First off, apologies for taking so very, very long in writing this. In my defence, I don't think any story has ever taken so much effort as this one. It has literally taken me months to get it done, so I hope it came out all right.

So, here is the second part to uno mega's request about what happened to the family Kate left behind. Enjoy!

Chapter 10

End of the Line

She sorted the letters in chronological order and then stopped to look at her handiwork. There were dozens of them, written late at night by the light of a campfire, in Rivendell, at Beorn's, in Lake-town, in the Mountain itself… The story of the quest for Erebor as witnessed by one Kate Andrews. Still, when her family got this, would they believe it to be real? Or would they think this was sent to them by some practical joker with a particularly unamusing sense of humour? What would she think if she was the recipient of such a parcel?

The Journal, Chapter 89: Letter to Home

Jacko never told his mother about the witness. That would only be rubbing salt in an open wound. Jeremy Grey had turned out to be utter rubbish and that was the end of it. Jacko forced himself to stop thinking about it. Of course that was easier said than done and in the weeks following the incident, his sister was firmly back on his mind again.

But there was a difference this time. Before now there had always been a small amount of hope that Kate was out there somewhere, alive, and they only needed to find her. Now there was just nothing. It was as good as certain that she was dead and gone.

'I almost wish they would just find a body,' Laura said over the phone when she called one day to ask for news. She must have known in advance that any news that may come was unlikely to be positive, but she had developed the habit to call every two weeks on a Sunday afternoon all the same. 'Does that make sense?'

'Yes,' Jacko replied. The same thought had gone through his head more than once in the weeks that had passed since the Jeremy Grey disaster. It felt wrong to mourn her when they were not one hundred per cent sure that she really was dead. Finding her body would at least bring them closure. If they found her, they could mourn her and start to move on. As long as she wasn't found, they kept hanging on to that little bit of hope, never entirely able to let go of it.

'It makes me feel rather bad about myself, I suppose,' Kate's friend said. 'It certainly doesn't make me a good friend.'

Then what kind of brother am I?

Jack ended the call with some vague excuse and stared around the room. The day was cold with winter fast approaching and the longer he was here, the more he thought it a very bad idea that he had come to stay with his mother for the weekend. He was supposedly here to help her paint the wall of the spare bedroom, but he was no fool. The main reason why he was here was to help her cope with Kate's disappearance, to drive away some of the loneliness. They'd done it before and it used to work, too.

Maybe it was the miserable weather that made him, made them, feel so depressed. Jacko had never been one to let his mood be decided by the weather, but there was a first time for everything.

But being on his own was less preferable than having a bit of company and so he made his way downstairs, having taken Laura's call in his own room so his mother wouldn't have to hear him say that there had been no news.

The living room was empty when he entered and he recalled her having said something about doing the laundry while he was on the phone. So much for company. Well, he had a book; he could read some until she returned.

Jacko was fairly certain though that when he had left his book on the table, there had not been a wooden box standing on top of it. And it didn't look like anything that fit in this room; his mother loved elegance and light colours. This box was made of dark wood, sturdy and heavy-looking with symbols carved into it that didn't look like anything Jacko recognised.

'Is this yours?' he asked when he heard his mother enter again.

She walked over and gave it a confused look. 'No, I don't think so. It wasn't there when I left.'

And it wasn't there when I left either.

He didn't like the feeling of this. When neither of them was there to keep an eye on it, the backdoor was locked, and no one could go through the front without a key anyway, unless they broke it open. And if someone had climbed in through one of the windows, which were also shut to prevent the heavy rain from getting in, Jacko would like to think he would have heard something. And he hadn't.

But then how did it get here? He was not in any hurry to start believing in magical explanations like the useless Mr Grey.

And he was not the only one very ill at ease with this; his mother looked out of sorts as well. It wasn't exactly the box itself that bothered Jacko; it looked harmless enough. It was how it had gotten here in the first place that he didn't like.

'I'll go and check the doors,' he announced. And the windows and all the mouse holes. There was something about this that set his teeth on edge, something that really shouldn't have happened, couldn't have happened.

Listen to you, Jacko Andrews, you're going as mad as Jeremy Grey.

He should have known in advance that he would find all doors locked and all windows closed. There was nowhere an intruder could have entered from, but yet there was the box, sitting on top of his book, where neither of them had put it. Neither of them had seen it in their lives.

And so a quarter of an hour later they were back where they started, staring at the box, wondering what the hell to do with it. It hadn't exploded yet, so Jacko took that to mean that it was unlikely to do so now.

We should open it.

'Maybe we should.' It was only when his mother replied that he realised he had spoken out loud.

He was the one to suggest it, so he should be the one to open it. It only made sense. And so he did. It wasn't locked and the lid came off easily. But whatever it was that he had expected to be inside – and he didn't even know what he was expecting in the first place – it wasn't the sheaf of folded papers he found himself looking at. It was just ordinary paper, the kind you could buy just about anywhere. All of it was folded he noticed when he hesitantly lifted all of it out of its box, and all of them were numbered, number one lying on top. Some of the papers looked like they had been burned in the corners, others showed signs of water damage.

What the hell is this?

'Letters,' his mother said. 'They look like letters.'

