Thank you for the reviews, the darling Fatalromance, the stunning Hawra ali, the perfect Ballroom Rittz, the beautiful lilith-thetiny-monster, the fantastic Ghouly-Girl, the amazing Priya24626, the gorgeous AureliaLyannaMoon, the extraordinary Kelwtim2spar, the delightful A5mia, and the talented lucefatale!

Sorry about the delay, sometimes it just be like that.

There is a Tumblr where you will find extra content for GUST and you can message me anonymously if you want. I will be taking requests for short fics and drabbles too, so check it out.

Also, would anyone be interested if I used Sims 4 to play out Helsinki's life and uploaded it in short episodes? I'm considering it as a visual addition.

Check out the GUST Spotify Playlist - helsinkidays GUST playlist.

Hard Disclaimer - I do not own any Tolkien associated content. Helsinki is my intellectual property however.

Sometimes not knowing things is better. Helsinki would have preferred not to know where her childhood pet rabbit went if it didn't go to the Hobson's farm. She would have preferred not to know that her grandmother had dementia and wouldn't remember her grandchildren's goodbye. She would have preferred not to know about hobbits or dwarves or wizards.

She would have preferred to stay ignorant on her couch, lounging in depression and remission, without a clue that Middle Earth was even a concept, let alone a tangible world she now had to navigate.

Sometimes not knowing things is better. And it's okay to feel that. It's okay to wish you didn't know something that has changed your future or made you feel unsafe. Wanting to remain ignorant of the worst parts of some things is normal, especially after you learn them and they ruin your life. There are a lot of things that Helsinki wishes she didn't know, especially now that she knew them and had had them bombshell into her life and leave gaping craters.

Middle Earth was full of these revelations, brimming with more and more realities everyday for Helsinki to face. Slowly, the bemused grin she wore when she learned something new turned into a sour grimace. The mountain of getting home in front of her was starting to become pockmarked with strange and unusual things she wished she never had to acknowledge.

Like dragons, for example.

She needed to get home.

It's not everyday you're told dragons are real, and so far everyday in this godforsaken world had resulted in Helsinki learning something new that she happily would have lived without knowing.

Dragons were the last straw. She jolted up from the table with clenched fists.

Sometimes not knowing about dragons is better.

Helsinki glared down at the surface of the desk. It was a dark wood, smoothed and covered by a plate of glass. It was elegant, in an angular, dwarven way. She hated it. Back home, she'd wager the desk would be worth a good thousand pounds by itself, not including the gold and ruby paperweight perched beside a pile of gold and bronze coins. Her desk at home was a flimsy fake wood thing that she didn't trust - so it was covered in forgotten garbage and old medical notes. She missed it so much, right down to the swears a young Sebastian had carved into the top of it.

So far, it looked like dwarves didn't know what shitty craftsmanship was.

It was unfortunate that they knew what dragons were.

Suddenly overwhelmed with a murky mixture of rage and sadness, Helsinki stood and shoved her chair away. Her insides were boiling and tense with the very human need to hit something, but of course, dwarves made everything from stone. Helsinki's anger at her own position doubled, now directed at her foreign surroundings that didn't offer her aid with her roiling emotions. She marched exactly three steps towards the door before she paused with her fists curled by her sides.

"Where are you going?" Thorin asked her.

"To commit homicide - or whatever you call it when you murder a wizard," Helsinki spat, briefly reminding herself of the Golden Girls. It would have amused her greatly if she wasn't so pissed with a wizard who wasn't anywhere near her to have his arse kicked. The raw stone walls of the study leered at her, unsmoothed bumps and ridges reminding her not to strike out at them.

Thorin's mouth twitched suspiciously. "You do not have to come with us, Helsinki."

"Yes, I do," Helsinki said forcefully, whirling around in a dramatic swirl of emerald green fabric. "I need to get home - I need to see my parents and my brothers and my nieces and nephews. I need to clean my pantry and buy last minute Christmas gifts. I need to see my grandparents and argue over books with my mother. I can't stay here!" She angrily wiped a threatening tear from her eyes and turned back to the door so that Thorin wouldn't see how upset she was. She felt like a pitiful toddler having a breakdown, embarrassingly in front of Thorin too.

Her shoulders shuddered pathetically and she wrapped her arms around her middle. Helsinki hated crying, especially in front of other people. She once fell out of a tree and dislocated her shoulder without letting a single tear fall down her cheek; her mother did learn about her daughters extensive vocabulary though.

Now though, the tears were burning and blurring her vision of the office, stray candles gauzy and haloed unhappily while Helsinki desperately tried to hold it all in. Had her father been present, he would have sat her down and told her that holding off on crying and being upset would only build the pressure - the inevitable explosion of emotion would be far worse when it did happen. Helsinki hiccoughed and sniffed, palming at her eyes grumpily at the thought of her father who was a whole world away. Her father, who had tears in his eyes as a tiny Helsinki gripped his finger from inside the NICU incubator; who had tucked her into bed with 'Guess How Much I Love You?' and helped her gang up on her brothers when they were being pricks.

Who knew homesickness was more about the people than the home?

