“Stilcho!” Her nails bit into his hand. He blinked and tried again to focus, succeeded finally in seeing her, beyond a veil like black gauze.
“Help me. M-moria-“
She rose and her chair overset, crashing down so violently she came and grabbed him and held on to him with all her might. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, dammit, don’t, come back-“
“I don’t want to go down there, I don’t want to die again -oh gods, Moria!” His teeth would not stop chattering. He could shut his living eye. He had no such power over the dead one. “It’s in hell, Moria, a piece of me is in hell and I can’t blink, I can’t shut it, I can’t get rid of it-“
“Look at me!” She jerked his head by the hair and looked him in the face.
Another jerk at his hair. “Look at me!”
His sight cleared. He caught her around the waist and hugged her tight, his head against her breast, in which her heart beat like something trapped. Her hand caressed his head, and she whispered reassurance; but he felt her heart hammering fit to shake her small body. No safety. As long as she was with him there was none for her, and there was nowhere any for him.
Get out of here, he would tell her. But he dreaded the day he would slip and
Moria would not be there to pull him back; he dreaded the solitude in which he might then go mad. If he were a brave man he would tell her go. But not today.
They would climb out of this pit together; for that much they needed each other he needed her skill and she needed his restraint and his protection to use the gold; but after that, after she was set up and he had a chance as well, then he would find a way to let her go.