Mahrâna

by Lindzzz

Summary:

"Mahrâna"
Khuzdul-"To burn/the act of burning."

In the year Bilbo is gone, Thorin rebuilds more than Erebor.

The follow up Thorin POV to "Safe and Distant"

Notes:

Thorin is a huge fucking emotional disaster and that's really all that can be said.

Chapter 1

“Thorin no, come on look at me, Thorin look at me.”

The ice stopped being cold long ago, the tear through his muscle and ribs stopped it’s dull throb and sank into the numb gray that’s overtaking him bit by bit. Bilbo’s hand is a steady pressure over him, a single point of heat in the deep cold.

He looks. He never could stop himself from looking when Bilbo was nearby.

It’s a far better end than Thorin had ever hoped for, having Bilbo here by his side. More than he would have dared to ask, more than he deserved to ask. And perhaps it’s his final blessing, that he’s receiving his wish to have Bilbo by him till the very end.

 

After everything that’s happened; after the rage and fog and fire, after the Arkenstone burning in the human’s hands and Bilbo’s terrified whimpers on the wall, Bilbo holds to his promise to be there until the end. Bilbo keeps his words in ways Thorin was incapable of.

 

The hands on him are shaking, one pressed over his wound and the other gripping tight onto his arm. They shake and Bilbo’s voice chokes on denials, face twisted with a pain that never should have been there. It’s more than Thorin ever wanted to see on that indescribably expressive face, there should never be pain there.

 

But Thorin, the greedy, selfish, low wretch that he is, drinks it in. He soaks up Bilbo’s pain and basks in it. It’s a balm on some rough and raw thing in him, that Bilbo could still look like that for his sake after all that has happened.

 

“Bilbo…” I’m sorry. For everything, I can never say I’m sorry enough. Go home. Get away from here. Go home to your comfort and peace and plant your tree. Go home and let me live on in you as you saw me. Remember me as the Thorin only you saw. Remember me as the Thorin who defined himself by his honor and wouldn’t feel relief in your pain. I’m sorry I brought you here. I’m sorry I would have dragged you here a thousand times over just to have you by me.

 

The words are thick on his tongue, caught in flecks of blood and frozen in the air. Thorin knows he has to let them out, has to say a final farewell. He’s so tired. Tired and hurting and he can feel the goodbye growing in him.

 

“Don’t!” Bilbo’s voice breaks thick and desperate. The hand on Thorin’s arm tugging sharply, like he just needs to get Thorin’s attention. “Don’t you dare say goodbye to me Thorin Oakenshield! Do you hear me? You’re not done here, you aren’t done, we aren’t done. Look at me Thorin, look at me. Keep breathing, just stay awake, and look at me.”

 

Thorin looks. He looks at the way the light catches in Bilbo’s hair, at the trickle of blood down the side of his face. Thorin looks at the twitches in Bilbo’s cheek from clenching his jaw, the furrows between his brows and the wetness in his eyes. He looks and can’t take his eyes away.

 

“Look at me.” Bilbo commands again, and Thorin can hear the iron that’s always hidden in Bilbo. The hard ore carefully kept under the soft, open warmth that’s shown to the whole world.

 

‘I’ve always looked at you.’ He thinks, distantly aware of the ground moving away from them, of Bilbo’s hands gripping tight at his shoulders and the wind pulling at his hair. ‘I never could stop looking at you.’

 

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If they had met in another setting, he thinks he may have been able to be friends with the halfling. Bilbo is clever, in his way. When he forgets to hold to his Shire manners he is nearly witty and able to keep an interesting enough conversation. His eventual willingness to sign that contract already makes him a step above the rest of his folk, and his fast thinking with the trolls had bought them valuable time.

 

Which did not negate the fact that Bilbo was the reason they were nearly eaten by trolls in the first place.

 

And that is the heart of the matter. Bilbo is witty, charming, big hearted, determined, and nothing but a liability to tug on Thorin’s mind. He may have told Gandalf that he was not responsible for the wizard’s pet project, but Bilbo swore his contract to Thorin Oakenshield. A pledge of service, even foolishly given, was not something to disregard.

 

So Thorin accepts the pledge, and each morning prays that the halfling will turn and go home before his gentle, home-bound soul meant for gardens and books and fireplaces ends up gutted by an orcish blade while under Thorin Oakenshield’s guard.

 

The halfling doesn’t seem any happier about the arrangement than Thorin is. He’ll mutter complaints and stare moodily at the mud on his fine waistcoat or the pony hair on his jacket. He’ll wish for baths and toss restlessly in the night. The complaining itself does not bother Thorin too much, the rest of his company is hardly shy with their grievances. The rest of the company is also at least capable of holding their own in a fight, while Bilbo holds the little sword Gandalf gave him like it might leap from his hand and bite him.

 

To say he is shocked, when the halfling comes running up behind them after disappearing in the goblin tunnels, is an understatement. Bilbo honestly should have been dead, though Thorin was praying the halfling had managed to slip away and was already on his way back to the elf hive where he would no longer weigh on Thorin's conscience. 

 

But there Bilbo stands with his hands on his hips, smeared in dirt, the fine clothes he’s always complaining about torn and ripped, smiling awkwardly like he was embarrassed to have gotten lost from a party instead of coming out of an infested goblin city without a scratch on him. That he somehow survived and made it out after the rest of them had to scrape by with a desperate battle is shock enough, and that’s what everyone else is focusing on.

 

Thorin has other matters he’s concerned with. Bilbo should not have come back. Bilbo has no reason to come back. He’s shown no interest in the gold, complains constantly, and Thorin knows his harsh words in the mountains struck a blow to the halfling’s confidence. He should have left. He came back.

 

“Why did you come back?”

 

Bilbo considers him, head tilted and smiling a bit, and it doesn’t look like the same forced, hard smile that he usually wears when he’s biting back bitter words. Nor is it the bright eager smile of a fool running off to excitement that Thorin has seen a few times.

 

This smile is sure, confident and firm. Bilbo looks Thorin in the eye now, as he stands straight and smiles. There’s something hard there, and the Bilbo who shrugs and smiles on as he speaks of homes and fighting for them does not seem to be the same one that had missed his armchair and his books. It’s like throwing a piece of plain stone to the side, and having it break to show iron ore within. But this is just a halfling, and Thorin wants to know where this came from. Wants to march forward and demand to know what happened in those tunnels, that spat out this quiet and grounded, smiling creature that is not the Bilbo Baggins he has come to know.

 

Thorin wants to know why this little book keeper would come back for a home that isn’t his. Why he’s so concerned for them when they’ve dragged him into hardship and peril. He wants to know why, after all his harsh treatment, Bilbo looks right at Thorin as he explains that he wants to help them find a home. He wants to know why Bilbo looks at him, and says ‘you don’t have one’ in a way that yanks at something in Thorin’s chest and has him lowering his eyes, looking down from a hobbit of all things. But Thorin lets it go, notes it as something to keep an eye out for, and nods his head, heart hammering, deciding that he’ll have to start paying a little more attention to their formerly simple burglar.

 

The mystery is forgotten in running and panic and the mad thought that they’ll be running for the entire quest, from one catastrophe to another.

 

There’s fire. Burning the trees like torches, like the orange glow that came with a roar years ago.

 

There’s a pale orc that rides in from his nightmares. Blood and snapping pain and a rage that clouds out every injury until he is left humiliated on the ground, grabbing at his sword and thinking that he can’t let his life end in this mockery. He can not let himself go on remembered as the fool who had his head taken by a nameless orc foot soldier.

 

There’s a scream, a tiny battle cry, and a tinier body slamming into the orc over him. Thorin’s vision is fading in and out, but he can see that it’s the halfling plunging his little sword into the orc’s chest with a wild snarl on his open face. It’s the halfling stumbling to stand in front of Thorin like a small guard dog, bright blue sword held stiffly in an awkward grip, swinging wildly against the dark and the flames and the snarling wargs.

 

Bilbo. Of all the fools to come flying to his rescue, it’s Bilbo Baggins standing fierce in front of Azog. It’s Bilbo who’s about to die standing in a fight, instead of small and scared and shivering as Thorin had thought him.

 

And when they stand on the Carrock, and Thorin can feel every torn muscle and broken bone in his body, it’s Bilbo who stands a little ways away, looking small and scared again.

 

It’s one of the most amazing transformations Thorin has ever seen. Bilbo’s eyes Thorin warily, his hands flexing at his sides and his eyes blinking rapidly. He’s a far cry from the ferocious halfling who flung himself in front of battle raged orcs while he barely knew how to hold a sword.

 

Thorin thought he understood the halfling. He thought this was some little pet project of a bored wizard who, if not an outright accomplice to Gandalf’s plans, was simply a fool who confused the real world for the stories in his books. He only saw meekness and a weak heart that may have been filled with good intentions, but would ultimately fail. He thought Bilbo had no place there, had no business being outside of his Shire.

 

And now it’s nothing at all to crush Bilbo to him, trying to show with a single embrace how sorry he is for doubting, how in one day Thorin’s entire view has spun around and left him dizzy with the exhilarated shock of it. Everything he thought he knew about this halfling has been flung in his face, and Thorin finds that he has never been so happy to be proven wrong.

 

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His head is full of fire.

 

There’s heat and ice and blood rushing through his mind, burning and searing away everything that he was. The smoke fills his mouth and sticks to his skin, and all the air is full of rotting and burning meat. He can see his brother in it, his sister and father, Fili and Kili caught in the fire that burns in Thorin and consumes everything in it’s path while it leaves him hollow and standing. Dis had said once that the fire had followed them all from Erebor, and Thorin knows that she was right, because the burning was in him all along.

 

It lifts, the smoke lingers but the burning and ice slowly ebb away leaving a thick haze that thrums over him. Through it he can barely see firelight caught in gold, it’s not the blazing gold of the treasure halls, but soft golden-brown hair that reminds him more of sunlight and warm wood than of gleaming metal.

 

“Bilbo…?” His own voice echoes through the haze, like it came from somewhere else. And there are hands on him and a voice shushing him but Bilbo can not be here. He was sent away, thrown down and cast off and far, far off where the ice and fire can’t touch him.

 

Bilbo is not here, but Thorin still grasps at the illusion of him, desperate with apologies and pleads for a forgiveness that he does not deserve. He clings and is only aware of a soft worried voice and hands on his sleeve that would not be Bilbo’s. Thorin's voice drifts and echoes, and the flames rise up again, the smoke billowing over him and consuming this illusion and pulling him back down into the inferno forever burns within him.

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Gold.

 

Gold beyond sorrow.

 

Beyond grief.

 

Beyond his orders for Kili to stay in Laketown, beyond Fili's glare as he stayed by his brother's side. Beyond the sweeping ripping horror as the dragon flew to the little town of men that held two of the brightest points in Thorin's heart.

 

The town burns behind him, screams drifting over the distance and pulling at him. There is no way to tell one cry from another, but part of him still listens for his nephews in the fire.

 

Dis screamed at him, when they signed into his company. She struck him full across the face and screamed with a fury he had not seen in decades.

 

"You do what you will! Follow our father, our grandfather, into madness and ruin! I can't stop you anymore. I gave up on stopping you long ago. Follow them, burn and go mad like they did if you want it so badly. But don't you dare take my sons down with you!"

 

The mountain beats in a steady pulse over the screams, like a soothing heartbeat. In there, in that warmth, there was no more loss. There was no more failure. The memory of the gold is a wave sweeping over him, a calming pulse like the thrumming rush of wings in the air and the heat of a well lit forge.

 

It crashes over him, and he lets the memory of warm gold and flickering fire smother the screams of the town and of his failure.

 

Gold beyond measure. Beyond life.

 

It crashes over him and calms the fire in him, quenching it with how the gold catches the light of all the torches. He spends hours in the gold, feeling the pride of their people, the calm comforting pulse of it, wash over everything else. The fire turns from a blaze into a thick wrapping heat. Like a hot day of summer or the damp, heated air around a forgefire. For the first time he does not feel the tense, consuming need to go, to do, to accomplish and run. There's nothing but the strange, tranquil syrupy heat and the gold soothing his mind.

 

"Thorin-"

 

He's only distantly aware of the voice over the gold, small and tense and beckoning at some other part of his mind.

 

"-need to eat! Plea-"

 

He looks up from a chalice that had caught his eye, so perfectly crafted and made of smooth curves. The sharp runes carved along the lip had caught the light in a different way than the flowing handles of it did, and he was lost in the different fractals of light reflecting off the sweet, cloying gold. He's ready to bare teeth, to snarl at this intrusion that has rudely pulled him from his calm study.

 

It takes a few seconds for him to recognize the small, worn creature in front of him.

 

"Bilbo?" Oh yes. Of course it's Bilbo. Thorin smiles a bit because yes of course it's Bilbo. Bilbo was always fretting, always determined to stand by him. "You worry so much." He says, feeling a sudden rush of fondness welling up in him.

 

Bilbo is standing in amongst the gold, the firelight catching in his hair and in his dark, dark blue eyes. They're so dark, for such a light thing, like pools under moonlight.

 

Like sapphires, like gems.

 

Like something that should be swept up and guarded and protected.

 

Something precious and cherished. By Thorin's side at all times.

 

Bilbo isn't something to wander and stand in rags, he is far to grand for that. He should be draped in g o l d.

 

Gold hair threaded with gems, with citrine and emeralds that would be greener than any tree of the Shire.  Clothed in silks and furs and the finest mithril chains and drops of gold falling over him, catching light as his skin does.

 

He is far, far more than just a trinket to be picked up and looked at for a few moments. Bilbo is something else, something that stays with him, something that belongs down here with the gold, locked away kept and guarded and safe and all of it is theirs and Bilbo is his all-

 

There's a panicked twist, a sharp pang that has him looking away, heart pounding as he stares back at the chalice. The roaring in his head overcomes the sweet pulse of the gold for a few seconds, and as he fights it down he nearly forgets that Bilbo is there.

 

"This is not your concern." Thorin growls, something keeping him from looking back up at the halfling that had, for some reason, so captivated him a few seconds ago. "Leave me."

 

"Thorin! You need to rest! It's be-"

 

"I said leave me!" He bellows, the roaring back in his head, leaving him gasping for air and staring at the chalice. The roaring doesn't settle until he hears the quiet, hesitant steps of halfling feet against stone leading Bilbo out of the treasure halls.

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The smoke starts to clear again, leaving him blinking slowly in clear air. Everything is worn at the edges, blurred and smeared. Thorin wonders if he has passed into the halls of beyond, but he is in a bed, and the room is blurred and swimming but it's very ordinary.

 

What is not ordinary, is the halfling sitting by his bed. That is how he knows for sure that he is still lost in his own mind. Because Bilbo would not be sitting nearby, a furrow between his brows and his mouth pulled into a very ordinary frown as he looks down at the book in his lap.

 

Thorin takes a few moments to simply watch, eyes still swimming and head pulsing with the distant blaze that burns over his skin. It's such a different heat, than the gentle warmth of the fire that bathes over Bilbo. It strikes him as the difference between the two of them, that Thorin is a consuming and devouring blaze, while Bilbo has always been the crackle of logs in a hearth warming the space around him.

That, or the fire of a forge, warming the mountain from the roots and heating pure metal into something stronger.

 

In this light, in the soft clean clothes that are too large for him (a dwarvish shirt, rough cotton and clean of blood),  Bilbo looks so ordinary in a way that defies logic. His hands are blunt and soft, more suited to the pen in his hands, to turning the pages of a book, than for gripping onto iron. It's all a clever lie, a fascinating one, this ordinary facade.

 

'Yazârnu sanzigil makhaha nimthurul 'abban.' Balin's voice drifts through is fevered mind. That had always been one of the old dwarf's favorite sayings. 'Even mithril is found among plain stone.'

 

His hand moves through thick air when it reaches out, brushing against Bilbo's arm and marveling at the very ordinary softness of it. This softness that survived dragonfire and madness. Bilbo jumps at his touch, book slamming shut and eyes wide when they go to Thorin.

 

"Thorin! You're awake!" It's strangely panicked, but Thorin's still too caught in the gentle way the firelight catches Bilbo's warm skin. Bilbo clears his throat, wincing, face defined in folds and little furrows that are constantly moving. "How uh, how are you feeling then?"

 

Nearly a year he has known Bilbo, and his mind so perfectly recreates every crease and curve of him, down to the shadow between his eyebrows, the worried mouth and concerned, dark eyes.

 

And all he can think is the one question that seems to always come to mind, when he tries to wrap his head around everything the halfling is.

 

"How are you so soft?"

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By the time Thorin realizes what has happened, it is already far too late.

 

He can never place when it started, or how it grew. Even years later he only knows when it hits him that it's already settled too deep to root it out and stamp it down.

 

The halfling was a constant source of mystery and confusion that Thorin already knew he was drawn to. Now that he was paying more attention, he was finding that Bilbo was nothing but contradictions. 

 

He would talk too much, babble nervously in sword practice sessions or even in actual battles. Determined, it seemed, to distract Thorin with his prattling and deadpan little jokes.

 

And that was another surprise, Bilbo's jokes. They're so flatly delivered, with such utter seriousness, that Thorin finds himself laughing over them before he is truly aware that Bilbo has made one. He wonders how many of the halflings strange little comments ("Well I am a fair hand at conkers, if you must know.") were actually jokes, and how many of them were at his expense. Thorin starts listening carefully, hovering around conversations for glimpses of that humor that he somehow missed before.

 

He would talk too much, but he could sit in silence for hours. Bilbo could be quiet in a way that Thorin can appreciate more than most dwarves. The others will sing and laugh and banter, and sometimes he could join in and feel for a few moments, as if he is simply part of the throng. But there are the nights where he's drawn to the edges, to the peace and quiet, and more often than not he finds the halfling there as well.

 

It becomes a habit, seeking out the quiet company of Bilbo, who somehow doesn't feel like an intrusion into Thorin's need for solitude. They can sit without a word and be aware of each other without a need to even look at each other. And somehow that company calms his burning thoughts more than simple isolation ever has.

 

The halfling is a mystery, a puzzle. Thorin likes to understand things, prefers to know what is going on with anything that he is involved with. Understanding makes it easier to come to decisions.

 

He does not understand Bilbo, not since the Carrock, and it's not like the prickling thorn of mystery that Gandalf is. Not understanding Bilbo is strangely fascinating. Thorin finds himself wanting to pry and nudge every secret from the odd creature.

 

That was his thought, when he asked Bilbo to talk about the Shire.

 

He only wanted to know how this halfling could miss home so much in one breath, then roll his eyes and sneer at any memory of his own kin in the next. Bilbo's lack of respect for others in his family (The Baggins', and it's an odd custom, Thorin thinks, to name an entire line of Kin beyond simply tracking lineage.) is a shock for Thorin. Bilbo can understand home, but not the bonds of kin, which are so tightly knit together in Thorin's mind that he can't fathom the separation.

 

So he wants to know what Bilbo thinks of, when he thinks of home.

 

And then he can barely hear Bilbo's answer, because he's hooked and caught fast by the way the halfling's voice goes distant and gentle, full of a longing that yanks at Thorin.

 

It's like a pain, hearing Bilbo's voice filled with such tenderness as he describes trees and rivers and hills, seeing his face soften in the mix of moonlight and firelight. It's captivating, and Thorin feels the slow start of a suspicion he can't quite name, when he wonders at his own aching.

 

His heart is pounding, and he's frowning as he tries to sort through the suspicion, to find it's source and root it out. Thorin dislikes not knowing his own mind and feelings, and is determined to get to the bottom of this odd tangle.

 

Then Bilbo smiles at him, and it's a rare, true smile. Bilbo smiles often, as a reaction to everything. He has sharp smiles that do nothing to lessen harsh words, thin smiles that bite down annoyed sighs, quick flitting smiles and laughs that only come out when Bilbo is making it clear that there is absolutely nothing funny going on. But this is a true one, sweet and lighting up his face in a subtle glow.

“Well, you’ll have some of your own I expect, at the end of this.” He says. And Thorin is too caught in working through the hammering tightness in his chest to follow Bilbo's meaning.

 

“Some what?”

“Stories about home. You’ll be able to have some again, when we get your little mountain back to you.”

 

It's such a little thing. Not that different from things Bilbo has said before. It's small and innocent and he's sure Bilbo means nothing by it.

 

It's devastating.

 

It crashes down through all the confusion and tangle that he's been picking through, setting it all ablaze with a sudden horrid, sickening certainty.

 

'Make them with me.' Thorin thinks, feeling a lurch deep in him like his soul is being drawn in towards Bilbo's smile, which is slowly fading in the face of Thorin's stare. ''Make a home with me. Make new stories, start over. Find a way to look at me with that longing that you hold for the Shire.'

 

Everything is far too clear, and he could wring his own neck for not catching this sooner, because it's too late now. Without him even realizing it, his heart has set itself on Bilbo Baggins, a little soft-hearted halfling from the Shire. And he can feel it deep, that there is nothing else now. His heart had been so content with only Erebor and home, with the need to be everything he could for his people, but now Bilbo has been drawn into it.

 

Thorin had never thought of the possibility of falling in love with a single person. It's a relatively rare thing for dwarves, and most never allow it to happen in favor of craft or some other impersonal passion. But now there's Bilbo, blinking in confusion at him, and Thorin knows there could never be another like this. His kind do not fall easy, but when it happens it never releases them.

 

A halfling. Mahal help him he went and fell for a halfling without even knowing it. Dis would laugh herself sick if she knew. King Thorin Oakenshield, heir to Durin's line, setting his heart to a gentle little halfling.

 

And why not? He starts to think. What's the shame in loving Bilbo Baggins, who has been a source of amazed confusion for weeks, who has saved Thorin's life and talks to him as if he's just another dwarf, and not a king of legend or doomed failure?

 

He could leap up right now, take the short stride over to where Bilbo sits, grab his hands and ask him to stay in Erebor after this quest is done. Thorin is not one to hide or skirt around things, and his skin thrums with his realization, and the need to let it all out.

 

Why not? Because they're sitting away from a traveler's campfire, on their way to very possible death and ruin. Because there is a kingdom to fight for, his company to look after, orcs to run from, Azog's return from death, a wizard's riddles of something far larger than Thorin's quest for home.

 

His head is already being pulled in ten directions, and Bilbo had just spoken of a place far away with a longing that was all too familiar. How can Thorin ask him to leave that now? How could he ask Bilbo to abandon the green hills and trees of the shire, when he has nothing to offer nothing in return? When he only has danger and dragonfire and an empty mountain?

 

Bilbo blinks at him, brows coming together in confusion, completely unaware of the spark he's lit with what was such a meaningless little sentence.

 

'I love you.' Thorin thinks, nearly terrified with the weight of it. 'I just realized that I am very much in love with you. And nothing can be home now, without you there.'

 

And that is too much. Thorin stands quickly, wanting to run, to escape from the fact that once again, Bilbo has flung everything to the wind and changed all that Thorin knew in such a short time. Home had been Erebor, he only needed that stone of his past and his kin within it, and now there's the horrifying lurch of knowing that he also needs this halfling there. This halfling who already has a home.

 

Bilbo's mouth is opening and shutting on questions, apologies, whatever is going on in that mind of his. Whatever is about to come out, Thorin can't hear it, can barely hear his own hasty goodnight before he's hurrying away. He rushes back to the fire, back to the distracting babble and bantering of his Company.

 

He sits heavily next to Dwalin, feeling wrenched and dazed as he stares blankly into the fire.

 

He's in love with Bilbo Baggins. There's nothing he can do about it. It's already  happened.

 

Dwalin glances over, pausing as he cleans his knuckle-irons. "Y'alright there?"

 

'I'm in love with the damn halfling.' Thorin thinks. He shakes his head instead, heart caught in his throat. Dwalin is quiet for a few more moments, then sighs loudly and sets his irons down.

 

"You don't want to talk about it, do'ye?" He asks, and Thorin is so grateful for the fact that there is no real invitation in the question. Mahal bless Dwalin. Balin would have been prodding at him and giving him the most pitiable smiles until it was all forced out.

 

"No." Thorin responds. And Dwalin nods sharply, sighing in relief, then goes back to his cleaning and lets Thorin stare in horror at the fire.

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He is surprised when he wakes, that it is on a normal bed of roughly hewn wood, in one of the smaller rooms of Erebor, with normal gray stone and an ordinary fire warming the air. Thorin had been expecting the endless vaulted halls, filled with light and kin from his past and the eternity of the kingdom of Mahal.

 

He’s not sure if he is glad or disappointed.

It takes only a few seconds to take stock of himself. Breathing is a tight pain, but not excruciating, so there are a few cracked ribs. There’s an oddly numb stretched feeling on his left side, constricting bandages over his entire upper torso, and he assumes that he has one of Oin’s numbing salves to thank for the lack of mind stopping pain. He also itches slightly under the bandages, so healing is already underway, meaning he has been unconscious or unaware for a few days at least.

 

“It looks like you’ve returned to your senses, in multiple meanings of the word.” Gandalf says by him, closing a little book as he looks up. Thorin takes a few minutes to frown at him, trying to remember when the wizard returned. The last he can recall, Gandalf had left them outside the Elf wood without any explanation. Thorin had not been too sorry to see the wizard go, and was not overly pleased to see him here. He can not understand why Gandalf would only appear now, after the battle and sickness and-

 

When he remembers, it’s a booming voice in his mind and small hands desperately gripping his arms.

 

‘If you do not like my burglar, Thorin! Then please return him to me unharmed!’

 

“Bilbo?” It’s the first panicked thought to spring to his mind. Thorin can’t recall seeing Bilbo after the wall. He can’t remember if Bilbo-- no, now it’s coming back. Bilbo had been there, on Ravenhill. The halfling had appeared breathless and bracing his hands on his knees, snow in his hair and not nearly as far from the fight as Thorin would have hoped. But he was there, there to warn them. He was there to look Thorin in the eyes and, with no time for words, had still given the smallest smile and nod before everything fell into chaos.

 

Bilbo had been there when Thorin was ready to let go, was ready to finally give in after he spent years, decades fighting death. Bilbo was there clutching and begging, as if Thorin had not tried to kill him that same day.

 

‘Don’t let go Thorin, look at me please just look at me…’

 

But Bilbo isn’t here now. And there had still been so many orcs, far too many. Swarms of them over the top of Ravenhill even with the eagles there. There were too many orcs and Bilbo isn’t here, what if-

 

“Bilbo is fine.” Gandalf sighs, and tucks his book into some fold of his robes. Thorin breathes out, hands unclenching from the blanket at those two words. “He’s just fine, Thorin.” Gandalf goes on. “He had a nasty lump on his head that healed up nicely while you’ve been out this past week. Though he has made himself quite difficult to find the past few days. You know how scarce he can make himself, if he choses to.”

 

“He is good at that.” Thorin agrees.

 

There’s a quiet that comes over them, as Thorin looks down with a distant interest at the cuts and bandages and scrapes on his hands. A gash here, grazed knuckles there, a dark bruise over there. He can feel an anchor, a lead ball around his lungs, pulling him down and down, as the silence crushes on him.

 

“You were right.” He admits. The words drag the weight out of him, and leave him just hollow and scooped out inside. Everything he had fought to prove wrong, everything the Wizard, the Elf, his own sister, had feared, had been right. “I was not strong enough. Everything that I swore I would not become-”

 

“You became.” Gandalf says, brusque but not harsh. “And you overcame.” His voice gentles as he sighs and leans back in his chair. “You came to yourself, and your mad charge was the morale boost that quite possibly saved us all, Thorin. And-” the wizard raises his eyebrows with a wry smile and a sidelong glance at Thorin, “it could be said that if you hadn’t had your ill thought idea to call on Dain, we would be doomed. The armies of the Iron Hills proved invaluable against Azog’s attack.”

 

Azog would not have been there to attack, if Thorin had taken only one more swing and finished the deed those many, many years ago at the battle of Azanulbizar. Many things would have been different, if he had only had the foresight to simply thrust his sword through that filth’s chest after taking his arm.

 

If. If. If. The word that plagues his life. If he had not given in to pride, if he had gone in and finished things instead of being satisfied with the thought that Azog had died in humiliation.

 

Azog, who had led them into a trap. The panic comes back in a wild rush, grabbing at his heart and clenching it tight when he remembers Ravenhill. Thorin’s head whips up, eyes filled with the memory of Fili held up in Azog’s grip, yelling at them to run.

 

“Fili!” He gasps, “Kili? Are they-”

 

“Fine, Thorin.” Gandalf says quickly, putting a thin hand on Thorin’s arm. “They are fine! A bit worse for wear, but they came out better than you did and have both been fully awake and aware for some time now, and they will be very glad to hear of your recovery.”

 

Thorin lets out a slow breath, and leans back against the headrest then. The panic drains out and leaves an odd, hollow ache, and leaves him aware of the sharp pulling pain in his side where Azog’s blade has punched through him. “I did not think to recover at all, or even survive.”

 

“No. I did not think that was in your plans.” Gandalf says quietly, and Thorin looks away from the piercing eyes trained on him. Thorin dislikes how much the wizard sees, how much he knows, and how much he keeps hidden. “But you have survived.” Gandalf continues. “And now you face the wonderful, terrifying question that happens whenever you survive.”

 

“And what is that?” Thorin grits his teeth, feels his side throb a bit. He’s in no mood for a wizard’s riddles. He’s tired and sore and his entire body feels like it’s been wrung through and drained out He very much wants to sleep for another week and wake without a wizard trying to impart twisted truths and gleams of wisdom hidden as if they were fine treasures that Thorin was privileged to receive.

 

Gandalf seems to take no notice of Thorin’s displeasure, or, more likely, doesn’t care. “Now what?”