Helsinki had been so unaware of her surroundings in her grief that she didn't hear the other chair in the room move on the stone floor. She startled when a large, warm hand tentatively settled on her shoulder.

"Helsinki?" Thorin asked her, voice gentle. "Are you alright?" he sounded so genuine and concerned that the meter broke and the dam burst. Helsinki's lip trembled for a moment before her shoulder slumped in broken defeat.

"No," she admitted with a thick voice. "No," she said again.

Thorin was not an experienced dwarf in social circles. He grew up attending courts and balls and dinners. Training alongside warriors, even though they all would throw their lives in front of his if it came down to it. Friends were hard to come by when they all knew that he would be their king one day, when Thorin was already raised as a Prince and held himself as such.

He had missed his courting days, the stretch of years in which most dwarrow branch out and learn wherever they can. Where they introduce themselves to as many people as possible in the hopes that one of them might be their One. Thorin's young, adventurous years had been spent stepping up to be a leader, finding a home for his people and fighting in a war. Losing dwarrow he knew daily, watching them sacrifice themselves in front of him or seeing them later, after they had fallen.

A cynical part of him that grew as Erebor fell and feasted on every plague and famine, every struggle that befell his people, began to whisper about his One having died in Erebor, choked on smoke or buried alive. It suggested that they were among the uncounted dead at Azanulbizar, where he had already lost so much. The cynical monster grew until it had more say in his decisions than it should have; though sometimes it paid to be pessimistic if only to have the outcome exceed expectations.

Thorin wished of Erebor, dreamed of reclaiming his home for his people, for Dis and Fili and Kili. The cynical monster though, it knew that marching on the mountain would be a lost cause, that the doors were barricaded and the dragon probably still lived. He never pursued those dreams of home, instead focussing on making sure that he could provide a good home where they were, in the Blue Mountains.

Then Gandalf had found him in Bree. An uneventful and unsuccessful search for his father culminating in a small meal in Bree's most notorious tavern, the Prancing Pony. The wizard spoke in circles, as Thorin had heard most wizards do - a very Elven trait, if you asked him. Gandalf wanted him to reclaim Erebor, and not in a wishful way like so many. Thorin was angry at first, feeling as though the wizard was toying with him; only Gandalf wasn't. He had a map, one that Thorin had never seen of Erebor's lands, and a firm belief that the dragon's time under the mountain had come to an end.

Foolishly, Thorin agreed and proceeded to bide his time cobbling together a list of possible allies; afterall, how many of his people would really be willing to face down a dragon? Gandalf met him a few more times in various shady locales, speaking in hushed tones of timing and supplies, once of a burglar.

Then, on what should have been their final meeting, Gandalf arrived with very little to say and a strange looking dwarrowdam trailing behind him. The wizards' words about the quest fell out of the air like feathers from birds in flight, and Thorin's eyes locked with a wide pair of green ones. He tried later that night to convince himself that it was just shock, but there was no denying it to himself, not really. Thorin inhaled a mouthful of his drink, and in his haste to clear his lungs of alcohol, slammed his head into the table he sat at.

Eyes watering, something registered in his chest, then in his head, followed by everywhere else. Like an empty hole had been filled, the yearning that tugged whenever he finished a piece of blacksmithing he should have been proud of but couldn't muster the smile - something slotted into place as though it had never left.

His fists curled and clenched as the wizard said a few more words, trying and failing to focus on the matter of most importance at hand - the quest. Her hair, the colour of burnished molten gold fluttered in the firelight, shifting hypnotically. She was too pale, with a marked flush from the fire nearby, and a smattering of freckles decorating her cheeks. Her nose was too small for a dwarf, though the wide jaw and scattering of hair on her sideburns somewhat made up for it. Her mouth was downturned, lips wind chapped and twitching as though she wanted to say something. She was dressed awkwardly, in a long skirt and a tan shirt, with a thick jacket of an odd material over the ensemble. It hid her figure, though not enough for Thorin to wager that she was small, proportioned more like a Man than any dwarrowdam.

She was perfect. His hands burned to touch her, to pull her close.

The cynical voice was shoved aside while he introduced himself, turning her offered hand into a proper dwarrow greeting. She was odd, that much was obvious, but so long as the cynical voice stayed away, she was the most perfect being Thorin had ever seen.

And her name was Helsinki Alphecca.

Thorin battled for a long moment with his cynicism, drawn to comfort the clearly upset dam in his study, but also wary and nervous to offer such a close service. Perhaps he should retrieve his sister? She would know what to do, surely.

But he still found himself slowly approaching Helsinki, and laying a hand carefully on her shoulder. His eyes followed the movement, watching as her black blouse was swallowed by the skin of his hand wrapping over her shoulder until his fingertips brushed her clavicle through the material.

Helsinki caved in on herself, blindly and uncaringly turning until she was pressed to Thorin's front, face tucked into the lapels of his coat. It smelled like him, lavender and teak with the unfortunate undertone of old and worn clothing underneath. Hands fisted in his tunic, Helsinki sobbed painfully into the dwarf's chest uncaring of her dignity for once. It was awkward for a moment, before Thorin's arms came up to encircle her in return.

