Chapter Text
There wasn't a Hobbit in all the Shire as well-read as Bungo Baggins. This is mostly because there was never a Hobbit so motivated to learn. Bungo's wife was mad. He knew it, but he loved her so of course he would never say. She spent rainy days in the mud and sunny days at home, flailing that hideous mathom she still kept terrifically sharp.
Sometimes, when the weather was very fair for a very long time, Belladonna would leave Bag End. More often than not, she came back to him with several weeks of cuts and bruises, grinning stupidly and tracking dirt over the threshold.
He would always ask her: "Are you alright, my love? Where are you hurt?"
To which his wife would reply: "I'm fine, dearest. It's sweet of you to worry." Then she would kiss him hello and ask loudly about dinner.
Bungo learned quickly that his wife could be a stunning liar.
Once, during the worst month of Bungo's life, Belladonna came home, ate a good meal of beef and carrot stew, went to sleep, and did not wake up.
When his family found out, they clucked and clucked.
"Foolhardy Took girl," they said. "Paying for those nasty adventures."
Bungo paid them no mind at all. In fact, he did not hear them. He was in Bree, buying volumes on healing and the bodily processes. He was in Tuckborough, ambushing the most learned Hobbits he knew for information. He was meeting merchant dwarves from the Blue Mountains and trading coin and good food for their books. He read his books about Hobbit bodies first, using what he could to help his wife. In the downtime while he waited for his haphazard remedies to take effect, he read about Dwarves and goblins and trolls.
On occasion, he'd asked his wife what she got up to when she left him. Her answers wound about him like a garden path, confusing and distracting. He was left sometimes with the impression that she had seen everything there was to see and couldn't possibly tell him all of it, so she told him close to nothing.
He would not be left behind. Whatever she saw and did outside of Hobbiton was very dangerous and he felt he could no longer turn a blithe eye to it. So he read and read and, one day, a little more than a month after she fell asleep, Belladonna awoke.
"What in the world are you doing?" she asked him feebly, when she saw him reading at her bedside.
He laughed and felt like the world was lifted off his shoulders. "I am catching up to you, my dear."
She smiled. "Shouldn't be too difficult at the moment."
After that harrowing month, Belladonna returned from her travels, sat her silly husband on her lap and told him everything. He was less than happy about the very big creatures and their very big weapons that often appeared in her stories.
"Must you?" he would ask. "Must you tempt fate?"
She laughed at him and told him how it had felt to escape her death by a hair.
...
Bilbo knows about Dwarves. He learned the basics at his mother's knee. "Mahal carved the Dwarrow out of stone," she said to him. "They live and work among the very stones that gave them life, just as we Hobbits live and work in these green hills."
He learned even more from his father and the big, brittle books in his library. When Bilbo was small and his mother was off again (his father always told him she was traveling to see family) Bungo would hand him a book and tell him to read it.
"When you're finished," he said, "We'll talk about what you learned."
Sometimes, when Belladonna had been gone a long time and all of Bilbo's emotions felt painfully close to the surface, sitting still and reading a book felt like the worst sort of chore. He grumbled and whined but, eventually, the book would take him. In this way, he learned about all the races of Arda. He read the legends and songs of the creators of the Earth. He could trace Hobbit history back to its beginning. He learned to recognize herbs for pain and fever and childbirth. He saw pictures of terrifying beasts from far away and memorized accounts of those who had encountered them and lived.
When he was old enough to realize that all of his mother's family only lived within a two day walk, Bilbo assumed his father wanted him to learn so he could help her, the same reason Bungo had been compelled to create his library in the first place. It wasn't until both of his parents were dead and he found himself shoving cram into an overfull knapsack and sprinting after a party of adventurers that he realized there may have been another reason.
...
When he was fifty years old and Gandalf the Grey scratched a Dwarven rune into his new paint, he was firmly miffed but still bustled off to the market for ingredients. As the dwarves piled into his home, he eyed their braids with fascination.
Dwalin was a warrior, decorated in battle. The silly blonde youth devouring his candied yams was a crown prince. And many of the dwarves at his table were related to each other in some way.