 

He doesn’t want to think of ‘now what?’ He wants to sink back into an oblivion where he does not have to wonder how he’ll rebuild a kingdom from a ruin and how he will face the world after his madness. He doesn’t want to know what has happened outside the mountain, if Dain will take the rule from him, if anyone will acknowledge Thorin’s claim, how they’ll find food for the winter, if he is truly himself or this is a brief respite before he falls back into rage and the pulsing heat that filled his head in the height of the sickness. If, if, if, if; circling in his head and pulling at every hope of peace.

 

He very much wants to see Bilbo. Thorin hadn’t hoped to see the halfling again after the wall, had given that dream up as lost. It had sat in his chest like a pit, knowing that he had to let go of Bilbo, that his own actions had ruined every chance of the future he had seen for them. That was lost, but Thorin had pushed on to reclaim his name, to try and reclaim his honor at least if he could not have his happiness.

 

But Bilbo had still been there, had looked him in the eyes with a short nod and then clung to him and kept him from falling into that tempting exhaustion and darkness. There may still be nothing there, but he wants to know for sure. At the same time, he dreads knowing. He has no idea where he stands with Bilbo for the first time in a long time, and he’s not sure he’s ready to find out.

 

He loses any choice in the matter when the door jerks open sharply, kept from banging against the wall by the glaring hobbit gripping the handle.

 

Thorin has seen Bilbo angry, he has seen Bilbo throwing a temper tantrum and seen the quiet rage that simmered long before exploding or hissing out in harsh insults. Bilbo is not angry, he is livid. He’s vibrating with it, hand white knuckled on the door handle and eyes flashing with a barely contained rage. It pins Thoin to the spot, shoving a metaphorical blade through any vestige of hope he’d allowed to grow, and in his mad head he still thinks for a second that Bilbo quietly furious is a glorious thing to behold.

 

“Well, well, Master Hobbit! Good to see you, as always.” Gandalf says brightly as he stands. Thorin glances away from Bilbo to stare at the wizard instead, suddenly changing his mind on the old man’s presence and desperately hoping he’ll stay and distract Bilbo enough to spare Thorin for at least a few more moments. Thorin may deserve whatever harsh words are sure to come, but he doesn’t want to face them just yet. “I’m sure you two have much to discuss.” Gandalf chuckles, patting Bilbo, who doesn’t break his glare away from Thorin, on the shoulder and strolling out the door.

 

The door shuts, and the click of it is like metal striking iron in Thorin’s head. The silence after it is torture, and Bilbo only narrows his eyes further.

 

This has been coming for him. Bilbo has followed him halfway across Arda, left his home far behind, walked into a dragon’s den, battled orcs, and stood by Thorin and challenged him in his madness. Thorin has repaid him with injury, threats, insults, rage, and, though he suspects Bilbo may not know of this, a forced and underhanded marriage proposal.

 

He thinks he will leave that part out, to avoid the awkwardness as well as to save himself from the shame of it. Everything has gone wrong, everything he had imagined is ruined and tainted now with his own madness.

 

“Right,” Bilbo says, marching towards him with a voice like stone. “Right then. Mister Thorin Oakenshield.”

 

“Bilbo,” Thorin tries to keep his voice calm, tension coiling through every muscle in his body. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. There was never supposed to be this tense anger and silence and heavy weight, not with them. And he should be grovelling and begging forgiveness for destroying everything, for nearly getting them all killed through his pride and lust, but he tries to cling to some form of normality, unwilling to let it go. “It’s … good to see you are well.”

 

“Don’t,” Bilbo’s voice is a slap and Thorin quiets instantly. “Don’t. Give me that. You.” Bilbo goes on, pointing a finger accusingly at Thorin. And if things weren’t so dire, if he weren’t about to have everything they could have been dragged out and thrown to the ground, it would have struck him as funny because it’s so painfully Bilbo. But this isn’t another day where he’s being lectured for rudeness, this is Bilbo standing with a bandage on his head and far from home, and Thorin lying broken on a bed before him. So he doesn’t laugh, and prepares himself for the painful end, for Bilbo to finally see that he’s nothing but a mad, greedy king driven by rage and need.

 

“You.” Bilbo says again, “You kissed me.”

 

Thorin whirling thoughts scream to a halt, and he takes a few seconds to reconcile what he was bracing for with what Bilbo actually said. “No I didn’t.” He has spent enough time thinking about kissing Bilbo to be sure that he would remember doing it.

 

“Oh yes you most certainly did!” Bilbo shouts at him. “Trust me on this one, I was actually awake for it!”

It sinks in him like a slow knife in his stomach, that Bilbo is telling the truth. And Thorin can only stare and think that of course he did, of course he went and threw a match on everything by finally kissing Bilbo, and he can’t even remember it. He can’t even try to think of an excuse, and only stares when Bilbo begins pacing at the foot of his bed, scrubbing a hand back through his curls.

 

“Just … where is this coming from?” Bilbo sounds nearly frantic. “You pulling that! And everything else you were spouting off!” Everything else? Mahal help him what has he been doing this past week? “I nearly watched you die and I had to deal with that, I had to sit there and hold your insides in where they’re supposed to be and I had to deal with that and then—you! You!”

 

He’s being yelled at for almost dying. For kissing Bilbo while feverish, and Thorin has no idea how to continue, or what to say. His exhaustion is forgotten and his heart pounding, beating against the pain in his side where Azog’s blade had pierced him and Bilbo’s hand had pressed against the flow of his blood. Bilbo peters off, hands falling away from his hair and he seems to collapse inside, deflating and falling to sit heavily on the edge of Thorin’s bed. He’s so close, so close and again, confusing and amazing Thorin by not doing anything expected. Thorin wants to reach out, wants to let the small flicker of hope in him grow and allow him to reach to Bilbo as he had imagined doing so many times. But he needs to let Bilbo finish, needs to hear where the halfling is going.

 

“You nearly died up there,” Bilbo’s voice is quiet now, drained of rage and soft with some other emotion. “You nearly died and I didn’t … after everything else, I’d never thought of you dying at the end. You were always supposed to … to just be. Somehow. And I never took a chance to even think of, of any of that!”

 

“Any of what?” Thorin asks, dares to ask. Bilbo isn’t talking about the wall, about the madness, and there is a quaver in his voice that has Thorin fighting back the hope growing in his chest.

 

“This!” Bilbo snaps, some of the rage back, though it’s still coming through as shaking and wrought. “You! You kept waking up and, and saying things! And then in the mountain you were all—” Thorin can’t stop the sharp inhale, as he remembers everything he was in the mountain. There it was, there’s where this is going, what he has been expecting. But then Bilbo keeps going before he can address it. “You haven’t been you. It’s all too much. It’s all too much at once.”

 

Thorin watches Bilbo’s face, expressive as always and flickering with so many emotions as Bilbo scrubs a hand over his eyes. His heart is set to burst, and he’s sure Oin would disapprove of how it pounds against his ribs after he nearly died but Bilbo is here, worried about his death and about his sickness. And for the first time since he awoke staring at the golden floor, feeling a heated veil lift from his mind, he dares to hope. He dares to let himself see what Bilbo may yet still feel for him.

 

He lets the hope grow, lets himself reach out and put one of his hands over Bilbo’s. His fingers wrap around the softer hand, feeling the beginnings of callouses on the soft palms, put there by Thorin’s actions. Bilbo shouldn’t have been dragged into this peril, but Thorin can see how it all has tempered Bilbo’s spirit, brought out the fierce and bright fire that his burglar had always kept hidden. And Bilbo doesn’t pull his hand away, only goes so still, as still as only a halfling could manage, and the hope is something unstoppable and incandescent.

 

“I meant it,” Thorin says, hoping that the three words will capture everything, everything he ever meant and everything this amazing halfling means to him. “All of it.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is something unspoken, unsaid with just the two of them.

 

Thorin feels it in the air between them, in exchanges that are nothing more than a shared look, a nod and a smile. It's said in quick touches and the charged feeling when he sits close enough to Bilbo for their shoulders to brush together.

 

It's a slow torture, not being able to say anything. Every day he wants more and more to sweep up to Bilbo, ask him to stay with them in Erebor. He wants to court Bilbo properly, to speak plainly and let everything out.

 

But this is not the time for courting.

 

They're still a lot of bedraggled, worn travelers chasing after an impossible task. He's still barely the king of a young colony, and barely even that since he left the crown to Dis when he left.

 

Want is something Thorin is familiar with. He is accustomed to wanting. A home, recognition, freedom, safety for his kin, an end to the images of young Frerin lying in the funeral pyre, an end to the long and weary journey of his life. Want is no new thing.

 

Want for a person, is very new.

 

He has felt desire, has had fumbled encounters with other young dwarves when he was a carefree prince of Erebor. But they had always been purely physical meetings that had been less about want for another and more about experimentation. They were fast, mild, and he felt little need to seek them out.

 

But now Bilbo exists so close to him, and Thorin wants. He wants to feel the oddly short, curling hair under his fingers, wants to kiss that animated mouth and feel it move against him. Wants to follow the lines of Bilbo's throat down to his collar bones, down under the dirty and tattered silks and velvets of his Shire clothes.

 

Bilbo will waves his hands as he tells some story, and Thorin wants to feel them on him, warm and wrinkled and soft against his flesh. Bilbo licks his lips, or licks a bit of food from his finger, and Thorin wants to chase the tongue with his own back into Bilbo's mouth and drink in the sounds that would follow. Bilbo will stretch and make a pleased noise, and Thorin wants to hear that sound from beneath him, catching on his name.

 

Bilbo smiles, and Thorin wants to tell him that each true smile stops his heart for just a second.

 

Bilbo asks of Erebor, and Thorin wants to hold his hand and tell him that it could be his home as well.

 

Bilbo twirls a sword in his fingers, and Thorin wants those fingers in his hair, plaiting in a new braid and running through the snags and tangles of the day.

 

It's a torture, but it's made easier by the lingering smiles Bilbo gives him, by the fond little laughs and the fact that the halfling will seek him out to sit by him at the end of each day. They don't need to say it, don't need the words between them to know where they are.

 

Thorin wants. But Bilbo will glance over, smile, pat a rare, casual touch to Thorin's arm, and the tension eases in him.

 

He wants, but there is the unspoken agreement between them.

 

'Not now. Wait.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Bilbo walks out the door, shuts it quietly, and Thorin drags in a ragged breath that he did not know his lungs had stopped against. The air burns, catches wet and harsh in his throat and he wishes it could keep burning the rest of him.

 

His hands are still warmed from where they held Bilbo's.

 

'I can't...'

 

Thorin understands.

 

He understands with a sickening clarity. Of course he had allowed himself to hope, had read too much into Bilbo's concern, had sought after what he could not have yet again.

 

'Thorin, I can't...'

 

What he had with Bilbo, what he thought he had, was cracked far beyond repair by his own actions. And Thorin, being a greedy, needing fool, had grabbed too fast and too hard at the first sign of hope that he saw, and ended up breaking what was left in his clumsy fist.

 

And Bilbo couldn't. And Thorin understands.


'I can't.'

 

He could not let it be. He could not control himself, could not simply ease and try to fix the break between them. Could not be bothered to find the patience to mend what he had done before he leapt fully and dared to clutch and scramble at what was not his.


'It's too much, Thorin.'

 

He understands. He understands why Bilbo would leave quickly. Why he should escape from the mad greedy king who rules an empty mountain of gilded tombs.  

 

The hollow, empty pain gives way to burning, to a fury that slowly creeps over him until his fists are shaking in his lap and his breath catches tight and furious in his throat.

 

Fool. You greedy, selfish fool! You truly can not see beyond your own desire!

 

There had been a small pitcher of water sitting by the bedside. He's grabbing at it blindly, screaming his rage and pain out as it flies into the wall by the fireplace, shatting and scattering to the ground as the door opens.

 

Dwalin grips the handle, stares from the broken pottery on the floor, over to Thorin, his face grim.

 

"Get out." Thorin snarls, fingers tense and curled, wanting something else to fling and shatter and destroy.

 

"No." Dwalin growls, stomping into the room. "The halfling left a note. What happened?"

 

"Get out, Dwalin!" Thorin swings his legs out from under the blanket, shoves himself up onto his feet and growls when his legs buckle under him. He stumbles into one of the bedposts, teeth gritted against a wordless cry at the pain shooting up his ribs and the shaking in his arms and legs. He still tries to swing his fist when Dwalin approaches, needing to break something needing to lose himself in a fight and blood and shattered bone.

 

His punch doesn't even connect, swings wildly off target and Dwalin grabs his shoulders, shoving him to sit roughly on the bed, ignoring the enraged yells as Thorin tries to throw him off.

 

"What happened, Thorin?"

 

"What do you think happened!? I tried to kill him, nearly killed all of us, and thought he would still allow himself to be Naiblil'âmralê with me. Now get out!" Thorin snaps, teeth bared and fingers digging into Dwalin's forearms. "Get out, before I throw you out!"

 

"Oh I doubt you can manage that." Comes Balin's voice by the door, sighing sadly, and the knowing pity in his eyes is too much right now. "Thorin..."

 

"I'll throw both of you out if I must! Leave me!"

Dwalin snorts and pushes him back onto the bed. "You can barely walk, y'fucking fool."

 

"Come now laddie." Balin shuts the door behind him with a shake of his head. "You'll pull yer stitches if you keep this up."

 

"I don't give a fuck about my stitches, Balin!" Thorin hollers, feels his throat crack and the yell take something from him. The last of the fire leaves in that shout and he's back to just sitting on the bed, curling in on himself with aching ribs.

 

There's a large arm around his shaking shoulders, a broad but gentler, old hand on his back, and Thorin curls in further on himself.

 

"I've ruined it." He says, his voice shaking on a sob and his body wracked with tremors that he can't get to stop. "I've ruined everything. They were all right about me."

 

None of it was supposed to be like this. Not the reclaiming, not Bilbo, not the aftermath. He was supposed to die in glory and redemption up on that frozen waste, and Bilbo had held him and kept him there only to leave him lost in the wreckage of his own making.

 

"I've ruined everything..." He says again, and he finally breaks down, sobbing broken and ruined in Balin and Dwalin's embrace.

 

Chapter 2

Notes:

"This probably won't be as long as Safe and Distant it's just...oh....oh nevermind"

yeah there are at least four to five chapters planned for this whoops. Enjoy!

Now with a playlist!

SPECIAL WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER INCLUDE:
Body horror/vague gross descriptions of body horror
Mild suicide ideation mentions
Unreality nightmare descriptions

His revelation ends up changing little.

There is still the journey, still packs of orcs hunting them through the wilds, still a distant dream and a head full of doubts that Thorin can not dare to show.

Falling in love with Bilbo Baggins is a small thing in comparison. It’s a note in the back of his mind, something to deal with later, something to worry about later.

Thorin reminds himself of this regularly. The facts that he has fallen hard and fast, that he can not love again, that the object of his affection breaks several dwarrow taboo’s, that he has very likely set himself firmly at something he can never have (a habit of his, it would seem), all matter little in the grand scheme of things.

He reminds himself of this, but it, and Bilbo, remain a distraction.

Thorin is constantly aware of the halfling’s location within the troupe, still drawn to him and hungry for every scrap of conversation or attention Thorin can gain from him. He knows that he is being ridiculous, knows that Balin and Dwalin have started eyeing him whenever his stride slows just enough so he falls in line with Bilbo, or whenever he calls Bilbo up to the front to ask whatever he can use as an excuse.

Thorin cannot allow anything to jeopardize his mission. There is already too much against him, already so little chance that he can even get them to the mountain in one piece.

He makes a few feeble attempts to find the old suspicious hostility, uses it to jab at Bilbo thinking that perhaps he can still chase Bilbo off. That would be for the best, wouldn't it? The distraction would be gone, Bilbo would be safe, and if this did all succeed, then maybe Thorin could make a stop in the Shire on the way back to Ered Luin. He can try again, without the quest. He could come back as a King in his own right and try courting Bilbo without this threat of fire and destruction hanging over them.

It’s a poor idea, he knows. They’re far past the Misty Mountains and Bilbo would be in more danger going back on his own. Chasing Bilbo off only to return to try courting his favor was also not likely to accomplish much.  

And,Thorin has to admit that while the idea of coming back later for Bilbo sounds appealing, he does not really want the halfling to leave. It’s a poor idea and he does not really want it to work, but Thorin’s having trouble thinking clearly on the matter, and is feeling desperate.

Fortunately, before he can make anything of this plot, Bilbo shoots down any attempts with that newfound fire of his. Whenever Thorin even tries to get a few insults in, Bilbo will only sigh and roll his eyes, then make shooing motions with his hands as if Thorin were nothing more than a misbehaving child.

“If you are going to be taking up that attitude, Mister Oakenshield,” Bilbo snaps at one point, “then you can take it up somewhere else. I’m sore, tired, hungry, I think I may have sprained something on the rocks back there and my feet are quite ready to fall off. I’m really not in the mood to put up with your stubborn, prickly nonsense.”

“If the journey is such a hardship for you why-” Thorin starts, knowing it’s weak but grabbing at what he can. Bilbo groans loudly before Thorin can finish.

“Oh, go punch Dwalin or something! I may be tired but at least I’m not being an unbearable sod about it! If you want a fight then it won’t be here, Mister Oakenshield. Come back after I’ve eaten something and I’ll be able to tell you off properly, and you can yell at me all you want. Right now you’re just being a nuisance!”

Thorin nearly stops in his tracks, face burning while Bilbo pointedly looks away and walks over to Ori. No one has called him a ‘nuisance’ since before he was just starting to grow his beard. Even Dis tended to use far more colorful descriptors for him.

“That,” says Balin’s voice coming up behind him, “was not a pretty thing to watch.”

Bilbo is laughing about something with Ori, hands flying about as he talks about whatever it is those two find to discuss. Thorin always found Ori too nervous, jumpy and stammering whenever Thorin tried talking to him, and he can’t imagine what could have Bilbo so animated so quickly. Whatever it is, it, and Balin’s calm remark on his recent humiliation, has Thorin setting his jaw and curling his hands into fists by his sides.

“Our burglar,” he says, not having to fake the angry snarl or the glower directed at Bilbo’s back, “has picked up quite the insubordinate mouth.”

“Aye, he has.” Balin agrees, and something in his tone, hinting at a smile and far too calmly amused, has Thorin glancing sharply at him. “And I don’t blame him, with you acting like some scruffy-faced lad pulling braids around him.”

“I’m not-!” Thorin grits his teeth and clenches his fists tighter, cursing under his breath when he feels his face heat up more. “I can not afford having a member of the company showing a lack of respect for-”

“Oh enough of that.” Balin sighs, lightly hitting Thorin’s arm and shaking his head. “Bilbo respects you when you deserve it. It’s something I quite like about our little burglar. And I suspect you feel similarly.” Balin smiles up at him, as calm as if they were discussing the latest mining, and far too pleased with himself.

Thorin keeps his mouth shut, stares hard at Balin and starts considering Bilbo’s orders to find something to punch. To be so obviously seen and called out…

“You can glare all you want, but it won’t be a bit of good for wooing him.”

“I am not wooing him.” Thorin says, teeth grit.

“I should hope not, if that’s how you go about doing it!” Balin laughs. Thorin decides that it is best not to answer, hoping that Balin will let it go and leave. Balin never does, but Thorin can hope all the same. He longs for Dwalin’s gruff distaste for any talk of this sort of thing. And if Dwalin did try prying, punching him is always an option. It technically is for Balin as well, but Thorin can never bring himself to even make a friendly swing at the elder dwarrow, for all that Balin could take it.

He glares out at the trees, and means to keep his gaze there, but slowly, surely, his eyes start to wander over to the small red jacket and head of curling golden brown hair. Fili and Kili have been pulled into whatever conversation is happening, and the two of them flank Bilbo and Ori, nudging and laughing at the halfling’s half-hearted scoldings and Ori’s growing grins. It’s obvious that whatever they’ve done hasn’t truly angered Bilbo, for Thorin can see the pulls of a smile twitching over his forced frown. Bilbo’s face always gives away so much, and Thorin feels that he could tell what was going on from any distance as long as he could see and track the rapid fire of expressions.

It’s another way Bilbo exists to distract him. Everything about Bilbo distracts him, and he tries to hold on to his anger about this, but it slowly melts away at the sight of Bilbo finally giving in and laughing along with his nephews. Kili must say something, because suddenly his brother is nearly flying over Bilbo and Ori to tackle him to the ground. Bilbo jumps, then only laughs and shakes his head at their tussle where before he would have stared in alarm at the violence.

Thorin watches the four of them and snorts on a small laugh that’s barely more than an exhale. He forgets, for a moment, that Balin is still there as he looks at his nephews and their burglar.

“I’m happy for you, laddie.” Balin says, smiling and quiet. The amused calm snaps up fast, and Thorin quickly tears his eyes away from the four to look back at the trees with his jaw set.

He slowly lets out a breath, and feels the tension unwind a bit, knowing that there’s no use pretending he hasn’t been caught. It is not as much of a shame as he would have thought. It’s more like relief, when he looks back at Bilbo and knows that there’s someone he can vent his thoughts at, that someone else knows.

“He’s a halfling.” Thorin only says. Because that’s a large portion of his problem. The dwarrow do not have many rules with love, but that any dwarrow, much less a king in Durin’s line should fall for one who isn’t one of his own race is unspoken of.

He tries to imagine what his father, his grandfather, would think of it, and clenches his jaw. It may not matter that he has found his love, that there is nothing but Bilbo now, because Bilbo is a halfling.

“That he is.” Balin says amiably. “But I never saw you as the sort to get caught up in traditions and rules. You threw that out when you handed the crown of Ered Luin to your sister before your death.”

“That made sense.” Thorin replies, tense again. “If I should die, then she rules and the rule of Erebor passes to Fili, if I do not die, then Ered Luin will still need someone to guard over it when I retake Erebor.”

“You gave up one crown to chase another, and with good reason. But it still was unheard of. I do not think anyone would be able to hold much of an argument if you decided to take a halfling on as a consort.”

Consort. The word nearly stops his heart.

He had not dared to think that far, had not hoped that any would approve of such an idea. Balin is the one who says it though, as if it were the natural next step, and that lightens something in Thorin’s chest. He can’t quite stop the small smile that grows at the idea.

“You would approve, then?” He asks quietly, and for the first time the tight warmth that grows in his chest as he regards Bilbo does not feel like a doom. Balin has been Thorin’s support, his guide, for years that go back to before Erebor’s fall. While Thorin may not always accept his advice, it never lacks for wisdom and reason, and if Balin approves of him looking to court Bilbo then the rest of the Dwarrow Lords who may speak against it could hang.

“I think he’s as fine a fellow one could hope for. He’s of an odd folk, but I’ve hardly met anyone more decent and with a temper to keep yours in check.” Balin smiles up at him, then goes on in a gentler, quiet voice. “And I think it’s what you deserve, Thorin. I’d know better’n most what you’ve gone through, and I think to find someone like him is a fine thing. You look at him and y’look lighter and happier than I’ve seen in many a year, and I couldn’t be more pleased with it. It’s exactly what you deserve, at the end of all this.”

Thorin looks away, looks down to distract himself by tightening his vambraces and clenches his jaw at the unexpected praise. It sounds like far more than he could even hope to deserve. Peace and calm and happiness, they haven't had much meaning to him since he fled Erebor.

But Balin approves, he more than approves, he’s happy with the idea, and that has the small smile coming back to Thorin’s face. He chances another glance up, smiling still as he looks at Bilbo dodging attempts by Fili and Kili to pull him into their scuffle.

“After this is done. When we’ve finished what we set to do, I will tell him then.” He decides. The dread, tense weight of the revelation melts away, leaves something bright and calming seeping through his bones as he looks at Bilbo. It’s not some shameful, tense secret that will doom him to a life of longing. There’s hope, there’s the decision. He could do this, reclaim Erebor, reclaim his homeland and the land of his fathers, and tell Bilbo. It would be a final crowning moment to the glory he strives for. Take Erebor, claim his birthright, then take Bilbo’s hand and ask him to stay there by his side.

Bilbo glances back and pauses, blinking and raising his eyebrows cooly when their eyes meet. Thorin smiles apologetically and tips his head, hoping Bilbo will see the attempt at atoning for his earlier behavior. The halfling shakes his head and rolls his eyes, but does it with a small smile.

Thorin shrugs, Bilbo scrunches his face, whatever that means, then gives a quick wink that makes Thorin’s heart skip a little, before going back to Ori.

Balin chuckles quietly, and Thorin doesn’t hold back the slow grin, nor does he fight the growing elation in his chest as he thinks Bilbo may not be all that unwilling to stay.

---------------------------

When Thorin was young, he was always wandering. Life was heavy for a firstborn prince of Erebor, and he often escaped from his lessons to look at the stars, to wander the mines, or to go to the wall and watch the lights of Dale in the distance. It was not that he didn’t appreciate the importance of the lessons, of what would be expected of him later, but something about them being forced on him made him need to get away.

His escapades never lasted long, and every time he was caught he would be locked up for a short while in his small room separate from the main royal chambers. The punishment wasn’t harsh, he would be given food while simply closed in for a few hours or, if he had given the guards a particularly bad time or gotten Frerin and Dis involved, a day. He still learned to hate the walls of his rooms, once the door was closed.

They locked him in, represented everything he could not do, everything that was expected of him. Every freedom he had to give up, every ounce of pressure was caught in the stone. Thorin loved Erebor, loved the mountain and feeling the stone like a living thing around him. But when he was forced in, locked up, trapped, he could feel the weight of the entire peak pushing down on his one room. The ceiling, carved with scenes of Durin’s life and embellished with gold leaf and runes of protection, stooped down over him and the walls closed him in.

He remembers that room, those walls, as he looks at the stone of a different room within the same mountain. The bindings on his leg, the throbbing in his foot, still keeps him chained to the bed and staring at the walls while his skin crawls.

Sleep does not come to claim him again, there is no smoke filling his head to cloud out the real world. Thorin is left trapped in the room where Bilbo would not even look at him as he said ‘I can’t’ and walked away. The same room where he can remember scraps, flickers of images from before then.

(Firelight in ashen gold hair. Warmth pressed around his hand. A voice drifting past the smoke and pleading with him to hold on, anchoring him in and dragging him back in into himself.)

“Uncle?”

Thorin’s head flies up from where he was staring at the chair. Gandalf may have said his nephews were fine, but to see them again after watching Fili tumble down the rocks of Ravenhill...and there he stands in the door. Kili stands close behind him, and both still bear the bruises and cuts of the battle. Fili may have an arm in a sling and a bandage over one eye, but he’s standing there. They’re both standing.

“Fi-” Thorin doesn’t finish before they fly in, crashing into him and he instantly flings an arm around each, crushing the two against him. His side is screaming in agony and his foot throbs from being jostled but the lads are alive and at that moment, that is everything that matters to Thorin.

“You had us a little worried there for a bit.” Fili says lightly, and when he pulls back from the embrace the dark circles under his eyes belie his casual tone. Thorin grips them both, one hand on the back of each head, perhaps holding a little too hard but they’re here. It was all for them, and for a while he had not known if he would ever see them again.

“Consider it a small repayment for the countless worries you both have bestowed on me through the years.” Thorin rasps, and he closes his eyes when Fili and Kili press their foreheads to his, one against each temple. There’s only him and his kin, the young ones he’s guarded and watched grow since they were tiny bundles held to Dis as they all wandered the hard, empty roads of Arda.

He built a new home for them, hammered iron and stood in the fire, built one home and sought to reclaim an old one where they could live with the pride of heirs of Durin.

“It’s good to have you returned to us.” Kili says, and Thorin’s fingers tighten in their hair.

“I’m s-”

“Don’t start apologizing.” Fili says, and they lean back again, each sitting on either side of him on the rough bed. Thorin sighs, bites back all the apologies and excuses that stop up in his throat. He looks over his nephews instead, and his eyes fall back to the bandage over Fili’s eye. Thorin’s eyebrows come together and he releases the back of Fili’s head to touch the edge of the cloth.

“Your eye?”

“Oh it’ll be alright, Oin says.” Fili shrugs, the closed, tilted smile coming over his face. “I banged my head a bit on the way down and messed something up a little, I just need to keep it covered from the light while everything patches all back up.”

“Your mother would murder me if she could see the state of the two of you.” Thorin sighs, and again his chest fills with the crushing reality that he very nearly got both of them killed. After fighting so hard for them he had thrown them into a battle that was never needed. He moves his hands to a shoulder on each of them, unwilling to break the contact that keeps him grounded.

“We’ll leave her to finish what that white bastard’s army couldn’t.” Kili grins, but Fili watches Thorin with serious eyes, brows coming down and mouth a thin line.

“Uncle...” He says slowly, and the careful tone has Thorin tensing already, the hand on Fili’s shoulder gripping briefly. Fili ignores it and goes on. “Bilbo-”

“Do not-” Thorin says sharply, “speak to me of the burglar.”

It’s harsher than he intends, spat through gritted teeth with fingers digging into his nephews shoulders.

(-‘His name is Bilbo.’-)

(Yesterday he sat in that chair by the bed. His hair was caught in the firelight and the flickers defined every etched and haggard, tired line on his face. He was thinner than Thorin had last seen him, nearly gaunt and pale when he sat on the edge bed with a bandage around his head and his hands tense against the covers. His eyes, always so expressive, were pressed with dark bruises beneath them and full of a heaviness)

Thorin can not speak about him, can’t hear his name or think of how far down the road he was now.

