Chapter Text
As evening drew on, it became harder and harder for Thorin to avoid the marines. They were everywhere, and getting more and more determined to catch him the longer he evaded them. There were patrols jogging through the streets, marines posted at every dock and checking every ship, more officers questioning residents and putting up wanted posters. Thorin was reduced to less and less dignified hiding places as he made his careful way through the city, looking for somewhere to lie low for the night or somewhere to get the cuffs off his wrists.
Thankfully, he was so far only reduced to hiding behind barrels, rather than in them, but even that indignity was enough to grate. The current wave of patrols stomped past, not even bothering to check behind the stack of barrels, and Thorin straightened, eyeing their retreating backs warily. Tugging his tunic straight, he kept his head down and rounded a corner, trying to blend in with the crowd. To his great relief, he spotted a blacksmith’s only a few stores away, and quickened his steps. A group of marines appeared at the far corner just as Thorin pushed into the workshop and shut the door firmly behind him.
He paused just inside to catch his breath and assess his new surroundings. The workshop appeared, at first glance to be empty. A wagon sat in a clear space, away from the large machinery that, while well cared for and surprisingly good quality, were old and obviously very worn. The workbench was a typical organised mess, and the forge was lit but obviously hadn’t been stoked in a while. Thorin approached, scanning the tools for pliers or cutters large enough to deal with the thick chain between his manacles.
Before he could spy anything, a clatter came from deeper within the store. Thorin whirled about on his heel, heart in his throat, and saw a man in a blacksmith’s apron snoozing in a very uncomfortable position across a couple of barrels, surrounded by empty liquor bottles. Approaching warily, Thorin watched him snore for a few moments, then picked up the half-full bottle that had slipped from the man’s hand. One sniff of the contents had him wrinkling his nose and setting the stuff aside.
After contemplating the man for a moment, Thorin turned away in disgust. If he woke the man with his work, well, it shouldn’t be too hard to overpower him, even in shackles. That left him with the rest of the workshop to contemplate, and the impressive array of tools and finished swords lying about. It had been a long time since Thorin had last worked a forge, but his memories didn’t abandon him.
The first thing he tried was a saw, but the angle was awkward, and it would take far too long. Then his eye caught on the machinery, and he started to smile as an idea formed in his mind. The donkey that turned the great wheels was a docile and obedient beast, and it didn’t take much encouragement to get it moving. Thorin then reached up on tiptoe to loop his chains over one of the teeth of the largest horizontal cog and let the power of the machine do the work for him.
The plan worked beautifully, and he landed back on his heels feeling particularly smug.
His moment of triumph was ruined when he heard the stomp and clatter of someone approaching and unlocking the back door. A quick assessment told him he wouldn’t reach the front door in time, so instead he hid behind the towering bulk of the forge and spied on the newcomer as best he could.
The man that stepped inside was broad shouldered, board-chested, and stocky, powerful and solid in both appearance and presence. His skin was a dark tan and slightly freckled, and his hair and beard were red and wild. The resemblance to a man Thorin had once wronged was like a punch in the gut, and he remained frozen as the young man – definitely young, despite the impressive beard he was sporting – strode into the workshop and set about halting the donkey and thus the machines.
Once the donkey was still, and all the gears had ground to a halt, the young man looked up and about himself with confusion. His first suspicious glance was reserved for the only other – obvious – occupant of the room, the drunken man. The red-head snorted when he spotted him, and grumbled “right where I left you,” in a tone of such wry exasperation that Thorin could only assume it was a daily occurrence. Then the young man scanned his workspace, and Thorin winced even before the red-head narrowed his eyes and honed in on the misplaced saw sitting incriminatingly next to Thorin’s hat. “Not where I left you.” The man concluded.
Stupid, Thorin cursed himself, as the lad’s eyes drifted from the saw to the hat, his eyes narrowing in thought. There was really only one way out of this now, and though Thorin was loathe to draw attention to himself, he was not one to baulk at a fight, even an unfair one. As the red-head’s fingers brushed his hat, he stepped out of the shadows, drawing his sword and tapping the flat of it against the back of the boy’s hand in a single motion.