Their embrace was warm, cosy, and depending on how you look at it, very unromantic. Helsinki's crying face was not that of an actress', but an ugly picture of red cheeks and an open mouth choking on sobs. Her hair was smoothed back but springing free of its confines, strands sticking to the wetness on her cheeks and she had to keep snorting so snot wouldn't make the entire situation much worse. Resolutely, Thorin held her steady and firm while her chest wracked under his hands and quiet wails met the walls of his study.

The wet thumping of his heart under her damp cheek helped ground Helsinki as she breathed herself into stopping crying.

"Oh god," Helsinki's gluggy voice was muffled by Thorin's nice blue tunic. "Oh god, I'm so sorry." She stepped back, missing the warmth from Thorin's arms around her torso immediately, and palmed under her eyes. How embarrassing, to be crying in the arms of a king.

"It is okay, Helsinki," Thorin replied smoothly. He didn't sound upset, perhaps a little bit stilted, but nothing like he did earlier in the hallway. "I understand that you are grieving. Give it time, it will become easier."

Helsinki blinked up at him, wet eyelashes clumping and catching the light of the candles on the shelves. She hadn't really considered that she should be grieving - that she was but she was pushing it down. Now that she thought about it, crying about her situation seemed only fair and she felt better, lighter, now that she had shed some tears over losing her home and family. "Are you sure?"

"Of course it does," said Thorin.

He was right of course, Helsinki had seen many people pick themselves up and turn their grief from an ocean into a puddle. A year ago she had been treating a teenage boy whose Chronic Kidney Disease was going down the toilet quicker than treatment could have an effect. Helsinki saw that boy everyday for a month and a half, she met his family and friends, even helped him with his chemistry homework when he got stumped on a particularly tangled equation.

It became clear after a month that the treatment wasn't going to work, at least not for long. Helsinki was on shift the night after his parents were informed, and after she had completed her rounds she checked in with the boy. He was hooked to a dialysis machine and looked a lot smaller than she remembered him being the previous day. Dark circles under his eyes were mostly hidden by red soreness.

Helsinki gave him a kind smile and slipped into the dark room, looking over his charts and IV and dialysis though she hardly processed anything.

"You've heard then?" the boy asked, a wry grin pulling at his mouth.

Helsinki took a seat on his bed, careful to avoid the numerous tubes lurking like malignant snakes. "I did," she said quietly. "I'm sure you've been asked this plenty… but how are you?"

He snorted. "I'm fine. Kinda glad to be honest. It's been Hell for years, no offense to present company."

"None taken," Helsinki said.

They sat quietly for a while, listening to the whirring of the machine acting as the boy's kidneys. "You know what?"

"What?" Helsinki asked, looking over at him.

"I know my family will be okay without me," he said confidently. Before Helsinki could articulate a response he was already continuing. "When I die, I won't be taking my love with me. I'll leave it here with them. I won't be needing it, I already have their love with me. So I'm leaving mine for them," he explained with surprising poignance for a teenager.

Helsinki blinked hurriedly, hiding the tears in her eyes. She rested a hand on his leg and smiled. "That's a good way to think about it," she told him.

When the time did eventually come, his family returned to the hospital a week later with gifts for the staff. They all looked tired and withdrawn as expected, but they had made the journey into the city just to deliver a cake, and a box of pastries for the nurses and doctors who looked after their son. The boy's little sister, barely three, was perched on her mother's hip and smiling.

Helsinki said hello to her, as she often did when their paths crossed in the hospital.

"Well, thank you all for what you did for Alex… he's left so many people with lovely memories and I'm sure you're all no different," his mother had said.

"He's not gone!" the little sister refuted. "He's here, 'Lex said so!" she smacked her chubby little hand to her chest, tapping above her heart.

And seeing as the little girl was looking at her, Helsinki smiled and nodded in agreement; love goes with you, wherever you are. It's gifted and shared, like all good things should be. The dead have no use for your love, that's why they leave it with all the people who remember them.

Helsinki swiped at her cheeks, calming her breathing. She might not have her family with her in Middle Earth, but she knew that she had their love, always.

Thorin kindly guided her into the seat she had vacated, his bulky frame exuding warmth like a midwinter's hearth or a bonfire, like the ones Helsinki and her brothers used to like throwing inappropriate things into.

"Are you well?" he asked her, standing close by.

"Uh, yeah, thanks," Helsinki rasped nasally. "Just overwhelmed."

Thorin moved away, taking the warmth with him, but letting the candle light touch her again. "It is understandable. You are a long way from home and what Gandalf has done is task you with an impossible choice."

"I thought I told you not to say that name," Helsinki feebly complained. She felt as though a cold, wet blanket was draped over her shoulders, leeching damp tiredness into her bones.

"Perhaps you should take a few days to think on your choices," Thorin suggested, taking his seat opposite Helsinki. "You have already proved your value to my people, Helsinki, staying here is an option for you-" he held his hand up as Helsinki went to interrupt with a vehemence. "Even if you don't want to consider it. Dis will gladly help you assimilate with our culture and you can continue to live here with her. Your other option is coming with my company on our journey and completing the task that Gan- the wizard had set for you. Whichever you choose, I will gladly help you in any way I can."