Kili and Fili both look at him in surprise, Fili frowning sharply and Kili looking oddly pained. It strikes Thorin then, how much older they look. These are not the same half-wild younglings who had followed him with wide grins and bright jokes out of Ered Luin. They’ve seen battle, they’ve been in the thick of it and fought through. They’ve travelled hard, faced fire and ruin, and watched their uncle go mad for gold.

“I’ll speak of him as much as I want.” Fili says shortly, brushing off Thorin’s hand. “We went after him. The two of us, Dwalin and Bofur. We got to Dale but he had already left with the wizard.”

Thorin pulls his other hand from Kili’s shoulder and places them in his lap, the rough blanket bunched up in his fists as he shuts his eyes against the sinking reality. Bilbo was truly gone then, and had wasted no time to put as much distance between himself and Thorin as he could. And that was Bilbo. Once the halfling decided to do something, it would be done and done quickly.

(How quickly had he moved, when he decided to run and take the Arkenstone with him?)

“We can still go after him!” Kili says in a rush, eyes bright in his enthusiasm. “Bilbo’s just not thinking right! He’s being an little idiot and he can’t be that far out. We can go get him back, and everything can be sorted out here. Bofur’s practically got his pony packed already. And you know how Bilbo rides, it’s not like we’d have any trouble overtaking-”

“Kili.” Thorin interrupts, suddenly feeling exhausted through his whole body. “No.”

“You can’t just let him go!” Kili bursts out, arms flying up. Fili makes a small sound of warning, which his brother ignores. “You’re both Naiblil'âmralê! You can’t just let that go! When you’re in love you don’t-”

“And what,” Thorin says softly, hearing the growl in his voice when he raises his eyes up to glare at Kili, “would you know of love?”

Kili quiets, but when his mouth shuts, it’s not on a look of shame. His jaw sets and his eyes blaze, and Thorin wonders again, when they grew up so much.

“So you’re letting him leave?” Fili asks, staring hard at his uncle, who looks away, looks back to the empty chair behind Fili’s back.

He remembers when he would never have let Bilbo leave. When he would have locked Bilbo away in the heart of the mountain, kept him draped in gold and held in behind thick closed doors.

(-Bilbo had to be kept safe, safe from those who would take what they could not appreciate. Others would see the value in Bilbo, the spark and hardness that made the halfling so endlessly fascinating. How could they not see? Bilbo was the single most concentrated point of Good that Thorin had ever encountered.

He would not part with it. Not while Bilbo had accepted his token, not when Bilbo wore his favor and stood by him.

Everything in this mountain was theirs, and Bilbo was Thorin’s.-)

Worst of all, something still twists and slithers in his chest, growling discontent at Bilbo going where others could see him.

“Master Baggins has chosen to leave, and he has left quickly with all intention to put this place far behind him. I will not hold him where he does not wish to stay, I will not keep him against his will.” He shuts his eyes briefly and looks away from the chair. “He left because he wanted to leave, let him go.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Watching Bilbo’s mood grow sour is like eyeing an oncoming storm. It is a force of nature that can not be stopped, but only prepared for.

The moods, however, are far more harmless and easier to predict than a storm. After two days of rain, soggy cold rations, a torn shirt, broken walking stick, and tripping twice into the mud, Bilbo is like a pile of black powder preparing to explode. The entire Company has started watching their burglar warily, all caught between avoiding him and wanting to prod at him just to see what will happen.

“Two coins says he snaps tonight.” Kili starts. Thorin thinks perhaps he should have a talk with his kin about nobility and image and always being the one to start the betting. But now he’s too entertained as he looks over at where Bilbo is muttering through gritted teeth to himself and sighing loudly every five minutes. Bofur is chattering away next to him, and it’s difficult to tell if the other dwarf has simply not noticed that Bilbo is ignoring him, or doesn’t care.

“He will not make it to tonight, I think.” Thorin says, and Kili turns to stare at his uncle with raised eyebrows.

“Why, Uncle! Is that a wager?” He asks, and Balin glances over with a curious look.

“I do not wager.” Thorin answers loftily. “And I do not need to bet anything on that certainty. He has an hour at most.”

“Uncle is the best on reading the burglar’s temperament, it’s true.” Fili says with utter seriousness. “Or reading the burglar in general.” He adds with a shrug, only smirking lazily at the look Thorin shoots him.

“Starin’ at him.” Dwalin snorts. “We can all say it. Starin’ at him. At the damned halfling.”

One of Thorin’s most recent regrets was telling Dwalin about the situation regarding Bilbo. He glares sharply at his old friend, who glares right back. Thorin knows most of the complaining is a show, since Dwalin has not outright said he disapproves of the idea, but Thorin still feels the need to protect what is left of his dignity on this.

“Oh!” Kili perks up, grin growing dangerously. “We’re talking about it plainly now?”

“Talking about what?” Thorin asks, putting every warning in his voice. Kili very likely hears the warning, and carries on regardless.

“Now, now…” Balin begins, but Kili blazes on before the damage can be stopped.

“You makin’ lamb eyes at our wee little burglar.” Kili croons, ignoring the steady glare Thorin trains on him as he swaggers over to nudge an elbow into him. “Tell me Uncle, when are we expecting some half-hobbit cousins?”

Thorin shoves Kili off him, hard. Sometimes some straight forward, simple discipline is the best way to handle his errant nephews. Kili stumbles to the side and flails into Dwalin, who makes a grunt of disgust and sends the lad tumbling into the mud. Fili starts laughing so hard that he nearly joins his brother on the ground, and Thorin can hear the disgusted mutter of ‘barbarians’ behind them.

Thorin has to stop and glare down at Kili, who is still lying in a mud puddle laughing so hard he’s clutching his side.

“Get up, or we’re going on without you.”

“It’s true!” Kili crows. “Ah, Mahal! I thought we were all jokin’ but it’s true!”

“I said get up.” Thorin growls, looming over his damned giggling fool of a nephew. Fili leans against his back, laughing hysterically, and Thorin throws him off as hard as he had thrown Kili. “I’ll leave the both of you here to rot, and I can tell your mother that her sons lost their minds and drowned in the mud!”

“Some nice family bonding going on, I see.” Bilbo says, voice forcibly mild, from somewhere behind them. Thorin feels a moment of mind numbing panic as it strikes him that Bilbo might have heard that entire conversation. When he turns and looks over his shoulder however, Bilbo only looks slightly annoyed.

The ‘slightly’ is a front, as Thorin can see the twitch under the halfling’s eye and the tense line of disapproving tight lips. Kili breaks into another howl of laughter and Thorin feels his face heating up when he delivers a swift kick to Kili, who only rolls over and wheezes while his no good brother leans against a tree and laughs over him.

The pride of Durin, the lot of them.

“Is there a problem, Master Baggins?” Thorin asks stiffly, ignoring the fresh wave of laughter from the ground.

“Oh none at all.” Bilbo replies, voice so light and carefully cheerful that it is very obvious that to him, there are plenty of problems. “Obviously everyone is having a wonderful time. In the mud. It’s a good thing that some of us can have some fun while we all journey to what is probably a certain doom. I’m so, so very glad I signed into this dignified company where I am certain I’ll be in good hands and everything is handled with the most care.”

Perhaps it wouldn’t actually take an hour to get to the snap.

“Bilbo.” Fili says, obviously fighting to keep his face serious as he looks at Bilbo in the eye.

“If you do not have anything of value to add,” Thorin says slowly, narrowing his eyes at his heir, “then I suggest you not say it.”

“Bilbo, please.” Fili goes on, grin starting to crack through even under the twin glares of Bilbo and Thorin. “You can trust that you will definitely be in good hands with Uncle Thorin.”

Kili, who had managed to pull himself back up, nearly falls over and into his brother again  with a fresh burst of laughter.

 

“<I will not hear another word about it!>” Thorin finally snaps in Khuzdul. His nephews both jump a bit at the formal tongue and watch with wide eyes as Thorin storms off.

More distractions, more damned distractions and having everything thrown in his face as a mockery. Not even his own nephews can take him seriously on this and Thorin’s fists make the leather vambraces creak as they tighten at his sides.

“Hold on! Wait a- What on earth was all that about?” Bilbo huffs, running up besides him.

“Nothing that you need to concern yourself with, hobbit!” Thorin snaps. Of course, it very much concerns Bilbo. Nearly a third of his turmoil lately has had everything to do with the halfling.

“Hobbit!?” Bilbo gasps, and Thorin realizes his mistake too late when Bilbo darts around to stand in front of him, firmly stopping him in his tracks. “Oh, that’s nice!” Bilbo hisses, one finger raised menacingly. “I don’t know what little familial issues you’re having but let me remind you, Mister Oakenshield, that I have a name and I would thank you to call me by it!”

Thorin can’t stop the slight wince at the ‘Mister Oakenshield.’ He knows he’s fumbled when that comes out. No one calls him ‘Mister’ anything except for this strange little creature. He feels his face heat up and hates that Bilbo’s right, that Bilbo is hardly to blame for the issues that he has no idea he’s the cause of.

“Bilbo-” He sighs, wondering if he can pull them aside so he can apologize without the entire company witnessing it. Having everyone see their king being chastised by the hobbit burglar is not the sort of thing to inspire continued loyalty and respect, and Thorin can feel the eyes on him like daggers pointed to his back when Bilbo interrupts him.

“Oh! Oh there it is! The great Thorin Oakenshield does indeed deign himself to remember my name! What an honor for me! After I get dragged out of my home, attacked by wargs, orcs, goblins, and goodness knows what else. None of that was in the contract, may I remind you. Not a bit of it! And all because Thorin Oakenshield can’t be bothered to follow any advice but his own and possibly wait for the wizard! Or not go after some grudge fueled battle while his company hangs in the branches! Or-”

His chest burns, and Thorin can feel the sharp, flaming pain of it stopping his breath as he steps in towards Bilbo. There had been startled cries and some yelling about Ori behind his back, the flames approaching his company and all he had seen was Azog standing alive and untouched. All the shame burns through him as if he were reliving it and it comes out through gritted teeth and in clenched, shaking fists. He roughly grabs Bilbo by the arm and ignores the angry sputtering protests as Thorin drags him out of earshot of the rest of the company.

“Thorin let me go! I’m not some errant little whelp that you can just yank around! Just because you think you can bully-”

Thorin stops and rounds on him, letting go only to stand in close and use every inch of height over Bilbo to snarl down at him.

“You will watch your tongue, or you can go back to your thrice damned Shire.” He says quietly, not finding any satisfaction in Bilbo’s wide, startled eyes.

Bilbo opens his mouth, shuts it, then blinks rapidly for a few seconds, face going red. It is perhaps the first time since the embrace on the Carrock that Thorin has been able to silence the hobbit. He takes no pleasure in it, even as the shamed rage simmers hot like a coal burning through his guts.

“I-right. Sorry that was...that was uncalled for.” Bilbo says softly, swallowing and looking away with a wince. “I know you’re, well you’re doing the- you’re a good leader, and I wouldn’t be following you at all otherwise.”

The flame gutters out, and Thorin’s shoulders sag as it leaves, feeling the surge of energy dying away. Ah yes, at this rate Bilbo should be falling into his arms in no time. “You do not have to-”

“No. No, I was out of line.” Bilbo says firmly. “I shouldn’t take my temper out on you. Well, not like that anyway.” He grins a little at that, and Thorin could kick himself as his mind quickly supplies possibilities for all the ways Bilbo could take his temper out on him. “Sometimes you deserve it, make no mistake. But I think this time, for once, I may have been the one who got a little too hot headed. It’s this blasted rain.” Bilbo shudders dramatically, making a disgusted face. “I don’t think I remember what being dry is like, it must have been a wonderful feeling, dryness.”

Thorin exhales, smiles slightly, and shakes his head, but he keeps replaying Bilbo’s words over and over through his mind. He looks down and adjusts his vambraces (they were fine) and frowns at the blue stained leather.

“You were right.” He says, feeling the weight of the words in his mouth. Usually he can only admit with words to being wrong to Dis or Balin, occasionally Dwalin. “I have acted rashly and brought us into many unnecessary dangers.”

“Oh you’re not as bad as all that.” Bilbo breezes, waving a hand as if flapping Thorin’s words out of the air. “You got us all through those dangers in one piece, as well as other dangers that you had no control over. You’ve done a lot of good that far outweighs the moments where you act like a sod.”

Thorin frowns, glances up at Bilbo, then quickly looks away again, his mouth in a thin line. “I do value your advice,” he says stiffly, “in spite of your milder upbringing, you are clever and show wisdom in many things.”

“Oh, I read a lot.” Bilbo says loftily, and Thorin isn’t sure if he’s serious or not.

“It’s simply that you can’t...” He has to stop, and shifts uncomfortably at the fact that this halfling so often leaves him stumbling for words that usually come so sure and easy to him. He is not often one to stumble over sentences, yet with Bilbo he is constantly pausing and rethinking his words. “I can not have you so blatantly correcting me in front of the company. Or bringing attention to my faults in front of them. It is not that I’m not aware of them, however-”

“It’s a king thing, isn’t it?” Bilbo asks curiously. And Thorin nods curtly.

“I barely hold on to what claim I have.” He’s saying too much, revealing too much, but can’t stop. “At this point I can not afford to have a...halfling…” Thorin winces again, not sure how he can get any of this across without offending, but Bilbo only gets a little smile, sighing as if he understands too plainly.

“Can’t be having the hobbit back talking you too much?”

Thorin winces, but can’t disagree. “It is difficult, you have good points, and you are not my subject so I do not rule you. I do appreciate your advice and welcome it but not at the expense of what respect I have.”

Bilbo tilts his head, mouth pursing in thought then moving a bit as if he’s chewing over the idea. He hums a little bit then his eyebrows come together in a puzzled furrow. “Do you really think they have that little respect for you?” He finally asks.

It’s not the response Thorin was expecting, and he blinks as he tries to find a way to correctly answer it. “What?”

“It’s just, well, they already signed on and followed you all this way. I think their loyalty and respect for you isn’t at the point where some mouthy hobbit is going to undo it all. Balin and Dwalin, and your nephews for that matter, snap back at you all the time, but they still respect you and your leadership. I do, for that matter, even after you act like a pig-headed lout.”

“Then for my own sake,” Thorin goes on quickly, unwilling to look into Bilbo’s assurances. “I can hardly ask you to fully respect me,” and he can’t help but smile a little and raise his eyebrows pointedly at Bilbo, who shrugs with no shame, “but at least-”

“Don’t specifically and loudly point out when you’ve being an idiot in front of everyone?” Bilbo asks, and Thorin sighs, then nods.

“That would be preferred.” He admits with a wry smile. Bilbo tilts his head again and looks off at the trees, making a show of considering Thorin’s request and putting his hands on his hips as he thinks it over.

“Well, alright yeah. I suppose I could do that. Preserve your delicate honor and all that.”

Thorin stops a bit there, leaning back a little to regard the halfling. “I do not believe anyone has ever called me ‘delicate’, Master Burglar.”

“Didn’t know you too well then, did they?” Bilbo shoots back with a smirk, turning to start heading back to where the Company is trying not to obviously ogle at them. Thorin stares at his back and takes a moment to start following after him, feeling that now familiar tightness in his chest at how easily Bilbo smiles back at him.

“And you would know better?” He asks, finding that he can’t help but prod and smile a little. He feels like he’s a prince in Erebor again, playing at words and barely veiled meanings with secret smiles.

“Well you did say I am wise and clever, I think my word should be trusted.”

“You have called me delicate, and a pig-headed lout. I begin to question my sureness of your wisdom, if you would contradict yourself so easy.” He can never predict how Bilbo will answer him, could spend forever exchanging only words, seeing how this halfling will surprise him again and again. They’ve falling along next to each other now, and Thorin barely notices the stares as they make way back to the Company.

“You are a pig headed lout.” Bilbo snorts, and as the two start the march everyone falls in behind them easily. Thorin is hardly aware of any of it, of Fili and Kili’s grins at each other or Dwalin rolling his eyes as he clouts the two over the head. The world seems to have narrowed down at the much lighter halfling now, whose smile is like a break of sunshine coming through the clouds of the earlier mood.

“You also,” Bilbo goes on, “are a good leader, a strong king, and one of the most noble people I know. Doesn’t mean you can’t also be a lout. Your pack of miscreants follow you to a dragon infested mountain for a reason, and I doubt it’s just gold or some vague idea of glory. It’s because they are loyal to you and love you.”

Thorin nearly stops again, and has to look away, swallowing heavily. ‘And do you?’ he wants to ask. ‘Could you love me, not as a leader?’

He can’t quite see it, can’t imagine what besides the leader or legend any of them could love. “I don’t-”

“And there’s those delicate little feelings.” Bilbo sighs. “The proper response, Thorin, when someone tells you you are good at your job, is ‘Thank you’.”

He can’t thank anyone for something he has not earned. It’s nothing new to hear it, what throws Thorin off is that he is used to hearing it from the other dwarrow, from his subjects. He is used to it from Balin, occasionally Dwalin, from those who have sworn loyalty to him. They call him noble because he is King, Heir, Ruler. He has had legend thrust on him and so they see the legend.

Bilbo has not seen any of that. Bilbo met Thorin Oakenshield. Bilbo calls him a delicate pig headed lout and bases it on no pre-learned notions of what he is or is not, but only on his own observations. Bilbo has only seen him as a weary traveler trying to hold a company together, with a few stories handed to him later by the others.

Thorin isn’t sure what to make of any of this, or what it means.

“Thank you.” He says quietly, heart pounding when Bilbo grins at him as if he’s accomplished some grand feat, which Thorin feels he has.

“There now. That wasn’t so hard then, was it?”

-----

Thorin can not quite remember leaving the room. He has no memory of pushing the door open, of the pain in his wounded foot and racing up his side as he stumbles on the hard stone and braces himself on the wall. He only knows that he can not stand another second in there, breathing the closed in air and staring at the walls. Staring at the empty chair by his bed or the empty spot on the side of bed.

(Two days ago. Two days ago Bilbo sat there, worn and thin and with firelight in his hair and his hand in Thorin’s.

‘Where is this coming from?’

As if he had not already known.

As if he had never felt the same things Thorin did.

As if Thorin were not only deluding himself in that moment, but from the start.)

Thorin can not stay there any more. Not in that room. And he does not know where he is going but he finds himself climbing stones, feeling a breeze on his face and nearly sick from the throbbing pain in his foot as he comes up to stand on the section of wall that still stands, where Bombur had blown the war horn.

The road goes out from the mountain, winding down to Dale and then onwards, following the river, going through the forest.

Bilbo already left Dale, taking the wizard with him, and Thorin wonders how far they are now. He wonders if Bilbo ever glanced back, even for a second, at the mountain behind him. He left only a note for even those in the company, and Thorin knows that is the surest sign that he truly chased Bilbo away. He had sent Bilbo fleeing so fast that he could not even bear taking a moment to say farewell to those who had become his friends.

He can feel a warm wetness in the bandages on his foot, but it is like a distant thing muddled through the numbness. Thorin just stares at the road, and wonders how much he had fooled himself. How many smiles, laughs, little looks and touches, had he read too much into?

Thorin’s eyes move from the road, slowly drawn to the height of Ravenhill, where he had accepted an end to it all.

It should have ended there, he thinks. It was meant to end there, so others could pick up and do what he was not able to, what he had to do. The King of Erebor had been prepared to die, but Bilbo had held onto Thorin Oakenshield, and kept him there. Kept him there, then left him behind.

No, that was unfair. Thorin shakes off that line of thought and drops his eyes from the peak to the road. Whatever he may have wished for his death, as much as it would have been welcome then, he survived. There was nothing now to be done there.

He thinks, instead, of Bilbo on some pony that he probably gave a pointless name to as soon as he put a saddle on it. Bilbo starting the long journey back with only the wizard for company, fleeing Thorin and Erebor to return to the Shire that only held scorn for him.

Thorin knows well what is awaiting Bilbo there. He remembers when he first wandered that quiet, idyllic green place. The beauty of the Shire was undercut by the suspicious glares of it’s inhabitants, shot through windows and rapidly shut doors. Even then, when he had asked how to reach Bag End, there were dark mutters about how odd it was, that the respectful Mister Baggins had so many dwarves coming to his home.

Mister Baggins. The title makes Thorin’s lip curl. It stopped fitting Bilbo so long ago. Mister Baggins was too scared to fight back, was afraid of being without his handkerchief and shrank away under any dark looks, flinched at the sight of drawn swords and fainted to the ground at the mentions of death by incineration. Mister Baggins may have been the one who left, but it was Bilbo Baggins, the barrel rider, the riddler, the dragon speaker, the spider slayer, who rode back.

To Thorin he was Bilbo, he was the Master Burglar. Who still fretted for his handkerchief and looked sick at blood, but who whipped out his little sword as quick as any of them. Who would dart around, gathering stones, and be able to throw them into the chaos of a fight with such deadly accuracy that enemies sometimes seemed to drop for no reason, a deep gash or dent in their head the only sign of what had felled them.

Bilbo Baggins was riding back to a place that would force him to be Mister Baggins, and the idea of it makes Thorin’s stomach turn.

“Does yer nannyin’ healer know yer out n’about on that foot?”

Thorin blinks, pulled out of his mind by his cousin’s gruff voice, and the mention of his foot sends the shooting pain blazing up his leg. He grunts and steps back to lean against the wall, hissing through his teeth as he looks over at Dain.

“I can’t be holed up in there forever.” He says shortly, wincing as his foot throbs. Oin was likely to kill him, though he could not find the energy to care overmuch. “What news?”

Dain comes up to stand near him, looking out over the fields between Erebor and Dale with a quiet seriousness. Thorin remembers how many underestimate his cousin and his loud showy blustering. Under the crass and brutish humor there was a mind that had ruled the Iron Hills for long decades, and there are many who forget that.

“Well,” Dain says, “that depends on the news yer wantin’, cousin. The mibilkhags  are still holed up with the humans in Dale, waitin for a council meeting between the three of yeh’.”

“You will be there as well, I expect.” Thorin says. He feels oddly detached, thick and numb and calm. It is not a pleasant feeling, but it is not outright unpleasant, and it makes discussing official business easier.

“Perhaps.” Dain shrugs. “I think not though. I may be a king, but you’re King Under the Mountain now, and this is between you lot. An’ I don’t think the pointy-eared bugger will appreciate so many Durins under one roof with him.” He adds with a wide, toothy grin, and Thorin thinks he should perhaps make a joke in response. It’s what they often did, exchange increasingly insulting names and possible torments for Thranduil and his ilk.

“How many?” Thorin asks, looking at the misleadingly clear and quiet grounds laid out before Erebor. He can still see the huge holes in the hillsides by Dale, where swarms of orcs led by Azog had poured out like tar.

Dain’s grin falls, and he sighs loudly, following Thorin’s gaze to where the battlefield had been. “I brought five hundred of my finest with me, and there are now perhaps a hundred left standing. Two hundred, if I count those who are now recovering in your halls.”

Thorin sucks in a breath and shuts his eyes, lets the inhale pull against the sharp pain in his side. Over three hundred dwarrow dead at the foot of the mountain. Three hundred who came from another kingdom, who likely had never seen Erebor. Many of them probably were descended only from the Iron Hills, no ties even of close kin to this place.

(-‘A treasure such as this, can not be counted in lives lost. It is worth all the blood we can spend.’-)

Over three hundred spent. And that was in dwarrow lives alone.

“This is a debt I could never repay to you.” He says softly.

“You are kin and King, cousin. There is no debt to repay. They came for a battle and fought one of greater importance than we could ever dream. We may have come expecting to die at the blades of elves, but I think they prefer to die fightin’ orc scum instead.” Dain says plainly, leaving no room for argument.

“King.” Thorin echoes quietly. It is the title he has been groomed to, one that he wore as a peasant King in Ered Luin (the Blacksmith King, some men had called him once, when they heard a dwarrow lad address him as Your Majesty as he wiped the soot of the forge from his brow.) To be King of Erebor, King Under the Mountain, was something he had fought so hard for, and now he can feel the weight of the whole mountain behind it, behind the fact that his first acts as King had been a petty war and the death of hundreds of his people.

(-‘You’re not making a splendid figure, as King Under the Mountain, Thorin son of Thrain.’-)

“Aye, that’s often what we call the buggers in charge with the bunch o’metal on their heads.” Dain snorts. “And yer King here now Thorin. I only heard a few tidbits of the madness that came from this place-”

“You rode here with five hundred of your warriors at the call of my madness.” Thorin explains, voice flat.

“So I hear, though a bit o’luck there since that white bugger showed up.” Dain shrugs.Thorin draws in a slow breath, then lets it out even more slowly, frowning down at the ground below them.

“Does it not bother you?” He asks, teeth grit together. “That the Kingship has fallen to one who has already gone mad?”

“Oh we’re all a bit mad in this family.” Dain snorts. “I s’pose that stick-headed sprite had the right of it there.”

“It is no laughing matter, Dain!” Thorin snaps. “My Grandfather, then my Father, and I did not even have the crown on my head before I fell to the same madness as they did!”

Dain grunts, thinks for a bit, then makes a dismissive sound and shrugs. “Well, y’don’t look mad to me now. Y’feel a bit mad, Thorin? Thinkin’ of flyin off into the sunset or perhaps running me through right here?”

Thorin’s head flies around to stare at Dain, skin crawling. His mind floods with the memory of Dwalin standing before him, the sword in Thorin’s hand swinging wildly and the clear image, the goal, of his friend lying in a pool of blood before the throne.

“You’re mocking me.” He snarls, shaking from the shame, the pain, from everything he can not name.

“M’not.” Dain says simply. “Whatever may’ve happened in here, I did see what the sickness did to yer grandfather, though I was only a visiting child who did not understand fully what was about. I do not dread a mad king on the throne of Erebor again, cousin. Not when yer the first I have ever ‘eard tale of, who regained themselves after fallin’ to that sickness. Not even Thror could say that.”

Thror also already had a long, blessed rule behind him. Thror founded this kingdom, saved his people, started a legend, and it was only after countless years that he began to slowly fall to the sickness.

But Thorin can not find anything to say to Dain, he only stands with a hand to the sharp pain in his ribs and his weight on his good foot, his jaw setting rigid against any arguments that would come. There are no more words between them, and it’s only a few moments before Dain tilts his head, one King to another, and takes his leave.

-------------------------------------------

The Company has found the strangest new use for their adopted halfling.

It was started by Fili and Kili, who had fallen asleep one night by Bilbo, when the cold was first starting to seep in and even a few of the dwarves were feeling the nip of it. Thorin does not know when it happened or who had gravitated towards the halfling first, but when he awoke the next morning it was to distressed muttering sounds from their side of the camp. A quick investigation revealed their burglar, firmly caught in the grip of his two nephews and nearly hidden entirely between the arms and legs flung around him and the blonde and black haired heads nestled to his back and front.

Thorin only watches Bilbo’s struggles with raised eyebrows, wondering if he should be asking some awkward questions of his nephews, when golden-brown hair manages to peek over the top of Fili’s arm and Bilbo catches Thorin’s eye.

“Help!” Bilbo whispers furiously, face flushed bright. Thorin raises his eyebrows, smirking slightly at the burglar’s predicament, and only chuckles to himself as he goes about fastening his knives in place and strapping Orcrist to his back.

It’s only a few more moments before he hears a surprised squawk from Kili, shortly after a sharp thwapping sound that Thorin is sure was a halfling hand hitting a dwarvish head.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Get off me! What on earth are you doing?!” Bilbo yells, his earlier concern over not waking them up forgotten.

“Oh shush, you’re warm.” Fili mumbles sleepily, making no attempts to move.

“What has that got to do with-”

“You really are!” Kili says with wonder, and Thorin barely manages to keep his mouth shut on the laughter threatening to bark out as he listens to the most absurd conversation he’s been witness to. Kili goes on, neither of them letting Bilbo go. “I mean really really warm!”

“That’s nonsense!” Bilbo snaps. “Let go of me! I’m no warmer than any of the rest of you lot! I don’t know where you get these ideas in your heads or get the impression that it’s perfectly alright to use me as a bed heater!”

“Haven’t slept that well in ages though.” Fili says thoughtfully, letting the halfling push him away and sitting up with a groan and a twist of his back.

Thorin snorts, and a few other dwarves watch curiously.

After that it becomes custom to crowd around Bilbo at night, and more and more of the Company swear to the forges of Mahal that the halfling runs hotter than any of them and is the greatest aid for a good night’s sleep. Bilbo’s loud protests to this fall on deaf ears, and after a few weeks he learns to accept his fate and only requests with a strained voice that no one drools on him.

Thorin wonders if Bilbo’s problems are a personal issue, or if all halflings are as strangely tense about any physical contact. He can’t recall seeing much to go off in his short time in the Shire, but Bilbo reacts to even a hand on the arm as if a grand discretion has been done to him. In either case, he ends up tiredly saying that at least he never gets cold, with the pile of dwarves surrounding him every night.

He does not seem to truly understand how accepted he is, how he is being treated as only another dwarrow within their strange little band.

Thorin, for his part, stays far from the piles that surround their halfling each night.

“You have to try it, Uncle.” Fili drawls. “I don’t know what it is about halflings, but I’m convinced they’re designed to be hugged.” Not that Thorin needs to be told, he had already felt the small, superheated softness when he held Bilbo to him on the Carrock.

“Just try not to crush our burglar before he can do his job.” Thorin groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wonders, not for the first time, how he ended up with such a ridiculous mess of a Company to try and reclaim Erebor with. He often feels more as if he’s in charge of a band of circus fools than a Company off on a very serious quest.

“And stop talking about him as if he isn’t able to hear anything!” Bilbo snaps from behind them. And that’s all that’s said about it to Thorin.

