A/N Y'ALL IT HAS BEEN A TIME. Bajeezus.
Like, A Time (tm) and I'm trying to get my shit back together. But luckily part of that is getting some writing done for that whole "writing is healing" shit I talk about all the time.
So hi, hello, I'm not dead. I think.
And after this chapter guess where we're at? THERE IS SO MUCH ANGST COMING ARE YOU READY? I am. It's gonna be fun.
If during the War of the Ring she'd felt akin to a lost duckling, now she felt more like the mother of thirteen ducklings, trudging along behind them while they looked for the treasures of the trolls' hoard.
The smell hit them before they could see it and they followed their noses until the dark maw of the cave showed itself around the bend. Bofur, Gloin, and Nori followed Gandalf and Thorin inside while Dwalin hung back. She stayed well outside with the others, watching them poke around the fringes of a couple of piles of refuse outside.
All Josephine needed to do was make sure they came out with two swords and Sting, other than that her work there was done. Done, at least to the point of waiting worriedly for shit to hit the fan again and hear wargs on the horizon.
"Lady Josephine?" Kili asked over his shoulder. "Are you alright?"
She snapped out of her musings and took stock of how her arm was resting around her middle, unconsciously covering what sore spots would probably form into some nasty bruises from being squeezed back in the glade. Trying to seem as nonchalant as possible she dropped her arm and nodded. "Can't stand the smell."
If Kili wanted to ask anything else, he ran out of time as the group came back out of the cave.
"Bilbo." Gandalf said. "Here, this is about your size."
Josephine watched from afar as Sting was passed into Bilbo's hands and they spoke quietly while Gandalf tried to convince him to keep it.
Then Thorin stiffened. "Something's coming!"
"Stay together!" Gandalf called. "Hurry now! Arm yourself!"
The dwarves rushed towards the sound, pulling out their swords and buffering her as they passed. She didn't hear wargs yet so this was something else. What was it again? God, it had been so much longer since she'd seen the Hobbit movies than when she'd been doing this before with the Rings trilogy.
If it wasn't wargs then it wasn't probably dangerous and horrible, but she pulled out her sword anyway and nodded to Bilbo as he came up to her with Sting drawn and a nervous expression.
"Just stick close to me, we'll look after each other." She told him confidently as they slipped into the rest of the group.
The rustling sound got louder and they all braced themselves for what ended up being absolutely nothing to worry about. Then she remembered, it was just Radagast.
"Thieves! Fire! Murder!" He yelled as he pulled his sled to a stop in the midst of them all.
"Radagast!" Gandalf sighed in relief, sheathing his sword. "It's Radagast the Brown! What on earth are you doing here?"
"I was looking for you Gandalf, something's wrong. Something's terribly wrong!"
"Yes…?" Gandalf said slowly.
It was then that Radagast seemed to realize he was surrounded by dwarves. "Well…well perhaps we should speak of it…with a little less…"
Gandalf harrumphed and motioned for Radagast to follow him a little ways away. She wasn't invited, but she wasn't…not invited either, so she followed. She needed all the background information she could get to fill in the gaps in her memory.
Gandalf lit his pipe and the dwarves milled around, napping and searching for food around the rocks even though they knew they wouldn't find anything.
With a moment to collect himself after his arrival, Radagast began his story, glancing briefly at her but not saying anything when Gandalf gave little notice of her being there. "The Greenwood is sick, Gandalf. A darkness has fallen over it. Nothing grows anymore, at least nothing good. The air is foul with decay. But worse are the webs."
"Webs? What do you mean?" Gandalf prodded.
Josephine didn't need to be reminded of those. She'd been glad enough in hindsight to not have needed to follow Frodo and Sam through Shelob's lair. Now she was sure Mirkwood was going to be worse.
"Spiders, Gandalf. Giant ones. Some kind of spawn of Ungoliant, or I am not a wizard. I followed their trail. They came from Dol Guldur."
At that, Gandalf turned slowly to look back at Radagast. "Dol Guldur? But the old fortress is abandoned."
"No, Gandalf, it is not. A dark power dwells there…such as I have never felt before. It is the shadow of an ancient horror. One that can summon the spirits…of the dead."
His eyes glazed over in fear and Josephine knew exactly what he was talking about. She still heard their screams in her nightmares and the memory of that cold, instinctive fear had never left her even after all this time.
"I saw him, Gandalf. From out of the darkness…a Necromancer has come." He fell silent for several moments, eyes unfocused and distant. Then suddenly he snapped back. "Sorry."
"Try a little Old Toby." Gandalf offered, wiping the end of his pipe off with his beard and offering it to Radagast. "It'll help settle your nerves. In and out."
