How I Leave You

Fleeing Moments

In the months to come, I will look back at the moments after that confrontation with Thorin and wish I had done everything differently.

I will wish I had not listened to the voice telling me to leave, to flee Erebor and return home. But when thinking back to why I acted as I did, I will have to remember that, as I pace my chambers after slamming its doors behind me, I feel it for the first time.

It makes me stop everything I'm doing. Every thought I'm having. Every plan I was making.

I stand very still, looking out over River Running from my bedroom window, not actually seeing anything at all. Alert. Waiting for it to happen again.

For it is not just that odd feeling that has been building in me for the last while. It is not just the betrayal that stings me, the ache that claws its way through me. Not even the regret that I let myself be deceived, let myself be burned by the flame just because I wanted to get close enough to kiss it.

My hands travel to my stomach and I almost convince myself that I just made it up. That I did not just feel something move inside me.

For a long time, I stand like that, watching my nearly transparent reflection in the stained glass. I have not looked at myself in a long time, and even now I do not truly see, for the world narrows to this: my hand on my abdomen, and the beating of my heart beneath it.

And something else.

Small. So gentle I barely feel it the second time.

A kick.

There can be no doubt about it now. The nausea builds up faster than I can hold it down. With one hand still on my stomach, another flies to my mouth.

Oh gods, the nausea. The sickness that has been greeting me ever since I got to Erebor. Ever since...

Since Thorin took me to the pools.

But that cannot be. That would mean I had been carrying a part of him inside of me for weeks. No, more than that. More than a month now.

It cannot be. Can it?

The exhaustion hits me like a hammer to the head. I have to sit down on the bed. The fatigue that's been overtaking me ever since waking back up... it was not healing at all, was it? It was growing.

Growing Thorin's child. His heir.

His bastard.

What future does the Lonely Mountain hold for a royal with no claim to the throne? For a child whose father belongs to someone else? Whose mother doesn't even belong to their peoples?

It does not take a fortune teller to know the answer to this. No future awaits an illegitimate Durin. Not here. Not while Thorin is engaged to someone else.

It is still day out. The winter sun hangs low on the cold sky, and I know, then, that I only have a few hours to prepare before they will come looking for me.

When they do, I will no longer be here for them to find.

Before sending the letter to Arwen, I write another one, addressed to my friend, the hobbit. I tell him where I have gone, though I do not mention why. How I leave Thorin is between me and the dwarven king. Still, I let Bilbo know that while I am angry, I am not hurt, and that while I'm away, he should not come looking for me.

I give him my blessing to go back to his hobbit hole, and plant that acorn I have seen him carrying around. To read some books, and perhaps one day write his own. I say that I hope he does not forget me, even when he is back on dry land in Bag End. I know I certainly will not forget him.

I sign it as his loving friend, Ilwien, leaving it underneath his door to find later tonight, when he is alone and the day has gone, and I no longer will be here to see it return.

By now, finding the entrance to the grotto has become no more than muscle memory. I haven't brought many things with me, for I do not have much to bring. Besides Arwen's Evenstar that she gave to me all those years ago, and the little life I carry in my stomach, I have nothing else with me except the clothes on my back. But even that I'll leave by the banks of the pools, for it'll be no good to me once I'm in my natural state.

Descending those stairs into the lush grotto is the heaviest my feet have ever felt. Still, I do not look back. Not even at the sound of the heavy stone door shutting behind me.

As I undress, I briefly let myself look down. My belly is barely protruding, but I no less wonder how I could have been such a fool to not realize it for so long.

Is that not what my mother warned love would do to you? Make you blind? It was certainly what happened to the princess with her sailor. I should no less be blamed just because it was a king I let blind me.

But even as I descend into the water and feel its cool comfort surround me; even as I sink below the surface and let it drown me...

Even then I have no doubt in my mind that, for him, I would have blinded myself a thousand times over. That is what scares me the most.

For with the life currently inside of me, that is precisely why I have to get away.

The transformation feels no different than it always does. The pulses of pain, my silent screams, how my body thrashes around in the dark. Maybe the only change is that, this time, I do not fear just for myself. What if every ache that befalls me also hurts the part of Thorin that's inside me?

When it's done and I can breathe again, my hands immediately seek my belly. For a long while, I do not move. Instead, I wait. Wait for something, anything. A motion. A kick.

A sign of life.

When I finally feel it, I swear I almost swoon from relief. From my belly, barely hard enough to be felt by my hand, something moves. But when the relief has let go of me, the astonishment replaces it. To think, something is really alive inside of me.

Even if I have lost him, a part of the man I love will always be with me. For it's true: no matter how much I tell myself to let him go, I keep holding on. I keep loving him.

Regardless of how much it hurts.

A painful pang of affection streams through me. I look down at my slightly swollen belly, and I know, then, that no matter what happens, I will do anything to keep us safe. This child mixed with the spirits of a dwarven king and a naiad without her people.

And I know exactly where I will go, then. For maybe, just maybe, there is a chance I will pass on my golden scales.

A chance that, for the first time since Azog took everything from me, I will never be alone again.