The red-head flinched away from the cold metal, head snapping up to stare at Thorin in alarm. He looked painfully young to Thorin in that moment, but that didn’t last long. In the next second, his expression had hardened into a scowl, and the resemblance to old Glóin Fireforged was more pronounced than ever. The idea that there was a connection rooted itself in Thorin’s brain, despite his attempts to dismiss it – Glóin’s family were still in England, last Thorin knew, and far too poor to afford the crossing – and he resigned himself to at least attempting not to harm the boy.
Gimli spared a moment to ask the Maker what he had done to offend, because surely having a day this bad could only be the result of cosmic interference. First, in his clumsy attempt to save Legolas from harm, he’d only ended up causing it himself, then he’d heard news that Legolas had nearly drowned, only to be promptly held hostage by a pirate. Of course, there’d been no way for him to ascertain Legolas’s health for himself, so he’d been left to fret for the rest of the day.
And now he had a pirate in his workshop. A pirate that by all accounts, he realised, matched the description of Legolas’s assailant. He set his jaw, a slow building rage starting to burn in his chest, and planted his feet, refusing to back down in front of the man that had threatened Legolas’s life. “You’re the pirate they’re looking for,” he declared roughly, challengingly.
“That I am,” the pirate agreed nonchalantly. Then he tiled his head, considering Gimli with evident confusion. “Have I threatened you before, or are you one of those people that hates pirates on principle?” The last word came out a mocking sneer, but Gimli didn’t pay that much heed.
“Not me,” Gimli corrected through gritted teeth. Despite the steel hovering near his throat, he took the risk of moving, darting sideways away from the pirate’s blade and towards one of his own. Once he had the battleaxe in hand, he swung it up, just in time to block the sword’s descent towards his throat again. “You threatened Master Greenwood.”
The pirate rolled his eyes.
Gimli was going to kill him. He exploded into movement, swinging his axe – not his favourite but one of the better ones he’d made – fast and hard for the pirate’s neck. The pirate defended himself admirably, and struck back with equal fervour, a hard, assessing light in his eyes. He was skilled, Gimli would give him that, and carried his cutlass with the long familiarity of a veteran of many battles. Gimli, in turn, was a self-taught blacksmith, skilled but by no means experienced.
The clashed back and forth across the open space of the workshop, which was not all that much, but it served their purposes well enough. “You know what you’re doing with that thing,” the pirate remarked in a momentary lull. “Self-taught?” He wondered, and Gimli bristled.
“Yes,” he growled, and attacked again, driving the pirate onto the defensive.
To Gimli’s eternal frustration, it didn’t appear to unsettle the pirate, and he recovered well, using Gimli’s anger to turn the tables and push Gimli back again. “Mind that hot head of yours. Anger only makes you sloppy,” he warned, which was good advice, and only served to annoy Gimli further.
He lunged, the pirate sidestepped, spun around him, and whapped him on the back of the head with the flat of his blade, sending Gimli stumbling. He turned, all his anger turning inward at his own foolish, rookie mistake. He let his enemy goad him, and he paid for it. The pirate, however, didn’t seem inclined to gloat. He just studied Gimli for a moment, then bowed his head in an oddly respectful gesture. Gimli was left a little dumbfounded as the pirate sheathed his sword and turned towards the door. Gimli drew in breath, reminded himself to remain calm, to remain focused, then threw his axe.
It spun, hilt over blade, flashing past the pirate’s ear to thud into the door above the wooden bar holding it closed. An inch and a half of the blade disappeared into the wood, biting deep. The pirate whipped around to stare at him, and Gimli tried not to look too smug. It was an effort not to chuckle when the pirate grabbed the handle and tried to wrench the axe free. Gimli had a blacksmith’s arms, which wasn’t even to mention all the hair-raising adventures Legolas had gotten him into over the years that had turned his raw strength into hard-won muscle. There was no way that axe was coming free without some serious strength, and probably a lot of patience, too.
