put a lot more pieces together with a lot less hinting.
She could already see the pieces falling into place behind Elrond's eyes.
"Indeed, of that I can surmise. I would like some time to think on these things further, but it will have to wait until after the evening meal. Is there anything else you wish to make known before we retire?"
"Are Galadriel and Saruman on their way here?"
Surprise becoming less and less common as she spoke, Elrond nodded. "They should arrive within a week or two."
"Galadriel can know I'm here and who I am, but Saruman absolutely can't." The trick was to not let on that it was because he was already dipping his toes into evil. "When I meet him in the future it has to be for the first time."
"Very well. But if your presence is to be so closely guarded from our future, then what do you intend to do with your dwarven friends? They may hold their own secrets close, but yours would be harder for them to keep."
She sighed, already tired just from thinking about all the work she'd have to do for that one. "That's gonna be a whole different, much more difficult conversation."