Chapter Text
The winter wind burned in Bilbo’s lungs as he dashed down the steps to where he had watched Thorin fall, heart pumping what felt like acid into his veins and stomach and terror twisting in his gut as he fell down beside Thorin. At the sight of him, Thorin’s pale face lit up and he reached for Bilbo’s hand, clutching at it as if he could comfort Bilbo when he was the one who must be in terrible pain. Thorin was smiling, smiling just to have Bilbo there and that Thorin was… Thorin was…
Dying.
Dying by inches, his lifeblood pumping out onto the snow and Bilbo’s hands fluttered about uselessly, seeking some purchase, putting pressure to the wound as if he could hold Thorin to life by force of willpower alone.
“No, no, no. Thorin, don’t you dare!” Bilbo said, voice breaking and he clutched harder, jolting Thorin’s eyes open again as the dwarf faded beneath his hands. “Thorin, please…”
A shadow fell across them. Not even the giant eagles could have torn Bilbo away in that moment, but at the sudden darkness he jolted, looking up to see a shape blotting out the pale winter sun.
“Little bunny,” Beorn rumbled. “Give the king to me.”
“Beorn?” Bilbo blinked. He could feel Thorin’s hand going slack and he squeezed it, gripped it as if his life depended on it, saw Thorin’s eyes still tracking the movement, the blood soaked eyebrows rising a little at the sight. Still there, thank goodness, he was still with them. Bilbo shuddered as if coming awake. “Beorn! Quickly, please, it’s Thorin. He needs help. Medicine. Gandalf. He needs—”
“He will die,” Beorn said, arresting Bilbo’s tirade. Bilbo’s mouth opened, staring incredulous into those inhuman golden eyes, denial rising to his lips. “… Unless I take him to the others now.”
“Take him?” Bilbo said, stupefied. Then shook his head again. “No, you have to bring them here, Beorn, he can’t possibly move!”
“Another minute and he will be gone anyway,” Beorn said simply. “The stench of death is upon him. There is no time.”
Bilbo could not squeak, could not protest at all, before Beorn shifted before his eyes, a huge bear taking the place of a huge man that once would have terrified him if he were not faced with the far more greater terror: Thorin lying still upon the ground, never to move or speak or breathe again. Beorn scooped Thorin from Bilbo’s numb hands, and between one heartbeat and the next he was gone, tearing down the hill, back towards the battlefield. Bilbo saw only a glimpse of Thorin’s pale face in the crook of those massive arms and surely, surely he was already dead from such a jostling.
But Bilbo was already running, screaming for help, putting on his ring to dodge the last of orcs being mopped from the field, as the bear ran further from sight.
Night fell. Exhausted Men, Dwarves, and Elves crouched in groups along the field, pyres already burning to dispose of the orcs, and lay the Men to rest. Dwarves and Elves did not take to such funeral practices and here and there those long-lived people moved about the field, with all solemnity carrying their dead to place in neat rows, to await a more proper send-off.
And Bilbo still did not yet know if one more grave would be dug that day.
“Please, someone, where is Thorin? I have to find Thorin!” Bilbo pleaded. He had seen not a glimpse of the Company. He had been too busy running about the battlefield, searching for any word of where Beorn had gone.
“Bilbo Baggins!” a familiar, aged voice called and Bilbo jerked up, spinning on his feet to see Gandalf emerge from the smoke that yet lingered on the battlefield.
“Gandalf!” Bilbo called, relief swelling in him, only to be followed by fear.
“And not a moment too soon. Come, you are called for,” Gandalf said, and just like that he was sweeping Bilbo up with the long arm of his robe, towards one of the field tents Bilbo must have passed a hundred times.
“Wait, no, where are you taking me, Gandalf? Thorin—” Bilbo began.
“Is in here. He has been asking for you.”
At this, Bilbo froze at the flap of the tent, heels digging in to the cold earth. Then he was moving again, propelled as if by fear alone inside, into a room filled with the stench of blood and antiseptic note of medicine. And there: Thorin, stripped to the waist and wrapped in bandages across his head and chest. His face was horribly sunken and sallow, pale as the edge of death, but at the sight of Bilbo he smiled and it was as if the sun had risen within that dark, cramped space.
