Chapter Text
--Now--
They were all going to die here.
There was no escaping this wretched mountain. Those things were coming, and they were all going to die.
Their dim lamp flickered and went out again, and somewhere in the dark behind Bilbo, Bofur gave a choked sob, and Óin's hand tightened around Bilbo's with a gasp.
They ran.
--Then--
Bilbo was tired.
Bone deep, soul drained, tired.
They'd only been here two days, and Bilbo was already well and truly done with this mountain. His Dwarrows seemed content enough, rifling through the ridiculously large pile of gold that took up the bulk of the main chamber, although they were all looking a little... stunned.
They had a right to be stunned funny. They had finally accomplished what they had come all this way to do. They'd actually done it. They Company had reclaimed Erebor for the Dwarves of the West!
Sort of.
Smaug was gone, at least.
Personally, Bilbo was convinced that it wasn't that easy, but although he was terrified that Smaug would return at any minute to smash through and kill them all, and was sick in his stomach at the thought of what was happening to the people of Laketown, he was altogether far too tired to really summon the appropriate measure of emotion to deal with the moment.
He was tired. And Smaug had not returned yet. May never return. Who knew? But even the exhaustion and the fear of death-by-incineration weren't really the main cause of Bilbo's discomfort, though.
There was something off about this place. None of his Dwarrows had said anything, indeed, although they were acting quite peculiarly around all this gold, they seemed.... happy. In a manic sort of way. So for all that Bilbo knew it could be a quite normal feeling sort of Mountain, and he himself, being a normal sort of Hobbit- if a little too adventurous for his own good sometimes- was wholly unsuited for mountain dwelling. Whether it was or not was neither here nor there, since all his Dwarves were far too busy playing in piles of jewels and sparkly things to tell him either way, and Bilbo was loath to bring it up. Quite likely with the way they were right now -gleeful with a sharp edge of maliciousness- they'd take offence or start another nasty song about his Hobbitly timidity, and he was in no mood for either.
So whether he liked this place or not, he was stuck here, for although he really did not want to be in this room full of treasure, spoils of the dead and desolate, he really really really did not want to be out lingering in the dark and quiet halls, with the crumbling walkways and sinkholes of doom, and most disturbingly, the statues.
He shuddered.
He'd thought, at first, that they were in fact, just statues, strange and eerie though they were, and while he had idly acknowledged how odd he found it for them to be everywhere, he'd just assumed it a Dwarrow thing and not thought much of it, far too concerned with the prospect of burgling a bloody gem from a dragon. It was only after, when the dragon was gone and he was starting to note how terribly odd some of the stone figures were, that he had seen the sorrow of his companions.
Óin had been the one to explain to him, the others too overwhelmed to dare. Dwarrows were different to other species. While the fire from the mouth of a dragon burnt most other species to ash, Dwarrows were of the stone, and to stone they would return, even by way of dragon fire.
Perhaps he was a fool coward of a hobbit, but he found statues that were not statues, but people, victims of Smaug’s rampage, burned hot and furious.... it was disturbing.
Especially as the dark and the odd spaces, and the long tunnels with strange echoes often made him feel that things were moving in the dark, and with the vague sensation of eyes on him, something in the dark watching him wandering about, a stranger in this place of stone, it all left him jittering and jumping, gaze seeking out danger not there- memories of a twisted wretched creature in another mountain still fresh in his memory. The glittering blackness that had once been real Dwarf eyes did not help, and only added to the terrible feel of beings lurking and watching, waiting for him to be taken off his guard.
It was foolish, but it only added to his discomfort, and he would like nothing better to be rid of this whole blasted mountain, perhaps back in Laketown, if he could not be in his Shire, by a warm fire with a good flagon of something for his nerves, and a meat pie as big as his own head. And a bed. Oh, his father's prized peonies for a decent bed.
With hours and hours of odd golden glow in his vision, however, and chilled to the bone and shaking with sweats- how could it be cold and stifling all at once?- and so desperate for someplace other than hip-deep treasure, he found himself quite without sense, and drifted off down a hall, skirting carefully around great looming not-statues, shivering and trying not to look at the fierce stances and brandished weapons of the Dwarrows-made-stone.
He paused in a crosswalk, and blearily assessed his options. He was fairly certain he took the right hand path up to reach the gate outside. Blasted, confounding mountain.
Bilbo sighed deeply, rubbing at his eyes in exhaustion. By the green fields he was tired!
"Bilbo," Thorin said to the left of him, and Bilbo snapped around, not hearing him come up the walk.
Thorin was standing in front of one of those poor burned dwarf statues, and the thing was reaching, though what it could have been reaching for at the moment of death, Bilbo had no idea. From this angle, it did looked disturbingly as if it was about to grab a hold of Thorin by the hair.
Bilbo shook his head at the foolish thought, clenching his eyes shut for a minute and looked again, jumping slightly to find Thorin so much closer and not have heard him move.
He was so very tired.
Thorin was staring at him. His eyes glowed oddly in the light of the funny lamps the dwarrows had all lit after Smaug had flown off and not come back, and his hair was a mess; not his usual mess that was far too attractive and very distracting, but a mess that was of frustrated tugging and disinterest in personal upkeep. And although his uncouth bunch of Dwarrows were an unhygienic bunch, they did spend a large amount of time on their hair, taking pride in every strand in the ridiculous great manes. Even Thorin. Seeing his braids half unravelled and one of his clasps from the back missing and the other half-dangling, with snarls and tangles hanging about, well.
There was something wrong about this place. With his Dwarrows. And with that cursed gold.
He already hated this place and all its miserable treasure.
"All those months ago," Thorin said softly, absently, "I hired you to burgle me an Arkenstone. Yet you haven't brought me an Arkenstone, yet."
"You hired me to burgle you gold," Bilbo said crossly, backing away from Thorin's odd eyes and his disturbing hair. "And instead, you have the whole mountain, full of treasure, and with plenty of time to find your stone. One would think you would be grateful!"
"As I am," Thorin said, and there, for a moment, he pouted, face hurt and gentled from the harshness of before. "I thought you would be with us, searching and looking through the treasure."
Bilbo sighed loudly, leaning back against the wall of the passage for a moment.
"I need good fresh air. Just a little time at the gate, that's all."
"Nobody is searching," Thorin said, tone petulant, bewildered, and his face was twisted with plain confusion.
It was... every time Bilbo looked at him lately, it was like looking at a different person. Thorin was different; this mountain had changed him, was changing them all.
"Everybody is searching," Bilbo insisted, and stepped forward, taking Thorin by the arm. "Come to the gate with me. Get some fresh air, away from all that gold."
Belligerence crossed Thorin's features at the word 'gold', but the touch of Bilbo's hand on his arm seemed to wipe it away, and he shook his head as if to clear it, and then nodded and followed Bilbo along the passage to the opening.
Near the great doorway that was the opening to the gate, however, Thorin stopped and grasped Bilbo's arm, stopping him just shy of the doorway.
"This is close enough, surely?" he said, gripping the back of Bilbo's coat to stop him before he could reach the last light of the setting sun.
"What-? No. This is most certainly not far enough," he said, pulling himself free and stepping into the warm glow, out and away from the stone over his head, and out under clear sky and gentle wind. Finally, relief from the stagnant stifling chill, that always seemed to leave a thin layer of sweat over his entire body.
He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, breathing deep. It was so good out here; real sunlight and fresh breeze, and finally the unrelenting pressure of unpleasantness hammering in his head eased. He took big grateful gulps of air, savouring it while he could. The air in the treasury was stagnant and metallic and with an odd edge of rancidity. This was fresh air, and it was glorious.
A moment of silence, and he found himself turning back to the tunnel to check if Thorin was still present, so quiet was his companion. In the little light from the balcony, and mostly shadow from the tunnel, Thorin looked lost and somewhat small. The hair didn't help, looking much like a small child spent too much time running amok and now tired and in need of a good bath and a groom.
"Come out and get some sun," Bilbo prompted, holding a hand out for the silly Dwarrow that was quite becoming inexplicably important to Bilbo.