It is not that Thorin wouldn’t like to find a bit of relief from the increasingly cold nights. He has been on many journeys and the dwarrow already have little propriety or stigma against casual contact, especially for the practical purposes of warmth.

It’s more the matter that he simply does not trust himself to be in such close contact with Bilbo. The others may be able to wind arms around the halfling or tuck against his back without any problems, but Thorin has only to think of that smaller body curled against his own, the heat a steady comfort against him and the heartbeat against his chest and wrapped in his arms, and his face begin to heat.

No, if he is to hold to his promise to himself to wait on letting things out with Bilbo, if is best if he maintain as little contact as he can.

That decision is very strongly threatened one night, as they settle in after setting camp, and Bilbo drops his bedroll down by Thorin.

Thorin stares at the bedroll, then at the halfling swinging his pack off with a groan. He feels a strange weight of doom coming over him when Bilbo smiles over apologetically.

“Sorry, do you mind? I know you like your privacy and mysterious distance and all that, but I would very much like a night where I can actually breathe and not worry about whose hand is where.”

Thorin only nods silently, hands gripping tight at the scabbard he was putting down within grabbing distance. He exhales slowly and gradually releases Orcrist, his heart pounding in his ears.

“I can tell them to stop, if it’s disturbing you.” Thorin says, keeping his eyes off Bilbo and ignoring the flump of material when the halfling drops his coat and waistcoat to the ground, stripping to only his loose shirt and trousers.

“Oh if I stopped everyone from doing things that disturbed me, then I would no longer be surrounded by dwarves.” Bilbo breezes. “I would be on an adventure with a band of polite, respectable hobbits who were all perfectly reasonable.”

“I do not think you would be on an adventure at all, if that were the case.” Thorin notes, and even when his skin is on fire and his heart is wild in his ribs, he still smiles a little at Bilbo’s short laugh.

“Exactly my point! Don’t worry about them, I can handle it well enough on my own. I only wanted a night of peace to see if I could remember what it was like to sleep with only myself.”

Thorin nods, and swallows past the tightness in his throat.

‘I could make it so you never remember what it is to sleep on your own. So you never want to remember.’ He thinks, then quickly turns away from Bilbo, face heating (it has been doing a lot of that, as of late) as he lays down, facing very much away from the hobbit.

This will be fine. Bilbo is just far enough away that there isn’t a real danger of Thorin doing anything ridiculous. He lies and stares out into the dark, unable to ignore the sounds of Bilbo settling down behind him or the soft breathing that fills the silence that follows.

He is an heir of Durin’s line, he can make it through one night two feet away from a damned halfling. As long as he keeps his back to Bilbo, then there is no real danger.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep, and his back aches from the tensed strain he can’t let go of, his arms crossed tight to his chest and his ears straining for the sound of Bilbo’s slowing breathing as the halfling falls asleep behind him.

He is first aware of a beating sound, distant and surrounding, filling his mind with the gentle thud-thump, thud-thump. Everything smells of warmed wood, like a cedar mantle in front of a fireplace. There’s wood, a deeper, earthier smell of tea, and a hint of something green and bright. Everything is warm and lax, and it’s so different than his usual dreams of fire and blood that Thorin lets himself linger in this strange state between sleep and the waking world.

The heat against his face is strong, but soothing in it’s steadiness. He’s distantly aware of a brushing down the back of his head, a brief touch that he can feel down his whole body and has him wanting to burrow himself further into the calm, warm softness. He nuzzles his face against something plush, murmuring mild complaints when it jerks slightly and the thumping sound increases. Thorin tightens his arms, which he’s now aware are wrapped around the same warmth, loathe to let it go. Something small comes around his shoulders, and the heat surrounds him entirely now, cradling him in a safety that he can never recall feeling before. Not since the smoke of dragonfire filled his lungs.

It’s then that he wakes just enough to hear voices.

“Don’t move Bilbo, I want to preserve this image forever in my mind.” Fili, that’s Fili.

“I honestly am a little afraid to move. I feel like he may attack if we wake him too suddenly.” And Thorin is yanked fully awake when Bilbo’s voice hums against his ear, which is very much pressed to Bilbo’s chest.

Most of him is pressed to Bilbo. Thorin’s head is fully nestled against the halfling’s sternum, his arms wound tight around Bilbo’s middle, and even his legs are tangled up with Bilbo’s. He doesn’t move, pretending to still be asleep as he mentally curses himself in every way he knows how to for not being able to keep control of himself.

“Now this is just too much.” Bofur’s voice joins in Fili and Kili’s chuckling. “Jes’ look at him! Like a wee babe with ‘is toy. Absolutely adorable.”

“Keep your voice down, I have a feeling he hasn’t gotten many chances to sleep in.” Bilbo says softly, and Thorin nearly holds him closer for the gentleness in it. He remembers feeling the hand running once over his hair, and curses not his own weakness, but the fact that he now has an audience. Though perhaps that is best, as Thorin wants nothing but to see if he can hear how that heartbeat would speed up, if he were to press a kiss to Bilbo’s chest, if he would be able to feel the heat of Bilbo’s skin against his lips through the thin cotton shirt.

After that it’d only be natural to slide his hands up, untuck Bilbo’s shirt and feel bare skin on his palms. He’d lift the shirt till he could put his mouth to bare, sleep warmed skin and see if it tasted the way Bilbo smelled. Thorin could move his lips over Bilbo’s heart, feel it beat through skin against his tongue and speed up as he moved to take a nipple between his teeth and-

“Oh, can’t ever let him live this down.” Dwalin chuckles darkly, and that stops Thorin’s musings in their tracks. Dwalin is there. Dwalin is seeing this. He really is never going to live this down.

“Don’t be cruel, Dwalin.” Bilbo sighs, and something taps against Thorin’s shoulder, which is when he becomes aware that the small warmth around his shoulders had been Bilbo’s arm. “Besides, I think he woke up a bit ago already.”

Thorin tenses. “I didn’t.” He mutters, wincing at the surly tone in his voice. After that there’s no point in trying to hold on to the moment, and he lets go quickly, pulling back slightly and refusing to look at the audience that is ever growing around them.

“My apologies, Master Burglar.” He says stiffly.

“Oh it’s quite alright, I’m used to it.” Bilbo replies, and the smile in his voice has Thorin looking up.

He almost damns every plan he has right there. Bilbo looks down at him with a small, warm smile, hair still mussed from sleep and face flushed a comely pink over his cheeks. Thorin pauses, stares, and very seriously considers throwing his patience to the wind and closing the space between them. It would be as easy as breathing, to put a hand to Bilbo’s cheek and push up to kiss his halfling. It would be warmed from sleep, gentle and unrushed, as if it were the start of every morning. It would be so, so easy.

One of the other dwarves clears their throat, and Thorin quickly jerks back, the moment broken as he rolls away with more muttered apologies and glares at the grinning faces around him. Fortunately by this point his Company knows better than to outright tease him, as he scowls and packs.

After that he makes sure he waits for Bilbo to settle first, before laying his bedroll far away.

------------------------

Thorin doesn’t know how long he stays up on the wall, doesn’t know when he’s dragged back to the room they’ve holed him up in for Oin to fuss and prod over him. He’s distantly aware of being led back to the rooms, and does not know through the pain in his foot and side if he protests out loud, or if it’s only in his head that he rails against being trapped in the place he was left in.

Oin tuts and scolds, pretends he hears none of Thorin’s protests and it’s with a numb rage that Thorin takes and downs the cup of hot liquid pressed into his hands.

“There, Mahal knows when y’last slept.” Oin snorts, and that’s when Thorin realizes that he’s been given a sedative. Scratching blankets pull on him and draw him down, down, and e v e r

                                                                                                                        

                                                                   do w n.

Down into the burning.                         

                                                                                      Smoke in his lungs fire in his mind


                  and in his heart there’s



Gold.


Molten hot gold burning gushing bubbling slithering up over his skin.


              It burns

                    it quenches the fire in him and it           
                                                                        burns.

It rises around him like a tide, leaving blistering scorched flesh in its wake as it

                     sears

                              consumes

                                              d r o w n s

When he tries to scream against it the gold floods his mouth, burning his tongue burning his throat as it pours down and fills every space in his lungs.

It fills him and burns out his eyes, and when drops away it leaves a gilded, bubbling layer over him where his skin had been burned away leaving him raw and flayed and nothing but gold gold gold gold g o l d pulsing through his veins.

The gold is a drum in his head a beat in his heart it’s a scream that drowns the sounds of the blood under his feet and it drowns the sight of the bodies of the useless pointless meaningless meaningless meaning le  s  s

                 Fili

                       Kili

                           Balin

                                  Dwalin

                                      Bilbo in his hand. Golden fingers wrapped in a dirty, worn cotton shirt.

           The threads feel like barbs against his palms.


They stand on the wall and the arkenstone beats to the rhythm of Thorin’s heart far below them. Thorin holds Bilbo up into the air, gold eyes gold heart gold blood pushing through him and burning the skin on Bilbo’s chest through the shirt leaving red welts but Bilbo clutches his arm and the air sizzles with burning skin on burning gold the smell of burning flesh one that he is too familiar with its too familiar but Bilbo stares at him stares stares into gold eyes grips gold hands grips him holds him as he’s held up-

“Don’t you dare.” Bilbo says, and Thorin lets go as the gold burbles up from his lungs and when Bilbo falls Thorin falls to his knees with chokes.    heaves gasps

 

                                        sobbing up blobs of gold gold gold gold gold g o l d that never stop

         He wants to stop he wants everything to just s t o p wants an end to the burning and the fire and smoke and everything everything needs to stop needs to stop

                            “Don’t you dare.”

------------------------------------------------------------------

“Don’t you dare!” Bilbo spits, hands on his hips and eyes blazing. Thorin sets his shoulders and glares back, fists tight at his sides.

“Are you so eager now, for battle?”

“I’m not eager for anything of the sort!” Bilbo snaps back. “If you ask me I’d be quite content to never see another fight in my good long life!”

“Then why are you arguing this!” Thorin could strangle the halfling, could throw him. Bilbo spent so long fretting over fighting at the start of this, and now he apparently won’t stay away from them!

“Don’t you dare tell me to just go hide whenever something pops up! What nerve! This is insulting and I’m no child to be hidden away at the first sign of danger!”

“You’re no warrior either! You are the burglar and we need-”

“What are those sword lessons about then!?” Bilbo shouts over Thorin, and any agreements they had earlier about not fighting in front of the Company were forgotten so long ago that Thorin doesn’t notice the wide stares he gets now whenever it happens.

The latest battle happened after a small goblin attack. There were a few of them every so often, little bands looking to avenge their killed King. This last one had been handled as well as usual, with Thorin blocking out Bilbo’s nervous babbling. He’d lost track of Bilbo until he found himself backed up against a tree, a particularly large goblin advancing with a mace the size of Thorin’s torso, and he was mentally ticking through the motions of how to come out with minimum damage to himself when a small shout above him nearly had both Thorin and the Goblin dropping their weapons.

Bilbo drops down from some branch of the tree, his little elf blade glowing brightly and singing with a sick thud into the goblins head. The halfling gave a short shout of triumph that quickly turned into alarm when the goblin tilted over and took Bilbo down with him, both toppling into a small ditch nearby and making Thorin’s heart stop cold when Bilbo’s shouting had died when they fell.

They found him half under the goblin’s body, wincing in pain as they lifted the heavy weight off him and muttering angrily to himself as Oin tended to the ugly bruises left on his chest by the felled goblin.

“Oh isn’t that nice, nearly taken out by my own kill. That’ll be one for the songs.”

It was as soon as he was bandaged up that Thorin, heart still in his throat and panic still fresh in his mind, had told Bilbo that in any future fights he was to find a place away from it to hide and stay there.

It does not go over well, and now Bilbo shakes with rage and glares up at him.

“The lessons for your own protection!” Thorin shouts back, and Bilbo points at him, shoulder tensed up and the finger shaking with all the anger behind it.

“Codswollop!” He says, voice dropping from a shout to a dangerous hiss. “What’s the point of learning how to use a sword if I’m to just stand around waiting for something to fall on it? You brought on a burglar, and you taught him to use a sword, and he is going to use it!”

“I will not have your death on me!” Thorin growls, feeling the strain at the idea. Just the thought of Bilbo crushed under the goblin, more than he had been, enough to crush the life from him, enough to leave him choking on blood and lying in a ditch by the road Thorin had dragged him on to. Lying dead and pale before they could be anything. A few weeks of learning how to hold a sword don’t make a warrior or a fighter, and Thorin knows well that for all his fire, Bilbo is neither.

“You won’t!” Bilbo shouts back, then, as suddenly as his voice went up, Bilbo deflates. He lets out a gusting exhale and rubs a hand over his forehead. “You won’t, you idiot. Do you really have so little faith in my abilities that you think I wouldn’t do something without first thinking it through and decided I’ll be able to survive it just fine? I went through a whole mountain of bloody goblins, I can handle one or two, at least!”

The anger drains from Thorin, leaving just the image of Bilbo’s body in a ditch, but also leaving the image of the sure and confident halfling that had stood outside the goblin kingdom and stands before him now.

“I only worry-” He starts, and stops, unable to find words that would not give away too much.

“About everything! About nothing! I know!” Bilbo exhales sharply again and pinches the bridge of his nose, muttering nonsense to himself before throwing his hand out like he’s had a revelation. “Fine. Fine! How about a deal? You dwarves love deals, don’t you? Always were sticklers for them when I tried to buy anything in Bree.”

Thorin narrows his eyes, having given up on trying to follow Bilbo’s various mental leaps long ago. “What sort of deal?”

“I won’t die if you won’t die.” Bilbo states flatly, hands back on his hips and eyebrows raised expectantly. Thorin’s mouth falls open just slightly, in incredulous awe at the absurdity of halflings. “Do we have a deal?”

“That is not a-”

“Do we have a deal?” Bilbo repeats loudly, eyes narrowing. Thorin stares for a few more moments, and Bilbo glares right back. They stay like that for a few moments, before Thorin snorts and holds his hand out, feeling like he’s making a mockery of something that he can’t quite name.

He hates himself just slightly, for not being able to fight down the smirk at the surreal absurdity of the non-existent deal that only Bilbo could think of. “Very well, we have a deal then, Master Hobbit.”

Bilbo chuckles and slaps his palm into Thorin’s, grinning like they’ve told a fantastic joke. “Pleasure doing business, Master Dwarf.”

----------------------------------------

Thorin feels like he’s a child again, reduced to sneaking out from his rooms and closed doors and stern looks to run out to the wall. It hasn’t been too difficult as of late. Oin is one part of a throng of healers, Dwalin has been kept busy installing a temporary guard out of a handful of the Iron Hills soldiers that are still present, and Balin has been in charge or managing the supplies coming in from the Iron Hills.

He runs from the thick concoctions Oin shoves at him, from the burning molten heat and running blood of his dreams to stand on the rubble of Erebor’s gates.

There is no comfort for him out here, but he finds himself drawn to this place over and over nonetheless.

“I hear tell you’re givin’ Oin a hard time.”

He lets out a slow breath, and should have known that Balin would only let him hide away for so long. “I will not be kept locked up and kept drugged into submission.”

“From what I understand, drugged is the only way you’ll sleep.” Balin says mildly, coming up to stand next to Thorin, looking out with him over the road from Erebor. “You know you won’t be able to see him from here.” He adds softly, and Thorin pretends not to understand what he means.

“I sleep when I need to.” Thorin can’t go back into the heat, back to the blood and the smoke in his lungs and the bodies piling around his feet to the sound of gold coins chiming and shimmering in a clinking cascade that awaits him whenever sleep pulls him under.

“And are you sure y’should be walkin around on that foot there?” Balin goes on, nodding down to where Thorin is favoring the still wrapped limb. Thorin only shrugs, crosses his arms, and glares out at the horizon.

(One week. Bilbo would have reached Mirkwood at this point, if they were riding fast and depending on what road they took. Their ride down the river saved a lot of time, and he’s sure Bilbo would enjoy taking a slower road that didn’t involve so much water. Bilbo hates swimming, Thorin recalls.)

“Thorin,” Balin sighs, “you know Bilbo would not want you to be carrying on like this. He wouldn’t want to see you-”

“How fortunate then,” Thorin says loudly, “that he is not here to see anything. And will not be here to approve or disapprove of my behavior from now on.”

Balin falls silent beside him, and his heart pounds in his ears so loud that Thorin suspects it may have drowned out any retorts from the older dwarrow.

The peace (such as it is, the mockery of peace that it is) can only last for so long. Only a few heartbeats and Balin sighs loudly, and no doubt if Thorin looked over he’d see Balin shaking his head with that sad, resigned face.

“Be that as it may, you are still King Under the Mountain now, perhaps it is time you remember it. There are those who still need you.”

For a brief, white hot moment, Thorin lets the indignation and rage of Balin’s presumption flare through him. But it is only for a flashing second, a sharp inhale and quick clench of fists before it fizzles out and snuffs away. He turns his head and looks back on the depths of Erebor behind him.

The dead have long since been gathered and entombed deep, deep within the roots of the mountain. Both those felled by Smaug and later by Azog, kept forever in stone and commemorated within the mountain they died for. It was a quick affair, and Thorin barely remembers it as a blur.

What’s left is crumbled stone, barely lit by firelight. Boulders where there were once statues, the shuffling of a few recovering, battle worn dwarrow where there had been a thriving kingdom.

When he first entered Erebor again, when he felt a rush of something exhilarating, of something consuming and enriching that lifted him above every doubt he ever had, he only saw his old home, his kingdom. There had only been His Erebor and all the grandeur he felt it should have.

Thorin looks back now, and sees a gutted mountain of ruined stone and forgotten lives.

“I ah, had the lads make a little something, while you’ve been of in yer own world.” Balin says quietly, and it’s then that Thorin notices the small bundle of cloth in his hands. Somehow he knows what it is, even before Balin sets it on a stone and pulls the corners of the cloth back.

“Yer grandfather’s crown was a fine thing, but I think I speak for us all when I say we’d all be quite happy to see it never on your head again. It is the crown of a cursed kingdom, and of a cursed king, and this is our time to start anew.” Balin explains, and Thorin’s throat is tight, his mouth dry when he looks at the crown sitting between them.

It’s steel, silver and black steel, made of cruder lines than Thror’s crown had been, but there’s an artistry to the roughness. Thorin can see that every uneven divot is on purpose, to catch the light and capture the feel of something organic within the harsh square cuts and runes edged within the metal. It’s like bark, like a tree, like oak. The tall spikes of the crown, similar to the old one, are still styled on raven wings and still stained as black as the deepest mine pit. Straight, square cut sapphire lines each ravenwing, and Thorin’s heart stops at the sight of it all.

“Balin, when did you-”

“Don’t worry about that lad.” Balin waves a hand, and then lifts the crown with is fingertips. “Are yeh ready?”

He never could be ready. Thorin has not felt ready a single day in his life, not since the wind cracked through the trees on the side of Erebor over a century ago.

He swallows, ignores the shaking in his hands, and silently dips his head to accept the weight of the crown.

Chapter 3

Notes:

"mibilkhags" didn't have a direct translation, the dictionary just said "Elf (impolite term)" and that alone cracked me up so bad because they have a specific separate word for a RUDE way to refer to elves.

I love dwarves.

Anyway, have some drama.

WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER INCLUDE:

Some descriptions of gore/body horror stuff
More of the weird formatting/nightmare type nonsense

Even if he were not tracking the passing time, counting down the slow approach of Durin’s Day, watching every sunrise and sunset with his eye ever on their far off goal, even without all that, he would know.

Nearly a century past, and Thorin still knows what day it is, can still smell the burning corpses in the air, mixing with blood and iron, swirling up with the screams of his sister as they stood together before the funeral pyres that held what was left of their world.

To be remembered as one of the Burned Dwarves, as one of the hundreds dead before Khazad-dûm, was considered an honor that would carry into memory and legend.

Thorin only feels a sick twist in his gut when he remembers piles of bodies, already picked over by crows, smoldering and smoking when they should have been planted deep within the stone roots their people were borne from.

This was the day Frerin and Thror burned together, when Thrain vanished into madness, leaving Thorin and Dis to try and hold onto the ragged remains of their people.

Most believed Thorin’s father dead, but there were those who whispered that Thrain sought to reclaim Erebor and had left to find a way in. That in his madness, the gold called him back to the dragon’s jaws.

Thorin keeps his eyes on the horizon, on the distant smudge of Erebor’s peak, and feels the key hanging heavy around his neck more on this day than he ever had before. It is the hope of his salvation, of the restoration of everything they once had been.

It is the possibility of madness, the weight of the past that dragged his father and grandfather down from the greatness that few cared to remember.

Balin and Dwalin are as quiet as he is, the three of them lost in their own thoughts and memories of that distant day as they march back to flames that sent them away.

His head is full of the smoke of the past, of the clash of swords and the fire and smoke that may wait in his future. The clamour fills his thoughts, so he is barely aware of the footsteps beside him until a soft voice drifts in under the chaos. And even if the memory makes a roiling rage twist in him, he can’t help but remember the words he overheard from the elf Lord in Rivendell.

“You’re a different sort of quiet today.” A different voice interrupts his thought, brisker than the deep tones of the elf.

It doesn’t have the same teasing note that Bilbo usually has when he calls Thorin from his own head. There’s no mention of brooding or sulking. No small, curling smirks.

There also isn’t any pity. Just a calm, quietly curious observation opening the invitation for Thorin to talk.

“It’s nothing.” He says, voice gruff, shutting that door before he ends up letting everything out. Bilbo does not need to know all the history that doesn’t involve him, history that touches too deeply on Thorin’s worries for his comfort.

Bilbo makes a noise that somehow captures just how little he believes that, but does not press further. He also doesn’t fall back to rejoin his usual companions, instead continuing to walk silently besides Thorin. There’s no expectation to it, and Thorin finds himself slowing his stride just slightly when he notices how quickly Bilbo’s shorter legs are moving to keep apace.

They walk on like that, the silence an easy weight, though Thorin feels as if the air is crackling between him and the halfling. Try as he might, he can not fully pull his attention away from the small body beside him.

“This was the day of the Battle of Azanulbizar.” He finally says, directing it down at the ground in front of them.

“Bless you. Wait, the what?” Bilbo scrunches his face up for a second, head coming up and tilting as if he’s trying to get a better look at the word. It’s only then that Thorin realizes he used the Khuzdul name that his people gave the battle.

“The gates of Moria.” He sighs, already regretting saying anything about it. The silence had been pleasant, and Bilbo wasn’t pushing or, more accurately, stumbling into sensitive topics again. Then Thorin had to go and bring it up on his own. He should have kept quiet.

Bilbo glances over, the hand on his walking stick tapping nervous fingers on the smooth wood. “Is that the one Balin talked about? The one where your grandfather-” He stops suddenly, wincing at himself and goes quiet with an awkward coughing sound that Thorin’s becoming familiar with. There, that could be the end of it, he knows Bilbo enough to know that the hobbit will keep quiet for a while now just to avoid further social fumbles.

“And my brother. Frerin.” Damn it! This isn’t the halfling’s concern! Why can’t Thorin just keep quiet on this?

Bilbo looks over, jaw working for a few moments and eyes unreadable as they glance at Thorin, glance down at the ground, look out at the trees. “I didn’t know you had a brother.” He finally says, voice subdued. “I’m sorry.”

“He was much like Kili in temperament.” Thorin goes on quietly, unable to stop the images of Frerin that spring up. Frerin had the same grin as Kili, same bright and crooked curl that was mostly teeth and mischief. “And almost as young, when it happened. Dis couldn’t join the battle because she was pregnant with Kili then, but we couldn’t keep Frerin from joining, though he was far too young.” Thorin’s voice trails off, lost in the memories that he hadn’t fallen back into in a long while. Frerin’s loss is not as harsh and bitter as it once was, though the ache of it will never fully leave. “I do not speak of him often, you had no reason to know of him before.”

Bilbo nods, hand shifting over his walking stick again. “Is that why you’ve been quiet? Remembering him?”

“No, actually.” Thorin admits. And he knows he still has no reason to continue, but goes on regardless. “I was thinking of my father.” He frowns down at the ground. With the dwarrow, any mention of his father was usually followed by shaking heads or pitying looks. Everyone else had long given up on Thrain. “I last saw him at the battle, and he vanished shortly after. Even before the battle he was…”

The battle had been one of the few points in those years after Erebor’s fall that Thrain had seemed more himself. When he stopped Thorin from going at Azog, when he said ‘not my son.’

Even then, it had been like Frerin did not exist. And that’s how it had been. Thrain lost in memories, lost in the past and refusing to see what was in front of them. Talking only to Thorin, if he talked to any but his own visions. He would speak of Erebor as if they would turn and reclaim it any time, as if they just had to turn around and walk back in. There were fevered nights, where Thrain would grip Thorin’s sleeve, then would twist the ring on his finger over and over and over, whispering furiously about how no one else was strong enough, how no one else would be able to do it. How Thorin was the only one left who could be trusted. How Thorin was his only son.

“He was not well.” Thorin finishes.

Thorin was officially declared King after the battle, with Thror dead and Thrain missing. Now, looking back, he knows that he was ruling long before that, barely keeping a hold as best he could as they followed Thror, who was barely past the ravages of the Dragon Sickness, and Thrain who was steadily losing his grasp of reality after the loss of Erebor.

“Was it-” Bilbo stops, shuts his mouth and grimaces on whatever was about to come out. After a few minutes, he sighs sharply and tries again, voice hesitant and quiet. “Was it...what Elrond was talking about?”

Neither of them has ever mentioned the conversation they both overheard in Rivendell. Though Thorin has thought of it often. The elf lord’s words were nothing new, nothing that Thorin could really argue against, even the new slice of shame that the halfling was hearing of his legacy of madness was hardly a sting. Thorin was used to it.

But he still thinks on it often, thinks on it now as he looks in the direction of the mountain and nods shortly.

“There are many who thought that if Thrain survived the battle, then he succumed to the sickness of Thror and abandoned his people to hunt the gold of Erebor.” Thorin hadn’t believed it. Could not believe it. He could not…

“Is that what you think?” Bilbo asks.

He could not believe it. Did not want to believe it.

“I do not know.”  Thorin whispers, teeth grit against the admission. His father had not been well, had not been himself. It was part of what drove Thorin’s hunt for Thrain, the need to know, to find him and see if there was any way Thorin could help. “And now I find myself drawn to the same mountain. Even before Gandalf came to me, I felt it like a pull.”

‘Can you be sure Thorin will not fall to the same madness?’

He would not fall. He could not. There was too much at stake. Yet here he was, walking to the same mountain with only a bare handful that would follow him.

It’s the closest Thorin has ever come to admitting the fear that sits deep in his core like a weight of tainted lead.

Bilbo watches him for a few moments, and though Thorin will not look at him directly, he can see the way the halfling’s head slowly turns from him to look in Erebor’s direction, then angles back to him.

“Well...why do you want to go there? You asked me a bit ago what I think about when my thoughts go to the Shire, what is it about that mountain that pops into that head of yours when it’s all quiet? Is it the gold?”

There had been golden light from fires and small lights lit with an ancient magic. Hunks of crystals lit from within, inscribed with runes and radiant with a soft light that put off no heat, yet warmed something in the heart when you looked at them. Tapestries with golden threads and the light dancing over stone walls. He remembers the few stories he’s already told Bilbo of it, of everything Erebor was to Thorin.

“It’s home.” Thorin breathes, and there is so much more in his head, so much more that Erebor is, but nothing that he could say.

Bilbo tilts his head, considering, then gives a short and sharp nod. “Right. Well that sounds all sorted to me then. If you’ve fallen under any sort of sickness it’s a home sickness. Which isn’t anything I would worry about.”

“I can not afford to fall to anything else.” Thorin shrugs, meaning it to be flippant, casual, but there’s still the flaw of concern to it.

He can not afford to fall.

“Oh don’t worry about that.” Bilbo replies, the old teasing shortness to his tone returning. “If you start going bonkers, I’ll just knock some sense into you. Goodness knows someone around here needs to do the job at times.”

In spite of himself, of the memories of smoke and fire and blood and worries for a strain that runs deep in his line, Thorin ducks his head on a small smile and a huff. Of course Bilbo would make it sound like a simple matter of common sense, the sort that only a hobbit could bring.

“Are you sure you could reach my head to do any knocking, master hobbit?” Thorin asks, and can’t help but look over with a growing grin at the explosion of shocked sputtering.

“I could knock you a bit right now! If you need so much proof! Can I reach? Really! You’re not some towering thing that I can’t pop you over the head if I think you may need it!” Bilbo snaps, brandishing his walking stick threateningly, and Thorin lifts his head to laugh, feeling the key around his neck weigh a little less heavily.

-------------------

The nightmares never did improve.

They changed subject, tone, length, but their existence seems to be a fixed point.

Some nights he stands in halls of gold, red blood splashed like liquid ruby to gilded stone and running in bright rivulets down the warm metal. His Company lies in heaps around him, limbs hacked and muscles torn apart, deep gouges and slices laying the still steaming innards of those who swore loyalty to him out on the shining floor. A golden sword is in his hand, blood dripping in sticky globs to his feet from it’s edge, and when he wakes he will still feel the weight of it against his fingers.

Some nights he only watches through dead eyes, standing in a superheated body he cannot control. He watches as the molten gold pours from the statue of Thror and crashes around him. Instead of the dragon, it drowns Fili and Kili. Thorin watches without moving as the molten metal burns them alive before it consumes them, searing their skin and lighting their hair as they scream.

