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Dis barged into Thorin’s office, annoyed. He should be happy, Mahal damn it! He should be the happiest dwarf in all of Arda. He had succeeded. After all these years he had finally done it. They were home. He was now the king he had been born to be, and all she had seen him do since her return was mope around Erebor.
Her children had made it, almost all of his Company had survived. The battle had apparently been a bit hit and miss, but Thorin and Fili and Kili had all survived and she in turn got to come home.
She had walked these walls with her hand in her mother’s long ago, Thorin and Frerin trailing behind them. They had grown and laughed and loved here, and now they were back.
This hard won mountain was theirs again and Thorin was working hard to make sure it stayed that way. And, whilst he was doing that, he was still working himself to an early grave and Dis just didn’t understand why.He was a king now. She had argued with him that he had to look like a king, that he had to look like he was happy being King Under the Mountain.
He had only hissed back “If I am King, then I look like one as I am one, happy or unhappy it matters not,” back before storming away, again.
Dis just didn’t understand him. The only casualty they had seemed to have suffered personally was that of their burglar, but he was just a hobbit and who mourned a thief anyway?
Not that she had said that more than once, she had been lucky that looks couldn’t kill what with the way the entire Company had glared at her after she mentioned the burglar being irrelevant.
Hobbits were useless, fat little things. Every dwarf knew that/ She was grateful that this one had helped Thorin and Fili and Kili of course, but well, it was only a hobbit after all. Nothing would convince her about those grandiose stories told about the creature. That it was the hobbit that had saved Thorin again and again. She had scoffed at the implication. Offended on Thorin’s behalf. Thorin didn’t need saving. He was the hero of his own story, not some hobbit simpleton, she thought vindictively towards the hobbit that had died after the battle had been won.
Apparently the hobbit had gotten Thorin, Fili and Kili the help they needed to survive, which she was grateful for of course, but the stupid creature hadn’t seen to its own wounds and he had died, inside the royal tent, beside Thorin’s bedside of all place.
Of all the disrespect he could have shown them, dying in their recovery tent seemed quite high on the list, Dis decided.
She was feeling pretty confident that she had ruled out that it was the hobbi’s death affecting her brother’s mood, after all he had barely known him so Dis decided she would do as all younger sisters did and snoop through her brother’s things.
She decided to start with his office. After all, there may be something to do with the elves that had been bugging him and, like the stoic fool of a dwarf he was, he would keep it to himself until it crashed down around their heads.
She was the Princess Under the Mountain; it crashing down around them wasn’t something she could allow again. It was something she would never tolerate again.
She looked over the trade agreements and treaties on Thorin’s desk. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary though, so she moved to his drawers instead. The left one opened easily enough. It was full of quills, the new pens Balin had been creating, and bottles of unopened ink and paper. Just writing supplies. Not what she was looking for.
She then moved onto the right drawer and found it locked. “Ah hah,” she said triumphantly. If his trade agreements and treaties were out in the open for all to see, then that meant it was something else in this drawer. Something much more personal.
She removed one of her hairpins and jimmied the lock, the way that Thorin had taught her many, many years ago. Idiot should have remembered, she thought with fondness.
She slowly opened the drawer and then blinked at the first thing she saw. Unsure if it was really them in front of her eyes. She hadn’t seen those beads since they had decorated their amad’s hair. She had chewed on those beads when in her mother’s arms. She had watched as their adad had carefully braided them in each morning. Dis often sat on her amad’s knee as he did so.
If Thorin had found them in Erebor then she would have understood him coveting and hiding them away, but he hadn’t. He had had these beads since just after their amad’s death. They were the only thing he would never sell over the years. He had refused to part from them for anything, including Dis’ wedding.
In fact, he was so loath to part with them that he had toiled through two winters of gruelling work so that he could buy gold for Dis’ own marriage beads instead of parting with their amad’s.
They had always been in a pouch around Thorin’s neck, so why were they now locked away inside a drawer, far away from her brother’s heart where they usually lay?
Dis reverently lifted them up and placed a kiss on each bead, sending a prayer up to Mahal and her amad and adad before placing them softly on the desk, careful to make sure they wouldn’t roll away.
She took a deep breath and then dived back into the drawer again. There had to be a reason Thorin had finally put the beads down and locked them away after all these years, and she would discover what it was.
The top sheets of paper inside the drawer were just reports from members of The Company who Thorin now held in the highest esteem. Dis had said nothing about miners and bastard Durin’s joining them as part of Thorin’s closest companions and confidants. After all, her brother was king and could choose his own friends and council.
She shifted through the papers and moved them out of the way when her hand suddenly stopped at an out-of-place looking piece of paper.
It was weather worn and on much lower quality paper than the reports. It looked blank at first glance, so she slowly turned the sheet of paper over and let out a little “oh,” as she stared at it.
