A/N Did I anticipated this whole sequence would be happening before the weekend came? Absolutely not. Did I literally come straight home from work and knock this out because I had the music in me? Yes.
ALSO VERY IMPORTANT STORY INFORMATION. PLEASE SEE THE AUTHOR'S NOTE AT THE END OF THIS CHAPTER BEFORE CONTINUING TO CHAPTER 20
Aragorn had, months before, made plans for them for that day. A rare day off, recognition of their second year together. It was uncommon to mark anniversaries every year, instead milestone anniversaries were more noted. But it was tradition from her land, and he wanted to do it for her.
But now he could only honor the day alone. The gifts he'd had made for her laid on her dressing table, useless to her in her absence. The finely wrought builders tools, the embroidered mantle, and soft new slippers would have to wait until winter, when the weather wouldn't suit them and the gate would be complete.
He dressed in silence, knotting her token around his neck to keep her close before buttoning up his tunic. Before leaving for his day, he laid his hand on the back of her dressing table chair.
"Happy anniversary, meleth nin. May you find your road safe this day."
The air thinned quickly as they made their way up into the mountains and it didn't turn entirely cold, but the breeze held the promise of a chill night. One day after the next they walked up and up and up, their moods dour with the difficult terrain.
Her requisitioned travel coat was a godsend when the mist set in. And then a week and a half into their journey it turned into rain. It was a miserable but wonderfully uneventful trek up. Constantly, constantly up.
And then their path got thin and pushed through craggy spires soaked in the perpetual rain. It was slick and muddy and generally skirting a cliff face. They slid and caught one another all day long and gave up, night after night, on finding a dry spot to lay.
Late afternoon, just after the two week mark, her blank, one foot in front of the other drudgery came to an end.
Stones and boulders began crashing into the walls around them. She grabbed Bilbo and held him against her with one arm, using the other to brace herself against the rock wall to their left.
"Stone giants!" Someone yelled over the clap of thunder and crash of stone.
This wasn't the part she was afraid of.
"Take cover!" Dwalin yelled.
They flattened against the wall as a boulder hit the mountain above them and stone rained down. Josephine could hardly see through the stinging rain but she could make out dark masses across the chasm in front of them, tossing boulders at each other.
Staying still was a death sentence, but moving was also a risky idea. Rocks broke off parts of the path, making it even narrower in place or leaving entire gaps they had to leap across. Every time they had to jump someone grabbed her from behind and threw her into the arms of the dwarf who'd been in front of her. Josephine couldn't decide if she appreciated the help or worried they'd misjudge the timing and drop her.
She kept waiting for the path beneath their feet to start moving and to realize they were standing on one of the giants, but it didn't happen. Through the flash of lightening she realized the giants were actual flesh and bone giants and not made of stone, a small comfort all things considered as another boulder came their way. Bilbo's place as an unreliable and exaggerating narrator was coming through for her when she saw them. Luckily that would probably help mask her presence in the story even more.
They began to round a corner in single file, eager to get out of the range of the giants, but their luck wasn't that good. A boulder slammed into the pathway right in the center of the group, and more specifically, Bilbo, Fili, and Kili.
Thorin, three dwarves ahead of her, called back over her head for his nephews and they all froze in place, seconds feeling like minutes while the debris cleared with their eyes straining in the dark.
Another flash of lightning lit up the mountains and they saw the other half of the group again, including Fili and Kili, but Bilbo was missing.
"Shit- Shit! Bilbo!" She screamed over the storm, pushing past Dwalin and Balin towards the new gap in the path.
She heard his quiet, frightening yell from the ledge where all she could see were the tips of his fingers. The dwarves followed suit as she reached for him but he slipped onto a lower handhold right as they go to him.
Suddenly someone grabbed her cloak and yanked her back, that someone being Thorin who quickly took her place and swung down off the edge. He hoisted Bilbo into the arms of the dwarves, then when the weight shifted he slipped, barely caught by Dwalin in time.
"I thought we'd lost our burglar!" Dwalin said.
"He's been lost since he left home." Thorin snapped, frustrated and out of turn. "He should never have come. He has no place amongst us."
"Thorin, shut the fuck up!" She snapped, sending a ripple of silence through the entire company. Hindsight, twenty-twenty, telling the grumpy Thorin to shut the fuck up was not the calculated sort of action she would've hoped to make in that moment. But she wasn't going to put up with him being an asshole to Bilbo for no reason without saying something either.
Thorin glared at her and drew close, unable to tower over her with their near match of height but the anger in his eyes was clear. "And neither do you."
And that was the end of it, one more unfounded and stabbing comment that stung a lot more than she wanted to admit. She expected his stupid snipping and rude demeanor but she didn't like being the target of it anymore than she liked to hear it directed towards Bilbo.
He went to the head of the column as the last of the dwarves plus Gandalf made it over the gap. Bofur gave her a pat on the back and a sympathetic smile.
"Don't worry lass, you belong just fine. The both of ye do."