When he opened the door for the late-comer, he found himself standing in front of a king. He thinks he might have known even if he hadn't been wearing the royal braids in front of his ears. Something about the flinty edge of his eyes or the turn of his mouth commanded Bilbo in a way that shook him deeply.
...
Later, as Dwarves and Hobbit huddled around a small fire in an uncomfortable mountainside cave, Bilbo would find his eyes straying to their fearsome leader. His braids were immaculate. That was quite right, Bilbo would muse, remembering the thin plait he'd noticed several of the Dwarves sporting. Since Thorin was related to so many others in the Company, he should never be in need of someone to help him.
Something about the shining, ordered braids disappointed Bilbo and he had to laugh at himself. Really-- a Hobbit of his age and status, gazing after a king of Dwarves. It was very silly, but as he closed his eyes to sleep, he couldn't help but think that he should like to see Thorin's braids a little mussed.
He tried to be appalled at himself for the thought, but fell asleep instead.
...
After the horrible battle on the so-called Carrock, Bilbo couldn't stop shaking. The heat of the fire destroying the great tree seemed to lick over his skin; he could still feel the blustery impact of swords onto his own. He never knew how much wind a battle could make.
Even settled on Beorn's land as they were, he could not be still. Once the dishes had been cleared from the dinner table, Bilbo caught sight of a gentle puff of smoke from the garden. He made his way outside, hoping to find Bofur or Balin. They'd never begrudge him a pull or two and he could certainly use it.
He found Thorin, standing on the eastern edge of the garden in a patch of blooming clover. He was staring straight out at nothing.
No, thought Bilbo. Not at nothing.
He didn't announce himself. Hobbits are very quiet when they want to be, and Bilbo wanted a moment just to look at him. His braids were coming apart. In fact, they could hardly be called braids. Bilbo had seen his nephews wince whenever they looked at him, and for good reason. The plaits near his ears were unrecognizably mangled. He could have been a pyrite miner and no one would know any better.
Bilbo shuddered as the breeze lifted his own hair away from his brow. Why should Thorin suffer so much for the sins of his grandfather? Why should his people? Looking at him, Bilbo wondered just how many people had ever seen him like this: bandaged, bruised, unkempt. It was probably far too many and far too often.
A very un-Baggins-like urge moved through him. He wanted to put his hands on Thorin's braids. He wanted to release them and weave them back together again. He wanted to watch Thorin's face as he did it.
He should have blushed. He would have, if only he could stop thinking of the wind and the fire. Their journey had almost been finished on that great bloody rock. They may never live to see the mountain restored. Smaug may burst free from the mountain and chomp them to pieces where they stand. With enemies like theirs, Bilbo was terrified to realize they were extraordinarily lucky to have made it so far.
He cleared his throat. "Well met, my King. Could I inconvenience you?"
Thorin smirked at him and held out the pipe.
"If you must."
He felt the warm smoke pour under his skin and smiled at Thorin, who was looking toward the mountain again.
"Are we in the garden to brood, then?" he asked. "I'd call that a shame. It's a lovely evening."
"Not brooding, Master Baggins. I am thinking about Durin's Day."
Bilbo wasn't sure he could say anything reassuring, so he said nothing. His fingers twitched and he looked at Thorin's braids again. He could feel himself working up the courage to ask, almost against his own will.
"Thorin, I--" he handed the pipe back to him. What was he thinking? Was he really going to ask? But why shouldn't he? After all, tomorrow either of them could be eaten by a warg or cleft in two by an orc. The skin on his palms felt very hot. He glanced down at them, but they didn't look red. They were normal-- his own pink hands, although the tremors were new.
Thorin was looking at him sidelong. "What is it, Master Burglar?"
Bilbo took a deep breath and tried to control his racing heart.
"It's only-- well, your braids are coming apart."
Thorin turned to face him fully. "Yes?"
"Well, that is to say that... I could help you... with them."