Letters in a box. Yes, he supposed they did look like that. His curiosity was starting to get the upper hand now that it turned out that there was nothing at all explosive in the box. Why would someone go through all that trouble to deliver a box with letters without being seen? It still did not make an ounce of sense and he supposed it wouldn't until he had opened one of those letters and read it.

'Shall we?' he asked.

His mother nodded. Really there was nothing else for it, and so Jacko took the piece of paper that had been labelled number one, and unfolded it.

Dear Mum, dear Jacko,

As I hardly know where to begin, I suppose that I could always start by telling you that I am not dead. Seeing as you are reading this letter and will have recognised my handwriting – at least I hope you have – that must be rather obvious to you, though. But I'm alive and in good health.

And I am sorry. I am really very sorry for not making more of an effort to give off a sign of life sooner than now. Truth be told, I do not know if there would even have been a possibility for that, but I feel guilty for not trying harder than I did. But at the time I was trying my hardest to come home to tell you in person that no serious harm had befallen me, and this alternative did not even occur to me. Nevertheless, I am so, so sorry for leaving you in the dark for so long. I would undo it if only I could, but alas, I am no wizard.

Speaking of wizards and impossibilities brings me to the next matter. You may be wanting to sit down for this bit. Insane though this might sound, I am in another world. Middle Earth, courtesy of that rather pathetic excuse for a wizard called Gandalf the Grey. Yes, that sounds crazy. Heaven knows that it felt like that for a good many weeks before it even started to feel real to me.

Yes, it sounds crazy, but please bear with me. I do not know how I can convince you that this is not the biggest nonsense you have ever heard in your life or that I am not a practical joker with the worst sense of humour ever born. It is just true. But hopefully you haven't forgotten what I am like, so give me a little credit, please.

Where to start? Well, at the beginning, I suppose. It all began with the brochure for a hiking trip organised by the company called Magical Trips. In hindsight I should probably have realised there was something off with that, but at the time I suspected no such thing. Anyway, I was waiting at the bus stop for the promised bus, which never came. Instead there was a note – and I am still not entirely sure how or when it got there – telling me that my transport wasn't coming, apologising for the inconvenience and concluding with the wish to see me soon. Next thing I knew there was a whirlwind kind of thing – that wizard has a slight love of theatrics, I am sure – and I was standing in the Shire, in Bilbo Baggins's house, with Gandalf telling me that he was pleased I could make it.

It turns out that without knowing I had been employed as advisor to the company of Thorin Oakenshield on the quest to retake Erebor from a bloody fire-breathing monster. Suffice it to say that I was hardly pleased with this turn of events, but there was not much choice at the time. Gandalf made it crystal clear he would only return me home as long as I played my part in his plan.

Like I said, it sounds completely insane. And if I were the recipient of such a letter, I might have sent the sender of it to the nearest mental asylum I could find without delay or hesitation. Except now I am the sender of such a letter and I am fairly certain I have not lost my wits along the road.

And I won't spend pages and pages trying to persuade you. First of all, I don't have all that much paper left – and I have been reliably informed that I am not to be let near parchment unless I want for disaster to hit – and secondly, most of the paper you'll find in this box is my account of what happened on the quest. I also included the memory card of my camera, so you can see and decide for yourself if I have turned into a lunatic over the past months.

Anyway, it is all over now. The dragon is dead, the Mountain reclaimed and the orcs defeated. The battle we know as the Battle of the Five Armies took place only yesterday and here I am, sitting in some tent in the middle of the camp writing this letter to you.

You may be wondering why I am writing all of this in a letter rather than to tell you in person. The reason for that is as simple as it is infuriating: I am not coming back. That too is thanks to a certain wizard. I intended to come back to let you know I was fine before living out the rest of my days here, but apparently that is out of the question because of the spell he used to get me here in the first place. A There and Back Again spell is what he called it, which, if I understood him correctly, means that I could go back home, but would then be stuck there.

And that is a problem, because leaving is becoming something of an impossibility. I have become too involved in all the politics around here. People believe certain things about me and if I were to leave… Well, let's just say that the consequences would be disastrous.

There is another reason, though. I am pregnant. And there is no way that this particular child would have a chance at a normal life in our world. I would explain it all, but I think the letters I am sending with this one would do a much better and coherent job of it than I could in this one. Suffice it to say that there are so many ties binding me to this world now that coming back for good is not an option anymore, no matter how much I regret it.

And I do regret it. I don't want this. Well, I do want to stay here, but not at this cost. The price just seems too high. You win some, you lose some. Isn't that the saying? I suppose that sums the situation up to perfection. And at the moment I would be losing more by coming back. I suppose that makes me look heartless, that giving you up seems the lesser evil. And I am so, so very sorry for doing this to you. I wish I could change it, but I just can't!

So I guess that this is goodbye. Duty calls. There are decisions to make, people to deal with and according to some, I am the person to talk to. I miss you. I wish I could see you again, but it is not to be.

I am sorry. I am so sorry.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Kate

P.S. Please take care of the cat; Laura hates him.

For a moment after he finished reading, Jacko could only stare at the letter. Impossible! This is impossible. Wizards, magics and fairy tales. There was no way on earth that Kate, no-nonsense Kate could ever be involved in any of that, provided that it was even real, a notion which he dismissed out of hand.