Thorin stared at him for such a long time, but Bilbo was an obstinate sort of fellow, and eventually Thorin let himself step from the shadows and join Bilbo on the battlements, tilting his head back into the last of the day's sunshine, looking quite like a great big cat in the way his neck arched and his lids fell most of the way closed, a deep noise of surprise and contentment rising from his chest.
Bilbo smiled and turned his face into the last of the sun, focusing on his own contentment, and the warm steadiness of Thorin's big hand wrapped around his own.
"I feel as if I can scarcely breathe in there," Thorin said suddenly, quietly. Wearily. He looked it, too; weary and small and a little bit frightened, and Bilbo squeezed the hand in his own, not entirely sure what to say.
"We'll get it aired out," he said, a little stupidly. "And it will be fine. You'll see."
"It doesn't feel right," Thorin said, and swallowed hard, and Bilbo realised that Thorin was swallowing against tears, his eyes shining too brightly in the remaining glow of day. "I'm a fool, Bilbo. Decades, over a century I've been dreaming of returning to this mountain, and all this time, I've never accepted the way of what I would truly be returning to."
"Way of what?" Bilbo asked gently after a moment, when Thorin did not continue immediately.
Thorin shook his head, teeth gritted and eyes shut tightly. Finally, he seemed steady enough to speak, though his voice shook when he did.
"It will never be like it was," he admitted. "I just wanted to come home. But it isn't like it was. I'm not like I was. And I never can be again."
"Thorin..."
"I can't ever go home, not ever again. It's gone."
Bilbo abandoned words. Oh, it hurt to hear Thorin speak like he was broken, like every conviction he had was falling into ruin around him, and there were no words that could possibly help. So Bilbo turned and moved in and wrapped his arms around Thorin's shoulders and tugged him close and held him tight.
Thorin's breath was a shuddering noise into his shoulder, but he rested his head against Bilbo's and let his hands rest around Bilbo in return, and they stood for a long time, till the sun was gone and the stars emerged, and Bilbo stirred at last.
"I promised to help you regain your home, Thorin, and that isn't a promise I intend to break," he said, and Thorin shuddered hard.
"But it's gone."
"Home isn't really a place, Thorin," he said, shifting far enough back to force Thorin to lift his head and look at him. "I know that is an odd thing for me to say, coming from a Hobbit that has done nothing this whole arduous journey but quite vocally long for the walls of his home, and drive you all mad with my waxing and moaning on about it!" And there, that got him a bare bones of a smile, a glimmer of the wonderful Dwarrow Bilbo knew.
"The truth of it is, my armchair is the place my father sat me on his knee by the fire and talked of his day, and his voice will always be home. My books are my mother's, adventure and excitement all read to me by the fire, voice animated and eyes bright with the joy of discovery, and I find her in those pages. My home, my knick knacks and old furniture and empty rooms, all of it is memories and lingering traces of what used to be. But it never will be what I remember again. That's alright though."
"How can that be alright?" Thorin asked, eyes slipping away to rest on Bilbo's shoulder, unwilling to meet the Hobbit's gaze.
"Because sometimes home can be found in the oddest of places. Like in my cousins pilfering my tarts from my pantry cupboard, chasing them down the lane and promising dire consequences at the top of my lungs, their laughter trailing behind them and forcing a smile to my face. Sometimes I stumble across home in a good meal with a treasured neighbour, belly full, toes warm, and friendly faces echoing my contentment. And sometimes, home is by a miserable scrap of a fire, with Dwarves fighting over who tipped the spit over and singing songs not meant for polite company, but familiar, and safe, and joy in the shared experience. Sometimes home is a wizard's smoke rings in your face when you're trying to saddle your pony, or good mead served by a great bear skin-changer, comfort in the oddest of moments. Hobbits value comfort, don't you know? And there is no greater comfort than that of people dear to your heart."
Thorin was so very tense under his hands, shaking slightly, and still refusing to make eye contact with him.
"I'll help, Thorin. I'll help you find home here again. With the Company, and with your family, and your people. It can be a place you treasure again. Not the same, but home nonetheless."
Thorin said nothing for a very long time, though he allowed Bilbo to stay so close to him, petting his shoulders, and gently trying to smooth his hair back into some sense of order. Finally, he nodded jerkily, resignation settling about him like a cloak, and Bilbo wondered if Thorin had not really heard what he had been trying to say at all.
"Come back to the doorway?" Thorin suddenly pleaded, dragging Bilbo with him as he stumbled across the stone walk. He gasped when he hit the inside air, and Bilbo shuddered, right down to his toes. This was no good place to make a home. Not yet. There was something so very wrong here, and Bilbo had to discover what it was, if he was to keep his promise and help make Thorin a home.
No matter how determined he was to help, though, he wasn't quite ready to go back to the room full of treasure, that glowed in the strangest of ways that pierced his eyes with it's sharpness and that strained him from the dimness and made his head threaten to burst from pressure, where the air was frigidly cold and stubbornly still and left him sweaty and clammy and shaking, where his Dwarrows’ faces were lit with a grim delight that made them almost unrecognisable as his dear companions in the flickering of the lamps. He could not go back to that just yet, no matter how tired he was- and how much he may be able to convince Thorin to allow them all a nap.
"We can go inside," he told Thorin, "but I need a little longer. Just a little more time. Mountain caves are so odd to a Hobbit."
Thorin nodded, but the Thorin of just a few minutes ago was almost gone again, once more frowning impatiently and with the slight air of arrogant aggression about him, though he watched Bilbo with sharp, intently assessing eyes. Bilbo shivered, and edged closer to the open air again. There was something wrong with this mountain.
"Careful now," Thorin warned, voice low and sharp, and falling flat of the humour he might have been trying for, judging by the mean little grin. "You linger outside my walls, I may lock you out."
"Oh?" Bilbo said, attempting a slightly amused, inoffensive tone, but quite aware of the quiver in his voice. "The gates are out there. Going to toss me over?"
"The main gates are out there," Thorin agreed, but he reached over Bilbo's shoulder, to smooth over a series of runes carved into the rock. "But Dwarrows have been known to be completely reclusive, you know. There are times when we have shut down our mountain completely, sealed so tight that no outsider can even find the door."
Bilbo shrank back against the wall, breath unsteady in the face of Thorin's glee over his discomfort.
"And why didn't you do that when Smaug came?" he said, again aiming for light, but sounding far too accusing, which Bilbo immediately regretted. Thorin's face morphed to thunderous glaring.
"We had no time. He was upon us before we could lock our mountain down from his plunder. It is... one of my regrets," Thorin admitted, and there, there was Thorin again, his honourable Dwarf speaking plainly to Bilbo. "I came here, to the gates, but I was too late. He forced his way in, killed so many, and I... was too late."
"I am almost certain that none of this," Bilbo waved a hand about them, "was your fault. Dragons are forces of the darkness of this world. No person could ever fault you for any part of the downfall of your people."
Had anybody ever told Thorin anything like that? Surely. Surely the sister that Thorin had spoken shyly of to him in Laketown, or his cousins, as Bilbo had discovered some members of the Company to be, somebody surely would have at some stage told Thorin that nothing, none of the suffering of his people was Thorin's fault. One would hope. Yet Thorin looked gutted, lost all over again.
By all that was good, Bilbo hated this mountain, and what it had done to his Thorin. What it was doing to him. To all of them.
"Why don't we close it now?" Bilbo asked. "Close down the mountain in case Smaug comes back?"
"Can't," Thorin said raggedly. "I know how to close it, but I don't know how to open it again. I never learned. We'd be trapped in here."
"Why wouldn't you know how to open it?" Bilbo asked, gaping at what he saw as quite the absurdity.
"This is sacred Dwarrow magic, Bilbo. It requires the right words, and the right thoughts to open, and to shut. Grandfather taught me how to lock the mountain down to protect it, but never how to open it again. They never got to that. I think father knew how, and the magic workers could, but they're all gone now. They assumed that any danger could be defended against, and one of them would be here to open the mountain when the danger was past."
"Oh," Bilbo said stupidly, and nothing more. Thorin looked exhausted again, and Bilbo felt a pang run through him at the sight.
"How about we go and get some sleep, hmm?" he asked cautiously, and Thorin stared at him in confusion. "Night has fallen. A little food and a rest, and we will have clearer heads to search."
