A/N: I don't own Middle Earth.

0.

Aule called the last of the figures Bella because of the nine he had made, it was the most beautiful.

It didn't have an opinion on the name. Names were just designations. It responded to the designation.

It did its best to respond promptly to all the orders it was given. Cracks started to form in its brittle clay limbs, but it did not worry about that.

It did not worry about anything, not even when the first of the figures shattered completely under its load.

Aule mended it. He mended all the figures again and again, but the cracks always came back again.

Bella was sturdier than some, but the cracks still came.

It was the last still in the workshop when it presented itself to Aule, as ordered, because the damage had grown too great.

"It's not working," Aule said. Its creator's frustration was plain. "Clay was a mistake, I think. Maybe metal? Or stone?"

It stood waiting for an order to be given.

Aule sighed. "This experiment, I think, has failed."

And then it was carried outside and thrown onto the rubbish heap. The clay shattered.

It was in many pieces now. Too many pieces to move. It could see the other figurines, also in pieces.

It lay there for a very long time.

Then there was a warmth that reminded it of the forges -

Reminded? It did not have memories, it had orders, but it remembered, and it hurt, but then it was all coming together again, and it could see a kind but terrible face.

"You too will have a place in the music," and it shook at the beauty of the words. "But not just yet."

And then there was darkness, and its first taste of an emotion it had never felt before.

It liked the emotion, even though it hurt.

1.

Bella woke up, and the world was fresh and new and beautiful.

There had been something before this, she knew. Something that had hurt.

(The dwarves were stone, and stone remembered, but the hobbits were clay, and clay, when it is soft and new, is malleable, and so clay forgets.)

(Or perhaps they just didn't want to remember.)

The others paired off and made more of themselves, tiny and precious and sweet. Bella was left the odd one out, but that was alright. She played adoring aunt to each and every one of them.

"Where did we come from?" one of the little ones asked her.

"Well, your parents loved each other very much . . . "

"Where did they come from?"

"I don't know," Bella said.

It tasted like a lie.

2.

By the time she was five years old, she knew three things: Her name was Bella, not Primrose, the sun was a new and wonderful thing, and Bandobras (not Isengrim, no matter what his parents called him) was in the same boat as her.

Whatever boat that might be.

"Do you think this happens to everyone when they die?" she asked him. She had to look up to do it since he was currently hanging upside down from the highest branch he could climb to in his favorite tree. She had stayed sensibly in the lower branches.

"I dunno," he said. "Think it'll happen again?"

She considered this. "Maybe. But I don't think we should count on it."

Bandobras nodded enthusiastically. "I wanna see everything. Just in case."

Bandobras did not see everything. He was killed ten years later by an orc while he was out foraging in the forest.

The hobbits moved deeper into the safety of the mountains.

Bella set out to see everything in his stead.

The first time Bella died, she was eleventy-one and passed in her sleep.

The first time Bella nearly died, an arrow went whizzing over her head while she hid in a hollow of tall grass in a valley that had looked lovely from a distance.

The arrow had not been aimed at her, little comfort though it was for her pounding heart. It had been aimed at a figure only a little taller than herself with hair like the lumps of gold she'd once found in the river back home. He wasn't as beautiful as the tall figures she'd glimpsed just before the shooting started, but he seemed far more present and real somehow.

"In here!" she called as loudly as she dared.

He must have heard her because he threw himself forward into a roll that brought him safely into their little shelter. He left traces behind him, but the tall figures never got close enough to find them. They let out a few shimmering calls, presumably over their disappearing prey before the calls were replaced with laughter that made Bella shiver, and they rode away.

Bella turned to her companion. "Bella," she introduced herself.

"Thorin," he said. He was staring after his hunters with half mad eyes, but he finally tore his gaze away to look at her. He blinked. "What are you?"

At least, that's what she thought he said. His accent was nearly unintelligible.

Apparently, hobbitish and what she later learned was Khuzdul had made a linguistic departure at some point. Thorin insisted that the dwarvish language was still exactly as their Maker had taught it to them, so it must be the hobbitish language that had diverged.

Bella didn't argue the point.

That was later. The point at the time was that -

"They've taken my nephews," Thorin said, rising. "I have to rescue them. Quickly. They've already slaughtered the rest of our hunting party, I will not let them take my own kin."

Bella stood too and brushed her dress off. Thorin was the first non-hobbit she'd met, and she wasn't going to let him get away that easily. "Why did they take them?"

Thorin was already stalking off in the direction the tall figures he called elves had ridden off in. "Why do they hunt any game?" he growled.