Something gave him pause, though. The handwriting was Kate's beyond the shadow of a doubt. He knew what her writing looked like, and this was it, right down to the way she crossed her t's and the strange things she did with her a's. He knew that writing, would know it anywhere. It had been Kate who wrote this. And the style, the phrasing, the words she used, that was Kate as well. Her writing style closely resembled the way in which she spoke, especially when it wasn't formal writing. He could almost hear the words coming from her mouth as they were written.

Other than that, the whole idea remained utterly ridiculous. He speed-read the letter again, determined to find something that would prove this thing a fake, and instead found the exact opposite. The paragraph detailing her abduction…

'No,' he whispered.

Her account matched Jeremy Grey's perfectly, including the whole whirlwind nonsense. Except now he was not all that certain that it even was nonsense. From one moment to the next this letter had gone from a fake to a frightening possibility that it might just be real. He had already acknowledged that Kate had written this, and he could not think of one reason why his twin would make up something so strange unless she was forced. And if she was forced, why not choose something people might actually believe?

'That can't be right,' his mother said, but she was pale. 'Jacko, this has to be nonsense, a practical joker of some kind.' There was a pleading tone to her voice, begging him to reassure her that really this was just a joke, that no one would ever do this. It was also an assurance he could not give her.

'It isn't.' God help him, it wasn't. And so much for his plan to spare his mother Jeremy Grey's account. Of course he could have forged the letters in order to lend some credibility to his story, but how then would he have gotten them written in her own hand and how in the blazes would he have ever smuggled them inside here? He didn't even know where they lived!

No, the letters did not seem to be fake, but still, the explanation was too ludicrous for consideration. Magic and wizards and elves and dwarves and stories that were real. To be honest, that sounded like the concept for some very cheesy kind of book, and that was not the nonsense Kate liked to indulge in as far as he was aware.

'The other letters,' he said. 'What is in them?'

His instinct urged him to hand these to the police and let them do with them what they could in order to discover what really happened to Kate and why her abductor thought it such a good idea to torment them like this.

But what would he tell them? That someone was playing some sick joke by making Kate write a letter like that, letters like that. Because it was plural, a whole collection of letters in her hand. Whoever had her, they must be insane, but also dangerous. Wasn't that the kind of thing that mentally deranged lunatics did?

And deranged lunatics might even go as far as to make the whole thing up, because if the intended recipient did believe what was in them, then what use would there be in searching? There would be no coming back from that. And they would have their way with Kate uninterrupted.

The thought alone set Jacko's blood to boiling.

But his hand seemed to have gained something of a will of its own, creeping towards the letter now lying on top. The paper was crumpled, as if it had been crushed a couple of times and it certainly had been folded and unfolded numerous times. But the writing was legible and unmistakable Kate's.

Two weeks. It has been two weeks. If this was a normal holiday, I would have been back home now, but of course this is hardly a normal holiday. Come to think of it, this is not even much of a holiday either. This is one crazy roller coaster ride in a world that should be fictional with people that should be just as fictional. Instead it is all so real and I don't suppose anyone will call me out on it if I admit to a piece of paper that I am dead scared of it.

The fact that I am even writing this makes it feel as though I am admitting to myself that I will not be back home anytime soon. In the back of my head I think I have known that all along, but it is quite another thing to have it confirmed.

How is this even my life?

The rest of the letter was spent detailing what had led her to that point. He knew the story – because it had to be a story; such a thing could never be real – up to the point of her abduction and her new "job" as advisor, but that letter appeared to have been written in haste, whereas in this one she seemed to have taken her time writing it and detailing what had happened to her. She mentioned arriving at Bilbo Baggins's house – of all people – and what had transpired there.

'Impossible,' he whispered, but there was a pleading quality to his voice now as well. What was this madness? His thoughts echoed Kate's perfectly. How is this even my life?

The letters that followed were all written in true Kate-style. In her writings she always was annoyingly precise and there were entirely too many details in these missives, things one only would notice when one was there and Kate had never been cut out to be a liar. Even in writing she could not be false without him noticing.

But she could not possibly be telling the truth. But there were details and a consistent line running through the letters. Who she liked – not many and she was close to almost none – who she disliked – Thorin and Gandalf – the landscapes she saw, routines in camp at nightfall… Could one even make this up? It was just that he could not see how this account matched the first letter that he read. Kate seemed to have no intention to stay where she was from what he'd read.

I am not sure yet, but I think I may have sold Thorin a little short. That dwarf seems to have no limits when it comes to his company. That is the only sensible explanation for us leading trolls on a merry hunt which was bound to get us caught I can think of. Of course the only sort of thanks I got for risking my neck was the gift of a sword he found in a troll hoard and a warning not to hurt myself with it. Which is pretty rich coming from one whose bright idea it was to let ourselves be chased by trolls, if you ask me.

Change of heart there. Jacko knew the book, not as well as his sister, but he knew it. Unlike Kate he didn't have much patience for fiction, though. Books should have useful information in them if they were to hold his interest. If he wanted fiction, he would watch a movie. Plenty of those about and more visual, just how he liked it. He didn't need his own imagination to fill in what characters looked and sounded like. So he had seen the movies – the two that were out so far – so he remembered a part where trolls were involved, but he was fairly sure that the trolls chasing ponies and their riders had not been part of the story as he knew it.

