Chapter 37

The Oakenshield Affair Part 2: Something Rotten

She wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by reader expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he'd have to spend the rest of life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.

Jasper Fforde: One of Our Thursdays is Missing

Thorin

The silence dragged on for so long that Thorin was more or less convinced that his captor had left the room when he spoke at last.

'What is Jurisfiction?' he asked.

If he did not know, Thorin was in no mood to enlighten him. Dwarves were well-known for keeping secrets and this was one he was determined not to spill. Right now he was unaware of what would be coming for him and the longer he could keep it that way, the better.

The man's ignorance of the policing force of the BookWorld also confirmed that he was indeed dealing with an Outlander here. And that was worrying. For years the Goliath Corporation in the Outland had attempted to invade the world of fiction. Had they now at last succeeded? If so, it did not bode well for the future.

'Listen, mate, I'm on your side here,' the man whined. 'Least you could do is help me out.'

On his side? 'You took me from the place I belong for your own ends. I did not require intervention.'

In Thorin's opinion, Outlanders could read the stories and think of them what they liked. That was of no concern to him. They could argue their opinions until they were blue in the face, but that did not affect him. But he took exception to those empty-headed busybodies who thought it was up to them to rewrite the stories the way they wanted to, especially if there was an element within the tale that they thought of as problematic. It was a trend that had been going on for a while. But judging by the evidence, new lows had just been reached.

'Face it, your story is shit.' The man was obviously still blinded by his own self-righteousness. 'And that girl you're paired up with is no better than any of the other so-called Original Characters that are invading all fanfictions these days.'

'That girl, as you refer to her, is my wife.' The words came from between clenched teeth. If he'd had the use of his hands, he would have cheerfully strangled the man and have done with it.

'Because you were written that way,' the man argued. 'Stuck in the rigidity of that worthless narrative. You didn't have a choice. But now you can break away.'

He really didn't know the BookWorld at all, did he? 'Kate is my wife by choice.' About this at least he could set the man right. It was no great secret. In fact, the BookWorld had been whispering and gossiping about it for months when it happened.

'You only think that because you've been written that way,' the man explained, the way you would explain something to a small child.

'We were married before we came to The Journal,' Thorin snapped, his well of patience run dry. Not that it had been very full to begin with, but that was another matter entirely.

They had met in college, when they were just Generics, too undefined even to be named. They'd gone through character training together and had done well there. They had both achieved A-grade with ease, top of their class. There had been plenty of offers in original fiction for both of them, but they had grown so close by then, that they had requested to be placed in the same story. The only dual placement available had been in fanfiction, which nobody had expected them to take.

'Well, if that's what we can get, we'll take it,' Kate had said, leaving their teacher to stare at them in open-mouthed horror.

'That is throwing your future away!' he'd exclaimed. 'You could do so much better.'

'Maybe so,' Thorin told him. 'But I would only ever consider it with her by my side. So I ask again, are there any other dual placements available, even if it is for B or C-grades?'

There had been none.

'Then we shall pack our bags and head away to The Journal, I believe it was called?' It had been the easiest decision of his life and he had not regretted it for even a moment.

And all things considered, The Journal was not such a bad place to be. Considering that it was fanfiction, it was decently written and their author generally treated them well. Granted, he wouldn't have minded if she hadn't decided to drop a dragon on his legs, but it could have been worse. Besides, she had given them sixty almost entirely unrecorded years in which they could basically do what they wanted. And he had Kate by his side for all that time. In his opinion that was worth more than being in original fiction.

Of course, this fool did not know that. And suddenly Thorin didn't feel in an divulging sort of mood anymore. Whatever he said, this man would use it against him without a second thought.

'Untie me,' he demanded, deciding that it couldn't possibly have any less effect than attempting to reason with one so unhinged. 'If it is your belief that I should be grateful for your so-called interference, then you should have nothing to fear from me.' That was the way Kate would reason, had she been the one in his position.

The man said nothing and, more importantly, didn't move either.