Bella thought that over for a sickening moment and then chased after him. "I'm going to help," she said firmly. "I'm very quiet. I can sneak into the camp for you."

Thorin frowned at her. "Why?"

"To . . . cut the ropes if they're tied up? Tell them the plan?" Bella floundered. She'd never been involved in a rescue before.

Thorin slashed a hand through the air. "Why would you help? We are far from my city. I have no gold to offer you."

Bella blinked in confusion. "What would I want gold for?"

Thorin seemed to accept this as a hobbit oddity and didn't question it. "Then what do you want?"

That was a good question.

"I want stories," she decided. "All the stories you can give me. I'm beginning to realize I'm not going to have time to see everything, so I'm going to have to see some of it secondhand."

They probably could have snuck in and out of the elves' camp undetected if the youngest dwarf, Bella couldn't remember his name, hadn't been shot through the leg long before they got there. He wasn't going to be able to walk, and although his uncle and brother could carry him, there wasn't going to be anything stealthy about it.

The four of them looked at each other in the fading light, Thorin and Bella still hidden in the safety of the shadows.

"Go on then," the youngest one said wearily. "We all know I'm not getting out of this one."

"Absolutely not - " his brother growled, voice rising a bit too loud for comfort. He fell silent at his uncle's glare.

Thorin's knuckles were white as he frantically tried to figure out a way to make it work.

Bella went through the stories he'd told her on the way there and hit upon a word from one of them.

Diversion. Delightful word, that.

"Wait here," she hissed. "Get them out on my signal."

"What signal?" Thorin demanded, but Bella was already scurrying back to the tree line at the edge of camp where she'd left her pack.

The cooking pot she'd brought was right at the top of the sack. The ladle wasn't far beneath. She grabbed both and circled the camp so that she'd be running perpendicularly to the dwarves.

She took a deep breath and then took off running, blowing right past the elvish sentries as she pounded on the pot with her ladle and screamed at the top of her lungs.

She definitely had their attention.

She ran right past the fire, bare feet stinging at the sparks that blew on them. The effect helped her gain volume, though, so that was all to the good.

Someone finally tried to grab her, but she was fast and small, she could see the dwarves escaping from the corner of her eye, and it was working, actually working, they all might actually make it out -

Fire bloomed in her shoulder, and she fell into the dust.

3.

The first thing Bella thought when she realized that her name was, in fact, Bella and not Lobelia - what her parents had been thinking, she couldn't guess - was that she wondered what had happened to Thorin and his nephews. She never had caught their names.

She decided to go and try to find out.

"You're mad," Rosemary said. "It's too dangerous out there."

She'd been one of the original nine, so Bella's scowl was only half so intense as it could have been.

"I didn't get to see everything last time," she said.

Rosemary kept complaining, but Bella didn't care.

She set out a week later.

There were signs of a good deal of people all moving in the same direction, so Bella decided she might as well move in that direction too. There was a greater chance of meeting someone who knew of some record of Thorin that way.

It was only when she got close enough to hear the screams that she realized her mistake.

This - this was nothing like last time. This was a battle and the word did not sit at all delightfully on her tongue.

She had no intention whatsoever of getting in the middle of it, but then a group of horses charged over the hill she was on far too closely for comfort, and she was forced to run and the battle moved, and then there were orcs, and then and then and then -

She found herself directly in the thick of it, running around and desperately trying not to die while a dwarf with fiery red hair and who was far taller than her dwarves had been swung an axe at everything in reach and roared a battle cry.

He met her eyes for a split second, and she thought Thorin the same way she had thought Bandobras and Rosemary and even Bella. It was always the eyes that stayed the same.

She thought Thorin and he's back too and then she thought nonononono because he was falling, falling, falling, and there was nothing she could do.

The other dwarves nearby were shouting, and the orcs were rejoicing, and one was swinging his sword down to claim Thorin's head, and Bella -

leapt -

her good carving knife swinging upward into a beady black eye -

and then there was blood, so much blood, and the dwarves' cry of "Azaghal! Azaghal!" was ringing in her ears, and she was swept up in the tide of them as they carried their king home.

She never completed the journey.

4.

Bella was three years old when she remembered the truth this time, a fact that she later attributed to her parents in this life naming her Harvest-of-Plenty, a name she refused to bear any longer than absolutely necessary.

Hobbit naming schemes had changed considerably since her last death. She did not consider that change to be for the better.

Regardless, the fact that she was only three years old perhaps explained why her reaction had been to crawl under the table and announce that she was never coming out. Her parents could pass her food whenever they ate; she saw no reason to ever head outside her own kitchen, much less her own door, ever again.

