Middle Earth || OS

9. Thorin | A Debt Paid in Full

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"A Debt Paid in Full"

+ Anon fic request: where the reader was in the military and is a VERY skilled fighter and ends up in middle earth with the company and Thorin thinks she's useless until she gets them out of a bad situation

Genre: angst, fluff || Settings: outside Beorn's house; before the Mirkwood forest; Bard's house; Erebor; Ravenhill, post-coronation festivities at Erebor || Songspiration: "" by The Great Escape || 1+ 2

'We Don't Need Her'

"Is that it?" The skin changer looks impatient, suspicious, and completely put out by the strangers filing out of his house. "Are there any more?"

Before the bumbling wizard gives the cue, the last person emerges from the house. He is another bearded Dwarf, but different from the others. His dark hair comes nearly to the middle of his back and he has a stately, stubborn countenance.

Beorn stares, his mind inexplicably making a connection between the authoritative-looking Dwarf and the face he's seen hiding among his young oak trees for weeks.

"You must be here for her." Beorn returns to splitting another log in two with a mighty blow. "At last."

" 'Her'?" Gandalf asks.

"Yes, the sly one. Not many are able to stay on my property so long without my knowledge She is odd; talks to herself about a land I have never heard of, spars with trees. But she is safe."

"We are not here for anyone," Thorin snaps. "We don't need her. Whoever she is."

That's when you come into view from the green fields, from behind the saplings, as if your name has been called.

'I Am a Soldier'

Everyone is tongue-tied when they see you, except Gandalf, who introduces himself and bows to you.

"Allow me to introduce my companions." Gandalf turns to the people behind him, and rattles off names while pointing to each head.

Trained to pay attention to details, you repeat each name to their amazement, mixed with a healthy dose of suspicion.

After you tell them your name in an official manner, there is muttering and chuckling amongst them.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, don't mind us, friend. It's just that 'Corporal' is quite an unusual name," says the white-haired one, Balin. "We mean no offense."

"Corporal is not my name. That's my rank. I was - am - a soldier."

Only one laughs now: Thorin.

"You?" he says through skeptical, twisted lips.

"Yes."

He gestures toward your outfit. "Are those strips of fabric supposed to be your armor? Where is your chainmail?"

You glance down at your scruffy black undershirt, pants and boots.

"That..chainmail...is not exactly something we use."

Everyone is immediately curious. Thorin listens to your story, of how you were doing a sweep of an abandoned warehouse in a war-torn region one minute, taking a set of stairs to the basement the next, and blacking out, for some reason, without getting struck or bumping your head on anything.

When you awoke, you were in the woods, near the skin changer's house.

Thorin rolls his eyes, hisses "fantasies" and turns to go back inside.