“Bilbo,” Thorin breathed, reaching with one bandaged hand, fingers barely lifting from the heavy fur blankets before they fell back.
Bilbo was at his side like a shot, clutching that hand, holding it to his chest and only loosening his grip a little when Thorin winced. Bilbo’s fingers wrapped warm around Thorin’s cold ones, and he shot a look back to Gandalf, pleading with his eyes to know rather than have to ask if he had only been given a brief respite, a last chance to say goodbye.
Gandalf shook his head. “Another minute, and we may well have lost him. But thanks to young Kili’s paramour, not to mention Oin and some of my own modest skill, Thorin Oakenshield has been recalled from the very doors of the halls of his fathers.”
Bilbo’s throat closed, and he whipped back to Thorin, too strangled by the threatening sob to speak and he acted by instinct, pressing Thorin’s knuckles to his lips, holding them there as he held Thorin’s arm when he would have liked nothing better than to hold all of him close until there could be no doubt that Thorin would pull through.
When he opened his eyes again, it was to see Thorin staring. It was a soft, wondering gaze, filled with a painful edge that had nothing to do with his injuries but of something softer and far more perilous. Hope. He opened his fingers from where they were clutched now to Bilbo’s cheek, tracing the tear-tracks, running the back of his thumb to the corner of Bilbo’s lips.
“Bilbo…” Thorin said again, this time quieter, breathless, a question and entreaty all at once. He tilted his face up, trying to rise but at a sharp spasm of pain started, so his words were choked as they emerged. “Thank you.”
Bilbo blinked, shaking his head to himself, a half-smile of surprise teasing his lips. “What? Whatever for? I should be thanking you for holding on. You quite scared the life out of me up there.”
Thorin shook his head, the gesture minute and clearly full of pain. His voice was a rasp. “For…coming back. Every time. It is more than I ever expected, or deserved.”
“Where else would I be?” Bilbo said, brow furrowing. His heart was still hammering in his breast, a searing ache that only just began to slow at the thought between one breath and the next that Thorin might make it, despite the terrible pain on his face and the many wounds that scoured his body.
“Home,” Thorin whispered. “You are free… of the contract, now. There is nothing to hold you here. I thought—”
Bilbo laughed, a hollow sound. “Home? What good is that to me now? You know I had entirely forgotten about it.” At Thorin’s slight questioning frown he shrugged. “Well, not entirely, but I’m afraid I was a little more preoccupied with you getting better. How dare you, Thorin Oakenshield? Taking on Azog alone like that, couldn’t you have waited even a moment for one of us to help you?”
“Scolding so soon, burglar?” Thorin smiled, his voice so faint it was barely within hearing, but there was a touch of humor to it that made Bilbo’s heart slow it’s frantic pace and begin to dare hope. “If you have the strength for that, perhaps my fears were misplaced.”
“If I have the strength?” Bilbo exclaimed. “You’re the one who is going to be confined to his sickbed for the next year if I have anything to say about it. And I’ll keep you there myself if I have to, if only to stop you from throwing yourself again into such foolish, suicidal danger!”
“I think… it will be quite some time before that will be possible,” Thorin said with the suggestion of a wry smile. “And I would not wish to keep you.”
“Keep me?” Bilbo scoffed. “You’ll be very lucky to get rid of me. I don’t intend to go anywhere, Thorin, not until you’re better. If you think—” and here his composure failed him, as did his outrage. He remembered Thorin bleeding out on the ice before him, what could so easily have been, and his chin quivered, voice emerging as a broken whisper, “If you think after all this that I will ever leave your side again, well, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“Good.”
“And not even a royal decree will be enough to send me off, I’ll have you know, I’m not one of your subjects and— pardon?”
“Good,” Thorin said, voice a little stronger. “I think, after this, I will have enough subjects. But to have such an excellent burglar by my side is more than any son of Durin deserves.”
“Well now you’re just stealing my words,” Bilbo said, offering a watery smile of his own, before adding with a bit of affected outrage. “So who is the burglar now?”