I am congratulating myself on having made it to Rivendell alive and in one piece, although not quite that unscathed. Just my luck to trip over my own feet – in a bloody rabbit hole of all things! – and knock myself and Ori down just as the warg leapt at us. Of course it would have been too much to ask that it would have missed me altogether. It scratched my shoulder and it is hurting like damnation, but I am quite sure that it does not justify the scene Dori is – still! – causing over it. I am starting to wonder which is worse: death by vicious orc or death by fussing dwarf?

The elves are just as quick to fuss over it as he is, though, but they do it differently. And I am not sure what to make of them quite yet. They sort of serenaded us when we entered the valley – to which I may or may not have sung a less than flattering response – but otherwise they are so serene and unearthly that you just can't help but feel uncomfortable around them. The way I see it, they have only three moods: they are either wise and serious, serene and smiling or happy and silly. And to be honest, the fact that they have deluded themselves into thinking that Thorin and I are married does not speak for their intelligence much. We bicker like an old married couple, that much is true, I suspect, but that is where it ends. And I am perfectly happy to keep it that way, thank you very much.

Fortunately we'll be leaving tomorrow. I suppose it sounds strange to say that I'm not really sad to leave Rivendell so soon already. It was nice being here and it was even nicer to be able to have some time to just sit back and do nothing, but some of these elves are really getting on my nerves, not to mention that I am more than glad to drop this whole marriage act. I'm pretty much convinced now that the elves have had more wine than healthy. How else could one come to the conclusion Thorin and I would be some kind of dream couple, never mind an "excellent team," as Gandalf would have them believe?

But that gave Jacko pause. Thorin. That was the one she was marrying? What did she think this was? A fairy-tale of some kind? That could hardly be right. Not that she seemed to like him much at this point, but it was hinted at.

And it only became more obvious when her account went on. She did not often mention it again, except to complain when the Great Goblin apparently suffered from the same delusions the elves had – Is he out of his mind? Oh, wait, stupid question, of course he is! – but there were other signs. All of a sudden he appeared in her reports a lot more than he did before. There was even the occasional mention of we in relation to something the two of them did. And Kate did not even seem to realise what was going on as she wrote it. If this was a forgery, then it was a damned good one.

All thoughts of forgery went right out of his mind though when he happened upon a drawing folded into a letter of Kate's that dealt with their visit at Beorn's. Apparently this is how our interactions look to people who aren't us, she'd written underneath a drawing of herself and someone who was presumably Thorin. He had her grabbed by her wrist, Kate half-turned away from him as though she had meant to walk away and he had held her back. She was smiling, that teasing smile he knew so well, and he was looking solemn, unamused, but certainly concerned. Concerned about her, given where his gaze was directed. That made him feel slightly queasy.

How good could a fake be? There had to be a limit to that, hadn't there? But he wasn't sure he was quite ready to believe in the existence of Middle Earth and the characters that inhabited it. Damn it, Kate, what have you gotten yourself involved in?

Surreal. That was what this was. He worked his way through her letters and passed them on to his mother when he was done, but it felt like it was not really him reading it all. He read about her connection to Dori, Nori and Ori, about her adventures in Mirkwood, about an elf called Elvaethor, about Lake-town, the search for an elusive side-door, the slaying of the dragon and the lead-up to the Battle of the Five Armies. But throughout there were interactions with Thorin and a budding relationship that she seemed to become more and more aware of as time progressed. She did not say much about it, even in her letters, but he knew his sister well enough to read between lines. By the time they had arrived at the Lonely Mountain, the two of them were a couple.

Eventually, there was only one letter left.

Dear mum, dear Jacko,

Well, here we are then, at the end of the story. This is going to be my last letter, well, for you to read. As I am writing this, I am still in the process of struggling with the letter you will have read first, if all goes well. But I rather think I owe you at least something of a conclusion to this account of events. It'd be like writing a manuscript and writing "the end" after the second to last chapter otherwise.

So, here goes. As you may have guessed, the battle was won. That is one of the most important things, I suppose, but the cost was high. You already know I was not supposed to fight and to that end I stayed behind with Bilbo and Lufur, only to realise that we had stupidly forgotten to close the side door. And with Nói being the black-hearted bastard traitor that he is, the chances of that door being secret were absolutely non-existent. So why I was even all that surprised to find the orcs already inside when we arrived to contain the damage, I'll never know.

Suffice it to say that it was one hell of a fight and it turned out that Bilbo was once again the great hero – story of this quest, if you ask me – by cutting our makeshift ladder and sending the orcs flying down the mountainside. The rest of the orcs were taken care of by us and Elvaethor and Tauriel. Where they came from and how they knew they were needed, heaven only knows, but they were a tremendous help. To cut a long story short, the orcs took collective flying lessons – landing lessons not included in the price – and we retreated into the Mountain. And really, who needs keys when a hairpin will do the job as well?

