Chapter Text
The stone was scraping against his arms as he scrambled, desperately, away from the lashing tail of the great beast, away from the sweeping claws, and there was a sudden and sharp pain in his side as he did not move out the way quick enough, a bloom of warmth in his side as the blood from a wound whose depth he did not know blossomed against his side, soaking into the fabric of his tunic, and Smaug let out a great a horrific roar of victory as he caught the scent of it in the air.
There were gold coins pressing into Bilbo's hands as his rolled, the symbols of cities from far away indenting against his skin, and his terror was a heavy weight in his mouth, pressing down so fully that he thought he might choke on it, on the taste of it, on the coppery blood that he thought he could feel on his tongue. Smaug was glowing even brighter now, his rage kindling some great and terrible fire deep within him, and Bilbo remembered suddenly the stories of the strange fires that some of the cities that Thror had conquered faced, fire that the stories insisted had come from nowhere, from no spark nor hand of man, and as he pressed close to Smaug’s belly for just a moment as the beast turned towards him he could feel the heat of flames, to hot that he thought that he would burn himself had he been forced to remain that close for any longer.
He lashed out with the blade, but it brushed off scales without leaving anything more than a scratch.
The heat of it was oppressive, and he could feel sweat beading on his forehead even as he got away from the bulk of the beast, scrambling over armour, bones breaking beneath his hands even as Smaug screamed in anger at Bilbo escaping his clutches, reaching out to try and snare him once more, but Bilbo was too quick, Smaug too slow after too many years of tracking his victims through his tunnels at his own pace.
And there it was! That glow, making the gold shine like tarnished silver.
The stone, so innocuous among all the other riches in this cavern.
The heart of the beast.
Smaug’s voice was loud in his ears, so loud that he wasn’t sure if he could hear anything else, and somehow he had managed to keep hold of the small blade through all this, though he isn’t sure any more how he has been that lucky, and just an hour ago he thought for certain that he was going to die, but now he is bursting with hope as much as he is with fear, and hope is a dangerous thing, keeps his mind off the beast reaching for him and on the twine in the corridor, the long line of it stretching through the darkness, only when he imagines it he sees that twine glowing red in the black of the tunnels, a gentle and warm red, leading him back to the doors, back to his kin, back to freedom, back to Thorin, who might be waiting still, behind those doors, who might have heard these roars, whose eyes are such a nicer blue than Smaug’s heart, such a gently cool colour, almost grey but for when he is looking at the sea, staring away and beyond at the world of potential that still lies out there, and it isn’t safe to be thinking this way, not when claws are scraping against the stone behind him, not when death is so close that it might be standing in the room with them, not when Smaug’s breath is so hot that he is certain that all of this gold will melt under the pressure of it, that he will sink under the surface of it, the most luxurious way to drown…
And there!
His hand finds the stone just as Smaug finds his leg, pulling him back through the gold, coin flying in the air around them, and his claws are biting so deep that Bilbo can’t help but scream even as he pulls that stone to him, raises his arm, raises the blade that Thorin gave him –
for Thorin, for his kin, for his mother, for Prim, for Bilbo himself, for the ghosts that are trapped here as much as he is, for everything that they have lost, for Thror and all of his scars
- and plunges the blade into the great gem.
The darkness comes, sudden and overwhelming.
Outside the great bronze doors they stood transfixed as the sounds continued to come from the labyrinth, roars that might have been heralding the doom of their island, or the world itself. It was not hard to believe that the earth might suddenly rent when listening to the those sounds: Vili started at one particularly loud one, knocking over the bowl that Thror had left on the floor, the now-cold blood of the sacrificial bull spilling out, slowly seeping across the stone floor.
Thorin found himself watching, oddly detached, as it reached his feet, pooling slowly around the soles of his sandals.
And then, suddenly, everything fell silent.
They stood, and they waited, and they listened, but they heard nothing more.
Thror’s hands raised, for just a moment, as if he were about to plead to the skies, but instead they just fell, beating once against the door.
The sound was loud in the sudden silence.
“What have I done?” Thror said into that quiet, the same words that he had said so many times, on so many long and terrible nights like this, Thror’s fear and guilt open in his broken voice, in the lines around his eyes, in the slump of his shoulders.
“Grandfather,” Thorin began to say, but then Thror turned to him, everything that had once been strong in the old man broken now, his gaze lost and so very afraid, and with a low moan he fell to his knees before them all.