She was eventually lured out with cake. And, well, parties often had cake too, so she reluctantly left the house as well.

The world was much safer now, she assured herself, and Bandobras, returned a few decades before her, agreed. Everything would be fine. She'd stay here, safe in their home in the Gladden Fields, and there would be no need to go searching out dwarves.

. . . Even if she never had gotten her answer.

She blamed the cake.

It was cake that had lured her out of her hobbit hole, after all, and it was cake that had lured her out to the market today specifically.

The market where a gray haired but unbowed old dwarf was bargaining for supplies with his sister and nephews, one of whom was cheerfully explaining that they were joining their kin in the newly established Moria.

It couldn't be, she told herself. Surely not. She was a grown hobbit now, not a lass to be carried away by fancies, and the odds of meeting the same dwarf three lives in a row were surely astronomical. It was impossible.

But then he turned to view some bread, and she couldn't repress a squeak.

It was him.

"Thorin," she breathed, and then she repeated it louder when he didn't react. "Thorin! Oh, it's so good to see you."

He actually looked puzzled. "I believe you have the wrong dwarf," he told her politely. "I am called Ghuran, son of Dalin."

"Don't give me that," she said impatiently. "I don't care what they're calling you now, you were Thorin when I first met you, and while I can certainly call you Ghuran if you prefer it, you're still the same dwarf underneath."

"You must be mistaken," he said, eyebrows pinching together. They were starting to draw a bit of attention from his family now. "Until we came across your settlement here, I had never come across one of your people."

Her mouth had dropped open. It couldn't be. She was sure it was him.

Unless . . . Unless dwarves, unlike hobbits, did not remember themselves if they returned?

If her eyes were wet, no one else had to know it. It was ridiculous, after all. She'd barely known Thorin, and he'd never brought her anything but trouble.

"My apologies," she choked out. "You are quite right, I must be mistaken. I wish you and your family good luck on your travels."

She turned and fled, all thoughts of cake forgotten.

"Bandobras," she asked five cups of tea and a good deal of cake later, "has there ever been anyone who's shown up in multiple lives for you? Besides me, I mean."

He considered this. "Well, Primrose always shows up sooner or later," he said. "But then, I married her the first time, and I've never looked at another woman since, so I always thought that might be part of it."

"And that's it?" she asked slumping onto his kitchen table.

"I've seen some of the others pop in and out," he said, nursing his cup of tea thoughtfully, "but Prim's the most consistent. Lost her before you were born this time," he added quietly. "That was a bad winter, that." He shook the memories off and looked back at her. "Why?"

"Nothing," she said with an unconvincing shrug. "Dwarves must just work off different rules, that's all."

And that made sense - even if Thorin was one of the original dwarves, his nephews certainly weren't, and they were the same too, she'd seen it in their eyes, so she already knew the rules for dwarves were different. Thorin was no doubt being sent back for some purpose of Aule's, and she . . .

Well, everyone knew hobbits weren't good for anything. Whatever she was getting sent back for, it wasn't that.

5.

With the Bounders bringing back grimmer and grimmer news, Bella (not Lily, though she didn't actually object to that one) wasn't exactly surprised by the news that ultimately came.

Still, that didn't mean she was pleased.

"Sauron," she said into her hands. "They're all gearing up to fight Sauron."

Rosmary, Primrose, Bandobras, and Meriadoc looked equally grim. It was the most of them that had been together since the beginning. Bella didn't think that was a good sign.

"We should sent a company to help fight," Meriadoc said, leaning his chair back. Gathering around the tea table was not what Bella's books had given her to think most council of war's were like, but then, most council of war's didn't get the snacks they did.

"I agree," Bandobras said instantly.

"Absolutely not," Rosemary countered. "We'd get slaughtered."

"We'll get slaughtered if they lose too," Primrose pointed out. "Bella?"

Leaving the safety of the hobbit community had never exactly brought Bella long life, but . . .

"Of course we should help," she said firmly. "It's our fight too."

Their little company, armed with slings and bows, ended up with a ragtime group of refugees from Eregion that included both elves and dwarves. Bella resolutely did not look in any of the dwarves' eyes and tried not to flinch from the elves too much.

"You seem nervous," said a deep voice from behind help.

Bella jumped and yelped which probably didn't help her case. "Yes, well, the last time I was this close to an elf, they shot me," she said. "Although to be fair, I suppose I did startle them rather badly first." Out of the corner of her eye, she could just see a dwarf with thick brown hair and a just healing scar where his left eye should be.