Thorin's eyes were huge as he stared at Bilbo. Bilbo did not look at him; he felt like Thorin could look right into his head, at times.
"Master Baggins..." He said no more, but lowered himself to the bed of clover and crossed his legs in front of him.
"Do you know the patterns?" he asked from the ground. Bilbo gaped at him then shook himself and flopped down next to him. His heart was thrumming.
"No," he said, and it was the truth. He knew that each dwarf had a unique combination of patterns that they chose for themselves after they selected their craft. Bilbo knew many of these-- he could braid a miner, a merchant, a fisherman. He could braid a hard-working, married, second-born blacksmith. Looking at Thorin, he could certainly recognize the royal braids from his father's books-- but the books had never shown him these. From what he could see, Thorin had two distinct patterns outside of his royal plaits: a wicked herringbone and an impenetrably thick ladder braid.
"You could teach me," he choked, suddenly overwhelmed. Thorin had accepted him. He sat there in the dirt and growing things, just waiting for Bilbo to braid him.
Thorin lifted a drooping braid. "This is the first braid my mother taught me. It's a pattern she learned from her father. Each member of our house has worn this braid all their lives."
"This," he said, showing him the other pattern, "tells all who see it that my life and limbs belong to my people. It represents my duty as King."
A huge bee bumbled lazily by and Bilbo watched it as it went. What was he getting himself into? Thorin's entire family had worn the same braid since Durin's creation.
"Master Baggins?" Thorin said, gently. "What is troubling you?"
"Oh, nothing. It's all very...grand."
Thorin saw through him, as he often did.
"It is simpler than it looks," he said.
...
And so Bilbo got his hands in Thorin Oakenshield's hair. It was not as soft as it looked, he was surprised to discover. Once he'd unwound the ratted braids, he looked at the pile of beads in his hand.
He remembered a story from the his father's books. It told the story of a dwarf lass, Dhoine, and her beau, Harum. They'd been unable to marry, as Harum had been promised to another since youth. They met in secret, anyway, often slipping away from their families to steal time alone. As the story went, Harum's family knew of his infatuation and became impatient. They forced him to stay away from Dhoine by arranging outings and events with his betrothed. Stricken, Harum was determined to show anyone who looked that Dhoine had his heart, even if they could not be together. To this effect, he wore her family's pattern over his left ear. They say he died wearing her braid.
Bilbo had never liked the story of Dhoine and Harum, because Harum did not marry Dhoine in the end.
Perfectly tragic, he used to think, frowning into the hearth.
Now, as he stared at his little collection of beads, he thought that it really was tragic. His own hair was far too short for braids, and, although he could crochet the Baggins signature lace pattern by memory, he looked at the blank canvas before him and knew he had nothing to put there.
"What should I braid?" he asked Thorin, feeling quite foolish. It was not like him to do something without properly thinking ahead. By this point, at least, he should know better.
"Shall I show you again?" Thorin asked, twisting slightly to look at him. "It is just a double climbing ivy braid, Master Baggins. Children learn it before their letters."
"No-- I meant..." He trailed off, then picked up a chunk of hair and Thorin's heavy comb. "Never mind."
The braids really weren't so difficult. Bilbo had learned to braid like this on his mother's fine, golden hair. Now, he was realizing that Dwarven braids were made to fit in Dwarven hair-- the thick strands clung to each other like they'd only been waiting to be introduced.
He was finished just in time-- the trees were black against the sky when he closed the bead around the last braid. Suddenly nervous, he pushed to his feet and shuffled in place as Thorin stood.
"How will they know?" he asked him.
Thorin's brow furrowed. "Who?"
He spluttered. "Wh-- the Company! Anyone!"
He looked confused. "How will they know you have braided my hair?"
"Yes?"
He spread his arms to the sides. "Well, it appears we have been alone here for quite a while-- they should know when they see us enter the house that we have been together. And, the last time any of them saw me, I was not so well-kempt. They can draw only one conclusion, I think."
Bilbo flushed. One conclusion, indeed.
Together, they walked back to the path. Bilbo hid a smile in his tunic.