“Forgive me,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “There are too many families out there, I have no the years left in me to beg each of them for a forgiveness that I do not deserve. Too many lives, lost at my hand. Too much hurt, that I cannot hope to undo. And you, too, my own family- I have loved gold and I have loved power, and I have been broken from it. But now I know the truth – that the sort of power that I craved should not be for mortal men to hold. All that I want, all that I should ever have wanted, is this – you all, my family, I love you now more than I have ever loved anything, and I am a better man for it.
“But this is the legacy that I have to offer you. This is all that my years on the throne will be remembered for. Some great beast in the dark, the fear of thousands, the death toll that will grow only higher as the years pass, years that I will never see. I do not deserve your forgiveness for that, I know that well, yet still I ask, for I have always been a fool, a weak and selfish fool, and I fear a death that leaves behind nothing but resentment, and anger.”
They stood in silence for a moment, none of them knowing quite what there was to do, but then Thorin stepped forward, and his Grandfather embraced his knees, in supplication so sacred that the Gods themselves would not have been able to ignore it, and Thorin rested a hand on the silver mane of Thror’s hair.
“What you did was out of madness,” Thorin told him. “And I will not hold those actions against a person. You regret what harm you have caused, and that is all that I could have ever asked of you.”
Thrain stepped forward now, resting a hand on Thorin’s shoulder.
“When the beast appeared, when you lost control of it, when you understood what you had done, you did not send your servants to destroy it. You took that task on yourself, and you nearly died. The beast almost ripped you in half, but in turn you took its sight, enough so that we were able to restrain it whilst the maze was finished, enough that we were able to imprison it in the dark. You demanded victims from abroad to keep its anger in check, to protect us all, your family and your people alike. You are my father, and I have always loved you: you never needed forgiveness from me.”
Dis knelt before her Grandfather next, taking his head in her hands.
“You have left a burden for my sons, a burden so great that I do not know if they will be able to withstand it, for though they are strong they are gentle creatures, more suited to play than to war, though they would follow us into battle if we asked them to. And yet, despite that, I cannot despise you. Do you think we do not know the nights you spend weeping? There has never been a regret so sincere.”
Thalassa came next, and then Vili, though they said little; when Frerin came it was with a strange expression, one that was impossible to read, something closer to anger than Thorin could remember seeing on his brother’s face for a great many years, and though he rested his hand on Thror’s head he said nothing but that he would try to forgive him, and that he loved him still. Thror nodded, seeming to understand, holding no anger against his second grandson.
Gandalf was the last to come, and he shook his head at Thror’s kneeling figure.
“You give up hope too quickly, old friend,” Gandalf told him, a strange smile on his face, but before Thror could reply, there came from the great bronze doors a loud knock, bold and somehow unafraid, and a voice calling out words that none of them had ever hoped to hear.
“Smaug is dead!”
As he had plunged that blade into the stone, the great glow of Smaug’s scales had faded suddenly, to the barest light, embers of the hearth fire at the end of the evening. His grip on Bilbo’s leg had released just as quickly, leaving him panting on the piles of gold, the hot and smoking rock in his hands, the blade wedged so deep within it that he was unsure if he had the energy to pull it out once again, unsure if he would even be able to move any time soon.
But Smaug was making a strange sound, a keening whimper, and Bilbo forced himself to sit upwards, for he did not know if he was truly out of danger yet or not.
The great beast lay in his hoard, slowly dying.
Bilbo crept a little closer as Smaug’s pale, blind eyes stared at the ceiling.
“Where are you, little rabbit?” he rasped, his clawed hand flying to his chest, pressing where his heart would have been had it not been taken from him, all those decades ago. “You have felled me, but I can smell enough to know that you have not scurried off quite yet.”
“I am here,” Bilbo said, and then a strange thing happened.
Smaug – the great, monstrous creature that he was – smiled.
And it was not a cold smile, nor even was it a calculating one – for a moment his face looked almost human with how genuine it was, just how joyful it was.
“I’m sorry,” Bilbo found himself saying.
“Don’t be,” Smaug replied, “for I would have killed you and all your kin had you not slain me, and I would have delighted in ripping the skin from you, in sucking the marrow from your bones. And I would have felt no pity for you, would have felt no dread at my fate, nor even guilt at my actions.”
