Thorin shivered slightly and reached around to pull his cloak tighter around him. Something stopped it, though, and the fur slipped through his loose grip. With a grunt, the dwarf lifted his head, realizing that there was a slight weight resting against his side. It was a hand. A very small hand, at that. Surprised into stillness, Thorin let his gaze follow the hand to the arm, then the arm (he turned his shoulders a bit so he could keep looking without hurting his neck) to a small body.

A small, feminine body.

Thorin blinked. Billa was curled up under a blanket just behind him, with one hand held against her chest and the other buried in the fur of his cloak. Her head was half tucked under her blanket, and it looked like her knees were nearly touching his back.

They'd been traveling together for three weeks already, he realized with a start. He had expected the hobbit to have left by now, or at least complained about the conditions and whined about wanting to go home. As it was, he could only remember passing comments about how it would have been nice to have access to this or that. She had been handy at cooking over an open fire, which was surprising enough, and though she shifted a lot when they settled down to sleep, he'd never heard her complain.

This little gesture, made silently in the middle of the night, was the first time he'd noticed her looking so... vulnerable. Thorin felt a slight stirring in his gut, and he knew that the others would have felt it, too. He wanted to protect her. This halfling, so small and fragile and female, needed him to protect her. After a beat, he scowled and pulled his cloak out of her reach, wrapping it around himself and hunkering down against the cold earth. She was a distraction. Why Gandalf had chosen her was a mystery. Though the dwarf grumbled, the seed had been planted. This burglar was not simply a burglar anymore.