I am sooooo sorry it has taken me this long to update:( I should be beaten and locked in Thranduil's dungeon!

I still don't own any of Tolkien's adorable characters or Salvatore's. Bruenor Battlehammer Do'Urden is a spawn from my brain, though.

Bruenor must have dozed off. One moment, he was listening to Mearnin humming softly beside him while bathing his aching head with a cool cloth. The next, he was sitting on a rise above Mithril Hall with his cousin, Mykail, at his side. He turned and met his cousin's golden gaze and grinned just before he was pulled from the dream.

At first, he thought he was in the mines. The sound of dwarven voices raised had awoken him, but the wet, humid air that stifled him did not fit his home. It brought to mind a dark, twisted forest that was far from the safety of Mithril Hall. But if there was dwarves. . .

Bruenor's eyes snapped open and he got quickly to his feet, startling the Healer beside him, but he didn't even think to apologize. His eyes searched out the owners of the voices he had heard, only to have his hope crushed. They were not dwarves of Mithril Hall. But maybe, maybe they might know of it. "I do no' suppose any o' ye know o' Mithril Hall?" he asked, his eyes on the dwarves. Silence suddenly reigned in the clearing as the dwarves took in the strange elf.

"Wha' kind of elf are ye?!" a tawny haired dwarf barked at him.

Bruenor's eyes narrowed at the rather rude tone of the dwarf, but for the sake of getting home, decided to answer. "I'm a drow, ye ole coot. Now, I've answered yer question, answer mine if'n ye please," the young drow said. "Have any o' ye heard o' Mithril Hall?" Bruenor suspected what the answer would be. Surely if they knew of his home, then the dwarf would've known a drow if he saw one, but he had to ask.

Bruenor watched as the motley crew shared a few looks and shrugs, at least as much as their restraints allowed, before a dark-haired dwarf—their leader by all appearance—answered, "No."

Bruenor barely acknowledged the answer, his attention now caught by the fact that the dwarves were bound. "Why do ye 'ave 'em tied up?" he asked Legolas.

Legolas directed a look at Bruenor meant to question his intelligence, before reminding himself that the young elf wouldn't have any idea about the history between the elves and dwarves of this world. "Our peoples are at odds with one another. Their presence in our wood is a trespass."

Bruenor's eyes widened at the new information, but all he managed to utter in reply was "Oh," but Legolas knew that a question was forthcoming when the young elf's brows drew together in confusion. "Then, why didn't ye tie me up? I'm as good as one meself."

Legolas stared at the drow a moment. He didn't really have a good answer for the question. However, realizing that the dwarves were watching this exchange with great interest, he replied, "You are not of the dwarves of this world," and called for the group to depart, hoping to stall any more difficult questions Bruenor might have.

The elven group began heading home once more, a large group of dwarves and one drow in tow.

While Legolas' warriors stayed alert to their surroundings and their captives, the dwarves were muttering in their own awful sounding dialect to each other, probably plotting an escape, but Legolas had no way of knowing.

Dwarven was one language he never intended to learn.

He heard Bruenor let out a choked laugh, undoubtedly at something one of the dwarves had said at elven expense, and then the air was suddenly filled with a very lyrical stream of dwarven. Legolas stopped dead in his tracks and stepped back into the cover of the forest to observe.

Bruenor was talking to the dwarves.

At first, they seemed wary of him, but something he must have said put them at ease, and they began conversing with the drow in their strange, rumbling language. The younger ones especially seemed to have developed a fast friendship with the young drow. And Bruenor, Bruenor was animated and lively, even more so than he had been before. He was in his element, among the familiar. He was dwarven.

Legolas suddenly felt very uneasy. But what troubled him most was not that Bruenor seemed so very much more dwarven now that there were dwarves for him to interact with. No, it was that the king would not see Bruenor. Legolas feared his father would see an odd elf that too closely resembled a dwarf in far too many ways.

"You are worried." Legolas glanced at Tauriel, acknowledging he had heard. There was no reason to reply. It wasn't a question. "He seems less of an elf now, and yet no less of one," she added, as the group passed them, the two elves hidden from the eyes of their captives and the drow. "I do not believe any of our group would rebuff him now if he sought their company, even if he is currently befriending the dwarves. They have had time to accept him before seeing how closely his mannerisms are to dwarves." Tauriel's eyes met Legolas' as she stated his fears aloud. "The king's first impression of him, however, will be as one of them."

"I cannot let that happen," Legolas said. "We'll take the dwarves straight down to the cells. I'll have Bruenor taken to the King first, separately. Perhaps, then, Bruenor will simply be a curiousity, not a threat," he added. At least, that was his hope.