Chapter Text
Willow looked at her drinking companion and smiled. “Can you make me forget?” She lowered her voice into a soft purr. “For one night, can you make me feel wanted?”
The dwarf’s blue eyes turned almost black as she leaned closer to him. She didn’t know how it started. Perhaps it was because he was alone and didn’t seem to want to carry a conversation. So, she simply sat down next to him and told him everything as she drank.
She told him how her husband of two years had divorced her because she couldn’t get with his child. She told him how Otho was marrying her cousin, Lobelia, who was already growing with his child. She told him how the nursery she had been raised in and had hoped to put her own faunt in was now going to cradle another woman’s babe. She told him how the only home she had ever known was lost to her. She told him how she could never get it back because she had no children to fill Bag End with.
Willow touched the dwarf’s knee and slid her hand up his thigh. His breath hitched in his throat as his hand wrapped around hers. “I have a room,” she whispered. “Won’t you come with me, Master Dwarf? You look as though you have felt sorrow as well.” She leaned in and pressed her lips to the shell of his ear. “Shall we go be broken together?”
His grip on her hand tightened. Willow led him up to her room and to her bed. The dwarf took her body and worshiped it. He whispered what seemed like prayers in a language she didn’t understand. She clawed at his back as his breath burned his words against her skin. His beard scratched and she cried out in pleasure against him. She felt like a forge as he took her apart and brought her back together over and over and over. He found his pleasure and she gave it to him as well.
For a brief moment, Willow could imagine what it would be like to be loved.
After they were both sated and boneless, she rested her head against his shoulder, trying to find breath. Her hand played with the dark hair on his chest as he traced designs across her back. He began to whisper only a little about himself. He was from Ered Luin, formerly of Erebor. It was the anniversary of his younger brother’s death. He just wanted to be away from other dwarves. He just wanted to forget who he was for only a little while.
“And did you forget?” Willow shifted and nuzzled his jaw, a slight moan came at the friction. “Was I able to make you forget?”
A growl escaped his lips as he forced her on her back and claimed her mouth. Willow wrapped herself around him as he took her again. He was rougher that time. He pounded her into the mattress and she cried out for him, begging him to fill her and to let her fill him. He collapsed on top of her and Willow held him in her arms. His weight felt right against her, as though it was where he belonged. The dwarf shifted again and turned on his own back, holding her to his chest.
They both drifted off to sleep.
In the morning, the dwarf was gone.
Willow came down and asked the innkeeper where the dwarf who had shared her room had gone. He looked at her with a mix of pity and disgust.
“Said he had to get back to his wife and child.”
The hobbit felt sick. She thanked the man and then made her way back to the Shire.
Without stopping, she made her way to Asphodel Burrow, the place she would call home from that day onward. There were few things she had been allowed to keep after the divorce. Two of those items had been her father’s old chair and a quilt her mother had made for her when she was a tween (“For your children someday,” she had said). The hobbit climbed into the chair and wrapped herself into the quilt and began to sob.
What little there was left of her, shattered completely.
***
It was one thing for Gandalf to bring people into her smial, it was a completely other matter for him to bring dwarves to her home in the middle of the night. She was barely able to keep them from screaming their songs and breaking what little cutlery and dishes she had. Things couldn’t get any worse and then Gandalf said there was one more.
Willow was lulled into a stupid sense of security when the eleven dwarves at least tidied up after themselves. Then a knock came to the door and the old man became rather serious.
“He is here.”
Willow followed Gandalf to the front door, as did the dwarfs. Whoever this ‘he’ was, he must have been rather important. Gandalf opened the door and Willow felt her heart stop.
“Willow, may I present Thorin—”
“You!” Willow shrieked and the dwarf at her door froze, his blue eyes widening. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t. Instead, she grabbed two daggers, one in each hand, that the blond dwarf had set down on her chest upon his arrival. She threw them at the dwarf at her door. Willow picked up more things and threw them at him with every exclamation. “You vile! Horrible! Wretched! Do you have any idea what you did?!”
To his credit, he dodged most of what she threw at him, only taking the impact when hit with something sheathed (which was most of the weapons). “Mistress Hobbit!” He tried.
“No!” She was throwing books now, tears bubbling in her eyes. “You leave without a word and then I have to find out the truth from someone else! You loathsome! Horrible! Stonehearted little—”
“Mum? What’s going on?”
Willow froze, book lifted and behind her head. She dropped it and everyone turned back and saw the young person standing there, his eyes wide in horror. His eyes were her soft brown. His short hair was black, but curled like hers. He had a scruff of a beard, but that was all he was able to grow. His brown eyes went from his mother to the dwarf, Thorin, she had been chucking things at. His gaze turned stormy when he saw Willow’s tears.
“What did they do?” He scowled, rushing over to his mother. He cupped her face in his hands. “Are you okay, Mum?”
“I’m fine, Kílian,” she whispered.
Kílian glared at the wizard. “You might be able to bully my mother, Gandalf. But you can’t bully me into putting up with your schemes. We don’t deal with dwarves in this smial.” He looked at Thorin with a burning hatred before turning back to the wizard. “You’re lucky my cousins aren’t here. The Tooks won’t be happy that you brought him of all dwarves here.”
“Kíli, please.” Willows lip trembled. She hated looking so weak in front of her son. “We… we shouldn’t be impolite.” She straightened out and wiped her tears away. “Baggins are proper even when no one else is.”
The dwobbit looked down at his mother and sighed. “Fine.”
Willow glanced at the father of her faunt and felt her stomach churn. “Come in, Master Dwarf,” she said, lifting her chin. “Your company left some food for you.”
She turned to the kitchen to make some soothing tea. Her son, Kíli, followed closely behind her, glaring at every dwarf as they parted to let the two through.