A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Alternate Entry Twenty-Four - Rot and Growth

It didn't end up working out between us, Bain and I. Just the thought of having to tell him this made me ill for days, and for days I avoided it. But the awareness of this had been coming on for weeks, I had just, for my own comfort, denied it.

We sat in a secluded part of his house, me with my knees drawn up and arms wrapped around them, him with his elbows on his knees. "You are an irreplaceable friend to me but I think our cultures are just too different. You're terribly courteous, Bain, and that's why human women love you. But I'm from a different place, where I'm neither accustomed to nor terribly happy with too much deference. You'll make someone very happy that way someday, but I don't think that someone ought to be me."

Bain nodded, gazing grimly down between his feet, maintaining his wonderful courtesy even now. "I understand." He glanced up. "I'm not arguing my case, but as I understand it the dwarves are fairly deferential toward their women as well."

I heaved a sigh. "I know they are. With any luck I'll find a rude one to marry."

He gave a small chip of laughter. "I think you'll have to."

"Bain I desperately wish to remain your friend, and regardless of what you want I'm going to try to be. Please tell me we still can be."

He nodded, looking down at his feet again. "Of course, Mabyn. Who could deny you that pleasure?" He cracked a wry smile that I had no idea what to make of.

I stood, not wanting to linger in his distress when I had been the one to cause it and I was not the one who could assuage it. "I'll see you soon then? I'm so sorry, Bain."

He shook his head, and gave me that small smile again. "I'd never ask you to go against your nature, Mabyn. Only a cruel man would."

He took it very well, but still it hurt me terribly to have caused the pain of a dear friend, and I was positively shaking by the time I returned to Erebor, taking back hallways Gimli had explored with me so I didn't have to face anyone I knew. When I returned home I threw the door open and slammed it behind me, causing Bofur's head to shoot up in concern. He knew what I'd left to do that evening.

"Mabyn, are you all right?"

I shook my head, took a few steps forward and sat curled in on myself on the ledge down into our living room.

Bofur came immediately to sit at my side, arm wrapped around my shoulders to lean me into him. "What happened?"

I shook my head into my knees, tears filling my eyes. I opened my mouth more than once as I tried to speak. Finally all I could do was whisper what was hurting me most of all. "I fell in love with a dead man." And admitting it aloud only allowed the wound to crack through what little control I still had and I began to cry in earnest. "I was so intrigued by his character and I knew I wouldn't be around long enough to experience it for real, so I let myself fall in love with him knowing I couldn't hurt him. I latched onto him. And then everything went and ruined itself. I was supposed to be the one who died and he was supposed to be the one who lived, and when I found him there and knew he was already dead I just loved him even more as though that would bring him back and I knew it wouldn't, but I still hoped it would. I hoped it would just be some figment of my imagination but it wasn't and he's gone and I still love him because I never had the chance not to."

Bofur lifted his other hand to cup my cheek and kiss my hair. "I'm sorry it had to be this way too, Mabyn. Not that you lived of course...."

"I know," I moaned. "But I'd reverse it if I could. Nothing happened the way it was supposed to. The strong ones are supposed to live."

"You would have died if you weren't strong as well."

"I should have died."

"Dying wouldn't have made him live."