Chapter 50
Healing Part 1: Stitches
Lesson two: not every broken thing can be mended. We'd like to think so, don't we, that no matter how bad it gets, in the end everyone will be whole and happy again. Stories dictate it and somehow it becomes something we expect out of real life too. Because everything and everyone healing and being whole again is part and parcel of the premise of happily ever after that we all love to buy into.
The Book, Epilogue: Decision Time
Healing takes many shapes, Thoren finds after the war. The wounds the Enemy dealt them are many and varied and most of them are not easily healed. Thoren can attest to that, because many things seem to take longer for him than they do others. That he knows this at all is because Duria seems to take an interest.
And interest is probably not quite the right word.
'How many hours have you slept?'
'I have not kept a record.' Thoren has a mountain of paperwork to deal with, but not a mountain so great that it will hide him from his sister's wrath. He ought to be pleased that she is reverting back to more of her normal self these past few weeks, but given that he has become the sole focus of her concern, he cannot feel glad.
'Do you eat well?' she continues as though he hasn't spoken at all.
'You do realise it would be more appropriate to ask these questions of my pregnant wife, do you not?'
Not that Tauriel would be more pleased to have Duria laying into her than Thoren is, but at least it would make more sense.
She gives him a look so pointed that by rights it should have run him through. 'It is not your pregnant wife that looks as though she is about to fall ill.'
It's somewhat harder to argue with that, and well he knows it. There's a reason he avoids his reflection in the mirror these days. Truth be told, his wounds heal slow. His knee keeps on giving him trouble and some of the wounds twinge and pull when he moves. No matter how many times Thráin tells him that he should give it time, the fact remains that it's been months since the war ended and yet his progress remains undoubtedly slow.
His answer is too long in coming, so Duria pounces on it like a starving warg. 'That's what I mean,' she says heatedly. 'You're not well!' He's never claimed otherwise. 'Why not give some of your load to Cathy? She's performed ably before.'
'Cathy has her craft and her daughter to keep her occupied.' And he is not so infirm that he cannot do this. It is bad enough that he barely has the strength to work in the forges. 'Speaking of which, have you no craft of your own to devote yourself to? Aren't there some scholars looking about forlornly for someone to harangue them?'
Duria bristles. 'That's not what I do!'
'Isn't it? I wouldn't know, given that I do not usually stick my nose in your work. As I would appreciate you keeping yours out of mine.' On days like these it's an effort to remind himself that he likes his sister, a very great effort. 'I'll be off to my rest all the quicker if you leave me to get on with this, Duria. Go find some scholars to pester.'
Of course now he's made her so angry that she storms out of his study in a huff. It would please him more if he wasn't so sure she'll be back the next day with equal fervour.
Healing, Thráin discovers, is mending that which is broken. And so much has been broken during his year long absence that he is not quite sure where to start. Esgaroth and Dale are both gone. The only things left in their place are loose stones and orc filth. The Mountain itself has taken a beating, but it still stands, which is more than can be said for anything within a fifty mile radius of it.
The area around his homeland is supposed to be green and fertile. It's not supposed to be bare and bleak. It's supposed to be bustling with life, not empty and deserted. The orcs have razed all that stood so much as an inch from the ground and instead have littered the land with piles of their own filth.
He has never known Smaug's desolation, but he thinks he can picture it now.
Worse than that is the brokenness of the people still sheltering within Erebor's walls. They have survived, are still surviving, but one can hardly call it living. The food supply is precarious – and too heavily reliant on Lord Dáin, whom Thráin never liked before the war and likes even less now – and everywhere he looks he sees people who have been marked by war, either through wounds and loss of limbs or the weight of grief that hangs like a cloud over everything and everyone. Aye, there's relief and some gladness, but they come in subdued tones and one has to look hard for them.
For our victory to be complete, we must live and thrive, not just survive. If there is one thing he has learned from the war, it is this. For some time he has been side-tracked, thinking about the places that have yet to be reclaimed and cleansed, but his return to Erebor has made it painfully clear that the process begins at home.
It's good to have an aim, so he throws himself at the problems with all of his recovered strength. He's no good at mending people – he'll happily leave that to the healers – so he heads to the forges to put his craft to good use. He makes tools for farmers, shoes for horses, little pieces that Víli and Nes use in their contraptions and everything in between. It is a relief to be able to create for life instead of death and destruction. They've not been at war long, all things told – nothing like the people of Gondor, who have borne that burden for long years – but the war has been brutal, savage and demoralising, so it feels like it has been much longer.
'Do you stop to eat and sleep?' Nes asks him one day.
Thráin scoffs. 'Of course I do.' Not in the least because Duria will nag in that vexing way of hers if he doesn't. 'Do you? I've heard you and Víli are doing a roaring trade these days. Your order is on the shelf, by the way.'
Nes picks it up and puts it into her bag. 'Thank you. And to answer your question, we have taken on a few apprentices to help us get the work done.' She grins in a way that is just a little cheeky. 'Something you haven't, by the looks of things.'
'Apprentices deserve a master who's available for years on end,' Thráin points out. And he will not, cannot, ever be that. Besides, he would not be the most patient of teachers.
'Aye, I've heard you have plans to save the world one orc slaying at a time.'
'Someone must.' It might as well be him.
'So humble,' Nes comments with a grin.
It makes him laugh too. He puts his tools away and sits down. He may as well take a break. Nes plants herself beside him and passes over part of her meal. It's a pie still warm from the oven.
'That's yours,' Thráin points out.
'I brought to share,' Nes counters. 'There's some folks who think you don't care for yourself as you ought.'
If she means that he may have lost sight of things that are not related to his craft, she is both right and wrong. Right, because he has filled his days with little else and wrong, because he has tried to fill his evenings with company. There is nothing quite like knowing one could have lost folk for motivating a body for spending time with them. He has to check on Thoren's recovery, dote on his baby niece and make sure that Elvaethor does not actually move his bed into the healing rooms. The only one of his kin he has actively avoided is Duria, and she hunts him down anyway.
'I see plenty of folk,' he says. 'And you most days once or twice.'
'Apparently folk think you like me better than Duria.'
'That is not hard.' Thráin is not sure what happened to her during the war – Duria certainly does not tell – but she has come out of it even more overbearing and meddlesome than before.
Nes pokes him in the ribs. 'I'll just say that for all your proclaiming that we ought to live instead of only surviving, you are not in fact doing a lot of living.'
He opens his mouth to protest and to his annoyance finds that he cannot. 'Aye, you're right,' he admits. 'What would you suggest to remedy that?'
'Well…'
'It had better not be dancing,' he warns her.
'Dancing is not the answer to everything,' Nes agrees. 'Not quite yet. No, I was thinking there's a group of us going to Haldr's for a meal and some company. You could come and we could remind you how to live.'
He remembers doing that, in the days before the war. Funny how he had almost forgotten about it until she mentioned it again.
'Aye,' he says. 'Remind me how to live.'
