Unmoored : A Hobbit Fanfic

Okay, so there are so many fanfics where a girl falls into Middle-Earth (or some other fictional world) after she dies in some horrible accident, and it just got me thinking, what if it wasn't a one-time thing? What if you couldn't turn it off? What if every time you died, you woke up in another universe? It sounds cool at first, but eventually, it would become a living hell, wouldn't?

This might just be a one-shot. I don't know yet. I usually don't write chapter stories, just one-shots and drabbles, but I've got so many ideas swirling around in my brain for this one, I might do more, I don't know. Please review if you think it would be worth it for me to continue. EDIT: I'm reposting several of these early chapters to try to fix a lot of spelling and grammar errors. Only the first chapter is in first person POV.

Chapter 1

At a tavern in Dale, some months after Erebor has been won back ….

"Where will you go?" The question was asked quietly, earnestly, and brought me out of my dark thoughts and back to reality. Once I would have made a biting joke, at least to myself, about this being 'reality'. But now I just don't have the energy or motivation to do so, even to myself, in my own head. Once that would have worried me, too, but not anymore.

I looked over the wooden table at the weathered, but still attractive, face of the dark-haired Man sharing a beer with me in the wan light of the dingy tavern. I shrugged. It didn't matter where I was going; I was going away from here and would probably never come back. I really should not have agreed to meet with him first, I should have just left. My desire for connection is proving to be a weakness still.

"Don't know yet."

The normally full lips were set in a hard line, pressed together so hard they almost turned white, and appeared quite thin, too. His brow was heavy and his dark onyx eyes clearly flashed his outrage.

"Thorin should not be throwing you out."

"He's not."

"After everything you did to help reclaim Erebor!"

"This is my choice."

"After saving his life, his nephews' lives-" His voice is raising in volume now, while mine drops dangerously lower, almost in an imitation of the Dwarf King in question.

"It's better this way."

"You don't have to be so loyal to him, protecting him even now." He slammed his fist down on the table, making the tankards and silverware clatter. Years ago (decades, I corrected myself) I would have jumped at the sudden noise. Not anymore.

"He's clearly pushing you into this!"

"It was my idea."

My companion scoffed. "I don't believe that. This plan stinks of him. Taking Kili and Fili on a 10-day hunting trip so you can quietly slip off? With no word of parting? Nothing?! Just leaving?! That's Thorin, not you!"

The lightning flashed in my eyes then, and the older (younger?) Man saw it. His righteous anger faltered slightly, before I even responded.

"YOU. DON'T. KNOW. ME!" He stilled at my outburst. My jaw was clenched, my teeth grinding together, a muscle twitching in my cheek. I closed my eyes, summoning all my reserves of calm then, in order to be able to go on without raising my voice in kind again. We were already getting looks from around the tavern, and I had not wanted witnesses. Too late for that now.

"I left a letter in his room."

He tsked me. He actually tsked me! Like some mother hen! Well, he was a parent, and a single one at that. I ignored it and continued.

"I couldn't have this conversation face-to-face. I have tried, I truly have. It's as if he knows what I am working up to and he outmaneuvers me. He'll talk me out of it before it even comes up. I can't risk that happening again. It's gotta end. It's going to."

"You are leaving Dale." It was a statement, not a question.

"I cannot stay in the shadow of the Mountain." My voice was far lower than it had been all night, now, hollow-sounding, even to my own ears.

"Stay at my house tonight. The girls would be happy to see you again."

I shook my head, avoiding his gaze. Bad idea. Connections were the problem, not the solution.

The Man reached across the table then, his long fingers easily catching mine. I knew I should pull away, but I didn't. His fingertips were calloused from a lifetime of hard work. He was born on the water, born to oars, and they slid gently on the back of my knuckles, tracing an unknown pattern. Why couldn't you have fallen for him? My mind whispers to me. Someone closer to your own class, your own station, instead of a damn prince. You keep making the same mistakes, only worse. This time he's not even the same species as you. I try to convince myself that it matters, like Thorin says it does (at least as far as princes go). It doesn't work.

"Just one night." Bard was pleading now. This is not good. Don't do this, not again, the whispering voice in my head has a raw edge to it. You'll hurt him, too.

"You can leave just as easily in the morning. And you won't have to use any of your 1/15th of the gold to pay for a room here, tonight."