Some nights there is only quiet, and a distant thrumming that beats like a slow heartbeat through his mind. Those nights he feels like he is lost and adrift, cold and trapped in his mind and so so small. The thrumming calls to him with warmth and grandness and the promise that he could be so, so much more, yet he finds himself shrinking away from it’s pull.

Some nights, Bilbo stands before him, hands lightly resting in Thorin’s, looking up at him with sad, dark eyes.

“Did you really think I could stay?” Bilbo would ask, head tilted to the side with that little crooked twist of a smile he would get when he smiles because he did not seem to know what other expression to make. “I can’t, Thorin. I can’t. And I likely never did. You know that now, don’t you? That I very likely did not love you?”

“I know.” Thorin will say, numb, blank, burning. Only standing still as Bilbo shakes his head and fades away.

Some nights he dreams that he wakes in the same cot he fell asleep on, rough sheets under his cheek and a weight filling the small space by him. He will wake slowly, watch firelight glinting on the amber-gold hair that is more the gold of crop fields than the gold within the mountain. Bilbo will smile up at him with those same dark eyes. A real smile this time, slight and tender and piercing like the way he used to smile in the quiet moments when they would sit together and talk of nothing. Thorin brushes a curl of hair from Bilbo’s face, winds his fingers through the soft strands, and Bilbo will reach up and rest his hand over Thorin’s.

“You know I always come back.” Bilbo will say, and it’s only those nights that Thorin is sure he is dreaming, and can not decide if this is better or worse than his usual terrors.

Three and a half weeks after Bilbo left, two weeks after Thorin accepted the weight of the new crown of Erebor, and he is well used to sleepless nights. He takes what rest he can manage, clings to the scraps of true sleep that he can, takes what moments he needs to catch his breath and stop the wild hammer of his heart in the morning, and carries on.

His side is mostly healed, he can breath without it pulling against his ribs,  he is able to walk well enough now. There is much to be done.

He is not well rested, but rested enough, now in a sparsely furnished room within one of the more intact buildings of Dale, back straight and tense as he sits at the wood table. Balin stands on one side as his adviser, Dwalin on the other as his new General of Erebor’s armies. Fili as his heir is just behind his left shoulder, and Bofur and Bifur stand behind them all as his personal guard.

King Bard and King Thranduil sit across from him.

Thranduil leans back in his simple chair as if it’s a throne, hands light on the armrests and eyes hooded while he regards Thorin with the same small smirk that he always wears. Thranduil sits as if he isn’t the visitor here, as if Thorin and Bard are honored to be in his mere presence and he isn’t a near-invader.

The only thing that keeps Thorin from finding something to throw at his pale, gaunt face is the hint of dark smudges under his eyes that mar the usually smooth and eerily flawless complexion.

It’s out of no sense of pity that the small signs of stress deter Thorin. He only wants to take time to enjoy the visible wear on Thranduil’s face while it’s there.

It’s easier to look at Bard, who is stiff, grim as ever, tense as he rests his forearms on the table and regards Thorin with narrow eyes.

“So, it’s as easy as this?” He asks. “Three carts of the gold you would have killed us all for, delivered without a peep?”

Fili shifts behind him, leather creaking ominously, though fortunately his nephew keeps control of himself. Thorin takes a slow breath and does not begrudge the suspicious glare of Bard’s face.

“I can not atone for the loss and bloodshed brought on by my actions while under the sway of the sickness-”

Thranduil scoffs, a short mocking noise in his throat, and the dwarves instantly tense behind Thorin, hands adjusting on weapons. For a second Thorin reconsiders the decision he and Balin had agreed on to remain non hostile and not let Thranduil goad him. His fists curl on the table, but fortunately before he can decide if this entire meeting can hang itself or not, Bard shoots a quick look at the elf, who surprisingly only gives a short huff and slides his eyes away to gaze out the window as if the entire thing has lost interest to him.

Thorin lets out the breath he was holding, not questioning whatever just transpired as long as it shut Thranduil up with minimal violence.

“As I said, I can not repay the lives lost, but I can honor my word and give the men of Esgaroth whatever tools they may need to rebuild their lives.”  Thorin relaxes slightly as he talks, the words well rehearsed and planned out. “Erebor hopes to rebuild the alliance and trade with Dale, and both kingdoms will need to work together so that we can rebuild. I have some of my kin in the Iron Hills working to open up the old trade routes and as we speak, agreements are being made to bring supplies, and word is being spread of Erebor’s reclamation. Many will come looking for work, and any dwarf who wishes to work within Dale is welcome to it. My kin, Dain of the Iron Hills, has also offered the assistance of his accountants and merchants to take on those among your men who are interested in starting work managing the growing economy of Dale.”

Bard nods and listens, fingers tapping slowly on the table as he considers Thorin’s words. “So,” He says slowly, looking over the dwarves standing behind Thorin. “Am I rebuilding a kingdom of men? Or simply starting a debt under the dwarf King? I would have Dale be it’s own independent city, though an alliance would be best for the both of us.”

Suspicion, everything always tainted with the suspicion. And Thorin wishes he could still hold on to the old anger over it, instead of understanding it all too well. He can not blame Bard’s concerns, when Thorin hardly trusts his own motivations at times these days.

“What I offer comes with no expectations of repayment or debt. Instead this is hoping to pay back the people of Esgaroth who slayed the dragon Smaug and lost much in the battle with Azog. I offer the assistance of Dain’s men because they are free contractors who owe no allegiance to Erebor and offer to work of their own free will. They stand at the city gates now with the gold we brought to settle the first debt of my word.”

The three carts of gold, the ones that had pulled at Thorin’s chest through the ride to Dale. Even with their load covered and hidden, he felt a sickening lurch with each step away from Erebor that they were dragged. It was a small enough pull that he could ignore it, could ignore the heat and thrumming that came with it, and he made no mention of it to any of his company.

Bard considers Thorin for a few more moments, then nods shortly. “Done.” With that he reaches into his coat and pulls out a small wrapped bundle, barely larger than his fist.

Thorin’s breath stops in his lungs, the world narrowing to the small package and the innocuous clunk it makes when Bard lays it on the table between them.

Thorin is aware that the human is talking, can hear the words as if they come to him through water that grows deeper and darker when Bard tugs a string and opens the cloth.

The arkenstone shines with such a light that the rest of the world grows dark around it. It glows not with a light of it’s own making, but a light that it pulls from around it, sucking it from the air and capturing it in fantastic prisms.

Such a small thing, such a little thing that has the weight of a mountain within it’s heart. He realizes he never actually touched the stone in his life. Even when he was a youngling in Erebor, he never was able to reach out and feel if it was as warm as the light within it lead him to believe. A human had put his hands on the arkenstone before the King Under the Mountain did.

And before the human, it was a hobbit.

(-How could this happen?

His claim. Bilbo’s claim. Did he not understand? Did he not realize his claim was to the mountain, was to Thorin just as Thorin had a claim over him? That he was the only thing equal in measure to the arkenstone. That Thorin needed only the arkenstone with Bilbo, and the gold to both of them, to have everything he had desired?

How could this happen. How could he do this? Everything Thorin loved everything he had felt so sure of, thrown in his face.

Bilbo’s claim.

He’s been blind before this. Blind in his love, blinded to the truth of having a burglar in his company.

Bilbo was the only good point in the world, the only thing that could be trusted. A soft light and softer smile, an acorn on a palm and gentle words drifting through Thorin’s tangled mind.

And it was all a falsehood.              All a trick.                

A lie.

It had to be it all had to be a lie.

Even now Bilbo stood there small and defenseless, with serious eyes and a drawn face. Looking small and incredible and perfect.

Speaking sweet words of concern and worry.

Everything about him is a lie.

It’s all a  l  i  e…-)

Thorin takes a slow breath, feels the thickness of the air drain away as he breathes in, the darkness in the room receding as his senses come back to him.

A short jerk of the head to Balin, and without any words the elder dwarf reaches out and bundles the arkenstone back up. Thorin ignores the flare of heat and rage at the sight of another touching the stone, clamps down on the feeling of wrongness when Balin tucks it away somewhere.

Bard leans back in his chair, seeming not to have noticed the small turmoil caused by the stone.

“So we are settled then? I can gather my men and find those who are interested in trade, I know there are still a few merchants and shop owners left who would be up to the task. For now the main concern is supplies for the winter. I understand you have trade with your kin, and I am working with the woodland realm to bring in crops that could grow well in the soil down around Esgaroth.”

“A lgreat number of pretty words.” Thranduil says slowly, turning his head to regard Thorin again. “But you already gave your word once to the people of Esgaroth, and we have seen what that led to. Why should we accept your words now? Why should we accept  the vows of a king who lacks all honor?”

Thorin’s words strike back at him, cracking like a blow and leaving him dumb in his seat, reeling not with rage, but with the awful truth of it.

(-”You gave us your word!"

 

                                                    

“I would not trust the word of King Thranduil…”

 

 

                           “Is this treasure truly worth more than your honor?”-)                           

“My uncle was sick!” Fili spits. “And he is the only one of his line who was able to recover-”

“Fili. Enough.” Thorin says sharply, and his nephew quiets, though he still nearly vibrates with repressed rage. Thranduil tilts his head and smirks at Fili, as if the entire display was some quaint amusement, then looks back to Thorin.

“A sickness,” He says, draws the word out as if it’s some joke he hasn’t quite worked out yet. “Yes we have all heard word of the terrible sickness of Durin’s line. A pretty way to describe what I would call nature. But let’s say this is simply a sickness and not a character.” Thorins fists clench in front of him, but he keeps himself as still as he can despite the rush of blood in his ears, even when Thranduil’s smirk curls wider and the pale eyes flash in triumph. “If this is a sickness, how are we to know he simply won’t fall under it’s sway again?”

They prepared for this, had even discussed the possibility of such a thing among themselves, but Thorin still feels a hot slide of shame through him. He thinks of the pull of the gold, the thrumming heat in his nightmares and hates that he can not even look Thranduil in the face as he nods towards Balin, who steps forward instantly.

“We have prepared for such an event, and King Thorin is sound of mind now, but knows that there is a risk within his line.” Balin says stiffly, reaching into his coat and pulling out a roll of paper. “As such we have written out an official proclamation from the King himself. In the event that Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, son of Thror, should fall under the Dragon Sickness again, to be determined by his advisor, Balin son of Fundin; then the rule of Erebor shall be taken from him and passed to his heir and nephew, Fili, son of Dis and Vili. This is signed by Thorin Oakenshield son of Thrain, and witnessed by Balin son of Fundin, and Dain son of Nain, King in the Iron Hills.”

The roll is handed to Bard, who watches Thorin with a small frown, then takes the paper with a nod, opening it to scan over the agreement written out.

“Dale accepts this.” He says, after reading through a few times. “But we can trust Balin son of Fundin to judge fairly on this? I know how your people value loyalty, why would Balin work against his king if the need arises?”

“Balin saw both my grandfather Thror, and later myself fall to the sickness.” Thorin says quietly, eyes on the wood grain of the table. “He is the only one I would trust to be able to judge wisely and fairly on my state of mind. And I have in word that he will act against me if I should fall, and I would take his word to the grave.”

Bard nods, rolls the paper back up, and hands it back to Balin. “It’s in our best interest to work together. For the sake of moving forward, I can accept this. This is settled then.”

“Business between Erebor and Dale may be settled.” Thranduil says smoothly, eyes bright and pale as they watch Thorin with unabashed amusement.

For a few seconds, Thorin considers again the benefits versus the costs of not going to war on the damned point ears and raising the whole cursed forest.

He settles for glaring at the mibilkhags scum instead, and raises his hand slightly, not breaking his glare as the small heavy chest is dropped heavily onto the table by him.

“There.” He snarls, not bothering for nicety as he shoves the chest roughly towards the elf. “The gems promised by my grandfather Thror. Consider your debt paid.”

Thranduil raises an eyebrow, one elegant hand lightly lifting to the chest and raising the lid just enough for him to look in on the starlight jewels. Pale eyes narrow as he shuts the lid sharply, pushing the chest to the side so he can tilt his chin up and narrow his eyes directly at Thorin.

“Paid? You consider this settlement?” He says softly, the mocking note gone and replaced by something far darker. “After the blood of my people has been spilled over this cursed land in defense of your twice cursed and sick mountain? You would consider giving what was already owed proper payment?”

“Aye.” Dwalin growls. “Your full payment is us not declaring war on the lot of you.”

“You did not come here with your armies to defend us.” Thorin says before Thranduil can respond to Dwalin. “You came here as invaders. Bard’s people had just cause to take up arms against us, but you came here before knowing of the sickness as plunderers hoping to ransack a defenseless mountain. Dwalin has the right of it, your only payment is the fact that we’ll forget this and I will ask Dain of the Iron Hills not to take offense to you riding against his kin!”

Bard watches the two in silence, face grim and judging as he looks between the two other kings.

“You-” Thranduil snarls, hands bracing on the armrests, the elegant drape of them turned to clawed fingers as if he’s close to standing up and reaching for his sword right there.

“You had said you came for the jewels, and because the dwarves had invaded your home.” Bard interrupts quietly, face unreadable as he looks at Thranduil.

“Invaded!” Thorin snorts back a laugh, and it’s not exactly a happy one but he can say it’s the first honest laugh he’s been able to have in a long time. So that’s what excuses Thranduil used! Thorin doesn’t bother holding back the grin he shoots at Thranduil, who sneers back at him. “The woodland realm of King Thranduil must be in trouble indeed, if a band of thirteen lost dwarves is an invasion.”

“You came armed into my kingdom-”

“You held my company hostage to try and force my hand for the very jewels you have in front of you! You want repayment? Dwalin is right that we should repay you with our axes for the insults you have done to my kin and I!”

“You-!” Thranduil shoots up, and Thorin is on his feet in an instant, the dwarves behind him snarling threats in Khuzdul and reaching for various weapons.

“Enough!” Bard barks. “We are here to work on rebuilding the alliances of our kingdoms and moving forward! So if we could finish this without you two starting a new war, I would be much obliged!”

Thranduil jerks his head in Bard’s direction, lifting his chin and staring down hard at the human, who stays sitting and glares right back, undaunted by the glare of the elf king.

There are a few tense moments where the two simply glare at each other, Thorin can not guess what passes between them, but Thranduil looks away in the end with a scoff, turning from them to busy himself with the wines and glasses set on a nearby cart.

Thorin sits back heavily in his chair, still glowering at the elf’s back and gleefully imagining burying an axe in it and ruining the light silvery material of that cloak with a few bloodstains. “Are we done here?”

“I would hope so.” Thranduil says nastily as he pours himself a generous goblet of wine.

“There is one more matter.” Bard says slowly, ignoring the looks shot by elf and dwarf at him. “It doesn’t sit well with me, seeing the halfling sent away in shame.”

Thranduil tilts his head slightly in their direction, not fully turning, but paying attention again.

Thorin feels a shock through him that scoops him out and leaves him wordless and numb. No one has mentioned Bilbo since he’s been able to leave the recovery rooms. He sees the concerned looks, the frowns from some, but no one has dared mention the halfling directly.

“I know he committed a crime against your people,” Bard goes on, still frowning at Thorin, “but it was for peace. I do not like the idea that he was cast out from those he risked himself to save, no matter what his means were. And he did it not for us, but to save you all. He was quite clear on that point. ”

Of course he would be. Of course Bilbo would want to make it very clear that he was not doing anything for Bard or Thranduil. Bilbo’s own odd sense of loyalty, that let him see the betrayals that needed to be done for the sake of keeping those he cared for alive. It was an act of cunning, of bravery, of back stabbing pain, and Bilbo was the only of them who could do it. And the only one who could do it and then return. Return to stare unflinching into the rage of a mad King.

And they thought he had been cast off, sent away, when the truth was far better and far worse. Bilbo had fled. Not from wrath, but from an unwanted love forced onto him.

“Bilbo didn’t-!” Fili begins, but Thranduil’s silken smooth voice slides in before he can finish, the elf turning smoothly with the small smile returning to it’s usual place.

“Oh don’t trouble yourself with the fate of the halfling, King Bard, Bilbo Elf Friend has been well received and was welcomed in my kingdom when he passed through with Mithrandir.”

There’s a ringing in Thorin’s head, high and whining and dragging like nails on glass. “Elf friend?” He repeats numbly.

It’s a title given very carefully, one only gifted by the elvish rulers, one that lasts through the life of whoever it’s bestowed on.

“Oh yes,” Thranduil says lightly, head tilting and smiling down at Thorin with a calm sureness and blazing eyes. “I granted the title on Mr. Baggins of the Shire for his efforts in stopping war and saving lives. He also was kind enough to give me a gift of some emeralds he found within Erebor, saying their color reminded him of the trees of my home. Such kindness is not to be overlooked. The dwarves of Erebor may cast him out and stay blind the value, but Bilbo Baggins will always be welcome by the elves.”

Thorin needs to find the rage, knows it’s somewhere roiling underneath the ringing shock that’s clouding his mind. There’s the blaze of rage and a sickening twist somewhere, remembering Bilbo’s wide eyed wonder at the elves of Rivendell, his bright smiles as he discussed some ballad or another with a group of the tall beings. Thorin can see that smile now, those wondering stares, in Thranduil’s halls.

“Bilbo didn’t get kicked out!” Bofur snaps, breaking the tense silence that fell over the kings, Thorin still sitting in shock as Thranduil smirked down at him, and Bard glanced between the two with a befuddled frown.

“Did he not?” Thranduil asks, eyebrows going up in feigned surprise.

Thorin lifts a hand to silence Bofur before his guard can go on, but he can hear the angry aborted noises behind his shoulder. “Master Baggins,” Thorin says, the name sitting heavy on his tongue and his voice coming out stiff and hollow, “left of his own free will after our differences were settled. He left without announcement, and before he could be properly rewarded for his services to Erebor.”

Bard nods, satisfied with the answer, but Thranduil’s smile is a razor edge.

“Really? I wouldn’t think he could have been given a greater reward for the shirt of mithril he wore.”

Thorin feels a swoop of raking horror, as he stares into the hard, pale eyes.

“Unless,” Thranduil adds softly, smile widening and voice calmly curious, “that was not a reward?”

He knows.

Thranduil knows, and Thorin is only distantly aware of the snarled “Mibilkhags kakhf!” from Bofur and enraged growls from Dwalin and Bifur. Fili actually takes a step forward, hand moving to his belt before Balin grabs him with a hissed whisper. Bard begins to push himself out of his seat, eyes widening in confused alarm and darting between the smirking, unmoving elf and the bristling dwarves gathered to Thorin’s back.

“We’re just...glad to know there is no bad blood with the halfling.” Bard says carefully, holding a hand out as if he’s calming a wild animal as he stares back and forth between Thorin and Thranduil.

“Yes, such a relief.” Thranduil sighs, sipping at his wine. Thorin shoves up out of his chair, close to shaking with suppressed rage, shame, horror, disgust, all clamoring at once through  him.

“We are finished here.” He announces through his teeth, turning and marching out of the room, down and out the door to where their rams are tied up before he can hear any response, paying no heed to the scrambling behind him as his entourage tries to keep up.

“Thorin-” Balin starts, catching up to him, a hand reaching out to his arm to stop him that Thorin yanks away from.

“Leave it!” He hisses.

“You did-”

“I said leave it, Balin!” Thorin growls, throwing himself up onto his ram and kicking off, rushing ahead before anyone else can try to talk to him. His fists are white knuckled on the reins, the leather biting into the pads of his fingers and he stares hard at his shaking hands as he passes the piles of gold brought to the men of Dale.

The thrumming pounds louder than it did before, a promise of heat and relief and strength that would wipe out the wrecked jumble that ravages his mind. Balin assured him that Gandalf lifted every trace of the dragon’s miasma from the treasure before he left, no more would fall to the sickness. No one else felt the pull.

It’s only Thorin. No curse, no dark magic, only his own mind.

He keeps his eyes on his hands, focuses on the shaking, on keeping his grip steady.

‘King Thorin is sound of mind now’

Thorin shudders, and the ride back to Erebor is in tense silence. He’s aware of his dwarves riding alongside and behind him, of the concerned glances shot over his back and drawn faces.

Each of them is ignored, and no one stops him when he continues to ignore them and strides as fast as his still pained foot will allow him back to his rooms. No one stops him when he shuts the door hard and slides the bolt shut. No one has to see him slump against the wood, sucking in air and feeling trapped in the locked room that he put himself in.

There is a heat to his back, seeping past the wood. He knows if he follows the warmth, it will draw him deeper into the mountain. He knows exactly what path it will lead him down, can envision every step of it as clearly as if he were walking it now.

Thorin keeps the door bolted shut, shuts his eyes against the thrumming promise of forgetting and not caring, of the solid strength that would wipe out the visions of Bilbo riding into Mirkwood welcomed as Elf Friend.

 

‘King Thorin is of sound mind now...’

 

‘of sound mind now’

 

The nightmares return when sleep finds him, after hours of sitting on his cot and staring at the door that locks him away from the draw of heat and gold.

It’s a new one, where he stands in Thranduil’s halls before the throne again, in the same place he shouted Thranduil’s betrayal for the entire kingdom to hear. Where he wanted every point-eared scum to know what their king was.

Bilbo stands at the first step up to Thranduil’s throne, face grave and carved in tense lines and shadows around his eyes and mouth. There are strings of gems in his hair, brilliantly white and shining like stars caught in the curls. The gems of Lasgalen, strung around Bilbo like pretty little decorations.

Bilbo sighs, mouth a thin line of disappointment, and throws something down from him. The mithril lands with a delicate shimmer of sound at Thorin’s feet, pooling like quicksilver at his boots.

“You lack all honor.” Bilbo says, not angry like Thorin’s bellow had been, but small and sad and stiff.

Thorin wakes with the light of the woodland realm glinting in Bilbo’s hair and scrambles onto the floor, the gleaming of white gems in his mind and the pull of heat and thrumming tugging at his body while he vomits into the pail by his bed.
-----------

Bilbo starts fitting into life with the dwarvish company with such ease, that Thorin wonders if the halfling has really noticed.

It has been such a gradual shift that it’s hard to really place when the change happened. It’s less like Bilbo changing, and more like Bilbo growing more into himself. There is an ease there that Thorin can not recall seeing when they first set out; smiles that come as easily as the frowns, laughs bursting without reservation, and sharp words snapping out from where they would have once been kept clenched back under tense scowls.

It’s very difficult for Thorin to tear his eyes from the change.

At the moment Gloin is discussing the possible trade routes that could be reopened once Erebor is retaken, the alliances with the Iron Hills, the restoration of Esgaroth, and how they would need to seek routes to the agricultural lands first. Thorin listens with half an ear, trying to remember the names of all those that his grandfather had mentioned in trade meetings.

The records had to be kept somewhere, perhaps Ori would be of use there, he had always been the scribe.

It’s hard to pay full attention to what he has to admit is a very important matter when his eye is constantly drawn to the other side of the fire they’re circled around.

Bilbo is lounging on a stump and leaning back on a nearby tree, legs out and crossed at the ankle and smoking his pipe like he’s a lord set on a throne, instead of a bedraggled hobbit with traces of orc blood still on his once-white shirt. His face is creased in a rare honest grin, lips curled around the pipe gripped in his teeth and eyes lit up as he listens to some story Bofur is telling with wild gestures.

The -Ur family has become Bilbo’s usual group at the end of the day. The four of them will often start bickering amongst themselves as soon as camp is struck, starting with Bombur and Bilbo fighting over who is going to cook for the night, accompanied by gestures from Bifur and unhelpful commentary by Bofur. It’s an odd little group, and Thorin wouldn’t have thought of Bofur’s usually coarse humor as being to Bilbo’s taste, but the hobbit has always been full of surprises. And judging from the number of rolled eyes and offended yelling, perhaps it isn’t to Bilbo’s taste, though there are enough grins shared between them still.

Thorin keeps glancing over, unwilling to look away for long from the confident leisure that Bilbo wears like a mantle as he sits amongst the dwarves. His fingers twiddle with the pipe, the edge of his thumb sliding over smoothed wood and fingertips hooked over the long stem. His clothes are also a bit more loose, the buttonless waistcoat hanging more loosely open than it had a month ago, and trousers only held up by the bracers.

Thorin frowns at the loose clothes, he had thought they were better about making sure their burglar was getting enough to eat, after it was discovered that the halflings ran on more food than dwarves did. It was a group effort, getting Bilbo to eat enough without it becoming apparent that the halfling was being “fussed over.” Bilbo refused to make himself a bother, so it was largely through a series of making sure everyone happened to have apples, waybread, or other easily grabbed bits of morsels that could be tossed over to Bilbo with minimal suspicion. It seemed they needed to increase their efforts, perhaps he should talk with Bofur on the matter.

He thinks on how best to approach the subject, still watching Bilbo bantering with the other dwarves but not fully paying attention to them. Part of Thorin’s mind is on when he can pull Bofur aside to bring up the matter of keeping their hobbit properly fed, (and Bofur is certainly the best one to discuss it with, being the closest friend Bilbo has made of them) and part of it on the way Bilbo’s lips curl around the pipe when he grins.

Thorin’s still only half paying attention when he registers that Bilbo’s looked back at him, face going through the usual litany of expressions, eyebrows going up, then down, then together, then going up again, but this time with a slow, wide and crooked smile. Bilbo’s hands dart up in front of him, movements a little clumsy and fumbling, but they’re clear enough that Thorin’s mouth nearly drops open when he recognizes the iglishmêk signs.

‘What are you look at’ Bilbo signs, looking very pleased with himself. Bifur grins next to him and gives him an encouraging thumbs up.

Thorin couldn’t stop the amazed smile if he tried, couldn’t be bothered to care about Dwalin’s disgusted noise next to him as he gestures back with a dazed grin.

‘Where did you learn that?’ He signs, feeling euphoric when Bilbo squints at his hands. He repeats it, a little slower so the hobbit can follow the movements of his fingers.

Bilbo’s face clears, and he nods with a smile, then squints his face back up in concentration as he stumbles through the reply.

‘Bofur and Bifur teach me so I could talk Bifur’

Bofur eyes Thorin nervously as Bilbo puffs up with pride next to him, completely unaware, not having a single clue that he isn’t supposed to know any of this. That iglishmêk, Khuzdul, it’s all taught to the dwarves at a young age, and the lesson ‘don’t teach the outsiders’ is hammered over and over until it’s engraved in their minds.

Do not teach the outsiders.

Bilbo grins with pride, eyes shining and his hands were small and gentle in the movements, nothing dwarvish about it at all and Thorin’s heart pounds with a thrill as Bilbo slides more into their world without understanding how phenomenal it is.

Bofur relaxes a bit when he realizes Thorin is not going to punish him as any proper King would, and Bilbo has no idea. None at all.

‘You’re terrible at it.’ Thorin signs with a smirk, keeping his gestures slow enough for Bilbo to follow. ‘Your gestures are too sloppy.’

He can see Bilbo’s mouth open and sputter on some sort of offended protests, but can’t quite hear what he’s sure is a fantastic bit of muttering, if the indignant glare is anything to go by. Bilbo turns to Bofur, whispering something furiously, and Thorin watches with an amused tilt to his mouth as Bofur guides Bilbo’s hands through something.

Bilbo turns back to face Thorin, triumphant and eyes alight as he signs something.

Thorin’s eyebrows go up. Bofur nearly falls off his log as he explodes laughing.

Bilbo’s moment is gone and his face falls into the lost frown he gets when he has no idea what is going on, but knows that it’s at his expense.

‘What did I just say?’ He signs awkwardly. Thorin can’t hold it back anymore, can’t stop the fit of laughter that grabs him and has him doubling over and clutching his side as he tries to sign back as clearly as he can as he shakes with maniacal cackling.

‘It is good my mother is dead, or I would be far more offended by it.’

This time he can hear the scandalized gasp across the fire, and the yelp from Bofur when Bilbo thumps him on the shoulder, and Thorin nearly falls into Dwalin he’s laughing so hard, only laughing harder when Dwalin shoves him onto the ground with another disgusted snort and a small smile even he can’t quite hide.

 

---------

 

Thorin wonders that he must be doing something horrifically wrong, because this is feeling too easy.

He lays the arkenstone deep within the tombs of Erebor, nestled in a stone chest held in the hands of a likeness of Durin the Deathless, head bowed to watch over the heart of the mountain and all those who had died defending it.

It was done quietly, without great pomp, and Thorin had walked out of the tombs feeling a pull that lessened with each step.

It is too easy. He’s spent so long longing for and dreading the rule of Erebor, balking at all that would need to be done, remembering the madness and wild scrambling for resources that it took to start something somewhat habitable in the ruins of Belgarast.

Turning Belgarast into the colony of Ered Luin had him with nothing but what work he could do and what scraps of alliances he could pull together with Dis’ help. Now he meets with Dain and other lords in the Iron Hills, he makes agreements on he best trade to reopen, what supplies to start with. He has an entire mountain of gold that he has at his disposal, though he has not dared to go back down there.

Instead there are plenty of dwarves coming back, dwarves he can assign to tasks like managing the coin of Erebor, to allocating resources.

Gloin is made head of trade without a thought, Ori made lead scribe which also makes him the charge over the Ravens that can still speak. Between the two of them messages are sent out to the other dwarf lords within weeks.

Things fit together.

There are sitll nightmares waiting for him at night, still the thrumming in his mind if he goes too quiet, if he lets his thoughts wander too far from the current needs of his kingdom.

But he can step out and be King Thorin, and the weight of his new crown is grounding, it’s a weight that holds him down and holds his head in place. King Thorin is finding things working well for him, finding alliances and lords working with him, finding himself sliding back into the role of leader and builder as if he had never left it. He may not have Dis’ steady presence by him, but there is Balin, who he listens to more attentively than he ever has before. He can be King, but there are times where he can not trust his own head, when a stray thought is too close to the heated sway of the sickness and leaves him lost and fumbling for the words that he used to be so sure of.

