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The first time Bilbo heard the laughter, he imagined that it was a child playing in the street. The sound was happy and full of life, and it told him he had chosen the right place. He needed life and happiness around him, and selling his parents' property to buy this house had been the best decision of his life. It would help him not dwell on the past.
That laughter was a good sign.
The child, whoever he was, laughed often in the following days, all day long. He did not seem to ever go to school, might have been too young for it. He laughed at night sometimes too, loud and clear, and in the silent darkness, Bilbo could hear another child with him. They seemed so close sometimes, Bilbo swore he almost heard them running in the room next to his, the one he intended to use as his office as soon as he would find the strength to work again.
After a month, Bilbo realised that none of the neighbouring houses were close enough to hear to well a child's laugh. He also learned that neither of his neighbours even had young children. Mister River only had two grown brother who came sometimes on Sundays, and miss Beorn was unmarried.
“I am still sure I heard something,” he told her.
“The house was abandoned for many years,” miss Beorn replied. “Some children might think it still is, and come in sometime, hoping to see a ghost. I'm sure if you say anything, they'll get scared and will stop coming.”
Bilbo agreed, and the subject changed to the silly things they had done as children.
When he heard the laugh again, Bilbo did not say anything, and instead listened carefully. It was indeed coming from his office. A room with a locked window, and a locked door for which he had the only key. A room he had not opened once since he had moved in and put his dictionaries and files in there.
At three, one night, the laughter rang through the house. Bilbo stood up, grabbed the key to his office and opened it, only to see a dark haired boy standing in the middle of the room. The child seemed just as surprised as Bilbo. As soon as he had recovered from the shock, the boy cried and ran out of the room in terror. Bilbo locked the door again, and went back to bed.
It wasn't until morning that he realised that to get out, the child had ran right through him.
He wasn't sure how he went from that realisation to unlocking the door and leaving it that way.
It just felt like the right thing to do.
After the door was unlocked, Bilbo saw the child more often. He wasn't very old... five, maybe six years old. He was constantly laughing and running and playing. The first few times Bilbo met him, the boy froze where he was and disappeared instantly, but after a few days, he grew more confident and simply ignored him, making Bilbo feel as if he were the ghost.
Bilbo had been living there for two month when he first saw the other child. A boy again, blond, and barely older than the first one... but more serious looking, and with an air that said well enough that he probably understood more than the other that they no longer lived. When he laughed it was more quietly, and whenever he noticed Bilbo, he stared at him until the man was forced to look away.
“I only moved in here three years ago,” miss Beorn said. “The house has been empty all the time I was here, until you moved in. But you might want to ask River... the house was his parents', he's always been here. If anyone can tell you about the previous owner, it will be him.”
Bilbo thanked her sincerely. Two days later, he went to see mister River. Dori, as he happened to be called. They had never really talked before. Dori had never seemed interested in Bilbo's company, glaring at him from his window and never saying hello. Bilbo had never understood why.
He did then, when mister River told him about the man who used to live there.
It was night again, and the children were laughing particularly loud. Bilbo decided that it was a good sign, that they probably were in a good mood. So he sat up on his bed, looked around, and made himself smile.
“I'm not afraid of ghosts at all,” he almost shouted, to be sure they heard wherever they were. “I know you mean no harm to anyone.”
The laughters stopped, but Bilbo continued.
“I think you probably need help of some sort, and that's why you are still here. I don't know what I can do for you, but whatever help I can give, I will.”
There was silence then, and Bilbo felt foolish. After all that he had read, he had hoped... the children needed help, especially after what had happened to them, and they were so young, he had to...
“I do not think you can help us,” said a voice behind him, a voice that most certainly did not belong to a child. “But it is kind of you to offer.”
Bilbo took a deep breath before he turned toward the voice. There was a man there, taller than him with dark hair and piercing eyes, and Bilbo recognised him from Dori's photos.
“You are Thorin Oakenshield.”
“That I am. And you are Bilbo Baggins. I am told you own my house now.”