"I have to search," Thorin said, but he sounded more resigned than insistent, and Bilbo took one last breath of free air, and gently took Thorin's arm, leading him back towards the others, stomach dropping as they walked away from the exit. Thorin let himself be led.
Once they had reached the treasury again, though, Thorin strode off back to his gold, kicking through piles of gems and jewels with the renewed fervour of tightly reined fury. Bilbo sighed, slinking across to where Bifur was stirring a cookpot of what smelt like smoked fish even as he twitched and muttered at the slightest movement around him.
"Alright there, Bifur?" he asked quietly watching Thorin yell at nobody in particular. Bifur made a noise that was not a whimper, but was loaded with apprehension, and Bilbo patted him carefully on the shoulder.
"Yes, I know," he said, before he turned back to the door they had entered through, near their 'camp spot', such as it was, on a wide step above the gold.
"Do you think that shuts?" he asked nobody in particular, that strange sensation of watchful things in the dark making shivers run up and down his back.
"It does," Balin replied from behind him, wearily wandering up to the top step where Bilbo hovered. "Dinner soon, Bifur?"
Bifur grunted an affirmative, and Bilbo fidgeted where he stood, staring at the black shadows within the stone doorway, right by where they had dumped their bedrolls.
"Then may we shut it, Balin?" he asked with a little urgency. He'd just walked that very passage way, but the gaping door gave him the shivers, and he wanted nothing more than to shut every door leading into the entire room.
Thorin would probably not appreciate that. He would not appreciate anything at the moment.
Balin turned his attention to Bilbo properly, and then the door, and it did not take him very long at all to nod seriously and his body to snap to wakeful watchfulness.
"Aye, I think we had better," he agreed, and made his way over. Bilbo did not see much of what Balin was doing, view blocked by the elder's body, but there was a dull clank and a shift, and a door slid smoothly into place, shutting with barely a sound, and Balin hesitated only briefly before pulling some sort of lever-shaped bar out from the door and down into place, locking the door shut tight.
"There," he said, turning back to Bilbo. "Always makes for a better sleep with solid rock at your back, eh lad?"
"Yes, that's... yes. Thank you, Balin."
Balin nodded, brow creased a little, and stepped back to Bifur, taking one of the bowls of ladled stew, and wandered off to sit on another step, eyes on Thorin fumbling with a pile of bits and pieces.
Bilbo really hated this mountain.
There was nothing to be done, though, except to swallow down the meagre meal and take his blankets to the wall, wrapping himself up and covering his head so he did not have to see the faces of his companions as strangers in the horrible glow of gold.
It took him a long time to sleep.
--Now--
Balin was gone. Bilbo had heard him cry out in the last dash for freedom, before Nori had managed to break through a door and lead them in a mad dash down a thin tunnel, and Bilbo tried to hope, he really did.
Dwalin was sobbing, Óin and Glóin holding him tight between them and hands wrapped over his mouth to quiet the sound of his pained tears, and prevent him from crying out for his brother, and Bofur and Bombur were huddled in a corner, past the louder stages of their grief, now. They had lost Bifur a few hours before, when they'd been crawling through an aqueduct system to avoid a meeting hall with too many doorless entrances. Nobody had even noticed until they were through.
In the soft light of their rekindled lantern, Thorin's face was awash with pain, twisted in grief, biting down hard on his lip, and Bilbo slipped forward to huddle with him and the lads.
A noise up the tunnel and they tensed, and Dori threw open the next door, all of them stumbling through, and piling what bits they found on the other side against it, before they ran again.
--Then--
Digging in gold. What fun, Bilbo thought dully, shifting a few more coins aside. Digging for a gem in a field of gems and stupid, stupid gold.
He sighed deeply in frustration.
One gem was surely just as good as another? Red, blue, green, who really cared? Cold and hard and not really good for anything, if you asked Bilbo. Which nobody did.
This particular important gem they sought, though, was apparently white. He'd found many, many white gems over the last several hours, and received expressions of pure disgust for the presentation of each. No no, it was big! A large white gem, that shone with a great inner light of beauty. That was the description he had to work with. Oh, and 'pride of my grandfather's reign', 'prize of the Longbeards of Erebor' and 'proof of my divine right to rule'.
(Bilbo may have made the mistake of snottily asking if said jewel came with these particular details written on it anywhere, and received a look of absolute fury for his troubles.)
Oh, the headache he had at this moment. Gold was a poor light source, gleaming and reflecting what meagre lamplight there was in the worst of ways, but the Dwarrows were having no problem at all, and their supplies were limited, so there really was nothing Bilbo could do about it. He'd already scampered up to the gate for a breath of fresh air once today, hurrying as fast as he could past crumbling holes in the floor from a dragon's rampage, entries to long winding tunnels of darkness, and the strange frozen stone bodies of Dwarrows long gone, feeling the weight of phantom gaze on his back as he ran past them like the scared little ninny he was.
Thorin was unlikely to tolerate him running off again.
Thorin. That dwarf! Bilbo heaved a great sigh and sat back, tipping his head back and closing his eyes against the sight of gold. It only made it easier to hear the mutterings of the Dwarrow on his mind, though, and his stomach lurched unpleasantly.
Bilbo would be quite the fool to pretend that Thorin did not have a special place in his heart. He really had not meant for that to happen, and truly, he wasn't entirely sure when such a thing had occurred, but it was there. He could be rude, he could be arrogant, rash, impatient and haughty, but he was generally noble and kind-hearted and devoted to the well being of his entire clan, shy when confronted with affection and heartbreakingly confused by kindness. He loved wholly and unreservedly, and treasured his family. He was confusing and contrary and should be the furthest thing from an ideal mate for a Hobbit, but he was in Bilbo's heart, infuriating as it was.
They all were, such wretched beasts as existed as these Dwarrow. Friends and dear family, they had all become. This mountain scared him down to his very being, some large part being how different his family were behaving. Even Fíli and Kíli were not the lads that had played tricks and gotten themselves in far too much trouble trying to prove their mettle, but subdued and focused a lot of the time, past the point of whooping and hollering over the gold, throwing fistsfull of coins at each other and trying on the grandest of the jewellery they could find. Now, they only searched for this wretched gem, focused and silent, and although Bilbo knew they worshipped their beloved Uncle and would tear the mountain apart to please him, their demeanour did not suit the persons Bilbo knew them to be.
Something was very wrong with the mountain.
His digging hand hit something large enough to possibly suit the requirements of the blasted Arkenstone, and Bilbo pulled the piece loose from the pile and eyed it dubiously. It was certainly very pretty, and large, and white.... well, whiteish. It had a distinctive blue tone. But it shone brightly in the lamplight. Perhaps it was ...?
Well, better to check than to be berated later for tossing aside the jewel they were after. He clutched the thing to his chest and pushed to his feet, groaning at the click of his back from hours bent over these useless mathoms.
Thorin had abandoned his own rifling through treasure. He'd found what was apparently his Grandfather's armour, and although it was grand, it did not suit Thorin at all. Perhaps to a stranger that did not know him, he cut a fine figure of a Dwarrow, but to Bilbo, it was an ill fit and was altogether too showy, and still not nearly grand enough for the true King Bilbo knew him to be. And the silly sword he had found! While it may be a fine Dwarven sword of wonderful material, or some such nonsense, he held it with none of the grace and skill he had held his elvish find, Orcrist, lost in Mirkwood. His movements as he swung the thing back and forth in agitation were jerky and slightly off balance, and Bilbo's fist tightened around the latest gem find at the sight.
Thorin had moved to another grand stair leading into the treasury and climbed to the top of a giant fallen corbel, one that had no doubt come down when Smaug had first smashed his way in, and it all but blocked the doorway but elevated Thorin far above the others to watch them suspiciously, hiding him, too, when he muttered and stalked off to the shadows around the almost hidden door, and honestly, how many doors did one need into a treasure room? One would think it would be better secured, the way Dwarves hovered so jealously over all this useless glittering metal and rock. But, doors all around, there were, and odd pillars, and recesses and stairs and columns. For all Bilbo knew, all this architecture was necessary to keep the whole mountain top from caving in atop them, but it seemed so very showy to Bilbo.