Gratitude filled Helsinki, for both the kind words and the removal of a certain wizards name. Despite this, she had already made her decision and was sticking with it. She took a deep breath in, locked her eyes with Thorin's and laid her hands on the table.

"Tell me about this quest."

Thorin blinked at her. "I intend on marching to Erebor with a company and reclaiming my homeland from the dragon Smaug." Helsinki motioned with her hands for him to continue. "He is a firedrake from the North, a great beast with claws of steel and razor sharp teeth; he has felled entire cities before he took Erebor from my people."

Helsinki considered the size of an animal capable of destroying a city. Presumably quite large, but she assumed the cities here in Middle Earth were significantly smaller than the ones that she was used to back home, so the dragon could also be smaller than anticipated. Still, if it managed to ruin more than one city, she didn't fancy meeting it.

"The dragon's quite big then?"

Across the desk, Thorin gave her a fleeting disbelieving look. "He was larger than Erebor's grand gate, which from memory I believe could fit a legion of twenty armed troops shoulder to shoulder."

Exceedingly large then.

Helsinki steepled her fingers, crossing her prosthetic over her real leg and resting her elbows on it. "Hmm." She hummed. "This is a development."

"If you do not wish to join the Company, I will not hold you to do so," Thorin said.

Helsinki was already shaking her pale bronze head. "No no. If I want to get home I have to go. There isn't another option for me."

There was, definitely, as discussed, but Helsinki knew that she didn't want to stay in Middle Earth.

Thorin sighed and sat back in his seat. "I am planning on travelling to Gabilgathol in four days. I have called a meeting of all the Dwarf lords to see if any will aid us in our quest."

"You don't seem hopeful," Helsinki noted cynically.

"It is asking much, to take on a dragon who has destroyed so many lives already," he replied.

"You're the king though. Or are you only King of here?" Helsinki made a circling motion with her finger.

"No, I am rightfully the King of Erebor, a title that has been respected for centuries as the King of Dwarves," said Thorin. "But I am not crowned. And even if I was, I do not think I could order men to their deaths."

Helsinki considered him with an admiring glint in her eyes. He was a kind ruler, much like he was kind himself. Such a sorely undervalued trait, especially in those required to make the toughest decisions. "So you'll only take volunteers?"

"Yes," said Thorin. "And that is why I will offer you a home here, if you do not wish to come with us."

"I'm touched, really," Helsinki admitted, forcing herself to sound offhand. "But I'm coming with you and completing whatever the hell it is the Wizard has planned for me. Who knows, he might be done with me well before we get to the dragon part anyway." She pinched her face in a smile, not her most convincing but seeing as Thorin knew the dangers, she figured he'd respect her weak attempts to keep her own cheer up. "I want to go home. I need to go home."

She supposed, in that respect, that she and Thorin were actually quite similar.

Thorin doesn't smile at her, or look pleased to be taking her along with him, but he also doesn't look unhappy. Firmly neutral, his eyes find her own green ones and nods. "Very well, I will see that you are informed and prepared before I leave."

Helsinki made no move to leave although Thorin's words had been rather dismissive - in a normal, end of conversation way as opposed to a nasty way. "Thorin?"

"Yes, Helsinki?"

"Why is there a dragon in your home?" Thorin stilled and Helsinki wondered if she'd unwittingly stumbled upon some social taboo, asking why a dragon is inhabiting ones home. Maybe the phrase was sexual in nature, she had no way of knowing. Nevertheless, if she was going to risk having her arse roasted, she wanted to know why the dragon was in Erebor. "Sorry if it's rude to ask, but it's nothing I've ever heard of before. Dragons squatting in ancestral homes is something I'd see in a children book probably, not… the end destination of a quest I'm going on."

"You do not have dragons where you are from?" Thorin asked, avoiding the explanation that Helsinki was asking for.

"Not the fire-breathing type, no. I'm assuming that's what's living in Erebor?" A cartoonish image of a foul tempered Komodo dragon and a small army bearded dragons and other small lizards sitting in a cavernous kingdom popped into her head.

Thorin nodded. "His name is Smaug, a firedrake from the North. Erebor was a fortress, a great kingdom before he came. My family has held the throne for centuries, through battles and sieges, carving it into the magnificent city it is today. Mines rich in veins of gold, vaults of valuables, forges that burned eternally and birthed the most precious of treasures. I was born there, I grew up learning to love and rule Erebor with respect, to understand the value of everything and everyone sheltered within its walls." Thorin's eyes were distant as he described his home to Helsinki. "But my grandfather, King Thror, he became ill with a sickness of the mind. He left the balance unchecked and began to hoard the gold and the diamonds with a feverish need. He ignored his people and tunnelled deeper into his own madness. I barely saw him eating, he never seemed to sleep. He only prowled about the treasury with growing madness."