She lifted it carefully and placed it on the desk that she was sitting in. She placed it before her and realised this must be how Thorin viewed it and often. On either side of the sheet, careful not to smudge the charcoal, were thumb marks. The oil of Thorin’s thumbs had seeped into the paper, discolouring it slightly.
She looked at the portrait of the fae looking creature on the page before her and tried so hard to figure out what Thorin had seen in him. And he must have seen something in the hobbit if he was staring at this portrait, brooding the way she assumed he was.
For him to be sat looking at this portrait when he could barely talk about the many they had lost, let alone look at the few portraits they had of their lost family members meant this hobbit meant something else to her brother, and not just as a burglar who helped him get the mountain back.
Dis took a deep breath when she realised that their amad’s beads had been sitting over this hidden portrait. There was no reason for Thorin to keep a portrait of the dead hobbit in his desk other than the one reason Dis was starting to suspect for her brother.
Dis suddenly felt sick. It wasn’t brooding that Thorin was dealing with; it was grief. Grief of losing his One.
She had felt the pain of losing her own One but she’d had her two little dwarflings to help keep her going, to stop her falling into the despair dwarves combated when losing the other half of their souls. The same dwarflings that Thorin had helped support their entire lives. But now they were almost full grown. Fili would be ready to be King in a couple of decades. Would she lose her last remaining brother then? When he knew the boys would be alright? When he thought he would no longer be needed by them? Not realising that she would need him forever.
She looked at the hobbit’s portrait before her and couldn’t help but both love and hate the hobbit for kindling her brother’s heart and then rip it apart, all within the same year. Her poor, poor brother.
If she believed half of what was told about the hobbit, then she only had a brother and children because of this creature. But he had left Thorin. He had even had the gall to die beside Thorin’s sick bed. Dis couldn’t imagine Thorin’s heartbreak when he went to sleep, his hand clasped in his hobbits and woke with it cold and the hobbit no more, just another casualty of a battle made worse by Thorin’s own hubris.
She could imagine the noise her brother had made when he had opened his eyes and seen his love dead beside him however. The same noise he had made as he cradled Frerin in his arms as he brought him home to Dis. Frerin who had been one of the few given the honour of being brought back and saved from the mass funeral pyres. It was the same noise he made as he held Dis’ close when she almost succumbed to Mahal on Kili’s birthing bed.
Thorin rarely showed what he felt, but by Mahal did he feel. He felt with every ounce of his body, every splinter of his soul. Dis often suspected that he felt more than most beings, most dwarves she had ever known.
He had spent 195 years Oneless, believing he was broken as he didn’t have a One and he wasn’t drawn to a craft, so instead he had made sure that he excelled in all that he tried so no one could ever say he was lacking, that he didn’t deserve to be the Prince he had been since birth. Dis had always suspected it was more than that though. That he had been trying to fill a hole in his soul that he would never acknowledge.
But Thorin had finally found the being that would fill that gap. He found his One in a soft little, beardless hobbit and he had lost him less than a year later. Why did the Valar hate them so, Dis wondered as she realised she was crying for her brother and his new found pain.
And Thorin was in pain. Dis had seen it since the moment she had stepped foot back in the mountain. She just hadn’t realised the source of that pain.
He hid it well, all things considering. But he was her big brother, her best friend. She had known something wasn’t right, but looking down at the hobbit in the portrait before her, she realised she hadn’t known how deep the pain went and with a sinking heart she realised she could never fix it or take the pain away. She could never be able to take it away.
It was with a heavy heart that she went to put the portrait of the hobbit back where she had found it. She winced to herself when she realised she didn’t even know his name, that she hadn’t paid enough attention to the stories, chalking them up as tall tales and just not being interested.
As she put it back, she moved another report, and underneath it was a letter. She knew she shouldn’t look at anything else. She had learnt what she had needed to, but well, she had already come this far, she reasoned to herself.
She reached down and grabbed it before she started second guessing herself.
There, in Thorin’s beautifully scripted handwriting, was a love letter. A love letter to his dead One.
She was torn between putting it back, and learning what she could about the hobbit no one wanted to talk about with her (though she knew she had no one else to blame but herself). The hobbit Thorin refused to talk about.
Just the first line gave her the information she hadn’t already had. His name was Bilbo. An odd name for an odd creature who, if she took the tears that had stained the letter, her brother had adored. She settled down to read her brother’s innermost thoughts.
My Dearest Bilbo,
Where are you, Master Baggins? Why did you go? Why did you leave me? I do not know what I want to write. I do not know if you will get this when I burn it. I do not know if you will hear my prayers for you in your Lady’s Gardens, but I miss you with everything that I am. I miss you with my entire body, heart, and soul.
I had never imagined I would be in this position, never imagined it would be my heart that had been broken. Never imagined it would be I who fell in love, and with a hobbit no less. And yet here I sit. At my desk. Knowing there should be another in this office with me. Another quill, another bottle of ink, another being to share the pens that Balin crafted with you in mind. Another to share every part of my new life with.