Of course, that was when Tauriel dropped her own bomb on me. Apparently I'm pregnant. Yeah, that kind of took me by surprise as well. To be honest, I've had better things on my mind than thinking about that, which must be why I've missed all the signs. And I didn't even think it was possible to begin with. Turns out, it's not the first time something like this has ever happened, according to Elvaethor. A certain Dari and Inga have done something similar centuries ago – and had offspring as well – but I had never heard of the story. I feel a little better for knowing Thorin didn't have a clue what he was talking about either.

As you may have guessed, Thorin lives. So does most of our company. There are some still unaccounted for and I know that Fíli is busy leading the chase of the orcs. Their forces have scattered entirely and are on the run. They won't be coming back anytime soon. Would that the same could be said for Thranduil and Erland, but I'm doubting it.

We lost Kíli. We can blame Bolg for that – believe me, I do blame him quite a lot – but fortunately he is dead. Apparently Thorin saw it all happening right in front of his very eyes. If truth be told, I'm grateful for the fact I did not have to witness it. There is only so much I can take.

And there are so many dead or injured. Not many that I know, that's true, but too many all the same. Balin is injured, word is that Bofur and Nori have been hurt as well and Ori has lost a hand in defence of Thorin. Of course Thorin is quick to take the blame in addition to the wounds he's already nursing. Some bloody nuisance of an orc took a sword to his right knee and although he doesn't say so – because that would be showing weakness and heaven forbid that should happen – he's clearly in pain. Which so far hasn't stopped him from going walkabout when the mood strikes him.

But he is not yet recovered enough to talk with his lords. Nope, that thankless task has fallen to me – okay, admittedly I sort of volunteered – and it is not something I'd recommend. Dwarves can be a stubborn and unyielding lot and Blackbeard is by far the worst of it. Honestly, if today's proceedings are defining for the years to come, I fear for my sanity.

But well, I've made my choice, so it's no good whining about it now, is it? Not that I could ever imagine that this was where I would end up, and I am not certain it is something I am entirely happy with either. Under the circumstances, it is the best option available, though, harsh though that may sound. There is no way to do this right for the full hundred per cent. Whichever way I turn, someone will get hurt. As stupid as this sounds, my current course at least ensures that as few as possible are hurt. I'm containing the damage, I think, not preventing it, not by any stretch of the imagination.

I wish I could at least could give you the assurance that I'll write, but with Gandalf not always readily available and his objections to not being a glorified messenger, I can make no such claim.

I love you to bits and I will miss you every day.

All my love,

Kate

Saying goodbye. That was what she was doing. She was telling them goodbye, because she would never see them again. This was the end. The end of months of uncertainty, but also the end of the search. What point would there be in searching out someone who had gone from this world? There was none.

He stopped himself there. He was not really about to accept that this was reality, was he? It couldn't be. Every ounce of common sense dictated that he treated this as nonsense. There was no such thing as stories being real, not in this world. Stories were just that. They weren't real. They could not be.

But then why did Kate's letters sound so truthful?

He pulled his mobile out of his pocket and dialled a by now well-known number. If he was to make any sense of this, an extra pair of eyes couldn't hurt. Goodness knew he was at his wit's end.

He was in luck; the phone was answered after the second ring. 'John Andrews.'

'Hi, it's Jacko,' he said. He glanced at the letters. 'Would you mind coming over? There may be news about Kate.'

If this had been any other situation, Jacko might have laughed at the baffled expression on his father's face. Today however was not such a day. He still could not quite escape the notion that they were victims of a sick joke and Jacko had suffered more than his fair share of them already.

'Have you had them tested for fingerprints?' His father asked when he had read the last one. On inspection the box had turned out to contain the memory card to Kate's camera and another two notes in addition to the letters they had already read. One was a very short and formal note written by this supposed Thorin, expressing his apologies for not returning Kate to them and his vow that she would be well looked after for as long as he drew breath. Jacko might have felt some measure of relief at that if he had been convinced that it was actually real. So far, he wasn't. The second note had been infinitely more informal and was signed by someone who called himself Nori. Basically, his note ran along the same lines as Thorin, though the wording was different, but ended with the assurance that they needn't worry about Kate. (Not to worry. We'll look after her. Dori will fuss over her till he drops, Ori will make sure she won't make a fool out of herself and I'll do my bit to keep her spirits up. Between the three of us, what could possibly go wrong, eh?) It was the height of insanity.

'Not yet,' his mother said. It could be called a miracle she was even considering talking to her former husband, never mind that she was actually doing it. If that was not testimony to how serious the matter was, Jacko wouldn't know what was.

'I'll have Miles look into it,' he said. 'He has the contacts to have it checked out discreetly.' It rankled that he was making decisions as if he had a right to. They may be starting to mend fences, but that didn't mean everything was well yet and Jacko was reluctant to put up with his father's attitude. John Andrews seemed to have taken their sort-of reconciliation outside Mr Grey's house as a sign that he was at liberty to waltz back into their lives. He wasn't quite ready for that, not yet anyway.

Still, he bit his tongue and kept his silence. He had called him here to help, to offer insights, so he shouldn't start complaining now that his father was doing what he had come for. Not that Jacko thought the fingerprints test would come up with anything useful, but it was worth a shot. It might be their best shot.

'Good,' he said. It was as much of his seal of approval as he was likely to give. 'What do you make of the letters?'

John Andrews shook his head. 'They sound genuine.'

