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Bilbo wasn’t sure where she was, or for that matter what had happened. She had been on her way out of the Mountain, headed for – what had she been headed for? She was going to do something… with a groan of effort, she managed to sit up, hand going to the immediate starburst of pain emanating from the back of her head. In the dimness of the room she had woken up in, she could only discern a shift in colour on her hand, but she was well familiar with the tackiness of blood drying in her hair by this point.
“Ye awake already? Must be sterner stuff than I thought, halflings… Well, that just won’t do, can’t have you running around dirtying the Durin line.” Before Bilbo could turn to look at whoever was speaking, the deep, scratchy voice coming from behind her, pain bloomed as something heavy hit the back of her head, and she welcomed the darkness.
When Bilbo came to again, she immediately knew something was amiss. Several things tipped her off, actually, but the primary one was that she could hear her brothers being very upset in close vicinity to her bed. She loved them most ardently, but she was a proper Hobbit in some aspects, and the only males allowed in her bedroom would be her husband and any eventual sons she’d have.
She opened her eyes and regretted the action just as quickly. It brought home both just how much her head hurt, and that she was probably the cause of her brothers’ yelling. The ceiling above her bed should not be white and far away, but the ceiling of the healing hall was.
“Wha…” Bilbo managed to croak out before her voice cracked and she started coughing. After what felt like an Age but probably wasn’t more than a minute, if that, during which Óin carefully helped her sit up and Fíli slipped in behind her to act as a backrest, she stopped coughing, attempting to catch her breath.
“Peace, nan’ith, take care,” Fíli soothed, encouraging her to lean back against him. Kíli hovered at the foot end of her sickbed, desire to be close to her warring with his well-founded fear of healers.
“What happened?” Bilbo finally gathered breath to say, pain shooting through her as she took a too-deep breath.
“Lass, we were hoping you could tell us that,” Balin said, rising from the chair next to her bed. He came to stand at her free side, now that Óin had stopped fussing over her, and gently clasped her hand. “One of the junior guards heard an unfamiliar noise in the lower levels, and by sheer luck, he decided to investigate. Had he not, we likely wouldn’t have found you in time.”
“The – lower levels?” Bilbo muttered in reply, free hand going to her head as if to stem the confusion some. “I wasn’t… I was heading for… it was market day, must’ve been.”
“Do you have to ask her now, Balin? Can’t you see she’s in distress?” Fíli interrupted, taking his duties as her first brother – her nuddel – seriously. He’d claimed it was because she didn’t see her true worth, so he would simply have to protect her from anything unworthy.
“It’s fine, nadad, I’m fine,” she patted his arm, trying to calm him – in vain, she knew.
“I am sorry, Prince Fíli, but I must ask your nan’ith, we must find who did this – and soon, before they try again,” Balin persisted. Bilbo couldn’t entirely suppress the smile that bloomed when she felt Fíli’s well-hidden wince at Balin using his title.
While she didn’t quite feel up to intense questioning, she did want to feel safe again, and she told them as much. Fíli wasn’t happy about it, Bilbo could tell, but he didn’t say anything.
“I don’t remember, Balin, not exactly – I woke up, I think, a short moment, in a very dim room… I think I had been hit around the head already then, I was bleeding, I know that.” Bilbo knew she probably wasn’t making much sense, rambling like she was. It was clear that both Fíli and Kíli understood enough of what she was saying, Fíli hugging her ever closer, and Kíli’s grip on the foot end of the bed was turning white-knuckled.
She was interrupted in her continued recollection by the door to the healing hall opening and Dwalin entering, and though she probably shouldn’t – and had no real right to - she couldn’t help but relax slightly at seeing him, more so still when he closed the door behind him.
“No trace of anyone at all,” Dwalin said, voice gruffer than usual. His voice went soft, however, when he turned to her. “How are ye doin’, Mistress Baggins?”
“Oh, you must call me Bilbo, Master Dwalin, by this point I would call us close enough friends for that to be appropriate,” she returned, a smile lighting up her face. She desperately hoped no one noticed her blush at his kindness.
“Only if ye call me Dwalin, I’ve said.” He didn’t physically smile at her, but she felt she knew him well enough to know that the way his eyes lit up was close enough to count as one.
“Dwalin,” she said softly, always feeling like it was the first time she was granted the right. It usually happened at least once a month, the two of them meeting too rarely for propriety to allow any familiarity to really settle. It pained her. “I am well, Dwalin, thank you for asking.”
“Don’t listen to her, Dwalin, she’s been badly bashed around the head and had your guard found her just a little later, it would have been too late,” Fíli interrupted, not keen on letting her downplay just how bad it was. “She was just telling us what she remembered of things before you came in. Please, continue, nan’ith.”
“I don’t remember much, I’m sorry – I woke up in the dim room, as I said,” she began, feeling much steadier now. It probably had nothing to do with Dwalin standing guard between her and the door – Bilbo had always been good at lying to herself, even if a grown Hobbit really shouldn’t. “Whatever had happened before that, I really do not know – I was going to the market in Dale, I promised Dori I would pick up some of that white blend he’s ever so fond of.”
