A Better Place - The Hobbit Fanfiction

Twenty-Sixth Entry - Catalyst

_____Spoilers are contained in the next couple chapters; do not read them until reading the book or watching the coming movie.

I did not feel Bofur gently stroking my hair that night, when Dwalin woke him for his shift on watch; or Gloin carefully tying my bootlaces together because I'd forgot; or Thorin picking up the fool's amethyst I'd had clenched in my fist early in the night and dropped, and slipping it back into my fingers; or Bilbo straightening my blankets when he realized they'd gone askew and I was shivering. I did not know the number of small kindnesses that had been bestowed upon me by these gold-hearted dwarves, but I felt the warmth that they provided. I had been craving it all my life.

I woke sometime in the warbling hours of the morning to Bilbo waking Bombur. I walked to the balcony to look out over the dim gray landscape and though Bombur was about to wake someone else for the watch he diverted temporarily to stand at the wall with me. I smiled at him. "Wonder when it will be spring again," I said, nodding toward the bleak cold stones and dormant grasses. "Do you remember how it looks?"

Bombur shook his head. "Only Thorin and Balin were here at the fall, the rest of us hadn't been born yet." He glanced sidelong at me. "The others have told me a number of stories about you, to try to help me remember, but I'm afraid I still don't." He shook his head. "Some of the epithets they remember you saying were particularly entertaining though, so I wish I did."

My lips twitched up. "I wish you did too. It isn't like we were age-old friends, but it is sad to lose anything that was once good. And I'd imagine you feel a bit left out since the others all remember those weeks and you don't."

Somberly he nodded. "That I do. But it is what it is I suppose."

We spent a few minutes in silence before I asked, "How have you been since the river?"

Bombur sighed. "All I want to do is sleep," he admitted. "The dreams I had while sleeping were so full and warm and comfortable. They were a far kinder time than this has been thus far."

Thick sorrow spread through me for his plight, particularly since I understood it so well. My dreams had brought tears to my eyes when I woke from them before. "It's a terrible fate that sometimes the kindest worlds are the ones that aren't real." I didn't know it, but confusion was creeping into my mind then, muddling my sense of reason. As we watched the landscape never change I said, "What's worse is that your reality might be someone else's dream." I shook my head. "None of this is real. I have another life somewhere-the one I've told you about, even if you don't remember-and this is the kinder dream for me."

Bombur was staring at me, severely unnerved by my confession, but I didn't see the astonishment in his gaze. I was losing my ability to remember why I had or hadn't done things before, such as explain that this place wasn't real to me even if I so sorely wanted it to, even if it meant I would still die here. I would rather die in this world than live in mine.

Bombur shifted his considerable weight back and forth on his short legs. He cleared his throat. "Hm. Well. I'd best wake Nori. It's his turn for the watch." He shuffled off, but not before saying, "Perhaps you'd best try to get some more sleep, too. I've a feeling we'll be losing it soon enough."

I returned to my pile of blankets as Bombur had suggested. I didn't know when I woke the next morning that Bombur had secretly woken Oin as well as Nori and had a hushed, hasty conversation with them, in which they discussed possible stresses on my mind and my perception of the world. They decided the infection must be addling me somehow, and that I needed to be watched more closely from now on. Oin decided to tell Thorin in the morning, but no one else, and swore Bombur to secrecy until further notice. He knew I didn't want special treatment and, this late in my life, wasn't about to hurt me with their distrust of my ability to think for myself. They wanted to keep me as happy as possible, and if excluding me from some truths would achieve those ends they would.