Bilbo bit his lip, unsure what to do.
“Thror feels the guilt of what he has done,” Smaug said, his voice barely above a whisper now. “I know that he regrets his actions: he comes often to the doors to tell me that, did you know that? No, I don’t suppose that you do. But I have often wondered if that is not the real curse that the Gods have laid upon the both of us: Thror has his guilt, and I have to live with the knowledge that I am a monster, and that without my heart I could never be anything more. I will never regret what I have done, will never plead for forgiveness, will die being as much a creature of evil and destruction as I have ever been.”
“Can you really be so?” Bilbo asked, as the glow from his scales grew even dimmer, so that they were left almost in the same darkness that he had been in before he had reached the heart of the maze. “Can you really be so singularly evil, and nothing more, if you know all of that?”
Smaug smiled again, and it was strange, and soft.
“Yes,” he replied, quite simply. “Not having a choice does not make what I have done any less monstrous, little rabbit.”
And Bilbo did not know what to say to that, so instead he remained silent, and sat at Smaug’s side as the embers of his glow reached the point where they might not have been there at all. The blue shine of his stone was all that was left, a faint flicker of light in the darkness, and despite himself Bilbo began to weep, though he was no longer sure who it was that he was crying for.
But, perhaps that was alright.
“I think you’re wrong,” Bilbo whispered to the darkness.
Smaug laughed, a quiet, sad sound.
“Thank you,” he answered, the last words that he would ever say, and with one last breath the greatest and most terrible creature left on this world passed away, to what end Bilbo did not know. Was there a place in the Underworld for creatures such as him? He had no answer, but for a moment he thought he felt something brush against his face, something warm and gentle, though it might just have been his imagination.
It took him some time to find the right tunnel again in the darkness, even longer to find the twine that he had tucked away, but eventually he did, limping all the way. There was blood dripping on the floor after him, he thought, and he took the time to rip as much fabric from his tunic to bind his wounds with as he could, before following his long and rambling course through the labyrinth back again, colder and sadder now than he had been before.
And he could barely smile when he heard his kin’s cries of relief when he called out to them, could barely feel anything at all, unsure of anything but the weight of a dead heart in his hands, the pain in his limbs, the taste of blood in his mouth, and he banged on the door and called out, suddenly afraid that it would not be enough: but after a moment of silent there came the great sound of bars being lifted, and the door drew suddenly open.
The light was almost blinding, there was blood on the floor, and the faces of his kin were pale and scared around him.
It took him a moment to take it in, but there were the royal family, Thror kneeling, the rest of them standing, staring, looking as exhausted and ruined as he himself was feeling right now.
The Athenians poured out around him, but he fell to his knees, dropping the cold stone heart in the blood before him, and he stared at the old King, at the strange flicker of hope-fear-pain in his eyes, and offered the closes thing to a smile that he could.
“He is dead,” he said again, and then Thorin was rushing towards him, falling to his knees in front of Bilbo’s side, pulling him into an embrace so warm that Bilbo felt as if he had been very suddenly brought back to life again.
Bilbo had not had a chance to see the official throne room before, but now he was here, standing before a great stone throne flanked with painted griffins, bathed and clean but somehow still feeling wrong, though he was unsure now what was really the matter – whether there was anything specific left for him to feel at all.
And sat on that throne, defeated but smiling, sat King Thror.
He asked them for a forgiveness that he said they could never give; he lauded Bilbo as a hero. The guards had been sent into the labyrinth, following the thread that Bilbo had let drop behind him again, and they had found that chamber, the piles of gold, and they had gathered the bones of all those who had been lost, the bones which already they were digging graves for along the clifftops, where they might look out across the sea, perhaps to the lands from which they had once come.
They had found too the smoking bones and scraps of flesh that was all that was left of the great and mighty Smaug, scales scattered around his remains, as if he had simply fallen apart once the light of him had died away, and at Bilbo’s insistence they had brought them out into the light too. They were not to be buried: somehow Bilbo was sure that the laws that governed the spirits of men did not apply to creatures such as him, and so they had been burned, on a great funeral pyre, the smoke blackening the sky above them.
He thought that Smaug would have appreciated the fire, the chance to once more be free.