He backed up a little to better see Thorin up the little ledge of the corbel he had wandered to, waving his sword still, and peering suspiciously at each member of the Company and glaring if they did not seem to him to be searching hard enough for his silly heart thingummy. Perhaps Bilbo would just keep this gem atop a pile, and sort contenders into a collection until Thorin was in a better mood, if he seemed too agitated to call too. He moved over to see Thorin a little better, hidden in the shadowy recess he was mumbling in, and frowned.
He hadn't realised one of those poor petrified souls was in the room with them. Bilbo did not remember seeing a statue there, but he could see the shadow of it there, behind Thorin, it's now-stone sword raised in a long useless strike against a dragon that had burned it to dead rock instead. He'd quite thought that Thorin would not be so comfortable pacing and mumbling about what was essentially a corpse of one of his beloved people, when he had been so sorrowed when they had first arrived, but perhaps this was another change. That he did not even care for respecting the departed now.
From this angle, the shadow seemed to loom out of the darkness, an indistinct profile shuddering and moving with the odd flickering of one of the lamps gently swinging back and forth. Larger than life, an indistinct darkness, massive and bearing down upon his poor Dwarf, poised to strike at his Thorin, his Thorin that was bedraggled and dressed up in gold like a child playing at costumes, defenceless despite the armour and sword, and Bilbo's chest tightened at the vision.
"Thorin!" he called, and blinked, immediately feeling like a fool for being so frightened by an image that had disappeared as fast as he had imagined seeing it. But Thorin was already turning and looking for him, and moving forward to come down. And now that he had moved, Bilbo could quite see that there was no statue on the ledge, or in the doorway behind where Thorin had stood, and even the shadows had shifted in the sway of the lantern and showed none of the sort, and Bilbo silently berated himself for jumping at shadows where there was no danger to come.
"Did you find it?" Thorin asked, striding unsteadily across the sliding treasure.
"Umm, I'm not sure?" Bilbo stuttered, holding the jewel out hesitantly.
Thorin stared at it for a minute, before his hand swung out and knocked the jewel flying, face furious.
"That you could even think such a paltry thing could compare to the beauty of the Arkenstone of my forefathers-"
"Well how am I to know, Thorin?" Bilbo snapped, suddenly furious. "I am no Dwarf, and one jewel looks as like as another to me! I- surely there is something more helpful I could be doing, because I am useless at this."
Thorin said nothing, but stared at him in surprise, and Bilbo swiped one weary hand over his face.
"Why don't we go for a walk to the gate again? We can get some air and you can describe the Arkenstone to me a bit more, so I will recognise it." Thorin looked torn, eyes straying to the door that was open again, the shadowy door out to the balcony. "That crown looks heavy," Bilbo said quietly. "Why not take it off a while? Walk with me."
Thorin blinked at him, and slowly nodded, the sword sagging in his limp hand, reaching up to remove the crown from his head. He hesitated then, though, and looked at Bilbo accusingly.
"You have to keep searching," he said, voice and sword rising again. "All of you need to keep searching. Find my Arkenstone!"
Barely any of the Company even looked up, Bilbo noticed. He also noticed, quite worryingly, Ori was sitting on a pile and looking about himself as if he didn't even know where he was, and Balin had abandoned searching and was pacing atop another ledge of downed stone and muttering furiously. Bilbo sank back onto the gold, hands digging in without even looking, eyes shutting in exhaustion.
There was something very wrong in this mountain.
--Now--
The cavern they had run through had been unstable. They hadn't known it, obviously, or they would not have run that way. They'd almost been across, and through to the next passage. Thorin was sure it was this way, and they were almost there, he had said. They just had to keep running.
The floor had collapsed under Kíli.
Bilbo had heard the scream, and dared to look back, just in time to see Kíli disappear from sight, falling down, down into the dark as the stone under his feet seemed almost to disappear down into the darkness. Fíli's yell had been desperate and anguished, and he hadn't even hesitated to dive after him, tumbling unsteadily down after in a shower of crumbling rock. Dwalin swung about and flung himself at the door they had just come through, slamming it shut and jamming himself against it while they had all rushed to the gaping sinkhole in the floor.
The lads were gone.
The hole was too deep, too far down for there to be any hope. They did not answer calls, and no light could go deep enough to penetrate that far into the dark to determine their fate, and Thorin sobbed and sobbed over the hole, calling and calling.
A great hammering came at the door, though, like many bodies throwing themselves against it, and an axe split through the wood, burying itself an inch into Dwalin's armour and into the flesh of his shoulder below it, and he roared with pain, but kept himself braced tight, even as a spear ripped through the door and narrowly missed his head.
"We have to go!" Bilbo yelled desperately, yanking on Thorin, half dragging him to the door at the opposite side. If Thorin did not leave, Dwalin would stay at the door, and he would not survive much longer holding it as he was. But Thorin was stuck hovering over the hole in the floor, sobbing out useless pleas, and Dori darted back and grabbed his other side, helping Bilbo shove him across and through into the next passageway.
"Dwalin, come on!" Bilbo yelled, letting Glóin take over his side of Thorin to rush him forward, and ran back to grab Dwalin as he stumbled, clutching at his shoulder.
"It's not deep," Dwalin gasped, as he and Bilbo came through the next entry way and slammed the door shut behind them. Together they manhandled a heavy decorative stone sculpture to shove in front of the door and raced after the others down the latest hallway.
"We'll need to bind it anyway," Bilbo wheezed as they raced down the hall after the little lamp that showed them where the others were. "You're leaking, and they may be able to track it."
So far they had gotten lucky, racing away when they were found and hiding for a few minutes here and there to catch their breath. If they could only reach the Zarârgharâf!
He almost kept running, after throwing himself around the frame after the bobbing little light, until he noticed that Dwalin had stopped dead in his tracks just before the door into the next hall.
"What?" Bilbo asked, eyes darting about for what could have put that expression on the warriors face.
"You're right. They could track us from the blood," Dwalin said, gesturing to the splatter trailing off behind him, blood still leaking steadily down to pitter-patter about him.
"I'll bind it," Bilbo said, already working at the fastenings of his tunic. He could take if off and tie it around the shoulder, which would stem it for a short while.
Dwalin shook his head, though, and backed away, groping for the door.
"I can lead them off. Go."
"What? No!" Bilbo insisted, throwing himself back towards Dwalin, but the burly warrior was too quick, and slammed the door shut, barring it from the other side.
"Dwalin, you open this door, right now!" Bilbo yelled, hammering at the barrier, when the handle would not turn and the door refused to budge.
"Go! Thorin needs you," Dwalin said, voice muffled and Bilbo whimpered. He was going to lose another one to this cursed mountain. He wasn't sure if he could do this much longer!
"Thorin needs you too, Dwalin. You'll break his heart. Please!"
There was no response from the other side, only silence, and Bilbo waited breathlessly for long, long moments, until finally, the sound of boot steps on stone hurrying away came through the door, and Bilbo gave another few useless heaves against the door, before his head hit the door in anguish, and the steps faded away to silence.
And there was another gone.
"Bilbo!" Nori cried, sliding to a stop beside him. "We found a place to hunker down for a bi- Where's Dwalin?"
Bilbo shook his head, rocking his head back and forth where it still rested against the wood of the door. A tear worked it's way loose, the losses suddenly piling their way up in his head. Balin, Bifur, Fíli, Kíli, and Dwalin. All gone.
"He said he'd lead them off," he managed around his grief-thick throat.
"And you let him?" Nori asked in disbelief.
"I didn't let him do anything. He's barricaded the door from the other side."
Nori shoved him aside and threw himself at the door, tugging and pushing and hammering, turning sideways to slam his whole body again and again at the utterly unyielding barrier.
"We must leave," Bilbo said slowly, running his sleeve over his eyes and tugging at Nori's shoulder when he started to scrabble around himself, presumably for something to help him open a door that would never open.
"We can't just leave him," Nori hissed.
"We must," Bilbo said, tugging at the shoulder under his hand. "Otherwise, we waste what he has just given us."
