Chapter Text
Thorin was running. Behind her back, the Lonely Mountain was erupting like a volcano; but in place of fiery lava, molten gold ran down its hillsides and battlements in great waves, engulfing everything in its path. It gave off heath, vile and deathly as a dragon’s breath, and the old scars on her back recoiled with memory as she made her way through the desolation.
There were others as well in the wilderness. Most of them were strangers, a blur of unknown faces from all races, but some she recognized as various members of the Company. As she gained on them, she was shouting for them to run, to save themselves from the impending death – but none of them moved. She was now close enough to see that all of them had their gazes fixed on the gold, eyes glassed in greedy stare that would not waver even as she tried shaking them or pulling them along. For all her attempts, all they did was open their arms wider.
It was then that she spotted Bilbo amongst them, her fair-toned curls glowing like a lit beacon in the unnatural dusk. Unlike everyone else, she had her eyes downcast and she was hunched over something she was holding in her hands, cupped between both palms. Thorin ran to her, but before she had time for any warnings, Bilbo lifted her face and looked straight into her eyes.
“It’s too heavy,” she complained. She seemed to be talking about the object she was holding in her hands, still shielded from Thorin’s view. “I can’t run with it.”
“Who gave it to you?” Out of all the possible questions, she wasn’t sure why she had picked that one; somehow, it seemed important to know who was to blame.
Bilbo’s unexpected smile was sorrowful thing. The gold was already so close that even though she had her back to it, Thorin could see it reflected in Bilbo’s eyes, making them bright and otherworldly as the sun, instead of the familiar green as the many fields of her home. She suddenly understood that after this those, too, would be forever lost.
Just as she felt the first wave of gold hit the back of her boots, Bilbo finally lifted her other hand to show her the thing she was holding. For a fleeting moment, Thorin expected to see the Arkenstone; but what Bilbo was holding was no jewel, but a still beating heart of flesh.
“You did,” she said.
Then, there was only gold.
Thorin came awake with a jolt. It took her a moment to understand that she was tucked away in her own bed at Erebor, and that her sheets were drenched in cold sweat instead of liquid metal.
She waited a long time for her heartbeat to settle. When it finally had, she threw aside the covers with a hiss, got dressed to her best ability and headed out of her rooms.
It was not the first time she found herself plagued by odd dreams: during those first years after her people had settled at the Blue Mountains, there had been many. First they came slowly, only a handful of images spread over a span of time, but as the years drew on and the memory of Erebor became something resembling a festering wound, the dreams, too, increased as if to poison her mind.
She could first feel the change during the month she fitted shoes for horses in a small village by the Greenway. She was almost stomped over so many times that she grew permanently unfazed by creatures many times her size and perfected an unsettling glare that was bound to work on both the animals as well as their boisterous owners, not taking too kindly for a woman doing what was largely considered a man’s work. It was there where she first dreamed of her father’s ring, the one that had been lost with him, and how in the dream it was placed on her hand – not by the famous elven smith - but some faceless figure draped in shadows. The same dream repeated countless times over a fortnight, but as she finally returned home, she decided not to mention it to anyone.
Weeks later, she took on work so far up in the north that even the constant proximity of the forge wasn’t enough to keep her warm; she slept curled beside it like a cat, chasing its lingering warmth during nights when the icy sky above was set ablaze by strange lights which served to remind her of moon runes. It was there she found herself dreaming again about the ring, only this time she wore it while standing by a great gate carved in stone, one she had not never seen but on the pages of old books. It was as if the gate was only the beginning, since in the dreams that followed she came upon the legendary city of Khazad-dûm itself, and she spent countless nights wandering its endless, empty halls, before she was always pulled awake by the sound of drums in the deep.
In time the dreams only increased in number, but Thorin still kept them to herself, even from Dís, who had just lost her husband and the father of her children, and as such, had too many things on her mind already. But she remembered what had happened to Thrór and what had been said about the catching madness the women of her kin were prone to, making her think how dreaming of such great acts only seemed like a different kind of greed, since they were now as unreachable to her as Erebor’s riches.
