Returning Home: A Hobbit Fanfiction

Chapter 26 - The Australia of Middle Earth

~~ Celia ~~

Celia looked away, not wanting them to see the pain on her face as she waited for the two brothers to tell them they hated them and never wanted to see them again.

"But you're going to need a lot of help carrying out your purpose if you're both dumb enough to believe that we could ever hate you for trying to save our lives."

Celia whipped her head around so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash as she met Kíli's amused gaze. 

"Did you really think that we would hate you for keeping this from us?" Fíli asked, looking both slightly hurt and amused at the same time. "Because look at it from our point of view. Our closest friends just told us that they got thrown into another world, that they never believed was real, assumed - without being told, might I add - that their duty was to save the lives of people who, according to everything they knew, were supposed to die - without even having met said people! And they've been trying ever since then to change things for the better."

"Like trying to warn Uncle about the trolls," Kíli interjected. When the two girls looked at him in confusion, he merely shrugged his shoulders. "What? I can pay attention to things too, you know. I saw the way you talked to him right before we found out about the trolls, and again right before we were attacked by the orc hunting party. And he didn't look very surprised to see Azog back by the Misty Mountains, just unhappy. Although, granted, that's kind of his normal look."

"What I think my brother is trying to say," Fíli broke back in, "is that we've both seen you go out of your way to try and keep us from danger as much as you can without being too obvious about it. So, no. We don't hate you. Far from it, actually."

"But, but, we knew all that stuff was going to happen. We knew that Azog was alive, and that there would be the trolls, and the stone giants would have a fight, leading to us getting captured by the goblins - all things that could have killed us," Celia protested.

"And all things that we only hinted at to Thorin, and didn't even warn any of the rest of you. We knew all of this horrible stuff was going to happen - there's still awful things that are going to happen, and we can't tell you, because some of it has to happen, or something even worse will occur. Why doesn't this upset you?"

She honestly didn't know why she was fighting this - she had been feeling sick to her stomach ever since she had realized the possibility that they might no longer be friends after the reveal. 

Kíli just shot her a flat look, his tone disbelieving. "So you're telling me that you both knew Elena was going to fall with Bilbo? That you knew all along that she and Bilbo weren't dead, and that your tears were completely faked?"

Celia frowned, feeling affronted. "Of course not! We weren't in the original story, so how could we know what was going to happen to us? Besides, if I had known that they would survive, don't you think that I would have told -"

She faltered, remembering that they were in the middle of a conversation about their failure to do exactly that. "Well, I hope you know that I would have told you, both of you, if I had thought there was a chance for them to survive," she continued in a quieter tone.

"But in the original narrative, Bilbo fell alone, and in a different spot. I thought that because he fell where he did, and Elena with him, that they wouldn't have the elements that enabled Bilbo to survive the first time.  Especially when Fíli told me that Elena hit her head on the way down." The piece of straw she had been fiddling with broke in her hands, and she fumbled for a new one. "Us being here has changed some things, and other times..."

She glanced at the two brothers, her eyes pleading for them to understand. "Things have deviated from the norm on their own. There were two possible ways things could happen before, and it seemed to split between the two of them. I've seen things from both routes."