Healing is hard and requires effort, Duria learns. None of her books had ever mentioned this unfortunate fact and so she finds herself unpleasantly surprised time and again.
Her sons keep waking up with nightmares. Most nights it's Narvi who makes the trek to their room. He has a gift for comforting and a gentle voice that calms even Dari's fiercest terrors. Duria has none of that, but Narvi cannot always go.
'No, my turn,' she declares when they are woken for the third time in one night. The dark circles under her husband's eyes tell her that the interrupted sleep is beginning to take its toll even on him.
I have avoided this duty long enough.
The fact that Narvi only gives a token protest tells her all she needs to know.
So it's off to the lads' bedroom she trots, with no idea what to do in mind. It's not as if she can tell her child the rational answer, for dreams are never that and it's the dreams that plague them now.
Give her an orc to fight any day. She's no good at that either, but at least an orc is tangible. She'll have no such luck with night terrors.
Nari is still sleeping, but Dari is sitting up in bed, crying as though the world is ending, gasping out Harry's name over and over again.
'He's dead, amad! Harry's dead!'
Maker be good. There's is no need to guess which of the many horrific events of the war is preying on Dari's mind tonight. She is no stranger to that nightmare herself and Harry dies in them every single time. Yet it is one thing for her to have to bear this, but Dari is a child. He should never have been a witness to any of this.
'It was a dream,' Duria tells Dari. She puts an arm around him. He needs no more than that; he hurls himself into her arms and clings to her as though his very life depends on it. 'Harry is alive.'
Her scholarly side yearns to produce the evidence of this, but she is very sure that Thoren is not going to thank her if she marches into his home to borrow Harry for a spell, not in the middle of the night.
So failing that, words will have to do. 'He is alive,' she repeats. 'Do you remember? You saw him at your lessons today and then Aunt Cathy took you two to the market. Do you remember? The war is over and Harry is alive.'
So many weren't, but in this case she could offer some good news.
She offers up as many pieces of evidence as she can and slowly Dari's desperate sobs quiet into the occasional hiccup. Of course it's possible that it is not her rational approach that does the trick, but rather the gentle stroking of his hair that she keeps up all the while.
'Harry's really alive?' he asks at last. 'Really?'
'Really,' Duria promises. 'You will see him again tomorrow.' There isn't much else she can do, but this she can promise. 'Now lie down and close your eyes. Just close your eyes and take deep breaths. It will be morning before you know it.'
Dari does as she tells him and after a while his breathing evens out as he finally falls back to sleep. It might have gone quicker if perhaps she could bring herself to speak softly to him, as she knows Thoren does for Harry, or sing to him, as she knows Cathy does for Victoria. Her own memories are rich with moments where her parents did that too, but Duria never knows what to say and all the promises in her old lullabies ring horribly false after the war, so she says nothing at all.
She just sits there and hopes at least her presence offers some comfort.
It's very late by the time she tiptoes back to her own bed, hoping to not wake Narvi in the process. She slips beneath the blankets and tries to follow her own advice, but Dari's nightmare has brought the memory back to the forefront of her mind and now she cannot stop seeing it the moment she closes her eyes.
It had been so very close. And if Jack hadn't run so fast…
She instinctively shies away from her brother's name as well, because as painful memories go, that one is actually worse.
We are all broken, she concludes, from young to old. There's none who have escaped it.
It's not a happy thought, so when Narvi stirs beside her, she's almost glad of the distraction. 'I'll go,' she offers. She hasn't heard anything yet, but Narvi's hearing is sharper.
He shakes his head. 'It's not the lads.'
'Oh?' It comes out as a question.
'I can't sleep myself,' Narvi clarifies. 'Might as well get up.'
Oh.
Of course.
The lads are not the only ones with terrors haunting them at night. The lads haven't fought in the war. Narvi has. He does not speak of it, almost none of the ones who went out in defence of hearth and home do. Occasionally, when asked, they will say that it was terrible and wretched beyond imagination. They do not volunteer any details and even Duria has known better than to ask for them.
'The war?' she asks, feeling awkward and foolish for even asking.
'Aye.' Narvi is silent for a spell and Duria is not sure if she should ask. She is all of a sudden not so sure that she wants to ask. For all that she craves knowledge and words, knowledge and words about the war are different. They rub salt in wounds that have scarcely begun to heal, renting open that which she is trying desperately to stitch closed.
But Narvi is my husband. He has always been the steady rock she clung to and he has never once complained of that. But Duria remembers enough of her parents' marriage to know that these things are supposed to work both ways.
It is time to pull my weight.
'Would you speak of it?' Never mind that she very much hopes his answer is no.
Another long silence follows.
'I am not sure I have the words,' he says at long last. No, the talker in this marriage has always been Duria. It's Narvi who is so much more suited to the far more important doing.
'I can wait,' she replies, preferring to do anything but. 'They need not be fair words or eloquent sentences.'
Narvi doesn't speak again for so long that she would almost think he has fallen back to sleep. Almost. But he is drawn as tight as a bowstring.
It startles her when he does speak. 'The sky is blotted out.' The use of the present tense indicates that, though the war has ended, it is still very much alive in his head. 'Unnatural magic in the air. Terror on wings. Such fear…'
Duria says nothing. Her words fail her utterly.
And he is not done, because now that he has begun, he seems unable to stop. 'Weapons we cannot defend ourselves against. The screaming. Maker help us all, the sounds…'
She knows a little about that; she has sounds she cannot get out of her head either. So she does the little that she can: she reaches out to hold him and listens as the horrors of the war keep pouring out of Narvi's mouth.
The hardest part of healing is trying to pick up the threads of her old life, Cathy finds. Logically she knows that the whole point of winning the war was to have something like a normal life again. Besides, she's lived a normal life for far longer than she has lived in wartime. It should be easy, natural even, to slip back into her proper spot.
But it's blatantly obvious that logic has nothing to do with this, because it's not easy at all.
Thoren has recovered to such an extent that he is capable – at least in his own eyes – of taking up the daily running of the Mountain again. She is glad to leave those tasks to him; she hasn't enjoyed them and they have kept her up for many a night, even if she did have a talent for them. And yet, now that she should have the time to devote herself to her own craft again, she cannot seem to focus on it. She starts projects, but none of them turn out as she wants. Her fingers seem to have forgotten that which once came so easily to them and her mind keeps wandering, straying into the not so distant past.
'You are lucky, my lass,' she tells her daughter. 'You never knew anything about it.'
Victoria will grow up with the stories of it, telling her of heroes and valiant deeds. She will grow up knowing her name was given to her to celebrate all that was achieved. And rightly so.
The stories Cathy will not tell her until she is much older, the stories of death and grief and horror, those must live in her own mind for now. They live in Halin's mind too, she knows, though he cannot bring himself to speak of it. He will go quiet sometimes, looking at things Cathy cannot see. She will reach out to touch and he will reciprocate. She will hand him the babe and he will hold her. These things seem to help, but words do not come into it.