It wasn’t until during a moment’s weakness when she confessed to Balin how she feared she was going mad, when he begged to voice a differing opinion. He reminded her of the stories she had once heard on her father’s knee, of Durin’s promise and the Five Queens that had been since. In his opinion, it wasn’t unheard of that their dreams might be linked to one another, so that fragments of their lives and rules could be passed on to her as a form of encouragement.
Thorin knew what to expect from him next; she might not be one to linger at their home in the stronghold, but she often traveled with the merchants who were unaware of her true heritage and prone to gossip. And, true to his form, Balin only hesitated for a moment before he admitted, “Ever since the battle of Azanulbizar, there has been talk that you’re to be the Last.” Perhaps he then caught a glimpse of her disbelieving look, as he was quick to add, “But of course, one can’t put too much weight on dreams alone.”
At first Thorin was almost angry; in her opinion, there were far better things to do than to engage in idly gossip when both food and money were still scarce. But the unavoidable truth of things was, that she also felt flattered by the rumors – how could she not, when the message they carried spoke of clear trust; a trust that she had never dared to have because of her gender, but a trust she had earned nevertheless. It made her remember how she had brought home with her the branch that had saved her life in battle and then forged it into a shield, so that at all times she could carry with her the evidence that the Line of Durin wouldn’t be so easily broken, and that she would extend her namesake’s protectiveness over her entire kin, shielding them from whatever blows the world decided to throw their way.
In that light, her dreams ceased to be a nuisance and became a responsibility instead. If she truly was Durin’s given promise finally in the flesh, then it would mean that she could remember everything her people had been, as well as everything they yet aspired to become. It was her duty to set an example, in more ways than one. For all her childhood she had heard stories of the Seven First Dwarves, all linages blessed with great lords and kings – all except for her own. Durin and the Five Queen were a reason for great pride, but even on this day and age a woman’s right for rule needed constant defending against those who dared to question it. Should she reclaim the Mountain, Thorin would prove that the faith her kin had not been in vain.
Then, just as she had first intended to march out to meet the leaders of their armies and insist that they should take back Erebor, she lost Dís. It was a simple accident, as it appeared that her pony had stumbled and taken bad fall on one of the less used mountain paths, but for the longest of time, Thorin blamed herself. If she had only gone with her that day as she had asked, instead of coming up with pipedreams, she would still be with them. She even found herself thinking that perhaps the madness had found her after all and this was to be her punishment for it; to see her remaining family perish for her greed for glory.
She never mentioned any of her doubts to either of her nieces. Fíli was thirty-five, nearly of age, and Kíli not far behind, but in that moment of shared grief they turned to her in look for guidance, and she in turn found herself with children, if not hers by birth then at least by blood. She didn’t even know where to begin to unravel the meaning of it. Whereas she had nothing against children per se, her own thoughts about possible motherhood had withered and died long before Smaug arrived to Erebor, as she had come to the conclusion that she could never see herself as one. Dís, on the other hand, had always spoken in length how she wanted children, so in her naïve youth Thorin simply assumed that if she were ever to inherit the crown, she would name her sister’s offspring her heirs. That thought hadn’t wavered since, not even on the day when a simple blacksmith had arrived to Erebor and – once the winter was over – Dís had decided to take him for a husband, to the great horror of their entire royal family. When their parents had tried to talk her out of it, Dís had merely laughed; even now, Thorin remembered well how she had always been the braver of them two when it came to things that really mattered.
So she might not have wanted to become a parent, but fate didn’t leave her with the luxury of choice, and like in many matters before, she was left to do with what she had. She raised her nieces to be warriors, so they could fight back when the world would try to take everything from them as it was wont to do. She couldn’t bring back the parents they had lost, so she gave them knives and bows and something else to believe in, by sharing the same dream that had kept her moving through all those difficult years – that someday, Erebor could be theirs again – even if in truth, the actual dreams had long since ceased to appear. She saw the Queens and their dealings no more.