As he was about to admit that he did, Bilbo noticed two little forms hiding behind the man, two children he recognised as the ones who so often played in his office.
“And you must be Fili and Kili,” he whispered. “It is nice to meet you.”
Something was off about them though. They should not have been hiding behind Thorin, as if he would protect them. After what Dori had said...
“I know what you think,” Thorin claimed, frowning. “I saw you go to the neighbours and I know what that River boy must have told you. It is not true. I never would have done such a thing. I never hurt the children.”
The eldest boy (Fili, wasn't it? Bilbo thought it was Fili) looked up at his uncle and took his hand, as if to comfort him. The youngest only appeared to be confused, and Bilbo wondered once more of he knew he was dead. Considering what had happened, it would be for the best if he didn't.
“There was a bad man,” Fili suddenly said. “It was him. He was angry at uncle and he said he would punish us all, and then he made uncle watch. It's the bad man who did it.”
“A bad man?” Bilbo inquired.
Thorin's face closed, and he took both boys in his arms, holding them close.
“We do not talk about this,” he snarled. “There is nothing to say. You cannot help us. You cannot help us. No one can help us.”
Before Bilbo could protest, the three of them were gone.
The children weren't so shy after that. Bilbo still heard them laugh, still saw them run around, but now they sometimes stopped to say hello. It was mostly Kili who did so, bold little thing that he was, but the mere fact that Fili was visible more often was an improvement.
Thorin Oakenshield, however, remained hidden.
“He's angry,” Kili said when Bilbo asked about his uncle. “And he's sad. He's always angry and sad now. Before, he played with us. He was the Doctor and we was all travelling in the space and it was fun. Now, he's always sad. It's no fun.”
“The Doctor... Doctor Who? You watched that? Weren't you a little young for it? It must have been scary!”
Kili shook his head proudly, but Fili suddenly appeared at his side to nod quickly.
“It was so scary and there were monsters!” the blond boy cried. “So, so scary! There were daleks and they killed people for nothing, just because they were people!”
“You didn't like it then?”
“I like it a whole lot!” Fili claimed. “It was the bestest.”
Bilbo laughed, and confessed that he too had loved the show as a child.
Later that day, he checked online if there were reruns of the old episodes, and when the new ones were one. From them on, he made sure that the tv was always turned on at the right time, and sometimes he even watched with the boys. He had a feeling sometimes that Thorin was in the room too, but Bilbo never turned to check. If Thorin had wanted to be with them, he would have.
Bilbo was reading yet another book on ghost encounters in the middle of the afternoon when Thorin appeared next to his chair.
“I am very grateful for what you do for the boys,” he said, smiling a smile that shouldn't have made Bilbo so happy. “I wish I could thank you.”
“There's nothing to thank me for. They are good boys, good company... I only wish I could help more. It must not be nice for them to be trapped here, and...”
“I'm not the one keeping us here,” Thorin claimed. “I know you think I am... you must think I'm keeping them trapped here out of a desire for... revenge, or justice. I am not. It is their work.”
“Theirs?”
The tall man nodded, and smiled sadly.
“I think it is mostly Kili's work, to be fair. He understood, as he was dying, that I would be blamed for their deaths, and he could not bear it. Young children can have such a sense of justice sometimes. I think he wants the world to know what truly happened... but it cannot happen, and there we are now.”
“Who killed them then?” Bilbo asked, closing his book. “Who killed all of you? They will not talk about it. Kili does not seem to entirely remember, and Fili disappears every time I try to ask. Who did this to you?”
Thorin gave him a strange look, almost a glare, and Bilbo feared he would leave again. But instead, the man started telling a story.
It was the story of a policeman, one who, almost by chance, arrested the leader of some great underground network over a petty crime.
“He was terribly drunk,” Thorin explained, “and he had decided to break all the shop's window in a street. I do not know why he was alone, but he was, and I arrested him. It was pure luck. Bad luck, as it turned out.”