'I hope you need never know the worst of it,' she adds in a whisper.
Victoria hears none of it. She sleeps the sleep of the innocent. No terrors haunt her dreams and Cathy is not a little jealous. Somehow she seemed to have fewer dreams when she was still standing in for Thoren, which rather makes her miss those duties after all.
Well, nothing for it. He's the King and I am not. And thank the Maker for that.
She looks down at the piece of cloth in her lap that, once again, has failed to become anything even remotely resembling a garment. Another morning gone and nothing to show for it. It makes her feel like a horrible excuse for a dwarf, which was always more Jack's prerogative.
Well, he's not here. Perhaps I'll stand in for him.
Regardless, sitting here is not accomplishing anything, so she picks up Victoria – she sleeps through it again – and takes her for a walk. Who knows, some movement might shake away the cobwebs and allow her to actually do some work in the afternoon.
Now, as so many times before, her feet carry her to the battlements. She suspects it's force of habit and now, as always, the lack of a besieging force feels a little bewildering. But it's a good sight, or at the very least a slightly improved sight. Those moving before the gates are no longer ankle-deep in orcish filth. There are no more bodies, no more blood and mud. There's not much green either yet, but here and there some determined plant pokes its head above the ground and, given the season, hangs on for grim death.
'A hopeful sight.'
Cathy startles and looks beside her to find the wordy elf standing beside her. It takes her a minute to recall that his name is Aerandir and that calling him the "wordy elf" is unlikely to please him.
Having said that, he looks as battered and beaten as most folk these days. Even elves have not escaped that. They carry the reminders of the past year on their bodies the same as everyone else. Aerandir himself has come out of the war short a foot. It's why he's here, leaning on an elaborately carved stick, and not with everyone else trying to dig up the road to the Mountain from underneath all the mess.
Cathy gives him a bit of a look, because hopeful is not quite the way she would have described this. 'It's not what I would call this,' she points out. 'Less bleak than a few months ago, perhaps. At least blessedly free of orcs and assorted cronies.'
She tells herself that Aerandir does not intend his smile to be derisive and that it is just old dislike making her think that, but it's an effort. Maybe elves can't really help it that they always appear as though they're looking down on everyone.
'You mistake my meaning,' he tells her. 'I did not speak of what lies before these gates. I would agree with you that that sight would sadden the hardest of hearts.'
Before he goes off on a tangent – this elf has form – Cathy interrupts with: 'Then what do you mean?'
To her astonishment, Aerandir waves a hand gracefully in her direction. 'Your babe,' he speaks, notably direct. 'In the midst of all the death and destruction that the orcs have wrought, there is new life to give hope to us who had lost it.'
Her first instinct is still to disagree with any and all elvish babble, but she finds she can't. Worse than that, she realises that Aerandir is right. And so was Thoren when he pointed out that they did not celebrate their victory as they ought to. Of course, there have been celebrations, but that will to live and to enjoy, that hasn't made a permanent return.
And yet…
There's life too. Victoria is proof of that. In some months Thoren and Tauriel will have their own babe to hold. Despite Sauron's very best efforts life goes on.
And maybe that's enough to be getting on with.
She doesn't say so of course, but the elf has given her exactly what she needed.
It is learning to live again that Elvaethor finds hardest after the war has ended. This past century has been such a time of upheaval, of great heights and staggering lows, that at times he can barely catch his breath. And yet, this is what he must now become accustomed to. He no longer lives among elves, whose lives are long and who have therefore no need to cram as much living as they can in the short time they are allotted. The pace at which life is lived is faster.
That is not to say that the whole world has not been severely affected by the events of these past decades, yet Elvaethor has chosen this. At times it feels as though he has been caught in the rapids of the river of his erstwhile home and there is no placid lake to be had at the end, because the end never comes.
And yet…
If he were to go back in time and receive the chance to do everything all again, he would not choose differently. Even though the grief makes him gasp for breath at times, he would not have felt such grief if there had not been an equal amount of love to cause it. And that he would never choose to miss. It is too valuable.
'What are you doing here all by yourself?' A businesslike voice pulls him out of his reflection.
'Thora,' Elvaethor acknowledges.
'You aren't going to live among the dead, are you?' she demands, flapping her hands to indicate their surroundings and their intended purpose.
He shakes his head. 'I intend no such thing.' But every once in a while, he seeks them out. 'They never mind if I speak to them.'
Thora crosses her arms over her chest. 'None of us mind you speaking to us, Elvaethor.'
He knows that and it is not why he is here. 'This I know,' he reassures her. 'From time to time I desire to speak with those who no longer walk among us.' He knows they are no longer here and that in all likelihood they cannot hear him, but he finds comfort in it. It is remembrance too, cradling the memories of them, because they are precious to him.
Thora considers this. 'We would not have you dwell among the dead and neglect to live,' she says at last. 'We have fought too hard to let life slip through our fingers now.'
Elvaethor inclines his head. 'That I do not intend to do either. I merely came in search of peace and quiet.'
Thora smiles. 'That, I grant you, you are unlikely to find anywhere else.'
'Were you looking for me?'
'Thoren, actually.' She makes a face. 'It seems it's one of his days.'
Elvaethor sends up silent thanks that it is possible again. Thoren is no longer as quick on his feet as he used to be, but he has improved much in recent months. 'I have not seen him,' he answers the question his friend has not yet asked.
'Well, that being the case, the search goes ever on.' She is at least remarkably cheerful about it. 'Don't linger too long.'
With a last touch on his arm she is gone again.
He looks on the statue they've erected of the brother he's lost too soon. It's a good likeness, but the maker had enough kindness to give Jack a somewhat more benevolent face than he had often shown to the world in life.
You knew peace at the end, Elvaethor thinks. As relieved as he is for that, it makes his passing all the more bitter. Would that you had lived to see the end of this war.
Too many haven't. There are too many faces missing in the crowds. But he is here. He has not found some reason to go on a mission or journey. He would have liked to, but he knows he would not have done so for the right reasons. He would have been running away again, like he had when he went to fetch Thráin from Gondor.
If I do not face the shadows, they will never lift.
It was a hard lesson he had been forced to learn after Thorin and Kate had passed, but one that is no less hard to learn the second time.
So he stays.
The staying is often agony.
Still he stays.
Above all, Beth decides, healing is bloody hard. It is trying to fit pieces together that do not want to go together. Some that are meant to slot next to one another have changed their shape, so that they chafe and pull and hurt when they brush up against each other, because no matter how much she wants to pretend otherwise, they have changed too much.
It is evident especially in her interactions with Harry. He has taken to Erebor and its people like a fish to water. He is happy and chatty and far too busy to spend much time with his mother. He flits around from person to person, laughing and talking and smiling even wider when they all hail him as Young Harry. His cousins, Duria's sons, follow in his wake. Beth's own parents orbit that little group. Even Thomas has fit back into Harry's life as if he had never been out of it.
It's Beth that's the odd one out in her own son's life.
