Chapter Text
The smell of grain and wildgrass on the breeze told Bilbo where he was before he’d opened his eyes.
With them still closed, Bilbo could see the hull of the Elven-ship in his mind’s eye, the white of it gleaming as they sailed farther and farther away from the shore. The pinkish palette of the sky painted on top of the water, and the varnished wood beneath his feet, the tap-tapping it made against the stick he was using as a support to walk. Sea-salt blew through the fine wisps of his grey hair and speckled his pockmarked cheeks.
The amber glow of the sunset against the tower that stood lonely on the western shore marked the last point of the world. Bilbo had thought it odd that such a sight was called the Grey Havens when he’d never seen so much colour.
Three figures stood against the railing on the bow, watching the shoreline; two in graceful, flowing white robes, tall and still, and a smaller one in simple beiges and browns with a cord tied round his waist. Bilbo had sheltered behind them, quiet and frail with the marks of rapid age, and he’d smiled slowly to himself, feeling it wrinkle the folds of his face. His deteriorating voice came out as nothing more than a creak when he spoke.
“I think I’m quite ready,” he said to them, or maybe to himself, “for another adventure.”
After a moment he became slowly aware of a touch to his forehead from long and gentle fingers, but when his eyelids blinked open Gandalf and Galadriel were still standing either side of Frodo, both watching Bilbo as he felt himself drift. There was a silent, puzzling understanding in their gazes, and he wondered what exactly it was they were understanding.
Wondering was quite tiring. He sat down.
His shaky line of sight slipped to eye level, and he felt the lingering remnants of what must have been dismay. A single silver tear-track had crept its way down Frodo’s face.
Who had put that there? Bilbo felt sure he would have noticed it, being Frodo’s guardian as he was. Though, in truth, he wasn’t awfully sure how long ago that had been. It was as though there were clouds in his head where before there had been thoughts.
It was no matter, anyhow. He must have been there if Frodo had needed him.
There was suddenly a voice somewhere in the distance that was trying to part the clouds. Bilbo squinted blearily in an attempt to hear better.
“You have lived long and served well, Bilbo Baggins of the Shire,” it said, in a silken voice that must have belonged to the Lady of Lórien. White petals seemed to rain down around her as she spoke, but then, no; they were on a boat, in the middle of the ocean! No trees to be found. No petals. His eyes had just gone misty again. Bilbo closed them and felt it like the folding of paper.
“Not of the Shire anymore, are we?” he whispered — or thought he might have. He’d heard that scratchy noise that seemed to be him now, at any rate. “Not anymore, Frodo. We’re of the sea and the waves now.”
He couldn’t quite remember who’d spoken to him, and thought it must have been Frodo, since that was who he’d replied to, but it was Galadriel still standing in all her glory before him. The other figure in his vision Bilbo knew to be Gandalf — but then it wasn’t Gandalf, somehow, because Bilbo distinctly remembered that Gandalf always wore a hat.
But it was Gandalf, wearing a different colour, for some strange reason. How peculiar! Bilbo tried to frown but felt that his eyes were simply too tired, so he closed them once more.
“You should get some rest, Bilbo,” he heard his boy say from far, far, away, and Bilbo made to murmur back but found instead that he was falling, falling down into himself, his thoughts slowly turning to nothing but quiet. It felt as though he was floating in a steadily encroaching mist, his limbs made of air and his head lightening, lightening more than it had since the earliest days of Rivendell. His curls tangled in the breeze, and it raised gooseflesh on his weathered skin.
The realisation lured Bilbo with a sudden jolt of clarity from his dreamlike state, and he realised with an acute thud of his heart that he really was floating, high above the ship and watching it start to cut through the water, away from where he was nothing but a breath on the wind.
Bilbo very quickly felt the beginnings of panic, then took the smallest of moments to marvel at the fact he could panic, at the fact he was awake at long last from the sleepiness of great age and an absent mind, alive in a body that felt like his own again.
He hastily glanced downwards, and let himself calm once he realised he’d taken his body with him wherever he seemed to be adrift in the air. There’d been one awful, frightening moment where he’d been sure his body had finally failed him and delivered him to death, right then and there on Elrond’s ship, only moments after setting sail. It would have broken Frodo. It would have —
Bilbo blanched.
Oh, Frodo.
The two figures silhouetted in white turned back to face the greying shoreline, and rows of trees were shrinking into nothing more than inkblots in the distance, but as Bilbo watched them, their faces seemed to lift towards his. No, that wasn’t right; they were facing him, Galadriel and Gandalf both still as carven statues and watching him on the skyline with unmoving eyes. Frodo still stood between them with his cloak wrapped round his slim shoulders, but he was looking away, somewhere off to the side, unaware that Bilbo was leaving him.
A dreadful pang rang suddenly through his chest. The tear-track still glistened on Frodo’s face.
Bilbo looked away.
When he spoke, he wasn’t sure if it was aloud or if the wind was simply carrying his thoughts in its fingers towards the drifting ship.
“Where am I going?” he asked, though his voice made no sound when he spoke, and the gusts were pulling him further and further away. He hadn’t meant to word it quite like that. He’d been intending on asking something more like what on Earth is happening to me! but instead of any breath in his lungs there was only the breeze cradling him in the air.
Gandalf brought the sleeves of his robe together across the hull of the boat and bent his head.
“You know, of course, why we sail for the West, Bilbo?” he asked simply, and Bilbo gave a slow nod.
Then Galadriel raised her head to the heavens, and an indescribable expression broke across her face.
“If your hurts grieve you still and the memory of your burden is heavy, then you may pass into the West, until all your wounds and weariness are healed,” she sang, her eyes glowing like faraway moonlight. She was quoting something, though Bilbo did not know what.
“Yes!” he cried, mad urgency leaking into the wispiness of his non-voice. More and more he was starting to sound and feel like his old self again, prim and persnickety, and the thought brought with it a strange flourish of hope mixed in with growing terror. “Yes, which is why I was told I was to be coming with you! My burden was heavy for sixty years!”
It was becoming an effort to maintain a sense of alarm, however, when he could feel his bones settling back into themselves for the first time in years, and his speech was sounding more and more like what it had been for most of his life instead of the faded rasp it had become.
Gandalf’s smile was ancient and fond when he looked at Bilbo once more.
“And yet,” he said slowly, “I sense that your heart will never truly be at rest so far from all that awakened it in the first place.”
“My heart…” Bilbo muttered absently, and looked around himself; at the silver light on the water, the fog that crept along the edges of the ship, the purple of the mountains stretched outward on either side of the bay. The landscape was unfamiliar to him, and yet somehow an echo of what he already knew. He’d recognised it as soon as they’d stepped out of the cart; his failing mind just hadn’t been able to connect the thought to anything tangible. This was a strange, western mirror of other mountains lying in the East, far away from here. Ones that, even as his thoughts had blurred and his mind decayed, he wouldn’t ever have been able to forget.