Nori shook him off, lifting a nearby chair and slamming it into the door. The act did nothing more than shatter the leg off the chair, and Nori slumped against the door, still but for his harsh breathing for a long time.
Finally, he stood, hands resting upon the barrier for a long long moment, before he reached for a heavy stone plinth nearby and carefully dragged it to wedge against the door, to hold it closed a little longer. Still silent, he reached to take Bilbo's hand in his own shaking one.
"The rest of them are this way," he said blankly, leading him off down another dark dark passage of a cursed mountain.
--Then--
He couldn't help it. He'd just felt so suffocated in that room that he had slipped off for another breath of fresh air at the gate -having to be quite sneaky about doing so, the way Thorin, and some of the others, seemed to be becoming more and more paranoid about the actions of those around them- but somehow, being free of the mountain had not felt as refreshing as it had the previous few visits. Instead, he'd shivered amongst the battlements, a terrible sense of impending doom settling about him and leaving him quivering right through to the heart of him. The sensation of being watched was back, and he'd spent a lot of time whipping about abruptly, only to feel a fool to find nothing there, time and time again.
In the end, his heart had been hammering so hard inside his chest, his breath coming in such uneven gasps, he had left the refuge of the only open sky he had access to, and was returning to the treasury, even though amongst the gold was still the most horrid place in all of Middle Earth. But he'd frightened himself well and truly at the gates, and the Dwarrows were at least all in one spot, and Bilbo had the feeling that if he were to be anywhere right now, with them was better than not.
There was something very, very wrong with this mountain.
Most of the lamps that the others had lit when they had arrived had sputtered out at some point. Bilbo thought it odd, since Bofur, Bombur and Bifur had used some concoction they had mixed with powders and gels, and had implied -though, he should admit, not outright ever said- that they should continue to burn for a long time. Perhaps by long time, they had meant a day or so- how long had they even been here anyway- but Bilbo had thought they had meant long like longer , since the ones in the treasury were still burning. He'd 'borrowed' one of those on his way out, unwilling to traverse the halls that seemed even darker, and more malicious then when they had arrived.
Like now.
It was infuriating how horridly still it seemed to be in this mountain, when the sound of wind whipping through tunnels echoed and hissed at his ears, at times almost making it seem as if things were moving restlessly in the dark, making him jump and whirl and spin and stumble along. Bitterly cold, and again he was shaking with it, from the contrary sweat building over his skin and rapidly cooling.
Trembling from terror was not helping either.
It was incredibly dark in the tunnels now, and finding his way was a hundred times more difficult now that he did not have the option of simply following the lit passages. Another crossway, and he was certain the he was to go right... or the other, not quite straight ahead? It all looked so different in deep shadow. He hesitated, feet straying forward, but the tunnel ahead was... well. Was there a concept of darker than completely dark? And ominous. Very, very ominous.
He took a step back and spun. Right. He was going right. 'Don't go down the darker-than-dark tunnel of death, Bilbo old chap' he told himself with grim humour.
"Bilbo!"
The cry came from behind him, down that exact tunnel he had just most certainly resolved not to travel down. Was that... was that Ori? Perhaps he was going the wrong way.
"Ori?" he called cautiously, lifting his lamp and peering off down the dark. "Is that you?"
"Bilbo!"
"Ori? What's wrong? Ori!"
"Bilbo, help me!"
"Why?" Bilbo said, lifting his lamp as far as he could, desperately trying to make out anything at all. The darkness seemed to almost swallow his lamp light. "Why, what's wrong? Are you hurt?"
It... after everything that Bilbo had been through, everything the Company had been through together, there was nothing on this green earth that could prevent him from helping his friends if they were in trouble. If not for the fact that every instinct he possessed was telling him that going down the dark tunnel was a bad idea. A very bad idea.
"I'm hurt, Bilbo. Help me!"
"Ori, what's happened? Where are you?"
There was no response, and for a long time, Bilbo hovered, the dark ominously silent ahead. He shouldn't, every single part of him was screaming not to go down there, but Ori could really be hurt.
How odd that he should be hesitating to go to aid his friend.
He swiped one clammy hand across his brow, brushing the thin layer of sweat away before it caused him to start shivering again, and straightened.
"Al-Alright, Ori. Where are you?" he called into the darkness, taking one tentative step forward. "Ori? Ori!"
"Bilbo?"
The voice came from behind him, and he cried out as he spun, hand going to his chest.
"Ori," he gasped, stepping back away from the tunnel.
"You called for me?" Ori said, frowning at him oddly, before raising his torch to peer off into the gloom behind Bilbo.
"No, you called for me," Bilbo said, heart still racing a mile a minute, hairs raising along the back of his neck. That sensation of being watched was back.
If Ori was here, who had just been calling to him?
"I didn't call for you," Ori said, frowning at the tunnel. "You shouldn't be down here. Thorin will be noticing you gone, soon. Where were you going?"
"To look for you," Bilbo said, turning to hold his own lamp up again. Honestly, the darkness in this place was impenetrable. "You were calling me from down there, I heard you."
"It wasn't me," Ori murmured, still frowning. "Hello?" he called into the dark, but nobody answered. He took a step forward, and then another, waving his torch in an arch above his head, and Bilbo hastened forward to join him, holding up his lamp.
He should probably be ashamed of the way his hand desperately sought Ori's spare, but Ori latched on easily enough, and squeezed a little too tightly to be all about reassuring Bilbo, and so he clasped tight, and stepped slowly forward when Ori did, and pretended that his gulp was not so audible in the stifling space.
"Is anybody down here?" Bilbo called into the darkness, voice quavering back to him in hollow echoes, but no other sounds reached them, the passage suddenly utterly silent.
Another slow step, and another, both of them faltering the farther they went. Still nothing called to them.
They both shrieked, though, when the lights swung, and hit a petrified Dwarf, the statue menacing and right in front of them, axe held aloft.
"Sweet Mahal," Ori said, a strangled whisper around a clenched throat. "I think I need a change of trousers."
"ddddgglllmmm," Bilbo managed, trying desperately to peel his tongue off the roof of his mouth, and his eyelids out of his forehead.
"I agree," Ori said, tugging on their fused hands, eyes still locked on the odd statue. "Let's leave, shall we?"
"Hmmffss," Bilbo said, nodding frantically. They both backed up, stumbling with the desire to not turn their back on the menacing figure, before they as one turned to flee with fast steps back to the main pass, and Bilbo glanced back, the light bouncing off the grim visage of the fallen Dwarven warrior, it's frozen expression even darker in the odd shadowing, axe seeming to loom higher, raised to strike.
Ori glanced back over his shoulder as well, eyes still wide with something that looked a lot like fear, and a strangled noise made its way out his throat.
"Bofur made dinner," Ori whispered, tugging them both around the corner. "We wouldn't want to miss out," he continued, yanking them into a run that Bilbo was only too happy to try to keep up with.
Stumbling into the main chamber was sweet relief and light, the semblance, at least, of a level of safety from an intangible danger, and they both bent to gasp deep and grateful, and Bilbo could honestly say he had never been so happy to see a great glowing pile of gold in all his life.
"Well that was strange," Bilbo finally managed, and Ori giggled somewhat hysterically for a moment.
"Strange does not even begin to cover that," he said quietly, finally dropping Bilbo's hand.
Bilbo stared at him, wiping a new layer of cold sweat from his forehead, and hugging himself when he started to shiver.
"So, you agree with me," he asked after a while. "There is something odd happening in this mountain?"
Ori stopped and glanced at him quickly, and looked away, fidgeting in place.
"I... I don't know," Ori admitted. "I think we need to find the library. There is an old story I once read when I was younger, in a book salvaged from the library of Belegost. I cannot quite remember it, but I think it might be important. I think I need to find that text. It was a copy of an Elvish book, and the main library here was supposed to be as extensive as Moria's great pillar of knowledge."
"Do you think it is still here, though? Books are somewhat flammable, what if the whole lot went up in smoke care of Smaug?"
"Doubtful," Ori said shortly. "Our main through-ways are large and roomy enough for a dragon to stomp his way through, but the corridors around places like homes and libraries all have smaller passages surrounding them, too narrow for a Dragon to bother with. That, and antique treasures would have been kept in the public museums, separate from the written histories, so nothing for him to pillage there to make it worth it, I'd wager."