All that was left of him was one small scale that was now tucked into Bilbo’s pocket, the sheen of it turning red-copper-gold as you turned it in the light. It was beautiful, and it was terrible, and there was a part of him that wanted to throw it from the cliff tops to be lost forever in the sea, but he kept it anyway. He did not think that it would do any good to forget all that had happened here.
Thror asked him what he could do to make up for all that had happened to them, and Bilbo had just shaken his head.
“It was not my children who were lost,” he reminded Thror. “Nor do I have the authority to answer on their behalf. But I speak for my mother, Queen Belladonna of Athens, when I ask for peace between us, not the anger of retribution: we have never been a war-like people, have only every wanted harmony and happiness.
“We,” he told the King, finally smiling a little, “value good cheer and food above all else, really. And what I would really like to do right now is to go home, back to where I belong, and give my mother good news after so many decades of ill.”
Thror had nodded at that.
“Then my last order,” he said, ignoring the way that his family suddenly looked between each other in surprise. “My last order as King, will be to send my oldest grandson back with you to Athens, if you would be willing to have him. I think it is time that Crete send a token of their good will, and if he should chose to remain in Athens, or to travel with the agreement of the Queen, then I would wish him well.”
He turned to Thorin then, to his oldest Grandson, to the first of his kin to step forward and accept his apology.
“You will live with the royal family, as so many Princes have done before, and they will teach you these ways of peace. You will harbour the bonds of friendship between our island and their city, as I should once have done.” He smiled, and there was some sudden levity in his gaze, some hint of laughter. “And I think that you would not be particularly unwilling to go, but know that if you really would not wish to leave, then I will not force you.”
Thorin’s eyes glanced, quickly, at Bilbo, and he shook his head.
“I would be proud to go,” he answered, and Thror smiled.
“I suspected as much,” he said, and Bilbo found that the tips of his ears were growing red, that there was a kernel of excitement sparking in his chest where moments before it had only been filled with a circumspect dread, and a sorrow that he had not understood.
He had thought, once, that he might never have the opportunity to get to know Thorin better, that their chance to see what it was that lay between them would never have been, but it seemed that now, thanks to a cold stone and a bundle of twine, that they might be able to, after all. Bilbo could go home, and Thorin could leave, and even now Bilbo was thinking of that sea journey, of the chance to talk to Thorin, to tell him all the stories that he had ever heard; all the years afterwards too, to show him everything that he had ever loved.
Thorin stepped away from the dais where the rest of the royal line were standing, taking a step closer to Bilbo as he seemed to steel some resolve inside himself, and then he came even closer, and took Bilbo’s hand, lifting it to his mouth and pressing a kiss against the back of it, the scratch of his dark beard gentle against Bilbo’s skin.
“I have never met,” he said quietly, so that only Bilbo could hear him, something of a promise in his tone. “Someone so loyal to his kin, so honourable in keeping their word, so willing to accept fate as you.”
Bilbo’s ears were definitely turning red now, but he found that he could not look away from Thorin’s gaze, so sincere, so full of anticipation and joy and freedom, a freedom that this bitter experience had earned not just for Thorin but for all of his family, too.
“And I have never known anyone so brave, either. If you would have me, I would return with you, to your house and your books and your city, to the olive tree growing outside your window, and watch it grow a little taller.”
Bilbo smiled a little: he couldn’t remember at what point in that evening sat in the courtyard he had told Thorin about that tree, which was strange, because he had never told anyone about it before, and he thought that the memory might have stuck a little firmer in his mind. And though there was a sadness in his chest still he pulled Thorin’s hand back to his own mouth, to kiss it as gently as Thorin had just kissed his own.
“You would be most welcome, Prince of Crete,” he told Thorin, “and I’m glad that the first of your adventures would be to my city. To my home.”
They might have stood that way for quite some time, smiling at each other, but Thror cleared his throat, and they glanced away from each other, from that sweet and unexpected intimacy that had grown so quickly between them, back to the King.
“And with that,” Thror said, his voice quieter now, “I would give up my crown, and my throne.”
He took that great crown of silver from his brow, and turned to Thrain, resting it instead of his hair, still more dark than grey, with a smile that for the first time in so many years seemed truly happy, and without hurt.
“I wish you many years of rule, and peace, and prosperity,” he said, more to his son than to the rest of the room, and then his eyes turned to each of his kin, one by one. “And know that I love you. Hail the King!”
They echoed his words, and if Thrain’s eyes seemed a little misty then none of them were willing to comment.