It took Bilbo only a short moment to understand what it was Gandalf was telling him.
“My heart?” Disbelief clutched at his throat and dried his mouth with the wind.
Galadriel smiled. “It is not our doing, Bilbo Baggins of the Shire,” she said. Her entire form was lit like an angel in silver and pearl, her face serene. “It seems fate would not take you where you might not find peace. It is carrying you there instead.”
Bilbo bristled at once, and he started up into a great splutter.
“I haven’t even gotten a say in any of this! What if I don’t want to go back there, what if it’s just as miserable and I’ve just been left there with no say of my own in the matter, what if —”
But he faltered, knowing deep in his sorry old heart that even as he protested, there wasn’t an ounce of truth to any of it. He’d wished for this every day for the last eighty years.
“My dear Bilbo,” Gandalf said, and his eyes were alight, peaceful in a way Bilbo realised he had never truly seen in Gandalf until now, not in any of all his long, long years in Middle-Earth. He seemed to look past Bilbo, back toward the shore at the shipwright’s lone tower, his mouth twitching. “You and Frodo were always coming on this journey to bring your hearts peace after the torments they have endured at the hands of Sauron the Enemy. You are the Ringbearers. You have been touched by darkness others can scarcely imagine.”
Bilbo could only speak in a whisper. “And are you sure this is truly where I am meant to go?”
He watched as Gandalf raised his hand and touched his heart in answer, holding his gaze. It was a rare gesture — one from long ago, when the world had been far different. Beside him, Galadriel opened her twilight eyes and did the same.
Bilbo touched his own fingers to his chest.
“I wish you all the luck in the world, Bilbo,” Gandalf called, very far away now — Bilbo could hardly see Frodo anymore. There wasn't enough time to say goodbye. “Let your heart rest. Let the darkness fade once more.”
The feeling of floating on the wind now was less like something pulling him back towards the world he’d left and more like he’d been caught by a gentle breeze. And when Bilbo woke, and smelt the grain and the wildgrass, opening his eyes was like turning the page of a book.
It seemed about mid-morning, to Bilbo’s reckoning, from the way the sunlight was filtering a gentle orange through the window, cracked open slightly so the scents of the garden could float into his bedroom. He stared up at the ceiling, not quite registering the sight, flexing his fingers one by one and trying not to reprimand himself too harshly for being giddy about the feeling of his joints cracking again. It was a long, long time before he felt brave enough to sit up and blink around at the little bedroom in Bag End.
It’d been twenty years since he’d last seen it, and somehow it felt to Bilbo like meeting an old, old friend from an age that had long passed. A patchwork quilt half-thrown across the armchair in the corner, a handkerchief with the initials BB carefully stitched along the edge, several pouches of pipeweed lined up neatly on the bedside table, held in green velvet casing. A watercolour of Tuckborough and its rolling green smials on the wall opposite, the sky a soft blue and the clouds scattered on the canvas like afterthoughts. His beautiful fountain pen and ink-pot resting on the little table against the wall.
The pen had been a gift from his mother to his father when Bilbo was still young, one that she’d gotten on her semi-annual trips to Bree. The make of it had always seemed a little unfamiliar and strange to Bilbo, something so Elven about the glide of it, so unlike the trusty scratchiness of their own writing tools in the Shire. The older and more proprietary he’d become, the more he’d gotten a secret little thrill out of picking it up, like he was breaking some unspoken rule by using something so un-Shirelike in a space so distinctly hobbitish.
The idea was preposterous to think back on now, and Bilbo almost threw the pen right out the window in utter mortification. Oh, go outside your door once in a while, you complete fool! Pens and paintings, indeed! How about you set a foot past the end of your row!
Frankly, the pen was very lucky it had once belonged to Belladonna Took.
Many things were still missing from his bedroom, too, that would find their way to him in the years to come, but Bilbo could still picture each one of them as if it were only yesterday: the stack of letters bound with twine that had always sat in pride of place on the top shelf of his bookcase, the small chest in the corner, the wood old and decrepit but its latches still sturdy. The paper sailboat Frodo had made for him. The scroll of parchment with his own signature scrawled in ink across the bottom, and the exquisite shirt of silver mail that he’d eventually lent to the Mathom-house in Michel Delving, and then again to Frodo.
The notebook bound in red leather.
Bilbo threw the covers back and bustled over to the bookshelf as soon as his eyes caught a slight sliver of red. He took down the book and opened it gently, heart all the way in his throat.
Each and every one of the pages were blank. There was no There and Back Again. No Return of the King. There was nothing in it at all.
Another nasty pinprick of guilt poked at him when Bilbo let his eyes wander up to the calendar he always kept hung on the wall beside his bookcase, and saw very plainly written there: April twenty-sixth of the year 1341 in the Shire-reckoning. There would be no Frodo yet either. Not for twenty-seven more years.
The mists of the Grey Havens swirled through his mind again, the colours of sundown flitting against the water, the three lone figures silhouetted across the backdrop of the horizon. Gandalf’s whispered words reverberated themselves through his head.
And yet I sense that your heart will never truly be at rest so far from all that which awakened it in the first place.
Bilbo remembered very clearly his last morning in Bag End. The sunlight had fallen through the window in just the same way. He’d packed the valuables up, tucked all his papers into his bags, left the envelope with the — with it sealed tightly inside on the mantel for Frodo. He’d tottered down Bagshot Row for the final time underneath the stars, and hadn’t travelled west of the Misty Mountains since, until their very last journey.
To bring my heart peace.
There was only one meaning that could possibly have, and Bilbo already knew very well in his heart what it was. Oh, certainly, he’d been one of the most blessed hobbits in and around all the Shire, all that nasty business with the Enemy and his personal belongings aside. His life had been long, and he’d been exceedingly lucky; he prided himself on it.
It was only that he’d lost those he loved a long time before they should have been taken, and he’d never gotten a chance to know his life with them in it. The skin over the wound had always stayed tender no matter how many years had passed them by.
A horrible lump had started to creep its way up into Bilbo’s throat. He blinked a few times in a vain attempt to fight it back — don’t you dare cry, you silly old thing! — but his eyes were already unseeing, and all that was in his head were echoes from far, far away.
So he spent an embarrassing few minutes with his face in his hands, the tears hot where they dripped through the gaps in his fingers, his shoulders shaking terribly. The choking in his throat had broken free, and Bilbo could barely begin to recognise the sound of his own voice, it was so twisted-up and awful.
He could think of nothing but what it meant for him to be here again, and why, and who it meant he would see, and who he had left behind. He’d left Frodo behind and gone on without him, abandoned him completely and utterly and entirely. And there were only a few scant hours before it all began again.
Bilbo’s adventure had been the pride of his life. It was why he’d always spoken of it with such passion and such care, why he brought up the dragon, and the barrels, and the dear friends he’d made time and time again, never once tiring of the tale in all his years; why he’d been known to all and sundry as Mad Old Baggins.