He nodded, like this was all perfectly sensible. Perhaps it was; living with hobbits had given her little to compare it to. "And your nervousness with my people?"

She sighed. "I don't mind dwarves generally," she said. "I mind one dwarf specifically. I'm trying to avoid him."

"Ah. May I ask why?"

"I made a rather bad fool of myself in front of him," she confessed. "I've no desire to do so again."

"I am rather familiar with that feeling," he said gravely. "Perhaps I can help you avoid him. Who might he be?"

In this life? She had no idea. Assuming he was here, of course. "He called himself Ghuran when I last met him," she said. At least the name would sound less outdated than Thorin or Azaghal.

"Then I am at least relieved to know you're not avoiding me. I am Baran, son of Tharan." He held out his hand to shake.

She turned to take it. "Bella," she said, and she finally looked up to meet his one remaining eye.

It was, of course, Thorin.

She managed to avoid making a fool of herself for at least the rest of the evening, however, and before long she was surprised to find herself drawn into friendship with the dwarf. He could be grim and almost frightening, but he saved her life at least twice, she'd managed to return the favor once, and he let her prod him into telling truly excellent stories, so she was . . . reluctantly . . . glad she'd found him again.

Even if one night around the fire he examined her sling and asked her, "Why do your people not use metal weapons?"

"We don't work with metal," she said flatly. "Not unless we have to."

Thorin - Baran - whoever he was looked curious. "Do you have some religious objection? I have heard it rumored that your people were made by Yavanna, and I can see that a forge might offend her - "

"We were not," Bella cut him off. "Yavanna had nothing to do with us. None of the Valar want anything to do with us. At least you dwarves know someone wants you." She threw another stick onto the fire and got a vicious satisfaction in watching it burn. "We don't work with metal because we've been reliably informed we're no good at it."

He frowned. "Anyone can learn, given time. I'm sure your people are no exception." He hesitated for a long moment, regarding her carefully. "As to your other point . . . We were given many gifts by Mahal, yes. Our craft. Our language. Our ability to endure. Yet we never forget that he was willing to destroy us himself, and that it was only on sufferance that we endured."

"So we are unwanted together," Bella said, strangely cheered.

His lips twitched. "It seems so."

"Then I suppose we'll just have to be glad for each other that we're here," she concluded. "I can live with that." She checked the pot. "More potatoes?"

She wasn't quite sure why that got him to laugh, but she was quite pleased that it did.

She was less pleased when even his dwarven endurance failed to sustain him through an axe blade to the skull.

6.

It was a long road from the Gladden Fields to - wherever they were going. No one was quite sure where that might be yet. Somewhere green where their crops could grow again.

In the meantime, they were at yet another market, and Bella was doing her best to sell some onions she'd found growing wild.

A young dwarf, barely past maturity, came up and began turning over their onions carefully. He glanced up. "How m- Are you alright?"

Considering her head had just thumped down onto the cart she was selling from, it was probably a reasonable question.

"An explanation," she said, voice undoubtedly muffled. "You can have all the onions you want, Thorin, for one really good explanation."

"Um . . . Well, I wanted them for soup," he said cautiously. "Also, my name's not Thorin. It's - "

"I really don't care," she sighed as she raised her head back up. "I'm Bella. Still and always. One copper per onion, please."

7.

The Shire was supposed to be safe. The Shire was supposed to be just for hobbits.

The Shire was not supposed to have dragons. Equally importantly, the Shire was not supposed to have dwarves.

Bella thought she was probably the only person who put those two thoughts on equal levels of importance, but still. She didn't care if Thorin was trying to help them out with their dragon problem, she wasn't getting involved with him. Not this time. She hadn't gotten involved last time, and she'd had a long and prosperous life. She could take the hint, thank you very much.

This probably would have worked better as an argument if she hadn't volunteered to help distract the dragon before she caught Thorin's eye, but it was too late for that now.

"You do realize," he said as buckled on his swordbelt, "that my name's not actually Thorin."

"If you want to call me by another name, be my guest," she said in the interest of fairness. "You're stuck with Thorin."

8.

She couldn't believe Gandalf was actually trying to convince her to get involved with another dragon.

With Thorin.

Who was, at least, finally going by his proper name, even if he didn't actually seem to remember anything else.

Still, she told herself after a night of tossing and turning, maybe there was hope. Maybe he'd remember more.

It couldn't hurt to try.

Halfway through the adventure, she remembered that it could, actually, hurt to try. Quite a bit. She had bruises in places she'd never had bruises before in any of her lifetimes.