The silence dragged on and, having nothing better to do, Thorin tried the strength of the ropes again. They still wouldn't give and Thorin had not really expected them to. As it was, he had barely enough space to wriggle his fingers and that wasn't going to do him a lot of good.

'It won't work,' the man said. Of course he would see, standing behind him.

Thorin was beginning to find his presence unnerving. His manner was not unlike that of a prison guard and so far he hadn't made any real attempts at either changing Thorin's mind about his circumstances or doing anything with him at all. And all efforts to start a conversation of sorts had originated with Thorin as well. His captor was waiting for something or, more likely, someone. There would be others, or at least one other, involved in this mad scheme. Perhaps the Goliath Corporation was involved after all?

Either way, getting out of this situation had become his main and indeed only priority. Once he had his freedom, he would gladly devote some efforts to getting to the bottom of this mystery, but it could wait.

So he rested his hands and devoted his energy to summing up what he knew. So far, he was reasonably sure that he had not left the BookWorld. Not that Thorin had ever been to the Outland – he would stand out too much there – but Kate had been there a couple of times on a Jurisfiction assignment and she had told him about it. The Outland was not as structured as the BookWorld, she'd explained. It was overwhelmingly rich in detail and everyone looked as detailed as A-grade characters. Possibly because they all thought of themselves as the main characters of their own stories, she had theorised. In the Outland people didn't categorise themselves as mentor figures or villains or sidekicks; they all took centre stage or at least strove for it.

The place he was in now, was sorely lacking in detail. In fact, the far end of the room was barely described at all. Either the author hadn't bothered or Adjectivores had been having a go at it. From what Thorin could tell, it was probably the latter. After all, he would have expected the wall to be made of stone, perhaps a little old and crumbling like the rest of the room. It wasn't. It was simply a wall. There was no a single adjective that applied to it anymore. Well, there wouldn't be if an Adjectivore had been snacking on it.

Normally Thorin would find that annoying, because it meant another grammasite hunt or at the very least a mission to repair the damage done, but for now he was relieved to see it there, because it meant he was definitely still in the BookWorld, quite possibly somewhere in the backstory of a book, since that was where Adjectivores felt most comfortable.

And if he was in the BookWorld, he should theoretically be able to read himself back into the main Library. He would have been able to do that even from the Outland, but it would have taken more effort. And he had never taken the transfictional jump himself. It seemed foolish to attempt it from his position now.

But now that he knew he was still inside the BookWorld, he was confident he could make it out. True, he would still be tied to a chair, but at least he could cry for help and somebody would find him soon enough. And it was better to at least try than throw in the towel and admit defeat.

Outlanders would need a book to travel, as would some Jurisfiction agents, but reading himself into the Library was easy even without a Travel Book. He had accompanied Kate so often that he knew the words by heart. It was a risk to utter them in the presence of this man, but since he had already kidnapped Thorin from his own story, it was safe to assume that he had at least some basic knowledge of how to navigate travel in the BookWorld.

He looked over his shoulder, but it appeared his jailer had, at least for the moment, lost interest in him. He had moved to another corner of the room to another chair that was presumably for his own use and had turned his back on his prisoner.

All for the better.

He began to recite: 'I was in a long, dark, wood-panelled corridor, lined with bookshelves that reached from the richly carpeted floor to the vaulted ceiling.' He knew the Library well, pictured it in his mind as he recited, slowly and precisely. 'The carpet was elegantly patterned and the ceiling was decorated with rich mouldings that depicted scenes from the classics. High above me, spaced at regular intervals, were finely decorated circular apertures through which light gained entry, reinforcing the serious mood of the library.'

Something was wrong. By now he should have been almost out of this place and into the Library itself and there wouldn't be a single thing the man in the corner could do about it. But nothing had happened. Thorin's surroundings remained as solid as they had a minute before.

Even so, he wouldn't let this deter him. 'Running down the centre of the corridor was a long row of reading tables, each with a green-shaded brass lamp. The library appeared endless; in both directions the corridor vanished into darkness with no definable end.'

'It won't work.'

