A Fairy's Tale

Chapter Five

The elves tried to take her when he got back inside but Bilba went into near hysterics, clinging to Frerin and pleading with him to stay with her.

In the end he'd taken her to a small sitting room and sat with her in a large chair next to a roaring fireplace. A blanket was brought and he managed to get it around her before simply settling back and wrapping his arms around her. She dragged the blanket over and around herself until she was completely hidden, curled against him, and went silent, shaking and breathing unevenly.

"I'm sorry, Frerin," she said finally, her voice wavering.

"You did nothing wrong." Frerin said. "You have nothing to apologize for."

"That's not what I meant." She pulled the blanket down to let him see her face but kept it around her like a shield against the world. "I didn't get it before. It hurt so much and I was so scared and it only lasted a few minutes. Just a few minutes and it was awful. You went through it for years and you were hurt so badly."

Her voice broke at the end and Frerin's heart twisted with compassion for her. "I never felt any of it," he said, "I didn't feel anything."

"You felt it," Bilba said flatly. "Maybe not the physical pain but you felt it."

Frerin took a deep breath, focusing on a blank area of the wall. "It's over," he said simply, "for both of us."

"No it's not," she whispered. "It's over for you. It's just starting for me."

"You'll be safe in Rivendell."

"As long as I never leave," she said, her voice bitter. "Those are my options, stay locked in Rivendell or live alone and hidden in the Wild. That or I guess I could always find out where the rest of the Fae went and follow them."

Frerin flinched at the cynicism in her tone. It wasn't something he'd ever expected, or wanted, to hear from her. Thorin appeared in the door, raising an eyebrow in question. Frerin gave the slightest shake of his head. Thorin nodded and left, quietly pulling the door closed behind him.

Frerin studied the door, his mind absently going over his brother's plan to try and retake Erebor.

Erebor...a mountain with only two entrances that could be tightly controlled. With a potential city on its doorstep that could be seeded with spies, as it once had been, to watch for any possible threats, with a forest full of elves between the mountain and the primary pass coming over the Misty Mountains. Even if someone went out of their way to the Gap of Rohan and came up, they would still pass close by, if not through, Lothlorien, another area populated by elves who were quite capable of sensing evil. And if all of them proved as protective of Bilba as the ones in Rivendell...

If only the mountain weren't currently occupied by a dragon...

He studied the door where his brother had been a few moments earlier.

If only...

"You're wrong," he said to Bilba and she looked up at him with a frown, the lull in the conversation enough that she'd lost the thread of it.

She looked up at him with a frown. "What do you mean?"

"I don't believe you have no other choices," he said. "I don't believe you're not free to live the way you want, and I intend to prove it."

Her eyes narrowed. "How do you plan to do that?"

He pulled her up closer until he could look her in the eyes.

"Simple. I'm going to get you a fortress."

***

Thorin raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "What happened to, and I quote, 'the most inane plan you'd ever heard and that was saying something'?"