The new life they now had at the Blue Mountains was no longer a constant struggle and at times they even had the chance to indulge. Fíli and Kíli, born and bred west from the mountain range, had different standards for wealth and were at home in modest halls, but Thorin could still remember how it had felt to drink wine from cups made of pure gold, or weigh on her hand rubies the size of a grown man’s fist, and having the knowledge of those things made her spirit restless. She found herself thinking of Erebor once more, and of Durin, even if memories of both seemed to have deserted her for the time being.
But then she received word that her father had been seen wandering the lands near the town of Bree. She went searching and did endlessly so, until she was finally so exhausted in her futile search that she fell asleep while riding. In her dream, she was leading a group of survivals across lands – a memory from her time in exile that had haunted her for years. But then she came around a familiar hillside and was met with the sight of the Lonely Mountain, for what was – she understood upon seeing its pristine slopes and sides, untouched by any chisel or tool – the very first time.
So later, when Tharkûn himself sat in her table at the local inn, her father’s key at hand, she had no need for further reassurances or omens.
Her time – the time of the Last - had finally come.
Only now, even if they had won back Erebor, she wasn’t so confident about that claim.
It had been a week since the healers had deemed her well enough to return to the Mountain. She had complied, if not exactly eagerly, then at least with a certain amount of relief. She had been fed up with the drafty tent and being endlessly prodded and poked by her caretakers, Bard’s people at her beck and call day and night despite her earlier behavior towards them. Even if being back at Erebor had its own downsides, at least she was no longer at the mercy of the very people she had doomed to a fiery death.
For the most part of the past seven days Thorin had stayed in her room, since Balin had insisted on it most rigorously. The Mountain certainly wasn’t going anywhere, he had said, and they could very well be expected to manage the beginnings of a simple cleanup without her direct supervision. She had obeyed his request to her best ability, but there were times when being left alone with her own thoughts drove her up the walls and that is when she took to walking the halls as she did now, attempting to familiarize herself in their shapes once more.
Most of her wanderings took her to those parts of the palace that had acted as her and Dís’s favorite hideouts, even if she only managed to discover a mere fraction of them, as if the very halls had rotated during her absence. But on this time she did come across Dís’s old room, where she found a pair of dolls, once made for them by their mother and which neither of them had never actually played with, but something Dís had kept nevertheless. They were both dressed in miniature versions of the traditional Ereborian binda, their long dresses made of the same expensive fabrics as the real ones and embroidered with delicate, golden details. As Thorin picked up the nearest one, she recollected the heavy weight of her mother’s skirt and remembered thinking how crushing it must have felt for her to be wearing it at all times, cocooned in the suffocating embrace of the heavy silk and velvet. She had understood it even less when Dís, upon reaching her come-of-age, had made the rare decision to start dressing in one; it was generally known that once such a decision was made, it was a matter of pride to never back down from it. When she had questioned her about it, Dís had only said, “The weight helps me to remember,” and Thorin still hadn’t understood her meaning, not until the day she picked up her wooden shield and everything she that came with it.
Now, just before continuing her journey, she brushed both of the dolls clean of dust and placed them carefully back on the shelf, watching as their wooden heads rested gently against each other for support.
Thorin recalled very little of those unfortunate days after Smaug’s banishment, but what she did remember was that the whole Mountain had sounded different then, its voice a series of dull and joyless clanks, or threatening hisses made by doors opening on their own. On her sickbed, she had feared that perhaps for all her stalling she had arrived too late, and now, even if she had survived, Erebor could only serve as her tomb; a city made for the dead.
But as she had been dreaming her restless dreams, a fresh breeze had made its way through the halls, and now, the very place seemed lighter for it, less ominous, and its habitants more prone to laughter and song as they worked to rebuilt it. Thorin had come across a full platoon of guards caught in a fierce match of conkers, heard her people singing odd songs and even saw one dwarf with her hair cut to a similar short shape, and she had known, then, who it was that had breathed life into her heart, not once, but twice.