The man's voice broke Thorin's focus and destroyed whatever progress, if any, he may have made.

Thorin turned his head around in order to glare at him. It was a difficult thing to achieve successfully; he was once again standing behind Thorin in such a way he could not make out a face. 'You have no right to keep me here.' Of course, that phrase had never stopped kidnappers before, but he was so furious now that the futility of his words didn't matter much. 'What have you done?'

'There's a textual sieve on this book,' the man replied, sounding smug. Thorin realised that in trying to make his escape this way he had only played into his kidnapper's hands; he had been expecting it. For someone who expected gratefulness from his prisoner, he had certainly taken some extreme measures to prevent escape. 'Though nobody's really explained it to me.'

Nobody could. It didn't have to be explained in the BookWorld. It was a place that ran on imagination – and enormous amounts of paperwork – and as long as somebody was able to imagine it and write it down, it would work.

Textual sieves however needed approval, written, signed and sealed in triplicate. The Council of Genres was rather strict on the use of extreme measures such as that. The use of one here would almost certainly have left a trail somewhere, if it had been an official one. Thorin doubted that. There was no question that the Council of Genres had many issues, but they would never give permission for the abduction of a character.

None of this made sense.

'Not as grateful as you thought he was going to be, is he?'

The voice speaking was female and none Thorin recognised.

'Did you know about this?' the man demanded.

Thorin tried to turn around, but the new arrival kept to the shadows and he couldn't see her face. Hard to tell from where he was if she was a character or an Outlander like her partner in crime.

'You don't understand this place,' the woman said. Her tone was distinctly patronising. Even if she hadn't had a hand in his abduction, Thorin very much doubted he would have liked her. 'It's alive, you see. Not in the same way you and I are, obviously.' So she was an Outlander too. 'The characters have more agency than you'd think.'

'If that were the case, he should be grateful,' the man argued as if Thorin wasn't there. 'That toxic relationship he's been forced into… I mean, he should be able to recognise that the girl wasn't good for him, that he was effectively a prisoner in his own book.'

'Well, if Stockholm Syndrome exists in our world, it could exist here.' The woman sounded almost distracted. This discussion was not her primary focus. 'You see now, don't you, that your approach won't work?'

'I need more time,' the man said. 'Give him the opportunity to change his mind, let it sink in. I'm sure he'll come round.'

'I will not,' Thorin snarled, very angry by now and also feeling the first traces of dread creep in and make themselves at home. There was a greater scheme here and though he did not know what it was, he had already decided he did not like it.

'There you have it,' the woman said. 'It's time for Plan B, don't you think?'

Thorin did not like the sound of that either.

Kate

'It must be an Outlander, surely,' Vernham Deane said.

Kate grimaced. The same thought had occurred to her over and over again. But every time she thought it, the notion that it did not make sense came hard on its heels. What interest could an Outlander possibly have in Thorin? He wasn't the original Thorin after all. He was next to no use if people wanted to extract a ransom from the Council of Genres. Fanfictions were ten a penny these days and the loss of one story was not a great one. Characters could be sold off to other stories and whatever remained could be chopped up and reused elsewhere. Kate herself would probably be spared, given her job at Jurisfiction, but her friends…

Stop it right there, Andrews. This fight wasn't fought and lost yet. As it was, the fight had barely even begun.

'Yes, but why?' It always came back to that.

Vern invited himself to perch on her desk. 'Let's see what we actually know,' he suggested. He was approaching this far more reasonably than Kate did. Normally, that would have annoyed her. But she was too restless now to pay it much attention.

'Right.' She forced herself to take a deep breath and focus. 'Thorin disappeared between the line breaks of chapter 36 of The Journal. Clever move, because everyone was asleep at that point, except for Dwalin. And he was knocked out before he could see who was there, so that's no use either.'

She didn't blame Dwalin. It wasn't his fault. Nothing was supposed to be attacking them at that point, so there was no need to be vigilant.

'And a few days earlier, there's this suspicious Outlander creeping around in another Hobbit fanfiction. So far as we know, he's done nothing, but he wasn't supposed to be there in the first place.'