But to be back here — to be back then —
He hung his head in his hands and stared wide-eyed between his fingers. The thought of anything at all was overwhelming beyond belief.
And what was it the Lady of Lórien had said to him? Until all your wounds and weariness are healed.
He grimaced. There was a strange sort of understanding in that. Bilbo’s hurts had never lay in Middle-Earth because the cause of them had already departed from it, and he would only have carried them along with him all the way to the Undying Lands. He could travel the world a thousand times over and not ease the ache with the distance.
It was that which the Lady Galadriel had been telling him. The West could do no more for his grief than any other place he had tried to travel to, for grief did not let you leave it behind when you walked away from it. And whichever power had whisked him all the way back here had surely known it, too.
Bilbo allowed himself one more dismal little sniffle into his own hands and then pushed himself up abruptly to pace up and down in front of the bedroom window. The tip of his nose and the corners of his eyes were surely still red, but he paid them no mind.
All right, old lad, he thought instead, with a fickle sort of determination. Pull yourself together. There is work to be done.
Clearly, he’d been set a task. Or — not a task, perhaps, but a goal. A chance. For now, Bilbo could do nothing but push all thoughts of why to the back of his mind and keep them for another day.
He looked down at the blank pages of what had once been his most beloved work again, and felt his nose twitch. There really wasn’t a single speck of ink to be found in the entire book.
He flipped a page and peered downward, tilted his head, then took up his father’s pen and meticulously began to scratch out notes in the margins.
It was only a full hour later when he set it down and propped the volume against the table. He couldn’t quite bear to tear the page out just yet, couldn’t bear to damage the book that had once held his life’s work.
Bilbo squinted down at it.
It wasn’t a heavy volume, all things considered. Bringing it along would be manageable. Perhaps he could stand to go without a few of his other items on the trek, anyway; Bilbo had always found, in all the years since that first venture outside his door, that sentiment and meaning far outweighed comfort. He wished he still had his own map up on the wall, so he could tuck it away into the book, too, and carry it with him just in case.
He’d only managed to fill a couple of the Red Book’s pages with writing, but Bilbo scrambled to open it once more and run his trembling fingers over the letters, as if committing them to memory would somehow calm him.
Some had turned out quite skittish and only half-formed, his mind moving too fast for the ink to keep up, and wasn’t that something Bilbo had missed with an almost guilty fierceness!
Faster trail ?? — Can’t skip Sting — but trolls ??? Perhaps eagles food for thought — how to ask Gandalf without seeming suspicious ???
There was also:
Avoid barrels — do Elves have rowboats ??? Something to ask Elrond (or maybe Lindir)
And some were notes, ideas, mantras Bilbo knew he would need in his head when each of the most important moments from their adventure came. He found himself murmuring the words as he scanned each of the lines, desperate to remember, terrified he would leave something vital out.
Must stop Laketown from burning.
Must find the Ring the you-know-what. At all costs. Avoid goblins if possible.
Must not tell anyone anything if you know what’s good for you.
Must deal with the Arkenstone as soon as am able.
That one made him grimace, but there was nothing to be done about it, really, and he knew very well now there were worse things that could happen than the King Under the Mountain alive and hating him.
Right at the very bottom, a line was written in a shakier, sprawling script:
You must keep them alive.
There hadn’t really been a need to write it down in words, because it had been and would be in Bilbo’s thoughts every single day onward, but to leave it be felt in his bones like a betrayal. To write it down was a promise — and, he thought, a secret wish, like a whispered offering to whichever strange higher being had promised him a settled heart, just in case they hadn’t known quite what it was he was searching for.
Bilbo looked over the book for a moment longer, holding his breath, then straightened his linen waistcoat and snapped the cover closed. He checked his pocketwatch, blew a breath out his teeth, then snatched his pipe up from where it was resting on the windowsill and hurried out to the front garden.
He was very nearly late for a meeting with Gandalf.
“Good morning!”
“What do you mean?” said Gandalf the Grey. “Do you wish me a good morning, or do you mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not? Or, perhaps, that you feel good on this morning? Or that it is simply a morning to be good on?”
Bilbo had to fight not to let the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkle with fondness when he spoke. He’d dearly missed the way the wizard’s hat had always been pulled low over his face. He’d missed those twinkling eyes.
Gandalf's usual smoke-rings were billowing out of the mouth of his pipe and up into the sky as he peered down his nose at Bilbo sitting in front of him. It really was a good morning, Bilbo thought, letting himself muse on the way the water trickled down into the river and lapped at the edges of the rolling hills in the sunshine. He patted down the end of his own pipe with his fingers and screwed up his face in a shrewd expression.
“I’m quite sure you’ve already selected which one it is you think I mean, Gandalf, regardless of what you say to me, and so you may as well tell me what brings you to Hobbiton after so many years away,” Bilbo said. Quite matter-of-factly and to the point, he thought. He had to work hard to make sure none of the amused satisfaction he was feeling showed on his face.
Gandalf, for his part, looked mildly startled, but took Bilbo’s cheek in stride with only a twitch of his beard and his bushy eyebrows.
“I must say, Bilbo Baggins,” he remarked, “I am impressed you remember my name after such a long time, let alone myself at all.”
“Yes — uh, well,” Bilbo said, suddenly flustered, “you were… you were dearly loved by my mother, don’t you know? She used to tell me stories about you when I was young.”
And she had, though Bilbo had not remembered it until well after he’d set off with Gandalf and the dwarves the first time. The way Belladonna Took had spoken with such reverence and affection about the wandering wizard who had walked with her through thickets and green fields and across all the plains of the West, and of the kindly smile in his eyes beneath the grey brim of his hat. It had taken Bilbo a long time to recognise the Grey Pilgrim Gandalf presented himself to be as the wanderer who wove magic through every one of his mother’s stories, and even then, he had only recognised that side of Gandalf once he had come home again.
He knew enough now, however, to recognise the sparkle in the wizard’s eye at the mention of Belladonna, and a surprising warmth blossomed in his chest at the sight.
“This is excellent news to hear!” Gandalf exclaimed. “Perhaps, then, you’ve inherited her penchant for adventures? I am searching for a hobbit to share in one, and I must admit,” and here he paused, raising his extravagantly wiry eyebrows and widening his eyes at Bilbo sitting on his bench, “I rather hoped that it would be you.”
Bilbo was quiet for a moment. He let out his Old Toby in a steady stream and pursed his lips.
“And I assume I’m not going to get any more information out of you about this adventure?” he asked dryly, looking up at the wizard. He couldn’t resist prodding to see if Gandalf would let up about what it was he was keeping secret, because it was quite a lot, and quite a lot of it was incredibly important information.
“Oh, all in good time, I assure you,” Gandalf said cheerfully, adjusting his grip on his staff.
