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T.A 2942
March 21st
Dwalin's fingers caught the back of Thorin's head mere seconds before it smashed into the floor. His knees hit the ground with twin cracks of iron on stone and his axes clattered alongside where Thorin had dropped Orcrist. The room stank like where sewers met the sea. He slammed his other hand onto the ground for balance. Sand and salt crunched over his skin.
“Thorin!”
The cry tore from his chest like a blade gutting an orc. He barely noticed Bilbo and Balin both dropping down opposite him, four more hands reaching for Thorin.
Dwalin pushed them away with a snarl. He pulled Thorin to sit up, cradling his lolling head. Breath washed over his wrist and relief slammed into him like an avalanche.
“He's alive,” he gasped.
“What happened? What happened?” cried Bilbo, his expression distraught. Balin too was white, sitting back on his knees as he stared down at the sand, salt, and crystal on the floor.
“That thing,” hissed Dwalin. “That monster. It did something, it--...”
Thorin's skin suddenly burned under his hands like he’d grabbed coals from a fire. He jerked, but didn't let go even as pain seared his palm. Before he could even form thought the horrendous heat mellowed into a prickling warmth.
Thorin began to glow.
Each strand of hair lit up from the root down to the tip, the mithril streaks in the dark locks shining brighter than the sun. His skin pulsed with radiance reflecting off the shards of crystal scattered around him. His beard, his eyelashes, the hair on his knuckles flaring with light.
It stung Dwalin's eyes and he blinked through the smarting tears, catching sight of the shock and awe on his brother's face and mirrored in Bilbo's. Both of them were caught in the light. Like Thorin they too seemed to glow, an gleaming aftereffect around their edges.
Dwalin's breath had frozen in his lungs. The aura surrounding them was like a shadow cast of light, something illuminated that he had no right to see.
Then the light began to fade. Dwalin dropped his gaze back down to Thorin, holding him a little closer.
Thorin stirred. His eyes opened as the last of the light seemed to sink back into him. The blue of his irises was striking, clearer and crisper than Dwalin had ever seen before. For a second he seemed ethereal and more like Durin himself than the Thorin he knew and loved.
“What happened...?” Thorin croaked, turning his head to cough up a mouthful of sand. He groaned and retched, wiping a trembling hand across his mouth.
“I don't rightly know, laddie,” Balin said darkly, handing over a flask of water.
“Thorin, are you hurt?” Dwalin asked urgently. Thorin shook his head and grasped Dwalin's forearm to keep his balance. Dwalin kept a hand on Thorin's back while he drank. Bilbo was silent, bringing his fingers out of his waistcoat pocket to push through the crystal shards while Balin started to pace the room with his head bowed.
“Where did the creature go?” Thorin asked when he'd swallowed a few more mouthfuls of water.
“Right here.” Bilbo lifted his little hand, letting sand trickle from his palm. “It turned into this.”
“What was it...?” Thorin let go of Dwalin and reached forward to catch some of the sand falling from the hobbit's fingers. Dwalin watched Thorin turn Bilbo's wrist, plucking a sliver of crystal from his palm.
Something tugged at the back of his mind, like a miner pulling on the handle of a long-forgotten lever.
“Blast it if I know!” Bilbo exclaimed, suddenly grasping Thorin's hand between his own. “You killed it, I think, but there was an awful magic in the air! Rotten, and foul. Worse even than Smaug, and his stench was enough to turn my stomach a hundred times over. There was something different about that thing, something even older and more wretched...”
“Something pitiful,” breathed Thorin, looking into Bilbo's eyes.
Dwalin sat back on his heels, letting his hand drop from Thorin's back.
He had known his best friend from his earliest memories. He knew Thorin as well as he knew Balin. As well as he knew himself.
Bilbo reached up, brushing sand and salt from Thorin's hair and shoulders, his knuckles brushing against Thorin's cheek.
Realisation thudded into Dwalin's gut like a stone dropped into a well from a great height.
Thorin pushed himself to kneel, placing one hand on Bilbo's knee for balance.
“I'm sorry for causing you more distress.”
“Nonsense. Hardly your fault, hardly your fault at all. That nasty thing is the one to blame, not you-- oh!” Bilbo hissed pulling his fingers back from Thorin's chest. A single red bead of blood welled up on his fingertip. “Damn and blast. Those shards are sharp.”
Thorin caught Bilbo's hand. With a frown of concentration he pulled Bilbo's handkerchief out from where it was half-stuffed in the hobbit's waistcoat pocket and pressed it over the nicked skin.
“Be careful. You have been injured enough on my behalf.”
Oh, Mahal.