She was also, coincidentally, having the time of her life. Possibly several lives.

Bandobras's words about Primrose bounced around in her head probably more than was healthy. Thorin was good-looking in this lifetime, yes, and noble, and an excellent singer, and -

She might have a problem.

In Laketown, he kissed her.

In the mountain, he nearly killed her.

And then he lay dying in the snow, talking of food and gold and a merrier world, and she kissed him to make him be quiet because it sounded far too much like a goodbye.

When she pulled away, his eyes drifted shut.

She blinked away tears. "I will not say goodbye to you," she said. "I will not. I will see you again in our next lifetime, and I will - I will - "

But what would it matter, when he wouldn't remember her at all?

More and more of the nine showed up. She suspected significance in that.

She did not suspect the ring.

But it was the ring, of course, and she wondered whether her eight lives had helped or hindered her resistance. It didn't matter now - it was gone, and her strength was gone with it, and the elves had offered to take her across the sea.

She hesitated. Not because she was still afraid of the elves, but because no one ever returned from that journey, and she wanted - she wanted -

But dear Frodo needed her, and there was nothing here for her. Not really.

She was stronger in Valinor. Strong enough that when Lord Aule graced Elrond's new house with his presence and knocked on her door in particular that she went to open it herself and then looked at him and said, "I suppose I can't keep you out like a Sackville-Baggins."

"At the very least," he said almost apologetically, "it is a bit too late to pretend you aren't here."

"Yes, well." She swallowed nervously. "Come in then. I have tea. I've been told I make it well."

He had to duck to enter the doorway. "I'm sure you do," he said gently. "I would love to taste it."

She poured it with shaking hands and then sat back in her chair.

"You didn't want us."

The words hung, trembling, in the air.

"I did not want mindless tools that could not do their job," Aule said carefully, weighing every word. "I very much wanted the living children you became." He was silent for a long moment. In another being, she would have called it hesitation. "Do you - remember the forge?"

"I do," she said. "I also remember the rubbish heap."

He closed his eyes. It could not hide the pain in his expression. "I did not realize. I should have. I have - tried to make up for it since."

Bella thought of the hobbits, blessed by Aule's wife, perhaps at his request. Thought of rising, again and again, being given chance after chance, never again left on the rubbish heap. Thought of their history. Not without its pain, but better off than many. Speaking of which.

"The dwarves could have used similar care."

To her surprise, Aule actually let out a rueful chuckle. "Despite their pride, quite unlike your own, in being my children, the dwarves have always had a rather puzzling resistance to being made safe," he said. "I have done what I could despite it."

Bella deflated somewhat. "Well. I suppose no one can ask for more than that. Cake?"

He looked rather startled. "I would be honored." He ate every last bite and finished his tea as well. Bella couldn't help the hint of pride that rose.

"I'll tell the others when I see them next time," she said. "They'll be glad, I think. If I see them. If there is a next time."

"There will be," he assured her. "And they will not be the only ones you see."

9.

There was a knock on the door. Bella put down the potato she'd been peeling and went to open it.

She had not been expecting to see a dwarf who would not look out of place on a battlefield fidgeting nervously from foot to foot on the other side.

"Are you Bella Baggins?"

"Sackville-Baggins," she corrected, mouth twisting with the same exasperation she'd felt towards her last name for years. Apparently, whoever was in charge of these things had a sense of humor.

The dwarf's shoulders slumped. "So you've - married, then."

Bella blinked. "No, of course not, I've always been a - " She finally got a good look at his eyes. "Thorin?"

He gave a jerky nod. "May I come in?"

Bella backed up to give him room to do so in a daze. "You remember."

He shut the door carefully behind him. "I do."

"Have you always remembered?" Her voice rose dangerously.

He shook his head quickly. "Only the seven were given that gift." He hesitated. "Until now, at least. I'm not sure why I was made an exception."

Bella thought of Aule's parting words and was pretty sure she did, but that could wait until later. For now, the important bit was - "So you remember last time."

Thorin flinched. "I do. And I regret - "

She had had quite enough of regrets, thank you very much. She surged forward and caught his mouth in a kiss.

It was different than last time. She was a shade taller, and he was perhaps an inch shorter; their mouths were subtly different, and, far more importantly, neither of them was covered in blood.

So the kiss was quite definitely different than last time.

It was still very, very good.

Her lung capacity gave out before his did, and she stepped back with a gasp. "Do you regret that part of it?" she demanded as soon as she had her breath back.

"Only the part where it ended," Thorin said, and then he kissed her again.