It seemed that wherever she went, Bilbo’s influence could be seen, even if she herself was nowhere to be found. She walked the halls like a spirit, seemingly vanishing in thin air just mere moments before Thorin hoped to catch up with her. She followed the series of footprints she had left in the ash that still covered the floors, and watched how her own cape brushed them away in her wake, as if Bilbo had never been there at all. Thorin could not blame her for her behavior; they had not spoken to each other since that day in the tent, so in that regard it was easy to assume that Thorin’s mere presence was enough to make Bilbo fade away. The younger ones’ - oblivious to the poisonous words exchanged between them - seemed to believe her Gandalf’s equal for it, and at that she had to bite her tongue, for not arguing how in her mind the two had no grounds to be comparable; even for all their unresolved issues, she still considered even a lock of Bilbo’s hair to be worth more than the wizard and that damned stick of his combined.
She tried to remember the unexpected hope concealed in that admission, something entirely else than the familiar trust and loyalty of her dwarven supporters. For the thing she was now about to do, she needed all the courage she could muster.
Until now, Thorin had kept firmly away from the treasure at all times. She hadn’t dared to risk it for the sake of everyone involved, not when they all had sacrificed so much to spare her from her own stupidity. Bilbo’s scolding might have persuaded her to reconsider her decision to give up the throne, if not for her own sake then at least for Fíli’s, since forcing her into such a position without any preparation would have been pure cowardice on her part. But all that didn’t change the fact that the very Heart of the Mountain was now rotten, her hearth, and as an extended proof of that there was the gold, spilling across caverns like a tumor.
Now, Thorin stood by it with her eyes firmly closed. She hardly even dared to breathe.
It was absurd; she had faced down orcs and goblins, beasts big and small, and even gloated at a dragon. She had defied death for the very thing she was now too afraid to even look at, in the fear that if she did, she would forever loose her ability to see beyond it.
Just then, from some distant hall far above, a peal of laughter carried into her ears. As far as reassurance went it was feeble at best, but it still managed to convoy a drop of hope. Thorin thought of the feel of Dís’s skirt in her fingers, the way she had carried it proudly across the many difficult miles from there to the west and never complained once; and she thought of the recent moment when the healers had delicately told her that the spear had apparently caused too much internal damage for her to ever conceive again, and how she had shocked them with her sudden bark of laughter, unable to put in to words how she already had all the daughters she could ever hope to have, even if she deserved neither of them.
And lastly, she thought of a southern wind blowing through Erebor’s halls, clearing out the ash, and then of conkers, hatching open and growing into great trees, making the desolation coming to life once more.
Focusing on all of that, she finally opened her eyes.
During the past week, Glóin had led a team that was in charge of cataloguing and sorting out the gold, a task that would take months if not years. In the meantime, the treasure was there for all eyes to see, and Thorin discovered now how witnessing it in all its glory hadn’t lost any of its appeal. She picked up a handful of coins and saw her image reflected back in a golden mirage, simply breathtaking in its beauty. She now wondered if it had always been so, even in her youth, and if it was only the shock of discovering the milky dullness in her grandmother’s once so intelligent eyes that had prevented her from seeing it like that.
But the remainder of Thrór pushed forth more memories, such as those not of her own, but the ones she had seen in her dreams. No one ever dared to remember the Queens as anything else but symbols for their rules, the women that had carried the crowns forever lost behind them. Now, for the first time ever, she found herself wondering whether any of them had ever second-guessed their place in the chain of great warriors that were meant to lead their people, or had any such doubts about their own importance as she did now. It was, after all, during their rule that something had managed to drive their people away from the halls of Khazad-dûm and made them settle into the Lonely Mountain, a place near the homestead of the dragons of the north – a great prize to pay even for all its contained wealth.