So he was keeping his lips sealed then, Bilbo noted, and not without his fair share of distaste. He wrinkled his nose begrudgingly.
These wizards and Elves and Men. They’re very well lucky us hobbits are so accommodating.
“I see,” Bilbo said. “Well, I shall have to hear what you have to say on the matter further, but for now…” Bilbo’s eyes flitted up to Gandalf’s as he stood to make his way up the little cobbled path, patting down the pockets of his waistcoat. He met Gandalf’s gaze steadily. “I suppose you shouldn’t count me out, just yet.”
Gandalf seemed dreadfully pleased, and he shook his sleeves out merrily. “I will be around for tea this evening then. Look sharp, my dear fellow! A spot of supper, too, if you can spare it,” he said, turning away as he made to depart.
A convenient way to hide your nefarious purposes, you conniving old man, Bilbo thought, striding up his garden path.
He’d almost reached the freshly forest-green door when it occurred to him to ask what should have been quite an important question. Bilbo was a little miffed at himself that he hadn’t thought to ask it the first time Gandalf had shown up at his gate — but then again, he’d been so utterly frazzled by Gandalf’s peculiarity that the idea had completely slipped his mind.
And really, it was terrible manners of him, to go around inviting guests willy-nilly into other people’s homes and expecting Bilbo to be completely and utterly at peace with the situation. He was certainly lucky this time around that Bilbo had his wits about him, and that he already held their guests in the highest honour. If wizards weren’t already renowned for their terrible manners, then they very well should be.
Bilbo turned and scurried back down the steps.
“Gandalf! Are we to have company when you come back for tea?” he pushed, taking care to put emphasis into every word and widening his eyes imploringly. “I’d hate to be unprepared.”
There. See what the wizard would do with that one.
Gandalf stopped at the gate, his hand resting on the well-worn latch. His head turned halfway to the side, and Bilbo watched his mouth pull upward at the edge. The outstretched brim of his hat hid his eyes from view once more.
He turned away, smoke-rings floating into the air after him. And Bilbo wasn’t sure if it was just a trick of the light, or if some of them really had been different colours.
“Company indeed, Master Baggins. Company indeed.”
Bilbo spent almost the entire rest of the day holed up in his kitchen with pots and pans covering every surface he could spare. He’d scoured every corner and square inch of his pantry for food, every nook and cranny in every shelf in Bag End. He’d carefully picked vegetables and herbs from his little garden in the front yard, and even given the Gamgees down in Bagshot Row some coins for a few of their famously marvellous potatoes.
He’d brought out the porcelain crockery tucked away in his mother’s bedroom that was embossed with soft pink-and-blue flowers on the edging, and tidied every knife and fork and napkin that was laid out until all of them were set uniformly and exactly to plan. Every chair that could possibly be found in his house lined the table, and he’d even managed to scrounge up a battered, wayward little stool for himself to sit on once he’d found the set-up one seat short.
It was only well after the sun had tucked itself behind the hills, when he had a moment to stop and breathe, hair a bedraggled mess and droplets of sweat congregating on his brow without any invitation, that Bilbo was forced to face rather head-on what was about to happen very imminently. He’d kept busy all day long to keep any of it from being able to cross his mind, but now he could think of nothing else, and his hands began to shake.
There were only a precious few moments until he would have to open his eyes out of the dream, out of the mellow haze he’d been floating in for longer than he could remember, and he was not sure if he could bear it. He could feel his throat becoming stuck with unspoken words and tears, and worried a little frantically that all he would be able to get out upon the opening of the door would be an awful wailing.
Bilbo had left behind just seven of the Company when he’d made to sail away from Middle-Earth; the others had been lost to either the Mountain or to Moria. But there were thirteen dwarves coming to visit, and it had been eighty long years since he’d seen some of them, and there was no way in any corner of the land or sea that Bilbo was ever going to feel ready deep down in his soul to face the dead.
(For those few precious months with them, he'd felt wide awake for the very first time in his life, after spending the first fifty years of it half-asleep. He’d been able to see the world with open eyes, and became enamoured with what it really was; all the colour he’d been missing.
And then he’d watched them lay the bodies to rest, and it had felt like falling asleep again.)
Some days Bilbo had hated it. Sometimes he’d even hated him. He adored Frodo, and he’d never, ever come close to wishing that the rest of his life had gone any way other than the one it did, and yet he’d never quite been able to wake up again, after that very first time traipsing out his door. Something in him had finally, finally flickered to life out in the wild parts of the world, trudging through mud and mountains and marshes, and only a few months later he had felt it shrivel up and die. He’d gotten so many more years of his life than he should have, and yet all of them had been split between what could be and what might have been.
But Bilbo’d had his time with Frodo. They’d had their days in Bag End, the windows cracked open to let the breeze in, the light glinting off the dark curls on Frodo’s head. They were some of the most treasured moments of his life, and Bilbo knew in his bones that he would never have given Frodo up for anything — not for all the gold in Erebor. Not even if, the heavens help him, he could have somehow kept the piece of his heart alive that he’d instead had to bury with a sword and gemstone cradled against his chest. It was simply a fact of Bilbo Baggins that Frodo meant far too much to him.
But as he walked to the entryway of his home to wait, competing tremors of sick hope and cold dread running all up and down his limbs, Bilbo thought once more of what Gandalf and Galadriel had told him, what Elrond and the other Elves in Rivendell had said.
We sail for peace, and for healing. To give our weary souls rest after the unending pain and hurt they face on the shores of Middle-Earth. You sail with us so in time, you may forget the hold the Ruling Ring has had on you, and the suffering you and yours have seen after being touched by it.
He’d set off with one foot still on the shore, because half of his hurts had not come from the Enemy at all; they’d been buried in the East all those decades before. He just couldn’t quite understand why it was he’d been given a place back here. He could not understand what he’d ever done to warrant the chance to take that hurt away.
Oh, what was he doing? Bilbo wished with everything he had that he could go out and touch his hand to the steady oak tree in his garden, press his forehead to the trunk and breathe in the wood as familiar to him as the sight of the far-off mountains, but it wouldn’t be there — hadn’t even been planted yet. The thought made him feel suddenly, woefully stranded.
It didn’t matter. He would handle himself without it. He was determined to keep his head on straight as persistently and admirably as he could, no matter what, or who, he was soon to come face to face with. Bagginses could stay calm and civil if they so chose, and so Bilbo was going to keep his confusticating emotions in check if it killed him.
Amongst all this bothersome thinking, Bilbo’s ears slowly became attuned to a soft, crunching sort of noise from outside, like stones sliding underneath heavy footfalls. His stomach flipped over, curled up, then sunk into his toes.
There was a faint scuffle, and a grunt, and then a knock at the door.
He cracked the door open and the cool night air rushed in, swirling through the flames in each of the candles on the mantel and raising fresh goosebumps all along Bilbo’s arms.