Helsinki reached across the table and rested her fingertips on Thorin's hand, brushing weatherbeaten skin and honed muscle. Helsinki had worked with mentally ill patients before and had seen what it could do to the family. Her maternal grandmother, Lucy, had begun battling dementia when her grandchildren were only six. It was rough for the entire family, a very long goodbye. Helsinki's great-grandmother still lived, the wiry old bat, but she was frail and pushing it at one-hundred and two. Still, she comforted her only daughter with the air of a fed-up, and very loving mother as her daughter slipped away. Thorin spared her a small smile of gratitude and continued his story.

"His love of gold kept him awake at all hours, irritable at all others. He stopped attending council meetings, and at dinners he was always raving about plots to steal his treasure. He went back on deals he had made and eventually became a hermit, a recluse living in piles of gold. He closed off the city after that. Not even my grandmother could pull him from it's clutches," Thorin admitted. "Smaug didn't come with much warning. We heard sounds, winds like a hurricane and screams, and the city of Dale to Erebor's south was decimated in minutes. I rallied our troops, but we were unprepared. Smaug wanted Erebor's wealth, and he took it. We could have fought him, if it weren't for the people trapped inside, trying to evacuate. He destroyed much of the causeways and paths, making it hard to reach him or for my people to escape his wrath. Our best option was to flee, those of us that could." Thorin's hand flipped over, grasping Helsinki's tightly. "And our neighbours, the Elves of Mirkwood did nothing. Their King, Thranduil, watched my home, my people run and burn, and then he retreated into his forest without a word. We wandered, found homes where we could. Eventually my father, Thrain, settled here."

Helsinki looked up at Thorin, eyes soft and sad. Dwarrow were proud, she knew that much already. Her heart ached with empathy for his plight, for his people and their lost home.

"My family lost a home too, you know," she said quietly. "Kinda like yours."

"How so?" Thorin asked.

She swallowed. "There was a war close to fifty years before I was born. My grandfather was the only one of his family to survive it. He fled the country - sort of a kingdom I suppose - in the early days, he was supposed to meet up with a guide or something. Someone with a safe place for the whole family, away from the war. But, by the time my grandfather had met the man, the war had escalated and the rest of his family were trapped. He stuck out the war, finding some work and keeping his head down, but when it was over, he was the last one left. He went to his old home, but it was trashed and empty, and after finding out what had happened to his sisters and parents, my grandfather decided to leave," Helsinki softly concluded the short version of her paternal history. The fates of the great-grandparents Tobiasz and Eleonora and their daughters Felicja and Luiza, Helsinki left out deliberately. She didn't much feel like explaining the depths of hatred and horror her home knew, so she kept it simple. Pawel Alphecca, her grandfather for which her brother was named, found his way to Scotland and met Molly, and they eventually started a family.

Helsinki's father had never shied away from teaching his children about their family history, he encouraged them to explore the attics and old boxes of trinkets at Grandad Pawel's house. Pawel the Senior had never gone back to Poland. Nobody in the family really spoke about it, but everyone understood that there wasn't anything left for him there.

But clearly Erebor still held something for Thorin, just like home did for Helsinki.

Two days later found Helsinki attempting to patch up the hole in her beloved t-shirt on the floor of the living room. At some ungodly hour the previous day, Halȗna had dropped back the laundry Dis and Helsinki had dropped off the day of the mine collapse - which felt like months ago when Helsinki was hauling herself out of bed. Her arse, her back, her shoulders; everywhere felt strained and sore after her trek around the city with Dis.

The shirt, an acid washed band tee was more than a few years old, thin and soft from many washes, and a comfortable reminder of home for Helsinki. Diligently she had presented the hole in the side of it to Dis, and briefly explained her first interaction with Gandalf to the dam before she was given a basket of sewing supplies and made her way to the living room. Kili was out apprenticing, and Thorin was doing his kingly duties somewhere, Helsinki presumed, but Fili was present, lounging on the largest chair by the fire with his sketch pad and a pile of charcoal pencils.

Dis was still in the kitchen, but ever since Helsinki had explained how the hole occurred in her shirt, the dam had been making a lot more aggressive noises with the cast iron cookware. A loud clatter from the kitchen startled Helsinki whose fingers slipped on the razor sharp needle and embedded in her thumb.

"Ah! Fuck!" she hissed, deftly removing the offending object and sucking on the small puncture. Fili looked up from his drawing.

"Stab yourself again?" he asked.

"Yep," huffed Helsinki.

"Ma's not normally this loud without Kili or I annoying her. Though perhaps Uncle Thorin did something this morning to make her especially mad?" Fili pondered aloud while Helsinki resumed her stitching.

"Nah, it was me," Helsinki muttered, haltling just in time for another punctuated clang! to echo from the kitchen.

Fili sat up to regard her properly. Helsinki was sat nearby, using the light of the fire and some sort of oil lamp to run a single thread of dark cotton through her shirt. "You did? What did you do?"

Helsinki didn't look up, determined to successfully pull the thread through and hide it with clever stitching. She hadn't used the ladder stitch technique in some time but it was handy for smaller wounds in visible places. "I told her about how I got this hole in my shirt - ah ha!" she crowed as she finished speaking. She gave a final tug and the hole had vanished, along with the thread holding it together. Singing her own praises mentally, Helsinki tied off the thread and cleaned up the strewn sewing supplies that littered the space around her, oblivious to Fili still waiting for a decent explanation.