The company stayed in an awkward silence and they went on for another quarter hour before Thorin dipped into the mouth of a cave up ahead with his sword drawn just in case.
"Looks safe enough." Dwalin said, going in next.
"Search to the back, caves in the mountain are seldom unoccupied."
They all huddle in near the mouth while Dwalin looked around and finally said, "There's nothin' here."
"Right then!" Gloin said, happily tossing a few legs of former Rivendell furniture onto the ground. "Let's get a fire started."
"No, no fires." Thorin said quickly. "Not in this place. Get some sleep, we start at first light. Bofur, take the first watch."
Josephine immediately went to the edge of the cave, trying to hide as much of her anxieties as she could. And if she were along the edge, she'd hopefully not get crushed by a bunch of falling dwarves as they fell and just end up on top of them instead.
Bilbo followed her, noticing how she didn't remove any of her wet clothes but not bringing it up.
"You're not gonna slip away on me, are you?" She asked him, her voice muffled beneath her mask.
He scoffed like what she suggested was crazy but it was obvious he'd been considering it. "Without you? Never. We stick together, you and I." He was about to lay down when he paused. "Thank you, by the way. For earlier, with what Thorin said."
"Anytime." She said, trying to sound lighthearted. "We stick together, remember?"
And with that he plopped down beside her and tried to fall asleep.
Josephine didn't. Not a wink.
She waited there, listening to the dwarves snoring, coiled like a spring ready to snap into action at any second. At first she mistook the grainy hiss of sand for the storm outside, until Thorin's voice grumbled in the darkness.
But it was, of course, too late.
With a creak the trap doors opened and they were falling.
Josephine wrapped her arms around her head as they tumbled and slid and skidded over rock and gravel. When they came to a stop, all piled on top of each other in a wooden cage, there was just enough time for Josephine to roll over and see a mass of screeching goblins flooding down the path towards them.
They were pulled out one by one and pushed into the throng. As each dwarf was grabbed a heavy hand pushed her back and she fell into Bilbo. But it was a matter of time and the second to last goblin grabbed her by the scruff of her cloak. She wrenched her chin towards her shoulder to try and find Bilbo, seeing him get snagged by the last goblin and shoved towards the rest of them. That wasn't going to work, he had to go unseen, fall into the bowels of goblin town.
With a heave she caught her captor off guard and sent him flying off the ledge of the platform. Then, time short, she grabbed Bilbo's captor and chucked the small creature away into the yawning dark. These goblins were smaller than the ones she'd met in Moria, and she was lucky for that too. She was larger than a lot of them.
"Hide!" She hissed at Bilbo, then felt two hands grasp her by the arms and drag her back. When she looked back up, Bilbo was gone. She was also glad to see that Gandalf was nowhere to be found.
That was the most she could do. Now it was up to Bilbo, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do. But whatever he did, it would determine the fate of Middle- Earth.
They were pushed along in a sea of goblins, the dwarves occasionally shoved or hit back but it didn't do them any good, there was no way out of the hoard even if they fought off a few of them. The trek was long but as they rounded a corner a wheezy sounding horn blew through the cavern and the winding path towards a very clear throne came into view.
Oh how she'd hoped, how much she'd hoped the music was also an exaggeration. Other so-called instruments started up, hurting their ears and playing out of tune.
As the Goblin King came into full view he began to sing and they were herded into the center of the platform. The dwarves pulled her into the middle of them and she tugged at her hood and mask, making sure it was all still in place.
"Catchy, isn't it?" The Goblin Kind said. "It's one of my own compositions."
"That's not a song, that's an abomination!" Balin yelled.
"Abominations! Mutations! Deviations! That's all you're gonna find down here." The Goblin King sat back down on his throne and the goblins began pulling their weapons off of them. She watched angrily as her sword belt came off and Aragorn's knife joined the pile at the giant goblin's feet.
"Who would be so bold as to come armed into my kingdom! Spies? Thieves? Assassins?!"
"Dwarves, your malevolence!" A goblin offered.
"Dwarves!"
She didn't understand how he couldn't figure that out by looking at them, but maybe his bad eyesight was just bad enough that it would help her remain unnoticed. As it was, the dwarves were doing a good job, sticking her behind Dwalin who was one of the tallest of the group.
"We found them on the front porch."
"Well don't just stand there! Search them! Every crack! Every crevice!"
Their bags were torn from their backs, their cloaks ripped from their throats. Gilraen's gift followed into a pile next to their weapons as Nori's bag was tipped upside down and emptied, spilling a menagerie of silverware and candlesticks from Rivendell.
"Elves!" The goblins squeaked and yelled.
"What are you dwarves doing in these parts?" The king demanded.
Oin pushed forward. "Don't worry lads, I'll handle this."
"No tricks! I want the truth! Warts and all."
"You're going to have to speak up, ye'r boys flattened by trumpet!"
The king got angry and shot forward. "I'll do more than flatten your trumpet!"