'Perhaps he was looking for high quality characters,' Vern suggested. 'And he didn't find any there.'

Kate shook her head. 'Their Kíli is more than halfway decent,' she argued. 'A few of the other dwarves as well.' She looked over to where the Kíli in question was still giving Commander Bradshaw the details of the man he'd seen. He was a B-2 character, wasted in that piece he was stuck in. 'Why not go for any one of them?'

It felt so unfair. They to face more than their fair share of conflict of one sort or another in their book; Kate could count the number of quiet times on the fingers of one hand and then she'd still have fingers to spare. And now they faced it outside of the narrative as well? And she couldn't blame an author for this or the folk down in the Well of Lost Plots who constructed the story. This was an outside force that she was somehow defenceless against.

It only served to make her angrier.

'But no A-grades as far as I know,' Vernham pointed out. 'They're rare in fanfiction.'

'But not unique.' Kate could name eighteen A-grade fanfiction Thorins at the drop of a hat and then there were probably some more that she'd missed. A couple of them were in fanfictions that adhered a lot closer to the Hobbit canon than The Journal did. And if you were going to steal a copy, wouldn't you want to get as close to the genuine article as you could get? Because that would have been the logical thing to do.

Which brought her back to her initial point. 'None of this makes any sense.'

Vernham thought this over. 'Perhaps this Outlander is a little insane.'

'Delete the little and you're probably right.' She pulled her hand through her hair for lack of something better to do.

She felt restless. Usually she had at least something to go on. Even this morning, she had been going round other stories looking for clues. She had been busy. She had contributed something. But now that new information had emerged, she couldn't see how to continue. Tracking people in the BookWorld was difficult. Unless they messed about with a story, they were untraceable. And the BookWorld was vast; they could be anywhere.

The quiet went on for 98 words and then Vern said thoughtfully: 'Well, if that's true, then maybe he'll make a mistake, mess up in the book he's hiding in and we'll find him like that.'

'He could have fled to the Outland already.' Her heart sank at the idea. While finding him in the BookWorld was hard, the RealWorld would make it harder still. She had been there a few times now, but she never stopped finding it horribly overwhelming. There were so many details everywhere.

And the sheer amount of people had baffled her. The BookWorld had more than enough people to be passers-by or townspeople and the like, people who were just background in the stories because they never did anything other than walk past and occasionally wish one a good morning. Passers-by in the Outland were distinctly different, not least because they were all at least as detailed as A-grade characters. And they all seemed to be doing a lot of things other than simply walking past. They were carrying on conversations of their own, glowering at people who got in their way or stopping her to ask directions. It was chaotic and alien. She had always been glad to return home to a world more organised than theirs.

Before she could sink too deeply into that idea, Commander Bradshaw approached her. 'There's a message from The Hobbit,' he said.

Kate groaned. 'Their Thorin has gone missing as well, has he?' After all, it was only to be expected.

'No,' he replied. And that at least was cause for some relief. Although the abduction of the original Thorin would doubtlessly have made her colleagues a bit more motivated to take this seriously. 'He wants to have a word with a Jurisfiction agent on a sensitive matter.'

'For goodness sake!' Kate exclaimed. 'I'm trying to find my Thorin. Can't somebody else go?'

Vern stepped in and saved her from herself. 'The original Thorin asking to see a Jurisfiction agent on the same day another Thorin disappears? You don't think that's a coincidence, do you?'

Kate could have kicked herself for not seeing the connection right away. Her focus had been too narrow and as a result, she'd not only behaved like a fool, she'd likely lost valuable time as well. Bloody hell, Andrews, keep your head in the game. 'Right. Sorry.'

Bradshaw patted her on the shoulder. 'He's requested you drop in near the end of the first chapter.' Kate could tell he felt sorry for her, but was grateful that at least he didn't say so. She might not have responded in an acceptable manner. 'We'll keep looking through the other Hobbit fanfictions, to see if he has visited any others. Perhaps he spoke to somebody.'