“What are you doing?” Frerin asked, stepping forwards, frowning, and Thror smiled at him.
“I am leaving,” he said, waving a hand when Thrain began to protest. “I do not deserve to stay. So instead I will leave. My greatest mistake is dead, and now I will live out the rest of my days by the sea, knowing that you are all well and content, and try to find a peace inside myself that I have never had a chance to know before.”
He glanced around at them all.
“But before that I shall take a ship, and go to each city that my armies ever conquered, and return to each King or Queen the crown that I once took from them. It is not enough, but, well. It is the least that I can do, I think.”
Frerin nodded, and then his face twisted, and he threw his arms around his Grandfather.
“And I will come with you,” Frerin promised. “Perhaps in time, we can undo enough of what our family has done that we might be forgiven.”
Bilbo looked away as the family began to weep, quietly and happily, the curse of their line finally lifted.
He watched Thorin say goodbye to his family on the docks in the grey light before dawn some days later, and wondered to himself if one day he might be able to come back to this strange and beautiful place again, to see the pink sands of the shore through something of a veil of grief. One day, perhaps he might, though he was already sure that the fear that he had fought might still grip him too tightly to contemplate it for some years to come.
He was surprised when they turned to him next, and embraced him as firmly as they had done Thorin, though he had only really known them a scant couple of days. It was Frerin who whispered a quiet goodbye in his ear, and Dis a genuine thanks, and Fili who asked him to look after his Uncle Thorin. He replied to each of them in turn, embraced them in return, and finally turned to bow low first at Thror, and then finally at Thrain, who fought through the grief of saying goodbye to his son enough to smile in return.
Thorin glanced across at him as he straightened up again, and smiled, and Bilbo wondered if he was as afraid at the thought of leaving his family as Bilbo suspected him to be.
But wasn’t that the true meaning of bravery, after all? Not to stop all fear, but to press on, despite it.
Before he left, Thror pressed one last gift to his hand, and Bilbo smiled to see the crown that had once belonged to his mother, as she had described it to him many times, sheaves of wheat and stars cut into the polished metal.
The ship cast off before the sun had risen, and Bilbo left Thorin to watch the only island he had ever know grow smaller, and then finally disappear over the horizon. It was only then that Thorin came to him, at the other end of the ship, the wind in the sails and a fine spray on their skin that didn’t feel anywhere near as bitter as it had done the last time that Bilbo had undertaken the journey from one place to the other.
“Will you miss Crete?” he asked Thorin, who shrugged a little, and caught Bilbo’s hand in his.
“I will,” he said, but there was something of a smile about his stoic mouth, some reserved and quiet joy that Bilbo wondered about, wondered if he could find more about, if they could somehow together make it all the brighter. “But I am ready now, to see more of what the world has to offer to me.”
Bilbo nodded, and Thorin’s arm pressed against his.
“As long,” he said, some humour in his voice. “As you don’t have any plans to abandon me on an island along the way.”
Bilbo laughed at that, a bright and sudden sound against the roar of the sea, the slap of the waves against the side of the ship.
“No plans,” he promised, as Thorin’s thumb stroked along the back of his hand. No plans like that, of any sort, no plans other than to take Thorin back to Athens, to show him his sprawling city, the cries of the wheeling birds overhead, the flowers that grew along the shoreline. No plans but to take him home.
He squeezed Thorin’s hand, quite gently, as if to reassure him of that fact.
The sun began to rise slowly on the horizon, bloody and engorged and beautiful despite it, and Bilbo reached with his other hand, to find that scale again, to stroke it gently.
What would he show Thorin first he Athens, he thought to himself. The great temple on the hill, the paintings in the palace, the bustle of the marketplace? He wasn’t sure, and in that moment he realised that it didn’t really matter, not any more. They were going home, to a city now safe, to give his mother the news that she need no longer carry the burden of the reaping, and that was all that he had ever wanted.
They stood their together, in the light of the rising sun, and after a moment he pressed a cautious kiss to the corner of Thorin’s mouth, light and quick but enough to make Thorin glance at him in surprise, before his face softened, and he smiled in return.
It was a beginning, Bilbo thought to himself, as much as it was an ending.
Weeks later, they would reach Athens together, and many years after that they would leave again, bound for more adventures, to see more of the world, together. But that, perhaps, is another story.