It was too easy, he knew it was, and should have known it would only last for so long.

Balin is smiling as he stands in the door to the room Thorin’s been staying in from the start, though now they’ve dragged a sort of desk into it, and there are stacks of papers all around. Requests, demands, reports, agreements, offers, contracts, all piled in precarious mountains that may be tedious and sheer mental drudgery, but he does not mind the work for the distraction that it is. There are new sheets now, and it’s enough of a change that Thorin can finally get into the cot without feeling a small dip down by his legs where Bilbo had sat and stared at the floor with a hitching voice and wide eyes.

It is better now, but Thorin still finds that he has little patience for some things, such as Balin standing and smiling in the doorway looking pleased and waiting to be asked what he’s found.

“Out with it.” Thorin pushes himself from the chair at his desk, placing a pen neatly on the note detailing the various fungus farming tunnels that should be excavated first. If they are fortunate, a few will still be filled of a variety of mushrooms bred for a variety of flavors and dietary needs.

Balin’s eyes roll up briefly, but he shrugs and strides in, smile still in place. “We’ve finished cleaning out the pathways to the royal chambers, thought you might be getting tired of spending your evenings in an infirmary.”

“It’s served well enough.” Thorin shrugs, feeling a small thread of unease as he gesture Balin to lead the way.

He does not need Balin to lead of course, his own rooms as a child had been connected to the royal wing that housed the King’s chambers as well as the rooms for his entire family. It was built to house generations that Thror was sure would come to be during his rule. But he lets Balin lead, knowing there’s an odd sort of ceremony to this, to leading Thorin from the small corner he’s holed himself up in to the King’s chambers. There’s echoes of activity around them, pockets of noise and business in the still mostly empty mountain. Thorin hears the clang of metal on stone, and mentally lists through all the mining tunnels and pathways to living areas that are being worked on, what’s being rebuilt where, which family homes have been refurbished so far.

Most of the dwarves coming in have been from the Iron Hills, either workers coming for a taste of the glory and the many jobs to fill, or the remnants of the families of Erebor who had fled and settled there instead of continuing west to what would be Ered Luin.

They all look at Thorin with a quiet awe that itches at him and makes him want to slink back to his rooms, though in the busy infirmary wing they hardly afforded him much privacy. At least this will be one advantage of the King’s chambers being cleared.

Bofur’s already waiting at the base of the stairs, dressed smartly in the raiment of the King’s Guard, though Thorin notices they haven’t managed to separate him from the absurd hat that’s always propped over his head. He does sweep it off with a wide grin as Thorin approaches, holding it with a sloppy sort of respect to his chest.

Perhaps he didn’t seem like the most obvious choice as a member of the honour guard, but the -Ur family had no ties of blood and loyalty to Thorin when they agreed to the quest, no reason to stay with him for the whole journey. Bifur joined Dwalin as a second in command over the city defense, Bombur to no ones surprise, settled quickly into the kitchens, which left Bofur. Thorin couldn’t think of anyone else besides his kin he’d want as a guard, and the three dwarves refused any rewards greater than their share of treasure.

That, and Thorin had seen the fierce skill hiding in the loose limbs and wide grins, and knew how lethal Bofur could be with that mattock.

“Your chambers await, all spit-shined and dusted down to every cranny!” Bofur announces, shoving his hat back over his braids. Balin makes half-hearted noises of disapproval over ‘can we at least try for some professionalism?’ that Thorin ignores as he looks up at the heavy stone stairs, their faces engraved with interlocking squares and stylized feathers, flanked by tall grim statues of the past kings of Durin’s line, leading up to the heavy doors of the King’s Chambers.

“You don’t need to look so ‘fraid of your bedroom.” Bofur points out, and Thorin’s mouth twitches in a twist that he hopes slightly resembles a wry smile.

“It feels strange.” He admits. “When I last stood here, I would have simply continued on that way,” he points to the left, to the path’s swooping into recesses behind the stairs that lead to the royal family rooms, “and gone on to my room. Occasionally I would visit my Grandfather, but he usually preferred to visit us down here.”

Bofur nods as if he already knew every word of it, and leans on his mattock. “Well it’s all yours now. Though I took a gander in there when they were clearin away all the debris and cobwebs and spiders, mind. Figured it wouldn’t do no harm seeing as I’d be stuck in front of it for most of my time, and it’s just too big in there if you ask me. I don’t see why anyone would need quite as much space as all that, least of all one dwarf. I used t’wonder about Kings but I know one now and you lot don’t take up any more space than anyone else I ever met. Even with all your flailin about at ni-”

Bofur stops with a garbled noise, and Thorin can’t bring himself to be offended when the other dwarf looks like he’s ready to swallow how tongue for how it went on. He only sighs and has to shrug at the truth of it, he’s woken up with sheets a tangled mess around him too often to try and pretend his sleep is restful.

“Let’s just get this over with.” Thorin grumbles, taking the lead up the stairs. The quicker they opened the King’s chambers, the quicker he could move in officially, and the quicker he could go back to his work.

Bofur and Balin fall into silence behind him, and Thorin’s grateful that there is no ceremony to this, no pomp and audience, which he’s sure he has Balin to thank for. Bofur steps around him with the grin back in place, though it’s still on the apologetic side as he pushes one of the heavy wooden doors open.

The royal chambers swing into view and

             Gold.

Thorin feels the punch through his sternum, feels a grab around his heart and a sharp pained twist that robs the air from his lungs.

Every pillar and tile on the floor, each swooping arch and paneled wall is glimmering and decorated with sheets and bars and twists of

Gold.
     
                           Beyond measure.

He takes a step back, lungs spasming and the sounds of voices barely filtering in over the roaring thrumming of a heartbeat through his mind and promises the sweet promises-

        Beyond loss.

‘This is what you’ve earned. This is what you are. Why wallow in what was when this is what you can be? King Under the Mountain, King of the- no no no-’

       Beyond grief.

Thorin wrenches himself away from the door, stumbles through swimming red (gold gold gold) vision until his hand hits the stone of one of the statues, the grim blank eyes of Durin the Deathless looking down at him as he heaves onto the carved robes.

“Thorin!” He doesn’t know which of them is yelling, doesn’t know whose hand is at his back, quickly drawn back like it doesn’t know what to do as Thorin desperately tries to find breath again.

“Strip it!” He shouts, eyes shut tight against the mess of sick he’s left at his feet and pressing his forehead against the cool stone of the statue. His skin is jumping and prickling in chilled gooseflesh though he would swear he’s burning, burning and scorching in the thrumming heat pulsing from the room crashing and mingling with the hot shame low in his gut.

“What are y-”

“I want it stripped!” He gasps, and there’s a wildly hysterical thought that it is a very good thing Balin made this a private affair. “Every scrap of gold! I want it out of there!”

He’s aware of voices, calling his name, pulling him away, the sound of a door slamming shut. But all of it is drowned, drowned under the roaring in his skull and lost to the chill on his skin contrasting with the scorching heat in his lungs and the hot slice of shame low in his gut.

----------------------------

Gold glows under him, the soft light of it has been a warm comfort, a thick syrupy balm oozing over to cover the scalding chaos of his mind. It was power, it was respect, it was a promise of the sort of solid foundation that was always denied to him.

Thorin drifts over the gold, hears his footsteps an unsteady staggering against the smooth surface of it, stares into the lush reflections and tries desperately to find that same warm comfort.

He needs that comfort needs the stability of it that it’s brought to him needs it now more than ever what can he go to if not this? When he can not trust his heart (held in the hands of a human held in the dark eyes of the only one who held his heart enough to crush it so neatly with such betrayal) could not trust his kin and friends could not trust what he thought was sure and steady by his side then what else could there be but this?

What else could Thorin be?

 

He was not his grandfather.

 

                                 He is not Thorin Oakenshield.

                                                                He is King Under the Mountain he is Lord of Erebor he is the ruler the holder the claimer of this wealth.                             He WAS-

-You are lesser now than you ever have been.-

                    He is not some low dwarf lord he is not that small shattered WEAK notthekingnottherightfulnotenoughnotenoughnot-

-You've changed, Thorin!-

 There's nothing nothing but the gold glowing warm inviting

                                                                                      burningsmotheringscorching

 

               Coming over him and shielding him he is Lord

                                                    drowningdraggingheisnothingtheresnothingbutgoldheisnothing

The soothing warmth is gone and there’s nothing but heat heat burning scorching and blistering and the dragonfire growling through his heart and roaring deafening consuming but still it’s not enough not enough to drown the quiet whispers


-Is this gold really worth more than your honor?-

 

--------------------------

 

Thorin spends several days absolutely certain that Balin will come in, sad apologies in his eyes, and holding the thick roll of paper they’d all agreed on. Signed by him, witnessed and read out to the other kings.

’King Thorin is of sound mind now...’

Balin does return a few hours after Thorin’s quick retreat back to the infirmaries, and Thorin feels a tight dread in his chest, but also a sort of calm, tranquil acceptance as he opens the door.

“I’ve had a group go in and start tearin the gold out of there.” Balin says without any further introduction. “I am so sorry lad, I should have thought to take it out before. There are some seams of raw gold still within the roof, y’want those covered up as well?”

Thorin blinks, frowns a little, and wonders why they’re still talking as if he’d be in the King’s chambers. “No, those are fine.” He says, off kilter and waiting for the hammer to drop.

Balin nods a bit, thinking that over. “Perhaps it’s only the gold that has been worked then? Something about the crafstmanship put into it perhaps? That’s very interestin’...” Balin trails off, mumbling a bit as he sorts out this new puzzle, and Thorin feels the confused anticipation continue to build in his chest.

They had an agreement. Signed and witnessed. Thorin was not of sound mind, and Balin and Bofur both had witnessed the very obvious truth of this.

Balin is stalling, trying to numb the blow with chatter, and Thorin has no patience for it now.

“Balin!” His fists curl at his sides until his knuckles strain. “Out with it!”

Balin’s eyebrows go up in surprise, and he blinks rapidly at Thorin’s tone.

“Out with what lad? What in the blazes are you shouting about?”

“You saw what happened, I’m not fit. I can’t-”

Balin throws his hands up, making a wordless sound of frustration in his throat. “I’m not here to take your crown Thorin!”

“I’m still mad!” Thorin shouts, the hard fists at his side shaking from the force of too many things all at once. “Did you think being ill just from seeing some golden decorations is the sign of a sound mind? Do you really think I can be trusted as King after-”

“I still trust yeh fine!” Balin says sternly, hands on his hips and glaring hard at Thorin. “You fled from it, Thorin! And the fact that yer even askin’ me to is what let’s me know you aren’t sick.”

Not sick? How could he not be sick? How could he be anything else when his head is still full of thrumming and heat calling for him and tugging him if he let’s his thoughts stray. If he can’t even think on Bilbo without a twisting thought of how easy it would be to fall and forget.

“Did you not see-” He starts, teeth ground together.

“I did! And I’ve also seen people with colds keep coughing after they’re well again!”

“This is not some little sniffle during the winter season!”

“Aye, but it’s sickness all the same!” Balin sighs, deflates slightly and the anger drains from him. “Thorin, I saw what that sickness did to you, what it made you. The precautions I made for if it came back all involved force, because if you were going down that path again you would not let me take the kingship from you. Dwalin and I already discussed it.”

That hits him like a surprise blow to the gut. And it should hurt, it should be a betrayal of the lowest form, that his two closest friends talked together about the possibility of throwing him from his throne with force.

But instead, it feels like relief.

“You’ve...discussed this?” He asks quietly, and Balin nods.

“We know what we’re lookin’ for lad, we know what it does to you. Trust me Thorin, if you start really falling, instead of simply still pickin’ yourself up? We’ll be the first ones to act for your own good. Even if we have you drag you screamin' and ravin' from the mountain to do it.”

That is that, and things go on.

The King’s chambers are stipped of worked gold, quicker than most would of liked, though Thorin doesn’t care about the sections of scraped stone and bare carvings left behind in the haste. Bofur was right, the rooms are large, almost comfortingly spacious so even a closed door does not feel like a trap. And the the gutted harshness following the rough stripping o all the gold makes it feel less like he’s an intruder to Thror’s chambers.

His desk is moved in, a table set so he can spend more time in the wide room by the fire, working late into the night, and things resettle.

And again, he should have known it would only last so long.

And he should have known. Should have known something was going on, when he had hardly seen his nephews in a month.

Should have known something was going on, and when Kili walked into his chambers with wide, nervous eyes, Thorin only thought it was something broken or some other mischief the two got into.

Thorin shoots from his chair, Kili’s stumbling introductions and explanations lost as the elf woman steps in behind him, closely followed by a serious faced Fili.

Every line of her is wrong, long and willowy, the bow of her head respectful, though her eyes are fixed unblinkingly on Thorin. She’s dressed in the deep green of the woods, feet apart in a warrior’s stance, hands clasped smartly behind her back, and a single thin braid over her shoulder, thicker than the usual elvish style, and clasped with a bead at the end.

It’s the red hair that trips Thorin’s memory of the sharp, barking elf woman roughly grabbing Kili’s shoulder in the forest and shouting orders as they were all led into the dank, cramped dungeon.

“What,” Thorin rumbles, “is she doing here?”

The elf drops to a knee with a perfect military crispness, one hand still held behind her back as the other whips around to press a fist to her chest and her head dips down. “King Thorin, son of Thrain. My name is Tauriel, and-”

“And you are Thranduil’s lackey.” Thorin finishes, stalking forward, not bothering to hide the creeping disgust in his tone. “The guard of the cursed woods and what I assume to be a very poorly disguised spy.” Thorin’s mouth twists up at the corner, and he tilts his chin to look down at the crouched elf. “I must admit, this is a new low for the sprite, and poorly thought out, even for him.”

“Uncle!” Kili snaps, taking a half step forward, as if to put himself between Thorin and the elf. “Tauriel is not a spy!”

“Thranduil is not my king.” The elf interrupts, raising her head to look Thorin in the eyes, her gaze hard and set. “I have been banished from the Woodland Realm of the elves.”

“And why,” Thorin sneers, “would you think to come to my halls instead? Did you think you’d find some sanctuary here, elf? Why would you come here?”

She stands fluidly, the movement so smooth and quick that it sets Thorin’s teeth together. The elf stands at Kili’s elbow, just behind and to the side as she holds Thorin’s gaze, and his eyes are again drawn to the sterling bead at the end of the thin braid.

There’s already a roiling sick twist of recognition before Kili speaks up, shaking but determined.

“She is here because I brought her.”

Thorin’s eyes dart between the two, waiting for the follow up, praying for something, anything, to explain further. Anything that would explain more than how close they stand together, how Kili flushes but edges closer still, with the bead that once clasped his hair dangling from hers.

“No.” Thorin states. “If this is a jest, then it is a poorly thought out one.”

“It’s no jest.” Fili murmurs, raising his eyebrows, as if daring for a contradiction.

When did he look so much older?

“Did you really think,” Thorin growls, feeling his stomach churn as he looks at the elf guard of mirkwood and his nephew. “That I would give my blessing to this? That i would allow it? Is your heart so easily swayed by a fair face, Kili? What sweet words did she say to you, to make you think you could take this mibilkhags-”

“Don’t call her that!” Kili shouts.

“You’ve been tricked!” Thorin snarls back, fists balled at his side. The elf woman’s eyes flash, and her hands twitch at her hips. Behind them, Thorin can just see Bofur adjusting his grip on his mattock, eyes wide.

“I have tricked no one.” The elf says, voice stiff and trembling, though she tips her chin up and her face remains impassive. “I have been banished for disobeying my King, and for loving as I will.”

“Love.” Thorin sneers, his guts twisting at the word that sticks like hot tar in his mouth. “You point-ears do so enjoy your talk of it. Using your pretty words to hide only deceit and tricks. Is that what you sweetened my nephew’s ear with so he’d take you in here?”

“She saved Kili’s life. Twice. And she saved both of us once.” Fili announces, hands calmly resting on his belt. “Uncle...” Something in his tone softens and grows grim, and it’s enough that Thorin tears his gaze from the elf in his chambers to regard his nephew.

“Kili very nearly died.” Fili says grimly. “In Laketown, I hate to admit it but you were right to not take him with you. His wound was festering from the orc arrow, and she saved him. She came with the elf prince to hunt the orcs, and she refused to follow him to keep the hunt, instead choosing to stay and heal Kili.”

Thorin’s eyes slide back to the elf, whose eyes blaze, and her jaw clenches, and then Thorin looks back to Fili.

“She got us all outa Laketown, when the dragon attacked.” Bofur adds hesitantly from outside the doorway, then instantly snaps his mouth shut when Thorin shoots a glare at him.

“And she killed the orc Bolg, when he attacked Kili.” Fili finishes.

“Thorin’uzbad.” The elf says, voice firm and officially sharp, and the hairs on Thorin’s arms raise. “Iglib’e amrâlu’e Kili.”

The words catch on her foreign tongue, flowing smooth and elegant, twisted and rounded at what should have been sharp edges. It’s a sickening sacrilege that has Thorin only staring in horrified shock at the elf speaking Khuzdul in Erebor.

“You taught her Khuzdul.” He says faintly, fights clenching tight. “You taught this mibilkhags-”

Khuzdul was taught to young dwarves as the tongue of the mountains, the language of stone and the inheritance of their people. To hear it spoken by an elf, flowing and wrong in another tongue, was a wrong that struck deeper than personal dislike. Even Fili stares at the elf with wide eyes, obviously unaware of this little skill.

“You let Bilbo learn iglishmêk!” Kili snaps. “And don’t call Tauriel that!”

“I am sorry.” Tauriel says quickly, face going pale. “I meant no insult-”

“Your presence in these halls brings insult!” Thorin roars. Unbidden, memories of small hands stumbling over the hand signs spring forward. Iglishmêk was kept secret for practical reasons. It was a way to communicate in front of outsiders, similar to Khuzdul in that regard, but it lacked the sacred history.

“Why are you doing this!?” Kili yells, voice quavering.

“You think this is love?” Thorin asks, and the elf sucks in a sharp breath. “You think this-”

“You’re only jealous!” Kili spits, then freezes his eyes going wide, and behind him Fili hisses through his teeth.

“Jealous?” Thorin prompts, voice low. Kili blinks, swallows, then clenches his jaw and glares back at his uncle, nostrils flaring and face going red.

“You heard me! You’re only jealous because Bilbo-”

“Kili-” Fili says quickly. Thorin’s vision swims in red, and he can’t stop the sharp breath that stabs through his chest.

“Out.” He gasps, then inhales deeply and grits his teeth in a snarl. “I want her out. For the sake of your life I won’t have her thrown out with a sword at her throat! And you-” He points at Kili, who pales and stares at Thorin with wide eyes, “can decide between your so called love of this mibilkhags, and your kin.”

There is no choice there. Not for any dwarf. Not for any raised in the line of Durin. Thorin knows it, knows the low manipulative blow for what it is, and turns away so he doesn’t have to see the lost horror in Kili’s eyes.

Fili had always been the heir, the mastermind, but Kili in ways had been the favored nephew. He was so like Frerin, so wild and bright, a laughing point of light in the dark early days of the rebuilding of Belgarast into Ered Luin.

Thorin thinks of Bilbo in Mirkwood, named Elf Friend, remembers visions of white gems strung through golden brown hair, and can not help but wonder what else he will lose to that cursed forest.

“Uncle, I can’t-”

“You may show her out.” Thorin announces, turning back to his desk, trying to ignore the painful stab in his chest at the pained sound behind him,
“I can’t-” Kili starts, voice breaking off in a confused crack.

“A'maelamin,” the elf’s voice is soft, barely above a whisper for Kili, “do not abandon your kin for my sake. I have your promise still, we will meet again. Come, show me out, and I will need see if there is peace to be made with Thranduil anyway.”

Thorin waits for their footsteps to fade out, Kili’s voice still a strained whisper, before he turns around.

Fili looks out the door after his brother, face twisted and mouth set in a hard line.

“Is there an orc wife you would like to introduce, while we’re at it?” Thorin sighs, falling back into his chair. Fili frowns, and breaks his gaze to look at his uncle.

“You should not have-”

“Don’t.” Thorin grits, having had enough back talk from his nephews for one evening. Fili’s frown tenses further, disapproval in every line of him, then sighs and shakes his head slightly.

“You can not keep him locked up in here.” Fili points out, and Thorin has to agree there. Kili is too much like him in that respect, to tolerate being caged in anywhere.

“No, and I wouldn’t try. If he does not hate me already, then forcing him in here would make it a sure thing.” Thorin leans back in his chair, and decides this is as good a time as any. “I want you to go with him to Ered Luin.”

Fili tilts his head a little, putting the pieces together. “You want us to go get mother?”

“Or at least...try and convince her to visit.” Thorin amends, though he wonders if she ever will. Dis had parted from him with a crack to his face and rage burning in her eyes, and he does not know yet if word would have reached her of their success.
Fili nods, then looks towards the door again.

“Did you mean it?” He asks, voice grave. “That you would make him choose between her and kin?”

Thorin grimaces, running a hand over his forehead. “You have to mean everything you say, when you’re King.” He shrugs. Fili regards him, face unchanging.

“Did Uncle Thorin mean it?” Fili adds, softer and much more serious.

Thorin swallows, and keeps his hand up on his forehead, feeling his eyes burning unexpectedly.

“No.”

-----------------

“So,” Gandalf says without a single greeting, sitting on a bench next to Thorin within Beorn’s spacious home, “when are you planning on telling him?”

For a second, Thorin pauses his cleaning of Orcrist, and seriously considers pretending he has no idea what the damned wizard is talking about. But that would be a pointless effort, and he sighs loudly through his nose and does not dare look up in the direction he knows Bilbo is in.

“So it is true what they say,” Thorin responds, voice forcibly mild, “about wizards and their meddling.”

“You know,” Gandalf says, unfazed by Thorin’s brusqueness and sounding almost amused, “when I decided to bring on a hobbit to change your opinion of them, this is not what I had in mind.”

Thorin decides not to mention that Gandalf hasn’t changed anything, and that as far as Thorin can tell, Bilbo is the exception to the general rule of halflings.

“You can stop hovering about wondering. I do not plan on telling him anything about it until the quest is completed.”

Gandalf sighs, a short sound of frustration following it. “There is a lot that could happen in that time, Thorin.”

“Which is why I won’t be speaking with him about it. This is not the time for testing romance.” Thorin says shortly, already wanting this to be done and for the wizard to stop his prying. Gandalf is wise, and without his help they would hardly have made it this far, but that does not mean Thorin has to like him. Or even trust him overmuch. After the stunt in Rivendell, then leading them right into the lair of a skinwalker who dislikes dwarves, Thorin sees no real reason to trust Gandalf more than the minimum he’s earned as a wizard.

“I find,” Gandalf says, leaning back and crossing his arms, “that there’s almost never is a good time for this sort of thing. And if you sit around waiting too much for the right time, then it’ll all go past and it will all be lost before anything can happen.”

“I’m not telling him Gandalf.” Thorin says shortly. “Not yet.”

Gandalf makes another impatient noise, “I would tell him, before there is the possibility of it being too late.”

And at that, thankfully with no more to say on the matter, the wizard stands and walks off.

---------

Four months after.

By now he was probably back at the Shire, settled in and comfortable again, where he belonged. Far from peril and madness and gold and fire. Thorin would know for sure soon enough at least. It was over a week ago that, in a fit of paranoia and anxiety, he sent one of Ori’s most intelligent ravens to the Shire after it had been given time to carefully examine a map of the area.

“Just see if he’s safe.” Thorin said, voice thick. “See if he made it home alright.”

Ori had watched with wide, questioning eyes, too nervous to ask the million questions no doubt flying through his head.

Four months, and there are still nightmares of fire and gold and Bilbo’s eyes looking at him with that tense, drawn disappointment.

Four months, and Thorin now sees those dark eyes alongside Kili’s tight, pale face and shaking grip on the reigns as him and Fili rode out of Erebor.

‘At least,’ he thinks, lighting a second candle for the night and flipping over a new report to review, ‘Erebor seems to be running smooth enough.’

Small mercies, though he supposes he should also be thankful that the thrumming and heat pull on him less and less, even as it seems more and more relationships fray at the edges.

Three months and then some, weeks going by in a blur only punctuated by whatever new nightmare his mind has decided to supply him with.

It’s after two more weeks that the raven returns, finding him standing at the wall and landing neatly next to him. It croaks and chitters for a few seconds, trilling through a few notes as it finds the voice to mimic, which means there is a voice to mimic for a return message. Thorin’s heart skips, having no idea what he should hope for or even want, but just the fact that the raven is returned from the Shire, where it was supposed to talk to Bilbo…

“You can tell them I made it back safe.” The raven chirrups, voice a close facsimile to Bilbo’s clipped tones.

Thorin’s heart skips again, then drops in a gutting swoop to the cold stone below.

That was it then. Bilbo made it back safe, and that was all. It strikes him then, that this is very likely the last he will ever hear from Bilbo. A short message, trilled through a bird’s voice. Polite and informative, and nothing more.

He should have taken some sort of token, should have asked for the mithril back, anything that he could physically hold in his hand to remember Bilbo by.

Instead, he’s left with the memories, the dreams, and a message through a raven’s voice.

--------------------------------

“Why do you care?”

Thorin hates in that moment how quiet and unsure his voice sounds. And it’s all he can think, when Bilbo asks for tales of Erebor before the dragon, before the fire and death and enormous destruction that everyone loves to hear about. Bilbo had the information they needed, had his own odd notions of reclaiming a home for them, but he wouldn’t need more than that, so why would he care about stories of something long gone?

Bilbo tilts his head a bit to look at Thorin, his face is crinkled up in a befuddled little frown. “Why wouldn’t I care?”

Because you have your Shire, you have your books, and your armchair, and your life elsewhere. You’re here for the adventure, for your own noble sense of home, and I can not let myself think otherwise. He grips his hands, already regretting sitting down on the ground next to the hobbit, who even in the space between them, is radiating a warmth that seeps in through all the layers over Thorin’s arm.

“This is not your homeland.” He says instead, staring at his clasped hands. “It’s not your stories. You knew nothing of Erebor before you signed your contract to me. You have no reason to care for what it was.”

No reason, Thorin reminds himself. Bilbo has his contract, and his ideals, there’s no reason for him to care for more.

“It’s a home, isn’t it? Or was.”

The mention of home again, as if that really is all the reason there needs to be. Thorin’s head twitches in the hobbit’s direction, still sure there has to be something else and unwilling to admit what else there could be. Bilbo sighs loudly, and shrugs as he goes on.

“I mean...honestly I don’t really need all the treasure. I’ve my house, the name of Baggins behind me, all the prestige and nonsense that goes with that. A bit of gold wouldn’t do me much good. I don’t care about all that too much.” That went without saying, Thorin already knew that Bilbo did not desire or need the gold. Even at the start, he knew it wasn’t simple greed that motivated this strange creature.

“But…” Bilbo continues, “but it’s like I said. When I came back. This is a home, and I don’t know it but it’s your home. That’s worth this daft journey, I think. And if I’m going to be facing fire and death and ruin and all that bit, I’d like knowing why. Why it all matters so much.”

 

It didn’t matter to the others, though they did value what Erebor stood for. Only three of them had memories of the mountain itself, only three cared for what had been, and not just what could be. The others had the glory of their people to drive them, the ideal of a homeland for them. But Bilbo is not asking for the grand legends of Erebor, or the history of it, the value it has for the dwarrow.

It’s what Thorin could give though, since Bilbo did not explicitly state that he wanted the personal tales.

He can’t remember the last time he let himself truly think about the calmer points of life in the mountain, before Smaug, before fire and death and ruin.

There’s no reason to tell any of it to Bilbo, and Thorin can’t let himself fall deeper than he already is, when he is still so unsure of Bilbo’s regards about anything.

Bilbo makes an odd noise, an aborted start at words before he starts pushing himself up. “Look, sorry. “I’m sorry it’s not...it’s not really my business.  I didn’t-”

Thorin reaches out before he truly thinks on it, fingers grasping a small tent of the fabric of Bilbo’s sleeve. Bilbo freezes, then, at the faintest tug, slowly sits back down, watching Thorin with curious eyes.

As soon as he’s sitting, Thorin yanks his hand back, fingers tingling from the warmth of Bilbo’s skin through his shirt, and heart hammering at the realization that Bilbo is now close enough that Thorin can hear his soft breathing.

“When I was small,” Thorin begins, letting himself wander back into old memories for the first time in many, many years, “I was always sneaking out onto the walls. Or into the great mines and forges. And I was always getting into trouble, dragging my sister with me to look at the rivers of gold through the rock beneath the mountain city...”

------------------------

Four months and two weeks after, and Thorin feels his mouth go dry when Ori comes up with a shy but wide smile, clutching a book that he holds out.

“I designed it.” Ori says, “For your banners. It’s something new, and I thought it suited you.”

Thorin looks at the rough sketch of a raven from the front with outstretched wings, claws gripping a heavy oak branch with falls of oak leaves curving up on either side of it. There are points like stars over the raven’s head, the stars of Durin’s crown.

Five, it’s his official banner, and he watches the colors unfurl, the runes spelling not King Thorin, son of Thrain, but King Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain. The title he had both cherished and despised, stitched permanently over what would become his emblem, something entirely his own.

He feels a strange swelling sensation within him, and the thrumming surge in his head is no more than a faint hum in the back of his thoughts.