It was a long shot and they both knew it. Unfortunately it was also the best they had.

The end of the first chapter was where she needed to go and so there she went. It ended with Bilbo falling asleep and so, when she arrived at Bag End, she waited a few minutes until she was sure the chapter had ended and then she knocked on the door of the bedroom Thorin was supposed to occupy. 'Agent Andrews from Jurisfiction,' she announced.

She had been expected, because she was let in almost straight away.

'Agent Andrews,' the original Thorin acknowledged.

'Thorin Oakenshield,' she greeted. 'I've heard you had an urgent matter to bring to my attention?'

They hadn't met before. Like many original characters, the original Thorin often liked to pretend his fanfiction alter egos did not exist. He was unlikely to appreciate someone from the Hobbit fanfiction to come poking around his book and since Kate's area was fanfiction by default, she had never come near the original The Hobbit. She imagined it would be an awkward experience for everyone involved.

Awkwardness was now the last thing she cared about.

'Come in,' he invited.

Kate did as she was bid, only to find that Thorin had not been alone. Nori was with him, looking equal parts sheepish and terrified. She didn't know what exactly was going on, but Nori was generally a troublemaker in whatever story she found, her own included, and so it was no difficult leap to make to assume he had something to do with the reason why she had been called here in the first place.

Thorin closed the door behind her and remained standing in front of it as if to cut of escape. Nori's escape, she imagined, not afraid for her own freedom.

'What is this about?' she asked briskly.

'He has been seen in conference with what is presumed to be an Outlander,' Thorin informed her. The tone of voice was icy and dripping with disapproval. 'And we have been told that a character has been taken from his own story.' Kate strongly suspected he knew exactly what character, but he just couldn't bring himself to say it. And she didn't mind, not now anyway.

She turned her attention to Nori. 'You've spoken with this man?'

'Don't know anything about a man,' he said. 'Looked like a woman to me.'

Great, so there's two of them. At least. 'This woman, then,' she corrected. 'What exactly was the conversation about?'

Any reluctance Nori may have felt about divulging such information was undone by the way Thorin looked at him. 'Information,' he confessed.

'About?'

'The BookWorld,' Nori replied promptly. 'And The Hobbit. And fanfiction.'

Kate could start to see where this was going. 'Why?'

The sheepishness for one moment outweighed the terror. 'Money.' He hesitated, then continued: 'Well, it's not like it's cheap to make your story better. Décor costs a fortune these days, not to mention the price of decently written dialogue and characters above C-grade. And the price of a good backstory is going through the roof just now.' All of a sudden he sounded very irritated and put-upon.

Realisation dawned on Kate. 'You are not the original Nori.'

She should have bloody realised. This Nori was A-grade, the original one somewhere between C-3 and B-8. She wasn't entirely sure. The original Nori couldn't have thought of such a scheme.

'Where's the original?' she demanded, turning to Thorin for an answer.

'On the Character Exchange Programme,' he replied, not sounding pleased about it. Well, he had no reason to. 'An agent from Jurisfiction provided a stand-in until his return.'

Kate knew the procedure. Sometimes it was best to recruit from fanfiction when an original character wanted a holiday. They were already familiar with the part and, in most cases, more or less looked as they were supposed to.

Kate was normally in charge of selecting the right fanfiction alter ego to temporarily step into the shoes of the original. And she was good at her job. And it wasn't an easy job either, because fanfiction was a mess even on a good day. It was where the flotsam and jetsam of the BookWorld washed up: the rubbish, but also the gems who couldn't find employment in original fiction, usually because they resembled existing characters too much. Over the years fanfiction had become the place for those characters who had nowhere else to go.

And it was tricky to get it all right. But Kate knew the genre – and honestly, that term was so wrong for a group of stories that encompassed every genre known to man – like the back of her hand. She always made it work. Except these past few weeks she had been so busy fighting grammasites that she asked Bradshaw if somebody else could handle that part of her duties for the time being. And Kate knew for sure she had not authorised this particular transfer.

Somebody had royally messed up here.

'Who handled this?' she asked.