It was strange: how easy this was, how lovely Thorin’s smile’s now at his words, how utterly precarious it had seemed only a few hours ago to ever have this. With the sickness, and the stone, and the battle, and the blood staining Thorin’s lips… yet here they were, chatting like the oldest of friends. Like more than that, like…
“May I kiss you?” Bilbo blurted, and the blush was crawling up his throat immediately, but Thorin did not start, did not recoil at the suggestion, only stared at him wide-eyed. It was such a wild thought, foolish and Tookish, that Bilbo could scarce believe it himself. It was quite a leap to go from barely holding hands to wishing to kiss Thorin, but he thought he had read something in that painful look of hope in Thorin’s eyes when he had kissed his hand. The Baggins side might have said he was imagining it, and yet he could see it so clearly as if the words were written in the air, as even the tiniest flicker of emotion in Thorin’s eyes was a book for him to read if he could bring to bear courage enough to look.
That part of him, that desperate Tookish part that remembered how Bungo and Belladonna had looked at one another, and thought to either have that for himself or nothing at all. That part had thought that he might die himself if he did not have the chance, at the thought that he might never have had it.
But another thought chased after it like the inevitable flow of the tide, in the face of Thorin’s silence it seemed impossible. Oh goodness, had he really said that? Thorin was barely back from death’s door and he was already taking liberties? What had even possessed him to ask? The adrenaline of the battle, the terror that still felt like smoke in his throat, choking him the breath from him? His hand spasmed around Thorin’s and he would have jerked away, if not for those terrible injuries, if not for the fact he would have to be ever so careful with Thorin until he was truly recovered, and he had gone and mucked it all up, and…
Thorin’s finger brushed his jawline, drawing Bilbo’s gaze down and his mind back to the present. And only then did he see that Thorin had taken his other hand, as weak as a day-old kitten, as weak as he had been on the battlefield when he patted Bilbo’s hand.
“Yes,” Thorin said simply, and winced as he began to prop himself up, his hand cupping Bilbo’s cheek, and Bilbo was cupping his in return, and there was a fire spreading over his cheeks that came straight from his heart and zinged in his veins and…
“Wait, what are you doing? You can’t be moving like that! Lie still,” he exclaimed, leaning closer to fuss over Thorin’s pillows, plumping them up behind his head. When Bilbo finished, their faces were only inches apart, as if drawn together by some inevitable force and Bilbo gulped to see those blue eyes so near, and looking at him with something that could be love, and really, what else could he do? He had asked first after all.
Bilbo leaned in, the kiss so gentle at first that it left no greater impact than the stirring of their breath. His fingers tracing through Thorin’s beard, cupping his jawline, holding him there, just knowing he was still there to hold. He was embarrassed to say there were tears pricking his eyes, and Bilbo blinked against them, facing screwing up, crumpling to see such a look of relief and peace on Thorin’s face, and wonder so soft and bright it left a physical ache in his chest.
It was an ache like hearing the horn blast and knowing Thorin was well again, like seeing his face on the Ravenhill and knowing all was forgiven by some silent exchange that somehow, impossibly, existed between them. It was holding out an acorn for Thorin to see in the depths of his sickness and watching the glow of the remarkable person he knew return, like the parting of clouds on a dark night to reveal a single star shining still beneath, never truly gone. It was somehow arriving on the other side of it all, the terrible battle, and sickness, and betrayal of all the wrong things for all the right reasons. It was Thorin still in his arms, injured but alive and so nearly not.
It was finally understanding himself, and that moment of confusion when Thorin had told Bilbo that he should go home, and he had not understood.
Because he was already there.
This was home.
They broke apart, and Bilbo hiccoughed the sob that had been building in his chest, wiping his eyes with every sign of embarrassment, his vision still wavering when he looked back at Thorin. A million words rose to his lips, apologies and explanations and excuses, but Thorin was looking up at him, smile bright beneath the paleness of his injuries and gaze wondering, tipping his head up again to recapture Bilbo’s lips. And suddenly Bilbo did not mind at all that the kiss must have tasted of his own tears, because they were here on the other side and for all the horror that had come before it, he had never felt so alive.