He cleared his throat. "Why would your strange clothes make my mother angry?"

Helsinki cast him a glance, stretching out her fingers one at a time so they clicked a little bit, a habit she'd never been able to break. "Oh, I think she just doesn't like the wizard."

"I have noticed her snorts whenever his name comes up in conversation recently. Uncle Thorin also seems displeased to speak about Gandalf," Fili observed, putting his charcoal down.

Helsinki refrained from spitting out insults at the use of the wizards name. "Mmmh," she hummed. "I can't say I'm that fond of the wizard either," she admitted.

"Why is that? He is helping us reclaim our home, a guardian of Middle Earth," said Fili with a large divot of doubt in his brow.

"Once you meet him you'll know," Helsinki darkly disagreed. "He's a pain in the arse."

Fili sat up at that, dislodging his sketchbook from his chest where it was resting. The thick paper book flopped to the stone floor in a short flurry of coal dust and landed face up on a pretty design for a diadem made of thin, angular, art-deco style lines. Helsinki smiled at the drawing.

"I like it," she said, as Fili scooped up the book and slammed it shut.

"What?"

"The diadem, tiara thing. It's pretty. I like it," Helsinki repeated.

Fili blinked. "You don't think it's too small?"

Helsinki barked out a laugh, immediately throwing her head back and cackling. "Oh, boy, if I hadn't heard that before…" she trailed off amusedly. Fili was still staring at her, now more confused than before. "I think it's nice and understated. It'd be quite eye catching, especially up close with all of the detailed lines and chevron pattern."

The blond peaked at the page, reappraising it. "It's an old sketch of mine, my mentor didn't think it would look very good so I never made it. He said it would be a waste of good materials and valuable time."

Sure, the tiara was simple, not even ten centimeters thick at its widest. Simply two bands with lines connecting them in a separating chevron pattern, but Helsinki thought it had charm. Hardly worth scrapping or dismissing because it wasn't grand enough. "Perhaps if you took the small peak off and made the whole piece the same width, and then lowered the positioning on the head?" she offered with a tilted glance. Helsinki gestured to her forehead. "So it was worn here. Still visible and it would show off more of the design than if it was tucked away in someone's hair."

Her idea seemed to hold some merit for Fili, who plucked up another pencil and hurried to draw something out. He held out the book a moment later, showing a basic head with the band sitting in the middle of the forehead, lines hastily scribbled in. "Like that?"

"Yeah, I think it's nice," said Helsinki approvingly. "Maybe with stones lining the pattern on the inside?"

Fili grinned at her and opened his mouth to reply when Kili slid around the corner in a mess of brown leather and green fabric. Dis followed close behind, whipping him with a tea towel.

"AH, Amad! Not in front of Helsinki!" Kili squawked as Dis landed a shot on his rear. Fili jeered in the dwarven language, which Helsinki didn't understand though she could infer the meaning based on Kili's sudden glare.

"Don't run in the house, how hard is that to understand?" Dis sighed, flicking the towel once more for emphasis. Helsinki grinned up at her, recalling battles with her brothers and tea towels. They were banned as weapons in the Alphecca household for five or so years after Helsinki landed a spectacular shot on Sebastian that bruised blue for two days.

"Did you get your shirt fixed, Helsinki?" Dis asked kindly.

Helsinki held it up to show the hidden stitches proudly. "I did," she confirmed.

Dis admired the work, inspecting the fabric. "These are fine stitches, Helsinki. You could be a seamstress with work like this," she commented. While she speaks, Kili stands behind her, making odd jolting movements with his head. He looks like a labrador trying to get water out of it's ears. Helsinki stares at him in confusion before realising that he's attempting to subtly gesture outside.

Her eyes go wide with realisation, and Helsinki quickly tries to dim her expression back down, nodding at Dis. "I did lots of stitching back home with work, especially when I worked in the emergency area" she said. "Speaking of home, I really miss fresh air," she declared.

"I know, I'll show you the woods!" Kili enthusiastically chimed in. He was bouncing on the balls of his feet with rather unsubtle excitement. From the corner of her eye, Helsinki noticed Fili, ever observant, frown at his brother.

"I'd like that," Helsinki smiled over at Kili.

"Why not just go out to the cavern, there's plenty of fresh air there," Dis says, somewhat disapproving of her son and the woman she took in as a ward gallivanting off into the woods so close to dinner time. She had guests coming and while she felt that she could probably trust Helsinki to come home looking put together, her youngest was another story. He practically attracted dirt.

"Not fresh enough," said Helsinki, getting to her feet and evacuating the living room before Dis and Fili could question anymore.

Out in the hall, tugging on their shoes, Helsinki smacked Kili around the head. "Real subtle pal," she remarked. "Like a real James Bond."

"Hey!" Kili fussed with his hair, one boot still held in his grasp. "We're leaving, aren't we? I got some training stuff, it's waiting for us."