'A Master George Warleggan, I believe.' Judging by the look on Thorin's face, he didn't have the first idea of who that was.

Would be that she was blessed with that ignorance.

'I'll bring that to the Bellman's attention,' she promised. A part of her revelled in the idea of having George – finally – cut down to size, but it didn't take prominence as much as it would have on an ordinary day.

This Nori was overqualified for the job he was doing and clearly George hadn't bothered to so much as meet him to determine whether this Nori would be a good fit in the original story. He really should have done his homework.

That didn't mean that Kate didn't sympathise with Nori's plight. She was only too well aware of just how underfunded fanfiction was and how the quality of the stories suffered as a result. If she had been in his shoes, she would have tried to improve it as well, in order to attract more readers and to make her story a more pleasant place to live and work.

But I wouldn't take money from a dubious source in exchange for information.

And now her Thorin was gone, vanished into thin air. For all she knew, Nori had enabled that to happen. For just a moment she had the violent urge to scratch out his eyes with her fingernails, but that wouldn't bring Thorin back. It changed nothing.

'Why?' she demanded. 'Why did this woman want to know all these things?' It took considerable effort to rein in her temper and stick to the case. She'd see him in court for this eventually, preferably after she got Thorin back. Until then, he had information that she needed. You'll need to do this by the book, girl. Her little fantasy about hurting him would have to sustain her for the time being.

Nori shrugged. 'How am I supposed to know?'

'Meaning: you didn't bloody well ask, did you?' Kate growled. 'Just took the money without question.' She laughed without humour. 'How very like you.'

He shrugged again. 'I'm written like that.'

How many times had she heard that one as an excuse? She'd lost count. And of course, certain types of characters acted a certain way, but especially the higher graded ones weren't slave to that. They had more agency, more freedom and intelligence to break away from the confines of writing when not inside their own narratives. Take Emperor Zhark for example. Inside his books he was the tyrant to end all tyrants, but outside of his stories, at Jurisfiction, he was capable of more balanced social interaction, albeit still with a slight tendency to solve matters the violent way. And this Nori, being A-grade, really should have known better.

'Cut the bullshit,' she snapped at him.

Nori held up his hands. 'Whoa, calm down. What's it to you anyway?'

Kate held his gaze, doing her very best to mimic Thorin's iciest stare. Judging by the horrified look on the recipient's face, she was succeeding. 'The character who's been abducted is my husband.' She let those words sink in before she continued. 'That is what it is to me. My husband, whom I love, has been taken. But not only that, because of this, if he is not found, my story and everything and everyone in it, is at risk. Because of you.'

Nori seemed to realise he had pissed off the wrong woman. 'I didn't know.'

Kate wasn't fooled. 'Would it have made a difference if you had?'

She had him there. 'Well, no. I think.' He seemed to take a few words to determine whether his next sentence would see her throttling the life out of him and evidently decided she would not, because he continued: 'But I would have warned you. Probably.'

Kate's glare must have informed him his reassurance was not appreciated.

She commanded him to describe the woman he'd spoken to and Nori answered in some detail. He described her as in her late twenties, as tall as the elves, with green eyes and curiously coloured purple hair; the fashion trends in the RealWorld must have gone completely bonkers. It was hard to argue with that assessment.

'But how did you know she was an Outlander and not an A-grade character?' Kate asked.

'Well, she told me.'

Did she?

It doesn't make sense.

'Did she perhaps tell you what she was up to while she was at it?' Kate asked.

'Like I said, I didn't ask.' For the first time Nori looked apologetic. Kate couldn't decide if it was genuine; for all she knew he was just trying to save his own skin. After all, she knew where the Eraserheads were kept and he had just helped to facilitate her husband's kidnapping.

Kate looked back at Thorin. 'Could I have a word with you alone?'

He agreed and gestured for her to move into the hallway beyond the door. Once again, he stood against it, just from the other side, so that Nori would not be able to get out, unless he wanted to take his chances with the small window in the room itself.