Bilbo caught sight of Thorin pacing back and forth waving his sword about and chewed at his lip.
"I don't know how we shall accomplish getting there, since I am sure Thorin will not let us out of his sight again," Bilbo said lowly, pulling Ori over to a nearby pile of gold to rifle through when Thorin stopped in his pacing and started to peer around at the assembled Dwarrows. "He's not himself. I don't like this. I don't like any of this!"
"I really think I need to look at the archives, Bilbo," Ori said urgently. "Everything in me says that I have missed something important, that I should have spent more time researching the Elvish tales of the long-ago Drakes instead of trusting the reports given to Thorin. I, I just... I have the worst feeling, Bilbo!"
"Well you can't go on your own," Bilbo said, heart in his throat. "After dinner. Thorin said we could break for dinner. Perhaps you could go then. Take Dwalin."
"He won't go," Ori frowned. "He'll want us to stay here and search."
"Maybe he would have done before," Bilbo said, turning slightly so he could eye the burly dwarf in the corner. "But he knows something isn't right. He was fighting with Thorin before, and he came away near tears."
Ori hummed in a way that was decidedly doubtful, tugging Bilbo up and across the room to hover not far from where Bofur was doling a thin stew of the last of the travel ham and cram into bowls, and carefully observe the Company. The others were starting to drift over in states ranging from relief to grudging, only Glóin and Nori as adamant as Thorin in refusing to leave the gold. It was getting worse if more of them were becoming even more focused on the gold, and really, Bombur was usually the first to front up for a meal, yet he was only just now reluctantly tossing aside jewels to wander over. And the lads! Fíli and Kíli were both diligently working through a pile, polishing gems and coins on their shirts as they worked, sometimes stopping to stare in fascination at some trinket or another. And quiet, oh so quiet! It was not like them. Not like them at all.
"It's getting worse," Bilbo murmured to himself, wringing his hands.
"Yes, and no," Ori said, and then blushed. "I mean, when we first arrived, I admit I was quite taken with it all. You have no idea what the call of gold is to a Dwarf, Bilbo! And there has been so little of it within the Blue Mountains, it was so very overwhelming. But, I think for some of us, the exhaustion and the hunger is waking them up a little." Here he nodded towards Dori, who had finally wandered over and was scowling into his bowl, and Dwalin, sad and weary, spooning the paltry meal into his mouth, slow and tired. Bofur was sitting with his own bowl now, the portions he had grudgingly served out and uncollected congealing in their bowls in a little half-circle about him, and scowling, always scowling. When was the last time Bilbo had seen the happy Dwarf smile?
Óin was with them, but he seemed torn. He'd brought a pile of gems with him to have his dinner, and he would take a few bites before he set aside his bowl and started to peer at stones through an odd little spy glass, but after a few minutes, his brow would crease, and he would blink tiredly and set the jewels aside and reach for his bowl again, slumped and half asleep, before the whole process would start again.
"Some are getting worse, though," Ori admitted, looking to where Bombur had dully finished his meal and quietly set his bowl aside and returned to the gold without thought to seconds of the paltry meal, lowering himself onto a pile and gently running his fingers through the riches about him.
Bilbo darted forward and retrieved a few bowls for them, and shivered when Bofur turned his glare on him for the trouble, pulling Ori over away from the others and beside a great stone pillar. He had an ally now, someone else who seemed as discomforted at this place as he, and he was not going to get them into trouble speaking of such things around the others.
"Where's Bifur?" Bilbo wondered, eying Bofur's continuing scowl.
"You hadn't noticed?" Ori asked around a mouthful, pointing up, and Bilbo's gaze went up and across the room.
It was difficult to see in the shadowy portion of the room, but Bifur had found himself a perch up high, atop a fallen pillar and in the corner space between the wall and a buttress. He was shoved back into that corner, too, eyes wide and darting, pike clutched desperately to his body.
"That's not..."
"Good. No," Ori agreed. "It's not just us, I am sure of it. Something is wrong here. Bifur knows it. Balin's missing, too."
"What?" Bilbo's head whipped back and around the room, but Ori was correct. Balin was not amongst the others.
"That's how I found you out there, I went to find him. I don't know where he went, though."
"You don't think that was him calling for help, do you?" Bilbo said, tapping his spoon against the side of his bowl in a nervous rhythm.
"No. I didn't hear anything at all. And I am certain, Bilbo, that you absolutely should not go anywhere alone. No matter what you hear." Ori's face was twisted with worry, now, and he chewed nervously on his fingernails.
Bilbo grunted in acknowledgement, finishing his dinner quickly, eying the strange behaviour of his Dwarrows.
"I think we had better talk to Dwalin," he decided.
"Are you crazy? I thought you were joking! He's the most loyal of all Dwarrows to Thorin. Why would he help us?" Ori asked incredulously.
"Look at him, Ori," Bilbo insisted. "That is not the Dwalin we know. And he may know where Balin is!"
Ori spooned the last of his watery dinner into his mouth and swallowed, grimacing deeply.
"Fine. But don't be surprised if he's the one to take our heads for treason."
Bilbo huffed, but stood, swirling his spoon in his bowl and pretending to eat when Thorin briefly turned his way, feigning a distinct fascination with his meal until Thorin frowned and turned away again, and then hurried across to sit beside the morose axe-wielding giant of a Dwarrow that was Thorin's best friend.
Once there, though, he really had no idea what to say. It did not seem to matter, however, when Dwalin grunted and stabbed at his bowl.
"Balin has gone to look for the library. He says that there is something wrong with the mountain."
"Do you agree?" Bilbo asked. There really was never any reason to be beating about the bush with Dwalin.
The dwarf in question did not answer immediately, though, but stared into his unappetising dinner for a long while, eyes sad.
"He wears the crown and stands amongst riches, victorious, and he is far less a King now than he was crownless with nothing. I don't know what to do," Dwalin admitted, sniffing a little.
Bilbo... did not know what to say to that. He settled for patting the giant dwarrow's arm gently, leaning into him in comfort.
"Do you think he'll find it?" he asked. "The library," he clarified when Dwalin looked up at him. "Will Balin find the library easily enough?"
Dwalin shrugged.
"He should. I barely remember this place, but Balin told me stories... I know it was a fairly direct walk from the throne to the scribes gallery, and through there, one could access the tomes of knowledge. It should be simple... He's not himself," Dwalin told Bilbo desperately.
"Thorin? No, he isn't, but we'll soon-"
"Balin. He's not himself," Dwalin said, dinner set aside now, in favour of wringing his hands together. "Nothing is right. Balin is not himself, and I don't know what to do."
Bilbo caught the great hands with his own, as the tightening of his fingers around his own dusters threatened to hurt himself.
"Ori and I wanted to find the Library, too," Bilbo told him quietly. "There is something wrong here, and Ori thinks he can figure out what. And if he can discover the problem, then we can fix it."
Dwalin fidgeted, eyes darting about and landing again on Thorin's pacing figure.
"It's so hard to think in this place," he admitted, forehead creased.
"There is only one thing you need to remember," Bilbo told him firmly, and jabbed him with his finger. "You came on this journey to protect Thorin. You swore to protect him. Do your duty."
Dwalin jerked like Bilbo had struck him across the face, eyes wide and breath hard, and he stared for a long minute before his gaze went back to Thorin, and hardened, and he nodded.
"What do you need me to do?"
"Keep Thorin distracted," Bilbo said immediately. "We'll find Balin and look through the Library for information. Thorin may notice we aren't here, though."
"I don't think he'll notice a thing," Dwalin said softly, still staring at his King. His gaze swivelled away quickly, though, when Balin stumbled over and collapsed next to him on the step.
"Balin?" Bilbo asked uncertainly. The normally stoic Dwarf looked a mess, with cobwebs and dust caking his clothing, his beard a mess of snarls and blobs of muck, and his eyes wild.
"It's dark out there," Balin muttered, huddling into his messy coat. "So dark. The lanterns keep going out."