He wasn't buying into this, was he? 'But they can't be.' In his head can't be sounded suspiciously like please, don't let them be. 'There is no such thing as Middle Earth. And Kate is too practical to believe in it.' Unless she had found out that it actually was real. But that would be absurd.

In the end it all came back to that. It was far too absurd to be real. And Kate was just about the last person on earth to ever lose it and start believing in impossible things. And if a kidnapper wanted to get the police off his back, then he would have to come up with something more believable. So why go for this approach? None of it added up.

Unless it was real. Of course, this notion was followed immediately that it could not possible be real at all. It was a circle from which there was no escape.

His father nodded, but the gesture lacked certainty. Not surprising, since he hardly knew what Kate had been like in the past couple of years. All contact had been severed. He wondered what she would make of his involvement in the search for her. Like as not, she would want him to stay as far away from it as possible. Well, Jacko had no such reservations. In fact, he very much wanted to hear her rant about it, because that would mean that she was actually alive enough to do so.

Still, there was something to be said for his father's point of view as well. They did sound genuine. And if the very notion had not been so ridiculous, Jacko would have believed them in a heartbeat. The wording was all Kate, the handwriting was hers, the way she viewed the world and people around her was uniquely hers too.

And then there were the letters themselves. Much of the paper smelled of smoke and a good deal of the missives were suffering from water damage. Kate chalked it up to what she called the Mirkwood inferno and leaking barrel respectively. The oldest letters were in worst shape. Only the last couple of letters looked relatively unharmed. Well, the last and the very first, which she claimed she had written last. Even from looking at them, one could tell that they had taken months in the writing.

'Have you taken a look at the memory card yet?' his father asked.

Jacko shook his head. 'We've waited till you were here.' Part of him wanted to desperately know what was on it, whilst another part didn't want to know at all. It didn't help that he had absolutely no idea what to make of it. Photographs could be forged, manipulated. Why should he believe it?

Still, he fetched his laptop and opened the files. The card was full. There was barely room left for one more photograph and that while Kate was not exactly an enthusiastic photographer. She made pictures during holidays, but only ever the bare minimum. This was not the bare minimum.

The first fifty pictures or so were all of landscapes. Beautiful landscapes to be sure, but the kind of sights that could not be found close by. She must have been really far away. And she must have been at liberty to take photographs. Kidnappers generally didn't allow such things, did they?

It was only after the landscapes that pictures of people started to appear. Dwarves, his mind supplied, but he dismissed that idea too. He only thought that because he had read those letters. Nevertheless the fact remained that the people were all very hairy and rather bearded, not to mention short. There was a series of pictures that must have been taken on the same day. There was a large house in the background, but the pictures appeared to be made in a garden of some kind.

And then there was a video.

'Video?' His mother was the first to frown at the screen in confusion.

'Apparently,' he said, hitting the play-button.

It turned out to be a fairly short one and there wasn't much to be seen, just a patch of grass and the boots of the one holding the camera.

'That's the one,' Kate's voice said. It wasn't exactly high quality – the video had a grainy quality to it and the voices sounded like they came through a tin can – but it was unmistakably her. And a bittersweet sound it was too. 'Now, hold it steady, and don't press that…' The video ended abruptly.

'That was her.' His mother sounded like she was in shock.

So, for that matter, was Jacko. Months and months he had longed to hear that voice and there it was. But it wasn't in the way he wanted to hear it. He wanted her here, safely back from whatever ordeal she had gone through. Was that really too much to ask?

His father meanwhile had clicked on the play-button of the next video.

'Now, don't press that button until you want to finish the video,' Kate's voice came again. 'Best get your finger away from it, just in case. Now, hold it steady and move it…' Whoever it was that was holding the camera did so very fast. For a moment, Jacko only saw a blur of greens before it settled on his sister's face. And that was a shock in and out of itself, another thing he had hoped to see for so long and once again he got his wish not quite in the way that he wanted. 'Well, not that fast. You'll get seasick watching that.' She rolled her eyes in exasperation at the cameraman.

It was Kate, no doubt about that. He could be relied upon to recognise his own sister's face when he came upon it, but there were differences as well. Chief amongst them was the wound that crossed her face from chin to forehead. And it was not such an old wound, he guessed. It had scabbed over, but it still looked too red, too fierce. He remembered reading something in the letters about having been whipped across the face by goblins. That could explain her injury, if he only bought that explanation.

She appeared thinner too, as if she hadn't been eating well, and her skin colour betrayed that she had spent considerable time in the sun. Well, that was something to be grateful for at least. At least she wasn't kept in some dark hole underground.

'What, like this?' a male voice asked. The tone betrayed enthusiasm and excitement. The camera was moved again, considerably slower this time.

'Yes, Kíli, like that,' Kate said.

'That is quite the thing you have there,' another voice said and the next moment a grey-haired fellow showed up next to Kate, giving the camera an interested look. 'One might almost call it magic.'

Kate snorted. 'It isn't. It's just a camera. Kíli, get your finger away from that…'

The video ended.

What was this? If he had been a less practical sort, he might have said magic. It all seemed real, but the fact remained that it couldn't be. Yet everything he knew about his sister seemed to correspond with what he had seen and read. There was a bit of doubt wriggling its way into the back of his mind. What if?