He had to fight down what would have been a bizarre smile at the feeling of it. He still couldn’t believe how good it was to feel things again. His skin hadn’t fit this well since the last time he’d stepped over this doorway to leave it.
It had only been a decade or two since Bilbo had seen Dwalin, really, but by the time he’d had made his dramatic escape from the Shire and arrived from his journey in Dale, Dwalin had been a much older, much greyer dwarf, and the signs of all the battles he’d seen had started to show.
He cut as intimidating a figure as ever against the calmer twilight of the Shire, his shoulders breaking across the skyline and cloaked in a dark-green dwarven travelling hood. The ink on his bare forearms was a starker black than the last time Bilbo had seen it, the long years not yet wearing away at them, and the parts of his face not hidden in shadow were set in a flat scowl.
Bilbo beat him to it.
“Bilbo Baggins, at your service,” he said, bowing so deeply he couldn’t even see Dwalin’s boots from behind his own hair falling in his face. When he rose again, Dwalin was watching him cautiously, although Bilbo could see in his eyes and the way he held himself that he’d made a reluctantly good first impression, and that it was rather grating on the dwarf’s nerves. Bilbo smiled gently, making sure to hold his gaze.
“Dwalin, son of Fundin, at yours,” Dwalin said roughly, pulling his shoulders back — presumably in a display of intimidation, or some such. Bilbo valiantly stopped himself from rolling his eyes and stepped back from the doorway to gesture towards the warm glow of his kitchen.
“Please will you join me for dinner? I’ve prepared as best I could, and you must have had a long and difficult journey.”
Dwalin just barely inclined his head and stepped through, though Bilbo noted that he took care to wipe his boots on the doormat, making him hum happily.
Balin had been next, and it seemed like no time at all before the second knock at the door came; certainly not enough time for Bilbo to have even slightly prepared himself for it.
He could not think of many sights more familiar to him than the one of Balin standing in front of his green door, hands clasped behind his back and hood lowered, and he almost could not keep the joy off his face. Bilbo bowed again, deeply, and with a wobbly smile, and Balin bowed in return, and it was a struggle to keep his distance, to not greet him as an old and cherished friend would. Balin had crossed this very threshold several times over the years before his journey to Khazad-dûm, always for tea and always right on time, his braids done especially neat for the occasion. The sight of the dwarf standing in his doorway, and his white hair and long jolly beard, was very dear to Bilbo, and in those last few decades he had missed it terribly.
He led his old friend through the entrance and along to where Dwalin was standing at the end of the table, and together they seemed to take in the spread with a sort of shock.
Bilbo had worked quite hard on it, and he was pleased that he’d able to put together something that they seemed so astounded by. He’d never gotten the chance to properly cook them a decadent hobbit feast before, and on his own grounds and all, with no horrible element of surprise this time to stump him. He was a little more than eager to impress.
He'd almost made it to the doorknob after the third knock came when he remembered with a jolt who exactly it was that had come next, and how he’d last seen them. His heart stuttered in his chest, and he came to a stop.
Twin smiles that now lived on only in dreams and stories; one golden-haired, one dark. The knowledge that dwarvish lifespans were more than twice that of hobbits, and he was now far older than either of them had ever gotten the chance to be.
They knocked again, and Bilbo shook himself and strode over, throwing the door open before he could lose his nerve. The dead were not going to be kept waiting for something so fragile as his memories.
The chill rushed in and bit at him from the inside out.
“Welcome, my dear dwarves.”
He watched them bow in unison. Oh, they both looked so alive.
Bilbo was quickly realising that he’d forgotten the way Kili’s hair fell messily across his forehead, and the way the ends of Fili’s moustache-braids shook when he smiled. Kinetic energy bounced off them in waves. Bilbo had lived a very, very long time, and hadn’t ever seen many others like them, and he’d never known whether that fact had broken his heart even further or not. Two brothers with so much to give the world and so much to take from it, only to be taken themselves before they’d gotten the chance at all.
His fist clenched involuntarily at his side, and Bilbo stuffed it hastily in his trouser-pocket. He hadn’t even realised how glassy his eyes had become until two faces leant in to peer at him in concern.
“Are you all right, Master Baggins?” Kili said.
“Oh, dear!” Bilbo exclaimed, floundering, his cheeks heating with embarrassment. “Yes, I’m quite all right. it’s just, well — springtime allergies, you know. Bag End can be quite dusty when you live here all alone!”
Their eyebrows furrowed at the same time, and Bilbo felt the split down his middle even more.
“How on earth can you be allergic to your own house?” Kili asked incredulously, his eyes bright. Bilbo laughed a little wetly and quickly pressed the heel of one hand to his eye.
“Oh, well,” he said, sniffing once more before he backed away from the door to let the two dwarves past and casting around madly for an excuse, “my, uh — father built this hobbit-hole for my mother. I couldn’t leave it for anywhere else in the Shire. I don’t mind putting up with a bit of sneezing every now and then.”
That was going to be a lie he told now, then. Bilbo began to wonder with an increasing amount of panic if he was in much too over his head. He’d already burst into tears and worked himself up into a complete bluster, and it had only been eleven minutes.
Keep your head on your shoulders, old fellow. You’ve encountered things more difficult than this!
Kili’s beaming face knocked Bilbo’s resolve backward even further. “Well, that’s a relief!”
When they were gone, instead of shuffling back into the kitchen to hover around the quartet, Bilbo made sure to stay by the door with it propped wide open, so when the rest of them arrived in a bumbling line up his cobblestone steps, he only had to usher them in with a wry smile and an absolutely withering glance at Gandalf.
Watching them walk past him one by one — Bifur, Bofur, Oin, Gloin, Dori, Nori, Ori, and Bombur — was like watching a painting as it floated backwards through time, the way their familiar faces tugged at his heartstrings, how young they all were. He’d seen most of them on his last visit to Dale, when all of them had been giddy and greying in the light of the prospering Lonely Mountain, and Gloin he’d of course seen in those last days at Rivendell when they’d waved their boys off and everything had started slowly to blend together.
It was a bitter sort of warmth, seeing them the way they had been back then, or now, Bilbo supposed. Back again. All of them together, as they should always have been, and younger, and so very jovial, and eager for the chance to win back what had once been theirs. And yet, Bilbo couldn’t wander into the fray the way he used to, to ask Gloin about how his lad Gimli was faring in Ered Luin, or to mention to Bombur that he had a few of his grandmother’s best recipes for mushrooms tucked away in one of the cupboards to loan him. He could not even trust that Balin or Bofur knew where the plates and spoons were, because they did not know this house yet, and he was still a stranger to them.
He simply stood a little ways away from the table and watched them dig in, politely answering scattered questions about whether he had this or that kind of ale and if he might possibly be able to spare another bowl.