I don’t know if I can take it. I don’t know if I wish to go on. I shall. I have, above all things, including above you, always done my duty and my duty now is to carry on until Fili is ready for the throne. But how do I do it Bilbo? How do I manage without you?
I do not know how I will endure this for as long as I have to. I know I do not wish to.
I can take the rain on the window of the empty rooms I created for you. It doesn’t bother me as much as it ought to. I can take the tears that I shed every night when there is no hobbit in the armchair I crafted for you.
I’m not afraid to cry every once in a while when The Company sits around a fire and speaks of you with all the fondness you deserve, even though going on when you are gone will always upset me.
There are days when I’m able to pretend that I’m alright. It’s painful, it’s always painful without you beside me.
But that isn’t what gets to me. It isn’t what hurts me the most.
What hurts the most was being so close to you and having so much to say, but knowing you faded away.
It’s the never knowing what could have been that is tearing me apart Bilbo.
It’s the not knowing if it was actually love in your eyes when you looked at me or just admiration.
It’s the knowing that I will never see that look again, or any look, on your face that I came to adore so.
It’s hard dealing with the pain of losing you when everywhere I look in my mountain, it’s like I can almost see you here out of the corner of my eye, but I am doing it. What other choice do I have?
It’s so hard to force a smile when I’m with the rest of The Company. When I’m sat before them, surrounded by them and yet I’m still so alone Bilbo. You should be by my side. You should have always been by my side.
It’s getting harder and harder to get up, to get dressed, to see Kili with Tauriel, Fili with Ori, Dwalin with Nori, when I’m here. Knowing it will never be Thorin and Bilbo, it never was really and it never can be. Not now, not ever.
I’m living with the regret of never having told you that I love you. That I adore you. That I was blessed when Mahal led me to your smial door, it is eating me alive Bilbo.
I do know that if I could do it over again, I would share all the words in my heart that I left unspoken. The words that you should have heard. I wouldn’t wait if I could do it again. I wouldn’t be as cruel to you as I was. I would tell you my love for you is bigger than anything I have ever felt and I am honoured that you called me friend even if it was never anything more on your part. On mine it was so much more, it was everything. You were everything, you are everything.
What hurts me the most was being so close. Of being here with Fili and Kili and Dis because of you. That you lay beside me and faded away after saving my entire family is too much for my old, scarred heart to bare. Why didn’t you ask for help Bilbo? Why didn’t you tell Oin? Why didn’t you ask Bard? Why didn’t you care for yourself the way you cared for me and the boys? Why didn’t you fight to stay with me, my One?
Know that I love you Bilbo. Know that I miss you. Know that each day it is getting harder and harder to smile, but I will. Durin’s endure after all, and this is my penance for not grasping that which Mahal gave to me. For not grasping you.
One day, one day, we will be reunited. I will beg Mahal if I have to. I will smuggle myself into Yavanna’s Gardens if that is where you are. Whatever it takes to be beside you will not be enough to show you the depth of my regard, my love for you.
I hope, I pray that when I am eventually able to part with this letter and burn it, you will receive it wherever you are. That the Valar will allow it to pass through the veil separating me from you. That you can see my words immortalised like my love for you should be.
But know this Bilbo Baggins, I am yours. I was yours the moment I met you and will be yours long after I leave Middle Earth.
I love you Bilbo and I’m sorry that I never got to tell you in this life. I will tell you in the next one, make no mistake about that. I will find a way
Yours, before and after the world is remade, Thorin Baggins
Yes Baggins, I would have taken your name with PRIDE Bilbo.
Dis looked at the letter after reading it more than once. She had to hold it away from herself so she didn’t get her own tears on it too.
Mahal or the Valar or whoever it was that had taken Bilbo away was cruel. Her brother had had such a hard life, never asking for something, someone, of his own.
Like her, he would now be broken forever more. His heart would never mend and Dis’ heart broke for him in turn.
Dis carefully placed all the papers back in Thorin’s drawer, carefully placing the marriage beads she now knew he would have braided in Bilbo’s hair, back on top where they had been placed safely before she stood, her heart hurting for her brother.
She could never fix this for Thorin, but, like when he had held her as she screamed for Vili, when she had woken sobbing in the night because of the bed being empty beside her, she would support him in turn.
Her brother would never ask for comfort from her, from anyone. She was going to make sure he received it, nonetheless.
Walking through the Halls of a home that neither she nor Thorin recognised anymore, she made a vow to herself, to Mahal, that she would keep her brother tethered until he couldn’t stand it anymore. She would help him fight the darkness that would try to consume him. They way he had done the same for her all those years ago.
And, if he still hadn’t gotten to his hobbit when it was her turn to arrive at Mahal’s Halls, well, she would help him then too. After all, he had done nothing but help her since she was born. It was high time she repaid him in any way she could.