I had to bite back a laugh at that. I don't tell him that I'm not taking my share from the quest with me. Well, I have some. But hardly a drop in the ocean of what was to have been my share. Really, 1/15th of all the gold in Erebor? Did he think someone could actually carry that on their person? I couldn't help but pity him a little, to not even be able to imagine how much gold there must have been. How much poverty has he seen in his life to say something like that? What does he define wealthy as? How do you define wealthy? The vicious little viper of a voice whispered and hissed, and then laughed. He really is just like you used to be, the inner voice said again, and it flooded me with guilt, which is just ridiculous. Staying at his house for one night won't ruin him. Will it? Better safe than sorry.

"I can't ask you to do that."

"You aren't, I'm offering." Damn him, why did he have to be so earnest, so persistent, so … good?

"One night."

His fingers tightened around mine. "Please."

I sighed. "Will you promise to stop making such a scene if I say yes?"

His smile split his face in two, and it looked like the sun had come out on a cloudy day. "Of course."

"Stop grinning like a shit-eating dog. You haven't won anything. I'm still leaving tomorrow."

He released my fingers (finally!) and Bard the Bowman – Bard the Dragonslayer, now – spread his hands wide in an expression of mock surrender, schooling his face into seriousness, but his dark eyes were smiling. I sighed. Yeah, this was decidedly NOT a good idea. Too late now.

~000~

I wish I had died in the Battle of Five Armies. It would be so much easier then, for both of us. It would have hurt Fili, of course. He would've mourned for me. But eventually he would have moved on. He would have fallen in love again. Hopefully with some honorable darrowdam who could give him the true dwarfling sons he deserved. He could go on to rule Erebor with her one day, after Thorin. And maybe it would hurt a little less every day, until eventually I would be only a distant memory to him. A fondly remembered companion and lover, an old friend from a different time.

Surviving is harder. I can't be what he wants me to be, no matter how much I may lov …. feel for him. I gotta stop staying the "L" word and reinforcing it. These feelings are … inappropriate. It would have been better if I had died. Fili would be free.

And I would have woken up somewhere else, somewhen else. And had to start over again. As I have so, so many times before. When the blaster had shot a smoking hole into my chest, I had hoped (futilely, of course), that this death would be the final one. It wasn't. I woke up in Middle-Earth, smoking ruin in the center of my torso magically repaired, like it had never happened.

I don't getting a happy ending.

I don't get an ending at all.

Ever, apparently.

~000~

My name, my real name, doesn't matter. I tend to change it a lot, anyway. I think one day I might forget what my birth name even was. It's been so long since I've used it. But I didn't want to be reminded of the life I had left behind, of my little brother who had depended on me, the friends I had abandoned. Even if I could somehow go "home", they'd never recognize me now. Experience changes you. So, it's been decades since I've used my birth name. Here, in Middle-Earth, I go by Moira. The ancient Greek word for 'Fate'. A private little joke with myself, if a dark one. It does seem like I don't get to make any of my own choices anymore.

I was born human, but something happened to me. I still don't know what. I changed. And no, I don't know how. Maybe I will someday. But I doubt it. It doesn't matter anyway.

I don't die. Well, that's not entirely true. I do. I die. I feel it each time, feel the pain, the fear, the life-force fading from my body (bodies?), the blackness wrapping itself around me, the ice creeping into my soul again. It terrifies me each time, even as each time I hope this one will be the final one. The one where I won't wake up again.

But I do. I die, and I just change universes. Shot, stabbed, lynched, poisoned, sickness, gored by a crazed bull - even old age, once. It doesn't matter how it happens. I die, and reality re-forms around me. I awake gasping, the pain and memory of the death still fresh, but the death-wound gone, my body renewed (is it even the same body? Am I even me?). And I must learn my new world, where I am condemned to spend another lifetime until I die again.

Sometimes I recognize the world as one that is mirrored in the fiction of my own, sometimes I don't. I've gotten involved in important events, sometimes changing them drastically, sometimes acting as a guardian to the "proper timeline", and I've sat them out entirely. I don't know which is better, which I am meant to be doing, if there is a meaning to this at all. I've made things better, and I have fucked up royally.

I've tried both magic and science to stop this, in various worlds. I've lived and died. I've fallen in love. I have 9 children (well, 9 still living, at last count), spread across 6 universes. I doubt I will ever see any of them ever again. I only pray that my curse is not heredity, and my children will be spared. That they can live their lives in some semblance of peace. Since I've never moved backwards, into a universe I have already lived in, I will likely never know.

I am unmoored in space and time, and there is no respite or release. I am in hell. I am so, so tired. And I can tell no one.