Thorin had, by his own admission, not been kind to the man he'd arrested, mocking him and laughing at his threats. Once he had sobered up, the man had remembered the humiliation of that mere policeman laughing at him. When he had been free once more (and he was freed of course, he knew the right people) he decided to have his revenge.
“My sister sometimes left her sons with me for the week-end. Her husband and her travelled a lot, for business. I did not mind, I loved the boys, and I was glad to have them with me. I lead a lonely life at times, like you, but the boys brightened my hours.”
“They are wonderful children,” Bilbo agreed, and if Thorin had been alive, he might have taken his hand to comfort him.
Somehow, the man whom Thorin had arrested knew about these happy week-ends. It was no accident that the killer he sent came on one of them, tying Thorin to a chair and forcing him to watch as his nephews were tortured to death. And then, when Thorin had been too broken to resist anymore, the killer had put a gun in his hand, and had made Thorin shoot the boys.
“One thing the investigation got right was that I did kill myself,” he said. “That killer had a gun against my head to make sure I died anyway, but it was barely needed. I think I would have put that gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger anyway. These boys were my life, the only children I would ever have... without them, I had nothing left.”
Bilbo's hand moved to take Thorin's, and met only empty air. The taller man smiled anyway, as if he appreciated the intention.
“The man I had arrested was called Sauron Annatar. His killer's name I am not sure of, but he was a very tall man, an albino with a missing hand. I do not know if they still live. I do not think justice will ever be made.”
“Didn't anyone think it strange that you would suddenly kill these boys?” Bilbo cried.
Thorin shook his head. “There is a history of violence and instability in my family,” he explained. “People only thought that I was not so different from my father. He killed my brother when I was young. An accident. Frerin had broken a vase, and in a fit of rage, my father threw him down the stairs, breaking his neck. And my grandfather ended his life locked up in a small room because he would try to bite everyone who came near him, saying we were all spawns of the devil and had to be purified. They all thought I had snapped too.”
“But you did not.”
“I still killed them,” Thorin sighed. “It was my fault. Had I not arrested Annatar... but you know now. Do not talk of it to the children again. It makes them cry, and I would rather hear them laugh.”
“I will not,” Bilbo promised.
Thorin smiled then, and disappeared, leaving Bilbo alone with his hand held out in the air from when he'd tried to touch the ghost.
Bilbo was not a detective, he was a translator. But a friend of his was a writer who specialized in detective stories and knew people. It was a little difficult to find a plausible explanation as to why Bilbo had such a sudden interest in crime rings and hired killers, but in the end he did the easy thing and claimed he was writing a book.
“A book?” Bofur laughed. “A book. Well, I should have known you wouldn't be translating software documentation all your life! And you want to write a crime story?”
“Based on true fact,” Bilbo explained. “There was a murder twenty years ago in the house I live in. A man and two children died... supposedly he killed his nephews and then committed suicide, but I am not so sure. I've asked around, he was a stable and nice man, and there's something off about the story.”
“Isn't there always? And you think this is some sort of mafia who did it. What was his job, your man?”
“Police. I think he once arrested a man called Sauron Annatar, and that might be why he died.”
“Name rings a bell,” Bofur said. “Let me check... won't be a minute.”
Bilbo laughed, glancing at the piles of papers all over Bofur's flat. Abandoned novels and ideas and researches and all sorts of things. Bofur's novels were known for being so well organised, and were compared sometimes to clockwork for the way everything was in the exact right place and fit together. Bilbo liked to joke that all of Bofur's organisation was inside his writing, leaving the rest of his life a terrible mess.
“There, got it!” Bofur claimed after a few minutes. “Knew I'd heard the name... and you should drop your idea, Bee. Annatar doesn't play nice. You know how there are awful criminals who have a heart of gold sometimes? Well he's not one. He's the guy that make killers piss themselves in fear when they hear his name. Drop the story, Bee, or change the killer.”
“It's real life, Bofur. I don't get to chose the killer. Does... does he by any chance work with a hired killer... a tall albino with one arm?”
“Azog works for everyone,” Bofur grunted. “He's the only killer who doesn't shit himself when thinking of Annatar, and that should tell you what sort of a person he is. Drop this, Bee.”