They spent time together, but it is awkward. They don't know how to be around one another. Harry will chatter about everything under the sun – that bit is no problem – but it's about people and places that mean little to her. And hanging over them like a dark spectre is the question of where he is going to live. If it's up to Beth – and it should be – he should come with her to Minas Tirith. She is his mother; of course that's where he should be.
But in Erebor is where he belongs, plain as daylight. And, though she does not like it one bit, she does not know if taking him with her is the right thing for him. Harry's adapted remarkably well to all the changes in his life, so it stands to reason he could do it again, but in Erebor is where he has put down his roots.
And he is thriving.
'You can't mean to leave him here?' Mary's voice rises an octave in outrage the first time Beth broaches the subject with her. 'Have you looked around you lately? None of them are even human!'
Of all the things that worry Beth about all of this, that is not something that even remotely concerns her. 'Thoren is half-human,' she points out. More than that, he is a good man… dwarf… whatever. She finds it hard to get his measure, because something about him remains so entirely other, but she has seen him. She has seen him with Harry and with Tauriel, with his family and his subjects. He's a good King as well. Truth be told, Harry couldn't be in better hands.
She suspects they are better suited than her own.
Mary sputters in a way that would have been amusing under different circumstances. 'You know what I mean! Thoren won't raise him… well, English.'
'We no longer live in England,' Beth remarks wryly. Her adopted children are Rohirrim, her husband is of Gondor, and her child, when it is born, will be of Gondor too. They are tying Beth to Middle Earth. True, they are human societies and Erebor is not. Still, they are people. More importantly, they are the people Harry loves.
She is no longer sure he loves her.
I took too long and let the chance slip through my fingers.
'Besides, you were always on my case when you thought he wasn't happy or well-cared for,' she continues. 'You've seen him here. He is happier than he's ever been.'
Mary is perfectly capable of ignoring a good argument when it doesn't suit her. 'He got stabbed here!'
'When there were traitors, in wartime. It is no longer wartime.' And all the traitors were dead long before the war even ended. Harry would be safe here. 'And it's about time I started doing what is best for him rather than what is best for me.'
It's both satisfying and a little disappointing that Mary has nothing to say to that.
'This is distasteful,' Legolas comments as he surveys the scene.
'Aye,' Thráin agrees because it is impossible to disagree.
The site where Dale has stood is still a mess, even months after the war. Much work has already been done to remove all the filth the orcs have left behind. The only thing this has revealed is how complete the destruction of the mannish city has been. Not a building remains upright. In some places the orcs have even dug up the foundations.
That was what they sought to do to us; the complete erasure of all Free Folk.
The orcs had made a very convincing start.
We will undo it. We will rebuild. He does not think he could in good conscience set out to reclaim Khazad-dûm before the damage on his own doorstep is mended.
Legolas exhales in a manner that is not quite hopeless, but that is certainly in the same neighbourhood. 'When we returned from Mordor I thought for a short while that all was over, that our struggles would be done. Little did we know that they had only just begun.'
Thráin has been guilty of the same, though not for long. Nevertheless the sight of his homeland and the surrounding region is unfailingly dreary and utterly disheartening, more so now summer is making way for autumn and the weather is turning cold and grey.
'It will never be done if we don't make a start,' he points out.
The men of Dale would like to clear away the last of the filth and level the ground before the cold sets in and makes it all impossible. Now that the harvest is mostly in, folk are free to help and Thráin, encouraged by his friends, has been persuaded to leave the forge for a few days to help out.
'It is hard to know where to make such a start.'
The answer to that is easy: 'Right here.' And if someone in charge would like them to move elsewhere, they'll no doubt be told.
They work in silence at first, clearing the ground of debris so that more skilled folk can have a chance at levelling. Most of what they remove is unidentifiable, stinking orc filth, but there are charred remains of furniture, blackened bricks and bones as well. Some of those bones are awfully small. It seems not all of Dale's people had made it out alive.
It is around noon that King Brand joins them. Thráin knows him of course, but they have never been friends. He recalls that Jack had befriended the man when he was younger; they had been of an age.
'Dale won't be rebuilt in my lifetime,' he remarks.
No, Thráin thinks, it will not. Brand was not young when the war started and he has aged considerably in the one year that has elapsed since its begin. He may have some years in him yet, but rebuilding an entire city might be a young man's life's work.
'No,' he says out loud. 'But you will oversee its beginning.'
Brand smiles, but it is tinged with sadness, as so many things are these days. 'Bard is full of ideas,' he says. 'He is up from dawn till dusk, conferring with craftsmen, sketching out maps and plans. The Dale that will be built here will be his. I am too old and tired for such a venture. My days were of war, but his will be of peace.'
He walks away again, which is just as well, because there is little Thráin can say to cheer him that would not be a blatant lie. In many ways there is not much hope for men like Brand; they are old and weary. Everything they knew – as well as many of the folk they knew – is gone and it will not be restored in their lifetimes.
'I did not think that victory would look like this,' Legolas says.
'This is not yet victory,' Thráin disagrees as he shovels more filth into a wheelbarrow.
It's only when there is a knock on the door that Thoren becomes aware of the passage of time again, but at the very least the mountain of paperwork has shrunk to a small hill. This would be a more cheering prospect if part of that small hill was not all the elvish correspondence he has been steadily ignoring for a fortnight.
'Enter.'
'Afternoon, cousin!' To his surprise it's Víli who pokes his head around the door. 'Come on in, Nes. He's alone.'
'Why is it good that I am alone?'
'So that we have you all to ourselves, of course.'
None of this sounds very reassuring.
It doesn't look reassuring either when Víli holds the door open so that Nes can wheel in one of their newfangled contraptions. They have made great strides in the design and functionality. It no longer looks quite so much like a chair with shortened legs and wheels at the ends and more like what Harry calls "a proper wheelchair." All of which Thoren would applaud if he was not so sure that he is about to be forced into this one.
'No,' he says.
He might as well not have spoken at all for all the heed they pay him. Víli closes the door behind Nes and leans against it for good measure, presumably in case Thoren decides to make a run for it. And he might have, had he been able.
As much as he despises the very idea, he can no longer pretend that walking unaided is going well. The healers tell him that he forced his leg too soon and too much and that the price for that is paid in pain and with a limp that doesn't seem to go away. I won't lead troops into battle again, he's told Thráin. The longer this goes on, the truer that seems.
Víli crosses his arms over his chest. 'That's no way to receive a gift,' he tells Thoren. 'Didn't your ma teach you that?'
Thoren scowls at him. 'There are folk who need these things more than I do.' That at least is the truth. He still has both his legs and he can use them to get himself from one place to another. Not as fast as he used to, granted, which is why they are here of course.
'And we are making sure that they receive them,' Nes points out. 'This one is yours.' She wheels the thing into the centre of the room with a practised flourish. 'For your kingly comfort, it is equipped with a cushioned seat, adjustable footrests, and brakes to ensure that you never wheel yourself into an abyss.'