Then Bofur jumped into the fray. "If it's the truth you want then I'm the one you'll want to speak to." When the king paused to let him, Bofur froze. "We were on the road. Well it's not so much a road as a path. Actually…it's not even that come to think of it. It's more like a track. Anyway the point is we were on this road like a path like a track. And then we weren't. Which is a problem because we were supposed to be in Dunland last Tuesday."
"Visiting distant relations." Dori added.
"Some inbreds on my mother's side." Bofur continued.
The king bellowed again. "Shut up! If they will not talk! We'll make them squawk! Bring up the mangler! Bring up the bone breaker! We'll start with the youngest!" He pointed to Ori.
"Wait!" Thorin yelled, stepping forward and showing himself.
"Well, well well…Look who it is. Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thor. King Under the Mountain. Except…Oh, but I'm forgetting, you don't have a mountain. And you're not a king, which makes you…nobody, really. I know someone who would pay a pretty price for your head. Just the head, of course, nothing attached. Perhaps you know of whom I speak. An old enemy of yours. The pale orc astride a white warg."
"Azog the defiler was destroyed. He was slain in battle long ago!"
"So you think his defiling days are done, do you?" The Goblin King sneered, turning to a goblin sitting on a pulley. "Send word to the Pale Orc. Tell him I have found his prize."
They were kept at the king's feet as goblins scattered to collect the mangler and bone breaker and others continued to pick them of their gear. Josephine tried to stay calm and optimistic, as optimistic as someone trapped in the goblin capital of the Misty Mountains could be. Everything was familiar so she had no reason to worry, except for their eardrums as the Goblin King began singing again.
She ducked and hid behind the dwarves, helped along as the goblins circled them. But the goblins were smaller, and even though her head was lost in the sea of dwarves, one noticed her from below. A hand closed around her ankle and wrenched it out from under her, dragging her out of the protective circle. They clawed her coat off and tore away at her mask, leaving her disguise on the ground as she was hefted into the air by four goblins who screeched excitedly.
"Look, your benevolence!" One yelled. "They brought something else with them!"
This was bad, very very bad, but they had time. There wasn't much left, Gandalf would come soon.
"Bring it here!" The king demanded.
They tossed her onto the ground at his feet, well out of reach of the dwarves.
She pushed herself up and stood in front of him, heart pounding but ready to buy for time. She'd argued with Saruman and Denethor and the damn Mouth of Sauron, she could handle stalling a goblin.
"You're not a dwarf." He said, bending down to level his face with her. One large finger hooked under her chin and he turned her face to the left and right to get a better look. He was blind as a bat after all.
"What gave it away? The smell or rather, lack thereof?" His breath made her want to gag but she smiled and pushed back the impulse.
"A woman!" The king exclaimed, sitting back on his throne with a lot more happiness than she was comfortable seeing.
"Last I checked." This wasn't a time to show off or play know it all like she had with the others in the past. She'd heard the stories of what happened to travelers caught by goblins, specifically ones like her, but she was pretty sure none of them had this kind of chance to talk their way out of it either. "I was hoping these dwarves might help me come into some gold of some sort but they're poor as church mice." She said with acted disappointment.
"Church mice?" The king inquired. "What are those?"
Turn of phrase translation errors."...The poorest kind."
The king smiled and bent down again. "Ah, a thief within a band of thieves are you?"
"A girl's gotta eat." She shrugged, recoiling internally at the sweet tone she took up. "I bet you put on quite the feast too."
He chuckled. "Oh we do, of dwarf and of daughters of men who try to use their wiles to escape what's coming to them." He finished in a growl, took her chin between two fingers and gave it a shake that went all the way down to her feet.
Then he took his forefinger and flicked her in the chest, making her stumble back several feet into a huddle of goblins who took hold of her.
"I've changed my mind! We'll start with her!" He bellowed out so that all the spectators along the walls could hear. The goblins laughed and jeered as her stomach sank.
They had her, four of them, by the arms and behind Bofur yelled her name.
Thorin was next, she looked over her shoulder as he was held back by the fray, behind him crude and spiked machines were making their way along the path.
"She has no value to you!" He yelled.
"Now that's where you are wrong, Thorin Oakenshield. If you won't talk, then perhaps we need to…hm…change your perspective?"
Claws dug into her arms, tearing into her tunic as she was shoved onto her knees and her arms were stretched out to the side. The crack of a whip broke the air over her head and she flinched. Behind her, out of view the dwarves yelled. In front of her the Goblin King jeered excitedly.
Gandalf was coming.
She'd be fine.
Gandalf would be there any moment.
He had to be.
A/N PLEASE READ.
The sequence that follows in the next chapter is where I'll give the graphic depictions of violence tag some use.
AKA trigger warning, torture/lashing cause goblins are shitty.
It's a short chapter because it only contains the more graphic portion of what's going to happen, and I wrote it in a way that if you want to skip it you can without losing the flow of the story or having to skim past it within a larger chapter.
I know at least one of you reads this with your kids and some of you might just not want to read something like that in general so feel free to skip to chapter 21 where it will pick up after the descriptions of torture are done.
And with that, carry on my wayward dudes.