Perhaps Balin had been only partially right; perhaps these dreams of hers weren’t only remembrances of glory, but a collection of warnings in measures, provided as proof that every great deed brought with it the seeds for destruction. In their humble wisdom, her predecessors had put on offer their own mistakes, in the hopes that she should see that they, too, had erred, and were still today recognized as worthy by those that really mattered.
With this in mind, Thorin looked at the gold with new eyes. At the end of the day, it was just a pile of metal – cold coins and flimsy trinkets, shiny stones and empty tankards. It was a rebellious thought for a dwarf, but then maybe that was exactly what she was. After all, her life had been spared by a branch rather than any iron shield, and she had never loved any sword as much as she did of Orcrist, a blade of elven making.
And then there was, of course – Bilbo.
Her hand went slack, and she watched the coins scatter back into the pile were they lay with the others, seemingly harmless yet still as deathly as a coiled snake.
“Do you blame me for what happened?” she asked out loud.
Even without seeing him, she could sense that at some point Balin had made his way to her side. He still walked with the same gait as he had done all those years ago when he had come to comfort her after some royal exercise gone awry, and Thorin could recognize him for it even now. She kept her eyes on the gold, even if her question hang heavy in the air between them.
But as Balin replied, he did it without hesitation. “Never,” he said. “If anyone, I blame myself. I shouldn’t have let you come.”
His admission shocked Thorin. She twirled around, a motion that finally brought the two of them face to face. From Balin’s expression she could read only guilt, and it was then that she understood for the first time that Dwalin must have gone to him after their fight in the tent that day, confessing everything, even if later the two of them had simply carried on as if anything of out of the sorts hadn’t happened, nothing there to remind them of it but the scar she now carried on her cheek.
Before Thorin knew it, she had her hand raised in abrupt motion, as if to reach out to touch him. “Balin –“ she started, all in a rush, but halted just as quickly as her hand had done. “It wasn’t your choice to make,” she finally said, hoping that it carried out everything she couldn’t manage to put into words.
Balin simply nodded, his eyes filled with sadness. Not for the first time Thorin became aware of the whiteness of his hair and beard, and her gaze tracked down the deep lines of his face. There had been a great number less, back when she had first started to dream her dreams of old.
“And that’s what I have been telling myself ‘till this day,” Balin answered. “But I think we both know how there is unique kind of pain in still remembering the very first time you held someone in your arms and then following that same someone into what can only be a certain death – and not once, but twice have I now done that.” Thorin now made a weak attempt to speak, but Balin shushed her. “No, I want you to hear me out on this one, lass. Because you are and have always been the rightful Queen to me, but – and I mean no disrespect to Thráin - I also like to think you as a daughter. Having to watch you perish on that battlefield would have broken my heart, just as I knew that staying at the Blue Mountains and casting aside all hope of reclaiming our true home would in time have broken yours. And that is why I convinced myself that you had to come - not because it was expected of you, but because after all the hardships, you if anyone deserved the chance to be truly happy.”
Distantly, Thorin was aware that something was now trickling into the midst of her sideburns, and it took her a moment to discover that she was, indeed, crying. She hadn’t been aware that she still had enough tears left in her for it; it now felt strangely comforting to know that there were certain things not Smaug, nor Azog, had managed to rob from her.
Carefully, like her skull was made of the brittle bones of a bird, Thorin stepped closer to press her forehead against Balin’s; the last time she remembered doing it, they had just sealed Dís inside the stone for all eternity. Into the gap between them, she whispered, “I have failed you.”
“You did no such thing!” Balin snapped, almost offended. “The war with the orcs was not your fault. If I recall correctly, your actions provided us with an army – many of them, in fact,” he assured. “And even if you had, it wouldn’t change my mind about a single thing I just said.”
“Even still. Forgive me,” she begged, the apology dragged out of her hoarse throat like a desperate prayer, each of the words setting something inside her free, “forgive me for everything.”
Balin reached out to cover her shaking hands with his own, much warmer and surer than hers had ever been. “Not that I’m not glad to hear it,” he answered, and in his voice, Thorin could hear the beginnings of a smile, “but I don’t think it’s me you should be apologizing to.”