'You must mistake me for an idle mannish king.' It rankles. 'I have no need for footrests and cushions.'
Just for folk to get off of his back and let him heal – or, as it turns out, not heal – in peace.
'You know, Thoren, you're as big a fool as I've ever clapped eyes on,' Nes says, which shuts Thoren up. He's known her since childhood, which gives her a lot of leeway, but this is unprecedented.
'Aye, more beard than sense, as my ma would say,' Víli agrees. The reason he knows that phrase so well is possibly because it's a comment Síf will have frequent occasion to say it of Víli himself.
The amount of hypocrisy from someone not so very sensible himself keeps Thoren speechless long enough for Nes to get her say in. 'I reckon it's pride that keeps you from taking this,' she declares. 'That or lack of sense. You have fought and won a war. None fought harder than you did, and all know it. You were wounded in battle.'
'I was wounded in captivity.' Had he been wounded in battle, he might feel differently about all of this, but he had not been. The orcs had done this to him whilst he was unconscious, when he could not remember it. They had been able to do this to him because he had given himself up for lost.
Nes waves that away as if it is all the same. 'Because you were first taken in battle, and none hold that against you. You don't begrudge others who've been injured thus these wheelchairs.'
'Because they have need of them.' He does not. Or if he does, then not as much as other people do. Let them first go to those who miss feet and legs.
'As do you,' Víli says. 'We've all seen you walk, you know. And Mistress Thora thinks you ought to use one. Not always, but on the bad days. And then maybe one day, you won't need one at all and then you can give it to Young Harry for a toy.' He smiles brightly.
'None will think it a weakness to use one, Thoren.' Nes manages to sound sympathetic without sounding pitying.
None but me.
There is a part of him that knows that they are right. He knows that his recovery isn't progressing as he had hoped and that his own stubborn refusal to heed the healers is largely to blame for it. He knows Tauriel does not understand it either; even to her he can't seem to explain it. Words fail him when he tries.
'Your limp will be no more a fact if you use one than if you don't,' Nes adds.
And where his own words fail him, hers certainly don't. It's like she has seen to the heart of the matter without even trying. Because using one will declare to one and all that no, he will not return to the way that he was before the war. Thoren has known this from the moment he first woke up in the healing rooms. He has admitted this to himself and his nearest and dearest. Yet to declare it to the world is another entirely.
'You are a dwarf, not an elf or a man that you would seek to deny the truth,' Víli points out. 'And you'd be a right fool if you think it is not plain that you need a wheelchair by all who look on you.'
Have I been? Am I that foolish or prideful?
The notion that he may have been is not a welcome one. And yet Víli is right too; he is no elf or man that he would deceive himself. And accepting this gift will certainly please Duria. It might even persuade her that yes, he is old enough to occasionally be left to his own devices.
'Very well,' he says.
He does his best not to feel like he has just been defeated.
Erebor is a strange place, Beth finds, or an alien place at the very least, but it is supposed to be her home for the foreseeable future. Boromir won't hear of her travelling while she is pregnant. The roads aren't safe enough, it's autumn anyway, it's raining so much and it's growing colder every day. Much better to wait until next summer, when their babe is born and grown enough to travel and the weather is milder. Beth's protestations that they could use the magic box have fallen on deaf ears. In this Boromir has found an unlikely ally in his sister-in-law, because 'are you out of your mind, Beth? You don't know what magic travel could do to an unborn baby!'
And so she is staying put. Not that Beth is about to admit that both Boromir and Mary make some very good points, not outside the privacy of her own head at least.
It's just that she finds herself at a bit of a loose end, because of her little family she is the only one who can't seem to settle. Harry fits in here as though he has lived here all his life – she needs to decide what to do with him soon, but she keeps pushing it back. Helm and Freda have made friends and attend school with them and come home every day full of stories. Every day is a new adventure to them. And Boromir is busy restoring defences and training warriors and finds his days as full as the children's.
While I am just busy gestating and not doing much else.
The boredom is really getting to her and just at the height of that boredom Thráin's suggestion pops back into her head. Why doesn't she write the tale of the war? She is a writer – or so she keeps claiming despite having spent the last year not writing anything longer than a short letter – and someone has to be the first to make a record of this war. It might as well be her.
She's made a start shortly after he first made the suggestion, but that was unprepared. She had quickly realised that she had no idea how to make it a reality. There was too much that she either didn't know or didn't know how to describe and the whole thing had foundered on the rocks of indecisiveness. But the idea won't leave her alone, so here she is, back for round two, but not necessarily any better prepared.
The question therefore has not been should she do it, but how should she do it. It's kept her tossing and turning for three nights in a row. The war was massive and it was everywhere. Should she focus on the Fellowship and their quest? Should she write of the war in Rohan and Gondor? She has been there for both those things. Or, and this might be the most daring, should she tackle the war here in the north?
It's just hit her that she could in fact do all of that.
I must be mad. But even as she thinks that, she also knows that it feels right. Every book has to have an angle, a perspective through which the reader sees everything. And in many ways, this war has very much been a family affair, an Andrews family affair. They've been involved in the war around Erebor and Mirkwood – obviously – and through Beth and Thráin also with the quest and the war in the south. And if she chooses to tackle it this way, she can cover the entirety of the war and offer as complete a view as it is possible to get.
Yet the task is enormous and not a little daunting. It's bigger than anything she has attempted to date. It is certainly far too much work for one person.
And so she is on a quest to get some help, and the Erebor library is where it is to be found. Erebor itself is still strange and bewildering, but in the library it is easy to forget all of that. A library is a library in any world and this particular one is making Beth drool. It is enormous and there are more books than she could read in ten lifetimes, even discounting the ones in languages that she doesn't speak.
The person she is looking for has an office on one of the higher levels of the library and it's there that Beth's feet take her. She is in luck, because Duria is at her own desk. Nothing is visible of her except the very top of her head; the rest is lost to sight behind a veritable mountain of books.
Even though the door is open, Beth knocks.
Duria gets up and beside her another person pops up.
'Good afternoon!' Duria says, a greeting echoed by her uncle Ori.
'Good afternoon,' Beth returns. 'I'm sorry, is this an inconvenient time?' If she had known that Duria had a guest, she would have come another time.
'Not at all,' is the brisk reply. 'Do come in. Tea?'
Beth is not so far separated from her roots that she is able to turn down a good cup of tea, so she has a few moments to ponder how to phrase her request while Duria busies herself dispensing the tea Beth is sure they'll need.
Having said that, she likes Duria. In a world full of baffling and strange people, Duria is the most relatable of them all. Yes, she is dwarvish and therefore still a bit different, but she is also a dedicated scholar with a love of books. It's easy to get on with her. I honestly don't know what Thráin's problem is with her.
'Well, now,' Ori says when the tea has been poured and they have made themselves comfortable. It's clear he has no intention of leaving.
Beth doesn't mind. She likes him too, even if she still finds him a bit intimidating. He may look unassuming, but she's heard enough about him to give her a healthy respect for him. No one who saves his King in battle and erases an elvish traitor from every record in the world is ever someone to overlook.