Helsinki shrugged her defeat, pulling the door open with both hands. Dwarven architecture was very pretty, and very heavy. Kili breezed past her, both boots now on, and instead of turning left towards the interior of the mountain, began leading her right and out to the mouth of the cavern where the tips of trees waved in the wind.

Being outside again was nice, Helsinki supposed. It was cloudy and chilly, but the air was flowing and fresh on her skin a bit like a cold shower. Something she felt inclined to invent after seeing Thorin exit the bathroom with dripping hair the night before. It was barely a glance, Helsinki wasn't in some romance novel and had maintained enough facilities to continue walking towards her room, but what a glance it was.

She wanted to lick him.

And possibly see what he was hiding under that thick tunic-

And then Thorin had disappeared and taken his sodden hair with him, like spilled ink that soaked into his shirt. Helsinki took a good long moment to regroup, scold herself, and then reason that there wasn't anything wrong with liking him. Sure, he was a mythical being in a fantasy world, a king, and entirely too stoic in general, but she could still think he was nice looking.

And smelling.

Among other things.

A short walk down a steep path lead into the trees, though for Helsinki it was a long walk with a prosthetic that needed a stable surface if it wasn't to absolutely buckle, ruin her back, and make her eat dirt. Keeping steady, she caught up with Kili who was watching her from the treeline with a raised brow.

"Keep it quiet or the first thing I teach you will be how to stitch your own mouth shut," she growled as she passed him.

Kili smiled toothily and took her arm, guiding her deeper into the tall trees. "I didn't say anything," he lightly told her. "Regardless, the first thing I will be teaching you is archery," he gestured through the trees towards a small clearing where a crude target carved into a tree greeted Helsinki.

"Alright," she nodded to the brunet. "Let's get started."

Of all her natural talents, which included but were not limited to; piano, dancing, arguing, insulting, speaking foreign languages, and retaining information for later use - archery was nowhere to be seen.

Helsinki could barely shoot and she was even worse at aiming. Knocking another arrow, removing arrows from stray trees, and pulling the practice bow that Kili had smuggled from the mountain also proved impossible.

"What are you doing wrong?" Kili exclaimed, walking around her looking as though he was about to start pulling his hair out by the roots.

"Maybe it's my teacher?" Helsinki idly commented.

"It's not that," dismissed Kili with a surprisingly calm wave of his hand. "Something else is making you miss. Your stance keeps moving too and I don't know why you can't seem to knock an arrow."

Helsinki knew the answer to at least one of those problems. Her prosthesis dug into her thigh and didn't feel stable enough when it was positioned as Kili wanted, a mirror of his own stance. Naturally, Helsinki wanted to have her left leg in front, but apparently dwarven shooting was different to what she had seen before in the sense that it made zero sense to her body.

She aimed and fired another arrow, this one striking a spindly tree off to the left of her target. "Fucks sake," she swore, stomping over to retrieve it.

Kili snorted at her. "Aren't you grumpy this afternoon," he commented slyly.

"Fuck off, I'm allowed to be grumpy," Helsinki shot over her shoulder, yanking at the arrow. "For god's sake not again," she huffed as it refused to budge.

A minute later Kili popped up beside her, watching her struggle. "Would you like some help?"

"Help like last time?" Helsinki asked with a raised brow. Kili flushed faintly at the memory of slipping on some wet leaves while trying to pull an arrow out of a tree and almost landing on his arse.

"That won't happen again," Kili swore, more for himself than Helsinki who found the first incident far too amusing to begin with.

It didn't happen again, because this was a different tree that didn't have wet leaves in front of it. Instead, it had a shallow slick of mud by it's trunk. And instead of flailing about for a short moment, Kili gave one good heave and slid. This time, he did fall.

His boots gave out on the mud and slid forward, while the rest of him lurched backwards to counter the sudden movement. His arms grabbed for the tree comically as he went down, reaching for it but never quite making contact.

Sitting dangerously close to the mud, boots caked in the stuff, Kili sighed in defeat while Helsinki did her best to stifle her laughter. "Perhaps we should call it a night," he said, getting to his feet.

"Sure thing," Helsinki agreed, plucking up the bow from where she had discarded it to hide her snorts at Kili's mud-ballet.

A short rustle behind them had Kili standing up and pulling Helsinki by the wrist closer to him. His bow was on the other side of the clearing and Helsinki would only be useful if she aimed anywhere but at the intruders. She could use it as some sort of blunt weapon, but anyone who wanted to do damage would be armed with things far worse than training bows.

Helsinki sensed how tense Kili had become and moved closer, gripping the bows wood tightly in front of her. So far the worst thing Middle Earth had shown her was men - not a huge change from home, quite frankly. The annoying wizard notwithstanding, Helsinki's time in Middle Earth so far hadn't been terribly dangerous.

But the weapons she saw everywhere, the swords, shields, Kili's bow - they all spoke for themselves of need. And whatever dwarves needed to be packing so much heat for, Helsinki wasn't keen to meet.

The rustling grew louder, indication that they weren't being ambushed at least. If they were, the intruders were very bad at it. The undergrowth parted and a small pack of dwarves emerged into the clearing.