“Impressive,” the pirate complimented, turning on his heel to face Gimli again. His voice wasn’t any different from before, when he’d been coaching Gimli on his fighting, but there was something about the way he held himself now that made Gimli think he was more angry than he let on. “Except now you’re once again standing between me and freedom, and now you have no weapon,” he explained, prowling back the way he’d come, towards Gimli and the workshop’s back door.
Gimli responded by repeating the move he’d pulled before. Dodging backwards this time, he snatched up a shortsword and another axe, this one with a shorter handle and larger blade. Not so good for throwing, but much better for cutting through tough leather, or even bone. The pirate raised an eyebrow, and the fight resumed.
“You can fight with a sword as well,” the pirate remarked, sounding impressed, “but surely even in a marine port, there’s no call for quite so many weapons.” He glanced around, at the pieces Gimli had poured his soul into not because anyone had paid him, but because he wanted to. “Certainly not for axes.” The pirate fended off Gimli’s next attack, but paused instead of pushing his advantage. “That’s a weapon much more fit for a pirate.”
Gimli refused to rise to the bait again, and fought with his temper. “The axe is an honest, versatile weapon. That hardly sounds like something a pirate could make use of,” he shot back, and saw that his own barb had hit home. He followed it up with a much more physical attack.
“You make them just to hang them on the wall, then?” the pirate demanded scathingly. “An unused weapon is no weapon at all.”
Gimli bared his teeth in an expression caught half way between a grin and a snarl. “Who says they haven’t been used?” he demanded, spinning out of the way of another attack and finding himself alarmingly close to his machinery. The next clash of steel on steel startled the donkey, and it leapt into motion, pulling at it’s harness even as it trotted the circle it was bound to. As if the fight hadn’t been perilous enough already, Gimli was suddenly hyper-aware of just how many moving parts his rig had, and how many places he could loose a limb if he were careless.
“You can’t have used all of them.” The pirate seemed unconcerned at the sudden new dangers, and pushed Gimli backwards until they were among the turning axles and grinding gears.
“Every last one,” Gimli confirmed. “I practice with them three hours a day.”
The pirate gave him a dubious, almost pitying look. “You need to get out more,” he decided, “find a new hobby, or perhaps a lass.” Gimli bristled at that, disliking both the words and the patronising tone the pirate was using, as though Gimli was somehow unworthy of his skill. He redoubled his attack, holding tight to the reigns of his temper and refusing to let the pirate goad him into being reckless.
“I’d expect nothing less from a pirate,” he growled. The pirate rolled his eyes in disgust, which Gimli thought was pretty damn rich, coming from him. “Women are more than just a source of entertainment when you’re bored, but I wouldn’t expect a pirate to have any respect for another person, man or woman,” he scathed.
The pirate didn’t respond. At least, he didn’t until after he’d stepped forward, got his blade under Gimli’s guard, and twisted his blade around Gimli’s until Gimli was forced to let go of it or injure himself. “Oh, I see,” the pirate mocked as Gimli forced him to back off with a swing of his axe. “You’re feeling defensive because you’ve already found yourself a lass, but you’ve no idea how to woo her.”
Gimli wasn’t sure if that taunt made him want to laugh or rage. Legolas was certainly no lass, and the comparison was very amusing, but he couldn’t deny that even if he’d wanted to – which he did, but only when he wasn’t worrying about what the rest of the world would do to them for it – he wouldn’t have any idea how to woo him. It wasn’t as if Gimli, a poor blacksmith’s apprentice with no family, no past, and very little future, had anything to offer the son of a Lord. He settled for saying, “you’re wrong,” and snatching up another sword to replace the one he’d lost so that he could push the pirate back.
The fight had lasted too long already, and Gimli was tiring. The pirate was flagging too, and Gimli knew that sooner or later, one of them would make a mistake, would move too slowly, and the fight would be over. He gritted his teeth and stubbornly ignored the growing weariness in his muscles, determined not to loose to a pirate.