So she outlines her plan, making sure to stress that the initial idea was Thráin's – it can't hurt – even if the specific perspective is hers. 'But it's a big job,' she finishes. 'I may have bitten off more than I can chew.'
A long silence follows.
'It would involve a fair bit of research,' Duria muses.
'Not hard,' Ori judges. 'We keep excellent records. Now the real challenge,' and here his eyes begin to gleam, 'is interviewing witnesses. The Fellowship of course may be tricky, seeing as most have already left.'
'Not a problem; we could corner them at Christmas.' Her parents have invited everyone and their mother. Having something useful to do might be a welcome relief from all of the festive activities no doubt being planned. 'I think we're all invited.' And by then Beth will be past the first trimester, so yes, she'll do travel by magic box then. She won't be the only one of her family not attending.
It's only then they all three of them simultaneously realise that they are talking about it as if they are already working on it. They fall silent and then grin at each other.
Well, Beth thinks. Will you look at that? I think I've found my people.
Duria would sooner go for another fight with a horde of orcs – and armed with nothing more than a breadknife and a rolling pin besides – than admit that it feels as though Beth has thrown her a lifeline. She finds she needs this. She needs a purpose, because she has been sorely lacking that since the end of the war.
At first it was nothing she could easily put into words. It was just that with the end of the fighting and the cleanup and the struggle to keep themselves fed, well, it seemed almost frivolous to even consider going back to her scholarly ways. There was so much to do that was of greater import.
And now everything is quieting down and she finds that, much as she loves her books and her work, she doesn't quite know how to get back to it. She spends hours at her desk trying to perform the tasks she once did in mere minutes. So she checks up on Cathy and bothers Thoren until he is sick of the sight of her and she still can't find her way back to the craft she loves.
And now here is her mannish kinswoman with a project Duria would have found ambitious and daunting even when she was still at the top of her game and somehow, that's what gets her going again. It's as if her mind, so sluggish and uncooperative before, is suddenly on fire with ideas and plans. She finds herself rattling off lists of things they'll need to do and she hasn't even said yes yet.
Of course, it is a foregone conclusion that she and Ori will both go along with this.
Not that she is very eager to revisit the war, but she knows that it must be done. And maybe, by writing about it, she'll be able to close the chapter. A return to normalcy – researching, compiling information, writing a coherent piece of text – will help too. Thráin's words echo in her mind: If we live as though we have died with the fallen, what is our victory?
Besides surviving, the aim of this wretched war was that they would still be here at the end, living their lives, doing what they should have been doing had the war not intervened, proclaiming victory over Sauron in that way too.
So, the sooner she gets this underway, the better it will be. She spends a nearly sleepless night going over ideas and in the morning she is off to interview her first witness, armed with quills, ink and more empty pages than she probably needs.
'Ah, good, you've already done your correspondence,' she notes as she lets herself in. 'That is fortuitous.'
The recipient of that comment doesn't seem to share her opinion. He wheels around and it's only then that Duria notices something she should have seen immediately.
'You're in a wheelchair!'
Thoren scowls at her. 'Aye, it's cold and damp and my leg gives trouble. Why are you here?'
She ignores that for the time being. 'When did that happen?' She puts down the tools of her trade so that she can indicate Thoren's new contraption.
Now that she has seen something of these devices she can see their merit. Well, and they've been much improved these past few months. And Thoren needs it. His leg isn't healing well and he should stay off it more than he actually does. A wheelchair is a good idea, one she has suggested to him several times now only to nearly have her head bitten off as a thank you.
And now here he is, sitting in one. It would be too much to expect that he has decided to do that because she told him to.
What is the use in calling me sensible if they never actually heed me?
'Duria…'
Perhaps she should be pleased that their dynamic is going back to what it was like before the war, but it doesn't hurt and frustrate her any less.
'Very well,' she says. This is not a fight she has ever won before and she shouldn't antagonise him now, not if it is answers that she is after. It won't do to lose sight of her mission. 'Do you have a moment?'
'I have a meeting with the wordy elf in two hours.'
'The wordy elf?'
'Aerandir,' Thoren clarifies. 'And when it comes to talking, he could give you a run for your money.' From his lips, this is not a compliment.
Duria squashes the hurt. 'Well, then today you ought to be glad, for I intend for you to do all the talking.'
This announcement is so unusual that Thoren apparently loses the capacity for speech. He performs an excessive amount of blinking and swallowing – Duria wonders if that helps, but now is not the time to ask – but eventually settles on merely frowning.
'What in Durin's… Mahal's name would you wish for me to speak about?'
'The war.'
He blinks some more, rendered speechless yet again.
So perhaps more explanation is needed, which she gives. She explains Beth's proposal, to record the tales of the war as experienced from the unique perspective of their family, a family with roots in two worlds, which is entwined with the books that first her mother and then Beth brought with them.
The look Thoren gives her when she is finished is not flattering. 'And now you mean to go around asking questions of all involved?'
'It is called research,' Duria nods. 'And yes, I mean to start with you. You've told me you have two hours' worth of time.'
'I see.' His expression says that he sees rather more than Duria does. 'And when you write this account…'
'It's not just me,' Duria points out. 'The project is Beth's, but Ori and I mean to assist.'
Thoren ignores that. 'When you write this account, how detailed do you intend to be? What do you mean to include?'
The answer to that is very simple: 'As much as we possibly can. We intend to offer a very comprehensive work.'
Clearly this is not the answer Thoren would have liked. A shadow crosses his face. 'You will not always like what you hear, Duria,' he warns her. It isn't a flat refusal of her request, which is heartening. 'You will dredge up truths and hurts that may be better off remaining buried.'
'Won't pulling them into the light not allow for healing?' she suggests. 'How will we ever heal if they keep festering in the dark?'
She would not have suggested this a month ago, but she's since seen how much good it has done Narvi to speak of the terrors that still haunt his sleep. The nightmares are not as frequent as they have been, and when they do come, Duria can now be a comfort to him, because she knows what pains him.
Thoren studies her intently. 'Perhaps you can tell me,' he says. 'Do you mean to pull your own into the light?'
That brings her up short. Strange that it had not occurred to her that her own wartime experiences are well within the scope of the intended work. The realisation makes a rock drop into her stomach, because she knows what Thoren means. If she wants to be comprehensive and drag everything into the light, then there are things she too must speak of that she would much rather not.
And it is only buried, not healed. She only has to close her eyes to have her own worst memories returned: the despair, the emptiness, sitting in the dark waiting for the end, and, later, the vivid horror at what she had nearly become. But she cannot ask from such deep truths from her nearest and dearest without confronting her own. This she knows.
Taking a deep breath helps. Just a little. 'Yes.' It is not her wish, but it is a necessity, for she cannot be a hypocrite. She'll leave that to the elves. 'I will not ask of you what I will not ask of myself.' Much as she really does not want to.