'That's a damned good forgery.' His father was rubbing his chin, leaning back in his chair. He too seemed to have been thoroughly startled by what he had seen.

'Is it?' he heard himself ask, wondering why he was even saying that. He could not truly start to entertain the notion that this was real, could he? But then, what other explanation was there for all of this? If Kate had been kidnapped, as they had thought, then what was all of this good for? It served no purpose. It was simply too insane to believe.

Kate herself had admitted in her letter that she would not have bought any of this had she not seen it all for herself. At the same time she had written that she would not spend pages to convince them. She had left the choice whether or not to believe up to them, but she wanted them to believe her.

'You cannot think…?' John Andrews looked at him, no, stared at him.

'What else am I supposed to think?' he shot back. The more his views were attacked, the more he wanted to defend them, no matter how many doubts he had about them in the privacy of his own mind. And he was not even sure that his doubts were based on logic rather than his own wishes. How had this even happened? 'There are no rational explanations for this.' And then there was that rather unpleasant realisation about Mr Grey. 'And it fits with what we heard from Mr Grey.' Heaven forbid. The man was clearly a bit addle-brained, but why expose himself to such ridicule unless it was true?

'Let's see what else is on the card.' His mother was being the diplomatic one in this, heading them off before they could get into an argument. And Jacko wanted to provoke an argument. He needed to vent his frustration and confusion in some way and Kate's preferred method of shouting loud enough to bring down the roof suddenly seemed as good a method as any.

Still, he gave in with a curt nod.

There were more photographs. Kate was in some of them, suggesting that this Kíli had been given free access to her camera. He had made another video in which he showed them round the house, with Kate giving instructions in the background. Beorn's house they called it. What followed was a short video in which Kate was trained with a sword, which ended abruptly when her weapon was knocked out of her hand and the cameraman had to duck in order to avoid a full-on collision.

It was evidence upon evidence that this was exactly what it appeared to be. Dread was settling in his stomach. If this was real – the if was still very present in his mind – then they were never going to see Kate again. Of course, the idea had presented itself over the past couple of months, but this would make it final, would end all the hope they had. She was gone, for good.

There was another video. By now it felt like they were rubbing salt in open wounds and he was torn between sitting and watching and throwing the laptop out of the window. It was just too much.

In the end it was the realisation that this was Kate's final gift to them that made him stay where he was. Bloody hell, Kate, what have you gotten yourself involved in?

The video was not of any better quality than any of the ones they had already watched. In fact, the quality was probably worse. Well, the lack of light in the house may have something to do with that as well. But when he did get used to it, he could make out people and furniture. The focus of the one manning the camera seemed to be two people sitting on the ground a short distance away, a piece of paper or parchment between them. One of them was Kate, the other he thought was Thorin. They were conversing, studying the thing between them. He could only hear voices, not words. But it was the body language that really got his attention. They seemed relaxed, at ease with the presence of the other. Kate looked as if she belonged there and it stung.

'Give that here, you're doing it wrong,' a voice nearer by said.

'Lay off, Fíli, I am getting the hang of this,' someone else responded.

'Thorin is going to kill you for spying on him like that,' the first one, Fíli, predicted.

'He's too busy.' The other dismissed that out of hand. 'Maker preserve us, how long do they need to get together? They are taking forever!'

This remark was met by laughter. 'Afraid you'll lose your coin to Nori?'

'Nah, I've got till Durin's day. Plenty of time.' The camera shook a little. 'I wished they'd hurry up, though. It's almost painful to watch.'

That was the end of it.

And the end of Jacko's patience as well. He shoved his chair back and left the room. He wanted to believe that it was a joke, a very sick kind of joke, but there was only so much one could see before the very foundations of that assumption were shaken to the core. And now it was all starting to come crumbling down, his denial lying in shatters at his feet.

I almost wish they would just find a body, Laura had confessed. Except there would never be a body, would there? Even when she died, hopefully of old age sometime in the very distant future, they would bury her there. In the meantime, she might as well have been dead to the family she left behind in this world. She was absent and would never be coming back. It all amounted to the same thing, didn't it?

'Damn it, Kate. What have you done?'

Jacko knew that his parents didn't want to believe what they had been told. His father had left shortly after Jacko himself had left the room, taking some of the letters with him for that private detective to scrutinise. He seemed determined to find something, although his son was quite convinced there would not be anything.

He could not even quite say why he thought that. Maybe he had seen too much proof that what she claimed was real – no matter how absurd that idea was in and out of itself – or maybe he was just too tired to search for an alternative explanation. Either way, the arrival of the box had marked something. They had reached the end of the line. They had exhausted all their possibilities and there was nothing to be done about it now. They had searched, hoped and followed up clues, to no avail. Kate was gone and she would not be coming back.

And so naturally the quest for fingerprints came to nothing. They found Kate's prints and several belonging to Jacko, his father and his mother. Then there were a couple that could not be matched. They were big prints, Patrick Miles had reported, fingerprints that could only have been made by large hands. Other than that, there was not much that could be learned from them at all.

And so their last lead had led to a dead end.