'You did not say you were married to the stolen Thorin,' he observed. He didn't seem very pleased. Well, he wouldn't be, given what some of the Original Characters in the Hobbit fanfiction section got up to. They made Kate cringe on a fairly regular basis. The blonde whimpering C-grade from this morning's story sprang to mind almost straightaway.

But she prided herself on being nothing like that.

'Wasn't aware I needed to,' Kate retorted, keeping her tone light and businesslike. The whole thing hadn't been awkward until he started about it, but now it suddenly was. Because in effect she was married to another version of him. That was the way he was clearly looking at it anyway. 'You're not him.'

There had never been any confusion in her mind. She knew who she was married to. Perhaps they were made from the same basic material, but their experiences were different and therefore the sort of people they were today were also not the same. Of course, they kind of looked the same. The original Thorin had been morphed by collective reader expectation to look more like the movie version of himself. Rumour had it he wasn't happy about it.

But most characters whose books had been made into movies underwent some kind of change, especially if both movie and book got a lot of attention. And Thorin had got off relatively well. Harry Potter had more grounds for complaints.

She had taken him by surprise. 'I did not say so.'

'You were wondering if I was thinking it.' It didn't really matter which version of The Hobbit she was in, blunt honesty was always valued by dwarves. 'And I'm not. I want my husband back. I haven't got the faintest interest in you.'

She missed him. A mission of this magnitude they would have undertaken together. He would have had her back and she in turn would have watched his. They'd each pick up on things that the other missed. She tried to do by herself what they usually did with the two of them and it made her feel incredibly lonely. Maybe seeing someone who looked like him but wasn't him only made it moreso.

Where is he? Is he alive? What do they want with him?

She had more answers than questions.

Thorin nodded. 'Good.' Then he swiftly moved on. 'What is to be done with him?'

'Keep him close,' Kate counselled. 'If we're lucky, she'll come back for more.' Unlikely, seeing as she already had what she came for. 'If so, kindly detain her and send word to Norland Park. I would appreciate it.'

Again, she had received a snippet of information, but had no idea how to use it. It made her feel weary to the bone. And at the same time it made her blood boil with rage. Why her Thorin? Why of all the people in the BookWorld had they gone after him? What reason could there be? How dare they?

If only she had a place to start, if only she knew more. But she hadn't and she didn't and so the investigation, such as it was, was moving at a snail's pace. And quite frankly, that was an insult to snails in general.

'It will be done,' the original Thorin informed her. It seemed that a few pieces of the puzzle had finally fallen into place and now at least he realised who exactly she was. 'It was said that you could have done well in original fiction, yet you chose fanfiction.'

'I did.' She hadn't regretted it once.

The next question was predictable. 'Why would you do that?'

'Because it was the only place where we could be placed together. It was a choice.' People asked her sometimes if she wondered what it would have been like to work in original fiction and if she ever wished she had made a different choice. The answer had always been no. It wouldn't ever change either. 'I love him.' It was hard to remember a time when she hadn't. It was hard sometimes and people were always judging, both in the narrative and outside of it. And it's still worth it. This is still worth fighting for. 'Where he goes, I go.'

But now she hadn't followed. Not from choice, but because someone had decided to separate them.

She couldn't recall if she had ever felt so alone before.

Next time: The woman who shouted a lot. Kate really isn't happy with George right now.

Personally I think that Thorin and Kate wouldn't really be themselves if their relationship was not a conscious and somewhat controversial choice. It's at the heart of their story and I would not dream of changing it.

If you do know the Thursday Next series, I'm keeping to the canon up to Something Rotten (book 4). I'm certainly disregarding most – if not everything – of that series where it concerns fanfiction, which I am happily making up as I go along.

A quick thank you to dearreader for your review. Great to hear you're enjoying this!

Also, on a completely unrelated note: has anyone any recommendations for good Hobbit fanfics? I need something to back up Kate's claim of knowing 18 A-grade Thorins and I can't find them.

Thank you very much for reading. Please let me know what you thought about this one! Is it enjoyable? Are there things I haven't made clear enough? Reviews would be very much appreciated!