Five and a half months after, and he sends another raven with instructions to find Fili and Kili and then stay with them. The message it carries is longer than Thorin wants to bother teaching the bird, so instead he ties a small letter to it’s leg.

‘We will speak again of the elf woman on your return.

I’m sorry.’

Eight months after, and Dwalin finds him on the wall, staring at the long lengths below him, and at the path that leads from Erebor.

“I do not know if I can do this.” Thorin says weakly, remembering the heat and rage and loss. Thinking of all that has been lost to his people, all that would need to be done and everything that was expected. He stares at the road, at the long drop from the wall, at the statues of Thror that guard the entrance to the mountain.

“You already did it you great brooding fool.” Dwalin sighs. “Can you not see how much you’ve already done?”

Thorin looks down, and sees dark blue-grey eyes, wide with shock and terror, staring back up at him.

A rough hand grabs his shoulder and spins him around, shoves him to look in at the mountain. Thorin remembers standing here with Balin, before the wall was rebuilt, when his side still ached with a fresh wound and he stared into a mountain of crumbled stone and death.

There are still bits of rubble, still shattered stone, but now they are covered in scaffolds, echoing with the shouts of dwarves, lit with the strings of lights they found in the mines. There’s movement all over, from the traders coming in unloading wagons of supplies and haggling with the merchants who have already set up shops, to families riding in and shouting in awe, arguing over how to get to the dwelling of their ancestor’s within the mountain.

Torches bathe sections in golden light, patches of soft yellow and orange warming the cold darkness, disappearing into the depths of the mountain.

‘You should have seen this,’ he thinks, feeling dazed, as if this were the first time he actually looked at Erebor since he returned. ‘You should have seen it like this, full of life, full of warmth, like I had told you. You should have seen it as this, and not left it remembering only a tomb of madness.’

“This is what you’ve done for us.” Dwalin says, gruff voice unusually gentle. “You are the King here, and Erebor is waking up quickly under you.”

Thorin looks up at the mountain, at the points of light along her face from the guard posts, and the swell in the chest grows again, making him dizzy with the strangeness of it all.

‘This is mine.’ He thinks, and there is no thrumming or dark growl behind the thought.

Ten months after, and there are still nightmares, but they’re no longer of tidal waves of gold and fire that burns through his mind and turns his bones to charred ash.

Now his dreams are full of softness, of dry, gentle hands holding his and burnished gold curls pillowed next to him.

“I’m not really here.” Bilbo says, mouth tilted up in an apologetic, polite smile.

“I know…” Thorin responds. He knows his own head well, and has come to recognize this dream.

“I made it back safe.” Bilbo continues, voice briefly getting an odd chirping crackling sound, before it returns to his usual sound. “And I’m home now, where I belong. And that’s where I was always going to go.”

“I know.”

“Because I never was yours.”

“I know...”

Every morning Thorin wakes to stare at the high ceilings of his room, chest punched out and as hollow as it was the first morning after.

But there is Erebor to worry about, to lose himself in. Erebor to watch over and Erebor to fill his thoughts all through the day.

Twelve and a half months after.

Over a year, after, and in the morning the pain is no less than it was the first time.

But there is much to be done, and the hollow pain can dull into a manageable ache as he walks along a vast hall within the Eastern slope of the mountain alongside Kolith, the masterbuilder of this sector.

“We think there are more private dwellings beyond this block.” Kolith explains, pointing to a section of the map spread on a flat stone in front of both of them. “I think it was mainly mining housing, we haven’t seen any house line sigils in a while.”

“We will want to start the mining operations again.” Thorin says. “And we will not have nothing but noble families moving to the mountain. Most of the harvest tunnels are well tended to, if you think it doable, focus on clearing more dwellings.”

“Very good, King Thorin.” Kolith nods, rolling the map up smartly, right as another name calls the same title and a younger dwarrow runs up.

“Your majesty!” He gasps, then nearly doubles over, hands braced on his knees as he sucks down air. “Your-”

“Get some breath in you lad.” Thorin sighs. “You can’t deliver any message if you keel over.”

The lad nods, then takes a final deep breath and stands up, face still flushed. “Your Majesty, Lord Balin sends a message from the front gate.”

“And? Out with it.”

The lad nods, then frowns in a bit of confusion as he repeats the message.

“There’s a halfling that came in through the front gate, Lord Balin mentioned there may be a chance of burglary?”

Chapter 4

Notes:

YALL I AM SO SORRY I REALLY HAVE NO EXCUSE????

And I know I may have originally said 5 chapters, and there was originally an explicit rating on this fic, but for those looking forward to porn, I am sad to say that it won't be found here. It felt like it didn't really fit in with all the other stuff happening here, and I didn't want to just do a POV shift rewrite of the smut in Safe and Distant.

But after a long, long, stupidly long delay, here is the close of Mahrana. I hope you all like it!

 

Thorin has heard many a tale regarding the madness of wizards, most of them from his grandfather.

“They’re too damned old,” Thror shrugged once. “Older than most of the elves even. Makes their heads soft as soapstone, an age like that. They stop noticing the actual world around them, preferring to stay in their heads with their schemes and tricks. Tharkûn isn’t as bad as the others, at least.”

Looking over the soft, green land, with it’s quaint little round homes and it’s softer, rounder people, Thorin thinks his grandfather was probably wrong about Tharkûn .

Gandalf now , he reminds himself. Wizards are too damned old, and have too many damned names.

Thorin has enough doubts that the wizard truly found their burglar in this place. Looking over the meandering, directionless roads of Hobbiton, decorated with tender flowers and perfectly trimmed bushes, does nothing to alleviate them. He has met halflings before while working or trading in Bree, and found them to be soft and silly creatures, more concerned with food and their comforts than they were with anything of real worth.

Now he wanders their homeland, and starts to learn that by Shire standards, those empty-headed fools he had dealt with are considered the wild and brave ones. The hobbits of ill-repute who dare to live within the town of men.

In Hobbiton, the halflings are all gentle, suspicious and frowning creatures with rosy cheeks, well scrubbed faces, and delicate curls held in even more delicate ribbons. They are insular and suspicious in a way that is almost dwarvish, if Thorin were feeling charitable enough to compare them in any way to dwarves. But their suspicion doesn’t come from any long history of fire and iron. There is no hardship written in their blood. There is naught to them but a simple-minded stubbornness, a fascination with the soft soil, and whatever green they can work from it.

And Gandalf expects their burglar is here. Thorin only hopes that this Baggins is an anomaly, perhaps an outcast among these simple creatures. Surely Gandalf would not suggest him if he were anything like the rest of his folk.

He clings to this hope, even when every mention of ‘Baggins’ makes the halflings nod and say what a fine, respectable fellow he is, before squinting suspiciously at Thorin and asking why Master Dwarf would be inquiring about a fine person such as Baggins. But for the sake of his own sanity, he prays that the wizard has not gone completely mad.

Maybe, just maybe, Thorin will be wrong, and the halfling will be useful.

When he finally reaches the right hole (and of course, leave it to the halflings to make the most winding, nonsensical roads), Thorin has never been so disappointed to be proven right.

“So, this is the hobbit.”

He is small, which Thorin can not fault him for. And his eyes lack the cow-like simpleness of many of the halflings Thorin met. Baggins stands straighter as Thorin circles him, setting his jaw and narrowing his eyes. He isn’t afraid, or at least isn’t bullied into being afraid, and there’s a little spark in there.

But it only exaggerates everything else wrong about him. The halfling has never used weapons, doesn’t seem to understand why he would need them on a quest to go after a cursed dragon , and his softness is nothing but that, softness. There’s no strength hidden beneath, like with Bombur, no warrior spirit like in the lad Ori. This is a book keeper. A writer, a reader.

Baggins is the sort who sits backs and watches things happen, not one who does things. The life of a scholar is not a bad one, Thorin was taught to respect those who valued knowledge. But that did not mean they belonged in the wilds on a quest that was closer to a suicide mission than was comfortable.

But Thorin does not write him off entirely, and out of respect for the home of another, he does not laugh in the face of their “burglar”. He even manages not to turn on the spot and demand to know what Gandalf is thinking, or if this is some jest of his.

Time does nothing to alleviate his concerns. Later, Thorin watches as the little thing struggles for air just from the description of a dragon. He could stop Bofur, but if the halfling can not handle being told he may turn into a pile of ash, then none of them have any business being here.

The hobbit falls, splayed in a dead faint on his perfectly polished floor with its perfectly plush rug, and Thorin rubs a hand over his forehead, nearly bursting into laughter at the sheer absurdity of it all.

“Well this has been enlightening. I can see the wisdom of this excellent recommendation, Gandalf. If the dragon comes at us, we can throw the halfling at it.”  There are some chuckles behind him, and Thorin lifts his head to glare at the wizard, who only glares back.

“Oh dear…” Bofur says, leaning in his chair and looking worriedly down at the halfling. “Was it something I said?”

“I thought that was a fine description, Bofur.” Fili says loftily, “The ‘poof’ was an especially nice touch.”

“Oh no! The poor little wee thing.” Dori bustles over, picking the limp pile of halfling up like it was no more than a rag doll, carrying him out while chatting all the while. “I should get some of that tea ready, he did have a lovely chamomile. And there was one with a touch of mint! That should perk him right up, so we can get this contract looked over and-”

“He is not looking over the contract.” Thorin sighs. “Because he is not coming.”

Gandalf rounds on him, glowering down menacingly. “Now see here, Thorin-”

“You expect that he will come? You may say he is a burglar, and it is only you who says this, but he has no reason to sign anything with us!” Thorin bursts. “You expect me to bring this halfling who knows nothing of anything except what he has seen written on his maps! I do not know what scheme you have-”

“There is no scheme, you blasted dwarf!” Gandalf snaps with a thump of his staff on the floor. “Bilbo Baggins is the best candidate for our burglar! And that is final!”

“Are you so determined to see your friend die?” Thorin asks, crossing his arms as he raises his brows at Gandalf. “Because that is what this will do to him. None of these halflings know anything of the real world, and there is nothing for him out there except for hardship and death.”

“Mark me,” Gandalf says, and there’s a change in his tone, something darker that makes the air close in around Thorin when one soot-stained finger points at him. “If you do not find a way to convince Bilbo Baggins to join, then the quest will fail.”

The words are heavy, weighed with prophecy. Again, Thorin feels the uncomfortable pull of fate, the same that had sunk claws into him in Bree when the wizard had looked at him and said, “Take back your homeland.”

He wants to hate the wizard. There is too much fate here, too much destiny clouding things up and taking Thorin’s choices from him. But despite the possible madness of the wizard, and Thorin’s bristling at having his father’s map and key kept from him until now, he knows that a wizard’s proclamation is not something lightly ignored.

“Very well. But I will not push him if he refuses.” He looks away from Gandalf, the anger draining from him. “I will not take anyone with me who does not wish to come, wizard’s pet or no.”

-------------------------------

‘ There’s a halfling that came in through the front gate, Lord Balin mentioned there may be a chance of burglary?’

The barked orders echoing through the halls, the sharp clangs of hammers on stone, the roar of machinery, his own heartbeat. All of it stops.

Thorin’s head rings as if he had taken a blow to the skull, or a black powder keg went off too close and his ears weren’t properly protected.

If he were not already leaning with his hands firmly splayed on the table with Masterbuilder Kolith’s figures and sketches, solid stone under his bare palms, the ground itself may have moved under him.

“What did you say?” His own voice is strained, drowned under the thudding in his chest. There’s a rustle of parchment; Kolith carefully collecting his rolls of data, murmuring something and bowing away. Barely noticed. Thorin only stares at the lad, who shifts uncomfortably and frowns in confusion at the shaken gaze of his King.

“My King I only- Lord Balin didn’t tell me what it meant…”

Burglary. It could not mean-

Balin would have no other reason to use such words. He was exact, always meant exactly what was said and had a way with words that meant each one had a very specific purpose. Something with all the weight, the history, of ‘burglar’, would not be so casually added in.

But this...

A halfling came in through the gates, it was nonsense to think it could be anyone else. It was simple logic, yet his mind refuses to accept the truth of it.

“Thorin!”

Sounds come rushing in, crashing like hammer strikes on his skull. Thorin jerks his eyes up to the entryway of the main hall of the Eastern Slope, and does not see the way the lad nearly sags with relief at having the attention diverted off him. Bofur nearly runs over another dwarf as he barrels in, waving his hat like a standard and shouting enough for it to echo off the pillars and high arches. He at least is off duty and out of uniform, though Thorin would not have noticed even if Bofur was dressed in the finest raiment of the King.

“Thorin! He’s back! He’s here! Bilbo’s here!”

Bilbo. Bilbo was back home safe. Bilbo was tucked away in his rolling green Shire.  

Thorin takes a slow breath, and takes the short time to log all the sensations around him carefully. It is an easy habit now, born from lack of sleep and the occasional blurs between what was dream or reality. In dreams things stayed hazed and intangible.

Now there is the smoothed and polished granite under his palms, the clamor and echoes of the work crews hauling away the rubble and ruin. His crown is heavy, and the air is cool, but not enough that the hot air from the forges has been diverted to flow through the mountain. There’s a slight breeze, just enough for him to feel the movement of the air, from the ducts directing wind from outside to every living chamber. This is real, and he is definitely awake.

Thorin stands fully, nods towards Kolith, manages a grateful small smile and a coin for the lad Balin sent running from the front gate, and strides to meet Bofur before his Guard Captain can knock anyone else over in his excitement.

“Thorin! Thorin he-”

“I just got word.” Thorin interrupts quietly, steering Bofur back out of the main hall. There's too much noise, too much movement and bustle and activity there and Thorin suddenly needs the quiet. Or at least as much quiet as he can ever get in the company of his head guard. He walks briskly, staring straight ahead, an ache already forming from the tension starting to knot his shoulders up as Bofur chatters on beside him. 

"I don't know how Balin does it, no idea. He sent out messages to everyone by the looks of it. Bombur said there's already a quick celebration feast bein' put together. I'll take you to it!” Bofur falls into step easily just behind and to the side of him out of habit. How he expects to lead from there is a mystery, but Thorin barely notices.

Bofur rambles on, and while Thorin isn’t paying attention, there’s a familiarity to it that’s almost grounding.

“I can't believe that little bastard just goes an' shows up all bright as you please without any word! Does he not know how messages work at all? I saw all that fancy writing fruppery in his hole, I'm damn sure he knows how to use a pen.”

Why would Bilbo come back at all, was the real question. He was settled back in the Shire, and this wasn’t the season for a holiday. It might- but no. No, Thorin can not allow himself to go leaping down the same assumptions that chased Bilbo away in the first place.

“It's bad manners is what it is. I'm pretty sure that's bad manners anyway. He should know, at least with how often he went on about ‘em. ‘Bofur you can't be belchin at the elf king's table.’ and ‘Bofur that isn't a napkin.’ ‘Bofur don't go teachin’ the bargeman's kids that song.’ It's hypocritical is what it is."

In the mountain. He was here in the mountain at this moment. Instead of the joy Thorin always imagined, there’s a tight, smothering, trapped feeling growing in his chest.

Every day since the raven returned, every morning he chased away the remnants of whatever dreams came to him, was met with the acceptance that he would likely never see Bilbo again. And right as he was finding some sort of peace, or at least something resembling it, Bilbo returns.

‘I can’t...’

The words were so soft, yet the memory still drowns out Bofur’s voice. Last time Thorin saw Bilbo, there were bruises under the halfling’s dark eyes, blood staining the bandages on his temple. He looked worn and thin and drawn out, jaw tense and voice catching.

Thorin’s last memory of Bilbo is of him standing at the door, hunched and tense, and unable to look Thorin in the eye before he left.

‘ You’ll make a good king.’  

“Thorin?”

What was he supposed to say? What was he supposed to do? How could he expect Bilbo to honestly want to speak with him?

“Thorin, you’re going the wrong way! Hold on- hold on now!”

A hand on his shoulder stops him in his steps, and yanks him out of his thoughts. Bofur comes around to peer at him with a concerned frown.

“If I’m not mistaken, this is the way to your chambers.” Bofur gestures vaguely over his shoulder, still keeping Thorin in place with one hand. “Balin’s got everyone meeting up in the private dining hall by the front gates. And why by Mahal’s forges do you look like you’re about to face death?”

Thorin nearly stops, his head whirling as Bilbo’s visit and the reasons for it begin to become clear. The entire Company coming together again (minus Fili and Kili, but Thorin can not afford to dwell on the reasons for that.) Things start to fit together into, and Thorin feels some of the panic drain away, though it leaves a hollow in his chest behind it.

The Company. That was it. It was foolish, and dangerously self-obsessive, for Thorin to think he alone could scare Bilbo away from the rest of his friends and companions.

While that explains the why, it does not help Thorin solve the problem of how he can bring himself to face Bilbo. He pushes Bofur’s hand from his shoulder with a shrug.

“Go on.” He says, as evenly as he can manage. “I will join you all later. I simply need a few moments to…” Thorin trails off, gritting his teeth on his frustration when he can not find the words. A few moments to gather himself? To prepare a few lines? To relearn how to breathe properly?

Bofur hesitates, obviously torn between duty and the need to tear off to see his friend. Torn he may be, but his eyes are steady and he looks at Thorin with far too much understanding. “Are you sure? I can wait with you and head over whenever you’re ready.”

“I can find my own way without an escort well enough. Go and tell Balin and Dwalin I’ll be joining you shortly.”

A nod, then Bofur pauses again, sighing and leaning in to say quietly. “‘Ay now, this is a good thing! He’s back. And he came back right before winter’s to set in, so he’s likely to be here for a while if he doesn’t want to be buried in snow in the mountains. This is good. He’s back, and you two can get back to figurin’ out everything.”

Thorin looks away, clenching his jaw and nodding stiffly. He never, in all the long year since Bilbo left, went into the details of the massive misunderstanding between the two of them. Balin suspects, most likely, but most of them probably still think the engagement was entered with full knowledge by both of them. The old shame starts to slink back in, festering under the tense anxiety that won’t leave.

“I’ll only be a few moments,” he says quietly. “Go on.”

Bofur only hesitates for a moment, then nods. “Just don’t go taking too long, or we’ll eat everything again.” He says, before giving his usual exaggerated version of the formal salute and practically bolting in the direction of Balin’s meeting place.

Thorin sags, letting out a slow breath and running his hand over his forehead, just under the edge of his crown. It’s like a twisted version of one of his dreams, and all he can think is….now what?

------------------------------

Barrels. Only Bilbo Baggins would think of something as madly brilliant as barrels. Thorin is bruised and soaked, the new battering only highlighting how sore he is from weeks locked away in the damp dungeons. There are small pricks of pain in his hands and arms, splinters most likely, and his muscles scream in protest as he steers his barrel through the slow water towards the shore where the others are gathering.

He counts up all the barrels, eyes darting from one head to another. Of course Bilbo hadn’t actually thought to get into one himself, that would have been far too sensible! And Bilbo bloody Baggins was only sensible if it gave him a reason to chew someone else's head off.

But even in the rapid churning water foaming all around them, Thorin was able to catch glimpses of the halfling clinging to one of the barrels. Bilbo had gone through that cursed forest, avoided capture by the elves, survived, undetected, in the Woodland Realm for weeks; he certainly is strong enough to come out of the end of their escape.

But there isn’t a sign of a red coat, or a thatch of short curly hair among the barrels steering to the rocks.

“Where’s the halfling?” He croaks, winces, then shouts louder when no one hears him. “Where’s Bilbo?”

A few heads turn in his direction, Nori pauses in pulling his Ori from the water and shrugs, frowning out at the river.

He had to be around here, he was just with them a few moments ago! Thorin scrambles out of his barrel, aches forgotten, heart pounding in his chest.

“Bilbo!”

No, no Bilbo only couldn’t hear him. Or he was already up on shore, waving his hand muttering about Thorin worrying too much. Thorin struggles through the bitingly cold, knee-deep water, nearly running into Dwalin’s barrel.

“Bilbo!” This time he can feel the shout tearing at his throat, his voice was already strained from the shouting during the orc attacks. But he needs Bilbo to hear him, needs to hear something back.

Kili wasn’t able to avoid injury, and there had been such chaos during their escape. Arrows and blades everywhere, barrels smashing into rocks. Crashing against the sharp riverstones, with Bilbo clinging to the outside of one. Easily lost in the churning white water. It would have been impossible to see if he went under then.

No. No he could not allow himself to think it. He just needs to get to higher ground, needs to get up to where he can see better. The thought has barely entered his mind when Thorin’s nearly falling back into the water in his haste to climb out onto the rocks, still screaming Bilbo’s name on the chance he’ll hear an answer.

There’s nothing but the voices of dwarves, and the bubbling of the river. Not a sign anywhere. He could have been hit with an arrow, could have been struck by one of the axes, even knocked into the water by the damned elf prince hopping around!

“Thorin! The river!”

Thorin does not take the time to see who’s shouting, he spins around and looks back at the water. And- there! Another barrel floating with a small cluster of empty ones. And clinging to it, soaked and coughing, fingers digging desperately into the joints of the wood, was Bilbo.

“Bilbo! Over here!”

Bilbo looks up, then yelps when the barrel rolls and he scrabbles at it to stay afloat. “Yes- yes I can see that!”

“Then get over here!” Dwalin bellows, “Before someone,” he looks at Thorin, who ignores him, “has a heart attack!”

“Ah- problem. There is uh- a slight - ah- problem. With that plan.” The barrel tips again, and Bilbo very nearly goes under the water, spluttering and gasping as he clutches at the barrel like it’s life. “Definitely a problem.” 

A memory strikes Thorin, just some offhand comment Bilbo made as they sat around the fire near some creek, watching others leap wildly into the water. 

He can’t swim.” Thorin says faintly, then again when every implication of that fact crashes in all at once. “He can’t swim! Iklifumun !” He spits the curse angrily, throwing it at every elf, orc, and foolhardy halfling that got them into this mess!

The water is ice, and hardly noticed when he dives back in, snarling curses in westron in khuzdul alike. “Hold on! Stay still you damned-”

"Try telling the current that!” Bilbo snaps back, and the next startled yelp, cut off by another wet coughing fit, drives the retort from Thorin’s mind.

There is a lot more shouting, curses and half-panicked snapping that gets garbled with swells of water and Bilbo’s floundering. It is not the most romantic or dashing rescue, and Thorin is still snarling when he grabs Bilbo off the barrel by the scruff of his coat. Thorin drags Bilbo back onto the shore, pulling him in and away a little from the curious eyes of the rest of the Company.

They’re all here, they all came out alive. Bilbo is standing bedraggled and looking like a drowned cat, but whole enough to mutter protests when Thorin can’t stop his hands shaking as they pat Bilbo over. He is fine. He is here and with no injuries, yet Thorin can’t bring himself to let go.

Bilbo doesn’t exactly make any attempts to pull away, though he does flap his hands at Thorin and huff in annoyance. “Thorin really, I’m fine! Just a bit of a dip. Needed a bath, to be honest. Though I could have done with it being a tad warmer.”

“What were you thinking!?” Thorin hisses, fingers curling into the sleeves of Bilbo’s soaked red coat. “Throwing everyone in the river when you can’t swim?!”

“Well, that’s what the barrels are for.” Bilbo says patiently.

“Only if you’re in the thrice damned barrel!” Thorin shouts back, forgetting for a moment that there may be orcs tracking them. “You can’t swim, and you decided to throw yourself right into a river after-”

“I didn’t throw myself in so much as fall. And that is besides the point! We’re all here, are we not? We’re all out of the dungeons! We’re all far away and no one drowned, so as far as I’m concerned-”

“You damn well nearly drowned! If I hadn’t dragged you out of that river…”

“Well, good thing I can count on you to drag me out of any rivers in the future then.” Bilbo shrugs, then coughs, shivering in the breeze, and Thorin can’t stop himself from pulling him into a tight embrace. It’s a testament to how adjusted Bilbo is to dwarves that his only reaction is a slightly protesting “oof” and a few incoherent grumbles.

"If you could find ways to save all of our skins without throwing yourself into an insane scheme in the future, I would be much obliged.” 

Bilbo snorts, for once not squirming away from the excess contact. He tucks himself further against Thorin’s chest, and it’s only when he shivers again that Thorin realizes he must be freezing. “Stop getting everyone into stupid situations, and I won’t have to. Problem solved! However, seeing as we’re heading to a mountain with a dragon in it, I’m afraid we’ll both just have to strap up and make do.”

The words should sting, and they sound eerily similar to the thoughts that have kept Thorin awake for many of the nights spent in Mirkwood. But Bilbo pulls away (much to Thorin's disappointment) with a small, but honest curve of a smile and a wink, and Thorin only chuckles and shakes his head.

 "We can not linger here." He admits, the relief of everyone alive and accounted for whisked away with the knowledge that they are in no way safe. Turning from Bilbo, he looks out over the ragged and soaked Company. They're miserable and half drowned, but they're alive.

"We have two minutes! Then we move!"

 

----------------

 

Back in the solitude and safety of his room, Thorin leans his forehead against the thick wood of his door, ignores the edge of the crown digging into his skull, and breathes slowly.

He can not hide away forever, but he can at least take some time to settle himself.

Foolish, to think Bilbo would never return at all. Bilbo had his friends, the rest of the Company, even Bard.

Perhaps this was a second chance, in a way. Not for the marriage and life together that Thorin longed for, but for some scrap of affection at least. It would be just like Bilbo to seek out the remains of the friendship they had shared.

The friendship Thorin spent over a year thinking was something else. Over a year deluding himself into thinking the smiles, the jokes, the little moments, all had the weight of a future together. While to Bilbo it was nothing more than a friendship. And perhaps Bilbo honestly hoped to return to what they had been. That they could move past what had simply been an awkward moment and everything would be fine. Back to business as usual.

Thorin was well adjusted to the idea of never seeing Bilbo again. A life without Bilbo seemed far preferable to a life with a Bilbo kept just out of reach, held behind a wall of polite smiles and friendly talk.

‘ It is not a life. ’ Thorin reminds himself forcefully. ‘It is a visit. And you can not hold a visit against him any more than you can hold your own mistakes against him. ’

No, he could not hold any of this against Bilbo. And he could not spend the entire time hiding away in his room, waiting for Bilbo to return home.

He is King. This is his realm, his home, and he will not make any friend of his feel unwelcome here. Even if the word ‘friend’ feels like dry coal in his mouth.

Taking one last deep breath, Thorin feels his resolve grow stronger. He could do this, would do this. He could face Bilbo and at least pretend that he held on to nothing but the friendship they once had. He would not force any more of his true feelings on Bilbo, would not make Bilbo face that again.

It’s a resolve that carries him through the mountain, hard and determined. It feels like an armor cloaking him as he marches through the stone halls. It lasts him until he ducks down the narrow corridor leading to the small banquet room Balin has set up for the impromptu welcome party.

It lasts until he actually hears Bilbo’s voice.

"-wasn't here for that."

Thorin stops in the narrow corridor, closing his eyes, hand pressed to the cool and solid stone just before the doorway. Bilbo sounds just the same, voice untouched by a raven's crackle. Light and clear, and for a moment with his eyes shut against the stone walls and carved doorway, Thorin could almost hear the crackle of a campfire, the wind in trees and the scrape of wooden spoons and bowls.

"But you're here now!" Bofur cheers, and Thorin's eyes open to the mountain. His kingdom. It is strange, he thinks distantly, slowly stepping towards the doorway, how he has much more than he did in those days of hurried travels and open camps. He is a king in his own right now, standing in the thriving mountain that was won with this company and has grown in his rule. Thorin in so many ways is steadier than he had been, a little more sure of his place here and in the world. Yet he longs for those days in a way, for all that he was always plagued by doubt and the weight of the quest and all that stood upon it.

At least then, he felt sure about his place with Bilbo, wrong though he was.

'I am his friend. ' He thinks, stepping into the entryway. 'I can be that much for him. I can have that.'

The hall here is spacious enough, but small for Erebor. Built for private meetings with foreign dignitaries or Kings so words wouldn't echo where they could be easily heard by anyone nearby. Thorin has had a few awkward and tense meals with Bard in here, to talk over trade agreements and supplies for their rapidly growing kingdoms. Now his company is crammed into it, with a table heaped with rapidly prepared platters of whatever breads and meats that Balin could acquire on such short notice. With grinning faces, they each slowly fall silent as they spot him.

And then there's Bilbo.

Standing at the head of the table, back to Thorin. He looks like he's put some weight back on in the Shire, no longer a half starved and bedraggled hobbit. There's a glow of sun on the back of his neck and on the skin of his forearms exposed by the rolled up sleeves of a travel worn, but clean shirt.

 He falls silent, and turns to face Thorin, expression guarded and hopeful, and it is all lost.

 Thorin is caught, caught in the way the multitude of candles hits Bilbo's hair that was never quite brown or gold. The soft lines of his face, the nervous twitch of the corner of his thin lips trying for a strained and small smile, eyes dark as pools within caverns, taking in Thorin's appearance. Thorin never really saw him within the mountain, he realizes. The entire time he was blinded, first by the wild rush of fighting the dragon, and then by his own mind. He never truly saw Bilbo standing in his halls, a creature of green and sunlight in walls of fire and stone.

“Thorin.” Bilbo says gently. A single word, nothing more than a name with a small and tentative smile, a real one now, starting to grow on Bilbo’s lips.

‘We are friends. Do not stare.’ Thorin swallows, his arms crossed tight in front of him.

“Master Baggins.” It’s almost easier this way, falling back on formal titles. Master Baggins is the gentlehobbit who lives in the Shire, who mainly concerns himself with gardening and what he will cook for his next meal. It is easier to be friends with this hobbit than it is with Bilbo.  “I hope your journey went well.”