Three of them, all armed and one with a deer slung over his back, a doe. The closest, a dark haired dwarf with beady eyes frowned and then smirked at them. Behind him, a dwarf wearing a heavy helmet held an axe, and the one with the deer had probably the most violently red hair that Helsinki had ever seen.

"Hagar, Milne, Buin," Kili said tensely, dipping his head in greeting. "Successful hunt, I see."

Something felt off to Helsinki as she watched the newcomers warily. They exchanged smirks, eyeing Kili's bow off to the side and the target etched on the tree nearby with smug glee.

"My Prince," the one in front, Beady Eyes replied, sweeping into a bow that felt more like a mockery than a respectful greeting.

The other two mimicked the greeting, the one with the doe dipping his head as far as possible without dropping his prize.

Beady Eyes looked to Helsinki who still held the practice bow, now with a tight grip for reasons other than fear. "And this is?"

Kili stepped forward. "Miss Helsinki Alphecca, Guest of the House of Durin."

Helsinki sideyed the brunet at the exceedingly formal introduction but let it go as the other dwarves bowed to her next.

"Forgive me, I have not heard of you prior to our meeting," Beady Eyes said to her. His tone indicated that it was an insult of sorts, as did Kili's sudden bristling beside her. Unfortunately for Beady Eyes, the insult went right over Helsinki's quaffed curls and missed its mark. She lined up hers.

"That's fine, I haven't heard of you either," she smiled sweetly at the leader who narrowed his eyes at her.

"Hagar, son of Dagar," he struck his chest for emphasis. "My father is master of the Gold Guild."

Helsinki supposed this made his dad some bigshot, but just because your daddy has a good job doesn't mean his son gets to clamber onto the pedestal too.

"That's nice, I've never heard of him either," said Helsinki. She looked at the one in the Helmet, something of a beta to Hagar's obvious posturing. "And you are?"

"Milne, my lady, son of Hildingr," Helmet bowed.

Helsinki aimed for the knees. "Not a clue," she replied, watching Helmet puff up like a disturbed chicken.

Beady Eyes stepped in. "Practicing our archery are we? In secret too?" his voice lilted in an unpleasant way.

Helsinki recalled her conversation with Kili in the bathroom. He had mentioned teasing due to his affinity for archery, even if it offered an advantage and didn't look as phallic. Beside her, he was holding himself tall but too tense for it to be played off as confident.

"He was just helping me learn, actually," Helsinki answered Beady Eyes. "Prince Kili has been an excellent instructor." He hadn't been, really, but these asshole ticked all the wrong boxes.

"I suppose there isn't much choice going around," muttered the one with the deer. Helmet snickered quietly.

"Not much genetic choice either is there?" Helsinki questioned.

Helmet cocked his head. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You look inbred," Helsinki said. "You act it too. Like your head's up your own arse."

Kili faltered in his posturing and snorted. Beady Eyes and the back up singers gave her a mix of affronted and insulted glares.

"I come from a long line of Firebeards-" Deer-Boy blustered.

Well, that explained the hair at least. "And yet not one braincell passed down, what a shame," Helsinki cut in.

"Listen here, I don't care if you are a guest of the Royal house, I will speak to my father and have you shorn in front of the court for disrespect," threatened Beady Eyes. This was apparently a major threat, as Kili took a step forward in warning while the other two moved back.

"Hagar-" Kili hissed in warning.

"Go ahead, see if I care," said Helsinki. "All it'll do is prove that you went crying home to your daddy because I stood up for the Prince."

Helmet swallowed nervously and shuffled up to Beady Eyes. He muttered something to him at a volume too low for Helsinki to hear.

It must have registered because the posse moved to leave the clearing the way they came, Beady Eyes lingering to glare at Helsinki. "Guest or not, I would be careful if I were you," he said as he left.

"And I'd grow a backbone and a decent personality if I were you," Helsinki waved them off.

Once their rustling had vanished, Kili relaxed back to his normal, lanky size. "You didn't have to do that, Helsinki," he told her.

"Sure I did, they were assholes," she answered, plucking stray arrows from the ground. "Besides, I have a feeling you would do the same for me."

"But you're a lady, defending your honor would be an honor in itself-"

"And you're my friend. Defending a friend from sentient pondscum comes with the position," Helsinki grinned at Kili. "I'd say it was pretty honorable to help out a friend anyways."

Kili offered her his hand, pulling her up from where she was crouching with a handful of arrows. "Friends?"

"I did just insult strangers for you, I'd say we're friends now," said Helsinki wisely.

The brightest grin lit up Kili's face, scrunching his nose and turning his dark eyes into half moons. "You're right! We're friends," he tucked her arm through his and scooped his bow up with the other.

As they exited the forest arm-in-arm, Helsinki spoke up. "Next time I'm teaching you."

"Teaching me what?" Kili asked, excited. "Is it stitches like the ones I helped you with? Is it-"

"First lesson is on dirty insults," said Helsinki. "After that we cover stitches."

Thank you all for reading! Let me know what you liked and what you want more of! You comments absolutely make my day! Also, I like to answer questions about the future of this fic and Helsinki, so if you have any, send them my way!

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A.K!