'But I guess I already knew that,' he admitted to a picture of Kate he had in his bedroom. He liked that one. It had been taken a couple of years ago during a holiday in France. Things had been relatively simple then, certainly in comparison to the mess they were in now. 'You were never one for doing things the way they were supposed to, were you? But good grief, did you have to go and get yourself stuck in a fictional world?'

It had to be the truth. He had gone through all the options in his head over and over again and not one of his explanations had provided a satisfactory answer for all the facts. There were always holes, things that could not logically be explained. The only one that made any sense was the explanation Kate herself had provided.

And it left him feeling empty, useless, powerless. At least before the letters had arrived, he had been able to sustain the belief that he was doing something to get her back, but even that was now gone, leaving him without purpose. There was nothing left to strive for. There was only acceptance to achieve. And Jacko found that acceptance had yet to grace him with its presence.

'You left us.' It felt better now that he could speak it. The anger had been simmering inside since he had started to realise that Kate's continued absence was of her own making. Her disappearance was not her own work, but this was. She had made a conscious choice to not come back. That couldn't not hurt. 'You go on ahead to make a new life, but we don't get a choice in the matter at all, do we? You run off with a king and here we are, worrying about you.'

He wasn't being entirely fair. He had seen the longing for home in her letters, her frustration with the wizard's refusal to let her go back, but it hadn't been enough, had it? In the end she had chosen that world, that life. And he did not begrudge her happiness, but it shouldn't have to be like this. They had worried so much over her, feared her dead and now there was that box with letters and a memory card with photographs. She was alive, she was well and she was never coming back.

He snorted. 'And I can take it, you know, but how could you do that to our mother? She's devastated. She only wants you back. Don't you think she's been through enough? She's been crying off and on and trying not to. Would it really be that bad to come back to us? Were you so unhappy here that you felt it necessary to escape to another world?'

Here I am, talking to a photograph, he thought. It was a good thing there was nobody else with him or they would have declared him mad. And it felt better to get it off his chest, all the anger and sadness and fear. Because it was one thing fearing that nothing would ever be as it was, but it was quite another knowing it.

Through it all, the photograph remained silent.

Acceptance did not come easy and it did not come quickly. It came gradually, with weeks and months and years. Even so, the pain only dulled. It was never truly absent. It was, Jacko reflected one day, like missing a tooth. There were times when he could not think about it, but eventually he would stick his tongue in the hole it left behind and be reminded once again. Kate became a cold case. They never told the police there was no hope at all. How could they? They'd be seen as insane. Goodness knew that it still sounded insane to his ears and he was fairly convinced that it had happened as Kate claimed.

And it was easier than he thought to not tell people. After all, people don't like talking about missing persons, especially when they have been missing for ages. They were all too afraid to ask, claiming they would not want to put their finger on the sore spot, but really because they didn't know what to do with the reactions they might get.

In time, the anger and resentment subsided. They were still there, but like the pain, they dulled. Jane knew, of course she knew. She had a right to, although she had no easier time of it coming to terms with the bizarre reality of it.

There were still days when he wondered how Kate got on, if she ever regretted choosing as she did, but for most part she had vanished out of his life, taking the place of the sister long since gone, a picture of her kept on the mantelpiece in remembrance. His son asked about her once and he had told him the truth, that his aunt had gone missing a couple of years before he had been born. Archie had taken it in his stride and resumed whatever game he was playing at the time. It did not make much of an impact. That's all she is to us now, a memory.

Even so, sometimes, when he had the house to himself, he would catch himself out on talking to her picture, as if she could hear him. 'I do wonder if you're happy now,' he said one day. 'If your life is everything you thought it to be. Well, I'm fairly certain you've got a kid of your own, older than my Archie, that's for sure. Other than that, we don't know anything, do we?'

Maybe someone had heard him. Otherwise it would be one hell of a coincidence that that box was standing on the coffee table all of a sudden. It was of a similar make as the one that had suddenly appeared in his mother's living room years previous: heavy, sturdy and with strange symbols all over.

'You did it again,' he said, somewhat surprised and somewhat in awe. 'Bloody hell, Kate.'

True to expectations, when he opened the box, he found a pile of letters, all of them written on parchment and all of them numbered. He remembered a comment she had made about her skills with that particular material and thought that her penmanship must have improved with the years. A strange thing to think perhaps when faced with the first real news in seven years. A sign maybe of how much it had dulled. He wasn't exactly jumping for joy, but he did find that there was a smile tugging at his lips.

When he unfolded the first letter, he found a drawing inside. Kate was at the centre of it, with her husband next to her. A young boy was perched on her lap and another child, a baby, was in Thorin's arms. Next to him was another boy. Three children.

'You wasted no time, did you?' he muttered before turning his attention to the letter itself.

Dearest mum, dearest Jacko,

As you can see, I have managed to beg, plead and blackmail Gandalf into being my messenger one more time. It took considerable effort, but he yielded in the end and so here we are at last.

And I hardly know where to begin, because there is so much to tell you…

Jacko put the letter down, picked up the phone and dialled a very familiar number. 'Mum,' he said when the phone was answered. 'I have something here that you will want to see…'

I couldn't resist ending it on a sort of positive note. The next little story will certainly be something happier.

Thank you for reading and, as always, I would appreciate a review if you have a moment; I'd very much like to know what you thought about this chapter. And, of course, suggestions are more than welcome as well.