There were more than a couple of occasions where he even found himself walking into bits of furniture he’d moved later on, or reaching for something and finding that nothing was there. Whenever this happened, the dwarves would give him strange, assessing looks, and Bilbo’s ears would suddenly feel like they were being boiled in a hot kettle. He was entirely sure that all the blood thundering into them was going to make them fall off, and then he’d faint from blood loss and the Company would leave him lying there on his kitchen floor like a complete twit and he wouldn’t make it onto the quest at all.
Bilbo was perhaps not managing as well as he had initially hoped.
He cursed under his breath after ramming his toe for the third time into the leg of a table he’d thrown out years later, and ducked his head so they wouldn’t see his ears neatly bypassing red and turning an atrocious shade of purple.
“Won’t you come and have a seat, Bilbo?” Gandalf called, watching him with fonder eyes than Bilbo thought he probably deserved just yet. Bilbo flashed a grimace at him.
“That’s all right, Gandalf. I’ll sit down to dinner once everyone has arrived. If I am not mistaken, we’re still waiting on one more, aren’t we?”
His heart was thumping like a drum, and he'd tucked both of his hands deep in his trouser-pockets to hide their incessant shaking. He did not miss the curious expression that washed over Gandalf’s face.
The silence stretched out. His legs felt like they were made of twigs. His mind was filling with sand.
Quite like clockwork, there was one final knock at the door.
Bilbo had always heard that when you reunited with a loved one after a long time apart, you saw details you’d forgotten, and noticed things you hadn’t before. He’d wondered which parts of his mother’s face he would have to relearn, when the time came, and whether it was at all possible that he could ever have forgotten the image of the statue carved into the mountainside.
The person looking back at him in the doorway was like out of a perfectly preserved memory. His silver-linked shirt, stitched together with threads of dark blue, strips of animal hide draped for warmth across the shoulders. The scruff of his beard, short and blunt against his face.
Oh, his face. How could anyone ever begin to describe the way it felt to look upon a face long lost to you?
One you hadn’t seen in nearly a century and yet you knew you saw every time you woke from sleep. One you’d last seen serene and still, peaceful the way it never quite had been in life, encased within a pool of dark hair fanning outwards like the deep rays of the moon.
Sometimes, in Bilbo’s memories of Ravenhill, where everything had gone so terribly, terribly wrong, the snow was falling down, and sometimes the wind would be whipping at the two of them, catching at the tangles of Thorin’s dampening hair and not letting him lie still.
He’d been talking, rasping in the way of someone whose lungs were starting to fail them, and whose heart had finally decided that it was time to stop trying, and all Bilbo had thought, over and over and over, had been Just keep talking.
Just keep talking, Thorin Oakenshield.
Don’t you dare look away from me. Don’t you dare go.
Because for those awful last few moments, laid out on the ice with the frost biting at their skin, Bilbo had known with absolute certainty that Thorin was not going to live. And so he’d watched him talk, and breathe, and watched him choke out an apology already forgiven, and all the while he’d been thinking about how quickly the moment was already approaching when he was going to have to let go. And he’d had no time to gather any of his thoughts before that moment had come, and he’d watched the fire that was in those eyes shutter out at last. And then Bilbo had sat there and cried for a very, very, very long time.
The funerals had been worse. They’d still been in those early days, when it had felt like his heart was crushing down into his chest, when the tips of his fingers were numb and everyone he spoke to had to repeat all their words because he had not been able to hear them.
He had watched a person pulled down into death he’d only just realised he’d needed in life. The colour had just melted away, the way raindrops slipped down the glass of your windows on days when the clouds were drenched and dark. The heavens had opened above him and then closed right back up. He'd drowned in how heavy the silence had been.
Bilbo hadn’t been able to bear touching Thorin that last time. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought that his skin wouldn’t be warm under his fingers when Thorin had only ever burned with life. His hands were almost aching now with the effort not to reach out, not to run his knuckles along one of his cheekbones, soft as a butterfly’s wing. He could almost physically feel it when he had to bottle it all up and hide it away, to pretend like he didn't know him.
Bilbo lifted his chin, then swallowed gently and let his head fall ever so slightly to the side. He took care to blink slowly and take careful breaths. He let his eyes travel along all of Thorin’s sharpened edges, up the line of his throat and along the base of his chin and clenching jaw, over the ridge of his nose and up to familiar eyes; blue, blue, blue.
It's been so very long, my dear.
It was so good to see those eyes again.
“You’re a tad late for supper, Master Oakenshield,” Bilbo said calmly, eyes settling firmly on the clasp of Thorin’s furs resting against his clavicle. “I was beginning to worry you hadn’t made it at all.”
Then he turned gently aside, the ageing floorboards creaking under his feet as he walked back into his home and away from Thorin Oakenshield.
It took Gandalf quite a long time to notice that Bilbo was not sitting with the rest of them at the table, but was propped up on his little stool in the corner, slurping up soup with a wooden ladle and watching them over the rim of his bowl with his eyes twinkling. It took much longer than that for any of the dwarves to even notice he was there in the first place, and as soon as they had, they’d started up that dreadful song about knives and forks and whatever else, the sound ringing in Bilbo’s ears. He made sure to keep his face neutral and kept his nose firmly in his dinner so he wouldn't be tempted to grin.
It was more difficult than he’d expected to watch the way they all moved with each other, the yellow light flickering overhead as bits of food soared this way and that and foaming mugs of beer slopped unceremoniously onto his beautiful redwood table, all their raucous and rowdy noise bouncing off the walls of the dining room and down all of his winding hallways. It was like he was watching a frame out of time, and the thought made him worry with a sudden sharpness that it wasn't real.
Maybe his mind had finally truly cracked. It would certainly be less surreal than what was happening in front of him.
Nevertheless, the sight made Bilbo glad that somewhere far away, in another lifetime, or perhaps still to come in this one, his old hallways would be echoing with the feet of little Gamgees for years and years to come. They would not be allowed to grow old in despair and decay as he had begun to. He spared another gentle thought for his Frodo, and for Frodo’s Sam, and wondered how both of them were faring, wherever they were in the world.
(He wondered if Frodo had made it to Valinor. Perhaps the journey was only ever taken by Elves because it took hundreds and hundreds of years.
Perhaps Bilbo was still on the way there and all of this was a very vivid and torturous daydream somebody had put together for him.
Perhaps Valinor didn’t even exist.)
So anxious was Bilbo over all of this wondering that he missed the booming call of his name from Gandalf until he shook himself awake and found fourteen sets of eyes suddenly fixated on him, some in piqued interest and some with very noticeable disdain.
“Sorry, Gandalf. Lost in my own thoughts like a silly old hobbit!” he joked, taking no notice of the bemused smile Gandalf sent his way and rising from where his legs were crossed on the stool with a lit lantern in hand. Gandalf spread a worn map across the head of the table as he approached.
Bilbo knew this map. He’d had a copy hung on the wall behind the desk in his study for years and years. He could have sketched it with his eyes closed.