Some days after, Thorin was convicted that if she were to stay indoors for a moment longer, she would go mad for entirely un-gold-related reasons. She had spent so many of her years constantly on the move, that she now felt like some feral animal trying to pass as a house pet as she prowled around the confines of her room, and - as she tossed and turned in her bed – nearly mourned the waste the soft beddings were on her back, as used as it was to being pressed against the hard ground while sleeping. For once, she thanked her late mother for all her dedication in drilling the royal manners into her think skull, since it spared the Ereborians from realizing that in addition to all her other faults, they also had a wild thing for a Queen.
In her desperation for a breath of fresh air, she finally managed to haggle one of Dain’s men to accompany her for the short trek that was the distance between the main gate and the nearby Ravenhill. Thorin knew she was in no shape to ride, but she didn’t wish to risk the walk in the fear that her strength might run out midway and she would be forced to be carried back in the soldier’s arms like some common damsel. Since Nori had reported to her that Esgaroth guarded its ponies with such a ferocity that even he was unable to purchase or steal some, they were left to do with what they had. And so Thorin watched, eyes uneasy, as the soldier saddled a pair of rams, the animals now nearly as anxious as she was for being cooped up in the stables for so long.
Still, they managed to reach Ravenhill without an incident. Once there, the soldier agreed to stay by the foot of it with the animals, while Thorin started her slow climb up the path.
The Ravenhill had been yet another of the secret places she and Dís had had the habit of coming when they wanted to be left by themselves. Whenever the pressing knowledge of their mother’s impending death or Thór’s flight of fancies had become too much, the pair of them had taken refuge at the hilltop, where a great ash tree stood in majestic solitude, its trunk wide enough that it would take four dwarves with their arms stretched out wide to circle it, its equally huge roots providing enough shelter for them to hide in.
To her immerse relief Thorin learned that the tree was still there, reaching its winter-skeletal branches towards the sky, peppered with black spots that turned out to be ravens huddling against the cold. As she started to make her way around the tree, Thorin nodded to them in greeting and saw them craning their heads in return, a mute sort of understanding transferring between them.
Her original reason for coming was to attempt to try if she could still find the runes she and Dís had once carved into the tree’s bark. Upon making the markings had contained both of their real dwarven names spelled in the old tongue – a clear violation of the secretive nature of their people, but something Dís had talked her into, saying that this way, even when they were gone, their names would live on in something else besides stone, on something that would continue to grow and green each spring for years to come.
Now it was still winter, and the snow was too deep and the roots too covered in ice for her to discover signs of any carvings. But what Thorin did come across was a set of footprints, fresh enough that they had been made mere moments ago; the tracks were far too light to be made by any boot, as if they belonged to someone who had been walking –
“Oh.”
It was most likely the barest of whispers, but in that moment a gush of wind travelled up the hillside and it carried the sound to her ears; Thorin felt her head perk up like a spooked dove’s, and she must have looked as if she had seen a ghost. On the other side of the tree, a little further away from the trunk, Bilbo stood staring back at her in equal surprise.
She was – as could have been gathered from the footprints – barefoot in the snow, despite it being thick enough for her to be in it up to her knees. On the lower branches of the tree Bilbo had a couple of ravens to keep her company, and with her straw-golden hair, her cut-off trousers and with the amount of layers of clothing she wore upon layers, she rather reminded Thorin of a scarecrow.
It was that slightly hysterical image that finally broke the spell, and Thorin set out to meet her, trying her best to get over the shiver that had taken over her body, one that had nothing to do with the cold and everything with the meeting at hand.
As she drew closer, she half expected Bilbo to vanish between one blink and the next, as she had done countless times before, but to her amazement found her standing there in waiting, blinking lone snowflakes out of her lashes and puffing out clouds of frozen air, a delighted sort expression coloring her face. It would have been easy to assume that she had fully expected for them meet here, had indeed intended so, like any of the unspoken rules of their game of hide and seek didn’t apply once outside of Erebor’s walls. Thorin knew it was impossible for Bilbo to have known when she would come, as unplanned as this visit of hers was, but she decided to entertain the notion a while longer.