“What?” The small smile freezes before it can become more than a twitch “I. Yeah. Yeah it was alright. A lot less exciting this time around, but I’m not complaining.” The smile attempts to come back, but Thorin can see the confused and concerned furrow between Bilbo’s brows, the tense lines around his eyes.

“Of course.” He nods stiffly, before mentally kicking himself. A joke, Bilbo was trying to make a friendly joke. That should be acknowledged with at least something more than a nod. But the moment passes, and a tense silence settles in behind it.

Bilbo shuffles nervously on his feet, looking around while Thorin cannot stop looking at him. There’s a small, faint line of color along the collar of Bilbo’s shirt from long days on the road here. Sting sits comfortably on his hip, no longer an awkward addition but now as a part of Bilbo’s attire as his cravat and waistcoat. Thorin feels the eyes of his company on them both, feels the tension in the air, and his mind fills the silence with every question he cannot ask.

‘Why did you come back?’

‘Why did you have to leave?’

‘Was I so horrible that you truly could not wait to get away from me?’

‘Why did you stay when I was mad, when I tried to kill you? Why did you leave when I was in my own mind again and said I loved you?’

‘How could you not know that I loved you?’

‘Did you keep the mithril? Was it sold to the first high bidder? Was it the unfortunate relic reminding you of the mad dwarf king who tried to bind you with it?’

‘Did you think of me?’

‘Did you dream of me? Did I haunt the dreams or the nightmares?’

‘Can you stay? As friends, as anything you want, any way you’ll have me. Just as long as you stay.’

‘Leave. Leave me in peace. Let me live comfortable knowing that you are too far away, out of reach.’

‘Could you let me try again? Can you stay and let me start over? Let me try again just once. With as much time as you need. Let me try, now that you know that I am trying. I will go as slow as you need. I will be as clear as you need. Anything you need. I promise I will not shove things at you again. Let me try again without a dragon and death overhanging us, let me woo you as a king.’

“Ah, Thorin-”

‘Stay...’ Thorin thinks, and at the same moment realizes that he can not do this. Not now. Not when it has all come at him so quickly. Not when Bilbo went from something lost forever to being here, just out of reach, in front of him and giving him that distantly polite smile without a whisper of warning.

“You will excuse me.” Thorin says quickly, controlling his tone, his posture, everything. He can not remember the last time he has had to hold himself under such control. He needs to leave. He needs to get space and work his mind around this new world where Bilbo is here and they are nothing more than polite friends, where Bilbo stands as nothing but a guest within his halls..

“I’m afraid I can not linger for long. My apologies, Master Baggins, there’s much to be done still. It’s--.” Thorin stops, lost for words again. It is not a feeling he is used to, and usually Bilbo is the cause. It is good to see you again. I think of you at least once a day. Having you here like this is torture. Never leave. “It’s good to have you visiting.” He says finally, and he can’t call his leaving anything other than an escape.

 

---------------------------

“So...that’s it then? Open the door, sneak in, get the Arkenstone, kill the dragon with a lot of angry dwarves?”  

Thorin nearly snorts. Trust Bilbo to put what sounded in Thorin’s mind like a solid plan, and make it sound like childish nonsense. If it were not for the fact that he is used to Bilbo’s singular talent in turning the direst circumstances into flippant quips, Thorin would be more concerned. The combination of the wine, the sight of Erebor, and the fact that Bilbo has not noticed their thighs pressed together - or, even better, has noticed and hasn’t done anything to separate them - coalesces into a warm blanket of exhilaration, keeping the usual storm of doubts far from his mind.

"There is much to do afterwards.” He admits. “Erebor is in ruins, and the rebuilding alone could take decades, depending on how deep the dragon has dug itself in. We would need to establish ourselves, make a settlement that could last and grow. Most importantly, I would need to bring my kin here and establish my line as King. There’s much to be done, before I can say this is finished.” It’s a daunting task, overwhelmingly so. But currently not quite so daunting as the dragon. As Bilbo would likely say, it is best to keep focused on the most immediate threats to life and limb. 

Bilbo squints his face up a bit, looking down and tapping his fingers on his goblet, and Thorin tries not to be too obvious in watching the thoughts work through the hobbit’s mind.

Thorin just admitted how much work there would need to be, how much this really required. Bilbo was only signed on as a burglar and his contract would be fulfilled as soon as he obtained the arkenstone. Thorin is sure...almost entirely sure...mostly sure, of what they are to each other. Mostly. But Bilbo thinks for a while, and Thorin starts preparing himself. Start’s bracing for the ‘well glad I won’t have to deal with all that mess then’  or ‘I’m sure you’ll be alright with it all’ if Bilbo was feeling supportive.

“Well…” Bilbo starts, and Thorin holds his breath. Then, without warning, without precedent, Bilbo reaches out first and puts a small hand on Thorin’s shoulder. Thorin goes still, heart pounding. It is such a small gesture, stiff by dwarf standards. But from Bilbo, nervous, reserved Bilbo who tolerates unnecessary touches at best and shoves them off at worse, it’s almost…

From Bilbo, this is practically a declaration. Spoken in the slight pressure and great warmth seeping from Bilbo’s palm through to Thorin’s skin. Thorin’s body stays mostly angled towards the window, almost afraid to move, as if he’ll frighten Bilbo away if he does anything too sudden.

“Well,” Bilbo starts again, looking up at Thorin with full eyes and a smile so small it would be missed if one had not spent months memorizing how Bilbo’s face works. “I signed on to this, and I’ll see it to the end. I may have just been taken on as a burglar, but I want to see it finished.”

Right there, Thorin very nearly throws all hesitation to the wind. That he could say what all would be involved in truly completing this quest, and that Bilbo still wanted to stay to the end…

Thorin is hardly thinking when he puts his hand on Bilbo’s shoulder, thumb brushing against the jumping pulse in Bilbo’s neck, and leans down to press their foreheads together. By now Bilbo has seen the gesture enough times to know the importance and weight behind it.

Bilbo does not pull away, and Thorin closes his eyes, letting himself feel.

They would get through this. They had to get through this. There was much to be done, and Bilbo would stay to the end. Bilbo, who is solid and warm before him, breath warm on Thorin’s face, soft curls of his strangely short hair brushing Thorin’s forehead. Bilbo is here, and Bilbo will stay.

“When this is finished, when it’s all done,” Thorin says quietly, “we will have much to discuss, you and I.” 

---------------------

Once more, before Thorin fully registers where he is going, he finds himself on the ramparts.

This is not the same wall that he stood on only a year ago, caught in a blazing haze of rage and loss. It is not even the same stone. The old rubble of that wall was scattered into the river and then removed to be broken and recarved into some other use, somewhere else in the mountain. It has been comforting, to know all the stones that witnessed his actions there were scattered and broken for new purposes.

That thought is little comfort to him now, not with Bilbo back within the mountain, whole and happy, just out of reach.  

Even now, on these new stones, Thorin looks down and can feel rough cloth and mithril bunched in his fist, a rapid heartbeat pounding against his palm. He can hear the small, terrified sound and see dark eyes staring up at him in confusion. A single pair of eyes that struck him heavier than the hundreds upon hundreds of sets watching him, a quiet sound louder than all the shouting of his kin.

He has apologized, again and again, and each time felt like a trivial spec compared to the magnitude of his actions. Each time, Bilbo forgave him, because that is what Bilbo does. He would bring up the time Thorin burned everyone’s dinner a thousand and more times, but nearly being killed is waved away with a nervous smile and shrug. In a hobbit’s mind, burning food was the far greater sin.

If he were not listening for it, he would have missed the sound of bare feet on stone, slowly approaching from behind him.

A lifetime ago, a year ago, just yesterday? Time is a confused thing, and the memory of Bilbo’s head and shoulders held over the sheer drop of a wall, of hands gripping Thorin's arms and shoulders from all sides, always feels like a bad dream, and yet all too real at the same time.

 “I remember it all.” He says, breaking the tense silence. There’s a scuff on the stone behind him, then Bilbo comes up along the ramparts. Well out of arm’s reach, Thorin notes.

 “Yes.” Bilbo says stiffly, with his usual odd sniff as he looks out over the wall. “Yes. Well, I like this wall a great deal more. It’s nicer.”

 Bilbo keeps a distance, leaning on the wall, but tense as he stares out towards Dale. And with him here, the memories are only sharper. It was a colder wind then, though Thorin hardly remembers that. All he can recall is the heat that consumed him and filled his thoughts. The heat that sparked into a white inferno when Bilbo stood against him.

“I’m sorry.”

It comes out quieter than he intended, and he has said it already, but still feels as if he has not said it enough. “I’m so sorry. For all of it. For all the things I said. For-”

“Thorin, it’s alright.” Bilbo interrupts. “It’s really…” He trails off then, and a hard lump forms in Thorin’s throat, sinks down into his belly, and sits like a stone. It is not alright. It never was. Thorin has built a kingdom, has done everything he set to do when he left Ered Luin. It still feels like nothing compared to the day he raised his hand to Bilbo.

“ I’m sorry.” Bilbo sighs. So soft that Thorin nearly does not hear it.  It scatters Thorin’s thoughts, and before he can gather them enough to ask what in this earth Bilbo could apologize for, the halfling continues. “Whatever my reasons were, I betrayed you. And I didn’t...it wasn’t what I wanted. That was the hardest thing I did, and a few times I had been so close to giving it to you, just because I knew how badly you wanted it. I never wanted to betray you. Handing that stone over was-. I knew I was hurting you and I couldn’t-”

“You did what was needed.” Thorin interrupts before Bilbo can continue. The betrayal still hurts. The fact that what was needed was his love hiding and going behind his back never lost it’s bitterness, but he does not want to hear apologies for something that he knows he needed. He can not take apologies when he was the one at fault, even if something eases in his chest when Bilbo says it.  Even if there is some deep part of him, something sharp and hard that never had anything to do with gold, that relaxes at the apology. “You were right, not to give it to me, to take it away and know not to follow me into death and ruin. You were the only one who saw what was best for the company, for me. Your only mistake was coming back after you did it. You always-”

You always come back. And each time, it takes Thorin’s breath away. Ever since Bilbo ran up waving the contract like a banner of victory, leaving Thorin dumbfounded as the question came to him for the first time. Why? Why does he always come back? Why was he here now? “My apologies.” Thorin says, before any of the questions can escape. “These shouldn’t be the sort of memories you dwell on during your stay.”

Silence falls, hard and heavy. He can hear the smallest tap of Bilbo’s fingers on the stone, and can feel the space between them tug at his skin.

Why. Why are you here. Why are you in Erebor? Why did you follow me out here, when your friends are waiting with warmth and light and food? Why do you torment me? Why did you come? Why did you come back?

“Where…” Bilbo breaks the silence stiffly, then stops, fingers tapping nervously on the stone. “Where is it now? The arkenstone?”

The hesitance in his voice makes Thorin wince inwardly, though he has no trouble answering the question.

“Deep. It is back down in the depths of the mountain. Sealed within a tomb dedicated to those who lost their lives in this place.” Lost to his folly, by his need for that same stone. All the facts that Thorin had pushed himself from for the past year.

Bilbo nods. “Good. That, that’s good. It’s a good place for it.”

Silence again. And Thorin can feel the tension in the air, thick and potent, making his skin crawl with the awareness of it. Bilbo is watching him, he is aware of that much, but he cannot bring himself to look back. Looking back at Bilbo makes him more real, more solidly here, more out of reach. How long will he need to endure this? How long will it take until friendship settles back into something palatable?

“Thorin-” Bilbo’s voice is closer, Thorin had not noticed him approaching. And there’s something softer, more intimate in his voice. Ah yes, of course they would talk about it. Or Bilbo would try. Try to talk about where they stand, about the forced and ruined proposal, about the feelings Thorin projected into their relationship.

All the things Thorin does not want to drag out and lay bare again. Especially when he knows how gentle Bilbo will be, how kindly he will tell Thorin how much his friendship is valued.

“How long will you be visiting us?” Thorin asks quickly, before it can start, wanting to know how much time he has to adjust.

“What?”

“You are always...you can stay as long as you like.” Bilbo is staring at him hard. So hard that Thorin can feel the gaze boring into him as he looks at some fixed point at the fields. If he continues talking, Bilbo can be distracted by niceties, and hopefully any talks about the value of friendship can be shoved well down. “I will have Balin arrange a place for you, if you wish to spend your time in Erebor. It may be wise to wait until the spring, when it will be easier to cross the mountains back to the Shi-”

“You idiot!” Bilbo shouts, and it is so unexpected that the sound makes Thorin jolt. His head whips around to stare in surprise, and finds Bilbo closer than he expected. And, another surprise, Bilbo is livid.

“You absolute idiot! I can’t believe-” Bilbo stops, shaking his head and throwing his hands up in Thorin’s direction, as if he cannot articulate Thorin’s apparent idiocy. Thorin had nearly forgotten this side of Bilbo and the sudden switches Bilbo could make from his polite talk and little questions, to the spitting angry thing in front of Thorin now. And how Bilbo tended to snap from one to the other for no discernible reason, such as now.

“What?” Thorin asks, hesitant, wondering what offense he has given this time, feeling horrendously off balance.

“You-!” Bilbo shouts, waving his hands towards Thorin again, in case Thorin was incapable of understand who ‘you’ was.  “Why do you think I came back? Why do you think I hitched myself up to a bunch of dwarvish merchants and spent months coming all the way back to this bloody mountain!?”

“I don’t-?” Thorin can think of several reasons that Bilbo would return, and none of them warrant all this yelling. To see his friends? To visit a place that had been a large part of his life? Perhaps, as it seems now, because he had forgotten some argument with Thorin, and had found a few more points that needed to be made?

“You’re a king! You’re supposed to be able to catch onto things! You absolute moron! A visit!” Bilbo nearly spits the word ‘visit’, yanking aside the collar of his shirt.. “A visit! Really?!”

Bilbo is making no sense. What was wrong with a visit? What was there-

And Thorin sees it. Moonlight and torchlight catching on silvery white metal. The world sharpens, then blurs as everything focuses on the unmistakable shine of mithril. Without thinking, his mind flipping through countless questions at once, Thorin reaches out and takes a bit of Bilbo’s shirt collar in his fingers, tugging it down and showing the bright linking rings with the diamond studded collar.

 

(Art by Rutobuka)

“Why do you think I came back?” Bilbo asks, the rage replaced with a light touch of laughter that sends Thorin’s heart up into his throat. It feels as if the fever from his wounds has returned, leaving him shivery and warm and floating and heavy all at once as the world moves slowly around him. He is more aware of the movement by his hand than of the sight of Bilbo shaking his head, more aware of the vibrations as Bilbo chuckles. “You complete, utter, incredible moron.”

A grounded section of Thorin’s mind notes that only Bilbo could say ‘complete, utter, incredible moron’ with all the softness of a wedding vow. He looks up into Bilbo’s face.

It is a face he has only seen in his dreams as of late. Dark eyes warm and open, eyebrows up making familiar furrows in Bilbo’s forehead, and a crooked twist of a smile so full of fond exasperation that Thorin can only look for a few moments before he yanks his eyes back to the mithril. The mithril that Bilbo kept, that Bilbo wears here and now in the mountain, fully knowing why it had been given to him.

“I just needed to think!” Bilbo sighs, and Thorin watches in a distant fascination as the rise and fall of Bilbo’s chest makes the mithril catch the light. “Thorin, I needed to actually think! Away from all the pressure here! I had no idea that you- that there was all that. I’d never dared to hope for any of that! You’re-. Well you’re you! You’re Thorin Oakenshield, the king and warrior and everything else you’ve become. I’m just-”

“Bilbo.” Thorin finishes, though he does not see how Bilbo could be Bilbo in a way that deserves a ‘just’ before it.  

Bilbo stops short with a nervous swallow, and takes a few moments before he begins to speak again. There’s a shift that Thorin barely registers, his attention still entirely on the mithril. The mithril is safer, somehow. If he looks too long anywhere else, he may awake. But then there’s a warm hand wrapping around his, holding him holding onto Bilbo’s shirt. Bilbo’s fingers drift lightly over the back of his hand, growing more solid as they wind over Thorin’s knuckles and grip in a way that is far too real.

“Yeah. Yeah that. Look this-” Bilbo stops again, takes a deep breath and settles himself. “This is mad and irregular,” he goes on succinctly, and it is such a Bilbo thing to say that Thorin looks up then. “But you kind of make me do mad and irregular things pretty...well...pretty regularly. I-”

The words drift in syllable by syllable, slowly coming together in Thorin’s mind. The air is cool around them, Bilbo’s fingertips cracked from the journey, his shirt dirty, and none of this is a dream. There was a serious discussion happening, not once has Bilbo used the word ‘friendship’, and instead of calmly gentle and nervous, Bilbo is stammering and huffing and turning a deep shade of pink.

“I. Ok. I’m for it. Alright? The- the marriage. That whole thing. That idea. I’m. Yes. Yeah. I-you...I love you. Alright?”

Bilbo is still talking, but those words stick and start repeating in Thorin’s mind. Within his dreams, waking or sleeping, he has heard it many times, imagined a million different ways Bilbo could say it. In life it comes out rushed and breathless, as if they were shoved out in a hurry before Bilbo could think better of it.

‘I love you ’ repeats again and again as Thorin memorizes the exact way Bilbo said it. Not sweet and soft or gentle, but in a way that was entirely Bilbo.

“And I did before but I had to get my head around the fact that that wasn’t a bad thing and that you were actually a thing that I could- Yeah. So I came back for that. Because I want-. That wasn’t home anymore. And I’m thinking this could be. A home. With you. If you-”

Home.

The word punches the air from Thorin’s lungs, and he is aware in some way that he makes a sound, though he does not really hear it. There is not much that Thorin knows in that moment except for the need to have Bilbo closer. To feel him solid. Here and wanting a home with Thorin.

With a shift and a gentle pull, Thorin brings Bilbo closer, and Bilbo steps in easily, closing the distance between them and tilting his head forward as Thorin rests their foreheads together. Even through the thick layers of his clothes and cloak, he feels the light pressure of Bilbo’s hands holding his arms grounding him where he stands.

How long the loose embrace lasts, Thorin can not say. Even long years later he will say it felt like a few seconds stretched into hours. There is no speaking, no sound except their breath and the snap of wind through pennants on the ramparts.

He would have thought that his heart would be pounding hard and fast, and it is beating hard in his ears, but there is no rush. It feels as if a tense pressure has released it’s hold within his chest, a tightness that had become such a part of life that Thorin was not aware of it until now as it melts away. There’s his own heart beating, calm and slow and steady, and Bilbo leaning into him.

The skin on the back of Bilbo’s neck feels like a gentle furnace on Thorin’s palm, and soft curls of hair brush against his knuckles. While longer than before, it still seems strangely short to Thorin, who wonders what it would feel like to card the short curls through his fingers.

It is the realization that he could, possibly, do that which jolts him out of the trance. Not just possibly. Probably. If Bilbo wanted to marry him, then that is very likely something he could do. And perhaps…

“Bilbo…” Thorin says quietly, a decision already solidifying, making his calm heart start to beat faster, ““I am going to kiss you now, and I would prefer if I not get yelled at for it this time.”

He is glad that he has his eyes open, and can therefore see the wide and shaky grin on Bilbo’s face. “I’ll yell at me if you don’t kiss me you utter-”

That is all Thorin needs. Whatever Bilbo was going to call him can wait, can wait until tomorrow or the day after, or the week after, or the year after. Thorin cups Bilbo’s face between his palms, taking only a breaths time to savor the soft skin and way Bilbo tilts his head up with bright eyes, before he ducks his head down and presses their lips together.

Now his heart will not settle, and he never wants it to. As Bilbo grips his arms, Thorin swears that his hands blazes through the layers of fur, leather, and wool. The distance between them closes, not by a move from either one of them, but like the pull between a lodestone and solid iron, an irresistible tug as their heads tilt to allow for the deeper kiss. A piece inside Thorin settles back into place, completing something that he had thought was lost, that he had only dared to dream of before.

And he knows that for as long as he lives past this moment, this is a kiss he will not forget.

-----------

The wind is far more bitter up here, and Thorin feels it all the more now for the heat that has guttered out in his heart. There are only grim glances exchanged between him and Dwalin as they look out over the notably empty landscape.

Where are they?

Thorin stalks across the ice covered stone, muscles hard and tense as he glares down around the crumbled stone of Ravenhill. There are too many places to hide, and it is too quiet, and Dwalin hovers by his back, a solid wall of support.

Already another plan is forming in his mind. Azog wants him, and will likely want him separated. As soon as Fili and Kili return he can send them to relay information to Dáin, and Dwalin…

Hopefully he will be able to separate from Dwalin at some point in the chaos of battle. And what comes after will come.

But first he needs to know where the filth is. There is a strange sound just under the wind, like a gust of air hitting something.

“Thorin!”

Thorin spins around hard, not daring to believe what his ears tell him.

And there stands Bilbo, doubled over and gasping for breath.

“Bilbo!”

Thorin can not keep the shock from his voice, or the relief that he did not expect to feel. He had been so certain that his last memory of Bilbo would be of fear and hate and a fire in his mind that would not block out the terrified sounds and hurt stare looking at him. But Bilbo was back here, after everything, alive and....why was he here? Why was he not already miles away, away from the ice and iron and blood?

Thorin moves forward without thinking, the cold forgotten. All that he wants is to clutch Bilbo to him, to feel him solid and warm and say again and again how sorry he is.

Bilbo steps back and to the side as he steps closer, holding an arm out, and Thorin stops. The cold returns, more bitter than before. He does not think Bilbo will ever let him come within an easy arms reach ever again, and he does not blame the halfling in the slightest.

‘I did not mean…’ He thinks, but Bilbo speaks before he can force the words out.
“We have to leave here! Now!” Bilbo gasps, staggering up to stand with them. “Azog has another army coming in from the north, this tower will be surrounded!”

Plans dissolve and reform. If Bilbo has not left, then Thorin can not let himself die here and now. Not yet.

There is too much to be said to leave it to chance now.

----------

The cold returns, hard and bitter through his clothes as if he were wearing nothing but his own skin in the ice. It is a scene that has replayed countless times, though in this moment of the dream it feels as if he is truly back on Ravenhill with his boots sliding on the frozen river.

Azog leers before him, somehow always fresh to the battle, while Thorin feels every cut, every ache, every bruise down to his bones. With each swing of his sword, his shoulders scream and his arms shake. He rolls up across the ice and is certain with each dodge that he will not be able to get up the next time. It goes on and on, Azog laughing and never tiring, never showing any of the blows Thorin lands as he swings the flail of stone around as if it were a toy on a string.

This battle will go forever, he knows. It already has. Centuries will pass and he will still be in this winter, on the ice, struggling to keep fighting for another second while his body threatens to crumble.

“Give up.” Azog grins, speaking his dark language, though Thorin can understand every word perfectly now. “You have nothing left. You will fail your kingdom again, you will fail and be remembered for nothing else. Just like your father. Just like your grandfather.”

Ice cracks under him as Thorin throws himself to the side, a rib screaming in protest as he lands and Azog laughs.

“Give up.”

He can not give up. Can not give in to the pain and exhaustion. It would be easy to give in to it. And the temptation is there to shut his eyes and let the dark peace pull him away. To not push himself up the next time he needs to fling himself onto the ice. There would be relief, perhaps warmth, a welcome finality to it all.

“I can not...” It feels less like defiance and more like a tired, pained confession. “I -”

The stone hits him in the middle, ribs crack, the icy air hits lungs even as they collapse and-

Warmth rushes in after the cold, and Thorin sucks the warmth into his chest as he wakes. He takes a few moments to simply lay there and breath, to be sure that his lungs are whole. It is not until the mattress shifts and dips that Thorin realizes his is not alone, and he opens his eyes.

Bilbo frowns down at him from where he is propped up on one elbow, brow furrowed and folded, hair mussed in the firelight and mouth a tense line. Another night, like every other night. How many times has it been now, that Thorin wakes from one nightmare into another? How many times has Bilbo looked down at him like this and asked “Why didn’t you just give up? I gave up on you long ago.”

And this time Thorin is just...tired. Tired in every bone in his body, spirit drained away. Bilbo’s fingertips brush over his face, pushing back a lock of hair, and Thorin shuts his eyes to the pained exhaustion, hoping to force himself awake.

“Thorin…”

“I know.” Thorin grits, willing himself to finish waking up, or to fall back into the ice and pain, or the fire and gold. Either is preferable to this right now.

“Know? Know what? I haven’t said anything.”

That is not right. Thorin frowns and opens his eyes, looking up as Bilbo frowns back at him with a puzzled tilt of his head.

“Bilbo…”

“Are you alright? You started thrashing in your sleep. Was it wrong to wake you?” Bilbo asks, fingertips curled to rest his knuckles at Thorin’s temple, thumb moving in slow, careful strokes over where Thorin knows a scar from Azog slices his forehead. Hand shaking, Thorin reaches up and wraps his fingers around Bilbo’s.

“You are here…” He breathes, memories starting to come back as he wakes more. The ramparts, the kiss, more kisses, the heated rush to the rooms and laughter as clothes hit the floor. Laughter as their lips met and hands explored.

Bilbo’s nose wrinkles up and twitches. “Of course I’m here. Where else would I be? Especially in the middle of the bloody night after- well. I’m certainly not going anywhere else.” The last bit is said defiantly, as if Bilbo would be challenged on this.

With a sharp exhale that pulls all the air from his lungs, Thorin practically topples towards Bilbo until his face is pressed to the soft chest and Bilbo’s free arm settles on his shoulders.

“Thorin?” Bilbo asks gently, hand moving in slow circles between Thorin’s shoulder blades. It is such a simple, intimate touch that takes Thorin apart more than all the desperate grasping did before.

“I am not well…” Thorin admits, teeth gritted around it.

There’s a pause, where Thorin focuses on the sound of Bilbo breathing and the heartbeat against his forehead. The hand on his back pulls him in closer, and moves in steadying strokes of Bilbo’s palm.

“You don’t mean the battle wounds, do you?” Bilbo asks, voice so soft. Thorin shuts his eyes and gives a slow shake of his head.

“There are nights, most nights, where everything is either ice or fire. And always blood and gold.”

‘ And you.’ Thorin thinks, but does not want to say, not when Bilbo is here now.

Another pause, where Thorin lets himself feel Bilbo around him, letting the silence settle him. When Bilbo speaks again, it is a soft, gentle cadence that threatens to send Thorin back into sleep.

“You know, I was quite blown off my cart when I saw Dale.”

Thorin’s eyes crack open, and he frowns, puzzling at this new leap that Bilbo’s mind has taken. It is not too concerning however. It is too much of a relief to be once again at the mercy of Bilbo’s odd mind and the strange turns that it takes.

“How so?” Thorin asks, curiosity overwhelming exhaustion.

“How far it's come.” Bilbo goes on. “And Erebor, so much more so. I felt like I must have come to the wrong mountain! Just a year ago there was rubble and loss, chaos as everyone scrambled to figure out where food would come from, how rations would be split among the cities, who would do what.”

“There still is quite a lot of that.” Thorin points out wryly, remembering the latest meeting with King Bard and the resulting arguments on the exchange rate of the trade of farmed food for metalwork.

“Oh I’m sure. But that’s part of the whole kingdom thing, I imagine. But they’re actually kingdoms, not just piles of rock barely held together. Erebor looks like it’s already nearly rebuilt, structurally at least. It doesn’t…”

Bilbo trails off, and Thorin tilts his head to look up without moving himself away from Bilbo at all. The result is a strain on his neck, but entirely worth the effort.

“It doesn’t look like a tomb anymore, and Dale doesn’t look like a battlefield.” Bilbo goes on, and Thorin watches as Bilbo’s eyes glance away, grow distant and squinted in a tense frown. “Sometimes, I still have dreams as well. Dreams where I am running up to Ravenhill forever, with bodies falling around me. Sometimes there’s nothing but dark and the screams of the dying all around, as if I got shoved into a pot with a closed lid in the middle of battle.”

Silence descends again. Bilbo, Thorin decides, is still too far away and frowning too much. It takes only a slight tug at a curl of hair to bring Bilbo back down to where Thorin can curl against his chest and wind an arm around Bilbo’s middle.

“Better?” Bilbo asks with a chuckle, which grows when Thorin only nods. There are a few moments, where Thorin has an odd sense of having been here before, curled against Bilbo’s front as hands gently card through his hair.

“What I guess I’m trying to get at.” Bilbo starts again, the words both coming from above Thorin’s head and pressed as low vibrations against his ear to Bilbo’s chest, “Is that this place is alive again. I could see it so clearly against all my memories of the pain and loss. There’s life and healing and movement forward. There are still some piles of rubble, some bare areas of the mountain and, I imagine, there are some scars that will never go away. There will always be some memories of what happened.”

Thorin has the distinct feeling that Bilbo is not entirely speaking of the stone and ground of the kingdoms, and he tightens his arm around Bilbo’s middle.

“But it is healing, and it has come a very, very long way.” Bilbo goes on, and when Thorin tilts back to crane his neck and look up, it is into Bilbo’s soft, warm twist of a smile. “And even if some scars never fade, I’m all too happy to stay and see how much more growth and life blooms here.”

The silence is shorter this time, and Thorin does not dare break it with words. Instead, he pushes up until his lips brush against Bilbo’s with hardly more pressure than a breath of air. He stays there for a few more moments, in an almost but not quite kiss.

“There is a long way to go…” He warns.

“I’ve already come a long way.” Bilbo answers. “And so have you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you. Now stop being melodramatic and kiss me already.”

And he does.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of A Cultural Misunderstanding