He watched all thirteen dwarves lean in a little closer as Gandalf began.
“This, of course, is a map of the lands around the Lonely Mountain and the city of Erebor. It also,” Gandalf said, deftly unfolding a silver key from between his fingers and peering around at his rapt audience, “gives us the location of the secret door, which is of dwarven make, and thus even now remains invisible to the eye.”
Bilbo couldn’t quite bring himself to watch Thorin when his eyes landed heavily on the key. He could not quite bring himself to look Thorin’s way at all. He watched Gandalf watch him instead.
“How did you come by this?”
Thorin Oakenshield’s spoken voice was quiet, despite the deep rumbling cadence it had always had, and his words came out slowly, as if all the world hung in the balance when he spoke. It was the sort of voice you could feel brushing against your skin, low and woody and lingering.
“It was given to me by your father,” Gandalf said, returning Thorin’s gaze. Bilbo watched the key change hands from wizard to dwarf, still unable to watch the rawness that broke over Thorin’s expression, the reminder of his father’s peril and the worry of not knowing if he was lost to him forever.
“Now,” Gandalf continued, “having a way in, you see, whilst giving you an advantage, does not by any means guarantee your success. For you to re-enter and retake the Lonely Mountain will require courage, and trust, and stealth, and strength, and most importantly, when you make it to the hidden door, it will require one of you to go first."
It was here that his gaze meandered over to Bilbo standing next to him at the table, the stillness of the room and of the thirteen dwarves palpable all around them.
“In other words, a burglar.”
“Indeed,” said Thorin, his top lip curling in a show of contempt, but contempt that, this time, Bilbo was prepared for. “An excellent one.” He turned to the side and fixed Bilbo darkly with something that wasn’t quite a glare, but was clearly meant to assess him, even to unnerve him. Bilbo watched the vague vicinity Thorin was sitting in right back, calm and unflinching.
“I assume you no doubt have experience in burglary, Master Baggins?” Thorin asked. His voice was gravelly, still underused, and it pressed impossibly thick against Bilbo on all sides.
“Oh, I’ve stolen here and there in my time,” Bilbo said very deliberately to Bofur’s hat and not to Thorin. There being, of course, from under the nose of the very same dragon. “Enough to know I’m most certainly up to the job.”
There was a chorus of scoffs and disbelieving titters from the table. Bilbo closed his eyes and smiled softly to himself.
“You may all laugh, but you might well be surprised by what I have to offer and how helpful my experience may come to be, once we reach the Lonely Mountain.”
“And what is it you do have to offer?” Thorin continued in the same deep voice that had appeared in every one of Bilbo’s dreams and every one of his nightmares. Bilbo’s brows twitched together.
“Light feet. A quick mind. A fair amount of luck. And I know I do not look it, but I can manage well enough on my own in a fight.”
“Luck, you said?” someone called — it might have been Dori, or possibly Oin.
Bilbo slowly opened his eyes, the smile on his face growing. He’d stumped them quite a bit, he guessed. Either that or they thought he was completely batty, but he was quite used to that.
“Luck indeed,” he said wryly. “I’ve been told by quite a few folks that I seem to be rather lucky. You might just see, if the time ever comes.”
He probably wasn’t doing himself any favours, being so cryptic, but he could not even bring himself to mind. He’d missed his friends far too much not to have his fun toying with them a little bit.
“Now, I mean no disrespect, laddie,” Balin said, not unkindly, and Bilbo appreciated that he was at least being polite about it, “but are you sure a gentlehobbit like yourself will be able to keep up where we’re going? Simple luck is not very much to go on.”
“Aye,” piped up Gloin from further down the table, and distinctly less kindly, “he looks more like a grocer than a burglar.”
Even knowing this would happen, Bilbo bristled - after all, he actually had something to say for himself this time, and clearly they would still not hear a bit of it, stubborn-minded as they were - but he was saved, thankfully, by Gandalf coming to his defence, a wildness in his eyes as he rose suddenly in his chair and gripped the end of his staff.
“If I say Bilbo Baggins is a burglar, then a burglar he is!” he bellowed, looming over them all, the candles snuffing out one by one as he drew the shadows closer, and really, if Bilbo hadn’t known him as well as he did, he would have been frightened out of his wits. “He is the fourteenth member of this company that I have chosen, and that ought to be enough for all of you. He is the only person I believe is right for the job. If not him, Thorin Oakenshield, then you shall have no one at all.”
The silence afterwards prickled at his skin, and Bilbo felt a little guilty, even if he hadn't done anything.
“It’s fine if you don’t trust me just yet,” he said to them quietly. “Really. I would not ask you to when we do not know one another, and you have no reason to believe that I am anything more than what I seem, but I will prove my worth to you if and when I can, and I only ask that you do not judge me too unkindly before then.”
He knew they had good reason to be wary and mistrusting of outsiders. They’d suffered greatly in the wandering years, and in settling amongst the Blue Mountains when it was so far from every other home they had lost. They were overlooked, ostracised, and underestimated by every other race in Middle-Earth.
But Bilbo also knew that, as he was here because they brought him peace, he would in time be able to bring it to them, too.
“Very well,” Thorin said, scowling again, watching Gandalf with a flicker of tension visible in his shoulders. “We will have Master Baggins as our burglar. I assume he has a clear idea of how he plans to go about his job?” His eyes turned in the direction of Bilbo, and Bilbo’s dropped at once to the table.
“I hardly think any of us will be able to form detailed plans until we’ve actually seen the place, surely?” he shot back, and Thorin at least had the grace to look somewhat humbled, though Bilbo could tell that his guard was up in the coolness of his face. No matter. He’d fully resolved to crack that shell, as soon as he got the chance.
“A plan will come when we are in need of one, I should think. And you will all see your Mountain and your city again, I am sure of it.”
The hush that swept around the room at that tugged at the threads of nostalgia that had laid themselves in Bilbo’s heart, and sure enough, it was not much later when he heard the stirrings of slow, mournful song in front of the crackling fireplace, and he could not help but think.
Bilbo’s last few years had seen a Dale that was colourful and musical and thriving, and an Erebor that was strong and sturdy and had stoutly withstood the onslaught of the Enemy in the face of gravest danger.
It would stand again. He was sure of it. He knew, somehow, that he was not quite here to ensure the success of their quest when they’d already done it once themselves.
No, Bilbo had his own musings about the reason he was truly back here, even if he didn’t understand at all why he of all people had been given such a chance, and he did not think it was only for himself. He could bring life back to the Mountain that had never gotten to see it reborn, give the dwarves back their leader and their young ones, and heal every one of their hearts as well as his own. He was here, he suspected, to save the only love he had ever known; to deliver to him at last the title of King Under the Mountain.
Dawn broke with the quiet sounds of sleep and bodies waking, and it was still half-dark with the blue of morning when thirteen dwarves began to wearily trundle into the little kitchen in Bag End, only to come quite to a stop at the sight of the spread laid out before them.