"Did you find the library?" Bilbo asked in a whisper, when Thorin's furious pacing took him another lap around the room, glaring at everybody and everything, and even a few things that weren't there at all, by the look of it, but aside from a furious glower in their direction, he seemed too out of his own mind to come and berate them.
It was getting worse.
"The library. Yes, yes, I did," Balin said. "I couldn't stay there. I lit all the lanterns. They flickered, Bilbo. They flickered."
"Lanterns do that sometimes," Bilbo said slowly.
"Not Dwarven lanterns," Dwalin said ominously, folding his brother gently into his side.
Bilbo turned that thought over, chewing on his own lip and watching Balin mumble to himself, rocking in Dwalin's grip.
Everything in him was screaming that they were fast running out of time.
"Keep him distracted," he said finally, with a tilt of his head towards Thorin. "We'll be back soon."
--Now--
Thorin was huddled into a tight ball in the corner of the room, face buried into his knees when Bilbo made his way over, having checked all the entry points to the room and counted off what remained of the Company. Counting that had left a great panging throb in his chest at the reminder. More lost. Five gone, now. Balin, Bifur, Dwalin and the lads.
The very reason he made his way across to the solitary King, wrapped in a ball, so trapped in grief, Bilbo wondered if he would continue on.
What do you say when someone's whole world is crumbling down around them?
"Thorin?" he asked tentatively, when Glóin solemnly prodded him forward with an encouraging nod. Thorin did not react, but his hunched shoulders and just-audible gasping sobs tore at Bilbo's heart, and he knelt and wrapped his arms around Thorin's bulky shoulders as best he could, and buried his face into tangled dark locks.
"I have done this," Thorin whispered, loud in the space between them. "I have been the one to finally bring wrath and ruin to my line. I have killed my beloved sister-sons and the truest friends a Dwarf could ask for with my blind pride. You should leave me to my fate."
"Don't be silly," Bilbo said around the tears he'd been trying to quell. "Your fate is to bring freedom to your people, not huddle in a corner waiting to be slaughtered. Fíli and Kíli would be outraged. So would Dwalin and Balin and Bifur, for that matter, so stop being so melodramatic!"
"Everything I have done, I have done for them," Thorin whispered harshly, and Bilbo buried his fingers into all that hair and pulled, until Thorin lifted his head long enough for Bilbo to wedge himself in, and let that head rest on his shoulder. "I named them my heirs out of necessity and love, but it brought me nothing but grief to do so, to know what I was sentencing them to. I wanted so much for them, for their future, I wanted so much to change our circumstances for them. I didn't ever want them to have to lead a dying people, to be King of the starving and poor. You can't imagine the helplessness, unable to be what your people deserve, deliver the life they deserve."
Bilbo shook his head, unable to speak around the lump of held-back tears in his throat.
"I have killed them with my greed and my pride. Madness worse than my grandfather's. And now I have doomed the last of my people to slowly die out, in a ruined Mountain of the West. There is nothing, now."
"There is everything," Bilbo insisted, suddenly angry. "It is everything to the thousands of your people in the West, waiting for word of their new home, of a future without poverty and sickness and hunger in their bellies. Will you lay down and die and allow them to come to ruin? Are you that selfish?"
Thorin reared back, eyes wide and furious, but Bilbo glared, shoving a finger firmly into Thorin's chest.
"The ones we have lost would be appalled at that attitude, that you would abandon their kin, allow them to starve and die without any to care for their fate because you personally lost people close to you. They came on a quest to destroy a dragon, they knew there was little chance of survival. They accepted that. It was always quite likely that we would die in the attempt. That does not mean you get to give up!"
Thorin stared at him a long time, and Bilbo could feel the weight of the gaze of every other member of the Company on his back.
"Don't give up, Thorin," Bilbo pleaded. "We can do this. We can reclaim this mountain. For good."
"I... yes, alright," Thorin said slowly, gripping Bilbo tightly for a moment. "We... I owe them the promise of a home, no matter the cost. That is what we swore in the beginning. That is what I shall do. I shall reclaim our home for the Dwarrows of Erebor."
"We will," Glóin said behind Bilbo, and he twisted to take in the members of the Company, tall and resolute, and Bilbo nodded to all of them, and finally Thorin.
"Yes, we will."
--Then--
"Well, that wasn't nerve wracking at all," Bilbo said nervously, backing into the library. The corridors here were... exceedingly creepy. "I guess one does not understand what it is to live inside a mountain until they encounter how damnably dark it is down here."
"This is not much like living in a mountain at all," Ori insisted, running enquiring fingers down a sign carved into a rock plinth, that looked to be a list by the outlining, though Bilbo could not read the sharply shaped glyphs that were the Dwarven script. "There is always a little light somewhere in a mountain, and you would be surprised how much it reflects and illuminates. The angles and build of Dwarven construction are planned just right to do exactly that. This darkness is not natural," he finished grimly, moving quickly along the stacks to another catalogue, and quickly reading through.
"Great," Bilbo sighed, rubbing at his eyes. Another thing to be worrying about.
"Got it," Ori murmured, hurrying along the rows and taking off down an alley of dark bookcases, and they turned into another book stack, Ori running his fingers along the grimy metal plates mounted along each shelf.
Bilbo tried very hard to ignore the lantern gently swinging on its hook when they entered the row.
"Here," Ori said triumphantly, ducking down to fingerwalk along a row of dusty leather spines, all in various elvish languages.
"Of course you keep the elvish books practically on the floor," Bilbo muttered, backtracking to grab one of the funny rolling tables that dotted the area and wheeling it back. Piles of elvish books went on the stand, and Bilbo grabbed any of them that looked to be in Sindarin for him to glance through. Quenya and Silvan, there were plenty, though, and Bilbo spared a moment to admire the dedication Ori seemed to have if he could read those as well as Common and Sindarin and his own complex language as well.
"I'm pretty sure what we are looking for is a collection of tales from the Second Age on monstrous beasts," Ori said, already flipping through texts and discarding them on the floor next to him. "Look for anything referencing dragons."
Bilbo discarded three texts in a row, fingers trembling at the clanging sense of urgency.
"This one has a list of known types and how to identify them," he said, flipping through it quickly, but the rest seemed to be devoted to other creatures.
"I'm not looking for a physical description," Ori said vaguely, flipping through the text and discarding it for another. "I remember reading something more about dragons as a younger lad, gave me the shivers it did, and I never paid much more attention because it was too frightening and I thought it mostly fictional. A coward, I am, and now I may have doomed us all. It's got to be here somewhere!"
"This is not your fault," Bilbo insisted.
"If I'd just remembered, if I'd searched and found evidence..."
"Thorin still would have come," Bilbo said shortly. "He's not one to trust the judgement of Elves, in any case. Here, this one has many pictures of dragons, but it is in Quenya," Bilbo handed it over, "and I am not fluent."
"Let me see." Ori flipped through the small tome quickly, running his fingers along a page to a line and then flipping many ahead to another section. "Yes! Not the book I remember, but here, see? Dragons are... yes, I know all that, I am looking for a, oh, here it is! Dragons '... contrary to common belief, are not driven by beast-like instincts, instead possess a sharp intellect and refined cunning, occasionally even seen as a playful curiosity that one should never account as a decrease in the likelihood of death through such an encounter. It is not only their physical prowess that adds to their deadly nature, however, but their mind, indeed, their powers themselves rest in most part within the damaging of the psyche.' which we already know."
"I would liked to have known more about that before you lot sent me in to face Smaug," Bilbo grumbled, while Ori muttered over the translation, skimming across to the next page.
"There's another one here," Bilbo said, handing over another book in Quenya, this one big and bulky, turned to the pages filled with frightening illustrations reminiscent of Bilbo's encounter with Smaug.
"Give," Ori demanded, giving the first back to Bilbo with instructions to hold on to it. "This... is the one I remembered! I knew it would be here, this Library is wonderful... Oh, here, let me read this..." he trailed off, mouth moving silently along with the text.
"Right, here we go. '...possess the ability to influence even the purest of souls, manipulate and control the mind of the weak or those prone to illness of the mind, to strip out good judgement and common sense of their victims. A force that grows even, it is said, to a level of power so as to control the remnants of the minds left within the dead.' Sounds as if you were lucky, Bilbo."
