➼➼➼➼

➼➼➼➼

italics - elvish

italics - orkish

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry about this." Legolas said, as he escorted his niece back to the cell.

"It doesn't, but thanks anyway." Alenia said.

"Look, I know what it's like to not know your mother. Lanatha was thirteen, and I was nine when our mother died. Slain by orcs. So if you would like, I can come visit you and tell you stories about her." he continued, switching to elvish, as they neared the cells.

Alenia looked at him, as she stepped into the cell, and he shut the door. "I would like that. Maybe you're not so bad. Uncle."

He nodded, and then walked away, leaving Alenia standing at the cell door, staring blankly out through the bars.

"How'd it go?" Kili asked, slowly sitting up from where he had been sleeping, as quiet shouts could start to be heard from outside. "Did he give the speech about you needing to abandon us?"

"Basically. Along with the standard threat to the one I love." Alenia answered, turning away from the doors. "He wants some jewels from Erebor, and when I said that I didn't want to give it to him nor did I have the power to, he basically snapped."

"I'm not worried." Kili remarked, smirking. "The pointy-ears will have to get through you first."

"Don't forget about us," Fili said, grinning from the other side of the cell door. "There are twelve dwarves and a halfling here too."

Fili raised a ring of keys up for the lovers to see.

"Bilbo did it." Alenia murmured, a smile growing on her face, as Kili got to his feet to join her. "We're getting out of here."

Fili quickly unlocked the door, and the half-elf and dwarven archer stepped out of the cell to join the rest of the Company, as they followed after Bilbo.

The hobbit led them down, deeper and deeper in the Woodland Realm, and as the stairs ended, the dwarves began to mutter amongst themselves.

"I don't believe it; we're in the cellars!" Kili whispered harshly, causing Alenia to slap his arm.

"Quiet. He knows what he's doing," Alenia hushed.

"You were supposed to be leading us out, not further in!" Bofur exclaimed.

"I know what I'm doing!" Bilbo retorted, before he waved the group forward. "This way."

"See?" Alenia said, grinning at Fili and Kili, before shuffling after the hobbit.

The hallway widened into a big room, with a stack of empty barrels in the middle of it.

"Everyone, climb into the barrels, quickly!" Bilbo instructed.

"Are you mad?! They'll find us!" Dwalin said.

"No, no, they won't, I promise you. Please, please, you MUST trust me!" Bilbo pleaded.

The dwarves began to mutter again, and Alenia and Thorin locked eyes.

"It's your call," she said.

Thorin looked at her, then turned to look at Bilbo's face, before he nodded. "Do as he says!"

Alenia nodded at the heir of Erebor, before she turned, and being the most agile of the Company, climbed into the topmost barrel. Her movement was mirrored a few seconds later by the dwarves, signalled by the loud thumps and grumbles.

"What do we do now?" Bofur asked, as all of the Company poked their heads out of the barrels, watching as their burglar walked towards a lever in the ground.

"Hold your breath." Bilbo said.

"Hold my breath?" Alenia repeated.

"What do you mean?" Bofur asked too late, because Bilbo pulled the lever, and a creaking sound filled the air.

"Ah, crap," Alenia muttered, pulling her head back into the barrel and tucking herself into a ball, just as the floor began to tilt, causing the barrels to freefall for a few seconds, before plunging into an underground river.

Alenia surfaced, heaving huge gasps of air and clinging to the sides of her barrel. "Shit. That's c-cold."

Kili laughed, and a loud creaking sound could be heard again, causing the Company to look back from where they had come. Just in time to see the floor tilt, and poor Bilbo fall through, to splash into the water below.

"Well done, Master Baggins." Thorin called, as Alenia pulled the floundering hobbit into an empty barrel beside her own, who waved everyone forward.

"Come on, let's go." Thorin yelled, turning in his barrel, to paddle alongside the current, before he was sent tumbling down a waterfall.

"Hold on!" Fili yelled, as the rest of the Company followed after their leader.

As the group resurfaced from the rapids, Alenia turned to see the elves running alongside them.

"Shut the gate." Legolas yelled, as he leaped over a fallen log.

"They're closing the gates!" Alenia shouted to the group, who hadn't understood what he had said, because, well, they were dwarves. "Hurry!"

A horn blew in the air, as the Company turned around the river bend, allowing them to see the gate, slowly shutting closed.

"No!" Thorin shouted, as his barrel stopped at the iron grate, unable to continue.

All of the other barrels came to a stop, packed tightly together at the gate. Alenia glanced back to see the elves still a ways away. She then looked up to see a few elves guarding the gate, with one taking a step towards the stairs to get to the Company. But he couldn't take another, before an arrow pierced his back and sent him tumbling down to land on top of the dwarves in their barrels. The arrow was followed by a pack of orcs, who swarmed over the guardpost, killing the other elven guards.

"Watch out! Those are orcs!" Bofur shouted the warning too late.

"Slay them all!" The orc leader yelled.

The orcs threw themselves at the barrels. Bilbo managed to kill one with Sting, and Dwalin elbowed one in the face.

Alenia glanced up again to see the lever to open the gate, the Company's ticket out of there, with only five or so orcs in between it and her. She liked those odds.

Her eyes shifted until they met with Kili's, who was undoubtedly thinking the same thing.

"I call dibs." She said, scrambling out of her barrel, as Kili yelled from his own barrel, "Dammit Alenia!"

She set foot on the stone stairs, and ducked under the first orc's blow, before she grabbed it's hand holding the weapon, stopping it's path. She winked at the horrid beast, before she swept it's legs out from under it, pulling the blade from it's grip, and plunging it into it's back, sending it to plop into the river below.