As the smoke slipped out from between Radagast's lips Gandalf continued gently.
"Now, the Necromancer. Are you sure?'
Looking him square in the eye, Radagast pulled a weapon from his coat wrapped in a skin that Gandalf quickly unwrapped the hilt of.
"That is not from the world of the living."
The calm and sturdy expression Gandalf had shown the whole time fell suddenly and he looked from the hilt, to Radagast, and then finally to her. She couldn't mask her familiarity with what they were talking about, or the realization that she also knew what that blade meant. It was the same blade that would sink into Frodo's shoulder one day.
"Josephine, I would very much value your input on this, if you are free to-"
But he couldn't finish his request and she jumped as a howl cut through the forest. By the time they reached the others, they'd cut down two massive wargs who lay dead at their feet.
"Warg scouts! Which means an orc pack is not far behind!" Thorin growled.
"Orc pack?" Bilbo said with a leaning towards annoyance even more than fear.
"Who did you tell about your quest, beyond your kin?" Gandalf pressed Thorin.
"No one." He answered.
"Who did you tell?!"
"No one. I swear! Perhaps we should be asking our Seer who she may have told instead! What in Durin's name is going on?"
"Wait, hold on!" She snapped. "How did we go back to NOT trusting me!"
"Well, the trolls probably didn't help much." Nori mumbled.
"I'm not the reason you're being hunted and we don't have time to argue about it either!"
"She's right." Dwalin interrupted. "We have to get out of here.
"We can't!" Ori added, running down from where he'd been watching them. "We have no ponies. They bolted!
"I'll draw them off." Radagast said confidently.
"These are Gundabad wargs, they will outrun you!"
"These are Rhosgobel rabbits! I'd like to see them try."
So, with howls filling the trees, Radagast took off through the brush, his voice echoing in the distance as he drew the hunting party away. The Company traveled in a long line following Gandalf's lead into the rocky outcroppings in the higher areas of the Trollshaws. They would run one way, then skid to a halt as a stream of wargs passed the ridge above them. Then they'd turn and head another way. It seemed random enough, except Josephine had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't entirely out of Gandalf's hands. It wasn't like they would just stumble upon the secret pathway on their own.
Thorin had the same suspicion. "Where are you leading us?" He asked as they paused to allow another part of the hunting party pass.
Gandalf didn't answer, and neither did Josephine.
Her ribs were burning but they paused just enough to give her a chance to breathe. She was lucky her time in Gondor hadn't been idle and she'd kept up with exercise enough that she wasn't entirely out of shape for this kind of thing.
They pressed back against another outcropping, squeezing themselves as far into the stone as possible as they heard a warg on the stone above them and the sound of a sword coming out of its sheath.
Thorin nodded to Kili to draw his bow and Dwalin pressed his arm back over her chest, keeping her securely away from view. Kili stepped away and fired, hitting the warg in the chest. By the time the warg and the orc riding it hit the ground in front of them, the fletching of a second arrow was sticking out of the orc's chest, but not deep enough to kill it.
Dwalin and Bifur jumped forward and hacked at it as it screamed.
"Move!" Gandalf yelled. "Run!"
The gig was up, they were found out. They ran, but it wasn't long before they were flanked.
"We're surrounded!" Fili yelled.
But Josephine had her eyes on Gandalf and he had his eyes on a particular boulder just behind them. "Please tell me this is the passageway we've been looking for?" She hissed as she followed him towards it.
"If I'm wrong, then we've got quite the fight on our hands."
They reached the edge and found the steep passage down into the darkness. No time to waste, Gandalf slid into it. "Call the others!"
She poked her head back up over the rocks and yelled. "Let's go, boys! Double time!"
They ran for her and she popped back up onto the grass, drawing her sword as they funneled down into the tunnel. Thorin took up a place on the other side of the passage and yelled for Kili who was still shooting down the orcs he could reach. But he had enough time and distance that he made it well ahead of any of the wargs and he followed Fili down. Then Thorin took her by the collar and shoved her, sliding down last of all.
The dwarves all looked up to the opening with worry and confusion as a different horn rang through the valley, an elvish horn. A dead orc rolled down to join them, but that was all. And then suddenly it was silent.
"Elves." Thorin said unhappily as he inspected the arrowhead that had downed their orc friend.
"I cannot see where the pathway leads! Do we follow it or not?" Dwalin yelled.
Bofur was already pushing through the others to get ahead. "We follow it of course!"
"I think that would be wise." Gandalf said smugly.
Josephine took a deep breath and sheathed her sword. "Finally."
The pathway was tight, and only a sliver of sky was visible among them. They went through in single file, she was just ahead of Bilbo and Gandalf, and the dwarves behind them kept lagging here and there to help Bombur get through the tighter spots.