“I came to look for these,” Bilbo explained as a way of hello, extending her hand for her to see. Thorin was hit with a nauseous twinge, but as Bilbo opened her fist, it was simply to show her a collection of dark feathers. “To make quills, you see. The ones I found were badly burned, and anyway, Ori said that he could teach me how to make my own.”
For one terrifying moment, Thorin’s mind had been caught in a moment of remembrance, as she recalled the similarities between her latest nightmare and this moment; Bilbo presenting her with Thorin’s own heart, turned heavy as stone by all her sins. But of course there was no heart, as there was no blame in Bilbo’s eyes.
“And may I ask what you’re planning on writing?” she asked, fighting to reclaim her voice.
“Well, in light of your recent blunders, I started to wonder how I could remind everyone of your supposed greatness.” Until now, Bilbo’s voice had been coated with heavy irony - but as she continued, it was with utmost sincerity. “So I figured I should write a book.”
Thorin had not expected that. For all the shared secrets between them, not once had Bilbo made any mention about literal ambitions. “A book?” she asked in amazement.
Bilbo shrugged, perhaps a tad too nonchalantly – Thorin noticed - to truly mask her insecurity over the matter. “Why not? May I remind you, that while you thought you were on your deathbed, you told me that only I was permitted to pen epics about you.”
She spoke the words in the same manner of heartfelt teasing as before, but as she did, Thorin could feel some sort of grand shift taking place, like an invisible veil being pulled aside - as if after days of avoidance, they were suddenly ready to joke about the things that had caused the rift between them in the first place. It would have been easy to assume that they were not there yet, and that what now laid in waiting was a number of lengthy conversations and apologies in measure. But it was as if Bilbo had decided to circle her way around that wasteland of potential ruin, in the hopes that they could start afresh.
“And this book of yours,” Thorin inquired, “how does it end?” How do we, she would have liked to know, but didn’t yet dare to ask.
Bilbo reached to scratch her ear in endearing fashion – another nervous tick, yet her voice still betrayed none of it. “Well, I was thinking along the lines of ‘and they lived happily till the end of their days’ or ‘all was well’. Because why not, really?”
“A happy ending.” Thorin couldn’t help but notice how her own voice hadn’t come out as hopeful as she had intended. She understood that Bilbo only meant well, knew that if anything, she should feel flattered, but it was a hollow sort of gratitude. And by the looks of it, Bilbo had recognized it too, because now she was gazing at her with a worrying frown between her brows, her own good mood deflated.
Thorin clenched her hands into fists, feeling her nails – now uncharacteristically long – dig into the flesh of her palms, the feeling just this side of painful. She took a breath, then another, and tried to think what Dís would have done, were their positions changed. Take courage, her voice whispered in her ear.
“I want to explain –“ she started, in the exact moment as Bilbo said, “Thorin, you don’t think –“
Their words clashed and got mixed up in each other. It rendered them silent once more, until Bilbo was the one to break it; she huffed, shaking her head, and composed her features in a pleading sort of embarrassment. “I think this would be easier if we were still at Beorn’s, speaking of doilies and whatnot,” she admitted.
Perhaps she felt that she was grasping at straws here, but inside her chest, Thorin felt her heart jump at the sight of the offered solution. Indicating the hilltop around them, she said, “It wouldn’t be the first time I trusted this place with my secrets.”
Bilbo’s head perked, clearly relieved that she had caught her meaning with so little prompting. “Well alright – if what you say is true and you have already shared some here – then I go first.” Taking a deep breath, she said, “I feel like I should tell you that don’t see you as symbol.”
“Is that your secret?”