Thoren thinks this over. Duria presses down hard on the urge to fill the silence with more good arguments. Over the years she has learnt that this would be the fastest way to turn Thoren's reluctant agreement into a hard refusal. So she holds her tongue and keeps herself utterly still as Thoren works through his own thoughts.
It's a long wait, but at last he nods. 'Very well. Take a seat, Duria.'
It's rather better than she has dared to hope. 'You would start now?'
He has the audacity to roll his eyes at her. 'Is that not why you are here?' He indicates the empty pages and the quills. 'So sit down, we may as well make a start.'
Elvaethor finds that helping others to heal heals his own soul. It is as though with every body that he helps piece together, he himself is pieced together too. Healing is what he is called to do, that which his newfound kin calls his craft. He's lived long enough to master many things – swordplay, archery, languages, even some forms of poetry – but it is healing that he has always found most rewarding.
Most of the wounded have healed enough to leave the healing rooms under their own power. The folk who need his aid now have no open wounds that must be stitched. They have missing limbs or lost eyes that they must now learn to live with. Some have pain that does not fade. They are the scars of war.
Elvaethor has seen such things before, because he has lived through more wars than he cares to remember, although remember them he does.
'It's a nuisance, this missing leg business,' his current patient grumbles. 'I've lost the wretched thing and yet it pains me still.'
'It is a known symptom,' Elvaethor tells him. 'Some find that the pain abates with time.'
'But not all?' Ivar asks. When he moves his nose ring dances up and down. Elvaethor wonders if he's kept it in on the battlefield. It seems like a disadvantage; far too easy for an attacking orc to grab hold of.
'Not all,' Elvaethor agrees.
Ivar shrugs. 'You can't give me some potion for a limb I no longer have, so I won't ask for one. Nah, it's the balance that's giving me some trouble. And before you try to sit my arse in some cushioned chair with wheels, don't bother. I've always faced life standing on my own two feet.'
'Only now you have merely one of them remaining,' Elvaethor points out.
Ivar has always been abrasive and age has not mellowed him. Having said that, Elvaethor cannot help but have respect for one of nearly three hundred still taking up his axe and marching to war. That he has survived Elvaethor can only attribute to his innate stubbornness.
'Does not Lord Dáin walk with a foot of iron? Can such a thing not be fashioned for me?' He waves a finger under Elvaethor's nose in warning. 'And don't tell me such a thing would be too heavy. I am a dwarf, you know.'
Elvaethor is aware. Not only is Ivar very clearly a dwarf, he is built like a boulder besides. A rather ill-tempered boulder, with a questionable sense for self-decoration.
'I've heard that Víli and Nes have decided to create such devices as well as their chairs,' he replies calmly. 'It may be rewarding to visit their workshop and discuss with them what may be done.'
Ivar's eyes narrow in suspicion. 'They won't force me in those wheeled contraptions, will they?'
It almost makes Elvaethor smile. 'I've not heard of people being forced to do so at sword point, no.'
'Because I heard they've bewitched our King into one of them.'
'Thoren has heeded their good common sense,' Elvaethor corrects. 'He is not bewitched.'
Ivar weighs those words. 'I suppose I must go there, then.' He regards Elvaethor. 'You cannot do some magic then, to make my leg grow back?'
Such a thing is not in his power and Elvaethor tells him so. Some hurts cannot be mended even with magic. One can learn to adept, as one must learn to adept to the loss of loved ones, who can no more be brought back than missing limbs.
It's not the answer Ivar likes, so he grumbles all the way out of the healing rooms, stabbing his ornately carved walking stick on the floor with quite unnecessary force.
'There's no pleasing some folk, is there?'
Elvaethor turns around to find Ori behind him. 'If you are in search of your wife, she has been called away to a lady in labour,' Elvaethor says. Another reminder that no matter all their losses, there is new life to be found as well.
'I am not,' Ori tells him. 'It was you I came to see.'
'Then I am at your disposal, for there are no other patients to see.' And spending time with Ori has always been a pleasure. He, like Cathy, has that elusive gift for contentment, no matter his circumstances.
Ori gestures after Ivar's retreating figure. 'He'll learn to deal. I have.'
Elvaethor nods, but adds: 'It is not this one injury that troubles me. It is the number of people being thus afflicted.'
There are times when he feels guilty that he still stands, that he has never been scarred the way so many others have. He is not without the reminders of the war etched into his flesh. His legs are covered with many thin white lines, reminders of the night the last of the Nazgûl were slain. The wound the Nazgûl dealt him, just below his shoulder, has never healed entirely. The flesh has grown back, but there is a cold stabbing sensation lodged deep within, playing up at times. Yet he is one of the lucky ones, for he lives and breathes and functions.
Many others do not.
Ori nods and lays his hand on Elvaethor's arm. 'We will mend,' he promises, his voice ringing with conviction. 'In fact, one might even say that my kinswomen and I have embarked on a mission to help with that.'
This Elvaethor does not understand, so he asks what Ori means by that.
So Ori tells him of their plans for an ambitious book to be written, one documenting the war from the view of their family. One that does not hide all the secrets that they have long kept out of sight.
'It's time for the truth to be told,' Ori finishes. 'The truth of my sister as well, I reckon. Whatever condemnation folks may have, it will not hurt her now.'
'It is time her achievements were duly acknowledged,' Elvaethor agrees. 'Those of her kinswoman Beth as well.'
'To do credit to Beth, we must speak of Kate as well,' Ori nods. 'As I said, it is an ambitious goal we have set ourselves and there are many we must speak to.'
'So you have come to me,' Elvaethor says.
'You are our kin, are you not?' Ori peers at him from over his glasses. 'If you are in fear of forgetting, we must do something to mend that.'
He has not forgotten. He cannot. It is too miraculous and precious still. It is his first thought in the morning when he rises and the last before he lays down his head at night. It has given him a sense of belonging after feeling adrift for so long. No, he cannot, will not and shall not forget.
And so he tells Ori. 'I have no more patients to see today. Will you sit down so we can begin?'
It is one thing to piece herself back together, but another thing to help her nearest and dearest do the same. Cathy hasn't got the first clue how to go about such a thing, but she finds that she very much wants to. There's so much brokenness and just making garments isn't going to be a lot of use in the greater scheme of things.
She can't stitch broken homes whole.
She can't mend people with needle and thread.
She can't sew all of their problems neatly and then tie it off, like there was never any damage there. It's frustrating. Most off all it is tragic. There is so much to be done and she does not have the kind of skill that can be applied to the problem.
'You are being very silly about this, my girl,' Aunt Thora tells her when she drops by for a visit to check on Victoria.
Cathy blinks at her. 'I am?'
Thora gives her one of those looks that seems like it pierces right to Cathy's soul. 'There's many in this Mountain today who fled here with what little they could carry. Some arrived with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Now that winter is coming, they'll need tunics without holes, thick coats, warm dresses, you name it. Lots of children have outgrown their garments. Many grown folk have worn out what they brought. There's a group of women from Dale and Esgaroth knitting socks and scarves, but there's a great need for skills such as yours, my lass.'