"Gandalf? Where are we?" Bilbo asked.
"You can feel it-"
"Yes. It feels like…well like magic."
Josephine paused, taking in the same thing he was feeling, the same pure light and tingled at the edge of her mind. "It is magic, Bilbo." She closed her eyes and breathed it in, feeling altogether relieved to know it's peace again.
"There's light ahead!" Dawlin's gruff tone exclaimed, interrupting them.
They filed out of the tunnel past a small waterfall and onto a ledge, and there it was.
Josephine stepped through the group right up to the edge, unsure now if she were still with the dwarves, or back in her own time because both looked exactly the same. They were high up along the walls of the valley, above the thick trees, and could see every house and path from their height.
"The Valley of Imladris." Gandalf said proudly. "In the common tongue, it's known by another name."
"Rivendell." Bilbo answered in a daze.
"Here lies the last homely house, east of the sea."
Behind them Gandalf and Thorin argued but she didn't pay any attention. It wasn't like they could turn back now so it didn't matter how grumpy Thorin was about it. And besides, she couldn't move her eyes off of the valley if she tried.
Of all the places she'd been so far, none of them were as familiar as Rivendell. And none of them held as much memory. The thought was bittersweet and it jogged her out of her vigil.
"Come on, it's this way." She turned away from the view and made for the pathway down. This wasn't the first time she had walked it.
November 3018
Aragorn was thorough in his teachings and didn't hold her riding lessons just to the wide and well kept paths of Rivendell. Would the winding path up into the hill probably been easier and less nerve wracking on foot? Josephine was sure of it, but she knew Aragorn had done this purposefully to get her used to riding in places that were a bit more precarious.
Even still, even being on the sure footing of an elvish horse and following someone she trusted as much as Aragorn, the path made Josehpine nervous.
He glanced back at her from time to time, especially when they passed a point a bit more narrow than the rest, and every time she offered him a tight smile she hoped didn't totally smash his confidence in her. Then he returned the smile in a surety that she was doing just fine and Josephine found her nerves soothed, at least a little.
Eventually their climb paused in a small grassy clearing and Aragorn dismounted and turned his horse loose to graze. He offered her his hand to help her down and she tried not to pay much mind to his other hand as his fingers brushed against her back when her feet hit the ground.
She looked back at the way they came and laughed nervously at the steep, curving journey. "So we're going to lead them back down on foot…right?"
Aragorn smiled and shook his head.
"Right?" She winced.
"You need not fear, these horses will carry us safely wherever we may go. But come, we are not yet where I wish to take you."
Leaving their horses behind to enjoy their snack, the two of them continued on into a path cut into the mountainside. It was tight, too tight to bring the horses and Aragorn took it purposefully slow.
Josephine stepped carefully around loose rocks, keeping her eyes glued to her feet until they reached a wider area where Aragorn paused, ushering her up past him. With a hand on her arm he led her to the edge of a small pool that fell off into the air below them and then she realized why they'd come.
"You can see the whole valley from here." She gasped.
"Yes, and there," He pointed to the very end. "Where the Bruinen flows down into the Trollshaws."
The water was silver and gold in the afternoon sun which was burning through the gap in the mountains that surrounded the valley. "The sunset from here must be amazing." Part of her hoped they would stay long enough for her to see it, and the other part…well she wasn't too fond of the idea of riding back down in the dark.
"Indeed." He sat down and propped his arms up on his knees. "I came here often as a child."
She followed his lead and sat down next to him, crossing her legs and dipping her fingers into the cold pool by her knee. "Running away from your studies I'd guess?" He smiled and nodded and she chuckled. "Come on, we all did it. I mean I only had an attic to go sneak into and not an entire valley but still. For me it was my math homework. Stupid, right? The architect that hated math growing up." She paused when she caught him out of the corner of her eye."What?"
He was watching her with a smile. "I like to hear you speak of your home."
Josephine smirked and looked down at her hands. "It's not really all that interesting."
"I find it so. But I know it causes you grief to think of it and I do not wish that upon you."
Josephine didn't know what to say and wondered if it was weird to thank him for his sentiment and tact or better just to let it hang in the air. He seemed to pick up on her indecisiveness and took up the conversation again, turning it back towards something lighter.
"I most disliked learning to write Tengwar. I would come here to hide from my tutor."
"Who was your tutor?"
"Lord Elrond." Aragorn answered with an amused glint in his eye. "He can be quite intimidating to a child."
"It's the eyebrows." Josephine answered decisively. "Everyone thinks so."
Aragorn's laugh rang off of the ledge and out across the trees and Josephine decided she could handle a ride down in the dark if this was how they'd get to spend the afternoon.