Another orc charged her, and as she blocked the blow, Dwalin tossed her a weapon from a fallen elf, as he yelled, "Alenia! Catch!"

She grinned at the blade for a moment, before she looked back at the orc in front of her and cut it's head clean off. Still smiling, she bounded up the steps, slicing into orcs in her way, sending them into the river and on top of the barrels below her.

"Hey!" Fili yelled up to her as a severed head bounced off of his own. "Send your carcasses somewhere else!"

"Sorry!" Alenia shouted back. "I'm too busy saving our asses!"

She struggled against a slightly bigger orc, her back to another oncoming beast. Kili's eyes widened, before he grabbed a dead orc's blade and threw it at the other enemy, allowing Alenia to focus on killing her own orc.

She dispatched her opponent, before turning to see the other orc spluttering up blood, with a knife stuck in it's throat.

She grinned down at Kili. "Thanks love."

"Just get the lever." Kili called, rolling his eyes.

Alenia stuck her new sword into her belt, and reached for the lever, just as an arrow struck her in the leg.

Alenia's eyes widened, as she stopped short, panting.

"Ally!" Fili and Kili yelled.

Alenia groaned in pain, as she reached for the lever again, grabbing hold of it, and straining to push it down, before she collapsed back onto the stone.

Kili looked back to the riverbank to see Bolg, the leader of the orcs, stringing another arrow.

"No." he breathed.

An orc appeared over the stone wall, peering down at Alenia for a moment, before it leaped at her. Just as it reached her, an arrow split it's skull, killing it.

Alenia rolled her head over to catch of a glimpse of her savior, to see Legolas running through the bushes, his bow lowering from his shot.

"Kill him. Kill the princeling." Bolg yelled, as Tauriel and the other elves emerged from the bushes to fight alongside the blonde elf. As the elves took on the orcs, Alenia sat up, and put all of her body weight on the lever to pull it down, opening the gate, allowing the Company to continue on with the river, before the half-elf fell onto her back again, groaning.

"After them." Bolg ordered, causing the orcs to start to break away from the elves to trail the dwarves.

"Ally!" Kili and Fili yelled again, desperately hanging onto the sides of the gatehouse walls, Alenia's barrel in between their own.

Alenia grunted, as she slid off the side of the stone platform and landing in her barrel. As the arrow entered the barrel, the shaft snapped off, causing a loud scream of pain to fall from the half-elf's lips.

Legolas turned at the sound of his niece's scream, and watched worriedly, as the trio's barrels went over the falls, and joined the rest of their Company as they quickly floated through the rushing river. He turned to kill one last orc, before he and the rest of the elves ran after the orcs and their quarry.

In the river, an orc leaps at Thorin's barrel, causing the Dwarf Prince to slash at it with a stolen sword.

"Take this." Alenia muttered, shakily pulling her new sword from her belt to hand to Kili. "You'll b-be able to d-do more with it than I c-can in my state."

Kili grabbed it from her hand, and let go of her barrel to float towards others', while Fili stayed behind to make sure she didn't drown, or get stuck.

"I've got you." Fili muttered, hanging onto her barrel to keep them together, as the group went through yet another patch of bumpy rapids, causing Alenia to groan as they were thrown about in their barrels.

"Cut the log!" Thorin yelled, as he cut into the wood of a fallen tree trunk as he passed under it.

Dwalin headbutted an orc away, stealing it's axe away, before turning to swing said axe at a overhanging log. As Fili and Alenia went under the log, Fili smashed his own stolen weapon into the wood, causing the orcs standing on it to collapse with the log into the river.

Dwalin tossed his axe to Bombur, who caught it and used it to kill an orc on his barrel. The deceased's spear poked into the wood of his barrel, before flinging it onto land, bringing poor Bombur with it. The large dwarf and his barrel rolled alongside the company, smashing into orcs, before coming to a halt.

As the orcs closed in on Bombur, the dwarf's limbs crashed through the wood, brandishing two swords, which he used to cut a path through the beasts to the river, where he then jumped into a new, undamaged barrel.

As the elves once again caught up to the dwarves and orcs, Legolas leaped out into the river, landing with his feet planted on Dwalin's and Bifur's heads. He then swivelled, while balancing on the dwarves' heads, firing at orcs running on the riverbank.

Turning again, he leaped from the pair of dwarves' heads to bound across the tops of others in the Company, before he reached the riverbank, and began slashing through a group of orcs situated there.

"My uncle's badass." Alenia muttered, grimacing.

"That's your uncle?" Kili asked, as he latched onto the half-elf's barrel to rejoin her and Fili.

"Just found out." She explained, before her eyes widened, as an orc snuck up behind Legolas.

With a fear-induced bout of strength, Alenia snatched a knife from a floating corpse and flung it into the body of the beast, sending it's quivering, dying body to the ground in a heap. Legalos turned, saw the body, before he turned again and locked eyes with her.

She smiled weakly, and he returned it hesitantly, nodding his head, as the Company disappeared from view, the current swiftly carrying them away.

➼➼➼➼

a/n:

anyone else surprised that alenia risked her life again? anyone at all? i didn't think so :))

you shouldn't be surprised at this point, i enjoy putting her through pain for some reason, despite the fact that she's my bbg and i love her dearly. and also she's a fucking selfless person so... yeah. we love that.

happy thxgiving week for the americans out there. hopefully ur going to be enjoying the break you get off from school. ik i am. a five day long nap session. i can't wait hehe

see y'all on friday xx

- ash xx