“I can't. Someone has to figure out the truth, and I think that someone has to be me.”
“The dead are dead, Bee. Won't change anything for them.”
“You don't know that,” Bilbo decided. “And this... this is about justice. Beside, aren't you always saying I need to do something, get a hobby?”
Bofur grunted. “Chasing criminal masterminds isn't a hobby, Bee. It's elaborate suicide.”
He refused to give more information on either Azog or Annatar after that, but Bilbo managed to get the name of one of Bofur's contacts in the police, a man named Dwalin who might give him access to any files on Oakenshield's death, if they had been kept.
“You do not have to do this,” Thorin told Bilbo that night, watching him research on the web for any trace of Annatar or Azog. “You should not do this.”
“Someone has to.”
“And it should not be you. I do not want you to die.”
Bilbo turned to him and smiled. “I will not die then. But even if I did, I would not mind so much, especially if I could stay here with you and the children. They are wonderful boys, and I love them terribly.”
Thorin looked pained for a moment, but he did not insist and disappeared, as he always did.
“There is something odd with the Oakenshield murder-suicide,” Dwalin grunted. “I wasn't part of the investigation because Thorin was a cousin of mine, and they thought it'd be best like that. But all the cops who did investigate were... well, there's black sheep everywhere.”
They were in a busy café. Dwalin's idea. People would have more trouble overhearing them, he'd said. Beside, the coffee was good, and they made nice chips.
“Does the name Annatar ring a bell?” Bilbo asked.
“Does. Surprised you'd know it, though. Not a very well known man, old man Sauron.”
“I have my sources,” Bilbo explained, putting on his most professional expression in hopes that it would be enough to avoid questions. “And these sources say that Oakenshield had arrested Annatar some time before the murder. For being drunk in public, from what I understood, and he didn't realise at the time who he'd arrested... nor had anyone else, I imagine.”
Dwalin glanced at Bilbo, and grabbed a chip.
“You got some damn good sources it seems,” the officer claimed, chewing slowly. “Surprised you even need me for your book if you already know all that. So what's it really all about?”
“This is about justice,” Bilbo replied politely, “and a man who never would have killed his nephews.”
“Well, that at least I can get behind,” Dwalin agreed. “Old boy loved his nephews more than anything. People say he went mad like his father and grandfather, but they don't know. Never saw him around kid that had been beaten or worse, or they'd know better. Can't believe a man like that would lay a finger on his boys. Fine, mister Baggins. I'll try to see if we have anything that can help you with your book. But don't you hope too much.”
Thorin appeared again that night. He did so more and more, and stayed longer and longer. Bilbo knew the ghost only cared about this attempt to restore his honour and appease Kili, but it still made him happy. Thorin, when the mood would strike, could be as good company as his nephews.
“How was Dwalin?”
“Tall,” Bilbo said. “I'm starting to think it runs in the family. You didn't say he was your cousin!”
“Knowing too much would have made you suspicious.”
Bilbo laughed, and put some water to boil.
“Well, I still was you know. But I think he was glad to not be the only one to have doubts. I think he cared for you a lot.”
That made Thorin smile, and he was unfairly handsome like that. How old would he have been, had he lived? Older than Bilbo, but not so much. Would he still have been so handsome, after twenty more years?
“We were close once, Dwalin and I, and then my mother stopped seeing my father's family, and we lost contact for a few years. When he met again, things were different... we were on our way to being friends once more when Annatar came.”
“He seems like a good man.”
“He is.”
Bilbo smiled then, but there was an odd look on Thorin's face, something he couldn't quite name... but then, his water was hot, and the expression was gone when Bilbo came back in his office with a cup of tea. Thorin wasn't the only there now, the boys had joined him, and they threw themselves at Bilbo. They knew they couldn't touch him, but they always tried anyway.
“Uncle Bilbo, come watch with us!” Kili ordered. “There is pirates! And they turn into skulls and there is a monkey!”