“Yes!” Until then Bilbo’s feet had done a nervous sort of dance in the snow, but now they stilled in their shuffling and became firmly planted in place. Thorin watched her drew in air like a bellows, readying to puff out a stream of rightful fury. “I feel like we got this whole thing backwards; I’m not here because it’s a choice between that and getting married, and I’m definitely not here because I signed a contract or swore an oath! I did both of those things because you gave me the courage to be the person I wanted to become, who I like that I’ve become, and… Well, if I also quite happen to like the person you are, then I don’t think those two things have to be unexclusive.”
“You give me courage as well,” Thorin admitted, in a small voice that she didn’t quite recognize as her own.
“Oh, like that’s supposed to be your big secret?”
“It is,” she insisted urgently. “You reminded me of many things I had overlooked: family and friendship, and the meaning of mercy – all things that were nearly lost to me while I fought to achieve less valuable pursuits. If someone like you can see that I still have the potential for good in me, then I have no choice but to believe it true.”
Bilbo’s face filled with delight, as the weight of her words made itself know. But just as quickly, like paint peeling away from wood in strips, her joy disappeared once more. Thorin watched as her right hand tugged nervously at labels of her topmost coat, before disappearing into her pocket. “I’m not some sort of a barometer, Thorin. I don’t think I have it in me to be your conscience,” she mumbled. Before she managed to reply, Bilbo added, suddenly almost begging, “Please don’t ask me to.”
“I won’t,” Thorin hurried to promise, even if it seemed rather pointless; Bilbo was, now doubt, the kindest and most rightful person she had ever had the good fortune to meet. She also suspected that a large part of Bilbo’s humbleness flowed from the fact that she could never see herself worthy of such praises, even if the old ones themselves would ascend down to this plane to tell her as much. Thorin knew she would be forever in awe of her, the same way she knew now that she was a much better subject of her admiration than any stone.
Still, in the face of her promise Bilbo seemed to relax, her hands coming out of hiding so she could hug her arms to keep warm. Before her courage could fail her, Thorin hurried to say, “But there’s one other thing I would like to ask…” When Bilbo looked at her expectantly, she requested, “May I kiss you?”
Bilbo blinked a number of times, clearly taken aback. Then something in the set of her shoulders eased and the movement was repeated when her tight smile made way for genuine happiness. “After everything, do you really think now’s the time to start asking for permission?”
Thorin’s hand cupped her chin in order tip it up. “From you? Always.”
So she did as he had asked, in a place that had been a safe haven in the storms of her childhood, and what she now thought in terms of it being a crossroads of sorts of their respective homes; a stubborn tree that had stood boldly against Smaug’s reign, maybe in hibernation for the time being, but not easily conquered.
When they pulled apart, Bilbo leaned her forehead against her chin. “What are you thinking?” Thorin asked, her voice a quiet hum. She was holding her close by the elbows and could feel her own hands shaking just slightly. It made her think how she didn’t quite yet know the secret of a tender touch, but was determined to rediscover it.
“I’m thinking that if I’m not careful in the future, I might be in danger of getting a beard-burn from a woman,” Bilbo quipped; against her chest, Thorin could feel her body shaking with quiet laughter. “Or maybe I was just wondering why we didn’t do this sooner.”
“I think there was the matter concerning a certain dragon.”
“You wanted to kiss a dragon?” Thorin pulled back, annoyed, and Bilbo looked at her sheepishly. “No, sorry, that was uncalled for.”
“I wanted to, though. Kiss you before,” Thorin explained. She felt brave enough to admit it now. “At Beorn’s. Nearly confessed to it then, too.”
She watched as Bilbo’s eyes went wide, and then soft in turn. Then she wrinkled her nose, as if something had only now occurred to her. “Oh, let me guess: Erebor’s Queens don’t even have shield-maidens, do they?”
Thorin could feel her lips pulling into a wolfish smirk, the one she knew she shared with her nieces, but hadn’t worn in ages. It seemed like the cat was finally out of the bag, if not as swiftly as Dwalin had once predicted. “We do not.”
Bilbo rolled her eyes, leaning against her once more with a fond sort of reassignment. “Figures.”