Dwalin stood. He felt like laughing. Like grabbing Bilbo and dragging him to some forgotten corner of Erebor and telling him to leave, now, before Thorin realised his feelings for the hobbit ran deeper than friendship. Long, long before Bilbo would have to break Thorin’s fragile heart. He wanted to tell Bilbo to go back to the Shire and his own kind, and he wanted to beg the halfling to stay by Thorin's side for as many years as Mahal gave them. Emotion flooded him, anger and disbelief and jubilation all rolled into a gritty boulder which crashed and smashed inside of him.
More than anything, Thorin deserved happiness. Bilbo did, too, he supposed. But dwarves didn't love outside their own kind. It wasn't done. He'd never heard of any dwarf whose forge had lit for anyone but another dwarf. They wouldn't be accepted.
Except... they already had been. They were getting married in a fortnight.
Dwalin sat down again, so heavily both Bilbo and Thorin looked over with open surprise and concern on their faces.
… Oh, Mahal. Did Bilbo also…?
Balin's voice tore him from his reeling thoughts.
“That was no creature of men, nor any elf I've ever seen. I have no feel for magic beyond what lays in the rock and stone, but... there's no mistaking evil.”
“... A servant of the Enemy,” Thorin whispered.
It was like ice-cold water over his head. Dwalin sucked in a shaky breath, pushing himself to stand as Thorin stumbled to his feet.
“Sent to reclaim --.”
Dwalin reached out at the same time Bilbo did, steadying Thorin as he staggered.
“Perhaps,” Bilbo said softly. “But you won, and the Enemy has been chased away by Saruman himself, or so Gandalf and the Lady Galadriel have said, and I'm wont to believe them in matters like this.”
Thorin suddenly gasped, fingers tightening on both Dwalin's arm and Bilbo's. But when he raised his head, his gaze was trained again on the hobbit's face.
“The Lady Galadriel said to me, 'He will come to you. You must turn him away.' She said that light would guide me.”
Bilbo beamed.
“Well! There you have it! She must've seen this and left some of her magic in you. You lit up like one of your bulbs, you and the thing both, and it began to smoke like a bonfire. It made the most terrible smell of burning rotten fish, and then it exploded! As if it were some kind of firework into, well, into all that,” he finished, gesturing at the sand and crystal.
A curious prickle of relief sank down in Dwalin's chest. He didn't trust any elf, not one bit, but out of them all, the one who'd spoken inside his head seemed the most trustworthy - if the most strange. She'd spoken Khuzdul, after all, low and ancient. And she'd told him his actions alone had saved Fíli's life beneath the tower.
If she'd said this would happen, then Bilbo was right and Thorin had defeated it.
“... Then... if that is so...” Thorin said, slowly standing straighter than Dwalin had seen him stand in months. “Then this shadow should have been lifted from me.”
“Precisely. You look better already. And I have just the thing to chase those last cobwebs away! A hot bath, a good meal, and a walk around the mountain. I've even got a little more Old Toby while I'll share with you, though I shan't tell you where it came from!”
Thorin smiled.
“I will gladly take your offer. Your advice has often proved worthy of following.”
“Always, I think you'll find,” laughed Bilbo, rocking back on his heels.
Dwalin took a step back. There was a sting he couldn't deny, but Thorin's hands were tender as he placed one on Bilbo's shoulder for a moment, and the peace and calm draping over his shoulders like a cape was a welcome sight. He wouldn't let pebble-like jealousy cloud his mind.
Balin heaved a sigh.
“I will clean up this mess. I think it's best to keep the... remains. Perhaps to show Gandalf, should he return in a timely manner. Nevertheless, better not to throw it out carelessly. Beyond the company and the Lady Dís, of course, I think it wisest if we don't speak of this again.”
“I agree,” Thorin said as Dwalin and Bilbo both nodded. “I shall take my leave. A hot bath sounds more appealing by the moment, and I don’t wish to linger here.”
Balin smiled, patting Thorin's arm and watching with shrewd eyes as Thorin and Bilbo left the room side-by-side. The door closed and the tell-tale signs of guilt washed over Balin's features.
“I should have known it was not Thráin,” he said softly.
“Aye,” murmured Dwalin. “We both should have. If Thorin had fallen to him...”
“... It would have been our fault, and our fault alone.”
Dwalin swallowed hard, pain searing his throat and lungs.
“Off you go, brother,” Balin sighed after a few seconds of choking silence. “I need some time to think, and I'm sure you'll find something to do.”
Dwalin nodded, exhaling roughly. He had too much to think about, his head stuffed full with it.
He needed to do something with his hands, and there was rubble to be moved and things to be rebuilt. He would lose himself in stone and labour until his thoughts made sense again and the burning guilt had faded enough to speak.