Of course, all the determination in the world didn’t help him when the pirate, obviously recognising the same thing Gimli had, tossed a bag of sand in Gimli’s face. He screwed his eyes shut and threw up his arms to defend his face, but some still got in his mouth and up his nose, causing him to cough and splutter. He blinked his eyes open as soon as he could, skin prickling at the danger of being blind around an enemy, but found it was too late.
The pirate had a gun levelled at Gimli’s face. “Cheat,” Gimli accused in a growl.
He got a sardonic look in response. “There’s no such thing as cheating in a fight for your life,” the pirate informed him solemnly. Then he twitched the gun sideways for a moment. “Move.” It was only then that Gimli realised that, despite all the leaping about they’d been doing, he was still between the pirate and the door.
“No.” Gimli lifted his chin and planted his feet, glaring defiance at the pirate.
This almost seemed to amuse the pirate, until someone knocked on the front door and called out in an officious voice that they were the navy, and needed to search the property for the fugitive pirate. Said pirate grimaced and cocked his gun. “Get out of the way,” he ordered.
“I’ll not stand aside and let you escape,” Gimli declared.
Bitterly desperate frustration twisted the pirate’s face and his finger tightened on the trigger, but he didn’t pull it. The marines outside started banging on the door, clearly trying to force entry, and by the fury he could see in the pirate’s eyes, Gimli was pretty sure he was about to die.
Instead, to his complete surprise, the pirate lowered his weapon, eyes closed as if the action caused him physical pain. “Damn you,” he muttered. Gimli just blinked, too bewildered to manage anything else. There was an almighty crash as the marines finally broke through the door, but the pirate didn’t react beyond a sneer twisting his lips. Somewhere behind Gimli, his master woke with a grunt and flailed his way upright, demanding to know what was going on.
Within seconds, the marines had the pirate surrounded, muskets all pointed directly at him. One of them snapped a new pair of shackles around his wrists, above the broken old ones, and Legolas’s friend, Tauriel, strode into the shop. She swept her eyes over the scene, then offered the pirate a sweetly sharp smile. “It seems you’ll always remember this as the day that Captain Thorin Oakenshield almost escaped,” she said to him.
The pirate, Thorin Oakenshield apparently, glowered at her, but otherwise offered no response. After a miniature stand-off, Tauriel gestured for the marines to take him away, and Thorin only gave token resistance as they dragged him out of the smithy. Gimli watched him go, frowning, still mightily confused by his behaviour before the marines arrived.
“What was that pirate doing here, Mr Durinson?” Tauriel asked crisply, startling Gimli.
Gimli turned to her, still frowning. “Don’t know. I got back and found him here.”
“Why was the door barred?” Tauriel demanded.
Gimli narrowed his eyes. “He was trying to escape, so I stopped him.”
“And that’s why we found the two of you standing here having a conversation?” Tauriel pressed.
Had this been the pirates plan, Gimli wondered bitterly; if he couldn’t escape capture, to at least take Gimli down with him? He would believe it of a pirate, but it didn’t fit with the way Thorin had been behaving as he lowered his gun. “Oh, aye, I make a habit of standing around chatting with weapons in my hands.” Gimli growled sarcastically.
“Why weren’t you using them?” Tauriel asked.
“Because the bastard pulled a gun on me!” Gimli exclaimed, exasperated beyond measure. Tauriel raised an eyebrow at him, but Gimli only set his jaw and glared, refusing to back down an inch. Eventually, Tauriel nodded acceptingly, then turned on her heel and strode out of the smithy. Gimli watched her go, vibrating with frustration.
He wasn’t given long to indulge his temper, though, because within moments, his master was demanding he clean up the forge and get back to work. Gimli obeyed, because that was what apprentices did, and by the time the place had been put to rights, his temper had cooled. He was left only with his confusion. Why had the pirate lowered his gun, when he’d been one shot away from freedom?