"What does that even mean?" Bilbo asked, jittering from one leg to another in a little jig of terror. "Control the remnants of the dead, and what have you?"
"Don't know," Ori said, though his tone was that of one that had a suspicion. He turned the page, fingers skimming down to a section half down the page. "And here, again: '...as well as an adeptness with the almost puppet-like control of the wits of others, it's abilities to manipulate the mentality of the races extends to an affinity with the magic of curses, most primarily based in the protection of their hoard...'"
"Curses to protect the hoard? The gold is cursed?"
"Oh dear," Ori said, and read aloud "'... this malicious belligerence extends to the jealous guarding of their hoards, even beyond death. Treasure is coddled close, and the longer one of these foul beasts gloats over his prize and lays idle amongst the riches, the longer, and stronger, the curse of the beast upon the hoard... Any within the vicinity of the gold will feel its pull, and the longer one resides amongst it, and thinks as the beast, and covets the burdened treasure, the stronger the curse grows, until it consumes the fate of those who would possess it. Armies shall fall to war, and friends shall become enemies, and the insidious hidden traps of the cursed lair shall strike at the unprotected backs of those too far entrenched in madness to sense their doom'. We'll, that doesn't sound good," Ori said in a quavering attempt at humour that fell far short of its mark.
Bilbo stood back, running his hands through his hair, hair that was lank and unkempt, and longed once more for a time where he was not mixed up in all this business of Dwarrows and Dragons. He could be eating a nice fish dinner after a good bath right now. Instead of investigating curses and other such ridiculousness.
"There's a few different accounts, here," Ori muttered, but Bilbo was not listening, his whole body suddenly tight with terror.
"Ori," he managed around the great lump in his throat, "Ori!"
"What?" Ori asked waspishly, still skimming through pages of text.
"You said that Smaug never came here. That he wouldn't have fit down the hall?"
Ori hummed an agreement, frowning at the book.
"Then where did that come from?" Bilbo pointed one shaking finger towards the end of the stack.
"What?" Ori asked, standing and turning, and freezing at the sight of the petrified dwarf at the end of the row, two great swords held menacingly in front of him, stone eyes glittering at them madly.
Bilbo stared at it. Ori stared at it.
"Oh dear," Ori said, groping behind him for the book and clutching it to his chest. "I think we'd better go."
Bilbo whimpered an agreement and as one they swung in the other direction.
A second Dwarrow statue stood at the other end, a massive axe held aloft.
Bilbo's gulp was loud in the silence of the library, and he stared in horror at the statue even as Ori spun back the other way.
"Bilbo," Ori whispered urgently after a long frozen moment. "Don't take your eyes of the axe-dwarf."
"Why?" Bilbo asked shrilly, backing up a little, and something extremely sharp prodded him in the back. His eyes widened further and he whined a little.
"I think," Ori whimpered, "I think they may move when we are not looking."
"Oh," Bilbo said. Well. This little jaunt was turning into a suitably horrific situation. "Do- Do we have a plan?"
"Well," Ori said, tone cheerful in that way that told Bilbo they were certainly about to die. "Mr two-swords was joined by a friend while we were saying hello to the axe-wielding fellow you're keeping an eye on, so I'm voting for braving Mr Axe."
"Good plan," Bilbo said quickly, shuffling sideways to press his back firmly against Ori's, and fist his hands into what he could reach of Ori's jerkin. "Off we go, then."
Together they shuffled forward towards the axe-wielding statue, still and menacing at the end of the aisle.
The lanterns beside them flickered, and the first of them extinguished abruptly.
"Oh dear," Bilbo said, trying very hard not to take his eyes of the statue in the dying light as the lights started to fail one by one.
"To the stack to your left," Ori said urgently, steering them sideways. "Knock it down."
"What?" Bilbo asked breathlessly, eyes straining.
"Knock it down!" Ori cried urgently, and threw his shoulder against the stack. Bilbo whimpered again, and did as asked, gaze glued to the statue that seemed to be capable of watching them no matter which direction they were, eyes burning from the nervous sweat sliding down his forehead.
As one, they slammed against the bookshelf, and perhaps adrenalin fuelled them well, as the stacks were heavy and good Dwarven construction, but they wobbled nonetheless when Ori and Bilbo rammed them desperately.
"We're very lucky these aren't stone," Bilbo cried somewhat hysterically, bracing himself and hurling his aching shoulder against the wood, despite the books raining down and hitting him.
"Stone's not good for books," Ori said grimly, and they both hurled themselves at the shelf, and Bilbo shrieked, when a falling book cut off his view, and cleared to show the Dwarf halfway down the aisle towards them.
The stack teetered, and then toppled with a crash into the next, and for a moment it seemed as if the next would hold, no doubt spaced to prevent this exact thing from happening, but Ori hauled Bilbo up onto the downed wood like a ladder, and the next toppled, and then the next, and they abandoned watching, and leapt from shelf to shelf, hopping so fast up the shelves that they were hopping to the next before it was even hit and toppling, making for the door at the other end of the room.
Oh, and from up here they could see the whole library, and the dozens of stone Dwarrows surrounding them, all watching with glittering dark eyes as they leapt and leapt, reaching for the freedom of the door.
Which was blocked.
"Ori!" Bilbo yelled.
"I see them," Ori said, head swivelling, hand clutched in Bilbo's, trusting him to keep them moving. "We have to jump for the vent!"
"What!?!" Bilbo shrieked, eyes bugging at the vent high in the wall ahead, the vent with the barred grid over it, which was approaching fast as they leapt.
"Just do it!" Ori yelled, and they braced themselves on the last shelf and leapt and held on tight, toes scrabbling for purchase in the stone wall, and Ori fumbled with a mechanism inside the vent, they braced their feet on the wall and hauled, and it lifted, and they clambered in awkwardly, the whole process taking less than a minute, and Ori jammed a long rod back into place to hold it closed, and they collapsed back against the walls of the narrow shaft they had wedged themselves into.
The light flickered for a long moment, and Bilbo screamed at the stone face that had appeared pressed against the vent. Ori started chanting what sounded very much like a prayer in his own language, and Bilbo stared, heart pounding loud and drowning out everything for long moments, gaze connected with the black eyes of the long-dead Dwarf.
Carefully, he edged forward, eyes locked on the dead dwarf and slowly sliding down it's stone body. It was standing on another, and that one on another, and that one on a pile of downed-shelf, to reach the vent. Not far from them, two of the good three or four dozen were actually damaged enough from the falling shelves to have parts smashed right off, in a way that could possibly prevent them from following.
"They can be broken," Bilbo murmured, looking back at the one so close to him, through the grate. Ori edged close to him and peered below, and then abruptly grinned, all teeth and out-of-place malice.
"Good," he hissed, and slid free the bolt holding closed the grate between them and the statue.
"What are you doing?" Bilbo asked in alarm, but Ori did not answer, only bracing his feet on the grate, and then drawing back to kick it solidly outwards.
It hit the dead Dwarrow straight on, and he toppled, falling down and crashing over the bookshelf below, splitting straight through the middle, his legs one side of shelf, and his top half rolling away to wedge awkwardly between shelves. The one it had been standing on wobbled, and Ori leant out the vent and whacked it in the head with the heavy elvish book, until it to rolled and toppled and hit the one below, but the only evidence of damage was a large crack in its arm. Ori yanked himself back into the vent and re-bolted the vent with another frighteningly vicious grin.
Bilbo gaped.
"Hopefully that kills them.... sort of. I mean, they are already dead," Ori admitted, while Bilbo continued to stare.
"Ori?"
The lad hummed absently, leaning to keep an eye on the statues below, and Bilbo shook his head in disbelief.
"You are one scary fellow when you want to be, aren't you?"
"I grew up with Dori," Ori nodded, and the two shared grins, before all the lanterns started flickering wildly in the room below, and they scarpered up the shaft.
"Do you know where this goes?" Bilbo asked, as they half-crawled, half-skidded around a corner and hooked a grating into place, Ori giving it a few good kicks to jam it into place.
"No idea," Ori admitted. "But anywhere away from those things is better than nothing, right?"
"Right," Bilbo agreed, and hastened around the next bend.
___