There were apple and cherry and raspberry tarts laden down with fresh cream and butter and bright red fruit. There were sausages and ham and scones and toast with bumblebee honey and sun-yellow egg yolks and poppyseed cakes and orange slices and mint leaves. There were jugs of elderflower water and loose-leaf lemon tea. And in the middle of it all, amongst the mismatched chairs and his curls being quite crushed against the gingham tablecloth, lay Bilbo, the tips of his fingers dark with juice and a small pile of mulberries lying next to him on the table where they’d made it only halfway to a plate.
Everyone was quiet for a long time. Then, “Did he even sleep?” asked Gloin, the utter shock they were no doubt all feeling bleeding into his voice.
“He did,” said Gandalf, who had a biscuit in his mouth and was sitting quite unannounced in the corner of the room with his cloak bundled up about him, watching Bilbo Baggins with a rather intrigued look on his face. “He went to sleep a little later than the rest of you, and woke in the very smallest hours of the night to bustle around some more, and then slept again, and then woke to add the finishing touches and quite fell asleep in the middle of doing so.”
Gandalf watched on with the rest of them as Bilbo seemed to stir for a second, scrunching up his nose, and then relaxed back into sleep. He turned to peer at all of them curiously.
“I have no idea how he knew them, but he insisted that he was going to make all of your favourites.”
“He will be too weary for the day’s journey,” Thorin said gruffly, a deep scowl staining his face. He was glaring around at all the food as though it was offending him.
Gandalf sat up straighter in his chair and fixed an assessing eye on the dwarf. “He will be atop a pony, Thorin. He can doze as he needs to. And I must say, all of you are now acting like most ungrateful guests, after what he has prepared for you.”
And with that, the dwarves looked around abashedly at each other, and then pulled out their chairs and tucked in.
Quite some time passed before the hobbit began to wake to an insistent prodding, and he opened his eyes slowly to the sight of Ori peering at him in hesitation with one finger outstretched towards his ribcage. He looked around, bleary eyes adjusting to the morning clutter and still heavy with sleep, and seemed to realise after a moment that most of the breakfast plates and bowls had been cleared away, and that nothing much was left on the table except for scattered crumbs and empty pots of marmalade. He flushed bright pink and leapt to his feet.
“Oh, hell, I’ve been such a terrible host, falling asleep on all of you like this! Are we leaving soon? What’s the time? Did you all eat enough for breakfast? I bought the sausages especially.” His hair was sticking up in all sorts of directions, and he kept patting it down and running his fingers through it, like he was worried about being less than presentable in front of them.
Really, it was exceedingly strange.
Several heads turned towards their leader, but Thorin Oakenshield did not speak, so it was Gandalf who replied, “Indeed, Bilbo, we were planning to leave in just a few minutes.” The wizard then acknowledged Thorin with a shrewd look, clutching at his staff with his shoulders bent against the hobbit-sized roof, but the dwarf merely looked back at him with the same air of stoicism.
“Give me just a moment to finish my packing, and I will be on my way,” Bilbo said.
When Master Baggins walked back into the room with a pack strapped to his back and a travelling coat on his shoulders, a few of the other dwarves glanced down at his bare feet for a moment, frown, and then shrug their shoulders and turn away. Fili and Kili, however, did not seem to have acquired this same level of subtlety.
“Will you really go without boots the whole journey, Mr Baggins?” Kili asked, Fili peering down alongside him.
The hobbit wrinkled his nose at the question. He seemed to do that a lot, though this time, his lips were quirked at the corners.
“My dear boys, have you ever heard of a hobbit wearing shoes? I’d rather my feet be cut up on mountain rocks and fall clean off than have to step foot anywhere near a pair of boots. Shoes, indeed!” he chuckled.
“To be honest with you,” Fili said diplomatically as they made their way out the door and down Bagshot Row, “many of us have hardly heard of hobbits at all.”
But at that, Bilbo Baggins only chuckled again.
They strolled for a little while down the winding Shire paths, shouldering their packs and grumbling and kicking at each others’ heels when one of them walked too slowly. Many of them thought the hobbit should have been showing them where they were supposed to be going, but instead he was trotting along at the very back of the pack with a pensive sort of look on his face, and this rather perturbed them. It did not bode well for the rest of their journey if he was going to refuse even to guide them in his home country.
Before long, they’d reached an outcrop of trees near Frogmorton, where a beautiful dozen-and-then-some of ponies were roped in a little line and waiting patiently for them.
The wizard Gandalf strode forward and began murmuring to each of the ponies, running a wrinkled hand along each of their hides. He turned back to them once and inclined his head to the rest of the ponies with a single raised eyebrow.
“Don’t dally just because they are not a mode of transportation you frequent, Master Dwarves. This should allow us to make up some ground nicely. And all perfectly sized!”
The Company saddled up slowly, strapping bags and satchels and bedrolls to the sides of their ponies with stirrups and bits of rope. Some of them were tossing each other bits of food to gnaw on before they set off properly. Gandalf craned his neck over the many dwarf heads to keep an assessing eye on the hobbit down at the end of the line, who was stroking the nose of his pony affectionately.
Bilbo Baggins must have known Gandalf exceptionally well, because he sensed the wizard’s gaze at once and turned his head to look. Gandalf smiled at him.
“My dear fellow, you've run some mulberry juice through your hair,” he commented.
The hobbit seemed to startle at this, lifting his hands to the curls bouncing in front of his eyes and touching them lightly, and then realising belatedly that his fingers were still stained richly purple-pink. A real smile broke across his face, then, and it quite changed his whole demeanour.
Strange, on such a small, round face, just starting to be lined at the corners. He seemed to almost light from within.
They were on their way.
Bilbo had mulberry juice in his hair like a clothead, and he could not look at Thorin Oakenshield properly without the breath falling right out of his chest, but he'd been paired with Myrtle again, and he’d remembered a handkerchief this time, so turnabout was fair play, if he said so himself!
If all went well, Bilbo would only ever return to Bag End once more after they took the Mountain. The thought meant nothing to him, now. He’d cut his ties here long ago, and it was only the lingering picture of dark curly hair and youthful wide eyes that made him pause, and turn back to look one last time.
He smiled tightly. He was going where Frodo could not follow, and where Bilbo would never have asked him to even if it was possible. It wasn’t quite fair that the two people who meant the most to him could not exist at the same time, in the same life.
Maybe that was why he was here again. Maybe it could only be one or the other, and he had spent a lifetime yearning so profoundly for the other that he’d somehow caught the attention of powers higher than he.
It was a waste of effort, and magic, in Bilbo’s opinion. There were others who deserved it far more than he did; he could have rattled off a long list of them. There was nothing he could remember doing in his life that had ever warranted a gift like this one, and Bilbo was very conscious of the fact he did not know when or where he would find the catch.
But still. No matter. Onward he would go.