“But you were found on the lower levels, Bilbo, that’s not on the way to Dale,” Kíli interrupted, expression confounded. Behind her, Fíli sighed, the sound filled with a lifetime of being an elder brother.
“We all know that, Prince Kíli, and I think Bilbo knows that as well,” Balin said, hand stroking his beard in thought. “The question is how she ended up there when Dale was her destination.”
Balin was all set to continue his musings when Bilbo’s sudden gasp stopped him.
“I heard – there was a dwarf, not a voice I recognise,” she said, words tumbling over themselves as she spoke, in a hurry to get them out. “He said – I was getting too close, I was sullying the line of Durin.”
“Purists,” Dwalin hissed out.
“There is a band of – I don’t want to call them dwarrow, for they are not worth the epitaph, but for lack of better terms. They are against anything they think would – yes, sully, I think that is the term they use,” Balin explained, expanding his brother’s outburst. “They are Longbeards but call themselves the Mahishmêr Durinul – Protectors of the Sons of Durin. When King Thrór found his One in a Firebeard, they attempted to kidnap her, claiming it was against Mahal’s Will that the Line of Durin would sully itself with another House.”
Balin was a good orator, his storytelling abilities next to none, and had Bilbo hooked on his every word. By the spellbound look in Kíli’s eyes, she wasn’t the only one. It was, she decided, quite lucky that Kíli had taken a seat at the foot of her bed, because she was rather certain that if he hadn’t he would have fallen over, considering how close he was leaning to Balin.
“We all thought, after Erebor fell, that they would… stop this ridiculous vendetta.” Balin sighed. “They are difficult to track down, and I am afraid they have far more sympathisers than actual members.”
“But I am not – how can I sully the Line of Durin?” she objected, a yawn stopping her before she could get really upset, however.
“The princes have claimed you as their sister, Bilbo, and that is a close relation to the throne – especially as you are not of the Khazad.” Balin shook his head, his distaste for the thinking obvious in every movement.
“But I just,” she started to object but was again interrupted by her own yawn. “They’re my brothers, I don’t care about their titles!”
“That is a very foreign thinking to many of the Khazad, I’m afraid, nan’ith,” Fíli replied, sorrow painting his every word. “According to amad less so now, after Erebor fell, than before, but still common.”
“Adad is a mere blacksmith, something that would have had the Mahishmêr up in arms before Smaug, but in Ered Luin, it only resulted in a few angry mutterings,” Kíli continued from where his brother cut off, absentmindedly picking at her bedding as he spoke. Bilbo was listening intently to them, which only made her all the more embarrassed when another jaw-cracking yawn got away from her.
“Well now, that’s a sign as good’s any, th’lass needs ‘er rest, all of ye, out!” Óin appeared from what seemed like thin air, the healer immediately setting about shooing her visitors out. “She won’t heal any if ye don’t let ‘er sleep, and don’t think I dinnae see ye yawn before lass, ye should be asleep already.”
Bilbo smiled sheepishly at him in reply, taking his fussing for the earnestly meant care it was. She accepted the tonic he handed her in good grace, despite it often leaving her feeling more addle-minded than ever – there was something in the dwarven tonic that just didn’t agree properly with Hobbit physiology, it seemed.
“I’m staying,” Dwalin said, once he was the only one Óin hadn’t managed to banish from his halls. “She needs a guard, and I wouldn’t trust anyone else with that – would ye?”
Bilbo really couldn’t stop the blush from rising in her cheeks, but she certainly hoped it could be blamed on the tonic. She really shouldn’t be this twitterpated by some left-over over-protectiveness from the journey, but when it came from Dwalin she really couldn’t help it.
Óin helped her lay down again, once Fíli had left, something she was rather grateful for. She didn’t think she could’ve managed it on her own.
“Dwalin’ll be standin’ guard ‘ere, then, lass, and I’m in the next room over. Yell if ye need anythin’ – anythin’ at all!! – and don’t ye hesitate to speak up if ye’re uncomfortable,” Óin told her, Dwalin grunting in agreement from his post by the door. Before he could leave, Bilbo managed to grab Óin’s hand, and the squeeze she gave it and the earnest thanks she managed to voice left the grizzled healer blushing beneath the beard.
Silence descended over the healing wing again, and Bilbo hovered somewhere between wakefulness and sleep when Dwalin suddenly took her hand. She probably would have thought she imagined or dreamt it if she didn’t feel the warmth of his hand and the roughness of his callouses.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you, amrâlimê, you’re safe with me.”
Bilbo wasn’t fluent in Khuzdul by any means, but she recognised endearments when she heard them – and while being called ‘my love’ by Dwalin certainly figured in several of her recurring dreams, this wasn’t one of them.
Before she could do more than smile, however, the tonic finally pulled her under, and she succumbed to the sweet oblivion of sleep.