“Well, I certainly can't miss seeing a monkey,” Bilbo admitted, smiling at the boy's current obsession. “Is it a nice monkey?”
“It turns into a skull too!” Kili squealed excitedly, making it clear that good and evil were unimportant notions compared to the sheer amazingness of an undead monkey.
“Will you join us, Thorin?” Bilbo asked, even if he knew the other man never did.
But the man smiled widely, and nodded.
“I cannot very well miss pirates,” he said with a quiet laugh. “And I'm very intrigued by the idea of a skull monkey.”
It was oddly comfortable to be all together on the sofa, Bilbo thought later. He knew that Kili wasn't really on his knees, and he couldn't actually feel it when Fili snuggled against his side when he was frightened... but it was nice.
And ghost or not, when Thorin's hand caressed his nape, Bilbo shivered, and wished he could kiss him.
Thorin was not the first one that Annatar had killed over a minor offence, and neither was he the last.
Bilbo found them, one by one, and there was something of a recurrent style that he noticed. It always looked like someone had murdered their loved ones before killing themselves. Here it was a woman and her husband. There, a boy, his boyfriend and the boy's birds. A couple and their two children.
“He will kill you too if he notices what you are doing,” Dwalin warned him when Bilbo shared that information.
“I don't have much to fear,” Bilbo retorted. “Everyone I love is dead already.”
Whenever Bilbo wasn't out to investigate, he spent the night watching television with the ghost he now privately thought of as his family. Neither he nor Thorin ever said anything about the fact that the dead man would have been sprawled all over him, had he been alive.
They didn't speak either of the fact that Bilbo tried to kiss him once, after Thorin had made a particularly unfunny joke.
Some things were better left unsaid.
Bilbo was not surprised when he woke up one night to see a tall pale man sitting on his bed, a gun in his hand.
Terrified, yes. Surprised, no.
It was the plan, he realised then. He had never told Thorin who would have refused and ordered him to stop, but it had been the plan. Bilbo had talked to several people of his investigation. Some he trusted. Other he did not. And now he would die... but Bofur, and Dwalin, and mister River and miss Beorn and others, they would hear about it, they would say that he'd told them about how others had died this same way, at the hand of a hired killer. They would say that he'd been investigating Thorin Oakenshield's murder, and maybe... maybe it would be enough to clear the name of a good man who had loved his nephews.
“You've been too curious, mister Baggins,” the pale man said, smirking. “Didn't anyone tell you that curiosity killed the cat?”
“I'm not a cat.”
“No, you're not. You look more like a rabbit. A tenacious rabbit. But they die too, and quicker than cats. Open your mouth, mister Baggins. Let's not make this difficult. I'd rather not hurt you, eh?”
Bilbo obeyed, opening his mouth to let the gun's cannon in, and closing his eyes. Thorin and the boys were there next to him, and Bilbo wished he could have also covered his ears so he wouldn't hear them beg him to fight for his life.
Then Azog pulled the trigger, and Bilbo didn't hear anything anymore.
“You shouldn't have done that!” Thorin shouted at Bilbo while his body was taken away. “I never asked for that! You weren't meant to die, not yet! You were too young! And why stay as a ghost, why not...”
“There's no one waiting for me on the other side,” Bilbo cut him, “supposing there even is another side. My family is right here, and I will leave when you all do, not a moment before.”
The boys, who had been observing the coming and going of the police as if it were all a particularly realistic show, joined them then. Fili's hand went to Bilbo's, and for the first time their fingers met.
“Are you going to stay with us, uncle Bilbo?” the boy asked.
“Of course he will!” Kili exclaimed, hugging Bilbo's legs. “He's our other uncle, he'll stay with us for ever and ever and ever!”
Bilbo laughed and promised, kneeling down to kiss both boys and hug them close, as he had never been able to before.
“Are you sure you won't regret this?” Thorin asked.
“As sure as I'll ever be,” Bilbo replied, pulling the other man down to join the hug.
And when the children went to play and they were alone at last, kissing Thorin was everything he'd hoped it would be.