That brings her up short, because her aunt is right and the thought has not occurred to her once. Has she been so caught up in her own problems that she has missed everyone else's? She hangs her head in shame.
Thora squeezes her shoulders. 'It's understandable, Cathy,' she says. 'You are a new mother, with a babe to look after. You've been so busy making sure we do not starve – yes, I know about that – that you've lost sight of everything else. There is no shame in that.'
Cathy deliberates whether she should speak any more, but she trusts her aunt, so she does: 'It's hard to go back to ordinary daily life. It seems… almost as if by doing so we run the risk of forgetting it all happened.' She sees that Thora is taking a breath, but she is not yet done: 'And it did happen. I dream about it.' She bites her lip. 'And Halin too.'
Out of everything there is to fret about, that takes up the most space in her mind. Halin has made it through the war with few scars on his body – far fewer than most warriors – and yet she can't escape the notion that he bears his scars on his soul instead. He still goes quiet so often and he has lost more weight than Cathy feels comfortable with.
'I don't know what to do to help,' she confesses. 'I can stitch a garment, but I can't stitch my husband back together.'
The sympathy on her aunt's face is almost unbearable. 'I've heard many of the fighters tell that they owe their life to Halin,' Thora said. 'They all say that he was there where the fighting was thickest, where the horrors were worst. His courage never wavered. You've married a brave one, Cathy.'
'I know that!'
'Just so.' If Cathy's outburst had fazed Thora at all, she doesn't show it. 'Yet horrors such as he's seen, they don't go away very quickly. They tend to linger in the mind. Has he spoken to you about them?'
Cathy shakes her head. 'Only that it was all so unspeakably wretched and to please not ask him about it.' The look in his eyes when he said that had chilled her to the bone.
'It's no easy task, Cathy,' Thora says. 'But I think it'll be a worthy one.'
Of that there is no doubt, but there are the practicalities to consider. 'I have no notion of how to go about this.'
'No one ever does.' Thora smiles at her. 'But you are resourceful, Cathy. This past year has shown that. So that means you need to stop moping and apply that resourcefulness to the matter in hand.'
She leaves the room while Cathy is still speechless.
The worst thing is that Thora is of course entirely right. It's very vexing to admit, but it is the truth. During the war she had turned her hand to whatever needed doing, whether that was running the kingdom in Thoren's absence, rooting out traitors or looking after her nephews. She'd had experience in none of those things, but she had put her mind to them, because someone needed to do them. And, as it turned out, she had figured it out and performed her tasks well.
So why is this so different?
And clearly she is the only one of her siblings with this particular problem. Thoren is busy with being married, impending fatherhood and ruling Erebor. Thráin is busy doing many things; smithing, building, clearing up the area around Dale, you name it. He hadn't wasted any time finding a new purpose and setting to it with a will. Elvaethor is seemingly everywhere at once, as though he had determined that now that the war is over, he is going to single-handedly putting everything and everyone back together. Even Duria has found something to occupy her again, what with this book she is going to write.
To her shock and annoyance, Cathy is the only one of them who is actively moping. And that will never do. The realisation is enough to shock her out of her lethargy and into action.
The opportunity to act comes sooner than she thought. It's the middle of the night and she is up again with Victoria, who is fussy for no reason that Cathy can discern. Resigned to a night of little sleep, she is about to take Victoria to the rocking chair in the living room when without warning Halin sits up straight in their bed, eyes wide and breathing heavily. A nightmare, a very bad one.
No more moping, she tells herself. There's wounds to mend.
Experience has taught her that words will do no good, not so soon after waking. Besides, words are wind. It's actions that mean something. So Cathy sits back down on the bed and gently puts Victoria into her husband's arms. His arms curl around his daughter on instinct and his breathing slows down a little.
Victoria, who has decided that her adad is very much her favourite, quiets down and coos at him in that adorable way that never fails to melt Cathy's heart. It's a balm all its own.
'Tea,' Cathy decrees, because like her mother before her, she knows that tea makes everything better. And if it doesn't make it better, then at least a cup of tea will fortify a body for the trials ahead. Tea won't heal Halin, this she knows, but it will warm him and ground him. And that's a decent enough start.
Halin says nothing, but he shifts Victoria into a more comfortable position and leans back against the headboard. He gives Cathy a nod that is so small she almost misses it.
She'll take what she can get, so it's off to the kitchens she goes to make the tea. This is the kind of night where she suspects they will need a lot of it, so she locates the biggest mugs she can find and takes those back to the bedroom.
Halin's eyebrows jump up. 'Did all our smaller mugs break?'
'Not that I know.' She puts his mug on his nightstand, then circles around to her own side. 'How so?'
'Seeing as how you brought me a vase instead of a mug.' His eyes crinkle in that way that was one of the first things she'd liked about him.
'I reckoned that there is no such thing as too much tea.' Not for this, not for this task.
'I reckon you sound like your sister,' he points out.
'Well, even Duria occasionally makes sense.' Not that often, but lately more often than Cathy quite likes. That she doesn't mention. 'In all things tea, I bow to her superior knowledge.' She settles back onto the bed and curls into his side. Halin shifts Victoria to one arm and drapes his other over her shoulder. 'Another dream?'
'Aye,' he says, but volunteers no other information.
Cathy still has no idea how to do this, but she forges ahead, because this must be done. 'I don't know what best to do to help you,' she says, because maybe honesty is the best policy. 'And I wish I could.'
He strokes her shoulder. 'There is nothing,' he says. 'You cannot bear the memories for me. And I would not burden you with them.'
Cathy does not particularly want to be burdened with them – she's heard enough to know that the war brought with it horrors she could scarcely imagine – but what she wants is not really important in this, because: 'I am your wife,' she reminds him, 'and you cannot all bear it by yourself.'
He looks at her. 'You do not know what you ask.'
Cathy shrugs. 'Maybe not.' She has no illusions on that score. 'But I know that something must be done, because it has been months and there is so little improvement. And I want to help. Just tell me how to.'
He kisses the top of her head. 'You are helping,' he tells her. 'You and Victoria. For every time I wake to find you here, I know that the war is over and the horrors are past.'
Sweet as that is, she doesn't know how helpful that is. 'Perhaps you should talk to Ori,' she suggests. 'And present it as factual information for the book he's helping to write.' She knows better than to suggest that he speaks with Duria or Beth. But Ori is different. He has been to war, and has the loss of his hand to show for it, and the horror of it won't break him. It is in fact so clever that she is astonished by her own genius.
Halin chuckles, as though he knows exactly what she is doing. 'You are nothing if not tenacious, dear wife.'
'Not to mention exceedingly brilliant,' she grins.
He smiles and it warms her from the inside out better than tea ever could. 'However, none shall accuse you of humility.'
Next week: the next part of this.
Reviews and requests would be welcome.
Until next time!